Sorry!

I'm sorry I'm not posting a lot - I blame the holidays! I've been busy, and .. well, there's not a lot to talk about. I'm still doing the same thing, working on my One Week Marketing plan. Of course, this most recent campaign has been more like a 3 week marketing plan. I have finally picked my product/keywords for my next campaign though, and I'm eager to get started. I just have to finish up with the last one!

Happily enough, I'm already getting some good traffic, and even getting some Google traffic. I feel like my keywords were a lot better this time.

I hear you now - what? One Week marketing? Keywords? What?? One Week Marketing is a system of internet marketing created by a woman named Jennifer, who's known around the internet as PotPieGirl. Over the last 3 months, I've been on a search for a way to get started making money on the internet, and in all my research, I felt that this was the right way for me to get started. The 2 biggest draws - It was easy to understand, and other than the purchase of her program, it could be done for free. Everything she teaches in her program is using free platforms, like Squidoo and Blogger.

If you're interested in earning money on the internet, visit her site at One Week Marketing. That's an affiliate link, so if you should decide to buy her system, I'll make a little money from it, she'll make a little money from it - and you'll find a fantastic way to make some extra money - maybe even enough to quit your job. Everybody wins!

Trapped in Squidoo's Spam Filter!

I had some issues with Squidoo this week. I got my lenses done for my current campaign, and when I went to publish them, they all got caught in Squidoo's 'spam filter'. But honestly, they weren't spam! I went through all the information I could find, and couldn't find any reason why they would be considered a problem. The only thing I could figure is that because they are based around a health problem, they mentioned 'diet' quite often - and Squidoo doesn't allow weight-loss lenses, because they're quite often scammy and spammy.

So - how did I solve my problem? Well, Squidoo gives you three options:

1. Edit your lens, and remove any problem causing modules or text. Well, that didn't work for me because I couldn't find any thing that was against the rules.
   
2. Delete your lens and post it on a more forgiving platform, like your own blog. Squidoo has an 'export' option, where you can download everything from your lens onto your own computer, and that way you don't lose any hard work you've done setting it up.
   
3. Have it hand reviewed by a live person - but only do this if you're willing to risk them deciding against you, and locking your lens - and if they find you have a lot of spammy stuff, they make go so far as to delete your account.
   

So, I took the plunge and asked that they be hand checked by a live person. Because I was SURE there was nothing spammy about my lenses. First though, I went into edit mode on each lens, and exported the file to my computer - just in case.

And today... Hooray! All my lenses are there and published. It's so nice to know that I was doing it right, and that the people at Squidoo are fair! It's a pleasure to deal with a company that is run by real people, and not mindless machines.

If you'd like to check out what I was working on, here's a link to the lenses for this week's campaign.

• Buy Gluten Free Food
• Gluten Free Cookbooks
• What's all the Fuss About Gluten Free Eating?
• Best Gluten Free Breads
• Recipes for Gluten Free Bread

If you'd like to find out what all the fuss is about with Squidoo, check out this free download: FREE Squidoo Guide!

Amazon Associates

I have to say, Amazon is doing pretty well for me. I'm going to break $100 this month in Amazon sales, so I can't complain about that. It will be interesting to see how things go after Christmas - after all, people still shop for a lot of these items, right? For example, some of my items are good for camping, so it stands to reason that come summer time, people may be searching for them. And kitchen items - people cook all the time, and mother's day may be great for that, too.

We'll just have to see how it goes.

Problems Galore

The last week hasn't been very profitable for me.

I've been lazy and unorganized. I've done more thinking about 'how' to do it instead of just getting in there and doing it.

I was all prepared to really buckle down yesterday and make it different. And what happens? Internet gone. ALL FREEAKIN' DAY! GAH!

Ok - so I'll just start today. Of course, it's almost 4 pm now, and I really haven't done much of anything. I've got a house guest and she's a bit chatty, which normally is fine - but I have a TON of work to do!

Good news, I'm up to 25 sales on Amazon this month so far. Bad news, is Christmas is only 10 days away, and I can see the hits on my product lenses drying up. I was averaging about 50 hits/week on my best lens, and in the past 7 days, it's only had about 25. I've dropped on the whole from 350 page views/week to 290. So the traffic is definitely moving on.

Maybe I need to start planning something for Valentine's Day? I bet I could turn some of these lenses into Valentine's day gift lenses.... hmmmmmm.

No Drive!

Image by clydeorama via Flickr

I've got no drive to get up and go this week. I'm now 4 days behind on my one week marketing! This lack of motivation is NOT going to get my family to Disney World next Christmas!

I have updated all my blogs, and have got the first part of my campaign started. It's just a matter of writing, writing writing, and I'm dragging my feet. I need a big kick in the butt!

Moving on...

Wow! I've already had 14 Amazon sales this month! That's an average of 2 a day - I'm really pretty stoked about that.

And I've started getting hits on Clickbank for my campaign from last week. Sweet. :D Just need to start getting more attention from Google to my pages. The Ezine articles should help, they were just posted yesterday. Well, the two I finished were - and I just got the email, my account was approved, so now I can get back to writing articles there. Excellent.

And now - I've started working on this week's campaign. So - I'm still a little behind on last week's campaign because of the Ezine hang-up, and we had some domestic issues that kept me from getting what I needed to do today done. But tomorrow's a holiday, and I can sit here and work my bootay off all day. :D I'm gonna be a writing fool tomorrow.

Remember! $100 a day average by my birthday in June - that's my goal! November had me at $8.40 a day, so I've got a ways to go in the next 7 months!

If you'd like to see how I'm doing it, check out One Week Marketing.

Working Hard!

Image via Wikipedia

I've been working hard this week, but had a few snags over the course of the last few days.

One of the things I did was buy a domain name. I'm using it because hoplinks - the links you use to send people to the product you're supporting - are kind of ugly and shady looking. So, I created my own url - BestWaytoLearnSpanish.info that I set up to forward to the sales page of the product I'm selling. All well and good - except that the day after I got all my Squidoo lenses, articles, blogs etc. pointing at that URL - it stopped working! I was in a panic, sure I'd done something wrong - except that they had all worked the day before. Finally, I sent an email off to customer service of my domain name server, and turned out it was an issue there, an hour later they fixed it right up. Whew!

Later in the week, I was busy at work writing Ezine articles, when I hit the end of my account limit. So now, I can't proceed with anything until my account is reviewed and they raise my limit.

I'm planning on starting another blog, on another topic, and am waiting for a PLR article pack that I bought to help me with some of the content - it's supposed to be here today, if it shows up I guess i can get started on that. AND I did go ahead and do my keyword research for the campaign I've got starting tomorrow - so that'll be exciting! I guess i can just move ahead with other things while I'm waiting for this one to catch up.

Make Me Money November Round Up

Ok - here's the scoop, not really too much different from what I wrote in the other post, but I did want to have a definitive total.

Freelance Article writing - $100
Associated Content articles - $14.08 in residuals, $3.57 in upfront payments*
Christmas Cash Squidoo Lenses - 82.46
Other affiliate sales - $52.67

So, my total for the month of November is: $252.78

Wow! It might not seem like much, and it's certainly not enough to live on - but dang! I only got serious about earning money online in about the middle of October, so to already be making that much is .. just.. wow.

The thing to remember is this - and I know I said it before - Everything I do online, once I put the work in, will keep earning me money for as long as it's online. So if I can find something that sells enough to make $10 a week, that's $10 a week for however long the internet keeps working this way, and the product stays available. And I'll keep getting that $10 a week, without having to do anymore work. So, if I can find 50 products that make $10 a week? That's $500/week, that's enough for me to live on. And 100 products? That's $1000 a week, and I'm living large. Ok, maybe $1000/week doesn't seem that big to you, but since I'm in Peru, we get by on about $900/month... so $1000/week would be HUGE. (heck, $500/week would be awesome!)

If you're interested in seeing what I'm doing on Squidoo, check out one or more of these pages -

Learning Spanish Verbs Online
Learn Spanish for Travel
Best Ways to Learn Spanish
Best Spanish Language Software
Learn How to Speak Spanish Fast

If you're interested in finding out how those pages are making me money, check out PotPieGirl's program One Week Marketing - I bought it, I've read it, I'm working it. It's not a get rich quick scheme, it's a real way to work and make money on the internet in an ethical manner. But I'm telling you now - I'm using it, and I love it. After a lifetime of being miserable working for other people and by their rules, now I'm working for me. I can't wait until I'm making enough money that my husband doesn't have to work 12-15 hour days! (That link is an affiliate link, so I will make a little money if you should buy the program - but I wouldn't be linking to it if I didn't believe in it.)

Ok... I'll get off the soap box now. :D I'm just super excited to see all my hard work is really starting to pay off - like the Tortoise and the Hare, 'Slow and Steady Wins the Race!'


*Residual is the payment I got for page views on all my articles on AC, upfront is the amount I was paid.. well, upfront, for the one article I submitted last month. (I didn't do much article writing, as I was busy with Squidoo lenses)

Make Me Money Update

OK, I received One Week Marketing yesterday, and have read through the material. I was so excited to get started, that I did :D I picked a niche and started off doing day one of the plan last night. Today, I'll be working on day two. Day two seems like a lot of work, but I'm determined to do it!

If I can explain OWM without giving away too much of PotPieGirl's info - it's basically about keyword domination - finding a small niche, and then saturating the market with your pages and your keywords, and becoming an expert in that field. What she's done though, that makes it so great for new internet marketers, is give a very simple to follow, day by day plan on exactly how to do it. (If you want to see how it works, she gives away the first 18 pages for free if you click here)

I've made another sale on my Christmas Cash Blueprint! I'm very excited about that! I've now made a total of 9 Amazon sales this month for a total of nearly $100 dollars. Not bad! It's really exciting to see the work I'm doing pay off. The really great thing is I think I can incorporate some of these Christmas lenses into One Week Marketing campaigns after Christmas is over. Here's an example of what those lenses look like - Le Creuset Round French Oven

So what everyone really wants to know - The Monthly Total so far -

Amazon - $54.74 (the newest sale hasn't shipped yet so isn't added in)
Freelance Articles - $100
Other Articles - $12

The CCB lenses seem to be picking up - I'm eager to see how things go after the weekend!

One week later...

I've spent most of the last week making backlinks for my Squidoo lenses. I now know what my least favorite part of Internet Marketing is - making backlinks. Basically, I've been writing articles of about 300 words in which I can put a link back to my Squidoo lens - (get it? link back = backlink!) and posting them on free article sites. I've put some on Ezine.com, some on 3stepads.com and even more on various other similar article directories. But that's what you've got to do, soI'm doing it! My lenses still aren't where I want them to be in Google - I've got about a third of them on the front page, some at the #3 and #4 spots. I originally had a lot more - but I can see that the Christmas competition is really heating up, and other pages are passing me by. So, I'll just keep on chugging along, and make as many back links as I can, and hopefully get the rest of these things at least up to the first page of Google.

I HAVE had some good news though - two more sales this week, for which I earned about $10. So it is possible to make money with Squidoo lenses and as an Amazon Associate. $10 in a week doesn't sound like a lot - but you figure, I wrote an article also for $25, and made about $4 on page views. so that's nearly $40 this week. Ok.. still not a lot -- but I'm new! I'm just starting, and still learning. And if I can make $40/week with what I've got, I can double it and make $80. Then triple it, and make $120. Remember, with affiliate marketing, it's that set it and forget it thing - once you've got the work done, it keeps making money for you even if you don't do anything else.

Also, my money came in this Monday, so I've done a transfer over to PayPal. As soon as that's through, I'll be purchasing One Week Marketing from PotPieGirl. I'm REALLY eager to get started!! I already have a couple niche ideas, so I just need to get the blue print on how to get started. If you think One Week Marketing might be something you'd like to try, or if you're just interested in seeing what it's all about, PotPieGirl let's you download the first 18 pages for free. Check it out if you're at all interested in making money online.

If you've checked out Squidoo and would like to know how to get started making lenses the easiest way, PotPieGirl also makes a great Squidoo tutorial available for free download. I had already started making Squidoo lenses and thought I knew what I was doing - her tutorial made me better and faster. I recommend it if you want to make money - or just make lenses. It's free, so you can't go wrong.

Oh - and my lens traffic? Remember last week when I said it had moved up to 215 views per week? Up through today I was at 320/week. w00t!

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Some of my money making ideas...

I've been trying (albeit not very hard) for a few years now to think of ways to make money. I have to admit that I've been looking for a way to make a decent amount of money (say, $1500/month) with something that I could do from home, would give me lots of time with my family, and wouldn't cost me anything to start. And if I didn't have to work very hard, that would be even better!

As I mentioned, my first money making idea was article writing. And right now I've got a small income stream, about $140, from it that includes about 4 hours of work a month. That could easily grow if I wrote more articles - I get paid per click, so the more articles I have out there, obviously the more clicks I'll get. It takes a lot of knowledge about SEO (search engine optimization), which means you've got to know about keywords, finding KWs that people are looking for, and getting them to your article. If you're article doesn't rank high on Google, you probably won't get a lot of page hits.

So, to get my articles higher on Google, I started making backlinks - and that brought me to Squidoo. This is the most recent of my money making ideas, and I'm following a plan that I learned from Jackie Lee's Christmas Cash Blueprint. It has everything I was looking for - it was simple to follow, I could start it right now with no material, and it was FREE. I've been building CCB lenses on Squidoo since the 1st of October - I have nearly 30 of them. So far, I've seen $35 in sales. It's not much, I realize - but we'll see how things go as we pass the middle of November here.

And where do I go from here? Well, hopefully, the lenses from the CCB will continue pulling some sales for me even after the holidays are over. I can refresh those lenses, take out the Christmas references and link them to some other blogs. But apart from that, I'm going to move on to PotPieGirl's One Week Marketing plan. Basically, it's doing niche sites - picking a product (either physical or digital) and making pages based on SEO and keywords to get people to come and buy the product. I'm sure it's not as easy as I just made it sound :) But that's what I'm going to be doing for the next 6 months. I'll post here about what I learn, and how I do. If I'm doing other things, like the article writing, I'll also post about that. And I'll keep a tally of how much I'm actually making here - so if you're following along, you can see if the work I have to put into it is worth the trouble.

If the PotPieGirl or Squidoo sound interesting to you, she's got a FREE Squidoo guide - click on over and check it out.

Stumble Upon works!

I have 31 featured, active lenses on Squidoo at the moment. I generally have around 120 total weekly views at any given time. I spent about half an hour this morning going through all my lenses and making sure that I had 'stumbled' them. By this afternoon, I was up to 215 views!

That is amazing. Nearly double the views, just for doing a half hours work.

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My 6 Month Make Me Money Challenge

Image by redjar via Flickr

I'm an avid reader of the website Internet Marketing for Mommies where I've been studying Jackie Lee's Beginner's Internet Marketing Strategy. This week, Jackie has written a post titled "Are You Going to Make Next Year Different Than This Year?" and has challenged her readers to FOCUS. To focus on one thing, one method of making money, and to throw everything we have into making that one thing work. I, for one, am up to the challenge - and figured, hey, I should blog about it and let the world see. I believe I can be successful in my attempts to "make me money", and if I can do it, anyone who has doubts in themselves may read this and decide that they can do it too!

So first, a bit of background.

I'm a stay at home mom, living in Lima, Peru. My main income is a house I own and rent out back in the United States. But the income from that has been problematic; what with tenants moving out, unreliable property managers and emergency repairs there's actually been next to nothing to live off for the last 2 years. I've done a bit of blogging as a mostly diary keeping sort of thing, to keep track of what I'm doing in my life. Back in August, (about 3 months ago) I was offered an opportunity to write some articles for a friend's website. Since I love writing, and needed the money desperately, I immediately agreed.

It worked out really well - so well, in fact, that it became a full time gig, which is great! I enjoyed it so much, I started looking for other places online where I could write, and soon found Associated Content, where I have posted around 50 articles since I first made my account. It's a small income, but it has generated around $30 or so per month since I started - and the nice thing is that it is residual income. I don't have to do anything else, as long as people read my articles, I'll keep getting a few bucks a month.

In my quest to create more 'buzz' for the articles I was writing, I made my way to Squidoo.com. My original plan was to simply create a page where I could make some links to my articles on AC - more links means more love from Google, right? I was hoping to get my articles higher in the Google page rankings, and hopefully draw more page views.

But when I found Squidoo, I quickly realized the potential for making money from the site. It wasn't long until I found Jackie Lee's websites, and those of PotPieGirl - both women who started with nothing - work at home mom's who had no money to invest, just like me! - and have been able to achieve their dreams through working smart and working hard, online. What I really have appreciated the most about both women is that they don't try to sell, sell, sell me products that I HAVE to have in order to make me money. They both are quite positive that it's possible to earn money online without having anything to invest. Well, I can already vouch for that! In 3 months, I've so far made about $600 online - without investing a penny, except for the computer I already had. What I have invested, is time. Lots of it.

Now I could sit here and thing - Jeeze, Louise, I'm working as hard as a real job, and only making a couple hundred dollars a month! However - what you need to realize is that once that work is done, it's DONE. And the work I've done - articles, blogs, Squidoo lenses - will always be there, earning me passive income. Residual income that I won't have to do any more work for! The goal is to have as many little points of income as I can make - and each little spot will keep earning for me, for as long as the internet is around, anyway :)

So - that brings us to the challenge. I am taking Jackie Lee up on her challenge - to focus on one goal and on one method. See, there are a million ways to make money online, and when you're new at this, it can easy to be distracted by all those bright and shiny toys they throw at you: Do This, and Start Raking in the Money! So, you do that... and the money doesn't come in fast, so you pop off to another idea... and another... and another after that. Sorry folks - After only 3 months of working on the internet, i can tell you it just doesn't work that way. The way to making a real, livable income is to focus on one thing and WORK IT.

So:
1) I am going to invest in PotPieGirl's One Week Marketing Plan. (PotPieGirl will let you download the first 18 pages of her OWM plan for free at that link - if you want to make money on line, check it out! it's worth a read)
2) I have already bought MicroNiche Finder - a keyword tool to help me find product and niches to focus on.
3) Total investment - less than $200 (But remember, I started with NOTHING and already earned $600, so I'm actually just re-investing some of my earnings back into my business)

I'm going to use OWM to create one niche per week, every week, between now and my birthday in June. My goal is to be earning a minimum of $1000/month from online sources by the time I turn 47.

So, won't you follow along in my journey? Perhaps we can learn something together! And let's find some ways to make me money!

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