L.A. or Bust! - How to make $25,000 in 30 days.

LA or Bust! has been broken down into three sections for more enjoyable reading.

LA or Bust - The hump days 11-20.
LA or Bust - Final Countdown! days 21-30.

We're pretty much an average family . Rachael, my wonderful wife of 11 years and I live in Clearwater, Florida. We have 2.3 kids; Wiebke is 11 years old, Dieter is 7 and the .3 is Leopold who will be 7 months old when the trucks start rolling. My mom, Dorothy, lives with us and keeps the kids in line.

We've are mostly self-employed with 2 businesses. Our 'day job' is a web design and custom programming business. Then, about 4 years ago, I came up with a couple of inventions and we have been developing one of those and are almost there, but not close enough to count for this adventure.

Being self-employed, with 3 kids, and a start-up venture that isn't quite to market yet, we aren't in the best financial position. We blazed the current economic trend and have been struggling to keep our house out of foreclosure for about 3 years now. We refuse to accept defeat and declare bankruptcy. We've managed to keep the utilities on (or get them turned back on quickly in some cases) and all our over-extended credit cards are finally under the limit and no more than 60 days late on payments!

Over the last 5 years, I've been traveling a lot to Los Angeles. I've grown to love the city and have convinced my family of 6 that Californy is the place we ought to be.

Jay Richards (http://www.myspace.com/activeartist) has played an active roll in getting me hooked on LA culture and particularly coffee and dessert. We've spent many an evening exploring and adventuring the LA Nightlife. Trips to Venice Beach, Santa Monica Promenade, the Hollywood Sign, and many old haunts from Jay's 20 years of LA living - one never knows what exactly to expect, just that it will be fantastic.

With that said, you can see that we aren't Wall Street Tycoons or Real Estate Moguls, but plain folk trying to get by and make a better place for our children and the world in general and have a little fun doing it. We're starting from scratch and we're going to make it to LA with all the bills caught up. As best we can figure, $25,000 for the move, a place to stay when we arrive, all the bills and a slight bit in case we rounded wrong.

I hope you enjoy the ride (heck! I hope WE enjoy the ride) and I'll share every detail of how we do it.

Tuesday evening Rachael and I were talking about the exploits from my recent trip to Los Angeles. Over desserts (well memories and tales of) we decided it's time to go. Just do it - whatever it takes to get moved to Los Angeles.

Let's pull the kids out of school and send them to Grandma's in Phoenix for the summer. Pack up, rent the house and drive across country and finally arrive in Los Angeles.

No more cross country commutes. No more jealous tales of fantastic meals of Mexican and Chinese delicacies. (They have NO good Mexican or Chinese food in Clearwater or surrounding areas!) No more taunts of heavenly desserts eaten with the best company anyone could ask for. (often with Jenn - Rachael's best friend who moved out to LA in January) No more long-distance relationships with Jenn.

The decision had been made. Off to a restless nights sleep of excitement and worry. How were we going to pull this off? We haven't been able to do this in a year... why would now be any different? How are we going to pay for it? How much will it cost? $20,000 at least, maybe more! Who's going to load the truck? Are we driving straight through or stopping in Phoenix to see the kids and sleep? (I've driven from Las Vegas to Tampa twice straight through - what's one trip back?)

A very restless night!

We rose to a usual day, the excitement and worry about moving to LA fading like wisps of dream evaporating in the morning sunlight. Over morning coffee Rachael and I realized it wasn't just a dream. We had really decided to go to LA NOW.

What are we going to do? Well - we had better get a plan. Which of course, we had a rather lose one as we've been thinking about moving to L.A. for quite a while. Now it was serious. Real logistics that could be - had to be accomplished by the deadline to make it.

Figuring out how to get the kids to Phoenix wasn't too hard. Mom was very excited, and started shopping process on moving vans and loaders/unloaders right away. Rachael and I put together a budget.

$ 5,000 - First wave to LA - 26' moving truck, gas, tow dolly for Mom's Saturn, etc...
$ 1,000 - Second wave to LA - Tow dolly, gas, food...
$ 5,000 - Rent and deposit for a 4 bedroom house in a descent part of town
$10,000 - Bills for the month - old and new - we have alot of debt
$ 4,000 - plane tickets, paint and carpets to stage the house, other miscellany and a little for oopses.

$25,000 - hmm... Well now, that's a show stopper. I knew it was going to be expensive, but that's a little more than I was prepared to handle. Ok - Way more than I was prepared to handle.

So how do we come up with $25,000 in 30 days?

That's 11 hours a day at my 'day job' assuming every hour were paid work. I'm pretty crazy and sadistic, and do love my job, but that's pushing it with the current state of the business - not to mention having a home office includes having a 5 month old baby to entertain on regular occasion. (One of the best perks any job could have!)

I've kicked around alot of ideas for small internet businesses, my favorite being t-shirts. I'm always coming up with something that I would wear. Often, someone else knows someone they'd buy a t-shirt like that for, if not wear it themselves. Some people make good money on t-shirts. So, $5 a piece, that's only 5,000 t-shirts. How we gonna do that? I don't have 500 friends, let alone 5,000!

Well, what about affiliate programs on the internet? I setup a website a couple years ago as a SEO experiment and had been making almost $100.00 a year with adSense. It had a cool CTR ratio of 4.05%, but just a tiny trickle of traffic. That's only 500,000 clicks with a CTR of 4.05% so only 12,345,678 visitors statistically!

Leaving me to shuffle decimal places and contemplate infinity, Rachael left for work. I hit Google searching for the answer. I ran across alot of possibilities, but nost everything smelled of scam. Fortunately, having only $13.65, I couldn't fall for the only $19.95 ones that did look tempting. I found alot of free articles that had good ideas. Throughout the day, I noticed more and more good articles had this little one eyed squid logo. (SHHHH!!! It's called foreshadowing -don't ruin it for everybody! ;) )

Rachael finally got home, but didn't look too happy. I figured that she had a rough day at work getting everything done with all the excitement of moving to LA and the overwhelming task of actually doing it. I was WAY off!

Turns out that her boss (btw - one of the best parts of working at home is the boss really does like you and all your ideas!) had a little talk with her, and he's having to cut some of the office staff and asking the keepers to cut back their hours. She already works short hours, and barely covers her allocated expenses. Not a happy thought.

Well, she can start looking for a new job here or LA, or better yet create a new one that follows us both to LA. Since she likes looking for a job even less than she likes getting out of bed before 10, create one it is. Thanks Denny (Rachael's boss) for the nice gentle push from the nest. It looks like it's LA or Bust!

You'll see as the story develops that I didn't get around to creating this lens until day 6. I'll be filling in the blanks as fast as I can while keeping the current days updated. It's not easy doing all this money making, but I'm trying my best!

By now you are probably wondering how we're going to make any serious money to get to LA. We are too!

Fortunately, a good mate, Aram Stehpan, transplanted from Australia to Clearwater, has this neat little custom stick on label and iron-on label business. I wrote the original shopping cart for his website a few years back . It's a fantastic design and has a great conversion rate.

He offered all our referrals a 15% discount if you mention our name! (Use the promo code LAorBust )

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Way to early this morning, I dropped Rachael at the airport in Tampa. She's off to see her family in Phoenix this week as her Grandpa isn't doing well. (He's a tough old coot, I think he's playing possum! :) ) She'll be back next Monday on the 4th.

I'm fretting her absence. We've got a lot to do to get to LA and time's wasting. So what to do???

PACK! Her stuff first while she's not looking! :)

The kids room is ALMOST done. They've got most of their toys boxed up and stuff for Leo when he grows a little more has been sorted out and properly labeled. Clothes are set out for both Phoenix and their remaining time here. The rest are packed away.

I didn't have the heart, so I just cleaned up Rachael's desk and packed up most of my books and clothes. The room is a bit empty, but it sure is nice to have all that clean space. Glad I did it today. I might as well enjoy the super-clean all week she's gone.

No luck making money today. I got a few quotes out to Scott and Holly at ClearTech for some programming. No confirmations back yet.

I did however get 60 friends on Facebook and all of 4 visits to this lens. It's a slow start... but it's LA or Bust!

Busy day today, but it doesn't feel like I've accomplished nearly as much as I'd hoped. Every day, I set out a battle plan for the day, based off of the overall plan to get us to LA. Considering that much of this is well out of my usual experience, I spend alot of time reading others suggestions and successes. This of course adjusts the methods necessary to reach our long term objectives.

One of those course corrections happened today. I was sharing my experiment with one of my best friends, Paul Bickel. He's always been incredibly supportive. This time was no exception. This man has faith beyond faith in my endeavors. When asked about this, Paul referred to the Bible as he usually does. "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. " Hebrews 11:1 and "So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. " James 2:17 Paul sure knows how to put things in perspective and light a fire at the same time!

Later in our discussion, Paul recommended a very clever way to help pack and move all our goodies - eBay Mystery Boxes. Instead of dragging all our stuff with us, share it with others (for the price of the box) and they can enjoy our old stuff and know they've helped us reach our destination - LA or Bust!

The kids had somewhat mixed feelings about dragging in all the old toys they had already said their good-byes to, but were excited knowing that they would not be dead to the world and could bring joy to others, until they realized that we'd be sorting out all the broken and junky toys from those worth passing along. It's a shame, just Monday we took a large load of toys, kids and womens clothes and shoes to one of the local charity resale shops. At least I still have some good computer equipment and some other goodies that didn't make it on the truck.

I've sent an email to Trevor Eisenman of Richter 10.2 - dessert aficionado, and Social Media guru to see what he suggests I can do to pour on the coals. I'm at 76 Facebook friends and 8 visits to this lens. Been reading how to get more traffic, but I'm sure Trevor's got an ace up his sleeve.

On the multiple streams of income side of things, I got an LA or Bust! t-shirt placed in our Printfection store. More designs are on the way.

Our first order of StemGevity arrived today! Both Mom and I were quite excited as we've been dying for the order to arrive. StemGevity is an adult stem cell mobilizer. Simply, it helps the body get the cells that replace and repair tissue and organs out where they are needed. As advertised, we noticed a definite increase in well feeling within 2 hours. Later in the evening, Mom came though the house stating that she didn't have any of her usual pains getting out of bed. We'll keep you posted on this as well.

All across the Empire, people are taking notice and hitching their ride to our star. He's a friendly StormTrooper wanting to join our cause - LA or Bust!

Get your very own LA or Bust! t-shirt!

Proceeds of all t-shirt sales go towards moving our family to Los Angeles!

It's 2 am, didn't get much sleep last night, been reading Squidoo all night (Better than Sudoku!) Think I have an idea of what I'm doing, so I'm going to sign off now, and hope it's all retained in the morning. I'll catch up tomorrow.

StemGevity seems to be working fantastically so far. Way better than I expected for the second day. Mom's feeling better. I'm feeling better. I have noticed that I run out of energy pretty quick, but the energy level pops right back up with a little protein. I'm burning through more than I expected.

My friend Grant is a Singer and Entertainer. He's just finished his first CD. Check out his renditions of the classic love songs and then use the coupon code "blue" when you purchase for a special discount.

Time to stretch your legs and take a break. (short!) Go grab something to drink and hit the restroom then head back here for some more.

LA or Bust - The hump days 11-20.
LA or Bust - Final Countdown! days 21-30.