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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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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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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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.

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 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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If you were one of the early adopters of the iPhone you know the data speeds and coverage could be better and starting in July they will be. Apple announced the 3G version of the iPhone at the Apple World Wide Developers Conference this year.  They also announced a drop in price…but there’s a catch. Only existing owners get the price break. New purchases and subscribers pay the full price of $399. So you can save yourself the $399 now and enter to win one.

Head on over to JohnCow.com and enter.

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1. I wanted it to be small enough that carrying it around wasn’t going to be cumbersome and cheap enough it wouldn’t break my wallet.
2. I also wanted it to be HD so I wouldn’t be looking to upgrade to a new camera in a couple years, and it will work with my current whopping, huge, enormous 27″ HDTV.
3. Lastly, I wanted to have massive storage so I wouldn’t be having to dump the files every time I turn it off.

So…2 out of 3 ain’t bad.

I ended up buying an Aiptek A-HD+ 1080p camcorder. I said 2 out of 3 because it was a) cheap & small and b) it was HD.

What I failed to realize, however is it only came with 128MB of built in memory. I ended up tracking down a 32 GB SDHC card from Amazon.com for $150. That’s half of what I saw elsewhere. Panasonic makes a 32 GB card for over $300. The PNY was not only cheap but it can store a ton of video at 1080p 60fps. We’re talking 17 hours! That’s plenty and I can’t wait to use it.

Expect to be seeing some video posts soon. The card pictured here isn’t what I bought, but Amazon is currently out of stock. I got one of the last two left. You can search for it by putting in this: P-SDHC32G4-FS.

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He had a penchant for speaking the obvious yet making it known you didn’t know it was obvious to begin with. One of my favorite memories of him is from the live show I saw a couple years ago when he came through my home town. I got tickets for myself and my best friend and it had to be the funniest show I have ever seen.

George Carlin was known for speaking his mind about politics, energy, the world, people, pretty much any subject the felt like talking about. The most amazing thing, though was he had such an acute point of view on everything.

I consider him the ultimate cynic because everything you have ever thought about your neighbor, friend, wife, lover…he’s already come to terms with and has it recorded somewhere for you to laugh about.

He really will be missed. His comedy was always a treat and my 365 day calendar is going to be a little bit lonelier when it’s done. Goodbye George…nice knowing you.

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The infamous John Chow is giving away a whole bag of goodies courtesy of Market Leverage. The prizes include:

• Flip Video Camera
• $200 Market Leverage American Express Gift Card
• USB Pen Drive
• iPod Nano

You can win all these fabulous prizes by going to JohnChow.com and posting a comment.

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Only one person commented on the post, so he definitely wins one of these Top Trumps packs. David Dunn of Ferrari Dave blog has won one of these packs. David is also a previous winner of An American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund which I gave away in January.That leaves 3 more for others to win. I’m extending the deadline to the end of the month, so on July 1st I will announce the rest of the winners. It’s so easy to enter I can’t believe I’m not announcing more winners. All you need to do is leave a comment on this post stating you want to enter. 3 prizes will be randomly chosen using random.org.

I realize it’s not something big like an Apple 3G iPhone or a Sony Playstation 3 but this blog is still in its infancy. I’d love to give away bigger and better prizes and as the blog grows I’m sure I will. I’m always looking for sponsors, advertisers and prizes to give away. If you want to donate a prize for my next giveaway just use the contact form and email me.

I hold contests like this because it’s my small way of giving back to the community. Albert Einstein had these words of wisdom:

The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.

I truly believe you need to give what you can. It’s what makes life worth living and what truly makes us happy.

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After the movie, we noticed a bunch of packages of Top Trumps Indiana Jones cards lying about so I snatched up 4 of them and I’m giving them away. These are promotional packs for the Collectible Card Game featuring characters from Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

The game is played like war and can be played between 2-6 players.

To win a pack all you need to do is comment here. If there are more than 4 people commenting I will draw winners randomly from random.org. The drawing will be held this sunday, so hurry up!

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On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One is available for purchase and download.

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness is an episodic RPG-adventure game series set in a deranged comic-book meets-pulp-horror 1920s universe. Armed with unconventional weaponry and witty repartee, you join forces with the Gabe and Tycho, the crime-solving team of the Startling Developments Detective Agency to make war on bizarre enemies and solve the mysteries hidden deep in the sinister heart of New Arcadia.

From the hilarious and twisted minds of Penny Arcade creators Mike “Gabe” Krahulik and Jerry “Tycho” Holkins, legendary game designer Ron Gilbert and veteran producers at Hothead Games comes a 100% authentic and hilarious Penny Arcade experience.

Game Trailer:

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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

As an experiment last month, I wanted to see how much traffic Entrecard was generating as a result of clicking on other blogs/sites and dropping my card. Compared to April 2008 traffic on this blog decreased dramatically. Excluding my financial blog, The Proficient Investor, May traffic produced 232 visits and 342 page views. The Proficient Investor produced 732 visits and 829 pageviews. Why the drastic change in traffic? Simple. I stopped dropping a lot of Entrecards. Subsequently my Alexa rank has nearly doubled. The bounce rate for this blog was 80% which essentially means 20% of my traffic sticks around to read the articles.

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 May 2008

Total income from all sources was less than April’s Blog Income Report with only one income source producing anything relevant. That would be Text Link Ads. Income from Text Link Ads came out to $38.11. To advertise through TLA on this blog is $15 a month, of which I get half.

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.

One of my problems last month was my inability to write a lot of good articles. Part of the reason is because I am going through some very difficult personal issues. A good friend of mine has lung cancer and we recently found out it has metasticized into his throat, which has also made him nearly unable to talk. Trying to balance helping him out, taking care of my wife and child and working full time makes it hard to come up with anything to write about.

I don’t want to belabor you with boring details of my personal life…but then again maybe you want to hear about it. Maybe that’s what I need to start doing more of. I usually refrain from posting pictures of what I eat for lunch or make videos of my commute to work…but heck, maybe that’s what you all want to see. Comment here and let me know.

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!

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.

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

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Unfortunately, there has been an electrical fire at the data center housing Entrecard’s servers. The servers have not been damaged, but the site may be down for as long as 12 hours.

Entrecard is hosted with ThePlanet, and this fire has effected over 9000 websites, as many of the world’s most popualar websites are hosted with ThePlanet. They are working around the clock to get their data center back online, and we are hoping that they get it back online fast.

Thank you for your pateince and understanding with this rare and frustrating problem. Unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing we can do but wait for The Planet to get their datacenter back online.

Please check back with Entrecard in 12 to 24 hours.

Thanks,

Entrecard Team

I hope everything’s ok both with ThePlanet and with Entrecard, what a mess…

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First of all, video doesn’t play on all mobile devices, but text does. Second, there are still users out there that don’t have broadband connections and video uses a lot more bandwidth than text.

I also think you can’t video everything. Videos are great for showing something unique like your baby’s first steps or capturing some event that might not ever happen again but for everyday blogging, I just don’t think you can video everything you want to say. You also need to be able to hear and see video and sight impaired people wouldn’t be able to see what you are talking about.

I’m not saying I won’t ever make video blogs, in fact I’m trying to find a decent camera that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg but still has good quality. I’d like to get an HD camera if possible but I don’t want to spend more than a couple hundred dollars for it. Got any suggestions?

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He held the contest to celebrate the anniversary of his blog and I won a free copy of OIO Publisher. What that means is I’ll be able to sell advertising in various formats directly from this blog. I’ll still be running Google Adsense, Text Link Ads, NeverBlueAds and AdToll Ads, but now advertisers can upload the files, pay for the ad and I can turn around and put it up in much less time.

Previously, an advertiser would send me an email, send the paypal payment to the same email address and I would then upload the graphic, create the link and then notify the advertiser their ad was up.

OIO Publisher eliminates all that mess. I’ll be installing and configuring the plugin soon so if you’ve been wanting to place an ad but balked at the process, fret not! A new system shall soon be in place! Check out the Advertise page for more details.

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I’m loving the new dual core 2GB RAM model I have now. The downside of course is I have to reinstall all my software. That always takes about a day. At least i get paid to sit around and watch it install. That being said, I decided this time around to install the new version of Firefox. Firefox 3 is in beta and I love it. Some of the new features include a streamlined interface, new add ons and some updates to the button locations and look and feel.

I especially like when you begin typing an address into the address bar the history begins to show along with a favicon of the associated site. Pretty slick.

If you have been using Firefox 2 and want to try out 3, it’s out there ready for download. I don’t know if it will help you make more money online but I’m sure there are going to be a lot of add-ons that will make some tasks easier.

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This time around I’m hoping to win a new Apple MacBook Air from Bloggin-Ads, who’s site is about doing blog reviews. You can win too, just head over to Bloggin-Ads and enter for yourself. If I do win the MacBook Air I’ll probably turn around and give it away here since I already have a laptop but who knows. Maybe I’ll keep it to blog with.

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The details are, this Friday I weigh myself and submit the figure to my friend who is recording all official weights. Then between now and the end of August I attempt to eat healthy and exercise regularly to lose the highest percentage of weight (hopefully fat) by that date.

Last time we did this I came in second, losing 10 lbs (which since we are doing a percentage weight loss wasn’t enough to win) but still enough to make a difference and I have kept it off since then.

At last weigh in (Weight Watchers scales) I weighed in at 218lbs.  Normal clothes, without shoes and I’m 5′11″ tall.

Looking at me you wouldn’t call me obese or overweight in any way, but according to the American Medical Association I am OBESE!

Yeah, that whole BMI thing isn’t accurate…it’s only a measurement for professional nutritionists or weight trainers to decide what they need to focus on. It is, however a good indication of the amount of fat compared to other mass you carry.

I don’t get too hung up on numbers though, I look for improvements in my physical appearance and my general state of mind. When my face thins out and I feel good and happy…I’m in the zone…I’m probably at my ideal weight…then when the stress hits hard and I feel like junk food can make it all better…that’s when I know it’s gone wrong.

But we all have those challenges. It’s when we push through those everyday challenges we find ourselves in the winners circle. Hoo Rah!

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