When I wrote the post about quality or quantity, I think it is clear that I was taking a trip to negative town.

Being idealistic is fine but in the world of online income, it rarely gets you anywhere. When it comes to generating an online income, chasing the next big thing is going to be a fruitless exercise for almost all of us.

Look Around You

A day or so ago I was hit with the realisation that whilst I am sitting here being a little self-righteous, there are people making some serious money online. I would still love to have that one golden site but realistically, the more I search for it, the more time I waste.

I had this epiphany when reading about other peoples’ successes with affiliate mini sites. Whilst I was preparing to discard the idea completely, there were people making their bank managers very happy. The difference between us? They were grafting away whilst I was trying to cruise down the moral highway to poverty.

Middle Men Are Everywhere

Whilst an affiliate site may not be the most constructive thing on the net, at least it is honest. Middle men have been connecting buyers and sellers since the dawn of commerce, with a reasonable commission paid as a result. The online world is no different and I think I need to wake up.

Get Working

There is a lot of money to be made online, yet nothing is being earned while I am sit around pondering an idealistic approach.

Blogging can be an area of the web that moves on very quickly. I recently made the decision to find a feed reader, with the aim of following all my favourite blogs.

I tried a small number of feed readers and all had their strengths and weaknesses. At one point I was even using Thunderbird to manage my feeds. Thunderbird works reasonably well as a feed reader and I enjoyed managing alerts for both my e-mail and RSS subscriptions in a single application. However, Thunderbird is not the most intuitive when it comes to displaying updated feeds.

After trying and dismissing Sage, I had almost given up on finding a Firefox extension that would provide good feed management. Luckily, I came across Brief before I abandoned the search.

Brief is a very simple yet intuitive feed reader that builds on the Live Bookmarks feature in Firefox. Having a feed reader within Firefox, negates the need to have another application running in the background. It also means that I get convenient little alerts in my browser window as I am surfing the net.

My only small complaint is that feeds containing flash videos can sometimes throw up error dialogues. It appears to only affect videos from Viddler and I am quite sure it is down to security features built into Flash.

All in all, I am quite impressed with Brief. If any other Firefox users are looking for a feed reader, I would recommend it.

Having been working on some mini sites for the past couple of weeks, my conscience has been getting to me a little bit. Whilst my main aim is to make money online, I still have my own moral code which I must adhere to. With affiliate mini sites though, I feel I may have strayed a little.

In an ideal world I would run a single website. It would be a site that people find to be genuinely useful and I would be adding value to the internet. Unfortunately, I do not have a website like that nor the great idea needed to create one. Instead, I feel relegated to the lower levels of online earning, where people are just chasing the next click or commission.

The Path Of Least Resistance

A while back I read somewhere about it being easier to create ten sites that each make $10 per day as opposed to a single site that makes a $100 daily. I have no doubt that there is some truth behind the logic, having experienced this to a degree myself.

That said, just because it works does not mean it is a good thing. Building websites in volume just dilutes the internet for the simple reason that mass produced websites lack any meaningful quality.

After working on some example mini sites recently, I noticed that I would be doing the very same thing if I decided to start creating them in volume.

Quality Does Not Scale

The problem with building a high quality website, that adds value to the internet, is that it takes a lot of time and effort. Your time and effort is a finite resource that cannot be scaled. Without hiring staff or outsourcing work, I have to accept that there is a limit to how much value I can add to any particular web property. The trouble with mass production is that I would end up spreading my efforts too thinly across the network.

A good example is blogging. We could all create a thousand automated blogs tomorrow, that generate posts simply by rehashing old content. How many blogs could you possibly maintain if each post was planned out, unique and well-written? My guess would be a significantly lower number.

Conscience Wins

Over the past few days I have tried many different mini site variations in an attempt to create something that is worthwhile. Ultimately, everything I have tried has just been another attempt at chasing the money.

I feel hypocritical about that and it bothers me. With two weeks until I start reaching for my income target for June, I am almost certain that niche mini sites will not be on my agenda.

In order to really create a successful online income, I need to take a close look at what I want to achieve and when. Working towards something not only gives me a focus, it gives me measurable progress.

Back to basics…

By the start of June, almost all of my existing sites will have been discontinued and I will be back at square one. I am currently trying to dampen the blow by starting new projects, but there is still going to be a noticeable income drop.

In the past I have leisurely monitored statistics and income reports but have never given myself any strict targets. Since I am taking online earning seriously now, I need to be able to consistently build my income and adapt when I am not reaching my goals.

Keep it real…

My target for the month of June is not going to be some astronomical amount and to most people, it will seem pretty low. I am trying to get a foot on the ladder and create a solid foundation that I can build upon.

A key factor in setting goals is making them realistic. Each successive goal needs to be a stretch, but still within your current realm of achievement. Setting goals that are unrealistic just makes you more likely to fail and that in itself will damage your confidence and motivation. No matter how big a target you want to aim for in the bigger picture, keep breaking it down until you have a series of smaller goals that are achievable.

This is a philosophy I live by offline and now that my websites are no longer hobbies, I will also be applying it online in order to keep on track.

Target for June…

My target for the month of June is $250. If reached, it will be my highest earning month to date. I now have a fortnight to decide on a solid plan of action and make the necessary preparations.

Wish me luck!

Part of my daily routine is catching up with the latest posts on my favourite blogs. I have a small, but growing, collection of blogs that I keep in a folder on my toolbar and I check them all regularly.

However, manually visiting this many blogs is time consuming and the situation will only get worse as I add more blogs of interest.

Although feeds are an integral part of blogging, I have never really paid much attention to using feeds as a way of keeping myself updated. I feel that I have finally reached the stage where getting myself a feed reader is the most sensible way of staying current and “in the loop”, so to speak.

Not Quite What I Need…

Firefox has a built in feature called “Live Bookmarks” but from what little experimentation I have done with it, it looks pretty thin in terms of features. Whilst not being a feed reader, it is meant to help keep you current by dropping a list of links onto your toolbar. Frustratingly, this is similar to the setup that I have currently. A setup I am trying to change! I think I would benefit from having something a little more substantial and feature rich.

A quick search led me to Sage which is a feed reader extension for Firefox. I had a brief play around with it but again, it seemed fairly basic. Truth be told, I am not entirely sure what features I should look for in a feed reader, but nothing I have seen so far has impressed me.

Help!

Do you use a feed reader to aggregate your favourite feeds? Do you use a web based reader, browser extension or is it a standalone piece of software? If anyone has any suggestions or tips when it comes to feed readers, please share in the comments :)