Working For Myself is Soooo Sweet!!
Published by fongrich on Tagged Internet Business, Business JournalIt’s been 18 days since my ‘retirement’ from the corporate world and I want to give a quick up date. Basically, life is pretty sweet at the moment. 
I get up around 10AM, read for half hour to an hour, then I roll out of bed and plan for my day while eating breakfast. Then, I start talking to my ’staff.’ It’s usually night in other timezones, so I am just getting an update of what they have done while I was sleeping. I keep close track of my time with a time tracker. I break down my production hours into: project management, web development and R&D. Pretty self explanatory and easy to use. It really keep my somewhat slacker ass on track. Another very useful tool is a “to-do” list manager, which is based on the book “Getting Things Done” - David Allen. It’s a more advance technique and very effect in getting projects done by breaking it down. It’s at nozbe.com
I work at about an hour burst on one thing only and completely focus on it. That means no email, no checking on adsense, no surfing, not even bathroom if I can help it. Then I take a 10 minute break. I can do 2 bursts in a row, then I need to run an errand, excercise or a longer break. Depending on what I am doing mostly, but sometimes it gets too mundane for me to sit in front of a computer. Since I don’t have a boss watching over me, I can just leave, take a nap, or whatever. Did I mention life is sweet?
On a productive day, I get in about 7 production hours. That’s hyper focused, no messing around work. In corporate world, the probably translate into 9-10 “face time.” However, on some days.. usually a Friday.. I sometimes totally slack off and take 2 separate naps lasting an hour each… hahaha I didn’t feel good about myself that day. Overall, I am getting a LOT more done than were I doing this part time. On average (based on 2.5 weeks), I get around 35 hours of productive work in a week. I try to keep things balance. I make sure I get out of the house daily. Most times to exercise, errands or classes. So I get some social interaction and don’t feel like a hermit. (which hurt moral and lowers production)
Result:
Well, revenue has actually gone down a bit since last month. This is expected as March was pretty good. However, by the end of this week I will have launched 18 new sites. So I have been averaging 1 site/day. Of course, they’re launched in bursts, so it’s not like one comes out a day or I am actually involved with launching it. My role is to coordinate and track results. These sites will kick in about $40/month average after 3 months. So for now, I will be bleeding money launching these sites. But in 3-5 months, things will kick in and I will finally be in green.
I have 4 writers, 1 article submitter, 1 webmaster/programmer. I also got a rolodex of graphics designer, web designer, and programmer on call if I need anything. Once this business evolves, I’ll need a project manager to manage all this while I focus on something more interesting. Maybe I don’t.. Haven’t quite decided. There are still many ideas that I need to test. I am still learning so new key knowledge could completely shift my business strategy as it has in the last few months. That’s what I like to call biz evolution.
So far, my key traffic generator is article submission. I don’t do much link exchange except for a few sites in a very sophisticated network which I pay dearly for (StomperNet), but it’s also a very good source of knowledge and expertise. I can just pop into the forum with a very specific question about technical, marketing, business strategy and it’ll be answered by many real experts within 12 hours. It’s completely worth it for me when I am stomped on something. For now, I still need to learn this datafeed and blogs to really scale traffic and work the affiliate angel. That’s my current plan and it will keep me busy for the next couple of months. After that, I’ll probably look at my network and see what niche opportunity I can really focus on to get it wider and deeper focused to really establish a few big cash cows.
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