You Never Know Until You Live It

I read the book 30 Days to Live not long ago. Many of the chapters I read quickly because I felt my life was in order.

I picked up a few tips and even made a few adjustments.

But then my world turned upside down.

30 Days to Live became a reality. My world had completely done a backflip and I was delivered a truckload of lemons.

Fortunately I had the recipe for lemonade and my friends came to the rescue. My life is changed and I plan to make the change a positive one even with the truckload of lemons.

So when you sit back and think if something happened this is what I would do. It probably isn't. Because until you have lived it you have no idea how you will react.

If you noticed that I don't blog here as much as I used to you are right. Posting on this blog will be 3 times per week when things clear up. I will post once a week until then.

The schedule on my other blogs will stay the same as I was only updating them a couple times a month anyway.

As for my sites. I got rid of my virtual server to save money. It doesn't make sense to manage 20+ websites for the amount of money they were making.

From now on I will stick to free blogs and use my free hosting from Wealthy Affiliate. More on WA in my next post, but that is one expense that I am not going to give up!

Michael

Interesting Testing Results

I had a nice surprise yesterday. I checked my stats on shareasale.com and noticed that I had a sale. But not just any sale, since I often have sales promoting their merchants.

The surprise part was that I had a sale for a merchant that I was planning on testing. I was working on a landing page and was going to promote using AdWords. But I didn't start advertising yet.

So the page was found with a natural search. After checking the page stats it doesn't get much traffic.

I may have found another winner. Now I will have to use the tools over at Wealthy Affiliate to figure out the best keywords to use on AdWords.

I could just load a campaign with 100's of keywords, but I found that using the tools at Wealthy Affiliate save me time and money. Now I only need to have 15-25 keyword phrases in my AdWords campaigns.

Have a good weekend.

Michael

Use Tools To Help You Make More Money

The best way to make a hard job easier is with tools.

It will hake hours to cut your lawn with scissors, but a lawn mower will make the work easier and produce better results.

The same holds true for making money online. That is why I use the tools at Wealthy Affiliate.

Big things are happening at Wealthy Affiliate and in addition to the tools already offered, more are on the way.

I use the competition spy tool to help me spy on markets before I start promoting within a niche. Works great and saves me a ton of time.

If you are serious about making money online now is the time to join Wealthy Affiliate. The price goes up on Tuesday, but you can lock in the current low price if you join now. Thats right, join now and pay the same price for as long as you are a member.

I don't know what the new price will be, but the tools alone are worth 3 times the price of membership. They also offer free website hosting for 3 sites and have free tools to help you build sites quickly.

Join today before the price increase and start using tools to help improve your online income.

Michael

I Joined The Mile High Club

While in Denver I joined The Mile High Club. Well, not the one you are thinking.

As you can see from the photo I visited the Capitol building and had my photo taken on the 15th step. We all took the 10 minute walk from the conference center to visit the capitol.

What did you think of the post title. Using attention getting text is important. But you have to use the right mix and not overdo it.

Stop back next week to see how I start using the $170 to test selling some products.

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 One Step Process To Make $1 Million

I know you have been waiting for this a while now.

I am happy to report that there is just one step to make $1 Million. Funny thing it was much easier then I thought.

Last year I planted a $100 bill in my back yard. With the warmer weather I noticed a vine sprouting from that area. Just today I saw the corner of a $100 bill from 10 of the sections of the sprout. If this keeps up I will have $1 Million in no time.

By the way, don't forget to check my other posts from April 1 (give or take a day).

April Fools - Happy April Fools Day!

Michael

What Does It Take To Make Money Online

A popular question with new bloggers is can I make money with my blog.

The simple answer is yes and no.

Yes, you can make money with your blog, but it takes a good deal of work. An no there is no guarantee that you will make money blogging.

That said, learning from others is a great way to get started. I just joined 2 new affiliate networks the other day and will be reporting on them soon.

Google AdSense is a popular form of income for bloggers because it is easy to install and Google is well trusted. I do run AdSense but if you read my past posts you will see that most of my money comes from other sources.

Traffic is the lifeblood of your blog. Do you know where your traffic comes from? Do you know how to get more people to see your blog?

More on that in a future post.

Michael

One Month To Live

Yesterday I mentioned about the book "one Month To Live" by Kerry & Chris Shook.

Since you are only supposed to read one chapter a day I will have to add a second book to my current reading list.

So far I love the book.

I may not have agreed to roller skate on Saturday had I not been reading this book.

What does that have to do with internet marketing?

For me when I think about only having one month to live and the work I do online. It helps me to focus on what is important and cut back what is not.

The 4 Hour Work Week did a great job of guiding my thinking at eliminating things that were not important. But 30 Days To Live does so with a thread of purpose throughout.

What good is working only 4 hours a week if you are not going to use the free time for something important.

Before you spend 3 or 4 more hours surfing the net today/tonight. Cut back by 50% and head to the bookstore to purchase "One Month To Live". No, this isn't the book that was given to me for free to review. I think it will change your life, that is why I suggest it.

Michael

How To Run A Contest On Your Blog

I am currently participating in and watching an awesome contest run by Winning The Web.

The prize pool is currently over $9,000. Now that is one way to get attention for your contest. And the great part is most of the prizes are donated by sponsors.

I am a participant in the contest and this review will get me 10 entries. Would I do the review even if I didn't get the 10 entries, well yes. This contest is the best of 2008 and I doubt anyone will be able to beat it. I would be a fool not to tell my loyal blog readers about it.

As you can see on the Winning The Web blog I purchased a text link. Earlier in the week I mentioned testing an advertising source. So far the clicks are lower then expected. But I do get an added bonus that non-advertisers don't get. I see how many uniques per day his blog is getting. This alone is worth the $24 I paid for the text link.

Good luck to all who enter.

Michael

Testing All Kinds of Advertising Income

After some thought I decided to open up advertising sales again.

I stopped last year when Google started dropping sites that had the TextLinkAds code on them. That was closely followed by the PayPerPost slap.

To avoid big brother Google from beating me up for something they have no problems doing themselvs I decided to make a change.

Starting in March I am going to open up private advertising again on my network of blogs. There will be paid post options as well as text link and advertising banner options as well.

I am heading to New Orleans a week from today and will be gone for 8 days. When I return I will start accepting advertisers.

If you are interested, just post a comment to this post and include your email. Don't worry the comment won't show on the blog and I will delete it after transfering your email adress to the advertising waiting list.

Prices will be cheap since I am cutting out the middle man (TLA & PPP).

When I start using private advertisers I will cut the AdSense SkyScraper back to a single ad unit. 125x125 I think it is.

Take Care,

Michael

CPM Advertising for BLOGS

Last month I tested some CPM advertising. Conversion was terrible and it would have been much cheaper at $1 CPC.

But on the flip side the sites I advertised on got paid and didn't loose any visitors. Instead of earning for a visitor to click and leave they simply had to show an ad to get paid.

Direct sales are the best way to make money with CPM because the rates are lower. Check your current eCPM and cut it in half, then in half again.

But on the plus side, you may loose less visitors from clicking.

There are plenty of networks where you can display CPM ads. Check out my tools section for the ones I use.

Michael

The Saturday Newsletter

I don't have anything planned for the Saturday newsletter this week.

I was busy working on my Squidoo Lense last night. I used the set-up as described over at Wealthy Affiliate for best optimization.

Now I have to figure out where I wrote down my password so I can check my Squidoo stats.

Back to the Saturday Newsletter.

I won't have time to make a video this week. But I will try and whip up a nice PDF with some juicy info to help you make more money blogging. Hmmm, let me re-think that. I won't have time to whip up a make more money PDF either.

Have no fear. The Saturday Email newsletter will be delivered on time and have something useful that you won't find here on the BLOG. If you are not already subscribed, the form is in the upper right.

One thing I cannot stress enough. If you are serious about making money with your blog and not just AdSense pocket change, then you seriously need to look at Wealthy Affiliate toady.

Michael

Advertising on Facebook for Marketers

I was looking around FaceBook and found their advertising section.

Being an internet marketer I decided to look around and give the system a try.

I love the market details for targeting your market. In under 5 minutes I was able to narrow down from 16 million FaceBook users down to 6 thousand. Talk about targeted.

The CPC price was close to 80 cents. More then I care to spend on a test. The CPM price was closer to $2.

After reading the guidelines I decided to skip testing advertising on FaceBook for now. The list of things not allowed was way too long with tons of grey areas. Not worth loosing my account over a simple test.

My sites and blogs make money because people visit and buy something. So the more visitors I get the more money I make.

Michael

A Look Back at 2007

This is the first post of 2008. Wow, it seems like only yesterday that we started 2007. Time seems to go faster every day.

Looking back at 2007 I learned many things and made plenty of mistakes.

My AdWords spend for 2007 was $1,616 from all sites and blogs I own including the ones not counted as part of the One Penny Project.

Total AdSense income from free blogs was $207.71 and $847.95 from my hosted sites. Again including blogs that are not part of the one penny project. $207 is a fair amount of money from free blogs. Hopefully in 2008 I will bring this up to $1000 or more.

ClickBank income was $470.81 from all sites and blogs I own. This amount is much lower then I would like, but not bad. My goal for 2008 is to increase this to $2000 or more.

Income from ShareASale was 321.93 from all sites and blogs. This was mostly from 2 network offers. I may do some direct promotion of ShareASale offers in 2008.

MaxBounty accounted for $389.15 of my income for 2007. The offer I was promoting that generated most of that income is no longer on their network. If I had the time I would probably promote more MaxBounty offers.

PayPerPost brought in $220.36 from paid posts. While this is more then my AdSense income it was also much more work.

To round out income I sold a bunch of ebooks that I wrote myself. This by far is my biggest earner for 2007. As for how much income that was, I'm not telling. Sorry some things are private.

Other then some advertising expenses I paid $35 a month for a shared server, $20 a month for Aweber, and $30 a month for Wealthy Affiliate. That comes to about $780 not including the advertising.

Working towards my goal of $200 a day in 2008.

Michael

Income Goal Success in 2008

What does it take to reach income goal success?

Based on the daily income goal poll that varies for each of us. Considering the vast majority of people answered in the $500 a day and above category, it looks like most people want the highest income they can get.

Do you know why successful people are successful at achieving their income goals?

It is because they eliminate bad risk from the situation. That does not mean they don't take on risk, just that they eliminate the bad portion of the risk.

If you want to make $500 a day, do you think that you will need to invest some money first?

What do you think it takes to make $500 a day?

The topic of the month for January is on making $500 a day. Since I don't have experience in making money at this level I am going to provide research and let you take it from there.

I will also have some success stories to report on and as always I will have special information for those on my email list (form in the upper right).

My goal for 2008 is $200 a day, but I won't complain if I hit $500 a day. :-)

Michael

The Future of Blogging in 2008

I started podcasting back in 2006. By the end of 2006 I thought that podcasting was going to take off and become more popular as more people purchased MP3 players.

Not that I thought podcasting was going to replace blogging, but I did think that more bloggers would be producing podcasts.

Here is my look into the future of blogging for 2008. This time I am not going to hold back on a thought because of current limitations.

Prediction #1

Social Networks like FaceBook & MyBlogLog will gain in popularity and use. MyBlogLog will probably add some new enhancements and build on the value they currently offer. I believe that MyBlogLog is the best social network for bloggers. FaceBook is going to hit a rough patch in early 2008, but should recover in the second half. From what I see "Marketers" are starting to find the loopholes. The value of FaceBook as a site to visit daily will drop slightly until late 2008.

Prediction #2

At some point in 2008 Affiliate Marketers without a list will have a harder time marketing. Product authors will drop prices on the front-end product and work on converting the back-end. This in addition to the bonuses authors can offer will reduce the profit margin for affiliate marketers.

The increase in competition will also eat away at the profit margin for those not promoting their own product.

Marketers who use tools like those offered at Wealthy Affiliate will have an advantage over those who are just trying to do it on their own. That leads me to the next prediction.

Prediction #3

Marketers using tools and systems will crush even experienced marketers. Because of networking and sharing of information within a small group the tools will improve beyond what a person can do without being a part of the group.

Prediction #4

Having a list of email addresses will no longer be enough. Email delivery is at a very low point, even using a high delivery service. Because of this I feel that the information you collect in your list will be more important then just having an email list. More on this later in 2008 when I have some test results.

Prediction #5

I saved the best for last. But to get this prediction you have to be on my list. Just subscribe with the form in the upper right.

Prediction #5 will be emailed next Saturday. Subscribe now so you don't miss it. I saved the best on for my list.

What are your predictions for blogging in 2008?

Michael

p.s. If you post a comment you are allowed 1 link back to your blog. Comments promoting affiliate products or containing more then 1 link will not be approved.

One Penny Project Update

For my valued email subscribers there will be no project update tomorrow. I was going to try and have something completed by this evening, but at this point I don't have enough time.

What I might do instead is just give out some products that I have re-sell rights for that are allowed to be given away in a membership. Or I have another idea.

Over the weekend I will work on a post that I have been planning all week. It should be out on Monday.

My blog traffic is holding steady on most of my blogs. Some for terms that I never would have imagined worth optimizing for.

There is much to be done, and little time to do it.

Take Care,

Michael

Building Your Community of Bloggers

Earlier this month I announced that I hit the 500 members mark on MyBlogLog.

Since then I picked up a few more new members.

I am thankful for those that join my community or subscribe to my RSS feed. While it is nice to sell stuff and make some money, looking at the bug scheme of things I would rather have people tell me that they like what I say and want to hear more.

Over the past few days I did some social network research. Not that I am new to Social Networking, just that I wanted to get a feel for where this will be going.

If there is anything you would like me to write about, just let me know.

Take Care,

Michael

Send Out Cards to Get Noticed

I joined Send Out Cards earlier this month. I sent 17 cards so far and love it.

As mentioned before I will be using this as part of my $200 a day project. It will be tied into the website I started working on earlier this week.

But Send Out Cards is not just for my new business I have been using it to get noticed by other bloggers and website owners.

What I do is, when I find a blog or website I like, then I check the whois info for that site and send them a card. Instead of an email or comment on their site this is one way to stand out.

A card costs me $1.03 including the stamp. This is pocket change compared to the benefit of networking with a popular site or blog. And it took me under 5 minutes.

The other day I posted a question on a forum and I sent a Thank You card to the person who gave a very detailed answer that lead me to the discovery of the solution I was looking for.

Imagine their surprise when they open the card and see it was from someone they helped on a forum. I stood out from everyone else on the forum.

There are 100's of uses for Send Out Cards. Try a free card on me, I'll cover the $1.03 cost.

Take Care,

Michael

Traffic Is The Lifeblood of Income

It goes without saying. If you don't have traffic to your site you can't make any money. That doesn't mean that having thousands of visitors every day is a guarantee of income.

Last night I was working on my new website. I worked up until the point I barely had the energy to get myself to bed.

Today I goofed off a little and should have jumped on working on my new site instead. Now it is time for Survivor, then back to my new site.

There are many ways to get traffic to a site, but knowing how to get targeted traffic is key. My plan is to focus on the targeted traffic and not worry about the generic traffic.

Time for Survivor, then I have to get back to working on my new site.

Michael