A new direction...sort of.

[Menard]

In my thread 'You might be a webmaster if...' I was reminded that some things that are funny are often closest to the truth.

I had commented on one of Andy's replies about registering a domain whenever you have a good idea (or think you do) that I resembled that remark; mostly because I do resemble that very much.

I have not been accomplishing very much with my websites because I keep going off on different tangents whenever I come up with a new idea, or recycling one that has been done several times before.

Andy even tried to tell to take one project at a time and that didn't sink in (of course, at his age, he probably doesn't remember that ).

It's not necessarily a new direction I am taking as so much prioritizing and trying to organize projects.

Presently I am going to set the majority of my projects on the back burner, so to speak. Where I am going to concentrate is on my personal site (ahem...that would be the CargoShip for those of you not aware yet ) and on sites I primarily setup for affiliate links.

My affiliate sites are:

The DVD site ( http://importdvds.net ) which is just the Scanlines site on its own domain. Need to double the number of titles and add a little content.

The automotive site ( http://carfixdaily.com ). Yeah, I've already heard plenty about 'fixing a car daily'. This site is self sustaining as it is primarily feeds with some stuff that I will occasionally add to the shopping section.

The cheap webhosting site which we have discussed in another thread. I'm primarily going to update it by adding a few pages that were webmaster resources sites (sub-domains) that have since gone away, but I still have the pages and might as well make use of them.

And a few adult sites that are pretty much complete, I just have not been promoting them and they have been just sitting there.

*If you desire to see any of the adult sites (like it's really killing you ) you can PM me for the links. Some of you have seen most of them, I think, except for The RedRoom.

The webhosting site was one I could design without much effort and I was able to get a good domain name for it. I have several web hosts with which I am signed up as an affiliate, but have not done much with them. Being that my web hosting fees and domain renewals are becoming a little bit of a crunch, I have started consolidating my hosting and am hoping that I can make use of the affiliate sites to generate the fees for my hosting and domain renewals.

Many of the site ideas I have mentioned on here before are just simply going to be on hold, and some sites are going to be taken down. If I can work more effectively toward my original goal of getting the new site ready, and there is a lot of work that needs to be done for that, I will have accomplished what I perceive to be my watershed project as a webmaster.

Being that the CargoShip was the prototype for the new site, even though I have always envisioned maintaining it as its own site, I have toyed with the idea of, when I do get the new site ready to at least upload, merging the CargoShip into the new site. It would be interesting to read your thoughts on that.

[Menard]

Being that the CargoShip was the prototype for the new site, even though I have always envisioned maintaining it as its own site, I have toyed with the idea of, when I do get the new site ready to at least upload, merging the CargoShip into the new site. It would be interesting to read your thoughts on that.

Hmmm...quoted myself.


I have decided to merge the CargoShip into the new site when it is ready; basically I am going to permanently redirect the zhorkow domain to the new one.

One of the primary considerations for this is simply the difficulty of the domain name. Despite being a unique keyword for me, it really has no advantage. I have been maintaining two domains for misspellings and that is really unnecessary with the new domain name.

I will take the template for the CargoShip and put it on a domain of mine that has more in relation to science fiction and do away with the more general content which will be moved to the new domain.


A new affiliate site I will be working on will be expanding on my eBay buyer's guide article. There is not too much to do; primarily to just write a seller's section to add to it. Nothing immediate; just when I get to it.


I got a good lesson in trying to multi-task oneself too much. A forum that I frequented had the admin disappear for a month. Although the members were starting to get concerned, there was an overwhelming feeling of being abandoned and several, what few there were, members fell off the board.

Despite the intention of trying to add a forum to different sites, after this experience it seems like a better idea to take my most developed forum, update it to include sections for other sites, and link to it from different sites making it a single forum to admin rather than trying to spread out forums which nobody is paying attention to anyway.


Okay....I'll stop boring you now.

[Andy]

Menard,

I think you are wasting your time starting a new forum unless it is to support a product that you have produced. It's better to have a blog. This is ideal where you expect to be the majority poster and only have a a few responses to your article-style posts.

Most people simply enjoy reading web content and are not so keen to put their head on the block and post a response or even do the jump between the tower blocks of starting a new thread.

What you may need more than anything else is inbound links from related authority sites in your niches. Your Import DVD site looks good to me but appears to have no traffic. also, it has no article content pages, no privacy policy and contact page. So at the moment it looks like a landing page only.

I actually sent you a copy of my script for adding an article section to a site a couple of weeks ago. You could write 10 content pages in a few days I think. Then Ad a blog to review the various DVDs and entice comments from fans etc. Once you get a few 100 vistors per day you should start getting sales. If not, Ad Adsense to get some $.

 

[Menard]

Menard,

I think you are wasting your time starting a new forum unless it is to support a product that you have produced. It's better to have a blog. This is ideal where you expect to be the majority poster and only have a a few responses to your article-style posts.

Most people simply enjoy reading web content and are not so keen to put their head on the block and post a response or even do the jump between the tower blocks of starting a new thread.

What you may need more than anything else is inbound links from related authority sites in your niches. Your Import DVD site looks good to me but appears to have no traffic. also, it has no article content pages, no privacy policy and contact page. So at the moment it looks like a landing page only.

I actually sent you a copy of my script for adding an article section to a site a couple of weeks ago. You could write 10 content pages in a few days I think. Then Ad a blog to review the various DVDs and entice comments from fans etc. Once you get a few 100 vistors per day you should start getting sales. If not, Ad Adsense to get some $.

 

The forum is one that already exists, and has been around for a few years. It has gone nowhere as the original members who started it up with me left shortly after, so it has been more or less a blog for me to rant about things. I figured that since it is already there, rather than building any new forums that I would just add some categories to it for some of my sites and use it as a single, collective forum shared among several sites.

The DVD site is basically a landing page I placed there to have something on the domain. The page there is the old ScanlinesDVD page (I had used the scanlines site, just a sub-domain, to use on traffic exchanges; hence, the reason it is only one page). I have pretty much forgotten about the domain, till you mentioned it. I had planned, and will, double the number of DVDs advertised on the page and add some of my movie oriented articles to it, on separate pages, but take parts of the articles and an introduction to add to the main page. I don't really plan to do much more with the site than that; other than promote it.

My plans on the new site have hit a roadblock, being that my main computer was knocked out by lightning that time. Though I have most of it backed up on an external hard drive, there was a lot of newer stuff I was working on that I had not backed up yet and it is on that hard drive; until I eventually get another computer in which I can use the old hard drive as a slave drive.

My concentration is going to be on the Men's Daring site. When I started getting into fitness more, I had though of the idea of having a blog or something to tell about what I am doing and share some articles. Thinking about it, it made sense to me to just update my idea for the Men's Daring site and add some of my interests (fitness, cars, etc.) to the Men's Daring magazine. To me, it seems like it would work out better in several ways: 1) It adds additional content, and more frequently, to the Men's Daring site; 2) It keeps me more concentrated on the site if I have several areas of interest represented, rather than having separate sites for fitness, muscle cars, movies, and men's adventure stories, and which I am likely to let individual sites linger where if these topics are on one site then I can still keep the site updated even if I have more interest in a different topic from time to time. (dang, that was a heck of a run on sentence)


That's my excuse anyway.

[Andy]

Well Menard,

I think you should work on one project at a time. The DVD site seems the best idea to me as an alternative to breaking your back at the job.

Write articles about your favorite films and submit them...

http://ez-onlinemoney.com/blog/article-marketing/15-article-directories-worth-submitting-to/

Remember to add an author bio that links to your desired web page.

[Menard]

Well Menard,

I think you should work on one project at a time. The DVD site seems the best idea to me as an alternative to breaking your back at the job.

Write articles about your favorite films and submit them...

http://ez-onlinemoney.com/blog/article-marketing/15-article-directories-worth-submitting-to/

Remember to add an author bio that links to your desired web page.

From an seo perspective, the DVD domain is stronger for keyword searches, I agree. From a perspective of knowing what I am capable of (a.k.a. neglecting things after I start them) the Men's Daring site will probaly work out better for me.

I have been writing about my experiences with fitness on another forum, for now. I do have that content available, just to update it more for the Men's Daring site. Then I might strike more of an interest in writing about movies, then fall off of that for a while. It might even be about cars, or the music I am listening to at the moment. Updating the Men's Daring concept to include all of these areas, and provide an outlet for short story writing, should provide (being my hope) enough flexibility and variety to keep me tuned on one site, regardless what my most current interest is.

[Menard]

BTW, one of the first things I did when I got online several years ago was to contribute reviews to Amazon.com. I have taken some of these reviews, and some from a movie forum I frequent, and added them (updated) to my own websites. This does at least provide a good base of reviews I can use, just change the content a little, for the DVD  site.

My Amazon Reviews page: http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2OP21WUY8L3WL/ref=cm_cr_pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort%5Fby=MostRecentReview

[Menard]

  Don't know what happened to the last reply.


I am working on the ImportDVDs site now.

I am presently adding a reviews page, an articles page, and am considering a contact and about page; though I don't know why I would want a contact page.

Originally, I was going to just place text links to the reviews on the reviews page, but I am now thinking of doing it like the front page; with a small image of the DVD cover and the title.

I have two articles I can put on the site and link to them from the articles page. I may put a submit form on the articles page as well, just to keep it from looking so barren. I realize that I can just link the articles from the reviews or front page, but I am wanting it to look like there is more to the site for the purpose of being listed by directories.

I will also put snippets from the articles on both the front page and the articles page.

Just in case anybody was wondering, the articles are on WIP (women in prison) Flicks and zombie movies (like anybody is surprised ).

Since I have the content already written, just need to adjust the wording a little, the majority of the work will be on just creating and linking all the new pages, finding cover shots for DVDs, and getting more titles for the front page. I should be able to have the site updated, or mostly updated, by this weekend.

That just leaves promoting it after that.

[Andy]

Sounds good, content is king more than ever now. Also, you need inbound links.

[Menard]

I'm pushing back the completion of the update of ImportDVDs to about Tuesday; unless, of course, I finish sooner. The main reason is simply that due to the Memorial Day holiday here in the states, my schedule has been adjusted and Monday and Tuesday are going to be light work days, lighter than usual, so I can take advantage of that for this project and doing some other needed updates.

After the DVD site, my next affiliate site project is going to be Men's Bookshelf; just a simple site, along the lines of the DVD site, that will concentrate on book sales through affiliates in subjects oriented toward men: private investigation, martial arts, adventure novels, etc.; plus ebooks on similar subjects for download. This will, however, be after the DVD site is finished and getting enough traffic to produce sales.

If I can put your advice to good use, Andy, hopefully I can get some supplemental revenue coming from a few sites. I know it ain't coming from my employers as the gas is going up even more and my income is not; and aren't we all in that boat? I've been with two companies for a period of time to have earned a raise and neither is going to be giving one. I so feel for them that they can raise their prices and fees, but in order to squeeze just a little more profit they are going to screw their employees as well.

Pardon me; just ranting.

[Andy]

Employees are normally paid just enough so they don't quit, so what you are experiencing is entirely normal. The wage bill has a direct impact on profits so minimising it is a priority for directors of a business.

[Menard]

Employees are normally paid just enough so they don't quit, so what you are experiencing is entirely normal. The wage bill has a direct impact on profits so minimising it is a priority for directors of a business.

Not so much normal. One of the companies has traditionally always increased wages by a minimum of 3% each year. I was told by district that this is the first time the company has done this since they have been with the company.

The companies are basically adopting the rationale that with things as tight as they are that people are either just going to accept it (which is the most likely scenario) or someone else will be willing to accept it.