A programmer's first journey, starting small, $5 a day goal.

DevTucker

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Hello everybody, as a programmer I've got a little bit of a "do it yourself" attitude, which is probably going to hurt me during the beginning of my journey. I'm attempting to jump into a saturated niche using a "two-page blog" type of setup. The websites core content will be divided into two pages:


  • The home page, which displays recent videos and posts
  • The post page, which displays information about posts and videos.

My plans for monetization:

  • Google Adsense
  • Selling every-day ware (T-Shirts, Hats, Mugs, etc) using custom niche-related designs.

I've decided to do something a little different for the starting up of my website, considering I am aiming to get repeat visitors I'm going to keep the advertisements off of my home-page for awhile. Instead the advertisements will only be displayed on the post-page. If I find a decent network that allows for niche-related video advertisement, I may look into implemented randomized video advertisements, but make them more rare than common, and disabled for any user that is logged into my site. (This should be fine as YouTube does not stream advertisements to embedded videos).

I've decided on building my own software and website for this.

I've never liked wordpress, and while you can tell me a thousand reasons as to why I should use it, I can tell you a thousand reasons as to why I wont. I'm a pre-degree programmer, so my portfolio is everything. I figure having a fully functional blog can't hurt my portfolio if I've done all the work myself.

Here's a mockup of the main-page that I'm working on.. I've already finished most of the blogging system, including video posts and keyword/tags. What it comes down to now is figuring out how I want to handle the styling of my website.

bhwthread.png


How I'm going to get traffic:

My niche is very popular, and there's hundreds of thousands of videos on YouTube that aren't owned by anybody. They aren't monetized (and can't be) and can be reuploaded at whim. Copyright claims against this niche is down right ludicrous, and while it can happen, I can almost guarantee it wont. I've created a decent 7 second opening that's very catchy, and even voices out my domain in a memorable fashion. The domain name is also very easily memorable (and brandable). I'll reupload videos with this opening on it around 3-4 videos a day. Once traffic starts picking up I may even purchase some advertisements, we'll see.

Facebook groups: I'm in tons of facebook groups pertaining to this niche, some are private, some are public, and one I am the owner of.

Tumblr: I've created a tumblr bot that allows me to post images similar to that of the old tumblr "queue". This was done using the tumblr API. I'll be liking/following images manually, and will only upload 8-10 hours a day. I've used this bot for 6 months on an adult niche before getting banned and that's because I went overboard. (1 post every 15 minutes, left it on for a week by mistake because I left the house).

Local get-togethers: This niche is something that I'm involved with personally in my local area and a few surrounding areas, I'll be giving out shirts and the such there.



Well, I guess that's pretty much it.
I'll keep you guys up to date on my progress, I don't have time to work on this every single day, so my updates may come in waves, but I'm going to stay at this and stay strong. I've been an enthusiast about this niche for years, so I'm not going anywhere.
 
So today was a fairly slow day, and while it's not over just yet I figured I would post my progress as I'm absolutely exhausted. The overall design I had created had an immediate flaw when it comes to responsive designs, so instead of a large banner up top, I'm looking for something more suitable. I may just change banners based on screen resolution, but I'm not exactly sure right now. Currently I'm using a small logo towards the left-hand side of the screen with a black background. I managed to get the rest of the page finished and looking like a prototype, there's a few styling issues when the screen is larger than a certain size, but I think I'm going to make the website have a maximum size of 1920x1080, and just center everything ontop of a background from there.

I'm still currently following through with the idea of not having any advertisements directly on the front page, on a side-note my other adsense website (Which I'm doing with a friend) has made $0.45, but we're rotating advertisements and I have no idea what he's gotten. We're getting around 2,000 visitors/day.. so I'm sure we can pull up to the $10/day mark with some work.

Tomorrow I plan to start fixing up the design and making it look pretty and getting the video player to work how I want it to, which shouldn't be hard. I don't have much experience with AJAX, but it's obvious that there's going to be a requirement to figure that out to get this completed. Oh well, shouldn't take long at all to figure out.

I'm still looking for a company that creates shirts, hats, etc and sells your designs for a % or flat rate earning.
 
I've never liked wordpress, and while you can tell me a thousand reasons as to why I should use it, I can tell you a thousand reasons as to why I wont.

As a developer, I can't agree with this more. Also, awesomesauce to see one of us delving into IM. All the best to you on your journey! If you're interested, I have one here where I often tend to start rambling about dev-related stuff.
 
There is no right or wrong about using WordPress. It's depend on the taste and projects.
As I'm not a developer from scratch, I tend to depend on open source CMS more. Still, I know the feeling as a developer, we'd like to create something by ourselves.

Anyways, you have a nice solid plan and knowledge here; wish you the best of luck with your journey!
 
If your were just aiming at making money with google adsense
then your $5/day goal maybe would make sense maybe.
Your aiming at selling actually physical products which really makes your $5/day goal a joke.
You would be better off with having a goal of getting one sale then another then another.
NOT saying "I'm going to sell shirt for pennies dimes & nickels to get $5/day"
AIM HIGH THINK BIG...not dirt cheap...i'm just saying...Regardless progress towards success.

Oh...For your last question...Is something like Society6 or TeeSpring what your looking for?

-JB
 
What programming language are you using?
 

I'm sorry I should have been more clear, while I am definately leaning towards opening up the "store" as popularity grows, my goal is strictly for adsense. I can see where there can be confusion between my post and goals and I apologize. Currently my goal is $5/day, however once I open the store I'll have a goal of $20/day for that one. Please keep in mind that when selling things having a "/day" goal isn't as simple to reach as some people would think.

Thanks for your link to both of these, I've already seen Society6 and it didnt' seem to be my cup of tea, and TeeSpring looks great, but so far it doesn't seem like what I'm after either. I'm looking for a store that will allow me to integrate it into my website and my website design, this is usually pretty rare, I'll keep TeeSpring in mind though.


As a developer, I can't agree with this more. Also, awesomesauce to see one of us delving into IM. All the best to you on your journey! If you're interested, I have one here where I often tend to start rambling about dev-related stuff.

Subscribed.

What programming language are you using?

PHP, Javascript.

I don't really consider HTML5/CSS3 programming languages, but those are used too.
 
Last edited:
Day Three

Updates on the website are continuing on a on a 'hobbyist' basis for now, I haven't had much time to invest due to helping out my brother with his vehicle. I have finished most of the blogging engine and starting diving straight into AJAX. It's very simple (as I had assumed it would be) and already have most of the home-page functionality done. I'm trying to find someone that can help me make it pretty though, because right now it's just a two-tone website. (Black and white). I started working on the blog-post page as-well as made the home-page mobile friendly. It can still use some work, but I'm very happy with my current progress.

On a side note I was asked to create a website for my uncles business, in exchange I get a paint-job for my car, and he does ridiculous work, so I'm happy with that. (Probably around $3k worth of work for a website.)



 
Day Three

Updates on the website are continuing on a on a 'hobbyist' basis for now, I haven't had much time to invest due to helping out my brother with his vehicle. I have finished most of the blogging engine and starting diving straight into AJAX. It's very simple (as I had assumed it would be) and already have most of the home-page functionality done. I'm trying to find someone that can help me make it pretty though, because right now it's just a two-tone website. (Black and white). I started working on the blog-post page as-well as made the home-page mobile friendly. It can still use some work, but I'm very happy with my current progress.

On a side note I was asked to create a website for my uncles business, in exchange I get a paint-job for my car, and he does ridiculous work, so I'm happy with that. (Probably around $3k worth of work for a website.)



To get inspiration for your website, go to themeforest, pick a premium wordpress theme that you loved, check its "live preview" and go to the inspection on chrome...you will get all the inspiration you need + color pallets :D then do something like that.
 
To get inspiration for your website, go to themeforest, pick a premium wordpress theme that you loved, check its "live preview" and go to the inspection on chrome...you will get all the inspiration you need + color pallets :D then do something like that.

Unfortunately I've already gone through so many pages of word-press themes it's made me sick, this goes for standard HTML/HTML5 themes as-well. My current layout is something that I really, really like, but I just can't find a way to color it appropriately to bring it to life. I can probably leave it black/white and people will be happy, but I want it to look like there's been a lot of work put into it. (Even though there has been, 99% of the visitors won't know the difference). I just don't have the eye for design, so I may pay someone to revamp it a little.
 
It is very little money for a programmer. You should join Elance and oDesk
 
It is very little money for a programmer. You should join Elance and oDesk

Unfortunately these sits (Especially oDesk) are flooded with people from (What I would assume to be india) offering work for $2 and $3 an hour, and I'm just not going to do it. I rather set up my own website, get a decent portfolio going and have some passive income that will pay for the missing fraction for a nicer car or something.
 
So today I took what would seem to be a break, but wasn't really on purpose. The only part about this venture that's really going to hurt me (until I can afford a VPS with unlimited bandwidth) is going to be the downloading and uploading of videos after adding my own intro and watermarks to them. Unfortunately this youtube account will be using material that cannot be monetized directly through a partnership so the features available to partners (Such as watermarking the corner and a short opening video) won't apply to me and I'll have to do it all manually.

Currently I'm trying to upload a 400mb video, and I'm getting an estimated 900 minutes remaining, this is after an hour. I currently do not have a laptop or I'd take myself down to a McDonalds or leach off of someones WiFi in town, unfortunately I can't do that right now.

Considering this venture is going to require the upload of hundreds of videos and maintaining social media which requires a ridiculous amount of photo uploading, I may have a rough start. The good part about this is that my father has a decent Internet connection and may let me stay with him for awhile, while I get this project on its feet.

The websites main page is finally completed and is completely compatible with mobile devices, I fixed up the video results so that we can have a endless stream of videos, instead of a "4-4-4-2" scenario, in which there were oenly 14 videos but we were supposed to display a total of 16. In this case it will show the last two and the first two videos in the list, and start over just like that. An endless cycle.

The only thing that I don't have completed on the website so far which I'm having some problems tackling is the search feature, considering I want to be able to search my database for videos that I've personally uploaded (to the website) I need to create a search engine of types. The fact of using "exact match" searches is always a possibility, but that's definitely not the best way to go about it. Oh well, I knew this was coming when I wanted to add a video search to my page. Considering I don't have tons of pages on my website and instead it's just a "index.php" and "post.php" which handles the displaying of everything, we'll see how that works out.

Probably a rediculous approach when trying for SEO, as it makes it seem like the page has zero content, even though it may have thousands of pages..
 
Productive update, though I'm curious about why you're having trouble with search. Have you tried using SQL LIKE queries?
 
Productive update, though I'm curious about why you're having trouble with search. Have you tried using SQL LIKE queries?

Yes I have, for example if I have the title "How to eat soup with a fork" in my database (Lol, what the hell is with that title) and I searched "How to eat soup with a frk" using

Code:
SELECT * FROM `table` WHERE `title` LIKE 'How to eat soup with a frk'

There would be zero results.
 
If you are such a good programmer and software expert, you may go through ALL of the BST's, take the best and put it all in 1 software package and sell it here on BHW.. you will be reach in seconds if you can code and if you do it better than all the others!
 
I just wrote up a massive response and update, but regardless of how many times I updated it the spam-filter was picking it up, sorry guys. I'll try to put it in a nutshell.

Youtube reached 1.5k subs and 130k views.
I purchased 6 niche websites from the MP section.
I purchased my old authority domain back from before I knew about IM and will build on it in my free time.
I have worked on the design of my main page.
 
Use a wildcard:

Code:
SELECT * FROM `table` LIKE '%eat soup%'

Pro tip: Parse the search string when it's submitted and remove all the grammatical BS like 'a', 'the', 'with', etc.
 
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