My $2000+ Return On Investment

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What do you think of when you hear the word “investment?”

Per­haps you think of stocks, banks, debt, money, or prof­its when finan­cial words like “invest­ment” are used.  For many blog­gers and web entre­pre­neurs the word is some­what intimidating.

I know for myself, until recently, I have never invested any money into blog­ging or work­ing online.  I learned through a won­der­ful exper­i­ment I am about to explain why invest­ment can be a beau­ti­ful word to bloggers.

My Big Blog­ging Investment

I’ve had a no risk approach to blog­ging for the last 3 years.  Its worked won­ders for me! I put noth­ing but time into my blog and get noth­ing but lost time out of it!

You see I am earn­ing on my blogs but the amount isn’t any­thing to be proud of.  The rea­son why is because I don’t have enough time to make my blog­ging highly prof­itable yet.  If I want to move closer to becom­ing a full-time blog­ger, which I do, then I need to learn how to make more money on the time that I have.

Right now I can’t invest much more time than I already do which is about 10 – 15 hours a week.  With that much time allot­ted to respond­ing to emails, tweets, stum­bles, and com­ments plus writ­ing new posts and pro­mot­ing my blogs there isn’t much time to focus on mon­e­tiz­ing.  This is where the exper­i­ment begins…

My First Major Purchase

Okay so I have made small pur­chases before many times like web host­ing and domain names but never a major pur­chase over $100.  I have been want­ing Adobe’s Pho­to­shop for years now [if you click on the link you will be get­ting a sweet soft­ware pack­age I love using] and so I finally decided to bite the bul­let and get it.  Here is my reasoning:

If you want to make money then you have to know when to spend money smartly.  With the The­sis skills I have gained and the time I already invest in work­ing with images I new it was time to pur­chase a high-quality imag­ing soft­ware pack­age.  Up to my pur­chase I had been using Gimp, which is the best free soft­ware avail­able, but does not com­pare to Pho­to­shop.

Buy­ing the pack­age was the best thing I have done in a long time.  It cost me… $238 for the stu­dent pack­age which included Adobe InDe­sign, Illus­tra­tor, and the lat­est Acro­bat pro­gram as well.  For not that much I got a whole lot of qual­ity soft­ware.  Here’s how it paid off.

My Big Payoff

After two weeks of using Pho­to­shop and my pre­vi­ous skills at design/Thesis Theme I have made a lit­tle over $2,000.  I would say that it is an invest­ment worth making!

You see too often we have some­thing that will take us to the next level but we con­tinue to fail at decid­ing to invest in it.  I don’t just mean money either.  It can be time, skill devel­op­ment, or rela­tion­ships and networking.

Invest­ing in your blog­ging means plan­ning and work­ing towards a real­is­tic goal.  It also includes putting the resources into doing what will help you to ful­fill your dreams and reach your goals.  Spend­ing $238 made me… $2000+

This is my story but what is yours?  What can you invest in to dra­mat­i­cally change your blog­ging dreams into reality?

Ques­tions to Ask Yourself

Now that you have heard my story start think­ing about yours.  The key is to first ask your­self some impor­tant ques­tions. I did not just up and buy some­thing that I con­sider to be expen­sive on a student’s bud­get.  I researched it all out first and found the best deal and new exactly what I was going to do with it.

Like­wise what worked for me might not be the best for you.. I don’t know but you do.  Ask your­self these ques­tions and you will get a lit­tle bit closer to find­ing out what will help you get to the next level:

1. What goals do I have for Blogging?
2. How do I want to earn money?
3. Do I have any skills for pro­vid­ing ser­vices or prod­ucts in any niche?
4. Are there any prod­ucts that would dras­ti­cally improve my performance?
5. What is my prin­ci­ple idea for monetization?
6. Do I need to invest money, time, or talent?
7. Is there some­thing I should learn first?
8. Is this the right time to invest?

Now I don’t want to be blamed for encour­ag­ing any­one to rush off to any make money fast scam, I just want you to think about legit­i­mate ways you can increase your earn­ings and reach your goals faster.

For some peo­ple they might real­ize they need to invest in get­ting them­selves a cus­tom design for their blog.  Maybe for you its get­ting a con­tent writer to post once a day to increase your con­tent.  Per­haps you should hire an SEO expert.  Maybe its just that you should spend more time learn­ing how to do those things yourself.

What­ever it is find out what you are miss­ing out on and get doing it.  The sooner you start invest­ing in ways that will dra­mat­i­cally improve your blog­ging the sooner you will get a won­der­ful return on your investment!

Prod­ucts and Tools You Might Need

Now I am list­ing some prod­ucts and tools below that you might need.  Not every­one will need them all though and some peo­ple might not be ready for any of them.  They are affil­i­ate links too, so know that if you do buy from the links you would be ben­e­fit­ing Blogussion.

The key with get­ting tools or prod­ucts is know­ing what you are going to use them for.  I will try and give a brief expla­na­tion for when and who should use prod­ucts like these:

Problog­ger Book

Dar­ren Rowse is the most famous blog­ger who blogs about how to blog bet­ter.  His blog is excel­lent and his book is a must have for new to inter­me­di­ate blog­gers.  The book out­lines the essen­tials of start­ing a blog, build­ing a brand and pro­mot­ing your blog to mon­e­ti­za­tion meth­ods too.  Maybe you just need more knowl­edge to get your­self to the next level. - Buy Problog­ger Book

WP Affil­i­ate Ninja

If you are a seri­ous affil­i­ate blog­ger [some­one who sells prod­ucts via affil­i­ate links] then you have to have MaxBlogPress’s very easy to use and highly func­tional Affil­i­ate Ninja plug-in.  The way it works is you input what affil­i­ate prod­ucts and links you want to use for cer­tain key­words you choose.  When a reader comes to your site the plug-in auto­mat­i­cally inserts the affil­i­ate links into your blog’s post on rel­e­vant key­words.  To avoid being spammy you can set the limit for links as well as a num­ber of other essen­tial tools for inter­net mar­keters. — Affil­i­ate Ninja

Adobe Pho­to­shop

Pho­to­shop is not only a must have for any­one who calls them­selves a designer but also for blog­gers too!  Adding your own cus­tom images to your blog posts is easy and fast with Pho­to­shop.  Over time and with the help of some fan­tas­tic tuto­ri­als [like PSDTUTS] you can design your own blog very quickly.  — Buy Pho­to­shop

Remem­ber: Don’t Be Afraid to Invest… it might pay off!

Con­test Rules

Its easy to enter to win Smash­ing Magazine’s “Smash­ing Book” — all you have to do is fol­low the rules below!  The con­test will end on Sun­day Decem­ber 20^th, 2009 at Midnight.

1. Com­ment on this post below [no spam com­ments will count]

2. Tweet this: @Blogussion is giv­ing away a free copy of “The Smash­ing Book”, leave a com­ment to enter… http://ow.ly/Ne7P

The Win­ner will be con­tacted via email.

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