Beware the Internet Marketing Forums
One of the easiest traps to befall a new internet marketer or blogger is the lure of marketing forums. There are many forums where people talk about all things related to making money online. Everything from white hat to black hat methods and anything in between. You can gain some good information and advice (and some bad, too) just by scouring these forums and reading the threads. You can learn different techniques, learn about different software, companies, you name it. Used smartly, it can be a good source of education to internet marketers.
The problem is information overload. Internet marketing is a broad area, and there is so many things people talk about. It is easy to waste a lot of time reading about so many things. I know because I just fell in the trap. After my last post, I decided to send some time educating myself, which is something you should always do on a regular basis, but it’s important to schedule it and set limits. Action is more important than theory.
I’ve spent my spare time since my last post on the forums. I learned some, but it is so easy to get distracted by the hype. You end up reading, bookmarking things you won’t have time to go back to, following members who seem lke they really know what they are talking about, etc. I learned some things, so the time isn’t a total loss, but I haven’t made a post on this blog in 8 days, and I did very little work to my other blogs in the meantime. Everything I did learn could probably be condensed into a 1 hour course.
One thing that was interesting was a post I read about how many hours people work daily on their internet marketing activities. People reported everything from 0-18 hours a day. Most of them seemed to be full time and were from 8-16 hours a day. The ones who have day jobs like myself reported 0-4 hours. I know I need to increase to about 3 hours a day. Then there were some of the successful ones who make a fulltime income online who reported 0-3 hours a day, with most of their work being outsourced to others. They laughed at the ones doing 8-16 hours. I hope to someday be laughing with them- not at the working stiffs, because I’ll never forget what it’s like to work long hours. I just want to be able to laugh because I’m enjoying life!
What I’ve Been Doing In February
Brrr…. it’s so windy and cold today. I’m originally from Florida so I can’t wait for spring. Oh well. I decided that I didn’t like the design I’ve been working on for my 2 other blogs, so I’ve been working on redoing them using a different theme. That’s a bit time consuming, so it’s very important when starting a blog to pick a theme you are happy with. Test it and make sure you can make the blog look the way you want. Does it look professionally done? Can you add anything you may want down the road?
I may also redo the design of this blog, but that will have to wait for a while. This theme is more basic and limited, and it’s not very polished, but it is very easy to work with. I’d prefer a much more polished and professional look for this blog. A visit to the website of any blogging guru will show you a crisp, detailed site that looks like a major corporation produced it. Not that you want to appear like a big corporation though- people want to know that you are real. They are more likely to trust you and your advice if you just “keep it real” and show them you are a person just like them.
It’s easy to get sidetracked when you are first working at making money online. I have to confess that I’ve been bitten by the poker bug. I’ve been studying Texas hold-em poker the past few weeks as time allows. The other night I dabbled for a couple hours of playing for money online. My skill level at this point is about break even. I wouldn’t suggest it to anyone without thoroughly doing your homework first. There are all levels of poker players online, and many can spot a fish (a beginner) very easily. There’s even software some players use to calculate odds for them and all kinds of things.
Yes, there are many people who make a living just playing poker. Some make a pretty good living. I even have a couple Facebook friends on my personal account that do this. They were guys I hung out with in college. Slackers but they loved strategy games, so I guess it was natural they would go that route someday. One of them won a $60k pot recently. But making a living at it is not for everyone, or for most people for that matter. You can play free games online, even at the websites where people play poker for money. But just because you may be a winner at the free games, don’t think you will be so good at the money games. People play very differently. They play much more tight in money games and risk much less, and hey, they pay more attention! I will consider poker a hobby, unless I become amazingly good, at which point I would be asking you to check out my poker blog… :)
This weekend I have a lot to do around the house. My wife’s university work is keeping her very, very busy. I hope to have another blog all set up and pretty by next weekend. I’d also like to get Adsense up on this website and begin talking about some specific gurus out there and what you can learn from them.
The Almost Great Job Escape
I’ve explained a little bit before about my current job- I work in an inside sales position, taking and making non-stop calls in a grossly understaffed office. I think our company, which is owned by an investment banking firm in NYC, makes a gross profit of around $40 million per year. There are only about 12 of us on the phone making it happen.
I’ve always been a computer nerd, ever since buying myself my first computer in 1992. It was a 386sx 16 mhz, with a whopping 2 megs of ram and an 80mb hard drive. Ever since then I’ve been upgrading computers, taking them apart and putting them back together, and working with all kinds of software. About the only thing I don’t do is coding.
So my company has an IT department of about 7 people. They decided they will hire a computer support technician, fixing and maintaining computers and offering support to employees. In my department I am already the person everyone goes to for suport before asking the IT department. So I interviewed for it, because I love working with computers and it would actually be enjoying to me, instead of the current job I have spinning my hamster wheel.
I don’t think the interview went so well. The IT guy who is supervising the position prefers someone with actual experience working in the field, and wants someone with experience working with corporate networks. My knowledge of networks is limited to home networks, and he could tell by quizzing me some that my skills aren’t up to snuff in that area.
I did explain that if he wants someone who will devour the subject material, will be an eager apprentice with a passion for learning (and I’m a quick study), that I would surprise him how quickly I would master the role. He seemed to like that, but I don’t think I’m getting the job. But without showing that passion, I wouldn’t have any chance at all. I think you have to have that kind of drive in anything you set out to really accomplish. It takes passion, eagerness, enthusiasm, discipline, and hard work to make a plan come together. Making money online, or having a widely read blog is no different.
You Can Never Have Enough Blogs
It seems I am the type who is able to conceptualize very well. I can have powerful, detailed visions of projects and how they would evolve. When it is time to do the necessary work of it, and stick to it, is where I have always fallen short in the past. Here I am and it is day 3 before I am updating my blog. Sure, I have excuses- My family has kept me busy this weekend (I let the kids stay up too late). I also conceptualized a new blog I am excited about. But more on that in a second.
This blog is central to me because it chronicles what I am accomplishing. One you get started posting and updating, you have to stick with it so it becomes an ingrained habit. Sure, some nights I just want to go to bed shortly after the kids are in bed. With my busy schedule, there is always something to do. It’s important to have down time, and I allow myself some of that on the weekends just so I can recharge some for the week ahead. But when I get to work Monday morning, I’m barely there for an hour before I am kicking myself for not getting more done on the weekend and telling myself I need to work harder so I can leave my job!
This weekend I conceptualized a blog I am going to start. After I get it started I’ll be able to share it here because it is related to internet marketing. With my niche blogs, I don’t want to share exactly what they are because I don’t want their readers to read this blog and get the wrong idea- ‘He’s just trying to make a buck off this…’ However the new blog will be fair game.
The funny thing is I have about 9 conceptualizations for blogs, and most of them I haven’t really seen anyone do before. I barely have time for 1-2 blogs, never mind 9. Maybe when I am able to leave my job, who knows? Some of them may become successful, some may not. But you can only succeed by trying, and sometimes failing. You only really need 1 of them to become successful to build a business around it.
2012 State of the Blog Address
I’d like to have a tradition of posting a ‘state of the blog’ every year. Since I only just started this blog about 1.5 weeks ago, and there isn’t much to it yet, this post will give more of a sense of my starting point. This blog is a journal of the journey from debt, to making some spare income, to being able to quit a dead-end job, to paying off debt and expanding a business, to achieving a healthy net worth and financial freedom. So let me give you some more insight to my starting point, so it will be easier to appreciate the transformation that I will be sharing here.
Net worth: Currently my family has roughly $100k in debt. This is fortunately all in student loans, which is low interest (maybe 3.5% I think). My wife is pursuing a PhD currently. When she graduates in 1.5 years we project to have $125k in student loans. We rent our meager 3 bedroom house. We own the car I drive, a 2004 Sonata with 125k miles on it. My wife has a 2006 Sonata with 91k miles on it. We still owe $1800 on it and have 7 months left of payments. We have no credit cards or other debt. We learned our lesson with credit cards about 7-8 years ago, and haven’t had them since, except to keep one card for emergencies.
Income: I earn about $45k per year at the job that I can’t stand. It is a very demanding, fast paced sales environment. I make someone a lot of money every day, then I go home exhausted. My wife works part-time at an assistantship at her university. She makes about $20k currently. The rest of our income unfortunately comes from the student loans.
Expenses: Our son is still in full-time day care, so that expense really affects us. With rent, food, and all the other assorted bills, we break even every month. We do a lot better than many families out there, so understand that I am not complaining about our finances. At the same time, I am not content or complacent. I want much better for my family and so I am working towards bettering or finances, and this will give you an idea where I started this project from.
Blogging: It took me a little while to build and plan the blog before I started posting. SInce I just started posting on January 16th, there isn’t much content to the blog yet. I am striving to make a post each day, but if I can’t, 2 days is the longest I will go without a post. Quality is more important than quantity, but I’ve learned you have to be in the habit of updating your blog regularly. Some nights I only have a late-night hour to work on the blog. It’s also important to spend regular time learning about your topic. I spend about 30 minutes a night reading other blogs or with programs I have purchased. I have an Amazon Kindle that I use during my lunch hour to squeeze in some learning time too. I haven’t been able to do much yet with my other 2 blogs, but starting February 1st I plan to start posting on them regularly. So far I haven’t done much at all to promote this blog. I’ve done a little updating with social media websites, but I haven’t promoted the blog enough to get any real traffic yet. I’ll post soon about beginner techniques for getting traffic to the blog. I hope to do some promotion this weekend. I think it’s a good idea to have at least 7 posts or so before bringing people to your blog. How likely are you to revisit a blog that only had 1-2 posts? Of course with not much traffic yet, there is no income yet. First you build the traffic, then you insert ways to monetize the traffic.
Just a word about the goals I posted earlier, does a $1 million net worth by December 21st, 2012 sound a bit out there? Maybe, but it is important to set your end goal high, and give it a time limit. You might not reach it, but if you make it part of the way there, you can count it a success. It’s also important to make smaller goals as steps on the way there. Focus on the first goal, then the 2nd, and so on until you just have that end goal left to conquer! Also, your goals about your blog can’t all be about money. You need to treat your blog like a business if you want it to reward you like a business, but if you are blogging just to make money, you will likely fail. You need to blog because you love writing about your topic. Set some goals about what you want your blog to become for you and your readers, and keep that vision in sight.
How to Monetize Any Blog
To expand on my last post, Blog Your Passion, I wanted to write a little more to show how easy it is take a passion, or in this case an obsession, and turn it into a money-making blog. Now I’ve never, ever played the popular online MMORG game ‘World of Warcraft’. I’ve heard about it here and there, and have only had one friend who ever played it. He mostly just bragged about his exploits, but he did show me a pretty funny Youtube video involving some gameplay footage of a character named Leroy Jenkins back in 2005.
Getting back to the subject of blogging for money, let’s say you are one of those people who spend 4 hours playing this game (or a similar game, doesn’t really matter). Spending that amount of time on something should make you a bit of an expert on it (i would hope so, anyways). In other words, you have something you can teach other people. So you start a blog about the game. You give tips for newbies on how to get started adventuring. You give more experienced players tips on how to beat certain stages of the game. You discuss new features of the game, or recent happenings. You share what you know and learn.
So now you have many players reading your blog to learn from the game master. How can you make money by sharing all this knowledge and making a fun blog for players of the game to enjoy? Simply look for things that are sold to players and fans of the games. You would focus on any that have an affiliate program that pays you for referring sales or leads. To make sure your readers are happy and trust you, make sure you only recommend quality programs or services you have investigated yourself.
So to still use the game as an example, you could insert advertising on your blog for these affiliate programs. Again, never played the game, but I know there are services for players to trade loot from the game, as in gold coins, swords, armor, pretty much anything that can be found in the game. You could have a small ad on your blog advertising the service. You could also write a review of the service and include your affiliate link to sign up. You could also recommend expansion packs (additional game software), game memorabilia sites, or maybe a book on World of Warcraft that someone has on Clickbank.com or a similar affiliate site. You could also have Amazon and Ebay ads on your site filled with World Of Warcraft merchandise. And of course, there is always Adsense, which could be configured to just display ads related to the game. The point is, there are ways to monetize a blog about anything. If you want to start a blog, but aren’t sure what to write about, ask yourself what you spend the most time doing when you aren’t doing your normal responsibilities. If you spend 4 hours a day at it, chances are you are obsessed enough to write a very informative blog.
Blog Your Passion
The most important factor that’s going to determine if you have a great blog is your passion for it. The old adage ‘follow your passion’ certain applies here. Because if you aren’t passionate about what you are writing about, it will come through in the writing, and your readers won’t feel passionate about it either.
I’ll give my own example. This isn’t the only blog I’ve started. Since this is a blog solely about making money on the internet, I’m keeping it separate from my other blogs and their readers. One of them that’s dear to my heart is about a condition I’ve suffered from since my high school days, but have managed to overcome with effort. I write that blog to help others and give them inspiration. I am monetizing it simply because I am also passionate about making money on the internet. I will only monetize it with products I really believe will be helpful and I have used myself. That’s also why I have this blog. To share results from this blog and other projects I work on.
So what is your passion? Find your niche and go after it. While making money online is a popular topic, there’s also a lot of people writing about it. Only the best writers make decent money doing it. While I hope to join the circle of ‘make money online’ blogging gurus, I don’t expect this blog to be my best source of income. I suspect I will make more from my niche blogs, like the one I mentioned above. In fact, a review of the top 100 blogs from Technorati.com will only show a couple of blogs that deal with internet marketing. The rest are about different topics people enjoy reading about. So if you love to write and you love your niche, then write for your readers and you will be rewarded.
Why It Is Essential to Register a Domain Name
If you want to move your blog beyond a small hobby or something that you tinker with, it is essential to register a domain name for your blog. Your blog needs to have it’s own dedicated address on the internet. It needs to clearly point to you rather than someone else.
Having a domain name is the very first step in branding yourself and your blog. It tells people that you are a real blog, and not someone playing around on a free website host. For example, you can create blogs on many free sites, such as Blogger or WordPress. However, your domain name will always be an extension of the address for that website. It will never be uniquely you. Which of these looks more professional and more of a serious blog?
A. ragstorichesblog.blogspot.com
B. ragstorichesblog.wordpress.com
C. ragstorichesblog.com
Of course the answer is C. Besides looking more professional, there are many other benefits to registering your own domain name. For one, as long as you renew it yearly, it is always yours, no one can take it away from you. If your blog is hosted by Blogger or a similar service, that website could delete your blog without notice, and you would lose everything, without many options for people to find you again. If you insist on having Blogger host your blog, Blogger has an option where you can use your own domain name. That way if Blogger were to delete your blog, you would still own the domain name and could then recreate the blog with your own hosting. You could also have backed up your posts on Blogger and then import them to your new blog. I will cover hosting in a later post.
Also, Google’s search results love domain names that end in .com. If you can’t find a .com name that suits your blog, try a .net or .org, as these rank highly also. I would avoid other extensions like .biz or others. Also try to avoid dashes and numbers in your domain name. Make it something easy to remember, because your domain name becomes your identity. All of the internet marketing gurus understand the importance of building your brand on the internet, and having your own domain name is the 1st essential step to do it.
The domain that I and most of the internet marketing gurus use, because it is the best, is Godaddy. They have the best price, the best service, and there is never a problem. It’s also not bad looking at Danica Patrick whenever you log in. I’ve secured a deal for my readers- get a new .com domain for just $5.99 !! Just pay a visit here to GoDaddy.
The 8 Year Anniversary
Today was the 8 year anniversary for my wife and I. We were married at the Excalibur Hotel & Casino in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada. I would guess that most Vegas weddings don’t last, but for us it was meant to be.
To celebrate we went to Carrabba’s for dinner (I had a $25 gift card to help). No fancy restaurant, and no picture of my dinner uploaded to my blog (I don’t have a data plan). We brought our 2 kids because we didn’t want to pay for babysitting. To their credit, they were angels. Of course for my 4 year old son, it helped that he had a Nintendo DS in his hands playing Mario Party while we waited for the food to arrive.
My wife and I also agreed not to buy each other gifts. We just wanted to spend some time together. But my wife deserves more than this. She used to be a school teacher, an amazing one. We have been sacrificing so she cold go back to get her doctorate in education. She has been doing excellent and she works so hard. I want to be able to take her to expensive restaurants. I want to be able to take her for a romantic weekend somewhere. I want to take her on a week’s vacation in some exotic sun-dripped location. And someday, I will. When envisioning your goals for success, I find it often brings more joy imagining what you’ll be able to do for others than what you’ll do for yourself.
My Goals For This Blog
I think it’s important before beginning a major undertaking to establish and define goals. If you have a blog or internet business, having clear goals is a must. If you don’t know your destination, you may never get there.
Yes, the focus of this blog is to make money by blogging about making money. I plan to make it very interesting along the way, but that is my passion and so that is what the goals must revolve around. So here are goals for 2012:
Money-wise:
1. First reach a level where I am averaging $100 per day in revenue.
2. Then reach a level where I can comfortably fire my boss and leave my crap-on-you job.
3. Erase my family’s $100k+ debt (all of which is student loans). I’ll be posting more on debt soon.
4. Reach a net worth of over $1 million!
Other-wise: (in no certain order)
1. Gain a following of over 100k readers.
2. Build a wildly entertaining and informative blogging empire.
3. Have ample free time to spend with my family.
4. Have fun enjoying what I do.
What are your goals for 2012? If you haven’t set any yet, do it right away. Have a clear vision of what you want and go after it!
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