Whew...

Well, school is underway, I'm settled in and things are crazy.

I thought I'd have more time for this stuff, but one class in particular is taking up a lot of time. To go off on a little bit of a tangent/rant it's a programming class and he uses an email grader to check your output. He tells you what the name of the input and output files are (so you can grab the data to manipulate), but you never get to see it. He gives you a sample input file so you know kinda what it looks like, but that tends to be a simple case. His input files (used with the email grader, that you can't see) tend to be more "worst case" type input files (IE, there's extra spaces that you have to deal with). When you email the grader all you get back as a response is A)"Your program didn't compile", B)"Your output was wrong" or C)"Your output was correct." You can't see the input file, nor can you see what your output was. So even very simple problems are almost impossible to debug, because you essentially have to do it blind. The email grader is 100% literal, so even if you have one extra space somewhere it's wrong. Fun.

Anywoot, hopefully things will slow down a bit and I can get back to business. For now, I'm trying to keep things short and simple, so I might focus on article writing or perhaps dip into social network marketing. Things I can do without having to keep a close eye on them, because I'm a bit too busy right now. I was pretty happy to find that I've made about 100 bucks a week the last few weeks, and I really haven't done anything. Bonus money :P

Also, I'm pretty excited about my senior project. I got it approved before the start of the semester. It's going to be an indexing/rank tool. Essentially, I plan to make it do some social bookmark submitting, trackback discovery/submission, and auto find high page rank places to make comments. The trackback part is a bit spammy I suppose...but the comment part won't be automated, it'll just find them for you, so you can read through it and make a real comment. The social bookmarking part I hope to be somewhat like Bookmarking Demon. Depending on how quickly things come together it will have more or less features, but those are my basic goals. Should be pretty neat.

So far it can login to a couple of social bookmarking sites. I figure that once I start to get a better handle on using C# (which I'm new to), things should come together a little quicker. The social bookmarking part will probably be the bulk of the work, so I'm hoping to get that mostly done within the next couple of months. I already have it setup to make new threads for each site, so it seems to be running pretty quick. Once it gets up and running a bit more, should be a handy tool for indexing articles, lenses, whatever.

Not Dead

Yeah, I bet you thought I was dead...or at least that I gave up. Actually, neither is true.

This stuff has gone on the back burner a bit, as I'm getting ready for my return to college. I've been spending time with friends and family. Also, I got a proposal for my senior project completed and accepted. I've started research and work on that.

I apologize for the complete lack of updates. I originally made the blog for myself, just to keep track of what I was up to, I never really expected anybody to read it, lol.

With school starting up, I might actually be making more updates and working harder than before. I know that seems strange, but being home and around family all day (only 2 days am I home alone for any stretch of time) in a small house, it's hard to stay focused. I have my own apartment now up at school, so I'll be able to get some time to really focus in.

Bum Marketing Adventure

I gave up counting days, lol.

I'm in a bit of a rut right now. I'm having trouble making things work. I've hit a lot of setbacks. Things just aren't working well.

I'm making things easier on myself. I've been getting frustrated, so I decided to just let that go. I would spend all day working on this, yet really get nothing done. I'm changing this. I have a very simple goal for each day. Make one good site. That's it. If I feel like more, I can. If not, I can forget about IM for the whole day. It seems to take 2-5 hours to do, depending on how quickly I get a good idea. This goal guarantees that I get something worthwhile done everyday, without wearing me out. I've stuck to it for a week now.

I'm also not worrying about money right now. The fact is, as slow as it's been lately, I'm still way ahead of where I thought I would be. So I'm just going to go about this slow and steady.

My biggest problem now is, with Squidoo not quite as good as it once was, rankings are harder to come by.

Days...a lot... - Bum Marketing Adventure

I realize my posts have grown rather infrequent and for that I apologize.

Things have gone downhill lately. I won't really get into it, but I've been having a hard time making things work. I'm not giving up but I'm a little exhausted and frustrated.

The couple ideas I had seem so powerful, I just can't quite crack the code to it. I KNOW there is huge gains to be made, I just need to come up with a really good plan to exploit it. I'm so frustrated because I know I'm right there, I can feel it...I just can't quite get over the hump. Hopefully I can figure this thing out before I go crazy.

This month has been by far my worst. I plan to make next month my best.

Days 67-72 Bum Marketing Adventure

Wow, long time no update.

Well, I'm still unsure on Squidoo. Some of them are still doing ok, others aren't. From what I heard, the reason many sites dropped (or get deindexed) was because a spammer got a hold of Squidoo and made something like 70,000 lenses in just a few days. I'd imagine it was someone using a scrapper (script to steal content from other sites to make you a bunch of automated sites. Individually not very effective, but 10,000 plus can add up. And it's completely automated.)

This, of course, made Google frown on Squidoo. Squidoo contacted Google to try and rectify the situation. While it seems somewhat fixed, this is bad news for us Squidoo users. First of all, it brings Google's eye on Squidoo. So, if they weren't before, they're now well aware of IMers on Squidoo. Secondly, Squidoo may have to drop the hammer a bit on spam lenses. While most of us should be ok with that, it may cause some problems. I'd expect to see some captcha on there as well. They do have some when you make a lens, but apparently that's not enough.

That said, to call it dead would be stupid. It's still pretty powerful and its future remains to be seen. If you can get your lenses some links, it's still very powerful. And even if you can't, it still works ok.

I, as usual, continue my poor attention span ways and waste time doing a million things. Oh well, at least I enjoy doing that. Although I have stumbled upon a new idea. If I can get creative enough, it could be huge. We'll see.

Day 64, 65, 66 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Well, it appears the Squidoo drop wasn't just my imagination. A couple of you have noticed it as have a lot of people at the Warrior Forum. While I wouldn't call it completely dead, it does hurt the viability of marketing that way. I knew it was only a matter of time before this happened. Squidoo has almost NO real information on it, just IMers trying to make money. Squidoo even advertises itself as a "get high ranks in google easily" tool. Those two pretty much spelled its eventual doom.

I've been trying to find ways to replace Squidoo. I might have a couple ideas. For now I guess I just target less competitive keywords, as they still rank ok. This is a bit of a downer...ok a huge downer. I guess that's the life of the starting out IMer. Big highs and big lows.

Day 63 - Bum Marketing Adventure

...perhaps my new goal might not be as achievable as I once had hoped. Perhaps I'm wrong and just unlucky but I'm starting to think that the Google love to Squidoo is wearing off. While I don't keep a close eye on all of my lenses, I do watch my more important ones. In one day, nearly all of them dropped at least 4 spots. Many of them are dropping off the first page. I had also noticed that my last 4 or 5 new lenses were ranking way lower than I would have guessed. Sometimes you get a shocker that doesn't make it as high as you'd think, but in general I could make a good guess as to where it would land. So I'm very afraid that Google has finally dropped the Squidoo love. This day was inevitable...but for now I'm hoping it was just bad luck on my part. Perhaps things are ok and it's just a strange string of coincidences.

If it's not just bad luck, I'm due for some crappy times, because pretty much all of my eggs are in Squidoo. On top of that, I don't know much else about internet marketing without using Squidoo. So I might be back to square one for awhile. We'll see. A little disheartening for me but hopefully things pan out.

Day 61 and 62 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Holy cow, I can't believe it's the middle of the summer already.

My lack of updates is really only because I'm at the same things. I keep remembering to update the blog really late at night, lol. Nothing really new or exciting happening, just me trying to keep the cash flow going.

Sales have been really slow lately. So I'm starting to up the ante a bit. That's something I've realized about myself. Success doesn't motivate me to work harder to achieve more success. Failure motivates me to stop failing. I suppose that's a good thing, but it's also a crappy thing. I'll be "just getting along" all my life if I can't shake that attitude. I feel as though my summer has been good so far and I'm way ahead of where I thought I'd be, so it's allowing me to slack off. It's the procrastinator in me. I need a new goal. How about 100 a day by the end of the next 60 days? If I get my butt back in gear, I think I can do it. Maybe it's a bit lofty, but what's the point of a goal if it isn't lofty?

I think that was my mistake. I achieved my goal easily and now I'm coasting. We'll see, but I should give it a shot. I never achieved my last goal of another 100 dollar day. I'm actually mad at myself now that I think about that. It's time I get going.

Day 59 and 60 - Bum Marketing Adventure

No update yesterday. I hardly do anything on Sundays.

Today I did a couple lenses and worked on my tool some more. I actually got a semi-functioning trackback harvester created. Not bad for a days work from a guy who hardly knows Perl, lol.

I think I'll get back to making more pages tomorrow...I've had enough programming for one week, lol.

Day 58 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Not a great day...it was one of those days where everything seems to go wrong. Nothing big in particular, I just kept messing up little things all day and frustrating myself.

I'm going to start getting back to really working on what's paying me. I've been slacking in that department (not that I haven't been working, but I've been working towards different things).

My pay is starting to sag a bit, so I'm thinking I should up the ante a bit here in the second half of the summer.

Day 57 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Spent most of the day working on my tool. And slacking...lots of slacking...

Still, I have big plans for my tool. I got my error checking cleaned up and it now submits to 8 different sites. I have all sorts of plans for this baby...it's gonna be pretty wicked. So many ideas I want to implement.

I think I'll make a "go through all my lenses and push the submit button" on squidoo bot. I'm really super lazy when it comes to that but I like having freshly submitted lenses. Unfortunately, the more lenses I add, the bigger pain that becomes. Shouldn't be too hard to do.

I'm pretty impressed with how far I've gotten with my tool considering I knew zero Perl about 4 days ago. There are some pages that are just leaving me stumped, but overall my progress has been good.

Day 55 and 56 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Sorry I missed updating last night. I was coding like a mad man into the late hours. I get in a zone where I HAVE to fix my code before I do anything else. By the time that was done, it was 3:20AM.

I've really been working hard on this social bookmark submitter. So far it can submit to 5 different sites. I'd like to get it up to at least 10. I need to figure out a better way to keep track of how well the submissions are getting done though. Sometimes the sites don't update quite fast enough and the code reports the link as not being there, but when I log in, it is. Perhaps move the error checking to the back of the code and put a 10 second delay before it runs or something. I just get a little annoyed seeing an error in submission only to log in and find it there, heh. The point of the tool is to NOT have to login, lol. Oh well, if I can get it working with 10+ sites (I'll keep going until I run out) it'll be well worth it. I want at least 10, but I'd like 15-20.

Still, frustrations aside, I think that's pretty good for somebody who knew zero Perl just 3 days ago.

Eventually I'd like to make it so it post links on my blogs and automatically ping to however many sites I can find. I'm sure I'll think of other neat things. I know that right now it's pretty much just wasting my time...but when it's done it'll be pretty sweet to have a tool that'll get me indexed in (probably) under 2 days consistently and help me stay ranked high. All I'll have to do is fill out a small form and submit.

Day 54 - Bum Marketing Adventure

I just spent about 5 hours straight working on Perl...only to discover I can't figure this effin thing out. My brain hurts.

I have no problem getting it to login. I think that's working ok. But I gather up all the data I think I need to submit to a social bookmarking site...try and make it work...and it doesn't. The thing that's driving me insane is that you get NO feedback as to what you're doing wrong. You don't get any errors, if you choose to bring up what it returned it's often either nothing or useless garbage. From the standpoint of the program, it submits the data just fine and gives no errors. Unfortunately, the page never gets submitted. I think I'm missing something simple but I don't know what. Once I figure out whatever this problem is I should be able to get a lot of them working, but for now, I'm stumped.

Day 53 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Pretty productive day for me. Did 2 lenses and learned lots of Perl.

I was successfully able to use Perl to login to Digg (whoopdeedoo right? It was mainly just an exercise in learning how to use Perl to submit a POST form). I was halfway through trying to make a Digg submission tool when I remembered Digg uses captcha...doh...Oh well, the basics are there to apply it to another site. Eventually I'll learn how to make it bring up the captcha image so I can type it in for sites like that.

Sales have really slumped lately. No sales today, one yesterday, none the day before. Ouch.

Day 51 and 52 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Not much has happened, sorry for the lack of updates. But I didn't feel like updating to say, "wow, I'm lazy."

I'm gonna learn Perl. Should be fun.

Bonus Post

Hey, you guys get a bonus post.

The reason for this? I'm pissed beyond belief. Somebody has copied a ton of my lenses. They took the exact same keywords, paraphrased my lens, then spit it back out. Some of them outrank mine on Google. That's disgusting. Do your own work, don't steal form others. Perhaps they read this, who knows? So whoever you are, I hope karma catches up to you. You sicken me.

EDIT: Doing some research, I'm almost positive it's somebody that reads this blog. I have my reasons to believe this. Perhaps it's time to shut this down if that's how it's going to be.

Day 50 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Wow, is it really day 50 all ready? 1 site done and 3 sales today.

Another late night with a short post, sorry. Pretty much the same song anyway...I need to work harder...get focused...set a schedule...you know, what I've needed to do the last 3 weeks. Man I'm a procrastinator. I don't get myself sometimes. I've got a great thing in front of me and I'm pretty much settling for mediocrity. Strange huh?

Day 49 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Sorry, this post is gonna be kinda short. It's really late and I just remembered I didn't post.

1 lens done and 2 sales today.

I think I'm gonna learn PHP. That, or Perl. From what I'm reading PHP is the smarter choice at the moment, so I'm not sure. Just trying to get PHP setup is a bit of a pain though. We'll see. At least it's easy to install Perl. I think I'd do Perl, but I've noticed nearly all scripts I've seen for automating SEO stuff is in PHP. Apparently Perl just isn't the "hot" language.

Either way, I definitely want to learn one or the other. I'd love to be able to automate some stuff. Like, for example, going to all my lenses and pushing the "publish" button so my last edited date is recent. I've got 4 Squidoo accounts and 30 lenses or so. That's not too bad now, but still annoying. When I've got 100 lenses, I'm really not going to want to go into each one just to push the publish button.

Day 48 - Bum Marketing Adventure

I did one lens and had 3 sales minus 1. Lol, I knew that sale was coming back. I noticed it about a week ago. Somebody payed by check. Yeah...I bet that's a real check. No shocker, it bounced.

I've noticed my posts are getting more and more boring. Sorry, I just don't have much to say at the moment. I continue to waste way too much time reading about new tactics that I generally have no plans to implement. I just find them so interesting.

Oh...and I lost internet for about 3 hours in the middle of the day. I guess that's a change of pace, but even more annoying than usual.

Day 47 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Lost internet for awhile again, I have no idea what's going on with my ISP.

Made two sales today, didn't really get anything done. I need to stop that. I keep saying that, but I'm addicted to new information. I'd be making a lot more if I'd just stick to making more lenses, but I really enjoy trying to learn new tactics.

I'm also interested in learning how to program to automate tasks (say, social bookmarking). So I've been looking into that. I think I might learn Perl because it seems so flexible and fits what I need. It'll take awhile to be mastering that, but hopefully it'll pay off.

Day 46 - Bum Marketing Adventure

A big thunderstorm knocked out my cable last night, so no update.

I did a couple lenses and, sadly, had no sales for the first time in awhile.

Day 45 - Bum Marketing Adventure

As I promised, I didn't do squat today. Played some golf with the old man.

I have a little under 2 hours to get another sale :P Currently sitting at about 92 bucks for the day, lol. So, so close. I was shocked to see so many sales...perhaps extremely lazy people going, "OH CRAP IT'S FATHERS DAY!" who didn't even have time to go to the store, so they locked their door for 10 minutes and desperately tried to find an ebook they could order right away, lol.

I think I'll get up earlier tomorrow and work hard. But I always say that, so I don't make any promises.

Day 44 - Bum Marketing Adventure

1 sale, not much work done. Lazy day. Tomorrow will be equally lazy.

I did sit around and do some interesting research. Apparently I was a bit too late on the gold rush though, lol. What you could do was search for old blogs that had been deleted but still had links pointing to them. You could then sign up for a blog and use their domain name. The number of page rank 3,4 and even some 5 blogs that were available was scary. I could have easily claimed 50 of them. Imagine the power of 50 page rank 4 backlinks? The problem? Blogger and wordpress addressed this issue awhile ago. I'm not sure exactly how they did it, but the domain will always come up as in use, even though it's not. The strange thing is, I have a blog that's indexed that I deleted awhile back and I could claim that address, but I can't claim any of the ones I found. Strange. But it isn't just me, I guess it really doesn't work anymore from what I've read. Myspace also has a ton of sites to find. But again, problems. These ones you can get, but myspace is now doing the "msplinks.com" crap for any links on your page. So that's completely useless for backlinks. So apparently I missed this goodness by about 6 months, lol. I'm sure there's still somewhere you can do this, but I couldn't find anything.

Day 43 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Another lens done today and one sale. That's ok I suppose.

I think I really need to go into overdrive over the next couple months. I've got the knowledge I need, now I just have to start going. Wait...didn't I say that last post? Yeah, I forgot to mention, I'm a huge procrastinator. Seriously though, I really need to get working. I was working my butt off the first couple weeks and now that I've got some sales coming, I'm settling into acceptance when I should be striving towards the sky. I guess it's easy to get lazy when I feel like I'm doing pretty good.

My pay period is coming to a close and I did quite well (although, it'd be nice if I got my FIRST paycheck. C'mon Clickbank, how slow are you? And I swear, if my first paycheck gets lost in the mail, I'll be mad). Little over 500 from Clickbank and a little under 100 from other sources. 600 for two weeks, pretty darn good, especially considering how lazy I've been over the last week.

I've discovered something interesting with Squidoo...I've never made a penny directly from them. Supposedly you get payed per adsense click, but I'm starting to not believe it. I've had, by my guess, at least 5,000 visitor over the last couple weeks...you mean to tell me I haven't gotten one single click? And, even more suspicious, I was looking through the page of where my visitors were going, and plenty of the were going to "http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/blahblah" One site had over 20 clicks in the past seven days. I looked over the web page and I could find NOTHING besides adsense ads that had that URL. According to Squidoo:

"Since Squidoo is free to use, we have to run a few ads on your lens in order to keep our doors open. So you'll see a few Google ads and SquidOffers on your lens.

Now, since you're the brain behind the lens, you should get a cut! And better than a cut: you get HALF. That's right. Any time someone stops by your lens and buys a product you recommended or clicks on a Google ad, you get 50% of the royalties. "

So I should be getting paid on those. I know it's not a lot, but still...even if I'm getting a dime a click, that's two bucks just in the past 7 days from ONE lens. I'm starting to think that Squidoo owes me some money.

Day 42 - Bum Marketing Adventure

2 lenses done and 3 more sales. Pretty decent day.

I wish Clickbank wasn't so slow with sending my check. It worries me a bit. It says "it will be sent within 15 days of the end of the pay period" so I guess I'm still ok, but holy crap, could it take any longer? I wonder why they don't offer an option to get payed with paypal.

Sorry some of these posts are getting short and boring. But there hasn't been any new or exciting developments.

Day 41 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Doing my update a little early today in case my internet dies again. 1 sale today, although I still have a few hours left that still count towards today :P.

I finished two lenses. Other than that, pretty uneventful.

Edit: Dur...I forgot something pretty big.

Squidoo updated their stats! You can now see where your traffic is coming from, what keywords they were searching for, and if they are following any links off of your page! That's HUGE for affiliate marketers. It's like Squidoo is built for us.

Day 40 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Sorry again...me and my ISP are going to have a chat soon. That's the 2nd time in as many nights I've lost internet and the 4th time in about two weeks.

I had a couple sales, didn't get much else done, given the no internet.

Day 39 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Sorry about the no update last night. Again, my internet died on me.

I made 2 lenses and had a nice 4 sale day. I see one of my lenses dropped off the first page :/ Sucks, but that one had been behind somebody elses lens for almost a week now, so I don't think it was doing much anyway. My scheme might bring it back up, we'll see.

Speaking of the scheme, I've gotten several more first page results using it and they seem to start off slow, then slowly climb up. I had one land at 16 and, about a week later now, is up to number 6. I've even landed some number ones for uncompetitive terms. Interesting indeed.

It also seems like, for one reason or another, bloggers are landing higher than before. I only did one, so it could be a fluke, but it took a number 5 spot on a phrase with over 50,000 optimized results. Before, I thought bloggers were a bit weak. Either I got lucky, or they're gaining steam. We'll see.

Also, I tweaked one of my popular pages because I think it could sell better. So far, I think my new version is doing a lot better. I may mess with another one that's underachieving.

Day 38 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Had a couple sales today. Not bad. I made one lens and more of the same research.

As I mentioned before, I think it may be time to just start pumping out some lenses. My pages seem to be sticking long enough to where I can at least make some money off of them.

I've decided to motivate myself a bit by offering myself a reward. I'm normally a bit stingy with money, to say the least. Everybody that knows me would say I'm down right cheap. I'm a bit of a nerd and I really want to buy a game. So the deal to myself is, I can't buy it until I have another triple digit day. The second I have a triple digit day, I get to run to the store and buy it. Time to start working.

Day 37 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Not much to report today. Still fighting strange Google problems.

I really think I just need to let it go. I've gotten decent at keeping them up for awhile, might as well just try and make money with what I know. I've been spending way too much time trying to solve it. So much so that I'm getting very little actually done.

No clickbank sales today, which is disappointing. On the other hand, one of my other programs (which is usually only good for about 3-5 bucks a day) churned out a nice 30 bucks. To say I was surprised is an understatement.

Day 36 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Made another lens, nothing special.

The problem I noted earlier hit another one of my lenses. That drives me NUTS! If my lens isn't attached as a "related" site, I'm in the 4 or 5 position. Then, some lens (who isn't optimized for the keyword) becomes dominate for some reason, and I end up in the related position and drop like a rock because I'm forced to follow the less optimized lens. I really don't know why Google would do that, but I've had a couple of my lenses go up and down doing this. Really, really annoying.

Had a few sales today. And something I had been waiting for for awhile finally happened...I had a return :/ That sucks. I wasn't shocked though, I heard Clickbank's return rate is about 7%. I'd imagine half of that is people that truly aren't happy with the product and the other half being jerks that think to themselves, "Hah, I can get a return AND keep the book. This is too sweet." Although one thing I didn't get was, I made a little under 20 bucks on the sale, yet they debit my account for a little over 22? What the heck? How is that fair? Why am I punished? Shouldn't the publisher be punished?

Day 35 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Sorry for the no update last night. I was over at a buddies house having a bit of a LAN party. It was raining really hard when I got home, so I didn't feel like trying to bring my computer back in in the pouring rain.

Made another lens. No sales though :/ Also, the other day I had managed to bring one of my lenses back up, only for it to drop again today. Hrm. Google, I just don't get you.

Edit: I just had a thought, and I think I know why that site has been so up and down. Sometimes, it gets set to the "related" status under another page. When this happens, it drops to number ten, behind the related page. When my page is the dominate page and the other page is the related page, it jumps up to number 5. For whatever reason, my site actually ranks HIGHER in Google than his, but sometimes Google chooses to make my site the related site. Whenever that happen, I get sucked down to number 10. When his site goes underneath mine, he gets bumped UP to latch onto me. Now why Google would make his dominate when it appears to like mine better is beyond me.

Day 34 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Pretty good day. 4 sales. One lens done and plenty of research and testing.

Good and bad news really...one of my lenses has been pulling in a lot of sales. How many? Probably about half. That's great that a lens is pulling in so much cash, but a little scary, because I can't afford to lose that sucker.

First off, I think I've been able to move my pages up a little. Essentially, there are a lot of untapped social bookmarking sites I wasn't hitting.

My scheme is also an interesting one. I've actually got a couple more pages indexed using it and perhaps it is helping my rankings as well. I'll be testing this a lot for the next few weeks.

Also, I found something rather interesting. A couple nights ago, I had made an MSN space, filled it with articles, and promoted it with some social bookmarking sites to get it indexed. My plan was just to throw some of my lens on there to perhaps get them some traffic and free backlinks. Strangely, this space has received a good deal of traffic...around 100 hits today. I figured it had to be coming from the social sites but a look at the manager msn spaces has and, nope, most of it was coming from google searches. Huh. I literally spent 10 minutes making the space, filling it with articles and social bookmarking it. I had no intentions on it seeing much traffic at all. Perhaps I need to relook this one, heh. Seems as though there are some openings to exploit here.

Also, oddly enough, this site still isn't indexed. I know that, by default, Bloggers don't get indexed, but I changed that value. It seems odd that over a month of updates and Google still hasn't found it. I installed the webmaster code today, so I can see if GoogleBot is getting any errors when it visits...or perhaps it isn't visiting at all.

I might be making an ebook in the coming weeks. I make no promises though, lol. It'll be free to my readers. I realize that I'm not a guru by any means, that's why it'll be free. Still, I've seen plenty of people that don't have any idea on how to make bum marketing work. I've at least cracked the code to making some money, so hopefully I could help others do the same.

Day 33 - Bum Marketing Adventure

A couple sales today, but I'm not satisfied. I want to start seeing lots of sales. Heck, I'm barely on pace to match my last pay check, I can't have that!

I think I need to limit my time I spend on forums, I'm just addicted to the darn things. Instead focus on making more lenses. I should probably make a 2 lenses a day rule. Nothing else happens until I finish a couple lenses.

I did another lens today and tried fixing my rank problem. We'll see how it goes. Essentially, there's a lot of social bookmarking sites out there I wasn't tapping into. Also, I've got another bit of a scheme going on. I'll let you know what I was doing if it works. It seems like it might help, but I could just be crazy. The only way I had ever been able to get my Squidoo's to index was social bookmarking sites. This "scheme" got me indexed in only a couple days for one of my sites that I didn't touch with any social bookmarking. The problem is that it didn't rank as well as it should. So I'm thinking that if I expand on the idea and take it a few steps further, I might have a bit of a system going. One site isn't enough to really tell, so I'll have to try a few more. The biggest problem is it is time intensive.

A couple of my lenses hit top 5 for their categories, which I thought was cool. I also got my first #1 rank on Google. Unfortunately, my keyphrases and niches aren't exactly buyers, so I get plenty of traffic with little sales. Still, that's not bad.

Lots to try tomorrow.

Day 32 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Crap, crap, crap. This degrading rank problem isn't going to go away. I managed to make one sale today, so at least I didn't get blanked, but that doesn't make me feel any better. I was on a really good roll the last week and this drop in rankings just hurt me pretty bad.

I've got two options from here and I'm unsure which one is the right one. I can:

1) Research, scheme, test, and do anything I can to figure out how to delay or stop this degrading. This would allow me to keep my lenses up for a longer time and get me a lot more cash per time invested once I figured it out. I've been doing this option the last couple days. I'd like to use this option, but the problem is, I'm not making much progress. I probably spent at least 7 hours reading and messing around, but I don't feel I made any progress.

2) Ignore it completely and accept that my lenses will drop after 7-14 days. Instead of wasting time researching I could just pump out 2 or 3 times the content. This option is better for my immediate cash flow, but isn't something I'd be happy with.

So either way, I'm a little frustrated.

Day 31 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Sorry about the no post last night. I have an excuse though, lol.

Like I had planned, I didn't do much yesterday. Later in the night, I checked my stats and much to my displeasure, my Clickbank for the day was empty :( It was the first time in a week that I got blanked on Clickbank and the first time in 6 days where I hadn't made two sales. Boo. That got me motivated to get back to work. But about 5 minutes later, my internet died on me for the rest of the night.

I logged on today and I think I know why sales dropped. Remember that thing I told you was gonna kill me...the whole, "pages slowly dropping" thing. Pretty much all of my pages that had been doing so well were in the 5-10 spots, where before they had been 3 or 4. One of them seems to be gone completely. Gah. This is going to kill me if I can't get them to stay up longer.

Day 30 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Another pretty slow day, as promised. Although I did get around to making another lens. What time I did spend working on this was mainly more research and brainstorming ideas. Tomorrow will probably be pretty lazy too. Back to the serious grind Monday.

I had pretty good sales day. I woke up to 20 bucks, very late in the day had 35. In a matter of a few more hours, I finished with 75. Pretty sweet feeling to make 75 bucks on a day I really didn't even work. Heck, at a "real" summer job where I'm at, 75 bucks in a days work mean you worked for about 10 hours. Score, lol.

Oh, I remember something I had been worried about a few days ago. I was looking over some of Clickbank's policies, and I came across an interesting one. They will not issue a check until you've had at least sales from 5 different credit cards (paypal does NOT count) and at least 1 being a Visa and 1 being a mastercard. Given how many paypal payments I get, I was actually kinda worried about this. That, and the Mastercard thing, hehe. I wasn't aware Mastercard is still all that popular. Lucky me, I had a few mastercard sales and plenty of Visas. But that still had me worried at first.

I was also a little sad to see "it may take up to 15 days to receive your check." Boo, I want some cash in my hands now, just to know it's real, lol. I was also disappointed seeing I'd lose 20 bucks if the postal service loses my check because Clickbank would have to cancel the check. Can't I have it mailed with insurance or something? That way the post office is at fault for it. I wouldn't mind spending an extra buck or two to ensure my 400 bucks makes it ok, lol.

I may have to email the other company I was working with. They are supposed to pay me with paypal at the first of the month. It's past the first, and my paypal account is still empty. Perhaps there's a delay, I dunno. Just good to make sure everything is setup ok.

Day 29 - Bum Marketing Adventure

More research about Adwords and what not. I really didn't do much today. I'll probably not do much tomorrow either. I need to recharge a bit.

A somewhat promising day finished being just average. I woke up to 50 bucks...and I'm going to bed with the same 50 bucks, lol. No sales at all throughout the day. Boo. Oh well, 50 bucks is 50 bucks.

Day 28 - Bum Marekting Adventure

Today I did the usual, 1 lens and a couple articles. Lots of research. I think I've been doing more research than work lately. I'm not sure if that's good or bad. I guess both.

I remember what I was going to say the other day. Ezinearticles makes me mad. They didn't give me platinum membership. They gave me "basic plus." Which means I get to submit 15 more articles, wait days on end for them to accept them, and probably just get angry. What peaves me is they don't say why I didn't get platinum. They just said "we feel most of your articles are good to great, but there were some minor problems, please refer to our editorial guidelines." You mean the ones I've read like 15 times? All of my articles are fine. Heck, most of those 10 weren't even to make me money, they were to get my platinum membership. They were all really good. I think I had two rejected. One of them was because I put a URL too early in the article or something. It wasn't even an promotional link. Just a link to AVG's website. Both of them were fixed. Bah, I don't know what their problem is.

Another 60 some bucks made today. My paycheck should be getting sent out today from the two main places I'm using. Over 400 bucks! I'm pretty excited with that. And if I can continue to pull in sales at the same rate I have been the last 5 days, my next check could break 500.

Day 27 - Bum Marketing Adventure

I made a couple good lenses today. Had a little over 70 bucks in sales and my first check should be set at the end of tomorrow! Woot. I'm really happy with it too, over 325 bucks at the moment. I also have around 30 with another company heading my way. That's maybe 50 bucks less than what I would have made pushing carts. I'm really happy with that.

I had a bit of a scare today. You know how I said I'm worried about my pages losing rank? Well, I searched for one of my terms, and it was off the first page. "Crap!" I think to myself. I keep looking...not on page 2, 3, 4, 5...what the heck? It's not even indexed as far as I can tell! Then, about 4 hours later, it just came back. Weird. Google is funny.

I really am worried about pages losing rank though. And even more worried about the fact that all my money is coming from Squidoos and whenever Google drops the hammer on them (and it's just a matter of time, imo) my sales will drop to zero. So I think I'm going to start more seriously working on "real" websites. I don't have many good ideas just yet, but I think it's a direction I need to work towards. That and building lists...didn't I say I was going to do that? Silly me. Now that I've got some money coming in, I can afford to spend some on hosting and what not. I guess that isn't really bum marketing though, lol. I'll keep you posted anyhow.

I kinda want to look into usfreeads as well. They don't seem to be ranking all that great and a lot of people are saying they are on the down, but they still interest me. They seem like a really easy way to build lists. Maybe not sell, but build lists.

Also, I think I might look into adwords more. I don't want to get eaten alive like most newbies do, so I'll read up a lot. Maybe invest 5 bucks a day or something just to test the waters.

I think it's time to keep adding a lens a day or so but start to branch out. I don't want to have my hand buried in the cookie jar if Squidoos start dropping. Time to diversify.

Day 26 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Another routine day. One lens, a couple articles, and lots of research. Did over 30 bucks in sales. Not my 130 of yesterday, but I'll take it :P

I really need to get a schedule going though (haven't I said that like 3 times now?). It's really messing me up to be working on this sporadically all day long. For one thing, I never feel like it's really time to relax. I just keep going on here and reading forums and whatnot. Secondly, I don't think it's very efficient. I'm constantly losing my train of thought when I get interrupted by other things. I really just need to lock myself in my room during set times and then be done. No work past a certain time so I can actually unwind.

It seemed like I had something I had wanted to say when I logged on but I have no idea what it was...

Day 25 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Wow. Just...wow.

I wake up this morning (ok, afternoon, I'm a night owl) and check my stats like I usually do. My Clickbank account had 60 bucks in it for the day already! I had made 60 bucks in my sleep. At that point, I thought to myself, "So that's what success feels like." I know my adventure is just getting started and I'm going to see plenty of setbacks along the way, but at that point, I felt like I had really accomplished something. It's the most proud I've ever been of myself. I know, seems like an overreaction for 60 bucks right? It's not the money that I'm proud of, it's the fact that I put my mind to something and did it. I usually give up quickly on projects when they don't pan out.

It didn't stop there though, by the end of the day I had made almost 130 dollars! H-O-L-Y C-R-A-P! My first triple digit day.

Apparently sales really are streaky...I have day totals of 50 bucks, 25 bucks, 0, 0, 15...and then 130? I'm not complaining, but what the heck?

The biggest thing worrying me is what I wrote about last time. I'm almost positive these pages will lose rank and there goes all my sales. While I always can make more pages (and will continue to) I'd like to see successful pages stay in front for as long as possible. I'm really not sure what to do about that. Backlinks are the obvious solution, but that's easier said than done. Most of the pages are decent enough for the search terms, but not good enough to where I'm going to get many quality sites to want to link to them. I looked into article submitters today, but I'm not sure that's the answer either. So I'm stumped as to how to solve the "dropping page" problem. That's going to kill my ability to ever really get my sales going. If I'm constantly making new pages just to replace the old ones, that isn't efficient at all and my sales will never increase, they'll only stay the same.

I'm patiently eying one particular program that's going to be released soon with a lot of interest, as it might help me with the problem I was just talking about (that's right Ruck, I'm looking at you!).

On a completely unrelated topic, why do a lot of these affiliate programs insist on making me use some completely random 8 character sequence as my password? First off, nobody can remember that. "Let's see, my password...password...password, OH! That's right, it's 8c45tg2q. Flows right off the tongue." Secondly, 8 random alphanumeric characters is NOT a strong password. I can guarantee my 11 character password is much, much stronger (it even has symbols) and I can remember it.

Oh, I almost forgot, lol. What did I do today? A lot of research mainly, I was really trying to figure out the dropping page problem. Unfortunately, I didn't come up with much. I did write about 4 articles though. Also, I started working on a real website. It won't be done for awhile, but I want to get a big project going. I'd like some experience in managing a real website, I've never done it before. And, if it's as good as I hope, it'll be a steady stream of income.

I'm almost laughing at the fact that my goal was to be up to $10 bucks a day by the end of summer.

Day 24 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Not as a productive day as I would have liked. First off, I again hung out with my brother most of the day. Then I sat down, ready to work, and started working on a lens. I had been thinking and typing for a good 20 or 30 minutes and I thought to myself, "I should really save this in case something happens." So I copy it and get ready to paste it into notepad (don't ask why I didn't just hit save on Squidoo, sometimes my brain doesn't work) and as I do it, I lose power. Grrrr. I couldn't believe it. No more than five seconds after I had that thought the power goes out. It's like I had a really crappy sixth sense. A sixth sense that warns me of danger...but doesn't give me enough time to do anything about it. We lost power for about 4 hours.

So with that setback in place and my own lack of ability to stay focused I didn't get much done. Having family members around all day (in a very small house) makes it impossible to not get interrupted constantly. I wish we had a basement or something. Still, I finished another good lens.

One sale today, plus a subscription thingy (a couple of my sites didn't have very good products out there, so I found an affiliate for a subscription based site, they don't pay very well, but whatever, better than nothing). The sale came off of one of my newly indexed sites. My big site continues to see tons of traffic but no sales.

One problem I'm a bit worried about is lenses losing rank. It seems as though they don't cling to high spots for long unless they get lots of backlinks, which is something I don't have easy access to and no experience in how to go about doing it. So I'm a little afraid that even my good lenses will eventually drop into no man's land. I'm gonna have to figure that one out.

And on another note, I'm surprised the amount of traffic this blog has been getting lately. More than I would expect from a site based around my rants and ramblings, lol.

Day 23 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Another similar day. One good lens and a couple articles done. Still waiting on ezinearticles to approve me, won't happen for awhile. Good thing they take weekends off.

Another disappointing no sale day. I swear this business may just kill me by the end of the summer, lol. I can't figure it out for the life of me. The page produced 3 sales within the first 30 hours and got me really pumped, now nothing for almost two days now. Strange. It's still getting lots of hits too, so I can't use that as an excuse. I got 3 sales in about the first 200 hits. Since then I've gotten 400 more and got zero sales. Very, very strange. They keyword I've got isn't the most "laser targeted" to sell by any means, but 0 for 400 is pretty darn sad. Especially after going 3 for 200, which (given the lack of extremely targeted traffic) I thought was pretty good. I might spend some time really tweaking that site tomorrow. I can't be wasting a ~150 hit per day site with 0.5% (and dropping) sales conversions.

Hopefully, though, as I add more lenses, the streaks and droughts of each site will even each other out to steady sales. I've got 2 more lenses showing up in the 3 or 4 spot on Google. Hopefully another will be following suit by tomorrow. I'm getting good at getting Google to spot my site and picking key phrases I can dominate. Now if only I could get better at selling...one thing at a time I guess. It just plain feels dirty to be wasting those 150 hits a day though. Perhaps I'll work a list into that page and maybe get some signups. Hmm, just have to think of something free to give away.

Hopefully I sell something tomorrow to lift my spirits a bit. Getting blanked is never fun. I think I'll put out two or three lenses tomorrow. If I want to see more and more sales I've got to do more work. Perhaps I'll look for keyphrases that are a bit more targeted at buyers. I've been slacking a bit due to interruptions. My brother has been around and I don't see him too much, so I'm not going to sit and type whenever he's around.

EDIT: I just noticed something. I've heard that pinging is pretty much useless for getting pages indexed, and apparently they aren't kidding. I haven't done anything to promote this site except pings and signatures, because I'm really not worried about traffic to this site that much. Still, after 23 posts and pings you'd think Google might pick it up by now. And yes, I do have the html modified to allow indexing.

I also noticed I've got more comments :P Yay! I appreciate the tips and motivation, so feel free to keep commenting, I'm definitely interested in what you have to say.

Day 22 - Bum Marketing Adventure

I've had a couple comments I see :P It's nice to know people are interested.

I finished another good lens today. I've found that spending more time researching and writing the lenses really does give better results, so I'm focused more on that. I spent nearly two hours just researching my keywords.

I also wrote a couple more articles and manually requested my ezinarticles membership get upgraded, because this is ridiculous. It's been a very long time since I finished my 10.

I didn't get any sales today, which is a bit disappointing. While I'm getting more and more confident, I've still been hit and miss on sales and it always makes me wonder if it was just a fluke when I sell something. I go from 3 sales, to 1, then to 0. I'm still feeling good about being able to do this, but I have a hard time believing it until I see the sales.

I've added a "programs I recommend" to the side of the site. I'll just be adding programs that I've used and liked. Yes, they will be affiliate links, to let you know. You can always Google them if you don't want me getting the commission.

The one I added was The Joel Method. The Joel Method is a $7 e-book and it was what taught me how to change my selling tactics to ones that work better. Following his guide was what got me my first sales. It's probably not ground breaking for any of you advanced marketers out there, but for a noobie looking for his first sale, it's pretty darn amazing. You can literally spend 30 minutes to an hour and potentially make a sale or two from it. In my case, I spent about 3 hours using his techniques 4 times. 1 of them produced two sales, 1 of them produced 1 sale, 2 of them did nothing. I'm sure it's based on writing skills on how well it works. It's from the maker of the SpaceBankers program.

I expect to do one more good lens tomorrow (as I do everyday from here out) and hopefully see a sale :P

Day 21 - Bum Marketing Adventure

A fairly productive day today. I finished two good lenses with some promotion done. I also did a couple GoArticles.

I guess I'll be contacting ezinearticles manually tomorrow, as they still haven't increased my membership.

After a three sale day yesterday, I went down today. Still, I had one sale, so I'm still happy.

Tomorrow I plan on supporting my new lenses with a couple articles and doing at least one more good lens. If I have time, I'd like to start a new site based around the idea of getting opt-ins. Starting building my lists.

Hopefully I see more success tomorrow. My spirits have been lifted a bit thanks to my recent success.

Day 20 - Bum Marketing Adventure

I wrote 4 articles today all around one site, really trying to dominate that niche. Ezine continues to be slow on upping my membership.

I was pumped to see that one of my lenses landed number 3 on the first page, plus number 7 for a term I wasn't even going for. That was one of my new pages using my new "don't really try and sell them" strategies, which seem to convert way better. And boy did it ever. It made 50 bucks the first day it was indexed! I'm pumped to see that. I'm not expecting it to stay that way, but still, that's exciting. It seems I've finally figured out a way to "sell."

I messed around with an autoresponder today. I'm signed up with Aweber now. Hopefully I can start building a good list.

That little bit of success really felt good. I'm looking to repeat it.

Day 19 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Not much done today. Spent most of the day with my dad. I wrote a couple articles and started looking into autoresponders. I think I might fork over the money so I can start building a good list. Seems like it should be well worth it.

I need to start looking over my pages and figure out why I'm not converting better.

Oh, and ezine still hasn't upped my membership yet, argh.

I'm really tired, so I'm off. Tomorrow I'll be busting butt.

Day 18 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Another couple of really nice lenses done. Still waiting on ezine. That's killing me right now. I need to be able to put up more articles, but ezine is probably one of the slowest sites I've ever seen.

I think I'm making progress, but I still feel like I'm doing something wrong. I should be seeing more progress given how much work I've been doing. I'm looking at other people and seeing how much they got accomplished in the same time frame and I can't help but wonder what the heck it is that I'm doing so wrong.

I really think my big problem is I need more ezinearticles up. They rank well and get a lot of views. Unfortunately, I've had my 10 submitted for about 6 days now and still sitting on basic membership. Because of that, instead of having 20-30, I still have 10. I think I really need to start cranking out tons of articles. I think that's the key. So that's what I'm going to start doing (once ezine decided to play along). Make a lens, then find at least 5 related keyphrases I can dominate with an article, and do so. Link my site to the articles.

The other thing that's killing me is trying to make good connections between my articles, pages, and affiliates. It gets messy. You have to be able to match keyphrases to articles, articles to your page, and your page to your product. If any of them don't flow perfectly together, you don't seem to sell a thing. It seems like a long shot to sell anything. First, you need to get your articles ranked high enough. While that's usually doable, it isn't guaranteed. Then you need to hope they click on your article. Then you hope they follow your bio link. Then you hope they buy something. It's a long chain that seems to break down easily. Two part articles help a lot, but it still seems like a long shot. I have a couple articles that get views that have a part 2 that perfectly match. I was really, really proud of how well they went together. But I don't sell anything. That was probably my best work so far, and it isn't converting. I'm unsure what's wrong.

Although I really shouldn't be so pessimistic. I'm comparing myself to people that made thousands by the end of their first month bum marketing...but it wasn't their first month on internet marketing. So they have a huge leg up on me. The bum part is easy, it's the marketing part that takes experience. And besides that, I've made 40 bucks in the last four days, which is technically completing my goal for the whole summer. Now, I'm not optimistic the sales will keep coming in, but still, I think I'm getting pretty close to completing my goal already. Hopefully by the end of the month I'll be confident in getting my 10 bucks a day done.

So I guess it's time to be positive. Despite my frustrations and failures, I'm DEFINITELY confident that I can get 10 bucks a day by the end of 120 days. I'll honestly be disappointed if I can't at least triple that.

Day 17 - Bum Marketing Adventure

I didn't do too much today. It was a lazy Sunday. Still, I got one well promoted lens up.

I made another sale last night, so that was sweet. I still feel I'm behind where I should be though. I think that's because I haven't kept a focused system. So I just wrote down every step I'm going to take for each site I make. I'm also refocusing my efforts into more specific keywords and niches. I was being to broad and too hopeful. As opposed to aiming for 50,000 or less quotes results, I'm now aiming for 1,000 or less. Preferably under 600. Also, I'm not so focused on big traffic. I'm trying to focus more on converting what traffic I get. I want to be able to have a site that might only get 5-10 hits a day, but still converts once a week or so.

The reason I've made a couple sales is I've learned my pitch pages weren't effective. I read all the advice on making good sales pages, only to learn that it doesn't work very well at all. The new method is both easier and more effective. As opposed to trying to sell them something, I get targeted traffic about a subject, give them a couple posts worth of good information, then casually make a list of good products that I like. This allows me to build some credibility by giving them good information to start with. Also, I don't appear to be trying to sell them anything, so they are more apt to look at the pages. Since I appear to just be a casual guy giving information, they are way more likely to trust that I would make a good recommendation on a product. It's interesting, simple, and much more effective than my old method.

I need to get a schedule going. I've been doing most of my work randomly during the day, then a big burst at night. I need to start picking a time to work, because randomly working all day is really messing me up. Also, I need ezine to up my membership badly, because their articles are really the key, at least from what I've seen.

Day 16 - Bum Marketing Adventure

A rather disappointing day. After I thought I finally had the key figured out, I get nothing the following day. Blah. I'm really starting to doubt if I'm ever going to get this.

I found some other blogs from people who did things very similar to what I'm doing now, the only difference is, by day 16, they had already made 400 bucks. Gah. I need to figure out what I'm doing wrong, because something isn't right.

And for frick's sake ezine would you effin give me my platinum membership? You have to be the slowest site in existence.

Day 15 - Bum Marketing Adventure

EDIT: I GOT MY FIRST SALE!!!! Either I got lucky, or there really is something to that new trick I learned. Two hours after I made it! Holy cow!

Redid my layout, if you didn't notice. I liked the other one but apparently a lot of people thought it was a bit too harsh on the eyes. I guess I could understand that. I like this one better anyhow.

Did 2 lenses with my new plan of better support for each one.

I'm still waiting on ezinearticles to up my membership so I can really shift into the next gear.

I learned a new tactic for getting quick traffic and (hopefully) quick sales. I keep saying this, but I REALLY need to get the sales monkey off my back. I can't take it much more. The longer I go without a sale, the more I start thinking that I'm wasting my time on this internet marketing or doing something wrong. Gah. I MUST SUCCEED DANGIT! On a slightly bright side, I made over a dollar in adsense today, lol. On the one hand, it isn't much, on the other hand, if I could repeat that every day, that's over 10% of my goal. So I guess that's good.

I still can't seem to establish any consistent traffic, although I think I know why. The Overture tool sucks, really bad. It lies to me. I've been picking keywords that I thought were good, that actually kind of suck. I realized the Overture tool was broken when I did a search for "matchmaking" and it comes up with 70,000 searches. Ok, that sounds good. Then I look up and see that "jewish matchmaking" is above it in searches. What? How could that be? Then I see how many searches "jewish matchmaking" supposedly had. Over 1.38 million. In one month. Riiiiight. At that point, I realized the the Overture tool was a complete waste. I found a better free tool that I think is working. Wordtracker. You only get a two hour trial, but you can get the trial over and over again. It's pretty powerful.

Day 14 - Bum Marketing Adventure

It's really late, so this post won't be too long.

I really want to get this stupid no sales monkey off my back. I'm slowly starting to trickle some traffic in, but no converts yet.

I'm realizing that the initial thing I was told of "just make a million lenses on long tail keywords" isn't working out. I need to support each lens. So I worked out a plan where for each lens I: right at least 2 articles (submitted to ezines and goarticles), ping it, make a blog post about it, craigslist it (if possible), and a couple other tricks I learned (sorry, paid for those, so those are copyrighted). I did this for a for a few of them, and those are the ones seeing traffic. Hopefully the next week will start to be good to me. I need to get a sale soon.

Day 13 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Today was an interesting day. I didn't pump out very much content today. I got one good page up. Most of today was spent revisiting some of my better sites I had done.

I went through and tweaked a whole bunch of sites. I realized some very stupid mistakes I was making. For example, in one site it was a bit of a "how to" with some affiliate links mixed in there, along with some non affiliate ones. The other links were there to download other programs I was talking about. What I was doing that was stupid was NOT opening them in a new window. So if somebody had been reading through my site, they might follow the link, leaving my site forever. That's obviously bad. The second thing I fixed was the start of the page. The most boring and long section of the whole how-to was at the front, I moved it to the very back. Durr.

I spent some time with Commission Junction. I didn't realize they were easier to sign up with than before. I had looked into internet marketing years back, and CJ used to require a site with something like 5,000 visitors a month. So that was nice. There are a lot of good vendors in there.

Playing with Commission Junction made me realize something I wasn't tapping into. BANNERS! They look nice, really draw attention, and "square off" blogs pretty nicely, imo. I wish the blogs were a bit more flexible in exact placement, but I can't complain too much, they are free.

I also worked on my "content" blogs a bit more. I have about 4 content blogs I plan on keeping up with. At least a few posts a week on each of them.

I'm starting to wonder if Google just doesn't index pages unless you really work for it. I guess that'd make sense, but from talking to people, that's not the indication I get. Pretty much all of them say their Squidoo's get indexed quickly without doing much of anything. I have about 5 that are two weeks old now with no index. The only pages of mine that are indexed are ones that I used some "moves" on.

Still waiting on ezinearticles to up my membership.

Living and learning...

Day 12 - Bum Marketing Adventure

Relatively productive day today. I wrote 5 good pages plus 1 article to finish out my 10 on ezinearticles. Just waiting for my platinum membership now.

That fast indexing method did get all of my pages indexed. One of them is ranked 6th on the first page! I was pumped about that. The other two were for less competitive keywords, yet ended up on page 5. I'm a bit confused about that. I did see one of my articles land in page 5 once, only to rise to page 1 later, so I'm just hoping Google isn't done ranking it yet. That would be weird. The one that landed on page 1 had over 10,000 quoted results, while the ones on page 5 had about 650. Weird. I guess I still have a lot to learn about SEO and what makes a keyword good.

I made my first bit of money today, but from an unexpected source. I threw some adsense on a couple of my bloggers. Not really bloggers I was expecting to make money from, I just did it for fun. I got one click for 31 cents! Woot, lol. Ok, so that's a joke, but I was like, "huh, where did that come from?"

Still can't wait to get this empty sales column off my back. C'mon Google, index all my work!

Day 11

Bah, the indexing trick is still failing me nearly 60 hours later. I swear, Google is trying to make me go insane. I really want to start perfecting my sales pitches and site setup, not worry about if I'm doing something wrong. I really just want to keep pumping out content, but I'm sitting at something like 20 lenses (some of them 12 days old) and NONE of them are indexed. Even the supposedly fool proof indexing method is leaving me empty. I'm starting to worry I'm doing something wrong.

On that note, I began messing with Blogger some more. I hadn't used them before because, in the past, none of my blogs ever got indexed. Like, 6 months with no index. Turns out there's a reason for that. I learned a little trick that actually allows them to get indexed, woot. I made a blog, did the trick, and did nothing. The blog had no content, nothing. It was indexed about 3 days later. I don't think Blogger has quite the same ability to dominate search results like Squidoo, but I think it has more staying power (it's Google's own service, they're never going to give it a bad rating. I'm thinking as Squidoo gets flooded with more bum marketers, it will lose it's luster in Google's eyes). I also like the overall layout of them. I can make a pretty good looking Blogger. Squidoo lenses look cluttered and unprofessional no matter what you do. Plus, I got a blogger indexed, unlike my lenses, lol. That makes me a bit more hopeful.

I spent most of today taking a lot of my lens ideas and turning them into Blogger's. Also did a couple ezine articles. I need one more to apply for platinum membership. I really should use those more, I just keep getting ideas that don't lend themselves well to being supported by articles. Ezines seem to have a really high ranking, so I should start tapping them more. I have two articles, one is ranked in google on the first page, but not for a great keyword. It was one of the first articles I wrote, so it wasn't very focused. Still, those two articles alone have over 130 views in about 4 days from (mainly) ezine itself, not Google searches. I thought that was pretty good.

I really can't wait to get rid of that goose egg in my sales column. That'll be a huge monkey off my back. Unfortunately, I'm somewhat stuck until Google decides to cooperate a bit more with my efforts.

Day 10

Not much to report today, it wasn't a "work super hard" day. Wrote 3 lenses. My "30 hours" trick is now at hour 36 with no success. That's a little discouraging. I think I'm doing pretty good as far as picking keywords, setting up my pages, writing articles, and stuff like that, I just can't get any of my work indexed. I think I'll be in decent shape once/if my pages ever get indexed. I'll give this trick till tomorrow evening before I'll be requesting a refund. Don't guarantee me 30 hours if you can't deliver on it.

Google, why do you hate me so?

Day 9

I'm kind of debating how I want to approach this. At first I was pumping out lens and articles left and right, not really worry about their quality too much. They were just good enough to get the job done. I'm starting to think I should do a little more quality work. More importantly, get keyword targeted at people who are close to buying something, reeling them in, then hopefully getting a sale. Plus, my new fast indexing method (which I'm still waiting on...it's got till tomorrow evening, lol) requires my sites to be a little higher quality.

With that in mind, I only made 3 lenses today. That was quite a bit less than what I was doing before, but I think they're a lot better. I found a couple really good keywords. I was really surprised one of them is still untapped. I would have guessed it would have been saturated by now. Hopefully I can get on the front page of that one, it'll make me a killing.

One of these days I'm going to look into link cloaking a bit more, those tacky hop links have got to go.

I haven't slept well the last 5 days. Literally tossing and turning for 3 hours. I just gave up last night. Didn't sleep at all. I've never been a good sleeper, but this marketing stuff is really getting me excited. Every night I go to bed learning new things and having new ideas I can't wait to try out. It's exciting, but being able to sleep would be nice!

First week (Days 1-8)

I just started this and I'm already a few days underway.

I've been focusing on mainly bum marketing strategies, since I don't have much cash to start off with. I plan on adding a couple traditional websites and maybe an AdWords campaign or two if I start seeing some success.

I've been hard at work publishing articles and squidoo lenses. I've yet to see any results, but nearly all of my work isn't even indexed yet. I'm learning to love ezinearticles, despite how strict their policies are. I had one rejected because it contained a URL too early in the article (even though the URL was just a link to AVG's homepage). I figured it'd be better to tell the reader where to go, as opposed to making them find it. I guess they didn't feel the same. The articles seem to get a decent amount of hits just from internal their site. Once they get indexed in google, that'll be even better.

My lenses have yet to do much, because none of them are indexed. I'm a little shocked that some of the older ones (over a week now) still aren't indexed. I just learned a trick today that supposedly gets them indexed quickly, so we'll see. Unfortunately I can't really spam this trick and I'm only comfortable using it on my higher quality lenses. If it works, I'll be a very happy panda.

I already find myself getting better and better at writing and getting more and more creative with my author resource box. A lot of this is thanks to posts written on the Warrior Forums. Good stuff.

Alright, day 9 is under way.