I love it, I’m sitting at my favorite coffee shop, across the steet from Starbucks, and I just finished my lunch. It’s raining outside, and I chose to be here for the rain today, that and to finish an 1100 word Book review for Ashley Karyl. The eBook review is for his book How To Photograph Nudes Like a Professional. Great book on the topic of Professional NUde Photography, and how to be successful at it.

The review has been a long time coming as I’ve taken a while to read the book, it’s 328 pages long, and life tends to get in the way at times. I’m not complaining though. I can honestly say that being able to walk to the coffee shop and just write and relax, is a really great may to make a living! I will NEVER work for “The Man” ever again. Think about it, right now it’s 2:27 pm on Tuesday afternoon, and I’m sitting here at this great little coffee shop, while most everyone else, is stuck in a cubicle.

I’m not trying to be a snot or snob, it’s just the way it is, and it’s also the way I’ve decided it shall stay. I’d like to say I am the one who did this lifestyle design, but I had a hand from someone above or somewhere. My I.T. company went down the tubes with the economy, and I was forced to look for income elsewhere. No one was hiring so I started blogging and doing affiliate sales. So far so good!

So I am just “Going with it”, going with the flow of the day, which is writing each day for a total of maybe 2 hours a day, writing on topics I like to write about, and reading the things I like to read. Not to mention I get to also spend a ton of time with my two beautiful daughters each day instead of putting them in a day care facility and letting someone else raise them.

The thought of how people get up early to take their kids to daycare or preschool, then go to work for 8-10 hours a day, then pick up the kids and bring them home to feed them then put them to bed, disturbs me. It really does. The most precious moments in my daughters lives, would be missed or gone without me even seeing them, if that was the case.

I love the rain. I also like the sunshine, but in San Diego, rain is rare and much appreciated and enjoyed by me, not to mention it’s free water for my organic garden. We grow great tomato’s.

So I guess I just wanted to vent, no not vent, but shout that I am pretty darn happy about having found this new type of lifestyle, based on writing about the things I love(photography, making money and not working a regular job). I write on several blogs that I own, about Kindles, Pain Medication, running a successful dating site, The Rockabilly Music Scene, Photography, Physical Fitness through Kettlebells, and several others I am probably not thinking about.

Yeah I run a few blogs, each makes me a tidy sum of money and each money the amount goes up more and more. The secret is to write about topics that are Hot, or about things that people want, like gadgets, or problems(mental, physical or perceived). Look around for what people are desperate for, and write about it. Don’t just write about what you think would work, because chances are it may not. Give people what they want, not what you think they want.

Which brings to mind, what would you like to know about? I will write about it.

Anyway, back to my hot Spiced Chai Latte and the rain…

My Coffee Shop Office

Related Posts:

• Quitting The Day Job, Finally.

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.

Related Posts:

• The Real Life Struggles Of An Online Entrepreneur
• Micro Niche Site Challenge – Part 3
• Micro Niche Site Challenge – Part 2
• Adversity, The Catalyst for Change and Success
• Niche Market Blogging or Streetfighting for Bloggers – Part 1

I’ve had a lot of thoughts about getting rid of a few of my blogs I have, and one idea that came to mind was flipping them. The site Flippa.com is just the place to do it. An acquaintence of mine sold her blog ebookerreaderguide.com for a bit over 1K. the person who bought it keep posting to the blog, building readers and traffic, and while all this is going on he is making money from the traffic to Amazon.com. He eventually flipped the site again on Flippa.com for 16k!

You read that right. $16,000. Of course not every site is going to command that kind of money but you can search for it on Flippa.com and see the interesting feedback and stats on the site. I’d like to do that sometime, but when you have a site that makes 900$ a money, what do you do? Keep it or sell it? which is the better of two evils?  To make 16 k it would take a little over 16 months, and by then the market could dry up, google could de-index me, all my clients who are paying could say “See Ya”, or any number of other weirdness. Then that would be the better time to sell, before things got bad. Right?

But when is the right time to sell? How do you know when it’s time to close shop and get out? Maybe it’s when you are bored of writing on the same topic day after day after boring day. Personally, I’m tired of writing about roses and how to grow them, aphid control, compost tea and when to plant knockout rose bushes. I’m just done with it. I did put the site on Flippa for a low $197 as the reserve price, and got a whole 2 bids which amounted to I think $45 total. Oh Boy. I could hardly contain myself. hahahaha…

Needless to say the site didn’t sell but I got some insite to it. maybe lowering the reserve price a bit to help start a bidding war, or no reserve at all, but then I risk lossing the site for less than I wanted. That and with all the time and effort I’ve put into the site, well, let’s just say I would be happier to keep the site and make a few dollars a month until it could sell for a higher price.

I think I am going to re-list the site and lower the reserve to $50 and see what ensues. Hopefully a bidding war starts and the price is driven up. Who knows. I’ll keep ya posted.

Related Posts:

• Income Report for October 2010
• Income Report for September 2010
• Steve Chou’s Wife Quit Her Job – Podcast Interview #3
• Choose Your Topic Wisely When Doing A Niche Affiliate Site

If you’ve wanted to join the blogging revolution and didn’t know where or how to start, how to upload or setup a blog, this is your chance now! Become a Blogger Premium is re-opening this week with Gideon Shalwick and Yaro Starak, and this program rocks.

Claim Your FREE Copy Of “The Roadmap To Become A Blogger”!
The Essential Blue Print for becoming a Blogger!

I can personally attest to the greatness of Yaro Staraks program “Blog Mastermind” and am a member myself, so I highly recommend become a blog premium if you are wanting to become one of the best bloggers in town. You can just go check out the free videos they have up, read the sales page and sign up.

There’s absolutely NO RISK  involved, so you have NOTHING TO LOSE.

Click the banner below to get there and watch the free videos and decide for yourself, plus there’s coaching and tons of tech support!!!

If I were you, and you wanted to Become a Blogger, I wouldn’t miss out on this Opportunity to belong to this group of great blogging professionals.

My Personal Endorsement!

Larry Clark.

Related Posts:

• The Real Life Struggles Of An Online Entrepreneur
• Compounding Online Income Streams and December’s Income Report
• I lied, I’m not as good as I thought, learning to blog…

Killing me with Kindness – For a Better World

One of the blogs I follow is http://www.thrillingheroics.com, because I like what this guy is doing. Sure he’s traveling the world and living the good life of an entrepreneur, but he’s also stopping at orphanages around Bangkok and Thailand and helping them. There’s one post I was just reading and watched the video here, “My Secret Recipe for 100% Guaranteed Happiness”. I couldn’t stop balling my eyes out and wanting to hold my daughter and never let her go. The feelings that well up inside me make me want to get this whole thing right, that much more. This whole Entrepreneur thing and living a better life to help others live a better life too. Damn this tears my heart out.

I know I can still help others live a better life now, but I want to make more of a difference than I can at the moment. I would love to be able to donate lot’s of money to specific organizations and charities to help little children like those. The smiles on faces and lights in the eyes are what make me live. My life changed when my daughter was born, for the better, no, for the best, it’s ever been. I see things in a whole different light, both scary and happy. Scary because I never want her to go through the shit I went through, and happy because I know she will have the best I can give her. Always.

I’ve lived in the streets, turned my life around and recovered from drug addiction, and when I was unemployable I put myself through tech school to make a better life for myself. I am not proud of where I have come from but it has made me what I am today. That is a matter of controversy to some but I say I am on the road to being the best person I can be. I am an up standing father to the most precious little girl and boy friend to a beautiful woman who stands by my side. What more could I ask for?

A better earth.

I’m for a better earth.

A place where people don’t kill themselves over religion, where people don’t have children needlessly and then abuse or abandon them, where things are better than they are now.

It all starts with one person, it starts with me, now.

What are YOU going to do for this world? ANSWER ME THAT!

I fear for my daughters world. Monsanto, the huge GMO conglomerate of a cluster fuck company. Makers of Agent Orange, Roundup Weedkiller and other deadly chemicals. The people who fund mass corruption. The patent holders of a life organism, as well as other corrupt people, places and ideals. If we don’t change things NOW, we’re going to be up shit’s creek without a paddle. I’m serious, why do you think people are speaking out about global warming and other changes in climate? It’s not just their imagination. It’s real. I can tell you my parents who live in D.C. where is used to snow more have not experienced snow fall like they used to 25 years ago, it’s much less due to global warming.

Have you noticed there’s not many protests except those protesting abortion and such? The passionately angry? The people who are not going to stand for any more of whatever they believe in? It sickens me when people complain about where the world is heading and then tell me they didn’t vote, or didn’t do something that could have changed the outcome results of a poll or decision. Go fuck Yourself, if you bitch and complain about something but didn’t do something that could have changed things, IT’S YOUR FAULT ALONE. Fucking Tard.

Passionately Angry, yeah that’s me. It bothers me to see protests for things that people don’t really understand. It bothers me to see no one protesting things they do understand and do nothing about. If you are sick and tired of the way things are, then do something about it. Stand for something or fall for anything. Go to Jail for it. Be a hero. Do something for the good of humanity.

I’ve been reading and listening to Timothy Ferris’ The 4-Hour Workweek book and audio, and am impressed beyond belief at how simple he makes it sound. I really like the audio book best and the book as a reference companion. I usually take the audio with me to the gym and on the road when I am driving. It’s funny when I’m at the gym, and I start busting out laughing and all heads turn and I remember where I am. Oh yeah, I’m at the gym. It’s that funny.

I’m implementing a lot of what Ferris talks about in his book. From getting a VA(Virtual Assistant) to answering calls only at 2 time periods per day, to responding to emails only at 2 time periods per day too. I’m doing this to free up needed time to enjoy whats really important to me. My Daughter.

I don’t have a steady 9-5 job, I don’t want one and nor have I had one in over 5 years of being laid of from my last employer. I will never go back and work for “The Man” ever again. If I can help it, and I’ve done pretty good so far. I prefer to get up at 8am or earlier and have my tea, stretch and get a cheese danish from the local coffee shop. THEN come home, check email and start my days proceedings.

Which brings to mind another thought I had yesterday while standing on the corner trying not to get hit by all the mad people rushing to work, while putting mascara on in the mirror and trying to drive to make the almighty buck. Yeah that life just isn’t for me anymore. The mascara part I mean, no really the driving to work for a 9-5′er and being tied to someone else’ money making venture. I stood there and realized just how lucky, maybe not lucky but how good I have it.

I’m standing there, cheese danish in hand for my 8 weeks pregnant(Again ) girlfriend, who is having the weird cravings thing, watching the line of frantic people driving off to work. Standing there wondering if I’m going to be able to cross the street, because no one is stopping to let me cross even though pedestrians have the right of way.

Yeah, I’ll continue to read the current book I’m reading, which I suggest you do as well, “The 4-Hour Workweek“, and think about what YOU are going to do to better this world, when you have the money to quit your job.

I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to stop in on Cody McKibben on my way to Angkor Wat someday if he’s still there when I get there. I’ll spend some time changing diapers at the orphanages and being grateful for what I have, help out where ever I can, then head off to see the jungle temples in Cambodia.

I give myself two years to make it.

Larry

Related Posts:

• Dan Andrews @ Lifestyle Business Podcast – Podcast Interview #4
• Book Review: The 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris

Give me 31 Days and I’ll Give You a Dramatically Better Blog… Guaranteed

At least that’s what Darren Rowse is saying, and I believe it. I had been following Darren for a little while, I bought and downloaded the workbook “31 days to build a better blog“. After purusing it for a few days I decided to go ahead and start the workbook exercises. Not only did I see a dramatic increase in traffic in the space of just a few days but I learned more about blogging than I ever knew before.

This was before I joined “Blog Mastermind“. Now BM is a much more robust program in which you are going for 6 months through a complete schooling on blogs, blogging, monetization and promotions, which is great but if you can’t afford $97 a month for 6 months, especially in this economy, I would suggest getting Darren’s 31DBB.

It’s ONLY 19.95

The eBook is ONLY 19.95 and it comes with a bonus podcast of Darren answering questions that people had submitted. It’s an exercise a day for 31 days and you can do it at your own pace. It will go through all the things a good blogger does in order to generate traffic, write sticky posts and have return readers. The next thing is how to monetize and make money. I mean if your going to blog yoy might as well make it worth your while, especially if you’re good at it, right?

Special Bonuses

Unfortunately, I didn’t post about the special bonus Darren just had with 31DBB, which was 3 bonuses, one a PDF report and 2 podcasts which 2 successful bloggers from the blogosphere, Neil Patel from quicksprout.com and Leo Babauta from Zenhabits.net

I really enjoyed both podcasts but they were both definitely on either side of the tracks as far as personality was concerned. Leo a more relaxed guy and very minimalistic in some of his approach, and Neil much more of a type A kinda go gettum business attitude. Not saying Leo is not,  they are just two totally different guys altogether. Which was really refreshing. I me I had been going through some bit of burnout lately and listening to the two of them really got me pumped up and back at it again.

Hearing the business minded Neil and then listening to the relaxed attitude of Leo, helped get me back on track and realized I need to stop being a perfectionist. I feel thatif you are trying to be a perfectionist, you are setting yourself up for FAILURE. Why you ask? Because it will NEVER be perfect in teh eyes of a perfectionist, and since this is the case you will FAIL.

I know, it still doesn’t stop me from being a perfectionist, but at least I can try and MAKE PROGRESS, NOT PERFECTION.

As David Risley says; “Don’t worry be crappy”, just know when good, is good enough.

Random Posts:

• Super Adsense Wordpress Themes
• Become a Blogger Opens This Week Again
• Blog Flipping when bored with your website
• Popup Domination Review – An Honest One.
• The Secret to Successful Blogging or Marketing.
• 10 Steps to Start and Run a Successful Dating Site
• My office the coffee shop, one of them
• The Big Moo by the Group of 33, and Seth Godin

Compounding Little Income Streams to make Bigger Income Streams.

I’d like to go over Decembers earnings and how Compounding Little Online Income Streams can help to form Bigger Streams of Income. This post is meant to encourage those having a hard time with making money online, by seeing how it’s working for me. Decembers income report is much better than the last one I put up, about $450.00 better than the last one. The last one was around $800.00.

Decembers Report.

So far the figures from December of 2009, which total $1,294.78, are as follows:

Dating Site I Run – $338.89

TLA(Text Link Ads) – $52.19

Direct Advertising on my www.RockabillyLifestyle.com website – $250.00

Photography Sales (I’m a photographer too) – $150.00

Various Affiliate Sales – $173.70

Contextual Ad Placement on 5 sites – $330.00

Again the total of all these is $1,294.78 which is pretty darn cool if you ask me, it’s gone up about $400 since my last earnings report, that I actually took down a while ago.

Compounding effects of little income streams.

In Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind Program, which I am enrolled in, he talks about compounding: “The traffic secret that every blogger knows is the power of compounding.” I am now seeing the effects of compounding this month and I’ve only been doing this for about 7 months now. I think Iam doing pretty good considering I have been totally flaking on a couple of my blogs. I have several blogs I run, most of which are hobby related and stuff I am very interested in. I know some people do blogs on topics they could care less about, but I just can’t do that. I have to have a passion in order to write about something, otherwise people will see right through me and know it’s fake.

So above I have 6 different little income streams. Each one alone, is not much money, however the effect and power of all of them together is worth $1,294.78 per month to me. That’s most of my rent payment right there. In today’s economy my day job is going downhill. I am an IT consultant and I manage 6 different companies networks and computer systems. Several of those companies are in debt to me by 3+ months, and I haven’t been paid in those 3 months by them. That’s several thousand dollars that I am out each month and needed to supplement that somehow.

Where and How I started.

I got my start accidentally through Ebay. I sell Hellraiser Puzzle Boxes on Ebay and I was also interested in Costume and Vintage Jewelry. I educated myself on the jewelry and I make and sell the puzzle boxes on Ebay. I realized when things weren’t selling that well on Ebay lately, that somethign was terribly wrong. That’s about when I realized the economy was going downhill fast and I needed to find a way to supplement.

Looking for an alternative.

I started looking around, bought a couple things, several bottles of  Snake Oil as I was still learning what’s legitimate out there and whats not, and that’s when I stumbled upon Blog Mastermind, For Desperate Buyers Only, Niche Profit Classroom and Confessions of a Lazy Super Affiliate by Chris Rempel. I also stumbled upon 31 days to Build a Better Blog which is the best 19.95 I’ve spent on a product in a long time. If you want to learn about blogging and making an income, I suggest reading that. If you’ve got $97.00 a month you can spare for 6 months, then I Highly Suggest Signing Up for Yaro’s Blog Mastermind. That is a COMPLETE course in and of itself and I highly recommend it. If you don’t know anything at all about Blogging, what it is and isn’t, then I would suggest checking into Yaros “Become a Blogger Course”. This will teach you what is blogging, how to set it up completely and how to star blogging and make your first money, even if you have NO CLUE about blogging.

Optimizing what I already had going.

I had been running a dating service for people with a certain health issue for 13 years, when I started blog mastermind. I was making some money with it monthly, but not as much as I am starting to make now. In the blog mastermind forums you will meet all kinds of people willing to help you out for free. They are all in there for several reasons, to make money, to learn more about making money online, and helping others make money online too.

I found a few people who helped me to look at my dating site, optimize the keywords to pull in more traffic and helped to optimize the contextual advertising on the site to bring in more money from that as well. This was about 4 months ago and I posted about the site and my findings. It’s been 4 months now and the income from the site keeps going up a little bit each months, as does the income streams from my other little streams.

The Most Supremely Ultimate Important thing.

The most supremely important thing I’ve found about all this making money online stuff is being consistent. Through consistency we built discipline, and through discipline we are able to push through the times when we feel like giving up, and putting the blog down. I hit a little bt of burnout a few Weeks or months ago, as I have been doing this on several blogs for a little while now.  Through consistency I have been building traffic which is the other most important thing about making money online. Traffic Traffic Traffic. Without it you have NOTHING. It is where all sales are generated and where all word of mouth comes from and all incoming links come from. If you don’t believe me, try selling something to nobody. Then you will understand the importance of Traffic! That and good content.

Enjoy your week!

Larry

Related Posts:

• “Desperate Buyers Only”, and “Confessions…”
• Income Report for October 2010
• Income Report for September 2010
• Income Report for August 2010, Niche Profit Course and ReviewAzon
• July Income Report and a Day in my “Glamorous” Life.
• June Income Report
• May Income Report
• April Monthly Income Report

I’m subscribed to Copyblogger as should all of you be, and I got the post for the day and it talks about speech recognition software. I’ve been “playing” around with speech recognition for a little while, but only getting frustrated with it as it works half the time if that. I watched the video at the second link that Copyblogger listed which is at Problogger. Leave it to a guy in a wheelchair to come up with the Ultimate Guide to Speech Recognition. Certainly he needed it, but he took his disability and used it to his advantage and came up with Speech Recognition for Bloggers: The Ultimate Guide

I give major kudos to Jon Morrow for not only overcoming what most people who just succumb too, but to overcome and move past his disability and become an integral and hard to replace member of one of the best blog teams on the net. I myself am glad to have watched this video because I was getting ready to trash the software and mic, but now I think I can make this work for me.

Check out the video and come back and give me a comment or two. See what you think from this guy in a wheelchair…

Enjoy…

Related Posts:

• The Real Life Struggles Of An Online Entrepreneur
• Amazon Trademark Infringement, Ooopsss…
• Blogging, One Year Later, Where I’ve Been, Where I’m Going…
• What I have learned from blogging

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.

Related Posts:

• The Real Life Struggles Of An Online Entrepreneur
• Become a Blogger Opens This Week Again
• Flowing with The Current Economy
• Compounding Online Income Streams and December’s Income Report
• “Desperate Buyers Only”, and “Confessions…”

Today is my daughters 1st birthday. I am taking her to the San Diego Zoo and taking her directly to the petting zoo. I want her to get a feel, literally, for the animals. It’s her day today and I want to make it special. Although she may never remember this day, she can still have a really good day. She is/was the best thing that happened to me, aside from my wife.

In trying to make ends meet in this crappy economy, I have started to really pursue blogging in an effort to increase my income, as well as do more niche marketing. I already do niche marketing in several hot niche markets, but I also run several dating sites that do rather well for me.

The thing that Blogging had taught me about running these other sites is word choice, phrasing and meaning of what I am writing. I am still working on sentence structure and punctuation.  It’s been a long time since I was in English class. I have been studying things like copy writing, sales techniques and formulating a phrase that will emotionally grab someone and hopefully get them to purchase a product.

I have sat here in reflection of what I am writing, where I have been, where I am going and how far I have come in my life. I’ve come a very long way, done many incredible things and am surviving and living with a life threatening illness.  I am a miracle in some peoples eyes, but sometimes a loser in my own. I have learned to focus,  to have follow through and complete the task at hand. I have also learned patience, but still need to work on that.

The one thing I have learned, through blogging, is there are no get rich quick schemes, it takes time, effort and hard work. I have learned to stop and smell the roses. I think the most important thing I have learned through blogging is to appreciate what I already have, and not focus on what I don’t have. Life is good, and it is getting better. I can’t say enough about how having an attitude of gratitude has helped me to really get the most out of life.

That’s it kids, have an attitude of gratitude and the universe will be yours and it will give.

Have a great day,

Larry C.

Related Posts:

• The Real Life Struggles Of An Online Entrepreneur
• Amazon Trademark Infringement, Ooopsss…
• Blogging, One Year Later, Where I’ve Been, Where I’m Going…
• Speech Recognition for Bloggers – The Ultimate Guide
• The Secret to Successful Blogging or Marketing.