The journey begins
September 25, 2007
I am in China now to work on my Olympic project. I can’t stop thinking of different ideas to try and implement. It is exciting to feel that for the first time in six months I am actually traveling for a real purpose, related to one of my websites.
I also had to use my Chinese for the first time in a long time. I am far from fluent and I don’t understand much of what people are saying, but I was able to get from the airport and checked into a hotel.
Emini trading review
September 24, 2007
Sponsored review:
The emini trading system is advertised as a cheap and reliable trading system based on the S&P 500, created by Todd Mictchell. They offer a free audio CD, some lessons and information on the E-mini trading system, which is a great way to take a preview of emini trading before you make a purchase of the full system.
The educational program includes manuals, videos on DVD, audio CDs, access to the member website and “unlimited phone and email consultation”.
The course includes some of the following:
- how to calculate the next days’s highs and lows
- scalping technique
- MFAM for trend analysis
- probability Counter-Trend trade set-ups
- and most importantly the numbers to buy and sell at
Depending on how much time you spend studying the average person takes about 1-2 months to learn the emini system. The course is suitable for beginners and experienced traders. Todd explains his system without using technical jargon.
He offers a 15 day money back guarantee. He also encourages people to pick up the phone or to send him an email if they have any questions about his course.
Providing content for other websites
September 23, 2007
I have been going a bit mad with Hubpages, writing more articles than I normally would with my websites. I suppose that in some way I am restricted on the themes I can write articles for on my websites and after a while it is easy to get stale.
With a site like hubpages, you can write about just about anything. It seems that there are a few “newbies” there looking to make a buck online, so it is easy to write stuff for them. Things like, getting traffic to your site, affiliate programs etc. It is also a way to get some new links to your websites and a little bit of traffic.
The question is however, how much time should you be spending basically creating content for another website. This is a difficult question. If you have a hugely popular website, you probably wouldn’t bother with trying to get traffic from a site like hubpages and would spend all of your time on your own website. If you are like most of us, you probably need to spend quite a bit of your time writing comments on other blogs, participating in forums and writing articles on other websites to get extra links and traffic.
The advantage of writing content on another site like Hubpages or Squidoo is that it will get indexed by Google very quickly and if the keywords are not too competitive, it might even be easy to rank for some long tail phrases. It’s probably a good idea not to put your best articles up on another website, but perhaps write a teaser article that links to your website to get people to click through. If you just want to make money, include plenty of affiliate links.
Unfortunately for me I haven’t made any affiliate sales yet, but I am having fun with it for now, so will stick with it for a bit more.
Why I didn’t join blogrush
September 21, 2007
Nothing against John Reese who is an unbelievable marketer, but is anyone else getting sick of these programs getting pushed by the top bloggers, just to see who can get the most number of referrals?
It seems like you probably just need to send an email to Yaro Starak, Shoemoney, John Chow and Darren Rowse about your new product. If they promote your product/service positively, you can almost guarantee an immediate success with your launch.
Looking at Alexa graphs and charts it would seem that blogrush has been a huge success, but who is it really benefiting, other than perhaps the top few? I doubt that these bloggers even need visitors, from what is basically a traffic exchange program.
Blogging and internet marketing is becoming more like MLM everyday. People are already talking about “downlines”. *cringe*
I think John when he launched this, his idea was either to build it and sell out quickly after getting thousands of sign-ups, or to collect lots of data which he will then use to launch some kind of contextual advertising program, complete with a 10 tier affiliate program.
It’s raining, I’m bored
September 16, 2007
It has rained non-stop today and pretty much off and on the last few days, since the earthquake in Indonesia. Someone suggested here (Langkawi) that the earthquake could have upset the weather conditions.
I have done quite a bit of work today write articles and updating some sites.
I came across Deal Dot Com which looks like another simple, but interesting idea for marketing and making money on the internet. I like how these sites are launched; they are just geared towards bloggers writing about them and promoting them.
One thing I learnt from the 30 Day Challenge
September 16, 2007
Once thing which really got me thinking about the 30 Day Challenge is that if you have a new idea for a website, you don’t necessarily have to go out and purchase a new domain for it. There are services like Squidoo that allow you to set up your own one page website.
I have been working on a couple of pages the past couple of days to sell affiliate products on and to promote/build links to some of my other websites. Squidoo already has traffic and ranking, so it is possible to quickly get some good keyword rankings rather than creating a whole new website.
If your lens does well you can then consider starting up a new website. It’s a great cost-free way of testing a new market. Creating a site like this could take around 1-2 hours or even less. Create a couple of links to the site, make sure you have some affiliate links in your new web page and you can then forget about it.
You aren’t likely to get super rich from doing this, but I would be fairly confident that without doing any further work to your page you should be able to generate a couple of sales a year from your site. Hubpages is another Squidoo type clone that has been getting a bit of press recently.
I you don’t have any money to invest in your new internet business Squidoo and Hubpages are a great way to get started. Also if you have zero technical skills, these sites are very user friendly and are a great way to enter the world of affiliate marketing.
By building lots of websites, pages on these networks, blogs you are building up your “Internet Arsenal”. Sometimes blogs will work and sometimes a squidoo site will work. The important thing is to test all of these different methods.
It might seem like a lot of work, but I generally spend a few hours setting something up, put some affiliate links in and include some way to analyze traffic. Get a couple of links to the site and then forget about it. If I make some affiliate sales, I then go back and check where I was getting traffic from, add some more content and research any new affiliate programs.
You could summarize the process like this:
Idea -> Create -> Monetize -> Analyze -> Improve -> Repeat
My milliondollarwiki page
September 14, 2007
After reading about the milliondollarwiki on John Chow and Shoemoney’s blog, I couldn’t resist buying a page as an experiment.
I actually considered buying a page a while ago but because they didn’t accept Paypal, I gave them a miss. I even wrote to the owner saying I would only buy a page if they accepted Paypal. I basically use my Paypal for buying scripts, templates and some links and anything else that looks like it could be interesting. Well now they also Paypal so I bought my first page: foreclosure. I thought it would be a good, high paying keyword to have and there are lots of clickbank and affiliate products available.
The site is getting some good traffic with lots of links from bloggers and some major media outlets including CNN. The site is a simple, yet original way of making money online. It is one of the ideas that as soon as you see it you think “why didn’t I think of that”.
When every day is a weekend
September 13, 2007
I guy from Belgium I had been out drinking with a couple of times who is currently on a year’s leave of absence from his job said to me, “everday feels like a weekend”. This is one of the nice things about working while traveling, but it can be difficult at times. Everyone around you is on holidays and enjoying themselves so it is sometimes difficult to get motivated to sit at a computer for long periods of time.
Here are some tips you can at least try to keep some balance in your life if you are working on the road:
- Try to stick to a Monday to Friday schedule. It is very easy when you are traveling to lose track of the days. By at least working hard Monday through to Thursday you can then give yourself some time off on the “weekened”.
- When you are on the internet, do all of the important, must do tasks first before spending time checking your stats, reading forums and blogs.
- Set yourself weekly and monthly goals and stick to them
- Wake up at regular times
- Work hard trying to make money writing articles, getting links to cover what you will spend say on a tour or a night out
I must be honest though, as much as I would like to follow the above tips, I am failing miserably.
Travel and technology
September 10, 2007
I remember seeing television programs on how in the future we could put on goggles and gloves and we could travel to exotic destinations without leaving your arm chair. Not surprisingly I don’t think there is any way technology would ever stop people wanting to visit an actual destination.
However, technology has definitely changed how we go about researching and booking our trips. I found the place mentioned in a travel forum and read some good reviews of the place. I just called to book the place which is in Langkawi in Malaysia. It is a cheapish guesthouse and they told me they don’t take phone bookings. You need to book online!
I have no trouble with this and I actually think it is great of the hotel to do this. It saves them time from having to take phone bookings and messing around trying to collect deposits.
Almost every hotel you go to now has some form of internet access. More and more traveler’s cafes have free wifi internet access. The Starbucks in Malaysia even has free wifi and the one I was at today had power points spread right around the place to plug in your laptop. They even had points so you could sit outside!
In the evenings some people sit around talking but many people sit in front of computers, chatting, Skyping their friends and family, writing travel blogs, uploading photos and of course using facebook.
This whole concept is actually the theme of my ebook which I am currently writing. I still have a few finishing touches to put on it before I actually release it. I will be making it available for free. Perhaps if I get some free time in Langkawi I will spend some time on it.
Get hundreds of links to your site
September 10, 2007
I recently wrote about ways to get links to your site. It is a painstaking effort trying to get links by emailing webmasters and submitting to directories. I suppose I was fortunate enough that a couple of people responded to my email and added my site. I am doing it for my next big project I am working on.
I need to get a lot links, very quickly to the site as I am working on a deadline. The only way I can see it happening is by creating some interesting and slightly controversial content. I will be traveling to China within the next few weeks. I may even have a place to stay in Beijing.
So to get a bunch of quick links I will need to write something or take pictures/video of something that is going to get bloggers talking about. I have a few ideas, but would love to hear from anyone else. I would be even happy to award a cash prize to anyone who comes up with some good ideas.
