I think that it all depends on how you look at what your niche is and where you want to diversify into. Currently I occupy the niche of unsuccessful, aspiring web entrepreneur, which is where most people who are trying to break into the “MMO” or Make Money Online niche. Many people just like me buy up hundreds of websites with the idea that, “if one site makes $5/month the 100 sites will make $500/month”. These people are right in a sick sort of way, but who really wants to maintain hundreds of sites? I know I don’t. But how many sites does it take to be successful? 1? 7? 150? I really didn’t know…

So I went to the people at the top of the MMO world.
Darren Rowse
John Chow
Jeremy Schoemaker
Zac Johnson
Andy Beard,
Mark Wielgus
Daniel Scocco
Jim Kukral
Courtney Tuttle
and many others that didn’t email me back or their answers where something like, “we don’t give out that kind of information”.

Turns out the average number of sites these people run is about 5. Now obviously if you have 5 sites you are not guaranteed success but the most successful people on the internet only focus on 10 sites or less. This should tell you something about the person that is just making a mess of the internet with hundreds or even thousands of “ad-rich, content-poor” trying to score $5/month on each one. I thought about stooping to that level but soon realized that with a little more initial effort I could have something 10x as big.

At this point I own 8 domains but this one and another are the only ones I use for anything at all. The latest domain purchase came out of my idea that I need to stick to what I know or learn something new. Well I know cars so I have launched my 2nd internet property GearHeadWiki. It is a site dedicated to all things automotive including something completely new to the internet, free online repair manuals. I envision that GearHeadWiki will get rid of any need for anyone to have to purchase a repair manual for their vehicle again.

If you like cars and want to be part of this project please feel free to create or edit pages. Anything is helpful and if you have any questions please email wiki[at]gearheadwiki.com.

When I started this blog I told myself a gigantic lie. This lie was that I was only going to use this blog to tell the story of making money and not to become what actually makes me the money. I then proceeded to try to get my site really popular. Tip #1- If you want to make a site popular, it works better to make a good site and let people come to it than have a crappy site and try to promote it. Tip #2 - If you want your site to make money by telling people how much money you make online, I have news for you…It’s been done. Not only has it been done, but unless you have some sort of new information that hasn’t been written about on all of the top Make Money blogs, you are almost guaranteed to fail at making the kind of money that makes it worth it to continue spending your precious time updating and promoting your blog.

I knew deep down that I would not make any substantial amount of money from this site but I tried (yah for $26.32) but in trying I learned a lot about websites and the more inner workings of the internet.

I also learned a few things about life in my month long hiatus. First - I realized that unless something directly benefits you should get rid of or stop doing whatever that thing is. Second - I learned that having what seem to be unrealistic goals will get very good reactions that have absolutely no weight because you can tell that people don’t believe you can achieve them. Third - I want to be able to actually do whatever I want whenever I want, and that will take quite a bit more money than $15/hour every hour of everyday, and at the same time require me to use less of my time to do it. I need to find a way to make tons of money with very little work, or, my preferred way, to make a ridiculous lump sum of money after a period of work no longer than 1 year. Fourth - If you have seen The Last Lecture you will already know that brick walls are put in your way to sift out who really want something from those who don’t want that something as badly as you do. Fifth and finally - If you only focus on what matters in life you will be a much happier person. This means that, unless you lead a very sad life, Blogcatalog friends, reading John Chow dot com, and Entrecard are out, just to name a few.

THATS IT!?!? REALLY?

I knew that Entrecard was not that good but this confirmed how bad it really is. I get more traffic if I power drop E cards than I get if I buy an ad on one of the top blogs in the world.  This is understandable, however, because if you power drop 300 cards a day, those 300 people are more likely to click back to your site, rather than the thousands that see your ad on another site. This just perpetuates the insanity which is Entrecard.

Despite the poor results I will continue to use the system. Why? Because Entrecard still brings in a lot of traffic for me. However, I won’t be buying any more ads on more popular sites. My advice to anyone, is to buy multiple ads on smaller site rather than 1 ad on a more popular site.

PS. I know that if I had a naked woman on my ad I would have seen much better results (ie. Stak Loaded) but I have a rather plain (but unique) ad and so these are probably more typical results.

PPS. A cool side note, both John Chow And John Cow have bought ads on my site in return.

I realized that the key was to find people that will pay me what I KNOW my time is worth. I do actually believe that I am something special and deserve to payed more than almost all people are willing to pay me. This is all part of the reason I have made this website, to document my quest to get paid what I am worth. I know that I dont deserve the same pay as lets say a surgeon or some bigshot athlete but on the other hand there are many CEOs who go to 4 meeting a year and get paid more than anyone else on earth. You have to think of also what other peoples time is worth to you.

A surgeon might be worth $1000 dollars to you, but if he is only worth $1000 to each person and performs 200 surguries a year, then his time is worth $200,000/year. A CEO of some big company, on the other hand, might only be worth $1 to you but in this case 1,000,000 people think that he is worth $1 therefore he is overall worth more than the surgeon. I don’t know about the rest of you but I would like to be the CEO.

Another point being that, what I think I am worth does change day to day and year to year. For example, I know that I am worth more today than I was when I was 16 and I will be worth more in 20 years than I am today because of what I can provide people through my increasing knowledge, skill, and experience. It basically comes down to supply and demand, I need to find out what is the best way to turn what I can supply into money.

I was just so surprised that stats could plummet that fast! I mean the RSS and Technorati stay pretty much the same, but Alexa and total visitors drop off to almost nothing when I am not actively promoting this site. Is this normal? Is my site really that bad? (no, wait, don’t answer that)

I think that it is probably pretty normal for stats of a new site in a pretty saturated market to fall off the edge of the map without actively doing something. I think that this is probably where most people quit, when the reality sinks in, that you actually have to do something to get something in return. So many sites out there are 3-12 months old and have no traffic, no income, and no new content. I think that these people probably got to the 3 month mark and threw in the towel because they weren’t making $30K per month, doing nothing. Well today is my 3 month and I haven’t thrown in the towel, I’m just am not waving it as wildly as when I started.

More than one blog per account

You can now ad more than one blog to one account, making the whole process of gaining EC credits easier than ever.

Entrecard eBook

Entrecard has written its very own eBook chock full of everything you want to know about the Entrecard system. It contains things for the beginner up to the seasons pro. If this sound like something you want download it here for free.

75,000 credits available to win

Just by adding blogs to your account you have a chance to win credits. Depending on how many blogs you add, you qualify for a chance to win 15,000 per category and all you have to do is add blogs to your account.

For the Advertiser:

You have a database of nearly 38 million pages, between over 58,000 users to buy links from (not to mention the system growing by about .2% per day!!). TNX has a point system that allows you to buy ads for very competitive rates. The points allow you to get up to 20,000 links (PR 0) for 20,000 points which will cost you roughly $30/month. Not bad, even with a PR of 0, considering all links count for something. In addition, they have developed a link generator that makes all of the links look like they are natural, when they are in fact computer generated, making them much more Google and search engine friendly.

For the Site Owner:

Just like in anything else on the internet, the higher you rank, the higher you get paid for the most part (and not just PR), and this is no different. This is actually a good thing, because it discourages the people that think they can make a quick buck for doing nothing. If you want to sell ad space on your site through TNX you do have to be indexed by Google, which could be a downside to some newer webmasters but it really works well to sift out the pages of no value. A PageRank of anything above 0 will be pretty much necessary for you to make any kind of real money, just like any other link selling system. Not to say the you can’t make any money with a PR of 0 but you are going to need one heck of a lot of pages indexed by Google.

For the Affiliate Marketer:

Along with most companies on the internet, TNX has an affiliate program in which you earn points toward cash or advertising on other sites. Affiliates earn 13.3% of their referrals’ income (in points) which is not bad at all, especially when you think that you receive 13.3% of their income for as long as your account is active. No one time affiliate payments here.

The Cons:

Honestly the only thing that TNX could change is so minor, I feel bad even writing about it (but hey, no one’s perfect). TNX went worldwide within the last while, and there are a few things that seem to be either too directly translated or just written in a way that is a little bit awkward. Other than my small pet peeve…

Tnx is one of the most well put together companies on the internet. They offer reasonable advertising, a great opportunity to sell ad space on your site, and a lucrative affiliate program. In addition to this, TNX has a promotion going on right now for a free 5000 points for webmasters and 2000 points for advertisers. You quite literally have nothing to lose, and up to 5000 points to gain.

I am in no way affiliated with TNX.net, however, after doing this review I might just sign up.

How stupid are these people that spam? I know that most people don’t actually spam personally, but even those who make the auto-spam programs and use those programs to spam blogs are so stupid. What do they really get out of it? A link? Maybe if the blog just approves every comment but who really does that?

They must see some success with it though because it’s just not in our human nature to do something for a great deal of time that has no meaning or reward.

I guess this means that, for the first time, I have to enable a spam comment blocker. I have Aksimet only because WordPress comes with it, but if you know of a better one let me know.

RSS subscribers:12

Visits: 478

Unique visits:110

Page views:725

Technorati rank: 646,322

Technorati authority: 15

Alexa rank:735,304

Adsense earnings: $7.97

45n5.com: 314

Oddest search keywords: porn involving aphrodisiacs/love potions (I can’t make stuff like this up)

This month my total unique visitors have gone from about 400 to just over 100, quite a significant drop, however my page views have only gone from 1000 to 725 which would lead me to believe that I am starting to get some targeted traffic with more page views per unique visitor. All in all I would call it a good month.