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 8th, 2008
I’ve been quite productive in the last few days and have been working hard on a couple of my projects… one of them you already know about which is my IT niche site, and the other is a new one just started today! Looks like I still have some way to go before I can keep my attention focused on just one or two sites!
The IT Niche Site
I feel that this one is coming along nicely, and soon I’ll be starting to promote it and get some visitors in. Hopefully Google doesn’t take too long to index pages and organic traffic will also start flowing.
So far I’ve researched keywords, got the domain name, setup the site (I’m using WordPress), written 4 articles, added some Adsense blocks and got my analytics tracking code in. Before the weekend I’d like to get a few more articles on there and drop in some affiliate links.
So far I’m finding this site quite enjoyable and easy to write for, mainly because I work in IT in my day job but also because I am quite interested in this particular niche.
Initial searches on Google and some research using Google’s keyword suggestion tool lead me to believe that there isn’t too much competition at the moment and the search numbers look promising, so fingers crossed I can rank well for some decent keywords. There are also plenty of choices for affiliate offers for this specific niche so I’ll just have a look around and choose whichever I think will convert better and will mean I get paid more!
The New Site
This one just kind of happened by accident today. As I’ve mentioned in a couple of my recent posts I am quite interested in trying out domain flipping. I’ve been reading up on this in the last few days and this morning was doing a little research by looking at what domains people are currently selling and basically following a tip which was to keep up-to-date with the latest technology and trends to give you ideas for domains to flip. As I mentioned earlier I work in IT and I regularly read technology news sites and blogs, and as I was thinking about what “new trends” might be profitable I realised that something I have read about in the last couple of days may well be just what I need. So, I did a bit of checking on available domain names and came across a few that I thought could well work out nicely. Of course, I don’t know for sure that they will as I’m a complete newcomer to domain flipping but I reckon they would turn a profit.
Anyway… I went ahead and registered one of the domains I’d found but instead of flipping the domain straight away, I decided to stick a site up on it and see whether it would be more profitable to hold on to it and monetise it. I’ve been beavering away today and have so far setup WordPress (with a handful of useful plugins), got a design I feel fits well, added some well placed (I hope) adsense and added some content. As this is a bit of a hot trend at the moment I want to make sure I get some more content up there in the next couple of days and get it submitted to search engines. I’ll also go about participating in forums and on other blogs in this niche, and look at other ways I can monetise the site, probably in-text ads and affiliate offers.
If the site gets no traffic and makes nothing in the next 4-6 weeks then I may well try and flip it (not just the domain - the entire site), but either way I really do think that it has the potential to make me a bit of money. Hoping my spur of the moment decision to do the site pays off, but I guess the most I lose is the cost of the domain so it’s not too much of a risk.
What About the Real Estate Site?
Unfortunately with all the work I’ve been putting in to the sites mentioned above, I still haven’t even decided on a niche to pursue, not done any keyword research or anything for my Niche to Riches challenge site. I’d really like to try it, but to be honest at this early stage in my affiliate marketing career I’m not sure I’m ready to try and create a site in a niche I really know nothing about. It’s been much easier for me to come up with ideas and content for the IT and technology sites than it has to even think about this one.
Sorry Empress! I really did want to participate fully in this challenge, but I just can’t see it happening. Maybe when the next challenge comes round I’ll already have a few sites under my belt and feel more confident with dipping into niches where I’m not so knowledgable.
That’s it! It’s been busy but I have been enjoying working on these. You never know, one of these might turn out to be a good little money maker for me… that would be very nice indeed 
.
How are your online projects coming along?
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Posted September 24th, 2008
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m the type of person who will come up with an idea and fling myself into a project with tons of enthusiasm, but then I’ll come up with another idea and do the same thing, leaving my original project to wither away. I do this all the time and the end result is that I rarely get one site up and into what I would consider a finished state.
If I’m honest then it’s probably after the initial excitement about the idea dies down, or when it gets to the “boring” bits that I move on from a project. I guess I need to learn how to grit my teeth and just get on with it when I start to get this feeling.
This really does frustrate me as there are loads of ideas which I’d originally had high hopes for that I’ve just left for dead in the past. I think I need to stop this cycle now!
What I’m going to do is to pick two projects (maybe three… we’ll see) and only work on those until they are complete. Anything else that I currently have in my list, or any new ideas I come up with, can go into a queue and be worked on once one of those 2-3 slots is free’d up. Hopefully this will mean I can turn out sites much quicker, and more importantly that they will actually be complete, working sites. I’m hoping it will also help me stay focused rather than have a million things on the go.
For now the sites I want to work on are my real estate niche site, an IT related niche site and possibly, if I can squeeze it in, a mashup site that I am working on with a friend. There is enough to do on all of these to keep me going, and if I stick to only these then I think I will start seeing some good progress over the next few weeks or so.
Are you like me with many projects on the go, or do you tend to see each one through before starting on the next?
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