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Part 2: How Many Websites Can One Webmaster Manage?

Published
by
J.B.Slife
on March 23, 2007
in Management
. 0 Comments

Yesterday I started off with Part 1 of this 3 part article. Just as I was getting to the section on “budgeting your time”, I had to take my own advice. Today I’m back with more time, so here we go.

Budgeting Your Time Wisely

As a person gets older and gains more resposibility, time becomes more and more of a factor. I am absolutely terrible with time. Over the next few months I am going to try and break some of my bad habits and become a little more efficient. Here are a few of my problems.

  • Lack of a Laptop (problem solved)
    • Having a laptop allows you to be anywhere and post. You can keep content fresh and fix issues from anywhere in the world. It allows you to be in the same area with your family and still get some work done. By having a laptop, I can work 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there instead of waiting to get home and locking myself in the computer room for 3 hours. (My 3+ year old Gateway laptop died the other day, so I went out and bought a Toshiba Satellite. $1000 + a $300 warranty, I would reccommend the Satellite to anyone.)
  • Tied to a Laptop
    • A laptop should be used to help you out when needed. You should not be on the net doing nothing for hours just because you have a laptop. Get outside, go shopping, clean the house; make sure your life comes before your laptop. Laptops are very addictive, be careful.
  • Create a Daily Schedule
    • If you have several websites (or just one), creat a schedule. Force yourself to be productive. If you want to create 5 posts on your forum a day, do it from 9:00 am - 9:30 am everyday. Don’t stray from your task at hand. Make a schedule like this for every task you do and stick to it. If your daily website work takes 1.5 hours, then you should not be working on them for 5 hours everyday.
  • Limit R&D Time
    • Research and development is very important, but it cannot be done all the time. Give yourself 15 to 20 minutes a day to brainstorm. Surfing the net is not always the best way to do this. Think out of the box, get off your computer. Most likely you are just rehashing other peoples ideas if you find something online. Go sit on the beach with piece of paper and pen. THINK! The most unique and successful ideas are born in peoples imaginations and transfered to the net.
  • Go to Bed
    • As soon as you feel tired, be done with the computer. This is a no brainer, you’re not productive when you’re tired. If you’ve had a coffee, 4 Mountain Dews, a Snickers, and you’re eyes are bugging out…it’s time to go to bed (or run around the block 6 times and then go to bed). Make sure you have regular sleep patterns.
  • Leave Time for Your Real Life
    • I’m starting all these sites for a purpose, to live with less stress and have more time for my life. Everything takes work, but don’t kill yourself everyday to create average websites. Good sites take time. People don’t work 24 hours just because you do. Write quality content, stick to your schedule, and give the net some time to work while you’re at the beach. What?!?…that’s right go to the beach, by the time you get back you may just have a backlink.

I have to budget my time again. I’ll be back tomorrow with Part 3, “Create Sites You Know & Love”.

Part 1: How Many Websites Can One Webmaster Manage?

Published
by
J.B.Slife
on March 22, 2007
in Management
. 1 Comment

How many websites do you have? Do you ever feel overloaded? I have several now and I always feel overloaded. Let’s talk this issue and what is takes to manage multiple sites.

What Makes YOU Feel Overloaded?

I don’t think this is a question that anyone can answer the same way. Everyone has their own life, knowing your life (and not ignoring it) will help you control it. Here’s a little about my life.

I have several factors in my life right now that are making it more difficult than normal to keep up on my websites. I a wife, a daughter, and another daughter due to the 28th of this month. My family, of course, is much more important to me than my websites. We are also preparing to move from Califonia to Wisconsin, this will happen in the next two months. We will also be dropping to a single income family and I am changing jobs. I now have several websites that I really want to keep, but I am having trouble running them all.

My wife and I know our life and we know what we want it to be like. My wife and I have talked and we are making some major changes. Moving to Wisconsin will put us closer to family, so we will get some help. My wife will now be pulling her income from our ecommerce site, LeotardCrazy.com. We have decided to take a huge step. We are not going to let the websites overload us, we are going to make them a part of our life. We are looking for the extra family time that an internet income can provide.

The Advantage of Youth

You will notice that many internet entrepreneus (very successful ones) are very young, between the ages of 16-24 (sometimes younger). Many kids are turning the “business of the web” into a video game. They are spending less time on gaming systems and more time on building real websites. This experience guides them straight to success.

Some say the young have a serious advantage on the net. Maybe, and I wish I would have started off a little earlier than I did. However, I have a family and that is my “American Dream”. Anyone can build a website overnight, some people will never build a family. I am lucky.

Don’t neglect to start a website because you think it’s too late. If a 20 year old can build a revenue earning site in 6 months, so can a 45 year old. You just have to budget your time a little better as you age.

Budgeting Your Time Wisely

As I look at the clock, I realize that I must budget my time. Tune in tommorrow for Part 2 of this story.

Accepted to Kontera ContentLink

Published
by
J.B.Slife
on March 22, 2007
in Blogging
. 1 Comment

JBSlife.com has been accepted to Kontera ContentLink, a leader in “inline” ads. I have heard many good thing about ContentLink, now I get to find out for myself. I have also heard that they don’t really match the content of the site as well as they should, well see about that. I’ll keep you updated with some of my ContentLink results.

Just keeping everyone informed of what’s going on here. Remember, I amKontera ContentLink working on retiring before the age of 40. Great new ad networks are always a big help. Until next time…

JBSlife

Advertising Plan for JBSlife.com

Published
by
J.B.Slife
on March 21, 2007
in Blogging
. 1 Comment

This blog was started to speed up my journey into retirement. Yes…this is another “money making” blog. Now that I have some decent content on the site, it’s time to start advertising. Below are some of the steps that I have taken or plan to take:

AdWords Budget: $50/month

One of my first advertising mediums will be AdWords. I have had great success over the past year and a half with AdWords. I’ve learned a lot about AdWords, mainly through the “school of hard knocks”. Now it’s time to take what I have learned and aggressively apply it. That’s right, I’m going to put my money where my mouth is. As the heading of this title implys, I’m starting with a budget of $50/month.

Yahoo! Search Marketing: $50/month

On Chalkbucket.com (my gymnastics community) Yahoo! Search Marketin has done outstanding over the last 6 months. I have found my ads displaying on ads that Google cound never get them to. I’m a huge Google fan, but more and more are steering clear of big brother Google. This means a larger piece of the action for Yahoo! and I can’t ignore that.

Text Link Ads: $150-$200/month

This is something that I just became aware of. It’s a great way to get high quality backlinks and boost your PR. I purchased a text link from Tyler Cruz the other day. I’m very happy with the results. Some site owners do sell their own text links. Normally these are a bit less expensive or have better placement. This is do to the fact that the ad company (middleman) is not taking a cut. I’m not totaly sure of a budget on this one as I have just entered this realm. I would say $150-$200 per month with a monthly performance evaluation.

Forum Signature

This is a simple one, I will be changing my signature (to include JBSlife.com) on all forums that I participate in. There is no hard cash involved in this one. It does take a lot of time and dedication to forum posting. This idea only works if you contribute high quality content (posts) to the sites that you participate in.

Footer Links

I will be adding footer links, to JBSlife.com, on most of my websites. I am starting to acquire some decent internet real estate. Hooking them all together is a given.

Press Releases

I never tapped into the power of press releases, but I’m going to give it a shot. This will take a little while as I have planned a new website for this idea. It will be complimentary to this site, but (hopefully) a bigger idea. It’s one of my “tropical dreams”. Ha Ha…I have these dreams all the time and I have mentioned that I do fail 9 out of 10 times. With that being said, I am on schedule to have another success. Stay tuned to JBSlife.com over the next couple of weeks for the introduction of this brilliant new site.

$$$ You Spend Too Much $$$

That I do…I believe in money. You have to spend money to make money. I do believe that it is possible to create a great, money making site without spending much money. I just believe it can be done much quicker with money. With 1000’s of new sites popping up everyday, anything that you can do to speed up your ideas is very important.

Tag Clouds: Excellent for SEO

Published
by
J.B.Slife
on March 20, 2007
in Blogging and Forums
. 1 Comment

One module that has really helped my vBulletin sites is Zoints Thread Tags. This module allows you to tag threads with keywords. These keyword tags are then displayed in a “tag cloud“. A “tag cloud” is basically a list of keywords that are visually emphasised depending on the amount of links they have behind them. Below is a “cloud” from ChalkBucket.com.

Tag Cloud

The term gymnastics is large and bold because there are many links to that term. This “tag cloud” if from a vBulletin forum, so the links are to threads. Every time a new thread is made, the creator can add keywords to better describe the thread. These keywords are the tags that appear in the cloud.

Users can easily search for tags. When a tag is clicked on, all the threads with that tag are displayed. As you can imagine, this concept is great for SEO. That’s why large sites like Flickr, Technorati, and del.icio.us are tagged.

The other day when I came across a tag plugin for WordPress, I took a closer look. I found out that there are a few main tagging plugins for WordPress: UTW (Ultimate Tag Warrior), Jerome’s Keyword, and Simple Tagging. I chose Simple Tagging. It is based on Jerome’s Keywords, which is no longer being supported (from what I can see).

I now have Simple Tagging installed on this site and Zoints Thread Tags installed on all of my vBulletin forums. I can’t wait to see the spiders go nuts here (just like they did on my forums). Check out the concept of tagging, it’s one of the best things you can do for SEO.

Later,

JBSlife

Airbus A380: SUPER Jumbo Jet

Published
by
J.B.Slife
on March 19, 2007
in Random
. 1 Comment

Airbus A380: Super Jumbo Jet

The largest passenger jet in the world, the Airbus A380, just started it’s US tour. Flying from airport to airport, the $300 million, 800 passenger beauty is impressing everyone and selling to no one. All of the US airlines have already labeled it as “too big”. US airlines would rather fly many smaller planes than a few SUPER jumbos. With airlines having financial difficulties, how would they even afford $300 million jets???

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