Jerry D. Russell dot Com

If you got here because you were looking for a page on please don’t feed the writer or The SpunPuppy, you’re in the right place!  It was a hard choice, but i had to make the decision to combine the content from those blogs with Jerry D. Russell.com.  In the end, the other two blogs had stagnated, and the content is all relevant here, so the change makes sense.

Please pardon the dust while I work a few things out with the site and layout.  Code snippets from SpunPuppy are broken, and the ads obviously need attention.  Generally I would build the new theme in a sandbox, but the added pages and features of the other sites broke the template I was using, so the change needed to be immediate.  I’ll be working through this for the next few days, so be patient, it will all come together in the end!

If you’re like me and have been running several blogs for a while you find that eventually there comes a time when you have to look at everything that you’ve been working on and decide if all the effort is still worth it.  Are these blogs still satisfying to you and your readers?  If they were monetized, are they making you any money and most importantly, do you still have the passion on the topic that you had when you started?

If the answer to the first two questions is no, then you have to ask yourself what you need to do to change the way things are working.  Do you need to put more time and effort into posts, or is it that you just need to go find yourself a few new affiliate partners?  If your page rank is dropping, do you just need to generate more inbound links, or have you managed to get in with waht Google considers to be the “wrong crowd?”  Define the issues and then tackle the problems.

If the answer to the third question is either “no” or “I’m not sure” then it’s probably time to move on to other things.  if the blog in question can handle a different type of content, just start writing what inspires you.  You may lose a reader or two, but in the end you will gain more than you lost.  If the blog is completely niche and you find that you can’t easily move on to other things, then it’s most likely time to put up an “out of business” sign, and maybe load it down with advertising until the domain expires.

This is the unfortunate position I find myself in at the moment.  I’ve got a trio of blogs, one of which I’ve been maintaining for years.  Each just dropped to a PR2 or below and none of them holds my interest any longer.  One can be incorporated into this blog without much of a hitch, one already has been, but the last…  Well…  It’s just gonna have to go.

There’s no way I can repurpose it or move on to something else with it.  it doesn’t get enough traffic to warrant leaving it dormant until it expires, because it won’t make me a penny.  I can’t think of anything better to do with it than to milk the last few posts I can out of it, then let it die gracefully, because in the end, it’s already terminal.  i have no passion for the subject any longer.

That of course brings us to this particular corner of the web.  this blog is taking on aspects of the other two that I’m incorporating here.  I think that in the end this will be a benefit to everyone, because I’ll have more content to post, more variety of topics and a lot more relevant information (along witha  few asides.)  I see a benefit, and its got me excited.  That means I’ll write more, and that’s a good thing!

Do take some time and analyze your current blogs every now and again.  Beating a dead horse only prolongs the inevitable, and while you’re busy beating it, others may be falling by the wayside as well.

I set myself with the task of making $100.00 per day on Friday and Saturday.  And I did it.  Granted, with a PR5 website in the mix it’s fairly easy sometimes to pull a decent chunk of that $100.00 goal in just a matter of minutes, but there are other days when it can be a real challenge.

Not only can making the money be a challenge, but keeping my content up to my own standards can be difficult as well.  I’ve never subscribed to the theory of “paid post, short post, paid post, short post, paid post, real post” In my opinion ALL of my posts are real posts and shoul be of value to at least some of my readers in one way or another.  I’d much rather make no money at all on a given day than to make my goal by posting chaff that nobody is interested in.

I’ll continue to keep evryone updated on daily income totals, or perhaps just weekly totals, I’m not sure which just yet.

Until then, have a great day!

I’ve recently begun challenging myself to meet minimum income goals for the day.  Most days I keep these pretty mild, say $60.00 per day.  It doesn’t sound like much, but if you add that up over a 5 day work week you get $300.00, or $1,200.00 per month.  Not great as a primary incoms source, but nothing to be scoffed at as a supplimental income. I’ve had mixed success with this so far, but I usually come pretty close to the mark.

Yesterday I started the day with a few great opportunities presented to me.  I could see that making $60.00 would be pretty simple, so i raised the bar on myself and shot for $100.00 in earnings for the day.  Not only did I make it, I exceeded it by $21.00.  I’m not saying that everyone can make that amount of money in a single day, but it’s worth setting a goal that’s achievable and then going for it.  If you don’t make it today, shoot for it again tomorrow.

The key though here is that making money takes work.  There is no get rich quick scheme, there is no magic bullet.  Follow your passions and the effort you put out may not feel like work, but the rewards will follow because the effort was there.

Today’s goal is set at $100.00 as well. I just need to see if I can pull it off twice in a row.  I’ll let you all know how I did tomorrow.

Has anyone else been hearing crickets around here?  I know I have.  It’s not that I’ve given up on the whole blogging thing.  Usually when there are no posts here it means that the blogs I run that are paying my bills are taking all of my time.  This last month has been no exception, but that isn’t the only reason that I’ve been absent in this venue.

In the past month I and my family have had to deal with more than our share of personal issues.  My wife has been having difficulties at work, we’ve had a few external family problems and then there was the kicker.  My two year old son has been diagnosed with Autism.

Needless to say, news of that nature can cause a drop in productivity for most people, and I am no exception.  Most of my time in the past 30 days has been devoted to making sure that his need are going to be met in both the long and short term.  i’m a Dad, that’s my job.  All other responsibilities fall far lower on my list of things to do than taking care of my family.

Things have settled into something like a routine again and wth that I’ve taken a hard look at the time I have to devote to work vs. the time I cannot help but devote to family.  In that light I realized that I was spread too thin in the world of writing and blogging and have been getting ready to shut down a few projects I’ve been working on.  At the same time, I’ve begun work on another, but that’s a different story and I’ll get to it later.

For now just let me say that there will be far more frequent posts here.  At the very least i’ll post a daily summary of earnings if there are any, and there usually are. Hopefully this can inspire others out there to make a litte cash for their Christmases as well.

For now I have some things I must attend to.  I’ll be back no later than Monday to get this ball rolling again.

Peace, I’m out.