Looking back at 2008

Playtime is over! I’ve used the past period to experiment with some forms of promoting my posts and trying to get more traffic. Although the results were satisfying as you can see in the graph above, it felt more like ‘work’ than ‘hobby’ for me. Because doing this is rather time and energy consuming. And that is not a good thing…if you’re not making money from it, that is!
The above graph illustrates the short period from October until end December for this blog. And it’s no surprise that it’s possible to get a peak of visitors and views, no matter how humble your blog or post is. But to keep this visitors coming back you need to invest a lot in time and energy…but I’m gonna focus on other things instead.

Setting goals for 2009

While reading My Internet Goals for 2009 I found out writing your goals down works very therapeutic and very refreshing. Although very personal it can be interesting and inspiring for others too.

Now that the new year is getting closer it’s time for me to get my goals clear and focus on them. Maybe you should write down your own goals too?

Aytemir.com: Design, Develop…Blog!

The main goal for this blog has always been a supporting blog for the projects I’m running or planning. I’ve used the past months to experiment with some social media and I’ve learned a lot, which I hope to use in return when I’m ready to promote these projects once their ready.
I will keep the current categories and write about the progress of the projects listed below. I’m prepared for a lack of visitor peaks, but the content should be useful (for me) when starting a another/new project.
At a certain moment I think I might have to say goodbye to the Unstandard theme…

Uppedd: Ranking and Rating the Stars!

This will be my ‘Pièce de résistance’. Like the rest of the projects I’m going for the easy route and use already existing tools and plugins and try to go (private) beta in 2009!
Although the concept is rather basic, it still is a rather ambitious project and it’s potentials are very promising.
Expect to read more about this projects in the coming posts.

Fan-Tas-Tic! Science-Fiction & Fantasy Art Gallery

I was always meaning to do something with my favouriet genre: SF&F. While writing Best of 2008 for developers: 2008+ tips, tricks, scripts and sources! I came across a bunch of WordPress powered CSS galleries and got this fan-tas-tic idea: Why not do the same for fan-tas-tic SF&F art!

Fan-tas-tic.com was luckily not taken and from now on will it be not only my own personal favourite gallery, but visitors can also submit other SF&F art and vote on the submissions.
I’m aware there are already other great resources for SF&F art, but they mostly miss some of the basic features of these Web 2.0 galleries, like tags, rating and ranking or they also contain less fantastic work.

BAOA: Blogging About Oracle Applications

This niche technical blog is actually for my company and I it’s about time it got pimped. It needs an upgrade, new look and feel and a lot of more useful plugins.
The content is absolute king and therefore it needs more audience, yet only from the same technical niche, which is a great challenge.

VoetbalPortaal: Exclusive Soccer Forum

I’m considering this soccer forum project actually as finished, since there is not much more I’m gonna change about it.

Summary

Note that I’ve not set any goals regarding monetizing any of the new projects. And initially the design will be of based on a existing theme in most cases.
The focus will be on getting things finished instead.