From Internet Dummy to Internet Guru
www.adawn.net Is Merging Into www.canadapersonalfinancewebsite.com
When I started Mind Over Matters – Canada’s Personal Finance Website in 2006, I had no idea about how to run and maintain a website. I did not know anything about the things which you need to marry and live with on a daily basis if you run a blog or a website, such as:
HTML/CSS
Web Hosting
Domain Forwarding
RSS Feed
Feed Aggregators
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get, pronounced wiziwig)
Pings
Trackbacks
Traffic Stats
Affiliate Programs
Contextual Advertising
This is just a few worth mentioning, not a complete list. I’m not saying that you need to have in-depth knowledge of all these subjects, but you need to have a basic idea of how they work and how to apply them to your website.
So much has changed since 2006. I have absorbed a lot of material in the last two years and I’m easily able to maintain a site these days. When I started A Dawn Journal about a year ago, my goal was to provide my readers with interactive, quality writing and useful information covering all aspects of life. A Dawn Journal was able to attract more traffic than Adawn.net within the first two months of its launch and since then it has been keeping me busy day and night, along with my 9–5 job.
I Can’t Keep Up Anymore
Now I have reached a moment where I am not able to keep updating both of my sites on a regular basis. I have not updated anything on Adawn.net for over six months and I have come to the decision that in order to serve you better through A Dawn Journal, it will be in ADJ readers best interest to close Adawn.net and concentrate on Adawnjournal.com. Adawn.net and Adawnjournal.com have similar types of articles and I will be moving all Adawn.net articles to Adawnjournal.com.
An Emotional Decision
The decision to shut down Adawn.net is not an easy one for me. Adawnjournal.com exists today because of Adawn.net and Invest Now became a published book because of Adawn.net. The idea to publish a book struck me one day while I was writing for Adawn.net and after two years of hard of hard work it became a reality.
What Does the Future Hold?
The whole process to close down Adawn.net will take about 3-4 months. Once it’s down, it will make my life a little easier and I will be able to concentrate on ADJ even better than before. Down the road, when I quit my regular job and start living a full dot-com life, maybe I will launch Adawn.net again or even come up with other sites–only time will tell.
Enjoying Serving You
ADJ has an increased level of traffic and it’s going up daily. I enjoy writing for you and your love and encouragement are what keeps me motivated and keeps me going. The main reason I decided to keep ADJ and shut down Adawn.net is because ADJ is a blog site and blogs connect authors with readers on a personal level; blogs build lasting relationships that regular sites can’t. When I see my readers making comments on ADJ and sending me email saying how helpful an article was or how they like and appreciate what I am doing, it means a lot to me—that’s the essence of this blog.
Last Word
Let me say something very important I leaned in the past couple of years:
You can learn anything you want; you only need the willingness to learn. Take me, for example; I transformed myself from internet dummy to internet guru–only because I wanted to learn. I did not have anyone to teach me; I gathered everything I needed online by doing online searches.
Be consistent. Be consistent pursuing your goals and never give up. There were moments when I felt like giving up. There were moments when my negative inner-sense almost took over my positive inner-sense. But instead of giving up, I consistently pursued my goals and that’s why ADJ is still alive today.
Finally, I would like to end today’s post by saying thanks to all my readers and sticking with ADJ for this long. I hope this lasting relationship will continue for years to come.
Update (Feb 9, 2009) :
Since this post went online, I stated getting emails from readers asking not to end Canada’s Personal Finance Website and not to get rid of www.adawn.net domain. I never thought this post would generate so much traffic and become the most popular post of all time. I would like to thank you all for your love and support. Based on your feedback and after careful reconsideration, I have started a new experimental site Canada Personal Finance Website. The purpose of this new site is to experiment what kind of traffic it gets and how long it takes for this site to get on Google Search Results first page. So far, it seems to be doing very well. Unlike my original Canada’s Personal Finance Website (which was not a WordPress blog), this new Canada Personal Finance Website uses WordPress as its blogging platform. WWW.ADAWN.NET domain is kept alive and being forwarded to WWW.CANADAPERSONALFINANCEWEBSITE.COM. Without my reasers’ support, all these would not have been possible. I thank all of you again and I will keep you updated on any new issues on www.adawnjournal.com.
