I have finally signed up to Pubmatic.com .. at least for the beta period .. to test.

I have currently selected only 1 blog to test because I think it is a lot of work to switch the code all around. The blog that I have selected … is 1-8-0-0-H-A-R-T .. and I have only setup my Google Adsense account with Pubmatic. The theory, is that *before* .. I only made $15.34 in adsense in the month of January 2008 on this blog .. and hopefully *after* the test period is over .. it will be – more.

The problem with testing things is, that things need to be tested and worked out. There will probably be a lot of crappy looking ads on 1800HART blog for a while, as Pubmatic is in learning mode .. and it is trying new things automatically. I mean – that’s its job, right? To try things and test things out to maximize the monetization.

Well .. at least I believe that’s what it is supposed to be. So, for now – I will just let it sit on auto-pilot.

Yes.. I remember this post:
Mar/2007 – I have no intention of twittering thank-you very much!

Okay. It’s Feb/2008 and I have resurrected my twitter account “PetLvr” and trying it seriously for at least the month of February 2008. I am using an application called Twhril v0.6 which required me to also install Adobe “AIR” (which I hear can be a memory hog)… but, so far so good.

So – if you feel like watching me virtually “pee” or “eating” or “posting ridiculous stuff” on twitter – feel free to follow me along 🙂 I’ll probably include new posts from around our network as well 🙂

Apparently .. betweem 3:45pm CST and 4:26pm CST our sites were offline today, because we apparently reached 150% of our CPU usage. I wouldn’t have noticed, if it hadn’t been for my alerts from Montastic.com – the free internet monitoring service.

I just set up a whole bunch of alerts and have them email them to my Gmail account when my sites are down. I contacted my host provider – determined what the cause was – and reboot was up shortly.

I highly recommend you try that service out!

Now comes the future questions for the HART-Empire Network … It looks like I will have to be upgrading our RAM on the dedicated server from 2GIG up to 4GIG … but then the question becomes – What next?

* I’ve been keeping track of my HART-Empire Network Earnings Online ..

Here is the link: HART-Empire Network Earnings Spreadsheet Document

The earnings are on an “Accrual” basis, where I’m documenting what I’ve earned, but monies will usually come in the following month, or (if ever) when I reach the minimum threshold for release of my earnings for payment. The expenditures are on a “Cash” basis, as I pay something related to my online earnings, I just load up the spreadsheet and modify it.

Summary of Gross Earnings 2007/2008

* January 2007 – $344.61
* February 2007 – $372.37
* March 2007 – $492.41
* April 2007 – $491.85
* May 2007 – $620.99
* June 2007 – $632.47
* July 2007 – $672.66
* August 2007 – $701.78
* September 2007 – $706.09
* October 2007 – $801.12
* November 2007 – $859.20
* December 2007 – $863.36

** Year-To-Date Gross Earnings (Jan-Dec/2007) – $7,558.91
* Average (YTD) $20.71 per day or, $629.91 per month

* January 2008 – $981.88

** Year-To-Date Gross Earnings (Jan-Jan/2008) – $981.88
* Average (YTD) $31.67 per day or, $981.88 per month

Reflection

A good start for 2008 .. 981.88/863.36=118.52/863.36 = 13.7% increase over December revenues. I thought I would break $1,000 in January but “oh well”. I have found out that my adsense earnings are finally kicking in .. and I really haven’t been promoting the new template except on the “Battling For Health” series of blogs.

I think there is great potential for increase once the template is finally distributed to more sites over the next few months .. starting with the “And You Will” series of blogs.

Analysis Of Revenues

I thought I would keep up the side-by-side comparison to see how many months it takes me to exceed 2007 year-to-date revenues 🙂

As I have been saying each and every month so far .. Where is the money?

Analysis of Expenditures

I will not be publicly analyzing my expenditures in 2008, although if you look at the public google document you will be able to see where my profits are shrinking to .. 🙂

It’s good to see my friend Thord Daniel Hedengren back with a new template and energy on Bloggertalks …

Well, it’s just nice to read interviews about really interesting people once again.. like:

Skellie, a successful freelancer on freelancing

PS:

BloggerTalks.com is more than just interviews in 2008. It’s …

* INTERVIEWS – Talking to bloggers that matter
* THE RAG – Daily news from the Blogosphere
* PAGE TWO – Flip it for some blogging resources

Vote For Your Favorite Blogs in 2007

If you’re like me .. and over 2100 RSS feeds in your Bloglines is never enough *g* .. here is your chance to increase your feed count by adding some of the newer blogs that came onto the scene and made a splash in 2007. This is all according to the team at Performancing.com and its readership. They put a call out to its readership to submit blogs and then narrowed them down to 6 per category.

According to Performancing: If your blog hasn’t been selected, don’t worry! For each category, there is a “write-in” option on the ballot. Just have your readers stuff the ballet box with your blog’s name (legal stuffing only!). To get maximum response from your blog community, consider blogging about it and also offering reminders throughout the voting period

Voting is open from January 3rd through January 10th

Check it out!

Both the Reader’s Choice and Judges’ Choice Performancing 2007 Awards on Friday January 11th, 2008. Here are the categories!

Vote For Your Favorite Blog at Performancing

* Vote For The Best Overall Blog
* Vote For The Most Influential Blogger
* Vote For The Best Blog Design
* Vote For The Best Blog Typography
* Vote For The Best Blog Name
* Vote For The Best New Blog of 2007
* Vote For The Best Blog Community of 2007
* Vote For The Most Improved Blog of 2007
* Vote For The Best Blogs You’ve Never Heard Of
* Vote For The Best Use of a Corporate Blog
* Vote For The Best Blog Podcast
* Vote For The Best Video Blog
* Vote For The Best Writing/Blogging Blog
* Vote For The Best Science/Technology Blog
* Vote For The Most Controversial Blog
* Vote For The Best SEO Blog
* Vote For The Best Celeb/Style Blog
* Vote For The Best Business/Money Blogs
* Vote For The Best Photo Blog
* Vote For The Best Sports Blog
* Vote For The Best Blog WebHost
* Vote For The Best Family and Parenting Blog
* Vote For The Best Political Blog
* Vote For The Best Food/Health Blog
* Vote For The Funniest Blog
* Vote For The Best Travel Blog
* Vote For The Best Education Blog
* Vote For The Best Entertainment Blog

* I’m kept track of my 2007 HART-Empire Earnings Online ..

Here is the link: HART-Empire Network Earnings Spreadsheet Document

The earnings are on an “Accrual” basis, where I’m documenting what I’ve earned, but monies will usually come in the following month, or (if ever) when I reach the minimum threshold for release of my earnings for payment. The expenditures are on a “Cash” basis, as I pay something related to my online earnings, I just load up the spreadsheet and modify it.

Summary of Gross Earnings 2007

* January 2007 – $344.61
* February 2007 – $372.37
* March 2007 – $492.41
* April 2007 – $491.85
* May 2007 – $620.99
* June 2007 – $632.47
* July 2007 – $672.66
* August 2007 – $701.78
* September 2007 – $706.09
* October 2007 – $801.12
* November 2007 – $859.20
* December 2007 – $863.36

** Year-To-Date Gross Earnings (Jan-Dec/2007) – $7,558.91
* Average (YTD) $20.71 per day or, $629.91 per month
*** Still not enough to quit my day job!~

Reflection

Year to date NET income shows me making $1,228.84 profit … *shrugs* .. I have no idea where it is now!

Analysis Of Revenues

On an accrual basis .. 7558.91/3665.00 .. it would seem that my revenues were 206.25% of 2006 in 2007. But the reality is that the private ads figure in 2006 was actually a pro-rata amount that I received in the fall of 2005 .. so, actual earnings GENERATED in 2007 was really 3665-1500 = $2,165.00 … So, in that case – my 2007 generated revenues were really 349% of 2006!!

So, I suppose I should be happy.

Analysis of Expenditures

I didn’t keep track of expenses ‘publicly’ for 2006, but I did for 2007. Here is a summary with an explanation and commentary.

* Domain Renewals – $306.40 – This was for renewing all my domains, in the month prior before they became due. I just renewed them for 1-year at a time, and the average cost was $8.95 each through Chuga Domains. I have a big hit every January April and October each year .. but in 2008 I might renew them for longer periods of time, like 2 years or 5 years.

* Domain Registrations – $256.86 – For this expenditure, I was actually registering MORE domains .. but, I think I’m done registering new domains now for 2008!

* ISP Host Providers – Old ISP’s – $229.95 – This was for Blackun and Acenet before I moved in June 2007 and in each case was for overages (blacksun $180.00 in May/07) and interim monthly (acenet) before I decided where to move to.

* Dedicated Server Costs – $1,482.51 – Ouch! But, Its now costing me $263/month to host all of my sites now. Per month. Every month. It’s definitely my highest fixed costs per month.

* EVDO Laptop Access – $674.19 – Pricelist! That is, while I’m out at the beach every summer and there is no internet access. This is basically like a Cell Phone Contract I am tied into – at $67.80/month for 6 months and $49.95 for 6 months in the off-season. It’s definitely a necessity during the summer months and quite a burden and aggravation reminder everytime I pay a bill every few months in the winter.

* Advertising – $428.67 – I don’t feel I got any benefit from buying text-link-ads on blogs around the ‘net – based on my refer stats. I might have received about 10 clicks. Although, I did spend $100.00 of this amount at StumbleUpon Ads .. which, at 5 cents per click (or 2000 stumbles) to my Halloween site that I received no sales or affiliated leads from them.

* Miscellaneous Business Opportunities – $511.83 – I call it this, for software plugins that I have purchased, maybe ebooks that I buy or seem worthwhile to support the author etc.

* Design & Sub-contract – $940.00 – This was towards the cost of a new Network wide Template .. it is not complete, and still in progress

* Content and Sub-contract – $1.118.94 – This was for external content or designs purchased for my network. For instance, would include private label articles (PLR) and designs or scripts or blogs that now basically make up the http://HARTmarket.com group of subdomains and sites. Sites were created to tie in directly with affiliated sites but, I have yet to really market them.

* Writers and Sub-Contract – $380.07 – This is for the writers representing 1-1/2 months and, no there will not be any future breakdowns. I foresee this section to be my biggest future expense, although I hope that some shared revenue payouts are added to this figure – which would make both myself and the bloggers very happy!

* Ebay Activity Fees – $5.65 – Can’t remember what this was all about, I suppose I paid off my ebay balance.

>>> Total Expenses $ 6,330.07

>>> Net Income from Blogging – $1,228.84 – or, 16.26%

Reflections about 2007

I feel that as much as I think I should have grown financially in some exponential way to make me rich beyond all my expectations (*g*) … I am happy the way the year finally progressed. In the month of June 2007 .. I moved and combined all of my blogs into one central location and obtained a Virtual Private Server (VPS). I thought that would solve all of my traffic and bandwidth issues but it was a lesson in Hard Knox learned that CPU and computer resources have little to do with the bandwidth and traffic – albeit, somewhat cause and effect related. Bottom line – the VPS wasn’t good enough and it took until the beginning of September 2007 to finally convert to a dedicated server. Since that time – I have double the traffic on all my blogs on the server.

As I mentioned last month .. I finally hired writers that were not related to me (or friends in real life) to write for blogs in the “Battling For Health” series. I hope to continue until all positions are filled .. and leave the content to more qualified writers!

In October 2007 .. I hired two writers .. Gloria Gamat for the Battling Arthritis Blog .. and Lesly Maranan for the Battling Cancer Blog. For January 2008 .. I hired another writer .. Michael Davidsen for the Battling Alzheimer Blog .. and another one starting prior to February 2008 (to be announced).

Predictions for 2008

I hope we are all prosperous, of course! However, in real terms at this time – I hope my traffic doubles every quarter (for the HART-Empire Network as a whole) and revenues double every two quarters!

So, in other words: In December 2007 .. we had 52,650 unique visitors with 83,979 page views (1.6) .. so that would mean that I would like to see the uniques grow to
(-0) 52650
(3) 52650+52650=105300
(6) 105300+105300=210600
(9) 210600+210600=421200
(12) 421200+421200=842400 uniques for the month of December 2008
>> and 842400×1.6= 1,347,840 pageviews or more actually, if we can better that ratio!

and
(-0) 7558.91
(6) 7558.91+7558.91=15,117.82
(12) 15117.82+15117.82= $30,235.64 total gross earnings for 2008!

>> Well, that would be nice – however, as we all know it’s not how much GROSS you make – it’s how much NET you keep! And, by the end of 2008 – well, I still dream and hope that I can make at least an extra $3500 saved savings to take my wife on a really great vacation after next year’s Christmas Celebrations.

I’ve been concentrating my blogging efforts to the *NEW* Original network template design by Thord Daniel Hedengren .. As I’m calling it in the footer .. all basic templates are “HART’icized by HART (1-800-HART)” aka me.

Well, now I am in TESTING mode – and there are still changes needed. I kind of know what I want .. but, how to do that is still in the air. If I see something or want to do some changes, I just do them! For this reason, I am holding off from mass-updating these templates to the rest of my sites.

Feel free to check out the new templates!

* HART-Empire-Network.com
* Battling Arthritis
* Battling Cancer

I just wanted to say that, after I noticed that I haven’t posted in here since December 8, 2007.

For future update: I will be continuing to talk about the blogging of the HART-Empire Network and its business in this blog – but, I will be posting more or less ‘Factual Update’ type of posts on HART-Empire-Network.com – the new home of the HART-Empire Network – such as … I did this. I did that. I did this again. Etc.

I was locked out of my blogs today … I received this message

Latest Activity
Error 403
We’re sorry, but we could not fulfill your request for /wp-admin/index-extra.php?jax=incominglinks on this server.

Your Internet Protocol address is listed on a blacklist of addresses involved in malicious or illegal activity. See the listing below for more details on specific blacklists and removal procedures.

Your technical support key is: ce2d-4fe7-1366-73cd

You can use this key to fix this problem yourself.

If you are unable to fix the problem yourself, please contact hart (at) PetLvr (dot) com and be sure to provide the technical support key shown above.

The referral page how to fix this problem yourself .. reads

Technical Support
Your request was intercepted by security software which protects the Web site you visited from malicious activity, such as hackers, spam and viruses. We apologize for the inconvenience, but your request matched a profile of suspicious activity. This problem is usually quite easy to fix.

Your computer’s IP address was determined to have recently sent spam or engaged in malicious activity as reported by a third-party monitoring service. This means your computer is most likely infected with viruses or other malicious software. See below for more information and removal instructions.

Your request was blocked because of malicious automated requests received from your computer’s IP address.

This problem may be caused by viruses or spyware on your computer, or by malicious software that pretends to be anti-virus or anti-spyware software. Ensure that you have REAL anti-virus and anti-spyware software on your computer, that they are kept up-to-date, and that you have run a full system scan using each tool. Once your system is cleaned of viruses and spyware, please try your request again.

The free Google Pack provides trustworthy anti-virus and anti-spyware software. Get essential software with Google Pack.

Blacklist Reason(s):

If the above suggestions fail to resolve the problem, click Back and contact the e-mail address you were given for further assistance.

So I emailed the plugin writer

You see .. that key was quite confusing, because there is no logs table in MySQL database .. it’s just one bad_behavior log. And – where do you input this key? There is no place to input this key! Aaargh!! So, I emailed the author of the plugin, Michael Hampton .. and he pointed me to this:

www.bad-behavior.ioerror.us/2007/12/06/bad-behavior-2011/

That’s correct. There is a solution – you need to upgrade to the latest Bad Behavior Version 2.0.11

WHY?

Well, according to Michael on that page ..

In brief, yesterday I moved all of my sites to a new dedicated server. In the process, I decommissioned an old blacklist I was running which I thought wasn’t being used, not realizing that Bad Behavior was still set to use it. Shortly afterward, I found myself locked out of my own blog, just as you all did. So therefore, this release.

* I’m keeping track of my HART-Empire Earnings for 2007 Online .. and yes .. I forgot to post my October 2007 earnings – (but, it’s included YTD)

Here is the link: HART-Empire Network Earnings Spreadsheet Document

After the decision to consolidate my network into a handful of sites back in September … October and November 2007 were rebuilding months for month. Although, I still haven’t completely reworked the consolidation of about half of my sites – but, it’s not out of mind.

In October 2007 .. I hired my first two blogger/writers that weren’t related to me! Woohoo! If you haven’t met these bloggers or visited their blog .. please do!

* Gloria Gamat has taken over my Battling Arthritis blog and
* Lesly Maranan has taken over my Battling Cancer blog.

I wish them all the best, quite happy with their work and results, and feel my blogs are in great hands! Feel free to go stumble their blogs or articles and leave them some comments! 😀

Besides writers, I have been expanding (and incurring expenses) in acquiring content – mostly sites that are or will be part of the HARTmarket.com ‘mega site’. I probably need a good portal site but, here are the current stores part of the “HART Market”:

* Animal Art @ HART Market new
* Birthday @ HART Market new
* Classifieds @ HART Market new
* Furniture @ HART Market
* Halloween @ HART Market
* Lingerie @ HART Market
* Medieval @ HART Market
* Pet Care @ HART Market new
* Pet Supplies @ HART Market new
* Vision @ HART Market new
* Wedding @ HART Market new

I have a few more stores or sites being implemented on this domain, but will probably not introduce them until 2008. Once these and other sites are at the level I imagine, I will be concentrating on expanding content by hiring more writers in 2008.

I feel that things are starting to become more stable and opportunities continue to exist for modest growth and minor expansion. I’m still spending waaaaaaay too much, in relation to my earnings – but it’s all part of growth. All my earnings are put back into the HART-Empire Network. I’ve been trying to implement a switchover to a network wide themed HART-Empire Network template that I hope will be in place before 2008 that might help speed up the loading of certain sites, and help with branding. This has been a long-time in coming and I’m at the mercy of my designer and implementation strategies and design. I’m not in a real rush, because I know once I finally get this in place I will have to upload them to all of my sites! This means downtime, final upgrading of sites, new plugins, delete old plugins, adding unique sidebar and footer codes to individual templates, etc. I will be tackling a ‘mega site’ at a time, starting with the Battling Series of sites hopefully!

If you are a blog owner monetizing your own site, I am assuming you are quite aware of Google’s PR downgrades around the ‘net. Most of my sites have been affected and were changed. My 1800HART site, which was a PR5 back in May07 is now a PR0 – but, I suspect that it has more to do with me posting all of the 2kbloggers links back in the month of August 2007, instead of the Text-Link-Ads issue. I’ve lost some sponsors, but generally I’ve also been picking up new sponsors and quite frankly, search engine traffic continues to grow for me and didn’t seem to be affected. And (knock on wood) nor was my earnings. I still consciously am looking for alternate ways to monetize, which has explained some of the growth in the HART Market series of site .. which are all affiliated-based instead of product-in-my-basement-based sites.

So – back to my earnings YTD to November 30, 2007. The earnings are on an “Accrual” basis, where I’m documenting what I’ve earned, but monies will usually come in the following month, or (if ever) when I reach the minimum threshold for release of my earnings for payment. The expenditures are on a “Cash” basis, as I pay something related to my online earnings, I just load up the spreadsheet and modify it.

Summary of Gross Earnings 2007

* January 2007 – $344.61
* February 2007 – $372.37
* March 2007 – $492.41
* April 2007 – $491.85
* May 2007 – $620.99
* June 2007 – $632.47
* July 2007 – $672.66
* August 2007 – $701.78
* September 2007 – $706.09
* October 2007 – $801.12
* November 2007 – $859.20

** Year-To-Date Gross Earnings (Jan-Nov/2007) – $6,695.55
* Average (YTD) $20.05 per day or, $608.09 per month
*** Still not enough to quit my day job!~

Reflection

Year to date NET income shows me making $1,128.65 profit. Based on my paypal account balance, which is basically -NIL- .. this is obviously the amount that I have spent foolishly paying bills. However, the reality is that 100% of the google adsense earnings ($1,316.90) automatically transfered directly into my bank account – so, I must have actually PUT BACK $188.25 from bank account to cover some paypal purchases during the year. I’m hoping that for 2008 it will only be one way – the first way – from paypal/google to my own bank account and not the other way around!

Season’s Greetings Everybody!

In the meantime, I would like to take this opportunity to wish everybody a Happy Holiday Season .. and, for all of you sites out there monetizing your blogs and have online stores .. a successful and profitable Holiday Season for you!

Take care
HART (1-800-HART)