Why heart rate monitors?

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently created a web site dedicated to the review of heart rate monitors. Why did I choose that subject?

Well, fitness has become one of my growing passions. Something I read more and more about and ever since I started using my Suunto t6d about six months ago, the use of these devices and the tremendous help that they can bring to an average Joe trying to get in shape (like me).

So what's the link between all this stuff about heart rate monitors, fitness and generating passive revenues? Well, first of all, one of the things that were made obvious for me while listening to the smart passive income podcast is that if you have an interest in which you are willing to invest time and money, chances are that others are also willing to do it.

Another point that brought me to get my feet wet with this subject is that while it is a growing interest, I don't have as much expectations with that one as I do with other projects of mine. This basically means that I do not mind making newbie mistakes while working on this site. I actually expect to have my share of failures with it and that is part of the goal! As long as I learn from these failures and enjoy the process, creating that review site is a positive experience.

And who knows it might bring in a few bucks at some point or even help someone buy the right product for his needs!

Back from vacation

Well I am back from a great vacation in Mexico well rested and more motivated than ever to get this train rolling. Wouldn't it be great to be able to have this view for more than a few weeks a year?

Well, sitting on the beach, a margarita in hand, it occurred to me that this is the type of things passive income can allow you to do. And boy was that a motivating thing!

Now don't get me wrong, I like my 9 to 5 job and don't plan on quitting tomorrow to concentrate full time on my few projects. But am I not allowed to dream a little?

So what is the goal right now? Well, at this point I still have my target of $5,000 of passive revenues for 2012. Now to reach a goal, you have to lay out a plan and that's what I'm working on right now. I am still putting some work in my first niche site and I am happy to see that it is climbing the google ranks slowly but surely.

After that I have a few more ideas of blogs and other niche site I want to start rolling out, probably sometime in December. I am not ready to discuss what these are for various reasons, but rest assured that the readers of this blog will be the first to read about it. Speaking about this blog, you will have noticed that there are ads on the right hand side and that a new Bluehost ad too. These are some simple way to try to monetize this blog (although the main goal of the blog is to chronicle my progress through this adventure, wouldn't it be nice if the blog itself could generate some passive income?).

Bluehost is the hosting service I am using for my first niche site and so far I've been pretty satisfied with it. LOVE the 1 click wordpress install! Disclaimer, these bluehost links and the banner are all affiliate link, meaning I will get a commission if any of my reader should decide to subscribe to bluehost using these links.

Now about my niche site. It's been a while since I've talked about it and even though it's in a very "work in progress" and incomplete stage, I've decided to talk a bit more about it here.

Inspired by my recent physical training and the use of my Suunto t6d (again, affiliate link, commission, thank you very much!) I've decided to start a heart rate monitor review site. If you go visit the site right now, it will seem pretty simple and light and you will most likely wonder how in hell could this empty shell generate any sort of revenues. Well, come back to it in a few days, and again in a few months and you should see much more content. The goal here is to provide useful reviews of a nice type of product and hopefully people who feel compelled to buy one of these products using a link on that site and thus generate a commission from amazon.

So, if you're in the market for a nice heart rate monitor as a Christmas gift to yourself or a loved one feel free to buy it from my review site! ;)

What have I been up to?

It's been quite a few days since my last post so I think an update is definitly due! The last few days have been really busy and all that stuff about creating passive revenue streams (and blogging!) has taken a bit of a back seat. Thing is, I went out of town for a cousin's birthday, then the mad rush began.

I am leaving on Saturday for an overdue vacation. I am going to spend a week in Mexico around Riviera Maya with a good friend of mine. In itself this should not have prevented me from working on my income streams, quite the opposite actually, it has motivated me to do more before I go for a week. Problem is, my day job has been an intense sprint to make sure I close as much stuff as I can before going away. This along with the (let's be honest) intense celebration of the last week end, has left me pretty drained.

So my niche site is currently in an incomplete mess, this blog has been left out quite a bit, and I won't be able to work on all that much next week. Well... at least I hope a nice trip report comes out of this! Oh and of course, preparing this trip brought me passive revenues ideas I might explore a bit (and blog about) when I come back.

My take on passive revenues

Generating passive revenues is a subject that has fascinated many people on the internet for quite a while and that is already discussed at length on many websites. Actually, my inspiration for starting on these projects comes in part from many of these websites! Heck the techniques I use also come from stuff that has already been written down by people who know much more about the subject than I do.

So what do I have to bring to the table by writing this blog?

I hope what can make this blog interesting is the fact that I am like you, an average Joe who still knows little about niche site, advertisement, monetizing blogs, eBooks and stuff like that. I hope that what can make this blog interesting despite the ton of information already available elsewhere is my journey as I go from zero passive income to (hopefully) making a few bucks to complement my 9 to 5 job.

Through this journey I will try to provide as much details as I can about how I go about it, the challenges I meet and my emotional ups and down as I fail and succeed.

THIS is what this blog is about and hopefully you enjoy it. If not, then all is not lost since I am already enjoying chronicling this endeavour.

Niche site progress and monetization strategy

As I said in my last post, my first niche site is finally online. Slowly the content there is starting to take shape and the site is starting to resemble a real website. Readers of this blog have probably noticed the ads on the right side and wonder if advertisements are also my strategy to generate passive income from my niche site.

I thought about it for a while and my main money making strategy there is to use affiliate links to amazon for the product my niche site is centered around (no, I will not divulge what it is, or the URL of the site just yet). I guess I still could have put ads on there too, but I felt that the ads might actually compete with my affiliate links and I'd much rather visitors click on the affiliate links than on advertisements.

In case you don't know what affiliate links are, a lot of online retailers have affiliate programs. Basically what it means is that you can register as an affiliate and start promoting any product they sell. If a sale comes from your affiliate links, you get a commission on the sale.

Pretty neat and I will discuss this in more details in a future post.

My first niche site is online!

Well... kind of. It is online but with only very limited content and I can't stay I'm completely happy with the current layout. So I still want to work on it before I start pushing it.

Time to go back to the content farm!

One more step towards my niche site

Well as of this morning, my domain is registered, my hosting is paid for the next year and the "shell" of my first niche site is there. All that's left is putting content in there and then, hopefully, it will slowly start to generate some passive revenues.

Where does that leave me now? Well, there is still a lot of work to do before this thing is actually "ready".

• I have to write content... LOTS of content for the site
• I have to register as an affiliate for reselers of the product my niche site is about
• I have to figure out the best way to display ads on my site
• I have to try and find some way to get backlinks to that site to improve my google rankings

There are probably other things I still have to do that I can't think of right now. Point is, I just made a pretty important step, but it's still just one step.

Back in town

I just came back from a week end out of town visiting family members. Spending three hours on the road with my wife was a great opportunity to discuss my various ideas for generating passive revenues as well as brainstorm with her for more ideas. She is about as thrilled with the whole idea as I am and she has quite a few leads she wants to explore too.

So where does that leave me with regards to my idea for my first niche site? I want to get it online as soon as possible. I have no illusion that my idea will be a gold mine, in fact quite the opposite. The niche that I target seem to be prett competitive, but I figure this is still something I can produce quickly and I consider going through the whole process with this idea to be a learning exercise.

I have started writting some content for this site as well as reading through a lot of information on how to set up things and try to get as much traffic on the site. Basically the plan is to get the site online, add adsense ads to it and put affiliate links and see how it goes.

Maybe I'm just being paranoid but I will wait for the thing to be online before I provide more details about the niche I'm targeting, the keywords I chose and so on. Hopefully the site is up and running in a few days!

Niche sites

There are multiple avenues possible to create passive income online. The last few days I have been reading the smart passive income blog fanatically trying to gather as much knowledge about all of this as I can. Well for now it seems that the first avenue I want to give a shot is the development of niche sites.

What is meant by niche sites is sites that discuss a niche topic and help people find resources online. How can that generate passive income?

The two main ways are:
1. Advertisement
On niche site it is pretty easy to place Google AdSense advertisement which can generate revenue per click.

2. Participating in an affiliate program
This means that you basically, on your site, provide direct links to an online reseller. In exchange for this, the reseller will give you a commission, generally a percentage of any purchase that is made by someone visiting the reseller's through the links you provide.

The trick here is that you have to find a niche that can be profitable, that is not too saturated and that you can provide content about that is relevant enough to make your page come through near the top of the google search results for your niche.

Right now I'm at a point where I have a few ideas for niche sites, but I am still a bit hesitant about spending the initial fee required to get me started. Those fees are pretty small all things considered (web hosting, good web platform... and that's pretty much it!) but I still think I could get a bit more info before getting my feet wet...

But then again, am I just stalling because I am a bit scared to go on that path?

The beginning

Where to start...

A few months ago a friend of mine talked to me about the magic of creating passive income on the web. I was a bit skeptical at first but the more I listened to him, the more everything he described made sense and the more I was curious. Well that evening went by and I left pretty fascinated with the whole idea and thinking to myself "well this is something I should look into at some point in the future".

Well that point is now. A few days ago I stumbled upon a great resource that brought that whole thing back to my mind and I've finally decided that this is it. The beginning of the passive income adventure!

I will use this blog to chronicle my journey through this, share my discoveries and maybe help others follow that path.