Blog reboot
There are times when life gets in the way of fun projects. That has been the fate of Scraping Pennies as well, as the past two months made me put this fun project on hold. I had too many things going on simultaneously that needed my attention. And if you divide your attention between too many things, none of them get the attention they deserve. So I decided to choose. Some projects get all attention, others get none.
Scraping Pennies was one of the projects that got no attention at all. Well…I did check the stats every now and then. And it amazes me that there are 40 something subscribers that stuck around. A would like to give you a big THANK YOU, I appreciate your loyalty! The wait was not for nothing, because I’m rebooting the blog.
Some changes
First of all, I moved hosts. I consolidated all my hosting to one company, Dreamhost. All my hosting is still in the range of the regular shared hosting plans, and Dreamhost offers a great value solution. Their shared hosting plan allows you to host unlimited sites. So I could host How to be an Original and Scraping Pennies on the same hosting plan (and a bunch of other sites as well), instead of having a hosting plan specifically for either one of them. So this move saves me money.
The second change is the frequency of income reports. I started out doing weekly income reports, but I’m changing those to monthly reports. The weekly reviews are overkill in my opinion. Too much data for people trying to follow the progress of this blog. Imagine reading through 52 posts or through 12 posts to see how the past year has went…
The third thing I’m changing is income related. Initially I worked on getting Scraping Pennies as much of a stand-alone entitity as possible. That turned out to be very impractical. And as you can tell from the hosting move, I have abandoned that thought. I will do my best to seperate Scraping Pennies income from other income, but if it’s too much trouble I won’t. The same goes for cost. I have my hosting for my main online activities, Scraping Pennies enjoys a free ride on that hosting account and as such has free hosting.
The fourth thing I’m changing is budget related. I started out with a $250 budget. But this project is meant to be an educational fun project, and I won’t stop if the money runs out. So I’m going to allow to get below zero on my “funds”. But everything in moderation, this doesn’t mean that I’m going to spend money like a wild man! It’s just that I won’t let it stop me when I’m going to “run out of money”.
Additionally there’s also the thing of the stuff I already own, because I bought them for my other online activities. If they’re relevant to Scraping Pennies and there’s an affiliate program, I’m going to feature it here as well with no money down. It’s not totally ‘fair’, but I will still disclose the money I spent on it and why.
What’s not going to change
The main thing that will not change is that I will still give full transparency, about my investments in and returns from the blog.
The relative priority of this blog will also not change. It is not, and will probably never be, my top priority for getting an income. This is a fun and educational project, that has the goal of making money online. I won’t give a value to the lessons, but they are a large part of the ‘revenue’ of this blog.
What’s next?
The next step I’m going to make is to do get an overview of the financial status of Scraping Pennies and write a report about it. After that report I will start doing the monthly income reports, so the first income report will be early November (that’s about October’s income).
I also need to update the tutorial for OIO Publisher, as it’s outdated. Simon Emery released a new version of OIO Publisher, and made many improvements. Among them a big redesign of the site, so the screenshots in the tutorial are simply not correct anymore. He also raised the price to $47. Good products tend to get more expensive on the net, and OIO Publisher is a good product!
I’m looking forward to this renewed start. You have been patient the last couple of months, but as you know rebooting takes a while too. So I’m going to push that reboot button, please wait a couple of days until the system is up and running again.
A Penny For Your Thoughts:
If you don't put your two cents in, how can you get change?
