My membership to JD Swanson’s VRE challenge started about a week and a half ago, but of course, wouldn’t you know it, I got an avalanche of offline deadlines and haven’t managed to do even a quarter of what I had planned.

Here’s what I’ve accomplished this past week and a half:

1. Two sites built (I will, of course, be adding more quality content to them over time). All articles written by me.
2. Began promotion of these two sites (not nearly as much as I’d hoped to accomplish, though).
3. Nine more domain names bought - sitting quietly in my head, waiting for time to work on them and get them launched.
4. Keyword research for these nine sites all done.
5. Bought and received ten original articles for one of the nine yet-to-be-built sites. I’ve done a quick check through Google to make sure these are original. They are, and the writing is very very good, so I’m hopeful that I might have another writer to add to my outsourcing list.
6. Found about 101 CSS-based templates that I might use sometime in the future.
7. Converted one of these templates into one that uses php includes.
8. Finally reached the ten-article mark at EzineArticles and applied for my upgrade. Received word today that I have Platinum status (yay!)

So here are my results so far, after a week and a half:

1. Two sites built.
2. One site has been indexed with MSN. The other one isn’t indexed at all.
3. I forgot to put in my tracking code, and I’m too lazy to go look at my AWstats, so I can’t tell you how many visitors I’ve had so far. However, according to Adsense, I did have three page impressions yesterday to one of my sites (not the one that’s indexed).
4. Um, no, no money made yet!

So that’s my update so far. I’m looking at another two and a half weeks of deadlines, so I probably won’t be able to put a ton of work into this VRE Empire plan for a little while yet. But I’m trying to do a bit of stuff every day - and at the top of my to-do list? Install those tracking scripts!