Lately I discovered something that’s helping to drive my creative output goals. It’s simple, it’s elegant, it works for me.
It is 750 words.
750 words is an online text editor that tells you when you’ve hit 750 words and gives you badges if you do it daily. A streak of three days gives you your first badge and, after 17 days of use, I still haven’t managed to hit that.
The hit and miss rate for 750 words
That’s OK. The trick is, when I open up 750 words in the morning, I’m reminded that a big part of my life is writing.
At the end of the day, a lot of my life has become about writing, and — in some ways — the more writing I do (or commission) the more money I make. Admittedly there’s more strategic planning and organisation to be done, but at the end of the day, more writing = more income.
750 words is a great way to ensure I’m getting at least 750 words of creative output each day. After writing online, I drop the text into the right blog setup or Scrivener folder, tag it appropriately, and edit the crap out of it. Then it can be sent for editing, scheduled, laid out or just published depending on the type of material it is.
A part of your brain tries to sabotage your life’s work, and I love little tricks like this that can come into your life for a time and force you to do something that creates a good habit.
Do you have any little crutches that make your life a better place? 750 words has become one of mine.
Travel Blog Success relaunches today and it’s better than ever. I’ve known Dave for a few years and was quite impressed with Dave’s material when he launched it back in February 2010. Now, he’s made it awesome value. You can see all the benefits on the site, which I won’t copy here.
There’s a lot of good advice floating around — and there’s free stuff, like here on Make Money Travel Blogging –, but no-one’s put together a course that shows you how to make money and get press trips in year one in quite the same way Travel Blog Success has. Because it’s organised and constantly updated, information is easy to act on.
At just $149 for the professional level, this is undoubtably the most focussed, most valuable resource for travel bloggers that want to go pro. It gives you access to private discussion groups on a forum and on Facebook. It gives you up-to-date reports and information. It gives you access to bloggers like Dave (with a US$36,000 turnover in 2010) and me. Now $36,000 isn’t a lot of money for some people, but it’s more than a starting wage in most of the world — and I know Dave is going to make a pile more in 2011.
We all know I make money if you buy through this affiliate link, but the dirty little secret is that you might too. $150 is a small ad sale, or profits from a month’s sale of a cheap ebook. I believe that you can make that back within 12 months; heck you might even be able to make it back this month if you have an existing blog.
If you’re ready to transition from blogging as a hobby to blogging as a business, invest a little: Join Travel Blog Success today.
For people who book through my affiliate links, I’ll put together a private audio recording sharing what I did right and wrong last year when it came to making money, and what I’m doing to improve this year. (We’re about to hit the end of our first full financial year, and it looks like the company will just turn a profit after paying for operating expenses, a new 13″ MacBook Pro, a new 11″ Macbook Air, a new iPod touch, a new camera, a bunch of hard drives, and two people’s travel through 27 countries.)
Corbett has put together the most amazing course I’ve seen on affiliate marketing. It’s got amazing detail, two fully-transparent “test” sites that both make money, details on the affiliate programmes that are working best for him, and all the nitty gritty of finding niches and building traffic.
What I like best about it, is that his techniques are not pushy, scammy or manipulative. They’re very ethical and make a lot of sense. And money.
I’ve been part of the course for about 24 hours, so this is just my first impressions. I paid US$57 to join, as I was on the pre-launch mailing list. Until 8am Pacific time on Thursday 12 August it’s staying at US$67. After that, the price doubles.
That’s 8am Pacific, Thursday 12 August.
While I don’t really like price-pressure, I’ve paid a heck of a lot more for a heck of a lot less information.
If you’re going to get into affiliate marketing, this is my best pick from the dozens of courses I’ve done. It goes beyond the information in the Challenge, Karol’s How to Live Anywhere and is more focussed in scope than the Empire Builders Kit.
Why affiliate marketing?
Why do I keep talking about affiliate marketing when so many people want to know about selling banner space? Because you can make a lot more money selling products and creating leads than you can from selling a banner spot.
Say you sell an ad space for $20 a month: that’s $240 a year, and it’s money in the bank … set and forget, then chase the advertiser in 11 months and get them to pay again. With an affiliate link, you can make money week after week, month after month — and the more you remind people about the product, the more likely they are to buy it.
Burnt by affiliates?
I’ve been burned by affiliate deals. I’ve got the links and creative, thrown it up, promoted it, and got … nothing. But that’s changing. Yesterday I made $30 on travel-related affiliate sales (and more in other places). I don’t make $30 every day, but it’s not unusual anymore. That’s better than US$20 a month, and with some of the ideas in Corbett’s course, I’m going to be building more — and more profitable — affiliate agreements and sites.
Corbett’s course: Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
Corbett’s course, Affiliate Marketing for Beginners, seems really complete to me. I’m currently listening to one interview on the site, have fixed one core mistake I’ve been making, and have been through one of the many modules. I haven’t had enough time to write a full review though — however I wanted to write something on it before the price goes up — but Andy Hayes from Travel Online Partners really re-inforced my first impressions:
“I’m no stranger to affiliate marketing – but Corbett’s course is overflowing with good information, all well organised so you can use what you need, when you need it.”
I have a few complaints, though. It’s not with the content, it’s with the format.
I need offline access! I can’t currently download the interviews to listen to on the train/bus/flight.
I need offline access! It’s a website, not an ebook, etc. Having each segment as a PDF download would help too.
Comments are distracting (for me). I love being able to ask questions, but I’m not a huge fan of seeing everyone’s questions and answers. I think this is because I know a lot of basic things (hosting, themes etc) and there’s a lot of inexperienced/non-technical people asking about those things.
More critique will have to wait for a full review, but these are my first thoughts.
A web-based format that allows you to ask questions along the way for a more interactive learning experience
Two real functional example sites that you can follow along with and see how I would do things (none of that “I can’t show you my sites for competitive reasons” stuff)
5 modules (complete intro to affiliate marketing, finding opportunities, site building, getting traffic (and sales) and advanced)
21 lessons, including keyword research, topic selection, site building with WordPress, search marketing, content development and sales optimization
Advanced topics on how to scale up or apply affiliate marketing to an existing business
The complete 100% money back guarantee (see below)
A $50 discount offer on hosting, if you don’t have a web host already
As I speed through Germany in a first class ICE cabin, I’ve just finished reading How to Live Anywhere by Karol Gajda. I’ve also just been brought complementary biscuits, but that’s another story (Thanks Eurail.com!).
The first I heard of Karol, was when he sent me a fun guest post on Indie Travel Podcast entitled, Seven Reasons Hostels Suck. Months after that, I enjoyed a lunch with him and Nomadic Matt in central Auckland.
During that lunch I found out he wasn’t just a start-up blogger; in the recent past he had been earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year doing internet marketing — a figure that staggered me, and Matt too, I think.
What was more amazing was that he had walked away from it all.
When I saw him launching a new book called, How to Life Anywhere I asked for a review copy and got through it pretty quickly.
So, it is for you?
The book is broken up into three sections: philosophy, travel and money. The overarching theme throughout the book is certainly the philosophy, which Karol calls Ridiculously Extraordinary Freedom.
Trapped and in pain?
If you feel trapped right now, then this book may just be for you. It takes shots at limiting beliefs, draws heavily from Karol’s own life examples (unhappy when earning both US$100 and $2,000 a day) and tries to gently slap you upside the head.
But if you’re stuck, you’re probably looking for a way out. A roadmap, rather than a telling-off. I’m unsure if this book will have enough detail to help you; it will definitely spur you in the right direction and there might just be a truth-coach in there that fits you perfectly.
Travel guru?
Long-term travellers, especially in the internet-savvy blogosphere aren’t going to find this useful. If you know your way around frequent flier miles, know how much it’ll cost to rent in India as opposed to New York, and can find your way around a Visa application, you’ll probably find yourself nodding a skimming this section. Earthclass mail and airfare-search aggregators? Yep. Since that’s most of you, dear readers, I’ll leave those 16 pages alone.
Want to make money?
You’re at this blog because you want to make money online. You want to focus on your travel blog. That’s good. Let’s see if this section will help.
Karol outlines three ways to make money online: creating digital products, affiliate sales through SEO and affiliate sales through CPC ads.
He outlines three strategies for making that happen: launching products on your blog, building and selling mini-sites, and “hubpages on steroids”. He also talks about consulting and other service-based industries.
Most usefully, perhaps, he outlines a 90 day action plan designed to get you earning money from within three months of starting out. Thats 90 days from nothing, so you can almost certainly cut down the running time with your existing audience if there’s a good match there.
He shows you how to get free things from companies so you can talk about them on your blog. It’s not as hard as you might imagine.
There’s nothing here that’s particularly focussed on the travel blogging niche, but there’s nothing that can’t be applied.
Notes from a hurtling train
The book is crammed with ideas, has little fluff but is quite loosely written. It has a personable feel to it, but I’d like to see the prose tightened up in a future version. If you’re a literary type, you might struggle with it; if you want to change your life, you’ll look past that and start scribbling your own notes and action plans.
There’s no one killer thing that will help you make more money with your travel blog, but people with audiences and no income or nothing at all, will benefit from it. Experienced money-makers may learn a new trick or two. I did.
How to Live Anywhere is available here. I get a cut if you buy through these links. If you want to make sure I get that commission please clear your browser’s cookies before clicking through.
And the bonuses
Every good ebook launch seems to need a bonus, and Karol has definitely delivered with a short extra called “Anatomy of a four-figure affiliate promotion (Or, why you don’t need a massive audience to make massive cash)”.
This was exciting for me, because I recently realised that affiliate promotions were the most-scalable way for us to build our travel blogs’ income.
Karol outlines three examples of affiliate promotions he had recently run. One brought in $54.60, one $387.60 and the last $1542.24. What’s best is that he shows exactly what he did in each case, with wording from his own blogs and email promotions. Pure gold from a medium-sized blog.
There’s also audio material and interviews with people who are making money online, but not necessarily making money travel bloggings. It takes some filtering and creative ideas to apply.
I’m sure many of you will have heard of Matt Kepnes, aka Nomadic Matt. He makes $7,000+ a month from his collection of travel blogs and sites.
His book, Make Money with your Travel Blog, was a real turning point in my development as a money-making blogger and, if you haven’t read it, I am about to highly recommend it: you should buy it today.
I’m recommending you buy it today for two reasons:
1. On August 1, the price is jumping from US$27 to US$37.
2. I’m trying to sell 75 copies of Matt’s books before August 31. Then he’ll send me an iPad, which I’d like.
I’ve just received a newly-revised copy of the ebook. He’s using the designer I hooked him up with and it looks smoking hot.
He also offers to send you the addresses of guaranteed-to-buy-space advertisers if you have an existing blog and audience. With this list you can make your money back. Without this list, you can make your money back using his other techniques.
Can you get all this information free on the internet? Of course you can. It might take you a few years to figure out though. And I’m not going to be able to get enough info on MMTB in the short-term.
And for 27 bucks
But, I want to make it better. And I want an iPad. If you buy Nomadic Matt’s book using my affiliate link, you’ll get:
The book from Nomadic Matt
which includes information on SEO, advertising, article marketing, keyword research and a list of advertisers.
plus:
My own 40+ minute audio “critique” of the book, with areas of expansion and difference.
If you buy before August 1:
A one-year free membership to the advanced segments of Make Money Travel Blogging when I launch it.
I hate hard sells more than you do. But I think this is worth more than $27. If it’s something you’d like, then:
1. Clear all the cookies from your system. There are instructions here. This ensures I’ll get the commission when you buy the book. Ensure your browser accepts cookies though!
3. Forward your receipt to me – craig@indietravelmedia.com. I’ll send you the recording and keep your address on record for the additional bonus.
Is this book for you?
You’re reading this site, so probably, yes.
When I re-read the updated version I spent an hour making tweaks across my sites and I’ve read the book twice before. I think I read it a few years ago while it was still a draft too. Even “experienced” money-making bloggers might learn some tricks.
If there’s one thing that can save you hours of hard-coding it’s a well-planned and well-managed adserver.
You can use an adserver to quickly change out advertising, rotate ad space (so you can experiment with them) and remove advertisers that have stopped paying for that space or affiliate programmes that are not performing well.
In this video I answer a reader question, “Which adserver do I use?”
I’ve just heard that my number one recommendation for an online money-making course is re-opening on June 16! (Which also happens to be my wife’s birthday.) Chris Guillebeau’s Empire Building Kit is coming back on the market!!
I’ve been a big fan of Chris Guillebeau’s work since he started blogging. I own all his products and have even had dinner with him once in Auckland, New Zealand before a casual meet-up we organised.
I have to admit, the Empire Building Kit is not aimed at travel bloggers, or even bloggers really. Rather, it’s an approach to building an online empire of targeted products, websites and opportunities to help you make real money. I wish this was around when I started making a business out of my online hobbies.
Prepare for empire!
The original Emperor’s Builder’s Kit was launched while Chris was travelled America by Amtrak … How’s that for an intriguing (and hazzard-filled!) launch plan? Sign-ups were only open for 24 hours, so I quickly picked the course up and have been on it since April 7 this year.
This isn’t cheap! There are three price-tiers at US$149, $249 and $449. I wish I could have afforded the most expensive, but plumped for the middle option myself. It had some key advantages over the lowest. The best thing to do would be check the site on launch day and decide what best fits your current stage of online business development and budget.
I do recommend buying on the 16th though. Why? As a launch-day special, there’s going to be an extra give-away, “Backyard Biz Profits”, which focusses on applying his empire-building strategies in local markets.
I’m going to be emailing our Make Money Travel Blogging mailing list just minutes after launch with a special, exclusive deal for this one. Sign up below (or at http://makemoneytravelblogging.com if you’re using RSS) before 9am PST, 12pm EST on June 16th to get my special offer as well as whatever goodies Chris is giving away to celebrate the relaunch.
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