I love to plan things. I like to make spreadsheets, outlines, mindmaps. I love research. I love knowing what I have to do to get something done. I like learning new things.

This is my biggest problem.

At some point, you have to take action. It's great to learn new stuff - but if you don't actually set up an auto-responder after researching it, what good is that?

Working on your own - or for yourself can be difficult. You have to find ways to motivate yourself and keep moving forward.

Some days I find myself paralyzed by all of the information that I have taken in. I've made plans for great things - only to never start them because they seem so big.

I've realized that sometimes you can have too much knowledge. At least for me, that's the case. Sometimes it paralyzes me. The things I know best, I learned by doing. I set up my first blog 2 years ago just by jumping in and doing it. I built my first niche site by just getting an idea and setting it up. I built a CafePress shop by just diving in. I came across CafePress - and had my first shop set up about 3 hours later, just because it seemed like a cool idea. I didn't spend a lot of time researching it - just did it.

That also means I've got a lot of projects that didn't pan out. Some flops, some successes.

I've been trying to find a balance between research and learning - and doing.

I know that I work best when I create a list of things to do. For some reason - lists drive me crazy. I can't stand a half-finished list. They motivate me to complete all the tasks on the list.

I've begun writing a list every night before bed. It's my to-do list for the next day. I put 10 things on the list that I would like to get accomplished. They can be writing an article for a certain niche to finding a new niche to begin. It might include 30 minutes of reading material in a forum on list building - or submitting some sites to 10 new directories.


By making a list everyday - I've broken up my large, long term goals into small, manageable daily tasks that will get me there. When I finish a daily list - I feel like I really accomplished something that day. If I do that everyday - it won't take me long to actually realize the grand goals I've set for myself.

Not only that - but by making the list, it lets me manage my time better, so Harper and I can go to the park because I know exactly how much time I'm going to need later to move forward that day.

Have you found yourself unsure of the next step? Make a to do list. Don't be unrealistic about the things you put on it. I try to put things on the list that will take about 30 minutes to accomplish. Obviously some will be bigger projects, and some will be quicker - but I use that as a general guide. Try it out. Do it for a week - you'll be amazed at how much you'll get done.

Technorati Tags: to do list, making money online

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I'd like to thank Amy of My Debt Free Goal for finding this program. I had a few domains that I had purchased to build some affiliate sites on. But, since it takes a day to build a site, and then a few days writing articles and trying to drive traffic to the site - I always have some domains that are unused and waiting in line.

What I've always done in the past is to place a page holder, under construction, maybe a google ad on the page until I could get to it. But now, with WhyPark, it's a lot easier to monetize those pages that you haven't gotten to yet. And you can do it in a way that the page holder is going to be content rich.

WhyPark lets you host up to 100 domains. WhyPark then lets you decide which keywords you want to use, and it fills the page with articles related to your keywords. The articles are continuously updated, so that when the search engines come around, they'll always find new content. You can use your AdSense account to place ads on the site - and you don't have to split any revenue - you keep 100 percent of the revenue.

It literally took me 10 minutes to put up my first site today. I was able to control and choose the template, insert my adsense code, and place a few affiliate links on the page. There is a one time fee of $99.95 to open an account. But for that hundred bucks you can host 100 sites - easy math - buck a site.

There are no recurring fees and no monthly fees. Here's an example WhyPark site: PC viruses.

So what I'll be doing with WhyPark is building sites for my domains that are empty still. Then I'll be able to focus on one site at a time while those domains hopefully start earning a little for me. The nice thing is that I'll also be able to see which domains might perform well by using WhyPark as a sort of test before investing too much time in building a complete site.

Technorati Tags: whypark, making money online, domain parking

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As I said in my previous post - my focus for my online income earning has shifted from the 'get paid to' programs to more of an internet marketing focus.

But, I did want to do a quick update on the 'get paid to' programs that I am using. First, I'm going to be dropping Hits4Pay and DealsNCash from the programs I'm using. I finally hit the payout threshold for Hits4Pay. I never did any real intense promotion for Hits4Pay, but I did have about 20 referrals in my downline. With 20 referrals it took me about 2 months to hit the payout level of $25 bucks. And that was with a $10 dollar sign up bonus! Here's a breakdown of what it actually took to hit that $25 bucks.


Technorati Tags: get paid to, cashcrate, making money online

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On Day 30 of the 30 Day Challenge Dan presented a pdf of one of his niche sites and it's reach. I thought it was really neat how he mapped it out - and it's nice to have a visual representation of the kind of network that we're trying to build with a niche using a combination of free platforms and our own domains.

Two days ago I purchased a domain for the niche that I made my 30 day challenge sale ($18.78) in. I like the niche and think there's a lot of potential in it. I'm also finding a few more key phrases that fit the parameters that were looking for as far as competition and daily searches. One of the free platform sites that I put up is ranked fourth in google and is getting pretty good traffic.

Anyways - I thought I would take the next step by purchasing a domain and putting up a site - which is why I haven't posted the last couple of days, been busy putting that site together.

And tonight I made a map of my niche so far - I'd say about 10 percent completed compared to Dan's site. But it was fun to map out, and since I'm a pretty visual person, it really clarifies my direction with this niche for me.


Technorati Tags: 30 day challenge, making money online, niche, internet marketing

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So have you ever locked your kid in the bathroom and forgotten about it? Ok - so I didn't really lock him in the bathroom.

We both crashed this morning for our mid-morning nap on the couch. Two hours Later - I was awakened by some muffled,distant crying. Apparently, Harper had woken up, crawled off the couch without waking me, went to the bathroom, and shut the door.

He's not tall enough to turn on the lights, and hasn't figured out the door knob yet. So the little man was sitting in the dark crying and waiting for somebody to either let him out, or turn on the lights so he could wreak havoc on the bathroom.

I'm not sure how long he was in there - I hope I woke up rather quickly, but we might not ever know. He's not telling.

Luckily - to Harper I'm probably the funniest person on the planet. I did a little arm waving and danced around a little bit and the tears turned to laughter. That joke always kills.

I don't know what I'm going to do when Harper's sense of humor changes from quick/sudden movements combined with dancing jigs because well, I don't have much else in the way of material. I've been watching Last Comic Standing hoping to pick up some new jokes to tell him - but really, most of their jokes consist of quick/sudden movements and dancing jigs.

So I thought I would make it up him. Bribe him if you will. I told him I'd enter him in a contest to win a nice 24 inch LG widescreen LCD.

It'd be good for watching the Wiggles - who are really good at quick/sudden movements and dancing jigs.



Technorati Tags: contest, making money online

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Technorati Tags: cashcrate, making money online, spam

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New Schedule
Harper's been running me ragged today. Today was the first day of our new schedule. Mom's starting a new job and is gone from about six in the morning till three. So now I got the kiddo all to myself all morning.

I'm not a morning person.

Well, ok, at least I'm not right now because I have been on a different schedule. I usually work through the night and mom would have him till about noon. Not anymore. Now I have to try to get to sleep earlier so that I can spend my morning putting the dvd's back on the shelf, the pots back in the cupboard, and well, change some not so fun diapers.

But it's fun. I just have to figure out how I'm going to get anything done now. I'll still have a few hours in the evening - and I hope that I can get some stuff done during the day. I'll just have to distract him at key moments with snacks. Those seem to work. Bright shiny objects aren't working so well anymore - guess he's past that stage.

If I can just work out 15 minutes here, and 15 minutes there I should be able to get a few little things done - a few quick articles hopefully. It's just so hard because I tend to want to pass out during those 15 minutes.

It was funny today because I couldn't get him to take a nap for the life of me. Eventually, finally, he simply spread out on the floor in the living room and feel asleep. So not wanting to pass up an opportunity for a nice nap, I passed out next to him on the floor.

Using links in your blog posts
How's that for a transition? Really smooth, eh? (eh? I've been talking to a Canadian friend a lot lately and I love to use eh, eh? He claims there's about a hundred ways to use eh. I've only found about 36 so far).

I've been thinking a lot about how I use links in this blog. You ever think about that? I mean really, links are like money in the blog world. People have contests and do all sorts of things to procure valuable links. So if you have a blog - it's like being able to print money. Ok, not really. Because really, I guess you're links heading out of your blog are only as valuable as the links you have coming in.

Link to the big boys
Why? I used to have some links to the big ones - you know, problogger, john chow, etc...I mean really, what's the point? You're readers probably know how to get there. In fact, they've probably been reading them just as long as you have. So really, what's the point of having that link - I used to tell myself that it was so I could just click on it when I wanted to read there stuff. Yeah, I have them in my bloglines - do I need a link too? No.

Link to your peers
So if links are so valuable, who are they most valuable to? Blogs like your own. Blogs that are about the same size, slightly bigger, slightly smaller. That's where your real traffic is going to come from, and that's who is going to love seeing that you linked to them. Trust me. I know everybody that has a link to me. It's not hard - it's not a huge list yet. It's growing, but that's because I've been nurturing those relationships. Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. That's the idea right?

I could link to John Chow, is he going to link back to me? Probably not. Yet. That's because everybody that has a blog links to John. He doesn't have to link back to me. But that's ok. It's not going to make me angry. I'm not losing any sleep over it.

But what's really nice is when you've written a post and linked to somebody and a few days later they link back to you in one of their's. That's what this all about. That's what you should strive for. Those are the links that are going to be the most valuable to you in the long run. It takes some time - you're not going to blow up over night, but if you grow a little every week, you'll get there in good time.


Technorati Tags: making money online, harper, links, blogging

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One of the things I like about fellow up and coming blogger Angel, is that he says what he thinks. He's not afraid to try something out and give his honest opinion on it. For example - he recently tried out CashCrate and Treasure Trooper using my referral links and gave his opinion on the program.


As you can see by the title of his article - he's not a big fan of the "get paid to" sites. But that's ok - like I've said before, it's not for everybody.

I do disagree a little though. I agree that sitting and clicking those ads isn't fun. It's boring and you might make more money if you went and got a job at McDonald's. But for about 15 minutes of my time a day, I could make a couple of bucks which at the end of the month might be 30 or 40 dollars. Yeah, not a good hourly rate, but I could watch a show on television everyday for 30 minutes and not have any cash at the end of the month for it.

But I don't spend 15 minutes a day on it.

I've written a few posts about it - made a few comments in a couple of forums with a link in my signature line. That's about all I've done with those - because I really think the power of these programs comes when you can build a large referral pool. I mean really - Amy of My Debt Free Goal makes $1500 bucks a month from a couple of weeks she spent getting referrals (she also wrote this great review that had a very high conversion rate). Now that's a nice passive income.

So, fill out the surveys yourself and you could make enough for a dinner at a not so fancy restaurant each month, or try to get a few referrals and you might be going out for sushi. A few times.

Anyways - thanks for trying it out Angel. At least Harper can thank you because the fifteen or thirty minutes you spent laboring over those surveys on the other side of the world bought Harper a cone at DQ here in hot Las Vegas. And ice cream is always a good thing.


Speaking of Angel - he's having a contest and this week I'm all about the contest so I guess things in the universe are just lining up. So. It's a pretty simple contest.

• 50+ words in a post and a link to the contest page
  
• Stumble his site
• Subscribe to the site's feed

That's it. $100 bucks. How you like that?

Check his site out - it's one of my daily reads.


Technorati Tags: making money online, get paid to, cashcrate, treasure trooper, contests, angel

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Tumblr Tumbld
Following the last few days of excitement as people dove into the 30 day challenge - things seem to have reversed. Panic and hysteria has set in as a majority of the 30 day challenge participants logged onto their computers today to find their tumblr sites had been erased from the internet.

Unfortunately, my 3 sites were erased as well - though all three of them are still ranked in the top 10 of their respective phrase match searches on google. Oh well.

It's funny - I finished working at about 5 this morning and when I logged back on this afternoon it was obvious something was wrong. The first thing I usually check is my BlogLines, and there were plenty of posts already talking about the carnage. I checked my sites and confirmed, yes, they were gone.

Oh well.

What can you do but move on. Something like this was bound to happen - and I think like Ed said in his response video today - it's time to make a choice.

So what's it going to be?
If you've spent the day angry and upset and full of panic - then you might want to take a step back from the challenge.

I think making money online is equal parts determination and attitude. If you're going to let one site, ONE site get you this worked up - then trying to make money online is going to be a long tough road for you.

After seeing my tumblr blogs (hours of work) gone - I stepped away from the computer. It was frustrating sure, because I feel that I genuinely had some good content up on tumblr with one small link at the bottom of each blog, not spam in any way shape or form, but it's ok. So about a half hour later I was back, looking for a new platform to start again. Last night I had actually started work on a different platform from tumblr, so I finished that one up, and then immediately set out on another.

Tumblr was never meant to be the crowning achievement for you in your quest to make money in a niche market - it was one tool among many that we will be using. Some of them are going to work, some of them aren't. It's too bad that tumblr falls into the latter category. Especially since so many had experienced a little initial success from it.

My first $10 from the 30DC
In fact - while working on a new platform, I logged into my clickbank account to get some links that I needed for my new pages - and what do you know, there was money in it.

$18.78. Apparently, before tumblr had been nuked - I had made a sale from it. I knew for sure that it was tumblr because it's tracking code showed up in the details of the sale.

So there. A little bit of success amongst the rubble. I was really excited to see the sale, but, I had already made up my mind to trek on - this was just a nice little extra.

So make that choice. Are you going to suck it up - because in the world of the internet, there are going to be plenty more bumps - some harder to take than this one.

I have a feeling that we're going to lose a lot of people this weekend - but that's a natural process in anything - not everybody is meant to do this. Throughout my life I've tried many different things, and I've learned what I'm good at and what I'm not - use it as a lesson, use it as motivation.


Technorati Tags: 30 day challenge, making money online, tumblr

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Both Harper and I took the weekend off of the computer. Well, I guess he didn't really take it off as he still likes to walk up to the computer desk and bang on the keyboard when I'm not looking. He's getting pretty good at doing things when I'm not looking. In fact, that's how most of our days are spent, looking for things to do when dad's not looking. Climbing on the chairs to get on top of the table, taking all of the pots out of the cabinet, putting dad's keys in the dog's water bowl...

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Let me admit right off that it was luck. I'd like to say that I researched the market, found a keyword phrase and targeted that phrase till I owned it.

Nope. The reason that I'm making almost $200 dollars a month on CafePress is pretty much dumb luck. But hey, there's no reason we can't duplicate that success and really put it to work for us.

Ok. So what did I do and how did I do it?

I opened a store on CafePress about a year and half ago, and within a few months I was making about $150 dollars a month pretty steadily. Here's a shot of my best selling products:


Technorati Tags: cafepress, 30 day challenge, making money online, money, internet, success, niche

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Does this excite you?



Only 23,800 competing pages!

Finally. They were right, I did do a little dance around my chair when I saw this. If you don't know what I'm talking about, but are curious: 30 Day Challenge.




Technorati Tags: 30 day challenge, making money online, internet marketing, umbrella phrase

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You have to be proactive if you want to blog.

It's always important to know where your readers are coming from. It's important to know what they're clicking on. It's also important that you don't spend too much time trying to figure it all out.

I'm really bad about this. I love watching my traffic stats. I like making a post someplace else and watching what kind of traffic it generates. In elementary school did you ever release groups of balloons with your class's information to see who would find the note attached to the balloon and contact you?

Or - when you were a kid did you ever send signals up into the night sky with a flashlight in case aliens might pick up your signal?

I'm still waiting for a response on that one.

I always wonder if I'm just waving a flashlight around in the sky when I'm blogging.

That's why when you look at your stats, you'll be able to see what is actually having an effect, and this is good because you can do more of that.

Make sure you know what activities are directing traffic to your site. Is it the comments you left on a fellow blogger's blog? Is it the link in the sidebar that you exchanged for? Is it an article you wrote that had a link back to you?

I also like to know which links are being clicked. Do you know which is your most popular? Out of every link I have, text or image, this is my most popular, it's one of my referral links - though lately I've had it linking to one of my reviews:



Technorati Tags: blogging, making money online, cashcrate, cash crate, gpt, pay to read, traffic, 100 in 100

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A quick little blog upkeep post. Some odds and ends that I've been collecting to put into a single post.

I've had a few readers contact me in the last couple days with some questions. I'm always happy to get emails or comments from anybody with any questions for me. If I can I'll reply through email, or perhaps if it's something I can address on the blog itself - I'll do that.

And with my participation in the 30 Day Challenge there are all sorts of new ways that you can reach me.

Facebook Profile - Add me as a friend, I could use a few.
Twitter - follow me and I'll do the same.
or good old fashioned email - chewingglass(at)aol(dot)com

For everybody looking for my RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed, fret no more. Like a scavenger hunt or Easter Sunday I've taken the liberty of hiding a button on this page that will beam all this wonderful content directly to the feed reader of your choice. Look carefully and see if you can find it - it looks a little like this:


Technorati Tags: 100 in 100, making money online, 30 day challenge, cashcrate, pay to read

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http://www.johncow.com
(don't ever 'blink' stuff on your site - it's sorta tacky)

This is by far the most excellentest blog post / explanation of Niche Markets that I've seen since I began the 30 Day Challenge. I thought I understood niche markets - but after reading this post by Mike Mindel (co-founder of WordTracker) I now have to go back through and start over. But, I'm sure that's going to be a good thing. I wouldn't want to get to far into it before I realized a mistake and had to start over. And luckily I think I still have two hours before Harper wakes up. Oh. Crap.

So far I think I've been super focused on the niche and forgot about the second half - the market. Anyways, I believe that this blog is going to go hand in hand with the training videos and podcasts from this point on. Like a super, free Cliff's Notes this blog is.

http://www.webventurer.com/blog/thirty-day-challenge-3/


Technorati Tags: niche market, internet marketing, 30 day challenge, mike mindel, making money online

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