Self-Employed Income Plans

A few random and recent events have combined to make me think hard about my future self-employed income plans:

• I just received a guitar
• I began reading Yanik Silver’s “Moonlighting on the Internet“
• Fantasy Baseball is starting again

Each one of these events had some part in my new line of thinking. I will get into how each one changed my income plan, but first I will briefly detail my current self-employed income plan. Currently, I am just beginning to attempt to make money from this blog. I also tutor as a contractor through a tutoring company.

My New Guitar

My parents gave me an acoustic guitar for my birthday. I’ve wanted one for a few years now, even though I’ve never played before (other than rock band of course). I really want to find more time to try new things like learning how to play the guitar. I want to be able to work out more. I’m falling behind on my movie watching. I used to go watch every new movie that intrigued me. I haven’t seen the new Underworld movie, even though I had been counting down the days until it came out.

I’m not only failing to find the time for things that I enjoy doing, but I’m failing to find time for my obligations. I haven’t kept my condo as clean as I want. I haven’t sorted, filed and even opened some of my mail in over a month. I have to find more time.

“Moonlighting on the Internet”

If you want to be inspired to make money on the internet, read Pat’s Smart Passive Income Blog or Yanik Silver’s “Moonlighting on the Internet“. I’ve been reading Pat’s blog for over a month now and I just began reading Yanik’s book. I’m only 40 pages in, but I highly recommend this book and I’m very inspired and motivated to begin some new online ventures, other than blogging.

I already plan to tutor on my own, and I’m hoping my expertise in the high school math and science realms will open up some new money making ventures online. I’m not sure if I want to try to develop a membership site with clearly laid out lessons for difficult high school topics or if I want to write ebooks. Either way I have to find some time to work on this. At the very least it will be a great resource for my tutoring ambitions.

Fantasy Baseball

I absolutely love fantasy baseball, so much that I recently wrote a post comparing it to the stock market. I’ve already participated in four mock drafts at espn. Annually, I participate in at least 8 leagues. This passion for fantasy baseball (I also enjoy football and basketball) has to lead somewhere. There  has to be some sort of income generating venture in the vastly growing fantasy world.

I have to at least attempt to generate some income from my passion. I can’t think of a more enjoyable and entertaining job than writing about fantasy sports for my career. I won’t be very happy with myself if I don’t at least try to start something.

I’m not sure how I will go about generating income, but I will be doing some research into starting a blog, and potentially morphing that into a membership site with annual ebooks with premium content. I haven’t done a whole lot of thinking about this, but I feel like the market for fantasy advice and inside information and will continue expanding.

Future Career Path

I find that there’s a common theme for these three random events: I have to find more time. Either I have to cut back on some tasks or I have to be more efficient at what I do. I’ve decided to cut back on the time I spend working on this blog. Instead of trying to post 5 times a week, I’m hoping to post 3 times (not including my link post). I think cutting out one or two posts a week will save me some time that I can spend on other ventures.

Additionally, I think reducing the number of blog posts a week will help me focus on quality posts. There are topics that I want to research and learn about. I just haven’t found the time to do this because I felt like I had to post every day. I have a book about asset allocation that I want to read, but I don’t have the time. I’m convinced that this will increase the quality of my blog posts. I’m very proud of the some of my recent posts, such as: 11 reasons why you should be lazy and average, how does the stock market compare to fantasy baseball, and the biggest lesson learned from this bear market. I’m looking forward to more quality posts like these in the future.

In summary, I will focus on more quality posts, instead of quantity. With my extra time I will focus on generating income in different ways. I plan on posting about how these ventures are panning out on this blog. So stay tuned.

Does anybody have any online ventures that they are planning in the near future?