Shutting Down

This will be the last post that I make on this blog. I have 4 blogs in total and they have been a wonderful experiment for me, but it takes too much time to have 4 quality blogs. I have neglected this one enough so I will be shutting it down.

I will be shutting down one of the other ones as well; leaving only Rookie Mormon Apologist and Rookie Political Commentator up and running. These two I expect to keep going for years to come.

Thanks for visiting.

Learning SEO

Learning how to increase traffic to a website is a bear. I am not a detail person so having to involve myself in this is testing all of my weaknesses. But persist I must in order to achieve my overall goal of sufficient traffic to generate $250/day in total. That goal is high, but not unreasonably high. I simply have to work hard and long enough to figure this aspect of the business out. But it's no fun, I assure you.

I considered hiring someone to do this, but there are so many scam artists in this particular field that I don't dare try to figure out who is good and honest, and who is not. A friend of mine got taken for over $3000 by a group in Utah who took his money, but didn't deliver on the promise. Hiding behind the cloak of anonymity there are too many who are willing to lie, cheat, and even steal if they can get away with it. So I'm left with figuring it out on my own.

Kevin Thompson

Another of the interesting characters that I've met along this journey is Kevin Thompson. Kevin spends a lot of his time using a tried and true formula for making money on the Internet. He offers regular teleseminars explaining how he did it and continues to stay in touch long after you've listened to the teleseminar.

He describes himself as follows in his emails.

Kevin Thompson is an internationally recognized expert in the fields of automated income systems, emotional connection marketing and selling-without-selling.

As President of Maximum Response Inc., Kevin now has clients from around the world who are successfully using his methods.

He is the author of the international best-selling Automatic Income System that shows you how to have an automated business that pays you for doing what you love.

Kevin and his family live in the small town of Arlington, Washington.

I find his methods interesting and his communications to be worth reading. Although I have never met the man I have learned a great deal from his teleseminars and emails.

Google Analytics

I took my web sites and enrolled them in Google Analytics for free. What a great idea that was. I now know who is visiting my sites, and where they are coming from. For example most of my visitors are from the US and Canada but a few of my visitors are from Brazil! I learn what pages they stay on and how long they stay. I also see how many people never get off my home page to look at the other pages. As a a result of analyzing this, I will be redesigning many of my websites to make allowance for the patterns I've learned. This should result in more income resulting from better "income-optimized" websites. Stay tuned!

Holding Pattern Continues

I have been researching how websites that generate income are structured. From it I've learned that my websites to date are not structured correctly. I have no intention of going back and remaking them since they are working and generating a little income, although the emphasis should be on the word little. So far it is my blogs that generate the most traffic and the most ad revenue. The biggest payday however has been with my non-blog websites where someone actually purchased something I recommended! That payday was nearly $30!

The blogs generate click-through income from Google AdWords. So are that income has risen to nearly $1! I still am stuck with the same problem - learn SEO! Once I get a chance next week (I am on the road in St. Louis) I will have to tackle this problem. It sounds so tedious and I am not good at tedious tasks. I'm going to have to get over it or this project will be on the ropes. Suck it up big boy!

In summary this is my plan as of now:

1. Learn/do SEO for existing websites
2. Continue to develop an audience for the blogs
3. Go about website development differently - starting with the health and wellness sites
4. Sign up with AWeber when I'm ready to build the new websites
5. Build the health and wellness websites differently than I've built the security/IT ones.

Progress is slow

I am finding that progress is slow. While my blogs are receiving increased attention, the other web sites are not. I am going to have to learn how to do search engine optimization (SEO). I had hoped to set up one of my children in this business by asking her to learn it; I would pay her for her time, and then I would set up a website for her to market her services. She checked into it and replied that the work seemed too tedious for her. And she's the one I thought would enjoy something with that level of detail!

So now its my problem. Either I learn how to do SEO or this project is going to come to a screeching halt. On the other hand, the health and wellness business I have started is looking promising. Not only have I lost 5 pounds in 3 days, I am feeling great. This idea of nutritional cleansing is really showing a lot of promise. Isagenix may ultimately be the thing that makes this entrepreneurial project of mine successful.

Two New Sites

I have been working on two new sites in relation to my effort to finally lose the extra 75 pounds I have been carrying around for more than 10 years. The two sites are The Business of Wellness and Great Cleansing Diet. I use the word diet more in the sense that the French do in that it means a nutritional lifestyle. The links are active but I am still working on the front end content.

As I confessed at the beginning of this journey I have a very specific goal - building an online business that could generate $250/day in profits. Sales aren't my goal, profits are since it is from profits that my mortgage, etc... will get paid off. This blog has journaled the path my journey has taken. I believe that these two new websites will account for at least half of my goal so I am very optimistic about them. Wellness is a huge business at this time. Americans spend over $35 billion a year on weight loss products. My two web sites are in support of a cutting edge lifestyle that is designed to help anyone overcome obesity and keep it off. $250/day out of a $35 billion market? I'm not very ambitious am I?

Erica Douglass

Another person I have met on this journey to financial independence has been Erica Douglass. Actually I have never met her face-to-face, I have met her online through her blog, emails, and e-books. Her website tells her story in this manner:

After selling my online business at age 26 for $1,100,000.00, I "retired" and chose to teach you how to jump-start your business.

If you are motivated to change the world and want to learn from my successes (and failures!), please get my free business tips and join my community!

She does not blog frequently, perhaps once every 7-10 days, but I have come to have great confidence in her advice. Whatever she writes is worth reading. I recommend getting to know Erica to every budding Internet entrepreneur.

AdSense

In order to improve the profitability of this venture I have started placing Google AdSense ads on all of my home pages. The idea came to me when I noticed that I had earned $.25 (yes that is 25 cents) last month from my four blogs. Since this whole venture is based on trial and error I thought I would up the stakes by adding ads to all of my sites. We'll see how well we do in September.

Update

This is the complete list of my websites to date:

Blogs

Rookie Internet Entrepreneur

Rookie Mormon Apologist

Rookie Tri-Athlete

Rookie Political Commentator

Websites

Rauma Enterprises

The 123 of Online

Starting Up Online

Secure My Home PC

Secure My Office PC

Best Backup Companies

Best Hosting Companies

How to Make Income Online

Start An Online Business

The Best Domain Companies

Several of these websites have multiple URLs and some of the content of this list is duplicated. So the grand tally so far is 10 distinctly different web identities and 4 blogs.

Leslie Householder

One of the interesting people I have met along this journey is an old friend Leslie Householder. She is the proprietress of Thoughts Alive, a self-help web-site, and author of The JackRabbit Factor.

I first met Leslie and her husband Trevan before they started on the journey that has brought them such success. So when you visit their website and learn about their incredible story - I am an eyewitness to the truth of it.

Anyhow, a couple of years ago Trevan and Leslie visited our home and gave me a copy of The JackRabbit Factor, a book in the mode of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I read it soon thereafter and absolutely loved it! More importantly I set set two goals. The first of these goals had to do with my health; the second with my finances. I put the book and its teachings to the test and the first goal has already been achieved by the date I originally set. This Internet Entrepreneur effort is how I expect to reach my second goal.

I would encourage anyone interested in changing their life's circumstances to give Leslie's website and book a chance. It has certainly blessed my life.

History

I promised to tell my story last week so I intend to keep that promise starting with this post. How did I get here?

I have always been ambitious but ironically my motivation has never been money. I love a challenge! Well I have one now.

For most of the past 16 years I have been self-employed. I have the mentality of an employer, not an employee; yet because of the current economic malaise I have been obligated to take a position as an employee. Mind you I am grateful for the work. The people I work with are wonderful and I feel exceptionally blessed to have acquired a well-paying position under the current circumstances. I am definitely NOT COMPLAINING.

But I am in debt. This is the result of living within my means when my means were about double what they are now. Fortunately I wasn't living beyond my means or we would be in much more serious trouble. Some of that indebtedness is my own fault - foolishly charging things on a credit card instead of paying cash, etc.... But some of it isn't my fault (i.e. acting on bad advice from my accountant). Nevertheless I am ultimately responsible and need to find a way out. That's where the Internet entrepreneur things started.

Hope and Change

I am currently in a holding pattern as I continue to research my newest project and hope for better results. Since I am convinced that little gets accomplished simply by hoping, I am using this time to find better ways in order to get better results. But in summary this is my plan.

I have found a company that I think is going to work for me. Upon signing up with that company I will get a cookie-cutter website. In anticipation of that I have bought 2 domains which I will redirect to the cookie-cutter website, keeping my domain visible throughout the session. In that way, it will be less obvious that my site is similare to everyone else who works with this product.

Then I will have to learn how to market it. Currently I am learning about how to hold teleseminars as a marketing strategy. Stay tuned while I figure all of this out.

A New Series of Posts

I am working on a series of posts telling the background story of what lead me to the point of trying to earn money on the Internet. From that foundation I will then tell you about some of the people I've met on this journey and the lessons learned. Hopefully you will find it enjoyable reading.

The New Thing

This new project I am on will result in another cookie-cutter website but this time things will be different. This cookie-cutter website is marketed completely differently. I don't expect people to find it by searching Google or Yahoo!. That was the expectation and selling point of the first website and that didn't happen.

This new cookie-cutter website is marketed in more traditional ways. I will refer people to it directly as they notice my weight loss. Nothing is more predictable than being asked how you lost all of that weight. And when they do I will simply give them my business card with the URL on it.