February Ad Revenue: $9,000+

Revisiting my goals I set back in September, I had stated my goal was to earn an average of $10,000 a month by September 2006. I have 7 months left. This month of January, I almost hit that, raking in $8,311.40 from PFO in private ad sales, another $350 or so from affiliates, and $700 or so from MoVa. And I'm not counting site/domain sales - I actually received payment for DF in January, not December when I sold it, so if I counted that as well, my total income (not profit) for the month would be $23,000 (I paid $10,000 for the domain and invested around 500 into DF so 3500 is only profit). But really, I only count ad sales, so $9,000 is the correct number to display here. So this is my best month ever - and this is obviously not a normal month; many advertisers renewed slots with the increased prices for 6 months or 12 months and so forth, so this is nowhere near the norm for me. Next month will probably be around $2000 I'm guessing, for example. However, this still brings me hope that I'll reach my goal of an average of $10,000 a month by September 2006. It would also be nice to break my PFO month record of $8,311.40 one day.. I'd really enjoy that...

LOL - $650 in 5 minutes

$650 from ads made in 5-minutes: Ben says: that's a problem mate I wont get approval for such thing before we see any results Ben says: ? Tyler says: what Ben says: you're a good sales man. ok it's a deal. how can i transfer you the money?

Growth and Surprising Results

I was playing my roll of ignorant clueless newbie in #SEO on Efnet as I have been doing lately for fun, when I got into a discussion/debate, defending my belief that time is much better spent working on building a quality site than it is building up links and other SEO for them.

The discussion lead to a path that prompted me to check my referral traffic, as they didn't believe my traffic could grow when it was largely type-in/bookmark traffic and through word of mouth as a result of being a quality site, and thought it came almost entirely from SE's. I knew we had a large number (larger than usual) of loyal visitors who bookmarked or typed in the site, but I didn't know it was so high and that Google accounted for hardly any of the traffic.

Before I go on, I just wanted to say that PFO has been growing very slowly but steady over the months, but I think the new design has done a lot for it, as traffic the past week has shown a consistant growth; about 1500 more per day. Yesterday it garnered 7336 uniques, and it was a Sunday (weekends always slow traffic days for me usually). Movie Vault is still growing, albeit at an unbelievably slow rate, and was at 6327 for yesterday (again, a Sunday..). Then I have all my other sites.. hell... this BLOG gets 100 uniques a day lol..

Okay, back to business, these are the surprising results for referrals to two of my sites. First, PFO:

1. (no referral) 88.35% 2.www.google.com/search 2.15% 3. search.yahoo.com/search 1.81%

and now MoVa:

1. (no referral) 67.96% 2. www.google.com/search 10.35% 3. search.yahoo.com/search 5.75%

So, wow! I had thought I was getting a MUCH larger referral traffic number from Google for PFO, but it turns out that I only get 2% from them. And nearly 90% of my traffic comes from bookmarked/type-in/loyal visitors. Yet the funny thing is that traffic is indeed still growing. Proving my theory and beliefs right. These stats taken from past 3 months.

MoVa is also doing very well. Now, I don't know what everyone elses stats look like, but I'm assuming their (no referral) agent is nowhere near as high as mine are, but I could be horribly wrong.

Anyhow, this is great. I'm #2 or #1 on all the top search engines for "poker forums" and "poker forum" and so before, it was a worry to me what would happen if I got bumped lower, but now since I'm only getting 5-6% from SE's (the rest from backlinks), I believe i'm very safe.

Let's try to get an average of 10,000 uniques a day for PFO.. that'd make me happy.. we're already getting a million page views a month for PFO...

Computer/Desk Pics

Yes, I'm alive!

Hi Everyone, Yes, I'm still alive (if anyone notices or cares...). I've been extra lazy lately and have been just lounging around playing new computer games, watching lots of movies, eating, playing poker, and going out to dinners with the girlfriend. Hard life I say... So I apologize for the lack of entries, but hopefully this one will make up for it. Are you ready!?: PFO Redesign New Computer pics soon Maid Mouse Problem Taxes CookingForums.net Finished List/new list MoVa Multiple Reviews MoVa Skin PFO Redesign The new design of PokerForums.org is up. I had paid for the skin, and worked with the designer, as I do all people I hire, very closely, with very specific things I had wanted done. I often can be a pain for such hired help, as I know what I want, and I try to get as close as possible a result to what I had originally planned.

I'm very content with the final outcome of the design. I was going to pay him $700-$800 to also convert this into a 'front page' area, so as to replace vBadvanced with custom html. I decided to do this myself, and save the $700. It took me about 2 days, working many hours, and on the second day I refused to sleep until I had finished it all, and ended up going to bed at around 4am, exhausted, right after finishing the conversion. The result was a custom front end, without having to use vBadvanced, using the new template.

I even managed to implement something not commercially or freely available for vBulletin. I basically put together a very simple (after a bit of annoying code research) templating system together for the site, merging SSI with vB's templating system. The entire site, both forum parts and front page parts, uses this system, and so updating the site to add an advertisement for example, only takes mere seconds, as I just upload the corresponding text file. The only difference between this and normal SSI is that this uses the vb templating system still :)

PFO is doing well, and has recently reached the 1-million-page-impressions-a-month milestone. New Computer pics soon Again, I've been slow and lazy lately so I haven't had the opportunity to take pictures of my new desk with my new computer on it yet, but I should have that up within a day or two hopefully. Maid I've been thinking about hiring a maid. Yup! See, at first it sounds ludicrous, but I honestly believe that hiring a maid will make me more money. First off, hired cleaning is not expensive. I'm guessing just a little more than minimum wage. Let's say $10 an hour, which sounds realistic. I'm thinking of 2 hours a day, twice a week. I seem to spend a lot of time washing and drying dishes, cleaning my kitchen, doing laundry, and whatnot. And more often than not, I let these messes pile up and then clean them up gradually. As a result, my workspace (which is my apartment really) is cluttered and messy and it slows me down. Hiring a maid will not only save me time from having to clean my place and let me work on my sites, which will in turn profit much more than $10 an hour, it will also give me a clean environment, making me happier and more productive. Plus, it'd just be really cool to be able to say I have a maid, and the look on my parent's faces when I tell them would be worth it as well ;) Mouse Problem Please help! My new computer is great, but my mouse does a weird thing. It's an optical mouse, not wireless, and on a brand new good jel pad. I've also tried it on other surfaces which doesn't change anything. The computer is a fresh install of XP, and my mouse is fine, but every so often, maybe around every 4 minutes or so, the cursor 'jumps' to the edge or corner of the screen. Sometimes the top, sometimes the bottom or side.. this is extremely annoying. Especially when trying to play Quake 4. If anyone can help me fix this, I'd be much oblidged... Taxes I was stressing over taxes last week so much that I was getting butterflies. Even though the tax season doesn't really start for another month, I wanted to get it over with. The reason I was worrying was that since I'm self-employed, I don't have my income tax automatically taken out each month. I also have to pay TWICE as much CPP since I'm both the employer and the employee. I have been, each month, putting money away into RRSP and money into an account I have for taxes, and I increment that each month, but due to OCD, I was just incrementing by $25 or $50 each month (I forget which), and since my revenue was rising so fast, it didn't stay in tandum with the raise in pay I was getting. Soo.. I only had $4,000 in my 'tax fund' ready for taxes, and some calculating by me and Ulchie, we expected I'd have to pay around $8,000 in income taxes, that's after all my business expenses, so I was extremely worried. But I decided to be brave, and went to my new accountant. IT WENT WELL! I'm glad I decided to continue to see accountants this year (as I did last) and not do it on my own, as it's really priceless. Best money you can ever spend. Luckily, I had to pay $3,000 for some dental work, and due to a special new Canadian government ruling, I get to deduct a lot of that. Also, the $10,000 USD I spent on DomainForums.com is completely tax deductable. She is double checking right now, but believes domains aren't marked as depreciative property yet (if anything, I observered, they should be apprecieative)... also, last year since I made so much less, my accountant that year had my 'carry over' my tuition fees since I didn't need to use all of them to reduce my taxes, and so that helped reduce things too. Anyhow, we only ran through rough numbers, as I gave her all my expected tax writeoffs and stuff, and so a lot of stuff was estimated and rounded, but things were 'fairly' accurate, and it came down to me only owing $50! HAHAHAH! Now, I expect that to be more, on my way home I realized a few calculation estimatation mistakes I made, but I'm really thinking it'd be $1000 in taxes absolute WORST case scenario, but more likely around $200-500, and that still leaves me with $3000 left over from my tax savings, which while I'd love to spend, I'd keep there for next year's taxes. So I'm to meet with her again once my bank sends me my RRSP history for the year, and am to go back to see her with that plus all the records and numbers for my tax writeoff stuff. Then I'll see how much I owe. I also asked her about incorporating, as it's a great way to reduce taxes. She says I should wait until I hit a certain number, which I think I may just hit next tax year, so I may be incorporating next year. Merendi Networks LLC. Sounds neato, eh? Anyhow, so yeah, I'm happy lately because I was so relieved I didn't owe like 8k. CookingForums.net I bought CookingForums.net. $8, as usual :) Going to buy a vB license for it. I love cooking... think of me as Iron Chef Chen Kenichi... Finished List/new list I finally finished my old list, and so here is my new todo list:

Taxes ------------ Arrange/print out all receipts/accountant requested info Phone Cathy regarding RRSP mail

Bookmark.com ------------ Attempt to add to urchin Contact ARIT again with type-in numbers

CookingForums.net ----------------- Add to apache Create MySQL Buy vbulletin license #127432341 ;)

Merendi ------- Add MMAForums Add CookingForums Add MovieForums Upload new PFO image

Urchin ------ Add all new sites/remove old ones

BadmintonForums --------- Add Forums Customize vB

MMAForums --------- Add Forums Customize vB

CookingForums --------- Add Forums Customize vB

MovieForums --------- Add Forums Customize vB

MovieVault ---------- Add images to news Update staff news message

PFO ---- Send Newsletter Request article from steve Update advertising page (#2 on yahoo, etc., traffic)

MoVa Multiple Reviews

Zeeshan FINALLY finished the multiple reviews for MoVa.. we'll see how this fares for the site. He was 5 months late, so I asked if I could pay him in 5 months since it was only fair, and he reluctantly agreed. I can pay it now, but must teach him a lesson!

It basically changes over the entire site's programming to allow reviewers to submit multiple reviews of the same movie; so there are now 'parent' reviews and 'children' reviews, linked from the 'parent' review as a sub review. This was done to try to resolve a problem with all the reviewers on the site fighting to be the one to review certain movies.

MoVa Skin I finally tracked down the skinner that I hired to integrate MoVa's forum with the rest of the site, so it is not so seperate, and so then I can say ads are truely 100% sitewide. He had some health issues, and while he's like 3 weeks late (Ugh, nobody can seem to get my projects done on time anymore...), I think he's starting to recover now and hopefully he'll have it done soon. So there's your updates everyone!

Another Interesting Article

Send to me by Zeeshan: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/technology/16ecom.html I'm surprirsed DP is only making 10k a month though.. seems rather low for a 325 alexa-ranked site...

They have arrived!

Riinnnnnng. Ugh. 9:10 a.m. Let me sleep... RINGGGG. My apartment buzzer is so very loud. I grab some pants and manage to put them on and let the delivery people in. My desk and chair and mat had arrived. It took me the whole day to put together (on my breaks from playing Civ4, going out and picking up some Wendy's and a couple of DVD's, and watching the movies), but it was fun so it's okay.

So now I'm just waiting for my computer to arrive.. which should be on Wednesday. Then I think I'm gonna put some more lights for my place, and maybe a few plants...

Busy busy little bee

Ahh... 4:40pm. Tired. Hungry. I woke up, cleaned a bit of the mess from last night (pizza/coolers with the G), talked to Cyndi, who will be taking over Melissa's job and will essentially be taking care of most of the news on MoVa, and thus I'm upping her pay. So I talked to her for a while about that. Then I talked to Sheldon, the vb designer for PFO. He's like 95% done the skin now, but only for the forum, and not the front end of the site, so... I'm gonna have to wait like 2 weeks or something before I can pay him because my CC max is $1000 since I'm self-employed, and he only accepts credit card payment.. so I have to pay that off first.. So that is kinda a bit of agony since I'm really impatient and hate waiting for things. The site looks good though. Looks exactly like the mock up, I'm impressed. Hmm.. the 120x60's have sooo much more room now I love it. I think I'll have those at $50 each to start, and maybe add a new slot, for skyscrapers, bringing them in at $200 a pop. Can't wait for the new design to be up. Then I went out and did some errands: got my mail, found a cheque from AllPosters, so I went to the bank and cashed that. Then I went to see John, the owner of the domain im brokering, to pick up a CD which contained server log files for the domain so I can analyze type-in traffic, since there has been a number of corporations and businesses contacting me about the domain who are interested. I won't post the details here since some of them have read my blog! Apparantly doing background research on me... Then I went over to Staples and bought a desk, nice chair, and glidey floor thingy. Now, I was going to get the desk shown on the right here:

But they'd have to ship it in, and it'd take a week. And I'm sooo impatient, so I went with the one on the left, but in the color of the one of the right. I was looking at this one before, and couldn't decide which to get. Plus there was some real big and elaborate big corner desks for the same price as these ones, but I dunno.. it seemed almost TOO good and outrageous for me so I chose between these two instead.

Here's the chair I got. Well not exactly, but it looks similar:

Then I did a bunch of other stuff but I'm WAY too tired to write it. Sooooo bye.

Desks desks desks

A bit of good news. My dad phoned me and told me about two desks they had at Staples in a flyer that came today, so I went down to my apartment lobby to check it out. One is $70 off, the other is $50 off. They both come to more than the one at the other place I was gonna get, but it comes with free shipping from the store! So I can get it tomorrow (I assume). Now.. it's strange because they have two there in the flyer, and both are very different than the one I was gonna get. The one I was gonna get looks similar to the one in the image above. One of the ones at Staples looks just like a normal desk kinda, but it has a drawer pull out thing for the keyboard, a little cubby hole thing I think, and a couple mounts on the side, for the HD and stuff. On the top it has a little stand thing for a printer. It's actually a simply make, but it's solid oak and the finish looks really really nice, but it's very simple. The other one is more complex, not as nice as the one above, but almost, it is a bit bigger, and costs $50 more, and the top of it is bigger than the one in the picture.. sits on the top of the desk.. but im afraid of that because im afraid it might fall over. see im next to the wall right now, but about 5 inches from it because theres a heater, and wires.. so i cant put the end against the wall you know? Which would you guys vote for?

The Arms Race

A number of weeks back j0n bought a crazy top-of-the-line computer with 3 LCD monitors, as well as a new desk. His specs were: Processor: 2.4 GhZ AMD 64 939 with virus protection down to the processor core Hard Drive: 500GB / 2x SATA drives RAM: 2GB DDR Graphics 2 x 256MB (512MB Graphics) 3 x 19″ TFT monitor CD/DVD Readers/Writers Floppy Drive nForce4 Motherboard SLI Keyboard/Speakers/Mouse Very nice... $3000 USD. Now, I wanted really bad to one-up him here and just barely beat his computer, but where would it end? Haha, well the truth is that I don't need anything that fancy. And as much as I'd love to have more than one monitor, for me it'd really just be a vanity thing, as I'm perfectly capable of multitasking all I need to on one. That being said, here's mine: AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 939 Processor 19-inch LCD LG monitor 2 GB DDR Memory Nvidia Geforce 6600 256 MB PCI-E Video 6 Channel Audio 10/100 Networking 160 GB SATA HD 16x DVD RW Drive Keyboard/Mouse/speakers-subwoofer Windows XP So it's half-decent I guess. But I also am getting a really nice desk. The box was so huge it wouldn't be carriable without a dolly, so we're gonna get it later this week with a dolly probably. My computer should be ready for pick up by next week on Wednesday. I'll have pictures for you. Anyhow, with the nice 19-inch LCD and the realllly nice desk, my apartment is gonna look real cool. I'm gonna buy a chair rolly thing to glide on and a nice new 'executive-style' chair as well. Wheeeeeeee!

Our bodies felt the morning dew...

I'm feeling bad. I tried sleeping by watching some Charlie Rose, but had things on my mind. One of them is personal related, but the other is work related. It seems that funny/cool/interesting video sites seem to be absolutely monster money makers. Once they are built, which isn't too hard; buy an existing script and launch a basic template, all the updating that is needed are the actual video/news posts, many of which can probably just be 'borrowed' from other related sites. These sites though, from just my experience of visiting them, seem to really just be massive cash cows. So I got to thinking, what If I had one of these? Have it bringing in $300 a day. Pay a couple people $500 a month to update it regularly.. what's so hard? But I have problems with this. Please tell me if I'm stupid for thinking this. But I dunno, I just feel bad about the whole thing. I feel weird. I wouldn't feel comfortable in doing such a thing. For one, the legalities. Businesswise, how can you do this; these videos are all essentially copywrited, and none of these sites pay royalties or even get permission to display them on their site. Nobody seems to care, and you never hear of people being sued; and if somebody does want it taken off, it's not hard, as it's only one news posting right? But I've always had a bad feeling with such things.. not legally wise but just ethically. The other reason is that most of the videos and news posts deal with usually either very sick, lude/gross, sad, or sexual topics. Sometimes they contain genuinely interesting videos, in fact about half the time they do almost, but the times they don't, I don't feel good morally dealing with such things. I'm actually a really moral person, even though I'm agnostic; in fact, I'm much more moral and reserved than many so-called 'hardcore' religious people. It's not porn or warez, I know - but the video legallities is still questionable at best, and I just don't feel good about owning/running such a site. The sad part is that such sites are really goldmines. I dunno.. just had to write this.. it's on my mind and I needed to air it out. Any comments people? In other news, I installed vB on 3 of my sites today (mmaforums.net movieforums.org badmintonforums.com), and have just been doing a bit of general work. Also hired a 3rd vb skinner to skin my forum on MoVa to match the rest of the site. Melissa starts work for me tomorrow, so let's see if that newfound news and updates does anything for the site. I don't really have any sites.. just a poker forum and a movie site. I feel bad. I suck. :(