How I Turned Overwhelm into Opportunity in just 12 Hours

In yesterday's post on my blog I wrote about how I had my worst day (emotionally) in quite some time. There I was looking at my portfolio of photography niche sites wondering how I was going to be able to compete against some of the authority sites that I was up against. The competition in this niche is pretty intense and I was feeling like I had bitten off more than I could chew.

Thankfully, I made a pretty startling realization and I didn't feel this way for more than about 10 minutes.

I'm feeling super optimistic

Today I woke up at 5am (I NEVER wake up this early!) feeling fresh and full of optimism. Why so optimistic? Because I realized that my portfolio of niche sites was a far greater asset that I had originally realized. Up to now, I saw them only as a vehicle to earn passive income - as many of them already do.

My big "aha" was that they can now also serve another (greater?) purpose; they can become my lab rats for all sorts of experiments and case studies that I can share with the readers of my blog.

Its common practice for bloggers like me to keep their niches a complete secret from their readers. The thinking is that if we give up our niches, some of our readers will just copy our sites and go into competition with us. What I realized when awoke this morning is that is just plain stupid. Here I have all these websites, and every single one of them can be used to conduct experiments on how to use SEO to get traffic and monetize it. Why the heck wouldn't I want to share that?

By sharing my niche sites with my readers, I am putting myself in a position that very few bloggers do, and in doing so, I believe that I'm going to be able to create some extremely valuable content. I'm also willing to be that this content will get shared and my list of subscribers will grow. If my list continues to grow, then so will my income, and isn't that the whole point of blogging?

So, here is what my readers can expect from me going forward:

* complete transparency with regard to my niche sites - you will see the URL and the traffic stats for each one I blog about
* case studies on many of them, each with a different purpose (SEO & monetization)
* I'll test various products to determine their exact impact on my SERP rankings and then post my findings
* I'll run split tests and share the results
* I'll use my webinars to walk you through the results of each case study and take your questions

Some of the things I'll be blogging about in the next few days include:

* My detailed approach to competitive analysis
* Some new SEO products I'm putting to the test
* How I'm going to incorporate outsourcing into all my niche site activities

Suffice to stay, I'm pretty darn excited to have had my "aha moment" and I can't wait to share the results of all my experiments with my readers. After all, my blog is called the Online Income LAB and testing is what Labs are for.

If you are warrior looking for some help, I hope that this thread is a place to start and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

-Trent