I thought today would be a good time to give an update. I have a lot of news. First, I ended up getting my mom a Nook for Mother's Day. She loved it and uses it all the time. I also bought myself a netbook. Big mistake. I bought it so I could work outside on the patio but the screen is glossy so there is no way I can use it outside. I've only used it twice since I bought it in late April. It was nice to bring on vacation with me but I shouldn't have bought it.
My college classes went well and I got 3 A's and a B. I only have two classes left to graduate and I'm taking those in the fall. I've decided to pay for fall tuition with cash instead of student loans. I already have over $30,000 in student loan debt and I don't need anymore. After I graduate, I'm going to focus all my attention on my niche sites. Doing web design for clients will be a back-up plan.
Bonnaroo was amazing! I saw so many great bands. I wish I hadn't dragged my parents along. They were a bunch of party poopers. They complained the entire time and it really brought me down. The festival could have been a lot more amazing if they didn't complain about every little thing. Anyways, I enjoyed the festival regardless. I was able to save up enough money to pay for gas and my parents paid for food. It's been over a week I got back and I'm sick. I think I caught a virus at the festival. I can't breathe, I'm sleeping all day and night and I've got a horrible cough. I went to the doctor and she told me to take some cough medicine and I'll be fine in a couple days. That was four days ago and I still feel awful. I slept from 10PM yesterday until 6:30PM today. My mom was worried that I was dead and kept coming in my room to check on me.
Speaking of illness, my grandma was diagnosed with leukemia the last week of May and died a week later - the day after I got back from Bonnaroo. The week before she was diagnosed, I went up to the cities to visit her. She was telling me about how tired she was and that she didn't get dressed because she had no energy. My cousin, her fiance, my uncle and my parents were there as well. We thought she was tired because of all the people that had visited in the last couple days. The next day she was admitted to the hospital. It took a couple of days to diagnose her but once she was diagnosed, she refused all treatment and was put on hospice. When we learned that she was on hospice, we came to visit her again. We saw her on Tuesday before we left for Bonnaroo. She seemed just fine. She had all her energy back and even wanted to cook us dinner. We could only stay for an hour though and when we went to leave, she was begging us to stay. She said she will always love us and we said the same to her. By Monday, she couldn't get out of bed and wasn't eating. My uncle flew in from Virginia and my grandma's sister flew in from California, both on Wednesday. They visited with grandma for an hour before she died. They said she thanked Jesus for a good life and then she stopped breathing. Neither of them knew she was in bad shape so none of them brought clothes for a funeral. My mom went with my uncle and my grandpa to buy new suits on Thursday. My grandma and grandpa just celebrated their 65th anniversary in February. My grandma was 87 and my grandpa is 91. My grandpa always thought he would go first so he was pretty devastated to learn about my grandma's illness. He seemed to be in pretty good spirits at the funeral. He cracked a few jokes at the funeral and the wake. For example, when the priest told him that he would see him later, my grandpa said that he wasn't planning on dieing anytime soon. The priest laugh and said that he meant that he would see him at church on Sunday. My grandpa laughed and said that he knew what he meant. The wake was on Sunday night and the funeral was on Monday morning. I'm kind of confused about my emotions. I didn't cry at the wake or funeral. It seemed like everyone was crying but me. I cried for 5 minutes when I learned that she had passed but I wasn't even sad at the funeral. I guess I had already come to terms that she was dead, she's in a happy place now and she lived a long and wonderful life. I said goodbye to her when she was alive. There wasn't really anything to be sad about at the funeral or wake. I'm going to miss her but I have good memories from when she was alive that I can think back on when I'm really missing her
On July 6, my nephew will be born. My sister-in-law is scheduled for a C-section on Wednesday, July 6. I'm not sure why they are scheduling a C-section when the baby is healthy but SIL's mom keeps freaking out about all kinds of little things. There was some abnormality with the placenta which is common but her mom thought that there was something wrong with the baby. She was all worried about it and I'm sure she was the one that convinced the doctor to schedule a C-section. Anyways, I'm not the one being cut open so as long as they are both okay, I'm fine with it.
Finally, what you've all been waiting for, I'm going to update you on my work. I feel like I'm being split in a million different directions. I'm still doing titling for Demand Media. I need it to pay my bills. I've got about 4 different niche sites now. I'm going to name them so you don't get confused. Niche site #1 was the site I started for The Challenge. Last month, I changed the theme and added a few pages and it's earned about $0.50. That's the most I've ever earned from it so I'm happy with that. I'm planning on adding around 15-25 posts. I'm aiming to earn $20 a month from niche site #1. I'm going to have to choose a different keyword with more traffic to rank for. I'll probably work on this site slowly as I have other, more profitable sites to work on. Niche site #2 is the career-oriented site that I started in March. It's made $25 so far this month. It fell out of rankings for it's main keyword so the $25 is from long-tail keywords. The site is almost completely done. I hope to finish it by the end of this week. I'm adding state regulations for career training and I have about 30 states left. Once I get the site done, I'm going to add about 10 article marketing backlinks, 10 forum backlinks, 10 blog commenting backlinks and 10 .edu backlinks. Then I'm going to let the site sit while I work on my other sites. Niche site #3 is a housing site. I haven't started on this site - I just have the domain. I actually bought it to help my parents sell their house. They decided not to sell their house so I have the domain name with nothing on it. I'm not sure how much this site can earn but I think the keyword is pretty good. I guess I'm going to add articles on how to buy and sell houses. I don't know what else to put on the site. I'm saving this site to work on last. Niche site #4 is a communications niche that I just purchased on Sunday. I was having trouble with a particular service and I couldn't get it to work. I was searching for a new provider and I couldn't find any information on it at all. I went to Market Samurai and did some research and found that there are a lot of people searching for this but there is little competition. The CPC is pretty high. I think I could get this site up to $500 or more a month if I can get it ranking in the top 10 for it's keyword. I'm not sure what I'm going to put on the site as far as articles and information but as soon as I'm done with niche site #2, I'm going to do some brainstorming and get to work on getting this site up and running. My plan is to eventually get to $5,000 or more a month with niche sites. I figure it will take me 10-15 niche sites and around a year to get to goal.
The rest of the summer will be spent working on my niche sites and working towards making money with titling. I still owe about $300 on my credit card that I need to pay off plus I need to pay for fall tuition and I need to save for the cruise. I hope to be making over $100 a month with my niche sites by the end of the summer. I'll try to update again before September. I hope everyone has a great summer!
