How i wasted 3 years making absolutely no money

One free way of generating traffic is by using Forum Marketing.

Put aside at least 30 - 60 min a day to reply mindful, valuable, and solution providing comments on threads.

Make sure that you reply to threads where you know answers.

Sounds like we've gone down a similar route with learning IM and various other things.

You sound like you've learnt a hell of a lot, and that's only going to help you in the future, stick to your strengths.

In terms of free traffic .. I've had some luck with that.

I started a blog last year, nothing too serious and I didn't try that hard .. I didn't put too much effort into link building or creating content straight away.

I gradually built it up adding more content and taking more care with link building .. and the important fact here is I didn't go over board ..

I optimised the on page content, then bookmarked all my articles, and did a lot of blog commenting on sites using KeywordLuv & Comment Luv plugins (make sure if you're using feedburner you untick the link tracking otherwise it will hijack your links).

Also sites with the top commentors widget will be a god send, some of my best back links have come from these. - And just comment on sites on a regular basis.

I did get a few blog roll links and experimented with link wheels.

And now I'm on the first page for some competitive terms in my niche and for some of the less competitive terms I've found that I can publish some articles and rank on the first page within 12-24 hours, or in the top 3.

The best part really is that it's still a really small site and I'm doing quite well against huge sites that have been around for a long time.

It's all about getting the most access points to your site as possible.

Other than organic search I've gotten a lot of my traffic from stumble upon, although the bounce rate is sometimes higher than I'd like, but it's free traffic.

The other thing that has been helpful has community sites in my niche where others go to find articles or information on the topic.

There are also some niche bookmarking sites that are popping up now that can be quite good for traffic.

You must be a nice copywriter. I like the first sentence of your post.

There are tons of free traffic generation methods that can get you leads and traffic. You can do article marketing, blogging, video marketing, and forum marketing. These are some of my favorite. You should learn how to make money with NOTHING... in particular starting off with a Blogger blog and making money with it with Adsense and Clickbank/Amazon.

Join a forum in the niche of your choosing (besides the WF!) give great content on there and eventually put a coll sig with your hoplink in there. (not here)

Network with others on Youtube and as you make a few connections, offer to place a link on relevant channels/ videos. Also comment on videos to get people back to your channel where you have some links.

Then comment on blogs related to your niche. Leave witty, useful, or controversial comments with your links in the appropriate form, and that will do it.

Then there's FB, join some groups and again, network with people Free traffic takes time to garner. Be creative and think about places you can get your link into without seeming to be a spammer. Above all, be genuine.

Keep making excuses or start making money...your choice..

You have the time, watch less TV, you can easily find 2 hours a day to code that plug in. 7PM-9PM is perfect, I'd spend 4 hours every day on writing and link building every day in the past.

Niche sites can rank faster if you do great keyword research and even if it ranks only in 4 months it's still good, doesn't require gazillion of time to manage too.

Looks to me like you aren't really hungry...

Thank you Jeremiah, inspiration to me.

Solid FREE traffic.. sounds like a oxymoron.. To me, there's no such thing as a solid traffic, you either pay for them, or sacrifice your time building them..

Go start a blog and set it as your CPA landing page.. Start writing blog posts and post it on that blog on a consistent basis.

Facebook, craiglist can be a solid "free" traffic.. The question and problem is, are you a solid marketer? If not, then instead of posting thread asking for advise (which you won't appreciate anywhere), go take action, experience will tell you which is solid FREE traffic.

Jeremiah

P.S. RAWR!

Hi I have been in the same boat as you...and someone turned me on to pinterest....its free traffic fun and a womens website thats growing extremly fast! I use Google Adsense cpa and Amazon...I started by buying Pinterest WSO from this site and have been doing great since...do the research on Pinterest if you want to start making money easy...good luck.

*clears throat*

Yes, and YES!!!

Just start with the thing... you don't need traffic for WSO from outside WF. You will get views. Give away 5 review copies to experienced members or even a 7 day trial.

Also guest post on blogs that write about similar topic, if the readers can benefit from the plug in they will buy it and blog owner will like your offer too. Example would be having a security WP plug in sold on a blog about niche sites where someone teaches people how to make those sites...

Stop with excuses...

HI, I read your posts with interest. Thanks for writing. Two quick comments: The sheer power of Ebay to drive traffic - even if just from the free classifieds- never ceases to amaze me; and two I usually buy products from the banner signature of posters.
If you have something to sell you will get sales if you consistently post your offers in your posting signature.
Keep on going, you will succeed, just don't ignore the little things to generate business.

No wonder you've wasted 3 years.

More excuses huh? You know WSO sales so well you see the future? I'd say you should go into betting business with that talent man...

If you create plug in that isn't freely available and has it's niche you will sell well. Build a brand, guest post forums and make your name there and you will sell. Opportunities are good gotta start doing something instead of looking for reasons why you might fail...

If you provide good value you will be fine. That's why I think having your own plug in (or product) is best. I do build AdSense websites but it's a Plan B for me as I'm gonna be providing web design/SEO services to have more tangible business. Still, niche sites are great for starting and getting income and I like doing them.

With your skills you could build websites for local businesses.

You could put up a site for a lawn service or car detailer or pool repair business. Then do a search and find who doesn't have a website.

Call the guy up and tell him it's his for $200. Tell him if he doesn't want it you'll sell it to his competition.


Sell 5 and you'll have your $1000.

I sounds like you've spent a lot of time reading about all of these skills and methods but if you haven't done them successfully - gotten good search results, built a good list, made any money... than I don't really think you do know them all that well. Go back and stick to one of them and do it tell you do make something.

If you want $1000 go talk to small local businesses. Build them a website or do some site updates. Do some SEO. Write articles for blogs that pay. You can raise that cash in a week if you actually try.

You want a 1000 visitors. It only takes one good guest post, article syndication or submission to reddit/stumble upon.

You just need to stop reading these board/making excuses and get to work.

spend money on charity..

and feel what the result

it is not logic but many people believe

I think your priorities may be wrong. You should try establishing your brand first if you want to sell WSO's.

You didn't ask me. Add an "imon" to my username and stick an @gmail.com on the end and send me an email.

I'm not a millionaire but I do make a full time living working from home and have for the past 4 years. I'll tell you exactly how I did it:

1. While working a crappy 9-5 job and waking up every morning to hate my day I decided it wasn't for me and started looking for alternatives. Stumbled across Rich dad poor dad and 4 hour work week and those two books changed my life (only mentally at that point).

2. I was shopping for a software product online in a very small but lucrative niche (not sure if I even knew what niche meant at that point). Couldn't find one that met my needs at an affordable price so I decided to try to create a product.

3. While making $12/hr I saved for several months until I had $800 to hire a programmer from elance.

4. I worked my ass off for a few months to write every feature out, actions, functions of how it should look and work and then hired a programmer to write the code.

5. About 4 months later I had a product. I couldn't afford a website so I listed it on ebay and sold 2 copies on ebay to make my first $400.

6. I used my $400 to hire another programmer to make a website for me. And the next month I sold 2 on ebay and 1 on my new website for a total of $600 which I then used to hire someone for SEO. I can still remember my first elance job listing for an SEO expert. It went something like this:

"Looking for SEO professional. Need my site to be on the #1 spot on google for all my keywords. Budget $300 fixed price." :rolleyes:

7. My rankings went up and each month after that the sales from the site kept growing. I reinvested most the money into professional organizations related to my niche (usually $300-$600 a year). This gave me more link juice and also direct buyers from these organizations.

8. Reinvested money into adding new features and raised the software price from $199 to $299 with hardly any drop in sales. After I build a client list of over 500 software users I then started offering niche websites to my list at $200 setup and $29/month to build a recurring income...

That's pretty much my business life story. I'm now starting a local internet marketing company to focus on more recurring income and take a little break from the software world. If you think building websites and SEO is hard wait till you single handedly run a software business. If my hair was blacker it'd be gray by now.

That being said here are a few tips:

1. As many have said you have to take action. Spend time learning something from a reputable source and then ACT. Instead of moving on and learning something else you first need to get your hands dirty with your first project.

2. Get organized and come up with a system that is ACTION BASED. You need short/long term goals and a way to get ideas off your crazy mind and onto a system so you can FOCUS on the task at hand. GTD (getting things done) system is awesome.

3. Make friends with someone locally who does internet marketing. You can trade ideas and feed off of each others knowledge and success.

4. Read positive thinking books and have the I can mindset. Stop coming up with excuses. I hate the word CAN'T and try to eliminate it from my thoughts and vocabulary completely. When I have kids someday it will be banned from my household. I know this is hard at first but once you make your first $ it will give you the confidence and build the "I will be rich someday" mindset which is what will cause you to become successful.

Best luck moving forward.

Thanks Happyluke,

I would be very interested in your offer "I'd mentor you by having you do the work I need done" Can you please give me more info about what I/we will be doing.

Regards, John.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ADMISSION.

There is some really bad info floating around that all you have to do is launch a WSO and all your troubles will vanish.

That area is not guaranteed cash. You actually need a solid product and you actually have to know something about how to market.

You do. You mentioned them in your first post or somewhere and then said it was unrewarding for the effort.

You didn't even put the effort in, so you don't know how well those free traffic methods really do work.

Hopefully so

I agree completely. That is why one of your skills should be to learn how to post a great job listing, weed out bad applicants, conduct interviews properly, and find VA's that can handle all this for you.

What all have you been pursuing?