Been thinking a lot again about how to make all this language-learning stuff make real money online. It already is making real money, but more could be accomplished with greater cash flow.

What I do currently is make money (through affiliates) helping people find (mostly free) language learning resources online. I'd like to extend that to helping people learn how to use the Web to learn languages - what tools and sites to leverage, what resources are best for individual languages, the real deal on learning for free and paying for products, etc.

The best way is to get into the fray myself! So I have laid out some disciplines to accomplish this week (all done a week from today - why wait?). By posting them here, I am committing to these things for myself and for the readers. If I don't work hard on making this sailing scallywag life last, it'll become less and less feasable and the work will never evolve into what I envision (and beyond).

Here are the steps I am going to do this week to put myself into the fray with learning Mandarin Chinese and get deep into what the people I am researching and documenting for experience themselves.

. sign up for a premium account at ChinesePod
. use Free Language to do a roundup of the best resources on the Web for learning Mandarin Chinese
. create a screencast guiding learners through these sites, highlighting the most useful stuff, and post this on YouTube, Free Language and Freestyle Language
. choose a social language learning network (or two) and have language exchanges with two Chinese people
. dig into Second Life materials for learning in the virtual world just to see what it's all about
. start blogging in Mandarin Chinese (yes! see it soon on Freestyle Language)

FYI: My experience with Mandarin Chinese ranges from classes at university to traveling in the south of China in 2001 and living in Beijing in 2005. I have since used the Pimsleur Method on and off, as well as numerous books and the Chinese in a Flash system.

I'll be back around soon...

Oh yeah, the money all comes in through generating more traffic to my websites. These Web Sites inform people about useful stuff for free, like learning languages and getting free-yet-valuable investing info.