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.