* 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
* February 2008 – $1,076.12
* March 2008 – $1,596.30
* April 2008 – $1,872.57
* May 2008 – $1,767.04
* June 2008 – $1,857.06
* July 2008 – $1,770.19

** Year-To-Date Gross Earnings (Jan-Jul/2008) – $10,949.33
* Average (YTD) $51.29 per day ($57.10 in Jul/2008) and Average (YTD) $1,560.62 per month in 2008

Reflection

July 2008 revenues showed a decline of almost 5% over June 2008 levels, but I consider July as a short month. We went on vacation from July 27, 2008 until August 13, 2008 (hence the delays in posting this) and I was working hard “offline” trying to tie up loose ends before we left. Although I had internet access with my Laptop and EVDO card .. most of the time spent online was trying to setup and organize working stores in my HARTmarket.com sites. I seemed to be quite involved in more promotion of other people’s social requests that I didn’t really have much time to do my own! Also, certain CPM contracts expired and there were vacant spots with no earnings on the Adify network for about 10 days in July.

I am not optomistic about August 2008 revenues, and in fact TLA revenues are down. But, surprisingly the adify revenues have exceed July figures already as of today, and Adsense also estimated to be exceed July figures .. Go figure! I know that I haven’t been posting much! Quite strange indeed – and, whatever they will turn out to be – they will turn out to be~!

In the meantime, I know the slowdown is a direct result from the lack of posting on the sites around my network. Instead of the usual 10-15 blogs I have been contributing to (in addition to the paid writers) I am probably closer to 5 blogs that I contribute to. I have to work on that despite my enjoyment of having somewhat of a vacation.

Good News … I broke $10,000 in July and almost broke $11,000 year to date earnings! WooHoo!

Bad News … The expenses were out of control in July, and overall .. I barely made $65 net for the month. All money earned is going back into the HART-Empire Network in the way of fees for content, hosting and incidentals. I know I’m not getting any of this money! Hopefully soon though~

* 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 .. 🙂

* 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.

(1) December 7, 2007 – First Day I Hit $10.00 Adsense Day

Yes .. I look at my adsense figures a few times in a day, but mostly because it is part of a tab of sites that open up as my start page. On December 7th, 2007 – as I was approaching $10.00 adsense earnings for the day .. I was actually staying up until the statistics reset (2:00am CST) clicking refresh until I did break the $10.00 high! As it turned out, I did not hit this $10.00 high per day since.

(2)December 28, 2007 – First Time I ever broke $200.00 Adsense Month!

I started blogging in May 2005 and it took until February 2007 that I finally broke the $100.00 per month level. I am glad I broke the $200.00 level in 2007! This includes all of my sites by the way .. not just one or two. Perhaps sad .. but, still a milestone to me 🙂

(3) We DOUBLED The Traffic since September 2007

The above is the sitemeter public stats collected from all the stats of all blogs in the HART-Empire Network. It is obvious that in June and July 2007 there was downtime when I consolidated all my efforts on two servers into one mega dedicated server. By the time I got my act together with the move and testing in August 2007 .. I considered September 2007 the first month on a dedicated server where I was able to consider to promote my blogs – instead of worrying about whether or not my efforts would overtax my server.

But – a picture is worth a thousand words, eh? Both the unique visitors and page views practically DOUBLED in the month of December 2007 over the figures from the month of September 2007.

I hope 2008 continues with this trend and HART-Empire Network continues to grow and provide continued value to our readership base and beyond!

Happy New Year and All The Best To Everyone in 2008 as well!

October 16, 2007 marked our 2nd Anniversary

* The Year-0 Post October 2005
* The Year-1 post October 2006

Welcome to the Year-2 post of October 2007!

When I look at the stats over the past 12 months .. I definitely see a pattern and progress. I see a story .. and, that story is about me – HART. I tried to grow my network of sites and maintain the status quo – even during my busy income tax preparation time (February – April) months … and I started to document my earnings online since January 1, 2007 on a public google document.

Traffic wise, I was doing fine and going in the direction that I wanted (steadily upwards) .. but, I peaked in May 2007. Suddenly, out of the blue my bandwidth and traffic started to cost me an arm and a leg .. and I was desparately in need of an upgrade.

So – I decided to move everything June 1, 2007 (Q3) to a new host provider, that promised me better stability and growth potential that offered me hope in continued expansion of my network.

Here’s a summary of the past 12 months

* Nov/2006-May/2007 – steady growth, increased traffic, new sites!
* June/2007 – Upgraded to a Virtual Host Server (VHS) with MidPhase (AnHost brand) – Slowdown
* July/2007 – VHS not able to support my sites, and CPU Resources crashed the server constantly
* August/2007 – Upgraded to a Dedicated Server with MidPhase (Singlehop brand) – slowdown
* September/2007 – Uneventful blogging, even exceeded May/2007 levels
* October/2007 – Consolidation and Reorganization efforts were made and finally a ‘plan’ developed

Plans for Year 3 and Beyond

I decided that now is the time to consolidate my network. All this time, I have been trying to keep things organized into similar related themed channels (like, “Pet Related Channel”, “Health & Fitness Channel”, etc). The new look for 2008 will hopefully fall into a simpler network, with the following characteristics:

1) HART-Empire Network = HART Caricature = “HART” Brand

Although you wouldn’t know it, I have been trying to get a network wide theme developed so that all sites will basically look similar to the other. With wordpress upgrading their software every 3 months now, plugins coming and going … I want to brand my HART caricature face as the logo of the HART-Empire Network (beside just a funny comical picture of Hartley B Singer the person) .. and when one goes to one site, it should readily be identifiable as a HART-Empire Network site.

2) BattlingForHealth.com = “Battling For Health” Brand

All previous “Battling-Series” of blogs will now be created as a subdomains of this mega site. Currently, I do have longer term plans for the main domain .. however, in the meantime it will be a portal relaying all of the summary posts found from each of the health and fitness topical blogs. Having subdomains, instead of separate domains .. also allows for easier creation and expansion into newer health topics. I want to build this site into a sound health and fitness resource and library and possible support site.

3) AndYouWill.com = “And You Will” Brand

All previous “AndYou-Series” of blogs will now be created as subdomains of this mega site. I want this domain to grow into a sound do-it-yourself improvement site, and a resource to find tips and help about many different topics under the sun. I figure, I’ve yet to venture out into podcasting (sound) but if I ever do that .. or into vidcasting (video) .. I would probably start wetting my ears somewhere in this domain 🙂

4) PetLvr.com = “PetLvr” Brand

I will probably do this last, as I am currently trying to fix the archives, clean up and rearrange categories and tags, trying to figure out a way to stop spammers from creating FREE blogs at PetLvr.com/mypet ..etc. I haven’t decided yet if I will be moving the blog to the root directory, but I will be consolidating all of the support sites (which I segregated at the end of Year 1) back into the PetLvr domain .. the “LVR-Series” of blogs, as I like to call them … DogLvr.com CatLvr.com BirdLvr.com FishLvr.com HorseLvr.com and even PapillonLvr.com .. Consolidation will also allow me to segregate even further existing categories into new sites.

5) HARTmarket.com = “@ HART Market” Brand

I am experimenting converting sites strictly for affiliation and marketing purposes, that will ultimately have products to sell (versus monetization through advertising and other routes like that) and have setup a few sites already … pets.HARTmarket.com .. halloween.HARTmarket.com .. lingerie.HARTmarket.com and a few others that are still disjointed and I’ll leave out for now .. Oh, I did resurrect my old cafepress site (cafepress.com/1800HART) and am trying to figure out a way to mask this domain and redirect it to run through HARTmarket.com – but, haven’t figured that out yet ~

6) Everything Else – “HART (1-800-HART)” Brand

For now – I have ideas but, not convinced they are good ideas. With the many other sites that I have floating around this network .. consolidation might not be suitable and there is merit for having stand-alone sites. So, in this case .. I will just call this last group the “HART” group.

If you haven’t yet read how I consolidated all of these sites – from many domains to just a few subdomains – it took me a painstaking amount of time to do this and research my methods .. and if interested – check out my reorganization post and my reogranization post #2.

Help With The NEW PLAN for Year 3

On October 12, 2007 .. after many months thinking about it .. I finally put out a shout out that I am officially looking for new writers to help me take the HART-Empire Network to the next level. Deborah Ng kindly placed an ad on one of her sites .. Freelance Writing Gigs … and the response was enormous.

I received over 50 qualified applications and emails are still trickling in. I hired two new bloggers last weekand I could probably hire at least 10 more bloggers tomorrow – if I could afford it. And, after that .. I’m sure there are about 20 more in the lot of applications that I could find positions! I was very pleased, to say the least, with the results. I shouldn’t have to put out any new calls for writers until mid-2008 hopefully!

So .. Meet The New Bloggers!

I am so delighted to introduce, officially, two wonderful additions to the HART-Empire Network .. I am thrilled that they have come aboard to help kickstart Year 3, and in complete amazement that somebody actually wants to work with me 😀

Please check out the new blogs .. the new writers .. and join in their conversation! I’m sure they would like that!

* Gloria D. Gamat – Gloria takes over the “Battling Arthritis” blog (RSS), which is a *NEW* blog part of the newly consolidated .. “Battling For Health” site

* Lelsy Maranan – Lesly takes over the “Battling Cancer” blog (RSS), which was formerly known as the Battling-Cancer.com blog

AND NOW LET’S PARTY!

Today, October 24, 2007 .. I will be off to party with a bunch of party animals also celebrating their blogiversary this month … at Liz’s Successful-Blog.com running all day between 7am and 11pm CST

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

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

It seems that “three times is a charm” and, like June 2007 and July 2007 … August 2007 was another transitional month for me, and the HART-Empire Network. First, I was away on vacation from August 3 to August 20 .. but, I did have my trusty little laptop with me and access to the internet with my EVDO access (it’s a PC card you plug in and like a cell phone number with high speed internet data stream attached). And secondly, as I referred back in my July 2007 earnings post .. I desperately needed to upgrade my new Virtual Private Server into a full-blown Dedicated Server on August 1, 2007.

The thing with schedule upgrades is that it’s quite frustrating when schedules are not followed. My VPS account didn’t get upgraded until August 9th, 2007 .. and then we had to wait for the name servers to kick in for the move and transfer. When the smoke cleared, it seems that my host inadvertently forgot the BIGGEST site of mine (PetLvr) and the name servers had kicked in! It took until August 11th and into August 12th when everything was finally transferred properly. However, by August 15th it was evident that the standard RAM added to the dedicated server (1 GIG) was not enough and there were still glitches in the running of my network. I upgraded to 2 GIG RAM and everything seem to have been working fine since August 15th (knock on wood). If I had to, I will upgrade to 4GIG RAM and after that .. probably split this network up and shake things up a bit more!

As for the August 2007 earnings … here they are below. The switchover to the dedicated server and the extra week lost in my PetLvr account definitely shows in the Google Adsense earnings – as, I did NOT hit the $100 payout for the month of August 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 – $701.72

** Year-To-Date Gross Earnings (Jan-Aug/2007) – $4,329.08
* Average (YTD) $17.82 per day or, $541.14 per month

Reflection

Despite my difficulties and third monthly slowdown .. it was nice to see an increase in revenues – even though it was slight. But, cash outflows were back to normal. In August, 2007 .. while I was on vacation .. I decided to try some Private Label Rights (PLR) content for some of my sites around the network .. in addition to the free Ezine articles that I use or attempting to hire any writers. There are some pros and some cons associated with using PLR content, and right now from where I sit .. the pros outweighs the cons.

* By the way .. for those interested in what my dedicated server finally costs me .. it will now cost $263 USD per month .. $179 USD per month hosteing by SingleHop Brand (or midPhase). Because I’m not computer savvy, I opted for the general management package of $69 USD per month to have a “just in case something does happen, don’t look at me” policy .. plus an extra $15 for the extra 1 GIG RAM Memory. Believe me – I am quite aware of the ratio of hosting costs to my earnings are, and (as one person commented to me … ) HART’s out of control!

Well .. It’s September 2007 now – and everywhere you go … the back-to-school stuff is starting to slow down and I already see Halloween merchandise at the stores. Pretty soon .. it will be XMAS 2007! Are you ready? I hope HART-Empire-Network.com will be ready .. working .. and able. For September .. I am trying to get a new network wide template in place, and actively being with content and blogging on some of my obscure little domains that I have .. and, also signing more sites up to TLA and Linkworth than I have at the moment (less than 25% is setup). I will be reviewing some of the things that I do have that is not working and seeing if I can’t do something interesting for the XMAS season. For instance – it appears that I apparently have $87.00 or so in my Cafepress accounts … which, I forgot I even had!

Take care
HART (1-800-HART)

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

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

July 2007 was another transitional month for me, and the HART-Empire Network. June 2007 resulted in me shutting down most of my blogs and a real slowdown due to off-line work requirement. The first half of July was tidying up all the loose ends and making sure everything was working fine and running. Then – I started to post on the weekends with my EVDO Internet Access on my laptop at the cottage on weekends.

I soon found out that despite upgrading and combining both of my old Mega ISP#1 and Reseller ISP#2 accounts into a single Virtual Private Server (VPS) .. it was NOT enough. With all my blogs and sites, over 50 of them, the CPU resources and other system resources were reaching the maximum allowed. And, when my VPS system reached the maximum resources … what did it do? It killed resources. This shuts down my entire network. There is no email. You can’t access my sites. I can’t login to any sites. It is very frustrating! Mostly, because while I am a quite computer savvy person, I am not a linux or tech support type of computer savvy person. It took me a whole day (the first time it broke down) to understand that the tech support person who couldn’t just flipped a search and reboot my server in 10 seconds .. decided to waste me about 6 hours trying to teach me what to do. It took about 6 hours because this tech guy was not a good teacher, and gave me bum instructions, and inadvertently created other problems by trying to teach me (renaming my password, etc – stuff like that).

So – again – I basically shut down my blogs for the last half of July and was debating what to do. I have finally decided to upgrade to a fully dedicated server and just get it over with – that happened yesterday August 1, 2007 and they are still getting everything ready. I’m not sure if technically you are reading this from the old VPS or the dedicated server. I just know that whatever I earned in July – I should be grateful (and a little lucky that sponsors didn’t walk away from me) and I am optimistic about moving forward with August and promoting the HART-Empire Network.

As for the July 2007 earnings … here they are. 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

** Year-To-Date Gross Earnings (Jan-Jul/2007) – $3,627.36
* Average (YTD) $17.11 per day or, $518.19 per month

Reflection

Despite my difficulties and second monthly slowdown .. it was nice to see an increase in revenues. But, cash outflows were high in July 2007, and exceeded my cash inflows again, but just barely. There were three things that contributed to my cash outflows:

* I contributed $300 on account of the new Dedicated Server. As it turns out, my final monthly price will now me $179 USD per month, hosted by SingleHop Brand (or midPhase). Because I’m not computer savvy, I opted for the general management package of $69 USD per month to have a “just in case something does happen, don’t look at me” policy! Maybe I’ll learn a little as we go along and do not need that additional expense, but I’d rather pay it since I can afford to – and have it, than risk something really bad happening to me.

* My first EVDO bill came in July .. that’s on an accrual basis – in CDN$ funds. I just paid that plus a little extra scheduled for tomorrow, to pay off last month’s bill and just in case I was over for second part of July – I wanted to pay something on account, so it won’t stop me from blogging in August at the cottage.

* I bought a new “PAID” wordpress plugin in July! WP-CLONER – I have great plans for this plugin. I’ve set up a master blog in my network, and will be keeping it current with all the plugins I want and templates .. and then I will just (as they say..) CTRL-C the settings directly to all my other blogs automatically! I’m still setting it up, and about halfway through setting up FTP and logins etc to do that .. I will be posting a better review of it after my first update.

Hope everybody is having a good summer! I will be away on vacation for the next few weeks at the cottage, but will be popping back home for a day or two in between .. and have access to the internet and all my emails.

* This is a looooong post! If you prefer to just read the “Short Version” .. click HERE!

I used to have two ISP servers. ISP#1 was a super-mega account, downgraded a few notches to just a mega account. ISP#2 was a reseller account that I used to create and build up sites in the HART-Empire Network. I found both accounts at a reasonably managed level to pay and service was spectacular and I never had any downtime, that I can think of .. or any server crashes or problems. Support and service was exceptional.

But – around the middle of May 2007 .. I found out that I had already exceeded my monthly alotment of bandwidth on the ISP#1 account, and perhaps it was time to upgrade. I decided to slow down on my postings around the network, but by the end of the month I had exceeded my bandwidth limits by over 18 GIG traffic. My ISP#1 wanted me to upgrade to a larger account. However, the bandwidth limits on this larger account would have been that I would have exceeded my bandwidth alotment by 3 GIG if it remained the same. It was obviously not enough.

Dollar-wise .. combining the two servers .. I was paying about $800+taxes per year to host all of my sites. A few years earlier, it was about $960+taxes per year. In June, I was charged $180 for the excess bandwidth usage and if I were to upgrade to the plan that was suggested to me, the annual cost for my ISP#1 would have been about $2,200+taxes (CDN).. plus, $420 USD for my ISP#2.

THAT’s What Prompted Me To Move Servers .. Hosting Fees – I admit that

Overall, if you translate that into a monthly fee, it probably would equate to about $240/month USD equivalent. But, that seemed a lot to me, and in both cases for my ISP#1 and ISP#2 .. the prices were actually discounted, assuming I would pay it in advance in one lump annual sum. That’s a lot to cough up at once – even with planning – and my online revenues were just being eaten (or rather reinvested) back into financing the growth of the HART-Empire Network.

I ended up with two choices of ISP’s to move to:

(1) GLOBAT.com – I actually hosted my curling blog on this server, and by far (in my own humble opinion), this is the best server hosting deal and cheapest price with respect to both hard drive space and bandwidth that is out there. But, I don’t think it would be good enough for a multitude of sites, except perhaps a small handful.

(2) MIDPHASE.com – I personally have never used them, but there are big names out there from my Bloglines and daily reads that I respect and trust their opinions, and in addition to that – all stories, reviews, and research seemed to indicate that this is a reliable company.

I selected MidPhase as my choice for the new server

But, you probably know that already – as I documented earlier … I closed both of my ISP’s and transferred everything into a new Virtual Private Server (VPS). If you are unfamiliar with how hosting plans work, I just quadrupled the length of this post and added some extra information about hosting that I pulled from Wikipedia .. BELOW!

PS: Virtual Private Servers are also shared servers, but in my case and VPS-PRO account that I selected, the bandwidth is unmetered. Unmetered bandwidth appealed to me because it’s unlimited. On my old ISP#2 reseller account, I had to allocate limits for bandwidth on each account. However, if an account got stumbled upon or dugg (which never happened btw – but could have) I could reallocate bandwidth limits among accounts. On this VPS Server, with unmetered traffic, the only limitation is the System resources that it uses. Blogging and accessing MySQL databases access a lot of CPU resources, and my limit of resources available on my VPS is 25% of total available resources.

PPSS: midPhase.com is where the shared hosting is, and Autica.com is where the VPS and dedicated server hosting is. There are a few other sites that are used by them as well.

I have a lot of blogs in my network and domains with non-blog sites .. and bottom line is that when I hit or reach the maximum allowed CPU or System Resources, for server starts to kill systems and resources to keep the server active. Unfortunately for me, this happened to me last Monday July 16, 2007. It was unfortunate for me, because I couldn’t figure out how to reboot the system .. and some of the killed systems and resources ceased access to all my online sites, and emails.

I took only a few screenshots of resources – which, is at a point in time and not a dynamic and changing resource graph. This means that although I might have reached a maximum resource usage, I might refresh 20 seconds later and the usage may be 0%. It’s all relative. Anyway, feel free to click on the thumbnails below, and just hit your BACK key to return to this post.

VPS Resources – Clean Slate – Before I transferred everything over – June 8, 2007

VPS Resources – June 26, 2007

VPS Resources – June 29, 2007

VPS Resources – July 23, 2007

SHORT VERSION

That last screenshot was taken about 2 hours ago .. Today I decided to upgrade from a Virtual Private Server Pro account to a Dedicated Server Pro. The schedule move from the Virtual Private Server to the Dedicated server will take place August 1, 2007 – *knock on wood* – if everything goes according to plan.

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HOSTING INFO

Shared Web Hosting Service

A shared web hosting service or virtual hosting service is a form of web hosting service where more than one instance of the same web server is hosted on a single physical server. This is generally the most economical option for hosting as many people share the overall cost of server maintenance. – Wikipedia

Reseller Web Hosting Service

Reseller hosting is a form of web hosting wherein the account owner has the ability to use his/her allotted hard drive space and bandwidth to host websites on behalf of third parties. The typical web hosting reseller might be a web design firm, web developer or systems integrator who offers web hosting as an add-on service. Reseller hosting is also an inexpensive way for web hosting entrepreneurs to start a company. Most reseller hosting plans allow resellers to create their own service plans and choose their own pricing structure. In many cases, resellers are able to establish their own branding via customized control panels and name servers. – Wikipedia

Virtual Private Server

A virtual private server (also referred to as VPS or virtual server, and abbreviated VPS or VDS) is a method of partitioning a physical server computer into multiple servers that each has the appearance and capabilities of running on its own dedicated machine. Each virtual server can run its own full-fledged operating system, and each server can be independently rebooted. – Wikipedia

Dedicated Server

A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of Internet hosting where the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have full control over the server(s), including choice of operating system, hardware, etc. Server administration can usually be provided by the hosting company as an add-on service. In some cases a dedicated server can offer less overhead and a larger return on investment. Dedicated servers are most often housed in data centers, similar to colocation facilities, providing redundant power sources and HVAC systems. In contrast to colocation, the server hardware is owned by the provider and in some cases they will provide support for your operating system or applications. – Wikipedia

Managed Server versus Non-Managed Server

Dedicated hosting server providers define their level of management based on the services they provide. In comparison, fully managed could equal self managed from provider to provider.

Note: The provider will continue to maintain security on the network regardless of support level.

– Wikipedia

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

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

June 2007 was a transitional month for me, and the HART-Empire Network. I basically shut down my blogs for half a month while moving to a new server. And, it was quite a challenge. I wasn’t moving one or a handful of blogs .. I was moving over 45 blogs in total. SIX of those blogs shared the same MySQL database and the actual database .sql file was over 400 MB in size! It was quite hard to backup, and even during restoration .. there were issues because of its size. I managed to segregate all the six blogs into a unique MySQL database for each blog .. and get that working.

As for the June 2007 earnings … 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. At the moment, I am at the cottage and there are a few small accounts not verified. I will update during the week.

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

** Year-To-Date Gross Earnings (Jan-Jun/2007) – $2,954.70
* Average (YTD) $16.32 per day or, $492.45 per month

Reflection

Costs were high in June 2007, and exceeded my cash inflows. First, I got hit with an $180 charge by my old ISP#1 for the overage of the bandwidth levels in May 2007 .. which, equates to $10 per 1GB Bandwidth overrun. My bandwidth on just 6 sites – including PetLvr and 1800HART was 33GB in May 2007. I’m also paid up for the first three months (jun-jul-aug) with the new ISP#3 quarterly VPS plan. A whole bunch of domain renewals came due and I renewed them all. The next batch is in September, and I’ll probably renew them later this month before I forget.

The big news (and new monthly expense) is that I started an EVDO account June 30th, which gives my laptop hi-speed internet access where ever there is cell phone connectivity .. and besides signing up for a 3-year contract, I had to “buy” the PC EVDO Card for about $100 plus taxes (CDN). For the first three months, my cost is $60 CDN per month based on 500MB transfer per month. I have no idea what that translates to until my first bill – as, I will be using this all July! After that, I get one free downgrade to the minimum $45/month fee it will cost me in the off season .. and then I have to pay $25 each time to max out the plan to next summer’s monthly fee of $90 .. and then to downgrade again in September to $45 per month. It’s a vicious cycle, but as you can see with my online earnings – I think it is a valid expense at this time. Last year, my blogging empire began to dwindle while I was out at the beach enjoying the summer. Now, I can still do that – but, at night check in with the virtual world and keep my blogs posted.

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

I posted my 2007 earnings for the period January 1, 2007 to April 30, 2007 last month .. OVER HERE ..and it is my intention to update it every month – and “keep score”. It’s also my hope to show all the “newbies” and even the “not-so-newbies-but-been-around-the-block-too” people .. that it really does take time to get things built up and to a level where you can earn revenues from online activities.

I have now been officially blogging for MORE than two complete years as my PetLvr site reached it’s 2nd anniversary on May 31, 2007. Personally, I think whoever says that they are making money within their first six months are either “the exception”, lying, or will eventually burn out and never make it long-term. I don’t think I could ever have made money within the first six months .. however, I chose not to invest money or advertise during my time blogging .. and recognize that 2 years before one starts making money might be a little longer than the average person. If I didn’t have my online career and the slowdown every Jan-June from lack of involvement and time reasons .. well, I believe I would be way ahead than where I am today.

I’ve learned to be patient with the earnings part (and hopefully not annoying of my readers) but anything goes with the monetization aspect .. in the hopes not to be reliant on one sole source of revenue. Definitely, Text Link sponsorship has helped me get a boost in my earnings and as for Google Adsense .. it’s hard not to take advantage somehow and use them on the sites.

Here is what my earnings looked like since DAY ONE for both adsense and text link sponsorship .. so .. be patient! As you can see, I’ve only been using TLA for 1-year and I’ve earned more than double what adsense was for 2-years. I see real estate space for future TLA earnings, but limited to my sites and their potential. For adsense, there are other variables that I keep in mind (mostly traffic) but I think might have the greater exponential growth possibility. I could be wrong though! 😀

I might add, that in case you were interested in sponsoring a text link on any of my blogs .. please check out: HART-Network.com/advertise/ …

*Gratuitious Link*

It’s Also A Good Idea To Start Keeping Track

I’m using the Google Spreadsheet Document and constantly update it as I go along, and free to look at my figures, or even my formulas or the way I set this up .. for your own use!

* Here is the link: HART-Empire Network Earnings Spreadsheet Document (I hope you can’t change anything and it really is in VIEW mode – it’s hard to tell because I’m always signed in with my Google Talk! If not, please do not save any changes :D)

Obviously, 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 (previously reported as $476.08)
* May 2007 – $620.99

** Year-To-Date Gross Earnings (Jan-May/2007) – $2,322.23

* Average (YTD) $15.38 per day or, $464.45 per month

Reflection

I’ve added more information related to my costs and net earnings. In May, I received a cheque from Hear and Play Music for $15 and somehow, my account at AuctionAds earned $0.77 and I’ve adjusted April figures.

The big news is that I am moving servers this month to my new ISP#3 .. MIDPHASE, and have already begun the process with my backups and well, payments. I’m expecting a surcharge for the additional Bandwidth that I used up in May at my ISP#1 .. and an extra sub-contract support to help me segregate MySQL database at ISP#1 but, so far – Year To Date (Jan-May/2007) my cumulative net earnings were $1,046.67. And, when you subtract my June payments already made .. $346.76 .. I don’t know where the difference went to – because, I’ve only got less than $10 in my Paypal account at this moment.

*some day* Hopefully some of my paypal earnings can get transfered back to my credit card, or my savings!

I can only hope it’s before Xmas 2007 – when I wish I have saved enough for a mini-vacation getaway with my wife.