Disappointment is the gap that exists between expectation and reality.

So yesterday I had one small sale. But the interesting thing is that the sale occurred AFTER I went to sleep.

Usually I see sales after I’ve played playstation with my sister, or after I wake up in the morning or from and afternoon nap.

This is because affiliate marketing is a method of PASSIVE income. Most people screw themselves up thinking that if they work X hours, they’ll earn X amount of money.

That couldn’t be far from the truth. There is no guarantee of money with Clickbank. However, the potential for money is incredible.

If you work harder and smarter and long enough, you will be able to see 1-3 sales per week.

Some days you’re earn $100, and other days you’ll earn $0. But what matters is how much you earn at the end of the month.

And what also matters is your overall improvement from month to month.

“Dreams come a size too big so that we can grow into them.” Josie Bisset

When I was little, I used to wear oversized clothing because I thought that I’d look thinner.

The problem was that I’d get fatter and would need even bigger clothing. For weight loss, buying oversized clothing is not the solution.

But for life, dreaming oversized dreams is the perfect solution. A big dream motivates you to rise to the occassion.

This past month I’ve worked just as hard as any other month – maybe slightly harder. But the thing is that I’ve enjoyed every moment of it.

I’ve realized something about my business, and it’s helped me completely reconfigure my strategy.

It seems to be working quite well. After that big launch, I broke $300. I’ve never done $300 before.

I’m quite sure I can hit the $2000 mark for this month. Will I be able to do that next month?

Not sure, but I will try.

To help others get up to the $2000 mark, I’ve started working on an eBook titled “The 2 Grand Per Month Clickbank Formula.”

Just finished writing the first chapter – “How to Get Free Review Copies of Products.” I’m going to be talking about a lot of things I have not seen in other eBooks.

Here are all the topics I will cover:

1 – How to Get Free Review Copies of Products – And NO, I’m not talking about an illegal method.

2 – How to Make Money off of Product Launches

3 – How to Make Money off of Email Marketing

4 – How to Write a Better Landing Page

5 – How to Make Money off of Vendor Interviews

6 – One Single SEO trick to Propel your Blog Traffic

7 – Why I’m not a fan of Social Media and RSS Feeds

8 – How to Use Bonuses to Get Repeat Business

9 – How to Outsource your Article Marketing

If there are any other topics you’d like to cover, let me know.

P.S – I will not be covering PPC. I want to focus mostly on blogging, article marketing, and email marketing

P.S.S – There’s something I need to say to newbie affiliates – dream big, and keep working. But don’t just work harder, work smarter. Do your research, and test test test!

So, post launch I’m actually doing pretty good. Here’s the sales for the past three days:

So I been making one sale per day. But these sales are of high-end products, so it ads up. With one refund this week, I’ve done around 188.

Overall, I’m on my way to breaking past $2,000 for this month. There’s 7 days left, so lets see what happens. Yesterday I didn’t do any work becuase I was at my fathers store.

But when I called my sister to check my sales, I was pretty excited to see a sale from the TacFit program. But with a $66 commission, I wondered if they dropped the price down.

Well, what actually happened was that they sent out an email offering the discount one last time to their list. That make sense. Why would they drop the price permanently?

Even though they should.

I’m going to try to ask them if I could use the link for the lower product as a discount I offer only to people that purchase from my site. Other affiliates may be doing this.

There doesn’t seem to be that many affiliate promoting this product, but I should definetely ask Adam if I could do that. Of course, I would have to link directly to the order page.

In other news, I’ve emailed 4 vendors. 3 of which just came out with a brand new product. All four of them have sent me review copies of the products.

It seems as though it’s very easy to grab review copies, especially if you have a website like mine. I might just keep my work very minimum and not write as many articles as I am.

I think I screwed myself over by asking for 4 vendors at once. But we’ll see if the volume approach works. Eventually, it would be great if I didn’t write any articles at all (maybe 1-2 per week) and just focused on 1) reviewing new products and 2) interviewing new vendors.

Lets see how this approach works out.

I also recieved 15 articles from my article writer from Elance. It was about 2 weeks late, but I don’t care. I’m only paying him $1.50 for each article. Realize that in India, $1.50 is 75 rupees, which is a lot of dough.

When I went to India, we had a big lunch for 3-4 people. Total cost was around $4 or $200 rupees. I also remember my cousin working hard for 2000 rupees a month, or around $40.

These guys are getting paid $75 for 50 articles, or around 3750 rupees. Now, I’m not their only client. If they can provide, cheap, fast, and high quality service, then they probably have a few dozen clients.

So, for third-world countries, being a virtual assistant is pretty lucrative business. For me, it saves me a lot of time.

Anyways, lets see how the rest of the week turns out.

Nice post by Michael Fortin that may help you right better landing pages: http://www.michelfortin.com/the-biggest-mistake-copywriters-make/

I’m still a bit confused as to whether or not I should continue promoting TacFit Commando heavily.

Last night I set a goal of getting 2 sales this week. However, I woke up this morning and found 1 sale of one their old workouts.

Then, later on there was another sale for the new Bodyweight Muscle building program I started promoting.

The new program seems like it’s going to work, as lots of people have been landing on my site searching for a muscle building program one can perform just with their bodyweight.

Here’s what the new sales look like:

It’s only 8:29 AM, so I might get one more sale and break $100. But either way this brings my average daily sales to $97.03.

But, here’s my concern – I made that money because of the launch. Without a powerful product that is getting me steady sales, there is no way I can break $1600 for next month.

I don’t know of any product launches in the home fitness niche for March. Although, I found out about TacFit towards the end of the month of Jan, so you never know what might come up.

But either way, I still believe that diversifying over a few high end products will really help me achieve my goals and make even more money the following month.

We’ll see how well the new muscle building program does.

Alright, so the TacFit launch is officially over. I made a lot of money during the launch, but the question is…will I make any money after the launch?

Lets see the stats so far:

The launch ended on Friday. I made one sale at a commission of $135. My thought was that this product would have enough momentum for me to earn revenue for the rest of the month.

Doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen. I haven’t made a sale on TacFit Commando for the past 3 days.

Doesn’t mean anything, actually…or does it? I’m still getting a lot of hits for TacFit Commando on my site from search.

In fact, In the last 3 days I’ve had 98 visits from people searching for the TacFit program. So I think the main issue here is the price increase.

People are wondering if the program is actually worth the $197 it’s priced at. At $97 I made over 20 sales, and one sale at the $197 price.

To make around a grand per week through this product, I’d have to make 7-8 sales per week.

I’m shooting for 1 sale per day. It’s going to be tough, but I’ve started off with taking a look at the keywords that are bringing in traffic.

What are people searching for? Things like, “Can You Gain Muscle on TacFit Commando?” clearly shows you what people want to know about the product.

Then you can go ahead and write content around that keyword. This is why I love blogging and using Google Analytics to help me develop content.

Anyways, I’ve already been pumping out a lot of brand new content around TacFit Commando.

We’ll see how the rest of the month turns out. If I’m making even 3-4 sales per week, then it’s worth it to promote this product.

Yes, so they did raise the price! And I did make a sale at the new price. Commission per sale for the deluxe version of TacFit Commando is now $135.92.

That’s incredible! And Adam emailed me today with a few tips for my site. I just love how he drops in every now and then and browses my site.

It’s very cool. Here was today’s earnings (and also yesterday’s earnings, I made about 3 sales after I went to sleep yesterday) -

And I didn’t do any work today at all. I went to the doctors this morning, then straight to the store, and came home at 2 AM.

I won’t have any time to work tomorrow, so we’ll see if I earn anything tomorrow. But I’m already at around $1600 for this month.

I just readjusted my goal for this month to $2000. Which I think I’ll achieve. If can get at least one sale each day of TacFit Commando, then I’m good to go.

Oh yea, the second sale was Adam Steer and Ryan Murdock’s first product – Bodyweight Exercise Revolution.

So either way, today was Ryan Murdock and CST’s day for me. They are clearly helping me earn the most amount of money through my site.

I had one more idea today that I need to post up (so I don’t forget it) – I should write some content for personal trainers and convince them to purchase a product they can use to help train their clients.

I suspect some of my customers are personal trainers. So if I can get more trainers to my site, they would be higher end products to help them make more money and make it easier to train their clients with pre-made workouts.

I can start off with Craig Ballantyn’s Turbulence Training Bodyweight Deluxe package. We’ll see!

Thought I’d post up the final results from the product launch before the weekend hits. I won’t be able to do any work for the weekend, so it’ll be ultimate test of “automated income.”

Here are the results:

Tonight is when the 51% discount ends for the product. Then the price will go up to $197. I promoted this same vendor’s products a few months ago, and they did not raise the price after the promo. So, we’ll see if they actually increase the price to $197.

I guess it all depends on buzz. How many people are still interested in the product? I personally am hoping that they boost it to $197, just to see. Because I’ve never experienced such great success with a $97 product.

Before this I used to stick to products between $20 to $40. I thought, “If I don’t buy it, why should others.”

Then I realized how backwards that thinking is. People are buying for content. They’re buying something because it will give them something new.

Unfortunately, I promoted a lot of bad products before promoting good ones. And the right product, something that trully gives people something unique will not only sell well, but have staying power.

This is the reason that products in my niche such as Turbulence Training and Truth About Abs have been doing so well for so many years.

Its because they were the first of their kind. Well, the product I’m promoting, TacFit Commando, truly is revolutionary and the first of it’s kind.

I’m glad I’m part of this. It showed me whats possible on the web (and what’s possible with my body. Those exercises are tough!)

Future ideas:

• Need to start cracking on the Mike Thiga program. He finished up the interview for me. I just need to publish. Here’s the dilemma I’m facing:
  • Mike Thiga’s products is all about Muscle Building with Bodyweight. It’s unique, never before seen content. It’s also a recent release. I had not idea about the product until Mike contacted me. So, the question is – should I get aggressive with this thing? Launch date was on Jan. 27. So I’m still within the window of opportunity. I posted a review of the product a few days back, and I’m starting to see some traffic to it, but no sales yet. Or, should I wait and use it as a back up once the TacFit sales slow down?
• For TacFit, I want to continually add new content to the landing/review page. I’ve taken the videos they were using to promote to their list and placed them on the review page. Technically, my personal review is only about 2-3 paragraphs. Everything else is presell (if that makes any sense). I REALLY want this product to sell well, not just because it’s lucrative, but it’s really something people need to know about. So, I will brainstorm over the weekend what I can do on my end to keep sales steady – (a lot of this will depend on the price increase).
• Finally…I got a request for a private ad! But it was only for a measly $20 per month. However, it did get me thinking about another way I can make money through my site. I have 9 spots on my side bar and underneath each article where I advertise affiliate products. I can sell that ad space. I also mention affiliate products within articles and have SEO traffic going to those landing pages. So, just in case all those 9 spaces are filled up with private ads, I can still make commission off of affiliate products. However, I need to set good rates for them. $20 per month is pointless if I’m making around $100 per day (thanks to the launch!). So, there’s something else I need to think about over the weekend.

So, to recap, I gotta figure out how to get consistent sales with TacFit Commando, what to do with Mike Thiga’s product, and how to set advertising rates.

On top of that I’m going to go see the doctor tomorrow for my eyes. Damned lasik surgery. Don’t get it done!

Hope the news isn’t too bad.

So you know that launch I’ve been talking so much about? Well, it was yesterday and here are the results:

Sticks out like a sore thumb, ey? So this month so far I’ve made $88.49, which is 81% more than last month….and the month isn’t even over yet!

I still have 18 more days until the end of February. I’m sure I can break past $1000 for this month.

Here are some lessons I’ve learned:

• Try to get involved in big launches. They make you a lot of money.
• New product launches will also help you with SEO. Since you’ll be one of the first people to write a review on the product, you’ll get a nice boost in google juice.

Here are some things I need to work on:

• TacFit adwords – so far, I’m seeing only one TacFit commando PPC campaign. Which means this guy is getting cheap, high converting traffic. I need to get in on that.
• TacFit Articles – Even though I have a good head start on SEO, it doesn’ mean it’ll last. I need to fortify my rankings with additional TacFit content on my site.
• Muscle Experiment Articles – Mike Thiga contacted me earlier this week. He just came out with a brand new Bodyweight muscle building program. I’ve already written a review and am working on an interview with him. After the interview, I’ll focus on writing more content around his product.
• Elance Articles – Elance sucks. That’s my conclusion. At this point, I’m going to write all the content myself. O well, it was worth experimenting with the service
• Mailing Lists – I don’t know what to do with my mailing lists. They’re not really that responsive. I’m going to get rid of all free content fo rmailing lists. I will only put people on a mailing list who buy something from me. This way, I have a list of buyers as opposed to a list of free loaders.

Site re-design – I was talking to one of my cousins and he suggested a site redesign – turn the site into sort of a comparison shopping thing.

I have a variety of products on there. Perhaps I can create almost a shopping-cart kind of experience with the site.

It can be a seperate section of the site. Or…who knows. I’m going to check out some themes first.

So, lets see what happens for the rest of this week!

Had a sale today for #38.79. The TTKbell sale. Pretty snazzy. So that puts me up to $58.03. I have $1441.97 to go.

I think getting rid of the free bonus on the side bar was a good thing. I dunno, I’m thinking of getting rid of the free bonuses altogether.

This way, the mailing lists would only have people that have already bought something from me. Something to ponder.

But then again, in the beginner, people on my mailing lists did purchase something from me. But it was few and far between.

I dunno, we’ll see. Well, I won’t have any time to do any actual work tomorrow since I’ll be at the store.

But in order to hit my target goal, I need to make $66 tomorrow. Two TTKB sales would be nice.