Sore Finger

I've bought a guitar!

Apart from wanting one for a while I wanted something that would require a lot of concentration that I could get absorbed in. Since going full time working for myself I've had a problem that I guess a lot of people have in the early days, that is that I don't think of anything else apart from business.

So I finally bought myself a guitar as a distraction. I've played it for abought 30 minutes last night and about 20 mins this morning and my fingers are throbbing. i don't know how long it will take for them to harden but I hope it's soon

It's half term for my girls and they've gone to spend a few days at Grandma's that means me and my wife (Sarah) get to go out three evenings in succession, which is nice.

Sarah is pretty obsessed at the moment also, she is back to university doing a History degree and reads or writes 24/7 it seems.

I need to go now and practise 'On Top of Old Smokey'

Busy Week

It's Friday night already and I just don't seem to have had any time this week.
This probably means that I'm doing too many things and that I need to step back take a look and focus.

I'm going to try not to do any work this weekend, it''s really hard to stay away from the pc when you work at home.

I've been working with Google Ads this week after buying Google 123 and have had a little success and some learning experiences. I've been trying to create a campaign all day today at Google but their system throws up an error everytime I get to the add keywords stage, which has been very frustrating.

I've also discovered Affiliate Text which I think is new. What this does is automatically insert links to ClickBank products within the text on your page.

I have it running on this page www.themoneyseed.com/ebayblog if you hover over the links that are triple underlined you will see the ads.

Time for a takeaway from the Indian restaurant and a bottle of wine......

Still Here

Yes I'm still here just havn't managed to find the time to talk/write.

Since reading Adwords123 at the weekend I've been busy selecting products and setting up campaigns. The orders are trickling in...

I have found the time to write another article which can be found at www.themoneyseed.com/articles/recipe.html

I've also started on a few campaigns and sites for christmas although I probably should have had it done by now.

It's been raining all day in my little corner of Norfolk, England and it suddenly seems very dark.

For eccentric notes about Norfolk & the weather check out http://arthurnotes.blogspot.com where Arthur proves that you can have a web site at any age.

Adwords 123

On Friday I bought a copy of Adwords 123, which is a guide to profiting from promoting affiliate programs in Google Adwords.

This book is absolutely outstanding and has got me taking a fresh look at my campaigns & creating new campaigns. This book is everything that Google Cash isn't, sorry Chris.

It takes you step by step from beginner to advance strategies.

Greg Haslin the author shows how he made $1,758 in one day.

It really is an excellent book and big value for money.

Do yourself a favor and check it out now

Click Here

Tou our success, I need to get back to creating new campaigns now

I Love Firefox But Can't Escape Explorer

I just come across this article about the Firefox (Mozilla) browser that I mentioned a couple of days ago.

"If I want to use the online banking services, I have to use IE. Why? No good reason I can fathom. Heaven knows IE isn't more secure than Firefox (oh, were it so!). I suspect they simply didn't bother to check other browsers when they built their site. Then again, customer service and banks often don't seem to go hand in hand."

Full Story:

Zabang

I said I would let you know what Zabang is.

It is a search engine that has not yet launched that hopes to knock Google off the no. 1 spot. It will be very Internet Marketer friendly and has all soughts of earning potential.

They are now taking pre launch registrations as well as running a competition to win $15k

Click Here for full details

V Tired

I stayed up late last night to listen to the Joe Vitale webcast. Apparently there were 12,000 people on the call and don't I know it.

I had big problems with the broadcast dropping out every minute or two & I had to quit & go to bed in the end it was about 2am local time hwne I finally called it a day, but I was all buzzed up by then and had trouble sleeping.

So I was tired & grumpy this morning until I discovered I could download the recording & still get the free gifts ($197).

If you missed out you can still get the recording Click Here . (The site is still very slow so be patient.) Once loaded go ahead & sign up for the webcast & you'll get your own link for the recording.

I've downloaded the webcast but not listened yet but I have listened to the two bonuses which were excellent.

I need to get busy writing now I have an article to outline & an unadvertised bonus for buyers of The Money Seed both of which I need to have polished & ready to go by Friday. I need to include some time for the putting to one side & returning with a fresh head part of the process.

Later.

Kapow

Zabang I think its a new search engine powered by Bat energy. I'm too tired to read it now, but I got an invite & filled in my details.

Check it out & I'll post more details tomorrow when I've had time to read all about it.

I spent the afternoon reviewing a sales letter for somebody who asked for help, only thing is I forgot that it was someone elses & ripped into it with major changes. I hope he has his thick skin on.

Tap & modern today for Daughter No. 1, which means a big rush from school to tea to dance all very tense. I hope I can stay awake for Dr Vitale tonight (1am in the UK, I think).

Kapow Zabang.

There's still jobs outstanding on my list for today so I gotta go

This weeks article

I don't know if I mentioned it previously but I'm going to write one article per week, forever, I have joined www.submityourarticle.com and they allow 1 article per week to be distributed so that's how many I will do.

This week, if I can get it into 800 words, I'm going to write a step by step guide to having your own online business. I guess the details just won't fit in but it seems to me that it is almost impossible for the newbie to making money online to know where to start.

So that's a decision made. I'll be back later.

Goal setting & resources

I'm setting some goals today but before I write about that I want to tell you about the Mozilla browser.

If you don't already have this browser you should check it out. That's because it includes live bookmarks which remove the need for a news reader.

The browser lets you add an RSS feed to your bookmarks (favorites) and whenever you click the bookmarks menu and hover over any of the feeds it shows you all the items within that feed.

So for example if you surf to this page from within the Mozilla browser at the bottom of the screen in the status bar you will see an RSS logo. Click that and confirm you want to add the bookmark & then instead of checking on this site each day you can click on bookmarks and see the title of the latest & all recent posts, so you'll know whether to click through to the page or not.

You can get the browser here http://www.mozilla.org/

So I've been revisiting my goals, not because I want to change them but because I need to put some clear metrics on them. I don't know why I hadn't done this previosly because when I lived in the corporate world there were always measures on all objectives.

What I'd forgotten temporarily is that if you don't have measures alomg the way you may think things are going bad when in fact they are right on target.

This came flooding back to me this weekend. On Friday I was a bit disappointed with recent progress but over the weekend I realised that I had achieved a lot recently just that it hadn't converted into pounds and pence yet.

I now have goals for number of hits & unique visitors for each site, number of mailing list members, number of affiliates as well as income goals for Adsense, affiliate programs & of course sales.

I will now update a spreadsheet weekly that will show me graphs for everything so I can see that things are progressing.

Perfect

My daughter is fed up

with people telling her what a wonderful actress she is, she's not cut out to be a celebrity. I just grin all the way through these things, there's nothing better than seeing your kids performing.

It's been a bit of a hectic day as daughter No.2 fell over and cut her head open so a trip to the doctor was required. She's ok now but has a plaster that will have to be removed from her hair at some stage.

So the article, yes it got finished, that is unless I make some changes when I give it the final read through in the morning. You can check it out at www.themoneyseed.com/rss

My wife has gone for an indian and a bottle of wine and all is well with the world. Just as I wrote that I realised that all is not well. Ken Bigley is no longer with us & the world is a little sadder tonight. Send your love to his family.

A day just disappeared

I didn't post yesterday, I meant to but the day just flew by and I didn't get a round to it.

I wrote a new article which I will polish up today & post when it's ready. It's currently called '6 more free steps to online income'

I did a search for the title of last weeks article '5 free steps to online income' and found that the first 5 listings at google are copies of my article on various other sites. Which is nice!

I have to go now as my daughter (eldest 8yo) has the lead in the school assembly this morning and I have to get out of my PJs & scrubbed up before I can play the proud dad.

AdSense

There is so much to know about Making Money Online and no one know it all.
I try and learn things as I need them rather than try and learn everything which takes too much time.

I have recently started using Google Adsense for the first time and so have just bought a copy of The Definitive Guide To Google AdSense

It's a cold & windy day in my little piece of England so I'm going to spend the afternoon in front of the fire reading.

Clix Galore Problems

I'm having a run in currently with Clix Galore. It's been due for some time.
Clix Galore is an excelent site for finding affiliate programs to promote. Especially if you want stuff slightly off the mainstream.

Their site tells you EPC for each program & what percentage of applications the merchant accepts. IE you can see which merchants automatically accept everyone.
I have had no problem getting paid for the UK sites that I promote but can't seem to get paid for the Australian programs that I promote.

A flurry of mails has resulted in a payment but its about £200 short.
A phone call to Australia might be required

Banners & Mash

Not sure what the mash part is but the banners are the banners I have been creating as per the John Reese list of things I must do... I started this post in my Opera browser which is useful in so many ways, but annoying in so many other ways. When you post to Blogger in Opera the WYSIWYG controls don't appear. Which I forget each day until I need them Like now to add my banner!

So far I've created 5 in various sizes I just need somewhere to stick them now. Of course my affiliates can use them but of the 7 I have so far only 3 have sent visitors and single figures at that. Early days yet, I have paid to have my affiliate program announced to all the directories by Affiliate Announce but it hasn't been done yet.

This afternoon I have had my sister visit with her daughter, we both have daughters that were born a week apart, so they are both at infants school for mornings only & both cute as buttons in their school uniforms. It definately puts a smile on your face when you see 20 4 year olds coming out of school in their little uniforms. So not so much work today.

Today's lesson

I guess we all are the same when it comes to learning stuff.

We see something that we already know but this time it makes sense or maybe we just forgot about it and stopped using it.

So today's lesson is that once you've finished with your traffic you should sell it. (Lynn mentioned this on the audio I mentioned earlier)

The easiest way to sell that traffic on is with Google Adsense. If a visitor is leaving your site anyway you might as well try and get some of the money back that you invested in getting that visitor.

The trick is to find ways of not giving them somewhere else to go until they are finished with your site.

Ideas..

On your newsletter/list thank you page
On your product download page
exit pop ups with more information & ads

You can use the comment button to add your own ideas

Valuable Audio Lessons

I've just been listening to Lynn Terry who has recorded an audio call to promote the an educational cruise for work at home moms. Whenever I find a good source of educational audios I like to play them in the background as I work. You will almost always come hear something that sparks an idea for you. I've just heard something on Lynn's call that I am going to put into action.

Check it out

Popunders

I don't know if this was a good thing to do , but I will find out.

I have purchased 10,000 clicks from a company in the UK, now they call them clicks but they're not really because the traffic come from pop under pages.

I wouldn't normally buy traffic like this but I was looking for places to buy banner ads , which is one of the John Reese strategies from Traffic Secrets, and I came across this site & before I new it I had paid for 10,000 impressions.

I have the impressions tracked and split between two variations of the same page. So if any action does come from it I will also know which page performed the best.

The pages are www.themoneyseed.com & www.themoneyseed.com/indexblack.html

John is big on tracking everything & split testing everything.

On the links front Zeus is driving me crazy and I might change tack and outsource my link creation on elance

I have sent out three JV offers I'll let you know if they come to anything likewise with the 10,000 impressions, which by the way cost £29.95 and will leave me all square if I make one sale from them.

What A Grind

Getting link partners & JV partners is just a grind and it takes considerably longer than expected. Well it does for me.

The only highlight of the day is that I got an article published on a forum so in gratitude here is a link to the forum
http://3momjobs.aimoo.com/ check it out, it's shocking pink.

I now need to chill out because I'm all agitated because things just aren't happening quick enough for me.

Franz Ferdinand may help