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For the last two weeks I have been looking for a program that could run multiple Wordpress accounts. I just wanted a place to manage all of my sites without having to log in and out of a bunch of Admin Panels. I ran across about 20 different software programs or web based programs that wanted to charge up to $2,000 (can you believe that). Nothing was really what I was looking for, and the last thing I wanted to do was waste money on something that wasn’t quite what I was looking for. This brings us to Zoundry Raven.

Zoundry Raven is a Windows based program that allows you to add in all of you blog account Wordpress, and the best part is that it’s free. I quickly added in all of my accounts and configured them to be able to remote post with the help of the xmlrpc.php function of Wordpress. If you are running Wordpress 2.5 or newer, you need to enable this function manually in the settings tab of your Admin Panel. When you write your post or edit an existing post, it looks and feels just like Microsoft Outlook.

As far as I know, there are very few limitations to the software other than if you are running some extra plugins that require your input. Otherwise you are about to quickly and efficiently edit and post to multiple blog accounts in a matter of minutes, or as long as it takes you to bang out some posts. You are still able to insert all of the pictures, html, links and peview before publishing. If you are running more than one blog, it is definately worth checking out.

Next on the tools every blogger must have is the Seagate FreeAgent Go. The FreeAgent Go is a portable hard drive that does more than just store your files. It allows you to run and sync all your home computer files so that while traveling you have all the software and features you are used to having at home. For example, I run my Zoundry, Skype, FireFox, Word, Excel and just about any other program you can imagine. The version I got holds 160 GB and they make 250 GB version as well. (Link to Seagate FreeAgent Go on Amazon non-affiliate).

The main advantage is the ability to have all the comforts of your home computer at your disposal while only having to carry something the size of a deck of UNO cards. The second you unplug the devise from your computer or a remote computer, all of the cache is erased and everything is cleared as if you weren’t there at all. One of the biggest advantages I could see would be the ability to use your own version of FireFox. If you allow some of your passwords to be stored in FireFox when you visit those sites, you don’t have to manually type them, thus preventing any keyboard takers from recording your passwords in any public places. I always make sure to use the encryption mode so that I am the only one able to use the device. If you travel at all and hate lugging around your laptop and cables for just a night or two you can simply bring your Seagate and have everything you would normally have, anywhere.

(P.S. this post was written with the help of Zoundry and Seagate while traveling.)

I have found that the more that I am in love with my work environment, the more I love to work. This goes beyond loving what I do, which I do. My work environment is a pleasant place that I look forward to spending time in work mode. I recently bought a Herman Miller Mirra desk chair and it arrived yesterday ;). Note: this chair is not cheap but highly recommended.

I picked mine up from InterOffice Furniture in Fargo and had to wait about 3+ weeks to receive it. That seems like a long time but was well worth the wait. I decided to go with the Herman Miller chair after trying out a few different models and brands. The place where I bought the chair from was nice enough to let me try the chairs over a day or two each in order to determine what I needed. I have had mild back issues for a few years and a good chair makes a huge improvement.

I feel completely at home in my chair and even after a long day of sitting, my back still feels like a million bucks. I came to the point about two months ago that it was well worth the money to invest in an office chair and workspace to increase my productivity. If I love my space and am comfortable while working, it becomes even easier to do what I really love, my work. I am to the point where it is motivating and exciting to get up in the morning and start on the day. I hope both your workspace and environment are to the standards of your choosing.

Up until recently, I was using a patio chair as my office chair. Now that chair was actually better than some of the other desk chairs I have had in the past. I made sure I didn’t continue using that chair a day longer than I had to though. Do you have any office space / equipment horror stories? Lets hear them.

I wouldn’t trade my job for the world. I probably wouldn’t even trade it for a higher paying desk job. I don’t really believe that you can put a price on the freedom that being an entrepreneur allows. Each day I can wake up at any time I choose (normally 8:30). I eat a quick breakfast and head into the office and am checking email by about 8:45. Of course this daily routine can change depending on if I have a meeting set up or am out of town.  Here are a couple of the biggest reasons I love being an entrepreneur.

Security

I know that the traditional feeling is to work for someone else (company) and move you way up the ranks until you make management or get placed in charge of another project. I don’t like this type of system and highly recommend against it. Being an entrepreneur, I realize the goal for myself is to create a product or service that generates a decent income and then do it again. Eventually you have set up 4-5 different businesses all generating revenue. What would happen if one of those were to fail? Nothing really, you would be out some time and cash, but overall you would just pick up and move on to the next project. I have never really been concerned to fail in a business idea (which I have) simply because I know I can probably create a new and better product learning from my mistakes. If you and your businesses are diversified enough, there is little to worry about (other than the Internet going away).

Lifestyle

Before starting my journey of entrepreneurship, I never really grasped the idea of lifestyle design. In what other business can you take your work on the road with you as you criss-cross the world all the while knowing everything is going to be okay? Nowadays, with a smart cell phone, you can handle just about any situation that might arise while you are traveling. With Wordpress, I can set up weeks worth of future posts to publish on my blog the whole time I am gone. With email auto-responders and virtual assistants, I wouldn’t even have to go online for weeks at a time. I like traveling and doing outdoor activities and at any time I know I could run off for the weekend knowing that things will be just fine without my every involvement. We can choose what kind of lifestyle we want. If you want to make millions, by all means, do so, if you want the freedom to travel or spend as much time with your family as possible, all options are on the table. You pick and choose the lifestyle you want.

Opportunities

Opportunities come to everyone and at anytime. The best thing you can do is prepare and be able to capitalize on those opportunities when they arise. It is hard to seek out and suggest people try different opportunities when you don’t have the final say in what gets done. Being a self employed entrepreneur allows you to pursue and capitalize on different opportunities when they present themselves (including the forced presentation of opportunities). This is also where the security factor plays in because you are able to seek out completely different areas of business all the while pursuing the things you enjoy. Being able to seek out your own opportunities is like treasure hunting in a way because you never know what you are going to get. Ultimately, you will be able to hone in your opportunity-seeking abilities and will succeed more often than fail. Basically you become a business inventor.

Reward

Nothing could be more rewarding than doing the things you love while providing value to others and being justly rewarded for that value. How much fun is it to run your own business and set your own schedule vs. conforming to the will or others? At my last job I was a slave to the phone, so much so that even 30 seconds late could get you in trouble, including and not limited to the removal of incentives, not getting a raise, verbal / written warnings and possible termination if actions where habitual. I look back at that job and can’t even think of one thing I miss other than the people who worked there. As I add more value to the businesses I am employing (with my time) I can’t help but feel rewarded. Watching your handy-work in action and seeking the positive impact you have on your customer is a rewarding feeling to have. Subsequently, the more value you add to people and businesses, the more you are rewarded both in feeling and money.

Conclusion

This is by no means a complete list. Feel free to add your own thoughts about being an entrepreneur in the comment section. Remember to ask yourself while others are getting laid off in a slowing economy and being told everything is okay until the day the pink slip shows up, who is more secure? Security is best when provided by yourself. You can only control the things you have direct control over. If you don’t have control over your paycheck, what promise do you have it will be there tomorrow? Get excited knowing you can start making the change today that will guarantee security and the lifestyle you desire tomorrow, because today matters.

Actually, that title is a lie. I really don’t believe there is a fast track to becoming a millionaire. I do on the other hand think that you can achieve the riches you desire in a short time frame if that is your goal.

It seems like everyone is trying to make money online thinking they can replicate someone else’s success in a short length of time and end up making as much money. The truth is everyone pays their dues. Like starting out on the ground floor of the building and working your way up, it takes some time. Sure you could start out a few floors higher than most, or climb the floors faster than most, but it won’t happen overnight. This isn’t just a post about telling you that “you can’t do it,” or “it’s really hard to make millions online.” The exact opposite is true. Look at Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook. He bypassed the millions and went straight to the billions. What I am really trying to drive at here is the process you go about making your money.

Focus on the lifestyle you want

So many times and probably the number 1 reason for bloggers and online entrepreneurs failing is because all they are doing is chasing money. Chasing money is a very, very hard thing to do. Sadly, most people who could live off the chase of money quit before they have really made any money from their online ventures. It takes time to start turning a profit, and if you haven’t been in the make money online game for long there are a lot of bumps and bruises along the way.

If you think you would like to try one way or the other to make money online, my first advice is to do as much as you can for as little a$ you can. You don’t want to go broke trying to live out your dream of self employment and the freedom that working online brings. Make the Internet work for you, not the other way around. I very rarely feel guilty stepping away from the computer and going outside or on a last minute trip to family or friends. Often business picks up when I am gone because of all the work put in preparation for the mini vacation. I don’t think I could pick a line of work online that involves my direct involvement over every aspect at all times.

The secret to making money online is really the secret of motivation. If you can’t stay motivated doing what you are doing for next to nothing for six months to a year, the chances are high for failure. Failure is likely, not because the idea is bad but it is unlikely someone will stay motivated for that long without immediate returns. If you compare all of the “A-list” bloggers, most started out doing it because they loved what they were doing and a year later they started getting rewarded for it. Find anything that you are really passionate about and focus on that for the first phase of making money. Often, your passion will probably be specific and niche enough to draw a good crowd with the potential to monetize it in short order down the road.

It won’t take long from the time your first project gets off the ground, and all of the lessons you learned from it will steamroll right into the next project or phase. The skills you learn along the way will continue to carry you through each project you take on. As you take on more and more projects, you build a nice big foundation to grow from. This is why there is no magic bullet for making money online and basically to each their own. I never want to be just average, and I doubt I have ever been. So, I would hope you are the same way.

Don’t settle for average or the mundane online either. Look to the edges of the subjects you are interested in and never forget there are close to 7 billion people in this world. That is a lot of untapped potential to find the people who are out there with similar interests as you. Become an authority in your field and niche. I promise you, if you stick with the things you know and love, you will succeed and make your millions.

Over the last few days I have been running a series on how to make the lifestyle change to working online. Here is part 1, part 2 and part 3.

The hardest part about making the switch from, say, a traditional 9-5 job to working for yourself online, is the ability to stick with projects and even more importantly, letting them go. Since starting out online, I have participated no less than 10 different ways of making money online over a 6-month period. I have made money or broken even on pretty much everything, but the downside was the amount of time invested in some of these ideas. Nothing beats the time when I planned on writing and promoting ebooks. I wrote wrote and wrote, only to discover I really didn’t want to do that type of work. It was too labor intensive on the front end and there were no guarantees on making any money from the ebooks themselves.

Think of your bottom line and how much time it is worth in order to earn that money. If you spend a lot of time just to earn a little return, you are fighting a losing battle. On the other hand, if you have to spend 100 hours without seeing any profit in order to make much larger returns, that is the better deal. Most of successful work online involves more front end work and higher rewards after the time, energy and effort are put in. This is why most make money online schemes don’t work, because they promise the returns before the effort. Rarely is this ever true. Like I said in the earlier posts, there is no magic bullet. The key is determining when to hold onto those projects and goals as they start costing you more money and time than you had planned or anticipated for. For me, I like to make a plan and return to that plan even if it is just mentally to reassess where I am at in the process. If I feel directionless and unmotivated, it is probably because I have strayed from my original plan or I am realizing the cost benefit ratio is changing.

I really don’t have a set guide for when to drop a project and when to keep it. I spent about 1 year working on an ebook site to help unpublished authors and ended up putting the idea on the shelf. That was a really hard thing for me to do, especially after all the work and time invested. Fortunately, I had only invested a tiny sum of money into the project, mostly due to the limited budget. The project could have easily cost me a lot. It was a hard choice to tuck the idea away, knowing it would probably never see the light of day again, but I had a couple quiet secessions with myself. I really dug deep and asked if that project was something I really wanted to pursuit, or did I want to cut my losses while they were still minimal and move on? I chose the latter and have been thankful ever since.

On the reverse side, I made the choice to stick to my guns and pursuit other ideas that have paid off much more in the long run. It is a hard choice to stick with a dream as you are watching your bank account dip into the double digits territory and just hope that some of the auctions you have on eBay are enough to carry you through til things pan out. It was slowly becoming a reality that I might have to pick up a part-time job to make sure I was able to pay my bills. Just for future reference, potatoes are $.67 a pound, hard not to be able to eat when some food is that cheap. I truly loved what I was pursuing and was going to stick with it until the last possible second. After being humbled by an extremely tight budget fit for a college student it did not take much to feel rich. This is why it is so important to be doing something you really love and would do even without pay. When times get hard, that desire to continue on will be the driving force to carry you through. What separates most successful people from others is the ability to make it through the dip, because I can promise you there will be dips when you start to question your sanity.

If you have forgotten what sunlight looks like it, might be time to reconsider how much effort you are putting into your project. I made the decision to have the freedom and lifestyle that working online allowed. Recently, I made a trip to visit and help family for 3 weeks, and nothing changed as far as my business was concerned. In fact, I saw a slight boom in business while away. This is not always the case, depending on the kind of work you have chosen or are preparing to choose online. My goal was not to choose a line of work that I had to babysit on a regular basis but rather work that molded to my desires and lifestyle goals. Lifestyle design is a really important aspect of choosing what online ventures you pursuit. If you are interested in lifestyle design, I highly recommend Tim Ferriss’s 4 Hour Work Week.

Having determination and a love for what you are doing is vital for making it through the rough times when things are highly uncertain. I lived off of about $800-900 a month for a few months in order to realize my dream of working online and the flexibility it brings. This is another reason to have a financial buffer while you make the switch. My reasoning of quitting my job and jumping in head first was to force myself to really work from day 1 at making money. I made a sign and posted it right above my computer that read “will this make you money?” For me, it was sink or swim, because there was no way I was going to return to my previous job, and I was willing to do anything to avoid another job just like it. This was not the easiest way to make the switch and being young without many liabilities aided in my ability to approach my new career this way. I would highly recommend for anyone else thinking of making the switch to really analyze your situation and make the proper preparations to ensure your success. Mostly, that involves saving a lot of money or phase out the old job while phasing in your new career as it becomes more profitable.

I can’t encourage you enough to pursuit your dreams, whatever they are. The neatest thing about those dreams and the things that you love is you can make good money doing what you would do for free for a friend. The biggest thing is asking the right questions and really targeting the people you most want to work with. I love helping small businesses because I can relate with so many of them and their desire to succeed in what they do. I get a sense of reward and accomplishment watching others succeed and knowing I was able to assist them in their efforts.