LOL @ Lenn. :-D

Dan, sometimes you have to grab the .net .org and/or .biz if you want to keep people from getting confused regarding which one belongs to you. If there is a sale on .info sometimes I grab that as well and then have to decide which ones are the bounce pages directing people to where I want them to go and which ones maintain content. A few never get developed (e.g. MikeStarr.com for hubby who has yet to do anything with it. I may have to turn it into something for him. It's just a means to having vanity e-mail for now - LOL).

Gary, simplify and focus is indeed the name of the game. :-)

Thank you, Claudette.

Laura, I am pretty excited about it as well because there are a lot of interesting affiliate programs out there to sign on with in addition to creating your own.

Thank you, Tony. Happy New Year to you too.

Renee, I work in 20 minute intervals. If you do a few tasks in small steps and are happy with it, at some point you wind up getting a lot more done during the day because keeping your list of things to do small makes it easy to achieve your daily goals.

Thank you, Angelica. I like to think of it as paying attention to the people who went before me and trying to absorb what is useful from their successes and mistakes. I make a lot of mistakes on my own, so having a blueprint cuts down some of my blunders (LOL). Tim Ferris has completely revamped my assessment of how I spend my time. There were a lot of days that I worked from 8 to 8 or 8 to 10. I am not doing that this year. Penelope Trunk makes it very clear about how tricky it is to create a start up and run it. She gives great career advice, so I am hanging out lurking on Brazen Careerist deciding what to do with my music, art and freelance writing. Real Estate practitioners could have fun writing for AmericanStyle Magazine (bi-monthly / 80% freelance) because it covers travel and interior design besides the artists being showcased. You can start tweaking your blog now to practice for when you may wish to submit an article for their consideration and review. They like 600 to 800 words and only pay between $400 and $800. If you manage to get a few gigs a year that small stream adds up. They publish a year in advance so my advice is to write 24 articles, collect some eye candy and submit. If they say no you wrote 24 articles that can be used on your blogs or submitted somewhere else. Architectural Digest maybe? (LOL)

LOL @ Jackie. I drink a lot of tea. I love tea. I have assorted flavors from all over. This website was created by a cancer survivor who discovered the benefits of tea during her recovery http://theteaspot.com/about-us.html

SarahGray, I have a lot of issues (LOL). I am hoping I do own 2010 in spades :-) I am looking forward to doing other real estate related things like write for interesting mags, maybe try and get something in a newspaper or association trade journal. I want to guess blog as a writer this year and criss cross knocking on corporate doors to see which programs I'd like to become an affiliate of. I want to explore more of marketing in a broader sense so while I experiment with myself I figure I'll take you guys along for the ride and we can talk about what is and isn't working for us. My music hits outnumber my RE hits in a ratio that boggles my mind. I want to have fun with the possibility that people are interested in who we are as a whole rather than what we do as fractions of ourselves so I shall be trying to pull more of them over here. Our jobs should not define us. We should define us. It is okay to fail or miss the mark as long as people learn something from it and try to improve round two. I think it would be a mistake for me as a writer not to try and improve my writing assets while I learn more real estate skills. It is intellectual property that people can inherit if something happens to us. We should be monetizing our blogs. Passive, residual income from something you are going to do anyway does not hurt (LOL). ;-)

Thank you, Will. :-)

Sue, please feel free to ask me specific questions and I shall try to answer them here for you. I know some people may read this and pooh-pooh the idea of us branching out into selling articles, books, screenplays, etc but I think it's your blog and you can write anything you want. If you are going to write it would not be too hard to tweak it to suit the requirements of other professional organizations. Practice here may open the door somewhere else. You have to decide what you want to focus on. Yes, I do real estate but I am a great cook. Cook book? Share my cooking on-line? Yes, I do real estate but I am a great quilt maker. Tutorial? Take shots as I do what I do anyway and leave it in draft until the entire project is done? Your client (or some one else's client) may want your quilt because it reminds them of their Granny. They may want your paintings. They may want your pottery. If you don't share that part of you you may be missing out on a connection that may result in you having third parties open doors on your behalf. The person you play tennis with may need what you have but they can't buy it from you if you never tell anyone it is for sale. Wanna have fun? Place a one page bounce page on-line. Link it to your blogs. Have your RSS feeds running down the center. Put your listings on the left and your collectibles for sale on the right. People Google for what they are looking for. They will find you and they may bookmark your page because you have useful info and interesting stuff for sale.

Carole, I am two years overdue regarding us having lunch or dinner together. You are such an amazing writer and I bet if you published digital ebooks of your work you'd be amazed at how a $4.95, $9.95 or $19.95 digital download product would wrack up. That is why I previously mentioned working in MS Office and turning newsletters into PDF files for subscription distribution. Amazon.com makes life easy for people like me who do a lot with a little. A good digital on demand press ensures you don't have to store an excessive amount of hard copies.

Thank you, Sara.

David, messing with WP and GoDaddy can be very useful. GoDaddy not only has Website Tonight, which is a user friendly drag and drop site builder, but it also has an affiliate hosting deal with WP. Here is what I am doing: I have multiple Outside Blogs, a Localism Blog and my AR Dashboard (inside blog). I buy reasonably priced domains at GoDaddy, I decide which ones stay with WT (you can build a store with a shopping cart to hook into a PayPal account in your GoDaddy dashboard) and which ones I want at WP. TannStarr.net and uberMental.com are at WP. The are brand spanking new baby blogs that will be PDF and ebook distribution spots. I write in ActiveRain first, then publish additional thoughts in WP, then cross link them all to each other. If you are consistent with how you start doing this your readers will have an expectation and start checking the signature icons or internal post links to see what you have done. What you write will not travel through Google rankings at the same rate. The goal is to improve your writing so all of your subject matter ranks well in the search engines. The goal is to produce less than 10 quality links per post to tie everything together. If you over link people may not come back because you are sending them too many places.

Monika, I realized I needed to change my strategy because each site should have a definite focus. I want each site to have the potential to make money and that only happens if there is a perceived value. So I shall be destroying them all and rebuilding them during the month of January after I define what the goals are. The key is clustering them so that they each have their own personality and provide something beyond the conversation at hand. If you want to learn how to make money advertising Amazon.cpom products (they pay up to 15%) check this link out: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/

We have writers in the Rain: Elizabeth Weintraub, Missy Caulk, Margaret Rome, etc. You could promote their books on your sites with links and widgets and earn a small percentage if readers buy through clicking on your links. They provide widgets. They provide banners. They have tools that hook into Google Blogger and Twitter. Why would you guys not want to buy a domain through an AR outside blog set up, or a GoDaddy set up and nestle them together. As writers, you are creating very unique content and readers check you out every single day. Do do ad spam in ActiveRain or anywhere else, pick your affilate program carefully then cultivate it jealously. The people I mentioned reading are very narrow and specific in their focus. We each need to figure out where we want to focus our reader's attention to enhance their blog experience with us. If you have a short sale listing why not link to a short sale book so they can understand the process? Why not link to all three Rainers and let people make up their own minds what to buy? Do you realize in the process of helping your friends you may be helping yourself? They are published and they provide answers and solutions. It's time for you guys to get published as well. There is an awful lot of material floating around the Rain. Find a couple of talented friends, make a team blog, write a book together, pass that puppy to Amazon.com and get busy. 2010 is the year to do a new thing.

Joe, the more we connect with them on a real level the more we can get done. Sometimes, I find I have to tell people "no." Longer hours do not always translate into more transactions and can actually result in cultivating lookie-lous (LOL). 

Amy, my usual answer is if anyone can read an entire book, then they can survive a Wordy C blog post (LMAO). ;-) Take your time and read it in stages. There is a lot to digest here but sometimes if you don't say what you mean people don't get it. I would be very happy to answer any and all questions to clarify what I am cooking up and to hear what you guys may be doing with your intellectual property. I have been on-line since 3 a.m. In a few minutes it will be 12 hours (LOL).

Cheryl, moments like that always make me grin a silly cool aid grin because it means we all have a shot at it. A writer can go to sleep broke and wake up very comfortable in a matter of days if their work is perceived as valuable and it is marketed correctly. What good is it to write if no one finds you? We write to be found and read. If we are going to work this hard to be found shouldn't we work just as hard to monetize our intellectual assets? It is worth a shot and we can take our sweet time doing it.

Christopher and Stephanie, Penelope Trunk fascinates me. I really love her work. She gives very sound career advice and can be a bit quirky at times. I love that about her. She is a brutally honest writer and can be funny as hell. http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/ She is on WP. I think that's why I finally went over there and switched two sites from GoDaddy hosting to WP hosting. :-)

Colleen, I know what you mean. I get inspired and I grab the name if it is available then start plotting and planning what I want to do with it. Sometimes it takes a while, but I usually get it done eventually.

Frank and Jodi, that is Spanking-A. You may want to investigate signing up for an affiliate program as well. One banner on 50 sites may generate a stream of income for you while you do what you normally do. :-)

Answering an e-mail question: What type of Amazon.com items do you intend to list on your website(s)? (1) Books, (2) Movies, (3) Music, (4) Games, (5) Digital Downloads, (6) Kindle, (7) Computers & Office Electronics. Why? Because that is what I buy and what me and my friends use (LOL). Why not start with what you know and branch out as your interests see fit? (BTW, They also do Home & Garden Grocery, Health & Baby Toys, Kids & Baby Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry Sports & Outdoors Tools, Auto & Industrial, etc ) Affiliate programs are about choices. If you create hot spots in your PDF newsletters you will have great ads leading back to your affiliate links to help make you some money to fill in the blank spots if you do not have enough advertisers. :-)

Donna, that is fantastic. The potential is amazing. I am picking and choosing through a bunch of banners right now looking for interesting items that would correspond to future posts. The goal isn't to spam readers, it's to introduce them to what a writer likes and uses. If one goes somewhere or does something it makes a lot more sense to talk about what you know and have experienced. I love talking about where I have eaten a great meal. I like blurbing about movies. I read all the time. I am software and camera crazy... :-)

Wow... It appears that I am going to have my hands full answering you guys (LOL). I've been experimenting with Widgets and Java Script all day. Round two just posted in AR and I am working on round three in WP... I have flash banners to test out (LOL). Will be back to serial comment and answer you guys in a little while. :-)

Thank you, Steve. We are working on re-doing the websites because they all need to be upgraded. :-)