Wham or Scam

OK, apologies again for the lack of updates. I really must try harder.

A year in review

What a year 2009 has been. It has been a year where I have finally discovered what I want from life – not to be stuck in front of a desk for five days a week for the rest of my working life – and discovered how to get there. It has been a year where I have started to believe that things could really happen, and they have happened. I have discovered that there is a long way to go to reach my goals and I have also discovered that you learn so much whilst doing affiliate marketing.

There are also lessons to be learnt. Don’t be afraid to find out how to do new things – if you go wrong its a valuable learning tool. I have also found out that I could have worked a lot harder. Still, these lessons I will take with me into 2010.

The Year Ahead.

So what does 2010 bring? Well there is Project 2011, my self named project to earn myself enough money to live comfortably. In my line of work the salaries are just not good enough to live a comfortable life, so by April 2011 I hope to earn enough extra money through affiliate marketing to live a comfortable life without having to worry about where the money for the bill are going to come from. There will be more details on Project 2011 soon.

It will also be my first time I pay taxes to (or get taxes back) from the UK government. I already have to pay a years worth of National Insurance on top of my PAYE. At least I will qualify for a pension sooner this way (that’s what I keep telling myself anyway).

2010 is going to be a good year – I can feel it in my blood.

Hope you all had a good Christmas and I wish you all a happy and prosperous new year

Well, the time has finally come for me to register for Self-employment so I can be a good girl and pay my taxes; the only problem is that it is not that easy to get the information needed. Another commission last week has pushed my earnings up, so I really don’t think I can ignore it anymore.

I am a long long way off getting the kind of income that will see me pay loads of taxes every year, in fact, I am still a little in the red (so maybe I get some money back???), but if I lose my job again it might have some implications for the amount of benefits I receive. Nevertheless, this has to be disclosed.

Reading through the information for registering for self-employment there are certain things that I have to do – like keep all receipts of sales and expenses, draw up a profit and loss account etc etc – all seems like more time out of my already busy schedule.

Is there an upside?

While I am like any other British citizen I greatly begrudge giving away my hard earned cash to the government, we are entitle to list any expenses we may have incurred in running our ‘business’. This means that the cost of advertising (AdWords), purchasing equipment etc etc can be offset with the money we earn. If we make a loss we don’t pay anything and in some cases we may even get money back from the government.

Is there a downside?
Probably for me. I had only just been told by a friend last week that I was supposed to register for self-employment within three months of me making money/starting my business. I may now be liable for a fine. There is not much I can do about it. I cannot carry on not declaring my income so if they fine me they fine me. Lesson learnt. As for the benefits if I lose my job (which is very likely in the very near future) I will have to tell them as well. Who knows if it will affect my benefits.

So what now?

I Have to try extra hard to make that little extra money. If I lose the security of benefits in unemployment this money will come invaluable. It also means that because I can claim expenses I am able to try things that were too risky in my days of unemployment – like AdWords and setting up an E-mail list. The upside is that compared to many businesses out there Internet Marketing has very low overheads so that won’t be so much of a worry.

I may also be entitled to financial help from the government. I haven’t explored this option yet but should I lose my job again I will try and get more information.

Well, lets hope that the fines will not be too harsh .

Disclaimer: Tax law in the UK (and any other country for that matter) is the definition of confusion. The information in this blog post should not be relied on, AT ALL! I am writing as I understand it and in no way am I a tax expert nor am I an expert in self-employment tax implications etc etc. Ask your accountant or contact the tax people who are qualified to give advice.

We have all been there haven’t we – product after product promising to make us rich over night with their hyped up sales pages etc, etc – only to find out it is all a scam. That is the problem with the ‘make money online’ niche. I’d have a guess at saying that at leas 99% of the products out there are not worth the money.

Well now the consumer has a voice. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) have come down very hard on those who sell products that simply don’t live up to expectations. I have seen many many sales pages that make outrageous claims of wealth – soon you stop believing it all together.

What do the new rules mean?
The bottom line is that if you are making claims that people who buy your product or a product you are promoting will earn you a certain amount of money, and you have no evidence to back it up; then the FTC will slam you.

What does this means for the consumer?

Well, put simply an affiliate can no longer cliam that product x will make you rich overnight (unless he has the evidence to prove it). This means that sales pages should in theory be more honest about what the product intends to deliver and if the promises are blatantly false they can be reported to the FTC. It just makes a more honest sale; and those whose products have continued to scam people will no longer have a free ride. Whether the FTC will carry out their threats remains to be seen. For now, things can only get better for the consumer.

Well I have been putting into practice what I have been learning and it all seems so easy now. Why didn’t I do all this ages ago? Well I was kinda scared. I thought that you had to have a separate hosting account for each blog that you set up; which even with the cheapest hosting package would cost in the region of  £30 per year. It doesn’t seem much, but when you have five sites to set up and more on the way it soon adds up. Another point is that the basic hosting packages do not have the support and tools that are needed to set up and maintain a blog.

Choosing the right hosting package is key to keeping the costs down whilst allowing you to expand the number of websites without worring about the extra costs involved. This is a vital discovery that has allowed me to continue to move forward in this business.

Another vital discovery has been the need to keep track of all the domains and hosting packages you have. I have a hard time keeping track of those one-hit-wonder domains that randomly renew themselves every year, ones that I had completely forgotten about until the money leaves my account.

Only this week I had a reminder that a domain and hosting package was due for renewal at the cost of $80. I didn’t even know I had this hosting and quickly disabled the account. Who knows how many others are out there. Now I have one hosting account with multiple domains, and any domain name that needs registering is with another provider. It would be easier if the hosting and domains were in the same place, but it is such a hassle transferring domains. It is very easy to redirect the domains to the hosting account anyway.

I am hoping to give a summary of how I have gone about Internet Marketing using blogs and articles. It will by no means be a comprehensive guide but it will give you an idea of how easy it is to set up and internet marketing business.

Well, I started back in my ‘real’ job today, the place that made me redundant 10 months ago! I’m not the only ‘returnee’ there either. Honestly, it’s like the bloody Hotel California that place. ‘You can check out any time you like, but you’ll never leave’.  Same s**t different day more like.

On a serious note it has only confirmed what I already knew. There are better ways to make a living, for me at least.  I’ve had a taste of what life can be like without being a wage slave, and I liked it (apart from Job Club. I could have done without that). The issue now is to keep pushing things forward until I make some progress. I am looking into a hosting package that has the Fantastico application. It just makes installing and maintaining WordPress that little bit easier.

I will update on my progress. Stay tuned.

Well, after another long period of no follow ups I am back. I had an exam to study for but that is out of the way so I can focus on my Internet Marketing once again.

I have been trying to upgrade some blogs to the latest version of WordPress but it’s not going too well. This is one thing that I have to learn. The platform I am on right now is WordPress 2.7. There is an option to do an automatic upgrade but it is not working. The only option now is to upgrade via FTP, and it’s a fiddly operation.I managed it with this blog, but all host packages are different and need a little tweaking here and there.

Instead of avoiding it I have decided I must learn how to do it. Hell, this blog was stuck in the dark ages with WordPress 2.3 for ages because I just didn’t know or want to know how to perform an upgrade. There was no option for an automatic upgrade, so it had to be done through the FTP. In the end it was not too bad and I was proud of myself for achieving it.

My attempts to upgrade my other blog have all failed so far. It has even got to the point where I cannot even upload the previous blog because the files are corrupt. Luckily I have saved all the posts to my hard drive so not all is lost. I think the only option now is to start right from the beginning. Wipe all the files and upload the entire WP-2.8 to the server.

Why upgrade to WordPress 2.8?

The simple reason is there is much more choice about how to write your posts and an added boost to SEO. Compared to previous platforms, WP-2.8 is much better in terms of usability.

So, i am off to try again. Who knows how long this might take. I’ll be back when the mission is accomplished.

Well as you can see I have managed to pimp my blog up a little bit. The old one was fine when I first started blogging but to be honest it needed a facelift. The only thing stopping me before was my fear of the unknown. After reading the instructions and playing about a bit I didn’t know what the fuss was all about.

Which brings me to my next point. My distinct lack of progress since the initial flurry of commissions has led me to believe I need to step up my game to make things really work. Blogs are a vital tool in the Internet Marketers armoury and now that I’ve mastered how to customise the layout to my advantage I need to set up some more.

Whereas before I would settle for a free hosted WordPress blog with a domain name pointed to it I now have to plunge into a self hosted blog. The reasons are simple. Whilst the free hosted blog is a cheap and easy option it does not allow for the freedom to customise templates and additions.There is also the possibility that a free hosted blog can disappear overnight because the content does not belong to you.

Setting up a self hosted blog is much easier than it used to be. Many hosting packages now have an ‘easy install’ button that will automatically upload the WordPress platform to your hosting package. There’s no need to worry about how FTP works as a hosting company will do the work for you. While it may cost a little bit more to do things this way in the long run it will pay off. You don’t even need to buy separate hosting packages for each blog as you can get bulk hosting packages that will allow you to set up multiple websites or blogs under the same hosting package.

This is my plan for the next week. I will be trying to set up an independent blog based on a market that has already earned me commissions. Hopefully this strategy will earn me more money.