Million Dollar Portfolio

Today, I wrote to several of the bloggers that I admire asking if they would like to donate a prize they thought was worth their while. I mentioned it could be anything from a 125 pixel ad to something like a playstation 3.

I’m not going to name names here because, as a loyal reader/contest entrant I always figured these guys for integrety in the utmost.  It’s too bad for my sake I was wrong. I’ve asked two of the biggest bloggers on the planet to donate a prize which probably amounts to little more than peanuts in their pocketbook to a give away I am promoting for my 36th birthday on July 5th, 2008.

Blogging isn’t always an easy thing to keep up with and most of the time it is done when for most other people the day has come and gone. Sometimes it is a personal sacrifice in time just to get out a message one deems important for their audience. For others it has become a way of life and a way of income.

Time travel back to the early days of blogging, Back when we didn’t know what a blog was…back then it was more like an art form, an eclectic coagulation of ideas that morphed into some semblance of an an online diary, a webblog, if you will. Those early adopters “discovered” some untapped resource and were able to exploit it.

some 20k odd subscribers later, they still reap the benefits.

Am I bitter? No…well maybe a little. I was writing blogs before they were known as blogs. If you doubt it, go to http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.armory.com/~james1 and what you will find is a cached archive of the sites I was working on long before the big names of the web.

At that time I was experimenting with “Future Splash Animator”, later to become Flash. Of course, now one of the standards of the web. I hate myself for being an early adopter…

My first website was a movie review/pop culture site called Orbit that was popular among my friends and the university crowd. Keep in mind this was in 1991. I’m sorry…were you online in 1991? Oh I didn’t think so.

Now, did I think I was going to be making money then? Of course not, because the concept of profiting from something that was freely available to every college student in the world was unfathomable.

Cut to modern day.

Web “entrepreneurs” like John Chow are making six figures a year from writing about how they make money online.

Yesterday I contacted several “high profile” bloggers about a contest I wanted to start on July 5th, 2008 in celebration of my 36th birthday.

In short, these Mega Bloggers both said they didn’t have it in their budget to donate anything. I mean nothing. Not an ad spot on their blog…nada…zip.
I guess the 14,000 visits from 4230 unique visitors isn’t worth the time of day for these guys (one who’s real name I still don’t know, even though he sent me $400 paypal for my iPod Touch, which Incidentally wasn’t Free…I had to pay $99 USD for.) I never mentioned that to him, but since he is now apparently too cheap to donate any kind of prize, I felt obliged to mention. Sure I “won” the ipod…but since I live in the US…I had to pony up for the extra cost since the dollar wasn’t worth as much at the time. Oh lucky me.

I have one more big time blogger on my list I have contacted for this contest.

Mind you, this isn’t for my benefit. I don’t get to keep any of the potential prizes here, i was just hoping to get some involvement from the community I felt I was such a big part of, but according to these guys, I really wasn’t…

I really didn’t want to get on a rant in the middle of July, but here it is. There’s still a couple other sponsors I’m waiting to hear from, but in the mean time I’ll say I don’t think there is any credence to what either of these blogging juggernauts has to say anymore because, unless I am serving their interest, they could care less about me or any other fledgling blogger. They do what they do because it continues to make them money. For the most part it’s the same tired song and dance every day and I just don’t buy it anymore.

In celebration of my birthday, I’m putting up the following prize for one lucky blogger this month, A Flip Video Ultra Series Camcorder, 60-Minutes (Black). NO, I did not win it…I am using my hard earned paypal dollars to purchase and send a prize directly to one lucky reader of this blog who will be chosen at random among all those who follow the rules.

I DO NOT have the budget for this, but I have integrity and when I hold a contest I am good for my word.

To enter to win the Flip Video Ultra Series Camcorder I am giving away you have several choices to enter.

1. 1 entry is given for simply commenting on this post.
2. 2 entries are given for subscribing to my full RSS feed.
3. 5 entries are given for blogging about this contest and tracking back to this post using the keywords “million dollar portfolio”.

All qualified entries will be put into a hat on August 1st and (so far) one winner will be chosen to win the Flip Ultra. I’m looking for more prize donors. If you donate a prize, you get a link back to your site with the keywords of your choice and the gratitude of my loyal readers.

Spread the word, get on the comments, let everyone know. There can be only one grand prize winner. If/when I hear from the other prize donations…I’ll update this page with the prize listings.

Other Prizes:

• From Thor Schrock - 1 Coupon Code for 1 year of unlimited Rhapsody music downloads

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When I work in the city (San Francisco) I usually eat out for lunch. This amounts to about 3 meals a week at various restaurants near my work(the financial district, soma). One of my favorites is called Chaat Cafe and they are best known for their naan wraps. These are basically an indian version of a burrito.

You can get different kinds of wraps from tandoori chicken to saag ( a spinach dish) and lamb.

What I always enjoy are their lunch specials. Today was “Butter Chicken” which is tandoori chicken stewed in a creamy savory sauce. I think the sauce is made with butter, some cream, tomato paste and various spices like garam masala. It’s a classic indian dish and probably one most people think of when they hear the phrase Indian food.

Seen here is the Butter chicken in the bowl, about a cup and a half of basmati rice, cucumber salad and their famous (and delicious naan).

Naan is a traditional indian dough that is flattened and fired in a clay oven called a Tandoori. This the same oven the “Tandoori chicken” is cooked in on long skewers.

If you happen to be in San Francisco, I recommend this place for good, fast cheap eats. This lunch special is about $8.50 including tax. Other dishes I like here are the Karahi Chicken, Saag Paneer (spinach with goat cheese), Chicken Tikka Masala and the Samosas which are fried puffs with a potato and garbanzo bean stuffing. delicious!

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Bic Promo Pens and John Chow are teaming up once again to give something awesome away. This time, it’s not one, but TWO Flip Video Camcorders. These are great little camcorders for getting video onto your blog or YouTube easily.

To enter, all you need to do is add a comment on John’s post about Bic Promotional Pens and you can get an extra entry for blogging about it and sending a trackback to his blog. It couldn’t be easier.

This summer seems to be the summer of contests and John is always giving something cool away. I’m working on getting some advertisers to donate some cool products, but I need your help. Contests are one of the best ways of generating traffic and return readership. The more RSS subscribers I have, the better the prize I can get to give away. Advertisers want to know their ads are being seen and by holding a contest with a cool prize donated by someone, they get brand exposure and you get a cool new toy!

That being said, I’ll be giving away the Flip video camera if I win it. I’m already using an Aiptek A-HD+ for my video and photos, so I get to pass on the cool prize to you if I win it.

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Summers in San Francisco where I work 3 days a week are rarely hot let alone warm enough to come to work without a jacket. It is on days like that when you need something warm and soothing for your cold bones.

I normally take myself out to lunch then to a place called LongLife noodle house and jook joint.

This place is inside the Metreon on Mission St and 4th St in San Francisco where you can also find an Imax movie theater, a Playstation Store, a Sony Style store, Buckhorn Grill, Firewood Grill, Sanraku (japanese food), Julianne’s and Luna Azul which is a mexican restaurant.

When I go to LongLife I always get the same thing. Now if you read around on the web you are bound to find reviews of this place that do nothing but bash it. My only guess about that is these people are used to a certain kind of chinese food (usually Cantonese) or Szechuan style. This place is a little different. They take some classic dishes and change them a little. What I like is called Tampopo.

Their Tampopo, based on the movie classic of the same name consists of fresh Ramen noodles with barbecued pork slices, Menma (bamboo shoot), Naruto (white fishcake with a pink swirl) and thinly sliced green onions in a bonito broth. The broth is quite good with a mild salty taste but i always like to kick it up a notch. Seen here in the accompanying dish is a mixture of Sriracha hot sauce, chili oil, white vinegar and soy sauce. This gives the soup a good amount of heat to warm up even the chilliest day.

This will set you back a mere $8 for lunch. The bowl you see is huge, much of the time I have trouble finishing and I never drink all the broth.

Why am I writing about what I had for lunch? Mainly because almost every week I see an article on John Chow.com about his lunch or his “dot com pho” and I’m always intrigued at that. He likes to show how extravagant one can be when money isn’t an object. For bloggers just starting out though, it can be intimidating. You probably won’t see me bragging about a $60 hamburger topped with bacon and fois gras because I don’t like liver and no hamburger is worth that much money to me. The best burgers in the world are from Jack’s Hamburgers in Santa Cruz anyway…

I thought I would show you how other successful bloggers eat. I consider myself successful because I’m making money from my blogs now. Month after month I continue to pull in Revenue. Sure, it’s not JohnChow.com kind of money yet, but even he started somewhere. Besides I don’t want to be the next John Chow, I just want to be me.

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This year I have been reporting the income this blog makes to show you that anyone can make money online if they do what they are passionate about and persevere. Summer is here and last month I mentioned that advertising tends to slow down because of nicer weather, vacations and people just not spending as much time reading and blogging as they normally do.

My own activities had slowed during June because of a death in my family which not only left little time to blog because of having to take care of the bereavement process and all that is involved, but also because I just had no desire to talk about anything, as you can imagine.  That being said, June didn’t slow down in terms of advertising revenue, in fact it was better than May.

I’ve mentioned before that traffic is a huge component to how much money you can make. This includes RSS readership. The more RSS readers you have, the more likely it is ads are going to be seen and potentially clicked on and/or will have produced a sale for the advertiser.

Traffic Statistics

Entrecard continues to be part of my traffic, but it’s probably not generating as much revenue as I would like. The reason for this was because of some culprit sites using Entrecard as a credit building system. Entrecard caught on and has banned all of the sites they could find that were exploiting this system. Entrecard users (droppers) tend to only visit a site to generate a click for a credit and some have it down such that they can drop 300 cards a day. Not only does this defeat the purpose of the system, but some even built pages or sites with only the widget on them so they would load fast…but I digress.

Traffic is still the most important thing when trying to make a blog successful.  Unfortunately, I forgot to add the google analytics code to my index page when I changed my theme in June. Therefore I won’t be reporting google analytics traffic statistics. I have to instead refer to Webalizer from my hosting provider.

For the month of June, The Proficient Investor had 7747 total visits from 1713 unique visitors with an average of 258 visits per day. This blog had 7049 total visits from 2517 unique visitors with an average of 243 visits per day.

RSS subscribers increased from 1 to 5 for The Proficient Investor and Million Dollar Portfolio has stayed the same.

There are 2 things to take away from this information.

1. Generating traffic is the most important thing you can do for your blog.
2. Creating original, quality content is the second most important thing because you want your readers to stick around.

Total Blog Income For June 2008

Total income from all sources increased over May as RSS subscribes grew and previous advertisers signed back on with Text-Link-Ads.

Total Revenue was $55.62 from Text-Link-Ads.

Not signed up with Text-Link-Ads yet? TLA continues to be my most consistent performer. Along with providing ad space you will also get an affiliate link to post on your own blog. Anyone who signs up under that link will earn you $25 cash each and every time. Sign up now and start earning money!

I also earned $2.46 from Google Adsense bringing my total ad revenue to $58.08 for the month of June.

Summing It All Up

So what does all this tell you? First of all, traffic is still really important but so is the quality of what you write. Last month saw a drop in the number of articles, but not the quality of the articles I did end up writing.
The bottom line here though, is I am still making money online. My hosting fees are paid for and I get a little money in my pocket. You’ll notice some changes on the blog already.

I’ve installed OIOPublisher which allows you to sell ads on your own, eliminating the middle man. Does that mean I’m getting rid of Text Link Ads? Not at all. I still like the fact that someone else out there is pimping my sites and selling ad space for me, which means less work on my end. That being said, you can become an affiliate of my site!

Do you want to make money online but don’t know where to start? Read this to get an idea of what has made me successful this year.

New Affiliate Program

Can you sell ad space? Can you convince others that advertising on this site is worth it? I pay 10% on every sale you make. Click here to sign up and start selling space on my site. You can make some good money doing this. Just check my advertise page to find out the rates and calculate your potential profit. For example, a 125×125 banner ad on this blog costs an advertiser $50 a month. If you make 10% on the sale, that means $5 a month goes to you each and every month that advertiser continues to advertise.

July will be an interesting month because i have this new ad system in place and traditionally, advertising slows down in the summer months. I’ll update you all in August and let you know how it goes.

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I just read on John Chow how Entrecard is going to be removing/banning sites that have only the entrecard widget and no other content. I say its about time.

I understand the need/want for EC (entrecard credits) because you want to advertise on john chow or darren rowse’s Problogger.net but to stoop so low as to only have a widget and then surf to 300 of these daily to rack up credits? Does anyone really have that much time?

I know I don’t. Some of my time has to be spent playing games like Assassin’s Creed. I’m almost finished with that one…it’s pretty good but has problems. Read my review at GAX Online.

Summer has a tendency to slow down ad revenue and other online money making strategies simply because most people get out and do stuff. Because of this, if you don’t have your ducks in a row so to speak you are going to suffer for the next 3 months. Summer is officially underway and if you don’t have plans to make some extra cash offline, you might be eating beans and rice for a few months.

I’ll be updating my income statement for June in about 4 days, so look forward to that. Locally, each Friday night during the summer there is a free concert and two big names are playing this summer. These concerts are right on the beach. Check out the schedule. I’m looking forward to Blue Oyster Cult and  Gin Blossoms!

The weekend’s almost here which means a couple films for me Saturday and then I’m recording the 9th episode of my podcast “The East Wing Podcast“. Listen in won’t you?

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