There are so many things I love about you, such as your quiet determination, your gentleness, your wackiness, your great sense of humor, your adaptability, how well you did scholastically this year at school even though it was your first year at a ‘real’ high school after all those years of home schooling and even though you skipped half of grade 7 to get in. I also admire your creativity, not just with writing, your empathy and kindness.  I am also thrilled that we share a common fondness for fantasy and that you are now old enough that I can share some of my all-time ‘favorites’ in the fantasy realm with you.

I hope you have a wonderful day, full of fun and friends (and presents, heh!)

There are SO MANY PROGRAMS online urging you to join them, spend some money and subscribe…  I refuse to say they are all scams. I think there are a lot of people out there making money from ‘people who subscribe’. And there are a lot of people who “subscribe” who actually end up making money!

I subscribed to different programs and didn’t make any money, but it wasn’t the “programs” fault, in most cases (or all cases) it was my fault.  One of the main problems with someone wanting to start out with internet marketing is that they have no idea where to begin. Thus a prerequisite for any program is that it is geared towards beginners and that it does not progress at too fast a rate. It is also important that a good program does not overwhelm a beginner or introduce too many new concepts too early in the program.

I signed up with a few ‘free’ programs but they went too fast for me. Then I signed up with “Wealthy Academy” for a month or so. It was okay but very impersonal and I felt it was attacking on too many fronts at once. I couldn’t really get a handle on anything. Some people really took off on it, and my hat goes off to them. I was not one of those people.

I was also reading a lot of free money making blogs and I came across one guy who was teaching the most incredible stuff for free. He was also teaching you how to make money online without investing any money at all. He has since gone under the radar, but at the time he was publishing regularly he really opened my eyes to how simple this whole thing could be.

For those interested in a structured course he recommended some friends of his.  You know me, all for structure!  I checked it out. It is the Keyword Academy. First month $1. If you like it you stick around, if not cancel your subscription. When I joined it was $33 a month, and I am still paying that now.  (Recently, after about one year and the addition of many new internet marketing aids, the fees went up to $69 or so but anyone who signed up at the ‘old’ price stuck with that.) It is worth every cent.

I could extol all that I like about these guys here, but I already have  on my hub about how I was about to increase adsense revenue with the Keyword Academy training. There are training videos, an excellent and very active forum where you can get a lot of help, support and answers to your questions, and quite a few programs that aid you in your marketing. I do not think I would be where I am at now without the additional support I received, but even without it, it is possible to still ‘make it’.

One other reason that I have stuck with this particular program is because I was fairly isolated in what I was doing, especially in my neck of the woods!  Not a lot of people understand much about it and people tend to look askance at me for doing it. It is important to have some support when undertaking any new endeavor as there are definitely ups and downs and times you want to throw in the towel. There are also times when it seems everything is going wrong, and you don’t know what to do. That’s where being able to get some support from those who have been doing this a long time helps. They assure you that ‘it has happened before, it will happen again, just keep working away at it’, which is probably the most sound advice I received in this regard.

I am going to put up some links to some of the things I have written previously about making money online for anyone interested in browsing. If you are not interested, don’t read!  It’s really as simple as that.

Here is what has happened since I last “brought you up to speed.”

Summer school holidays. ‘Nuff said.

Dexter has been returned to his place of rescue. Towers closed down and we could not keep a dog in the apartment. We did take Prisca the three legged cat, however. She is feisty and unattached and spends her days and nights perched on the arm of the couch in the living room. Her and Tabby (our other cat) get on fairly well.

Peter is in the throes of getting his new company up and operational. It’s a challenging time for all, and a bit taxing at times too.  We expected that though.

It is Christi’s birthday tomorrow. She will be fourteen. Sigh. Supposedly surprise birthday party tomorrow though I think she has caught wind of it. Interesting thing is that her “school” friends will be joining with her “family” friends to celebrate. A real merging, interesting to see that happening.

I have to go and make the bed. I washed all the sheets and covers today just for the heck of it (joking, joking. I do it regularly). Good night.

The great thing about IBM is that you can extend the warranty, even after the fact. I can extend the warranty for $275 or I can buy a new motherboard for around $500.   Yes, warranty extension sounds the better deal to me too.

In the interim of deciding what to do I ended up claiming one of the kids’ computers–hey, I had to keep working! And it has been great working on a desktop rather than a laptop.  So, we’re tossing ideas back and forth. We could probably get a desktop for the same price we’d pay for a laptop repair (well, close).  We are not rolling in money right now.  Peter has a new company going without a lot of real sales coming in yet and I’m still getting my fledgling business off the ground. So we’re just sitting on things for the time being.

On the positive side, this situation has forced me to recover all of my passwords (that were ‘automatically’ stored on my laptop, shame on me) and document them. I have learned the value of backups, even if you don’t have anything that important that you’re working on.  I have also got rid of a ton of stuff I never referred to anymore and am currently only keeping on my hard disk what I am actually working on.

Another positive side to things: Remember I said up there somewhere that I have commandeered the kids’ computer (there is still one in the living room that they have to…gosh…share…) Well I was actually so impressed at how well they took things. We have not had a lot of money to spare lately, but they are taking it so well. At first there were tons of complaints and gripes but now they are very resolute about things.  Before they would ask, “Does this mean we’re poor?”  or they’d say about most things they wanted, “But I guess we can’t afford that.”

There has been an almost imperceptible shift in the way they look at things recently though. I am happy about that. They still have all they need, just maybe not all they WANT, lol. But it has been good for all of us. Trimming down, tightening the belt, doing without the non essentials, sharing computers, gluing shoes.  Claire could not afford to get very much for Chris for her birthday, so she wrote out a whole stack of “I will do this for you…” vouchers. The funniest voucher was the “I will do your dish job for you”.  Claire is not an avid fan of dishes at the best of times, so the thought of taking on an extra job…well.  She was talking to herself back and forth, “She’ll probably save this one up for a day when there’s a real mess in the kitchen, or there’s tons of dishes to do…”

But, you know what, she wrote out that voucher.  I was so proud of her. She stretched. She wrote that knowing that it was going to cost her something, and she did it anyway.  Hey, see.  Having to be careful with your money can develop character

As I have had to explain myself a few times, I have the general gist of the questions down now. I have to say that I have been impressed with how everyone has been fairly open minded to it. At first I was hesitant to say much about it as I was fairly certain everyone would think I was involved with some online scam that was draining money or some such thing. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I have been doing this for over one year now and while I have not yet met my major goal of being able to totally pay for all of our home expenses with my online earnings, I have certainly met all of my intermediate  goals, and am ahead of schedule on many of my major goals.

Here is how I am currently making money online:

1. I write a lot of articles for other people, via article writing agencies. It is not super well paying, as there are people working in developing countries doing the same tasks for much less pay. In other words it is highly competitive for not that great pay. If I worked really hard I could pull in about $80 a day.  I do not do that because I am also working on my own websites.

I chose to do this because it is immediate income. I can stay home and work, be here when the kids get back from school so that I can referee all arguments, etc. I enjoy writing and I am pretty fast at it now.

Eventually I will phase out of writing for other people, and instead I will be in a position where I have other people writing for me. Can’t wait!

2. I am building Wordpress blogs and putting Google Adsense on the blogs. Every time someone clicks on one of those ads I make money. At around 20 blogs, I have about reached my current limits — I write all the articles and do all the work involved myself.  Income is increasing every month. I have hit the 12 months plus mark, which is when magic starts to happen with your sites if you have done things properly.

3. I do some affiliate marketing. Heard of Amazon?  If I advertise Amazon products on my sites and people buy those products I get a commission.  Christmas was good! I am just dabbling in this presently so it is not a major earner but every little bit helps.

Why am I doing this?

I want to make money from home. I feel it is important to base from home for the kids’ sake. If I were teaching (I do a bit of that, incidentally) I would have to spend lots of hours away from home.

I am fascinated with what I do. It’s all about statistics and math, and averages and WRITING. It is also like a big game. There are variables, there are constants and things are always changing. I love the thrill of it. I enjoy the fact that a lot of the reasons things happen are predictable but there’s that element of chance. Basically it is a composite of everything I enjoy doing.

I am constantly learning something new.  There are always new horizons, new challenges.

Hey. I just like what I do.

Reality Check

It is hard work. I really do put in the hours. I have to study and learn. I make mistakes with what I do and have to start all over again. If you think you can make money online in, what, “ONE WEEK”, “ONE DAY”, “MAKE MONEY NO WORK”, you’re probably kidding yourself.

There are people online who do this, but they try to cheat the system. They are spammers and scammers. You know all those weird comments you get in your spam folders, or your “spam” comments section on your blog.  They come from those people. They are called “black hatters”. They do all the things that give people involved in this business a bad name. They try to cheat “the system” or “game the system”.

My friends and I are “white hatters”.  Other end of the spectrum. We do things properly, follow the rules, and put in the hours.  It is just like starting any business. You have to work pretty hard at first but then it gets easier. It is a lot like any other kind of marketing actually.

I am planning on passing on more information on how I started, what has and has not worked for me, tips and ideas for anyone who is interested.  I do not expect everyone to be interested in this aspect of my life, which is why I have sectioned off my blog in the way that I have. If you do not want to read technical stuff about what I am doing you do not have to.  If you are interested in this side of things, keep checking in. I am going to post more.

It is a speech recognition program, for those of you who are not familiar with it. A large part of what I do on a daily basis is write.  I hear it, “But you LOVE writing, don’t you?”  Yes, and no.  Yes, I love the creativity of writing. No, I hate the monotony of writing.

Part of what I am doing to help earn our living is internet marketing. I end up writing a slew of articles all about one topic. It is not fantasy. It is not fiction (well…sometimes, maybe it is a little bit. I’ll tell you about that later.) It gets downright boring at times. I mean, how many words can you spend writing about doggie strollers?  After a time you actually do run out of things to say, especially if there aren’t any newly released, six wheeled doggie strollers to post about.  I don’t know how many words a day I would end up typing, maybe an average of 3,000 or so, with that number sometimes going up.  Now, that’s fine for a Nanowrimo month, but day in and day out, it translates into a fair amount of pounding the keyboard. Right now my “N” key is taking a bit of a beating, and it is fading.

Enter a dictation program called “Dragon Naturally Speaking”.  I speak into a microphone and the computer types out the sentences.  I am going back and forth with using it, sometimes I am more inclined to do so than others. I do end up with some odd word combinations at times as it does have a tendency to misunderstand words at times. You have to train it to understand what you are saying, and that can get a little tedious. On the plus side, it has helped me to churn out some great, longer articles and has given my poor fingers a break from typing.

I am not convinced that I will use it all the time, but it is both a time saver and a finger saver at times and it relieves the monotony of typing everything. Plus, I also seem to be a bit more creative when I am speaking, as opposed to when I am merely typing.  (Right now I am typing, not speaking.)

The post was definitely a funny read again.  For those who may have missed it last time, I will link to it here.  (I am not going to repost it, I am against duplicate content…)

Check out the end of the post titled Traveling Taiwan.  I think rule #3 and the signature were my favorites. How about you?

Today I teach at a big Elementary school in Taipei City. Claire, assistant teacher, will accompany me. It is a 1.5 hour class, with a mixed group of kids, a big class, and I hate having to perform and keep everyone inspired and learning English.  Thus, Thursdays have become my least favorite day of the week.

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Currently I am working on a new I.M. Challenge–setting up ten websites in one month, complete with five posts, supporting articles and linking.  It’s fun.  I am lagging quite a bit this week though, as I haven’t really done as much as I had hoped. Today all I managed to do was to get a few link exchanges going (I give links to people in exchange for links from them) and write about three blog posts and one article.  It was only the morning, but I can really do a bit better than that.

I am learning not to set financial goals, such as “I will make such and such an amount of money this month”, but to rather set accomplishment goals, “I will write this many articles per day, or a total of this many per month.” Money is transient, you have good days and not so good days (no $/hour pay with this!) thus if you set your goals on money and for some reason you don’t make that much, you can end up getting quite depressed, especially if it happens a few days in a row.  You do not have control over how much money comes in on a daily basis, you do have control over the amount of work and writing you do each day. Set your goals on something you have control over, that way it avoids the emotional roller-coaster that success or failure tends to set you on. It is dangerous if you really have no control over it. If you have control, on the other hand, you know you only have yourself (or outside circumstances) to blame, and it is much more rational and understandable.

If you want to know what direction this blog is going check out the “About” page.

As far as bringing everyone up to speed…

Long Story.   How about I just update you on where we are currently?

Peter is heading up an Association, “FISAT”, and it’s growing slowly but surely.  He is also setting up a company that will trade in Chinese and Borneo organic tea, it will also give an intro to those interested in Chinese culture, and as tea/culture is intricately meshed with the Chinese art world, he is having visions of grandeur when it comes to art dealing. It might happen, knowing Peter. But for now, the tea selling thing is the most happening. I won’t give away all his business plans here, but he is targeting international sales, as well as local sales.

Robyn is liking life. She is not currently working on any fiction writing, but she is doing A LOT of non fiction, article writing–some good, some bad, some indifferent.  None is about that medicine that makes your thing hard, or about quick ways to lose that stuff around your belly. Lots of home improvement topics, fashion, jewelry, home security, packaging (heh, trade shows too, by proxy!).  All good honest stuff, in other words.

She is also building a Web empire, piece by piece. Internet marketing, and actually making money without compromising beliefs.

Robyn Speaks: The funny thing is that I LOVE it. I have finally found a niche where “all of me” feels complete. I can write to my heart’s content, and I can statistically analyze everything to do with stats, visitors, marketing, what gets me to #1 on Google (yes, I am there with some sites!) I can be creative and analytical.  Nothing could be better.

Christi (see note in About page, for changes in spelling said name…) is attending 8th Grade at a 7th Day Adventist private school. She is slotted to go into 9th grade at another 7th Day Adventist school, come September. She will read everything I write here, so I have to be very careful… She may pursue a literary career. [Chris, I'm sorry, I have to say this--it was so funny!]  When enrolling her in 9th plus grades it asks about what university you are aiming for, career choices etc. Chris blinked her eyes rapidly and asked, “I am going to university????”  I explained that she didn’t have to, but that we did have to design her course plan.  She chose ‘writing’.  I will fully support her in this, she has written a couple of books (none published of course) and I think she is exceptionally talented in that area.  (Yes, Claire, you are too!)  I will support her in her endeavors.

But when all is said and done, who knows what we will become. I was a registered nurse.

Claire goes to a public Chinese school. She is learning to read and write and speak Chinese. Peter thinks she will become an integral part of his tea/culture/art company one day.  Of course, we don’t know what Claire thinks about that.  She is the perfect age (still) for learning Chinese. Chinese is the most spoken language in the world (could be wrong there–sorry if I am–but it beats English I believe.) Claire writes long stories also, and they are great. She is also composing her own renditions on the piano. Her former piano teacher constantly told us she was gifted with the piano, but a bit naughty…. (Heh. Claire, is that you?)  She plays music that soothes me. I can’t wait till she is playing all of Canon in D, moving hands back and forth across the keyboard with elegant ease. It will happen. She is good.

Nike went to a good owner.  He loved her the moment he saw her.

Dexter is still guarding Towers….and hopefully catching snakes.

Prisca is hopping around on three legs, at Towers.

Tabby. Well, Tabby. The most lazy, non-feral-any-more cat I have ever seen, is with us. Constantly. In our bedroom.  At our feet.