My Jouney Toward $5k a month

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I've decided to contribute to the community a little more and I figured I would start a thread here on my daily activities toward reaching this goal. I'll briefly cover my history.

I'm a full time entrepreneur and professional Programmer. I'm not trying to sell myself, but I can program anything you can imagine, from apps for iPhone/Android to PHP/MySQL based web apps to 3D Games, but I've learned recently that this is actually a weakness. It doesn't matter how great your skills are if you are not solving someone's problem. Also getting over my own ego and 'have to do it myself' attitude was an important step I think in the right direction.

Therefore I figured I would post my daily goals here with detailed reasoning why and my results, and I look forward to any feedback (positive or negative).

My Goals: To create a passive business (one in which I just have to water it once in a while) that generates $5,000k/month. That is $166/day I need to earn. I think this could be possible with the right advertising.

To start: My current philosophy is to learn from those that have already been successful. So I created a Meetup Group in southern california based on the Millionaire Fastlane Book by M.J De Marco (which is another story, but I feel a very motivational book that opened my eyes a bit).

I got lucky and met a multi-millionaire there called John-Chow on the opening day who made his millions (40,000+ a month) teaching other people how to get rich and still is from being an affiliate and selling products on clickbank. He taught me a lot of useful information and "secret sauce" apparently involving the manipulation of gravity score which a lot of affiliates use to base there decisions. His advice was "Get rid of your clients".

So I did. I thought about it and it doesn't make sense to have clients, they will take up your time and you will only earn as much money as you put time into it. On a graph it would be a straight line correlation between time & money or linear.

To the fast-lane business owner time is your most valuable asset. Your business can not move forward if your time is being used, that is the reason they frown upon jobs for themselves like the plague (and I do too!). Some people like to say they have there own business when they are running around finding clients for themselves like a fitness trainer. In reality, you are just creating your own job because your time is involved, there is no way you will make money unless you go out there and train the person. The real business owner back in the day would (if there was a need), advertise for people looking for fitness trainers, hire fitness trainers and a manger, teach the manager what to do and sit back and make the money difference.

The problem with that method is it takes a long time to scale. You can only expand as fast as you can train managers and target new locations.

Therefore, the new way of thinking is to use the Internet. With the internet you can scale your products/services to the entire globe. I think the new approach would be:

1.) Identify there is a market for people looking for fitness trainers online.
2.) If there is, interview these people and see what all these people have in common. Gender, Sex, Race, Time-Of-Day Interested, Interests, etc.
3.) Find a statistically significant amount of people (I think 20) from this niche of people and find out what they would pay for.
4.) If for example, they would pay for a personal trainer because they need help staying motivated then, you start proposing some ideas to solve there problems.
5.) I might suggest, if I had a website where you can see different personal trainers around the globe and could hire them would you do it?
6.) If no, why would you not? Lets say it's because they don't know how trust worthy the trainers would be? So you propose a ranking system based on this sales need (Keep in mind a website has NOT been created yet. I refuse to create a website before a market has been proven.)
7.) If they say they will buy now (or say they would use the trainer in anycase) (and 20 of them do), then you can start work on the next phase, which is getting the trainers. Research keywords and ways to attract trainers online (noting the costs to do this if using PPC for example). You could make a simple landing page saying you got customers for the trainers and see how often they call you, and start a conversation with them about what you are trying to do and what they would pay for. The goal here is not to sell them clients yet but to gain valuable information about who they are, interests, concerns, just like the clients. You can even share with them your valuable information about what you learned about how much the average person is willing to pay for fitness training and what they look for and how they feel secure.
8.) Find out how much the trainers are willing to pay for a lead to a 'customer'. Will they buy from your site if you complete it? If so great you have a customer before you even made your site.
9.) I think at this point if all is good, the next step is to work on the proto-type of the site. NOT going feature crazy, just the bare-minimum of what your customers said they need to purchase. A good site design doesn't matter unless they tell you they won't purchase because of it.
8.) Once you finish this, turn back on the same ads you used to attract your client base in the first place and see if your site starts to make money. If you truly did your homework and both parties was serious about paying money to be connected to each other (or lets say the customers were not, but the coaches were), then either way as long as you are making money off one of them you got the start to a promising business.

One thing I did not note that is very important, is the cost to advertise versus the money you take in. If it costs you $100-$200 in costs to attract people looking for trainers and the trainers themselves and the trainers are only willing to pay $50 a lead or worse $25/lead, then the business will fail .

I want to share with you guys a case study from an actual attempted business I had. My video for it is on youtube as paybylead, it's shutdown for now until I figure out a solution if there even is one.

I've recently been studying different niches and came across pool service as an interesting niche that I am thinking of targeting if someone is interested in working with me on that.

In my days doing internet marketing I would always get pool service tech's asking me to do their adwords marketing. I had a good reputation for it because it only took 3-4 clicks to get a customer with the keywords I was targeting. It was like a magic lead generation machine. I also found out that for pool service customers they are willing to pay $300 - 400 a lead if you can guarantee that lead will get them business, or $25 otherwise if it was not guaranteed. They are willing to pay this because they can turn around and sell that route for $1200 to $1500, and pool customers tend to stay customers for life if you do a good job. They make roughly $80/month per customer on average, sometimes $100/month.

I found that on average (assuming the pool service tech answers his phone) that the cost per lead would be $20-$25 before they got a phone call that turned into actual business. I could tell because I had all phone calls go through a tracking number and therefore recorded for studying the marketing (both parties were aware of course).

That said, I identified a need.

1.) People looking for pool service
2.) Pool Service tech's who want customers

My first business was to do just this. Try to sell these leads with the guarantee on it. Surprisingly it did deceptively rather well, I made around $2000 for only spending $300 in adwords cost. Only problem is, I had to pay $1600 for a convention and $3000 for another to find the pool service customers to make that happen and once the pool service tech's got there leads they didn't buy anymore because they became satisfied. I only had '1' of them ask for a refund, so I took a minor $50 loss on that case, but I had accounted that would happen from time to time.

I had also spent a YEAR to develop the complicated software system they would use to buy more leads and get them automatically. It literally was as easy as them buying leads and my advertising would turn off/on based on the calls.

I ran into so many unforeseen issues. For example, the biggest problem being the pool service tech's not picking up their phones. Every-time they missed a phone call I would lose money. Every-time they did not do there business correctly and lost the customers because of the salesmanship I would lose money. Now don't think I was stupid, I was aware of these issues going in, and even with that accounted for I would still make money. The even bigger problem was, how to passively get pool guys to buy leads. It was VERY expensive to get in the 'face' of pool service techs. I have yet to find a way to do this cost effectively. If I can, I can probably start this business again.

The business model was just NOT profitable. I was so discouraged and went into depression for a good 3 months. I thought I for sure had the money making machine by selling leads but I forgot the most critical aspect.

Cost to get my customers versus money I bring in:

My cost to get a pool service customer might be $2000 in convention costs.

Here is the BIO on your typical pool guy based on interviews with literally hundreds of them from conventions and in person/phone.

1.) White or Hispanic
2.) Older with sun-bleached wrinkled skin (from working in the sun all day)
3.) Drives a truck
4.) Very money focused, tend to be greedy.
5.) Very cautious of advertising and scams, paranoid.
6.) Shady personalities on a lot of them
7.) Don't use an iPhone or smart phone, let alone know about a computer.
8.) Very content once they earn a certain amount of money, no ambition.

The market that purchased my product was the 5% that actually knew how to use a computer.

If it cost me $2000 to get a pool service tech, and $20-80 before I get a lead that turns into business for them that sells for $300 or $400, I don't have any profit now do I .

Thus that business collapsed very quickly on it's self.

Rather than deal with all that headache, I'm going to try and take a new approach to this business this time. I'm going to talk to some pool service tech's and see if they would pay for a guide that guaranteed them new customers or there money back and find out what they would pay for this guide. I'm thinking they would easily pay $400 or even $500 for this guide. I will give them step by step how to make their landing page, where to advertise (on craigslist and using adwords), and everything they would need to know.

I have to find out where new pool service tech's go, what websites they frequent (for the few that do), and then run some test ads and get them in contact with me somehow.

If I can learn the sales conversation for the guide with them by talking back and forth by email then I can make the pitch page that follows that sales conversation put a $100 out on the keywords that attracted these people in the first place and hopefully make the difference in profit.

I have a real product that generates real money for these people. I just need help finding a marketing expert to help me get in front of the right audience and see if this thing can sell.

If it does, my next plan is to target clickBank and start getting my gravity score up to attract people to sell this for me so that this eventually becomes completely passive.

I don't mind throwing all this information out there and telling my story because I want to learn from those that have done it and get there input on my strategy. The flaws/problems with it.

I don't claim to know what I'm doing, I just know what not to do so far.

I'll write more tomorrow on the steps I'm taking to do this after I get feedback.
#$5 or k #jouney #month
  • Profile picture of the author x11joex11
    11-4-2012: Did some research on the forum today and discovered about fiverr.com and using flyer people to promote a clickbank product. I'm going to give that a try and report my findings to see if it works.

    I hired a guy for $5 that does radio for sports ads (for my click bank product of choice), and $5 to a person in miami florida to target sports players.

    We'll see if $10 invested = even 1 sale. My reach is 200 people from the flyers and unknown amount from the radio, but I have different tracking ids for them both.

    I'll keep this thread updated.

    I'm also researching into pay per call models since I know I can generate phone calls for business very well.
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  • Profile picture of the author cwill184
    Sounds interesting, looking forward to reading your updates. The only thing I would say is that you state only 5% of your target customer 'the pool guy' knew how to use a computer, I think the guide would be difficult for them to implement. It would take months for them to be able to use a computer to a good enough standard for them to get their adwords functioning correctly, understanding analytics etc. The second problem is that you are adding more competition for them on a daily basis by selling the guide to their competitors, so more people competing for the same keywords etc.

    I think you will be paying a lot back on your guarantee if the pool guy's can't get to grips with learning the technology in order to succesfully implement your guide.

    Just my opinion and hope I am wrong. Good luck.
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    • Profile picture of the author x11joex11
      Originally Posted by cwill184 View Post

      Sounds interesting, looking forward to reading your updates. The only thing I would say is that you state only 5% of your target customer 'the pool guy' knew how to use a computer, I think the guide would be difficult for them to implement. It would take months for them to be able to use a computer to a good enough standard for them to get their adwords functioning correctly, understanding analytics etc. The second problem is that you are adding more competition for them on a daily basis by selling the guide to their competitors, so more people competing for the same keywords etc.

      I think you will be paying a lot back on your guarantee if the pool guy's can't get to grips with learning the technology in order to succesfully implement your guide.

      Just my opinion and hope I am wrong. Good luck.
      You may be right about that.

      As for the flyer thing, I'm not sure yet if it works because I just did it yesterday, it's going to take a week to find out if it works, but in the meantime I'm going to research some paypercall options while I wait to see the results of that.

      Update: 11/4/2012 - I bought the domain name jumpmanual.info, and redirected it to my clickbank hoplink. I have no idea if this will work or what I'm doing really but the flyers I'm trying to target to basketball players and the radio ad is a podcast targeted at people into sports. We'll see if something happens.

      Total cost so far for this experiment:
      $5 - domain name
      $10 - Ads (on Fiver)
      $10 - Flyer Creation Cost on vWorker.

      I'm willing to go up to $50 to see if I can make something happen. Will let you know.
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  • Profile picture of the author teammate
    Any update on earning from your flier project.
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  • Profile picture of the author x11joex11
    UPDATE: 11-08-1984

    Hey guys, it's my birthday today! But anyways, I just wanted to update my thread as to what I'm doing.

    So the radio-gig thing was finished and complete 2 days ago, but unfortunately no sales resulted from that, so $5 probably wasted there, but now I know that doesn't work.

    As for the $5, I found '2' people, one is going to pass flyers around normally to 200 places, the other is going to give 200 flyers directly to the basketball people at their college . So if that doesn't work this probably just 'wont' work or sell, which is fine. It was cheap to find out and I'll consider why it failed or why not and see what opinions you guys have.

    In the meantime, I've been following the Sam Ovens approach to business and having some great success so far. If you are not familiar with it, just Google sam ovens foundation, and look for the video from mixergy.

    Anyways, the idea is that you find a need in a marketplace that people want so badly they are willing to pay before it's even made.

    I've researched domainers problems and have came up with such a solution to their problems that they face on a daily basis and it involves email extraction for domainers and am working on a prototype right now. I already have the word from 6 people, and 2 persons ready to pre-order 3 months in advance at the price of $20/month, and some at $49/month. So I think there is good monthly income potential here and not only that but it's a software tool that I can JV with someone on here in the domain niche and share in the sales . So I'm looking forward to that. I'm getting the program ready to scale and will keep you guys updated. This will be going on for a while I wait for the results from my other tests.

    if anyone has any other cool ideas that they want me to test out to see if they work let me know, I'm willing to post everything in great detail about what I did, just ask if there is something you want to see, I don't care if I get competition, I'm just trying to practice the formula for success that works.

    UPDATE 11-08: Near end of day: I confirmed the flyers have been passed out by one of my flyer people. She says she gave it directly to basketball players, some were skeptical and some seemed interested. So we'll see if anything happens.

    This was the message from my fiverr person.

    Hello
    Not to worry, your flyer was very easy to target. We have a large basketball court park in our neighborhood. (Goulds Park in Goulds, FL). I only distributed your flyer to adults 18+. A few people seemed interested, but there were a lot of people that were skeptical of it. A lot of people told me that if they want to learn new moves they just go onto youtube.
    Anyways, Thank You for ordering, I wish you many membership sign-ups to your website.
    -Nicole
    - Joe
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  • Profile picture of the author x11joex11
    Update: November 10th

    I can say rather definitely unless I'm going to get a late response that I have no clickbank sales as the result of the fiverr flyer test, having tested with '2' different flyer people and trying the radio ad. This doesn't mean this doesn't work, but guess the basketball market is just not a good one. I'm still thinking this might work possibly for a more generic product.

    If anyone has any suggestions for a product they want me to try let me know . It's only $5 to find out if there is something that will convert from the flyer approach.

    In the meantime I'm starting development on a product for the domain industry and will keep the updates here and on namepros in a thread titled 'email extractor'. I interviewed lots of domainers to find a 'need' they had and finally found one in which I could do something to solve it.

    My plan is to eventually see if I can get a JV partner on here with a domainers niche list and see if I can get a lot of attention this way.

    As always, I'll keep this thread updated for those that are interested.
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    • Profile picture of the author jordyhill
      Hi Joe,

      I have promoted different CPA offers with flyer distributors from Fiverr and have made decent profits.

      The best converting for me were survey sign ups. Anything in the health and fitness niche that has a free trial has also done well:p

      Best of luck, I'll be following your progress!

      Jordy
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  • Profile picture of the author Elegantthemes
    Interesting, please keep us posted. Thanks!
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  • Profile picture of the author cloudstrife
    I have used fliers to promote CPA offers, not Clickbank. This has worked quite well for me. Though I have never considered promoting Clickbank offers on it.

    Either way, I will be reading this to see your progress. Good luck and all the best!
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  • Profile picture of the author JamesColin
    Banned
    If the flyer lady told you that several mentionned youtube, you could add the youtube logo on your flyer and have a video on your pre-sell page (assuming your domain doesn't go directly to the clickbank sale page)

    From my little experience (only started really in september) I've seen that going after everything and anything is not working for me because my time is limited and so is my focus. So if for instance I see learn to jump higher is not working quickly then I turn to another product, etc.. This can't work long term and I'm wasting time in the hope that I find something that works quickly so I can put all my focus on it.
    Rather than doing that, you could do like me and refocus on what you like the most, or dislike the least and then be prepared to focus on it (one topic or at maximum 2-3 topics) for months in the future, no matter if it doesn't work in the first months.
    For this you need to think simple and identify markets where you know there is business going on, several offers, people buying, etc.
    Then focus on that and build something for the long term.
    For instance your domain name instead of redirecting it to a clickbank offer immediatly, have simply a pre-sell page or squeeze page where you collect the email address of the person in order to get to the affiliate product you want to advertise. If you're using aweber, you install a form to collect the email and in the "confirmation" url you put your affiliate product link.

    That way, even if you don't make a sale, you can still contact those people with other offers (with a preset email sequence), or just let your list grow until you have developped your own site/product in your chosen niche.

    From my small thinking I've limited myself to 3 main areas that would concern most people, and I choose my topic only in those 3 areas, they are:
    money (earn more, save more)
    health (improve it)
    relationship (fix problems)

    But everything inside it can be turned into topics that one doesn't associate immediatly with it, for instance about the money, it is not only about make money schemes or investing or frugal living to save money, you can combine two things. If you take this forum audience they are all webmasters/bloggers and we know that very often more traffic = more money, so you can offer things about generating more traffic to their website/blog, or in the case of vendors things about better conversions of visitors into buyers and buyers into repeat-buyers. So you're selling/talking about traffic and conversions, but it is still in the money area out of the 3 I mentionned.

    Also, since you are technically minded, you should think about membership sites, about making one or two. And sell memberships to your visitors so they can access information or products from within the restricted area. There is a full thread about it on warrior forum. I tell you to consider that because it is easier to collect emails and make sales when you're providing a site with several levels of memberships, the first one being free (only email required) and other levels paid (small fee, like $5 a month) and another of high quality if you have reach that stage (still keep it low, $20 a month)

    If you have those tools then you have people that you can reach to promote affiliates products too. But to do this as you can understand it is important to limit yourself to a few choices where you can focus all your time and efforts, you can't do such work if you're still trying out many things to see what works quickly.
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  • Profile picture of the author x11joex11
    How do I know what is selling well? What alternatives to clickbank are there? As for CPA offers where do I find those? Also I'm a newbie so what does CPA mean?

    update:nov.11th I will be looking into CPA (studying what it is), maybe this might work. Still finishing up my prototype for that domain app as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author JamesColin
    Banned
    It's quite easy in fact, if you see a market where there are a lot of products it's not just because vendors didn't know what else to do.. It's because people are buying.
    Also you can use ebay, amazon and other big marketplace and find their best sellers listings. For instance in books on amazon, browse their top sellers and write down, find patterns in title/topics.
    Same with google search, when you search for something you are investigating from the top sellers listing, take notice of the number of ads being displayed, refresh the page, go to page 2 and 3, if you see they change a lot it means there are a lot of advertisers. You can use the adwords keyword tools too to look at the competition between advertisers. It's the same story, if they compete it's because there is money to be made, there's an active buyer market.
    CPA is cost per action.. Sometimes action can be filling a sign up form (so the vendor can collect leads), or doing any action, so you want to send traffic and have the visitors take that action, but often an action can be to buy, so it's the same as having the visitors buy a product and earning a commission on that sales. Except actions such as filling a form can be easier to make the visitor do since it doesn't involve money and often they are prompted to take this action in exchange for a chance to earn a prize or any other marketing trick.
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  • Profile picture of the author x11joex11
    UPDATE: Nov.12th - I signed up for PeerFly and ComissionJunction today to check out what offers they have avaialble. CommissionJunction had pay per call, but after I looked into it I concluded that the services on there would be extremely hard to generate phone calls for in a profitable manner. Mainly because they pay to low per call, and the cost to generate traffic with adwords would be about the same, not to mention they have strict rules on the pay per call, where it has to over a certain amount of minutes or certain words said. It starts to become really unruly after a while. I know because I tried to make my own company around it . There was also only 66 people to choose from...

    That said... I'm still working on that domain idea concept, which seems to be gaining a lot of traction over at namepros for what it is. I have a lot of buyers lined up for my email extractor concept. So I will be focusing on that this week.
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  • Profile picture of the author x11joex11
    My second flyer person just reported in:

    I just finished handing out the rest of them this night I hope this inspires some people to visit your website and buy your product! Some people sounded interested when I presented it to them! I was also planing on hanging a few inside the gym to get some extra traffic, let me know if this gig helps your business!
    I'll see if I get anything as a result of this, doubtful though since the other when didn't have any results, but maybe she did better on this one.

    Also on a side note I got the first part of my domain program hashed out with a flowchart I'll upload it now for feedback. Remember though this is targeted at domain niche from a direct need they are asking for, so I understand if you are not quite sure what it's doing.
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  • Profile picture of the author x11joex11
    Here is the uploaded file in zip.
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  • Profile picture of the author williambrukowlski
    Wow, 5k a month is a long and challenging journey.
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  • Profile picture of the author x11joex11
    Yup that it is, that is why I'm working on it every day. First I got to make $50/day, that would be a good start .
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  • Profile picture of the author therenegadeleader
    I'll be looking forward for updates on what you do.
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  • Profile picture of the author x11joex11
    UPDATE: NOV. 15th

    Sorry took so long to update. Lots of stuff been happening. As you know, I created my own meetup group to try and learn more about internet marketing & business in general and how to be successful. Not sure why, but I was able to get one-on-one time with John Chow who taught me a lot about what it takes to be successful. I have a long road ahead of me for sure. There is so many paths for me to take right now that it's hard to select the right one.

    On one angle, I have my domain email extractor software, which I have 7 people ready to pre-order once I have a basic prototype (which shows demand, and I could make monthly income from that), as well as a service I could market to a list of people interested in domains. I could give a free guide on how to make money selling domains and let them know about my tool and it helps. I can get testimonials as necessary easily enough to help.

    On the other hand, after talking with John Chow I see the power of a product (especially informational products). If I make a guide for example that teaches you how to 'program', and I make a website blog where I encourage people to subscribe to receive their free e-book guide teaching them the process to start up a website and do the programming. It could be good. I could then advise you need to get hosting and get referrals from host gator for example. I just need to be honest with them and let them know that is what I'm doing, but that my coupon saves them 20% on it so it would be a good deal. I think trust and honesty with your subscribers is key. Then I just have to create a system to constantly bring in subscribers.

    Both of these options are very interesting, I'm stuck between what to do.

    Also I want to note the 2nd batch of flyers did not result in any sales, so FIVERR at least for the basketball product does not work. I may still test it with other products but I should not expect much for $5 (this seems to be the trending information I'm getting on the forum).

    I will keep this updated with my progress and probably create a blog for those that want to follow my progress.
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  • Profile picture of the author esuresh
    I have book marked this tread. You definitely can reach much more than your goal as you are a programmer.
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  • Profile picture of the author mhanys
    my friend is a programmer and also IMarketer. He make a very special software to drive traffic to website, seriously I make some good money every month by just set n forget the software. If you can do something similar like this, it should be gold mine for you :-)
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  • Profile picture of the author x11joex11
    UPDATE: NOV.16th

    Hey guys PeerFly just accepted me into their network! This is great . I'm going to look around see what offers there are that I can look into selling. I will update here what I plan to do after looking around.

    My domain extractor program is going to be put on hold for a week while I figure out the limitations with Google Custom Search API. It appears they limit you to 100 queries a day and $5 per 1000, and the most I can search is 10 results per quiery, so that means basically, 1000 results a day for free, and 10,000 results for $5. This could get costly for my users and me, but I'll see if they are okay paying the price for this. Otherwise i'd have to use blackhat methods which I'd rather avoid but Google might be tying my hands in that regard.

    In anycase, I'll be focusing on PeerFly stuff for this week and see if I can't create a plan for selling a product I find.
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  • Profile picture of the author AlmightyGreg
    I really like this thread. Keep up the good work, you have the right hustle. Keep going.
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  • Profile picture of the author x11joex11
    UPDATE: NOV. 23rd

    Alright, so here is the deal. I've been a bit busy because of thanksgiving, but I've ran into some issues with my email extractor program. Mainly Google putting a limit on search results which will involve creating a complicated cue system. I'm got to finish my diagram of how this tool will work and then get on it as soon as possible.

    EDIT: I just made a deal with another coder who is willing to work on this with me together, so this thing may yet be alive. He has more experience in the Google part of it than even I do.

    I also have another project with my dad involving a complex medical software program. I can't go into too many details about it because he doesn't want me talking about it, but I stand to make $100,000+ (for my share) off of this once it's complete and it will take me 4 months! Best part is he already has a 100 customers, and those customers will pay $30,000 for a copy of this software. So yes that is 3 million, but I'll get a large sum of money right away to play with for this stuff.

    Medical software really does sell for a lot! It's getting me thinking if there is room for medical software programs out there. Maybe I could partner with a doctor somewhere and find a software need that would help them. Medical software is some of the hardest in the world to program but very profitable. It targets magnitude instead of scale, which is easier if you have good connections to your niche.

    I'm still playing around with peerFly, but I have no idea how I can make money with some of the offers I see on there. It may be CPA, cost per action, but the pay out's are too low and I'm not sure how I can derive cheap traffic to it yet. If anyone has any cheap traffic sources that are at least somewhat targeted let me know.
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  • Profile picture of the author rehtheis
    Ummm. Interesting. I'm following, too,x11joex11
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    • Profile picture of the author webcashuk
      This is a great thread as not only is it inspiring to other members but it also keeps you held to account and moving forward.Well done , keep up the good work and the updates


      Regards


      Peter
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  • Profile picture of the author x11joex11
    UPDATE: December 7th

    Hey guys, sorry I have not updated in a while been busy programming .

    I'm still helping my dad convert his medical software app, but in the meantime I have another project that I plan to launch soon as well.

    Well here is my current plan. I've made a partnership (of sorts) with someone who had a previous list in the Guest Blogging Services.

    Guest blogging is where you go find a blog in a niche with high page rank and try to convince the owner to let you write an article for their blog. The reason you want to do this is so that you can get a link with high PR back to your website or blog and get traffic as well.

    Apparently this really works, as it's done as a service currently by some people. I could easily make a software program to help with this, and since my partner has a list of previous clients already, it's a good place to start.

    The software would scrape around google getting emails from blog owners and send them an email asking if they would allow the user to write an article for them for free. I then automate which contacts responded so that the guest blogger knows what the details for the article writing are. For example, it may have to meet certain quality criteria guidelines.

    Blog owners are okay with this because it's free content for their next blog post saving them time/money.

    While working on this I realized this program would not work without proxies. A huge list of proxies, so I was forced to make another program as a partner program to this one.

    I call it ProxyChecker. This tool will allow you to add proxy websites where proxies are listed or add your own list, and it will automatically check the proxy list according to your criteria. For example if the criteria is that the proxy was not banned by Google, you can customize it to tell you that. I already have the program complete, just adding some final touches.

    I plan to earn money in the following way.

    1.) Offering discount codes to proxy websites where you can buy proxies and save time
    2.) Offer proxies for free to users in return for filling out surveys CPAlead.com

    I believe a lot of people will choose between those options, especially #2 to save time. If you can fill out some surveys (where you don't buy anything, just watch an ad, I get $0.50 each time. So if the proxies cost me $2 to purchase, you might have to watch 6-7 ads, but you just got a free quality proxy to work with.

    I figured since I had to make this program anyways to insure quality proxies for the users, might as well give it away for free with the potential to make money.

    I can also use this program for my other tool for the domain owners that need to find prospects to sell there domain names.

    This is where I'm currently at. I'll keep this updated and of course give a download link to my proxy program. If you want to BETA test it with me just message me and I'll send a copy your way. I really need feedback on it.

    Thanks!
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  • Profile picture of the author x11joex11
    Update: DECEMBER, 29th

    Alright, guys it's the new years. I'll admit I've been very busy with Christmas related duties. I've learned A LOT in these past 2 weeks.

    I am continuing to work for my dad on his programming tasks. In the meantime I have some time still to experiment with some new concepts I've learned. I've read the book the 'Lean Startup' and really got me thinking about doing business in a calculated way and based on the customer.

    My goal is to target an advertising source where I can get in contact with 20 people, ideally under $100 is my goal. I don't really care what it is, but I prefer something that has a possible chance of software helping them, since that is my specialty.

    My goal is to find a need in some niche that a website or software program would fix it if it existed. I'm aware of a need in the domain industry, but I don't think it's feasible to solve their particular issue with email harvesting, not to mention it's frowned upon, so not sure what to do about that just yet, but they appear to be willing to pay.

    I'm a bit lost at the moment as to what niche to target in this regard and how to go about it.

    I'm looking up keywords on Google Adwords and using the Trend tool to try and get an idea of a potential need out there.

    I'm not sure if I want to target Consumer-> based on sex, age, & interests, or target business to business. Consumer will be more affordable I think to advertise to, like on facebook, but will probably pay lower amounts for something that solves an issue.

    I'll let you know what niches I think would be good to investigate.

    I'm keeping in my mind at all times the cost of advertising versus the dollars returned and what would be the most likely to pay off.

    I'm thinking of targeting smaller niches but selling products that sell based on magnitude, (like what I'm doing with my dad). Once I have more money to work with I can afford to do experiments on the more general populace.

    Will keep everyone updated.
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  • Profile picture of the author x11joex11
    UPDATE: January 18th

    This is a brief update since I'll be out of town for 3 days, here is the results of a recent marketing test I did.

    Post edited by moderator: Follow me threads are not allowed, nor is bumping your old threads to give them new traction.
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