I estimate that I started this journey to freedom through internet marketing around 800 days ago. I reckon I’ve spent thousands of dollars on learning products, articles, websites and outsourcing. I still work a full time job. [Update: I'm working 3 days a week now]

Uncommon? I doubt it.

But not strictly necessary either.

I’m not defeated. If I don’t give up then I’ve not failed right? So I just simply made the decision not to give up.

Here’s what I’ve learned.

  • It’s a LOT more effort than I thought it would be. Yes the sales letters make you think it’s easy to follow someone’s system and to be honest it is. It’s just that it takes a hell of a lot of effort to do it well.  It’ll be nice to have a 6 day weekend but I’m going to have to work for it. Creating content, commenting on blogs, forums, spinning articles, installing software, uploading images, using research software, directory submissions, adding more content, managing adwords . . etc. Takes up your time very quickly.
  • You have to focus on one system. Pick a system, any system. Well ok not any. Try and find one that you trust. I recommend Affiloblueprint. It’s the one I’ve ended up following. I don’t know if that’s because I’ve learned a lot through mistakes and now I’m ready for it or because it is easy to follow.
  • Quality content is essential. I used to think I could just stick up articles without editing or reading them. I was wrong. It’s much more valuable to have good quality than lots of quantity. Try spending more time on creating real value for your readers.
  • If you’re still young, don’t wait. Start now. If you start now, you’ll never need to get that job that you’ll end up hating and struggling to try and escape from. Start small, start frugally and build it up over 12 months. Your friends won’t support you but they’ll be green with envy when you start travelling the world.

That’s it so far. Except that I’ve also learned that I hate link building but love building websites. So I’ve outsourced the link building.

Hallelujah.

No doubt my next 800 days will teach me even more and I might even be an expert by then.

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Website Building: Week 15

by Keith on January 20, 2010

It’s still a bit hit & miss with the PPC so I’ve reduced my max spend to $10 a day. I got myself Perry Marshall’s Definitive Adwords guide so once I’m through that I’ll have another go.

I do feel I’ve learnt a few things though. Particularly to keep landing pages and adgroups very ‘tight’ and not to over bid once my CTR is reasonably good. I’m yet to advertise on the content network so more fun and games to go there.

I’ve been doing more blog commenting and forum posts to improve my authority. Still not really enough though so I’m looking forward to my outsource company starting on Monday.

I need to find out if they will be doing AMA submission and Ezine articles for me.

I have half a dozen ideas for new sites but I’m resisting the urge to start building them. This usually ends up with them being built, looking pretty good but having no traffic. No use to man nor beast.

I’ve also been listening to Teaching Sells again. They have a neat little “affiliate squared” model in there that I’d like to try but I have to focus, focus, focus on one thing at a time.

I’ might take Clayton’s lead and start checking my clickbank account only once a week. I think that would do me the world of good.

That last sale today came from a site I put up and did no SEO on so I’m not really counting it as progress, even though it’s nice to have.

weeklysalesreport20jan2010

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Website Building: Week 14

January 14, 2010

This week I’ve reduced my PPC campaign to include just one adgroup for one product. I realise I went in full steam ahead with a dozen adgroups and it was just too much.
So word of advice: Choose one product review to advertise and use only product related names to start with. I can expand it [...]

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Website Building: Week 13

January 5, 2010

I’m about half way through my challenge. With just less than 3 months to go before i need to hit my target income I have been getting a bit negative and hopeless on occasion.
However, the good thing is I recognise this feeling from previous attempts at building an affiliate business and it stems from not [...]

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PPC progress: Week 3

December 20, 2009

So annoyingly enough I tweaked my ad campaign with misplaced optimism having made 3 sales in my first week. I widened the number of keywords to included non-product based keywords and upped my bids.
No sales.
Argh! Why not?
So I hemorrhaged cash for 7 days before pausing my campaigns.
This morning I activated a 3 of my ad [...]

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PPC progress

December 4, 2009

I was surprised and delighted to get a sale within the first 24 hours of my PPC campaign running. From only 5 click throughs I sold a copy of Guitar Superstars.
I’m guessing this is not going to be typical but I had a little celebratory dance anyway
I am assuming it came from [...]

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Week 10 – Starting PPC

December 1, 2009

Well I’m in week 10 (or thereabouts) of this project and at the moment there’s not much happening.
When I say that, what I really mean is that I don’t have much traffic to my guitar site. However, I shouldn’t really expect much since I’ve only been doing SEO on it for a month or so.
So [...]

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Week 9

November 23, 2009

So I finally got my 6 part mini series up and running at www.greenguitarguy.com. I’m glad I finally got it finished as it was quite an uphill struggle being that I’m not used to editing and rendering video.
I finally got the files small enough but with good enough quality by using Camtasia to save them [...]

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The 4 Key Thoughts I’m Finding Useful In Building My Business

November 17, 2009

Recently I was reading Escape 101, an ebook about location independent living and how to take a sabbatical. The first half of the book is dedicated to getting in the right state of mind and there are 4 steps to achieving this.
It struck me that these 4 steps could serve us well in our affiliate [...]

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Week 8

November 9, 2009

This weeks tasklist

Upload my 6 Part Mini-Course lessons that I’ve been recording this week. They all seem to be too big even when they’re compressed! It’s driving me nuts!
2 blog comments and 2 forum posts
5 new articles for my site
1 Ezine article
3 articles into AMA

Here’s my traffic snapshot for this month. A weird spike on [...]

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