My First Website

Please note some of the links in this post may contain affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. As always any recommendations that I make are always based on my personal experiences with the product and I have not received any free products or anything else by these companies.

This is my story of “How I started making money online”.

In the Beginning

It was in fall of 2003 when I decided to move to Sydney. With very little cash I spent the first few months living on a friend’s couch and was having difficulties finding work in Sydney as I had very little contacts and friends.

Since leaving University with a Bachelors degree I was fortunate enough to find a job right away and spent the first half of my career sitting at a desk within the corporate world and now to having no job, cash flow or my own home. I was getting desperate, so I got a job working as a kitchen hand at a local steak house that paid minimum wage.

This was one of the first trying and most humbling part of my life. However, it gave me the strength and perseverance to do whatever it takes to fulfill my dreams.

I decided from that moment, I never wanted to feel so helpless in my life, I wanted to create and build something that would not put me in this situation again, something that would provide a constant cash flow so I would not have to worry again.

Discovery

After a couple of months, still working everyday at the local steak house I managed to find a job back in the corporate world. I needed to start building my assets and working towards fulfilling my promise.

At this point I was still quite unsure what it was going to be but I had a gut feeling that the world of digital and online would take off over the next few years. So I tried selling stuff on Ebay, doing online surveys and even participated in paid to surf. Although I never achieved any great success from these activities but it taught me a great deal.

Then one day, I stumbled upon Webmasters World where I was reading about how people were making money from Google. This got me really excited and interested. Back then Google was really big and cool, they still are today!

So I began to dig a little deeper and did some research on how people were making money with Google. It was here that I was introduced to Google Adsense and into the world of pay per click (PPC). The best thing was it allowed Australians to participate. (Back then it was hard to find any programs that allowed International participants). As well I knew Google wouldn’t rip me off. 

To get into the program, I needed a website.

Choosing my Niche

I began to think of ideas around what niche market to work on that would be lucrative in terms of dollar value. What initially came to mind were electronics, cars, books and computers however, there was quite a lot of sites out there already. I needed something that would help me rank well on Google and didn’t have so many competing websites already up.

It was late one night while watching tv, I saw an infomercial called “Proactiv” an acne solution and a little bulb lit up. So I Google it and there was not much information. I watched a few more shows (infomercials) and tried to find information on these products online. There was very little out there in terms of information and dedicated sites. I realised then that I had found my niche market.

Writing Code

Back then, there was hardly anyone who had review sites, let alone for infomercials sites. So I decided to build a review site for infomercial products. I wanted to take advantage of the growing online community in terms of social bloggers and forums that people could share their thoughts (good/ bad) on the products they had bought and trialed.

Being a season programmer I built the website from scratch, yes from scratch. Coding one page at a time. I made it interactive as well, it allowed my readers to rate and share their experiences with the products they had previously bought. It took me quite sometime to develop and build the site (I wish I knew about WordPress all those years ago).

My First Website

My First Website – Infomercial Review

After one month of coding I finally finished my website. In May of 2005 I launched Infomercial Review.

About 6 months after launching, I received my first cheque from Google of $150.00. I still remember the day it came via snail mail, I finally made my first real money from online. I started thinking about how I could turn my $150 dollars into a consistent flow of money so I could eventually leave the rat race.

I knew I had a long way to go, to achieve a full time income from this business I needed more. For the next 3 years I was spending nearly every spare waking moment researching new products, reviewing and updating the content, and finding new ways to increase more traffic to Infomercial Review.

Then in 2009, Infomercial Review really took off. It began to make over $1000 a month.

Statistics

773,882 unique people have visited my site
2362 Consumers wrote reviews
348764 readers found that the reviews were useful
595 Product Reviews
133623 Ranked for keywords
~$35,000 in Revenue from Google Adsense, Amazon and various Affiliate Programs.

However I only started recording these statistics from Google Analytics as it was not available until 2006.

Today

Infomercial Review is still a consistent moneymaker for me, but due to the increase of competition and various Google Search updates my traffic has slowed down quite dramatically.

I have seen all the highs and lows of Google updates including Penguin but it was the most recent one that Google released called Panda which really took a big hit on my website.

For years Google loved it but then last year it decided it no longer thought my website was valid and relevant hence my ranking dropped significantly. From a SEO perspective, this website is as “white hat” as it can be. I never had to do any link building, cause as you can see from the above statistics I ranked for over 133,000 different keywords.

Future

I have new plans for this site to take it back to its former glory. I think it’ll be a great working case study to take an existing site and rejuvenate it to see if it can once again rise from the ashes.

If you like to give it Infomercial Review some loving, feel free to share the website with your friends and family or simply take a look to see how I built my very first website.

The one thing I will leave you with today that I learnt from building Infomercial Review is, “Always do your research before you buy” especially when it comes to new products. Take the time to read real people’s comments on their experiences but ultimately, make the decision that is best for you.

Norm