The Niche Think Tank » Adsense

The Real Life Struggles Of An Online Entrepreneur

Larry C. — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 18:35:36 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, and there are several reasons why, which I will go into. Let me first explain a little about this post and the reason for posting it.

I’ve been blogging on here for a while now relating my successes and struggles. I also read many other blogs on success, making money online, personal improvement and the location independent lifestyle. One thing I have noticed about most, if not all, is the lack of struggles that happen. I don’t read much about the struggles and hardships they go through and many write about how everything seems peachy and rosy.

I’m not here to bitch and complain, but I think people should see or hear what some of us go through, because it isn’t all peaches and cream in the life of a successful blogger/online entrepreneur. There have been things that have happened that make me question why I am doing this, why I continue to try to make it big like others, and do I want to press the Publish button when I am done writing this post.

Everyone talks about being authentic or being transparent but I never hear about the bad shit. Show me you’re a real person and tell me what’s really going on in your life once in a while. I want to know you are for real.

I have this blog and things have been a little rough the past few months, and I need to write about it.

Business Stuff

Back in December things were really looking good, I mean really good! Income was going through the roof thanks to Christmas, the niche sites were really working well and I felt like I had finally made it to the big time.

Then Google hit with the Panda Update.

Some of my main money makers took a hit, a huge hit. My Adsense income went from $20-$30 a day to $2-$8 a day and my Amazon Associate sales feel quite a bit too because of the lowered traffic my sites had. You can read This Thread at the Google Webmasters Forum and see all the others who have been hit. People who have good sites with original content, yet are losing traffic and income because of the Panda Update, all in one fell swoop.

On June 16th Google pushed out Panda 2.2 and many people, including myself, have seen some recovery from the initial Panda update. This is the latest and just one of several updates done to Panda since it’s release back on February 24th.

My Adsense income has gone back up to $20-$30+ a day again and it’s been a much needed change and recovery. But it’s guarded. What I mean is that I can’t and won’t put much trust in Google again. Well let me say this that I never really trusted Google to begin with anyway. Having a monopoly on search engine traffic and customizing peoples search results isn’t being quite honest in my opinion. This is why I diversified my online income, so my eggs weren’t all in one basket, but it was a good part of my arsenal. I am further diversifying my arsenal for the next time something like this happens. And it will happen, trust me.

Family Stuff

One thing that has had me way distracted and very angry was the lead test that came back positive for my daughter Sarah. The landlord had done some renovations which weren’t conducted properly, nor was the clean up done properly, and my daughter was exposed to lead dust.

This house was built in 1927 and it is covered in lead paint. Most of the time, if the paint isn’t disturbed things are ok, but the lead laws in San Diego make it mandatory that a lead certified construction company do the lead abatement whenever there are renovations going on. This was not done.

Consequently my daughter tested positive for lead and when I asked the landlord to pay for testing to find the source, he refused. Further investigation lead me to the Lead Safe Neighborhood Program of San Diego. After telling them my story they opened a case on this house, came and tested the painted surfaces, took dust samples and cited the owner. The owner had 45 days to comply or be hit with heavy fines for violating health and safety codes.

New renovations have been done by a Lead Certified company and removed even more lead paint from this house in the safety of containment containers. However the owner and the rental agency have made us feel as if we were the bad guys for calling the city on them. It still really bothers me they did this, actually it makes me so damn angry, it’s not even funny. We still have yet to get an apology from the owner.

We’ve been looking for a new place to live and we don’t need their attitude. I am also sure after the “No Retaliation” period of 6 months is over, they will give us the boot. Either way, moving sucks but we need a place to live that is attitude and lead paint free.

In doing my homework I found what removes lead from the body: vegetables high in Iron like greens and Apple juice to name a few. Three months after the initial lead test we had her tested again and the lead has been eradicated from her body. Thankfully she didn’t have to go through chelation therapy. We are relieved and happy to have this lead removed from her tiny body, yet we still have to take her to get evaluations for her growth and learning progress to see if there are any long lasting effects from the lead poisoning.

It’s been almost 6 months since her initial lead test came back positive, the lead is gone but we are still dealing with the after effects of this situation. Doctor and therapist appointments, feelings of anger and helplessness, and wondering if her IQ has been affected or not. It’s not something a parent wants to hear has happened to their child knowing it could have been prevented.

Amazon Associates Program Gets the Ax in California

Here’s a screen shot of the letter I received from Amazon:

Amazon Associates Cancellation Letter

I had waited a week before hitting the publish button just to make sure I really wanted to publish this post. I guess there was another reason I waited and now I know why. Another blow has hit online entrepreneurs who reside in California. This blow comes in the form of the cancellation of the Amazon Associates program in California. This is because Amazon and other companies like OverStock.com are taking a stand on what they feel is unconstitutional and counter-productive.

Many, many people in California, and other states(California isn’t the only state who did this) who’ve been axed, depended on the income that Amazon Associated Program gave them. Many people have been ruined and some have probably lost their homes and livelihoods or worse. I counted on the income from Amazon too, but it wasn’t my sole source of income, as I said previously I diversified my income and it was only a part of my income. While it is making things interesting, it is not the devastating blow many people have felt.

Amazon isn’t the only affiliate program that has given Californians the boot. I’ve been kicked out of no less than 5 other affiliate programs due to the new law. Mainly companies who have no physical presence in California. I’ve had to search for comparable affiliate programs, but the biggest blow for me, is that many of my niche sites are dependent on Amazon for the products in the niche. Amazon has a HUGE, no, THE HUGEST inventory of just about anything you can think of. I looked at Barnes & Noble and Borders, and neither of those giants have the selection of the books or products I need to make money with my niche sites.

So what am I doing?

Some of my sites are being sold on Flippa, such as this site: Kindle Covers and Cases which brought in $1,649.10 in December of 2010 and it continues to bring in sales each month. I could get an LLC in another state to continue to work with Amazon, but I don’t really want to go through the hassle of getting an LLC in another state to continue to operate with Amazon Associates. At least not yet. I am hoping the tax law will be over turned and we will get our associates program back. For now I am selling it on Flippa, as well as some of my other sites.

Another thing I am doing…

Another thing I have been doing is focusing on niche sites that I have an active interest in and selling eBooks, such as my Boudoir Photography Poses website. This site, on average right now, has an average of 46 daily visitors, and it sells between $25-$50 worth affiliate sales in eBooks each day on the subject of Boudoir photography Tips.I started this site after the Google panda update hit the first time, in an effort to supplement the lose of the Adsense income I had. This along with the recovery of my Adsense income has helped to offset the lose of the Amazon Affiliates Program.

Dealing with stress and remembering what’s important…

In May of this year we had a family wedding to attend in Ohio. We stayed at my sister-in-laws in Kentucky which is right across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ohio. I decided that I wasn’t going to do ANY work at all. I had at first thought I would do some posts and get caught up on this blog, but decided not to. I did however have to review and approve personal profiles for the dating sites I run. This is about 10 minutes per day just before bed and that was all I did.

Taking time for the family…The Attitude of Gratitude

First, I spent lot’s of time with my girls: my wife and my two daughters.

My daughter and I on a quiet Kentucky dirt road

The next thing I did was not worry about business, knowing that whatever is supposed to happen, is going to happen no matter what I do. I just tried to do the next indicated step. Knowing that no matter what happens, everything will be OK. I’m an entrepreneur and entrepreneurs are survivors. I’m a survivor. If one thing fails I go to another thing or way of making money.

The next thing I did was spend some time with my parents who came down just to baby site and see the girls. That was nice. My dad hadn’t met the younger one, Hannah, and my mom hadn’t seen her since she was born. We went to the zoo with my parents and the kids and spent the day feeding the goats in the childrens zoo, riding the miniature train(Sarah loves trains) and just enjoying the free time of not having to work.

Worrying about what’s going to happen, does nothing but make you sick and paralyzed. There’s nothing that worrying has ever solved for me, so I just went with the flow. I just turned 47 last month and I’m not getting any younger so spending time with my daughters is paramount in my daily life. Who knows what the future holds for us, but I remember an old saying, ” Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift.”

Another saying is “If you have one foot in the past, and one foot in the future, you’re pissing on the present”.

Things do happen in the lives of successful people and their not always pleasant. Staying grounded and keeping what’s really important close to your heart, will help you get through anything. My grandfather used to say ” If you have a shovel you can always dig ditches”. My head is the shovel, life is the ditch. I dig life, it’s an adventure worth living.

So what Amazon is gone for me now, maybe it will come back, maybe it won’t. I’ll do other things that help to support the family and my lifestyle of working at home, close to the family. So what Google made my traffic almost nil for some sites and my income go down a bit, I’ll just do something else like sell eBooks and do photography. So what all this is happening around me, what really matters is what’s important and close to my heart, my family. That is what’s truly important.

Without the bad we wouldn’t be able to gauge the good or know true happiness.

This post goes out to my mentor and teacher Yaro Starak. My thoughts are with you and your Mum.

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Income Report for September 2010

Larry C. — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 06:35:19 +0000

Hey folks, sorry for the total and complete lag on my monthly income reports, lot’s of things been happening. So this is September 2010′s income report, 5 months late, but I guess better late then never. So the past few months I’ve been perfecting a system of how I build niche sites, how I place content on them, and how I get them ranking with back linking strategies and such. I’ve been working hard at this as I am putting together a membership course for niche site’s and niche marketing. I’ve been using ReviewAzon for getting some content up really quickly and highly suggest it. See my review HERE.

I’m sure there’s a few people out there who have a little extra time and would like to know how to do these little niche sites that build recurring monthly passive income. How’s about an extra $1000-$2000 a month sound to you? I’m sure for some of you it might make all the difference in the world to have a little more income than you have now. Especially in this economy, right? I know every cent counts for me, seeing as how this economy had tore my day time business apart. Which is why I turned to the internet to supplant that income.

This months(September) Amazon was way down, and in my August report it had come up from the previous month, but then went down again. This is all catch up from the past months of figuring out how I was going to make the Amazon Associates thing work for me, as it had started to actually make some income, and got me thinking. You’ll see from this month out, the Amazon income will be going up, and way up in December, but that’s another report.

So even though my Amazon was down many other things were up and going up steadily as I somewhat predicted a few income reports ago.You’ll see somethings fluctuating from this report forward but you should also see things going up. Way up.

So enough of my yakking, I’m getting ready to do a podcast with a special guest which will be released next week, so stay tuned. I’ll be catching up over the next two weeks on my income reports so stay tuned for those as well.

Thanks for stopping by.

September 2010

Amazon – 36.17

Dating Sites – 676.33

eBook Sales(Mine) – 29.94

Affiliate Sales – 223.48

Clickbank Sales – 49.21

Text Link Ads – 39.19

Google – 459.48

Side Jobs (Hosting, WordPress Installs) – 1067.00

Total September $2580.80

Last month (August) $2168.72

Increase of $412.08

September 2010 Income Report

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Choose Your Topic Wisely When Doing A Niche Affiliate Site

Larry C. — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 14:58:09 +0000

I was researching a topic last week for a few new niches and stumbled upon something that’s quickly becoming the next cool thing to have, an Android Smart Phone. With Googles new Droid, HTC’s Droid and Motorola’s Droid, there’s going to be a bunch of new cases and skins for the new smartphone craze.

I did my research, looked for a good domain and was amazed there weren’t more domains snatched up. I decided to get a couple different domains, ranging from $9-$12 at Godaddy.Com, and started building the sites. Things are going great, one site is already on the first page of Google within 2 days! Awesome!

The site looks great, cool Android type font, color is great, it’s going to be a great money maker. So I start to add products and after adding several from Amazon.Com I realize the price is so low, I’m not going to make anything. Well, at least not like I want.

A typical Android Phone Case or Cover is anywhere fro .02¢ to $20.00, with the majority being under $10.00. Wow, what a waste, sorta. I spent all this money on domains, then the time to build the sites, and then I realize the price of each item at Amazon.Com is so small, I’m going to be working hard to drive traffic to make any kind of money at all, if any.

The one saving grace is if there’s a lot of traffic it will drive my product count up, which will in turn drive the percentage I make from Amazon.Com up too. At Amazon.Com you make 4% to start. Then sell a certain number of items, and the percent goes up to 6% and then up to 6.5% and on up to 8.5% I believe. So if you have a site that sells larger, more expensive items that people are on the hunt for, like cameras, Kindles or Baby Car Seats, then you will make a nice chunk. At .02¢ a pop for an Android Case, I won’t be making squat, I mean what’s 6% of .02¢? Get my point? I will probably do a minimal of build up on these sites and then just get rid of them at Flippa.

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Niche Market Blogging or Streetfighting for Bloggers – Part 1

Larry C. — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 01:03:35 +0000

I’ve come up with a little philosophy about internet marketing, niche marketing, finding a good niche and making money online. I am sure I’m not the only person to take this approach, but it all stems from Bruce Lee’s philosophy of Jeet Kune Do. Take what works, discard what doesn’t.

With this philosophy in mind, take what works, discard what doesn’t, I formulated my own “Style” or philosophy of Blogging and Marketing. Comprised of things that work and get the job done the way that works for me, in the most efficient way possible. I call it Street Fighting for Bloggers. As I am sure you know, Street Fighting is Quick, Down and Dirty. Street Fighting for Bloggers is also Quick, Down and Dirty. It is the most efficient, fastest, easiest way to monetize a blog and start pulling income in within the first month of blogging or putting up a site, that I have found to date.

This philosophy I came up with for my own style of Niche Marketing Kung Fu, came from a need of money. I have my own company in which I do I.T. Consulting, and manage small and medium sized businesses. While I watched as my list of clientele slowly started to drop like flies, or were unable to pay me for services already rendered, I also saw my income take a scary downturn. I started seeing a bleak future for my company and my family if I didn’t start to supplement my income somehow.

I started out over a year ago selling old computers parts on eBay, for extra cash, there’s a surprising number of people who buy old computer parts on eBay and build computers with them. I supplemented my Christmas spending money with that one year. Then the economy started to take that downturn and people weren’t buying things like they used to. Instead of buying things they wanted, they ONLY bought things they Needed.

Need before want, was the message of the day and the stuff I had to sell wasn’t selling anymore. No money for luxuries, only for necessities. I had to figure something out and quick, my annual income was quickly going from 70+K a year down to under 30K, in under one year.

I started looking around and while I had a semi lucrative Dating Service I ran for people with a certain medical issue, and thought I knew about making money online, I started to see things that opened my eyes to things I hadn’t thought about before. I came across sites like Problogger, Entreprenuers-Journey with Yaro Starak and Copyblogger. I started to see that I really didn’t know all there was to know about Niche Marketing or even just making some money online.

I started reading Problogger, Copyblogger, and Yaro Staraks Blog. I also bought Darren Rowse’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, joined Yaro Staraks Blog Mastermind and joined Niche Profit Classroom and started my education of Online and Niche Marketing.

Blogging was cool and looked like it could make a nice lucrative, even “full time” income, Eventually, but that wasn’t fast enough. I needed money to support my family and quicker than the minimum year it sometimes took for a blog to start generating income. Niche Profit Classroom, was interesting, I learned about Niche Marketing and small niches, but the way they taught about websites, to me looked spammy, and in the 3-6 months I tried their method, I made exactly $0.00.

I did buy a product I really believe in and that’s Alexis Dawes “Give me Desperate Buyers Only”. With that I was able to make my first Niche Site that actually started making money, 14 days after putting the website up. I’ll talk about that in a few minutes.

All of the things I learned about seemed logical, and feasible to make an income, but it just wasn’t fast enough, I needed to be making money asap. This is when I started to do my own experimenting in blogging and niche market design. I had listened to Podcasts on Yaro Staraks blog, and with the info I gleaned from “Give me Desperate Buyers Only“, I created a site to help people get off a certain painkiller. Being someone with experience in this area, I felt I knew enough of how to successfully get off of this painkiller to write an info product that would sell.

It sold, and sold and still sells today. People are Desperate to get off of painkillers, especially those addicted to them for a long period of time. Why did this sell? Because it’s something that people are Desperate for. Something that they Need, as well as want, but the Need is much stronger. So they buy it, several times a month, and the money goes straight into my Paypal account.

After my initiate success with that first website, I tried doing sites in a manner taught to me by one of the programs I joined, to no avail. After 3-6 months of sites that weren’t making money with that style of site they promoted, I decided to make my own layout based on premium WordPress themes I had.

Street Fighting for Bloggers, is a combination/blend of Amazon Affiliate marketing, Banner Ad Marketing, and Google Adsense, all combined with good content, the basis of all good blogs and websites. With this formula you have almost instant income, which will only grow over time, as you keep adding content to the site it draws more and more traffic. As we all know: Traffic=Money.

My first month of using this formula I pulled in:

Amazon: $51

Adsense: $104

2nd Month:

Amazon: $97

Adsense: $95

3rd Month:

Amazon: $60

Adsense: $60

4th Month:

Amazon: $139

Adsense: $89

The Google Dance

The third month I had a little setback, and I’ll tell you what that setback was in a moment, but just remember this income is from just 3 websites.

On the third month, Google started doing what I call the Google Dance. Once you are indexed by Google, you will enjoy a nice period of being at the top on Page One many times, some people refer to this as the Google Honey Moon Period.

Google will index new sites and give them a good SERP ranking, being high in the first page usually, sometimes even #1. After a few weeks or a month or two, you will disappear, almost completely. Although you will still be indexed, your site won’t pop up for any search whatsoever, at least not in the first 10,20 or hundred SERPs. People get a little nervous when this happens, thinking they may have been penalized for something they didn’t do. Not to worry.

If you have done your homework and picked a good niche, ranked your keywords and use good content, you will return to the high ranks in no time at all. For me it took one site almost a whole month before this happened, on another site it was back up within 2 weeks.

Once you are back on top you will start to see the clicks and book sales start to happen again and start to increase with each month, as long as you have a good niche, and are using good content and picked your keywords wisely.

In part 2 I will be going over how I pick good niches that will bring in income almost immediately.

Part 3 will be about Constructing a Niche Site like I use to bring in monthly Passive/Residual/Affiliate Income.

Part 4 will be about content creation or re-purposing content for adding good content to your niche site.

Part 5 will be about what to do after you get bored with the site,even though it’s making money, or Blog Flipping.

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What we can learn from Bruce Lee about Blogging

Larry C. — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:10:58 +0000

Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee, started a martial arts philosophy called Jeet Kune Do, The Way of the Intercepting Fist. Rather than a system or “Style” of fighting it was more philosophy than physical art. The premise is “keep what works, discaed the useless”. Having drawn from many styles of arts in his life, but the core being from the style called Wing Chun, his own growth in martial arts was very eclectic, taking what worked for him, and leaving what didn’t. In many ways, we as bloggers and niche marketers need to do the same thing for ourselves.

I for one have been through several “Schools of Blogging” and several “Schools of Marketing”, and have found that from each there were things that worked for me, and things that didn’t. The Darren Rowse School of Blogging, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, was short and sweet, very to the point and inexpensive. Yaro Staraks, BlogMastermind, was 6 months long, and was a bit more from the wallet than Darren Rowses course, but worth every penny, as was Darrens.

From both schools of thought I took away many things that would work for me, and some things that didn’t work for me I just left alone. I then studied several schools of marketing in the Internet marketing world, one was the Micro Niche Adsense Masters Course, by John X-Factor, and the other was from CopyBlogger run by Brian Clark, learning writing techniques and traffic pulling concepts. Again both have their merits, both are good and both have things that didn’t work for me.

I also drew from several other courses, The Lazy Super Affiliate, Niche Profit Classroom and Alexis Dawes Give me Desperate Buyers Only, all of which had excellent points and things I took away with me and the rest I just left. Why carry it around if I’m not going to use it? Right?

With these philosophies I formed my own style of blogging and marketing, some are based on what I have learned from the “Masters“, and some I have developed myself. With these in mind, I would like all other bloggers reading this, especially Early Stage Bloggers, to realize that you don’t have to do everything perfectly by the book, or how the teacher explains, you should develop and find your own way of thinking and growing in the blogosphere.

There is no absolute right or wrong, sure there are right and wrong ways of doing somethings but there are no absolutes. So don’t feel as though you are doing one thing wrong if you do it differently than you were taught, but it works the way you do it.

Just remember, the Masters or A-List Bloggers started exactly in the same spot we all are or have, with only one reader, ourselves.

Available at Amazon: Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Stay Tuned for My Next Article: Streetfighting for Bloggers.

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SOLD! How I Flipped My First Website

Larry C. — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 00:29:01 +0000

Well I did it! I Flipped my first website! I made more money flipping the website than I did in all the time it was up. Which isn’t much but hey, I got some money for it.

So my first flip was a site I originally put on the auction block at flippa.com, and it received 2 bids total, but didn’t meet the reserve so it didn’t sell. I decided to put a little more content on there, and then I re-listed it for half price listing, since it didn’t sell the first time, and then I also redid the sales page on the auction.

I included the income it was receiving, the traffic stats, and some other ways it could be monetized and then crossed my fingers. It received 1 bid, which was exactly the reserve amount of $60, and it sold with that one bid. The guy then sent me all his login info for his control panel and expected me to put it up for him. However I stated in my auction that I will install the site and set it up for a small fee, to which he promptly paid me a whopping $50 to do.

So I received a total of $110 for that website, and a tiny amount of work, which for the time I spend putting into that site, wasn’t worth it, to some. To me it was worth the experience I received selling my first website. That experience gave me the courage to do it again, or at least I’m not so scared to sell another one.

The initial time I think any of us does something new, is scary. We know not the outcome, if we’ll get burned, or if we’re even doing it(whatever it might be) right. So my first one behind me, and dealing with a customer who needed help setting it up, piece of cake. I’m sure this won’t be a piece of cake for other sites I intend to sell. I’ve already moved plenty of sites from one server to another and no issues whatsoever.

The site I sold in question was www.rosebushcaretips.com, and I’ll tell you why. I started that site when I was in Niche Profit Classroom, while learning their technique for building automated income sources. They give you a “Niche Pack” which is a website, basically, content and some direction on how to put it all together, along with some article marketing, and there you have a self sustaining, automated cash flow machine, right? Well, not quite.

The Niche Packs they were giving out were more like luxury items for sale, and in this recession no one is buying luxury items. When I say luxury I mean things that you might WANT, but not NEED. they are not necessity. So no one will by in a bad economy things that are considered a luxury or a a non-necessity.

The sites looked like this: http://learnroses.com or this: http://www.secretbookofroses.com

In my opinion they look spammy and just one long sales page. You sign up for the newsletter or e-course as they usually call it, and then they send you their sales pitch after a few e-course emails. Well it just wasn’t working for me at all and I didn’t feel like that sort of sales page would sell anything, especially in this economy. So I completely changed it.

The way the site looks now, if the new owner hasn’t changed it, is what I made of it when I ditched the Niche Profit Classroom mode of thinking. I gave the e-book away, I put videos and tons of useful content on there, pictures, Amazon Associate Links and Google Adsense on there. Summer was coming and the traffic was going up, as it’s more of a seasonal thing, but it was ranking high in the search engines, so it will keep going up as long as the content is coming in steadily.

The first month I put Adsense on there it made a total of about $2, the second month it made $4 and the 3rd month before I sold it it was bringing in $7, effectively doubling each month from the time I started doing it “My Way”. The Amazon Sales were minimal but started to go up as well.

The reason I sold it is this, I wasn’t really into it, I didn’t feel like working on a website that would cost me more time to build it up. Plain and Simple, I just wasn’t into it. I love roses, I’m just not that into it.

I also want to say that while I may seem to have spoken down about the Niche Profit Classroom, I learned a great deal from them, about What’s a good Niche, and Niche Marketing. I just took away what I felt was useful.

So website flipping is somewhat addicting too, as I can’t wait to sell my next one for hopefully much much more.

In case you want to see the auction page it is here: http://flippa.com/auctions/96464

PS wait till you see my Income report for June!!!

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May Income Report

May Income Report

Larry C. — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 22:10:56 +0000

May’s income report was a slight increase from April, for a total of 1002.88. May was the month to start reorganization of my thoughts, my workflow and my direction in Internet marketing and making money online. I started the focus on writing my own product. I’m doing 2 to start with, a photography book on my style of photography, Hollywood Glamour Photography, and the second on my new way of monetizing websites, the fastest way I have found to do it so far.

While all the marketing and money making programs I have done have been good in their own way, for one reason or another, they do not monetize fast enough to help pay the bills.

Like I said This month saw a slight increase from last month, and I am forecasting a gradual but steady increase from here on out. I have a few new sites I’d like to talk about, one being a Kindle Forum. http://www.thekindleboard.com.

I am hoping to make a community of people chatting away about their Amazon Kindles, Apple iPads, and Barnes & Noble NOOKs. If you are one of my readers and wish to help me out, I could use more people signing up and posting on that board. As we all know, no one posts to an empty board. Eventually it will be monetized so if you all stick around maybe you will watch it grow?

I have also decided I have a Domain Addiction. I buy domains with the intentino of monetizing them, but I have way too much on my plate to really do anything about it. So I have decided to start a 12 step program called domain buyers anonymous. For those of us afflicted with Domain Buying Addiction. I almost bought 2 domains today but decided not too, I have tons of domains I can monetize, but just need to sit down and do it.

Do you, or someone you know, suffer from Domain Buying Addiction? We can help…hahaha…

BTW I own over 350 domains, is that sick or what? I ‘d like to know.

Anyway on to the report for this month:

Amazon – 48.43

Dating Sites – 465.17

Affiliate eBook Sales – 47.50

Text Link Ads – 57.67

Google – 284.11

Advertising – 100.00

Total – $1002.88

last month (April) – 977.53

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March Income Report – A Watched Pot Never Boils

Larry C. — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 05:02:24 +0000

I’ve finally had a better month at making some good online income, and have spent less time on the computer doing it too. I’ve made some huge leaps and bounds and while my income has only gone up about 100$ since my last income report, I’ve also spent less time doing it. WAY LESS.

First off, I’ll be giving another review of Niche Profit Classroom, as I have used it for over six months now, and not earned a single dime from it. At least not the way they teach it. But I will review that in another post. I recommend it for people needing or wanting to learn about selling ebooks or other info products, but the way they teach it and the products they sell with the program are… crap. But again that’s for another post.

So I’ve been very busy and away from the computer and this blog for WAY TOO LONG, and I need to post to this blog more frequently. So my total for this month right off the top of my head is $1,356.91. My last report was 1,294.78. The difference as I said before is I spent way less time on the computer and online doing it this month than ever.

I listen to blog talk radio sometimes and ran across this program: Adsense Masters Course, which I liked what I was hearing. I make some good money from Google AdSense but what this guy was talking is so simple and I am wondering why I didn’t think about doing this months ago, because I KNOW that Google AdSense does work.

Basically you make a site which a keyword phrase and pull traffic to the site and people click on the AdSense. It’s all White hat, no black hat crap. Otherwise I wouldn’t do it and risk losing my AdSense account. I’ve also implemented my own little twist to it too: Amazon Affiliate Sales. I will be putting out my own PDF document Product on how I do this now because I have had a steady growing stream of revenue from both the Adsense and Amazon stuff, that I feel I have finally figured it out and found the magic ingredients.

I’ve also re-discovered the real secret behind marketing and sales online: TRAFFIC. If you have no traffic, you have no one to sell to. I’ve also figured out that for me, I need to blog and work on sites that I have an interest in what I am writing or selling. For instance, my site www.rockabillylifestyle.com, or my photography Website on Hollywood Glamour Photography: Darkmans Darkroom. Oh and you should have seen the jump in traffic when I blogged about Michelle Bombshell McGee, Jesse James Mistress( I almost Photographed her once). That was a hot topic. So was the death of Peter Gowland, The Pinup Legend.

Traffic is a big part of those sites and there is a lot of interest in those topics. So I will be putting together an eBook for my own product here shortly and will be giving it away for a week and then I will be charging for it once I get some feedback.

Ok so here is the lesson with small streams of income and traffic kids, please do try this at home.

I have this money tree, it was given to me by a close friend who couldn’t take care of it any longer and it was not doing to good. I put it in a larger pot, and fresh dirt, with some fertilizer and it took off. I’ve had it about 3-4 years. I recently started trimming it just before spring of the past two years. I do this to keep it groomed and to train it to grow the way I want it to grow. I also have this idea that if I nurture this little tree, it will bring me luck and money.

So each spring I trim it and feed it and watch the new leaves sprout, but you never really see it grow by watching it. Just as you don’t see a pot of water boil if you stand there and watch it, or it takes just too damn long. So this year I took some pictures to illustrate how little streams and online marketing will frustrate the hell out of you if you start there and watch it try to grow. It will just be very frustrating, which I found out.

Each day I would look at it, and see no real change, but between photographs, which were taken only days apart from each other over a period of 2-3 weeks, you can see the difference. Little streams start to gather momentum, and then join with other little streams to start forming a larger stream of income and then the next thing you know you have a nice chunk of change coming in. See the pictures below.

The Money Tree

Little Buds Starting

Little BudsTurn into Leaves

Little Leaves Grow into Bigger Leaves

Over time things mature and really take form

The pictures were taken over a period of a couple of weeks(2), and this is how I have experienced the growth of my online presence and income slowly growing and gathering momentum. If you sit there and try to watch each click, visitor or payment that comes to your site instead of focusing on Good Content, Driving traffic and being patient, you will NEVER see any light at the end of the tunnel.

Still with something for at least 6 months to 1 year before giving up on it.

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I lied, I’m not as good as I thought, learning to blog…

Larry C. — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:32:59 +0000

Question Authority

I’m not THE guru, eating my words.

When I started this blog I was all set and ready to make money blogging, take on the world and show everyone how it was done. Well I got my words handed back to me and I am humbly asking for what little audience I have to forgive me.

I really didn’t know what I was talking about and for the most part I don’t know as much as I thought I did.

I was going to do this blog on Niche Marketing and tell you how you can make tons of money effortlessly with Niche Marketing, but the fact is, the way I was doing niche marketing was rather boring. So I make a niche site, I put an ebook on it and sell it. Oh Boy, how exciting and how many times can I talk about that? Once, maybe twice then its dead.

I make money with a few dating sites and Google AdSense. I just started blogging, and I just started to do niche sites and selling ebooks. I have made money on the ‘net before and I thought I knew everything there was to know about making money on the ‘net, but boy did I find out just how wrong I was. And for that I apologize.

Blog Profits Blueprint, learning how to blog.

So I started this course on blogging and learning how to make money blogging, or rather how to make a full time living blogging, and blogging when I want, not blogging everyday, all day long. The place I am learning this is Blog Mastermind, which is headed and built by Yaro Starak. From his site alone I have learned an incredible amount of information and technique. I have also started blogging on topics that I am comfortable with like my Hollywood Glamour Photography and Pinup Photography at Darkmans Darkroom, instead of trying to teach people how to make money on line which I know very little about. At least I realize this now.

Lazy Super Affiliate, Desperate Buyers Only and Niche Profit Classroom Reviews.

I have in my sidebar some links to techniques and methods for making money online. These methods include Affiliate stuff, Desperate Buyers Only, and Niche Profit Classroom, these are all good techniques and ways to make decent money online. I have bought these programs and used them all. I promote them because I have used them, I like them and I continue to use them, so again, I promote them. So if you want to know what I think about making money online with these programs, I highly recommend the ones I am promoting. Otherwise if they didn’t work, I wouldn’t promote them because I only promote that which I believe in.

Choir Lessons, instead of preaching to the choir.

So now my blog is shifting focus. Instead of me trying to teach you something I really don’t know much about, I am going to document what I am learning. I am doing this so others who read my blog can learn how to do it too, and learn from my mistakes and successes.

So far I have been enrolled in the Blog Mastermind course for 3 months now and I have actually started to make some small change. Not huge amounts of money but enough to help pay a few bills. Not all of it is from blogging but from some of the techniques I have learned through Blog Mastermind on building traffic. If you want to know the secret to all of these things, it’s traffic. If you have traffic, the sales and money will follow. This is one big thing I have learned from my studies so far, but it’s not the only thing.

First Good Money, aside from Google.

I have made money with Google and still do on my dating sites and other sites, but I have other websites that have traffic and I want to monetize them as well. I was hearing everyone talk about Text-Link-Ads. Since I had Google AdSense on some of these sites already, I wanted another way to monetize the sites and the one tool that I really like is Text-Link-Ads. They didn’t take all the sites I had, usually the sites with a good bit of traffic that had some back links, but the money I got from them for the Text-Link-Ads on those sites is nice!

I started in August 2009, and my first month payout was about $5, September was about $20, October was about $32 and November is about $56 and still going up, and this is from just one site. It depends on the number of links that sell and are placed on your site and each month my pay would go up because more links sold and that means more money. I still have link space on my sites that have the Text-Link-Ads on them, so I am not up to capacity yet on any of my sites. So that means I have more potential for more money on each site. I really like the Text-Link-Ads system because I do Nothing at all. They do all the work and I just collect the money, just like the banner says, “Earn while Snoring”. See my sidebar for that banner.

The big payoff, actually smaller ones adding up.

So this month will be about a $56 payout from Text-Link-Ads, and that’s from just one site. That’s $56 I didn’t have before, right? That’s a tank of gas, or a bill paid or whatever, but it’s cold hard cash! And that’s what I like right now. This economy has really screwed things up for me and my IT business, and I was getting desperate for a while. I mean really desperate. So I turned to the Internet to try to make some extra money and that’s how I stumbled upon those things in my sidebar, and the Blog Mastermind course, which has helped me immensely.

So I may not be making huge amounts of money, like huge payouts, but I am making a few smaller ones, and those add up really fast. My Google AdSense stuff, while Google prohibits me from telling how much I make, I’ll just say that I have several bills that are due at the beginning of each month that total around 300$ together. My AdSense payout takes care of those 3 bills and then I have some left over for what ever other bills I decide to put it towards.

So with Google AdSense, the Text-Link-Ads and membership fee’s from my dating sites are starting to add up quickly to pay for a good chunk of my monthly expenses. I have several other little things happening too, affiliate sales. On one of my dating sites I have an eBook download that is a sales product from Clickbank. It’s a product on dating and dating psychology and he last time I checked I had a few sales of that product which is adding up for yet another bill here or there.

Makeup… a line…

On my photography site I have affiliate banners for a makeup company called E.L.F. E.L.F. sells really cheap makeup but it’s good makeup. Since I use makeup artists on my various photo shoots, they all use makeup, and makeup is not cheap, usually. With E.L.F. Cosmetics it’s very affordable, especially if you are doing a lot of photo shoots and going through a lot of makeup. People who find my site or makeup artists looking at my site and my photography see the links and banners to E.L.F. Makeup, click on them and investigate. They see how affordable the makeup is and they buy right then and there.

Many times I get traffic from search engines, where my posts are indexed, from people searching for affordable makeup. They are searching for “really cheap makeup”, they find my posts, click on them, see the low makeup prices and buy. I in turn get a commission from that since I am an affiliate. This too I have learned from the Blog Mastermind course I am enrolled in.

Knowledge is Power.

There is a wealth of knowledge that Yaro Starak is imparting at the Blog Mastermind site and I am realizing I didn’t really know as much as I thought. This is OK, because I am open minded to the idea that I may not know as much as I thought, so it makes me teachable. Therefore I learn, and you shall too, if you follow me on my adventures in blogging in the blogosphere.

If you are interested in learning how to blog, become a blogger or learn to be a better blogger, please feel free to check out the licks in this post or the little square ads over there —> in my sidebar, you’ll be glad you did, I guarantee it.

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Super Adsense WordPress Themes

Larry C. — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:02:50 +0000

I have been so damn busy lately with all the Desperate buyers and Lazy affiliate stuff I have been doing, I haven’t done a post in forever. I am doing a ton of work lately and hopefully in the next day or so I will go into it. I have however put up a site to sell Super Adsense WordPress Themes for a super low price of 9.97. Along with that I bundled up Jason Oickles “Adsense Secrets Unleashed”. This is the most complete eBook on Adsense I have ever seen and he said I could bundle it in with my Super Adsense Wordrpress Themes. Anyway the site is here: http://www.wp-adsense-themes.net

and again the themes are going for $9.97 (cheap) and the Jason Oickle eBook “Adsense Secrets Unleashed” is free.

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