This Year Has Been Very Challenging For Me…

As Christmas comes around once again, I’ve been looking back on the past year and where my business has gone off track.

The year has been challenging to say the least and is my worst year ever making an income online.

Even worse than when I first started out as a full-time affiliate marketer back in 2004.

My blog-building business died a death because of the pandemic.

I’m not alone. Many businesses have been forced to shut up shop permanently because of loss of staff and/or customers.

Others have had to close their doors temporarily because of lockdown measures or because there aren’t enough customers to pay the expenses of keeping them open.

Do you know what I mean!?

So there just hasn’t been the business budgets out there to finance building blogs.

Along with that, with the huge numbers of people stuck at home or laid off, people have had a lot of free time to learn how to build blogs themselves.

So, while I haven’t shuttered my blog-building business, it’s currently dead in the water, generating zero income.

I also lost income that I’d come to rely on over time, when some passive income affiliate programs I was in, shut down.

And, all across the board, I’ve seen my online income drop month by month and I’ve had to dip into my savings to cover the bills and living expenses.

And now even those are depleted.

Maybe you’ve been there yourself?

It’s fair to say that things as they stand are just not working for me.

As I mentioned, I’ve been a full-time affiliate marketer since 2004, so I’m not new to online business or supporting myself with that business model.

But all businesses fail. Eventually.

I guess it was just my turn.

One problem is that I spread myself way too thin.

I have blogs on nearly 60 domains and that’s far too many for any one person to manage to keep them full of new, fresh relevant content.

I’ve also been spreading myself too thin in following a number of affiliate marketing courses at the same time.

Overwhelm has been setting in.

And it’s become confusing knowing what method or strategy to use and who I should “really” be following and listening to.

Does that make sense?

If I’m honest, I’ve had a measure of desperation creeping in to find something that just works and would reverse the downward spiral I’ve been in.

And I’ve been posting, mostly affiliate offers, haphazardly on a variety of social media platforms.

None with much success, it has to be said.

Aside from all that, I got distracted by my cat, Mocha (that’s a picture of him below), disappearing one day in October.

He went outside in the morning of that fateful day and never came home.

I spent a lot of time trying to find him –

? talking to neighbours
? searching the local roads for a body
? posting flyers asking people to check their sheds in case he got locked inside
? contacting vets within a 5-mile radius in case he was brought in as an accident victim
? and contacting a large number of cat rescue and cat care centres for the same reason

He simply just dropped off the face of the planet.

If you have a pet of your own, you know that they’re a member of the family and you grieve their loss when they die or go missing and are presumed dead.

So there was that to deal with too.

With all that, I’ve spent the last few days taking a step back and reassessing where I’m at and where I’ve been heading.

And there’s no doubt that it’s time I changed how I do things.

I’m 60 now – yes, officially an old fart ? – and I don’t have the luxury of being able to spend a lot of years building up a business again.

I need to build something within a couple of years.

So I’m going back to the drawing board and to keeping things simple.

? I’ve already started letting some of my domain names go – they’re simply a drain on my finances each year I renew them.
? I’m keeping the domains that domain appraisal apps say are worth more than $? as there’s a good chance I can auction them off.
? I’ll either be selling off or shuttering the vast majority of my blogs.
? I’ll keep up to 10 online with 2 or 3 being core business assets (this blog being one of them).
? I’ve already unsubscribed from a number of tools and services that I either don’t use or use very infrequently.
? I paused my Clickfunnels account as well so if you’re seeing funny behaviour on some of my sites, that’s the reason.
? I closed down my Builderall account. While it’s better value as a tool suite than Clickfunnels, I just didn’t like the user interfaces of its tools – I found them counter-intuitive to use.
? I shut my ClickMagick (link tracking) account and use this WordPress plugin for that purpose instead.

Going forward, the broad outline of what I want to achieve is:

Be able to generate a sustainable, passive income that covers the bills and gives a decent lifestyle and will provide coverage for unforseen medical expenses and such in the coming years.

I’ve become a slave to the PC and I want to get my life back while I’m still Compos Mentis enough to enjoy it!

◼️ So the idea is to start from scratch, building a new affiliate marketing business by following only one mentor – Zach Crawford.
◼️ I’ll be posting primarily on one social media platform – on Facebook – but will post the odd Tweet too.
◼️ Some profits will be reinvested into the business to acquire automation tools or perhaps a Virtual Assistant at some point to reduce my workload.
◼️ Some programs I’ll be promoting will provide passive income but, as I learned this year, this kind of income can’t be ?% relied on. Although, to be fair, this year hasn’t been a normal one by any stretch of the imagination!
◼️ The rest of the profits I’ll put into cryptocurrencies.
◼️ Some of those I’ll simply hold as their value is expected to continue to rise over time.
◼️ Others I’ll stake – this is a process where you get interest for essentially lending out your cryptocurrency either for a fixed or flexible term. The rates of return blow what your bank offers out of the water. For example, one crypto I’m currently staking is paying a 110% return per year.
◼️ And some of the profits from the business, as well as some of the profits from staking cryptos will go into other blockchain products that will provide ongoing passive income.

So, while the plan starts with affiliate marketing, I’ll eventually move the bulk of my business into cryptocurrencies.

I’ll be posting about my new journey here and over on my Cryptocurrency blog and, if you’re interested, you can follow along.

Leave a comment if you’re in a similar situation, not knowing where to turn, or what to do to get yourself out of your current bind.