Hello, my name is Lorelei, and I want to thank you for visiting toptut.com!
Today, this is a very popular blog that you must have heard about before many times, if you are in the blogger-sphere, but you’re probably wondering how it all started. When toptut.com was launched back in 2005, I dedicated most of my time to its maintenance, and it was almost like a full time job for me; building links, getting traffic, optimizing for search engines, writing posts, getting ideas about what’s in demand, and so on. While it was almost like a full day job in terns of time, it was paying back in proportion of.. let’s say, rude waitress’ daily tips. We are really speaking about just measly dollars of daily returns. It was discouraging and I, like most beginners, started to make more websites, in different niches, spending my time and energy (or wouldn’t it be a better word to say — “wasting”?) on building traffic, readers, and writing content... Basically, I was dedicating a bit of my time for everything, trying to reach as many people as I can in all niches and ages, and in the end I wasn’t reaching anyone and in frustration I… exactly! — made more useless websites that surprisingly didn’t make my piggie bank any happier. This was the “success story” of my online business, up until the beginning of 2009, when I could only maintain a $4000-$5000 monthly revenue, working from 6am to 22pm. Definitely not bad, but I couldn’t keep up like that forever…
So, When Was the Shift?
Quite frustrated from the unsuccessful online income (like I said, the maximum I could reach at that time was $5k a month from sales, custom design and Adsense altogether) I took a timeout offline. I fully neglected my websites and dedicated time to spiritual practices, raising self awareness, growing both spiritually and emotionally. I realized that it’s not money that makes people happy, it’s the emotions that we think they will give us… significance? security? comfort? For you it can be something else. No hateful boss, to waiting for paychecks, no scary deadlines..? And in my offline journey, during which I got to read so many interesting books I didn’t even know about before, as soon as I realized that it’ s not money that makes a difference — this is when I started to really make impressive income. ironic, isn’t it? I was breaking my own record day after day, and looking back at my dream-goal of “6-figures income a year” suddenly sounded so childish.. When you work online, there is really no limit as to how much you can harvest, and that is the incredible part! I know many bloggers dream about making “6-figures revenue”, and I know it’s a lot in most countries and in vast majority of standards, but it’s really not something to that should stop you.
What Really Happened That Made Me Rich?
In my educational journey, I read plenty of books not only about emotional awareness and other new-edge brainwashing, but also about building success strategies, about establishing a business and how to make your profits multiply themselves. I finally figured that it’s not the amount of useless websites, which I produce, that will effect my monthly income. But, be surprised, it’s not quality either. Of course creating a useless product would be harder to sell, but have a look at the shopping channel — aren’t all the patented stuff they sell there are eventually useless, once you get them? It’s not easy to make unique business model in today’s competitive world, but it is possible to make the business extremely profitable, if you make it automated.
My key to success was spending less time on my internet business so I either could spend the rest of my day on my hobbies and enjoy, or spend it on making more money, which is of course what I did. If previously I had to spend 8 hours a day on a blog in order to make $x, now I only spend 1 hour a day on it, in order to make $xx,xxx of steady monthly revenue. And, that’s just one blog. This means, my hourly rate went up (to say the least) and what did I do? You are right, I made more blogs that run on the same model of auto-pilot, while spending only 1 hour a month on maintenance, and this is where the real shift happened.
Ironically, I work a lot less and making a lot more, only thanks to being more skilled and experienced. Unlike being a part time freelancer, when my income depended on my online presence, I now own an internet business, that will function even if I go on a vacation for the entire month. It took me almost 5 years to figure how to become truly rich online, but I learnt the hard way, because I had no one to guide me through, which is why I decided that soon I will release an ebook (that will be offered FREE to our readers), where I will take you through all the steps of creating a successful online business, which will allow you, in due time, to buy the house of your dreams, monster-car, yacht and travel the world.
Yours,
Lorelei