How to make money?

When it comes to blogging, my niche is related to living in the Philippines.  Even when I write on other subjects, the Living in the Philippines niche is still in play.  For instance, when I write on this site, it is about making money.  Primarily, though, it focuses in on how to make money while living in the Philippines.  Because I live in the Philippines, that is just a big part of my life, and it interacts with just about any subject that I write about.

One thing that I get a lot of is e-mails from other people who want to live here in the Philippines.  One of the most widely asked questions in those e-mails is - “how can I make money while I live there” or “what kind of job can I get in the Philippines.”  Well, my answer to that second question is always the same - you can’t get a job here.  In addition to legal hurdles for foreigners who live here getting employment (i.e. taking jobs from Filipinos) there is the simple fact that employers would rather hire a Filipino in most cases.  And why not, after all, a Filipino can better understand the customer, can speak the same language, etc.  If you do find an employer that will hire you, are you willing to work for a few dollars per day?  I doubt it.  I know that I would not.  I mean, if you are the type that is willing to work for $3 per day in a full time job, you probably shouldn’t even be reading this blog!

So, how can you live here if you are not independently wealthy?  Well, derive your income from some other method, some other source.  That’s why I talk on this site about ways to make money online.  Do things like write books, write websites, sell things online.  There are lots of ways you can do it.  But, the key is to be self employed, and take responsibility for your own well being.

Recently a friend of mine wrote about somebody that he knew who worked for a major corporation in the Philippines, and the company refused to even pay the salary.  When you work for yourself, you don’t have to worry about those things.  Yeah, you will have people who will try to weasel out of paying for things, but after you are in business for a while, you will figure out how to spot those people, and you will also figure out ways to do business where this can’t happen to you.

Basically, if you are looking for a way to get into your own business and earn your own money, take time to read this blog!  Read other blogs on this topic (there are hundreds of them).  Don’t expect the UPS truck or FedEX to pull up to your doorstep with a box of money the week after your start.  It doesn’t work that way.  Indeed, you must work, and the money will come.  Give it time, though, and don’t give up!  Instead of getting discouraged and working a little less day by day, work harder when it isn’t going the way that you want.  It will pay off.

Believe me.  I know, because I’m living the life.

Book publishing

I have been kicking around the idea of writing a book.  I have written about a dozen books in the past, and have had them all published.  I used two different publishers before.  One experience was a disaster, the other experience was great.  Now, though, I am conflicted when it comes to publication.

Conflicted about what?  Well, I am debating about whether to go the traditional way of writing a book and having a publishing house print it and distribute it, or whether I should self publish.  If I decide to self publish (which is the way that I am leaning), I can see two paths to take there too.

1. Go the traditional route of printing the book on paper, and distributing it to book stores and such.
2. Go the new route of doing an e-book (electronic book) and distributing it over the Internet.

It’s a tough choice.  Each route has advantages.  I know that from my past experience, you can expect to get maybe 10% of the sales price as your share of the money.  So, a $15 book would bring you maybe $1.50 per copy sold.  This, of course, is if you use a publishing house.  If you self publish, you would get a lot more than $1.50 per copy, but that means that you also have to front all of the costs for printing, distribution and such yourself.

One nice thing about living in the Philippines, though, is that you can self publish a printed book relatively cheaply here.  So, let’s say that I got 5,000 or 10,000 copies printed and then distributed them myself.  I can imagine that most sales would be off my own websites.  I’m OK with that, because I have a lot of traffic on my various sites, and I think that I could sell that quantity of books relatively easily.

The electronic press path is attractive too.  You just write the book, publish it as a PDF file, and you are ready to go.  No real costs involved, except for your time (I already have all the software that would be needed for the project).  You could then sell the book, even at a lower price, and still make more money.

I feel that I actually have several different books in me, just waiting to come out.  I just have to decide the proper path for publication and selling.  It’s been a decade and a half since I’ve done this, and a lot of things have changed in that time.

So, what do you think?  Which method of publication is best in today’s environment?  If you are buying a book, do you feel that a paper book is better or more desirable than an electronic book?

Share your thoughts, I need them!

Stop the treadmill! I think I want to get off!

I’m having one of those days today.  You know the kind of day I am talking about - one of those days when you work hard for the entire day, and at the end of the day, you feel like you didn’t do anything.  I don’t like those days.

I blame Wordpress.

“Why Wordpress,” you say?

Well, I blame Wordpress because it has become like a treadmill that never stops.  First of all, you have a never ending parade of updates to the software.  As soon as you update to a new version and get all the kinks worked out, it seems like there is a new, critical security update that you have to do immediately!  If you don’t update on time, it’s like running around in public naked - you just don’t do that!

Here’s what happened today.  I had a couple of improvements that I wanted to make on one of my sites.  When I went to that site, I noticed that the Plugin panel on Wordpress was telling me that two plugins were out of date.  Oops!  I better update those right away.  So, I went and downloaded the new releases on these plugins, and installed them.  What the….   I just checked my blog and the whole top half of my screen went black!  Hmm… turns out that one of the plugins didn’t work!  So, I reverted back to the old version, it worked fine.  That second upgrade that I did didn’t work either.  So, I eliminated that one.  I have dozens of blogs, so all of this piddling around took me half the day (or more).

The thing is, I am feeling like with Wordpress, it is getting to the point that there are so many Admin tasks that need to be completed, that I rarely have time to produce the quality content that I want to share with my readers!  If I had one blog, maybe two it would not be a big deal, but I have more than that.  It is making me wonder what I should do.  Abandon some of my sites?  Find a new software to run on?

I have been playing with the idea of moving to Drupal.  Today I took the step of installing Drupal on one of my inactive domains, and playing with it.  It only took a few minutes when I realized that if I changed platforms, that meant that I had to re-learn the whole system again!  I had to create a lot of new templates.  Hmm… I have sites with thousands of posts on them, which means that I had to import all those posts into a new platform.  Importing thousands of posts usually doesn’t go as smoothly as it should.

Hmm… I don’t think I want to change platforms.  I also don’t think that Wordpress is the right platform any longer.  Updating plugins and platform software doesn’t bring in any money.  However, if you don’t do the updates, your site will end up getting owned by somebody else who hacks in.  Either way, you haven’t written content that keeps your readers coming back.

For me, the call comes down to what direction to go in order to make the most money.  Problem is… right now I can’t figure out which direction will achieve that goal.

What do you think?