Posted October 19th, 2008
I arrived back from New York yesterday and have had a nice surprise, I won $100 in the Tyler Cruz Cash Giveaway! Not bad for simply signing up to the newsletter of a blog I already read regularly! Thanks Tyler!
Apart from that welcome boost to my online earnings this month things aren’t really progressing as I’d hoped, adsense isn’t really up to much lately and neither are others (ebay, in-text ads etc.), but there’s still some time to improve those so we’ll see how that goes.
I should get back to my regular posting and of course working on my sites next week and hopefully can kick things back into gear.
Posted October 15th, 2008
There is a good reason that I haven’t posted anything here so far this week… and that’s because I’m currently visiting New York! It’s not all fun though, I’m here to visit the NY office of the company I work for, but still I have the evenings to get about and see the city which is cool.
Of course because of this I’m not really going to have much time to post this week, or do much work on my sites. However, I did just check analytics and adsense stats and the new technology site I created last week seems to have just been indexed by google in the last couple of days, already started to get visitors searching for my main keywords and had one adsense click so far, so fingers crossed this just gets better and better. I’ll work next week on adding more content and hopefully I’m onto a winner!
Hope things are going well for you guys.
Posted October 6th, 2008
You may have noticed that there have been a few changes here in the last couple of weeks so I thought I’d explain what they are and why I did these.
Ads
While I have had ads on here before, I never really formally announced that you can buy ads on this blog, or set up a page with information for prospective buyers. To be honest, I didn’t think it was worth it at the moment, but then I got to thinking, someone did show interest once before, so how do I know others wouldn’t be? As you’ll see on my Advertise page I offer ad placements on this blog at a very low price. I’m open and honest about my site stats, because I’m not out to con people into paying to get their ads up, I just want true stats there so people can make an informed decision. Also I hope that as the blog progresses this will be visible in the stats so you can see that it is growing!
Increased Posting
I’ve been making a very real effort to post regularly here as it definitely slowed right down during August and I really don’t want this site to just fizzle out like so many other things I’ve started in the past. I’ve been trying to post around 4 times a week, and so far I’ve been managing it. The idea is to get more comfortable with it and obviously get more content up here. I’m sure the quality of what I have to offer here will only get better and as I learn and progress into this journey of making money online!
Additions to the Sidebar
I’ve changed the “Subscribe to RSS” bit at the top to stand out a bit more, and have added an option to subscribe by email. I’ve also added a list of some blogs that I read regularly. Although I won’t simply exchange links with other blogs, I will add any blogs to the list that I enjoy reading and return to often.
CommentLuv
I’ve just installed the CommentLuv plugin, so every time you post a comment on here you will have the option for it to also include a link to your most recent post.
What do you think of the changes? Will they help the blog or turn people off? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
Posted September 30th, 2008
It’s been a bit quiet on here for the last few days, and that’s because I’ve been having some trouble with WordPress on my web hosting which is driving me insane. I can’t post, when I hit the Save button I get taken to a 404 “not found” page. This still isn’t sorted but hopefully will be soon, in the meantime I’ve just discovered a decent-looking app called BlogDesk which allows me to write a post offline then publish it straight to my blog when I’m ready. Hopefully this works well and my WP issues won’t be such a major problem.
It has been really frustrating me because I’ve made a big effort in the last week or two to post regularly and have a few posts lined up that I’ve wanted to get out in the last few days. Oh well…
Assuming this post makes it up to the blog without any issues then there should be some more on it’s way soon.
Posted September 25th, 2008
Since I started this blog one of the things I’ve thought about is selling advertising on it. Now I know, as it’s still fairly new and doesn’t pull in a high number of visitors at the moment, that advertisers aren’t going to want to pay a lot for the potentially low exposure, but I still wanted to put up an “Advertise here” type page to at least give people the option, so this is what I’ve done! You should notice the “Advertise” tab in the menu at the top of this page.
As a way to kick start advertising here you can now get your hands on either a 468×60 ad at the top of the page (next to the title - only one available), or a 125×125 ad on the right sidebar (six slots available) for one month for just £1 (less than $2)!
I’m working hard at the moment to get more exposure for this blog, get more traffic and of course get the readership up, so why not try out an ad spot here? There isn’t much to lose, it will only cost you £1 and there is no obligation to renew if you feel that it’s not worth it.
To allow people to make an informed decision on whether or not to advertise, I’ll be including the last few months of stats including Alexa rank, Technorati rank, Google pagerank, number of unique visitors and number of pageviews. Hopefully from now on this will show increases in the numbers month to month and show advertisers that the blog in on the up. I was in two minds as to whether I should include my stats at the moment since they are so low, but I’m not trying to hide anything or con anyone into buying up ad spaces so I thought there’s no reason not to.
As well as ads I am also going to try my hand at paid reviews. Right now you can get a well-written, honest review of your site with a minimum of 500 words for just £5 (under $10)!
I’m not offering subscription options for the ad slots at the moment as the prices are likely to change as the blog does get more traffic, but this is something I will look at in the future.
If you’re interested in buying any advertising or paid review on here then please take a look at the Advertise page.
Posted September 19th, 2008
I’ve come to realise that I have a bit of a problem which eats up a good amount of my online time… I think I’m obsessed with checking stats!
Even though none of my sites has really got off the ground yet, all get very very low levels of traffic (if any), I still end up spending a fairly long time going through stats for them! It’s crazy since there’s nothing really there to check!
So, I’ve decided that I need to nip this in the bud so that when I do start seeing some better traffic numbers I’m not spending all day staring at tables and charts rather than actually working.
Allocating Time To Check Stats
This is one of the things I mentioned in my last post, allocating time to each individual project. I think this should also be the case for checking on my site stats. What I think I will do is allow just 1 hour per week to check them. It’s going to be hard for a stat-junkie like myself, but I’m willing to give it a try!
Maybe when things have picked up and there is more of a need to keep a better eye on traffic numbers etc. then I’ll do it a couple of times a week, but at the moment I know there’s no point in me checking every single day.
How often do you check yours?
Posted September 18th, 2008
Things have not exactly been going to plan around here lately, I just seem to be going round in circles. I plan to work on some sites and have every intention of knuckling down with them, but then something comes up which severely limits my spare time and I just don’t get round to doing it. This has been going on for the last 6 weeks or so.
I have a fairly decent sized list of sites/projects that I would like to get into some kind of “live” state in the near future, and hopefully this time I can really get stuck into them. Part of that is also to be more active on this blog.
Making Time
This is the major stumbling block for me. Time. I’m not trying to make any excuses because I know there are people out there who are working a crazy number of hours to get their online empire off the ground, but I do find that time to spend on my online projects is just so hard to find.
I work full time, Monday to Friday, and I “enjoy” a 2 hour commute (each way), so that’s 12 hours out of my day. I also have a wonderful wife and three great kids who obviously want to spend time with me in the evenings and at the weekends, and I want to spend time with them too. That usually leaves me with some free time from about 10-11pm, and since I have to get up at 5am to start it all again, I’m usually a tad knackered by that point and can’t get my head around anything.
So, the plan…
Well since I moved house and acquired an extra hour (each way) commute I thought it would be a good idea to get myself a laptop so I could work during the 1 hour+ train journey. I was after an Acer Aspire One, but instead have managed to get my hands on a Lenovo X61 from work. Lovely. So this is a good start, giving me roughly 10 hours a week. That’s not bad.
I’m going to also try and actually take a lunch break every day (gasp!) and also use this time for online work. If that goes to plan, it’s another 4 hours (I play footie on Friday lunchtimes).
At weekends I’m going to try and set aside a couple of hours for me to lock myself away from distractions and get some work done then too.
All in all I’d like to be able to find at least 15 hours a week. I think in that time I could definitely get into the swing of things and start seeing some positive results, seeing as I’m barely spending an hour or two a week at the moment.
Getting Organised
This is another thing I need to work on. At the moment what I tend to do when I do get the odd hour is to work on whatever comes to mind at that moment. This usually means that each of my projects never gets a chance to gain momentum as it’s only getting the odd bit of attention here and there. I’m also terrible at keeping to-do lists, so never really have any good indicators of how that particular project is progressing.
I’ve now started a to-do list for each of my projects, along with some basic goals for them. As I complete each item on the list I’m hoping the sense of having achieved something will spur me on to keep it up.
I’ve also started to prioritise my list of projects, so I can see easily which ones I want to get rolling first and can then dedicate more time to those.
I was considering allocating specific blocks of time to specific projects as well, but I’m not sure how well that would work (do you do this? Any comments welcome).
So there you have it, this is my plan for helping me get back on track and start to get things done and hopefully see some results.
How do you make time to do your online work? Care to share any tips for freeing up those extra hours or organising your workload?
Posted August 25th, 2008
I’m back online at home now, but have only just now had a chance to sit down and figure out where I was at a few weeks ago. I’ve realised that at least one of my projects has passed a kind of important deadline, which I hope is not a killer. I’m going to try and work on that tomorrow and get it up to speed then hopefully make up for lost time on that one. This site is not selling anything and is free to use. It’s more of a hobby type site for me with potential for alot of returning visitors, so I hope to monetise it with affiliate banners and possibly adsense.
I’ve got a few others I should also be working on, mostly ebay/affiliate type sites, again I hope to find a bit of time in the next week or two to get back on track with those.
Although I will post an earnings report for this month, believe me it’s not going to be anything special at all, but I think this month has been pretty much a write off for online work/earnings so I’m not too worried about that, and hope to do much better next month.
I also want to try and find some time to post some helpful information up on this blog, I have a few posts in mind to start with but want to find enough time to make them half decent quality rather than incoherent ramblings.
That’s where I’m at right now, just getting the wheels in motion again. Hopefully you guys are faring better than me at the moment.
Posted August 18th, 2008
I’m back at work now after a week and a half off while we were moving house, and so I’m back on a normal Internet connection! Unfortunately it’s been a busy day in the office today so not much time to really get back into reading through my RSS feeds, checking on my sites etc. Also, hopefully our home broadband connection is being turned on tomorrow… so fingers crossed that goes without a problem.
As long as all goes well this week then I hope to get a post or two up here by the weekend, as well as work on my sites.
In terms of meeting this month’s goals, I think that is highly unlikely, at least in the making money online goals. It looks like it’s going to be a really really poor month (looking like around 10% of last month at the moment 
), but you never know what could happen in the next couple of weeks…
So, hopefully normal service will resume shortly and I can try and get back some momentum.
Posted August 10th, 2008
Actually, no, i’ll stick with the same goals, but… it’s going to be a bit harder going because I moved house on Friday and, as well as being in a totally new city, we have limited internet connectivity for up to 2 weeks. Ouch! This might sound stupid but it honestly didn’t dawn on me until yesterday that it’s going to be hard work getting things sorted for the next week or so, not to mention exploring our new surroundings, getting a feel for the place etc. And that added to the fact that we’ll hardly have any internet access has made me realise that maybe, just maybe, it might be a tad more difficult than I thought to achieve my online goals this month.
It’s obviously going to be harder to post here very often over the next week or two (has anyone tried using WP Admin from their Blackberry before?!), let alone work on other sites/projects, but we’ll see how it goes.
Rest assured, as soon as we’re settled and back online, i’ll re-double my efforts to try and make up for the lost time, i’ll keep the same goals in place, it will just be more of a challenge that’s all!
