Maybe I’ll Live in a Station-Wagon?
Maybe you’ve seen some of my posts from a while back about how I’m moving to Canada, after living for 10 years in Korea, in a few months from now (March 2016)? The plan for how I’m going to avoid living out of the back of a station-wagon and going surfing in Tofino every day is kind of up in the air for now.
Wait, that plans doesn’t sound so terrible because I think I’m going to need a vacation from my life here in Korea, some time to just chill out and get used to not being the centre of attention, ALL THE TIME. Anyhoo, I really do hope to avoid bleeding money at every single turn so a job of some kind will likely be a necessity and ideally, I’d be working for myself, writing books and building websites and other good stuff like that. Plus, the 2 cats probably want a place where they can run around and chase each other and do cat kind of stuff.
Nervous Energy: Yes! I’ll take Advantage of You
Not one to let nervous, completely terrified energy go to waste, I’ve been working really hard all summer at building the English teaching empire up to a point where I could feel like it’s not entirely the craziest plan ever to do it full-time when I go back to Canada.
What has this nervous energy gotten me? A new book: Life After ESL: Foreign Teachers Returning Home, which I’m actually convinced is my best one yet. Not to tout my own horn, but you know? I think it really is a solid one that people will find really useful. 55 of my friends and random netizens helped me out with it, so it’s based on some solid research. It’s up to 8 books now and all the book marketing podcasts I compulsively listen to say that after about 7 or 8 books, it’s time to hit the marketing hard because you can really start to get some good results. So, off I go, trying to bring the awesome to the world.
Plus, in news of other books, I’ve started to sell a good amount of them, especially the print on demand ones where I can make a lot more money than the Ebooks. Word is getting out there and people have started messaging me, asking me where and how they can get them, saying they heard about it from a friend or whatever. And, my ESL activity books (warm-ups and speaking activities) have started to get some traction with people not from Korea, which is key for me if I want to make my living off of it because English teachers in Korea just aren’t a big mass of people.
Website Awesome
Plus, I’ve also got myself a sweet new website: My Life! Teaching in a Korean University. Okay, not gonna lie. It’s not entirely new, but it used to be a blogger blog and now it’s a self-hosted one that’s a million times better.
Plus, I have this website too that now has a decent amount of content on it: ESL Speaking and the conversion on the pop-up box is freakishly high, like over 10% and I get at least 5 email subscribers each day through very little effort on my part, apart from just posting an activity that I have in one of my books.
Viral Blog Posts + Pop-up Awesome
And, my email list. Thanks to a few contests I’ve done, and a few viral posts on various blogs combined with SumoMe pop-up buttons, I now have 1000+ subscribers. All the podcasts I listen to say that it’s all about the email list and that once you get to 1000, things can really start to happen for you. I’m ready for the awesome!
