• HART-Empire Network: Year 2 In Review

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    October 24th, 2007HARTHmmmm Things, Statistics, WooHoo

    October 16, 2007 marked our 2nd Anniversary

    * The Year-0 Post October 2005
    * The Year-1 post October 2006

    Welcome to the Year-2 post of October 2007!

    sitemeter-2007-10-22-year.jpgWhen I look at the stats over the past 12 months .. I definitely see a pattern and progress. I see a story .. and, that story is about me – HART. I tried to grow my network of sites and maintain the status quo – even during my busy income tax preparation time (February – April) months … and I started to document my earnings online since January 1, 2007 on a public google document.

    Traffic wise, I was doing fine and going in the direction that I wanted (steadily upwards) .. but, I peaked in May 2007. Suddenly, out of the blue my bandwidth and traffic started to cost me an arm and a leg .. and I was desparately in need of an upgrade.

    So – I decided to move everything June 1, 2007 (Q3) to a new host provider, that promised me better stability and growth potential that offered me hope in continued expansion of my network.

    Here’s a summary of the past 12 months

    * Nov/2006-May/2007 – steady growth, increased traffic, new sites!
    * June/2007 – Upgraded to a Virtual Host Server (VHS) with MidPhase (AnHost brand) – Slowdown
    * July/2007 – VHS not able to support my sites, and CPU Resources crashed the server constantly
    * August/2007 – Upgraded to a Dedicated Server with MidPhase (Singlehop brand) – slowdown
    * September/2007 – Uneventful blogging, even exceeded May/2007 levels
    * October/2007 – Consolidation and Reorganization efforts were made and finally a ‘plan’ developed

    Plans for Year 3 and Beyond

    I decided that now is the time to consolidate my network. All this time, I have been trying to keep things organized into similar related themed channels (like, “Pet Related Channel”, “Health & Fitness Channel”, etc). The new look for 2008 will hopefully fall into a simpler network, with the following characteristics:

    1) HART-Empire Network = HART Caricature = “HART” Brand

    Although you wouldn’t know it, I have been trying to get a network wide theme developed so that all sites will basically look similar to the other. With wordpress upgrading their software every 3 months now, plugins coming and going … I want to brand my HART caricature face as the logo of the HART-Empire Network (beside just a funny comical picture of Hartley B Singer the person) .. and when one goes to one site, it should readily be identifiable as a HART-Empire Network site.

    2) BattlingForHealth.com = “Battling For Health” Brand

    All previous “Battling-Series” of blogs will now be created as a subdomains of this mega site. Currently, I do have longer term plans for the main domain .. however, in the meantime it will be a portal relaying all of the summary posts found from each of the health and fitness topical blogs. Having subdomains, instead of separate domains .. also allows for easier creation and expansion into newer health topics. I want to build this site into a sound health and fitness resource and library and possible support site.

    3) AndYouWill.com = “And You Will” Brand

    All previous “AndYou-Series” of blogs will now be created as subdomains of this mega site. I want this domain to grow into a sound do-it-yourself improvement site, and a resource to find tips and help about many different topics under the sun. I figure, I’ve yet to venture out into podcasting (sound) but if I ever do that .. or into vidcasting (video) .. I would probably start wetting my ears somewhere in this domain 🙂

    4) PetLvr.com = “PetLvr” Brand

    I will probably do this last, as I am currently trying to fix the archives, clean up and rearrange categories and tags, trying to figure out a way to stop spammers from creating FREE blogs at PetLvr.com/mypet ..etc. I haven’t decided yet if I will be moving the blog to the root directory, but I will be consolidating all of the support sites (which I segregated at the end of Year 1) back into the PetLvr domain .. the “LVR-Series” of blogs, as I like to call them … DogLvr.com CatLvr.com BirdLvr.com FishLvr.com HorseLvr.com and even PapillonLvr.com .. Consolidation will also allow me to segregate even further existing categories into new sites.

    5) HARTmarket.com = “@ HART Market” Brand

    I am experimenting converting sites strictly for affiliation and marketing purposes, that will ultimately have products to sell (versus monetization through advertising and other routes like that) and have setup a few sites already … pets.HARTmarket.com .. halloween.HARTmarket.com .. lingerie.HARTmarket.com and a few others that are still disjointed and I’ll leave out for now .. Oh, I did resurrect my old cafepress site (cafepress.com/1800HART) and am trying to figure out a way to mask this domain and redirect it to run through HARTmarket.com – but, haven’t figured that out yet ~

    6) Everything Else – “HART (1-800-HART)” Brand

    For now – I have ideas but, not convinced they are good ideas. With the many other sites that I have floating around this network .. consolidation might not be suitable and there is merit for having stand-alone sites. So, in this case .. I will just call this last group the “HART” group.

    If you haven’t yet read how I consolidated all of these sites – from many domains to just a few subdomains – it took me a painstaking amount of time to do this and research my methods .. and if interested – check out my reorganization post and my reogranization post #2.

    Help With The NEW PLAN for Year 3

    On October 12, 2007 .. after many months thinking about it .. I finally put out a shout out that I am officially looking for new writers to help me take the HART-Empire Network to the next level. Deborah Ng kindly placed an ad on one of her sites .. Freelance Writing Gigs … and the response was enormous.

    I received over 50 qualified applications and emails are still trickling in. I hired two new bloggers last weekand I could probably hire at least 10 more bloggers tomorrow – if I could afford it. And, after that .. I’m sure there are about 20 more in the lot of applications that I could find positions! I was very pleased, to say the least, with the results. I shouldn’t have to put out any new calls for writers until mid-2008 hopefully!

    So .. Meet The New Bloggers!

    I am so delighted to introduce, officially, two wonderful additions to the HART-Empire Network .. I am thrilled that they have come aboard to help kickstart Year 3, and in complete amazement that somebody actually wants to work with me 😀

    Please check out the new blogs .. the new writers .. and join in their conversation! I’m sure they would like that!

    * Gloria D. Gamat – Gloria takes over the “Battling Arthritis” blog (RSS), which is a *NEW* blog part of the newly consolidated .. “Battling For Health” site

    * Lelsy Maranan – Lesly takes over the “Battling Cancer” blog (RSS), which was formerly known as the Battling-Cancer.com blog

    AND NOW LET’S PARTY!

    Today, October 24, 2007 .. I will be off to party with a bunch of party animals also celebrating their blogiversary this month … at Liz’s Successful-Blog.com running all day between 7am and 11pm CST

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