A Year In The Life of TDW: A Cautionary Tale

[Preacher]

A Year in the Life of This Depraved World: A Cautionary Tale

I know, no one likes to read long posts. If you don’t want all the details just scroll down until you see the colored numbers and you’ll get the drift.

Most of you who have spoken to me in individual chats know that I am very open about my incoming and outgoing traffic, my profits and my search engine placement and optimization results. Honest to a fault.

I remember reading Kristian’s thread about documenting his own linklist journey and I thought it was a good idea to expose what most people outside of linklist owners do not understand about the time and effort it takes to build and run a reputable site, build traffic and turn that traffic into profit. The only problem was Kristian’s journey was skewed from the start.

See, the problem as I see it was that Kristian was already successful in adult websites and this gave him a clear advantage. To begin with he could pump traffic into his new linklist from various traffic sources in his existing network. He also had the funds to pay top dollar for a script and a css designer to create the framework of his linklist for him. This is not the start that most average linklist owners would have.

This made me realize that I should have been documenting my linklist journey. I should have given potential linklist owners an understanding of the struggles of building a successful linklist from the viewpoint of a complete novice to linklists with but a handful of existing traffic and no paid labor. Unfortunately I did not have the foresight Kristian had, but I still had something I could contribute to potential linklist owners.

What I did have was a small background in both accounts payables and accounts receivable, access to Quickbooks and an understanding of how to segregate both income and expenses so that I could more easily track my existing projects and determine where my profits and losses were actually coming from. So with that I am going to share the expenses and income of my linklist that is exactly one year old, my baby…This Depraved Word!

Keep in mind the figures that I will be listing pertain only to This Depraved World, not to its’ companion blog, not my other linklist, not any of my hubs and certainly not any of the feeder free-sites that I have fed to good traffic sources. Where the income and expenses were mixed I tried to either split it by percentage or in some cases – like non-referral sales – I had to use my best judgment and look at where I was sending the most traffic to that particular site to attain that particular sale. These figures also do not reflect any cost of doing business expenses like business licenses or a trip to Vegas to meet with fellow webmasters.

One important thing to note is that I am not including my labor costs and the lost income in passing up mainstream projects that I instead put into the building and maintenance of my linklist. I don’t even want to think about that, so don't bring it up. These figures also only reflect cash on hand. The $15’s I have scattered here and there awaiting another sale or two before I can collect them don’t pay for my meds so what good are they?

$325.00 software
$18.40 domain purchases
$69.95 hosting
$50.00 mixed use hosting split
$176.35 income
$287.00 total loss


Now it should be noted that there are some things I did not do, like buy traffic, push for ‘hardlink’ trades as hard as I could have or create a confusing navigation scheme to get more clicks to my sponsors.

But I did build feeder sites to pump in traffic. I got valuable SEO advice and implemented most techniques. I conversed with submitters to help them get listed. I sent out rejection emails with unique explanations of why the site was not listed. And finally, based on my internal stats I can tell that I am sending out more traffic then a few other linklists that have been in this game longer then I have. In that regards I consider my linklist a success if not a financial one.

And on that note I’d just like to take this time to unveil the new template for my category pages: This Depraved World: Hardcore Sex

Feel free to post any questions you have here and I hope this helps someone out there.

[JustRobert]

Kudos to you for your honesty

It is the same thing for me as well. If it was not for freesites, galleries, hubs, etc... I would not be able to do this full time. Well, mostly full time since I take a bunch of contract work from the company I quit after 18 yrs. I knew that it would take longer than I thought but I am good with that, most times

[KG Gary]

Wow. Fascinating and surprising. For a "hope to run a successful link list one day" guy like me, posts like this are incredibly helpful.

I would never have expected TDP to be making a loss, not in a million years.
I do have some questions if I may, sorry if they are too intrusive!

1. Has TDP's generated income grown month by month in it's first year?
2. Has TDP as a Link List grown steadily in it's first year? More & more visitors each month etc?
3. What's next? Do you have any plans that you will implement other than a new design? (The new design looks really nice, by the way).
4. Are you going to post follow-ups to this post? Please?

Thanks for the honesty, Preacher. It really helps keep things in perspective.

[virgohippy]

I mean this as no offense to you Preacher, because I know how intellegent and capable you are, but I'm not surprised.

Thanks for sharing.

I think a lot of people confuse SE traffic with profit. Quality traffic is great, but traffic does not always = sales. When I look at my stats, unique hits per sale, it's my freesites which do most of the selling.

And anyway, my entire network of freesites all together bring in more SE traffic than all the pages on my LL, though their pretty close.

[Preacher]

Originally Posted by KG Gary

Wow. Fascinating and surprising. For a "hope to run a successful link list one day" guy like me, posts like this are incredibly helpful.

I would never have expected TDP to be making a loss, not in a million years.
I do have some questions if I may, sorry if they are too intrusive!

Well, I'm glad it was helpful to someone.
Like I said, I'm honest to a fault and there are few questions which I will consider too intrusive.

Originally Posted by KG Gary

1. Has TDP's generated income grown month by month in it's first year?
2. Has TDP as a Link List grown steadily in it's first year? More & more visitors each month etc?
3. What's next? Do you have any plans that you will implement other than a new design? (The new design looks really nice, by the way).
4. Are you going to post follow-ups to this post? Please?

Thanks for the honesty, Preacher. It really helps keep things in perspective.

1) No. I rarely saw any income from the linklist in the first 8 months or so. A sale here and there but nothing worth writing about. Honestly, the last two months have really picked up...but I don't have any checks in my hand for those efforts.

2) Yes. Unfortunately I did not keep the logs from my first hosting company, but if I recall correctly, the first month's daily average was about 150-200 uniques a day. This month I had 2 or 3 days of a stats outage, but I bet I'd be pretty close in saying that I am seeing about 1300-1400 visits a day.

I took a significant hit in my search engine traffic in July which at the time I believed stemmed from to factors. Google's enforcement of reciprical linkage penalties and MSN finally determing that my site was nothing but a linkfarm. It really hurt to lose that MSN traffic.

My google traffic has since self-corrected with absolutely no structural changes to my pages, I am at loss to explain why. Yahoo however has steadily increased pretty much every month.

3) The new design actually began when I took that very noticeable hit to my search engine traffic. The goal was to make the site more search engine friendly, including removing all the tables -- which was quite a feat for a completely tabled site and listings template (and yes I know that there is still one table on the page). Now that google has self corrected I was almost hesitant to implement the new design, but I put too much time into the redesign to just toss it away.

My original main concept behind TDW was ease of navigation, and I think moving my sponsor links off the firt page a surfer hits and reducing things down to two columns has only helped in that effort. I left in the functionality of those old third column's information in the tabbed laballed pages.

I may have an inside track with one of my sponsors that will allow me to do some unique advertising in place of one or both of those screen caps, other then that I have no long term plans as I have found it much more useful to be flexible and make changes based on short term results and long time trends.

4) I don't exactly know. I know that breaking things down by class in Quickbooks has created some very confusing reports. I was thinking about redefining all the classes just back to adult so I can read the reports without sidescrolling through a ton of classes, like free-sites, free-site rebills, blogs, blog re-bills, no-referrer, 2 different linklists, etc...

[Greenguy]

I've been looking forward to this post since you asked me if it was ok to post it - great info

(and I'll take credit for the idea of Kristian posting actual income & expenses - that was one of the things I asked him to do before that mess started)

[Preacher]

Originally Posted by virgohippy

I mean this as no offense to you Preacher, because I know how intellegent and capable you are, but I'm not surprised.

You might have been surprised a year ago though. When I first set up the linklist the general opinion being thrown around at the time was that it would take at least a year for a linklist to become profitable. So I took on this project with that knowledge and general assumption.

Maybe a month or two in, it seemed as if the general opinion suddenly shifted to three or four years.

Would I have put the majority of my efforts into building a linklist if I had heard about that time-frame at the beginning...I just don't know. But now that I'm in and I'm emotionally committed, I plan to stay in.

[Preacher]

Originally Posted by Greenie

I've been looking forward to this post since you asked me if it was ok to post it - great info

Thanks, that means a lot to me actually.

[Fonz]

Some good info you gave there Preacher. I can say that SMilingPussyLinks.com had a slow start too but is on a roll now. So just hang in there and that loss will turn into profit for sure

[kitty_kate]

Hi Preacher

Nice infos you posted there, I wish you all the good traffic in the world (btw thanks for the traffic you're sending me ) and I hope your LLs will grow up eventually.

The template you unveilled looks nice, one suggestion though: you could try to light up a little bit the color used for the left column because as it is now, the surfer's attention is caught by the free sites listed (don't know if this is what you want).

Keep up the good work!

[Useless]

Those numbers are better than I would have guessed, but of course, I suck at this. New link lists take forever to become worth owning. If only we were all addicted to internet porn back in the day...

The key, I find, is to maintain a sense of humor about one's lack of success. You need to be able to laugh along while Dr. B, GG, and your own wife mock your inability to make a dollar even though you spend 16 hours per day in front of a computer.

I blame much of my own net poverty on the fact that I was never patient enough to let anything simmer in its juices. I'd build the site, see that there wasn't any traffic, and change it to something else. (WW has been a TGP on at least three separate occasions, a paysite, a massive free site, and a variety of other nondescript sites.) I dream of the day that I own something worth selling.

We weren't talking about me, were we? Shit, I did it again.

[MrYum]

A good read Preacher...thanks for the honest and open disclosure

Your tale is very similar to my own experiences and those of others I've spoken with on the subject.

Having banged around a few different areas of this biz, I decided on going the link list route for the long haul. Yea, it takes a good long while get things tweaked right and establish any sort of consistency. But, it can be done and it should be longer lived than many other areas of the business.

That said, it's a long and fuckin bumpy road indeed

[japamor]

Well that's got to be one of the most interesting posts I've ever read, particularly as I'm about to start a LL.
Thank you Preacher.
You've got a quality site there and I'm quite sure your figures will get better and better.

[Preacher]

Thanks for the kind words everyone.

Originally Posted by japamor

Well that's got to be one of the most interesting posts I've ever read, particularly as I'm about to start a LL.
Thank you Preacher...

Funny you should pop in here japamor, because it should be noted that japamor was my first submitter account ever created and put up one of the first user submitted free-sites on my list and has been submitting ever since.

Let me know when you need some trades for your new project.

[Maj. Stress]

Thanks for sharing Preacher. Have you noticed how many bookmarkers you get each month? Does the number and % seem to be going up?

[WarBot]

I LOVE the new template for the category pages. Very nice, very professional looking, very clean. Nice work.

In 1 year youve managed to get some pretty good traffic, I know this because you send my free sites a nice amount. I think this will be the breakout year for This Depraved World. I hope so anyways.

Cheers and Good Luck
WB

[KG Gary]

Not sure why I typed TDP instead of TDW. My apologies.


It seems that the most difficult thing is to get everything balanced to keep all parties happy. Pleasing & teasing surfers, keeping your submitters happy, and of course growing and making money.
Finding a way to grow big enough to be self-sustaining.

I've looked at so many link lists for clues but haven't found any obvious secret for success, although it wouldn't be much of a secret if it was obvious, would it? Duh.
The organised structure of some LLs versus the of clever chaos of others. Pretty & polished versus downright ugly. It's fascinating trying to see what that magic balance is.

As a submitter to TDW I will say that you treat freesite builders the right way! I had no idea how important respect and reputation would be when I started, and at some point down the line I like to think that somebody will give you a huge boost just because you helped them so much along the way.
It's also nice that you are really proud of TDW and are determined to make it more successful. I'm really looking forward to any chunks of information about your next year of LL ownership, and I hope the coming years bring you much bigger rewards for your efforts!

[Preacher]

Originally Posted by WarBot

I LOVE the new template for the category pages. Very nice, very professional looking, very clean. Nice work.

In 1 year youve managed to get some pretty good traffic, I know this because you send my free sites a nice amount. I think this will be the breakout year for This Depraved World. I hope so anyways.

Cheers and Good Luck
WB

Originally Posted by KG Gary

As a submitter to TDW I will say that you treat freesite builders the right way! I had no idea how important respect and reputation would be when I started, and at some point down the line I like to think that somebody will give you a huge boost just because you helped them so much along the way.
It's also nice that you are really proud of TDW and are determined to make it more successful. I'm really looking forward to any chunks of information about your next year of LL ownership, and I hope the coming years bring you much bigger rewards for your efforts!

Thanks guys.

Originally Posted by Maj. Stress

Thanks for sharing Preacher. Have you noticed how many bookmarkers you get each month? Does the number and % seem to be going up?

You know, I don't actually. My understanding is that the 'add to favorites' is just an estimation so I haven't actually paid attention to that figure. The 'direct address / bookmarks' as an inbound link has always hovered between 50-60%, so take from that what you will.

But you bring up a good point, as Greenie has said before search engines come and go but bookmarkers remember your site. That was also inspiration for my ease of navigation concept, as emphasized in the new category template.

I can't believe I haven't mentioned this yet, but what I have learned on this site and the contacts I have made here have been invaluable. Not just with linklists, but with all of my adult ventures.

[albundy]

looks like owning LL is not so good nowdays

[Useless]

Originally Posted by albundy

looks like owning LL is not so good nowdays

Well, if you don't have an established traffic source or a ton of connections with people who do (and are willing to link to you), it's very difficult to create a new one from scratch. It takes an agonizingly long time to produce your own traffic from nothing. Any fool can build and submit a free site and have thousands of hits to it the first day. It doesn't work that way with link lists. It's a desperate and lonely road we travel. We're the monks of the industry.

[WarBot]

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

Any fool can build and submit a free site and have thousands of hits to it the first day.

I can vouche for this.

[MrYum]

Originally Posted by WarBot

I can vouche for this.

You a funny funny man WB

[virgohippy]

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

It's a desperate and lonely road we travel. We're the monks of the industry.

Ooommmmmmmm... Ooommmmmmmm...

Shit, man, and I thought being a LL owner was gonna be tough!

Originally Posted by MrYum

You a funny funny man WB

[ronnie]

Very good thread and the honesty is great..

Though many have hinted at what it takes, if people can pick them out.

ronnie

[Simon]

I said it to you at the radio show chat, Preacher, this is a great thread, and nice work on it not costing you a lot more. I thought for sure you'd show a couple or few thousand dollar loss before I scrolled down.

On one hand, some people will be discouraged that they wouldn't be able to generate much revenue the first year. But on the other hand, I'm thinking that at a (first year) annual out of pocket cost of about $300/each, they're a nice long-term investment.*



*Yeah, I'm not counting the blood, sweat and tears put into them either. But I figure that's just what you have to do to remain sane (well, passably sane in public anyway).

P.S. I'm thinking of looking into a design for a "Monks of the Industry" t-shirt. |goodidea