Way back in April of 2005 I wrote an article on Building Your Virtual Empire. I’ve moved ahead strong with that concept over the past few months and so has my ’empire’. Ya know the cool thing about that? We all have a virtual empire, no matter how small it may be.

If you’ve contributed to anything at all on the internet, you’ve begun laying down the foundation of your empire. That’s a powerful concept. In the beginning, its all about those small steps. You post on a few blogs here, you contribute to a few forums there, you write an article or to and submit them to an articles site, you send a couple of emails and get to know website owners and they mention you on their site. Its those small steps.. That’s laying down your foundation. That’s the beginning of building your empire.

From there, you begin to expand. You build your own site, you begin spending more time on communities, you become more active in the blogging world by commenting and getting to know the writers better. You launch your own blog and keep it updated. You build a readership of your own.

And then, the challenges.

Suddenly you’re spending TOO much time. Sure, you’re meeting lots of people and learning a ton, but you’re suffering overload! And to top that all off, you’ve got bills to pay. For some, its no big deal, you have a job and the internet is just a side project, for now. For the rest, the internet is a full time project. Your virtual empire is all you have and it needs to be producing results

I’ve faced those challenges.

For me, its required a balance. I can spend my ENTIRE day reading blogs, posting on forums, sending emails, and talking with people. My network of relationships expands, I learn more about people and they learn more about me. This IS a very important part of building an empire, but its not the only part.

I’ve learned to balance my attention. Each day I invest time in expanding the economic side of my empire. Expanding and developing the projects and ideas that make money and, consequently, give me the freedom to expand the rest of my empire.

You’ve got to maintain a balance. Some of you have mastered that balance, some of you are just now becoming aware of the need to balance, some of you are in a real struggle with that balance. Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better, but as you stick to it and actively strive to maintain a balance, things WILL get better.

I spent over $400 on domains today ;). Godaddy.com is my registrar of choice and after 3 customer support calls that went very well and a nice 10% discount, I’m a very happy client. I had all my domains ‘consilodated’ to renew on June 9th of each year, my birthday. It’s kind of funny. On my 20th birthday next year I’ll be shelling out over $1000 in domain renewals.. Yeah, I know, its small, but its a start :). I’m expanding my empire.

In another news, a friend of mine, Cary Miller, recently made a nice expansion of his virtual empire with the addition of a reallly nice ipod blog. Check it out at ipod-church.com. Give Cary and his wife some love and leave a few nice comments :).

Alright, and that’s that from me! I’m off to bed to get some sleep so I can take on tomorrow!

Goodnight World! You guys are awesome :).

-Jonathan Wold