Posted October 19th, 2008
I arrived back from New York yesterday and have had a nice surprise, I won $100 in the Tyler Cruz Cash Giveaway! Not bad for simply signing up to the newsletter of a blog I already read regularly! Thanks Tyler!
Apart from that welcome boost to my online earnings this month things aren’t really progressing as I’d hoped, adsense isn’t really up to much lately and neither are others (ebay, in-text ads etc.), but there’s still some time to improve those so we’ll see how that goes.
I should get back to my regular posting and of course working on my sites next week and hopefully can kick things back into gear.
Posted October 15th, 2008
There is a good reason that I haven’t posted anything here so far this week… and that’s because I’m currently visiting New York! It’s not all fun though, I’m here to visit the NY office of the company I work for, but still I have the evenings to get about and see the city which is cool.
Of course because of this I’m not really going to have much time to post this week, or do much work on my sites. However, I did just check analytics and adsense stats and the new technology site I created last week seems to have just been indexed by google in the last couple of days, already started to get visitors searching for my main keywords and had one adsense click so far, so fingers crossed this just gets better and better. I’ll work next week on adding more content and hopefully I’m onto a winner!
Hope things are going well for you guys.
Posted October 10th, 2008
In case you don’t know, the term “domain flipping” means to buy a domain with the aim of selling it on again at a profit. This could either be a brand new domain, one that has expired or one you buy from someone else.
I’ve looked into this a little bit in the last month or two and I’ve no doubt that if it’s done right it can be a nice little extra income stream. I’ve read about people who are making a pretty good living just flipping domains.
While it’s something that will probably take practice to get really good at, from what I can see it’s a fairly easy way to make a bit of extra cash without being too time consuming. I might be wrong! It could be really difficult to get right and take many hours to flip just one domain!
The Experiment
As I mentioned in my last post, my first attempt to simply buy a domain then sell it straight on failed since I then decided to setup a site on the domain instead 
. Last night I bought another domain, this name is to do with something that could be very big in the technology world, but at the moment I’m not 100% on it. I would like to try and sell it on soon because I am eager to see how I can get on flipping domains and see if I can make a profit, but I think the best course of action would probably be to let the main keyword get some more exposure in the news and online world and maybe even wait to see whether others start selling domains with this name in it and see how much they go for.
Although I’m still very busy with the affiliate sites I have on the go, it can’t hurt to take half an hour here and there to try something different. In fact I have a couple of domains which I don’t think I am going to use so I may try and sell those, they are .co.uk names so not sure what the market is like for those at the moment. Both names are fairly short (7 and 8 letters). These domains don’t have sites, don’t get traffic, they are just domains sitting there doing sod all!
Once I’ve been through the process I’ll post back here with my experiences. Hopefully I’m successful and can look at this as another consistent income stream, and hopefully I can help you guys out with what I learn from it.
Have you flipped domains before or are you considering trying it out?
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Posted October 8th, 2008
I’ve been quite productive in the last few days and have been working hard on a couple of my projects… one of them you already know about which is my IT niche site, and the other is a new one just started today! Looks like I still have some way to go before I can keep my attention focused on just one or two sites!
The IT Niche Site
I feel that this one is coming along nicely, and soon I’ll be starting to promote it and get some visitors in. Hopefully Google doesn’t take too long to index pages and organic traffic will also start flowing.
So far I’ve researched keywords, got the domain name, setup the site (I’m using WordPress), written 4 articles, added some Adsense blocks and got my analytics tracking code in. Before the weekend I’d like to get a few more articles on there and drop in some affiliate links.
So far I’m finding this site quite enjoyable and easy to write for, mainly because I work in IT in my day job but also because I am quite interested in this particular niche.
Initial searches on Google and some research using Google’s keyword suggestion tool lead me to believe that there isn’t too much competition at the moment and the search numbers look promising, so fingers crossed I can rank well for some decent keywords. There are also plenty of choices for affiliate offers for this specific niche so I’ll just have a look around and choose whichever I think will convert better and will mean I get paid more!
The New Site
This one just kind of happened by accident today. As I’ve mentioned in a couple of my recent posts I am quite interested in trying out domain flipping. I’ve been reading up on this in the last few days and this morning was doing a little research by looking at what domains people are currently selling and basically following a tip which was to keep up-to-date with the latest technology and trends to give you ideas for domains to flip. As I mentioned earlier I work in IT and I regularly read technology news sites and blogs, and as I was thinking about what “new trends” might be profitable I realised that something I have read about in the last couple of days may well be just what I need. So, I did a bit of checking on available domain names and came across a few that I thought could well work out nicely. Of course, I don’t know for sure that they will as I’m a complete newcomer to domain flipping but I reckon they would turn a profit.
Anyway… I went ahead and registered one of the domains I’d found but instead of flipping the domain straight away, I decided to stick a site up on it and see whether it would be more profitable to hold on to it and monetise it. I’ve been beavering away today and have so far setup WordPress (with a handful of useful plugins), got a design I feel fits well, added some well placed (I hope) adsense and added some content. As this is a bit of a hot trend at the moment I want to make sure I get some more content up there in the next couple of days and get it submitted to search engines. I’ll also go about participating in forums and on other blogs in this niche, and look at other ways I can monetise the site, probably in-text ads and affiliate offers.
If the site gets no traffic and makes nothing in the next 4-6 weeks then I may well try and flip it (not just the domain - the entire site), but either way I really do think that it has the potential to make me a bit of money. Hoping my spur of the moment decision to do the site pays off, but I guess the most I lose is the cost of the domain so it’s not too much of a risk.
What About the Real Estate Site?
Unfortunately with all the work I’ve been putting in to the sites mentioned above, I still haven’t even decided on a niche to pursue, not done any keyword research or anything for my Niche to Riches challenge site. I’d really like to try it, but to be honest at this early stage in my affiliate marketing career I’m not sure I’m ready to try and create a site in a niche I really know nothing about. It’s been much easier for me to come up with ideas and content for the IT and technology sites than it has to even think about this one.
Sorry Empress! I really did want to participate fully in this challenge, but I just can’t see it happening. Maybe when the next challenge comes round I’ll already have a few sites under my belt and feel more confident with dipping into niches where I’m not so knowledgable.
That’s it! It’s been busy but I have been enjoying working on these. You never know, one of these might turn out to be a good little money maker for me… that would be very nice indeed 
.
How are your online projects coming along?
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Posted October 6th, 2008
You may have noticed that there have been a few changes here in the last couple of weeks so I thought I’d explain what they are and why I did these.
Ads
While I have had ads on here before, I never really formally announced that you can buy ads on this blog, or set up a page with information for prospective buyers. To be honest, I didn’t think it was worth it at the moment, but then I got to thinking, someone did show interest once before, so how do I know others wouldn’t be? As you’ll see on my Advertise page I offer ad placements on this blog at a very low price. I’m open and honest about my site stats, because I’m not out to con people into paying to get their ads up, I just want true stats there so people can make an informed decision. Also I hope that as the blog progresses this will be visible in the stats so you can see that it is growing!
Increased Posting
I’ve been making a very real effort to post regularly here as it definitely slowed right down during August and I really don’t want this site to just fizzle out like so many other things I’ve started in the past. I’ve been trying to post around 4 times a week, and so far I’ve been managing it. The idea is to get more comfortable with it and obviously get more content up here. I’m sure the quality of what I have to offer here will only get better and as I learn and progress into this journey of making money online!
Additions to the Sidebar
I’ve changed the “Subscribe to RSS” bit at the top to stand out a bit more, and have added an option to subscribe by email. I’ve also added a list of some blogs that I read regularly. Although I won’t simply exchange links with other blogs, I will add any blogs to the list that I enjoy reading and return to often.
CommentLuv
I’ve just installed the CommentLuv plugin, so every time you post a comment on here you will have the option for it to also include a link to your most recent post.
What do you think of the changes? Will they help the blog or turn people off? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
Posted October 2nd, 2008
Here we go then, my October project, earnings and blog goals.
Earnings Goals
This month I would like to see around a 50% increase in earnings on last month, so I’m looking at about £20-£25 ($35-$45). Because I’m now not going to include any GPT earnings (like Greasy Palm), this should be a good little challenge as I’ll have to try and coax my other income streams (Adsense, affiliates, in-text ads, direct advertising here…) into performing a bit better.
Project Goals
In terms of goals for my online projects, the main one is to get at least one new site I’m working on up and running and to start getting traffic to it. This will probably be the real estate niche site I’ve mentioned before, as part of the challenge over at NicheToRiches. I still haven’t got very far with it, not even really narrowed down my niche, so there’s lots of work to be done here.
I’m also going to take one of my existing sites and try to double the traffic and income from it. This site is in an IT niche which I think has some room for my site in there. It’s getting a trickle of traffic, but the site is only really very basic at the moment. I am going to work towards writing 5-10 articles this month to try and increase the organic search traffic, and also see about doing a little bit of blog and forum marketing, and submitting to stumbleupon, delicious etc.
Apart from those two sites, I would also like to spend a little bit of time looking into another possible income stream which I’ve been getting increasingly interested in these days, domain flipping. If I feel confident enough that I know what I’m doing I’d like to try one domain flip before the month is out. If I do I’ll be posting here about it along the way and sharing my experiences.
Blog Goals
I’m quite pleased with this blog last month. It’s still not getting lots of traffic, but it has increased on the last couple of months which is obviously the right direction to be going in!
Here’s a quick list of my goals for this blog for October.
- To get 10 RSS readers
Currently 6
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- To make at least 15 posts
Last month I managed 10 posts
- To get 300 unique visitors
Last month there were 190 uniques
- To get 600 page views
Last month there were 435 page views
- To break into the top 1,000,000 on Alexa and Technorati
Alexa has currently shot up (not good) from the 1.2m mark when I checked on September 24th, to 1.5m as of 30th September. Not sure why this has happened…
These might be very modest goals, but I know that I’ll be sorely disappointed if I was aiming for this blog to instantly gain 100’s of readers and 1000’s of page views. It’s going slowly at the moment, but at least it’s going in the right direction.
So, those are all my goals for this month. I’m going to work hard to achieve these, and hopefully that hard work pays off.
Do you set yourself goals? If you do, do you normally reach them or find you set them too low/too high? It would be great to hear from you.
Why not subscribe to my RSS feed and follow my progress this month? You never know, you just might learn something new along the way :)
Posted October 1st, 2008
I know, this is the post you’ve been waiting for all month, the c-online earnings report. Well, the wait is over, it’s October 1st so that means it’s time for my September Online Earnings!
Seriously now… I have only really got stuck in properly to the stuff I want to be doing in the last week or so, so I haven’t really seen much progress in terms of earnings just yet. However, a little trickle of passive cash is coming in… I just need to turn that into a flood.
- Greasy Palm (cashback / GPT site) - £10.00 ($17.78)
Not really done much on this site as I think the number of offers I can actually do are drying up, and I really don’t want to be buying new home insurance, car insurance, 10 credit cards and taking out loans just to get some cashback! I think this is probably the last time I’ll include this kind of site in my online earnings as it’s not really what I’m after.
- Affiliates - £1.93 ($3.43)
Again, the only affiliate income I’ve made is from eBay. OK I guess since I haven’t touched the site that uses it in about 2 months.
- AdSense - £1.46 ($2.60)
A bit less than last month, I was hoping for at least a little bit of an increase but I guess that will come when I start getting visitors to my sites!
- In-Text Advertising - £2.23 ($3.98)
I’m pleasantly surprised at this figure as it’s alot more than last month, and hopefully will keep on increasing as I build up traffic.
Total = £15.62 ($27.80)
Expenses = £0.00 ($0.00)
Total Profit = £15.62 ($27.80)
Again, nothing to shout about, but I am pleased that my passive streams of income have increased a little on last month, and hopefully they will continue to increase as I keep working at this. I am aiming for October to be the first full month that I work on my online projects without any major interruptions and fingers crossed the earnings will reflect that.
How did you do last month?
