Review - Money Made, Lessons Learned & The Future

When I started this challenge, I really believed I could put in 8 hours plus per day, and that I would smash the $1,000 barrier. 30 days later, I didn't even get halfway towards the $1k and 2-4 hours per day has been my usual amount of productivity.

That doesn't mean I consider it a failure though, in fact far from it. I'll go more into why later, but for now, here's how much I made:-

Week 1 - $105
Week 2 - $35
Week 3 - $206
Week 4 - $40

Total - $386

I'm not sure I've even made half that during a month since I have been in IM, so it shows I've definitely made progress. During those weeks before Christmas when I didn't make a cent, if you'd told me I'd make $386 over 4 weeks, I'd have taken it in a heartbeat.

I've got into some good habits - things like leveraging my content by rewriting, spinning and syndicating it. I've also been a lot more organised than before, partly down to this blog and partly down to the productivity software I bought a few weeks back. I've learned some new things - how to put a squeeze page up, how to upload and sell my own digital product to name two.

In terms of the money I generated, it came from three areas - a couple of sales from my main niche site, my JV PLR article pack WSO and largely from a CPA offer I have been promoting. I'm going to look at these 3 in depth.

Main Niche Site

Just a couple of Clickbank sales from this is very disappointing. Although I concentrated more on ranking it higher in the SERPs and building a list, to only get 2 sales from it is a poor showing. Just from the search engines alone it gets 15-30 unique visitors per day. I know that isn't many, but the Clickbank products on there are pretty prominent so I'd expect more. I think one of the main reasons it doesn't convert is because there is a LOT of information on there about every aspect of the niche. In fact, without wishing to blow my own trumpet, a visitor could be well on the way to fixing the problem that makes them go there by implementing the information and advice on there.

It feels good that the content on the site is helpful to the visitors, but I'd like to make some money from it too. With most of the products on there costing $37 upwards, no wonder they usually don't buy any of them. I plan on writing and releasing my own product in the coming months, at a cheaper price than other similar products, maybe that will make a difference.

The site holds the number 10 spot in Google and 7 or 8 in Bing, and the keyword phrase gets searched 500-600 times per day. Maybe things would change if could get the number 1 spot. But instead of thinking like that, I'm going to look at the site and see what changes and improvements I can make. I'm also going to continue trying to build my list and tweak anything I need to on that front.

PLR Article Pack WSO

In terms of the PLR article pack, we sold 14 of them, which isn't bad for a first WSO. I never expected to sell the entire 50, but if I'm honest I'd have liked to have sold at least a few more. We wrote the articles for Warriors only, and I'm glad we did but if we hadn't and had advertised/promoted them elsewhere, I wonder if we could have sold more. I'm probably going to do another PLR pack, but I'm going to look more into places to sell/distribute them. In fact, in the future I may even create a PLR article site. Definitely something to think about.

CPA

With the CPA sales, I think I struck pretty lucky, although saying that, I would have liked my clicks to have converted much better than they did. Throughout January, my site was getting 20+ unique visitors from Google every single day and my site/articles/press releases were dominating the keyword phrase they were coming from. At this moment in time, I don't have any active offers on the site, as they have either expired or been dropped by the networks I am in. I'm currently looking at other networks to apply to. As I've said before, I was happy with the 3 I was in and didn't really want to join any more. I have no choice now though.

My stats for this offer during this challenge are something like 6 actions from 300 clicks. Not terribly bad, but the problem I have with those stats is that the keyword phrase people were typing in to get to my site is exactly what the offer gives them. I found driving traffic to the site(aside from the natural Google traffic) to be difficult as the keyword phrase looks a bit on the 'spammy' side, being as it has the word 'free' in it. Once I have got into a couple more CPA networks, I'm going to continue with this offer though, and if I can rank for the main term I want to, I should still pick up regular traffic and sales.

There are some areas that I really need to improve on - namely list building, traffic generation and article marketing. In terms of the last one, it's most of my strategy, but I don't get the CTR's I want. I know I'm a reasonably good writer, but I think I'm going to step back and really critique my writing style - perhaps I'll buy a course or WSO to help. There are so many variables though - the main niche I'm in is difficult to predict and gauge, and the niche where all the CPA sales have come from is the same.

I have a LOT to learn still, but I'm always willing to do just that. Not only am I nowhere near finishing my IM education, I've barely even started. I am determined to stay determined and motivated though - and that's what will hopefully carry me through to where I want to be.

I've pretty much decided that writing things down, and sharing things with others is something I want to continue, so I'm probably going to put up a Wordpress site in the near future. I'm going to blog(not every day like here though!), do reviews and document my strategies and plans. I guess it will be a step towards being in the make money online niche, which I'm sure I'll be in at some point in the future.

I made $386 in the last 30 days, and know I could have made more. At the same time, I know if I had been doing the things I was doing months ago, I would have made much less, so overall I'm pretty happy. I've really enjoyed this challenge, and I hope you guys that have followed along have too - thanks for reading, and I'll see you soon.

Day 30 - Solid Yet Disappointing

Today was the final day of the 'challenge' aspect of things, but I am going to write a detailed conclusion tomorrow so I'm just going to go over what I actually did today in this entry.

I prepared two of my articles for spinning(with the Article Productions Spinner)by rewriting each title and paragraph 3 times. As I usually do, I'll spin 20 versions and spread them around the article directories and web 2.0 sites. I timed myself doing this, it took me 1 hour and 43 minutes in total. Not too bad, considering I'll get 40 articles ranging from 70-95% in uniqueness as a result.

I did my daily blog commenting too. I don't know if I've mentioned this here before, but my strategy is very simple. I'll go to Google Blog Search, go to advanced search, type in a keyword phrase, type in any words I don't want results to include, set it to blogs from the last day and 100 results per page. I pay no attention to dofollow and nofollow like a lot of people seem to, I just try and contribute to each blog I comment on with something helpful, and have a link back to my site in the anchor text. I spend half an hour each day doing this, and Google seems to find the links very quickly.

The 3 articles I submitted to EZA yesterday went live. So far, the CTR's are poor, although I picked up 2 new subscribers to my list so it's not all bad. I really think I need to look at my article writing technique, because it's not getting me the results I want in terms of traffic, subscribers and sales. I've gone from not giving much away and getting high CTR's, to being as helpful as possible and getting low CTR's. Maybe I need to find a happy medium. I also think I need to look at my resource boxes. I might actually shop around for WSO on this by one of the article marketing experts.

I ran into some frustration later in the day though, yet another CPA offer I'm promoting has expired, meaning the links on the site that has made me the most money in the last few weeks lead to nowhere. I spent time going through other networks to find ones that carry the same offer. It looks as though I'm going to have to apply to at least two. I don't like applying to new networks because like I've said before, I have trouble keeping everything organised. I was happy with the 3 networks am in, and feel like any more and I am spreading myself a little thin. Saying that, most people that do well with CPA encourage you to apply for 10+ networks, so I'll have to suck it up.

Like I said earlier, I will be posting a detailed conclusion, probably tomorrow. I'm going to dissect the entire challenge, find out what I've learned, and decide where I'm going to go from here.

Day 29 - A Great Start To The Week and February

If I could reproduce the amount of work I did today 5 times a week, I'd surely get to where I want to be sooner or later. I put in a good solid 5 hours(probably a little more actually) and got a good range of tasks completed, including the following:-

-Blog comments
-CPA research
-SEO research
-Article submissions(to my site and EZA)
-Created some new Web 2.0 properties
-Done some social bookmarking

The research tasks really needed to be done. As I mentioned yesterday, I'm really disorganized when it comes to CPA offers. I put together a list of offers I want to promote, it's just a case of getting sites and landing pages together for them and/or where on my existing sites to put the offers.

SEO research can be a real eye opener, and sometimes not for the better. I have been wondering why this one site has been dominating a keyword I have been targeting(my site is at the top of the second page). It's been a while since I've even seen the site in question have any content on it, it has usually redirected straight to a CPA offer. I analyzed it's backlinks today with SEO Spyglass and what come up was.....interesting. Most of their links are poor quality web 2.0 properties and blogs. When I say low quality, I mean the same article posted multiple times on the SAME Squidoo lens, paragraphs that make no sense and keyword stuffing. Why Google rewards such little effort with the number 1 spot is beyond me. Those of us that do things the right way and offer value to readers and visitors will surely surpass these kinds of sites, I hope so anyway.

I put a new article on my main niche site, and submitted 3 others to EZA. I'm really interested to see the CTR's and views for those 3 articles as I've barely submitted to EZA in the last few weeks.

I really want to keep up this level of productivity, I know I have to if I really want to make a success of my online business. I think the penny has dropped about that aspect of things. Tomorrow is the last day of the challenge. I may not be making much money, but I'm learning so much along the way and am getting into some really good habits that will hopefully serve me for years to come. So I'm pretty happy.

Days 27 & 28 - Quiet On The Whole

I had my usual Saturday off, and today I did a bit of social bookmarking and not much else. Stepping back at the weekends really helps me to be raring to go by Monday morning, in fact by Sunday night! I say stepping back, I still check stats, search engine rankings and hang out at the Warrior Forum quite a lot - I can't help it.

Today marks the end of week 4, and I'm pretty disappointed to have only made $40 this week. In fact, I'm very disappointed, especially as I put in quite a lot of work during the week. There are reasons why I'm not consistently making the money I want, and understanding those is going to be vital in terms of after this challenge. That was one of the reasons I started this blog.

I'm already thinking of additional strategies - one of them is a new approach to CPA. I'm so disorganized with it, it's untrue. I think it would serve me best if I maybe pick out 3-5 specific offers I want to promote at the beginning of each month and really concentrate on them. Having various offers(some out of date) scattered around sites is not the way to go.

My main niche site is holding it's number 9 spot nicely. I'm hoping to get it up even higher this week. It does concern me that I'm getting very few opt ins to my list though. It's something I've really got to work on. One of MANY things I have to work on. At the end of this challenge, I'm probably going to spend an entire day dissecting it, and really looking at what went right, what went wrong, what I should have spent more time on, why I didn't reach my target etc etc. I may have had my best month in IM in a lot of ways, but I still have a LONG way to go and I know it. I'm going to throw myself into Monday with lots of enthusiasm.

Day 26 - A Couple of Stumbling Blocks But Positive On The Whole

Ever since I bought the domain and put up(with the help of my wife) my main niche site, I have had the aim of getting it into the top 10 for it's keyword phrase in Google. After 5 months or so, that day came yesterday. I always knew I'd do it, but it felt good to actually see it there. I made a thread on The Warrior Forum, saying how I did it, and how I would go about things in the future, so I won't go over it all again here:-

http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-ppc-seo-discussion-forum/172747-finally-broke-into-top-10-google-how-i-did-what-i-would-do-next-time-step-step.html

Got some positive feedback, and some thanks, which was really nice. It's dying now, but I kind of expected that. The 800 threads about profile backlinks and such continue to go strong though, oh well. Seriously though, without wishing to sound bitter or like a know it all(I'm nowhere near either), it kind of worries me that a lot of people seem to think posting thousands of profile backlinks is the way to rank high in the search engines. Yes, it can of course help, and even get you the number 1 spot in some cases, but to me a good link building campaign is all about getting good links from a variety of sources and providing value at all those sources.

At some stage, I'm pretty sure I'm going to get into the make money online niche(I was actually in it for a few months in my MLM days, and had no business doing so really as I lacked experience and knowledge) in the future and I hope in doing so I can help newbies to learn some really good, fundamental strategies for establishing sites and such. In fact, when I have more experience, I'll probably tweak that post and turn it into a free ebook. It's going to be a while before I enter the MMO niche, but when I do I want to be able to offer great value and help steer people in the right direction.

I made a CPA sale yesterday, and a few hours later the CPA offer expired at the network. Luckily though, it's on another network I'm in, so I just changed my banners and links. I also called the CPA network I applied to last week, no answer and they aren't responding to my E-Mails. I'll probably pick a new one to apply to, in order to promote the offer I want to promote.

I wrote some new articles, making 5 brand new ones for my main niche. I had my wife read over them to give her opinion on which ones to put on the site. I've already put one of them on there, and will probably put at least one more on there. All 5 are going to be rewritten/spun and submitted to directories/web 2.0's anyway.

That's about it really - I'm really pleased to have got my site into the top 10 in Google. It's gone up to number 9 today too, which is fantastic. The number 1 spot would be a dream come true - the top 10 is full of heavyweight sites so to be top of the tree would be incredible. Not that it's all about rankings - I look on it as an opportunity to reach and help more people. This niche is pretty close to my heart, so not only do I want to eventually have the best site around, I am going to start writing what I would love to be the best product around to supplement it. I'm ambitious, but also know I have a helluva lot to learn and a long way to go.

Day 25 - Unremarkable, But Solid

Today I did around 3 hours of IM work. Although(as I keep saying) that's not enough, I'm at least being pretty consistent in terms of what I do. More about that later in this entry.

I wrote some more articles, did some blog commenting and submitted my first article to Article Productions. I also spent an hour or so reading an ebook that a Warrior very kindly gave to me for free, even though it is a WSO.

A few months ago, I heard something about a 'bum marketer' woman that was making 100k+ per year purely from writing and submitting articles to Ezine Articles. Well, within this ebook was a link to the video about it by Travis Sago. Inspiring stuff indeed. Travis emphasizes a few points in the video, including the fact that she consistently works every single weekday, she cares about her readers, and her articles are long.

I started thinking which of these applied to me. I definitely care about my readers, particularly in my main niche because I have been where they are. I put a lot of effort into my articles and try to make a connection with every reader.

In terms of my main sites, my articles are usually between 500 and 600 words. In terms of directory submissions, they are usually between 400 and 600. I did go through a phase after buying a WSO where I'd write 250-300 word articles and try my best not to give anything away in them. I was only submitting to EZA back then. It didn't really feel right, and with changes in rules and such I went back to my usual 400-600 word articles.

Consistency - this is perhaps the most important area. I do work every single weekday, but my consistency in terms of what I do and how long I do it can sometimes be lacking. You'll have seen from reading this blog that I usually do between 2 and 4 hours work a day. Sometimes less, but rarely more. I'm finding it hard to reach the dizzy heights of 6-8 hours a day. When you think about it though, if I had a '9 to 5' then I'd HAVE to. So why can't I do it with my online business? It's something I definitely need to look at.

Take short tasks like blog commenting and Yahoo answers - there's no reason why I can't do even 15 minutes of each every single day.

Whoever the bum marketing lady is, I applaud her, admire her and envy her. I'm going to take a leaf out of her book on all 3 areas that I just mentioned.

I'm very disappointed to have not made a cent for 4 days now - the CPA offer that was bringing me most of the money seems to have stopped converting now. Maybe that's a good thing though, I was becoming a little dependent on it. I'm living and learning, and I still want to finish this challenge strongly.

Day 24 - Pretty Solid, Progress Made

After an extremely poor day 23, I got back on track. I've finally submitted an article with Article Bot, to 200+ directories. It does concern me that although some of them have gone up fine, I've seen a few that are missing paragraph spacing and such. The main purpose of submitting to these(mostly '2nd tier') sites is admittedly for backlink juice, but traffic would be nice too, and I don't want any viewers seeing any articles that look funky.

I also did some work with The Link Juicer. I'm now using The Best Spinner(it's free during BETA) to get my content into syntax format for things like this. It's an extremely good program, and I'm curious to see how much it is going to cost when it is officially released next week.

I got a new article written too. I know that doesn't sound like much of an achievement(and it isn't), but the majority of my time lately has been spent getting things into place for long term SEO benefits. The 2 sites where I make most of my money are around the top of page 2 in Google for their targeted keyword phrases - I know being on page 1(hopefully right at the top) for them both will have a dramatic effect on traffic and sales. Perhaps I spend too much time on SEO and backlinks, but I absolutely love natural, organic traffic. With that said, I know the 'Google Dance' is going to come at some stage and when it does I'll be frustrated.

I really need to get into an article marketing routine. During this month, I have kind of been creating and testing a strategy, and it's now taking shape. I think this is pretty much the long term strategy I'll be using:-

1. Write fresh article
2. Put original on site(if I consider it suitable for the site)
3. Rewrite 3+ versions of the title, and each paragraph.
4. Using the Article Productions spinner, spin 20+ unique versions.
5. Submit 10 to the top article directories - EZA, Article Productions, GA, Articlesbase etc.
6. Submit some to web 2.0 properties - Wetpaint, Weebly, Blog, Squidoo, Hubpages etc.
7. Take one of the unused spins, rewrite words/sentences/paragraphs with The Best Spinner.
8. Submit Syntax format version to Article Bot.

Of course, there should be much more to it than this - I've barely been backlinking articles recently, and need to step that up. In fact, I need to step everything up.

I'm writing this at the beginning of day 25, and I'm ready to put a lot of work in today. As I was writing this, a Google Adwords £75 voucher came through the post - I would have wondered if it was a bit fishy, but I've seen others mention this on the WF. I'm definitely going to use it, it's just a case of which site to use it for. I'll talk more about it later though. BTW - $0 earned in the last 4 days now - not good. Hopefully I can change that.

Day 23 - Frustrating and Unproductive

I barely moved forward at all today, and I have nobody to blame but myself. I ran into a few technical problems with sites and such, but still I did far less than I should have.

I'm nearly ready to submit some articles with Article Bot, and my sites are still rising in the SERPS, but there's nothing more to add really. A couple of days since I made any money too. The way I'm going, it's going to be a $0 final week. I really don't want that to happen, so I'm determined to really get going tomorrow.

I'm annoyed and frustrated at myself, but I'm going to channel that negative energy into positive tasks that will move everything forward.

Day 22 - A Quiet Start To The Week

I had a few things to do around the house today, so it was late afternoon before I found time to work on IM. I only completed 2 tasks - signing up for article directories with Article Bot, and updating a weekly keyword rankings spreadsheet I have.

I can't stress enough the importance of reading through instructions when you buy a product. I have a few of Incansoft's other 'Bot's' - Social Bot, Directory Bot, RSS Bot. I bought Article Bot a few weeks ago, and spent literally seconds skimming through the manual.

Last week I was spending an hour a day manually signing up to accounts, and I found out at the weekend you can do it completely automatically - doh! It doesn't do all of them, but the vast majority. So I'm almost ready to start submitting - hopefully a little traffic and lots of lovely backlink juice will flow as a result.

I say 'weekly' keyword rankings spreadsheet - I haven't updated it since the very first day of this challenge(rolls eyes). So today I could see in black and white, a bunch of my sites and articles rankings side by side. The site that I'm getting most of my sales from at the moment has gone up from number 37 in Google to number 12 for it's main keyword phrase. Quite a few of my articles have risen too.

By my standards(I'm a bit of a nightowl), I'm having an early night tonight. I really need to catch up on sleep. I plan on putting a lot into tomorrow.

3 Weeks In - Time For Some Reflection

I have thoroughly enjoyed this challenge for a number of reasons. It's been great to keep a daily journal of everything I have been doing, it's really helped me to stay focused and organized - 2 things which I struggled with before.

In terms of performance, I'd probably only give myself a 7 out of 10 - I know I could have put more in. At the beginning, I was looking to work 6-8-12 hours a day, but I've found that easier said than done. Between 2 and 4 hours seems to be the average. That is one of the main reasons I'm probably going to fall short of the 1k target.

Speaking of the target, I don't even look upon it as important any more. I've moved forward so much from where I was in December, that the amount of money I am making doesn't seem to matter so much any more. Of course, the more the better, and the chances are I'll hit the $500 mark for the 30 days, which isn't bad for someone who didn't make a cent for six weeks not so long ago.

This probably sounds ridiculous, but I liken it to Rocky(I'm a huge fan) in the first movie - beating Apollo Creed was irrelevant in the end. The fact he proved he could see it through and be competitive was more important. After that, he knew he had the ability to beat him, and of course he did second time around.

I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but in the last few months I've pretty much sacrificed one of the big loves in my life - music. I play various instruments, write and record original songs and just love to play. I think I thought to myself that I need to put things like that on hold while I get to grips with this whole IM thing. Pretty silly really, everyone should find time for their hobbies and interests. Now though, I'm going to get back into it - even if it's just half an hour a day.

There's still a pretty long list of things I should be doing better with, but I'm always looking to improve. I need to improve. For example, I've written very few new articles during this challenge. I've concentrated more on rewriting and spinning existing ones and submitted them to lots of directories and web 2.0 properties. I know I should also be writing lots of fresh ones every week too. On that note, I think I'm going to get into freelancing too, as another income stream. I briefly tried odesk and guru a few months back, but found the whole portfolio/bidding/application aspects to be daunting. I'm now looking at sites where you simply submit, and people buy if they want to.

OK, with 9 days to go - how much have I made? I'll break it down week by week.

Week 1 - $105
Week 2 - $35
Week 3 - $206

Total - $346

I really want to break the $500 mark, so I'm going to put a lot of hours in this week.

Day 21 - Mostly Another Day Off

After celebrating my first $100 day on Saturday night, I felt a bit groggy the morning after. On Sundays, I usually do keyword research, read ebooks and generally think about what I want to do in the week ahead. I did a little reading, but not much else to be honest. For the second day in a row, myself and my JV partner's WSO article pack sold another copy - every little helps.

Nothing else to report really, I have always been somewhat of a traditionalist when it comes to Sundays - 'a day of rest' indeed.

Day 20 - A Milestone Reached, Celebrations Had

As usual, Saturday was my official 'day off', so I didn't think I'd have much to report. On the contrary - this was actually my best day since I got into IM, for a number of reasons. Firstly, I made another CPA sale for $40, which meant $120 earned in less than 24 hours. My wife convinced me to treat this as my first $100 day, and I wasn't going to argue!

A few months ago, I promised myself that when I reached this milestone, I would not only celebrate, but I would take time to thank all the people that helped me reach it. I posted a thread at the Warrior Forum and did just that. It felt great to be able to say 'I did it' and I had been wanting to thank some of those people for months, but was waiting for a good opportunity. In addition, I posted the thread with the intention of inspiring newbies, and anyone who is currently struggling - kind of 'if I can do it, YOU can too'. I got some overwhelmingly positive replies, and I think that made my day even more than the money itself.

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-internet-marketing-discussion-forum/170360-first-100-day-kind-some-thanks.html

I also found out that quite a few people have been following this blog. I really had no idea if anyone was or not, so it's really nice that people have been interested enough to follow along. One Warrior even said she hoped the end of the challenge wouldn't be the end of the blog - that kind of comment makes me feel so good.

Myself and my wife have had a bottle of champagne in the house since Christmas, and said we'd only open it on a special occasion. We opened it last night, and added to a good few beers - a good time was had. I think it's really important to acknowledge your achievements and give yourself a pat on the back for the hard work you have put in. I know I have a long way to go, but I make sure to celebrate every milestone - you should too.

I'm very much looking forward to the week ahead, and the last few days have reinforced how glad I am to be an internet marketer - it really is so rewarding, and the money is actually only one part of it.

Day 19 - Unproductive, Yet Profitable

Yesterday(I'm writing this on Saturday, Day 20) was one of those days where I just couldn't seem to get going, and literally all I did was a few Yahoo Answers, and apply to a new CPA network. An awful showing really, I know I can do much better.

Despite such an unproductive day, I had the most profitable day of the challenge so far. 2 CPA sales at $40 each - an $80 day. That's the second most I've ever made since I've been doing IM - the most was $82 back in September. I'm very happy about it, and it takes the challenge total to a little under $300, at $296. To be honest though, the feelings of satisfaction are mixed in with feelings of disappointment.

The disappointment is in myself - during the this challenge, I've probably only put 50-60% of the effort in that I know I can, and should. Whilst I've earned all the money I've made this month through work and effort, I know I should have made more. This actually in turn makes me feel optimistic though - because I know what mistakes I've made, what I haven't done and what I need to do from now on.

Take the CPA sales I have made - the main offer that has brought the sales is converting at 3%. Not terrible, but not great either. I'm lucky in that I'm getting 20-30 organic visitors to the site I promote it on every single day. It seems this particular offer is hot at the moment. I'm with 3 very good CPA Networks, and I'm only selling one offer, that converts at 3%. I have the know-how and resources to be promoting say 5 other offers that maybe don't bring in as much per sale, but that will convert at a higher percentage. I do have some offers scattered around some other sites, but I'm very disorganized when it comes to them.

I know how to rank sites high in the search engines, I know how to drive traffic with articles, I know how to build lists....and on and on. I should be making considerably more than I am. This weekend, I'm going to really take a look at the things I'm doing, and the things I'm not doing. I want to finish this challenge strongly. It's unlikely I'll reach my goal, but I want to at least make a couple of hundred in the coming week.

I sound obsessed with money don't I? I'll just say here, that if you are in doubt - providing value to visitors and customers is VERY important to me, and I think that has played a big part in a change in my results($0 for 6 weeks, $400 in the next 4 or 5).

I might have a little surprise almost right at the end of this challenge too. I'm not going to say what it is(it's not strictly IM, but technically IS making money online)but if it comes off, it will give me an extra $177. This came from a hunch I had on literally the first day of this challenge, and an extremely small investment.

I think I'll be listing some sites on Flippa next week too - I'm completely new to this, but I think the last week of this challenge is a great time to get my feet wet with it. I'm very optimistic about a couple of the sites too. Overall, I'm very optimistic about week 4.

Day 18 - Pretty Solid, and Some Things To Look Forward To

I'm extremely tired to will keep this very brief. No sales today, but I did a good few hours work, which included some keyword research for some articles I'm going to write. Sometimes I forget just how powerful Micro Niche Finder is. It's tempting to always want to find keywords with big search volume, but my rule is usually 100 searches a month and above for articles. In just half an hour, I found 15 really good ones with very low competition. I'll probably start the articles tomorrow.

The other main development is that I got some great advice from a fellow Warrior about site flipping, and she pointed me towards a very helpful ebook and video. I have 3 sites I am definitely going to flip, and maybe one more. I'm excited to be finally getting into flipping, to be honest I've been a bit intimidated by it in the past, simply because I knew little about it.

So that's all for today, I'm pretty pleased with it. Roll on tomorrow.

Day 17 - Barely Even Worth Writing About

I slept later than usual today, and found it hard to get going all day. I didn't even do 2 hours of work - all I did was some directory submissions, some article directory account signups and a few Yahoo answers. Another day with no sales too.

I'm beginning to struggle, most of me has given up on the 1k target, but I certainly haven't given up on my long term goals. I need an extremely good day tomorrow to make up for a poor one today.

One of my tasks for tomorrow is to apply for a new CPA company - Media Trust. One of the offers I'm promoting with another network is expiring tomorrow, but it has just started with them, so if I'm accepted I can continue to promote the same offer without interruption.

When I first started in CPA(back in October), I was extremely nervous about the application phone calls. I'm not really a 'phone person' as it is, but I was having to kind of wing it as I didn't have any CPA experience. Now though, I'm pretty confident - I have some very good ranking sites and I'm much better at driving traffic than I was then. It really is time I branched out from the 3 CPA companies I'm currently with.

By the way - I decided to apply for Media Trust as a result of checking out their offers at Offer Vault, which is a fantastic free resource for reading up on affiliate companies and CPA networks. You can quickly find out what offers they are running, and how much they pay and such. Highly recommended.

That's all for today - tomorrow is important, I really need to prove to myself that I can just get my head down and get a few good solid hours work done.

Day 16 - Pretty Productive But No Money

I did 4 hours and 15 minutes of work today. That's an improvement on the last 7 days or so, so I guess I'm pretty happy with it.

Again I did some SEO tasks, and in addition I did some Yahoo Answers(I find 2 links per 5 answers works well), some article rewrites and some article directory account creations. The article rewrites are for the new niche I'm entering. I really need to get moving on that, because I still don't really have a plan. The article account creating was for Article Bot submissions. A repetitive task, but one that needs to be done. I omit all the unrelated directories, and some of the top ones that I prefer to submit to manually.

A cheque/check arrived through the door too, from CX Digital Media - one of the CPA companies I'm an affiliate for. $64, most of which I earned in December, It's always nice to get paid and it's actually the first time with that particular CPA company. I hope the next one is going to be much bigger.

At the time of writing this, I haven't actually earned any money today, which is pretty disappointing. Maybe a sale or two will come overnight - the 2 I got yesterday got my hopes up for the rest of the week.

That's all for now - I intend to spend at least 5 hours on IM tomorrow, and to really get this new project moving.

Day 15 Update

I just checked my stats on one of the CPA sites, and I made a $40 sale! It's now 42 mins past midnight here, but it might have come before midnight so I'll add it to the daily total - meaning today was a $76 day. Really pleased with that. Interestingly, this offer didn't convert with 21 clicks yesterday but has done so with just 7 today - like I said, these things level out over time. A great end to today and hopefully I can keep it up tomorrow.

Day 15 - A Reasonable Start To The Week

According to The Focus Master, I did 2 hours and 15 mins of work today. Way short of where I should be, but I actually got quite a lot done in that time - mostly article submissions and SEO stuff.

I made a CPA sale for $36. It's a similar offer to the $40 one I keep mentioning, and is underneath it on the site I promote them on. It took only 3 clicks today to convert, yet compare it to the other offer yesterday that didn't convert even after 21 clicks. It's disappointing, but I believe over time things will level themselves out.

For the keyword phrase I am getting all the traffic from, I now hold 6 out of the top 7 spots on Google - made up of the main site, articles and press releases. Strangely though, all the clicks come from the main site - I guess they find what they want there, especially with it holding the number 1 position.

For a bigger keyword phrase it is slipping down the rankings though, and I can't really figure out why. The number 1 spot is held by a social bookmarking entry, but number 2 is held by an authority site. I looked through all the backlinks this site and saw nothing too impressive - a few article submissions, some blog comments, a couple of web 2.0 properties. A total of only 40 backlinks show up. It seems quite a lot of the work I have done in the last week(press releases, web 2.0's, article submissions) is yet to be indexed. My site shows 30 backlinks.

Not a lot else to report really - I have put together some PLR articles I am either going to completely rewrite or use as an autoresponder series in another niche. Time is ticking though, I'm going to have to really get my act together to make some money from that niche before the end of this challenge.

I'm a little worried about my state of mind at the moment when it comes to this challenge. I'm still motivated, but I'm happier with my progress so far than I should be. Maybe it's because I'm now making money online pretty consistently - I've done so on 11 out of the 15 days. Quite a difference to early December when I hadn't made a cent/penny for 5 weeks. I think I know that even if I don't reach 1k(which is looking increasingly unlikely), I have made some great progress. By my standards, the $176 or so I have made in the last 15 days is pretty good.

I do believe in myself, but I find it hard to push myself that extra mile that would maybe make the difference between a couple of extra hundred a month to a few thousand a month. I'm learning all the time though. I know I'm going to get there eventually, but it's going to take something pretty special to do it during this challenge. I believe I have it in me, it's just a case of whether I can tap into it.

Days 12, 13 & 14 - Laptop Woes, Conversion Problems & Lots of Reflection

I have followed blogs similar to this one before, and I have always been disappointed when the author stops posting after a few days. I'm glad to say I'm not one of those people, but for anyone who is following long - there are a couple of reasons why I haven't been updating in the last 3 days.

There's not much to say about Friday - a pretty poor amount of work was done. A couple of SEO tasks(Directory/Press Release submissions etc) were done, and a few article submissions but not much more than that. I hold my hands up and say that like most days of this challenge so far, I just didn't do enough.

Saturday came, and as I usually treat it as an IM day off, I thought I would spend a little while fixing an increasingly bad overheating problem my Laptop was having. I've had it a few months now, some dust has accumulated. I had a look around online to see what I needed to do. There were 2 main options initially, blow the dust out with some compressed air or suck it out with a vacuum cleaner.

I went for the latter, and what a mistake that was! I put the pipe of my vacuum cleaner close to the vent where the fan is, a little dust came out so I put it right up against it. In doing this, I must have sucked a chunk of dust into one part of the fan because it stopped spinning completely. To cut a long story short, I then tried to take the Laptop apart(voiding the warranty in the process) in order to fix the problem, but realised it was a lot harder than opening a desktop upon watching a step by step video on Youtube.

I'm lucky in that although I don't excel at DIY/electronic based tasks, I have a wife that does. This particular task was a lot down to bravery though - I just lacked enough to take the entire Laptop apart myself! So after a few hours, she removed the dust and all was well again. There's now a small issue with the keyboard, but she is going to fix that later today(hopefully). If you are reading this and have a similar problem - blow out the dust from the air vents, don't suck it!

As a result of this(I do 95% of my work on this Laptop), Saturday and Sunday were days off. I can't really afford to have them if I am going to successfully reach my goal, but there you go.

There have been some interesting developments with a couple of my sites. One has suddenly started receiving much more traffic(all of it organic), and as a result the CPA offer I'm promoting on it has been receiving more clicks. Before the weekend, on an average day this offer would maybe get 5 or 6 clicks on average. On Sunday, it got 21. This is fantastic, the only problem being it didn't convert from those 21 clicks. Pretty disappointing. On another day, I could have literally made 5 - 10 sales from those clicks, which would mean $200 - $400 made! It's a good offer, and the keyword the visitors are coming from describes exactly what the offer is. Hopefully it's going to start converting today. With that kind of click volume, I should be making at least 4 or 5 sales a week.

I did make a couple of sales of the WSO PLR article pack over the weekend - which gives me a little under $10 after Paypal fees when I split it with my JV partner. That means I made around $35 in week two. Very disappointing, especially compared to week one. Yes, I didn't do enough in week two, but if a couple of things I am promoting converted at just 10% I would have beaten my first week total of $100 comfortably. Oh well, onwards and upwards.

Day 11 - Falling Short Yet Again, But A Couple Of Positives

I'm really tired so I'm going to keep this one quite brief. After almost a year since venturing into the IM arena, I created and uploaded my first ever squeeze page today. Why has it took me so long? Good question. I've had opt in boxes on sites, but just never bothered to create a specific individual page to collect names and E-Mail addresses. It was during those painful 5-6 weeks of not making a penny that I decided I really needed to work harder at building lists.

My wife helped me a little with it, and I'm really pleased with it. It's for my main niche, and I am going to test it out starting tomorrow - hopefully it will bring some new subscribers.

I submitted an article to Ezine Articles for the first time in 4 or 5 weeks today. It was approved within hours too, and after it's first 10 views has a 50% CTR. I'm very happy with that - I did a different kind of resource box than I usually do and it seems to have worked nicely. No sales or subscribers from it yet though. Now this article is live on there, I can start distributing the other 19 spun versions at other directories and web 2.0 properties. I made sure the EZA one was extremely unique compared to the original on my site, in fact it was 92%. EZA editors can be picky with things like this, so I made sure to give them a really good version of it. I plan on submitting a lot more to them too - I still do like EZA a lot.

I did a few other SEO things, but again my overall productivity was well short of where it should be. I did around 2 hours and 45 mins work. That is atrocious for someone trying to make 1k, and I know it. I have to really come through in weeks 3 and 4.

That's all for now, I'm looking forward to tomorrow and hope I have some good stuff to report at the end of it.

Feeling The Pressure and Need To Vent

One of the upsides of writing a blog, is that you can use it to express any negative things you are feeling, as well as positive. I'm about to start my IM day and I'm feeling frustrated and disillusioned for a few reasons.

I haven't made any money for 2 days now, which is completely down to me - but on top of that my clicks(to CPA offers/Clickbank products etc) have dramatically dried up in the last few days. I could understand if my sites were sliding down the rankings - but they've actually been moving up, and traffic has been reasonably good(by my standards). We finally got an opt in to our main site list. I have no idea why it has taken a week since we put the free ebook and new opt in form on there.

It seems sales of my WSO are going to be very irregular and rare from now on. I'm sure most people that would be interested have now either seen it in the thread itself, or in my signature. Still, 11 sales isn't bad for my first WSO I guess.

Speaking of the Warrior Forum, I of course love the place but sometimes the nature of forum behaviour and trends(at ANY forum, not just WF) can be frustrating. Without sounding like a whiner(if I do, I'm just venting hehe), most of the time I feel my words and opinions don't hold much weight there. This is understandable, as I'm still fairly new and haven't yet built a reputation there on a big scale like many of the senior members. But I feel frustrated when I post something really helpful, and it is ignored, or somebody posts a worse suggestion(in my opinion) and gets a much better response.

Take for example the subject of article spinners. Whenever that subject comes up, it seems 90% of people say they are junk, and 10% talk about software that is good. This is fine, but on a couple of occasions I have posted about my fantastic experience so far with the spinner at Article Productions, only to be ignored. I even posted yesterday about how I spent one hour on an article, writing 3 alternatives for each paragraph. I spun 20 versions, and they ranged from 65% to 95% uniqueness. Now if I was reading that, I would sit up and take notice, but it seems most are happy to spend hundreds of dollars on software or use something free that spits out syntax format.

I guess I should just concentrate on my own business, but I like to help others too by posting about what works for me. Going back to the Article Productions spinner, if I'm frustrated, I can't imagine how frustrated James, the owner, is. He tries to tell people you don't have to spend money on software to have a good spinner, one that is human controlled - but it seems it falls on deaf ears for the most part.

I posted a review of The Focus Master in the product section, and it is sliding down the first page with a very low amount of views and no replies. Yet, automated programs and expensive programs that promise to 'make you thousands' seem to guarantee lively discussions. Oh well, I can only post what works for me. Everybody has their own opinions about what works for them.

I'm about to set my daily tasks, which I haven't really decided on yet. I know I need a good day to pull myself away from feeling negative and disillusioned. I need more traffic, and some sales. It's my job to go and get them. Hopefully my entry later will be more positive than this one, and I apologise for whining. We all need to vent sometimes though.

Day 10 - Productive, But Not Productive Enough

In one of my earlier entries, I mentioned a nifty productivity software called The Focus Master. I stumbled upon it almost by accident, when I checked out somebody's blog via their signature at the WF. Well, I finally bought it today and it's outstanding. It might just be the best $17 I've ever spent.

It allows you to set specific tasks and time limits for tasks. At the end of each allocated task, an alarm goes off. It sounds basic, but trust me - it's great for staying organised, and getting the best out of your time. At the start of my IM day, I typed in 6 tasks, totaling 3 hours and 15 minutes altogether. These included press release and directory submissions, niche research and article rewrites. It's amazing how much easier it is to get things done when you are working to a timeframe.

I learned a lot about my productivity as a result of using this software....and it's not good. If I had done all I done today without the software, I'd have thought I'd got a lot accomplished. By some people's standards maybe I have. But considering I'm working towards a 1k goal, it's not enough. 6 hours+ is more like it - if I don't start putting in those kinds of hours then I'm going to fall well short of my target.

For the second day in a row, no sales or anything. Pretty disappointing. Despite doing better in the search engines for a couple of keywords, clicks have dropped. Also, my main niche site still isn't getting opt ins to my list, and I really don't understand why.

On the plus side, I set aside an hour to research a new niche. I had 2 in mind and started by finding a good PLR product with master resell rights. I found a fantastic one, which made the decision easy. I also did some keyword research with Micro Niche Finder. Found some good ones too, without too much competition. I hope to get this project moving by the end of this week. I'm racing against the clock now, but my wife is going to help me out with some of the technical stuff.

That's all really - The Focus Master is going to be a massive help, and I'm now going to end each entry documenting how much time I worked for. Today it was 3 hours and 15 minutes.

Day 9 - Frustration, Deflation and Not Enough Organisation

I slept a couple of hours later than I wanted to this morning - not a good start to the day. My first task was to start submitting a press release with Incansoft's Press Bot. I love their products, and thought it would be simple. I wrongly assumed it supported Jetspinner Syntax format like a lot of the other 'bots'. So I pasted it into a nifty little program called Article Tool Chest, added some alternative words and sentences and got ready to start submitting.

It then occurred to me that it didn't mention in the user manual that Press Bot supported syntax, but I was still pretty sure it did. I decided it was better to be safe than sorry, so asked on the Warrior Forum. It took 5 hours to get a reply, and even then I still managed to mess up my first submission. I accidentally left out the link to my site - duh! (Facepalm). Luckily though, I had only submitted to 4 sites and in the E-Mail confirmation they sent me, it allowed me to remove them and resubmit.

I am going to submit to 5 or so every day for the next few days. In terms of Press Bot, one of the guys that works at Incansoft told me they are currently upgrading it(and some other bots) to have the syntax compatibility, like in Article Bot and such. This will be good for future submissions for other sites, as I can make each submission a little unique.

What else did I do today? I started making more use of another SEO/link tool I have(monthly subscription) called The Link Juicer. It basically allows you to submit content and links, and it spreads it all around using social bookmarking and blogging accounts. I'm not going to deny that it's a bit on the spammy side, but used properly it can create lots of link juice to sites. I've been subscribed for 3 or 4 months and haven't really got the most out of it yet. All I've had in it is 3 homepages - to get the most out of it you need to submit inner pages, articles, web 2.0 properties.

The reason I haven't done more with it is purely down to laziness - it uses syntax and you have to aim for a certain target percentage in terms of uniqueness for bookmarks and blog posts. It's pretty difficult to hit the targets, but the higher you get, the more weight your links will have.

Today was another day pretty much dedicated to SEO - I did some Social Bot and Directory Bot submissions too. As I said yesterday or the day before though, it's dangerous dedicating so much time to SEO when I have a goal to reach - the Google dance could stop me in my tracks at any time.

I also collected together some articles from my main niche site, that I am going to spin with the Article Productions spinner and submit to some article directories and web 2.0 properties.

Today was somewhat of a frustrating day. If I keep going the way I am, I'm not going to reach my goal. I think I need to want it more. That sounds strange, but I think I get too comfortable at times. During this challenge I have made good progress in a few different areas, but I shouldn't be satisfied with just that.

At different points during the day, I found myself wondering what to do. Should I write some articles? Should I build some backlinks? Should I start a new project? Etc etc. This isn't good. When I get up tomorrow I think I'm going to write up a plan for the day. I also think that either this week or the beginning of next week I need to start a new project that can supplement the income I'm getting from the current things I'm promoting. I need to work fast and hard on it though, if I want to make money before the deadline.

Oh, some good rankings news - one of my sites I have been working hard with(the press releases, web 2.0 properties etc), has jumped from 39 in Google to 15 for the keyword phrase I'm targeting. I want that number 1 spot, and if I could get it in the next couple of weeks, it will really help things along I think.

That's all for today, I need to step things up tomorrow, and for the rest of the week because I'm setting myself up for failure in terms of my target.

I Was Wrong.....

In my day 8 entry last night I said it was the first day of the challenge so far when I hadn't made any money at all. After just checking my Clickbank stats, I'm happy to say I was wrong! A sale for $25 is sitting in there for yesterday. This came from my main niche site too, so I'm very happy. 8 days in a row now, this represents real progress.

Some Google Movement From My Main Niche Site

I just checked the position of my main niche site in Google, and it has moved up 2 places from 14 to 12! I'm very happy with this for a number of reasons - firstly because it has been stuck at number 14 for most of the last 2 months, and secondly because I haven't really done a lot with it lately, particularly when it comes to backlinking.

To break into the top 10 would be pretty big. It's a very competitive niche, and the keyword phrase I've targeted gets 500-600 searches per day. I always planned to be in the top 10(ideally number 1) when we launch our product in the coming months. But why wait? I'm hungry to be there right NOW, so I'll be doing some backlinking in the coming days and weeks, as well as adding some fresh content.

It feels really nice to know we have a strong site - some of the sites around it have been around for 10 years+ and have masses of backlinks and reputation. My approach has been to fill it with good content, make sure it has good onpage SEO, and create a presence for it. It seems to be working nicely. Can we crack the number 1 spot? I think we can in the future, I have no doubt. No matter what niche you are in, don't be intimidated by the competition - do things right and you can be up there with them.

Day 8 - Productivity, Lots of Link Juice and Some Questions

Maybe there's something about Mondays, but I always seem to get a lot done. When I say 'a lot', I mean by my standards. Even though I got some important tasks done today, I still don't think I've reached the level of productivity required. Perhaps I'm building up to it. Last week, I did lots on the Monday, but never really repeated it throughout the week. I aim to have 6 or 7 'Mondays' this week.

First up was creating a press release for one of my sites to give it some welcome link juice, exposure and a little traffic. Press release sites are one of the important first steps I think you should take when establishing a site, both in terms of exposure and link juice. I created one, using my usual format, spun it using the Article Productions spinner(after writing one alternative for each paragraph) and hand submitted the spun versions to 3 of my favourite free sites:-

PR Log
Free Press Release
Big News

I also really like I-Newswire, but there was a reason I left that one out. I am going to be using Incansoft's PressBot to submit to 25 free press releases sites, and I-Newswire is one of them. I should add that I absolutely love Incansoft products, they are fantastic for the price and save me a lot of time. Instead of submitting to all 25 at once, I plan on doing 5 per day for 5 days. I will also use syntax to add a little uniqueness to each one.

I'm mainly doing this for link juice - although I'm actually dominating one 'buying' keyword phrase, I'm sitting at number 36 for the one that gets a good amount of searches and the title of the site. I'm hoping to get into the top 10 in the next couple of weeks. I once held the number 11 spot so I don't see why I can't.

Those hand submitted press releases were indexed fast and a couple of them appeared alongside the site high in Google. I don't expect much traffic from the press releases themselves, but who knows?

Next up was some web 2.0 posting. I posted some of the spun articles I mentioned the other day to them. I actually registered at a few of them for the first time, including Wet Paint, Blogs.com and Webs.com. I really like these sites, they're easy to use, easy on the eye and very nice for link juice. I do have a technique I'm using, in terms of linking them together, but it's not a link wheel per se. Hopefully they'll get indexed soon and I'll see if it helps move my site upwards, I'm sure it will.

A couple of things are bothering me. The first is the new opt in form I've put on my main niche site hasn't made any difference in terms of sign ups. We haven't had a single one since, and it's been 5 or 6 days now. The title of the Ebook subscribers get free when they opt in is pretty much the answer to the problem that makes them go to the site in the first place, so I really don't understand why they aren't signing up. I've tested everything to make sure it's working too. Perhaps it's wrong to be disappointed when we're only getting 10-15 visitors per day. If we were getting 100 per day, we could make more of a judgement then maybe. I can't help but be disappointed though.

It has also struck me that during this challenge, I really can't rely on one thing too much. I have been putting a lot of effort into a 'side' site(not my main one mentioned above), but the reality is that it could fall victim to the Google dance at any time, and all the press releases, web 2.0 will mean little in terms of this challenge. All it's traffic(and sales) is organic. Relying too much on organic traffic is a big mistake that I've made in the past so I don't want to make it again.

My main 'money' site isn't converting at the moment(expect for one CB sale last Monday). As I've said before, I think it's because there is too much helpful content on there. This is a good thing - I like to help people, but a sale every day or two would be really nice. My plan has always been to release our own product and sell that from the site at a nice price though, which I'll be starting on next month, so aside from collecting opt ins(or hopefully), it's kind of on hold at the moment in a way.

I think my best bet to have something to fall back on in this challenge is to really put some effort into another niche. I have two in mind, one of which I have some experience of, the other which I don't. I plan on driving traffic to a squeeze page, after which the visitor will receive 5-10 follow up E-Mails with lots of good info, and I'll pitch a product at the end. I'm currently looking for a really good PLR product with master resell rights, and a salespage etc. I absolutely refuse to sell crap to people, so I read through all the ebooks to see if they are good. I haven't yet found one I want to sell, but I haven't really started looking in depth yet.

Speaking of PLR, I signed up for Gold Membership at Resell Rights Weekly - a great decision. And yes, that is an affiliate link, and no I am not just saying that so you sign up under me! If you know me, or have been reading this, you should know I'm not that kind of guy at all anyway. The amount of products, articles, sites and general info that is there is mind blowing. It goes beyond being just a PLR membership site. I highly recommend you at least sign up for free to check it out for yourself.

So that's all for today. Oh yeah, today marked the first day so far that I haven't made anything at all. A bit disappointing, but it's a marathon, not a sprint - and I'm confident come Feb 5th I'll be where I want to be.

Day 7 - A Mini Crisis, A Milestone and Optimism For The Week Ahead

In the early hours of Sunday morning, before I was about to go to sleep, something told me to have a look at my main niche site in Internet Explorer. I absolutely detest IE, so pretty much never use it at all. I think what made me want to look was because of the new opt in form we put on there a few weeks ago. When I opened it up, the sidebar(it's a Wordpress site) was messed up! The RSS feed button looked weird, and more importantly, the product banners were missing. I checked Opera, pretty much the same thing. The site looked perfect in Firefox though.

I was so stressed out that I woke my wife up and told her(it didn't go down well!), as she deals with design and coding of that site. I installed HTML Validator, an excellent Firefox plugin and looked at all the errors. There were 4 of them, and also lots of warnings. This morning she set to work on fixing it and first of all tried using another theme then switching back. When she switched it back, it looked fine. We have no idea why it was messed up on the other browsers, but thankfully all is well now. Depressingly though, this could mean we've missed out on lots of sales and opt ins in the past. We don't know how long it was like that. Probably best not to dwell on it.

My advice - regularly check how your sites look on different browsers. This is a great site for looking at sites on lots of different browsers and resolutions:-

browsershots.org

I had somewhat of a lazy day today, all I really did was a Social Bot submission of a new article I put on one my sites a couple of days ago. Again, not good enough, but I'm really ramping things up this week.

We made another sale of our WSO PLR article back, taking the total to 11. It was a $10 sale now, as the price has gone up due to the first 10 selling. As a result, I have hit what I consider an important milestone.

For the first time EVER, I have made money online 7 days in a row! To be completely honest, I'm pretty sure my best before this week was 2 days in a row, so this represents real progress.

As it's the end of week 1, I really should add up how much I've made from everything. If I take out the Paypal fees for each sale of the WSO, it adds up to around $105. If I don't take them out, it's pretty much right at $100. I'm really pleased with that - I expect to make the most money in this challenge during weeks 3 and 4, but in week 2(starting tomorrow) I'm hoping to at least double this weeks income. Wish me luck.

All This Talk About Rankings - Here's How I Do My Keyword Research

I felt that as I talk so much about rankings and keywords and such, I would write a little entry on how I do my keyword research for those of you reading.

Like most people, I started out with the Google Keyword Tool. I still use it now from time to time actually. After a while though, I wanted something that gave me more info and organized the info better. I gave the free trial of Market Samurai a shot, was very impressed but eventually settled on Micro Niche Finder.

I can't speak highly enough of it. You type a base keyword in, and it brings back up to 200 keyword suggestions. It of course brings up the monthly search volume of each keyword, and you can see how many competing sites there are, but if you want to quickly see what your chances of ranking are, you click 'SOC' which stands for Strength of Competition. It will bring up either a red, yellow or green and a numerical value. Green obviously means the term isn't too competitive, yellow means it's moderately competitive and red means it's very competitive. The lower the numerical value, the better.

In addition, with one click of a button you can see if the .com, .org and .net domains are available, and you can even check the 'strength of backlinks' the top 10 for each terms have. There's much more too, including the ability to save keywords into projects.

I take all the information I get from MNF as a guide - a pretty darn good guide though. After I have a keyword, or set of keywords, I'll use the SEO Quake firefox extension to investigate further. With this you can see the page rank each site has, and delve even deeper into just what makes these sites rank so well. If I want to have a really detailed look into a site's backlinks, I will use SEO Spyglass(one of the Link Assistant tools I mentioned in an earlier post).

I firmly believe that if you do the right things, you can rank well for pretty much any term, but implementing these tools and strategies really helps me to target good keywords, and helps me to have an understanding about what I need to do to rank.

I keep lists of keywords in my MNF projects - I use these keywords mostly for article titles(whether it be on my sites or in directories/web 2.0 sites), and keyword rich domains. That's pretty much how I do things - it has served me well so far.

Day 6 - A Day Off But A Couple Of Positive Things To Report

I always like to have at least one day off, usually either a Saturday or Sunday. This week it was Saturday. This morning, I checked one of my CPA accounts, and I saw a sale for $40 - woohoo. This is one of the main offers I am promoting at the moment. As I've mentioned before, I've made a few sales of this in the last few weeks. The sales are all coming organically, as a result of a keyword phrase I didn't intentionally optimize the site for. It's nice when that happens.

I found out today that not only do I hold the number 1 in Google for this particular term, I now hold the number 2 with the Articlesbase article I submitted yesterday. Not only is this good news simply because I hold 2 spots, it means the site itself is pretty powerful if it can hold off a brand new Articlesbase article - article directories are extremely powerful in the search engines. The best part is, I haven't really even started in terms of backlinking and building the site. The main term I want to rank for, it's currently at number 36. Competition isn't too much, so I'm hoping to get in the top 10 in the next couple of weeks.

I'm pretty upbeat, and despite it being a Sunday tomorrow(which I've always affectionately referred to as a 'day of rest'), I'll be putting at least an hour or two in.

Day 5 - A Few Dollars But Progress Is Slow

I'm actually writing this entry early on Saturday afternoon, but to keep things in order, I'm only going to cover Friday. I'll do Saturday's entry tonight, where I have some good news to report.

Today I started distributing those 10 spun articles. I submitted one to Articlesbase, one to GoArticles and one to the main site I'm promoting in this particular niche. I rewrote a few parts of the one I submitted to the site, just to make sure it had plenty of weight in the eyes of the search engine. I really like Go Articles and Articlesbase because articles go up pretty much straight away and they both perform well in the search engines. With 7 left of the spun set, I'll probably submit 2 to article directories and 5 to web 2.0 properties.

I still can't believe from one article I got 10 - all very unique. What's also great is that I have a LOT of content written from the last few months in various niches that I can do the same with. In terms of writing completely new articles during this challenge, I doubt I'll write more than 10 or so.

The other thing to report is that we sold 3 more of our PLR Article Pack, and this brings the total sales to 10. Before it went live, I actually said to myself that I'd be very happy if we only sold 10. PLR packs aren't like the many 'magic bullet' WSO's in that they'll probably sell a lot when they first go up - it's more a case of they'll sell pretty steadily over time, and I'm completely happy with that. To bump a WSO thread, you have to pay $20, I said before it went live that I wouldn't bump it so I intend to stick to that. 10 sales also means the price now rises to $10 per pack for the next 20 sold. So far myself and my partner have made around $30 each from the pack, after Paypal fees and such. A great start.

Overall, yet again my productivity was probably 30% of what it should have been. No excuses though - I know I need to step things up if I want to reach my target. Still, I've made money in each of the 5 days so far - it's just a case of making more of it each day.

Day 4 - Again Falling Short With Productivity But A Great End To The Day

I'm buzzing right now - in the last couple of hours I have discovered a few things that make me feel really optimistic. Cast your mind back to my introduction post when I mentioned that freebie site I have. I haven't updated it in months, haven't built any backlinks - nothing. It still gets traffic each and every day though. A few weeks ago we earned enough 'greens' to get a bank transfer of £34/$54. We can go months without getting anything but when you get two you qualify for a bank transfer instead of a gadget or gift if you choose.

Anyway, cutting to the chase, my wife is working on a new site that she is thinking of flipping in the future and I was helping her out with the SEO on it. I'm a big fan and user of the free tools offered by Link Assistant - inside the suite you download, there is a tool to check backlinks, one to check rankings, one to find link opportunities and one to give an extremely detailed report on how well optimized your site is for your chosen keywords. At the end of the analyzation, you get an SEO score. My wife's new site got a very good one(46%) and while I was using the tool I thought I'd check the freebie site out of curiosity.

The results? ALL 4 keywords that I targeted with it are getting scores of 70%+ - comfortably beating each and every respective Google top 10. Oh, and these keyword phrases get hundreds of thousands of searches per month EACH. I remember working extremely hard on it using other tools like Web CEO months ago, but I moved onto other projects and kind of forgot about it. No more! I was thinking of flipping it, but I think I'm going to get back into adding content to it, and building backlinks. It has a couple of hundred at the moment, but knowing what I know now, I think I can crack the top 10's for all 4 keywords. I firmly believe good SEO optimization is the backbone of a site's ranking, but it's the presence you create for it(i.e varied backlinks) that leverages the entire thing.

The list of things I haven't done with this site is pretty long, I'll write them down in fact. These are all things that I know contribute massively to a site's ranking performance in terms of backlinks:-

-Submit articles to multiple article directories
-Build web 2.0 properties
-Submit press releases
-Submit to directories
-Submit videos
-Blog commenting

...of course, Google loves fresh content, and this site hasn't had any for probably 5 months+. Doing everything above and adding fresh content should get the site in the top 10 for at least one of the keywords. One referral/sale is worth $27 so I think I'd be crazy to either flip this site or continue to be inactive with it.

When checking stats for it, I noticed I had 2 greens - which means another bank transfer! None of this counts towards this total BTW, the second green was done on Dec 31st. I'm really happy though, because I'm going to spend the entire $54 on IM tools. First up is a productivity tool that was created by another Warrior, called the Focus Master. You input all your daily tasks into it and set a time, and it generates reports too. It's exactly what I need right now. That leaves me with $37, not sure what to spend that on yet but I'm sure I'll find something soon.

OK, time to talk about what I have actually done today. In truth, not a whole lot, and certainly not enough. I had my first play with the Article Productions spinner and I am absolutely blown away by it. I took an already written article I have, wrote 2 alternatives for the title, and every paragraph except one and spun 10 versions. The result? The articles were ranging from 60-80% uniqueness! This took me around an hour, and that was only because it was my first try - I could have done it in half the time. The system it uses is intuitive, and very enjoyable to use. No wonder it's creator, James Stein, often comments that there are human controlled spinners out there that give great results as opposed to software ones that produce gibberish - this is absolutely the real deal. The other tools there are outstanding too. I'm probably going to submit the majority of those 10 articles to web 2.0 properties and maybe a couple of directories too.

That's pretty much all I did today - again not massively productive, but again I took a big step in terms of what I learned. I also helped my wife out a lot with her site. Money wise, myself and my JV partner made one sale of our PLR article pack, so I made $3 or so - hardly mind blowing, but I've actually made money on each of the 4 days of this challenge so far. I'm falling way short of my target, but I'm still very confident of reaching it.

A Thought I Just Had

I really should be asleep now, yet another late night though. It's my own fault, I sit in bed with my Laptop and my mind races. Once I try to go to sleep my mind is too stimulated. It's something I need to cut out.

I just wanted to share this though. The CPA product I just talked about is $40 per sale - if I made just one sale of that alone per day from now until the end of the 30 days I would hit my target comfortably. A couple of sales and I'd smash it. The lesson here is not to overcomplicate things, I've done far too much of that in the past. Having a goal and having the desire to reach it isn't enough - you need a detailed plan of how you are going to get there. What I just mentioned is only one method of how I can get there, I have many more available. A nice thought to end the day on I think.

Day 3 - Some Big and Needed Changes, But Falling Short

Tonight I sit here, with mixed feelings of both satisfaction and frustration. I'm falling short of my financial target(which I expected at this stage anyway), I'm falling short in terms of productivity, yet the positive changes I am making are vital.

With lots of help from my wife(who takes care of coding and such), our main niche site now has a really nice opt in form, with an attractive ebook ecover above it. Before, there really wasn't much of a call to action in terms of people signing up to the list, now they get a free ebook. I expect opt ins to increase dramatically. Since September we have only got 25 or so subscribers - we really should be getting that per week, and maybe even each day. When you consider that 500-600 on average search for the keyword term we rank for every single day, we should be doing much better. I'm really optimistic that things will take a turn for the better now. I also edited some of the follow up messages, and added a new one. I plan on adding at least 2-3 each week, with intervals of 3-4 days. I'll be adding similar set ups to most of my sites.

I also got a nice surprise when browsing one of the CPA networks I'm a member of. I saw a product I'm promoting with another network, but here you get $12 more per sale. I switched to their banner and link. I've already had a couple of clicks, I plan on driving lots more traffic there in the coming days. In fact, I think during this challenge that site, and that offer in particular may bring the majority of the money. One thing I do need to do is to cloak my affiliate links. I had no idea until I read it on someone's(a Warrior of course) blog last week, but apparently ugly affiliate links can hurt your search engine rankings. That makes sense, because this site was at number 11 for a couple of weeks, and when I added more affiliate links it dropped quite a few places. I haven't been doing much in terms of backlinks, but still I definitely think it has an impact. I'll hopefully get that done tomorrow.

There's not a lot else to report really. I'm pretty disappointed with myself actually, but maybe it was too much to expect I'd be able to work 8-12 hours every day after basically lazing around for the last 2 during Christmas. As a family, we've yet to get back into our regular routine as my son's school has been closed due to the weather. Hmmm, I sound like I'm making excuses......I AM making excuses - not good enough. If I carry on like this, I absolutely will not reach my target. I'll do better tomorrow for sure.

Day 2 - Sales, Frustration and Not Enough Productivity

Yesterday, I leapt out of bed at 8am and launched myself into the day. Today was an altogether different story. I foolishly went to bed at 2.30am this morning, so ended up getting up much later than I intended to. Not a great start. I then got sidetracked by my wife - she has been looking into selling a site she built a few months ago on Flippa.com and was asking my thoughts and opinions. She's a member of the WF too so made a thread on there about it. Until yesterday, I knew pretty much nothing about Flippa, but I'm on Ed Dale's list and he sent out a video where he talked about it and browsed it.

Remember the first site I mentioned in my introduction? The 'freebie' one? Well, I think I may list it at Flippa. It has a couple of hundred backlinks, is reasonably high in Google for a few terms, gets organic traffic each day and has a lot of monetary potential. Judging by what I saw in the Ed Dale vid, I'd expect to get maybe a couple of hundred dollars for it. I'd be very happy with that, and it'll make a nice dent in this 1k target. I won't count the sale of my wife's site though - she completely built that and it was her idea to flip it.

When I finally started work, I set about adding to my keyword ranking spreadsheet - some inner pages of sites, some Articlesbase articles and such. Speaking of Articlesbase - I've noticed a lot of articles there ranking highly in the SERPS. In fact, I'm starting to see more of them than EZA articles. Until the last couple of months, I didn't really submit to them much, but I really like that your articles go up almost immediately, and you get detailed stats on them.

Next up, I headed to Article Productions, and watched some of the tutorial videos. I've been intrigued by the spinning capabilities there, and it looks incredible. I planned on trying it out, but with one thing and another didn't get around to it. I'll write more about it some time soon and report how I'm doing with it.

Finally, I uploaded a free PLR ebook to my main niche site, and altered some details in Aweber. Instead of visitors opting in just to get more info and advice, they are going to get this ebook too. I'm confident this will dramatically increase opt in rates, because to be honest they have been nothing short of pathetic up until now. Ran into some problems though - I have to edit the opt in box and get a graphic up of the ecover of the ebook. My wife takes care of the technical aspects of this particular site so she is going to do it tomorrow. We had a little disagreement because I wanted her to do it straight away. I really don't want to waste another second. Today the site had 13 visitors, which is pretty low by a lot of people's standards but not too bad for us at the moment. With the new setup, I'd maybe expect a couple to sign up to our list - who knows, maybe even more.

Despite a not too productive day, myself and a fellow Warrior's WSO thread went up today and so far we have made 5 sales at $7 each. I'm really pleased with this. After paypal fees and taking 50% out, that means I made $16 or so today. Not bad. I'm hoping it will sell pretty steadily over the coming weeks.

That's all for today, not a great day by any means but again I made some money and a little bit of progress. Tomorrow I plan on really knuckling down.

Day 1 - A Good Start and Some Surprises Along The Way

It's almost 1am here, snow is falling heavily outside the bedroom window and it's time for my first daily entry. It struck me earlier that I didn't really go into what I'm actually going to be doing in order to try and reach my target. Well, at the end of each day I'll write an account of what I did, how I did it, what tools(if any) I used, and any money I made.

I was actually prepared to make a big fat zero in the first week of this challenge. It's all about putting things in place and really getting my strategies together. I thought I may get a sale or two here or there though, and I got one today. A Clickbank one for $24.47. A nice little bonus that I wasn't really expecting. It came from my main niche site, and although I haven't set up Clickbank tracking(I really need to get around to doing that!), judging by my Google Analytics stats it seems it was a visitor that was on the site for 23 minutes and read 21 pages of content. Feels good to know someone found that much value in the info and advice offered on the site. Usually visitors stay for no more than 5-10 mins, and mostly much less. I'm happy about the sale, but in the next couple of days I'm going to turn my attention to building a list from that site.

The current list of subscribers is pretty tiny, somewhere between 20 and 30 if I remember rightly. When you consider that this is out of thousands of visitors the site has had since we put it up in August, it's a pretty pathetic number to tell the truth. I completely understand why though. If I was a visitor, I don't think I'd sign up. Why? Because it doesn't seem like there is much in it for me. There's lots of content on the site itself and I can find lots more info elsewhere. A few days ago, I came across a really good PLR ebook at Resell Rights Weekly, which is a PLR membership site. I only signed up there a few days ago, it was recommended to me in a newsletter from another PLR site. The sales page had me hooked, and although I'm only a free member, I'll probably upgrade to Gold in the future. On that note, I should say that with a couple of exceptions, I will NOT be spending money on anything extra in terms of IM this month. I've made a promise to myself. There are a few things I want, but I'm going to work for them, rather than just buy them. Back to the ebook, it has an excellent title, and is really well written. I'm going to upload it and offer it as a free gift when visitors sign up to our mailing list. I'm hoping it'll dramatically increase opt in rates.

(You'll have to forgive my awful habit of writing extremely long paragraphs - it's a lifelong habit that I'm gradually trying to break).

OK, so what did I do today? Pretty much everything I set out to at the start of the day. The first thing, and something that has been in the works for a few weeks now - my first ever WSO! If you're not a Warrior Forum member, WSO means 'Warrior Special Offer' - you sell products at special prices/exclusive to the WF etc. In this case, it is a 20 article pack, and they were written exclusively for this project. This also marks my first joint venture(or JV). I have teamed up with Warrior NewBum76 AKA Jon. We each wrote 10 articles for the project - he did 10 Get Your Ex Back ones, and I did 10 General Dating & Relationship ones. I'm really pleased with the finished product. We're limiting the pack to 50 sales. It'd be nice if we sold out, but more important than that is that anyone who buys the pack is happy with it and has some good things to say. This could be a really good way of building our reputations. I'm sure we're going to team up again, and also eventually release products individually too. I would go into how this JV came about, but this paragraph is already long enough and it's really late. I'm really excited to be putting up my first WSO and hope it will be the first of many. The thread is currently awaiting approval, hopefully it'll be ready to go live tomorrow morning.

The second task on my list today was to sign up for ArticleProductions.com. I've been meaning to sign up for a few weeks, but as it's a paid subscription thought I'd wait until the new year when I could really get the most out of it. The site is owned by James Stein, known on the WF as TheRichJerksNet. I've always been impressed by the value he gives with his posts on there, and he really knows his stuff when it comes to article marketing, backlinking and pretty much any other area of IM. If you post on the WF and come out with a statement like 'Google penalizes duplicate content' or 'I'm posting all my content to EZA', prepare to feel his wrath! More than that though, you'll see just how much knowledge and experience he possesses. I've seen him say that he spends 12-16 hours a day on IM. Now THAT's dedication. His site is not only a very good article directory without annoying ads, it offers lots of tools, including a spinner, the ability to submit to multiple directories and MUCH more. I haven't had a chance to really get into everything available yet as putting my WSO up took longer than I thought. It's my first stop tomorrow though. Upon signing up, you get an affiliate link so I might as well use it - Article Productions, but I highly recommend you click the link in his WF signature, where you can try it out for 7 days for $2. I'm very excited to be a member.

My final task of the day was to make a spreadsheet of keywords/urls, and my position in Google for each one. This is something I learned from Jeremy Kelsall, another A grade Warrior(WF = IM school). He has a meticulous approach to organization of keywords that I really want to have myself. I also put into practice his tip of concentrating on building backlinks to articles that surface in the first 5 pages of Google when they go live. I typed in the keywords/urls of my sites, the inner pages of these sites, and some articles, mostly at EZA. Using the Open Office spreadsheet program, I simply type their Google ranking. Perhaps I should include Yahoo and Bing, but it's a good start. I am going to update it every Monday, so I can see just how well my backlinking efforts are working. Whilst doing this, I discovered quite a few of my articles(both on my sites and in directories) are still ranking nicely months after they were written. Also, after 3 weeks of doing pretty much nothing in terms of backlinking and adding new content, my main niche site sits nicely at number 14 in Google for it's main keyword phrase - a keyword phrase that gets 600 or so searches a day. It's been up as high as 11, in late November, but I'm really pleased it is still sitting so high and I actually get organic traffic from it every day. When it's in the top 10, things are going to look even better too.

Overall, I'm very pleased with today. I got lots of work done, made some real progress and even made an unexpected sale. I'm looking forward to tomorrow, or rather today. Only another $975 or so before I reach my target! Until tomorrow, take care.

Introduction - My Story So Far & Why I Have Decided To Do This

The Story So Far

My name is Liam, I'm 30, I live in the north west of England and I made my first tentative and skeptical steps into internet marketing almost one year ago, in February 2009. It's funny, but the seed was planted a couple of months before, when with Christmas on the horizon I typed 'Free Wii' into Google. We were thinking of getting one, and although we could afford one(not as comfortably as I'd have liked though), I was curious to see if there was actually a way to get things like that for free(legally of course!). I took the search results with a big pinch of salt, bookmarked one of them that looked interesting and didn't think much more about it. We bought the Wii at Christmas and like many other families around the world, jumped around like idiots playing tennis and boxing on Christmas day. I decided that I would look more into this 'gifts and gadgets for free' thing after the holidays.

In January '09, I started to take a more detailed look at these 'freebie' sites, and to my surprise it all seemed above board, and people actually were getting these things for 'free'. Well, not completely free - they had to sign up, complete an 'offer' then refer others to do the same. Long story short, I did this(I think it was an online bingo offer) and set about referring others in order to get something for myself. Myself and my wife decided we wanted a Wii Fit. To qualify for one, you had to refer 4 others to sign up and complete an offer. Seemed simple enough. From reading around a popular freebie forum, the general consensus was that you needed to have your own website in order to refer people. My wife set about building us a site - she's very good at designing, whereas my strengths lie more in writing content and organisation. We got our site up and started promoting it. As this was my first taste of anything that could be deemed 'internet marketing'(other than a couple of sites hosting our music in the past), I knew pretty much nothing about hosting, SEO, list building etc etc etc. This was a nice, almost gentle introduction to the IM arena though.

When promoting this site through various means, I kept coming across various 'business opportunities'. Although most of them looked too good to be true and 'scammy', some of them really intrigued me. One kept popping up again and again and it was called Global Domains International. Apparently, people all over the world were making 'quiet fortunes' promoting this opportunity. All you had to do was sign up for a .WS domain package, then refer others to do the same. You would receive $1 per month for everyone you referred, but for every FIVE people you referred you would receive a bonus of $100! I finally decided to give the 7 day free trial a shot, and carefully selected a 'sponsor'(i.e the person you sign up under). I had really high hopes, my sponsor was making thousands per month and taught all his methods so I thought if I just put in lots of time and effort that I'd be able to do the same. I also joined a few other opportunities too.

After a few weeks, nobody had signed up under me and the money I was shelling out every month for various biz opp subscriptions was gradually increasing. Still, I still felt confident that I'd be a great success and it was only a matter of time before the money started flying in. Every day I would hit the traffic exchanges, post links on social networks, post blogs, use safelists, send out E-Mails - blah blah blah. The results? A few sign ups here and there, but my pride and confidence was gradually taking a beating. Here I was, someone with very little experience, someone who isn't really a natural leader trying to recruit people into things which(rightly or wrongly) a lot of people in the IM industry look upon as unreliable and poor value. Now I'm not going to bash anything or anyone in this blog, it's not my style. Some people might say these MLM type opportunities are 'a scam' and such. I'm just going to say that they just aren't for me and I wouldn't really encourage others to get into them, especially those new to IM. It took me 3 months or so to finally start moving away from this kind of stuff, and a little forum called The Warrior Forum was instrumental in that.....

So we're now in June 2009(Not NOW, I mean THEN!) - I join a couple of forums so I can learn more and maybe(cringe!) promote GDI and the other similar opportunities I was a part of then. When I joined the Warrior Forum I began to learn some hard lessons. Firstly, I wondered why nobody seemed to talk about 'biz opps'. All I seemed to see was talk of 'niches', 'list building', 'membership sites' etc etc. I didn't really understand it all to be quite honest. Still, I was there to learn and surely being in such a highly populated place would enable me to get some more people on board with the opportunities I was promoting. WRONG! At the time I had a site/blog promoting these opportunities. One of my first posts on the WF was asking for a review of it. I genuinely wanted feedback, because I wasn't sure about the design, or some of the content and wanted some fresh ideas. The thread was deleted. I was slightly annoyed, but I figured it was because they saw a bunch of affiliate links on there and I was new, so kinda understood. A few days later though, something really annoyed me. Being new, and admittedly nieve - I wasn't using my own pic as my avatar. Instead, I was using a pic of Leona Lewis, the singer and admittedly, my number one 'celebrity crush'. (Myself and my wife are going to see her in June, her first ever tour - woohoo! Tickets paid for with a Clickbank cheque too - booyah!).

I log on and my avatar has mysteriously disappeared. Being a noob and being an annoyed noob, I make the error of starting a thread in the main part of the forum to ask why it was deleted. Big mistake! For want of better terminology, I got my ass kicked around in that thread. I thought it was very unjust at the time, but looking back now - I think I deserved it purely on the strength that I was so nieve. Newbie with a few posts, girl in his avatar, MLM in his signature. To the experienced Warriors, it didn't really look good. I was genuinely upset though. I think some people thought I had the female avatar in order to gain some kind of advantage, to fool people into thinking I was female. I was actually accused of being a scammer, which really hurt because I'm honest to a fault. Yes, it's often been said(by my Mum, no less) that I am TOO honest. I have never, ever been comfortable with lying so don't do it and have a problem with people that do. Now at that time, the 'scammer' tag was completely untrue, but arguably the 'spammer' one wasn't. In the biz opps I was a part of, myself and other members were encouraged to reach as many people as possible, by as many means as possible. So although I was never one to blatantly post links(think of the viagra spammers that make a mess of your blog comments) where they shouldn't be, I wasn't really providing much value during my promotion so it was perhaps a fair assessment. Instead of arguing, I dusted myself off, used a pic of myself as my avatar and decided I wouldn't let that bad experience get to me. Although, at the back of my mind was a vow of "I'll prove them wrong". The people in that thread have probably forgotten all about it, but I'm pretty sure I have by now. I certainly hope so.

After a few more weeks on the WF, I started to rethink my entire IM existence. I was jaded, making very little money(next to nothing in fact) and I saw all these people apparently making a great living by offering real value to everyday people. All this talk of 'niches', 'listbuilding' and such confused me, so when I saw a thread offering a free ebook which was a simple guide to niche marketing, I jumped at the chance to download it. It was written by Warrior member Lisa Stoops. I don't think she's a big poster these days, but that book offered so much value and really set the ball rolling for me. I decided on a main niche I was going to get into. I had a lot of personal experience with this niche, lots of people were looking for information on it so it seemed ideal. By now, I had learned a lot about SEO and such, so I knew a lot of the basic things to do to really get the site myself and my wife built, off the ground. You know, things such as a keyword rich domain, decent keyword density, alt image tags etc etc. Without giving away the niche(finding out isn't difficult though!), we immediately jumped to the first page of Google for the title of our site. Now the exact title doesn't get many searches(e.g. our site is 'dog training online' but we want to rank for 'dog training') but it was still nice and proved I had done a good job, SEO-wise.

For the next few months, I added content to the site, promoted it and generally tried to build it's presence. In August I started to get into article marketing in a big way, and to this day that is where most of the money I have made has come from. I'll talk more about that in the next entry. Over the next few months I built some more sites in other niches too. Some did OK, some I have decided to discard. I have learned a LOT during this time, especially being a member of the Warrior Forum. Financially speaking, I've probably made around $500 or so thus far, and it has yet to be consistent. My best day was back in September when I had an $82 day.


So Why This Challenge? Why Make A Blog About It?

I have decided to take on this challenge, and document it in this way for a number of reasons. Firstly, I think having a set goal is a very powerful motivator. Not only is my goal in writing here, it is my desktop wallpaper too - '$1,000 - January 4th - February 4th 2010'. It's in the middle of a collage of pics that represent the things I want long term - everything from guitars to brand new fridge freezers to holidays/vacations in the US and Australia. I highly recommend you do something like this too - it forces you to focus. Where did I get this idea? You guessed it, the WF! So thank Warrior RebeccaL, not me! I'm going to make sure to update this blog at the end of EVERY day, that way I can make sure I'm doing enough, and I can also see over time what IS and ISN'T working - you can too! I highly encourage you to try and learn some lessons from this if you possibly can, even if it's just how NOT to do things. Back in early December, after 5 weeks of not making a CENT, I decided there was no way I was going to let this happen again. I decided to swallow my pride, and ask for some help and guidance on the Warrior Forum:-

Click Me

I decided to take a couple of weeks off over Christmas, re evaluate and come back in the new year, refreshed and more determined than ever.

I have always enjoyed challenges in life. I've never been the most confident of guys, but somehow at different times in my life I have risen to the occasion and been able to bring out the best in myself. A couple that spring to mind are learning to play guitar - I come from quite a musical family, yet had shown no interest until the age of 16. It was then that I first picked up a guitar. I'm sure people thought I'd get bored and/or not be very good at it. I stuck with it, and in the 13+ years since I have got to what I consider a reasonable level(I'm my own worst critic though). I have written, recorded, produced and engineered lots of original songs, learned other instruments and more. Of course, all this is very much on hold at the moment, I have barely picked up a guitar in the last few months. I do miss it, but one of the many great things about being able to express ones self through music, is that it is always there when you need it. Another time I did the seemingly impossible, was when a 'wet behind the ears' 22 year old still living at home and extremely nieve and inexperienced in life, I flew to the US alone and stayed there for 4 weeks. There's a lot more to that story, but that's a whole another blog! Also, I was afraid of flying and had never done so before, so to face a fear and overcome it felt really good at the time. Hmmm, I always hate to sound like I'm blowing my own trumpet(not my style at all!) so I'll also add that I have fallen short many times too - in life, work and otherwise. That's what being human is all about though, isn't it?

This challenge isn't just about the money. I mean, yes - that money is going to be a big help to myself and my family. Although we're FAR from rich, we don't consider ourselves poor either. This challenge is about setting a goal, and working each and every day to reach it. Doing so is vital in life, not just IM - but if you are in IM yourself you'll know just how crucially important having a goal, and a plan undoubtedly is. Will I reach my goal? In terms of the $1,000, even I have to acknowledge that the odds are stacked against me. Why? Simply because I have yet to make even a third of that amount in a month prior to now. So on previous form, it'd take a brave person to back me. HOWEVER, I am actually VERY confident of doing this and not only reaching the goal, but SMASHING it. This is because of the following things:-

-I have learned and acknowledged what I have done wrong in the past
-I have a detailed plan that I am going to follow every day
-My motivation levels are at an all time high
-I've gone 'public' with this challenge so want to prove I can do it
-I have lots of time, and lots of support

Even if I don't reach that 1k, I'm sure I'll have learned a lot, and it'll only be a matter of time before I am making that kind of money online. Hopefully those of you that are following along will have learned some things too.

I've talked about myself and money WAY too much so far, let me be clear and tell you that I count myself very fortunate to be in a position where I can actually make a difference in people's lives. Yes, that's right - us internet marketers actually do just that, no matter how small. Some people(non IM's mostly) think it's all about selling things and making money, but I think of it like this - we are helping regular people with problems, desires and needs. Whether it is someone who wants a better relationship, a healthier body, to make some money to put more food on the table, or to break an addiction - we are in a fantastic position to help them. When I started out, I didn't really see this as much as I should have. Yes, I have always tried to offer valuable help and advice, but I have been guilty of concentrating on the end result rather than actually making sure to provide value to people. Value first - money second. That's the way I think of things.

I intended to spend maybe 20 mins - half an hour writing this introduction.......that was now hours ago. I'm really sorry to have written a mini novel here, I hope you weren't too bored! Before I started, I was actually considering buying a domain, installing Wordpress and having a really nice looking site, but I thought I'd keep things simple(and quick) with a simple blogger page. OK, here's how things are going to go - at the end of each day I am going to post about the things I have done that day and my general thoughts. I'll also keep my income updated. I'll also post separate entries in between talking about specific techniques, strategies and products. There will be a few affiliate links here and there, but only for things I personally use and recommend. Any income that comes from these links does NOT count towards my final total. I'm probably going to post some screenshots too. Hopefully I'll have plenty to show! Wish me luck, take your ringside seat and have a fantastic day.

Liam