And still another two for one post; just to get to the New Year. This deals with really beginning to dig in and put in the work effort. The setting up days are past, I have a fairly clear direction and now need to get down to work. It also represents the very first monetary successes. Very very modest but funds nonetheless. From 12/01 and 12/22.

12/01

Interesting month. I completed the initial release of the sport niche website and began SEO work and signing up for Google Adsense & Analytics. It’s been quite intriguing strategizing to populate the site with appropriate keywords to drive traffic. As of last night, I had 12 keywords in the top 100. Thru Google analytics I can see which parts of the site are being targeted via traffic and used on a consistent basis. Interestingly my bounce rate is around 10.5% and people are spending close to 10 mins on the site. I now need to figure out how to begin to monetize the eyeballs based on the visit duration. A couple ideas have been to add affiliate links to “affiliate’ on the site video page and the site info page and to fully populate the site with Google ads. My next step is to start going to different establishments to pick up information to provide more content. I also will begin adding weekly tips. I am close to making a purchasing decision for the incorporation site (this site). I’ve located affiliates for those and will populate with Google AdSense ads similar to the first site. I’m more hopeful for revenue generation there since it’s about money and since I have a very compelling story for Prosper. I do intend to create a blog site but need to study the WordPress tools. It’s been encouraging seeing that I’m bringing value thru communicating sporting niche site information but I do want some funding (lol…yeah I’m greedy).

12/22

Man the time has flown. I’ve had a couple sessions where I’ve been able to really dig in and add some valuable tip information to the sporting niche site. And on Dec 6^th or so I made my first $.03 ….yeah!!! LOL not much and reminds me of a Pat Flynn show I listened to where one of his guests was pushing thru his own inertia and trying to convince his wife and made his first $.11. It was sooo exciting for him but he ultimately determined that the niche sites weren’t for him and went in another direction and really found his calling and hit upon that idea that enabled him to make a career out of being a solopreneur. I was telling a work colleague about my general directional goals and she mentioned her husband started in niche sites and is now involved in Mastermind groups in the northern part of the state and will be pursuing course development. I’m not quite there yet and noted that I had the first two ideas developed, just need to execute, but that I was worried about the third as it would likely be something I wasn’t already familiar with. She commented on a shared skill that we have from work and that she thought would be a good candidate for a product. I mentioned that I had initially jotted the idea down but crossed it out for viability. But as she explained it I could see the merit in it. So it’s on the backburner in my mind for the next site. Of course speaking of number the next site brings me to this one. I’ve purchased the URL and have now gotten it assigned to my Cpanel in WordPress. This was not the most intuitive or user-friendly process so I’ll be sure to document. It was a little more straightforward getting the site added to my Analytics page. I need to secure the social media site names and nail down the site structure. I have a draft for the about page ready. I’m thinking a blog for the homepage and then links to specific tools/topics as I’ve discovered them. I do believe this will be a profitable venture that likely pays for the hosting fees. I just have to devote a good solid week of work to getting it off the ground. Of course, It’s been SEO’d from the start; even the site name was SEO’d. And at some point, I have to do the finances. I find this so difficult to manage as it does not add any potential revenue and thus seems to be a non-value added expenditure of time when I already have so little. Yes, folks, these are the struggles and considerations of attempting to walk away from trading time for money and progressing thru this journey.