Okay, so I've been around digital point a while now, and so far have never had a lot of success making money online. I had a small article writing business that made me close to $1000 over the summer, and could have made me about $10,000 a year if I had stuck with it. I've tried product blogs with adsense, but in total have only averaged about $0.50 a day. I've tried so many things online, but nothing has stuck. Maybe I'm not giving things enough effort, time or money, but its safe to say I haven't been much of a success. Most recently, I wrote an ebook and a landing page (in my sig) that hasn't converted a single time with about $50 total in Adwords and YSM over 2 weeks, even though it costs just $8. Right now I have around $500 to invest in this. After that's gone, I'll have to get a day job. I'm still in school btw... so my work is limited to like 2 hours a day and the weekends. My goal is $100,000 a year. I know this won't happen quickly but I would think that $20,000 a year or $54.79 a day would be possible by the beginning of summer, $50,000 a year, or $136.98 a day by the end of summer, and hopefully $100,000, or $274.00 a day by the time 2010 starts. I know these are lofty goals considering the success I have been having, and the amount of money I have to invest, but I am determined to be successful online, and know I have the skills to do so. I will be using a combination of methods to reach my goal, and hopefully will be chronicaling them here. In the beginning I will be looking for help from others, if I do become successful at this, I may provide a little less info to protect my investment, but promise I will keep sharing. So I'm thinking a two pronged approach: Publisher and Affiliate I've started out being a publisher writing an ebook (www.my-online-empire.com/8index.html). I feel its a solid ebook, the information is not super unique but it is well written and gives step by step instructions for noobs. My selling point is that I've included forums, so if I do get a lot of people buying this product, there will be a community aspect,and they won't feel abandonned. Plus I've given out my “personal email†and have written some response emails, to just copy and paste if people need help, they'll feel loved : ) Ive advertised with Adwords but no success as of yet. Recently all of my quality scores have gone down, and I've only gotten a few hundred impressions and 0 clicks even with a bid of near ninety cents. I'm a long way from being profitable with this. I know its a solid product though, since its a good book, and the community forums, and personal help thing is unique. I just have to figure out how to make it work. As for being a publisher I feel I could do reasonably well. I have sufficient writing and photoshop skills, I'm not the best, but I'm improving. With more practice I think I could make some good products, the trouble is finding the right niche, my current one isn't working well at the moment. Right now I'm looking into some others, but unless something hits me in the face I'm gonna work on being an affiliate to get some money in my pocket. My affiliate experience is very minimal. I had some clothing blogs with affiliate links and got hundreds of clicks but not a single conversion. Its pretty frustrating being in Internet marketing since september and not made a dime, except for things like selling off websites, or about $10 in adsense. I'm thinking of approaching this from different angles as well. I will be writing blogs to promote products (blogspot and wordpress) and article submissions as well. This seems to be a good method to get a sale or two for those with little money or experience. I'm going to just work with products with over $30 a sale. The forex niche seems profitable but difficult and saturated so i'm going to keep looking. I'll start getting into Adwords too, I don't have a huge amount of money to play around with so I'm gonna have to be careful. Hopefully others will find my journey useful. I want to prove to myself that I can make it from nothing to at least making a steady income no matter how much.
You know what.. that was exactly how I did few years back.. but now, all the hard work and patient pays.. so my advise.. you're on the right track, just keep it up, your success is not that far as what you might think it may.. cheers,
You really need to find the product that will convert. I agree that forex is oversaturated but there are products out there that will work. Good luck.
Well it's really hard to get good advice here anyway, so.... If you are running out of money, why don't you go back to your "article writing business"? Whatever that is. Thais is, if that is true what you say.
Hey andysm849's. I dont have an answer to your question. But I can tell you this: When I started with internet marketing i did the following 1. I started a blog. That was about 2 years ago. At the time, I was making $0.10 a month from it. I have stuck with the blog and added other features to the site. Now I have about 3 part time writers and make a decent income from that same blog. 2. I treated my ventures like a buisness. I developed a proper business plan - and that took many months to write! I defined my niche - I was sure their was a clear demand for my service. I paid special attention to SEO, and tried hard to dominate the keywords I wanted to rank for. I saw SEO as free marketing in a way, and in my business plan SEO was one of my key marketing strategies (I rarely do paid ads). Things happen when you start ranking #1 and #2 for your key search terms i.e $$$$$ These are two things that worked for me.
Good info and insight... thanks for posting this! I personally avoid Forex, I know a ton of people who make AWESOME money with it, but that not my niche. Just my 2 cents: Look into making some type of magazine? I know there are a ton of online mags out there... but if you can implement it successfully with your blogs, esp. for the blog which you promote products, I can see much profit and success with that Good luck!
I think that has been one of my biggest problems. I research a lot, but I don't spend enough time detailing exactly what I'm going to do and why it will make me money. I think businesses are kind of like writing essays for school. You can be a great writer and still get a C. Its whether your thesis is strong, and you back it up in a sufficient organized manner that gets the A. I think that by having a "case study" like this will motivate me to focus on the "thesis" of making money through marketing, and hopefully allow me to be successful. My article writing business was basically a website that I set up and advertised my article writing skills. It worked way better than people in the buy sell trade section because it showed stableness and a reputation, and got me two separate contracts with two individuals that paid me $0.02 a word rather than one, and got me about $200 a week in business. That way I didn't have to try to get 10 dollars here and there, I had steady easy money. It was taxing on me though, as I got bored of writing sooo much and the consulting company hiring me didn't need me as much anymore. I would suggest it to anyone starting out, its a great way to start out at the bottom.
I've decided to go with the "Doubling Stocks" product on Clickbank as an affiliate. It seems like a solid product with good conversions, so i feel good about it. I'm going on a multi tiered approach: Two review blogs, a review site, and Google Adwords. If it starts being successful I will consider hiring an article writer to do the article marketing for me. I'm also looking at putting a really short ebook on torrent sites with my affiliate link in it to get some more free traffic. As far as my personal "My-Online-Empire" program is going, I have stopped putting time into figuring out why my adwords keywords have low quality scores. I have only gotten a few clicks in the last few days, but have edited my landing page and put the price back up to $50. I want there to be a perceived value to the product, so trying to sell something for $8 that is spose to be the best thing in the world sounds scammy. I'm still looking for that first conversion. Perhaps my landing page has some problems? Its not as professional or "themed" and flashy as some I have seen... In the next few days I will start work on the Doubling Stocks product, advertising that, and try to figure out what is wrong with my Adwords that I can't get any clicks or even impressions, when I could easily when I first started out.
You are completely correct, and I from experience selling ebooks, you will be surprised at how many people will buy an ebook, no matter what the price may be. For example, I sold a friends ebook on a guitar instruction, and we originally priced it at 7.99, and sold about 30 something copies in its first month (I think 36 to be exact). However, we then decided to increase the price by $15.99... for now there was a solid, positive rep and steady praise coming in from happy customers so the timing was right. The 2nd months results? 75 copies sold! I'm sure the number of copies sold wasn't effected solely by the pricing, but we matched 1st months profit in roughly the first week of the 2nd month! I wish I would have stayed on the ebook sales market and projects... but I'm thinking of getting back into it again. ... sorry I rambled a bit, but I just wanted to say that you are definitely making a smart move on the pricing aspect