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How to Have a Perfect Life

Life

A few years ago, my wife and I were discussing life improvement, the options in front of us, and our future goals. She said she felt trapped by the scope of our goals and didn’t know where to start. That led to a discussion on

goal
goal (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

achieving our goals, which led to this.

Examine your life. Take stock of every aspect of your life. What pleases you? What upsets you? What do you do that adds no value to your life?  Or worse, removes value?  What do you do that adds the most value? What would you like to change? Eliminate? Improve? Count the small things. Nothing is insignificant. Write it all down and be specific.

Analyze your list. Are there any obvious patterns? Is there a single thread that is making you miserable or affecting multiple other items? Would eliminating 1 factor improve 90% of the rest? Is there a bad job or a toxic relationship ruining your happiness? Be honest and be critical.

What are your dreams? Where would you like to be in six months? A year? 5? 10? How would you like to retire? When? Write it all down. This is now your life plan.

Set goals. Set concrete, definable goals. Set goals that have an obvious success point. When you reach your goal, you want to be able to point it out. “Lose weight” is not a goal. “Lose 50 pounds in the next year” is a measurable, definable, concrete goal. Set incremental goals to reach your larger goals and, more importantly, your dreams.

Here’s an example:

Dream: Retire at 50.

  • Incremental Goal: Get a 10% raise within 6 months
  • Incremental Goal: Eliminate debt within 3 years
  • Incremental Goal: Max out 401k contribution
  • Incremental goal: Save 150,000 within 10 years
  • Incremental Goal: Save 45k each year after that.
  • Retire

When you are setting up your goal plan, make sure to include the analyzed items mentioned earlier. These are the things that will make today happier for you.

Now, you have examined your life. You have analyzed the results. You’ve gathered your dreams and compiled a goal plan based on your hopes, dreams, goals and desires. What’s next?

We’re going to take a page from David Allen. It’s time to Get Things Done. What do you have to do next to reach your goals? What is the next step? Don’t let yourself be overwhelmed by the scope of the entire list. Select one single item from your plan and look for the one single next step to make on the path to that goal.

Going back to the retirement goal plan, the next step towards a 10% raise could be researching salaries for your job description in your area to give you ammunition in the meeting with your boss. It could be updating your resume to hunt for a better paying job, or even just studying up on some resume tips.

If you want to run a marathon next year, the next step is to start walking every day to train your body.

If you want to improve communication with your spouse, the next step is probably to let her know.

If you want to eliminate debt, the next step may be setting up a budget or canceling unnecessary services like cable.

Every goal has a path leading to it. If that’s not true, you haven’t defined a concrete measurable goal.

Examine your life. Analyze your situation. Know WHAT you want. Know what you want to change. Set goals to get there, one step at a time. Take a single step towards your goals.

Then take another.

What are you doing to reach your goals and improve your life?

Money Problems: 30 Days to Perfect Finances

Welcome to the series, Money Problems: 30 Days to Perfect Finances.   The series consists of 30 things you can do, each in one setting, to perfect your finances.  It’s not a system to magically make your debt disappear.  Instead, it is a path to understanding where you are, where you want to be, and–most importantly–how to bridge the gap.

Day 1: Setting Goals

To start with,  we look at 3 questions:

  1. What is your financial goal?
  2. Why?
  3. How can you get there?

Day 2: What’s Going Out?

On day 2, you’re going to find out what you are spending.  For most people, this will be a bit of a surprise.

Day 3: What’s Coming In?

For day 3, you’re going to examine exactly how much money you bring in each month and think about how you can make more.

Day 4: Making A Budget

On day 4, you’ll build a basic budget.   This doesn’t have to be intimidating.

Day 5:  Boosting Your Income

This is the day we really dig into ways to make more money, whether that means getting a raise or finding work on the side.  Nothing beats more income for balancing your budget and getting out of debt.

Day 6: Reducing Expenses

Second only to more income, reducing expenses is the best way to save money.

Day 7: Paying Off Debt

If you’ve got debt, you are in interest-slavery.  Make that go away!

Day 8: Insurance

On day 8, you’re going to look at the insurance you have and the insurance you need.

Day 9: Health Insurance

On day 9, you’ll spend some time learning about your health insurance options and how to examine what you’ve already got.

Day 10: Debt Insurance

Debt insurance is insurance you pay for that will pay your lender in the event of your death, dismemberment, disfigurement, disembowelment, or unemployment.

The rest is yet to come.  Check back often!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Making Extra Money Part 3: Product Selection

Finance

When you’re setting up a niche site, you need to monetize it.  You need to have a way to make money, or it’s a waste of time.

There are two main ways to do that:  AdSense or product promotion.   To set up an AdSense site, you write a bunch of articles, post them on a website with some Google ads, and wait for the money to roll in.

I don’t do that.

I don’t own a single AdSense site and have never set one up.  This article is not about setting up an Adsense site.

My niches site are all product-promotion sites.  I pick a product–generally an e-book or video course–and set up a site dedicated to it.

Naturally, picking a good product is an important part of the equation.

The most important part of product selection is that the product has an affiliate program. Without that, there’s no money to be made.     There are a lot of places to find affiliate programs.     Here are a few:

  • Amazon.   If you don’t live in one of the states that Amazon has dropped in retaliation for passing laws that attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ruling on collecting sales tax, you can sign up as an associate and collect a commission on every referral you send that turns into a purchase.   That means you have a lot of product to choose from.   Unfortunately, your commission is small, so you need to promote fairly expensive products to get a decent return.   On the other hand, people trust Amazon, so that’s one less hurdle to making a sale.
  • Commission Junction.   These are the people managing affiliate programs for a large number of credit cards and banks.  If you’ve opened an account with INGDirect through one of my links, I got a commission for the referral. (Thank you!)   They have a lot of other products, too.
  • e-Junkie.  This one is a popular distribution system for bloggers.   It’s likely that, if you’ve bought an ebook from a blogger, e-Junkie handled the fulfillment process.   A lot of the products available there have an affiliate program, but that is up to the owner of the product.
  • ClickBank.  My favorite.   This is one of the largest affiliate networks specializing in electronic products, whether that’s membership sites, ebooks, or video courses.   Commissions are good, often 50-75%.   They also offer a 60 day guarantee of every product sold through their site, which helps soothe the wary customer.  This is the site I’ll be using for this series.

The first thing you need to do is sign up for whichever program you intend to use.

If you’re not going with Clickbank, feel free to skip ahead to the section on keyword research.

Once you are signed up and logged in, click on the “Marketplace” link at the top of the screen.

Clickbank

From here, it’s just a matter of finding a good product to sell.   Here are the niches we’re going to be looking for:

  • Back pain
  • Bankruptcy
  • Conflict resolution at work
  • Detox diets
  • Fat kids
  • Foreclosure avoidance
  • Job hunting
  • Weddings
  • Writing sales copy

I’m going to look for one or two good products in each niche.  When that’s done we’ll narrow it down by consumer demand.

For now, go to advanced search.

CBSearch

Enter your keyword, pick the category and set the advanced search stats.     Gravity is the number of affiliates who have made sales in the last month.  I don’t like super-high numbers, but I also want to make sure that the item is sellable.  Over 10 and under 50 or so seems to be a good balance.

The average sale just ensures that I’ll make a decent amount of money when someone buys the product.   I usually aim for $25 or more in commissions per sale.  Also, further down, check the affiliate tools box.    That means the seller will have some resources for you to use.

This combination will give us 36 products to check out for back pain, unfortunately, none of the results are for back pain products.    After unchecking the affiliate tools and setting the gravity to greater than 1,  I’ve got 211 results.    Sorting by keyword relevance, I see three products, two of which look like something I’d be interested in promoting.   One has a 45% commission, the other is 55%.  The X-Pain Method has an initial commission of $34 and claims a 5% refund rate.   Back Pain, Sciatica, and Bulging Disc Relief pays $16, which will make it a potentially easier sale.  I’ll add both to the list for further research.

I’m not going to detail the search for the rest of the niches.  That would be repetitive.  You can see my selections here:

Now we’re going to go through a few steps for each of these products.

The Sales Page

We need to make sure the sales page doesn’t suck.    If the site doesn’t work, is hard to read or navigate, has a hard-to-find order button, or just doesn’t look professional, it’s getting cut.

  • Raw Foods is eliminated.  The sales video is horrible and the order link is at the bottom of several screens worth of nothing.  It’s a crap site.
  • The 7 day foreclosure-avoidance product is out.  Site’s down today.  I want reliability.
  • Management Training By The Book is out.  I don’t like typos on the sales page, especially in the page title.

The Email List

If it has an email subscription form, we’ll need to subscribe, then double-check to make sure our affiliate information isn’t getting dropped in the emails.   If it is, the seller is effectively stealing commissions.  In the interest of time and laziness, I’m going to eliminate anyone pushing for an email subscription.  It’s harder–and time-consuming–to monitor that.  On of my niche site had a seller completely drop their product.  Instead, they pushed for email subscriptions so they could promote other products as an affiliate.  Absolutely unethical.

  • Wedding speeches is eliminated for  throwing a mandatory email entry into the order process.  There’s no guarantee they are up to anything shady, but I’m taking the simple route.

Checkout and Credit

Finally, we’re going to visit the checkout page.  You need to do this from every links in the newsletter and the links on the sales page, just to make sure you’ll get your money.

The way to tell who’s being credited is to look at the bottom of the order page, under the payment information.   It should say [affiliate = xxx] where xxxis your ClickBank ID.   Anything else, and the product gets cut from the list.

When you are checking these, don’t click on every possible link at once.  That confuses the cookies. Do one at a time.  I tried to do it in one batch for this post and lost half of the cookies.  If it weren’t for the fact that I already own one of the products and bought it through my own link and got credited, I would have been talking undeserved trash about thieving companies.

Other Factors

Sometimes, when you’re examining a product, it just doesn’t feel right.  When that happens, drop it.  There are millions of other products you can promote.   In this case, I’m dropping the anger management program because, in my experience, angry people don’t think they are the problem.  Here’s a life tip:  If everyone else is a jerk, the problem probably isn’t everyone else.

  • Another important factor is the sales page itself.  If it doesn’t make you want to buy the product, why would anyone else?
  • Amazing Cover Letters is eliminated because it’s too easy to overlook the buy link.  If I have to hunt for it, it’s losing customers.
  • Amazing Wedding Planning is getting eliminated because I don’t like the sales page.  The buy link is easy to overlook, and it doesn’t compel me to buy.

Now we’re down to 10 products in 6 niches.    At this point, we’re comfortable with the sales pages and we know that they are crediting commissions.   As it stands right now, all of the products are worth promoting.

We’ll make the final determination after doing some heavy keyword research in the next installment.   That’s where we’ll find out how hard it is to compete.

Any questions?

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2011 Goals

Life

It’s that time of the year when people make public promises to themselves that last almost as long as the hangover most of them are going to earn tonight, otherwise known as New Year’s Resolutions.

Not a fan.

I am, however a fan of planning out some concrete goals and doing my best to meet them.     I do this through a series of 30 day projects.  I set a goal that can be reached in 30 days, and push for it.   I tend to make my goals fairly aggressive, and I tend to meet them.

Here were my goals and results for 2010:

  • January:   Wake up at 5am AND read to my kids every night before bed. These were easy goals to meet.    A year later, I am still getting up much earlier than I ever have, even if it’s not 5AM.   I write better late at night than I do early in the morning, anyway.    I’m not still reading to my kids every night, but we are making progress on teaching my four-year-old to read.
  • February:  Do 100 push-ups at one time by the end of the month. I accomplished this in 22 days.    I also had a secret project that involved doing something sweet for my wife every day.  By the end of the month, she was convinced I had done something horrible that I was trying to make up for.
  • March:  Do 100 sit-ups at one time by the end of the month. It took me a week, but I found out how bad sit-ups are for your back.   Pure failure.
  • April:  Spring Cleaning.  I will declutter every room in my house this month. We missed one room and one closet, but made a lot of charities happy.
  • May:  Have a sit-down dinner with my family, at the dining room table at least 3 times per week. We managed this one and enjoyed it, but we haven’t managed to keep it up.   I’ll have to try this again.
  • June:  No computer use, while anyone else in the family is awake, except for household necessities, such as bills. This one worked well and improved the quality of our interaction.  I’m not quite this strict about it, but my computer use has gone down dramatically while my family is awake.
  • July:  Write fiction every day. I don’t think I wrote more than a few pages of fiction, but I did write every day.
  • August:  Buy nothing new this month. We came very close to doing this one perfectly.  It wasn’t easy.
  • September:  Attempt to learn a new language. Total bomb.  I never even got started.
  • October:   No yelling at the kids. Have you ever thought about trying this with a a two-year-old and a four-year-old?  We never got started.
  • November:  No complaining.  Not at home, not at work. I didn’t make this an actual month, but I’ve been trying to complain much less.  I think it’s been working.
  • December:  I will have done 14 projects this year.  December is a month off. As planned, I took December off.

So I missed 4 months of projects.   This year, I’m going to modify my overall plan and only do 6 projects, every other month.   That will give me a month off to either relax or incorporate the goal into my ongoing habits without any stress.

Here are my goals:

  • January: I’m going to do Tim Ferriss’s Slow-Carb diet.  Yes, it’s a fad diet, but it beats the constant stream of garbage I eat now.   The basic plan is to avoid anything white; no bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, or sugar.   That’s accompanied by a targeted supplement regimen and a timed exercise plan to manipulate my metabolism.    I’m not adding any aerobic exercise to my day, because I want this to be as controlled an experiment as possible.   If it’s working at the end of the month, I will keep it going.    It’s time to not be fat anymore.
  • March: In February, I managed to get myself able to do 100 pushups in a single set.   In March, I hurt my back trying to do the same with sit-ups and that killed my workout habit.   This March, I’m going to do the 100 pushups challenge again, but this time, I’m going for perfect pushups.   Last year, they got sloppy after about 80.  This year, that won’t be good enough.
  • May: I’m going to do at least 30 days of the Couch to 5k running program.  It’s a 9 week program.   As a 30 day project, it’s designed to establish the habit.  When I tried picking up running last year, my knees were causing problems.  Hopefully, my January project will mitigate that this year.
  • July: I’m going to pick up a new language.  This is the failed plan from September 2010.   I’ve narrowed it down to either Spanish, Swedish, or Italian.  One is useful, one is a part of my heritage, and one is for fun.   At the moment, I’m undecided.
  • September: Undecided.  I am leaning towards a “nice” month.  30 days of doing something nice, for someone, somewhere.   If I go this route, I’ve got 9 months to plan, because that’s a lot of things to do.
  • November: Absolutely undecided.    Any suggestions?

That’s my plan for the new year.   Six specific goals, each lasting 30 days.    I could definitely use some help for September and November.   Please give me some suggestions in the comments.

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Money Problems: Day 10 – Debt Insurance

Finance

Mortgage debt
Image via Wikipedia

Today, I am continuing the  series, Money Problems: 30 Days to Perfect Finances.   The series will consist of 30 things you can do in one setting to perfect your finances.  It’s not a system to magically make your debt disappear.  Instead, it is a path to understanding where you are, where you want to be, and–most importantly–how to bridge the gap.

I’m not running the series in 30 consecutive days.  That’s not my schedule.  Also, I think that talking about the same thing for 30 days straight will bore both of us.   Instead, it will run roughly once a week.  To make sure you don’t miss a post, please take a moment to subscribe, either by email or rss.

On this, Day 10, we’re going to talk about debt insurance.

Debt insurance is insurance you pay for that will pay your lender in the event of your death, dismemberment, disfigurement, disembowelment, or unemployment.  Exactly what is covered varies by insurer, type of debt, and what you are willing to pay for.

Private Mortgage Insurance(PMI) is a common form of debt insurance.   Generally, if you take out a mortgage with a down payment under 20%, you’ll be expected to pay for PMI.    According to the Homeowners Protection Act of 1998, you have the right to request your PMI be cancelled after reducing your loan amount to 78% of the appraised value of the property.  That ensures that the lender will be able to recoup their money by seizing the mortgaged property if you should happen to fall under a bus or get hit by a meteorite.

Another common form of debt insurance is for your credit cards.  Card companies love it when you buy their insurance.   If you buy their life insurance, your card is paid off when you die.   Disability insurance pays it if your get hurt.  Unemployment insurance…you get the idea.

Here’s the deal:  Get life insurance and disability insurance separately.  It’s cheaper than getting it through your credit card company and let’s you get enough to actually live on if something tragic happens.   Unless, of course, you die.  Then it will leave enough for your heirs to live on.

As far as unemployment insurance, build up your emergency fund instead.  That’s money that gives you options.   Credit card insurance is money flushed down the toilet.  Many of these policies cost 1% of your balance.   If you’ve got a $5,000 balance, that will mean you are paying $50 per month.  By comparison, if you’ve got a 9.9% interest rate, you’ll be paying about $40 per month in interest.

Debt insurance is a bad idea, if you can possibly avoid it.  A combination of life insurance, disability insurance, and an emergency fund provide better protection with more flexibility.

Your task for today is to review your credit card statements and mortgage agreement and see if you are paying debt insurance on any of it.  If you are, cancel and set up the proper insurance policies to protect yourself and your family.

FINCON13 After Action Report

Business, Life

I spent most of last week at the Financial Blogger Conference, or FINCON.

First, since this is a personal finance blog, here is what it cost:

Hotel: $695.75 – I paid $119 per night, plus taxes and fees.  The travel rewards on my credit card will be making this go away.

Airfare: $211.80 – I bought early and live next to a Delta hub airport.  This will also be getting erased by my credit card rewards.

Ticket: $175.84 – I got a $25 discount for being a repeat attendee and I paid an extra $99 for the Bootcamp extension, which was 2 extra days that–alone–made the whole trip worthwhile.

Food: $203.53 – This includes a $90 splurge meal at Ruth’s Chris, which I was looking forward to for months before the conference.

Other – $113 – I brought $183 in cash with me.  This was used for some meals not included above, cab fare, and tips for bartenders, housekeeping, and the concierge.  I always tip a bartender, even if it’s an open bar.  It guarantees fast service and full-strength drinks all night.

Total cost: $1399.92

Total after credit card reimbursement: $492.37

Now for the important part: Was it worth it?

Yes.

The Bootcamp was a fantastic time to meet–and actually get to know–other bloggers.  There were only 50 of us, instead of 500 at the main event, so we were able to break into small groups and brainstorm useful projects and activities.  I learned more about podcasting than I ever had before and I got a chance to share some of what I know about SEO and managing virtual assistants.  In the larger sessions, questions are rushed and people are shy.

I got to beat up on my comfort zones.  

I presented some awards with Crystal at the Plutus Awards ceremony, which means cracking jokes about Canadians in front of 500 people who don’t know me.  I regularly stand and teach 30-50 people, but that’s always a warm crowd on a topic I know extremely well.  This was new for me.

I sang anatomically explicit songs to strangers during the Bootcamp karaoke night.  Selections were from Monty Python, DaVinci’s Notebook, and Denis Leary.

I was on a panel, by surprise.  I was asked to be available if I were needed for questions, then got dragged to the front of the room for the entire session.  I would do that again.

That’s 3 things that were all well outside of my comfort zone, but I’m happy I did them.  I don’t believe in not doing something simply because I’m afraid to do it.

Random gatherings are fun.

From people stopping by our staked-out territory in the lobby, to a surprise game of Cards Against Humanity in the lobby bar with Joe and Len to having a discussion about the meaning of “No” when you’ve got a pre-determined safeword, it was a good week.

The last 5 days were easily the most extroverted days I’ve ever had.  Since I didn’t force myself into any large groups for long periods of time, I never felt drained like I often do in similar situations.   It’s good to find a balance that let’s me meet and connect with other without exhausting myself.  I am seriously an off-the-charts introvert, even if I’m not even a little bit shy.

FINCON was totally worth it.  I was excited to go, and I’m excited to start acting on what I’ve learned, including being a part of a new mastermind group, with the awesomest lounge lizards in the PF world.

 

 

 

 

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