January 2008 Income report

Ah, the ol’ income report post, perhaps the most important regular post on any Make Money Online blog.

So, how was January?

January was a disimprovement on the previous month (Where I earned $1,500 in profits) which seems like a huge disappointment, but given my circrumstances, I consider the month to have been quite a success. I said at one point that getting into the $xxx region would please me, and I’ve done that and done it well.

Income  

$40 - Blog reviews (My best blog income to date I think? Finally all my love and affection I put into this site is paying off!)

$25 - Misc. sales

$95 - eBook sales

$500 - Website sale

$21 - Adsense

Total Income :  $681

Expenses : 

$20 - Design

$11 - Two hosting accounts

$20 - Sitepoint auctions

$5 - Various proxy promotions

$13 - Giving in to the whinings of Mongey for a cut of any sale he helped with in any way

Total Expenses :  $69

Total profit for the month :  $612

Overall I’m more than happy with that. I’m spending very little time online these days, so to still be making more money than I was in my old job has me fairly pleased.

I expect next month’s earnings to be the lowest I’ve had in a long time, because I have my mock exams, and currently no projects on the horizon that would bring up february’s income. I’m hoping that 4getschool.com will continue growing in terms of adsense income, but you can never be sure of anything with proxies.

It’ll be horrible posting next month about my earnings when they’re next to nothing, but studying is really more important right now, and I’ve earned enough recently to get by for a while. And you never know, I might have some sort of million dollar brainwave idea…

I like being exact with these earnings, taking my expenses into account at all times. I love reading the various income reports across the blogosphere, but I hate that not enough people seem to be exact, or say how much came from where, or in particular, mention their expenses! It’s easy to go out and say you earned whatever, but then not mention how much you spent to earn that. All you’ve gotta do is do what I do. Keep a notepad next to your PC (or laptop in my case) and a pen next to it. Draw a line down the middle of the page, one half is for income, the other for expenses. Considering I make money through different ways that only I can keep track of, I have to do this.

Good to see John Chow’s income has hit yet another new record, with $30,000 this month. Still a good candidate for president? Oh I think so! And look at that income report. A man making over $30k and he even goes into cents in his recordings.

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Looks like google stopped loving me

Sadly, I seem to have been stripped of my page rank. It’s no big deal, but it’s a little irritating all the same. I know damn well this page deserves to be a PR3 (which it was) or more, so it’s frustrating to have google take off my PR simply because I’m using a piece of code in the sidebar that sells ads through TNX. PR is a pretty vicious cycle, in that you want a higher pr so your site is worth more and you can charge more for links or advertising, but as soon as Google see you sellings links, your Pagerank gets taken off you. As far as I know, TNX have something that may prevent this happening, so I’ll have to look into that in the hope I get some PR back.

Google had been treating me very well lately, as I’d been getting high rankings for keywords I mentioned in posts. I’m currently still number four result on Google for “digital point forums”, which is pretty funny since the post is titled “Digital Point forums are going down the drain”.

Otherwise TNX has been working pretty well for me. You get more and more credits each day, for doing absolutely nothing, and soon I’ll be able to cash them in, so it’s pretty handy. If you’re gonna sign up, do so using my referral link, or using the banner at the top of this page

In other news, I’ve finally bought a new hosting account for my proxy, so will be promoting that a little soon. Remember to use 4getSchool.com to get on bebo from school kids

You may have noticed that I’m posting a little less often on here. That’s due to school work and study getting the better of me lately, so expect posting to be 3-4 times a week rather than 7 days a week like I used to be able to do.

Sellin’ links in my, my sidebar,

I fought the Google and the Google won, I fought the Google and the Google won

I needed money cause I had none
I fought the Google and the Google won, I fought the Google and the Google won

Yeah I’m currently listening to that famous Clash song, so that seemed appropriate. Real lyrics are here, do you all like my clever word change?

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Why do I have so many domains?

I logged in to my Godaddy.com account today to see just how many domains I own. I have one domain elsewhere, and all my others are at Godaddy.

The result was quite surprising.

I own 25 domains! Let’s go through ‘em all shall we?

• 4getschool.com - Proxy site I’ve been running a bit lately, but now need to purchase a new hosting account for, since you can’t host proxies on ordinary servers.
• CleanseAcne.com - A site on which I wanted to have an ebook guide on acne and all that. My reasoning at the time of purchase was that teenagers are probably the biggest internet users, and this is a common problem for teens. I still haven’t done this site.
• ConorMongey.com - This was a Christmas present for a friend, who’s now doing his own blog on there.
• FeckSchool.com - Was a proxy site, but is now doing nothing, shame since it’s a nice domain. Even if I continue doing nothing with this domain, I’ll renew it.
• GetFrontPage.com - That’s right, the site I sold for $1,050. The buyer never accepted the domain, but obviously I couldn’t sell it again or risk him coming back to me giving out. I’ve contacted him about this and never gotten a reply.
• GoingHairless.info - A shitty adsense site I put up back in the day and hoped to sell. I never sold it, still try to the odd time, but never with any conviction!
• GuideToWordpress.com - I was going to do an ebook site on this, but Smemon and myself decided to use it to start a blog guide, helping out with wordpress and also giving away his ebook that he wrote. Smemon basically did all the work, and we were going to continue posting on the site for a while, get a few subscribers and see where that takes us. Just yesterday I talked to him me not having enough time to run my own projects, so working on something substandardly with someone else is not something I’d feel very good about, and I gracefully retired from the project. I don’t deserve any credit not doing any work like! I offered him the domain, but we’re going to wait and see. I think my choice was best for both parties involved.
• ImgSlut.com - Ah, my new image hosting site. I think this could enjoy a little success, since it has a domain name that is more memorable than the average image hosting site. I’m in the process of finding a designer for the header/logo, and will fiddle around with the site after that. For the header I’m hoping for something kind of funny, like an image logo or picture frame wearing fishnet tights and high heels. If you or someone you know could do this for a cheap-ish price, give me a shout.
• JointVenturesProfits.com - A disgusting domain for what was a disgusting PLR ebook site. I sold the site for $25 ages ago, and the buyer didn’t accept the domain. Just a few weeks ago he mailed me about it again, so I go and push him the domain for the second time, and again he doesn’t fucking accept! The second time he mailed about it, I had already made some bigger sales, so doing this for a smaller sale from ages ago (combined with the fact that this was his fault anyway) was annoying. If he mails me again, he’s getting ignored, and that’s something I never do.
• PhoneGallery.info - Ah, this one warms my heart. There were so many different ideas and sites up on this domain. Eventually I did a mobile phone blog on there and sold it, and of course the buyer never accepted the domain.
• RockFestivalBlog.com - Fairly obvious what my idea was for this, a blog with updates on the rock festivals around the world. I’d still like to actually do this site, but you know me, I’m a lazy bollocks.
• SiteOfTheConchords.com - This is the domain I’m most proud of. I wanted to do a fansite for The Flight of the Conchords, and came up with this domain. Even now when I think about it, I’m proud! This got a PR1 a while ago but then lost it again. Someday, I’ll do this site.
• SlipStreamLCC.com - A domain bought for a poor friend with no credit card.
• Soodie.com/.net/.info - A trilogy of domains I had a plan for. I found the name pretty brandable, so went and bought the .net and .info extensions before realising the idea was too expensive for me at the time.
• UltimateHealthBlog.com - A health blog I made and sold, and I actually didn’t realise until now that the buyer never accepted his domain.
• VXJQ.com - An “investment” I made during the dying seconds of the LLLL.com sale rush. Could prove to be worth more in years to come.
• Walsho.net/com - The website you’re currently on. Recently bought the .com extension to stop anyone holding me ransom.
• WebmasterDiscounts.com - A decent domain and idea, and I ran this fairly well with someone for a while. It’s now kind of abandoned, but has a PR3, and I’ve been meaning to start working on it again!
• XQJV.com- See number 16.
• XVTQ.com - See number 16.
• YourBabies.info - See number 6.
• YourDebs.com - Wanted to do a debs information site with this. I still do, and have been slowly making progress on it.
• YourGphoneblog - Bought this around the time the iPhone came out, and every single iPhone domain was being bought for silly money. So then the rumours of Google bringing out a gPhone started spreading, so I bought this. There has been no more word of a gPhone since. Thanks google, now I look like a fool.

If anyone fancies buying some of these domains off me, give me a shout, as I’m sure you’ve noticed most of them have been abandoned!

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Another website sale

I mentioned yesterday that there had been some good business news.

Well, it’s the ol’ reliable selling of an ebook site that did the trick yet again. WordpressForProfits.com was an ebook website I made last week. I sold some copies of the ebook and made around $85 dollars in a few days, and since I didn’t have time to promote it anymore, decided to sell the site (with exclusive ebook rights) there and then. The starting bid was set to $100 and the BIN price at $500. Within an hour or two I had received the BIN price, giving me a nice $500 to boost this month’s income which has been fairly shit thus far due to time restraints with school and studying. The transaction was very smooth, I wish the new buyer all the best of luck with the site.

I’m beginning to hate this sort of income though to be honest. The whole selling ebooks and then selling the site is not a long term thing, and is pretty unreliable. If I had more time on my hands I’d try avoid this method and work on more long term income methods, but I simply don’t have time for that, and I have to settle for making quick cash to get by on. The reassuring thing is that I’m still making more money online than I was in my part-time job, which I gave up just before Christmas.

Now for something completely different. I recommend taking a look at William Montanaro’s new wordpress theme, which he actually made himself. Pretty impressive eh?

You may notice this post is coming a little earlier than usual for me, because I wasn’t in school today. I woke up this morning absolutely wrecked and given that I very rarely miss a day in school, decided I can have a break now and again. Had I gone in I seriously doubt I’d have been able pay any attention anyway. Though I must admit I’m worried that I’ll get into a habit of missing school, since today was so amazingly relaxing!

I’m considering putting a strict limit on my daily computer time so I don’t end up wasting too much of my day. Two hours a day sounds reasonable I think.

I’ve gotta go study for a french oral exam anyway, I’ve gotta learn enough to fill twelve minutes of conversation, which is a lot tougher than it sounds! A bientot!

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Building a portfolio

Firstly apologies about two reviews on here over the past two days, but well, a bloggah’ gotta eat, bro.

I’ve decided that while procrastinating on working on actual projects and stuff, I’m gonna build a shitload of websites in the meantime. Simple websites, and nothing I’m gonna devote too much time to unless they start growing in some big way. Image uploading, various blogs, forums are some of the ideas I have, along with starting up a couple of proxies again. Stick up some adsense, do a little promotion, and hope for the best! Worst case scenario they earn nothing or very little and I have a big website portfolio which I could sell off for a tiny profit on the basis that the domains have a little age. I’ve a lot of sites I want to work on for potential long term profits, but I’m always in need of quick money to get by.

That’s what the new ebook was for, and it’s done fairly well. Not quite as well as I would have hoped, but I’m still working on getting more sales. I even bought some advertising for it yesterday, on an SEO blog. The advertising was going pretty cheap and I thought it could be a good way to test out if it’d be worth it to pay a lot more for an ad on some of the biggers blogs.

That’s all I’ve got for today really, since studying and homework are really getting to me and I’m trying to keep everything in balance. I’ll hopefully reveal more on my website portfolio plans soon, so stay tuned. Not sure if I said this already, but those Maths and Physics exams I mentioned last week? Got an A in both, so being a nerd is kind of paying off!

EDIT - Writing this post actually caused me to burn my dinner, but thankfully I’ve now discovered that a blackened margherita pizza isn’t actually that bad when it’s well done!

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How to implement Popular Posts on Wordpress

The “Popular Posts” plugin is a very handy one. When new readers visit the blog this plugin shows them your work that has gone down well, and when they see your best material, it just might convince them to subscribe to your RSS feed.

Now I was actually surprised about how easy this was to set up.

Firstly, download the Popularity Contest plugin from this page. From there most users will know what to do, but here’s my guide on how I set up the Popular Posts plugin on the sidebar of this blog.

After you download the plugin, upload it to your plugins directory, and then activate it from the Wordpress admin panel. Then, since I wanted to implement my plugin in the sidebar, I edited the sidebar.php file, and firstly added a new heading by putting in :

<h2>Popular Posts</h2>

After this heading simply throw in the following code :

<ul><?php akpc_most_popular(); ?></ul>

That’s all I had to do, so I’m presuming that’s all you’ll have to do!

It’s actually quite interesting to see which posts get onto the most popular list. The method of calculating the popular ones is described as follows on the website : “Views, comments, etc. are tracked and given configurable point values to determine popularity.”

I’d like more info as to how exactly it works, but what ya gonna do?

Remember to purchase my excellent new ebook to learn how to profit from wordpress.

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Manners Gentlemen

Lately I’m getting sick of dealing with idiots who conduct business with showing any sort of courtesy or manners.

Showing respect and being polite is something everyone should do anyway, but in business this will generally benefit you. Not just the politeness and courtesy, but also professionalism, as in using correct grammar and spelling when emailing a potential customer and things like that.

We see evidence of this everywhere. For example, shops. When you’re being served in a shop by some annoying little bastard it puts you off going to that place, whereas you’re more than happy returning to a shop where customers are always treated well.

I always try to be polite and respectful in business as possible. I don’t lie to increase my profits or sales, and generally this goes down well with any customers I’ve had.

Here’s an example I experienced two days ago which demonstrated the importance of courtesy and professionalism.

I needed to get a book for some research project in school. The book was difficult enough to find, particularly from a seller based in Ireland or the UK, and I didn’t want to wait weeks for shipping from America. So I went onto Abebooks.co.uk and found a few British sellers. I mailed three of them this message :

” “[Sekritz book title here]” book.

I’m in Ireland and need this book asap. I’m willing to pay extra for faster delivery if necessary. I’d also like to know if you would accept paypal as payment rather than Credit Card? I could manage credit card if needed but it wouldn’t be preferable at all.

Cheers,

Mark. “

One of the sellers didn’t reply at all. Another seller sent this exact response, which was so damn irritating.

“pay normal and we will send out first today
fran”

All lower case letters (from a book seller for christ’s sake!) and no greeting. And pay “normal” ?! I understand what she meant but I think Paypal is a fairly”normal” method of payment, so I think it’d have been better to ask me to pay by credit card. The general shittyness of this response left me very reluctant to deal with this seller.

Soon enough I got a third reply, and this was much more what I expected. Here’s the reply :

“Hi Mark

Thank you for your enquiry. I have had the book taken out of storage this morning for weighing and it is nearly 2Kg which does add to the cost. Your options are as follows

ROYAL MAIL AIRMAIL - No guarantees at all! £17.85

COURIER NON GUARANTEED SERVICE - Usually 2-5 days but not guaranteed and not recommended as may not be faster than Airmail if you are unlucky £24.99

COURIER NEXT DAY GUARANTEED - This service is guaranteed for delivery by the end of the next working day £44.49

Only the final service is guaranteed in any way at all. The problem is that collection MUST be booked by 10.00 a.m. this morning for delivery by the end of tomorrow. If we miss that cut off time they will collect on Friday and deliver on Monday

Please telephone me urgently if you require this service booked today. My landline number is set out below and I am sure you know how to adjust it for calling to the mainland. We can sort out payment after we have it booked but Paypal is not a problem

Best wishes

Alex“

This was followed by all his contact details and website. I replied telling him my choice and asked him a few questions, and he promptly replied answering every single one. I told him to send the paypal bill and all that. He had the book ready for shipment before I’d even confirmed the payment. After we agreed our deal and everything had been done, I commented on his professionalism and thanked him for the great transaction, and told him I’d be checking him out first if I need to order any more books online. His response was prompt, polite and professional, (3 p’s?) and for that he got my business and potentially future business from me.

I’ve actually often seen seller’s on Digital Point lose customers simply from being rude in some way.

Treat customers well, and conduct yourself professionally and you give yourself a much better chance of being successful, and earning some cash. Look at any of the big guys in online marketing, and you’d struggle to find an example of them being rude (without good reason anyway!).

Being polite and helpful has earned me some good contacts who I’m always willing to help out and they’re always willing to do the same. Remember when my ebook was stolen? Read that post and see how those contacts of mine all came on to tear that thief to shreds with me. Would I have gotten that sort of help if I hadn’t established good ties? I think not mes amis.

So while I’m talking about being courteous and treating customers well, I’ll let you guys know how to get my new ebook at the discount price of $7, on this thread. Post on there or give me a shout if you wish to purchase.

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Guide To Wordpress

This is a project I’m working on with Smemon, who is most certainly doing the majority of the work so far.

Basically he wrote a damn good ebook to help newbies with wordpress (admittedly I learned a thing or two aswell!) and he decided to give it away for free. This fitted in nicely with a domain I owned, GuideToWordpress.com

The plan is to have a blog on the site, with the ebook being an integral part of the site. Perhaps a box on the side about it or whatever. Currently the site’s configured so that a quick registration on the blog will get you the ebook. This benefits us in that it gives us a email list that we could use at some later stage, and also having a lot of people resitered on the site will look great and increase the value hugely. We’re looking to do a couple of posts a week about wordpress, such as tips, tricks, plugins, and all that jazz. The ebook is really worth the registration, and I’m really not just saying that. I learned a lot about Wordpress from Smemon’s blog, so to have all these tips in one quality ebook will come in handy for anyone.

I’m hoping the fact that Smemon’s already done a hell of a lot more work than me so far will motivate me to work on this as much as I should.

Check it out and go register, and don’t forget to let us know what you think of the blog, ebook, and idea in general.

In other news, my new ebook is pretty much ready for launch, check out WordpressForProfits.com to see it. It contains info on the methods I’ve made money from using wordpress and then come on here to brag about, so of course you’d be mad not to purchase

Check that sexy ebook cover, done by the ever obliging William Montanaro.I expect to be properly launching either Thursday or Friday,using good ol’ DP, but as it stands it’s all ready to go, I just need to look after some other stuff (yeah, school stuff!) before I can deal with buyers and all that. So do me a favour and buy now off the website, you’ll make me feel warm and fuzzy inside, and eventually go to heaven for your good deed.

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TNX - Text Link Revolution

I’ve been learning about and using TNX.net over the past few days, and my impression thus far is the same as it was at the beginning. I’m impressed. I first came across this site on Digital Point forums, with an impressively brandable domain and image, it’s hard not to notice this site. Seeing them on DP displayed a close realtionship with their users, something I rarely see in other successful companies.

Basically this site is somewhere for webmasters to sign up and sell links on their sites through the TNX marketplace, and obviously then it’s a place for advertisers to go on and buy links at an affordable rate. The systems benefits all parties, since advertisers can get cheaper advertising, promoting hundreds of keywords in a matter of seconds, and webmasters can earn more from link sales as TNX has the added option of being able to sell links on every page of your site, rather than just the main page, as offered by others. This alone sets apart TNX from other competitors such as Text Link Ads. I once signed up with TLA and wasn’t impressed really, it was dead, and thus, I didn’t bother mentioning it on here

With TNX, I was impressed at first by the sexy look of the site, and then the fact that signing up was dead easy, with no hassle or time wasting. That’s what I want.

The setting up ads is simple too, thanks to great coding on the site and a very user-friendly interface. You know you’re dealing with a professionally made website and system here, but it’s not completely impersonal as you would expect.

They’re friendly too, giving away some free points in this thread on DP, along with free tools and guides to getting #1 rank on google so have a read on there and get yourself something for nothing. As you would expect, there’s an affiliate program too, which you can access by clicking here. I like the site enough that I used my affiliate link and put up their banner at the top of this page. So there goes my banner virginity.

TNX has grown hugely over it’s short life, and it will continue to do so. So click that banner at the top of the page there and sign up

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A warm welcome for the new hosting

I mentioned yesterday that one of my website was down. In fact, they all are, except for this one. I found out Saturday morning that my hosting had gone down again, and in an annoyed and hungover state, I decided enough was enough and bought some professional hosting from Hostgator. I’ve been too lazy busy to transfer the rest of my sites over, but I will do this soon.

Let this be a lesson to any new webmaster. You’ll find hosting deals that are too good to be true, and even though they’ll do for a while, it’s inevitable that they’ll fuck up on you at some stage. And when you start having websites with regular visitors, this isn’t acceptable. Save money in the long term and get pro hosting from the start. I’m now with a proper company, with a good percentage uptime, and if there are any problems I’ll have support to go to, rather than just one guy on MSN who tries to sell some shitty hosting on the side.

I really hope my old hosting provider is reading this, and he can realise that he’s abysmal when it comes to providing hosting. I was told I’d get 99.9% uptime from this guy and I got nothing of the sort. Then when there were problems, I’d email him or talk to him on MSN about it. Often I’d get “Yes we are working on it, it will be back soon”. That’s great, but if you knew about the problem then why the fuck wasn’t I told about it rather than having to go to you? Sometimes I’d email and soon enough all would be fixed, but I’d never get a response to my email. A little courtesy and an apology for the inconvenience wouldn’t go astray. That hosting is still down, so that’s around 48 hours it’s been fucked. That in itself is too many times more than the 0.01% downtime I was promised.

Moral of the story kiddo’s? Don’t be a cheap bastard.

The wordpress timestamp feature is a godsend. I wrote this post on Sunday evening in order to minimise my online time today, and scheduled it to go live today. Ain’t that handy?

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