2011 was a good year on most fronts. My business did pretty good, my secondary incomes did pretty good, I beat the S&P, my golf game improved a little bit, made some money playing live and online poker, and didn’t lose that much in sportsbetting and casino play. Of course, there’s always room for improvement, but overall, I was happy with how the year ended.
Most people who have been reading this blog for a while now, know that my primary income is from my main affiliate marketing website boogster.com. I started it in 2004, while working at my engineering job, which I quit almost exactly a year later. Since then, I have been on my own, with the exception of a 1-month jail sentence of a side-job three and a half years ago.
Over the past year or two, I’ve started to branch out to other affiliate marketing niches, like my gift exchange site, and several other SEO related sites. These are what I consider my secondary income streams. They have done pretty well over the past several years. My goal is to build up these secondary incomes streams, so that I’m not just relying on my primary income source to pay all the bills. I’m trying to diversify, mainly because the gambling affiliate business has been pretty volatile over the past several years. Starting from the UIGEA in October 2006, to Black Friday on April 15, 2011, it’d be crazy not to diversify.
Anyways, onto some more details about my secondary income sources. Earlier this year, I went on a domain buying spree at Godaddy. I just calculated how much I spent at Godaddy this year: $628.15. I think I probably registered about 10 domain names, and paid for 3 years of linux web hosting. I already had a Windows web hosting account, but I ran into some problems with WordPress on this windows account, so they made me purchase a linux package. I must say that wordpress blogs run much smoother on linux than on Windows.
So, roughly 10 new domain names, all of which I setup a simple blog using the free Back My Book wordpress theme. Similar to one that you see on this blog. I wrote a few articles on the blogs, added a bunch of plugins for SEO purposes, then added each of these domains to my Google webmaster tools account, and setup adsense for faster google indexing. Most of the blogs are identical in looks, with the exception of colors and images. Here is one of my sample domains:
Basically, my idea was to target exact keyword matches in google searches. If you do a search for “UFC Lines“, you’ll see that I’m 2nd on the list. This was done with very little effort because there is not a lot of competition for this keyword and the keywords are in my domain name.
It takes me an hour or two to setup each blog, including writing some quick articles. The idea is to make money via affiliate links to gambling sites, direct product links to amazon, other affiliate links and through google adsense. Unfortunately, the site above doesn’t get too many affiliate sales for me. I just checked and I made exactly $15.52 from adsense last year on that one particular site. I think I got some Bodog signups as well, but nothing substantial. Regardless, the cost to me was $8/year for domain registration, 2 hours of time spent setting up the blog, and partial rent for the linux hosting account.
Fortunately, while the above domain didn’t work, I did have a few others that worked quite well. One domain, I made, $1,537.52 and another domain I made $1,248.32 for the year. Those were my two biggest earners of the exact name match projects. That’s about $2.8k there.
Several other projects that I worked on was the gift exchange site and my golf related site. I raked in about $8k from my gift exchange site, with expenses at about $2k or so, mainly for advertising via adwords. Revenues actually doubled from last year. I didn’t spend too much on anything else this year for the site. My golf related site, through adsense and affiliate sales, I made around $300, plus or minus a hundred bucks. I’m not tracking the affiliate sales as well as I should be doing.
All in all, I’m about +$8.5k net income from secondary sources. Gross sales would be around $11k. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get these to double by the end of next year.
I didn’t get to play too much online and/or live poker this year. Mainly because I didn’t really get the urge to play. I did pretty well at the beginning of the year, then I had a nice little losing streak, and that pretty much killed my urge to play anymore. Regardless, I still ended the year up about +$1,300. I would like to play more in 2012.
I didn’t really keep track of my sportsbetting this year, but I think I probably dropped about $400 or so. I reloaded on Bodog a few times and I didn’t even bet that much. I went all-in a few times though…I do remember that. Of course, it’s always that last all-in that doesn’t work.
Casino income was neglible at +$80. I went up to AC once last year, and ending up winning a little bit playing Roulette and Craps. Plus is always better than minus though.
Trading-wise, I just counted my totals across all accounts, and I ended the year at +$350 realized gains. Not good considering the amount of time that I spend watching my quotes every day, but it is what it is. I don’t think it was easy for anyone this year, due to the volatility. The S&P gained something like .004% or something like that. The Dow gained 5.5% on the year. Regardless, I need to do better. I was pondering the idea of putting my money to work into real estate instead. With interest rates so low, and so many houses on the market, my money may do better in real estate than in my trading account. Based on the last two years, I’m sure I can’t do any worse.
Looking back at some of my trades last year, two of my biggest losers were ASEI (-$4k) and UNG (-$4k). The ASEI trade was dumb as it was a low volume stock, and I bought it right before earnings. If I would’ve held, I’d be close to even, but I panicked and ending up losing $4k in just a few short weeks. The UNG trade was long, slow grind lower. If I would’ve held onto that trade, I’d be down almost double now. I’m starting to sense that my SBUX trade is going to kill me too. I’m already down like $13k on the puppy and I’ve been holding and averaging up the whole time. I really need to just sell my losers and let them go. It’s always that one trade that kills all of the profits for the year.
As far as the good trades, I made some good money on my BBY short. Not without some pain though. Like SBUX, I was down $4k-$6k on the trade before I started making money. I think I booked about $5k-$6k in profits from this stock last year, and I’m still holding onto about $5k-$6k in profits on paper this year. I’m gonna let this one run.
Here’s what I’m currently holding:
- -750 SBUX at $32.88
- -400 BBY at $36.49
- 8 BBY March 2012 $33 puts at $6.20
- 1 AAPL April 2012 $400 call at $28.75
- 2 GOOG March 2012 $575 put at $29.25
- 7 SBUX April 2012 $50 puts at $8.09
- 5 BBY June 2012 $30 puts at $6.00
Longer term portfolio:
- 72 DVY at $52.90
- 100 DTN at $51.32
- 100 DLN at $48.15
- 500 PEY at $9.04
- 50 DGP at $60.64
- 50 DDM at $58.73
- 50 QLD at $85.36
- 300 PIV at $13.98
- 125 PJP at $27.40
- $2,500 worth of GASFX
I really need to start unwinding some SBUX here. Earnings are coming up this week and I’m getting a little nervous. Psychologically, it’s not good seeing a -$10k in the profit/loss column next to a stock. Heh.
My next trade will be natty gas (/NG). I was going to wait until Feb 1st to start accumulating, but I think I should start scaling in now. I’m gonna try to get 4k shares total of UNG. We’re trading at $5.70 right now and spiraling lower every day. Historically, natty gas has done quite well in February. Since I suck at timing, I think it’d be better to just start accumulating at set intervals for the next few weeks. We may go down another dollar or so, but I think I’ll see a nice return if I start buying here.
So, I guess with the end of 2011, I should probably list some goals for 2012.
- Become a single digit handicap (currently 13.2). Gotta work on my short game, starting with putting.
- Double my secondary income, which includes all of my SEO related websites. I think $20k gross is realistic. I really need to put some more work into it though, instead of slacking off playing golf (see goal #1).
- Find 2 or 3 new sources of income, whether it be bringing up some new SEO sites, or following through one of my ideas. I’ve got a few ideas queued up, which I just need to implement. I can probably outsource most of them via elance or oDesk.
- Do better in the stock market. The last two years have been abysmal. I made money, but barely. Definitely not worth the time that I’ve spent following the markets. Not to mention that without respectable profits, I cannot validate my knowledge in the stock market. Profits = validation.
- Don’t sleep on my main income source. I feel like I’m neglecting it a little bit. Gotta keep moving with it, otherwise, I will regret it.
- Quit sportsbetting for the umpteenth time. For *real* this time.
- Stop using emoticons in anything that I write. I always hated them…not even sure why I started using them in the first place.
- Eat better. I have my moments, but like anything, it’s all about consistency. McDonald’s Big Breakfast on Sunday mornings is always my weak spot. I’m pretty sure it’s about a thousand calories, but those damn hotcakes are so delick-y-ous. I’d like to sniff 145 this year. Might have to cut off my leg to do it though.
- Run 13.1 miles. I’m not ready for a full marathon yet, but I think the build up will be inevitable. For now, I will start with a half. I’m debating whether to run the Wine Country Half Marathon. I just need to sign up and then I’ll be committed.
- Procrastinate less. Put deadlines on tasks, instead of leaving them open ended.
That’s about it. How was your 2012?
Good stuff, man. I give a lot of respect for people self-employed because I don’t have guts to quit my day job. I should check out your primary / secondary work to see if we can be mutually beneficial.
I don’t know how I found your blog in the first place, but it was trading logs that got me into and I’ve never seen anybody who posts a real P/L although I’ve seen people who post only when things are going well.
Looks like NG is getting another beating today. I placed an order to sell 2.5 Put for 0.153. To get that price, I think NG needs to get to 2.4ish. I didn’t know NG does relatively well in Feb, but I guess we’ll see.
Do you have any target in mind for UNG?
I just sold out of my UNG at $5.22 for about a $120 loss. I will wait until mid-February to buy. Even if I ultimately buy above $5.22, I think I need to follow the system. If I deviated, then I am asking for it.
That may be a better idea. Your system proves that. $120 loss is much better than sitting through $5K loss!
Your AAPL call is flying! A good job man!
Too bad I sold it before earnings!! Doh!
boogster! well I understand it though. We know what earnings can be. A good trade regardless. I’m beating myself because I sold it at $135 thought it was a good sell.