$18,000 in 28 days

• PublisherForums Skin Up!
• $18,000 in 28 days
• Hiring a Web Designer for 10 Sites
• Lethargy Strikes Again

PublisherForums Skin Up!

While it took a while to get up, it actually got up sooner than I had expected.

It's not 100% done, there is still icon imagry to go, and a few things I'm not happy with yet, but those things should be done by tomorrow. I thought I'd post it up now, early, anyway. It'd say it's about 94% complete though. Tomorrow it should be 100% complete if everything goes on schedule. How do you like it?

PublisherForums.com

How do I plan on marketing it now? Well, my next step, once it's finished being skinned is to get some banner creatives commissioned for it. I've had to wait for the skin to be completed so that the banner designer has a proper theme to go with.

I'll then probably look around and find relatively cheap webmaster-related sites to advertise on and just do a bit of advertising. Nothing major or anything, just to get the word out and to establish a bit of branding in the community.

I stated before that I didn't plan on holding a posting contest for this one, unlike Lee's EarnersForum and Jon's WickedFire. I have two reasons of rationale for this:

1. I'm aiming for a decent level of quality on PublisherForums. Ideally it'd have very high-quality discussion, but for it to be successful it's not realistic to have such high expectations; most people just don't post like that and it quickly becomes more of a burden to post long well-written posts than it does not to. By holding a posting contest, even if you stress awards would be given to the best posters and not necessarily posters with the highest post count, the very nature of it all will inevitably bring forth a lower quality of posts, even if you try to limit this.

2. I'm trying something a bit different. Lee and Jon aren't the first ones to come up with a forum contest; I did it before with DomainForums, and I'm sure many people did it long before me. Right now both Lee and Jon are holding large contests, and since I don't make nearly as much as them, I can't really compete against them.

I'm also trying to go on the hope that people will come to PublisherForums not just to win a contest, but to go for the quality content. There is quality content on both of those other forums, but there is also a lot of useless information as well. By not holding a contest, people that do decide to post on PublisherForums will not have an alterior incentive to post (ex. money).

Now, this isn't to say that I won't hold a contest later on. Lee's contest ends in a couple of days, and while I'm sure he'll launch another one, the competition in both Lee's and Jon's forums is tough since there are many members there already competing for a prize. And I've always believed in contests - they are great. I'm just not sure I want to hold one for PublisherForums.

$18,000 in 28 days

Just over a week ago I had mentioned how I made $11,000 in 20 days. Now I'm proud to report that I've made $18,000 in 28 days! That's an average of $642 a day!

Okay, well, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit. Or am I? How would you guys do this in accounting?:

My recent big advertiser decided to renew for a month and paid me another $4500 today via bank wire. This payment is for a renewal of their current campaign which is set to expire August 10th, and set to renew until September 10th. So, I've been paid today, in July, but it's actually for a campaign which will run August-September. Would you put that in your accountings under July, when it was paid? Or in August, when the campaign starts? I have the same thing for another advertiser; they paid me two weeks ago but I'm awaiting on their creatives still.

If you count them for this month then I'll have made over $18,000 this month. If you don't, then it'd be closer to around $12,000. What do you guys think?

Anyhow, I apologize if this just sounds like one long annoying bragging post. I'm not trying to brag... I'm just happy and excited. That's a lot of money and it's always great to beat your best-month-ever record. And obviously this is just a really really good month. This is nowhere near my average of course, lol.

The money is definitely needed. It helps pay for the disaster Replayer.org site where my developer ran off with my money, and gives me seed money to help launch my other sites.

Hiring a Web Designer for 10 Sites

If you watched the video in my last blog update you'll know that I'm planning on trying out the PPC Arbitrage arena. I plan on jumping into 10 different niches simultaneously, and will therefore require 10 sites for each.

Thus, I'm in need for a web designer to design (and code) these 10 sites for me. Those that know me will know that I have very high expectations when it comes to design work and programming. Well, these projects are a bit different as quality isn't my main concern here. However, I'm still looking for a designer that can deliver a decent site with short turnaround time and low costs. Especially since I'll be paying for 10.

So, if you're a web designer, here are some of the things I'm looking for:

1. Online most of the time and available via MSN 2. Able to provide the PSD source 3. Proficient in CSS 4. Clean and oraganized code and commented. 5. Good integration of AdSense, to be inserted via SSI 6. Quality designer that can also have fast turnaround times

Now, that being said, I'm not looking for the next eBay or YouTube. I'm planning on having around 10 pages per site which would just work off the same template with minor modification of the front. Each site will need it's own unique and creative design.

Payment would be sent via PayPal after each project is completed (If you can't trust me to pay you, then I don't trust you.) Prices are definitely negotiable, but I'd expect some decent bulk discount since I'd be purchasing 10! I'm not looking to spend more than $300 tops for each design, so don't bother contacting me if it's above that. Also don't just quote me $300. For $300 I'd want something really nice, so quote me something realistic like $100.

The hired designer would need to promise to an honorary NDA as to not leak out what sites they are making. This means it could not appear in their portfolio either.

If you're interested, e-mail me at tylercruz @ gmail.com (so much spam lately). Do NOT IM or PM me please. Provide your MSN name, your quote, turnaround time, portfolio, and anything else you deem useful.

*I'm also looking for a good banner designer, capable of quality animated banners in various sizes such as 468x60, 88x31, 120x60, etc. Would want very fast turnaround on these. Interested parties can e-mail me at the e-mail above as well.

Lethargy Strikes Again Sigh....

How many times have I talked about this? Too many. Guys, I'm so lethargic and distracted. I have been for probably the past year. I'm not sure if it's from moving out and having a lot more things to do and get used to or what. I think it's a combination of the following:

1. Lack of exercise 2. Poor diet 3. Too many things to do (as in recreation; Computer Games, GF, XBox360, Movies, TV, Books, etc.) 4. No driving force (rent is easily paid for now; nothing to be scared about) It is extremely frustrating because I have a million ideas, enough sites to work on as it is (20, with 10 about to be added!) and lots of work I could and should be doing... I just have no energy or focus most of the time. I honestly feel that if I had a decent amount of energy and focus that I could get so much accomplished that it'd be scary.

I do so little work these days. I'll check my e-mail, hire a couple people to do a few things, update my blog, sign up advertisers, etc. but not really any real work. "Real" work I'll spent maybe an average of an hour a day doing if that, which is stupid. See, it's not about 'having' to work, it's about being able to. I'm not able to work when I want to, and when I am able to work, it isn't often or for long periods of time.

Now, I've done something about this. Well, I've been trying.

1. Lack of exercise and Poor Diet The past couple months, every day I've made sure to do 20 pushups, 22 crunches, drink 3 glasses of water a day, and eat 2 fruits or vegetables. These quotas started lower but throughout the weeks I've gradually increased them. I also started to do a bit of fast-walking on a trail that circumnagivigates a lake here which is 6.7 Km, although I haven't done that in a few weeks. Maybe I should again. I haven't noticed any energy changes. Physically I've noticed a few small things, but it's energy that I care about. A week or two ago I noticed I had a bit more energy and concentration and was able to get a bit more work done, but this week I've been sluggish as hell again. What's worse, even though I've been on this, not missing a day, consistently for around 7 weeks or so now, my little workout never seems to get easier.

Now, I hope if/when I increase those quotas to have my fruit/vegetables at 3 or even 4, that that will then show a difference, but for now, I'm not noticing anything.

3. Too many things to do There's not much I can do about this one. I've considered getting rid of my cable, but the problem there is that I do enjoy watching the news when something is going on, I watch a bit before I go to sleep as it helps put me to sleep, and it's useful for guests/visitors. I simply need to organize my time better. I've been going on the computer less and less, which does help me get a lot done.. maybe I should try doing that again. I'd still be on most of the time, don't worry (hehe), but taking long periods of time from the computer can help me get a lot done. 4. No driving force

When I was around 16/17, I got so much done compared to what I get done now it's scary. I could work 3-4 hours straight reading programming books and writing a fairly complex Perl application, and I could work for the majority of the day being focused. This was probably because this was all new to me back then and it was new, exciting, and I enjoyed the challenge. At 19-20 I worked very hard as well, however a large part of this was a driving force stemmed from the fact that I needed to make money to pay my parents rent, as I only had a couple of part time jobs (Internet Access Centre supervisor, Web Developer for a local real estate company, and I had a little local Photo Restoration business.) and working on building my sites to generate more revenue became more of a real-life importance. Now I'm making enough money without having to put any effort in that I have no driving force anymore. Am I motivated? HECK YA! I'm motivated as hell, which makes this all the more frustrated. I know that if I had more energy and concentration that I could be making mid 5-digit figures each month with a year or two, but I just can't put myself to work. But not having any 'threat' to push me seems to have made me too relaxed in a sense.

Anyhow, I believe that eating better and getting more exercise is probably the biggest key here. We'll see if I can work my way up to 3 fruits/veggies a day and if that does anything for me.

Wish me luck, and energy.

Well, that's it for now. I'm going on a little vacation (vacation Tyler? From what?!) with Lisa up island for a few days on Monday in case anyone tries to get in contact with me during that time and can't. I'll be bringing my laptop along though and probably making video entires related to my blog then anyways.

Good luck and good earnings!

Fireworks Update

Here's a quick update for you guys. I know I've been a bit slow with my posts lately (roughly a week apart) so I'm making a concious effort to update more often. So here's a little video update I made while driving to see some fireworks earlier tonight. I apologize for the audio, I'm just using a cheap digital camera and the audio atmosphere in the car wasn't the greatest:

$11,000+ in 20 Days

Hi again. Miss me? I missed you... Today's workload:

• PFO: $11,000+ in 20 Days
• Charity Plug
• Apartment Photos and Videos

PFO: $11,000+ in 20 Days

Last week I had posted how PFO had beat it's best-month record by climbing into the 5-digit field. So far, 20 days into July, the site has made $11,000. That's an average of $550 a day this month so far! There is even more money from advertisers that has been received, but I haven't received their creatives yet, so I haven't started their campaign nor run them through the "system". But I should be getting those soon, and July should end having made $12,000 - an average of $400 a day for the month.

But we all know we can't calculate real average earnings like that, don't we :) However, it will indeed help when I recalculate my average earnings on August 1st. Let's pray that I beat $167 a day! I have some more good news. Remember that advertiser that ordered a large aggressive campaign a couple weeks back? Well, it isn't confirmed yet but it looks like they are going to renew for next month! That's another $4,500! Hey, I'll take it.. I need it! Luckily my members took well to their campaigns and enjoy the site so it's a win-win situation, which always makes me feel good. Cross your fingers and hope they do indeed to go through.

My advertising waiting list for my 468x60's is a mile long, so I went and increased the prices again. The top and top middle 468x60 ads I've increased from $375 to $400 and the 125x125 I've increased from $275 to $300.

I won't say that the increase doesn't make me a bit apprehensive - a $25 increase is afterall 7% more, but I can justify I think by having more than a couple advertisers on the waiting list for them and not having any long periods of time without them being sold. Also, I'm trying to gradually do a bit more and more affiliating myself.

I'll finish off this section on PokerForums by addressing the statement than many people make about me: "Oh, he's making all his money off of his poker site". Well, that's true. The majority of my income is indeed from PFO. However, let's not forget that I've built or bought and sold a large number of sites in the past, and I have three other sites producing income right now. But my real rebuttle is that I'm spending the majority of my time working on PFO. It's not like I'm spending all of my time building new sites and trying desperately to monetize them - sure, I'm working on many other projects right now to diversify and provide a more stable economic ground underneath myself, but part of why I'm making money from PFO is because I spend a lot of time on it.

Charity Plug

I had somebody e-mail me asking:

Massive favour alert, so please ignore it's too big. I've just spent the last eight months developing a community website that is trying to raise $6 million for five international charities. The project is an attempt to make the largest artistic collaboration of all time, officially breaking a world record.

Crux is that we have to get 1 million people to join in, so I'm using every means that I possibly can to publicise it.

Ah well, I don't mind doing a bit of goodwill here and there ;) So here's a plug for his charity fundraising endeavour:

"Ever wanted to become a world record breaker? Well here's your chance!Join the One Million Masterpiece and take part in the World's largestever artistic collaboration. All you need to do is complete one sectionof a giant picture - drawing what ever you want directly online. The complete picture will be printed on an 80 meter canvas and unveiled onWorld Population Day 2007 as a symbol of global unity. The projecthopes to capture a unique visual snapshot of global society, and willraise over $6 million for global humanitarian and environmental causes."

http://www.theonemillionmasterpiece.com/

Apartment Photos and Videos

I spent between 2-4 hours everyday for the past 3 weeks cleaning my apartment in every nook and craney including the ceiling and behind the stove. So, this is what my place looks like having lived here for a year and 3 weeks now.

Please note that I'm not posting these in any attempt to 'show off'; I don't believe that this is anything to brag about - it's a small apartment! However, I still can't believe that all of this comfort is paid for through website income. My place is usually very cluttered with dishes, mail, and other crap, but since I've cleaned it I think I've been more productive! For one, I find that if I go and do a whole apartment cleaning everyday and put everything back to 'perfect', that cleaning isn't as time consuming since things are just simpler to clean when there's less to do. For example, cleaning one hour a day for a week is not equal to letting things pile up and then clearning for 7 hours at the end of the week; the latter takes longer because you are not as organized. Anyhow, I think I may give an earnest attempt to keep my place clean now. As I said, I've noticed myself being more productive. There's two things I've noticed. First, just taking a break from writing a blog entry or taking care of some e-mails by putting something in the oven or microwave really quick and getting a drink is much quicker than before. Before, I was lucky if I could find clean dishes. Then I'd have to weave my way through the jungle of dishes and clutter to find my microwave.. and even just walking through my apartment is easier, not having to jump over things, lol! Secondly, being in a clean environment seems to have a bit of an influence in how your brain is organized as well. It's as though being in a clean environment helps you be more oganized in your brain as well, and things are easier to deal with. Anyhow, here are some photos of my place: Full gallery of 39 photos available at http://www.tylercruz.com/tyler/apartment4/ Below are 3 videos I made which give you a walking tour by yours truely through my apartment. I get a bit strange at the end asking readers of this blog carpet questions... Note that there is a 3-second audio delay due to a conflict with my digital camera and YouTube.

Five Digits

Sorry for the delay folks, not a whole lot had happened the past week, but a lot sure has in the past couple days! Today's list of ingredients:

• MMAForums's First Advertiser
• First 5-digit Month for PFO
• j0n's Supercomputer for Sale
• PublisherForums
• PublisherSpot Revealed
• PageRank Update

MMAForums's First Advertiser

I've just signed up my first advertiser for my mixed martial arts forums, MMAForums.net. It's a 6-month 120x240 spot which will appear on the right side (I haven't put it up yet) at $30 a month. Yeah, it's only $30 a month, nothing to write home about, but it's actually awesome. That's $1 more a day... that's like a free burger a day! And of course, it's what it represents... hopefully in the not-too-distant future I can build on that and get a nice little group of private advertisers going. I bet I can get an average of $200 a month from from the site within a year from now. This may be one of my prospects which rises up through the canvass (Saturday, April 22, 2006 -- The rest of the projects are not forgotten, but try to think of my projects as a tropical canvass, with the tallest and biggest trees, or projects, stealing most of the sun and energy, with the smaller plants and prospects getting the remains and leftovers :)). Anyhow, you guy may not care about this, but I'm really happy about it. It always starts with one advertiser... :) First 5-digit Month for PFO Boom! PokerForums.org has just broken it's record month of March when it made $8,496.30 from private sales. With July not even half done, PokerForums.org has just hit the 5-digit mark, and set a new record! So far, private ad sales just barely cross over the $10,000 mark. It should be noted that income on PFO is comprised mostly of private ad sales, but I am starting to do more affilating myself, and so there is around another $1000 from other ad networks the site is receiving as well. As I always state, "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." And that can be examplified in the fact that May and June gave very poor results in private ad sales. Part of why July is doing so well is that it's WSOP season. WSOP is the World Series of Poker, which is like the Superbowl of poker. I actually have a few advertisers on waiting lists for good spots because they are all filled out! So some of this demand will probably spawn over to August which will help. Finally, I signed up a big advertiser which wanted a very aggressive campaign (I mentioned this two posts ago under the $4500 sub-header), there was a bit of a hold-up due to a miscommunication and the fact that their were a ton of ads to get sorted out. Luckily, I took the time to write out a very long and concise e-mail, and they responded greatly and as a result everything got resolved with both parties extremely happy. Fortunately, their campaign is a good one (they are giving out $35 free. No strings attached. Don't have to deposit money. Visit here if you're interested.) and response on PFO has been good, meaning people like the site and thus don't mind all the heavy advertising for it. So, if they get a good result, then they will renew with us, and I can probably expect another $4500 from them next month. This cash can definitely be used to help my sites (kickstarting Replayer.org again, for example). Anyhow, $10,000 so far from private ad sales in July! Everyone cheer! j0n's Supercomputer for Sale My web entrepreneur friend and collegue j0n is selling his famous 4-screen computer on eBay.

It's quite new, and he's opting for a mac instead so decided to get rid of it. Anyhow, if you're up for something fancy with 4 LCD monitors, you can check his auction on eBay. But you'll have to be quick, as it ends tomorrow. This isn't a paid plug or anything, I just felt j0n deserved it as he's been an advertiser of this blog for a while now with the ChatWebDev.com banner up top.

PublisherForums

Yes, I know... here I go shamelessly plugging PublisherForums again :) Seriously though, if you haven't checked it out yet, please do. You may find yourself actually enjoying it. Help me out by making contributive posts now and I'll remember it if one day I'm rich and famous :) Right now we have 43 members having made 232 posts. The skin I commissioned is scheduled to commence on Monday. PublisherSpot Revealed I was planning on revealing what PublisherSpot was in this post, but I managed to find enough things to update and talk about that I think I'll decide to save this revealing for next update. It will allow me to provide a forthcoming post sooner. The site may even go live by then, really having something to talk about, as it's like 98% done now. PageRank Update Yes, there was a PageRank™ update! How did you fare? Unfortunately I didn't do nearly as well as I had hoped for. I had expected growth on TylerCruz.com and possibly a couple of my new forums, and always hoping for growth on Movie Vault and PokerForums. These are the only changes I did receive: PublisherForums.com: 0 to 4 This is strange. Hopefully it will stay (or grow) on the next update. It's rather strange though as it's new and doesn't have any backlinks or anything. Also, it launched at the same time as WickedFire and EarningsForum and both of those are still at 0. PageDump.com: 0-4 Um... okay... there is no site at all up here... AlienForums.net: 0-4 Same thing.. MMAForums.net: From #11 to #9 for "mma forums" I like that as it puts me on the first page. CookingForums.net: From #10 to # 8 for "cooking forums" Small, but it helps. Then there was of course other changes such as subpages on PFO and MV.. MV has literally thosuands of PR4 and hundreds of PR5 already though. Oh, I almost forgot. I wanted to talk about PokerForums. I didn't get an increase in PR on PFO, and at first I was a bit disappointed, but come to think of it, that's actually quite good. Think about it. I have a bajillion ads on there. Just look at the footer of the site. See all those text links? Right now I can count 28 footer text links alone. And at $896 a month (28 x $32), I don't think I'll be removing them for a miniscule chance of better PR. So, just staying the same after expending all that PR to other sites is fine with me. Well, that's all for today folks. Again, I apologize for the delay in this post, but I try to make all my posts interesting and entertaining so hopefully the waits are worth it. Good luck, and good earnings!

Broccoli Forums

I can't think of anything too interesting to start my blog today, so... be creative and insert your own witty line here _________________________. La Soupe du Jour:

• Domains and SEO
• New Logos!
• PublisherForums
• The Nomad
• Hollywood Tyler

Domains and SEO I know absolutely nothing about SEO, and I don't claim to know anything about SEO. Let's just get that out of the way first. However, my theory that domains are an extremely important factor may gain some ground in this post. Now, obviously I'm not the first person to say this - most people will agree that domains are important of course, but I believe that they are more important than many people may think. Many people have the belief that if given the choice of choosing between domain A, for the purpose of example let's use..... hmm.... SpaceRangers.com (Actually, a person, I forget who, messaged me and said they registered that after reading my post, lol) and domain B, SpaceRangerHaven.com. SpaceRangers.com would cost them $5,000, and SpaceRangerHaven.com would cost them $20. Now, I understand many of you would think about getting Domain A, but are you actually thinking about getting it, or are you just kind of drooling over it and wishing you had it? Anyhow, I'm focusing here on the people with the following mentality: These people, who I have nothing against, believe that it is better to get Domain B, SpaceRangerHaven.com and save that $5000 which could then be put into marketing and advertising. This seems like a very logical and sound decision, and does make a lot of sense... however, I believe that the long term effects of having a good domain make that belief false. A lot of this depends of course on the niche, topic, and market saturation of the domain, but generally I disagree with their logic. While it is of course feasible to brand a name on your own through marketing, a good domain markets and brands itself on it's own. And now I'll discuss the sheer SEO power of a good domain through personal example. PokerForums.org is #1 on Google, Yahoo, and MSN for "Poker Forums" and ranks just as high for similar keywords. Let me repeat that just in case you didn't hear it. PokerForums.org is #1 on Google, Yahoo, and MSN for "Poker Forums". Not page 1, not #1 Dad, but #1 result. How can you beat that? Did I do any SEO on the site? Absolutely not. Did I launch an advertising or marketing campaign? No, sir. For those that know me, they know that I do little-to-no advertising or marketing on any of my sites. This usually stems from the fact that I try to build quality sites and have them spread through word of mouth. Why not spend your time and money building a quality site and have others market it and link to it for you? Anyhow, some of you may say "Oh, PokerForums is just high because it's a popular site.. it's not because of the domain". Well, while that may be true to an extent, it only accounts for.. what.. 10% of it? Here are some more examples: CookingForums.net - #1 on MSN and #9 on Google for "Cooking Forums" MovieForums.org - #3 on MSN and #9 on Google for "Movie Forums" GymnasticsForums.com - #1 on MSN and #4 on Google for "Gymnastics Forums" BadmintonForums.com - #1 on MSN for "Badminton Forums" MMAForums.net - #11 on Google for "MMA Forums" What's important to note is that on ALL of these sites, I haven't even developed them really yet. They have a basic forum up on them and a skin, and minimal posts. I plan on giving them attention later, but right now I'm busy with other projects. However, even without doing any sort of marketing for them, they already have high SERP's. So, register BroccoliForums.com and in a couple weeks or so if not less, you should be #1 on the major SE's for "Broccoli Forums". Of course this is just an example, but it shows the power of domains. Traffic on these sites range from 35-200 uniques per day. Sure, about 20% or so of these are from spiders and some are from curious people who found the link on TylerCruz.com and Merendi.com, but the majority of traffic right now comes from search engines. And then people ask why I bought DomainForums.com for $xx,xxx.... Anyhow, that's just a little bit of food for thought for you - never underestimate the power of a good domain. New Logos! I have the two logos for two of my new sites. It was extremely difficult to choose between the samples and revisions, but I'm happy with my final choices. Rar.. Blogger is being a pain again and not letting me upload images, so I'll link directly from my site:

PublisherSpot is not a forum. It's a large project that should be done within 1-2 weeks and will act as a sister site to PublisherForums. How do you like the logos? PublisherForums Yes, it's time for another personal plug. But hey, it's important :) I'll put it bluntly: Check out PublisherForums.com. I understand that there are a lot of webmaster forums out there, with two new ones that just recently launched by Lee and Mook-Jon (aojon). I'm not offering you money or holding any contests. I'm not against that method, but I also believe that you have to be careful when holding such contests; quantity may quickly usurp quality. That being said, the tagline for PublisherForums is "Intelligent Discussion for Web Publishers". I'm trying to remain as true to that statement as possible. Again, I'm not going to lure people through monetary prizes and contests (not that I'm against that), but hope people will come on their own for the discussion itself, not the money. The Nomad I got my laptop a couple days ago. When setting up Windows, it asked me to name the computer. I have names for all my computers, and so I named this one "Nomad". It wanted a description for it and so I gave it "The Wandering Labourer". I keep it in my bedroom where I have another mini office set up. I tend to use it late at night and try to do my forum posting there as I'm less distracted there. I also use to watch my MMA videos by lying on my bed and putting it on the ground. It's an Acer 17-inch. Here are some photos: Again, I bought it so that I could go to the library and get work done that requires a lot of attention. I'll be sure to let you guys know how my first 'study period' with it goes and how much work I get done. Hollywood Tyler I'm a web developer and entrepreneur, but that doesn't mean I don't contribute to any of my sites. I've conducted a fair number of interviews in the past for my sites Movie-Vault.com and PokerForums.org with big names in the industry such as Lynn Guthrie (Movie Producer and Director), Gregory Jbara (Actor), Justin Zaharczuk (Art Director), Tony G (Professional Poker Player and Celebrity) and Lee Jones (Best-selling author and Professional Poker Player) to name a few. Last week I finished an interview with John Ottman. With almost 40 film scores to his name since 1993, composer John Ottman’s adaptive creativity spans a variety of genres. From tense psychological crime dramas such as The Usual Suspects (1995), Apt Pupil (1998) and Cellular (2004) to intriguing and gentle comedies such as Bubble Boy (2001), black comedy/satire Pumpkin (2002), to comic/horror flicks such as Lake Placid (1999) and Eight Legged Freaks (2002), to epic superhero dramas such as X-Men 2 (2003), Fantastic Four (2005) and most recently Superman Returns (2006) it seems there is nothing to which this talented composer cannot lend the particular enhancement of tension and drama of a superb film score. Even more intriguing is his dual function as composer and film editor on the films of long-time friend and collaborator Bryan Singer, a function he compares to composing with its ebbs and flows. John Ottman has also directed twice and produced once. You can read my interview with John Ottman here. Now I need to get busy and get some movie news sites to link to my interview :) Backlinks, baby, backlinks! Okay, that's it for now - my blog posts are so epic... hah. Good luck, and good earnings! **Note: I'm getting extremely frustrated with Blogger. I just spent 45 minute on fixing formatting problems that Blogger's posting creates. What are my alternatives? In general, I like Blogger, and moving to something else such as WordPress would make all my archives disappear and such. Perhaps I should only write it in HTML in the future, and not use the Compose area? Because as it is, It's extremely frustrating and takes way too much time trying to fix the formatting errors...

Happy Anniversary!

For a change I actually had quite a few things to talk about today. In fact, I had to omit a few of them in order to cut down on the size! Our specials for today:

• Rich Dad, Poor Dad
• One Year Anniversary
• PublisherForums
• $4500 and Back-Up
• Screwed?
• Laptop!
• HelloGreen Auction

Rich Dad, Poor Dad

A couple days ago I went out and bought Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad. I did this to force myself to read it and not put it off. My latest revenue magazine came too, which will make for a good next week of reading, as I have two poker books to review as well.

One Year Anniversary

Today is July 1st, 2006. And that marks exactly 1 year since I moved out of my room in the basement of my parent's house and into my own place.

Looking back over the year, I'm actually quite surprised how much I've accompished in just 365 days. Apart from the personal leaps and bounds I've made, my work and income have also flourished significantly as well.

In a post from my famous (or infamous) I'm Doing it Guys thread on Sitepoint, I had stated:

"I'm currently making betwen $1500-$1700 (fairly conservative number) a month Canadian before taxes(average from past 3 months - was much less before then...). For additional income, or backup income, I can do some photo restoration, web development, and English tutoring, which could bring in another $300-$400 CDN or so a month."

Now, a year later, I'm making triple that! What's interesting is that the Canadian dollar has risen, which is great for most Canadians, but not for me, as I get paid in US dollars. So, a bit over a year ago, I would have been making 150% of what I'm making now, as the US-CDN dollar was 0.5-1. Now the Canadian dollar is almost at par with the American.

Anyhow, it is interesting though how much one can accomplish in just 12 months. A year from now, if I'm still plugging away at this blog, I'd be very happy to be making an average of $7,000 a month, or $233 a day. We'll see what happens in another 365 days.

PublisherForums

In my last post, I had prelaunched PublisherForums.com. Thank you to everyone that joined. After just a few days, we already have 32 members and 128 posts. If you haven't registered and posted yet, please do! If you've already registered, keep on posting!

I'm trying very hard to keep the site as helpful as possible. Already we have a number of very good threads and so far, members have been helpful and discussing interesting topics.

To help illustrate the quality of discussion on the forum, I'll paste a response I made to a member who made a thread on SEO asking for help. Oops, scratch that. Blogger is quite horrid when it comes to formatting, and it wouldn't let me keep the formatting I made in the original post (was all garbled and scrambled) so I'll just link you to the post directly.

$4500 and Back-Up

A couple days ago I received a bank wire for $4500 ($5000 CDN) into my bank account. It was paid by an advertiser for PFO. What's interesting here is that this payment is for one month's worth of ads, not 6 or 12 months! Better yet, if things go well for them (their campaigns convert well), they will be renewing and doing this on a monthly basis.

Also, I have another advertiser wanting to purchase a 468x60 for a couple of months, so I have him on the waiting list.

However, there are a couple downsides to this $4500 transaction.

1. I got paid a lot, but I'm also having to put a _lot_ of ads on my site for them. There's a fine line between monetizing your site effectively and not driving away your members because the site is too ad heavy. You also have to balance not taking away from other current advertisers. I won't argue that it will be ad heavy, but I don't think I exactly went overboard either. There's no pop-up's or anything extremely obtrusive.

2. There's a bit of a hold-up in receiving the ads and creatives. This is due to a number of things including us being in completely different timezones (They are based in the UK and I'm in Western Canada), somewhat slow response time on their part (well, to me; they are fine with time from a business perspective), and that some of our creatives are quite unique, such as 'Sticky Ads' and 'Featured Site', that their creatives manager will have to do a bit of work (as opposed to just sending me standard banners and links).

In fact, #2 is starting to frustrate me a little as I want to get this campaign going and done with. I can't really sign up any other advertisers until their campaign is over if they don't renew.

As for them renewing, I don't think the chances are good. However, it really depends on what site(s) they are advertising and what they are offering. We could convert very well for them depending on what it is.

Well, cross your fingers and pray for me, folks. Pray that I finally get the creatives and get them up and running, and pray that they renew :)

$4500! Yay!

Screwed?

Arghhhhhh....! So I tried phoning the developer I hired for Replayer, but got no answer. In fact, I phoned on three different days and didn't get an answer. I'm using the phone number that was attached to his account profile on the outsourcing site I used.

So I did some investigating and found out his address through a 411 reverse telephone search. It didn't display anything because he's using a cell phone. I then did a phone lookup based on his address. What came up was a different address than he listed. Upon more investigation, I found out that a company/store called "Tech Tile" which is apparantly a type of tile/flooring company, is situated where it states his address is.

So, at first I thought, oh.. okay... maybe he moved abruptly. But then that idea didn't exactly fly, as stores don't exactly move into houses or apartments. And to have it listed on 411 already? Hmm..

Maybe he just didn't update his profile information for a few years... or.. *gulp* maybe he put up made-up information in his profile.

I'm very upset about this. Replayer was another fanastic entrepreneurial idea by me, but I end up getting screwed for thousands of dollars with nothing to show for it. Fuck. I am really pissed. But I learned a lesson, albeit a small one. Don't always be so trusting when it comes to outsourcing to freelancers. Make sure they at least have adequate contact information, and have a short chat with them over the phone at least before you start a business relationship with them. This of course isn't an end-all preventative measure, but it certainly would help (for example, you'd know that was their phone number and that it was active).

I even managed to find his brother who I had PayPal'd (apparantly his PayPal was having issues or something) a couple times with payments, asking where he was. No answer.

What's extremely strange is that it really doesn't appear that he is a con-artist. Googling him, I found him to have done a number of projects in the past, freelancing on various sites, and he had good ratings. Strange.

Maybe he just died or something. Always a possibility. I've always thought it strange - what would you do if you hired somebody and they just died.. how'd you contact them or collect your money back?

Anyhow, I'm going to wait some more and just hope he comes back. If not, I'll probably hire somebody else to finish the job for me and then sell it to collect my money back I spent on it. Laptop!

I bought a laptop yesterday! I was thinking of buying one for a while, and having 5 grand deposited into my account, I couldn't resist. I also think that this is a great investment - will pay off in the amount of quality (and quantity) work I get done in no time.

For example, I can go to the library at the college and study/work when there's stuff I need concentration and attention on. For instance, right now I have three books here I need to read, two I have to review for a poker publishing company, and then Rich Dad Poor Dad. A laptop would be handy because then I could take down notes and write the reviews when finished.

I'm planning to do these excursions whenever I need to focus hard or get some work done that doesn't involve the Internet. It's a shame, because you'd think I could just do this at home.. but the truth is I'm too distracted here.. I have TV, movies, Xbox360, and the worst culprit, the Internet. I'm not ashamed to say I have no discipline in this matter, but at least I have the discipline to go somewhere else where I can focus.

I know that I can get a lot done when I go somewhere away from my house that is quiet and without distractions because I've done this in the past many times. I get so much done, that going out to the library for a day with my laptop, I can get as much done as about 3-weeks worth of work doing it here at home! However, I won't have the Internet so work I do focus on will have to be limited so certain things that don't require the Internet. There's a fair number of those things that pop up time-to-time though so all should be fine.

It ships here on Tuesday, here are the specs for those interested:

• Intel® Pentium® M Processor 735 (2MB L2 cache, 1.70GHz, 400MHz FSB)
• 17.0" WXGA+ (1440 x 900) display
• 1GB DDR2 RAM (2 x 512MB)
• 100 GB hard drive, 5400RPM
• DVD-RW dual layer optical drive
• 56k modem and 10/100 NIC
• Built-in wireless 802.11b/g

I also bought a bag, had to order that special too as there aren't a lot of bags that fit for a 17-inch monitor, and a wireless router.

I took home the wireless router yesterday and hooked it up. I was worried I'd be stuck for hours if not days trying to hook it up, but I managed to do it in 5-10 minutes. I of course enabled encryption (128 bit) as well. For those of you who have wireless and don't have it encrypted, you are fools. Enable encryption now and stop letting your usernames, passwords, and credit card information float in the air for anyone to grab.

My girlfriend came over to help me test if the wireless part was all up and working by bringing her laptop. We connected just fine, and it was awesome.. wireless is all new to me and so it was fun having her come here and then seeing 4 different networks to choose from and connect to. There at the top I saw "Merendi Networks". Ah, there we go :) Saw one unsecured 'default'. Tsk tsk tsk. Also saw one named something along the lines of "Pooky pooooky pookkkky!!" - interesting.

HelloGreen Auction

I'm brokering the sale of the site HelloGreen.com which is an established webmaster forum. The reserve is at $2,000 if anyone is interested. It's currently on auction on Sitepoint, and can be viewed by clicking on the image below:

That's all for now.

Good luck and good earnings!