November, I love thee.
For November, the weather has been quite wonderful. 70+ degrees on Sunday, when it could just as easily be snowing this time of year. And my earnings thus far are greater than what I had anticipated. Even if my daily earnings were to drop to 50% of the current level for the rest of the month, I’d have had a successful month. I’m seeing earnings (potential) from three online advertising solutions, which pleases me as I am beginning to see the hope to launch multiple blogs this winter as a good investment decision that I should strongly consider following through with. If (BIG IF, though) the numbers I’m currently seeing for one site are any indication of the success (in money terms) of my other planned sites, earning 5-figures should be a breeze, or at least much more attainable than when I said, “The VERY AMBITIOUS, HIGHLY UNLIKELY goal for 2006? 5-figures (over $10,000 in one year).”
The big news in the blogosphere is the merger of b5media and About Weblogs. I’ve been quite impressed with b5media, but mostly underwhelmed by About Weblogs. That could be because I’m not the target audience of the current About Weblogs blogs, though. I suspect the move will be very good for b5media, but I think the announcement of the merger is premature and the announcement serves no purpose. In terms of blogs, a lot of people talk about “generating buzz” and “generating hype”. The b5media guys botched this, in my opinion. It could be that they’re focusing their efforts so much on blogs and generating revenue, that they got caught up in the excitement of the merger. Plus, I suspect there’s a false sense of urgency to ramp up and get big after the multi-million dollar acquisition of Weblogs, Inc. by AOL. (I don’t feel the acquisition has been accurately portrayed by the blogs I read. More on that some other time.) It could also be that the b5media guys don’t read as much internet marketing material as I initially thought.
Now is definitely the time to jump into “problogging”. Unfortunately, I also think that it’s time for the blogging bubble to burst. Earning a living off of contextual advertising is like gambling. (This is something I will also expand upon in the future.) While I hope to do some blog consulting, as I have been using blogs in various ways for the past 5 years or so, and consider myself as much an expert on the topic as other bloggers, I just don’t have the time to blog that much or invest the required effort to make a name for myself. I also have the unfortunate track record of not having any blogs to show for all of those years of blogging. I have quietly stopped blogging and removed 4 weblogs from the internet over the course of those 5 years, and am blogging anonymously on a site (and only for 4 months or so) that I have no intentions of revealing. I was too young to be a part of the first online bubble, but I’m in a position to potentially join this one by mid-2006. There is a lot of money to be made in a short period of time, I believe, and I just have to figure out whether I can balance an online career with an offline career in 2006 (and beyond). And of course, there’s always the issue of whether or not the bubble will even last that long!
But in the short term, November is treating me quite nicely. I can’t complain.
November 17th, 2005 at 1:18 am
[...] After realizing that I’d doubled my revenue, and that my November earnings were looking fantastic, my earnings each day have dropped and are flatlining. I previously said: Even if my daily earnings were to drop to 50% of the current level for the rest of the month, I’d have had a successful month. [...]