I came from the working class, and are working my way up to become a millionaire.
After receiving several emails about copyright infringement, I decided to take down t3blogs.com. Seems like I was violating several copyright laws, and I should certainly have known better. It was a waste of time, energy and money, and I pissed off a lot of people. However, I have learned several valuable lessons, and I doubt I will do something this stupid again.
A new blog network is born, T3Blogs.com. The concept of an automated blog worked so well that I decided to create another one fully automatic one. I used an old domain that I had, guitar-center.org, and it was then the idea of T3Blogs came. It will be a network with new blogs added daily, and it is something I believe will be my first financially success. I don’t have to put much time in it, new content is updated automatically, and it will receive natural organic traffic.
I haven’t really done much the last months except watching the money come in. I have made money from ads, link sales, ringtones, clothes and today I received my first check from Sweet-Dating. Thats right, my dating site now have premium members who pay money every month just to be a member. I should have posted more often tough.
I have to say that I dreamed of much more money than what I make now, but I am not disappointed either. More than $100 pr month in profit from passive income helps my economy, and I have learned so much. I must admit that I have failed in marketing, as most of my sites still don’t have much traffic. The site with the most traffic is Arcade Baby, with a record of more than 2000 unique visitors in one day. It only averages 200 unique visitors pr day, but that is much more than what I can say for the rest of my web sites.
Creating a website from scratch takes a lot of work, especially if you want it to look better than most of my sites.
I am currently in the process of coding my own cms (content management system). I do this to make it easier for myself when I take on a new project. Sure, I could have used Joomla, but I would rather build one from scratch that is made exactly the way I want it to be. A custom made cms will make the creation and maintenance of my websites much easier and I will save a lot of time. And time is money, right?
What is the progress so far? The foundation of my cms is almost finished. I have a working admin panel, articles are stored in a mysql database and are automaticly linked up to the menu system when they are created. I have even created my own template engine system. What is left now is good looking html template that is easy to customize.
Nothing much have happend since last month, my passive income is about the samt as last month so I wont update that. Arcademore.com have been up for about a month, and has only made me a few dollars so far.
I currently work at a warehouse and dont make much money from that job. When I finally get home, I am dead tired and head straight to the couch in front of the TV. It is not a good situation, but it’s a start. I am sticking to my plan to save 10% of every cent I make, and I tell you, it’s not easy when you dont have much to start with. But I have kept to my plan so far However, I currently looking for a new job in the computer industry, and I expect to get a much better salary there. I doubt I will get a new job before new year, but I feel that I am more than qualified for a support/helpdesk job. When I was in the millitary, I worked as support/helpdesk for one of Europes biggest navy bases so I got some related job experience.
I was supposed to move to England to continue my studies, but I changed my mind in the last minute. It will cost me more money than it is worth so I decided to stay in Norway and get a job instead. They way I see it, I will reach my goals faster if I start earning real money now instaed of waiting two more years. My student loan would also skyrocket if I decided to continue, so I dont regret anything. At the moment, I have a temporarly job at a local warehouse but I am applying for several computer jobs.
I also bought another website, www.arcademore.com. I paid a whooping $30 bucks for it, not much when you consider the fact that it have more than 1300 games installed, and a domain name alone costs about 10 dollars.
Thats it for now, I am busting my ass carrying boxes at a warehouse atm. The people I work with a nice, but the job itself is not fun. Classic hard work where I carry boxes, and it’s extremly boring. It is a good motivating factor for me to keep focused and pursuing my goal. I definatly dont want to work there for the rest of my life, so I have to keep working on my business when I am home.
September was another good month. I havent really done much with my websites except planning a marketing strategy for my ringtone site, and still my income increased. Not by much, but it’s $85 pr month now, last month was only $75. The site I purchased earlier, www.arcadebaby.com, has experienced a huge increase in traffic. It receive more than 2000 unique visitors every day, but conversion rate is low. I need to figure out how I can monetize that site properly, but it certanly was a good investment.
I was supposed to move to UK this month, but I changed my mind in the last second. I have been full of doubt for a long time as it will cost me a lot of money to go there. Instead, I will get a full-time job and make some money. 10% of what I earn will be saved and placed into an investment account that I will use to purchase more websites. 60% will be used for living costs and the remaining 30% will be used to pay off my debt.
I had a setback in June and July that called for a change. My adsense earnings dropped, but with the help of my newly purchased site, arcadebaby, they are pointing in the right direction again. My total revenue this month (adsense + affiliate shops) is $75.00, an increase of $10 since last month. I am not satisfied with that since my goal was $80.00. However, I can’t complain as my passive income has increased.
The dating site that I launched a couple of days ago is also doing well. More than 40 members have signed up since it was released, and new members join every day. I dont know how many of those who will convert into premium members who pays for membership, only time will show.
The two amazon affiliate shops launched havent had a single sale, and I dont know if they will have many sales before new year. It is hard to achieve good rankings for such sites in Google, but I plan to run a link building campaign for them this fall. Within a year, they will start providing sweet passive income.
There have not been any activity on this blog from my side this month, but that doesnt mean that I havent done anything. It is summer, and I have taken a well deserved break at the beach.
I recently launched Best MySpace Layouts, a resource site for MySpace. I am using a myspace profile to spread the word about it, and traffic picked up from day one.
I have also bought a website, ArcadeBaby.com. It costed me $300, and provided the previous owner an income of about $30 pr month. It looks like a good deal on the paper, only time will tell if it was. Cash on cash is more than 100%, which is very good on a deal that was made to increase cashflow. I wont update the passive income for this site untill I actually see the numbers in my bank account.
My plan for now is to finish the sites I am currently building, as well as buying new websites that can show a proven income. That way I can increase my passive income with minimal work.
The release of the two sites I wanted to release this month have been delayed, as they are still not finished. I am building them up from scratch, and its much more work than I first planned for. I dont know if I they will be ready in August as I am planning to change my strategy. I may just start to buy finished websites with traffic and then try to increase the revenue from the current traffic instead spending a lot of time building up websites from scratch. In the end, its the money made that counts.
Financially, I did not reach my goal of $80 in passive income pr month and I am quite dissapointed of that. However, with the recent purchase of Arcadebaby.com, I think that goal will be reached in August. I will spend more time searching for established websites with traffic that I can buy for a good price.
June has been a very strange month.
My AdSense earnings dropped alot, but the earnings from Abilca and other residual incomes made up for that. When I deduct my expenses this month, I end up with about the same as last month. I am disapointed for not reaching my goal of $80 in passive income this month. It is caused mainly by a site that loost its position in a search engine and therefore had very litle visitors. My philosophy was proven right again, visitors = money, and no visitors = no money. I have taked action against this, and hired an indian company to submit that site to 500 directories. With the increased backlinks, I hope it will be enough to get back my position in the SERPs.
My goal for July.
I plan to release two new sites this month, one that I think can be very successful in the long term, but it will probably not be that profitable for the short term. The other one can be successful right away. I will keep my goal from June, and work to get $80 in passive income at the end of July.
My summer job is not that exiting, I was exausted after my final exams, so I am taking it easy for now. I currently drive a taxi in Bergen, Norway during the weekends and have the weekdays off. The money I earn is used wisely according to Arkads plan in The Richest Man in Babylon. A part of what I earn is mine to keep, so the first 10% is immediatly put into a saving account. 70% will be used for living expenses, life is a gift and I want to live it. The last 20% are used to pay down debts. I have about 200k Norwegian kroners (about $32190) in school loan, but I dont have to pay any interest on the loan untill I have graduated. The money will be placed into another savings account for the moment, and will be used as an immediate loan payment when I graduate.
Summer came to Norway last week, and I havent really done anything with my websites since that. I will go on a one week vacation on Monday, plant to work full time with my sites when I get back. I have the time to do that now, which is a huge opportunity for me, and plan to use it.