The $50K Challenge

New Year New Beginning

2010-01-05T13:09:00.000-08:00

I must admit that I have failed to reach my goal miserably. I am not so sad about it though, I plan to try again this year. I've set unrealistic goals that's why it has been so hard to reach it. $1k is oh so far from the 50k I wanted to reach by the end of December 09.

Anyway, it has been a nice experience for me, I ended up buying 16 domains along with hosting for some whilst others are on blogger. Things that I would never have thought about buying on my own, I thought those were so complicated! I got to laugh at myself now!

Let's get back to the big fat 50k challenge; I sure want to make that amount of money this year but seeing the trend things have been moving I don't see myself earning that much unless I put much more time and effort into it. Let's see it took me more than 12 months to make that $1k and I have not been writing many articles either. I broke the tasks into smaller goals. Like a whole new beginning, as if I have never made any money on clickbank but know the steps to go through. I put the goal to reach for January at $1000 which equals to 200 articles (@ $5/article) that in turn equals to 8 articles per day for the rest of January considering 5 days are already gone.

Planning for tomorrow (6th January 2010) in priority
- 8 articles for my main niche
- Setting blogs for 2 different niche
- Move 3 more domains from blogger to wordpress
- Set SEO domain

I'll keep the work I have to do realistic too, if I have more time on my hands I'll update my to-do list but I must finish everything up there first.

Also considering holidays are not over yet, we're going out almost every day so I must take some time off for "family time" too... next week will be back to work. I will need to-do lists then too and stick to my lists.

Thinking about quitting my job

2009-06-18T12:24:00.000-07:00

I know this might not be the right decision right now since am not making enough and I do not have a consistent earning with affiliate marketing but I've been thinking a lot about this... There are days I do nothing to get my stuff moving, so if I have everyday only dedicated to affiliate; would I not be able to make much more, taking it like a full time job?
There're so many things I plan to do daily but I barely get anything completed, I am just so tired when I get back home @ almost 7pm, after shower, dinner and talking with family a bit (sometimes I don't have time to do that) I just want to sleep...

I want to try at least, I need to, I am confident about it...

Things have not gone my way

2009-06-09T11:36:00.000-07:00

I haven't really got the time I needed to dedicate to article writing, nonetheless I have been putting new methods in place that I will use and I hope will help me to get the job done. I will start the 30 Day Countdown again, sorry about the last post; I will not delete it, I really want to keep it for myself for when I see it again in a year or two I'll be glad that I did not give up after something going wrong.

Back to the 30 day challenge, day 1 starts tomorrow

A 30 Day Challenge - Day 1

2009-06-02T23:09:00.000-07:00

So far I've made $837.74 for the last 10 months, which is an average of $83.77/month... that's lame, at this pace I am never going to achieve my goal.
I have been listening to a lot of stuff concerning time management lately and I really hope these will help me to move much faster in my work. To achieve $50k by the end of this year seems impossible now but I need to set more short term goals and try my best to achieve them. It's true that $50k looks and sounds good but it's too big to achieve in one go. Let's break things down.

I am going to work on my first want in my wish list - a Honda Fit (I want a red one). This is one very specific goal.
Having searched for prices around I came to conclusion that it might cost me $15,000

What I will need to do to earn $15,000
My articles are worth $7 on average based on what I earned
and it takes me on average 3 articles to make a sale.

Based on that I will need to write 2200 articles for the next 150 days
Which is 440 articles/month
110 articles/week
I plan to work 6 days/week
So my daily work will be to write a minimum 18 articles/day

So, I will begin with this today itself and I must force myself to complete the work. I will update this post later today with what I have completed.

Sales are coming back

2009-05-23T11:50:00.000-07:00

The last month has been really bad and I think the problem was with clickbank because many other affiliates had the same problem... no sales.
See for yourself: www.cb-analytics.com
Notice the super big drop in May. Must have been because of all the recent changes in clickbank, issues with accepting credit cards as I have read almost everywhere.

But things seems to be getting back to normal lately, on my main account I had 2 sales for the last 2 days. I have only 2-3 hops that converted but overall it had been more than a few hundred hop to convert (I count the days I did not make any sales since the last one)

Account 1:

Account 2:Both account combined for the last 30 days I made $116.63 for 632 hops.
I can't complain though... I haven't done much work either but anyway, following my planning from my last post, I hope I'll do much better for June (notice that I added a few stuff to my wish list so I better work harder)

Things don't seem to be moving

2009-05-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

I am a bit frustrated these days, I am not making any sales no matter how much work I do. It's very discouraging and it seems like because of that I am working less and expecting to see sales coming.
I will try not to check my account for 10 days and focus on my work only.

If you have been following this blog, I know you might not be very impressed with what you have read so far but I am not going to give up any time soon.

I planned a new way which I hope will help me. I say say that so far I've only been learning many things and my biggest step will be to be more organized.
So here goes my work plan (I tried to be as realistic as possible):

4 hours per day (I will need to be strict with myself on that one)
I plan to sleep early and wake up early to work 2 hours in the morning, I will complete the biggest job then as in the afternoon when I get back home I am just too tired. Also seeing the tad work that I have to do I sometimes end up doing nothing...

It will be like this:
4 to 6 in the morning
7:30 to 9:30 in the evening

I will also try to make better use of my time while traveling, almost 3 hours morning and afternoon combined :O (yes that's a lot!!!) Reading articles to get ideas and brainstorming will be done during this time.

In short I will take it as if I am working part time on another job. I will also keep tract of every work I have completed at the end of the week (planned to do that on Saturdays). And finally my Sundays I will try my best not to do anything, just letting go so I can start the week fresher.

Ah, it feels better now that I have written everything down. :)

The Yahoo answers day

2009-05-05T07:50:00.000-07:00

I've spent almost all my time on yahoo answers today, I hope I will see at least a sale from it in a few days. This is my first time trying to sell on yahoo answers. I have read some people had quite good results with it so I thought why not try. It's very time consuming though.

Hmm, since last week it feels like I have started everything all over again, I am back to the starting point where I was a few months back. I need to have shorter term challenges to better motivate myself. 50K is big and seems really far to reach for it.

I'll set my first clickbank earning goal to $1,ooo. So far I have earned $625 from clickbank, let's see how much more time I will need to reach my first thousand.

Only articles for promotion?

2009-04-25T23:13:00.000-07:00

Even if I have been working hard to get my affiliate stuff back on track these last few days, I haven't got any new sales yet. But that got me wondering, why am I concentrating that much on articles when I can do so many other marketing techniques for free?

So, as from today I will also add reviews on my own blogs, I think having my own sites is extremely important too if I want to have long term traffic, articles on ezine seem to stay on top only for a few days unless you have a completely unique article on whatever subject. But I usually just rewrite articles... means my articles will rarely or never stay on top for long.

I need to think more out of the box!

The positive attitude is important

2009-04-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

I wonder where my inspiration and motivation went since January, what made me so lazy? I have looked at affiliate marketing in a whole new approach. See, I have a day job that I really enjoy, I would work no matter what, still I don't get my money daily it's only at the end of the month, still I continue to give the maximum daily. The question is, why can't I do it for myself? I must not have been looking for instant reward, that's not possible. I like how I planned my work this time and focusing differently.

I have been experiencing a few new things too that I am sure can help you if you are just starting out with affiliate marketing. Planning ahead is extremely important. I was lost, completely lost if I happen to open my clickbank folder after a whole week. I just do not know where to start and what to work on. I still need to classify my folders better but being organized can help you get a lot more work done in little time.

Finally I have passed the 100 articles mark

2009-04-20T04:36:00.001-07:00

This is something I should have done weeks ago. Seriously, by now I must have already written at least 300 articles... *sigh* Anyway, my motivation is back and I am really keen to tart making sales again on clickbank. I have written 5 articles yesterday and five today so I have 10 articles waiting to be approved at ezinearticles. I will write a few more articles today, I want to see what's the maximum I can write in a day. I read somewhere that a guy wrote over 30 articles/day. Well he must be a very good writer. Nonetheless I thought, if he has done it why can't I do even half of it. I will no longer put any limit on myself, eg say that I will write only 3-4 articles/day etc. I will work the max I can.

A quick update

2009-04-19T00:08:00.000-07:00

I am updating this blog again after 3 months, I really have no excuse. I must admit that I have been very lazy and blaming everything on lack of time. Sad thing is that I have not made any sales either... My motivation was gone.

I've been thinking a lot about whether I should really continue into affiliate marketing. Both my heart and mind said yes. It's just that I need a better planning. Also at times I reach to a point where I don't know what to do next and thus do nothing.

I guess I've wasted enough time. I will get back to get the job done as from today, I also need to catch up on my goals too. Talking about this, I think I should have given myself any monetary goals. Just for the work done. See, I don't know if with 3k articles I would reach $50k. I will just focus on the articles goal for now.

Also I've received my 6th cheque some days ago, only a measly $75.63 (yeah I lowered the threshold just to get this cheque). My balance at clickbank is back to zero. So, it is as if I am starting everything again.

The forth cheque and laziness goes on...

2009-01-20T08:17:00.000-08:00

My forth clickbank cheque arrived today ($125.43), I just updated the countdown but damn even if the money building up is exciting laziness and procrastination is spreading too!!! I must get rid of it asap. Can you believe it; since the beginning of this year I have written ONLY 1 article! Wow I wonder why I have been so lazy.

Anyway I will not try to catch up with my terribly late work as it will stress me and I will keep on procrastinating. It is better if I just start from where I left.

Oh yeah, I badly need to mention that I did not make any sales yet for January, sad sad sad.

My next cheque will take much more time to come as not only have I increased my threshold to $250, I am also late in my work. No work = No sales = No money.

I need to get my a** at work NOW!

I have been lazy

2009-01-06T10:30:00.000-08:00

Seriously, I have not written any articles during the holidays! I really can't believe I have been THAT lazy. Anyway holidays are already over (was too short but nice). I will not whine or blame my laziness on this or that, I have chosen to be lazy so it's all my fault. I have to pay for my silly actions now... sales have almost dried up. My last sale was on the 31th of December. No 2009 sales yet.

Brief stats:

Articles written stuck at 87, views and url clicks increased a bit but made only 1 sale (it's the ctr of my landing page that is low; need to work on that)

Made 27 sales in all which comes to $572.70 in sales. I am still very far from my 50k but I am working for it :) Wish me luck.

One more thing, my third check arrived today (sidebar countdown has been updated, $49,639 to go). Also my first check cleared a few days ago, which increased my motivation (yeah I have read around that many check bounced or checks got lost or other scary stories)

Oh yeah *Happy New Year 2009* everyone :)

I feel this year will be great for learning new stuff for me, I find affiliate marketing really exciting so far. Am still a noob, has not made much yet (blame the lazy side of me :D) but I feel it's 'my thing'. ;)

Starting an article countdown

2008-12-20T09:17:00.000-08:00

I have spent some time to review my affiliate marketing strategy today. Even if I am making sales (once in a while) I am still very far from the goals I have set, which was to make $100/week. One thing that I have experienced with clickbank is that you can never be consistent with sales; I guess it is same with other affiliate network also. Anyway, as from today I will focus more on the work that I am doing rather than on the sales (thus the "Articles Countdown" in the sidebar).

So far I have written 83 articles with 80 already published:

With the 80 articles published I made 25 sales (not counting the refund):

If I continue at the same pace, 3000 articles will not be enough to reach $50k, I will need at least 15k articles. But if I can write better articles, I can probably make more sales with less articles, which is the best strategy imo. Since I am not a great writer, I am sure that's why I am not many too many sales. Anyway, I am experiencing many new stuff and things are going great so far. I am happy that I have not given up.

One last thing; I have started a campaign for a new product today, so I am now promoting 3 products. I plan to promote at least 14 products. Will do my best to write 4 articles for 2 niches or more per day (2 per niche). So, when I reach 3k articles, all niche must have 200 articles.

Fed up promoting only one product, time for change

2008-12-05T06:08:00.001-08:00

So, I have been promoting a relationship book for quite a while, made a few sales but... seriously I am fed up writing articles for this everyday. And also am out of thoughts what to write about, am not expert in this niche anyway. lol

I'll definitely continue writing for it but will work on other products also (I should have done this since the beginning). I started promoting a product in a completely different niche, good news is that I already made a sale; after only 4 articles. Really felt great as all happened in less than a week and I didn't even invest in a domain. Made $20 with just my time; moral - "time = money". This was a really nice experiment as I can finally get rid of the thought that I need money to make money, so many people preach that when it is not always true, well in internet marketing it is not anyway.

I will make new experiments every time I am fed up or I feel my motivation. Starting up completely new things can be really exciting at times as I focus more on the work than on the sales and it is not fun when I see I worked a lot on a product but have not got a sales yet. So... promoting more products is what will keep me going. I really want to become a successful marketer, well the best internet marketer in Mauritius; why not! LOL

Ah, I am learning new things everyday. Never give up. :)

Finally I have been promoted platinum on Ezine

2008-12-01T09:20:00.000-08:00

The best news today... I have been waiting for this since so long. After almost 4 months and 60 articles (1 I deleted, probably what caused me to be stuck in Basic PLUS for so long) I am finally a Platinum author at Ezinearticles

I was smiling like silly when I got the mail about my account upgrade, it's a great achievement for me. Finally... finally! (Sorry I have blurred my author name) ;)

As you can see, I have not written much articles but I plan to catch up with my lateness (laziness is better suited here)
Let's see if it has been worth it. For me definitely yes. On average articles are sold for $5 or less. 60 articles will be $300, I have made 20 sales so far, that's around $450. So, if I had paid for my articles I'd still make $150 profit but all my articles I have written myself! My time is my biggest asset. Imagine if I had those 8 hours dedicated to my day job...

I am really happy today :)

One more sale this week

2008-12-01T06:07:00.000-08:00

It really feels great when I wake up and check my clickbank account to see I have made a sale. I know I will not make sales every day *yet* as I need to work more on my campaigns. So, the last sale is my 20th sale from clickbank as an affiliate... a little accomplishment for me :)

I have not yet started promoting new products but I started a new campaign for the same product and made 3 of the last 4 sales from that new landing page. What I have learned from this is that 1 page works better than minisites/blogs but this probably depend on the niche. What's pretty cool, yesterday I had only one hop!!! And it converted. Cool eh ;) I hope to bring more targeted hops to this landing page.

I have spent some time today and created a new landing page for a product in a completely different niche. I will learn a bit about it and start writing articles for the niche tomorrow. I guess I will have to start submitting articles to other good article sites, ezinearticles is slow to approve my articles and since I am still Basic PLUS I have to wait for them to approve all my 25 submitted articles before I can submit more. I hope to be promoted to platinum this time.

I am really starting to love affiliate marketing, it's really exciting and I am learning so many things about online marketing in general. I hope (and I WILL) one day I will earn enough from it to quit my day job. ;)

Ah! A smile back on my face

2008-11-29T03:42:00.000-08:00

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. :)

My second clickbank cheque

2008-11-23T02:21:00.001-08:00

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 ;)

Concentrating on the work not the sales

2008-11-23T01:27:00.000-08:00

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 never plan well

2008-11-17T22:51:00.001-08:00

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.

Yuck no sales this week

2008-11-14T10:54:00.000-08:00

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.

I guess right now I should continue working on what I planned to do rather than making sales as I have not yet reached 100 articles at ezine articles, I am still very far from that.

So, here's a snapshot of my stats. Glad that my views keep increasing and knowing that 1-2 of my articles are ranking in search engines makes me happy. Thanks to the new reports provided by ezine.

Diversify baby, diversify... I keep saying to myself that I MUST start promoting other products but I am still stuck on the relationship one.

Note to self: Prepare a list of potential products to promote.
- Keyword research (Must be completed before Sunday, I have 24hrs from now)

Aww my first refund!

2008-11-11T01:13:00.000-08:00

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 will not check my clickbank account for a week

2008-11-07T22:57:00.000-08:00

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

Hehe and good news is my second clickbank cheque is on it's way, only about half of the first one but well I there has been two weeks that I did not made any sale... Anyway it's still a good amount both combined :)

17 Sales so far, $384.96

2008-11-06T06:54:00.000-08:00

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.