Welcome

What Is So Great About This Blog?

The only chance this blog has of succeeding is to be different then the 100's of other 'How To Make Money Online' blogs.

What makes this blog different:

• This blog is about a website. It discusses and analyzes the creation, maintenance, and performance of howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com.
• All claims are backed up by actual data. You will not see claims like: 'post comments because it increases traffic'. This blog will show, by using actual data, how much traffic posting comments has brought to howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com.
• There are no false claims of how I made 1000's of dollars a day using a secret system. With this blog, lies and exaggerated claims are impossible because howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com reveals all of its stats.
• Being a webmaster is not always a sunny day. This blog discusses the real trials and tribulations of being a webmaster. If this blog/website are doing poorly then you will see traces of tears in the posts.
• This blog has no advertising or selling of any kind. It is simply information and entertainment. The website howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com does all the money making, not this blog.
• Most blogs expect you to follow their advice on the assumption that they are an authority on the subject. This blog expects you to look at the data and decide for yourself.

All Posts Are Written With The Following in Mind:

• Honesty.
• Mix information with entertainment.
• The visitors time is valuable. Provide clear and original content.
• No claims without data to support it.
• One day this blog and the website it discusses will be successful.

Enjoy!

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These words are written in hesitation, almost agony.  For more then a month I have not had to think about this website.  It was a month of total bliss.  My mind was clean.  I ignored my traffic stats, I did not read other blogs, I did not add new content.  It was back to the good old days – before I had this website.  My mind was free to roam about anything and everything.

Time was my own.  Reading,  I was able to concentrate on what the donkey was saying to the turtle.  When I had a shower I was able to sing.  I ate slow and chewed all my food.  No rush and nothing pressing me.  No pressure to be at the computer doing something to the website.

I did not care about this website or about the online world.  It was great; but like the courting phase of a relationship, it must come to a end.  The fun stops and work begins – kisses and hugs become obligations and commitments.

So here I am, back at it.  Writing about the website.  Oh God, the agony.  With these words come all the attachments:  HTML, visitors, traffic, Adsense, comments, backups and that is just the technical aspect.  There is also the physiological damage – mental strain, sense of failure,  syphilis pushing a rock up a hill only to have it roll back again,  a slave to the website.  Back at it, back to having the website as a constant companion while I walk the streets, take a shower and sip my coffee.

Why do this?  Why put one self through it?  What is it all for?  The same reason destitute and repressed people left their homes, traveled the stormy seas, and landed on the beaches of the unknown called America.   A dream.  I do it in pursuit of a dream.  Pilgrims came to America to avoid suppression and start a new life on their own terms.  This website is in pursuit of a dream of living on my own terms.  To be free from the terms of my employee contract.  To be free from my 1 hour lunch break.  To be free from my boss’s mood swings.  Free to call time my own.  I have a dream.

Lots of people died on the journey to America.  And a lot more when they got there.  In their case failure turned the dream chaser to fertilizer.  Fortunately for me the worst that can happen is I spend a lot of time and money and end up with 20 megabytes of useless HTML.

I have spent a year on this website.  In terms of making money it was a complete waste.  I could of made a lot more with a lemonade stand setup beside a water fountain.  During the year I spent a lot of time thinking about the website – mental time that I will never get back.  Was it worth it?  Maybe if I spent that time thinking about something else, like building a perpetual motion machine, I would be a lot better off now.

But that was last year.  Who knows if it was for the best.  But I am not a crazed nut that pursues an impossible dream of turning dung into gold.  One more year is all that I will allow this website to suck out of me.  If nothing drastic happens within a year I will release myself from its grasp and be free to sing in the shower again.

This website’s primary function is to provide accurate statistics for its visitors.  How many visitors a day, how many page views per visitor, how much revenue it has accumulated.  My task as a webmaster should be an easy one – get the stats and put them on the website for all to see.  Simple.  What could go wrong?

I am trying to do good in this world.  To bring accurate information to my visitors.  My intentions are pure and well spirited.  The world lacked knowledge about what a new website must go through at the beginning.  I saw the need and made it my purpose to educate.  With my sword of honesty and truth in hand my quest to educate began.

But there are evil forces in this world.  There are people whose pursuit is not good.  Whose intent is to destroy rather then create, misinform rather then education, to take rather then give.  It is these types of people that are my enemies.  Everyday my pursuit of truth and good information is being hindered by these villains.  Instead of focusing on bringing more and better information, I must spend time fighting vermin.

I am talking about spammers.

If I was a catholic missionary in Africa trying to educate the natives about all-mighty God’s preference towards a single sexual position, spammers would be there handing out copies of the Karma Sutra.

Everything I do in effort to better educate and help my visitors is hindered and exploited by spammers.

The Contact Page And How I Must Fight Spammers

The contact page use to have a captcha.  To send me an email visitors had to decipher distorted numbers and letters.  This is a common method used to differentiate between humans and machines.  Humans can read the disfigured characters but machines cannot (yet). Although it prevents spammers from sending me emails it has disadvantages.  The contact page takes longer to load because a unique catchpa image needs to be produced.  And sometimes the image is so distorted that even a human cannot read it.  So my good intentioned visitors must squint and move their head at different angles to figure out the characters – sometimes getting it wrong and having to try again.

To do some good and make it easier for my visitors I removed the catcpcha and replaced it with a simple question: What is 1+1.  Most humans can easily answer this question but machines cannot.  Now the page loads fast and my visitors do not need to decipher a captcha image.

I did good – but what does the universal rule state?  You do good and spammers will take advantage of it.  And they do.  Now I constantly get spam emails about pharmaceutical products.  Because answering the question what is 1+1 is easy, spammers find it worth their time to answer it for an opportunity to spam.  Captcha is too much work for spammers – but 1+1 is easy.  Easy for visitors but also easy for spammers.

I teach the villagers to read and the spammers hand out copies of “Teach Yourself 28 Different Positions in 28 Days”.

How Spammers Bring Traffic To Websites (Thousands Of Unique Visitors For Only $9.99)

At the beginning of every month my server side stats are cleared and begin at zero.  For the first few days I clearly see who is visiting my site.  Here is what my server side traffic stats looked like at the very beginning of the month:

There are 25 unique traffic sources to this website.  Only 7 of them are from legitimate sources.  The rest are spammers.  The most visits from a single source is also a spammer.

How do I know they are spammers?  Because I click on them to find out who they are and why they have a link to my website.  What do I find?  There is no link to my website.  These website are sending traffic to my website without having a link to my website.  How?  Why?

How they do it I do not know.  But because these are server side stats, all it would take is for these websites to ‘ping’ my website for it to show up in my stats.  A ‘ping’ is simply a knock on the door.  These websites come to my server and say – ‘hello, I am here’.  That’s all – they do not come inside and they do not read any of the pages.  They just knock and leave.  This is verifiable because these visitors do not show up on my client side statistics; if they were viewing the pages then Google Analytics would show it, but it does not.  According to Google Analytics these visitors where never at my website – they do not exist.

Why do these websites do it?  Why do these website’s just knock on the door and leave?  The answer is deviously simple.  They do it for traffic.

These websites paid for traffic.  They hired a company that promises 1000’s of unique visitors for $9.99.  As soon as this company receives its $9.99 it presses a button and a program runs that pings thousands of websites.  This creates thousands of webmasters that now have a new traffic source.  These thousands of webmasters click on the new traffic source to see who is linking to them.  Bingo – traffic.  Thousands of webmasters are now visiting the website to checkout the new traffic source.  1000’s of unique visitors for $9.99.

Of course these webmaster are not ideal visitors.  They click on the traffic source, see that it is a spammer, and leave the site in disgust.  But the company selling the traffic does not care – it delivered what it promised – 1000’s of unique visitors for $9.99.

Not only are these traffic selling companies ripping off naive webmasters by sending them useless traffic, but more importantly, they are hindering my ability to do good in this world.

They have rendered my server stats useless.  If I was to report my statistics according to my server side stats alone then it would be misleading information because most of my visitors are spammers.  Instead of showing how many visitors this website receives, I would be showing how many spammers it receives.

Because of these bastards, every morning I need to look at both the client side stats and the server side stats and figure out the actual number of real visitors to this website.

If only there was no evil in this world.  If only I could be left in peace to perform my good works and provide great information.  Instead of spending my time informing and giving, I am forced to hack away at demons who are always trying to undermine my efforts.

I know how the missionary must feel when during the middle of Sunday school one of the students raises their hand and asks, “Why does the Lord disapprove of the Reverse Cowgirl position?”

Last month this website did not make a lot of money.  No surprise.  I have become comfortable not making money with this website.  My world would be in chaos if this website made money.  What would I do?  How would I act? Who would I be?

Obviously making money does not motivate me to keep this website.  For motivation I need to look elsewhere.  Like the man who is suddenly happy because he finds an unscathed sock amongst the ashes of his burned down house, I too have something to smile about.

The Search Traffic Graph

There are many graphs on this website.  But none of them please me as much as the organic search traffic graph.  If I was a father and graphs were my children then the search traffic graph would be my favorite son.  The one that makes me most proud, the one that is going to grow up just like dad, the one I always take fishing.

When everything looks bleak and I start to feel like Sisyphus, all I need to do is to look at my beloved search traffic graph and everything becomes alright.

Every month organic traffic increases to this website.  Last month was a huge increase.  Almost 500 visitors from Google – twice the amount compared to the previous month.  For the entire year the graph is almost a perfect 45 degree upward slope.  For the last few months organic traffic has been doubling every month.  If this keeps up I will have 8,388,608,000 monthly visitors in 2 years.

It is a well known fact that to increase search engine traffic you need two things: time and backlinks.  As more time goes by the amount of search engine traffic should increase naturally – the older your website the better.  Google checks the date your domain name was registered to determine the age of your website.

(It is also claimed that Google checks the expiration date of your domain name.  If your domain name registration is about to expire, or registered for only a year at a time, Google thinks you are a fly by night operation – maybe even a spammer.  It looks better if your domain name is not close to the registration expiry date and is registered for the next three years.  It is claimed – I am not sure if it is true but it makes sense to me.)

Besides time you also need backlinks.  The last few months were a guest post frenzy.  Continuously spinning the lever on the guest posting machine gun:  Problogger, Dailyblogtips, JohnChow, Blogsessive.  Not because I want to entertain and inform people, I do it for the backlinks.  And it works; the graph keeps stepping up and up – 8,388,608,000 monthly visitors in two years.

The Real Value of Search Engine Traffic

500 visitors a month is not a lot.  There are websites a lot younger then this one that receive more search engine visitors in a single day.  But that does not make me envious because not all search engine traffic has the same value.  Some visitors are worth more then others and mine are worth more.

Google sends me visitors who are searching for “how much money can be made from a website’ and variations on this theme.  These are valuable keywords – I know because I tried to buy them.

Last month I created an account on Google AdWords.  I wanted to buy traffic.  I was going to pay money to have my website appear on search engine results in the sponsored links section.

I opened the account and then 30 minutes later I abandoned the account.  Visitors for this niche are expensive.  Imagine someone does a search on Google for ‘make money with website’.   My website appears on the side of the search results, if the person clicks on my link then I pay Google around 5 dollars.  5 dollars to have somebody land on my website, look around, and leave.  My earnings which took a year to accumulate would be gone in 4 hours.

Of course if I thought that the visitors would buy the ‘website starter kit’ then 5 dollars is a small price to pay.  I would be paying 5 dollars  and receiving 65 dollars when a paid visitor buys the starter kit.  To break even I would need 1 in 13 paid visitors to purchase the starter kit.  Being a realist, I know that is not going to happen.

My keywords are expensive so I cannot afford to pay for visitors.  But the flip side is that this website receives valuable visitors from search engines.  People looking for ‘make money with website’ are worth a lot more then people looking for ‘how to comb down a cowlick’ which  cost only 5 cents per visitor.

Last month I received 500 visitors from Google.  Visitors that if I had to pay for them would cost me around 2500.  In other words, last month I saved 2500 dollars.

This website receives only 500 search engine visitors a month while other websites receive 500 visitors a day because the ‘make money with website’ niche has a lot of competition.  Visitors who want to make money with a website are worth more because they spend money.  Visitors looking for hair combing tips do not spend money and that’s why they are worth only 5 cents – nobody wants them.  Other websites get 500 visitors a day, but these are messy haired visitors without a dime to their name.

Other websites get 500 search engine visitors a day worth (500*.05) 25 dollars a day or 750 dollars a month.  My visitors are worth 2500 a month.

Now all I need to do is figure out what to do with these valuable visitors.  I have them but how do I use them – how do I convert their value into cash.  People come to my store with cash stuffed pockets – how do I get them to give me that cash.  So far they just walk in, look around and leave.  Some of them accidentally dropped a few pennies on the floor but the bulk of the 2500 dollars that came through my door left.  I need to convince visitors to give me their money before they leave.

How to make visitors give me their money?  My days are spent thinking about this question as I lovingly gaze at my beautiful search engine traffic graph.

Like a green oasis in the desert, a life giving miracle has appeared.  This website is making a profit.  Finally after 320 days this website has incurred $538.23 in costs and made $544.71 in revenue – revenue is a bigger number then the costs number.  That is a cool $6.48 that goes straight into my pocket.  A crisp five dollar bill and some jingling change.

Of course $6.48 is a lot less then the $10,000 I was hoping to have.  But I take is a learning experience.  I have no other choice, the only other thing I can take it as is a total failure; so in this case I am choosing optimism over the truth.  I learned that my expectation was way to high.  I year ago I thought that in 320 days I would be drinking hundred dollar wine and deciding between a red or black corvette.  Instead, I have made just enough money to buy a coffee and ride the bus.

Bitter?  Yep.  Basically I got ripped off.  I have put in 494 hours of work and received a meager $6.48.  This is criminal – a scam.  A rational human being would never accept these terms.  The only way a person could end up in this situation is by force or trickery.   In my case it was not force – nobody made me make a website.  I chose to make a website.  I chose to build a website because I believed that I would get paid fairly for my efforts.   

Who knows how I fell for it.  Or who did it to me.  Or how they benefit.  It is like the Kennedy assassination – the deeper you look the more mysterious it gets.  I have tried to analyze what happened, how I get duped, where did it all start.  My investigations have led nowhere.  Somehow I believed that the internet would be a great source of income.  I have no idea who did this to me.  But to keep my sanity I have stopped asking who and why.  Kennedy is dead and the circumstances around it strange – period.  I spent 494 hours to get $6.48 – period. 

What To Do With The Bitterness?

Being bitter raises an interesting problem for a webmaster.  There is no way to vent or redirect negative feelings.  At the work place it is easy to redirect bitterness. 

Let’s say you do not get the bonus you expected.  No problem.  Do not buy toilet paper, pens, calculators, or coffee – the office will supply you with these.  Take one or two items a day.  It’s not stealing, it is your bonus.  You can come to work a little later, have a longer lunch, leave a little earlier.  Its is not abuse, it is your bonus.  One way or another you will get your bonus.

Boss does not appreciate your work?  You work over the weekend to get the report on the boss’s desk first thing Monday morning and all you get is a ‘great – thanks’.  No problem.   Monday and Tuesday you play solitaire and browse your favorite websites with a clear conscience because you are simply recouping your weekend.

Having a bad day at work:  Co-worker talking in your ear about her stupid domestic issues?  Crappy computer crashes?  Client upsetting you with unrealistic demands?  Phone keeps ringing?  No problem.  Hit the keyboard a few times, open and close the laptop monitor many times and really fast, hang up the phone extra hard, start a dirty rumor about your co-worker and give her real domestic issues.

That’s what so great about the work environment.  You get bitter and upset, but at least there is something you can do to vent.  The workplace offers many ways to redirect that bitterness onto other people and office equipment.

Sadly a webmaster has no such luxury.  A webmaster works alone and with their own equipment.  Nothing to steal, nothing to hit, nobody to bad mouth.  Something goes wrong and all you can do is sit there and stew.  You could hit the keyboard but then you need to buy a new one.  You could have a longer lunch but then you will have to make it up later.  You could yell at the dog but he will just wag his tail and want to play catch.

Like a egg, a webmaster can only boil in their pot and harden.

Raking The Sand

The other day I was browsing Amazon for something to spend my $6.48 on.  I quickly discovered that I have enough money to pay for shipping but not enough for the product.  So I went to the only place where I can spend my website profits – the dollar store.

The pin wheel hat was too tight and the plastic gun did not look real.  But then I saw it.  As soon I as I tried it I knew it was exactly what I needed.  It is a simple thing.  Sand, rock and a rake – a mini zen garden.

Now it sits beside my computer.  Before I check my stats I pick up the rake with my left hand and begin to slide it across the sand.  It has a calming effect.  Little rocks are placed randomly in the sand so I rake around them.  The four little lines in the sand twist and turn around the rocks and relax me as I check my revenue stats.  Monks have zen gardens to bring them closer to nirvana.  I have my little zen garden to avoid destroying my own keyboard.

My zen garden has taught me something else.  Just because I spend lots of time on my website and receive almost nothing in monetary return, does not mean my time is wasted.  Now I know that there are even bigger wastes of time possible – like raking sand around little rocks.  This calms me and the bitterness floats away.

I strongly recommend that you purchase a zen garden.  It will really help you as webmaster and make you gentler and kinder blogger.

If 26 of you buy the zen garden via the Amazon link above then I will earn $6.50 from Amazon – almost doubling my annual profits.  I am raking with my left hand and pecking the keyboard with my right.

Your visitors are strangers. You know almost nothing about them. All you are told is where – where in the world they are located, and where on the internet they came from.

There are occasions when knowing the location of your visitor matters, if you are selling snow tires and your visitor is from Egypt then you will not make a sale. But for the majority of cases geographical location is irrelevant. At most it reveals the local time for your visitor. If it is morning for him then he is grumpy, if it is evening then he is either full of wine or tired – how you can use this information is unknown.

The other where is the important one. From where did the visitor come from? There are three possibilities:

1. Some other site
2. Search Engine
3. Address bar or Bookmark/Favorite

Knowing from where your visitor arrived is vital information. Because when you know from where they came, you know their intent.

Know Their Intent, Predict Their Behavior

Like the father of a beautiful daughter, your main concern is: what is the intent? A boy walks up to the door, rings the doorbell, father opens, “hello…what are your intentions with my daughter?” The coy boy replies, “Nothing much, we are going to play baseball. I like to pitch and your daughter enjoys being catcher. After the game we are going to a BBQ for some hotdogs, which reminds me, your daughter needs to bring some buns – I bring the wieners.” The father smiles and shakes the young boys hand, ‘you kids have fun’.

Unfortunately you cannot ask your visitors about their intentions, the best you can do is infer. And the most useful piece of information about their intent is to know from where they came. Unlike the word of a horny school boy about to take your daughter on a date, knowing how your visitors came to your site is a true description of intent.

Why is intent important? Knowing intent allows you to predict visitor’s behavior on your site.

Obviously you want your visitors to behave a certain way. For this site I want my visitors to do at least one of these four actions:

1. Click an Ad
2. Purchase an affiliate product
3. Purchase my product
4. Backlink to this site

Visitors who do none of the above can be ignored – they do nothing for this site. If you are reading this blog then you probably belong to the ignorable category. You are familiar with this site so you will not click on the ads or buy the products. The only way to turn yourself into a valuable visitor is to backlink to this website. Some of you have done it, but most of you have not and will not.

If I want visitors to behave in one of the four ways above then I need to look at their intentions. Once I know their intentions then I know how they will behave.   So once I know which traffic sources brings me the properly behaving visitors then I can focus all my energy into getting more traffic from those source.

The Intent of the Social Website Visitor

Social website visitors have no intent. They just drift around aimlessly from one website to another. They like funny, shocking, sexy, and strange. If you do not provide one of these then they are gone – looking for the next zap of instant satisfaction.

They are pigeons moving the mouse and pressing the button hoping to land somewhere that dazzles the eye. Click, look, click, look, click, look. If the there are lots of colors, pictures, videos and sounds they will clap their hands ecstatically and stay – otherwise they are gone.

These visitors have no intent. They are aimlessly wondering around the internet killing time. With no intent they are useless for this website. They are not interested in anything I have to offer. They arrive at the website; see all the words, yawn, and leave. That is why I completely ignore social traffic. No need to promote via facebook, digg, twitter. I give visitors the option to do it for me, but I will not do it.

The Intent of the Search Engine Visitor

These are visitors with direction and purpose. These people are not wasting their time walking around randomly hoping that something interesting happens. They arrive at your site with their intent written on their foreheads. Hello, I am here looking to ‘make money online’, can you help me? Yes I can. Click on one of these conveniently placed ads which will show you how to make $5000 a month online. Thank you, thank you too.

Hello, I am here because I want to know ‘how to build a website’, can you help me? Yes I can, buy my starter kit and you will have a money making website in no time. Thank you, thank you too.

See how pleasant it is when you know what the visitor wants. No guess work involved, no trying to find something that the visitor finds interesting. When you know exactly what the visitor wants you can easily direct their behavior into an action that benefits you.

Image you have a website selling a Philips screw driver. What would you rather receive – 10,000 visitors from a social website looking to be entertained, or 100 visitors from a search engine that typed in ‘buy philips screw driver’?

Intent is everything.