My Internet Marketing Adventures

I've got dozens of profiles scattered around the internet on various sites like Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Orkut, and more. Many of them allow for posting links or graphics to blogs and websites and I spent some time recently updating some of these profiles to reflect my current activities. I've stopped promoting Ready Health Products and Goyin, primarily due to my 75 year old mother throwing in the towel and saying "enough." For the time being I'm listing The Entrecarder as my main blog, but I'm not sure how long that will last. I've enjoyed my 20+ Entrecard accounts and have been able to make some money from harvesting Entrecard Credits (ECs), but it's become somewhat of a chore to drop cards and so I'm pulling back to focusing on two blogs, this one and The Entrecarder.

I also spent some time cleaning up my presence in MyBlogLog and Blog Catalog, as well as creating an Entrecard "community" on Ning and publishing an Entrecarder lens on Squidoo. Rosemary Smekal introduced to NowLive.com and I established a profile there and recorded my first podcast, which can be accessed via the widget in the sidebar of this blog. I've still got plenty of updating to do on various sites and only time will tell whether or not I stick with this approach to publicizing my blogs.

Counting all my blogs I have created more than 100 original entries since the first of the year, some which took a minute of two and others which took over an hour to write. Just as when I was a radio talk show host, I can honestly say that I haven't been bitten by the "bug", that thing that drives one to keep at it and continue to want more. I'm starting to think that I'll look into developing some of my websites, a more difficult task than mere blogging in that I have to bone up on on html. The idea of having more static content is becoming more appealing at this point.

Overall I expect that I'll pull back from my internet marketing adventures and seek to spend more of my time in more traditional (and reliable) income production. I've been having fun...but more money means more fun and I need to focus on money more than I have been so far this year.

It's both a strength and a weakness, my propensity to do things my own way. I'm one of those folks who can analyze quickly and change path accordingly, which sometimes is good and sometimes isn't so good. Admittedly, I have been far too distracted by the Entrecard community and have been having loads of fun building a money machine for harvesting and selling ECs. That's good, I guess. The downside is that I'm not really building any long-term value with my Entreniche blogs.

I see lots of advice about making money online in the emails I get from blog subscriptions and the blogs I visit while dropping cards. I read it, comprehend it, and then proceed to ignore it. I don't read John Chow or Problogger and I'm not a student of blogging or making money blogging. I tend to follow my own muse and am more than happy to not do the same things that everyone else is trying to do. From past experiences I have learned I enjoy idea creation more than idea implementation and that's not likely to change.

Even the way I write my blogs goes counter to the experts' advice. Honestly, I'm bored to tears by most of the blogs I see, what with their carefully formatted regurgitation of somebody else's ideas. They might end up making more money with that approach than I do with mine, but it's not a road I care to travel. Truth be known, I still write primarily for myself and the few folks who care to follow my musings.

Over time I expect I'll find some additional ways to make money online and they likely won't be the ways that the crowd has chosen. And if that means that I spend most of my time off wandering on strange unmarked paths, hatchet in hand, then so be it. After all, it was adventure I was seeking, not fame or fortune.