A Simple Life of Luxury

One of the objectives of deciding to live here in West Wales, away rom the rat-race, was to eliminate as much stress as possible and live a relatively simple life without too many worries. Has it worked??

Well, most of the time I would say it has, but nothing is ever quite that straight-forward. We would like to say that we don’t have any financial worries and in general we don’t. We could always do with more money as we don’t have much, but our only debt is the mortgage (and my student loan, but I don’t earn enough to have to pay that back at the moment). We tend to live fairly well within our means, but we do still of course have to pay the mortgage, the bills and put food on the table. Thankfully Anna has a fairly secure job so there should always be some income from that. She has however taken quite a pay drop since going back to work after Morgan was born (that is another story entirely), the result of which is that my income is now an important part of the money we need to survive each month. As a self-employed freelance website designer my income can be extremely variable from month to month and I can never be sure of where my next pay cheque is coming from. This obviously does introduce some stress into the equation, but so far our frugal lifestyle means that financial worries have been minimal.

Occassionally my job itslef can be quite stressful too. There can be deadlines to meet, I try to set these myself but sometimes there are things that people need done immediately. There is also a lot of responsibility involved in building and maintaining peoples websites. Sometimes this responsibility gets to me and work can be quite stressful. I think in a way I am guilty of being too conscientious to the extent that even the smallest of problems become a major thing for me. Working on my own means that I can’t ‘pass the buck’ or even get support and advice from a colleague.

Invariably the things that get me stressed turn out to be nothing and I soon get them sorted, but I think I’m becoming a bit of a worrier. My conscientious nature forces me to think through all the potential problems before they occur. This should be a good thing as I can then prevent any problems, but for some reason simply thinking about them ends up with me worrying about them. I’m inventing stressful situations in my head and worrying about them. This needs to stop, there really isn’t any need, and it isn’t doing me or anyone else any good.

A stress-free life by the sea? Well, life could be MUCH more stressful and the worries could be real, but it could be less stressful too if only I stopped inventing things to worry about.

One of the ingredients that allows me to live what I consider the ideal lifestyle here in West Wales is the fact that I have set myself up as a self-employed freelance website designer.

In theory this should provide me with complete control over my work / life time balance. I have a fair bit of control over the timescales I give to various projects for clients and as long as I meet any deadlines I have stipulated then I can work whichever hours of the day I prefer.

In practise things aren’t quite a perfect as they would seem; meetings need to be arranged with clients, phone-calls need to be made and answered and each new appointment reduces the flexibility I had. These are minor points however and in general I am my own boss and can choose when to work and when to play.

There are of course other downsides to freelance website design work. As a freelancer I have to do everything to keep the business successful. As well as being the website designer I am also the accountant, marketing staff, salesman, support team, technical staff, receptionist etc etc. In one way this is a good thing as I know everything that is happening and have complete control. In another it’s a bad thing as it takes up lots of time that could be spent building websites and earning money. On top of which I’m not really cut out to be a salesman so that particular task isn’t really an effiicient use of my time.

Another constant worry of being a freelance website designer is the lack of job security. Obviously I’m not going to get laid off, but I never know where my next contract is coming from. At the moment things are looking good, I have a few projects on the boil, a couple simmering in the background and one or two where I am getting the ingredients in place to make a start. But after that who knows what will happen? Hopefully there will be more projects to work on, if not I shall have to put my salesman hat on and get out there to find some new projects.

All in all being a freelance web designer allows me to have the flexibility in my life that I need and helps me pay the bills. It doesn’t make me rich, it can be hard work at times and there are times when it can be a little stressful. But for me, it is the best balance I can get and does provide lots of job satisfaction.

Since Feb 2005 I have been experimenting with making a little income from websites. Not by working on them and building them for people which is one of my ‘proper’ sources of income, but by actually building sites for myself that then generate an income.

Now, before you get excited, I’m not making loads, in fact the sites are only just paying their way, but I thought I’d tell you about them as there is certainly potential in the techniques. In fact, quite a few people are making small fortunes using these techniques and a small minority are making HUGE fortunes from it.

At the end of the day the techniques really all boil down to placing advertisements on your website, but there are several different ways to go about this. The two I have been using are affiliate assoications and Pay Per Click Advertising. I have also in the past few days started using a new scheme which is in effect a combination of the two.

Affiliate Associations
There are lots of online businesses offering affiliate associations that you can sign up to. Once signed up you can place links to products offered by these businesses on your website and if people click on the link and subsequently buy the product you can earn some commission from the sale. One of the first companies to use this marketing technique and one of the most successful affiliate programs is that offered by Amazon. The box to the left is an example of just one of the links that the Amazon Affiliate program can serve. As you can see, you can link to individual products as a way of recommending them to your websites visitors, or you can add automatically generated links to your site that Amazon update with bestsellers, new releases etc. If a visitor to your site clicks on this link and then buys a product from Amazon you will earn commission for referring them to Amazon. Commission rates vary from around 4% to 7.5%.

I have tried taking this a step further by setting up online ‘affiliate stores’ such as ‘Web Design Books’. This website uses a set of scripts to obtain product information direct from the Amazon database and present it in the form of affiliate links arranged by category within an online store. The advantage of using such a script is that the information is kept up to date with the Amazon database so once set up the store is in effect maintenance free… You should be able to just sit back and watch the money roll in. Of course, it isn’t quite that easy. In order to make any money from it you really must put a lot of time and effort into promoting your new web affiliate store. Without any visitors you aren’t going to make any commission, and this is where the hard work comes in. Those people that have the time and expertise to promote their affiliate store can and do make a decent living from them. Unfortunately I don’t have the time to invest in such promotion so my store sits there making the odd sell now and then… Maybe one day I’ll have some time to make more of the site.

There are plenty of other affiliate schemes, I have set up an affiliate website selling website templates, which again makes the odd sell now and then. Click here if you want to sell website templates yourself. There are also sites that allow you to set up affiliate associations with large numbers of affiliate schemes and manage them all from one centralised location (I have tried this but have as yet made nothing from it).

Overall affiliate schemes can and do work, but in order to make any money from them you have to actually generate sales through your website.

Pay Per Click Advertising
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertsing is similar to affiliate schemes as you place adverts on your website, but you get paid everytime someone clicks on the advert regardless of whether they subsequently buy something. The grand-daddy of all PPC schemes at the moment is Google Adsense. The beauty of this scheme is that it is context-sensitive. As a web master all you have to do is place some code from Google on your website and it will automatically work out what the topic of that page is and serve relevant adverts to your web-page. Hopefully these adverts will be of interest to your website’s visitors and they will click on them earning you a small revenue each time they do. The amount you actually earn depends upon the advert and how much the advertiser has bid to get their advert to the top of the list.

I have implemented Google Adsense adverts on my Windsurfing, kitesurfing and surfing website and after a slow start and some tweaking with the positioning they do generate a little bit of income each day. Certainly not enough to make much difference to my annual income from real work, but they at least cover the cost of hosting for the website which was before costing me a fair bit to run.

Of course, if you have an extremely popular website or lots of them, then there is no reason why contextual adverts such as those offered by the Google Adsense program shouldn’t generate you a nice little income.

Interactive Merchandising
I’ve recently started experimenting with a system provided by Chitika called eMiniMalls. These are in effect a combination between Affiliate Marketing and PPC marketing. This system can be contextual in the same way as Google Adsense adverts or can be based on your own set if keywords. (Note: Adsense terms and conditions state that you can’t use other contextual adverts on the same page so if used in conjunction with Adsense, Chitika ‘eMiniMalls’ must be set up in non-contextual mode). The example to above shows a Chitika eMiniMall which should be showing a product along with the description of the product and the best deals for places to buy that product. Revenue is earned on a pay-per-click basis.

So far success with these has been limited, but I think that is because all the products and best deals are American based with prices in US Dollars, whereas the sites I have placed them on are UK biased.

Overall, it is definitely possible to make money from your websites. A popular site should bring in a steady trickle of cash and maybe pay for the hosting and domain name. But, with a little bit of effort, several websites and lots of promotion to bring traffic to your sites you could make a living out of it…. I’m still a VERY VERY long way off that and shall for the time being at least have to continue to work in order to keep the wolf from the door. But who knows, the income I do make from them may one day at least go someway to helping my family lead a ’simple life of luxury’.

It isn’t very often that there is any showbiz news emanating from the Aberystwyth area. We do have a few famous people living around here, but most have come here to get away from the limelight and therefore tend not to generate any news stories. However, the front page of yesterdays Cambrian News ran with the following story:

Scorpions star is declared bankrupt

A World-famous rock guitarist who lives near Aberystwyth has been made bankrupt. German-born Uli Jon Roth enjoyed massive success in the early nineties with his band The Scorpions with their anthemic tune Wind of Change. Ulrich Hans Joachim Anton Josef Roth, appeared before a district judge in Aberystwyth County Court recently where he was made bankrupt. Mr Roth has lived in Tanybwlch for around 10 years at Tanybwlch Manor in Rhydyfelin and has enjoyed a successful career spanning four decades. Despite moving to Tanybwlch , Mr Roth is still involved in the music scene and is currently away in Germany, touring with The Scorpions. Last month the band played to a sell-out 8,000 gig in France. He moved to Tanybwlch Manor, originally built as a hospice, in the mid-nineties when he bought it off Coleg Ceredigion who used it as a catering college. Mr Roth was unavailable for comment as he is currently on tour.

Not the most significant of news stories in the grand scheme of things, but one of quite a bit of significance to me as I have been working for Uli Jon Roth at his mansion for the past 6 or 7 years, so news of his bankrupcy will inevitably lead to the loss of some work for me. Fortunately I had been fore-warned of this and had been cutting down my hours there anyway, so hopefully when I finally stop working at Plas Tanybwlch the loss of income won’t be too devastating. As for the future of Uli Jon Roth and his family, only time will tell, but he has plenty of faith in himself and his destiny so I’m sure he will find success, hapiness and wealth once again.