Well, things aren’t going as well as they should be. If you look at the ticker above you will see that the target has just become that little bit further to reach. I had a surprise charge for hosting and domain renewal which totalled nearly £200. I really need to sort out the hosting I don’t need as I have a hosting package with another provider that only costs £6 per month for unlimited websites. It is just too expensive otherwise.

Which brings me to my next point. I have three or four sites that are just sitting there doing nothing for me at the moment, hemorrhaging money that I really do not want to lose. I need to re-focus some time into these sites and claw back some cash. The idea is to have all my sites working for me. They won’t be monetised for affiliate revenue as I have not got the time to promote them properly, but maybe to have unique content filtered to them by submitting the sites to Free Traffic System. The idea is to have these sites primarily focused on AdSense revenue, while still have the door open for affiliate revenue as well. This has additional benefits. If the site generate enough traffic and ad revenue the value of these assets will increase, and the door is left open to eventually sell these sites if I so wish.

It is not what I had hoped for. I am assuming that I just let things run away without stopping to think about the financial costs involved. These things happen though, and I am not afraid to take a step back; look hard at and issue and work to resolve them; even if it means starting from the bottom and working my way up.

Nobody said this was going to be easy…..

Post from: Wham or Scam

Things going downhill…

I am soooo glad that I started off doing it the hard way at the beginning. I was and still am proud of what I achieved with the articles that I did write; but if I am to move my business forward I have got to get the sites out there; not faff about with things that I worry about that don’t need worrying about.

How does it feel? Not good. I like to be in control, do things my way. However, I have chosen an outsourcer that is based in the UK, is reasonably priced (around $7 for a 350 word article) and I am reasonably confident they can get the articles back to me in a decent amount of time (although it is a Bank Holiday here in the UK so i’m expecting a little bit of a delay). From what I understand people are very pleased with the service they have received, which I am happy about.

I requested 5 articles from them for now (just testing the waters) which would cost around $35. If I am happy with the service they will get more work from me.

So, if this outsourcing project goes well I can concentrate on the things that I enjoy such as market research. I’ll keep you posted on developments.

Other News

I am planning to move this blog over to my Hostgator account, along with cancelling addon services for a domain that I no longer use. It is just a waste of money paying for hosting on another hosting company when I can get unlimited websites set up on hostgator for a minimal monthly charge. All my domain names will remain with the other company as it costs no more to keep them there, and transferring them is just too much hassle. I expect a little disruption to the service, and I will let you know nearer the time when this move is likely to happen.

The past four months has also been a great time for commissions. Every month in 2010 has seen commissions over £100. I never thought I would EVER see results like this! I am starting to see a little drop in visitor numbers to the site that is earning the commissions, but looking back on the trends over the past year it happened this time last year. Just got to ride with it and hope it picks up again.

Post from: Wham or Scam

Outsourcing – Letting go of some control

I have also had the ‘do or die’ moment with this business. I won’t go into detail, but work/employment/wage slavery is really getting me down. So I have said to myself that now is the time to make things happen. I had to redo one of my travel sites, and it’s not fully complete yet, but the results are that January has been the best month so far in terms of commissions. I still have a long way to go, but it’s the getting started that’s the hardest part.

The site I am currently working on is in it’s VERY early stages and is nowhere near complete. However if you want to take a look at beginners-affiliate-marketing then feel free.

I’ll keep you all updated on the progress.

Post from: Wham or Scam

Opening a can of worms!

Well, unfortunately I haven’t been able to work as much on my Project 2011 as I had hoped. We have had appalling winter weather here leaving us with 6 inches of snow for the best part of the week courtesy of the wonky jetstream. This has meant no IM work and playing catchup with the real work files in order to get things back on track

Anyhow, i have finished my work-from-home files from yesterday and I am now going to start my catchup with Project 2011. I’ll post some snowy pics soon.

Until later!

Post from: Wham or Scam

Update for Project 2011

Well, hope you all had a great new year and your heads don’t hurt too much. Now, here are some of my plans and targets for January; it’s going to be a busy one…

1. Set up my affiliate marketing blog.

This blog will primarily be set up to help people wanting to start out in affiliate marketing offering advice and tips on how to best go about it. I’m not promising it will be any good, but it’s worth a go. Usually when I start a new niche site I just set the blog up and off I go but this one needs a little planning due to the keyword competition of the subject as a whole. I also need to set up the blog so it is easy to navigate – something which I didn’t take much notice of with my other blogs and I think it has hurt the potential of the sites. Which leads me to the next point….

2. Revamp my two travel sites.

Well in all honesty the only thing that these two sites has taught me was how versatile the WordPress blogging platform really is. I realise now that I haven’t utilised these sites to the best of their potential and in all fairness they can be rated as rubbish. I am going to try and salvage them but I am going to need some advice from those trusty people at Wealthy Affiliate. In the meantime, if any of you have any tips for improving the sites then feel free to email me or leave a comment. The sites are:

Holiday Sun Cape Verde

Holiday Sun Kenya

3. Pay Tax

I have until January 31st to pay any tax on any earnings this year. Unfortunately for the Customs dudes it doesn’t look like they will have much off me. In fact, they may even end up paying me. We can only hope. Of course this is all dependant on whether I actually get the activation key in time to do the tax return online. Then I have to work it all out. They are not the fastest people on earth, bless them.

4. Work out how to operate an email marketing campaign. I’ll explain more when I figure it out myself.

5. Email Hostgator as I seem to be paying for two accounts. I was actually my fault, but i need to stop those extra payments.

Well, there you have it, my goals for January 2010. I think they are largely achievable, I just got to work towards them and not be afraid to ask for advice.

On a more worrying note when I started my computer up this morning it didn’t sound too healthy. It works, but it made me wonder what a crappy place I’d be in if my computer died. It made me wonder whether I should invest in a cheapish, basic back up laptop? After all it could be claimed back on my tax return?????? It also made me think what would happen to all my documents and research stuff if I had no hard drive left after a computer self-destruction fit. Mmmmm, I think I should investigate the possiblity of online document recovery……

Post from: Wham or Scam

Project 2011 – Targets for January

Project 2011 is just-for-fun-crappy-named-project set up to help me get motivated to try harder this year with my online make money business in readiness for April 2011.

Why April 2011?

It’s all to do with the combination of Working Tax Credits and the lousy pay in my chosen occupation. This year and next year I qualify for working tax credits, but the year after (beginning in April 2011) I do not qualify for this money robbing me of a cool £150 per month post tax income. This money allows me to live away from home without going bankrupt.

What’s the challenge?

The basic game of Project 2011 is to replace the £150 per month income with my own income from affiliate marketing. I haven’t quite worked out how to do this yet, but the basic aims are:-

To make an average of £150 per month profit by 5 April 2011.

This average can be made through any online venture: affiliate marketing, online surveys etc.

You can follow my progress through the Project 2011 category posts. I really should set up a separate website but can’t be bothered. I’ve added tickers to the top of the page you can follow my progress in real time (although by the looks of it they may need tweaking a wee bit )

Post from: Wham or Scam

Project 2011 – What the Hell is it?