June 07 Recap
Ok, I’ll say it. This past month may have possibly been the most important month of my life. This is in terms of my education in regards to learning how to earn money online, to date. That may not make much sense, but I’m pretty sure this post can back that claim up. Here I go:
The 4-Hour Workweek
This goes first. I started reading the book by Tim Ferriss after reading Darren Rowse’s review of it. Without a doubt the book made me think about how I plan my post-college life. Can I stand to work a 40 hour workweek? I’m not sure. I’m pretty darn sure though, that I’d love to have alternative money making methods other than working in a cube-city. Thumbs down, to cubicles. I know I started reading the book in May, but I’ll add it to the recap because I finished it during the bus ride home from FOOA and the concepts are just now starting to make sense.
Future of Online Advertising
Once again, thank you Kumiko for allowing me to get a ticket to go to this event. I’ve already blogged about the event to a great extent so I think what I’ve got to say about it now on the fact that the networking was great. But networking aside, going to the event allowed me to see where all these people see online advertising going. Darn, i’ll say I think the majority of them were too much in it for the money than they knew. Darren Rowse’s talk, coming from the point of view of the publisher made so much more sense. I think that uneven mix of marketer vs. publisher content made me realize how important it is not only to make myself marketable to companies possibly looking for a publisher, but for me to find the right company for me to want to align myself with.
Adsense Buys my Daily Coffee…
Darren’s talk really hit home and made sense. Why? Simply because it was the truth about marketers and their relationship with bloggers. Or as many bloggers wanted to know, how do I make money?
The chart above was from Darren’s presentation (which is available here) illustrating how much money problogger.net readers make from blogging. He made the point that 30% of his readers can’t pay for their daily coffee from the amount of money they make from their blogs. I think that may have been my wake up call.
Monetizing Websites
I think that this past month was the first time I took earning money online seriously. I purchased one site, and am working at growing a few more. My total earnings this month wont get me a paycheck from Adsense or YPN just yet, but I can tell from my trends in impressions and earnings that things are going well and I’ve definitly got an upward trend going in earnings. Also I think I’ve learned that diversifying my monetization options are the way to go. So far I’ve got 4 monetized sites useing two different avenues of earning. This blog isn’t monetized yet, but may be in the near future. I like that I don’t have ads here, but also I like to earn money. I’m currently on the fence about monetizing this blog so we’ll wait and see.
So what have I gained?�? Oh among great contacts, also a new sense of understanding what goes into automating my income. And by automating my income I mean setting up my websites I run as a network of sites which I can work on both with some urgency (my blogs) and also others with little to no upkeep. As I’m new to this, and the sites are also relatively young, my income is still rising, and I’m not even at a point of seeing it level off. Yes, I’m new to this. However, I can only see good things in my future of online earnings if current trends continue.
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Ok, so the Future of Online Advertising has now come and gone. It was a great event. I’m sure it will still take me a few days if not a week to cull through what i’ve come away with from the event. While it seemed at time as though the speakers will just plugging their own products, there were many great gems of information as well. I will say though, the highlight of the day was getting away from the “butlered lunch” (can i call it that? Is is really called that!?) and getting to have New York style pizza with pro blogger 
So today is the second and last day of Future of Online Advertising. Today should be interesting, Darren will be speaking later today. My opinion is that he will be one of the few speakers who are speaking more toward the publisher or blogger opposed to the company which seem to be seeking advertising. It seems as though yesterday’s content was primarily focused on allowing a company to better advertise itself within the online space.