I’m not sure how much I’ve talked about this but my ultimate goal – my dream – is to be completely location independent.  When my kids are grown up and safely on their own, I want to be able to travel.  Due to some health issues, my husband and I will never travel by plane, but we want to buy an RV and travel around the States and Canada.  I especially want to visit lots of lakes and as many parts of the ocean as possible.

Of course, that takes money, and that is where my website activities come in.  Of course, the ability to write will come in handy but I don’t want to have to be writing for others all the time.  I want to be able to have my own projects, too.  And ultimately, I want some of those projects to become residual income.  I know a lot of writers use sites like Bukisa, Firehow, and eHow as forms of residual income but they make me nervous.  At one of the writing boards that I go to often I’ve been reading about how lots of eHow articles are being deleted.  I don’t want to put time into that if my work is going to be lost.  I experienced that already many years ago with another writing site and I don’t want to have to deal with it again.

So what kind of residual income am I thinking about?  One that I’ve already dabbled with and plan to do a little more work on is static blogs.  I know, that kind of goes against everything blogging but I know some people that have good experiences with them.  They are basically like websites – once the content is there you can move on to build more but if you happen to add to it, it doesn’t hurt.  The other thing that you know I’ve been working on is e-books.

I’m about one half to two thirds of the way through my first e-book.  It’s for parents about teens and drugs.  I’m not sure how good of a choice that is when you consider marketability but I figure it is a good choice based on my knowledge and experiences.  I have a teen that has a drug problem (although she doesn’t think of it that way) so I’ve done loads of research on the topic.  And I’ve got the personal slant.

My problem is what to do with it when it is done!  I have to admit that I suck at marketing and while I have learned to do ok with Twitter and have a fan page with almost 100 fans, I’m not really utilizing them.  So, I’m debating on taking on a parter.  Someone that is really good at the online marketing thing.  Someone that is willing to go 50/50.  I do the writing and creating and they market the hell out of our product.

Do you think that could work?  And how would I decide on who to partner up with?  You know, becoming partners with people online is a risky endeavor.  It is hard to get to know people.  And even when you think you’ve gotten to know someone, can you really trust them?  Well, I do have a couple people I would consider.  But if that fails, then I guess I’ll just have to learn to market my butt off myself.

So that is the theme for this next year…

B R A N C H I N G   O U T ! ! !