If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

My last post was about switching from a traditional job to working for yourself online. I touched on some basics needed to accomplish this task. For me, all of this started when I quit my day job and set out to work for myself online, inspiring me to write about The Top 10 Reasons to Quit Your Job. There are countless reasons to quit your job and start having fun, but how does someone make that jump from the rat race to living out a dream?

November 2006 is where my dream started. I was driving beet truck for a local farmer during harvest season, looking for jobs to apply to and setting up interviews. I listened to the radio a lot while driving and picked up a show by Dave Ramsey, the get out of debt guru. He inspired me to make life changes in order to get out of debt and live a more fulfilled life. After reading some of the books he recommended, including some of his own, I came across a book called, 48 Days to the Work You Love. I have mentioned this book a couple of times because I will gladly buy this for anyone graduating from high school or college. The book doesn’t give you any answers about what jobs you should work, but it does ask the right questions. Over the next year and half, I worked to achieve my goal and quest to pursuit the career of my choice.

When I say I tried all the wrong ways to make money online, I mean it. I did the blog with Adsense, tried to sell ebooks, eBay drop shipping (including the book), and many others. I thought because others were successful at doing those things that I would be able to replicate their work. I was able to an extent do what they did but ultimately it cost me much more time and effort than I ever got out of those ideas. I always knew I wanted the flexibility and lifestyle that the Internet business could provide, but I was doing the business of others and not myself. It wasn’t until I figured out that doing what you are really passionate about is the key to succeeding both on and offline in business. You truly have to love what you do and be willing to do it even without a paycheck. If you can honestly wake up in the morning and want nothing more than to get to work you have found what you love. I can’t even sleep in anymore because I will just lay there thinking about the things I can do for the day.

For myself, I found that I love solving problems. I have know this for a long time but never capitalized on that ability to help negotiate my way through the situation until its resolve was complete. I also knew that I love working with people and helping to meet their needs (the go to person). What I did was merge offline business with business online. I have been helping local groups and businesses be found online. Most have a website but that site is not easily found in their local markets. I help define people’s goals and target for their businesses online. In our local market, this is a completely untapped niche. I can’t name anyone in town who really has a clue to accomplish these tasks for a business (some claim but don’t deliver). The last two months have brought a lot of business in for me and I find that each day I love what I do more and more. I think it is so much fun to help people like this and in an untapped market there is a lot of opportunity to grow.

The biggest part to remember with all of the information you digest while beginning your quest to work online is to live out your dream, not the successes of another. Unless you can separate your quest for money apart from a fulfilled career, it will have a short lifespan. Ask yourself the right questions:

• What are my favorite hobbies? (Passions)
• What do I know a lot about or seek to know a lot about (investing, housing, SEO, puppies)?  (Drive / Motivation)
• What are my talents (talking, writing, production, media, technologies)? (Leverages)
• What do I get fulfillment out of (helping others, adding value, sharing, teaching)? (Purpose)
• Who do I most want to work with (kids, businesses, charities, sports, car enthusiasts)? (Market)

Find your target market and build a product for it. Always have a plan and a goal before you start something online. My goal for this blog was to reach others and build a network. Don’t build a blog and try 10 different methods of making money from it, you’ll waste your time. Build a product or service for your target market, not a market for your product or service.

Popularity: 14% [?]

What a great week. The sun has been shining for at least half the week and we haven’t received any snow. Yes, believe it or not, last night it snowed an hour from here. I swear this winter lasted about 7 months. I just wonder how the rest of the seasons fit into the year.

Happy Mothers Day
Face it, without mothers, none of us would be here. I would like to say and give a special thanks to my mother for surviving the Las Vegas heat in summer to put up with me. Thanks, Mom. I hope that I do not have to remind anyone to call or do something special, but just in case. What are you waiting for? Go now and do it.

Traveling
On Monday I will be traveling to the great state of California for a couple weeks where I am going to be helping out some family members. Before you start dreaming of the ocean and sand, I will remind you that I will be in the far north area of California near Mt. Shasta. I have been looking forward to my trip and visiting family. Hopefully I can post some nice pictures next week.

Tools
I finally caved and bought an MP3 player last week. In particular, a Sansa View. I recently did an interview and had the chance to record some of the conversation with a Sansa I borrowed. I was completely blown away by how well it recorded and sounded, not to mention all the other features included. I really wanted to get a decent digital voice recorder. I quickly realized they were about $100 and for a little more I could get a device that sounds just as good recording but also plays music and movies. It seemed like a no brainer.
Alexa
I shaved off 25k from my Alexa stats for this blog. That is a good thing. I really don’t know how much weight I give Alexa anymore. Alexa even admitted that in the last two years it was completely wrong in how it valued websites and now somehow magically it is better. In the end, is your blog expanding or contracting? Do you have more readers this month than last? Do you have more comments and linkbacks? That is what really matters.

Popularity: 16% [?]

This week I interviewed Michael Marcil, the founder and CEO of The Marcil Group, based in Fargo, ND. The Marcil Group is primarily centered around the management of commercial and rental property in and around North Dakota. Other areas of involvement include construction, technology, capital investment, venture capital, restaurants and philanthropy.

I actually had about 20 some questions drawn up that I really thought would lead the interview. How wrong I was. I only asked a couple from memory, and the rest of the conversation took on a natural course of its own. Michael Marcil was recently named a winner of The Forum’s 20 under 40 award (local newspaper). A diverse panel gave the award out to recipients chosen as those who are making a difference in the Fargo community.

A majority of my conversation with Michael was focused on the unbelievably bright economic future North Dakota has and how that will transform the state’s citizens. In a time of uncertainty for the U.S. economy with the sub-prime housing mess and skyrocketing commodities such as oil and wheat, the only downside for North Dakota is its chilly winters. Just about everything else in the state will benefit greatly due to the rise in oil and food prices. Michael shared his love for all the different types of energy our state has the potential to produce and pictures North Dakota becoming the “Dubai of North America.” In case you didn’t know, North Dakota is very rich in agriculture, coal, oil and wind. Michael Marcil spent roughly 10 years in the dot com industry with his hand in a few projects like food.com and many, many more. Through consulting, he built up his management and development company extremely fast. So fast, that The Marcil Group has grown over 800% in three years. Not only that, but the company has been in positive cash flow every quarter since inception. It takes a man with a grand vision to grow and expand a company that fast. I have no reason to believe there is any slowing down in his future. The sky is the limit.

I have never before met someone who has openly endorsed the idea of promoting their competitors. I know this seems very counterproductive, but there is a genius behind it that most will fail to realize. Imagine that you own and operate a business in a town that is bursting at the seems. If you can garner some business even for your competitors, eventually you are able to leverage that flow of traffic to further your reach in that market. Essentially, you are making your competitors reliant upon your business more and more. Now that’s some unconventional marketing.

I enjoyed my time with Michael, and I can’t wait to see what he does in the future.

Popularity: 22% [?]

I will make this sort and sweet. I spent the last week moving out of one apartment and into another. I am sure most everyone who reads this has moved at some point and understand the labor intensive work that goes along with such activities.

Sitehoppin Toolbar was released. I have a few invite codes if you would like to try it out. Each time Max releases a new version of the toolbar, you can use the same invite link and code to download the newest version. The toolbar is only being given to 1,000 beta testers and 3/4 are left, so don’t hesitate.

I am going to be cutting back on the video posts for now and mostly stick to using videos for tutorials and guides. I feel that they have been a good success and will continue to do some posts in video form. The 10-day trial netted me about 15,000 video views. Overall, a success, I would say.

Current projects:

I am reviewing / interviewing 1-2 marketing blog each day for the next week, as well as interviewing the CEO of a local capital investment firm. I am continuing to build and promote a number of sites in various forms of construction.

Goals and achievements:

I love goals, and since April has ended, I will be revisiting those. I achieved one of the goals on my list and others that weren’t on my list. I’ll start with those. This last week Google released a new update of Page Ranks for websites and blogs. I was completely blown away that the first ever Page Rank for joshwhitford.com was 4. Not only was my blog given a PR4, but so was www.thatmutt.com. Last month I spent a lot of time building backlinks for both our blogs, and it sure seemed to help with our page rankings.  

Another cool happenings actually occurred yesterday on Tim Ferriss’s blog. He had posted about meeting Warren Buffett, the world’s richest person according to Forbes. Some might recall that around Christmas time I sent a letter and postcard to Warren Buffett. I posted a comment on Tim’s blog to which he approved and then included in another post about Becoming an Eco Bounty Hunter. I am pretty excited about all of that and had a great time reading the flood of new comments on my blog. When I woke up this morning I had 10 new RSS subscribers. Yay!

At the time of posting my goals for the month of April, I was completely on the fix that traffic means success, I now know a little better and have focused my efforts on gaining true readers and subscribers. My goal was to have 75,000 page views to which I received 54,657. I also made it my goal to be under 90,000 on Alexa. I was pretty confident that would take place until its new algorithm was released and put a kibosh on that. Now I am at 197,672, such is life. Another goal was to reach 160 RSS readers, and I am currently standing at 134. Another goal was to get a Technorati  authority of 200 with a rank under 100,000. I did get a rank of 77,789 and an authority of 106. This is also my 75th day of blogging, not bad for just a couple of months.

What a great week, and I can’t wait to see what yet another week brings. Until next time work smarter, not harder.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Well it looks like our friend Max of Zedomax.com was able to get an interview with blogger John Chow at the Adtech 2008 in San Fransisco. I am not sure how planned the interview was, but it is none the less entertaining. My favorite part is when John Chow admits to looking up to Darren Rowse of Problogger.net. This goes to prove that everybody looks up to somebody. Also there are some pretty good tips that Chow shares about blogging, life, family and building relationships. Check it out and feel free to share it.

Popularity: 13% [?]