First few Dollars I earnt...

First time when i entered through the doors of designing, I didn't even think I will earn a USD. But after I started GFXRebels.com, I had plans to keep Premium subscription, costing 5$ lifetime validity, and earn lots of USD. I kept adding contents for my premium users and was waiting that atleast one will purchase for a premium subscription. Later one day I felt that my approach in promoting subscription is ineffective. And I started to think of various methods to promote GFXRebels and important thing is doing the same in a cost effective manner.

I was ready to spend a maximum of 10$ per month in promotions, also had plans to increase the amount based on the response from my members. I was partly successful with some of my strategies: referral contest, graphic battles among members, point system and team battles. I also got 30-40 members per day visiting my site. But still the premium members section was empty. I don't want that that section to be empty chaired and hence I started to award my members with premium membership for some of their works... :D

Things went smooth as a melody and my site reached member count in 3 digits. One fine day, I felt I need to submit few contents to some other tutorials sites, so I could get 5-10 members from them. Hence I submitted 3 of my member's tutorials to pixel2life.com, shortly called as P2L. I wasn't aware that there will be a big tycoon waiting for me. After my tutorials was approved from P2L, I received a congratulations mail from them and I didn't take much care about it. Next day I was surprised to see my site, Tycoon had hit and the member count jumped from 150 to 750, yup 600 members in a day..:) My first thought seeing this huge improvement was that my DB got corrupted and I need to fix it ASAP. But later when I came to know that most of the traffic are from P2L. From this day I started to get 3-5 premium member per day for the whole week. I used paypal for my online transactions and for the first time I saw 4.5$ credited in my account tears rolled from my eyes since 0.5$ was taken as fee amount..;) (During this time only I came to know that fee will be deducted in paypal). Once my earning crossed 50$, I introduced further more strategies like increasing prize money for normal members, arranging special contest for premium members and more importantly, kept discussing with my forum moderators in keeping my site at its own high standards.

Time came for me to concentrate on my entrance exam for my PG and I need to sell my site. Digitalpoint helped in this. I kept my site in marketplace and I thought to sell GFXRebels to some good amount. David Lithman, a English men with high thoughts, through digital point enquired about GFXRebels and was eager to buy my site for 400$. GFXRebels was just 3 months old when I gave it to Lithman. Now, Lithman made many changes in the site and I feel really happy to see GFXRebels as one of the leading sites in graphic world.

Few things I learnt in my first few dollars I earned is never feel your site is unworthy. Also keep promoting your site not only with smart but also with cost effective techniques.