I shall begin this post by donning my enlightened despot cap and claiming that wisdom (or maybe just a working knowledge of economics) is knowing when to quit.

I began working as a webmaster with one simple goal.  I wanted, and still do, to own and manage a “big board” forum.  I’ve always been fascinated by forums but, I’ve never been able to create and grow a unique community.  In around 5 years of online work, I still have not approached this goal.  I’ve not even come close.  Over the years, I’ve dabbled in many other niches, but none have really ever caught my fancy.  I buy or start a site, use it for a while, and then let it go.  I never give the sites the time, effort, or passion that they deserve.  When they’re mere shadows of their former selves, I sell them-hopefully at a cost high enough to recover my investment.  My goal with sites like this has always been to make money.  This, however, is not enough to be a success.

After 5 years of online work, I still consider myself a novice in the webmaster game. I’ve turned a profit here and ther, but I still know nothing about web marketing, nothing about programming, nothing about monetizing a website when it is getting traffic. As such, it is time for me to tender my resignation. I’ve been a monumental failure in this business and I need to withdraw and reqroup. I’m not pulling out completely, I’m just liquidating all the sites that I currently own and starting over with just this blog. Until I know what I’m doing, I’m going to try and refrain from proliferating the spread of useless sites clogging the net.

This leads me to a metamorphosis for this blog. Starting when I get around to it, this blog will have a new focus…the world according to me!

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Don’t let anyone ever tell you that the weather in Arkansas is anything but crazy.  Over the weekend, highs were close to 70. Yesterday, the temperature was 60 degrees Fahrenheit with heavy thunderstorms. Right now, it is 29 degrees and we could have as much as a foot of snow on the ground!  It may be as much as 10 or 15 years since I’ve seen this much snow!

Snow day!

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I’m sure that more experienced bloggers would tell me to handle myself with a little more dignity and class, but I can’t help it this is just crazy!

Sam2k.com is being linked to from the GREATEST TECH BLOG ON THE INTERNET - Engadget! ( Check it out!) I submitted a tip to them about Vista SP1 x64 being available for download and included a link back to my post on the subject. So now they’re using my screen snip and linking to my blog! Now, that post is being syndicated through rss feeds and even ended up on ZDNet! You really can’t imagine this feeling until you’ve felt it. Its awesome!

I’m still not getting any love from Digg, but I’ll survive. An hour in and already 400 unique visitors. Man that’s going to ruin my averages.

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So, if you saw this post six months ago, then I guess I can’t really blame you if you’re somewhat skeptical about any statement coming from me regarding me actually posting on this blog in any manner that resembles regularity. I must confess, I’ve been much less than diligent in my blogging.  In fact, it appears that I’ve only made one post in the last 6 months!  I really must rectify this situation!  And so I shall.

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So…

Welcome to the all new Sam2k.com! It’s been a year since I’ve done any blogging. At all.  MasterTheWeb.org is dead.  Go figure.

A lot has changed in the past year.  I’ve finished my first year of college and am now a Marketing and Management major.  I was promoted to a supervisory position at my previous job and am now working as a wireless sales consultant at an independant authorized retailer for AT&T.  So, my internet empire has hardly taken off, but I’ve learned a lot about the real world.  Now, I’m going to apply my knowledge of the real world to the internet and hopefully start doing a lot more blogging about diverse topics.  I’m still going to blog about the internet, but not nearly as much as previously.  I’ll be blogging about Technology, Politics, Money, and whatever else I feel like.  As you sit there reading this post, I hope you’re as excited about this new direction and are willing to join me on this new adventure!

Until my next post…

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It’s been two and a half months since my last confession *er* blog post.

Let’s see, what have I been up to? After I earned a payout from Google I sold off most of my adsense earning sites. I’m not quite sure why, but I think it had something to do with trying new things. Then I got busy with working nearly 40 hours a week at Magic Spring and kind of neglected it all.

But I’m back active in the game now. I’ve bought several sites and sold a few more. I’ve also invested quite a bit of money for me into the development of three websites. One, ProxAce, is already having returns. The other two still need some work. I was actually going to move this blog to one of those sites but there seems to be a few hitches in the system. If I ever do get it transfered then I’ll be blogging about a lot more than the web.

Well, there’s a quick update.

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There are two reasons that I writing this blog post. The first is because I was looking at Awstats the other day and I found that someone had found this blog while looking for advice on how to evalutate their goals and this cause me to think that maybe I should have more posts around general topics like this rather than all of them focusing on me. The other is that I’ve become pretty busy between work and my senior year of high school and if I want to accomplish any more of the webmastering goals that I’ve set for myself, then I need to evaluate my goals and see which ones are best for me to pursue.

Find out where you are at.
Having goals is all well and good, but if you have goals but they aren’t relevant to where you are and what you are doing then you have a problem. There is no way that you can know where you are going, if you don’t first know where you are. Since this is my blog, we’ll talk about me and my goals, unless someone else wants to volunteer themself. Two of the goals that I set for myself were relatively easy to reach. They were earning a payout from Google Adsense and Getting a high PR website. If you’re goals are easy to reach then this tells you that they were already there for you, you just had to reach—which is a good lesson to learn early because most things in life are hard.

Figure out where you’re going.
If you know where you’re at then the next step is to figure out where you’re going. Ideally this should invlolve some praying and meditating on God’s word, but failing that, at least give it some thought. There are two things you should consider. Where do I want to be at y, and where do I want to be in xy. This is where short term and long term goals come in. If you have a definite end goal, then you can make your short term goals complement your long term goal or aid your progress in reaching it.

What if I don’t know where I’m going?
Why are you here? What is your purpose in life? If you can’t answer these questions then you have something in common with the other 6 billion people living on this earth: you don’t know why you are here or what your purpose is in life.

Evaluating Goals

I know where I’m going, they’re just so much that I want to do before I get there. How do I decide? There may not be an “I” in team, but if you rearrange the letters then there is a “me” and you are all that matters when it comes to evaluating your goals. I’m not talking about decisions that affect the lives of those around you, I’m talking about goals for your own life. Goals that affect those around you are far too complex to be covered in a single blog post. If you have your list of goals then the only thing you can do is give serious thought about what really want to do, and what you’d kinda like to make a stop at on the way to your end point. If at all possible then find ways to combine goals. For instance, I know that I need to learn PHP if I am going to be a successful webmaster, but I also know that it is covered in the Computer Science degree that I will be pursuing in the Fall. So there is no need for me to take the time know to learn all that I need to know about PHP. That will come when I need it. I’m not talking about procrastination, excuse my use of this four letter word, I’m talking about goal management. Some times it really is best to put things off, but when you do, put something in its place.

What if I change my mind?
You’re a human. That’s what you do. Humans are emotional creatures with chaning hopes, dreams, and desires. If your interests change then let your goals adapt to them.

What next?
You know where you’re at, you know where you’re going, and you have a general idea of how you’re getting there. That’s all you need. Use some improvisation, be daring, you don’t need it step by step. Live life, have fun, and keep your goals in mind. Keep a strict time frame on your goals, but don’t stress out reaching them. You can always move back the time frame.

I hope I’ve done more than just blow hot air with this post. If you like what I’ve written then leave me a comment. If not then I’m sorry and I’ll start working on my goal of become a good motivational speaker forthwith. Or Not.

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I don’t have a lot of time, so I just wanted to report that since the Big Daddy update has apparently finalized, I’ve just gotten my first PR5! I now have PR 5,4,3,2 and 1 index page. Many people will tell you that PR doesn’t really matter, so when I have some free time I’ll explore whether or not I can make more money off of a PR5 website than a none PR5.

PS. I’ve also just noticed that a site that’s just sitting on my vps has gone to PR3 without any promotion.

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I am very happy with January. The end of January sees me with 3 or 4 new websites all of which are getting lots of traffic and making money. In total I made $20 this month from Adsense and about a dollar from various other networks that I tried on some of my sites. I still don’t have much time to develop any major sites, so my plan now is to get sites that can pretty much manage themselves while increasing my ad revenue.

I’m still eagerly awaiting the coming PR update because once my sites get some solid PR I can sell advertisements on them and make better money than Adsense alone is paying.

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As you might have noticed, I haven’t updated MasterTheWeb in almost two weeks. This is because I haven’t had the time. My course load at school has sky rocketed giving me hours of homework every night. This isn’t much fun for me, but its what I have to do.

So what this means is that I’m getting to spend a lot less time online working on my webmastering. For instance, I don’t have time to work on php any more. Hopefully I can start that back up again in the summer.

Anyway, I’ll still update MasterTheWeb when I have something worth saying and I have the time.

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