Tyler Cruz: Living at home with my parents Part III

June 14, 2007

After 20 months later, Tyler Cruz came and posted again telling what he have done. Here is his experience after 20 months later:

If you want to follow his experience form the beggining please read the following:

Tyler Cruz: Living at home with my parents Part I

Tyler Cruz: Living at home with my parents Part II

Jan 25, 2007

Remember me?

I have not been very active on Sitepoint for a while mainly because I’ve been so preoccupied with other things. For those of you who don’t know me or don’t know why I’m writing this thread, here is a bit of background information.

The Genesis

A little over a year and a half ago on May 9, 2005, I had created a thread announcing my situation of living at home with my parents and my decided departure to move out on my own and attempt to do this ‘web thing’ for a living.

That thread garnered a lot of interest with 191 replies and over 10,000 views.

Five months later I posted a follow-up thread as I had a number of people ask for an update. The resulting thread was titled “Five Months Later” and turned out to be even more popular than the first with 483 replies and over 32,000 views.

Due to several suggestions from people and not wanting to clog Sitepoint with my ramblings, I created a blog which showcased my day-to-day work-related thoughts and actions.

Anyhow! I realized that it’s been 20 months since my original thread and thought that it may interest some readers to give an update on how things have been going.The Update

Please understand that in no way shape or form am I attempting to brag or show off here. I completely understand that I’m a very small time player, and even on Sitepoint alone I could probably name at least a dozen members who are making 10-times as much as I do. It is meant to inspire and motivate.

I created this thread simply to showcase an update of how things have progressed with me since my original thread and entry into the real world. This thread will present the updates from my Five Months Later thread:

Personal Life

I’ll start briefly with my personal life. I’ve been with a new girl now, Lisa, for over a year who has been great. I actually did follow through on joining MMA… although I only lasted a few weeks (it was actually the cardio that did it for me, not the actual rolling or sparing believe it or not) before quitting like a sissy.

[Photo: Me!]

I play badminton twice a week and absolutely love it. I’m pretty quiet though and am not a partier or drinker so I keep a fairly quiet life in that respect.

Web Entrepreneur

Workwise, I must admit that I don’t think I’ve been able to put in the extra work that I should be. I still find it very difficult to focus and keep a good work ethic. As a result, I still only work an average of an hour or two a day.

However, the past few weeks I’ve been putting in the extra effort to work an hour or two more each day, and it has helped a bit. So lately I’ve been averaging about 3 hours a day of work.

Even then, you could hardly call it work as I’m sitting at home, relaxing at my quiet desk at home, usually drinking a hot beverage, and listening to music…

In my last thread, I had mentioned my plans for DomainForums. While I did put in a bit of effort, I ended up selling it about 3 months after I bought it for $14,000. I must admit, I did it partly to grab some quick cash to buy a new car (2004 Toyota Corolla). In hindsight, selling DomainForums was a bad decision. I could have afforded the car anyhow but wanted to limit my interest expenses. DomainForums.com is still #1 on Google for “domain forums” and it was just a poor decision on my part. Oh well, I’m young and stupid… I’m allowed to make a few mistakes, aren’t I?

Throughout the past 15 months I also sold and bought a few domains and sites, but nothing major. I did develop, though, several new sites. I put a lot of time and energy into a new poker site, but the programmer I had hired had completely disappeared and split halfway through. The project remains half-completed to this day as I haven’t found the heart yet to continue with it as it was a hard hit.

I also created numerous forums on various topics I’m interested in (Web Entrepreurialism, MMA, Movies, Cooking, etc.) as well as a couple of webmaster-related websites.

My MMA forums are doing well and my webmaster forum is doing okay, although it could be doing a lot better. My webmaster which reviews ad networks was launched just a few months ago and I’m finding it difficult hiring people to write professional ad network reviews. I may look to outsourcing but only if I’m forced to.

My poker forum is still my largest and most profitable site, but then again I do spend a large chunk of my work time allocated on it.

The recent US legislation poker ‘ban’ hurt. It was an unfair and illegal bill, and although it did hurt, it didn’t cripple me as I sell most of my advertising privately and have always had an enormous interest from potential advertisers. Yet, the ‘ban’ hurt nonetheless; one advertiser was paying me $5,000 a month for heavy campaigning. After the bill they were forced to leave the US market.

The poker ‘ban’ was a bit of a downer because it was an unforeseen (although I knew they were attempting to pass it many months ago) incident and something I couldn’t stop. It was out of my hands and not a business decision.

My blog’s success has surprised me. I average around 900 unique hits a day, an Alexa ranking of 26,892, and an RSS readership of 176. I spend a lot of time simply writing posts for my blog. And it’s great fun, too.

It’s dwindled a bit now, but at one point I was making several hundred dollars a month from my blog!

I’ll end this section with some pretty big news but will try to keep it short and sweet this already this thread is becoming epicycle long.

I’ve been brokering a domain name for a client for a while now. I’m not a domain broker, but found out somebody here in town owned a prestigious domain. I took it upon myself to create the opportunity to broker it. I felt it was a win-win-win for everybody since although I’m not a domain broker by trade, that I have a fair bit of knowledge, experience, and contacts in the industry.

After quite a while of searching for a buyer near our asking price, I found one. The past two weeks I’ve been on the phone with the buyers and the owner closing the deal. It was opted to go through lawyers which slowed things down a bit, but the transaction is well underway and should be completed within a few days.

An NDA was signed so I cannot give any specifics out, but my cut will be a healthy 5-figures!

Now if that isn’t making money out of thin air I don’t know what is!

Income and Toys

I’m currently averaging $256 USD a day now and a progress chart can be seen below:

[Photo: Earnings Chart]

I have doubts that I’ll be able to continue on such a growth trend however. At least not if I continue to slack when I should be working.

Other than my new car purchase and a bit of money here and there on things such as an XBOX 360 and mini-vacations, I’ve recently just made a massive purchase.

I just bought a condo! It came to around $222,000 (Canadian) and I move in exactly 15 days. I can’t wait!! It’s a 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom 1163-square-foot unit which is brand new. Thus, brand new appliances, and finally I’ll have my own laundry room and my own dishwasher!

[Photo: Car]

[Photo: Condo]

The Future

I only have a few goals for the near future:

I’d like to increase my daily earnings.. one cent, one hundred dollars, I don’t care. I’d like to grow at least one of my ‘up and comer’ sites substantially (preferably my webmaster forum, ad network review site, or my MMA forum). And I’d like to work an average of 3-4 hours a day.

The Motivation

The point of this thread was partly to give an update on how things have been going for me since I took the plunge and started doing this for a living, but more to act as inspiration or motivation.

Personally, being motivated or inspired to work is extremely important. A lot of people who may be reading this are already doing extremely well, far beyond where I’m at, but for those of you that are just starting out or perhaps in the game but kind of plateauing, hopefully this thread helps motivate you to work some more.

I’m doing fairly well now, but really, I’d be perfectly making only $2000 a month. Where I live (Vancouver Island, Canada) at least, $2000 is more than enough to live a very comfortable life. When you’re a web entrepeneur working at your discretion and from the comfort of your own home, when you’re doing something you absolutely love, whatever you make is really just a bonus.

Well, that’s all folks. Maybe I’ll give everyone here another update in another year or two…

If you’d like to contact me, you can e-mail me at tylercruz@gmail.com but please do not PM me. The best way would be to respond in this thread though… of course.

Good luck and good earnings!

Author: Tyler Cruz