My 1,000th Post: 7.5 Years of TylerCruz.com
May 12, 2013 Posted by Tyler CruzThis is my 1,000th blog post (proof).
I first started blogging over 7 years ago, having made my very first post on October 21st, 2005.
I was 22 years old when I started it, and in a few months I will be 30 (which depresses me greatly). That means that I’ve been blogging for a quarter of my lifetime! Insane.
How It All Began
In interviews, one of the questions I almost always get asked is why I started blogging. Here’s the answer:
I was 22, living in my room in my parent’s basement and my websites at the time were just starting to make enough to where I could move out on my own and make a living purely from my websites.
This was May 2005, and while it may not seem like very long ago, making a living online at that time was actually pretty rare. At least, it wasn’t anywhere close to how widespread and rampant it is today.
At that time, I was an active and frequent user of a webmaster forum called Sitepoint Forums (the same company which later made Flippa). I was mainly active in their "Revenue" sub-forums, preferring to talk about how to monetize websites and grow income.
As I was about to move out from my parent’s place, I created a thread on the forums which documented my adventure of moving out onto my own. The thread became extremely popular and eventually I had a lot of people suggesting and requesting that I make a blog dedicated to my adventures online instead of limiting myself to the thread, and that is when my blog was born.
For those interested, you can read that original Sitepoint thread from 8 years ago.
I also did a follow-up thread 5 months later, which was even more popular.
In The Beginning
Originally, my blog was actually hosted on Blogger for about half a year or so. I then "invested" into getting my own TylerCruz.com domain for it in late December 2005.
My blog was also completely pink for it’s first year. Here’s what it looked like, courtesy to web.archive.org.
People always made fun of the colour, but I still stand behind my conscious decision for it. It was different, a bit funny and odd, and it stood out.
When I moved to WordPress, I used a free template and just modified the main header image. Here’s what it looked like.
By 2007, I was still using the same layout, but my blog was looking a lot better overall, with less whitespace, a thinner header image, and more information.
In October 2008, I had a major blog design upgrade to the design that stands today. I actually got it for free. Here’s a very thorough post all about it.
This is one of the early draft ideas:
Content Changes
When I first started blogging, my posts were incredibly horrible.
I was brand new to blogging, and took an extremely casual approach to it. Basically, my posts were glorified tweets. I didn’t really know what I was doing.
A lot of them were also very immature and self-congratulatory. I was 22 though, so I guess that can be expected.
Here are a few examples of some of my very early, horrible, blog posts. Warning: you will cringe.
- https://www.tylercruz.com/domainforumscom-gets-its-first-advertiser/
- https://www.tylercruz.com/couple-more-done/
- https://www.tylercruz.com/mutiny-on-the-bounty/
- https://www.tylercruz.com/w00t-2nd-advertiser/
Basically, my first 3 months are full of incredibly horrible posts.
You can view all 1,000 of my past blog posts here.
After the first 3 months though, they quickly started to improve. My posts were more of a journal at that time though. Basically, the majority of them were giving updates on what I was working on at the time.
As time went on, my posts included a lot more share/teach/review type posts. For a while, I went too far in that direction, being a bit too didactic in my writing, and doing too many promotional type posts and far too many paid reviews.
Currently, my blog is focused primarily on affiliate marketing, and I try to spread the posts evenly between giving updates on my own affiliate marketing efforts, and teaching what little I do know about it that I can, as well as reviewing and sharing related tools and services.
Blog Income (Banners Only)
I cannot give any sort of close report on my blog’s income over the years, as it’s pretty much impossible to track all of the affiliate and referral earnings that came from and as a result of it.
So, I’ll just share with you guys my private ad sales (banners) instead.
- 2006: $600
- 2007: $3,380
- 2008: $17,877.32
- 2009: $16,795.61
- 2010: $16,119.08
- 2011: $14,421.45
- 2012: $18,292.98
Total: $87,486.44
Again, this is only my private ad sales income from my blog. It doesn’t include any referral or affiliate income from it.
Stats
At the time of this writing, here are some interesting blog stats for you:
- 1,000 posts
- 21,048 legitimate comments
- 1,918,762 spam comments protected by Akisment
- 1,902 images (in blog posts)
- 34,340 WordPress users (probably primarily spambots)
- 46 contributors (Past guest bloggers, etc.)
- 93 different affiliate links auto-linked
- 40 polls
Metrics
- PageRank: 3 (Not that PR means anything!)
- Alexa: 49,053
- RSS Readership: 2,874
- Twitter Followers: 59,598
- Monthly Absolute Unique Visitors: 4,803 (Last 30 days)
- Monthly Unique Pageviews: 13,311 (Last 30 days)
My blog has never had very much traffic, but the traffic it does get is of extremely high quality.
The Future
It’s a bit overwhelming to know that I’ve been working on my blog for 7.5 years. That’s a long time. 25% of my life.
The scary thing is, I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon. Perhaps never.
I could very well be linking back and referencing this very post and these very words when I’m 40… or 50. Hello future Tyler…
If I do continue to blog, it will be very interesting to see where I’m at in another 1,000 posts from now. I should be around 40 at that time. Ah… depressing! Life is too short!
Thanks for reading my 1,000th blog post – I’ll be back with another post soon!
You have really come a long way, Tyler. You have, like they say, being there and done that. That’s why people continue listening to you. You certainly have a lot to share, based on your many years of experience doing this.
It’s also interesting seeing how you started. I hope newbies take a look at all these and realize that even the big dogs, like you, doing $30,000+ monthly profits today started exactly like them, from the beginning. For me, that’s the most important take-away from this post.
The fact that your initial posts were “incredibly horrible” didn’t stop you, neither should it stop newbies. The thing is to just keep going, keep improving and keep moving forward, like you, 🙂
I laughed out loud when you said turning 30 depresses you, but hey, you have a lot to show for it, so it should make you happy. You are making a lot of money and most importantly you are helping a lot of people today, than you were at 22. So, again, you have a lot to be happy for, Tyler.
Awesome post once again, Tyler. This has been shared and Kingged at the Internet marketing social networking site: Kingged.com, and a comment left, as usual:
http://www.kingged.com/1000th-post-75-years-tylercruzcom/
Wow great stuff, it’s nice to review things like this every now and then. I used to do annual reviews but have fallen out of the habit. I could probably handle a 7.5year review though. Reviews like this are actually something I encourage our NCEA tutors at http://www.pencilcase.co.nz to do
I remember discovering your blog from the sitepoint forums all those years ago. Had forgotten about you until I saw your posts at affposts.com, you’ve done really well.
Congrats man. You ave really come a long way.
Congratulation Tyler on your 1000th post on blogging! The journey of blogging for you in the past 7.5 years have been rewarding ( I guess it has come with some challenges!).
I am impressed by the way you described the road you have taken. Particularly, many new bloggers would be motivated by the fact that you have learned the rope of “writing” from the “horrible” to the now “near perfect” posts you have today. It readily tells that someone can be better if they consistently stick with writing.
More so, I like the way you have presented the data and statistics of your website from inception. It shows you are meticulous with data and keen to stick with evaluation. This should be emulated as it helps one to use the past to make future decisions.
Once again, congratulations, and I have learned the importance of documentation from this post!
I have shared the above comment in the IM social site – kingged.com where this post was shared and “kingged”.
Sunday – kingged.com
http://www.kingged.com/1000th-post-75-years-tylercruzcom/
Tyler,
Congrats! Its awesome to see how you’ve stuck to what you’re doing. I know you made some serious money over the years. I’m betting you’ll make even more over the next few.
MIchael
Interesting stats on Alexa. 50,000 rank with about 5000 visitors per month.
Put this in contrast to one of my sites – roughly same rank but 650,000 visitors per month!
Yeah, webmaster-related websites will always have a huge edge…
Alexa is a pointless rank to look at.
It generates these numbers mainly from searches people do using it’s alexa toolbar.
The toolbar nowadays is hardly used in the first place.
It’s mainly used by marketers who want to keep an eye on their “rank” which artificially inflates numbers for marketing/business related sites.
In theory, you could have a website targeted towards 8 year old girls which receives 22,000,000 unique visitors a day. This target market is unlikely to have the Alexa toolbar installed and would show the site gets virtually no traffic.
It’s always been pointless and always will be.
In ten years at your pace you’ll be let’s see
if you’re netting about $40,000 now in ten years you’ll likely be at least ten times that so lets say $400,000/month.
That’s $3.6 mil a year.
But the most important currency is time so how can you have ten times more free time?
That’s how you win the game of life.
For the last 5 years Tyler hasn’t really had growth. It’s stayed roughly the same.
To say profit/revenue will grow 10x in the next 10 years is a silly, really.
You can’t take his first years earnings into consideration when you look at the years following it.
He was referring to all my income, not just my blog’s income (which again, is only inclusive of banner sales).
My point still stands.
Your doing great with the affiliate marketing / PPC stuff and it’s bringing in good money… but that money is even less secure than the blogs banner ads.
It’s a very roller-coaster style way of making money and it’s very rare for someone to have consistent income via that channel over the years. Well, at the profit levels you’re currently at.
If he’s using that as an example, his 10x income is even more silly.
This is such an amazing achievement. Keep it up!
Congrats on blogging relatively consistently for 7.5 years! That is very impressive. I never keep my blog up to date. Especially lately as I’ve been focusing all my energy on affiliate marketing. Finally making some profits so it is very exciting! Reading all the case studies there are and testing everything out.
Finally had my first $15/day yesterday! Can’t wait to say it is $50/Day then $100/Day, etc. Thanks for the inspiration to try affiliate marketing. It’s a lot of fun but a lot of hard work. 🙂
Hi Tyler,
What a journey and development it has been, in addition to increases in income, you have taught me so much over these years and I hope you will continue to write about all the news, tricks and tips you learn.
Those are really great stats Tylor, you’ve achieved a lot in those 7 years. Unlucky I just found out about your blog today.
I’m trying to do the same, but so far no luck.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint. What I keep telling myself? Just keep on keeping on, 🙂
Tyler, in each of of your posts you dont stop surprising me. I think your quarter of life only blogging it has really brought you an amazing return. You really should be proud of that. Well worth it time spent! You dont stop inspiring me!
I have been a fan ever since I started in this industry! Keep up the good work and congrats! Looking forward to many more!! 😀
No words to wish you man! Glad to say one thing am also follower in your twitter account.
It’s really a long journey. Now I can see that you entirely depend on CPA. is it a reliable revenue source?
It’s definitely a major rollercoaster ride, so not exactly reliable, but the good months really help you ride out the bad ones…
Email subscribers are quite consistent. All you need is to build some consistent ones