I’m pleased to report that traffic from one of my most successful sites (my importing website) is at an all time high. It’s not only seeing more general traffic, but visitors are staying longer. More importantly, the traffic that’s coming in seems to be highly targeted. I’m not getting people looking for “how to ship stuff” but rather am seeing requests for “US import tax on cigars” which I’m very pleased about. Since the site is geared around selling ebooks related to how to import and the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, I’m thrilled to have an audience looking for just that information.

On the flip side, however, my free rpg games site has taken a downward turn. We were sitting in the top five on Google for the terms “free rpg games” and “free online rpgs” but have taken a major hit in this month’s update. I know Google is ranking based in part on fresh content, so this is largely out of my control since 1km1kt relies heavily on user submissions. No worries though, it’s not going anywhere. In fact I’ve recently been discussing some plans to revamp it, moving the forum to a different platform (vBulletin is working well for ScrapLove).

That’s all for now. I keep getting emails of encouragement from friends and ex-coworkers and they always make me feel good. Drop me a line if you haven’t already and let me know how you’re doing.

Day one of the business was great. I was up at 8:00, wrote several really good articles for itintl.com and dieselearth.com and a solid blog post. Today however has me up at 10:00 in the morning. It will take a huge amount of discipline to get the same amount of productivity out of myself that others have been able to achieve by employing me. I don’t expect myself to have the phenomenal will it would take to be pro-active 24 hours a day, so instead I’m trying to achieve this by setting systems in place for others to motivate me. I have a tremendous sense of responsibility when it comes to other people relying on me, so I’m looking to focus my efforts on the initiation of a project and then have others rely on me to make their work successful. From experience I know this will have the effect I’m looking for. For example, I’m setting up another SiteShare partner website today with the theme of small business networking and marketing (website under construction). I’ll expend the initial effort to establish the site and will then rely on the author (a fantastic lady who’s writtn some really great articles in the past for howtoadvertise.net) to ask me to post her articles. This allows for me to be proactive 20-30% of the time and reactive for the remainder which I feel is more realistic.

The more I research on this and tell others about the SiteShare program, the more cool stuff I’m finding out. Here’s a blog entry from copyblogger (recommended reading for any niche author) on the trend toward niche market websites.

This echoes an idea I read about in one of my SEO magazines, Search Marketing Standard, called “Targeting the Tail.” Both have to do with focusing less on the broader, general audiences and more on the smaller, niche markets. In copyblogger’s post, he argues for capturing focused audiences for content websites. In the SMS, the focus is on targeting buyers close at the “tail-end” of the buying process.

I agree with both. It would be nice to develop a product that transcends the boundaries and individual challenges we all face in life and develop a product or service that fills a need for virtually every individual on the planet (Coke, Microsoft, Boeing, etc.) but chances are slim and getting slimmer for me. In writing this I believe that most people who are dreaming the big dream of capturing the broader markets are missing the little dreams along the way.

For me, it’s a shift in focus. I’m no longer trying to skip steps in between my-life-right-now and the super-accomplishments I want to achieve. Instead, I’m going to take it one day at a time, focus on my skills and let them develop naturally into something more.

Veterinaryhelp.net is one of our fantastic SiteShare partner sites. It’s authored by a close friend of mine who is just a wealth of information on all things veterinary. Hers is one of my favorite sites simply because it’s one of the first in what will soon be a large network of niche-market content sites. It’s great for the author because she has the means to produce really valuable content in her everyday activities, and now can use that same content to produce articles that will generate an income for her for the lifetime of the website.

Let me repeat that: The lifetime of the website. She earns money for the lifetime of the website. As long as I can make her work produce income, she makes money.

Imagine yourself, working at your chosen profession, dishing out valuable advice to clients, co-workers, friends, etc. Now, if those ideas were valuable enough to doll out to those around you, what’s stopping you from taking that extra step putting pen to paper or fingers to the keys and turning your idea into an article that will generate income day after day, year after year with no additional effort on your part?

Here are some numbers just to give you an idea of the moneymaking potential:

Let’s say you write one article a week for five weeks on public speaking for a public speaking website. In the first month you average .53 cents a day because your topics provided some unique insight into public speaking that hadn’t really been addressed by other public speaking websites in the past. In your first month you would earn $8.95. Now, let’s take a look at what would happen in a year with a measly 3% growth in traffic to your website (3% is an extremely low growth rate especially if you’re adding a new article every week).

With a growth rate of 3% you would earn $112.83 in your first year. In the second year another $160.86. In the third, $229.35. In three years time you would earn $503.04. That’s $100.61 per article. Not bad.

Let’s not stop there. Remember, you’re going to get a check every month your articles make money for the lifetime of the site. If your five articles are still on the internet ten years from now with the same rate of growth and earnings potential, you’ll have earned $8923.88. Stop and take a look at that number again. Now what would happen if you put a little effort into it to improve your growth rate?

4% = $21,776.58
5% = $55,283.11

The math on this makes sense. I have one site that I started in 2004 and made $120.35. in 2005 it was over $6,000. As of today, I’m halfway to my 2006 projected earnings of $9,000. Do I post to it regularly? Yes. Do I add relevant content that people come back time after time to read about? Yes. Is it fun and easy? Yes.

It’s finally official. I’ve quit my day job to pursue the Danifer Web Services full time. It’s been so successful for the last two and a half years that Jamie and I have decided to quit working for the man and start building something for ourselves.

We’re both really scared at taking the plunge but just feel like it’s the right thing to do, simply because we both want to be rich - really rich. Rich enough to not have to worry about how much things cost or to let it stand in our way when we want to go and do. Yacht in Greece and summer in Europe rich.

So how do we get rich? It’s certainly not by working for someone else. When you sit back and think about it, having a nice hourly wage or a salary you can count on is a great thing - especially if it comes with perks like stock options or healthcare. The problem is that you’re capped for life. There’s a ceiling to how much you can make over the course of your lifetime. Even with regular promotions and advancement, you’ll still always make the guy above your richer than you’ll be yourself. It works great for lots of people, but I want to at least try to be the guy on top.

Failure is definitely an option here. The business model may be flawed, or I might turn out to be a really lazy person when I don’t punch a clock. We could have some terrible family tragedy (god forbid) that lands us in a financial situation that the business could not support. All of these are possibilities and I’m not going to ignore them. The key I keep focusing on is that Jamie is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met and I have a lot of faith and confidence in myself as well.

I firmly believe that anything we put our minds to and pour our effort into can’t help but achieve at least some measure of success.

With that in mind, wish us luck and check back to see how it’s going. Feel free to send business my way or just drop me a line to chat.

Keeton