Alex Le’s Blog

Websites As Businesses

Running a website should be considered as running a business, albeit a unique kind of business that everything is virtual. The designs and implementation is no longer the most important part. Managing contents, marketing, SEO-ing, and monetizing become a lot more critical, especially if the site is within a niche and crowded markets. Google is now rising to be the big G of the web: getting “Google-slapped” means dropping number of ads clicks and losing revenues from advertisements.

How profitable is a website?

Very and varied. When a site reaches a certain “critical mass” in terms of visitors, page views, Google page rank, it can pull in at least a couple hundred dollars a month. Smaller content-based sites (such as my website) can pull in a couple bucks to $10, $20 a month. On the other hand, there is a few blogs that pull in $1,500 to $2,000 dollars on average a month from advertisements. Other more successful blogs pull in $20,000 to $30,000 a month. John Chow’s personal blog is a notable one as the mastermind behind it publicly posts the monthly income on his website (that is also one of his marketing/PR techniques too).  Mega site MySpace’s revenue is up in the hundred of millions and a writer from Forbes estimated the 1B number.

True story:  a friend of mine is running a non-for-profit search page (www.searchkindly.org) that collects advertisement money and donate to charities.  He was able to raise $817.25 for March alone.  It is quite amazing to look at his “proof of giving” page.

With that kind of revenue, running a website as a business is much more profitable than any other kinds of investing, including real estates. The downside is that it takes a certain kind of people to run such a virtual business since there is no schools, no classes, no books to teach you about making a living off the internet. There are e-books being sold all the time with the promise of teaching you how to “make $5,000 a month from home in your pajamas using your laptop “, but I highly doubt the contents and techniques from such sources. There are certain things you can pick up and learn as you go. Making a money off the web is certainly one of them.

If you talk to people around you about making money online, most people will look at you with puzzled eyes. They probably won’t be able to grasp the concept of how a banner and some text links can generate such money. Alchemy they think. But as the internet become more and more crowded, the site that can generate leads and capture visitors attention will certainly win the breads.

Where should one start?

The easiest way is to start a blog and start writing about your favorite hobbies and ideas.  I love web technologies, I love coding, I love making money so this is the theme of my blog.  Your interests is different than mine, but it is something unique and better yet, you can start making money off it right away.  John Chow’s advice is to write not about money but what you love. He is making money doing exactly just that.

If you can program a web application then it is even better way to make money through both advertising and subscriptions.  However, the efforts will be significant higher.  Trust me.  It still hurts me every time I think about all the failed ideas, postponed projects that I worked on over the years.  Motivation and PERSEVERANCE is the biggest key to success.

The risks associated with such an endeavor is also mountain-high if you financially invest in it.  The risks get even worse if you don’t have the technical background and hire developers to implement your ideas.  The cost of developing an application is not cheap, at all.  You will get conned, get ripped, get sold on compromises, and delayed deadlines.  Your dream idea can become a nightmare, both emotionally and financially.  If you are not tech-savvy, then don’t start a web project until you find the right team and the right technical person to relate to.  Otherwise your loss is guaranteed. Speaking from my own personal experience, the best way to start a small web application is to have a team of 3 people:  1 designer, 1 lead developer/ thinker, and 1 co-programmer.  At an average rate of $50/hour per person, the numbers adds up quickly.

Can anyone make money off the web?

Yes.  You have to pick a point where you want to start.  Visiting lots of other sites with proven revenues to get ideas.  Experimenting with your site to generate more ideas and use that as the launch pad for other stream of revenues.

In the coming months, I will share more of my experience of making money online so definitely it will be more interesting.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading lately.  I read a lot of blogs and somehow I get clicked with a few personal finance blogs which I discovered from the personal finance section in alltop.  My favorite ones are 7Million7Years, MillionaireMommyNextDoor, Brip Blap (funny name, try to say it fast), IWillTeachYouToBeRich.  There are lots of gems from these sites and I’m glad that I can learn from their mistakes and how they work their way to be “rich”.

In terms of monetary gain, how much have I earned from these blogs?  A lot.  AJC from 7M7Y talks about the “magic number” and how to balance life and money.  This alone worths at least 2 million dollars to find out (that’s my magic number).  Millionaire Mommy blogs about how to take advantage of the market and investing in real estates.  This can worth at least a couple thousand dollars.  Meanwhile, Brip Blap wrote about his journey of losing 100lbs and building wealth, at the same times giving out free tips to increase salary to 6-figures.  Ramit from IWTU2BRich wrote an excellent post on the barriers, or the thoughts/actions inertia.  Suddenly I remember the wise words of Professor Orogun:  “People always find ways to fail, while I find ways to succeed.”

Success or failure, It is all in the mind.

The lowest level of success is money,  but it is usually the hardest one to achieve (you’ll find a lot more poor poets than rich poets, a lot more musicians than rich musicians, hence a far more many people than “rich” people).  The common theme running across the personal finance blogosphere is living frugal below your means, not getting into bad debts, investing smartly, and finally starting a business to generate passive income.  Get busy and get rich.  If you are not busy producing, then you are busy spending.  Brip Blap hit the nail on this one regarding saving more or earning more (ideally both should be done at the same time).

Instead of spending time to experiment with different investing tools, I can read directly from these excellent individuals’ experience.  Maybe I won’t start or get into the same business, but the ideas and the thoughts being provoked are equally important.  Instead of working for money, I am working towards my own number so that one day, I can have money worked for me.  Instead of sitting on my butt and think about what I should be doing, I am busy working ideas and projects.  It is like I am having a new mentality.  The transformation is great.

I am excited to see where I would head to in the future.  I cannot foretell, but I know what I have to do.  In the mean time, I’ll be a regular reader at the PF section at Alltop.  See you there.

I am updating the interface for the blog together with an upgrade to WordPress 2.5. Even though I like the simplicity of the previous design, I think it is time for a new change.

I still keep the 3-column design similar to the previous template, with an extra column on the left to hold extra meta-data about the post. The layout is based on the 960 Grid system and it works perfectly at bigger zoom factor and font sizes in both Internet Explorer and Firefox. You can try increasing the font size with Ctrl + (pressing Ctrl and “plus” key, Ctrl + 0 to reset to normal). Personally, I always read blog at 150% or so since I want to be able to sit back and scan through the text, instead of concentrating on just reading the letters. Also, the previous layout tends to break in Internet Explorer when the posts have different sizes. With the 960 Grid, this is no longer an issue.

There are a few ads now on the page. I am not trying to be the next John Chow, but at the same time, I want to start monetizing the blog more. Consider this an experiment. The revenue will directly go into the hosting fee and other good causes. I would like to see the blog become a small passive income source I love writing about my passions about investment, technologies, and other interesting aspects of life. I hope you enjoy my stories, and at the same time support the site as well.

If you want to advertise on my site, now is an excellent time to do so. Be sure to check back as I will post the statistics about traffic to site and advertising details on a later post.

There will be bugs within the blog as I have quite a few posts and pages, especially pages formatted to display code snippets. I will go back and correct them as much as I can. Going forward, it is my goal to keep the posts at the highest quality, in terms of writing, contents, and graphic illustrations. I’ll go for quality and quantity at the same time.

To sum up, here are the changes:

Technical:

• New design based on 960 Grid system
• Better layout and cross-browser support
• Scalable fonts to help you read the blog easier.

Updates and Improvements

• Permalinks will be updated to use post titles instead of numeric numbering. This will help Google and other search engines index the pages better.
• Begin to monetize with ads and banners.
• Officially offer advertising opportunities. Contact me for more details

Any comments and suggestions are welcome.

Sincerely yours,

Alex

It’s been a while since the last post. Personally I’ve been through a lot of pain, growing pains mostly. I was struggling with myself and the different thoughts and questions that keep on popping up in my head: who I am and what I am here for. I’m atheist, I can’t rely on a “God” person to come and show me the meaning of life. May be 42 is the answer (on a sad note, Douglas Adam passed away in 2000 so we won’t have his answer to the “42″ question either). Life sometimes is a puzzle that each person has to go through and find his or her own calling.

What’s been troubled me the most is … money. Truth is, I am always fond of money. The thought of making it and having it sit in my pocket (or bank accounts) make my eyes popped wide open and my adrenaline rushing to head. I’m not too crazy about spending my money though, except on books, investments, and the occasional travelings. For as long as I remember, I have always had the entrepreneurship spirit in me. I remembered when I was young, probably 2nd grade, my grandmom was in the PTA (should be GpTA - Grandparents Teacher Association). It was the end of the school year and the school would reward students with good academic standings with gifts. I was among those students, and my Grandmom was in charge of preparing the gifts for my class. The PTA bought tons of blank notebooks, probably because notebooks would make the most practical gifts at the time, besides they were cheap. Each pack of notebooks would come with the a bundle of paper labels (not even sticker labels — it was that long ago, say 18 years at least). I collected all the labels and had myself a decent amount of them. My next brilliant idea was to make a market of high-demand for cheap notebook labels. I managed to sell some of the inventory for a grand sum of 1500$ VND (roughly 7-10 US cents, depends on the exchange rate). That was my first venture, ever. It was a successfuly, considered the inventory was free and how cheaply I sold the labels.

In the next few years, since the entrepreneur blood was always bugging me, I started selling or trading stuff whenever I could. I once sold exam prep notes which I typed and financed the printing cost myself from my weekly allowance. However, in the end only I found myself giving away the print-outs to my friends for I felt that the *need* something to study better. Not all businesses are profitable (a.k.a. execution matters). Later I began to doodle, drawing Dragonball-Z characters and coloring them. My only customer was the neighbor kid. He bought my drawings for a total sum of 50,000$VND (~ $3 dollars). I was proud and kept the money to myself without telling anyone. Later on, it turned out that the little kid stole his parent’s money. Luckily for me I didn’t have to pay the money back. Not all clients are paying with clean, legal money.

It’s always fun remembering about the childhood time when I was one little boy. But my point is that I’ve always been money-oriented, e.g., always finding a way to make money. I understood vaguely that money is powerful, and I really do enjoying making it. I am just never big into spending, except my last 2 years of college when I found out about the plastic and spent my way on reckless forex and other investment services.

Money is important, evil, necessary, constrained, and liberating at the same time. Without money it would be hard to maintain my comfortable lifestyle. It is so evil that everybody are trying to win it over from the next person, only to find most of them failed and enslaved to the Money god. Money puts up this constraint that everyone has to work towards every single day to make enough so that they can put food on the table, or spend recklessly on the luxuries and self-indulgence, trying to justify why they are working so hard. Yet, enough money is a total liberation from this 9-5, 365-day cycle, and allows one to pursue anything his or her heart’s desire.

I found myself struggling with money. Financially I’m doing much better than me 2 years ago. No more credit card debts, even with a spotty credit history due to the many late payments after graduation when I was without a job. I am paying my car in cash. I helped my mom pay down a portion of the loan she had taken out for my education. I did a lot of things with my paychecks, most of which were beneficial (e.g., no wasteful spending on shopping and compulsive buying). Still, I feel I am still lacking something. My entrepreneur spirit tells me that there’s gotta be more to life than a 9-5 job with a regular fat paycheck. No matter how fat the checks are, they won’t never be enough.

I want to be retired when I’m 30. I still have less than 6 more years to achieve this, financially. I have lots of plans for investments, my own startups. Nonetheless, I increasingly find myself trapped in the 24-hour race between my fulltime job, my part time job, my freelance gig, and my own startup. On a regular basis I work for 10 to 12 hours a day. I found myself got burnt out, my health (especially my eyes) not as good as before. But I know I have to keep moving on. Still, each step forward is a step of self-reliance and self-struggle. Reading other people’s personal finance blogs, I feel the urge that one day, I will be able to share my story as well.

I don’t want to turn my blog into a personal finance blog, away from my root of geekery. But I do want to have a more candid conversation about money. I want to see the light, the liberation that money can bring at the end of the dark and winding tunnel. After working on my own startups many hours into the night, I realized that I won’t have enough courage and commitment if I don’t take my time and reflect what I am experiencing, internally and externally. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing — working too much for my own good may end up costing me more emotionally and physically. I still have tons on interesting things to write and share with the world so I might as well stop once in a while and tell my story. Head down coding may make me rich one day, but I won’t be as rich if I don’t enjoy life and give some back.
My goals for the blog are to

1. Revise and Upgrade WordPress to the newest version with my own design and template.
2. Start monetizing my Blog more. For example, my small question about Primerica turns out to be hugely successful. Since my goal is to be financially independent, I want to capture similar opportunities to make money.
3. Write more high quality technical articles about different technologies that I’ve been using. It’s been amazing working with Ruby on Rails and AJAX so it’s time to share.
4. Make my personal finance more public so that I can see it as a goal to achieve my financial dream. I will write more about the different investments as well as my portfolio gets bigger. It will be a shame for me to share my nest egg now (probably it’s only a quail egg, not the typical grade-A supermarket one) , but soon things will definitely change for the better.
5. Share my own story about life.

I guess my relationship with the Lenovo 3000 N100 laptop is a complicated one: as much as I hated the Home/End/Page up/Page down combo madness, I truely missed that 2 extra buttons that my Dell D830 doesn’t have. Now instead of just flicking my finger to hit Home or End, I have to move my entire arm to reach for either End or Home. Even though now I won’t make any mistakes with Home/End jumping as with the Lenovo, I have to slow down the typing with the Dell…. NO! Only if Dell put the 2 extra home/end button next to their Arrow buttons… Why can’t we just live happily with each other? Is it really that hard to design a good working keyboard, or is it me that just being picky about laptop keyboard?

“Good news everyone…”, as the Professor Farnsworth would say in his quite-mischevious voice, I have the fix for my crave for the Home/End buttons. AutoHotKey allows me to map custom shortcut to the keyboard, especially the Windows key. I mostly use the Windows key as the … boss key to quickly hide my stuff on the screen (Window + D), or run command (Window + R), or start Explorer (Window + E), even though these days I prefer xplorer2. With AutoHotKey, I was able to map Window + A to the Home Button, and Window + S to the End button, saving me from wiggling my arm around.

So if you are not satisfied with your laptop keyboard, give AutoHotKey a try. Maybe it will save you some aggravation.

Here is the small script to remap your Home and End button: AutoHotKey.ahk