Monthly Round Up!

It's been a very busy month.  Having decided to go with SubmitYourArticle in late Jan, I've been writing a couple of articles a week across my various topics. Views are now over 1200 off the SubmitYourArticle site alone, with 15% publications and 20 content feeds. Most articles have been on 14-30 day trickle, so many of them are still in distribution. So, somebody likes my stuff! I bit the bullet and paid another month's subscription. General opinion seems to be that you need 6-8 weeks to really see the results. Just googled my name and in the first 10 pages of search results I've got about 15 entries (with a decent number to the front). I find that encouraging, though I know of one guy who has had 9,000 views of one article. My main niches are competitive though. The project management articles seem to have the highest publication success http://www.projectpdq.com/ . Some of these are getting 50% publication rates, and others are quite low. This is helping to build backlinks, but it is slow (it's now 4 months since I started the IM/website business)

Issues with my articles:

• I probably put too much into them, they are after all supposed to be a tease. When I have an idea it usually takes me about 1/2 hr to write the article; using the ArticleLeverage from SubmitYourArticle takes more time, but I find it does help improve the general quality of the article. I have used it on every article.
• I need to be more 'keyword focused' when I write. I've got to the stage now where I need to churn out 3-4 articles a week (if I stick with this as a prime marketing tool). Yesterday I had my first case of writers block.
• I'm avoiding using article writers for now, but I do plan to investigate the area. I don't fancy it as a business proposition though as $2 an article seems paltry (though some people do charge a lot more). 

 I'm going to persevere with it for another month or two.

What else?

Well, serendipity - I came across an offer and bought a themed wordpress blog and got that set up and going. A whole new area for me and I've had to learn about plugins, GIMP (my artwork is improving), Audacity and a host of other tools. It was a very valuable skilling exercise, with a good installation guide for the blog. Associated with that I did my first podcast and first promotional video for YouTube. The package came with a very good web marketing pack which I have been working through. All came out of a $37 purchase, fantastic educational value!

I also signed up for a free 'white label' site deal in one of my niches, and I'm getting the marketing going on that.

I bought some xCommentPro commenting software for my websites in February. It was dead easy to install and run with the xSitePro2 site building suite which I use, but it will run with other sitebuilder packages too. These people really are good. Just a couple of days ago though, I got spammed on the comments on a couple of sites, so I turned on the Captcha feature. Just one switch and re-publish, and it's running.

Also, I set up a podbean site with podcast, a couple of tumblr sites, a couple of zimbio blogs, and a couple of weebly and wetpaint sites. Sounds a lot - each one different structure/design concept. Oh yes, don't forget 3 squidoo lenses too. Where do these guys get their ideas?

Finally, got a docstoc account set up, but couldn't make it work, keeps dropping my docs - maybe it sees them as trashy. Scribd seems fine and dandy though.

I'm still avoiding twitter, though I may get round to it in March.

So, Serendipity shaped my month - I have learned so much. Oh - I started learning to play tennis too!

What I'm going to do in March:
- get to grips with detailed keyword research
- investigate more niches and find a microniche
- keep up the articles
- get some income ($10 adsense in 4 months is paltry)
- 1 new site and 1 new blog each week. This is a tall order!
- look at Free Traffic System.
- look at buzzle
- more forum contributions
- improve my service and work on my forehand!

Phew! Now I remember why monthly reports are so good to do! (must remember to send a copy to my bank manager LOL)!

Financial Summary, project to date OUT ~$750 IN ~$60. My lady asking when it's going to turn into +++$!!

Persevere!   .