Back From Vacation Trying to Catch Up

Well, I have been back from vacation for a little over 36 hours now and trying to get caught up after not doing any of my daily activities for the past week.  I did manage to get through the large stack of mail this morning and have started to slowly unpack.  Since we stayed in a house, we were able to do laundry and so came home with mostly clean clothes.

I still haven't been able to get much written yet.  I did write a post for Christian Personal Finance last night as part of a paid writing position.  I figure that it could pay for hosting fees for my other online projects and provide a potentially larger audience for my blog.  If I pass the "audition", then great.  If not, then nothing is lost.  I will let you know when it is posted so that you can go and vote for me to become one of their two new writers.

I am also working on the list of articles in my Google Reader and commenting here and there.  I had over 300 to go through.  I have knocked that total in half currently.  I hope to get it done by later tonight so that I can keep up again.  I would also like to get posts written for Cash Flow Mantra, Options Dude, and Options Dude A to Z.  I am wondering if I am trying to get too much done in the next 12 hours.

The good news is that I have a very good idea of the topics that I will be discussing.  The bad news is that it will probably take some time (about 2 hours or more) to get it all done.  And I have a softball game plus some other work at the desk to do for my rental properties plus I would like to sleep some time tonight.  Oh well, if nothing else, I should be back on track by tomorrow evening at the latest.

The biggest problem with vacation is that you have to get 2 weeks worth of work done in one week in order to enjoy some time off.  The work doesn't necessarily stop, but simply gets compressed into a shorter time frame.  Anyway, it will be a bit busier for a few days.  I would also like to get ahead on some posts for Cash Flow Mantra since I really liked being able to schedule my posts during vacation when internet access was spotty and very slow at best.

Heading to Dallas--Gotta Love WordPress

So my family and I are heading for Dallas today.  Gotta pack since we leave in 2 hours or so, but had to do a quick post to let you know that I may not be all that active for the next week.  I don't know the internet access situation in the house that we will be renting.  If I have to live without, that is OK and might be better for me.

However, I have managed to schedule 4 posts that will happen at CashFlowMantra.com over the next 9 days while I am traveling.  I think that is absolutely awesome so be sure to check them out.  I put a lot of effort into getting four posts ahead the past week so that I could continue posting and not have people lose interest in that site.  I see a lot of momentum building and want to maintain that progress.

I just love the scheduling feature on WordPress.  I think it is so cool.  There might be one here on blogger, but now that I am getting into the WordPress action, I am loving it.  So, why didn't I do this sooner?  Fear of the unknown,  plain and simple.  Anyway, this is a quick post since I have to get packing.  Enjoy my new posts on my main personal finance blog.  You can go directly or catch them here in the right side bar.

Six Month Goals for Cash Flow Mantra

I have started a new blog that is a little over a month old now called Cash Flow Mantra.  It is a personal finance blog with the primary focus being cash flow.  You can link to my latest posts in the sidebar at the right.  In fact, many of you have been doing so because this blog is responsible for 7.5% of my traffic over the last 30 days according to Google Analytics.  I want to say that I sincerely appreciate your support in helping me build traffic over there.

I have mentioned in previous posts that I would share with you my goals for the remainder of the year with this new blog.  I honestly haven't had much of a chance to sit down and consider them in detail.  I also haven't had the opportunity to put them down on paper so I will actually be developing them on the fly as I write this post.

First, I would like to be able to publish some quality and thought provoking articles.  I am realistic and know that I won't be able to do that for every post.  I simply don't have that many good ideas but at least a couple absolutely knock-out articles each month is possible along with lots of other good articles on personal financial topics.  As part of the Yakezie Challenge, I will need to publish at least twice per week.  I certainly want to be able to maintain that pace at a minimum.  I would like to have a total of 100 posts by the end of the year.  I am currently at 17 and feel that 12 per month is reasonable.

Next, I would like to be able to get my Alexa rank down to 200,000 by the end of the year.  That is one of the primary goals of the Yakezie Challenge.  I think that this is possible but I will need to grow traffic and probably need to increase it 4 or 5-fold.  As the number of posts increases, the amount of search traffic would be expected to increase as well and could actually surpass my current levels of traffic.  I would also retain and hopefully grow my social readers at the same time.

I don't expect to earn a lot in the first six months, but I would like to see the total slowly grow.  I think this might happen as the search engine traffic grows.  I will not be targeting keywords necessarily but plan on writing what I view as quality content letting the chips fall where they may.  I would expect that by after one year, I should at least be able to cover my hosting expenses of $10 per month.  I currently have enough money in my PayPal account to cover one full year's worth of hosting expenses.  Plus I am getting close to payout with the HubPages Ad Program which would provide another $50 or five months of hosting fees.

I would like to also get some advertising on the site which could help.  As the traffic builds and Alexa rank declines, I might be able to get someone to advertise on the site.  Right now I have a special going, so hop on over and check it out.  Now would be a good time to get in on the ground floor as I build up the site.

These are the main goals that I would have for the site for the remainder of 2011.  I think they are reasonable and achievable but will require that I put forth some effort.  I can't simply ignore the site after a few posts.  I am continuing to interact with other financial bloggers by commenting which has helped me enjoy the best initial traffic success that I have ever had.  I will have to keep working hard in order to meet my goals, but plan on having some fun in the process.

Making Record Money in My Sleep

I woke up yesterday morning and couldn't believe my eyes.  While I was sleeping (which was only for 5 hours), I had managed to make over $19 on AdSense.  I thought I had accidentally picked a month's worth of stats since I haven't been making all that much in AdSense since the Panda attack.  But there it was in black and white.  A month's worth of earnings in only a few hours.  So this is what it feels like to be Felicia from nojobformom.com.  I think I like it.

Needless to say, today is back to normal, and I am sitting on 13 cents.  But that's is OK with me.  I am excited about the prospects of continuing to build up various blogs and sites in the months and years to come.  I have a long term horizon as I outlined in my article on compounding my online income.  As you can see from the table, I only need to be making $53.87 this month.  Plus I have a year before I need to make $100 per month to stay on track. 

I honestly think that I will be able to do this now that I have my own WordPress blog.  I may not quite make it this month with just AdSense, but adding in Amazon and the HubPages Ad Program may help although HubPages traffic keeps declining.  But traffic at CashFlowMantra.com is taking off.  I am entering the Yakezie Challenge with that site and will be pushing it hard to gain traffic which can only help.  I am enjoying using WordPress and look forward to being able to make a few more sites this year also.

Sorry to make this a short post, but I have to get out and fire up the grill for dinner.  In the next few posts, I will be posting my quarterly earnings and some goals for the rest of the year.