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.

Coming to Grips with Time Wasters - Read more posts like this at Perpetualized

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.

Problems with Production and Focus - Read more posts like this at Perpetualized

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.

Do You Believe in Signs? - Read more posts like this at Perpetualized

Considering today is the first time I’ve submitted any new articles promoting any of my current websites since mid-March and that I haven’t added any new websites to my empire since then either (and only 1 site at that), I am optimistic.

I’d like to see my income increase without adding any additional sites if at all possible. The reason for that is because I would really rather make at least $1 to $2 per day for each site. I’ve put a lot more work into proper research for most of the new sites I’ve created and I’d love to see that pay off.

Currently, none of my sites are closer than the 2nd page for their keywords in the search engines. I will be adding some new content to the sites that appear to be on their way up in earnings, because it means the new content will have the best chance of making a difference.

Traditionally, my method was this: I’d brainstorm interesting domain names for topics I found interesting. Research? Nah. I preferred catchy domain names. ;) I have since learned that this doesn’t work well when you want a website to actually be financially self-sustaining. You need a site that is at a minimum going to earn back its domain cost and its share of hosting expenses. So, lesson learned.

Now, I find a keyword in a topic of interest to me (see how I still just do sites I find interesting?) and then I find a good domain name to go with it. This lets me get the best of both worlds. I get a site that I’m not going to be bored with (I hope) and a domain that makes it more likely my site will actually get traffic and be able to earn enough to stay online.

I am done with hanging on to domains that can’t even pay for their renewal costs. This is a drain on my energy and drain on my finances.

To summarize, I have 8 articles linking to 9 websites.

(Technically I have 11 websites I’ve created since January, but 1 of those was a personal political statement about healthcare reform, and the other was another personal site – no keyword research involved in the creation of either site.)

My goals for the coming weeks are to finish some sites I have in limbo. I bought a few domains that I haven’t built sites for yet. When those are complete, I will be focusing on promotional activities for a short while. I need to test some things and make some effort to get as many of my sites on page 1 as possible and as close to number 1 as possible.

From my work on an older site I have that is number 1 for several competitive terms, I realize you can’t rush rankings. So I will alternate between building new sites and working to grow and promote my existing sites. This way I can learn as I go.

And finally, I will be working to use my new knowledge about research to my advantage on a few older sites I have. They’ve been around for years and are ranked for several okay terms.

One site specifically is ranked #3 in Google for a term that has about 1,600 exact searches a month and about 1,070,000 results in quotes for the term. The site is nicely aged at about 5 years old and positioned well to branch into some other keyword phrases that get considerably more searches but have considerably fewer competing sites. I’m going to try my hand at spiffing up that site and see where it leads me.

Although I’m willing to create many sites to generate the income I would need to make this my full-time career/job, of course I would rather improve fewer properties to make more money per property if at all possible!

Now, I just have to get to work!

Website Empire Per Day Income Inching Up - Read more posts like this at Perpetualized

I thought about going into details and had in fact written this whole long post about it, but then thought…nah. Boring stuff and probably too personal to boot. So let’s skip all that.

Here’s my new plan.

Following a plan that is much more in line with my own way of working with websites (building small sites about topics of interest to me so I can write) and monetizing them in a slightly different way than I’ve done in the past, I’ve been bringing in a steady $1.00 a day this month. My goal is to multiply that over the next 6 – 12 months and create a little website empire for myself.

I’m at $1.00 a day right now and my next goal is to reach $30.00 a day.

Simply stated, I just have to do what I’ve already done 30 more times to reach my goal.

Since I have created a few new sites that aren’t in the search engines yet, but the ones that are total 7, I assume that means I’m going to have to create 210 more websites. Not sure if that’s realistic or not since I take at least a day to build one good site and I only work on this stuff twice or thrice a week.

Then again, I could have just chosen terrible topics. I think it’s going to take quite a few more websites for me to find out.

I’m toying with the idea of posting stats for these new sites. We’ll see.

Getting busy building websites and my own little website empire - Read more posts like this at Perpetualized