Working On My Web Site

I finally finished a web site and published it in the beginning of this month, so lordxatl.com is up and running. Why just “a” web site? Because I know that this first web site of mine will be added to, modified and changed many times over. And that's the very reason why it took so long to publish.

After first purchasing the domain, it has taken me well over a month to finally make it public. I found myself trying to become an expert in everything involved in developing a web site and it was simply impossible. There are so many different areas of development that you can get yourself lost in. Picture and video management, template organization and even just learning how your particular hosting software works all can take considerable time to learn.

So I found myself trying to over do what I knew and was comfortable with and come up with the final web site I, in reality, should be building up to. I have an idea in my head of what I want eventually, but thinking more realistic, I'm trying to bite off more than I can chew. I spent quite a bit of time overdoing what I knew and that can become frustrating. And when you get frustrated, you tend to avoid the one thing that is making you frustrated.

So now I spent about a month suffering from information overload and only frustrating myself. The site I finally published recently is quite simple, no where near what I wanted it to be, but I figured I wanted to have my site active so I could at least experiment with driving traffic to it. You need a vast amount of knowledge in many different areas of Internet marketing and development to do what I dreamed of, but it just doesn't make sense to wait for the perfect site while not using it to sell at least one item and put the articles I have already written to good use.

I originally envisioned my site offering a few more items, but one in particular needs to see more site traffic before I can become an affiliate. What I may do is offer a similar item with a vendor who may be a little more forgiving for now and build more traffic, opening the door to the other vendors with the products I originally wanted. There are so many different directions I can go with this web site, it can seem intimidating. I really don't know how to operate the templates on my hosting account, so that alone is going to keep me busy for some time. While how much time it involves to properly and effectively translate my vision to the computer is still unknown, but I anticipate it to be substantial. Once I get a handle on it, I'm very optimistic of the potential of this site.

Starting A Site

Now, I began my affiliate marketing using the article marketing technique because I didn't want to invest any money, proving to myself that it was possible. I still believe it is, I just don't seem to have the patience for it.

I'm still looking for that good, consistent time to devote to my affiliate marketing endeavor that will keep me on track of my goals. Even an hour a day can pay off in the long run, so it doesn't need to be a substantial amount of my time. When your writing, it's not that bad to sit down for maybe twenty minutes and then take a break. It can almost be more productive using that approach rather than forcing content out of a four hour work block. And it can be surprising how quickly your output can increase and accumulate over time, so doing it now is of the utmost importance.

I have sold some items on Ebay, creating a positive balance in my PayPal account. Once I discovered I could purchase the domain and hosting using funds from that account, it didn't take much of an investment to obtain a website.

So a lot of my time is being spent behind the scenes, playing around with the templates and learning what to do. Being completely new to this, it can be overwhelming with all the options that are available to you. Sometimes you can over think it, causing more frustration than progress. It's hard not to think I have to get it perfect before I make it public. But thinking about it more, I think I may loose out on an accidental opportunity or even learning from mistakes, teaching me more than if I didn't do anything.

I have the option of launching an instant page, so I plan on spending available time to get that up and running this weekend. It shouldn't take to much time, but I'd like to have it up to decent standards before I publish it. But not be concerned with perfection. This page is available until I have the actual site running. That alone should give me enough flexibility to help learn.

Total cost for the website and hosting was just under ten dollars, making it surprisingly reasonable. But at that price, it gives me customization and a lot of research will accompany that. It already has.

The biggest obstacle I've encountered is myself. Trying to take too much in on all the aspects of developing a website. I want to be creative, but that desire slows me down, causing me to waiver between two or more ideas with an inability to make a choice.

I know I'll get a great sense of accomplishment when I actually have my web site up and running. I just need to stop over thinking and just produce.

Working Towards Consistency

The first thing I need to work on is consistency. Consistency in my article writing and blog submissions, consistency in when I do my work and can write effectively, a general consistency in how I approach self management and stick to something that works. I feel like everything is discombobulated and out of whack.

Since my son has been home, I no longer have the early mornings to concentrate on my article marketing and writing. I used to get up at 3 AM and spend a couple hours writing before my regular job would start and nobody was awake yet. Since then, I get ever chance of sleep I get. I spend my early mornings with our new son now, trying to give mom a couple hours rest before I go into work. I enjoy every second, but that was the only time I truly had for my affiliate marketing campaigns.

Prior to beginning work, I had some time I could slip away and work, but it was never anything consistent.

It can get frustrating, too. When you're working on something, moving along and then, all of a sudden, something interrupts your thoughts and you can never remember the original content. Nothing you can come up with seems to replace it sufficiently, so you're left thinking aimlessly. At least that's what seems to happen for me.

I can't even listen to a radio in my car while I attempt to write articles on my break at work. That, too, didn't work. Even without the music, you can only get so much done on a 10 minute break. 6 minutes if you want to get back to your station on time. It just seems impossible to keep track of the short thoughts you can come up with in that short amount of time available.

After looking at how my schedule is now, I think I have come up with a plan and simply need to have the support of my wife (not a problem) and self motivation (working on it) to implement it.

During the week, I'm allocating 2 hours a night instead of morning to work on my article marketing. 8 PM to 10 PM is now the only time available for me to get anything done without being away from home. My wife and newborn go to bed at 8, which would give me plenty of time if it wasn't for needing to get up early in the morning, so 8-10 have to will do.

My Article Marketing Landing Page

Obviously it's been a while since I have updated anything, but have been busy “behind the scenes”. The last couple of weeks have been extremely reveling to what I really want out of life and I have been lucky enough to enjoy it.

I have not been to my 7-3:30 job since 5/15, a Tuesday. My beautiful son was born at 8 PM on 3/14, and I took a 2 week leave of absence to spend time with the family. It has extended another week due to complications, but everything appears to have settled down for now. I thought I could get some affiliate work done while I was on my leave, but medical issue and paternal duties have occupied a majority of my time. So I haven't got much done, but that's ok. Like I had said before; It's given me an opportunity to experience what I really want and why I am pursuing the chance to work from home.

After all the scares settled down and I no longer spent my days at the hospital, I got an opportunity to get back to work again. I began a lens introducing people to the fantastic world of article marketing. The way I see it, I am going to come across all sorts of things that I can learn and share my knowledge on, so why not make a page that can help others achieve a self-sufficient lifestyle?

The more and more I participate in article marketing, the more I come to appreciate it and benefit from it. I've said it before and I will say it again; article marketing can be great therapy. Working with the recently separated/divorced niche can be exhausting, but every day I learn more about myself.

I had written quite a few articles earlier this month and have seen an increase traffic in bit. The biggest thing that surprised me were the click throughs I received from my articles on EzineArticles were up substantially and I haven't really figured out why. A majority of the articles were there for a couple months prior to now but never received this much attention. I'm not complaining, just surprised I received the attention I got this month considering I lost half a month. But overall, my numbers pleased me. My total visits to articles on Ezine totalled 182, while URL clicks were at 19, which gave me just over 10% click rate

I only had three submissions for StreetArticles this month and have reached an author rank of 506. I did break 400, but I have fallen back the last couple weeks, assuming because of the lack of submissions.
 I have changed my approach just a touch and designating StreetArticles for my affiliate marketing campaign and EzineArticles for my niche Getting Over Divorce For Men. It just seems to simplify it for myself.

Keeping The Momentum

That little push forward did sustain for a little while when, again, life intervenes. It felt good to have the motivation at the tail end of April/ beginning of May. I wrote a few articles and updated my blogs fairly well. Now, the challenge is going to create a routine and be able to stick to the routine on a regular basis.
What I have encountered issue that occur through the whole routine off track. And once you're off track, it is even more difficult to obtain that level of consistency again. It is so much easier to maintain a level of performance than to contribute in spurts, falling in a valley of performance, struggling to get to the mountain top again.
I have seen that with my own personal performance over the last few months. I have had a couple weeks that I am writing consistently and fluidly. The routine will be disturbed some way and I falter. My attention focuses on the issue at hand while my performance in article marketing suffers. I re-adjust after getting control of the interruption, and begin playing a game of catch-up with article writing.
My latest issue that hindered my article writing was the death (or so I thought death) of our cat. After that incident was resolved, I proceeded my article writing campaign full force. Again I have been faced with a obstacle at home that has consumed more time than I had thought it would.
It just so happens this particular events this week relates to my niche of marketing. Having custody issues of a child whom you care about deeply isn't easy. But I have noticed a benefit from the experience I have been obtaining through my article marketing.
Writing articles has given me excellent practice in writing and conveying information to the reader. Now, writing a court document didn't seem so bad. In light of taking a day and a half to sit down and write (not including research time), all the article writing I have done over the last few months have proven useful. I am happy with what I have to submit.
Now that I have addressed that issue at home, perhaps I can continue this forward push.
 I haven't increased the click through on StreetArticles, but had one article hit 24 visits in a day! That has given me something to investigate, learn, improve and attempt to replicate.
I submitted enough articles with EzineArticles on May 1st to reach Platinum Author. After writing 10 articles I have achieved that level, making the approval process for an article much quicker than before. Basic author's articles are approved after a 7 day evaluation, whereas, platinum are approved in 48 hours. The click throughs with these articles have reached 11%, hire than ever before. Keeping in mind the faster approval rate from the site and not even being half way through the month gives me great optimism for this month.
On another exciting note, I have someone following my blog on Wordpress now. They have liked a couple of posts and just recently started to follow it. Just a little gratification for all the work that gets put in.
We'll see what this week holds in store for me.

Keeping The Momentum

It seems that the little fire that got me going again has burned a little longer than I thought it would. It has been a very productive couple of days, despite work schedules and issues that arise while home. I think I have a better understand of how productivity works and can be optimized, but there was always a part of me that would go strong for some time, eventually running out of steam and dwindling away.

I recently wrote an article discussing characteristics of an affiliate marketer and I believe something in that opened up a different thought process for me. In it, I speak of having a passion and enjoying what you are doing. A lot of my articles talk about divorce, learning how to cope with the loss of a loved one and relationships while I continually plan to have them cover many other related topics. But as I have written more and more articles about the subject, the more and more it has seemed to help me handle the difficult situations I still face today. It has become a therapy for me, opening up an understanding of the events that happen in every day situations.

That being said, there is still fuel to continue this notable submission of articles I have been begun. I had submitted 4 articles for the month of April with EzineArticles, generally spread out through the month, week by week. I only submitted only 1 article with StreetArticles at the beginning of the month, so over all, my views would be expected to suffer.

In the month of May, I have already submitted 3 articles with EzineArticles and one with StreetArticles. The views have already gone up substantially and I am seeing some click throughs again.

Both my Wordpress and Blogger blogs had suffered from updates for the month of April. I believe I only had a couple updates for each on. I am anticipating on changing that to a couple of updates per week.

I have begun to witness and can appreciate the amount of work that can go into affiliate marketing and writing articles itself. In order to get results, you need to constantly adding unique and original material on a consistent basis. I have not invested any money, so I still have a long and difficult journey to profit. Even if the results I see are minimal, they are a move in the right direction.

A Push Forward

I have actually had a pretty exciting couple of days for me. Something got up somewhere and lit a fire under me,creating a very productive couple of days.

It began Sunday when I wrote a post for both of my blogs and submitted an article to EzineArticles. At that point, I was at my eighth submission and you can move up a level when you reach ten articles. I wrote and submitted an article on Monday and then one more Monday morning. I came home after work, checked my email and got a notification that I had achieved Platinum Level! Never realized I was so easy to please. With this achievement I am permitted unlimited article submissions (which seems silly. You are only allowed ten article submissions as basic author, but if you write ten, they upgrade you to unlimited? Maybe has something to do with accepted article submissions) and faster approval. This will definitely be nice, considering under basic, you generally have to wait seven days before your article goes live.

All in all, my article submissions were down for the month of April. I had 1 new articles with StreetArticles as opposed to 5 In March. Total views of all articles at this time were 367. This is a running total, not broken down for the month. I still only had the 2 clickthroughs that carried over from March, so I had a big fat 0 visits through StreetArticles to my landing page.

Now my Ezine account surprised me in performance. As of 2 days ago, I was far behind any progression from the previous month. I was surprised to see the payoff with the work I had done in the tail end of the month. My article visits were a total of 127 for the month, up over 5%. My clickthroughs were down almost 50%, but these all came in the last 2 days. This just shows me you won't get results without effort.

I realize these numbers may seem small, but that doesn't concern me right now. I see a reaction to the effort I am putting in right now and hope that carries through for a while. Besides, I haven't spent a penny yet. But the first expense will definitely be a web site.