Case Study: How we made a 237% ROI on one Authority Site
Why building an authority site is one of the best investments I’ve made.
How does one go about making money online? Or alternatively, what are the best investments one can make in online businesses?
I was recently surprised by my own answers to these questions. As one of the most basic ways to make money online, it didn’t occur to me until I saw the numbers that I was getting a 237% return on money invested (ROI) in building an authority site.
In other words, for ever $1 we spent on content in 2015 we made $3.37 back.You can get an idea of what this growth looks like from our internal dashboard above.
The rest of this post is about how this is possible, and how you can learn how to do the same.
7 Key Lessons From Business Building in 2015
Or, what happened to SpartanTraveler last year.
Editor’s Note: Many thanks to all those who encouraged me to get back to writing. 2015 was a bit of a grind, but the good news is I’ve got plenty to share from the experience.
Fear not, trusty readers, SpartanTraveler is alive and well.
But getting somewhere in life is about making hard choices, and the reality in 2015 was simple: focus or die.
Because when you do everything you do nothing.
‘Like the sculptor, who does not add clay, but strips away the inessentials until the truth is revealed.’
– Bruce Lee character from Dragon
I’ve always thrived at the breaking point of manageable activity. That place where positive stress forces focus and serious action. Where the goals and the necessity for completing them are immediately clear.
As a result, I always assumed as life went I’d continue to be doing more. More traveling, more and different types of adventures, and more varieties of work. Continue reading >>
The 6 Phases of Lifestyle Design
You quit your job. You buy a plane ticket. You leave to travel around the world. Then you figure out a way to make some money.
Most people go through a predictable series of steps on the road to a location-independent lifestyle. While the six phases listed here aren’t definitive or exactly linear, they sum up the lifestyle progression I’ve seen from dozens of travelers and veteran laptop nomads.Continue reading >>
Lifestyle-Overhead: Why Chiang Mai is Ground Zero
Some things we value: simplicity, focus, quality of life.
There are numerous reasons to ‘retire’ in SE Asia, including low-cost of living and high quality of life. But for laptop nomads, the goal is to minimize unnecessary overhead and and maximize time spent on things we care about.
Which is why SE Asia in general, or Chiang Mai in particular, is digital-nomad central. Old news to the veterans, but for everyone else, here’s one example of a place with virtually no penalty for being there.Continue reading >>
Location-Independence: Musings from My 3rd Year on the Road
What if home was everywhere?
After more than two years on the road it finally sunk in: location-independence is not an aberration. Moving around the world at will is a perfectly valid and (extremely) advantageous lifestyle choice, but ultimately just another way to navigate through life.
It has, however, warped my notion of reality over the last 6 months. Continue reading >>
22 Things I’ve Learned as a Digital Nomad
Digital Nomad: individuals that leverage digital technologies to perform their work duties and more generally conduct their lifestyle in a nomadic manner….
Over 2 years have passed since I quit my job.
Despite the image of me sipping Mai-tais on the beach somewhere (which can happen), there’s a big discrepancy between what my friends think I’m doing and what I’m actually doing. I write this overlooking the stunning crystal-blue water of the bay in Kuta, Lombok, but there’s a difference between me and every other traveler here:
I’ve been working on my laptop for 5 straight hours.Continue reading >>
4 Gmail Hacks to Dominate your Inbox and Cure Email Addiction
Update: Revised on 2/7/15 from 3 hacks to 4 hacks!
If you check your email every 5 minutes, I’ve got news for you: this not the best way to get things done, and it may be adding a lot of needless working hours to your day.
Unless your primary responsibility is “respond to any and all email,” or there’s a mission critical contract out that needs to get signed, or your project management solution has completely failed and there is absolutely no other way to get a hold of you, I would suggest another approach.
Email is, after all, asynchronous communication. It’s not a chatroom, it’s not a project management tool, and it won’t substitute for talking to someone on the phone or in person. It can also wreak havoc on brain-intensive tasks (28% of your time could be wasted by interruption).
Like any tool, there are efficient and not so efficient ways to use email. Here are a few game-changing productivity hacks, some I’ve been doing for years and a couple game-changers I’ve implemented just recently:
The Less Romantic Side of Geo-Arbitrage
Or how working in paradise can really suck.
[The porch out front in Bingin, Bali. As if I’m actually going to get any work done here…]
I was in the deepest of sleeps. My dream put me somewhere in the mountains, walking down into a beautiful valley with the wind lightly rustling my hair. The rustling got a little stronger until–wait a minute…
I opened my eyes in time to see a giant rat sprint to the edge of the bed and then leap off into space like a possessed flying squirrel.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
Everyone within 50km must have heard as I bolted out of bed and ran around the compound screaming bloody murder. When my roommate figured out what happened he nearly choked to death from his own laughter.
This is about when the glamour of my lifestyle really started to fade.Continue reading >>