New Month

Well it's a new month. I've been on this journey for more than two weeks now, with a big break of about a week and a half in the middle.

Yes, I am a very busy person. But I feel like it is not an excuse for not successing in my journey. I think it's time I set myself closer goals. Monthly goals.

So I hereby take upon myself to make by April 30 a net profit of $100 from Affiliate Marketing.
----- PAUSE------
I would like to share some thoughts and feelings with you. For a few days in a row I actually started working towards my first campaign (since I got back to Affiliate Marketing). However, suddenly yesterday I checked my dollar account for my budget and saw it was a few hundrad dollars less than I thought. This got me worries. I felt like I cannot go thru with PPC yet. Maybe I should try the "free method" brought by Millionare In PJs. And this morning when I read his blog about his up comming profits I felt like maybe the free way is a waist of time. So, you see what is going on here? I cannot just stick to something. I can't be independent. This is something to improve. Make a decision and GO WITH IT!!!Don't be afraid to take chances!!!Just make sure you learn from your mistakes, and then any money "lost" will be worth it.
---- UNPAUSE-----
I'm comitting myself to present a plan here in my blog, how I am plannig on achiving this goal.

To our success,
Amishosh

A Mistake?

So today I actually started moving my but (excuse my language). I researched clickbank. I chose 10 potential topics mainly by interest. Of course I made sure the "gravity" was high.
However, what I did not do is research the market for demand. I did not skip that on purpose but rather didn't think of doing it.
After I marked my 10 topics/products, I started working on one of the topics:
I read the sales letter from top to bottom, and took notes like:
What does this product solve? What are the benefits of this product? Potential keywords, and so on.
Then I began making a keyword list. And this is when I realized that the demand isn't all that great for this topic. According to all search engine statistics the search volume is low. I felt like I wasted all that time.
So first of all, as I saw in one of the affiliate forums "A mistake is one, only when you do not learn from it". Well now I will know to research first.
But...this may turn out not to be a mistake at all. Here's an opportunity to really know how to read the numbers. The stats are showing to be that great from keyword tools, but maybe this is a niche I can profit from. I will pursuit with my campaign and post the results.

Good luck to us all.

Me, Myself, And I

Good morning!

This is going to be another short post for the day. As I said I hope to get back on track next week.

A good thing to do when dealing with marketing is to open your eyes and ears to what is going on around you. Big companies pay thousands of dollars to design and word their ads that will and do bring in lots of sales. So why not try and use that to your advantage. They already paid to find out what works you can just try and copy them.

So anyway, while waiting in the airport the other day, for my guest to arrive, I was looking around at the advertisments around me.

I've noticed a cirtain theme repeated in all or most of the ads. All the ads were addressed to "YOU". What is good for you, what you need etc. etc. Less focus on the product and more why it is good for you. Face it, we are people. People are selfish. A person's name is the sweetest music to his ears.
So, this is something to keep in mind when writing ads or writing up pre-selling landing page:
- Focus on the benefits.
- Try to get in a few "you"s in there.

To our success,

Amishosh

It's been a while...

Well, it has been a week since my last post.
I just want to let you know that it isn't an indication of stopping my journey. I just had to take a little break due to a family afair which has been taking 200% of my time.
I also need to catch up on school.

I hope to be back on schedulle some time next week.

My daily tip for myself is, try to do something - even the smallest thing - for your business every day, not to lose the momentum. I havn't been good about it, and this post is the first thing I amdoing for my business since last week.

See you soon...
Amishosh

It’s A Business. Treat It Like One

Well it’s been a while since I last posted. I’ve been quite a busy man.
Yesterday for example I pulled a 12.5 working day. But the truth is I really love my job. I love programming, I love finding “bugs” (I’m a QC engineer, remember?).

The reason I feel like I need to start my own business, at least on the side, is for two reasons:
A) Anyone who read “Rich dad, Poor dad” knows that it is very recommended to have something to support you in case there are “cut downs” in your work place. So even though I love my job, who knows what will be tomorrow.
B) I’ve been working in my work place for a little over a year now. Some of the people that have been there for a while leave, or are simply not happy. I want to start now building something that I can fallback on if that ever happened to me. After all, maybe with more free time I can really get to do the programming I love

But this is not what this post is about. I want to stress something that the “experts” say all the time:
This online business is a business. And the ramifications of such a realization are many.
We expect to throw up some campaigns, build some sites and magically I will become a wealthy man. This is not true. One should really learn how to run a business, develop the skills his business needs in order to succeed, learn about finances, learn to generate and read reports and, have a solid plan of how the money is going to be made and on and on. I’m not even talking about self control and mental strength needed (which I promised a separate post about).
I know! suddenly it sounds like real work. Well do not fool yourself. If you want to succeed you must work. So why do it you ask? What is the difference between that and my 9-6 job?
Well, several things. The two main ones being:
I am my own boss (for some people this might be worse)
The return on investment is 100 times – if not more – greater than a 9-5 job.


So, the point I want to get through to you is that this is a business. Treat it like a business. And if you do you will succeed. And when you succeed…well I don’t know how it feel. But g-d willing I will.

Good luck to you all,
Amishosh

Day #3 - And The War Begins

Since yesterday I’ve been trying the "Beginners Method" recommended by The Millionaire in PJs.
I created a nice page with Google Pages and wrote up a whole pre-selling page. I headed over to Yahoo Answers and tried posting an answer with a link to my article…and bam…Error 999… my post kept getting rejected and I was getting so frustrated. I put so much time into my page and when I was ready to go live with it, it simply did not work. I lost motivation.

I want to try and analyze what was happening to me…

I read about a “simple” method to make me “easy” money, which won’t require me to spend a dime (“only” time). I went for it hoping that this is it. This is what’s going to make me the monthly check. And when it did not work I got discouraged and felt like giving up.
This is one of the reason I failed every time I tried Affiliate Marketing. I remember throwing up AdWords campaigns with a beating heart, because I thought “yay! I found an untapped niche. And the quicker I get my link up the quicker I will make money”. I was not ready for failure, and I was not ready to learn. I always wanted the fast cash and I wanted it now.

I think I need to realize that I need to fail. I need to lose. It will not be a waste of money – if I learn from my mistakes and failures – just like we don’t consider paying for college a waste of money.

It’s been only four days and I’m up against my first mental battle. Voices saying “you failed before, why would you make it this time”, “this isn’t for you. Stick to your computers and school” etc. etc.

I need to do this. This is my business. This is my asset. I can’t give in to laziness.

I think I’m going to use my time today for some study. I will find affiliate programs then find the affiliates promoting them. Try to analyze their pre-sell pages. Try to learn from the pros.

That’s it for now…

Required Skills For This Journey

The title isn't completely accurate...It should really say "Required Skills that need to be acquired during This Journey in order to make it a successful one" - but it is way too long and not as catchy :)

In short what I want to list here are the skills that I'm going to need to master in order to be a successful Affiliate Marketer. The way I see it (now) the skills are divided into two categories:

• Technical skills


• "Emotional" skills

In the Technical category I believe the following areas need to be studied and with time even mastered:

Copy write: An Affiliate Marketer has to be able to pre-sell. In other words, "warm up" and prepare the potential buyer to actually buy.
Ad copy: Since I believe one of the fastest way to get started with a product is through PPC, this will probably be my main focus for advertising. So knowing the ins and outs about Ad copy is going to be a necessary skill for me to obtain.
Keyword research: Once again a MUST for any webmaster who wishes to promote his website through search engines. This skill is required for both the Paid Search (PPC) and Natural Search optimization.
Identifying profitable markets: This is the ability to recognize a market to be profitable. Many times, however, this is done only with trial an error.
Track & Analyze: Knowing how to track your performance, and then analyzing the results, is one of the things that the "big guys" can't stop stressing how important it is. Many Affiliate Marketers fail and give up because of this important step.

These are the skills that I believe every Affiliate Marketer needs to acquire and eventually master in order to be successful. I summed up each skill in 2 sentences but the fact is I can write 100 posts (OK maybe I'm exaggerating - but you get the point) on each topic. Although I probably won't write so many posts on each one, but I am planning on dedication at least some posts on each of these important topics.

I don't claim to be an experienced Affiliate Marketer, but I did read a lot of material from people who are. And I need to organize the information I read, because already I feel like I'm suffering from what is called "Information Overload".

On the second group of skills I will elaborate in another post.

See ya...

Day #1 in my road to success

Wow! My first blog ever and my first post. So here it goes....
There's a lot on my mind right now but I will dedicate this post to try and explain A) Why I decided to even create a blog for myself and B) What will the blog be about.

I will start with B. Just a little bit about myself first.
I am 25 married and have one beautiful child. I'm studying for my B.A. in Computer Science and also working full time in a Hi-tech company as a QC Engineer.

Back in May, 2005 I was searching around the Internet for some thing a long the lines of "how to make money online" (sounds familiar?). I stumbled upon this website which introduced - for $39.99 - the concept of AdWords and Affiliate Marketing. This was my first encounter with Affiliate Marketing . I recall the information not really being so clear about the whole thing and a short time after that I landed on Google Cash. This was what really brought me in to Affiliate Marketing . Since May of that year I've been trying this out on and off and never with really much success. I did make some money but never in the way that I felt like I was really learning the art of Affiliate Marketing . I was always just following instructions and slapping up AdWords campaigns. The concept of reaching out to millions if not billions of people fascinates me. The ability to analyze people's habits was just an incredible idea to me. But for some reason I could not stick to it. In a later post I will try and explain why I think I failed time and time again.

About a day or two ago - during the course of "trying Affiliate Marketing just yet again" - I came across the Millionaire In PJ's. And this guy really inspired me. Although he has much more time than I do and seams to have a lot of marketing knowledge (at the age of 22) he showed me that starting now in 2008 is still realistic for Affiliate Marketing . You might have to work harder but it is doable.

So the theme of this blog is going to be about me and my Internet Marketing experience. I want to try and document here every thing I can about my journey to success. I must admit, that although I had an idea like this for a while now, I was inspired by the Millionaire In PJ's to actually take action. This blog is for me more than for any one else. I want to be able to express my thoughts. And stay focused and organized in this heavy task I took upon my self.

As you can probably guess time is not a luxury for me between work, school and family. But I will try and squeeze what ever time I have for this task.

I need to set goals but need to be realistic too. My goal now is to generate profit of $1000/mo within six months from now. So by Sep 30, 2008 I want to be making $1000 a month from Internet Marketing. And the way to do that is to start with baby steps and smaller goals.

In my next post I will lay out the skills that I think an Affiliate Marketer has to master in order to succeed.

Great weekend to you all,
Amishosh