Where have I been?

I've gone sooo Guerrilla that I can't even be seen...!

No, truth is I have been M.I.A. End of november my sites got hacked and a few deals I was working on fell through. This comhbined with Xmas and a new years trip to Ireland to see family killed my motivation for doing anything productive (you may not have heard, but the Irish like to drink :) ).

I also employed someone to do some work for me and they have been stalling until finally admitting they are going to keep my deposit and not do the work. I found myself making excuses for my lack of progress when ultimately the buck stopped with me. People let you down, things happen. Even if everything that can possibly go wrong, does go wrong, you are still the one in control, and responsible for making things work!

Luckily last week I snapped out of it. I finished converting my spare room into a home office and got back on the ball chasing the money. Things are getting tight now, I need a form of income before march or I am really going to be in the shit.

Having an organised place to work has helped get my head straight. I know my back is to the wall but I am working one task at a time and not letting it overwhelm me. I try to finish a task everyday, that way at the end of each day I feel like I have achieved something and am one step closer to my goal.

I am going to carry on working on the affiliate sites I set-up but I am not going to do any more. The income from them isn't great and they take a fair bit of work to get looking good. I am going to concentrate on sites for local businesses in the hope of getting a few quick flips that can go towards paying the mortgage.

I still have my big project working in the background but there is constant set back on that so I am not relying on it taking off immediately.

I'll be coming back hopefully over the next few weeks with some positive results and tactics that are proving effective.

Also, if you would like to do a JV I am willing to do all the SEO for a website if someone creates all the niche content. I like doing the SEo more than I like writing about obscure topics so it could work out well and possibly repeat it with several niches.

Anyway, take it easy and I will be back soon.

Where am I now?

Hey Guys,

A little while since I posted. I am not rolling in cash yet, my residual income so far is around £300/mo, barely enough to make a scratch let alone a dent. This also doesn't take into account the money I am spending out on content, hosting and other services. So all in all I am still in the red.

I have an admission to make that I have not created a fraction of the blogs I set out to. The liquidation is still dragging on, my previous business partner split and left me holding the can. For a while I lost all motivation and considered getting (pardon the swear word) a J....O....B!!!

Momentary madness over, I have regained my composure and re-assessed my situation. Writing and researching about a variety of topics I hold no interest in is not me. My SEO skills have greatly improved over the last few months and rankings are not a problem to get, but finding the motivation to get excited about micro niches and getting powerful sites put together is lacking.

This has pushed me to the decision that I should stick with what I know and setup a "proper" business. I have lots of ties in the software development and training industries, so I will plough further into debt in order to setup a new agency.

I will also be carrying on with the affiliate blogs but this will not be my main focus. I would much rather be in control of the product and sales tracking. After sending thousands of pre-sold hops to some affiliate providers without a single sale I am getting a little pissed off.

I have created a business plan, wireframes and marketing strategy for my new venture. I have secured funding and am now in process of getting everything made so I am mad busy which is great for the soul. Sitting around aimlessly is a slow and unusual torture for me.

I have a few good people I am talking to right now so don't be surprised if very soon I come out with my own set of services and products and try to carve out my own niche on the Internet. This will not be IM related as that industry makes me feel a little queasy when I look at what some people want you to believe, but it will be in a supporting area that is useful and has quantifiable results.

All for now, peace out.

Standard Bank Accounts Suck

One of the advantages of running a business that turns over a lot of money is that you get very good service and support. Now I have closed that account and opened a new one I am back to standard support.

This whole morning has been wasted trying to find someone at my bank who knows what a letter of credit is.

I have found a sweet product in China so I'm going to import it to sell on ebay to get a bit of cash in hand but as always lots of obstacles in my way. Fingers crossed I get it all sorted out today.

A bit quiet eh?

I have been quiet on my blog as you may/may not have noticed. This is because I am putting together a proper business plan.

I found that by jumping in feet first I ended up doing a juggling act and certain areas got over looked. So I have taken a pause to write everything I am going to do in detail and create step by step instructions for everything before hand.

This will hopefully allow me to address any issues before I run into them and allow me to give step by step hand outs to any outsourcers I use.

I am about 20 pages into it so far and it is really helping me. It is funny how there were things I thought I had worked out 100% but when it comes to writing it down there were still a few things to iron out.

I can't recommend doing this highly enough. Before you understake a project, write down everything you will do in detail. Then from this create a schedule of what you need to be doing each day, and from that work out deadlines and milestones so you can keep on track and get the project finished.

I am also using the free version of http://www.project2manage.com/ aswell as Google docs for collaboration purposes and to track progress.

Quality Takes Time

One of my sites that I put together on the quick with outsourced articles has now got some rankings and targetted traffic so I have gone back over it to monetize it.

The first thing I did was properly read the outsourced articles. I know I should have done this first but I just wanted something up so I could get it to rank.

I had expected to just tweak it a bit, but after readining it the whole site will need an entire re-write.

Last couple of days I have been re-writing the site and adding some custom graphics. I have to say its turning into quite a nice site, in a few more days it should be almost complete and I will be very surprised if it doesn't start to make me money very soon.

Now I have got a few sites up there, I think I will write the onsite content myself and just use outsourcers for the SEO fodder articles. When some money starts coming back in I will higher a more expensive writer to handle onpage stuff but I don't feel comfortable doing that until I start to receive some affiliate pay-checks in the mail.

Over Reactions

It seems to me that the majority of the warrior forum live in a constant state of caffeine fueled panic.

At the smallest thing you get pages of angry/worried/perculiar messages from people thinking its the end of the world.

The last over reaction was the FTC saying they could go after people for fake testimonials. I am sure this was a move to try to give them some more power against con-men and not to persecute blog owners. Just imagine how hard it would be to prove a testimonial is fake, and how much the court case would cost them. This legislation probably will effect less than 0.1% of internet marketers yet it has let to a constant stream of crazy posts from people convinced if you alter a testimonial you are going straight to jail. So far I am yet to hear of a single case going to court.

Now the latest fury is over Google's side wiki. People are calling it "Evil" and recommending people ban all google toolbar users from their site.

WHAT NONSENSE!

It's like a paying customer walking into a shop but you refuse to serve them because their mobile phone has some software on it you don't like.

Lets get one thing straight, I am not a fan of side wiki. It is too easy to spam negative comments at people. But guess what I am doing now? Well, I am spamming positive comments at my sites. So far on every site I have been to I am the first person to leave a message.

The truth is that only a small percentage of your visitors will bother to check it out, and I doubt people will take much stock of it as it is so easily abused either way.

Another thing, this is not new. There has been software out there that does this for years, the only difference now is that it is incorporated into the google toolbar which it very widespread.

Bottom Line: If side wiki effects your bottom line then you have some weak ass marketing. Go to the library and read some REAL marketing books and stop wasting your time with step by step get rich quick ebooks.

Sleepless Nights

I have fell back into the groove of making sites and promoting them. I have the IM bug bad and I am burning the midnight oil every night. Think I may turn into a vampire soon if I don't start gettig some sun soon lol.

My rankings are looking very promising now. I am creeping up the list on some highly searched terms. I am noticing that wordpress blogs seem to get a lot of junk traffic, I understand better now the posts from people who think they are getting 100 a day to look at their site but no sales. On one day, one of my niche blogs recorded 700 visits, but i think only about 10 of them were human. This could be due to the amount of directories I have been submitting to. They could be checking the link works or being scraped by spammers.

Now that I am starting to get traffic I need to monetize it which is always the tricky part. I got a load of work ahead of me but it feels good to be doing what I love. I have made a few good contacts recently also and I am discussing various business ideas with them.

Getting the temp ban in such a cocky way from the WF has made me not want to contribute there any more or submit guides. I will go back there eventually I guess but for the time being it is a good thing as I am focusing on getting things done.