My IM Odyssey

The title of this post could be used in several phrases. I don’t have the time to write, I haven’t taken the time to write, It doesn’t seem like the time to write, or my thought when I typed the title – Now is the time to write a bit more about my journey.

I put this blog up in January of this year and have let it languish. I did start on a post in February that is still in the draft folder. With my current plan for this space it will fit better after a few more ‘ground work’ posts. I plan to detail some of the basics of beginning an Internet Marketing business.

As with any journey there are some things that need to be addressed before you leave home. I have been accumulating knowledge over the past several months. If I write them up it will help me to order my thinking and to improve my knowledge in the area of Internet Marketing. I hope that my experiences may be of value to you, as well.

For the past several months I have spent more time learning this craft than actually doing anything useful. I have made some progress along the way. My traffic across my sites is up about 500% since I began studying the subject and my Adsense earnings now cover my hosting cost and my domain name service, but they have not bought me a new computer – yet.

I started building sites as a hobby and put up a fair number. Some of them have the potential to produce some income. Since it was primarily a hobby I did not buy domains or put up sites that were designed for IM. There was no plan and there was no or limited knowledge about the basics of Internet Marketing. Some of the early sites can be salvaged, some I will maintain as a hobby, and some will pass by the way.

I am going to attempt to make the time to write at least one post a week. Feel free to check up on me and complain to the management if I do not live up to ‘our’ expectations!

We all have to start somewhere.

I made all of the newbie mistakes and then some. I entered this arena through a side door. I enjoy building websites.

I started building sites on free ISP space. Eventually I outgrew the space available, although the allotment was reasonable for ISP space. I had an account with AT&T WorldNet. This allowed 25 Mb of space per account and I was allowed 6 accounts for a total of 150 Mb. Since hyperlinking allows linking of pages between accounts when I filled one space I continued in the next available space until my spaces were full.

When I was out of space and still wanted to add more content I looked for hosting. I looked around a bit and found HostMonster (affiliate link). The program seemed fine and I have been satisfied with the service there. This is a shared hosting environment and allows unlimited domains and sub-domains. I began buying a few more domain names and putting up some additional sites.

Since I was now paying for hosting it made sense to defray the expense with some ads. I signed up for Google Adsense and looked into some affiliate programs. There began to be a penny here and a penny there from clicks on the Google ads. The splatter of affiliate banners did not do as well. I was still thinking that if I put up a site traffic would come. After a couple of years I was serving around 100 pages a day from something like 30 sites.

It began to dawn on me that maybe something else was needed. I began to investigate website operations a bit more. I began to understand some of the problems that needed attention.

I have learned much more than I have implemented in the past year. This blog is intended to share some of the knowledge that I have picked up and to document the journey. I hope that it may be of value to fellow travelers on this road.

First there was The Hobby Webmaster, my blog about learning web design and development. With many websites there seems to be a natural progression to make them pay for themselves and, hopefully a bit more. The sites do cover their direct expenses at the present time primarily via Google Adsense. Many of them should do more.

I am entering my fourth year with ads on my pages. I did not reach the payment threshold in the first year. The second year I saw one payment of just a few cents above the threshold. Last year I did get two checks and will get the first check for this year (on last years clicks) at the end of the month. It will be the largest check to date would cover hosting for around two years or about half of my domain name registration bill. December ’10 was a record month. The Januaries for which there are records are about half of the December numbers. I hope to break that cycle this year.

I began to promote a few of the sites last year with article marketing. I intend to continue that effort but I am using some of the other available methods of site promotion for the first time. My primary interest has been in building the sites. Just putting a site up on the web does not insure traffic. I have been learning the ways to generate traffic and now is past time to implement the things that I have learned.

This blog will detail the things that I learn and log my progress along the road to greater income. I will also write up various aspects of the business and my impressions of those methods. There will be the usual ads and some affiliate offers along the way. I will use some of the new methods of site promotion to see if I can attract a little attention to this space. I would not be disappointed if this space joined others in covering the cost of the necessary electrons.