Beyond Adsense

Right now, the only monetization avenues that my blog network is using is Adsense and a few affiliate links from some freelancing websites. See Disclosure Policy

As a blogger, the income that I'm getting from these are honestly not that substantial. I was wondering whether there are other avenues for exploration that would not make my blog appear like a roving billboard.

Sites With Potential on Flippa.com

Browsing over the listings at Flippa.com - a marketplace for buying and selling blogs, websites and such, I intend to find a few gems on the rough to complement my portfolio of slowly growing blogs and websites.

It's not an easy task though the "Refine" feature is quite handy.

Gems in the Rough
1. Uneasysilence.com - Buy it Now Price 25,000

• Founded: 2003 
• Confirmed via Wayback Machine
• Gross Monthly Revenue: Valid
• Claimed: $1,000 to $1,500 potential of $2,500 to $3,000 a month. 
• According to Hypestats: http://uneasysilence.com.hypestat.com/ = $11.92 a day 
• According to Cubestat: http://www.cubestat.com/www.uneasysilence.com = $29.51 a day
• According to SiteOutlook: http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.uneasysilence.com = $22.82 a day
• Traffic: 
• Claimed: 7,000 UV daily - 200,000 UV monthly - 300,000 PV monthly
• According to Hypestats: http://uneasysilence.com.hypestat.com/ = 3,581 UV daily
• According to Cubestat: http://www.cubestat.com/www.uneasysilence.com = 9,836 PV daily
• According to Site Outlook: http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.uneasysilence.com = 6,862 PV daily
• Compete Data: July 2011 23,927 PV

• SEO
• Keywords: "What is call barring", "esquire jenna jameson", "how to get free unlimited texting", "download after dark modules", "itunes import wmv files windows"
• Opensiteexplorer data: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.uneasysilence.com

• The first thing that I do when I look at a website is to see whether its domain turns out on Google search when I search for it. In this case, I searched for the phrase "uneasy silence" on Google and it turned up on top of the SERPs. Moreover, it has its categories listed down such that it effectively hogged half of the screen. The next results were its twitter account and youtube feed. 

Qualitative Analysis

Acquiring this website for $25,000 may be far too expensive even though the owners of the site have really spent a lot of effort in creating and maintaining it. They've obviously spent a lot of effort producing original content, SEO, promotion via social networks such as twitter, and uploading videos via youtube.com. 

Cons 

• The most troubling aspect of the site is its steadily declining traffic ever since 2010. The decline is more than 50%. Moreover, the design and layout of the site makes it look quite amateurish and bloglike. 
• Site owner failed to mention the expenses in running the site. 

Points of Action: 

• This is a very good website to acquire if one is looking into putting up a web magazine. Its general but easy to remember domain name could be highly advantageous and general enough for different niches to cater to, specially since it is a common phrase. 
• The person who will acquire this website would have to hire writers to continue putting up fresh content to drive up traffic. 
• The design of the website would also have to be altered. to accommodate a magazine theme. 
• There's still a lot to be known about its other offerings as they seem to have their own toolbar and other promotional material. All non-essential expenses related to maintaining the platform should be removed. 

Conclusion:

• At the right price, this website shows a lot of promise. As to what the right price is falls definitely well below the expected price of the site owner. It would likely fetch somewhere between $4,000 to $6,000 dollars due to its rapidly declining traffic. 

Case Study: Yehey.com

This blog entry was inspired by this Asian Institute of Management Case Study penned by Ms. Rhia Ramirez. Click Here to view the complete document. You'll find Yehey.com's history there. Please tell me if the link doesn't work. 

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Site Profile: Yehey.com

CEO: ?

General Manager: Jay Arellano

Address: 38th Flr. Discovery Centre 25 ADB Avenue, Ortigas Center Pasig City 1605. Philippines

Administrative Contacts

Marketing (+632) 9106418 Advertising (+632) 9106411

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Is This Awesome Enough?

I WON!!!!!!!!!

Beep! Beep! Beep!
UPDATE: There are "winning fees" in Prizes.org

I won $100 today in a blog contest!
First of all, thanks to Google acquired Prizes.org for the awesome contest platform. 
Thanks to Zagg.com and Zaggdaily.com for choosing my entry. 
Thanks to the readers of dannybuntu.com. A blog is useless if you're not here guys and gals!
More importantly, thanks to God for giving me everything that I have.

How I won it?
I tried to align my thoughts with the contest holder's goal. They were promoting their Gadget screen protectors through a blog contest and I admitted firstly that I didn't have any expensive gadgets. So I tried to think of a funny blog post title and everything flowed from there. I'm a very imaginative person so the blog title I came up with was very freaky.

Backstory 
I was set back for almost the same amount yesterday so this was an awesome break for me. One of my writer's experienced problems with the payments I sent through Paypal and her kid was also sick with dengue so she couldn't withdraw the money.

The kid was also my nephew. I somewhat felt responsible for them because I was the one who introduced her to the world of freelance writing, Paypal and online banking. So I sent money the old fashioned way, by depositing it physically in a bank.

What I intend to do with the money
I guess this is proof that kindness really does get repaid :)

Again thanks to the wonderful people of Zagg.com and Zaggdaily.com for the awesome prize!




Update: Winning Fees

There's a percentage based fee imposed on winners. It's 10%
There's also a fee for the payment processor (paypal) which is %5.5.
If you are a US citizen you also have to fill up a form W-9 for taxes!

Social Networking Hooligans

Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to London.

As British mainstream media struggle to keep up with the developments in London, social media companies based in the US are waging a different kind of battle on the Internet - that of protecting their services reputation as an instrument for change.

Suffice to say, that the events in London are not exactly what they  had in mind:

"Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Kavanagh said: "Social media and other methods have been used to organise these levels of greed and criminality."

He described some messages posted on social media sites as "really inflammatory, inaccurate" and said police would consider arresting people using Twitter in relation to incitement to violence.

BBC.Co.UK

TechCrunch was quick to rebuff the report with its own piece published on the Washington Post. 

How Blackberry, Not Twitter, Fuelled the Fire Under London's Riots.

"But while Twitter has largely been the venue of spectators to violence and is a handy public venue for journalists to observe, it would appear the non-public BlackBerry BBM messaging network has been the method of choice for organising it."

TechCrunch via Washington Post, 2011

It's idiotic to point out these online tools as well as the hapless Blackberry as the culprits responsible for what is happening in London now. It's like blaming the knife for the murder, or blaming people from talking with one another to spread an idea. 

Why I Love Klout

I used to think that Klout was for twitter eggheads and egomaniacs. People driven by how much people people think of them in terms of numbers.

This changed when someone gave me a +K. :D

Okay, stop.

Before you think that the only reason I'm writing this now is because of that fact, please take a moment to hear my deeper explanation.

[GUEST POST] Managing Commercial Real Estate Projects

There are three main types of commercial real estate: investment, retail, and office.  Which of these you deal with will ultimately determine your exact management style:

1. Investment -- property considered only as a moneymaking commodity, not used explicitly for any purpose other just ownership.  This is a basic and easily managed type of real estate: in essence, there’s only one participant, the owner.
2. Retail -- space used for shops or stores.  It’s a more complicated and challenging project to manage, as participants include owners and customers using the property for buying and selling, in addition to the owner.
3. Office -- property used primarily for business tenants.  This type of commercial real estate is also a challenging one to manage because, on top of the property’s owner, there is the company and its workers to consider.

How AirBnB Maximizes Social Media

August is going to be AirBnB month as dannybuntu.com would be focusing on one thing: getting someone to go here and book via AirBnb!

Despite the growing pains that AirBnb has been experiencing, very few have taken notice of how much it uses social media to its advantage. To its credit, AirBnB has the complete retinue:

[Guest Post] A Business Startup Mistake I Will Not Make Again

I was watching “The Social Network” movie a few days ago. It’s like the 3rd or 4th time that I have seen it now and it is still fascinating to me. One reason probably is that Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg still have not fully cleared out all the “dead bodies” from the closet. There are still legal issues pending going back to when the Facebook was founded in Harvard. I often look at things from a business perspective and Mark Zuckerberg made a few mistakes that still need to be resolved – 7 years after Facebook was founded.

Dead Hard Disks Go Here

There are times when data recovery would just take too long. For some reason, some of the hard disks sort of fix themselves after a few months in "the drawer". Plug them back in and datas there.