Praying to the WF gods for guidance

[chrisr]

Dont make the mistake I did for the past year and a half. Pick one method and stick with it until it works, don't change back and forth. Yeah.

I believe this is critical. Pick a path and commit to it no matter what. the methods you listed have been successfully for others, dive in and DO NOT LOOK BACK. Meaning, if you run into challenges, know that you are moving toward success with learning. Seek to network with people who have had success - you will find many who are willing to help if you are willing to work.

My primary commitment is email marketing - and wow we have had some exciting challenges. But we will learn from them, get better, and succeed.

Finally, ask yourself if you are playing with scared money. In poker, you have to make sure that you sit down to the table with the right stack relative to the pot size. Meaning, dont go into google adwords promoting ringtones thinking you can do it on $100 a month. Make sure you can detach from the investment you are making financially. You have three choices - invest your time, or your funds, or both. Each method will require a different learning curve. XMCP123 had a great article about this on his blog, reviewing email vs. seo vs. ppc and talking about the skills involved in all of them.

Most importantly, accept that it is OK to have some frustration. What you do with that frustration will seperate the men from the boys.

 

[HarveyJ]

In terms of niches, I can tell you one that's severely under-done at the moment: Mobile Phone Video Series

You know, those little 2-5 minute per episode shows.
Try and find a site that's got an aff program for that sort of thing.

 

[alexb]

I'm taking abhorrent's idea and running with it. Working on a minisite and setting up PPC campaigns on adwords tonight.

 

[johnmatrix]

I was in the same position as you a week ago after 3 months of failing.. I found something that works 3 days ago and im making about 50 a day off it now.. not much compared to some people here but its given me the confidence in myself that i can do this. Woke up to see an IM from my AM saying 'you are doing awesome on the <campaign>. yehhhhh!'.

I even threw together a ringtones campaign last night with my new found confidence and its profiting aswell (not enough volume cos im using yahoo.. but if i can get the QS under control on google it should do great). Longtails is the way to go.

 

[smaxor]

Ok here's the deal. You say you failed, failed and failed. The biggest problem I see with this post is all those things you "tried". You didn't decide that ok I'm going to make this one work and I'm going to keep testing and learning this specific strategy until it works. This is where I see people fail time and time again. They bounce from one thing to the next. Actaully most people live their life like this. They bounce from one thing to the next always looking for the easy way. Or they work at a job that pays them just enough not to leave and they work hard enough not to get fired. It's a sad state of affairs honestly. The bottomline is pick "one" thing and do it, become a master of it and scale it. All those things you mentioned make money at this point they just don't make money for you. Spend 100% of your time working on 1 of those things, research it and run 100-200 tests with small tweaks between them, learn and become an expert. Dabblers 99 times out of a 100 FAIL. You only FAIL if you quit.

 

[smaxor]

Also with regards to "thinking outside the box" if you digg deep deep into one thing you come up with ideas based on experience and trials and error. Call it "thinking outside the box", "creativity" or whatever the fuck you want it's experience.

Just like when you do a soduko puzzle when you first look at it all you see is all these blank boxes and have no idea where anything goes. But as you dig deeper into it and do some trial and error in your head things start to get filled in and as things get filled in they now get easier. However you really have to spend time on it. Think of it all as a puzzle and it has 100 pieces and you have to figure out where they all fit. Out of those 100 pieces for blackhat how many do you think you got together? And how does your puzzle look with 10 pieces out of the 100 together. Probably would work like a plumbing system with 10 lengthes and no elbows

 

[rgordon83]

Ever try robbing a bank?

 

[-Matt-]

I agree with all the above posts recommending you to stick with one thing.

I for one am into creating websites. Legitimate websites, Web 2.0 apps, etc. Building them, marketing them, finding the proper way to monetize them, and eventually selling them off is something I enjoy doing and am proud of my work. Though I do spread out a little (build small niche sites, and larger ones) my main area would probably be SEO.

I do not dabble much in PPC. Why? I started out my online ventures a couple of years ago with an extremely low budget. So PPC wasn't an option then, and now I just don't feel like getting into it because I have another area I prefer.

I also do that PPC for an entertaining poll that redirects to an email/zip submit whenever I find the right story to use. It's small but easy money and doesn't take me far away from my main area so not to be 'jumping around'