Random Thoughts

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Sitting on a beach getting a great tan, with a drink in hand I decide I better go home and get some work done.  I jump into my Black Lamborghini Murcielago and head on home to my $2.5 million dollar gated home.  I login to my computer for 1 hour each day and watch the profits roll in….all $5000 per day!

Isn’t it ridiculous what some of these Internet marketers will tell you!  The problem is, somehow many people actually believe them.

When I started in Affiliate Marketing I found so many of these claims that if you buy their e-book, you will be making thousands by tomorrow.  Just type “make money online” into a search engine and look at the claims made by the sponsored ads on the right.  The truth of the matter is this; Many of these affiliate marketers make money by selling you products that tell you how to make money, yet they themselves don’t actually make a dime, unless you buy the book! Photoshop is a handy tool, isn’t it!  It can help put a face in a sports car, or in front of a large home that they claim they bought with all their internet earnings.

Now don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of money to be made in affiliate marketing or internet marketing, but it won’t be quite as easy as many claim.

Affiliate marketing is an interesting business that certainly keeps me on my toes, much more than any “real job” has.  With a conventional job, you go into work everyday and you trade your time for some money.  While you’re there, you do what they tell you to do, within a set of guidelines and expectations and then you head home for the evening and do it all over again.  This kind of arrangement is just not for me.

I have a very entrepreneurial mindset in that I would rather make $30k working for myself than $100k working for someone else.  Sure, a steady paycheck might be nice but what do you sell in exchange for the money your employer gives you?  Time with family, friends, helping others…those are much more important than anything else, even driving a nice car or living in a nice home and certainly not worth the trade-off in my opinion.

So What Is The Affiliate Marketing Life Really Like?

Many 12 hour days of sitting in front of the computer where some days, if I calculated my time vs earnings,  I work for $1 per hour…whereas other days, I will earn much more.  Here’s how I spend most days:  I get up early only because I like to, not because I must.  I work  a few hours at Starbucks on my laptop before coming home.  I work for several hours at home then take a break and watch a little TV.  Then it’s supper and then I’ll work on my laptop and watch TV with my wife or occasionally we go out.  It’s not a glamorous life, but I like it.

Am I rich?  NO WAY!  Do I have the potential to earn quite a bit?  YES, but it will take a lot of time, commitment and perseverance.  No one is cracking the whip everyday and making me work.  If I don’t work, I don’t make any money - it’s as simple as that.

Don’t get sucked into ridiculous income claims.  If you desire to make money online, just work hard, keep your head up even when things are not going well and eventually your hard work will pay off.  You will need to be a constant student;  Learn new information or techniques and come up with new ideas that will help your business every single day.  People that make money online are explorers, innovators and are driven to learn and succeed.

Those that are looking for a manual that will tell you exactly what to do to make money online…I suggest you keep your day job!

Initially when I bought BANS, I was under the impression that I could just throw up 50 stores and in no time I would be making some serious coin.  Nothing could be further from the truth at all.  Not that BANS is a bad product, but I’m just an idiot sometimes!

My BANS progression has been slow and steady and my ideas have evolved over the past 6 months.  At first I was building nice BANS stores, but very thin.

Next step was to add some content pages.  Then content on store pages.

After that I was still making under $300 per month from 22 stores, which was pretty sad.  The next logical step was to add a blog in a directory called ../blog.  This is when sales really started taking off.

Things were going along well, and then comes the EPN expirations which made me re-evaluate my sites.  I looked at the ones with low EPC, or the ones that were in niches that I thought would be good,  but turned out to be terrible.  I shut those stores down and was down to 14 quality stores.

Then came the WP/BANS integration talk and I jumped in.  Since I had BANS on the root directory and the blog in a blog directory, I could not use many of the templates that require Wordpress to be installed on the root.  Soon enough my issue was solved when Soggy, from the BANS forum started offering BANS/WP integrated templates for those that have BANS in the root directory.  For a small investment I now have 14 very nice, quality sites that I am adding content to quite often through the blog.

The result; Clicks are down, sales stayed about the same for now and EPC went up quite a bit.  Traffic is growing slowly.  Now the people that stick around on my sites appear to be less likely to click unless they’re serious about buying.  I suspect this is part of what eBay has been looking for when they talk about “engaged” users, but really…no one knows what they really want!

Really, for me it doesn’t not matter anymore what Ebay thinks.  As per yesterdays post,  I have been terminated by EPN, so I will continue on with my sites, without eBay.

I highly recommend buying templates from Soggy and you can get his WP/BANS templates here.

Well, my day has arrived - I’ve been terminated by the Ebay Partner Network.  Well, I can’t say that I’m happy about this decision, but I’m not devastated either.  EPN is the WORST affiliate program in existence!  I hated the uncertainty of not knowing if or when I was going to get this email and I’m glad it came sooner than later.  I truly believe that Ebay is on its way out as their business is down and they screwed their sellers recently as well.  I’m glad this happened while my earnings were relatively low, rather than waiting until my whole existence depended on them.

So now you might be wondering what I’m going to do.  I’m going to keep the 14 BANS/WP integrated sites that I have and start building a business with CJ, Pepperjam and Shareasale using PopShops.  At least I should be able to build a more stable and secure business since Ebay was highly unreliable.

My advice to anyone that is considering purchasing BANS - Go for it, but integrate it with Wordpress and DON’T build a business with Ebay.  Build it with PopShops and merchants that are actually greatful for your business.

Hi Everyone!

Welcome back to Random-Thoughts-Blog.com. Did you miss me? I’m sure for anyone subscribed to the RSS feed, one day back in April, it just didn’t work and you just quit reading.  Back in April, after almost 100 posts, I decided to take my blog down not knowing if I would return.

If you’ve read some of the older posts, you’ll know that I am a full-time-unemployed guy trying to navigate my way through making money online.  I have not worked in a regular job since January of 2008 when we moved to a new city for my wife’s job relocation.

Since that time I have tried a number of different ways to make money, including blogging.  Some of the things I tried were successful, while some were not.  Thankfully, I had backups of my blogs database before I took it down and was able to bring it back online in no time with a brand new look.

So What Happened In April 2008 To Make Me Take My Blog Down?

To be honest, there wasn’t some catastrophic event that made me do it.  I just came to the conclusion that I was running out of content to write because I hadn’t experienced enough or learned enough about making money online that would qualify me to talk about it.  There are lots of blogs out there where people talk about how to make money online, but they themselves are making very little.  I decided that I needed to “walk the talk”, so I just pulled down the blog and that was it.

It was too bad that I did pull it down because it was really starting to get some decent traffic, but I’m glad I did.  After that I spent my days learning to make money with Build A Niche Store (BANS).  Once I saw my first earnings, I was hooked and I saw the potential income that could be made with BANS.  I devoted 12 hours per day to building and maintaining my BANS niche stores.  In total, at the height of my small BANS empire, I had 21 stores.

Once they stores were built, I set out to grow the traffic to these stores, which proved to be no easy task.  Good, quality buying traffic was what I was after.  Anyone can stumble a few blog posts or store pages and get some traffic, but I wanted quality traffic.  I worked day and night and my earnings started to climb.

Now, I’m not going to be one of those guys that shows screenshots of my affiliate accounts, since I think it’s tacky, but I have made some money.  I’m not talking about huge, buy a Ferrari kind of money, but decent earnings which have been growing each month. My goal with my BANS stores is over $5,000 per month, which I have not hit yet.  Actually, I’m not even close, but the growth has been at 75-100% each month, so it might not be as far off as I think.  Realistically, to give you an idea, last month I was fairly close to $1,000.

If you’ve ever considered buying BANS I would warn you.  IT IS NOT A GET RICH QUICK SCHEME.  The eBay Partner Network (EPN) has made it very difficult for affiliates looking for quick and easy money to operate.  The goal with BANS is building high quality, unique websites that dominate their respective niche.  This takes a lot of time and effort, but the rewards are worth it.  Along the way I have dropped a number of stores, some with hours and hours spent in development.  I’m down to 14 stores, each with a blog and I am in the process of turning them into high quality websites that add value to a customers buying experience.

Since that time I’ve also made money with Clickbank and niche blogs and I will tell you about that another time.  Also, I launched an article writing business which has been going exceptionally well and keeps me very busy.  If you’re in the market for quality content for your website, stop by NicheStoreContent.com

So now that I’m back I would love if you kept reading.  I will give you info on how it is that I’m making money online, what’s working for me and what is not.

Stay tuned!

Today I am interviewing Bill, from TheBlogEntrepreneur.com.  He’s a relatively new, yet fairly successful blogger with an beautifully designed blog…Check it out today!

1. Do you have a fulltime job or are you a fulltime blogger?

I have a full time job. I am a Sales Manager for a Fortune 400 company and I am one of the few that are blessed enough to love what I do. I love it mainly because of the people that I work with. I have a great team of guys working under me and I would hate to lose that aspect of the job. I would like to continue to grow my online empire to the point where I would have the option to enjoy the freedom that it gives. I have a ways to go before that becomes an option as my job carries a lot of benefits and perks with it that I am not prepared to give up at this point.

2. How long have you been blogging and did you have any other internet experience prior to starting TBE?

I have only been what I would call a blogger since about December 1st of 2007, just about 4 months. Prior to that I screwed around a little bit with a blogger blog here and there but probably didn’t have even a half a dozen posts on all of them so I don’t really even count them.

I have been dabbling online now for a few years and have been on the internet since childhood.  I have a varied background and can usually talk intelligently about most aspects of the online world.

3. Although you have only been blogging less than six months, it appears that you have been quite successful. What steps have you taken to achieve this success?

I simply made the choice to become successful at it. I know that sounds kind of simple but it really is. Most people fail because they choose to fail, they aren’t willing to invest the time, effort or energy to make themselves successful.

I started out by reading blog after blog after blog. I remember the first one I ever read was Yaro Starak at Entrepreneurs-Journey and I loved it. Yaro is an awesome blogger and I found myself really engaged in what he had to say. After kind of getting the lay of the land I dove in and worked at it. I spend as many as 4 to 5 hours a day working on my blog and that’s after working a 12 hour workday.

I don’t often put that much time in now but I did at first when I was learning how and what to do. There’s far more to being successful than just being a good writer. You need an attractive blog and you need to market your content like a madman. It’s tough starting out and it’s still tough 4 months later. I am still a newb and have a long ways to go compared to some blogs.  I will say this…it’s been FUN! I love it and I look forward to spending time researching and writing articles. If you’re in a niche that you don’t look forward to being engaged in then you won’t last.

4. Have you made an mistakes in getting started that if you could, you would go back and do differently?

Yes a LOT of them. Actually, no I don’t think so because everything I screwed up has taught me something. I would have preferred to have a custom theme designed for me right from the start but all the tweaking and playing I have done with mine has taught me a ton about Wordpress.

I think I was fortunate that I found a niche that I love, even though it’s absolutely saturated. If I could give advice to someone else I would say that you should pick a blog topic that you love and that you can be passionate about.

This will allow you to be a much better blogger than if you are writing to try and make some money. That will wear you out and it will show in your writing. I think the ONLY thing I would do over again, is start earlier. I’ve been considering a blog for years but never prioritized it right. My wife has been blogging for a while and loved it but I found it much later than she did.

5. What are your thoughts on affiliate marketing? Do you do any affiliate marketing and if so, what are your favorite programs?

My thoughts are affiliate marketing is a great way to earn income. It sounds like it’s easy and most of the affiliate programs make it sound easy, but it’s very hard.

The Internet marketers all make it sound like they are making thousands a week and that if you aren’t then you’re doing something wrong. Reality is very, very few people make a sustainable income from AM. It’s very possible, but most people aren’t willing to invest the time to get good at it because they think it’s going to be easy. When they find it isn’t they end up quitting.

My favorite programs have been Ebay and then smaller affilate programs like phpbay and BANS. I am getting working on developing another site that is going to be centered around blogging and blogging tools, themes, plugins that kind of thing that is going to be primarily an affiliate site.

6. Looking into the future, do you have any quantifiable goals that you would like to accomplish in 2008? (traffic numbers, rss, alexa etc)

Yes of course. If you don’t set goals then you are treading water. I will be very disappointed if I am not looking at 20k visitors per month, 1000 + RSS subscribers and an Alexa that is sub 50k. I would also like to have a PR4 or higher and be generating about 5k a month by the end of 2008.

If I had the luxury of being able to work online full time then I don’t think this would be too terribly hard as I have some neat niche sites and some good ideas, I just lack the time to get it all done.

This past week I had some technical problems which were very frustrating. My laptop is out of commission so I had to find an affordable alternative. Since I do have a desktop, I decided that I didn’t need to spend too much for a laptop. I mainly work on a desktop throughout the day and then in the evening when my wife is home, we watch some TV. To avoid sitting in the office all evening as well, I prefer to have a laptop to hang out in other rooms of the house.

Anyway, back to the gadget. I did quite a bit of research and settled on an ASUS EEE PC. What a neat little machine! At only 7 inches, it’s tiny. It has a pretty light Linux operating system on it so it’s not bogged down having only 512mb of RAM. It’s small, convenient to travel with and has a solid state hard drive, which means that you could drop it and not cause damage to the hard drive. The part of it was the price at just over $300. THAT’S RIGHT…$300. It does everything that I need a laptop to do for me. It won’t replace my main computer, but it’s a handy little computer that I can take anywhere and surf the net.  Sure beats a PDA. Check this out.