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. 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.

Related Posts:

• What we can learn from Bruce Lee about Blogging

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!!!

Related Posts:

• May Income Report

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.

Random Posts:

• SOLD! How I Flipped My First Website
• Aweber email service Hacked?
• Hellraiser Puzzle Box meets the economy from hell
• 31 Days to build a better blog
• My Review of “Desperate Buyer Only”

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:

• Compounding Online Income Streams and December’s Earnings Report
• I lied, I’m not as good as I thought, learning to blog…

The 4 Hour Work Week Book Review by Timothy Ferris

I sat at my gym on the outside upper deck over looking The San Diego Skyline, after finishing the audio version of Timothy Ferris’ “The 4 Hour Work Week”, and I had to give pause for a few minutes and start to do an assessment of my own life, goals and direction I am headed. I’m not happy that I am not further along in my goals, but I am happy that I have a good start on my four hour work week,  I just wish I was further along in the trail.

After going to his website and signing in and watching his videos of him in real life doing the things he talks about, or walking the talk, this guy is the real deal and is putting it all out there for all of us to grab. After reading this mans book, I want to be doing the things I want to do, like he does. That simple. I know several other bloggers I watch and read who are doing the same type of thing, and I long for the life of the New Rich. I’m already living this way but on a smaller scale. I am looking for this book to help me move along at a quicker pace.

I am happy at 45 I have already got a start on this path with several things in place making me the money to survive in this world and bad economy. I am Lucky, that I got rolling when I did, because I am not sure where I would be right now had I not started my online entrepreneurship when I did. The economy pretty much wiped out my day job as an I.T. Consultant and Network Engineer. My Clients couldn’t pay me and my income from that pretty much went from 40-50k to 20k or there about, but I haven’t really looked at the damage yet, and I am not sure I really want to.

What I am seeing now, is an upswing in my income from online enterprises and have been able to maintain my previous lifestyle so far with just the income from the things I am doing online. This is a good thing because I am only doing a “few” things so far. I can only imagine when I have several more in place, on autopilot and am doing nothing but walking with my daughter to the park everyday planning my escape to China, for my hike up Wu dang Mountain. The birthplace of Chinese Kung Fu and my personal quest for self indulgent fulfillment.

The Good

“The 4-Hour Workweek“ or 4hww is a GREAT read and an excellent audio. I listen to it in the car, at the gym and at home sometimes but I usually just listen to it in the car and at the gym. I liked the audio because the tones and inflections of the spoken word, make it that much more memorable, and hilarious as all hell. I mean I would listen to it at the gym and when I would start laughing people would turn around and stare at me, it was really funny at times.

4hww starts with Tim’s story, of living the 9 to 5 hell many of us have and still do, fortunately, I do not anymore. The book is broken into chapters but the chapters are contained in steps 1-4. His chronology of how things happened and why we need his book. Yes if You want freedom from the drudgery of 9 to 5, you NEED this book, it’s mandatory reading.

Step 1: D is for Definition, it defines some terms, theoretical situations which I know some people will have a hard time grasping. There’s always someone who has a hard time grasping because they can’t wrap their heads around certain actions and realities. But if you have an open mind and can see things in action you will have no problem with his definitions and realities. This book is for real.

Step 2: E is for Elimination, which talks about eliminating things from our life that suck the life and time out of us. To automate and eliminate. Email for one, has been the bane of my existence as I have over 20, yes I said over 20 accounts I check daily, or used to check daily, I don’t anymore. Phone calls that meander along with not much to accomplish but waste time and breath. The hem and haw’ers, that want your help and suck the life and time from you like the vampires they are and how to deal and get rid of them.

Step 3: A is for Automation, which talks about outsourcing things that we should never do again, unless we really want to. Income on Autopilot, finding what he calls the muse, a “Thing” that we flirt with and it brings us income. Our “Muse” our passionate little friend who gives us that which we long for, how to test it, and put it on autopilot.

Step 4: L is for Liberation, liberation from the previous life of the office automaton, disappearing from that life, mini-retirements and adding life after subtracting work. Most of us will definitely freak out after that happens, because of our “conditioning”, and he definitely walks us through how to deal with life after there is no work involved. One thing that he talks about is service to others. Helping others in need and making our life more meaningful. If any of you have ever helped out at a soup line or given food out to the homeless at Christmas or Thanksgiving, then you know how good it feels. Service to others is important, but not necessary, but I personally can guarantee you it will help to keep you sane, after adding life after subtracting work.

The last chapters which are not labeled as chapters are appendages that have all the needed referenced materials, companies, phone numbers, websites  and all the needed forms or anything else he talked about and he answers ALL THE QUESTIONS. His website also has a forum and additional chapters, which are available to people who won the book or audio, because there’s a secret password on a certain page, to get you into the forum and additional chapters.

If you haven’t read this book yet you are in Luck. There is a newly revised book with additional materials and you can still get it for less than $20 American. The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated is a must have and should be considered a Tome for the New Rich. While reading his blog there was a video, well several really, but one was made for the history channel and if you want to see this man in action, walking his talk you should definitely see this video.

The Bad

The only bad I can say is I now have to go buy the new edition as it has case studies from other New Rich and How they Did It. In his first printings, Timothy had a small few to choose from as examples aside from himself. Now that his book has been out for a while there’s been a lot of people step forward to share their story about how they did it. Of course buying his book all over again is something I would rather not do but I am going to do it knowing how good the first printing was. That is the ONLY bad thing I can think of about this book.

I can’t say enough about this book other than I am already reading and listening to it all over again, and need to get the new edition. I’ve started on my quest for another new, highly profitable “Muse” as he calls them, and I have set in motion the process of getting my passport. I’m heading to Wu dang Mountain in China, the birthplace of Chinese Martial Arts to fulfill a life’s Dream. I know this book has already changed my life and there’s a lot to learn, so reading is several times will have to happen for most of us.

I hope that this review has been helpful for many and that you find fulfillment in your journeys. If you intend on buying it please use my affiliate link here to The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris.

UPDATE: 7/3/10 I recently downloaded the New Expanded and Updated version of 4hww, and liked the new case studies chapters and such, the thing I didn’t like was the way it was read. The narrator, Ray Porter, didn’t have the pizzaz he did in the first reading. I really liked teh first reading and it made me laugh out loud many times.  While the second reading is still good, it just didn’t have the punch the first reading did. Don’t, NOT  get it because of this, it’s still good, this is just a personal observation or preference of mine.

Enjoy,

Sincerely,

Larry Clark

Related Posts:

• Killing me with Kindness – For a Better World

What can a little old man tell us about making money online?

The Little Old Man in the video is Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido. The philosophy of the art is to use the opponents energy against the opponent. Another term for this is Economy of Motion, using as little energy as possible to execute the maximum results. The old man teaches how to use as little effort to over come huge obstacles or opponents. As you can see in the video the little guy is effortlessly overcoming one, two, four and five or more larger opponents, with what seems to be very little effort.

An internet marketer tends to want want to make money without having to be tied to his keyboard all day long. Otherwise known as Life hackers, so we can do other things in life that are more important. Like enjoying the day and smelling roses. Right?

In Internet marketing or making money online, we try to make things as easy as possible. To automate as much as possible, so we are NOT as much of the picture as possible. To outsource as much as we can, so we can live a life of as little work as possible and enjoy our time instead of working our lives away.

One such service I use for automating email lists and newsletters is Aweber Email Service. This service is an auto responder service and newsletter service that ensures out emails get delivered and not filtered out like spam. It’s called a double opt in email list, which means first the person must sign up for it, then they must also confirm that they want in. This way we know and they know for sure they are not going to be spammed.

Another such way of  automating is to have a product that sells itself and is delivered by itself, for example, an eBook. I use a service called e-Junkie to handle my sales transaction and then deliver the product for me so I don’t have to. People will go to my niche sites, click the buy now button, and it takes them to a page that e-Junkie is handling the payment with, they pay and when the transaction is complete, e-Junkie takes them to a download page and sends them a download link for later should they need it. Simple and all this for just $5 a month. What a Deal!

With several niche sites that have products that sell themselves, I can leave my house and go to the beach, take my daughter for a walk or whatever else I wish to do and not have a 9-5 ball and chain, I mean Job, that I am tied too. This is but one of the ways I earn an income which I am not directly involved with all day everyday of the week. It is self containing, automated and it is with economy of motion that I can set other things in motion, like more niche sites that self by themselves. A great place to learn about the automated selling machines is Niche Profit Classroom, for which I am a graduate of and am happy with the outcome of these little money makers.

Random Posts:

• My Review of “Desperate Buyer Only”
• My office the coffee shop, one of them
• Aweber email service Hacked?
• Book Review: The 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris
• Remove Google Background Image: How To Get Rid Of the New Background Image on Google

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:

• What we can learn from Bruce Lee about Blogging
• Speech Recognition for Bloggers – The Ultimate Guide
• Duplicate Content Hurts EVERYONE
• Compounding Online Income Streams and December’s Earnings Report
• Confessions of a Lazy Super Affiliate

What people are buying and what they are not.

This economy has made things a little rough, as people aren’t buying luxury items as much, but what they are buying are things that they are desperate for, things that will either help them to Make Money Online, something that is a necessity, or something that they are desperately seeking a fix for. That would be something like a medical condition, or something that affects their social life or romantic life.

Seeking Desperate Solutions.

One such problem people would seek a fix for would be people who have little red bumps (aka Keratosis Pilaris) on their arms or legs. A “bride-to-be” might search desperately for something that will get rid of those little red bumps before her wedding. Why? So when she is wearing her wedding dress, she is not going to be embarrassed of those little red bumps. See my picture?

Seeking Desperate Fixes.

Another thing might be for a heart broken ex-boyfriend wanting to get his ex girlfriend back. He might seek out something on the internet and buy an eBook or a report on “How to get your ex back in 30 days“. This is the sort of thing people are buying right now so being able to adapt and change with the ebb and flow of the changing economy, is what is going to make or break an online entrepreneur.

One product that helps to find or identify niches that people are needy for or desperately seeking is Alexis Dawes’ “Desperate Buyers Only”. I have bought it, I have read it and I have gotten the revised edition as she gives free updates, and I can’t tell you how much this has helped me. My first ever desperate buyer only product that I made, a report on how to get off of painkillers, is consistently making me money each month and I can tell you it’s paying a couple of my bills each month.

I will be putting out a few more “desperate buyers only” products soon, as soon as I clear my plate of a few other projects that need to be tied up. Then maybe I will be making a fortune but until then I am happy with how things are going so far. As Alexis says on her sales page “You DON’T have to be some big-name guru to make thousands of dollars a month selling information products online”. I wasn’t a guru, I still am not a guru but I am doing what I set out to do when this economy started going south: Making extra income from sales generated on the internet to supplement my income.

Related Posts:

• “Desperate Buyers Only”, and “Confessions…”
• My Review of “Desperate Buyer Only”
• Yaro Starack, at Entrepreneurs Journey
• April Monthly Income Report
• I lied, I’m not as good as I thought, learning to blog…

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:

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

I stumbled upon this article tonight that just about puts it all out there for everyone to use. The articles goes from start to finish the steps to building a niche site and marketing it and page ranking it. This is a really good article and I highly recommend anyone who is into Niche to read it. It’s a 2 part article and part two is already there as well.

Building a Niche Minisite (Part 1)

On another note, my wife and I were able to get a baby sitter tonight and go out on a date. We went to Sushi, for the first time in 11 months. The last time was when my parents were in town visiting us and the new addition to the family, our daughter Sarah. So tonight was really nice to just get out, away from teh house, and have a little quiet time together eating raw fish. Yum!

We then went down by the bay and drove the harbor front, and stopped in Little Italy for a coffee. There was an art walk going on and interestingly enough there were a few older folks out speaking Italian. Imagine that, in Little Italy.

Well I am off to bed, I will be back at it tomorrow as I start work on the new niche sites I have planned for the Case Study #1. I am also going to get started the 3 new dating sites I am bringing up for 3 other different niche sites. Yeah I have a lot on my plate right now, but hey, that’s how I roll.

Ciao…

Related Posts:

• April Monthly Income Report
• Flowing with The Current Economy
• One of my Niche Sites – Disclosure.
• 10 Steps to Start and Run a Successful Dating Site
• My Review of “Desperate Buyer Only”