There are lots of articles posted on SoftwareProjects as well as on other Internet Marketing forums about How to generate traffic, Website conversion, How to Build content etc. but I personally feel there's a big shortage in specific step-by-step "show me the money" guides, that take a newbie through all the steps involved in building a successful website online.

Mike posted a Beginner's guide to Making Money online, Tyler posted a Beginner's guide to Link Building but even those two are not true step-by-step "show me exactly what to do because I have no clue what I'm doing" guides.

So as part of this 4 part series, I'd like to demonstrate exactly what's involved in monetizing a new website, taking it from $0 to $500 passive income per month in less than 60 days. My idea as I go through this process is to show you EXACTLY what I'm doing every step of the way, so that you can understand the basics of Internet Marketing & Web Development.


The Rules:

* All expenses must be documented.
* I cannot spend more than $200 on this experiment.
* I cannot use any "pull" from other SoftwareProjects owned sites. I have to build everything from scrach.
* I am not allowed to use any pre-existing scripts that have been developed prior to starting this experiment.
* I am not allowed to utilize any of my industry contacts to drive traffic to the site.
* Any form of monetization is acceptable as long as it is ongoing and not a single deal (like a single ReviewMe posting).

The website:

To keep it real, I asked one of the guys in the office to pick the site I should focus on for this website monetization experiment.

Big mistake on my part!

Jason picked the absolute (or one of the) most challenging website to monetize.

A Proxy Server.

Proxy servers are websites designed to allow people who are at work or school to visit sites blocked by their network administrator. As I will find out later, a proxy server is also a popular way for horny men to visit porn sites without leaving a history trace on their browser for the wife/girlfriend to find out about.

Why is a proxy website so difficult to monetize? That's because users on a proxy website are not in the "mind set" of reading content or clicking on ads. These users are typically trying to access the desired content as quickly as possible and be done with it.

Tip: Before you set out to monetize any website, it is important to understand user habbits and get familiarized with how similar websites are often used.

As much as it is challenging, I was up for the task. $0 to $500 from a proxy server in 60 days or less, here I come!

Step 1 - Building the site:

Now that it has been decided what type of website I'm going to use for this experiment, I had to build it.

I could go out and hire developers to build a proxy server for me, but building something new from scratch is going to take time. And I have 60 days to produce a reliable $500/month passive income.

I decided to do some research online and search for pre-existing proxy server packages I could use.

Searching Google for Proxy Script brought up 2.7 million results.

After going through the first two pages, it became obvious there are two top proxy scripts recommended by everyone:

* PHProxy
* CGIProxy

Both scripts were free and offered very similar feature-set. I recall one of our engineers said at one point that PHP code is easier to maintain and scale, so I picked PHProxy.

I downloaded the script and saved it on my local machine. Now I had to pick a Domain name for my new site and purchase a Web hosting package to host the site.

While you could go with any of your favorite domain registrars or hosting companies, I chose to use SoftwareProjects Domain registration and ultra scalable Web hosting (Multihomed) package. I knew as the site grew in popularity I may need to scale it and I didn't want to risk running into any roadblocks.

Got my new domain and hosting package activated within less than 5 minutes and I used CuteFTP to upload the PHProxy script onto my new site.

All done - I now had my new Proxy server up and running.

Financial review:
Revenue to date:
+ $0
Expenses:
- $29.95 Annual domain registration NoTraceWeb.com
- $49.95 Monthly web hosting (multihomed)

Total Expenses = $79.9
Total Revenues = $0


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On the next parts of this series, I am going to share how I submitted the site to popular directories and forums for some initial traffic, what I did to learn about usage patterns and how I began the monetization experiment with 4 monetization channels at once: AdSense, AuctionAds, AdBrite and another one I'm going to keep as a surprise.

Great post Adrian, I'm looking forward to reading the rest of your posts (and seeing your results)!

BTW, kudos for taking on something as challenging to monetize as a proxy server.

I would like to read the other 3 parts of the
website monetization experiment. Where would I find it?
Thanks