To go along with my sports themed network, I think my next site will be a general sports directory. I used to own one wayyy back called Sports Linkup. It is actually still alive and even PR4 now. That was one of my I need $50 quick site sales that I wish I would have kept.

I don’t have a domain yet, but I will run the directory with PHPLD 3.0 or maybe SiteSift. I’m not quite sure which one I will use. I’ve never tried Site Sift, so I might give them a good look. Once I get a domain, I’ll be sure to let everyone know.

New Project Update

I should have the initial design for my new project finished on Wednesday. I asked the designer how the progress was going and he told me not to rush him. I thought it was kind of rude, but whatever. As long as the work looks good I don’t mind.

I started to post some myself on the forum of my new site. Even though it hasn’t launched yet and no one knows about it, I wanted to get some content on there before I launch. I also purchased some paid posting from a good friend, Andreas Bard. This is my first time really buying paid posts. I purchased 100 posts I think. If it works out and the posts actually make sense and are topic targeted, then I might buy more. I’d like to have at least 500 posts by the time I launch.

Rookie Spot

I was able to make my first post on Rookie Spot on Friday, and will make a second post this afternoong. I’ll probably write about Vince Young or Maurice Jones Drew. Both NFL rookies and both in contention for the Rookie of the Year title. I have yet to promote the site at all really except putting links to it on all my sports sites.

Adsense on the Blog

Since Thursday when I put Adsense on this blog, I have earned $1.61. Not bad considering none of the posts in my archive have adsense embedded in them. Believe it or not, I actually get traffic from some of the posts I have indexed in Google. Once more and more of my posts with Adsense get indexed, I think my revenue will increase a bit. My goal is to make $1/day from this blog by the end of January.

I first want to say thank you to everyone who donated to the David Birthday Fund. I greatly appreciate it. All of you are true friends of mine, and I’d drop everything to return the favor. That’s what’s great about our community. Everyone is so helpful and generous. There isn’t any real competition.

Adsense Updates

We’ve reached the halfway point in the month, and as of right now I have just over $190 in my Adsense account. That comes to about $12.67 per day (a few dollars over my $10/day goal I set back in July). At this rate I will finish the month just under $400. That’s a pretty good month for me, and as I continue to add sites to my network, I expect the revenue to grow.

My top earner thus far continues to be Fight Song Lyrics, bringing in just over $60. I am surprised that revenue has stayed even though college football is virtually over. There are a few bowl games left, which I hope to cash in on, after that who knows what will happen to my earnings. My second top earner is Layout Pimps at $59 so far this month (if you add in Adbrite, it actually has earned closer to $70).

Adbrite Earnings

It has now been 12 days since I added Adbrite to Layout Pimps. My total for those 12 days is $8.75. That comes to just over $20 per month. Not bad for doing 0 work. I simply added the Adbrite code, and haven’t touched it since. Free money is what I call it. I’ll continue to watch this and keep you updated.

A New Goal 

A few months back I made it clear in some posts that my goal was to make $10/day by the end of December. This is back when I was struggling to make $1-2/day. It is safe to say that I have reached that goal. Barely, but I did it.

I’m setting a new goal for myself. This one is going to be way more challenging, and really force me to create great sites and drive a lot of traffic to them. My new goal will be to make $50 more per month, every month. Keep in mind this is just money from Adsense, not link sales, private ad sales, Adbrite, or anything else. So if I make $390 this month, my goal will be to make $440 by the end of January, and then $490 by the end of February. If I keep this up, I will be at around $1000/month by this time next year. While that doesn’t seem like a lot to many of you, it is to me. To know I went from $0/mo to $1000/mo in 2 years will be a great accomplishment in my eyes, especially since this is a part time job for me.

Well, that’s it for the day. I’m going out to eat dinner with my family tonight and going to have some yummy cake. I’m not really sure of my plans for tomorrow. Sunday the Jaguars travel to Tennessee to play their division rival Titans. We should win

Remember those kids that used to bring in cupcakes on their birthdays back in 1st grade? I feel like that’s me 20 years later. But hey, that’s what you’ve got to do when you have so many friends online and none of them know when your birthday is. Today I am officially 24 years old. No, I don’t feel any older. It feels the same as 23. I think these post college years are all going to be a big blur until I get married and have kids. That’s when you probably start to feel older.

I’m not having a birthday party, but I still wanted to give everyone here a chance to get me a present anyways

I started the David’s Birthday Fund, and we are now accepting donations via Paypal. Every bit helps

I’ll make another post later today with site news and updates. For now I’m going to enjoy my breakfast in my little cubicle at work.

I have almost finished pruning my network by removing all my non-sports related websites. In Game Flix was the latest site to go. I sold it on Digitalpoint for $50. It had made me only $3+ on Adsense since I launched the site in late October. I enjoyed watching all the video game movies, but it just wasn’t enough for me to keep around.

Some of you might think I’m crazy for getting rid of so much and focusing on a specific genre instead of diversifying my sites. It’s just something I want to do. If it doesn’t work, then I’ll rebuild and diversify. But for now, sports is my passion and that’s what I want to focus on.

Cya Tomorrow!

I mentioned a few posts back that I wanted to try to monetize my blog. Granted, I don’t even get 100 uniques a day (more like 60-70), but I still wanted to see if there is potential. I tried TLA, but they rejected. My next attempt with be good old Google Adsense. After reading The Easiest Way to Add Google Adsense On a Blog, by John Chow, I decided to follow his guide and install Adsense Delux to my blog.

I currently am running a 468×60 ad at the top of every page, followed by a 250×250 ad spot inside every post. I attempted to put a 300×250 ad at the bottom of every post, but for some reason adsense delux doesn’t want to add it and when I tried putting in into the template php, I couldn’t get it aligned. O-well, I think having these two is a good test for now.

I’m not sure how well these ads will perform since most of my readers are returners and won’t click on ads anyways. I get very few traffic from search engines. I will be sure to keep everyone posted on the progress and results.

Found a Designer

I found a designer for my new vbulletin project. I’m not going to reveal who it is just yet. I want to wait until the project is finished. I got a good price (atleast I thought I did) of $200 for a complete custom skin. The guy’s portfolio was amazing, and he has even won Form of the Month on several webmaster sites for his designs. He said it will take about 7 days to complete. I wish it were sooner because I am anxious to get started on my project. In the mean time, I will load all the mods and hacks I want and start creating threads myself.

A New Site!

I took the advice of Marc, one of the guys who comments on my blog, and started a new site. About a month ago he suggested a site idea about a rookie blog. This site won’t be geared towards user generated content. I will write the content myself. Anyways, I decided to make a Rookie Blog, just as he suggested. There are no posts on it yet, but I did put up a header. I think the header needs some work, but it’s a start. I’ll probably write my first post today or tomorrow. Without further adu, I present to you Rookie Spot, the number 1 source for everything Rookies.

I am going to focus on NFL, NBA, and MLB mostly because those are the only sports I follow. I’ll be making posts about performance predictions, top 10s, player updates, mock drafts and more.

I really want to focus my network on just sports sites. So naturally this was the next step. I hope everyone has a great day.

P.S. My birthday is tomorrow!

So I’ve taken some of the money earned from Historum, and am using it to start a new project. This will be the first time I’ve ever spent money on building my own project. I usually use free software like phpbb or wordpress.

I’m am going to build a college football related forum/community portal. I already have my domain, and have purchased a VBulletin license. I set up vbulletin last night and added some forums and descriptions. I also installed VbAdvanced, which is a portal mod. I am still very confused when looking through vbulletin and figuring out how everything works (especially with the portal). I am spending all my free time reading through VBulletin support forums.

There are so many hacks and mods to choose from. I have several already in mind, including vbookie (a virtual sports betting mod), vbplaza (a marketplace for users to spend forum dollars on new icons, ribbons, custom titles and stuff), v3arcade, and some type of photo gallery. I don’t have any of these mods installed yet, because I want to get a custom skin done first.

I am currently looking for designers. I’ve been thinking of hiring Matt to design something custom for me, but after reading his latest blog post about how he is bogged down with school work, I’m not sure if he’d be able to finish this project till after Christmas. He does great work though, so I will try to talk to him today and see what’s up. I know getting any custom design will take days, but I’m really looking to get this site up and running before Christmas. I don’t want to spend a lot of money on a skin, so I’m looking for people who can design me something for around $200-$300.

Once the site gets skinned, I will post a link here for everyone to see.

I’ll keep you updated on my search for a designer!