Flukeit

AS I watch my web empire grow to over 35 sites, I look over and see my children growing up without me. Sure, I’ve been there for them and work hard to give my family everything they need. However, right now I think that I might be putting a bit too much time into my web activities. Especially since many of my sites are not paying off.

I need to scale down.

I don’t plan to sell off any of my sites, but instead I might try to focus more time on a few of them, and put off some of my other pet projects. Maybe fewer is better anyway. Maybe if I try to spend my time promoting just a few, they will pay off more than a lot of smaller sites.

Maybe what I need is a clear strategy, and keep with it. In the past, I have been the text book case of knee jerk webmastering. I might get an idea, then without giving it too much thought, buying a domain and putting together a quick site.

So, I will not knee jerk this idea. I will think it over for a few days. Some of the things I’m pondering are:

* No more custom templates, just for the sake of building them.

* Eliminate posting to other blogs I own for now, until I have more time to give them good thought.

* Continue to promote my popular forum, and spend time working on another newer one.

* Finish current websites I have obligated myself to building, then scaling back on new ones.

* Complete this year’s income tax return, as the mere thought of it is adding stress to my life.

Hopefully, this will clear my conscience, and give me more time with the family.

I was checking out one of my sites, and noticed these strange symbols being displayed on a couple of the YPN ads. Anyone see anything like this?

On one of my sites, I decided to go with Joomla. I liked the idea of Joomla because of the ease of installation, plus it was an overall fit for the site theme.

One of the problems I am encountering is making the contact form functional. It seems as though no matter the functions I choose, nothing will work. I have to suspect that my host, Dreamhost has something to do with it.

I went to their wiki, and found some good examples. However, I set things up as shown in my image and the mail never get to me. I have tried several different email addresses on different servers, and nothing works. This will prove to be an ongoing dilemma and more than likely will be posting again on it!

I’ve been seeing to ads for the Affiliate Summit West while logging on to my Azoogle account, and now my Maxbounty account manager Jessica Dagg announced that she is going. It seems as though everyone who is somebody with affiliate marketing will be there. Unfortunately, I will not be on the guest list this time around.

Not only is this short notice for me, but I find it hard to justify a trip to Las Vegas, plus the cost of getting in since I haven’t really even earned enough to get a paycheck from an affiliate.

Well, I thought I would start off small then grow over time, but things are going very fast for me. My original intention was to build small sites, like for churches and things. In my attempt to start slow, withing the last two days I have given a few quotes, and actually am working on one site right now.

When becoming a webmaster for hire, take heed of some of these very important lessons I have already learned.

1. When giving a quote, be very detailed.

2. Don’t low-ball your quote. If they think it is too high, they will pass on it. There is nothing worse than pouring many hours into a project only to take a loss on it. DO YOUR RESEARCH!

3. Don’t be afraid to outsource work. I have already looked to contracting out some of my webmaster work. For example, one of the quotes I have given was for the development of a ZEN shopping cart application. I have no experience with this, so I took a quote to set this up for me.

4. After a quote is accepted, submit in writing a service agreement to the customer. This will spell out any and all expectations the client has with the webmaster, and you both can be on the same page.