Halloween Muse is a Success!

LegendaryHalloween.com

This Halloween season I made about $310 from affiliate links on LegendaryHalloween.com. Not bad for a site that has been live for less than three months.

I couldn’t have done this without Site Build It. I cannot stress how easy Site Build It makes it to create your own online business. The step-by-step process they walk you through explains everything. The forums are there to fill in any details or answer any questions you may have.

For my Halloween site, I focused on the keywords generated by Site Build It and created content pages for those key words. When creating those pages, I added affiliate links to allow my visitor to buy something related to Halloween.

For example, on the Gene Simmons Costume page, you’ll see a Gene Simmons costume at the very bottom. When someone clicks on that link from my site and purchases the costume, I make a percentage of that sale. Most affiliate links generate from 4-15% of the sale price. Not all links are so obvious. If you look in the text above, you’ll see links that are in the text. Those are also affiliate links.

Obviously traffic is key. That’s where Site Build It REALLY helped. Their software generates a list of keywords related to your site and show you the supply and demand for them. Several of my keywords such as ‘KISS Costumes’ and ‘Weird Halloween Costume Ideas’ produced great results because there was very little content out there for them. I ended up being ranked in the top 30 in Google for those keywords which brought a lot of traffic and therefore sales.

Halloween is seasonal so traffic has plummeted in November but now that I know it can work, I’m looking to create the next site.

Have I raved enough?? Good! Now go check out Site Build It for yourself!

 

A Halloween Muse is Born

I mentioned a few posts back that I was working on a second site idea with SiteSell. I’m happy to announce that LegendaryHallowen.com is alive!

LegendaryHalloween.com is a site that focuses on Halloween for Adults. You can find party ideas, drinking games, party games, costume ideas, cocktail recipes and more.

This site has been monetized from day one so now I’m working on building traffic as fast as I can to get everything ready for the 2008 Halloween season. If you have any ideas for content or traffic building, I’d love to hear them!

 

Tracking Spending Results

After reading Your Money or Your Life in April, I’ve been tracking every single cent that has come and gone from my life. Here are my Income vs Expenses for the past 4 months.

Month	Income	Expense	Difference
April 2008	$ 12,073.45	$ 14,225.85	$ (2,152.40)
May 2008	$ 12,414.03	$ 14,562.50	$ (2,148.47)
June 2008	$ 12,246.17	$ 13,735.31	$ (1,489.14)
July 2008	$ 15,205.60	$ 16,240.59	$ (1,034.99)

What I’ve learned in the past months is astonishing. I couldn’t believe it when I saw that I was spending $2,152.40 MORE than I made in a month. I knew in the back of my mind that I was overspending but the amount amazed me.

Now I understand why I’m in debt.

Since I had tracked and categorized every expense, it was easy for me to go back and see where I was overspending. For me it was travel, gifts, and business expenses. I spent way more than planned in travel and had never budgeted for gifts or business expenses.

I’ve revamped my budget and am now on track to spend less than I earn this month.

If you haven’t done this already, you should! This had been the single biggest eye-opener experience I’ve had so far on my journey to create wealth.

Resources:

 

2008 Financial Goals Q2 Update

Half of 2008 is over and it’s time to reflect on how I’m doing with my 2008 Financial Goals.

Goal 1) Pay off $11,000 in credit card debt

I’m still on track for paying this off in November but only because I am receiving $4,700 back from my taxes. My vacation travel this year has gone over budget between Taiwan and spending too much money in Europe. Now I am watching other areas of spending very closely so that I can still be on track for getting rid of this debt this year.

Goal 2) Create 2 new forms of passive income

I’ve been working very hard on Legendary Party Ideas but still have not monetized it because the traffic isn’t there yet. The traffic is growing steadily as I write more content so now it’s just a waiting game. Once this site has good traffic and I monetize it, I want to start a second site using SiteSell. I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve learned from their system and want to apply it to a second idea that I have.

Also, I’ve uploaded some images to iStockPhoto. I just got accepted today to their program so I’m not sure how this will work but if I can sell some photography then that would qualify as a form of passive income!

Goal 3) Buy a house in SoCal

This goal is still in flux. I’m undecided about where I want to live long-term and therefore don’t want to buy a house yet. However, I would still like to save the $50K for a house down payment. I don’t think I’ll make it since I was relying on my stock and frankly, its gone way down. It’s valued at about half of what it was.

At this point, goals 1 & 2 are on track. Goal 3 is behind. Not bad for ambitious goals.

 

Muse Idea with SiteSell!

Not one to give up even though I’ve failed at creating a muse, I signed up for SiteSell for a different approach and created Legendary Party Ideas. Here’s my review of SiteSell from what I’ve seen so far.

SiteSell believes in a concept they call C->T->P->M, which stands for Content -> Traffic -> Pre-Sell -> Monetize. So, you build your content first to drive traffic, then pre-sell your visitors with great content that you will eventually monetize.

So far, I must say that I like it. They give you a 10 day action plan in both audio & text

Intro: The 10-Day BIG Picture
Day 1: Master the ALL-Important Basics
Day 2: Develop Best Site Concept
Day 3: Brainstorm Profitable Topics
Day 4: Investigate And Plan Monetization Options
Day 5: Refine Site Concept and Register Domain Name
Day 6: Build a Site… That Gets The Click!
Day 7: Build Free Traffic
Day 8: Build Relationships
Day 9: Know Your Visitors
Day 10: Monetize & Monetize It!

On top of the action plan, they give you extensive tools and guides to help you through the process. There is also an active forum where people will answer your questions.

The brainstormer tool is worth the price of the software alone. For any keyword, it gives you demand, supply and profitability. It also helps you expand your idea using different kinds of searches.

Also, with SiteSell’s guidance on how to build a page and their software, my pages were listed in Google within a week! I’m even in the top 10 with certain keywords.

There are a couple of things I don’t like about it. First, 10 days isn’t realistic to finish everything and monetize. I’ve been working on my site for 2 months and I still haven’t monetized it yet because I’m waiting on solid incoming links. Second, the UI and navigation is clunky and kinda hard to use. Third, the site builder tool they give you don’t allow you to save drafts.

However, I think it is solid software and so far has delivered on its promises. Now, in the effort to get my incoming links so I can monetize, here’s a link to my site, Legendary Party Ideas.

And, of course, I’ll update you on the progress once I do monetize.

Here’s their banner if you want more details:

 

Muse Idea using Shopster

I signed up for Shopster.com last year around this time. Shopster is a site that will assist you in creating your very own ecommerce store. They have it all — from products that will be drop shipped to accepting payment to templates to create your site. All of this for the low yearly price of $329. It sounded like it might make a good muse. The part that interested me the most was the fact that they had lots of different products to choose from and it gave you the option to create many different kinds of stores.

The first site I created, Protect My Life, was all about protection — house protection, protection for yourself, your pets, your money, your house, you get the idea. The reason I chose this was because I found a similar site from the Shopster message boards and their site looked cool and interesting. Ah, I was so naive. That is about the stupidest reason to create a site. However, that didn’t stop me. I set it up, created a logo, and added products. As I was adding products, I realized that I had NO IDEA what most of the products were. I realized I was on the wrong path and I switched gears.

Next, I created Michael Jordan Mall. As you can probably guess, it sells Michael Jordan gear – autographed basketballs, photos, etc. I chose this site because there was a good product base and Michael Jordan rocks. I also did some research on Google AdWords to see if the market was too saturated and saw there were several keywords that didn’t have steep competition.

I spent about $100 on Google AdWords to advertise MichaelJordanMall.com and never made a sale. I stopped spending money at that point and I’ve pretty much ignored it since then. I’ve had one sale that made me a profit of $6.31. I feel like I haven’t really given it a chance so I am going to start focusing more of my attention and money on it.

Overall, I haven’t personally had great success with Shopster and MichaelJordanMall.com but right now I’m going to credit that to myself and lack of real effort put into the site. To be honest, I was looking for a quick and easy way to make some money and this wasn’t it.

I’ll add posts as I work more on MichaelJordanMall.com to keep you updated. In the mean time, let me tell you what I like and dislike about Shopster.

Shopster Pros:
1. Lots of products to choose from
2. Good templates
3. Can add custom pages
4. Helpful user community
5. Can set price margins easily

Shopster Cons:
1. Can’t set titles on feature pages – this is bad for SEO
2. Google Base won’t accept a feed from Shopster stores (Shopster has supposedly been working on fixing this the entire time I’ve been a customer)
3. Support turnaround time is slower than I’d like

Wanna check Shopster out for yourself? Here’s a pretty banner for you to click.

 

Will I Have To Care For My Parents When They Retire?

This journey has taught me several things; one of the more important ones is that my family has a huge effect on how I think of money. Growing up, we didn’t have a ton of money but we always had enough to do what we wanted to do. What I didn’t realize at the time was that my father has no savings or retirement plan and that I have no idea if my mother has a plan for retirement. They are divorced so they wouldn’t have them together.

My dad owns several pieces of land that have increased in value. However, at this point, that land is not producing any income. The only form of income my father had until age 52 was from owning and working in his masonry construction business. When he was 52, he started the bar along with my brother and me. That produces income but not enough for him to live comfortably.

I’m concerned because I’m not sure what his plan is. If you’ve read some of my other posts, you’ll know that my dad, brother & I share money pretty freely. I pay for the house my brother lives in and for the truck he drives. That is my way of contributing to the bar since I’m not there to help physically. However, I receive no income from the bar. I’m not worried now but if that is my Dad’s plan for retirement, the bar needs to be making a lot more money because right now I couldn’t support both of us.

My other major concern is that my little sister has Down’s syndrome. She’ll never be able to live on her own or completely care for herself. I don’t consider this a burden because my sister is a true joy to be around. However, there are financial implications involved with her care and I know that we aren’t prepared if something were to happen to my mom and step-dad.

My mom was always better with finances than my dad so I’m hoping she has a solid plan. But hoping isn’t going to get me far.

What I’m realizing is that I need to have an open, honest discussion with both of my parents about money. This isn’t something that we have ever really discussed. We know some basics like how much we make yearly and how much some things cost but that’s it. You know more about my finances if you’ve read this blog. That’s just pathetic and unacceptable.

I want to talk to both of them and get the scoop, however, it is kinda a taboo subject in my family. The general idea is “we’ll deal with it when it happens”. That’s not good enough for me but I have a feeling that it is going to be hard to get straight answers from them.

How about you? How do you handle discussing money with your parents?

 

Family Sayings about Money

Your family has a huge impact on your life. I’m just now realizing that the sayings I heard about money growing up have affected my financial life in ways I just now understand.

My family says:

“Money Is Made To Be Spent” & “You Can’t Take It with You When You Die”

These are favorite sayings of my dad and his side of my family. He believes in that he works hard and should spend his money and that’s exactly what he has done. We always had big toys growing up. Dad was into stock car racing and then switched to boats. I had my own ATV when I was 5 years old. Dad spent a lot of money and time on our hobbies and we enjoy them very much.

This “family value” reflects itself for me in my spending habits. I spend a lot of money on my hobbies, especially travel. I hear myself saying this phrase when I’m trying to justify a big purchase.

“You Can Always Make More Money”
This saying is one that I actually really love. I do truly believe that you can always find a way to make money. It may not be the way you want or as much money as you want, but you can make enough to get what you need.

That being said, I also use this as an excuse to spend outside of my means. Yes, I can always make more money, but do I really need XYZ thing to make me happy?

“My Money is Your Money”
My family is very generous with each other. My dad has 5 brothers and sisters and money is shared very freely between them and their children. It’s to the point where people that marry into my family, they have a very hard time with how much money is swapped between my aunts, uncles, and cousins. We have strong faith in our family that whoever needs the money will end up receiving it. We also don’t expect repayment. I don’t think this is a bad thing, however, as an adult, I realize is unusual for a family to act like that. I wouldn’t change it because I enjoy sharing with the people I love.

This family value has led me to be over-generous with my friends. I’ll buy the round of drinks or the upgraded concert tickets for my friends. It took me a long time to realize this made most of my friends uncomfortable because they felt like they owed me, even though I never expected anything in return.

–

As a 30 year old, I’m just now realizing how much these sayings have shaped my financial decisions. If I had a family whose saying was “A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned”, I would be a much different person with my finances. My family has taught me love, compassion, and many other wonderful things but they have not done well with teaching me about finance. I’m glad I’m learning now and I plan to share what I learn with my family. Hopefully my younger cousins will grow up more financially wise than me.

 

2008 Financial Goals Q1 Update

Well, we are 1/4 of the way through 2008 and I think it is time to see how I’m doing on my financial goals for the year. For those of you that are new, I posted my goals in this post. Here’s how I’m doing . . .

Goal 1) Pay off $11,000 in CC Debt
I’m doing ok on this. I’m up to $11,761 in credit card debt which isn’t really the direction I want to be headed. It went up due to an unexpected opportunity to go to Taiwan for a friend’s wedding. I’m a sucker for a wedding in a different country.

However, I reduced my monthly bills by $751 by paying off one of my two credit cards, paying off my brother’s truck, dropping HBO & Showtime from my cable, canceling my Krav Maga membership, canceling hosting for two blogs that I didn’t maintain, canceling a watch guard service from my bank (that I didn’t even know I had), and canceling my Get Friday Virtual Assistant. Most of these were little payments but they add up quickly.

I also got a 4% raise and I’m taking the extra money and applying it to my debt.

These changes have very little impact on my value of life but allowed me to set up automatic transfers for $1,600 per month to the credit card. That will wipe out this debt by November so I’m still on track.

Goal 2) Create 2 new forms of passive income
I decided not to write the ebook right now but did test a muse idea and watch it fail. I am working on a whole other idea that I will post to the site soon. This is proving to be harder than I expected and it is also going slower than I expected.

Goal 3) Buy a house in SoCal
For this I’d decided I’d need around $50,000 for a 10% down payment. I thought I would mostly rely on a sell of stock that I would receive later in the year, however I’m not sure that is the right decision. I’m also considering moving back to where my family lives, which would mean I’d need much less for a down payment. So this goal is still on my list, but it is evolving.

That’s the update. So far, it’s going but slower than I expected, which is also what I expect. I have a habit of creating unrealistic goals and then not quite meeting them. That works for me because I know that’s how I work and I don’t get mad or guilty about it. So, overall, I think I’m doing pretty good on my goals.

 

Unexpected Bonus

Yay! I got a $5,000 bonus from work that I was not expecting at all! Go me! Now, the question is, what do I do with it?

I knew I’d pay off one of my credit cards since it had a balance of $1,228. But I couldn’t decide between two options for the rest of the money, $2,695 after taxes. Here is what I considered:

1) Pay off the truck my brother drives but I pay as part of our deal with for money with the bar. The payoff balance was $2,350 and would free up $570/month that I could add to my “debt snowball”. However, the truck interest rate was lower than my credit card rates so it may not be the best option.
2) Take all of the money an apply it to my other credit card, the one with a $11,761 balance. This would get it below the $10,000 mark which would be nice.

I decided to pay off the truck and put the remaining $344 toward the other credit card. The main reason was motivation. It felt really good to pay off two things and to be able to make bigger monthly payments to my credit card.

Then I did two things that remind me of how good it feels to pay things off:

1) I printed copies of the truck and credit card bills that now show a $0 balance. I wrote the word ‘YAY!’ on each, highlighted the $0 balance, and hung them in my bathroom. Now every morning I smile knowing that I am closer to my goals! YAY!
2) I added to my “debt snowball” by changing the auto pay for the truck payment ($570/month) and the minimum credit card payment ($30/month) to go to my credit card. Also YAY!

I’m all about saying ‘YAY’ today.