[GOAL]New college IM'er aspiring to make extra money for Christmas Gifts =)

Hey Warriors,

Another post from me =). I've come to decide that I give a lot of credit to the people in the WSO section, but from browsing the Main Discussion forums, I can see that there is an absolute surplus of experienced help.

Last week was a pretty paramount week. I finally picked something I wanted to do. I made a blog, used it to get approved for an adsense account, and bought a couple of domains to use for redirects to some clickbank offers using some offline marketing techniques. I also tried some adsense facebook marketing.

The only money I have made so far is I got about 3 clicks my first day of launching my College Cooking blog. So, it was a grand total of $3. Not horrible; but I'm kind of at a stand still. I have a lot of ideas out, and I'm intent on figuring out which way to go.

The traffic I have been getting to my College Cooking website has mostly been from my facebook and college friends. I have been getting some great support, from people I barely even talk to. I also have had people want to guest post some of their recipes and whatnot. However, none of them seem to be clicking any adsense links, which I guess is okay. I'm just happy the idea I thought of is getting some praise.

The other two marketing concepts I came up with were one from a WSO I got, and it didn't get me many ad clicks, and not much traffic. These were making blogs and promoting them via facebook groups, etc. I had yet to get any clicks from either of those. I also tried promoting for a few days. Nothing crazy, but just gauging interest.

Finally, I made some domain names, put some redirect links on them, and dropped some flyers around my area. These were for clickbank offers. I only did one round of flyers at a horse betting venue in my area, and didn't get any sales or even one ounce of traffic =/. Then again, I only dropped about 30 flyers. I am thinking that a better way to optimize this is by getting CPA leads instead of ClickBank sales. I feel like lead's are easier to convert. The catch for this one is that I really have not much IM experience, and I am a bit reserved on thinking I'll be getting approved. I do a lot of reading, but it seems that a lot of CPA companies are very picky.

Basically, I have been getting a lot of advice lately, and I'm not sure where to take it. I've also been getting some unrealistic advice which is nice, but surely is not worth the work because I know it won't happen. For instance, until I get a top ranking in google from my Cooking blog, I am almost positive not one of my friends on my list would buy a clickbank or amazon cookbook. My friends are just not like that. Theyre in college, most of them don't have money, and most of them probably would just look for free recipes than pay for them.

I want to utilize internet marketing. I really do. I quit my intense gaming habits, and I'm trying to displace my addiction for gaming into something a lot more useful and productive. Such as this.

Appreciating any and all advice,

-Matthew, College Guru