photo credit: me and the sysop

Who knew, even talking about affiliate marketing gets you kicked off tumblr.

Well, apparently my little tumblr site was just too black hat for them and they suspended my account. As I discovered when I attempted to put up a little update there last night, and confirmed via email today.

Well, maybe not… seems to be all kinds of affiliate links there. But then, he’s Shawn Collins, and I imagine that makes a little more difference than some little peon like myself.

I’m not sure if I agree that my little site met their definition of spam:

Spam. Users that do not publish meaningful content, use deceptive means to generate revenue or traffic, or whose primary purpose is affiliate marketing, will be suspended.

I wouldn’t say my primary purpose of that site was affiliate marketing. Yes, there were affiliate links on there, but it was certainly not a site I was expecting to see large numbers of sales from. Just my thoughts on the process as well as a little of what I would manage to accomplish on an awfully granular level. Oh, and a handful of things I was grateful for for the day of that post, which I found to be the most useful part of the whole process. Things that probably would be fine throwing up here, quite honestly — sometimes I just complicate things to complicate things, it seems!

Irregardless, it’s gone. So be it. Luckily, I fed it to soup.io, so at least I can recover the post if I’d ever want them back. If you happen to be the curious type, you can check it out there.

Let this be a lesson: self-hosting is the only way your data is yours.

photo credit: kozumel

In a way, I’m itching to get back into the IM world, but tax season has been fun so far. (Yes, I’m probably odd, but hey, what can I say…) We’re around a third of the way through our main portion of tax season, and I’m amazed I don’t dream in numbers or depreciation schedules at this point…

One thing I haven’t been doing much of is checking my stats. I’ll admit I do much more of that than is necessary. Once a day is probably fine - heck, once a week is OK as far as that goes - but I used to find myself checking every few hours. But with my mind occupied with other people’s numbers, I haven’t bothered to check my accounts for quite some time. Relatively speaking, of course! And what do you know, while I’ve been otherwise occupied, I find myself doing almost as well this month as far as commissions as I did last month. Which was my best month of IM income ever.

Passive income is a wonderful thing…

So, I come to the only conclusion remaining: I’ve got to quit my job.

Well, maybe not quite yet. A bit more real current-wage-level-replacing IM income would probably be a good idea first!

But I can dream a little, can’t I?

• Start a project.
• Somewhere in the process, need to do research to continue that project.
• While finding the info needed, stumble across something really interesting that triggers another potential in my mind.
• That something becomes a whole other project.
• Rinse. Repeat.

Right now, too many domains waiting for development, too many half-finished ideas involved in those developments, too many potentials to possibly meet all of them. Especially when more of all three find their way into my head regularly. Too many choices is leading to decision paralysis, and nothing is getting completely done.

The simplest solution? I’m just going to have to resign myself to the fact that every domain doesn’t need development tomorrow, or that every idea doesn’t need to come to fruition. And that potentials are just that.

Resolved: Tomorrow, one thing, any one thing, is getting completely done…

• I can get a decent steak in just about any little town for a song, at least compared to what I’d be paying in the ‘big city.’ The local’s will still complain about the cost, but obviously they’ve never had to pay $50 for a good steak…

But it’s really awful for others.

• Craving a little fresh sushi? Or for that matter, some reasonably fresh, non-local seafood of any type? Good luck with that.