Back to Generating Income Online

It has been quite a few years since I was making some extra cash from displaying advertisements on my websites.  My first few websites that had introduced me to making some solid cash online were msmods.com, iconscripts.com and plusfriends.net.  These websites were related to the whole MySpace niche and helped generate over 160 dollars per week in advertisements alone. Msmods.com was my best traffic generating website that had earned over 20,000 impressions per day which was equivalent to 20 – 30 dollars per day.  The money was awesome especially being a poor college student having to pay for education out of pocket.  I remember not having enough money to buy a math book and I received an adsense direct deposit one day that made it possible to purchase the book I needed for class (thank you Google!).  I reminiscence the good old days and wished I had the web development knowledge I possess now back then.

Changes I Have Noticed Over the Years

Adsense payouts and CPM earnings have decreased dramatically.  It has become almost impossible right now to make a solid earning from this advertisement network just because the depreciated value of CPM and CPC.  I remember earning over $3.50 cents from a single click 3 years ago and now I would be lucky to earn only a few cents.  I keep telling myself that it is the economy that had depreciated the value however understanding there are over millions of websites now than there had been 3 years ago could make a huge impact on the pay outs meaning there are more web spaces that are marketing versus websites that are paying for marketing.  I remember having CPX Interactive as an advertisement network and they only excepted websites that had a lot of unique visitors.  I had earned over 50 dollars from CPM in a single week from this publishing network.  It’s amazing how only a few years can have a great impact on the value of advertisements.

My Battle Getting Back In

I’ve always dreamed about being my own boss, working from home (in my pajamas ) and having a website that could help me retire early.  It’s motivation that keeps my spirits up and force me to keep up the hard work.  I don’t mind working extra hard hours each day since it keeps me up to date with the latest web technologies.  I love learning about web development.  It is my pride therefore I will use it to my advantage in creating my new successful ventures.  I have promised myself to stop worrying about the potential monetary earnings from displaying ads, rather focus on creating some usable applications that are more powerful and have an impact on certain niches.  I have also decided to work on smaller niches rather than the “go big or go home” attitude that will simply be overwhelming and too much work to keep up with.  I’m a married man now and do not have the time that I use to in creating sites that only generate over 160 dollars per week.  I’d rather create an application that becomes viral in hopes to generate over thousands per week.

My business plan is to create small niche websites such as CRM (customer relationship management systems) that actually have a recurring payments system rather than hoping for visitors to click on google links.  My most successful website that had the highest income rate was Plusfriends.net where I had sold an actual service through a paypal checkout which in return had earned over 50 dollars per week as a steady income.  Through trial and error, I have experienced that selling a service will be more rewarding in the long haul.

My Plans for a Successful Website Business Model

I have learned that websites that auto generate unique content such as community sites like a forum or blog can generate the most income.  Elegant web applications that incorporate a recurring service fee can also be very successful. I have plans to create some new web application that hopefully become viral and an overall success.  It’s a risk that every entrepreneur makes, investing time and energy in “chasing the dollar”.  I have also planned to work even harder and crank out some awesome code to finally find homes on the web for all my domains I have lingering in my godaddy domain manager (and there are over 21 domains).  If I create some usable small niche websites that can generate over 5,000 unique visitors each, that is as good as having one website that generates over 100,000 unique visitors per day.

Working with My Wife to Create a Family Business

My wife hates the fact that I am so motivated and the fact that I’m constantly in front my monitors each day.  I seriously work well over 12 hours per day (yes per day) combining my full time job at BookIt.com and my personal projects.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my wife to no end and always find time to spend with her.  With all that said, we have decided to create a website business together in a niche she knows extremely well.  With her efforts in helping to create and maintain a new usable web application online, we can earn extra income from that niche even if it generates only 5 – 10 thousand dollars annually.  That is 5 – 10 thousand dollars extra we could be earning each year.

My Conclusion

Website businesses are great entities used to bring in extra income (even if it’s an additional several thousand dollars) especially since the only investment would be time rather than shelling over hundred thousands of dollars to start up a franchise.  It is definitely the true limited liability way to start any business.  Also, being a professional web applications developer makes it much easier to work with (you don’t have to pay someone to create your online software)… Any business man will tell you to use the resources you have and with that said, I am motivated in creating my new ventures!  Wish me luck!