Still No Cigar Wednesday, October 28th 4 Comments

So its coming up to the two month mark now, and what have we got to show for it? Well, not a whole lot of money, that’s for certain! I think we’re discovering how hard it is to actually do this, and do it well.

I can’t speak for Gray, but I myself am finding it very hard to manage, what with a full time job and other commitments, trying to get your foot in the door is really hard; however I have to hold some of the blame with myself. There have been (and are) opportunities that have the potential to make me money that I just haven’t explored. For example, I have learnt of a black hat technique that is very rarely known, which I could easily write up and sell for a couple of hundred at digital point for example. Yet the effort in doing so deters me – I have no evidence of income from this method (as I personally wouldn’t use it), or any kind of statistical data to prove that its a worthwhile investment.

I have, however, put my efforts into a few other things, which didn’t work out to well. I attempted to write a piece of automated research software which fell by the wayside; I wrote a domain checking tool which attracted no interest; I even started selling a fake email script, to which after the 3 days of it being for sale, I have had a total of zero sales. Most of my energy is being spent on a new website which I hope will take off, but what with the lack of positives currently, it is getting harder and harder to keep the enthusiasm.

The past month I found myself reverting back to my lazy ways – eating lots of junk food, drinking more, missing out gym sessions etc. Maybe its what I needed, maybe I needed to get it out of my system, and I hope that I have – because this new project of mine will be coming out. It will be released upon the world and god willing it will get a response, because once I have finished this one, I have another even more complex, but more rewarding, project to start.

Here’s to the future, and the change that is coming.

Dan

What Have We Been Doing? Tuesday, October 13th 1 Comment

So it’s been a while – over a month even – since this competition has started, and neither of us has made much profit (if any). In a sentence: things haven’t been going well.

So what am I personally trying to do to make money online? Well, at the minute I am working on a website that has the possibility of going viral – however its still in the very early stages and needs a lot of work and testing doing to it. I would hope the site will be live by January, however through my own procrastination it is taking longer than I would have imagined.

The other thing that is interfering is other ideas I have; as I began writing this post another idea of how to make some money came into my mind – one that is still progressing in my mind as I type this. The way I see it, is it could take me two nights to a week, and the end result would be close to $1000. Now it’s not something that is instantly repeatable, or a recurring money maker. It’s a one off “attack” as it were, but could pay well.

I am tempted to try the method tonight, or at least start the research for the method tonight, and then once I have implemented it, I will share exactly what I did with you all.

Interesting, no?

Dan

Temporary Downtime Thursday, October 8th No Comments

Well, thanks to paypal, you may have noticed the site experienced some downtime. The problem came with sending payment that got marked as an echeque as opposed to a normal payment, however that’s now been sorted (by me paying again via an instant payment).

You can still expect regular updates – hopefully I shall post later today or tomorrow regarding my efforts, but just wanted to confirm that we aren’t dead, just a little payment issue.

Dan

Back from the dead…. with no profit Tuesday, September 29th 1 Comment

Hi All,

I’m finally back with another post, and there isn’t much to report really. I have been using adwords more with CJ and I am still focussing on sign ups as oppossed to buying products. I managed to find a $75 Adword voucher for $12 on Digital Point forums, so this helped me top up my adwords. So far I have managed to sell £19 worth in CJ and spend £13. However, I do have a lot left in my adwords so at the rate of 1 sign up per day (£1 per day) I can see what I will soon overtake Dan (Hopefully). At the moment I haven’t thought of any new ideas, but I will soon me trying something new no doubt and when I do I will be the first to post here. I have attached my statistics for CJ so you can see what has happened.

Still No Profit Monday, September 21st 6 Comments

I know what your thinking – ‘amazing blog title to inspire us Dan!’ – and yes, you’d be right! The fact of the matter is that myself and Gray are finding this very hard. We’ve been making mistakes and trying various things to get off the ground running…but I’ll let him explain what he’s been upto in his next post.

Myself, well I’ve been still working on the app I mentioned  in my last post. I can reveal partially what it is, as it has been developed further than I originally planned! Exciting times no? The application itself is now an automatic keyword researcher – the basic functionality of which will query the google keyword tool automatically for a randomly generated list of keywords. It will then present you this list in an excel spreadsheet. And thats not all…

Digging Deeper Monday, September 14th 7 Comments

So I’m still finding it very hard to make any profit, as you might be able to see from the totals to the right – however I am still technically winning, so it’s not that bad!

I think what I’m finding hardest about this is finding the time to get everything I want done. I have loads of projects that I want to start, but I’m finding it hard to focus on just one alone. I have a brilliant long term idea, but I know that it isn’t going to make me any money in the short term, which I need in order to start it up; I have a couple of short term ideas that I keep switching between because I get bored by the fact that my work isn’t paying out. Add on top of this computer troubles, finding the time to work, being distracted by shiny things and having sinusitis (yep, it’s not brill), I don’t seem to be doing very well.

There is potentially one good thing that has come out of me being distracted though. As I stated in an earlier post I signed up for a marketing course called the keyword crash course. It cost me the total of $1 and has yielded some decent information – however in the first (and most informative) video, they outline a process that is rather lengthy and dull. It occurred to me that the process could probably be automated and the speed of which rapidly increased – so I set about writing a small java application for it. After testing the beta version of it for a while, I have sent it on to the guys who created the site to have a look at.

Now the immediate positive thing about the app is I now have a program which will speed this initial ‘researching’ process up for me, and automate practically all of it. Another positive, is if the guys like it, they may want to package it up and thereby offer me something for my efforts! However there is a slight risk that they don’t, or even worse hand it over to a ‘cheapo’ designer and get a knock off copy – yet at the end of the day I still have this tool I can use, so it can’t be all bad, right?

The only problem is their method of making money involves having some of it to start with…damn

Much love,

Dan

Progress update Thursday, September 10th 1 Comment

Hi All,

It’s been a while since I posted so I thought I would update you all on what I have been doing.

With regards to my sign ups, I have had 1 more sign up and that was yesterday, so I have made around $13 with that so far which isn’t amazing. I probably need to make my ads a bit better or extend out of Adwords.

As I am still keen on the sign up idea I signed up to another offer which was to get people to sign up to a gay website on a free trial. I started this a few days ago and have had one sign up again which was yesterday so that gave me another $2. Surprisingly little people search for gay websites in America, I thought it would be more due to the shear amount of people.

Also I signed up to two more networks, adscend media and adjal.com they offer paid quizzes and paid email submits which yield from 40 cents to $2. I decided to outsource filling in these submits and quizzes and pay them 50% of the revenue generated. I used a forum to advertise this and made it sound AMAZING (well I tried to)!! Finding good honest help is quite hard especially as I need US only residents, the majority of people claimed to be from the US but in-fact were hiding behind a proxy which is blatant and will not convert. I have however found a few good people and I have made $3.52 off adjal and $2.67 off adscend.

My total revenue so far is around $20 which isn’t great I know but I am still learning and it seems to be speeding up a bit now!

What I Have Learned Monday, September 7th 2 Comments

So it’s been a week into the race now, and as you can see we aren’t doing very well. It’s not something you should really admit on a blog that is trying to make money, but this is just showing how hard this is. A lot of options that would normally be available simply aren’t open to us at the minute as we are starting out with such small starting capital, so until we can increase that significantly it’s going to be quite hard to get off the starting blocks. With that in mind, let’s look at what I have done over the past week…

My First Day Thursday, September 3rd 2 Comments

Hi All,

I have also taken the affiliate route like Dan and I registered with Commission Junction (easiest to get accepted) and Adscend Media (Also easy to get accepted). I have decided in trying to sell sign ups (my leads) as opposed to selling products. I know most of you thinking, who will pay to sign up to something they may not have been looking for? All my sign ups are free and pay $6 per sign up!! The sign ups I choose to go for were all non English speaking websites due to Adwords being saturated on the US and UK sites for this particular website sign up. First off I was going to have a go at the German market, but as I don’t know anyone German speaking and translators are usually wrong, I changed to Swedish. I have a couple friends that are Swedish so I asked for them to translate for me for my advertisement. I checked to see what pops up for multiple key words and there were no sponsored links at all… YIPPEE!! I had to pay $5 for registration to Adwords and $5 for credit so I have spent around £6 so far. I placed 160 keywords/phrases that I thought would help in Swedish and English and submitted them.

Progress

I managed to get 33 clicks yesterday and 1 lead bringing my revenue for the day to £4 (around $6-$7)

I will post more in-depth information about what I am doing and the sign ups I am working on in due time.

Day the first Tuesday, September 1st 2 Comments

So the competition is officially underway, and I have spent most of the day looking at affiliate marketing. In order to try and remove any cost, I am advertising on Facebook using the free $100 in vouchers.

I’m using the affiliate network commission junction, as I have heard good things about them (and already have an account it seems) – and have decided to target two areas to market; weight loss, and dating. Now of the two adverts I have placed, one has been declined (as it is of questionable nature), yet the other one has started running, and as of 2 minutes ago, has already had 20 visits.

Sadly I can’t tell yet if any sales have been made from it, I’ll have to wait til commission junction update their stats and let me know. I have a good feeling about the advert I have chosen, as it is quite intriguing and something I personally would click on; although I don’t quite know if I would buy. Only time will tell!

Will post an update later in the week – but right now I have to go to bed and get some well needed rest, after quite a bad day; albeit that is a discussion for another day.

Much love

Dan