I've hit a wall

Keep on keeping on! Without bumps the road would get pretty boring.

I think it's time to take a step back and assess what you're doing and what niche you're in. You can't help that Amazon and your state are disagreeing, but you likely have an idea why Google pulled your Adsense. How much work are you putting into your website to drive traffic? Are you still in a competitive niche? There's more to the story...

Put your time into creating products in whatever niche you are in.

If you put your destiny entirely into the hands of third parties (Google, Amazon) etc, then you do not have control over your business (as you have discovered).

Create products, sell them, build a buyers list and be sure to engage with them in more than one medium. That is where you should focus your attention, in my opinion.

create a real business next time. Not one that relies on some big corporation. Deadly mistake.

REBUILD.

I feel like this is extremely relevant for you.

What is a Warrior?
What is a Warrior? on Vimeo

Hi,

Once you know how to build a HIGHLY RESPONSIVE email list
of subscribers, you'll never really ever need to rely on Google and Amazon alone.

Sounds like you've put a lot of work into this side of your business.

So I would recommend you go into looking at building a list so that you
don't need to rely on so many other things to staying afloat at least.

Once you've mastered the list building side of things you can then branch out
into other areas like:

Creating plugins, software, mentoring programs, recurring paying membership
sites and so on and so forth.

Once you own a highly responsive list your TO DO list will be dramatically
decreased allowing you more time and freedom to focus on just methods
that bring in the income.

Hope you turn this around I think you'll take action anyway I have
a good feeling about that.

All the best with your future efforts.

That is a big wall to hit. Now it's time to re-evaluate your condition and plan.
If you are really desperate now, then provide some service for short term.

Sorry to hear that... you MUST REMAIN STRONG

If you can, create your OWN PRODUCTS, accept payments on your servers and TRY NOT DEPEND ON ANY THIRD PARTY SITES. You lose "leverage" immediately when you have NO FULL CONTROL of your business.

Good luck sir.

Hi,

You mentioned your website traffic is more or less dead. Maybe you can expand on that, if you want, and get constructive ideas to fix the traffic problem.

Have you tried multiple traffic generation methods? What have you been doing for traffic up until this point?

As someone mentioned, are you in a market/niche that will support list building?

You can save time by examining the assets you currently have and think how you can do something different to breathe life back into them.

Well, I am from Bangladesh and I have found myself within a such limitation that I even can not get a paypal account or any major or famous payment processor in my country. Even I can not have a affiliate for my products. It seems there is not aviable option for me. But I did not give up. I just keep working for me. I have my website and got a third party payment processor to collect payment.

Without much SEO I am getting visitors and getting sells. But it took me 3 years. I think you should keep working. There is no way other than keep working and eventually you will get result.

Hey man I definitely feel ya. My amazon account was closed due to my state as well and I was making 85% of my money from them!!!

So needless to say I went into desperate mode to figure out what the hell I was going to do. I sat down long and hard and thought about my next venture ... something that wont just disappear on me. PM and Ill be happy to share my thoughts

As many have said, relying on Amazon or Google is definitely NOT the way to go. Instead, look at creating a Sales funnel and start building a list! Building a highly, responsive list is the only way to go.

Good luck!

If life or IM was easy, everyone would pack up their things at work and do it.

These are just small baby bumps that will occur. I like to think of it as the universe telling you that you are meant to do something totally different now and all your small successes was just training.

Now just work out what you want to do, i suggest research and work your ass off, and you will be able to acheive anything. I am sure the warrior forum is a good start. But all you really need to do is find a need and fill it. Easier said than done, but I am sure you will work out something.

randychinn, above me has the best advice i seen all day. Once I started building a list of freebies and buyers, and offered them great content and products, I was able to quit my job a few months later.

Focus on an asset, and that is having a list in a hungry niche.

Well products are never an issue. You can create your own or promote one from a particular affiliate program/affiliate program marketplace. This can replace Amazon and Adsense. If i were you, i would focus on driving loads of targeted traffic to your site everyday. Find a good niche, do lots of paid advertising, build a list, have them subscribe to your email newsletter, and continue marketing to them every week.

All great advice! Thank you everyone!

Lessons Learned:
Keep my mind open for opportunities
Keep pluggin' away
Do not be too dependent on third parties, if at all possible.
Create product or service of my own.
Build a dedicated email list and stay in touch with them. Could be a great source of income.


To answer some peoples' questions; I did own and operate an ecommerce site selling triathlon training gear. It was a side business (on top of my full time job), that took a huge hit when the economy tanked in 2007. I suffered a lot during and after that period, but I also learned a huge amount throughout it all, including my own limitations. Quite an experience!

Amazon affiliates were/are affected by sales-tax states that have passed laws that Amazon doesn't like. 45 states in total. We in the 45 states are waiting for the Marketplace Fairness Act to either be passed or not. Amazon is for the bill being passed. The remaining 5 states are firmly against it.

I'm not sure about what happened with Google Adsense for me. I was completely off the internet at the time, before and after, as I was out of commission with health issues. This is why I've been out of this for the past 1 1/2 years or so. I still earned money during the past couple years (great news!), and came back a few weeks ago. I think I was click-bombed at some point for Adsense, but who knows? The petition for reinstatement wasn't approved, so onward and upward.

The micro job site fiasco is completely my fault as I hired someone to create graphics for a site I'm building, which my site would be viewed as a competitor of sorts of the micro job site where I hired the graphic artists. It was the best deal I could find, but still a ridiculously foolish risk on my part.

I completely agree with many of the suggestions that being so dependent on third-parties is a bad idea.

Honestly, I have no experience with squeeze pages or newsletters. I've never built a true list. I actually bought an email service, but have not used it yet. I think I need to do this.

After careful consideration of your suggestions and researching/pondering the options, I think I will try to do local consulting work, such as SEO, marketing, possibly web-hosting and development. I'm not a programmer or a graphics guy, so I'd have to hire out for those things. I'll probably also set up a corporation, in order to protect my personal assets, along with being able to do other things which are currently not an option. And build a list.

Great tip Bruce, I'll take a look.

Rick, if a person changed their physical address to a state that is still Amazon-friendly then it would work. Or, they could "sell" the company to a family member in that state and do the work. However, that opens up the family member to tax issues. Moving or waiting seem like the best options.

I used to rely on Google AdSense as an income source. They was a badddd idea!

I think a lot of things happened with you together. It happens especially with Google Adsense. They are banning a lot of accounts. . Best of luck for you.

I suggest build a website and flip it. There are ways to flip websites that are new for some cash, and you can keep doing it till you get bigger in the game.

go to craigslist Under Gigs if you know how to do things (have an ability) you will be hired fast..wow why didnt i think if this myself hahaha

Hitting the wall with everything is odd.

Sounds like something more fundamental is going on under the hood.

Perhaps a day away from the computer to assess things might help.

You have to find new solutions. These Google updates caused a big mess online. Getting traffic became harder than ever.

Learn from your failures or mistakes. Level up your game you may be doing something wrong. Are you building a list?

At times like this I find the words of Bruce Lee hold much comfort: "Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one."

Sorry to hear about your struggles. I would say there are tons of ways to make money online. Find one that has a good reputation and go for it. Also be sure to have more than one stream of income that way if one dries up you are not just dependent on the one. I hope that helps a little. The main thing is find a way. Success is never a straight line.

tritrain....

Sorry about what has happened to you. IM can be very frustrating and as you see, relying on third parties can often lead to heartache.

I don't know if you indicated how much you are into writing but if you are looking to replace some much needed income, you should look into picking up some writing jobs. There are some good WSO's out there that can help guide you with going after the larger jobs. A huge benefit is that you get paid very quickly through writing/ghostwriting. Good Luck!

I always loved the story of how Donald Trump came back from 1 Billion in debt.......at negative 1 billion, with trashed credit and burned out connections, he went out and got it all back and more.

Regardless of what you think about Donald Trump, its a good testament to the idea that it does not matter how hopeless you think a situation is, there is ALWAYS a way out of it.

Read books, seek out mentors, listen to audios, do everything you can to get the information you need by getting around the people that have what you want so that you can learn EXACTLY what it takes and what you need to do.

I can guarantee that there isn't a single person doing internet marketing that has not gone through some type of terribly discouraging situation.

If other people can do it, and are doing it, then there is no reason that you can't either.

You need to get back on the horse, as others have mentioned you should build a list and do not put all your eggs in one basket. A common saying but it definitely holds true. Relying solely on a 3rd party probably isn't the best way to go.

You need a viable BUSINESS MODEL. Leaving every aspect of your business in the hands of third parties (Amazon, Google, etc) will from time to time leave you hanging by a thread and its not a good position to be in business-wise.

You now have experience, use it to build a real business based around real products (better yours) that you market to your list. Everything else you do online like driving traffic should be to support this single goal of building a real business.

Start a forum? Try a new niche altogether?

More than that, new business ideas take TIME. I had my first brilliant online money making idea in 2001. Then the next one didn't come along until 2010.

This year is not really prosperous year for me too :<

been offering service for 5 years, and doing pretty good in the first 4 year, but this year seem not pretty good... i guess competition is becoming harsh this year...lol...

what i do to get around the wall...?
do whatever i can other than stressing and thinking about those problems...

learn new thing, and offered new service...
try a new things (list building) and take action :>

and lastly... pray for the strength to endure a difficult time...

The night is darkest just before the dawn? i guess? :>

1) Build a List
2) Build a relationship with your list
2) Backup your list
3) Keep building your list
4) Backup your list(s)
5) Promote products and services your list will benefit from.
6) Build your list
7) Create products and/or services.
8) Backup your list.

You get the idea.

Something you always have to bear in mind is that if you are relying on a 3rd party platform you need to factor in contingency plans as much as possible.

How do you do that? You do it by leveraging that platform so that you also build assets at the same time that you DO control.

Otherwise you don't actually have a business, you have a cashflow (until it stops).

Think about all the skills you already have (a ton). Now think about all the people out there with tons of cash and running successful businesses but don't have close to the amount of knowledge you do. It's all about high ticket!

SO WHAT... That's what you need to say. So what Amazon did this... So what Google did that... Say so what and move on. Rebuild and do what ever it takes to make it because no one but you determines your future. Refocus and set a new clear intention for the changes you are going to make to hit your new goal, Be specific, be clear and get to work.

You weren't running organic traffic to your adsense account where you? Doesn't matter! You want to create yourself a squeeze page. This could be around anything. An affiliate product, your own product, some sort of business. You can do this by giving away a video or some content. Some really good stuff to help engage your reader. Then without giving away to much gold you then can create a one time offer or a full version or their free download for a set price. This will give you money up front but the real power is in buildig that email list.

As far as traffic Id personaly go with solo ads. Its fast and easy!

Another way and lately I have been running better numbers and that is with facebook ads. Learn about facebook ads and then start doing it and learn to send traffic to a squeeze page and get a 40 to 55% conversion rate and learn to keep your cost per click under 20 cents. So for 20 bucks you can drive over 100 visitors and with a 40% conversion rate you looking at around 42 leads for your business.

once you learn to do that and do it all the time you can approach local businesses in your area and offer your marketing solutions for them. With facebook I can target people by zip code, a page or group. For example I can advertise one pizza joint on the competitions page. Very, very powerful. You can offer a one time setup fee and then a monthly cost for your services plus they are responsible for their own advertising budget.

Yes, internet marketing is changing every day, especially nowadays. But keep trying.

You know if you hit a wall, you have to find a way of going over, under or around it. Life is full of challenges and the important thing is not to quit. Try to take a short time out to recharge your batteries but KEEP GOING.