Mark Ling has been encouraging me to write a newsletter. And if you’ve been following the thread you will note that I have been unmotivated and too lazy to do so. There are a couple of things that you should note in these exchanges. 1) Mark Ling is about as good a guy there is in Internet marketing. The dude only knows me from Lost Ball and my early membership in Affilorama. It’s not like we are exchanging Christmas cards each year. But he tries to help and actually gives a shit. I appreciate that. 2) Webmasters like me, who balance a full-time job, family and other things outside of trying to make money online, are just about screwed.

I do see value in writing newsletters. The real issue here is time. As much as Mark would like me to write, I may as well just sell off and delete all my other sites because I won’t be doing anything else but writing a newsletter and trying to come up with content. At the frequency he was suggesting, I’m not certain I will have anything to say about the topic in about three weeks. I don’t think. Maybe I would. OK, so at some point I will get the Aweber account and create a newsletter. I just have to find the time. Make the time.

Time. It’s my problem. I build 1, maybe 2 new niche blogs/sites each week (usually, not always). I rewrite up to 20 articles a week to post to those sites to get them going. The blogs that I start seeing potential I keep fresh. How? By finding time to write an article or so a week. Thank your god for RSS2B4 as at least I can get on a roll and create enough content to post over a few weeks, including BS like feeds to make it look like something is still going on at those sites. And then I have flagship sites like my health properties that I try to keep fresh for real with commentary, news, etc. Then there is Lost Ball which I like to write.

So here is what I do typically. Tell me where I’m effing up. I don’t even try to build sites that I can’t use existing PLR. So, I look at present and past article packs to come up with this week’s niche site. Let’s say I have one on “bottled rain water.” I go to nichebot and grab keyword phrases that make sense to rewrite articles on. High search-low comp phrases. I rewrite. I build the site, whether XSP, Blogger or WP. Each takes time to set up. Header. Plugins. Whatever. I post 5 articles for blogs. 10 articles for XSP. I rewrite an article twice and post to Ezinearticles and GoArticles. I take an article or two and build a Squidoo lens and link back. If it’s a blog I claim it at Technorrati. I Spurl and Furl it. I Stumble it. I write a snippet and post to PLRPro’s blog network. I post a link on one of my Tumblr logs. I use the one spam tool from Pete’s WSO that works, the Blogger blog building tool, and build a few blogs with links pointing to my new site. I add a few links to directories using Callen’s Directory Submitter. Hopefully this site building gymnastics will help with indexing and ranking.

Squidoo is manual. Technorati is manual. These take time. Directory Submitter is sketchy at best. It takes time to set up. All this usually takes all week… because…in the mean time I still have other sites to manage. To create content for. To get traffic to. Build links.

So how do I find time to rewrite all this stuff? Hell, I don’t. Once I have a site up with original content, the originality goes out the door. I’ll take the remainder of the articles in the PLR pack and rewrite the title, the first paragraph, change the keywords to matter and rewrite the last couple of sentences. I’ll then drop it in RSS2B4 as a text pod and let it post every few days. Gotta spread it out as much as possible.

So what happens when the PLR runs out? If I like the topic I can write some short posts to keep things fresh. More likely I’ll scrape articles using OrwellPro or Article Content Builder. I’ll use my own title, create a short commentary and post it up. By the time the PLR runs out I can get a feel for whether the site is working. If the site is not making money I will simply let it be. I’ve noticed that the XSP sites that I’ve let just sit does far better long-term than blogs that don’t update. I think SE and visitors expect fresh content with blogs. With static sites, I’m not so sure it matters as much. I’m no SEO expert but the blogs that I let sit around, get no traffic. Some XSP sites I built a couple of years ago and have never visited again, on subdomains, get a bit of traffic and make money daily in Adsense.

So you say, “stop building and work what you already have.” Well I kinda do. And I kinda don’t. I think we can all agree, and it’s been said by the biggest to the smallest of guberus, that it’s a numbers game. Yes you might luck out and create a badass authoritative site that makes 6 figures and gets threatened to be bought out by Weblogs, Inc. More likely you will have numerous little niche sites and you feed the ones that have the most potential. Not every site works of course so the prudent thing is to keep building. Maybe at some point you will have a stable of 15-20 sites each rolling $1,000/month and then you’ve actually got yourself something. You have the money to outsource. Take the best performers and really hammer them to authoritative greatness. But you can’t just take 10 niches and assume that they will be great. I mean you can, but you’re throwing all your beer cans in one ditch. Best to keep spraying the sites around, no?

People note that I seem to bounce around from one thing to another. That’s not really the case. I am consistent in building sites and writing or re-writing content. I may veer off in one direction and look at the possibilities in , say PPC or something, but I always come back to building and writing. I may try different means of getting my stuff found like Pete’s WSO’s for instance, or any number of other promotion techniques and gimmicks. But it only serves my websites.

I may go on a Wordpress blog building spree one week, build XSP the next and then Blogger blogs after that. But it’s still building sites and writing content. The problem is the more I build the more I have to feed it. The four horsemen (as I refer to them now) Vic, Frank, Court and Griz, have given me new ways to think about doing the exact same thing I was doing. Just more effectively. Many of my pages are getting top billing in Google now because of a few shifts in what I was doing because I read those guy’s sites. And for some sites I’m simply looking at them now as how they can make me money. Not whether they are editorially relevant or adds web value.

I am an army of one. That’s an excuse but there it is. If I did not have a family I would let it rip, quit my job, find a room to rent and bury myself in this with outsourcing and full time building and writing. I make enough in IM to support me. But if Google cancels my Adsense account that could affect my kids (if I was full-time). I find this business flimsy enough to not ever think in terms of going full-time IM anymore. Well, it’s flimsy the way I have structured my online business. Selling real products, real memberships, etc. is not flimsy. It’s a real business model.

So I’m rambling. My goal is to create a newsletter for two of my sites. It has massive potential. I have to find time in the 3-4 hours a day that I have (max) to fit it in between writing content, building sites, promoting my sites, swapping links and all that other bullshit you have to do when you create a site. Even if I stopped building new sites, which I do take a break from doing, I still have to go back and add content to the many that I have already built and are showing potential.

This is a never ending cycle that can drive one mad.