After reading through Lemon's excellent journal, I figure that it would be a good thing for me to start my own in an effort to organize my thoughts and actions which should make me more efficient. I also lack any kind of accountability, I'm hoping that this will provide me some in addition to getting some extremely valuable advice along the way. I fucked up my shoulder pretty bad at work today, so I'm toasted on Lortabs right now, not going to be able to do much in the way of actually setting up my campaigns tonight, but I figured I would write my intro post. I'm not really writing this first post for anyone but myself. It's something for me to look back on when I need that kind of boost.
Why I'm doing this:
All my life I've had to worry about money and frankly I'm tired of it. There are a shit ton of reasons to motivate me, but this is my main one:
My fiancé. She treats me like a king, and honestly, makes my life worth living. Of all the reasons I can think of to succeed at this, she is number one. I want to give her a good life, a life that she deserves. With the way she treats me, it's the least I could do. She is such an awesome person, and I just want to see her as happy as possible. In a few years, we will be starting a family, and I really don't want my children to grow up the way I did. I don’t want them to see their mother crying on their birthday because we are too poor to afford gifts. I want them to grow up in a good home, not seedy apartments in bad areas of town.
In addition to that, I want to go back to school, and that shit is expensive. I want to go back just because I love learning. I love going to school. I'm not doing it to pursue a specific career path, but I just have this thirst for knowledge and it's something that makes me really happy. I always want to be in school, always learning something new, pursuing a new direction.
And finally, I hate my job. It drains my soul. I work for the TSA. That alone should give me plenty of reason to succeed in Affiliate Marketing. The never ending stream of irate passengers. The bullshit draconian constitutional right depriving rules that I'm obligated to enforce make me cringe. It's seriously a very depressing place, and it is slowly killing any ambition and drive I have, so I have to hurry.
My goals:
So what do I want to accomplish? Simply, I want to make a living from Affiliate Marketing. Right now, I would need about $3,000 a month to be able to quit my job, but I wouldn't be comfortable quitting only making $3,000 a month. I would have to be making at least double that in order to feel comfortable. But what I need and what I want are two different things. I want to live a good life. I want to not have to worry about money. I want to travel, buy nice things, take my soon to be wife out to nice dinners, get out of debt, etc. My goal is to be making 6 figures. I want to make at least $100,000 a year. From what I've seen and read, this is far from impossible. Hell, some make that in a month, there's no reason I can't make that in a year. So that's my goal. I won't stop there, but that's what I want right now.
My plan:
I'm going to dive into PPC and later on once I build up a nice bank roll, media buys. Everything I've read tells me that this is where the money is. I'm signed up with what I feel are some really awesome networks. C2M, Ads4Dough, and Advaliant. Where I've had my hang ups is in the execution. I'd like to think I know what needs to be done, but then the self doubt sets in and I become my own worst enemy. I’ve had the mind set that I’ve already failed, but how can I have fucking failed when I haven’t even tried yet? I’ve got to stop that negative bullshit. There is nothing I’m trying to do that hasn’t been done thousands of times before. People are getting insanely rich off of Affiliate Marketing, no reason I can’t. The only person that will stop me from succeeding is me (and maybe the FTC
).
So, specifically, what am I planning on doing. Well, I’ve got a few offers picked out that I want to pop my cherry on. I’ve been thinking a lot about giving a run at the BizOpp niche. I know that this isn’t the most ideal way to gain experience, but I figure the bigger the challenge the more I’m going to learn and grow. I think I got a pretty awesome domain name for this niche, youmakethemoney.com. So we’ll see how well that goes. How I plan to market it. Well, I don’t have a lot of money to spend. I’ve been banking some money whenever I can to start my campaigns; right now I have about $300. So what I am planning to do is focus on long tail keywords. From what I’ve read, this can benefit me in many ways. The CPC is lower, the competition is less, and the people who click on my links are more targeted and thus may get me a higher CTR. I plan to avoid Google for a while and just focus on MSN and Yahoo for the moment. I have $80 in my Yahoo account from a coupon I came across, so that helps too.
So, in the next week, I will be making myself as good of a landing page as possible (if experienced marketers would be kind enough to review it when I finish, I would be extremely grateful), gathering a list of around 200 long tail keywords, researching and creating what I hope to be effective ad copies, and launching my first (of what I hope to be many) campaign. I’m looking for some advice on my plan. I know it’s not too detailed right now, but any comments are appreciated. I’ll elaborate more when I’m not so high and actually get to work on my campaigns.
I really want to thank everyone on this forum. You all are extremely helpful to those who try to help themselves. All of you can easily just keep your mouth shut and bank stacks and stack of cash, but you choose to share your wisdom, and I'm very grateful for that. I’m open to any and all advice that anyone may have for me, I look forward to it actually. So any comments/advice on what I’ve written so far are more that welcome. I hope that this thread won’t annoy as just another chump newbie making a journal. I really plan to have a great deal of success and I see this as something that can’t hurt and only help. I know it's a long read, but thanks for bearing with me.
Why I'm doing this:
All my life I've had to worry about money and frankly I'm tired of it. There are a shit ton of reasons to motivate me, but this is my main one:
My fiancé. She treats me like a king, and honestly, makes my life worth living. Of all the reasons I can think of to succeed at this, she is number one. I want to give her a good life, a life that she deserves. With the way she treats me, it's the least I could do. She is such an awesome person, and I just want to see her as happy as possible. In a few years, we will be starting a family, and I really don't want my children to grow up the way I did. I don’t want them to see their mother crying on their birthday because we are too poor to afford gifts. I want them to grow up in a good home, not seedy apartments in bad areas of town.
In addition to that, I want to go back to school, and that shit is expensive. I want to go back just because I love learning. I love going to school. I'm not doing it to pursue a specific career path, but I just have this thirst for knowledge and it's something that makes me really happy. I always want to be in school, always learning something new, pursuing a new direction.
And finally, I hate my job. It drains my soul. I work for the TSA. That alone should give me plenty of reason to succeed in Affiliate Marketing. The never ending stream of irate passengers. The bullshit draconian constitutional right depriving rules that I'm obligated to enforce make me cringe. It's seriously a very depressing place, and it is slowly killing any ambition and drive I have, so I have to hurry.
My goals:
So what do I want to accomplish? Simply, I want to make a living from Affiliate Marketing. Right now, I would need about $3,000 a month to be able to quit my job, but I wouldn't be comfortable quitting only making $3,000 a month. I would have to be making at least double that in order to feel comfortable. But what I need and what I want are two different things. I want to live a good life. I want to not have to worry about money. I want to travel, buy nice things, take my soon to be wife out to nice dinners, get out of debt, etc. My goal is to be making 6 figures. I want to make at least $100,000 a year. From what I've seen and read, this is far from impossible. Hell, some make that in a month, there's no reason I can't make that in a year. So that's my goal. I won't stop there, but that's what I want right now.
My plan:
I'm going to dive into PPC and later on once I build up a nice bank roll, media buys. Everything I've read tells me that this is where the money is. I'm signed up with what I feel are some really awesome networks. C2M, Ads4Dough, and Advaliant. Where I've had my hang ups is in the execution. I'd like to think I know what needs to be done, but then the self doubt sets in and I become my own worst enemy. I’ve had the mind set that I’ve already failed, but how can I have fucking failed when I haven’t even tried yet? I’ve got to stop that negative bullshit. There is nothing I’m trying to do that hasn’t been done thousands of times before. People are getting insanely rich off of Affiliate Marketing, no reason I can’t. The only person that will stop me from succeeding is me (and maybe the FTC
).So, specifically, what am I planning on doing. Well, I’ve got a few offers picked out that I want to pop my cherry on. I’ve been thinking a lot about giving a run at the BizOpp niche. I know that this isn’t the most ideal way to gain experience, but I figure the bigger the challenge the more I’m going to learn and grow. I think I got a pretty awesome domain name for this niche, youmakethemoney.com. So we’ll see how well that goes. How I plan to market it. Well, I don’t have a lot of money to spend. I’ve been banking some money whenever I can to start my campaigns; right now I have about $300. So what I am planning to do is focus on long tail keywords. From what I’ve read, this can benefit me in many ways. The CPC is lower, the competition is less, and the people who click on my links are more targeted and thus may get me a higher CTR. I plan to avoid Google for a while and just focus on MSN and Yahoo for the moment. I have $80 in my Yahoo account from a coupon I came across, so that helps too.
So, in the next week, I will be making myself as good of a landing page as possible (if experienced marketers would be kind enough to review it when I finish, I would be extremely grateful), gathering a list of around 200 long tail keywords, researching and creating what I hope to be effective ad copies, and launching my first (of what I hope to be many) campaign. I’m looking for some advice on my plan. I know it’s not too detailed right now, but any comments are appreciated. I’ll elaborate more when I’m not so high and actually get to work on my campaigns.
I really want to thank everyone on this forum. You all are extremely helpful to those who try to help themselves. All of you can easily just keep your mouth shut and bank stacks and stack of cash, but you choose to share your wisdom, and I'm very grateful for that. I’m open to any and all advice that anyone may have for me, I look forward to it actually. So any comments/advice on what I’ve written so far are more that welcome. I hope that this thread won’t annoy as just another chump newbie making a journal. I really plan to have a great deal of success and I see this as something that can’t hurt and only help. I know it's a long read, but thanks for bearing with me.
