Work at Home Mom: Streamlining for the New Year

I am embracing 2008 with renewed faith, hope and enthusiasm while taking with me the lessons of the year past.

As I enter the fourth quarter of my first blogging year, I have quite a lot of lessons learned.

First, I now admit that despite best intentions I couldn't keep up with my initial blogging schedule. I wasn't doing much writing offline before and that explains how I was able to write so much online. As new projects and involvements came up, I found that I have set quite unrealistic demands on myself. Many of my blogs suffered.

It was quite a surprise, therefore, that I still received an Adsense payment and am now building up to another payment soon. Not bad in relation to the efforts I have put in.

Of course, not all my blogs earn the same way. In fact, this blog is not even earning its keep. Only a few are self-sufficient and show promise of being consistent producers. These are the informational blogs.

One mistake I made out of sheer enthusiasm was to get all my blogs their own domain names. It wasn't really that big an investment, just $20 for a year of private listing at Yahoo. Some blogs have already earned back the year's cost in the first Adsense check, and continue to earn enough to pay for a second year's fee plus a little more to make the effort worthwhile. The others just have to be canceled, to be reverted back to blogspot addresses.

I am keeping the domain names of some blogs, though, even if they're not "earning blogs." Manila Mom has always been my "flagship" blog and I'm not giving up http://www.manilamom.com/,
no way! I am going to integrate our family blog here, though, instead of having to update 4 Dogs, 3 Pigs and a Family separately.

Likewise, I am keeping http://www.maiajose.com/ and http://www.caferomanza.com/ in relation to my upcoming writing projects even if they do not actually earn as blogs. We'll see this coming year if the projects can support them.

I intend to continue with my experiment. I hope the blogspot blogs still continue to earn even in trickles, at least to cover the previous year's domain costs. Hopefully, in time they may even pull in a profit.

I also intend to maximise those blogs that are performing well. I'll try to at least regularize my postings, even just every other week.

I'm so sorry that I just couldn't bloghop as I used to. Thank you so much to all the online friends I have made who continue to drop by for a quick visit. I'll return the visit soon, I promise!

Here's to joyful beginnings, everyone!!!