Owning your own website is a grand idea, till you get all the pieces put together and then it gets hacked. Yes you can spend hours and days building a site and in a few seconds it can be gone.
Thus was my experience a year ago, when I launched a traffic exchange titled Tap 4 Traffic. I think it had a life history of 2 weeks. It was never recovered, and I swallowed my losses and moved on.
After the traffic exchange, I launched a wordpress site, The Wired Daily Press and it was doing well till lockdown. I could not bear to post any news concerning the pandemic or wars. People are depressed and upset enough, so the site has been idle with no new posts. Things are starting to look up now that the pandemic has become a way of life, so it seems. People are getting on with their lives and I am seeing new hope of this in social media channels. People are posting about their business and family life once again, a positive sign for sure.
I did not give up on the idea of a traffic exchange, just the opposite. In February, I launched Stellar Ad Surf and the site is moving along at a steady pace. The site still needs a few fun plugins to give surfers a break and add a little cash to their pockets. Soon I will install a chat plugin and a random prize plugin so members can chat and share. Always a great addition to a mailer or traffic exchange.
I have already purchased the mailer script and a few plugins for that but find my budget a bit squished at the moment, so it will have to wait a few more months. In the grand scheme of things it would be lovely to have unlimited cash to do whatever, but there I go off to dreamland.
I spend a solid 12 hours online everyday, and everything I do is focused on growing my audience and building relationships with and in a marketing sector that I thoroughly enjoy doing. They say the easiest business to build is one that you enjoy doing, and I do enjoy it. It keeps me motivated and the tasks although similar in nature can present unexpected challenges.
A web owners skill set and knowledge must cover coding, graphics, security, web building, wordpress, communications, plugins, apps, api, sales marketing, email marketing and so much more... Building relationships is the biggest of them all and the hardest to master. These days it is so easy to tick someone off, so it is difficult to keep the balance and gain momentum. It is a day by day struggle, that you must rise up to everyday and never give it up, even with egg on your face.