I am writing this post with all disappointments I had in the past 1 and a half years of my internet life. One and a half years back, I was at home waiting for my Company to call me for starting my Training. That was the time I started this blog. My friend
Erudite Says is also one of the inspirations for me to start this blog. He has quickly gained Page ranks and traffic, and started earning from his blog. He used to tell his alexa ranks, Page ranks and earnings he gets and some other of our friend gets using blog. So I started this blog.
During that time I was not with any intention to earn from this blog. So I never applied for paid posts, and never cared much about adsense. I was very much interested to get more traffic than my friend, and better his alexa and PR rankings. But I dint want to go for back links and Blog Rolls. The Affiliates you see in this blog are all those of my friends whom I know personally. I started writing few posts that I have learned during the time I started. As it was during the end of my college days, most of my posts are related to campus interviews, and few questions that were held on my mind. And then suddenly I thought of doing something which will fetch me more traffic. Creation of applications, which people can use in their website or blogs.
Well, the path I took is great, but the application which I chose to make is not well recognized. Poor Advertising ? I don't know.
Thirukural Widget is the first application that I created. I know it is pretty much language dependent. And the percentage of internet users,web developers to be specific, is way too low for using the Widget.
Thirukural is a lovely piece of work by Thiruvalluvar. It tells pretty much how one should be live and it is common across all horizons and at any time. It has been translated into Many many languages. So in order to make my widget recognised by more people, I introduced few languages other than Tamil in my widget. Of course the Thirukural and translations are taken from some other Website. But I really did not worry much for copying others work. I had a satisfaction that I was trying to bring about something which everyone should know and adopt. As a courtesy, I have put the link from where I got those Thirukural and also emailed the owner of the web pages (no replies yet). As I said earlier the application is not that broadly focued to make my blog popular.
Meanwhile I was also making few posts. My friend asked me for CAT question papers. Then I searched in net and made some collection of question papers from various websites. He was happy with that. Then I thought of sharing those with others so that they don't need to search all over the internet. So I blogged about the Papers. It got me some traffic. That was great!. But still I couldn't get past my friends in PR or Alexa or Earnings. But my traffic was almost in par with EruditeSays.
One day my friend asked me to create one template for his blog. Oh that was the day, I think If I had not got any thoughts on that day, I would have been happy. Why should I struggle taking one classic blogger template and I edit that. That is pretty tough If me or others wanted to make one. So I thought of making one Template Generator. I searched online, and I found one called Psycho and few others. But I was not very much impressed by the functionalities they had. So I started to write my own template generator. The result was
Trix Blogspot Template Generator v1. I started it as v1 because I already had ideas for improving the application. I felt that this application would be very successful and It will be recognised pretty quickly than my first application. Worked on the application for about 2 to 3 months continuosly. While creating the application I had a requirement for selecting colors for various things like background, font, link color etc. So I created the
Hex Color Code Generator. Meanwhile my company has called me for Training. It was a very tough time. Just about 1 week before I went, I opened the application for public. During that time I didn't own any domain. So I had my application in this blog itself. Posted about the application in few orkut communities.
Well, the traffic I got is not as much as I expected. I used to get around 40 to 50 visitors a day during that time. Then I was little busy with my Training and I had little chance to advertise the application or make further changes. Two or three months went by. Then I bought a Laptop so I got a chance to work a little towards my blog. So thought of improving the template generator. But I cant keep putting the applications in my blog. That was the time I went forward to get a domain. It was during my birthday I opened the website giving it a name
Experience Infotainment. Ah great, I opened the website. Now I could quickly get some traffic and earn more. That was I thought. But with the traffic I got at that time I could hardly earn only 4$ a month. At that time my friends were pretty much far away from me in this regard. Meanwhile I was working on version 2 of Template Generator. The traffic was very steadily increasing and it was around 65 to 75 visitors a day when I released version 2. I was very much happy about the outcome of the application. My friend EruditeSays meanwhile have created few more blogs, and he is going ahead of me. He used to give me lot of ideas. But as always I will listen to him only after couple of months.
I was pretty much upset with the amount of earnings I got and the amount of work I put in a year. Then come google to support me. It offered 100$ Adwords promotional code. Then I signed up for Adwords and started advertising my Template Generator application. The traffic to my blog (excluding adwords Traffic) started increasing further and it went on to reach 100 a day. I was pretty much satisfied, but the amount I spent for my domain, hosting charges, advertising was well over what I received as Earnings from my website. Meanwhile I also developed the
version 2 of Thirukural Widget and few other widgets like
Friendship Calculator and
Flames. Suddenly I realised that I was getting more traffic from google search for Friendship Calculator. To my suprise it was having number 1 for the search term Friendship calculator. Visitors count raised to around 120 per day.
Then came yet another advice from Erudite Says. Change the template of the website!! Under his guidance and from some other sources I made few changes and he said It is just ok, but not great. Well the change in template helped me a lot. Adsense earnings improved but not that great. It got around 10$ a month. Traffic was raising towards 140 to 150 per day. The traffic was still low, mainly because I wasn't aware of SEO during the period I started the website. Now I feel I could have dont it better. I was kind of ok with the traffic that has improved in the 8 months after opening website.
Then I came across many forums like Digital Point (Yeah I know that was way too late). I was having a look at how other people are doing with their online business. Though there were many who are like me earning very low, I was amazed to find that many are earning more than 30 $ a day. I dont know how to react when seeing at people who post "I earn over 30 $ a day". In one view, I was really frustrated that I earn way too low, but in another view, It increased the hope that one day even I could earn that much. So then I will start again to work more on advertising and making few more updates to the applications. I even started 2 more new applications. They are pretty bigger in scope, and I am not able to spend much time on those. So it will take more time to finish than what I expected.
Every now and then I will be very much disappointed about the time I have spent on my website and the earning I have got. And today that disappointment made me write this post. I am sorry that this is a long essay. So for those who are trying to earn from your website or blog, make sure you work with caution. You need to pick the right theme and work smart if you want to earn big. Earning from Internet is not that easy if you don't know the in's and out's.
Though I am a lot disappointed, I was pretty much happy that I learned a lot during the past 1 and a half year. Okay I am going to start again with the belief that one day I will earn more. Give your Best, Let Life Do The Rest. See you soon in my success story :)
