…and I feel fine…

Lately I’ve been contemplating the direction to take this side gig that has shown such promise. Along with the future of my main gig, which carries the complications of certain obligations with it. And, well, lots o’ things.

What can I say — looking at the calendar it shows middle age creeping up on me. I seem to be having a touch of a midlife crisis here. I’m not looking at trading in the minivan for a Porsche, or trolling for Young Bombshell Wife 2.0, or anything that stereotypical.

Merely contemplating concepts like meaning and purpose and time and happiness and other such light topics. In other words, deciding what should be my next step.

So today I log in to my advertising account, and see that the big G has slapped me for the third time in this little adventure. Had a minor freak out for an hour or three. Not really because it kills my side biz or anything — though that is my first impulse even though all it really does is slow me down for a while — but because it means I have to rebuild.

I’m a lazy man, and would much prefer to add on to versus re-laying that foundation. Or, better yet (because I can be a truly lazy man at times) be able to just watch the earnings roll on in on those days or weeks I wanted to be doing other things.

The first time this happened, I panicked for a week+. This time, mildly for maybe an hour. Now, oddly, a certain peace has settled upon me as the day goes on. Yes, G is fucking with my business model. But that’s their prerogative. I’ve realized that I just have to build that reality into my model going forward. The key part of that last sentence: going forward.

I still haven’t decided where to take this side gig. Or what to do with my main one and it’s attachments. But this last year’s successes have opened up potential pathways I never would have imagined even five years ago. Or one, for that matter. Gilbert was certainly right in my latest read — we seriously underestimate the potential change that the future holds for us.

…begin the begin…

Ah, Tax Season 2009 has come to an end. Two days out, I’ve now spent most of two days playing a lot of LEGOs and Mario Kart with my son while the wife is out of town. (Shhh, don’t tell her — I know Mario Kart is essentially brain rot, but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her! ) Should probably consider looking for something a bit more productive to do eventually, but right now I’d say spending time with my little five-year-old is just about the absolute right thing to do.

So in the last two months, what have I actually accomplished?

• A couple hundred tax returns.
• Completed somewhere in the range of half a Campaign Blast Challenge. The brain and time just wouldn’t cooperate to allow me to finish the whole thing. Outside of the challenge, I built next to nothing.
• A hard slap of my eBay AdWords campaigns by Google — twice. You know Google, if you don’t want my money, fine, I’ll move them and the substantial amount I was paying to advertise with you to…
• Yahoo & MSN. Transferred all my campaigns over. The traffic isn’t quite up to Google’s numbers, but they are slowly building. And the traffic appears to convert even better!
• I’ve got another side business that is in serious need of, well, going the hell away. I just have to come up with a means of making a clean break with it. Now that tax season has ended, I have no excuse in putting that off other than not wanting to deal with it.

OK, so I guess I did at least get a few things done on this side endeavor that I’d like to make my main one.

Immediately after the slaps, my earnings took a major nosedive to the tune of around 10% of my peak. I’m back to around 60% and steadily increasing. Now that I have time and available brain cells to focus, it’s time to get back to the game and see where I want to be and what I need to do in order to get there.

After all, I have a single monetary goal for the summer: September 1st, I plan to write a check for the remainder of our mortgage…

photo credit: phunkstarr

Having a fine ol’ time this month watching all my work over the last few months really take off. I won’t go into specific dollar amounts right now, but my profit’s seven day moving average is almost 700% greater than this time last month. And last month, quite honestly, kicked the crap out of any prior month’s online income. Nevertheless, I’ve still been doing a little self sabotage.

I’ve got two campaign blasts in my stable that took off like a rocket as soon as I put them up. Enough so that I paused the first after less than half a day and in less than four hours with the other. And I’ll pause the next campaign that eats a sizable chunk of my daily budget that rapidly. That’s just common sense. You wouldn’t want an out of control campaign bankrupting you after all.

But what isn’t reasonable is discovering that those campaigns are actually profitable, to the tune of just over 78% return for both of them over that brief period. And then, despite that fact, letting them lie there paused because you were afraid to make the adspend. Apparently, I’m perfectly comfortable spending a dollar to make $1.75 in a campaign in a day. But not $50 to make $90. Or $1,000 to make $1,800.

So this evening I did a little more analyzing. Tweaked the campaigns ever so slightly. Added a zero onto those campaign budgets.

And resumed them.

So I’m hard at it trying to throw together a fairly ridiculous number of campaigns in the latest challenge put forth at the campaign blast membership site. I decided to stretch myself quite a bit, because all of a sudden I’m seeing some real progress. Total ad spend is rapidly taking off, as are earnings right along with it.

Never underestimate having a goal. I really am having a blast!

We are a fifth of the way through and are due to end the challenge a week before Thanksgiving. And all I can say is, if I can reach this goal I set for myself, the mass quantity of turkey and stuffing consumed isn’t going to be the only reason I’m sleeping all day…

Since busting through my big blasting personal challenge, I suddenly find myself on track to spend more in Adwords this month than I have ever made in earnings in any prior month. Which, let me be perfectly honest here, kinda sorta freaks me out when I take a peek at the numbers!

Mind you, even at this early testing phase of the game this month’s results show me at just shy of a 70% return on that investment. In other words, for every $100 I spend, I would be getting back $170 in earnings.

By that logic, if anything even approaching that rate continues, I should be ecstatic to shell out many thousands of dollars a month. After all, who would possibly argue against trading $10,000 for $17,000?

Nevertheless, logic isn’t always the hands-down winner of one’s internal mind games. So until those earnings actually hit my account, I’m going to have to wage some mental battles to keep me on track…

The keywords in your account are nearing an unmanageable size.

You don’t say?

Looks like Google wants to slow me down a bit. Ah, well, they are right after all. With all the smooshes (ala ‘thisisakeywordphrase‘) in my account, I have far too many keywords with not so much as an impression in the mix. So it’s probably time to do a little housecleaning. Sure, I could just open another account, but why let things get really unruly before doing some cleaning?

So, I am going to tack on another day to my 50 blast goal deadline and spend that day pruning.