Friday, February 22, 2008

New Month, New Progress ...

As my real day job has put some contraints on me over the past few months, it has limited my ability to move forward with some of my web development plans. I have to take a test in 10 days (anyone ever heard of the CCIE Exam?).

So, to get around this issue, and yet still move forward, I decided to hire a developer through oDesk.com.
(oDesk Outsourcing )

He is from the Ukraine, and costs me $20 per hour, but is very good at what he does, probably better than me even, so it is money well spent.

He is creating a user friendly ajax implementation of my extensive database, which I plan to turn into a franchising experiment. I want to allow individual "owners" to manage a particular area, and reap the benefits of using their marketing skills to increase the total revenue, which they will recieve a majority of.

In other news, I found a way to sell more textlinks, and I think I may be able to hit the $500 mark in link revenue by the end of the week.

Here's to successful dreams!

Monday, January 14, 2008

Mo Money, No Problem

The past year has been one of opportunity and progress.
As my goal was not reached ($4k per month revenue from sites), I have made significant progress.

My old cashcow is still producing milk, err, cash. It brought in a total of $800 last month. However, in addition to that site, I have created a niche application on facebook which has 12k registered users, and 500-600 of them visiting each day. I added google adsense to this application, and it is now bringing in around $15 per day. This brings my total monthly revenue to a snapshot of $1250/month.

That is 400% growth from the beginning of last year to now. I would have to throw a few cookies at myself for that, and maybe even a pat on the back. However, there is still alot of work to be done. My goal is still the same, and I am now almost a third of the way there.

I have a few ways planned in terms of bringing in more revenue.

1. Take the data from the facebook application (a religion based community application), and make it into a searchable website that I can get visitors to go to from google. I would love to see an additional $200 per month in revenue from this site by the end of the year.
Goal - $200/month

2. Make finishing touches on the facebook application that I created for my original website, a student campus rating system of sorts. I hope to see a sustained revenue stream of $300 per month from this site, as its potential user base is an extremely high number. This could prove to be a conservative estimate.
Goal - $300/month


3. Create more content that is searchable on my main student oriented website. Currently, it brings in about 1k users per day, and google adsense revenue of about $450 per month. With some real focus, this should double traffic to the website, at the very least.
Goal - $1000/month


4. Add features to the religion based facebook application, getting total installed userbase to reach 20k users, and over 1500 daily users. Current revenues of $450/month should double as a conservative estimate.
Goal - $1000/month

5. Link Sales are an increasing part of my revenue strategy. While its important to keep in mind aesthetics and usability, there are certain systems that allow one to keep links in a very inconspicuous place, and therefore become a very legitimate source of revenue. Current link sales revenue is at $375/month. As my sites become better ranked, I would really like to see this number improve to at least twice this amount over this coming year.
Goal - $800/month

6. Other sites that I currently have contain potential for getting monetized via Adsense revenue. I will try to work on these as well, in small peices though. My prospects for this revenue is conservative, but I still want to get started on a solid 3rd tier in my revenue stream.
Goal - $200/month

So, in a more calculated way of making goals for 2008, it looks like I will accomplish my newly reorganized goals by reaching a monthly run rate of $3500 by Dec 2008. Shy of my $4k goal? .. Yes .. Aggressive and Ambitious? .. Yes. Therefore, I will stick to it, and see if a more organized approach will bring me the success I didnt quite acheive last year.