Long-Time-No-Post

SOOoooo much has happened since Oct 2006 !
Am I much further down the road to earning a full-time on-line income ...
well ... perhaps,
though in real dollar terms I haven't much to show for my efforts yet.
I have learned an awful lot and I'm certainly having my patience put-to-the-test !

I had set a (extremely aggressive) goal for the end of June (2007) to have an on-line income close-to matching my present off-line (day-job) income. Now part way through April and only 82.5 days to go, but for a God-given miracle, I cannot see me achieving that goal date.

I believe I did everything "The Blogging Cash Machine" told me to do, researching keywords, posting regularly, setting up PINGS, etc, etc. But day after day, week after week I couldn't even FIND my blogs in the search engines, even when I put the exact strings into the search !
Eventually, like so many others, after two months of effort, I gave up on the blogging bit and moved on.

Around that time, I went to a Gold Coast seminar hosted by my
long-time marketing mentor from Western Australia, Mal Emery.
Because the seminar was on the coast, which is about an hour drive from my home, and it would be late at night driving back, I invited a workmate to go with me for company.
The seminar focused around on-line marketing using Google; Adwords; Adsense; and (in particular) e-books, with guest speakers Andrew and Darryl Grant

Little did I know that My workmate would see the opportunity in on-line marketing and run with it like I never could have imagined!
He has now picked up much of what I had learned and gone on to surpass me in his endeavours, having already received the first of his own cheques for affiliate sales.

Some of the things which I have discovered along the way are:

1. Doing this while working full-time and being a father/husband/home-owner is VERY challenging and requires considerable determination !
   I have been getting up quite regularly at 4~4:30 am for months now to try and find some uninterrupted time to work on this stuff.
   

2. Short (2~3hr) bursts at this really are very inadequate.
   You almost need to be able take a week-at-a-time to work full 7+ hour days on this stuff to make head-way.
   (Something I've not had the luxury of yet)
   This is not to say it can't be done, as I know a number of people who have broken-free doing it this way. It's just much slower and more frustrating because you see nothing for your efforts.
   I've been reading a good article on this over the last two weeks. One which I actually got when I purchased one of my various marketing tools last year
   (I can't remember which one now)
   It's "1001 Newbie-Friendly Tips" by BobMcElwain
   

   
   
   
   
   

   
   
   
   
   
   
   The reason I say "good" article, is because it's one of the few I've read which add reality to all the wonders of making money off the web.
   

3. Getting a start in web marketing really does require the support of your family (wife/husband/kids) because to get this stuff up and running consumes a vast amount of time and energy. Time which often has other demands on it as a family member.
   
4. Another challenge has been the lack of my partner's belief in ultimate success.
   There is a firmly held belief that it is not possible to earn a living AND enjoy what I call "time-choice-freedom". The ability to choose when you will work, where and how much.
   
5. I've never been one who needs a lot of sleep.
   5 hours a night is mostly sufficient.
   In trying to get a headstart on this stuff though, even I am feeing the drain of this push!
   Going to bed at 10:30~11 and up again at 4~4:30 day after day is taking a toll.
   
6. You have to be prepared to give up a lot to ever hope to get this to work.
   Examples; This weekend was the Easter holiday here in Australia.
   I had to choose between playing ball with the kids or ... do my marketing
   (did some of both)
   I had to choose between taking the family out or ... focusing on the marketing
   (family won)
   I had to choose between helping my elderly neighbour or ... my marketing
   (neighbour got my time)
   I had to choose between sleeping in because I didn't have to get up to go to work, ... or get up and do my marketing.
   (I slept in some, but still got up much earlier than I would normally by choice)
   
   And at this stage of my progress those sort of things are really hard choices, as I don't see any end to it yet and I don't really know which should get priority.
   * On the one-hand I'm watching my girls grow up and I'm not spending the time with them (which I so desperately want to be spending with them), both because of my day job and because of my attempts at internet marketing. Yet on the other-hand, I have-to work my day job to pay the bills and if I dont do the marketing stuff and attempt to change our circumstances then they are ulikely ever to change
   * I'm watching opportunities slip past because we just don't have the money to participate in those opportunities which we won't have unless I can change our circumstances.
   
   I know attainment is there to be had,
   ... but I just can't seem to reach it yet.
   
7. It is my belief that you have to hold tightly to three "keys" if you want to succeed.
   

   (a) You must believe
   - that it is possible to realise your dream and
   - that the creator wants you to realise that dream
   (b) You must be persistent
   ... beyond all normal levels of persistence !
   (c) You must provide useful information on a theme which you honestly love and enjoy, (are passionate about) providing answers to questions shared by a large number of people.
   

Anyhow ... back to the story ...
So I had started down the Google Adwords trail only to be hit by the Google algorithm changes so I had gone across to Blogging only to not get indexed after months of effort. I had started down the content-rich-website avenue using SiteBuildIt (SBI) when along came the seminar.
We go to the seminar and get all "revitalised " and my workmate starts down the path of ... e-books, then ... Adwords, then content-rich-web-sites. He buys a product out of Israel (whereas I am using SBI). We set aside some of our lunch breaks to go to our local library where there is open internet access (our work prohibits certain things, much of which stops our endeavours) and pursue our learning there. Because much of my research is saved to files local to my home PC in MS Word, Excel and PDF formats, I cannot access them at the library so I'm limited in what I can achieve. (I don't have a suitably equipped laptop so I can't do it that way either).

Then came the next hurdle.
Around November my home internet connection started going bad and over the December January February period was all but unusable except for the occasional email and sporadic web browsing.
Basically I lost three months of learning & development time

AAaaaarrrggghh!

Once the internet problem was fixed, and having seen my workmate's success with Adwords I flipped back to giving that a go ... yes ... right back to where I first started in March 2006 with GoogleCash
I have to say it has NOT worked for me, and my workmate has found that after his initial income from it, Adwords never really became profitable for him so he too has laid adwords-only, aside. That is definitely not to say we won't use it as a adjunct to our other web marketing activities, but just as it's own self-contained income stream we've both "parked" it

So here I am today.
Still only ONE of my blogs has been spidered (indexed) by Google and I'm stuffed if I can see why the other one hasn't been.
(If anyone can suggest how I go about finding out, please enlighten me. I put an awful lot of effort into what is currently a useless blog !)

So I've gone back to focus on SBI and niche marketing and my workmate is doing likewise using his package. Both systems have a similar focus (content-rich web sites) but employ slightly differing methods of design and monetization.
He's ahead of me because he didn't spend so long trying to work out a niche to work in whereas I've lost myself a LOT of time bound-up in trying to find an available and profitable niche.

So what brought me back to this blog after months of absence ?
Guess what ... out-of-the-blue I had an offer for a link exchange from someone !
So, what with all I'd learned, the internet working again, adwords not proving profitable and now the offer of a link exchange, I thought I should perhaps update my "journey"