Merendi Networks Updates
August 11, 2007 Posted by Tyler CruzThe user named CommunityRise.com made the following suggestion in a recent comment:
“On another note, I’m curious to hear about your slew of other sites accessible at your Mirendi network website. Could you maybe go down the list in an upcoming post and sort of spout your feelings on each website you own so far? I think it’d be a good read. Just a small paragraph for each one. Perhaps you’ve lost enthusiasm for one and another one is just on the backburner. And you’re considering selling this one and hiring a programmer/skinner for that one. When I look at that list, I can’t help but wonder where you stand at each one.”
After shuddering at his misspelling of “Merendi”, I felt his suggestion/request was a fantastic idea for a blog post.
A lot of people think that I’m just a blogger and that I make most of my income from my blog. Well, that couldn’t be further from the truth. The following will be quick summaries of the majority of my sites (some of them are secret, but they suck as well and aren’t worth mentioning anyhow).
I’ll give a rough breakdown as to how much they’re earning and where I ‘stand’ with them. I’ll have to keep the summaries short since I have so many sites.
Movie-Vault.com
Monthly Unique Visitors: 25,000
Monthly Unique Pageviews: 60,000
Income: Around $500/month from private ads, and $200 from network ads
My oldest site. It’s really gone downhill over the years at a slow but steady pace. I’m currently working on writing an epicly long revamp description for when I find a good PHP programmer. Unfortunately, I can’t find a very skilled PHP programmer who charges decently… I’ve been looking for ages. The forums are still alive with growth though.
PokerForums.org
Monthly Unique Visitors: 20,000
Monthly Unique Pageviews: 210,000
Income: Around $5,000/month from private ads, and $200 from affiliating
Basically I’ve done nothing to PFO for a couple years. Currently have some plans for improving the Reviews section though. But again, I need to find a PHP programmer… I do spent a lot of time dealing with advertisers though, so technically I put a fair bit of time into PFO, but unfortunately it is not spent improving the site.
TylerCruz.com
Monthly Unique Visitors: 12,000
Monthly Unique Pageviews: 20,000
Income: Around $150/month from private ads, and $300 from PPP/TLA/etc.
I actually spend the VAST majority of my time working on my blog. Reviewing sites, writing posts, promoting, researching, etc. requires so much time it’s not funny. It’s definitely a big gamble I’m taking. On the other hand, I love my blog…. Income is starting to increase so maybe all my hard work will pay off..
PublisherSpot.com
Monthly Unique Visitors: 1,400
Monthly Unique Pageviews: 4,000
Income: Around $50/month from referrals
Apart from my blog, PublisherSpot.com is the main site I’m focused on at the moment. I’m currently trying to review a couple new networks but just can’t seem to sit down and do all the researching and writing right now. The average network usually takes me around 6-7 hours to properly evaluate and review. Currently the site’s stats and income are not impressive, but I still have hope. A lot of hope 🙂
MMAForums.net
Monthly Unique Visitors: 3,500
Monthly Unique Pageviews: 16,000
Income: Around $100/month from private ads and $10 from AdSense
We’re now over 10,000 posts and have a bunch of great regulars on the forum… unfortunately our site is still fairly hidden from the public. I think a lot of this is becuase I went with “MMA” instead of “UFC”. I made the site before the huge UFC upsurge/craze.. just like I did with poker (I can spot trends, eh?) and apart from the trademark issues I wanted to avoid using “UFC” in the domain, I also wanted to be open to all MMA… such as Pride.. unfortunately UFC bought out Pride…
MovieForums.org
Monthly Unique Visitors: 6,000
Monthly Unique Pageviews: 26,000
Income: Around $100/month from private ads and $10 from AdSense
Ranking #3 on Google for “movie forums” and has over 800 members, but not many posts. I think people are just joining and not really sticking around. I haven’t touched the site since putitng it up other than the occasional plugin installation and few posts.
It’s actually growing quite a lot on it’s own, faster even than MMAForums.net… but not fast enough to warrant me focusing any time on it yet. I mean.. it has 163 ACTIVE members… all from me not touching a thing.. that’s quite a lot of self-growth..
PublisherForums.com
Monthly Unique Visitors: 1,000
Monthly Unique Pageviews: 2,000
Income: Around $100/month from private ads
This is one of my sites that I feel really bad about “abandoning”. I don’t want to abandon it, but I just have too many sites and only so much Tyler, you know? Hopefully I’ll be able to kick-start it to live again sometime. Maybe PublisherSpot will take off, and since the two sites are intertwined as “sister sites”, it could be just the thing the site needed. You guys could help me out by registering and participating on the forum. It’s actually a great forum, but just needs the traffic!
CookingForums.net
Monthly Unique Visitors: 1,000
Monthly Unique Pageviews: 2,500
Income: Around $60/month from private ads and $10 from AdSense
Similar to Movie Forums, it’s another site I left to just kind of fend for itself until/unless it grows big. Oh well…. $70 a month of passive income is still nothing to scoff at… I mean, that’s nearly $900 a year of money from doing absolutely nothing….
Starcraft2.net
Monthly Unique Visitors: 3,000
Monthly Unique Pageviews: 12,000
Income: A few bucks from AdSense
Similar to PublisherForums.com, this is a site I regret not having enough time to work on. I mean, it has 65 active members with a few new registrations per day. I just don’t have time to work on all my sites… Once SC2 is released though I’ll most likely work on it again. It’s already showing a lot of traffic for a game that isn’t even near being out yet and without any work on my part…
Replayer.org
No traffic worth mentioning
Almost started this up again a couple weeks ago but then changed my mind. I may try selling it and use the money to run contests on my other sites. For those that don’t know, the programmer I hired for the site just left me high and dry over a year ago and ran off with my money and a half-completed project. So I’ve been very bitter about this project ever since.
CarForums.org
No traffic worth mentioning
Haven’t touched this site since I purchased it. I’d sell it if I got an offer where it was worth to actually sell. Like $5,000. I know it seems like a lot, and it is, but theres no point selling it for anything less…
TheTylerProject.com
No traffic worth mentioning
Somebody blog about this or send me some money and lets get this going again!
t33h.com
Sold a couple months ago for a small profit. Was happy to get rid of it.
GymnasticsForums.com
No traffic worth mentioning
I can’t believe there isn’t a gymnastics community out there… This is one of the only sites I’ve ever made that I didn’t have any interest in…
BadmintonForums.com
No traffic worth mentioning
One of those forums that was too hard to get off the ground due to competition and lack of interest… Still a great domain nonetheless.
Hypotheticals.org
No traffic worth mentioning
A site I made one day after seeing a lot of horrible web design service websites, and felt like mocking. Fortunately I managed to get it Dugg and make some cash off it anyhow.
Undeveloped Domains:
AlienForums.net, SC2.net, StarcraftForums.info, StarcraftForums.net, StarcraftForum.net, StarcraftForum.org, StarcraftForum.info, StarcraftTips.com, StarcraftHelp.com, StarcraftCheats.net, Starcraft-Forums.com, StarcraftBoards.com, AstrologyForums.org, AstrologyForums.net, WeightLossForums.org, HostingForums.org
Okay, that’s it. Hopefully that will lay to rest the myth that I only run this blog 😉
You seem to have too many projects going on, I mean focus on one build it up create a good steady community and then you can go to your new project.
The domains you have could bring a lot of money if you did it the right way and I guess you want more than you can handle a common problem in most of us.
Why not hire some kids to look after it with kids I mean college students etc that are looking for some easy money they can earn, look after creating content etc.
And php programmers just go to a programmer bid page and announce your job there a lot of indian and asian coders that do a really good job very cheap.
So get this going and do not start any new project instead cut down.
Do you mean that you can’t find a very skilled PHP coder on the cheap? Good!! Very skilled PHP coding shouldn’t be cheap. I like the idea of a world where people are paid well for their skills, rather than everyone trying to penny pinch and working long hours.
That being said, you can certainly find some affordable PHPers if you look in the right direction. Outsourcing is one option, though it’s not for everyone. Personally, I have found that the extra time required to manage outsourcing partners tends to nullify any great savings. Also, my experience has been that outsourced code tends to have more security holes in it (I don’t know if that’s because of skills or because North Americans expect things fast and cheap from outsourced labor, so the offshore programmer has his/her hands tied by that requirement.)
I go for Zend Certified Engineers. I might pay more, but the quality of the work is excellent and they tend to be more business-savvy/mature than non-certified programmers.
You gotta pay to play!
I am amazed. How do you have time to sleep or enjoy life? 😯
I have found that I need to focus a lot on my one site, to try to generate traffic and earnings. I hope to join you in the 4 digit range one day.
Very interesting post. Like others have said, you do seem to have a large number of websites to manage.
What percentage of your time is spent on purely maintaining your sites? as opposed to developing them or other ideas. Also what proportion of that is involved with private ads?
PHP? Tyler, the future is Ruby on Rails. Do check it out. You’ll get better code/website and probably at less cost too. This is because it takes less effort to develop with it. I use it for all my projects.
I’d recommend getafreelancer.com if you need any sort php work done.. used that site a numerous amount of times to get simple and complex things done for more-than-reasonable prices.. but I have a question for you Tyler..
How do you find so many people that are interested in private advertisement on your websites? Do they come to you or do you list your site somewhere..?
I had a ton of domains that I was only doing a little bit of work on each, nothing to make a big enough profit. I sold all but 1 on the domains I didn’t want for a very tiny profit. I didn’t care though as now I am in the green on domain sells with about 6 or 7 still left. Now I can start to develop the ones I want, and hopefully make some sweet recurring income like PokerForums.
A number of you have said the same thing so I’m going to respond to them all here.
Regarding focusing on a less number of sites – well sure, that would be wise, but I’m also here to have fun, and I often get bored working on the same site for a long time, and like to have enough sites where I can jump around enough and stay interested.
Regarding outsourcing – well obviously I know about these sites and have used them many times in the past. I could never find anybody that came even close to being half-competent… maybe I have very high standards but still… the quality of work those freelancers produce is questionable at BEST.
To Ellie: I only work 2-3 hours a day, the very reason many of my sites are not as built up as they should be is because I do not put enough time into them.
Not Just Another Entrepreneur: Regarding the time question – it really depends on what the site is. My blog for example did not take long to set-up, but sure takes a lot of time writing content for. Then there’s PFO where I basically do nothing other than work with advertisers. 95% of my work with PFO is dealing with advertisers.
To answer the question of how I find advertisers – I don’t. They contact me… That may sound a bit stuck-up, but it’s true. In fact, I always have an active _waiting list_ for PFO. I think advertisers just visit sites high on SERPS or with a decent traffic base and a nice design/PR and enquire about advertising.
So most of your ‘Private Ad Sales’ come from people that have just contacted you over the years from running your sites?
You haven’t ever actively seeked them out on like DP’s forums or something like that?
100% of them, yes.
Only once did I actively seek out advertisers. This was 3-4 years ago, just posting on WebHostingTalk.com once a month saying that Movie-Vault.com had open slots for advertisers.
With my first blog, it was the same way. I just had people email me and told me that their customers would like my site. It was only after I sold that blog and started another that I went back to those advertisers and ask if they wanted to re-advertise.
I’ve always struggled to get direct advertisers for my own sites, which is a shame because that is where the money is.
I’m impressed that with 20,000 visitors to the poker forum you generate such healthy revenue from it.
Movie Vault you’ve got big potential there, I see for instance your transformers review page has got some strange url “DqYTIPfRVsxQVGCP” and no title/description. I’m taking it, your search for a php programmer would incorporate making such pages more search engine friendly…
It’s funny, I spend a lot of time on some sites that generate very small profits and the bigger sites in my network, some of which I’ve not touched for a year, continue giving me monthly returns on max 1 hour of effort a month.
It is, indeed, a lot to be making off of such a moderate amount of traffic. But there are quite a few ads on there (I count 22, not including a number of text links), so it shouldn’t be too surprising.
I can also relate to what you’re saying about effort and profit not necessarily going hand-in-hand, and it can make it quite hard to know which sites are most in need of your time.
Re: SEO-friendly URLs. I dunno if Tyler’s standards are high or not, but even if they are, he shouldn’t have trouble finding someone who can implement them (or at least switch to ID numbers). There are two especially simple ways to go about it that even a mediocre programmer ought to be capable of.
It’s actually a lot more difficult than just adding a simple mod_rewrite to change the reviews, becuase of how poorly and intertwined the sites and scripts are.
In any case, I’d want the entire site revamped, not just to improve one or two areas… go big or go home, you know? 🙂
If they’re in a database, mod_rewrite should work fine. Granted, you might have to add a field and write a script to populate it, but it’s still pretty simple.
Anyway, even setting that aside, you could just set .htaccess to treat extensionless files like PHP or Perl files, and then parse the URL out. That’s what I did before using mod_rewrite.
I can understand the all or nothing approach, but I’ve found it can be pretty detrimental sometimes, too. In some instances, I’ve forced myself to implement half-measures in the midst of an overhaul because they can provide significant benefits in the interim and take very little time. Especially in those instances in which overhauls take weeks (or months).
I am so impressed with this, everything takes sooo much time for me. I have found easier ways of creating revenue and traffic though which has reduced the time required
This is a great post Tyler. I just posted a bunch of my earnings on my blog from July as well. I think it helps to give readers actual ideas of what you’re doing and what’s working.
I really think with your poker site you could be making much more money per month off affiliate income over paid advertising. However if you’re using it just as a steady income source, then the paid advertising is the safer route.
Keep up the good work!
-Justin
Well, there’s another reason why I prefer private advertising… which I won’t mention here but…. yeah 🙂
Makes more money? Repeat customers? No revenue split?
Spill the beans lol.