Title: On Monday night I couldn't sleep.  I had a domain name that I'd bought (http://fstr.net) that wasn't getting approved by the parking provider.<p>It was just sitting there, doing nothing and I couldn't stand it.  So I thought why not put some web games on it?<p>So I coded... and coded ... and coded ... and by 3AM I had a page, with a database that linked up a bunch of games that were declared "embeddable" by their owner (addictinggames.com).<p>Tuesday, it made $0.50 on Adsense.  Yesterday $1.01.<p>Now if only I were able to scale that up by about 80 times (using only part time labor) and I'd be able to 'take the pay cut' so I could switch into scaling it up by about 200 times for a great big raise!<p>Reading HN has really opened my eyes to the fact that the internet is made by people.  It doesn't have to be created by corporations - but it's something that anyone can do.  Holy Crap! Even me.<p>I just checked my profile and I've been a Hacker News reader for 94 days.  With the income I've earned from this project, that's an income of over a penny a day so far...  Let's see if I can ramp that up?<p>I want to put some time into improving the technology.  Initially I was loading a random list of about 1000 games - but I've changed that to show the games sorted by order or user rank.<p>I've also got game tag and category data - so I can add navigation, maybe a fun, self updating 'active search' type of thing (I'm already loading the games via ajax)<p>I'd like to pull from other games sources - many of the big games sites allow you to host their games (since they get the linkback on the flash load screen)<p>Some even have revenue sharing on the ads inside the game as well.<p>The page desperately needs to be optimized in terms of adsense placement.  I'm getting a 1.5% CTR and I've got friends who have shown me placements that they earn 30% off of.  He tells me he's got optimizations that earn him 70% CTR.<p>I'd also like to redesign (again) so it looks a little more polished and professional.  So far it's really just a ~8 hour hack job and ugly.<p>But earning a dollar on the first day?  That's a bit encouraging.  I'd love to make a real, sustainable 'gig' out of running a games site (or any site for that matter) ...<p>I really think HackerNews might be the type of place that has the advice I need (and might be able to warn me off of some of the pitfalls I might run into).<p>Anything you can tell me would be greatly appreciated (a hell of a lot cheaper than an MBA program ;).
Upvote: