Running a Real Holiday: Journaling 135 Days of Joyful Vacation
- Thread starter Staccs
- Start date
December 23th 2014 - Day 69
My alarm to post on WF just went off so I'm making this now. I'm still working on a 22 item roundup that's at 2,158 words. Started it earlier today. Lots of facts needed for each item.
It's on a topic that gets posted 2-3 times per day on one of the communities I participate at. Should become the go-to resource for this 15k search term. Obviously it's not as simple as that, but the quality is taken care of.
Back to work.
66 days left
My alarm to post on WF just went off so I'm making this now. I'm still working on a 22 item roundup that's at 2,158 words. Started it earlier today. Lots of facts needed for each item.
It's on a topic that gets posted 2-3 times per day on one of the communities I participate at. Should become the go-to resource for this 15k search term. Obviously it's not as simple as that, but the quality is taken care of.
Back to work.
66 days left
December 24th 2014 - Day 70
Another post written and published. An interview reach out I sent last night converted. Scheduled for after Christmas. Made a list of the websites I linked to in my last few posts and will be reaching out to them. Planned the next post.
65 days left
Another post written and published. An interview reach out I sent last night converted. Scheduled for after Christmas. Made a list of the websites I linked to in my last few posts and will be reaching out to them. Planned the next post.
65 days left
December 26th 2014 - Day 72
My temporary hosting arrangement with Hostgator ends tomorrow so I took care of hosting today. Upgraded to a Wordpress VPS option with another company.
Just finished transferred my sites over and giving cancellation notice to Hostgator. Set up interview prep with all of the recent conversions. This is the last of hosting related stuff I will have to deal with, other then speed optimization which I should dedicated a day to getting done sometime soon.
Site has been averaging 10-20 visits per day for the last week and change. 5 visits from Google today. Still averaging above 5 minutes of time on site per visitor.
63 days left
My temporary hosting arrangement with Hostgator ends tomorrow so I took care of hosting today. Upgraded to a Wordpress VPS option with another company.
Just finished transferred my sites over and giving cancellation notice to Hostgator. Set up interview prep with all of the recent conversions. This is the last of hosting related stuff I will have to deal with, other then speed optimization which I should dedicated a day to getting done sometime soon.
Site has been averaging 10-20 visits per day for the last week and change. 5 visits from Google today. Still averaging above 5 minutes of time on site per visitor.
63 days left
December 27th 2014 - Day 73
Did all the prep for the upcoming interviews. The questions stay consistent for the most part, but I want to avoid copying and pasting the same questions. Add/remove based on the person.
Lots of outreach by searching certain footprints for my niche into Twitter and other communities, then answering their question. I didn't include my link in any of them other than a PM I sent to somebody who had a question about a specific topic I wrote an in-depth post on.
Feeling like I'm running out of things to write about. Probably just a wall. Have to go deeper than the relevant FAQ now.
62 days left
Did all the prep for the upcoming interviews. The questions stay consistent for the most part, but I want to avoid copying and pasting the same questions. Add/remove based on the person.
Lots of outreach by searching certain footprints for my niche into Twitter and other communities, then answering their question. I didn't include my link in any of them other than a PM I sent to somebody who had a question about a specific topic I wrote an in-depth post on.
Feeling like I'm running out of things to write about. Probably just a wall. Have to go deeper than the relevant FAQ now.
62 days left
December 29th 2014 - Day 75
Started the interview process with recent batch of people who agreed to do them. Sent out the first few questions today.
Focused most of my time on optimizing site speed. Upgrading hosting made a noticeable difference. Followed a bunch of guides to setup W3 cache and make some htaccess tweaks. These changes were marginal compared to the hosting change as expected.
The glaring bottleneck right now is the amount of images I use on my homepage. I'm using a magazine style theme which looks great, but perhaps the speed would benefit me more.
I had the owner of an established blog do a critique of my site a little while back and one of his recommendations was to really limit the amount of images I use unless they are key to providing clarity. He also suggested making the homepage a single page which describes the core principals of the site, lists a handful of the greatest posts, and makes a strong effort to get the reader to opt-in to a list right away.
This advice + speed test results are giving me something to think about.
Submitted a handful of posts to Stumble Upon. Getting traffic is what I need to be focused on right now. I've been slowly grooming my Reddit account in an extremely targeted subreddit that my content is massively beneficial for, but I don't feel comfortable directly marketing my website there yet.
Nobody posts links, just self posts. I believe a big part of that is because there are no websites on this topic, but I don't want to do anything too soon that could hurt the reputation of my brand. The moderator I PM'd doesn't seem like he's going to respond to me. I'm going to keep leaving 5-10 comments a day and PM another moderator (who is more active) at the end of the week.
I'm running out of ideas for comprehensive content to produce. I need to go in-depth and review traffic leak type strategies that are viable for this niche tomorrow. Once I have traffic I can straight up just ask my readers what they want to know.
60 days left
Started the interview process with recent batch of people who agreed to do them. Sent out the first few questions today.
Focused most of my time on optimizing site speed. Upgrading hosting made a noticeable difference. Followed a bunch of guides to setup W3 cache and make some htaccess tweaks. These changes were marginal compared to the hosting change as expected.
The glaring bottleneck right now is the amount of images I use on my homepage. I'm using a magazine style theme which looks great, but perhaps the speed would benefit me more.
I had the owner of an established blog do a critique of my site a little while back and one of his recommendations was to really limit the amount of images I use unless they are key to providing clarity. He also suggested making the homepage a single page which describes the core principals of the site, lists a handful of the greatest posts, and makes a strong effort to get the reader to opt-in to a list right away.
This advice + speed test results are giving me something to think about.
Submitted a handful of posts to Stumble Upon. Getting traffic is what I need to be focused on right now. I've been slowly grooming my Reddit account in an extremely targeted subreddit that my content is massively beneficial for, but I don't feel comfortable directly marketing my website there yet.
Nobody posts links, just self posts. I believe a big part of that is because there are no websites on this topic, but I don't want to do anything too soon that could hurt the reputation of my brand. The moderator I PM'd doesn't seem like he's going to respond to me. I'm going to keep leaving 5-10 comments a day and PM another moderator (who is more active) at the end of the week.
I'm running out of ideas for comprehensive content to produce. I need to go in-depth and review traffic leak type strategies that are viable for this niche tomorrow. Once I have traffic I can straight up just ask my readers what they want to know.
60 days left
December 30th 2014 - Day 76
Received the usual test burst for the two links I submitted to Stumble Upon yesterday:
I've been PM'ing users on Reddit who aren't getting their questions answered in-depth with links to relevant articles on my site. Lots of positive feedback. I go through my analytics to make sure they actually used the site and they typically are 6-7 pages deep.
I left a comment on a community site last week and it's been getting 1-2 visit per day. I just PM'd the author of the page which the visits are coming from to show him how great my site is and how people would benefit from it if he included the link in the main article. The page is from 2007, so I'm doubtful.
Haven't heard back from the two recent interviewees yet. I'll send a reminder nudge at the end of the week if I don't hear back. I know the period between Christmas and New Years is busy for most.
59 days left
Received the usual test burst for the two links I submitted to Stumble Upon yesterday:
I've been PM'ing users on Reddit who aren't getting their questions answered in-depth with links to relevant articles on my site. Lots of positive feedback. I go through my analytics to make sure they actually used the site and they typically are 6-7 pages deep.
I left a comment on a community site last week and it's been getting 1-2 visit per day. I just PM'd the author of the page which the visits are coming from to show him how great my site is and how people would benefit from it if he included the link in the main article. The page is from 2007, so I'm doubtful.
Haven't heard back from the two recent interviewees yet. I'll send a reminder nudge at the end of the week if I don't hear back. I know the period between Christmas and New Years is busy for most.
59 days left
Here is what would have been good to read;
Got to the office on New Years Eve at 7 am. Created a new spec site and learned the X Theme I bought on ThemeForest. Got it running in 3 variations for testing.
Turned on the football game on another monitor as I finished up client work and got a bill out for $1,100. Went home around 5 pm, early, to get the house cleaned up and cook a special NY Eve Dinner for my significant other.
Got up early on NY Day and rocked out some great social media touches before my target list got up so they were waiting for them. Had some cool links in my niche I shared and also wished then an prosperous New Year. Got a few replies as they drank their morning coffee, including a nice plug from a thought leader. Got a quote to use on my corporate page...
Tightened up the spec site, watched some soccer and then football, got my budget for the month done, and then did another social media reach out in the mid afternoon from my laptop.
Took my son to a stick and puck session at the local rink, drank some beers with the rink owner and a few other guys. May have gotten a lead with a commercial real estate broker and the rink owner himself for some online marketing work. Not a great deal of money, maybe between them $800-1,200 a month, but that will smooth out the road, and if I am too busy help pay for an assistant. I have a motivated, cool kid that is looking for work and it may help snag him and improve my business.
Came home, made a relaxing dinner and watched some football. Then got up at 6 am and headed to the office as I have to get my car inspected in the morning so that will hurt my productivity.
----
If you have not figured it out, this was my last 2 days. If the leads I generated pay off it could be 20 thousand in revenue over the next couple of years, and the foundation for a site sale of another 20-30k.
Oh, and the idea from the site came while I was on vacation with my family over Christmas in Australia. I also met with a major industry leader over there in another niche I am working on that may lead to some amazing synergy. All it took was a phone call and a willingness to give up 2 hours of my vacation.
Moral - This shit is not so hard. Just light the fire.
Got to the office on New Years Eve at 7 am. Created a new spec site and learned the X Theme I bought on ThemeForest. Got it running in 3 variations for testing.
Turned on the football game on another monitor as I finished up client work and got a bill out for $1,100. Went home around 5 pm, early, to get the house cleaned up and cook a special NY Eve Dinner for my significant other.
Got up early on NY Day and rocked out some great social media touches before my target list got up so they were waiting for them. Had some cool links in my niche I shared and also wished then an prosperous New Year. Got a few replies as they drank their morning coffee, including a nice plug from a thought leader. Got a quote to use on my corporate page...
Tightened up the spec site, watched some soccer and then football, got my budget for the month done, and then did another social media reach out in the mid afternoon from my laptop.
Took my son to a stick and puck session at the local rink, drank some beers with the rink owner and a few other guys. May have gotten a lead with a commercial real estate broker and the rink owner himself for some online marketing work. Not a great deal of money, maybe between them $800-1,200 a month, but that will smooth out the road, and if I am too busy help pay for an assistant. I have a motivated, cool kid that is looking for work and it may help snag him and improve my business.
Came home, made a relaxing dinner and watched some football. Then got up at 6 am and headed to the office as I have to get my car inspected in the morning so that will hurt my productivity.
----
If you have not figured it out, this was my last 2 days. If the leads I generated pay off it could be 20 thousand in revenue over the next couple of years, and the foundation for a site sale of another 20-30k.
Oh, and the idea from the site came while I was on vacation with my family over Christmas in Australia. I also met with a major industry leader over there in another niche I am working on that may lead to some amazing synergy. All it took was a phone call and a willingness to give up 2 hours of my vacation.
Moral - This shit is not so hard. Just light the fire.
January 2nd 2015 - Day 79
Today wasn't much better than yesterday.
I'm letting "obstacles" get in my way instead of adapting to them. If I were reading this thread as a third person I'd think that the OP doesn't want it bad enough.
I've gone over my options and considered the alternatives. None of them are a better fit than finding a way to make this work. Finding a way meaning actually working like this is an actual business, as the title of this thread once said.
tl;dr more words without actions backing them. I can't go another year constantly in this state.
56 days left
Today wasn't much better than yesterday.
I'm letting "obstacles" get in my way instead of adapting to them. If I were reading this thread as a third person I'd think that the OP doesn't want it bad enough.
I've gone over my options and considered the alternatives. None of them are a better fit than finding a way to make this work. Finding a way meaning actually working like this is an actual business, as the title of this thread once said.
tl;dr more words without actions backing them. I can't go another year constantly in this state.
56 days left
January 3rd 2015 - Day 80
Traded emails to finish up an interview today. It's shorter than the last one, but the quality is higher IMO. I sent a reminder out to the other person yesterday, but I'm not going to nudge them again.
Put some time into sending another PM to a Reddit mod about including my site on the sidebar. This one is much more active than the one I tried a couple weeks ago. I've been getting good responses to my comments as of late so I figure it's a good time to try.
I'm still pretty dry on new post ideas that would be completely original content instead of rehashing points into smaller posts.
Did some research into how I can get some traffic flowing from Instagram. Read some case studies and looked into the popular hashtags for my niche. I assume a lot of them could carry over into Twitter but I haven't looked too deep into that yet.
55 days left
Traded emails to finish up an interview today. It's shorter than the last one, but the quality is higher IMO. I sent a reminder out to the other person yesterday, but I'm not going to nudge them again.
Put some time into sending another PM to a Reddit mod about including my site on the sidebar. This one is much more active than the one I tried a couple weeks ago. I've been getting good responses to my comments as of late so I figure it's a good time to try.
I'm still pretty dry on new post ideas that would be completely original content instead of rehashing points into smaller posts.
Did some research into how I can get some traffic flowing from Instagram. Read some case studies and looked into the popular hashtags for my niche. I assume a lot of them could carry over into Twitter but I haven't looked too deep into that yet.
55 days left