Yesterday I did a minor update to Selling on your WebSite. I added the Advanced Comment System to the pages and also wrote one new article for the site. The new article emphasizes the need for traffic and talks about traffic quality. In order to monetize a website you must have traffic. The Site Build It system uses the acrostic CTPM as a success formula for building sites that pay. The letters stand for Content, Traffic, Pre-sell, and Monetize. Of these, in a way, traffic is the most important and usually the hardest part of the formula. There are other pages that discuss some of the other aspects of this formula. As The Hobby Webmaster building the sites is the fun part for me, but one must remember that getting people to those sites is the real purpose for putting the sites up in the first place.

I completed and tested the work on MC Rally today. Well, not really completed, but as far as I will go for a few days. I also added both sidebar and regular comment sections to the I Built My Computer site. I also wrote another article for I built. I think that I built and Mixing Live probably have my best commercial possibilities right now. I need to add some specific products to I built and then try to direct some traffic that way. I also need to get into the habit of writing more. Mixing Live suffers from lack of content.

I ran across a site that is the obvious product of an Internet Marketer. It was interesting to see one of those live and in person. I have probably seen many of them in the past but did not recognize what they were. I don’t think that many would see the planning behind the site as readily as I now do.

Most of the sites that I have have little commercial value now. There are several with potential, but only a few were put up with any thought about how they would be monetized, and those without the necessary planning and knowledge. I can see that a focused marketer that does his research would almost certainly be more successful than I. I hope that I am learning some things, but the sites that make money are never going to be as much fun as my pet projects. The pet projects could provide a trickle of income, but probably never a stream, let alone the river that I now need.

The time has  come to knuckle down and get’er done with the MC Rally site update. I have been working on it some today. Mostly I have been looking at what it is that I have and deciding how it is that I want to present it. I did install the comment system and put a comment box up on Sam’s Page, my tribute page to Samantha Morgan aka: Morgan Storm. I intend to get a gallery index going on the home page, as the galleries are the biggest part of the site. I also want to add comment boxes with all of the pictures to try to engage some of my visitors. Of course, I will update the Rally list and even bring  some of it into the next decade. There are many decisions to be made as far as the presentation. I have the tools so that implementation will go relatively rapidly when the format and decisions are made.

Once the site is updated I will try to build the traffic up a bit. I do get a steady stream of traffic, but I am sure that with a bit of promotion I can improve that a good bit. These sites have been up for over a year and a half. I thought that the word might get around, but I am learning that traffic to a site does not just happen. There may be a rare instance where something goes viral but those times are few are far between. There are a number of free ways recommended to promote sites and I will be exploring some of those methods over the next few months.

I will let you know how this all works out and make a post when the update is complete.