Hello,
I have some breaking news for you :)
Finally, I have got my first sale and earned my first commissions ($22.60). I got it from my PPC Google campaign, which I have been optimizing a lot lately. I still have my doubts about this niche, but as there too much effort has been already invested, I'll probably stick with it for a little longer. I have to mention that my balance is still negative, but at this point it was extremely important to have my first sale as the level of mistrust and disbelief started reaching the critical mass.

I have shifted my focus into a new area now – "Article Marketing", or "Bum Marketing" as it's called as well. This one costs nothing and can be as profitable as PPC campaigns. There're a few good tutorials and guides on this subject on the Wealthy Affiliate site.

There is another product on the market I'd like to mention. "Site Rubix" is a new website building tool designed for people who doesn't know how to build sites or doesn't want to spend too much time building them. The price is $29.95 a month and it includes free subscription to the Wealthy Affiliate program. Or, you can turn it around and say that Wealthy Affiliate is $29.95 a month and it includes free subscription to the Site Rubix tool. I'm going to write a review of the tool later as well as make a video. Meanwhile, you can read my preview here: Review of Site Rubix.

Well, I think that's it for now. I'll keep you updated with my progress. That's my affiliate link to the Wealthy Affiliate website:

Click here to visit Wealthy Affiliate


Cheers,
Mik

Hello,
I'm back after a long break and here is my report.
It's been a month since I registered with Wealthy Affiliate and unfortunately I haven't reached my target – making $5 a day – I haven't earned a penny yet :(
I have set up my website and a proper Google campaign following instructions, but there are no sales. I have contacted Carson (one of the guys from WA), and he gave me a few hints, I have implemented them, but it didn't help. I personally think that I made a mistake in selecting a product to promote as you can get it for free as well – a different quality may be and no guarantees etc., but still free. When I was selecting a niche (a products to promote), I based my judgement on the fact that "everything sells" – and it well may be, but apparently not that well that I notice it.

I'm disappointed of course, but I'm not ready to give up. The first big lesson for the past month – people wouldn't pay if they don't have to pay – and I'll have to keep that in mind when I start my other campaign. I'm going to do a few more changes trying to improve my current campaign and then I'll start looking for a new niche. I have signed with Yahoo Search Marketing and paid another $30 getting $50 of extra credit, which is very good of course, but I might have saved this $30 as I'm not advertising too much there at the moment.

I think that's it for now. That's it for me for today. That's my affiliate link to the Wealthy Affiliate website:

Click here to visit Wealthy Affiliate

Cheers,
Mik

Hello,
Let's see how the things are unfolding for my entrepreneurship :)
My direct link campaign, which I mentioned in my previous log, didn't bring me any profits so far, which didn't surprise me (but a bit disappointed) as I set it up more for research purposes and followed one of the techniques on the Wealthy Affiliate site to scary away any non-buyers. Apparently it worked well in scaring freebie lovers, but may be too well as I didn't get any buyers either. Well it cost me a bit more than two dollars and I was pretty much busy setting up my website, which I'm going to talk next.

I think it's worth mentioning how I found these guys I finally bought my domain name from. After googling "1and1 spam", I noticed circulation of the world "namecheap". Well, I tried for "namecheap scam" of course, and to my surprise, I found that in the listed topics people were actually advising to go with namecheap and complaining about other web-service providers. That's what I did and they set up everything for one day – amazing work. By the way, I got a message from 1 and 1 next day after namecheap finished setting up my domain name (that would be six days)… I think they won't see me as their customer.

Anyway, I spent last several days setting up my website, designing my landing and home pages, studying the products I'm going to affiliate, and writing short reviews for them. The website is all setup, the design is done, just a few more reviews to finish – but there is still a big job of organizing key words and setting Google campaign itself. After some reading, I think I'll go with about ten ad groups for one campaign. It might be another day (or better say night) or two, and I'm going to talk about it next time :)

That's it for me for today. That's my affiliate link to the Wealthy Affiliate website:

Click here to visit Wealthy Affiliate

Cheers,
Mik

Hello,
A new update on my adventures :)
When you do affiliate marketing, you have basically two choices: using direct linking (no web page and only for one product) or using landing pages (having a web page with one or more products linking to your merchant sites). After a little research, I found that a lot of people recommend using landing pages.

So, here we go: I need a domain name, a web hosting services, and website (a page at least). There’re a lot of sites that sell domain names, but WA suggested us using http://www.1and1.com/, so I did and here my story begins… Guys, this "1 and 1" people SUCK BIG TIME. I registered with them on Thursday night (NZ time). They claim to get everything done for 24 hours with a little exception for some special situations where they claim to do it for 48 hours. Guess what: 5 (that’s five) days later (my situation must be VERY special) I still got no domain name :( I sent them a whole bunch of emails trying to get it done, and they responded almost always very promptly, but nothing was done… They asked me to call their authorization department (which is closed on weekends) saying that their some authorization mismatching (what kind of mismatching for registering a $5.99 domain name??), they assured me that their administration is going to take care of it and contact me back. Guess what: NADA.

Luckily, I didn’t give them my credit card, but registered with my PayPal account. So, I cancelled (took me a few tries) my “merchant relationship” with them, which they set to recurring $200.00 (why would they do that for a $5.99 payment?) and now out and about looking for a new site to buy a domain name.

Well, that’s it for me. I have started by the way a direct link campaign, but about it in the next chapter ;) That's my affliate link to Wealthy Affiliate:

Click here to visit Wealthy Affiliate

Cheers,
Mik

Hello,
I’m back and today I’ll finally start telling you about my experiences with Wealthy Affiliate. First of all, Wealthy Affiliate is an online business (two guys as far as I know) that provides help, support, and whole nine yards to affiliate marketers of all levels. Now for those who like me are not even sure what is affiliate marketing, I’ll explain this as well. Affiliate Marketing is a form of online business when you promote goods of other merchants and get commissions for each sale.

Now, why Wealthy Affiliate? After my vigorous screening, I got down to four companies that provided similar services and passed my scam check. WA was the only company in my list that was charging a recurring fee, which first put it at the end of the list, but then I realized that it’s actually a good thing. Paying on the monthly basis should guarantee me help and support not only in the beginning of my journey but any time I need it. After comparing all bells and whistles, I found that the ones of Wealthy Affiliate chimed nicer for me and signed up with them. That was a week ago (21 August 2007).

The first impression after I logged in was rather positive. The site looked nice and professional; I was welcomed, guided on the home page, and given instructions to follow. In one of the steps I signed for their “8-week Action Plan” where they explained a lot of basics that I didn’t know and provided me with an outline of what I’m expected to learn by the end of the week and suggested what I should do.

As I’m not really a person who rushes in without preparation ;) I spent all week reading their guides and tutorials, watching videos and getting acquainted with their tools, resources and other materials (I’ve done a lot of extra reading as well – almost everything what I could get my hands on in the Internet). I even created two test campaigns, which didn’t bring me a penny, but I didn’t make them working on purpose as I found a few posts on their forum (oh yes, they have a very good and friendly forum) complaining on being sucked by Google when they rushed in and started their campaigns without proper preparation.

So at the beginning of the second week, I can state that I have a lot more knowledge about affiliate marketing and that I’m ready to start making real money :) Actually, I set my target to start earning at least $5 a day ($150 a month after expenses deducted) by the end of the first month, which is not much of course but at least realistic.

If you decide to join or check on Wealthy Affiliate, please use the link below:

Click here to visit Wealthy Affiliate

And I’ll be back later with the results of my real campaign.

Cheers,
Mik

Hello,
It’s me again and more stories to come. Today, before I start talking about Wealthy Affiliate what I probably should have done already, I’m going to tell you about a few things to avoid while you’re surfing endless vastness of the Internet in the search of your alternative (or not) income. I have to admit a few of them almost got me.

Finding an online business that would work and is not a scam or semi-scam is not an easy task and you should do a thorough research yourself before signing up for anything. OK, here we go:

- First of all, scam may not be explicit; “start making $1000 a day!!” is partially true as someone may be making that much or even more, but it doesn’t mean that you start making that much next moment you sign up or unfortunately at all.

- Avoid any “get rich quick” schemes, most likely they’re scams or semi-scams.

- Data Entry – no one is going to pay you just for typing. You’re going to advertise products and if no one is buying them, you’re not getting paid.

- Sending envelopes – a semi-scam. You won’t get paid for sending envelopes, only commissions for goods that are bought through your letters but mechanics of tracking your affiliation is not clear.

- Multi-level Marketing – is not a scam, but watch ‘em out, as you’re gonna do a lot of recruiting before you start seeing any income if you’re at the bottom of the pyramid.

It’s not a full list of course, but just a few types that you see quite often.

A few good links for scam checking:
http://www.scam.com/
http://www.ripoffreport.com/

And last but not least, I’d like to mention Herbalife. If you are looking for “work from home” businesses, you’re going to bump into them quite a lot. They will never tell you that they’re Herbalife distributors in front and they never show it anywhere on their websites. Good stable income with health or well being products. They’re not scam of course, but people lost a lot of money with them. Here is the link to read a few stories:

http://www.freewebs.com/herbalifereport/


Well, that’s it for me today and my next post will be about me doing online marketing using Wealthy Affiliate program :) Here is the link:

Click here to visit Wealthy Affiliate


Cheers,Mik

Hello,
I’m back and I have more interesting stories to tell you about my adventures in the world of Internet Marketing :)

As I had no experience at all with IM (Internet Marketing) at the time (which was just a bit more than a week ago), I spent a few days just browsing, reading, and clicking around the Internet. As a result of this productive activity, I signed up with fifteen companies/web sites offering paid surveys. As someone of you may be looking into it even now, I’ll share a few things that I noticed:

- Paid Surveys are not scam, but they may not work well for everyone.

- You DO NOT have to pay money to find or join any sites offering paid surveys.

- The sites offering you to join paid surveys for money (I’ll call ‘em money-grubbers) ARE NOT actual sites with paid surveys. All what they do is to give you a list of actual companies that do paid surveys, but you can find them on your own without spending a penny.

- The money-grubbers will provide you a list of companies, which can indeed save you some time and they can give you some useful (or not very useful) advises, but they DO NOT guarantee ANY income or that you’re actually going to receive any paid surveys.

Well, paid surveys DID NOT work for me well. May be because I’m not in the States but in New Zealand or may be they’re looking more for middle-aged women (I’ve heard they’re the biggest spenders), but anyway. It’s been two weeks now and I have got so far probably five or six invitations. In the first four, I was kicked out at the very beginning as I wasn’t going to buy a brand new car next couple of years and I got less than 25,000 of “fluid assets” ready to be invested. The other two put me in some kind of sweepstakes to win from $500 to $5,000… It may work different for you, so I'll put a couple of links to free paid surveys sites:

http://www.yellowsurveys.com/
http://www.paidsurveys.com/

Well, that's it for me for today. Again, there is the link to a program I'm working with now. And you'll hear from me later.

Click here to visit Wealthy Affiliate

Cheers,
Mik

Hello, My name is Mik, and I'd like to share my experience of trying to earn some extra money online using Internet Marketing.

First, I’d like to say that unlike many people promoting or talking about making money online, I’m not a school drop-out, not unemployed, and not a single mother with three mouths to feed and a drunk husband to deal. I did well at school and college, I have a good job as a software developer, my wife works as well, and in general everything is fine. So to say, I’m not desperate to squeeze out a few dollars to pay our outstanding bills, but having another reasonable income would greatly help with paying off our mortgage, helping our parents, and providing good education for our kids.

I spent quite a lot of time checking the ways of making money online and I’m going to share with you what I found so far. At the bottom of each page of my blog, you’ll see a link to a program (Wealthy Affiliate) that I have signed up at the end of my vigorous search and which I’m going to dedicate this blog to. Feel free to check it out and I’ll talk about this program more later on.

Click here to visit Wealthy Affiliate

Cheers,
Mik