It is kind of cheating, but things are not quite right. Due to an unfortunate issue, I missed my flight out of Indianapolis. Consequently, I ended up not getting home until early Sunday morning. That didn’t really help me get re-adjusted and instead of having the majority of Saturday, go to bed early and then Sunday, I was dragging all day Sunday only to get back to work on Monday. All that being said, my creative battery is really low.
A couple of things happened on my trip. The first was that SSL certificate expired last week. Technically, it didn’t expire until mid-April but this happens every couple of months. In fact, it is not suppose to expire but once a year. I don’t understand this at all. I know how to work around it, but that was not something I was really equipped to deal with on the road. It was just too many technical things to handle on an iPad. The second, I was checking on the health of other things due to my SSL problems today and it seems like I am running into some caching issues. What seems to be the problem is that the amount of data is building up and causing slowness of the server painting data, particularly pictures.
There is a actually a third problem as well. This problem is that it seems like MySQL version is out of date. The last two problems seem to be related to me sharing a server with other users. To solve that, it seems logical that the next obvious step is to pay for more space or my own server. That is easier said than done.
It’s not that I can’t get a dedicated server. The question is really should I? This whole thing was an experiment to see if I could build lifestyle/content business. Given that I have made $0 on this, it seems very impractical for me to pay more money just to serve up free content. I guess what I am saying is that as long as things continue at a moderate price, I am more than willing to keep going. There does become a point of diminishing returns.
The first year is always cheap, this is how they get you. The next year the cost is three times as much and then it seems to go up 20% a year from there. I guess that I am seeing that I am not really seeing the return on my investment. Now, I have to own the business plan. That being said, my idea was always to grow a reader base before actually trying to figure out a revenue model. I am not really seeing much growth in my site downloads in three years.
Ultimately, I am saying that I don’t think that there is a lot of desire for my work. And therefore I am in the dichotomy of upgrade to survive or die a slow death. To be clear, I am not saying that I am quitting, but what I am saying that I need to evaluate the future. When I talked about the ‘white hatters’ two weeks ago, I need to put some effort to really measure engagement and how much more effort that I should put into this endeavor.
Last week, I was listening to a podcast overnight and it was about two brothers who literally have built a side business on a Youtube channel about cutting firewood. It was their opinion (as well as many others) that content generation should be confined to a niche subject. The more niche the better. I just don’t want to do that, and I suppose this is my downfall. I guess we will see, I was hoping three years ago that there would be more people like me, interested in lots of different things.
End Your Programming Routine: I don’t think that there is any programming here today. I guess what I am saying is that I am probably not going to do this forever without some sort of return. I’m not even saying that it has to be financial. I cant really complain about not making any money when I haven’t provided any vehicle to do so. I don’t really want to beg. I don’t really want to get hooked into some third party program like Patreon. My first measure was really engagement, which I don’t see much of.
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