So here is the gameplan for 2009:

1) Posting the series I had planned on how I got my first rental property.

2) Posting my progress on what I am doing to get my second property.

3) Posting some cool stuff on Internet Marketing, including stuff I am learning from my membership in The Immediate Edge and 30 Day Challenge Plus.

4) Posting other things I find in my journey, including articles on Freelancing and Entrepreneurship, 4HWW, and Life Hacks.

Although I will probably not post every day, I will try to post more frequently.

Originally, they offered this deal only to 30 Day Challenge members, but for a limited time they are offering a 14 day trial for $1 to everyone interested. If you are serious about Internet Marketing, and want to know the cutting edge tools and techniques to improve your search engine ranking and increase your sales, then go to the Immediate Edge site and sign up.

Turns out the answer is a resounding YES! If you have expertise in any subject, chances are very likely that there is a need for that expertise. The Internet allows you to reach a broad audience who would be willing to pay you for your knowledge.

For example, let’s stay on the theme of languages; there is a site called VerbalPlanet who’s sole purpose is to help you learn a foreign language. If you are fluent in a particular language, you can sign up to be a tutor. Payments can be handled via PayPal. You have the freedom to set your own hours, and price.

There are also sites for general subject matter experts. For example, Ether, allows you to set up a phone number that you can publish and market. People then call you based on the hours you set and pay you for your knowledge. Two other sites that operate in a similar fashion are BitWine and SkypePrime. I also found a site called Jyve, but they seem to be down for the time being.

As you can see, your specialized knowledge could be your path to a second income, or perhaps a location independent lifestyle.

Update: here is the link to the article from his site.

Update 2: Sorry the link no longer exists…

In other news, my rental property is now on the market.  I have been getting nibbles, but no big bites yet. I have to get a tenant into the house before December so I can refinance it. I have a balloon payment due then and the pressure is on.

My general strategy is to get multiple streams of income coming in to initally supplement my salary, but to eventually have it replace my salary. So, with my rental, my Internet Marketing activity, and soon, my freelance Web Design work (and content writing), I hope to generate enough revenue to go independent.

Stay tuned…

For a while now, I have wanted to move off of wordpress.com and get my own domain. I would have a lot more freedom to do stuff and, hopefully, eventually find some way of deriving income from the site. The problem was, every time I would look for a domain relating in any way to “ProjectNomad”, it was taken…until yesterday.

I had this really great idea to create a site called “RentMyDomain” where people who had good domain names, but no inclination to develop them would be matched with people who had great creativity and skills, and could develop the site while paying “rent” for the domain name (logistics to be worked out later ) ). Of course, both “RentMyDomain.com” and “LeaseMyDomain.com” were taken. (Interestingly, they both are parked).

But, on a whim, I checked “ProjectNomad.com” for the umpteenth time, and to my amazement, it was available. So now it is mine…

No grand unveiling…just head on over there when you get the chance and you will see all that is in this blog. It is, like most things in life, a work in progress. I tried to clean some things up. I am exploring wordpress unchained – especially all the incredible templates, plugins, and widgets available for it. For blogging, I think this is the best application available hands down.

The pictures on the headers are from my various trips to my second home – Mt. Desert Island, Maine.

I know I mentioned another site I was moving to in an earlier post, but now that I have the domain name I wanted, I am sticking with the new site and have deleted the old one.

The partial downside is that, in leaving wordpress.com, I will pretty much disappear from sight as far as search engines and social bookmarks go. Google likes wordpress.com; Google couldn’t care a less about projectnomad.com…So the pressure is on me to provide better content, build a greater readership, and get a little higher in the rankings, which I am committed to do. I am still experimenting, trying to find a way to leave the corporate rat race and work on my own terms, wherever and whenever I want. I am still looking at ways to incorporate the principles in “The Four Hour Work Week“, and ways to leverage Internet Marketing and Freelance Web Design into this mix. I will continue to post my progress, as well as any useful resources I find along the way.

And I welcome any comments you have.

I have seen some really interesting resources, and I will continue to post them here. I have gone back on my list of resources and found that it is huge. I tend to just clip sites that seem interesting and put them all in an email that I then send to myself. I looked back on the emails and there were hundreds of links to review! Yes, some sites kept coming up with great info, but a lot of these were the sites I already had on my blog roll (although there are some new ones that I will add later).

The best advice I can think of is to do what I do and use sites that employ user recommendations to find subjects in which you are interested. Go to sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, or Stumbleupon, to search for topics like “Freelance” or “4HWW”, and you will find quality sites that have been vetted by others. This is the direction that online search engines taking – instead of blindly finding every site relating to a subject, good or bad.

While I have pretty much finished work on my rental property, I have not really made any effort to market it or get a tenant into it. I don’t know what is holding me back. Probably fear. I have heard horror stories of tenants from hell and I am afraid that when I do get someone in, the nightmares will begin. Still I faced my fears when I bought the house in the first place, and I still want to try being a landlord to see if it is right for me. I guess I just have to face this fear and ride out whatever adversity that comes my way.

As I mentioned in my last post, the Thirty Day Challenge is back, and I am going to participate in that as well. In July, it will be a year since I first started my effort to leave my current job and become a freelancer. I have learned a lot in that time, but it is a humbling experience, and it is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Life has a funny way of coming in and interfering with your plans. Still, I have not given up and I will continue to try different things until I find the solution that feel right for my goals.

As for my next post, you will get it when it is worthy of publishing… )

Oh…and it’s tax time…need I say more?

I am trying to apply 4HWW to my situation though. I am working on a proposal to outsource the website design to market my house. It is just taking too much time to do it on my own, and really, it is something perfect to have someone else to do for me. I will post my experiences here on how it goes.

Now, before I get into my favorite sites (yeah, you’ll need to wait a little while more, but it will be worth it…) I want you to imagine the following situation.

Say you have a laptop. On the laptop, you have a basic operating system, and a web browser. That’s it.

No utilities, No applications (other than the browser), No suites…nothing… Basically you have what is known as a “Thin Client”.

The challenge is, can you run a business from the laptop?

Sure ya can, Sparky… just go here.

It is pretty cool. Everything you need, via Web 2.0 hosted applications. This is perfect for a freelancer on the move. I hope you find it useful.