Comments on: My Early Retirement Plan

By: skeptic

skeptic — Mon, 16 May 2011 17:38:37 +0000

I am weary of hearing bloggers whose essential recommendation and/or personal success to to create successful blogs. Yes, what you did is impressive. But it’s not applicable to most people, and to me it is no longer even interesting.

By: Financial Samurai

Financial Samurai — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 06:01:52 +0000

20sMoney, I hope I’m right there with you in 8-10 years! It would be great to rake in $5-10,000/month from a website.

I won’t be focusing on money for another 6 months minimum. I’m not motivated by money now, and will just have a few select advertisers.

By: Concojones

Concojones — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:18:00 +0000

@20smoney: I never would have guessed your blog brought in that much income. Google Adwords is often looked down upon as a source of income, but you seem to be doing very well. Congratulations!

@Jacob: sorry, I should have been clearer. I was talking about a blogger who used to recommend a good book every once in a while, but nowadays has an affiliate link to an Amazon book in almost every blog post. A post about elephants? You can bet he has included a link to a book about Elephants.

If I’m not mistaking you have affiliate book links too, but since it’s only 2 seemingly favourite books I suppose you’re sincere. I might get confused if you had 20 such recommendations.

@tlblack: lol! No worries, I always try the library first, for the exact reason you mentioned. The few books I own were bought AFTER having read a library copy.

By: Kevin M

Kevin M — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:31:29 +0000

Dumb question, but what happens when 20smoney (the person, not the website) hits 30? Will he lose credibility with his audience? Or is this where the staff writers come in?

By: 20smoney

20smoney — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:15:55 +0000

My view is that it takes a great deal of time to ramp up an online income stream but it is very possible to significantly decrease the amount of work required to maintain it once it reaches a certain level. Therefore, it is a very good semi-passive income source once you cross a certain threshold. By semi-passive, I mean 3-5 hours of work a week.

As for not being diversified, if you read through my plan, I still planned on having some funds in traditional investments. However, I don’t put as much faith in consistent stock returns as most. All one needs to do is look at returns over the last 10 years to see what I mean.

Part of my economic views are that American’s economic dominance is likely over and thus, guaranteed stock returns are not going to be the same moving forward as they have been looking backward 30-50 years. I discuss these theories further on my blog.

Thx for the comments and Thx Jacob for posting my retirement plan.

By: Jacob

Jacob — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:03:11 +0000

@Concojones – Technically, nobody needs to buy it from amazon. The reason I use it is because it is highly convenient to find books there. I even use amazon’s search routines to get an exact title to use for my interlibrary searches.

By: tlblack

tlblack — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:24:36 +0000

I’ve read that most spenders on blogs are one-time visitors, which I find really weird and fascinating. I guess it makes sense though–if you visit a site often, you don’t even register the adds anymore. . .

And Concojones, be careful buying books or you’ll end up with a stock pile and when you move to California, you’ll have to decide what the heck to do with them!

By: Concojones

Concojones — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:04:48 +0000

@Jacob: yeah that’s what I don’t like about bloggers recommending a book on Amazon: is it really that good, or do they think “why not mention this related book so that I might earn a few extra bucks”. There are so many books out there and I need a GOOD reason to read one.

By: Jacob

Jacob — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:48:51 +0000

@Juliet – I use adsense, adsdaq, and amazon. I give the former two a space on my blog (upper left sidebar) and they pay me to put ads there. The latter one I get a cut if someone clicks on a link to amazon and buys something there. Obviously, this can lead to all kinds of conflicts of interest. For instance, am I advertising/talking about something merely to get people to buy it or click on it?

By: Juliet

Juliet — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:38:52 +0000

How do you make money from a blog? Do you use adsense? I thought all that stuff is kinda scamy.

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 14:03:00 +0000

I agree with you Jacob. Online income streams would be a fantastic way to early retire in theory, but in practice they really do seem to involve a lot of time and effort. (4-Hour Work Week aside) I once figured out that I could make a living playing online poker. The only problem would be I would have to play online poker all day.

By: Jacob

Jacob — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:27:10 +0000

@George – I think it could be said if I had the same people post regularly. I think the danger of that is the original reason for reading the blog might go away. For instance, I used to read GRS because of JD’s writing. Now that GRS is full of staff writers I hardly ever go there anymore. And if I like the writing of one of the staff, I might as well unsubscribe from GRS and go directly to the source blog. The main problem here is that if you want to build a blog based on great guest writers, the staff/guests will probably discover that they can be better off striking out on their own. The only way I would see this working is a concept like wisebread where income is shared. Of course this means that it is hardly passive anymore.

By: Blogging Banks

Blogging Banks — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:22:29 +0000

It’s great having an online income. The problem with 20s money is that he/she is not diversified. If 20smoney decided to retire after their website started producing 8K/month they are simply relying on one source of income. A much smarter way would be to invest earings in off-line activities such as stocks, bonds, real estate..

By: George

George — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:20:52 +0000

@Jacob – In one sense, by having guest posts, you’re reducing that sustained effort. It could even be said that you’re an employer!

By: Jacob

Jacob — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:59:59 +0000

I’m definitely in favor of diversifying income streams in the same way everybody keeps harping about stock diversification. A lot of small streams are better than one big stream in terms of resilience.

My main concern with online income is that it seems to need a sustained effort. If I stop writing for instance or even cut back it has fairly serious implications for my traffic. It pretty much takes 3 months to build it back to the previous levels.