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Wow, I can’t believe it’s been almost 2 weeks since my last post. Knowing that, I feel like I haven’t made nearly as much progress as I had hoped.

I said in my last post that I was planning to focus my effort for awhile on just one niche site. I have done that, but I was sick and then Thanksgiving holiday, so despite a few days off I still have alot of work to do.

Here are my current stats on the site I was focusing on (updates in italics):

Niche Site 1 - health
Indexed: ~Oct 3rd
Current Pages: 15 posted
Scheduled: 9 posts
(~7 posts written but need editing)
Yahoo BLs: 60
2 Ezine articles published
1 Website article published (same as EZ)
1 GoArticles article published (unique)
1 Squidoo Lens

I’ve had a nice jump in backlinks although Google still doesn’t register any, but the big G is stingy that way. My next move is to get those final 7 articles edited (I outsourced those) and scheduled to post. I schedule my posts to publish every 4 days. I also have an additional 2 articles to edit and submit to Ezine and then some other directories.

As I mentioned, I was sick for awhile so I had some motivational issues but I also had two days off from work and didn’t get as much done as I should. I realize now that I should have had a list of what I needed to get done and planned my time better. To often I drifted off to read a forum or a blog when I should have been getting backlinks or writing. I can see where a lack of focus could be disasterous when working from home, so that’s good to know ahead of time.

Well, back to work tomorrow but hopefully progress will chug along. I have a few more things I would like to get done on this particular site then I plan to move to another for awhile.

Well, today seems like a good day to update my progress on my niche sites. One of my kids was up a good part of last night so I am too short on sleep to focus on content writing/editing which is what I should really be doing.

Here is an outline of where things stand

Niche Site 1 - health
Indexed: ~Oct 3rd
Current Pages: 13 posted
Yahoo BLs: 5
2 Ezine articles published
1 Squidoo Lens

Niche Site 2 - health
Indexed: ~Oct 3rd
Current Pages: 11 posted, 5 scheduled
Yahoo BLs: 4
2 Ezine articles published
1 Squidoo Lens

Niche Site 3 - beauty
Indexed: ~Oct 10rd
Current Pages: 10 posted
Yahoo BLs: 3
1 Squidoo Lens

Niche Site 4 - business
Indexed: ~Nov 8th
Current Pages: 4 posted, 6 scheduled
Yahoo BLs: 0

Niche Site 5 - health/lifestyle
Indexed: ~Nov 1th
Current Pages: 3 posted, 7 scheduled
Yahoo BLs: 0

Yahoo BLs are backlinks showing in Yahoo Site Explorer. The Ezine articles are all showing up, but the squidoo lens backlinks are only showing for Niche site 2? I also see one of my social bookmarking sites (Mister Wong) on Niche Sites 1-3 which reminds me I haven’t bookmarked sites 4 and 5.

Just a reminder, for my first niche site (not listed above) I had a change of heart after a few weeks and ditched. Unfortunately, I had put a good amount of effort into that one. Niche 4 and 5 are my two newest and I don’t plan to do much more with them for now. I just wanted to get them started up with 10 pages and then I will just let them age. I don’t have many plans for Niche 3 either unless it starts getting some traffic - I find it a boring topic.

Now that I have at least 10 articles on each site, my plan is to just focus on Niche 1 for awhile. Since I have been struggling lately to get much work done and feeling a little de-motivated by lack of progress (traffic), I decided I was spreading myself too thin.

Niche 1 has a high CPC, but it also has a lot of competition. But, it has picked up a couple of long tail keyword traffic so I am hopeful. After I focus on Niche 1 awhile I will evaluate the other sites to see which looks the most promising and focus in on that one.

I have been outsourcing all my content which is a huge help and found some good writers, but the cost has been too high. I have been spending some time at the DP forum trying cheaper writers, but so far cheaper has been a waste of time for the most part. I have also already been scammed out of money by two people on DP for content. Guess that is part of the cost of outsourcing online, unfortunately. Hopefully some day I will have some income from my sites and can afford the better writers.

My plans for Niche 1 now are to get more content on the site and do more article marketing. I also need to do some more social bookmarking. Seems like I had other plans but that is all I can remember for now.

Traffic on all my sites is virtually non-existent. One of the articles on Ezine for Niche 1 is getting some hits, but not many. The rest of them (two I outsourced for direct Ezine submission) are getting almost no views.

That is where things stand for now.

Well, it’s the weekend and hopefully I can get caught up on some work on my sites. I have actually been outsourcing all of my articles and yet I still haven’t had time to get them posted. As soon as I get caught up on posting articles I will post an update of where I am at. After that I plan to just focus on one site for awhile as I have been spreading myself too thin.

In the meantime I need to try and stay awake! It was a bad week for just being sleepy and I don’t feel like I slept well last night, so maye this weekend won’t be so fruitful. Plus I have all the normal household duties to do and some shopping. It’s so hard not to spend most of my time at work just dreaming about quitting…

I have been so tired the last few days that I haven’t gotten much done. Usually I try to get a couple of hours of work in on my sites after the kids go to bed, but I just haven’t had the energy. That is very frustrating, but what can you do.

I really need to make an update here on each site here as this blog serves as a record of my progress. But first I need to stay awake past 9pm!

I have modified some of my previous plans on how to move forward with building my various niche sites. While I think it is good to have a solid plan and try to stick to it, the problem is that I am still learning. So as I realize ways that I think will work better, I have to adapt my plans. Right now I am trying to tie up some loose ends then I plan to focus in more and just one or two sites.

I have been busy working on my sites. Will make an update soon.

I feel like my progress has slowed but I am looking forward to some time off during the holidays to get some stuff done.