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!

Charley Parkhurst was a wild west bad ass. He was a stagecoach driver during the 1850’s gold rush in California. He spit tobacco, smoked, drank and was a private man of few raspy words. Kicked in the face by a horse, he had only one eye and a jarred scar across the face. Not a pretty sight, but if you needed to make the San Jose to Santa Cruz stage run then ‘One Eyed Charlie’ was the man for the job.

There was just one problem with this man of men. On his death bed and in his birthday suit the mourners noticed that he was missing more then just one eye. He was a she.

Throughout her life Charley had to do a lot of work to hid her secret. But thanks to the internet you do not have to get kicked in the head by a horse to appear like a man.

Why is Your Blog The Same Sex as You?

You made a choice that you are probably not aware of. You are the same sex on your blog as you are on the toilet.

If you use your real name then you give your sex away instantly. And if you use a unisex name like ‘Admin’ then you reveal yourself away by your point of view.

Let’s not get scholarly, let’s just admit it. Women and men have different points of view. For most blogs you can tell whether the writer is male or female. Either they give it away directly by stating their sexual point of view or indirectly by writing ‘don’t you hate it when you walk over a manhole and the updraft flings your skirt over your face’.

By admitting your sex you lose an exciting opportunity for something that you cannot do in live relationships. You can change your sex.

A Sex Change Is Exciting For You

Besides what you do in the privacy of your bedroom, when else do you have the opportunity to be the other sex.

You are probably bored of your sexual point of view. It’s the same you have had all your life. By changing sex new life emerges in your writing. You see new things. You are more conscious of your words. You have to think like the other sex thinks.

A Sex Change Is Exciting For Your Readers

For example. In a world where the majority of sports writers are male it is easy to get lost in the crowd if you are a male writer and virtually ignored if you are female writer. Sad but true. But a female writing as a male has a big advantage. She gets to ‘join the club’ of male writers and is guaranteed to have a different point of view. A wolf walking amongst dogs.

Sport readers tired of the man’s perspective but too prideful to read the woman’s will find solace in your writing. They will not figure out exactly why your writing is different, but it is – it has to be – you are a women and your audience thinks you are a man.

Is Having A Sex Change Honest?

Is it honest that you spatter your sentences with fuc#s and shi#s around your friends, but utter nothing but please and thanks at your grandmother’s birthday party?

Is it honest that you watch football with your boyfriend and bat your eyes with interest during his play-by-play commentary, but lecture your little brother on how he is wasting time watching numbskulls chase a stupid ball around?

You are a multi shaded person. For each relationship you reveal a different hue. Nobody sees the real you – they see the side of you that you choose to reveal. The only person that you are completely honest with is yourself. 3:30am, lying on your bed, staring into the ceiling, wondering what your life has become is the real you. Everybody else just gets bits and pieces.

The relationship you have with your blog readers is no different then the relationships you have with friends,family, and foes. Shining different shades of yourself to each of them is not lying. The difference with the internet is that you are not as limited as in face to face relations. On the internet you can decide which sex to shine.

How To Change Your Sex Online

Fortunately it is a lot easier to change your sex online then it was for Charley in the wild west.

It can be something as simple as using a name of the other sex. Your readers will assume your gender is the same as the name’s gender. It’s not your fault that just because your name is Bill “The Big Bone” Smith visitors assume you are male.

If you want to appear male then write like a male. Virginal Woolf provides a clue on how to sound more male, “I detest the masculine point of view. I am bored by his heroism, virtue, and honour. I think the best men can do is not to talk about themselves anymore.” So write about virtue, honour and yourself. Of course these are suggestions, not hard and fast rules.

And finally the appearance of your blog can be used to appear as a specific sex. Rounded corners and bubble gum colors are more female then army colors and sharp edges. Generalizations and stereotypes but effective.

This Post Is Female

Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology created a algorithm for predicting whether a piece of text was written by a male or a female. They argue that depending on your sex you are more likely to use certain words. There is a simplified version of this algorithm online – you can test whether your writing is male or female. I ran this post through the test and, as intended, this post is female.

One Eyed Charlie was a female stagecoach driver in a world where only men can be stagecoach drivers. She did not let her sex dictate her life’s ambitions, there is no reason why you should let your sex dictate your writing. Be whatever sex you want to be.

Fossil fuels are bad.  By burning them CO₂ is released into the air.  People get sick, the earth heats up, and nature is thrown into a tailspin.  Do not use fossil fuels – use renewable energy sources like wind power.

Wind power is bad.  Birds fly into the rotating blades and get chopped up into small nuggets.  The swooshing sound of the blades creates noise pollution.  Due to the low air pressure around the wind turbines bats die – it is believed that the sudden pressure change around the turbine causes their lungs to collapse.

The environmentalism movement is full of such contradictions.  It seams that everything humans do has a negative effect on the environment.  If humans are doing it then it is bad – not natural.  And regardless of what solution you try to find there will always be a group of people who do a study showing how harmful  it is to the environment. 

The problem is that environmentalists do not have a united front.  Thousands of  individual groups each fighting for their own chunk of the environment to save.  One group wants to reduce the use of fossil fuels and another wants to save the bats.  There is only one solution to satisfy every environmental group’s wishes – move the entire human race to the moon.

Although environmentalists are a threat to the existence of humans on this planet, there is a more pressing matter which directly concerns bloggers.  So far the environmentalists have not turned their gaze towards blogs, but soon they will aim their punitive eye towards us.

Blogs Are Bad For the Environment

Factories are an easy target for environmentalists.  Dark gray clouds of smoke hover around them revealing their evil.  The sun is blocked, trees covered in soot, squirrels coughing.  It is easy for environmentalists to rally up the public and force the factory to shut down or move.  All they need to do is point to the smoke stack.

Bloggers do not create smoke.  There are no smoke stacks to point at.  No dead birds, no three eyed fish and no confused wales.  But environmentalists are very determined – they will not give up so easy.  With will there is always a way.  Let’s give them the credit they deserve – they are awesome at discovering ways to show how humans are destroying the earth.

Here is how they are going to do it: Blogs are created on computers.  Blogs are read by people on computers.  Computers use electricity,  electricity that was generated by CO₂ emitting fossil fuel generators and bird killing wind turbines.

Environmentalists will look at the blogosphere and ask: how much electricity is being consumed creating and reading blogs?  Every blogger spends countless hours on the computer writing posts and promoting.  The readers of the blogs collectively spend more hours on their computers reading the blogs.  Environmentalists will add up all the electricity consumed by the blogosphere.  Then they will do some calculations and figure out how much environmental destruction is caused by generating the  electricity.  When this happens, we as bloggers are screwed.  The cross hairs of their big environment saving bazooka will be pointed right at our heads.

Of course, they will not try to shut the entire blogosphere down all at once.  They will start by picking off the easy targets  – the millions of low traffic blogs.  Blogs with a small following.  Blogs that nobody cares about.  Blogs that if they suddenly disappear nobody would notice.  They will argue that electricity is being wasted on these little blogs: are they necessary, do  these little blogs add enough value to justify the damage they cause the environment?

The problem is that the environmentalists would be right.  A lot of electricity is consumed on blogs that end up going nowhere – blogs that have their run for a couple months and die.  Earth heating up and birds dying for nothing. 

How Much Electricity Does the Low Traffic Blogosphere Consume?

Although the environmentalists have not attacked the blogosphere yet, lets see what they have in their arsenal before they arrive.  Specifically lets focus on their first targets – the low traffic blogs.  Blogs that have a small amount of visitors and therefore do not contribute to the greater good – are not worth the electricity being consumed by them.  Individually these blogs consume a small amount of electricity, but taken as a group they consume a lot.

According to technorati.com in March 2006 there were 15.5 million active blogs (blogs that have been updated in the past 90 days).  Also according to technorati.com 49% of blogs have less then 1000 unique visitors a month.  This means that in March 2006 there were 7.5 million active low traffic blogs.  Blogs that the environmentalist will target first because they do nothing more then waste electricity and pollute the environment.  

Here are the parameters we are going to use to get estimate of the amount of electricity consumed and CO₂ emission created by blogs with less then 1000 visitors a month:

• Number of active blogs with less then 1000 visitors a month: 7.5 million
• Average visitors a month: 500
• Hours a month spent updating the blogs: 20
• Average time visitor spends reading the blogs: 2 minutes

Unfortunately I could not find reliable statistics for the average amount of time bloggers spend on their blogs.  Nor could I find the average time visitors spend reading blogs.  Fortunately, this blog is a blog that fits nicely in the ‘low traffic blog’ category so I used the stats from this site to estimate for the entire low traffic blogosphere.  It is not perfect but good enough for this general calculation.

Following are the results for the amount of electricity consumed, the cost, and the amount of CO₂ produced by blogs with less then 1000 visitors a month:

As you can see, a lot of electricity is being used by blogs with less then an 1000 visitors a month.  Lots of waste, lots of money spent on electricity, lots of CO₂ emissions.  Environmentalists do not like wasted electricity and they certainly do not like lots of CO₂ emissions.

One of the tactics environmentalists like to use to persuade the masses to their cause is to take the numbers and create statements that people can visualize.  Like these:

• Every month low traffic blogs consumes enough electricity to light 385,416,667 standard 60W light bulbs for 1 hour.
• Every year low traffic blogs produces the same amount of CO₂ emissions as 36,513 passenger vehicles.
• Every year low traffic blogs produces the same amount of CO₂ emissions as 7,928,571 propane cylinders used for home barbeques.
• Low traffic blogs consumes the same amount of electricity a year as 27,750 average homes.
• It will take 5,045,455 tree seedlings growing for 10 years to absorb the CO₂ produced by low traffic blogs.
• 149,173,171 pounds (67,663,812 kilograms) of waste will need to be recycled instead of being sent to the landfill to offset low traffic blog’s yearly greenhouse gas emissions.

Should You Be Worried That Your Blog Will Be Attacked By Environmentalists?

Its seems that the environmentalists have a good case.  Blogs with less then 1000 visitors a month do cause a lot of damage to the environment.  They use up precious electricity that could be used for people (or preferably animals and plants) that really need it.  And by wastefully consuming the electricity these blogs contribute to the CO₂ emissions problem. 

The environmentalists will argue: what good are these low traffic blogs?  Who needs them?  How do they benefit the planet?  Wouldn’t it be better if we shut them down and conserve the electricity?  They will caricature bloggers as big steel footed monsters stomping through a pristine nature scene and they will be on CNN stating that, “Low traffic blogs will cause massive hurricanes that will wipe out the entire eastern seaboard”.

There is no stopping them.  If they could have their way all blogs would be abolished.  Like a swarm of army ants – individually they are harmless but together they demolish everything in their path.  They will take down the entire blogosphere.  The only consolation for bloggers is that that it will take time.  They need to start at the bottom – attacking the low traffic blogs first.  You will never be completely safe from them but you can get off the forest floor, climb up a tree as the first wave passes by.  They will get you sooner or later, but you can keep your blog alive a little longer by working on getting more monthly traffic and not being the first in their path.  

How Much Pollution Does Your Blog Generate?

Here is a online calculator you can use to find out how much CO₂ pollution your site generates.

Sources:

Number of active blogs in March 2006:
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/archives/2007/04/blogging_growth.html

Percent of blogs with less then 1000 visitors a month:
http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/the-how-of-blogging/

40 years ago Robert Zajonc did a very interesting experiment.

Volunteers are asked to watch a screen as a series of Chinese symbols are displayed.  None of the participant understand the symbols, to them they are nothing more then a bunch of intersecting lines and squiggles.  After each character is displayed the viewer states whether they like the symbol or not.

Of course, this is a very subjective thing.  Each person either likes it or does not like it.  If asked why they liked or disliked the Chinese symbol they usually say either that they did not know or they gave a reason like – it just looks nice.

To the participants it is an easy task.  Look at the symbol and state whether they like it or not.  They suspect nothing sinister.

What they do not realize is that milliseconds before each Chinese symbol is displayed on the screen there is another symbol flashed on the screen so quickly that they do not concisely see it.  Before a Chinese symbol appears on the screen the experimenters flashed one of two recognizable symbols – either a smiley face or a sad face.  They flashed it so fast that none of the participants reported seeing it.  But it was there.

The result of the experiment is that the participants where statistically more likely to like a Chinese symbol that had a smiley face preceding it.  Flash a smiley face, and the Chinese symbol will be liked.  Flash a sad face and the symbol will not be liked.

The revealing thing is that people can be primed to like or dislike something.  And the best part is that they do not know that it is happening.  Knowing this you can influence a persons opinion without them knowing you are doing it.  They  like something, but they do not know why.  There must be a way to harness this power and apply it to a website…

How To Apply The Smiley Face’s Mind Control Powers To Your Website?

Obviously the best way to apply this knowledge is to have a smiley face flash milliseconds before your website appears.  It would be so quick that the visitor would not notice it, but their subconscious would notice it.  They would be primed to like your website.  When your website does appear, without knowing why, they will like it.  Before reading a single line, before knowing what your website is about, they will be in a state of mind to like your website.  You will have them right where you want them – puppet on a string.

But unfortunately this cannot be done.  Not because it would be wrong, but because the technology is not there.  Currently it is not possible to have a image flash fast enough in a browser without the visitor noticing something suspicions.  The browsers might flicker, or depending on the connection speed the visitor would notice a lag in page loading speed.  Browsers are not dependable enough for this to work properly and reliably.  There will be some error, some glitch, some unintended loading pause and sooner or later you will be found out  – and that would be embarrassing.

So what can be done?  It is a waste not to use this knowledge to your advantage. 

The experiment teaches two things: people can be primed without knowing it and people are more likely to like something if they see a smiley face. 

Technology prevents you from flashing a happy face before they enter your website, but there is nothing preventing you from having a happy face somewhere on your website.  The effect will be the same.  Incorporate it into your logo, or simply have it sitting somewhere inconspicuously on your website banner.  

The visitor will notice it visually, but they will be unaware of its subversive subconscious powers.  They simply see it as a happy face graphic, without realizing they are being primed.  The visitor does not know that the smiley face has special mind powers -  the innocent smile sitting on the top-corner of the website reaching into their soul and forcing them to like the website.

For the last couple of days there has been a spike in traffic.  Retribution has come at last.  Finally the recognition I deserve.  After almost 9 months of work and waiting, after over 400 hours at the keyboard, the website is taking off.

That was my initial reaction after seeing the sudden increase in traffic.  But after some digging around in the website stats I discovered that it was not my hard work paying off – it was somebody else’s.

Clue 1 – Referral Websites That Do Not Link Back To This Website

The first thing I checked after seeing the spike in traffic was who it was coming from.  Who is sending me all the traffic.  Is it Google, is it a guest post I did, was this website featured on some blog, was this website submitted on a social network like reddit.com? 

I quickly discovered that it was none of these.  Using awstats I noticed that the top three websites sending this website traffic are website’s that I have never heard of before.  I checked them out and discovered three things:

1. They had nothing to do with my niche (make money online)
2. They were not in English (mostly Russian)
3. They did not have a backlink to this website

Number 1 and 2 are strange.  But 3 just does not make sense.  How are these website sending me traffic without having a link to this website?  Something is not right.

On seeing this the initial smile on my face slowly flattened out. 

Clue 2 – Traffic was not increasing in Google Analytic

Every morning I check the website traffic via two sources: awstats and Google Analytics.  Awstats is a server side analytic tracker.  Every time a request is made of the server then awstats make a note of it.  It could be a human viewing a webpage, or a search engine spider indexing the site, or a hacker trying to gain access.  Server side means that every request the server is asked to do gets recorded.  It is the most detailed and accurate measure of your website’s activity.

Google Analytic on the other hand is a client side analytic tracker.  It is a small java script sitting on every webpage that gets activated only when a browser views the webpage.  Client side analytics is a good measure of how many people are viewing the webpage – every time a browser reads the webpage the Google Analytic script is activated and the page view is recorded.

There is a major drawback to client side analytic tracker: the visitor must permit the running of java script in their browser.  If the visitors browser has java script disabled then the Google Analytic script cannot run and the visitor is not recorded.  For this reason the server side analytic traffic stats will always be higher then the Google Analytic stats.  That is why every morning I check both.  Usually they report the same number of visitor but sometimes Google Analytic is a little lower.

But with the recent traffic spike the numbers being reported where completely different.  Awstats was reporting 218 visitors while Google Analytic was reporting only 54.  Why the large discrepancy? 

The edges of my mouth became heavy and I could no longer hold them up.

Clue 3 – Pages That I Did Not Create Had The Most Amount Of Page Views

Again looking at the awstats I noticed that there where some strange looking pages that where quickly rising in the number of page views.  The odd thing is that they where pages that I did not create.  Pages like:

• howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com/SpryAssets/_vti_logs/CitiBank/CitiBank/citibankupdate/images/newimages/secure/bankofamerica/signon.php
• howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com/library/_notes/www.bankofamericaonline.com/www.bankofamerica.com/Onlinesecuritydepartment/bofa-update/session.cgi/cgi-bin2/Signin.Do/

CitiBank?  Bank of America?  What the hell is going on?  What are banking pages doing on my webpages?  I clicked on the links and here is what came up:

Request for banking information.  This is not good.

On seeing this my face was completely deformed.  Eyebrows pointing downwards and wrinkles on my forehead.

This Website Was Making Money By Collecting Banking Information

My website had been hacked.  A not so nice person uploaded and ran a script on my webspace.  This website was sending out requests to people asking them to update their banking information.  Those that dutifully complied sent their banking information to the not so nice person.

Based on the stats the request to update banking information was viewed around 500 times.  Unfortunately there is no way for me to tell how many people actually filled out the form.  Or how much money was stolen from those that did.  But to those that did fill it out, and had money stolen, I apologize for the small part this website played.

The funny thing  is that thanks to my low traffic numbers I was able to catch the problem quickly.  Only because my traffic doubled from the usual 70 visitors a day to over 150 visitors a day I able to notice the hack.  If this website was more successful and had 1000’s of visitors a day then it would of taken a lot longer (if ever) for me to notice.  An extra 50 visitors a day would a been a small unnoticed blimp on the radar.

How This Website Makes Money?  By stealing peoples banking information.  This website makes money – but unfortunately in this case I was not be the one receiving it.

How the Hack Was Removed

Although I liked the high traffic numbers I felt the right thing to do was to remove the hack.  I contacted my web host and told them about the problem.  They quickly disabled the infected folders on my website and deleted the hacked files.  Now if somebody tries to access the banking page’s  URL’s they get a 404 error instead of a banking information update page. 

Then I did an IP block for the suspicious websites that where sending traffic to my site.  So now if they try to send traffic to this website they get an access denied message. 

Now my website is back to its old self again.  Traffic is down to where it should be and the website is back to making a couple of dollars a day that go into my pocket. 

I admit, there were casualties – some people lost a lot of money.  But I am glad it happened.  I got the taste for success.  I got to feel, even if for just a brief few days, the excitement of this website finally taking off.  And I learned something – how to make my website is a little more secure.  I benefit from somebody else’s loss – that does not happen to often.

When I decided to create this website the first thing I did was open an account with a web host service.  The second thing was to create a few email accounts.

Three email account where created:

1. info@: this is used for the contact page.  When a visitor fills out the contact form and clicks send I get an email from info@.
2. roman@: I use this address when I want to email somebody or when I need to leave a contact address.  For example, on blog comments and on my AdSense account.
3. paj@: When someobody fills out the PAJ order page this email is used.

It is amazing how optimistic and ignorant I was.  The reason I created 3 different accounts was for organizational purposes.  I imagined that emails would be flooding in all day.  By having 3 email address I would be able to quickly determine what the email is about.  Is it a contact page submission, PAJ order, or a response to a blog comment I left?  It was suppose to be a great time saver.

Seven months have gone by since I created the email accounts.  No emails have come in via paj@.  Not a single order for a PAJ.  You are not surprised – I am.  Of course I did not expect 100’s of sales but at least 1 or 2 a month.  Nope – nothing.

I also expected that people would have questions and comments about the website.  Where did you get that number? How did you make that graph? Can you tell me how I can…?  I was actually worried that I would be spending all my time answering email questions and have no time to work on the website.  I have proof of my ignorant optimism – when you fill out the contact form the thank you message states:

Thank you for your comment. I read all emails, and I try to respond to all emails.

TRY to respond to all emails.  Large mail bags arriving everyday and my hand cramped up from writing to all my fans….I will try to respond to all emails.

Reality: the contact page has been up for 227 days.  I have received 12 contact page emails.  Around one contact form email every 20 days.  Wandering around the Sahara desert for 227 days I would certainly stumble upon a oasis more often.  Every time an email comes in from the contact form I think it is a mirage – it has been so long since I have seen one.  I will try to respond to all emails. 

A couple days ago I received one of the precious and rare contact form emails.  For me it is an event – I do not just open the email.  I savor it – somebody took the time to send me an email.  I get an coffee, close the door, turn on some music, and click on the email.  Before responding I read the email over and over again.  What do they need?  What are they asking?  How can I help?  Taking a sip of coffee my brain begins to formulate a response.

But the email I received a few days ago was different then the 12 before it.  I read it over and over again.  I could not believe what I was reading…it had to be a mirage.  An email that cannot exist. 

In essence it called me a liar.  It questioned my honesty.  It stated that the numbers on the website must be fabricated.

The reason the person doubted the numbers was that my AdSense revenues are too high for the first month.  The first month my AdSense revenue was $40 dollars.  That is too high.  The whole website it bullshit.  That was the message of the email.  It was not a mirage, the oasis was real, but the water was poisoned.

Why The AdSense Revenue Was High During First 2 Months

Here are my AdSense Revenue’s for the first 6 months:

As you can see for the first two months AdSense revenue was great.  Much more then the next five months.  How can this be explained?  There are two possibilities:

1. I am a liar – and this entire website is spattered with fabricated information.
2. The numbers are real. There is a rational and logical explanation for the high AdSense revenue.

The first possibility cannot be discounted – I am making the numbers up.  Even though the homepage states: “This website is a no nonsense, no hype, honest account of how it makes money online.”, it is just another lie on a fly infested dung heap of lies.  This website should have been called: How This Website Lies To Make Money (and how much it lies).

Of course there is nothing I can write to persuade you to believe me.  You do not know me and I do not know you.  The safest thing for you to do is not believe me.  The only argument I can give is that there is no reason for me to make up numbers.  How do I benefit by fabricating numbers?  Would this website make more money if I made less during the first month? I have no idea.  I cannot think of any reason to pull numbers from a hat.  It is actually easier for me to give the actual numbers because it requires no thought from me – I simply take numbers from one report and enter them into another.  Monkey work – no thought required.

Fabricating number with an intent to make more money is a level of thought beyond me.  I do not even know where to start.  Should I be claiming that I get more traffic?  Will more people click on Ads if I do?  Will that improve my SEO?  Or maybe it is better to claim that I get very little traffic.  People will come to my website just to see what kind of loser I am.  I do all this work and all I get is 10 visitors a day – would this website make more money if people thought I was an idiot?

Lets assume that you do not think I am an idiot and that the numbers are real.  What could be the logical explanation for the large AdSense revenue the first two months and then the big drop thereafter?

Here is a graph showing the traffic sources for this website for the previous 7 months:

Looking at the graph, what sticks out like a pimple on a super model, is that for the first two months most of the traffic is from referral sites.

The first two months I received almost no traffic from search engines – the website was new and not indexed.  All my traffic came from forums I visited.  Forums in my niche: make money online.  I was leaving comments and the signature was a link back to this website.  People who clicked on my signature where exactly like me – they were looking for ways to make money online.  They come to this website and see ads about making money online.  They clicked them because the ads are specifically targeted to them.

This was great.  I was driving perfectly targeted traffic to my website.  And made money with AdSense.  The problem was that it was a lot of work.  I spent countless hours on the forums reading and making comments.  Roughly an hour a day.  So for the entire month I spent 30 hours driving traffic to this website which earned me $40.14. A little over a dollar an hour.  Pathetic.

Month 2 was more of the same – 30 hours work for $50 dollars.  I needed a new plan.  Driving traffic from forums is too much work with very little gain.

So at the end of month 2 I changed strategy.  Instead of working like a donkey for a measly $1 an hour I changed focus.  Decrease my forum time and spend more time I getting search engine traffic.  Increase backlinks, improve SEO, add more content to the site.  Because of this change my AdSense took a big drop.  Search engine traffic is targeted but not as perfectly as the forum traffic.

The hope is that in the long run it will pay off.  If ever the day comes that search engines start to send me traffic in the 1000’s per day then I will be making a lot more in revenue and doing a lot less work.

And as this is going on I will be diligently updating the website’s tables and graphs.  Monkey see number, monkey copy number.  Of course, when I do become a success there will be lots of people who will not believe the numbers.  But whether that will help or hinder the website I have no idea.  Honest sells, but so does a lot of 0’s.