I just keep breaking records with my “popular” website. According to my sitemeter stats, the site received over 63,000 visitors yesterday. Unfortunately, my regular web server stats, such as AWStats and Webalizer, just aren’t working correctly. I’ve complained to my web host about it several times but they can’t seem to fix it. The log files are getting too big (too many visitors?). So I’ve had to rely on Sitemeter for my stats.

I am planning on hiring a friend/tech guy I know to help me with server stuff that my web host seems not to really care about. I’m hoping this guy can help me with the occasional MySQL errors, server issues and stats problems.

In other news, I am now boycotting Myspace. My chicklitbooks account got hacked and the idiot sent multiple comments to tons of people in my friends list. I took it kind of personally that people thought it was actually ME doing it. Honestly - if a site as big as Myspace.com cannot stop accounts from being broken into and private data being posted all over the internet, why should I bother with them? Come on, they are a multi-million (billion?) dollar company. I have always been disgusted with the constant errors and poor performance of the site, but now it’s gone too far. Thankfully I’ve never needed it to get additional traffic to any of my sites.

TylerCruz.com inspired me to write this post. He is challenging himself to do a 40-hour work week - where he actually works for 40 hours in a week’s time. I know from experience how difficult this can be when you are working for yourself at home.

Now, I’m not going to do the same, because I would fail. Badly. For the first time in 10 years, I am enjoying my life not having to work in a stuffy, miserable office, and damn it, I want to continue it. But with all this freedom comes massive laziness. Yes, it’s true.

I’ve gotten a lot better with my work ethics over the past several weeks. But before then, let me tell you how I would spend a typical day:

10am - Roll out of bed
10am-12:30pm - Work on site stuff, which consists of: approving user comments, deleting spam, answering emails, doing new posts, checking stats, etc.
1pm-12am or so - hang out with boyfriend, friends, drink a LOT of alcohol, laze around playing games on the computer, etc. I lived in a building full of people who literally partied 24/7. I have since moved, which has helped my schedule enormously.
1am- Shower, than go to bed.

Unfortunately I did a bit too much drinking and wasting of time. Thankfully it didn’t affect my website much. BUT. The past few weeks, I have gotten a little better. Now, my schedule is:

2pm: Get up, coffee, breakfast (I have a terrible day-sleeping pattern I am trying, with no avail, to break. I cannot fall asleep until the sun is coming up.)
2pm-6pm: Work on site stuff
6pm-10pm: Either go out with friends for dinner, etc, or go to an AA meeting, or stay home and do more work.
10pm-4am: Waste time on the computer playing games, or reading a book.
4-5am: Work on website (do the first part of the next day’s posts)
5or6am - 2pm: Sleep

I really, really need to fix my sleeping schedule - it really screws everything up. But I cannot fall asleep before dawn these days, especially now that I rarely drink alcohol anymore.

But I do get a lot more work done nowadays, it seems. However, I still have days where I literally don’t go near the computer. The past week was kind of like that.

I just discovered that I earned more in March than I originally thought.  Try over $11,000…

The confusion came about because one of my ad networks pays me either by ad impression, or amount of clicks - whichever is greater.  I forgot to look at ad clicks because of the fact that I had over 5 million impressions, which equals $5,000.  Well… turns out that I had over 12,000 clicks last month, which actually means over $6,000 because they pay .50 cents a click.

Awesome!

So, I asked around on the Sitepoint forums how to increase my traffic, which already stands around 40,000-50,000 visitors per day.  Nobody really had an answer for me, unfortunately, except to suggest that I expand my site.  So, I’ve decided to add forums.  I ordered some vbulletin forum software and have installed it.  I just need to customize and tweak it a bit.

People are already leaving multiple comments on my blog posts (on my “big” site) so I know for a fact they will enjoy a forum.  The only problem is that I will have to moderate it heavily.  It will be a bigger time challenge than I already have.  I guess I don’t mind, though.  I’m planning to buy a laptop any day now and will take it with me wherever I go.

I am happy to say that for the first time in my life, I actually have a balance in my savings account that is bigger than my checking account.  I am saving for some upcoming oral surgery, new contact lens prescription and glasses, a car, and a laptop.  Not to mention a couch for my semi-new apartment.  (Moved in here in Feb).  I used to spend money like it was going out of style, and now that I’m making a LOT more of it, I’m actually saving.

I really need to do a better job of keeping this blog updated. Anyway, this post will mostly just be caffeine-infused rambling. I’ve been up since 5:30am in an attempt to change my sleeping patterns. Lately, I’ve been going to bed at 7am and getting up at 2pm or 3pm. So last night I filled up on Tylenol PM and forced myself to go to bed at midnight. I got only about 3 hours of sleep though. Blah. Right now, I’m dying to go back to bed, but I’m going to force myself to stay up. Maybe a workout on my stationary bike will help.

Anyway, onto my post. The final numbers are in and I made just over $9500 for the month of March. Yay! The increase in revenue was mostly caused from one particular ad network I use. I got well over 5 million ad impressions with them in March, which means… $5000 from them. On the downside, one of my higher paying ad companies has bottomed out.

My website was mentioned in a major women’s beauty magazine, bringing even more visitors which caused the server crash discussed in the last post. Funnily enough, it wasn’t the most flattering of mentions… but a mention all the same. Apparently everyone and their great grandmother reads this particular magazine because even people I knew in person started telling me “omg your site was mentioned in ____ magazine!” Plus, several people mentioned it in either the comments section of the site or via email to me.

It was the April edition of the magazine, so hopefully it will continue bringing more visitors this month.

More later… I need more coffee before I fall asleep on my keyboard.