by Sapphire (May 22, 2008)
ummmmm Internet Homesteading? Looking for an identity
What Mark talks about here is exactly what I’m doing. I don’t want to be rich, I just want to be independent from the rat race, from cities where the jobs are (but the cost of living is high). I don’t want to worry about whether my day job will lay me off when I turn 50 because there’s such ridiculous ageism in this country. I don’t want to work for someone else until I’m 67 and then hope I can afford to retire. I don’t think I even want to stop working at 67, but it’s unlikely any job will want me at that age.
I want to work for myself. I want to worry about whether I am earning enough to get by, not whether the company that pays me is earning enough to keep paying me.
And yes, I think I can get to where I can earn enough online working 20-30 hours a week instead of 40, and then I’ll have some leisure time all my life for the rest of my life.
And yes, I’m willing (looking forward, in fact) to moving someplace relatively cheap and living a sustainable, frugal life. It’s really a blessing not to want tons of stuff. I do have a couple of extravagances I’d like to buy, and will someday. But I’m not one of those never-ending pits of lust that goes around looking for something new to covet. I’m perfectly content to be perfectly content, and that means I have a lot more options and much more freedom than people who are obsessed with having stuff.
Posted in Staying on Track 
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by Sapphire (May 21, 2008)
This is a really disheartening niche, people. You know why?
Recently I found a Wordpress plugin that lets you see what people are searching for when they use the search box on your site. Awesome! Now I have new ideas what to write about. It works great on Project Mai Tai, where people search for stuff I hadn’t thought of writing about.
Here… at least half the searches are other affiliate bloggers searching for their names and domain names. Vanity searches.
And people wonder why affiliate marketing bloggers get stingy about giving out links and the secrets to their success. And why this niche has a bad name. It’s because everyone in it, by the nature of what it’s about, is out for themselves. Those of us who aren’t pretty damn selfish are the ones who end up stuck making a couple hundred a year.
I’m still sorting all this out in my head. I hate to say it, but there are days - many of them, lately - where I want to just sell this domain and Chilly and get away from this niche. Just build my sites and make my money instead of talking about it. It’s just so discouraging to talk about it and realize no one’s listening* - they’re just checking in to see if they got mentioned anywhere, or to see what your keywords are, or to dissect your site or try to find your other sites so they can have a good ol’ snoop around those.
*Except for Empress, Stu and a handful of others. 
Posted in The BS Files 3 Comments »
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by Sapphire (May 19, 2008)
Some exciting new possibilities and ventures dropped into my lap over the weekend.
First, on the heels of that epiphany I had where I realized what the very marketable focus of the formerly unmarketable B-2 Bomber is, I woke up the next morning with a plan to turn it into an enormous hub that would totally attract investors and turn it into a smallish company unto itself.
I’m completely serious. I have a brilliant plan and it’s totally workable. It’s just a matter of getting more traffic and then approaching investors with the proposal. It’s easier said than done, sure - but it can be done. Whereas I can’t see this site, for example, ever turning into a small corporation. Just seeing that potential changes everything in my head about that site. Now I have a solid goal and clear steps for getting to it.
Later that day, a fellow blogger proposed a new blog idea to me, and it was good. Additionally, we know precisely how a similar site was launched to become quite successful in just a few months, and by using that plan with a few tricks of our own we should be able to make this thing take right off. We’re going to be full partners in the venture, and I’m looking forward to that experience: B-2 Bomber is a group blog, but I’m the owner and manager of it. In this new venture, I’ll have completely shared responsibilities.
I’m so excited about pooling knowledge with someone in this way!
While I work on this new site with my partner, I’ve got the B-2 plan happening step by step in the background and hopefully coming to fruition within about two years. How awesome is that?
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by Sapphire (May 16, 2008)
I just don’t get it. Alexa’s new ranking system is even further off than the old one, and we have Quantcast which does a far better job tracking accurate visitor counts and even sorting out demographics (it’s connected to Neilsen, who does the TV ratings in the US, which is the direction web stats have got to go).
I look at my sites on Alexa. Now, whether you love or hate AwStats, it has to be relatively accurate for two sites on the same server, right? That means I know without a doubt how much traffic my sites are getting relative to each other. And Alexa’s got it all wrong. My most trafficked site has the lowest ranking of all.
Quantcast has it all right. Now, granted, not everyone’s using it and it’s a very opt-in system. But that’s what third-party ad brokers should be using instead of pagerank or Alexa, which only speculate. Quantcast gets hard data, and people who want to sell ads on their site would be well advised to hook up - it’s free, and the results are publicly viewable. Don’t ask me where they get their info on gender, age and income level and all that - I’m still not convinced the Neilsens are really accurate. But it doesn’t matter, because once you have an industry standard, you have a platform for negotiations about ad space.
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by Sapphire (May 15, 2008)
This month, Project B-2 Bomber is hitting 25k visitors. That’s up 9k from last month - this is a big gain for one of my sites. Today, I had a major epiphany: I figured out what B-2 really means to people who visit.
Don’t get me wrong: I’ve always known what the site is about. We had a topic and we stuck to it, and the mission is pretty clear when you visit and look around. But that’s all about us. What do visitors tell each other? I never figured it out because we don’t really sell anything - it’s a site about a philosophy, really. How do you pitch that?
Easy - when several visitors over the course of a couple of years tell you and tell each other: “I check B-2 when I’m deciding which X to spend money on.”
Holy smokes, people - here I was thinking it’s a quasi-political sort of site and I don’t think advertisers are ever going to want to run ads on it and it’s never going to make any money and maybe 15k is all the monthly uniques we’re ever going to get. But in fact, we’re a site people consult when they’re deciding whether to spend there money here or there. This… is so marketable.
This is so valuable. In fact, you almost couldn’t have a better value for both visitors and advertisers.
Now, because the site’s tone is quasi-political, yes, it will still put off some advertisers. And I’m not willing to change the tone because that would make us just like dozens of more successful sites, and not only do I not want to mimic them, I don’t think it’s smart to directly compete with them. What this really means is that B-2 does indeed have longevity. It has a niche audience, but it’s a fairly sizable one, and it’s growing. It may take years before it starts bringing in serious money. But it’s perfectly poised for:
- Making at least some money
- Possibly attracting major media attention
- Attracting other opportunities that I can’t even imagine
I don’t think it’s a book deal site, but someone else might. Anywho… this is by far the most traffic I’ve ever had coming to one site, and this is a very good time for me to suddenly realize what it’s all about. I’m so stoked!
Posted in Blogging Tags: Project B-2 Bomber 1 Comment »
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