This week I have reached a number of new records in my online money making ventures.

New Subscriber Record

Firstly, after the release of my newest eBook “The Three Pillars of Making Money Online” my reader count has hit a new record.

As of today my reader count is now at 1,915 subscribers via RSS and Email.  I’ve been hovering around 1,800 – 1,850 subscribers for a while now and I know a big part of that was due to the fact that my personal passion has become more focused on making money online, but until recently that wasn’t totally reflected in the theme of my blog.

I’ve evolved my topic from “how to make money doing what you love” to focus more on “mastering the mindset of making money online” as that is really my passion now.  Making that change has helped me a lot because it’s given me something more specific to focus on with this Blog.

My new eBook fits in nicely with my new theme, more so than my previous eBook “The Passion Project”.  The other thing that I also added in was a Lightbox that pops up when a person first visits this website, offering them a free copy of my eBook.

When I first saw a Lightbox like this on a couple of other sites I found it a bit annoying because on those particular sites I had already downloaded their eBooks, so when the Lightbox showed up after they first installed it I didn’t like it.

However, I didn’t think of it from the point of view of being a brand new visitor to a website, in which case I do like it when right away I’m given the option to get something for free.

I recently watched a video by John Chow where he talked about his conversion rates jumping quite drastically ever since he installed the Lightbox on his site.  So I decided to do the same thing myself and test it out.  So far I’m really happy with the results.  The numbers are still not big enough to be totally accurate, but so far the Lighbox is converting at a rate of 12.2% which is quite high compared to my numbers before.

The coolest thing is that this Lightbox functionality is built right into AWeber so I didn’t even need to install any third-party scripts or software to make it work.

New One Day Affiliate Income Record

Yesterday I had a record day for one day profits for my affiliate marketing campaigns.  Here are my stats for yesterday:

Total Revenues: $926.66
Total Costs: $379.48
—————————
Total Profit: $547.18

This is a new record for me for one day profits.  I can’t wait to be doing numbers like that and higher every day.  If I did that much profit every day, that’s about $16.5k/month or just under $200k/year in income.  (Not a bad wage for working from home!)

Of course I know that every day isn’t going to be a record day, but the cool thing is that every time you hit a new record your belief levels grow and it becomes easier to hit those kinds of numbers or higher again in the future.  My next record goal is to hit $1,000 in profit in one day.

Twitter Followers

Although this one isn’t a huge deal compared to the numbers of followers I’ve seen from other more serious Twitter ninjas, my Twitter follower count has also hit a new record of 672.  I figured I’d take a screenshot and report it today anyways so when I look at this post a year from now I’ll know where I was at.

eBook Typo Fixes

As I’m sure anyone who’s downloaded my new eBook so far has noticed, there were quite a few typos in the eBook.  Now here’s a quick little story of what happened with that.

I’ve been working on the concept of that eBook for a while now and finally on Saturday morning I woke up and decided that I’m not going to bed until I finish and launch that eBook.  I had a whole bunch of other things to do on Saturday as well, on top of watching Zoe.  I was also supposed to go to a birthday party, but because I decided to finish the eBook I elected not to go.  There just wasn’t going to be any way I could finish the book if I went.

I had most of the book done by midnight, but I didn’t have anyone to proofread the eBook as my wife had already gone to bed.  I proofread it a few times myself, but it was starting to drive me nuts because every time I went to proofread the content, looking for spelling mistakes and typos and such, I would find myself wanting to add to the content instead.

So finally I just decided to release the book “as is”.  I went to save it as a PDF file and then I realized that none of the hyperlinks in the eBook were working.  I had to upgrade to the new Online Adobe PDF writer software and then I ran into more problems due to Adobe formatting the pages slightly differently than MS Word.

I then had to spend three hours of messing around with design and the table of contents to make it look ok once it’s converted to PDF.  Finally I had the eBook finished and ready at around 4:30am.  I put it up and went to sleep. 

This morning I received an email from “Ebele” from the UK.  Although it wasn’t her original intention, Ebele ended up proofreading and highlighting all the typos in the eBook as she read through it and sent me a PDF file with all the typo’s highlighted.  Nice!  Thanks Ebele!

So now I’ve gone ahead and fixed all the typos and I’ve uploaded a new version of the eBook so that thanks to Ebele, you guys no longer have to read all the typos.

So what’s the lesson here?  Get out of your perfection mind-frame.  So many people fail to make money online because they are afraid to release “Version 1.00” of something and then fix the typos and bugs later.  Take a lesson from Google.  Don’t be afraid to release beta versions of things.

This weekend I finished and launched my newest eBook – “The Three Pillars of Making Money Online”.  This eBook is part of my shift in focus for this Blog, making the transition from my main topic being “how to make money doing what you love” to “mastering the mindset of making money online”.

The eBook covers what I believe to be the three pillars of making money online – Mindset, Strategy, and Execution.  While most “make money online” courses and products focus and teach the exact strategies of making money online, very few ever take into account the mindset of making money online or the need for proper execution of the strategies being taught.

The eBook dives into the three pillars, focusing mainly on the introducing the exact mindset I personally use to make money online.

I have used this mindset to make money online as a blogger and as an affiliate marketer.  It’s actually the same mindset I’ve used for the last 15 years to get ahead in the corporate world as well, but it works even better when applied to the online world.

I’m releasing this eBook out free of charge, so if you’d like to grab a copy of yourself just fill out your name and email address in the boxes below and you will be instantly emailed a copy of the eBook.

If you’re already a subscriber to my newsletter, you were emailed a link to the new eBook on the weekend.

The eBook is a nice, short read, only about 40 pages long and I hope you guys enjoy it.  I’d love to hear your feedback on it after you’ve had a chance to have a quick read.

Enter your name and email below to receive “The Three Pillars of Making Money Online” delivered to your email in the next 3 minutes:

Enjoy!

An average person thinks anywhere between 12,000 to 50,000 thoughts per day.  For most people, 99% of the thoughts that they will think today are going to be the same thoughts they thought yesterday.  The conscious control we believe we have over our lives is an illusion.  Our lives are ruled by our subconscious minds.

When you go to the grocery store, do you stand in front of the liquid dish detergent isle trying to make an informed, conscious decision of which detergent would be best to buy or do you just grab the brand and type you always buy?  When you walk over to the bread isle, do you look at all the different types of bread each time, or do you just buy the regular one you always buy?

At some point during this month, did your telephone company call you to try to sell you on another month of telephone service, or were you just automatically billed for another month?  What about your cable or Internet service?

Universal Habitforce

I first read about the term “Universal Habitforce” in Napoleon Hill’s book “Think and Grow Rich”, but I’ve since adapted my understanding of it to mean something different than what Mr. Hill talks about in his book.

To me, Universal Habitforce has many faces.  It’s easier to understand the power of it if I give you a couple of examples from my life.

Weeds In The Garden

The property that I live on has some of the most amazing soil I have ever seen in my life.  All of the plant life around my house is huge.  All the flowers and bushes grow and flourish in this soil.  Unfortunately, so do weeds.

A month ago I decided to rip out all of the plants and flowers that were growing in one section of my front yard.  Every year they’ve been spreading and basically taking over the patch of grass that separates my house from my driveway.

When these plants are nicely trimmed and groomed, they look nice but when I get busy and have no time to do any gardening they take over my front yard and grow like nuts.  Essentially, they employ universal habit force to thrive.  By default, I don’t normally have time to cut these plants back so by default they grow bigger and spread.

When I decided to rip the plants out, I also had to make a decision as to what I would have to do in order to get rid of all the weeds that have grown in between the plants as well, since the last thing I’ve got time for right now is ripping out weeds. 

So, here’s how I used “universal habit force” to my advantage.  After I ripped out all the plants, I leveled the ground a bit and then I dropped down a whole crapload of grass seed and then I let the universal habit force do the rest of the work.

For the first week or so, nothing happened.  There was just this spot of dirt in my front yard that looked somewhat ugly.  The following week is the week that we got Zoe so there was no way I would have had any time to do any gardening.  Luckily, I didn’t have to.  The grass seed began to sprout on the second week.  At first it was just in a few patches here and there, but by this morning the patch of dirt is now 90% covered in grass. 

See, all I did was plant the seeds and then left it alone as I was busy with Zoe and my affiliate marketing.  I didn’t sit there and have to motivate the grass seeds to grow.  I didn’t have to feed them nutrients, they just fed themselves from the ground.  I also only watered them twice.  The rest of the time they got water from rain.  Some of my weeds came back, but the majority of them have been replaced by grass.

This is an example of utilizing universal habit force.  Leveraging the power of nature to your advantage.  Aligning with natural systems that already exist to accomplish something you want.

Housetraining Zoe

Here’s another example of using universal habit force to my advantage.  This is something I learned the hard way with my dog Kobe.  You see, house training a dog can be pretty difficult if you don’t know what you’re doing and you try to force it, instead of utilizing universal habit force to do it for you.

What do I mean by this?  Well, the premise behind house training a dog is that you want to teach them to pee outside, not inside your house.  So, the idea is to create opportunities where the dog can go outside to pee and then praise the shit out of them for peeing outside.  This helps them to associate peeing outside = praise.  At the same time, if they try to pee inside you can interrupt them and sternly say “NO” and quickly take them outside and wait for them to pee out there and then praise them again.

That’s the basic premise anyways.  Now there are some problems that arise out of this.  Firstly, young puppies can’t hold their bladder for as long as an adult dog can.  Also, they don’t like the feeling of having a bladder even half full, so what they do is they just want to pee all the time – anywhere they can.  This means that if the puppy is inside you have to keep a constant eye on them at all times, which can be pretty challenging when they want to pee every hour.

Not only that, but they don’t like peeing when people are watching, so they’ll often run into another room and pee before you can chase in after them.

So, how can we utilize universal habit force to help us in this situation?  Well, firstly there is a habit that dogs have that prevents them from peeing close to where they sleep.  So, if instead of letting your dog sleep on the floor you instead put them in a properly sized kennel that isn’t too big for them, they typically won’t go to the bathroom inside the kennel where they sleep.  This isn’t foolproof as sometimes puppies will still have an accident in the kennel for a number of reasons, but 98% of the time they will not go in there.

So, if you put them in the kennel when they go to sleep you eliminate the chances of them peeing while you’re sleeping.  Then, when they wake up if you take them out of the kennel and take them straight outside to pee, they begin to form a habit of going outside to pee.

This is an example of utilizing universal habit force to our advantage.  I don’t have to teach Zoe not to pee inside her kennel.  It’s already bred into her DNA.  I just use that knowledge to make it easier for me to create opportunities for her to wake up, go outside to pee and get praised for it which reinforces the good behavior.  I found this method of housetraining much better than putting out newspapers in the house for the dog to pee on.

Default World View

Another example of utilizing universal habit force is to learn and study the default world view of a society or a demographic and utilize that to your advantage.  For example, let’s say that 80% of my website visitors use Internet Explorer as their browser.  Now, let’s say that I personally don’t like Internet Explorer and I use Firefox instead. 

Now, what if I had some kind of feature on my website that only worked in Firefox?  Well, that would mean that 80% of my visitors would not have access to that feature.

If this was true, I could utilize two solutions to this:

1. Write some code that checks if my visitors are running Internet Explorer.  If they are, proceed to try to convince them that using Internet Explorer is inferior to Firefox and that they should switch.  Ask them to install Firefox to enjoy the full benefits of the site.
2. Modify my software to work in Internet Explorer as well.

Which one of these do you think utilizes the universal habit force more? Obviously it’s #2.  If you want to make money online, learn who your customers are and understand THEIR world view.  Then, build value and services for them and their world view, not yours.

Affiliate Marketing

The world of affiliate marketing is tremendously influenced by this.  Those that understand the existing natural habits of human behavior stand to make millions, while those that try to get people to act like some ideal scenario they imagine in their heads will go bankrupt.

In large quantities, people are very predictable.  It’s absolutely insane to see just how mathematical trends can be.  Once you become attuned to these subtle details that make the difference in being able to connect and influence people, you open the doorway to another world.  It all starts with understanding how universal habit force applies to people.

Look at the continuous success of diet offers and make money from home offers.  All these diet offers promise to help you lose 20 lbs in 20 days, and all the money making offers promise to teach you how to make money from home working 2 hours a day.  It really doesn’t matter if it’s possible or healthy to lose 20lbs in 20 days by taking some supplement pill and sitting on the couch.  The point is that the average person out there wants that to be true and they’re willing to pay for product after product until they find that solution.

The secret is to figure out how people are already thinking, and then to find ways to automatically make money by offering value to those people who think that way by offering them the solutions to the problems they keep having.

Of course this is easier said than done, but here are some examples of ways people have utilized universal habit force to make money online:

• Forced continuity membership sites that sell you once, and then keep charging your credit card until you cancel.  They don’t have to resell you on the product / service every month.  They sell you once and then by default you keep resigning up each month.  You actually have to take action in order to cancel, which is why most don’t.
• Creation of auto-responders that take new visitors through an email newsletter sequence that gets sent out to them automatically with no intervention from the site owner.
• Users who communicate on your Blog by leaving comments to each other end up creating valuable content for your site pretty much by default
• Forum communities where people leave posts and generate content for you automatically
• etc.

Making Money Online with Universal Habit Force

I know this concept is somewhat abstract, but if you become aware of how universal habit force plays itself out in your life and how you can utilize it to help you make more money online, you may surprise yourself with just how quickly you begin to see results.

Some of the questions that you may want to ask yourself to apply universal habit force in your life to make money online may be:

• How can I structure my online business in a way where by default my income grows each month?
• Am I seeing this from the point of view of average client I want to attract, or am I just looking at it from my biased perspective?
• If there is something that I need to do each day in order to produce some type of result that turns into income, is there any way I can automate it?
• How can I help others to provide more value to themselves and others like themselves?

If you’re totally stuck and don’t know how this could apply, here’s an example.  Go find an Audio CD training course that will help you make money online, but that you haven’t had time to listen to.  Now, go to your car with that CD and pop it into the CD player.  When it starts to play, turn off the engine (you may or may not need to press stop on the CD player) and lock the car back up and go home.  Now, by default, the next time your drive your car somewhere, you’ll be listening to that Audio CD.

Find ways to set yourself up to win by default and you will.

For the last few days I’ve been planning out some changes I wanted to implement in the structure, layout and look of my Fitness, Health and Healing Blog.  One of the changes I wanted to make to that site was to re-structure it more as a “website” with a blog attached to it, than just a pure blog.

The reason for this is because I want to be able to start writing more health and fitness related articles, but I want to make them much more extensive than just a blog post which typically gets buried in the archives a few days or weeks after it’s written.  Both my blog posts and articles are going to be much less time sensitive than what I’ve written before, so I wanted a design that could feature more content on one page.

I’m not finished with everything yet, but here’s what the design looks like so far:

Today I’d like to talk about a way to make money online that doesn’t involve Affiliate Marketing or Blogging.

It’s a neat little concept that allows you to take a little piece of wisdom that’s sitting in your mind right now and monetize it.  Let me explain.  Essentially, MindBites is a website that allows you to create a short little video lesson teaching people how to do something in life and then sell that lesson on the website to make money.

The lesson you teach are only limited by your creativity.  Some of the lessons already up there range from “How To Teach Your Baby Sign Language” to “How To Cut Hair With Clippers”.  Pretty much anything can be made into a lesson, and you get to set the price for your lesson.

So, for example if you like gardening you could make a series of video’s on gardening and sell them online.  If you have a killer lasagna recipe you could make a video teaching people how to make that lasagna and sell it online.  I mean the sky is the limit here.  Pretty much anything can be made into a MindBite lesson that can be marketed on this website.

Learn

The website is already starting to fill up with different kinds of video lessons.  There is a main section for all the paid lessons, as well as some free lessons.  Authors of each lesson set the price of each lesson based on the number of credits each lesson costs.  One credit is equal to $0.99, which is the minimum price for a paid lesson.

Here’s one video I clicked on.  After watching the intro to this, I totally want to buy this video and watch the rest of it.  It’s only $1.98 and I also might order that book too.  It looks like a cool way for me to start an organic garden in a small way to begin with.  Check this out:

Isn’t that neat?

Teach

The teach section is for authors who want to create video’s for sale on the website and to make money online by selling these video’s. As I mentioned above, you have full control over how much you want to sell your video for. The only restriction is that your price is determined by the number of credits it is. Each credit is $0.99, so if you wanted to sell your video for around $5, you would charge 5 credits which would be $4.95 per video sold. If 100 people viewed the video, that would be an extra $495 in your pocket right there.

The teaching section also has a bunch of resources that teach you how to make MindBites video’s. Here’s an example one:

Community

The site also features a community section with a forum and a way for people to register and request the types of video’s they would like to see made. Check out the wanted section for video’s people have already requested. Maybe you’ll find something you know how to do and you can get started on making money online with your first MindBite.

What I Really Like About This Idea

About five or six years ago I had this idea of creating a website where ordinary people could capture something that they know how to do that most people don’t know how to do and sell it online. At the time my idea was to make a website where people could create eBook reports of their particular skill and then sell them to others. I did a bit of brainstorming on the idea and even registered a domain for it. I never did get the project off the ground as I was busy working on so many other projects at my job, but I always thought it was a solid idea.

At that time it wasn’t very easy to create online video’s and things like YouTube and Flip Video camera’s weren’t things many people knew anything about. However, with today’s technology I think that the idea of using video as a medium for sharing the wisdom hidden in ordinary people’s heads is brilliant.

I don’t think I have ever met a single person in my life that didn’t know how to do something interesting that most other people don’t know. Of course most people probably take what they know for granted, so they may not be aware of the fact that they know things that most people don’t, but if they really sit down and think about it I’m sure everyone could come up with a few dozen video’s to share with the world.

Suggestions For Improvements

As much as my first impression of the MindBites site is very good, I do have one strong suggestion for the creators of this site.

Here’s what I think they could improve on:

Affiliate Program – This site could have HUGE potential for an affiliate program. For example, let’s say that I visit the MindBites website and participate in the community and I find out that someone is looking for a video on dog training. Well, if MindBites had an affiliate program, and I knew a friend of mine that was a dog trainer, I could send a link to the MindBites site to my friend and if he registers and creates video’s that make money for him and the site, I could earn an affiliate commission.

Having an affiliate program like this, where Bloggers or Affiliate Marketers can promote the site to people and then earn a small % of all the earnings created by the people who they refer to the site could totally make this website explode with content.

Final Words

What do you guys think of the idea behind this site? Are any of you going to try making money online by creating MindBites?

For some reason I really like this site and I might sit down and brainstorm some ideas to create some lessons on something to see just how much money can be made with this site.

Click Here to Visit the MindBites Site

One really neat way to work on improving your affiliate marketing or blogging results is to utilize the unique forms of expression present in each one of the elements.  For example, you could make each weekday one of the elements with Monday being Fire, Tuesday being Water and so on.  Or you could simply approach each individual challenge, milestone or goal using one of the five elements.

Allow me to explain a little bit about the different elements and how they could relate to something like affiliate marketing or blogging.

Firstly, let’s start with the element of fire.  Some of the characteristics that embody the behavior and being of fire are:

• Spreads very quickly.  Moves fast.  Explosive.
• Very direct.  Fire burns through things, it doesn’t go around them.
• Utilizes the very thing it’s burning as fuel to burn it.
• It envelops things from all sides.
• etc.

So, how could we utilize the strategy of being like fire in making money online?  Well, a “fire strategy” would be a quick attack from all sides, so as a blogger you could create a lot of value from all sides very quickly to completely overwhelm the competition.  For example, imagine writing 100 blog posts without publishing a single one, and then scheduling them all to be published at a rate of 5 posts a day, every day for 20 days straight.  At the same time, imagine launching a banner campaign driving traffic to your blog on the top 25 blogs in your niche, or something to that effect.  That could be one way to utilize the feeling of “fire” to plan out your strategy.

Another example could be to use a viral video that spreads on the Internet.  That’s using the very thing that you’re marketing to as fuel for your marketing.  Basically a viral video properly executed targets a group of people and then those same people you targeted end up fueling the next wave of people to see your campaign and so on.

Another element we can look at is water.  Here are some characteristics of water:

• It flows in and out in waves of increasing / decreasing magnitude.
• It’s patient, waiting and looking for a way to flow through something.
• Seems week, but in reality can create a lot of momentum and destroy things with it’s power.
• If it can’t go through something it will go around it.
• etc.

So, a water strategy could involve working on things like improving your affiliate campaigns or blog by testing, surveying and responding.  For example, putting up a survey on your blog asking your readers for their opinion and then utilizing the information gathered to improve your blog in waves.  The same thing can be done with affiliate marketing.  You could think of each day as a wave cycle and each day you log into your AdWords account and check the stats and make a tiny improvement to your campaign, and you let it run for another day and gather data.  This flow of gathering and interpreting data and then improving slowly over time is a very water-like strategy.

Another element is earth.  Here are some characteristics of the earth element:

• Steady and strong like a large boulder or a mountain.
• Heavy, dense, impenetrable.
• Unmoving.
• Stable and slow.
• etc.

Utilizing an earth-like strategy could involve things like backing up your data and websites  to maintain long-term security, or employing a long-term pay-per-click strategy where you put yourself in a position in Adwords for a particular keyword or keywords and not moving from that position.  The stability and constant visibility of being in one place all the time is an earth-like feature.

Another thing in an earth-like strategy would be to focus on improving an existing affiliate campaign, instead of runing off to start another new one the minute the first one gets a bit profitable.  Another thing about earth is that it’s stable and long-term, so maybe in terms of affiliate marketing, employing an earth strategy might be to build out a long term site with a tonne of content on the niche topic you’re in.

The next element we’ll cover is Air / Wind.  Here are some characteristics of this element:

• Invisible, yet all around us.
• Can also come from all around, enveloping from all directions.
• Likes to spin things, move things.
• It’s light and quick.
• etc.

So, what would a “wind/air element” strategy look like in terms of affiliate marketing or blogging?  Well, it could be to launch a whole bunch of “light” websites that aren’t so extensive at first.  For example, you could put together a strategy to launch one landing page per day for 25 days.  Each landing page / site will be unique, but similar and you could attack your niche market from all angles with all these small websites.

Another thing you could do is test your affiliate offers across multiple networks, jumping around from one to the next to see which network has the best converting offer and why.  You could learn a lot from doing something like this.

The final element is Void.  Here are some characteristics of this element:

• Void is nothing, yet at the same time everything.
• Void is tricky, deceiving.
• Void is invisible.
• Void is distracting.
• etc.

Employing a void strategy could involve employing tactics to keep your affiliate campaigns safe from competitors, or utilizing misdirection to focus your competitors attention on one thing (something neat and shiny), while you make money somewhere else.  The tricky / deceiving part of the void element could involve using some kind of clever link-bait tactic to get more traffic to your Blog.

There are just very rough and beginner level descriptions of the five elements and some very brief ideas on how they could be applied to our business of making money online, but I’m sure you get the gist.  If this speaks to you, I would suggest getting familiar with each of the elements and then trying to see ways in which you can implement the feeling of that element to your online money making efforts.

I began the journey as a way to join my financial / business goals with my health / fitness goals by creating nine milestones along the path towards my ultimate goal of making $30,000 in 30 days from my online business and losing 25.0lbs of fat (or weighing 185lbs).

My first milestone in the journey is:

• Income of $10,000 in 30 days, plus 5.0 lbs of Fat Loss ( or weigh 205.0 lbs )

Weight Loss Goal

I’ll start off with my weight loss goal.  When I started this journey on May 30th, I weighed 210lbs with a body fat % of 26%.  I just weighed myself a minute ago and I’m now at 206.4lbs which means I’ve lost 3.6lbs.

So what have I been doing to promote my weight loss?  Well, to be honest the only real thing I’ve done different in the last 15 days has been walking my new puppy Zoe several times a day, and more regularly drinking my antioxidant juice (I won’t mention the name, contact me if you’re interested).  Besides that I’ve been eating my regular crappy diet which isn’t really healthy and includes foods like pizza, McDonald’s, Chinese food, sushi and of course I’ve been drinking Coke which is my biggest addiction.  Well, in reality the addiction I have is to white sugar, and Coke just happens to have plenty of it.

Considering I haven’t changed a thing and just increased the amount of walking I do per day, I’m quite pleasantly surprised that I actually lost 3.6lbs that easily.  I only need to lose another 1.4 lbs and I’ll hit my first weight milestone.

Income Goal

My income goal milestone hasn’t been coming along as well.  Firstly, shortly after announcing my first milestone I started to notice that some of my affiliate campaigns started to lose traffic.  It wasn’t much at first but slowly the traffic began to dwindle.  At first I thought it may be due to the lack of time I’ve devoted to my campaigns since I’ve been so busy housetraining Zoe, but that didn’t really make sense since I hadn’t changed anything to warrant the loss in traffic.

I went through my campaigns and adjusted some of my bids and tweaked some of the campaigns to see if I could bring my stats back up to the momentum I was having before and things started to look like they were starting to come back on track.

However, looking at my stats I also realized that I had to launch some more campaigns if I was to reach my ultimate goal of $30,000 in 30 days, so I worked on and launched some new campaigns in a new niche.

Then, yesterday morning I woke up to check on my new campaigns and I noticed that some of my older campaigns stopped getting traffic.  I wasn’t sure what was going on so I looked deeper and was horrified with what I saw.

The Dreaded Google Slap

After looking at my campaigns I realized that I’ve been Google slapped so hard my head was spinning.  Some of my best campaigns got hit really hard and basically went into cardiac arrest after Google’s slap.  I wanted to roll up in fetal position and cry.

But, there’s no point in crying about stuff like that.  Instead I began doing some extensive research on the Google slap and learned a lot about what Google likes and what they don’t like.  I then made a whole new plan for my campaigns and went to work on re-launching a totally new set of campaigns on different sites, with a much more long-term strategy in mind.

After reading up a bit on what the Google slap is all about and how Google’s quality score works, I feel a lot better about it and I think it’s actually very beneficial to the affiliate marketing industry as a whole.  It’s going to force affiliates to create much higher levels of content quality which I have no problem doing.  It will help those affiliates who are trying to provide value to the general public to make more money, and those that just want to slap together a quick page for a quick buck are going to be filtered out by the system.

Sadly, the slap has hit some of my most profitable campaigns so my 30 day income total has actually dropped instead of growing in the last 15 days.  I haven’t had time to account for my numbers yet, but I would venture a guess they are somewhere in the $5k-$6k range for the last 30 days.

What You Fear, You Draw Near

One of the reasons I have been hesitant to talk about my affiliate income and campaigns in the past is due to the fear that if I talk about my income online I may attract competitors or people who want to hurt my financial progress due to jealousy.  Most affiliate marketers out there at one point or another have said that if you find a way to make money online as an affiliate, you should shut the hell up and keep it a secret from other people.

One of my fears of even revealing that I’m making over $5k/m in affiliate marketing is that I may draw in people who try to copy my campaigns or cause problems for me such as complaining to Google about some of my pages etc., which could result in getting Google slapped or losing some of my traffic.  Well, within a couple of weeks of starting my journey, sure enough I attracted the exact event that I feared – losing traffic to competitors and getting Google slapped.  There’s law of attraction at it’s best for you.

The thing is though, that I really don’t care anymore.  I don’t want to spend the rest of my life hiding in the bushes, pretending I’m not doing well just so that other people don’t get jealous or just so that I don’t draw in any competition.

Running this Blog, and talking about affiliate marketing, sharing what I learn on my journey and even what I’m making as an affiliate will definitely create some challenges for me in the future I’m sure, but I think there are also benefits to it that will help to support my journey just as much.  It actually may have been an easier path to just keep quiet about everything, but I’ve never been much about taking the easier path.

I’m hoping that by sharing my journey with you guys, I may inspire some of you to pursue your dreams and the benefits of that far outweigh any challenges that I may encounter by sharing this journey.

Just for fun, I also just registered GooglSlap.com.  I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it yet.  Maybe I’ll create a fun little support group for those who have been kicked in the nuts GooglSlapped.

What do I mean by this? Well, first let me share my point of view on what affiliate marketing really is. My view is that an affiliate marketer’s job is to connect consumers looking for a solution to their problems with products and services that will solve those problems. That to me is affiliate marketing.

So to be an effective affiliate marketer you have to find people with problems and connect them to a possible solution.  Luckily for us, there are a lot of people out there with “problems”.

Where I think a lot of new affiliates go wrong is being stuck in their own minds and not being able to see through the eyes of anyone else. They look at an offer for “payday loans” for example and selfishly proclaim "I wouldn’t get a payday loan, those things are a scam" or they see an offer for roofing services and think "I don’t need a roof."

Affiliate marketing is not about you and your problems you selfish bastard so get over yourself if you ever want to succeed as an affiliate. It’s about other people, their problems and connecting them to possible solutions.

My Battle As A Selfish Bastard Affiliate

I used to have a big problem with this when I first started as an affiliate.  I was looking at things from a very selfish bastard point of view.  I went looking for offers that I would personally buy myself and got really frustrated because a lot of the affiliate networks didn’t carry much of anything I would buy myself. The reality of it is that networks carry offers that a lot of “average” people are buying. If millions of people are looking for payday loans, then they will carry offers for payday loans, regardless if you need one or not.

If for some reason there is a big demand for roofing contractors, or underwater basket weaving lessons then that is what they will carry as well.  The bottom line is that you and I are probably not the “average” person, so regardless what you decide to promote as an affiliate you’re going to have to start looking through the eyes of your consumer, not through your own.

For example, my personal point of view on payday loans is that they are an expensive way to borrow money.  I have never personally used a payday loan service as to me, paying $15 or $20 to borrow a couple of hundred bucks is way too high of a price.  However, there are millions of people out there using payday loan services, so if I wanted to promote these products as an affiliate I would have to get myself into the minds of the people who use these services.

To do that I may ask myself a question like “In what situation would I use a payday loan?”  Well, if I was an employee and I lost my job, and then I found a new job but my first paycheck was not for another three weeks and I needed to pay my electrical bill because they were about shut off my electricity and I had nobody else I could borrow the money from and the payday loan cost me $20, but the reconnection charge on my electrical bill was going to cost me $55, then I would probably get a payday loan.

I could think of hundreds of situations where a payday loan may be a smart, logical choice given the other alternatives to my situation.  Now, I may not be in that kind of situation myself but can I put myself in the shoes of someone who is?  Well, that’s the question you really need to ask as an affiliate.

Can you see the world through the eyes of someone else besides yourself?  If you did need a new roof for your house, wouldn’t it be cool to be able to find a website that arms you with roofing contractor information in your local area? 

I know this is not an easy thing for some people to get past mentally, because they’ve never “promoted” anything they haven’t owned themselves.  The only “sales” most people have ever done is talking to their friends about something they bought themselves. 

I look at this like being the owner of The “Only Stuff I Buy” Store, where the only inventory that the store carries is stuff you own yourself.

If you walk into this store looking for a toaster, the store only carries one brand and model of toaster – the same one that the owner owns.  The store only carries one brand and model of a TV – yup, you guessed it, the same brand and model that the owner owns.  You ask if the store carries an electric kettle, and the owner says “No way, I would never use one of those!”

How long do you think a store like that would last?  I mean, maybe if you were a celebrity and people went in to purchase the same goods as you as a novelty, but outside of that you’re much better off stocking your shelves with things that people are looking for, not stuff that you would buy yourself.

What About Scams?

Some people look at some of the affiliate offers that you can find on the networks and see them as being “scams”, such as the reverse billing weight-loss offers that offer a “free” trial and then bill your credit card if you don’t cancel within the first 14 days.  If you don’t feel comfortable promoting things like that, that’s completely your choice, but realize that the reason those offers are successful is because people buy them.

I remember when cellular phones first came out and people were complaining how they were “scams” because they went in, get a “free phone” and then found out they were stuck in a 3 year contract with the cell company. 

Listen, I’ve never seen a cell phone store put a gun to someone’s head and force them to sign a 3 year contract.  People walk in, want the shiny new phone, and they sign a 3 year contract to get it.  If they didn’t listen to the clerk telling them that they are signing a 3 year contract because they were too busy playing with their new toy, and they didn’t read what they were signing, that’s stupidity on their part.  I know it sounds harsh, but if you’re old enough to sign contracts then you should be smart enough to read what you’re signing.  If you’re not, then you pay “stupid tax”.  I’m sorry, but that’s just the way the world is.  I’ve paid my share of “stupid tax” in life and then I learned to take responsibility for myself.

Today, when it comes to cell phones, people hardly blink an eye at signing contracts.  It’s pretty much assumed that the networks are going to sign you into a contract in exchange for a cheaper price on the cell phone. 

Most people no longer complain about this, because for most people it’s a better idea to pay less for a cell phone up front and sign a contract since they will most likely have a cell phone for the next three years anyways, so why not?  I got my iPhone for free that way, instead of shelling out $600 when they first came out.

To me, a real “scam” is where an advertiser is doing something illegal or where an offer is being promoted in a deceitful way.  Most of the time, the line between “scam” and “clever marketing” is quite thin and ultimately you have to decide for yourself what you feel comfortable promoting and how.  If you step over the line and do something illegal or promote things in a deceitful way, you’re thinking short term and eventually you’ll get shut down.

The main thing, however is to realize that even if you don’t feel comfortable in promoting a product in a certain way, don’t give up on the industry or product all together.  If you know of a better way to promote weight-loss products, or cell phones, or roofing services or whatever else people out there are looking for, then get creative and find a way to connect people with these solutions they’re looking for instead of bitching about what’s currently working out there.

Becoming Unselfish

Here’s a cool little exercise you can use to help you out as a new affiliate if you’re struggling to promote products that you wouldn’t buy yourself.

1. Sign up with one of the affiliate networks out there, such as Amped Media or Market Leverage, for example.  Find an offer for a product that is totally for something that is the last thing you would buy yourself.  Find something that is totally not interesting to you.  Let’s use payday loans as an example.
2. Read the offer page and get familiar with exactly what the advertiser is promoting.  What kind of payday loan is it?  What are the benefits of this payday loan offer over others?  How is it different?
3. Now, remove yourself from within your mind.  Pretend your mind is floating out of your head, up into the sky and is now floating up in the sky overlooking your city or country.  Now ask yourself “What kind of person or situation would I have to be in, where a payday loan would be the perfect solution to my problem?”   Now imagine your mind floating into the head of a person who’s in that exact situation, looking for a payday loan.
4. See them sitting at their computer, looking through their eyes.  What do they look for on the Internet?  What keywords are they searching for?  How do they describe their problem?  What is their life situation?  Where do they live?  How do they buy things? etc.
5. Now go back to your own life, and picture yourself in a situation similar to theirs.  What circumstances would you have to be in, in order for a payday loan to be a good solution to your problem?  List 10-25 benefits of getting a payday loan in that situation.

Now, if you can successfully pick one of the least interesting offers to you and become interested in it, assuming you were in a certain situation in life, then you’ll be able to find a way to not only feel comfortable in promoting that offer, you’ll also be able to think of ways to communicate with people in that situation.

Being able to see problems and solutions like this from the point of view of other people will be extremely helpful to you in your affiliate marketing efforts.  Unless of course you still just want to run The “Only Stuff I Buy” Store.  If so, that’s cool too.  Less competition for my store.

When all of your friends are stuck “working” for a living you tend to make new friends who are also working from home.

One thing I’ve realized by talking to online entrepreneurs lately is just how lazy we all are. The funny thing is that it is our laziness that fuels us to succeed online.

We’re not just lazy, we’re also very honest with our laziness.  We don’t seek recognition for working hard, we seek recognition for achieving a result with the least amount of effort possible.  We don’t hide our laziness, we’re proud of it.

The way I see it, if mankind didn’t have a lazy gene we wouldn’t make any progress in life. The lazy man who got tired of rubbing two sticks together is the one who lead the way to developing things like matches and lighters.

When we became too lazy to light candle lanterns all the time, we invented the light bulb.  It’s the lazy man who got tired of walking everywhere that decided to learn to ride a horse and eventually to invent the car.

Our human laziness fuels progress, yet as a society we’re brought up to label laziness as a negative human trait.

After talking to dozens and dozens of people about Internet marketing I’m convinced that a large percentage of people don’t ever give this way of making money a fair try because they subconsciously are afraid of being labeled as “lazy”.

If a part of you wants to leave your job and work for yourself and make money from home as an Internet entrepreneur, but another part of you believes that you have to “work hard” to succeed in life then you’re going to have problems getting yourself to get ahead online.

For example, I wrote half of this Blog post on my iPhone, while sitting out in my front yard enjoying the sun on a Thursday afternoon at 2pm, while the rest of the world is at work.  I have zero feelings of guilt about being able to do this, while other people “have to” go to work.

Why?

Well, because I understand the difference between “smart-laziness” and “lazy-laziness”.  Focusing on learning how to make money online over the last three years or so, in order to put myself in the position I am today is “smart-laziness”.  It required me to work at a job, and then come home and to work on building a business while the rest of the world was watching the playoffs or partying.  I used my free time after work to learn how to make money more efficiently because I knew that would allow me to be more “lazy” in the future.

It’s the same thing as riding a bike instead of walking somewhere.  It’s not lazy, it’s more efficient.  I’m not talking about walking or jogging for exercise purposes, I’m talking about it strictly from the point of view of getting from A to point B.  A bicycle is more efficient than walking, a car is more efficient than a bicycle, an airplane is more efficient than a car, and using a webcam instead of having to travel somehwere is even more efficient than all of those.

See if you can identify the activities in your life that would be classified as “smart-lazy” vs “lazy-lazy”.  Then, congratulate and reward yourself for finding more “smart-lazy” ways of doing things in life instead of seeing them as just “being lazy”.  When you see someone who has found a clever way to accomplish something in a simple and easier way, take notice of it and label it as “being smart” in your mind so that you can condition your brain to seek out such things for yourself in life.

Such “laziness” is what I call “smart-laziness” and all progress in life is a results of it.

After looking through my recent stats, as compared to last year, my raw number of unique visitors and page views actually dropped compared to the same time last year.  This is because last year I was getting a lot of traffic from StumbleUpon and Digg on a few key pages on this Blog, but while the traffic numbers were nice, the actual value of this traffic was pretty minimal.  I’ll take my current traffic with my current reader loyalty any day over my previous numbers.

This is another reason why I don’t really value high traffic numbers from Entrecard, StumbleUpon or other sites that just send users bouncing off of your site.  It can be pretty tempting to get excited about getting lots of “hits” per day, but if the visitors are just bouncing off the site there really is no value in that.

One number I really like to pay attention to is the average time on site for my users.  Last May when I was getting a lot of StumbleUpon traffic, the visitors brought my average time on site down to just 37 seconds on site.  This May, even though my raw traffic numbers are lower with less visitors, each visitor is staying over two minutes which is almost four times as long as last year.

I cleaned up my Advertising segments a bit, removing two of my 125×125 banners and my peel away ad as well.  I also lowered the prices across the board to attract more advertisers.

Here are my new rates:

125×125 Banner = $50/month
468×60 Banner = $50/month
300×250 Banner = $100/month
Text Link Ad = $25/month

For more information on Advertising on this site, please see my Advertise Page.