My 4 Hour Workweek

The first month of 2011 is in the books, and winter is here in Chicago.  The blizzard this week wreaked havoc on nearby businesses, but fortunately the internet world is somewhat immune to weather conditions.

I have mixed feelings about January.  It was definitely a month of change – as I detailed in my 2011 goals, I changed jobs (and careers) this past month.  As is usually the case, I didn’t spend enough time (or as much time as I wanted) on my internet business(es).  My results were still positive, but growth has been slower than I’d like.

Anyway, I’ll let you read about it and decide.

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With my January income report coming up later this week, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about something I don’t think I’ve ever explicitly discussed here before: reinvesting.  You often hear about “reinvesting” as it applies to large corporations.  For example, XYZ Manufacturing Inc. had a profit of $4 million in 2010 – instead of paying it out to its owners, the company reinvested the money by putting it toward additional research and development, to hopefully bring greater earnings in the future.

The same concept applies to us too – we can take our earnings, however large or small, and put it toward things that can help us expand our income potential.

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I read a statistic that showed a relatively high percentage of people give up on their New Year’s resolutions within the first few weeks of January (sorry, no reference link for that), so I thought to myself, “why not wait until a few weeks into January to even create my New Year’s resolutions and goals?”

In all seriousness, I just haven’t had the time to sit down and think about them, and I really believe this isn’t something a person should take lightly.  If you’re committed to reaching your goals throughout the year, you need to be willing to put in the initial time to create high quality goals – that is, goals that actually motivate you to act and achieve them.

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Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing Brooke Ferguson from BusinessBackpacker.com.  For those who aren’t familiar with Brooke and her work, she leads a pretty fascinating lifestyle.  In fact, I would say she lives and breathes lifestyle design, and seems to do an excellent job teaching others how to do the same.

You hear a lot about people preaching “lifestyle design,” but Brooke actually demonstrates it.  She was even featured on the Discovery Channel (the show aired this past December), which I thought was really cool.  After coming across her blog and reading about how she travels the world, basically living out her innermost passions, I knew she was someone who I had to interview for My4HWW.

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For those of you who are on the list and have been receiving my e-mails, you know that Newbie Niche Site Month has come to an end.  I know there were probably a lot of you who got the e-mail and went to register a particular domain, only to find that someone had beaten you to it.  Unfortunately, that’s how it goes!

Hopefully even if you weren’t able to grab any of the domains, you got a little bit of insight into exactly what micro-niche, exact keyword domains look like, and perhaps they inspired you to go out and find your own.  Anyway, I wanted to recap exactly what Newbie Niche Site Month consisted of for those who didn’t receive the e-mails (and yes, I’ll list out all of the domains I sent out).

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It’s been more than two months since my last niche side duel update, so many of you are probably wondering if I’m even still working on this site.  The truth is, I hadn’t for awhile, but I have recently started making some changes.  There were a lot of things that had kind of demotivated me, but one of the main ones was a domain change that put me off of Google’s radar for awhile.

The good thing is, I got back on Google’s radar, and in a big way.  This got my motivation back up and I made some changes to the site that I think will make a difference in my earnings.  This short story doesn’t have a very happy ending though, at least for the time being, so you’ll have to keep reading to see what happened.

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Happy New Year! Hopefully you had a pleasant holiday season.  December was a relaxing month for me, as it usually is with the holidays.  Aside from spending a lot of time with family, I spent a few days in Las Vegas, and it was nice to escape the frigid Chicago weather (even though my wallet was a bit emptier on the way home).  One thing I didn’t do in December was discuss my 2011 goals, as just about every other blogger has done.  It’ll probably come later this month once I’ve had the chance to really give it some thought.

This month wasn’t nearly as good as last month in terms of earnings, but I still feel good about it, knowing that the money was earned from very little work on my part.  Let’s have a look, shall we?

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About a week ago, I received an e-mail about the new Instant Article Wizard 3, which is currently in beta testing phase.  It piqued my interest when I realized that I could try it out from now until it’s released (supposedly mid-January) for free, without having to input any financial information (credit card, etc.).

I decided to jump on the opportunity, mainly because this software is made by the same guy who created The Best Spinner (which I currently own, use, and love).  Here’s what I found.

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