Serial Monetizer

So…my riches were short lived. Today has been a decent day, but it does not compare to yesterday’s take. It is not that I presumed that I would just keep up $13 days and grow from there already…but it is only natural to get your hopes up after a day like that.

This proves 2 things to me:

• A project like this takes great diligence and attention. Sites like mine can be fickle ones…and many forces can cause your traffic to die up (and the revs go with them)
• I NEED TO DIVERSIFY

The second bullet is one that I absolutely have to devote some focus to. I’ve mentioned the things that I would be doing online to reach my $40 in 40 days goal. I need to find/make the time to get a few of my other ventures to be earning $$.

The other one that I might focus just a bit more about is to monetize my blog. Not much history or traffic as of yet…but most readers seem to have gotten something out of it.

Ok…you have waited patiently through my rambles…so here is the revenue for today:

Another strong day overall for Adbrite…but there are a lot of their ads served.  One issue I have is that I don’t have good stats for my proxified pages (as in user traffic).  Any chance you know of somewhere I can get FREE robust stats.  I am using Statcounter right now, and it is good for catching UVs, but I am also very keen to know those number of pages loaded while on proxies.

Any reader have good ideas to share??

Thanks!

- Mark

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First, let me say this: Catching up is a b!t%h! I got behind on my posting earlier in the week, and it has been very hard to catch up. It has also been very hard to keep up with all of my plans. A few of my projects have gotten behind as well. I’m probably going to have to re-evaluate how I am doing and what more/else I will have to do to make sure I meet my goals. The first thing I need to make sure I do is post here frequently. This blog has many purposes for me…not the least of which is my public accountability to my stated goal.

OK—on to the money making!

Unfortunately, nothing new to report today as to the ways I am making money online. My methods are still very focused on proxies (my actual proxies and my topsite). I am in day #2 of full-swing proxy traffic, so I am getting a flavor for what kind of money I can expect my proxy network to generate. I haven’t paid for any promotion for a few days now, and still have very good residual traffic. The advice that other proxy webmasters have given about linking your network to one-another is very good advice. I have a few proxies that have solid traffic coming from nowhere else other than my affiliated sites.

My mood might sound down-trodden, but I am anything but at this point. See for yourself with my revenues for the day:

A banner day!  Not only did my proxy network eclipse $10 on its own today, but I sold my first gold listing on http://www.harmlessproxy.com.  Not even day 10, and I have my first $10 day…I think that means that I am ahead of schedule.  The other thing of note is the performance of CanepMedia ads on my proxified pages.  Their site and interface isnt the most slick you will find, but their CPM works out to be quite a bit better than Adbrite so far.  If they stay this different, I may think about replacing Adbrite altogether

All for now.  Talk to you soon.

- Mark

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Big hopes for today.  Today is Monday Jan 7, and it is the first day back to school for all the prime proxy users out there.   Given that I have just gotten into proxies with this $40 in 40 days project, I’ve not really seen “in-season” traffic.

It is obvious that something is different today.  Traffic was blazing even from first thing in the morning.  I now have 6 live proxies in my network, and over the course of today, they brought in over 1,700 UVs!  Unfortunately, I am having to use StatCounter.com for my site statistics.  They have some really good features…however, they don’t measure page loads on proxies all that well.  Please drop me a comment or an email ( mark @ serial monetizer dot com) if you know of a free stats package that would give me the page view slice.

So–you probably want to know what I turned the 1700 UVs into from a $ perspective.  Well, I’ll be honest, it is not what I had hoped it to be…as it is quite low.  Here are numbers from today:

As you can see…Adbrite is continuing to do better and better for me.

Also, CanepMedia looks goofy at 0.09, however, their eCPM seems to really beat Adbrite, so I need to keep a close look.

While I’m happy that I’m already turning a few dollars per day, I really need to grow the proxy network to a larger amount and get it sustainable.  I also need to diversify as I have mentioned previously.  Time to get cracking some on my niche site.  Not sure I’m ready to monetize much of this blog yet…but soon!

- Mark

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Hi everyone.  Thanks for the kind words and wishes about my daughter.  Thankfully she is feeling much better now, and seems to be back to herself again.  It turned out to just be a really bad virus.  When babies are that little, however, Doctors hardly take a chance that it could be something bad (like bacterial).  She was poked and prodded, but was a trooper through it all.

So, to catch up, I am going to write individual day posts (so it is somewhat as I meant it to be originally), instead of a digest like I’ve done before.

I’ve slowed on my proxy promotion at this point.  I’m really trying to sit back and evaluate the methods I’ve used, and see what is bringing in the highest quantity and quality of traffic.  I think I will write a post at some point just on what I have learned on the topic of paid proxy promotion.

The good news is that despite slowing promotion, and the fact that it is a weekend (6th day was Sunday), my traffic and revenues aren’t too bad.  I closed the day with $3.72.  Not too bad, all things considered.  I’ve got really high hopes for traffic and dollar numbers come Monday the 7th–when all kids are back in school (and need proxies!!)

Day 6 $:

Adsense for search is interesting to me.  Day 1 I had be bamboozled to think that I was going to make as much as I do on Adsense for Content.  Also, Adbrite (once the ads made it into rotation and onto the sites) seems to be humming right along as well.

Today I’ve added another CPM ad partner to test out vs. Adbrite.  Even though I mentioned that Adbrite is running well, it will always be my strategy to test like services out to see who does better for me.  Tomorrow there should be the first tickles of revs.

Bye for now!

- Mark

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Happy New Year, everyone!

Today is day #1 of my personal 40 day challenge. Today is much less about revenues, than it is making sure that I get some things actually up and running. A bad start today is a wasted day, so I’ve tried my best to make some good strides…

Here is what I’ve done:

Launched my first 4 proxies
I got the following proxies out of the gate: sympace.info, bebay.info, touyube.info, bacefook.info. They are monetized with adsense on the main page, and Adbrite on proxified pages. I got them listed on a bunch of proxy topsites, and invested a small amount to get them on some proxy broadcast newsletters. Not much traffic yet (the advertising hasnt really started).

Launched my Proxy List site
http://harmlessproxy.com is up and running. I put posts out on DP for 50 free listing, and half off listings for premium slots.

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=629071
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=629102

A decent start to the new year. I’m off to get these proxies listed on more topsites.

A plug for my Alma Mater, the University of Illinois….Good Luck in the Rose Bowl today! Go Illini!

- Mark

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Hello Blogosphere, and thanks to whomever is out there reading this.

The key objective of this blog will be to chronicle the efforts of a corporate stiff looking to supplement (god forbid even replace) my traditional income with cash earned online.

There are many out there that have done this before me, a good group of which I enjoy reading. They have varied motives for their writing and blogs, but I’ll pimp a few of them here:

http://www.shoemoney.com (c’mon…you all know)
http://www.johncow.com (put the cow ahead of the chow b/c the humor @ cow is top notch)
http://www.johnchow.com (see comment after shoemoney)
http://www.theuniversitykid.com (an up-and-coming $ maker online…and hes only a teenager…gotta go read this guy)
http://www.jimkarter.com (somewhat of an unknown…however, making a good killing online)

This is not an exhaustive list…just a few that I enjoy reading.

My goal is threefold:
1.) Publish my own goals so I can be held publically accountable for them.

This is important, as with many busy corporate fools, balancing time is not easy…so I want a mechanism to keep me honest here.

2.) Publish the ways that I intend to (and hopefully accomplish) making money.

This will be the types of sites or endeavors that I partake in for profit. I hope to have a bit more transparency here with my money making adventures than some are.

3.) Publish my learnings about monetization strategies.

I am an extreme novice right now when it comes to all the possible monetization possibilities…but I hope to learn as much about them as I can, and post my findings for everyone to share.

All for now…my next post will share my initial goal for myself!

- Mark

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