Money, money, money

I find myself thinking about money constantly. Not to a dangerous or unharfmful level or anything, but I definitely think about money a lot. It's strange, because just a year ago I was the exact opposite. I'm not thrifty; I tip a lot, eat out at nice restaurants, buy XBOX360 and computer games I don't play, and never look at pricetags when I buy things. So it's not that. I just always seem to think about these things, often when I'm driving somewhere, often when I'm waiting in line at the bank or walking to an appointment somewhere. To me, I think about and crave to make more money, not so I can buy anything fancy or live fancy. To me it's more of a competition with myself. I used to say, a bit over a year ago when I was still living at home and not making very much, that all I wanted (moneywise) was to live off my websites and move out and live in my own apartment, nothing too big or fancy, just as long as it was half-decent, and to have a bit of money left over to spend on some DVD rentals, food, and to pay the bills. That I'd be happy with that. I've already met that dream a while ago, while having a fair bit of cash to spare, and I'm not complaining; I am happy. That wasn't an exagerration I said a year ago. This is more than enough to make me content. The only thing more I could ask for is to have enough money to be able to travel freely. Being able to travel the world without any ounce of worry of cost, and explore the world. But really I'm perfectly content income-wise right now. That being said, I am human, and so I of course have ideas floating around :) Here are some examples of what I think about: "What would be enough to satisfy my desire to do what I want, when I want? $1000 a day?" It sounds ludicrous, but really, $1000 is not a lot. That's only $30,000 a month! How many webmasters already make that? A ton. A ton, I tell you. That's only $365,000 before taxes. Oh, sure it's a lot, but we're not talking about being satisfied; we're talking about being able to strut. $10,000 a day? That's $300,000 a month, nearly 4 million a year. That's a bit overboard. $5000 a day? That's $150,000 a month; 1.8 million a year. Now we're getting somewhere. I'm thinking that probably somewhere around $3,000 a day, which equates to roughly a million a year before taxes, is probably what would be enough to live the good life. I could then travel around pretty freely, buy a nice apartment somewhere. Maybe even travel around in a limosine. Anyhow... Terrorist #1 is taking his time designing and coding; which is admittingly annoying, especially when he goes a fair bit past his expected promised turnaround time. However, he does good work and he does eventually get it done so I'm not all that bothered. I've finished work with terrorist #2, but will probably contact him again soon for work with Project J. I'll of course use him again for logos. I've asked somebody for a contact for a good somebody. I'm actually surprised, they do very good work. I'll probably be putting in a $x,xxx order once some things are done. Wait. Hold up. Why so vague, Tyler? Oh, sorry. Well, you see, apparantly a lot of people read my blog, and I receive a lot of people copying my sites, but now I have had a ton of people flock to terrorist #1, and even more to terrorist #2. This is obviously bad for me for many reasons, and I find myself a great judge of quality, and so when I do finally hunt down what is perhaps the rarest commodity on the Internet (quality designers/programmers), I don't want everyone to run to them and steal my findings. They are mine, and so I am going to be extra careful from now on to keep them a secret. Anyhow, they do good work and I look forward to ordering from them. Project J's logo is done, and American Labourer #1 is doing very satisfactory work so far (which says a lot coming from me). As promised, whenever a decent amount of progress is done on the site, I will give another clue as to what it is. Clues so far: 1. The first letter of the domain is 'r'. 2. It is poker related. 3. The second letter of the domain is 'e'. You may have noticed a banner up top. I was paid $30 for it. $30 a month. I get around 350 uniques a day on this blog, 1% of them search bots, most of them type-in's/bookmarks. And traffic is perhaps the best targetted traffic you could ever want for an Internet-related ad since it's mostly other web entrepreneurs reading the blog, who of course are known to spend money for online services, and visit other sites. Anyhow, I decided to accept this advertisers request to put his ad up on my blog, as I think I deserve something, albeit a tiny amount, for people stealing my terrorists and ideas. Yeah, yeah, I'm grumpy today. So sue me.

Take me to your webmaster!

The fourth logo has hit the shelves, folks. May I present you with: Guess I should launch a site for it then... Ah well. In time. In good time. In other news, today I stiked up a deal with a different propping service for PFO. I've been with the current one for quite a while, perhaps close to 2 years, and have sent him over 450 signups. However, I decided to switch because the deal I was getting from him wasn't cutting it for me anymore. The new deal pays on a fixed monthly rate and has room for higher adjustment in the future. It's a bit of a risk on my part, as it may not work out, and then I may find it more than difficult trying to go back the old partner. Anyhow, I've sent him an e-mail stating what was happening and that is was a business decision and not personal, etc. Can't blame me - the amount I was receiving in return for the exposure I was giving him didn't match up. Terrorist #2 is working on Project J's logo now - which you guys won't be able to see for a number of months due to it's secrecy unfortunately. Terrorist #1 is still chugging along on the workload I gave him as well. American Labourer #1 doesn't work on weekends and so didn't get much work done, but should be getting back to business today.

MMAForums Preview

Here folks, is a preview of MMAForums.net. Looking quite good, eh? :) In other news, congrats and kudos to Jon for selling OG. He got a very nice price for it :)

2005 Taxes: DONE!

So I sit here, eating 3 Jr.Bacon Cheeseburgers and a Coke from Wendys, after having just returned from my accountant. It must be no surprise then, that when I went to my parking lot and to my car, it was pouring rain, and on my way home, it was very sunny out and beautiful, with even a rainbow visiting. Anyhow, after meeting with my accountant again today, my taxes are now officially completed and done with! If you guys don't know this already: If you don't have an accountant, get one! It is the best investment you will ever make. I had originally thought I would be owing xx,xxx. And the fact is, I probably would have if I hadn't had great 'ol Cathy to take care of me. There's just so many things that accountants (especially good ones) can do to save you a crapload of cash, and all legally of course. She did so many things that I never ever would have known if I did my own taxes. Saved me literally thousands and thousands. And not only that - but my taxes are done correctly. I say this because I'm guessing that 90% of people who file their taxes, do it incorrectly. Not all knowingly, in fact, most do it by accident, but the fact still remains that many people aren't paying what they are supposed to be paying or declaring what they should be declaring. I like the feeling of knowing that my taxes were done by a professional. Anyhow, I ended up only having to pay $210 or so. Ha. Ha, I say! $200? Ooooohhh scarrrrry. Sure beats $xx,xxx. LOL :) I'll go to the bank and pay tomorrow or next week. This brings me to another point. How many web entrepreneurs do you think are actually declaring and paying their taxes? Seriously. I have absolutely no figures or proof to back me up on this, but I have a gut feeling that 90% don't declare them at all. And I must admit that this pisses me off. Why should I pay tens of thousands of dollars (Hello, tax season 2006...) when most other webmonkeys don't? That could so easily go towards buying a new site or advertising. Then I'd be making even more! So yes, that really bugs me. But then again, in a way I don't care. Even though people who do tax fraud rarely get caught, I think it will catch up to them in other ways. Being an honest businessman or entrepreneur or whatever you want to call it says a lot, and I believe the people who don't declare their income are only kidding themselves. Besides, other than the moral and ethical sides of doing the right thing, there are a few perks, such as having it on record that you are making more, thus being able to get loans, buy a house/car, etc. much easier. So my 2005 tax season is now over! What's scary is that my 2005 earnings were 3x that of 2004, and my 2006 will be 3x that of 2005! Moving on, let's talk about Project J for a while. I finally found somebody. Oh, that's right. We're still in negotiatons and writing out the contract and stuff, but so far I'm very pleased and impressed. Again, we haven't even started, and he sends me 9-page detailed documents on what he proposes to do specific to what I asked (this isn't prewritten/templated stuff). He's American, too. Perhaps what's most amazing, is that he had just finished a project extremely similar to what Project J is about, and showed me a sample of it. While his sample is extremely basic and not near the complexity and professionalism that my project proposes, it does have a core fundamental basis insofar as programming as my project. And while it's very rough cut, it does work. He told me that it was done on an extremely low budget, and from speaking to him further I believe I can confide and trust in him that he has the abilities to make what I want. Here's a screenshot of one of his detailed reports he's sent me so far: So.. yeah, definitely looking forward to getting project J FINALLY under way :) I believe I've found the right man for the job. Oh, and I bought some more domains: Woodsman.org JerryLee.org JohnDenver.info Darkie.org ClarkGable.info Chow!

Shhhhhh!!

Here then, is the latest completed logo: Three down, two to go. I should also have my first preview for MMAForums's skin soon. The video is making progress, albeit slowly. ChatWebDev had a live auction on Sunday. It was quite fun. A lot of crap domains and prices, and it was run prett poorly but the domains should hopefully get better next time, and I'm sure it will be run much better. Always hard doing things the first time. Anyhow, my domains sold like hotcakes. I believe 4 sold, but only 2 ended up going through. I sold WarOnOil.com ($25) and Demagnify.com ($15) and I bought one myself: OpenReviews.org for $18. Might develop it in the future, or resell. Not sure, but it's a nice little domain for $18. Workable.. I had an advertiser renew an ad for 6 months which came to $2025. If all the rest renew their ads this month, I'll just barely beat the month of Janurary. If things go really well, I might break 5 digits. Project J is making me think. I may be veering off the cheap outsourcing trail this time, and look towards a private freelancer or company. The problem here lies in: 1. Finding one that can handle the job 2. Finding one that is down to earth and easy going; I find it incredibly difficult to work with ones that aren't. 3. One that won't charge me 100 grand. So I don't even know where to start in this search... My expectations of quality work dramatically differs than that of the general webmaster public. This includes 'successful' web entrepreneurs. I have a very high expectation and so this makes it near impossible to find quality work for a reasonable price. Sigh. Moving on, I'd like to warn all of you about Kolby of www.vbcore.com. I don't normally do this. In fact, I've never had nearly this bad an experience with anybody I've hired ever before, and believe you me I've hired a many number of people. I first met vbcore perhaps around a year ago from talking to him on MSN. He would message me on occassion asking me if I wanted to buy his site (vbcore.com) to which he said made in the medium to high 5 digit range in profits each year. I then later talked to him from time to time as he'd tell me how ugly my forum skins were and that he could redo them for me for $600 or whatever his price was. I always declined because although his portfolio is decent (which says a lot coming from me), they never 'wowed' me enough to warrant the pricetag set on them. Anyhow, a number of months ago he seemed extra desperate for cash and was asking me if there were any vb projects I'd need doing. He then suggested he could integrated Movie-Vault.com's forum into the current design and integrate the colours and such so that it would fit inside. He said he'd do it for $150. Initally I declined, but after a week or two, I changed my mind as I felt it was worth it. What came to follow was the worst experience that I cannot properly write down as so much has happened that I'm not going to go into as it's not worth my time. But I wanted to give you all the gist of it so none of you would have to deal with this horrible person as I had to. We agreed to the project, and I immediately sent him the agreed $150 via PayPal. He initially told me it would take an hour or two to do, and should be done in the next day or so. After a lot of dodging and excuses, about two weeks later he again kept telling me "Okay, I'll have it done in an hour or two". I kept sending him e-mails and whatnot asking him what was going on - I hear from him like 3 weeks later. He says he had food poisoning. I apologize and give him my condolences. Now, I'm not so sure he had food poisoning at all from all his lies, but I of course don't know for sure. About 2-3 weeks later, I start hounding him again about getting the skin done. I see him on AIM and MSN all the time. 90% of the time he doesn't answer, even though he's so obviously there (I'd message him once he got off 'away' mode and was active). 5% of the time he'd just log off. The other 5% of the time he'd say "Sure I'll get to it tomorrow". Now, from here my time is pretty messed up since he took forever, but I'd guess it was about another 2-3 weeks when he finally e-mailed me stating he was finished. He sent me a screenshot and I was very disappointed. He did an extremely half-assed job, and what pissed me off most was that all he did was copy the header and footer code, and put that in. I could have done that myself in 5 minutes. He did not integrate the left side, because he said "It wouldn't fit right". But also the top part he quickly cut off in HTML he didn't even bother to integrate; that is, the bottom half of the nagivation menu images were all cut off, but he didn't care. Perhaps the worst part of it was that he didn't integrate/match the forum colours at all. He used the DEFAULT colours, and if I remember corectly, even the default forumstatus icons! (What I have now is better than that!!!) claiming the default colours were 'blue' and worked well. So even though I'm pissed, I politely ask him to fix the navigation thing, and he of course says "Sure, no problem". I keep hounding him to contact me, I e-mail him about once every 2-3 days. He keeps replying asking for forum admin access. I keep giving it to him, he e-mails me with pathetic things like "I forgot my password can you resend it" then later "I forgot my username can you make me a new one". Now, what's probably 2 months later, I'm left here. I warned him in the e-mail if he didn't contact me back and finish what he was paid to do, I'd write about this on my blog. Obviously he didn't respond. As I write this, I see him online on MSN. So I lose $150. Big deal (except for all the hours of time and expectation he stole from me). Fortunately I'm doing pretty well moneywise. But what if it wasn't me? What if it was little Joey Smith from down the Internet who saved all his monthly AdSense earnings of $15.64 to finally afford to hire a skin designer for his forum, only to see nothing happen? Again, I don't normally make such things private, but this was just horrible. I warn you all, NEVER TRUST THIS MAN. BUY ANY OF HIS SITES OR SERVICES AT YOUR OWN RISK! Spread the word, too, folks.

Sizzzzzle...

And so here folks, is logo #2. I wasn't pleased with the initial choice mockups, but chose one and got my revisions down, and I'm happy with the final product: So that's two down, and three to go. Can't wait to see the others :) So while terrorist #2 is busy working on that, terrorist #1 finally started the skinning for MMAForums yesterday (agreed upon) and I should get a preview/sneakpeak of it in a day or two. I've been outsourcing my Project J...erm... project, and it's been stressful (as usual). I haven't outsourced overseas for a year, and that was only for 1 or 2 projects; I haven't really outsourced a lot for about two years. You see, for those of you who haven't done this yourself, the majority of workers and dev teams you will find are cheap Indian labour. Some are from Pakistan. Some are from poor European counties like Russia. I found the cheap European countries to be of slightly higher quality and skill than India, however Indians are always the most professional. This is the tricky part, and where you have to be very careful. Indians, may not be great when it comes to design and programming or high quality work, but they are very professional when it comes to selling you their services :) They are extremely kind and curtious and respectful. I believe they are a great option for outsourcing tech support or customer service... especially customer service.. but for projects such as Project J.. they are a scary choice. So I've been weeding through all these people. I found one from New York, whose company has done work for many large American fortune 500 companies, but upon closer inspection, I became a bit skeptical, you see, portfolio speaks volume to me... I'll hire a company basing my decision about 90% on their portfolio. One thing that surprises me, although I guess it shouldn't have, is how low everyone is willing to work for the project. I can understand competition and everything, but this is no easy project! It requires complex programming, and everyone is offering such low bids. This is one of the major decisions I have to work with here. Do I risk paying a very affordable fee, in return for a half-assed result, with the result probabilities being: 50% half assed, 40% completely crappy, 10% good/hoped result. Is it worth it? See, if it comes out crappy, I plan on selling it. The question now is, is it so crappy that I can't even sell it for a profit? Or is it just crappy enough that I can sell it for a profit? And run away lucky? This is what I'm faced with here...

Ka-POW!

Terrorist #2 proved to be a very good recommendation by terrorist #1. In fact, if he continues to impress me, I will be hiring him to design 7 webpages for me, should I ever get that damn Escrow.com transaction started with that other guy for the 7 domains I was going to buy, which it's starting to look like it may not.. Anyhow, after sending me bonus revisions (at no extra charge) and fulfulling my request that he do the first logo extra quickly if he could so that terrorist #1 could get started on the skin, and working out a few minor changes, here is the logo I ended up choosing. I must say choosing from the original 4 mockups he sent me was extremely challenging, as they were all superb: On another note, even though I raised my ad prices last week, demand is still as high as ever on PFO. In fact, there are now two 120x600 skyscrapper ads on the side, which take up sooo much vertical room. That with the existing 120x60 ads really make the left side extremely ad heavy. So I raised my prices again. This time: Sticky Post: $150 -> $160 Sitewide 120x600 Skyscraper Ad: $375 -> $400 And that's still probably too low. Because a 120x600 takes up the same amount of room as 10 120x60 ads, and so you'd think you'd go 10x$60=$600. Anyhow, I've closed off the selling of any more skyscrappers, and if the continue to be renewed and/or sold, then I'll increase the price again. I just had an advertiser purchase $3000 of ads on PFO, so income is doing well. This month may, and I repeat may, beat my January record of $9000, and hit $10,000 all from PFO. Here's hoping :) Stay tuned for updates on my other upcoming logos and skin designs.

When it rains, it pours

Where to start?

I usually do very minimal actual 'work', but today was one of those days where a lot of things just happened to all come at once.

It started with me waking up extremely tired. Why? Oh, a few factors. I was a bit hot after jacking up the thermostat a bit before I went to bed, the damn sun manages to find it's sneaky way of being sneaky through my blinds and landing on my face. I seem to be very sensitive to light when I'm asleep. I need it to be really dark. Anyhow, that was annoying, because no matter how I turn or try to block the sun, it just doesn't work. So I'm actually contemplating buying one of those night mask thingies. But it was the damn whistly guy that did it. This guy who lives in the same apartment as me, always walks SLOWLY in the late evening and in the early morning. and he whistles. And he whistles LOUD. And he has leg braces so he walks really slow. Oh, he does other things, too, like try to initiate conversations with you if he sees you, or waves to you if you drive past him, but it's his whistling that's perhaps the worst.

So I awake to the stupid sun and the whistly-man's whistling, and relectantly get up.

Um... yeah.. anyhow, here's some stuff that's new:

1. wesley from chatwebdev showed me this link: http://www.marketingsecrets.com/images/vrevideo.html

If you haven't seen it already, it's a 25-minute video about some guy showing his AdSense ads. Now, this may inspire you greatly, or the sheer redundancy and vagueness may leave you wanting to rip your eyes out...

I've also been trying hard to get my first-ever Escrow transaction done, but the guy is being rather difficult to work with and contact. I'm buying 7 domains from him.

I had a little meeting with Sheldon today regarding my latest forum skin, and before he will start, he said I'd need a custom logo so he could work with something. So he recommended me a guy, and I decided to go with him, and after looking through his portfolio and seeing he was named Sitepoint's 2005 Designer of the year, I hired him for 5 logos, 3 mockups each, and 3 revisions each. I worked him down to nearly 50% off.

That's another thing I wanted to bring up, and here's a major money saving tip for you folk out there: ask for discounts. Sounds simple, right? Well, I never really used to ask for discounts.. I think what got me started was when I started doing repeat business with people. I felt I deserved something of a discount. But now, I ask for discounts straight out. Usually I buy in bulk anyway, making my plea justifiable, but you can really really either (a) lower your costs and save money, or (b) simply order more with what you saved. (And if you do this sneakily like me, you can get an even larger discount because you're potentially getting more for free what you wouldn't normally get in terms of quantity..). So I got nearly 50% off for my logos, which saved me like $300, I got 20% off something else from a guy who never in his long freelancing life gave out before (I feel special), and let me tell you, these things do add up. Why not ask? You won't sound cheap?

Okay, I lie, you will. But, hey, that's what being an entrepreneur is all about, isn't it? Hehe.

Okay, then I had a meeting with my flash guy for my movie thing.

Did a bunch of other work stuff...

Oh, I'm so descriptive.

And I Western Unioned for the first time today! Because I hired my second terrorist!

That's right! My first terrorist is in the United Arab Emirates and PayPal doesn't accept them, so I had to wire him money from my bank. My newest terrorist is in the Czech Repubic, and PayPal doesn't support terrorists there either.

Today was Sunday so my bank, being as lame as banks are, was closed (seriously folks, are they EVER open?) and I wanted to get my logos done ASAP, so I tried Western Union online. Which wasn't the greatest experience. First their site kept giving me errors (javascript mainly) and then after filling out an ever-long registration page, it didn't send, so I had to open up Firefox (Yes, I use IE, live with it people) and do it all over again.

Then there was a stiff $42 fee to send it, which I agreed to pay (See, this is where asking for discounts comess in handy..), and then I had to phone them up after paying, to confirm it. Which took a long time, and a few tries after their system didn't recognize my MTCN (Money Transfer Control Number) and hung up on me, and then being on hold for what was probably 6 minutes.

But it got there instantly so it's a great alternative to PayPal and bank wiring after all, if you want to pay a nasty fee.

So then I wrote a 5-page, yes, 5-page ever-so descriptive report on what I wanted my logo identity to be and encorporate, and send it to terrorist #2. You may think I go overboard with these things, but I think being extremely detailed when you outsource work, especially design work, gets you results you wouldn't normally get from them.

So I have a lot going on. I have 7-domains I'm early trying to buy via Escrow (which I plan on developing myself), 5 upcoming domains with a lot of money invested into them, a domain im brokering, my existing sites, an inspirational flash movie I'm working on with a guy, and trying desperately for months to harass this designer I hired ages ago to stop hiding and do my work. He probably never will, and keep dodging me, at which point I will publicly give him the slandering he deserves, to warn all others.

Anyhow, that was my day. How was yours?

Growth

Howdy. March already.. how time flies, eh? Woke up, had a voicemail on my cell. Somebody who visited my blog and wanted to talk about advertising on my sites. Bleep. Deleted. Hehe. If you're reading this, just e-mail me or talk to me on MSN. I find too much dilly dallying goes on in live conversation. I can be much more blunt online :) Anyhow, seeing as it's the 1st of the month, I went and recalculated my monthly and daily averages. It was close... not a big improvement, but then again, you can't expect much when you're averaging from the past 6 months, and recalculating once a month; as you're only changing it by 1/6th of a factor during each recalcuation. Anyhow, I was luckily enough to be up $4 more a day, making it an average of $128 a day now from ads. Since it was such a close call, I decided to go and increase PFO's ad prices. I love doing this.. it's better than Christmas, it really is. Here are the changes I made: Sitewide 468x60 Banner (Top of Site): $350 -> $375 Sitewide 468x60 Banner (Top Middle of Site): $350 -> $375 Sitewide 125x125 Banner: $200 -> $250 Sitewide 120x60 Side Ad: $50 -> $60 Sitewide 120x600 Skyscraper Ad: $350 -> $375

There's been, as always, so much demand for the ads, that the price increase should be okay. Also, $375 for a million impressions (there's no rotation and they are on every page throughout the site) is only $0.375 CPM. Even with it being an ad heavy site and 4 top 468x60 banners, $0.375 CPM for a highly targeted poker site is a great deal, so I don't feel too bad.

Thanks to web.archive.org, we can easily compare how much the site has grown from exactly one year ago to this day:

One year ago

Today

Then:

Unique Visitors Per Month: 35,000 - 40,000 Page Impressions Per Month: 400,000 - 450,000 Alexa Ranking: 59,307

Now: Unique Visitors Per Month: 120,000 - 135,000 Pageviews Per Month: 800,000 - 1,000,000 Alexa Ranking: 35,112 Then: Members: 642 Threads: 2,001 Posts: 20,021 Now: Members: 3,470 Threads: 8,756 Posts: 85,237 You can also compare the price differences by clicking on the link mentioned above.