My story so far

[MJ DeMarco]

Great job Andrew .. start monetizing that volume into $$$!

 

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[AndrewG]

I have started monetizing and made a pretty nice profit. I'm working with 2 ad networks and I've created some various ad options such as button ad spots and sponsorships.

 

[andviv]

Andrew, I follow your blog using the google reader. Does that still count and provides you money for the ads? Just tell me if it does not and I will connect to the page directly.

 

[AndrewG]

I'm actually trying to monetize the RSS feed right now but it probably won't earn as much money as if someone came to the site. However, please do what is easiest for YOU.

-Andrew

 

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[AndrewG]

Update

Lyved has been going strong and doing great! I just wanted to let everyone know of an article I wrote for Dumb Little Man, a very popular blog about topics similar to mine. Please check it out, it's called 20 Things I'm Glad Life Taught Me

http://www.dumblittleman.com/2008/02/20-things-im-glad-life-taught-me.html

-Andrew

 

[AndrewG]

If anyone is interested I did an interview for another blog called The Next 45 Years. You can get to know a little more about me and the story behind Lyved: http://www.thenext45years.com/2008/02/there’s-no-age-limit-for-wisdom.html

-Andrew

 

[Jill]

Nice interview, Andrew. Well done. Congrats on the new venture!

 

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[AndrewG]

Thanks Jill.

-Andrew

 

[AndrewG]

Update:

Hello everyone,

I haven't been participating in the forums as much as I wish I could. I've been busy with my blog and wanted to give an update.

I recently refined the design so that it's cleaner and slimmer. I've created new advertising spots and am currently looking for advertisers if anyone is interested. If you are please visit: http://www.lyved.com/advertise/

Some numbers:
From launch date on December 31, 2007 to Feb 29, Lyved has received over 195,000 unique visitors and over 320,000 pageviews.

I would like to thank everyone here for their continued support.:thankyousign:

-Andrew

 

[Strategy]

would someone really pay $35 month for a ad spot on a blog ? j/w

 

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[AndrewG]

Oh yeah. Check out some of the most popular blogs, Johnchow, perezhilton, icanhascheezburger, cuteoverload, shoemoney, and many more. Some blog ads cost hundreds of dollars, and in the case of perezhilton it's thousands a week! So $35 is cheap.

-Andrew

 

[Luke12321]

What is the google PR on your blog? I am just asking because I am not that active with my blog and it it only gets about 20 visits per day but I am able to sell links via Text-Link Ads and that generates a nice amount of money. Might should check them out or similar sites.

 

[AndrewG]

I'm not sure what my Google pagerank is. But I hear that it's not as important as it used to be. Also you have to be careful with selling text link ads. Google doesn't like link selling and can remove you from search results or change your ranking. This happened to JohnChow.com if you type in "John Chow" in google his site won't appear in the results.

-Andrew

 

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[dhuang]

I'm not sure what my Google pagerank is. But I hear that it's not as important as it used to be.

Hey Andrew, I just checked your site, and it has a pagerank of 0. But an Alexa of 100k!

That's pretty impressive! I guess Google PR doesn't really matter too much...

There is a WordPress plug-in that will automatically create a Google sitemap and uploads it to Google.

 

[kurtyordy]

Andrew-

Here are my thoughts of the redesign. By increasing the ad count to 6, they are now just mental noise on the screen, and very easy to tune out. As a reader I like this, as and advertiser I would not. I personally would be more interested if you had one ad spot with six ads feeding it, so every sixth page load, my ad would come up. This would also keep things changing for your readers as well.

As far as alexa ranking goes, someone somewhere on this forum mentioned that alexa ranks the site based on the alexa toolbar and it not being an accurate indicator, but I forget all the reasons why. Anyway, they recommended quantcast which I have found to be quite accurate.

 

[AndrewG]

Hey Kurt, Well the ads randomly rotate around so the are never in the same spot. So it's never the same.

And thanks for the wordpress plugin dhuang and jscott. I'll check it out.

-Andrew

 

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[rzach41]

Andrew,
I cringed when I read that your application crashed. Around The World has a wonderful point in the fact that temporary failures are often a precursor to something magnificently bigger and better. Think and Grow Rich makes numerous references to this. I wish ya nothing but luck my friend.


Ryan

 

[AndrewG]

Thanks Ryan. Yeah that was a pretty big blow. My partner didn't want to keep going with the idea so I moved onto something else and found plenty of success.

-Andrew

 

[AndrewG]

Update:

My site hit the Digg front page again (http://digg.com/educational/9_Simple_Strategies_to_Getting_Things_Done_At_Work) with this article: 9 Simple Strategies to Getting Things Done At Work. A friend of mine wrote the article.

Traffic got a big boost with over 20,000 unique visitors yesterday. Since launch date on January 1st to this morning, Lyved as received over 225,000 uniques and almost 370,000 pageviews.

So there's plenty of potential in the blog world and on the internet. I'm not highly skilled in the web business or online marketing, so receiving traffic like this doesn't take a genius to do.

-Andrew

 

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[kurtyordy]

Andrew,

I think I need to clarify my thoughts better. I do not mean to offend with any of this, and if I do, let me know and I will delete it. This is regarding the redesign. I hope to use one of the most bizarre analogies in the history of the fastlane.

Imagine a room. Surrounding this room is a balcony for visitors to come and look at this room. On the one side of this room are the most beautiful women you have ever seen laying on the floor facing up. The are wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. On the opposite side of the room are men, the best looking in the world, and they are also wearing nothing but shorts. Now splitting the two, running down the length of the room is a line of horses.

You are told to walk up to the balcony, look at the room for three minutes, and come back to me. If I were to ask you how many horses were wearing saddles, I would guess that you or most people would answer " I don't know."

Now imagine, instead of a line of horses, there was just one. Odds are a greater percentage of people would be able to answer whether or not this horse was saddled.

Why? Because one horse forces the eyes and mind to engage and decide what to do with it, but a line of horses is easily dismissed as that, a line of horses.

Now taking this back to ads on your site, if you had one ad rotating, when a first time visitor came to your site, they would have to decide mentally where to catagorize it, junk or not. But they would at least have to engage it. A line of ads is easily dismissed as just that, a line of ads.

Your falling fruit ad actually is the one horse, and the other spots are the line of horses. As an advertiser, I have no desire to be part of a line, I would want to be a horse by itself even if I only got to be in the room for every tenth visitor.

Also, if you want to fine tune things even more, remove the "ads by greenworks" text. This is akin to a sign being next to the single horse saying "this is only a horse, go back to checking out the hot guys and gals". Let your readers discover/process the content for themselves. This gives the ads message a better chance of reaching the audience.

I hope this was not confusing, and I am sure some here would disagree. Please know is not in any way a reaction to the traffic I did recieve while I was advertisng under the old layout. I was pleased with what I got. This is just an objective analysis of the new layout when it comes to your ads. I hope it helps.

 

[AndrewG]

Hey,

I totally understand what you are saying and I'm not offending at all. Actually within a the next week or so I'm getting a new more professional design. It will be more of a web 2.0 look and be much more clean. Content and readers will be the most important element first then advertising. So I will be rethinking my ad offerings as well.

As for "ads by greenworks", there's no way I can remove that, I've tried. It comes from their server and editing ad code is against terms.

Thanks for taking the time to write your opinions.

-Andrew

 

[Yankees338]

Hey, any updates, Andrew?

 

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[AndrewG]

Hey everyone,

Sorry I haven't been around in a while. I check out these forums everyday, but I jsut haven't contributed in awhile.

I've been working on my site and another HUGE project (can't tell you about it yet). Lyved has been doing very well. I just hit the Digg front page the other day again for this: http://digg.com/educational/How_to_graduate_the_School_of_Hard_Knocks_with_a_4_0

Here are some other interesting links to interview I did if you'd like to check them out:

http://blog.nj.com/jerseyblogs/2008/04/blog_of_the_day_lyved.html

http://www.thenext45years.com/2008/02/there’s-no-age-limit-for-wisdom.html

Thanks for your interest!

-Andrew

 

[TaxGuy]

wow way to be on the right track... there's sayers and doers in this world and you sir are a DOER!!!

now I just need to get off my lazy butt and be a doer myself :smxB:

 

[AndrewG]

Thank you very much. When I was younger I was a sayer, but it took me some time to become a doer.

-Andrew

 

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[mtnman]

Hey, any updates, Andrew?

1,000 posts!!! Some Speed!:banana: I don't know about everyone else, but I don't know many 17 year olds that contribute this much of their time to their aspirations, such as entrepreneurship. To your success Ryan!

 

[AndrewG]

Hey Fastlaners,

I wanted to give everyone an update on the major developments for my blog Lyved.

I’ve been trying to get a new design created and I have finally done so and just launched it a few hours ago. With this design, I’m taking Lyved from good to great!

I’m expanding into a few more topics and set the site up more like an online magazine.

If you are interested please have a look at the new design: Lyved And please let me know if you see any bugs or typos.

Thanks for all the help and encouragement from the beginning to today. I appreciate it very much.

-Andrew

 

[Yankees338]

Hey Fastlaners,

I wanted to give everyone an update on the major developments for my blog Lyved.

I’ve been trying to get a new design created and I have finally done so and just launched it a few hours ago. With this design, I’m taking Lyved from good to great!

I’m expanding into a few more topics and set the site up more like an online magazine.

If you are interested please have a look at the new design: Lyved And please let me know if you see any bugs or typos.

Thanks for all the help and encouragement from the beginning to today. I appreciate it very much.

-Andrew

Wow! Design looks great! Congrats on your success!

It's definitely inspirational and motivational for all of us! Should have added to your goals on your latest blog post, "Post My Fastlane Success Story!"

 

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[AndrewG]

Thanks Ryan! I hope to make my success story a sticky on here someday soon

 

[Yankees338]

Thanks Ryan! I hope to make my success story a sticky on here someday soon

Any time! Hopefully mine will join yours!

Two things I noticed:

1) When you click on any of the tabs on top, the "Older Entries" button is next to the title. I think it should be separate more -- perhaps on another line.

2) When you linked to the people you thanked, the links opened up in the same window. I don't know if all of the links do that, but you should probably get them to open up in separate windows/tabs so that you keep your page open to viewers for a longer period of time.

Just a general thing, too (hope you don't mind correcting grammar): When you have two thoughts that can stand on their own as complete sentences, they can only be separated by either a semicolon or a comma followed by a conjunction. I guess a dash (--) can work, too. Hope this doesn't sound condescending -- just trying to help.

Good luck! You've done a helluva job so far. Keep it up, Andrew!

P.S. I gave you rep+++ before. Well deserved! How's the revenue coming along on the site if you don't mind me asking? Anything substantial from the ads?