As you may already know, The Financial Blogger has been a major pillar in my online company. In fact, on my side of the partnership, this site is how I made my very first step to (hopefully) becoming a dotcom mogul one day! I started with no experience, average English writing skills but with a good dose of passion for writing and personal finance.

As I mentioned yesterday, we have sold Gather Little by Little and it is now time to move on to something else. We are currently working hard on Green Panda and on Intelligent Speculator; they both have a new design, Green Panda is now part of the Money Mavens Network and Intelligent Speculator has launched it’s Premium Investment Newsletter. The guy is a trader on a desk, trust me, he knows what he is doing

However, if we keep going this way, we will still continue to slowly grow our blogs without really having a direction. After a while, you get into your day-to-day routine and you risk forgetting about your ultimate goal; making enough money to reach financial freedom. I guess it is human nature; we want the chaos to stop so we can sleep like babies at night. I think this is the problem with most projects; we get all motivated when it starts, we work like sled dogs on it and we have a tons of ideas. But once it is launched, when it is going well on its own, we simply ride the boat instead of adjusting with the sails to pick up the wind again.

This is why we are making a plan!

Most people think that plans are useless. In fact, I think they are right in 90% of cases. Why are plans useless? Because they are never applied, because they were  written on clouds instead of going back to the basics. If you want a good plan, you have to come down from the clouds and get down to the ground level. You need to have a global vision but nail your plan with practical actions.

What are we going to discuss during our weekend

We are taking a weekend at the end of May to leave for another city and concentrate on our company for 2 days. Big companies do it and their employees take this time off to have a solid drink on the house. I can’t say we won’t have a drink, but I can tell you can we will also work like animals .

For the upcoming months, we will shoot ideas back and forth and make a list of the points we will discuss. It is an important year since we have to look at crucial elements for the survival of our company such as:

-         What happen if one of us gets sick or dies?

-         We need to calculate the insurance needs so the surviving partner can buy the other partner’s shares

-         We need a shareholder agreement (was not necessary at the beginning)

-         The direction of each blog and how we will make it through

-         The new projects we want to put in place with a schedule and practical actions

-         The parameters required to buy a new website (yup, we are on the roll again!).

-         A global plan to know where we will stand in 12, 36 and 60 months.

I really have the feeling this weekend will be the additional push to get ourselves outside our “comfort zone” and start working for real. Enough with the routine, now it’s time to make some serious money!

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Recently, I read a very interesting post over at Four Pillars about why bloggers blog. This got me thinking about my own motivation. As you may already know, I have been blogging for the past 3 and a half years. This is quite a long time for a blogger (but it’s nothing compared to Canadian Capitalist!).

When I first started, I was convinced that I was going to be able to make money. At that time, most people laughed at me saying that if I was able to make more than $200/month, I would be a king. Well let me tell you, the blogging world has changed a lot since then.

Bloggers have now become small entrepreneurs

While making money blogging seemed to be more a rumour promoted by John Chow and a few other bloggers, we can now find other wealthy bloggers around the blogosphere. There are several bloggers like me who are making a decent income and even some that are now able to live from it (Get Rich Slowly, Christian PF, Prime Time Money, The Oblivious Investor?).

What were my original motivations for blogging?

At first, I was thinking more about improving my English writing skills (this is my second language) and I also thought that people needed and would value more information on personal finance. I was definitely driven by my passions for finance and writing.

Have my blogging motivations changed since then?

While I am still driven by the very same passion about personal finance, explaining to the world what is good and bad in the financial world and also debating my controversial point of views about Primerica, The Smith Manoeuvre or not taking a real estate agent to sell my house, I have discovered other motivations.

I’d say that I have now discovered that it is fun to be interviewed by major media personalities (The Globe & Mail and Canadian Business Magazine). Visibility is definitely something that I have discovered over time and that I truly enjoy the notoriety! I even use my media appearances at work in order to gain credibility

But above all the other motivations I may have, I blog for one big reason; I blog to get closer to financial freedom. My online company seems to be opening the door to a whole new world of financial possibilities. It seems that through blogging, I will not only be able to offer to my wife the ability to stay home but eventually for me to work from home… or from anywhere around the world

Blogging would definitely not be the same without passion. I think that most bloggers quit or sell their blog because it requires a lot of time, energy and most of all; inspiration and creativity. I have never had the feeling that I was lacking topics to write about nor the will to write. I believe that I could write all day long and never tire of it!

Finally, I am glad to have a voice, to have people read my stories, my fears, my successes and learn more about finance everyday. Definitely, knowing that people read me every morning makes me wake up at 5am, open my laptop and let my fingers dance on the keyboard.

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Before I start with this post, I must admit one thing: I really like blogging! Since I’ve always wanted to write a book and make a living from my writing, blogging has been a great opportunity to test my writing skills and creative stamina .

So why am I selling? I actually need money to fund other projects within my online company. I didn’t expect to sell this year, in fact it wasn’t in my plan at all. I really like my blog and I didn’t want to sell it. However, when you have a good offer on the table, you should consider every single option. Sometimes, the best time to sell is when you don’t want to.

Oh! I forgot to tell you which blog I am selling I’m selling Gather Little by Little (gotcha!). To be honest, I don’t think I would be able to sell The Financial Blogger, it is now part of my daily life and I really like what it has become overtime .

Blog flipper? Nah! I’m a business man, that’s all!

Some people will surely call me an opportunist or blog flipper since I am selling GLBL not even after a year its acquisition. But the truth is that I am a businessman and I know when I see a good offer on the table. When we first bought GLBL, we first thought about growing our blog portfolio with a great and well known blog. We never thought a second about selling this website (or any of our other websites either!). We are currently a money making machine that will continue to have a positive cash flow on a monthly basis. So we want it to grow, not to sell the best parts and generate less revenue!

This was an amazing learning experience

Being on the other side of the transaction felt kind of awkward; I learned a lot negotiating from the selling side (finding good points about my site instead of trying to reduce the price of a blog I was purchasing). But unlike the case when I sold my house, I didn’t have any emotions attached to the website (besides TFB, of course!). Therefore, negotiating was purely doing business.

I won’t disclose the identity of the new buyer nor the price. If you want to find out, do your research and ask the new owner . In fact, I am not exactly sure what we will be doing with this money. We surely want to invest it wisely.

Don’t want to spend it all

Money is easily spent. I don’t want to become the next GM of the New York Rangers if you know what I mean. I want ensure we make smart investments that will help grow our business. This is a very interesting step that we are taking as it is the very first time that money won’t be an issue to do a project (unless we increase the size of our original projects!).

Only a few months ago, buying Green Panda was not an easy decision to make as we had limited resources. While we are far from being rich, we now have more latitude to make moves.

We will be taking a weekend off in order to work on our “annual plan”. While big companies do it to “look good”, we actually do real planning and apply our plans once it done. We have taken moments like this in the past in order to establish our direction and it worked pretty well (remember when we took a full week off to work on our online company? We had a blast… and we are making much more money today!).

So I’ll be soon posting about our new projects… as soon as I know what they are

If you liked this articles, you might want to sign for my FULL RSS FEEDS. Then, you will get my daily post to your email and can read it at any time. To subscribe CLICK HERE

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We are hoping to sell our house pretty soon and we are already looking forward to buying our next one. We know where we want to go but we haven’t visited the properties we are comtemplating. Why? Because I made the “mistake” of making a conditional offer to purchase a house thinking I would sell mine quickly. In the end, I imagined myself in this new house for about 2 months and they finally sold it before I sold mine… result: I was left with a house to sell and nowhere to go!

So in the meantime, I play with my excel spreadsheet and figure what my new budget might look like. I love playing with numbers . My wife and I were in a serious discussion about how much we can afford for our next mortgage. Since I am moving for bigger and better, we may have to pay more for our next property. The numbers seem too big which scared her a bit.

This is when I pulled out my previous budget from a year ago. She was working full time and we were comparing how much money we were making back then and how much money we are currently making now that she has quit her job and that I am working 4 days a week. Believe it or not, we are now fully covering her income! In fact, we are making much more money now, than when she was working!

Passive income is the key to money problems!

A year ago, I was struggling between my MBA, my new job as a financial planner and working on my online company. Today, I am done with my MBA, I have learned the financial planning game enough to succeed and my online company is generating a very interesting passive income.

Over the past 12 months, we have made several websites purchases, modifications and partnerships throughout the web. We are always thinking about how to make more with less effort and it is working perfectly.

Last week, I wrote about how cool it is to earn passive income. Well over the last weekend, I realized that my online company not only pays for gravy stuff like a Blackberry but also provides me with a better quality lifestyle (working 4 days a week) and is now compensating for my wife’s income. For the record, my wife was making about $25,000.

Fighting for your right to paaaarty!

Love this song from the Beastie Boys . But seriously, this is how I was working to make a few more bucks at work; fighting for raises in my salary! I have written about how I got 3 raises in the span of 12 months and I am looking forward to getting another one in the upcoming months. These income increases were enough to allow me to keep the same net salary now that I was getting when I was working 5 days a week. It does put a lot of pressure as every Monday morning, I wake up thinking I have to bring more money in my book so I can get another raise. But you don’t get anything for free and I am willing to pay the price of pressure to make even more .

Bonus is gravy

Last year, we took the decision of having my wife stay home based on my bonus forecast. I told her that I will be getting her salary as a bonus so she doesn’t have to work anymore. Today, the bonus is not necessary anymore. Therefore, I can plan other uses for it such as:

#1 paying my parents back this year!

#2 going on vacation next year

#3 improving our future house

I guess this is what makes my calculation so “interesting”. I have to figure out a way to buy the house I want while paying back my parents… I wouldn’t buy a bigger house and then tell my parents “sorry folks, I’ll have to postpone my debt for another 5 years!”

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As you may already know, I own and write on several websites. In order to be able to do this, I must be very consistent with my writing schedule. It also helps to have several interesting ideas racked up on my laptop so I don’t waste too much time messing with the inspiration fairies in my head.

But this morning, the fairies have taken over. They made me close my ideas notepad and open a blank word document. They want to make my fingers dance across my keyboard because I really feel happy. Do I have a big announcement to make? I am going to buy another blog soon. Not really. I am just happy for what we (my partner and I) have done over the past 3 years.

My best friend (and partner in this adventure) is currently on his honeymoon in Vietnam for 2 weeks. During his wedding, I had the chance to meet several of his friends which I had heard about all these years but never had the chance to meet. This came to me as a true inspiration; talking about passive income, about creating your own business. Most of them are looking toward the avenue that we are already on.  We jumped in the car and are driving fast on the information highway.

For once, I guess I have to consider myself lucky. I hate to say this because I don’t believe much in luck. I do believe that when something good happens in your life, you are the maker of this event. Same thing if your life sucks But this time, I guess that all the right conditions have united to make our project grow and, maybe one day, drive us to financial independence.

For the past 12 months, each time I felt nervous about my budget and my financial obligations (having a wife at home is marvellous, but it adds its share of financial pressure), my Blackberry was there to comfort me. The little “bzz bzz” in my pocket each morning telling me that I had received money from Paypal is amazing.

I remember my latest shopping frenzy; I went to buy some nice clothes for Christmas. I hadn’t done this for a while and I was looking at the young lady piling up my clothes and thinking about how big the bill was going to be. While she was packing up my stuff, I saw the rude number, $375, on the computer register. My Blackberry was there once again to comfort me: I received an email telling me that I had received a payment for $650… I guess this is what we can call passive income!

Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t happen overnight. Before my Blackberry buzzed to tell me I was making money, before I could even afford to pay for a Blackberry, we worked many hours without earning a dime. While I was doing my MBA, nobody could understand why I would put my books aside and use precious paper-writing time to simply open my laptop and write “meaningful” posts about personal finance.

I am still far from being able to live off of my online income. However, it now pays for a lot of things in my life and will definitely help me pay back the loan from my parents in a few months time! I guess this is the perfect balance for now: I’m not working like an idiot, I still have a social life and my kids still remember who their father is while I make extra money in the meantime!

Actually, my only regret is that I had not started this earlier. On the other hand, I now have a safe career and a very promising source of passive income growing at the same time. Today, I am truly grateful. This is a feeling I wish for you all. Enjoy your day with a smile!

If you liked this articles, you might want to sign for my FULL RSS FEEDS. Then, you will get my daily post to your email and can read it at any time. To subscribe CLICK HERE

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