greenaffiliate

Current Heartbreak

2011-05-08T20:51:00.000-04:00

Big Waste of Time

2011-02-20T01:08:00.002-05:00

I have a confession to make. I waste a lot of time! The way that I waste my time is that I find internet marketers and read their blogs which chronicle their money-making adventures. These are usually relatively small time Internet Marketers making $500.00 - $5000.00 a month. I spy on them and trace back all their other sites and figure out their money making methods and their back linking strategies. This is a stupid waste of time and it will end NOW.

I am going to dedicate a big chunk of money to be put back in my business via outsourcing and I am going to double my income by the end of 2011. So in order to make 5,000.00 a month in December 2011, I will need focus and determination and the removal of stupid time-wasting pastimes.

November 2010

2010-11-03T00:19:00.005-04:00

I thought it was time to give an update on my earnings for October:

Adsense: 965.00
Text Link Ads: 755.36
Linkshare 31.12
CJ 156.88
Shareasale 55.70
Linkworth 136.00
Blogads 0.00
Private ad sales 100.00

I've been changing up my approach lately. I've built a few more sites and I have bought a few services for promotion. I think I'll wait and see how it plays out and if I get some good success, I'll let you know what I'm doing.

Decisions, decisions.....

2010-03-06T20:08:00.003-05:00

I'm trying to decide whether to promote one of my new small barely earning sites or further build out my moneymakers. Of course, the best decision is to do SOMETHING rather than just weigh the options. (I constantly need to remind myself to take action, cause left on my own, I'll just read blogs of other internet marketers all day)

So, I'm going to install a directory on one of my sites. I have a site in the wedding niche and I get several emails a week from vendors who would like to be listed on the site. ...I have no interest in watering down the content with these folks, so a directory could be the ticket to make everyone happy. I'm not sure what to charge though??

I think I should start it cheap and see how it goes....maybe $20.00 for a year? Seems relatively painless. We'll see.

I'm either going to use www.wpdirectorypro.com or www.directorypress.net/ both are wordpress plugins, so they should be relatively easy to set up.

Onward!!

Back again - January 2010 Earnings....

2010-02-21T16:20:00.002-05:00

Here I go again.....

I always love when folks print their earnings and I see that I haven't listed mine since May 2008?? Can that be??

Oh well, Here goes, you can see and laugh at me!! ....

Google 1014.59
TLA 839.78
Linkshare 17.96
CJ 292.70
Shareasale 135.32
Blogads 0
Misc affiliate 80.00
Misc ads 125.00

total $2626.27

Well, if I compare to May 2008, I can see a big drop with google and blogads.

Time to get cracking! I'm serious this time, I'm going to get working again. (I've really been doing very little and this is serious passive income.)

What's Up?

2009-08-16T20:34:00.002-04:00

I am still plugging away. Making some money online. I seem to stay in a place (income-wise) where I make a wonderful part-time income but have trouble stepping it up a notch where I can kick the day-job to the curb and work from home. I don't have it bad, though cause I'm a webmaster in my day job and I get to play on facebook and twitter and make blogs all day. But, man! I'd love to work in my pajamas and ditch all the office politics crap.

Anyway, for an update, I have been stalled BIG TIME!! I've been stuck since January...and there is no way I can lie or weasel out of this cause I have had a "business coach" for the last two years and I had to fire her recently cause it was embarassing to talk to her every 2 weeks and have very little to report on growing my business!! Eeeks ...no one to blame but myself (even though I want to blame my husband and my job and bla bla bla) Nevermind blaming anyone/anything, I am going to make some changes.

First change is that I am dumping Stompernet. It is expensive $800.00 a month ..I think it is worth it, but I really don't use it enough to justify $800.00 a month...besides, with $800.00 a month at my disposal, I can buy some other educational materials and shake things up!! Stompernet has had a big shakeup lately with one of the founders leaving ...I'm sure it will still be top-notch but I've paid $800.00 a month for 2 years and don't feel the need any longer!!

I get a lot of my online mojo these days from Wordpress Goldmine (that's an affiliate link!) The guy Mark who runs the site (it is a book, videos and a forum) is a cool guy and I first "met" him (he doesn't know I exist, I'm sure) in NicheRockets (which had some other name before which I can't remember) ...so I've been following him for 5 years or so?? and he has always been a straight shooter. I am pretty much a lurker in forums, so that is why I doubt he knows me.

Btw, just in case you didn't notice, I am recommending something that costs $67.00 one time fee vs something that costs $800.00 a month. I've followed LOTS of the gurus and if you are new, watch out, cause some of them are just plain junk. That is another thing about Wordpress Goldmine, Mark doesn't promote a lot of crap.

Anyway, other than that, I'm turning 50 in a couple of months...how could that be? Boy, it is really important for me to live my life to the fullest. I struggle with wanting to grow my business but not really wanting to be on the stupid computer ALL. THE. TIME!! You know?

Anyway, I'm going to start promoting a few new sites I made a few months ago and see what happens. I'll pop back with an update. In the meantime, if you want to make some money online, give it a try ...there is nothing like getting those checks from all over the place every month!!

What's going on with me?

2009-03-30T01:26:00.003-04:00

LOTS!!

Income is down. I've tried to grown my inventory of sites by making a few new sites and I bought a couple of sites. One of the purchased sites was annoying because it ended up to be a bit of a "bait and switch". (luckily I didn't pay too much for it)

Now, I need to spend the time to promote these new sites a bit. (the fun part!)

I'm outsourcing a lot of the work, but I still have too much to do and the quality of outsourcing is not that great. I think site visitors can pick up the vibe when a site is loved and cared for (even if it isn't updated that often) vs the vibe where it is updated often, but it is by folks who are not really emotionally invested.

Not sure what/where I'm doing/going. I still work a full time job as a webmaster however I feel like I work too much and don't have enough time to stop and smell the roses. I'll give a few more details in the next post.

I want to crank out the work!

2009-01-10T17:50:00.001-05:00

Okay it is now 2:50pm. I am sitting down to work. I'll check back with a status update in a couple of hours.

Bored!!

2008-11-30T00:50:00.002-05:00

I am trying to make a new blog every week. However I find it very boring. Want to know what would make it more exciting? If these new sites took off like wild fire and started making lots of money!! I got to get over being bored and start working!

2008-11-09T17:54:00.003-05:00

Well, well, well. I'm sure no one reads this blog anymore, but I find it helpful to track my progress. What is going on with me?

I've consistently kept my earnings at around $3500.00 since about May of this year and I have stalled there. I have made minor attempts at new sites but it still comes down to about the same 8 sites. ...I should probably say 6 sites since two are very neglected and don't make any money. I got a "day job" in May and that along with the freelance work I do (web design and programming) I found it hard to keep up with all my sites and have started outsourcing the content. You can say all you want about outsourcing, but outsourcers never ever will have the passion and interest that I do in the subject. I think that working with outsourcers will let me maintain the level of my sites but I doubt they will have the ability to grow them into great sites. I still keep up my main money site and do NOT outsource the content for that site. My second biggest money earner site is more of a website than a blog and it rarely gets updated and it brings in a good adsense and affiliate based income. It has a blog that I rarely post to ..and up until recently had a forum. But the spammers beat me down with the forum and I had no interest in spending my time deleting their stupid posts.

My goal now is to create some new sites and beef up my income. I figure if I can make $10,000.00 -$12,000.00 a month that will be enough to support myself and my husband. (I live in Southern California and it is NOT cheap!! ...and I am not interested in scaling down my lifestyle by much!!) I would like to ditch the day job, but I enjoy it (I'm lucky, I know) so there is no rush.

In a future post, I'll talk about some of the ways I've been experimenting lately to get traffic and go over some of the new sites I build.

May Earnings

2008-06-19T23:17:00.002-04:00

May Earnings

Google 1730.67
TLA 633.99
Linkshare 81.90
CJ 545.10
Shareasale 50.54
Blogads 326.32
misc affiliate 11.80

total 3383.32

more later....

update

2008-01-27T19:04:00.001-05:00

Well, adsense income is still about 50% higher than pre holiday traffic. I was stuck at aprox. $30.00 a day average for about 5 months and after a banner month last month, it has now settled back to aprox. $47.00 a day. I always worry about relying so heavily on adsense.

My traffic building strategies are working. I've found a few good places to advertise the contests that I am running on my one blog (only 2 more weeks to go with the contests!) which brings in quite a bit of traffic. I also offer additional entries if a blogger links to my site and I would say that I am getting about 5 new links a week from that. I will be happy when the contests are over, however, because I find it disruptive to the flow of my posting ...but we'll see.

On my wedding site, I am working on optimizing my SEO efforts. I think it is helping and traffic seems to be increasing ...or is this the natural time for increase in the wedding industry? Not sure. I am pushing an affiliate product on this site quite heavily. I make between 10.00 and 20.00 for each sale. This month I've had four sales so far; last month, I had 2 sales; and two months ago I had 1 sale.
Goal: I'm going to try to get 10 sales of this product in February. What I've done so far is: I tried the product and I wrote a review article about the product on my site. Before this month is out, I'm going to do a little video on the product and see if that will help. I also hired a writer and got 15 articles written for this site. The articles ($4.75 each) aren't really all that great and I *may* create a feeder site with them rather than put them on this site.

Other stuff: I still haven't done diddley with my travel site ...why do I have such a block on this site???? I bought a few books off of amazon in the subject hoping to motivate me ...so far, the books sit on my desk and mock me.

I also need to pay attention to my main money site ...I have neglected it a bit lately and haven't been posting as much. One thing that I've seen over and over in my network of blogs is that posting frequently and regularly helps on every level!! It is hard to be steady and consistent and it is so easy to come up with excuses to blow off posting ...but I know deep down in my heart that that is one of the main tenets of success in this crazy online world.

I've had quite a bit of web dev freelance work lately, but I've also been looking for a full time job with benefits. In the meantime, I am trying to make this time of working from home as productive as possible!

Happy New Year!

2007-12-31T15:08:00.000-05:00

Time to regroup and get those resolutions written down!

First to regroup:
Looking at where I was last year, I think I did pretty well this year!

I have had an awesome month this december with adsense (almost double the usual) and affiliate sales were pretty good (way more than last year but could have been better).

Traffic was incredible due to a mention in the Washington Post on November 30th which went on from there with mentions in 3 other newspapers during the first week of December. This of course resulted in an increase in traffic which helped sell a few blogads.com.

But the biggest thing for me in 2007 was moving from Boston to San Diego in July. When I left Boston, I continued to work remotely for my Boston employer (switching from full time to part time) until just recently and now I am completely unemployed, and need to pay for my own health benefits and all that crap.

I feel like I am not as productive as I should be with all this additional time and I am worried that I am not going to make enough money. I have always done a bunch of web dev freelance (which always annoyed me since it cut in to my IM time and energy) so I am not ready for the soup line yet!!

So here's my plan:
1. Continue working on my main money maker site posting a couple posts a day.
2. Continue to work on my #2 site. I've been running some contests on that site lately (you can read about it on this blog). Traffic has picked up a bit and I have received some backlinks due to the contest...but I have a few more weeks of prizes and then I am cutting that out for a while. The contest isn't a lot of work, but it cuts in to the flow of regularly updated content and I'm not really enjoying it.
3. I have a niched wedding site and there is no reason for me not to rank #1 for all the phrases associated with this niche. (I'll go in to this in more detail in a later post.) Also, I've found a good affiliate product to promote on this site, which I want to write a couple articles and promote. In addition, the entire site needs to be gone over for broken links and a general overall update. I've also seen a few blogs lately where I could use as research for me to create more content.
4. I have a niched travel site which I don't update hardly at all ...but I believe has grand potential. I've bought a couple of books from Amazon around this niche and will start updating content, one post five days a week. (this is something I could possibly outsource.)
5. I have a niched gadget site that my husband was updating and now isn't, so I'd like to give that a push.
6. I want to get more in to affiliate sites and less on relying on adsense. (doesn't everyone?)
7. I also want to loose 10 pounds!
8. My "main money making site" has a "sign up for newsletter" box since everyone says the 'money is in the list'. Thing is, I have yet to send out a newsletter to these 700 people who have signed up for it. This seems like a great place to explore to make some money with affiliate links.
9. I belong to a membership site (nicherockets.com) which gives its members 5 ebooks each month to sell. The books are pretty good and they come with articles, keyword research and a whole website built. Basically, the only thing I need to do is change the title and maybe change some of the graphics so that it looks different than everyone elses and then do a bit of social bookmarking SEO to see if I can get it to rank and sell some of these. As I've mentioned before, there are some topics I'll never touch, like: acne, anxiety and the like. But, there are a few of these ebooks on physical products like security cameras....so I would like to venture down that road. It will be fun for me from SEO perspective mainly.

Basically, I just want to get to a place where I am making enough money so that I can sleep at night. And if you look at my list, nothing requires a huge amount of skill or brains, it all just requires a bit of ACTION!! So my New Year's Resolution is to quit reading so many blogs and figure out what everyone else in the whole internet marketing space is doing and ignore it all and just do something /anything / something!!

Affiliate Summit in February

2007-12-07T17:55:00.000-05:00

I want to go to Affiliate Summit in February! and this post is my entry into the contest over at Zac's blog. When I picture the life that I want to live, I want to be making a generous salary from my online endeavors and be able to continuously improve my knowledge by attending conferences around the world. Recently, I moved from Boston to San Diego and that brings the Affiliate Summit to within a day's car drive. With the move, I left my full time job and am working full time online but I am not yet making the same salary as I was in my Boston cushy university job. So, Affiliate Summit may be the answer to giving me the knowledge, the networking, and THE GUTS! to be able to make it.

How's your holiday season coming along?

2007-11-30T11:26:00.000-05:00

I'm curious how other people are doing during this holiday season. Personally, my adsense earnings are going through the roof. Which is great!

However, I spent a lot of time on incorporating affiliate links and I am not getting the returns I expected. Which is sad! ...I guess I have a bit of time left however.

In other news, my contest is going well! I let people enter by either commenting, signing up for my newsletter or linking to my blog (if they link to my blog, I quadruple their chances of winning) ...it has gotton me several non-reciprical back links out of the deal. (always helpful) Also, as people see the contest, other suppliers are getting on board, so it keeps getting extended and I am going to be giving things away every week through January. (originally it was going to end at xmas)

It is a bit of work, but fun and an interesting attempt to get some traffic!

Try Niche Rockets for $1.00

2007-11-28T00:57:00.000-05:00

I have been a member of Niche Rockets for a couple of years. It used to be called Keyword Avalanche...but they have recently changed its name. It is a nice little community where lots of money making ideas are discussed quite openly. It is a good mix of occasional newbies and lots of old timers who really know their stuff. The volume of posts is not too overwhelming either, so once I got caught up with all the content, I feel like I can keep up with the the different threads and goings on....with out needing to spend a bazillion hours reading forums. In addition, they just started giving out 5 "businesses in a box" each month. Where they give you an ebook which you can rewrite, a website, a sales page, graphics ---the whole shebang if you are interested in creating your own products.

They are having a deal where you can sign up and try it for 7 days for $1.00 and then you can get in for $97.00 a month (rather than the $147.00 a month that the site advertises). I'd recommend trying it out for 7 days for $1.00 and if you don't like it, leave!!
Here's my affiliate link: Niche Rockets

Stats and more stats

2007-11-22T16:21:00.000-05:00

From almost the beginning of my blogging career, I used mybloglog.com to keep an eye on real time stats. I liked it. It gave me a quick peek of how things were going and I could make adjustments if I was being hit hard by stumbleupon or if something screwed up and one of my sites was down for some reason. Recently, (and it is unfortunate because I just reupped 3 blogs for a total of $75.00) something has screwed up and I can't log in. It something to do with yahoo and mybloglog and the combination of passwords or something. I'm emailing support but I have my doubts...and since this is such a crucial time of year, I felt "naked" without my realtime stats. I use google analytics and awstats as well...but they aren't exactly realtime.

Anyway, I just signed up with mint at http://www.haveamint.com ...it is $30.00 for each domain but unlike mybloglog it installs on your server so you don't have to pay yearly. I only signed up 3 blogs to start, but I really like it! Great referrer info and great to see the search phrase activity ...a bajillion times better than mybloglog.

Another helpful stat program is crazy egg. http://www.crazyegg.com That program has taught me a few things as well ..and it is free ...can't argue with free!!

Google - do you think this is funny?

2007-11-21T19:04:00.000-05:00

Above is the traffic from google for the past month or so for the blog that was stolen. As you can see on October 26th all traffic from google virtually stopped except for people typing in the name of my site. ...all long tails KAPUT!

This particular site went down because I ran out of bandwidth right around this same time (October 26th) and originally I thought the problem was somehow related. Now, I think it was just a coincidence.

As I mentioned before, this site doesn't get a ton of traffic nor is it a huge moneymaker for me but I have been working on it for two years and the traffic was finally getting to a respectable level.

I'm not sure what got it to pop back into google's search listings. It could have been one of the emails that I sent to google when I was reporting that a site stole all my content. I mentioned the traffic drop off starting on October 26th. I don't think that the site stealing my content was up and running all that long ...so I don't really believe it had something to do with kicking it out of the results.

Anyway, it looks like order has been restored. Just important to realize how vulnerable your income can be relying heavily on one search engine for traffic.

Someone stole my site

2007-11-14T17:57:00.000-05:00

Never a dull moment here in Green Affiliate land!! Yesterday, I happened to notice that someone had stolen one of my sites. Basically they took all the content from one of my blogs and re-uploaded it on their own site in a different wordpress theme.

This blog gets about 5000 visitors a month ...like is this person stupid??? In other words, this is NOT my biggest money maker.

Anyway, just in case you would like to know what to do when someone steals your site, here is what I did.

1. I went to domaintools.com and looked him up. The brilliant man had been too cheap to pay for privacy protection so his name address and phone number and email for me to get in touch!! Lucky me!!

2. I called him and left a message and told him if he didn't take his site down in 24 hours I was going to report him to google adsense and my lawyer was going to show up at his home, after which I repeated his address!!

3. I waited 1 minute and then I reported him to google adsense. I clicked on "Ads by Google" on his site (oh no!! I mean my site!! but on his server) and then I clicked on "Send Google your thoughts on the site or the ads you just saw" and I reported a violation.

4. I then went to google webmaster tools and clicked on "Report Spam in our Index"

5. Then I emailed the abuse address at godaddy where the domain name was purchased

6. Then I emailed the host who was hosting the site (I forget who is was, someplace in Canada)

Success!! Today the site is an apache generic host success page.

Oh, and since he was stealing not only every word I've written, he was also stealing all my images and the bandwidth to host them. This is the image I had him show on the top of his page:

If anyone cares: the site where he hosted MY site which is now taken down is: organicbabythings.com

Does anyone have a full membership to domaintools? Apparently he own another site and I'd love to continue to torture him.

Learning about Bandwidth

2007-10-30T11:32:00.000-04:00

One of my sites ran out of bandwidth last week. It was only for a few hours before I noticed it, but since it happened, my traffic has taken a serious dive. This is so frustrating, since I've been working really hard on this site to get it more traffic. Previously, hostgator would send me an email at hitting the 80% mark....but no emails this time until it was too late. Grrrrrrrrr

Shaking things up and Having Some Fun!!

2007-10-27T00:35:00.000-04:00

I've been trying to get my groove back. I was just reading Jenn's blog and that girl is rocking! It is a blast when each month you are making more money than the last ...it can be a real kick! Her hard work is paying off! It is great to see.

Me, however, my earnings have been pretty flat and steady since April. Some streams of income go up!! some go down!! but all in all it has stayed around the same amount of money for the past six months. Previous to April, I experienced exponential growth!

So, I thought I'd have me a little fun and try some new things and get things rocking again! Soooooooo, I started a contest on one of my blogs ...my first step was to email 12 companies and ask for donations. I promised primo real estate promoting their product for 1 week with photo and links back to their site. I've heard back from 7 in the positive and the donations are piling in by postal mail. Each week, I will giveaway one of the donated presents to someone who comments on a post or signs up for my newsletter. (kind of win win for everyone!) I figure I'll get enough loot to give away one a week during the holiday months of November and December.

We'll see how it goes, it hasn't been too much work yet, and the donations have been freaking amazing!! People are sending 2 or 3 items when I only asked for one. Each item goes for about $20.00. Anyway, it seems fun and hopefully it will bring a bit of a buzz to this particular blog and get some energy flowing. I'll keep you posted!

If any of you out there have ever held a contest and you have any advice, please leave them in the comments! I'd love to hear if there are any pitfalls I should avoid.

Terrifying!!

2007-10-11T17:54:00.000-04:00

BJ over at Adventures in Net Marketing had this to say:

I don't know about you, but I've been feeling really frustrated with my Adsense earnings lately. My sites that carry Adsense ads have been going up in traffic - most of them get double the amount of traffic they did last year at this time. And my CTR has been improving, so I've been getting a lot of clicks.

And yet my Adsense revenue is only at about 30% of what it used to be.

I find that TERRIFYING!!!

I just looked at some of my stats and this is completely unscientific cause I am taking adsense across several sites and visitors across one site and I am not even considering CTR. but here goes:

sept 2005 414 unique visitors $ 13.00 adsense earnings
sept 2006 16000 unique visitors $260.00 adsense earnings
sept 2007 26000 unique visitors $920.00 adsense earnings

Anyway, we all know that adsense can't be relied upon and we all need to diversify.

My problem is that I am continually researching and developing and not enough action. I'm a sucker for new software and not enough action. I love to read forums and not enough action. I love to read the exploits of other online marketers but not enough action.

I'm off to work on my sites.

Business in a Box - for sale

2007-09-23T11:51:00.000-04:00

In the same spirit of Burt's sale, I have 5 "box set" businesses for sale. If you've ever wanted to play around with selling your own products, here is a chance to start with practically everything done for you!
Each box includes:

10 articles (in Microsoft word and .txt format)
Keywords
a Website template (including photoshop files)
An ebook product for you to sell (at least 25 pages of content)
Cover graphic already made for you
A sales letter and thank you page designed to sell the product.
EULA which gives you the right to sell the product/use the articles and website (but does not let you sell the whole package like I am doing here)

Basically everything is pretty much done for you. Just edit it a bit to make it your own, set up a website with everything provided and start selling.

Here's the topics available: (I will only be selling one copy of each)

ALL ARE SOLD!! THANKS

Price is: $25.00 each. Please email me at lizh30dc AT gmail DOT com
and I will give you my paypal address.

Found a Cool Plugin for Affiliate Links

2007-09-22T16:54:00.001-04:00

One thing that always bugs me is the big ugly affiliate links. Like:
http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1819081-10362423?sid=ggg1509&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.simpleshoes.com%2FClearanceDetails.aspx%3Fg%3DWomen%26categoryID%3D221%26productID%3D9181%26model%3DToe%2BFoo

Probably most surfers don't notice ...I don't think I did before I got into affiliate marketing and got the inside scoop. But it can be much cleaner with a new wordpress plugin I found at:
http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection/

I heard Alice Seba talking about redirecting her links at one point so that users would view a cleaner url when they moused over the link...but it seemed like way too much work, so this is an easier solution. It makes me a tad nervous, truth be told, just in case the plugin is not kept up for future versions of wordpress.

This is more busy work that can keep my going for hours!! I sure do love me some busywork!!

LinkWorth - More Passive Income

2007-09-14T12:05:00.000-04:00

I'm having good results with linkworth as another easy way to sell text links on my blogs and sites. It is not as drop dead easy as TLA since the website seems to be stupidly confusing!
But, good news is you only have to figure it out once and then you can sit back and pull in the cash.

My tendency is to think "i gotta make some new sites" when the easy thing to do is "work on the ones I got".

Need to make some changes and regroup

2007-08-26T12:48:00.000-04:00

I have to evaluate my business and make some changes. Blogads, which traditionally has made me a good amount of money has slacked off lately. Not only for me but for most of the publishers in my niche. I'm not sure if it will pick up in the fall, but I feel like I have to be nimble. I've had $900.00 months with them ...with an average of about $500.00. In my early days I made way more with them than I did with adsense. Anyway, since it is slow, I am using it to offer a couple of free ads with folks I've been developing relationships with online. Filling up the "karma bank" so to speak.

Anyway, I have been pushing more affiliate links, and my work has paid off with more sales there. I've also made a few direct sales of links. I'm also trying an ad network called adify and have been asked to join a couple other networks. One I am interested in, but it means redesigning my blog a bit to allow for the ad size. ...so that's just laziness and fear keeping me back there. I've got to try to deal with that this week.

However, I am still trying to figure out 'what I want to do when I grow up'. I am working part time remotely for my employer back in Boston. I would love to do internet marketing full time and am trying to get it to happen! For the moment, my online endeavors do not equal my full time salary, so I am looking into ways to scale it up.

One thing that is helpful for me is to think about "REAL NUMBERS". Like exactly how much do I need to make to pay taxes, insurance and all that stuff that my job pays for? How much do I need to earn to cover the expenses? How much do I need to earn to save at the level I want to? If I get a $500,000.00 mortgage, what is the monthly payment? If I get a $600,000.00 mortgage, what is the monthy payment? In a future post, I am going to describe how I would love my online career to develop. I find that really helpful.

In other news, I've had a woman contact me with an offer of 100 domain names that are very similar to my domain names. Her offer was $2000.00, then $1000.00 and then $500.00. for all 100 of them. It was *extremely* tempting to buy these domains ...but the reality was I really don't have the time to develop them. And I feel like she was being really sneaky and wierd to have done this in the first place!! Again, it was really hard to leave them on the table ..especially if someone does buy them and develops them they can be confused with me....but I felt manipulated and it was operating on my fears ...rather than operating on the direction that I want to move to.

I'm not sure I made the right decision there! Let me know if you think I should have taken them ...they are probably still available.

This is my new mantra.....

2007-08-16T01:49:00.000-04:00

You want to succeed in Business and in Life?

Two Years Online!!

2007-08-07T00:47:00.001-04:00

I just recently realized that my first money making blog (isn't the first always special?) is two years old at the end of July. I have come a long way! I started at $0 of course, and now make over $2K each month from about 10 websites. It could be better, of course, but I'm pretty happy especially since I have had a full time job through the entire project and my husband just started helping me this past January.

I often try to connect with that early energy I had. It was really a case of having a zen "Beginners Mind". I had no idea what I was doing, so I was willing to try anything! I also got lucky in a few places. and did I mention I worked really hard at it even when I didn't want to? I had so many times that the "voices in my head" told me what I was doing was stupid ...or that I was really tired....or that I should watch TV with my husband...or whatever excuse I could come up with!! ....and I reminded myself that they were just "voices in my head" and I kept going.

With moving, my momentum has really taken a dive and boy has my attention on my sites suffered!! Thankfully income is still climbing, but I've got to get back in the groove!

Is anybody doing the thirty day challenge? There's some good content over there...

Made it to San Diego!

2007-07-31T01:34:00.000-04:00

Woo hoo!! Made the move across country. Moving is so much work!! ...I really can't complain, however, since everything really went smooth as silk. And San Diego is one cool city! Unfortunately, I'm living kind of out in the suburbs .....I'd prefer something a bit more "hip and happening" like my old neighborhood in Boston, ..but where I am in San Diego there is a nice lake to walk around that is very close and did I mention there is a pool in the back yard? And the house is awesome!!

I need to decide what I want to do with my life. My old job back in Boston is keeping me on half time (with full benefits)...but probably only through the early fall. I really wish my online endeavors could pick up the slack and provide my full time income. ...but truth is, I am just not there yet.

I am going to try to work like heck the next couple of weeks and see if I can make it work. Worst case is I get a job...the job market seems pretty healthy for my line of work at the moment, so I am very grateful for that.

I'll need to keep very focused and make good decisions on where to spend my time and energy. I'll keep you posted!

Hostgator - is this a sign from above?

2007-06-23T22:59:00.000-04:00

I have had a reseller account with hostgator for several years and I have been relatively happy with the service. I have a side business doing web design and I resell hosting to several small businesses and one of my clients is a real pain in the neck. He would notice the minute his email would go down for 2 seconds and call me obsessively. A few years ago there were email outages on a regular basis ...nothing major ...but this one client would always be very put out by it all. Anyway, fast forward to today.....I'm moving across the country and thought it would be a great excuse to get rid of this particular pain in the neck client even though hostgator has had no problems for about a year and it has been pretty painless.

I've got to say, Hostgator has been absolutely impossible to work with. Moving this host (from my reseller account to a new account set up also at hostgator) has forced me up the food chain to "adminstrator support" which means no phone, no chat, just email correspondence. The kicker is that I have to wait 24 hours between each email. It goes like this:
I email hostgator
24 looooooong hours later hostgator responds with a lame question like: this is going to cost $10.00 is that okay?
I respond to hostgator in 2 minutes flat
24 looooooong hours later hours later hostgator responds.

In addition, I don't think I have ever experienced this much miscommunication and bumblings in my life!! They just now emailed me to tell me that all my files were running on my domain. LIKE DUH!! ...the ticket was to MOVE the files to a NEW domain. I guess they didn't get that part....where they still don't work.

Anyway, I have the month of July off ....do I spend the month, finding a new host and moving 50 or so sites/domains over to the new host? That is NOT how I want to LIVE MY LIFE!! I'm am stomping my feet like a teenager!!

However, I feel like if there were ever a truly serious problem with my sites and I was stuck in this email 24 hour response time hell, I would totally blow a gasket.

Feel free to leave me host suggestions in the comments. (with affiliate links if you like)

need to update

2007-06-09T17:46:00.000-04:00

I haven't updated lately but not a lot new in my online life. I learned one lesson however!! ...which I will share with you all. I was approached to host a video on one of my blogs by the Sundance channel (their new "Green" channel) ...they even said 'exclusive use' ...I'm always up for that ...but I didn't really see much increase in traffic for my effort and man!! ...did I burn through bandwith! Yikes! I had to upgrade my hostgator account (which was easy) but now I am paying $15.00 more a month than I did. Hopefully my traffic will skyrocket all over my sites and this increased bandwidth will be used every month!! : ) I resell hosting cause I do web design for many small businesses ...so I've got my hosting costs pretty covered ...but STILL!!

Other than that....it is just a battle for "time" ..maybe that should be "TIME" to work on my sites keep them interesting and keep the traffic building and do promotion and keep up with learning new things. I did purchase [aff link seoelite] or [non-aff link seoelite] which has some great tutorials attached to it. I'll post a more thorough review a bit later when I have used it a bit more. I hope to use the product to learn new ideas to beat some of my competition.

I will be leaving Boston at the beginning of July and do not have a place to live in San Diego until the beginning of August and hope to spend that month developing some new sites to increase my online earnings.

Selling ads directly - Update

2007-05-05T21:18:00.000-04:00

I successfully sold a year's worth of advertising directly a few weeks ago. I sold a years worth on 5 blogs for a little 120 x 120 little thing that has text ads in it. I was reading Tyler Cruz's blog today and he gives all the details of his deal where he sold a block (similar in size and style to the one I sold) on 7 blogs for TWO years. ...I got well over half of what he got for only committing to one year and 5 blogs...so I think I brokered myself a pretty good deal. (plus his advertiser is a porn ... and mine is shopping) It sure is nice to get a big chunk of change like that all at once. I'd love to make a habit of it!! Did I mention we're moving from a ridiculously expensive area (Boston) to an even MORE ridiculous area (San Diego) at the end of June? Oh well. We sold our condo in two days with two offers so no complaints. I'm picturing blue sky ahead!! ...oh yeah, there's blue sky every day in San Diego..... What else is going on? I've depressingly fallen below my goals for my travel site. Only 4 posts in the month of April ...but the traffic climbed an tiny bit ...(75 visitors a day avg) ....going to try to get this to 100 for the month of May.
Good luck everyone!

I'm trying Text Link Ads

2007-04-30T20:25:00.000-04:00

I feel like this blog is a text link ads commercial sometimes. I'll show you!! I won't even link to TLA in this post. TLA has been running a "sale" forever where you can purchase $125.00 of ads for $25.00. I finally took advantage of this offer and I now have an ad on 5 blogs. I am using variations of a keyword phrase and I am linking to the home page for most of the ads and on one of the ads I am linking to a category ...it probably would have been smart to do more internal linking rather than the home page. Oh well, we'll see if I get anything from it. One or two of the blogs were very good deals in that I was paying $25.00 or $30.00 a month before the discount for a high traffic site. However, I was not able to order multiple months using this coupon. So I had to spread out my $125.00 to other less desirable sites. In other news, things are poking along. Revenue keeps going up.....slowly... and my dog went in swimming today for the first time this year.

Rest and relax

2007-04-16T10:45:00.000-04:00

I have today off from my day job because of Patriot's day and the Boston Marathon. I feel extremely drained and needing rest. I want to do some work on my sites, however. And, of course I have freelance web work as well. (not in the mood for that today!) I just finished uploading the new text link ad plugin on six sites that allows advertisers to purchase ads on a particular post. I'm not exactly sure how it works but my text link ads inventory is pretty much sold out every month so this is an opportunity to increase earnings with Text Link Ads. ...just a side note...I do quite well with Text Link Ads, so if you are not signed up with them ...get on over there!
In related news, I am still trying to push my sites into new levels of traffic. I also believe I need to continue to build brand new sites as well. In order to increase my traffic (by increasing my links which will in turn increase my SEO) I contemplated purchasing a package for $50.00 to get one site submitted to 300 directories. Does anyone think this is worth it to increase traffic? I know I need to outsource braindead tasks like directory submissions, if I listen to the big players. I guess I am just cheap sometimes and want to do it all myself.

I also plan to start playing the article writing game. This weekend, I purchased Article Post Robot to assist me in that endeavor.

I can tell from this post that I am all over the map and not really focused. ...time to make a plan. I will research article writing tonight and start a push to do one month of article writing on one site. ...I'll start this article writing blast next weekend. In the meantime, I will keep on posting to all my blogs, to increase the content ...which will increase the traffic.

Selling ads directly - Synchronicity

2007-04-06T21:31:00.000-04:00

Just met someone online this week. We're in a similar niche and we traded a bunch of link love ...but the cool thing that she is doing is selling a lot of advertising directly...rather than go through a middle man. It really woke me up a bit since up to this point I have sold all my advertising through text-link-ads and blogads. ...and trying a few other things with minimal success. Anyway, two days after meeting her, I got an email from a big shopping site wanting to buy advertising directly on my site. I'm just making up numbers here!! I figured I'd split the cut that TLA takes for the text link ads. (I think I under priced them!) Anyway, the person came back with no comment on my text link prices that I pulled out of thin air and wanted pricing on a 120x120 banner. I tripled the price from text link ad to 120 banner. Does that sound right? ....we'll see how it all goes. To keep things in perspective, I've made more money so far this year than I made all of last year....let's be thankful for what we got.
I love the version of "Be Thankful for What You've Got" from Massive Attack.
Happy Easter!

Update

2007-04-03T09:06:00.000-04:00

well....I wasn't as successful with the travel blog this month as I had hoped. I posted to it 9 times. and submitted it to some directories. I got a few less visitors this month (492)...than last month (510). I am going to keep at it and keep submitting good content. I found a forum that discusses this particular niche and I will try to read and participate in the forum in order to get content (by learning what folks are talking about and what is important to them) and also to drive traffic to my site.

In other news, I hit my goal of $20.00 a day average from adsense (collected across all my sites combined). It is mostly from one site, however. Next goal ...$35.00 a day!!

I signed up with linkworth.com to try to sell more text links. I also signed up one of my sites with AuctionAds.com ...I'm not getting very targeted ads. It is a fashion site and the ads are playstation and things like that ...but I just looked and it is a wallet ...so it might work. Just trying to experiment here!!

Generally, I am very psyched how my online earnings are progressing. It really takes time day after day for things to pay off...no quick riches here in Internet land.

Next Project

2007-03-05T21:01:00.000-05:00

I have a travel blog that is in a good niche. However, I have severely neglected it. It has averaged one or two posts a month with some months with no posts. (bad!!...very bad!!!)

Anyway, in February, (one of its busiest months) it received 510 unique visitors and 82.4% stayed on the site between 0 and 30 seconds. (bad!!...very bad!!!)

I'm going to work hard on this baby this month and give you a status report in one month. Let's see how I do!!

Monetarily, last month this site sold 8 TLAs for $102.00 a month and made a few bucks in adsense. (bad!!...very bad!!!)

This is my most neglected site.
More later....

big long weekend

2007-02-15T21:43:00.000-05:00

Well, it is a big long weekend here in the US. with Monday being a holiday. I am taking friday off as well to make it really long. But, I've got plenty of trouble planned for myself. First up tomorrow morning I go visit a client for a web job. This website has limped along and tomorrow I want to infuse the meeting with great energy and get a plan for completion!!!

Next up is my taxes. I need to get ready for my appointment with the tax lady next weekend. This is a tedious task, but I am curious to see how much money I made last year from freelancing and from my internet marketing endeavors. (I already know how much I make from the day job)

Next up is my resume. I saw a new job I want to apply to so I need to redo my resume (haven't touched it since I landed my current job 6 years ago) ...another adventure!!

Then, I have 2 noodley client jobs. One pretty simple, the second involves creating movable type blogs which I need to create templates to match their current websites. ..I welcome this project since this is something that I want to get better at. (the only small drag is that I much prefer wordpress!!) ...but c'est la vie!

Then, I get to work on my blogs and internet marketing projects. FINALLY!!! I've been really busy lately and my posting frequency has slacked off a bit ....plus I don't think I'm able to be as humorous witty and engaging when I'm rushing around all the time. I jest ...but SERIOUSLY!!! These blogs take work people!! ...so the blogs and internet marketing is the fun stuff for me...I hope to get finished with all that other crap and be free and clear starting on Sunday (and then have Monday, too).

When I finally get to work on my money making sites, I will continue my link building and traffic building campaigns along with a bit of social networking ...reaching out to like minded bloggers with blog comments, asking for a link, asking for some cross promotion and whatnot. I should probably write an article or two but that may be pushing it. My husband has taken over writing on two of my blogs ...and people he is awesome!! I gotta get the man some traffic!!

I'm enjoying watching the work that BJ and Jen are documenting !! Those gals are so motivational!!

Hey, anyone know of a relatively cheap ebook (or free as well) that gives a blow by blow on how to set up campaigns using MSN adcenter? I've got $200.00 in free credits I need to use up.

Also anyone use a product called optilink? Thoughts on it??
Thanks!!

Traffic Update

2007-02-01T21:46:00.000-05:00

I like to count my traffic as well as count my money. : ) and even though lots of folks beat me at the traffic game, I'm proud of what I did with one of my blogs over the last year.

Link Building

2007-01-27T19:22:00.000-05:00

I spent some time over the weekend doing some link building work for my sites. It is very time consuming work. ...at least the way I do it. I always find appropriate sites and send a unique email suggesting either a link swap or some kind of partnership. Sometimes people email back very excited to work with me and some folks don't respond (or my email gets lost). I always sign the emails with my first and last name and my city (Boston, MA). A lot of people have lived in Boston as one point in their lives and it is a nice way to connect with folks. (plus I think it helps that I'm female and I live in the US) I kind of enjoy the work ...but as I said ...it is very time consuming.

A new approach I tried was using stumbleupon. I would set it up so that I was subscribed to one niche that I was working on (say it was weddings) then I would stumble through wedding sites until I found an interesting one and send an email for a link.

Still extremely time consuming ...but relaxing and fun work.

Blogads

2007-01-21T18:04:00.000-05:00

I have been a member of blogads since last April. It has been a nice source of income for me. (I only have two blogs that are running ads) Recently I noticed that they are trying to sell ads that belong to a "hive" (don't ask me why they use such a silly word). Anyway there are "hives" that are centered around gossip, conservatives, liberals, gadgets, food, military....you get the picture. Anyway, there was a "shopping hive" that seemed to be neglected. I asked about it, got offered to run it and VOILA!!! I am get to invite blogads bloggers into this little hive. The cool part is a get a small cut of the profits from the folks I invite to join. For a gal like me who loves 'multiple streams of income' this is right up my alley!!

I have invitations to the Blogads network (you don't need to qualify for the shopping hive)...so if you have a cool blog and you get decent traffic 5000+ a month. Email me at liz@meditationdesigns.com with the name of your blog and I'll send you an invite.
Let's make millions together!!

Clearing out the junk!!

2007-01-20T22:16:00.000-05:00

Okay, I have been hard at work canceling crap I do not need!! So far I have said good bye to:

1 65.00 every six months hosting account at Ipower
1 75.00 every six months hosting account at Liquidweb
2 3.99 a month hosting accounts at Godaddy
1 108.00 every six months account at aweber (this just got renewed - shucks!!)
1 29.95 a month subscription to Perry Marshall's Renaissance Club
1 15.00 a month subscription to Burt's SmArticle Template Pack
1 29.99 a month subscription to Niche Site Profits
1 100.00 a month subscription to SEOBlackHat Forum

It's the little crap that wears us down.

ADBRITE

2007-01-17T14:47:00.001-05:00

Does anybody out there in internet land have any success with adbrite? I see some of my competitors do quite nicely, but I've made a total of .17 cents!! I need to email their support or something ...or move my ad location.

Any ADBRITE suggestions would be most welcome!!!

Keyword Avalanche

2007-01-16T18:10:00.000-05:00

Some folks asked me about Keyword Avalanche. It really is a good forum!! You can read folks (not me) talking about it on the warrior forum
http://www.warriorforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=127772
and here's my affiliate link if you are so inclined to sign up. Keyword Avalanche

Addictions!!

2007-01-10T20:27:00.000-05:00

Man!!! The Warior Forum is addicting. Tons of stuff to learn and try.
Gotta stay out of there and work.

Thinking about the Warior Forum, I'm drawn to think about the money I throw around learning all the ins and outs of internet marketing. I'm curious to what monthly subscription things you all belong to?

I belong to waaaaaayyyy toooo many monthly subscription programs and need to drop some. I'm going to list them here for you all to see so I'm shamed into getting rid of some.

Here's my inventory (they say awareness is the first step):
Keyword Avalanche (aff link) this one is awesome!! and I won't give up. I've learned a ton. Lots of helpful people and discounts and general good stuff. A bargain at $57.00 a month. I read it everyday.

SeoblackHat - lots of black hat tricks. I think I'm the only female on the whole board. I don't read it enough...I'm going to cancel before the next payment $100.00 a month (ouch!)

GreenBusiness.net - I'll keep this one cause it is cheap and even though I don't participate much, I have a few sites in this niche and it doesn't take much time. $12.00 a month

Burt's Monthly thingy - I don't even know what it is called -- more stuff I don't use and I should cancel. $15.00 a month.

Wealthy Affiliate (aff link) this one is new to me, I impulsively signed up a week or so ago after watching a video that came to my mailbox. My first impression is that it looks like really great info. And there is a TON of info. But probably not necessary for me. $29.99 a month

NicheSiteProfits - This one gives you four websites a month with articles, keywords and graphics. I've only belonged to this a couple of months but I have yet to put up a site with the materials !! and for this I pay $29.99 a month.

Perry Marshall's Renaissance Club - Info about doing adwords which I have never done!! I have to cancel this one. $29.99 a month

There it is!! $275.00 a month!! most of which I don't use. Okay that's the end of my dirty secret for this evening.

Oh, and did I mention I want to joing Stompernet???

New Years Resolution Time!!

2006-12-31T13:48:00.000-05:00

Well, it has been a quiet week here in Green Affiliate Land. Time for reflection.
Last November I made a grand total of $13.92 - all in adsense.

This November I made about $1400.00 with adsense, advertising and affiliate sales.

December has also been a good month, but it will be interesting to see what January brings ...if money will backslide.

I'm trying to figure out my next move. I'm tempted by Stompernet. I'm tempted by the System Seminar. I want to go to the next level.

However, one of the battles I keep having in my heart is that I don't want to pollute the internet with more dreck. Does the world really need one more acne site? Even if I can squeeze out $100.00 a month on it?? (bad pun sorry)

However to not produce dreck is very very time consuming to produce the content. I'll keep you posted.

MUST SHARE: - earlier this week I was getting in that place where blogging is somewhat of a drag there's no spark, no pizazz...I wanted to quit.....know what I mean? I was thinking of how much money I could possibly sell my blogs for on DigitalPoint on and on. Then as I was looking through my stats I noticed I was getting traffic from the NEW YORK TIMES!!!

I got a link from the New York Times!! I was very jazzed. I didn't get a lot of traffic from the link (it was the day after xmas and it was in the "Times Select" which is content you have to pay for) ..but I plan to exploit the coup to my advertisers and I'm sure it will give me a bit of google-love.

Most importantly is that I am taking it as a sign to keep on keeping on!!

Happy New Year all my online money making friends!!!

Give yourself a Christmas Present!

2006-12-13T22:18:00.000-05:00

I added a new adsense banner (the 728 x 90) and I am being generously rewarded!! I've always stayed away from that size since it seemed to scream "I'm an Advertisement!!" ...and it didn't really fit in my designs but I relented this weekend and I have had very nice returns every since. So, go ahead!! don't be scared ... go change stuff!! I dare you!!

Traffic update

2006-12-10T19:05:00.000-05:00

ggg July avg = 760 goal 800 Nov avg 1337
ggs July avg = 63 goal 100 Nov avg 128
ggb July avg = 135 goal 140 Nov avg 268
ggga July avg = 37 goal 50 Nov avg 119
ggp July avg = 34 goal 50 Nov avg 107
ggw July avg = 37 goal 75 Nov avg 90

Christmas Music

2006-12-05T21:55:00.000-05:00

This CD is awesome!!! If the holidays are stressing you out, go buy this CD!! I got it at Starbucks ...and while you're there, grab a peppermint mocha. YUM!

Wordpress plugins

2006-12-03T10:31:00.000-05:00

I'm doing a bit of maintenance today and am installing some plugins to my wordpress blogs. New ones are Permalink Redirect, Populariy Contest (I modified this one so that the info doesn't display on the blog, but I can get the data), Subscribe to Comments(I need this on a day-job blog, so I figured I'd test it out and get ahead of the game a bit), and Ultimate Tag Warrior.

I already have installed: Wordpress Database Backup, Text Link Ads, and Spam Karma 2. Am I missing anything?

updates and such

2006-12-01T07:25:00.000-05:00

Just in case you want the microsoft $200.00 free adwords credit that I mentioned in my last post--here is the link:
For new advertisers only:
http://www.startadcenter.com/200unoffdm/

Other than that, cyber monday was a bit of a bust here in green affiliate land. My adsense numbers are up but I haven't made any sales this week so far. My "gift ideas" page is getting a lot of traffic but no one seems to be buying. Oh well, I think I'll tweak my gift ideas page a tiny bit more over the weekend.

In other news, I got a request for a review from reviewme.com for another site of mine. Very wierd however. If you have a product out there -- listen up!!

I was asked to review a cleaning product that couldn't have cost more than $10.00 -- the sad part is that my blog doesn't get THAT much traffic, and I'm generally a nice person and I'm always looking for content on my blog. If the person contacted me and offered to send me the product, I would have reviewed it for free!! And I would have had the added avantage of actually USING the product. Instead they chose to pay reviewme $60.00 and I wrote some superficial crud and made $30.00.

Oh well....would you have done it differently?

Happy Thanksgiving

2006-11-24T01:04:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. I have lots to be thankful for!!

I received a request for another review on reviewme.com. The product was appropriate for the site so I did it and I am now waiting to see if it is accepted.

I've been working some on my new site meditationdesigns.com. But part of me thinks I'm crazy to start up another blog centered site since to get good content on them and have people actually READ the site, it is very time consuming!! Oh well, we'll see how it goes.

In other news, I saw an offer on one of the membership sites I belong to for a $200.00 coupon for MSN version of adwords (forget what it is called) I needed to put $5.00 down to get $200.00 credit (need to spend it in 90 days) ...so that will be something fun to try and a built in procrastination buster!! How fun! I'll post my success or failures with that program here.

I created the "gift ideas" page on my most popular site. I loaded it with small commentaries on online shops in my niche and then used affiliate links on the ones that had them. I've gotton a fair amount of traffic...so could be a good thing! Affiliate sales are up for me --this is really the first time that I've really worked the affiliate thing...boy, it would be great if it could keep going after the holidays.

happy holiday!

Interesting Observation

2006-11-17T09:57:00.000-05:00

I use MyBlogLog.com for stats on all my blogs and have noticed that a certain TextLinkAd is gettting lots of hits on my site. The "text" of the TextLinkAd is "Gift Ideas" ...makes me think I should make a page on my site called "Gift Ideas"!!

Trying out ReviewMe

2006-11-10T13:03:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer: I am getting paid to post this review.

I got an email today encouraging me to sign up for "reviewme" a new service offered from the folks over at TextLinkAds. I like TextLinkAds and the guy that runs it, so I thought I would give ReviewMe a shot. I don't KNOW Patrick Gavin, but I read his blog and I've heard him on a podcast or two and I get the impression that he is a nice guy and a straight shooter. It was easy as pie to sign up and you are allowed to enter in six blogs per your account. So, if you are like me and own MORE than six you need to think about your strategy a bit. Depending on traffic and topic you get paid between $20.00 and $200.00 per post. I submitted 3 blogs -- 2 got $20.00 and 1 got $30.00. None of these blogs are runaway huge traffic mongers, but they do get about 50 - 200 uniques a day and they are all about a year old. Is that good? I never know. Anyway, seems easy so far. Posts must be 200 words and the thing I like about it is that you MUST label your post that it is a paid post. Is that how the rest of the Pay per Posts companies work? I am still a newbie in this PayPerPost space...and don't plan to do it too much cause it seems kind of creepy in a dishonest sneaky kind of way. But the fact that the ReviewMe site requires that you lay it all out there and own the fact that your are selling your blog's soul seems to make it okay in my book.
More later.

site update

2006-10-23T21:46:00.000-04:00

Found a 3 column wordpress theme which is what I wanted. Racked my head cause I couldn't get my silly "about me" page working. Finally I switched the way the files are named in the options panel and it finally showed the file. Jeez...sometimes it is the littlest stupidest things.
Anyway, I posted one product and got an image for my header. I will hope to work on it a bunch this coming weekend. Meantime, I'll try to post on it this week so it will "launch" with some content.

In the meantime.....

2006-10-16T21:18:00.000-04:00

I am going to make an affiliate site similar to some of my other sites so folks can see how I work it and they can offer suggetions. I don't go at it the easiest way in the world...but then again, even though I desperately want to make money....I do NOT want to throw up total crap all the time. But, as we all know the definition of crap sites is very subjective and my view on it shifts all the time as well.

So, here is my new site: www.meditationdesigns.com
Brand new domain name. All that I have done so far is install wordpress.

Check back later for progress updates.

Half way through October!!!

2006-10-15T22:17:00.000-04:00

Goodness, time is going so quickly. I am soooo serious about building my income online, that I am going to start posting on Green Affiliate a bit more often and try to tell you what I am doing around here.

I am still trying to increase my posting frequency on my six established blogs (this number DOES NOT included GreenAffiliate) and one website (which also has a blog). Blogging is great, it has some awesome income opportunities, but it also is time consuming for me every day.

I'm not into throwing up splog crap....I research and post products and original commentary.

I am very intrigued by what is going on over at Keyword Avalanche. (if I was smart I would post an aff link) I want to start writing articles and making a site that way and then writing more articles to promote the site....following the steps of Tim Gorman.

I have a couple good niche ideas.

More later!! Feel free to ask questions in the comments, if you have them.

long weekend

2006-10-05T22:17:00.000-04:00

So happy to be having a long weekend this weekend. Tomorrow, I have a side business client meeting and then I'm free !!!

Can't wait to spend some time building up my sites. I am working on getting more people to sign up for my newsletters on my blogs (not that I actually WRITE the darn newsletters...but if I did!! ...I'm getting the list!!)

I'm giving a way a free copy of a three different books to somelucky winners, if they sign up before October 15th. I got these books as advance copies from a publisher for me to read and review on my blog (which I did!) and now I figure I'll give them away. It gives the publisher a bit more additional exposure as I advertise this contest and it gives me email addresses!!

Other than that....on my agenda is to make a yoga site. I kind of like yoga and I see a bunch of affiliate products and I hope it will be easy for me to write up some content.
My goal is to start and FINISH this weekend.

Too many half finished projects hanging around here in GreenAffiliate land!!

In other unrelated news, but some you may find interesting, today is my birthday and I am 47 years old!! My hubby just took me out for a bunch of sushi and some ice cream. Life is good!

Not BUYING

2006-10-03T21:40:00.000-04:00

I feel like buying every darn internet marketing product being released on the internet some days. I need to concentrate on what is in front of me.

MESSAGE TO SELF: DO NOT BUY IT!!!

Earnings update

2006-10-02T18:28:00.000-04:00

I got to stop buying stuff so I make some profit around here!!

Anyway not too bad:

September
Adsense 268.35
Affiliate sales 0.00 from CJ* 8.32 from Linkshare
TextAds 247.91
BlogAds 245.42
*I made some money from CJ but I'm only counting this when I actually receive a check.

August
Adsense 208.00
Affiliate sales 89.00 from CJ 11.00 from Linkshare
TextAds 127.10
BlogAds 163.67

July
Adsense 108.35
Affiliate sales 0.00
TextAds 88.07
BlogAds 115.66

Washington Post launches a blog network

2006-09-17T14:15:00.000-04:00

I saw this post on Steve Rubel's blog and signed up one of my blogs.

It is a network similar to blogads and looks pretty good for another way to monetize my blogs. I was contacted this week by Jeff the manager of the program. (I was so honored!) He hopes to get it running in the next month or so as soon as they nail down all the legal stuff.

If you have a blog, scoot on over there and submit it. (he said about 800 blogs were submitted so far)

In related news-- blogads has updated it's system and I have completely fallen off the radar. All summer I was selling ads effortlessly...and routinely had 5 or 6 showing on my blog at one time. Now, I have zip.

BUT>>>...in an effort to make something good out of it, I am taking offering free 2 week ads to some of the friends I've made in the blogosphere. That way my blog doesn't look like a empty ad wasteland and I build up some nice karma.

I'm sure it will all work out in the end. ...and I have been selling Text Link Ads like crazy. If you aren't putting these on your site, you are missing an opportunity!! Very little work for a good amount of cash!! You can also sign up to Buy Links ..where you purchase $25.00 of ads and they give you $100.00 of ads free.

Anyway, short update. Hope you are all well and making piles of money.

Plan for September

2006-09-04T20:48:00.000-04:00

When I started on this journey, I didn't know what I was doing, so I jumped in with blogs. Now, over a year later, I somewhat regret it since they are a lot of work to keep up.

However, during the month of June, I actively tried to post as much as possible. I liked the results, my traffic increased and things seems to be moving in the right direction. During the months of July and August, I've slacked a bit. I post a lot to my main money maker site....but the others was catch as catch can. Starting today, I am beginning another posting blitz on all blogs and will combine it with a commenting blitz to blogs in my niche as well.

Wish me luck!!

Traffic Update

2006-09-04T20:44:00.000-04:00

ggg May's avg = 541 June avg = 633 July avg = 760 Aug avg = 840 goal 800 (hit massively by stumbleupon)
ggs May's avg = 60 June avg = 80 July avg = 63 Aug avg = 65 goal 100
ggb May's avg = 96 June avg = 121 July avg = 135 Aug avg = 135 goal 140
ggga May's avg = 8 June avg = 18 July avg = 37 Aug avg = 139 goal 50 (hit massively by stumbleupon)
ggp May's avg = 19 June avg = 38 July avg = 34 Aug avg = 28 goal 50 WENT DOWN!!
ggw May's avg = 31 June avg = 52 July avg = 37 Aug avg 53 goal 75

Earnings update

2006-09-04T12:15:00.000-04:00

August
Adsense 208.00
Affiliate sales 89.00 from CJ 11.00 from Linkshare
TextAds 127.10
BlogAds 163.67

July
Adsense 108.35
Affiliate sales 0.00
TextAds 88.07
BlogAds 115.66

June
Adsense 86.61
Affiliate sales 0.00
TextAds 31.62
BlogAds 222.37

Weekend Plans

2006-08-18T23:30:00.000-04:00

I've got lots planned for the weekend to get a bunch done on my sites.

First up, I need to do some work for my day job. What?? you say? On the weekend?? I know it is pathetic, but this is a really busy time and I hate feeling stressed and behind the 8 ball ...so I'd rather do a bit of work on the weekend and feel more relaxed during the week. I'm wierd, I know.

Second up, I need to write a proposal for a big freelance project that I am starting. I have mixed feelings about taking this on, but I really want the ca$h!! I want to move out of my current condo and buy a house. and I live in one of the most expensive housing markets in the country. enough said. I will make more money on this freelance web project than I do with my online marketing projects ...so until this balance switches, I'm going to continue to do this work and continue to raise my prices.

Third up, I get to work on my sites. Wahooey!! First, I need to respond to a bunch of emailand post a bunch to my blogs. I've had a friend working on one of my sites which I believe has huge $$$$ potential for making money. She has not been keeping it active ...it pisses me off... so I'm going to start posting and getting links for the site. (advertisers love this site ...it just needs traffic)

Fouth up, I'm going to launch my new blog, datafeed site. I thought it would be fun to try to get some new low maintenance sites up. Not sure if it will go anywhere. But, in anticipation of Xmas, this is my first shot.

Fifth...I want to exercise and get out with my camera.
wish me luck!

2006-08-08T22:26:00.000-04:00

I don't know what I'm doing. I feel like taking 3 weeks off from my day job and just working on my sites. I feel like I going in a million different directions.

I've got 6 blogs and 1 website that has a blog and a forum.

One website does a decent job with traffic ...as you can see below many of the other SUCK!!

Three blogs get 37 visitors a freaking day...who makes money with that??!!

Ick -- I'm going to bed.

Liz

greenaffiliate

2006-08-03T23:38:00.000-04:00

Traffic update

ggg May's avg = 541 June avg = 633 July avg = 760 goal 800
ggs May's avg = 60 June avg = 80 July avg = 63 goal 100
ggb May's avg = 96 June avg = 121 July avg = 135 goal 140
ggga May's avg = 8 June avg = 18 July avg = 37 goal 50
ggp May's avg = 19 June avg = 38 July avg = 34 goal 50
ggw May's avg = 31 June avg = 52 July avg = 37 goal 75

as you can see -- after my big posting push in june ...some of my traffic eased off as my posting eased off in July. Not sure what my plan will be with this. Maybe drop the lowest traffic site and proceed? Posting alot to blogs is a must for them to be successful and make money. But it is a lot of work and it is time consuming. Argh!

Tons to update

2006-08-03T07:20:00.000-04:00

Well, as you may have guessed, I dropped out of the 30 day challenge. Finding a good niche to work kept tripping me up. Then I fell behind and let myself give up.

I have lots going on at the moment and am glad for what I learned in the challenge and someday may go back to it. But want to focus on what is in front of me at the moment.

I had my one year anniversary july 31 of putting up my first blog. Pretty exciting!! I've come a long way! I sometimes want to get down on myself for it not happening faster ...but it is what it is.
This month I finally hit the $100.00 goal in google. I made about $85.00 in text ads and $260 in blogads and $160.00 in affiliate sales. I'm pretty happy. I now have seven sites.

The month of June I focused on posting more to my blogs and increasing traffic. I fell off that a bit this month and traffic on some of my blogs suffered. Posting more works! It is time consuming though!!

I'll post more of an update on the weekend...but this is a busy time for me at my day job and I have a ton of freelance web work...so hopefully I'll have some time to dig in and work on my sites.

Caution ...the software on one of my wordpress blogs at my day job was not up to date and we got this wierd hacked/virus wierdness that had to be removed. (javascript gets written on the php pages) anyway ...update wordpress if you haven't already!
there is a plugin that will back up your database and the whole process is pretty easy. I should know, ive done 10 upgrades already

greenaffiliate

2006-07-14T11:18:00.000-04:00

Saw a great online seminar earlier this week featuring Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Watch. You can see a recorded version of the seminar (including the PowerPoint slides) here. ...it installs webex on your computer ...but I still recommend it.

Also the free Clicktracks program is pretty sweet if your host provides log files. I haven't tried their paid stuff.

I'm loosing steam on the 30 day challenge....I'm going to try to suck up as much information as possible. But it is a time sucker!

30 day challenge continues.

2006-07-07T23:37:00.000-04:00

30 day challenge is freaking hard!! it is a lot of work but I am committed ...why not? I am a few days behind at the moment but figure I can catch up this weekend. But, i've got my product topic picked out and I am moving forward!!

I am still posting pretty heavy on my regular sites, too, so I'm managing to keep up my pace more or less...okay a little less ..but not too bad.

Adsense income has taken a big jump lately and just keeps going up. (we're not talking big numbers or anything but I am happy with the direction!!) I've also sold a few ads so money continues to trickle in.

Finally moving over the DNS for a big side website project this weekend which means the darn thing is done and I get to invoice it. Woo hoo!!

Also met a new client today for lunch who seems to have a lot of work to throw my way. All good!

At my day job, I am setting up a blog for a VIP...I thought I may like to get in to creating a consulting practice around blogs... so this will be a practice run on that. not sure if this is something I want to pursue passionately or not.

more later....

I'm going to do it!

2006-07-03T21:40:00.000-04:00

I'm going to go for it with the 30 day challenge.

This is a hard decision since I also need to keep my posting up on my 6 websites/blogs. I want to continue to grow these properties since traffic and adsense income is climbing on all of them. The six websites/blogs also provide the occasional affiliate sale along with advertising income from blogads and text links ads.

Anyway, I just finished a big side client job and with the exception of my day job, I've got free time. I am holding a vision of myself working from home and for myself. I see my internet marketing empire very successfull and easily making $300.00 a day.
I'm off to jump in to the fire!! and will only allow a completely positive attitude for the duration of this project!

Traffic Building Month update

2006-07-01T12:29:00.000-04:00

ggg May's avg = 541 a day June goal 800 a day Hit 633
ggs May's avg = 60 a day June goal 100 a day Hit 80
ggb May's avg = 96 a day June goal 140 a day Hit 121
ggga May's avg = 8 a day June goal 50 a day Hit 18
ggp May's avg = 19 a day June goal 50 a day Hit 38
ggw May's avg = 31 a day June goal 75 a day Hit 52

So I didn't hit any of my goals but traffic did go up on all of my sites. I still have a good long ways to go. Adsense earnings was up ($86.00). I sold a few more TextLink Ads ($30.00), sold some Blogads (not sure how much) Affiliate sales aprox. ($30.00). I didn't post *every* day on all the blogs but did much better overall. I'm happy with my progress and will continue.

Now, I need to decide where else to spend my time. There is the 30 day challenge with Ed Dale, I just impulsively purchased (bad me!!) a script to use wordpress with datafeeds, and I still belong to a membership site which is full of promise, if I buckle down and figure out what they are doing and how they are making their money.

And then there is the day job and the client work. We'll see....I check back and let you know what kind of trouble I am getting myself into!

Posting like a madwoman

2006-06-16T21:08:00.000-04:00

I've been posting like crazy. Tonight I am taking the night off, however. I am tired. I'll take inventory this weekend since I am a little more than half way through the month and I started being *very* focused on June 4. Traffic is going up up up. Not hugely or anything.

However, I am stymied by one of my blogs: I thought I would check if it had been indexed so I went to google and did: site:www.myblogname.com and I got back 133 results but all the results are full of spam and NOT the content on my blog. Does anyone know what is at play? I asked in a couple of forums but no one has gotton back to me yet.

Carry ON!!!

BTW, I got my first actual payout from blogads and it was 222.00 yippeeee!

Traffic update

2006-06-08T21:24:00.000-04:00

I checked my traffic stats tonight on all of my sites and numbers are steadily going up. I'm emailing and searching to find good places to exchange links as well. Pushing out all the stops ...nothing is going to stop me for this month of June. Weekend coming up and outside client work is very minimal so I will be able to spend a good chunk of time getting posts ready in advance to make next week a litle easier. (Weather is supposed to suck as well ..which makes it easy to sit in front of the computer all day.) I sold another blogad ad as well. Woo hoo!
FYI, the owner of Text Link Ads was interviewed on Shoemoney's show over at webmaster radio if you want to hear more about the program.
I'm off to read more of Aaron Wall's SEO book. Everyone recommends it. http://www.seobook.com/ (not an affiliate link)

I'm still posting

2006-06-06T21:30:00.000-04:00

My chant is "effortlessly" "effortlessly" as I fill out these blog posts in my six shopping blogs. (this blog doesn't count but it is number seven) I am not taking the time always to put in the affiliate links every single time--it bogs down the process at this point. I figure now is the time to try to get traffic!!! Traffic posting!! posting!! traffic!!

I decided NOT to make fake comments on my blogs and then comment back as myself in a schizo way. I'm going to let it happen naturally. However, I did go to two other people's blogs and comment on them. So, maybe that will have some kind of effect if I keep at it. I'll try to comment on a couple more before I call it quits for the night.

I signed up with Text Link Ads last weekend and made two sales today!! One of the sales is on a site in the travel industry that gets virtually NO TRAFFIC (like it is my worst performer ...maybe 5 visitors a day) and I sold an ad for $20.00 a month. Try to get THAT with adsense!!

If you want to sign up for Text Link Ads, I highly recommend it ...very easy and they do all the work for you. You just put a little code on your page. The link above is my affiliate link ...feel free to use it or not. I am running it on four sites and am now going to try to get it on the other two. Not a lot to loose.
Good luck everyone!

traffic increasing day 2

2006-06-05T07:35:00.000-04:00

I've posted to all 6 blogs. I've got a few posts in the can for a couple of blogs. (it is very time consuming!!)
I signed up for Yaro's traffic course. He suggests that I comment on every comment that comes through. I don't get many comments. Should I assume a different personality and comment on my own blog and then comment back as myself?
Seems like it could fool "some" of the people "some" of the time. Maybe I'll try experimenting doing that on one blog. Leave the rest alone. I feel like it is important to put yourself out honestly and it comes back 10 fold.

Focus

2006-06-04T16:09:00.000-04:00

This month I am going to focus on increasing traffic to my sites. I will do this by posting more, requesting links from folks I blog about, and trying to engage other bloggers in my niches to link to me.

Below are the details on how many visitors I got for the month of May and my goal for visitors for the month of June.

This month is all about increasing traffic by focusing on increasing content by posting, posting and MORE posting. Combined with linking linking linking.

TRAFFIC:
ggg May's avg = 541 a day June goal 800 a day
ggs May's avg = 60 a day June goal 100 a day
ggb May's avg = 96 a day June goal 140 a day
ggga May's avg = 8 a day June goal 50 a day
ggp May's avg = 19 a day June goal 50 a day
ggw May's avg = 31 a day June goal 75 a day

I've got work to do!! Note, I've barely been updating the sites ggga and ggp and ggw. Keeping 6 blogs/sites updated with content everyday will be challenging. Let's see if I can increase my income!

update

2006-06-03T11:36:00.000-04:00

Time to update. Hard to believe a month has passed!
May:
Google Adwords: 66.76
Blogads: 182.42

Hey everybody I'm a 3 figure blogger!!

Here's my posting update for May:
ggb 30
ggp 0
ggg 54
ggs 19
ggga 1

I think a big barrier to making money for me with my blogs is that I need to post more. I want to start new sites (and I just bought 3 on godaddy 5 minutes ago!) but I really need to focus on the ones I've got.

It is very obvious that if I have the traffic, I can certainly sell the advertising ...witness blogads $$$
above. And I am doing nothing to get the ads ...it is all just coming to me with no reach out or prodding on my part.
I must stay focused and get these sites more traffic!!

Hard though, Jenn and BJ look like they are having so much fun!!

Tale of two links

2006-05-01T19:16:00.000-04:00

How powerful are links? Let me count the ways!
My day job, I am web developer at a graduate school at a private univ. Last thurs I was in a meeting where someone wanted to buy clicks (through google of course) to our site using the keywords "graduate school of bla bla" ...For this important key word combination we came up on the fourth page of results as #34.

I thought I'd see what I could do to improve the rankings organically.

On Friday, I renamed a page on the site "Graduate School of Bla Bla - The RealName of School" On that page the header is "Graduate School of Bla Bla" and I changed the first sentence of the first paragraph to read. The RealName of School is a leading graduate school of bla bla. Paragraph goes on to blab about the curriculum.

On Saturday, I linked to this page using the text "graduate school of bla bla" from a blog I had running on the same domain but different host. I went to delicio.us and created a brand new account and linked the words again "graduate school of bla bla" to the same page.

My results on sunday morning were - top of second page #11, and #12.

sunday evening: first page #6
Monday morning: first page #10
Monday evening: first page #6

I'm not going to touch it for a while now. But, I was surprised at how quick and how little I did. The domain is an .edu but I am competing with a bunch of other .edu sites for this phrase.

From 34 to 6 in 3 days pretty rockin!!

Check from Google

2006-04-30T11:00:00.000-04:00

Got my first ever check from google for $109.00 - way cool. I started this road in August with one site. Brought 4 more sites online around January. Then another site in Feb and another site in April. For a total of seven sites so far. So it took 8 months for me to make my first $100.00. BTW, For the month of april money earned from google so far is $55.00...so things seem to be on the upward trend!
I'm a little early but here is my posting updates for april:

ggb - 27
ggp - 0
ggg - 44
ggs - 10
ggga - 0

You can see last months posting trend in the archives some where if you are intersted.

I'm going to go out and take some photos of spring and take a break from the computer.

301 redirects

2006-04-28T21:41:00.000-04:00

Went through all my sites and added 301 redirects so that only one version of the site exists. It had been in the back of my mind for some time so I am glad it is out of the way. While I was doing this work, I thought I'd go back and purchase the plural of the name of one of my sites to avoid confusion for my site users. Unfortunately, someone bought the domain name two days ago. Bummer.

Anyway, I uses the instructions for the 301 redirect here:
and here.

adsense channels cleanup

2006-04-24T21:08:00.000-04:00

So, I just went through all my site and cleaned up the adsense ads. I tweaked the colors a little bit on the ones that needed it and then I made many channels so basically now I am tracking each ad on each blog. Previously it was a tad haphhazard. It should make things a bit more interesting. I really have the info to do some good testing.

I know this is basic stuff and I should have been doing it since day one but originally I was overwhelmed with all the options and I am slowly able to get down to the details of things.

My new site --I saw a post on a forum from a woman who was writing an article on the niche and she was looking to talk to folks. I *hesitated* for a few hours (bad!!) and then emailed her but she never called. It would have been a nice piece of offline PR. Shucks.

All for now....

new site launched

2006-04-22T21:47:00.000-04:00

Finally launched my new site. I was listening to a podcast from Joe Vitale...he was talking about abundance. Anyway, I forget the exact context but he mentioned that the universe gives you ideas ..and you have to act on them FAST!!
I should have been faster with the launch of this website. However, if I had my way entirely, I would have worked on it another month before I launched. So, it was a compromise and I am glad it is LIVE!! Perfectionism is sometimes fear with another name on it. The new site is certainly not perfect ...but it is live.

Anyway, my other sites are doing well. I've made so far this month in adsense, what I made in the entirety of last month. I think that is good since there is still a good week left of april. (I'm talking about $29.00 which is my all time high with adsense) I'm making affiliate sales with several products. Not huge numbers but I'm making them!

Since I'm let go of Martel and Keyword Avalanche I treated myself to a couple of educational incentives!

I bought an ebook which came recommended in Alan Gardayne's newsletter (name escapes me) ...haven't started reading it but I will give a review when I do.

I also bought Alice Seba's Sweetie something or other (it consists of a few audio files and some pdfs). I've listened to the audio files and it is a bit basic for me but I did get some good advice regarding keeping things organized and whatnot. It seems worth the $27.00. and she really is a sweetie!!

I've also been listening again to the "six figure blogging" course that I took over the winter. That class pisses me off for some reason ...I didn't feel like I learned enough for the money. It makes me so mad that I listen to the series over and over so that I can glean every little last crumb!! And I must grudgingly admit that I did get a good tip out of what I was listening to in traffic this week. Darren mentioned linking to other blogs in your same niche. Sometimes I get scared to blog about my competitors ..even though I am happy when they blog about me. So that is something I will try to do more. Because you DO develop relationships out here in cyberland and they are fun and they come in handy.

Just for the record, PubCon was here in Boston this week and I LIVE IN BOSTON and was not able to go. I kind of blew my budget at my day job going to SearchEngine Strategies and didn't feel like I could take the time off. Very very silly. I should have signed up the minute I heard about it and not given it another thought!!

Oh well, I am going to work really hard and study very diligently and be working for myself soon with plenty of money to go to any darn seminar I want!! so there!

Onward!

Cleaning out

2006-04-16T13:55:00.000-04:00

So, I, too, gave up my subscription to the James Martell Buzz this weekend. Following a few wise souls....

I never really listened to it much anyway...so it was truly a waste of money...besides all the other complaints.

I'm also letting go of my subscription to KeyWordAvalanche ...I was lured in by the promise of putting up sites and raking in piles of money. But basically it is a bunch of sploggers and I don't really want to spend my energy and time on crap. Call me wierd ...but I'd like to put up sites that have some value to someone somewhere...even if that value is entertainment by shopping or even poker or porn (I don't do poker or porn at this time) ...but just a bunch of scrapper spam is useless...

New Advertiser!!

2006-04-15T14:06:00.000-04:00

Wow! That was cool. I got a new advertiser...just popped in my email box like magic. I like it when it is easy!! $50.00 a month. Way cool. Starts on May 2... a good advertiser for my site as well.

I'm going to start putting blogads on a second site this weekend and invite a couple of folks to try it out for free. ...then take it from there.

I'm stoked!

stumbleupon mania continues

2006-04-12T17:25:00.000-04:00

Still getting hit by loads of traffic from Stumbleupon. Goods news is that it is bumping up my traffic so I look better to advertisers at blogads and I even qualify to put up clickmedia ads.

I need to approach more people to see if they want to advertise on my site. Is that how it is done? or do I wait to folks approach me?

Posting Update

2006-04-03T15:53:00.000-04:00

Post update for month of March ...I must POST MORE
ggb - 16 posts
ggp - 7 posts
ggg - 35 posts
ggs - 6 posts
ggga - 1 posts

Stumbleupon

2006-04-03T15:47:00.001-04:00

My main blog is getting hit from visitors at stumbleupon like wildfire! Wow! I hope I get some folks who come back once in a while. I forget if I submitted my site to Stumbleupon(I must have) or they just found me. It is way fun.

Feeling Crazed!!

2006-04-01T15:09:00.000-05:00

So just to update my last post ..performancing kinda sucks. it is nice and easy to go from blog to blog to blog ...but it doesn't seem to be capturing traffic or referrals very well. I like to watch the referrals.

About referrals, it was awesome that I was watching them in real time (via mybloglog) and noticed all the traffic coming in from the SFGate article last week. Since I saw all that traffic coming in, it moved me to put in a couple of posts since the current one on the top was not exactly stellar! so that is an argument into having real time stats...and checking them!! The stats I get from my hosting company only update once a day.

So, anyway, I am using the free version of mybloglog on a couple of my blogs ...but the free version info is a day old and limited....probably okay for me for now since most of my other sites are not too high traffic yet...but my main blog that gets majority of traffic, attention and $$$ has the full version.

I had a BIG month for me adsense wise ...almost $30.00 up from $11.00 last month. I also sold 2 ads last month. One for $40.00 for 3 months and one for $50.00 for one month.

I'm still trying to get a new site up. I was working furiously just to get the darn thing up when my husband saw it and he brought reality to my head. He made me realize that the site really needs to look classy and professional. So, it is back to the drawing board on that one. But, I want to get it up so bad I am almost hyperventilating!! Can anyone relate? I feel like it is a great niche with not a lot of competition....and the time is now!!

Oh well, this weekend will be devoted to this new site along with a bit of web grunt work for one of my side biz clients. Not complaining about the grunt work...I'll crank some podcasts and be in heaven.

Leave any stats package recommendation (that are cheap!!) in my comments.

Back Home

2006-03-25T22:44:00.000-05:00

Happy to be home. Vacation was nice but home is better. I do dread going back to the day job on Monday, however. I would love to hang working on my sites.

News in my world....last week there was an article in the SFGate about "green blogs" (this is my niche) and my main site was mentioned!! It was such a kick ...I was just thrilled and tickled pink. ...and I got some good traffic out of it, too!!!

I just signed up yesterday with performancing. It seems like a cool product for blogs and it is free!! I was using mybloglog.com ...but it costs $25.00 a year per blog....seeing as I have seven or so blogs going now...it gets a bit pricey. So I think performancing will be great because you can see all the blogs from one interface (don't have to keep logging in and out). I really need to bump up the traffic on my new blogs, however...they are severely behind and I tend to push my main blog the most.
Oh well....

I am still working on my new site that is based on the pregnancy site ...I wish I were a better designer!! it is frustrating ...but I did alot of the writing over vacation and I just want to get the dang site UP!!!
This new site will be a bit different format for me as it will have a lot of static content and then a blog as one of the 8 or so pages ...this will cut on the pressure (I HOPE!!) of feeling like I have to constantly be updating these crazy sites.

Anyway ...more later ...let me know how you are all doing!!

On Vacation

2006-03-17T13:54:00.000-05:00

Here I am - on vacation in not so sunny California. Feels great to be away from the daily grind of the 9 to 5 day job. (not that the job is bad or anything...but nice to get out of the fray).

I've got a couple of things going on. One of my blogs is getting posts "borrowed" on a somewhat regular basis. About 50% of the time they give me credit but it annoys me when they don't!! (so today I sent a friendly email and said "hi you forgot to give me credit on this post -- thanks for fixing it" ...we'll see what happens. I've tried to let it go and just not go visit this particular site ...but that is just not happening!! not today anyway!!

I got a new advertiser on one of my blogs which is cool. So I have 2 advertisers now! go me!! I seem to be getting a bit more email for some of my blogs as well giving me suggestions on what to post about (always appreciated).
more later!

weekend - woohoo

2006-03-11T11:19:00.000-05:00

I'm totally psyched it is the weekend and I can work on my sites. I have to fix up one blog so that my ads show on more pages and also there is something freaky in that the category pages throw up an error page....so I need to dig in and do some coding.

But I have a great idea for a new site and I'm going to try to get it up this weekend. I'm going to try to take what I can learn from that pregnancy site and churn out a new site in a completely different niche of course.

I leave for vacation on wednesday for 10 days so I know it will be tuff to keep up with content while I am away and I'm dreaming if I think I can do any development. But I will bring a laptop and I will have internet access so one never knows.

Nice thing is that my web design side business has slowed down a bit so that is one less distraction.

Onward!!

I've been absent

2006-03-09T20:42:00.000-05:00

This affiliate marketing life is truly a rollercoaster. So full of hope and promise for a few days and then sunk in doom and gloom that it will never work. Guess where I have been lately?

I just have to keep plugging!! It can and will work if I am persistent. What caught my eye today is a site that was sold on sitepoint for the price of $5000.00. Site was: http://www.pregnancyetc.com/index.htm . This site only has about 12 pages of content!! not much at all ...but affiliate links and contextual ads are strategically placed and it brings in $500.00 a month. (the site was less than 2 years old but had a page rank of 4 and good back linking ) ...anyway, I think it is truly amazing.

Anyway, enough dreaming the good news is that the traffic on my main site has consistently grown month over month since I started in august and this month the daily numbers have almost every day been over 300 ...where as last month I only had a few days over 300.

Message for today is keep on keeping on!

Search Engine Strategies

2006-02-18T11:42:00.000-05:00

In other news, my day job is sending me to the Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York for 4 whole days of fun and search!!
I am PSYCHED!!! to say the least. I absolutely love, love, love new york city.

long weekend --yeah!!

2006-02-17T22:46:00.000-05:00

I've been slow to update here...must post more often!(for all three of you out there!! teehee)

Anyway, what have I been up to? Weeeellll....I'm very very very close to finishing a big side job (a web site) I've been working on it since september ... awesome!
This week I tried really really hard to post to all my blogs every day. it is hard!! I think what I need to do is get a bunch of posts done over the weekend ...and then i don't get as pressured to post to all 5 blogs in one night....especially when I am doing stupid client web work as well.
post inventory this month so far: (since today is the 17th ...less than 17 is unacceptable!!)

ggb - 9 posts
ggp - 7 posts
ggg - 20 posts
ggs - 9 posts
ggga - 2 posts

So, starting this weekend, I will post in advance!! ..the more posts the better!!

Tomorrow, I am stopping by a local shop that opened up in my town that is focused on one of my niches! should be interesting. as least I will find some products to post on. I thought it would also be cool to feature the woman who owns the shop and maybe arrange to do a bit of a podcast to try something new on one of my sites!! we'll see how brave I get. I'm shy even to go and meet her even though she emailed me and complimented my site and such.

MUST BE BRAVE!!

Other news was that I got into blogads!! yea!! I just asked a guy in my niche how he liked using them and he offered me an invitation!! wooo wee! I feel like I am in the big leagues. now to see if anyone wants to advertise on my site.... The rates begin at $20.00 a month (that is more than I am making on adsense these days!) so it could prove lucrative.
I need to redesign the site that I want these ads to go on and ask a few folks if they'd like to advertise on my site for free. (so my site looks like people are falling all over themselves to get a spot on my sidebar) ..anyway, I am psyched. I'll post more later

Google Site Maps

2006-02-02T22:11:00.000-05:00

I added google site maps to all four of my blogs tonight. Very easy with a word press plugin. If anyone is interested in how to do it Andre Chaperon has an very clear camtasia tutorial on how to do it.
http://www.andrechaperon.com/2005/07/google-sitemaps-tutorial/
Apparently it gets google to index your site pretty quickly. 3 of my blogs are relatively new (a month or six weeks or so) even thougth I loaded them with about 50 posts each before I launched them ...they still don't get much traffic compared to my other blog which has been around longer and has been successful in getting backwards links.

just checking in

2006-02-01T23:22:00.000-05:00

I checked in on a bunch blogs of fellow travellers on the affiliate path today. They were all posting earnings much higher than mine!! I made almost $10.00 in adsense this month after about $20.00 last month. My affiliate sales have been piddly.

I will not let myself get depressed on this. Tonight while I was doing some web updating work (which I am getting paid $50.00 an hour) I listened again to some of the content from the "Six Figure Blogging" class that I took with Andy Wibbels and Darren Rowse. I learned a few things I missed the first time around and I KNOW that if I listen to them over and over I will learn even more. Each hour is so packed full with info. It is a great resource ..that I paid alot of hard earned money for and I should utilize them and get all I can out of them....I'm mentioning this because my way is to run around the internet looking for something NEW to buy that will fix my piddling earnings right up and find the magic pill and spend the money and look for the fix and run around and phew!!
Lesson for myself today: just sit, don't get negative, you have a great life, and keep on keeping on with what you've got right in front of you ...well right after the last bowl of ice cream.

Onward!

greenaffiliate

2006-01-23T20:05:00.000-05:00

SEO Tip :: MSN Search by IP Number

Got this from Supper aff who got it from stepforth. Cool tool.

hello again

2006-01-19T21:18:00.000-05:00

Things are good here in internet land! But of course too busy to do everything I want.

I am reading over my last post and I still haven't gotton to tagging. Why do I have such a block on that? This weekend all blogs get tagged for sure!!

My side web development business just got really busy again and I will need to devote many hours this weekend to that. It pays pretty well ...but it is not learning/creating in affiliate marketing world ..which is where I really want to be!!

Deep breath. Life is good.

saturday

2006-01-14T09:56:00.000-05:00

so what I want to do this weekend is start tagging my posts. I installed a wordpress plugin to make it easier...so I just have to start doing it. maybe I'll go back and tag all the posts from the month of January in my four blogs. The other thing I though I'd do was install the little graphic thingys that allows one to just click and subscribe to your rss feed. I just want to figure out how those things work (and I could use it at my day job as well).

One of my big web site design jobs got turned back on so I will need to work on that this weekend as well...it is totally boring (the site is brochureware for medical supplies) but I don't have to think much, I can crank some podcasts and just code the pages...it is pretty mindless work. I kind of like doing that...as opposed to blogging which requires me to "write" ...or more like "re-write" and I try to be clever and witty >....which requires brainwork on my part.

Last night hubby and I went to Barnes and Noble...I bought many magazines....and was pumped about blogging again. I want to start two new blogs this weekend. We'll see.

Last but not least ...a new store opened in my town in one of my niche categorys. I thought I'd stop by and introduce myself and see if I can get ideas of stuff I can blog about. ...and tell her about my site.

I can walk down there and get myself some exercise...that is my NewYear's Resolution ...to not sit in front of the computer all day every day. (well right now I am lying on the couch with my laptop...) you get the picture. MORE EXERCISE!!!==GOOD THING!!!!