I just got back from a girls-weekend trip in Chicago.  Myself and my college roommates met up at the Hotel Sax to catch up and just relax. The weekend included a lot of shopping, hanging out at a fun martini bar, and singing along to fun songs at a dueling piano bar. We also had a few courtesy bottles of Bin36 Cabernet, a great wine that is made at the restaurant below the Hotel Sax. I have a ton of new writing material for my Girly Drinks web site

Olivia Golden Retriever

Mike and I also decided to get a puppy – a golden retriever! We get to bring her home at the end of this month. Her name will be Olivia

Last month I mentioned my frustration with not being able to find a nice office space in Michigan, but since then, I’ve found something that works out great. Eric Urbane from Urbane Apartments had mentioned on twitter that he had co-working space available in Birmingham, so I tweeted him back asking him how much it would cost. After meeting last week, I agreed to blog about cocktail events for him on his Royal Oak/Detroit blog in exchange/trade for use of the office space – that’s an amazing deal for me! After talking in our meeting, we also made a side deal that puts me back in the SEO client space, something I thought I wouldn’t be doing again. I’m going to concentrate on some SEO efforts for his site and document the process in eBook form so that it can be packaged and (hopefully) sold to other apartments down the road.

I also won a gold pass to Affiliate Summit West, so I’ll definitely be there come January.

I’m currently in search of the perfect camera (looking at Canon Rebel and Nikon D60 right now), just ordered Whiteboard paint that will let me paint a whole wall in my new home office and use it as a whiteboard, hired a full-time virtual assistant (for article writing, linkbuilding, profile creation, bookmarking, etc), and took on one more online reputation management client, bringing my ORM client load to 3. I enjoy working on ORM projects much more than SEO, so I’m happy to bring on more clients instead of my original plan, which was to just focus on affiliate sites.

I also mentioned last month that I had signed up for The Keyword Academy, an adsense focused training program. I’ve had a few people direct message me and email me asking how that was going. The answer: so far, so good. I made more money in adsense this month than I have in previous months, but I also started one site that was only meant for adsense, whereas my other sites are focused on people purchasing affiliate products and aren’t heavily loaded with adsense placements. I’m still signed up for the program and have my virtual assistant working on article writing and linkbuilding for the site, so hopefully next month the numbers will be even higher.

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.