Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

It’s been almost two months since I was hanging out in “The Matrix.” I’ve gotten married, had a blast of a honeymoon in New Zealand, and enjoyed a little bit of the summer months out here in Hawaii. But now it’s time to get back at it.

Since I’ve been gone I’ve had continued writing on only one blog, Aloha Update. All my other blogs and internet business ventures have been stagnant. However, I’m pleased to report that earnings have stayed at the same levels as they were in May and acutally went up on some blogs. This is very encouraging news, it shows that the system of writing a lot, or having others write for your sites, can pay off while you do nothing!

But this news has also been pulling at me to get back in the world of internet business building. Having the last two months to sit back and take stock of what I’ve created has allowed me to really look at what works, what makes me money. I’ve been able to learn which approaches have the biggest return and thus those that I should spend more time creating.

It’s also allowed me to plan a path to refocus on those sites and operations I feel have the highest potential to build into a real business and provide a stream of money to fund other ventures. This is my main focus over the next few months is to work off a plan and build a business system that can fund the next planned operation and so on and so forth.

We’ll see how it goes, but I wantd to let ya’ll know, I’m back in the matrix!

I’m definitely not the first to say that google analytics is new and improved. The word has been spreading about them taking urchin site tracker to the next level.

My Google Analytics account has just been switched over to the new look and feel and I have to say that it is Googlefied to the max. It gives you more information right at login that it ever did so you don’t have to go digging through all the crazy sidebar items. Speaking of which, the sidebar options have been majorly trimmed which is great!

The nice thing about the streamlined version is that it’s not really streamlined at all. I still see all the information it used to have just now it’s much easier to find and know it’s there (I even found stuff that I didn’t know analytics tracked.)

Here’s a pic of the new look. What do you all think of the new look?

I have recently been writing about volumetrics as a legit dieting plan and the different low energy density foods that you can enjoy while on the diet. Writing about it and really trying to stick with it has made me google happy for the term “volumetrics”.

From there I found out that Consumer reports has named volumetrics it’s top diet plan for this year.

“Recent clinical trials show the best overall weight loss of any diet evaluated. Based on research at Penn State, the diet aims to maximize the amount of food available per calories, mainly by use of reduced-fat products, liberal addition of vegetables and low-fat cooking techniques.”

For those of you who don’t know, the idea is really simple. Eat foods that weigh a lot and have a lot of volume with relatively low calories. This way you feel full while still eating less calories. It doesn’t take a nutritional degree to know that if you eat less calories than you burn throughout the day you’ll loose weight over time. The only problem, which volumetrics claims to solve, is you don’t feel full.

I for one hate being hungry so going from eating whenever, whatever, to trying to “diet” for the first time in my life has been difficult. Eating apples, salads, tomatoes, and other low energy density foods gives me the right balance of foods, and allows me to eat a lot, while lowering my calories.

I now find myself reading labels to do quick calculations based on weight and calories per serving. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep this up for the next 20 days until the wedding. Lord knows I could stand to loose a little tire that has inflated around my belly.

For those of you who love to read about what other bloggers out there are making I stumbled across a great list of a lot of prominent bloggers and what their salaries might be.

I for one try to spread the love by updating you with the most recent earnings reports that make it to my reader but this list may be the best yet.

Paula Neal Mooney’s list contains bloggers from the top all the way down to the up and coming. Should you be on the list? Well if you think you should, just drop her a line or comment, I’m sure she’d be glad to add you, especially if you have a link to your earnings.

Speaking of which, maybe I should drop her a line, I should be close to the top 40 this year!!!

“OK Great,” says my fiance. But what foods can I eat then? “Vegetables and fruits,” I reply.

After explaining about the new volumetrics “diet” that I’m trying to stick with to feel full with less calories, my fiance wanted to know about what foods she could eat and was it just going to be lettuce and apples (both of which she’s not too fond of.) Googling around I couldn’t really find a good source of what foods we could eat so I thought I would make ya’ll a list.

This list is just starting and what I’m trying to do is show there is a variety of foods out there you can eat. All below an energy density of 2. Remeber:

Energy Density = Calories / Weight in Grams per serving

OK, after the last PR update and this blog didn’t even budge off it’s PR4 I’m on the hunt for quality link exchanges from others like me. People who are jumping into this internet web money making wonderness and want to get their blog’s PR up and spread the link love.

If you’d like to exchange links with me in your blogroll, just send over a comment and I’ll be happy to exchange links with you. I’m looking mainly for similar type personal blogs but will consider just about anything.

On a happy Google PR note Blogtown Press did see most of it’s blogs reach PR4 which is great! Now I just gotta get this one back up there again……

OK, so I admit, I’ve started to rock a little bit of a tire around the mid section. Nothing big, but noticeable none-the-less.

To try and get in shape in time for my wedding (which is in Hawaii, friends coming out, and I should really look like I actually play out here rather than work on my computer all day long) I’ve decided to cut calories and increase activity. The only problem is, I get way too hungry.

I’m trying and trying, but once 9 pm rolls around, I’m starving! I snack a little, not excessively, as a I used to but I’m still not cutting out as many calories as I’ve wanted to.

That’s when someone in my office, who noticed my disgruntledness (good word) at the candy jar, handed me over this great article from Newsweek titled Filling up with Less. It’s about a little known “diet” called volumetrics.

Volumetrics is essentially watching the amount of calories you take while still remaining full (or as they call it many times in the article, satiated. You eat foods that are not necessarily lower in calories but have higher densities usually as a result from more water in the food. This is called their energy density.

Energy Density = Calories Per Serving / Grams Per Serving

You want to eat foods that have an energy density of less than 1. Foods with energy densities between 1 and 2 are OK but should be limited and over 2, forget about it.

OK, so here we go, time to start eating many more fruits and veggies and get rid of that extra ring around the belly.

I recently read an article in Business 2.0 about a company that is trying to make it’s own market on the internet.. They’ve cleverly hid the fact that all their trading is web pages by modeling them after real life real estate and people. It’s called Weblo.com.

It’s really an interesting concept. They name and group all their pages by countries, states/provinces, cities/towns, streets, and even buildings. Pages are then created, “owners” add content, make money, pay tax to what those groups they fall under as well as weblo and voila, you have a virtual market contained on one site.

If you really look at the idea it’s nothing more than what people are doing over at SitePoint.com, Digital Point, or a plethora of domain name reseller places out there. Except, they organized it under one place, can monitor it (tax it), and have a concept that is unique. Some of the most searched for things are what to do in city X or what celebrity slept with whom. They just built themselves a whole new organized resellers market.

In Business 2.0 they state the company claims to make $2 million in this quarter alone, which I don’t doubt. If you head over to the site you’ll notice that most of the major cities, even the obscure ones are taken and it costs a few dollars to “own” each one.

However, the long term outlook for earnings on the sites might be a little more suspect. Unless they get a killer format and a ton of webmasters that just love creating content (like wikipedia) the pages created will be useless. Many other webmasters will be able to build sites and take most if not all of the traffic away from Weblo.

But if you look at the concept strictly from an entertainment point of view, theres a million ways the site can go and be profitable, they just have to keep the audience there. Good luck with that.

About two months ago I wrote about feeling the digg effect where I talked about the great feeling of getting your article to the front page of digg and then quickly seeing your shared server plan crash to ground.

The residual effect of getting to the top of digg is immense. Although if you feel the effect and your server crashes that is a bummer in the short term, but all the links you get will help your page rank, your site promotion, and boost your readership (so long as you keep up the writing.)
Based on what the surrounding hours were receiving, the time I was down cost me about 30K visitors for the 3 articles I had dugg to the front page. Ouch!!!

It even prompted me to switch servers and plans.

I recently came across a interesting niche hosting idea started by this guy and another called SurviveDigg.com. A great idea, especially if they can keep up with staying true to their name and get to the top of Google’s search results for hosting plan that can survive digg (that should help ).

I don’t know how many times I searched for that on Google as well as all the forums I could find. It’s a tough subject because it seems like everyone has different answers about the same hosts and the same hosting plans. (ie it’s a crapshoot)

But the idea is definitely a great niche to go after and a product that I would have thought about trying had it been launched back when I was mulling over the decision to switch hosting plans because of the digg effect.

It’s Aloha Friday again and I for one can say thank goodness. The week has been uber busy and I don’t feel like I’ve gotten anywhere!

I’m in the midst of a restructuring of sorts over at Blogtown Press as well as working on building new ventures and revisiting old contacts. During this process, I feel like of course there’s too much to do and thus I’m getting no where.

With all that jumble said here’s some links for you Entrepreneur Types out there.

The first one is just a funky little when will I be a millionaire calculator done nicely in AJAX I assume due to it’s no refresh graph adjustment. Put in some variables and see when you’ll be a millionaire. It’s a basic calculator geared towards savers. If only there was a calculator for entrepreneurs…

Here’s something from the Wall Street Journal called Startup Journal. It’s a WSJ online publication for entrepreneurs. I’ve never been nor knew it existed but in a brief poke around it looked like it could help out in some regards.

Lastly I’d like to say congrats to Josh Buckley who this week announced the formation of his network of sites called 2slice Media. Always great to see more people building networks and discussing their paths openly for all to learn and grow. Good luck Josh, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for the new site design and the network growth.

All for the weekend,
Aloha,
Erik