Israel Hyman’s Personal Blog

Until the other night, I had never seen an episode of Grey’s Anatomy.

Here’s how it happened:

Because there was nothing good on the Tivo, and Noell and I wanted some additional boxed entertainment, we quickly visited the iTunes Store, and downloaded Season 1, Episode 1, entitled “Pilot.”

The show was significantly better than I had imagined. The character development was excellent and authentic. The plots and subplots were interesting. The setting, a Seattle educational hospital, was foreign enough to cause ample amounts of fascination. The acting was superb. And the main character, Meredith Grey, was completely adorable.

Like millions of other people around the world, I am now hooked. I’m looking forward to playing catch-up on all the episodes between number one and the present.

It’s like I’m a super-hero living two different lives. During the day, I’m a Sales Manager with a Fortune 1000 company. In the evening, I’m online creating valuable content and giving it away, currently supported by Google Adsense revenue and donations.

My daytime job usually requires a 55+ hour work week. Also, I must balance my time to include an active spouse and three children, ages 9, 7, and 3. This doesn’t leave a lot of time for building a second income.

But here are the six reasons I spend time doing it anyway:

1. I can work on it anytime I want.

The flexibility with time is key. Everyone is busy — very busy — so why not build a side income that can take advantage of spare minutes in the early morning hours, in the late evening hours, and on weekends?

2. I can work on it wherever I want.

I have a MacBook Pro (a very powerful notebook computer) running OS X and Windows, and I have a Verizon Wireless internet card that allows me access to the internet from almost anywhere.

For example, during family visits to the park, as my children dangle upside-down on playground equipment, I bring my computer and work on my websites. In the past I would have simply brought a book or magazine to read, but now it’s my computer. It’s amazing really; my second income business is portable like a magazine. I also take my computer with me on business and personal trips out of town. Occasionally I’ll turn on the television in the hotel room, open my notebook, pop in the wireless card, and get to work creating the free content that gives people reason to come back to my websites. One thing is consistently true about business trips for me: I get plenty of downtime. Now I can put it to use.

3. It creates a reliable, increasing income stream.

Right now I’m only making a couple hundred dollars per month through Adsense, but I’ve noticed that it’s very consistent. Also, it gradually increases as more and more people discover my websites.

A few months ago, my daughter was diagnosed with Epilepsy, and while my family dealt with the changes associated with this, I didn’t work on my websites at all. I went several weeks without touching the sites. How much did my income decrease during that period? Zero! When you post an article (or, in my case, a podcast), and put Adsense next to it, it will produce income for as long as it’s available online. All the work I do now can continue to pay me forever.

4. The costs involved are very small.

My hosting provider is reliable, but inexpensive. I can spend $10 for a domain name, and $10 for a hosting service, and now I’m in business. I think of every new website as another division of my business. How many opportunities allow you to start a new division for $20. It’s almost absurd how low the costs are.

5. The barriers to entry are small.

It doesn’t require licensing, years of school, or any professional certification. I’m a sales manager who spent a few minutes in the morning, reading about HTML and CSS, and eventually got to the point where I could make my own websites. It’s not hard at all. Anybody can learn this stuff. It’s just that many people don’t even try.

6. Word spreads by links, online and off.

This is a powerful phenomenon. By focusing on creating good, valuable content, I benefit from audience members recommending my site to others. As of now when I’m writing this, when you google “video podcast” my Izzy Video website turns up in the top 10 results. This is because of all the links coming to me from high quality, highly authoritative websites such as Lifehacker and others.

Links online are valuable, but links offline are incredibly valuable as well. How does this happen? Just this morning, I received this email:

I own a video production company in Billings, MT and have made your tutorials mandatory viewing for my staff. Although two of my production guys have been shooting commercials for quite some time, their work has improved greatly as a result of your time and talents.

I’ve heard of teachers showing my video podcasts in schools. I’ve heard of people burning my videos on DVD’s and giving them to friends and family. Do I mind? Not at all. All my videos prominently display my web address, so they simply help drive more traffic to my website. And that’s where the Adsense is.

Hopefully you can see how with all these benefits, a busy person like myself might devote some time toward a project of this nature. I can’t think of an income source more flexible than building something online. But it’s not just flexible. It’s fun, challenging, and in many ways, addicting.

This is far off the subject of video, although it’s slightly connected through the brilliant Apple commercials featuring “I’m a Mac. I’m a PC.”

The news is simply this:

The iTunes store is giving away the funniest audiobook I’ve ever heard. It’s called “The Areas of My Expertise,” and it’s written and read by John Hodgman (think “I’m a PC”).

The thing is brilliant, and I’ve been laughing all morning. Please trust me on this one, and follow this link. It will open the iTunes Store, where you will find the book available for download (free at the time I’m writing this).

As Hodgman frequently says on his own blog…

That is all.

I’m feeling pretty good about what I accomplished this weekend. I published a new episode of Izzy Video, as well as a new episode of Paperclipping. The former consumed my Saturday, and the latter took only a few hours on Sunday.

The only downside to having so many production commitments is that I’m not sure I’ll have the energy to maintain that kind of output every weekend.

And my output really needs to increase, because I work on more than those two shows.

I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

We did something tonight we haven’t done in ages. The entire family sat together in our family room and watched a DVD. It’s been a long time since we’ve done that. I don’t even remember the last time.

The movie was Monster House, a new release on DVD. When I read the back in Best Buy, I took a risk and purchased it. At the top of the cover was “Two Very Big Thumbs Up!” from Ebert and Roeper, so I guess it wasn’t that much of a risk. My experience is that if a film gets two thumbs up, chances are pretty good I’m going to like it. I know not everyone feels the same way, but my own tastes luckily line up quite nicely with these famous film critics.

My goal was to select a movie that the entire family would enjoy, ranging from 3 years old to 34 years old. How’s that for a target audience?

Monster House was great for that. I was expecting the kids to hide their eyes during the scarier parts, but was pleasantly surprised to find them laughing.

I won’t spoil anything for those of you who haven’t seen it. It’s good. Really good. Go buy it. Your kids (and you) will love it.