Eric Giguere asks an interesting question over at his blog – Do you have an “AdSense Will”?
It is actually a question V (my wife) and I have talked about and made plans for over the past year or so.
It became more serious for us to talk about when we realized that our family’s main income source was blogging and when we started planning a family (funny how things get more serious when you realize you’re responsibly for a little one).
Phase one of getting things in order was getting our wills together and setting up our business in a smart way.
With that out of the way we had one level of the problem solved – but another question arose.
V came to me one day and said ‘if you died, how would I know what to do with your blogs?’ and ‘Would they keep earning money without you?’
The second question first – yes they would continue to earn money, but on a decreasing scale over time. It would be important for her to either manage the blogs and find a way for them to continue to operate with soeone e
Now V’s a pretty smart person, but she’s not a blogger and while I’m not a techie, she makes me look like a hardcore coder. Like Eric writes in his post, she wouldn’t have the faintest on where to start in a lot of the logistics of what I do.
As a someone who works largely alone I realized that I needed to put together some sort of dossier to help her out in case anything untoward were to happen to me.
Here’s what it includes (so far – it is a work in progress):
- Contact details for partners – I have a number of blog partners that would be able to help her navigate some of the logistics of managing my blogs
- Contact details for trusted other bloggers – a few others who know enough to be useful
- Passwords and Contact details for Advertising Programs and Affiliate Programs – to be able to access and manage income
- Contact details of bloggers who work for me – a number of my blogs are written these days by others.
- Contact details for web hosts – without these the blogs fall over and income disappears
- Passwords for Paypal accounts
- Backup details – for blogs and computers
- Blog and hosting passwords – to give her (or those who help her) access
- Instructions on what to do – a few notes on what I’d suggest she does. Which blogs she could sell (and who could help her sell them), which to allow to run (and who to write on them), what my agreements are with different people etc
I’m also going to give V some blog lessons in the coming months and be more intentional in talking to her about the day to day running of my work so that it isn’t a completely foreign thing to her. She’s also going to meet some of my blogging partners next year when we head to North America which I’m sure will help also.
Eric calls this his ‘AdSense Will’ or ‘Disaster Recovery plan for your online business’ – I just call it thinking ahead and being smart for the sake of those you love.
PS: Interweb also has a piece picking up on Eric’s post titled AdSense in the Afterlife? as did Blogging Pro.
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