I get a mere 15-20 visitors to this website each day, and it is no wonder - I rarely update.

For now, I’m going to put this website on a little hiatus for the summer. I plan to do a lot of traveling around the country in the next couple of months and plan to start a blog detailing my adventures. (I’ll post the link later if anyone is interested). Of course, I will also be keeping my regular money-making site(s) updated. (The power of a laptop and wireless card…)

Perhaps when I return and settle down, I will actually start blogging here regularly.

However, there is always the chance that I will never settle down, and never come back. And if I don’t, just remember: it IS possible to accomplish your dreams and goals. I can offer this advice for budding web entrepreneurs/bloggers:

1. Choose your subject wisely. The more controversial, the more traffic you will probably get.
2. Don’t copy other people’s hard work. Only the most original and clever ideas get really popular, not copycats!
3. Don’t send link requests to bigger sites asking them to add you before you add them. Also, try and tailor each link request to the site you are sending it to. The more personal you are, the better chance you have of them listening.
4. Don’t spam other blogs by putting links to your site in their comment sections. This really pisses off site owners.
5. If you will be starting a blog, select a subject that you are truly interested in and have some knowledge of. Trust me, it is very tedious to write about something day in and day out that you can care less about but only selected because it is “popular”.

For the month of April, I set a new record on both visitors and revenue. I averaged $444.86 per day in revenue, for one thing. Which is absolutely mind-boggling considering the fact that I usually only work between 2-6 hours per day.

My “popular” website got mentioned in the London Times this past Sunday, and I added several new link exchanges to my blogroll - and I’m talking other high-traffic websites that get over 20,000 visitors per day EACH. Like many of you, I get many link exchange requests each week from various other sites, but I don’t always want to add them. If their content is too generic, or their “link exchange” email sounds like a robot typed it up, or if their site is completely unrelated to celebrities, then I will not add them.

In other news, I’m getting $2000 worth of oral surgery done this Friday. It’s going to be a miserable weekend recovering, but I’m thankful that I have the money to shell out - for once.

Also, my web expenses are going up again. I will have to start paying a photo agency to use their pictures on one of my websites. More on that later.

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.

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.

Ugh, I can sure be a lazy person at times. This blog hasn’t been updated since November…

Things are going pretty well in my WE world at the moment.   I got over my previous bout of laziness, buckled down, and I made a whopping… $8,100 last month in ad revenue.  I originally had thought I’d made about $7,500, but then I recalculated. One of my ad companies didn’t have automated reports and I had to wait to get the check a month later. Now, finally, they are automated. I also now keep meticulous records of what I make from each company and update it every few days. This month I will make a little less - as of this moment I’ve made just over $7,000 for the month of February.

You might be wondering how I managed to get my revenue to jump like that. Well, it took a lot of moving my various ads around. Plus, a certain popular CPC text-ad company emailed me and helped me optimize my ads, which pretty much tripled what I was making with them. Also, there is this one ad company (more like a blog network) which pays depending on ad impressions. For instance, if you get over 2,500,000 ad impressions with them in a month, you will make $2500. Well, I moved their ads around so that they now show on every single page of the site, and the impressions have skyrocketed. In fact… next month, I will likely get over 5,000,000 impressions with them, in which case I will make $5,000 from them alone.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sorry it took me so long to get around to doing another post!

This entry will be about the ups and downs of my life now.

People hear what I do for a living and they immediately start gushing: “Omg you are so lucky” and “You have to teach me how to do that” and “I hate you!”  I have to admit that I am content with what I do and yes, wouldn’t trade it for anything else right now.  I absolutely hated working for other people, hated always having bosses breathing over my shoulder, and hated having to get up early in the morning.

However, there are ups and downs to this business.   We already know the ups: being my own boss; no set hours so I’m free to do what I want, when I want to; freedom; I can update my site in my underwear if I so choose; not having to go to a day job and get yelled at.

My ex boyfriend knows it’s not all roses, however.  (I used to complain to him).  Here are the downsides of being a freelance Web Entrepreneur:

Read the rest of this entry »

To be honest, my WE success happened almost overnight, but at the same time took years. Let me explain.

Since May of 2003, I had a website up on the internet. I started advertising and making a little bit of money on it in early 2005. By mid-2005, I decided that I wanted to one day work from home and do websites or computer stuff. The problem is that I wasn’t sure exactly how, or what I wanted to do.

I flirted with many computer type stuff before discovering what I was good at. I started with web design, which honestly, I was only decently good with. I would redesign my site many times a year. But somehow, the designing aspect never really took off with me. (Although I did get paid to design someone’s site, eventually). Next, I tried learning how to program PHP so I could start building my own applications.

While interesting, it just didn’t stick, either. To be honest I’m not sure why.

Finally, I discovered that all along, I had been good at “putting content on the web”. I was beginning to get paid for it, but still only a couple hundred a month. Nowhere near enough what I wanted to make. Read the rest of this entry »

This is my first post…

Basically, I plan to use this blog to talk about my full time job as a home Web Entrepreneur (referred to as WE from here on out).  I will also cover my day to day life as a WE, both ups and downs.

I will quickly introduce myself and then get going, because it’s currently past my bedtime!  I’m Rian, 29 years old, female, live in the Northeast USA (New Hampshire for now).  I used to slog away doing date entry and boring office stuff.  Now?  I sit in front of a computer in my underwear, updating my websites for a living.  I went from making around $24,000 to currently averaging $46,000 per year… and it’s only going up.  So long as I don’t get too lazy.  (I struggled with that my first two months out of a “normal” job).

In the next post, I will talk about what led me to this place and how I did it.