A Step Closer

I’ve been a recluse for so long, it’s a wonder I even know what the outside world even looks like anymore. I spend so much time on the computer that I don’t get to experience too much human interaction.

I live alone and I am picky about the company I keep. To make matters worse, the people I think are cool are all people I’ve met online and they all live in a different city, state, country.

I’m definitely thinking of putting together a group of like minded individuals locally and having a meetup of some nature. I’m just wondering if there are any like minded individuals near enough to me who’d come.

Then there is that pesky problem of the little voice in the back of my head saying, “will they like me? Will they think I’m weird? Gosh, I don’t want them to think I’m a complete idiot…” - we’ll see.

It’s been a while since I’ve updated my blog (3 days) and I’ve been wanting to, quite badly, but something always seems to come up.

I’ve been in a funk, especially about my affiliate website. I still haven’t heard any word from the affiliate site as yet - I really am starting to think that affiliate manager is asleep at the wheel. But I didn’t let that deter me, I was still able to:

• Add a Feed and Corresponding URLs to the affiliate site
• Make a few design changes to the affiliate site
• Submit my website to another 6 directories (thus meeting my daily goal)
• Update the contact form page
• Added/deleted a few CMS plugins

After all of that was done and said, I was able to focus on some client websites. I managed to get 2 more clients and one more lead , so business is looking up. I also finished designing my short term money site (don’t worry, nothing illegal) and I only need to make a few minor updates before it’s ready for launch and marketing.

I also developed the site map and category layout for my next project. So right now, I currently have:

• 1 affiliate site I’m actively and aggressively developing/promoting
• 1 short term money website in development and a few pages away from launch
• 2 other affiliate/content sites in development
• 4 websites on the back burner - will focus on these sites like a laser once I’ve finished the others

And of course, there’s the client projects that I have work on - I made a list of current clients/what needs to be done and I will steadily work through that.

I’ve also decided that I will take a hiatus from current outside work to focus on my affiliate/online projects and I do have some die hard loyal clients, so they will understand and deal with the 2 month wait.

Today was definitely better than yesterday and 100 times better than the day prior to yesterday.

I got a lot of work done for my affiliate site and also found some inspiration for future affiliate sites.

I initially set my goal to get at least 5 inbound links to my affiliate site. Somehow, I found myself on a linking hayday and by the time I finished I had requested (manually by emailing webmasters) 5 link exchanges and submitted my URL to 20 website directories. Yep, 25 inbound links (20 are confirmed).

I found a good number of link partners simply by doing a Google search and submitting URLs to the first 2-3 pages of results. The search term I used was allintitle: keywords directory (substitute keywords with your website’s keywords or niche).

Another good thing is it really didn’t take me all that long - it was an hour of my time well spent. I also got some more good news when I checked my stats and I see that Googlebot finally decided to make his way to my site. He crawled most of the pages and he was the last of the three big boys to get there.

And before I close up this post for the evening. I finally broke down and applied to another affiliate because I have not heard any word from the initial company I applied to. I think their affiliate manager is asleep at the wheel. The only problem with the new company is that I cannot link directly to specific products, so I am still holding out for the first affiliate company.

The website is almost done and I will be adding the search script tomorrow and I will be promoting my website’s directory so that I will obtain even more link partners.

Oh yea, one more thing - I’m finally due to get my first check from Google this month and I am extremely excited. Since I cannot disclose actual numbers, suffice it to say that it’s a larger payout than I expected.

That’s the business update.

Sometimes I lay awake at night and I wonder why this thing we call love has to be so complicated. I wish I could just will the man I want into existance because it seems as if my luck is very questionalble.

It’s not that I don’t care for him and love him, it’s just that I don’t love him in that special way he wants me to. Not anymore. And if you’re wondering who I’m talking about, it’s my ex. He’s been an ex for a while now, over a year, but somehow he decided he wanted to work his way back into my life as if nothing had happened or changed. He disregarded me, how I would feel, and decided what he wanted he would have.

I wanted to fool myself into thinking, sure it could work out this time. It would be different. I could make myself feel that deep love for him again. But that wouldn’t be very fair to him or myself. I want more. I want to feel that deep passionate love that my psychology teacher told us about in class that one day. How she still gets excited when her husband gets home and she bounces to meet him at the door and vice versa. I want love like that cute old couple I met in the restaurant one afternoon who’d been married for fifty (yes, 50) years and still loved each other as if they had only fallen in love the day before. I deserve that, don’t I? Even if it means hurting someone else.

I really don’t want to hurt my ex, I just can’t go through it all again and I’ve made my decision to move forward with my life - without him and I’m okay with that. Hopefully one day I’ll meet the one.

Well, although I felt like a lazy ******* yesterday because I got not a damn thing done, today I can’t say the same. I actually forced myself to sit down and work on my affiliate site. I finished the coding for the link directory and installed the link management software. I even managed to include a couple links in it. Tomorrow I intend to finish adding my links and start seeking out viable link partners.

In the meanwhile, I anxiously await approval from the affiliate site I applied to. While the website already has 69 pages created, I really need to get approval from the associate program so that I can start adding their product pages which will make up about 90% of the site’s content.

On another note, I really didn’t get any work done for client sites today either. I know I’m supposed to be working on one in particular, but the good news is, I’m still ahead of schedule and there is some content he needs to get to me. I also acquired a new client as well, I will be starting that project - which hopefully should be quick and painless - next week. I wanted to give myself ample time to work on the two most urgent websites I have on my plate (my affiliate site and my quick money site).

That’s all for the business update.

I woke up this morning to lawn mower people cutting the grass and decided I shoudl roll out of bed and do something - anything. Wow, that really didn’t happen. All I did was check my email. I know I have a couple projects I could have worked on, but for whatever reason, I just wasn’t interested in working on them. Each time I opened up Dreamweaver or Photoshop my attention wandered. I thought an extra long hot shower would help - uh…no.

In my own defense, I did manage to apply to another affiliate program to further expand my affiliate site. I also replied to a few email inquiries. I started working on my most recent venture. I’m not as excited about this one as my affiliate program, but it’s something that will put money in my pocket while I build my affiliate businesses and I sure wouldn’t mind having some extra spending money - seeing as how all my money is currently going into my business.

I guess I’m trying to “feel okay” with myself even if I didn’t get everything I wanted to do done. That whole “inspired actions” thing and frankly, I felt inspired to do not a damn thing. I’m going to watch a movie and hopefully some sparks will hit me and I’ll have enough ooomph to finish adding the link directory to my affiliate site or at very least finish the design to my most recent project so I can start bringing in new clients later this week.

AAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH! Nah, that didn’t help.

While finishing my blog hopping, I just stumbled upon something useful (finally) called the Google Index Notification system by JRBTECH.

Google Index Notification will do all of that for you and more. Just plug in the follow the instructions on the site, plug in the code, and wait for google to index you. There is even a query tool for looking up which pages were index on any day of the year. The query also gives a summary of how many times google indexed you, and on which day.

Awesome! The software is a free download and it will generate a complete report of all the pages indexed by Google.

I will definitely be using this for my most recent affiliate website. So far, my web stats program seems a little wonky so I can’t tell which bots have indexed yet (’cept for Yahoo! which has already indexed half of the entire site) - but this tool will definitely prove quite useful in the coming months.

Update: Well, it turns out that while this is a nice tool for watching how Googlebot goes through your site, the author of the script felt the need to insert his button on each page that is being monitered. I would have gladly given credit back to the script author’s site instead of having an ugly button (no offense) placed on my site for me.

I unwittingly called the script as the first line of code and decided to check the site to make sure there were no errors - well, I had a PHP error which I fixed up by deleting a few lines in the code (nothing of value) and that solved the problem - however - I was apalled to see a huge greenish button appear at the top of my page breaking the layout. While I am not one to “reinvent the wheel” it seems I will need to write my own script for this task - nice idea though.

That’s the last time I will write about something before I try it out first.

I floated by last year and it was by far the best year I had in terms of business. 2005 got started with a huge bang and hasn’t really slowed down since. That’s good news. Actually, that’s great news because I feel very inspired to “get stuff done” and continue growing in terms of business.

But it’s painfully obvious to me that I need a better system. Better organization because some days my head seems like it’s stuck so far up my *** I can see through my nostrils. Each time I purchase a new organization system or book, there seems to be something missing from it or I’ll be good for a few weeks, then revert back to my old habits (I’m a habitual procrastinator).

I really need a better system, so that will be my ultimate goal for tomorrow. I know I have a few client projects to work on and I have two potential clients lined up (yay - they will help me to fund my ventures and pay down some bills), but I plan to only spend 4 hours working on client projects, 2 hours working on my web ventures (namely setting up the link exchange directory for my new affiliate site and submitting my URL to a couple indexes), and then I will spend the remainder of the evening filing. Yep, you heard right - filing. My filing system is non-existant and I have papers flowing all over the place.

It’s tax season and I swear I’m not very good at taxes. Last year was definitely better than 2003 and I only had to pay $100 so I can just imagine how much Uncle Sam is going to try and take from me. I believe I will definitely be bringing my business to somewhere like H&R Block or something so I can hopefully get out of having to pay any money at all because I had a whole lot of business expenses for setting up.

I know I also need to get all my receipts in order and all my paid invoices to really take inventory of how well I did last year with my consulting business. But for the immediate future, I just need to find a suitable filing system and a suitable organization/motivation system.

I do a lot of reading, especially alot of internet marketing blogs and articles. After reading about four blog articles on how their PR is up and how many people they have linking back to them, I finally decided to stop reading.

While I understand the importance of link exchanges and PR and all that other wonderful stuff, there is already plenty of people writing about it and how they already have it. What I want to hear more about are the results. Cold hard figures. Describe to me how your going from PR0 to PR4 in a month has impacted your online revenue.

In that month timeframe, how much more money did you earn as a result? In that month timeframe, how many listings has your blog or website or whatever jumped in the SERPs? Those are the things the internet marketing gurus need to be talking about.

You can have all the PR in the world and you can talk about it, and to some internet marketers who are still wet behind the ears will start thinking you’re some amazing SEM God, but the fact remains, unless you have cold hard figures to back up the announcements of the ever increasing PR, it means diddly to me.

It is definitely time for me to go through my bookmarks, newsletter subscription lists, and RSS feeds and decide which of these gurus is worth the 5-15 minutes of my life that I waste reading their BS. I’ll post my results at a later date.

It seems that life is always putting something on your plate, whether you want it or not. I woke up this morning, late mind you, and I thought to myself “dammit, this sucks!” because I hate getting a late start. When I get a late start, I really don’t feel like doing much of anything.

To make things even worse, I hate going out in the late morning - early evening times because I fear bumping into one of my neighbors. It’s not that I don’t like my neighbors, I just don’t feel comfortable being withing eyeshot of any of them. Oh well, I’ll just wait until tonight to get my grocery shopping done.

On a lighter note, I believe I will try to get some other stuff done around the home today. Shut off the computer for the rest of day (I will surely need God’s help with that one), and work on my business plan. I currently have a couple projects I am so antsy to get done. I set up my very first affiliate site a couple nights ago and already added 69 items to it - don’t get any bad ideas about the number, it was just a coincidence. Today, I really want to get some link exchanges going and have the link directory set up. My goal with this particular website is to generate a steady $1,000 per month. I know it will take a few months to get it up to par, but that’s what goal setting and prayer is for.

My ultimate goal is to have about 10 more affiliate websites, each generating at least $1,000 per month, before 2005 is over - anything more than that is an added bonus in my book. So far, I’ve tasted the sweetness of affiliate marketing and getting paid for setting up a website one time and putting it on “auto-pilot” - I figure why not do some more.

Also on my agenda for today is to actually clean my house - it literally looks like a pig sty because I’ve been so busy. Hopefully when all is said and done, I won’t get distracted and I’ll have plenty to show for my time when I sit down to write my “today I accomplished” list.

I’m still trying to fit into my blog skin, so I’ll definitely be using this website as a place to get my thoughts all collected and organized.