“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” – Mark Twain

I do a lot of reflecting, even though I rarely ever find myself on the side of the majority. I hate being like other people. There was only one moment in my life that I tried really hard to fit in and I hated it. It caused me a lot of emotional pain and proved to me that the worst thing you can do for yourself is to try to be like other people.

What I’m trying to do for myself, not many people are trying to do. In high school, when kids were thinking about what college they wanted to go to (like your SUPPOSED to), I was thinking about finishing up my first novel.

In college, when most people were either busy goofing off or thinking about a career in some large corporation, I was working on finishing up my feature length screenplay and thinking about how I could avoid working 9-5.

It’s AMAZING to be Different

I think differently than the majority of people out there. Recently, I was contacted by one of Internet Marketer John Denton’s sales people who was offering me a coaching service. He said, “We usually do not work with people your age, because kids your age aren’t thinking about creating something on their own.”

I find it really funny that we’re taught that we should first get a job, then pursue our dreams later, when we’re more “experienced” and “financially secure.” But who has actually done that? Most people, after working for just 12 months, will often just say, “Well, I like the stability, I’ll just stay where I am.”

Another thing that people don’t realize is that it takes about the same amount of time and struggle to do something you love and do something you don’t love. For example, lets just say your dream is to become a writer but instead you end up going to med school, just because you’re thinking money and stability.

Put a VALUE on the STRUGGLE

In order to become a writer, you’re going to have to struggle a lot, and face a lot of rejection. One of the greatest writers in bollywood, Javed Akhtar, struggled for five years before getting his first break. I don’t really know what it takes to become a doctor, but I’m guessing 4 years of pre-med, 3-4 years of med school, then 1-2 years of residency? So, 5 years struggling to become a writer as opposed to around 10 years struggling to become a doctor? Plus, you’re faced with all those student loans and you’re doing something you don’t particularly enjoy?

Now which one seems more appealing?

I’m not bashing doctors. I saw a doctor last week who clearly enjoyed the path she had chosen in her life. But, I’ve just bee meeting too many people recently who are completely unhappy with their place in life, and its really sad.

Life is about ADVENTURE

Break down the numbers. Don’t just look at things in dollar signs. Life isn’t about stability, it’s about becoming the best that you can be. Making money is easy, making money and having fun is the hard part.

I guess most people still won’t listen to me, since I’m not making a “steady” income. But I’m getting there. Right now I’m at 100 per week working at home. That call of freedom is getting closer and closer. How long do you think it will take me to scale my business to a point where I’m making 100 dollars a day….or a 100 dollars a minute without a boss or any employees? Now that’s magical.

Its been 3 weeks since I decided to take the next step with my blog and actually start making money with it. It’s already changed dramatically in terms of goals, content, and design. Here are my results for the past three weeks. Today starts the new week:

I want to thank everyone for their help and support. Here are some goals ‘m working towards:

# Get 100 email subscribers in a day – currently doing 20-30
# Make $100 in a day – average daily income is around $20. The most I’ve made in a day is $88
# Make $400 in a week -Most I’ve made in a week is $241

Whats been working for me:

- Create email list
- Send out emails with product recommendations at bottom of post

Things I been working on that are starting to work:

- PPC marketing of a product with best conversion rate. – There is a product that I no longer carry on my site, however I noticed a sale yesterday from PPC alone. I have yet to look at the hop data, but I think it took around 20 hops to make a sale for around $8. So if I’m spending 5 cents per click, thats $1 in PPC. My profit is $7. Not bad. Better off spending money on a low-commission, high converting product, then a high commission, low-converting product.

- We’ll see what happens with this

Things I did that did not work and won’t be working on again:

- Writing ezine articles and sending traffic to a landing page. Apparently I suck at writing landing pages. I sent a lot of traffic to these landing pages, but did not get many sales. Actually, for one product I recieved one sale out of 200 hops. Not good.

So, these were just some thoughts – things that are working for me, etc. I hope to achieve that $400 per week mark soon, but of course I feel I need to be able to grab at least 100 subscribers per day, and finally reach a point where i can make $100 per day before I reach that ultimate weekly goal.

Once again thanks for everyone’s help!

So I published a whole bunch of articles on Ezine yesterday, July 3rd. I woke up this morning and notice that one of them had 26 click backs to my site. I usually get around 4-6 hits back to my site. I’m sure that’s the average for most people.

I’ve been getting really high click backs lately, at least 10 for most articles. I noticed a few very important things:

- The title needs to be simple, with the keyword as the base of the title. Don’t make anything too flashy, or too common. If there’s 4000 other articles with the same title, chances are your article won’t rank too well.

- The body needs to be personalized. Don’t regurgitate the same BS as every other article. Don’t give out too much information either. The one’s that that have a higher click rate focus more on results and benefits than actual advice.

- Make sure you have a call to action. Just don’t say, “To find out more, click here.” Say something like, “Now it’s time to reveal to you guys how I achieved some great results…”

I’m sure these pointers are nothing new, but I noticed a ton of questions about Ezine articles, so I’d thought I’d share these quick tips.

Here’s the truth though – despite the great traffic I’m getting from ezine, not many have converted, especially with the particular article I’m talking about with 20 something click backs within a few hours.

This could mean that my landing pages suck, or that ezine articles just don’t work as well as email marketing. At the end of the day, it’s the people that trust you, who’ll buy from you.

One thing I have achieved though. Remember I said I couldn’t get sales Monday thru Thursday? Well, I’ve gotten at least one sale each day this week except Wednesday. So at least that’s a good thing.

UPDATE: I just spent yesterday changing the link back to ALL of my ezine articles (all 90 of them) to point straight to my opt-in page. At this point, I’m convinced that the Ezine to Landing Page concept of “bum marketing” is not my time. So far, I’ve made ONE sale from bum marketing. All others come from my email list.

So the goal is to get 100 sign ups per day to my opt in list. That’s 100 potential customers DAILY. If I get around 10-20 (lets say, 15 per day) sign ups right now. That’s 105 per week. I get around 5-10 sales (lets say, 7 sales) per week

105 sign ups per week = 7 sales per week
105 sign ups PER DAY = 7 sales PER DAY

Most of my sign ups were coming from PPC, so I’m guessing ezine articles will have more qualified leads. I think this is the fast track method to seeing double zero daily commissions.

The biggest mistak you’re making with affiliate marketing is that you’re not selling products you’re interested in.

If YOU won’t buy the products, then how do you expect someone else to purchase them?

My expertise is home fitness. I’ve been training at home for years. I started a blog, built up a community, and now that community trusts me enough to buy from me.

So for all those that are struggling with this, start a blog today. Get yourself a hosting servcise and domain name. Install wordpress, choose a nice theme, and start blogging.

By the way, blogging has the best SEO. I barely do anything and I rank high in the search engines.

It takes time, but what doesn’t? If you want a good, steady, long-term source of income, then blogging is the way to go.

Check out my blog for ideas on product promotions, writing, and layout: http://shahtraining.com/

What I’m saying is that there are so many beginners going into niche’s they have no idea about. Once you know what to do, then yes, you’ll probably be succesfull with anything. But shorten the learning curve my talking about products and niche’s you’re familiar with.

But keep in mind that Affiliate Marketing is a Slow process. Stay in it long enough, and you WILL be successfull.

I’ve been talking a lot about email marketing since I joined this forum. Frank Kern just put out a great video about how you can use email marketing to make affiliate sales. Check it out here: http://masscontrolsite.com/blog/?p=52

I’m going to start using some of these techniques which hopefully result in a better click through rate.

You guys should try to get on Frank Kern’s mailing list. Even though he does a lot of product promotions, his free videos are worth it.