In December and January I did setup a spreadsheet with my goals for 2009. I did plan to concentrate on only a few websites of mine and to let the other ones go onto auto-pilot. Goal was (is) to streamline the few resources I really have to optimize results and therefore increase my online income. The spreadsheet is there to help me to stay on track and to keep track of my progress.
The first quarter of 2009 was very different than expected. I sold 2 websites for a total of roughly $35K. Both sales were unexpected, but overall I think it was a good move. I am flush with cash accordingly, but of course lost some recurring income accordingly. I have been struggling in rebuilding that income. Main reason because I am still working to get into the Payday niche. This is one of the most competitive niches to enter and I can admit it is extremely difficult. I am doing PPC and SEO and so I am draining quite some cash into this. To a certain point I thought it (the problem of no conversions) was my API integration with the network I am using, but as I go I am learning a lot about this industry and its customers and once all software problems were solved, I ran into the “normal” PPC problems one will experience when entering this niche. So, I lost some money already, but I am not giving up that easily. I have collected a lot of data and I am working on using that data for better results. I still expect this to be a money pit for a while.
Anyway – 2 of my other websites were running on a non-supported software called Evo-Articles. Great software, but the guys who wrote it and marketed it probably got into disagreement on things and the company is dissolved and the software not updated. I have been able to move 2 of my sites from this unsupported software to WordPress – a blogging and CMS software with a large following and great support. The moves were hard working as I had to match the databases against each other, but it worked out good. I was even able to maintain the link structure which is awesome from an SEO perspective. I still have 4 websites to migrate, but overall the 2 main ones are done. One of the websites I migrated made good income from Google Adsense. That income dropped down really since the migration and I have been doing a lot of Adsense testing. Interesting findings that I will write about in a different article.
Last year I invested into a developer license for the Revolution Themes for WordPress – quite a chunk of money. That investment kind of vaporized when Brian Gardner decided to change things around. There is still support for the product, but overall development has shifted away. That sucks. So, I bought a Thesis developer license. Thesis is more a Theme Framework for WordPress and (knock on wood) highly supported. The framework allows you easily change layout and design and to customize the look of your website. At first I had some problems using it, but now I am on my 3rd site with it and I just love it. Once you invest a little more time to work with it, it really is easy to use. If you do not know Thesis for WordPress – check it out.
Related posts: