Week In Review + Circles of Influence

And there we have it, sale number 2 after a fairly short amount of time. I realized a few days ago I've only really been doing this 3 months, 4 months if you count when I was considering learning as doing, which it really isn't, so I have to say I'm kind of proud of having made such headway. But of course, this sale meant infinitely more to me than my first sale simply because it didn't feel strictly like luck. And I think I've isolated my biggest problem (aside from laziness, which I just deal with by writing an article and then eating a Crunch bar... I have no idea why I thought that would be funny, but who cares). Oh, and the biggest reason this sale felt better was because it came from my very first campaign, and the one which was done strictly with article marketing.

Anyway, I should just fully recap the week now, I guess, so let's get to it:

Last week I did a few articles. Not nearly as many as I should've. I told myself I'd slow down and stop focusing on quantity purely for article marketing, mostly because it just doesn't work for me. I know a lot of people could care less what their articles say so long as they inspire a click from the prospective prospect. But me personally, I can't just sling crap out knowing its crap (in my mind). I always have to reread what I write, and re edit stuff. That being said I'm still pretty lucky in that I type extremely fast and am a kind of natural writer- stringing words together is as easy as stringing... er.... insert simile here... And I rarely mispell words, even when typin fast. My grammar are also excellent without hardly trying.

Argh, getting off subject for the sake of hilarity again! Anyway, I did a few articles, and created a few blogs for later down the road, and also started working with CPA Networks. I applied to a few and figure I'd see what the buzz is about. So far been accepted by some using this very same blog. So for those of you that feel technically challenged or like your site isn't good enough, don't.

Aside from applying to CPA networks and all that jazz, I also started studying one of the most annoying and yet sometimes one of the most effective types of internet marketing (well, really it's a subset of affiliate marketing, but who cares): email marketing. I've been thinking of starting an email campaign. Truth is I'd been bugged for forever by my mom (who I'm now "teaching" internet marketing to, by the way) to start putting an opt in on my sites. It seems like the best marketers have email lists consisting of dozens of thousands of people, and I could actually see getting a list of a couple thousand by this time next year, but my problem with email campaigns is the whole market based nature. It seems like there's only really money in a few niches, which makes sense when you think about it. People in the "get rid of bad breath" niche may be interested in clearing other odors down the line, but I doubt you'd get many like that.

I haven't done much research, but it seems like the biggest and most profitable lists are in the make money online niche. And I honestly don't want to be one of those guys that constantly rehashes obvious info to people to build a "connection" and then toss the next JV product (Google Sniper's all the rage lately) to them like it's the holy grail just hoping to pick up a sale. I'm sure every product launch would bring me a cool $1000-$5000 if I got a big enough list (5000 people at a 2-3% conversion). Now I'm not dissing all "gurus" in general; I'm on a couple of lists and I like the way they do their marketing, where they don't constantly throw out new products only pausing to give "helpful information" that's nothing more than "And to get your rankings up, you need to backlink! STAY TUNED FOR MY NEXT PROMO!!!"... Okay, sorry for the rant, but anyway, I don't want to be that guy. Not to mention I barely know enough to get a sale every 250 hops (yeah, that second sale took 263 hops to the merchant's page, maybe minus a few for me hopping on my own link) so I sure as hell shouldn't be trying to teach anyone. I think I'll start a make money online list that passes on my experiences one day, but I won't actively monetize it (I.E., look for promotions to toss to people reading). If I find a fair product- which, by the way, George Brown's Google Sniper actually is a pretty good product if you're fairly new, look for a review of it later- then I'll suggest picking it up (yeah, affiliate link).

Well, that's my thoughts on email marketing.

I also feel like I should let the -2 readers (that's right, so few people read that this blog is actually written by them... or something) know that I've been reading Mike Iser's blog. This guy is almost as amazing as Ben from make money online with SEO. And that "almost" is in terms of earnings output, not saying anything about his work ethic, which makes him look like the Bruce Lee to Ben's Chuck Norris. Dude works seriously hard. I think he even did 101 articles in one day once without really meaning to. Talk about getting in the zone! Anyway, I got interested in who the man behind the money was when reading, like I usually do, and found out that he actually started out with the NicheBlogger. I then thought about how I started out in a Scrubs style voice over, and realized I didn't know exactly.

Note: The following paragraphs will contain an exorbitant amount of links.

I usually think of myself as, for lack of a better word, a Grizzly follower. Not because I follow Grizzly's methods extensively or even manage to read all of his stuff, but simply because the crowd I've always hung around with online has been hangers off of the Grizzly way. I mentioned Ben over at make money online with SEO earlier, and he's probably who I really "follow"- I spend most of my forum time (which is considerably limited now) hanging at his forum. I guess I'm really a follower of that guy if anything. Anyway, Mike's blog made me think of exactly how many other people I have kind of followed, using methods from them as I learned more about this gig. As I was organizing it in my head, I think I've come to the conclusion that there are about 4 solid circles of influence that I personally can consider being influenced by.

There's Grizzly, Ben, Vic, and Court and Mark over at The Keyword Academy who are more Adsense than anything else, and who don't seem to be afraid to give away the info on how to make money online for free... even though people still don't seem to listen and start doing what they're told.

Then there's the forum goers. People who straggle after things in the Warrior Forum and Digitalpoint. Now I know everyone expects me to say those places are jokes and full of retards who know next to nothing about making money online, but, honestly, after a certain level (the level where you can tell what's too good to be true and who is talking out their ass- pardon mon Francais) Digitalpoint and the Warrior Forum are pretty knowledgeable places. Drown out the noise of the idiots just trying to get you to buy from their affiliate link or to opt in to their lists and focus on people that can use vowels and consonants correctly. And, of course, don't go to the Buy, Sell, Trade section unless you're going to flog the douche selling the next crappy ebook or unless you need a script written. The Warriors Special Offer forum is the same deal.

Next up is the Nicheblogger group, who, admittedly, I know next to nothing about. I started to do Nicheblogger back in late June, I think, but after signing up for the 3 day trial and seeing that she had it set up by month I canceled two minutes later. I was pretty desperate for cash back then, of course, but even without that, I was fairly certain that you could start earning money online (even if it was just a few dollars) before months of work. After reviewing her course a few weeks ago, I found out you would be earning all throughout the course, but I also didn't like her setup. Oh, and the "her" I keep referring to is the creator of the course, Amy Bass. It seems like a decent set up over all, but just not for me.

The final circle is actually the first one I was introduced to, and if I had the money on a month to month basis, I'd probably keep up with this circle more than Grizzly's. And that is the Wealthy Affiliate circle. I learned a lot from Travis Sago, PotPieGirl (I think my One Week Marketing campaign is starting to make headway!), and, of course, Kyle and Carson, in my time there. I'll probably go back and join for the tools at some point soon, but anyway, this group is full of people doing what I'm currently doing, and not what I've got planned for the future, which is a big plus.

So what is my point with all this? I guess it's just that it's interesting how people that want to make money online usually end up starting by following someone's methods and then they kind of branch apart in all kinds of different directions, conjoining with several circles in most cases before they start really applying what they learn.

But this post has gotten way longer than I expected, and it took me an hour and a half to write, for some reason. Anyway, I'll leave you guys for now. Oh, briefly before I split:

The plan for this week: Most of it is going to be finishing my CPA applications out. Don't know how many more networks I have to go before I get either a denied or an accepted status at each place, but I know I've got quite a few big name networks left. In addition I think I'm going to start fresh. I mentioned earlier that I found my biggest weakness, and that weakness is probably product selection. I always seem to select a product that has a low converting landing page. I think they're good landing pages, but judging by the hops to order form impressions... Actually, I have one product that converted in, like 30 hops (the one I ran PPC on) and which got almost half as many order form impressions between the hops to the sales page. That being said I'm still starting fresh with a new campaign + my old campaign. I'm going to completely drop work on the One Week Marketing campaign and other article campaign- I want to see what conversions are like if I leave them sizzling for a month or two. My new campaign I'm going to target the lowest of low competition keywords, create a stellar landing page that presells the crap out of the visitor, and then write a few really amazing articles instead of going with pure quantity. I'll then backlink these really good articles with lower quality articles, and have a link to the landing page in some of the low quality articles. I'll split test as best as I can and see how conversions (or hops to the order form) are.

Well, that's seriously it for me. Hope everyone else is making money too!

Peace,

Broke