Optimist Under Siege

So, my Maid of Honor site seems to be losing visitors. This is the site that I was so excited about a couple of weeks ago because it had reached 100 visitors per day. That may not seem like a great feat compared to the Googles and Amazons of the world, but it was pretty cool for me! Now I get to try to figure out what changed and, more importantly, how to fix it!

On the upside, I’m still the number one entry when searching for “maid of honor” on the MSN search engine. Perhaps that means that less people are searching for the term, and not that my site’s SEO has gotten worse. That’s certainly on the optimistic side of things.

Even so, I’m writing a new article on outdoor weddings and will try to find some new inbound links. It can’t hurt! (…Or can it? *ominous music here**)

Okay, so it gets better. In response to yesterday’s post about my husband giving me constant suggestions as to how I ought to write my blog entries…he felt the need to stick his nose in once more and give advice on how I explained that he was giving me advice on how to write blog entries! Wow!

Basically, his suggestion was that I explain in greater detail what I’m trying to do here (in my blog). Now, as much as no one likes a backseat blogger, he did make me realize that I probably should explain what it is that I “do” while working at home. It should give my daily hopes, dreams, and yes, ramblings a bit more context and clarity (or that’s what I’m telling myself at least). So here it is, in all its glory, my self-inflicted job:

I’m trying to make a living making money on the internet. The channels I’m using include affiliate marketing, and google and yahoo pay per click ads. To make my websites stand out, I’m employing and testing a variety of SEO strategies. I wrote a bunch of content on the theory that “content is king.” I have exchanged links with some other websites on the revised theory that perhaps links are queen. I try to improve the sites with interesting articles, quizzes, forums, and other interactive techniques to make visitors more “sticky” and likely to both stick around my sites longer…and hopefully buy something once in a while.

So that’s it. That’s the goal. Now all I can do is keep experimenting and share with you, lucky readers, the fabulous (or..um..not always fabulous) results.

My husband is a nosy busybody! He likes to give me advice on what to write in my lovely blog and suggestions for improving my websites. Now, this is all fine and good since he works in a similar field and really does know his stuff.

But seriously, I can figure out how to write a blog entry or two! I’m doing well so far, right?

…Right???

Well, after much deliberation, I decided to do a little of all the things I was considering in my last entry (starting with cleaning the backpacking stuff out of our living room in order to restore sanity).

Of course, doing a bit on the cheese site and a bit on the maid of honor site really just leaves me with the same question of what to work on daily. So as soon as I solve the problem today, it rears its ugly head again tomorrow. The lovely cycle continues…

So it’s Monday again, one of those Mondays where I’ve completed several projects and need to decide what should be next on the priority list. Should I work on the maid of honor site since it continues to get a good solid 80-100 visitors daily? I’ve already added a couple of features to make it more interactive so that visitors will want to stay longer. Of course, one of those features is a forum…And do you know who has posted to the forum so far? That would be me, myself, and I (under two different aliases!). I’m having a riveting conversation with myself. I guess you’re supposed to be your own best friend, right?

If not the maid of honor site, perhaps I should work on the cheese review site. I still need to make it a bit more user friendly and there are so many cool features to add “at some point.” Ah, one of the procrastinator’s favorite phrases!

Or, what I might want to make the highest priority is cleaning up all our backpacking stuff from the last two weekends. Our apartment looks vaguely like the mountain threw up all over it, covering the floor with pine needles, sleeping bags, dirt, tents, and leftover gorp. It’s not a pretty site!

Decisions, decisions. I think the bet thing to do is head to Starbucks for inspiration!

It’s going to rain a lot this weekend. And we’re going backpacking anyway. Hey, why stay warm and dry when you could haul your food, sleeping bag and tent up 4,000 feet in the rain?

To be fair, my husband will be carrying the tent… (but still!). Apparently, sanity is optional.

Argh! I’m going to eviscerate Etrade! (How’s that for good imagery?) My husband and I opened up an account with them (because they have a very high interest rate), and we have been trying to transfer money into the account every since. But the money has STILL not arrived. And this is after I spent about an hour on the phone with them “proving” my identity because they had put a freeze on our account. YES, I AM ME! Didn’t Descartes already prove this?

So today I’m going to their office in person to find out what’s up and whether that nice high interest rate is really worth it! Stupid Etrade.

The interesting thing about writing websites on a variety of topics is that you get to be an expert on things you previously knew very little about. Sure, I’ve gotten to know html, css, and php, but I’m also becoming an expert on brie, comte and havarti (for my cheese review site).

Don’t you just wish you too could use words like “bloomy rind,” “acidulous,” and “cheesemonger?” I mean, cheesemonger. That’s up there in the same coolness league as tiddlywinks and burgermeister (which actually does mean “mayor” in German!).

I think my new goal in life should be to become a cheesemonger, goddess of all things fromage.

My Maid of Honor website hit 99 visitors yesterday! Woo hoo! I made my husband take me out for blueberry pancakes before work to celebrate. For all you Amazons and Facebooks out there, that may not seem like much, but to me it’s awesome! I am queen of the maid of honor world. Or princess at least.

Perhaps I should postpone the coronation until I get at least one of those visitors to actually BUY something. One step at a time. More work now, royal procession later.

I’m sad to report that I’ve gone partly over to the Dark Side. That’s right. I just finished installing Parallels on my macbook, enabling me to install WINDOWS (dum dum dum!) and run it side by side with my much beloved Mac OS.

I feel so ashamed! It was, unfortunately, a necessary evil as it will allow me to more easily debug and format my websites to look better in that other necessary evil, Internet Explorer. That’s right Microsoft; I caved! Happy now?