My 4 Hour Workweek

Google certainly made a big splash in the news today with its implementation of “Google Instant,” a new Google search feature that instantly displays search results as you type your search query.  This was such a big story that I decided to postpone my monthly passive income update until tomorrow (or Friday).

I am by no means an SEO expert, but as someone who dabbles in website creation and affiliate marketing, I wanted to weigh in on how I think this drastic change to the way people search could effect SEO and affiliate marketing, especially with respect to long-tail keywords.

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UPDATE (11/16/2010): Lending Club has ended their “free $25″ promotion, however I still recommend signing up, depositing a little bit of money, and trying it out.  It’s really a nice source of true passive income.

It’s been a long time since I’ve written about Lending Club (aside from reporting my performance metrics in my monthly passive income updates), so I thought it deserved a revisit.  Since I originally wrote my review, Lending Club has made a lot of really nice changes to their website, making it more user friendly and visually appealing.  In addition, they’ve introduced some new types of loans that you can invest in, which I’ll explain further in this article.

The bottom line for me is that this income is pure passive income. Yes, creating a niche website is eventually passive income, but still requires a good amount of upfront work.  Investing with Lending Club is very much a “set it and forget it” type of passive income, where you probably only need to revisit it monthly to check on your performance and invest in additional loans.  Best of all, you can try it risk free (no deposit needed) because they will give you $25 free if you sign up with this link.  Keep reading and I’ll get into the nitty gritty details.

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A lot of times when you write an article (or a page/post on a blog), you put yourself in a “set it and forget it” mindset.  Sure, you’ll do some backlinking and you’ll monitor your Google AdSense and Analytics websites, but beyond that, you’re waiting around for the cash to come pouring in.  While this approach works, it’s safe to say that if you do this, you’re leaving money on the table.  The passive income potential of your content is likely higher than what you’re currently earning.  This article is going to show you how to find that “hidden” potential.

I consider this article to be an unofficial “part 4″ of the InfoBarrel Earnings Challenge series, because it fits well with the other three parts (part 1, part 2, and part 3).  Just to reemphasize what I’ve said before, however: The usefulness of this information has applications well beyond InfoBarrel.  You can apply this thinking to any article site or any website in general.

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I rarely post anything on the blog “for fun” or just to be humorous.  Lately though, I’ve been having a ton of fun with this site called Xtranormal.  I thought it might be fun to put together a series of funny videos related to blogging, passive income, and affiliate marketing.

Hopefully you guys can appreciate me poking fun at the “making money online” game.  I definitely don’t mean to offend anyone!  It’s a pretty short video (just over a minute).  Continue reading to actually see the video!

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Have you ever wanted to see exactly what your competition’s backlinks look like?  You’re trying to get on page 1 of Google and you know the #1 ranked site has 180 backlinks, but you really don’t know much about them.  You certainly don’t want to go through and check each one of them manually.

In the comments section of my article about increasing search engine ranking, one reader (Eric Greene), pointed out this awesome feature of Market Samurai that I completely overlooked.  Sure enough, I was blown away by it and decided that I absolutely had to share it here because of how powerful I think it is.

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Wow, I can’t believe the end of August is around the corner with the summer quickly coming to an end.  Fortunately, fall and winter generally bring better reading conditions for me.  I don’t know about you, but when it’s sunny and warm outside, I try to limit how much time I spend indoors.  While it’s nice to read outside when the weather is nice, I find that I’m more likely to read indoors when it’s cold and rainy or snowy.

Enough about the weather.  September’s reading list is very light (this is the lightest reading list I’ve had so far on the blog) because I’ll be wrapped up in another tax season from now (it started a couple weeks ago) until October 15th.  Unfortunately, my reading time will suffer.

Here are a couple books I hope to read this month:

1) The New Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz (this was recommended to me by Maren Kate)

2) Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink

If you’ve read or are currently reading any of the books listed here, please share your comments.  I’d love to see what everyone else thinks about these books, especially before I read them.  If you have suggestions for next month’s reading list, please share those too!  As always, you can check out my past reading lists by clicking the Reading link on the top menu.

Today’s post is short and sweet (this has been a really busy week for me), and I’d like to get your feedback.  I’ll start by saying: I shouldn’t be doing this.  I have too much work to do, too many side projects, and too many “challenges.”  Nevertheless, I’m not one to pass by an idea that I think I can implement fairly easily.

It’s hard to stay motivated as we try to escape our jobs, start our muses and businesses, and really reach the life we desire.  Wouldn’t it be great to have a place you can go to that is almost guaranteed to motivate you, even if it’s only for a short while?  Here’s the idea. There will be a new feature/page on My4HWW called The Motivation Vault. This page will feature (over time) a massive collection of links to articles, interviews, blog posts, etc. that motivate you.

Here’s what I need from you:

1) Your feedback. Do you like this idea?

2) Your submissions. If I go through with this, I want to know all about what you read online that really motivates you.  I’ll have a lot of my own things to list, but it’ll be a lot better if I get contributions from other people!  If you have ideas now, you can submit them via the Contact page, however I’ll also set up a contact form on the actual Motivation Vault page once that’s set up.

Sound good?  Head to the comments!

It’s amazing how “fluid” motivation can be.  One minute, you’re pumped and ready to dominate every challenge on your path, and the next minute, you’re demotivated, discouraged, and feeling like you just want to lay down and watch TV.  It comes and goes.  As aspiring entrepreneurs, we need to do whatever we can to keep that motivation around as long as possible.  It’s easier for some than others.

How do we create motivation?  There’s probably no easy answer to that, but one thing that has always motivated me (and I’ve probably mentioned this several times before) is the success story.  There’s something compelling about reading a real-life story or interview about how someone has overcome failure or some other obstacle to ultimately find success.  It somehow lights the fire in you and gets your motivational juices flowing (at least, it does so for me).

With that in mind, there’s a success story I came across on the internet recently that I want to share  with you, in case you haven’t seen it already.

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