30th November 2006 - my most memorable birthday gift.

I woke up on my 28th birthday and rolled over to check my laptop, as I always did, to check how much money I had made.

That year, I had created a network of 2000 websites and gotten them to rank in Google for all sorts of keywords, in order to generate ad revenue. I was feeling good, as they had generated over $1,000 the previous day.

When the report appeared, I froze.

Reported revenue was $0.00.

Nil.

Nothing.

I checked my traffic report, and my sites had received no visitors.

They were all dead.

I felt cold even as my heart raced.

There must have been some mistake.

But even as I scrambled and my mind struggled to look for hope, I knew what had happened.

I searched for my websites in Google and found no trace of them. They had been purged.

Hundreds of hours, months of work, completely erased.

I felt horrible, empty - but worse than that, I knew it was what I deserved.

I had created no value - my sites were junk sites filled with recycled...