The wisdom of a pop star
Unwritten – A song published by Natasha Bedingfield is a constant point of refocus for me. Whether Natasha has any idea of the wisdom of her song or not I don’t know. What I do know is that the song has immense value to me when it comes to making money.
The core of the words go like this:
I am unwritten, can’t read my mind, I’m undefined
I’m just beginning, the pen’s in my hand, ending unplanned
Staring at the blank page before me
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten
Let me brake it down from my perspective.
Your life and my life are unwritten. We don’t know what is going to happen today, we can’t control what happens to us. We can however control what we do with our lives, and what we do with what happens to us.
The song says I’m just beginning, the pen’s in my hand, ending unplanned – When you start each day you get a new chance. A chance to do something, a chance to succeed. Each day of your life is a new page that is not written down. What will you do with your life today?
Staring at the blank page before me Open up the dirty window Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find Reaching for something in the distance So close you can almost taste it Release your inhibitions – When you look at your life each day, don’t think about what can’t be done, think about what can be done. Get some illumination from those around you that are succeeding, read their blogs, read their twitters, read their forum posts. Sometimes you can feel you are on to something, its so close you can taste it. Quit holding back and go get it.
Feel the rain on your skin No one else can feel it for you Only you can let it in No one else, no one else Can speak the words on your lips – Life comes at you fast, stop and feel the rain. See what is really around you, what could be. Only you can succeed with your life, no one else can or will do if for you. No one can speak your words, no one can do your job, no one will earn the money for you.
Drench yourself in words unspoken Live your life with arms wide open Today is where your book begins The rest is still unwritten – Your thoughts and ideas are your opportunity, immerse your self in them and put them into action. Live your life with arms wide open, ready to embrace whatever comes your way and use it to your benefit. Today is where it all starts, today is where the opportunity starts. Today is the day you can start making money, or today is the day you can do nothing. Your life is not written down, its not decided, will you embrace today and write it down as a success? You don’t have to make money today to succeed. However, if making money is your goal then you DO have to take steps toward that goal to succeed. If I take steps toward my goal, regardless of whether or not I make that goal today, then today was a success. The more steps the better.
Someone once said “Today is the first day of the rest of your life”. What are you going to do with it? Are you putting yourself in the position today so that you can earn money down the road? How about that plan?
SEO College
I attended a private Bible College in Indiana for 4.5 years and a state technical college for .5 years. The college mentality seems to be, work hard during college at whatever job you can, and once you get out you can apply your degree and get a good paying job. As you know I currently work a day job, but I want to quit that someday and work for myself full time. Rather then wander around aimlessly I decided I needed a plan and time frame.
One class I attended at the state college was “Advanced Website Design”. The teacher is one of the best teachers I have ever had, smart and helpful. The class was centered around learning Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver and a few other tools. The majority of what we did was to go through in-program tutorials or online tutorials for the programs. The tuturial would give us a project and then guide us step by step how to do it. Thus we were able to learn by hands on experience and, to some degree, at our own pace. This teacher taught me one of the single most valuable things I can ever learn. He taught me how to teach myself. Basically the class was just organized tutorials that you completed. I can read and learn anything myself. Simply read, learn, apply in a structured format and your doing the same thing.
Thus I came up with a plan. The plan in a nutshell was to go to SEO college for a “bachelors” degree. By that I simply mean that a bachelors degree is typically a 4 year degree. So I plan to learn SEO and online business in 4 years. Now in a typical college, you would have to pay money, usually alot, to have someone teach you. Given the fact that you are really doing the work, all they are really doing is guiding you and making sure you achieve a measurable level of knowledge. Neither of which actually guarantees you will earn any money with your degree when you get done. This isn’t to appealing to me.
So I decided to consider myself as being in SEO College. By having my own college I can create a learning plan, learn in an organized format and measure my level of knowledge by how much money I make. I am of course not just learning SEO, I am really learning how to make money online. Its just like college, with a few differences. I don’t have to pay some school a incredulous amount of money to learn. In fact as I learn and apply I am actually earning money. I don’t have to do it on the schools time frame. I can learn as fast as I like. I don’t have to go thru four years of wondering if I am going to get a job when I get done. I get to actually build myself a job as learn. Also in this case I get to stay on top of things. If there were a college course on SEO it would be well outdated by the time you finished the 4 years. I stay up to date as the market changes.
So about the plan. I don’t have a strict plan per say as things do constantly change. However I have basic plans. -I do have many small steps laid out, but in order to keep this post reasonable I will give a summary. I will give more detail of my plans over time. – My plan is to quit my job by April 2011 and be able to work full time for myself. I believe that I will meet this goal before April 2011. The purpose of considering myself to be in college is to keep me focused and on target. If the average joe can get a degree and job in 4 years, I can get an excellent education and create my own job in 4 years or less. When I get discouraged about things not going fast enough, I remind myself I am just a sophomore in SEO college, how could I expect to know what a graduate like Shoemoney or John Chow knows? 
Shoemoney and John paid their time in “school” I am paying mine now.
My status in school? – I started April 2007 with proxies. I have since written an ebook that has earned over $2500, I have earned over $1500 with proxy websites in one month. My latest successful projects include 2 content sites that are SEOd. I can’t say everything I have done has earned a profit, but even Google and Apple have had non profitable ventures at one time or another.
To reach my goal (maintaining my current income) and quit my job I need to earn $65,000 per year. To be comfortable I want to earn $80,000 to $100,000 per year. I earned about $10,000 last year and am already on track to well exceed that this year. If things go as I would like I will make between $30,000 and $48,000 in 2009.
It all starts with a plan. If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time. I WILL go part time at my job for a while when I transition and quit my job altogether one day. I have a plan, what is your plan? Do you even have a plan? Do you want to succeed in earning either a living or just some side money online? Then get a plan and stick to it. Enroll in a hypothetical self taught college if you want, start a blog to help you keep track of your progress maybe. Just be sure to WRITE IT DOWN. Do it, on paper, on purpose. Do it today, do it now.
Monetizng with Text-Link-Ads.com
Yesterday I was reading a post by John Chow on monetizing, and he listed Text-Link-Ads as a source he uses. I have seen TLA before, but never really had a site to use them on, or that I wanted to. As some may know I started making money online with proxy websites. These are not the type of websites that would fit the bill for TLA. About 6 months ago I started to get serious about making websites that were SEOd and rank well in Google. Given that I work full time with a family as it is, I have been on a rather slow path at learning SEO. I have gotten a site up and running and on the first page of Google for a competitive Microsoft term. The site brought in $270 last month solely from adsense, so its starting to get moving.
That site is the type that can work with TLA, so I applied yesterday. I got it all setup and was approved yesterday. Before 11AM today I got an email that they had sold an ad on my site already. Given how new my site is and all things considered it only costs $15 to buy a link. So its not to high of a price, but I was surprised at how quickly they got an ad sold. Give my current profit share it could bring in an extra $50+ per month for that site. So thats not too bad for now. I assume the prices go up as the site grows, they say they review each month. I will see how it goes, but for now it looks like a painless way to more efficiently monetize. All told I didn’t remove and adsense ads to put up the TLA ads, so its pure profit at this point.
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