Update On My Self Employed Income Projects

With some of my favorite TV shows starting in September, I’ve been less focused than I would like. I did make some progress on my projects, but I’d really like to start seeing my income increase. During October I will focus more on short-term money making projects like my sports drink and one week marketing campaigns, while still sprinkling in some work on my academic subject tests.

Marketing a new sports drink online

During September I was able to finish the website completely. I added the legal page that acts as a privacy policy, security statement and FDA disclaimer. I scrapped the articles section of the site. I thought writing articles pointing to my site was more important than writing articles on my site. I may come back and write articles later, but for now I will focus all of my effort on article marketing.

We have yet to make a sale through our web site, which is sort of good as we’re still waiting for the contact information for the drop shipper. Our contact for the drop shipper is very unreliable at returning calls. Other than securing the contact information, the only remaining task is to write articles pointing towards the site using long-tail keywords. Since writing articles is all that is left to work on for this project, it makes more sense to list a goal rather than an action plan. So here’s my goal for this project for October:

• Complete 10 keyword rich ezine articles pointing to the site

Writing ebooks for academic subject tests

I made some great progress during September on this project. I decided on a website name. I started setting up the website. I completed the hardest part of the set up, which was finding a way to show specific blog posts on different pages that correspond to each subject. I wanted to have one page act as my blog where every post I write shows up, but I wanted a different page for each subject (ie Chemistry, Calculus, etc) to sort through the posts and display every post for that subject. I found a very creative and unique solution. There is still some set up work to do, but the hard coding is completed. My current action plan:

1. Finish setting up website
2. Develop outlines for ebooks
3. Begin creating content as blog posts
4. Develop tutoring credentials page
5. Develop contact page

Affiliate marketing campaigns

I still haven’t finished the campaign for my second idea from two months ago. I also didn’t have any sales from my current One Week Marketing campaign. I have really settled into a holding pattern with using the One Week Marketing technique with Keyword Elite, which is bad considering it’s currently my best method of earning income. Similar to the sports drink project, I’m going to make a goal for the month of October rather than list an action plan. My October goal:

• Complete a One Week Marketing campaign for 10 different products

Ebook about taking ideas to products

This project is in a holding pattern until the sport drink is up and running. I did some keyword research and decided on a website name for the sales page. I also developed an outline based on some minimal research, as well as a slogan for the product. I am waiting for my Dad to create an outline, which probably won’t happen until the sport drink is up and running.

Monetize Personal Finance Start-Up Blog

I haven’t done anything additional for this project during September. So far my current monetization efforts come from content ads from Microsoft, affiliate marketing (Lending Club, TradeKing, etc.) and text ads. I have to start driving more traffic to this site if I want to earn more money. The following is my action plan to drive more traffic:

1. Submit posts to carnivals
2. Comment on other personal finance and passive income blogs
3. Target keywords with article marketing
4. Host a carnival or two

Create a fantasy sports membership site

I have yet to do anymore on this site. I have a domain name reserved. I don’t know if I will be able to pursue this project much further until I have time to consistently blog about baseball and football. If I’m not consistently blogging with this site I will not be successful. I am targeting the beginning of fantasy baseball 2010 as my starting point. Until then I will be trying to develop the website so that all I have to do when 2010 baseball rolls around is write articles.

Income for August

• Personal Finance Start-Up blog
  • August – $104.85
  • September – $10.93
• Affiliate Marketing Campaigns
  • August – $21.57
  • September – $0
• Total
  • August – $126.42
  • September – $10.93
  • 2009 – $137.35

It was great to achieve the first milestone in August, but September was a real step back. I don’t know if making money online is ever going to be considered consistent, so all I can do is focus on developing the income potential on my projects. Now that I’ve set specific goals for a few of my projects, I hope to increase my income once again in October.