I’m Back and We’re Completely Changing Focuses

Warning: This is post is extraordinarily long. If you don’t care where I’ve been or why the blog has changed, feel free to skip it entirely.

When I started Ask Shane.org, this was how I described the purpose of the blog:

I’ve had the pleasure of running a few blogs of my own and helping a few others manage theirs as well, but the more I do that, the more I have people ask me to help them, too. It’s impossible to help everyone one-on-one, but my hope is that this blog will allow me to help as many as are interested. Let’s see how it goes!

And in the very first post, I made it clear from the get-go that I was writing this blog for the benefit of those who considered blogging a hobby.

I lasted three whole months.

Now, they were good ones, mind you. Heck, the content was good enough (and timeless enough), that my RSS subscribers are actually up 20% since I stopped blogging — more than five months ago. (Look for a post about that phenomenon soon.) But at the end of the day, three months is a pretty pathetic lifespan.

It all goes to motivation. Helping people is fun. A lot of fun. (At least for me.) Helping people do a hobby better isn’t as fulfilling as a lot of other things, though — and especially when I really never got to see the results up close.

I also was never an expert on blogging. I had a lot to offer, but I was really learning the finer points along the way. That made it tougher to write really good stuff than it would have been otherwise.

Add those two things together and you get three months of good blogging and five months of hiatus.

I’m back now, though. New plan. New focus.

Here’s what’s happened since our last episode…

I’ve been 100% self-employed (i.e. fully funded by my own sites; no consulting work) for several months now, and it’s awesome. I haven’t gotten up to go into an office in more than two and a half years. My kids don’t even remember me ever leaving for work, being gone all day and then coming home. (Good thing they and my wife still like me ) I have freedom that I never dreamed of, and it’s allowed me to get involved in a lot of really fun, really huge projects. (Want a hint on one of them? Check the “Great Things Elsewhere” section in my sidebar.)

And over the past year, I’ve been working with my friend Jeremy off and on to take him from day job employee with a fledgling website to millionaire site owner with no one to answer to but himself.

Well, when I told my wife how much fun I was having working with Jeremy, she asked me what it was that I liked about it. (She always asks great questions like that.) I knew immediately: I was doing something where I clearly knew what I was talking about, and in doing so I had helped someone quit their day job forever. That was an awesome combination.

So, that’s why I’m changing this blog. I’m hoping I can do that on a much larger scale. I’m just going to start telling you everything I know about how to take your site from a few dollars a day, to the point where you can live off of it full-time, to the point where you can sell it and immediately realize financial independence, and we’ll see where we end up.

The new journey begins Monday. Maybe I’ll make it longer than three months this time.