Hey, guys.  It’s that time, again!  Yeah, the one where I tell you all about what’s been going on with me.  I purposely haven’t done one of these in a while because the Summer tends to be a bit a slow (unless you’re working in very specific niche markets that I have no interests in), so I wanted to wait until I had something to share.

The first thing I want to tell you about is a new product called Writer Help Wanted by Ron Douglas and Alice Seba.  As the time implies, this is course designed for the newbie and seasoned marketer alike that teaches you how to make money writing.  It’s great for those who are just starting out and need money to supplement their income or for those looking to establish a long-term business and who want to earn income passively from writing.

There are video tutorials, case studies with writers who specialize in everything from Kindle to PLR and beyond and other resources, where Alice and Ron walk you step-by-step.  One thing I love about this course is that it doesn’t just focus on the business side of things.  They actually teach you how to write and how to improve your writing skills as well.

I also used the Google Sniper method to put up another site the latter part of this month.  I particularly like this product because a lot of the products in the niche that I work in outside of IM are geared towards women, while this one was geared towards men.  I’m getting traffic and clicks but no sale as of yet.

I’m okay with that as long as it starts pulling in commissions within 30 days.  It usually starts happening around the third week for me (with no list in this niche) — takes a few days to get raked and settle in the search engines.  I also found out about another product that seems to be popular, but I’ve got to contact the product creator in order to get free access before I make a move on that.

Until next time…

I was browsing a popular internet marketing forum, and posters (mostly newbies) were asking whether or not it was better to be a product creator or an affiliate marketer.  They had heard that both were popular routes to take but didn’t know which way they should go given they had little to no experience.  I though I’d share my thoughts.

When it comes to making money online, both of these are two of a number of routes you can take, and each can you you money.  When I hear the question about which is better, I pause.  Why?  While being a product creator is the most lucrative, it really depends on where you are at the time in your online career that determines which way you should go.  Here’s why.

When you’re starting out online, learning affiliate marketing and niche blogging is the least expensive and requires less of a learning curve (& most common method).  Affiliate marketers, in large part, decide to promote something once they see a product is already getting search engine traffic and what not, so all we have to really worry about is writing content or creating video and getting ranked.

If we do this properly, the commissions roll in.  To find a product to promote you can either start out by promoting a product in a niche that you already own (that is currently being searched for) or ask for review access (free access) from a product creator.  Click the link below to learn more on affiliate marketing.

Become an Affiliate Marketer

In order to be a successful product creator, you need to have all of the skills of an affiliate marketer plus more.  Product creators have to  worry about all the behind-the-scenes stuff (like getting joint venture partners in the industry to generate buzz), so the product will become popular enough that affiliate marketers will want to promote it.

Whenever an affiliate earns a commission, the buyer is added to the product creator’s list (in addition to making sales from those who go directly to the site & earning the other half of the commission from an affiliate sale).  Click the link below to learn more about product creation.

Become a Product Creator

Until next time…

Today, I’ve decided to answer a question that I’ve been seeing a lot in various internet marketing forums and that I get via e-mail quite a bit.  The question is usually something to the effect of “How much money does it take to start blogging?”  This is an important question because I think the answer (or what some newbies might think the answer is) can deter them from getting started.  Let’s dive right in.

1. To begin with, you need a quality program to teach what you need to know.  While it is possible to try to learn everything on your own, I wouldn’t recommend it.  Why?  In my experience, not only took me longer to progress (learned more in one week with a quality program than I did after 6 months of trying to do it on my own), but I found that I was missing vital pieces of the overall process.  For product recommendations, I recommend that you check out Google Sniper 3 ($47 for main product, all you really need, make sure to uncheck the box on the sales page if you don’t want the optional “Sniper X”).

2. You will need to purchase a domain name.  You usually pay for domain names on a yearly basis.  The reason for this is because if a site is not performing, you might want to let it go or decide to sell it or something.  The cost for this is around $13 a year.

3. You will need to purchase web hosting.  Web hosting is where your content is stored.  This is paid for on a monthly basis.  This cost less than $10 a month.  This is the price for unlimited domains.  This means that whenever you decide you want to have more than one site (most marketers do), all you will have to pay for is the domain name.

4. After your website begins to get traffic, you should start building a list.  In IM, we build list with an autoresponder.  The most popular autoresponder is Aweber.  Awber offers a $1 trial for the first month.  After that, it’s like $19.00 a month — until you get up to a certain amount of subscribers.

So far, the total comes to $71.00 for the first month.  Keep in mind that all of these costs are standard and DO NOT include up-sells or anything like that.  At the start of the second month, you take away the cost of Google Sniper and add the regular autoresponder cost. This brings the total to $43.00 in the second month and so on.

5. You will need a product to promote.  This can vary and may not cost you anything.  When first starting out, I recommend that newbies go into a niche that they already know something about and in a niche in which they already own products — especially if you’re promoting a physical product.  All you have to do is to make sure that people are searching for it, so you’ll get traffic.

If the product is a digital one (something that can be downloaded), all you have to do is contact the product creator and ask for review access.  This is the marketer’s way of asking something for free.  Make sure to tell them that you are building a site in order to promote their product.  They will happily give you access.  Remeber, all of these costs are standard and can be made up with just a couple of sales.

Until next time…

Last month, I told you about what I thought would be a rather interesting product that I had just come across, but that I had to dig in deeper and do my research and what not before I could tell you more about it.  Well, I did just that!  I actually got so excited after I e-mailed you that I decided to dive right in — like a kid in a candy store — and can now let you in on all the details!

The product is called The Commission Machine by Michael Cheney, and I’m a fan for a number of reasons.  It allows the complete novice how to get their feet in the door of the internet marketing industry in a very ethical manner as well as teaches you a lot about the ins and outs of the niche.  It also introduced to a network that I’m loving, where my conversion rates have been considerably higher than Clickbank.  It also provides you with way more info than Clickbank, including refund rates and more.

I used the Google Sniper method to put up another site at the end of the month in my niche of choice outside of IM.  After I finally got access (had to go back and forth with the product creator), I actually liked the product.  It also got indexed really quickly.   If you’re not already doing so, I encourage you guys to make sure of social media sites to promote your stuff.  Don’t just use any site, though.  Use the one that the people in your niche frequent the most.  Make sure to have followers before you start promoting your stuff.

Certain social bookmarking sites also seem to get traffic to my sites quickly.   The launch for another product I was promoting on one of my other sites I delayed as well.  Even though I heard about the launch and got ranked for it at the beginning of the month, the launch didn’t start until the end of the month as well — the ups and downs of IM, I guess.  Since I’ve been putting up new sites, I also decided to let some of my older ones go.  After a year, they weren’t doing much.

Well, that’s all from this neck-of-the-woods!  Until next time…

Hello, everyone.  Thankfully, this month  started off better as I found a product in my niche of choice at the beginning of the month that was created by the makers of another popular product in my niche that still happens to be selling.  Because of this, I decided to go for it using the Google Sniper method before I knew whether or not the product might be another hit.

The one thing that sucked about the whole experience was that I had to go back and forth with customer service in order to get review access (so I didn’t have to spend my own money buying the product) and getting some questions answered about the product itself.  Due to the difference in time zones and the number of questions I had, this took a while.  On the other hand, at least customer service worked!

I finally got my site put up towards the middle/end of the month.  This was interesting because I started getting traffic really fast (like within a day) — even though the product had just come out and didn’t have time to sell that fast.  I few days later, WordPress notified me that it was updating all of my sites automatically.  Then, the unusually high volume of traffic stopped, which made me think all of that other traffic was just bots,  I started getting trickles of normal traffic after that but haven’t made any sales, yet.

Let’s see.  Oh, I started following a number of other products that came out during the month in the same niche.  Some of them had quite an interesting spin to them, but those products haven’t taken off, yet, either.  I also noticed that only a small percentage of the overall sales were coming from affiliates.  I’ve learned from past experience that one of the indicators that a product coverts well for affiliates is the fact that a majority of the sales are coming from affiliates — like 90%.

Finally, I learned about some interesting products in the internet marketing space at the end of the month.  They are both blogging products with a unique spin.  I learned about one while on a webinar call.  This product is by a really reputable marketer but hasn’t officially launched it.  It focuses on acquiring the main skills you need to make money online like writing, promotion, and getting traffic.

The cool thing about the product is that you know you’ve gotten good at those things when you can use those skills individual skills to make money — while you’re on your way to building your niche blogs.  It’s set up like a coaching program.  The goal of step one is to make $500 or more from writing before you move on to the next step.  It’s really cool.  I’ll let you know more about it when it launches.

I just found out about the other product a couple of days ago.  It’s by another ethical marketer.  The product looks really good and is leaser expensive than the coaching program.  The thing is that I haven’t actually gone through the course, yet.  It’s also on a popular network but one I haven’t used before — in other  words, not a Clickbank product, so I have to figure all that stuff out before I let you in on it.  I’ll get you abreast of what’s going on.

Until next time…

Well, this month wasn’t like what I expected to be.  By that, I mean that it was pretty uneventful.  I thought since that it was the start of the new year, there would be a lot of cool products coming out in both the IM niche and the other niche that I’m involved in (where I have my smaller niche sites) — didn’t happen.

I don’t know what’s going on in the IM niche right now, but it seems like those binary option type-of-products are becoming what’s “in” now.  Unfortunately, I have no interest in them at all.  First, I’m not big on having to spend significant amounts of money without a guaranteed return on my investment, which is one reason I got into blogging.  While there are no guarantees, the start-up costs are low — even for someone who is on a “shoe-string” budget (where I was when I got into this business).

Secondly (and thirdly), I learned (after a bit of research) that learning about binary options and all that entails is a whole different ballgame in comparison to other ways of making money online.  People in the industry that had made it also made it seem like that you basically have to have an endless supply of money to throw at it until you get it right (like a gambler or something).  There is also a saying going around that says something to the effect of, “Those who make money with it don’t teach it.”

My first thought was that people are exaggerating about how difficult and stuff it is, and that there have got to be a number of quality products out there that teach it.  Then, I noticed that a lot of the products that are out on the market that claim to teach it were basically created by many of the same scam artists marketers that exist within the IM niche!  No thank you.

There wasn’t much going on in the other niche I’m in, either, so I basically just spent my month chilling and getting more into social media (like using Facebook fan pages as a means of promotion) and think of re-thinking my overall promotional strategies for launches as well as following some products that will hopefully take off in the near future.  I’m hoping that February will be better.

Until next time…

People make all kinds of resolutions at the beginning of the year, and making more money is always at the top of the list.  In that spirit, I decided to compile a list of some of the top trends for 2015, so that you can get a jump start on your business.  I recommend using Google Sniper 3 when setting up your sites.  Avoid using brand names when deciding on domain names.

Health and Fitness: Insanity by Shaun T was the most popular workout program for 2014, according to Google trends, so if you already happen to use this program, you’re in luck!  I recommend using a domain like “best workout routines 2015 (.com)” for this and a keyword phrase like “sean t insanity workout review.”  You will notice that I mis-spelled his name.  That’s because lots of people do that when searching for him.

All of the keywords I chose (from the domain name to the review keyword) currently get searched for in Google.  When you combine keywords together like I did to come up with the review keyword, it will not only allow you to pull in traffic from multiple keywords but mean lower competition as well.  I should also mention that P90x by Tony Horton was also amongst the most popular programs, so you could do the same for that one as well.  Oh, if you’re promoting from Amazon, you can also see what other products people purchase along with it in order to make even more commissions.

Animated Movies: We all know that Frozen was huge this year.  After doing some research, I learned that Spongebob still brings in massive traffic all these years later and that there is going to be a new Spongebob movie coming out in February that people are already searching for in Google.  I suggest using a domain like “top animated movies 2015 (.com)” for this.  You could use a keyword phrase like “spongebob movie 2015 sponge out of water” — got this from related searches at the bottom of the page when looking up Spongebob — and promote the previous movie and related stuff until the movie comes out.

Electronic Goods: The Iphone 6 was the must-have item of the year, and the Iphone 7 will be released in 2015.  I’d recommend a domain like “best cell phones 2015 (.com)” for this.  The reason I went for “cell phone” was because I wasn’t sure if “smart phone” was trademarked or not, and they costs a lot.  No need to worry, though.  People use the words “cell phone” and “smart phone” interchangeably, so you’ll still get lots of traffic.  I should also mention that the Samsung Galaxy S5, the Samsung Note 4, the Moto G, and the Nexus 6 were also on the trends list.

Fashion/Shoes: I thought of this niche because I saw someone running on a treadmill.  I then immediately thought of Jordan’s since people seem to go so crazy over those. You could choose a domain name like “best basketball shoes 2015,” and go from there.  You can do a search to figure out the most-popular shoes, so on and so forth.  You can see when the next shoe is coming out (several coming out according to what I found).  You can also cross promote his jersey and other apparel as well.  Lebron James is another popular player with shoes and stuff.

Well, this is just to give you some ideas.  I hope it helps.  Don’t forget to grab your copy of Google Sniper 3, so that you can get started!

Hey, guys.  It’s that time of the month, again.  I have to admit that I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked to this month, but I did learn some stuff.  I launched a new site at the beginning of the month in my preferred niche outside of internet marketing.  Unfortunately, it didn’t catch on.  While the quality of the product is good, this is the second time I’ve promoted a product by this person with such sucky results.  I won’t be wasting my time, again.

However, there is more to the story (never heard about this happening before).  A considerably more successful competitor sent out an e-mail explaining how you can have a good product and have a good name in the industry but still suck when it comes to making bank on Clickbank.  It was very informative.  Basically, it comes down to marketing and preparation for the launch (or lack thereof).  I hope the person gets their stuff together, but who knows?

On a more positive note, a site that I launched during the previous month started bringing in some money.  🙂  it didn’t take too long (about 3 weeks from the time I launched the site), but it still took longer than I would have liked.  This is mostly my fault.  I found out about the product like two weeks after it had launched and had to grind to get something out.  With that said, I did manage to get on the product creator’s list, so that won’t be happening to me, again!

During this whole process, one thing I learned is to not discount the traffic that the smaller search engines like Bing bring to my sites (think Bing/Yahoo accounts for something like 30% of search engine traffic.  While it does bring less traffic than the Google monster, it would seem that its ranking algorithm is slightly different from Google’s and much easier to get indexed in.

Let’s see.  What else…Oh, I just learned that George Brown is going to be releasing Google Sniper 3.0 — a big deal — in December!  Ya’ll know I’m a fan of a quality blogging product and am always interested in learning more to improve my own stuff.  An update to the course is long overdue, so I’m looking forward to that.

Until next time…

Hey, guys.  I thought I would provide you with a monthly wrap up for the things I did in the month of October.  Let’s see.  Firstly, Traffic for my main site has finally returned to normal.  I launched a couple of sites this month.  It’s safe to say that one of the sites was a flop.  While I really liked the product and thought it was going to take off, the traffic just wasn’t there — hate when that happens.  Maybe it will take off later.

I also launched a second site at the end of the month.  This was another quality product.  I don’t have too much info on this site yet — other than the fact it took me like 5 days to start seeing some traffic, which isn’t too bad, I guess.  I also found out about this product a little later than I would have liked.  On the plus side, I got on the creator’s list, which I know will totally be beneficial to me in the future given how many products the guy puts out.

What else…Oh, I had a guy contact me about promoting a product of his blogging and digital marketing product of his.  While I had never heard of the guy, I Googled him and learned some good things.  This made me really happy because there hasn’t been a really comprehensive and quality blogging product to come out in a long while — started going through it, learning lots, might be my new favorite, gotta finish it ASAP.

Finally, I’m kind of planning for the upcoming year.  I’ve been new income goals for myself and am laying out a plan to get me there.  I’m looking forward to cranking out more sites and exploring more niches and maybe another business model (say that every year but one has been stuck in my head for a couple of years now).  Maybe that’s a sign.  Well, that’s all from this neck-of-the-woods.

Yours in online success…

Hello, all.  I thought I would bring you a quick update — even though not that much has changed.  The traffic for my sites and stuff is still in “recovery mode,” but things are improving — a plus.  I just wish things weren’t so quiet still.  It seems to me that a lot of niches still seem to be slow to come back to life after the summer — unless you’re in one of the niches related to like school supplies and stuff like that (i.e. computers/technology).

With that said, I have found what I believe is a hot, new product in my niche.  This product has seem to taken off rather quickly and to come out of nowhere.  At first when I looked at it, I thought it might already have too many affiliates promoting it for me to make a go of it, but after checking out the competition, I think I still have a good chance of making something happen.  There’s also the added bonus of being able to request a free review copy.

Oh, that’s a tip right there.  A review copy is something you can request when a product is either new or about the hit the market.  Basically, you’re saving yourself money from not having to actually purchase the product.  I’ve done this, so the only thing I’ll have to purchase is a domain name, which is really cheap (like $13 bucks for a year).  I’ve never done this before in this niche and don’t know the creator, so it will be interesting to see if and when they get back to me.

Other than that, I think that’s about all.  I’m just watching a new products to see if they are going to take off like the one I want to build a site around, learning a bit more about the non-internet marketing niche I’m in and am on a never-ending quest to find easy ways to make money (gave up on the site I started using before but am able to see them in a different way to help my overall business, so it wasn’t a total loss).

Yours in online success…