8 Years in IM - Made *Maybe* $2000 - Doing It Wrong - How Can I Fix It?

Hi Warriors,

First of all, I just want to say this isn't a "poor me" thread. I would really like to get to the bottom of why I can't seem to do anything right with IM.

I started out on Digital Point back in 2006. That's where my education began. I've been bangin' around webmaster forums ever since. I've had at least one active website since then as well. My first website was this horror I created on a 1 and 1 hosting account in HTML. You can still see remnants on the Wayback Machine. It was called...wait for it...weblogblender.com. It was supposed to be a blogging resource site, and I guess it sort of was in its limited ways.

I made my first money online in 2006 as well. I wrote articles. Between 2007 and 2009, I had one failed blog after another. I was kind of daft at picking out domain names. My first blog was waxingpoetic75.com which was the handle I used for a lot of things online. I had yet to understand keywords and domains. The second one was kerbloggle.com. Still, lame domain. I eventually merged this with the first one and ended up selling the whole thing which had about 160 articles on it for $60. It was online at least through 2012.

I had a couple of other sites with equally lame domains. I initially found IM in 2006 because I was unemployed and living in Vegas. Soon thereafter, I found a job, but still dabbled in my spare time. So it went until December 2008 when I was laid off from my job. At that point, I one brief stint as a webmaster...then I moved back home to North Carolina in the Spring of 2009. I went 18 months with no job. I lived with my parents and made a little money here and there freelancing and writing for Demand Studios.

I did have a part-time job for a couple days a week. Then I finally found a full-time job. All the while, I worked and worked trying to find a way to make more money online. I tried arbitrage. I tried systems. I built sites. I tried affiliate programs. I read ShoeMoney. I read John Chow. I read Problogger. In fact, there's probably not much you could tell me that I don't know when it comes to Internet Marketing.

In 2010, I built one of my current sites...the one in my signature. I haven't worked on it regularly in quite a while. The problem with that site is when I started it, it was all over the place. I had "experts" review it and tell me that I needed to "choose a niche". This is one of the most difficult things for me because I have such a wide array of interests. ProWebWriter was bringing in about $100 per year in Adsense revenue. Woohoo! I let it ride for a couple years. I thought, "I'm going to do it different. Maybe it will work."

As my whims changed, I eventually decided to split the site and move some of the subjects to new domains. I had about 3 main subjects that I liked to write about: writing, android apps, and A.D.D. So, I bought 2 more domains a year or so ago and moved everything to their respective new homes. ProWebWriter dropped from about 4000 traffic a month to gosh, I don't even know. I haven't checked in so long. It's down to about 10 a day. I'm sure I made some major mistakes with the move like not doing 301 redirects, etc. I honestly don't care anymore. I keep the site because the domain has some age on it...like 12 or 13 years.

I did a foray into PLR and had a PLR site for a while. Because I had maintained a full-time job, my work on my sites was steady, but often out of focus and fragmented. I bought books on making money and SEO. I tried doing an Amazon affiliate store in a tight local niche. I made a make money online blog because I LOVE writing about Internet Marketing. I'm published on Kindle. I have ebooks for sale here and there. I tried, and tried and tried and tried and tried. Then I tried some more. One thing I am not is a quitter.

More recently, I've created a new marketing company where a partner and myself offer a variety of services just to help small, local businesses get online. As an added service, I've also created an area directory site. I've put in a ton of time writing, building, and working. I work on it everyday. So far, we've probably put about 60 bucks in the whole shebang. It's pretty new as well...but it's not doing jack.

No one has signed up for our list. We've had one taker on a free listing in our directory. Perhaps this is where I am falling short on everything. Perhaps I don't have the ability to target or drive traffic effectively or at any real duration. Perhaps I'm simply doing it all wrong. When you can't even give away things, how in the hell are you supposed to sell anyone anything?

What do you think, Warriors? I don't lack ambition or action...I have even thrown out a little cash here and there. I'm simply tired of failing. If you read all this and have something constructive to add, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Here's hoping your words will help not only me, but maybe another Warrior on the forums.