Out of Obscurity

I made an $18 commission yesterday.  I was notified by email that one of my advertisements had been viewed and someone had purchased the product.  I’m thrilled.  I can’t live off $18/month, but I think that there is a steep learning curve ahead of me and I should celebrate any success that comes my way.  For those of you who are interested, to gain this commission, I promoted the ebook, 3 hour profits.  If you’d like to purchase this product, visit www.my3hourprofits.com.  I like this ebook because it details how much work really is involved in internet marketing.  It doesn’t just tell you start posting links.  It gives you an actual number in terms of how many advertisements to post daily, when and where.  The guidelines are applicable to most products that you promote.  While it doesn’t touch on social media, the marketing techniques do work.  I didn’t follow them as well as I should have and therefore my profit margin is smaller.  However, I am trying to do too many things at once.  I’m trying to learn blogging, social media, internet marketing, HTML, and play with my nephews when I get a chance.

It has been 30 days.  I missed my blog goal by a mile.  I do not have 1,000 visitors to my website.  I must admit, I have been paying more attention to my affiliate marketing attempts than on figuring out how to make my blog look nice and attract visitors. 

I tried using twitter to increase visits to my site.  While this works, for the longest time I only had one account.  I added a second because I noticed a couple people were posting the same things.  Yesterday, my mentor from Acme People Search told me he actually has 20 accounts on Twitter.  Twitter limits how many people you can add at a time.  Often the people that you add will follow you and if you are lucky, they will visit the websites that you suggest and buy the products that you recommend.  So, today’s online efforts focused on increasing the number of twitter followers that I have.  I created six new accounts and added followers to them.  I also used Tweet Later to schedule some tweets that recommended the affiliate progra that I”m marketing.  It isn’t rocket science.  You can read online that marketing technique.  Will it work?  I’ll let you know as soon a I see some results. 

I haven’t seen results from Traffic Swarm just yet.  I really don’t like it.  I have to look through a bunch of flashy advertisements so that someone else will take a 2o second look at my website.  It is a lot of effort for very little reward.  It is hard not to get sucked into someone else’s product sometimes.  Everyone claims they are having great success making money with their online business, but we all know most people don’t succeed right away.

It is very difficult to stay on focus when you don’t see immediate results.  When your product isn’t selling like hotcakes in the first few days with the minimal effort that was advertised, it is easy to get discouraged and jump to another product or type of marketing.  I haven’t had huge success with my marketing efforts.  However, gradually my blog is being visited by more people.  I am getting comments and help from others.  I am learning what works for me and what doesn’t.  It is pretty discouraging to read that 90% of the people trying to make money using the internet fail.  I don’t know what their methods or products were.  Was it all affiliate marketing?  Were they targeting the wrong audience?  Were they jumping from promoting one product the next and their readers lost trust in them?  I am grateful for the mentor that I have with Acme People Search.  He told me what his profits were the first month, around $700.  But he also let me know that he had been marketing online for two years and made a total of $400.  Not great for two years worth of effort.  While $700 isn’t a ton of money and won’t replace my income, it is nice to know what I can expect.

I signed up for traffic swarm.  I did read a positive review of it.  However, it is deceptive because if you want people to come to your website, you have to earn credits by visiting other websites that are there.  As I was visiting other websites, I came across an advertisement that looked interesting.  It was a service charging $29.95 to submit your website to major search engines and increase traffic to your website.  There were loads of testimonials promoting the product.  I almost bought into the idea of using the service.  But, instead I did a google search to read some negative reviews.  Why?  Because, when promoting a product, you always state the positive.  One man wasted $90 and didn’t have any increase in traffic to his website through the service.  In the ezine article, he recommended engineseeker.com instead.  They have a five day free trial, so I signed up for the service.  I didn’t enter this site in because I am currently not trying to make money from my blog’s traffic.  I am just writing about my trials and errors in the world of online moneymaking.  I entered in the affiliate product websites that I am currently trying to promote through other methods, my3hourprofits.com and Acme People Search.  I don’t think that it is all that vital to submit your website to a search engine though.  If you do a websearch on my name, it will pull up this blog and I never submitted it to a single search engine.  But, I’ll try it out and see what the results are.

I noticed a link on twitter to $125 guaranteed comissions and clicked on it.  It was an advertisement to create my own search engine.  I had no idea how I would do this or why it would work.  However, the person who created the program, Tissa Godavitrne, lives in the area.  His story of unemployment resounded with me and since it wasn’t going to cost me anything, I joined.  They have support forums to help you problem solve, people who are able to answer your questions, weekly webinars to help increase your success rate.  Normally, I would shy away from anything that deals with multi-level marketing, but this has a lot of interesting features.  I liked that they would provide me with some training.  Two people sent me emails after I signed up offering to help me through the steps.  I emailed both of them my questions and both people responded with helpful answers within 24 hours.  I was a little disappointed that my display rate was not immediate.  However, when I learned that the creator of the program was sick and he was manually adding everyone, I understood.  It is not a get rich quick method.  It does require learning how to earn money on the internet.  If you’re willing to put in the time, Acme People Search might be for you.  I’ve included a link on my sidebar.  You can use the following link to sign up for yourself.  http://acme-people-search.com/signup.php?ref=1248091044RSBA

One method that affiliates don’t utilize enough is online classified advertisements.  I read everywhere about using social media, sponsored links, and pay per click.  But you can have a lot of success through simple classified advertisements.  This is one of the methods that is reviewed in my3hourprofits.com.  Your don’t have to search for your targeted audience.  If they are looking under home based business opportunities in the classifieds, you just have to make sure your advertisement is more appealing than the other ones listed.  It is still a numbers game.  Not everyone will want the product you are selling on Monday.  You need to repost daily to make sure that it is seen by everyone.  It is recommended that you actually post multiple advertisements three times per day.  There are many sites that you can use to post classified advertisements.  Craigslist, backpage, city news, US free ads, classifiedads.com, webclassified.us, and recycler classifieds are just a few. 

I just posted my first classified ad online today.  I’ll keep you posted about the results that I achieve from this method.  It was a little tricky at first.  I tried to add an image and it wasn’t working.  I got frustrated because I really wanted it to look nice.  In the end, the important information was posted.

I have discovered that there are many techniques that will work.  The best thing to do is become very proficient at one or two.  The problem is that in the beginning, you are overwhelmed and you don’t know which technique will work best for you.  The search engine that I signed up to do is tricky.  There are three basic first steps before you start marketing the product.  I’ve completed the steps and I’m now waiting for some direction on marketing.  I think I need an affiliate link.  At any rate, I went into the forums and read some posts.  Some people are hugely successful, while others struggle to make a dime.  One woman complained that her article will come up second in a google search, but she isn’t getting referrals.  What was the problem?  She was too honest and mentioned that people would actually have to put in effort!  I guess there is a trade off.  You can write a lot of articles with truth in advertising or you can sell a product with a pitch that appeals to someone.  People are looking for solutions to their problems.  They will eagerly pay for solutions to their problems.  However, don’t tell them that by buying the product they will actually have to put in more work.  That won’t make you money.

I signed up for a program to help me make money online as an affiliate.  It boasted that I would only need to spend 3 hours per day on it.  They offered a money back guarantee.  It sounded like it was worth a shot.  I ordered the information.  It didn’t cost a whole lot.  I liked what I read, but it is going to take a good 3 hours per day to do complete all the tasks that they have.  In fact, I’m sure that it will take me more than three hours initially.  It took me three hours to read all the material. 

My other project involves a people search engine.  Once I try it out and find out if it makes money, I’ll post a link.  (If I can ever figure out how to post links on wordpress.  That is another hurdle to overcome.)  I signed up for that because it was free and the person who runs it lives in a nearby town.  His story sounded familiar.  Lost his job and needed work.  I’m hoping that this will bring me success as well. 

Twitter Traffic Machine has brought me a lot of followers.  However, I’m not sure what to do with them.  Send them to my website?  Spam them advertisements for my affiliate products?  Give them more articles to read.  The amount of information available online is overwhelming.

I was about to purchase the Clickbank Code when I read a negative review of it.  I read some more reviews on the blog.  I tried to purchase a product that I thought would help me learn more about online marketing.  However, it did not accept my credit card.  I found a less expensive product promising a 60 day money back guarantee.  I was relieved.  I can try something for 60 days.  It took me a couple hours to read through the material though.  I am not yet an affiliate of the product and do not want to list it on my website until I try the methods out and see if they actually do work.

I anticipated seeing information about social media and posting things on Twitter.  That was not the case.  It mentioned using online advertizing sites such as craigslist.  I was grateful for the different idea.  While I have advertized on craigslist before, I never thought about marketing affiliate products through such a service. 

Unfortunately, my sister was unable to help me create a video for youtube today.  That is still in a goal in the works.