Blog Update- The 1st Six Months

By Molly

Mar92012

We’ll be taking next week off.  Don’t miss us too much 🙁  We will be back with more stories and tales of growing and making stuff!  We have over 100 posts- take a looksie around- god knows what you might have missed!

We’ve been writing ‘Mike and Molly’s House’ for 6 months now.  When we launched our site back in September our goal was to make a blog that would become our full time job.  It was our new small business that combined everything we love to do (writing, making stuff, raising chickens and ducks, inventing new objects) in one spot.  We  knew our posts needed to be thoughtful, interesting and have high quality photos.  What we didn’t know was how to monetize the site.  That’s been a learning curve.  In November we were kicked out of Adsense which was the lowest hanging fruit of blog monetization.

Mike: Boo! no more low hanging fruit!….Stupid Adsense!

Molly: Shush your mouth!  What if they turn off our Gmail?…or erase all our GoogleDocs…or…or take us off Google?!!

Mike: (under his breath) Stupid Google giving everything away for free….fricken fricken frack…. » » »

Finding a Niche Site- Part IV-The Finale!

By Molly

Mar42012

Our 3 week and 1 day challenge to find and build a niche site is up!  Where’s our site?  Will we make money?  Well, not quite…but we did learn quite a bit and it’s paying off on our site here.

Take a looksie, the vlog will fill y’ all in:

Now what are we going to do for money?  Well, Congress did extend our unemployment benefits so we will have that but we need to find some real solid income.  We have a few irons in the fire and we think we are close to one of them coming to fruition so we won’t have to dip into our emergency fund.  We’ll keep you posted!

Molly:  I’m looking forward to making more vlogs, how about you hon?

Mike:  You know, I like making the vlogs more than working on a niche site!

Molly:  Lordy loo!  What am I going to do with you?

To see all the parts to our 3 week and 1 day challenge go to:

Part I:  We are So F**Ked

Part II:  SEO Keyword Hell

Part III: Finding our Niche (neesh)- Trust Issues

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What?  You can’t get enough of us?  Well do we have options for you!

 You can subscribe to Mike and Molly’s House through our RSS feed or email.

You can also follow our Facebook Fanpage , join us on Twitter, see what we are up to on Google + and see what cool stuff we follow on Pinterest.  

 Like what you see here?  Spread the word to your friends and family!

Thanks!!!!

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Finding our Niche (neesh)- Part III…Trust Issues

By Molly

Feb262012

We thought we were going to make educational videos when we set out to do this series but really we just like amusing ourselves so if you’re like Steve and still have no idea what a keyword is or for that matter what the heidi-ho a niche site is keep watching…we think at the very least you will get a good belly laugh from it.

If you are just joining us check out the first in this series here (or just skip to the video here) and the second part here (and here’s just the straight video).

To see all the parts to our 3 week and 1 day challenge go to:

Part I:  We are So F**Ked

Part II:  SEO Keyword Hell

Part III: Finding our Niche (neesh)- Trust Issues (you are currently here!)

Part IV:  Finding a Niche Site: The Finale!

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What?  You can’t get enough of us?  Well do we have options for you!

 You can subscribe to Mike and Molly’s House through our RSS feed or email.

You can also follow our Facebook Fanpage , join us on Twitter, see what we are up to on Google + and see what cool stuff we follow on Pinterest.  

 Like what you see here?  Spread the word to your friends and family!

Thanks!!!!

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SEO Keyword Hell

By Molly

Feb192012

Hang on to your seats as we peel back the curtain to reveal the dark secrets behind how we’re mining Google to find the perfect term to bring the hoards to our new niche website.

There comes a time in every blogger’s life when they start thinking –  “How the heck am I going to get more people to my site?”  Turns out it’s all about the SEO (search engine optimization) here in internet land.  Really the question is how can I get a good ranking in Google so that I’m at the top of the page when someone searches for something I’ve written about.

Oh, for those of you who are thinking, ‘Yawn…watching a video on SEO keyword research sounds  really  boring’ we are ready to prove you wrong.  Well, at the very least it’s only 4 minutes and if you don’t like it you can have your money back.

Molly:  We are STUNNING  people!

Mike:  Forgive Molly, she  just finished imagining she was presenting at a seminar on positive thinking.  » » »

We Are So F**Ked

By Molly

Feb102012

Well, the video will explain….

What is a niche site?

A site that is focused on one particular topic.  An example would be a site dedicated to lemon cupcakes.

Great links to check out the 411 on niche sites:

Sandy @ Yes I Am Cheap

Pat @ Smart Passive Income

Who competed in the  Niche Site Duel?

Sunil @ The Extra Money Blog

To see all the parts to our 3 week and 1 day challenge go to:

Part II:  SEO Keyword Hell

Part III: Finding our Niche (neesh)- Trust Issues

Part IV:  Finding a Niche Site: The Finale!

…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

What?  You can’t get enough of us?  Well do we have options for you!

 You can subscribe to Mike and Molly’s House through our RSS feed or email.

You can also follow our Facebook Fanpage , join us on Twitter, see what we are up to on Google + and see what cool stuff we follow on Pinterest.  

 Like what you see here?  Spread the word to your friends and family!

Thanks!!!!

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Blog Update-January

By Molly

Feb32012

We’ve been writing Mike and Molly’s House for 5 months now.  We skipped reporting on December- the month went a little faster than expected.  How does that happen?  We have continued to grow which is always exciting.

Stats

Posts:  20!  Our goal is to write at least 20 each month.

Visitors: 3,519-out of those 2,374 were ‘unique’ visitors (AKA- new readers)

December we had 3,199 visitors and 2,058 were unique

Readership: 

Since December 1st (yes this is over two months) all of you helped us to go from:

88  Facebook fans to 123!

154  Twitter followers to 197!

131 subscribers to 176! (email and RSS)

Our Alexa ranking went from  188,454 (and 29,961 in the US) to 161,915 (and 28,270 in the US)

Are we making money?  No.  Have we tried in the last two months?  No.

Molly:  CRYSTAL!!  HELP US!!

Mike:   Yikes!  That was a li-ttle screechy.  Crystal from Budgeting in the Fun Stuff  will be taking over our advertising.  She’s our gal now! » » »

Updates and Giveaway Winner!

By Molly

Oct172011

It’s time to announce the winner of our first giveaway!  Last Tuesday, October 11th,  we told you all about NM chile.  It’s a delicious spicy veggie that New Mexicans cannot live without.

Red chile

Molly:  I was very sleepy this morning and just wanted to pick a winner.  Mike wouldn’t let me.

Mike:  Nope, we’ve got to be fair.  It wasn’t a big deal to make a spreadsheet of  entries and let Random.org  pick us a winner.

And the winner is….. » » »

Breadwinner Relay

By Molly

Sep32011

Mike and I have switched or shared the role of breadwinner so many times we can barely keep up.  Right now I’m bringing home the bacon.  Last year at this time he was.  The year before we both were (yep, we had about the same salary).  We’ve both tried self-employment before and with each other with mixed results. While neither one of us particularly enjoys it, for the past six years at least one of us has been ‘out in the workforce’  in order to support the family.   We both agree that having one person staying at home works for our household.  Anyone who has/had kids knows the challenges of conflicting work and kid schedules.

Mike was laid off this past March so he has been playing the stay at home role. » » »