Sunday, October 11, 2009

Decisions and Changes and Pass Me an Aspirin.... I Have a Headache From Thinking Too Hard....

Well I've got some changes to think about. About a year ago I joined quite a few affiliate programs.... you can see their links and banners over on my side bar.... or on my web site A Lil Enchanted. I was desperate to find a way to earn money working from home because we were struggling just to buy food. I put 100's of hours into building my web site and keeping it updated and even more trying to advertise my site and get some sales. The first year of my web site was free... but as of October 28 (which also happens to be my birthday).... I will have to pay $15 for the site and another $15 for my domain. Not really a bad price at all..... I was hoping the business would at least earn enough to pay for this come renewal time.... but it hasn't. I also have a mirror site which is free on Free Webs.... I started my site there then moved it to Microsoft Office Live.... I never took down the Free Webs site 'just in case'. So now I have to decide whether or not to pay to keep the site up and running. I have had one sale from it and earned a whopping $2.... so it's not doing well at all.... but I also put a huge amount of time into building it..... so just losing all of the work I did on it leaves me feeling at a loss. Of course I could keep the free mirror site.... but to be successful in a web biz I really need to have my own domain.... then again I could keep the domain and use it for my blog. This is really a bad time for this to come due.... we're broke from all of the birthdays.... I made an accounting mistake which cost me $70 in bank fees.... and my car tag has to be renewed by the 28th as well..... so money is very tight right now. So my options are:

A) Pay the $30 to keep the site and domain and hope that it does better this year.... www.alilenchanted.com ... that is if I can scrape up the $30 by the 28th.

B) Pay the $15 to keep the domain and use it for my free mirror site on Free Webs (which has limited features, ads, and a few other issues) http://www.freewebs.com/enchantingtreasures/

C) Keep the domain for $15 and use it for my blog

D) Let the domain and web site go and just keep the free mirror site and hope to drive traffic there and generate sales from my blog.

E) Forget the whole thing and just drop both sites

Now admittedly I haven't done much to promote my site since I started my blog because I've just been enjoying the blog world... even though I started the blog to help promote my site. And I haven't been keeping my site updated since then either.... I've put all of my online time into my blog.... so both sites need updating at this point.

Also... whatever I decide I will still be here blogging my lil heart out.... but I'll have to find time to work on the business should I decide to keep it. And also should I decide to keep it I would like to change my blog layout and have a small column on each side with a posting section in the middle.... I would put my business links etc in one column and my blog related links etc in the other. I don't know how to get 3 columns on this blog... I don't see any 3 column templates on blogger. So where do I find those??? I've seen many other Blogger blogs with 3 columns.... where did they get them??? I can't afford to pay someone to design a layout for me (remember I tried to win one... but I didn't get it).

So I'm asking for opinions.... and advice on the business issue. And I'm asking where to find a free 3 column layout for this blog.

A Lil Enchanted,
~LaShan~

13 comments:

Wendy said...

Sometimes I've let go of things that took alot of work. It was hard, but the fact that I felt relieved once it was done, told me that I had made the right decision.

And some things I have fought to hold on to. It all depends on what is most important in your life.

I realize that is no help at all. Ugh.

Wendy said...

Oh, to adjust your blog to 3 columns:

http://www.bloggerbuster.com/2007/07/create-three-column-blogger-template.html

Sharkbytes (TM) said...

Hmmm. An affiliate program that only made $2 in a year is worse than Google Adsense. Have you looked at Chitika. It's a little better. See http://justthrowmoney.blogspot.com/2009/09/first-results-from-chitika.html

Dorothy said...

I wish you luck for whatever you choose I don't make any money on our site and I don't know how however, maybe a few of your readers will have some ideas..

Blessings and the best of luck..hope you stay blogging so we can share life.

Dorothy from grammology
grammology.com

A Lil Enchanted said...

Thanks so much Wendy.... as you can see it worked! And it was pretty quick and easy.... even though I was terrified that I would mess up my whole blog.

Thanks for the info Sharkbytes... I'll look into Chitika. The programs on my web site are shopping sites... but I'm always open to suggestions.

Thanks Dorothy... I'll be here blogging no matter what I decide to do with the business :)

So what do you all think of the new 3 column layout? Is it too busy? I still have some tweeking to do and I have to work on my blog roll :)

A Lil Enchanted,
~LaShan~

Grampy said...

LaShan you are looking good. I mean your blog of course.As far as I am concerned your domain name is who you are.I feel blogging is the way to go.You can get templates for shopping blogs and set up a store. I have a website that I don't use. I have played with it in the past.Whatever you do, please keep blogging.

Chatty Crone said...

Prayers being sent your way to might the right decision.

Unknown said...

i love the 3 column blogs, this one looks good. do you have a pay pal account or an alertpay?

have a great day la shan...hugz!

Mom's Place said...

hello..here are the sites that they offer free 3 columns templates.

www.BTemplates.com
www.ourblogtemplates.com

they have templates for business also and its all free.

Keep on blogging.

Kat from Philippines

KAT said...

Hey LaShan!

I love the new look!! You did a good job converting the 2 column into the 3 column.

I sent you an email with a possible solution to the website thing.

Let me know,
Hugs!!
Kat

StaceyC4 said...

Good job on getting the 3 columns up and running. Doing that sort of thing terrifies me! I was really hoping to make some money on-line, as well. Writing is my passion but the sites that I am working with only pay one penny (or less!) per page view! I'd have to have like seventy jillion people go on there to make it work!!

Sherri said...

I love the new look too LaShan:) It looks great! I did the switch to 3 column myself too and it was a little nerve racking wondering if things would get totally messed up. I used http://www.thecutestblogontheblock.com/ and it was very easy to do. I hope things start to pay off for you in great ways.

Curtis said...

Quite effective information, thank you for your post.
free games