Business in a Box - for sale

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

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

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

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.....

You want to succeed in Business and in Life?

Two Years Online!!

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!

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.