From Soldier to Backpacker to Business Entrepreneur
My original plan was going back to the army, after finishing my 4 months of duty in DANILOG (Danish International Logistical Center). First I had planned to travel through South- and Central America for 6-9 months, before returning to Denmark and hoping to get a contract and go on a mission to Afghanistan with the Danish Army.

Not even 3 months into my big journey in South America, I reach Lima and stay for about a week in Miraflores, Peru. I end up meeting a lot of amazing and awesome people, revive an old business idea I got the first time I was in South America, and within 2 weeks in Lima I decided that I would give it a shot – Living in Lima for a year.

Getting Used to Combies and Contrasts
I must admit that I love Lima by all my heart. It feels like the right place for me right now, and I love the contrasts of old and new, rich and poor, expensive and cheap, that you see everywhere in Lima. I might live in one of the expensive and rich areas of the town at the moment, but the fact for me is, this is what the future of Peru should look like. I don’t believe in solving 3rd world problems by donating money so the poor can get some food; I believe the only way to help the 3rd world is creating a future for them. Something that doesn’t solve the problem right now, but over a period of time and I only see this possible in creating a stable economic, creating jobs and run the old mill of capitalism.

Lima has its flaws but with more than 8 million people (in 2007 that is) this city is more populated than Denmark with our 5,5 million people. When I was back home in August, even our biggest city Copenhagen felt like a small place. Living in a city bigger than my country honestly leaves some marks.

Running a Small Business – Keep Your Focus!
The most important lesson I have learned in 2009, is to keep focus on what you are dealing with right now. I have been moving away from my startup several times, ending up in a huge delay. My Google Sniper Sites project ended up taking way too much time and making me lose focus, even though I learned a lot from the project. Right now I am focusing 100% of my time on my current business goals, getting evisitcard translated to Spanish, finish the system and hopefully start entering the Peruvian market.

So my best advice from 2009 can only be to keep focus. I have delayed my adventure for way too long, because I didn’t keep focus on what I was actually here to do, and instead was acting like a dreamer, spreading my timer over too many different projects. If you want success with your Small Business, remember to keep your focus.

Blog Statistics from 2009
As the blog started out as a travelers blog, telling a bit about my experiences (and playing around with SEO, posting about places I visited) I never expected much for the blog. I still managed to get around 200 monthly unique visitors, with December 2009 peaking with over 500 unique visitors. In total more than 3000 unique visitors stopped by my blog, with a bounce rate on just around 60%. It hasn’t been the most active blog, with only 31 posts and 65 comments during the year, but I am quite satisfied so far as I have changed the direction of the blog. The visitors started picking up after I wrote about my Affiliate Marketing adventure with Google Sniper in October, so in the coming time I will focus more on useful posts for Small Business owners, Internet Marketers and in general tips for people working with Online Marketing like myself.

If you have any special request about what you would like to read more about, please feel free to post some comments on the blog. I hope 2010 will be a more active year, and wish you all the best of luck in 2010.

My 3 Reasons For Going to Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas

I am sure that everyone, beginner or experienced with Affiliate marketing (or maybe just starting, like me), can come up with a few reasons to go to the Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas, going off January 17-19. Personally I got 3 reasons ready right here, and who said you can’t mix business with pleasure? If I end up going to Affiliate Summit, this will be exactly the plan.

• Reason 1: Visiting my better half
  Today my better half is leaving for Las Vegas (or near, a place called Bear Mountain Ski Resort) for almost 3 months, and we now face the dreadful long-distance relationship problems. I’m sure most people can agree that this sucks, so getting a chance to visit her and relax with some Snowboarding would be no less than awesome!
• Reason 2: Working more and more with Affiliate Marketing
  If you have followed my blog the last couple of months, you probably know that I started my Google Sniper Project back in the end of October, and even though I’d like to focus on some AdSense sniping too now, most of my sites are affiliate sites and I am getting some really nice experiences. This is a field I’d like to work a lot more with, and integrate as part of my business here in Peru.
• Reason 3: Internet Marketing is my business, and there is lots to learn from Affiliate Marketers
  I am living here in Peru to start my business, and it is going quite well. I believe in my project, my product and that the market is ready, but there is still many major challenges to overcome. Even though I am selling my own product, I still believe I can get learn a lot from Affiliate Marketers, as in basic, its just about Internet Marketing.

The Big Answer: Yes – I’m a Player!

The answer to the big question; hell yea, I’m a player. I would put it all down on 1 hand of BlackJack, hopefully following my recently luck in the Casinos here in Lima, where they usually end up paying me to get drunk. I never win a lot in Casinos, but I usually walk away with a little more or the same money I came with – and pretty drunk (free whisky while playing BlackJack – why not?).

What would you do? Are you a player or a saver? Feel free to post it in the comments.

Now its time for a update again. I havent been blogging much lately, but hoping it will change as I will get some more time and focus some more on my business in the upcoming time. I felt like the blog needed a change, and since I always loved the Andreas02 design from Andreas Viklund, I decided to take the challenge and convert the design to a WordPress theme.

The design from Andreas Viklund is actually back from around 2005 I think, but it is a classic example of how good webdesign can keep working. For me its simple, easy and looks amazing. Unfortunately I couldnt find this as a WordPress theme, and I didnt find any other WordPress themes I liked as much as this design – so I decided to spend a night splitting the file to parts, and getting to know WordPress a little more. I really like the WordPress platform so far, and it would be interesting working some more with the platform. There is still some changes I’d like to figure out later, like for example making the tabs in the top become active, so example the “About” tab changes color when you navigate to the About-page, etc.

I’m also doing some small experiments with Adsense on this site and on FeedKataloget, which is a small danish site for adding RSS feeds and getting linkluv back. I hope to get some time to work on the site and finish some ideas for it. I didnt expect that many people to find it without doing any serious linkbuilding on the site, but I get a few new sites each week. Hopefully I can finish the project withing 1-2 works, start some serious linkbuilding and get a nice big catalog of RSS Feeds.

That was kind off a messy blog update. I hope to write some more well structured posts about subjects such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) in general, Business Productivity, Lifehacks and more about my projects I’m working on with Easy-Web.
Also happy Blogbirth to my mate Jan Poul Kaczmarek, who started his blog BonusNinja.net one year ago!

NextGen Gallery for WordPress
The best thing about WordPress is definitely the easy way to find and install plugins – everything from photo galleries to SEO-plugins can easily be found and implemented in the blog in no time. I had been looking at the NextGen Gallery before, so I decided to give it a try. I’ve uploaded all of my travel photos, and in the next couple of days I will add all the titles and descriptions to the images – hopefully I can get this gallery plugin to work with some decent SEO at the same time.
What I really like about this plugin is the easy administration – it took me no time to create and upload all of my travel photos. I will definitely recommend this plugin if you have a WordPress blog and want to share your photos.

AdSense – commercials on the blog
I have also added some AdSense boxes to the blog. I don’t expect to earn money on this blog, but I have the ads on the blog for two reasons; first of all I want to learn AdSense to know, as it is an very interesting perspective on Internet Marketing and I never really used it before. Second of all it would be nice to cover the costs of hosting this blog.
With AdSense people will only see sponsored links that are actually about the subject I’m writing about – interesting ads that people actually CAN use, and not just random ads for products that have nothing to do with why people are on the site. I remember the time I started working with internet and making websites, where most of the ads on the internet didn’t have anything to do with the websites – it was just companies paying for people seeing their banners. I love the way that Google really changed the way of seeing and using the internet.
It is my hope that the ads are not annoying, thus still visible for the user. Their relevant, in “eye-height”, but its not like a flashy banner in ugly colours, disturbing the websites design.

Why start a business in Lima?
You can read more about why and how I made the decision on my About-page. But I am really excited about this, though I have a lot of work to do. I still have to figure out how to structure everything in the future, so I wont be taxed twice (as the Danish tax is 40-60% and the peruvian tax is 15-30%, it could end up being quite expensive). There is ofcourse also the problem with working visa, with should be a pain to get, but proberly is pretty easy compared to going the other way around… If you have any information or experience with these things, feel free to make a comment on the post – I really apreciate any information I can get on this subject!

What will you be writing about now?
As living in Peru makes a good base for exploring more of South America during the next year, I will try to keep writing some posts about travel experiences and travel tips. However it is no longer the main theme for the blog. Mainly I will try to post about my life in Miraflores Peru, and the process of moving to Peru and starting business in Peru. There will also be more posts about private opinions and things i find interesting. It is my goal that writing about my way of moving to Peru and starting business in Peru will help other people searching for information and thinking about starting business in Peru.

If you find this blog interesting, got any questions, feedback or just wanna make your mark, make sure you throw a comment on the blog. And if you just so happend to travel through or visit Lima, make sure to give me a call, and I’ll help you as much as I can in this wonderful city!

Saludos
Christian Jessen

The plan is to write atleast once per week, though you never can promise anything when travelling.

Over and out, first post done..