September 22, 2005
egads…
http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/launched August 18, 2005
made $76,000 in 30 days.selling 1 pixel for $1 usd but, you have to buy it in $100 lots.
That was an email that I sent my wife .. amazed that Brit ALEX TEW came up with an ingenious way to make money online .. and when I first heard about this. If you haven’t heard the story, you can either visit Alex’s website and blog or, even read up about in in wikipedia over HERE. By January 11, 2006 the final tally was $1,037,100 USD .. in 146 days ..
.. in 146 days .. My gawd. That’s amazing.
Anyway, I personally have been blogging since May 31, 2005 and basically they are shown in the sidebar, in the HART-Empire Network recap. It’s unfortunate that at times, my blogging might suffer due to working engagements – but that’s okay with me. I still tryto do what I can, when I can and you won’t find me making up excuses for not blogging or making excuses. But I do consider this and my blogging to be part of my business – the business of “somehow making a killing on the internet or some other reason without working too hard and retiring early” type of business! To do that I have created a simple goal for myself .. to be able to support a vacation for my wife and myself in December 2006 funded by my efforts here online.
To do this, I have a few things happening .. most of it is upfront and visible. This is basically the google adsense advertisements, the chitika eMini mall advertisements and amazon references here and there. Generally, I will receive a commission if clicked on the ads or if a sale is determined. I have also signed up to many sites and become an affiliate and try to get people to go to these other sites, make a purchase, and receive a commission. However, I am mostly doing this on 1-800-HART’s Picks blog. I have two online stores, one that is getting an amazing amount of hits, but hardly any sales .. but I pretty much ignore trying to make this site a success because I hate to pack orders, invest in inventory and stock merchandise. I have another site that doesn’t get much hits but have been consistently selling products – but the commissions are small. This site could do much better if I would pour more advertising dollars into the promotion but I just don’t have the resources or energy for that.
There are many more options available for me to better monetize my blogs and websites, but I know I am copping out and not spending the time to really learn and improve my efforts. For instance, I am a fan and read Darren all the time, and if I spent a day in this category I probably would be much better off.
So .. why am I telling you all of this?
In the course of my travels .. I come across many sites and when something NEW or different comes about, something in my gut just tells me – “Wait a sec .. Look at this! That’s neat!” That’s what happened when I came across Diane Ensey and her VA Journal – A blog about News, Events, and Information for Virtual Assistants. If you do searches for similar types of milliondollarpages or pixel advertising .. you will see that there are tons of people trying to capitalize what the original Alex Tew created .. trying to make their own million dollars.
What if you don’t want to make a million dollars though? What if you want to just finance a vacation in December 2006 for your wife and yourself? Now .. instead of selling a million dollar pixels and have a separate phony homepage … imagine having just enough for your vacation .. in your sidebar? Doesn’t this look great? I sure wish I had something like this for HART-Empire Network .. Hmmm… *thinking!*
But – if you think this is a great idea – you can advertise directly on the VA Journal … it looks like a great place to advertise, if you are a Virtual Assistant anyway .. I don’t really know for sure because I don’t really follow stuff like that. Perhaps, if you want to advertise on their site (for FREE) with up to a $1,000 USD value .. you can go visit Diane’s site and come up with a new logo and enter
The VA Logo Contest.
I dropped Diane an email a while back complimenting her on her decision to use this pixel advertising format in her blog (which I thought was really neat and still do) and asked her about it. While most of my business in with accounting and income tax, I also consider myself a problem solver, acting as a “Systems Consultant” because I don’t try to push things on people and businesses, but instead try to make the most of what I can with what they’ve got. There is always a better way out there, if you look for a better way. Sometimes it takes an outside person to see this. That’s why I think there are two great lessons to be learned in this post and my travels to the VA Journal Blog …
(1) It’s true – There’s always a new and different way to look at something .. often it can be for the better
(2) Virtual Assistants are capable of thinking out of the box too! Maybe they can do it for you too?
Now .. for Diane’s response about the pixel advertising ….
As for the pixel advertising, it really hasn’t been up long. I revamped VA Journal January 1st in order to really start monetizing it. I’m really concentrating on building readership now, which I am sure will drive the pixel advertising. In the next few months I also plan to start contacting some partner businesses like office supply companies, etc to see if I can’t solicit more advertising interest.
I am using the million-dollar script – while I could have figured out how to code it myself in PHP, I figured it was more cost-effective to just buy the script. It is nice because it handles the whole subscription process, from payment to notifications when the pixels are expiring. The script allows you to create rectangles of any size and gives you the code that you can plug into your site anywhere, which was very nice.
When creating the new blog I wanted to reserve the header as an area for bigger revenue generation. I also wanted to add a novel way for smaller businesses to advertise, which is why I chose Pixel advertising. I deliberately chose to start the blocks “above the fold” to draw readers eyes down.
I am going to “seed” the advertising by giving away a rectangle as a prize
to the winner of our logo contest and I am also going to advertise my own VA
business (www.digitalgybe.com) and create a better button for VA Journal. I
think that may jumpstart the process as well.
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