Make Cash Online

The gears have finally been put in place to do my very first RTW (’round the world). The whole reason that I got into internet/affiliate marketing was this. It was a big driving factor for me. Even though I’ve financially surpassed what is required for such a thing a while ago, it’s something that got lost. You can see my old post here on the original blog. This is exciting for me and I plan to embark on the journey in Spring of 2013.

Lately, I’ve been working hard to change the way I work with my business and the way the business works itself. Backpacking around the world doesn’t really give you the optimum work environment for a business to thrive. It requires a delicate approach because I’m going to be in countries where the internet is patchy at best. Working out of your backpack with a laptop isn’t easy. These are new challenges I’m face with now and as the time comes closer for my RTW, I’m probably going to talk about these kind of issues and building a business that works this way.

Building a Cloud

This is something that I’ve been working on probably for the last 6 months. That’s not to say that I’ve been working on it for 6 months straight. I’ve been playing with it and seeing what will work best for me. The idea behind a “cloud” is that you can access your stuff from multiple computers. It’s often managed on many servers, so it’s virtually never down. I need my entire work operation cloud based. My laptop might break on the trip. It might not be secure to work over a WiFi connection in some countries. My only option could be sitting down in front of an internet cafe computer and working there. What I’m creating is the exact same environment through a cloud. Everything is completely the same because of the cloud.

But this goes well beyond just websites. My business used to be sole proprietor from a government tax view and now I’ve incorporated. This saves me a lot more in taxes, but brings on a more administrative side of things. I need to be able to cloud my physical mail. This allows me to see my actual mail. If I have to forward something to my accountant, I can do it easily over email. These are the challenges of running a legal corporation while traveling around the world for a year (or more).

Automating As Much As I Can

One of the biggest things that pisses me off about Amazon, as a Canadian affiliate, is that they don’t do direct deposit. Shitty Clickbank is able to do this on a weekly basis, yet Amazon has a problem with this. They claim that it is an issue with converting currencies. I have a US Dollar bank account at a Canadian bank, so it really isn’t that big of a deal I don’t think. Anyway, I hate checks. I hate depositing them. Being out of the country makes it impossible unless you have someone acting on your behalf.

As a Canadian, I’ve been able to get around this problem by opening a corporate bank account in the United States. This took a little while to setup, but I actually got it to work. It will be the topic of a future “how to” post for the Canadians out there that want to direct deposit their Amazon earnings. I need to have all my earnings to be directly deposited into a bank account. This means Amazon, as well as some of my other earnings like Clickbank and Commission Junction.

Outsource Like a MOFO

One of the big things I’ve learned since I went from full time (I was doing full time Internet marketing from the very start) to part time is that I honestly don’t have all the time in the world to get what needs to be done. I need to start adding in outsourced work for my sites. Right now this aspect isn’t that important because despite only working part time on this I am still pretty good at getting the necessary work done. I have a pretty good routine and understanding of what works and doesn’t.

But with all that I’m going to end up without internet for periods of a few weeks. That’s not going to make or break me when it comes to earnings, but I need to make sure that work stays relatively consistent over the year. I know I’m going to be taking a crowded 7 hr train ride around a country. And when I get off, I’m not going to feel like working. It’s just one of those things. I need to develop more of a “project manager” role with outsourced groups. I’ll still work like I do now, but I need to accept the fact that I’ll not be able to do it all.

I also have the goal of having more money when I return from my RTW than I had when I left. So another reason for this.

As you can see, my challenges have changed. This means the things I’ll inevitably talk about will change too.