This week I posted an ad at the DP Forums looking for a news-writer.  This is the second time in two years I’ve made such a post and since the type of responses I got were nearly identical both times I feel that I owe it to the world of potential content writers out there to give some tips on getting work:

1. READ THE FUCKING AD!!  If the ad says “send me a private message”, don’t reply with a public question.  If the ad says “I DO NOT WANT XYZ TYPE OF A WRITER” do not send me a PM (or worse, post publicly) that you a very good “XYZ” writer and ask me how much I’m going to pay you for all your great XYZ writing!
2. Don’t bother me if based on the very few requirements in the ad, you are not even close to being qualified!  If the ad says “you must be able to write in near grammatically perfect English” don’t send me a message written in Pidgeon English at the grammar level of a 7 year old asking how much I am going to pay you
3. When sending an example of your work, make sure it is your BEST work!  And OMFG, if that is your best work, please refer to #2
4. Don’t send a clearly ‘canned’ response that really has nothing to do with the ad/request that I posted.  You are supposed to be a professional writer, right?  At least put in some effort and WRITE a response.. and for God’s sake, don’t send something that has been re-written by some kind of 10 year old “keyword rewriting” program
5. Don’t make ME work – Don’t make me go searching some spam-farm looking for  your samples of work, or make me beg multiple times over multiple emails to see examples of your work.
6. If you can’t read, can’t speak/write english, have the IQ less than 9 year old encephalitic, or worse, all of these things combined, then please, leave me alone and just keep writing for eHow.com – you two will go well together.

Fortunately out of the 100 or so responses I received, there were 2 or 3 that actually met my requirements and will have some work waiting for them should they choose.

Our newest Advertising Network, IDG Tech has three easy ways to generate income:

1. CPM Ads: As I posted a few weeks ago, IDG Tech’s CPM ads have been doing fantastic, and still are – my two test units are still earning over 10x better than Adsense units ever earned in the same locations.  I again recommend at least trying the IDG Tech CPM units if your website qualifies.
2. If you are part of IDG Tech Network, they also offer referral payments for sign-ups to their IDG Tech Panel which pays members to take surveys related to the IDG Tech Advertisers.  If you are already an IDG Tech Network member (publisher), ask your account manager about how you can sign up or contact me and I will forward the name and email address of the program manager.
3. As part of #2, anyone can generate money and/or rewards by completing the IDG Tech Panel surveys.   Normally I would not recommend online-surveys to make money, but knowing that many of my readers are looking for any way to generate a few dollars – and after signing-up myself, doing a few surveys, making a few dollars, and seeing how easy it is, I’ve realized that someone with a few minutes on their hands every day could actually make more than just gas or beer-money each week.  If you want to give it a try, you can sign up for your (free) account and start making some extra cash:  Click Here To Join IDGTech Panel

I’ve recently been in talks with a media company that has expressed interest in purchasing GrownUpGeek.com.  I made it clear to them up front that I was not really interested in selling, but I would listen to what they had to offer.

What is the real value of a website? The standard way to valuate a website is to take it’s average yearly earnings and multiply that by 1 year, or 3 years, or even 5 years.  This would put the estimated sale value of Grownupgeek.com somewhere in the neighborhood of $300,000.  Of course, if the buyer is more interested in just the domain name because it matched a new product or service, the value to the buyer could be much more, but sadly I have no such luck.

Going into the talks I knew/assumed that the company would already have an idea of the “standard” value of GrownUpGeek.com ($200,000 – $300,000) and I was already prepared to turn down an offer of that amount.  WHY?  Because the website will generate that much money in 4 to 5 years.  If I sell the website today for say, $300,000 then subtract taxes, escrow fees, attorney’s fees, and whatever other fee’s that come up, I would actually be losing money as opposed to holding on to the site for 3-5 years.  This does not even take into account the emotional attachments to “my baby” – I have spent the majority of the last 5 years of my life tending to, feeding, & caring for the website.  It’s my hobby, it’s my LIFE!  What the heck would I do without it?  Sure, I would have a couple of hundred thousand dollars in my pocket – but I will have that anyway over the course of the next few years.

So when asked by the big media company “what kind of number did you have in mind Mr. Brown?“  I responded with something closer to 2.5 times higher than “standard” value.   (I could hear the gasp in the room)..  Some kind of bargaining technique?  NO – It’s just worth more to me than a few hundred thousand dollars that I will most likely see anyway in the next few years.  Unfortunately the media company does not assign the same emotional value to a website that I do, and as expected, they thanked me for my time.

How much is your website worth to you?  Do you assign any sentimental or emotional value to it?  Even if it’s “just a business” to you, could you walk away from it for only 3-5 years worth of your current earnings?  Am I just a sentimental fool?

It’s probably just a seasonal high, but for the last few weeks Kontera earnings have been trending up, and for most days in December have exceeded my Adsense earnings.

If you have a Kontera account that you’ve stopped using because because you weren’t happy with it’s performance, NOW might be the time to blow the dust off and throw it back on your site to see how it does.  If you don’t have a Kontera account you can sign up HERE, but it might be too late to cash-in on the seasonal-high.  And don’t forget – you CAN use Kontera with Adsense.

Affiliate Links: This post contains affiliate links.  If you hate affiliate links you can go directly to www.kontera.com the hard way.