Stay Focused On One Thing Until Mastered

I committed to this goal just a few days ago.  I realized that I have gained many skills over the years of working online, however little REAL success.  I’ve had my share of successes, but nothing to brag about or to really show.  I came to this realization yesterday and it struck me pretty hard.  At the time I had 3-4 different projects on the table and many more floating around my head.  I was learning more PHP, designing one website, building and adding content to another, toying around in affiliate marketing and still trying to hold all my interests offline.  It just doesn’t work when you spread yourself that thin.  I have a lot of skills, but never focus on one long enough for that huge success.  So my first goal in 2009 is to strictly focus on Affiliate Marketing until I am success and have plenty to show for my efforts.

Become Self Employed By April 10th (Easter)

My first goal is my way to goal number two.  My plan is to be completely self employed doing affiliate marketing by April 10th, 2009.  I am in the process of setting monetary goals, but off the top of my head I could live off of a mere $3000 net profit a month.  Estimating taxes I figure that is about $5000 in commission revenue a month to achieve this goal.  I know it’s more than possible knowing people online who make $10,000…$20,000 and even $100,000+ in revenue a month.  This is just a starting place to know that I can support myself.  I will be one of those making $xx,xxx a month some day.

Make The Move Out Of State

I have been trying to find a job in Michigan the last 6 months or so - so that I could move.  If you don’t know Michigan is in a terrible economic state.  The whole country is hurting, but Michigan has it even worse with their main industry failing.  Needless to say it’s near impossible to get a job there being from out of state.  So my third goal is to move soon after I hit my second goal of at least $3000 net profit.  I am having trouble setting a dte for this goal as it depends on the previous goal.  Assuming I reach my goal by April 10th and sustain it for 3 months I will make the move in July.  Again, I actually hope to meet goal #2 sooner so this could be even earlier.

Maximize Affiliate Marketing Efforts

I mentioned it above, but it is amazing how much money is to be made online in affiliate marketing.  I see no reason why I can’t take my BIG piece of the pie.  My next goal is to be making $15,000+ a month by the end of the year bringing in a $100,000 a year salary.  I know this sounds like a huge goal, but I was conservative on the first one and need something to push myself towards.  I know it’s possible if I put in the work.

Diversify Income and Investments

My last goal brings everything full circle from my first goal.  As I mentioned I have interest in a lot of different businesses.  I will not steal profits fro my affiliate business as I feel it’s best to re-feed the money back into a money maker to maximize more profit.  However, I will begin putting money from my own salary I pay myself into various interests including stocks, web development, real estate and more.  Not only do I have a great business interest, but it’s always wise to have more than one stream of income.

One motivational tip I will offer today is this:  Stay focused, master one skill at a time and you will become successful.

I offer this advice because one of my own biggest downfalls is that I try to do it all myself.  I love learning, I love business, marketing, design/development and the internet in general.  The problem is that since I have a such a wide interest, I jump around and don’t ever master one skill.  So while I have all this knowledge and skills, I have yet to become extremely successful in any of them.

One day I will be designing websites, the next working on affiliate marketing campaigns and then programming the day after.  If I want to be self employed and see success in any of my interests I need to stay focused, remain persistent and give whichever area I choose the proper attention.  I have no doubt that I can master any of these given the proper time and focus.

One of my goals for 2009 will be to remain focused on one thing and master it before opening up another subject.  You will find out what that is and my other 2009 goals in my next post.

Until then, keep making money.

Keith

The break was terrible as I am still really motivated.  I was looking forward to having Thanksgiving week off so I could focus a lot of attention to affiliate marketing.  Looking back though, my only real regret (since it was the holiday after all) was not taking some time to research possible niches.  Instead I slacked off and enjoyed Thanksgiving and vacation.

The good news is that I received my Adobe Creative Suite today and will begin researching and building at least one new niche/page tonight!  So I was sidelined by bad luck, but I’m still motivated and know I will reach my goals on time.  Speaking of which I will be posting a goals post in the near future as I feel those are important for everyone.

Keith

Twitter:  keither

Now I know this sounds stupid, because that’s the whole idea, right?  Set up campaigns and cater to the audience that you bring into your website.  People search and find your site based on what they are interested in doing.  Well, the problem is for myself and many new marketers is that we are excited and jump in without fully thinking about it.  I am mainly (so far) talking about zip and email submits.

No matter how you promote your submits, the offer needs to be related!  You may be able to successfully set up your landing page to promote related topics, but you really need to be thinking about what your demographic might like and not just that the offer is a cool product.  An even easier way to target your customers is to take a zip and email submit and build the campaign specifically around it.  Offer sell them on cooking utensils and then send them to a page to get the utensils.  Don’t promote shoes and then have them click through to random offers about clothes.  Where this may work, why not directly target them?  Wouldn’t you be a little upset if you were sold on shoes and got only a related product?

This was my “AHA!  Moment”.  Simple, yet over looked by many of us new affiliate marketers at times.

Good Luck.  Make Money.

Keith

For my first campaign I threw in everything possible I could think of around my niche.  I was excited about my first campaign and wanted as many people to see it as possible.  My mistake goes back to the subject of this post - what good are clicks on your product if they aren’t really interested in buying?  Some people already own and are looking for information, some are browsing and trying to decide what model (but you don’t have that info on your site) and some are just surfing the web.  These will not results in conversions and that means you’re spending money for someone to click and leave your site with no action.  Not good for PPC marketers.

Dont’ be afraid to try new things and try to lure BUYERS in different ways, but if it’s too far out from what you want them to do - drop it.  If you want to test that is fine, try your methods for a day or maybe even a week, but there will be a time to ride it or cut it lose.  A ton of impressions is great, but not so good if they aren’t interested in taking action. 

It seems like common sense, but I am willing to bet many people do this out of negligence or excitement.  My campaign is loaded with keywords and even a couple ads that aren’t directly targeting my action.  So now with a full day of clicks behind me in I can begin looking at the stats and seeing what’s working and what’s not over the next week.

I hope this opened some eyes even if you already knew it, because you just might be doing it anyways.

Good Luck.  Make Money.

Keith

The key to this post is that I have been extremely motivated and excited over the last week or two and now I have to wait.  I have lost a little of that motivation as I was expecting to launch Tuesday and hopefully see some encouraging results to keep me going.  Instead I have put almost everything on hold until I can get my Adwords account working.  I should be building more on the campaign I am trying to launch, but I just haven’t been into it.  I’m positive the motivation will return once I get things rolling!  It’s more being anxious than losing motivation anyways.

The waiting and putting the campaign I was working on - on hold has been somewhat beneficial.  Yesterday and part of the day before I had time to do some research on my next campaign.  I have decided on a niche for a review site which will hopefully become an authority site.  The niche I’ve decided on has lots of traffic, forums and other sites about it, but surprisingly few review/product sites.  I will be using WordPress and a plug-in to review, promote and sell these products.  It’s a niche that I’ve always been interested in, but never really took part in learning.  I see this as an opportunity to jump in, learn more and get free stuff from the companies that would want to be seen on the site for advertising purposes.  I win on both ends - free stuff and selling their products to make money.

Update: Yesterday was Veterans Day!  Does Google work on Veterans Day?  I know transfers still show up in the online system for my bank on holidays.

Good Luck.  Make Money.

Keith

I finished that work and set the campaign to launch tomorrow (today) and went to bed excited that things would take off tomorrow.  I wake up this morning, get ready for work, get to work and hop on Adwords, my tracking system and the affiliate network to see if things had begun working.  Checking one system after another I realized something obviously wasn’t set up correctly.  When I logged into Adwords and it had a message that my campaign wasn’t active and I needed to verify payment information.  I don’t know why I overlooked this, but I figured I’d have set it up by now or I’d just be billed to my account and I could pay.  Ahhh.  So now I have to wait 1-3 days for Google to make a deposit into my banking account so I can verify it.  Hopefully they do this sooner than later because I’m past being ready to get this campaign started.

Another mistake or maybe a tip is not utilizing Microsoft Excel!  I know the program very well,  but nearly disregarded it due to all the specialty tools I had downloaded from various PPC sources.  Even with the other programs though, I found myself copy/pasting back into Excel to arrange and format which made things much faster.  So I strongly suggest you don’t buy into all the programs out there and do keep a spreadsheet open at all time when building campaigns.

Good Luck.  Make Money.

Keith

First off my day job is becoming extremely stressful and honestly, I don’t make nearly enough to put up with the bullshit.  Apparently where I work everyone knows best about business and web design than myself - but they really have no clue. The frustration is really starting to build up and I nearly went off last Friday.

My job includes constantly building, tweaking and polishing sites that are way better than most in our market.  When I present a great looking website that is laid out and functions well, what do I get?  “Oh, have a look at this website…I wanted it like that…”  What?  So, you want me to copy another site, going as far as stealing graphics instead of having something that is original?   “Yes.”  I honestly can’t stand people who think they know best about everything and try to micro-manage everyone else around them.

I have my degree in Business Administration and have been developing websites for 8+ years.  They all have “degrees” in Communications.  Who are they to tell me how to do my job and try and teach me about marketing an branding?  I got hired for a reason.  Who would you trust?

On a more stress free and exciting note I am about to launch my first OFFICIAL affiliate marketing campaign.  I spent most of last week designing the page and planning my strategy.  This past weekend I managed to get about half of my campaign built and ready to launch.  I plan to get the last few ad groups together tonight and launch tomorrow morning.  I have learned so much the last few days by simply getting into the tools, programs and resource sites and going at it.  I suggest you take your time planning, but as I said in my previous post don’t wait too long after educating yourself.  Get to work!

I hope to be back with another post in a few days on the status of my first affiliate campaign.  A few days after that I’ll hopefully be back with profit news!

Keith

Right now I have an extremely good base of how it’s done, the process and other tips and tricks for Affiliate Marketing.  The only step left for me to do now is to actually create and launch.  I’m extremely confident moving on from here and wanted to post some resources that got me to this point for anyone else who is just starting out.

www.theblackinkproject.com
This is by far the most comprehensive  free information for affiliate marketing on the web.  Not only does it give you strategy and tools, but it gives you theory behind marketing.  This information will take a while to go through properly, but the information is invaluable if you want to do affiliate marketing.

www.superaffiliatemindset.com
Amit Mehta catches a lot of flack for bragging on his lifestyle, but I feel a lot of it is unwarranted.  He does let you know how well he’s doing, but it’s also inspiration and he does offer good information so you can succeed too.   One thing that sets Amit apart from other Affiliate Marketing blogs is that he gives you statistically data to calculate and determine your success.  Either a lot of marketers don’t get this advanced or simply don’t talk about it.

www.johnhasson.com
John doesn’t post as much as he used to unfortunately do to his business.  if you go through the pages of his blog there is a lot of useful information.  He has videos explaining how the process of sending traffic to your page, to the offer page and even how it’s tracked that are great for learning how everything works.  He also has an open line to him with an AIM widget where you can ask questions nearly anytime.

I would really like to find a good affiliate marketing forums to join yes, so let me know if you do.

There are man resources out now that you can find your own and see what connects with you the most.  In my opinion if you focus on these sites you will gain the knowledge and pick up plenty of tips to set you on your way.

Keith

The same thing goes for making money online.  We hear of big bloggers or super affiliates making thousands and in some cases millions of dollars from simply the Internet and a laptop.  This is all well and good, but most people push aside that these people have been at it for years and gradually built up their skills and success.  When you don’t go through this learning process people rarely succeed and eventually get bored with not making what they had hoped and quit.  I personally attribute a big part of this towards the phrase that became popular a few months ago “Fake it til you make it”.  People believed they could be Jimmy living in his parents basement and make people believe they were Donald Trump.

The point of this post is to simply put things into prospective.  It is important to go through a scaling process of your online business and will ultimately benefit you in the long run.  Set your goals high, but don’t be a week in and faking that you’re already making thousands of dollars a month or know everything.  It’s fine to stretch the truth, but completely blowing the truth to pieces is simply deceitful.  There is no shame in being a smaller guy in any niche and growing to reach your goal of being a key player.