Comments on: HART-Empire Network – 2008 Final Earnings – Intense Summary and Analysis

By: loopzy

loopzy — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:59:11 +0000

I’d love to read more about this

By: 12 Steps Necessary For Combining Multiple Blogs Into A Single Blog | HART-Empire.com (HART-Empire)

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 08:29:26 +0000

[...] I’ve decided that for BOTH BattlingForHealth.com and AndYouWill.com series of blogs, I will move all the individual subdomain blogs into one mega blog for each niche. In 2009 I want to try to leverage the strength of these two larger and populated domain blogs and build toward a greater success and expansion of my HART-Empire Network. I don’t think I could do this keeping the status quo with 28 smaller and not fully populated subdomain blogs. One on hand – it’s true … there really is a benefit of having many sites because it’s easier to make $40 a month on 50 blogs than it is to make $2,000 on 1 blog. I’ve proven that. [...]

By: The Prolific Writer » Blog Archive » Case Study: My First Retweet.

The Prolific Writer » Blog Archive » Case Study: My First Retweet. — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 08:45:37 +0000

[...] I sent on a link to Darren, from Problogger, because I thought it could be of use. This was Harts 2008 income analysis. [...]

By: HART

HART — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:07:31 +0000

Thanks Martin .. for your insights! That’s something to think about .. creating a “Media Kit” .. I have to revamp my advertising page anyway and, as you suggest .. knocking on more doors.

I will catch ya on twitter .. eh~!

By: Martin Neumann

Martin Neumann — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:58:44 +0000

Hey Hart – way to go on being so open and letting us peek into your Empire.

Some sobering stuff there and only an Accountant and someone happy to call themselves Anal-Hart would get into such nitty-gritty.

It’s so much to absorb that I’m turning my 2 cents into a post.

One thing: loving trend watching/analysis myself, I see your “Network of Blogs” have clearly broken through the 100,000+ a month pageviews, especially in the later half of the year where it seems to have broken the 120k-140K mark and stayed relatively stable. That’s a good sign, imho. 2009 should see you get those above 200K and thus you can start using some scale (sponsorships / private deals etc).

You need a real good “media kit”, work those numbers (which you enjoy) into advertiser/sponsor speak and work hard at getting the first “name” sponsor.

From personal experience, the hardest part is getting a well-known sponsor. Once you do, they tend then flock to you in droves (I guess a bit of social proof on the other foot).

Enough already – I’ve got a post to write.

Good luck in 2009 and get over the begging/needy attitude – this is business. If you can deliver the goods then advertisers will beat down your door – you’re not begging, you’re selling niche pageviews.

Catch ya on Twitter, mate.

By: ImaNicePerson

ImaNicePerson — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:31:57 +0000

Fantastic breakdown. Thanks for sharing and helping educate others on the reality of blogging for income. Good luck as you continue to grow and evolve in the future.

By: HART

HART — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:52:36 +0000

Thanks but, I’m not a pro blogger .. just a guy with a lot of sites and not enough time on my hands

By: FreelyEducate.com

FreelyEducate.com — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:40:16 +0000

Found you through through ProBlogger’s Tweet (who didn’t?) and wanted to thank you for being so honest and taking the time to write all this out. It’s not something we can find on many pro blogger’s pages, so thanks! ~ Lori

By: Bruce

Bruce — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:27:47 +0000

Hart, Looking at your traffic and knowing what the traffic is on the site in my sig, its as more every month as what you report for your best site and there a lot more than jsut that domain on my plan, then I just don’t understand the need for a dedicated box. If its the CPU and these are all wordpress blogs, then perhaps you have something wrong with a plugin as 70 sites even adding in OpenAds, etc.. should not cause that much load.

Even if you feel like you need the control of your own box, you could get two VPS systems for half of what you are paying now for one dedicated.

I’m saying all this from experience as a couple of years back I decided I wanted my own box and went out and jumped on one before I really thought it through. I was only paying $175 a month for it and it was a Windows VPS. With .Net apps and SQL server. Wasn’t long before I figured out I weas throwing good money after bad so I ditched the Windows platform and moved everything to wordpress. It was a lot of work, but in the end, I came out so much better.

I’ll go back to dediated when my traffic decides I need to be dedicated, but until then I intend to keep my expenses as low as possible. Just good business sense.

By: HART

HART — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:09:00 +0000

Thanks to @Problogger for the tweet and all the retweets @cravenjade @hendrylee @Gloson @nikewong @krahe .. just got up and will answer some comments … Thanks for all the kind words and even @HomeBiss for opposite!~

@Artem Russakovskii – http://text-link-ads.com – I have 36 sites registered with them

@tom smart – Do you have any examples of sites using your software? I know I have to go down this route and sell space myself. I have OpenAds installed on my server, but found it too complicated (D’oh!) But, am currently trying AcruxAds on a few sites.

@Bruce – I’d up your 2cents to a nickel! good advice! Unfortunately, it’s never been a traffic issue on the dedicated server – it’s sheer CPU Resource limits that has got me on this merry-go-round. If I had less blogs and concentrated on the winners, yes it would be affected.

@Gary Grant – hi! Long time! How’s life in the Blair Valley?

@zaki – this is a part-time thing for me.. I’m an accountant/consultant/income tax preparer during the ‘day’ and my time is quite limited Feb-June every year, so among holidays and weekend getaways – I rarely get motivated until the fall and usually just having fun and putting out the fires and a few things here and there~

@Professional Lab – You’re doing good .. keep it up!

@SEOTools – I would like to hear what you have to suggest .. either google talk or email .. send me a DM on http://twitter.com/PetLvr for address // thanks.