Everyone Needs a Break...

Hey everyone, I've added another video entry, although this is really the first one (I don't really count the Lost on a Mountain ones as they were off-topic). I really like doing the videos now because not only do they provide a more 'human' and 'realistic' touch, but they allow me to get out what I want to say a lot quicker and easier. I usually spend hours writing a single post update - much of that time spent on uploading images and formatting - and doing it 'live' via video reduces time as I'm not worrying about structing and presenting what I want to say in words and formatting. That said, I have only a few concerns about making video posts: 1. 10 Minutes YouTube allows only a 10-minute maximum of videos. While most of my blog videos will be just a few minutes long, I do imagine on occassion I may want to do a longer one. Basically I just don't like being limited.. 2. Search Engines Obviously with video posts, I'll be losing out on textual data for search engine crawlers to pick up on. I don't plan on having all of my blog posts in video for this reason. 3. Visitors I have no idea if repeat visitors of this blog even like the videos (Please, for God's sake, speak up people!) - maybe they prefer text over the videos.. 4. File Silze The 1-2 minute video below is 10 megs. Once I start adding more videos, and longer videos, their filesizes will be enormous. While I'm lucky enough to store them on YouTube, I'll have a lot of copies on my HD, and I make a lot of HD/server backups to CD/DVD so this will eat away at space too. Anyway, without further adieu, here's the entry: asdf

Lethargy is my worst enemy

*Yawn* Hello. Things could be better... 1. Lethargy 2. Server & Forum Problems 3. PokerForums.org Upgraded 4. Replayer Updates 5. MoVa and PoFo Traffic Updates 1. Lethargy Lethargy is my worst enemy - it always has been. Competition, lack of funds, low traffic... they are nothing compared to when lethargy kicks in. I find that when I am properly energized, awake, and organized that I can get an obscene amount of work done. Unfortunately, lately - over the past 2 weeks or so, I've been pretty lethargic. In addition, I've been weighed down even more due to being very busy with things; server migrations and problems, tons of e-mails and IMs, and a neverending 'todo' list. As a result, even though I've been putting in a fair amount of hours lately and getting quite a bit of work done, I could have got a lot more done if I was more energized and focused. There are a number of ways to fix this.. but the simplest way is to just wait; eventually I'll get out of this little slumber I'm in. Other ways are to limit the amount of 'fun' I allow myself - watch less TV (I actually watch very little TV; by TV I usually mean watching episodes of Prison Break, LOST, or The Ultimate Fighter 3 on my computer), play less XBOX360, don't do silly things like I did last night (went to the casino with Lisa and blew money on silly slot machines), etc. I'm not saying I shouldn't have any fun, but I think I'm too spoiled now. Even when I work it's fun.. I'm listening to my radio station, sitting in my cool little office area, etc. I just need to focus a bit more on actual work. In addition, I need to start exercising and eating healthier again. This is vital. It's also funny - I believe the output you get from it is energy and focus and well worth the time. I don't mean going overboard and working out for 4 hours a day.. I just mean going out and taking some walks, making sure I'm eating more veggies and fruit.. you know. As a result, even if I take that time out of usual work time, I believe it will pay off in the longterm by being more focused and working more efficiently. Funny how taking a walk around a beautiful lake for an hour can actually make you more money than working for an hour! Anyhow, things have thus been slow lately, but I've still got a fair bit done nonetheless... 2. Server & Forum Problems Oh boy - where to start? Heh.. I actually just took a long sigh. Basically there were a bunch of problems when setting up Trinity and Bertha. Apache, PHP, Perl, and MySQL were all upgraded and then immediately I started receiving hundreds upon hundreds of e-mails. These e-mails were auto-generated from vBulletin indicating MySQL errors. Originally I had thought it to be a conflict due to 3.0.6; I had 3 forums on 3.0.6 and 3.0.7 with the rest of mine on 3.5.x. I read that 3.0.x weren't designed for MySQL 4.1 and had problems. I won't bore you with all the long technological mumbo-jumbo, but basically I was scrambling for help. I eventually found an emergency server administration company who fixed things up; basically they downgraded MySQL from 5 to 4 and everything was better. Unfortunately, all this took a toll with something around 8 hours of downtime. When I had thought it was a 3.0.x problem (which it turned out not to be; not exclusively anyway), I was running around asking for him. Ryan Amos came on MSN to help with vB, and even though it turned out not to be the case, he did help. As a gesture of gratitude I offered him a mention of his site on my next blog update, so here it is: His site is http://www.humorsoftware.com/ so go and check it out :) 3. PokerForums.org Upgraded For a long time, PokerForums.org was left behind, stuck with vB 3.0.6. The reason for not upgrading was simple - updating from 3.0.6 to 3.5.x requires skins to be recoded. I also had a number of hacks installed and at the time they hadn't been ported to 3.5. However, having been partly motivated by a recent server scare (the 3.5 forums were fine; it was the 3.0.x forums that had problems), I decided to start upgrading the 3 forums that were still 3.0.x - one at a time starting with PokerForums. I paid a dude $200 to do this for me - I've been quite happy with him actually. I've been having horrible experiences with hired help lately and so he was a nice little change. PokerForums now sports the latest version of vB - 3.5.4. It's skin has been ported properly and in addition, a fair number of past bugs have been fixed by him as well. Finally, he installed about 5-6 hacks for me, a couple of which he made a few minor adjustments/hacks to as well for me. So now PFO is sporting a much better workable environment - this should last me for another 2 years or so before I need to do any other major vB changes - I have a number of non-vB changes on the site in the works already. Finally, I'll end this section by saying that one of the hacks I installed was a mass PM hack. Basically it sends a private message to all the members of the forum. I will be charging $500 for advertisers to have me send out a message of their choice via mass PM. That's roughly 10 cents per person - very reasonable for a targeted audience in poker. If only 3 people sign up and deposit, the advertiser has basically succeeded. I'll be adding this new advertising option to my advertising page soon. We'll see how well it does. 4. Replayer Updates Sigh. Progress with Replayer.org has been... slow. It's very unfortunate. At the start I was very optimistic, but since then things have just went downhill. The programmer I hired has suffered (or so he says; while I do believe him, sometimes it's difficult to as I always seem to have horrible luck when hiring people...) many medical problems which has dropped progress on the site down tremendously. Time is not the only bad thing going on here either. I had given extremely detailed descriptions of what I wanted in terms of the website part of the site; I wanted a web 2.0 type style. What I got was a simply pathetic regurgitated attempt at one. I'm going to let this go as I stated I just wanted something simple and wasn't expecting anything great, but still, this is disappointing. The actual Replayer is still quite buggy, although it is kind of neat. Once all the bugs are fixed, it will be quite good. It is still using copyrighted graphics - and while this is probably okay, I'm still waiting on (OMG how long is this going to take?) the custom graphics for it. They are 3D renderings, and so I'm hoping they turn out well. Finally, when I started this project, I only knew of one other site of it's kind. Now I've found several of them out there. One of them I found is very well done, and is getting even better with constant improvements. The only thing I can think of that we have over them is that we are completely Javascript based - we will work in all browsers new and old, and no plug-ins are needed (unlike their Flash). So now I'm not sure if I'll keep the site and try to grow it, or sell it immediately once it's finished. It's certainly a complex piece of programming and was (is) a big undertaking, so I feel that it is valuable. That's for sure. I'm not sure, if I sold it, at what price it would be at. PokerLedger was sold after just a few months of it being launched for 7000, and while that too was a very big undertaking and very complex, Replayer.org is bigger. I'd ask around $20,000 for it. At least. If I didn't get any offers near that, then no way am I selling it. Anyhow, wish me luck on the continued development of it. 5. MoVa and PoFo Traffic Updates I have a little big of good news for Movie Vault and PokerForums. If you remember back in late Februrary, I had written a post about MoVa and PoFo's traffic. Inktomi (Yahoo), turned out to be around 50% of my actual traffic (again folks, I implore you to find out how much of your traffic is actually search engines). I also posted that my daily average uniques were around 6000 per day for each site. A bit of an update - taking server logs results from April 1st to May 23rd, Inktomi accounted for only around 40% on each site - a 10% reduction. This is great - although who knows if it is actually getting lower. A server downtime of around 8 hours may have turned away some spiders. However, the reduction could also be due to simply having more 'real' traffic. Movie Vault and PokerForums's daily averages were 8200 and 7400 respectively. Over a 1000 daily average increase! Combined, the two sites host nearly half a million unique visitors a month! It's pathetic the miniscule amount I'm making from Movie Vault - I really need to get cracking on that. Anyhow, let's keep an eye on these two sites and hope that Search Engines (Inktomi) account for even less of the pie next report update on this, and that daily traffic increase as well! That's all for this post. Good luck and good earnings.

Lost on the Mountain

I apologize for the delay in getting this post up. Nine days is a long time, I understand, however after my little adventure which you'll learn about in a minute, I needed some time to relax. My blog postings also take quite a while to put together so please bear with me...

• Lost on a Mountain
• Server Upgrade
• MovieForums.org Complete!
• Videos

Lost on a Mountain

I normally don't post personal events on my blog as I try to keep this as work-related as possible, however this was a fairly.... interesting... event. The following is an excerpt taken from the full story I posted on one of my sites: Yesterday was a beautiful day with the weather giving us sneak previews of the summer ahead. Lisa and I decided to take advantage of this by hiking up to the top of Nanaimo's Mount Benson. We brought along about 2 litres of water each (Two bottles each) and snacks and little meals such as a small bag of chips, 2 apples and oranges, cheese and pepperoni sticks and a couple other small snacks. Here we are at the "Powerlines". We started our ascent at the beginning of Westwood lake for a real all-day hike (as opposed to many people who drive halfway or 3/4 of the way up through many of the old logging roads). To get to the Powerlines, you follow the 6.7 km trail that circumnavigates the lake and leave it when there is a fork in the trail.

8 hours of hiking up the mountain later, we got lost. This wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for the fresh bear droppings we kept passing, and then the bears we started to hear.. and then see...

The entire story is too long to post here, so you can read the rest of it on my Movie Vault Forums.

Server Upgrade

Over the past month or two, my dedicated server, named Trinity, started to act up. MySQL started to crash and burn from too many queries. This is obviously a result of running many forums. Actually, it's mostly PokerForums and Movie Vault that are causing the havoc; PokerForums has over 100,000 posts on the forum, and Movie Vault gets crawled just as heavily by spiders: Most users ever online was 501, 05-07-2006 at 02:30 AM

The downtime these little MySQL surges caused was not significant, but I saw them as a bit of foreshadowing and so I asked my long-time friend/hired programmer/server administrator about how much more abuse Trinity could handle. Due to the growth of my sites and the fact that I'm always launching new projects, we decided it was time to do a bit of upgrading.

The decision was not easy. Basically it came down to saying goodbye to Trinity, the 2.4 Ghz Celeron, and upgrading to a Dual Xeon, or purchasing a second server and offloading some of Trinity's burden onto it.

There was pros and cons to both, but I went with the latter decision for several reasons:

1. The cost to run two dedicated servers was cheaper. This is only because I ordered Trinity nearly 3 years ago and so I have a much better price on it, which they didn't bother to increase for existing customers.

2. Moving to another server would mean both significant downtime for the server migration as well as any risks and problems moving it properly could bring. Trinity is a very.. sensitive machine and is customized in many ways.

3. Running two servers allows us to take advantage of resources such as memory and bandwidth. The Dual Xeon only had the same memory and bandwidth as my new box does; it was mainly just a faster processor.

So I purchased the second server which I named Bertha. If I had got the Dual Xeon I was going to name her Big Bertha. I'm going to stick with my tradition of giving them female names... although I don't think I'll need to upgrade or add another server for at least 2-3 years

I also updated the NAS backup on Trinity from 10 Gigs to 20. I never got around to finishing getting it set up so actually it hasn't even been used yet, but now with 20 Gigs it should be put to some use. Perhaps storing a MySQL dump and copy of major config files such as Apache's httpd.conf once every 24 days or so...

We are still (and by we I mean Zeeshan) setting up Bertha and we are moving Trinity's Mail and MySQL to Bertha. This will help allocate memory resources better; Trinity will still handle everything else including running Apache and Perl/PHP.

This should have a positive effect on load times on all my sites as well. Also, mail will be set up on Bertha properly this time. Before, it was set up half-assed with sendmail. I never even had any POP3's set up; I had always used redirects before. While I'm not sure if I'll start to use POP3's (I like the pop-up notification that MSN Messenger and Gmail notifier provides), the enhanced mail on Bertha will probably allow me to start sending mass-mails to opt-in members on my forums such as PokerForums.

I used to send these, and even when sent in batched groups of at about 100 at a time or so, vBulletin's scripts would time out because of the lag in mail server processing. If this is fixed because of Bertha and I can send them again, I can even attach advertisements in the newsletters. With 5,000 members and a niche such as poker, this can only bring positive things.

Server administration is so complex to me, just as is programming, HTML, Graphics, etc. Sure, I can do the basics of all of them - I started as web designer and programmer, and I have to do basic server administration now to keep things in line, but I only know the basics. I absolutely hate having to depend solely on Zeeshan or others to come to me rescue when I'm in trouble. I'd like to learn, but it's just way too complicated for me. Oh well, we'll see...

Anyhow, here is a visual representation of my two dedi's:

MovieForums.org Complete!

MovieForums.org is now 100% complete. If you really like movies, drop by, register and start posting :) Apart from finding a nice new community to hang out in, you'll also be helping me. Videos John Chow had recently added a couple videos to his blogs. I had commented that I really enjoyed them. I've added a video in this post as well. I'm thinking of adding videos to my postings now - not all the time, but once in a while, but I'm not too sure. What do you think? Would you like to see videos on here?

If I did add a video or two once in a while, don't worry - I wouldn't eliminate the text. That will always be here, although it may be a bit less. The video lets me say what I want to say a lot faster and easier, thus allowing for both faster and easier blog postings as well as not making my posts a mile long :P

The only other problem I can foresee is thinking of what to do the video about. Would it just be me sitting at my desk talking? Would that be boring and text be preferable? Speak up :)

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

Good morning everyone! No sleeping in now, get up! It's a brand new day! Rise and Shine!

• Sales of sites
• My gift to you
• CollegeFreebies.net
• Overwhelmed
• MovieForums update

Sales of sites

In my last post I had mentioned the acquisition of Wrestlemania.org, Smackdown.tv, and VideoCodecs.org. I'm pleased to say that in just 24 hours after purchasing these sites/domains, I resold them for a very quick and easy profit of over $600.

It actually would have been closer to $800 or $900, but there was an incident. I had bought the site Wrestlemania.org for $250. The owner wanted $300 originally and was pretty stern on it, but you know me and getting discounts :) Wrestlemania.org was bought at the BIN for $800, and the payment was received and the domain and CPanel/FTP information sent quickly.

However, I then received a message from the buyer stating he was unhappy with the purchase. Apparantly the site turned out to be a 'scraper' site; a one-pager site where mod_rewrite and a backend system basically spam the SE's with fake content which then point it back to the hoem page. I had never heard of this type of thing before, and since I had just purchased the site, I hadn't even FTP'ed in or anything and was thus not aware of this. I was certainly not aware of it when I bought it.

I was upset because I had been really excited about turning over the site for an ROI of 220% in just 24 hours (Note here that this is the ROI, not profit. ROI = [(Payback - Investment)/Investment)]*100. Profit would have been $550). The buyer was very displeased and angry but you could also tell he was scared. Obviously this was because he thought he had just been screwed and wouldn't see his money ever again. However, I talked to him honestly and calmly and fairly for about an hour and a half. I reassured him that I wasn't aware of this when I bought it and wasn't trying to screw him. I told him that it wasn't worth scarring my reputation to earn a few measely bucks.

I offered him either $100 back, as that is about how much I felt the 'scraper' revelation damaged the value of the site, or else a full refund. I felt I did everything in my power to resolve the situation.

However, he felt it damaged it more as he explained that these 'scraper' sites work for a few months and are then worthless. He thinks Google already banned the site, which I wouldn't argue against since there is no knowledge of wrestlemania.org when you search for it in Google.

In the end, he requested $200 back. I was just about to hit send from PayPal, when I had an idea. I offered him the domain SmackDown.tv in lieu of the $200. He thought about it for a little bit then accepted. My minimum asking price/bid for the domain was $200 with a BIN of $500 so he certainly got a deal there. However, I didn't mind substituting it for the $200 as it's still profit; I had bought it for $42 (OMG, since when did .tv extensions become so expensive? I had always thought they were regular price!) so essentially I really only paid him $42 if you look at it from my eyes.

Anyhow, that situation was completely resolved in a very professional manner. You must realize that when he first contacted me there was a lot of tension and anger in the air, and it ended with both parties happy. A rarity these days I believe when such an incident occurs.

VideoCodecs.org was sold at the BIN for $200. I had bought it for $30. Quick and easy. (Wow, I just checked and it looks like he already built up a one-page site for it. Simple site with AdSense... good for him! Internet works fast!)

Here's a rundown of the outcome:

Wrestlemania.org: bought for $250, sold for $800 Smackdown.tv: bought for $42, sold for $0 (gave with Wrestlemania.org) VideoCodecs.org: bought for $30, sold for $200. Other expenses: $16 for 2-year renewal of Wrestlemania.org, $15 for Sitepoint listings

Totals:

Expenses: $353 Return: $1000 Profit: $647

Not a groundbreaking story or anything; I've sold countless domains and sites in the past, but what makes this different from the rest I believe is how quick it all happened. I saw an opportunity and bought 3 sites. 24 hours later, I sold them all for a quick and painless $647 profit.

My gift to you

I sometimes have ideas for sites, and usually I develop them myself, but since I have so many on my plate already, I'm going to share this one with you guys. I won't be developing it and so the idea is completely up for grabs. Whoever wants it, it's yours. I only ask that if it does ever go big or anything, that you mention where you got the idea in a little blurb on an 'about' page or something :)

Here it is: an Internet photo scavenger hunt website. "What?!". Yeah! Okay, here's the idea. The website, once a week (or whatever increment) at the same date and time lists a list of about 7-8 items. Whoever e-mails/submits photos of these items first wins a little prize. Maybe at first it's just for glory on the website, then later for a little prize.

I honestly think this could be very popular. Think about it. There are many many many people who enjoy taking photographs. A photo scavenger hunt would be extremely fun for a lot of people. And the chance to win a prize by being first just makes it all the more fun.

Here's how it'd work, first off, the items on the list would have to be somewhat specific, such as "An overweight woman wearing a blue or red shirt", "An overflowing garbage can", "3 birds in one shot; no more no less", as opposed to "an overweight woman", "a garbage can", "birds". This is basically to make it more challenging but mainly to make it so people can't store up 'archives' before hand and just submit those later to claim the prize.

Now you may ask "But Tyler, how do you know if people are just grabbing images off the Internet?" Simple Watson. In every photo, you will require that they hold up a sign (doesn't matter how big or small or where in the photo it is) saying "site.com". This helps promote your site and removes any possibility of cheating.

Great idea huh? Well it's yours. Just remember to give me credit for the idea - the profit is all yours :)

You're welcome.

CollegeFreebies.net

I've had a number of people ask to advertise on my blog. However, I only allow one 468x60 ad to be dispalyed. I don't want to clutter this site up with ads, and I like my policy of just one ad. It's also great for the advertiser.

However, I had a guy e-mail me asking if I could mention his site in my next post. I agreed, and for $25 here it is:

His site is CollegeFreebies.net and you're more than welcome to check it out if you like.

I promised him no testimonial or anything and that it'd be casually mentioned like that.

It's actually not a bad deal - this blog gets around 700 uniques per day, most from bookmarks or direct type-in's, and the visitors are obviously webmasters and web entrepreneurs themselves.

If you're interested in getting a blurb in my next post, e-mail me at tylercruz (at) gmail.com

Overwhelmed

Man, some days I am simply overwhelmed and completely bombarded by IMs and E-mails that it's virtually impossible to do anything. When this happens, productivity crawls to a standstill. It's strange because this usually happens only once in a while... you'll just suddenly be inundated with a ton of people all talking to you at once and e-mails pouring in.

A couple of days ago I had one of these days. Keep in mind that I only have about 10-12 people on my MSN list, virtually all work-related, 5-6 people on AIM, and that I usually don't conduct personal things online much anymore so it's not a bunch of personal e-mails or IMs pouring in.

Blogger is being a complete bitch again and it's image uploader is down again (as it always is it seems) so I'll have to link my image here via HTML:

Although that photo doesn't give true justice; the left monitor's taskbar was filled as well but didn't show up in the screenshot. And yes, I use MSIE so I don't have your sacred FireFox tabbing, but screw that, long live IE :)

All in all I had I believe about 45 windows open at that time, and was frantically trying to deal with everything. It was kind of fun actually. Fortunately this type of thing only seems to happen once in a while; usually I'm free and can relax.

MovieForums update

After talking to Terrorist #1, I got the changes to MovieForums's skin I wanted, and the skin pre-design stage is now done. The skin should be coded and up on the site within 48 hours. Then all my new forums will finally be done.

Again, had to post the image via HTML:

I have had a lot of people (well not hundreds or anything but perhaps a dozen) tell me they are looking forward to MovieForums. Hopefully it will do well; MMAForums and CookingForums are already on a good start, and I haven't even begun to market them yet.

MMAForums:

Threads: 110, Posts: 795, Members: 32, Active Members: 27

CookingForums:

Threads: 34, Posts: 81, Members: 13, Active Members: 10

Well, that's all for today. Good luck and good earnings :)

Somebody Stop Me!

I promised myself along with everyone else that I was going to stop launching and purchasing new sites as I had enough on my plate as it was. I even sold all my domains in a cheap bulk package not too long ago so that I could concentrate on developing and improving my existing sites and begin monetizing them. However, last night I was a bad boy and bought 3 new sites. More on that later. Anyhow, here is today's update:

1. CookingForums Finished!
2. MMAForums Banners
3. New Acquisitions

CookingForums Finished! Terrorist #1 finally finished skinning CookingForums.net and here it is. Feel free to join the site and participate in cooking and food discussion. You'll be surprised how much you enjoy talking about food :) MMAForums Banners

Here is a sample of some banners I had commissioned for MMAForums.net: http://www.mmaforums.net/showthread.php?t=108

5 more are on their way. Talk about sexy, eh?

New Acquisitions I bought the following sites with the intention of selling them all. However, WrestleMania.org is already making money, and I believe VideoCodecs.org has a lot of potential to make decent money with a very basic one-time made site, so if I don't sell them, I won't be too disappointed.

I won't be disclosing how much I bought these for since they are for sale, although I may after I sell them, if anyone is interested.

WrestleMania.org

I've already put this up for sale on Sitepoint, which you can view here.

Here is some information:

• Yahoo has 1058 results for wrestlemania.org
• Overture returned 25883 searches for "wrestlemania" in April.
• Unique Visitors Per Day: 50 - 80 (1600+ per day in October 2005)
• Pageviews Per Day: 100 - 200
• AdSense: $40-$60 a month

Smackdown.tv I've already put this up for sale on Sitepoint, which you can view here.

• Popular WWE television show
• Overture: 59858

VideoCodecs.org

I've already put this up for sale on Sitepoint, which you can view here.

• Could be used for a site listing all the different codecs (DivX, etc.) with links to downloads.
• Overture: 4161

Well, that's all for today. I've worked many hours last night and today so now it's break time. Good luck, and good earnings :)

Movie Vault's AdSense Mystery: Can You Solve It?

I seem to spend quite a lot of time when writing blog posts. This one took 3 hours. In fact, I believe I spend around 2 hours on average when posting a new entry. Crazy, huh? Anyhow, here's today's posting:

1. Latest 'todo' list
2. Movie Vault's AdSense Mystery: Can you solve it?
3. PokerForums admin improvement
4. ProjectAffiliate Diary

Latest 'todo' list Some of you may be wondering why I haven't been posting up new 'todo' lists over the past while. What happened was that I was indeed working slow and steady on my original todo list I wrote many weeks ago - there was a number of items on them that really took a whole lot longer than I had expected, most notably being the 'create 20 threads on X' where X was one of 4 or 5 new forums I was launching. Creating 1 or 2 threads isn't too difficult, but creating 20 on each site and making those new threads well-written with between 2-5 paragraphs and pertaining to the site's topic/niche really is a lot harder that it sounds. Then I also had to do some description writing for projects and such. On these, I'm very detailed and organized. I tend to write between 3-9 pages on such descriptions and format it all nicely. Anyhow, the old 'todo' list is finally done and I've manifested a new one. It's very lengthy. Here's a screenshot of it. Notice the scrollbar indicating there's more...

Somebody stop me! Haha. Well, yes, it's a lot of work, but I don't expect to complete it for about 3 weeks or so. I also don't burden myself with it; it's work I do after completing e-mails and whatnot during my work sessions. The whole routine is working better all the time and I believe it makes great use out of my time; I only do a 'work session' when I want to and I have ample energy and focus to do so. If I don't have any energy or focus for 5 days, then I don't work for 5 days. Movie Vault's AdSense Mystery: Can you solve it?

Where to start. While I earn a modest little sum of income from the Internet, almost of it is received through private ads. Most of the rest is made from affiliating or from various ad networks. AdSense therefore accounts for but a tiny fraction of my income, yet it is the most dominant form of advertising residing on my site Movie-Vault.com

I have used AdSense on Movie Vault since 2003, and while I only used a single 468x60 at first, that gradually grew to an average of a 468x60, 250x250, and 120x600 situated per page. Some pages have more. Now, at first glance you'd think that Movie Vault, being very content-rich with thousands of professionally written movie reviews created by Movie Vault volunteers, would be a great candidate for contextual advertising. Any maybe it still is... However, I've always received horrible payouts from AdSense. But that's not the only thing. I've done my fair share of moving the ads around, trying different colour schemes, ad formats, and positioning - that did help a fair bit, boosting my CTR up quite a bit. Unfortunately, there is not much I can do about my niche; entertainment/movie ads it seems pay out extremely low - with an average of $0.05-$0.10 CPC. Anyhow, continuing on with the mystery, let me give you a brief look at Movie Vault's traffic: The chart above shows April's daily unique traffic. As you can see, it averages at 7500 uniques per day. It should be noted that approximately 45% is from Search Engines (You guys should really check this on your server too; you may be surprised how much of your 'unique' traffic is actually spiders crawling your site... ). This chart shows Aprils pageviews. Unfortunately it isn't much more than the uniques. The daily average for pageviews is 20,000. Note this.

Here now is where the mystery breaks from the darkness. The image above shows April's AdSense earnings for Movie-Vault ads only. It appears that a daily average of 2,000 page views are shown here, which doesn't add up to the daily 20,000 that Urchin (among other programs/sources) states. This isn't a recent bug or anything; I've always noticed this, but have always just shrugged it off as I assumed that it'd be foolish to second-guess Google. But things just don't add up. I finally decided to ask for public help after speaking with Mooky last night on AIM; he didn't have an explanation either. So I of course did some more digging around:

This is from April as well. There is only one change from this image from the last - it displays the Ad unit impressions instead of the page impressions. Now, according to the above image, this appears to make sense as I do have multiple ads per page. However, this still only calculate to around 2,000 pageviews per day. Why is this happening?

Why does AdSense only seem to see a small fraction of my ads, 10% to be exact? Yes, I have AdSense on every single of my pages on the site. The only exception would be that I only have 1 468x60 on the forum, which doesn't get a massive amount of traffic, and on the staff admin pages, which doesn't get a whole lot of traffic either, there is only a 468x60 ad. This does not add up.

The only real thing I can think of are defaults. You know, those public service ads and whatnot that Google displays when they don't have an appropriate or filled advertiser to display. Now, sure, this would all make sense.. however.. I highly doubt that AdSense shows these defaults 90% of the time.

So, I'm looking for answers people :) I'm completely lost here. What am I missing here? I'm obviously missing something... aren't I? Or is this normal? Does this happen to everyone?

I'd love to try YPN but alas it is still in Beta and I'm not an American. I'm frustrated here earning a nickle or dime per click, and having AdSense only show 10% of my actual pageviews.

If anyone knows an answer to this, or if this is normal, please let me know!

I've also posted this on Sitepoint and TalkFreelance (my first post there) as I'd really liek to get to the bottom of this.

PokerForums admin improvement

I had this project planned out in mind for my long time programmer to tackle after he finished with ProjectAA. However he had a strange request; he asked if I'd do him a favour and give the project to his friend. Now, I wasn't thrilled with this idea - I find the quality of most 'random' hired help to be insultingly poor. Also, he's a PHP programmer. My long-time programmer and I are Perlers are heart :)

Anyhow, after a bit of negotiation, we worked out a deal. First, my friend assured me that his PHP friend was definitely of proper calibre. Secondly, I managed to dramatically cut down his friends price for the project (nearly in half. Haha, I always rock at that :P). Lastly, my friend agreed that if I wasn't satisfied with Mr.PHP's work, that he'd do it from scratch in Perl and take over for him, basically putting his back on the line for his friend. Gutsy :P

Very basically, the project involves converting PokerForums's poker site reviews section to a dynamic format, using scripts and MySQL. It will be very robust and more user-friendly, as well as a hell of a lot easier to update and append to, as an admin area/CMS will be created to ease the burden of myself.

ProjectAffiliate Diary

Just a small note here. On my Affiliate project I'm starting (which may actually turn into an AdWords/AdSense site) I decided to keep a diary/log. It will be very brute and basic in form, but I thought it would be awesome if down the road the site did become a success, as it would be a log from the very birth ( in fact pre-birth as I'll be in R&D mode researching for the site before I even get a domain) and I think that it would be an invaluable tool to other webmasters.

Anyhow, that's my entry for today. Good day, and good earnings :)

Slow but Steady Wins the Race

Good morning :) Here is today's menu:

• Monthly Earnings
• MovieForums Preview
• Bookmark.com Update
• Other Updates

Monthly Earnings

Well, it's May 1st and I've kept with tradition and recalculated my daily and monthly earnings. Here are the results:

(I tried to present it in a table, but Blogger decided to be bad and had crazy formatting. I then tried to upload it via Blogger but again, Blogger crapped out so I had to FTP upload it. Hence, please enjoy it, lol)

So, to those who don't already know, I recalculate my average of the past 6 months on the 1st of each month. The chart above therefore reflects the recalculations of the previous 6 month averages, not the income for that particular month.

The growth/trend is very optimistic, however, January and March were abnormally great months due to advertisers renewing or purchasing slots for 6 months or 12 months. This has a dramatic change on even a 6 month average. However, to compensate, my new projects should all be complete in a few months and should start to see revenue (albeit miniscule to start off) which will help provide a boost in income.

According to this chart, though, there is no way I'm going to meet my September goal of averaging $10,000 a month. Although, I believe I may reach an average of $6,000 a month by then.

Recalculating my earnings is always extremely scary. I want to see an increase each time I do it, even if it's only by $1 a day. I'm always terrified it will be lower than the previous. I'm looking forward, not backward!

MovieForums Preview

Here's a preview of MovieForums.org's skin. I'm not all that happy with it, and am going to write a list of things I want changed/modified to the designer:

It should be up on the site in about a month I'm guessing.

Bookmark.com Update

Some bad news for Bookmark.com. I talked to my contact this morning and we discussed some numbers after he had some time to analyze the site's data. He didn't make an offer, but told me roughly around what he think they'd be able to bid. Unfortunately, they are bidding solely on the site's type-in traffic earnings. This equates to a much lower number than our asking price; they are not factoring in the sheer value of the domain itself.

So we're going to let the testing period run for a few more days then he will give me a real final number, although it doesn't look like anything is going to come out of this.

So that's unfortunate, but my search will continue.

On a positive note, the site is making between $3-5 a day from type-in traffic alone, and the owner will be pleased to hear of this, as I can put up some AdSense for him and make him an extra $150 a month.

Other Updates

I've been working a little bit here and a little bit there on all my sites, but here are some of the more notable updates:

Affiliate Site

I've decided that I'm going to start an affiliate site. That is, a site focused on selling merchandise/leads from an affiliate perspective solely, instead of CPM/CPC. While I've done my fair share of affiliating in the past, and am an affiliate with dozens of poker companies with PokerForums, I've never built a site as an affiliate for products.

A few things prompted me to try this. One was that I've never tried it before and the industry intrigues me. The other is from revenue magazine, which is virtually 100%-affiliate focused. I want to try my hand in this, and am excited.

I'll have to pick a niche/topic/subject first though, and progress will be fairly slow as I have a million other projects on my plate right now, but I will indeed pursue it.

However, this will be the last project I add, I swear!

Project AA

I've spoken to my long-time programmer/developer about the status and progress of Project AA. He said it's 20% done. This equates to about 15% done, as I'll be hiring a web designer to go over his basic framework and make it all pretty.

I've been thinking, and I believe that this project will most definitely be one of my major sites soon after launch. There is just massive need for this site in the webmaster industry. I really can't believe there hasn't been more of these made. And the way in which this is being constructed... it'll just be fantastic. It will also be greatly beneficial to me in so many ways, the biggest being that I'll be forced to 'test' and research things that will, I believe, provide me with a wealth of important information.

I can not wait for this project to launch... :)

Replayer.org

I haven't heard from my programmer for Replayer.org in about a week. I'm beginning to get a bit antsy about this project.. it's taking a while, and I haven't seen much progress in the past 3 weeks. If I don't hear from him within a day or two, I'm going to start to get back on his ass again.

I've poured much too much time and money (Oh, God, the money...) into this to let it start to slide.

MMAForums.net

MMAForums.net is going well. The skin is done, and the site already has a fair bit of discussion on it:

Threads: 100, Posts: 689, Members: 27, Active Members: 26 Granted, most of these are from paid members, but only about 90% or so. I have a few members who aren't paid members, and they are returning and posting.

However, I need to go cry to the company I hired to help me market the site. ARGHH.. What's with this, I search long and hard and pay a lot of money to purposely target reputable and top professionals in their fields, and lately I've just been getting.. not screwed.. but.. ugh.. you know how it is..

Anyhow, that's my update for today. Good luck, and good earnings to ye!