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As most of my readers probably know, my Online Adventures are my part-time job.  I have a full time job that I spend most of my time at during the day.  Therefore, I try to get caught up on my online stuff on the weekends.  However there are are weekends like this where I actually have to work overtime at my day job.  This makes it very hard to keep everything running the way it should be.

The way that I have been working on making these disruptions less of a headache is to streamline my sites such that nothing HAS to be done to keep them up-to-date content wise.  That way if I don’t get to them on the weekend it is not the end of the world.  As for stats, analytics, etc I check them daily and will make adjustments if need be.  It is on the weekend that I start new tests, and I ensure that the tests last one week.  Therefore if I am too busy to end the test, and review the results, I am not at a loss.

As for the few blogs that I have on the go I simply write my articles in advance.  I have one post for every second day for two weeks.  Then everyday I try to make another post.  This way if I miss a weekend I am still safe for the following week.

Leave your ideas in the comments on how to cope with having less time than you expected to work on your projects.

I have noticed that one of the biggested issues that webmasters have, especially ones that have just gotten started, is maintenance of their websites. Scripts like VB, phpBB, phpDirectory, ZenCart, Wordpress, etc all update frequently. It is one of the most important things to keep up with the updates. I think that this should be right up there with adding new content frequently, and probably should be number one. There are a lot of webmasters out there that start up too many sites and then do not have the time to update all of them with scripts, content, links etc. And the one that is usually left out is the scripts. This is because there is no easy metric to show that spending time on the updating of the scripts will make you any more money. This is a huge mistake and I will explain why below.

Script writers update for a reason, normally the small updates between large releases are for security fixes. If you are not careful, then your website can be comprimised. If you are lucky, the only thing that will happen is the hacker would simply deface you site and leave it at that. Worst case would be they take all of your user data and delete the site. Neither of these make you look professional, and you WILL lose traffic, especially from those users who may have only started visiting your site regularly.

Now imagine if this happened while you were away from the computer for an extended period, everyone needs a vacation now and then, and your site was defaced. Well you could be looking at a site that will be offline for a long time, and the full extent of the damage may not be visable until longer term.

Even though I am harping on this, I am also a person that sometimes forgets to do this myself. I have one VB site that hasn’t been updated in a while, simply because it is not fun. I have a lot of templates to change and on top of that there are a lot fo hacks and addons that I will have to update at the same time. To make this process less painful I follow a simply stragety. Signup for the mailing lists of all of your major scripts, and every week ensure that you are updated. If you have more that half a dozen sites you may want to stretch that some, but make sure that you at least catch all of the major, well known bug fixes.

I just bought a e-book site that I am planning on doing some cool advertising for it.  This is not the first e-book site that I have owned, but the first one is one that I started from scratch and then got overwhelmed with the work involved in making a start-up so I sold it. 

Now I am ready, I think, to try to give it another go.  The good thing about buying a site that is already set up is that if you don’t have a lot of time at the moment then you can just sit back and let it do some stuff organically.  Then when you have time you can start to actively work on it.  Also since the site wasn’t making a lot of money, I bought it low.  I have calculated that I have to make $20 per month to break even in one year.  I should be able to do a lot better than that with minimal work on advertising.  I also plan on putting together a “real” book store through Amazon Affiliate.  This will also give me another revenue stream.

I will let you know how it goes.  I am looking forward to have some passive income from this site. Wish me luck

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Like I said before sometimes making money is not always fun, however I think that after doing my books over the weekend I would like to change that stance somewhat.  Making money is fun, however sometimes all of the shit that you have to do to ensure that you are making money is not so fun.

Now I realize that it is always fun to watch you bank balance go up.  I recently have been doing some equity trading and am watching some on my picks go up and up.  However the kicker is that the commissions that I paid are very high compared to the amount of cash that I have at this time to invest, so it does some serious eating into my profits.  However my Adsense revenue on the other hand is going up every day and I am not doing ANY work to promote my biggest earner.  Sure this is going to hurt me in the long run, but I have really lost interest in the topic.

One other balance that I am watching go up is my poker balance.  Yesterday I was sick as a dog, so I skipped out on the day job and played some limit poker on line.  I made just about as much money as I would if I went to work, but I am pretty sure most of it was luck so I withdrew everything except what I started with.  Right now I am completely even

So I guess I was wrong to say that making money is not fun, the work that is involved may not be fun but seeing your balance go UP is ALWAYS fun

I have been trying hard to work on one of my forums lately, but I just can’t seem to get into it.  I really do like reading what others are saying, and commenting, but I am starting to see a decline in activity and I can’t get myself back into the fray.

The site on a SEO / developed standpoint is strong.  It has a strong presents in the SEs and SERPs, so to me all of the fun stuff is done.  Now I have to do the not-so-fun stuff, like developing content and getting more people interested.  I have lots of ideas, but I really do prefer to develop my PHP and backend rather than go for my other ideas.

Anyway, I really shouldn’t be bitching so much.  The site is holding its own, and I do make more money directly from this site than any other in my portfolio, so it does deserve my time.  I just wish that it was easier to start topics and research articles than it is now.

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