I’m only two weeks into my change of venue and I think I have discovered that I’m trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Selling products is fine, but it has never been my strong suit. My husband on the other hand can sell sand to a thirsty man in the desert. Too bad he doesn’t want to do this writing stuff.

My strengths have always been in information. I liked researching difficult topics and breaking them down into easy to follow steps. I guess it’s my way to say there is always a simple way to explain the most complex topics.

A Little Digression

When I first got involved in tech writing I had a coworker (who eventually became a good friend) that loved explaining things. The only problem with his explanations is that he tried to impress people with his knowledge so his explanations were a compilation of large words spoken in a way that he could make instructions for fixing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich sound difficult.

I later got beneath his outer need to impress and realized he was a bit insecure. His “Mr. Professor” personality was his coping mechanism. He learned to drop Mr. Professor around me and we became good friends (people couldn’t understand what I saw in him, but they never took the time to know him).

The Reason for That Story

Most people want to know how to do technically or administratively difficult tasks but they need someone to explain it to them in an easy to understand fashion. In the movie Philadelphia, Denzel Washington’s character often used the phrase, “Explain it to me like I’m a 6 year old.” In other words, keep it simple.

Square Peg/Round Hole

My square peg is my desire to simply explain complicated topics. My round hole is attempting to sell products that I use and endorse. The problem for me is that I truly enjoy taking difficult concepts and breaking them down, but I dislike selling products.

Now that I’m almost two weeks into this internet marketing and niche site building phase of my online writing career, I’ve found that creating niche sites that offer information is much more enjoyable (and so far more lucrative) for me than selling a product. I guess the old adage of “do what you love and the money will follow” has some truth to it.

Real Life Experience (Round Hole)

On March 24, 2011, after much keyword searching, I created a small niche site around a product that I endorse. The site is only 5 pages large. The articles are keyword searched and they are geared towards folks who are looking for a solution to a particular need. The solution, of course, is the purchase of the product.

After creating the site, I wrote a few articles and submitted them to 6 different sites for backlinking purposes. I’m fully aware that some folks submit hundreds of articles for backlinking purposes but I wasn’t ready to do that so the 6 sites will suffice for now (plus I HATE the article submission for backlinking process).

It’s only been 2 weeks but the site has received 6 hits.

Now to Doing What I Love to Do (Square Peg)

On March 31, 2011 I claimed a domain name (after much keyword searching) and started to create another niche site. This site is an informational site. It discusses a topic that I have some interest in, but even more than my interest, I get to play internet sleuth. I get to digest difficult information and break it down into simple terms.

On April 1st I added the About page and a page describing the basis of the topic. In other words, if you’re going to do research on this topic, you must understand certain basic concepts so I created a page explaining the basics.

Yesterday I wrote my first post and have so far received 11 page hits and have earned $3.09. The site is nowhere near complete. It only has two pages. The goal is to create a 10 or 15 page site, because I believe I can adequately cover the topic in 15 pages. Once the site is complete, I could then write a few articles for backlinking or, maybe not. If my numbers so far are not a fluke, I’ll forgo the backlinking process in favor of creating another site.

Ken over at The Freelancer Today uses a phrase that I like. “Find what works for you and work it until the wheels fall off.” I think I might have found what works for me. Only time will tell.

That being said, I inadvertently ran an experiment. The experiment solidified my belief that it’s so much better to work smarter than harder.

Back in April of 2006 I created a website. It’s a true website and not a blog. The pages are static pages that are not interactive. No comments allowed.

A few years later in January of 2009 I created another website. Well, it’s not really a website, it’s a blog. On this blog I did not enable comments because I wanted to try to re-create the website feeling without having to go through all of the website coding. This blog is also static as it does not allow reader interaction.

Here’s what I discovered about the first 10 months after each site went live.

There are a lot of variables here. When I created the site in 2006 I didn’t know very much about writing for the web. However, the one thing I did realize was that Google AdSense was a powerful earning tool so I tried to get as much content on the site as quickly as I could.

I did manage to populate the site, but it’s quite obvious from the above numbers that I should have taken my time to pick and choose my content more carefully. As time went on and I learned more, I made changes to the site, but I think the initial damage was done.

Don’t get me wrong, it still earns a steady income, but imagine how much more site #1 could have earned if I had used similar tactics to the ones I used with site #2 above.

What I learned:

• Bigger is not always better
• Traffic does not always translate into dollars
• A small niche site can be more profitable than a larger multi topic site
• Working smarter is much better than working harder
• Slow and steady beats a wheel spinning frenzy any day