This seems like as good a title as any!  I can’t believe it’s been so long since I posted here.  My poor little blog has been sadly neglected.  Why?  Well, it’s a long story.

For nearly three years now, I’ve been putting most of my time and energy into article marketing.  For the uninitiated, article marketing involves writing articles with links to websites where people can buy something they need.  For instance, say you have a cat with a bladder infection.  If you google “bladder infections in cats,” and you find my article and read it, you can click on a link that takes you to a natural cure for bladder infections in cats.  If you buy the product, I get a commission.  Sounds easy, right?

Well, I’m here to tell you that anyone who says you can make a million dollars overnight on the internet is lying to you.  I’ve worked hard, and written many articles, and put up a whole bunch of blogs.  It took me two years of constant hard work before I finally started to make a halfway decent part-time income.  Things were finally looking up.  This year I even made enough that I have to pay self-employment tax.  Now THAT’S a bummer!

In the process though, I pretty much burned myself out on writing anything, even this blog.  I’ve struggled this year to write articles, although I did manage to keep up for a while.  But this month my revenues have tanked.  I’m not sure why.  Did Google stop indexing my articles?  Did the recession finally catch up with me?  Is it just the holiday season?  Will things improve next month?  Am I just not writing enough articles?  Good questions with no easy answers.

For two years I didn’t do much but write articles.  I didn’t quilt, weave, knit, or do much of anything, but write articles on yeast infections, hair loss, menopause, various problems afflicting cats and dogs, and other interesting topics.  No wonder I’m tired of it!

Leni Weiner had a really good post on her blog, entitled Artists and Time Management.  It really made me stop and think about what I want to spend my time doing.  She starts out by commenting on the fact that people are always saying they don’t have time to do the things they want to do.  It seems that the things you have to do take up all your time.

Leni says, “It is important to remember that we always get the important things on our lists done–we never go without dinner, the dog always gets a walk, and those with jobs always show up for work.  I think that time management can be a self esteem issue–that we don’t consider ourselves important enough to spend time in pursuit of the things that make us happy and fulfill us.  We feel guilty doing something for ourselves.”

She hit the nail on the head with that one.  I fall into the trap of thinking that I have to get all the “important” things done before I can work on my quilting .  By the time I get all the other stuff done, it’s 8 pm, and I’m too tired to even think about quilting!

I also have the idea that if I’m not making money at it, it’s not important.  This idea was reinforced by an ex-husband who didn’t think anything I did was worthwhile because it wasn’t bringing in money.  (Forget the time I spent raising a huge garden every year, all the canning and freezing, milking the goat, making cheese, doing laundry with a wringer washer and hanging it outside, raising sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens, soapmaking, etc.  But that’s another story!)

This is where the self-esteem issue comes into play.  I still have to fight with that little voice in my head that tries to tell me that quilting (or anything else I enjoy doing) is a waste of time.  So I think that’s why I put it last on my priority list.  And this is in spite of being married now to a wonderful man who thinks everything I do is amazing!  It’s hard to fight that little voice, but fight it I will, and I will win!

So will I continue with the article marketing?  I don’t know right now.  If I do, I will certainly cut back.  What I do know is that in 2010, I’m going to focus on my quilting, whether it brings in any income or not.

I’m very fortunate that I don’t have to worry about supporting myself at this point.  My husband is a disabled vet, and he gets disability from the VA, which is enough to pay the mortgage and cover all our bills.  My income is nice for extras, and I’ll continue to have  residual income from my articles each month, whether or not I ever write another one.

And of course the upside is, that I learned how to set up WordPress blogs, and I know all about webhosting and domains and SEO.  Maybe I’ll wind up with a side business setting up blogs for artists and craftspeople.  Lots of people use Blogspot because it’s free, but there are several reasons why this is not a good idea, the most important being that you don’t own your blog.   It belongs to Google, and Google can take it down any time they want.  But that’s a different subject, too!

Leni suggests setting goals for what you want to accomplish in the next year.  She also says to write them down!  So what’s my goal for 2010?  To spend at least an hour a day working on something I want to do.  Not to sell anything, not to make a masterpiece, not to do anything in particular.  Just to set an hour aside for myself every day.  Think I can do it?  I’m sure going to try!

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