The $300 in 24 hour Challenge

I haven't been lurking online much lately because I have taken up my writing work for online customers and dealing with a pesky heart problem. But a different kind of problem reared it's ugly head at me today and long story short, I have to come up with $300 in 24 hours. I made the stupid mistake of paying my rent money on the wrong account, and if I don't get the actual rent paid in 24 hours my little family is going to be in a lot of trouble.

So after I had a little cry about it, I started to work out what I can do about this situation. I think I have mentioned previously that I already have web hosting and whole stack of domain names, so I think the best thing I can do is put up a whole stack of my ebooks online - on the one page; offer them for sale at $5 a piece and hope like crazy that I can make 60 sales in 24 hours. If ever there was a time when I wanted the things I have learned to do in internet marketing to work for me now, this is the time.

My plan right now - to get a site page up - I will post a link to this blog when I have done. Then I have to work out what is the very fastest way I can get the word out about my fire sale to as many possible customers as possible. I am figuring blog comments, forum posting, yahoo answers, twitter and as many free traffic options as I can find will be my best bet. And hey, I am going to ask for help as well. If you have a list that could benefit from ebooks about ghosts, making money through garage sales, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, making money with ebooks or through photography then please, when you see the link listed here, please send it to your subscribers. I would be truly greatful.

In the meantime the clock is ticking, I have spent thirteen minutes of my 24 hours writing this so I had better get cracking. I will keep you updated

A rather frazzled Lisa :)

P.S. Link not showing yet, but you want to help? Please email me

Back into the World of Freelance Writing - special offer for Warriors

Yes this blog post is a bit of an advertisement really for my writing services, but hopefully you will find it informational as well :)

Since I mentioned the other day that I was going back to work as a freelance writer for a while I have been spending time creating my Elance Profile (you can find that by searching for "BizyWriter") and looking for other avenues to promote my services. Unfortunately many of the bid sites for freelancers have been over-run by people prepared to work for ridiculously cheap rates and that makes it more difficult for people like myself to make a decent wage from our skills. If you are considering writing or freelancing in any other skill area and hope to make a regular income from doing so then you seriously need to work out the costs associated with working from home. These can include things like your internet connection, site fees, subscriptions, membership sites, utility accounts and even office space.

You also need to factor in the cost for your time. Now this is where many freelancers fall short - they fail to recognize how important their time is as an asset and will offer to write articles for a dollar a page and then wonder why they are still broke at the end of the week. Underpricing yourself is a classic way of getting burnt out and disillusioned with the whole working online process. If you are offering valuable services to paying clients then don't sell yourself short. You can find out more about this through my lenses on Squidoo - just look for "wisecrone333".

That said, I do offer a discount to Warrior Forum members. I was recently the recipient of a war room subscription from a warrior member and I think the forum as a whole does a lot of good for people who are genuinely trying to make money online - so for all of the warriors out there who might be interested in my writing services simply send me an email to bizywriter@gmail.com and put "Warrior Client" in the subject line. Let me know what type of writing you are looking for - ebooks, articles, blogs etc and I will get back to you with a quote for the work at a special discounted price.

To anybody else that is reading this and looking to work as a freelancer please check out my Squidoo lenses as mentioned above or if you have registered with a site like Elance and have not made any money then you might want to check out my super cheap little ebook on "Winning Work on Elance". Prospective clients feel free to drop me a line at the email address above and let me know the type of services you are looking for.

Have a great day
Lisa :)

Freelancing is still the only given :)

Hi all,

Well after a lot of soul searching and weighing up the pros and cons, I have decided to put the internet marketing efforts on the back burner for a while, and focus on actually making money instead - i.e. through freelance writing.

Don't get me wrong, I am not giving up on the IM scene - I do know that many people make money online through selling their own, or other people's products, and I know it is possible for me to do the same - but I have been putting in a lot of hours with very little returns and as we move towards the last quarter of the year I need to be making some decent money. I have a huge family as many of you know and there are so many birthdays I have to buy for in the next three months, as well as hordes to buy for for Christmas, the money I make freelancing has always paid for those things in the past.

Actually I have had a couple of good ideas to make money online (aside from freelancing). For example out of the blue the other day I got a sale on a book I have listed at Lulu.com - you can view my storefront here and that led me to an "AHA" moment. I have a lot of material on my harddrive that would not take a lot to be formated for sale through Lulu.com and I figured if I use some of the tactics I have learned over the past six months in getting and driving traffic, then this would be a good way perhaps to get some sales of my own products.

Another thing I have decided to do is to create some mini-niche sites for some of the many domain names I have bought and not used. I can use affiliate products to sell on the site; articles from EZA to create content and outsource some more articles on keywords related to the niches concerned to help create some targeted traffic for that. That will give me a semi-automated system that will hopefully snowball over time into a nice regular income.

Finally I have come up with an idea for a forum membership site on religion - I am still trying to find a script for the site at the moment as paid forum scripts are not that common (at least for free) so if you can recommend one please let me know :)

So as you can see, none of this is actually that focused (which is something many IM's will tell you that you need to be) but hey, I am woman and I can multi-task. But for now I am off to create a new profile on Elance and see how I get on with getting some paid work as a provider on there. I will keep you posted on this and all of the ideas I have mentioned in this post.

Have a great day
Lisa :)

RE: Traffic Submission Services Don't Work, or do they?

Hi there,

Thanks for popping back to see me. I have been a bit lax in updating my posts lately as I have been struggling to get traffic to my sites - man it is not easy.

What made me a little mad and frustrated was that I signed up for a place called "IPostAd.com" that will submit your adverts to more than 2000 safelists with apparently more than 3 million members. They will also submit adverts to almost 300,000 ffa sites, more than 90 search engines and members links. I have spent two days setting the thing up and blasted my adverts last night confident that even if I had not made any sales I would have got some decent traffic figures.

HAHA - what a laugh. I used two of my sites through the IPostAd site - my Real Work Real Money one and a new site I just got finished yesterday - Five Dollar Guides.com (more about that below). This afternoon I went and checked my traffic stats and guess what - I had the lowest traffic figure for RWRM that I have had for in the past month and a grand total of just five people went to the Five Dollar Guide site - those are honestly the worst figures I have had for the RWRM site since I launched it :)

Still I am not going to pull out of this traffic submission business just yet - I pad $12 for a month's worth of service so I am going to continue to use it for another couple of weeks at least - I will let you know if I see any improvements.

Yes my new Five Dollar Guide site is now up and running. It is a site that sells predominantly ebooks on all sorts of different topics - at the moment there are over 200 books available for immediate download: all priced at the affordable rate of...you guessed it...just $5. There are some really good titles in there but I am still looking for more.

This is where you come in - if you know of any writer that has an ebook they want to sell online then send them over to me. I will host selected ebooks for a one time fee of $20 and pay the authors $4 for every book sold (they will be sold at $5 of course). I am putting a lot of time and money into promoting this site, so tell your friends (or yourself of course) to get in early. You can learn more about this at http://www.fivedollarguides.com/about.php

I read on the Warrior Forum last night that people are still making some really decent money (over $100 A DAY) simply using article marketing and selling affiliate products. Obvoiusly there is a bit more to it than that, but I have decided to give it a try for myself and hey, you will be updated on how I am doing.

In the meantime don't forget to leave me a comment - it helps your backlinks and mine - and I will write again soon.

To your success
Lisa

Those Making Money Systems Don't Work and Free Traffic Again

Hello again,

I haven't posted on this blog for a few days because I have had my mind full of reading a whole stack of information on making money online. I have now more than fifty such programs (paid for and free) on my hard drive and it is almost disappointing to say that not one of them - not one program that I have bought or downloaded for free has actually provided me with a foolproof step-by-step system on how to make money online.

Don't get me wrong - I have collected some really good information - My notebook is more than an inch thick and crammed with written notes, diagrams and flow charts. I have huge A2 sized posters on my office wall with more mind maps and notes spread across them. My head is starting to feel a bit like an over soggy sponge and I am even having trouble sleeping because my brain won't stop working.

BUT no single program or ebook that I have read has actually given me that golden key of internet marketing - a fail safe complete way of making regular money online. I know that money can be made from affiliate marketing (but you have to get traffic and a starving crowd); selling your own products (same problems as affiliate marketing); website flipping (needs specialized skills I don't care what the books say); membership sites (finding a topic that is easily updated and of course the traffic problem) and bum marketing which is a version of affiliate marketing. I do believe that it is posible, but no one program answers all of the questions a newbie would have, and outlines every step of the process necessary to succeed.

Hence the enforced isolation - I have been spending my time trying to work out what would be the most effective way of creating a system that is replicable and can be put in place by anyone. I have considered micro sites, small reports, affiliate marketing and larger sites that would need regular updating but could over time encourage a membership system. As you know I already have a couple of money making niche sites (see Real Work Real Money and Winning Work on Elance).

I also have a non-moneymaking niche site at Can Ghosts Hurt You, this blog and about five others, and I am in the process of setting up two other niche sites - one in relationships and one in the cooking niche. The relationship site will sell affiliate products and personal counseling with me (I am a trained counselor among other things). The cooking niche will host featured recipe books on different topics - some my own products and some affiliate ones. Finally I am in the process of setting up my "big" site at Five Dollar Guides.com - this will be dedicated to selling information products on a huge range of topics all being sold for the princely sum of $5 (okay so I am not that original when it comes to picking domain names :)).

Now to date none of these sites have been making any money although I have been successful to a small degree in getting traffic to these sites - but making money online (the residual method) is something that requires quite a complex formula - driving traffic, picking niches, writing good sales copy and so on - and working out what is wrong with each of my sites is something I am still working on. However I am keeping notes as I go and I as soon as I find the winning formula I promise I will let you all know.

Which brings me obliquely, to the idea of free traffic again. Some of you will have been following my escapades with free traffic sites, article marketing and using Squidoo and HubPages to drive traffic to my sites. As I was placing adverts on my free traffic sites this evening, I did wonder if perhaps I would have more success with sites that had a larger membership base. I noticed that all of the sites I currently post to have only four digit subscriber/membership numbers and so what I have decided to do is to try and find a list of high ranking free traffic sites and have a go at doing some advertising through them - I will keep you posted.

Your comments as always are gratefully read and received and if you do have any traffic sites you would like to recommend then I am happy to visit your affiliate link.

Till next time
Lisa :)

My initial assessment of free traffic sites

Well I have been posting to free traffic sites now for more than a week and have had mixed results which I would like to share here. If you recall I initially signed up with:-

www.target-safelist.com
www.safelistpro.com
www.viraladstore.com
www.supersolosmonthly.com
www.business-mailer.com
www.yourezads.com
www.thelistauction.com

I made sure I was operating as a free list member on each of these sites and with the excpetion of thelistauction I have posted ads every day on the other sites in accordance with their ruling. The whole thing only takes about fifteen minutes in the evening; so I don't feel as though this aspect of the whole project was unduly time consuming. But the results have been poor.

Firstly the site I got the most response from on my RWRM site was thelistauction. You are only allowed to post one advert on their site once a week as a free member, but I got 60 hits to my site from that one advert in one day. However 98% of those hits only stayed on the site for the pre-requisite 20 seconds or so so that the clicker got his/her credits for visiting me.

From the all of the others sites I have had less than 5 clicks from each of them on my site over a week. This does suggest that for the most part free traffic (at least as a free member) is only useful to paid members, who have their sites visited on a regular basis. Text ads do not appear to have had any impact on my site statistics at all - note thelistauction sends out email adverts as opposed to text ones.

However my news is not all doom and gloom - I have had some positive traffic from having my web address in my signature line on forums - this would support statements made by many internet marketers that posting useful content on forums, or in the comments on blogs does bring in a certain degree of traffic. I was also pleased to see that for my RWRM site that I have positions two and three on the first page of Google results for the phrase "real work real money" - this is out of over 3,000 returns for that search term so I am quite pleased with that. Unfortunately the only two pages of mine that ranked in the top fifty returns for that keyword phrase was my website (domain) and my hubpage with the same keyword - all of the work I have done in EZ articles, Squidoo and my blog have failed to get any notice from Google at all.

A quick search on Yahoo for the same search terms shows that my domain site is still ranked as number one on Yahoo, which is good news. On the negative side the only other pages to rank within the top 50 for Yahoo were my hubpages (numbers 30, 31 and 32 out of 50) and again none of my other pages, including those from EZ and Squidoo ranked with Google at all.

Then I got curious about the stats for this blog - I installed Google Analytics on it yesterday so of course it would not be showing any traffic figures yet (I would like to know if I am talking to myself :)) but using a phrase search for "grans internet income" I did come up with 44 results including the blog itself of course. What I noticed that might be interesting to you there is that the RSS feeds I put through for the blog (through Feedage and Feedest) ranked first and second in the results, which would suggest they are good sites to lodge your blog with when you get one started. Yahoo also had the blog listed, but only 6 results with the blog itself showing as first and the two RSS feed site links showing second and third.

I am not sure what I can deduce from all this yet but I will let you know when I have come up with something profound :)

Have a great night
Lisa

Two things I did today that I should not have done

HI there,

Some of you may remember that a few posts ago I made the point that to increase my chances of success with internet marketing I was to stop buying products and stop buying domain names. Well today I did both things even though I know I should not have done. My defense - it was a really good deal on a product and the domain name will be perfect for a new product I am thinking about.

The product I bought, or rather signed up for free was one by Russell, the guy behind Micro-Continuity - he is currently offering a limited number of free DVDs of more than five hours of his workshops including a complete overview of the MC system. I have gone onto the squeeze page about six times, and was initially just put off because even though the shipping and handling (international) was $19.95 that can be a lot once it converts into NZ dollars. However for some reason the nifty little NZ dollar has been making some great gains against the USD, and it was hubby's pay do so I thought "why not?"

After the signup, which was relatively pain free, I was taken to a page where I could download four audio files plus some templates and some info on the MC workshops. I have only managed to get through one of the audio files today - more than an hour's worth and I have written pages of notes - I have to say even though I can never remember this guy's surname (I know it starts with "B") he is one of the most interesting and informative people I have ever heard. - I have got my monies worth from one audio file and there are another three to go!

In a coffee moment I was thinking about my breathing - you see after I had my heart attack late last year one of the specialists I saw told me I wasn't breathing properly - and I always thought that it wasn't possible to get that wrong. Anyway I was thinking about that, and then my thoughts wandered to a book that I want to write on how to lose weight through breathing properly and things like that (yes it can be done, I am living proof) and before I had finished my cuppa I was on GoDaddy.com and am now the proud owner of the domain name "BreatheinHealth.com" - now all I have to do is write the product, do a website, get some promotional material sorted, and so on... why do I do this to myself :)

I am really looking forward to getting some comments on my little competition posted a couple of days ago - I have posted the information below again - tell your friends and let's see what we can come up with.

Have a successful day
Lisa :)

I am going to start up a little contest - you tell me what is the most effective subject line that you can think of that would make you open up your email almost without fail. You can be as creative as you like but you are not to use things like "You have won money" "You have payment" and things like that because those subject lines are banned by free traffic sites anyway. Maybe you have already been using free traffic sites and have found one or more headline works better than others. If so share it in the comments section below. I will run this for a week, until Sunday 23rd August and the prize will be a weeks coaching from my Real Work Real Money site or a free large advert to your site hosted on this blog and my website for a whole month. Tweet your friends and let them know about this too and let's see if we can get the creative juices flowing.

More on Free Traffic and Free Traffic Sites

Even after I finished my post last night I couldn't help thinking about why people were still using free traffic sites - it seemed like a flawed logic to me. But I couldn't escape the fact that I had received some (ok minimal but some nonetheless) traffic from using these options.

I think the key is that you could have a thousand visitors per day but if they are not really interested in what you have to offer then you are not going to make any money. The key to making sales is getting targeted traffic and I think there are better ways of getting that than using free traffic sites.

One of the most common and effective ways of getting free targeted traffic to your site is article marketing. Now this entails writing articles based on your the main keywords of your site and submitting them to article sites like EzineArticles.com. EzineArticles is an article directory site and you can place your articles there for free so that other publishers can come in and use your content for free. Now before you start worrying about the whole free aspect of this - there is a good side to this. When publishers use your articles they have to use the whole thing, and they are not allowed to change it in any way. Therefore you get added exposure from an increasing number of people because the link to your site or special offer will be in the resource or author box that is attached to your article, and which publishers can't remove - you get exposure, you get credibility within your niche and you get a back link which helps improve your ranking in Google.

If you are dead set on the fact that you are not a writer and you can't afford to outsource the work then you can look at posting comments on blogs and forums. If you run a search for your keywords and "blogs" or "forums" you will find plenty of them. Simply read over those blogs and forums that seem to have a lot of members, make some useful comments and you will be leaving your link in the signature line - perfectly placed for other people interested in your niche to click on.

Throwing in a few posts on Twitter can't hurt either. Again it is free - you can put links in your posts (but try not to do that every time or people will just ignore your posts) and it only takes a few minutes a day to start building a following. RSS feed sites like FeedAge and Feedest are another two free places you can submit your blog URL to for more exposure. StumbleUpon can also improve your rankings and increase your targeted visitor count.

A really good IM I was watching the other day mentioned that building traffic in a community environment did take time but that in the long run it was the most effective way of doing it. If you are in your niche for the long term, and you need to use free marketing methods, then this is honestly the best way to go about it.

I have my IM call tomorrow night - please don't let this be another scam or sales pitch :)

Best wishes
Lisa

More about clicking for traffic and a new CONTEST

Hello again,

I have been giving a lot of thought to this whole idea of clicking for traffic - usually when I am clicking actually and I have to wonder at the effectiveness of it all. Let me explain.

When I get an email for "solo" ads (the ones you can click to generate credits for your own advertisements) I click on it and am told that I have to stay on the page for X number of seconds to receive the clicks. Well, when I started doing this I was very conscientious about this - I would open the page up fully and scan the headings etc through to the bottom of the page. I did that for about two days.

But then I have to confess boredom set in - so many of these ads are for the same sites - I don't know how many times I have been taken to the Leap Frog site for example, but as soon as I see the top header showing up I don't even bother to open up the browser page fully or even try and read it. I know the bloomin page almost word for word.

Now some of you (especially if you paid money to put that ad in front of my face) are probably thinking that I am being unfair - after all I am getting credits to do this. But think about it realistically. If the only people who are going to see your advertisement are people who are wanting to promote their own, then there is not going to be a lot of positive result for anybody.

Another thing I noticed today was that some of the pages that I am sent to don't even load fully (or in some cases even partially) before the second counter has finished and I have got my credits. Well I am not going to sit around waiting for a page to load fully when I still have about another twenty emails to click from - I am going to close the page. But how does this fit in with the current Internet Marketing tip which states that you should use video or audio instead of text on your squeeze pages? Videos and audio take a lot longer to load than text and smaller graphics - so how is anybody actually going to take the time to wait for the plug in to start?

But as I mentioned yesterday I am going to reserve judgement until I have had enough time to tweek the ads that I am sending enough times for this to be a fair experiment and I need a few more days for any traffic figures to come through.

BTW I am sooooo glad that I did use a new gmail address when I signed up for those safe lists I mentioned yesterday - after six hours while I was sleeping I had more than 300 emails in my inbox from them and I just checked it a moment ago and there is another 175 of them waiting to be read. - how can this possibly work unless you have the most captivating subject line in existence.

Actually that gives me an idea. I am going to start up a little contest - you tell me what is the most effective subject line that you can think of that would make you open up your email almost without fail. You can be as creative as you like but you are not to use things like "You have won money" "You have payment" and things like that because those subject lines are banned by free traffic sites anyway. Maybe you have already been using free traffic sites and have found one or more headline works better than others. If so share it in the comments section below. I will run this for a week, until Sunday 16th August and the prize will be a weeks coaching from my Real Work Real Money site or a free large advert to your site hosted on this blog and my website for a whole month. Tweet your friends and let them know about this too and let's see if we can get the creative juices flowing.

Well I must get on and go and place some more free ads. I did put up two new hub pages today so if you are interested in making money or ghosts check me out at HubPages - just look for wisecrone333.

Catch you tomorrow

Lisa

P.S. Have any of you joined the Birthday Bonus Club? Does it work?

Free Traffic and Safelists - Worth the Effort?

Hi there,

I am absolutely thrilled today - oh but I am getting ahead of myself. You remember that in my last post I was so upset by an Internet Marketer who went from mentor to salesperson in 2 seconds flat and how I had posted a long post about it on Warrior Forum. Well one chap on the WF pointed out to me that I wasn't being strictly honest with things myself on my Real Work Real Money site because all I really had on there was an affiliate offer for somebody else's product. If you have been reading my posts a while you will also know that I was really pleased with that page because it was actually converting into small sales for myself.

But my mate on WF had a point - and I spent the next couple of days thinking about what I can do to offer something unique in the internet marketing field and make money. So I completely revamped my RWRM site and have changed the focus of it completely which you can see for yourself if you pop along - let me know what you think. I am still offering affiliate offers (clearly marked as such) on my thank you page (which is free to get to), but the actual focus of the site it something completely different.

What I am thrilled about is that I did do all of that site myself (does it show :)). I wrote the copy, the reports and everything all over two days and I am really pleased with the results. Of course only time will tell if I actually get anywhere with it, but we will see - I will keep you posted.

Anyway an extension of this has been my research into more traffic methods - preferably free. I had used free traffic sites and safelists back eight years ago and more and all I ended up with was a chock-a-block inbox every day. I think the inbox issue is still evident because the sites I signed up for today all recommended I set a seperate gmail account to deal with all of the offers. Which led me to think that if everybody else was doing the same, then were any emails being read at all?

I know in the past week I have been clicking ads like crazy for YourEzAds.com, TheListAuction.com and Business Mailers.com. I signed up for free accounts for all three of these places to see if I could drive some traffic to my RWRM site and this blog. But my traffic stats have been very slow - I am getting rougly 10 - 20 visitors per day to each of my three sites (including the Ghost Site) and according to the Hostgator Stats virtually none of them have come from these three sources.

So this evening I decided to try three differnt opt in safelists - again joined up for free - I have outlined the different points for each of them below.

Target-Safelist.com: Ok these people allow you to send one ad per 24 hours to the number of members you can cover with your credits. There are only just under 3,000 people on the list at this point so I read 10 Mega solo ads on the site to get an additional 4000 credits - if you read 10 ads for 300 credits each you get 1000 bonus credits. I got an email about ten minutes after I had finished with the site so I will check my traffic stats tomorrow.

GlobalSafelist.com - this site was running so slow I wanted to get out and walk - they were the same as Target Safelist above in that you could read ads on their sites to get the same sort of bonuses. I have placed one advert with them but if the site is still as slow tomorrow I will be flagging this one completely - I haven't got that much patience.

Safelistpro.com is the last one I signed up for. they have the same deal as Target Safelist in that you can read ads on the site but they only offer 80 credits per super click through although you can get a 1000 credit if you read ten ads. They also only allow free members to send out an email once every three days.

I will monitor the traffic stats over the next few days and if I do see a surge of interest in my sites then I might test out the effectiveness of the paid options for the safelists and free traffic sites. But at the moment I have not seen anything in my traffic stats (or results) to suggest this is worth it just yet.

While I think of it too I wanted to mention that the traffic stats is one of the reason I do all my hosting through HostGator - they show details of every single hit I get, what page the person went to, where the person clicked from to get to my pages and the countries and everything else. I don't know if other hosting sites have the same sort of analytics but if your host doesn't do this you might want to consider changing.

For myself I have finally clicked on what a lot of Internet Marketers have said about tweaking and testing and things like that. If you know where each person who visits your site comes from then you can tell if you are getting a return on your marketing dollars.

Anyway we are running a 23 hour telethon here in NZ this weekend to help raise money for the kids in our schools that can't afford lunch or a pair of shoes, or a coat. In New Zealand Telethons are a big thing - we are such a little country that the whole country does get behind the deal - we haven't had one for 15 years!! So I am off to watch some of that.

Remember comments please - it is a lot easier to write something with feedback :)
Lisa

P.S. I signed up for another one of those phone calls - the guys states clearly in the email that there is no selling involved - am I mad or just really optimistic - I will keep you posted.

Does My Email Address Scream Sucker?

I just posted this message on the Warrior Forum - it is the summary of what happened this evening with the call you will know I was eagerly awaiting from a woman who had offered to give me a free hours coaching to get my internet business started.
********************************************************************************************
Why is it do you think that some people just can't be honest with what they are doing? Don't they realize they can bring people down big time?

I am sorry if I seem a little upset but I have just spent yet another hour on the phone with a woman from England this time who was offering a free coaching session for an hour to help newbies get their internet business off the ground. She had explained in her promo email that her time was worth $1000 an hour but went on to say that because she was doing so well she wanted to give something back to a select group of newbies in the form of one free session.

Now I will give her her due - she did tell me at the begining of the conversation that she would try to sell me something at the end and i felt that was fine - I was under no obligation to buy but of course I felt that I would have gleaned some important little bits of information that would help me anyway, and if that information was valuable well of course I would consider her deal.

Well she was good, I mean really good. She had a prepared script and she led me like a lamb to the slaughter - asking me about my dreams, my niche, asking me to layout a course i could see myself doing online, really helping me get into the whole thing about what I could with my business online - I felt so good that it wasn't until the call only had ten minutes to go that she started talking sales talk and I realized that she had not actually given me any information at all apart from what she could teach me in the future - she went from being a mentor to a sales woman in five seconds flat.

Should I have expected it - the same thing happened to me last week as well. Am I that naive because when somebody tells me they want to help me and they will give an hour to me for free, that i believe them? Did I miss something in the jargon of "helping others', giving back and all of that stuff. When people say they are giving something and helping others is that just this giant con that I don't know about?

I have tried to be very restrained in this post but the reason why I am writing it at all is because I know there are a lot of newbies on the list who like me are going to look to those who have succeeded for some little gems of wisdom. I have also seen first hand how great this online community is in supporting others - you only have to look at the thread about Michael to realize that. And I have tried to do my little bit too - I am only new, but I have given advice and support where I can because that is what I believe a community is all about - don't the same rules apply outside of the warrior forum?

You notice that I haven't used the womans name or identifying site details at all - that is because despite the fact that I feel like she punched me in the chest when she told me her help was actually going to cost me more than $10,000USD and I looked through my notes and realized she hadn't given me one piece of information I didn't already know from reading the posts here, I am still a decent person and I don't think it is right to be rude about other people. But what she didn't realize and probably never will is that when you encourage a person to dream and dream big, and then you pull it away from them in ten seconds flat, that the pain and the disappointment is truly hard to deal with - I felt physically sick after that call.

I know we are all in this to make money - I don't have a problem with anyone coming along and asking me if they can give me a sales pitch - hey I will listen - but when somebody comes along instead in the guise of a mentor who ends up doing the sucker more harm than good I just don't think that is right.

That's my two cents worth. Thank you if you have managed to read this far, I appreciate it.

Lisa :(

*********************************************************************************************

You will understand if i don't write anything further today - hopefully a good nights sleep and I will be back on deck bristling with enthusiasm once again tomorrow.

Best wishes
Lisa

Squidoo, HubPages and Aweber

Hi everyone,

What a day I have had today - Firstly I had a falling out with Squidoo - it wasn't intentional, I really quite like writing lenses, but I wrote one today about the fact that to make money on the internet you really needed to work at it. I was writing the lense to support and provide backlinks to my RealWorkRealMoney site. I was also hoping it would drive some traffic to the site as well.

I don't know if you are aware of this but Squidoo tightened up a lot of its rules lately - I can appreciate why they are doing it in that they want the site to be filled with quality content, not just rehashed material and thinly disguised advertisements. I spent at least an hour on the lense and was quite pleased with it but when I hit the Publish button, I got told that my lense was probably on the "not allowed list". I went back to try and edit it, without success so I have left it to be hand reviewed which apparently means someone will read it and decide if it has any valuable content in it at all.

Prior to this my lenses had been supporting another small site I have, Six Secrets to Winning Work on Elance. I had written four lenses for that site and all of them had been accepted and have been on the site for about a month. To be honest I could not work out why this one was any different, but I figured well I wanted to be able to publish somewhere where my links would be accepted in text so I decided to give HubPages a try. I copied and pasted the text from the Squidoo lense and managed to get a Hubpage up in about thirty minutes. I then figured why not go for broke and copied another new Squidoo lense of mine into Hubpages as well - you can check both of them out here and let me know what you think if you wouldn't mind.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Real-Work-Real-Money

http://hubpages.com/hub/Can-Ghosts-Hurt-You

And do you know what the really great thing is - my sites at HubPages were indexed by Google within 30 minutes - my Squidoo pages used to take longer than a week - I have to say I am really impressed at this stage, but of course the purpose of these pages is to drive traffic to my other sites so only time will tell if they are as effective as Squidoo in doing that.

You may have noticed something new on the site today - yes I have also conquered the world of autoresponders and have an account set up at Aweber.com . The little form on the right hand side of the form is the result of that - the only problem is that I decided to give away a free gift that had not been created yet so I spent the rest of the day writing it, lol. If you want to take a look at it you are more than welcome to sign up for it - let me know through the comments section if it doesn't come through.

That's about it for me today - I am going to talk more about traffic tomorrow because I really do think it is an important topic to discuss and a process to get right, so I will catch you then.

Remember comments and links are always appreciated
Best wishes
Lisa

A thought about Globalism, IMRenegades and My Own Products

Hello again,

I hope your day is going along swimmingly for you - I seem to have spent the day rushing around an awful lot today, but I did get some juicy little pieces of information that could help you in your internet marketing journey.

Firstly I just have to recommend this video file that I spent almost two hours watching this morning. The guy in the video is Russell Bronson and the title $20 into millions. Now I have to confess I did start watching with that whole, "yeah, yeah" attitude - the only reason I started watching it was because I was taking a coffee break - but I tell you after five minutes I was completely hooked. This is the first internet marketer I have come across that gives you pages of worthwhile information on how to start up your own business for FREE.

After almost two hours I had pages of notes and information written down and basically a complete blueprint of how to run an internet business selling your own products. Now as much as I appreciate the easiness of affiliate marketing I still have a hankering to write my own products - I like being a know-it-all :) Suffice to say after watching this audio I made a few calls to cancel appointments I had for the next few days and starting in the morning I am going to follow this blueprint to the letter. This guy absolutely filled in the blanks that were missing from all of the research I have done so far - if the guy wasn't so young I think I would be in love (definate joke hubby :)) The link again $20 into Millions - not an affiliate link and nothing to buy - if you are serious about your internet career (and not just following me for the heck of it) then I strongly suggest you take the time to watch this video.

Now I think I mentioned that last night I was waiting from a call from the second internet marketer that I had won a conversation with. This is where globalisation comes in. I was sitting here at three in the morning waiting for the call - it didn't come - it seems from an email I got later that the woman concerned thought I was in the United States (she is in London apparently) and was trying to ring my number there - we got it sorted out though and she has graciously offered to phone me on Thursday evening 9pm (my time) so we can have that one hour session. I have a really good feeling about this and will report more after the call.

I wondered how many internet marketers just assumed that most of their traffic came from the United States - I would love to hear your thoughts on that in the comments section below.

Finally I signed up for another affiliate program today - IMRenegades. After signing up (for free) I was given a number of products to promote complete with web pages, the ability to use my own autoresponder to collect details of signups and all monies are paid directly to my Paypal account.

You can take a look at "my" pages at the links below:

WordPress Tutorials - $17

The Testimonials Generator - $17

The Other Side of List Building - $7

The Easy PDF Maker - $17

7 Day Profits - $7

The great thing about this program is that firstly you get to set the prices for the products (within a minimum/maximum range). I purposely chose the cheapest rates in the hope of increasing sales. I am not exactly sure how I will promote these just yet but I am thinking of adding some pages to my Real Work Real Money site and promoting them through there. i will keep you posted.

Well I think that is about it for tonight - I am really tired. I know I promised to talk more about free traffic methods today but hopefully you will bear with me and pop back tomorrow for that information.

In the meantime as always make sure that you post your comments and links to this blog - I would love to know I did have some readers out there who were following my antics online.

Until tomorrow - to your success
Lisa.

Notice of New Project/Challenge Starting Tomorrow

Have you seen all of those ads all over the net about Selling Membership Sites by Not Selling and how a membership site can be set up by people with no techy skills at all in just six minutes.

Well I went ahead and bought the program seeing as it was so well covered in the Warrior Forum and I am currently working through all of the masses of information that came with the set up.

Hopefully by tomorrow I will have a site up and running to show you all - so check back here soon and I will let you know, blow by blow how I get on.

Catch you then
Lisa

Free Traffic - is it worth the time?

Hi there,

Tonight I thought I would explain a bit about the free traffic methods I have been using to try and promote my two current projects - Can Ghosts Hurt You.com and Real Work Real Money.com.

There are a number of different methods of driving traffic to your site, product or affiliate product and basically what you choose comes down to whether you have money or time. As I am money poor and time (slightly) richer I go for the free methods. The benefits of free methods is that

1. They are free of course
2. They can be implemented as you have the time to do them
3. They can help you build an organic traffic system that is based on search engine results

The free traffic methods I have been using are article marketing, free advertising, this blog, and forum posting. Now they all have their good and bad points as you will see below.

Article Marketing is great - if you ever see those ads that tell you that you can have page one Google ranking in like 24 or 48 hours - they are talking about the power of article marketing and in particular having those article posted on article directory sites like EzineArticles.com. I have three articles on Ezine Articles on my Ghosts niche and for the search phrase "Can Ghosts Hurt you" I have four of the top ten spots on Google and of course those articles all point to my website. For the slightly shorter search phrase "Ghosts hurt you" today I have five of the top ten Google results including the top two.

Probably the only problem with article writing is that it is time consuming. As you know I worked as a writer for ten years before starting this and even I have trouble cranking out one article after the other. But Travis of Bum Marketing fame suggests that it is just as effective if you write your articles one a day and submit them to at least four of the top article directory sites. Actually there is a lot more I can talk about on this topic so I think I will make it the subject of a new post so look out for it.

For free advertising I have gone with YourEzAds.com and ListAuction.com. To use them (for free) you have to click on emails that you get from other members to earn credits towards your own advertising campaign. Now this is a good and a bad thing. It is time consuming as you have to stay on each link you click for 15-20 seconds and you get heaps of emails. But that said I have actually signed up for a few things that I have found on my enforced surfing and I am making credits towards my own adverts.

Suggestions if you want to use them - go for a free site at first like EzAds - use a new email account like a gmail one so that your other mail won't get lost in the deluge and just set aside 30 mins a day and click. Of course you can always buy credits for your ads as well if you would rather do that than click for thirty mins a day.

Wow, I have just gone over this post and it is getting a little lengthy so I will continue this tomorrow. Don't forget comments are welcome as well as links. Any questions, just ask.

Hugs Lisa :)

Don't Believe Everything You Read - A warning

I just had to share this with you even though this is my third post today but the information in it is important and I don't want to see people go through what I did today.

Now you will remember I did mention a couple of days ago that I was being more proactive about approaching internet marketers who were successful and who mentioned in their emails that they were keen to hear from people about what problems they were having getting started and things like that. I think I also told you that I had two positive responses from internet marketers who gave the impression that they wanted to offer some form of mentoring to newbies to help them get started. I was really keen to share some insights from some internet successes and got quite excited about it really.

Anyway I had forgotten about Gabriel Aguinaga offer to call me about a "partnership" until the phone rang earlier this afternoon. We had a bit of a chat and I explained to him that I was looking to help increase traffic to my site and for advice on how to improve conversion rates of the sites I had. He seemed really nice on the phone and directed me to a link to watch a video, which he said would take about half an hour to watch and then he would phone me back.

Now I had a lot of high hopes about this call and the video I was going to watch - Gabriel had mentioned how he wanted to help people to become as successful as he was and I was hooked when I started watching the video - I was so sure this would be the missing "it" that I was looking for. Boy was I dumb and naive.

I sat and watched a 30 minute sales video on the benefits of joining his system to help him and his company sell his product. Oh if any of you have any internet experience at all who are reading this I bet you are laughing so hard about now. I can honestly say though that I did not see this coming. It would not have been so bad if I had learned anything useful for my own business, or if the price to join was not so expensive (roughly $1500 USD - thats more than $2000NZD) but I am so peeved with myself for getting sucked in.

Now I want to be fair here. Gabriel Aguinaga is a truly decent bloke and I have had some free reports off of him in the past. It is highly possible that I misread his intention when he asked for my phone number and best time to call, and maybe he thought I was looking to join some super high flying system.

I mean he was right in some respects - you do make more money selling high ticket items than lower ones (if you can get sales) and I imagine the tools and tips he was offering as part of this partnership would be really useful to a newbie like me to promote products of my own. But I told him specifically when he did phone me what I was looking for and he sent me to his video presentation anyway - and that I find strange.

Look I am not running down this man or his business okay - I was the one who made the mistake of thinking I was going to get some mentoring from a successful internet marketer and I was probably really silly not to realize there was going to be a cost involved. The program he is offering is a good idea and if any of you are looking for a high ticket product to sell then his Millionaire Maker System could be what you are looking for. I should imagine the rewards for joining something like this are huge if you do become successful - it just wasn't what I was looking for.

As for me I emailed him and explained that I wasn't what he was looking for and wished him well. It is only time that will tell whether or not I am the sucker here for not taking him up on his offer, or whether my slow but sure little efforts will actually win out for me in terms of monetary success in the long run.

Don't forget to leave me any comments you might have and your links - I would love to hear from you

Hugs
Lisa

P.S. Gabriel if you do happen to read this then please leave a link in the comments section to your program so my readers can check out your program for themselves and my apologies for not answering your second phone call - I was just too embarressed. Hopefully my email to you sufficed.

I had the greatest time on Warrior Forum

Hi again,

I know, two posts in the one day but I have been so busy today and there were things I felt I had to share because if you are a newbie following me on this then any information I can share can make your journey that much easier :)

I think I mentioned I had joined up with the Warrior Forum a few days ago and although I had only looked at what they had to offer initially (and that is a lot I can tell you) today I decided I wasn't going to just "lurk" anymore but actually start participating in the forum itself. My decision came just after I had a rather disappointing experience with another internet marketer (see my next post for details about that) and I was determined to seek out some genuine people who were making money online and start looking for advice from people who were successful at what I wanted to do. Made sense really :)

The Warrior Forum has literally thousands of threads posted on all sorts of different topics. I started off in the internet marketing section, honestly believing I didn't have anything to contribute, but I was surprised to see a mix of newbies and experts alike. I posted comments (well my opinions really) on about seven different threads and felt really pleased with myself.

But the Warrior Forum is not just about internet marketing there are some great threads on other topics as well. They have a motivating section which I thought was a really good idea where people discussed what they thought of success and things like that - I even managed to get in a post about ghosts although I did not want to seem like I was promoting my own products and site so I just mentioned that I had seen ghosts so did believe they existed and stuff like that. I even had a bit of a cry when a member had made some really cute submissions about dogs and I thought back to the two dogs I had that had to be put down last year.

I could not get over what a great community the Warrior Forum is - it is free to join and it is really easy to use. I laughed, learned, listened and cried all in the space of a few hours and you can guarantee I will be back on the forum again real soon - I think I should make it an important part of my daily routine :)

Click on any of the Warrior Forum links in this post - it is not an affiliate site or anything so I am not trying to get you to buy anything from the links - I honestly think you will enjoy it especially if you are a newbie like me and I hope to see you on there.

Catch you soon
Lisa

I Made $10 Today!!

Hi there,

You are not going to believe this, I can barely believe it myself, but I made my first sale today - I am totally blown away by it and can't stop dancing around.

You remember I told you yesterday that I was going to try that free site offered by Richard Legg and had hosted it on my domain name Real Work Real Money.com. Well last night I submitted that link to some search engine submission sites, but according to my Hostgator account I had not had any traffic today. I was planning to write a few articles for the site to try and get some traffic that way - but somehow something I did actually worked :)

I will be looking at my hostgator traffic statistics tomorrow to see if I have any better idea of where this sale came from, but it must show that the page itself must be a good convertor so I will also be making myself some notes on why it is so effective so that maybe I can replicate this success with some of my own products.

I do know that I have a lot more enthusiasm today for what I am doing and as I truly believe that attitude is more than half of a winning formula that definately counts for something.

Will write more soon - to your success
Lisa

Tried Something New Today

Hi everyone,

I thought I would try something new today - you know how you are always getting those emails that tell you that you have to have your own website if you want to make any decent money online? Well after sifting through roughly 150 of them this morning I decided to take two of them up on their "Free Offer".

The first one I clicked into was through an Internet Marketer, Richard Legg. Now I have to admit that I do read most of his emails because he does offer some really good free advice to newbies. In this email he was promoting a new site, set up for free, where the affiliate made 100% of any sales made through the site.

I have noticed there a lot of these offers around now, where marketers will let a lesser priced product be sold by affiliates for 100% commission - they make their money through people signing up on their list, OTO and upgrades. The only costs involved in this venture were for domain name and hosting and as I had managed to score for myself the domain name "Real Work Real Money.com" just yesterday and I have unlimited domain name hosting with Hostgator.com I thought why not try this offer and see what happens.

You can check out the website I got for free through http://www.realworkrealmoney.com - that is all that is on that site at the moment. I will let you know if I have any luck with it.

I have also been taking up the offers from some internet marketers and replying to their emails letting them know the ways their products can help me in my own internet marketing efforts. I have had replies from four of them this week and I have to tell you that I am really thrilled with the helpful comments I have had about some of my early web efforts.

You can comment too - just check out http://www.canghostshurtyou.com or http://www.youempowerlife.com or of course http://www.realworkrealmoney.com and let me know in the comments section below what you think. And don't forget to leave a link for me to view - I would love to see what you are doing.

Have a great day
Lisa :)

P.S. I just remembered the second thing I tried today was a traffic link site - will tell you my stories about that tomorrow

It is So Easy To Get Distracted

Hi there, I hope you are all having a great week. I realized today that I have become the victim of distraction and that is probably why I am not making any money online just yet.

You remember me telling you that the idea was that I would create a new product that would help people just like me to make a decent income online. I also shared how I have created a few small niche sites as a means of testing that method of list building and income generation. You can check them out here:

Can Ghosts Hurt You
You Empower Life
Winning Work On Elance

Now none of these have been overly successful yet - I am getting a bit of free traffic to the sites but figure I have a lot to learn about page conversion and things like that. To that end I have been signing up for, and in some cases paying for information from other marketers on how to make this a success.

The problem is that this has now become my main time waster - I have over 200 (!!!!!) reports and ebooks on my hard drive, with more than 50% of them waiting to be read. Having the information is fine - but there isn't any point in it at all if I don't take some action on the things that I am learning.

So I am going to take advantage of the one skill I know I have in spades and am going to write an ebook/report on how anybody can learn to write about any niche topic anytime, quickly and easily. It is an idea that has been brewing in my head for a little while - the key is getting it all down on paper before I get distracted by something else :) If you are interested in learning more about this project (which should be finished by the end of the week if I stay focused) then simply add your contact details to the comments section below and I will email you when I have got it sorted - or check me out on Twitter.com - Just look for "wisecrone333".

Don't forget to leave a link on your comments so I can see what you are doing.

Have a great day
Lisa

The Learning Curve is Getting Steeper

Hi there,

Well yesterday was yet another learning curve, but I am so proud of myself - I actually created and uploaded a new website all on my own and it only took all day and most of the night :) You can check out my results at http://www.youempowerlife.com.

You may remember I was having real trouble with my ghost hunting site getting the paypal buttons to work and even getting it to load properly. Well I decided that rather than pay for hosting on Godaddy.com (that I still love for hosting by the way) I decided to upgrade my Hostgator account - for an extra dollar I upgraded from the smallest account to the next one up (Baby I think he called it) which allows me to host as many domains as I like.

I must make a note here too that the support guy at Hostgator was really helpful in light of my lack of technologica knowledge and I strongly recommend their services.

So to date I have three sites up; I have posted articles about my ghost hunting site on four different article directories in a bid to drive traffic and so now I am off to bed to think of some more traffic ideas that can help get my offers in the faces of the people who will appreciate them

No Sales Yet

No Subscribers Yet

But I can feel things are going to change for the better real soon

Once again your comments, any advice and your weblinks of course are always appreciated

Will catch you later

Lisa

Winstone Churchill once said "Success is going from failure to failure with enthusiasm" - that is so very true :)

Day 2 and 3 - what a disaster!!

Has that ever happened to you? When you have this fantastic idea - get all excited about it and then the crap hits the fan? Well that is what happened to me. You have to laugh, really :)

Despite my cool idea from the other day on GransInternetIncome I thought it would be a more sensible idea to try and get some income online in another way so that I could have the time to create my new product. So I was looking for affiliate marketing ideas and that type of thing.

I decided to put three different plans in place:-

1. I bought a set and forget system for the grand sum of $5

2. I decided to set up a niche site for a niche I was interested in (and so could better type up articles for it). I chose "saving your marriage" for that one and

3. I wanted to take steps to set up another niche site; but one I was going to build up some content on and make money over time (the residual aspect).

The set and forget system turned out to be about creating small sites - a landing page site; a couple of Squidoo lenses and some articles on the topic submitted to Ezinearticles .

Well I had most of that sort of thing already in place - on the niche topic of Ghost Hunting - I had two products of my own; I found another one I became an affiliate of in Clickbank.com ; I had two articles in ezinearticles already that had had some good traffic so I modified them and sent them through for resubmission and all I needed was my own site.

FIRST MAJOR LEARNING CURVE - When GoDaddy.com offers you free hosting with your domain purchase don't take it!!! I spent hours working on a site for my Ghost Hunting niche - saw that I had a free credit with GoDaddy for hosting - did not read the fine print. At 4.00am last night I was just about ready to smash my computer with a sledge hammer - I had uploaded my site four times through an ftp program and the pages weren't loading properly - Now did I mention I am a website newbie?? Perhaps I should have.

Anyway it was hubby that alerted me to the fact that the page was not loading properly was because I was sharing the page with a GoDaddy banner and page - should have known nothing is really free. If you are quick you can go and see what I mean if you type in http://www.canghostshurtyou.com - I am planning to upgrade to some paid hosting with GoDaddy in the next day or so, so try and get to it before I can (hopefully) make it look normal.

Thanks to all of the hassle I didn't get time to get to step number three. So I am off to read some interesting stuff on website flipping (although why I am reading it is beyond me given that I can't even get my first site to work) and then hit the hay.

Will be back on deck in the morning with a smile on my face and some renewed enthusiasm I think. Don't forget you can leave comments and your web links - perhaps you can show me how it should be done because I am willing to try anything especially if it is free.

Have fun
Lisa :)

Day One: So how is this going to work?

Hello and welcome to Gran's internet income

I was having a shower last night when I had my "eureka" moment - much to my husband's dismay i went running through the house clutching my towel - still wet and dripping, hunting for a piece of paper so I could jot down my new domain name - GransInternetIncome.com. Within minutes I was on GoDaddy.com paying for my new domain and by the time I finally got to bed I couldn't sleep because of all the ideas that were flying around my head.

To understand this I should probably explain a bit more about myself. I am "Gran", also known as "wisecrone333" (check me out at Twitter.com). I am a mother, a writer, a new artist, grandmother (of course) and am now teaching myself internet marketing. I have been earning money online for more than ten years now, but I was "working" for that money through ghost writing for clients - a great job and one that did bring us in quite a bit of money, but not something that I wanted to do for ever.

I knew I had the know-how to write a book - I have written seventy of them for clients over the years, but what I wanted to do was to create some product of my own - I was tired of single paydays - I wanted a residual income. I had been spending months reading product after product after product on how to make money online through affiliate and internet marketing, but I still could not think of one niche, or USP (unique selling point) that would make my products stand out from the crowd. Until my shower last night that is.

So this is it - if you choose to follow me on this blog (and I do hope you do) I will outline what I am doing as I go through the writing of this new product, my efforts at marketing and what have you. I KNOW it is possible to make money online - I have been doing it for years - but this is a new venture for me and I am hoping that if you choose to follow me and what I am doing, then we might all be successful together.

Had better close off now - got some keyword research to do. Will be back again tomorrow. Don't forget to leave me comments and include links to your sites as I love to see what other people are doing.

Hugs
Lisa