Online Expert Matt Raad shares how it’s possible create significant semi-passive income and free up your time by working in the digital space online.
It’s Matt here and today I want to share with you one of the challenges that we found, at least in the early days, working online from home. So when we started doing this full-time, one of the things we found that was a little bit different to bricks and mortar businesses, was that when you’re alone and you’re sitting in front of that little computer screen, there’s a lot of distractions. Okay? Emails are coming in. There’s this thing called Facebook. There’s cat videos to watch which are good fun. There’s a lot of supposed activities that you need to be doing to drive traffic to your website. But really at the end of that day, are pretty low outcome activities.
So my suggestion to you is, or food for thought, is you need to know where your time is going and in particular, you need to learn what other high-value outcomes or things that you can spend time on that gives you the biggest bang for your buck.
So presumably, you’re online and you like this idea of creating semi-passive income or freeing up your time or giving yourself leverage. And we find a lot of our students are like that. They’re basically there so that they can have these semi-passive websites that pump out money and basically, one of the reasons why is because it frees up time.
Okay, the problem is, if we’re spending time on doing what’s called useless little activities like answering lots of emails or being on Facebook all the time, or trying to keep up with all these newsletters that you’ve signed up for and stuff, you’re not freeing up your time.
So for Liz and I, the keyword that we use is focus. Intense focus. Okay, so when we do get to work on our website, we’ve got a list. We’ll make a brainstorm, a list of things that we’re going to do to renovate a website. But really, we need to break it down. When you look at that list and go, okay, what can I outsource? What’s really essential? What’s going to give me the biggest bang for my buck. We call it our MRAs, our maximum return activity. So when I sit down, I look at my watch and go, “Right, yeah, I’m here, I’m working today from 9:30 till 3:00 and then I’m out of here.” Or I will just want to do a few hours of work in the morning and then I’m off on my mountain bike or whatever.
So for me, I need to be really focused on what is the high activity. I got to keep reminding myself, “Matt, don’t think. Just do. Get into it. Do it.” And you know, make that phone call or make that Skype connection or send that really important email to try and network because those sorts of things are really important. You know, networking in our industry and in our niche is online.
Look for advertisers. Get my staff or my outsources to be compiling lists for me of different websites that we can approach to, get certain deals or get advertisers onboard or whatever. Or working our guest posting opportunities and getting back-linking and getting the teams going on the sites that we need to have the work and certain jobs done.
So be aware of those sorts of things. Now, admittedly, we have a lot of experience but that’s part of your journey, is when you first start out online, what I would suggest your main maximum return activity is going to be learning the process, learning the system and spending the time on doing that.
Another big thing that I would strongly suggest if you’re a beginner, is learning how to build and renovate a really good website, okay, so that you learn how the traffic works, how conversions work, how you get it making money. They’re really core skills that you need. And once you’ve got those, the great thing is you can outsource them. So that’s sort of the main things that if I were you and I was starting out again, I would be focusing on in the first part of the journey. I wouldn’t be trying to do everything at once. Just learn the basics of how to build a good site, get traffic to it, get it making money. Learn some basic money-making systems. And away you go.
So there you go. Have a think about that the next time you jump in front of your computer.