Accomplish 101 things in 1001 days.

I started on September 5th of this year and have achieved quite a few of my goals. In fact, I was perusing the list this evening and realize I had forgotten some of the things I put on there!

Hence the realization that #51 had been done and I should post about it. I also finished another one that will be posted in a few days.

Aside from my full time job and this blog here, I also run another blog/forum called Arizona Sports Fans Network. It’s kind of a passion of mine, something I’ve done for relatively little reimbursement for a long, long time.

Well, the site garners around a million pageviews a month and around the same time I realized how much I enjoyed blogging, I also realized that ASFN could probably make me some extra cash.

The goal in putting ads up:

1. Help the site become fully self-sustaining, aka, pay for itself. And you don’t want to know what it takes to run our very own server to propel those busy Sundays when the Arizona Cardinals lose.

2. To make some money off the top to help pay off school and student loans.

The owner of the domain name and technically the site, was hesitant for a very long time about advertising. But after we spoke to some experts and figured out a way to do it tastefully, he agreed. He wanted no part of the revenue, because he’s older and this is a hobby of his. It’s all fun and he’ll likely be a part of it until the day he dies. A total pure Cardinals fan…it’s rare to find!

So the Google ads went up. After about two weeks of major stress by myself in worrying about daily revenue, I started to relax and let it breath on it’s own for awhile.

And so far, it’s done okay. Nothing like I had hoped, but the fact remains that the site is really a forum first and foremost, and thus all those pageviews don’t usually convert directly to coin.

But it’s bringing in some revenue and will do better. Hopefully in time it will be able to pay for the hosting on its own, but right now, any little bit helps!

It was nice to accomplish this goal, especially because I had been wanting it for such a long time. Even my wife was sick of hearing about it.

So thanks to Jim at ASFN for letting me run wild…it’s all really due to him.

I have to basically rate today (Friday) as being in the Top 5 days of the year. I mean, Christmas is good, my anniversary, Jina’s birthday, my birthday…but the Stooges Fantasy Football draft is the next one in line. This marks the 9th consecutive year that myself and a group of guys have gotten together to do our little geeky night of bidding on players, making fun of each other for past mistakes and enjoying utter football greatness. It’s really the apex of the football season for me, even if it hasn’t started yet.

I know a bunch of you guys are joining me this weekend (and I also have one on Saturday), like Adrian, Todd, Scott and Tyler. Jina’s friend Kory from work is also gearing up for his drafts. It’s like being a kid at Christmas for us.

So two football drafts and then flying away to Sausalito for five days…does it get much better than that?