Today’s the Day! PDN is profitable. I spent approximately $140 on setup on this site and it took me just over a month to recoup the losses. The interesting part is that most of the earnings have happened in the last week. It takes time to get some content on the site that’s worth reading. And I think that’s the important part. I’m writing for people. Not search engines.
This really is the ultimate experiment. Can I take a site from scratch to making a living with it in a year. Yes, you read that right. A year. I think a year is long enough to do whatever it takes to promote the site and to have the search engines do their thing. it’s still early days and I’ve been in retail long enough to know that a good december doesn’t neccesarily mean a good Jan/Feb/March. I may be late to the party to fully monetize photo daily news for the holiday 2008 quarter, but there’s always 2009.
Income.
Google Adsense. $1.41
Affiliate Programs: My best day so far at $44.84
Items sold:
Nokia Extended Battery BL-5C
Canon Powershot SX10IS 10MP Digital Camera with 20x Wide Angle Optical Image Stabilized Zoom
I sold two Canon Powershot SX10IS Digital Cameras yesterday.
Kingston 4GB SDHC Class 4 Flash Card (SD4/4GB)
Sandisk SDSDB-4096-A11 4 GB Secure Digital High Capacity Flash Card
Sony Cybershot DSCW300 13.6MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom with Super Steady Shot
Western Digital WDMER2500TN My PassPort Essential 250GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive (Real Red)
One interesting thing so far in this little experiment is that some of the items purchased have nothing to do with photography at all. I’ve sold video games and earbuds using links from this site to Amazon.
To date, Amazon is clearly the vendor that’s winning so far. As I mentioned earlier this week I have one sale pending from Adorama but most of the sales happen from Amazon. And why not? Amazon’s site is one of the easiest to navigate, they discount heavily, and have deals all the time. And, they’ll even gift wrap. They ship fast, and the customer service is top notch.
The disadvantage to Amazon, and where you might want to consider the photo specific shops like adorama, b+h, or ritz camera is Amazon just sells stuff. If you need advice or guidance than the specialty shops might be a better option for you.
Traffic:
Traffic was 1923 unique visitors which is just about where I’ve been averaging at 2000/day. I wonder what I can do to increase this? Does anybody have any tips?
Grand Total
Today’s the big day. I’m profitable. Not by much at all, and there’s some days I wonder if I’m just wasting my time. But it’s days like this that offer me a hope. Again, it’s not the monetary success I’m after as being able to say that I made this. From scratch. with a domain name and $100 for a template.
Here’s the numbers.
-28.69 plus 44.84+1.41 = a PROFIT of $17.56.
It took me 35 days to be profitable. The next goal is to average $100/day. I wonder how many days it will take for that to happen? My guess is it will be well into Summer of 2009.
Thanks to each and every one of you that read this and take an action. If you’ve been planning on a digital camera purchase anyway and any of my work here has informed, entertained, or otherwise. Thank You. The internet is out people. That’s me helping you, and vice versa.
Hope you’ve had fun reading. I’ve had fun writing.
Jim
Related posts:
Featured, Full Disclosure
November 12th, 2008 at 9:23 am
……and where you might want to consider the photo specific shops like adorama, ………….. is Amazon just sells stuff. If you need advice or guidance than the specialty shops might be a better option for you
Thanks for the recomendation for Adorama Camera. If you need specific help or have a query with an order, you are very welcome to contact me directly: helen.oster@adoramacamera.com
Sincerely
Helen Oster
Adorama Camera Customer Service Ambassador
November 12th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Thanks Helen.
See folks? Adorama has a “Camera Customer Service Ambassador”. This is what I was talking about earlier in the post. If you need assisistance, or help from a reputable, knowledgeable dealer Amazon might not be the best idea.
lowest price does not necessarily mean best value. And that’s what you want. Value. You won’t remember the ten bucks you saved if you buy the wrong camera for you needs.
April 25th, 2009 at 5:15 am
Finally someone who can write a good blog ! . This is the kind of information that is useful to those want to increase their SERP’s.
I loved your post and will be telling others about it. Subscribing to your RSS feed now. Thanks