I Built a Cage For Myself – What Happened?

I started this website 4 1/2 years ago, and quickly discovered that I liked writing on the net.  Quickly on the heals of that I discovered that I could also make money writing on the web.  So once this website was up and running I started building other websites and then life kinda happened.

I had this dream of many, (btw 5 and 10), walking websites.  But somewhere along the line I was waylaid by my own laziness and needing to pay the day to day bills.

It was hard work building this site in the beginning.  I was living in Prague at the time and I did not have a history of building websites and learned and the stuff, HTML, CSS and some php only from sites on the net.  This has to be the slowest way of learning something – I am a fan of learning from others it is quicker and can save a lot of dead ends.

Year 1 I Worked Hard

And it paid off, not financially as this site is not something that was built for money.  But the site started getting a lot of visitors and worked its way to the top of the search results.

Towards the end of year 1 I bought a few other domain names for other walking sites – but by this time the thought of doing it all again from scratch on a new site hurt my head.  But I did, however, it was not done quite as well this time.

Year 2 I Thought I Worked Smart

And I am not so sure about that now.  I bought a load of domain names, lots of them are what is called exact match – these were all for a quick buck and I cared little about the sites that were built on those domain names.  Not surprisingly none of them have been successful.  I was trying to manage content for 70+ websites and getting content from anywhere as cheaply as possible – I would call this my year of spam.

Many of these domain name I have since dropped – I wasted time building garbage thinking I would make money online.  The only sites that did well were sites that I liked and spent time on, writing the content for them myself.

Some of the mad ideas I dreamed up myself and some was from various forums on the net – it was a frustrating year.

Year 3 I Started My Business Officially

The need to pay the bills pushed me away from my own sites.  I setup my small business in online marketing, and it has been fairly good.  I went to work on my business site and client sites.  My business site has done well and so have many client sites.

Now thought as you could imagine it is fairly tough during the first year of a business and I worked non stop, plus we were jumping straight into a recession – timing dear boy timing.  My own websites, including this one were left to drift in the wind.

Year 4 I Worked My Arse Off

Literally.  Business, business, business, that was it.  My writing here and my own blog more or less ceased.  The camino forum has kept going well but that has been down to the members, I read all the posts but hardly had a chance to write myself – I worked six days a week for this year.

At the end of the year I wondered what was going on.  My social life had gone mostly, my own websites were doing nothing, checking stats was dull it was just the same day after day – well I wasn’t making the time for my own sites so what did I expect?

I saw that I was heading in a direction that I did not want and decided to change.  It was hard and frighting.  To change direction I need more space and time – to achieve that I had to cut down on client work.  I set myself a target of two days per week client work and the rest for my own sites.

I had one large client and the relationship had been uncomfortable for me – so I decided to commit business suicide and stop working for them – that gave me a bit too much time for a while.  However I felt such a relief once I did that – but still very nervous about money.  By the end of March this year most of that old stuff had cleared out.

Year 5 Change

During this year I now have the time to build the sites that I want.  I write here a bit more often now.  The 70+ domains name have been cut down and in the short term, this year, I am working on three of my own sites plus this one.  My target is 10 good sites mostly in the walking travel area.

If you are reading this and you are thinking of building your own online portfollo I would give one main suggestion.  Fine something you love and stick with it, build it bigger and better than anyone has done – not building one huge site was one of my major mistakes.

It now feals like the bars on my cage are not so solid.

I really hope this does not sound like any sort of a moan as my life is good and I have a fair amount of freedom, it just helps me write stuff down to get things clear in my own head.