Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

In a year when most stock portfolios are down at least 30% some much more than that you find that most people are adjusting their spending and work habits accordingly. Reports are coming in of shoppers preparing to spend less this year on holiday shopping. Travelers are planning to travel closer to home. And investors are looking to savings accounts and CDs before the Fed lowers rates so low banks practically can give money away for free.

Even with all that, has the economy affected your day to day patterns?

For me, I can say that my wallet hasn’t been affected yet. My wife and I don’t pull income from our stock portfolio which is good, it’s down almost 50% on the year, and we’re still able to get student loans for her and my paycheck is still getting signed. However, psychologically we’re both looking for ways, just like those people I mentioned above, to save money “just in case.”

Save money on gas, which, although it’s coming down in price, still has us trying to plan our routes better to conserve gas. We’re eating in rather than going out. We’re putting more money away in savings every month for a rainy day. And lastly, I’m starting to blog again.

That’s right, I’ve been away for so long I almost didn’t remember how to float images, or transfer blogs between servers, or… But the major difference between last year and this year is that I’ve decided to spend a little more time building content on my many blogs to see if I can increase traffic and get a little extra cash every month for those just in case moments.

It’s not that I have much more time to do so. My 9 - 5 is still a 24/7 job, meaning I’m always thinking about, answering phone calls, or emails (from my phone too), for work. But now I’m trying to make time to blog a little more and get back into the internet thang.

This means blogging early in the morning when I wake up, or blogging late at night before I go to bed. At these times I may read a regulatory document here and there for work just for fun, or gasp… even try to spend some quality time away from work. But, now I can fill that time with creating content that will build my blog network and hopefully increase traffic and earnings as I’ve done in the past.

I think this change will ultimately be good for America. Rather than people expecting to get things now or feel entitled to high salaries, bonuses, and stock options, credit that can buy them whatever they want NOW!, they’ll see that working hard, saving and then getting your reward is how you get ahead and feel success.

So, How has the Economy Affected You?

Why the question mark you might ask. Because if you’ve traveled on an airline lately you’ll know that most people aren’t happy. The workers or the travelers. This is something that I’ve come to know too well. Traveling for work (my 9-5) I’ve gained 1K status on United Airlines. For those of you that don’t know that’s flying 100,000 miles in one calendar year. And I made it in the first week of October.

For some this may seem cool or great, traveling for work, going to different places and I must admit, at the beginning of the year I thought is was too. But 3 months into it I was over it and now after a solid year of traveling at the rate up almost 2 weeks a month I’m getting over it. I live in Hawaii with my wonderful wife, and enjoy playing outdoors.

To top it off, all of my flights are at least 6 hours long!

That’s why I was surprised and relieved when I took part of my last trip and it seemed as though the airlines were full of joy? Every work was kind and approached me with a smile, the plane staff was extremely friendly, behind the counter, same thing! And better yet, on both of my flights I received a pilot card with a little note written on it thanking me for being an elite member. Both legs!

Now the pilot cards are nothing new, every once in a while the stewardess’ will hand them out. But two in one day, plus the happy flight staff, unreal? Maybe there was a company wide meeting at United saying we have to actually care about the people that pay our salaries. I’m not sure. But whatever it is it was great to fly with them.

I just hope it wasn’t a fluke and these people are nice all the time.

By the way, the flight was LAX to IAD and IAD to MIA.

This is only a test. I repeat, this is only a test.

I’ve decided to give a go WPhone wordpress plugin as my mobile blogging tool and see how easy it is to blog. Since I’ve come to spend about half of my time on the road for my 9 - 5 job I needed a way to make blogging easier. When the mood hits me. I’ve become accustomed to emailing from my phone and thought I’d give this a try. Who knows. Maybe I’ll be able to bestow some mobile blogging wisdom on you.

I repeat, this is only a test.

Since I started blogging I’ve gotten to know some great people involved with the online money making world. It all started when a co-worker pointed me towards Steve Pavlina’s Blog and all the money he makes from his pesonal development blog. This was shortly after I had started to play around with some web publishing of my own so the timing was great.

This co-worker then stopped working for the same company and became a freelance webdesigner along with creating other sites that employ writers, photographers, and bring him passive income. At least thats my guess since I haven’t been able to get a hold of him to find out how things are going ever since he decided to bike across America.

I also met some other great people around the blogosphere and had some great conversations and a dinner with a little more known internet entrepreneur, Yaro Starak. He was in Hawaii on his way back to Australia from Canada and I was able to have dinner at a local hot spot on the beach and discuss all things internet. He gave me some great advice, that, although he may not see me following it yet, I’m definitely working towards ideas raised in that conversation. Besides, who am I to go against a proven method that’s working for him.

Also in the mix is my brother. He’s started a clothing line, ASONE Clothing which has been doing well for small startup company. Also while doing that, he’s become somewhat of a wordpress guru. Couple that with his design abilities and he’s perfect for those wanting design work done. Right now his client list is pretty full and his ability to both code, not just CSS, full-on custom PHP and plugin integration as wel, is going to continue to bring him a lot of work. You can check out his budding portfolio over at PaperTree Design.

He also runs a few blogs on the side related to web design and creating buzz for product launches.

All in all, this online crowd is a great crowd to get into. I hope to develop my network more and more as I try and bring more information to the table. Some things I’m helping colleagues with are…

• Wordpress and PHP consulting, focused on custom wordpress applications and design
• SEO
• Starting and building blog networks
• Idea generation

As I recently wrote, I’m working to get back into the online site and business development world. With that I thought it time I redo how things look around here and maybe make it easier for readers to find content, and find related content.

So over the next few weeks, please excuse the look, rearranging of categories, and general disarray of things around here. I hope to continually organize and update the site to provide readers with a better experience but the drastic changes will most likely take place over the next few weeks.

Some good things you might notice…

• Categories are making more sense
• Easy navigation on the top and in the sidebar with post/category related options
• Each category, post, and tag page now have a main category they are subbed under
• Posts, series, and information is better grouped to allow those searching for help to find it better
• The overall “entrepreneurial feel” is elevated

Feel free to bounce some suggestions by me as well. Who knows, they might get incorporated into the site.

It’s been a little over a year since I spent much time paying attention to my internet “holdings.” Since the spring of 2007 my blogs have pretty much been on autopilot. Every once in a while I would write a blog post, check in om my earnings, make sure I didn’t forget a domain renewal, and a few odds and ends bookkeeping wise. But that’s about it.

Well, since that time a lot has happened besides gas prices doubling. I’ve become extremely busy at my 9-5 job getting a promotion, a lot more responsibility and managing a lot more. I’ve lost pretty much all page rank on my sites. I’ve lost three earning parked domain names due to non-action on renewal. I’ve lost a lot of regular readers to this blog and some other high traffic blogs I run.

And somehow, through all that, I’ve managed to keep my income steady?!?

Yeah, that’s not a typo, my earnings from blogs stayed about the same. The great part is, income from both passive sources, Text-Link-Ads and AdSense, have increased. My overall earnings have stayed the same because I’m not actively selling ad space or reivews on my blogs. If I had kept up where I left off, my earnings would no doubt have been much higher. But then again, it wouldn’t be passive income now would it.

The past year has been a good break from the internet. Blogging, domaining, and the prospect of making money working for yourself is a very big motivator towards spending entirely way too much time sitting in front of your computer. And rightfully so.

Before I took my break I had learned a lot about blogging, investing in domain names, and becomming part of the internet entrepreneur community. This blog has been featured on top name blogs such as problogger.net for a php hack I did to save your YPN account, and also featured on Entrepreneurs-Journey.com several times for various articles I’ve done as well as a post on my link-baiting technique to launch my blog network.

With all that great promotion and words of encouragement, you’d think I would have stuck around. But sometimes you just need a break. My plan is to return slowly and build my blogging, domain investments and other online income to a steady passive income stream competing with my salary from my 9-5.

So how did your blogs continue to earn money?

I know I’ll get this question from a lot of people right off the bat. And don’t worry. I plan to answer this question along with many more over the next few weeks with regular posts to this blog. But, since I’ve been away, my prolific writing skills just aren’t what they used to be.

Some things to look forward to.

• Income reports on the previous year
• Updates to my domain name investing series
• How to file a patent series
• How to start a corporation series
• More on Starting a Blog Network
• and many, many more…

Thanks for those who’ve kept me on their RSS Reader and are surprised to see some updates from me.

Aloha,
Erik

It’s been almost two months since I was hanging out in “The Matrix.” I’ve gotten married, had a blast of a honeymoon in New Zealand, and enjoyed a little bit of the summer months out here in Hawaii. But now it’s time to get back at it.

Since I’ve been gone I’ve had continued writing on only one blog, Aloha Update. All my other blogs and internet business ventures have been stagnant. However, I’m pleased to report that earnings have stayed at the same levels as they were in May and acutally went up on some blogs. This is very encouraging news, it shows that the system of writing a lot, or having others write for your sites, can pay off while you do nothing!

But this news has also been pulling at me to get back in the world of internet business building. Having the last two months to sit back and take stock of what I’ve created has allowed me to really look at what works, what makes me money. I’ve been able to learn which approaches have the biggest return and thus those that I should spend more time creating.

It’s also allowed me to plan a path to refocus on those sites and operations I feel have the highest potential to build into a real business and provide a stream of money to fund other ventures. This is my main focus over the next few months is to work off a plan and build a business system that can fund the next planned operation and so on and so forth.

We’ll see how it goes, but I wantd to let ya’ll know, I’m back in the matrix!

I’m definitely not the first to say that google analytics is new and improved. The word has been spreading about them taking urchin site tracker to the next level.

My Google Analytics account has just been switched over to the new look and feel and I have to say that it is Googlefied to the max. It gives you more information right at login that it ever did so you don’t have to go digging through all the crazy sidebar items. Speaking of which, the sidebar options have been majorly trimmed which is great!

The nice thing about the streamlined version is that it’s not really streamlined at all. I still see all the information it used to have just now it’s much easier to find and know it’s there (I even found stuff that I didn’t know analytics tracked.)

What do you all think of the new look?

I have recently been writing about volumetrics as a legit dieting plan and the different low energy density foods that you can enjoy while on the diet. Writing about it and really trying to stick with it has made me google happy for the term “volumetrics”.

From there I found out that Consumer reports has named volumetrics it’s top diet plan for this year.

“Recent clinical trials show the best overall weight loss of any diet evaluated. Based on research at Penn State, the diet aims to maximize the amount of food available per calories, mainly by use of reduced-fat products, liberal addition of vegetables and low-fat cooking techniques.”

For those of you who don’t know, the idea is really simple. Eat foods that weigh a lot and have a lot of volume with relatively low calories. This way you feel full while still eating less calories. It doesn’t take a nutritional degree to know that if you eat less calories than you burn throughout the day you’ll loose weight over time. The only problem, which volumetrics claims to solve, is you don’t feel full.

I for one hate being hungry so going from eating whenever, whatever, to trying to “diet” for the first time in my life has been difficult. Eating apples, salads, tomatoes, and other low energy density foods gives me the right balance of foods, and allows me to eat a lot, while lowering my calories.

I now find myself reading labels to do quick calculations based on weight and calories per serving. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep this up for the next 20 days until the wedding. Lord knows I could stand to loose a little tire that has inflated around my belly.

For those of you who love to read about what other bloggers out there are making I stumbled across a great list of a lot of prominent bloggers and what their salaries might be.

I for one try to spread the love by updating you with the most recent earnings reports that make it to my reader but this list may be the best yet.

Paula Neal Mooney’s list contains bloggers from the top all the way down to the up and coming. Should you be on the list? Well if you think you should, just drop her a line or comment, I’m sure she’d be glad to add you, especially if you have a link to your earnings.

Speaking of which, maybe I should drop her a line, I should be close to the top 40 this year!!!