adiakritos

I'd assume its because I'm still active in general. Plus I put an bookmark in the top bar of my browser so that i can update it whenever.

Vipz_10

all the best dude.

adiakritos

Thanks Vipz.

Just realized something more fully that's been cooking in my head.

I should be working to build relationships.

adiakritos

Honestly, I'm not reallllllly sure how to use this email marketing thing to sell affiliate products.

Also, I'm a bit discouraged with the lack of sales this has produced. I know I could have went though this more thoroughly.

People say that I've done to much planning. It seems that in reality, I just don't know how to plan and what to plan!

Also, I haven't had a realistic knowledge of how long planning should really take or even knowing when I've planned enough.

Experience will tell me. The process is showing me its self. I keep learning, applying, testing...etc

I've got to do this while continually seeing the outcome I want, and remembering the reasons I do this.

Sure, its not easy. But its fair. So fair that the people who didn't believe in me will envy me when I drive up in my red Ferrari.

This is going to fucking work. I'm gonna get a toy store auto trader and start picking out the ferrari I want.

I'm even going to check out some places I want to live in by the beach.

Lithium.

I've been following your journal for a few weeks and I'm genuinely amazed at your passion and determination to succeed. I haven't seen such dedication from someone for quite some time.

I actually hope you succeed in your venture and you really do deserve it.

Work your ass off and get that Ferrari and beach house you're after.

Good luck.

__________________


Adaptive-Media.com
The UK's Premium CPA Network

adiakritos

Thanks man!

In all honesty, I don't think I've been working hard enough.

I could have been more thorough in my launch. I spent the last week almost enitrely playing video games and getting chubby.

Thats because I'm away from my usual work environment.

So to counter this I'm creating a work environment out of my laptop alone.

The egg timer? Got a widget that does that for me.
Removing distractions? Got a chrome extension that gives me 5 minutes to screw around in facebook and other play sites.

Getting emotional leverage? Since I'm not in my room where my yearly calendar is I took a screen shot of my calendar before it's printed and put it as an image on my desktop. So now every day when I take at least one hour of action towards either building my brain to get better what I'm doing or actually work at putting something together I can put a nice hefty red X on the day.. with a circle around the day when school starts.

Deadline PLUS the motivation to keep the X's going is killer!

I'm thinking about buying a stack of thin notebooks to take notes on each program I watch so I don't get my notes mixed up. Like one notebook for Frank Kern. One for John Reese. one For Eben Pagan. Then one for plans only, Then a legal pad for Todo Lists ONLY.

Hmmm... yep, thats about it, Thats my portable workstation! =)

The only thing I need now is a pair of noise cancelling headphones if there is to much noise going on where I'm working.

OH! I forgot to mention.

On my breaks between working, even when I'm done for the day, I don't really want to succumb to video games so fast. I want an endless supply of brain programming. Something that will keep me constantly reminded of what I'm after.

Its a great feeling to read the goals you've written down, and then look at the work your doing. Then think about the progress you WILL make from that platform. Your goals don't seem that far out of reach. Actually, after a while, they don't even seem like that big of a deal. Like a ferrari and a beach house in South Beach or Hawaii is simply just a small taste of what wealth feels like.

Like Trump says, it becomes easier to THINK BIG. I have a hard time with that. So I just gotta keep taking action, getting results, and seeing where I wanna go.

Ok enough ramblings. I'm going to write an article on something using the principles in "Advertising Secrets Of The Written Word" by Joe Sugarman.

All of your support really lifts me up guys, thanks for expressing that.

School is starting on the 22nd of august. I'm going to go through those 3 months with full dedication to get the best out of it. I'm gonna join the biz club and see if I can make some good connects in the mean time.

I'm honestly not sure what the education will do for my internet marketing. Like what calculus will teach me about building relationships with clients through email and then having them throwing their money at me. Accounting will be useful for when I want to scale this into something larger, even then its not like I'm opening a zappos. The knowledge its self would be good though. it is nice to be educated.

Even though Harvard graduates might never make as much money as me I can still admire their hard work and high intelligence to get through that. In so much that I'd look for the less pompous ones and hire them someday. Assuming that I create some plans that involve hiring a larger staff. I'm not sure if I'll want to deal with that type of management though. Time will tell.

I've learned more in these past few months that I have all year, and its because I've been able to take consistent action. I MUST keep this going. At this rate I don't see why I won't have made a nice profit by the end of a year. And then in 2 years? Shiiiiit. 5? Forget about it. I'll be able to buy a Ferrari with no problem by then.

I heard that Ferrari's arent even that great as cars. That they break down in 2000 miles are so. But they're so beautiful! omg... I don't care. hahaha I still want one.

Donace

I've always been partial to Aston Martin's.....

You've got me fired up and I feel like re-entering the IM field again.... Honestly because of you last 2 weeks i've been formulating a plan, got figures, quotes, estimated profit, meetings and mockups of design.

...May start a journal some time next week as well

__________________

AceB7

Just read through your posts and wow man, wow, dedication. my notepad is full with ideas to try with my new site.

I've got a calender out and set myself weekly goals. So I am moving forward. Thanks for that tip

adiakritos

awesome!

adiakritos

my pleasure. thanks for letting me know =)

adiakritos

Seriously guys, this extension "stay focused" is awesome.

I was on a site typing some stuff to someone trying to help them out with something. But its nothing to do with being productive. So after 5 minutes it blocked me.

It displays a message saying "Aren't you supposed to be working?"

and then BOOM, I'm back on track.

adiakritos

BRAIN STORMING TIME!

I find that I brain storm the best when talking to someone else or just writing out my thoughts in a free manner.

Doing some critical thinking here.

How am I supposed to use email marketing to sell fitness programs? (that's my niche)

I want to 1. build an email list because it's an asset. However I'm not really sure WHY its is an asset or how exactly to use it. If anything, it's an asset because of the relationship I'd be building with it. SO.... I've got to position myself as someone to listen to and buy from. hmmm....

So, how can i develop that relationship? I don't personally have results to show for so I don't even want to be called out on that. I don't want to lie about it either. I guess its sort of the effect your fat fitness teach has on you.

It's very tempting to simply write up a down-to-earth review on a product and then link to it directly. But I don't think that would be nearly as profitable.

So, my question still is, how can I develop this relationship with people.. on auto pilot? What could I continuously talk about? How could I create a continuous bond with people?

I've gotten more click through's on a page I'm not even trying to optimize than through my emails.

If anything, my emails should be amplifying desire for a product. how-the-fuck-to-do-that......

This is assuming the individual is fat, and hardly knows much about health. They have the option of exercising or not. either way it would work for them.

hmmmmmm

Damn, I wish I was in the same or similar boat with someone else so that we could bounce ideas off of each other. It would be so easy to come up with ideas and sort this thing out.

If I want to turn this into something closer to a legit business I need to build a client base and a relationship with that client base. I just don't want to be seen as a fitness guru or someone who you'd lose respect for should you see that I don't have an incredible body. Or even somewhat 'fit'. I've got an average body. I don't even want to imply a lie.

Hmm. I know what I'm going to do to get the creative juices flowing a little. I'm gonna play my "incubation game".. hehe.. its called "Moby Dick" or "Desktop Tower Defense".

The question is how to position myself to have credibility worth listening to, returning to, and buying from.

secretagentdad

You need to give them something of value for free.

__________________
Exact Match Domains Done Right
http://EMDLISTS.com

dchuk

Lists are valuable because you can reach out to them when you want (as opposed to waiting for traffic like SEO) and because they're "warm" to some extent because they've seen your stuff at least on your site.

Let's say you're promoting an offer for a blender. On your site, you offer a free guide "the 10 best blender recipes"...pdf.

To get the PDF, you have to double opt-in (sign up to your list). Then you can start dripping your emails.

Give them some tips: how to clean their blender, what to look for in fruits, how to make protein shakes. Then on email 3, you hit them with your kick ass blender offer. Tell them how it saves them time, is easy to clean, makes better smoothies, makes them sexy, will call them the morning after...whatever.

Then drop back into tips and guides. Maybe hit them with a protein powder offer a few emails later. A special blender scrub brush after that. Just keep giving them free information about how to do something manually, then hit them with offers that would make their life so much easier.

It's like teaching someone how to cut down a tree with an axe then selling them a chainsaw...now you know how, here's how to do it like a BADASS

A list allows you to pull people out of the internet advertising ecosystem and hitting them in their personal lives via email. You're sandwiched between an email from grandma and their daily groupon. They trust their email because spam filters are so good nowadays, only good stuff gets through. Make love to them and they'll buy stuff from you.

__________________

adiakritos

Yeah I've been doing that. I made an ebook and used it as a way to get them to subscribe.

It's helped pull subscribers pretty well. about 1 of every 10 people who see the page subscribe.

Cuz honestly it's pretty simple to just give them something of value, but that's the steak. I want to get a continuous sizzle going.

I've got something in mind. I'll work it in. Motivation. haha. Hmm...

adiakritos

damn that made it so much clearer. Thanks!

adiakritos

Devising a new plan of attack atm. This is so exciting!

adiakritos

I noticed I flow better with a new piece of writing directly after reading something that teaches it with a few examples. I've got a list of topics to write about. Instead of blogging I'll just write up new emails telling stories and giving value.

My goal right now is to get people emailing me asking questions so that I can take the general questions and answer them back to the whole list.

My hope is that I'll have found a way to get the word out about something and build a following much faster this way than with regular blogging. After all, this is much more intimate and I have a way to measure how effective my writing is by how often people open my emails and whether or not they come back for more.

I've got to keep in mind that I want to be writing to people who are just starting out and people who have already reached their goal, ideally with me along the way.

adiakritos

the more I think about it, the more I understand the whole purpose of building up my 'tribe' over time. That's pretty damn cool. This way it's not really a relationship with a 'company' but with one person, me, who then communicates with them.

Thats pretty legit.

adiakritos

I'm not sure if I have enough time before school starts to keep up with this email relationship thing. Like, reeeaaaaaaaaallyyyyy experiment with it.

what I can do it let it sit for testing while I'm in school. That should be a well spent 60 bucks of research.

My god-to-honest problem is flying through each phase without much thought. I suppose because I don't know what to think about. I'm just winging it and then using whatever info I get back to make some changes.

But that's not how the best people do it. They find out what others are doing which is working.. and they implement it as fast as possible, get some results, and keep repeating that.

I've got to follow some 'star mentors'. People with the success I want.

I've been in the key's for vacation so I haven't gotten much building done. Just been learning some.

Well, it's back to building time.

dchuk

You're thinking too much without action. Every day, sit down and write 4 articles:

-post 1 to squidoo
-post 1 to ezine
-post 1 to hubpages

-add the remaining one to your auto responder series

The articles you post should link back to your landing page with your opt-in form.

Follow this pattern for 30 days. After that, you will have at least 90 articles driving some sort of traffic (they should be keyword targeted so you get organic visitors), and you should have a 30 day long AR series.

Assuming an average of 3 visitors/day/article to your lander, you have 250+ visitors already. Assuming a 35% opt-in rate, you have about 85 new opt-ins a day.

4 articles a day should take you about 2-3 hours. Don't get so caught up in copywriting and all that at this point, just write. Get your first series going. Get people opting in. Collect data. You'll get better the more you DO, not the more you READ (not to say reading is bad, but it needs to be applied or else you're just spinning in place).

__________________

adiakritos

Ok, this will be exactly what I do before going back to school.

ShalaMedia

^^ spot on. Adia, i really, highly suggest you take half a day out and watch all the videos this guy has done. he is a pro, has a proven track record, and not following and tweaking his advice will be your loss - CloudBlueprint: Email

Most importantly of all is to take action. nothing will ever be perfect in life but those who do, and take action will reap the rewards.

adiakritos

word.

I'll check him out. Thanks

adiakritos

Ok... sooooo when I started signing up for a squidoo and writing in the intro and bio and all that stuff I was annoyed that I had a hard time know who the hell I'm writing to.

So, I went back a little bit and defined who my market is it, down to a specific situation and motivation. Just very specific, ignoring all the other potential people I could be writing to. This way I get a very specific audience that is easier to write to.

I also realized that I was not matching my product with my audience right.

So actually, I went to find out what kinds of people are buying this product first. Then with that I defined my target.

I re-wrote my capture copy to target these individuals.

I just watched the video on split testing from that cloudblueprint videos Shalamedia sent me and I was blown away.

Now I'm on to tweaking my follow up email to fit this market and then on to squidoo, ezine, and hub pages.

BitWriter

Just dropping in to say that it's inspiring to see you still at it after so long. Props to you.

adiakritos

thanks!

dchuk

Good to see you constantly thinking about things, but you need to focus on traffic. You can't properly test anything without traffic. Just start writing and posting to these sites and getting visitors.

You'll get better naturally; track the traffic from each article you post, then look at the ones sending the most traffic and try and emulate your methods used in those in other projects. Rinse and repeat.

__________________

adiakritos

okie doke. I'm on to traffic now.

I've got everything else set up with more clarity and congruence.

In addition to writing articles myself I paid a writer from wicked fire $25 to write me 10 articles. He's taking forever to reply so I'm a little worried.

adiakritos

I'm watching a program on creating an online business.

Since it's a seminar this one guy gets up to talk about the results that he's gotten from implementing what he's learned so far.

Basically he explains the problem he identifies, some of the stuff he writes in his copy, how he just published the site realy quick with a free blogger blog, and sent an email out that same day.

Within a few hours he made like $212 bucks from 7 sales selling an affiliate product.

HOLY SHIT!

You know what? I'm building myself up so that I'll be able to do that over and over. Then even create my own products to wash, rinse and repeat.

The seminar was shot in 2007. I just did a quick google search and found the same blog post and I'm blown away! It's got the ugliest design ever! There's even ads to the left of the copy. There's only one blog post, and that's it.

Choller

Stop watching seminars, reading this and that and listen to dchuck

__________________
"Against all odds"

VVE Beheer

adiakritos

Wrote a list of topic titles to write on so I know what to write about next. Made sure that whatever remaining work my writer has would be changed to fit this market. Set up my posterous network.

Wrote an article, posted it to ezine, hub pages, squidoo, tumblr, posterous, facebook, twitter, and blogger.

I'm about to write another article on my next topic.

I noticed that there was a nice amount of views to my previous posterous network for the childcounselling site I did. I figured that if I had just continued with it I'd have eventually accumulated a following.

I'll not make the same mistake by just up and leaving this time. And I'll keep posting.

After this next article I put out I'm going to jump on some forums and start answering questions for people.

My targets are people who are new to fitness and are looking for information. So forums will make it easy to find them and build some cred with the newcomers.

My goal is to get these newbies into my email sequence so I have a private connection with them.

The main goal here is to build a list and then build a relationship with that list where I know special stuff and I'm helping them out.

Then I can send them offers that will help them out. The way dchuk described.

This is how the whole process has come together in my head.

Especially with that little story I mentioned about the guy and the shittly designed blogger post and making 212 bucks in a few hours.

It's like each component crystalized in my head and I 'get it'. Its so simple that I almost feel dumb for not seeing it before hand. Like, within a few seconds of thinking about it.

adiakritos

Am I building new hubs and lenses on squidoo? Or am I simply adding to the one's I've created to build them up...

I got 5 articles from the guy I hired. I've got to add some numbers and studies n what not to make them more informational and credible.

I went and found the top squidoo's on squidoo to see what these peeps are doing and I realized they just build up one squidoo with lots of good content, lots of pictures, request for "likes" at the beginning and at the end and try to sell stuff. Instead of selling stuff I just want people to enter my email sequence so instead of straight selling shit I can just link them to my site.

I'm not really even worrying that much about what I'm doing. I'm just trying to make educated guesses and then publishing, moving on to keep building. Then when I get the data back I can "model and project".

Figuring out my exact target makes things SO MUCH EASIER. I can make better educated guesses when I think about what is the end result these peeps are after, and what kind of content they might find valuable.

adiakritos

If I create more lens's will that ensure that my website is found via squidoo vs. posting to a single lens constantly to build it's cred?

Hub pages is cool because I can quickly make a post to it like with ezine. Squidoo takes a little more time. I'm not sure what's better.

I'll have to have a lens I build up, but also create a new lens for each article to see what happens unless someone here can tell me, thus saving me probably weeks of saved time on squidoo.

secretagentdad

If you are going to be posting a bunch of articles, might as well get some seo value out of it.

Pick some easy peasy 300 search terms in your niche and get some added value.

__________________
Exact Match Domains Done Right
http://EMDLISTS.com

adiakritos

Thanks man, I'll keep this in mind when I'm writing articles.

adiakritos

I like the feeling of writing something that I really really feel is an awesome tip. Like, something WILL help people. Something you'd call your buddy up just to tell him about it. These are the kinds of things I love writing about. I guess because naturally I would happily and enthusiastically talk about them.

adiakritos

5 articles later and I've been getting views to my hub pages. Gotten 1 view to my squidoo lens. 0 views to my landing page.

Patients dear self. There articles are sort of like just writing ads. They've got to have a good title to grab eyeballs. Now I've got to feel out a good article format that gets people clicking through to my lander. Plus, I've got to change my lander from another article to something more direct.

Already wrote something I think might do better but still gotta test it. It's just there, ready for use when I'm done testing the current lander.

Even though the lander I'm using now is suited better for my target audience, it's CTR is 12.5% compared with 20.5%.

Before I change the article lander to a more direct one I'll run some split tests on it as soon as more traffic starts to roll in.

I've taken my best topics, the ones I think would be the most helpful to my audience and submitted them to my email sequence. Right now I'm just going to put a small selling bits at the end of each email instead of one email of straight selling.

Gonna go away to the keys for another 4 days straight. I hope I come back to some rolling traffic and a sale or two.

adiakritos

I'm not going to post back here until I make a sale.

adiakritos

OK I made a sale of something a few months ago.

I didn't make a fortune. I made $7.80 deposited to my paypal account.

I havn't been back here in awhile because I forgot about this but I figured now that I know what I'm doing, more or less, I'll continue updating this thread. It helped a lot of people so I'll just keep it going.

*********************************

What I did to make close to 8 bucks was selling programs for wordpress.

I sold two within a few minutes of publishing the ads on fiverr.

It didn't sell at all after that, I guess because the ads were lowered down on the list.

I've gotten a job at a vitamin store recently making minumum wage. I'm going to stay there for one more month and then quit, take my check, save 80% of it, and continue on my other project.

When I quit, I'm going to spend 20% of my time selling these wordpress programs and 20% of my time building a website/application for people who are trying to lose weight (the business I have a bit more of a plan for)

That's basically 20 hours a week doing each project.

I'm going to school part time so that gives me plenty of time to do this.

School is great in terms of loving the mental stimulation by learning and being enlightened on many different aspects of the world although it's taking up my valuable time from being rich as fuck.

I also bought a model Lamborghini Aventador to sit on my desk and look at to keep my motivation up.

I realized that motivation needs to be maintained like health or anything else.

I'll update this thread with each success I make selling my little wordpress things. The quick response was proof there's a market for what I was selling.

If I can make more than $500 per month selling wordpress programs with less than 20 hours a week i'll be making an economic profit when comparing with minimum wage working at the store.

adiakritos

Got a domain name, got hosting, got a webpage up.

Edited a nice template to remove the sidebar and I'm about the remove the comment area as well when I get home.

I don't want the site looking like a blog. I just need the design and content area. This will make it easy to make as many pages as I want to split test without worrying about viewers seeing that every blog post is just a slight variation of the others.

Thankfully I learned css, html and a little php so I have an idea of that works.

I've got to get split testing set up and find a way to quickly come up with different header images. I want to build a brand around this so I've got to do it right.

adiakritos

Almost done setting everything up.

Figured out how to set paypal up, writing an installation guide now with screen shots.

I posted an ad for a job to pay someone to make the guide for me but no one seems interested.

Once I'm done with that I'll be moving on to writing some ad copy and begin marketing and split testing.

adiakritos

Now I'm moving on to setting up google website optimization for my adcopy pages.

I'm going to also track my adcopy format in different types of templates. Almost there!

dchuk

glad to see you're still hustlin'. hope it all goes well.

__________________

adiakritos

thanks! I'm glad to see you're still around here. I hope serpIQ is going well.

dchuk

it is man! we just launched a whole brand new design check it out when you can

__________________

adiakritos

Niiiice! Looks fancy

ryanjm

Wow, I read the first post and was like, "$600/day in 6 months, no fkin way." Now almost 2 years later it's "Hoping to make $500/mo."

I don't know if anyone in this thread has made any suggestions, but you simply need to follow one proven method of making money, and stick with it until you figure out the tricks to making it work. Maybe I was just lucky to have done that on my 1st go at IM, but I've only been in the game a little over a year and in a good month I can hit your original goal.

I'm not one to advocate endless analysis, but check out WaFo and sort by 5-star threads. Most of that forum is crap, but there are legit 5 star threads there with people giving away million dollar business ideas. There seem to be a good number of those on this forum too under the "enlightened members" area. Your original goal is a little lofty in that time frame, but there's no reason why you couldn't be making a few thousand a month within 6 months.

adiakritos

No doubt I've abandoned every project I've gotten in to prematurely. I'd probably be making a decent amount if I'd have stuck with the 2nd or even 3rd project up until today consistently.

My problem is that if I didn't see results within a month or 2 I'd get bored and annoyed with the labor and move to something new.

adiakritos

Ok so here's what's been accomplished this far

product created
site is set up
tracking is set up
ad copy in place
ppc ads in place

Now I just wait.

In the mean time I'm gonna have to figure out how to stay organized. Time to go back over "Getting things done" and use this file cabinet I bought.