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I make several hundred dollars a month from affiliate programs. Just to show you how lucrative it can be, I was just checking my affiliate statistics at Amazon and saw that someone had just bought over US$200 in camping gear through an Amazon third party. None of my sites have anything to do with camping! Read more »

Investing

Wow, last year went so fast. I didn’t even have time to make summary of 2008 post like many blogs do.

I suppose the Olympics and spending 6 months in China was the high(low?)light for me in 2008. It was an unforgettable experience in so many different ways. One thing is for sure, I won’t be going back to China for a long while.

The past few months have also been fun and interesting. Two months in Thailand, a bit of time in Malaysia and the past couple of weeks in Sumatra, Indonesia. I had another bad experience in Indonesia a few days ago, losing my passport on a bus. Long story, but I manage to track it down and recover it, along with some cash and my valuable ATM/credit cards, but it was a harrowing few hours wondering if it had been stolen or if I would even be able to get it back.

At least it had made me to be me careful again for a while.

The Olympic site wasn’t so much of a success and although I love blogging and building websites, perhaps I need to sit back and have a hard think about what I am currently doing and what I want to from now. My family also miss me terribly and I have to admit that it is hard not seeing my sister’s children grow up. I also read about so many people actually wanting to move to Australia that it sometimes makes me think, maybe it is not such a bad place to live.

I have thought about running some kind of guesthouse on a nice beach in Asia, but I sometimes wonder if that would be sustainable, with constant threats of terrorism and political instability. Perhaps I should look to my home country where at least I will have full legal rights to own and run my own business.

Some of the things I have thought of doing include:

- getting a job in SEO/SEM for a company in Australia
- becoming a migration agent and leveraging my Australia Forum site to find customers
- starting my own SEO/SEM company and taking on real clients
- starting a website targeted for Australia based on successful models I have seen overseas

Or a combination of any of the above.

Of course I don’t plan on doing any of this right now, with the economy the way it is.

Making money online

The internet is full of sites with varying degrees of knowledge and expertise on a variety of topics and issues. One of these areas is the realm of relationship advice. Starting a website and generating the requisite traffic would be a cinch if you pick the right niche.

People are constantly looking for ways to improve or fix their ailing personal lives, so they look to a multitude of articles on the web for advice on how to get to the place they want to be regarding their relationships.

There are so many different angles one could take when starting a relationship advice website or blog. Here are a few suggestions for creating a successful relationship website or blog:

Relationships Gone Wrong

A site like this could focus on relationships that have gone awry. Rather than a best practices approach, the site could be humorous in nature, focusing on all the wrong moves that can be made in a relationship. Readers would more than likely see some of their mistakes in the stories on the site and learn from a more comedic approach to relationship advice.

Relationship 101

This type of site would be a sort of relationship primer, with advice on how to meet people, what is appropriate, etc. Basic rules of etiquette, advice on attracting the best possible people into your life, and scenarios fully outlined for those who are not very good at the dating scene would be the focal point of this kind of site.

Successful Relationship Stories

A completely opposite approach from the first idea, this relationship site would focus on nothing but the positive aspects of being in a relationship. Anecdotal stories and affirmations would be the main type of content posted on this page or blog. Positivity and nothing but good, heartfelt content could make a great inspirational relationship site.

Relationship Problems and Solutions

This type of relationship site would focus on common relationship problems and different options for solving these dilemmas. Topics would range from taking the relationship to the next level, commitment issues, and tougher topics like infidelity and breaking up. No stone would be left unturned on this type of relationship site.

This post was contributed by Kelly Kilpatrick, who writes on the subject of an MBA degree. She invites your feedback at kellykilpatrick24 at gmail dot com

Travel

It has been nearly a month since I posted my last entry to this blog, which is probably the longest break I have had from writing here. I suppose I felt like I needed to take a break from blogging after the Olympics. I am actually writing this from Australia, where I arrived back in Melbourne last week.

The visa problem I had was never resolved. Worse still, the agent I was dealing with disappeared and I never got my passport back. I then had to explain to Chinese immigration why I had lost my passport and overstayed my visa. It was a little nerve racking, but fortunately I got away with just paying a fine.

I spent so much time on the Olympics site, I am now at a bit of a lose end. Fortunately, my other sites don’t require too much maintenance, but continue to earn passive income from Adsense and affiliate programs.

I have been doing some thinking since the Olympics and I want to change the focus of how I make money on the internet. I learned some good lessons blogging the Olympics. I used to think building hundreds of niche websites was the way to make money, but now I believe it is better to have one or just a few solid sites that you spend 90 per cent of your time working on.

So now I am brainstorming my next project and deciding on which sites I want to keep working on and which ones I want to cull.