One Dollar A Day - New Blog

Just to let anyone who still checks this blog know that I have set up my new One Dollar A Day blog where I'll be talking about all my online money making adventures, not just AdSense scrapper sites!

End of Challenge, End of This Blog!

Yes, I'm sad to say that it's the end of the challenge - so how did I do...?

Target: Create 100 websites FAILED (only 65 created)

Target: Earn $100 per day from these FAILED (averaged around $20 per day)

In terms of the challenge then, I well and truely FAILED! Looking back, I was probably a little naive about how hard this was going to be and how much time I actually had to dedicate to the challenge.

So what have I got out of the challenge?

Well first things first... $376 profit from my AdSense sites alone!
Discovered that it is possible to make good money by churning out niche portals.
Learnt an ongoing way to bring in a decent extra income each month.
Learnt techniques have helped me make more money out of my content sites.
Set up two AIS type sites that are bringing in a small but decent income.
Finally...I've re-discovered my appetite for making money on the net :)

The end of the challenge also signals the end of this blog. I got a bit bored just writing about my Adsense exploits towards the end and I'm sick of Blogger - the last straw came a few weeks back when they added the CAPTCHA to this blog :(

I'll be setting up a more general Wordpress blog on my own domain to keep everyone up to date with my online money making adventures (Adsense and AIS) as well as whatever else I feel like writing about...details to be posted here when it's ready.

Until then, thanks for following my challenge and here's to a happy, healthy & prosperous year in 2006 for us all :)

Other AIS Roundup

As regular readers will know, I started branching out into other types of sites than just pure adsense portals.

RSSG Site (launched at end of Nov)
2 x installation orders @ $10 = $20
3 x templates @ $9.95 = $29.85
3 x template packs @ $14.95 = $44.85
Total income = $94.70

Site for Burts Challenge (launched mid Dec)
1 x ebook @ 14.99 - $14.99
AdSense = $8.34
Total income = $23.33

The cost of setting up these was just the cost of the domains.
I did spend a fair amount of time writing the ebook and designing the site for burts challenge and also creating the templates for the RSSG site, but the only ongoing work is doing the RSSG installations (5 mins a pop). In all other aspects, these are true AIS's :)

I'm going to be concentrating my efforts on these sort of sites in the immediate future...in fact I have several ideas in the pipeline and need to decide which to develop first!

I have also persuaded a friend of mine to write 2 ebooks for which I will get 50% of the profits for doing the web marketing...1 of these ebooks in particular I'm convinced will be a great earner...just waiting for her to write them!

December AdSense Figures

My AdSense earnings for December were slightly down on November at $589.97 from 65 sites (compared to $629.97 in Nov) but still healthy. I put the drop down to a combination of not building new sites on a regular basis and the poor Christmas period I experienced. I also built a big bunch of sites in mid-December which are not making money yet.

Current total = -$213.93

December AdSense earnings = $589.97

Running total = $376.04

It's nice to be firmly in profit and to know that anything I earn above my monthly costs (KWA membership, hosting & domain fees) is pure profit :)

Burts Challenge - 2 Weeks In

Just a quick update on the brand new site I entered into burts challenge:

• Site is fully indexed in all major search engines :)
• 1 ebook sale @ $14.99
• AdSense earnings of $5.63
• No Clickbank affiliate sales yet

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with how things are going especially so early on. That said, I've no idea how all the other entrants are doing!

Xmas AdSense Nosedive!

Just getting back into the swing of things after taking some time off for Christmas and I logged in to check my AdSense...oh dear!

For Christmas day and the two days either side, my earnings took a huge nose dive to almost half of my usual daily average. The worst day was Christmas Eve when I earned just $6.50 in AdSense.

Looks like a lot of people were doing the same as me and having a break from their computers - can't blame them really!

The good news is that things are picking back up again :)

World Cup!

I think I said previously that I would be setting aside some of my AdSense income to pay for my trip to the World Cup in Germany next year.

Well, I have just applied for tickets through the England supporters club and, if I get tickets to all the matches I applied for at the highest ticket categories, it's going to cost me a cool £800!! (that's about $1400). And that's just for tickets, no flights or accomodation.

The way I see it though is that the WC is not likely to be back in Europe for probably 12 years. The next one is in South Africa and the one after that will be in South America (i.e. Brazil). Add to that the fact that England have probably the best chance of winning it since I've been alive and I just have to go to Germany...

Best get building some more AdSensers quick!

Pureprofile

Since I last posted about Pureprofile, I have made £25 just for viewing a few websites and answering a couple of questions. I'll be withdrawing this as an HMV voucher and using it to pick up some new CD's in the post-christmas sales :)

Sign up now for Pureprofile and get earning - it's easy money with no obligation to buy anything!

General Update

My AdSense earnings have slipped quite a bit recently, but I'm still averaging around $20 a day for December. This seems to be down to 2 main factors:

1. Me not building enough sites! (The 20 I put up a couple of weeks ago aren't making any money yet.)
2. Finding out on Dec 16 that RSStoBlog had stopped posting to my blogs on Dec 8!! This is now fixed and my earnings are on the rise again.

Overall, it's quite clear that I'm nowhere near achieving my goal of having 100 sites earning an average of $1 per day. It's a shame, but I am still earning some decent extra income. Remember I have broken even, so anything above my monthly costs is pure profit :)

My other AIS (templates for RSSG) is not setting the world on fire but is chugging along with $40 of sales over the past 3 weeks. Nothing to write home about really but I will create some "prettier" templates in the new year to try and boost things.

Finally, my entry into burts contest is currently being promoted in an attempt to get it listed in the search engines quickly. It seems to be working as googlebot has notched up 141 hits already :)

My Site for Burts Challenge Is Up and Running!

My site for burts challenge is up and running :)

It's a hybrid of a content site with an ebook I wrote for sale and a pure adsense niche portal with some clickbank thrown in for good measure! Hopefully, this three pronged atack will be a winner...

Internet Marketing = BS

I'm sick of internet marketing. I'll illustrate why with two examples:

1. Sales Letters

I can't think of a worse way to sell a product. If I ever come across a sales letter, I immediately close the browser or click my back button. I just don't trust them. I don't believe anything written in them. The question I have is do these sales letter pages work on ordinary members of the public? Or do they just sucker in others playing in the internet marketing game? They must work at some level, otherwise people surely wouldn't continue to use them. Or is it just that they are too lazy to put together a nice, well written website to showcase the product? That can't be the answer either since these sales letters are usually pages and pages long so they must have taken time to put together.

2. Follow Up E-mail Campaigns

A real life example for you from a (free) product I downloaded a few weeks ago. I had already signed up to receive notification when this product would be available to download, so the first e-mail was to let me know the product was available to download:

Not too long ago, you signed up to receive priority notice about the release of the desktop application, httPulse.

With the promise of knowing the instant it was released,
we just uploaded the download file about 5 minutes ago to
the server and it's ready for you to install.

Head on over to the following URL and pick up your copy:

http://www.******.com/

(or cut and paste that link into your browser)

Can't wait to hear what you think.

Great, so I went ahead and downloaded the product. Exactly 15 minutes later, I received this e-mail:

Just wanted check in and make sure that you downloaded
httPulse okay which you requested a few days ago.

Did you open it up, install it and start using it?

If so, way to go!

We're already getting rave reviews from people...

So, I requested to download the product a few days ago did I? No! You're already getting rave reviews...15 minutes after making the product available to download are you? No!

This second e-mail was clearly meant to arrive a couple of days after the first one and it just goes to show you what BS they contain.

Anyway, rant over!