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 if you have a few hours. It’s quite interesting. It’s unrelated to the topic of this post, sort of, but it did have something to do with my sudden desire to change things up.

You Are Not a Gadget

Jaron Lanier

Google books has pages available to read if you just want a taste of the book.

What I Want is What I Get - Read more posts like this at Perpetualized

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.

Tried Pligg On a Site But it Failed to Live Up to My Expectations - Read more posts like this at Perpetualized

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!

Challenging Myself to Get to Work - 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

I am still tracking for a solid $1 a day, and I just finished another site. Or partially finished, I should say. I will be adding more content over the next couple of weeks, until I reach 20 – 25 pages, possibly 30. Heck, I could probably do more than that, but I’m going to start there.

The thing is, I don’t like the idea of all my income coming from one source. I want to diversify and I think I’m going to do that. This particular site is well suited to affiliate promotions and at the moment that is the way I’m going to go with it.

In fact, I might stick to affiliate promotions as much as possible because this does give me the best chance for diversification.

I’ve created this one site in April. I did a couple in March. At the moment, this gives me a total of 49 websites, but this includes all the domains I own including the many personal sites I run.

I have found it difficult to separate out the sites based on what their purpose is, so I’m just going to go with this number in the future for all my forecasting. It’s easier that way. Of course, this is going to give me some really bad forecasting models, but maybe that’s best too. I do too much forecasting anyway.

I look back and realize I’ve already learned a few things that make it apparent I have made some bad domain decisions even with these new domains I’ve purchased, but at least I have discovered this early enough to make changes in my future domain purchases. My fast or slow? decision seems to have panned out for me.

I’m going to have to figure out how to track some of this stuff so I can be more effective. I’m also going to have to get back to work!

Website Empire Road Bumps - 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

Here’s the breakdown.

Yes, I think the material in the Google Sniper is worth the $67.

Yes, I got my refund for the upsell product that I decided wasn’t something I could use. :) That made me happy. The refund was prompt and without question. I really appreciated that.

The manual (possibly) makes a few inflated claims but I really think the underlying methods make very good sense. I do expect to make some money from these sites. Now, whether that’s the $200+ per month the Google Sniper sales page claims, or the $50+ per month I’m hoping for, or the $5 per month that would mean the sites are “profitable” albeit along the lines of a below minimum wage job—now that’s another question that I don’t yet have an answer for!

That said, I’m not lowering my criteria. I’m following along with the manual as closely as possible.

There is one small issue I take with the Google Sniper course and that’s the suggestion that I create a character to go along with my website if it’s a market that I don’t fit into. I take exception to that, on an ethical/moral basis, and I have decided that anything like that will be off limits for me. That’s my line, and it’s one I don’t want to cross.

Let me note that I’m not talking about the simple process of taking on a pseudonym. I’ve done that many times—I’ve been writing fiction for years and I do not use “Lynn” as either of my author names. Pseudonyms are useful for protecting your privacy, and frankly, I suggest you use one whenever you put yourself “out there”. The world really is full of crazy people. BUT I do not think that gives anyone the moral right to lie to others just to make a sale. Pseudonyms are just names. They do not determine who you are inside.

The thing is, I’m willing to give it a test of 20 sites. Heck, I’ve still got 22 sites of my own and 3 that I built with a friend (and that’s not counting the freebie sites I built back when I first started building websites—think geocities/weebly). What’s 20 more? ;) The good news is that the other 22 + 3 make enough money to pay for their domains, my hosting package, and the new 20 domains I’ll be testing. Not much will be left over, but anything worth doing has a little risk associated with it!

I’m thinking about starting a section where I keep a log of income from the Sniper sites. I haven’t decided yet, but I’ve probably got a few days. :) (Yes, that was a touch of sarcasm. I don’t expect miracles here.)

Here’s what I think will happen.

These are my numbers vs. the numbers in the Google Sniper book, which I’m not bothering to show here because I’m just not confident that they’re really accurate—at least not in my experience—yet. ;)

This is what I expect* will happen. This isn’t what I’m hoping for or working toward, by any means.

$5 Affiliate Commission x 10 Sales per Month = $50 per Site/Month

20 Sniper Sites x 50% Failure Rate = 10 Profitable Sniper Sites

10 Sites x $50 = $500 Total Monthly (from 20 initial sites)

The truth is, this isn’t a lot of money from a pretty large time investment. Despite the claims of 2 hour sites, these sites take a minimum of 4 – 6 hours each when you add in all the details.

Also, that doesn’t include the time it takes to become really familiar with the market and topic.

All said, I don’t think most people could put up a quality site, complete, in less than one day of solid work, and you can’t do it all in one go. Your content is very important to the Google Sniper system, and there are certain things that you have to spread out over time, so when it’s all said and done, the really devoted Sniper could spend a week developing 5 sites, starting on Monday and tying up all the loose ends on Friday. Heck, I might even give it a go myself in a few weeks just to see if it’s possible.

Let me reiterate though, this would be a lot of work and it’s unlikely anyone could do 5 sites a week working only in the evenings, unless you just don’t have a normal life to lead!

If my numbers work out as expected, the Google Sniper method might not be a viable way to earn an income online. However, if my numbers do turn out to be conservative (and here’s to hoping they do), then things might look a whole lot better than they appear here. Only time (and lots of work) will tell.

*There’s good research out there that identifies expectations with unhappiness. Expecting things leads to disappointment. Hoping for things doesn’t. So I don’t expect too much, but I hope for everything!

Google Sniper Update - Read more posts like this at Perpetualized

So let’s call this a review where I’m not really doing any kind of review. Maybe you can call it commentary.

Yeah, that works. This is commentary.

I work and work and work, but I don’t get anything done. Am I lazy? Nah. I’m very misdirected though. However, I don’t think he’s wrong.

People will understand my argument – if you put more effort into something you earn greater rewards – yet will go back and spend their time on activities that have less impact because they are easier.

People…will understand how important…articles are, will learn all kinds of great marketing ideas, and will be inspired and energized…. Yet, even with this new awareness they will spend their time reading other blogs and websites, watching television and lamenting how much they hate their job.

These people, as much as they like to complain, have no one but themselves to blame for their current situation. How they currently live is a product of the choices they have made leading up to today….

He goes on to encourage action as the way to keep from becoming one of these people. Yaro Starak wrote this in his Blog Profits Blueprint, which is a great little ebook and something you should definitely read if you’re as addicted to websites as I am or if you’re interested in making some money from your website/blog. Click here to download the Blog Profits Blueprint.

This is a fundamental problem with me and my websites. I’ve discussed before how shallow I am about choosing domains and deciding on what I’ll make of a site (worded somewhat differently, but the meaning was there). I actually went looking for the post so I could link it, but the truth is, I couldn’t find it. So it’s either buried in this site somewhere, or it’s one of those posts I thought about writing but never did get around to getting it down on the computer. In case it’s the latter, I’ll say it here so you know what I’m talking about. I like to buy cool domain names—let’s not obsess over whose definition of cool I’m talking about here—and then never really do anything with the sites because I didn’t think that far ahead when I came up with that oh, so cool domain name.

I spend a lot of time reading about websites, thinking about websites, but not doing the kinds of things that really move things forward. I wouldn’t say I’m lazy, in the traditional sense of the word, because I work hard on my websites, just never on the things that matter for forward momentum and growth.

It’s a lot of hard work reading voraciously and learning about website creation and monetization, but I guess it must be even harder work to actually do something about it. You know…you actually have to make decisions.

That’s the kicker. The decision-making process uses skills most of us haven’t ever really developed that well. Making a decision, sticking to it, and then following up to make sure your progress stays aligned with the outcome you decided you wanted.

So yes, I am lazy, not with work but with decisions. I don’t want to make them, and I don’t want to stick with them. And that’s something I’m working frantically to change.

Most People are Lazy and I’m No Exception - Read more posts like this at Perpetualized