moderndaypeasants.com

Something Is Amiss

As a child growing up in the suburbs, outside the city of St. Louis in the 70’s, I played heavily and worried little.

During High School in the mid to late 80’s, I began working at a job, partied heartily and found love for the first time. However, something is amiss. I can’t figure out what it is.

After High School, I spent 3 years in the US Army and learned about fear. I also worked very hard and partied even harder. During this time, I experimented with love a bit more and shared a quick insignificant 1 year marriage mistake.

In 92 I got married for the second time and a few years later my beautiful baby girl was born. My daughter became the love of my life but something was still amiss.

A few years later, the honeymoon was over and so was the marriage. Divorce was quick and swift.

I spent the next 4 years in a blur of hard work struggling to help support my daughter but remaining sure to be her dad and spending as much time as possible with her.

In 1999 one of my best friends and I discovered we were ideal soul mates. She had two great kids from a previous marriage and they along with my daughter all got a long as loving siblings. Later we married and my son was born shortly after. We have the perfect family unit but something is still badly amiss.

The next eight or so years are spent raising children, working in good careers and living well rounded social lives but I still wasn’t satisfied and it was beginning to eat away at me.

I have to figure out what it is. I have a great wife, great kids, everybody is healthy, we both have really good jobs, we make decent money and have good friends.

What could be wrong? What is at that is so amiss?

In 2008 at the age of 37, I finally figured out the problem.

I needed more! I needed my life to count for something more than just family, love, good friends and stable careers.

What I truly needed was the freedom to grow personally. I wanted to create and help others with my creation. I wanted to work for myself but also wanted to be paid for it. The question was how to do it? I mean… my whole life I have been taught to get a good job and try to make as much money as possible.

I didn’t know much about working for myself. I had always worked for other people or businesses.

I immediately began personally building this website and I continue to build it. Not long after, I quit my job and also started an eBay business and continue to grow it. I created other websites and continue the fight to make them flourish. I learn as often as I can and as much as I can.

Now days, the family is stronger, my wife and I are happier and our friends are still our friends. The money is not yet where it was when I left my former employer but it is certainly marching in that direction. Sometimes the work is challenging. Other times it is very rewarding and satisfying.

The biggest difference is that nothing is amiss.

I guess the moral for this story, if one can be taken, would be to listen to your inner voice and act on it. Set your goals and make your dreams a reality. Don’t ignore or procrastinate for if you do you will never be truly happy.

Don’t let anything be amiss.

Best Wishes!

Content Relevancy Is Still Key

I have three different websites now and the biggest thing I have learned to date is that the relevance of your content is still the key to high traffic. The speed of the site, links, looks and ease of use are all important but the actual content carries more weight than anything else.

To be more accurate, content relevancy as related to your site keywords is the true driving force behind your website traffic.

For example, this site has quite a few articles related to Internet marketing but the articles are all over the place. At times, I will write about article marketing, music marketing, content, affiliate marketing, motivation, internet sales and so forth.

The site is not directed to one particular market.

I still get a solid amount of traffic, however, my new sites get quite a bit more traffic when compared to the kind of traffic I received from this site when I first created it. The reason is because the new sites are focused on one subject.

In other words, the content on both new sites are extremely focused on 1 or 2 keywords as opposed to 10 to 12 keywords. This makes the content for those sites extremely relevant to the keywords thus driving more free organic search engine traffic.

I’ve also noticed the same goes with article marketing. If I keep the content that I write on ezines and other outlets fresh and focused they seem to do much better by way of traffic to the article.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is this.

When building your sites, try to pick a subject that you are deeply interested in and write about only that subject. Keep your site keywords limited and stay up to date on the subject. If you can do those things you will always enjoy a large amount of free organic search traffic.

Here’s a video of Google’s Matt Cutts talking about the weight Google carries on content relevancy as opposed to site speed.

Adding a Favicon Icon to Your Site

Many people often ask why they need a favicon icon for their website.

The answer is quite simple.

A favicon icon is a small image usually 16X16 or 32X32 pixel which shows up in the address bar of your browser immediately before the website address itself. When a visitor bookmarks your site it will also display the favicon icon in their list of bookmarks.

In simplest terms the tiny little icon serves as a means for previous visitors to easily find your website in their list of bookmarks. This is just one more small but significant tool to help generate additional website traffic.

It’s a bit of a subconscious thing but it definitely serves it’s purpose! If you ever pay attention to the address bar and the icons in your list of bookmarks you will notice that some if not many of the saved addresses do not have favicons. The only image you’ll see next to the web address is what appears to be a white sheet of paper with the right hand upper corn bent over.

If your site has a unique or bright colored favicon icon it makes your site much more memorable and easier for your visitors so they may come back to your site without having to search through all the different sites listed in their bookmarks.

People like things to be easy so make it easy on them!

The problem that most people have with favicons is the file has to be an actual icon file with the .ico extension at the end of the file name. An example of a properly designed icon file might read “my_site_favicon.ico” when completed.

Rather than struggle to try and build the file yourself you can easily generate a favicon icon for your website by visiting a website named Dynamic Drive.

All you need to do is upload the image for your file and click the “create icon” button. When finished just save the file to a location on your computer then upload it to your website.

Simple as that!

Now….go and add a favicon icon to your site today and make the act of re-visiting your site a little easier for your visitors.

Best Wishes!