Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

As I recently discussed in my first adsense payout article, I’ve been blogging and taking a stab at the wide world of internet publishing and marketing for only 9 months. Now for some guru’s who got it right from the get go, 9 months is an eternity. They would have already made $100K by now. But for those of us who are learning as we go and don’t spend all waking hours at this, I feel breaking the $100 a month mark is a pretty good milestone.

I say this because this month I will have gone over $100 in internet earnings for the second straight month! Now a good portion of that has stemmed from my recent purchase of revenue earning domain names, about half to be exact. But aside from earnings I have learned a few things and began to shift my focus from what was originally thought to be the “right way” to pursue online riches.

First off I have seen the amazing power of networking and connections you make just by publishing content on the internet. I was “found” by an old high school (when I say old I mean 6 years ago) classmate who began writing for our blog Fueling The World about alternative energy. He runs his own site and has been a great contributor to that blog and we’ve kicked around a few good ideas and may even get a previous teacher to contribute to the writing.

I’ve also been contacted by a publishing company to review a short Golf Book that they sent free of charge. It turns out the book is rather short and feels more like a pamphlet but none-the-less, I was contacted!

I was contacted the other day, out of the blue to advertise on my Hawaii Update Site and sold and ad block on that one. I ended up selling it for way less than I should have considering the site has been increasing in traffic over the past few months, but that doesn’t really bother me. I sold ad space from doing nothing. (By the way the last time I added any content to that site was August 3rd, almost a month ago, so that was promising)

I am in no way, shape, or form, remotely close to what steve pavlina has accomplished with his single blog, but for some reason that hasn’t deterred me from wanting to continue with online publishing, marketing, and site development. Seeing him and Darren Rowse, and Jason Calacanis succeed and expand just makes me realize that I too can make this crazy internet thing work.

In my Blog Network development I would say I’m about 20% towards where I want to be. There’s a ton I want to do but don’t have nearly the same amount of time I’ve wanted to spend on blogging and development. I’m still trying to maintain 12 blogs and build traffic on all of them. I still want to add forums, redesign the sites, create a few new blogs, demolish some old blogs, and start development of 2 social/provider type websites. That’s a lot for someone who enjoys his free time in an outdoor setting and works full-time.

We’ll see what the next 9 months bring but I’m nowhere near packing it in. Sure I haven’t made squat with how much work I’ve put in but (insert cheesy line) who can put a price on learning.

(By the way I still haven’t learned how to manage getting back to all the emails I get sent so sorry if I am slow to respond to you.)

((Also by the way, this blog may be changing some direction, less personal, more informative and opinion based be excited for that!!!))

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