A new project

May 22, 2012 by

A new project

One thing that I have learned as I have started pursuing online passive income is that the learning curve is steeper than I thought. I have always considered myself decently savvy with a computer, but the WordPress website development has not been an easy undertaking for me. There is tons of new lingo, abbreviations and things to learn. Although I love the beautiful themes from Nick Roach over at Elegant Themes, it has still been a whole new world to learn how to get one up on my hosting platform and with the correct information inserted.

So to practice my skills, I started with something pretty simple. My mom, Kathleen Day, has recently published a wonderful children’s book called The Sweet Song of Rainbow Bird. I offered to help her set up a website to promote the book. It is still in its early phases, but here is the link — The Sweet Song of Rainbow Bird.

I used the Sky Theme from Elegant Themes. (They have pages of gorgeous themes like this that you can access for only $39 per year!) So far I have only set up the landing page and the About the Author Page. Everything seems to take longer that I would hope, but I am learning and I am happy with the results. Check out the cute drawings — my mom did those all too!

For the picture above, I played with Photoshop. I am sure many of you are much more adept at Photoshop than I am, but I had a good time. Photoshop also seems to have a steep learning curve — I don’t find it at all intuitive. One of the books that I have really relied on as I have tried to learn Photoshop is Scott Kelby’s book on Photshop CS5. It has some great projects to walk through with my own photos.

If you haven’t picked up the full Photoshop because of the price barrier (currently over $600 on Amazon,) consider whether you may qualify for a student or educator discount. This is how I purchased my copy last year. Adobe has a really generous program in which you can qualify to buy one of their premium products per year at a discounted price. You can qualify if you are enrolled as a full-time student or an educator. Because we homeschool, we can each (parents and kids) qualify for one product a year. You can still buy off of Amazon (make sure you select the Student and Teacher version) and then you have to submit proof to Adobe. It is all done online and only took a couple of days to receive the codes to unlock the program. Right now the discounted version is only $241 on Amazon! Check out the Adobe website for details. I also used this program to buy a discounted version of Adobe Lightroom, which I really like.

So, although the Rainbow Bird website is not a way for me to make passive income, it’s a great way to support my mom and increase my skills. I hope you will go check it out and let me know your thoughts…

 

 

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I made it through tax season!

Apr 27, 2012 by

I am not sure why I thought I could make work through tax season and start a passive income blog!  Lesson learned… I had some great growth in my CPA practice this year, so it is a blessing that I was so busy.

But I am excited about online passive income and looking forward to getting back into my research mode. Of course, I want to move beyond research and start earning some money!

One of my greatest challenges in starting up this blog has been learning the technical information needed to publish the blog. I know, there are lots of easy ways to start publishing online. But for me learning how to do it right has taken some time. One of the early decisions that I made was publish on the WordPress platform. Everything that I researched indicated that WordPress was a really solid platform and could be tackled by a newbie.

There are tons of free WordPress themes for websites, which is a great benefit of choosing WordPress. However, I wanted something a little slicker and more professional for this blog and any other niche sites that I start up. I was turned on to Elegant Themes and blown away by the quality and diversity of the website templates available there. This blog is currently published using the Magnificent theme, but there were so many beautiful ones to choose from. I like that there are themes for different kinds of blogs and needs. If I was starting a photography blog, I would definitely choose the DeepFocus theme. A subscription to Elegant Themes is only $39 per year, which gives you access to dozens of great themes. It seems like a good deal even for one blog, but if you are considering setting up multiple blogs and/or micro sites, it becomes a great deal!

Downloading the theme to WordPress was pretty easy, once I had figured out how to access my WordPress dashboard. I hope to publish an in-depth post about starting a WordPress blog.  Although Pat Flynn at smartpassiveincome.com has a killer video of registering a site and installing WordPress in under 4 minutes, that sure wasn’t his first attempt and it took me a lot longer than 4 minutes!

So, if you are thinking of starting up a WordPress blog or website (most of the themes can function in either format,) go check out Elegant Themes. Leave me a comment letting me know which one is your favorite….

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So much to do, so little time…

Mar 7, 2012 by

If anyone is following along so far, you can see that I haven’t posted in awhile. I am learning and thinking and planning my online business, but time is pretty limited. This is my busy time preparing taxes in my off-line CPA business, so a lot of my time is going there.

I have also started dabbling a bit in writing at InfoBarrel.com. Several of the online passive income blogs that I read suggested InfoBarrel.com as a great place to get started online. InfoBarrel is a revenue sharing writing site. You publish high quality content on the topic of your choice. You receive a percentage of Google AdSense income generated from your articles.

Here are a couple of reasons that InfoBarrel is a good starting point:

  • It doesn’t take a lot of effort to get started. Sign up for a new account and start writing. After you publish your first article, you will need to apply for a Google Adsense publisher ID in order to actually capture the income from your articles.
  • It is a good place to learn about SEO keywords. I have found the keyword issue to be of great importance in online passive income generation and you really need to know how it works. It is sure easier to test out your keyword research on a couple of easy to write articles than on an entire website.
  • It doesn’t take any money to get started. It is a nice way to dip your toe into the online passive income arena without investing in domain names, hosting packages and marketing tools.
  • The income is residual. Once your article is up, you have the opportunity to earn from it for years to come.
  • InfoBarrel has a great users forum.  The people are friendly, encouraging and really helpful, even to new writers.

I plan to post further information about writing for InfoBarrel. If you would like to get started now, click here. Writers can earn Adsense income from writers whom they have referred. Although most people who join don’t ever even write an article, there are writers on InfoBarrel who are making hundreds and even thousands of dollars per month from their articles. I aim to join their ranks, so why don’t you join me?

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The Adventure Begins….

Feb 5, 2012 by

This is the beginning of a new adventure for me.  While playing around online, I became intrigued with the idea of building online revenue sources that could provide a passive income stream for my family.

I am a researcher and data girl at heart (yes, that would explain the CPA career) and have spent the last few weeks filling my mind with articles, podcasts and websites on the topic of making money online.  At times it feels overwhelming.  There are crazy new acronyms – SEO, LSI – and lots of talk on building websites.  Well, I have never built a blog, let alone a website, before, so the idea of building dozens of them is daunting.  But I am trusting that if I keep learning and approach each topic systematically that I will soon have a huge new body of knowledge about things like keyword optimization and backlinking.

I invite anyone and everyone to play along with me.  My goal is to always be transparent, to share my mistakes as well as my wins and to watch my knowledge and my bank account grow!  This is not a zero sum game, so come along with me, learn as I learn and let’s make some money online!

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