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For a while now, I have wanted to move off of wordpress.com and get my own domain. I would have a lot more freedom to do stuff and, hopefully, eventually find some way of deriving income from the site. The problem was, every time I would look for a domain relating in any way to “ProjectNomad”, it was taken…until yesterday.

I had this really great idea to create a site called “RentMyDomain” where people who had good domain names, but no inclination to develop them would be matched with people who had great creativity and skills, and could develop the site while paying “rent” for the domain name (logistics to be worked out later :o) ). Of course, both “RentMyDomain.com” and “LeaseMyDomain.com” were taken. (Interestingly, they both are parked).

But, on a whim, I checked “ProjectNomad.com” for the umpteenth time, and to my amazement, it was available. So now it is mine…

No grand unveiling…just head on over there when you get the chance and you will see all that is in this blog. It is, like most things in life, a work in progress. I tried to clean some things up. I am exploring wordpress unchained - especially all the incredible templates, plugins, and widgets available for it. For blogging, I think this is the best application available hands down.

The pictures on the headers are from my various trips to my second home - Mt. Desert Island, Maine.

I know I mentioned another site I was moving to in an earlier post, but now that I have the domain name I wanted, I am sticking with the new site and have deleted the old one.

The partial downside is that, in leaving wordpress.com, I will pretty much disappear from sight as far as search engines and social bookmarks go. Google likes wordpress.com; Google couldn’t care a less about projectnomad.com…So the pressure is on me to provide better content, build a greater readership, and get a little higher in the rankings, which I am committed to do. I am still experimenting, trying to find a way to leave the corporate rat race and work on my own terms, wherever and whenever I want.  I am still looking at ways to incorporate the principles in “The 4 Hour Work Week”, and ways to leverage Internet Marketing and Freelance Web Design into this mix. I will continue to post my progress, as well as any useful resources I find along the way.

And I welcome any comments you have.

First, an update on what I have been up to. As I mentioned earlier, the major work on the house is done and I had some left over little things that I need to finish. The problem is, I can only work on the weekends. I have been working late at my job, and I am just too tired to work on the house afterward. OK…I’m venting, but it hasn’t been easy. I also have been having problems finding a tenant screening service. The recent changes to the credit reporting laws make it impossible for landlords with one or two houses to be able to get credit information on prospective tenants.

Oh…and it’s tax time…need I say more?

I am trying to apply 4HWW to my situation though. I am working on a proposal to outsource the website design to market my house. It is just taking too much time to do it on my own, and really, it is something perfect to have someone else to do for me. I will post my experiences here on how it goes.

Now, before I get into my favorite sites (yeah, you’ll need to wait a little while more, but it will be worth it…) I want you to imagine the following situation.

Say you have a laptop. On the laptop, you have a basic operating system, and a web browser. That’s it.

No utilities, No applications (other than the browser), No suites…nothing… Basically you have what is known as a “Thin Client”.

The challenge is, can you run a business from the laptop?

Sure ya can, Sparky… just go here.

It is pretty cool. Everything you need, via Web 2.0 hosted applications. This is perfect for a freelancer on the move. I hope you find it useful.

Looks like there is a MeetUp dedicated to The 4 Hour Work Week. You can find it here; I am also adding it to my blogroll…

Lea Woodward over at the Location Independent Blog has come out with this pretty extensive list of blogs that deal with Location Independent Professionals.

First of all, those of you joining me from Lea Woodward’s “Location Independent Blog” welcome! I hope you find this a good resource; fell free to browse past entries…

So…the bank has accepted my counter offer for the short sale. They are getting some money back for the house without initiating foreclosure, they are forgiving the loan, so the owner is relieved, and I am getting a nice house in a decent neighborhood - win-win-win.

The downside is that it is putting a damper on my plans for starting a virtual business. All my energy is now focused on due diligence and lining up a team to get the house in good condition to rent (this in addition to working my full time job!) My original exit strategy was to flip it, but that was before the sub-prime mess. As I mentioned earlier, there is still the possibility of getting a management team to handle the rental, but it is not worth it for just one house; I will need to get a few more rentals for this to be feasible.

Still, I am actively looking for ways to outsource as much as possible.

The longterm goal is to build multiple streams of income to get me out of my job and free up my time; this is just one step toward that goal.

Lifehack.org (which is yet another excellent lifestyle design site) has a good article on 6 Rules to Work Less and Get More Accomplished. You can find it here. Some of the rules should be really familiar to readers of 4HWW.

On Friday, October 12th, I looked at Google Trends and picked the second highest entry, Nicole Jaracz (Drew Carey’s fiance), and created a blog entry with her name in the header and body, along with tagging the entry with her name. (The first entry was a much loved college football player who died with his girlfriend in a car accident…no way I was going to use that with a clear conscience).

Here are the results:

Oct 12 - 5 Views to my blog, 1 of which was to the Nicole Jaracz entry.

Oct 13 - 13 Views to my Blog, 0 to that entry.

Oct 14 - 13 Views, 4 to the Nicole Jaracz entry

Here’s where it gets interesting…

Oct 15 - 126 Views, 116 specifically for Nicole

Oct 16 - 87 Views, 82 ” “

Oct 17 - 37 Views, 29 ” “

Oct 18 - 9 Views, 4 ” “

Oct 19 - 9 View, 6 ” “

This was for a period of one week.

Now, I totally understand that this is not a great method to draw in readers. I’m sure a lot of people took one look at my site and realized it had very little to do with Nicole Jaracz, so they left. I did not get much traffic to my other entries. I am also sure that most BAD internet marketers don’t care; they probably figure that, if you have a good enough hook, you may catch some of the readers. Any traffic is good traffic. Which is why the tag the heck out of their sites with everything in the world.

But as you see by the numbers, they drop off pretty quickly.

There is something to learn from all this… First, if you have really good content, and it does match something hot on Google Trends, putting the entry in your header, body, and tag can jump start your exposer. Something else pretty interesting, I still get, on average, anywhere from 3 to 5 readers still landing on that entry daily. Talk about Long Tail…

I am trying to figure out how to put this information to good use, but it was something fun to try.

Every quarter, publicly held companies are required to issue a report showing their progress for the past 3 months. This report is called a 10-Q.

Just over three months ago (last quarter), I finished reading The Four Hour Work Week, and I decided to work the principles into my life. The purpose was to create a virtual company, where I would subcontract the work to freelancers (or become a freelancer myself), with the eventual goal that I can run this company from pretty much anywhere in the world I choose to live.

Here now is my personal 10-Q…

The plan was to use multiple streams of income from the Internet, and possibly Real Estate investing (which sort of is counterintuitive because you need to be around to manage your properties, but I’ll get to that in a minute) to finance my endeavor.

Internet

I ramped up my education in Internet Marketing by taking the Thirty Day Challenge in August. My first attempt at applying the principles from the challenge ended with two outcomes; the first outcome - not desirable - was that I didn’t get any sales from my affiliate link on my blog. The second outcome - desirable - was that I placed on the first page of Google when searching for my keyword phrase. Yes it was at #10, and yes it was only for a couple of days before dropping off, but in my defense, I did not apply all the principles I learned and didn’t put a whole lot of effort into it. Seeing it on Google did boost my hopes that it was possible to make it happen, and motivated me to take more action. Like everything else in life, you get out of it what you put into it.

I got sidetracked a little with my “day job”, but I am on track to make another attempt at a successful Affiliate Marketing project. This time I’m all in.

The second Internet project I am working on is some sort of Information Product, like an eBook or Video. This is still in the early stages, but I have a couple of ideas I will explore, and document in later blog entries. I think this holds a lot of promise, because it doesn’t take a lot to produce, and if marketed right, it could produce a nice stream of income, with a minimum of maintenance.

Finally, something that I have not mentioned at all in this blog. Using an old PC I had lying around, I built an Ubuntu (Linux) server. Along with Linux, it had Apache - a web server, MySQL - a database application, and PHP5 which is used to create Web based applications (collectively called LAMP). I am getting up to speed on web page design and creation. This falls in line with my freelance aspirations. All you need is a laptop and an internet connection, and you can run a business.

Real Estate

As I mentioned in my last blog entry, I have a pending deal on the table. If the bank accepts my counteroffer, and there are no surprises in the inspection, I’ll have a nice house in a decent neighborhood. I originally intended to rehab and flip it, but in the current environment, I may either wholesale it to another investor, or change my strategy and rent or lease purchase it. Yes, if I rent it, in the short term, it will mean that I have to be around to manage it. Not something I can easily do from a beach in Nice…or the Italian Riviera…Still, in this market, I am thinking I can pick up one or two more houses, and if the numbers are good, I can hire a team to handle the property management. This, I can run remotely.

Plus there is no rule that I can’t do a little of everything, Internet Marketing, Web Design & Creation, and Real Estate investing.

The overall goal is to quit my day job to free up my time to do the things I want to do with it.

So…that’s the current state of Project Nomad, Inc. :o)

This first Quarter was primarily goal setting, education, exploration, and some action. The outlook for the second quarter is to take more action to move me closer to my goal of independence.

It’s not the destination, it’s the journey that’s important…right?

My destination is to be totally independent from a “traditional” job, and join the ranks of the professionals without borders. My journey is chronicled in this blog, and man am I having fun.

The two or three of you that actually follow my blog know that I try to find quality sites that align with my journey. You also may know that one of the methods I am investigating is Affiliate Marketing. I recently stumbled on a really cool site by a guy named Josh Wexelbaum. The site is called “The Scrappy Business Idea Blog” and it can be found here. He’s 25 and, like Lea Woodward of LIP Living, walks the walk. His site has tons of free resources, as well as his own eBook which appears as tabs on the main page. There are three basic online money making techniques he explains - affiliate marketing, Adsense marketing, and selling your own eBook. The information is geared more towards beginners, but there’s stuff for all levels of expertise.

He also has a link to his other site that chronicles his journeys around the world. His internet marketing gig pays for the ride. Not too shabby…

Just a quick update, the second part of Ryan Norbauer’s excellent article in 43 Folders on Enlightened Outsourcing can be found here.

Saw this through Technorati search on 4HWW and it looks really interesting. I haven’t fully explored their site, but I will; it looks like a book on their experiences is coming out soon.

I like the concept and branding. I added their link to my Blogroll.

Just spreading the love…

It had to happen sooner or later, but as of this writing, if you do a Google search on “Car Seat Ratings” (including the quotes), my Tumbler blog proof of concept is the last (10th) entry on the first page.

I don’t expect to make any money on this site, but I did want to see if what I learned in the 30 Day Challenge would get me placed.

I am now redoubling my effort to come up with a niche I am comfortable with and go whole-hog into developing. I am pretty psyched. Maybe the internet marketing route does have the potential to be a good Muse.