What Do The Numbers Mean

How often do you check your stats? Does it really matter if you only look at your stats weekly.

I have found through my current life changing situation, that no it doesn't matter. I can check my stats once a day or once a week. They don't change no matter how often I check them.

Guess what, stats aren't the only thing that works that way. My one junk website sells stuff every once in a while. Thing is it is my junk site. I use it to test code and build some temporary landing pages. Nothing is optimized, it is just there.

Yet every once in a while it sells something.

What do the numbers mean? The answer lies in what is important to you.

What are you missing by watching the numbers? By trying to make big bucks with internet marketing? Is it worth spending your time trying to make money online?

Only you know the answer.

Best of luck to everyone.

Michael

30 Day Challenge & Contact Me

I am not going to participate in the 30 Day Challenge this year. It was fun to do the past 3 years and I did learn something each time.

But in the overall scheme of things I don't see any reason to waste so much time going through a process that in the end produces very little income. Yes a couple will hit a hot niche and a couple others will make a small profit month after month.

Heck the blog I created for last years 30 Day Challenge still brings in $5-$10 a month even though I only do 1 post a month. How much effort would it take to bring that up to $500 a month? A ton of effort and a good bit of luck.

I'm on the lazy train (humming Ozzy's Crazy Train) from here on out. Life is just too short to focus so much energy on something that has terrible odds of success and profit for the time spent.

As for contacting me. If you email me you will never get a reply back. Only the people who I have met in person know my personal email address. For everyone else, you must use my contact form until we meet.

Michael

Why Try To Make Money Online

Time for the next update.

As mentioned a few posts ago, I stopped all paid advertising on my sites and blogs. The reason was not that I was loosing money, but that I didn't want to spend as much time managing my online business. If you don't keep an eye on your advertising you can go broke quick, so I figured that should be the first to go.

Since then I cut back on a few other things including my virtual server that I was only using half of.

I love free blogs for making money because the risk is so low. Not that it is a good idea to create a blog for the purpose of making money. But low risk because if I can't update every day it won't cost me any money.

I am back working on some Entrecard tests. So far I love all the changes they made. Spending all of my credits has by far been the smartest move I made with that system. To fully benefit from EntreCard you need to spend your credits.

Later,

Michael

Do What You Love

Ever notice how much easier it is to write when the topic is something you love.

Fortunately for me I am into a bunch of things. I love to do research and try new things.

Life is what you make it. From time to time we are delt a truckload of lemons, but it is what you do with those lemons that matters. It is a choice.

Choose to complain or find a way to turn that negative into a positive.

If you remember back a few months I read the One Month To Live book. I'm thinking it might be easier to think of only having one day to live.

What would I do today if I knew it was my last. Obviously I have to go to work, or the bills won't get paid. But it is still a good idea to put things into a day to live perspective.

Michael

Stand Out In A Crowd

Where I work we are raising money for "Make A Wish". The goal is to raise enough money to fulfill a wish for very sick children.

Each of the departments came up with a different idea.

So now when you get on the elevator you are inundated with small posters promoting a departments fund raising idea.

I love the ideas, they are great.

But the problem is that none of them stand out. When you walk in the elevator there are so many it is hard to focus on just one.

There is one poster that has some standout stuff, but no memory factor.

So, the idea isn't just to stand infront of your customers. But to stand where they can see you and clearly recognize you.

Michael

How to spend Entrecard Credits

As mentioned last week. I love Entrecard. More so now that I figured out the best way to use Entrecard.

Spend your credits by advertising on other blogs.

Very simple and very effective.

I always drop my card on the blogs I like to read. I also mark them as a favorite and often advertise on them as well.

Some days I drop more cards then others. My drops inbox always shows me new blogs to check out.

I'm more picky about placement then I am anything else. If it is an above the fold placement like I have here on my blog then I am willing to pay more to advertise on that blog.

Once a week I spend most of the credits in my account. I get advertising all week long.

Michael

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all. Even if you don't have kids you may have given motherly advice to a child in the past. So to all I wish a Happy Mothers Day.

Yesterday was jam packed with outside work. Hopefully today I will have time to work on the project I mentioned yesterday.

I also have to practice for my big poker tournament later this month.

Take Care,

Michael

Update on my Projects and Tax Rebate

Today I thought I would give you an update on my projects and answer a few comment questions.

Poker - Yes, I love to play poker. If you would like to play poker with me, just go over to Club WPT and sign up. My name is localpoker. Feel free to add my name localpoker in the referred by field. The cost is $20 a month to play and it is legal in the USA. They operate under a sweepstakes format, so you play with points instead of money. I love it, later this month I will be playing in a tournament with a $10,000 prize pool.

Wealthy Affiliate - Don't forget today is the last day to lock in the lower monthly membership rate. Where else can you get one-on-one mentoring for only $30 a month? Sign up at Wealthy Affiliate today to lock in the low rate.

Tax Rebate - While the plan was to only spend 1/2 of our tax rebate on vacation and apply the other 1/2 to a credit card, we decided to spend the whole thing for vacation. But here is the deal. Before the Tax Rebate the plan was to skip vacation and focus on our debt. So we are still paying down our debt, but at the same time taking a vacation. As for if my spending $1500 is going to stimulate the economy, no, I don't think so. There is something smarter that could have been done instead of the tax rebate, but there isn't enough time to discuss that right now.

$170 Project - I did not invest any of the $170 from my $200 prize. I donated $20 to MDS and $10 was for the PayPal fee. The research is started, but I never finished it. Like much of what I do, I start something, let it sit for 2-3 weeks, then finish it. So look for an update on how I invested the $170 later this month.

Blogging - I maintain about 12 blogs and a few websites. Most get a weekly update. Income levels are slightly below normal. Maybe the tax rebate checks will stimulate the economy to buy some of my ebooks?

Social Networking - I am getting close to 10,000 contacts on MyBlogLog. That is the easy part. My almost 800 community count for my Blog on MyBlogLog, now that I am proud of. Not many blogs can grow and maintain above 600. My goal is 1,000 within the next few months.

There are a few more items to give updates on, but I have to get ready for a meeting on the other side of Lancaster. I don't care for the long drive to and from, but the meetings are great. I serve on the Outreach Department for the Donegal Presbytery.

Michael

How To Schedule BLOG Posts

The blogging platform I use now has a feature to schedule posts.

So now I can write up posts for when I am away and they will show up daily as if I were able to write and post them that day. This is a great feature for vacations and travel. Other then that I prefer to write and post at the same time.

To do a future post in Blogger all you have to do is click on the Post Options link. Then under post date and post time just set it be when you want it to post.

Simple as pie.

Many things going on right now, so I better get back to it.

Michael

Past the 600 Post Mark

This is post number 601. Hard to believe that I made it this far.

Now if I could only break the $200 a day barrier.

Traffic picked up on one of my blog. I love when that happens. Guess I will have to increase the posting frequency.

Most of my blogs I only post once a month or once a week at most. This is my only blog where I post almost daily.

Time to do some research and start planning next week.

Michael

Tools For Blogging Success

I see that FaceBook added a chat application today. I know that most of the email providers also have a chat option. But I like the ability to chat with contacts no mater what email provider they use.

Over at Wealthy Affiliate they keep adding new tools to help me make money online. I love the research tools, saves me a good bit of time and money. They provide much at a very low price.

I haven't invested my $170 yet. I will probably use it to test 2 products with AdWords, but haven't decided yet.

My MyBlogLog community is growing nicely. Almost at 800 and it should hit 1,000 this summer.

Michael

What Can We Learn From Events

As you may know I was in Denver last week at a conference.

While there I attended a bunch of educational sessions and talked to a couple hundred vendors. It was neat to see how each of the vendors did their marketing.

Some were offering a chance to win a big prize like a Mac notebook or iPod touch, while others were handing out small trinkets. Some even gave pins to put on our conference badge.

At first I thought the big prize vendors were missing something by not having a handout at the conference. But then today I got an email from one of the vendors with an announcement of the iPod Touch prize winner.

And what did I do. Well I opened it and read the whole thing. In addition to announcing the winner (wasn't me) they told me about a free webinar that I can register for next week.

How smart is that.

There is just one more thing this vendor could have done to get me closer to being a customer. And that is to present on one of the session topics.

I give credit to the vendors to freely give of their time to come to a conference and offer free training.

More on offline and online marketing over the next few days.

Michael

BLOG Design Changes

I made a couple changes to the blog design.

I removed some elements from the right column. Currently I have the new MyBlogLog widget showing, but I may remove that if it slows down page load time. It does look cool, so I will probably keep it there.

I have to modify the top text links and the bottom banner. That will be another day.

I noticed that traffic died down after Entrecard changed their advertising algorithm. My site was getting good traffic and my ad rate was over 70. With the new alg I am looking at 32 or 64 on most days, with a high of 128.

Michael

New Tools At Wealthy Affiliate

I just got an email today. Great news, Wealthy Affiliate is going to be releasing some new tools very soon. As early as Friday there will be some new tools on Wealthy Affiliate
that other sites charge over $100 a month for.

I am excited. I already feel that Wealthy Affiliate is under priced and this really drives up the value. That reminds me I can use their page builder to whip up a site for that niche I found on Monday.

Since I will be away for a few days I won't get to play with the new tools until I get back.

Michael

What To Do With $200

I spent some time thinking about what to do with my $200 prize winnings. PayPal took $6.10 of it off my hands and I will be donating $20 to a charity or my church.

So I have $173.90 to invest, spend or hold.

My first thought was "Spending money for my Denver trip". But for the most part that is paid for and I don't want to spend that much on stuff. My second thought was credit card debt.

I have plenty of credit card debt, so that would be a guaranteed return above what I could get in a savings account.

But on the other hand if I use it to test some offers I could find one that will convert that money at least 50% every month. With $173 I should be able to find an offer that brings in at least $50-60 a month in profit. The hardest part is getting past the testing and keyword refinement stage.

I did look on Wealthy Affiliate last night and found a product that looks awesome. It is an under the radar mover, so right now competition is very low.

The only down side is I don't have a site already in that niche and I would have to build one. Since I leave for Denver in a couple days, I don't have time to do that.

I will probably Spend $70 of it in Denver and use the rest to test 2 offers/products.

More on that in a future post. I will also provide an update on some of my advertising tests in a few days.

Michael

The Week Before Denver

Next week at this time I will be heading to Denver for a conference. Collaborate 08 to be exact.

I am heading there as part of my job for a big project later this year.

The Internet Marketing portion of this is about advertising.

There will be about 15,000 people there all with interest in the same thing. So I took a peek at how much it would cost to advertise there.

A 10x10 booth in the expo costs $10,000. Floor Decals cost $3,500. Bottled Water cost $15,000 for 2 days.

At first I thought some of these vendors are paying $2 or more per "impression". But then I realized that these people are selling $20,000+ products. So 1 or 2 sales would be a profit for them.

Something to keep in mind when we advertise online.

This time next week I will be on my way to the airport. The conference starts early Sunday, so I will be heading out Saturday.

Michael

The Shopping List of Keywords

I got to thinking today about Keywords. It is absolutely amazing how 1 word can make the difference between a sale and just a visitor.

Imagine this.

You own a store in a shopping mall. Every customer that comes into your store is either holding a shopping list or they are there to look because they were told by someone else that you sell good products.

Now of all the prospects that have a list only some of the prospects actually buy and become a customer.

As it turns out all the customers who bought have matching lists. If even 1 word does not match, they didn't buy.

Believe it or not, this is real in the online world. It just happened to me.

As you know I am constantly testing new products to sell. I use Wealthy Affiliate to find products and research keywords to promote those products with PPC. I use the techniques they teach at Wealthy Affiliate.

I added 1 keyword phrase that is much like the others in my keyword list, but only different by one word. Guess what happened. Prospects started turning into customers.

Or should I say prospects were able to find my store because what I was selling matched what they have on their shopping list. Now to go in a weed out all the keywords that don't convert, then I will head back to Wealthy Affiliate to look for more products to promote.

What an awesome feeling that was to discover the power of ONE WORD in the right keyword phrase order!

Michael

Hang With Me Online

Are you my friend?

The best way to find me is on MyBlogLog, just click the My BLOG Community link above and join my community. You will need a Yahoo id, free if you don't already have one.

Another option is FaceBook, again just click on the My BLOG Community and then on my FaceBook icon. You can also see my YouTube and Twitter links there as well.

I tend to hang out online for a couple hours a day, so there is a good chance we will meet sooner or later.

I am getting close to having over 10,000 contacts on MyBlogLog. That is my current goal for MyBlogLog.

Michael

Track Your Advertising - AdWords and Paid Links

Sorry for the delay in updates. I was working on a big project and had to focus my energy on that product.

Once a month I review my traffic and advertising for each of my sites and blogs. This helps me avoid throwing advertising money away.

First I check AdWords and adjust my spending based on how many sales I got. For products I am testing I adjust prices and keywords. Some of my product tests may be dropped if not enough sales convert.

Then I check my paid links to see how many visitors I got from those links. If my cost comes below 3 cents a click I may choose to buy another months of advertising from them. In most cases I find that text links don't bring in that much traffic.

Weekly I check and adjust advertising on some of my testing products and on new tests I always check daily. I use the tools at Wealthy Affiliate to help me find new products to promote and also with keyword selection.

Michael

Tools To Make Life Easier

Do you know what products to promote on your BLOG?

I use the tools over at Wealthy Affiliate to find products to promote.

I also use their tools to spy on the competition and find new niches to market.

Did you know that you can be a member of Wealthy Affiliate for less then $2 a month? Heck they will even pay you to be a member. They pay you $14 per month for every person you refer that joins.

So just refer 2 people and your membership costs only $2 a month.

This is a win - win situation. You get your membership for almost free or make a profit and the people you refer get full access to the best website online for those who want to make money online.

If you join Wealthy Affiliate post a comment here and we can chat on the site.

Michael