Simpleology

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

Trying to Create Videos

I am so frustrated trying to create videos to help me market online. I have a Sony HandiCam and can't get the damn videos 'into' the computer. I think there is an adapter that I'm going to have to buy. It came with a USB cable that does absolutely nothing. I guess I'm going to have to spend some time googling to find out just what I need.

I've also been looking into buying Camtasia. I also came across a program called CamStudio which is like an open source camstudio. I've been so happy with wordpress that I might just give it a try. Hey, it's free so I guess it's worth a try. There is a bug where the videos don't show up with Firefox, but there is a way around that if I can figure it out. I wish I was more tech savvy - guess maybe I'm too old!

I have gotten a couple of sales in the past few days. I'm still over $200 away from my goal for the month of June and with only a day and a half left it's not looking to good. There's always next month.

I still haven't received my teaching certification from Florida so I can't start looking for a teaching position yet. I have an interview with Walmart on Thursday for a job as a part-time (32 hrs a week) Customer Service Manager. It's an hourly management position - managing cashiers, which means it will be a low paying 'sucky' job. But it will help pay the bills until I can get this affiliate marketing gig going a little better or get into a school.

I really don't think I would mind Walmart if I can get into a salaried management position. A teacher at the school where I did my student teaching was making $80k/yr as a manager at Target.

I hate this being in limbo and need to get some real cash flowing.

Wordpress Blog Site is Up and Running

I just love my third niche site. I made it using wordpress and hosted it on
BlueHost Easy Web Hosting $6.95/mo.

I added the seo-all-in-one plugin for wordpress. I've been looking at other plugins and widgets, there is just a ton of free stuff available for wordpress. Oh yeah, I also installed a stat plugin that I think will be cool - once I start getting some traffic.

I don't plan on getting too much traffic right off the bat. So far I've made four blog posts. It doesn't have enough on the site yet to consider a ppc campaign so I'm going to start with some article marketing. I just submitted the first article for this site. That will bring my article count at ezinearticles to 17.

I have high hopes for this site, I guess I have high hopes for all my sites, but remember that the first two still really suck.

It's been too long since I've had a sale. I still haven't had a two sale day yet. I keep hoping that I'll jump straight to a three sale day.

The writing is coming easier for me every day. The article I wrote this afternoon was actually fun to work with. I am getting a little faster, but still get hung up some. It's starting to get exciting and I'm having more fun with this every day. I can't wait to get up in the morning and get to the computer to see what action there was overnight.

Making My Second Site = User Friendly

I'm trying to make my second site more user friendly. It is a review site and I've been going through each of the 'reviews' trying to get all the text to look the same and to be the same size. It's a pain, but I think it will help with conversions.

The third site that I want to start is going to be a wordpress site. I'm excited to get it going. I'm trying to get together a very good list of keywords for the site. I have also been searching for a good theme. Once I get those together I'm going to begin again.

I'm not exactly proud of my first two sites. This third site I am going to try to take to the next level.

I haven't been writing articles. I have to create a new author for each site so I can be more targeted. I'm going to try to get a few done tonight.

I have to go take some motrin - too much time at the computer. I need to start taking regular breaks. I did just get a new office chair and that helps.

Another Niche Site Done

I've been busy creating another niche site. I'm not really happy with it, but it's up and it's better than the first site. I created it in the site builder that they have in Wealthy Affiliate.

I have also decided on my third niche. I registered the domain with www.GoDaddy.com. After searching long and hard I am going to have it hosted at Blue Host where you can Host Unlimited Domains - 1 Account $4.95 Per Month.

Things really are getting overwhelming. My wife is giving me a hard time about how much time I spend online. At the same time she is always complaining about money and thinks I'm crazy. She is sure going to love the money when it really starts coming. I am still making sales and it is increasing every week. She won't even look at anything I'm doing. I have to just stay focused and not let her knock me off track.

I'm going to try to get a few more articles submitted today. I have a total of sixteen live articles currently.

Wasting Time?

Well, I have to admit that I haven't been very productive lately. I have gotten to basic plus status as an author at ezinearticles. I now have ten live articles and two more pending.

I've been submitting articles that I outsourced - I don't think I'll do that again any time soon. What a waste, maybe I tried to go too cheap. I've been spending more time trying to fix (re-write) them, than I would have spent just writing the things myself.

I have been trying to watch were my time goes, I'm actually going to start logging my time so I can see exactly where it all goes. I know I spend way too much time checking my stats - it's like an addiction. That is the first thing I'm going to cut way back on, my first order of business. I've also been spending tons of time reading forums like the one at WA, also at DP, Warrior and ABW. Sometimes it seems like a waste, but I've been learning so much it's just amazing.

I've also been doing lots of thinking. I do think it's important in any business to do spend some time in the early stages learning and thinking! Not that you should ever stop.

I've also been spending too much time looking at and thinking about that first niche site of mine and yes it still sucks, but it's making a little money. So I really need to go on for the time being and start a second niche. I think my second niche will be much better than my first and so on. So by the time I get to five or six, I should be much, much better - then I'll start going back and improving my early niches with the knowledge that I gain.

So, did I waste time?

Although I didn't really accomplish much except for a couple articles, I do now have a workable plan and some real ideas.

More Sales Success and a Disappointment with My Article

My first month is coming to a close and I've made several sales in the past week. My commissions for my first month - with two days to go - total just over $270.00. Not too bad considering the very slow start. I'm very much looking forward to my second month and beyond.

I have eight live articles on ezinearticles and two are pending review. I can't submit any more until they go live and I can upgrade my account. I have sixteen other articles written that I will submit as soon as I am able.

My adwords account is costing me less than one half of the amount it was cosing me the first couple of weeks with more clicks. My cost per click has been cut to less than a third of what it started at because the quality of my site has improved. It still sucks, in my opinion, but I keep working at improving the quality.

I still haven't started a second niche. I have a few ideas that I'm still trying to flesh out.

What's my disappointment? Another author copied the title for the article that I had on the first page with my keyword phrase not in quotes and has knocked me off the first page. I'm now the first return on the second page and have a new arch enemy lol!

I'm preparing to get a mailing list going with AWeber, they are the gold standard when it comes to building a mailing list. If you've ever thought about getting your list started I can't recommend them enough and they even have a FREE test drive.

My first Article Success

My first articles have gone live on ezinearticles.com. I submitted two on May 29th, two on May 31st and two on June 1st. The first four that were submitted all went live on June 3rd and the last two went live on June 4th.

One of the first set of articles I submitted that went live on June 3rd was targeted to a long tail keyword that I figured got searched for around 400 time a month. The competition when searched in quotes is around 400, when searched without quotes it is 20,500,000 (WOW).

This article is getting way more page views than the other five. I just checked google and when I search that term in quotes my article is the first result. I thought that was great, but not very many people search with quotes. I then searched the term without quotes - not expecting much - and my article was the 5th result on the 1st page. That happened in just three days!

I am just ecstatic. I haven't written any articles since those six, I'm going to try to write four more tonight so I can get my ezinearticles account upgraded to let me submit an unlimited number.

I've been spending the last couple of days working on my pathetic review site that the articles link to, I still have a long way to go with that project. I now have five products reviewed and want to get to ten.

Patience - I Wish I had More

I've written a total of five articles so far and have submitted them to ezinearticles for review. They say it takes 7 - 14 to review articles done by new authors. I hate the waiting. Once I have ten submitted and reviewed they will increase my member status and the articles will go live quicker 6 - 36 hours.

I've also outsourced twenty articles that should be delivered today. I'm also going to try to write a few more today and I am getting much, MUCH faster at writing. I want to get fifty articles in this niche before I start a second niche. I think being very prolific with articles is more important than quality, although from what I've seen most of the articles are crap. My articles may not be as wonderful as I would like - when compared to what's out there - they are great.

My adwords quality score has improved and my cost per click has been cut in half. The sales have been trickling in although still not enough to cover what I am spending on adwords. I just can't wait for these articles to go live, that should help tremendously. With the sales that I've made at least I know that if I a can get more traffic I will get more sales. If I weren't getting any sales now I would really be panicking.

Time to go write a couple of articles!

Keywords and Articles

I have been spending way too much time on keyword research and writing articles. Like anything else that is worthwhile it takes some time to get good at marketing skills. I came up with a list of twenty long tail keywords for my niche and am outsourcing the writing to give me a quicker start.

I've written two articles in the last week, I need to be writing two articles every half hour. The thing about article marketing is that you need to be prolific. I have to quit worrying about making the articles 'too good' and just write. I tend to think way too much and it slows me down to a snails pace.

The articles that I outsourced are supposed to be delivered on June 1st. I can't wait to get them posted. I am going to try to write at least ten myself by then and then create specific goals for the month of June - I will post the goals on this blog.

I have also been spending hours and hours on different marketing forums to learn as much as I can about my new trade - they are definitely way more useful than the majority of rehashed ebooks on the market. I really like the Wealthy Affiliate forum.

I have been a member of the Wealthy Affiliate for almost three weeks and am a week behind on the eight week action plan - I'm still on week two! I'm going there right now and try to finish the second week today so I can get caught up to date.

I'm still busy getting unpacked, organized and settled in from my recent move. I'm planning on making June a very productive month.

Finding Product for My Niche

I've been super busy since I got back to NY. I have been searching for product to affiliate myself with for my niche website.

I became a Commission Junction member and have added one product from there to the website (one sale so far for $270.00). I am looking at a few others from there as well. I joined another independent affiliate program from a respected company and am going to add that product to my site, hopefully later today. I'm still and will probably always look for products that are a good fit, while always trying to get the quality better.

The product that I joined Commission Junction to promote is restricted to the CJ affiliates that have high performance levels and that will take several months to develop - I really have to up my game.

I have also been searching a couple of affiliate forums for information and have learned more from the forums than I've ever learned from most e-books. I have to be careful and not get 'lost' in a forum and waste too much time. I do need a break from working and being in a forum is not something I do for work. Affiliate forums that is, I'm currently trying to find a few decent forums in my niche to use for business.

My first Niche

I had my first sale yesterday on my new website, the one I did Sunday. I've been spending $20.00/day for an adwords campaign, this is my third day. Yesterday I made my first sale and got $54.00 in commission. By the way, my website really sucks, so once I get that fixed up AND it starts getting into search engines AND I get some articles out AND I get a mailing list going AND I get another niche going AND etc...

I'm so damn excited about the possibilities.

I've been busy with work and school. Friday was my last day student teaching and last night was my last teacher certification course. So now I'm professionally certified to teach any academic subject through eighth grade and Social Studies through high school. Today I'm packing and tomorrow I move back to upstate NY. I moved my my wife and children up there six weeks ago and stayed down here to finish school. I'll have to get my certification switched to NY - I hope that goes well.

I'll be on the road and busy getting settled in the next two or three days so I won't have any free time. I was even going to pause that adwords campaign, but I'm going to let it run and see what happens.

Making First Affiliate Web Site

I need a break from thinking about my new affiliate marketing web site, so I thought I’d write a blog about my experience. I realize that to be successful you have to get that first site going. I started early this morning doing some last minute searches on the niche I decided to enter, then over an hour deciding on the domain name.

Luckily Wealthy Affiliate has all the tools that I needed to research and create the web site. There is a keyword research tool, keyword creating tool, a very easy web site creation tool and even free hosting with you membership. There is a lady on the forum who has made 43 video tutorials for site creation, seo, list building, etc.

I decided to keep my site name generic so that I’ll be able to promote a variety of niches. For example – www.genericsite.com/niche_1 - OR - www.genericsite.com/niche_2, I will use them as landing pages and to pre-sell.

With all the tools available, building the site was the easy part. The time and trouble is deciding on the products for the niche and getting set up in different affiliate programs. Many of them are not automated so you have to wait for someone to approve the site and get back to you. I was ready to work today and wanted to get more done than I did. Well the site is up and I have two products on it, but the two that I really want to get on there are through commission junction and I’m having a little problem with them. I had an account with them years ago that I never used so they deactivated it, now it won’t let me login because it was deactivated and they won’t let me apply for a new account because I already have one! I sent customer support an email and hope to hear from them soon.

I even started a small adwords campaign. I should wait until the site is better developed, but I’m too impatient for that!

The site was so easy to create; researching and registering the domain took up much of the time. Now that I have that part done adding another niche is going to be a piece of cake – time to go research that next perfect, profitable niche. Finding the right niche is very important, there are some niches that are overflowing with master marketers – I’m not getting into that arena – I’ll stick with small niches for now.

How To Make Money From Blogging

Many beginning bloggers aren't aware that some major money can be made from blogging. There are some people that make up to $1,000 a month by simply blogging. It is actually possible to make money from blogging in your free time. There are even professional bloggers that make a professional living from blogging everyday. Nothing beats blogging from the comfort of your home and getting well paid for it. It is one of the most sought after at-home jobs that most people overlook. The vast majority of bloggers blog daily just for fun and don't get paid one red cent for it. There is a great deal of money to be made by blogging. You too can make money by blogging. There are five popular sites that pay bloggers to blog. These sites can help make a blogger hefty extra income if they diligently pursue their blogging on a regular basis and according to each of the individual sites's rules and policies. The most popular of the five sites is PayPerPost.com. They give bloggers many opportunities to blog about various products and advertisements on their personal blog. The other four popular income producing blog sites for bloggers is Blogsvertise.com, BlogToProfit.com, Creamaid.com, and Blogitive.com. Joining any of these popular sites will help you to make money from blogging.

There are many ways to make money from blogging and benefit from a successful blog. The most important tip to follow if you really want to make money from your blog is to make sure you have the proper title. Having an improper title that conflicts with your blogs content can damage your ability to profit from your blog. Be sure to use a title that is catchy and properly captures the purpose of the blog. If your blog is about cats it should mention that in the title or directly refer to it in some way. Your title needs to be clear and concise. This is critical if you wish to make money with your blog. The second tip to make money with your blog is to double check your content. You can not have any errors in your blog if you desire to create income. Your blog must contain accurate information for your readers. It also makes your blog more difficult to find and search through if there are too many incorrect spellings. The third tip to make money with your blog is blog persistantly. You must be consistant with your blogging if you want to make some serious money doing it. You should blog at least once a day if not more. You need to build up a fan base of people that enjoy reading your daily posts. It is the secret to a money making blog. The fourth tip to make money from blogging is to keep what your are writing about rich in content and to the point. You do not want to ramble on and on losing your readers interest. Quality information is the key to making money from blogging. You have to draw readers daily to your blog if you hope to generate money.

Blogging To The Bank 2.0.

• How One Dumb Little Blog Can Earn Over $3,947 Per Month.
• The 5 Biggest Secrets That Guarantees A Home Run Style Success For Any Blog You Create.
• The Most Successful Step-By-Step Blueprint For Long Term Blogging Success.
• How To Create Real Blogs In Just A Few Minutes.
• 6 Surefire Promotion Techniques That Are Driving 36,313 Visitors To Just One Of My Blogs Every Month.
• How Any Business Or Individual Can use Blogging For More Exposure And Gain An Instant 'PHD' Credibility Status.
• The One Technique No One Else Is Telling You About On How To Build A Multi Million Dollar Blogging Empire.

The Professional Start

Running my affiliate marketing like a business is the crucial element to success. You can play around with affiliate marketing and make a few hundred dollars a month OR lose a few hundred dollars a month if you're not careful, but if you run it like a business the sky is the limit(seriously!!).

There are a few things you must decide to do(I did) if you really want this to be a profitable business:

1. You must think of it like a business and not a hobby.
2. Keep careful records. This will help you set goals.
   
3. Do professional research. - more on this below.
   
4. Create real value for your customers - treat them like they are standing in front of you!
5. Set goals and decide what exactly you must do on a daily basis to reach those goals. For example I have set the goal to start 5 classified ads a day, write one article a day, start one blog a week and one new website every two weeks. These are all very inexpensive.
6. Ask for and get help when you need help. I'm always here to help, just ask!!
7. Don't get distracted surfing. Easy to do!
   

I just can't stress how important it is to treat it like a business if you want to be paid like you own a business.

I have been burnt by adwords in the past and am not a huge fan of PPC(pay per click) advertising. I'm slowly trying a few campaigns, but find the methods I'm employing now to be much more effective.

I basically use articles, blogs, forums, opt-in lists and classified ads to generate my sales. I started with USFreeads - they have free classified ads, but for only $10 a month you can post an unlimited number of ads. They've been very effective, not because of sales from the ads, but because they get indexed in the search engines and get traffic(targeted traffic which lead to sales). From the time I list an item until it shows on Google is about a week. Sometimes I will link to an ad from the bio box on one of the articles to help with search engine placement.

Getting help when you need it can be a huge problem. I am a big fan of the Wealthy Affiliate membership site. That is where I go for answers - the forum is an outstanding resource. They have an eight week action plan that I'm currently in the process of completing. I won't go into all the resources they have, just visit the site if you want to know more - too much to list now. If you sign up send me an email and I'll give you my forum name and you can pm me with any questions or concerns.

There is literally success story after success story of people making their first sale, reaching their first $100/day, and people who just received their first clickbank check over $2000. It is pretty cool to see how many people have succeeded at Wealthy Affiliate, and I am one of those.

I'm having the time of my life.

Use USFreeads classifieds to buy, sell or advertise anything!

WealthyAffiliate.com is an Internet Marketing University where you will learn by interacting with online tools, guides, courses and with real people. There are absolutely NO programs available that have what WealthyAffiliate.com does. The guides, tutorials, tools, case studies, personal coaching, turnkey websites, and keywords lists make Wealthy Affiliate Unique and worth thousands of dollars many members.

Learn More About Wealthy Affiliate

A Brief Introduction

This is just a brief introduction to let you know who I am and how I became an Affiliate marketer.

My name is Doug and I am in my mid forties, married for twenty years, two children in middle school and a new middle school teacher. I have changed careers after twenty years of running a successful retail business.

After a year in a middle school I'm not so sure I want to spend twenty years in one. The job can be VERY rewarding at times - BUT - and it's a big one, the students are so apathetic that the frustration level is pretty large. I'm very laid back and not happy about how authoritative I have to be to run a halfway effective classroom.

That is why I have decided to create real wealth through my Internet marketing efforts. My goal is to quit teaching once my online income is consistently three times my contract salary. I am making it large because there is so much security in teaching. My affiliate marketing program is going much better than I expected so maybe I can quit before next year starts!!

I have been selling over the Internet for over a decade on eBay. I was a power seller until earlier this year. Selling is the easy part with eBay - it's the packaging, shipping and customer service that is a pain. I found that for the items I was selling the profit was very small and every time I would find a product that I could do well with was soon flooded with copycats and the price plummeted. I've also had many websites over the years and even dabbled in affiliate marketing - made some money, but never took it seriously - I NEVER ran it like a business!

That has all changed. I miss the business I sold and am not thrilled with teaching. I am motivated and excited and have a whole new outlook on life!!

You will hear more about me over time as I use this blog to document my progress and try to help others learn the ropes. I will let you know what I do that works and what I do that fails. Tips and tricks that I learn along the way.