Wow, it’s been a long time since I have updated this blog. I wish that I could say that I have been so successfully busy that I just couldn’t find the time, but that just isn’t true.

Basically, I have been stuck in a long bout of confusion and analysis paralysis. I realized back in June that most of my niche site work thus far was not looking very promising. I had set up a few sites based on my initial training from The Niche Blogger program, and those sites just were not panning out. I may write a separate post on that, but for now let’s just say that the keyword training in that program stinks.

So I realized that I needed to cut my losses and start over. I knew I needed to get my keyword research methods worked out, but from there I was getting distracted.

Anyone who has been dabbling in IM knows how easy it is to get caught up in the latest method that seems to be making people money. You read IM blogs and scan WSOs at the Warrior Forum (WF) looking for that secret formula that’s gonna bring in the cash. Now, I haven’t fallen into too many of those traps luckily because I just haven’t had the time. But I have certainly wasted enough time thinking about the various methods.

Now, in my defense, I did want to restart with a direction I could have some confidence in. After jumping head first into The Niche Blogger method last September and wasting many hours and dollars, I didn’t want to end up spinning my wheels again. So I have spent some needed time getting my bearings and in some ways, returning to my roots. I knew I wanted to build decent content websites (niche sites), I just wasn’t sure the best way to do that profitably.

Well, the one I thing I did that was very helpful was to join The Keyword Academy (TKA) private coaching program. That helped me understand what keywords to target for niche sites. I also joined the SEO Bootcamp by Don & Jeremy from WF, which has a bit of a different spin than TKA, but was a nice complement. Now I have some direction, although I am still a bit gun shy about settling on niches.

I should mention that in between all this I did buy a few domains that I wish I hadn’t. I really wanted some keyword-only domains and ended up buying some .nets and .orgs. Now, there is nothing wrong with those extensions, but for various reasons I have decided that I want to stick with .coms only. And what is funny about that is when I first started with The Niche Blogger, and .nets and .orgs were mentioned as equally viable, I sorta felt weird about it.

What’s the point? Well, I’ve come to realize that some of my early hunches or uneasiness with things should have been followed. I built my first site (and my only site besides Blogger blogs) 4 years ago and knew a teeny bit about SEO, and I should have stuck with some of my gut instincts. I’m not saying that I would have been more successful by now if I had, but I would have saved myself some time and cash.

I also realized another important point – my situation is unique and I need a plan that plays to my situation. In other words, I was mapping my stuff out according to what other people were saying or what I thought would most profitable, but that wasn’t necessarily a good long-term plan for me. At the moment I work full-time. I don’t have a lot of time to devote to building my sites and I don’t need the income now. Now, it would be nice to have some income from my IM efforts so I could reinvest it, but I don’t need it.

So rather than focusing on building sites and promoting like crazy to make them immediately profitable, I think I am better off just concentrating on building and letting the sites age. Since I plan to stop working within the next year, at that time I could have many sites built and aging, and then I could put the time in to promote them and hopefully they would respond a bit better being older.

Also, I have to remember my overall goal with doing IM and that is to build a passive income stream. I want to spend the time upfront to build and promote niche sites, but once they become profitable, I am hoping they remain profitable without a lot of ongoing time commitment. My purpose in working from home is not to be rich, or even replace my current income, but to have a supplemental income (and activity), working when I want. Again, building good niche sites with steady traffic (ultimately) fits nicely with that passive income goal.

So, enough about me and my journey through the dry desert of IM confusion – where am I now? Well, unfortunately, as far as revenue I am no better off yet and as far as productivity, I have probably lost some footing. But I think I now have a solid plan and I am going to do my best to stick with it. It’s good to be results-oriented, but I need to focus on the right results. In my case, I need to focus on the result of getting sites built, not earnings. And not even rankings at this point – that’s for later.

But darn, it is hard not to focus in earnings and rankings! The one niche site I have been focusing on all along, which had made it to page one for a few weeks, has now dropped back to page 4 and is getting almost no traffic. I want to fret about that and analyze it to death, but I have to force myself to just ignore it. I need to work on getting new sites up using the better keyword research techniques I have learned.

Well, this is probably one of my longest posts so I will stop here. I had some others things to say but I’ll leave those things for another post.