Out of Obscurity

I checked to see how many unique visitors I have had to my blog today. I am almost at the initial goal that I set for myself of 1,000! In three months I have had 977 visitors! This month alone I had 517 unique visits with 2186 total visits. The past couple days, I noticed a drop in visits to my blog. I did not post that I had updated it on twitter. I also noticed a drop in the amount of spam comments that I received today (none).
It is time for some new goals. In the month of October, I plan on doubling the number of unique visitors to my website and actually achieving that goal of 1,000 unique visitors per month. That seems unattainable to me now. But, I know if I don’t aim high, I won’t stretch myself to achieve the goal.
I’m still in the process of learning affiliate marketing and my goal for the month of October is to create a niche website that will earn me money online. That is going to be very difficult for me. I don’t have any extreme amount of expertise and it will take not only learning how to create a website, but also writing content for the website. I’m currently considering a website about a Greener environment and a photography niche website. Neither of which I have tons of expertise in, but I think that a website devoted to saving energy and the environment would be beneficial to everyone and I substituted in a photography class today and learned about photography.

Social media is great. You make friends and recommend things to people that may or may not buy them. You might make a couple bucks here and there, but while I given a lot of tips on how to increase sales in my articles and on my blog, I want to emphasize that you can not neglect search engine optimization. The reason is that people need to find your website if they are to read your work. Let’s face it, I never got much out of free traffic exchanges when I sat there and clicked next every twenty seconds in front of the television. Big deal if you get 1,000 page visits from people who aren’t even interested in your site. Their entire goal is to get view their website. No one goes on the traffic exchanges to make purchases. When there is something you want information about or that you really need to buy, you go to a search engine to get reviews and find the best price for the product.
I will be the first to admit that I have not even begun to learn about and implement search engine optimiztion into my websites or blog posts. Currently my blog is really just serving the purpose of keeping me on track in my learning process of online affiliate marketing and website creation. I use it to set goals and share what I have learned. I have been able to write almost daily. On the weekends, I take a break. Someday, I’ll be organized enough to have written a few days in advance and so I can take a day off, but unless I do it everyday in the beginning, I will lose momentum.

You can never stop learning and information is powerful. I became an affiliate with clickbank and have not earned a sale from them yet. While I’m a little disappointed with that, I’m not about to give up. I started out making pennies a month off of my hubpages articles. This month, I’m up to $15. While that is not enough income to exist on, I realize that every thing that I do online has potential to generate income for me. That the more that I create, the more I will eventually make and there really is no reason to stop now. It is possible for me to in time be earning a living online. While Clickbank is a great affiliate program offering tons of informational products and people do make money online using it, linkshare has its own benefits to joining. For example, some of my favorite bargain places to shop, like Sierra Trading Post and CheapOair have affliate programs through link share. I can use links to sites that have concrete products that I believe in and start earning money online. If you looking for more affiliate opportunities or want to further monetize your blog, check out linkshare. There are many retailers that you will earn a commission for if you refer people to their website.

I started my day with a strong desire to write. I quickly located two new Clickbank products that I felt related to marketing and shared them with my hubpages readers. The two products were Great Newspaper Advertising and Adwords for Beginners. After writing 20 hubs on hubpages, I have some loyal readers that are hungry for ways to make money online by writing. All I needed to do was convince them that print advertisements were beneficial and that adwords can earn you money. Notice that both product would benefit someone who is trying to do some marketing on their own. It is all about relevance. Would I have much success if I chose the newest product – How to Wire Writing Jewelery? Probably not. The people who are reading my work are interested in marketing. They might also have an interest in jewelery, but it is unlikely.
AdwordsforBeginners Read step by step directions to mastering adwords and start earning money today.
Great Newspaper Advertisements! Learn how to great effective newspaper advertisements that sell. Don’t allow a graphic artist who knows nothing about sales to promote your product. Find out what words capture a reader’s eye and target your specific market.

It is important to proof read anything you write before you post. I admittedly have posted some things on this blog without reading them. However, if you are trying to make money online with article marketing or advertisements, having someone else review your work is invaluable. I was a little nervous today to submit my articles to the coach at Wealthy Affiliate to review. He pointed out to me that I had some great content, but questioned me about what my keywords were and reminded me that in order to get ranked, the keywords must appear 2-5% of the time. I think that was a great lesson and reminder. I was so focused on getting my article quality content, that I didn’t think about whether I was using the keywords often enough for people to find my page during a search. I get people from twitter to go to hubpages and read my work, but whether I receive traffic from the search engines is going to be determined by keyword searches and I can guarantee that I’m not at the top of any listings just yet. There is a lot for me to learn and implement before I get a good ranking from a search engine.

Today I created my first squidoo lens. I didn’t focus on wealthy affiliate and internet marketing. Instead, I shared my hairloss and regrowth experience. I didn’t start with an affiliate product in mind, but rather a story to tell. I feel strongly that aloe vera helped me reduce the inflammation that was causing my hairloss. I was diagnosed with alopecia areata. I actally lost about ninety percent of my hair and have been wearing a wig for the last few months. Just a week ago, I noticed some regrowh. I have given up on the traditional treatments because they didn’t work for my sister and our genes are pretty similiar. I also wanted to experiment with writing for a different audience. Check it out here. It is still a work in progress. http://www.squidoo.com/alopeciastory
The hardest part about creating a squidoo lens after publishing 25 hubpages is that they have different terms for the same thing. You still have text boxes to edit, however, hubpages calls them hubs, and squidoo refers to them as lenses. The icons are different. I couldn’t find where I was supposed to add a link to my lense, but that may come later today. I’m not sure if squidoo has adsense already enabled or not like hubpages does. I will find out soon though. Overall, it was not as difficult as I thought it would be. I’m excited to publish two more lenses this week.

There is a huge emphasis on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SMM (Social Media Marketing) these days. While both can be equally effective at making you money, often people overlook the obvious tried and true method of sales – classified advertisements. Most people who are looking through classified ads are ready to buy something or are keeping their eyes open for a future purchase. All you need to do to is put your relevant content in the correct category with the common keywords. You will get free traffic that is already looking for what you have to offer. You won’t make millions placing one classified advertisement though. The more people that read your advertisement, the better your chances of making a sale. Even with a targeted audience, your conversion ratio could still be low based on your keyword selection or the product’s relevance. Today, I want to focus on some techniques to implement if you chose to market through online classifieds.
Every advertisement will be listed in the order that it is posted. Try to post 30 unique advertisements for your product three times per day. Remember, the goal is to get the advertisement in front of a large audience. If you only have one advertisement, by the end of the day, it is buried at the bottom of the page.
You will need to have different ad copies. You would not try to appeal to a teenager the same as you would a retiree. Each person is unique and different terms will resonate with different audiences. Some people are turned off by something that sounds like a get rich quick scheme, while others are attracted to it. If your product helps someone make money online, you definately want both types to check out the product and purchase it, but you may need to create completely separate advertisements to get their attention.
Spice it up with pictures. Advertisements that feature banners and pictures have a higher click through rate and are more effective. Try to at least have 10-15 images to post, so that you are not posting the same advertisement over and over.
Don’t get flagged for spam. Make sure that you create a couple different accounts and change your IP address after you post an advertisement. Craigslist will only allow 3 advertisements per account per day. However, if you have a number of accounts, you can post to multiple cities and not get flagged.

Many people think that internet marketing is a crazy idea. However, the most successful people in the world weren’t afraid of failure. The people afraid of failure are really not willing to work hard and put effort into something when there is an unknown outcome. These are the people who are also intimidate by success and who don’t want to learn from their mistakes. Charlie Palmer, owner of The Washington Inn, started a restaurant with no formal culinary training. He found reference point and measured his restaurant against some of the most successful restaurants in the world. Comparison can be a wonderful tool. Find someone who is extremely successful and copy what they are doing. Eventually the gap between your performance and theirs will close and soon you will become as successful as the person whose techniques you are copying. You will make mistakes, and most likely you will fail. The key to success is to learn from your mistakes and not to make them again. As an affiliate marketer, I have already learned that you won’t make money if you select a poor product. I’ve learned that offering a freebie on your website might increase traffic, but not everyone will sign up for the bonus and that some free traffic to your website isn’t worth the spam that it generates. Whenever you implement a new technique in your life, make sure you document the results so that you can learn from it.

I’ve focused this week on writing articles for hubpages. I love getting visitors to my articles. People comment on them and it is great. Now that I’m familiar with hubpages, it is easy for me to write an article and attach an affiliate link or a link to my blog. Both are helpful because if they visit my blog, the reader also has access to more of my writing and may visit again. I also have my affiliate links on my blog for visitors to click on as well. Creating ezine articles is fine, but does not provide the instant satisfaction of being read immediately. Therefore, this week I’m branching out to Squidoo lenses. If I only write for hubpages, then my audiences is limited to those who read hubpages and the people who click on my links through twitter. However, if I start creating some articles for Squidoo, I will receive exposure there as well. My goal for this week is to create at least three Squidoo lenses. I currently have 24 articles up on hubpages, which is a great start, but I need to get better at article writing. It seems like I have procrastinated a little this week. On Friday, I didn’t write an article. While I’d love to say I have made tons of money writing articles, in reality I’m focusing on becoming a better writer and implementing the techniques that I learn about on Wealthy Affiliate.

I started this blog about my experiences trying to make money online. My first degree is in political science. I loved the field because it was ever changing and there was always something new to learn. I never imagined that every field is pretty much like that. I started out promoting Twitter Traffic Machine only to have it removed from clickbank. Then I found 3 Hour Profits, which does have some good ideas that do work. After that, I thought I hit the jackpot with Acme People Search and Free and Powerful. People were signing up everyday. But, eventually the market becomes saturated. With more people promoting it, competition gets tougher and you need to find new ideas and new ways to promote things. What I like about wealthy affiliate is that it has a great forum and people share what they are learning about, the things they try that work for making money online. Ten years ago, internet marketing was a lot simpler. All you needed to do was create a webpage and people found it through the search engine. However, with millions of people online now, you need optimization techniques and keyword reseach to get sales. You need to stay current with the latest trends to be competitive. If you aren’t taking action on a daily basis, you will never gain an online presence. There are plenty of marketing techniques out there to implement. Their effectiveness changes as online habits change. Social media marketing has come into popularity and some people make a living from sites like Twitter and Facebook. Others find success posting advertisements on Craigslist and free classified advertisements. Right now, I’m a fan of article marketing. But, we’ll see what type of success I experience with it.