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

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

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!

Here is a quick recap of what you will read here:

• I’m a corporate executive type that is looking to supplement/replace my income online.
• While I have been web-savvy and able to play around for a number of years, this is my first real make money online adventure
• My initial goal, which kicked off Jan 1, 2008…to reach $40/day in earnings within 40 days!

Read along to see how I am doing, and what I intend to do to reach/exceed my goals.

Happy money making!

- Mark

***********GUEST POST ON TUK***************

This is my first guest blog post since starting www.serialmonetizer.com. As such, I wanted to make sure that I contributed something very worthwhile to Jason’s fast-growing group of readers. The one thing I think I bring to the “make money online” game that is unique compared to some is what I consider to be very good experience in brick and mortar business. So, my post is about my theories relative to fundamental rules of business that hold true whether you have a storefront or a webfront.

Whether we realize it or not, each of us that is in the game of making money online operates as a small business. It may not be our sole income, and we might not have fancy letterhead or incorporation…but it is a business nonetheless. We have to market, sell, service, promote, etc. all the same as if we were running a Subway franchise. To me, the following are rules are ones to live by in business—whether big or small, web or traditional. Sometimes we get ahead of ourselves, and don’t stop to reground ourselves in these points:

• Stick To What You Know:

It sounds so darned simple. As an example, you won’t find me penning articles or blog entries on contemporary literature, on Impressionist Art, or on Mesothelioma (just thought I’d throw that one in for the adsense crowd). My current blog is really this in its most raw form. I’m not proclaiming to be a make money online superstar—I’m being right upfront about my novice status—but since I am learning the ropes, I will blog about what I have learned and now know about. When you start to operate in areas that you really don’t have an adequate depth of knowledge, you will be quickly ferreted out. This is especially true online—what with the advent of copyscape protecting original content, and all other information readily accessible—if you are BS’ing, misleading, or just wrong, you WILL be found out. Once this happens, you will lose credibility, and especially in the online world, when this happens you are just about sunk.

• Stick To What You Do Well:

Again—I’ve not proclaimed that these pointers would be rocket science. However, we lose sight of these points all too often. If the first point could be considered the “what”, then this topic is the “how”. Too often, we get sucked in to doing jobs or tasks because it is what is necessary, or “right”, or what pays the bills. However, if we aren’t focusing our efforts on the types of tasks that maximize our individual skills, then we are leaving results on the table. A few examples:

n Shoemoney has written about this previously…but the responsibility mix between he and Dillsmack is a perfect example. Schoe knows that his strength is in marketing, while Dillsmack is a great technologist. Together, they apply their top strength to create some world-class results.

n An example from me. I too feel that my top strengths are in the softer skills like sales and marketing. Because of that, I look to external sources for things like graphic design, script writing, etc. Some call it outsourcing, which is an apt description. Many of us should really look to pass off some of those things that we just aren’t that good at, and focus our time and effort on the activities that will give us the greatest ROI.

• Continue To Innovate:

This point is extremely important. If you have followed the first two pointers (this doesn’t work as well if you violate either of the first two), then innovation is your path to achieved or sustained greatness. The word innovation might be too strong—but could be summed up as learning, growing and trying new things.

An example from the make money online world: With the glut (myself now included) of people who are calling this genre home, we have to continually be delivering results of some variety to survive. Those results might be traffic, sales, conversions, posts, etc. If we all went about our business in the exact same way, we would have no leaders, and very few people would be satisfied with the content or those results. You can see this differentiation amongst some of the best known bloggers. Shoemoney is well-informed, with a good (sometimes dry) sense of humor, and he loves MMA. John Chow is credentialed, and borderline arrogant. John Cow is informative and can be very funny. Each of these online personalities has innovated and developed their own niche—enabling their big success.

So what exactly have I given you here? A blueprint for success? No. What I have given you is the opportunity to take these common sense items and reflect on your endeavors. Are you getting the results you would like from your job, or from your online money making efforts? The potential culprit could be a mis-alignment of these above traits. With 2008 still very young, I think we could all take a few minutes and, while cleaning mental house, evaluate how we are doing in these areas. It is really never too late to correct course.

Best of luck to you all! Follow my money making goals on my blog, www.serialmonetizer.com

***********END OF GUEST POST***************

A gold star to those of you that made it to the end!

I haven’t stayed true to my original strategy of having multiple revenue streams. So far, all of my revenues have been from Web Proxies. Not that proxies are all that bad. I think I have gotten the hang of them. They will also be a critical part of my strategy going forward. But, the fact remains that they haven’t gotten me to $40 in a day yet…so I need to tap my other ideas too.

The next one looking to get put into place seems to be my niche website. I have high hopes for this one. I will also be registering and launching several other proxies. If I can get this proxy network to be doing $15-20 a day, I will stand a better chance of hitting my goal.

All for now…

- Mark

I’ve still been pounding the pavement trying to raise my daily web-based earnings in hopes of hitting my goal. Guess what, I’m not even close as of right now.

Any readers have any tips on how to keep up with your blog? I have tons of ideas for posts, and this is a topic that is not only genuinely interesting to me, but I am personally vested in it. I spend some portion of time each and every day working on making $ online…so why can’t I just come write about it? It is obviously not because I am not verbose enough, or don’t have thoughts in my head.

Let’s hope that this is my online “low”, and that I can turn it back around from here.

Several posts to come tonight. The first step in the climb upward should hopefully come in the form of having my Entrecard on John Chow’s blog tomorrow.

Onward and upward…I hope

- Mark

Cross your fingers that he doesn’t block me!

- Mark

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

However, many fellow proxy webmasters and aspiring ones have been asking about my hosting arrangement. I happened upon WDServers.com at the behest of a DP member that I did some business with. The results have been great. Right now I have a VPS with 256mb RAM and 3000GB bandwidth. It is a pretty nice package, and has served me very well. It was setup quickly, and serviced promptly and professionally when needed.

If you visit their site: http://www.wdservers.com DON’T rush to judgment. I believe that they are re-doing their site. If you want to buy hosting from a fly-by-night operation that has a slick looking $39 template that they bought online as their storefront…then go ahead. If you could care less what their website looks like so long as their server performs…then WDServers is for you.

- Mark