My 4 Hours

I compiled a short list of other blogs that focuses on “The 4-hour workweek”.

The “original”

www.timferriss.com
www.fourhourworkweek.com

Some other resources that might inspire you to do some little lifestyle design of your own.

www.my4hrworkweek.com
www.fourhourworkweekjournal.com
www.fourhourworkweekdiary.com
www.fourhourworkweekresources.com
allisonreynolds.com/blog/
onlyfourhours.com/
livethe4hourworkweek.com/
quitthe9to5.wordpress.com/
lifestyledesignforyou.com/
www.yourlifestyledesigner.net/
lifestyledesignschool.com/
www.lifestyledesignunleashed.com

If you got a blog focusing on the 4-hour workweek, post a link in the comments

I get a lot of questions from both you, my dear readers, but also from my network. Recently I was interviewed by the Danish magazine “Iværksætteren” (“The Entrepreneur”) about my experiments, so I thought about maybe getting a more formalized place for asking and answering questions, as well as learning from each other.

So my question to you my are… Do we need a “4-hour workweek” forum?

I have asked one of my Filippinos to create a website (based on Joomla if anyone are interested) and install a forum component. It is almost ready and I just need to find a cool domain for it, but I would really like input from you guys.

Well I must say that after trying for several months and having lost a couple of hundred dollars, I still don’t have an ebook written.

I have found numerous filippino writers who are great at writing articles, but I have not found anyone who could write an entire ebook. So I am beginning to accept that I might need to do most of the writing myself if I want an ebook… Or… Are there anyone out there who knows of a a writer (preferable from the Philippines) and is willing to share him/her?

Sometimes I get a couple of questions by mail primarily about outsourcing. I thought I would answer the last one here on the blog.

The mail started with the reader’s current situation, but I will skip this and go directly to the questions:

How do you pay the freelancers?
by hours? projets?

Second question,
Do you find it difficult to be out of the office?
I miss working with people. So I should take a mini-retirment soon as Tim or share office space…
how do you deal with it?

Regarding question one, my answer is both . I currently have a couple of Filippinos hired on a fixed monthly salery (where I expext a certain number of hours of work).

But I also have a team in Russia doing webshops for me, that I pay per project. The ebook I am trying to have written is also paid on a “project basis”. So it varies with the task at hand. I would however strongly advocate that you have some people that you work with over a longer periode. Knowledge is quickly lost and it gets hard to keep a momentum if you hire a new guy every month.

Regarding the second question. Currenly I do not work only 4 hours per week. I work half of my time as a consultant typically on larger projects, so on these kind of projects I am typically on a team where I get my “social skills” polished . The other half can get a bit lonely but I am currently located in a shared office (http://laoficina.dk/) where I can talk with other people whenever I feel a bit lonely.

Regarding mini-retirements, I am currently looking at a house in Thailand so the dream is that I in a year will be able to spend 2-3 months there each year. However I have just become a dad, so my priorities are currently with my little princess .

Hope it answered your questions. You are all welcome to send me an email if you have any questions on how I organize my life.

Just a brief update.

Some of you might remember that I am trying to get an ebook written. Up until now I haven’t had much luck with the writer I originally hired. I am testing another one, but she does not have experience writing ebooks (only articles).

So when I discovered a couple of good looking profiles, I contacted them (also in the Philippines) and offered them the job of writing the ebook.

So now I have actually three people looking into my ebook project with two of them already started.

While some of you might say that this could be a quite expensive project, I can only agree, but I am also taking this as an investment in finding the right author. And if I find someone really good now, I will make my life so much easier once I get to the second ebook!

At least there is now some progress…

I am trying out a new method for doing AdWord campaigns for affiliate products found on Clickbank. The campaign has only been active for a few days and I already did my first affiliate sate.

26.30$ off passive income. Not too bad. Now for optimizing the campaigns that work . I have spent aprox. 5$ on AdWords and I will also tune the amount I pay per click (I actually started out a little high).

Once the campaing has run a little longer, I will try to sum up some more statistics.

A couple of months ago I found a writer that should write my first ebook. It didn’t turn out quite right and I am som experiences richer.

So I am on it again.

During my new round of hiring I have been in contact with several writers I found on bestjobs.ph. Many of them (up to 50%) are only doing freelance work and are not available for full time work. This means that I am finding it harder to find qualified people who are actually willing to work for you full time. Have anyone else seen this trend.

Unfortunely you cannot register yourself on bestjobs.ph if you live outside the Philippines (so it helps if you can get someone in the Philippines to create the account for you ).

I have also heard of people talk of Craigslist (the Manilla flavor ) but I haven’t had any success with this. Does anyone have other ideas to where you could find qualified fulltime workers in the Philippines?

(Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/inkytwist/511654483/)

I got to think about all the places where I have outsourced to through the last couple of years, so here is a small list of my findings:

India

If you can find them, they have great programmers. I’m afraid to generalize too much, but basically I haven’t seen a good website design by a company from India (I am open for suggestions here). Also the ones I have worked with have not been good at challeging my ideas or give me feedback. I have outsourced some .NET (C#) development. I am still using a VA company that I am very pleased with: VMGBPO.

Philippines

This is of course after listening to John Jonas. And so far I have been satisfied with my experience. People with good education to affordable prices. I am probably going to hire more people in the Philippines. I have outsourced research, content creation, website design and setup (WordPress and Joomla), SEO (such as link building).

Russia

Ok, I don’t think I have mentioned this before (so now it is out to all my competitors ), but the team developing Magento webshops for me comes from Russia. I have been very pleased with their services. A bit more expensive than the Philippines, but they are absolutely top notch.

Bulgaria

We had a guy from Bulgaria develop our website (build on WordPress). We paid 400$ for everything (design, implementation etc). We just provided the text.

Uruguay

I am using a company in Uruguay for custom Magento extension development. They are hardcore Magento developers so they are a great card to have on the hand when I deliver Magento webshops. Great people. They are very focused on my needs.

Brazil

Some time ago we also used a developer from Brazil I think it was, for a small C#/.NET job. Can’t remember the details though.

Bangladesh

Got some guy from Bangladesh to create my logo on Get A Shop

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Well, I think that was that. I will update this list if I remember someone I missed.

Last month I blogged about my business Get A Shop that provides Magento Webshops to the Scandinavian market at really low prices.

I have done a little search engine optimization on getashop.dk, but not much. So currently I shuffling between page 1 and 2 when I search for “Magento webshop” in Google. Notice that this is in the Danish version of Google that assumes that I am looking for a Danish site. The website is hosted on a US server so perhaps this is a problem. Also there is alot of competition for those keywords in Denmark.

So… My surprise was big when I entered the keyword “Magento webshop” in my browser’s (Safari on Mac) searchbox. I was taken to the .com version of Google and my blog entry about Get A Shop was NUMBER 4!

Oh my… This is totally unbelievable and I am not sure that this is because I am searching from Denmark (and Google then prioritize sites in Danish… remember that the site is hosted on a US server).

Since I am not sure how this happened and for how long this will last (or how many actually get this as hit number 4), so I took a screenshot of this as proof

Are there any SEO experts out there who can explain this?! I’m a bit baffled…

UPDATE

Currently this post is number 3 in Google on the keyword “Magento webshop”. Man. Perhaps I should transfer the Get A Shop site to WordPress. It is currently in Joomla, but if this WordPress blog can rank so good in Google, a site dedicated to Magento webshops in a local market should rank even better

UPDATE UPDATE (November 2.th 2009):)
And behold… Now I am number 2. Doesn’t anyone target the keyword “Magento webshop”?

As many of you know I am experimenting with outsourcing to the Philippines. Recently a Typhoon raged through the Philippines floding cities. Among these also Manilla.

Although I do not have any om my employees in Manilla, they are still very affected by this. At least one of them have lost contact with her family in Manilla, so the situation is really bad.

It is really hard not to be able to do anything from here where I live. All I can do is help out with a little money to help her search for her family.

Because of this I have of course also put my own plans of an ebook a bit on hold until I get a better overview of the situation. It is rather difficult to force anyone to work under such conditions.

John Jonas who is the “King of outsourcing to the Philippines” believes that the situation quickly should get back to normal though.