Josh Buckley Internet Entrepreneur

At the start of each year, i like to reflect on what i have accomplished mentally, physically and financially. In this business, financial improvement can be seen as the most important. In other words, be more wealthy than the previous year. Now, this can be liquid or assets. Having more of either will result in you being more wealthy.

This is one thing that I know i have done very well in 2007. In my bank I have roughly 15x the amount I did exactly one year ago. That’s a pretty massive jump! Whilst, I am pretty sure I won’t leave 2008 with 1,500% of improvement (it would make me a millionaire) it definitely is a very motivating thing to watch your wealth grow. Really, in 2008 i would be happy with a 100% increase of my personal wealth. Whilst that would mean me making the same as i did in the previous year, it shows that i can sustain my income. I’m not saying that i am aiming to earn the same, I will strive to get as close to that 1500% as possible! But, i will not be disappointed one bit if i don’t come close to this at all.

I have placed the majority of my discretional earnings of 2008 into a savings account. Being fortunate enough to get nearly 7% interest on the money in this bank each year, I definitely get motivated to put this money away. It’s definitely tough to put your hard-earned (in some cases, “easy-earned”) cash into a bank, where it shows up as a figure. However, it is a neccesary step towards achieving financial freedom.

Here are some quick tips for saving money that i have found successful:

• Don’t think too deeply into the money - Consider this, you just sold a website for $100,000. You have so many choices! What will do you with this money? Well, first you should obviously treat yourself. You worked hard to earn that, and you should definitely let yourself know that you appreciate it. But, you don’t want to see that money all go down the drain. You want to see it multiply, make that money work for you. Otherwise you will most probably end up back in square one.
  So, by not even thinking of it as money - you will easily be able to deposit it into the bank. As hard as it sounds, there are ways of helping yourself and it will help yourself in the future. One good way that i find helps is not to have the money in the form of cash at all. I know that i would end up spending the money if i had it in cash with me. It’s just sitting there, asking to pay for something. Keep it as a number in your bank, keep away the temptation.
• Act quickly - the longer your money is sitting around, not in the bank, the longer the temptation is there and you are not earning interest on the money. Just take that small move of sending the money into your savings account.Then, watch the money work for you.
• Imagine the possibilities! - Calculate how much the money will earn you in compound interest once it has been in your savings account. This is a great way to calculate how much money it will make you and a great reason to deposit money.

Many people will say that there are better forms of making your money work for you than depositing it in the bank. And, i couldn’t agree more. There are ways which have a chance of giving you a significantly larger return on your money. Such as the stock market, or investing into a company, which i have started to try. However, these carry a large amount of risk along with them. Putting your money with the bank is probably the best way to have your money work for you with the least risk.

Build a solid foundation, then take the risks.

Now, the new theme is up. Please let me know what you think, good or bad? It’s definitely a step in a new direction, in my oppinion it’s the right direction. There’s still quite a bit of work i need to do to integrate the theme. If there are any bugs around the site, please let me know and i will get it fixed asap.

The design was done by my friend James David. He showed me the design last week, and i liked it so much i made him an offer. His new site will be oceansnorth.com, which is currently not online. But, if you want some work done by him - just get in touch with me and i’ll put you through. His prices are very reasonable.

The coding was done by kien from ndkien.com his coding is great, fast and very affordable. I highly reccommend him for coding any design.

On another note, i’m coming close to beating jon at this rss contest I’m at 178 rss, let’s hope this design bags some new subscribers

In under 24 hours, you will see a brand new design of Joshbuckley.net. Personally, i think it is 100x better, and i guess i will find out what you guys think shortly. It’s definitely a big change, a step in the right direction in my oppinion.

On the left, i’ve posted a little preview of the logo on the design. In the post introducing this new design i’ll say who designed and coded it, both were brilliant.

So, i’m kind of getting used to these updates posts now and then. Would I be right to say that you readers like to see about my projects? After all, i’m pretty sure the majority of you are interested as you’re also aspiring entrepreneurs.

Dailybooth
Jon sent me the finished brief for the project i’m investing in, dailybooth today. It’s pretty impressive, it also looks pretty nice. If you’re interested in checking out the first two pages of it, just look at the new post on his blog. If all goes well, the site should be up on March the 1st. We have the developers starting.

New project
Dave, Jon and I have been wanting to work together for a while now. Sure, me and Jon have dailybooth. But, really i’m just a sleeping partner there. When browsing some website auction sites, we saw a great website for sale. A massive social community with over half a million members and 100,000 monthly uniques. The revenue was pretty good and with the server costs at $x,xxx we were sure that we could lower it. We put in a great bid on new years eve, which the seller was very temped by. Unfortunately we were rejected. There’s still a slim chance that we may get this site.

However, we now do have plans for a new investment now that this one hasn’t planned out. Who knows? This one could be even bigger. 2008 will be a big year.

Ad sales
As you can see, i’ve allready sold out all of the ad spots. I’m not really surprised at this, for a blog with this traffic, $30/month is pretty cheap. Jon bought a pretty funny ad here, so i decided to get him back with another ad on his blog

I’d like to thank Nate Whitehill for including me in a great post of his “What Are Last Year’s Top Bloggers’ Plans For 2008?“. It was really nice to be included amongst A list bloggers in that post, if only i knew my message was going in the post, then i would have written more

In a previous article, i wrote about preparing your goals for the new year. These goals are not set in stone, as they may become irrelevant to your success as the year moves on. That being said, it’s important to think hard about goals, so that you think you will follow them throughout the year. They are a great way of helping yourself to progress.

2007 goal recap:

As i am writing this, i’m refelecting on the first ever post on this blog. January 12th 07 seems like such a long time ago. I titled the post …And then he installed wordpress. In the post, i wrote four goals that i wanted to achieve by the end of the year. The good news is, I achieved them all! It’s pretty weird to look back at your old style of writing and see how it has progressed over the course of a year.

1. Earn at least mid $x,xxx in website sales
I was unsure if i was going to achieve this goal throughout most of the year. I was planning on keeping all of my sites. I did sell some small sites in the first quarter of 07, but that was only to low $x,xxx. Luckily, the menewsha sale came in the right side, and totally completed this objective several times over.

2. Make at least $xx,xxx net profit
I achieved this goal, through profits from my websites, and from the menewsha sale.

3. Improve my design and coding skills
I have only seen slight improvements with my design and coding skills. I have read some books on php, and played around with photoshop. I tried redesigning this blog here, i’m still unhappy with the result. But really, this goal has lost its significance. I don’t need to design or code anymore. Sure, i can do odd jobs on my websites, but i should be signing a full time coder sometime in 08, so it’s not neccesary for me to learn this one.

4. Make some good friends on/off the web who i can exchange ideas/thoughts and have some fun with them
I made so many great friends in 2007, really too many to list. That’s one thing i won’t do (i may end up missing some out). But, i have some great friends online and offline. In the first half of the year, i made so many friends from the blogsphere, when there seemed to be a massive boom of new bloggers, and the “make money online” craze was booming. Right now i’ve made online friends with developers, entrepreneurs, bloggers, investors and more. You guys all know who you are

2008 goals:

1. Own $xxx,xxx in assets, money or a mixture.
2008 is going to be a big year for me. I have multiple investments this year, after the success of 2007, i need to see if i can continue this success. At this moment in time, my projects planned out to be worth $xxx,xxx. Today, i will be signing a contract that gives away 10% of a project for mine for $8,000 - valuing the whole project at $80k.

That, mixed with my dailybooth investment will definitely fill up the assets collumn. There is another large community, with over half a million members we are in the process of acquiring.
So, this project does seem fairly adventurous, it will be very challenging - but i do need to set some really tough goals for this year. I currently have around £20k in bank accounts, it will be nice to see the interest rolling in from these.

2. Have my blog earning at least $400/month with at least 400 rss readers
This one is going to be a tough one. January 08 is the first month that this blog has been monetized, after a year of operation. This month it made $120 almost instantly from ad sales. I don’t think this goal will be too challenging. I’m getting fairly close to 200 rss readers and should be winning that competition any time soon

3. Get into affiliate marketing
Throughout 2007, this was at the back of my mind. I have some great friends who are doing really well for themselves promoting products. I would like to learn more about it, and maybe earning some spare change from it in the sideline

4. Manage my businesses and school
This year is going to be pretty tough at school, i’m in year 11 and i’ll be taking my GCSE exams. I’ll need to be working towards these as well as working hard on my websites. If anything, this could be one of the most challenging goals. It’s not proved a simple task to manage school life and a large business at once. Luckily, i will be getting a big break from school after these exams in july.

So, let’s hope these goals go as well as they did in 2007. They are more challenging this year, but i am confident that i will reach all of them in the course of the year. What goals do you guys have for the upcoming year?