I have so many web sites – ranging from affiliate to hobby to client and everything in-between – that sometimes my thoughts get scattered and I post random things on random sites. I’m trying to clean up the focus on all of my sites and figured I’d post the in-between posts here at my vanity url site.
I think I’ve finally settled down for awhile, after moving 4-5 times in the last two years. Since 2005, I’ve lived in Las Vegas, San Francisco, Farmington Hills, MI, Cincinnati, OH, Novi, MI, and now Dearborn, MI. I’ve also had as many jobs as I’ve moved…
I sold one of my affiliate web sites last May and had decided to take a bit of a break from a 9-5 job to figure out what I really wanted to do – working in an agency wasn’t for me, and SEO work for clients wasn’t that much fun, either. I had thought that with all of the success I had with SEO’ing my own sites and how much time I spend at SEO/Internet/Affiliate/PPC conferences and on industry related blogs, I’d have a blast working on client sites, getting them traffic. However, that wasn’t the case. It was actually pretty draining and my only thoughts all day were about what I could be doing with my own sites.
Anyways, I took the break and decided to invest some money into a boutique clothing store with my best friend. The plan was for her to do the buying and me to set up the ecommerce portion of the store. That was about a month ago. As of today, I walked away and the friend and I are on no longer on speaking terms. Lesson – don’t go into business with a good friend. The emotional and business lines are two lines that shouldn’t merge…
Anyways, I’m back in Michigan now and I’m focusing on my own affiliate sites again, as well as managing a few online reputation management clients and one affiliate client.
I’m attending more conferences now and trying to warm up to the concept of networking (not easy for a shy person who is able to hide behind the computer most of the day). These past few months, I’ve attended Tales of the Cocktail (a cocktail conference for my girly-drinks.com site), the Denver Affiliate Conference, a party at the Playboy Mansion from a contest I won with Azoogle Ads, and MAGIC/Project/ENK in Vegas. I also plan on attending Affiliate Summit West in January, and possibly SXSW. I’d also like to be invited to ThinkTank next year, but I think I need to work on my networking skills first.
Besides the conferences this summer, I also spent a month in Baton Rouge, visiting my brother, and a week in Santa Monica before the Playboy Party.
Now it’s back to focusing on my two Online Reputation Management clients (I remove the “bad results/reviews/news” for these clients) and hopefully getting a few more, and growing my affiliate web sites to new levels.