Wow. I was sitting and watching TV while eating my breakfast this morning and noticed my browser having a link to one of my websites. Just for kicks I decided to look at it on a mobile device. I hadn’t done that yet with any of my sites. Amazing. That’s how to describe what came up. I was pleasantly supprised for certain.
At this point there is just a home page and a couple legal pages. And of course the blog/journal. It made me want to spend all day working on websites getting them ready for the masses as soon as possible. I am excited about getting these sites ready. There just aren’t enough days in the week for all the hours I have to put in.
Each website has focus on what it is about for its own reason or Google won’t like it. However for some reason GOD seems to be leading me to show a glimpse of HIS the soft and welcoming side through all my websites along with their primary focus. Even those which have nothing to do with Christianity nor religion. Anyway…
Pretty busy since the last update. My next task is to set up email campaigns. In web mastering they call it a campaign when an email news letter is created. When someone decides to focus on selling stuff through email, they also call that a campaign too. I want to make it easy for my visitor to get the information they were searching for when they came to this website, but I’m not interested in trying to spin that information into a sales pitch just so someone might spend money. There are, unfortunatly, many webmasters out there that create sites for exactly that reason though.
It seems like there is a conflict for me in this. I have websites that draw people’s interest. Some will return and follow read what I have to say. They want to see my message. Each of my messages are in niches that also have a lot of products that people want to buy. So, is it OK if I create links to those products and make a commission from the vendor if someone buys something? Something they want to buy even if I didn’t make the commission for them buying the same exact thing? The price is the same either way.
Do I need to be careful about this? Absolutely. I don’t want to fall into the trap of following my greed or ambition and going after the “low hanging fruit” money wise. It would be easy for me to push a teeny weeny bit and make a big pile of money, that doesn’t make it OK according to my integrity.
Hosting this website costs money every single month. I just spent $295 to buy 10 ISBN numbers for my books. To copyright each book will cost $60ish. Domain names costs about $15 apiece per year. Makers of the best WordPress plugins, along with services like the autoresponder have increasing prices as the activity I have increases. It seems like everyone has their hand stuck out expecting me to drop cash continuously.
In my late 60s I am drawing Social Security now but it falls hundreds a month short of my needs even without all these costs, so I had to get a day job just to pay all my regular bills. I will need that extra income indefinitely. I do have a low supply of excess funds now to cover all these things though.
I refuse donations. If someone really wants to donate, I will put recommendations in for their donations in the future. In fact, although my biggest site would easily fall under the guidelines for which I could get a 501C3 tax free status, I choose to leave it in the “for profit” arena and pay my taxes. Jesus Himself said, “Render unto Ceaser that which is Ceaser’s.” So paying my legitimate taxes is something my Christian integrity requires me to do. Paying for each thing GOD is requiring me to do is required by GOD Himself. Credit is not a good thing in this situation. I don’t believe in the “play now pay” later approach. I don’t know if or when any money will actually show up so I will continue to just pay as I go.
Wait, that last two paragraphs got twisted. I was saying it would be easy for me to forget my “calling” is to produce a message and spread it to as many people as possible. I am never supposed to pervert the message by “spinning” any part of it into increasing even the honest parts of income I can make. Any income, and there will be some, will be things people want to buy without my pushing or even encouraging them to buy. I will suggest people to get things like their collar and leash for their own dog and other tools, but it will be about things they need for them, not for my income. I want them to buy something only if they decide to seeing a need outside of my influence.
So getting back to the progress report. I have some print book related tasks that will finally result in me getting my first ever paper book published.
My work on the ISBN numbers and copyright will take me doing tasks then having to wait for government responses. Along side of that, I will set up the campaigns for my news letters to all start emailing out once people start signing up. So it looks like I may spend a good part of the day watching videos from the autoresponder service. (sigh)
And I realized today that I need to create categories and tags for these blog posts on all my websites. That will take several hours too.
Later readers.