To The Moon: 1 News Site + 365 Days = 1,000,000 Dollars [Weekly Journal]

No it's not. Nobody's giving out gold stars. It's not the effort, it's what you learn from it and what you accomplish from it. Effort doesn't buy food and clothing, cars and houses.

Good luck tho, I'd love to see you accomplish this.

I agree completely. I know I most likely won't make it to $1M, but it doesn't hurt to try my best as efficiently as I can.

Thanks for the support; I really appreciate it :)
 


Newbie question (that's what this section is for, isn't it ;) ):

My AdSense account shows ~$10 in "Estimated Earnings", but only ~$2 in "Finalized Earnings".

This is actually the first time I've used AdSense, and I'm not sure if it's normal. Anybody know if the Finalized Earnings will eventually update, or will I never going to see the missing $8?
 
First post

Hey, good luck with your quest. I believe EVERYTHING is attainable with good planing, knowledge and dedication. I will follow this to learn from your success and from your mistakes.

I have a filmmaking website myself for a few years now with good quality and long articles but never monetized it and I believe it is about time I do so.
I hope I can get some ideas here.

Best of lucks!
 
Newbie question [...]
This was pretty obvious. Figured it out already :1bluewinky:


Hey, good luck with your quest. I believe EVERYTHING is attainable with good planing, knowledge and dedication. I will follow this to learn from your success and from your mistakes.

I have a filmmaking website myself for a few years now with good quality and long articles but never monetized it and I believe it is about time I do so.
I hope I can get some ideas here.

Best of lucks!

Thank you!
 
super long overdue update


Moved from DigitalOcean over to Vultr

$5/mo gets you better specs, more server locations, AND your servers don't get shut off randomly once a month; what's not to love?

Also, EasyEngine is the best fucking thing ever. It lets you setup Nginx, WordPress, and W3 Total Cache - properly - in like only 2 minutes.

Hired a shitload more 1¢/word writers

Native English, actually knowledgeable about what they're talking about, etc. Not going to win any Pulitzer Prizes, but I've seen people pay more for writing just as plain. Forums or whatever communities center around your niche are a gold mine. If people are already writing in-depth essays for free, why not get them to do it for $10 :1bluewinky:

Hit frontpage on some large (non-default) subreddits a few times

Nothing too interesting. Got 9000 something pageviews this month so far. Not enough.

Going to start selling advertising per month

Fuck Adsense. It pays too little.

Have not gotten any sales from BSA yet.

Will reach out to companies advertising with competing news websites.

Also going to buy a new theme

The current one is okay, but it's too "bloggy". I can't have that.

I found a new one on Themeforest that's almost a ripoff of an actual news website. All I have to do is fix it up a bit and it'll look like a million bucks (and hopefully get me closer to my goal of making a million bucks).

Unrelated, but I think I might have a problem with buying stuff on Themeforest. I have 2-3 themes for every site I own.

Growing on Twitter

Sometimes, things go viral (read: get 50 tweets), and it generates a bit of traffic, so I'm looking into ways to grow on Twitter. I tried out Twtmass' free trial and went from 100 to 600 followers in a week. The thing is, like 95% of the accounts that follow back are useless bots.

Not worth paying for IMO, but it does what it advertises. I might consider buying Twitter ads or sponsored tweets or whatever.

Other ideas for traffic

I'm not fully taking advantage of the site's inclusion in Google News yet; I will start targeting big keywords with regular posts in the coming days.

I also came up with a couple of creative ways to get more eyeballs on my content - some which will probably be worth it, and some which won't. I haven't had the chance to hire someone to code up what I need yet.

MORE WEBSITES?!?!?!

I've been brainstorming ideas for side projects, but I don't have the time for them. I guess I will just have to make time. Will keep you guys updated. :)

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Have you considered Taboola or a similar network (native ads) for monetization?

Also have you considered Mgid or a similar network to increase your traffic?
 
Don't have anything to add really, but just want to say I'm watching this with great interest seapunk! I can't wait to see where you end up!
 
Have you considered Taboola or a similar network (native ads) for monetization?

Also have you considered Mgid or a similar network to increase your traffic?

I don't have the traffic for Taboola yet (500,000 monthly pageviews apparently?), but I've started playing around with a bunch of other networks.

I've used Zergnet on another site in the past, but I didn't know about Mgid. I appreciate the tips!
 
Just wanted to share something cool as well: https://www.manycontacts.com/

It's like Hello Bar to collect emails, except there's this black overlay thing that has a crazy conversion rate. Simple, but it works for some reason.

I'll probably write up my own script with the same concept if I have time though, because the free trial is branded and has barely any features. Still gave more emails in 2 days than in 1 month with Sumome.

If you want something better, Picreel seems like a good f̶a̶k̶e̶ alternative to Bounce Exchange. Haven't tried either, but their popups are pretty.

Obligatory Cara pic:

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Haven't updated this nearly enough.

Random ideas/food for thought/common sense/things most people already know:

- Prepare a media kit before you actually need one
- Make a @2x "retina" version of your images and logos and shit - it makes a big difference
- You can sometimes buy a similar theme for $50 that already has the feature you need, instead of paying $150 for a developer to add it to your existing one. Especially when it's for a new site.
- Have a designer, dev guy and all that on Skype when you need changes/fixes real quick.

I'm sorry if you already knew all of that. I'm honestly surprised I didn't figure them out, but I guess I got to learn from experience then.

And Cara pic:

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Awesome thread man, I hope you make it! Keep us updated, I know it is hard when you're busting your ass to keep these forum updates going. Best of luck.
 
Update:

I've been focusing on IRL stuff way more than this. I made a bit of money from advertising - enough to, like, cover what I spent on logo design lol.

Life goes on.

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