September Journal Update

Tasks Accomplished

Recipe Site

I’ve expanded my affiliate links by adding a hosting affiliate link (not planned, but done in the spur of the moment) as well as the coaching link for the UK visitors. Now if I could only get an affiliate program out of the US official coaching program that would be great, but I guess I’ll have to wait for that.

I’ve kind of failed on the “6 recipes per week” front. I’ve fallen back to a minimum of 3 and managed to keep that up. I think with all the stuff going on the 6 was a bit unrealistic.

I’ve started work on the ingredient clean-up, but it has been mainly focused on the recipes or ingredients that have been directly related to my newsletters. Run into a few issues with the interface or lack-of-thereof for managing recipes. With the book getting priority had to put the ingredient stuff on hold.

On the plus side I did add a few small tweaks to the site here and there:

• fixed an issue with recipe moderation
• setup a new comments system (from fb to livefyre)
• updated ingredient categories
• loads of caching updates
• fixed a few typos here and there

Lastly I’ve also upgraded to NewRelic Pro, which I’ll probably do a separate post about, especially as it relates to caching, performance and earning…

Dieting Books

The book really has been a priority, especially as the September deadline was missed. But it wasn’t all uneventful, as I picked a cover and finalised the content. With the recipes selected, and the extra chapter added the book is now with an editor (hired through oDesk – great experience so far, worth a post on it’s own).

Other

I’ve prepared a new site for my sister [CS] – she’s decided to do some serious blogging too.

As I upgraded to the Pro version of NewRelic I’ve also separated all my sites into individual applications for logging on their system.

Lessons Learned

One big lesson from this month was the value of performance. I’ve done some tweaking on the site and as I’ve added caching not only did my pages get faster, but my Adsense revenue went up. Might be a bit early for absolutely conclusive statements, but it definitely looked like a bit more than a coincidence.

A few failures on my part this month were all related to a bit over-ambitious goals… As I’m juggling several projects and a partial day-job (it’s complicated…) I must really learn to remember, when planning, that the hours I have in a week have to be split between tasks and projects.

Finances & Stats

Advertising wise it was one of the best months recently. And after adding non-adsense sources of income it possibly could be my best month ever…

Traffic has been good on my main site, butstill working on building up all the other ones.

Tasks Planned

• Publish the book [DB]
• Create a sales page for the book [DB]
• Create a poster & mouse pad design [RS]
• Setup a basic template for the wordpress blog [CS]
• Move to new ingredient system [RS]
• Prepare a better plan for November