Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been on a mission to simplify my online presence and my internet business. The result has been an agressive purging campaign that would make Stalin proud.
Amazopia.com – Ah, Amazopia. This is a news blog about Amazon- and Kindle-related news. I started the blog about a year ago and there are currently 412 articles on the site. It makes about $100 a month (and the YouTube channel has 500,000+ views), but I just got a little bit tired of updating it (I’ve done zero promotion of it for the past six months or so). Well, no, that’s not true. It’s not the actual updating part that bothered me, it’s just that I kind of stopped caring about what I was writing about. And the final death blow was me moving to Mexico, where I don’t have access to the newest Kindles.
The site and domain and everything are still up, but I don’t think I’ll be updating it anymore. I’ll just let it continue to make some money through AdSense ads on the videos and Amazon affiliate sales.
CuteAWESOME.com – This is a blog I started just for fun. I’d post a picture of something cute (e.g., a kitten) and then a picture of something awesome (e.g., a funny photo or beautiful scenery). I deleted the blog (~180 subscribers), the domain name (PR 2), the Facebook page (I think ~300 fans), and the associated Pinterest board (~700 followers). I deleted it because
- I was bored with the site. Updating it wasn’t fun anymore.
- It relied entirely on other people’s content. I credited the original source when I could find it, but just posting others’ photos is not very fulfilling.
DailyPoetryClub.com – I deleted this domain. I deleted the blog that was on the domain a couple years ago. Every day I’d post a poetry prompt and people would write a poem based on that topic. The site was active for over a year but I got tired both of updating it and of writing poems. I did turn my best and favorite poems into a Kindle book, though (written under a pen name). I had deleted the website about a year ago but just deleted the domain last week.
Freestanding Hangboard Plans – This was a PDF ebook that I charged $5 for. It was an instructional book about how to build this. It’s a rock climbing training thing. The domain name and site are still there but I put up a site-wide “This is no longer available” notice and removed the ebook from e-Junkie.
I deleted the book because I don’t particularly like selling PDF ebooks and because it didn’t sell particularly well. I sold anywhere from 2-6 a month. Not very many. I prefer Kindle books because I can sell more (and therefore make more money) with less work. So I decided to give this book away as a freebie to those who buy my rock climbing Kindle book that does sell well. I’ll delete the site and domain as soon as I update my Kindle book to include the relevant download information.
LinguaBible – This was a set of 6 PDF ebooks of the New Testament. The English version of the text was on the left side of the page and the text in another language (there were Russian, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and German versions) was on the right side of the page.
I only ever sold a handful of these. I’ll probably offer them up for free somewhere. If you want one or all of them, shoot me an email and I’ll send them to you.
7 Small Tumblr blogs – I deleted several small Tumblr blogs and all of their content. These included
- A blog about zombies (which I used to send some traffic to FreeZombieBooks.com). But like with CuteAWESOME.com, it was just very unfulfilling to only post other people’s stuff.
- Vowels.me, a blog about language. I also deleted the vowels.me domain name. I started this blog because I had plans to write an ebook about how to study and learn foreign languages, and I was going to advertise the ebook on the blog. I still plan on writing an ebook like that, but I lost interest in updating the blog. I also now have a more robust platform on which I can advertise any future language-related book.
And I also deleted 5 other small blogs that were insignificant.
TheAmazonShow.com – This is a domain that redirected to a podcast I did as part of Amazopia.com. I deleted the domain because I stopped doing the podcast after a few episodes.
eBookCoverage.com – This was a little site that gave examples of good and bad ebook covers. It made about $5-$10 a month in Amazon affiliate earnings. I had grand plans to build the site out into more of a destination site, but other things came up and got in the way. There is now an under construction page when you go there.
GetPoweradeCoupons.com – This is a niche site that I deleted. I deleted both the domain and the blog because I hate niche sites. They offer very little of value to the internet as a whole and I kind of felt dirty building and owning the thing. It made about $50 in AdSense earnings in the first couple months but then got pushed back to obscurity in Google’s search results. I never had any interest in reviving it.
I also deleted a few other domains that I no longer needed or wanted. And while going through my domain names (I still have about 37), I realized that MakeMoneyBlogging.net (which I own) was finally un-banned from Google! Sweet! Now I just need to figure out what to do with it…
And finally, I un-followed some of the more frequent and annoying folks over on Twitter.
What now?
So what did I accomplish? What was the point of all of this? Well, I’ve now reassessed my priorities and gotten rid of the excess. Everything that’s left is something that I’m actively engaged in. All of the blogs I have left (like fkb.me, The Backlight, FreeZombieBooks.com, climbs.me, etc.) and all of the products I have left (like my 38 Kindle books, Infographic Academy, and a new blogging-related product that I’m developing) are things that I’m excited about, that I enjoy, and that are making me money. I have more time and desire to focus on the things that are most important.
In other words, there are no more distractions, and I just feel lighter.
- Is it time for you to purge your online life?
- What aspects of your online life can/should/will you clean up in the near future? What have you done in the past?
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
That’s what I’m talkin’ about Tristan! Trimmin’ the fat.
Since buying a domain, streamlining the site setup, and adding content is so easy these days – it’s really easy for us to push out a project we didn’t really put a lot of long-term planning into.
Over time, as you found out, all these add up on your mental “weight” and you get burnt out on the projects. It’s not that you failed with them or anything – it’s just that they didn’t come into fruition and, being the smart, business-savvy individual that you are, you identified the opportunity and cut loose the low performers.
Hopefully this will give you a great deal of time and remove a bit of the stress that comes with micro managing.
In relation to that – how much of your time do you feel you freed up?
Honestly, doing all of this didn’t free up too much time because these are things that I was mostly ignoring anyway. It freed up maybe a few hours a week, most of which was spent on Amazopia.
But like you said, the mental weight has been lifted, and that’s really what I was going for. I could have just waited for the domains to expire or whatever but actively deleting them just felt so much better. They’re gone. Out of sight, out of mind, and good riddance.
Think everyone should do spring cleaning of their online properties and presence once a year.
Last year I purged most of my social accounts that I wasn’t using (almost all of them). This year I’m deleting and/or consolidating blogs that I don’t have time for.
I’m sad to see some of those blogs go, but excited to see what’s coming in the future. You’re the man.
Yeah, it was just time. CuteAWESOME was a fun diversion while it lasted, but it’s good to move on.
Remember when you used to blog?
Oh the timeless question.
impressive! i think you’ve gotten rid of more than i’ve created! great job tristan ;-)
Yeah, I’m really good at creating stuff, but that’s a double-edged sword because I’m also incapable of keeping myself from creating stuff!
You deleted cuteawesome.com? Eh, well, I kinds got bored of it, too, though it’s hard to believe.
I know, it’s crazy huh! Oh well. Time to move on.
Have you thought about selling any of those domains? I might be interested in a couple of them.
Howard, I just shot you an email with some more info.
Wow, now that your done, wanna “tackle” my hallway closet? It could use some serious purging. :) It is nice when you can let go of the things or projects that just aren’t makin’ you happy anymore. Good luck with the more streamlined vision.
In Eben Pagan’s “Self Made Wealth” course, one of the things he has you do is go to closet and get rid of 20% of the clothes in there. And he recommends you do this once a year. Presumably the clothes you’ll give away are the ones you’re never even wearing in the first place.
The premise behind this exercise is that of teaching yourself to make room for better stuff to come into you life. If your closet is rammed full of stuff you never even touch let alone wear, your mind automatically rejects the idea of improving because there’s no space to.
I love this advice based on this premise as well as the one that says most people’s sense of fashion is disastrous and that hiring an image consultant to help them get rid of what isn’t flattering to their body and getting clothes that do, is one of the BEST gifts they could ever give themselves being that we all judge books by covers.
But Eben’s exercise was to transcend beyond the closet to other areas of life as well, including what you’ve done here Tristan. I commend you for getting rid of what is a time and opportunity suck in your life and it’s going to very cool to see the bigger and better opportunity that comes in and fills the gap.
Getting rid of domains is hard, but I decided to just have one blog… I think it really makes life easier. I’ll be down to four (or is it three?) domains after these expire… Right now I’m at 10.
You come to a point when you’re not any more enjoying keeping a handful of sites. If it’s stressing you out thinking whether or not to keep your blogs updated, then it won’t hurt to give them up entirely right? But those sites you just listed seemed loads of fun! Oh well, it was good while it lasted.
I think what you have done is very important. At a point of time, I was having 7 blogs and I was finding it very difficult to update all of them. I deleted three of them. Now I just have four and I update two of them on a daily basis and two of them on a weekly basis. Guess what, I did not even take a domain name for my latest blog (in blogspot!!). It’s a strategic decision :) I liked your videos (esp. the Hitler parody video on blogging). Do keep making more like that :)