Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

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

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