The baby countdown is on and I have been significantly deficient in my duties here at The9MonthProject.com.  No, I haven’t given up on the site or my dream to make a living online.  In fact, that dream has only taken deeper root in my heart and mind.  Generally the end of each year is fairly slow for a divorce lawyer, but this year was definitely an exception.  Time that I planned on working on my online business was transferred to my law practice because we really had no slow down except for the weeks before and right after Christmas.  But as you know, this type of work is extremely time intensive and really requires my presence to take care of it. In the midst of the busy working season we have been making preparations for our second child due to arrive on April 1.  Visiting day cares and trying to make all of the arrangements necessary so we will be ready when she gets here.  I have been super excited about the baby girl’s arrival, my spirits were calmed somewhat when I began looking into day care centers for our daughter.  What hurts?  Of course, the impact on my wallet at a rate of around $1,000 per month flying out of it, but also the sheer number of hours that my baby will be spending in a day care center without her family.

I’m not sure I can get the business up and running and making money before it’s time for my wife to go back to work after her maternity leave, but I have to give it everything I have.

So, I’m bearing back down and hope to share my progress here as I go.

So I have to be honest with you this week.  It has been pretty crazy and I haven’t done very much when it comes to building my online business.  While, I can come up with excuse after excuse from dealing with a combination of greater-than-normal requirements of my time for my day job and taking a few days this week to head out of town for a short vacation, the truth is, things just were prioritized higher this week.

I’m writing to you from the kitchen table of our condo at the beach and the image above is my current view.  I hoping for a weekend of rejuvenation and relaxation so I can hit the ground running on Monday when I get back to the office.  Hope you have a great weekend!  Cheers!

So, I’m trying to stay on the ball with the new business and my  new site to keep things moving along.  One of my flaws is that I love to plan, but sometimes get lost in the planning and fail on the execution.  The big announcement this week means I cannot fail on the execution this time.  I have to execute.  I have to make progress and move forward.  So what have I been up to this week?

I began working on my podcast and the enticement that I’m going to be using to get people to register for my e-mail list.  So let’s break this down a little bit.

The E-mail List

Lots of the internet marketing gurus out there say that you must have a list to build your business from.  In a recent podcast, Pat Flynn of the Smart Passive Income blog stated that one of the things he wishes he did much sooner was begin to build his e-mail list.  So that is something that I want to start working on immediately and have ready to go early on with the blog. The key to the e-mail is is that it is a way to start building up your sales funnel and to keep people close to your business.

So the first step that I have been working toward is choosing a software to handle the list.  There are two main players out there from what I can tell: Aweber and MailChimp.  I’ve half-way tried the internet marketing thing once before and used Aweber.  I’ve also experimented some with MailChimp.  One thing I have found from either service is that it takes a lot of time figuring out how to set them up and working properly – or maybe it’s just me.  I’ve been going back and forth for a few days now trying to decide which way to go with the list.  Initially, I’m trying to do a lot of this business on a shoestring so MailChimp sounds good because there is a free option to start off with and Aweber starts out at $19.99 per month.  But Aweber is the gold standard so that is probably where I will be investing my time and money and what I will be using on the new site.

The Enticement

I began working on an MP3 recording to give away to people for signing up for my newsletter.  I recorded a few minutes of audio and started to play it back to see how it was.  Bottom line: it sucked!  So, I’ve been working on getting more confident behind the microphone so my recordings won’t suck.  At the same time, I don’t want to sound like a corny radio DJ.  I’m trying to encourage people to do business with me and to trust my expertise.  I want to be real, but I don’t want to put them to sleep or run them off because I sound completely boring.  Jeesh!

It’s also taken me a little bit of time to figure out my microphone and Garageband to figure out how to use them and then some more time configuring the settings to get good quality sound as a finished product. 

Now, that it’s all set up and I’ve had some practice speaking in front of the microphone it’s time to start recording and get the initial podcast started along with the free MP3 that I want to make available to my visitors.

Organization and Backlinks

One of the issues with having a blog is that your posts are in no real order. There is some strategy in the editorial calendar, but many times, especially early on in my blogging I was just writing about whatever topic that inspired me that day.  Typically, my topics have been legal in nature so it was probably something I was currently researching or working through with one of my cases.  I spent a good deal of time organizing a few “resource” pages this week to help bring together several of my top posts on a few important topics on my blog.  I wanted to give people a single place to go to if they had questions about a few of the most popular topics for the blog.  Each resource page had a summary about the topic and links out to some of my most popular posts on each topic to give them a place to dig in right off the bat and find information about what they needed to know.

So, it’s official: my wife is pregnant and we are expecting our second child on April 1, 2012.  That means, I am just under 8 months left on my goal of having a passive income business that will allow for more flexibility and income when my second child is born.

Here’s the back story.  When my son was born four years ago, I was working as an associate attorney in a small firm.  My job was a little unusual in that while I was just an associate because the owner of the firm was out of the picture for about a year I was also the managing attorney and was responsible for generating all of the income necessary to run that firm which including paying my and two assistant’s salaries.  So, when the baby was born, there was no time for vacation – I had to be in the office billing time and meeting with new clients. My wife was very gracious and patient with me and understood what I was doing, but I don’t feel good about it.

I’m afraid that is going to happen again with Baby Atkins #2.  So, the goal of this project is to build up a passive online income that allows me to earn enough money that I can take some time off after my son is born so I don’t feel like I have to rush back to the office.

So that’s not a very specific goal.  Let’s get specific.  I would like this business to generate $5,000 per month in income by the time my second baby is born.  I’ve got to get on the ball to get this going and I need your help to stay accountable.

Labor Day typically marks the end of the summer.  School is back in full swing by now and the pools are closing – even though it will be a thousand degrees out there for another month or two.  For many people, Labor Day also means a day off – a day away from the grind.  My thoughts are with you if you are having to labor on this fine Federal Holiday.  Hopefully, you spent a good portion of the day resting and pouring time into your family.  This is also a wide open day that you can spend some time pouring into your new business as well without the 8-hour interference during the heart of your day.

Today, I spent a few minutes getting some blog posts ready for the week, but I honestly spent a lot of time with my family.  Happy Labor Day!