KhalidsLife.com

I realise it has been some time since my last post but to be honest not a lot is happening. I am at the mercy of coders once again, two to be precise. One is doing his job well and on time, the other is a week overdue for a $30 script.

As I’ve been kept waiting, my mind has been thinking of new ideas and I’ve invested a few dollars into new domain names. I intend to build another network but that requires a custom coded site too, so back to Rent a Coder for more bids!

I’ll keep you posted in due course. Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

A recent post by myself, Micro-Market Shakeup, suggested that Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo was opportunistic and if the internet was controlled by two major players - Microsoft and Google - the future for publishers earning an income online may become more difficult, less financially stable and less profitable.

With the sluggish US Economy impacting business on a World Wide scale, it was only a matter of time before Google was affected too. This occured on Tuesday, with Google’s share price being slashed 4.57% to $464. The move came after research firm Comscore reported a sluggish January in the viewing of paid-for-advertisements on the Google site.

The total clicking on to Google’s paid adverts was 532 million, down from 533 million a year before, Comscore said.

Despite the strong growth in searches in January, there was a decline in the click through rate of paid-for advertisements which create the bulk of both Google’s and publisher’s revenue.

So, what is the future?

I don’t have a crystal ball but I am certainly keeping my eye out for offline investments too. I’m not exiting the internet, in business you have to ride out the waves, but I am spreading my risks. Realistically, revenue can only lower to a certain level before an uproar or boycott occurs by publishers, with bigger sites probably conducting private ad deals.

I doubt we’ll ever have another dot com bubble, the internet is now a necessity rather than a luxury. However, in my own personal experiences where I see my PPC going to $0.03, it is apparent, and has been for a while, that publishers are not in control.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

On January 1st 2008, I blogged about my goals for the year. One of these was to earn a minimum of $10 per day online profit and I thought I’d dedicate this post to discuss how I’m well on my way to that figure.

My father recently told me “saving your first £1,000 is the hardest, but once you manage it you’ll find it easier to save your next £1,000 and you’ll never want your bank balance to go below £1k again“. I believe the same applies to making money online, infact doing anything that involves a challenge. Your first couple of steps are the hardest and you need to learn to walk before you can run.

My earnings with Media Jump’s quick links fluctuate daily and as they don’t have any sort of tracking or statistics, it is a bit of a guessing game finding out what works and what doesn’t. As you can see from the image below, my earnings up until the 23rd of this month are $120.65, which brings my daily average to $5.24.

Two things I’ve realised is that 1) You should never rely on a single source of income, and 2) you should spread your risks. As a result, I’ve implemented TTZ Media across my biggest sites and spread my risks (income wise) over two companies instead of one.

TTZ provide much better stats similar to Google Adsense and pay a whopping $0.15 per click minimum! This is fantastic news to publishers who are looking to get paid a respectable amount for their efforts. Their fill rate is 100%, the ads are relevant to your keyword(s) and the ad formats are easily edited in their control panel.

I’m looking to manage a CTR of 2-4% which is a reasonable target and one that should turn my goal into an achievement.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

My weekend away was a unique experience and culture shock, both pleasant and amusing! Every year a few friends go away on holiday and Amsterdam has been their choice for the past 3 now. I’ve never joined them due to commitments however I was able to go this year.

The flight there was fine, arrived on Thursday evening near 11pm, had an immediate adrenaline rush the way the taxi driver was about 2 inches from a bicycle whilst doing about 40mph, but I guess that’s how they drive!

Our weekend consisted of trying local delicacies and visiting different locations around the city, including the Red Light district, Amsterdam Casino and the city centre. There is a lot of wealth in Amsterdam, with many items being more expensive than in the UK. For example, a 500ml bottle of Coke was 2 Euro’s, about £1.60 which is close to $3!!!

The city is beautiful and the experience is truly unique so it is worth the money in my opinion but I couldn’t help feeling ripped off at times.

The culture shock was getting over the fact you could legally smoke cannabis almost anywhere and the ability to pick a working girl for sexual pleasure. I suppose novelty would wear off if you lived in the city, however it was very apparent both these legalities play a major driving force in Amsterdam’s tourist industry. The city is filled with people from around the world wanting to enjoy the liberal laws without shying away or feeling an outcast. And I must admit, with regards to the sex trade, some of the women are beautiful.

I personally never indulged in visiting a “Lady of the Night” - that saying isn’t entirely accurate as girls are available during the day! - I didn’t for two reasons. One, I have a girlfriend and two, because I don’t think I’d enjoy what a fellow tourist described as “Mechanical Sex” - there is nothing in it other than relieving yourself. To me, sex isn’t about that and it wouldn’t be a good experience for me, especially if you can’t touch or kiss the other person…how is it supposed to be enjoyable?

Since this blog does focus on making money, the sex trade is very profitable. We all know that porn dominates the internet and generates billions in revenue annually, well with girls charing 50 Euro’s for 15 minutes and working 8 hour shifts, they could be earning 1600 Euro’s every day…and some are!!! My friend told me some are VAT registered and have their own accountants!

Unforunately Amsterdam is also a place where you can’t walk at around at night in the centre without being offered drugs. Gangster “wanna-be’s” dominate the street corners repeatadly saying “Cocaine, Charlie, Exstacy”, which does get annoying even though you ignore it and walk by.

One one occasion a group of them were rather abusive to a hen party and did proceed to feel them a little etc but the girls just kept walking and took it well. We were a group of guys so they didn’t really bother us but I may have found it intimidating if I was with my girlfriend or alone. One doorman we got chatting to said “You can’t stop them because selling laundry powder isn’t illegal“, emphasising my point about them being “Wanna-be’s”!

On a plus side, there is a heavy police prescence and they are approachable. On one occasion they were conducting random searches and we got patted down. The officer was just explaining they do it to check for weapons as they like to ensure their streets are safe. At first I didn’t think it promoted a safe city, but looking back I was quite happy because they are being pro-active in dealing with crime. In the hotel magazine they were honest and had an awareness advert which said something along the lines of “We won’t beat crime 100% but we’ll always try and we need your help“.

Overall the weekend was good fun and it was nice to get away. Amsterdam is definately a place I’d recommend, the casino is huge so if you want to splurge those website earnings in style go there! Getting back to reality - I’ve come back to a mound of e-mails and lots of catching up to do but I have tomorrow off so I can get onto it then. It’s nice to be home!

Khalid.

I’m doing “Windmill Spotting” (lol!) in Amsterdam, I’ll be back on Sunday night so check back for a post on Monday!

Take it easy…I am,

Khalid.

A lot of my family and friends often question why I’m always on the computer, what I am doing on the net, where does my money go etc etc. My parents used to interrogate me a little when I was younger but I think that was for my own safety and because I wasn’t doing any physical activity or socialising as much.

Now I’m older and live in my own flat, my step-sister (flatmate) and my girlfriend (she stays over weekly) query what I’m doing. My friends still ask how things are going and what my plans are so I thought it would be interesting to give my readers and insight into what I actually do.

I worked full time for an energy supplier 37 hours per week. The rest of the time I’m working online, eating, sleep and occasionally socialising. Here’s how my week pans out…

Monday - Thursday

• 6.30am - Wake up, check e-mails, eat breakfast with a mug of coffee and get ready
• 7.10am - Travel to work by bus (it’s the easiest and cheapest way)
• 7.50am - Arrive in work, grap a cup of tea and read the news)
• 8.00am - Work through the day
• 12.30pm - Lunch at desk whilst reading some tech blogs or the news
• 4.30pm - Finish work and travel home
• 5.00pm - My second cup of coffee and time to check e-mails again
• 5.15pm - Adding content to my network, building new sites, backlink building, research
• 6.15pm - Make dinner, eat whilst watching the television
• 7.00pm - Finish dinner and continue working online
• 9.00pm - Get work clothes ready, make packed lunch
• 10.00pm - Final check of e-mails, Khalid’s Life blog update
• 10.30pm - 11.00pm - Bed (I try to get 8 hours sleep every night)

Friday I get a half day and I spend the other half with my girlfriend. Saturday I drop my girlfriend off at work at 8.15am and I’m working through to 6.00pm when I meet her (say 6-8 hours). I occasionally visit family and friends. Sunday’s I either work (4-6 hours) or spend the day with my girlfriend.

As you can see, in addition to my 37 hours of full time employment, I spend around 14 hours Monday to Thursday online and anything up to another 14 at the weekends, bringing my grand total to a maximum of 64 hours!!!

Do you spend as much time working? What do you think of my working week?

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Since I’m a lovely guy, and **cough cough** I want to increase my backlinks, I have released a free wordpress theme and free proxy template.

Check them out and let me know what you think?

Releasing free themes is a great way for people to acknowledge your site as a useful resource and to build backlinks for your hard work. These days you can pickup a wordpress theme for under $100 and a proxy template for under $20. If each get used 100 times, a permanent backlink on a wordpress theme would be $1 and a proxy template $0.20! You can’t get cheaper than that!

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how I intend to earn enough online for it to become my full time job and main source of income. It has been something that I’ve calculated and re-calculated, considered and edited. I’ve amended it over and over until I had the right amount of sites with the right amount of traffic.

So far I’ve got 15 domains registered. Only a handful are fully developed into websites and even less require continual maintenace. If I break them down into categories and say 5 require a daily update (like a blog post) and get 2,000 uniques per day and 10 require little or no maintenance and get 1,000 uniques per day, I have come to the following conclusions…

5 sites x 2,000 unique visitors = 10,000 uniques overall.

5% of 10,000 = 500 clicks per day.

500 x 0.05 = $25 per day in revenue.

My 10 sites would generate the exact same, totalling $50.

Not a lot is it? Sadly, that’s how the projections are looking.

So I’m aiming for 30 sites by the end of April. Give or take a few dollars on each site and I could be earning $100 per day.

Are my calculations completely wrong? What do you think?

In this volatile period where the credit crunch is affective us all and banks are less willing to lend, not so many companies are willing to launch hostile bids for others, even fewer at $44bn. So let’s kick this post off by giving Microsoft a small clap for their enthusiasm to purchase Yahoo.

I think Microsoft’s bid is partially due to being opportunistic. Yahoo need a helping hand after falling stocks and a lack of morale have left them in a bit of a pickle. The question is, would Microsoft make a decent return on their possible investment and how would this affect shareholders, affiliates and publishers? Whilst this may now be old news, I think it is important to highlight some interesting points that may affect web publishers in the long run.

According to some sources, the best opportunity for Microsoft to increase Yahoo’s revenue seems to be hidden in the depths of alternative forms of advertising, other than search. This is Google’s strategy, with their planned $3bn purchase of only media agency DoubleClick. Microsoft are aware of this tactic and so have laid eyes on aQauntive, with a $6bn price tag.

The idea is that both Google and Microsoft could use the platforms and technology to place ads more cheaply and efficiently. The automation of this could result in problems though. Any Tom, Dick or Harry can easily setup a site regarding health care or dieting and apply for the publisher program to display ads as a Google/Microsoft publisher partner but will bid brands, such as Unilever and Procer & Gamble want this?

Probably not and so they could easily end up re-locacting their investment in that area, perhaps to large established sites with their own internal advertising department. I mean, why would a multinational cooperation want to associate their brand with the average 15 year old’s MySpace page?

The result? With big brands backing out, dilution of the quality of network advertisers will probably occur as Google/Microsoft attempt to increase revenues and make up for their big brand losses. Less income for web publishers will most definately be a knock-on effect. You see, an ad is not a commodity that can be substituted or exchanged like a share, it really does matter to advertisers where their ads appear and it matters to publishers which ads appear on their sites. And for that reason, Google/Microsoft would have to tighten their policies surrounding accepting new publishers to avoid diluting their platform.

The future? The future looks hazy, especially with the possibility two major companies - Google and Microsoft - both who are ruthless and profit hunters, controlling the majority of internet advertising. This means earning an income online may become more difficult, less financially stable and less profitable.

My advice? Ride the waves out a little and let’s see what really happens, but don’t put all your eggs in one basket and perhaps invest offline too.

I’ll be visiting London again with my work which means I’ll be from my sites for the next 72 hours almost. Surprisingly no-one has submitted any SEO suggestions for my previous post…come on folks!

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.