Next Project

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

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

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

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

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!!

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

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

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!!

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!!

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.....

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.