If calculate the costs and time of running the site, then we did come out in the red. In terms of the knowledge I gained from promoting and marketing the site, living in Beijing while the Olympics were on, I don’t think you can put a dollar value on. We also now have a site that has thousands of links, which will be useful to launch other sites from and it will still continue to make money, although obviously not as much as when the games were on.

Even though the site wasn’t as successful financially as what I would have liked, I still think I will go ahead and try to put together an ebook on the methods I used to build traffic to the site. We had a lot of success using Web 2.0 sites like Facebook and Youtube to drive traffic.

We have also put together a medal tally widget that can be easily added to your blog or website.

Things are going to be very busy the next three weeks, but I am looking forward to reporting back after the Olympics as to how much the site made and the levels of traffic. So far everything is on track.

Caradvice is ranked in the top car websites in Australia, just behind sites that are run by big media companies like NewsCorp.

Alborz created a blog on a topic he loves and is passionate about and has turned it into a successful business. I think we see people all of the time creating websites purely for profit, sometimes they work, but mostly they fail. Just check out the sites for sale on sitepoint, most of them are crap. I am just as guilty as anyone though.

I think a lot also can be said for just working on one or two websites at the most and putting everything into them. Running multiple websites in many ways is just not practical and I think you waste time running from one niche to the next. Pick a niche that you love and write good content - it can be as simple as that.

This has worked for me to some extent with my Beijing site. At first I was running around trying to get links, but after a while I realized that if I wrote a funny/interesting/informative post, people would just link to it naturally. I think Google also prefers this. Link exchanges, link swaps and blogrolls are basically dead.

The hardest part to this of course is finding a niche that you are passionate about and is profitable. It is something I am going to have to spend some time thinking about once again when the Olympics are done.

It’s exciting to finally have people interested in the site and getting different emails from people. It was a pretty long wait, but I am starting to feel more confident that the site will do well.

And if anyone would like to help out blogging about their favorite athlete, team or country in exchange for some links, please drop me an email.

Search engine traffic has jumped from 10 to over 70 per cent overnight. It’s weird because I have ranked well in MSN and Ask for some keywords.

I have some good inbound links and have done everything above board. I have spent zero on advertising but have spent many hours writing guest posts and trying to craft good content that gets links.

Persistence is the key to anything. I think many people would have given up long ago if they were in the position I was in with my site.

It might sound corny but I believe:

persistence + passion = profit

I know you can make money from researching obscure, long tail key word phrases, but if you have no interest in that particular topic, I think your only passion will be in making money rather than making a website or info product that is any good.

The Wall Street Journal linked to the blog today and Problogger published an article I wrote on Facebook.

Traffic from Google still isn’t great, but I am expecting that to change when the Olympics are on and in the next thirty days as media networks go into Olympic coverage overdrive.

I still have no idea as to how the site will fare, but I am fairly confident I have done enough to at least get it to a point where it should do well.

I keep thinking of the analogy of someone publishing a book or releasing a movie - no matter how much work you put into something you have no idea as to how successful it will be until it is actually released. The site is live of course, but the start of the Olympics is going to be our “premiere”.

So, how do you actually define “wealthy”? Most people would probably say having a lot money means you are rich or wealthy. I made more money when I was working a 9-5 job together with my internet income, but I was always stressed and hated my job. I often felt sick in the stomach on Sunday nights when I thought of another five days of work.

I used to mark down the days on my calendar until my next vacation. I don’t earn so much now, but I feel so free everyday. I no longer dread Mondays or any other day. I have almost been able to eliminate everything in my life that I didn’t like doing. I can live everyday just as though I am on vacation.

I have some properties, earn passive income from the internet and the work I am doing now on my internet websites, does not feel like work at all. “Do something you enjoy and you will never have to work a day in your life”.

Material possessions for me are just extra baggage. Most people would look at someone with a big house, expensive cars and toys and say that they are wealthy. They probably don’t even think about the debt the person might be carrying on those possessions. Warren Buffet has lived in the same house his whole life and seems to live a very humble life.

So for me, wealth is the freedom to live how and wherever I like. To work as little or as much as I want without it affecting my lifestyle.

How do you define being wealthy?

Worst still the agent has my passport and my previous visa has long expired. The Chinese government is getting very strict now as to who can stay here while the Olympics are on. People who have been here for years are having to leave the country.

The agent who is getting my visa assures me there is no problem and it will be ready soon. Problem is he has been saying the same thing for the past few weeks. Sometimes it gets me really worried as to might or could happen and other times, usually after a couple of beers I just think it will be a fun story to tell people in a few years.

It makes me feel pretty uncomfortable not having my passport, living in a communist country. It is also the longest I have stayed in the one place for quite some time. Even though I am planning to stay here for a few more months yet, I am dying to travel somewhere else.

I have been pretty diligent lately working out everyday and one thing that keeps me going is having interesting podcasts to listen to. If anyone knows of any good ones, please let me know.

Podcasts are great, but they seem to be overshadowed a little now by video. Video is also great, but if it is only a shot of an internet marketer speaking, I can’t really see the point.

Do a search in Google on wordpress and anyresults.net and you will see that this is a common problem and you are still vulnerable if you are on the latest version.

There seem to be a few variations and my case seem to be the same as described here.

This is pretty scary. Spammers and hackers seem to be going out of control. I hope the owner of anyresults.net is investigated. I seem to have spent most of this week fixing script related problems because of increased security from Dreamhost, which of course is a good thing, but it is taking time away from writing content and marketing my sites.