So my preference would be to to roar ahead here in my development journal log for the project website, noting all the to-do’s as they get done and get checked off of the list. But the risk, I guess, in being true to this public accountability also looks like it includes admitting to the challenges as well as the achievements.

As I examine the options for the e-commerce ‘back end’ of my social media project site, I am starting to realize that there are several decisions to be made that will affect the ‘build’ – the site architecture – as well as the amount of time to both construct and maintain this aspect of the endeavour.

One example: I am looking forward to describing several e-books about social media that have had an influence on my own thinking and direction that I would be confident to post, along with an Amazon Affiliate link. The amount of earnings from that effort would be very incremental, but at least would start to develop that dynamic part of the site.

However, after I created my Amazon.com Associates account last night, it became apparent that links to e-books on Amazon.com do not work for UK or Canadian or Indian customers of Amazon (the English language Azon sites) who have accounts to shop in their respective online stores.

All seven Amazon sites are totally separate. The support rep I spoke with late last night was very helpful in explaining the issues. In my own experience, Amazon customer service deserves their top-notch reputation. So now I must decide whether that small revenue-generating machine part is worth the time and effort — to post four links for every e-book that I describe.

It’s fine for an author to do that, as you can see here at the bottom of the page in this link where David Amerland is promoting his book, The Social Media Mind.

But for me to do that as an affiliate, its pennies of commission per sale.

So we shall see how I resolve that particular issue.

Why it’s a conundrum for me is that there’s just so much time in a day (and night), with many parts to assemble in this machine (and miles to go before I sleep, according to Robert Frost).

Also, as I mentioned yesterday, I want to produce a lively curation of the trends and newsworthy activities happening in the hubbub of social media, in order to earn your attention. That in itself is an investment of time to read and select what to publish.

And then there’s the learning products, the social media how-to’s for getting the most out of Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, Vine, etc. — both for personal use and for business. I’m making steady progress in collecting some useful resources to offer for purchase downloading, however there are several choices for installing the e-commerce transactional plugins and/or third-party services to enable that.

And then there’s the webinar track, which represents a huge potential for building a specific niche expertise. It is my own expectation that online video in all of its usages will be the next big disruptor. Google’s announcement just yesterday of their new web conferencing appliance, based on Hangouts, is one good example of what’s in the broadband pipeline.

So I must also allot enough time to build skills for producing Hangouts on Air as my webinar platform.

Anyway, enough kvetching. I need to get on with it and install a contact form and a comments section on this site so that I’m not just talking to myself here.

By the way: just out of curiosity, I checked my Google Analytics before heading to sleep last night (earlier this morning, actually), and was thrilled to see a first trickle of visitors. A bit of a mystery cuz this site is not showing up yet in Google search, and I have not yet linked howardarfin.com to my Google Plus profile in order to boost my Author Ranking in search, and I have not mentioned nor publicized this nascent effort to anyone yet. So where is the traffic coming from?

Speaking of Google Author Rank, my Authorship Profile – complete with photo – started appearing in search for my Google Plus profile yesterday, which for me was humbly awesome. Here’s a screen grab of that: