The new Amazon.es site will pick up all those new online Spanish shoppers whose level of English would never have given them the confidence to shop from the UK or USA Amazon stores, but will fall for the Amazon UI and shopping experience now they have it in their own language.

For more comment on how Amazon is set to change online retail in Spain, see Amazon To Open in Spain – Big Changes Ahead?

How do you make money from blogging? That is something that most fledgling bloggers ask themselves sooner rather than later. For plenty of ideas, just head over to problogger.net. Darren Rose, the guy who runs that site, bought his house on the back of Adsense payments, so he knows what he’s talking about.

The Google Ads story here at Notesfromspain.com is a little different. Up until yesterday I had a vertical strip of Google ads down the left-hand column of all the blog and forum pages. Want to know how much they earned me this March, a fairly typical month?

More than 50 but less than 100 US dollars (Google’s Terms of Service forbid me from being precise). That’s for a grand total of 183,000 page views, and 25,801 Absolute Unique Visitors for the same month. Seems a pretty poor return for quite a lot of traffic.

Of course I could have been far more aggressive about the placement of the ads, putting them right under, around, and in the middle of blog posts etc, but I find that kind of practice insulting to readers, and in any case, I doubt it would have done more than double that figure.

So, I’ve decided to take the Google Ads off all of my sites. I’ll be throwing away just over 1,000 dollars a year, but the real issue here is not the small amount that Google can offer me as direct income from this blog, but the indirect benefits that this blog can bring me.

For example, the Notes from Spain blog and podcasts (the latter will be back soon by the way) led to work with Lonely Planet and Fodors. Notes from Spain originally led to, and still leads a lot of people to, Notes in Spanish, where we make 99% of our living. A few clicks from here to our new (and extremely good, if I say so myself) Real Spanish Phrase Book and Audio Guide, will be worth a lot more than a few clicks on other people’s ads.

So this particular blog and the accompanying podcasts can bring huge benefits, but they are side benefits (side benefits that have completely changed my life). They are, I think, a result of the fact that I love producing this content, that I love writing and podcasting about Spain. I don’t want to make money directly from these pages, I just want to write and broadcast, and afterwards to see what happens to come along as a result, to see if it makes people curious about our Spanish content, or want to read my book. Google Ads have no place in that equation.

Marketing Guru Seth Godin sums up the whole blogging-for-money thing very well in a recent post on his blog:

The best bloggers make money, but mostly as a side effect, not as a direct result of setting out to use a blog to make a profit. It’s just too long a ramp up time, too frustrating and too uncertain to be the best path to make a living.

Conclusion? Don’t rely on Adsense to make your fortunes online, but do keep blogging. You never know where it might lead!

Top Seth Godin Tip: Want to know more about the future of online marketing and communities, and how they might help you make money online? Read Seth’s Meatball Sundae. He’s a clever bloke!

Nowadays a lot of people including, I suppose, myself, are touting the dream of a live-anywhere, internet-based income. You know, the idea that you can chill out by the beach, check your email once a week, and watch the cash role in.

The reality is obviously a little bit tougher than that. Not only do you have to find an online business idea that works, you then have to lovingly pay attention to it, full time, for a very long time. Still, it beats having to commute to work every day, and yes, you can live by a nice Spanish beach if you want to!

A problem for many people that might be considering this online lifestyle here in Spain, however, is that they just don’t know where to start. Either that or, like us, you wake up one day and realise that your website is making you some money, but you really don’t know how to build on what you’ve got. You have no idea how to take your fledgling business idea up to another level, to a point where you really can rely on it to pay the mortgage.

In either case you need to find the right expert resources to carry you forward. Over the last 6 months I’ve spent a lot of time investigating such resources, and wanted to share the very best of what I’ve discovered with you here. A lot of what I’ve found out stemmed from a very useful lunchtime conversation with Dean Hunt (interview here), who taught us an incredible amount about honing our websites, and online marketing principles.

His advice put me on track in my continuing investigations, so if you can’t find a local Dean to tell you what’s what, I recommend you have a good look at this lot (presented in no logical order!):

Internet Business Mastery

In this excellent podcast Sterling and Jay do a great job of taking you through the whole process of conceiving, building, and marketing an online business. As I was already several steps down the line when I started listening to these guys, I was able to pick and choose which episodes I knew would be most useful – mostly, in my case, related to marketing and information products.

But if you are starting from scratch, want to know how to find a profitable niche, what free software to use to build an online presence, and how to get people’s continued attention, then you can learn an enormous amount from the podcast: www.internet-based-business-mastery.com

Note: A lot of what they cover is related to the sale of information products. If that is something that interests you, then there is a pretty excellent summary of how the whole information product business works online here.

Teaching Sells

Without doubt one of the fastest growing areas of online business is Education. One day we will all be learning almost exclusively online. If you know more about something than most other people (be it knitting, photography, being an expat, teaching English abroad, depression, ebay, hair-care for dogs… you name it!), the chances are you could already be making money from teaching others all about it.

A fairly new – and potentially hugely profitable – angle is the development of membership sites, where people pay you recurring monthly fees to learn all the stuff you already know, and carefully present to them. The Teaching Sells program provides a complete blueprint to setting up such a membership site, covering everything from easy multimedia content development, to affordable software solutions, and marketing your new site.

Personally, I don’t want to set up a membership website at the moment, but I have still managed to learn an incredible amount from being a member of the Teaching Sells program. As well as the great advice on content development and marketing, the information I’ve picked up in the members-only forums are worth the price of admission alone. You can currently check out the whole program with their one-week one-dollar trial offer. Check out Teaching Sells here.

The E-Myth Revisited

They say that to become an expert in anything, you only need to read the right three books. Some people go as far as to say just two well-chosen books on a given subject can give you all you need. I’m going to go one step further and say that in this case, just one book will do.

The E-myth Revisited is like an instant MBA. Honestly, if you are already running any kind of business, online or off, and you are not entirely sure how you got where you are or exactly where you are going, reading this book sets fireworks off in your head. If you are overwhelmed by your work, or by the work you envisage ahead, this book will put you right.

Even if you are already doing well and think you know exactly where you are going with your business, you have to read this book. It will pretty much up your chances of future success by about 3000%.

You might initially be put off by the writing style, and the occasional conversations with case-study Sarah, the lost, over-worked pie shop owner, but believe me, about halfway through the book those mental explosions will be happening, and you will feel infinitely more confident about where you are going with your present or potential business life.

Highly highly recommended (and I still have 20 pages to go!) Check it out on Amazon: E-myth Revisited

The Four Hour Workweek

I’ve mentioned this book before, and not everyone is convinced. But the point of this book is that it is very inspiring if you are thinking about leaving a boring life behind, finding an online income, and living life to the full right now. Actually, it’s inspiring even if you are already living the good life abroad!

There is a lot here which is frankly worth ignoring, including, to be honest, some of the advice on making money online, but everyone takes something away from this book. The productivity tips alone are excellent, and likely to give lost hours back to your life (it’s all about the 80/20 and controlling the email!!).

As I said, it’s inspiring stuff, and despite the bits you’ll instinctively know aren’t for you, it’s well worth reading. More reviews here: The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

Conclusion:

That’s plenty for now. Delve into that lot and you’ll have enough to keep you going for a year, because not only will you be taking action on everything you can learn from these resources, but I can promise that all the above will be sending you off to other useful information sources as well.

Now you can help me with two important questions. 1. Was this post useful? 2. Have you got any favourite websites, or books, that have made a huge difference to how you do, or are hoping to do, business online?

Still here? OK, as mentioned recently, I want to write occasionally about running an on-line business in Spain… or beyond. But some people may wonder what on earth I know about that?! (I often do!)

I built my first website in 2004, a site called booksonspain.com, which reviewed, wait for it, books on Spain. Every book had an affiliate link to Amazon, and I thought I’d soon be a very rich man as everyone jumped from my new site to Amazon, spending loads of money there and giving me the resulting affiliate commissions. I think I made about 100 dollars in the year or two the site was running.

Next I started blogspain.com, where I tried to build a directory of, wait for it, blogs about Spain! At the same time, I started this blog, Notes from Spain, to write about the genesis of the new blogspain.com site (confusing, I know). I soon stopped updating blogspain.com as well, to concentrate on Notes from Spain, and this new-fangled podcasting malarkey.

Getting in early on the podcasting scene put notesfromspain.com on the map. Notes from Spain led to Notes in Spanish, and Notes in Spanish (to our continuing surprise) turned into a business that has allowed Marina and I to give up our old day jobs, earning more (but not vastly more) than we used to, and having a lot more flexibility and free time. And, of course, no commute or boss.

So, based on the above, what are the fundamental things I think can tell you about starting out with an on-line business?

1. It takes a long time – 3 years of tinkering in our case before we could really think about this as a viable income and lifestyle possibility.

2. It takes hours and hours and hours of work every week. Be prepared to put in 12+ hour days to start with. I did for at least a couple of those years, and often still do.

3. If you are not passionately interested in what you are doing (in your on-line experiments, or your “niche”), then you probably will not succeed – and the passion should be more important to you than the money at first. But passion, patience, and a bit of luck, should pay off eventually. The internet is a meritocracy, and if you are dedicated and good enough, you will eventually gain people’s attention.

I heard a great interview today on a podcast that has given me some very useful information recently – Internet Business Mastery. The interview is with Yanik Silver, who knows a lot about making a lot of money on-line, and has some great tips about starting out. Listen here.

Finally, one more podcast recommendation: if you are any type of creative person (and in particular a musician), and want to know about making money for (and from) yourself via the net, listen to the Jonathan Coulton interview on Episode 133 of This Week in Tech – it’s slow to get going but stick with it, there is a lot to be gleaned once Jonathan starts talking about his own experiences of making money from what he does online.

Less about me in future, and more interviews and reading/listening recommendations. Please tell me, is this content interesting/useful?

Over the next few months I hope to write a series of posts about setting up, building, and running an online business in Spain. To kick-start the whole affair, I asked my friend Dean Hunt a few questions about his experiences as an internet entrepreneur here in Spain.

I met Dean in Madrid last year, and apart from being a lot of fun to hang out with – if you don’t mind going to bed absurdly late – his up-to-date marketing advice has also had a significant impact on the fortunes of our own little online set up.

Here’s the quick-fire interview, I’m sure questions in the comments will be more than welcome:

- So Dean, how long have you been in Spain?

Just over three years now. It doesn’t seem that long, el tiempo vuela.

- What exactly do you do here work-wise?

I am an Internet Entrepreneur. I know that sounds quite vague, but what I actually do can change from month to month, depending on where I see opportunities. I am also now considered one of the leading Marketing experts on the Internet, so that has been a touching accolade.

- How long did it take before the net paid the bills?

I was messing around on the net for a year or so before I came to Madrid. But in terms of trying to do it as a job, it took a year of intensive self education before I was in a position to be paying the bills, and even after one year, I was scraping by. Luckily I have continued to improve both my skills and my profile, so I am now able to make a handsome living: I currently make approx. 10 times what I was earning in the UK.

- Many people will think ‘I can’t do that’ – What special skills does someone need to be able to make money online?

If I had to pick one skill I would probably say writing. The Internet is essentially just a lot of content strung together by links, we have a saying in the industry: “content is king”, with good content, you will succeed, and invariably most content is written… even videos and podcasts are often scripted. Unfortunately most people with this talent use it to teach, proof-read, do freelance writing etc… and frankly, it is extremely difficult to make a 6 or 7 figure income that way.

- Do you think Spain makes it particularly easy or difficult to set up an online business?

Spain makes it very difficult to set up a business, I have built a house in Madrid and I have a limited company here, and the bureaucracy can be crazy. I have done things in the UK via the net or via the post (mail), yet in Spain you have to fill out 15 forms, queue from 6am, pay hundreds of euros etc… A Spanish person once told me that the Spanish like to make things as complicated as possible, from what I have seen, he was right.

- You have a somewhat lively blog at deanhunt.com – can a personal site like that make a big difference to someone’s online potential?

It started purely as a place to gather my thoughts, all of that exploded in late 2006 when I had almost 250,000 visitors in a one week period. Since then I have been addicted to the thrill of it, and now have a loyal following and reader base. For me it has helped a lot, despite the fact that my services are fully booked for a year in advance, I still get people contacting me on a weekly basis with job and partnership opportunities. The blog has helped a great deal in opening doors for me.

- What one piece of advice would you give the fledgling blogger?

Stand out from the crowd. There are approx 6 billion web pages on the Internet, find a way to stand out from the others.

- If you could change one thing about your working life…

I work from my home office, so over the years I have started to miss the daily face-to-face interaction with other people. So I suppose it would be interesting to work one day of the week in an office with like-minded people.

- The thing you like most about life in Spain is…

The beauty. Whether you are on a beach in Southern Spain, In Madrid Centre, or even in a quiet little town, it is beautiful. Throw in the good weather, and you have a perfect recipe.

- Any Spain moans?

Just the usual I suppose: Lack of customer service, terrible drivers/roads, David Bisbal

- The one post every should read on your blog is:

It is more of a page than a post, but http://deanhunt.com/category/life-in-madrid/ shows all the blog posts regarding my life in Madrid. There is everything from photos of my house, to the announcement of my engagement to Elena, to me eating snails in a bar in Madrid (yikes).

Many thanks Dean! Remember to check out his blog at deanhunt.com (mind the killer bunnies!), and feel free to comment/ask questions below.