Congrats on reaching the $100, not so happy to hear your out of pocket, i find it useful to not invest money that i cant afford to, instead i invest as i earn, theres no way i would have spent $400 on dreamweaver.
You'll be in the black before you know it. I'd look for a cheaper host, really. I'd also try to get more free links for your site. A site doesn't have to purchase links to make it to the top, trust me! It's really all about understanding the search engines and how they work. If you don't come to understand that, then you will always be in that 99% that you mention. Website design is great! Website content is great! If you don't learn how to get to the top, no one will ever see your "GREAT" website. Now that you have a good foundation, learn how the SE's work and apply accordingly to your site.
Well, you didn't have to spend a dime. I started 7 months ago with Blogspot for free. I have not spent a penny. I listed in FREE blog and website directories, and did free seo techniques I learned in here, etc. I now make $2000+ a month and growing. But either way, you have learned a wealth of knowledge, and if you set your goals high and move foreward, it will pay off financially as well!
big time congrats, nothign is more satisfying than that first time you hit $100 except maybe the first time you hit $1000 uyyyyy keep on bringing the pain my son
Almost every backlink I get is do follow. There are tons of blogs with do follow. You just have to find them and spam the hell out of them. lolol I will tell you why I got Dreamweaver. The first two sites I made with my DUMB host's free site building program. It was so much fun, but they SUCKED so bad. I mean really horrible!! It was fun though. So I knew I wanted to make something better. I looked around and saw that a lot of people were using Dreamweaver. I decided to try it. let me tell you, that was a HUGE challenge for me. I know so little about computers. I may have spent 50 hours just trying to learn how to do that. When I got it to work, it felt soooo freaking good! If I couldn't spare the $, and I know what I know now, I wouldn't spend a freaking penny. It just makes sense to get a dumb blogger blog, start spamming for links, and get in some free directories. But I'm still glad that I did it the way I did. That was one of my biggest challenges (learning html, etc). It really did feel good to break $100 with adsense. I was starting to think I couldn't do it. I have spent most of my time at DP in the seo forum. I know that organic traffic clicks ads, and social traffic barely does. I'm getting better with that, but I have a long ways to go. My next goal is to get better at design. I think I will just try to redesign all of my crappy sites. I want a really good theme for the cajun one since it's my baby. Any suggestions folks?? I'm not spending another penny on the net, unless I buy more domains (I probably will lol). My next goal, after design, is to get one of my dumb sites up to 1k in organic a day. I think I know what I need to do to get there. Your prayers/ encouragement is appreciated. I didn't start this to make money online. I did that in a big way when ebay first started. My goal was to make my own site, and then make something with adsense. Oh yeah, my host SUCKS!!! Stay away from start logic dot com all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
About site design, use Wordpress. It's really easy to use. Also, using it it's easier to optimize your site for search engines. Here you can find some great designs/themes http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/08/100-excellent-free-high-quality-wordpress-themes/
I have 3 sites using wordpress, plus another 2 free ones. Check out my LSU site for starters: LSU Wordpress is really easy. I like that. I may end up converting the cajun site into wordpress. IDK. My problem right now with it though is my host. Their mysql is screwed up, so it takes FOREVER for a page to load that relies on a db.
jaja... i like the way u have monitized it all.. i wonder how much i've spent these past years.. any how it's been fun.. AND THANK GOD i have a full time job that pays my bills else i'd be f#cked