Thoughts

I write several blogs, and the number has increased several fold this year, looking at my list of projects for next year it could get even bigger!

But is blogging on multiple blogs a good idea? I’m not talking about guest posting on other people’s blogs I hasten to add, I’m talking about actual blogs you administer manage and post more than 75% of the content to.

This is all Damien Riley’s fault that I’m pondering this with a pint in my hand at 5pm on a the last Sunday of the year! He asked the question was having multiple blogs worth the effort? In my opinion yes, although with the ones I may add over the coming year maybe I’ll disagree.

The reason I say this is that I had to split my personal blog to create this one! Posts about Paddington bear being under investigation really didn’t sit too well with discussions about PageRank, and Bumpzee. There’s probably a tonne of content over there that I haven’t ported over (just to prevent duplicate content penalties really!). I still post on my personal blog semi-regularly but full-time-blogger.com has become a focus place for my online activities!

I do regularly post on two other blogs, both news related (one sport, one health) but this is little more than commenting on stories I’ll likely be reading anyway, so I don’t consider it a chore in any way shape or form!

How many do you have, and do you ever feel diluted?

Way back when we started this full-time blogging journey we discussed Adsense, and how ShoeMoney had gotten a cheque for $132,994.97. That was pretty fantastic!

However Earners Blog, has just blown that away - with a single transaction worth AU$14M - you can check it out here!

Unfortunately the transaction was cancelled almost immediately, but it lead me to do some thinking. Adsense brings in money in dribs and drabs, often pennies everyday - which is nice, really nice, to see it trickling in. However would you prefer to see nothing coming in and then one really big transaction every week or so?

Let me give you a bit of an example that happened to me recently, I have a site that contains both Google Adsense and Amazon’s affiliate program, Adsense for Search had made less than a dollar that day as per usual, but someone clicked through from that site and put a £200 order in with Amazon! The commission on that single product sale was £16 - that’s probably the single biggest commission I’ve ever earnt!

So back to the original question, what’s your biggest affiliate commission (and what was it for)? Would you prefer to do just one of those infrequently or have daily trickles of cash through a program like Adsense?

It’s a strange old thing……

I’ve finally sat down today and brought one of my niche blogs upto date with all the news stories I’ve been receiving from Google Alerts the last few weeks. Most of them I’ve just deleted, as they were spam, duplicates, or useless sites - but it allowed me to make 6 or 7 posts and this site generally makes some Adsense clicks when it has new content, I’ll let you know how it goes with this set of updates.

I’ll probably do the other niche site next and make sure they’re both up to date going into the new year, that’s the beauty of Adsense, once you’ve written something and uploaded it, it’s there and people can visit it day and night and they may just click on it and earn you some cash! I know one person who stores everything he’s ever written and keeps it on one website, it’s not all related some of it’s old - but it all makes money!

So back to the original content of this post, motivation… What motivates you?

Personally, I’m motivated by being happy, it’s as simple as that…. What it takes to get that happiness is another story…. Currently on the list to make me happy is moving house, working for myself (and not “the man” as Matt so aptly puts it!), and building the business up!

Motivating myself to update the niche sites I discussed earlier wasn’t difficult, they’re both on subjects I’m thoroughly involved in and find it really easy to read and write about, some of my other domains where I’ve speculatively bought the domain and done absolutely nothing with it - I think I’d struggle to write for on the first day back after Christmas!

It would be nice to hear what motivates others, and how the different levels of motivation affect you!

WorkBlogLife.com recently published a list of signs that you are working too much which include:

1. Your family and friends have got so used to not having you around, you feel like a stranger when you are around them.
2. Closing yourself off from your friends and associates, stopping all contact, ignoring emails, phone calls from them etc.
3. You have a spiralling compulsion to work longer and longer hours, trying to squeeze the last few minutes from the day.
4. Your level of caffeine and stimulates has increased to the point that it disrupts your sleep, what little that you are getting.
5. You are putting aside relaxation or regular exercise in favour of getting the job done, you feel compelled to finish the tasks at hand.
6. You are finding that you are getting really irate at mundane things. Like when you have to wait for anything, queuing at the checkout, in traffic or waiting for a late scheduled meeting.
7. General forgetfulness of anything that is not work related.
8. Missing family special events, such as partner’s work events, or children’s school or major sporting events in favour of work.
9. Long term sickness, like a cold or flu you just can’t shake.
10. You get to the point that you can’t tell what day it is. You avoid drawing the blinds as you don’t want to look at the beautiful day outside as it’s going to distract you.

Where do you stand? How many out of 10 do you get?

Yaro, declares that:

“Most people are lazy. Most bloggers are lazy.”

He’s probably right!

I don’t consider myself lazy at all, I may however question my motivation at times! I joke that I had some motivation once, locked it in a draw and have struggled to find it ever since (it’s probably stuck some where between apathy and sarcasm if we’re really honest about things!).

So I’ve been started this blog a few days now and all we’ve done is install Wordpress and get it themed up. Let’s look at some of the other stuff I’m going to need in the coming posts.

Meanwhile, are you lazy?