Okay, it looks like there is an issue that has been raised in the “Guestbook” that need some clarification.
It’s a comment that seems to come back again and again in both the “Guestbook” and the “Bulletin Board”.
Here are a couple of samples of the theory, taken from the Guestbook:
…Ian is going to make a fortune thru web hits…
…Ian has already banked an obscene amount of money from web hits off genuine people wishing him well for the future…
…He will also bank the astronomical dollars from the number of web hits during the sale process….
…What sort of revenue would this website generate with it’s Guest Book, Blogs, FAQ’s, Poll Results, Videos, Links to Personal videos etc…
I’m sorry, but I must be missing something here.
I would be grateful if any of these people could explain exactly where they think this money comes from. Just because a website has a large amount of traffic does not mean that it is making any money.
For a website to make money it has to have adverts and banners which direct traffic to another site, the owners of which are willing to pay to have that traffic directed to their site.
There are two traditional money making models on the internet, which work as follows:
1) You have a product that you sell, you build a website, bring traffic to your site, and sell your product to your visitors, or
2) You set up a site with quality content, and create a large volume of traffic, and then sell advertising on your site, to direct your traffic to other sites.
My site does not fall into either of these two categories, although now does have some advertising on it. My site is designed simply to publicise and inform about the upcoming auction on the 22nd June, and hopefully allow as many people as possible know what is happening.
My intention was to not put any advertising on this site but in the light of the traffic this site generated, like many other sites who don’t get questioned or abused for doing so, I have recently decided to put up some Google Ads to cover some of the cost of the website hosting (read below). However, I would like to show you a snapshot of my statement.
“Hurray, of the 700,000 plus web hits over the last week, I have made an outstanding total of $23.16 from Google AdSense!!!! Will I retire now, or do you think I should wait a bit?”
Ahh. There was to be a snapshot of my Google Ads statement here, but I am told this is against Google’s user agreement, so I am not able to show you that. I imagine that this may fuel further speculation from the conspiracy theorists, but check Google’s terms and conditions – wouldn’t want to risk losing that $23.16, would I?
I’m not making any money from the videos shown on Youtube, much the same as thousands of other people who put their videos up there every day. And I don’t think you’ve seen me saying “this blog is brought to you today by such and such…”
I haven’t received a cent from any radio, press or television interview I have done so far. They haven’t offered, I haven’t asked.
This site was designed and put together for free by a good friend of mine. I would have never been able to pay for the amount of time and effort she put into it, but I am happy to provide a link to her business webpage.
As for the links to the people like phpBB who wrote the code for the forum I am using, they are part of a great community of developers who offer their scripts freely in exchange of one small thing: recognition for their work. I have simply given this where due.
In fact, so far, this website has cost me money, as the email below illustrates:
—– Original Message —–
From: “ICDSoft.com”
To: “alife4sale.com”;
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 8:49 AM
Subject: From ICDSoft.com, regarding alife4sale.comHello,
We noticed that you submitted an upgrade payment for the over-traffic your site has generated.
The additional 10GBs you have purchased do not cover the traffic your site has already accumulated.
Your site has already generated 50 excessive GBs of traffic.
We would recommend you to consider upgrading your account to a higher hosting plan.
A 2xBussiness hosting plan will provide you with 80GB of traffic plus the additional GBs you have already purchased.
This will make totally 90GB traffic for this month.
Unfortunately if your site continues to accumulate traffic so rapidly, the remaining of these 90GBs will be consumed for a few hours.
A 3xBusiness plan will provide you with 120GB (+10 additional GBs you have purchased).
You can proceed with the upgrade of your account, via the Order Hosting section in your online Control Panel.Here are the options that we can offer to you:
1. You can purchase 500GB as additional traffic credits for $500 that will be added to your account’s bandwidth balance.
2. Sponsorship agreement. You place an advertising banner of our company on your main page, and you will not be charged for the excessive traffic used by alife4sale.com.
Please let us know how you would like to proceed further.
Best Regards,ICDSoft.com
———————————
Guess which option I took! As a result, there is now a banner for ICDSoft on my homepage.
Of course, you can read all this and still decide it’s a scam, that’s up to you. But I guess you would be within your rights to ask, why would I do it if it’s all so hard ?
In the last 2 years since the separation with my wife, I have tried in many ways to put the past behind me. I moved from Perth to Kalgoorlie for six months and started a completely new career. I spent the following year working away up north, only returning to Perth one week out of three. I bought an old campervan and drove on my own across Australia 8000km from Perth to Sydney over a period of 8 weeks in an attempt to find some answers and a new direction for my life. Nothing really worked and I still had to come back to the same house, the same things, and the same memories.
Now, I feel that I might have found a way to deal with this once and for all.
As I said, my life will go on auction on Ebay on the 22nd of June and hopefully someone will have seen enough things that he/she/they like on this website to want to bid on it.
And if one of my most tenacious detractors on the “Bulletin Board” is true to his word, you will soon be able to see a video on YouTube of someone eating his hat.
And I am willing to bet YouTube won’t be paying him any money either!
