* 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

** Year-To-Date Gross Earnings (Jan-Feb/2008) – $2,058.01
* Average (YTD) $34.30 per day or, $1,029.01 per month

Reflection

February 2008 will be remembered doubly for me

* The first month I broke $1,000 gross revenues. Adsense revenues have only picked up slightly although traffic has been increasing each month.

* The first month my sitemeter overall statistics exceeded 100,000 page views traffic. 100k! WooHoo!

I am pleased again that February traffic is still on the rise, overall – in the HART-Empire Network. There are a few sites that I still am neglecting, as my busy “offline” work is starting to interfere with my time availability. My pre-posting sheets help me visually watch out for things that gets too far out of hand, however .. and – YES – I’m aware that these 100k statistics represents traffic on about 30-50 blog or however many I have currently~ So, it’s not great when you look at the individual stats. I do look at them by the way.

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 .. 🙂 And, in February 2008 a little had to do with me catching up and paying my EVDO (laptop PC card hi-speed internet access) 4 months at once. Me bad.

* 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!

* 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)

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

September was another great milestone for me and my network .. I decided to consolidate my network into a handful of sites, rather than 50+ sites. This took a little doing for me, actually doing it 3 times I mean, because I had some obstacles in my way in getting everything to work properly with regard to transferring the old domains to the new domains, and the structure involved. I wanted to have mega sites .. with the format .. http://megasite.com/subsite/ but ended up having something like .. http://subsite.megasite.com ..

These are the mega sites created so far:

* http://BattlingForHealth.com >> BATTLING FOR HEALTH >> health and fitness and resources
* http://AndYouWill.com >> AND YOU WILL >> self improvement and related resources
* http://HARTmarket.com >> @ HART Market >> shopping and affiliated product sites and reviews including a newly created site Halloween @ HART Market offering hallowe’en supplies while they last! (I haven’t yet created the portal site for @ HART Market yet)

I will be writing an article documenting how I managed to convert everything hopefully, before the (Canadian) Thanksgiving is over. If you have been following my earnings pages here (the Woohoo! category) .. it

So, needless to say, I consider September 2007 another month of slowdown in my postings and well .. I think you can see this in my September 2007 earnings. I did reach the minimim $100 level payout with Google Adsense this time, but barely. It was mostly due to a splurge in postings over at PetLvr blog, for the Blogging Against Abuse campaign – I was blogging 9.27.2007 to help stop animal cruelty and pet abuse.

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
* September 2007 – $704.35

** Year-To-Date Gross Earnings (Jan-Sep/2007) – $5,033.49
* Average (YTD) $18.44 per day or, $559.28 per month
*** Still not enough to quit my day job!~

Reflection

The expenses were still high, and despite my revenue for September growed slightly over August, my expenses didn’t leave me with any profits. I continued my experiment with some PLR content and freelance writing costs, and trial and error, I will probably be continuing this for the next few months as I try to find out if there is a balance in easing my time in the content generation part of this business, before next season’s tax season comes upon me (where my meat and gravy is). Although, if I could net about $3,000-$5,000 per month I might reconsider where my gravy really is and shift my efforts with a greater consistency. Currently, for the 3 quarters ended September 30, 2007 .. it would appear that I have NETTED $1,317.65 USD in profits – but, I can assure you – there is no savings account or payal account filled with this profit. Oh, where does the money flow .. let my count thy ways.

I should note that on October 16, 2007 .. will be the 2nd anniversary since I created the HART-Empire Network. Hopefully, all of the consolidation and reorganization will be complete and I can concentrate on the postings and growth and promotion of all sites within this network of sites of mine.

If someone wants to advertise on any of my sites, I am still trying to create a nice advertising page over at HART-Empire-Network.com/advertise/ however, I’m kind of waiting until all the mega sites and domains are converted – so, I can do it right once for all.

Take care
HART (1-800-HART)

I’m Looking For Amazing Stories How You Saved One Animal’s Life

Having many blogs in my network, I feel completely justified in promoting this event on every domain and blog that I have at my disposal! Please help me pass the word around the internet, and if you can contribute .. please do!

On September 27, 2007 .. a wonderful thing will happen. Bloggers from all around the world will be “Blogging For A Cause”. I will be participating with my fellow bloggers, and am asking you to help me participate in this event. I will be blogging to .. Stop Animal Cruelty and Pet Abuse – over at PetLvr.com – [The Blog]

I’ve done three posts so far for this event

1) An Introduction Post

2) A Clarification Post

3) How we rescued Zeus the Cat

To paraphrase from the PetLvr Site …

You Too Can Participate on September 27, 2007

I will be posting letters from “PetLvr Readers” around the world that have rescued an animal and made a positive difference in the life of one animal. YOU are the hero! I would like you to email me your story. Every story I receive on and before this Thursday will be published and permanently maintained on the PetLvr website, under a new page called “PetLvr Rescue Stories”. I will also link your website if you have one, and post a picture of your pet if you provide it to me.

* Did you rescue an animal from the humane society?
* Did you take a stray dog in and give it a home?
* Did you know any animal being abused and reported its owners to the authorities?
* Did you save any animal from natural disasters, such as Katrina or the Peru Earthquake?
* Do you work for any non-profit agency and helped save the life of an animal?
* If you are a non-profit agency and would like to be linked to your website 9.27.2007

Then … PLEASE! Email me your stories to: hart (at) PetLvr (dot) com with the subject: 9.27.2007

* If you have a blog, you too can join in with thousand’s of other blogs around the world. You can stop the abuse about any topic (elder abuse, children abuse, spousal abuse, environmental abuse, domestic violence, sexual abuse, abuse in the workplace, etc) .. it’s up to you!
Just follow the link from clicking the above graphic, and if you are not already a member of BlogCatalog.com .. well, join in and add me (PetLvr) as your friend! and you will be able to see your image in the widget in the sidebar when you come back here on September 27, 2007!

* If you do NOT have a blog .. feel free to start a *FREE* blog at PetLvr.com/mypet/ made available by PetLvr.com and start blogging! I will link all participating posts from there back over onto the main PetLvr blog … so start blogging!

cc’ed around the HART-Empire Network!

* 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.