One website that I like to read is Groklaw. It is a website that discusses the law and information technology. It gained its’ fame through covering the SCO vs. IBM lawsuit. Today, I read an article on Groklaw called Google Taking Blog Comments Searching Real-Time? by Bill Binko. In it he describes some changes in how Google seems to be indexing the web and the amazing speed at which they are doing it. He gives several examples in the article. Below, are a few that I tried for phrases from recent posts on The Lower Barn.

“unusual icicle formation” The only result is for The Lower Barn.

“a good land flowing with milk” The Lower Barn shows up as number eight on the search (On 1/22/08 at 2:50 PM CST, when I executed the search.).

“correct temperature for the milk” The Lower Barn shows up as number three on the search (On 1/22/08 at 2:52 PM CST, when I executed the search.).

What does this mean? For one thing, content gets indexed fast, even for websites with little traffic. As the article points out, Google may be looking more at current content than established content. Even the “little guy” can now show up on searches if the content is good and current.

Life has been very busy so blogging has been light. I am getting to the point where I can start blogging again. One thing I have been thinking about is the merits of niche marketing. Conventional wisdom, on the web, is that successful websites are targeted to a particular niche. I am thinking about pursuing a strategy of combining multiple niches in one site, effectively creating a “multi-niche” e-commerce site.

Today my e-commerce website, www.TenFootTable.com, is most successful in selling Celtic Sea Salt. Some of my plans are to expand the marketing of related items on this site. Salt, while a good seller, is a low-margin product. I want to create cross-sell opportunities for higher-margin sales. This fits well into the niche marketing concept.

It is appealing to add unrelated (to salt) items to sell on the same website. My main reason is that as a small operation it is time consuming to maintain multiple websites and the associated back-ends and/or business entities. Our business is also a family business. As a family, we have varied interests. Is it possible to market to many niches in one website? It will be interesting to find out.

Somehow, I forgot to post December traffic. Here is an update with both December and January traffic counts.

December 2006

January 2007

My website www.mikesmind.com is the only site out of the three that doesn’t have AdSense ads running on it. Based on traffic count, I should get busy adding them to the site!

One way to ease in to working from home is to leverage existing skills. This can be done by consulting on a contract basis. The internet makes it possible to work from almost anywhere. Because of this, there is a boom in contractors and consultants.

My areas of expertise are Project Management, Information Technology, Meeting Facilitation, Training, and Retail. I expect that I could leverage any or all of these into consulting engagements.

If you are just starting out, it helps to have a third party handle the payment details. RentACoder is a well-respected and established marketplace to connect buyers who need professional software develop to people with the skills to do it. Elance is a membership site that allows contractors and consultants to sell their services to interested buyers.

All that is needed is to “hit the pavement” and line up that first contract. This is a great option to continue doing what you’ve been doing and be able to work from home, at least part of the time.

Here’s my monthly update on traffic. Free to Farm continues to decline in traffic. Mike’s Mind and Daddy Work @ Home are picking up again. Regular posting is important. I need to keep up on that. I have plenty of ideas for writing, but need to plan time to do it.

On a related note, Jonathan Leger has an interesting series called “A case study on the traffic-building power of article writing.” I’m going to give this a try for my websites. Time is the main issue.