Today is my last day at work, yeah! I am so excited and ready to go full-time IM, or at least almost full-time. If I hadn’t been getting laid off I planned to quit soon anyway and concentrate on home and family, so my IM stuff will have to come second. Still, without a job I will have many more hours each day to focus on my sites.
One of the first things I need to do is formulate a schedule and try to stick to it. I have almost 8 hours to myself while the kids are in school and I want to make sure I use them productively. I also want to include time for things like exercise as I need to start getting off my behind! Sitting at the computer all day is not good for my figure or my health, so I’m going to work on that. I also just started a new diet 
The other thing I need is a solid plan of what I want to accomplish over the next few months. I really am having a hard time deciding how many sites I would like to create and how big those sites should be. Part of the problem is you sometimes have to try a few things to find what works. I’ve learned alot over the last year, but I don’t think my earnings reflect that. I have alot of ideas to try but I need a systematic way to go about trying them.
My adsense earnings have been less than stellar this month. I’ve been doing some backlinking lately but that hasn’t helped yet. However, my eHow earnings have been doing great so that has made up the difference so far.
Well, that’s all I have to say for now. I have a writer working on content for my sites and I have some articles for backlinks sitting around waiting to be used. Hopefully I can get caught up on that backlog next week as well as coming up with my move-forward plan. I have also tried a few new services/software which I will share another time.
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8 Responses to Last Day of Work
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I’m jealous! (is that a crazy thing to say?) LOL I’m sure you’ll get into a rhythm soon. Congrats on getting to stay home.
I just read about a treadmill that has a desk attached so you can work on your laptop and walk at the same time. I totally need that but don’t have room for one.
Wow that’s a big step! I have been semi full time for a while (I say semi, because I do writing and blog flipping to keep the cash coming in while I work on my passive income) but I still find managing my time and direction hard. I also am trying to exercise more!! Good luck to us both hehe. I look forward to following your progress.
Thanks Sara. I do have a treadmill but haven’t seen the desk attachment. I don’t know how well that work, I find just reading too hard while moving.
Thanks Ruth. Yeah, time management will be tough. Hopefully I can get into a groove.
Carrie –
NICE! Congrats, I’ll be joining the “fulltime online” thang by year’s end – sort of in a sticky position as I’m working for my brother-in-law at the moment, but it’s time to move on.
Anyhow – re: your tools you referenced, I’d recommend OnlyWire for a free bookmarking tool, worth a shot – about 30 or so bookmarks on every post, as you see fit, and it can be a free plug-in or $2.99 or something like that a month.
Otherwise, the old EZA -> ArticlesBase trick works really well (pasting your recently published EZA’s to AB where you can get 3-4 do-follow backlinks per article – it’s netted me about 75 backlinks every time and then some on every run of about 10-15 articles, not bad for free). Whatever – sorry to come on your blog and try to give you advice, not trying to be a jerk.
I did want to comment on the “try out a bunch of approaches” thing – I have seen too many entrepreneurs try a blanket approach…and spin their wheels…
I think you’ll get more traction simply refining 1 thing at a time, get good at it, and then reproduce it. A focused approach, with split-testing and simply refining the tactic nets more results.
The option of “going wide” usually results in a 1/2-baked effort, about 1″ deep and 1 mile wide, whereas if you focus on 1 thing, get really good at it, and then replicate it…well, I believe they call that McDonald’s.
Seriously.
Hey James, I never turn done free advice, thanks.
I do use Socialbot for bookmarking which isn’t great (it misses alot of sites) but is simple and gets a few BLs. I also have ArticleBot which also isn’t great but I did a test run and got a few sticks so I’ll start incorporating that. Republishing my Ezine articles on other sites is also on my to-do list.
The wide approach is not my goal but I’ll admit I am having trouble now picking an approach. That’s based on my limited success and many failures and some soul-searching on what I want to actually spend my time on. I’m still working that out.
I found, through researching a topic for one of my clients, an EZA piece with two backlinks to a site – and found it was one of the “microniche adsense” sites from XFactor’s course, except it was a one-off html site, not the WP template, different sitemap, etc.
Anyhow, it was well written (the EZA was phenomenal as well as the site), and this AdSense site was on the 1-3 pages of G, with over 15 pages of content. I looked it up with the SEO tool for Firefox…it had over THREE HUNRED backlinks – from EZA alone!
C-R-A-Z-Y…
…or not. it was 100% free (unless he paid for the articles), and simply translated into 1 hour a day per post maybe, backlinks included – or maybe 1-2 hours.
I’m very curious how much he gets – this site’s keywords rank at $5/CPC per G, which may mean $1 clicks…nonetheless, very dedicated, focused work.
I’m in a different boat than you, so I need to keep on the one track-mindedness. otherwise I don’t accomplish a thing, and I don’t have the luxury.
Of course, listening to dave ramsey 6 hours a day (due to work) doesn’t help me relax…keep on trucking.
Hey Carrie,
Congrats on no more job. I am hoping to do that soon. I have seen you on Mike’s and Sara’s blog comments. Can I ask you if you think ehow is better than livestrong or demandstudios? I know they are all interconnected but do you apply separately to each ? And do you find that one is better for more tips and conversational types of articles vs heavier researched ones? I’m thinking maybe I”ll try to stop one day at the job and use for article selling. Do you also re-write and change around for other purposes or do you not do that?
James- Can I ask if you link your articlesbase articles to your ezinearticles links or just to your website? Do you change title around or just use as-is?
Deb
Hi Deb,
Writing on eHow is like writing Hubpages or Info Barrels, you submit content in a revenue-sharing mode and earn ongoing passive income. If you write for DS (who owns eHow) you get paid upfront on your article only but I’m not sure how much (I don’t do that).
Articles on eHow can earn well, but they no longer allow self-serving or affiliate links which stinks. They are also bit unpredictable of a company and delete articles with no warning. Still, I have made a good return on my time there so far so I can’t complain.
I have rewritten some of my eHows and submitted elsewhere, but I need to do more of that. You need a complete rewrite for most places, though.