Am I being Treasonous - Sacrificing Financial "Stability"?

[SGSystems]

Hi Everyone!

I was hoping I could get a little input from the community to see if what I'm doing is treasonous to my Fastlane pursuit. Here's a little background:

My gf and I have a 6year old daughter and we are saving to move into a bigger apartment Feb 2012, absolute latest date. I've had employment/income disruptions in the past so our savings is small at only $3,000. My debt (1 credit card) is $1,500 and our combined Net income from our jobs is $3,200/month. I'm paying $100 (minimum is only $44) a month towards my debt and any extra is going into savings.

My Money System - Per "Setting Your Destination" section
In a couple weeks I'll have an extra $1,000 from a favorable insurance claim so I'm going to open a brokerage account as recommended in the book. I'll fund it with whatever loose change or extra money I can get.

My Business System
I have a small group of websites with Adsense that make average $280 a month. It's not extra money as I had to hire a full-time writer to supply content for the sites at $240/month. So my business is making just enough to cover all expenses including hosting, domains, etc. I've seen the income spike higher than $1,000 in one month but that was only a few times during holiday season - can't rely on that.

Trying to Expand My Business System...
Over the last couple months I've expanded my small 5 page sites to at least 30 pages and am now ready to start promoting the newly added pages and a couple new sites. I bought a Virtual Assistant that is fully trained in SEO softwares, etc. and will work full-time for a month for $375. However, I'm also feeling badly that the extra $800 monthly could go towards our savings account, and now it's only $400 a month with the VA costs. If he works well I may keep him till Feb 2012.

On the other end if I don't make the "investment" into the VA then I have no idea how I can expand my business. Doing it on my own (I tried) is impossible. I tried hiring someone for cheaper $250/month but they are always untrained and that is a PITA, wasted a few months going that route. This extra $800 is coming out of our paychecks and won't be available once we move out. In fact, once we're in our new place it will pretty much disappear due to higher housing costs. So the next 3 months have to be very, very productive.

The Burning Question
I guess my overall question to everyone with the above circumstances is, "Am I taking a gamble with my family's finances?" Normally I would just move forward but this time I'm nervous since this will cut into Christmas presents, guaranteed. And moving out will literally eat my extra $800 I now enjoy. Was hiring the VA and increasing my expenses a bad move? I thought it'd free my time , but it's also cutting my extra $$$. Save more? Paydown credit card debt first? I'm so, so confused all of a damn sudden...it's a miserable feeling.

The 4.5 Month Goal
My goal is to raise my adsense income to $1,200 by Feb 2012 as that would cover all my overhead plus taxes. All profit from there I plan on funding my Money System and growing my Business System with more VA's, more sites, etc. Then eventually I'd like to pull from the profits to increase my family's lifestyle a bit.

 

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[juntao65]

Regardless of what you do, paying minimum monthly on credit cards is a bad choice.

You've already made a revenue generating site. Figure out how to grow it. If you feel you've exhausted your current market, think about how you could have sized the market in the first place. Then find something bigger. The seeds are there, just grow it.

Hold off on the apartment until you can actually afford it. Unless you're staying in a closet, I really doubt the added overhead is going to do your family any good in the long run.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Hold off on the apartment until you can actually afford it. Unless you're staying in a closet, I really doubt the added overhead is going to do your family any good in the long run.

Agreed. A lot of people have no idea how to sacrifice to make ends meet.

Employees never have the will to become entrepreneurs because they aren't willing to make hard choices that will sacrifice immediate pleasure -- I want to start a company!! Oh and BTW, can I pay myself $100K/year too even though I have no customers? The startup process is difficult and often requires long hours in poverty type living conditions. Those two factors immediately force people to opt for the alternative -- a 40 year prison, chained to a job for 40 years.

Risk and sacrifice isn't comfortable.

 

[ageofz]

A lot of people in SEO think that hiring a VA is going to make their site immediately rank. I've used a lot of VAs and the best piece of advise that I can give you is to not expect a VA to do SEO. They do tasks. You have to do the SEO.

A VA can build links, but you have to tell them exactly what links you want. A VA can make content, but you need to tell them exactly what content to make. If you can't do SEO yourself, then don't expect a VA to do it for you. You should already know the ROI that a VA will make before hiring one. You should know exactly what you want the VA to do throughout the day (let me tell you now, that any VA that is using software such as SENuke/Xrumer/Scrapebox etc is not going to be worth it). The people that actually rank with this software are a very small percentage and they use linklists they have built, platforms they have modded the software to post on, and know SEO. Finally, the people that rank using any type of software keep their methods to themselves. In other words, out of the box the software is useless. VAs are "Out of the Box" workers. Don't expect them to craft an SEO strategy that's going to work miracles for your business.

Good luck man.

 

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[bernieshawn]

You could also look into adding some affiliate offers to your sites. If you find a good affiliate offer that matches the theme of either your site's content or your site's demographic and converts well you should be able to make significantly more than you do off Adsense.