Buy Me A Ferrari

Yup - I know, I’ve been really lazy lately and haven’t been posting half as much as I should be. This is changing as of now as I am not going to stop posting like I did lately.

At the moment I’m looking for a job and selling stuff I don’t need from the house - this is in an effort to purchase car insurance and get myself a car as I have a license and no car to drive at the moment.

I have a load of random stuff on eBay at the moment from children’s books to DVDs, there will also shortly be a load of computer parts going on as I need to have a clearout and generate as much money as possible.

If you’d like to have a look at what I’m currently selling and possibly even have a bid or two you can do so on eBay here.

So the sole purpose of this blog at the moment is to document my path to afford a car and insuring the car. I will get back to the Ferrari one day.

Any web designers willing to do me a cheap page?

If so, I want a one page website set up. If you can help drop me an email: me [at] daviddunn.co.uk and we can discuss this a bit more.

Where is Buy Me A Ferrari going now?

I will be continuing along the same lines as I was before but I want to make money now rather than in the long run as I need a car and insurance now.

I’ll still be talking about different things to make money on the internet etc. but I’ll also be talking about the ways in which I am making money and how close (or far away) I am to being able to afford a car/insurance.

Anyone got any quick ways of making money that I could use? Also, I need a web designer for another project idea if anyone is interested? Drop me an email.

All donations to the same PayPal email address are great and you will get a mention. Bidding on my auctions is great too.

Before now it has been pretty poor trying to track earnings as I’m registered on so many different websites offering PPC/affiliate/something along those lines.

I’m now going to list all of my current balances as of today so that I can effectively look back and see how much I have made during February.

This list contains some programs that I may not be running on either of my blogs (like AdSense) but I may use it for other projects throughout February so I’ll list the current balance anyway.

Here goes:

Google AdSense: $30.90
Rubicon Project: $8.16
ShoppingAds: $0.00
Text Link Ads: $0.00
Project Wonderful: $8.60
Kontera: $1.00
Private ads: $0.00
TTZ Media: $0.00

Think that’s about it at the moment really - anything else that I think about or remember will be added and I may create a page that lists all of the things that I am attempting to make money through.

As this post seems to have amazingly disappeared from my blog, here it is again. This is the stats for Buy Me A Ferrari during the month of January 2008. These statistics are basically from 18th January as this is when my first blog post was.

January has been half decent month for Buy Me A Ferrari and brought a fair amount of traffic - not that I was expecting a great deal due to us being pretty new.

Here are the stats in a little more details via Google Analytics:

Total visits: 1,151
Average visits per day: 82.21
Most popular day: Sunday 20th January (240 visits)

Total page views: 1,969
Most popular day: Sunday 20th January (443 page views)

Top 5 browsers:

1. Firefox (1,040 visits)
2. Internet Explorer (84 visits)
3. Opera (13 visits)
4. Safari (7 visits)
5. Mozilla (3 visits)

Top 5 countries:

1. United States (668 visits)
2. United Kingdom (179 visits)
3. Canada (82 visits)
4. Australia (30 visits)
5. Netherlands (13 visits)

Top 5 traffic sources:

1. StumbleUpon (819 visits)
2. Direct (110 visits)
3. Entrecard (106 visits)
4. FerrariDave (20 visits)
5. Sitehoppin (14 visits)

Top 5 Search Engine Keywords:

1. buy me a ferrari
2. buying ferrari
3. buymeaferrari
4. ferrari forum uk
5. how much money do you need make to buy ferrari

Top 5 posts:

1. Home (432 views)
2. StumbleUpon (420 views)
3. Ideas For Domain Names (316 views)
4. How I Am Going To Make Money (213 views)
5. Change In Advertising Prices (149 views)

Can’t really say whether or not these stats are great or not as I don’t have any previous statistics to compare with. However, they seem really good at the moment and are only set to improve. Will be good to compare with by the end of February.

As most of you will be aware, I passed my driving test on Thursday 31st January 2008 (last Thursday) and since then I’ve been looking at the price of a car and insurance.

Now, the price of the car isn’t the problem I can pick up a car for anything from £300 upwards so affording that isn’t going to be a problem.

However, when I go to do a car insurance quote (with me being 17) the price is colossal. For what’s meant to be one of the cheapest cars to insure, an ‘N’ reg Vauxhall Corsa, we’re talking £2100 at the cheapest insurer.

So… looks like I am going to have to pay SEVEN times the amount that the car is worth for insurance alone.

I personally think that’s ridiculous, yes, fair enough, my age group might be one of the highest for accidents etc. but it doesn’t mean that all of us drive around like complete idiots.

I might even be tempted to start a new website named “Buy Me Car Insurance” haha!!

So this is just a plea for help really - I’m posting this on both FerrariDave and Buy Me A Ferrari to try and get some help:

Anyone got any ideas as to decent ways to lower the premium I’ll have to pay?

Any cheaper cars that I could buy to lower the premium?

Anyone like to donate an odd quid from their PayPal account would be great (anything at all from 50p upwards would be great - or even $1 if you are in the States): you can do so by sending it to: me@daviddunn.co.uk (not that I am expecting anyone to but it would be great if you did).

I’ll even give your site a mention or do a blog review if you are kind enough to donate.

This is the second of two posts detailing my site statistics for January 2008.

January has been a really good month for FerrariDave and brought a fair amount of traffic.

Here are the stats in a little more details via Google Analytics:

Total visits: 9,633   |   Increase of 2989
Average visits per day: 310.74   |   Increase of 96.42
Most popular day: Wednesday 2nd January (2,221 visits)

Total page views: 17,101   |   Increase of 4670
Most popular day: Wednesday 2nd January (4,151 page views)

Top 5 browsers:

1. Firefox (8,791 visits)
2. Internet Explorer (748 visits)
3. Safari (34 visits)
4. Mozilla (28 visits)
5. Opera (27 visits)

Top 5 countries:

1. United States (6,236 visits)
2. United Kingdom (1,102 visits)
3. Canada (626 visits)
4. Australia (216 visits)
5. Germany (121 visits)

Top 5 traffic sources:

1. StumbleUpon (7,408 visits)
2. Direct (807 visits)
3. Entrecard (588 visits)
4. Google (110 visits)
5. Sitehoppin (53 visits)

Top 5 Search Engine Keywords:

1. ferraridave.com
2. libra library
3. entrecard
4. libra+library
5. dave dunn

Top 5 posts:

1. New Year’s Resolutions Over Time (6,495 views)
2. Home (1,855 views)
3. Beer Brothers (1,777 views)
4. Smoking In The Rain (966 views)
5. Wedding Anniversary (863 views)

Top 5 posts from January:

1. Smoking In The Rain (1,287 views)
2. Windows Live Writer (1,224 views)
3. Wedding Anniversary (1,223 views)
4. Blog Anywhere - Handwritten Post (1,047 views)
5. Happy New Year (726 views)

Pretty happy with these stats as all of the main traffic statistics are an increase and quite a substantial increase at that. I’d love to see all of these statistics double by the end of next month.

Before I start with this post, I must apologies for the infrequency that I have posted on both this blog and FerrariDave - this will be restored, I’ve just been busy and had important stuff going on that I had to dedicate my time to.

Now, back to the title of this post.. Yesterday I sat my driving test at the Gateshead test centre. I’m happy to say that I passed (in the snow) on my first test attempt.

I passed with a total of 4 minor faults which I’m pretty pleased with considering my nerves on the day!!

Never felt so nervous in all my life to be honest… once I got going though I started to settle down a bit and I was pretty calm (although a bit of a dry mouth throughout haha).

So all I need to do now is concentrate on purchasing a car and being able to afford the whopping insurance premium that comes with being a 17 year old student!

Normal posting will now resume on both of my blogs now that everything is pretty much sorted, thanks for sticking here. I’m now off to end the Entrecard competition on FerrariDave.

I recently came across an interesting forum post by Viraj on the Blogger to Blogger forum - the post itself was asking why bloggers still list their prices in dollars rather than pounds.

This made me think as I am from the United Kingdom and therefore my primary currency is GBP (Great British Pounds), however, I still charge for advertising in dollars.

At the time of writing my advertising page, I thought that listing my prices in dollars would be more widely accepted with most viewers coming from the US. Thinking about it now though, even if the advertiser is from the States, there’s no reason why they couldn’t pay in pounds using Paypal.

If I’m advertising somewhere, I have to pay in dollars usually so can’t see it being much of a problem if people have to pay me in pounds.

I’m now off to update my advertise page with updated prices.

Let’s see how this turns out, if you have any comments let me know as I’d love to hear your thoughts.

In a recent article, I touched on the fact that I have a few ideas that need to be developed. I have most of the domains for ideas that I have, here are some of the ideas along with the domain name. If you are interested in domain names I’m unlikely to get round to doing all of these so I can sell any of them at a suitable price.

If you are interested, please drop me an email.

Here’s the ideas along with the domain names:

YourAppleTV.com

Possibly thinking about having a blog dedicated to the Apple TV or have some sort of community website or gallery where people can show and talk about their Apple TV setups. I may be more likely to sell this as it is pretty low priority in terms of what I have planned.

CarSnap.co.uk

I’m thinking or maybe having either a gallery website where car owners can upload photos of their cars, or, a forum where people can discuss motoring related topics and post photographs of their cars.

911Owner.co.uk

Might have some sort of club and/or message boards where Porsche owners and enthusiasts can talk about their cars or just Porsches in general.

AuctionForum.info

I did intend to have a forum set up that had auctions on. I am now more likely to sell this rather than actually develop it although you never know.

TopWords.co.uk

I have absolutely no idea what I was going to stick on this one, purchased it a while back now and originally though of something along the lines of Million Dollar Homepage but instead of pixels have words. However, I believe this sort of idea is already out and about on the internet.

WiiBoom.com

Again, thinking about maybe having a blog that discusses the Nintendo Wii and games that are being released for the Wii. However, I don’t have a Wii at the moment and don’t see myself buying one in the near future. If I was to start I’d just be talking about new releases instead of actually reviewing games. Maybe someone else could give me a hand with this one? Write some content?

DavidDunn.name

I just registered this as it’s my name and it’s a .name - no idea what I’ll do with it but maybe I’ll stick a portfolio on there or something in the near future.

AboutGardening.info

Was going to have a website discussing all aspects of gardening but not really on the top of my interests list. Would be willing to sell this if anyone is interested.

ComperBlog.co.uk

This one will be a blog about entering competitions both online and offline. This is something I have been interested in for some time now and would be good to post about competitions that people can enter alongside tips for entering competitions.

ComperForum.co.uk

This is designed to go alongside Comper Blog, where people can talk about competitions, entering competitions, new competitions etc.

NewcastleLad.com and .co.uk

This is going to be a blog about my local area; Newcastle. Will talk about goings on and up and coming events in the city of Newcastle.

There are a few additional domains that I am buying etc. at the moment but these will be things that I am just starting to think about - hence why I haven’t blogged about them. The above ideas are very much that - ideas! I’ll never do all of these at once and never intend to - one at a time works best for me.

If you are interested in purchasing any of the above domains, I may be interested in selling - drop me an email and we can discuss it.

Are there any ideas you’d like me to get started on straight away? Please leave a comment.

Would you like to follow these ideas more closely when I blog about them here? Follow my RSS feed to keep up-to-date.

Well, hopefully anyway! These are the different things I am going to try in my journey to making some money on the internet. Note; some of these aren’t just things I am going to do on Buy Me A Ferrari but stuff I will put onto other sites, or new sites altogether.

Monthly advertising

You will probably notice that there are several slots on the pages of Buy Me A Ferrari that you can purchase on a monthly basis. Yes, none of these have been purchased as of yet as my blog is really new, but since the 18th (7 days ago) I have had 631 visitors and 1,123 page views so this should pick up.

These figures are increasing every day so hopefully people will start purchasing the ads. However, I haven’t been promoting these spots too much as I hope to implement a theme that I will purchase shortly, then and only then I will go and properly promote the ad spots (you can still purchase them now though and they will still be affective when I change the theme).

Project Wonderful

Project Wonderful seems to be a relatively new concept but I have it implemented on both of my blogs as the idea is really good. Advertisers bid (from $0.00) for a specific spot on your website, the more visitors you have the more money you will make as the site shows how many hits you are getting.

I like the idea as the advertisers are able to bid up to what they deem an appropriate price per day - keeping both the publisher (me!) and the advertiser happy. I am currently making at least $1 a day from this, for something that I don’t need to do much to, to keep it going.

Rubicon Project

Again, I think this is a relatively new idea that is still in BETA (isn’t everything on the web these days haha!?). I am only running these ads on FerrariDave as I decided not to have and AdSense type ads on Buy Me A Ferrari although it may be something I will look into in the near future.

From FerrariDave I currently have around $8 in my account although I have only been running it since about the second week of January.

If you too are looking to make money, Rubicon Project may be a good idea for you as it serves all sorts of different ads from different networks, they must work and be more appropriate for your visitors as I wasn’t making the same sort of money with AdSense. Sign up here.

Kontera

I have Kontera running on both blogs and basically what it does is picks out keywords in your pages and links them to different adverts (you may have noticed the orange links). Kontera isn’t going to bring me my Ferrari any time soon but it does bring me the odd dollar here and there.

Matched.co.uk

Matched brings me a set amount per month for displaying an ad that looks similar to AdSense. I’m currently only running this on FerrariDave and it brought my in £8 (~$16) for last month. I like this one as it doesn’t depend on people clicking on ads, I’ll get the cash whether people click on it or not.

Affiliate programs

I am definitely going to look into affiliate programs as all the top bloggers talk about them so they must be good for making money. Anyone like to give me some pointers where affiliate programs are concerned?/

Other ideas

I have several ideas that are currently work in progress or maybe just in design stages but most of them will be supporting ads and hopefully making me a few dollars/pounds here and there. Most of the ideas however are something I am interested in, not just something I think I can make money doing.

All of the above things will be talked about in more detail in up and coming blog posts on Buy Me A Ferrari. I will of course be updating about the money I am making (or not as the case may be). If you would like to be kept up to date, please Subscribe to My RSS Feed.

Another great source of traffic for both of my blogs has been Entrecard. An idea where you can swap virtual business cards, to other site owner in the form of 125×125 buttons.

Other members of Entrecard see your button on the Entrecard website and click through to drop their own card into your Entrecard dashboard.

Dropping your card on another blog with Entrecard installed earns you one credit and someone else dropping their card onto your dashboard also gives you a credit.

Now, these credits can be spent on advertising on other people’s Entrecard, not only this, but now they have implemented a shop where people sell various things like graphic design, templates, raffle tickets and more.

Does Entrecard bring me decent traffic?

Every time I begin to talk about Entrecard to other bloggers, whether it be on message boards or on MSN it always leads to a discussion as to whether the traffic from Entrecard brings decent traffic or not.

First of all, it does bring a lot of traffic to your blog, especially if you become popular on Entrecard. However, does this mean that the people who visit are visiting to read my posts or whether they are just coming to drop their card.

Whether or not it is decent is very much debatable but one thing can be said; Entrecard should still boost your Alexa rank a bit as visitors are visitors, doesn’t really matter whether they’re reading your content or not.

I personally always try to read at least the two most recent articles on the blogs I drop my card on - sometimes I find some decent stuff too. Unfortunately I can’t say whether or not people are doing the same in return. I’d like to say they were but there’s no way I’d bet my bank balance on it!

What do you think? Are you visiting from Entrecard? If so, thanks for actually reading some of my stuff - really do appreciate it. Leave a comment and let me know.