The company has taken a different approach (it does not really matter what they are up to) and that results in much lower income for most publishers.

For example, I earn around 60-70% from what I used to.

After this change I got a few e-mails from people asking me what had happened and there were lots of complaints. I found a bunch of negative forum and blog posts about Chitika and how it “sucks” now.

The underlying message of all these messages was that Chitika is responsible for poor income and emotional state of these publishers.

In other words, “It is Chitika’s fault that I do not earn enough and I do not feel well.”

From my perspective that is not taking full responsibility for your life.

It is placing the responsibility of our income and well being into the hands of someone else.

Since I do not have control of that someone else it is very likely that person or company will do something that I might not like. They have to take care of themselves much more as for me obviously.

If you take full responsibility for your income and your life, then your goal is to have multiple sources of income and so that you are not affected as much when one or more of your business partners stop generating that much revenue.

So what if my Chitika earnings have dropped by 30 or 40%? I can rely on other sources of income because I have worked hard to get my online business to a point where all this does not matter much.

You need to be prepared especially if you are planning to quit your job and rely purely on your online business to fund everything.

Here is a plan which worked for me and motivated me to keep working hard even when I had enough to live from:

1. Calculate the average monthly expenses you need to live your preferred lifestyle.

If you want to travel and spend some time in Southeast Asia or visit Chicago because of a seminar you want to attend, add those expenses into your yearly budget and see how much you need per month on average.

2. DOUBLE the amount and work hard to reach it.

Why double? In my opinion this gives you the safety margin you need if one of your main income streams dries up.

You are earning less but if you have a healthy and sane relationship with the money, then you do not really care that much – you are still earning enough and you are still free.

Of course, if your self-esteem is tied up with how much you earn and you have made the wrongful connection that making more money makes you more worthy, then you will be very sensitive to any fluctuations of your income and you will basically be a slave for money.

3. Once you have reached the double income needed for your preferred lifestyle, just keep updating your sites and stay in touch with the latest happenings on the Internet.

There will  always be new ways of getting traffic and new ways of monetizing your sites and if you want to be successful in what you do, you need to keep in touch. Think really carefully why you would want to build more sites and earn even more money.

Do you really NEED that much? Is there some deep emotional need or wound that is being somehow fixed (only in short term) by earning more money? If it is, you will never fix it that way. You will need to address it in a different way and heal the cause.

4. Focus on your passion and your calling in life – but keep your other businesses alive.

Work on yourself and deal with stuff that is not where you would like it to be.

It is very dangerous and tempting to spend the whole day behind the computer and by being a workaholic avoiding the things we need to face in order to grow.

Take a few minutes and think whether you really need to spend so many hours behind you computer or whether you are just avoiding something uncomfortable that needs to be dealt with by convincing yourself that you need to build more sites and find the latest trick to get more links.

If you follow your path and passion in life, you will automatically generate more income because you will be providing more value to people. Certainly we need to find ways of doing well financially since we live on planet Earth where everything has to be paid – and I found that to be one of the greatest challenges in life.

How do I earn really well and become financially free by doing what I love? In my case, it is not exactly ALL my passion. I am earning money from some niches that are not really my passion but I treat them as a separate business that enables one of my other passions to thrive – the freedom of doing what I like and the freedom of exploring this world.

I do not neglect those businesses because they are crucial to my lifestyle and my freedom. I do not see world as a perfect place where I can do everything I want all the time and be ecstatic every second of being awake.

The reality is much more complex and sometimes I need to spend a few hours per day doing not very exciting things – like doing keyword research and looking for quality links and publishing articles on my sites that do not interest me that much.

But because I had experienced some of that “boring” feeling and I had experienced working hard, I appreciate much more the times that I have  when I am free and when I travel around.

One of the reasons why rich spoiled celebrities get so depressed many times is exactly the lack of hard work and the lack of fulfillment. If you are living such an amazing life ALL the time, you stop appreciating it.

Instead of seeing how great it is to be free and travel around the world, you find it boring and not really special. And unfortunately the only thing that really stimulates your mind even more are all sorts of addictions – which in the long term hurt you even more.

So the key of making yourself and your business invulnerable to all the fluctuations of income is to focus on an least doubling your preferred monthly income.

I suggest that you really set that income in your mind (write it down!) as you will be much more focused on reaching that instead of just “wanting more money”. “More money” is not a specific thing and your mind does not focus like a laser on goals like that.

My personal goal a few years ago was to earn at least $2500 per month to be free and the double of that was $5000. Having such a clear goal in mind helped me reach that goal in about two years of hard work.

Taking full responsibility for my income and my life has helped me to become invulnerable to such things as Chitika changing their approach or anything else that might happen in the future.

Hope this article gives you food for thought and helps you become personally and financially free sooner that you thought possible.

There are so many negative beliefs around money that cause us to self-sabotage our progress and keep us stuck at the same monthly income for years.

While just changing beliefs can’t just magically manifest money in your lap, it’s crucial to have positive attitude towards money if we want to have a great income and be financially free.

Here’s what Amy from The Leaping Lamp asked me about the money mindset and what I shared:

——————————————–

Dear Tomaz:

1. What are your level of skills regarding SEO and making a high traffic website? Would you consider yourself an expert?

I think I am an expert although I think SEO in these days is very simple.

This is like 95% of the stuff that I do.

2. How do you perceive money differently before you became financially free vs. today? For example, What was expensive to you before, but today you consider to be a great deal? Does the word /expensive /mean something different to you today?

I read lots of books on money before. Think and Grow Rich, Rich Dad Poor Dad and similar. I simultaneously changed my goals related to money as I was earning more online.

I decided at some point that I want to earn 1 million dollars. Not because of the amount but because of what it takes to get there. I am not there yet but I am still aware of that goal that I “installed” in my brain at some point.

Of course, when you earn much more, then stuff is not that expensive. Although I realize that there are some people who are obsessively frugal even though they have millions.

I am not like that. I don’t mind paying $2500 for business class flight to Bangkok. In fact, I enjoy it.

3. What is one of the biggest changes in attitudes you’ve had about money since it has flowed abundantly into your life?

I enjoy paying for stuff. When I get my monthly bills, I enjoy paying for them.

I read somewhere: “I pay this bill effortlessly.” Start with that mindset every time you pay a bill and eventually you will pay effortlessly.

Before I felt that people with lots of money couldn’t be 100% good. I felt slight resistance towards lots of money.

Now I don’t. I like it. I am not bound by money and it doesn’t define me – but I simply like it.

I keep a detailed record of my online earnings since the first month when I started to earn online. That was in February 2006.

I can see for every month since then how much I have earned and with which program (Adsense, Amazon, Chitika, Clickbank). This signals to the mind that these numbers are important and that I enjoy when they grow.

I also am not greedy. I never felt greedy wanting much more money. I was always very very happy when I earned more than previous month.

I am very grateful to my own talents (intelligence, perseverance, good concentration) and people who showed me the way – Ken Evoy, Andy Williams and others.

I do set some interesting goals when it comes to money – like I want to earn a minimum salary (of Slovenia) – per day. But again – it’s just an exciting goal and not really that I want that money so much.

What I am going to do with it?

So I think I have a healthy and exciting attitude towards money and that probably attracts it into my life too.

4. How has your thought process changed over these years of your business success? Do you brainstorm good, profitable ideas more often?

It has simplified. I used to complicate more, now I focus on what works and don’t waste time on other stuff.

I don’t brainstorm much – I just grow the sites that I have. It’s more than enough – I don’t need more sites or more money.

I am focusing on my coaching career in tennis in the near and distant future.

5. How much money do you comfortably carry with you on your person? ( I ask this because I’ve heard that people with larger bank accounts carry more cash with them and I should carry more cash with me, too. Get out of my comfort zone a little bit and mimic those who have more wealth)

Very different. Typically around 100 euros. But I may have an empty wallet too and that doesn’t feel uncomfortable either.

But at some point I learned to have a very organized wallet. High notes at the back and lower notes in front. It signals to the mind that you respect money.

Some additional thoughts I think are important:

Money is just metal and paper. It doesn’t mean anything.

What’s important is to feel confident about money making skills and feel confident about entrepreneurial success regardless of the situation – whether I have something in my pocket or in my bank or not.

That inner calm and confidence is what works in the long term and not the outside results – how much I have in the bank.

With that inner confidence you feel calm in any situation. People who focus on the results and the amounts they see in their bank accounts are dependent on those amounts.

When the amount goes down, they feel very bad. They are slaves to the money.

I am not. If I lose everything today, I know I can build websites that bring lots of traffic which will transform into passive income.

So in summary, one should focus more on the inner game:

• not having negative beliefs about money
• enjoying any extra money regardless of the amount (not being greedy but being grateful)
• and developing good skills in creating successful websites that give you confidence and inner calm regardless of the state of your bank account

The other part of entrepreneurial success of course lies in taking action, being productive and keeping your goals in your mind.

In fact, there’s more focus on saving money than there is on earning more money.

I personally think that’s a wrong approach for two reasons:

1. If you think about saving money, then you’ll definitely see yourself lacking money at some point in the future. You assume that you need to save money now so that you will have it when problems arise.

You’re already creating problems in your mind, which creates issues in the future, AND that puts you in a state of stress all the time – anticipating something negative to happen at some point.

When people do this in sports (tennis, basketball, skiing, you name it), that mental stress causes loss of focus and actually affects the body, which now is in even greater tension.

The athlete now creates mistakes because he is in a negative state (mind and body are not working at their peak level of performance).

My belief is that the same thing happens in life, except slower. A tennis player in a negative state will most likely miss the ball (or hit it very poorly) in the next second and the cause (fear, stress) and effect (mistake) will have an obvious connection.

In life it takes longer and we often miss the cause of the negative results we encounter – because the cause and effect may be months apart.

But THERE IS a connection and there is a cause for your negative result – and it comes from a negative mindset and wrong actions you took.

So how is it good and useful to be thinking about saving money in the long term?

Consider this hypothetical question: if you were guaranteed to receive $10,000 every month for the rest of your life, would you save money systematically?

Most of you will say yes because you can’t really visualize a guaranteed income of 10k for the rest of your life. But try really hard to visualize that and how your life will be – if you never again have financial stress.

Would you systematically save money?

Systematically meaning that you would save some money for the future when you’d need it more – like in a special bank account or by buying real estate or by investing in stocks and so on.

I assume that your answer would be no. “No, I wouldn’t systematically save money – if I’m guaranteed 10k per month forever.”

You would definitely save some money anyway because you wouldn’t spend 10k in a month and there would always be money left (if you have a reasonable person’s spending habits).

If you agree that you wouldn’t systematically save money, then you must realize that your current plans to save money come from not believing that you will earn enough money every month. (so that there’s no need for extra savings)

And if you don’t believe that you’ll earn enough money, then you really won’t. You’ll self sabotage yourself along the way – so that reality will conform to your beliefs.

So obviously this is not the right mindset to have. But there’s another aspect to keep in mind: I personally don’t like worry. It makes me feel apprehensive.

So why would I perpetuate something (thinking about saving money) that makes me feel bad, causes me long term stress and doesn’t bring positive results?

2. The other approach is about earning more money. It’s about earning enough money through various ways of income that will guarantee $10,000 and more every month for the rest of your life.

If you’re not there, you should strive for that.

That should be your main intention – and NOT saving money.

Now imagine (if you’re not there yet) earning $10,000 (and gradually more) every single month for the rest of your life. Keep that image in your mind for a minute and see how you feel.

Good, right?

You are now entering a positive state – you have a clear goal and your body feels energized.

You feel: “Yes, that’s fantastic! It’s liberating!”

Your performance – whatever you do – in this state is at the peak of your mental and physical abilities. You feel good and you are focused and very productive.

Isn’t this much better than feeling stressed and worried? Aren’t you going to reach your goals much faster than in the first instance?

I am quite positive that you will.

When it comes to a home based business where you create website(s) with quality content and help people solve their problems (improve their tennis technique or choose the right vacuum for their home), you can progress fairly quickly in terms of income – as long as you put in focused and disciplined efforts in a longer period of time.

The start of the journey is not that motivating, since it typically takes at least 6 months to start earning over $100 per month, but that earning curve starts to go up faster and faster, up to a certain point.

Earning $2000 per month in passive income is a very realistic goal after 18 to 24 months of working on an online home business.

Based on my numbers, you can double that income every year. Which means that after 4 or 5 years of focused work on your home based business, will easily earn you $10,000 per month.

The key here is that the $10,000 per month will keep coming into your accounts whether you choose to work extensively on your sites (in which case the income will grow even more) or whether you choose to spend 3 months in South East Asia on holidays.

That’s the magic of the Internet.

Let me be a little blunt here – but this is how I say it to my friends: “If you are so damn lucky to be born in the Internet age – as opposed to any other age in the history of mankind – and you do not take advantage of the earning potential and the possibility to free yourself from the rat race and slavery, then this is the stupidest thing in your life that you’ll ever do (or actually not do).”

In closing, consider this: if you would spend all the time that you use for calculating how much to save, where to save and everything related to saving money – and rather focus on brainstorming how to earn more (and where to actually invest money), what do you think long term results would be?

It sure was one of the most exciting years in my life and I’m glad to have shared some of my experiences with other people.

I wish you all to sooner or later achieve financial and personal freedom and enjoy your life to the fullest.

I’ll be posting the winners of the “comment contest” soon so stay in touch and thanks again for all the Stumbles, links, del.icio.us bookmarks and other ways of supporting Freedom Ideas blog.

Talk to you next year…

I wanted to share my ideas with more people than just a few kids on a court (who weren’t even really interested).

It never occurred to me at that time that my online business would help me to achieve financial freedom and freedom from being stuck in a job.

Learning To Walk In The Online World

I asked a friend who worked for an IT company to help me out, and he suggested a website design firm that would create a website for me.

The design, the ability to write text and upload pictures, cost $700. I thought I had a good deal.

The website domain name was www.mentalwinner.com (it’s now expired and full of sponsored links; don’t click on any of them), and this is what my first header looked like (made for free by my good friend):

I wrote some tennis-related articles for the site and thought that eventually Google and Yahoo would find me. No such miracles happened.

Then I read some Internet marketing tips which told me, that the $money$ is in the list.

Okay, so I asked the IT company to give me a newsletter module.

“Sure,” they said, “this will cost you additional $300.”

At that point, I started thinking about other options. If this goes on, they will suck my account dry with all the extra modules that I wanted to add on later (like some forms, RSS, a blog module, complete traffic stats, and so on)

I started researching and asking some questions in IM-related forums.

And then one guy answered my question and told me to email him. He said he would help.

And he did. He sent me lots of tips, ebooks and ideas on how to start a website.

He didn’t want anything in return, which was quite strange. He said he was once at my stage, too (he was, and still is, making a nice living from his online businesses), and he hated seeing people being scammed all over the place.

After 20 or so emails, I asked him if I could build a website myself, so that I didn’t have to pay every time for a new module or something that I wanted to add to my site.

Tim, that’s his name, suggested Sitesell.com.

Learning From Ken Evoy With SBI

I had come across Sitesell before, but had never really researched it thoroughly. This time, I did.

One weekend, I spent almost 10 hours, split between 2 days, reading everything I could find on the web about Sitesell, Site Build It, and Ken Evoy.

It was unbeleviable (and still is) that I couldn’t find a negative opinion about Site Build It.

The only post I found in one forum was that their Brainstormer (at that time) was sometimes a little buggy.

Tim also told me that their Action Guide was the key to building a successful website and that there isn’t anything like it on the web.

The tools and hosting are all very good and probably above-average, compared to other similar products, but it’s the Action Guide and Make Your Site Sell, written by Ken Evoy, that really show you a step-by-step plan to building a successful and profitable website.

The final thing that convinced me of the power of Site Build It and that I could use my tennis expertise to build a high-traffic site was when I checked their results page.

When I saw that even a website based on baby showers could have an Alexa ranking under 100.000 (I knew something about Alexa by then), I knew that I, as a tennis coach, could create a high-traffic website.

So, on November 1st, 2005, I took out my credit card and paid $299 for my first Site Build It package. What a life changing decision!

I’ll write a review of Site Build It (Update: added a link to the review I wrote later) in the next few weeks, but for now, I’ll just share the most important moments from May 2005 until now:

The Journey From $0 To Financial Freedom

May 2005
Bought a website for $700 from a local IT company in Slovenia. Posted around 20 articles in English and Slovenian and realized that this wouldn’t work.

November 2005
On the 1st, I bought my first SBI package and on the 6th, I registered my first domain name www.tennismindgame.com.

I did my best to create quality content and started to write my first ebook. I also hired a graphics designer Thomas Breher to create header and ebook cover for me.

February 2006

Completed my first ebook called The Mental Manual for Tennis Winners and earned $51.32 from Clickbank by selling 3 copies.

I also tested some Adsense on my tennis website but was disappointed not only with the average pay per click, but also with the poor quality of tennis products advertised through Adsense.

After a few months, I decided that there would never be Adsense on my tennis site.

July 2006
I started writing my second ebook and bought my second SBI site. The reason for that was that I had subscribed to Andy Williams’ newsletter and he offered a new niche blueprint every month.

I decided to buy one (at that time they cost $50), and it was all about vacuum cleaners.

So I registered www.vacuum_______.com and started writing articles and looking to outsource them too, since I wasn’t really an expert on vacuums.

I found some writers on Elance.com and tested about 5 of them. I asked for 10 articles from each one and then decided on the best one afterwards.

August 2006

I completed my second ebook, Tennis Strategy Encyclopedia and earned a whopping $441.31 in this month.

My earnings from both ebooks were around $500 during the next 6 months.

It was a nice extra income, but I was still far from being financially free.

December 2006
The traffic on my vacuum site started to grow really fast, since I targeted some good keywords on my homepage.

I started to monetize the site in November and the final earnings for December were $436.68.

I also sold two SBI sites through my affiliate links and earned an additional $150 in that month, so for the first time, I earned more than $1000 in one month from my online business.

That was 13 months after I started my first SBI site. Things were soon going to get much better.

I also bought one more Niche blueprint from Andy Williams, which he claimed was one of the highest-paying niches in Adsense.

I also bought my third SBI package and started to build a website based on conference calls, audio, video and web conferencing, which was the topic of that niche blueprint.

Here are some numbers from the Google Adwords tool:

Oh, and I also won the $500 prize from an SBI video contest for this video that I created.

February 2007
I initially monetized my vacuum site with Adsense and Amazon affiliate links, but I was really disappointed with the conversion on Amazon. I was getting a lot of clicks, though, but not much revenue.

That’s when I discovered Chitika. I was accepted and started testing different types of ads.

I earned $2107,94, which was more than I was earning by working in the Tennis Academy of Asia. My salary there was $2000.

March 2007
Chitika was exactly what I was looking for – getting paid per click instead of purchase. I went through the painstaking work of replacing the Amazon affiliate links on over 100 pages with Chitika eMiniMalls.

Result? With traffic growing and Chitika ads, my earnings shot to $3647.97.

April 2007
I started to use Need-an-article.net more and more for my vacuum articles. Most articles were pretty good, and if they weren’t, I used them for article submissions.

I was also always on the lookout for good link partners and got some good links to my internal pages. This helped me rank even better in Google and I started to occasionally get more than 1000 visitors per day on my vacuum site.

I also completed the How to Play tennis videos, which I sell for $37. Since I had already built a nice list of subscribers on my tennis site, I could promote my videos to them.

The combined earnings from my ebooks and videos through Clickbank reached $1986,30, and my the total income with Chitika, Adsense and a few Amazon links reached $4795,64.

That was more than double my monthly salary.

I realized that if I kept creating quality content and followed my strategies, I could achieve total financial freedom without the need to work for someone else.

June 2007
The traffic and income from both my tennis and vacuum site grew nicely and reached $5602,72.

I still hadn’t monetized my conferencing website, since it was in an extremely competitive niche and it was hard to get good links to it.

July 2007
My average daily income from Adsense surpassed $100 per day.

In the middle of the tennis summer season (lots of traffic and sales), and me getting more experienced with Adsense and Chitika combos, my monthly income reached $7580,17.

I still remember the day at the start of August when I added everything together and stared at this number for a minute or two. Wow.

Maybe I should start another website…

August 2007
The big number inspired me to share my ideas about financial freedom, although I was still in a job.

But I knew that my contract would end on the 30th of November and that the 1st of December would be the day that I achieved financial and personal freedom.

So I started this financial freedom blog to share my ideas and help more people achieve financial freedom through home-based online businesses.

I also came across a nice niche while I was doing some keyword research in Nichebot. It was about water filters and related topics, so I registered my fourth SBI site and started to work on it.

The traffic and income still grew and I surpassed $8000 with $8361,17 total monthly income.

October 2007
My first month earning more than $9000 per month.

I was accepted in the Chitika premium publisher program, which allowed me to add Chitika Linx links to my vacuum site.

With some optimization tips from Ryan Travis (great guy!), my Chitika earnings surpassed, for the first time, my Adsense earnings – both over $3000.

I was getting smart-priced in Adsense, too, and I think I managed to get out of that by then. I’ll share my experiences with smart-pricing and how to escape it soon.

Total earnings for October : $9547,20

November 2007
This Financial Freedom Ideas blog started to get some traffic from Google, since it started to rank for the keywords that I am targetting with it: financial freedom, achieve financial freedom, financial freedom online and others.

(Hint; if you ever link to this blog, try to use the above-mentioned keywords in the anchor text. I’ll return the favor! )

As you can see, I promote mostly Site Build It, since I really believe that without the guidance of Ken Evoy, his Action Guide and the complete Site Build It package, you have little chance of really succeeding online.

I came across a few good products in my online journey and a few hundred crappy ones.

My mission on this blog is to earn money from affiliate links, only if I really believe that the products are worth what you pay for them.

So here’s what I used to earn $9302,11 in the month of November, 24 months after I bought my first SBI package:

Internet Marketing Tools I Use

1. Site Build It by Ken Evoy – Here’s a link to review of SBI 2.0 where you’ll also find a link to the first review I did. The best time to buy SBI is around Christmas where Sitesell.com offers a special 2-for-1 sale which is only once a year!

2. Niche Blueprints by Andy Williams – Andy is the real deal and has my highest recommendation. The niche blueprints give you already-researched niches with keywords, affiliate programs and suggestions on how to structure your website.

And Andy’s newsletter is one of the few that I still subscribe to and read every week. Most other Internet marketers just promote IM products without any really valuable content.

3. Nichebot by Jim Morris – Jim has put together a fantastic suite of keyword tools and I use it often to get more data from Wordtracker or to find good LSI keywords for my niches.

4. Master Plan by Charles Heflin – The Master Plan is that additional 20% of expert knowledge that Ken Evoy’s Action Guide doesn’t contain.

If it did, it would confuse beginners too much. Most of the information from the Master Plan can be found in SBI forums, but you wouldn’t know what to look for, right?

Highly recommended for beginners and experts.

5. Need-an-article by Scott Foster – I would give Need-an-article 4 stars out of 5. The articles can be bought for an affordable price and they are of good quality most of the time.

If NAA implements its promised Choose a Writer program, I would give it 5 out of 5 stars. (Update: The NAA did implement the Choose a Writer program and I use them very often.)

Monetization Programs I Use

1. Google Adsense – The easiest to implement and a solid earner. Has its pros and cons; I’ll share my experiences with Google Adsense in the near future.

2. Chitika – Chitika rocks, and so do all the people behind it. I’ve already shared my top 10 reasons why Chitika rocks and it was the best earner in this month where I made more than $200 per day on a few days.

3. Clickbank – the easiest way to promote digital products from other people, sell your digital products and get affiliates for them.

4. CJ – CJ is slowly becoming a good earner for me since I’m getting ebay sales through my vacuum site and an occasional sale through my conferencing site.

There are thousands of affiliate programs available, and you’ll be getting only one check, which is very convenient.

So that’s about it.

As you can see, it’s not that complicated, and with the above-mentioned Internet marketing tools, you have everything (with extra bonuses!) you need to build a successful website.

Besides the tools, you’ll need motivation and discipline to follow 2 simple steps to achieve financial freedom, working from home.

Thanks for reading my story, and don’t hesitate to ask a question or share your comments on this blog.

The feeling hasn’t settled in yet, but I feel an incredible relief and peace of mind.

My mind keeps going into the future to check what I HAVE to do and there is nothing. No pressure, no deadlines and no work that I don’t like to do.

The only things that I see in the future are things that I WANT to do.

I am moving from Thailand back to Slovenia in 4 days where I’ll celebrate my freedom and financial independence with my family and friends.

This New Year will also be a special one since it will be all about NEW beginnings. It’s like I can start writing a new chapter in the book of my life.

I sincerely hope that you have this same powerful desire to achieve financial freedom and become totally independent of a regular job.

I am aware that this achievement is a product of my perseverance and burning desire to free myself, but I have a great deal to thank Ken Evoy, the whole team at www.sitesell.com and many SBI-ers who shared their advice in the SBI forums.

Thank you all!

P.S. I’ve outlined my journey towards financial freedom in the 10-step process:

1. Freedom Starts In The Mind
2. 5 Reasons to Follow Your Passion Instead of Money
3. How to Make Money Online and Enjoy Freedom
4. Ken Evoy and Site Build It
5. How to Write Content That Attracts Visitors And Natural Links
6. On-page Search Engine Optimization
7. Make Your Site Known – Link-Building Strategies
8. Intelligently Monetize Your Website
9. Test and Tweak To Maximize Your Website Income
10. Enjoying Financial Independence And Making The Best Of Yourself

“If you think you can do it, or you think you can’t do it, you are right.” Henry Ford

Basically I asked for an earlier leave since there are only a few kids here at the academy and I would like to plan my USA journey from my home. The boss had no problems with that.

And of course, it will be nice to celebrate new year with my friends and family.

I am planning a series of articles for the last 10 days before freedom. They will show you a 10 step plan to financial freedom and how I got to this stage.

On another note, my October monthly earnings have grown for 10% since September so I was only $452 short of my monthly income goal.

It seems I’ll have to raise the bar again. So… What was my monthly income goal?

But if you then ask them WHY they want to make more money, you’ll often see a blank expression on their face accompanied with no immediate answer.

So many people get stuck in this more-money race that they completely lose sight of the big picture.

Think about it: money is either metal, paper, or numbers.

So what if you have a lot of paper or metal?

Does that make you happy? No, not really.

If you are after the numbers, they are only good for your ego, i.e. you can brag about them.

But other than that, the numbers in a bank account are just numbers.

The big picture of making more money lies in WHY you want to make money.

Why do you want earn more money? What are your goals? What do you want to buy with this money? What do you want to invest this money in?

The answer to that question is your real goal.

Chances are that you have been completely sucked into this money-making “competition,” that you are sitting behind your computer day after day just wanting to make more and more, and you are not living your life anymore.

I recently saw a video of a very successful blogger, who makes tons of money every day and he showed a video tour of his office.

At one point of the presentation he said,: “This is where I spend most of my day.”

So sad. Isn’t it?

That is where he will probably spend most of his next ten years. Why?

Just to make more money? To be a #1 blogger? To get the most traffic?

How are those things important to life?

Life is meant to be lived; it should allow one to experience new events, new people, new countries, new cultures …

It’s about having a great relationship with your partner and spending your time with people you like.

It’s about learning new things and challenging yourself with new goals.

It’s about pursuing financial and personal freedom and enjoying it when you get there.

It’s NOT about sitting behind a computer desk for most of your day and trying to increase the numbers on your screen.

And it’s not about trying to compete with your neighbours and other people just to be better than them.

As this article about millionares in Silicon Valley points out, there are so many people stuck in this money-making race, and they are still very unhappy.

Do you actually believe that having more money than someone else makes you a better person?

Set up some exciting goals of what you want to do with this money. Think about how you’ll feel when you are on your deathbed looking back on your life.

What did you DO in your life?

You may answer, “I sat behind a computer screen for ten hours every day.”

On the other hand, you may answer, “I became financially free, enjoyed life with my partner and friends, travelled around the world, grew as a person, served other people with my talents and effort and made the best of the the cards I was dealt when I came to this world.”

Make a choice NOW.

Find out how much time you have left and what you want to do with it.

Do you want to make more paper, metal, and numbers or live a life?

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
– Gandalf to Frodo,
J.R.R. Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring

That means that on the 1st of January 2008 I’ll be a free man.

My online income gives me the financial freedom to do what I choose to do and not be forced into some work that I don’t like.

Although I never really suffered teaching tennis in various clubs and academies, I always HAD to work.

I couldn’t take a break to see US Open if the whole club didn’t have a time off. I couldn’t travel to another place for more than a week and then I had to be back at work.

I will definitely stay in the tennis coaching since that is my passion and my expertise except I’ll be my own boss.

The online income provides me with freedom and I am not forced to work all the time. And I hope to grow my earnings even more although I’m not obsessed with money as many of the internet marketers.

Maybe it’s the American competitiveness or something…

Anyway, I came across this neat Countdown timer plugin which shows how much time is left before I become free.

You can check it out in the top right area of this blog.

So hopefully you’ll join me on this journey and set up a goal for yourself too to achieve financial and personal freedom as soon as possible.

Even though you may have enough, there is always the desire for more.

This, on the one hand, can drive you to really securing your financial freedom and thus your personal freedom.

But, on the other hand, you still work and work and compare yourself with individuals who earn even more than you and you never stop to actually enjoy that money and freedom.

I recently read an interesting article on the topic of money and happiness and I share the author’s views.

Actually, I not only share the views, I also enjoyed my money recently (hence no posts in the last four days).

My jailor boss was kind enough to grant me a four-day holiday, so I flew to Malaysia with my girlfriend (from Thailand, where I stay right now) to check out Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, and its International Fireworks competition.

Here are some of the photos:

And what I really LOVE about earning money online is that when I subtract all the expenses of the trip (air tickets for two, hotel, other costs) from the income I made from my websites in those four days (doing nothing about them), I earned $400.

In your normal job, not only does your income stop when you stop working, but you also spend some of your saved money.

When you are making money online, you might even end up in the black after you subtract your traveling and other expenses.

Have you started your journey to freedom yet?