This is my life.
When Free Means Shut Up
The internet is going to hell. Yes, I know I’m making a bold claim here, but bear with me. I am sick of everyone thinking everything should be free. When the hell did this crap start? Just because it’s on the internet, it should be free? I don’t think so.
Computers aren’t free. Internet service isn’t free.
Free is nice, don’t get me wrong, but the idea that anyone offering something for free has an obligation to the people who take the free thing is beyond presumptuous.
I read a comment recently on a site where the site owner was making a highly useful piece of software freely available, and a user had the nerve to chastise (in the ugliest, most ungrateful way possible) the software creator for not making the software usable by "EVERYONE" because "software should be able to be used by EVERYONE" and said user was "not happy" with the software creator. How disgusting. This was several paragraphs of complaint and censure and frankly, it irritated me to no end.
I wondered why this unhappy user didn’t just go buy some software that was better suited to their computer.
It’s not the complaints that are the problem here. It’s the user’s unbelievable gall in thinking the software creator has the obligation to make their software not only free but to make it acceptable for anyone who might ever want to use it.
Why are people like this? What is it about the internet that makes people believe everything should be free and that free stuff has an obligation to be good?
What I Want is What I Get
You know how when you have a site and it’s your site you can do anything you want with it?
That’s what I have here.
What I don’t want to do is keep updating this crappy challenge thing. All right. Yes, I know. I sound like a quitter. But sometimes you’ve got to quit the things that are making it hard for you to stay focused and do what needs to be done.
I prefer to think of my website empire in the making as my own personal thing. Making it public was a bad idea in the way I’m making it public, and frankly, I’m not comfortable with it. I prefer to feel free to talk about my sites and not worry about all the crap that I’m worrying about with them.
This post might not ever see the light of day, but getting it down here is helping me to realize a few things.
I’m not cut out to publicize my life.
I like my privacy.
I like to make decisions and then reevaluate and having a “challenge” like this is interfering with my methods.
I’m bored with this site. :)
Sorry, if you’re reading this, this is the last post on this site before I gut it and do something else with it.
By the way, read You Are Not a Gadget
You Are Not a Gadget
Jaron Lanier
Google books has pages available to read if you just want a taste of the book.
Coming to Grips with Time Wasters
I can’t spend too much time on this post, because I’ve discovered I waste a lot of the limited amount of writing and working time I have available writing for my sites that aren’t actually part of my in-progress website empire. My bad… seriously. Can’t get anywhere if I don’t get anything done.
I’ve noticed I am losing track of the weeks for my 50/50 Challenge, and I’m not sure my posting is really helping me at all! I feel guilty for not recording my progress, and at the expense of using my time for the real work I need to do.
So, just to be frank, I’ll get around to catching up the update reports when I get to them and that will have to be good enough.
I’m slowly coming to grips with the stuff that is wasting all my time. Some of it’s personal, some of it’s just me.
At the moment, I’m trying my damnedest not to become wishy-washy about what I’m trying to accomplish. :) I have a bad habit of doing that crap. Not today, though. I’ve got a couple more things to tidy up and then I’m SO done with Site #1 and it’s on to Site #2.
I am ignoring a lot of the stuff I’ve read and “learned” from others and focusing on what I’ve learned from myself, with my own experiments and using my own experience to get somewhere.
It’s been banging around in the back of my head that I do know what I’m doing. I have a few websites that are perfect models for what I need to accomplish to make real money. I just have to actually work, and that’s what I’ve discovered about myself. It’s not that I don’t know what I’m doing or how to do it, it’s that I haven’t spent nearly enough time doing it.
Oh, and letting domains age, as I’ve done, seems to have been a good thing… :) Now I just need to take them and my new domains to the completed stage and work them!
So, back to work.
How to Emulate a Static Website With a Blog Using WordPress
I started my plans for building a website empire with the idea that I would build static websites. I have a fondness for them, probably stemming from my controlling nature, but regardless, my thought was to build each site using NoteTab Pro (cool little text editing software I’ve used for years). Since I’m able to add little snippets of code and html with a single click, I’ve gotten quite adept at building sites quickly.
However, I had a change of heart for one reason or another and decided to go with WordPress after all. In the end, it really did boil down to me wanting to put a blog on nearly all my websites because I enjoy blogging as long as I don’t feel compelled to do it. Since I wanted to build sites that emulated static websites with a blog, the blog doesn’t become the centerpiece of the website, so there you go… no compelling reason to blog when I don’t want to.
Setting WordPress up to make it appear you have a static website with a blog is simple. Having a good theme helps, because it keeps your site from looking like a regular ol’ blog.
How to set up WordPress as a static site (even though technically it’s still a dynamic site :-)
First, create a few new PAGES for your site using the Admin Panel or something like Windows Live Writer (which I happen to think is fabulous).
- Home – put content on this one because it will be your homepage
- Blog – this one should be a blank page
- About – this will already be there, so just edit it
- Contact – fill out with some contact information or use a plugin to generate a contact form for it
- Any other pages you might want on your "static" site
Then, in the WordPress Admin Panel, go to SETTINGS: READING and choose "Front page displays – A static page. From the dropdown, you should select Home for Front page and Blog for posts page. Save changes.
Now, when you visit your site, you’ll have a static homepage and a separate blog, where you can "post" to. Any pages on your site should be built as WordPress PAGES and blog entries should be done as POSTS.
There you go, an ultra-simple way to create your own static site with a blog using WordPress.
Tried Pligg On a Site But it Failed to Live Up to My Expectations
Here’s the thing, I’m always first in line to call others out for complaining too loudly about the limitations and bugs you find in free software. Don’t get me wrong, though, because I love using open source software for my websites and on my own computer. The thing is, however, there are a lot of times when I get all excited about what a piece of software is promising to do for me and I go to the trouble of installing it and playing around with it and discover to my disappointment that the software just doesn’t work well at all for what I want it to do.
I should say now that I’m a controlling, exacting webmaster. :) I know what I want and I want software that’s reliable, fast, secure, and relatively easy to work with.
So, on that note, I read a lot of good things about Pligg and thought some of its features would be perfect for a site I’m developing (or trying to develop). I installed the software on a test directory, and after it looked promising, gave it a whirl on a domain of its own over a 48 hour time period during which I spent ENTIRELY too much time at my computer.
What I discovered was that the concept of Pligg is wonderful, but the actual software, not so much.
I found the Category Administration extremely buggy. I found the modules lacking, unless you want to buy some, but even those didn’t look like anything I was interested in. I found the customization of the default templates to be awkward.
In summary, I found that it just didn’t meet my expectations. All this really means though, is that I have to move on to something else that might work better for me in the long run. It’s like my trial run with Joomla a few years ago, except this time I didn’t build 3 complete websites before I discovered that I and Joomla didn’t get along. This time I only built one and a half. :)
Here’s my toast to figuring things out in a hurry.
Finally, have I completely abandoned Pligg? Probably.
Amazon Affiliate Links Do Make Money
Just discovered this guy here from this post here and I have to say I agree with his article on the forum and his ideas about Amazon. I’ve always done well with Amazon and it’s one reason I hesitate to go to contextual ads as my main income source. In fact, although I started out this new empire with that idea, I’ve seriously scaled back on the context ads and started using more Amazon and other affiliate links on my sites. I just couldn’t stand the thought of tying too much into one single program or income stream.
One thing I’ve noticed is that many marketers suggest you put up vague links that say things like "Click here to visit the … website" or "Click here to buy this at …" I’ve tried this on a couple of websites and I have to say, my old method seems to work better, my old method simply being a link in the post wherever I mention the product with the product name hyperlinked using an affiliate link, and a link such as "More info about …" or "Buy … " at the end of the description or post.
I’ve never been one who believes in all that silliness of telling your visitors that you’re using an affiliate link. Who cares? Links are links and everyone knows that. Common sense says if you can make a few pennies from linking to something you were going to link to anyway, you should do it and anyone who thinks bad of you because of that is probably a socialist. ;) (Private joke here. LOL.) All I can say is that I’m a capitalist and I’m proud of it.
Through Amazon, I’ve made a total of $253.51 this year from a few sites I run that I haven’t updated in a long time. I wish it were more money but frankly, when I built these sites, I knew nothing about keyword research or promotion, and even now that I do, I don’t usually bother with any of those older sites. Many of these older sites also promote extremely low value products. To be exact, it took 576 products sold to make that income, which comes to a commission of just a hair over $0.44 per sale.
According to my Amazon report my conversion rate is 6.77%.
I have just put one site online that links to Amazon and another affiliate program that I do okay with which pays me a 5% commission, and the sites I previously built to test out the "Click here to visit the … website" or "Click here to buy this at …" method of linking are about to be converted back to my previous way of linking so I can check for an increase in sales and conversions.
Back to the topic of this guy’s advice. I don’t know him, and I don’t know if he’s an honest fellow or not, but everything he says makes sense to me, and I’ve been using Amazon to monetize my websites since 2001.
I’ll be reading more of his stuff.
I have two days left in this week and I have about 16 more pieces of high-quality content to create for my current website project. Since I’m serious about this challenge I’ve set myself, this means it’s time to get back to work.
I intend to persevere, work hard, and deliver!
Challenging Myself to Get to Work
I’ve seen a lot of people create their own challenges lately. Although I don’t usually like to set myself up for failure, I’m about to give it a shot. I hate disappointment, just like most people do, and I usually do everything in my power to avoid it.
However, today I join the self-challenge crowd as I set up a challenge for myself. Let’s call it The 50 Dollars in 50 Weeks Challenge.
I need to get to work if I want to start seeing some income coming my way, so here’s what I’m going to do.
For 50 weeks I will be building a (minimum of) one site a week with the intent to earn $50 a day.
I’d love to be able to say I’m going to pop out 3 or 4 sites each week, but I do all the work myself so that’s not likely to happen. Anyway, $50 a day would mean I could officially abandon the old career path about 9 months into the challenge. That would be nice, because I’ve been toying with that option a lot lately anyway.
Every site will have to bring in about $1 a day on average, which seems like a stretch to me. My current income from my websites is more along the lines of $0.10 daily for each site on average. I have spreadsheets to prove it. :) Some sites do better, some do worse, but the average averages out and this average has been hanging around with my websites for almost 5 years.
It is definitely time to do something different if I want to beat this challenge.
These will be product related sites, with a minimum of 20 pages of highly-relevant, high-quality, unique content monetized with affiliate links and possibly some contextual ads.
And that’s it. Now, it’s time to get to work. The challenge started today and I have 17 more pieces of highly-relevant, high-quality, unique content to write this week!
The Difference Between the Haves and the Have Nots in Web Marketing
I am currently a have not, but I’d love to be a have. The problem is me. I’ve come to the realization that there’s only one real difference between the haves and have nots in web marketing and that’s work ethic.
The haves do the work, even if they hire it out. No matter how it happens, in the end, the work does get done.
Have nots do some work, but maybe not the work that needs to be done to move a website towards its earning potential. They might think of themselves as hard-workers, but in the end, the truth is that they either do too little, or waste time on the little things that don’t do anything to move them forward.
That’s me. I work hard, and I work a lot, but I don’t always (almost never) work at what really needs to be done.
Since I’m practicing self-discipline now, I’m changing that. And yes, despite my prior rant against accountability, I have a spreadsheet that makes me accountable to myself for what I’ve accomplished.
Nothing fancy. I have a set number of pages of real content I want on each site I build, based around good keyword research (as opposed to bad keyword research—at a time when I’m really not 100% what the difference is :) but nevertheless I move on…).
My spreadsheet has a single column where I input the current number of pages of real content I have on a site (excluding any standard pages such as privacy, about, contact, blah-blah). I update the number whenever I add content to a site. So there you go. Simple. Easy. Only someone who is lazy wouldn’t update it… (I am self-disciplined, I remind myself. I’m not talking about me.)
I wrote previously about how I had looked at my report (this same spreadsheet, from which I learned the undeniable truth about how much content I’ve actually not created for all of my websites) and come to the conclusion that I had issues I really needed to face.
I’ve never really given my business a chance to grow into something because my work ethic sucked.
It’s time to change that, so here I am, practicing self-discipline and trying to become the person I want to be.
When I looked at that spreadsheet, it was clear to me that all my bellyaching about how much work I’d put into my websites and how little progress I’d made was more than a little skewed. I don’t know what all the work is that I’ve been doing, but I’ve clearly not been doing it with any kind of focus or plan. There’s no regularity to the pattern, no signs of systematic follow-thru or follow-up on any of my web projects to date.
For me to really make the changes I want to make, that has to change dramatically. I have to pick one path, one method, and stick to it until the end. Minor course corrections are always going to be okay, but massive overhauls of how I’m trying to do things won’t work. Because frankly, that’s probably what’s been throwing me off track all along.
So, I now have a plan—and I’m quite excited by it.
Problems with Production and Focus
I have discovered a serious weakness in myself. Of course, I already knew about it (Perpetual Procrastination, anyone?) but I don’t guess I had actually accepted it.
I’ve had to now. I did a report for myself, of all the sites I’ve created and how many pages of actual content each site has. The answer wasn’t pretty.
I have 51 domains. I have created very little real content for the majority of those domains.
- 30 sites have fewer than 10 pages. 9 actually have 0 pages. Several of these are new. Several of these are not new. ;)
- 9 sites have between 10 and 20 pages.
- 7 sites have between 20 and 50 pages.
- 1 site has a little less than 100 pages.
- 1 site has a little more than 100 pages.
- 2 sites have between 1,000 and 2,000 pages. One of these sites earns $2 a month if I’m lucky and the other generates between $50 to $150 in income each month before expenses.
- 1 site has over 4,000 pages. This site makes about $0 each month. I’ve made exactly $10 off this site in a year.
Now, these last three sites are run on a database, so I haven’t actually created that many "articles" of content. And looking over the rest of the list, I was struck by just how little I had accomplished over the years with these websites. Clearly the hobby attitude isn’t doing me any favors.
It appears from this analysis that I have a serious problem focusing on anything long enough to actually produce anything.
Now, I’m trying really hard to change that. I am setting some goals (probably a waste of time) and practicing some serious self-discipline (counting on this to help) and making a plan. The plan is the thing I feel certain will help the most. The plan is nothing more than telling myself I need to do so many pages for each site before I move on. Some people might call this a goal, but I don’t. It’s a plan.
I’ve decided I’m going to build a real business around these websites of mine and that means getting to work and focusing on producing something. I’ve listed these in a spreadsheet and I’m going to start at the bottom, adding content to each one until I’ve reached a level that I think is useful and has earning potential. There are also a few very specific sites that I’m just going to get rid of when the renewal comes up.
I’ve seen the signs. It’s time to step up and do the work.
Do You Believe in Signs?
I’m not talking about those kinds of signs you see on the road. I’m talking about signs from God.
When I need to go in one direction or the other with a plan, I generally try to keep an open mind. I don’t wait for a sign, but when one crops up, I try to always pay attention.
I have a tendency to accept positive signs and ignore negative signs. The reasons why I do this are simple. I tend to believe God doesn’t punish us on Earth for wrong decisions we make here. I think he’s saving all that up for later. :o But when we make a right decision, I think we often see the benefits of that decision sooner than later.
Of course, making a wrong decision can lead to negative consequences, but those are likely of our own making, not divine intervention.
I realize this doesn’t sound entirely rational, but what with faith is?
Anyway, I’ve been seeing a lot of signs lately, and it all goes back to a particular epiphany I had in June of 2007. I went off track after that epiphany and didn’t do what I set out to do based on something I felt like God had put in my heart in answer to a pressing weight I’d been feeling with my work life. I intended to build my own website empire. I didn’t because I kept getting distracted with the next best way to build it.
Of course, over that course of time, I’ve learned so much that I almost think I wouldn’t be where I am now if I hadn’t gone through those times. Right now, I feel on the cusp of finally understanding the big picture and seeing how it will really be possible to turn my obsessive website habit into a true money making venture.
I had a re-epiphany a few months ago, and things are really starting to fall into place. I feel compelled to try to stay on track this time and not be distracted by other ideas and thoughts. Here’s praying it happens, because I certainly keep seeing the signs that I might finally be on to something.