Posted by Canadian Dream on August 11, 2010
I was reading this post the other day about how blogs really don’t treat themselves as publishers, despite that is exactly what they are. We produce content ourselves or use guest bloggers to generate content and then publish it. A number of bloggers that would like to go “pro” and be able to live off their blog income but a lot of us don’t treat our blogs as a micro-business, despite the fact that is exactly what they are.
As such we tend to not think with in terms of all the hats we have to wear when you run a blog including:
- Editor: Guess what folks, editors at major newspapers don’t spend their time fixing a lot of other peoples crappy writing. They fix the obvious, cut the any word that isn’t required and send it back for a re-write if certain parts don’t make sense or it wasn’t what you were looking for. The writer is SUPPOSE to fix it and then send it back. Unfortunately, I suspect many bloggers are way too nice about rejecting crappy guest posts and end up doing too much re-writing themselves. That isn’t your job as an editor so stop doing it and hit the reply button instead.
- Marketer: You can have the greatest blog in the world and no traffic. You have to get out there and strike up some interest in your blog. Submit to carnivals, comment on other blogs, do guest posts for other blogs and be helpful to others in forums. All of those can help to drive traffic to your blog without paying a cent in ads.
- Sales: Want some income on your blog? Then don’t just stop with Adsense you need to consider affiliate programs, paid link ads and perhaps launching your own product like an ebook/book, software or something else that people will buy. Income from a blog to be useful has to come from many sources.
- IT: I recently had my hosting company’s tech support try to tell me that they weren’t hosting my blog and that some other company was doing it. Needless to say I freaked out and then dug into it. Guess what? They were wrong and I had to figure that out what the hell was up. Like it or not you need to know a few basic items on how websites work and then have a phone number or two of friends you can call in when you get in over your head. You are the Help Desk like it or not.
- Accountant: Do you need a GST/PST/HST vendor account? Can you write off your hosting costs if you don’t keep a separate account for your blog income? When did you get your last Adsense cheque? If you don’t know the answers to those questions, then you need to find out.
- Writer: Then last, but not least, all bloggers are writers. We often start off doing just that role and forget we need to expand out into the other ones. Great blogs at their heart have good writers, but what makes a blog really great is how well you wear those other hats.
Now if you aren’t good at a particular role it’s ok to get help. Pick other people’s brains or even hire out sections of work. I know my weak points are IT and marketer. I’ve have to beg for help once and while from others with IT and I know I don’t do enough marketing work. I’m just starting to get better at the editor role with Robert and Dave doing regular guest posts.
So if you blog, what hats do you need to get better at wearing? If you don’t blog, which of these hats do you wear in your job? Any tips for the novices out there?
Posted by Canadian Dream on July 28, 2010
Occasionally I will end up reading a post by another blogger that total rings a bell with my own life. I recently had that experience when I read a post by JD over at Get Rich Slowly called Downshifting: The First Day of the Rest of My Life. I can complete sympathize with being overloaded in life and the utter freedom of finally having some time again. I can can really relate to the concept of being rich in time rather than just rich in money. Over the last month I finally feel like I’ve recharged my batteries for the first time in months.
So how did I recharge my batteries? Well that was easy while on a recent trip I made sure of one thing above all else. I would do absolutely nothing related to work for one full week. No day job work, no trustee job, no writing … absolutely nothing other than minor things like washing the car. It was like heaven for the first few days but by the end I knew my batteries were starting to get charged as I was getting creative bursts where I was itching to start writing again.
Now that I’m back at the house I’ve been digging into my ‘fun’ work with a vengeance during this last week of my vacation. I’m actually looking forward to writing again and managing to get some work done and some much needed planning on how to get to finish off several outstanding projects that I’ve been working on. It’s sort of refreshing to be able to sit down at a computer with a smile on my face and look forward to writing something like this post.
I think also my family can tell I’m back so to speak. I’m smiling more and much easier to be around and much less likely to get angry over silly things like spilling a drink at the table. I’ve also just enjoying the simple things like having time to read a book strictly for entertainment rather than a book review or research.
This is exactly why I wanted to ‘retire early’ and now I’m getting it now rather than waiting 13 years or so for it to happen. Time is not refundable and so I’ve taken to watching were mine is going a bit more carefully lately to ensure I’m enjoying life and still working towards my dreams as well.
So how are you charging up your batteries this summer? Vacation away from home? Resting around the house?
Posted by Canadian Dream on May 12, 2010
So there is another round of thought running around the blog world about is early retirement selfish (see here and here)? The answer of course is: yes! Yet not in a bad way. I think everyone is inherently selfish to a degree. How much varies from person to person, but in the end we all are a bit. The issue with early retirement is people for some reason assume you are no longer a productive member of society and thus try to put that selfish bit in a negative light.
The issue of course is life isn’t so simple. Let’s examine a few things. Is buying a new TV selfish? Yes, I think we could argue no one would die without a TV so it isn’t a need. So if that is true then buying a big house is selfish, and so is buying a new car every five years. Yet when you choose not to buy the new TV, the big house or the new cars is that selfish by choosing to save the money instead? On the one hand is you are just keeping some savings for emergencies or regular retirement I think people would consider it more prudent planning than being selfish. Yet if that is the case, where is the line between prudent planning and being selfish? If you retire one year early are you selfish? Likely not, so why is doing it five, ten or even twenty years any different? In reality there is no difference other than the difference you build in your mind. So why do you feel there is a difference? I’ll take a stab at this, you feel guilty about retiring early.
Which brings us back to the concept of a productive member of society. I think for some reason people assume that early retirement means doing nothing and thus you are not productive. Yet that is a false assumption. People are never doing nothing. Kids who are five and under don’t attend school and don’t have a job, so in some people’s definitions of productive would be seen to be doing nothing. Yet in reality we know small kids are learning machines who are figuring out balance and gross motor control, fine motor control, language skills, defining their environment, learning object permanence and literally thousands of other little things that you take for granted every day of your life. There are definitely not doing nothing. The same applies to early retirees, they might appear on the surface to be doing much but the reality is they are learning gardening or a new language, helping others, starting small business, driving up your property value by picking up trash on their morning walk…you get the idea. If you try to call early retirees unproductive members of society you might as well extend that to small kids or even artists since they don’t produce things that people need or pay enough tax. The label of unproductive is really, again, just in your head.
So after deconstructing those two concepts it easy to see early retirement is only selfish (in a bad way) and unproductive if you want it to be. Yes early retirement will always be partly motivated by selfish goals, but that doesn’t mean it is a bad goal. Early retirees do have the difficultly of adjusting to find more meaning in their life than just their career. Most working people don’t have to think of how they contribute to the world, they just assume it is their job. Which is sort of silly when you consider how many useless paper pushing jobs there are out in the workplace. It’s entirely possible by retiring early you will contribute more to society than you ever did as a working stiff.
So in the end you need to find your own answer to: why do you want to retire early? I won’t judge the answer, but you will in our own mind. If you get it wrong, then you will feel guilty. So be honest with yourself and really think about the question.
So why do you want to retire early? In my case, I want more time to learn and write. How about you?
