Dawn of the Geeks

If you had to pay an extra $20 a month you’d probably think hard about what you were paying for. If you could find an extra $20 a month you probably would think it wasn’t much. When you first start your home-based business you’re not going to get rich. When I first started my own business of building web-sites I wasn’t making anything. I was young with no bills so I really didn’t care that I was spending $70 a month on an internet connection so I could run my own web-sites. After a few years went by I found out I was pretty good at this internet thing and began looking for ways to make money from my hobby. When I first started trying to make money I was making $20 a month or less. Hardly enough to cover costs but it was my hobby and hobbies cost money anyway.

As years progressed however the money began to grow. Recently I decided to start up a new site. It was $9 for the domain and $7 for the host to put the site on. I made over $3000 in two months from that site. I essentially turned about $23 into $3000 in two months. All it used to make money was Google AdSense. The entire web-site was free for visitors to use. I’ll be honest with you and tell you it was a fluke. The site still only costs $7 a month to run but now it’s making closer to $100 a month. The idea here is that you have to be realistic. But, reality is great. That extra $100 a month helps pay the bills and I don’t have to spend even 1 minute working on the site anymore. I set it up over a weekend and havn’t done much with it since.

When deciding what home-based business you want to get into you have to be honest with yourself. If you’re looking to get rich overnight it’s just not going to happen. You may get lucky like I did and score a huge chunk of money in a short time but that’s rare. That happened to me once in the 6 years I’ve been running web-sites. What you have to focus on is finding something you enjoy doing that you’re willing to work on even when you’re only bringing in an extra $20 or $100 a month.

But don’t be content just accepting that small amount. As you find time to work to improve your business the money will increase. It is easy to make small amounts to cover a bill or two. But, if you want to do better than that it’s going to take effort.

Long ago I discovered that ad revenue goes up when you require that Javascript be enabled. For awhile I was being nice and not requiring it. Now my ad revenue is tanking. Javascript is now required to be enabled for various web-sites owned by Icarus Independent. When required, the “Javascript Enabled” image will be displayed if you have JS enabled.

It’s a bit fishy that Google ad impressions are going down while hits to the sites are going up.

IcarusIndie.com is now fully over on the new server. The only lagging detail is transferring the domain name from Dotster to GoDaddy. In the meantime all mail to icarusindie.com is still being handled by HostMatters. One of the disadvantages of consolidating hosting stuff like this is the sudden realization how much crap you really have.

I just need to sweep up some final things and then HostMatters is gone.

The Labyrinth has moved over. The Library has moved over. The Free Speech Zone has moved. I left no forwarding address for that section since it’s been overrun with spammers. You’ll have to click the link to the left. I’m sure they’ll return soon enough.

The only thing left is the main site which consists of a few directories but mainly just the blog. I’m taking this opportunity to prune some of the crap from this site that’s been in hiding for months. You may have noticed the “Contact Us” link is gone. It’ll be back once the site is fully moved over.

I’m hoping to have everything transitioned from HostMatters to GoDaddy by this weekend if not sooner. I can then start focusing on building various sections of the site that need work. Mainly just the Real Time Software Rendering section. “Bunnies” is coming along great. I just havn’t had time to work on it lately.

Believe it or not Icarus Independent has been around for 6 years on January 1st. With the new year comes a new domain name and a new focus for IcarusIndie. I havn’t worked out all the details yet but big changes are coming.

Leads are a business term for contact information collected from someone looking to buy something. For example, Joe Smith is looking to buy a bike. He finds a web-site with a form that collects his information which is then sold to Bike Co which sells bikes. Bike Co then contacts Joe Smith and tries to sell Joe one of their bikes. When done properly it is a high effective business stragegy. Imagine you run a business selling sprockets. Instead of just putting an ad in the classified section hoping someone who needs a sprocket sees your ad you can get specific contact information for people who want to buy sprockets. It saves you time and money.

Leadpile.com provides lead buyers with an e-bay like system for purchasing leads at the price they feel comfortable paying.

If you own a business and want an effective way to reach customers buying what you’re selling, sign with LeadPile.com for free and get started contacting hot exclusive leads today!

Leadpile.com also provides a way for web-site owners who want a way to monitize their web-site.

It is 100% free to sign up and you will make at least the amount you set for the leads you generate that sell. If you want $5.00 for every lead you sell then you will get at least $5.00 for every lead you sell. There are no fees. There are over a dozen different lead types you can generate using the I-SaveNow form with buyers paying as much as $50 per lead. There’s no cost to get started. Check it out!

code.icarusindie.com is the new home for the Real Time Software Rendering tutorials. I’m working on cleaning up Icarus Independent and shifting things off to my GoDaddy hosting account. For $7 a month I get unlimited domains and subdomains, 1000GB of transfer and 100GB of storage. Plus 25 databases.

By making use of DNS Made Easy (which is really cheap and really easy) I’ve been able to have IcarusIndie.com spread across three servers. I’d like to get rid of HostMatters since it’s costing me $28 a month for a lot less than I’m getting from GoDaddy. The only advantage that HostMatters has is access to the raw access logs. However, since I’ve perfected the art of the single index.php web-site I can do my own logging using PHP. I don’t get everything but everything I really care about.

When the switch is made you won’t even notice. My HostMatters account will then be quietly canceled while everyone is hanging out at the GoDaddy hosted copy of the site.