Serial Monetizer

Hi everyone,

First I want to say a big thank you to everyone out there who sent emails, comments, and general well-wishes to me related to this endeavor. As those that have read my posts can likely attest, this was a bit more difficult than I had envisioned. Not that I thought it would be a walk in the park…

Also, as a big step backward…in case you are new to the Serial Monetizer, here is a recap of the first leg of my online money making journey:

As detailed in my original post on the topic: http://www.serialmonetizer.com/2007/12/29/goal-40day-in-40-days/ I picked up on January 1st of this year (2008) with the intent of building a side income online. My stated goal was to grow this income to a “steady $40 per day within 40 days”.

So…how did I fare?

I will answer this two ways. First, I’ll say that it was a success from a monetary standpoint. This is because if you were to average my online earnings over the final 10 days of this experiment, my daily average was $39.62. This is pretty close to $40. However, in one way I was a big failure. Part of my original goal was to have a diverse income stream. I failed in this…as most all of my income over the course of the last 40 days came from my proxy websites. In fact, one of the key ways that I achieved $39.62/day for the final 10 days was to sell off a subset of my proxy sites.

All in all, I think the previous 40 days were very successful for me. The biggest measuring stick for “success” at this point is to know that I learned a lot. That is absolutely true. Right now, the $40/day is not significant in my overall financial landscape. Is it nice to have a few extra dollars here and there…of course. However, that figure won’t start to be very attractive until I make it grow by 10x. Then we will have a different conversation here.

Next post will give some details of my actual earnings for the 40 days, and some of the methods to my madness.

I also have some things up my sleeve for the “Next 40 days”. I will reveal my goal right now…it is to make a sustained $40 per day for 40 days. Or, put another way, is to earn $1600 in 40 days time. I may have peaks and valleys, but that is the number I will strive for. I am taking a few days off…so the first 40 days and second 40 days will not line up back to back. I will still be working some things in the background, but will have very little time over the next few days. So, instead of it being a potential excuse at the end, I am going to carve the time out, and kick off the second 40 days sometime later this week. Busy week traveling to LA to see a big client…so…wish me luck!

Thanks again everyone!

- Mark

3 Comments »

Lesson #1 that I have learned from the first 35 days of this challenge:  Balancing this effort with my family and f/t job is LOTS harder than I had assumed.  This is not for the faint of heart, and my admiration goes out to those who strike this balance so deftly.

An update on my progress…or lack thereof, as can be inferred in the first paragraph.  My hope was to significantly expand my proxy network, as well as my web interests.  Got the proxy network expanded, but have not as of yet launched my proxy traffic service, or my niche adsense/affiliate website.

I have gotten my proxies to the point that they bring in about $10 a day without much effort at all.  If I had more time, I’m sure that I could get them to $15-20 with a little elbow grease and investment bucks.

However, one thing that I am doing to help salvage some of the wreckage from this first 40 days is that I put a significant portion of my proxy network up for sale!  These are really solid proxies that get consistent quality traffic.  You can see the thread here:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=690855

I think the asking price is quite reasonable.  You get 11 domains that are good for 10+ months, proxies that perform nicely with little effort…and ones that have great upside if you continue to advertise them well.

Hopefully this $ will be added to my first 40 days worth, and can bring me nearer my goal.  I still have hopes that I can finish the niche site, and get a day or two out of that.

I have built some plans for the 2nd 40 days…but don’t want to get too far ahead of myself!

- Mark

6 Comments »

Greetings,

Thought I would follow up with some statistics about my day on John Chow’s website with my Entrecard.  There is a lot of ongoing debate about the value of Entrecard, and the quality of the traffic that the system brings.   I happened to be on EC late one night when a slot opened up to advertise on JC, so I took it.  The results have been a bit surprising to me.

EC has a little widget on their dashboard page that shows the ads you place, the number of clicks it brings you, and the cost per click (in EC points).  My day on JC brought 53 clicks, at a cost of 4+ EC per click.  This is fantastic return as far as I’m concerned!  I haven’t gotten quite that return advertising on anyone elses blog as of yet.

We’ll have to wait and see if that led to any other long term visitors/readers of the site.

Stay tuned!

1 Comment »