After more than 2 weeks without making a single sale, finally I made sales again. I was really happy when I saw this:
I just didn't get time during week days to update.
I couldn't reach my target of $100/week yet as clickbank is so unpredictable. I will start promoting same type of product from another network and see how it goes.
It really feels great to see sales again. :)
So, my second clickbank cheque arrived yesterday ($78.45) almost half the first one, I even lowered my threshold to $50 so I can get this one lol, I increased it back to $100 and now am stuck @ $99.88 haha only 12 cents so I can get my 3rd cheque. I am still very very har from my $50k target but I WILL reach it ;)
So the last two weeks I haven't made any sales at all, this week will be my third week whout sales. Discouraging? I don't think so! Let me tell you why. I had planned to write at least 100 articles before I start seeing sales... I have not yet reached that and made 17 sales (1 refund included). So as from now I will be concentrating more on the backend work than checking how many sales I am making. Here are my ezinearticles stats for today:
My views keeps increasing but none are converting, I am guessing that it is probably other affiliates who came across my article to get ideas (I am rewriting myself lol).
Also in this post, I said that I needed to diversify. Unfortunately I have not started to promote any other product yet. But I will definitely do it this week. In the relationship niche but which deals with another problem. Let's see how it goes by the end of this week. :)
I am happy that I am not giving up (See, I have even increased the number of articles I am writing/day, I won't play lazy anymore. 4 articles in 2 hours is reasonable and I have been able to do it these last 3 days, I have 2 more to write today). I seriously want to earn good money online and I will do anything in my power to be able to do it. If affiliate does not work for me I will go into something else, but I definitely want to earn online.
I already mentioned a few times how I very little free time to take care of my affiliate marketing campaigns. But I guess if I knew how to better manage my time I will be able to get more work done during the little time I have for myself (around 2 hours). I had plan to write 4 articles/day for the product I am promoting which means by how I should have at least 200 articles... I have written only 40 so far, not even a quarter of what I planned.
I guess this week I will focus more on my landing page to make it convert, better. I have around 30 visitors daily (very few I know) but only around 1-2 will actually check out the e-book. My conversion is very very low. I don't know much about marketing, probably the reason why it is so difficult for me to sell.
I have put together a few tools, and read some internet marketing tips around that I will be using for my campaigns. Keeping it realistic will be the most difficult, I have learned it the hard way... In 2 hours not much can be done unfortunately.
I think it is better if I call it "a negative week" since I only had a refund this week and made no sales. Even if I try hard, weeks like this one is are very discouraging... because I have read around things should keep getting better. Wow, am whining like a little girl lol.
Just to update on how I am doing with clickbank, this week I have not made any sale yet. Neither did I get time to add any new articles... Yes time is extremely against me! But on the other hand, not that I am happy about it, but I had my first refund! Isn't it great, no sales... -ve amount this week (J/K)
I am back to $358 for my overall earning lol. Also I am going to say it again, the amount that I have displayed on the right is the money that is already in the bank or cheques that I have received. I will not add money that I have not yet received there, see what happened today? Haha I don't want to decrease my earning every time I will have a refund ;)
I wanted to do this last week but I could not resist checking my account every day and more than 10 times :O. So, I feel I am spending way TOO much time just checking my account rather than doing more important work to make money online so that I can achieve my goal. This week I am going to be serious about not checking my account. Also since I started working on one more campaign, already that my free time is pretty limited, I will stick to my words and I will check my clickbank account only next Saturday. I know it will not be easy as I am almost addicted to my clickbank account. lol
I thought I'd post this to keep me motivated to go further. I know I can earn way more than that with affiliate marketing but there are just days when I am stressed when do not see any sales in my account when I wake up. There has been two weeks where I made no sales at all... I thought it was OVER! But I was wrong. So, here is a snapshot of my 17 sales that I made so far, I know it is not much but due to the little time I have to give to affiliate marketing I am doing my best...
The last week was the best of all as you can see from the snapshot in my last post here, where I made over $100, I will try to keep the pace for some time until I move to my next target of 1 sale/day.
As you can see on the image above not all sales are US based as there is some weird currency "DK" haha when I first saw this, it was "Donkey Kong" that came to my mind. :D It is in fact Denmark, I made a few other sales outside US, one from Iceland, another one from Jamaica and the latest from Malaysia. Which is good I guess, the product sells well worldwide.
Also I am happy that most of the sales I made were paid via credit card, I have got only two paypal sales. I have read somewhere that paypal sales have a higher chance of being refunded... I am on the safe side. ;)
I am happy so far but I am sure I can do better than that.
On Monday I reached my submission limit at Ezine Articles. I have sent my second request to be upgraded to platinum. Unfortunately I failed it again as I had problems with two of my articles (haha completely forgot to proofread these 2). But nevertheless my article views keeps increasing which makes me happy. I last posted my ezine stats on Friday 31th of October, only a few days ago, already a big increase in article views, and I added only 2 (yes my time is extremely limited) articles since then.
So far I made 17 sales with 33 articles (one of the article is for another niche). I wonder how many sales I will make when I will reach 100, 200 or even 300 articles, just the thought of it is enough to motivate me. Life is good :)
I was just going to post "nearly $100 week" but just had to change the title because I reached $100, better yet I made more than $100 this current clickbank week. This week I will close with $126.18. Which means I have passed my first target of making a sale per week. Now I can concentrate on $100 for 3-4 weeks until I am making that constantly then I will change my target which will be 1 sale/day.
Ah it feels great to know that all the work I have been doing these last 2 months was worthwhile.
For me to be able to reach my ultimate goal of $50k I should be making at least $140 per day. It is really cool that I started this blog, now I am more motivated than ever to reach that goal. ;)
Work hard, there is money on the internet waiting for you!
I have been extremely happy on Monday. When I woke up, first thing I did was to check my clickbank account (something that I have been doing these last few weeks, that is when I started making sales). My last sale was the Sunday before, I have not yet passed my first target of making a sale per week. So, Monday when I logged into my account, this is what I saw:
I have been sick with flu for more than a week, and not making sales I think was making me feel sick even more. But after seeing that nice amount in my account considering that it was 1 day only, I was extremely happy and spent a great day. :)
It would be so cool if I could earn that much daily. Well it is actually part of my plan but I guess I will have to invest more time so that I can earn more (something that I cannot afford right now unfortunately).
Also I would just like to take note that I am working on one product only, since the beginning I concentrated on only this product. And probably the fact that I have not been making much sales is because that niche is already full of very good affiliates, this product is actually one of the best selling on clickbank. It encourages me to think that I have been able to at least sell 13 copies so far of the product. It is a relationship related e-book.
Today I am going to start a new campaign from a completely different niche but still something that I am interested into. The tattoo niche, I am not sure yet where to begin with (on the marketing part) but a blog is ready to start sending content. Let's hope I'll do great with this e-book. Good luck to me. I will post follow up on this one.
I have been extremely down these last few days, making no sales and neither feeling great after a whole day at work. It's not that I do not like my job but I am barely having some free time when I come back home. It just sucks, that's the right word to describe my actual situation. I do not really like to put the blame on outside factors when something is not going like I want to but this time I cannot blame myself. It is too much for me to handle.
When I joined this job two months ago, I thought everything would be easy. But I was wrong. I had planned to work on my affiliate stuff once I am back home and write at least 1 article per day but seems like my calculation was wrong. When I get back home I am just too tired and want to sleep. So I though I would sleep for an hour or two once I am home then wake up and write the article... I have been only able to do that once. Seriously I am too tired after spending a whole day at office and getting back home at 6:30 in the evening. If I go to sleep about 7 pm after shower (not even having dinner) chances are I would sleep till morning and worse waking up a few times during the night. :(
It is only during week ends that I can catch up with my affiliate projects, but two days are just not enough to cover a whole week's work. And I need to relax too... If you have some tips how I can better plan my time, I am open to suggestions. I will not give up on affiliate marketing, I know for sure that there is money out there. I just need more time or find a better way to manage my time.
I don't know if I should call myself naive or just plain stupid. I have a very big problem when people ask me for help, I can barely say NO... You are probably not going to consider this a problem but for me it has been a problem and still is.
I use to work for a web design company (for the last 2 and a half years) and I so much like to help others when they have problems even without them asking. So, when they ask for help by themselves I can not refuse. This I count as myself being stupid. For all the time I wasted, yes W-A-S-T-E-D. I should have used my precious time for myself and doing so much more constructive things...
You might think I am a bad person thinking that way but when you have done all this only to be kicked in your ass then you are going to tell me the opposite. Some people are just like this and I can't change it. You help them, they enjoy everything but when it's their turn to help you they'll just turn their back at you. Sad but true. So that's about me being stupid. Something that I will try to change about myself. (noted and working on it)
Naivety is my speciality. Another sad but true story. I guess stupidity and naivety goes well together so I have both traits. I feel bad about myself now that I think back about those days where I was believing blindly in everything people say (most precisely my ex boss). He is such an a**hole (sorry about the expression) to lie to employees like that. Unfortunately that was my first job and my first time in the working world. I really loved my job but it's just that the boss was just abusing and making us work more than needed and damn I was SO underpaid! Oh well, I've taken a lot of lessons out of this situation. I am still a bit naive but definitely I am improving on this side too.
Lesson learned: Helping others is good but there is a limit, same goes for job. Know where is the limit.
One big mistake that many newbie in the affiliate marketing field do is to choose the "bad niche". Why bad is because most of the time they will choose a niche that is already saturated or a niche that is full of the best internet marketers. The chances of finding success in these type of niche is very low when you are just starting out with affiliate marketing.
I have gone through these too. When I first wanted to try I know I wanted to make money with the "make money online" niche! Easy one you tell me... Well, the make money online niche is surely where you can make most money but bear in mind that it is also the niche where there is the most refunds of products. In this niche you are mostly going to try to sell to internet savvy people so it will not be as easy as you think.
I am not saying that people can not be a millionaire solely by selling make money online products as everyday there are millions of people who gets their first access to the internet. So, there IS a market for these products, it is important to know where these internet newbies hang out at... (something that I had not done)
Let's get back on topic, sorry about the above blabbering. It was just to show my experience and what happen when you choose a bad niche. My advice would be to start with something that interests you and you enjoy doing. Let's say you love cars and know a lot about car modifications. It will be a good idea to start a website about it, giving free tips to your visitors and also selling products related to the niche or even better, why not write your own ebook!
Why you should choose a good niche is because if you get into a niche that you do not like you would probably be fed up after some time and not seeing sales whereas with the niche that you enjoy even if you do not make sales right away you would still be updating your website. And this is the root of the real success about making money online. Not giving up. Surely there is money in every niche but you just need to choose one that best suits you and that you know you will not be fed up talking about. Good luck in choosing your niche. :)
