Answering your questions. A mailbag Friday

First off, thanks to everyone who either commented below or emailed me questions for my last post.  I decided to answer a few of the questions all in this post…

Give us a detailed look at the 3-4 hours you work a day

• This is kind of tough to do, but Ill give it a shot.  Here’s some examples of what I did this week.  Monday was cleanup day for me.  I wanted to redirect all my affiliate links on my sites, so I could change them all from one location.  I got this done for my blog.  I also wanted to work on backing up my blogs and backing up my laptop in general.  I didnt get either of these done.  I worked on filing away some stuff for tax records.  I printed out expeneses and revenue sheets and put them away.  Still not finished with this.
• On Tuesday I began working on a new article, which is a case study type article.  It has taken me about 4-5 hours thus far just to do the research on it.  This is for one of my blogs
• On Wednesday I worked with my partner on ideas for the new poker site were developing.  I’m putting together ways to promote it, as well as what needs to be on every page.  It’s a bitch to say the least.
• On Thursday I wrote some articles for my MMA blog, and added content to the site.

I really dont have a set schedule as to what I want to do.  I have stuff that needs updated regularly.  So if that needs to be done, I do that first.  I spend too much time checking stats and chasing around people who are helping me on projects.  If you ever find a good programmer and a good designer, don’t let them go.  Ever…..

Outsourcing, do I do it? 

• I outsource anything that has to do with programming and design.  I don’t outsource much writing yet, because my main writing is for my MMA site, and I seriously just love writing about it, so I do it on my own.   Eventually when I have 2-3 more sites, I will look into outsourcing my content as well.  I know a lot of the bigger sites outsource more and more of their stuff everyday.

Social life outside of affiliating 

• This is the main reason I do this job.  I don’t want my life to be defined by my job.  I like having time to go out, hang with my gf, hang with friends etc….  Each day I’m usually at the gym around noon,  then I work for a few hours and then I go to my kickboxing/Muay Thai class 3 nights a week.  I cut back on my drinking a lot in the past 2 months or so, and I think it’s showing in my work ethic.  This summer I was ridiculous.  I was out 6-7 nights a week and drinking with everyone I knew.  All of my friends would call me to go out cause they knew I didn’t have to get up the next day for a job, so I wound up at the bar a lot.  Lately though, Im just kind of sick of feeling like shit when I wake up, and if Im at the gym in the morning I can’t be hungover or else I’ll be worthless.

What surprised you most about your first conference? 

• The amount of dorks in the publishing business.  All the guys I met from the PAW site were pretty cool, so this doesn’t include them.  But I think this is probably half the reason I’m skeptical about going to PubCon’s or SMX events.  I don’t know why it didn’t hit me before I went to the conference but I was just assuming most of the people there would be similar to me.  Yeh, bad thinking on that one.  I can’t even imagine how bad it is at a PubCon type show.  I’d prolly throw up if I saw John Chow‘s cult tailing him around the conference.  You couldn’t pay me enough money to hang out with that guy for a day.  His ratio of friends to RSS readers is probably 1 : 12,000.

What was it like the day I realized I was going to do this full time?

• I wish I had a real cool story about me quitting a job and embarking on this great adventure, but I don’t.  I graduated last March from college and really had no clue what I was going to do.  I wanted to do this for a living, but I didn’t have a good site or anything going at the time.  I remember just doing article marketing and press release stuff for the first month, and some players started rolling in.  I was thinking that if I could make like $1500 a month at first I wouldn’t have to get a job, cause that would cover my necessary expenses.  I was always willing to grab a job bartending if I couldn’t make $1500 in the first month…  I was very lucky in the sense that I didn’t have student loans or any big bills to pay because my parents paid for the majority of my college.

• I remember the hardest part was explaining what I was doing now for a job.  I felt awkward telling people I was making a living doing this, cause really I was just scraping by and I think I even lost like 1-2k the first month cause I didn’t make anything.  It still feels weird talking about this job to people, because there’s really no general figure for the amount of money you make.  Unlike being a lawyer or a nurse, where people have some semblance of your earnings, there’s just too many unknowns in web publishing.  It really gets mixed reactions from people.

Anything you don’t like about your job?

• I get sick of people telling me “I’m so lucky to have a job like this”.  Whatever man.  No one handed this thing to me.  I worked for about 2 years doing this and made mistakes left and right until stuff finally started clicking with me.  I was dropping 30 hours a week or so on my Columbus Poker site, while I was in school to make a measly $500 a month for literally about 20 months.  When my friends were watching reruns of Laguna Beach all night, I was reading books and learning about what I needed to do to be successful in this business.  I’m no where near where I want to be, so I really don’t see my self as successful yet, but I’ll be there soon.

Is there any difficulties of being young in publishing?

• No.  I think its actually better to be young.  I don’t have a wife, kids or a house.  I still haven’t upgraded my car or apartment.  I drive a 98 Ranger and pay $250 for rent.  I really don’t have much to lose.  I can take a lot more chances than guys who are supporting a family on their income.  I think the only downside to being young is I have less capital saved up to put towards projects.

I’ll touch on some of the other topics in future posts.  Have a good weekend!