Can’t Get Rich

I struck on something brilliant (read: lucky) yesterday, and I’ve been spending all of my time promoting it. I don’t want to tell what it is too soon (just in case it falls flat), but if it works like I think it will, I’ll be sure to let you guys know. I’ll give you a hint though:

Morons + Email Submits + Good Domain Name + New Campaign + Relevant to Current Events = Profit.

In addition to that idea, I’ve been doing some research on using proxies and CPM ads to make the $$$. If you don’t know what a CPM ad is, basically you are paid a set rate per thousands views. I know next to nothing about what those types of ads generally go for, so I’m looking around. Also, unless I can talk my web host into turning a blind eye to my system resource usage, I may have to look into getting a VPS (hopefully not though).

To top it all off, I’m still working on some craigslist ads that trigger an autoresponder with my product affiliate link. Those haven’t been too terribly successful, and I’m working on making new ads for different cities.

So yeah. Busy day. I don’t have anything too terribly witty or interesting to say, so why not take a look at some people who do?

• Cow is picking up Entrecard for a month again to prove that (most of) its traffic is worthless. Preaching to the choir here.
• Paul is answering questions. He still hasn’t answered mine though (Do you play Smash Bros?).
• Jason interviewed some big important guy. Definitely an interesting read.

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The Cow did one of these a few days ago, and my mind is rather empty at the moment, so I figured I’d do one too.

My Typical Day

• 11 AM. Wake up. Look at clock. Go back to bed.
• 1 PM. Wake up. Crawl out of bed, put on hat to keep hair out of eyes. Check email, see how many new RSS readers I have (hey, it’s still exciting for me), see if I have any pending lawsuits. Don’t respond to emails yet, as I’m not fully awake.
• 1:30 PM. Shower, get dressed, eat breakfast. It’s important for bloggers to maintain a healthy diet, so my breakfast usually consists of eggs, cheerios, pasta, hamburgers, and Mountain Dew.
• 2 PM. Respond to any important emails. Check PPC campaigns, pretend to be surprised, cancel campaigns. Check CJ and Neverblueads for any new, interesting offers. Find none, go sit on couch.
• 2:30 PM. Video games. I have a very long queue building up on Gamefly, and it takes time to go through them all. Beat roommate at Smash Bros.
• 4 PM. Eat again. Read webcomics, check Wickedfire for anything interesting.
• 4:45 PM. Head to work. Unlike some of you lucky folks, I don’t make very much money online, so I have to deal with a real job. Fix Windows servers for the next 7 hours.
• 7 PM. Go grab dinner from local coffee shop/fast food joint. Take time walking around outside to avoid the office.
• 7:30 PM. Return to office, ignore co-workers, continue to fix Internet. I’m actually not that busy from 8 to midnight, so I use this time to brainstorm blog ideas. Actually, brainstorming isn’t the right word. More correctly, I sit and wait for inspiration to strike.
  I also use this time to read blogs, investigate potential affiliate offers, read ebooks that I’ve obtained through illicit means, brainstorm new site ideas, and read threads on Wickedfire. I can’t count on having this much free time at work forever, so I need to find some other time to get this stuff done.
• 12 AM. Head home. Eat more, play video games, read book. If I happen to have a rare flash of insight, spend this time coding a new site and setting up PPC campaigns.
• 2 or 3 AM. Bed.

That’s my typical day. All of that is going to change in a couple of months once I start classes again, so I’m enjoying my semester off while I can. Also, if you throw my girlfriend into the mix, things get pushed around or removed. Can’t really work on things while she’s around.

I’m going to be heading home to visit my parents today and working remotely for a week. I think a change of scenery will be good for me, as right now I haven’t had any good ideas regarding Internets in over a week. Hopefully a little rest and relaxation will help get me out of this rut.

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Hooray for Sabrina, the first recipient of one of my new paid reviews: ReviewU Now. Today’s review is being fueled by Berry Lemonade Jones Soda, as you can clearly see in the picture (too tangy, not enough sweet. Definitely drink chilled). I’d like to thank Sabrina once again for sponsoring the first in my new collection of ReviewU bottles (which will make an appearance in each picture I take).

Anyway, on to the review.

MouthyGirl.com

First of all, what’s this site about? Well, after reading through a few pages of entries, it’s pretty obvious that this is a girl-power site. Alright, maybe that’s a bit too general. MouthyGirl.com is a place for women to read about successful women, womens’ thoughts on living in today’s world, news as it relates to women, advice for women, etc. If you’re not seeing a common theme here, then you must be pretty slow. As a guy, I honestly can’t get much out of this site, but I can appreciate a different viewpoint. I’m not sure how many inspirational girl blogs are out there, but that’s probably because I’ve never really looked. Still, it’s good to see sites out there for women, by women. As cold and heartless as I am, it still bothers me to see girls being treated like objects by their boyfriends/husbands/bosses, and it’s good to know that there are women out there who don’t put up with that crap. As an overprotective big brother (my sister’s still in high school), I approve of this site.

On to the layout

I hate to say it, but the theme being used on this site is decidedly dull. For one, the header is enormous, and there is entirely too much white. To be noticed, you have to have an eye-catching theme, and this one is just plain bland. I would consider looking into a new one.

Broken things

At the time of this writing, two of the RSS buttons are broken. The third one seems to work, but most people would probably give up after the first two tries. Fix those links to boost your RSS count.

While I’m on the subject of the sidebar, that ‘Buy me a beer’ button also doesn’t work. Wordpress loves to break Paypal code, so I’d recommend looking into the Adsense Deluxe plugin. You can paste your Paypal code into there and then insert a comment tag into your sidebar, fixing the whole issue. Either that or just mess around with the sidebar.php file until everything is working.

The $$$

It looks like monetization isn’t a big goal of this site yet, which is good. Newer sites need to focus on building readership before monetizing. Other than the aforementioned ‘Buy me a beer’ link, all I’m seeing is an affiliate ad for bean bags. Hardly even noticeable, so that’s good

Overall

Other than some of the above-mentioned items, I don’t have a lot to complain about regarding this site. It sticks to its niche without wandering around, it isn’t overly-monetized, and it’s updated fairly regularly. Consider making a few of the changes that I suggested, keep up the good work, and you’ll have an attractive site on your hands.

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Lately, I’ve discovered that I’ve had a much easier time writing at work, as opposed to writing at home. This is probably because I’ve not had much to do at work lately, and at home I have to resist the near-constant urge to play Team Fortress 2 and Smash Bros Brawl. Of course, I can’t always count on work being this slow, so I’ve been trying to figure out new places to blog from.

The problem with that idea is that to blog somewhere else, I’m going to need to bring my laptop with me. Now, my laptop was very nice back when it was new, but that was nearly four years ago. Today, it’s banged up, slow to boot, and has a six minute battery life (I’ve gone through two batteries with this thing, and I’m not going to buy another one). It has definitely reached the end of its useful life, and right now I only use it when I have to. That being said, I’ve been looking at this sexy little thing for awhile now as a potential replacement:

It’s got a tiny keyboard, a slow processor, and a minuscule amount of available persistent storage. Essentially, it’s exactly what I’m looking for. The tiny frame makes it easy to carry around. The slow processor eats up less power, and it’s battery life has been clocked around three and a half hours. I don’t really need a lot of storage space, as all I plan to use it for is Internet activities (blogging, Skype, etc). It weighs two pounds and costs around $400. To me, it’s the ideal travel/blogging laptop.

As cheap as I am, I don’t plan on paying for this thing with my hard-earned job dollars. I’m going to wait (and hope) for this blog to pay for one for me. If four people look at my ads and say, “You know what? I DO need web hosting.” and sign up with Hostgator through my link, that’ll pay for my Eeepc. Of course, I’m not actually going to ask my readers directly to do that, so I’ll just sit around and wait for it to happen.

Anyway, I’ve already found a good place for future blogging activities (away from home and office). There’s a nice little coffee shop right down the street from where I’ll be living next year. They’ve got good prices, a nice atmosphere, and free wi-fi. I foresee lots of creativity being used there in the future.

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Yesterday when I mentioned that I didn’t want to blog about the worst ‘make money online’ site I have ever seen, I meant it. Of course, that was before a few of you asked me to do it anyway, so I guess I might as well. Before I start ranting though, let me just make it clear that I have nothing against the author. He’s set a noble (and lofty) goal, and he’s backing it up with a plan. I can respect that. I can’t, however, respect his current approach. His site makes me want to tear my eyeballs out while bathing in live fire ants. It’s that bad.

Start from the top

I’ll start from the very top of the page and work my way down. First of all, let’s look at the title: “The Geek Boys”. If you take a look at his ‘About’ page, it seems that he chose that name because:

Well because I believe that the real people making money online and offline are Geeks. So if you want to make money join the geeks.

I don’t know what to think about that. People like John Chow, Paul Bourque, and Jason Pereira all seem like normal enough people. To me, a geek is someone who obsesses over one thing (video games, model trains, etc), shutting out everything else. So, that’s the first thing I hate about his site: People who make money online don’t have to be ‘geeks’.

Moving on

Ok, back to the main page. Moving down a bit, you’ll see his slogan: “A Bad speller with alot of Idea’s.”

…Oh, sorry. That sentence actually knocked me out of my chair. How can anybody run a make money online blog with a slogan like that?! That’s like saying “Hi, I’ve got a vague plan to make a ton of money, and I can’t be bothered with little details like spelling and grammar.” An attitude like that can destroy a writer’s credibility right from the start.

What’s the point?

Anyway, moving on we see his goal: To invest $10,000 in his blog, making it into a $1,000,000 blog in only one year. I think that’s a little (read: very) lofty. For starters, one of the most successfully monetized blogs on the Internet, John Chow dot com, makes less than half of that (assuming he keeps up with the $30,000/month trend). I think it’s nice that he is setting aside a big chunk of change for advertising costs, but I don’t think he’ll be able to reach that million dollar mark with only a $10,000 investment. On the plus side, if he can legally turn $10,000 into $1,000,000 in only one year’s time, he’ll have investment bankers lining up for miles to meet him. It looks like he’s spent a little less than $500 so far, and I’ve seen one of his ads (the anchor text was ‘John Chow sucks’), so he’s had at least a minor amount of success with his advertising.

The layout

This site suffers from two critical flaws.

1. Wall-of-text disorder. Minimal use of formatting and images makes for a wall of text (something I know I’m going to be guilty of in this post). I find that very unattractive.
2. White washed. There’s so much white, everywhere. Studies show* that using a non-white background color increases page attractiveness by up to 23%.

*not really

Other than that, the theme is decent, although I think the content area is a little too narrow.

The posts

Who cares? They don’t contain any traces of spelling, grammar, or punctuation. They’re thoroughly unreadable so I won’t even bother. Here’s a tip: Firefox has an automatic spell checker. Use it.

Monetization

It looks like he’s taking the slow route to that first million. He offers six sidebar ads ($20/month), ten text link ads ($5/month), and paid reviews ($20/month, although I’m not sure why you’d want a monthly review from the same site. He also reserve the right to “Deni” any paid reviews). Let’s do some math here: Assuming he sold all of his ads spots every month, and managed to do a whopping ten reviews per month, that puts him at $4,440 for the year (just a little shy of one million). I realize that he may adjust his prices as traffic increases, but that’s how it stands now.

Speaking of traffic, he doesn’t list any statistics. Why would I pay money to advertise on a site without knowing how much traffic it gets?

Jeez, what set you off Geoff?

I know this post is cruel. Normally, I wouldn’t go out of my way to attack another blogger, but this site really got under my skin.

1. He’s bashing a very successful blogger as part of his marketing campaign.
2. He’s throwing $10,000 at a site that is, in my opinion, absolutely worthless in its present form. I honestly believe that a savings account would get him a better return on his investment.
3. The spelling! Agh, this site is an affront to the English language! Yes, I’m a grammar nazi, I know.

Maybe tomorrow he’ll check his Wordpress stats and see this post as an incoming link. Hopefully he won’t get too worked up about my criticism, and make a few changes to his site. Who knows.

Anyway, if he’s serious about spending a whopping $10,000 on advertising, he needs to make some changes. Done correctly, he could make all of that back and more. As it is right now, he’d be better off lighting that wad of cash on fire.

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