I'm not making money and it's all my fault... Asking for some help.

by blur
17 replies
I know there are a thousand ways to make a buck online. I just need some guidance to choose what ways are the most profitable.

My Goal
My goal for this is to just bring in some extra cash for my family. I know there isn't a a real way to instantly make $3000 in 2 hours without working hard for 6 months previously. In other words I know there isn't a get rich quick scheme and I'm not looking for such. I just want to work and have a secondary stream of cash flow for some 'extra' in life.

Current Situation
I have a full time job as a graphic designer and work with sales people all day. I design signage, t-shirts, and other things to sell in retail outlets. I have just started this job on monday after being out of work for a while. No sad story here as my life is controlled by me. I don't want to settle for just one stream of income as we all know how the job situation is.

Also I do design websites and develop in drupal and have made a pretty good second earning stream until I had to move cross country for work. Since I moved I lost the local contact I had to build these sites. I host a couple clients that basically pay for my years worth of reseller hosting.

What I've tried in the past
Created an e-book
In a past life I was a club DJ so I wrote a book on how to promote yourself as a DJ. Sold about 6 books but when the content was outdated, I pulled the site.

Adsense
Using the knowledge from DJ'n I had a separate website in a related nich with adsense. I made 20 bucks. I had a local forum though that brought in a couple hundred in adsense - over 3 years.

Selling Templates
After I bought Artisteer, I sold templates online. I think I sold 5 templates over a year and ended up selling the website and templates for $20.

What I am pondering now
Selling goods from a drop ship site
Making microsites for niche products to sell through a drop shipper. I'm not sure how this works online with taking orders, so I need to research this more.

Local Sites
I live in a town of about 50,000 in the middle of the desert. We are a tourist town but the local internet presence, even for tourism, is poor. I was thinking of designing some 3-5 page websites - getting them to rank - then trying to sell them to local business.

Adsense
Thinking of making a few dozen blogs/pages on sites that allow adsense (like blogger) for some niches.

Affiliates?
I'm not sure about this one -seems it's getting harder and harder to promote affiliate items from CB

I don't mind doing the work - I'm just not sure which direction to go.

I own Market Samurai, Scrapebox, and will be getting Scrapeboard. I also have various products from Incansoft. Not that software makes you better, just letting you know.

Where do I focus? That seems to be my issue is focus. What would you do?
#fault #making #money
  • Profile picture of the author rammonster
    Hi,

    Nice to meet you...Im a Dj too.... I play on turntables ..what about you?
    Anyways, I see you know "how to" but you just dont know how to "go about it". Internet marketing is great..i have to agree...its almost like making money out of thin air!

    Before people start recommending method's here..i would just like to give you a piece of advice:

    "Stick To One System" - "Make It Work"- "Diversify"

    Find something that you think might work and then just run with it.. Once, you start making money with one concept..You can diversify..or multiply your effort's on the already working scheme.

    Trust me made the mistake of trying out multiple systems at the same time and ended up making a HUGE mess!

    Good luck!

    All the best
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  • Profile picture of the author Kevin_Hutto
    Is the whole dj thing your passion?
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  • Profile picture of the author grannywriteswell
    Hi there,

    Firstly it is great to see that you have tried quite a few good ways of making money online. You mentioned that you had an ebook but the site became outdated so I presumed you scrapped it.

    IMHO I think you should revamp the book and the site and then use the forum here to find ways of driving traffic to your site. You don't mention if you were getting a lot of traffic previously, only that you had poor sales. If you were able to drive the traffic then look at your sales page copy - if it wasn't very good then perhaps it would be worth investing a bit of money on a Warrior who could rewrite it for you.

    If you are having trouble getting traffic to a site then look at the free ways first - blog commenting in your niche, article marketing, setting up videos even and posting them on YouTube - they should all help with traffic to your offer.

    You also mention the possibility of selling websites in your local area and it sounds like you do not have a lot of competition. Definitely if you can do up a couple of websites based on a couple of the larger businesses in your area, and then using them as examples (to sell to those companies possibly) promote your service in person - apparently using online methods to market to offline businesses can be a very lucrative way of making some money.

    As you have probably guessed I am not one of those "focus on the one thing" type people because I hate to have all of my eggs in one basket. But if you focused say on the two I have mentioned here you will have both an online and an offline business established in very little time and hopefully will start to see some decent money coming in.

    All the best
    Ellen.
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  • Profile picture of the author IMGem
    Persistence is the key. Some time we learn something, try it and give up just before it might have brought us the results. If anyone on the earth is earning good money being IM, you can also.
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  • Profile picture of the author BeachDude
    Pay very close attention to what I am about to say, because this reply could be worth millions to you:

    You are like a man falling down a well trying to grab anything to hold onto. My advice? Cut everything but your day job, and be an AMAZING graphic designer. Get a refund on Scrapebox & Market Samurai. Sell all of your domains. Cancel your Adsense account. Stay in the moment at your job, and give great service to your employees and customers. If you need more money for rent/etc, then cut out what you need to so the pressure isn't so high for you to make more.

    Set an intention to make $XX,XXX per month online, print it out on a piece of paper and put it by your bed. Lay in bed for 15 minutes after you wake up, and 15 minutes before you go to bed, and picture in your mind what your life would be like if that kind of money was flowing through you.

    The most important thing I can tell you is that your riches are not going to come through any method you are currently aware of. You need to be open to anything.

    You need to free your mind, give your all to your current job, and within 21 days (if you are doing your 2x daily 15 minute mental movies), you will get an idea. An idea that you fall in love with. An idea that causes you to work for 32 hours straight and time stands still. It will feel easy, and the money will pour in like water out of a broken Damn.

    Trust me, because I was you just 3 years ago. I had the dead end job I hated, I had the bills, the debt, etc. I tried everything. I was the falling man. After I learned to Let Go, give my all at my current job, set my intention, do my 15 minute visualizations twice daily, and relax, it happened. Within 3 weeks of doing this I went from making $0 to making over $5,000 a day, and how I did it was no where near my consciousness before that. It all spawned from an idea that popped into my head while working out.
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    • Profile picture of the author Justin Hall
      Also, just a bit of encouragement here:

      My friend and his brother started blogging about food from Argentina a couple of years ago. They don't know anything about IM, they just like that type of food I guess. Because their content was so specific and so relevant to the site theme, they started to rank really well without even actively driving traffic.

      They decided to put some adsense on there and now that blog makes like 1,500 a month.

      Point is, they could probably be doing way better, and could have done it much sooner if they knew the proper seo and traffic methods and so can you or anyone else for that matter.

      Start off looking for the demand before anything else and build your business around that.
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  • Profile picture of the author RentItNow
    You were on the right track just didn't have the right fuel to make it to the goal. #1, I dont care what people say about following your passions....blah blah, find a market that is hot. Either write an ebook about that subject that has a unique angle on it or be an affiliate for one that is selling now. Build your site (that is still my most valuable skill - webmaster). Refine it. Blog every couple days. Refine and test until you are getting a good conversion rate. Then start doing PPC (again testing and refining ads) and get some good qualified traffic to your site. The money eventually starts happening. Took me a little over a year to have my first $100 day but boy did i feel good that day.
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    I have no agenda but to help those in the same situation. This I feel will pay the bills.
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  • Profile picture of the author MakeMoneyOnline09
    Don't think that Clickbank or affiliate marketing is hard because it really isn't....especially if you are willing to put in the work. The key to success as an affiliate is finding a product that people want. Forget about what you are interested in...just find what people are looking for and make sure that it converts. Use Market Samarai to do your research. Once you find that product, you will make sales if you market it consistently using your Market Samauri keywords. Even if there are a lot of people selling the product, you will still make $$ if you consistently market simply because most affiliates are not consistent, which is why so many are not successful.

    I say to go for affiliate marketing....Clickbank is a good place to start. You have to weed through the junk products to find something good though. You already have some good marketing tools at your disposal.
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  • Profile picture of the author mr2monster
    Find something you love (i.e. DJ'n) and start there... It could be that not a lot of DJ's buy ebooks.... find out what they DO buy... find out what problems they DO have.. then sell them that.
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    • Profile picture of the author jamawebinc
      First, go download my free report:

      http://iwebdigest.com/optin.html

      There is a blueprint there.

      To summarize...you find items people want to buy, you find problems people want solved, and you become the person who finds it and gives it to them and get paid in the process.

      Are people buying cordless phone? If you research this and find the answer is yes, then you proceed. Are these people reachable online? If yes, then proceed. Create a website about cordless phones. Come up with content, Put up phone for sales of which you get an affiliate commission and then find people that are looking to purchase them or for information on them and get your content in front of those people.

      That doesn't cover the "How To?" Of course, but it covers the "What?" in a nutshell.

      In essence this is how all money is made online.
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  • Profile picture of the author Justin Hall
    Hm, I've never been one to stake my lively hood on mental visualization, but if you have a steady day job doing graphics, then at least you know you aren't going to starve.

    If you want to start off with a method to make some extra money that has pretty much no start up cost, then creating a good blog with real content and doing all the proper seo is not a bad idea.

    Although I would suggest making your own blog with wordpress instead of doing it on blogger. If you ever decide to sell it down the road it will be worth way more if you do it on your own site.

    Focus on putting good content on there, have an opt-in on there if you want, make youtube videos, go post on other blogs and forums with backlinks and after a little while it should start to snowball for you. Especially if you have good, unique content.

    If you blog on very specific themes and write posts/articles that are very specific to the theme of your blog, it will really make a difference in the eyes of google.

    Also, building a list with to promote niche products off of clickbank or amazon is actually a lot easier than it seems if you know what you are doing. And it costs practically nothing to set up so risk is small.

    There is a ton of info on this forum on good list building techniques, and even quite a few free wso's on the subject.
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  • Profile picture of the author sylviad
    I'm wondering why you are focusing on doing web sites for local business? As you know, the internet is universal - you can do that job from anywhere in the world. If that is your forte, and you really enjoy it, then why not put your efforts into marketing those skills online to a wider audience?

    If you check around here, you'll see there are always people looking for web design services. If you have the skill to build WordPress templates, that seems to be a good market niche, too. Build a bunch and advertise them on all the marketing forums.

    From your detailed account of your progress to date, it sounds like you get started in something and after a small amount of effort and success, you jump onto something else. Would it not have been more profitable to expand your marketing knowledge to promote those projects, rather than keep looking for something else?

    You are right in your title - it IS your fault you are not making money. At least you've identified the cause. That's always a great first step to changing it.

    Try expanding your imagination a bit - think outside the box - in establishing a good niche for you and then find unique ways to market it.

    Hope this helps.

    Sylvia
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  • Profile picture of the author blur
    Thank you very much for all the replies. I think I need to step away for a bit and think about a strategy for things...
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  • Profile picture of the author matt5409
    @Blur - two things instantly spring to mind - adsense and affiliate marketing.

    set up another blog but this time write about Drupal. In my 5 years as a professional web designer (2 being self employed) I have encountered few people with knowledge of Drupal so a good resource could become very valuable. simply write tips and tutorials - you must learn new things on a weekly basis - imagine how you can put up short posts to pass on this knowledge.

    secondly - the DJ stuff - capitalise on it!! create a couple of microsites promoting amazon DJ equipment and then write articles about it as well. post articles to ezinearticles.com and goarticles.com. 1 a day for a month should see you right. to bolster these blogs put adsense on them.

    i have already built up a passive, yet admittedly small, income from affiliate marketing and i only started in january.
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  • Profile picture of the author Markus Mar
    Hello Blur, PM sent.
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    "Meeting beautiful women is easy IF you know the right way to do it!"

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  • Profile picture of the author Andrea Wilson
    You can mix and match! Seriously I think you already have what it takes to earn online. Right now, you already have the experience and maybe with a bit of capital you can afford to outsource.

    This thread: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...e-100-day.html is definitely inspiring. you may want to push on your idea to put up a few dozen adsense sites this time.


    Andrea
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