These small businesses that earn small amounts of money are what I would call “niche businesses” because they are not of appeal to the general public, but there is a small group of people, or a “niche,” who are willing to pay me for that service.  Usually, when you are involved in such a niche market, people will pay you more than if your business is of mass appeal.  For example, if you have  business that millions of people want to shop at, you will have plenty of competition, because the market is large.  In this case, you will need to keep your prices low to compete with all the other players in the business.  However, if you have a business that is very “nichey” there will either be no competition at all, or very limited competition.  In that case, you can charge more for your time or product, because there is not much competition at all.  As an example, let’s say that you were the manufacturer of Cola product.  Cola is very popular with several “big players” making it.  If you wanted to come out with a new Cola, well, you need to make your price competitive, even lower so that you can attract a slice of the market.  However, if you produce an off the wall, unusual flavor of soda, even though fewer people will like it, you probably would not have any competition for that particular flavor, and thus could charge a higher price for it.  After all, for those who really like your unusual flavor, even if the price is a bit more, they can’t get it anywhere else, and will pay your price if they really want it.

Rolling out your Niche Business

The other day, I was talking to my Mom on the phone.  I mentioned that I had been hired by somebody to do a certain job for them.  My Mom said, “gee, I didn’t know you were in that business,” to which I replied “Oh yeah, you didn’t know?  I’ve been doing that for years,” I told her.  It surprised me that she didn’t know, but as I thought about it, I guess I never told her!  That is sort of the way I look at these businesses of mine, none of them are such a big deal, because they are small.  But, even though they are small, they earn me a nice living.

So, how do you go about figuring out what kinds of businesses to get into?  A lot of people tell me that they just don’t know what kind of business to set up.  They are looking for a business that will make a lot of money, and they can’t find it.  Well, the beauty, at least in my eyes, of niche businesses, is that you don’t need to look for something that will make big money, just look for something small that you will enjoy doing, and that a few people might want to pay you to do, then promote the service.  If it turns out that a lot of people want to hire you to do that particular thing, well, that’s a good thing!  If only a few want it done, well, that’s OK, you just need to find other things that a few people will want to, and you will stay busy, and keep food on the table too.

So, again, how do I find these small businesses?  How do I decide what type of small businesses I should get into?  Well, that is very easy.  I let other people tell me what to do.  You see, if I get requests from people for a certain kind of service, if it is something I would enjoy doing, I do it for them, and then I start telling others that I will do it for them too.  I have a somewhat unique situation where I live in a place where there are not too many Americans.  Because of this, I get e-mails from people back in the States, in Europe, or elsewhere who need something done here.  For example, let’s say that an American guy who lives in the States likes to come to Davao where I live, and maybe he owns a house here.  Perhaps he needs something done, some papers for his property or whatever.  A lot of these kinds of people will e-mail me and say “hey, would it be possible that you could go to the tax collectors office and get these papers for my house?”  Well, if I decide to do it, I will then set up a website advertising to others that this is a service I can provide for them.  After a while, I will have dozens of different websites offering different services, and maybe a half dozen people in a year will also ask me to do that for them.  Add all these up, and you will find that you are soon making some nice money.  That is how I come up with different types of businesses that people need and I can provide.  After all, if nobody needed the service, nobody would have asked me to do it in the first place.

It is similar with my wife.  She enjoys doing things like home decorating and such.  She also likes helping people.  Thus, she offers a relocation consulting service for foreigners who are going to move to the area where we live.  She will help them find a house to rent, negotiate the rental price for them, help them decorate the place, show them around town and such, and she makes nice money doing it.  She gets a fair number of jobs doing this, and her customers seem to always be very happy with the service that she provides to them.  It all started out by people asking for such help, and she decided to make a business out of it.  This is a sure fire way to anybody to find niche businesses that people will want to use.

As I said in my first paragraph of this article, there are a couple of exceptions when it comes to the “all of my businesses earn only a little bit of money” rule.  Why?  Because I started out with something that only earned a little bit of money, and it turned out that there was a bigger amount of demand for that particular service.  In fact, a couple of my businesses earn quite a bit of money, and they keep my life, and my family’s lives, comfortable.

But, if those few businesses do very well, does it mean that the other businesses that earn only a little bit of money are failures?  No, not at all!  For me, anyway, if a business earns me any money at all, no matter how small, it is a success.  Now, I suppose that if a business only earned me a few hundred dollars per year, and I was spending 20 hours a week on it, well, that would be somewhat of a failure.  However, if a business earns only $200 per year, and I spend an hour a year on it, well, that is still a success.  It’s just not enough of a success that I can live on it.  But, if I have many of those businesses that can earn me $200 for an hour worth of work, well, I can live quite nicely, don’t you think?

For me, niche business is a great way to get good paying work that will keep you busy, and may lead you to some very profitable businesses too.

It all started out with my old laptop, a Compaq laptop that was only about 18 months old, or so.  I started having problems with it.  The monitor was starting to give out on it.  If I touched the monitor, the screen would go white.  Because I make my living on the Internet, I cannot afford to go even a few days without a computer.  Because of this, my wife told me to go buy a new computer when it was my birthday last week.  So, not wanting to disobey my wife (!), I rushed out to get a new PC.

I ran into some problems buying a new PC, which I wrote about on my other blog, click the link to read about that.  As it turned out, the big local PC dealers were not helpful, and few of them had anything that I really wanted to buy.  At that time, I decided to try a small local computer store that I had not visited in years.  About 5 or 6 years ago, I bought a Shuttle PC at a little shop called “PC Shack” in Uyanguren, also known as Chinatown here in Davao.  PC Shack was a very small, very local Mom & Pop type store.  They treated me well when I went there 5 years ago, but I had not really gone there regularly over the years.  But, last week, I visited there again, and I’m glad I did.

Actually, as it turned out, I discovered that PC Shack had “bit the dust,” sort of.  They had been bought out by a company out of Manila called “Qube”.  The sign still said PC Shack, but the stuff inside all said Qube.  As it turned out, I was very glad that I went to Qube.  They had a number of PC’s that interested me.

I saw a new form factor of PC that really caught my eye quickly, it is called a “USFF” PC, which stands for Ultra Small Form Factor.  This USFF PC runs on a dual core Intel Atom processor.  The Atom is the processor that runs the new little “netbooks” and “net-top” desktops.  I liked this one because it was a dual core Atom, so more powerful, but still efficient, cool operating, etc.

My new USFF PC, sitting on my desk next to my cellular phone

In the past, I have always been a “power guy” when it came to PC’s.  I wanted the fastest, most powerful PC that could be bought, and I was willing to pay a premium price to get the best.  Now, I still want a good quality PC, but I want only the power that I need.  I am not a “power user” to be honest.  Most of what I do is just stuff on the Internet, and a few other minor things.  I do some light photo editing work with Gimp Image Manipulation program, and the most power hungry thing I do is Video editing, but I do that only rarely.  When I started thinking about getting an Atom powered PC, I was worried if it could really handle my needs or not.  In fact, I held off for a number of days trying to decide if the Atom was really right for me or not.  In the end, I talked to several friends who have similar power needs as I do, and they told me that they are able to do it on an Atom based PC, so I took the jump.

I sure am glad that I gook the plunge too, because I love my little Atom USFF PC!  It’s great.  Here are the Specs of the PC that I purchased:

• Intel Atom Dual Core 330 1.60GHz
• nVidia MCP7A-ION Chipset
• Integrated nVidia ION
• 2GB DDR2 800MHz Memory
• 320GB Mobile SATA Hard Disk Drive
• Internal Card Reader
• Wireless Lan
• HDMI 1080p FULL HD Support

Overall, all I can say about this PC is that I love it.  It’s so tiny, so efficient.  It runs very cool, the case rarely even feels very warm.  Although I can’t really verify this, it is said that it uses 90% less electricity than a “regular” PC too, which is cool.

Another thing I learned in the experience of buying this PC is that I enjoy dealing with a small Mom & Pop type operation too.  One thing that I enjoyed about that was that it gave me a chance to use my Bisaya skills.  I think that if I did not speak Bisaya, I would have had a difficult time buying this machine, because the clerks there had a bit of a tough time speaking English.  At first, I tried to speak English with them, but when I switched to Bisaya, the purchase went a lot smoother and more friendly too!  I enjoyed it.  I’ll be buying at Qube again too, you can bet on that!

How could it be?

Have you ever heard of brainstorming?  Do you know what that is?  For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, brainstorming is a process of thinking of all kinds of ideas.  The best way for a brainstorming session to be conducted is to have a group of people, maybe 6 to 10 people or so.  You agree in advance that all ideas will be considered relevant, nothing is stupid (no matter how stupid it really is!), in other words, nobody will be teased or belittled for any idea that they throw out, even if it is rather senseless.  Set a time for the brainstorming session, let’s say 10 minutes, or 20 minutes.  Set a topic.  Let’s say that you are going to have a brainstorming session trying to come up with a new product for your company to start making.  Then, everybody just throws out every idea that comes into their head.  You don’t come up with an idea then think it over, consider how good or bad it might be, you just blurt it out when it comes into your mind.  The leader of the brainstorming session writes the idea down, and then other people blurt out their ideas.  When the brainstorming session is over (at the agreed time deadline), then the group considers the merit of each idea.  The interesting thing that happens is that none of the ideas may be found to have merit, but maybe combinations of multiple ideas, or slight variations of ideas might be found to be perfect!

I remember when I was a kid, my Dad worked in the paper industry.  He was an engineer, and later moved into management in the industry, and he was quite successful.  I vividly remember my Dad had a joke that was a picture drawn on a piece of paper, it was a design for a new toilet paper recycling machine.  Actually, it was obviously a joke, because the way it was designed, you would re-use toilet paper that had already been used, with no cleaning or processing or anything.  Obviously, if this were a serious idea, it was a stupid idea, but perhaps if the right person saw it, they may have come up with a real workable idea based on the joke, who knows?

Anyway, the thing is that as we think, or come up with ideas for things we should do or try, many of the ideas we come up with are stupid, or unworkable.  There is nothing wrong with that, it is just part of the process of coming up with good ideas that will make us money or improve our lives in some way.  Perhaps our good idea will improve society, or help other people.  But, we would not be able to come up with good ideas if we did not go through a certain number of stupid or bad ideas in the process.

Perhaps the most valuable asset one could have is the ability to filter through the stupid ideas and discard them, while saving and refining the good ideas that are in the mix!

In my own life, when I come up with a new idea, I often think that it is a good idea, something valuable that will improve my life in some way.  Then I start thinking it over, and I often feel after a day or so that the idea is not workable, it turns out it was just a stupid idea.  The good thing, though, is that as I think about the idea, sometimes that thought that comes from the stupid idea spawns new good ideas that I never would have even considered if not for my pondering about the idea that was actually stupid!

So, stupid ideas are not a waste of your time.  They are a breeding ground for good ideas, and are actually a necessary step that you must go through in the thinking process.  We all get stupid ideas.  The key is in being able to recognize that it is just another stupid idea, and to discard it before you invest too much time or money in it.  And, also, being able to use that stupid idea to spawn other ideas which are actually quite good!

Do you know what I’m talking about?  What do I mean about “pulling the trigger?”

Well, what I mean is this… if you get an idea for something, do you actually do it, or do you talk about it, then promptly just blow it off?  I hear a lot of people tell me of ideas they have for some kind of new product or service, a new business that they just know will make them a fortune.  They talk about it and talk about it, but I never see anything materialize.

Pull that trigger!

A lot of people will come up with some kind of innovation, a slight variation on something that already exists.  They tell me about it, and I think it sounds great.  But, nothing ever happens.  I don’t mean that they try to introduce it and fail, rather they just drop their idea after the initial excitement.

Fairly regularly, I get e-mails from people.  They explain to me that they have an idea for something.  Usually they say:

I have an idea for this great new gizmo.  How much do you think I can sell my idea for?

Well, frankly, in most cases you can’t sell an idea.  You need to develop the idea first, maybe come up with some kind of prototype, and then you could perhaps sell it.  Ideas are just that… ideas.  They are, frankly, a dime a dozen.  Nobody buys an idea.

Think of it like this.  Just as an example, let’s say that you have invented some new kind of sauce, a condiment.  It is very tasty, delicious, and every single person who tastes it things it’s the greatest new condiment since ketchup.  So, you decide that you are going to contact Heinz and pitch the sauce to them.  Surely they will like it, and they will pay you millions for the “idea”.  Maybe they will even give you residual payments for the rest of your life.  You are on the verge of becoming a millionaire!

Wrong.

The truth is that it is highly likely that Heinz will not even talk to you.  Honestly, they don’t want to even know what your idea is.  Why?  Because they fear that you will end up suing them.  Why?  Look, a big company like Heinz, who specializes in condiments, sauces and such has a huge research and development department.  They have dozens, maybe hundreds of employees who work every day on combining different ingredients trying to come up with the next hot condiment.  Now, if you write to them and say “hey, I’ve got this new condiment” and they say to come on down and tell them about it… well, what if you lay an idea on them which the research team is already working on?  Maybe you have this idea for a sauce made from raisins and jalapeno peppers, something that you would think that nobody had ever even considered before.  But, Heinz has 4 guys who have been perfecting this sauce for the past 3 years, and they are just about to introduce it to the market.  You come in and tell them about your idea, and a month later the new Heinz sauce is on store shelves.  You will sue them claiming that they stole your idea!  The fact is, they had already been working on it for years, though.  How can they prove it?  Maybe they can, maybe they can’t… but, it’s a big expense for them, and a huge hassle.  So, most big companies don’t even want to know your idea, for fear of lawsuits.

So, you get the idea for the raisin and jalapeno sauce, what can you do?  Well, you need to do a few things.  First thing is that you need to file for a patent of your idea.  You see, when you file with the patent office, a search will be done to see if your idea really is unique.  You also need to make some of this sauce, maybe do some taste testing to get a public reaction to it.  If you get your patent, and you have some sampling data from taste trials, then you contact Heinz and say, hey, I have this new sauce, which I have patented, and here is some data showing strong public demand for the product.  Then they will likely talk to you.

So, what it all comes down to is pulling the trigger.  Instead of just thinking something up and trying to sell it, which is highly difficult to do, you need to actually take some action down the road toward product (or idea) development.  Then you have something that you can sell, if the demand is there.  But, trying to just sell an idea is rarely doable.

As I said earlier in this article, I am a trigger puller.  When I think of something that I feel has value, I usually take action.  Note, I said usually, not always.  Why usually?  Well, here is my process that I follow:

1. A new idea strikes me for a product or a service.
2. I get very excited about this new idea.
3. I will spend a few days or a few weeks thinking about the idea, picking it apart, looking for flaws or downsides.
4. If the idea has merit after deep consideration, I pull the trigger and take action.

You see, probably half of the ideas that I get don’t withstand that scrutiny that I describe in #3.  Usually, when I get an idea and get very excited about it, by the next day, I say to myself that it was a stupid idea, and that I should just move on.  A little bit of time wasted, but no big loss.

So, get into the habit of pulling that trigger if you really believe in your idea.  Don’t just talk, do it.  You can never succeed if you don’t try!

One of the big pieces of news here, in my opinion, is that I have a new cat!  I should say that “we” (as a family) have a new cat, but I consider this one to be “my cat” and she stays in my office and in our bedroom, so she hangs out with me all day, so that’s it… she’s mine!  Here name is “Sputnik” or just “Sput” for short.  She’s pretty ugly.  In fact, she is so ugly that it’s cute!  If you know what I mean.  Anyway, Sputnik is a kitten, not very old at all, and she is quite playful.  Unfortunately, our other two cats hate Sputnik, and they even try to kill her!  We have to be very careful about making sure they don’t get together, unless closely supervised, because there will certainly be trouble!  That’s one of the reasons why the area where we keep Sputnik is limited to my office and the bedroom, to keep her away from her two enemies!

My new cat, Sputnik, playing in a cardboard box

Feyma with some Christmas Gifts we will give out

So, as I said previously, it’s been the holidays lately.  But, wait!  A few weeks ago I wrote about A New Holiday, right?  So, did I follow through and do what I had been thinking about?  No, I didn’t.  Feyma and I considered it, but in the spirit of the season, we decided to follow the normal holiday schedule.  I do think it is an excellent idea, though, but breaking traditions is not an easy thing to do, is it?  No indeed.  So, we followed the regular holiday schedule just like most everybody else did, and we had a very nice holiday.  It was nice having the kids home for a couple of weeks to enjoy the holidays as a family.  But, this week they are back to school, which is also nice!  I like having the kids around, but it is more peaceful here if they have school, which means that it is a more conducive atmosphere to getting some work done!  ha ha… I must confess that I like that too.

Another thing that I wrote about recently was the new coffee that I ordered recently, two different varieties, both originiting from the Nyeri region of Kenya.  Well, I am happy to report that both coffees are really excellent.  I have been enjoying them emensely.  I just finished having a cup of the Nyeri Tambaya coffee.  It’s really good, with a tangerine taste to it.  But, the one that kind of surprised me was the Ndiani Kyagundo decaf.  It was my first time to try a decaf, and I was a bit hesitant to try it, given the advice of a friend.  But, to my surprise, I like it even more than the Tambaya!  The decaf has a very strong flavor of strawberries, which I love!  I sent a sample of this to my friend who advised against it.  He didn’t even want any, but I forced him to try it.  And, he loves it too!  So, the decaf is really a nice bean, and I think I’ll be ordering more, as I only have about 3 1/2 pounds of it left. After roasting that, it will easily go down to about 2 3/4 pounds (it gets lighter when you roast the moisture out of it), so I will be needing more of this wonderful bean!

What else is going on?  Well, I just got back from a nice morning walk.  It’s been very hot here in Davao recently, but this morning was pleasantly cool.  Not cold, but not hot either, just cool.  So, I enjoyed a nice walk around the neighborhood.  It’s a nice bit of exercise, and also gives you a chance to see what’s happening in the neighborhood.  There is a lot of construction going on around here.  Plenty of new houses going up around the neighborhood.  That’s a good sign, but also bad.  Good because it shows that more people are appreciating this area, and it makes the neighborhood look nicer to have new homes being built.  Bad because it will increase the amount of traffic in the neighborhood, which is already bad!  Oh well… not much I can do about it anyway, so I might as well look at the good side!

I hope that all of you who are reading this had a nice holiday season, no matter which holidays you celebrate around this time of year!

Well, you see, Google checks your IP address to find out where in the world you are, and they give you the Google site that is appropriate for your location.  Since I am living in the Philippines, when I first go to Google, it takes me to Google Pilipinas, the Philippine Google site.  And, on top of that, the results of my search are in Tagalog!  Since I don’t speak Tagalog, this can be a bit of a problem!

Also, the search results are skewed to the country that the site is located in.  So, if I search for something, it gives me Philippine results first.  Well, that’s not really what I want.  I prefer the US results, or even better, I want the best results no matter where in the world they are located.

Click on the link in the red circle to get Google's main site

Thankfully, though, there is an easy fix for this, and it is something you only have to do one time and forget about it (unless you get a new computer, or somehow start out with a fresh browser or something).

In the image above, you see Google Philippines home page.  I have circled in red where it says “Google.com in English.”  If you click on that link you will go to Google’s main home page (US based), and from that point on, every time you go to Google, the US page will come up for you, unless you change it.

So, it’s very simple as you can see.

Happy Googling!

Within 15 minutes after getting home with my box of beans, I was already at the stove and roasting them too!  I was so excited, because Kenya is my favorite origin for coffee.  The coffees from there tend to have wonderful fruit flavors as part of the flavor profile of the beans, if you roast them right.  Earlier this year, I had some coffee beans from the Eegads Estate in Kenya, and they had a wonderful pink grapefruit flavor to them, which I dearly loved.  Next, I got some Getthumbwini beans from Kenya, which were rated very highly, these had a lemony flavor to them.  They were great too, although I liked the Eegads more.

These Green Coffee Beans are Decaf beans, and they really are quite brown!

Yesterday, I received two different beans that originated in Kenya.  One was “AA Nyeri Tambaya” and the other bean was “Nyeri Ndiani -Kiagundo WP Decaf.”  This is my first time to purchase any decaffeinated green coffee beans, I did it more as an experiment.  My wife is bothered by too much caffeine, so I decided to give these a try.

These beans scored very high when cupped by the experts!  The Tambaya scored 93 when cupped, which is the best score that I think I’ve ever had for any of the coffees that I’ve purchased. The Kiagundo Decaf scored an amazing 90.2, which is very high for a decaf!

When it comes to flavor, here is what the experts say about the Tambaya beans, this is what you should expect, if the beans are properly roasted:

An elegant cup with pink grapefruit, jasmine, light brown sugar sweetness, Mandarin orange, and warming spices.  Apricot and Earl Grey tea-like finish.

And, for the decaf, let’s have a look at the flavor profile of the Nyiuri Ndiani-Kiagundo WP Decaf beans:

Vivid brightness, brilliant fruited aromatics and flavors, red apple, plum, strawberry, pineapple, caramel, molasses sweetness, cinnamon, clove spice.

So far, I have done some minor sampling of these beans, and they are both very good.  I just roasted them both yesterday, so I am not drinking very much of it yet, giving it more time to rest more and develop a fuller flavor profile.  But, the initial tastes are very promising!  I can certainly note the mandarin orange in the tambaya beans, a nice citrusy flavor, almost juicy.  The light brown sugar flavors are also quite pronounced.  This is really nice.  The decaf is also nice, although if I drink them side by side, the tambaya is much better at this point.

So, I am visiting Nyeri, Kenya, but is through my coffee cup!  That’s a little cheaper than actually going there too!

Bottoms up!

I certainly feel that the complaint is valid.  After all, the Christmas holiday is really supposed to be a religious thing.  Where along the line the whole gift giving thing came into play, I am not certain.  What I do know, though, is that the gift giving part is what it is all about for many people.   Heck, even many people who are not Christian celebrate Christmas by giving gifts and such.  If you think about it, it does become pretty obvious that the religious aspect of the holiday has kind of taken a back seat to the other parts of the holiday.

Yes, it’s very commercialized.  During this time of year the malls are all filled up with people buying gifts for their family and friends.  You see one advertisement after another of what you need to buy for the holiday.  It gets a little over bearing, even if you are not a religious person.  But, what can we do?  How can we take it back to what it is supposed to be about?

Well, I have a way that we can do it.  Actually, I didn’t think of the idea, I read about it online.  Really, I have thought of this over the years, but never really had the guts to mention it to my family before!  I think it could potentially cause a riot, especially among the kids.

You can read about the idea in John Dvorak’s column, “In Defense of the Grinch” in PC Magazine.  Dvorak says that he wants to celebrate Christmas in January!  Think about it, all Christmas wrapping paper is like 90% off, the cool gifts that we wish we could afford are suddenly 40-50% off after Christmas is over (the retailers want to move out the stock that didn’t sell for Christmas, after all).  So, you just don’t buy anything until after December 25, and get huge savings.  Celebrate in January sometime.

I kind of thought of an idea that goes beyond what Dvorak is talking about, though.  If you are a Christian, celebrate Christmas on December 25 as normal, but without the gift giving, without the non-religious aspects that have become so popular.  Save that for your January celebration.  Don’t call the January celebration “Christmas” instead call it “Gift Day” or some other appropriate name.

Of course, this won’t work if everybody shifts as I suggest.  If that happened, all of the retailers would not be clearing out the stuff, they would wait until the day after the “gift day” celebration.  But, that will never happen anyway.  More than 99% of people will always celebrate on December 25.  So, if you personally hold your more religious celebration on December 25, and then have a festive gift day in January, you get to enjoy two holidays, and still save half of your money!  Or, you could spend the same amount of money, and just have a lot nicer gifts than normal!

I personally would love to do this, but I don’t think it would sit well with my family.  It’s hard to say for sure.  Maybe I’ll make a mention to my wife and see how she reacts.  Or maybe I’ll wait and see if she reads this article first!  Ha ha… that would be the easy way to go about it.

What do you think?

This might sound too good to be true, but believe me, it is absolutely true, and I am going to show you how you can do it.  One of the first steps is that you really need to stop treating your online activities as a hobby, and treat it as a business.  When you start devoting the time to your online activities like you would do it were a business, that is when you are going to start gaining popularity, and when you gain popularity, that is when you can leverage that popularity to make more money.

How?  It’s not really that hard, to be honest.

My Live in the Philippines Web Magazine

My most popular website is a site called “Live in the Philippines, the Web Magazine for Expats in the Philippines, and those who want to join them.”  The nickname that I call that site is “LiP,” which you will see references to later in this article.  I started this website as a blog back in 2006.  I was not too serious about it at first, only just posted articles about once per month or so.  After 6 months or so, I decided to make it the place where I spent a lot of my online efforts.  After just a few months, the site started building a following, and I asked my wife to join me as a second author on the site.  I felt that sharing her opinion would give a nice counter-balance to what I was saying.  While it was a little hard to get my wife, Feyma, to write regularly, with some constant pushing, I got some regular articles out of her.  A month or so later, I saw that this was working pretty nicely, and I invited a few others to join as authors.  The site began expanding in orders of magnitude, and soon I had a whole stable of writers.

A month or so ago, a friend of mine wrote me an e-mail and asked a question about that site.  Here is what he said:

BTW, not that I’m starting a multi-writers blog, but was there a way to transfer the scheme with ad blocks for individual authors on their created pages, or have you changed that scheme.

Since you don’t know the context of our earlier conversation, let me explain what he was asking.  He wanted to know how I shared the money that the site earned with other writers.

The rest of this article will consist of the response that I sent to my friend, slightly edited to make more sense for readers who were not in on the earlier conversation.

OK… your question about multi-author blogs and revenue sharing…

This is very complicated, and my answer is only my experience.  There are lots of ways to go about this.  None are perfect, for sure, some are better than others.

Let’s look at a few ways to do it:

1.  If you have one blog with multi-authors, it is not easy to assign ad blocks by author.  I know of no way to do it.  There probably are ways, I just don’t know of any.

2.  There are several plugins out there (sorry, I don’t know the names, as I don’t use any, but I do know they exist).  These plugins will assign AdSense earnings to each author depending on what factors you consider.  I believe you can set up something like “if John gets 10% of the pageviews, give him 10% of the ad impressions” or something.  No, they will not be impressions only on his articles, but rather 10% of the ad views on the site.  This may or may not be fair, depending on how you look at it.

3.  You could just split up the earnings based on the number of writers.  You could use one adsense account and then, let’s say you have 10 writers… you keep 20% of the ad earnings for yourself (as the publisher) and give everybody else 8% each.  This would all be manual.

In short, it’s up to you to decide how you do it, and how much everybody gets.

In the beginning of making LiP a multi-author site, I used WP-MU (WordPress Multi-User) to set up basically a different blog for each author.  For those who had AdSense accounts, I put their own AdSense on their own site.  For the AdSense rules of 3 ads per page… they got 2 of the ads, and I got one, for letting them participate.

Later, I decided not to give the writers any AdSense money at all.  I find that is the best solution, personally.

Here is the thing…  most of the good writers are not doing it for the money.  They do it for a couple other reasons:

1. Make themselves more well known, which in turn allows them to make more money on their own sites.
2. A lot of the guys do it for the love of the writing only.

What I do, though, is that every person who writes gets to put his blog on the Blogroll, and also, if he has a business that lends itself to the site, he gets an ad on the site for his business.
If you ever decide to set up any kind of multi-author blog, let me tell you… it is a lot of work!  It’s really nothing like having a blog of your own.  You are less of a writer and more of a publisher.  Editing is a huge job.  Chasing people down to find out why they are not writing articles on schedule is a huge job.  I enjoy it a lot, but there are also some hassles.  Also, I believe that having a multi-author blog is a way to build a site that you (not YOU… anybody) could never build up by himself, or would be very difficult to do.  I don’t think that LiP could ever achieve the level that it has achieved if it were just me, or me and Feyma.  It’s rewarding, but it’s work too!

So, as you can see, because of the fact that I had gained a large audience from this site (and others that helped build my profile), a lot of people wanted to write on my site.  They were even willing to do it for free to help them gain some name recognition with my audience.  How they used that recognition then determined if some of my online following would also adopt them and pull people to their sites.

The thing is, if they wrote good articles on my site, readers would most certainly go and check out their sites.  On their site, they can certainly make money from my readers who followed them there.

So, while I pay the writer nothing, I have leveraged my popularity to get them to join me and write for me, and they can still earn money themselves by drawing readers to their site, and increasing the popularity of their own site.

So, as you can see, you can indeed leverage your own popularity to attract others to write content on your website!

One of your first steps is going to be to develop a following online.  Whether you have a website, a blog, an e-commerce store or a combination of all of these, you won’t really achieve huge success until, or unless you develop a crowd of people who follow you online.  Even if you manage to become very popular online, you still need to turn that level of online success into something larger, and find a way to get those followers to part with some money, or do things to help you achieve financial success.

You can leverage your popularity for more financial success online!

Financial success can be achieved in a number of ways.

1. Your followers can support the people who advertise on your site by purchasing items from those advertisers.  As your followers support those who choose to advertise with you, and let the advertiser know that he made the purchase because of that ad on your site.  By doing this, your reader will help you in attracting other companies to advertise on your site.  The more advertisers you can achieve on your site, the more financially successful you will be on the net.
2. Your followers can support you by buying products from you.  In some cases, maybe you have an online store that sells products.  Maybe you have some services that you offer online.  Maybe you have eBooks or some other way of selling your knowledge to people, like consulting.
3. Your followers can help spread the word about you, telling family and friends that they might also enjoy reading your articles, or purchasing from your websites.

All of these kinds of actions can help you achieve more success online.

Once you have a website that is established and has a lot of followers, you can actually leverage that success to become even more successful.  How?  Turn your site into a multi-author site.  Instead of just you writing on the site, others can also write articles on your site.

But, Bob, I sure don’t have the money or inclination to pay people to write on my site.

That is the beauty of it, my friend.  You can actually leverage the fact that you are popular to get others to write on your site for free!

How can you do that?  Well, there are a few ways to get it done.  I will cover that in my next article, so keep checking back to read more!

But, believe me, as you gain popularity on the net, you can leverage that popularity to decrease your personal workload and increase your profits!  It can be done, and I’ll show you how.