So, heres a little project update to let you know where I’m at.

VPSSpeed
VPSSpeed is expanding at a phenomenal rate. In the last week we’ve filled 2 Core 2 Quad (8GB RAM) servers and taken in a lot of new customers. Unfortunately with these new customers came the fraudsters….you know the ones, those guys who signup, send 50,000+ spam emails, then dump the account. Because of this, an entire IP range got put onto the Spamhaus blacklist!

It forced me to take extra steps to prevent fraud orders. From using MaxMind fraud verification, to no longer allowing free email addresses such as Yahoo and Hotmail. Since doing this, we’ve not had any fraud orders get through.

I’ve got a great range of new features that will be added to VPSSpeed soon. These include:

• Updated website
• Advanced reseller program
• New OS Templates
• A company blog
• Twitter (Who’s not using it these days!?)
• Dedicated Servers
• DNS Hosting
• + more

There are quite a few other little bits and bobs that I’ll keep under wraps for now! We’re also looking at offering VPS hosting in other locations. Whilst our Dallas provider does a great job, we’re looking at offering a few alternate locations such as Atlanta, Tampa, New York, etc.

If you’re interested in a VPS server, then do check out VPSSpeed.com you can also get 25% off your first month with the coupon RMCOM.

WSDReg
WSDReg has taken a bit of a back seat at the moment. This month it is 3 years old and is still going strong with a customer base in the thousands, and domains in the tens of thousands. I’ll be working more with WSDReg in a few months time.

Unnamed top-secret hidden project
This one’s got me rather frustrated. Its something I’ve been working on for close to a year now and is coming very close to ready for use by it’s first customer. I cant go into much detail about it but I’ve mentioned it on my blog before!

There’s not a huge amount to say about this one at this time but I’ll be posting more details once it goes live!

Well that’s about all for now! I’ve only got about 5 weeks left at university (if that) then I’m off for 4 1/2 months, so will post more updates soon!

VPSSpeed has been in the pipeline for almost a year, as have several other web-hosting sites that we’ll be opening up in the near future. We opened up and saw an immediate surge in orders and this has continued since our launch. There seems to be no stopping the customers flocking to VPSSpeed!

I can’t blame them though, there are few VPS providers out there that can provide a 512MB VPS plan for under $15 /month and include a free control panel.

As VPSSpeed expands we’ve got loads of plans for it, including:
- Addition of Xen based VPS plans
- TUN Support (for stuff like OpenVPN)
- Pre-purchase reseller plans (i.e you can buy 2GB RAM, 500 GB HDD and 1TB bandwidth and allocate it out to your own VPS plans)
- Affiliate program to earn commission
- Updates Blog (to let people know about exciting new additions)
- A range of OS Templates to cover multiple versions of each supported OS.
- The addition of a Slackware template
- A pre-configured cPanel OS template
- A pre-configured DirectAdmin OS template
- A pre-configured Webmin Template
- A ‘hardened’ template (for those users without a control panel or who need a bit of help with server security!)

All these exciting features will be rolled out starting soon. Obviously not all at once, but we’ll get there!

VPSSpeed are currently running a special offer – get 10% off for life, plus an Unmetered 10mbps bandwidth connection (great for streaming!). Just use the coupon UNMETERED to claim the special offer! It expires on 15th March so be sure to get signed up soon!

www.VPSSpeed.com

So, whats been going on? Well the first thing, WebmasterStash had a refurb, and merged with another webmaster community, giving us a much larger array of content in the forums. I decided to close the main site as we simply didn’t have time to add new tutorials, templates and scripts due to work and life commitments. I think we tried biting off more than we could chew with WebmasterStash. Anyway, take a look at the new site (well, forums) and feel free to provide some feedback!

Next up, CLUBdb. This is still a fairly secretive project so I cant go into much detail at the moment. All I can say is that its being backed by a large club in the UK. CLUBdb is to fill a huge void in the market and provide some fantastic features. This probably makes no sense at all due to its secrecy…but don’t worry. It will make plenty of sense soon!

Mike has been working hard at a new Rike script. He started off working on a download manager, much like FMDeluxe (if anyone reading this can remember that far back! :p). However decided that his time would be better spent on a non open-source script, that way it could be marketed and licensed out to other companies. Mike is now working on an e-commerce based script with some fantastic new features that rival some of the best shopping carts out there!

The RikeMedia website will also be making a return soon with a new design and company blog. We will be issuning press releases and updates on projects, plus have sections showing what services and products are offered by the company.

Well I think thats about it for now. I’ll be launching the WSDReg Christmas promotion in the next few days and will be offering some fantastic offers! Be sure to keep your eyes on WSDReg.com for the full details!

We decided the best thing to do would be to flip sites. Make em’, sell em’ or buy em’, fix em’, sell em’! I’ve been watching the videos at SiteFlipAcademy and Justin has done a great job! He’s got some great information on his site, and in his videos. Anyone looking to become a ‘flipper’ should take a look at his site.

Currently I’m working on getting our new RikeMedia site done, which will run on WordPress, but not be an actual blog. I like wordpress and the way it deals with content…there’s no reason why it cant be used purely as a content manager!

I’m currently integrating the design. After that I will re-write all the content and such as well as insert a portfolio for all the sites we make/sell.

Mikes working on a custom CMS which we will use on some of the sites we make to sell. I’ve not seen it yet but it sounds pretty fancy….custom licensing system, modules, template engine, all the cool little features you’ll ever need. Oh, and complete integration with vB 3.7.

We are thinking about licensing it out (I.E selling licenses) as it will match if not beat the features and functionality of many premium scripts out there.

For the sites that don’t need a CMS we’ll probably just hand code them. There will be a few as not all site needs/wants a complex system.

Our first site up for sale is WebmasterStash. We simply lost the will to keep this going. Its a lot harder than you think, especially when you don’t get a return. It took us over 6 months to make WebmasterStash, before opening in December. Its gotten us nowhere!

Anyway, I’ll post another update about Rike once its up and running.

In other news, next week is my FINAL week of college…it feels really weird, and will feel even more weird when we go downstairs in the lift for the final time. We decided that we would all go to the pub on Tuesday, along with all our tutors (which could be interesting!). A final laugh all together, before we all bugger off to Uni’s all over the country!

Right….thats all for now folks!

Despite our somewhat productive meeting, I feel that we’re currently in a ditch and are struggling to get back up the other side. It seems that both myself and Mike are at a point where we cant seem to get motivated enough to work on anything at all. I had a feeling this would happen at some point as its happened before in our past projects.

The only problem this time is that I dont think we will get back up the other side….I have a gut feeling that everything is going to come crashing down on WebmasterStash because of our own personal lives and laziness taking priority.

This isn’t something I would normally blog about, maybe its just one of those things where you have to get it all out before you can feel better. One thing’s for sure, I woke up this morning expecting to crack on with some work, and have accomplished nothing. I feel upset and angry at myself for not doing work, and even more angry at the fact that I know I can do it, but cant….if that makes sense.

On another note, we had some professional banner ads made for WebmasterStash which look rather snazzy. You’ll be seeing them around soon. Also, I started and stopped working on moving WSDReg over to AWBS due to the fact that both ResellerClub and AWBS have an inability to communicate and have created a useless product for us. I’ve spoken with AWBS however and they are “looking into” adding functionality that quite frankly should have been put in place before the first version.

Well thats it for today. I’m hoping that I’ll have something less depressing to say later this month.

RickyMills.com (Re)-Launched
I relaunched RickyMills.com and ditched my old self-made portfolio site in favor of a nice WordPress blog, which would be used to track my progress towards being in control (either through sole ownership or through myself and Mike‘s Rike Media brand) of websites that would generate a long term income.

The blog got off to a great start, however I don’t feel I made enough effort in my first month. This was mainly down to having a lot of coursework to do (and catch up on) as I received 5 conditional University offers.

FotoRazor.com

After looking around at some websites for sale, I purchased FotoRazor.com, a free image host. The site was earning $70 income from text link sales and pop up adverts. I managed to increase this income to over $100 a month by adding optimized adsense adverts on the site.

I found that after this, I really didn’t want to run this kind of site. It had the multiple revenue sources that I was looking for, however I don’t really want to run an image host. Because of this, I placed it up for sale again. I’ve currently had many offers for the site, all of which I am considering. I did have one $700 offer however it turned out to be from a fake bidder. You can bid on the site over at DigitalPoint or DNForum.

WebmasterStash.com

Not much has changed around the site. Mike released some updates for StashNews, which is really turning into a great news systems. I dont think there is a better flat-file news system out there, feature wise. Its got everything that you would expect, plus that little bit more. For example; Integrated template engine with web-based editor (very few flat-file template engines can boast this!), easy and fast site integration, multiple users, captcha image verification on the news comment forms to help battle the spam bots, and more.

In addition to this, I started work on a concept for a new area to WebmasterStash; webmaster tools. Basically the idea is to have custom tools that allow users to check pagerank, backlinks, generate meta tags, etc. I’m still working on this, however I hope to have it live with our first bunch of tools online towards the end of February.

I’m hoping that once FotoRazor has sold that we can get a vbSEO license and/or some decent Photoshop tutorials written as mine aren’t exactly the best! Also I want to get the site promoted more, however I really dont think sticking some banners on a few sites is going to do much to help. We need some quality content. The templates and scripts are good, but the site needs tutorials to survive.

Other bits and bobs

I moved all our sites (except our old WSDeluxe project) over to a single VPS server as our hosting costs were about $60 a month. It was the right time to do it as our Dreamhost account is due for renewal in Feburary and after their “minor” billing problems I dont fancy staying with them (even more so when I saw that our 2007 uptime was only 85%). I moved off our JaguarPC managed VPS as we dont need a managed VPS so I was paying for a service that I didnt need.

The new VPS is a Link 4 at VPSLink.com – We’ve used them before and they have a good reliable service. The only downside is they have hard-drive speed issues which make sites seem a little more sluggish, however this isn’t really a huge problem for us at this stage.

So, thats January! I’ll be posting more progress soon, including the status of the FotoRazor auction!

I’m happy to announce that we acquired FotoRazor.com – a free image host making a nice little income! I’ve not done any major work on the site yet. I plan to redesign it from scratch and include extra options such as registration, user galleries etc.

The Rike Media empire has begun!

On another note, we’ve seen quite an increase in traffic over at WebmasterStash. Although our forums still remain rather inactive.

A web entrepreneur is involved in creating, buying and investing in websites. These websites draw profit from various methods such as advertisements and user subscriptions. What many people dont understand is that there is more money in websites than in most “regular” jobs. I’ve decided that by the end of 2008 I want to be earning enough money to live off. I’ll explain my plans in my next post which outlines my 2008 goals.

So, RickyMills.com is now where I will be blogging about how I’m getting along as a self-employed entrepreneur. Myself and my business partner, Mike Barlow recently opened RikeMedia, which is our brand name which we operate our sites under. All our sites are listed on the RikeMedia website so be sure to take a look!