Childengineering.com

When I am not doing all of the things I chronicle on this blog (or blogging about those things), I spend time working on Childengineering.com.

It was an idea I had earlier this year when I was trying to think of a website I could start that maybe hadn't been done before and that would suit my interests and areas of expertise. But I was also specifically looking for something that might generate some income through ads and affiliate programs. Since I noticed that as software engineers, Thom and I approached parenthood a little differently than other parents (Thom had to research baby monitors to make sure we got one that wouldn't interfere with our wireless home network) I thought there might be a place for a website devoted to engineer parents.

My goal is to provide links, information, and product reviews that are of interest to other analytically-minded parents. I've hooked up Google ads on some of the pages and signed up for Amazon.com's affiliate program and link to products on their site when available to try to generate some revenue. Since I created the site with Google's free Page Creator program (yes, another Google plug), it was free to set up, aside from registering the domain name childengineering.com (which wasn't strictly necessary).

I still don't know if there will be significant interest in the site, but it has been fun to work on. I have found that I really enjoy writing book reviews. I've added one on a parenting book I just finished (Secrets of the Baby Whisperer) and a couple on children's books we own. It will be interesting to see if anything becomes of the site.

(By the way, I use Google Analytics to monitor traffic on the site - another free service by Google.
I also use it to monitor traffic on this blog and was interested to see that in the past month, I've had visitors from China, Australia, England and a number of states in the US - some of which surprised me since I don't think I know anyone in those states.)