I use iStockPhoto.com for most of my images… as long as you look through the bargain bin, you can usually find some great deals!! Full icon sets for $1 many times…

As for the site being the big idea, no… that one is still in progress!! Just waiting on legal matters to be completed, which may still take another 3 months waiting on full trademarks etc.

Mark

Also, is the DIY site your “big idea” site that you mentioned in earlier posts?

Thanks for all the great info you provide us!

About 2 months ago, I started using Google Ad Manager, to manage ad space on sites. (You can see it on this site as well)

There is a pretty steep learning curve and ALOT of repetition to get your ads in place, but once you start using it… the utility functions of tracking, forecasting the possible earnings, etc are fantastic!! In addition, Google has it setup so if a competing ad in Google own network, pays higher than your EPC, they can automagically show that ad instead, on a page by page basis.

In regard to the Stumble traffic – I truly don’t have any one real thing I do differently from post to post. It seems that if the title is good enough to grab some attention, it will take off… other times, it won’t. On this site, I have posts that were stumbled 6 months ago, and for some reason, this week… they go crazy with traffic. No real rhyme or reason behind it, but something I will eventually dig deeper into.

@ Jeff –

I wish I could follow my own guidelines ALL the time! In 90% of the cases, I do… but there are some times that I dont. Its a result of having too much on my plate, and not enough time to get it all done. I have recently started removing many sites I have not been updating, just to preserve them for whatever the future may bring.

Another thing i have found is that even though I recommend one thing here today… I may have been doing it for several weeks or months on other sites. By the time the post goes up on this site… I may already be trying other things, that don’t reflect my current efforts.

Congrats on practicing what you preach(for the most part-LOL) and showing us it can get results.

Jeff

I also notice your using an ad rotator on this site what plugin are you using?

Could you also elaborate a bit more on how you use Stumbleupon to generate traffic?

Once I get to day 30… I am actually going to start it all over n a new site, documenting it every step of the way as well. All of the original posts will be linked in one index post as well.

In regard to the htaccess issue – I did actually jump in and try to correct it 7-10 days ago… I didnt want to risk pulling the site down, so I stopped. I replied to your email saying as much, but I also found yesterday that someone (I assume in the AOL network, since 1 spam report gets you blacklisted) has marked my email as spam… and much of my sent mails and blog comments have ended up in spam folders! :-)

@ Beth –

Some days… 350-400 visits, other days, 5000 visits or more. Yes, the site is only 22-23 days old, but the post topics have been highly relevant to seasonal subjects, and picked up and spread.

For example, How to use a Voting Machine was very popular over the last week…. along with 14 other variants of the phrase. The week prior, 18-20 variations of DIY Halloween costume searches was popular… Over the coming weeks, I have posts aimed at How to Fry a Turkey, 10 Different DIY Turkey Stuffing Recipes, etc.. and will attempt to simply stay in front of the trends, or demands of the search public, by providing the content they are likely to be searching for.

Google Trends and Google Insights are great tools for this.

Mark

It has been so helpful to me to see how you set goals and held yourself accountable to them, which in turn is bringing profitability to your site. It is so easy to get sidetracked and never do half of the plan. I tend to go off on a dozen rabbit trails and neglect the more important tasks.

It is very motivating to see that your site is earning money without EPN. I’m glad to be able to learn about various ways of monetization besides EPN, Amazon, and Adsense, and CJ Banners,etc. which are the ones I am the most familiar with.

I have a suggestion. When you get to the end of this Word Press site tutorial, would you consider putting all of your information together and making a downloadable pdf available on this site?
Since you are already subscribed to Aweber, you might want to start an email sign up list here, too, like you did on the DIY site with a downloadable ebook.

One more thing, did you ever get a chance to look at my cpanel to see why I am having trouble with the Oct 2 redirect (index.htm) in .htaccess?

Thanks for all,
Julie

The site is diyreviews -dot- net

I try not to use the address in these posts, to avoid pissing off Googlegods by talking about stats!

@ Randy –

The most popular posts have been the top-10 lists (2 for Halloween and 1 for how to vote). 100% of the visitors have come from organic search, or Stumble traffic.

Mark

How are you promoting your site to get so many visitors so fast?

Randy