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Making Your First Dollar OnlineWith my first post in this series, I either scared you off or I fired you up.  If you’re reading this post then I must have fired you up to make your first dollar online.  You may be wondering how in the world you can actually make money online.  There are tons of different ways that you can make money online but we are only going to focus on one of them for this series in particular.

From my experience over the past two years – I’ve seen tons of people try to make their first dollar online.  They hear one way or another is the best way to make money online and they go out and they try that method.  Then two days later they get another email or they read another blog post and hear that there’s a new best way to make money online.  So they go into implementing that.

Keep consistent with your first money making project.

Then they get bored – and after a week or less of trying either one of the tactics that they found they are out and about browsing the web for yet another way to make money online.  The real key that most internet marketing related products won’t tell you is that you need to actually choose one route and stick with it until you have a consistent stream of income coming in.

Once you have that stream of income then it’s time to diversify – I hear people talking about diversity all the time but they never talk about focusing on one project until it’s profitable.  You can’t diversify without having one solid income stream first.

So you’d like to know which method I’m going to show you right?  Well you’ve been looking at it ever since you landed on this website.  In my opinion – the easiest way to make your first dollar online is by talking about a subject you already love. Creating a blog on a topic that you love will allow you to stay motivated during the first few months where you likely won’t see much of an income.  That’s right – I said MONTHS.  Get used to working hard for no big immediate gain– unless you’re already used to doing that at your day job.

Focus is key – do not get too many projects on your plate at first.

I can’t stress focus enough in these first days of your career as an internet marketer.  You really need to choose one site and focus on it until it is producing at near maximum capacity.  In the next post in this series we are going to talk a little bit more about why you should use a blog, and how exactly you make money from writing about a subject online.

I’m going slow with this series so those of you that have a full time job already are still able to keep up.  For those of you that need more to do – you’ll have plenty to do in the next few weeks as we get the site setup, and learn how to drive short and long term traffic to it.  If you would like to move faster and don’t mind paying for a membership to a website, check out Internet University and you’ll spend days reading all of the material they have.  (The link to Internet University is an affiliate link so I will be paid if you sign up to their monthly program, more on that in the next post.)

Make sure you sign up for the email list at the top of this blog so you can continue to get the daily updates, and subscribe to our RSS feed as well.

Making Money Online For BeginnersYes I do – can I be an internet millionaire now?

You wake up in the morning and you don’t have to leave your house to go to work.  You’re able to sit down at the computer and you don’t have anybody to answer to but yourself.  You check your bank account and you see thousands more dollars in it then before you went to bed.  You’re living the new American dream – to live on your own terms.  All you did was quit your job and throw up a website and now you’re an internet superstar.

Wait – you mean I actually have to work hard?

Most people think that this is the way it works when you start making money online and you don’t have to work for ‘the man’ anymore.  If that were the case – then everyone would be doing it.  Making a full time living online is not for the faint of heart – or the lazy for that matter.  If you are looking for instant riches without any work – then go play the lottery and hope for the best.  Working online is not the way to instant riches.

If I haven’t scared you off already then you may cut it in the online world.  Over the next month or more I’ll be posting a series of posts that are geared towards the beginner – but can also help those people who have been trying various methods of making money online for awhile but haven’t really hit their stride yet.

I can work hard – now what do I do?

I’m going to go over every detail that I possibly can – no matter how simple it is.  I’ll go from deciding what type of site you want to create – to teaching you how to create that site – how to get traffic to it – and how to make money off of it.

The goal of this series is to take you from not knowing a single thing about making money on the internet – to having at least one profitable website so you can continue to expand your online empire knowing that this stuff does work.

Don’t quit your job just yet.

As I said before, making a full time living online takes work and it’s going to take a decent amount of time as well.  Don’t go quitting your job on me just yet – let’s get you up to speed and setup with an income producing website for MANY months before you go off the deep end.

Get ready to work 60 hours a week.

You’ll be working your day job full time, and creating your online empire part time at night, and burning that midnight oil.  Don’t expect to have too much fun during the several months or years that it will take you to truly get your online business to the point that you can (almost) think about sitting back and relaxing at home all day.  You can think about it – but it’s not going to happen.

If you’re anything like me – not having a day job won’t even begin to stop you from working 60 hours a week anyway.  If you still think that you have what it takes to make money online, then go ahead and sign up to my email list so you can receive updates each time I post a new part of the series.

Subscribe to my email list at the top of this page to get updates on this post series.

As most of you already know, I was down in Florida for college at Full Sail University. I’ve switched to an online degree in an effort to be able to focus on my business more so we’re also moving back up to Ohio.

Both Katie and I miss our friends and families back up in Ohio so we’re heading back up there and getting a new place. Even though the weather is much nicer down here in Florida!

I haven’t been posting much because I haven’t had a lot to talk about in the affiliate marketing arena. I’ve just been basically running my campaigns, and I haven’t really been doing anything all that exciting to blog about!

I’m thinking about turning this blog into more of a general ramble of my thoughts as opposed to affiliate marketing related only, but I’d like to see what you guys think. I’m not sure how many readers I honestly have anymore, since I rarely post at all. But what would you guys like to see?

Are there any traffic sources you’d like to hear about? General business knowledge? Case studies on specific types of offers? I’ll be glad to post up some case studies if you’d like. I’m just not sure what everyone wants to read about.

If anyone still reads the blog – let me know in the comments what you want to hear about and I’ll be glad to help out.

Seth Godin has pulled off yet another amazing book. If you are reading this blog you’re most likely into marketing of some kind, and if you haven’t read all of Seth’s books by now you are way behind. I received Seth’s book a few weeks early because of a charity donation deal that he was running.

When I first started reading, I was instantly hooked to it because he talks about a lot of what I’ve been thinking lately and really hammers the points home. Linchpin reminds me somewhat of Purple Cow – except instead of having a remarkable idea or product – you have to be remarkable in of yourself.

The business world as we knew it is gone, the world of factories and making a living just showing up are gone. In the past all you had to do was go to school, get good grades, work hard, keep your head down and follow orders. Those rules no longer apply, if you want to truly succeed you need to be a linchpin. It’s no longer about just showing up and doing your job – you have to challenge authority and do what you think is best.

You are not a cog in the industrial machine anymore – but the problem is we are still teaching our children to be cogs and there’s no more room for them. Whether you are an employee, or if you are working for yourself the changes are the same. We have to make our own choices, and chart our own path. We have to add value that others do not in order to succeed.

“If all you can do is the task and you’re not in a league of your own at doing the task, you’re not indispensable.”

You can be replaced at any time, by anyone. It’s not enough to be good at what you do anymore, you have to add value that the other thousands of people in your field cannot. What do you offer to your business, or to your industry, that nobody else can? If cuts were being made at your job – why would you be the one that stays?

The book has a lot of solid information in it and is a great book to read a few times. There’s a lot of books in our industry that are great reads and I think this one is up towards the top. If you have a chance, I would highly recommend you go grab it because you certainly won’t regret reading it.

Just wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas! I had a wonderful Christmas with my family, and we’re all relaxing and waching football now. Interesting game so far, I just wanted to get on here and wish you all a Merry Christmas and hopefully everyone had a great time with their families!

I’m glad how fortunate we are and my thoughts go out to those that are less fortunate. Remember how fortunate you are and never forget it. Get ready for 2010 in this last week, get your business plans ready and TAKE ACTION in 2010 if you haven’t yet.

Merry Christmas and have a great Holiday season!

Over the last few weeks I’ve been talking to various network owners about what they look for in affiliate managers. There’s been a lot of talk about what an affiliate manager should and shouldn’t be able to do. There’s a few different types of affiliate managers as well. If you are an affiliate manager and you’ve come across this thread – you should also check out Adhustler’s Ten Commandmants of Being an Affiliate Manager

1.) The affiliate manager that is/was an affiliate. They know their stuff and they can help you out with campaigns, targeting, anything really. These kind of affiliate managers also tend to be the networks owner, and not really an affiliate manager but they help affiliates nonetheless. Ryan Eagle of EWA, and Jason Akatiff(Smaxor) of Ads4Dough come to mind here.

2.) The affiliate manager that was never an affiliate, but still tries really hard to get you everything you want. They don’t bug you all day about the new hot offers, but they are ready and willing to pull up offer stats and etc for you IF you ask for it. I like these kind of affiliate managers, there when you want them to be, invisible when you don’t need them.

3.) The affiliate manager that just got out of college, or never went to college and has no real business being in this industry at all. They have no idea what is going on and hardly know what you are talking about when you ask them if you can run X offer on Y traffic source. These types of affiliate managers are far too common nowadays, and I tend to avoid them.

This obviously doesn’t describe every affiliate manager, but it gives a good base. The two extreme ends and one more in the middle. Personally I like the affiliate managers(or network owners) that have been in the industry awhile, and they still run their own internal campaigns. Some people think that there’s a trust issue here though – what if they just steal your traffic sources and run it themselves?

Other’s feel that they don’t need anyone at a network to bounce ideas off of, which is great for you, go do your thing. I talk to Ryan a lot about various campaigns and ask for suggestions from him, even if it’s not a campaign that I am running with him at that moment he’s always there to help. Jason Akatiff(Smaxor) is the same way, always glad to help.

Those are the two that I have dealt with the most which is why I name them, I am sure that there are others who help just as much, so don’t think that I am calling anyone else out. I don’t see any sort of trust issues here, because unless you have been around for a really long time, these two and others in this position know a lot and can really help you. I’m not going to even pretend to know near as much as these two guys.

What do you guys look for in an affiliate manager? Someone who runs their own campaigns very successfully? Someone who can’t spell affiliate manager? Or somewhere in between?

As you can see it’s been awhile since I’ve posted – let alone posted anything useful and I know that.  So I’m going to actually try to turn things around and make this blog worth reading again.  A few other blogs lately have inspired me to do so.

I’ve decided that I want to make the jump into some local affiliate marketing and really take my business to the next level.  It’s late and I should be asleep but the thought got my mind racing with all the stuff I need to do.  I’m taking care of revamping my company website and reading up on all of the posts about local affiliate marketing.

So as I dive into it I’m going to recap how it’s going here for you guys.  Unfortunately I have little real experience in local affiliate marketing as I’ve only done a few little things but that’s all about to change.  So I won’t be dropping knowledge bombs right away but it doesn’t matter because my friend Brandon over at Adhustler has already done more than enough of that!

For all of you guys that are interested in jumping in this with me I suggest you go over to his gathering of posts about local affiliate marketing right NOW.  Luckily Dennis Yu is also going to be making a guest post here for us so I’ll have one solid post for you – even though it isn’t written by me.  So go check Brandon’s post out and then keep checking back here for my updates.

1.  Do it. Stop reading everything there is to know about making a living online. Stop falling for all of the guru’s latest and greatest inventions. Education is very important to your success but I find that most people over educate themselves. Each and every day they read all of the latest forums, blogs, and guru tactics yet they never take action. Pick a form of marketing, figure out what you’re going to promote and just do it.

2.  Set Goals. One of the most important things in this industry is self motivation. There is nobody here to hold your hand, no boss to yell at you for goofing off. The only person that can truly motivate you in any case, is you. Goals are an important part of that process, by setting goals and deadlines for those goals you strive towards them. Different rewards motivate different people. Set your goals so that you can tie in a reward with them that actually motivates you, whatever that may be. Bryn Youngblut recently had a great post about achieving some pretty awesome goals – you can do it too!

3.  Stay Focused. You have to stay focused on what you want to accomplish. You can’t let the new latest and greatest way of making money stop you from what you’re currently doing. Don’t let other people’s opinions about whether it works or not sway you. Make it work, you can market literally any product if you do it right. Anything can be made profitable. Don’t let it get the best of you – tweak it until you force it to profit.

4.  Diversify. I know, this might sound like a contradiction to the last rule. However I don’t see it as one. I always try to keep my top priority 80% of my time, and use that other 20% to work on some side projects, some long term projects that will be consistent for you. You can’t expect one thing to last forever – so have a backup plan too.

5.  Have fun. Often over looked in this industry – you need to have fun each and every day. If this isn’t what you want to do then go find what is. You like the 9-5 work day for a company? Great – go do it. You like the whacky schedules and hard work in the restaurant business, go do it! But if making a living online is what you want to do then you should automatically have fun each and every work day and that’s what matters. We aren’t here to slave away and make a ton of money and do nothing with it. Have fun, do what you want, just get your job done.

6.  Network. I’m surprised I didn’t put this one on here sooner. Network with anyone and everyone you can. Don’t spend all day long on Facebook or Twitter or any other social media but you need to talk to people in the industry. Get to know your affiliate managers, your peers, your advertisers. Get to know everyone, any contact you have may come in handy some day. Whether it be for advice, a new direction, a joint venture or anything else, networking is key!

7.  Protect your wealth. Wealth is not measured in how much money you make, it’s in how much money you keep. I know plenty of people in this world who make way more than they need to yet they throw it all away and live paycheck to paycheck. Spend your money properly – make sure to always leave plenty of money in your business to expand and grow – but at the same time make sure you pay yourself what you deserve. One of the quickest ways to increase the amount of money you keep is by legally cutting down on the taxes you pay. There are several good reads out there about the subject – pick one up because you’ll be amazed how much money you can save and protect each year.

I talked with you guys about Tatto Media before and suggested them as a network.  Since then I’ve started to work with them a lot.  They’ve got some solid campaigns up now and they are ever growing.  For you PPC-Coach guys – they’ve been getting in a lot of email submits for me the past few days you might want to check those out.  Mike over there has been helping me a ton with all the requests I’ve been having.  I’ve been doing a lot with image ads so I have been asking him every few minutes it seems for banners for a campaign.  I wanted to do a quick highlight of the changes that have been made to their backend – I like them all for sure – definitely in the right direction.

Networks interfaces should always be changing and updating based on their affiliates needs and Tatto is on top of that.

  • New Design for Reporting and Statistics – Reports and Statistics is even faster and more efficient than before. Data view pages can easily be searched and sorted accurately even with multiple pages of data.
  • Conversion Tracking Report – This report provides specific lead/sale information, including sub id, tracking info, transaction id, ip address, and payout, allowing you to quickly run sub id reports. While “info” in current tracking links will continue to work, it has been replaced with “aff_sub”.
  • Updated Tracking Links – Updated tracking links that are easy to understand. Sub ID tracking has been updated as well as Source name added. Specify a Source name in the tracking url to easily drill-down and analyze performance in reports.
  • Offer Tiny URLs –You can shorten your tracking links with our own TinyURL.
  • Browser Targeting – The Tatto Affiliate Network now can target offers to users based on their browser.  This will redirect users to receive offers designed for mobile devices including iPhones and thus increase your conversion rates.
  • Creative Manager – A valuable feature that quickly generates tracking code with creatives, making it simple for you to include the creative you prefer with the offer-specific tracking url. Also new features to browse and preview creatives.
  • Suppression List – Updated suppression lists to better support email marketers.
  • Refer a Friend – Enhanced Refer a Friend feature to reward you for introducing friends into our network.
  • Improved Stats API – Updated functions and documentation to make working with our stats API even easier.
  • Live Support that AIMs affiliate’s Manager
  • More offer Categories for navigational ease
  • Support tab w/ help and glossary.

All of these changes are definitely for the better and Tatto is just getting started.  They are always on top of making sure their affiliates have everything they need.  I’ll be working more and more with them and will keep you guys updated on what they have going on.  If you guys aren’t already in Tatto Media – you should definitely go sign up now.

For the first time, a network has made it onto my blog without a paid review.  I just want to let everyone know that everything stated here is solely on my idea, and I wasn’t paid to put this up here.  EWA has no reason to get paid reviews – their network speaks for itself.  Although I haven’t been running as much as I should be lately with EWA, because I’m working on a few major projects, I felt this a necessary post.

Ryan Eagle, the owner of EWA or Eagle Web Assets, along with his partner Harrison Gervitz are by far the most helpful network owners around.  They truly care about the success of their affiliates and want each and every one to do the best that they can.  Their motivation for this isn’t because of the money that each affiliate brings them, because they do well enough on their internal advertising anyway.

They want everyone to succeed because EWA is a close group of friends, and as friends we like to stick together.  EWA continues to scare other networks and take affiliates from them by simply offering what we all as affiliates want.  We want the highest payouts(which all networks promise, but few truly deliver if you look around), we want the best support from the network we can get, which is what EWA delivers, and we want our leads to track, and we want to be paid.

The wants of an affiliate aren’t really all that much, yet somehow, networks still continue to get it wrong.  While we like all of our fancy referral commissions, and our gifts and gadgets networks send us, those aren’t nearly as important as offers, and support.  EWA puts affiliates first, and themselves second.  They work twenty hour days sometimes to make sure we have the offers that we need.  They are dedicated to getting any offer their affiliates want, and beating the payout on it.

Another thing that I need to highlight – when EWA sends out a mass email – it doesn’t just talk about the top offers and ask us to push this or push that.  EWA actually sends us out offers that they are internally testing – and even writes guides to help us get started on certain traffic sources.  The guide for advertising dating on Facebook that Ryan sent us awhile back helped tons of affiliates make a lot of money.  They truly are there to help their affiliates first, and write their paychecks second.

As I said before, EWA is a close group of friends so acceptance is limited.  However I’m glad to help budding affiliates get in – if you want in – please reach out to me on AIM at KatemiahCoop.  I won’t get you in right away, I want to make sure you fit the mold for an EWA affiliate first, but if you think you have what it takes – hit me up.

I just want to thank EWA publicly for what they’ve done for me as an affiliate, now excuse me while I go pump out some campaigns on their network.