$1 A Day

One Dollar A Day - New Blog

2006-01-17T19:13:00.000Z

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!

2006-01-01T17:40:00.000Z

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

2006-01-01T17:27:00.000Z

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

2006-01-01T17:16:00.000Z

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

2005-12-29T14:58:00.000Z

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!

2005-12-28T14:25:00.000Z

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!

2005-12-19T20:03:00.001Z

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

2005-12-19T19:47:00.000Z

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

2005-12-19T19:34:00.000Z

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!

2005-12-17T18:18:00.000Z

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

2005-12-13T23:15:00.000Z

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!

Forgotten Money!

2005-12-12T21:25:00.000Z

I just logged into my Clickbank account as I will be putting some aff links on the site I enter into burts challenge and found I have $21.24 sitting in there from one sale in November - bonus :) I had totally forgotten that I had put clickbank on a couple of my early portal sites!

Monthly Costs

2005-12-09T16:00:00.000Z

Just a quick post as I forgot to add this in:

Current total = -$143.98

Hosting = $12.95

KWA Membership = $57.00

Running total = -$213.93*

*December AdSense earnings to be added in at the end of the month.

Burt's Challenge - $100 Prize

2005-12-09T15:55:00.000Z

Burt has setup an AIS challenge over on his blog.

I will be entering with an idea for an ebook that I've had at the back of my mind for a few weeks.

The challenge starts on 16 December and runs until the end of January. The winner is simply the person who makes the most money (turnover). Take a look at burt's blog for full info and rules.

Fan Sites = Waste of Time (Financially)

2005-12-05T21:38:00.000Z

I wrote a while back asking for ideas about how to monetize a "fan" type site I run that was getting good traffic. That particular site is now annoying me even more. Traffic is on a steady rise, currently at around 200 uniques per day...but it is still earning next to nothing!

I did finally get accepted onto the iTunes affiliate program and have made 6p from 1 sale! Via Amazon, I have made 21p from 1 sale.

I think this site proves 3 things:

There is no money to be made from these sites
Country specific affiliate schemes seem to be a waste of time when your target audience is global and most visitors are not from the UK (I'm sure I would be making more if I was an Amazon/iTunes US affiliate)
I can build good content sites and get them to the top of the search engines

I'll be mostly focusing on point 3 then ;)

I'm going to give it another month and, if things don't improve, most of the affiliate stuff will be taken off the site to make it look cleaner.

20 New RSSG Sites Up - 65 In Total Now

2005-12-04T21:31:00.000Z

After recovering from my hangover (as a result of the staff xmas outing!), I spent today getting the 20 RSSG sites I've been talking about online.

I had to upgrade my hosting account, so this has increased my monthly costs by $10 (not too bad) but I'm now up to a healthy sounding 65 sites.

Current total = -$86.38

20 x domains @ $2.88 = $57.60

Running total = -$143.98*

*December AdSense earnings to be added in at the end of the month.

Break-Even Point Reached!

2005-12-04T21:27:00.000Z

My AdSense earnings for December so far have taken me over the $86.38 that I was still in the red at the end of November...anything I earn now above my monthly costs (KWA membership, hosting & domains) is pure profit :D

45 Sites Up

2005-12-02T00:42:00.000Z

I made 5 new sites tonight, so I'm up to 45 now...almost half way!

As I said a couple of posts ago, I have have another 35 keyword lists sitting here waiting for sites to be built around them. The next 5 will be built using NPB as usual, then I'm going to put a batch of 20 up using RSSG, then the remaining 10 from this bunch using NPB again.

Current aim is to get at least the first 5 NPB sites and the 20 RSSG sites up over the next 10 days. I have another week off work coming up after that, so the plan is to blitz as many more sites as possible during that week and hopefully get the 100 up before Xmas!

Current total = -$71.98

5 x domains @ $2.88 = $14.40

Running total = -$86.38

First Google Payment (Spent It Already!)

2005-12-01T20:42:00.000Z

So, I was checking my bank account this morning to see if I'd been paid...and I saw a deposit from Google for my October AdSense earnings...a nice little surprise!

This evening, the shops were open for late night shopping and I promptly spent this money on clothes...you've got to treat yourself sometimes haven't you?!

November Round Up

2005-12-01T20:30:00.000Z

November was a great month with AdSense earnings of $629.97 from a total of 40 sites (some of which haven't started making money yet though).

While that's an average of $21 per day (which I'm well pleased with), I'm still quite a bit short of my $1 per site per day challenge.

Current total = -$701.95

November AdSense earnings = $629.97

Running total = -$71.98

If my earnings continue at their current rate, I should be at the break-even point by Dec 5th.

Plans for December are to get building - I've been pretty slack this month but I have done a lot of groundwork...20 keyword lists ready to build sites with NPB and 20 keyword lists ready to build sites with RSSG. This will take me up to 80 sites...approaching that 100 mark.

The trouble is, these sites are going to take at least 2-4 weeks to start earning money, so it's looking quite likely that I'm going to fail my challenge. That said, I will have 100 sites up by the new year!!

Best Ever AdSense Day

2005-11-29T19:12:00.000Z

Had my best ever Adsense day yesterday with earnings of $41.89 :)

Strangely, burt has reported the same thing - I wonder if this was a more widespread trend - anyone else experience the same?

Adsense Earnings - Past 7 Days

2005-11-28T18:12:00.000Z

The past week has seen earnings of $174.89 - a nice increase on the past couple of weeks.

This seems to be due mainly to newer sites starting to make money and greater consistency in my daily earnings - average daily income over the past 7 days has been $24.98 :)

A Brief History Of My Online Money Making Life!

2005-11-28T17:40:00.000Z

Corby posted a comment on one of my earlier posts yesterday asking how I got started in the world of making money online and AIS. If anyone is interested, here's a potted history of my online money making life...

After graduating university, I temped for a year before before going self-employed with a graphic designer friend of mine. During this time, I got involved with osCommerce and taught myself basic PHP. My first good money-maker was a site offering osCommerce help/installation/etc. However this required some work and also involved clients :( !

My first true AIS was an osCommerce templates shop (built using osCommerce of course!). I was one of the first to get into this market and it proved a nice little earner despite having only a few designs for sale. The site enjoyed top ranking in Google for the term "oscommerce templates" for several years and this drove the majority of traffic to the site.

About 2 years ago I then took the decision to get a "real" job (mainly for financial certainty) and shortly after this I sold the osCommerce templates site for a tidy sum. Since then (until 2 months ago anyway) I haven't been making any money online - I have just been working on a few hobby content sites.

What got me back into the whole online money making thing was reading about burts experiences. The whole niche portal/AdSense earning thing sounded just too easy so I decided to take the plunge and give it a go...low and behold, it does actually work (not that it's easy though!).

As you can see from my RSSG post, I've also started branching out into other AIS's. When this challenge is over, I'll be concentrating more on AIS's rather than pure AdSense earnings - templates, ebooks and that sort of thing.

$500 For November

2005-11-26T22:03:00.000Z

Well, I'm pretty damned chuffed - I've topped the $500 mark in AdSense earnings during November already :)

If things carry on at this rate, I should be in profit in roughly a couple of weeks time...that'll be a nice position to be in!

RSSG - Really Simple Site Generator

2005-11-25T21:05:00.000Z

Now, this is not part of the Adsense challenge (and any earnings will not be included here!) but I thought I'd let you know about an AIS I've set up.

It involves a free site generator called RSSG (Really Simple Site Generator). This script was released a few months ago, but the original site then vanished. I set up a site offering it for download and have since added a few extras to it - an installation service and, today, some templates.

I've already had one person pay for an installation (which takes all of 5 mins!) and hopefully the templates will take off too :) The installation service isn't automated but, as I say, it takes 5 mins per site. The templates are totally automated using PayPal IPN and an instant download script.

I'll keep you updated on how it goes...