March 29th, 2009 | 
Author: Okay, I will cut to the chase my challenge to make $100 a day from Adsense from just 1 blog is about to end on March 31st and I am sorry to say I have failed to reach the $100 a day I had set out to reach when I began the challenge.
So how much am I earning in Adsense of the back of my European cruise blog? Well, it is now averaging $20 a day which is well short of my target for the 3 months. I am experiencing some very mixed feelings regarding this challenge, on the one hand I am feeling slightly angry and sad that I never reached the target but on the other hand I feel greatly appreciative to everyone of you that has shown me how inspired you have been from following my challenge. I can’t begin to express how humble I feel to you all for all the great support and interest you have shown.
When I began the challenge, I thought it might get a bit of interest and a few people following it but I am completely and utterly staggered at how popular it all became. A lot of you have asked what is going to happen when the challenge finally finishes? Rest assured, the challenge may be over but my quest to reach $100 a day from this 1 blog continues until I get there. I will pursue it in a much more relaxed fashion of course and it now gives me a chance to catch up on all the other projects that I have placed on the backburner.
For all those people that have purchased my “Cash Cow Guide to Adsense Wealth” and all future customers of the guide, I will shortly write an additional report that details the challenge and where it went well and where it failed. Also all customers will receive updates to the cash cow guide when I write it.
So the challenge failed to reach $100 a day in 3 months which like I say, is hugely disappointing but it is averaging $20 a day virtually on auto pilot now. That is $608 a month or $7300 a year, that is money that I wasn’t earning before the challenge began. The income from this 1 blog currently would pay for an average mortgage.. I just want to point out the power of building sites in the manner that I have described. YOU have the power to achieve this and more, trust me, you CAN do it and you WILL.
Yes…$20.00 bucks a day is nothing to scoff at…So are you going to share the website address with us?
Ryan
I wouldn’t call this a failure not by a long shot. The only failure is not taking action. You will hit the sweet spot sooner or later but the lessons learnt during the journey are invaluable to say the least.
Congrats for having started on the journey and thanks for sharing much valuable info.
primuskannan on WF.
Well, I failed in the sense that I never reached my target in the time scale I set myself but yes, you are right, it is the action part that is important.
Steve, thanks again for letting so many people in on your challenge. You might have not have reached $100 per day personally, but the influence you’ve had on us will lead to a lot more from the renewed challenges we’re all taking up ourselves. You’ve really inspired us!
Indeed – too many people fail because of inaction, or fear of failure or ‘information overload’. They fail because they don’t do anything. To do something is the most important – even in ‘failing’ there are valuable lessons to be learned from mistakes and ideas gained on how to do things differently next time. Failure is a strong word anyway – it was only a failure to reach an ambitious target, in many peoples eyes it’s still a success – who wouldn’t like a nice little ‘auto pilot earner’ which brought in enough to pay the rent/ mortgage each month. Perhaps you should change the title to “End of Challenge – Failed to reach ambitious target but site is profitable and still has potential to reach target over longer timeframe”. Not quite as catchy though.
Hi John, nice title!
Steve,
Failure is a mighty strong word. I think that you had great success, just not as much as you would like to have had.
If I set a goal for myself, I always set it a little high. We shouldn’t have goals that are too easy to achieve! I think that we need the pressure to keep us working.
In my eyes that project was a success and a lot of people were motivated from your efforts.
Bob
You inspired me.
And what is the address?
I haven’t followed this on a regular basis but the mere fact that you have reported your progress accurately and honesty speaks volumes for your integrity. I applaud you and honestly can say that you didn’t lose the challenge in the long run. If other marketers could be as honest and forthcoming as you it would make life easier on the rest of us. Thanks again.
Steve,
I thank you a thousand times for publishing your challenge for the world to see and for following through on the updates for the entire 3 months. Failure is not a word that belongs in your post. $20 per day on ONE site on autopilot is a HUGE success.
Thanks to you I currently have 13 new sites up and running and gaining in the indexes every day. I hope to have 100 sites in 3 months and aim for a measly $7 per day from each site on or before December 31, 2009. $700 per day that I wouldn’t have if not for your efforts, sharing, and coaching.
Best Regards,
Kevin
Hi, great work! What I’m interested in is not really the $20 per day but the net profit over the 3 month period. Like for instance I see you bought a lot of content, and am sure you had other expenses as well. This is something I’ve never seen any Internet marketer disclose. Is it at all possible that you can give us a kind of rough balance sheet, to indicate what your expenses were, and what kind of services you paid for? Again, very, very useful exercise you’ve done.
Regards, Charl
Steve,
I chastise you for saying that you failed. I would love a site that makes $20.00 a day, that is tremendous.
Thank you so much for sharing these last 90 days with us, it is inspiring
David
Steve, you absolutely did a wonderful job! I appreciate all the info you gave during this challenge. I understand adsense now, before I thought it was useless. I have one question, do you think the marketing strategies you used to get traffic to your site would work for a retail site like a yahoo store? Thanks again for all the information, I learned more from you than in the many courses I’ve spent money on.
Great show… I have followed the challenge throughout the three period.
Congratulations Steve, even though you failed to reach your target but 20dollars a month is still many of us think would take ages to reach. Your European cruise blog is still a motivation to a LOT of people and that i believe was your main aim behind the whole challenge. Sure, setting a target got the people interested but I don’t think anyone following your challenge would be disappointed for you failed the apparent target since surely achieved your main aim of getting people to believe that it is not impossible to earn a decent living from blogs and mini-sites.
Thanks again.
John.
Hello Steve
First of all i would like to thank you to show us how to be a successfull
Scaling your method to 5 sites can bring 100$ a month .
Also by what time do you expect that your european blog will reach to 100$/day mark ?
Steve, thanks for sharing everything during the challenge, and having the integrity to post your results, good or bad. As you said, even $20/day will pay for the average mortgage. It’s inspiring to think what 5, 10, or even more sites like this running simultaneously will generate.
Hi Mate,
To fail is not to do anything, or let challenges get in your way. I see you as a person who put themselves out there, making themselves accountable in a public way. That’s the type of person I want to work with.
Let me know if there is anything I can help you with – quality marketers/people are hard to find.
Paul in NZ
Thanks for all your great comments.. Your encouragement and enthusiasm is very rewarding for me.
Thank you Steve for sharing this adventure, cannot see any failure here, have seen plenty of inspiration,hints,help and guidance for many folks including myself in having spent much currency on products that haven’t helped as much as your contributions have.
Failed?? yeah right!
You’re an inspiration to many Steve.
Thanks,
Louis
Props for this case study. Nice to see someone putting the truth out there.
Been following this for a while and I have to say Steve that even if it did just get to $20/day thats great. With more tweaking and consistent effort I’m sure you can raise this somewhat. Maybe not to the $100/day that you wanted.
Making $20 a day from just one blog is a lot of people’s dream, your efforts just goes to show that staying active and positive throughout it all does pay off. This should be the lesson that everyone takes from this.
Best Wishes For Your Success!
Rick Roberts
Just saw this over at WF and my props to you. I ended up reading much of your thread (it is quite long at this point so I admittedly didn’t read the whole thing) and was very impressed. You may have failed to reach your goal in the desired amount of time, but if you keep up the work you know it is going in the right direction so who knows how things will look in a year from now.
Good luck in all your future endeavors!
Same here.. have been following you for a while and have been impressed! 20 bucks a day $7300 a year… not too shabby, look forward to more information about bootcamp
regards.. Lizzie
The topic is quite trendy in the net at the moment. What do you pay the most attention to when choosing what to write ?
I just read the entire Warrior Forum – every single post – and then came to this blog too. I have not got any work done and the boss is going to fire me! Huh! I’ll have to copy your blogging SUCCESS a(and yes, it was a SUCCESS in my eyes), and then copy and duplicate a few times! WELL BLOODY DONE!
Hi Steve, thanks so much for this post. I think I got to page 3 of your forum post on warriorforum.com and then thought I’d just click on your signature links. $20/month for 3 months is still really awesome. Actually, I’ve been thinking about doing a travel / toursim blog, but now that I’ve seen that you’ve done it, I am going to go ahead with it asap. $608/month is awesome and it does work out to be a healthy amount at the end of the year especially if you have 2 or three blogs too. Thanks again Steve. Peace.
I just found your post on warriorforum and it’s exactly what I’ve been combing the web for! More pros need to actually break down step by step what they are doing and what their thought process is behind their methods, especially WHILE it’s happening. While the ideas are fresh, so we can all learn from the successes and mistakes. I have to say though, $20 a day is a very honorable achievement in my opinion, especially from something adsense, which at first glance, to a noob like me at least, seems almost impossible! Thanks for letting us all tag along on this one!
As several have pointed out to me when I was discussing this recently, this is by no means a failure! It is true that you didn’t reach *one* of your targets but you actually set yourself several targets most of which were achieved. As with all projects, there is a main goal (which should be SMART, as yours was) and there are intermediate goals or milestones which directly contribute to the main goal.
There may be, however, many side benefits or subsidiary goals which may or may not be acknowledged. One of these was pointed out to me by a friend and I must say that it is something that I don’t ever recall seeing mentioned in any of the stuff I have read on ‘goal setting’ and similar texts. That is the *enjoyment* of doing what you do. I believe that that is a very valuable and worthwhile factor to aim for and, it seems, you have certainly achieved that!
I came across your project in a mail from Martin Avis ( http://www.kickstartdaily.com/ ) and was very glad to have done so. I have learned a great deal from your ‘challenge’ and shall continue to do so. I have also mentioned it to several friends who I thought might be interested. More power to your elbow, therefore!
Perhaps a shorter title than the one already suggested would be “Unexpected success!” (to give the spin that some projects that appear to fail may have success in ways that one, perhaps, hadn’t anticipated).
Hey, keep up the great work! Keep going and you will eventually suceed!
I found your $100 a day challenge 4 hours ago and sit quietly reading it with interest. The most important thing that I learnt is TAKING ACTION.
Currently, I have a small challenge to myself. MAKING $7 A DAY!.
You have my profound respect Steve.
An honest strategy from an honest and genuine guy – I have read the entire Warrior thread.
I hope people realize the true value that good people like yourself bring to Internet marketing.
Fail? Absolutely no way. This is a winner.
Ade
[...] Unfortunately, on March 29 this year, he wrote his “End Of Challenge – Failed” post. Although he didn’t make the $100/day mark, he did get it making $20/day ($600/month). Read about his failure here. [...]