2012 Inspiration: Doubling Down On Myself

It’s been a while.

With the holidays, friends visiting, three new books from the “Song of Fire and Ice” series (shut it) and a personal branding business idea that I spent a week trying to fully conceptualize, I haven’t been at the computer much.

As such, my online efforts have suffered. However, now I’m back with a vengeance.

Short Term Plans for 2012

In March, we’re leaving Riga for Brussels. The lady has at least six months of work lined up in Europe’s capital, and I’ll finally have a bikeable city.

Brussels requires that I tweak my budget and income because $600 / month won’t cut it there, and I won’t be able to get by on teaching English, either. So I am throwing myself hard into my English Confidential service.

Stepping Up Marketing Efforts

As you can see in the right sidebar, I’ve got a big advertisement for myself. Having my editing service on a separate site — with a separate Twitter account and identity — means I have to drive traffic to two sites. With enough luck, I can cross-pollinate from here to there.

Also, I’ve taken out an ad on the Warrior Forum, a major resource for internet marketers. Admittedly, I’ve done a terrible job of narrowing my focus to a target customer. Recently, though, it occurred to me that the number of internet marketers and entrepreneurs — who rely heavily on published content — comprise a pretty big market themselves. Let’s see whether I can tap into that.

Adventures in Freelance Writing

Finally, I want to point out my new Writing page, up in the top right on the navigation bar. This will be my landing page for collecting all of my freelance work and guests posts across the web.

My latest piece for EuropeUpClose.com, a short guide to Latvian beer, caught a little bit of fire as a result of some good, old-fashioned networking. I mentioned Valmiermuizas beer in the piece, and when I was writing it back in November, I sent an email to the company asking for permission to use an image from their website.

The team there was very helpful and asked for a link to the piece once it went up. Once it did, they blasted it out via the company’s social network pages, and that apparently brought a good deal of enthusiastic traffic, because the piece got seven 5-star votes (thank you, Valmiermuizas drinkers!) and was tweeted out more than most articles on the whole site.

Thanks to everyone who’s bothered to read my unsolicited thoughts in the last few months! Here’s to killing it in 2012 and trolling around Belgium on two wheels!