Goal Setting Archives - Page 3 of 4

No Such Thing As Luck

I woke up this morning, crawled out of bed and literally hit record. I don’t know what compelled me to shoot a video post today, but I felt the need to talk to you guys and gals – as it has been a while since I’ve done a viddy post.

Anyways, I give a little sneak peak into what my days are like normally, how many tasks I do within a given day and why it’s important to keep the right mindset when trying to quit your job and work from home.

Pardon the bags under my eyes and crusty hair as I didn’t even wash my face before hitting record, lol.

I get kind of personal at times – and keep your eye out because I don’t actually wake up until about half way through the video, and you’ll see the exact moment when it happens!

I had a laugh watching this back.

Also – I reveal what SuiteJ and I are up to in the site flipping world.. you’re not going to want to miss this info!

Cheers,

Elijah

Less Talk, Less Love, More Money!

So the other day I felt the urge to leave a little “cheap shot” remark on SuiteJ’s most recent post. It went something along the lines of “you bastards don’t comment anymore” and I was openly speaking to all my previous regulars who haven’t given me the light of day, but had no problem showing ol Big Head some love – even though he posts less than I do! It’s all good though – I’m not bitter at all. But you guys definitely know I’m the type who is quick to hit the “potty mouth” button in the middle of a investment bankers conference if that means I’ll get some attention and a free portfolio analysis. I cleverly made a statement, and it paid off because I got both SuiteJ and Neal from Nota Bene Consulting to hop on over and increase the comment count on my last post to beyond 4.

Updates and stuff…

Since 2009 has started, I’ve been battling this invisible force of poor task management. I find I’m getting easily distracted, and I can’t blame it on blogging this time. Despite my distractions, I’ve managed to make some great progress this month, especially in the networking and site flipping departments. Here are a few goals that I set which I have accomplished thus far:

I wanted to flip 8 sites this month, and as it stands now I’ve sold one, with two auctions currently live, and two more auctions going live before the end of the weekend. Providing they all sell (which they will) I have to develop 3 more sites in the next 15 days. Easy peasy.
I wanted to have an exclusive partnership with an uber-talented freelance writer to outsource my content for site flips and various other niche projects I have lined up this year. After a few emails to my Big Headed mentor, I’ve now been working side by side with one of the coolest, most talented writers I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. His name is Chris. He is 26, and has been making a full-time living online for the last 5 years via freelance writing, affiliate marketing and blogging. If you would like to learn more about how to make a living as a freelance writer, he’s got a pretty sweet course available over at ChrisBlogging.com. This guy is a fucking machine when it comes to cranking out keyword rich, unique articles – I love it!
I obviously set some goals regarding marketing and networking in the popular Internet marketing forums, and I’ve successfully stuck to a regiment, slowly increasing my presence and thread count. On the networking end, I read a really cool thread by this cat named AJ who’s been making a killing with affiliate marketing blah blah blah… but let me tell you something, this dude is the real deal! What led me towards him was his focus on presenting value to the buyer, and how important of a role that plays – as well as how so many people over look it when trying to get the sale. Anyways, rather than linking to the thread, we ended up connecting and I’m going to have him do a guest post, as well as he agreed to become my next “20 questions with…” victim! I’m definitely keeping an eye on this dude – he’s got a new membership site coming out that looks sick! I’ll keep you guys posted.
I’ve started my first ebook, and yes, it will be on site flipping. I’m so sick of all these garbage-ass site flip products that keep coming out.. for real, 90% of them only cover the basics, and to be honest, it’s not enough to help a complete newbie make $3000/month as they claim. Not even close. My ebook is going to be dead simple. I am basically writing from start to finish my exact process of creating a site within 8-12 hours and cashing out between $200-$300 profit. I learned this process from a crackhead with a lap top who sleeps behind a Jewish church by my apartment – and I’m going to be sharing it with the world. Quality, not quantity – that is how you make real money of flipping websites.

Anyways, I think that’s about it for today. I hope nobody comments on this so I can prove my point that once you stop commenting on other peoples blogs, they stop caring about you. And once you stop posting, they stop reading. And once you start making money, people start hating you.

IM KIDDING!! Man, you guys haven’t learned yet! I absolutely dig each and every one of you people.. and It’s a good thing that I’m not seeing you guys around as much because that can only mean one thing – you’re being productive elsewhere! And that right there makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside – kind of like when I stick my hand down my pants.

Cheers,

Elijah

Blog Report For October 2008

Yes indeed – I’m back from the dead! The end of October marks the three month anniversary of our beautiful blog, and all you beautiful people who actually read what I type into this little window every now and then. I’m still amazed by that! For those of you who I don’t talk to outside of reciprocal commenting, October has been an insane month from every angle possible. I’ve faced some of the hardest challenges online over the last 31 days and it’s really showed with the lack of posting – and for that I want to apologize.

On the same token, October showed a trim down of posting on the majority of blogs within my social network, which means that all my ninjas in The Bloggerhood have been super busy either preparing for Christmas traffic, or just trying to end the year with a real bang! Everyone I talk to on a daily basis has multiple projects going on simultaneously, and let me be the first to say that some of these projects I’ve been hearing about are absolutely groundbreaking!

The blogosphere is about to change my friends, and there is a serious movement happening right now. A movement of Average Joes and Simple Suzies that are about to knock all the high ranked bloggers out of the park. I am seeing this movement form right before my eyes everyday, with every email I read or every phone call I get. Things are starting to click and it’s an honor to be a part of this.

October was a pinnacle month for my career online – and I’m now calling it a career because I’ve officially made enough income to report on, so I don’t see myself getting a day job any time soon providing things continue as planned (which they will if I have anything to say about it!) Now I don’t plan to report my earnings every month, but with this month being a milestone I felt it would be appropriate.

Traffic

Now unfortunately due to my severe shift in posting, link building and commenting during October, there has been a decline in traffic compared to last month. I’m not worried at all because I know why our traffic didn’t continue to rise and I also know what needs to be done to bring those numbers back up. Here’s the breakdown not including today:

1379 unique visitors
3527 number of visits
11171 pages viewed
113.77 average daily uniques

Subscribers

As always, Feedburner is fucking up right now and giving me an error 500 when I click on sign in, so I won’t be able to report the exact sub numbers for October. What I can tell you is that last time I checked, which was about 2 days ago we were at 103 subscribers which is a huge increase from the 67 subscribers reported at the end of September. You people are all amazing and I want to make sweet love to each and every one of you. Dudes can substitute the sweet love making for a cold beer and a high five.

Earnings

Time for the bread and butter. As I’m logging into my respective money receiving accounts I can’t actually believe I just typed earnings into my blog, within a blog report post. To think 12 months ago I didn’t even own a blog, or know what an <h1> tag was – it’s a beautiful thing! For the month of October my main focus was developing, establishing and selling start up niche sites. Most refer to this process as Site Flipping. The whole movement of flippers online is really amazing when you think about it – rather than people writing ebooks that teach people how to make money, they’re building niche sites that make people money! I also had a record month with Adsense, by fluke, because a gentleman whom I sold a site to has refused to change the Adsense code out of apparent laziness! This can happen with site flipping, and can be rewarding!

Site Flipping – $1021.00 (6 websites)
Adsense – $16.73 (getting closer to my first Adsense check!)
Clickbank – $27.00 (1 sale)
Amazon – $0.00 (some assmunch returned something)
Pepperjam – $0.00 (because I haven’t earned anything, I get rejected for every decent campaign. Doesn’t make any damned sense!)
Neverblueads – $1.00 (got one lead!)
Prostitution – $13.74 (some old lady paid me to tie her shoe and touch her boob)

Upcoming Projects

I can’t be too specific on my ninja projects for November, but sources tell me that SutieJ likes to talk, especially if you bribe him with coffee and Hip Hop. So find him on Skype and send him a Tim Horton’s gift card (Canada’s equivalent of Dunkin Donuts) and the new Nas album via iTunes, and I’m sure you’ll have no problem finding out what I have up my sleeve for this month. Even better, visit ImWithJoe.com and tell Dready Kruger that you’ve sent, via FedEx, a steaming hot Philly Cheese Steak sammich, and built a giant goldfish out of pop tarts that you will give to him in exchange for my detailed November ninja plans. All it takes is food and Hip Hop to bribe my friends. Assholes.

In short, I have two sites that I will be developing for my own portfolio this month. One of them will be a review/conduit style site that covers various niche markets – chasing after long tail keywords to catch consumers in the “buying” stage for maximum conversions. This is also known as the Conduit Method by some. The second site, which I’m super hyped up about, will be an extension of my blog/ninja skills in the form of providing my services to the webmasters/MMO market.

So expect at least one site launch in November if things go as planned!

By the way, if you’re unfamiliar or have never heard of the Conduit Method, you absolutely need to stop by TheLazyMarketer.com and take a peak at his VIP reports – no bullshit, straight to the point make money techniques that work.

There you have it. I really hope everyone had a great October, and if not, keep pushing forward! I know everyone tells you the same fucking things online “don’t give up” “keep your chin up” “keep testing things out” “it will eventually click” and the fact of the matter is that this is all true. If October was a shitty month for you, and you can’t make a penny online, it’s time to stop sleeping and get desperate. Whore yourself out at the old folks home so you can grab a few domains, and get cracking. Steal ideas from those around you, while pretending to enjoy their virtual company and talk shit about them behind their backs.

Or… Work hard and realize that nothing happens over night. Destroy that dream of getting rich quick and reach out towards like minded people. Discard your insecurities and put your ass on the line, and you’ll be surprised to realize that once you have nothing to loose things start to come together. I promise.

Cheers,

Elijah

Success Starts With Your Socks

This past Saturday I got together with some friends to celebrate the 28th birthday of my friend Alistair Hill, and if you remember my post on finding local niche markets to dominate, Alistair is definitely a dude who shows great interest in outside-the-box business models – and more recently this whole Internet marketing madness I’ve been engulfed in. I have a great circle of boys who all support each other and for the most part, are all successful in their own way. As much as it may seem to others that we’re a bunch of drunken hooligans when we’re out on the town, genius happens quite frequently at these gatherings and Saturday was no different.

For Al’s birthday we decided to go bar hopping, or what some may refer to as a pub crawl, with more soldiers joining the brigade as the night progressed. Stop number two on the night was a quaint little establishment known as Sharkey’s; A contemporary, low-lit gastro pub with a menu and wait staff that were equally attractive. Joining our original party of three was a handful of other friends who stumbled in from various locations throughout the city, and for the topic of this blog I will be introducing you to our good friend Vic.

Vic is one of those unique, eclectic type of cats that are completely unassuming – especially if you were to see him walking down the street. He’s currently on his way to becoming a full fledged Architect within the next 24 months and has an insane knowledge of music culture. Combine this with a pretty intense shoe fetish and the ability to inflict unforgettable moments in conversation, and you’ll begin to have a brief understanding of why we love it when Vic comes out to play!

The moment of truth…

After two or three rounds of drinks, about seven rounds into the night, the discussion was on the topic of prostitution and goat cheese – feel free to be creative and figure that one out. Vic jumped in changing the direction a little by asking us all a question, “Do you know what sets apart the upper class of society from regular guys like us?” Somehow I knew there was undeniable substance behind Vic’s train of thought as he began to tell us about a professor at school, and how he’s recently noticed that he never wears the same pair of socks twice. Where normal guys go to Wal-Mart and grab the 24 pairs for $13, upper class dudes have a more refined taste in foot comfort and tend to pay upwards of $97 for a 12 pairs of Gold Toe Windsor wool socks which they will never wear twice in the same week, or month for that matter. The moment of truth at the table hit pretty hard as Vic concluded that his professors level of success is because, and I quote:

“His sock game is tight!”

You heard right! His sock game is tight, and having a tight sock game is vital to success in today’s business world. Now let’s think about this for a minute. Will buying $97 socks improve your chances of running a profitable business online? Probably not. If anything, spending that much money on socks will guarantee your future bankruptcy status and ensure that your wallet is forever empty. Symbolically speaking, this particular individual is one who believes in the “dress for success” theory and your only as good as you look because we all know in the real world, first impressions are everything.

Maybe it’s the attention and care for minute detail, or the strive for perfection that has set the threshold of sock quality so high? I think it would be safe to say that someone who cares that much about their feet would naturally expect supreme quality from their business and personal life, and those are the type of people you would want to be surrounded by when you’re first starting out. I’m sure you’re getting my drift, or at least I hope you are!

You can’t expect to take care of business if you don’t take care of yourself. Treat yourself to a nice dinner every now and then, or go out and buy that golf club that you’ve had your eye on for the last few months. Don’t be stupid and put yourself into more debt, but at the same time don’t fixate on spending $60 that you hypothetically “don’t have” because if you really stop to think about it, when will you really “have” the money to spend? Never. Sacrifice is absolutely necessary to budget and create surplus, but don’t cheat yourself completely – live your life to the fullest, and surround yourself by things that make you happy. Make sure your “sock game is tight” and everything else will fall into place.

According to Vic.

Cheers,

Elijah

Blog Report For September 2008

Another month, another stats report to add to the blogosphere! September was a weird month from several different stand points for TheAtHomeCouple.com – weird not being a bad thing, as growing up my mother always told me weird was good. The first thing that really caught me off guard was that the original 25 subscribers from our August blog report decided to stick around for another month despite my several attempts to be as inappropriate as humanly possible. Secondly, I’m still trying to grip the fact that I built and sold my first website in September.

Website flipping is talked about quite frequently on the Internet, and when I decided I needed to stop being afraid and start making money I had no idea that selling a website would be how that money was made – but it was! Lastly, in September I realized after hours and hours of sleepless nights that more work doesn’t always mean better work. When I heard my man Joe say that he’s thinking about taking weekends off and only posting on his site Monday through Friday, it was on! What a great idea…

September was also a big month for Veronica in the sense that she finally admitted to the fact that I’m not loosing my mind, and I actually know a thing or two about making money online. She has also taken on learning about blogging and WordPress into her own hands and came home one day with a “Blogging For Dummies” book! I’m not going to lie and say that I wasn’t turned on slightly – because I was.

Stats & Screenshots

Once again, I’m not going to report how much money I made online because this blog is about our adventure trying to quit our jobs, not our wallets. I will let you guys know that I did have a record month with Adsense and made almost $12, with TheAtHomeCouple.com contributing $4.44 to that total! Time to get me a movie ticket.

As I’m typing out this blog report, and infomercial popped on the television titled “Internet Shortcut Millions” with two busty young ladies talking about how if you can send an email you can make millions on the Internet using Jeff Paul’s 3-click system. I really wish you guys could see this… I’ve written down the number and plan to call and start asking the representatives about click through ratio and bounce rate – who the hell is Jeff Paul? lol.

As you can see in the screenshot above, there was a sexy increase in unique visitors to our blog in September. According to AWStats we had 2175 unique visitors with 16, 049 page views and an average of 3.49 pages per visit. That’s 805 more unique visitors than August!!! Sweet victory… The downside is that the page views and pages per visit had a slight decrease – but that could mean several things, and having a more established regular flow of readers probably contributed to that decline.

This is really blowing my mind right now – the above screenshot shows an average of 153.23 visits per day, with the most traffic on September 16th which brought in 519 visits! Who the heck are you people, and where do you come from? I know one of my strengths regarding website development is traffic generation, but 3 months ago I couldn’t even tell you what technorati does (I’m still not 100% sure, lol). Blogging rules, and that’s the end of that!

Here is my favorite number, and what ties everything together in the blogosphere – Our subscribers! We haven’t held a single contest, or posted anything insanely ground-breaking or controversial, and yet we’ve somehow increased our subscribers from 25 at the end of August to 67 at the end of September! I really don’t know what to say except thank you. I can only imagine what the response would be once Veronica has the time to get her crazy, beautiful, insanely smart ass up on here more often to mix it up with you guys and gals – I can’t wait!

Elijah, how did you get these numbers in 2 months?

I stopped caring about what the Guru’s are doing
I stopped reading and commenting on blogs where the favor is not returned
I stopped reading 37 ebooks a month
I stopped worrying about what to write
I started swearing in my blog posts
I started leaving demented comments on all of your blogs
I started linking to anybody or anything that I thought was cool
I won a Rastafarian plush doll at a carnival and made a dance video with it
I started sending questionable emails to Alan LeStourgeon, Paul Piotrowski and Mark Hansen regarding brown paper bags and dog poo
The most important factor that contributed to the quick success of this blog is that I stopped being afraid and started kicking ass. I stopped thinking about how I’m going to accomplish things and started to take action based on what I already know, and what I’m good at

We love you guys and can’t wait to have dinner with each and every one of you sometime within the next 25 years. I’m sure we will see some of you sooner, but that’s besides the point. I strongly believe that there’s a new wave of uber-talented, top-bloggers that are about to take over and kick some of these gassy Guru’s off their comfortable ladders. I can take a look at my blogroll and say, with confidence, that you’re all going to be big in your own way and we will all be around 12 months from now – whether it’s launching products together, or building a selling businesses online together. The future is being molded as we speak, and Veronica and I feel privileged to have the chance to be a part of this.

Cheers,

Elijah

Roll With The Punches – Update 3

When I announced to the world (the 150 of you that come by everyday whom we adore) that I challenged myself, while waiting in line at the grocery store, to generate the equivalent of that shopping bill in affiliate commissions by the end of the week, I thought I had it all figured out. Little did I know…

Though my original plan was well thought out, and in theory would begin to generate affiliate income, I quickly realized that 1 week is not enough time to implement the particular bum marketing techniques I was planning to use – so I had to change my plan and roll with the punches.

As I began to gather up my Lemmings and inform them of the labor shift , I noticed a common theme recently amongst my peers and partners in the Blogosphere – Site Flipping! After reading some awesome challenges and making a phone call to one of my Bloggerhood Ninjas, I concluded that site flipping is probably the most efficient way to make a quick buck with little to no financial investment – which would enable it to fall into my Bum Marketing Madness theme perfectly!

So over the last few days I have managed to do the following:

Find a niche and key phrases that have a high KEI rating using Wordtracker
Purchased a domain name that contains one of my selected key phrases
Researched affiliate networks and found 3 niche related products to promote
Selected a theme that will provide functional as well as aesthetic elements to my WordPress 2.6.2 back end.
Designed a custom logo to replace the stock header, and a few custom banners for Clickbank products using Adobe Fireworks CS3
Compiled a folder of images for the posts.
Researched and wrote 10 posts, all spread out and post-dated between Tuesday and Friday.
Submitted the site and posts to Digg, Stumble Upon, and bookmarked it in Technorati, delicious and furl.
Fully integrated Google Adsense and my selected Clickbank products into the theme and content.
Created a Squidoo lens using the same keywords and images from some of my posts, with completely rewritten content.

What’s left to do?

Today I’m hopefully going to complete 3 possible tasks to increase the value of my site flip once it hits the Sitepoint.com marketplace. The first thing I’m going to do after completing this post is write an article based on my primary key phrase and submit it to 5 or 6 of the high ranking article directories – with the domain name linked in the resource box of course! This will get one way links pointing towards the site and increase it’s value and positioning for my main key phrase – currently I have my Digg submit in the number 3 position as of last night, and I’m almost positive by the end of day tomorrow that my Squidoo lens and Ezine article submission will take the remaining top spots.

My second task is going to be creating a profile on Myspace and a few other social and blogging networks, and adding some friends and posts to these pages that point back to the site – again for one way links, but to also give the site some social value which is important with Web 2.0 style blogs. Lastly if all is well I’d like to submit the blog to some of the better known blog directories and maybe do some more commenting on niche related sites and forums.

My plan is to have the sales copy written and the auction up on Sitepoint.com by early evening Friday. If all goes well I will sell the site by Sunday for at least $100, which I don’t see being a problem, and accomplish my goal of making back the grocery money we had to put on Veronica’s credit card because we’re broke. This was my challenge to myself, and I am going to complete it while teaching myself how to flip websites for profit and spending nothing but time to do so.

See you guys at the finish line.

Cheers,

Elijah