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Clicking My Way To Increased Personal Finance

January 5th, 2009 · 4 Comments

[This is a post I wrote as part of Adrian Cartwood's Seven Millionaires in Training experiment...I hope you enjoy it...Jeff].

Making Money 201 is all about focusing efforts on increasing your income so that you can build wealth and make some headway on achieving your Number.

Being in the military affords me a nice and steady income (which I’m thankful for these days) but it doesn’t give me much of a chance to earn more by working harder or smarter so that I can earn that big promotion at work.  Nor can I focus on growth opportunities for the organization to improve profitability and earn more through profit sharing or bonuses.  This means I need to find an alternative, separate from the military to pursue new profits for my family.

But what should that be?

My required annual compound growth rate is approximately 38% to reach my Number ($10M in 10 years).  I expect to use stock and real estate investments as well as some type of small business to make that happen.  I have more detailed plans for stocks and real estate that I’ll share another time, but today I’m going to focus on my options for a small business.

Ideally, whatever I pursue should be as passive as possible.  I’m not afraid of hard work, but my time is my most precious asset.  The more income streams I can generate that require little or no time/effort to maintain, the more wealth I can produce as an individual.  I think of this as leveraging my time.

Another reason I’m chasing passive income streams at this point in my life is that being in the military is a full time job that doesn’t leave me much room to head off in my own direction.  If I find the perfect business opportunity, I’m not at liberty to “quit” when I decide.  Therefore, my efforts need to fit with my present situation and service obligation.

My final reason for chasing passive income is that I have some big dreams I want to pursue on a full time basis as soon as possible.  Yes, I understand the point of our exercise is to achieve the Number so we can retire and fulfill our life purpose stuff.  But I think I can get on with it sooner than 10 years from now if I can generate sustainable passive income streams to live off of.

Currently my passive income efforts revolve around:

- Real Estate investment - One of my 2008 goals was to begin investing in real estate other than my primary home.  However, the Navy changed my real estate investment efforts and that goal with orders to Boston, MA.  I’m going to be managing the Navy’s recruiting efforts in New England.  Drop me a line if you want to join up.  Because of this change in plans I’ve had to defer my goal just a bit, but will still be a real estate investor very soon, I’m just going in through the back door.  I have renters lined up for my VA Beach home and am closing on a house in Boston at the end of January.  The Va Beach home is renting with positive (and passive) cash flow and the Boston house is a foreclosure that I’m picking up for $200K below market.  :-)

- An Internet approach - As I mentioned above, I need a business that I can fit into my military career.  The Internet is everywhere.  It never sleeps and my online activities can be tailored to my schedule.  I can devote some time over lunch, during my commute on the train, or even while on travel and in the evenings at home.  Thus the title of this post, I’m trying to click my way into increasing my income.

I think of the internet as a big river money just waiting for me to dip a bucket into.  I am using several approaches to try and scoop my bucket into that river.  Mostly centered around advertising and internet marketing, I’m using several blogs (I have ten right now) to target specific niche markets.  The idea is to drive highly targeted traffic to the niche blogs which contain Google advertisements and related affiliate products.  Traffic = Clicks = Advertising and Sales Revenue.  So far the websites are paying for themselves, and I continue to build content and generate traffic via back links and search engine optimization.

I’m also dabbling in running targeted Pay Per Click ads (they are at the top and right side of Google’s Search results) to sell affiliate products.  I paid for an online course to learn some of the in’s and out’s of PPC, but have only lost money so far in this area of Internet Marketing.  I’ve suspended my PPC activities for now because I need all the cash flow I can muster to finalize my real estate deals in the end of January.

For now I’ll just focus on my niche blogs since I’ve got that breaking even.  I’ve heard “stories” of folks on the internet using this approach to make several thousand dollars per month.  I’ve only been at it for three months now and am making whopping $45/month from my ten blogs.  It’s not much, but I see the potential.

The idea is passive income from military retirement (someday), real estate rentals, and internet income so that I can really begin to focus on what I view as my true business calling…building an Air Taxi business.

You knew it had to come back to flying at some point didn’t you.  :-)

In the mean time…Click Baby Click!

-Jeff

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4 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Roger Burton // Jan 5, 2009 at 2:57 pm

    You and I seem to have similar background and interests. I served one year in the Navy, went to college and switched to the US Marine Corps. I got out with 13 active duty years and now I’m working on an online business with the goal of owning and operating my own air taxi business eventually. You can read more about my ideas at http://www.taxijet.com.

    I have spent 3 years designing and building an online portal for passengers to easily find available air taxi aircraft. Now that my system is completely operational I am embarking on an effort to make the service more visible to the online world. I just read a report that more people get their news from the internet than newspapers. The increase in internet news has been dramatic in the past year or two. I think you are on the right track by blogging. I intend to do much of the same in 2009 to hopefully drive more traffic to my web site, educate the public about the advantages and limitations of air taxi and to provide a stabilizing force in the air taxi industry that will help bring the moving parts into harmonious motion.

    I am looking for investors who are interested in helping me with advertising and operating the system. There may be opportunity for you and I to help each other in this venture. If your interest is in Air Taxi then you would benefit by researching and blogging about the air taxi industry. Perhaps you could assist me in operating the online services of my web site as well. This would be something you could do at any time of day or night (for the most part). If things work out who knows, maybe some day we can buy an airplane together and operate our own air taxi business.

    Shoot me a line when you have a chance.

    Best Regards,

    Roger Burton
    CEO - http://www.taxijet.com

  • 2 Jeff // Jan 5, 2009 at 7:18 pm

    Roger,

    Thanks for stopping by. It’s always a pleasure to cross paths with a fellow military aviator who shares similar interests and aspirations.

    I’ve been on your website in the past when I first started my Air Taxi learning process. I’ve been keeping your company on my short list of possible solutions to my future Air Taxi scheduling needs.

    I hadn’t considered blogging on the Air Taxi world. I think that’s a great idea to get my feet wet, learn more about the industry and create some name recognition in the sector. Thanks for the idea. :-)

    I’ve mentioned here on MMOB that I’m moving to Boston this Spring. One of the things I intend to do while I’m stationed up there is pay William Herp a visit at Linear Air to see what opportunities there are to learn some lessons from him and his success.

    Let’s stay in touch. I’d be very interested to see what future ventures we could collaborate on.

    If you want to go in on an Embraer Phenom 100, I’m in. It’s the sexiest looking airplane of the bunch. :-)

    Thanks
    Jeff

  • 3 Kate Kashman // Apr 10, 2009 at 3:34 pm

    Hi Jeff! I just found your site and it’s excellent. Plus, unless I’m mistaken, I know your predecessor Jeff. (Unless it is you, which doesn’t fit with your details.)

    I’ll be following you! Great job.

  • 4 Forest // May 28, 2009 at 4:45 pm

    Hello, I just stopped by and I like what I see. I’m also working on building up some passive income from the internet. I’m working on a few niche blogs. I’m going to keep reading but just thought I’d leave a comment.
    Also, thanks for serving in the military.

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