Of course it’s that time of year again when people make resolutions to improve themselves and/or their career/ business. Myself, I have a campaign to improve my business and finances because of some of the (positive) personal changes in my life. In fact, it’s a necessity that I get back on track.

Experience has shown me that if you work for yourself, never settle on just one income source. Build as many income sources as you can, especially if they’re passive or semi-passive. Passive means you have to do little work beyond an initial effort. Semi-passive means you might have to make a “maintenance” effort. This will become clearer in the examples below.

My 2009 Life, Business and Career Resolutions

Flickr: shutter.chick – CC license.

My overall goal? Having my cake and eating it too. The following is a list of some resolutions as well as a list of most of my current services. Maybe the list will give you some ideas for your own life, business and career resolutions, which you can feel free to share in the comments.

1. Work smarter, travel, and enjoy life more (again). I’ve already been working long hours most of my career, but used to also take time to enjoy life. The bulk of my work in the past four calendar years has been freelance writing and blogging. That used to mean long hours of writing. I’ve since developed some powerfully productive workflow by using Mind Mapping for all my work – gains which I write about occasionally at FreelanceSwitch, Geekpreneur, here and elsewhere.

My aim is to be a Digital Nomad, working and traveling extensively – a topic I’ll be writing a great deal about starting in 2009.

2. Share more of my knowledge. I’ve been in the workforce for over 20 years and been fortunate enough to learn numerous skills, gain a fair bit of knowledge about many topics. It was always my intent to share that knowledge when I started blogging, but that hasn’t always been the case. So my 2009 goals include writing and giving away at least a half-dozen ebooks on various topics, as well expand my discussions of the following topics:

1. cloud computing,
2. crowd sourcing,
3. digital nomads,
4. freelancing + entrepreneurship + career planning,
5. learning,
6. mind mapping + problem solving,
7. mobile web + mobile platform,
8. personal finance, prosperity and investing,
9. social media + networking,
10. travel (especially in the context of digital nomads and anthropology),
11. web 3.0 + semantic web,
12. writing + blogging.

3. Build multiple streams of income. Freelancing can be a tough game, unless you work smart and build multiple streams of income. Hopefully my sharing of knowledge skills will create useful content (articles, ebooks, podcasts, screencasts, diagrams) that translate into more income starting in 2009. It’s not enough to rely on website ad revenue – most bloggers just don’t make enough to live on. Leverage all of your skills. Here’s how I’m leveraging mine in 2009 and beyond. (Over time, I’ll expand on how you, too, can build revenue streams with some of these methods.)

1. Ad revenue. You can sign up for dozens of ad networks for your websites, but that does not mean they’ll earn you anything. Be selective.
2. Affiliate marketing. The more my colleagues tell me of their successes, the more I realize that this is an important and honest income stream.
3. Coding. Programming/ coding, along with technical writing, was my bread and butter for many years, and it’s time I got back into it. Got some Perl, PHP/ WordPress coding you need to get done? If I can’t do it, I usually know people who can.
4. Consulting. I love “New Media” and have ignored this as an income stream. Want to know more about how web video, podcasting, screencasting and other forms of New Media can benefit your online presence? Talk to me.
5. Ebooks. Writing (and storytelling) was one of my first loves, and remains something I enjoy. Need a book or an ebook written? I’m a published print author, and have a few ebooks in the works. Contact me.
6. Freelance writing/ blogging. This somehow replaced coding and tech writing as my bread and butter, but it really isn’t easy to write dozens of articles weekly – at least not with consistent quality, on deadline, and to a word count. I love writing, though, so freelance writing will stay as one of my core services. Email me (rdash001 at yahoo dot ca) if you have some writing that needs doing.
7. Link building and SEO. This is a service that I offer in tandem with several partners who have powerful social media presences (though I tend to not have time to build mine). Ask me about this can help your online presence.
8. Producing. Web video and film producing is a path I’m already headed down. If you need web video or film production (or even film financing), feel free to contact me, as I have a small stable of close friends who have experience in this business who I can put you in touch with.
9. Screencasts. You can see the bulk of my screencast work at Tubetorial, where I was the Editor for a period of time in 2007. Other screencasts appear at a number of websites. Screencasts are a great way to promote software or teach people how to use desktop or web applications.
10. Stock photography. I’m what you might call a “professional amateur” photographer, and have been for decades. As I’m planning to work and travel extensively in the future, I’m getting back into photography. If you need images, let me know, as I have a number of photographer colleagues.
11. Technical writing and training. This another mainstay of my career, and a service I’m continuing to offer.
12. WordPress installs + customization. Have you come to realize how important a website is to your online presence? Maybe you want a blog? WordPress is a free web publishing platform, and it’s not just for blogging.

So what are some of your resolutions? How are you planning to build out your income streams in 2009?

Why? Because building more blogs doesn’t interest me as much as it did two years ago. Yes, it is possible to have a full-time blogging career, but I also want to explore alternatives. So what’s the alternative? Sites or mini-sites, web services, directories, toolkits, etc.

If you surf around the blogosphere, you’ll see that bloggers fall into a lot of categories. Some are great writers, some are good at link building, others at building dialogue with readers, and others at marketing and promoting their blog. That doesn’t mean that they’re all earning reasonable revenue for their efforts. When that happens, building a blog becomes a chore, not a pleasure. And that will come out in the writing – eventually. Lack of passion in the writing, of course, spells the beginning of the end of a blog.

Alternative

Fortunately, there are several alternatives to building and maintaining blogs, and some of them can be more lucrative. One is to build and flip limited edition sites. A bit of research at a couple of domain/ site marketplaces (namely Sitepoint Marketplace and Digital Point Marketplace) shows a small group of people building and selling mini-sites around hobby and other niche topics.

I’ve purchased a few of these sites at US$100-200 each. While they show promise with the content, they lack something. So I’ve been changing static templates, adding a few visual elements, mini-directories, etc. In some cases, I’m rewriting a bit of the content or at least rearranging text to be a bit more readable, such as putting items in to bullet-point lists. And of course, I’ll be promoting the sites where possible. When the sites are done, they’ll be more than just a bunch of pages centered around a theme.

For monetization, some of these sites have Amazon or more exclusive affiliate ads. A few have Google AdSense ads as well, if the content talks about specific products. But AdSense is not the focus in most of them. And the real monetization will be when I sell them. I haven’t put a great deal of extra effort into any of the sites, so even if I only make $100-200 over what I paid, I’ll be making a profit. The sites will be affordable to other buyers, so they’re more likely to sell quickly. If they have any Google PageRank, they may sell at a premium.

Process

If you are thinking of trying something similar, here is a suggested process:

1. Pick a topic. Hobby or home improvement topics are often worthwhile for affiliate program-based mini-sites. See my tutorial at Tubetorial about choosing topics for blog posts (which also works for mini-sites).
2. Register or buy an inexpensive domain name.
3. Set up hosting. If you’re going to be doing this a lot, get a hosting reseller account that makes it easy to set up multiple sites at no or little extra cost. This way, if you have a site buyer that’s slow to move the site, you can offer them a bit of affordable hosting and still have room to build new sites.
4. Write 10-20 “evergreen” pages of content. By evergreen, I mean articles that’ll hold up a year, two years or longer from now. If you don’t feel like writing, hire someone. Edit their content if it’s not exactly the way you want it. Or you can buy a ready-made mini-site and tweak that.
5. Get a free static template from a site like OSWD or Free CSS Templates.
6. Add visual content such as images or videos. Often, you can reuse pictures from Flickr (check the copyright) and video from numerous sites such as Google Video or YouTube. There are loads more, and once I set up citizenCast, I’ll write there about audio, video, podcasting, and webcasting options.
7. If you want, you might add something such as a mini-directory, if its links do not draw traffic away from your affiliate links.
8. When you’re ready, build your HTML pages, which will require a suitable navigation bar.
9. Post your pages and start promoting with links, in forums, etc.
10. Sell the site. You can sell before the site gains Google PageRank, if you want a quick sale at an affordable price. Or you can hold onto the site, build PR, build some revenue, then sell at a premium.

The idea is to create quality, limited content on a topic: i.e, just once. If you revist a broad topic, try to pick a different sub-niche. For example, if you have site on dog breeding that you build and sell, next time try dog training. Doing this gives your buyers a bit of an advantage: you are not creating competition for them. That doesn’t mean there won’t be other sites on similar topics, but you can at least honestly claim limited edition sites – which makes them more salable.

If you build, say, two sites per week and make $200 profit on each, then you could make an extra $1600/m for a few hours of work per site. Of course, if you did this every day, you could make more, though I believe there’s a saturation point in the market. I may be wrong – test the waters and see. You don’t have to give up blogging, but if you want to supplement your revenue, and you have a sense for what might work in terms of mini-sites/ affiliate sites, flipping limited edition websites might be the way to go.

Andy, on the other hand, has taken every thing he’s learned and poured it into this very large, very detailed article. He explains:

• Why some sites sell for low multiples, some for high.
• How to build a high multiple site.
• Getting up to $12,000/m in profit, not revenue.
• The irony: a site that can be sold for a million might be worth keeping. Why? Because of tax reasons, site income can be more valuable than putting your money into real estate or stocks.