Yesterday was a bad day.  We argued the night before about nothing really, and even before that things were not going well that day, so it was a real downer.  So yesterday lunchtime I found myself having to revisit my visualisation for my new life and trying to drag myself out of the doldrums and back to action.

How did I do it?

Well, given that I was so p****d off, it was not easy.  I started with my visualistion of my new life, which actually I have not written down in much detail.  I must do so, because I think this really helps in the hard times, that thing about dreaming and “seeing” the thing you are aiming at.  So I was visualising this and then I started thinking about what a huge mountain I have to climb in order to get to where I want to be.

I was reminded, apart from the need to think positively about it all, of an old Chinese proverb that says something like “every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”.  I was also reminded of something I read when doing (trying to do) the internet marketing full-time, about the average person always overestimating what they can do in a day and underestimating what they can do in a year.  This means, for me, a tendency to berate myself at the end of the day – looking back and thinking “well, there goes another day, and you only did THAT”.  What I often forget is that the many “THAT”s all add up over a year; two years; five years – and if you just do something, whatever you can manage, each day to move you towards that vision, then it is progress.

What stops me dead in my tracks, like a rabbit in the headlights, is when I think of that huge mountain I have to climb, and always see myself at the bottom of it, looking up at the vast slopes above.  It just seems too much and I think I will never make it.  I think the key is not to look up, but to look down, at your next footstep, the thing in hand right now that is achievable and will take you to the next step.  That way, you don’t get overwhelmed by the vastness of that mountain.

So, in thinking all this, I brightened up no end and was able to get back to work and make a little more progress.  Which was nice.

Well, it’s been a while.  This is why:

The past three or four months have been life-changing for me.  I have been discovering more about my birth family (I was adopted) and it has been a real journey.  I have not only found my birth father, but I have also discovered who I am; my heritage; my roots.  For example, I now know that I am part-Norwegian and part-Polish.  Until three months ago, I had no idea about that.

Anyway, the above deserves more attention but is not really for this blog, which is about my search for a fulfilling vocation.

Coming out of the ups and downs of my adoption research, I have reviewed where my business plans were taking me and how this stacks up compared to “what I am living for” – my needs, wants, desires, passions.  What I realised is that, although some of my business activities are starting to show promising signs, other things that I have tried in the past year or so have just not “done it” for me and I urgently need to move on and try some new things.

With a pressing need to earn more money but a determination to continue to strive for a meaningful existence and not just a life of drudgery, I revisited a list of points that I compiled about two years ago, based on advice on the excellent StevePavlina.com website, and under the heading of “What am I living for?”.  Here it is (and yes folks, this really is me baring my soul to you now):

Now, I wrote this list from the heart, nearly two years ago, and reading it today brought a tear to my eye.  It all rings true, two years later.  This is reassuring!

Anyway, after writing the list at that time, I went on to try to crystallise this into an occupation or a vocation or a mix of business activities.  This led me to try internet marketing – actually not because I was “living for” internet marketing, but rather that it would give me enough passive income to pursue what I “am living for”.  Unfortunately, the income was not enough compared to the long hours of unenjoyable work – for me, that is – I know some people would be fine with it.

So now I have stepped back from this, and decided that I need to start from the above list again and try to make a better job of crystallising it into some practical ideas for “work” that I can implement out there in the world.

Now, the last time I tried to translate this list in this way, I ended up with a list of business ideas.  Re-reading them a short while ago, I was not at all happy with them, so I decided to have another go.  Here is a summary of what is on my new list:

Now, this list means more to me than it will to you.  There is real passion behind some of the words.  BUT, as you can see, the massive problem with this list is that it is about three million miles away from me actually making it happen in the real world, living the life and doing my thing.  I mean, can you imagine searching on a jobs website or a freelance website for “solving a problem for businesses” or “putting on a show for holidaymakers”?

So, my next hurdle is a familiar one, and one that I have fallen at several times over the years, yet it is a hurdle that I must once again approach, with confidence and commitment, so that I can one day say, “I Jumped” it!

The hurdle I am talking about is this – how to take my version of  “what I am living for” and translate it into activities that I can go out and do, so that I really can get closer to living MY life as ME.  It would also be good if enough of what I do generates enough money to pay the bills!

I could approach this from several angles.  For example, some would say that I should not over-analyse, but get out there, try a few things and see what works.  Others would say I need to identify things that are viable financially and then see if they fit my passions.  There are so many ways of approaching this that to be honest, as of now, I am a little bit “stuck”.

I will let you know how I get on.  Meanwhile, if anyone out there has been where I am now, and has any advice, PLEASE get in touch.  I need all the help I can get!

I was reflecting on my self employment and how it compares with having a “job” in the “real world”.

I came to the conclusion that when I had a full-time job, it was as if every day was a grey-sky day, when that uniform blanket of dark grey cloud keeps the sun out, forever.  There is a dull normality about it all.  There may not be any thunder-claps or heavy downpours, but there is never any bright sunshine to warm the soul either.

By contrast, for me self-employment has been like an extended period of unpredictable, unseasonal and very unsettled weather.  When I look at my affiliate marketing website stats and see that my latest precious new website has captured no more than 10 visitors in a month; when I write a carefully considered comment on someone’s blog only to press submit and get the magic word “discarded” in big black letters; when I carefully apply to an affiliate scheme only to log into my Commission Junction account  and see my application in the “rejected” list – these things are like bad-weather days, cold, rainy, windy, stormy days.

Conversely, when I make a big sale (as I just did today), it’s as if the sun of affiliate marketing has suddenly come out from behind those black SEO clouds  and all is well in my little self-employed world for a few moments as I bask in the warmth of my little successes.

So which do I prefer?  Oh come on, you know me by now.  I would HATE to go back to the grey life; a life of endless sun-less days with no hope of a sunny spell.  Give me the turbulent, changeable climate of self-employment any day.

Conversion Rate Boost for Top Ranking Keywords

Well, I have been playing with the new version of Webmaster Tools and it’s really something.

The three new pieces of information that are really exciting to me are the number of impressions for a keyword; the average rank for the keyword and the clickthrough rate for a keyword – in a given period.

This is exciting stuff.

The ranking/clickthrough/impressions data is especially useful to me when I have a site under test because say I have a microniche site with a theme keyword ranking average position 4 in a month, with 500 impressions in a month and say 50 clicks. In theory, once I get to know the average conversion rate for a targeted site at a given ranking, I could extrapolate the data to forecast with some accuracy what I can expect to achieve when the site gets to no. 1.

And herein lies the first eye-opener!

Aside from any inaccuracy with the “impressions” number, and there seems to be some, the big revelation is the conversion percentages.  To date I have been using the old AOL table from 2006 to determine what percentage of traffic a site could expect to receive at no.1, no.2 etc.:

Now, though, judging by what I see in Webmaster Tools for my sites, it looks as if this old data, based on averages for all sites whether targeted to a keyword or not, is really not appropriate when it comes to forecasting the clickthrough percentage at a given ranking for targeted, focussed, Thirty-Day-Challenge-Style microniche sites. Recent examples from my stats seem to confirm an example in a new training video on this subject on Thirty Day Challenge Plus, which I cannot quote, but if I take an aggregate from all the data so far I get these very approximate expected conversion rates:

OK so it’s early days, and these results are VERY ROUGH and based on a TINY sample, but this looks very exciting. On the face of it, this means that I can expect much higher conversions from targeted niche sites than the old table led me to believe.

Note how the total is way over 100%.  This is likely because the highly relevant, targeted pages involved really do pull in the traffic far better than the global average page for that keyword – something that I, and many others, overlooked since that original table appeared in 2006.

If, through use of Google Webmaster Tools, we build up enough case history in the conversion rates at a given rank for targeted sites, this will lead to big changes in the assumptions we make.  For example, at present the Market Samurai tool, which I love, applies a 42% multiplier to expected traffic to give “SEOT” which is expected traffic at number 1.  This is in line with the 2006 AOL data.  It will be interesting to see if the tool is changed in time to reflect what we will learn.

Please let me know your views on all this by leaving a comment below.

I have just analysed the performance on 17 of my Thirty Day Challenge-style microniche sites to see how the actual traffic stacks up against the estimated traffic that I got from Market Samurai or the Google keyword tool (it’s all Google data anyway).  I had read that often the actual traffic is less than the estimates, and from my analysis, it seems so.

Before looking at the results, I want to clarify that I calculated MY traffic estimates by starting with the actual number of unique visitors now, taking into account the site’s current ranking for its keyword, and thereby estimating how much traffic the site would get at the ranking that I reckon I could achieve (usually no. 1).  This adjustment is made by using the well-known table that I believe came from AOL in 2006 (it seems we still have nothing better!)  that shows what percentage of traffic a site is likely to get in each of the top 10 slots in Google:

This means for example that if I have a site that’s getting 50 unique visitors at no. 2, I can hope for, say, 175 when it gets to no. 1.

So, based on the numbers, adjusted using this table, I reached the following rather interesting conclusion:

On average, these 17 sites, ONCE THEY ARE RANKED AS PREDICTED, are estimated to get unique visitors for the main keyword equating to ONE THIRD of the exact match SEOT and ONE SIXTH of the phrase-matched SEOT shown in Market Samurai (whose numbers are in turn based on the Google Adwords tool).

Of course, 17 sites don’t make an in-depth study.  However, it’s based on real evidence and I will definitely be using this when it comes to estimating return on investment as part of the keyword research phase.  I’ll also recalculate the numbers each month to see how they change.

Well, I got a shock this morning when I tried to access the Google Keyword Tool from the Google KeywordToolbox, here:

http://www.googlekeywordtool.com/

because it’s all changed!

Google Keyword Tool Changes

It looks as if the local search numbers are now based on a 12-month average rather than the last month, and the whole GUI is all more slick than before.

You can also filter the results by categories.  Even down to product level if you like.  Could you do this before?  I certainly never did.   You can also limit the results to those that contain individual words from the keyword phrases.   Not only that, but there’s a handy link on each keyword to Google Insights for Search.  Now, maybe some of these features were in the old version, but I for one never saw them so either they are new or I’m only just noticing them now that they are “in your face” on the left of the screen.

All in all it looks great.  I am only hoping that everyone sees what I see and that this is not some sort of dream I had, because I had not read about it anywhere else.  Having said that, I’ve been off the keyword reaearch for a week or two.

One thing I haven’t got to the bottom of yet – and it could be important, is this sentence that appears just above the keyword list:

“Sign In with your AdWords login information to see the full set of ideas for this search”

I need to find out what more you get when logged into Adwords, or more to the point, what you DON’T get by NOT logging in…

Well, I’ve been pretty busy lately.  In the last week of January I decided that I needed to really go for it; to just do more of everything in the same time – to ramp up my productivity, as you may have read in my last post.

The plan was to produce four microniche sites per week, each with six posts scheduled for release over a few weeks and also some web 2.0 articles to support the sites.  I am pleased to say that, give or take a few hours, I am on track so far, with 12 sites up and running since the start of the project three weeks ago.

It really IS difficult.  I read the other day how someone who shall remain nameless reckons you can get one of these sites up “in a couple of hours”.  Well, it takes me nine.  There’s keyword research (average two hours per site); product sourcing (30 mins); domain, hosting and Wordpress set-up (30 mins); content creation (four hours); social bookmarking and setup in Google tools (30 mins); and finally web 2.0 articles (2 hours).  Total: 9.5 hours.  So as you can see, doing four a week is hard work when I have to fit in all my other stuff.

The other thing is that I will have to wait and see what results I get.  I’m taking, broadly speaking, the Thirty Day Challenge approach to these sites – they are all on “test” to see if they are viable.  I will be somewhat gutted if I get to the end of the project and find I have only a small number of sites that “pass” the test and are worth continuing with.  It could take a few months to reach the decision point on all of them – we shall see.

Right, better get ready for site number 13.

Following a review over Christmas, I have decided that I will continue with my bigger, longer-term, niche travel site, as was planned all along, but that I will recognise it for what it is – i.e. longer term, and now concentrate on doing things that will get some cash in during the shorter term.

So how can I do it?  Well, my most successful site is my Thirty Day Challenge-style microniche site on TVs.  In December it earned about £55 I think it was, and looks to be doing similarly in January.  OK, I know it’s a seasonal one, but it proves that the methodology can work.

SO, I reckon that it’s worth some commitment from me to try to do the so-called “rinse and repeat” and ramp up the number of attempted microniche sites.  To this end, I have this week published four new sites, each with one post now live, and five more scheduled in Wordpress.  They also all have Ezine articles, Hubpage hubs and Squidoo lenses, and I’ve done some social bookmarking for each one too.

My plan is to publish four sites per week, for 13 weeks.  Judging by the workload this created last week, that is a hard target for me.  Hard, because I write quality, value-added content, and this schedule means I have to do it FAST.

The other difficult thing is that I have no clue whether the microniches I am trying will work.  From August to November, I built seven microniche sites, and only the one has “worked” so far.  I am very concerned that even if I somehow keep to my gruelling schedule over the next 13 weeks and produce 50 sites, only, say, five of them will “work”.  It makes my heart sink, that thought.  On the other hand, if I end up with, say, 20 successful sites out of the 50, I will be over the moon. So, I am applying the Thirty Day Challenge methodology with blind faith, suspending all doubts and giving it a proper test, with a decent volume of sites, to see where that takes me..

So far, week 1, four sites up.

Sometimes, when I think about what I am doing on the internet at the moment, i.e. getting going in internet marketing, I think that somehow I am not adding anything; just grabbing  business off other affiliates – or trying to.  I was starting to think how I was not adding anything to the world, just diverting business from other people to me.

I was making the mistake of thinking that the online world is different to entering self employment in the offline world in this respect.  But, let’s face it, there are 12 estate agents down the road from me, and two of them are new.  Well, these new ones – are they not the equivalent of my online scenario?  I mean, they too are not bringing a new product or service to the market, and they too are diverting sales from the existing estate agents rather than creating “new” sales out of nowehere.

After all, for the small businessman starting out, it’s surely a lower risk to enter an existing market with a twist on an existing service or product than to try to convince people to buy something totally new that they don’t understand, unless you have really deep pockets.  I mean, look at Edison’s light bulb – how long did he take to get that right and earn some cash?  And what about Dyson and his plethora of prototypes before he got that vortex vacuum cleaner working right.

No, I can see this now – for those with little capital, the initial route to self employment on- or off-line is like diverting a stream so you get a little of the water.  A stream of business.  One that’s flowing already.  Diverting some of what’s there to you, not finding a way to make a new kind of water, and not mining for a new spring in the desert.  I’m convinced that for most people who go it alone, in the early days it’s just about going where the business is and diverting a little of it to your enterprise – where of course, you will try to add a little USP, a little something that makes you something more than just another estate agent, internet marketer or whatever.

For me, this realisation helped me to stop devaluing what I am doing online.  I am fighting for business just as valiantly and just as respectably as any estate agent, solicitor or baker in the high street.

As I write this I’m coming out of a couple of bad days during which I have felt that I have made little progress and taken a pessimistic view of what I have achieved in recent months and where I am taking it all.

I was trying to understand why I felt that way during these last couple of days so I can try to avoid it, because it is basically negativity that is getting in the way of my progress when it happens.

I have to say that for me a lot of the problem is the home working.  Being alone for most of the day is not for me and never will be.  I hate it with a passion.  I’m never good alone – I need people; I love people.  I knew when I embarked on this journey into self employment, when I jumped, that it would be like this for some time.  What I didn’t realise is that occasionally even I would not be able to shake off the demons that sometimes creep up and surround you when you are alone.  Worry about money.  A lack of confidence in what you are doing.  No longer knowing your place in the world.  I have noticed that, when I am working alone at home, these demons tend, if you are not careful, to grow; to surround and envelop you, to paralyse you so that you cannot move forward.  They torture your soul so that it is impossible to see any aspect of your fledgling business in a positive or optmistic light.   They are the voices that say:

NO – I just typed in a load of negative stuff and then back-spaced over it because I don’t want you to read all that rubbish, which, at the end of the day, is the best way to describe all that negative speak from those pesky demons – it really is RUBBISH.

So, I now realise that sometimes when I work alone I become vulnerable to an attack from the demons, and that when it happens, it can blow all the worry out of proportion – now that I understand this, I am on my guard – ready with a counter-attack of POSITIVITY that will kill those demons dead!