18 Months 2 Blogs Six Figures: A Manifesto by Corbett Barr about Online Income, Lifestyle Design, and Entrepreneurship

Below you'll find my comments and discussion points that I wrote down as I read through Corbett's manifesto. I am using this page as my encouragement, inspiration, goal setting, and focal point of my online pursuits that I have here on Squidoo (this writing platform you are on right now). Please participate in the discussion and debates on this page. Leave a comment about how you can apply these concepts to your online business.

Above all else, read and do. Read and do. Read and do.

Corbett began this entire lifestyle design transformation because he was feeling exactly like many of us feel right now. At the end of his rope.

"My situation was probably like a lot of yours. I was working to the bone week after week on projects I could care less about and had very little time to actually live my life."
"To me there are more fulfilling ways to live and work than the typical 9-to-5."
"The money was great, but I had no life to show for it."

Using the phrase 9-to-5 is an understatement for most people's work lives. I don't know anyone who works 9-to-5. Most people work from 7:30 - 5:30 with only a half hour lunch. Like many other people, Corbett was sick of the bosses, employees, putting in "facetime" in order to be paid, and the never ending hours of being required to be at your job to make a living, while life was passing him by.

I can totally identify with this frustration with traditional forms of employment. My husband is paid on straight commission with no vacation days, no sick days, and no retirement plan. He works at least 6 days a week, sometimes 7 days a week, for 60+ hours per week. Definently leaving him very little time to actually live his life...or even just see his wife and kids. If he's sick or it's a holiday and he doesn't want to work (like Christmas Day), his paycheck will show it. It will be less. No sick days, no vacation days, no Holiday pay, no salary. If he doesn't work, he doesn't get paid. It's extremely stressful for him, because his is the main source of income. It's also stressful for me because I'm in charge of all the finances for our family. I pay all the bills, divide up the money for savings, have to choose who to pay when. Because his income is straight commission, it varies. A LOT. Sometimes he doesn't have a paycheck. Sometimes his paycheck is HUGE. Sometimes its almost nothing.

We have to balance this unreliable source of income by setting aside what we call an "Income Flux Fund". It's a savings account specifically for us to be able to ride out the fluxuations in my husband's paycheck. This is NOT our emergency savings fund, but something completely separate. We strive for this account to have at least 1 paycheck in it (he is paid every 2 weeks), so we can pay bills if he doesn't make any money in a pay period. This normally only happens once or twice per year. I also bring in some income from my online money making adventures, which also helps to smooth over some of the rough patches of an unreliable source of income.

My interest in this topic (18 months, 2 Blogs, Six Figures) stems from my desire to have income that's NOT tied to time. What I mean by that is I want to invest my time into creating income streams that will not only pay me today, but also next week, next year, next decade.

For example, researching and writing content for a website, which sells a product, which may take 10 hours to research, write, and set up the product sale, but then the product featured may make sales and income today, tomorrow, next week, next year. That's in contrast to my husbands employment right now in which he is paid one time, on commission, for a 500 page report he writes that took him 40 hours to complete. Once he is paid for that 40 hours, he can no longer earn any more money for that project. He must work another 40 hours, turn in another 500 page report, and collect his check. Only to start over again. The good thing about his job is that he is paid based on his amount of work. (Need more money, squeeze in more hours to finish another report). Unlike a salary position where one person who does a ton of quality work may be paid the the same salary as someone else who does very little or contributes poor quality work. But the bad thing, as I mentioned, is that if he takes off 2 days at Christmas, his next paycheck drops by 20%. (Ok, getting off topic, but that's where I'm coming from). And why I'm so interested in this ebook by Corbett Barr.

Corbett started blogging at www.FreePursuits.com, about creating a lifestyle you want, where you want it (lifestyle design and entreprenuership) (I could write an entire review about that subject alone, and I plan to in the future.) But he found that this particular blog, while it had a good following, was not the ideal place to offer some of the products and services he wanted to provide his readers, and therefore not very profitable. Many of his readers were so new to the concept of lifestyle design that they really hadn't determined the direction they wanted to take with their life/business model, and he wasn't really comfortable coaching them through this phase. He want to help those who already knew what direction they wanted to head and then he could provide the tools and resources to help them get there. So although he was passionate about his blog, it wasn't really making him any money. So he needed to determine another direction to go.

How Corbett Determined What Services to Offer (so he could make money with a blog):
Corbett says to Find a good combination of:
1. Something you're good at
2. Some you enjoy
3. Something people will pay you money to do

He determined that he really enjoys helping others build audiences for websites, and he's had success doing this with his FreePursuits.com website. So he started another blog aimed at teaching people how to get traffic for their websites and develop an online following. It's within this blog that he could implement more products and services that actually earned him money. He was offering a things that people were willing to pay him for. This new blog was called, www.ThinkTraffic.net. He decided to make that blog a case study in itself, telling his readers exactly how he's doing it. He offers consulting services from this blog and also sells products and tools to help others who are wanting to grow their websites and business.

Corbett discusses how hard it was for the first year of this business building. The first 12 months had very little income. He survived financially on savings he had accumulated during his "employee" days. But he makes a point to say that his situation of having savings stashed away to help him survive that first year can be used by people as an EXCUSE for them to say there's no way for them to achieve the same results because they don't have the money saved to float them while they focus their energies on creating their new business. He makes a point also to say that your situation is what it is, and it's up to you to find a way to get from point A (where you are), to point B (where you want to be).

Hut on the beach in Cancun

"There's a way to get from here to where you want to be. Your job is to figure out what that is and dedicate yourself to making it happen."

Getting Started Income Tip: If you have professional services to offer (i.e. something you probably are paid to do as an employee that you could easily offer in some type of freelance or consulting senerio), Corbett suggests that getting set up to offer your services as a freelancer might be the quickest way to make money fast so you can quit your 9 to 5 job and focus on building your business.

Corbett says he "lived in Mexico deliberately to save money for much of that first year."

Let me repeat that. He lived in Mexico for much of the first year, to SAVE money on living expenses, while he was building his business.

Hmmmmm, usually we think traveling and visiting other countries costs a lot of money. He goes on to say that it can be really cheap to live in many other countries. I found that to be an interesting point because I think many of us think that traveling the world is the ultimate goal...to have enough money to travel and experience other places and cultures. When in reality, if we weren't paying our huge mortgage or rent plus utilites, we would probably have quite a bit of money to spend to rent a place in another country for much cheaper.

This is the ultimate goal of lifestyle design. To be free to live anywhere and work anytime you want to.

My thoughts on this. I would LOVE to go live somewhere else temporarily, but right now my husband and I have chosen and committed to staying where we are for at least 2 1/2 more years until our oldest son has graduated from high school. At which point in time, our younger children will be entering 2nd grade and preschool. (Yes, huge age difference in our kids). I am more comfortable looking at living in another country temporarily, traveling the United States in an RV, or moving to the middle of nowhere, etc.... once my oldest if out of high school. We don't want to uproot him from his friends, activities, and sports teams that are important to him. However, the younger kids would be much more adaptable, and also easier to transfer schools, homeschool if needed (I have a Master's degree), or whatever.

After reaching a breaking point, Corbett and his wife took "sabbatical" from their life as they previously knew it. It was during this time that he realized that

"My ultimate working situation, for now at least, is to be an independent lifestyle entrepreneur. To work for myself, by myself and to have the freedom to pursue what I want when I want."

He continues with advice to all of us: "If you're in a situation you don't love right now, if you're thinking about radically changing your life, I highly suggest taking some time off to really think about things"

Personally, I know I am a perfectionist and I'm stressed out very easily, at seemingly stupid things. In a job scenerio, little things will Drive me NUTS. For example, an unhappy customer's complaint, even if unjustified, will put my stomach in knots even days later at home. I take my work home with me, mentally. If I have a bad day at work, I'm crabby at home. I always want to please EVERYONE. In addition to that, when I was a manager in charge of 25+ employees, I hated being responsible for them and all their mistakes. It was me who got into trouble with my boss, if my subordinates were messing up their jobs. I didn't like being a manager of other employees and dealing with having to cover for them if they called in sick to a 6 am shift and I was the only other person with a key to the building.

This, among other things, like have 2 small children at home, make me focused on learning to create a full-time income from home. But my stressed out personality also make me realize that not only do I not want a boss or employees to worry about, but I also don't 't think I want to sell my own products. Dealing with customer service issues would drive me crazy. For this same reason, I love doing affiliate sales, where I just recommend a product and somebody else sells it to them, ships it to them, and deals with the customer for returns, complaints, etc. However the trade off for doing affiliate sales is that I earn a much smaller profit than if I were selling the items myself. However, for me, the decreased stress level is worth it.

"I decided to pursue a "Do-It-Yourself (DIY) career."
"I knew I wanted to achieve the ultimate in flexibilty. I wanted a business I could run from anywhere, that I could scale up as needed and take time away from when I wanted to. It seemed like building an online business would be the best way to do that."

Corbett decided that the avenue he would choose as a foundation to this new online Do-It-Yourself career would be blogging. He listed other successful bloggers would were an inspiration to him including, Chris Guillebeau, Leo Babauta, Steve Pavlina, Brian Clark, and Darren Rowse, all whom were making a living by blogging online.

If you're not sure about following Corbett's path with blogging as his primary platform, you are in good company. Corbett himself, as he looks back, is unsure why he chose blogging, as he hadn't written anything longer than an email or power point presentation, and thought he didn't like writing. But it turns out, now 18 months later, that he really enjoys writing and being able to share his ideas on things that are important to him.

Note to Squidoo users: Isn't Squidoo a great platform to use instead of blogging if you are first starting out? Squidoo takes care of all the website maintenance for you, updates security measures, and determines the best ad placement (which you get a % of if your page is ranked high enough in the Squidoo network). They also allow you to add in relevant products from Amazon, eBay, Cafepress, and iTunes and earn a commission if someone buys a product from your page. This allows you to easily earn income from affiliate marketing (earning commissions sending buyers to someone else website to purchase someone else's product). Personally, I've applied to become an eBay partner (affiliate) for my own stand alone blogs, and been declined two times. My stand alone websites just aren't big enough for eBay to want me in their program. But by writing on Squdioo I can use their eBay modules to still participage in the eBay partner network by featuring eBay products on my page. Granted, I have to split the commission with Squidoo, but half of the commission is better than no commission. Read my Squidoo eBay earnings report here.

If you like to write about a wide variety of topics, as I do, you can benefit from the size of Squidoo and that it covers almost any topic under the sun. I don't think that I could put all my Squidoo lenses into one blog and it make any sense to anyone, or gain any followers. However, by writing on Squidoo, a community of all kinds of people writing about all kinds of stuff, my work fits right in. Squidoo also has a built in traffic source. Visitors who land on other Squidoo pages, whether Squidoo members, or people who landed there as a result of a Google search, may see my page advertised in the right sidebar as a related page, then click over and read my work. You get the benefit of the traffic from other writer's great work.

Also Squidoo ranks really well in Google, so if you have a good page about a specific topic, you have a great chance of being found in search engine results. A stand alone blog has to be pretty big, with great content, to be found this way. This is just my preference to why starting out writing on a platform like Squidoo is a great idea. You can always remove your content later and put it on a blog if you'd like. Of course the downside is that you don't have any control over Squidoo's rules. They may not let you write on topics you want to write about. And you must always consider the fact that you have no control over the existance of the website, or its relationships with any money making partner, like Amazon or eBay. One day you might wake up and recieve an email notice saying that Squidoo is closing it's doors. Unlikely, as they have been providing an avenue for people to write online and make money since 2005. However, its a possibility. And giving up some ownership control is the tradeoff for some of the other benefits I've mentioned before. It is NOT complete control that Corbett is talking about by creating your own blog.

"You don't make money from a blog, you make money from a business."

Corbett talks about how the blog is just the vehicle to share information and ideas. You have to learn to write about things people want to read. But also these topics must have some sort of commercial viability, or way to incorporate products or services to sell.

"Just don't expect advertising to be your golden goose, and choose a topic that has some commercial viability"

Corbett has figured out, over the last 18 months, how to build an audience and earn money from the blog.

Corbett talks about how the last 18 months have been "simultaneously blissful and grueling". He talks about how you're kidding yourself if you think you'll be able to create the lifestyle you want by only putting in 4 hours a week, at least in the beggining when you are getting the business off the ground. This is even more true if you have a family to support. Corbett talks about how this first year and a half has been "grueling", yet "more fulfilling than anything else I've done work-wise in my life."

Blissful part: "9 out of the past 18 months were spent traveling, visiting friends, exploring new places and learning new things. Much of that time was spent at the beach in Mexico during the winter." He says he'll be returning to Mexico again this winter, living oceanfront, all for less than half the cost of living in the U.S.? Corbett, can you please tell me where you are staying?? You can read more about the things he learned during this timeframe at FreePursuits.com.

I just recently listened to a podcast from Smart Passive Income by Pat Flynn, where he interviewed Nicole Dean, who said that in lot of cases she gets her ideas for a new niche website simply by looking at her traffic stats on her current blogs and websites. If she gets a lot of traffic for a certain topic, without even trying, she takes this as a sign from Google that it will be easy to get traffic for this topic and starts a website around this topic. I do the same thing here on Squidoo. For every page, the traffic stats can give you an idea of something that you could branch off and make a separate page about. Look at your Squidoo Lens stats page. What are the top search terms bringing you the most traffic over the last 90 days? Can you make a separate Squidoo Lens just on that one keyword topic?

"There are lots of people out there who are creating their own realities and building businesses by writing about topics they're passionate about. You don't need a huge audience to make it work either."

Corbett says he regularly attracts about 35,000 unique monthly visitors. This is the traffic number that earns him six figures.

Comparitively, my Squidoo pages give me a combined monthly "Absolute Unique Visitors" according to Google analytics (more specific than the "Visitors" stat) of:
August 2011: 22,807 (about $500, final commissions not yet paid)
September 2011: 24,290 (about $850, final commissions not yet paid)
October 2011: TBD

However, as of right now, I am only offering the affiliate marketing revenue module, so I am comparing my income of approximately $10,000/year (if I make $850/month for the next 12 months), to Corbett's affiliate marketing income of $29,800. But my traffic is only about 69% of his traffic, so I should compare my income to 69% of his income, which would be $20,562. So he is making DOUBLE what I am making, given the same traffic numbers (for the affiliate marketing portion of his income - I do not offer product sales or consulting).

That tells me that I not offering near the same priced items as he is. Or I'm not being paid a similar amount of commission as he is. Or not selling near the number of products and services he does. I need to either start featuring products for higher selling prices. And I need to feature products from other affiliate networks that I join on my own and can earn higher commissions than the 4.25% I get from Squidoo's Amazon product sales or the 3.5% average I get from eBay sales made from my Squidoo pages.

Instead of earning an average of 3.75% commissions, I could easily double my affiliate income if I were only offering products for sale that had a commission of 8% or more.

You must provide valuable content to your readers, or nobody is going to read your blog. And if nobody reads your blog, you don't have a chance of making any money from the business model embedded in it. You must be able to answer the question "why should I read your blog when there are billions of other choices out there?". Corbett says you must not only answer this question once, but restate your blog's purpose many times through out your blog.

New readers should immediatly be able to tell what your blog is about.

It if adds value to their life, they will read it and follow it. Down the road, they may become potential customers to any products or services you may offer that will benefit them. Focus on providing content that is a "killer unique point of view first" and providing "unmistakable value to your readers". Corbett also hammers home the point of choosing a topic you are passionate about. You are going to be researching and writing about this topic every week for the next few years. As you passionate and interested enough in it to this type of long term committment?

Actually, this is another reason why I use Squidoo as my writing platform instead of a blog. As I mentioned earlier my topics are all over the place. On Squidoo, I can write a one page Squidoo Lens, and I only have to be married to that topic for the course of researching and writing on that topic. Yes I do have to update it and maintain it every once in a while. But I can write a new Squidoo page about an entirely different topic next week, next month, or next year. For example, if I was going through a phase where I was engrossed in hiking, I could write all kinds of Squidoo pages about the various topics within the hiking niche. But, if in 6 months hiking is no longer my hobby of choice, but now I am into snowboarding, I can easily shift focus and write about snowboarding. Each Squidoo page stands alone on one topic. I can't really do this if my blog or website is all about hiking, and my domain name is HikingEssentials.com. I have to stay with that niche.

When I first read the subtitle, I thought Corbett was going to talk about how to analyze what's working for you and focus your time on the most profitable stuff. Instead him simply talked about how the internet is one "giant distraction". And how we need to separate the little things that we think are important, like twitter and facebook, or the 10th revision of a logo design, from the really important things, like writing a blog post or creating a product to sell.

"Put all that little stuff off and focus on the CORE of your business FIRST every day. Then get to the other things IF you have time."

The area where I'm the guiltiest of this is in my sales statistics. I am almost obsessive about starting my day by logging into Squidoo and looking at my newly reported sales data. Then I log my sales on an excel spreadsheet. Then I estimate how much my commissions will be, and look at how much I'm expected to earn this month. I may even play around with making some charts and graphs showing my progress. This is because I'm analytical geek. I love making spreadsheets and making sales projections. I want to figure out, by the numbers, how many Squidoo lenses do I need to make if each averages this many sales, so that I can make $xxxx per month. While this is useful for goal setting purposes, I need to limit how often I make these projections. Because that type of thing if FUN for me, I could literally spend hours a day, just looking at stats, analying the numbers, and making projections.

But the CORE of my business, and the only way to keep increasing my profits, is to be creating new Squidoo pages and adding new posts to my Cash Back Websites blog. That's how my income grows. (I also have on my do to list to write an ebook, but I don't quite feel ready for this yet.) Does looking at my stats help me know where to focus my efforts. Yes, but I don't need to be obsessively looking at my sales stats every day. I need to limit myself to checking stats only once per week, allowing my self to look at the stats daily for positive feedback, but not to chart it all out on a spreadsheet the way I have been. That one hour a day that I probably spend doing this right now, could be better used by writing one hour of new content for either my Squidoo pages, or my Cash-Back-Websites.com blog.

Corbett talks about how the most successful bloggers have found their voice and their personality shines through in their writing. He also says this might take a lot of practice, as it did with him. He talks about how much people connect with openess and honesty, and some may become your followers because they find out you have so much in common.

I wholehearedly agree with this point. One of the blogs I read the most is Smart Passive Income by Pat Flynn. He is very open and honest, and details everything he is doing online, including things he tried that just flat out failed. He shares very detailed income reports, and has a loyal following of people. Many of them comment often about how much they appreciate his down to earth personality, openess, and honesty.

Another blog I love is TheFamilyCeoBlog.com. I identify with this blog because the writer has a very similar story as mine and thinks and feels the same way I do about a lot of personal financial challenges within a family. I feel like I connect with her. But I would not feel this connection with either blog if they didn't some personal details on their blogs.

Action Point: "Study the bloggers you respect most. Notice how much personality comes through in their posts. Try being yourself when you write."

"Don't give up. Seriously, DON'T GIVE UP."
This section is worth rereading once every few weeks, when you feel unsure of the direction you are heading, or whether being a Do-It-Yourself Career Solo-Entrepreneur is worth it. Because no two people are the same, there really isn't a standard roadmap for entreprenuers. Corbett talks about persevering towards your One Big Goal, which you need to determine. He says that you might have to start five different blogs or websites before you find one that works for you. Keep pursuing your One Big Goal, whatever that may be. I find that it helps to write down the One Big Goal, and post it where you will see it everyday (probably near your computer or work station).

My One Big Goal:
This may be too vague of a concept, but ultimately I want to live off 100% of our income from online sources that can be managed passively from anywhere that has an internet connection. I don't want my husband's time to be tied to our income. I want to do things together as a family whenever we want. I never want either of us to have a JOB that requires hours away from each other each day. I want our kids to have their dad around.

This is what Corbett Barr has achieved and why he wrote this manifesto. This is why I'm interested so much in the ebook.

Corbett sold $11,000 worth of his course, Affiliate Marketing for Beginners, in the first 72 hours. He now sells approximately $2,250 per month.

This part of the ebook is a bit advanced for the beginner. So if you reading to learn the technical aspects of how to lauch your first product, you can read all the details in Corbett's ebook. Corbett mentions specific books to purchase if you are serious about lauching an ebook that covers how to research, plan, produce, market, and sell an ebook.

Specifically he used and highly recommends How to Launch the **** Out of Your Ebook. Corbett says that it became his bible when he was building his online course that made him $11,000 in the first 72 hours.

I'm not going to go into an in depth detail on this section right now, but I will come back and cover this more in depth when I am ready to use this section and launch my own ebook. However, here's the lauch plan he covers in this section:

1) Ask your audience
2) Make your product unique, but don't stress about it
3) Don't talk yourself out of it, no matter what
4) Get inside your buyers' heads
5) Create a sub-list and pre-sell
6) Get affiliates involved and give 'em time
7) Create an upsell

Squidoo is a FREE writing platform that allows you to make money online by writing about your favorite topics, passions, and hobbies. (This page is written on Squidoo!) I use Squidoo.com to write about a variety of topics instead of hosting my own blog. Squidoo takes care of all the behind the scenes website management, allowing me to focus just on writing good content.

Write about what you know and make money from it too! You can add eBay or Amazon items for sale and make commissions when visitors from your page click an ebay or Amazon link on your page, then buy something!

You can also earn a percentage of the advertising revenue that Squidoo makes (more than $173,000+ per month in ad revenue, as of July 2011). They split the revenue with the people, like me and hopefully you, who have joined Squidoo, giving 50% to the "lensmasters" (those who sign up and write a one page "Lens", about a topic looking through their eyes or lens ). That means they pay out $86,500+ per month to individual lensmasters (just from the ad revenue - that doesn't include the thousands earned in commissions from ebay or Amazon sales). This ad share revenue is paid out to the top Squidoo Lens who have an average LensRank of 1-85,000 for the month. (you can see the daily LensRank of this page at the very top).

So what are you waiting for? Join Squidoo for FREE today and start earning money online by writing about your favorite topics! You can read about how much money I've make by writing on Squidoo here: My Squidoo Earnings Report

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