Life has been pretty hectic my end of late, hence why its been ages since I last posted here.  After spending a large chunk of 2010 travelling, scuba diving, and volunteering in Malaysian Borneo and the Philippines, I returned home to the UK.  It was December so the weather was pretty depressing (very cold and wet), I was broke, and I was also unemployed.  It was a bit of a depressing and stressful time to be honest.

Since then I am very please to say that I have managed to get myself back on my feet.  After attending loads of job interviews at the start of the year I have now found employment and am pleased to be earning a steady wage that I know will be coming in each and every month.  My salary is good enough that I can afford to invest roughly £300 every month in to my online business, in addition to earnings from my internet marketing endeavours.

I also bit the bullet in early march and bought myself a new laptop.  My old one was a real slug and it became unbearable to use.  I had been toying with the idea of crossing over to mac for a while but was unsure about how easy it would be to move from windows.  After much deliberation I finally opted to go for it.  Moving to mac was actually really easy and I really encourage others to consider it.  I cant tell you how much I love my new mac.  Its really quick, and I now have all the software I need installed and working.  Its made working so much more productive as I now don’t have to wait 30 minutes after turning my computer on before I can do anything.  Now I press the on switch and my computer fires up immediately, ready for action.  There are also very few applications that are unavailable for mac these days, and I think the only program that I don’t have anymore is Traffic Travis.  Its no real problem though as I also use Market Samurai which does pretty much the same thing as TT and is available for mac.

So I now have the equipment and investment budget to really take my online business forward.  This year I will be focusing on driving sales through free search traffic.  This involves lots of link building and adding content to my website network.  My priority at the moment is to find some article spinners who provide good quality writing for a decent price.  So far my search for spinners hasn’t gone all that well.  Human Rewriter has disappeared off the face of the earth, and some of the other service providers I have tried have proved to be rather erratic in terms of writing quality.  As I use these spun articles solely for link building they don’t need to be pulitzer winners, but I do want them to be readable to a human.  My outsourcing of article spinning is proving to be a bit frustrating as I seem to spend lots of time rewriting chunks of spun articles that I have already paid to be written.  Maybe I am being too fussy about quality.

So I am in a good position in terms of moving the business forward and am very excited about what the rest of 2011 will bring.  Hopefully my next post will be a bit more interesting as purchasing my new macbook pro has really limited my outsourcing efforts so far this year.  I still feel that I made the right decision in buying a new laptop as I am now so much more productive when I sit down to do some work.

All the best,

Rodders

This video created by Splork really made me chuckle when I came across it a while back.  Its a funny and also truthful commentary on the web sewer of spam that has been created by internet marketers over the past few years.

For me, 2011 is going to be all about linkbuilding. Currently, I have around 25 websites in various stages of development. 14 of these websites are online with all of the infrastructure built (articles, product reviews, email newsletter series, and bonus giveaways) with the remaining sites just skeletons at present. The 14 websites that are finished are all in big juicy niches where people spend money online, with multiple information products to promote as an affiliate. Most of the remaining sites are in niches that really interest me such as SCUBA diving, snowboarding, marine aquarium keeping, and travel. I plan to put these sites to one side for the time being as creating content, finding good products to promote, and finding advertisers is more complicated and time consuming than for the 14 sites that are already built and largely promote Clickbank info products. I will come back to these sites in the future when I am earning a good amount from the ‘Big 14’.

I have decided to go back to full time employment in 2011 (currently attending lots of interviews) in order to be able to invest more into my business. I plan to invest around £300 (just over US$450) per month plus whatever my websites earn themselves. I hope that by investing $450 per month earned from an offline job I will be able to kick start growth. After 6 – 12 months I will cease to invest money from my offline income and will just reinvest all website earnings back in to the business.

For the 14 websites that I will be concentrating on this year, the focus will be building links and achieving high search engine rankings for highly targeted buyer keywords. With a budget of £300 (just over US$450) or more per month I should be able to outsource plenty of article writing and spinning for article marketing, hopefully employ someone as a part time linkbuilder (to build forum, blog, directory, profile links etc), and cover the costs of subscription services such as Unique Article Wizard and Article Marketing Automation. I will also spend some of my budget on adding some new content to each of the 14 websites over time and therefore going after more keywords.

It’s difficult to know exactly how successful my business will become over the next 12 months, however I don’t think that it is unrealistic to expect to get my earnings up to $500p/m consistently within the first 6 months, and $2000p/m within 12 months. My confidence stems from the fact that other newbie’s such as Clayton have achieved this level of success using similar methods to myself. I think that I have uncovered some excellent keywords to get me started, and as I will have an offline income to live on, I will be able to reinvest everything back in to the business to ensure that growth is as rapid as possible.

I think that my plans are pretty solid, and I am excited about seeing how successful my websites will become using this strategy. I will be posting regular updates detailing how things are progressing, as well as any modifications that I may make to my outsourcing strategy, so stay tuned over the coming months. I should stress that I have calculated how much I can afford to invest very carefully so that I am not investing money that I can’t afford to lose. I guess that some people would see investing money earned offline into an online business as a bit of a gamble, but I have faith that I can build a viable business online. I am really excited about what 2011 will bring, and am confident that the $3000 that I plan to pump into the business over the next 6 months will be money well spent.

What are your goals for 2011? I would love to hear what you guys hope to achieve this year, and would like to invite you to leave comments below detailing your plans and goals.

I came across the work of casetteboy on youtube a while back and thought some of you might enjoy the audio clips as much as I do. Im sure most of you will know who David Attenborough is but for those who don’t, he is a wildlife documentary legend and a personal hero of mine. Nick Griffin is the leader of the British National Party, a fascist political party.

BTW Stella refers to Stella Artois, a popular brand of beer here in the UK.

What a c**t!!

At the beginning of September I took a break from internet marketing to go to the Philippines to conduct some voluntary work.  I lived for the most part on an Island in the Visayas, where the conservation charity that I was volunteering for was based.  The work involved lots of SCUBA diving in order to conduct marine life surveys, as well as working in the community raising awareness of marine conservation and the science behind it.

I had a really wonderful experience in the Philippines.  I loved volunteering and I made some great friends.  Unfortunately I didn’t get much internet marketing work done while I was in the Philippines.  The main reason was that I really threw myself in to the conservation work that I was doing, and therefore had very little time to work on my online business.  Another issue was that the internet connection was very slow.  While I was in Manila I purchased a Globe Tattoo USB internet device.  In towns and cities the Globe Tattoo provided a pretty quick broadband speed and worked really well.  Unfortunately I was based in the middle of nowhere most of the time, and the speed was very slow.

Ultimately I am glad with the way things panned out in the Philippines.  I really got a lot out of my volunteering experience and I also enjoyed having a break from learning about internet marketing.  I have now returned to the UK feeling really refreshed and ready to work hard on my online business.

I will add another post in the next couple of days detailing my big plans for 2011, so stay tuned.

All the best

Rodderz

Lately I have been really enjoying reading inspirational, witty, and profound quotes, poems, and social commentaries. I have even dropped some of my favorites in a few of my previous posts where they seemed appropriate. I have decided to take things one step further and create this post which will be continually updated as I find more material that I think is relevant to the working vagabond lifestyle:

Only when the last tree has been cut down,
And the last river has run dry,
Will man finally realise,
That you cant eat money,
And that reciting ancient proverbs
Makes you sound like a twat.
Banksy,
Wall And Piece

“Once upon a time there was a bear and a bee who lived in a wood and were the best of friends. All summer long the bee collected nectar from morning to night while the bear lay on his back basking in the long grass. When winter came the bear realised he had nothing to eat and thought to himself ‘I hope that busy little bee will share some of his honey with me.’ But the bee was nowhere to be found. He had died of a stress induced coronary disease.”

Banksy,
Wall And Piece

“A lot of people never use their initiative because noone told them to“
Banksy,

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”
Gandhi

“A man’s got to believe in something.  I believe I’ll have another drink”

W.C. Fields

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying.

Woody Allen

If you have come across any short poems, jokes, or quotes please feel free to post a comment or email them to me and I will add them to the list.

Enjoy.

“Sometimes I am so disgusted by the state of the world that I can’t even finish my second piece of apple pie”

Most days I can sit down and bash out a blog post in a matter of minutes. This post on the other hand has taken me hours to compose. The reason for this is that my first couple of days here in the Philippines have been a real emotional rollercoaster, and there is just so much I want to say about the place that it has been a real struggle to put it all together in some sort of coherent fashion. In a nutshell the Philippines is a fascinating country that encapsulates everything that is amazing and shockingly awful about the world that we live in.

I want to start by providing a bit of background info about the country. The Philippines is an archipelago made up of some 70,000 different islands. Over the past 600 or so years the Philippines has been heavily influenced by Spanish and US imperial rule that has shaped its people, culture, and politics. For example, the majority of Philippinos are Catholic, a result of Spanish rule from the 16th century until 1898.

Philippinos are considered the most westernised of all South East Asian people. The excellent standard of English spoken in the Philippines is a result of American attempts at spreading education during the years when the US claimed ownership of the Philippines. The general idea was that by educating young people in the Philippines, the population would be less susceptible to the recruitment efforts of rebel groups fighting for independence, such as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and the New Peoples Army. The number of languages spoken throughout the archipelago was a huge barrier to instigating a program of effective education however, and the task of publishing text books and delivering lessons in so many languages just wasn’t feasible. For this reason, the American teachers adopted English as the language of the classroom, and American English became the standard language in schools throughout the Philippines.

The fact that Philippino school children are taught in English from a young age means that most literate young people speak and write in English incredibly well. This excellent standard of English, coupled with the low cost of living (and therefore relatively low wages), has made the Philippines really popular among internet entrepreneurs looking to hire fulltime staff members for the purpose of outsourcing tasks such as link building and article writing. It’s possible to hire a college graduate in the Philippines (who can speak and write in excellent English) full time for under $400 per month.

In addition to the outsourcing possibilities, the Philippines is also a fantastic destination for working vagabonds because of the relatively low cost of living/travelling, the fascinating people and cultures, as well as the vast number of activities that are on offer to budget travellers. The Philippines boasts world class diving and snorkelling, good surfing possibilities, fantastic kite surfing spots, as well as trekking, island hopping, and much much more besides. Getting online while on the road is also easy and affordable. Remote workers can purchase a Globe Tattoo USB mobile internet device which facilitates internet access wherever there is a Globe mobile network signal. Rates for surfing are less than $0.50 per hour and the speed is also pretty good.

As well as all of the fun activities and good times that can be experienced while working and travelling in the Philippines, a visit also exposes travellers to some very sad realities of human life. The gap between the rich and poor of the Philippines is truly immense, with just 60 of the country’s 15 million families controlling virtually all of the wealth. 60% of the population (and rising) live well under the poverty line, and an estimated 1.5 million children lived on the streets in 1998 (increasing by over 6,000 per year (www.childprotection.org.ph)). Many of these children scrape by sifting through rubbish dumps for things to sell, or by engaging in petty crime and prostitution. An estimated 60,000 street children are engaged in prostitution (increasing by 3,000 per year), a problem that is exacerbated by the sex tourism phenomenon.

The Philippines is a popular destination for paedophile tourists, with an estimated 15,000 Australian men visiting the city of Angeles, north of Manila, on sex tours every year (www.catw-ap.org). The root of the problem is poverty, and it’s not unknown for children to be drawn in to prostitution just to obtain food and water. Street children are generally seen (and treated) like scum by the more affluent classes. There have been several high profile cases where death squads have killed street children thought to be petty criminals.  Many other street children are rounded up every day and imprisoned without any charges being made against them.

The plight of the street children here in the Philippines has stirred up lots of uncomfortable emotions in me. These kids had no control over where they were born, and it makes me sick to know how they are treated and the suffering that they endure every day. It’s not their fault that they have to sleep rough, engage in crime and prostitution in order to eat, and sniff solvents to fend off hunger night after night.

As well as the anger and sadness I feel about the plight of the street children here in the Philippines, I also feel incredibly guilty that my life is so comfortable. When I think about the problems in my life, they seem completely inconsequential in comparison to what these kids go through every day.

After doing a bit of research, I have found a couple of charities who are dedicated to improving the lives of street children by providing food, clothing, shelter, and basic education (such as www.bahaybata.org). As I have mentioned in a couple of previous blog posts, I am here in the Philippines volunteering with a marine conservation organisation. I’m on a pretty tight schedule, and all of my time is taken up working on the project site. Unfortunately this means that I don’t have any spare time to spend working with any of these other charities on this trip. This is a real shame as I really want to get involved. I guess I will have to come back again in the near future. I am also planning on raising some money for Philippino street children when I get back to the UK, perhaps putting on a few fund raising events (maybe a charity dinner and a collection on my local high street) and trying to raise awareness of their plight.

In summary, the Philippines is a fantastic destination for remote workers, although it can definitely be an emotional rollercoaster. My experience here so far has really helped to motivate me to work harder at achieving my online income goals so that I have more free time to dedicate to voluntarily working on worthwhile projects, rather than being stuck at home in the UK earning money for myself and worrying about things that really don’t matter.

I started this post with a quote from the British graffiti artist Banksy.  I have owned some of his books for years and love flicking through them every now and again.  I just happened to pick it up the day before I got on a plane to come to the Philippines, which is why some of his witty yet profound quotes have stuck in my mind.  The quote at the beginning of this post seemed appropriate to the situation here in the Philippines and how I personally feel about it.  I can also remember another of his pieces of social commentary that would provide a fitting end to the post:

“The human race is the most stupid and unfair kind of race.  A lot of the runners don’t even get decent sneakers or clean drinking water.  Some runners are born with a massive head start, every possible help along the way and still the referees seem to be on their side.  It’s not surprising a lot of people have given up compeating altogether and gone to sit in the grandstand, eat junk and shout abuse.  What the human race needs is a lot more streakers.”  Banksy.

Tomorrow afternoon I fly from the UK to Manila to do 10 weeks of volunteer work on a Marine Conservation project. I studied marine biology at university, and I am very excited at the prospect of spending the next few months diving on some of the most diverse coral reefs in the world. The data that I will be helping to collect is part of an ongoing assessment of marine resources in the area, with a view to helping local people care for and manage their marine environment more sustainably. The work is going to involve a lot of diving surveys, as well as working with local communities. I have done similar work in the past and I really can’t wait to get out there and get involved.

As I mentioned above, I changed my business strategy fairly radically a couple of months ago. Basically, I decided that the best approach for the growth of my business would be to go back to full time employment, while investing some of my wages each month in to outsourcing. As I will be working fulltime, hopefully from January 2011, I decided to get on with building lots of sites and getting them up and running so that next year I can focus solely on building the sites out and doing SEO work on them. This was quite a relief as I was getting a bit sick of spinning articles and submitting them all over the web for backlinks to my older sites. Also I don’t think I was very efficient at it, as the process seemed to take me forever. Now I will just outsource the whole process and concentrate on the things that I enjoy, giving my business direction, and setting the websites themselves up how I want them.

When it launched a while back, I signed up for Affilojetpack, and I have been busy building 10 new sites in 4 different jetpack niches since then. All 10 new websites are now uploaded and complete with email autoresponder sequences, squeeze pages, a few pages of content, as well as some product reviews. While I am away I hope to spend a bit of time writing some articles for these sites and adding content to flesh them out a bit more. I have done some research and found that Globe (a telecommunications company in the Philippines) offers a USB device called “Globe Tattoo” that allows you to connect to the internet from anywhere with a mobile signal. It seems quite affordable, and will make working on my sites while away much easier than hunting down free wifi spots. I have checked and found out that the marine research station where I will be based has a decent Globe signal, so that should work out pretty well.

While I plan to do a bit of work while I am away, I will mainly be focusing on the marine research project, so I doubt I will get a huge amount of work done. I get back to the UK in December, at which point I will start applying for jobs and look in to recruiting a full time writer, probably from the Philippines funnily enough. I will outsource all the article writing, spinning and backlink building for all of my existing sites, and maybe build a couple more once I have finished SEO on my existing ones.

Hopefully I will be earning enough to both get by myself, and pay for the growth of my online business. I have checked the figures and they look feasible. Over the course of 2011 I will keep a close eye on my online income, reinvesting all of it back in to the business as I will have a full time wage to live on myself. When my income hits $1500 p/m over the costs of my outsourcing activities, I will go back to working on my sites full time (or maybe just do the whole 4 hour work week thing and keep the sites ticking over while my outsourcers do the heavy lifting).

I am not sure exactly what sort of job I will look for when I get back from the Philippines, but at the moment I am thinking of trying my luck with some local webdesign and SEO companies. Although I am a qualified marine biologist, there just aren’t any jobs around that pay decent money. My last job was as a science technician in a local college, so I might go back to that. I guess it just depends on what is available at the time I get back. Hopefully I will find something fairly interesting in the science/technology area, but I would be pretty happy to do anything for a while. The fact that I have an online business gives me something to look forward to and should keep me going through the 9 til 5 drudgery.

My dream would be to work for most of 2011 while building my online income, then hopefully by the end of the year be able quit safe in the knowledge that my business will be able to support itself and me. That would free me up to chase my passions, maybe doing some more voluntary marine conservation work, build some schools, and generally just help people less fortunate. I really hope I can achieve my goals and do something positive with my life. Nothing frightens me more than the thought of an easy comfortable life earning money for myself and never doing anything good for anyone. What a waste that would be.

I can see myself spending lots of time in the Philippines if my plans come to fruition. Not only are there marine conservation volunteering opportunities, but there are also numerous other charities for great causes, such as helping street children (of which there are many in the Philippines). The opportunity to do some really fulfilling voluntary work, coupled with the great outsourcing opportunities that the Philippines offers for my online business, could be a match made in heaven.

So I have lots to look forward to and am very excited about life at the moment. I will post another update in a week or so when I have settled in to life on a marine research station in the Philippines. Im sooo excited.

Now back to the packing, I wonder where my passport is?

Rodders

Affilojetpack by Mark Ling – prelaunch

Hi everyone,

The 27th of July is the date for the launch of affilojetpack, Mark Ling’s new product, and I have to say I am rather excited.  Mark Lings other flagship products and training materials (affilorama (free), affilorama premium, affiloblueprint) are all superb and really over deliver on their promises.  I have been learning affiliate marketing the affiloblueprint way and I must say that I am extremely impressed with the course and how its delivered.  Affilojetpack looks set to be another fantastic resource, and I will certainly be dipping in to my pocket to get hold of a copy upon its launch on July 27th 2010.

Affilojetpack is essentially a set of readymade yet customisable websites, including everything an affiliate needs to get started making money online.  Upon purchase of affilojetpack, members can select a total of 5 out of 10 available niches, niches that are proven to be profitable.  Each niche pack contains:

• 90 high quality newsletters organised in to a 1 year email follow up sequence that can be plugged straight in to an email auto responder.
• 3 ebooks to give away as free gifts to subscribers to your newsletter series.
• A fantastic fully customisable wordpress theme that even has a build in squeeze page generator
• 3 Readymade customisable website header graphics
• 20 high quality articles to use on each of the 5 websites
• A years free hosting
• Top quality affiliate marketing training

When you multiply the above by the 5 niches that you can choose, you end up with 450 email newsletters, 150 website articles, 15 free reports, and 15 website header graphics.  For the money that affilojetpack will cost that really is a huge amount of content, and is way better value for money than spending the same amount of cash outsourcing.  Knowing Mark Ling and the affilorama team, this will be yet another fantastic product, and I imagine that the content will be top notch (it always is with Mark, just check the warrior forums and affilorama forums if you don’t believe me). Mark has claimed that the content creation alone cost him nearly $100,000 dollars to develop so I’m sure it will be fantastic quality.

Affilojetpack will not only be great for newbie’s just starting out, but will also be a fantastic resource for existing affiliates.  The content of the jetpack can be used to build an SEO site that relies on free traffic, A Pay Per Click site that drives traffic to a squeeze page and then follows up with a year long email sequence, and can be used as a model for how to build a super affiliate website in another niche.  Elements of the jetpack can also be plugged in to an existing website.  I have a couple of sites that really need an auto responder sequence, but I just haven’t had the time to make one yet, and I know I am leaking a lot of sales because of this.  I’m hoping that this niche is one of the 10 available in affilojetpack so I can use the articles and newsletter series to really turbo charge my existing website.

So if you are a newbie with no experience, an established affiliate struggling with content creation and technical tasks, or a successful affiliate who just wants a whole bunch of great content to use for your business, affilojetpack may be for you.

I will post a full review post launch, after I have had a chance to go through all of the content and materials.  If you are interested, you can visit the pre-launch page now to claim a free pdf report and video entitled “The 5 Step Formula for Making $10K/Month Online”.  I strongly suggest that you claim the free report and video as it is packed with useful information for budding affiliates, and its completely free with no obligations attached.

Writing this post has made me even more excited about the launch later this month.

Rodderz