I was browsing my dormant Technology Playlist of feeds in my Bloglines account when I saw a Free eBook entry in one of the blogs (a Blogger blog). I clicked the feed link and found a page which pointed me to a new site since this particular blog was already dead. It turned out that the blog belonged to Randy Brown, owner of GrownUpGeek.com, one of the more successful community sites out there. The reason I had been interested in Randy and his site and had subscribed to his then blog is because it was featured as a model earner in AdSense's site, a Google AdSense Case Study, and because his site was created using Drupal, the CMS I had been using, myself, for my sites since 1995.

Anyway, it turned out that Randy had been sharing how he became a four-figure-per-month earner in a best-selling eBook called How I Made a Successful Webiste in only 4 Months, and that he was now sharing the eBook for free. (This latter move was made after the eBook had been stolen twice and he had already earned a significant amount from the sales.)

Now, why am I telling you this? First, because I believe in synchronicity, the idea first put forth by Carl Jung which states (and am paraphrasing here) that things you currently need will come your way just when you need them (or when you at least declare to the universe that you need them). And for some time now, I've been mulling over the next steps of what to do with my life. You see, I could not decide between two choices -- to write a novel, or concentrate on one of my sites (in particular, I was leaning towards WriteLit.com, because, while it has for the moment minimal traffic, I've observed that the cost per click or CPC is higher than say compared to my other site, FilipinoWriter.com. I surmise this is because WriteLit.com has a world-wide audience while FilipinoWriter.com has a local readership).

I think coming across Randy's site and his free eBook has given me the answer -- I can do both. That is, I can write my novel, and, also, share my experiences researching and writing it at WriteLit.com. (Of course, I can always write about other writing and literature related stuff.) I've always wondered if I am the type of person who can only focus on one thing at a time. But I guess coming across Randy's eBook is the universe telling me, "You can do both!" You see, my dilemma is that my first priority is to write a book, in this instance a novel, but at the same time, I also have to earn a living while doing it. I already had the idea of doing both, but wasn't really sure about it. I think this instance of synchronicity is the nudge from the universe I had been waiting for.

So, I will be recording my journey here at PinoyTechie.com, and if you want to share my journey with me (like starting your own Drupal site, for example), just keep on coming back or subsribe to PinoyTechie.com's daily feed. I have just finished downloading and printing out Randy's free eBook am planning to emulate Randy's methods by making a checklist of the successful things he did with his site, and implement them in WriteLit.com. My ultimate goal is to duplicate Randy Brown's journey with GrownUpGeek.com, in particular his earnings record:

I think that it is a good omen that January is also the next month on the calendar just as Randy started in January of 2006. So to me and to you, here's wishing us all "Good Luck in 2008!" Hope that by May of 2008, we're already earning four figures.