Ka-Ching!

October 1, 2006 Posted by Tyler Cruz

Sorry sorry, it’s been 8 days since my last post, but that’s actually a good thing…

  • Working Hard, or Hardly Working?
  • Earnings Recalculations
  • IsMySiteUp.Net
  • PR Update in the Works
  • Blog Updates

Working Hard, or Hardly Working?

As you may already know, I mentioned several times in previous entries how I was getting lazier and lazier. Partly due to laziness, but also partly due to lack of energy and an abundance of lethargy. As a result, my work has suffered greatly. Over the summer I really have done little to no work at all. Sure, a few small things here and there, but mostly I was just keeping up to date with advertisers and posting on my blog. I didn’t have the focus or energy to do much else.

However, this past week I’ve actually been doing a lot! I’ve been upgrading 9 of my forums from vB 3.5.x to 3.6.1, which is extremely time consuming as the templates and hacks all have to be upgraded as well. I’ve been getting through a lot of e-mails and working new partnerships with fairly big advertisers…

Also, PublisherSpot is nearly done and will be able to be launched soon. I also found a possible way to resurrect Replayer and finally get it finished. My chances aren’t great on this, but I do have a possible solution which I’m working on.

So, hopefully I’ll stick to it and start working a bit more again. However, this morning I woke up with a bit of a cold so I hope I’m not getting anything too… distracting..

Earnings Recalculations

It’s October 1st, and so as you should know by now, it’s time for me to recalculate my earnings. As always, I calculate my daily/monthly earnings by taking the average of the past 6 months.

I knew it was going to be a good result as July and August were great months for PokerForums, but I had no idea it was going to be this dramatic. Previously, my daily average was $193. Now, it’s $239 a day! Nearly a $50 daily increase… I guess you could compare it to getting a part-time job… only I’m doing no more work.

Monthly, that’s a change from $5,790 to $7,170.. nearly $1500 more a month. Below is a graph of my earnings over the past 9 months.

Earnings Chart

As you can see, nine months ago I was averaging only $128 a day, but I’ve been fortunate enough to have it increase each time I recalculate. Now, this makes me worried as always: How on earth am I going to beat this average the next time I recalculate?

I am now going to recalculate quarterly as opposed to once every two months. As my sites grow and the number of my sites grow, it takes me longer and longer to recalculate my average earnings. This one took me nearly three hours to grab all the data and analyze it! So now it’ll be once every three months (quarterly), setting my next recalculation date to January 1st, 2007.

To end this section, I’m going to provide you all with a gift. I’ve never done this before, and don’t expect me to do it again, but here is the breakdown of my earnings from the past 6-months.

PokerForums:

Private Ads: $34,435

Affiliates:

FocalClick: $2,732
PokerStars: $300
PartyGaming: $200
CasinoPartners: $700
Misc: $200

Sub-Total: $38,367

Movie-Vault:

Private Ads: $2,980
Amazon: $45
Allposters: $110
Casale: $110
TribalFusion: $238
Misc: $100

Sub-Total: $3,583

MMAForums:

Private Ads: $150

PublisherForums:

Private Ads: $45

TylerCruz:

Private Ads: $470

Miscellaneous:

AdSense: $477

Grand Total: $43,092

$7,182/month
$239/day

Obviously private ad sales from PokerForums brings in 79% of all my income (with 89% being from PFO overall), and I can hear people swagging their fingers at me already for having all my eggs in one basket and being lucky, but remember that I’m spending the vast majority of my time on PFO as well. If PFO didn’t exist, that would allocate a lot of time and energy I could be putting in other projects, don’t forget that.

Also, I am working on building other niches, and my existing other sites will grow in income over time as well hopefully. Finally, there is other income I haven’t included here such as selling sites and domains.

IsMySiteUp.Net

I’ve received another paid plug advert, this time for the site IsMySiteUp.Net:

“How much business is your hosting company costing you each year?”

A website is a crucial tool in today’s business. Like it or not, your website will be the first port of call for many customers, and your first chance to make an impression over your competition. But what if I told you your website could lose you business for an average of 2 weeks every year, through no fault of your own?

With convenient reporting to you daily, weekly or monthly, and instant notifications of problems, you can identify server and connection issues as they arise and tackle them before any more damage is done to your company. From as little as $7, IsMySiteUp can protect you from the effects of server downtime, and ensure your website is as efficient and effective on the bottom line as you’d like.

PR Update in the Works

According to my favourite site for checking up on Google’s PR, there was an update on Sept.28th, and many people are reporting PR updates on their blogs right now. However, I’m quite sure it’s still ongoing and hasn’t finished yet as none of my sites have changed in my toolbar. I’d guess another day or two before they do. Once they do, I’ll post about it.

However, Google’s datacentres give me a sneak peak as to what I’m probably getting. A lot of +2PR increases mainly, which I’m happy with. This blog is going to be a PR4, up from a PR2, which I’m satisfied with, but comparing it to other related blogs, I feel it deserves a PR5 at least… Anyhow, I’ll post about this once I see the updates locally.

Blog Updates

1. I’ve updated my daily average earnings on the top right of the site.
2. I’ve changed it so that users must be registered and logged in to be able to comment on my blog.

I know this will lower the amount of comments, and make it slightly troublesome for others to comment, but really it’s not difficult – registering takes 30 seconds at the most, and then you’re done.

For some reason, my last blog entry garnered a lot of ugly comments. I’m fairly thick-skinned, and I don’t mind people commenting criticising remarks about me, as that’s part of what comments are for, but there were some people who were simply posting trash like immature 12-year-old’s. What’s more, is that most of these comments were from 2-3 people, posting under different names. I can see your IPs Einsteins…

So registering will help solve this problem, or at least make it more difficult for trolls to camp around here. I’ll start banning by e-mails or IP’s if they continue. Again, I’m fine with critisism, even to a borderline degree, but if you start going way overboard and posting nasty photos and such, expect to have your comment deleted.

Finally, I’d like to say how lame it was to make such personal attacks against me. I’m a nice guy – I don’t attack anyone or post slanderous remarks about people, my question to you is, if you hate me so much, why do you visit my blog everyday, perhaps multiple times per day?

Regarding the videos – I’m sorry if some of you don’t like my slight lisp, I can’t help that. I’m sure you’re not a perfect human being either.

Sorry to those of you who weren’t mixed up in that mess 🙂

Finally, regarding the videos, I post them not for you, but for me. It takes a lot of time to post these long blog entries, and I do the videos on occasion to help reduce the workload it takes me in maintaining this blog.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment below, subscribing to my RSS feed, or following me on Twitter.
Posted: October 1st, 2006 under My Websites  

16 Responses to “Ka-Ching!”

  1. Hey Tyler!
    Awesome job on the earnings… also start joggin… it will increase your will to do other things than to lounge around or even get a membership at a gym. I have done that and it has really reduced my lathargy.

    And reguarding your lisp… it’s hot! 😉

  2. Andy says:

    Tyler,

    I’m impressed with what you’ve already accomplished. You’re on a trajectory that will take you where you want to go, and frankly I’m a little jealous. Not so much because I don’t feel you’ve earned it (because I know you have) but because I have no idea where to even start the kind of web-based businesses you have going right now.

    Part of what’s preventing me from following your lead is the limited “free” time that results from holding down a day job to support my family.

    It’s trite but true, those who criticize are likely just jealous of your accomplishments. And making fun of the way you talk is very, VERY weak.

    Keep up the hard work and I look forward to following your journey to success.

  3. Joshimitsu says:

    Hey dude,

    Impressive earnings you got there! Really inspiring – i hope sometime i can get up to your standard. What type of traffic does pokerforums get?

  4. janc says:

    Hey Tyler,

    I’m curious to see if you are worried about the online gambling industry after the latest sentate ruling….

    http://news.monstersandcritics.com/business/article_1207294.php/Senate_whacks_Internet_gambling_companies

    Seeing how most of your income comes from a poker forum i’m wondering what your thoughts are on this.

    Thanks, Jan

  5. wesley says:

    You should make the comment functionality better, I couldn’t find the signup link (it’s in the footer guys). Also, why can I still enter my name, email and website when that should just automatically be added from the backend (my profile)

  6. Justin says:

    Im in the poker industry as well, and this new law will cause a huge shake up for everyone. Unless you’re traffic is 100% non US players, then this will all of us a lot.

    Im worried to see what happens, but Im also kind of excited, since Im going to focus a bunch of my new projects toward other markets in poker. It should be fun!

    -Justin

  7. AndrewR says:

    Well, the law only states that it bans internet gambling, and seeing at Tyler only owns a discussion forum, it won’t affect him as much. However, then the only members/traffic he would get is from real life players, as he has several on the forum.

  8. janc says:

    AndrewR,

    Of course it’s going to affect him. When the source of income is Gambling sites who just lost access to the world’s biggest gambling market then it affects everybody in the sector.

    It’s just like with the housing market cooling and Yahoo stating that the financial advertising is lower then expected.

    – Jan

  9. tke71709 says:

    Sorry Andrew, but you obviously don’t understand the problems that poker sites face with this new law.

    Simply put, it will be almost impossible for poker sites to get money from US citizens, therefore many of them will cease to serve the US market.

    Thus, they will no longer have a need to advertise to US citizens and poker ad revenue will plummet.

    Seeing as Tyler has all his eggs in one basket, very little in revenue from his other sites and no outside source of income this could very easily bankrupt him.

  10. […] $239 a day. Bookmark at:                Permalink   |   Email to a Friend RelatedPosts: […]

  11. PocketRockets says:

    Of course it’s going to affect him (and everyone else in the industry!) Where do you think he gets his revenue from? The online poker companies! 888 gets half it’s revenue from the US — and both 888 Holdings and PartyGaming said they would leave the US market if the bill passes. Their stocks plummeted recently, wiping out $7 billion of market value. There are already rumors that they will plans to stop all affiliate programs for the US.

    What are your thoughts on this, Tyler?

  12. tylercruz says:

    I will be writing about this in my next entry, but I’ll comment a bit here.

    There’s no doubt that this hurts me and that it’s very bad, but a lot of people don’t really know the poker market; I knew about this bill trying to pass for many months.. this is like the 4th time they attempted to pass it..

    This will hurt me, but there’s a lot to be said about staying calm; I just signed one of my largest advertisers this week, which will give me $xx,xxx.. anyhow I’ll write about this later.

  13. yeikow says:

    Hey Tyler,

    I hadn’t remarked the comments from last post, but Im certainly surprised.

    Personnaly I found your video eating your burger HILARIOUS!!! Like, damn, this guy really doesn’t give a **** what they think of him. Respect.

    And the way you talk is very personal, it’s a personality quirk that makes you nothing but more special. Sort of an attractive/curious business trademark.

    You gotta be a real loser to post comments in a blog critizicing someone’s way of speaking… lol.

    Impressive incomes btw. True inspiration

  14. admps says:

    Uw online verzekeringsmakelaar Eerst Europa Doelstellingen: De Ci2i Verzekering (Ci2i) zal het nummer een gebrandmerkte pan Europese commoditized online verzekeringsmakelaar door 2010 zijn.

  15. […] I recollected a post byTyler Cruz who talked about his October 2006 PageRank updates settling him at a PR4, well now he’s got the PR5! […]

  16. oyun says:

    Well, the law only states that it bans internet gambling, and seeing at Tyler only owns a discussion forum, it won’t affect him as much. However, then the only members/traffic he would get is from real life players, as he has several on the forum

PeerFly

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