Another day at the rat race… another day running in a wheel chasing that piece of cheese I will never reach. Oh how I can’t wait to leave the corporate world. Today I came a little closer to my goals. I made another website sale and also found a new money making venture.

• Leaving Yahoo Publisher Network
• Alex-Rodriguez.net SOLD!
• Money to be made in writing content
• Income statement update
• Earnings Progress Update

Leaving Yahoo Publisher Network
My expirement of placing Yahoo ads on all my websites is officially coming to an end tonight… like right after I make this post. Having made only $0.55 today for a grand total of $2.50 plus in 3 days, I have decided to quit and go back to Google where I was making that much per day. In order to increase CTR, and ultimately earnings, I am going to add Google link ads to my sites. I have used them sparingly in the past. I don’t know why I haven’t ultizied them more to maximize my earnings.

Alex-Rodriguez.net SOLD!
Yes, I sold this website on DigitalPoint for a cool $47.50. Not bad for a $2.75 initial investment and only one hour of work. Once again, not one person bid on this site on Namepros, but I had like 5 bids on DigitalPoint. It had a starting bid of $35 and a BIN of $80. Ultimately, I am happy with the sale.

Money to be Made in Writing Content
A friend of mine online recently started a blog on creatine called Creatine Journal. Since I am a former personal trainer and have a classroom knowledge of exercise physiology, I can contribute a fair amount to this blog. My friend offered to pay me to write 300-500 word articles for the blog. He will pay me an undisclosed amount per each article. I have seen people advertising content for sale on forums before, but never really thought about doing it myself. We’ll see how this turns out.

Income Statement Update
I have adjusted my income statement to include the Alex-Rodriguez.net site sale and a $20 link sale I made on Sonic Wild Fire.

Earnings Progress Update
I have also adjusted the Earnings Progress section on the sidebar to reflect July’s earnings.

Today is Sunday. I don’t normally do much web site work on the weekends, so I don’t have much to tell you. In the following post I will discuss:

• Progress of the YPN Switch
• FreeSpaceBackgrounds.net
• Historum reaches 200 members
• Alex-Rodriguez.net
• Income Statement Update

Progrss of the YPN Switch
Early indications point to my Yahoo Publisher Newtork expirement being a failure. On Friday evening I switched all my sites from Google Adsense to Yahoo. On Google I was averaging about 20+ clicks a day and about $3.00/day. Since the switch I had 0 clicks in Friday, 6 clicks on Saturday for $0.83 and looks like 1 or 2 clicks today for $0.23. All I can say is I am shocked.

I was not expecting such poor results from Yahoo. There are two possible reasons for the poor results. One, it’s a weekend and not as many people surf the internet, so my clicks will be down because my uniques are down. Two, I picked the wrong ad targets for each site.

I plan on leaving the Yahoo Ads up 1 more full day. If I do not see a significant increase in the results, I will switch them back to Google on Monday night. Luckily I created a backup of each file changed, so the transfer back shouldn’t take more than a couple minutes.

FreeSpaceBacksgrounds.net SOLD!
On Saturday morning I woke up to a couple of bids on freespacebackgrounds.net, A simple MySpace resource site I put together in like 10-20 minutes. I initially wanted to get $50 for the site because of the domain with keywords and the site script is quite good. I listed the site for sale on DigitalPoint and Namepros. In my opinion DigitalPoint’s market place is 100 times better than Namepros. You can always make a sale on DP.

The initial bid was $25, followed by a $30 bid and finally a $35 bid. Ultimately the $35 bidder backed out, and I was forced to sell the site to the $30 bidder. It was lower than I was expecting, but for the cost of the domain (only $2.75 on RegisterFly) and time put into the site, it was still a nice return. Almost 1000% return, right? And that’s all profit. Unfortunately, I have to put the $30 in my bank account instead of towards more web sites. I’m flat broke right now and need the money for bills.

Historum Reaches 200 Members
My favorite history forum, Historum, has reached 200 members. My goal was 200 members by August 1st and I barely made it with 1 day to spare. My next goal will be 50 new members by September 1st. Why the drop off? Well, I had been running an adwords campaign all month and have since stopped. New memberships have died down a bit. I need to get back to promoting this site on MySpace and doing link exchanges.

Alex-Rodriguez.net
I bought this domain a while ago. It is not seen on my income statement because I didn’t use my money to buy it. It still has a lot of work to do. I am using the same template/design as I did for the barry-bonds.net web site I made (and sold on DP for like $75). Once I finish this website, which is hopefully tonight or tomorrow, I will immediately list it for sale with hopes of getting at least $40 for it. It’s a great domain that would get very high results on MSN because of the keywords.

Income Statement Update
I have updated my income statement on the right sidebar to reflect the recent sale and $9.99 monthly hosting fees. I also included my Google Adsense Payment from months April-July because I earned more than the $100 required for a payment.

I hope everyone is having a good weekend. It is storming here in Florida, and has been for the past few days. It just gets sooo hot during the day that it builds up massive thunderstorms around 3:00-4:00 PM everyday.

My girlfriend had a girls night out tonight, and since I went out last night with my friends, I decided to stay in tonight and get some work done. Surprisingly, it doesn’t feel like I’ve accomplished that much. I still want to buy a domain or two tonight for a site I have in mind.

The Switch to YPN
I mentioned earlier about switching to YPN instead of Google Adsense. I completed the transition tonight by successfully converting all my sites to YPN. The targets of the ads aren’t that bad, but they still don’t have any of my keywords in them.

Along with switching to YPN, I also improved the ad positioning on Sonic Wild Fire and Medieval II. I used to run 728×90 ads in the footers of all the pages. I have changed that now and embedded 300×250 ads within the text of the pages. You can see an example here here and here. From what I’ve read on numerous forums, this is supposed to drastically improve CTR by having ads where people read text instead of having them at the footer where no one looks. If I had done this with Adsense, I probably could have increased my CTR by at least .5% on both those sites.

Free MySpace Backgrounds
I completed by 3rd Myspace site, http://www.freespacebackgrounds.net. It looks just like Layout Pimps. I don’t think I am going to keep this one. I will try to sell it for around $50. It took me about an hour to build the whole thing, so that’s pretty good money for the time spent.

That’s pretty much it for tonight. I just wanted to make a quick post about the work/updates I’ve made tonight.

I’ve been getting frustrated with Google Adsense lately and their poor payouts. I know Google isn’t the one paying me, it’s the publishers, but anyways I’ve been seriously contemplating making the switch to Yahoo Publisher Network this weekend. I would like to make the switch before the month is up, this way I have a full month to gage stats on and I won’t have any money sitting in my Google account. For those of you who don’t know, Google will not let you take money out until you reach $100.

I am on pace to make $70 this month from Adsense alone. I am curious if I can top that with YPN. In this post, I’ll go over some of the pros and cons of making the switch.

Pro #1 – More Money

Yahoo is known for having better payouts than Google. This might be because they are still in beta and have not gone international yet. But regardless, a higher payout is always better. I’ve heard of people getting $15-$35 clicks on Yahoo. If I had two of those I’d be set for the month!

Pro #2 – Money in the Account

I tried Yahoo sporadically when it was first launched months ago. I was able to accumulate about $18 in my account. It has just been sitting there, because like Google, you have to have at least $100 in your account to make a withdraw.

Pro #3 – Ad Targeting

During the early days of YPN all the ads were credit card and loan ads. Yahoo has since implemented ad targeting, enabling better targeted ads for your website. There are about 10 ad categories you can choose from, and Yahoo will only display ads from that category on your site. So if you run a gaming site you might actually get ads for games and toys. Yahoo has been working on better targeted ads, but they still don’t have half the clientele that Google does. The more publishers Yahoo signs up, the larger the ad base will be, giving you better targeted ads.

I can’t really think of any other positives for making the switch to YPN. Mostly, I just want more money. I am sick of getting only $3.00 for 25 clicks. I’m tired of seeing 1 click for $.02. To me it’s not worth it and feels like a slap in the face to put an ad on my page and only get 2 cents a click.

Now for some of the Cons…

Con #1 – Ad Targeting

I know I just talked about ad targeting as a positive, but it is also a negative. Yahoo is getting better now, but they still don’t come close to Google. For example, on my Sonic Wild Fire website, I see ads for Sonic games, Sonic the Hedgehog, or Nintendo Wii. Google does an excellent job in this department. If I place Yahoo ads on Sonic Wild Fire, I will probably see an ad or two for an arcade and maybe a board game company. I won’t see something for a Nintendo site and I definitely won’t see an ad for a different Sonic site.

Con #2 – No International Clicks Allowed

Since Yahoo Publisher Network is still in Beta, you are not allowed to have international visitors click on your ads. This will result in a banned account. I do have some international users, but I don’t think it is enough to warrant a ban. I really only get like 20+ clicks a day, and maybe like 3-4 are international. So with the drop to YPN, I may only get 1 international click a day. There are ways around this by using a method called geo-targeting. Using a script that finds a visitor’s IP address, you can alter the type of ad you choose to display depending on where the user lives. There are some holes in doing this, but it might be worth a try.

Con #3 – Less clicks

Because the ads aren’t targeted as well, the CTR (click through rate) will go down. Exact CTR isn’t allowed to be discussed, but I can say that it hovers around 3% for all my non forum sites combined. The CTR will probably drop, but hopefully the increase in payout will make up for it.

Con #4 - No Images by the ads

Google allows us to place images by the ads, assuming they are related and do not mislead the visitor to clicking on the ads. An example of this can be seen on Layout Pimps where I have a few user profile pictures in that very first section. Yahoo does not allow this at all. No images or graphics by the ads. What a bummer!

If I make the switch to YPN tonight, I will be sure to fill you in on the results of the move. I will give Yahoo at least a week of my time to test the waters. If I still hover around $2-3 a day then I will make the switch back to Google, simply because the ads look nicer on your website because they are related to your content. But If I can improve my daily earnings to $4-$5 or more a day, Yahoo is here to stay.

My goal is to reach $10/day from contextual ads alone by December 31. If making the move to YPN helps bring me closer to my goal, then I will say goodbye to Google forever.

Sorry I was out sick today. Ate something bad for dinner last night and was in bed most of the day feeling noxious and throwing up.

I will have a full post Friday to make up for it.

Is it just me or is running a forum fun? Sure it takes a lot of work and more dedication than any of the site, but to me there is something more satisfying about building a community rather than a normal click and go website. I’ve owned two main forums, and a few of my websites have forums on them, but they are inactive.

JaxForum

JaxForum was the very first forum I made. I started it at the start of December 2005 and ended up selling it by April 2006. I regret selling it now, but what’s done is done. It is still running today but the activity has dropped wayyy down since I sold it. JaxForum was a place for the citizens of Jacksonville, Florida to chat about local sports, entertainment and whatever. The people on the forum were great. The mod I had was awesome. The success of the forum was as much his part as it was mine. I had big plans for it, but I needed the money so was forced to sell. I started putting Adsense on it in February and made about $30/mo until I sold it. I sold JaxForum for $275 almost 10x the monthly revenue. There were about 220 members on the forum when I sold, and now there are about 300.

I do not visit that site anymore, except weekly to check on the activity. I guess you could say I am bitter for selling it. Having that extra $30/mo would almost put me at the $100/mo from Adsense mark meaning I would get a check every month from Google.

Historum

Historum is my latest and greatest forum. I love Historum, and so do the members. We are approaching the 200 member mark and should be there by August 1^st, which was my goal. I think forums are great to own if you have a passion for the topic they cover. I am not the smartest historian out there, in fact I don’t know much beyond the American Revolution and Civil War. But what’s great about Historum is there are people who do know a lot… people who know about the Romans and Greeks and ancient times. I have learned so much from them.

I take pride in owning a forum. It kind of feels like a child. You spend so much time raising it and watching it grow. You will also get offended when someone says something bad about it or tells you forums don’t make money. Anyone who says forums don’t make money because they have low CTR needs to read a page from Lee Dodd’s book. He makes $5,000 a day. Yah that’s right, a day! From owning forums. He is my inspiration when it comes to all this internet business venture stuff. If I could only make 1/20 of what he makes, I would be able to quit my day job and live my dreams.

Forums are not only fun, but that are invaluable with the friends and connections you will make. You can meet people from all over the world. People who you would otherwise never think twice about talking to. A members true identity is often hidden, so they are free to give their opinions without getting ridiculed or scrutinized. Forums are fun because it is sort of a team game. Unlike traditional websites, one person can not build a forum, it takes the entire community.