The Flip Flop Lifestyle

I have been doing a ton of reading lately - probably too much. Looking back over the Success or Failure post from a couple of days ago, I decided I needed to put one more project on my plate and write an e-book. Time is precious these days - selling real estate is my primary source of income and between taking care of my own clients and helping manage the team, it can take up quite a bit of time each day. Maintaining that is critical and most of the “lifestyle design” projects that I am working on get pushed in to my personal time - nights and weekends - hence this post getting written around 1:00 am when I have to get up at 5:30 am.

I have a couple of projects that I am working on these days. I think that I have mentioned the website that I own with my partner Darren that markets training materials for real estate agents. We got most of the bugs worked out of that now and it should be a matter of marketing it from here on out. It does take time though since it has a blog, and writing enough content so it doesn’t look empty is proving to be a challenge. Getting that site off the ground (nearly 6 months after we anticipated) served to teach me a certain level of patience when learning a completely new skill set, but I feel it is going to be a strong and steady source of automated income for years to come.

I also have a partnership interest in another e-commerce website that should prove to be very profitable. Most of the set up is complete and we are moving in to the marketing phase of that as well. That is a different animal entirely as it markets actual physical products. All of the products are walking related - various shoes, arch supports, etc. The learning experiences there have been invaluable as well - setting up the relationships with the suppliers, negotiating drop ship and payment arrangements, and setting up strategic alliances with companies for cross promotion and exposure for the site. When that site gets rockin, it is shaping up to be one of my primary sources of passive income. I’ll definitely go in to more detail on that project as we go along.

So keeping those moving forward have been (and will continue to be) my primary focus outside of real estate. It has meant giving up a lot of free time and I’m sure my wife isn’t too thrilled with that, but she understands where we are going and what it’s going to take over the next couple of months to get things off the ground.

I still try and post in this blog when I get a couple of spare minutes. It’s sometimes hard to justify as I do not see this blog truly as a money making activity. It may bring in some income in the future, but that wasn’t really the point of starting this in the first place.

Back to the e-book project I am starting this week. The decision to start this went something like this… most every single passive income or web marketing “guru” recommends information as one of the best products to sell on the internet. So, I analyzed my strengths, looked at my experience and my areas of expertise, and identified a problem that people have that I would be qualified to solve.

1. I enjoy writing - I am in no way an expert, but I am functional. I could buy resale rights or have the material ghost written, but I am trying to get these projects making money with as little investment as possible.
2. One of my main areas of expertise is in real estate - having been very successful in the field for the last six years gives me a base to draw from.
3. Buying a home for the first time (or the second, for that matter) can be a daunting experience. After reading through several forums on the subject, I find most home buyers are confused about many of the aspects of buying a home, from the contracts to choosing the right agent.

That is a brief rundown of the process I went through to come up with the idea for my first e-book. It isn’t a new idea, and there is plenty of info out there on the subject. The fact that there was so much information out there merely proves to me that there is a need that I can help people with. It also tells me that there are a myriad of opportunities to joint venture with other people as well as multiple affiliate possibilities when I get a decent list of opt-in subscribers built up.

With a little research and a couple weeks of writing time, I should have a viable product to assist home buyers in making their purchase a more stress free and successful venture. In the past six years that has been one constant - I love the feeling when clients sign the papers and get the keys to their new home. It’s an incredible experience to be a part of that and it would be hugely satisfying to know that I was able to help many more people experience the same thing.

I should be able to start writing this week. I am shooting for the first week of February to launch. I am going with a very simple website and rely on PPC advertising and affiliate programs to market the book. I’m excited to get going on this and I will post updates on each phase of the project as well as the results in the coming months…

This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 2:03 am and is filed under Internet Marketing - Money From the Web, The Beginning, The Journey . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.