$150 46-Hour Week Challenge Results
December 6, 2007 Posted by Tyler CruzI was hoping to give regular updates of the challenge as it had progressed, but I was a bit unorganized due to a lot of posts that needed to be made (Paid Reviews, Paid Posts, Blog Earnings…)
This latest work week challenge for me was very interesting. All of my challenges have been very difficult and testing for me… in fact I failed the first 2-3 I did. But this latest challenge was by far the worst.
By the 4th day, I hadn’t clocked many hours, and was 75% sure I wouldn’t make it. By the 5th, I was 96% sure I wouldn’t. In fact, I had basically given up. But there was one thing that kept bugging me: it was the fact that I would lose $150. Now, it’s interesting, because it wasn’t the thought of simply losing $150 by not finishing the challenge in time that bugged me. It was the thought of losing $150 for no good reason that drove me insane. See, I don’t mind losing a few thousand dollars in poker from bad luck, or getting ripped off by some freelance programmer for a few hundred. I mean, sure, those things don’t make me jump for joy, but losing $150 when it’s myself that has to give it away because I decided to stop working just seemed utterly stupid.
And so, I couldn’t let it happen. With only a day-and-a-half left to work (my deadline was on the 2nd, but at 11:00am and I usually don’t wake up before 11:00 so I couldn’t count that as work day) I had to clock around 18 hours to meet my deadline.
Now, understand this: on average I work 3-4 hours per day.. on a good week. On a bad week I’ll work 0-1 hours. That means that on a good week, I’d only clock between 6-8 hours in a day and a half, so the thought of having to clock around 18 hours in that timeframe made me lose my mind.
But the $150 was always in the back of my mind. I was playing a lot of Starcraft each night too, so I could feel the inevitable withdrawal that would surely come when I would have sacrifice my Starcraft playing time in order to finish my challenge.
But in the end, I did it. The first night, I worked from about 11 or 12 at night until 7:30 in the morning, straight. It was a bit easier to do because I was all wrapped up in a huge headache with server troubles, then trying to modify OpenAds, WordPress, and various Plugins, so the time went by fairly fast.
I did more of the same headache the next night, and then before I knew it, I had just made my challenge, with 0.5 hours extra and about 7-8 hours to spare.
Here’s the daily log:
Nov. 25th 11:00am – Dec. 2nd 11:00am
| Date | Hours |
| Nov. 25th | 5.5 |
| Nov. 26th | 4 |
| Nov. 27th | 4 |
| Nov. 28th | 5 |
| Nov. 29th | 7 |
| Nov. 30th | 9 |
| Dec. 1st | 9 |
| Dec. 2nd | 3 |
| Total: | 46.5 |
It’s interesting how, in the end, it was the $150 investment I had into the challenge that actually lead me to finishing it. I can guarantee you that without that money penalty that I wouldn’t have even come close. And it’s interesting how the amount makes a difference; I’m not sure if I would have tried to work so hard if it was $75 or $100. But $150 starts to become more ludicrous to simply ‘throw away’.
I kept a mini-log of what I got done during all of these hours. Unfortunately, I didn’t get as much work done as I’d like to, nor did I get that review of NeverBlueAds done and visited their headquarters. But that may have been for the best anyhow since we were hit with a lot of snow during that time.
Please take note that the first three items in this list took 80% of my time when I wasn’t working on the server/OpenAds/Wordpress/Plugin stuff.
- Answered/read e-mails (I get a LOT of email)
- Wrote blog entries
- Managed advertisers (accounting, renewals, etc.)
- Spent 3.5 hours talking business to owner of Entrecard. Ended up getting 2 paid reviews and $20 out of it
- Wrote first Entrecard review
- Did happy dance when hitting new RSS record of 917
- Added 20 NTF entries to NTF (very time consuming, took an hour)
- Posted on PublisherForums.com
- Did insane happy dance when hitting new RSS record of 960
- Worked on setting up special advertising and partnership blog deal with Kontera
- Wrote AdToll paid review (3-4 hours straight)
- Talked business with AdToll about setting up special advertising and partnership blog deal
- Requested link exchanges on 8 large money making blogs. So far I’ve received one confirmed "no", four bloggers never responded (or haven’t yet), and three said yes. The three blogs I’ve exchanged links with are: CourtneyTuttle.com (1,000 Technorati, 20,000 Alexa, and #11 on 45n5 top 100 list), WRevenue.com (Has fantastic content and I’m sure will grow huge soon), and Entrepreneurs-Journey.com (2,800 Technorati, 13,000 Alexa, #14 on 45n5 top 100 list, and over 5,000 RSS). As a result of these links, I gained an immediate 950 boost on Technorati.
- Un-installed/deleted PHPAdsNew and upgraded/installed OpenAds
- Worked with my server administration company to do some PHP modifications and server settings in order to run OpenAds.
- Talked to various people on IM’s a fair bit, but discussion was business-related. Normally I don’t do these during my work sessions, but they were striking up deals and stuff so it counts 🙂
- Went through all my forums to tend to any spam, PM’s, and to make a few posts
- Negotiated special deal with AdToll (which ended up falling through last night)
- Spent around 4 hours trying to fix timezone issues on my server
- My computer started acting up (Alexa toolbar messing up my browser, and other things that just did not want to co-operate which sucked since I had like 50 windows open at the time), so I had to spend a fair bit of time fixing my computer (Installing AdAware, reinstalling Alexa, etc.)
- Talked more business on IM’s to various contacts. I got a lot done, but unfortunately 2/3 of the deals fell through. I’ll be phoning a guy tomorrow and hopefully that one will end up going through.
- Did my "bank" accounting. On the first of every month I do my financials (put money onto my CC, taxes account, RRSP, etc.) and requested cheques and EFT’s from various sources such as PayPal, Neteller, Moneybookers, etc.
- Sent a nice email to two local papers regarding running a story on me (using the $1,000 blog income as the angle). Unfortunately no response yet… which is fine. I’ll contact them again when/if I make $2,000 a month. They can’t ignore me forever!! Buhahahah!
- Spent a lot of time working on adding an embedded banner to all of my posts which would also appear in my RSS feed.
Awesome post Tyler, thank you for sharing!
I’ve been playing Starcraft ever since 1999, in fact I still have my illegal characters account on battle.net , I think you will know what that means. 🙂
I think I played way too much starcraft this summer, especially since they announced that they are working on SC2.
As far as your newspaper deal, I would try to contact them again, try a different person, and why not try contacting a TV station? That could gain you some more exposure, for sure.
Yeah, I might contact a small local TV studio here. They just have one channel here and it’s quite low budget but they actually do pretty good reporting.
They’ll probably have a lot of stories for Christmas though so I’ll wait until the new year. Don’t let me forget to contact them.
Are you any good at SC? What type of maps do you play?
I’ll try and remind you around January then hehe
Yes I like to consider myself an expert player, but not Gosu, I like to play mainly non-money maps, and also play with manner 🙂
I don’t mind playing money maps, like if my friends want to play money maps, then I will, but personally I believe that the more skill is in non-money maps.
Favorite Map: Lost Temple
Favorite Race: Protoss
Okay, you and I are playing tonight. I just uninstalled it a few days ago to concentrate more on work but… time to reinstall. I have my CD key memorized.. DO YOU?? 🙂
Seriously though, we’re playing tonight. I hope you don’t have plans or have to work early in the morning. Have MSN or AIM?
All my cd-keys are in a notepad saved on my external hd 😛
Sounds great man, I sent you the details over at publisherforums.com
Tyler, this is the biggest load of crap I have ever seen. Don’t hold a contest that nobody has any way of verifying. Your excuses and far-fetched stories about how you miraculously reached your goal are getting old. Lets face it, you either don’t have the $150 or you just never planned on giving it out to begin with. I’m done reading your crap. Get a life.
I love you, too.
Oh, by the way it wasn’t a contest. It was a challenge to myself… with the penalty being having to pay out $150. I thought that was clear?
Hey Look… I didn’t mean to start some backlash, but something needed to be said. After reading some of the posts below, I feel better that I am not the only one who is a bit disappointed by your recent strategies to make money. Before you saw any success whatsoever, you used this blog to create UNIQUE, high-quality posts about your “journey” to becoming a successful internet entrepreneur.
Now, all we see is paid reviews and phony “challenges” to yourself in an effort to help motivate you.
Regarding motivation, if you really need some bad enough to hold public challenges, then I may suggest doing something like reading ProBlogger…. he offers great motivational tips on how to self-motivate yourself to be a successful blogger.
In some sense, I read your blog because we had one thing in common… domain names. Your claim to fame was the domain you sold and made a cut from that guy. You simply brokered the deal. My case, I own a large portfolio and sell names like that all the time…. but when you started blogging I clung to you for your insightful comments and daily updates on the success of your ventures. Now, those posts have discontinued and I am sick of reading about posts that exist only to help you motivate yourself. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that.
Throwing money around like this, regardless of whether you have it or not, is somewhat insulting to readers. A different tactic to get readers would probably be better. Preferably a less suspicious method.
Anyhow… Maybe instead of a blog re-design, you should also re-think about what you are feeding your readers… or the blog design becomes worthless when everyone stops reading.
Sorry for being so harsh before… but it was sad to see you change over a long period of time. Good luck.
What happened to: “I’m done reading your crap. Get a life.”
Well, I guess I’m now stuck on reading the only good content on your site, which is the comments.
Maybe instead of trying to stab back at me with little comments like that…you should read all the negative things people are saying in the comments and DO something about them. Goes to show I am not the only one who is critical of you right now.
Well thats it. You are free to choose to read whatever you like and not read whatever you don’t.
In same way Tyler as the owner of this web can do with it as he wishes and sees appropriate to achieve his goals here (whatever they are).
I think dr00t is being a little harsh, but I agree with him for the most part.
I’ve been reading your blog since the get go and I have to say I’m REALLY turned off by this “challenge.”
It makes you look bad, coming up with enough hours, despite your self confession for a tendancy not to work hard. It would have been a lot better if you hadn’t promised people money if you fail, that way it doesn’t look so suspicious.
Also, the whole idea of working 46-hours in a week being a “challenge” is an insult to people, like myself, who have done jobs where we go 60+ hours a week on a regular basis.
What the heck do you do when you’re not working and everyone else is? Do you think you are giving yourself good habits and work ethic if your internet business craps out and you have to go get “a real job”.
Good stuff Tyler, keep it up.
LoL tyler is the luckiest piece of crap you will ever meet, his poker forum sucks, theres only like 60 active members and “claims” to have all these sign ups yet nobody posts or they end up leaving because it sucks anyway.
Im surprised he gets what he asks for on that forum, but his forum will die in a bit when the poker craze wears off which its about to so hes gonna be working 9-5 thinking how can he come back. notice all his other forums have failed? because he got lucky plain and simple, im not saying thats bad im saying you have a really shitty attitude for where your at right now. i make 10,000$ a month but i take it for granted and as an investor your in a really shitty place for putting your eggs in one basket. Maybe one day you will realize this but then again you might be in a 1 br apartment when that happens.
Personally, I’d like to know whether or not he ever notified his advertisers that he’d mistakenly inflated his traffic levels for so long. It seems to me they have cause for legal action if he doesn’t offer some sort of refund or compensation. If I recall correctly, he’d been listing it as 10 times what it actually was.
That would be, um, kind of illegal, wouldn’t it?
Not going to get an answer to this, huh?
Poker isn’t going to die anytime soon. Tha game has been around since the 1800’s and continues to get new players all the time.
The poker boom of 2003-2004 is slowing down for sure, but that doesn’t mean you still can’t make good money from it. Many poker affiliate sites are continuously pulling 6 figures per month.
Tyler’s made some great sites, and none of it has to do with luck. Also who cares how “hard” he works? I only work about 12 hours a week and I pulled in $11k last month. Working effectively is what’s important.
Tyler, I think you should ditch the paid reviews on here. They dont make you that much money, and they really detract form the site. You could probably lock down some good paid ads that would replace that pretty easily.
Keep up the good work man!
46 hours to do that? Seriously, some of that stuff should take 10 minutes, maximum.
Yes, it wasn’t the most productive week unfortunately… that’s one problem with forcing hours on yourself…
Hey Tyler,
i really like your blog and your insights which you give into your business… I’m a blogger from Germany and i think about starting an English Blog. Could you give me some tips in general? What would you do in another way if you would start again at zero with your blog? What is important and where should i focus on? The topics of my new blog will cover affiliate marketing & self development. Do you think i should only fokus on one thing?
I’m looking forward to your answer and i would be glad if i can get some tips from you…
Regards, Max
Hehe, if you’re looking for general tips and information, just take a look at my archives. There are around 500 posts you can read.
As for “What would you do in another way if you would start again at zero with your blog?” – I would most likely just continue with what I’m doing now… one thing I would probably strongly consider though is not doing the blog in my name (TylerCruz.com) but using a generic brand/name such as BloggingTips.com or EarnersBlog.com. It makes is much easier to sell in the future if you want to (not that I want to).
I’d do the same, but it’d be in reverse… give away $150 if I failed to work less than 60 hours a week, can’t remember the last time that happened.
No matter what is happening Tyler, you’re still a very committed person in my book. You don’t give up when others did way back.
-Mike
[…] $150 46-Hour Week Challenge ResultsBy Tyler CruzBut in the end, I did it. The first night, I worked from about 11 or 12 at night until 7:30 in the morning, straight. It was a bit easier to do because I was all wrapped up in a huge headache with server troubles, then trying to modify …TylerCruz.com: An Internet Entreprene… – https://www.tylercruz.com […]
im down for some sc action. favorite map-fastestmap.
Sorry, I only play on ‘real’ maps.. that is maps with regular resources and not unlimited.. so like Lost Temple, Python, etc… 😉
haven’t seen a starcraft mention in a while, way to bring back the old school games. sounds like you have a lot of haters out there, but you keep on doing what you’re doing if it’s working
All that StarCraft talk reminds me: How is your SC2 forum going? Willing to share some tips for forum startups?
Cheers
Maybe I should challenge myself like this. I’m pretty lazy, although I’ve been doing more work since I got my MacBook Pro.
~ Dave
[…] · $150 46-Hour Week Challenge Results […]
Yea, I always hate losing a little $150 for no good reason. 😉