Only the Best Are Listed on My Site

When I started my first review website, I really didn’t want to be like every other review site on the web showing tons of products and really confusing their visitors. I just wanted to provide a form of leaderboard that showcased the best products in our class so that if somebody was looking for the best of the best, we would be out to tell them straight out.

In order to make sure that our site had legitimate reviews, I decided that it would make more sense for us to do the product reviews ourselves and share our own experiences with the products that we recommended. I felt that honesty was very important and when I told our visitors about the best coffee maker, I wanted to make sure that I would share what I truly believed.

For example, when we were trying to determine what which company made the best coffee makers, we needed to make sure that our recommendation not only made the best cup of coffee but it also had the best coffee pot (in terms of durability).

Even though this may sound like a lot of work, I really do love my job of trying new things out and sharing what I thought about them.

Working for My Man

My husband has been running his own SEO business for a little over a year now and he has recently recruited me as an employee. It is my job to come up with creative website design and I have actually taken a liking to it. I found some great stock photos royalty free that perfected the theme I was trying to create on my first site and I was hooked.

I decided to look into some stock photography companies for all of the sites that we are building and so far, the designs have been better than we could have imagined they would turn out. It is not too often that my husband and I are both pleased with the results, and so far, we both love how the sites are turning out.

I have been using a stock photo in all of the sites and I think, as long as we can keep the desired effect going, I will continue to do so. Now, if I can just convince him to pay me for my hard work, we will all be happy!

Complete Website Management

One of the biggest challenges for me for running my own website is the shear number of tasks I need to do.  It can be very hard to keep track of everything and quite often I feel overwhelmed.  I mean, you need to know how to login to each site, where you have promoted it, and continuously checking whether or not the site is up or if there are problems with the hosting.

So, I have been doing some research into webmaster tools that would not only make my life easier, but be able to scale with the growth of my business.  This was a very important requirement for me as I hope to have about a dozen sites by the end of the year.

I was able to find a program called Atomic Watch that monitors website uptime and some reciprocal link management software to help me manage my marketing.

Hopefully, I will get to the point where I can afford to hire someone to take care of all the website management that I need - but that will have to wait until I have the budget to do so.

Creative, I am Not

I own quite a network of blog sites. They do alright, but I have recently decided that, if I want them to earn their full potential, I need to make them look more professional and eye pleasing. Some of the graphics on the sites are very out of date and I wanted to make them all look fresh and modern.

As the sites were a good source of income for me, I thought it was a good idea to put some money back into them. I will admit that I am not a real creative person, so I thought that if I was going to do the sites some justice, I should hire someone to do logo design online.

I was very impressed with the first few logos that were created, so I gave them the go ahead to create new logos for all of the sites. When they were added to the sites, they were given just the boost that they needed and I was finally happy with how the sites looked.

Learning the Business

My husband has been running his own Internet business for the past year. It has grown to be quite successful and I am proud that all of his hard work has paid off. In fact, it has grown to the point where I was able to quit my job and stay home full time with the kids.

One night, we were discussing the future of the company and we decided that I needed to learn the business, in case anything ever happened to him. It was a lot of information to take in, but I eventually learned how to do affiliate ebook marketing and how to promote it.

I also learned what were the best affiliate programs, as this was crucial knowledge in the running of the company. I know that I still have a lot to learn, but at least, if something happened to him, I would know where to start.

Easy as Pie

I have never been a fan of working hard, though I would never be one to take a shortcut.  I am a firm believer in the thought that shortcuts get back at you, so I want to do it the right way, in the shortest time as possible.

So in my quest to make things easy, I have been looking for some quick and easy web design software to make my task of coding a site less of a nuisance.  I know that there are such products on the market, but I have some criteria that needs to be met before I lay out the money and purchase it.

After looking at many different pieces of software, I think that I have found the answers to my prayers.  The software that I am going to buy has a build in web menu generator, so I no longer have to fool around trying to code it by hand.

I will be trying my first site out tonight - I hope it is as easy as pie!

What Was He Thinking?

The human capacity to act selfishly and underhandedly, with multiple hidden agendas and motives, continues to be a source of amazement and dismay to me.

I just read a post at a popular Internet marketing forum about a problem a relatively new marketer was having with his sites. He had contracted with a new webmaster to oversee his websites. Then after the arrangement was made and he’d been paid a percentage of his fee up front, he insisted that he would only continue working for this marketer if his sites used dotnetnuke web hosting.

The furor this raised on the forum in question was pretty amazing. People were appalled that a webmaster would reveal after the fact that there were extra conditions.

I just keep asking, "What was he thinking?" It begs the question, doesn’t he realize that marketers talk to one another and he had just lost credibility on a forum that boasts thousands of members? Talk about burning your bridges!

My Sites are Down

There is nothing more frustrating to a webmaster when they realize that their sites are down.  Not only does this warn of a potential headache, but it also means that you are losing income - something that none of us want.

So, I have been using some software that checks on a periodic basis to make sure that the sites are functioning correctly, and it will even phone my cell phone if there is a problem.  For the most part this has been a great idea, but the sites do go down from time to time, which means I might have to cut a night out short.

That is exactly what happened tonight.  You see, the free web hosting that I have been using has been down for a couple of hours now, and it sucks.  So far, I have lost at least a sale or two off of the web store that I have, and there will be no way to get that money back.

I guess I should have went with paid web hosting instead…

My First Mobile Site

I know that sometimes I am a little slow to pick up on things, but I came across something that is pretty slick today.  You see, while looking at some mobile sites today on my cell phone, I came across a website that would let me make one of my own.

Now, I was a little worried that I would have to be some sort of coding expert to make it happen, but thankfully, that wasn’t going to be the case.  In fact, just from going through the tour, it looked like it was going to be a breeze.

One thing that had me a little excited is that they had a mobile community of people that are all doing these same things, and it was going to be a place where I could find some support if I had questions.

So, I signed up and I am in the process of creating my first site - I’ll let you all know when I get done.

Trying Something New

I have decided that with my success with Squidoo up to this point that I should try some other content sharing sites - there are more, right?

Well, after a bit of digging, I found another site that was along the same lines as Squidoo, but in some respects, offered more opportunities to make some money.

The site is called HubPages.

It works the same as Squidoo, though I find their hubs (their pages) a little less cluttered and easier to navigate.

So, I started by creating a hub about Free Spyware Removal Software and a Dragon Naturally Speaking Review.  The response and earnings up to this point are promising, but we will have to see how things go - but I think that they will go well.