Tag Archives: Pergola

What’s that saying about old dogs and new tricks?


Or, more appropriately for me – old cats?

In my ongoing pursuit of supplemental income I’ve mentioned that I’ve been doing some content writing for a website that I run with my friend Eve. I know you’ve all checked it out at least once and clicked on an ad or two for me right? What? You haven’t? Oh, c’mon – here, check out the pergola design page so you can all the wonder possibilities out there :-) I’ll wait…………..

But seriously folks (and thanks if you actually bothered to do that!) I’ve been ramping up the writing for the site updating pages and writing more articles for a corresponding wordpress blog that feeds to the site and hey now – we’ve sold 10 ebooks since Feb! W00t! Five of them in April alone. Adsense revenue has taken off in the last two months and I actually got a payment from them this month (threshold is $100 before they issue). I had to learn obviously about pergolas in order to write intelligently on them and then I had to start learning the basics of SEO so that I could drive traffic and interest to the site. Those concepts were not too hard to absorb really.

However….

Now Eve is bringing me in on new client contracts she gets to help support other small business owner’s sites.  Since she also has a full time day job she wants to train me on some more in depth internet market researching skills which I can then translate to our own site and to another one we want to launch this year as well as take some income from her client contracts to ease her work load and increase the services she can provide them. So now I am reading manuals and learning a whole new software and how to analyze the data it spits out and…..aack!

I mean – this isn’t a TOTAL 180 swing from accounting but it is close! Of course, my math oriented brain wants to create statistical analysis out of it all and actually the initial programs are doing just that but now I have to learn how to read them. It’s like learning a new language with PPC & ORV & CPC and…yowza!

Marketing and writing – whodu thunk?

There are many nights when I just have to sit back and say “Brain. Full. Need. Sleep.To.Reset.”

And then I dream about pie charts.

Mmmmm..pie.

I need a beer.

Have a good weekend :-)

Oh Hi


February is the Monday of months according to the always currently relevant Garfield The Cat. It’s also clearly Blogging Prevention Month around here.

My writing energies are all used up by the pergola site. With the ebook on sale – one book sold last week! – I have to ramp up the promotion which means article writing to drive traffic and then updating some of the old pages of the main site.

Then there’s Pinterest. I’ve been ignoring that latest trend. I noticed a few folks posting from it on Facebook. OK, so in reality I got pissed off by friends flooding their timelines with stuff. It was a deluge! Yuck. Too much Pinterest spam and I was about to block that app. Then…as I was watching stats on the pergola site, I noticed an incoming link from there. Hey now! Someone had “pinned” our site! That’s cool.

So, I joined & started playing. And as I set up my boards for fun and trolled for those aforementioned Facebook friends to connect with them, I pinned the site & put it in the Gardening category. That pin? Was “liked” & repinned over 25 times in an hour. By total strangers! I clicked on the website stats and? 5 hits in 5 minutes. 1 signed up for our email list! No book sales, but I suspect now that the email series I write previewing the book is rolling, I think those will convert.

Meanwhile, I already found two recipes I want to try on other peoples boards.

IOW, when I am not working, writing for PDIY, monitoring the teen study habits, running, doing taxes, or driving oldest around to his job & appointments…well, I’m having deep debates on Facebook & the Aug Moms email list, watching my tv shows piling up on the dvr, and I’m pinning crap.

But I turned off the Pinterest Auto feed to Facebook & Twitter – that shit was annoying as hell.