Back in October I discovered blogging. That led me into the world of internet marketing. I wrote an ebook, which is making some money. I also discovered affiliate marketing.

I’m diving into PPC affiliate marketing. I’ll be running my first campaigns before the weekend.

Because of the potential payout, I want to put all of my discretionary time there as opposed to this blog.

Undoubtedly, I’ll be blogging about my PPC achievements at a later date. Right now, I have to be completely focused on what’s going to lead me to my true goal.

If you’ve been a reader, thanks! I’ve made a lot of friends through blogging. We’ll keep up via email.

Lee

If you’re interested in making money on the Internet (and who’s not?), here are four must read blogs.

The way to read these is to go to the archives, click on the earliest month, go to the bottom of that and start reading.

They are…

www.johnchow.com

I know everyone reads John Chow, but I had to include him because 1) John’s blog is one of the first two blogs I ever read and is responsible for getting me into blogging and making money online. 2) You can learn a whale of a lot reading the whole thing from start to finish. 3) While you’re reading the blog, notice that it took him a few months to “get his groove on .”

www.zacjohnson.com

Zac is basically a kid who has made a ton of money in affiliate marketing. He’s only been blogging for a few months, but what’s really great about Zac is he’s very open with information. (Very helpful in the world of affiliate “b.s.” websites.)

www.richtwinpoortwin.com

Great website written by twins. These guys were making a ton of money with AdSense and then got Google slapped. Their attitude is why I read this blog!

Finally, there’s Amit Mehta’s blog (which I found through Zac Johnson).

www.superaffiliatemindset.com

Amit left a $90,000 a year government job in a research laboratory to become a super affiliate. Don’t tell him, but he should really be charging an access fee to his blog. The information is that good, especially when you’re starting out. Got a question about affiliate advertising? Leave Amit a comment. He’ll probably respond.

Just so you know, I’m getting nothing out of this list, except the knowledge that I’m passing on some pretty good stuff. These are four quality blogs you can learn a lot from. Hopefully some day soon, I’ll be on someone’s list, myself .

I was surfing ABestWeb.com a few days ago. You see, like most people, I’m having my problems with Google. They keep raising the cost of my keywords for my PPC campaign for my quitting smoking book, The Harold Cole Method. I thought at ABestWeb, I might get some insight into the problem.

God, I hate forums!

They can be good places to find answers to very specific questions about the kinds of things we do, but you have to wade through all the bitching and sniping to get there.

Is it that forums attract people who are generally hormonal or do they become that way after a few weeks of lurking and commenting?

I didn’t learn exactly what I came to find out. I think my keywords are fine and compared with everyone else’s are fairly priced. I did learn that some webmasters (and mistresses, too!) got caught in Google’s crackdown on useless AdSense sites.

It seems the way Google kicks you out of the playing field is to raise your keyword minimum bids to astronomical levels, making it effectively impossible for you to make any money with your campaign.

This is affectionately called being “Google slapped.”

Oh well, yet another potential hurdle on my way to living the life of a full-time internet entrepreneur!

I don’t believe I’ve been Google slapped. Google spanked, maybe.

Of course, the problem is that with 80% of the searches, Google is a near monopoly. We’ll get into the ramifications of that in a future post.

What’s interesting to me is the ever changing terrain of webmastering for profit.

Which brings me to Seth Godin’s new book, The Dip.

Seth is really good at creating simple paradigms for complex situations.

The situation he’s attempting to tame in this book is something anyone who’s every done anything, or tried to do anything, has experienced.

If you’re older than six, I suspect the following has happened to you many times.

When you set out to master something new, a new sport, a new language, a new business, for instance, at first things go well.

In the beginning of any new thing, you’re always stoked! Any progress is welcome because it’s new.

You feel like you’re mastering this new thing quickly, like you will get to the point of mastery fast!

Then it’s like the title of that book, “Who Moved My Cheese.”

What seemed to be not so hard suddenly becomes discouragingly difficult. And it stays that way, oftentimes to the point of your quitting altogether!

Now, if the thing you want to master is important enough to you, you’ll stay with it and finally surface on the other side. You’ll finally see some improvement. If you continue long enough, you’ll even master whatever it is you’re attempting to learn.

That’s the dip!

When you start something, it’s momentarily easy, then it becomes much harder to the point of quitting! If you stay with it, it begins to get easier again, but not until you’ve paid a fairly steep price.

I’m currently in the dip concerning my ebook.

At first I sold a few and I was really excited! Then nothing! And then, more of nothing.

The dip makes you do things like question your strategy, or especially it makes you question if you should be attempting what you’re doing at all.

A lot of people start things never to come out of the dip to the other side.

Of non-trivial activities, I can think of two times in my life when I was beaten by the dip. I didn’t realize I was in a dip, I just thought things weren’t working out. (I used to blame myself at these times, bad habit!)

If what you’re trying to do is important to you, you should stay in the dip until you get to the other side!

Why do we have dips? I don’t know. My guess is it has something to do with the basic workings of our brains, maybe the reticular activating system. It could just be statistical in nature.

Take my ebook for instance. Let’s say I will sell 1 book for 42 clicks, on average. Well, if I’ve sold three books and only had 60 clicks, it’s understandable that I might experience a drought of sales for a while, while the sales to click ratio evens out.

Maybe that’s the dip!

The important thing about the dip is this: don’t let it beat you! (Usually!)

If you’re attempting something important to your life, make it through the dip, if at all possible.

Think of all the people you know who would love to make enough money online to quit their jobs.

How many people do this?

Damn few!

I remember reading in one of John Chow’s posts where he says people tell him all the time they would love to be like him, able to make money on the internet. John always says “you can, just build a site”! Only two of all of the people John has ever said this to have built a site. One of them (I believe) makes a full time living through his site.

I guess the others were beaten by the dip–more likely, they never even started.

Google slapping!

I remember in one of Terry Brooks‘ books, there was a huge monster in the middle of a forest. The heroes had to cross the forest, hopefully without being eaten by the monster. I’ve forgotten its name. Maybe it should have been named “Google.”

How you get through the dip is important, and not something Seth addresses. This is where Wallace Wattles and The Science of Getting Rich comes in.

There are harder and easier ways of moving through the dip. I’ll discuss all of this next time.

As an experiment, I think I’m going to start a “for profit” whore-type blog. (I’m serious.) I’m sure I’ll post about the details here. Stay tuned!

What to do about posting when you’re pressed for time, is a concern, however.

Let me elaborate (a little)…

I tend to write longer posts, although they’ve shortened themselves somewhat recently. I think it’s the essayist in me.

I read a great post this morning, though, by Marty Weintraub at aimClear SEM blog, about the value of short posts.

Take a look at it. Great advice, and a really interesting blog to read.

I would love to know what you think about short vs. long posts. Just leave me a comment and let me know.

Doshdosh had a great post a few days ago about how to make money online. I bookmarked it, then forgot about it.

Linear bookmarking sites and I don’t get along too well. I’m not a very linear person.

Idealy, I would require about five or so dimensions. But, things being as they are, linearity is what I’m stuck with.

So, as I was rummaging through my delicious bookmarks I ran across this post.

It’s definitely worth reading!

After you read it, let me know what you think!

Well, he’s written another blockbuster.

I’m not even going to tell you what it’s about.

Just go read it.

(Hint: It could change your children’s lives!)

Getting from where you don’t want to be to where you want to be is not always easy, but it’s fairly simple.

Let me give you a few steps that can help you…

Step 1) Decide what you don’t want.

Step 2) Turn that around and understand what you do want.

Step 3) Daydream about what you want. Really flesh it out! Pay attention to the details. If you want a new car, see yourself in the car, feel the leather seat, smell the new car smell, feel the car as it accelerates.

Step 4) Have absolute faith that what Wallace Wattles calls “The Thinking Substance” (God) will manifest what you want.

Step 5) (Usually where people fail.) Act on your ideas and inspirations that you get in order to allow the car to come to you. In our world, this usually means making more money to buy the car, or at least enough for the down payment.

So, you need to actually go to car lots and drive the car. Talk to the salesman about a loan if you need one. Figure out how to make extra money to pay for the down payment.

You don’t know what to do to make money? Don’t worry! Return to your daydream, relive it often during the day. Wattles calls this “praying without ceasing.”

Don’t cling, just allow The Thinking Substance to do its work.

You do your part, daydream and have absolute faith, and The Thinking Substance will do its part.

You’ll run into a part-time job you can do. You’ll think of a part-time business you can run from home.

Who knows, you might even become an internet marketer!

While you working on all of this read Wattles’ book. Also, read other inspirational material.

I just got published in a blog carnival, here. These are some great posts! Read them and be inspired!

What do you do to create what you want? Do you have any tricks you do to visualize better?

Post them in the comments and you can share.

What do I do to raise my vibe? (Otherwise known as feeling better.)

When I was on my hiatus, I was tagged by Chris, at TheOrdinaryMystic, to list five things that I do to raise my vibration.

Whether we’re really vibrating or not is not the deal. The deal is this: when you feel good, when you trust whatever you want to call it (I call it, God), when you love rather than anything less than love, when you feel courage instead of fear, when you jump into the next minute like an eight-year old jumping into a swimming pool on a hot summer day, then wonderful things happen!

Intuitions come to you. People you need come to you. Necessary information comes to you. Add action on your part to this mix and love, health, and money will come to you.

It happens to me, just like this.

But it’s necessary to feel good.

By feel good I don’t mean the cheap Janis Joplin feel good as in “feelin’ good was good enough for me.” I’m not talking about alcohol feel good or drug feel good or casual sex feel good or shopping feel good. I mean a deep down trusting, knowing that God (because that’s what I call it) actually knows what you desire and need.

Wallace Wattles takes this all one step further by saying that God wants us to feel good because God is living through us–we are actually God’s physical form!

Two things: 1) I’m not a theologian, so when I say stuff about God, it’s actually what I “know” through personal experience. (I’ve read the Bible, by the way, cover to cover. Not that it matters, but I’m also the only person I’ve ever met who has read Das Kapital (Marx)–all three volumes.) So, if you don’t agree with what I’m saying about life and God, then fine. Leave a comment. I would love to hear your thoughts.

And!

2) I know I’ve got a lot of readers who are generally younger than I am, and who are either not comfortable with all this God stuff, or believe they are atheists. That’s fine, too! When I write posts like this, all I’m doing is describing. I’m not trying to proselytize.

So, getting back to our being God’s physical form, although this is not the standard way the New Testament is interpreted, it all fits nicely into several things that Jesus says. Like, in John, when he says “I am the father and the father is me.”

But you don’t have to go this far with the idea, if you don’t want to.

However, if you want your life to progress, then you need to feel good.

So, what do I do to feel good? Aka, raise my vibe?

I did it tonight while walking the dog.

You see, I haven’t been in the greatest of moods today. I have a lot of “irons in the fire”, and I’m impatient for the results of my efforts.

When I was walking the dog, I realized that 1) I just need to let go, and 2) I really needed to get myself into a better place spiritually.

I do this through feeling gratitude.

I have a specific way of doing this. It starts from the inside out.

I begin with my body. I feel gratitude for my body, for my health, for my strength, for whatever I’m feeling good about my body.

I then move onto my family, my parents, my grandparents.

The objects in my world. My automobiles, my house, my computer, my internet connection, my…on and on and on.

As Wallace Wattles says, we interact with the world and ourselves through the use of things.

So, I thank God for my things.

I continue with the trees, sky, clouds, birds, on and on and on.

Tonight, by the time I had finished my 30 minute walk with the dog, I came home feeling great!

I felt like some missing pieces had been restored to their place.

I had “raised my vibe.”

I would love to know your thoughts about all of this.

How do you interact with your world?

How do you maintain contact with the true source of your life, however you may interpret that?

Here’s why…

These twins, Henry and Wilson, 25, quickly built up an online mini-empire! A lot about how they did it is in the blog. Make sure you read the About page, so you understand that although they have degrees in Electrical Engineering, they didn’t know jack about the internet when they left school.

What they did is very inspiring!

Unfortunately, God (Sorry, I mean Google), didn’t like how they were doing it, and banned them from AdSense.

All of their revenue came from AdSense!

They’ve since been working on other ways of monetizing their websites.

Again, this is very inspiring both for what they did, and for how they are dealing with this huge obstacle.

BTW, I learned about this from John Chow. Check out his website and read this post about them.

If you can learn from your mistakes, you ahead of 95% of everyone else.

If, however, you can learn from someone else’s mistake, you’re now ahead of the other 4.99%!

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Update on this post.

It’s about three hours after I published this post. I went back to Henry and Wilson’s website and read every single post from the beginning.

What an incredible story!

I’m blown away!