Since my Blogger was so messed up, the import feature in wordpress wouldn’t work, so I’m having to move everything by hand. I’m glad I only had 50 posts to move, and I’m also glad wordpress lets you post back in time, so I can keep the archive working.

A couple things I’m trying to work on this new wordpress blog is getting my links up. My blogger template is gone, so I can’t get all my links from there. I do have a backup at home, but I’m trying to get this done at work so I don’t have to mess with it later. I think I got all my friends’ links on there, but if I missed anyone, please let me know.

After I get all the links up, I will work on getting the pages done. About Me, Contact, My Network, and Archives. I am excited to do the My Network page because I will write brief descriptions of all my sites and provide screenshots.

Once all the content is loaded properly, I will work on the presentation and layout. I will get a custom header made and perhaps change the color scheme. I’m not sure if I like the green yet. I also need to get the categories done.

Monetizing the Blog?

I wonder at what point should someone start to monetize their blog? After reading John Chow’s post about “Part Time Blogging, Full Time Income“, you have to wonder if it’s a good idea or not. He was able to bring in $25/day in the first week of October for his blog. Of course he also gets nearly 5,000 uniques a day so that’s understandable. I only get 40-50 uniques/day (hopefully more since my feed is working now), so my earnings would be around 4 cents/day. So it’s probably not worth it yet to annoy my readers with ads.

The Site Market Sucks

I’ve been looking to buy a site… a big site. I have mid $x,xxx to spend on a website right now, however, I can’t find anything to buy! I’m not going to rush into anything, so I will sit back and wait for something I like. It sucks to browse Digitalpoint and Sitepoint and all you see is poor quality sites for sale with 1 weeks revenue/stats and people claiming it makes $500/month.  Not to mention 95% of sites for sale fall into these categories: myspace resource sites, proxies, arcades, and image uploading. Now I have nothing against these sites, and infact myspace resource sites can be GREAT money makers. However, it’s just not what I’m looking for.

Hopefully some real gems will hit the market soon!

I am moving my blog to wordpress. I was sick of bloggers BS with the archives and RSS feeds not ever working. Please check back later and I should have everything moved.

I think I start out every Monday post with a “Monday’s Suck”. Of course if you’re an internet entrepreneur, your weekends and weekdays probably blend together, especially if you work at home and set your own hours. But for those of us in the work force, Monday’s suck.

This past weekend I had an opportunity to go to the LSU vs UF football game, but had to give away my tickets because I could not find anyone to go with me. If I really wanted to, I could have just used my ticket to get in and squeezed into the bleachers with my friends, but I wasn’t all down to drive almost 2 hours to be uncomfortable at a game. So I watched it on the comfort of my couch on my new 50″ TV (can’t figure out how to get my HDTV antenna to work !!!). Gators romped the Tigers and propelled themselves into #2 on the AP Poll.

I was however able to make it to the Jets vs Jaguars game on Sunday. See, I don’t mind if I miss a Gator game… but I will NEVER miss a Jaguar game. My veins may be orange and blue, but I bleed teal. The Jaguar game was awesome! We destroyed the Jets 41-0. It was a great game to go to. And the weather wasn’t bad either! After the sun went down it dipped into the low 70s.

Blogging about Sports
I was approached by a buddy (Matt) on my friends list, who is interested in having me write content for a new sports blog he is working on. It’s called NFL Addicts, and has a unique design and will feature several writers to maintain a constant flow of unique content. Normally I am pretty busy with my own sites… and I hardly have time to update several of my own blogs, however I love the NFL and I love the Jaguars, so I am going to give it a shot. I have a ton of experience writing about sports, so it shouldn’t be a problem to make a post or two a week.

A New Blog in the Making
I decided to start up a new blog. It’s about a topic I am not very familiar with so I don’t know how well this project will go. I’m not going to release the name of it until I have the design up, but it will be a simple blog run on wordpress. This might end up being one of those projects I only keep for a month and then sell for like $300.

Adsense Earnings
Well it is now October 9th, so I thought I’d give you a little update on my monthly earnings. As of right now, I’m sitting at $109.72, and should be near $115 by the end of today. My adsense earnings this past weekend were a lot lower than usual. I think it’s because the weather is so damn nice out that no one is staying inside on the computer. Once the cold hits up north, people will be more inclined to stay inside.

Bought Furniture
My girlfriend and I purchased a new couch and loveseat on Saturday morning. We went to Sofa’s Express and bought the two for $1,300. I thought I was going to have a heart attack because it was so expensive. But when you have a woman in your life, you quickly realize that you don’t have a say in anything domestic, no matter what the price. So I qualified for the good credit, and we don’t have any interest and no minimum payments until September 2007. After I sell off my current furniture, that will cover $300 of it. So then my girlfriend and I each only have to put down like $50/month to have it paid off by September.

Registerfly Sucks
It seems like everytime I purchase a domain there and get an order confirmation number, that my order just gets lost in space. I’ll check back the next day and the domain is not in my account. And you can forget getting online help via their sales chat. They never respond! Ugghhh.

I know I promised I would post this yesterday, but don’t you think it’s kind of funny how I am writing a post about how to handle work, business, and a social life.. and yet I couldn’t find time to make this post yesterday. If you’re not in my shoes, then you have no idea what it’s like. A lot of you are probably still in school, or maybe just out of high school and didn’t go to college. If you’re in that category you likely have a lot of free time. At least I know I did when I was in college (ahhh the good old days… just 2 years ago).

First I want to run down a typical day for me.

7:30 AM - Wake up
8:30 AM - Go to work. It’s about 20 minutes from my house.
12:00 PM - Go to Lunch
1:00 PM - Come back to work
5:30 PM - Go Home

That’s my typical work day. Now on top of that, I am trying to build an online business and maintain a healthy relationship with my girlfriend (who I’ve been with for 2 1/2 years). Now, I live with my girlfriend, so I actually see her all the time. We always eat dinner together around 6:30 PM, because she doesn’t get home until a little after 6:00. After dinner we usually watch some tv or go workout at the gym (I actually don’t work out as much as I should because I am too tired after coming home from work all day). After all that is done I will try to squeeze in some time to work on my websites. I’ll be lucky to get 1 hour a night to work on stuff. But usually it’s more like 20 minutes.

It is extremely difficult to build/maintain websites on only 20 minutes a night. However, I can do some things while I’m at work during the day. Like updating this blog… I have no cpanel access at work or ftp access.. so I can’t actually build a website while I’m here. I can only log into admin panels in wordpress and phpbb. So my forum and blogs are ok from here. I can also buy/sell domains and sites from work. See, I am working in a job position that is well below my capabilities. So I finish my work in super fast times. My tasks are so easy and menial that a caveman could do it. Because I am so good at what I do, and a lot smarter than what the average person working in my position is… I have a lot of free time. Free time=web publishing time.

Building a successful internet business is very important to me. Not because I want to make $200/day on adsense and play video games all day. That’s not my personality. I haven’t picked up a video game in months. I just don’t have the time. I am always working. Whether in the office, on the internet, or in my social life. My goal is to get out of this office and work for myself. I come from a very prominent family. I’m not bragging about being rich (because I’m not), but my family is very wealthy. But we aren’t spoiled or given handouts. I have to work my ass off to get what I want. I have not been given success or wealth, I have to create it myself.

Perhaps the most important spoke in the wheel of my life, is my girlfriend. Maintaining a healthy relationship with her is everything. She’s the balance in my life. Sure if I was single I could probably be on the net all day building an empire. But what kind of life would that be? It is crucial for me to have a social life outside of the computer. Sometimes I get caught up in the internet too much and will neglect my girlfriend. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “you would rather spend time with your computer than with me”. It’s not true by any means. It’s just that she doesn’t understand the amount of hard work and dedication that goes into this line of work.

Anyways.. I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore in this post. I guess what I’m trying to say is it is damn hard as hell to handle all of this. I give major props to anyone out there who can do all this, plus more (like having kids). Sometimes I want to quit. But then I remember how much I hate my job, and that building a business is my ticket out of here.

For me, I rank my priorities like this
1. Girlfriend/friends/family/social life
2. Internet Business
3. Work in cubicle

Sometimes I get ahead of myself though, and put the girlfriend/friends/family last on the list. I can’t stress how important it is to keep the ones you love at the top of the list. Internet business/web sites can be very addictive. Sometimes you need to step back and take a breather. Go on vacation. Go to the beach. Just do something. Don’t ignore the ones you love. I’ve done it before, and trying to fix a relationship is a hell of a lot harder than fixing a website.

I recommend you try to set just a couple hours a week to building your websites. If you truely work the entire time you can’t get a lot done. Don’t watch TV, don’t listen to music, don’t browse Youtube or digitalpoint. Set your goal in writing. And then cross them off the list when you finish. If you can’t prioritize or keep organization you will never get things done. You will get sidetracked and waste the few hours you have to get work done.

After all that rambling, I doubt anyone will make it this far to the bottom of the post. I was going off on some wild tangets up there. Oh well if this post didn’t turn out how it should be.

If you remember anything from the above post, remember this: “No matter how much you love building websites and seeing checks from Google, do NOT ignore or cast aside your friends/loved ones for this.”

Oh ya… and stick it to the man whenever you get a chance!

I am super excited about tonight… you know why? Because it’s the LOST season premier! I am proud to say I am a Lost Addict. This is the only show on TV I absolutely must watch every week. And I am thrilled that they won’t be playing any bs reruns this year. The show is going to run straight through like 24 with a few week break in December/January. There’s a lot going on on Lost, so if you’re unfamiliar with the show, check out the DVDs and visit Lost-Forum.

There isn’t really much new to report. My Myspace Directory has been getting almost 200 uniques a day and I have actually sold 3 regular links in the past two weeks. I am only selling them for $1 per link. So after paypal fees it really only comes to like $0.70 per link.

MVP Flix is still my most fun site that I am working on. I love watching the videos and I love seeing the stat tracker at the bottom showing 4-6 people online all the time. If I can keep uploading new videos, I know this site can take off. I also have a great viral marketing plan that can really boost the traffic to it. I won’t reveal the details until I have launched it.

Through the first 4 days of October I’ve made $50 on Adsense (and there’s still 10 hours left in today). I am hoping to surpass $400 this month as long as I can keep my $15/day average going.

I am also trying to sell some text links on Fight Song Lyrics. You can view details here.

Tomorrow I will have a more interesting post. I plan on writing about how to juggle a full-time while building an online business.

Stay Tuned!

In case anyone was wondering, I had a pretty good weekend. The beach house was awesome as usual. Moving all Friday night, most of Saturday, and Sunday night was a huge pain. But I came out of it with a nice 50″ widescreen TV and now I am completely moved into my new place. Just have to unpack now!

The Jaguars got their asses handed to them on Sunday afternoon against the Redskins. I don’t know what their problem is. The Jags always seem to fall apart when they are the favorites. The Jaguars are a much better team when they are the underdog and play with a chip on their shoulder. Once they get respect, they blow it.

Anyways…

Google Pagerank Update Sucks
Well the Google pagerank update has come and gone and I hardly reaped any benefits of it. As you can see, my blog is still PR0 even though I have a bunch of PR4 blogs linking to me. What gives? Fight Song Lyrics went from PR2 to PR4. A nice increase, but ultimately I’d like that site to get to PR5 by the next update. Historum went from PR0 to PR2. Not bad, but still not enough to sell links. Layout Pimps went to PR1 .. sucks. MySpace Directory went to PR1, which also sucks. In order for a directory to make any money you need a PR of atleast 4. Everything else is 0 I think. Hopefully Google will be kind to me next update. As long as I keep up with directory submissions and link exchanges I can build PR.

September Earnings
I’ve been slacking quite a bit with updating my daily earnings on the sidebar. I’ll get it adjusted very soon. That $6/day it shows is very outdated. A quick look at September

Expenses
- Hostgator - $10
- ServINT - $49
- Skyhighhost - $4
- Custom Headers - $30
- Domains - $20 give or take
- Myspace Bypass Purchase - $130

Income
- Sales
- EasyGolfTips - $360
- Randy Moss - $80
- CivilationForum.com - $50 or $60 .. can’t remember
- Adsense - $375

So Total Expenses were about $245. Total Income was about $875. That makes Total Revenue around $630. That makes avg daily income around $22 a day. A nice increase from the $6/day shown on the right.

I will try to get a more accurate and nicer looking spreadsheet updated soon.

Other News
Traffic is finally back up on Myspace Bypass. Around 1,300+/day on weekdays and rising! Layoupimps is still around 400-500/day. MVP Flix is around 80/day (thank you digg). Historum membership is rising and at around 430 members right now. It is growing at a rate of just over 100 members a month.

I also will be switching this site over to wordpress asap. I just have to finish unpacking and getting my websites moved to my new server before I can work on updating the blog.

Don’t forget to check out my Sports Highlight Video site, MVP Flix, if you love sports. I’m uploading tons of awesome sports videos everyday!