Even before New Year’s Day, over at My Journey to Millions Evan was already reflecting on his level of success for his 2011 financial, lifestyle, and career goals. Meanwhile, JD at Get Rich Slowly was planning for a future in which he expects his income may drop. And the Digerati Life’s proprietor, Silicon Valley Blogger, looks back over a year in which she improved her blogging business, which already was earning enough to substitute for a day job.
Last year my New Year’s resolution was to disconnect from the computer and build a healthier lifestyle.
Well, I failed miserably at that! Not only have I not managed to get away from the computer, I probably spend more time in front of the thing now than I did in 2010. I’m two pounds fatter and my back is freezing up. Several of the roses died of neglect. The pool is getting turquoise and black spots from my having used copper-spiked chlorine tablets to control algae growth, instead of getting off my duff and doing the job right. And my house-cleaning routine still involves letting the place get dirtier and dirtier until it’s so filthy I can’t stand it any more.
However…
Until quite recently, the S-corporation, of which FaM is one arm, earned about enough to cover its the cost of doing business and not much more. Right now it could buy a new computer and, I hope, a new printer, plus it’s paid an ad rep, a web guru, and a couple of editorial subcontractors. But it hasn’t earned enough to pay its proprietor a salary.
Still, along about mid-2011, Funny about Money began to earn a little money. Individual ad sales are now far outstripping AdSense, and in fact, in some months the site earns more than my teaching pay. If it increases as much in 2012 as it did last year, I may be able to start drawing a salary from the S-Corp. This would be good, because to get through next summer, I’ll need an extra $1,960 to $$3,960 above & beyond the income from the single summer course the chair has assigned so far.
The biggest lesson I learned in 2011 is that delegating time-consuming tasks and jobs I don’t do well works. Hiring Crystal at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff to wrangle ads for the site is the best thing I’ve ever done in the blog monetizing department. And hiring Jesse at Splyced Ventures to ride herd on the website has saved untold hours of wrestling with software.
One reason I’m earning more is that people who know what they’re doing are now taking on those jobs.
So, my 2012 goal is to delegate more and use the freed-up time to build the copyediting business, to write some e-books, and to improve FaM. I need to bring in a lot more business, enough to support two adults—myself and my business partner, Tina, who is about to be laid off by GDU (again!)—and Tina’s kidlet, until such time as Tina’s fiancé completes his training and gets a decent job. This is what we call “a tall order.”
We now know there are people out there who will pay us $60 an hour without blinking. As it develops, what we have regarded as an astronomical fee is actually well within the ball park, when you’re dealing with businesses and professionals rather than people who think they can get rich quick by self-publishing their memoirs or their cookbooks. So…what we have to do is find those people. That is going to have to be my job, while Tina and another subcontractor handle most of the actual work.
I’m thinking that part of this job also should be farmed out: we need someone who’s good at wrangling social media to build a presence on Twitter, Facebook, and waypoints. I haven’t kept up with the old standards, to say nothing of paying the slightest bit of attention to the new social media that keep popping up like toadstools. If we could delegate the job of tweeting, Facebooking, and all that to someone who’s really good at it, then that leaves me with only the job of joining business groups, giving presentations, sending out press releases, and generally making us visible on a statewide level.
We need to build a newsletter for the Copyeditor’s Desk site; that, too, might be done by a blogger-for-hire. My enthusiasm for coming up with grammar and style tips has been done in by teaching burnout. There are only so many times you can rehash that stuff without starting to gag on it.
The secondary 2012 goal is to improve income from Funny about Money. I’ve downloaded Darren Rowse’s Problogger book to the iPad and intend to study his sections on marketing and monetization.
If FaM can earn a certain threshold—let’s say 10 grand—it may be worth thinking about doing a second blog. It’s occurred to me that all the stuff about teaching and trying to survive on adjunct pay could populate a second site. How exactly to find the time to write two blogs escapes me, but maybe I could farm out some work for FaM and do some actual reporting for the proposed adjunct blog. As a practical matter, two sites each earning upwards of $10,000 a year would pull in all I need to get by, thanks to Social Security. If that happened, I could knock off the teaching and do nothing but blogging and copyediting.
That would help life a great deal. 😉
Just bought a ticket to a chamber music performance that will include Karen Knudsen, one of the choir’s professional altos. I love listening to these talented artists perform—they all have lovely voices (one has a magnificent voice, IMHO). Next Tuesday’s concert, part of the annual Bach Festival, will feature Bach cantatas and include oboist Marian Buswell, organist Scott Youngs, violinist Stephen Redfield, and cellist Jan Simiz.