Out of Obscurity

The great thing about setting goals online and letting the world know what you’re working towards is that you feel accountable to someone.  Luckily, I set a goal to learn how to use Traffic Wave yesterday.  This morning, the first thing that I did was open one of the emails about how to use it.  I was so happy that they had the instructions simply laid out for me.  It alleviated some of my anxiety.  This morning I created a terrible landing page that I will edit and post later.  Tomorrow, I’m going to start writing an email campaign.   

I wrote a hubpage article based on what I learned from wealthy affiliate.  What I’m doing is simply taking their tutorials and summarizing them.  It accomplishes two things at once.  It gives me something to write about and helps solidify what I have just learned.  If someone finds my article useful enough to become a wealthy affiliate, I will get the added bonus of a commission from them.   The real value for wealhy affiliate does not come from the tutorials, but the researching tools and networking opportunities, so I don’t really feel bad about giving a summary of their techniques.

I am really intimidated by the autoresponder that I signed up for, TrafficWave.  I am not positive that I even want to send out mass emails to people updating them on products that I think could help them.  However, after reviewing the multilevel opportunity video on the free and powerful site, I realized that it may not be that bad.  I know that I will never get around to learning it unless I set it as a goal and become accountable by telling people about it.  By the end of the week, I plan to read the training emails about how to set up the features of traffic wave.  I think the multilevel opportunity is a good one because, they give you 100% commission the first month you sign someone up, so I only need to refer one person per month to have free usage of the autoresponder.  This month, I’ve already signed up four people through the free and powerful system.  It shouldn’t be terribly difficult.  John Chow uses a different autoresponder, but he did a sales comparison between a blog post and an email message and the sales that he got from the email far exceeded what the blog sold, so I do know that it is a powerful tool for online marketing.  I just need to learn it.  (By the way, the trafficwave link is located in the right column under resources.  Free 30 day trial!)

My second goal involves wealthy affiliate.  I will watch the tutorials for the week and write summaries on hubpages.  I plan on writing 2 articles each day based on what I learn from wealthy affiliate.  The tutorials aren’t where Wealthy Affiliate’s real value comes from.  You can find most of that information anywhere online.  It’s real value comes from the research tools and the networking opportunities.

Today I completed two more hubs on hubpages.  I was able to create original content and add the affiliate links that I wanted!  Making money online is a long, but worthwhile process.  I think that the few people who do it immediately are lying to you.  All the success stories that I’ve read have come from people who put in the hours to learn the techniques, took action and then profited from the results.  I don’t see why people think that they will be able to get something from very little work.  I’ve included the links to my latests articles on hubpages.  I really like hubpages because they will publish your articles instantly.  Ezine takes a whole week.  While ezine does have a review process, the articles found there have a higher quality content.  It is still sometimes nice to see your work published instantaneously. 

The steps I took today to become a wealthy affiliate included reading an hour long tutorial about how to chose a click bank product to promote.  Then, I wrote a quick synopsis of it for hubpages and posted a link to wealthy affiliate for those interested in investing the $39/month fee to gain access to their computerized resources.  Selecting the right clickbank product to market could mean the difference between success and failure.

Today, I dug into writing again for hubpages.  It helped that yesterday I received notification that I had $10 in my adsense account from them.  That was over a two month from my two articles on hubpages.  I didn’t even have any idea what I was doing when I started writing those.  With wealthy affiliate, I have a little more direction in terms of setting goals for writing and a little bit more of an idea how to use keywords for research.  However, it does not come naturally to me just yet.  Obviously, I haven’t figured out how to jazz up the layout of this page and add pictures.  I still have a long way to go before I replace my income with an online income. 

Week one of wealthy affiliate suggests various tutorials and tasks to do.  Today’s task was creating articles on hubpages.  It took me awhile to figure out how to add a link that didn’t look like an affiliate URL.  This is important because people tend to not want to click on affiliate links because they are long.  After an hour of trial and error, I figured it out.  I published two articles on hubpages today!  I’m on my way!

Yesterday morning, I decided that I would test out the frequency intervals and results that I get from posting every 15 minute compared to every hour.  I would have expected more click throughs and even more sign ups.  However, my results were far from that.  My twitter following audience hasn’t changed dramatically.  So the advertisement wasn’t new to most of them.  I was thrilled in the morning when I checked bit.ly to see how many people clicked through.  It was around 50 clicks an hour.  That dropped during the work day.  The end result was only one sign up for free and powerful.  I was a little disappointed because the previous two days I had three and four sign ups.  Most people work during the day, so that is understandable, but I was still a little disappointed.  I am not discouraged.  I have made over $200 in referral commissions as an affiliate online.  I decided to sign up for wealthy affiliate and get some structure and direction to my efforts.  While my upline has been helpful in guiding me in the right direction, I still feel like I could be doing better.  The person in my upline made $700 his first month.  That is a lot more than my $200 and jealousy is a great motivator.  I looked into Wealthy Affiliate and with everything that they offer – webhosting, article marketing tutorials, pay per click tutorials, a research center, an eight week success plan and one on one coaching, I decided it was worth the $39.  I didn’t make along term committment.  If you are looking to boost your affiliate marketing, check out wealthy affiliate –   http://bit.ly/1kVjE

I am marketing the free and powerful system on twitter.  The person in my immediate upline says that he posts ads every 15 minutes.  However, the person in his upline recommended posting every hour.  This weekend, I decided to test out which frequency on twitter would produce better results.  On Saturday and Sunday, I posted hourly.  I had four sign ups each day.  Monday, I posted hourly and had no sign ups.  That makes sense.  People go to work.  Today, I am going to see what results I will get if I post every fifteen minutes.  I am no longer on my free professional trial of tweetlater, so it took a little longer to schedule the tweets, but I thought it would be worth the effort.  I have seen a dramatic increase in the number of clicks to the link that I received.  Last hour there were fifty, the most that I’d ever had!  However, it can be a numbers game.  Many of the people who sign up don’t follow through.  They might lose interest quickly when they learn that they have to generate $75 in referrals to receive the $125 guaranteed commissions.  It isn’t difficult if you spend a little time learning methods to use, but that is where most people fall short.  They lose interest or get frustrated and quit.  I’m pretty frustrated with the autoresponder.  I really want to recommend it to everyone on this forum and start receiving commissions and boast that it is easy to use, but I can’t figure it out.  I haven’t spent a lot of time trying to figure it out though.  I must admit that.

So, I’m trying to learn how to blog, make money online, use an autoresponder, gauge results, figure out social media, interact with other people and update a blog with useful information.  Just so everyone knows, it is too much at once.  I still haven’t tackled the autoresponder.  I just don’t know where to start.  I’m contemplating an online coach that is inexpensive so I get some better direction on making money online.  I’ve decided to keep my weekends to myself.  While updating everyday is good.  Most professional bloggers say to treat it like a job, and let’s face it, most people take their weekends off.  So, to keep my sanity, I’m posting Monday through Friday.  If I have anything on hand written, then maybe I’ll schedule it during the weekend to be posted, but right now I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. 

Am I making money online?  Yes.  Am I making as much as I wanted to?  No.  Far from it.  I’m using the  Free and Powerful system to get my feet wet.  You can try it out too, http://mindycurle.freeandpowerful.com.  Honestly, I have been working with it for almost a month.  Things didn’t pick up until the second week when I increase my twitter posting frequency and number of accounts.  I have built a downline of about 30 people.  I do get sign ups daily, but most people aren’t serious about it and don’t follow through with referrals, which aren’t hard to get.  I’m not talking to people, just posting a link on twitter.  I haven’t figured out how to market on myspace yet, but the people in my upline are doing that.  I’ll let you know the tips and tricks once I figure them out.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is very important in getting a website viewed by internet users.  Based on keywords utilized in the website, search engines will pull up the sponsored links that have those keywords as well as the most popular results.  Many people focus intently on keyword optimization so that their website can be at the top of the search results for certain keywords in hopes that it will translate into sales.  While this is important, another breed of marketers is online as well.  They are social media marketers who base sales purchases on the interactive nature of recommendations and interacting with others on sites such as facebook, youtube, myspace, and twitter.  Both are great marketing techniques and actually go hand in hand.  If your website is popular amongst the social media crowd, it will be listed within the top ten results on the search engines.  While some marketers have finely tuned the search engine optimization and gotten their websites listed at the top, if their product is receiving poor reviews among the social media crowd, they will lose sales too.  There needs to be  balance between the two for best results.  You want to make sure that your keywords are accurate so that people who are searching for your type of product find the website relevant and those in social media are recommending it to others.

Mentors are a lifesaver.  They really can help you out because they know the ropes.  If you’ve been following along, you know that I started marketing online because I lost my job.  When I didn’t see success within the first week, I questioned the person in my upline as to why I wasn’t seeing results.  After making a couple changes, I started getting sign ups for the program that I’m marketing.  What is great is taking advice from someone who has made dumb mistakes and can tell you to avoid them.  I think I would have given up much sooner on internet marketing had it not been for the person in my upline.  While I don’t know that he is the best person to take a lead from, it is nice to have someone to check in with daily or weekly.  I honestly wish that I had a blogging mentor to tell me how to fix up this website so that it looks nicer.  I want a splash of color.  I want to add pictures and have them actually be viewed.  (I have used the tools on the sidebar to add my pictures, but I don’t know where they are located.)

A couple days ago a friend of mine, who has worked in social media marketing much longer than I have, posted a question on facebook.  Once people get to your site, how do you get them to make a purchase.  I offered up what little knowledge that I had.  The dilemma is whether twitter is really used for two way communication.  She is a social media purist and believes that you need to be authentic online.  While I buy into that, it was taking too long for me.  I questioned the person in my upline about how he was achieving results and after following his lead and posting an advertisement every twenty minutes, started seeing people sign up for my online multilevel marketing opportunity.  While social media creates a lot of opportunity for selling things online and making money, the average person will get discouraged before they start to see results.  They will turn to the more traditional methods of selling and reaching audiences which are larger in an effort to gain a sale.  The trade off is the authenticity online.  Right now, I’m searching for that balance.  I want to provide my twitter followers with quality tweets that enhance their lives, but I also would like each of them in my downline so that I make more money.  It is definately a difficult balance to find.  If anyone wants to share their ideas or success stories, please do.  I don’t know the answer and I’ll be the first to admit it.