One of the favorite domains I have ever purchased is fuck-buddies.com. A site since 2005, it is exactly what you would expect!

Though this site has been around for a long time, it has just re-launched it with a new platform. The complete feature list is actually simpler to what was there before, but with a good reason. The key differences (apart from a cleaner design) are:
- more user friendly features
- improved mailing notifications & member alerts
- more members, of which there are:
   - more real members
   - more active members
   - less fake/scamming profiles.

All of this means a much better customer experience, and I hope this will result in higher conversion rates, higher retention rates, and obviously higher per member values.

It is not your typical sort of investment, a world away from my usual work and it is in an area which I know very little about to be honest. However I am investing in a young entrepreneur who will give 100% to this, and with some money and guidance it has every chance of success.

For me its really the first off-line company I’ve been involved in since my early days, and I am glad to be diversifying a little bit. It is also somethign which unlike most of my ventures will be very quick to turn in to profit as there is no long development schedules.

The only risk here is the unknown, I have no guarantee that I will make my money back, no guarantee that it is a value proposition. But what I do get is a new distraction, the chance to guide and support a hard working individual with a unique idea, and an influence in giving it every chance I can to be a success.

So seemed like a perfectly logical thing to do, embrace not fear the unknown. As soon as all the official paper work is complete, and the website is up I’ll post a link on here and add updates.

I also need to do this to get my accounts completely in order, to guage how close I am to the million, and to decide when to get my new car! If I set myself some (easy) targets I can justify it to myself!

On many of the other forums I frequent, I am very good at telling other people to post regularly. And I do on a lot of other sites, but I am very poor at keeping on top of my own personal bits. Hopefully with the back log cleared I’ll be a little more driven and efficient.

Finally - It is still Wednesday, which I have now been told are to be naked Wednesdays. I don’t know why, but I shall disrobe to find out what the fuss is about.

On the off chance that some developers are reading this - does anyone have any experience with cubecart? I need a programmer to take over a project which is built on this open source ecommerce platform.

Thankfully I was still able to achieve a couple of things:

New Site
Just a acquired a new site today. Very basic product which complements many of the sites I already have, it should also be easy enough to market on its own. I will add links once the transfer has been completed and uploaded onto my servers within the next few days.

Overseas Property
You see it in the TV all the time, so I figure it can’t be that tough! I now own property abroad. Its not much, but has potential for development and breaking up into a few plots, or maybe just having a random holiday home! It is Bulgaria in a village near the town of Vidin. Very close to the Danube and many lakes. I’ll take some photos soon and stick them somewhere.

Talking of TV
Talking of TV, which I wasn’t. Did anyone see The Apprentice? I didn’t. Its a crap show. Glad its finished. Something less for me to plan not to watch.

Its nearing 1130pm. I would love to say its time for bed. I won’t. Its time to do some more work. Have a few things I need to prepare for tomorrow.

I have spoken several times about numerous developments and one in particular I have been working on - after more than 2 years with little movement its time to leave it in the past.

Fortunately for me the incompetence of the last set of developers is sufficient to have good grounds to warrant a refund. I am chasing this in full. I do not expect to see a penny back, but I will be able to vent a lot of anger shouting down the phone.

Looking at my track history it might be sensible for me to take this as an opportunity, quit everything and focus on the one thing which always brings in money. Most of my income is after all from one main industry and any ventures into others have ultimately ended as failures.

Sadly if you think that’s going to happen then you are seriously misguided; sensible has no part of my plan!

Also, we should look more deeply at the facts before jumping to such irrational conclusions: As many as 1 in 2 businesses fail in their first 2 years - some of mine are perfect examples of this. The problem is clearly just a statisitcal one, I need to not focus more, merely start more business ventures! I am a big fan having completely independendent revenue sources.

I might as well divulge that I am currently looking at ALL of the following
1) online casinos
2) debt / finance management
3) web cam sites

None of these conflict with any of my other financial interests, and can be marketed completley independently of each other. PERFIK.

Concept

It is a simple affiliate marketing idea - Using my knowledge and experience of running dating sites on affiliate programs I would review, write articles and document new projects I was working on. Pulling together a library of useful resources for affiliates or potential affiliates to dating / personals sites.
Quality ahead of Quantity

The site should have been at this stage earlier and still there is a lot of content to be added. The reason for the delay is I have not been working on adding content or adding features, but instead researching the industry and deciding the best way to rank affiliate programs. This needed to be a unique and common sense approach. Rather than looking at volume of traffic, or individual payouts per sign up I wanted to rank by looking at traffic, conversion ratios, retention rate, pricing and commission rates.

The site is now using this system in its latest program update. Each program is scored based on a number of factors to give an accurate indication of which programs have historically and month to month performed best (for me). Something which noone else is doing.
This had been a personal project of mine, but after being approached by another party I have recently made the deicision to also develop the idea on a bigger scale with their help.

Why run 2 Sites?

The new project will be developed as a new site, a larger resource with forums and other contributors from within the dating/online personals industry. I dont wish to give away too much at this stage but the site will not be a replacement of what I havealready done. I will continue to use and develop Affiliate Dating Sites as a personal blog of my experiences with affiliate programs and aim to add as much useful content and links as is possible.
The reason for running 2 similar sites simulataneously is because I wish to still experience and know what is happening with affiliate programs first hand. This will allow me to better develop an affiliate community. I also believe it is more useful to affiliates and new comers to read about programs from a personal point of view.

Timescales

There will be constant updates to Affiliate Dating Sites as I continue to work on my own network of dating and personals sites. I am also in a meeting tomorrow to discuss the new business, timescales and marketing ideas. The idea is to keep the momentum on these sites and build a good reader base quickly.
Both sites should prove to be a very useful resource to anyone interested in growing an income from one of the biggest and best paying industries on the internet.

The last couple of weeks have been extremely hectic for me working on a few fronts…

As you may have noticed I’ve made a few layout changes to the blog. This is to make it easier to navigate and read. Mainly it is to entice new readers. The original reason for this blog was afterall to help me promote some of my sites, so I need readers to do this! The changes should also make it easier for me to market. I won’t go into detail about the various marketing methods I will use just yet, but I should quickly mention RSS.

On the right you will see lots of buttons to add the RSS feed to a web based reader. Subscribing to a feed automatically downloads the latest blog to your reader or web based reader, meaning you do not need to visit this site to read it. Very useful if you regularly read several blogs.
Yaro Starak has written a great article - What is RSS and How Do I Use It? about this. I have to say thanks to Yaro, have taken some inspiration and ideas from your blog already!

I have also started doing some marketing for World Dating Partners, a site I have used very succesfully to build some of my own dating sites. If you are interested its worth a look. To give you an idea setting up a basic site takes a few minutes and with simple marketing can start earning quickly.

I have further been working on Affiliate Dating Sites. No great cosmetic changes to the site, or even a great deal of extra content. Just behind the scenes work. Talking to companies who run different affiliate programs, improving my statistic tracking software and putting a business plan to paper.

My other 2 website projects in development are moving forward. Unfortunately due to my time restraints the latest delays have been completely my fault. I need to work on some templates for one site, and fully review the other. Something I hope to do at some leisure over my Christmas break.