Instead, it happened in four days. [...]]]> It happened earlier than I’ve ever thought it would. A lot earlier, in fact. My forecast (rather, my guess) would have been that I was to receive my first visitor from Google sometime between now and the end of the year, but not before, say, two weeks from the launch.

Instead, it happened in four days. And although eight visitors via Google may not seem too many, but it’s a pretty good start, I think.

I registered this domain on Saturday, launched the blog with the first post. The blog has been indexed by Google in less than 24 hours (thanks to the social bookmarking sites Digg, Mixx, Kirtsy and Reddit) to which I submitted my first post. But while being indexed by Google is nice, brand new sites (remember, this domain was free less than a week ago) usually have so low page rankings that those first indexes very rarely lead to actual visitors. Unless, of course the site covers a very specific and non-competitive niche, which is not the case this time.

Later on, yesterday, I launched my second blog under this domain on Charities Donations Volunteering and Nonprofit. Again I submitted the first post to various social networking sites, without any significant effect on their behalf. But it turned out that it had an effect, after all.

Less than 24 hours from posting the first article on my Charity Blog it has been indexed by Google, and the search engine has already sent 8 visitors on the first day. As I check my referer data, the article on Chosing wise Christmas gifts while supporting Charity organizations ranks pretty well on keywords, such as “charitable donations as christmas gifts“, “christmas donation presents” or “child present charity” (I haven’t tried all the possible combinations, I’ve just sampled three of the eight referer records on my Sitemeter account). Nice, general keywords.

And more importantly it’s nice to see that something has been started. We are on track.

Also, I received my first comment from Ben at Toptenblogtips.com, and my first pingback from a pretty obscure-looking site. It looks pretty much a splog, but I approved it this time, as it was the first one.

At least now I feel that I’m alive!

Okay, it’s a bit more [...]]]> It hasn’t been a week yet, but I’m already wandering from my original plan. I mean I know myself quite well, I had 30 years to get to know myself, but I’m still reticent to believe surprises like that. Anyway, the charity blog I launched yesterday can be found at http://zsoltballa.com/give.

Okay, it’s a bit more complicated than that. I’ve always been dreaming about building up a business on the Internet, including content and service sites, and I got very enthusiastic when I made my first move last week, and decided it was high time I started. So last Friday I registered the domain http://zsoltballa.com (although my real name is Balla Zsolt, but Hungarians, like the Japanese and the Chinese use family and surnames in reverse order, so the English compatible version of my name is Zsolt Balla), and started this blog.

I also wrote down a couple of ideas for the first blogposts, and after setting up the blog environment on Saturday, I started working on them full throttle. I also wrote down a couple of my already existing ideas I was planning to work on for the first few weeks (originally this blog was meant to be a report or a diary on the proceedings of those projects). These notes were not a specific business plan or something, that I am yet to create. But all the while it turned out that I had a hell of a good time writing blog posts.

Based on the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed writing blog posts, and brain storming on possible topics (I had over 30 topic ideas for future posts in virtually no time), and the other fact that I always wanted to have thematic blogs on two special subjects (one of which was charity, the other one I will reveal later on), I decided not to register dedicated domains for these blogs. I thought It would be a nice idea to use my personal domain for these blogs, especially as both of these subjects are of the kind I will gladly give my name to.

The charity blog I launched yesterday evening will feature news, articles, tips (and possibly a nonprofit database and a job board) on everything in connection with charity, donations, volunteering, fund raising, nonprofit works and aid works. I couldn’t resist but started the blog with a bunch of tips on charity Christmas presents.

Call it a cliché, but once I started the blog in the Advent season, I couldn’t find any reason why I shouldn’t do so. I’m planning to have approximately three posts a week up (similarly to this one), although the posting frequency may be a bit higher until the blog gets well established and widely known.

Although the blog is on charity and nonprofit, the blog itself is a for-profit project (I see nothing wrong with that), so for now, I’ve put a few Adsense stripes here and there. Later on I’ll see what works best for me (and for the blog).

But when drawing up the two posts, it turned out to be one. Laying down the rules proved [...]]]> Funnily enough, I first intended to to write up two separate posts on two separate subjects. One would have been on the rules, and the other (you’ve guessed it) on what this blog is not going to be.

But when drawing up the two posts, it turned out to be one. Laying down the rules proved to be nothing else but stating explicitly what this blog is not going to be and what is it that I am not willing to do (ie. the rules). So, here they are now.

This is a hobby. First of all, it means that I will only work on this blog (or on the projects mentioned in this blog) outside office hours. At least as long as I have a proper job (which I plan to have in the timespan that I’m able to foresee).

It means that I will not, in any means work or think about things mentioned here in the office, but on the other hand I will reduce my office-time spent with Facebooking and stuff, and try to cut out the longest time possible to do these projects with spending shortest time possible staring at a computer screen altogether. Secondly this site’s being a hobby also means that I will have to take it way more seriously than people take things related to their jobs. I mean normal people here, not the obsessed ones.

My life will not be changed by this. There are a couple of bloggers out there, who say that, back when they started blogging, they had no idea that it would change their lives. I’m not talking about change of this sort. If, say, two years from now, I will be a full-time blogger, sitting on my terrace writing posts and earning a six figure income, then so be it. When I say this hobby won’t change my life, I mean that I’m not willing to spend less time with my loved ones (family, friends, dogs etc.) because of my “virtual playground”. For now, I want to cut back on the time I spend on useless activities (watching TV, browsing the Internet pointlessly) and spend it on my internet projects.

I will be transparent, straightforward, and I’ll stick to the truth. If I’m not successful, you will know it, if I am, you’ll exactly know how successful I am.

I will never deny or hide any figure or data, be it income, spending, ROI, traffic, whatever. Amongst the few exceptions will be my AdSense revenue, as publishing details on your AdSense revenue is explicitly against the program’s TOS. But I will go as close to the exact figures as I can without braking the law.

If I find the key for success, I won’t keep it to myself so that you can’t copy my success. In fact, you are welcome to copy my success once I’m successful. But drop a backlink if you don’t mind…

I and all my projects will remain entirely white hat. No obscure schemes, no AdSense sites, no plagiarism. My sites will offer own content and own services. Period.

I will not want to sell anybody anything he or she doesn’t want to buy. It’s not that I have any problem with ClickBank-style stuffs or lengthy sales-letters, it’s just I’m not planning to be involved in that. I will use certain techniques, and, obviously, SEO. I will even buy PPC-traffic, but I will steer clear of anything reminiscent of a make-money-fast scheme. I will not review sites for you and lure you to buy lifetime access “for only $199″ or anything like that. I’ve been there before, I’ve seen it all, and it’s very remote from what I want from the Internet.

Internet, to me, means an infinite source of creativity, and I’m planning to keep it that way. I’m not sure that every site and service on the way will be creative and unique on its own, but I want to think that every idea of building a new site or offering a new service will be exactly like that.

Now I think I’m done with the mandatory part (maybe another post on what this blog will be after all would make sense), so let’s get down to business.

I believe in perfect transparency, both in personal and in business life, [...]]]> As I told you in my previous post (in the welcome-to-my-blog one), I do have a real-world job, but I won’t be too specific about it. On the other hand, I will be extremely specific about everything that is to happen on this blog.

I believe in perfect transparency, both in personal and in business life, and will post accordingly.

First things first, I’ll be very clear and specific about setting the goals of this blog (rather the goals of those activities this blog is about than the goals of the blog itself).

The aim is to double my real-life salary with my internet revenues within six months.

As I said, I can’t be too specific concerning my real-world salary (as there is a high possibility that someone from the office will sooner or later find this blog), so let’s say this: six months from now (May 7, 2009), I’d like to make $100 a day from my internet activities.

How about that for a goal?

This income, (a gross profit in my understanding) would roughly equal my 9-5 income. I do not take weekends into consideration (so the goal refers to $700 a week and not $500 a week), and also I’m talking about profit and not revenue. This latter is important, because I’m ready to invest cash in buying PPC traffic to one or more of my future sites.

I always have to keep in mind, that I’m doing it (the blog as well as the whole web-game-thing) only part-time, as a “hobby” (I will have an entire post on the rules later on), so obviously when and if I lose my job for one reason or another, that will modify the deadlines as well.

So if I lose my job (which I have no intention of doing), the original deadline will move to not later than three months from that specific point in time. Obviously, this only modifies the original deadline if it happens in less than three months from now, and that is, luckily highly unlikely. Still, the possibility can not be ruled out.

One more thing: setting a goal for six months is nice, and although it may seem a long period, in business life it isn’t long at all.

But I thought that the work and the achievements are easier to handle if we break our big goal down to tinier parts. These parts, of course, can be modified as time goes by, ideally without changing the original “big” goal. But even if one has to change the big, final goal, these smaller steps help keeping track of the actual achievements, furthermore, they are pretty useful when forecasting whether the big aim is still in connection with reality at all.

I also have to acknowledge that the road ahead is pretty steep. $100 A day is a lot of money. And probably making the first few bucks is the most difficult part of it all.

Thus, my first tiny goal is to make $1 a day by the end of this calendar year. It’s easy to calculate that I want to achieve the first 1% of my goal in the first 13% of my time. It may sound (and seem) weird at first, but taking all the difficulties of starting from zero into account, I think it is more than realistic. If you disagree, feel free to leave a comment.

Anyway, fingers crossed, and let’s get started!

As I’m writing this, there’s absolutely nothing on my website (I registered the domain a couple of hours ago, and now it’s parked free, courtesy of godaddy.com), and as I’ll be posting it on the page there’ll [...]]]> Welcome to my website, ZsoltBalla.com! This is probably the most difficult part, but hey, someone has to do it.

As I’m writing this, there’s absolutely nothing on my website (I registered the domain a couple of hours ago, and now it’s parked free, courtesy of godaddy.com), and as I’ll be posting it on the page there’ll still be nothing much, apart from a basic wordpress environment with a clear and cool-looking skin (redoable, actually).

Blogs with less than 10 posts inevitably feel like torsos, but I always wanted to have a blog under my own name, and the only way I can imagine having a blog with more than 10 posts is to have a blog with less than 10 posts for a certain period of time.

My name, as you’ve possibly guessed it by now, is Zsolt Balla, and I’m from Hungary, Central Eastern Europe (this will be important later on). I do have a proper job, and, due to the nature of jobs and blogs, I won’t be too specific about what that is. This blog is not about my job.

This blog is not my personal blog, either. I have my personal blog, that I’m writing together with my wife for almost four years by now. That’s in Hungarian.

So what is this blog, after all? Saying that this blog will focus on one of my hobbies, is one way to put it. The other way would be that this blog will focus on my professional life outside my 9-5. Because the hobby I’m talking about is building and developing websites. This website is not one of them. It’s just, you know, a blog.

I was alway curious, whether it is possible to make this hobby of mine (messing around with web design and php coding and sql queries and so on) into a decent amount of money, without officially turning a “web developer”, setting up a company or joining an existing one, negotiating with potential clients and selling yourself as the coolest-on-earth tech-guru or marketing-guru or designer-guru or whatever.

You know, the way, we all keep reading of: sitting at home (ideally by your pool or by your mantelpiece in the winters), working a couple of hours a day (which, as it is in my case, can be done outside office hours), and doing what you always wanted to.

Well, after all these years of dreaming, now I’m going to find out if it’s possible.

And this is exactly what this blog will be about.