Starting Fresh

Happy New Year!!!

If you guys visited DatMoney.com recently, you would have noticed that it was either down or completely gone. Well, let me start from the beginning then explain why it was, what I’ve been up to and what’s going to come in the near future.

DatMoney.com’s Background History And What Happened

If you have been a long time reader of mine or brand new to the site, let me give you a little background history.

DatMoney.com was created in November 2007 (wow, time really does fly, huh?) to explore different options on how to make money online and write about it. It went from just a simple blog in a saturated make money online niche to trying to help others through my online success and failures.

When I first started the blog, the intent was to find and test out different ways of making money online. I dipped my feet into so many different things – writing blog reviews, hosting blog contests, affiliate marketing, design work, site flipping, making money from pay-per-click ads, private ads and the list goes on.

Yes, I also tested some gray area ways of making money out of curiosity but that was short lived.

If you’ve been around since the beginning, you would have noticed a bunch of the articles I wrote were rushed and almost seemed like they were forced. Quite frankly, some of them were. I think I was just focused on getting content out there and was more worried on the quantity rather than the quality of the posts.

At DatMoney’s peak, this blog was making somewhere around $1,500 monthly from private ads, Google Adsense, paid reviews and affiliated links (I also managed my banner ad design work on here). That was coming strictly from this blog but I had other online ventures going on at the same time.

Towards the end of 2009, I decided that I wanted to sell the blog because I was getting too consumed with other ventures and it was selfish for me to not update regularly for you guys (again, I had this mindset that it was quantity over quality).

I listed it on Flippa – one of the most popular marketplaces to sell and buy websites – and I had a specific price in mind to sell it for.  If it met that price, I thought it was worthwhile to take that money and reinvest into other online ventures.

At the same time, hopefully you guys would have had a new owner with making money online knowledge willing to share and update on a more regular basis.

It didn’t meet the price. I believe the highest bid went for $6,500 privately ($6,000 publicly and you can see the listing here) so I decided that I would keep it.

I once wrote daily on here which soon went to just a couple times a week then once a week and soon enough, I didn’t write at all. But I kept it live because it still had a lot of good and helpful articles.

Then one day my server was hacked (what a headache that was!) and after thinking it through, I decided to delete the entire site so I could start completely fresh. The reason why is because I was reading through old articles, and as I mentioned earlier, a bunch were written like they were rushed or simply not useful at all.

On top of that, I originally started this blog without a plan and was just caught up with the short term money. I was just winging it so there was no organization to it so this blog was just filled with a bunch of garbage sprinkled with some resourceful articles here and there.

No plan = no future.

So, here we are with a new design, brand new articles coming, and a brand new mindset to be more in depth and helpful.

And yes, this includes a business plan this time around.  If you’re treating your blog as a business, it is essential is have a plan written out and use it as a guideline.

What Have I Been Up To?

I don’t even know where to start because so many different things have happened over the past few years.

I quit my full-time office job! A lot of people are probably thinking “wow! You must be doing great with your online ventures!” but I wouldn’t say that. It just got to the point where I was overwhelmed with working a full-time office job, trying to maintain my online ventures as well as trying keep sane with my social life.

I scrapped almost all of my online ventures because I simply didn’t have time or I was just so mentally drained by the time I got back home that I just couldn’t focus on more work.

Like most people, I wanted to quit my day job for years. Not because it was horrible or anything but the hardest part was the fact that it was my safety net – good pay, great benefits and tons of resources to learn.

On top of that, the people I worked with were the best coworkers anyone could ask for. A bunch I can call friends, which we would always have laughs even on the tough days.

That made it even more difficult for me to leave.

Then eventually it just hit me. I was way too comfortable and the things on my bucket list (personal and professional) were barely getting crossed off. I was stuck in a comfort zone that I needed to get out of. The more time that passed by, the more I was going to live in regret for not trying, not getting out of this comfort zone to see if I can succeed on my own.

I read this post about the “three C’s of life – choice, chance, change”. I made a tough choice to take a chance on myself to make a drastic change in my life.

So, I quit and I’m adapting the “three C’s” to my online ventures and life in general. Now I’m officially working full-time for myself and reinventing a bunch of old projects as well as starting new ones.

What’s To Come In The Near Future?

Lots. Failures. Successes. You need failure in order to learn and take that knowledge to succeed. I will be posting about all of my online success and failures as an entrepreneur so you can learn from it. This will include some basic information for the beginners, some more in depth content for the advanced and information about just starting a business in general for those who always wanted to take their hobby (whether it’s online or not) to the next level.

I feel a lot of blogs write about how it seems easy to make money online but they never really cover too much of the failures and mistakes from it. I have made plenty of mistakes and failures from my online ventures that I will be writing about so you guys will hopefully never have to go through them.

Some topics I’ll be talking about in future posts include, but not limited to:

– Social Media Marketing (Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, etc)
– Details About Legally Starting Your Own Business (LLC, Sole Proprietor, Trademark, etc)
– Creating Your Own Products
– Different Ways I’ve Made Money Online
– Outsourcing

Lastly, I just want to thank every single one of you! Some of you have known me since the beginning, some more recently, but you guys have supported me nonetheless and that means a lot.

Let’s all work on what we love to do… because you know what they say, “if you love what you do for a living, you never work a day in your life”.

Time to get to work!