First of all, thank you--all of my lovely WA buddies--for the words of support and the great questions.  What a treat it is to get excited about something, share it in a blog, and hear so many thoughtful and positive responses.  

What fun!

So I thought it might be a good time to share a little on progress and ranking, since we're all learning from one another here.  

Site #1--the portable car heater niche blog--is now ranking 38 in Google for its keyword.  It's #9 in Yahoo.  I've done a round of social bookmarking, and I've also done a lens and 3 EZA's relating to primary, secondary, and tertiary keywords for the site.  That's it.  The goal is to see if the exact-match domain name can help that ranking along without ridiculous, exhausting amounts of article-writing and recasting.  When the site was first indexed, it was at 78.  So, for that amount of effort, I'm pleased to see a rise in a week from 78 to 38.  I hope that in another week I can report that I'm on the first page.  I'll definitely continue to work it--drip-feeding the social bookmarking and maybe doing a bit of blog commenting.

Site #2--the Andy Warhol poster site--is now ranking 21 in Google.  As soon as it was indexed, it was at 29.  Then within 24 hours, up to 21.  Now this is interesting, because I have really had no chance to do anything but get indexed.  I am wondering if it helps that this is the site without a hyphen in the domain name?  andywarholposter.net  -- as opposed to portable-car-heater.com.  Don't quite know.  "Andy Warhol Poster" has 6790 SEOC, whereas "portable car heater" has 5330 SEOC. 

So, while the numbers are similar,  I guess some of it has to do with the different competition strengths.  When I did the competition analysis, the competition strengths seemed pretty similar to me.  I'll have to go back and examine more closely, because I would really like to know why it's so much easier to get higher rankings quickly from one than from the other.

Might as well touch on a few of the things I'm really enjoying about this process.

1.  Research.  What fun to explore new niche possibilities as a regular part of my workflow.

2.  Producing the content.  I love diving in, trying to become a "mini expert," (or just drawing on past experiences) and simply getting the content up.

3.  Measuring.  Unlike so many of my efforts and commitments, success is measurable.  First, through ranking.  Then, later of course, through revenue.  I like being able to measure the success of what I'm doing.  And I like the thought of having so many irons in the fire that I can put more energy into what is working and winnow out whatever is not working.

4.  Networking.  I love sharing what I'm doing.  I love hearing others' responses and trading ideas.  In the past, this has been difficult for me, because I am such a perfectionist that I don't want to appear foolish by making amateurish mistakes and having smarter people point them out.  Silly, I know.  But I am beginning to learn how important it is to "develop within community."  There's an energy that comes from that.  And an accountability as well.  I need both.  And I'd like to offer both too!

5.  Learning about new goodies.  What a blast it is to find out, while you're elbow-deep in the production process, about great tools.  So many of which are free.  I feel as though I'm very fortunate to live in the age that I do.  You don't have to be an expert in everything.  Just be an expert in a couple of things--and then use great tools for everything else.  Eventually, I hope to outsource to great people as well. But for now, I'm all about tools.  And wow, there is just such a wealth of amazing plug-ins, multimedia production tools,tracking utilities, and automation resources out there.  I feel like it's Christmas every day.

So that's what I'm enjoying.  What are you enjoying about your own process of trying to produce and monetize online content?  I'd love to hear about it!