2014 Already?! 2013 Year in Review

Where in the heck did 2013 go? It seems like just yesterday it was January 1, 2013 and I was making out my resolutions for the year. I can still remember how excited I was about writing lenses for Squidoo and was planning my trip to New York City to see the ball drop in Times Square (obviously, that didn't happen). 2013 was a decent year. There were both highs and lows. I got to go to Red Rocks for the first time to see one of my favorite bands The Avett Brothers along with Old Crow Medicine Show and I got to see Wilco, Richard Thompson, My Morning Jacket and Bob Dylan in Peoria, IL. I also lost a lot of weight in 2013. Business-wise, I officially filed paperwork to form a LLC. 2013 wasn't all fun and games. In June, Squidoo locked all 250 of my lenses which took my income from $1500 a month down to $100 a month. In September, my dad had another cancer scare and needed more surgery but he's fine now. At the beginning of November, my dog was put down because she could barely walk and couldn't hold her bladder. I still miss her tremendously and tear up whenever I think about her. {R.I.P. Jesse} I was able to complete a few resolutions this year but completely struck out on most. Here were my 2013 resolutions:

Goal #1: Publish 500 Squidoo Lenses – Rank 250 Lenses in Top 10 for Their Main Keyword. - Fail

Squidoo decided to lock all my lenses. I moved them to a new website that I started but they aren't doing so well. I'm barely making $100/month and they definitely are not ranking in the top 10 for their keywords. I only have around 250 articles posted on my website.

Goal #2: Save $500 in an emergency account - Draw

I saved up around $5,000 in a savings account but then my parents wanted to borrow $3,000 for new hardwood floors. I used another $1,000 to buy new clothes as my old clothes didn't fit anymore (see below). Another $500 went towards bills and now I'm down to $500. So, yes, I have $500 saved but I'm more than likely going to need the money in February for the vacation which I'll talk about below (I know, not smart to drain your bank account to go on vacation).

Goal #3: Get under 200 pounds - Success

I currently weigh 195 pounds

Goal #4: Read 12 books - Fail

 I've read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, The Scarlett Letter and most of Don Quixote (300 pages left out of 900). I didn't come close to reading 12 books.

Goal #5: Ride my bike 10 miles - Fail

 I was so close with this one. I mapped out my route, got my bike ready, made a lunch and decided to check trail conditions one last time before I left and found that the trail was closed for construction for two months. Trip cancelled. Ugh!

Goal #6: Pay off 1 student loan - Fail

I paid my student loans on time every month for the past 8 months but I'm broke right now and going on vacation in February (I know, not smart). I am going to file for deferment to delay my payments for a year. Hopefully, my business will be profitable enough by then that I can make extra payments.

Goal #7: Learn to play 5 songs on guitar - Fail

I started practicing every day but the guitar doesn't stay in tune and my fingers can't get the strings to go down far enough. I think the guitar needs to be set up by a professional but I can't afford it right now.

Goal #8: Learn to make Crème Brulee - Success

I made Crème Brulee a lot this year. It's pretty easy to make. Egg yolks, sugar, vanilla, half and half and heavy whipping cream. Mix the ingredients, strain and pour into custard dishes sitting in a pan of water. Bake and let cool in the water. Refrigerate overnight. The next day, boil sugar and water until the sugar starts to melt and quickly pour it over the creme. It will instantly harden into the perfect sugar crust. Yummy!

Goal #9: Get health insurance - Success

I was able to qualify for Medical Assistance through the Minnesota state health exchange called MNSure. I love Obamacare/Affordable Care Act! The last time I applied for MA, they wanted me to send in a ton of paperwork with proof showing that I'm self-employed. It was a big headache and I ended up not bothering. This time, I just filled out a form and I was approved. My coverage starts today!

Goal #10: Go to New York City for my 30^th birthday - Fail

I couldn't afford to go and I'm glad I didn't. It is frickin' cold outside so I don't want to travel anywhere unless it's to someplace warm. I especially don't feel like going to New York City and being tortured by horrible singers (Miley Cyrus, Mackelmore, Lady Gaga, etc). Instead, I've decided to go on a cruise to celebrate my 30th birthday. We (my parents and I) booked a cruise out of Miami to the Bahamas at the end of February. We are also going to the Daytona 500 so that will be fun. My first Sprint Cup race. The only other NASCAR race I've been to was a NASCAR East/West Series race at Iowa City back in 2009. Kyle Busch won and I got to see him do his bow for the fans. It was pretty cool even though I'm not a big fan of his. Even though I failed on this resolution, I actually succeeded because I'm doing something even better instead.

I'll be posting my 2014 resolutions soon.

6 Month Update

2013 is officially half way done. Is it just me or does it seem like time is flying by? It seems like just yesterday I was making these resolutions. I already have one of them done and I'm making progress on others but some of them probably won't get done this year.

Goal #1: Publish 500 Squidoo Lenses – Rank 250 Lenses in Top 10 for Their Main Keyword.

Change of plans for this goal. Squidoo went on a lens locking spree and locked many lenses without saying what was wrong with them. Luckily, I only got one lens locked but it made me mad enough that I don't want anything to do with Squidoo. I started a new website that I will write product reviews for. I hope to have 500 reviews completed by the end of the year. I am making over $1,000 a month on Squidoo and I hope to make three times that amount from my website.

Goal #2: Save $500 in an emergency account

Nothing yet. It will probably be a few months before I can even tackle this. Amazon decided to "fire" all affiliates from Minnesota. This means that I need to start a LLC in another state to keep my account. This will cost me around $500. I also need money for my vacation next week. I should still be able to get this resolution complete but it might not be until October or November.

Goal #3: Get under 200 pounds Get under 175 pounds

Complete!!! I started watching what I eat and exercising at the beginning of March and have lost 25 pounds and officially weigh 198 pounds. I am changing this goal to 175 pounds.

Goal #4: Read 12 books

So far I've read 2 books this year - Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (stupid book) and The Scarlett Letter (pretty good). I started Don Quixote but am not even close to being finished. I'm on page 50 out of 900 so it will be a while before I get done. I should be able to do a lot of reading on my vacation next week. It's a 14-18 hour drive one way and then another 18-20 hour drive coming home (taking a detour through Illinois). I hope to get at least 2 more books completed during the trip.

Goal #5: Ride my bike 10 miles

My bike is all cleaned up and ready to go. I just have to find a place to ride it. I'll probably start riding it when we get back from vacation.

Goal #6: Pay off 1 student loan

My first payment after deferment is August 7th. I haven't paid anything towards my loans this year. I hope to pay a little extra each month but I don't think it will be enough to completely pay off a loan.

Goal #7: Learn to play 5 songs on guitar

I started practicing every day until the beginning of June and then kind of lost interest. I still really want to learn to play but the guitar I have makes it hard. It never stays in tune and the strings are too high. I need to take it into a music shop to get it set up right but that costs $100 which I don't have right now. Not to mention that the closest music shop that will set up guitars is 2 hours north of here.

Goal #8: Learn to make Crème Brulee

I don't have enough money for a torch right now but I might just go ahead and make them using the broiler in the oven. They probably won't be as good as the ones I had on my cruise in 2011 but I think they will turn out okay.

Goal #9: Get health insurance

Again, I don't have enough money right now but the Minnesota Health Insurance Exchange is scheduled to launch in October so I should wait until then to get health insurance anyways. I might qualify for reduced or discount insurance based on my low income.

Goal #10: Go to New York City for my 30^th birthday

I really, really don't think I'll be able to afford this. I'm hoping for a miracle.

2013 New Year's Resolution Update

I figure that now is as good time as any to post an update on my new year's resolutions. Quickly regarding the last post, no I am still not on a schedule (which is why I'm writing this at 3:30 in the morning). Anyways, here's a recap of my resolutions and how I'm coming along on each one.

Goal #1: Publish 500 Squidoo Lenses – Rank 250 Lenses in Top 10 for Their Main Keyword.

I've only got 100 lenses published so far but they are making me a ton of money. I'm already at $600 a month. Squidoo is going great for me and it's only getting better. I'm now a Giant Squid which means I get cool stuff like templates that save time and more time to work on lenses that get flagged. Speaking of flags, Squidoo is running a filter next week and flagging bad lenses. I'm sure many of my lenses are going to get flagged but, since I'm a Giant, I get 3 weeks to fix them before they get locked. My goal from now until July 6, when I go on vacation, is to publish 5 new lenses a day and update 5 old lenses a day. This should give me around 550 lenses total and it will keep my old lenses updated and away from the filters.

Goal #2: Save $500 in an emergency account

I have nothing in my savings account right now but I've made a budget for the next 3 months and should have this done by the end of May.

Goal #3: Get under 200 pounds

I started eating healthy and exercising at the beginning of March and have lost 6 lbs in 3 weeks. Only 14 lbs to go to get below 200 pounds. I should get there by July!

Goal #4: Read 12 books

So far I've read 2 books this year - Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (stupid book) and The Scarlett Letter (pretty good). I'm not sure which book I'm going to read next but I think it is going to be that Don Quioxe or something-like-that book. It's a comedy and I can't exactly remember the name of it. I'll probably have to read 2 books in one month to reach this goal but I expect I'm going to be doing a lot of reading on my road trip to Colorado in July.

Goal #5: Ride my bike 10 miles

It has been freezing all spring. The snow is finally beginning to melt. My parents are going to Indiana for a week in June so I'll have lots of time to myself. This is the perfect opportunity to take my bike out for a nice ride somewhere.

Goal #6: Pay off 1 student loan

Haven't thought about this one yet but my deferment ends in July so I'll think about it then. I should have my emergency fund set up and be making a couple thousand dollars a month from Squidoo so I can throw extra payments at one of the loans.

Goal #7: Learn to play 5 songs on guitar

I'm planning on doing this when I've got the house to myself in June. I'm going to spend a couple hours a day learning chords and notes. I know it will take a couple months to get comfortable enough to play the songs but a couple hours a day for a week should give me a good start.

Goal #8: Learn to make Crème Brulee

I have a culinary torch saved on Amazon and I'm going to buy it as soon as I have enough money saved up. I also found a great Creme Brulee recipe. I'll probably buy the torch and some ramekins in May or June.

Goal #9: Get health insurance

I have decided which insurance plan I'm going to go with but I want to have my emergency fund established before I enroll. It's $162 a month and includes maternity (I'm single, living with my parents and don't have a boyfriend - however, you never know what might happen in the future). It has a $2,500 deductible and it pays 100% after that. I'll need to save up the amount of the deductible in case I ever need it.

Goal #10: Go to New York City for my 30^th birthday

I've looked into flights, hotels and touristy stuff and this is going to be really, really expensive. If I start making at least $2,000 a month from Squidoo, I might be able to swing it. I'll probably start doing some more planning in July when I have a better idea of what my finances look like.

So there you go. I'm making great progress on all my resolutions and I'm on track to finish a couple of them. I hope to accomplish all of them but it'll depend on how much money I can make. I'll post another update in June or July. I'm going to Colorado in July so maybe I'll wait until I get back to post the update. Until then, keep working hard at making your dreams come true.

What I'm Up To

It's pretty late and I'm getting tired but I thought I'd publish a post and let you all know what I'm up to. The move went pretty smoothly. I've got my own bedroom, office and bathroom which I love. I've been so much more productive since I've had my own office. Even so, I'm still way behind on my new year's resolutions. My plans on how to reach those resolutions has also changed.

The Plan

In my last post, I came up with a plan for making money after I moved. The main part of my plan was to start a blog and turn it into an authority site. The second part of my plan was to work on my niche websites and get them ranking high in Google. The last and least important part of my plan was to write a bunch of InfoBarrel article.

Well, the plan has changed. The new plan is to make the InfoBarrel articles the main focus. I have realized that my InfoBarrel articles are making around $0.75 per article per month. This has been consistent every month for the past year. I am now planning on writing 400 articles a month for the next 3 months. This will give me 1,200 articles which should translate to around $1,000 a month in earnings (hopefully more during the holidays). If my articles do hold up and make that much a month, I'll continue to write 400 articles a month until I reach my goal of $2,500 a month.

The authority website started out great. I designed a great looking theme and came up with a bunch of ideas for posts. I wrote 3 posts and decided to focus on InfoBarrel instead. I am still planning on posting to the blog but it's not my main focus anymore. I'm going to save it for when I'm making enough money from other sources so that I can focus on content rather than making money.

I'm also going to let my niche sites just sit around and make money. I'm not going to bother to work on them right now. Whatever they make is what they'll make.

New Year's Resolutions Update

1. Be at $2,500 a month with Adsense before the end of the year - My Adsense income increased to around $175 last month so that's encouraging. I might be able to hit $1,000 a month by the end of the year.

2. Pay off car loan - $3,400 - This is going to happen. I have less than $1,000 to pay on it and I won $500 in a sweepstakes last week. Next month I'll pay around $550 and I should have it completely paid off.

3. Save $5,000 towards the down payment on a house - Nope. I have around $5 in a savings account towards this.

4. Set up a dating profile (I don't have to actually go on dates but I want to at least get used to contacting guys online) - I'm not even sure how to go about doing this. I would like to date but I would prefer to have my own place and live closer to town. I would also like to complete resolution #5 first.

5. Lose 50 lbs - around 1 lb a week - I need to start eating healthier but it's hard. I love food too much. I should also exercise more. I'll try to come up with a plan next week.

6. Pay off 1 of my student loans - Uh...I filed for a forbearance or deferment or whatever it is called. I don't have to pay any of my student loans until December 7. I'm going to try to pay off one of my student loans by the end of the year but I'll have to wait until my car gets paid off.

7. Go to a Vikings game - I'd like to get my dad tickets for his birthday but I'll either have to win tickets or try to come up with some money after my car loan is paid off.

8. Build a 3 month emergency fund - I have $15 saved up. I don't think that would cover me in an emergency.

9. Read 2 books a month - I've read 2 1/2 books so far this year. My parents want to go on a road trip at the beginning of September so I should have plenty of time for reading. I still don't think I'm going to reach this goal unless I take a week off just to read.

10. Keep up to date on my sweepstakes - After we moved, I kept up to date on my sweepstakes until around July 15 when I got too busy from InfoBarrel. The $500 I won last week will come in handy. I really need to get caught back up.

As you can see, my resolutions aren't going too well. I think I will pick one resolution to focus on this month. I think I'm going to try to get the car loan paid off completely this month. This means I need to sell a bunch of stuff or write articles for upfront pay. Not having that car loan will help me complete some of my other resolutions. I'm going to post an update in September and let you know how I did at paying off my car loan.

Big Life Altering Changes and Resolution Update

 A lot has happened since I last posted in March. At the end of April, my websites took a nosedive and I lost most of my income. Around the same time, my parents accepted an offer on their home and put in an offer on another. We are officially moving before the end of the month. They didn't buy a duplex so I won't get my own apartment but I will have my own separate office which is going to be great. The main reason I wanted to post tonight was because I need to come up with a game plan for after we move.

Most of the 2012 resolutions and goals I set for myself involve money. I need to make $1,800 to pay off the car loan, $5,000 for a down payment on a house, a 3 month emergency account, enough to pay off one of my student loans and enough money for tickets to a Vikings game. That's a lot of money and I only have six months left to come up with it. That's why I need a game plan.

I own 10 websites and 8 of them have content on them. Not all of them are complete. Out of the 8, only 3 of them earn any money. In March and April, I made almost $300 from my websites and InfoBarrel. In late April, my sites tanked in the search engines and I only made $108. $25 of that was from my InfoBarrel articles. I need to find a way to increase my Adsense and Amazon income, diversify my traffic sources and diversity my income sources.

I was thinking about different ways to do this and I have a general idea what I'm going to do. I have a three part plan. First, I think I'm going to start another website. I know what you are thinking. "She's going to start another website when she can't even handle 10 of them?" This new website will be an authority style blog about my favorite hobby, sweepstakes. I will pull in traffic from message boards I frequent and blog comments. This blog will give tips and advice to newbie sweepstakers. I will try to post three times a week. I will monetize the blog with affiliate offers. I'm not sure if I will use Adsense or not. I don't want a ton of advertising on the site but a banner ad in the sidebar might be unobtrusive. I'm hoping to bring in around $100-200 a month within 6 months. Not only will this new blog help diversify my traffic sources and income but it will help me stay motivated to keep up to date on my sweepstakes which was one of my resolutions.

The second part of my plan is to complete all of my websites. I will build out all of the websites and transform them into authority style website instead of small micro-niche sites. All of the websites will have at least 100 articles posted. I will use Yahoo! Answers and a keyword question tool to find article ideas. The idea is to pull in long-tail keyword traffic. One of my websites isn't even ranking for the main keyword but still brings in over $50 a month. The website pulls in traffic from hundreds of long-tail keywords. The more articles you have on a website, the more long-tail keywords your website will rank for and the more traffic and money your site will generate. I figure that 100 articles on 10 websites should bring in around $800-1,000 a month. I will also be starting around 10 free Blogger blogs based on random topics and write hundreds of articles for each blog. This will bring in the other $1500 a month that I need to complete my goal of $2500 a month.

The third part of my plan is InfoBarrel articles. After I have completed or at least started on the first two parts of my plan, I will begin to write InfoBarrel articles. I have a list of 200 InfoBarrel articles I want to write but haven't gotten around to it. The InfoBarrel income will make up the difference in income between the first two parts of my plan and my income goal.

The hardest part of my plan is deciding how I'm going to get all of this work done. It's not hard work but it takes time. I don't have money to outsource all of these articles so I will be writing them myself. I will be writing around 1,200 articles total along with the three articles per week for my authority sweepstakes blog. I would like to get all of the articles written before October so I can take advantage of the holiday shopping season. I will need to write 10 articles a day, everyday to reach that goal. If I write 13 articles a day, Monday through Friday, I will easily reach my goal.

The plan is to start with one website and work on it until it is complete. I will wake up early in the morning and spend four hours entering sweepstakes. After lunch, I will write all 13 articles for the day. In the evening, I will enter more sweepstakes or write a post for my sweepstakes blog.

Here is an update on each of my 2012 resolutions:

1. Be at $2,500 a month with Adsense before the end of the year - I'm far from completing this goal. I was doing really well at increasing my income each month until the Google algorithm update on April 24. I will recover with the plan I detailed above.

2. Pay off car loan - $3,400 - I'm down to less than $2,000 on my car - Unfortunately, I'm not paying it anymore. My parents are making payments for me since I'm now only making $100 a month. I will get the car loan paid off this year but it sucks because now I owe my parents money. I would like to pay them back before the end of the year.

3. Save $5,000 towards the down payment on a house - Not even close. Maybe I'll win a nice big check through the sweepstakes I enter.

4. Set up a dating profile (I don't have to actually go on dates but I want to at least get used to contacting guys online) - Last night, I was searching through match.com and a couple dating forums. I really want to get started at this but I feel like such a loser living with my parents. I might get the courage start a profile after we move.

5. Lose 50 lbs - around 1 lb a week - I went on a diet at the beginning of May but it only lasted two weeks. Moving has been very stressful lately and I have been stuffing my face. I'll start a eating better as soon as we get settled into the new house.

6. Pay off 1 of my student loans - I'm haven't even made a payment this year. My loans are in forbarence and I don't have to make another payment until December. Of course, I'll start making payments before then and will accomplish this resolution.

7. Go to a Vikings game - Not even close.

8. Build a 3 month emergency fund - I started a new checking account with ING and will start a new savings account soon. I will be able to separate my savings into different sub-accounts. One account will be for the emergency fund, one will be for the Vikings tickets and one will be for a house.

9. Read 2 books a month - I read Gone With The Wind in January and I started Pride and Prejudice in April. I'm half way through it. As you can see, I'm way behind in the reading department and I'm not sure if I'll be able to get caught back up.

10. Keep up to date on my sweepstakes - I'm going to make this a full-time thing as soon as I get settled into the new house. I'll be updating my progress and will keep an updated a list of wins on my new sweepstakes blog.

2012 Resolution Update

It's been about two months since I posted my 2012 resolutions so I thought it would be a good time to post an update.

The first resolution was to make at least $2,500 a month with Adsense. I am slowly but surely working up to that amount. I made $70 in December, $126 in January and $128 in February. The one month of Build My Rank worked great at getting my websites ranking for their main keywords. I'm kind of confused about where to go now. In February, I focused my time on reworking my biggest earning niche site. I found a few more keywords I want to get it ranked for so I added a few pages to the site to focus mainly on those keywords. Now that I'm just about done with the site, I can start focusing on backlinking it and getting it ranking for the new keywords. I just don't know where to start. I could build quality backlinks at a slow and steady pace but sometimes I find that it takes too long to rank a site by going that route. I could also build hundreds of links quickly using AMR and Fiverr but I'm always afraid I'll get my site sandboxed by doing that. I also find that my sites bounce around more in the serps when I build a lot of links at one time. I'll probably end up doing the slow and steady route but, man, it takes forever to get my sites ranked. I wish I could afford to reactivate my BMR account. I keep hearing people saying bad things about BMR but I find it a lot easier to post there than to try to make fake account on forums, leave bogus comments on blogs or write crappy articles to post on article directories. I hate backlinking and wish I could just pay someone to do all my backlinking for me. I don't trust Fiverr and I can't afford anyone from Warrior. I'm sure I'll find a happy medium someday but for now, it's just a pain.

I'm pretty sure I'll reach this first resolution but it might take me until the end of the year to do it. I'll keep updating this blog as I go along. Oh, I also wanted to mention that to keep me motivated, I've decided that when I reach $1,000 a month, I'm going to buy myself a new desktop computer. I've had my eye on an HP TouchSmart for about a year now. Every time I think about this awesome computer, I get super motivated to work on my websites. I'm hoping to be making $1,000 a month by the end of June.

As far as the other resolutions go, I haven't gotten very far. I'm down to $2,800 on my car loan and I read 1 book in January (Gone with the Wind). That's about it as far as progress goes. My parents are selling their house so I haven't been doing sweepstakes because I don't want packages to get sent to this address. I'll start entering again after we move. They are thinking about purchasing a duplex. I'll rent half and they will live in the other half. I'm pretty excited about it. I would love to get my own apartment but I don't make enough money yet. This will be a good compromise until I can get enough money saved to buy my own house.

That's it for now. I'm going with my parents tomorrow morning to look at a house that's for sale north of here. It's not exactly what I want as it's not a duplex but the basement is a walkout so there's potential. I'll try to post another update around the end of April. Hope everyone has a great March and remember, spring is almost here!!

The Dreaded Summer Drought

The summer drought has hit workwise. There has been very little work in title selection for the past three weeks and I can't even find good titles to write. I'm so glad that I got a check from Google this month and I also got my payment for my eHow articles. They both help but I think I'm still going to be short paying bills in August. I might have to borrow money from my dad as much as that hurts.

My two niche websites are going well and I just started a new niche website two days ago. It hasn't been indexed yet so I'm waiting a week or two before I start throwing backlinks at it. My career oriented niche site is doing great this month and has made over $100 in Adsense. It is currently ranked 15th for its main keyword. I made a backlinking plan that I will start next week. I own Article Marketing Robot but I don't really like how it submits the articles to the directories. My plan is to use AMR to spin 4 different articles 500 times each. I'm not sure if it can spin an article that many times and still have them be unique but I'll see. I might have to spin more than 4 articles. I'm then going to sort the article directories by PR and add an article to 100 websites per day starting with the directory with the highest PR and working down the list. There are 9,000 directories listed in AMR so I shouldn't run out of directories. When I'm done submitting everything, I should have around 2,000 backlinks. That should get my niche site in the top 10 for it's keyword. The number 1 site has 1,050 backlinks. It has a high PR and is optimized for the keyword so I'm not sure if I can beat it but I'm going to try.

Last week, I had a great idea. I would start 25 career oriented niche sites and get them ranking well by the end of the year. If each site made $100 a month like my current site, I would be making enough money to live on. However, I don't really think this idea would work. For the niche site I started two days ago, I bought the domain name three months ago and it took this long to get the articles written and the site designed. I don't think I could do that for 25 different sites at the same time. The cost would be a lot too. If I paid $10 for each domain name, that would be $250. I could use my student loan money to pay for it but I'm not sure if splitting up my time across 25 different sites plus 3 current sites is a good idea. I have a couple months to think about it as I don't get my loans until September but right now I'm thinking I'll only going with two or three sites at one time.

Speaking of student loans, I decided to accept my student loans instead of paying for tuition out of pocket. I know this sounds irresponsible but I'm going to be paying on my student loans forever anyways so I figured why not. I need money for the cruise, I need a new laptop and I would like some extra money to buy domain names. Once my niche sites start making a lot of money, I should be able to pay back my student loans quickly.

Personal News

Getting to stuff that has nothing to do with money or my business, my sister-in-law delivered a beautiful baby boy on July 7. The C-section was scheduled for July 6 but my brother thought 7-7 would be a better birthday for him so they rescheduled. It was crazy at the hospital with everyone there taking pictures. C was diagnosed with heartburn which, surprisingly, is the leading cause of SIDS. C is taking medicine to prevent it and he has to wear a heart monitor while he's sleeping. Everyone that was going to be taking care of him including me and my parents had to take an infant CPR class. Ever since C was born, everyone has been fighting. First, my mom wanted to give the baby formula until SIL's milk came in but her mom made a huge deal about it. She seems to think that formula is poison and would not let anyone give him any. Poor thing was so hungry so my mom would sneak him formula when she wasn't around. SIL didn't care. In fact, SIL is a pretty lazy mom. I'm not trying to be mean but she'll breast feed him for five minutes and thinks he's full. She will also let him cry for a good ten to fifteen minutes while she checks her email or eats breakfast. Often times, she won't even wake up at night to feed him and tells my brother to give him a pacifier to calm him down. My mom is pretty mad at her but she doesn't say anything. She doesn't want to tell them how to raise their kid. After they got home from the hospital, SIL's mother decided to move in with them and my brother hates it. She hates my mom so on the weekends, my mom will spend the night so MIL will leave. It's been working so far. My brother got into a huge fight with his MIL last week because she didn't think C should visit his great-grandpa. My brother actually put his foot down and said that he's going whether she likes it or not. She stormed out and left her date book on the cupboard. My mom came over and found it and MIL had written some pretty nasty things about us on her calendar. Apparently, she writes everything down in her calendar. Stuff like, "Today I watched Toy Story with M" or "Today J's Mom blocked me on Facebook". I really think she's psycho and it makes me happy to be single without having to deal with someone else's crazy family.

Lately, I've been thinking about having a baby. It won't be for a couple of years but I have been thinking about it. I've always wanted to be a mother and I think I would be good at it. I have a couple of concerns though. First, I can't stand pee or  poop. The thought of it makes me gag. I haven't changed C's diaper and I hope I'll never have to. I don't even look at my own poop and I'll go as far as closing my eyes while flushing the toilet. I think I could get on board with the whole diaper thing but I have heard horror stories about toddlers taking off their diapers and pooping on the couch and stuff. Yuck! Maybe I could hire a nanny or something to go on cleanup duty. The second concern I have is that I have trouble getting myself to places how am I suppose to get a kid places. For example, I need a hair cut but have put it off for the past two months. What if the kid needs a doctor appointment or needs a hair cut or wants to join a club. Driving him/her around everywhere, making appointments and following up with people sounds like a lot of work. Even so, I think it would still be worth it. At the moment, my plan is to work on my business for the next year. I should be making enough money to buy a house by the time I'm 29. I'll spend three years looking for a husband and then when I'm 32 I'll have a baby - husband or not. Sperm donors are cheaper than I thought - especially if you do the insemination at home and find the donor yourself. It's along ways away and things could change in the next five years. Who knows, maybe I'll find the man of my dreams and get married.

Enough with all the baby talk. I know this post is getting long but I don't update very often and I need to get some things off my mind. One of my biggest stresses and worries right now is that my mom is starting her own business - and she wants me to do it with her. It's a henna tattoo business and she wants me to help her setup her booth at fairs and to take the money. She also wants me to set up a website which I don't have much time for. I really want to help her out as she hates her current job and is desperate to get out. I don't mind making a website for her but I don't want to sit around at some fair every weekend for hours on end. I'm hoping that she'll figure out a way to take the money and give the tattoos without needing me there. She's also hoping to do parties which I won't need to be there. Maybe she'll get so much work doing parties that she won't want to go to the county fairs. I really don't want to do this with her but I don't know how to tell her.

I guess I should end this post. It's pretty late so I need to get to bed. I stay up way too late worrying about stuff these days.

It's Offically Summer!!

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!

Big Changes Starting Today!!

I haven't posted in a while because I've been super busy. I am going back to college for Web Design and Development. I start my online classes today. I was really nervous about it but I just logged in and checked out my classes and they don't look that bad. A ton of work but it doesn't look like it's hard work. I think I'm actually going to have fun in my E-commerce class because we get to build our own E-commerce store and try to make money with it. We get graded on how well we plan out the site.

I also started "The Challenge" last month. "The Challenge" is by Ed Dale and it's a free IM course. You are expected to start a website and make $1 in 14 weeks. We start week 8 (Module 4) today. The niche site I started is ranking very well considering my backlinks aren't indexed yet. I expect my site to shoot up the rankings very quickly once that happens. We start monetizing the site this week. I can't wait to start making money. I plan on starting a bunch of these type of sites over the next year so I won't have to spend my time writing so much.

My relationship with my parents varys from day to day. One day, they will be pissed that I'm still living at home and the next day, they will be begging me to stay and telling me how much they love me living with them. My mom hates her job so that helps take the pressure off me a little bit. She's a little bitter that I work from home while she has to spend a week in a place she hates. I'm planning on moving out sometime in January. I can probably use my student loan as first and last months rent and as a security deposit. Hopefully, I'll be making quite a bit of money from my websites by then.

The office is STILL not done. I spent all day today going through boxes of junk and throwing stuff away. I almost have the office organized, then I can think about redoing the floors. I'm going to have office hours starting today (if I can ever get to sleep). I'm going to spend one-two hours working on my websites, a few hours working on my classes and the rest of the time, writing articles for upfront pay so I can make my car payment (parents are still pissed about missing payments earlier in the year). I'm also planning on writing a couple articles a day for Infobarrel to try to add to my passive income.

Quite a lot of changes in my life right now. I'm stressed, nervous, happy, and scared all at the same time. I can't decide if I want to go back to school right now but it's keeping my parents off my back while I grow my passive income so that's a good thing, right? I shouldn't even need to use the degree when I graduate in two years because I should be making a full-time income in IM by then.
I've got a ton of work to complete tomorrow. My classes all have easy assignments this week because it's the first week so I'm going to try to get them done tomorrow so I don't have to worry about them for the rest of the week. I'm going to try to make $40 with Demand Studios and I want to write 5 Infobarrel articles. I also have to do my assignments for "The Challenge". I'm so excited that I can't sleep but I guess I'll have to try.

Quick Update

The month of August has been going great so far. I'm up to 5 articles a day on Demand Studios. I've added 5 new eHow articles and I am on pace to double last month's payment. I've also got a new gig at Examiner and am earning more than $1/day or $30/month with them. I'll post an update at the beginning of September with the totals and more details.

July Update

I promised an update every month so here is July's update. I did better than expected in July. Since it was my first full month as a freelance writer, I wasn't expecting much. Here's the full breakdown:

Demand Studios - $105.00
Textbroker - $7.00
eHow - $5.83
Associated Content - $0.00
Total: $117.83

Demand Studios

I've only been working for Demand Studios for two weeks. The first week, I wrote one article and waited for it to be approved before continuing on. It was approved without any problems so the second week I wrote eight more articles. One article came back for a total rewrite so I deleted it and reposted it on AC. I'm hoping for big things with Demand Studios in August. I plan on writing 2-3 articles per day and I want to start writing some revenue articles. I got an email tonight stating that I'm one of the top writers so they've approved me to write Golflink articles which is an extra $5 per articles. I don't think of myself as a good writer but I've got a four on both grammar and research on my scorecard so I must not be doing too bad.

Textbroker

I was approved for Textbroker in early July and wrote one article the first week and one article the second week. The instructions for writing the articles were so vague that I kept second guessing myself. One of the two articles came back as a rewrite. The client asked that I mention 10 more keywords at least two times throughout the article. I just stuck them in where ever and the article got approved even though it didn't read right. I hate submitting an article that is bad but that's what the client wanted. I'm going to try to get $20 per pay period just so I can remain active. It shouldn't be too hard. That's 3 articles per week.

eHow

I did awesome for my first full month at eHow. All but two articles earned money which is great. I was only expecting a dollar or two my first month and ended up with $5.83. I'm going to double that in August. My goal is to add 20 articles and earn at least $10. I'm also going to try to market some of my current articles by adding them to my other social sites.

Associated Content

I have one article on AC (see Demand Studios above) and it hasn't earned a penny. I didn't feel like trying to get upfront pay so I just published it right away. I would like to add 5 articles to AC in August so maybe I can start earning something from them.

August Goals

Demand Studios - 2-3 articles per day, $30-60 per day, $900 for the month

Demand Studios Rev Share - 10 articles, earn at least $0.01

Textbroker - $20 per pay period or $40 for the month

eHow - 20 articles, $10 for the month

Associated Content - 5 articles, earn at least $0.01

Bukisa - 10 articles, earn at least $0.01

FireHow - 10 articles, earn at least $0.01