Boring couple of days

I haven't done anything tangibly productive since coming back - well, at least nothing I can show you, like articles or the new site. Which I promise is just about ready, I just want the hubby to bounce through it and see what he can see. My best 2 merchants still haven't answered emails I've sent which is a bummer, since they have some of the products I've already written about in articles. Hopefully before this site starts seeing a whack of traffic they'll answer. That's the biggest hold back for me going public. Any suggestions? Should I wait, or go forward? Yahoo tends to really like me and so far has me indexed VERY quickly, so even if Google holds off, I'll probably get a trickle within a week or 2. Things that make you go hmmm....

So other than tweaking both my Goal Starter page and the new site, here's what I've accomplished:

Made a huge list of which keywords I'll be attacking next for articles - I'd say at least 50-60 across all 3 sites.

Moved just about everything over to the laptop so I can work from it all the time to make sure I'm not missing something vital (like a 100 MB file) when I go to the trailer.

Did URL redirects to the proper pages (categories, like instead of index.html, dog-books.html) for my merchants on the product pages on both the travel and dog site. I'm hoping this will help convert my CTR into sales.

Added a Google search bar to one page to test it. No traffic to that page since I added it, so no news on that front.

Added a direct product link in one of my articles at Jon's suggestion to see if that helps conversion to sales.

Spent hours searching for possible new merchants for the new site with no luck. (even emailed a few last week and no luck there either)

Downloaded all the Affiliate Buzzes so that if I want to listen while on dial up internet at the trailer I won't wait for an hour and have crappy quality connection.

Pondered the fact that BJ had a fabulous day yesterday and my end result in Adsense would make most people cry.. lol

Checked out some of the motivational links on the Goal Starter page, deleted most, kept 1 and actually downloaded some stuff from it. Who knows when I'll get around to reading it though.

Had my own little dance of joy realizing that I way overshot my goals in Adsense this month - $57.03 unless I get a click in the next hour. My 3 previous months totaled don't even reach that - $1.12, $16.27 and $28.62. And I actually hit the $100 mark while I was camping a few days before I thought I would.

All in all, while it wasn't an exciting time, I got a lot done, and while writing this entry, I realized that I've had a great month. And while it's hard to discipline myself to work, being a natural slacker, I am getting better at it, and pray every night that I don't have to go out and look for a job in September, which is when I think I'll run out of my savings. I know I probably will, but maybe if I have a good number of sites up by then I can stretch it out longer. I absolutely LOVE working from home and making my own hours - not to mention not stressing if I don't accomplish everything I had wanted to do, because there's always tomorrow. At least for a few more months ;)

On that note, good night!

Tara :)