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.

I also started submitting articles to UAW (Unique Article Wizard) to test how much effect this have to the sites ranking. So far I haven’t been able to see results from this, though I expect it to give good results on a long term strategy. It seems like a nice way to get long-term backlinks, but it doesn’t give you a lot of fast backlinks. So far, none of my articles have shown up in the backlinks search. The backlinks count is pretty high because I posted some comments on DoFollow blogs and blogs with Top Commenters, which gives a lot of backlinks.

I have only built 6 sites so far, but only a few of them is starting to get decent traffic. Site #2 is doing really well, and getting a lot of traffic on long tail keywords, as well as a bit traffic on the main keyword. Site #3 is pretty interesting because I’m not promoting a Clickbank product, but choose to play a bit with Amazon referral. The site is starting to receive a bit of traffic from Google on long-tail searches, and has a pretty amazing CTR (Click-Through Rate) with 11 clicks from just 25 unique visitors. No sales yet though, but I am hoping Amazon keep their tracking cookies for a while, so there might be a chance of getting revenue next time the visitor buys something from Amazon. The referral rate is pretty low though, at just 4% – but the more items you sell from Amazon, the higher it will get (up to 8%). I will probably try to add a few more sniper sites to Amazon products and see how it goes, but I’m not sure if this is worth it. Probably depends on the niche that you focus on, and what the costumers buy.

I have also added the number of hops I got last week. There is quite a big difference on the new and the old Clickbank analytics, so I’m not sure which one is most correct. To confirm these results however, I coded my own little tracking-system, so every time someone clicks on my Clickbank affiliate links, it saves it in my database. I started tracking day-by-day clicks today, and will try to compare these results with the ones from Clickbank analytics, to see if there is a difference. Also the hop statistic from last week is a bit affected by testing some of the links, but should be no more than 10-12 hops.

Project Google Sniper – Week #2

Sniper sites created: 6
Sites indexed: 6/6
Backlinks to all sites: 247

Google rankings on main keyword
Site #1: None
Site #2: 3 (+3)
Site #3: 9
Site #4: 33 (+7)
Site #5: None
Site #6: 50

Clickbank hops: 68 (New analytics) / 101 (Old analytics)
Amazon clicks: 11 Clicks

So what is Google Sniper? Well, basically it’s a method to create sites made for special keywords on Google, get them ranked in the top of the search result. The goal for these sites is to presell a product, and send the traffic you get with potential buyers, to a sales page for a product. All in all, there is not much new in this method, but what really got me inspired, is the way George Brown (the author of Google Sniper) wrote the guide and made it step by step. This might seem to be just another of those “get-rich-quick”-schemes that you find all over the internet, but after reading some reviews about the guide and the methods used, I decided to take a go at it.

I started last week with creating some sites and actually already got them indexed, but I still need to do some work on tweaking them, and hopefully soon they will jump in rankings and bring me more traffic – and eventually some sales. I have to admit, that so far I haven’t made one single sale, but it is all a matter of time and getting the sites ranked. I’m just working in one niche right now, but I want to find a few more niches this week, and create a couple of more sites.

To get more backlinks to the sites, and get them ranking faster, I decided to give a go on Unique Article Wizard, where I have so far written 2 articles waiting for distribution, and I will write one article for each site to test this. But more about UAW and my results in a later post. For now I will give the first status update on my sniper sites.

The Google Sniper Experience – Week #1

Sniper sites created: 5
Sites indexed: 4/5
Backlinks to all sites: 68

Google rankings on main keyword
Site #1: None
Site #2: 6
Site #3: 9
Site #4: 40
Site #5: None

One of the blogs I follow is Rune Risdom, a Dane who also writes about his work with Just-Eat, where you can order food online. His latest post about how they expand with their own delivery service, so small restaurants like Sushi-places are able to get delivery too, made me think about how much I miss the concept of Just-Eat, which I so far havent found in Lima.

Let me start by saying, that you can get pretty much everything delivered here in Lima – from fastfood, pizzas and sandwiches to drugs from pharmacies. This is all great, but you need to know the number, what you want to order a know a bit spanish. But there is no online ordering for delivery, and so far I only found only ordering on Bembos.

What I really miss, is a solution as simple as Just-Eat, where you can search on all restaurants nearby, get the menu, and take your time to make your order online – and pay with your credit card. I think that Lima is a city which would be really great for a concept like this, and if you have the resources, experience and capital to create a brand like Just-Eat in Lima, you could do very well.

All I can do, is hope that a company like Just-Eat could see the advantage in this market, and find ways to get out to customers here. With the development of Lima and Peru in general, I wouldnt be surprised to see online ordering taking a portion of the market, just like we see it in countries like Denmark and England.

If you have any tips, experiences or comments on ordering food in Lima or concepts like Just-Eat in Lima / Peru, feel free to leave a comment in the post.

I have been reading quite a lot about time management and how to increase productivity when your running a small home-based business. I felt like I have had problems achieving my goals lately, and have felt I havent got anywhere for a while. So I decided to try to do something about my productivity by making some changes in the way I live and work.

I started reading on the Lifehack Blog, which contains a lot of very good and interesting articles. One of these articles that have inspired my to start a new experiment, is this article about how to wake up and instantly achieve something everyday. The basic of the article is, that if you start your day off by doing your most important goal for that day, you will get a self-esteem boost and possibly get more done that day.

I’m not sure how this excactly will work on me. First of all, I have to admit that I’m not a morning person at all – I need my coffee and my time alone. If I try to go running in the morning, I always get sick and dont get as much out of the trip as if I go in the afternoon. If I get caught by some interesting work, I can stay up all night and work where I suddenly notice that it is sunrise. So the thought of starting my day with actually doing the most important goal for the day sounds like a crazy idea.. None the less, I decided to give it a try.

I only just started on this experiment today, but the conclusion so far is that it actually works. So far I let my self make a cup of coffee and some breakfast, before I start working – but I try to avoid to start surfing, reading, watching TV or doing anything else that what I set as my “morning goal”. I simply just make my coffee and breakfast, and go directly into my little “office” – close down my mail program, and only keep the windows open related to the work I’m doing right at that moment. It really works to let you focus on that achievement of the day, and no matter how much of the other stuff you planned to do that day, you know you got the most importent thing done, because you did it before you did everything else.

As for the experiment, I will continue to do this from now on; every evening I decide what the first thing I will get done tomorrow will be. That way I dont have to spend the rest of the evening / night thinking about that thing, because I know it will be dealt with as the first thing tomorrow.

That and a lot of other interesting posts on Lifehack has really inspired me, and I will properly try to follow more and more advises from sites and blogs like Lifehack. I hope this maybe has inspired you too. Do you follow any of these Lifehack blogs or resources? Do you run experiments like that to increase your productivity, or do you have a speciel way of getting things done? I hope you will share your experiences with Lifehacks and ways of increasing productivity.

I can finally release some more information on my primary project here in Peru. And a little gift for all my readers: Get a free website with the Easy-Web CMS BETA. If you participate in the BETA of Easy-Web CMS, I will give you 3 months of free trial, and all BETA-testers will recieve a really good offer if they wish to continue using the solution from Easy-Web CMS.

My main project with my company Easy-Web here in Peru, is the Easy-Web CMS. This is basically a easy solution for small companies and private people who wish to get a small online presentation for their company on the internet. The basic idea for this project is a cheap and easy website, for people who are not used to work alot with computers, and just wants a easy and cheap solution.

I am right now working on launching the product in a Danish and English version. As soon as those versions are up and running, and I feel the system is on a level I want to sell on the South American market, I will have it translated to Spanish and start focusing on Peru and the rest of South America as my main market.

Now, the real news in this blog post, is a gift to all of my readers. I decided to open for public BETA of the system, and therefore I now offer you a free website. All you have to do is sign up at the Easy-Web CMS BETA website, and you will be online with your new website in no time. You will start with 3 free months trial of the product, and during the next 1-2 months you will see alot of changes and updates in the system.

So go ahead now, and create your own free website!

ExpatPeru.com – all the information you need
I think ExpatPeru.com is my most used source for information. On the site they have all sorts of usefull information, articles and more – everything an expat needs. But for me the most important thing about the site, is the forum. Being active and posting in the forum can first of all get you alot of good contacts, but second of all makes you much more clever on the expat life. This is where you go to ask other expats for helps on problems with moving to Peru. People on this forum are generally very nice, and spend a lot of time answering your questions and helping your.
Through this forum I got several valuable resources – I will highly recommend this to everyone thinking of moving to Peru or living in Peru.

LivingInPeru.com – Another interesting expat community
On Living in Peru you can find alot of usefull information as well as news from Peru. This site also have a big forum, but I have to admit that I have not yet used this forum as much as ExpatPeru.com. I think the best thing about Living in Peru is their Classifieds section, where everyone can put up an ad for apartment, jobs, selling private stuff or whatever you need. I actually found my current apartment through the classifieds section of Living in Peru.
All in all the site is not that different from ExpatPeru.com, but I think its mostly about just picking what you like best, or use both. I plan to use Living in Peru more in the future, as this also is a good place to get contacts and information about moving to Lima.

Other good resources
There is quite a few sites out there, but here is some of the other valuable sites I’ve used so far to find information about moving to Lima:

The Ultimate Peru List
A great list made by naturegirl321 from the Living in Peru forum. This list covers almost everything you need to know, if your looking in to moving to Lima!

Expat blog
This site is mostly interesting because it links to a lot of different expat blogs, where people tell the tales of their lives in a new country. You can also list your own expat blog here.

More expat resources?
If you know more good expat resources, especially for South America, feel free to leave a comment on this post, and share your experiences. What do you think about the online expat communities? And what are your thoughts of using the internet as a way of not only getting information, but also vital business contacts and contacts to other expats in general?

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