Still No Cigar

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?

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

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

Digging Deeper

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

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

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…

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Day the first

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

The Big Day Is Tomorrow!!

So tomorrow is the big day! I still am unsure on my route to take so I will have to decide quickly….

All shall be revealed in a few hours!

Advertising And Selling Your Ebook

So a lot of you know about the eBook that I wrote, providing some little scams and tricks to earn you a bit of money (offline). Well, in order for me not to have been wasting my time, I needed a way to sell the eBook – enter in the advertising stage! Over the past couple of days I have tried a few different ways to sell the eBook, of which I will describe here – along with some other things that I plan on trying in order to boost sales further….

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Its The Start Of Something New

First thing first, happy new 2009 to everyone! Second things, I apologise for using a high school musical song line to start this blog post – haha.

This is just a short post to let you know I am currently still on my ‘break’, and will be returning back to posting next Monday. I have been working on a couple of new projects, and have got myself quite in ‘over my head’ but they look to be very promising. I’ll be sharing the details of them as they progress, along with giving you valuable information I have learnt along the way. I have some great posts lined up for this coming year, so for those of you lucky enough to know about this blog, be prepared for a very good year!

Catch you soon racers! Hope you have all had a great holiday.

Dan