- My brother needed help and I couldn't email him
- I create the page on TinyEmpire in 2002
- People start emailing me asking for more details
- I change the website for a broad audience instead of just for my brother, put up a donate button and google ads.
- Donations and advertising flow in, also a lot of phone calls asking for more help, every time I get a call I change the page to be more explicit in how to make the solution. Develop CD fix, at some point develop a USB fix but that might have come later, it's hard to say.
- Four years later, I notice the traffic (and money) suddenly stops
- I google "ntldr is missing" and find out I've gone from page 1 to page 11
- I try to find out why, and find others with similar stories, google has changed some algorithms
- I register ntldrismissing.com for 10 years, to expire in 2018, and go to the pages that are now on page 1 of google and mention my site and point them to my tinyempire page.
- It helps, people also comment on "this Windows error has it's own domain".
- In 2007, maybe, I had my best year, earning $800. I remember we had already filed our taxes so I had to file an amended return.
- I turn down the google ads, figuring if I keep it under $500 I won't need to worry about the paperwork of taxes.
- At some point, the webpage editor I use to update the site (cPanel), I discover is stripping out the code that makes the google ads work, so it's possible I ran the site for years with no ads, I just assumed it was because I turned down the ads, or more adblockers, or less WindowsXP installs.
- I sell advertising on the site monthly, and some advertisers who like the high page rank buy ads, at first it was more money than Google Ads, then it goes to half of what it was, then it goes to half of that, then the advertisers interested in page rank don't want it at all.
- I sell advertising for a "pay" version of my same fix (that also does more stuff), to me this is fine, if you read my instructions and you could not find out how to make the drive (to be fair, it should be a lot simpler, but I've never been able to figure out how to make it like the pay guys do), so an ad for Lazesoft Recovery Suite Professional shows up after the instructions.
- A few months later, I ask if they would like to renew their advertising, and they tell me they aren't interested since it didn't drive enough traffic, but would I be interested in selling the domain?
- So I make an offer for tinyempire.com and ntldrismissing.com and they make a counter offer of $500 for ntldrismissing.com, and I accept.
- After the first $250 goes through, I ask my wife what to do with the money, and we are going to buy a vacuum cleaner.
So thank you internet for buying me a vacuum cleaner.
Does this mean it's all over? Maybe. If I google ntldr is missing right now, the third return is pointing at ntldrismissing.com and not to tinyempire.com, so it's possible these pages will just disappear far down the rabbit hole of google search results (have you ever gone past page 3 of google search results?). I was already earning less than $100 a year in advertising over the last two years, so it's possible I won't even reach the next $100 dollars to get paid out, what with adblockers being so much more active now.
I see no reason to take down my fix at http://milescomer.com/tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm and until someone offers me $5000 for TinyEmpire, it's going to stay there. And even then I'll probably move it over to MilesComer.com instead of just deleting it. Internet storage is cheap, and my hosting is paid up for the next 2 years.
