August 10, 2008 | Under My Sites, Updates | 1 Comment 

Well, I realize I haven’t posted anything in a while. I’ve been pretty busy. My friend Gareth messaged me a few days ago and asked why I haven’t posted and for an update on how things were going, so I thought I’d oblige.

Firstly, I haven’t been posting lately for a few reasons. I’ve just been busy with projects and with things in the real world. Secondly, realmadhatter’s sort of taken a back seat. I was never satisfied with the domain; in the next few months I plan to buy a better domain name to better chronicle my webmaster projects/advice.

As for what I’ve been doing…

I’ve really started to get serious with affiliate marketing. A while back I posted on BANS. BANS has made me a decent amount of money - a few hundred each month. However, that’s not really much when you look at the big picture. Rather than commit all my time to build a niche store sites, I’ve migrated to other affiliate marketing tasks. I won’t give details just yet, but I’ve been promoting offers from networks such as www.cj.com and advaliant. I basically build a site around them and drive organic traffic. I’ve also been experimenting with PPC a bit as well.

I’ve also been posting on one of my projects, ForWhichItStood.org. Basically it’s a political blog in which I discuss current events, libertarian ideology, and promote economic education. I’m still working on the site and plan to contribute more time to it in the near future.

Aside from that, I’ve been learning a lot about SEO and affiliate marketing. That’s about it.

May 3, 2008 | Under Resources | 1 Comment 

Typically I won’t post blogs like this for contests, but I’ve participated in contests that Lee’s been a part of in the past, so I know this is legit. Basically, Webmaster Talk is running a forum contest in which the winner gets a Macbook air, some cash, an iPod Touch, and several other attractive prizes.

This contest is a “merger contest” because Webmaster-Talk and Earner’s Forum have merged together. This has created a new forum with a lot of content, a lot of members, a lot of posts, and some growing resources for webmasters.

The contest is run on points and you can earn points for posts, blog posts, articles, that sort of thing. The contest ends on May 13th. If you’re interested in participating in the contest, feel free to sign up.

April 6, 2008 | Under Marketing | Leave a Comment 

I thought this brief video game a good summary of the basics of creating a viral video.

February 29, 2008 | Under My Sites | 1 Comment 

1stly, I’d like to apologize for not posting for a while. I haven’t forgotten about the blog, I’ve just been focusing more on some of my other projects, such as affiliate marketing.

Anyway, I’m currently selling the Sarah Connor Chronicles blog. This is a TV show blog built around the TV show, which airs on fox. The site brings in $250/month when the show airs and gets over 76,000 unique visitors. I’m unsure how much it will bring in over the summer when the show’s not airing, but I would guess around $50/month.

If you’re interested in buying the site, see the auction at sitepoint:

What can you learn from the success of this site?

This site has been a success in my eyes. If I had more actively advertised the site and sought out advertisers to buy ad space on the site, I have no doubt I could have doubled both my traffic and revenue. I simply didn’t have enough interest. But why did this site still turn out fairly successful? I believe there are a few reasons. Firstly, I started earlier. I began the site about 9 months before the show started. This gave me several advantages. Not only did it have the rest of the year to generate backlinks and begin ranking in the search engines, I had the advantage of virtually zero competition. I got the domain name, which was prime for SEO. The domain, combined with the time and lack of competition is what gave this site so much interest.

Another valuable thing I learned from the site is that I really need to diversify revenue. At one point the site was earning $20/day through Adsense alone; but Adsense lowered their rates and that dropped to nearly $5/day with the same amount of traffic. This can happen overnight. This led me to diversify the site’s income even more; today, the blog earns money from Kontera, Adsense, Commission Junction, Private Sales, and Amazon Affiliates/Unbox Downloads. This solidified the income enormously.

This post is just a brief update about what I’m up to. Hopefully through this site I’m selling you can take away something; plan ahead and diversify your revenue.

January 17, 2008 | Under Updates | 3 Comments 

A few days ago I made a post about the BANS software. While I haven’t made any significant revenue yet from the sites, I haven’t given up. However, I have shifted my focus in regards to affiliate marketing. I’m not going to give out too many details just yet, but I’m working more with leads rather than sales, and SEO rather than PPC. A few days ago I spent three hours writing 20+ articles for this project. I’ve just started building everything on a solid website; I’ll post an update once more progress has made.

As for my other new project, AdminAddict.Com, I’m waiting on the design to be finished by the designer. I would guess it will be done within a week.

Another project I’ve had in the works for a while is focused around Fox’s new show, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I was fortunate enough to get the domain name www.sarahconnorchronicles.org; because the domain name is very search engine friendly, and because I started posting on the site months ago, the site is ranked in the top 5 for most terms related for the show in most search engines. The result is a massive amount of traffic (for me, anyway) coming overnight. I was already having problems with the new VPS, and the new traffic did not help whatsoever.

Traffic aside, I did have some problems monetizing the site. I tried various sale and referral campaigns with commission junction, but had no luck. Amazon ads had been running for the previous month with only a few sales. With the boom in traffic, I switched ad sense. Sunday and Monday I made a decent amount, but had a very low CTR. I made some changes and it improved. I’ll keep experimenting. I’ve added TV episode listings of the recent episodes on Amazon and iTunes for purchase, so we’ll see if they’ll convert.

Sorry for not posting for a week or so; I’ve been busy.

January 7, 2008 | Under Affiliate Marketing | Leave a Comment 

BANS, Build a Niche Store, is the new ebay affiliate software that’s been all the talk lately. The software takes ebay RSS feed with your affiliate ID and publishes them as it’s own store/site. BANS allows users to select which categories to display, enter keywords and descriptions, and even add additional content pages. Overall, the BANS software is very customizable.

There are some big affiliate marketers out there, some bringing in thousands and tens of thousands a day in affiliate revenue. I realize most don’t make it as an ebay affiliate, but some do. This is my first real step of getting my piece of the pie.

Over the next few months I’ll be working with a few of my own BANS site. I see real potential to make money here, though, to be honest, I haven’t made a cent as an ebay affiliate to date. I plan to build up revenue through BAN sites through PPC, SEO, and social bookmarketing and see which works best. I’ll be trying various marketing techniques and will report their success (or failure) back here in a month or two. Regardless of my level of success, I will share what I did right or wrong.

Until then, I suggest you check out BANS and build a site of your own.

Note that the links above are affiliate links.

January 1, 2008 | Under Wordpress Themes | Leave a Comment 

Well, it’s officially 2008 - and what better way to start off the new year than with a free Wordpress theme? This is the first wordpress theme that I’m releasing to the public; up until now it’s only been live on DailyMovieReviews.Net.

This is the first wordpress theme I’m releasing, with more soon to follow. This three column theme is called Electrified. I realize it isn’t anything spectacular, but it’s better than many of the themes out there. This wordpress theme is 100% free. You can use this theme so long as you keep the designer link in the footer intact.

This theme is valid XHTML/CSS and is widgetized. It’s compatible with Wordpress 2.3, contains an editable PSD header, and is optimized for Adsense.

Demo | Download

If you’re interested in sponsoring future Wordpress themes, feel free to contact me.

Consider this your New Years Present. Have a happy new year!

December 30, 2007 | Under Updates | Leave a Comment 

Well, it’s been a few days since my last post, so I thought I’d update you on how things are going in general. Typically I avoid having posts on more than one topic, but posts like this every once in a while aren’t that bad.

Holidays

Christmas was okay, I suppose - no good nor worse than usual. I didn’t really get anything special, but I did get a little cash and some gift cards, which was nice. I ended up buy Lost Season 3 with some of the Christmas money. I spent most of Christmas Eve and Christmas with family and away from the computer. I’m not 100% what I’m doing for New Years Eve, but I know I have to work all morning. I’ll probably go out tomorrow night with friends. New Years day will be more family time. I go back to school the 3rd.

Lost TV Marathon

During the past three days, my brother and I had a TV marathon in which we watched all 3 season of Lost in 3 days. We ended up getting about 5 hours of sleep a night and watched 52 hours of video in 72 hours. Fun times. I was still online part of the time, but I did a good deal of TV watching. Lost is a spectacular show that I highly recommend. A few questions I’m just dying to have answered: What do the numbers mean? Why do the outside world think everyone is dead? What is the monster/black smoke? Why did the others want Walk? Who/What is Jacob? Why does Jack want to go back to the island in the flashforward?

Site Updates

In the webmaster world, I successfully sold my Heroes forum, though we need to finish transferring the site. The buyer got a real deal since I’m only selling it for 3 times the monthly income. I have some regrets for selling it, but I’m sure the knew owner will run it much better than I did - I didn’t have much time to devote the the forum. AdminAddict.Com has also been unofficially launched, so feel free to register and post on the site. I’m still waiting on a reply from the designer, so until we get a custom design we’ll use the vbulletin default. Once the design is finished we’ll have a custom look for the forum and it’s adjourning site. I’ll make a post later about AdminAddict once the site is better established.

December 27, 2007 | Under My Sites | Leave a Comment 

2008 is just around the corner, and with it brings new opportunities. Up until the past few weeks I’ve been very unmotivated in my web endeavors, but that will change in 2008. I’m going to college in next fall, hopefully to NYU or Northeastern. Both charge outrageously high tuition, so if that’s not a good motivator I don’t know what is. I intend to pay for the bulk of my college tuition through website revenue.

Some of my goals that aren’t related to specific websites:

• Spend an average of 5 hours a day working online.

  Currently, I may or may not be doing this. I’m not sure. I hope to better keep track of my productive hours working online. This may be difficult between schoolwork and my job, but I think I can do it if I remain focused. While I’m easily spending this much time online and then some, I’m not sure all of the time is productive. I need to be more productive in what I do.

• Keep Records

  One of my major flaws right now is I don’t keep track of what I do. Recently I’ve started a daily to do list, which has helped. Starting January 1st, I will keep track of 1) Revenues earned, both gross and net, 2) Hours worked, tasks completed, 3) tasks/jobs to complete, 4) short and longterm goals. I think keeping track of these things will help me stay focused. Moreover, I hope to occasionally post in this blog about the progress I’m making; hopefully some readers can keep me accountable.

• Establish a net income of $2000/month by December 2008

  I don’t expect to be able to accomplish this right away, but it’s my goal to reach by the end of the year. On average, that’s a little less than $65/day. It’ll be hard, but it is doable. I’m not sure what I’m making currently because I haven’t kept track, but it’s around $6-$7/day. So, in one year, I need to multiply my earnings by 10. Ideally I’ll make between $200 - $400/month on 4-5 sites plus additional revenue through affiliate marketing and miscellaneous income sources.

• Save 100% of the revenue earned for college

  As I mentioned above, I’m heading off to college next year. I haven’t been accepted to either of my first two choices yet, New York University and Northeastern University, but I really hope I do. Tuition is around 40K, plus about 10K room & board. That adds up to about $50,000/year. Not cheap for a Midwestern kid from a lower-middle class family with four children. Yikes. No more splurging on new laptop(s), new gadgets, or other unnecessary things. Any earnings I make online will either be reinvested in my sites through new designs, features, and advertising, or will be saved for college. This is something I’m going to be cracking down on this year. If I can manage to make $2000/month, my first goal, that should pay for about 1/2 of my college tuition for each year (if I can keep the earnings consistent).

A Look at the Future

• Real Mad Hatter

  This site, my webmaster and personal blog, is still new. However, I think that within a year I could reasonably pull in $250 a month or more through private ad sales. In the next three months I hope to revamp this design and get a custom logo/character for the blog. My RSS subscriber goal for the end of 2008 is 500 readers. I also hope to consistently post 4-5 times a week with productive, intelligent posts.

• Writing Forums

  Thus far, WritingForums.Org has been my greatest success. In the next few months I plan to upgrade it to vbulletin 3.7, install a custom review/critique modification, establish more writing contests, and much, much more. I have big plans for the site. It’s currently bringing in just over $100/month. My goal for 2008 is to increase this to $350/month. Currently stats: 6,833 threads; 118,942 posts; 2,665 members. By January 1st, 2009, I intend to have 300,000 posts and 5,000 members. Ideally I would like 500,000 posts and 10,000 members by the end of next year, but I think that may be setting myself up for failure. It’s good to be ambitious, but bad to be unrealistic.

• Admin Addict

  This is my newest project. I have high hopes for it. Since I’m still developing it I can’t tell you much about it, but the general idea is that it’s a resource and forum site for forum administrators. Tyler, my partner in this endeavor, and I are currently developing this project. This forum is more for fun and to help other forum administrators, but I don’t think it’d be too hard to image us pulling in $400/month from the site within a year. I intend to have at least 2,500 members and 100,000 posts by the end of next year. For the blog on the main site I hope to have 500 subscribers, as well as many [currently secret] features.

• Daily Movie Reviews

  This site is another new one from me. The goal is to provide one new review of a movie I’ve seen every day. This will mostly include newly released movies, but may include others as well. In addition to a movie review each day, I intend to post about additional movie and tv news, sneak peeks, and inside information. I still need to change some settings and create a custom header for the site, but this should be done soon. Most of the revenue here will be from affiliate sales, but also private advertisers and adsense. My goal for this site is $400/month and 250 subscribers.

I have many other goals as well. While I wouldn’t consider this a new year’s resolution, per se, I think it’s important to make goals to accomplish throughout the year. What are your goals for 2008?

December 21, 2007 | Under Forum Developement | Leave a Comment 

Choosing the topic of your forum is an important decision. If you have your boards centered around a topic no one wants to talk about, no one will talk about it. There are two things that should be focused on when deciding if your forum niche is appropriate - if you want to talk about it and if others want to talk about it. You need both.

Choose a Discussable Topic

Your topic should be on that can be talked about. You have to be careful not to choose a topic that’s too saturated. If you choose a popular topic, it will be difficult for you to make your forum more appealing that the bigger ones. You’ll have to work much harder, in this case. “you should aim for a niche that’s specific, but not too specific. For example, poetry my be more specific than writing, and thus a good topic; however, Shakespearian poetry is probably too specific. People have to want to talk about your topic. Make sure your topic is not obscure - discussing an unpopular book or creating a forum for the Amish probably won’t generate much activity. :p

Choose a Niche you Enjoy

While still important, choosing a topic you enjoy is still something you should consider. One must enjoy the topic and be knowledgeable in it. Creating a forum, blog, or other website you know nothing about is foolish. You have to personally want to talk about it. Oftentimes, the administrator who runs the forum runs forums on topics they’re passionate about. If you don’t intend to be active in your community, choosing a topic you like isn’t all that important. However, it certainly aids in a forum’s early days and in creating a community.