Passion is a great motivator, but make no mistake: we need money to pay bills too. Passion alone does not do that.

Sounds good.

Great answers by all and much appreciated :) The one I can relate to more as a fellow creative soul would be by Nebulas. This is what I will do now . . .

1. Wake up early to finish my daily article for my WA site (SEO stuff that I've been doing). Takes me an hour to do 1000+ page article.

2. Do my 9-5 (Also SEO related). 6pm-ish when I'm off.

3. Spend an 1 hour doing cold approaching on the streets for a music / club related project I've been working on. Will move this site to WA as well. Working on outsourcing this whole thing from my daily routine. Which would be awesome. Working on building this around my music goal. ???

4. Get home around 7. Have dinner with the lady and just work on producing music for 1-2 hours.

Thanks for your input everyone! I need to just prioritize my goals at this point and cut the fat so to speak.

One thing is for sure. The goal for this year is still earning $5000 a month passive by the end of December 2015 and also create more music. Wow, Feb is almost half way done. Back to work! :)

If you are only considering income I would do that first and foremost. Then put some icing on the cake with a website from WA.
Just my thoughts.
Ken

Why not combine them? I know you have a WA promo site, but if that's not your passion, perhaps you should create a site about producing music.

Your WA site is making some sales, so that's something you can still work on, but would it be awesome to create a website where you wrote content that not only benefited YOU abut also the people that read it?

It's a tough call. I found success promoting whatever and becoming passionate about it. But you are very lear that you love to produce music. I would at least try to start a website about it, and see what you like more. Perhaps you don't like "teaching" producing music, just doing it yourself.

If that's the case, brining people into WA and helping them creating websites about things they care about is still a pretty awesome business venture.

Hi there Soulja, I can totally relate to your question and situation! I am in pretty much the same situation and I would like to share my thoughts with you and discuss with you.
My passion is creativity (art, music and their combination in film) and I have been dragging along also some music projects for years that I was not able to produce. I am also in the cycle of what to do first for quite a while? Earn a lot money and create more time and energy for my passion? But in that time, I don't really get to work on my passion and I don't develop enough artistically. But when I just embrace uncertainty and chance (which I did for many years and obviously that didn't work out well) and go for the artistic development, I might end up financially broke times and again, leaving me even less time and energy for my passion.

Since a few months my conclusion is definitely: focus on creating passive income first - as long as it takes to become financially free, then I have all the time for creativity. And along that road don't lose my focus, goal and connection to creativity. That kinda means also to "sacrifice" my artistic time and development right now (not entirely thought, cause creativity is just part of my every day life) but still keep the focus and goal in my mind. I simply did some math. Right now I am actually "artistically" quite successful as a freelance filmmaker - I have plenty commissions and spend around 80-90% of my time doing those. So on the outside it looks good, but actually the better and more I get, the less time I have for my own projects (the left over 10% of the time). When I keep on this track for let's say 5 years to come. I will be doing 5x90% = 450% (of 5 years) time and work for other projects, leaving about 5x10%=50% for my own projects. Now if I focus for the next 2 years only to succeed on generating enough passive income for my life, I would use like 2x100% (2 entire years)=200% to build that up, but afterwards I have like 90% of the rest of 3 years 3x90%=270% for my own projects. Even though this just a theoretical estimation, the point should be clear that 270% is far better than 50%. And if I calculate that for even 10 years, returns are even greater. Actually if you manage to become financially free with passive income streams, you are actually free for the rest of your life.
And of course I think this is not the "either-or" thing, but BOTH. The goal is to create that passive income AND to do it around your passion and creativity. I think having great artistic content is essential, but the marketing and SEO part is just equally important - again it is BOTH and if one side is lacking, it won't be successful - that is what I have learned in the past months.
So my conclusion for artistic endeavors is to learn the (internet) marketing side also and take responsibility for the financial success of our own creative projects. Now to get to that point of financial freedom I think it is totally legit to look at all kind of different marketing tools and techniques to achieve that goal - even if that seems to be "off track" along the way. But as long as we are clear about what our actual goal is, it is not off track.

I hope that helps a bit.
Cheers!

I have 2 passions, working and creating with children and working on the computer, developing and creating, the children give me a basic income, and a lot of fun. My work on the computer has to bring me the additional income I need, when the children are to old to come to my daycare. I love to do both!
And I don't see my work as "work"
To make the shift from being paid as a babysitter > to being paid from affiliates, I have scheduled 5 years of consistent working on my websites to accomplish that goal.
Loes

I haven't made any advertising the last time here on WA, so I presume my traffic is send by the searchengines the last month. I have 5 sites up and running for 4-4-5-5-6 months
traffic 70-73-131-177-285 there is a climbing line to see.

My first website has not received any traffic at all and it is about 6 month old. My second site got traffic in one week. It all depends on what your content is and if there is a interest in it. Also, I have not promoted any of my sites, I have just let my SEO and WSO work promote them. One day I will promote them but not until I feel they are ready or I am ready for it. Hang in there my friend it will come. :)

I think it took me about a month to get that many but the thing was that they were all scammers. You will first be greeted by them so beware.
Normal traffic can take up to about 4 moths before you see anythig real.
Ken

Getting traffic takes time, on average 5,6 months, provided you write consistently, (2,3 posts per week)

Everyone's website will progress at different rates :) You will get steady traffic in due time

We don't know our stats so till
We so I don't see this as much help.

5x per day x 30 days in month = 150 referrals per month

150 referrals x 12% = 18 sales per month

18 x $8 (discount price) = $144

18 x $22.5 x 4 months = $1620

OK, the math doesn't work out. I'm not a mathematician! But that's the general idea. People sign up, some stay, some not, so it's give and take.

I have been dealing with this for 2-3 years now. You can recover a bit, but you will always be thinking...is the previous penalty holding me back? I have one site that had a manual penalty that I did a disavow on. It didn't really help much. I would just start over is my advice to you.

Start all over again . It will be a lot faster and you should be able to make another cool old site yourself

Definitely agree with Ken and would keep the domain. Lots of work ahead, but once it's done ... it's done.

Number 2 because you will have a hard time regaining respect.

All good advice there

I agree with Tommy. You can often take 1 site into the stratosphere more successfully than if you get 10 sites just hovering above water.

Concentrate on getting the first one up and making money for you, because if you start going off in different directions you will get lost and bewildered. Master all you can until you can do it with your eyes closed before biting off more then you can chew.