Serial Monetizer

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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Sorry all. I know in my last post I apologized for bundling days 3-5 together in one update. I PROMISE that my intent is to give at least daily updates…if not post multiple times in a day.

My daughter’s hospitalization lasted for a few days, and of course has consumed my time and brain power. Good news is that all are back home and healthy Appreciate everyone’s kind words.

Update on money making over the past few days is surely to come (hopefully soon today)…but the teaser is this: I had my first $10 day yesterday! Less than 10 days in and already having a $10 day means that I am technically ahead of schedule…I think :). Had a nice day on my proxies, and sold my first Gold listing on http://www.harmlessproxy.com

Hope to be back really soon!

By the way…had a guest post go live today over at TUK: http://www.theuniversitykid.com Thanks Jason for trusting me to write for you!

Bye for now.

- Mark

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First off, my apologies for the gap in posts. I’m spending the night in the hospital tonight, with my wife and infant daughter. The little angel has been feeling just awful, and her temperature has shot up several times. It sounds scary, but protocol at her age is to run a Spinal Tap to rule out scary things like Bacterial Meningitis. Yikes! 8 weeks old, and she is already getting a big needle in her spine. She is quite the trooper. So…I’m on my wireless broadband catching up on things from the hospital.

I had intended to give daily updates of my progress. I’ll catch everyone up on my progress for Jan 3-5 here now. Lets hope I can get back to daily update posts.

The bulk of my efforts over the past few days have centered around observing my proxy traffic, tinkering with layouts/ads, and trying to add monetization opportunities. I have primarily the same 4 proxies running (see last post), although technically I have released 2 more. These have some specific traffic campaigns that I am trying to isolate the results of, and therefore are negligible in the overall revenue side of things.

Revenues:

So, as you will see, I have plateaued a bit. The good news is that Adbrite is starting to kick in, and my proxies have some strong traffic #’s, with good return visits. I haven’t launched these proxies for flipping, I’m trying to build them for the long haul.

My Proxy List site is doing nicely, however I’ve yet to sell any premium listings. I think I am going to revisit my pricing/promotion strategy just to get things off the ground. For reminder to readers, the site is: http://www.harmlessproxy.com

I’ve also gotten my newsletter list strategy straightened out. I wasn’t ahead of the game on this one, and realized it after I had launched my proxies. I then struggles with which way to go in collecting opt-in subscribers who want proxies. I made a quick call to launch a google group. With a quick code flip, I added a subscribe box to the proxies, and I am on my way.

Over the course of these days, I’ve also straightened out some issue that I was having with one of my niche content sites. The hope is to get that up and running in the next 10 days or so, and get some adsense and clickbank dollars out of it.

I am also researching ways that I would like to gain more traffic to this blog. I know that the “make money blog” is quite often the actual money making focus for the web-trepeneur. However, I want to prove that I can actually make some money online first. That said, it will be important to have a reader base start to follow this journey as soon as possible, so that it can be monetized properly when the time is right.

I think I’ve rambled enough for now…will check back as soon as I can.

Will leave you with this…I’ve already gotten mention on another making money blog……at The Monetizer’s Blog. Go check it out: http://themonetizer.blogspot.com/

Bye for now!

- Mark

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Well…this might seem like it is a bit out of order.  Where is the Day 1 results post?  Well, if you read the Day 1 post, you can see that most of day 1 was spent setting myself up.  I really wanted to treat this like a race…so I only did some prep work ahead of the 1st, and then put it into high gear.

So, what did I do for my first day of results?

I launched 4 total proxies:

http://bacefook.info
http://sympace.info
http://bebay.info
http://touyube.info

I did some submission of these proxies to free topsites listings.  Not a ton…but a few of them got put on about 10 lists.  Still some major work to do here.  Will report back on it later.  Even for a minor submission blitz, I saw a few topsites produce greater results than others.

The serious play was to do some research on a blast submission promotion.  I spent a good amount of time scouring through the DP Forums, and wound up deciding on a DP’er that I had done business with before, and very much trusted him (DP handle “Shadey”).  I invested in a $10 package for promotion for http://sympace.info.  This accounted for most of my traffic and earnings for the day.  I am trying to parse out the promotions that I do amongst my proxies so I can measure how well they do in:

• Total Traffic
• Quality of Traffic
• Page views vs. UVs and
• Ultimately, revenues!

I’ll keep you in suspense for another minute on my earnings for the day.  Late in the day, I happened across what seemed to be a good opportunity.  There was a DP’er whose Proxies had outgrown their small VPS, and he was looking to sell a 1-month redirection of all his traffic from his proxies to someone whose host could handle the traffic.  I was pretty sure that I could handle his traffic.  So, I bought in for $40.  Seemed like a good deal for a proxy network that was getting 500gb worth of decent traffic.  At worst, I could redirect this traffic amongst my proxies and hopefully hook some consistent users.

(note:  There will be a post forthcoming about my host, WDServers, as they have been just great)

So, to summarize, most of the traffic for the day was supposed to go to sympace.info based on my $10 investment in some blast promotions.  The forwarded traffic (which I had sent to touyube.info for the time being) started in later in the evening.

Revenue:

So, $5.74 for my first day of earnings…not too bad. I could have gone bigger and crazier with investments in a proxy.org listing, etc.  But I am trying to earn and learn at the same time.  Interesting to see that the majority of this revenue came from the Google search on the sites.  I’ve made a note to make sure that I get a google search box on most every proxy that I can.  Might not be sustainable to make that per day on g-search, but I wouldn’t want to miss on days like this one.

All for now.  Not a bad first day…I’m happy with it.  Decent revenue, and I learned quite a bit.  That’s the goal, right?

- 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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I debated with myself for quite a while about the theme or template that I should use for this blog.  I strongly favored finding a suitable free theme to use…especially since this venture is all about money making.  However, none of the freebies seemed to suit my needs…wanting something very clean, and very able to monetize with paid ads.

So….I made the decision to invest.  For a mere $39, I picked up this theme from www.johncow.com.  JC had a great post about those that thieved the “essense” of his template…with that being the catalyst getting the Cow’s to work with their designers and offer a paid version of their theme.

My theme isn’t original…but it is clean and functional for now.  Next step will be to create a custom header, then a custom theme altogether.  Of course, these steps will only come once I am turning a fair profit.

- Mark

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Here is my first statement of my goal for earning online.  Over the course of 40 days, beginning January 1st, I want to build my online earnings up to a steady $40 per day.

Breaking this down further, I would actually like to have 20 sites that average $2 per day.  This might mean that I have some not yet earning any $, and others that might bring in $3-$4 per day.  For some that might seem like a lofty goal…for others it might seem low.  For me–doing all that I will be doing in my spare time aside from my day job and family, I think it is appropriately aggressive.

Out of the gate, I will have a fairly diversified strategy to achieving these earnings.  Here are the types of vehicles I will use to make my income:

• Proxy Sites:  I will first start by launching a small network of proxy sites.  I already have my VPS, some good domains, and am about ready to roll with this.
• Proxy Promotion:  I’ve invested in a script to run a proxy promotion site.  I hope to get good synergy for my own proxies, as well as monetize some paid listings from this site as well.
• Niche MFA:  I already have 1…may add some more…solid MFA niche site.
• Forums:  I have 5 forums in the works.  And, before you all beat me silly reminding me how hard it is to monetize these, I fully understand that.  These will be 1/2 for monetization purposes and 1/2 because they are fun and topics that are close to me.
• CPA site:  I have 1 in the works.  When I am able to get it off the ground and promoted appropriately, I think I might have a serious money maker on my hands.
• E-book site:  I have a domain and idea for an e-book.  It is not the typical “make $ X way” that you might find on DP forums…but still might be a $ maker.

Hopefully amongst these types of sites, I can start to make progress toward my $ goals.  I have also signed up with Azoogle (not yet approved) to try to dip my toes into affiliate marketing.  I think I might be good at that, and Azoogle seems like a great place to try things out.

Just about 2 days until the race officially begins.  I will be posting on my progress, as well as other things that I learn and think others could find useful.

- 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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