Goal Setting Archives - Page 2 of 2

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

Blog Report For August 2008

Wow, I’m having trouble accepting the fact that TheAtHomeCouple.com is already 1 month old – and what a productive month we’ve had! If you remember back when I posted our goals at the beginning of August, we had 5 main objectives which were fairly attainable. Our top 3 was to post everyday, increase our presence online via social media, and to connect with like-minded bloggers by actively commenting. Mission accomplished.

We actively created profiles and have begun participating on all the major social networking and social bookmarking sites as you can see in the newly added “Connect With Us” section in the sidebar. I also spent the month rabidly commenting on some of my favorite blogs, and discovered some sparkly gems along the way – which is always nice. Somehow I managed to convince Alan from AffiliateConfession.com to grace us with an off-beat interview and he gladly accepted, which was awesome, and I pretty much posted everyday minus 3 or 4 times that I needed to disconnect and let the laptop cool down. As Borat would say, “Great Success!”

If you’re reading this post expecting to see an income report of some kind, it’s not happening just yet and here’s why: a) We have been focused on building the foundation – which is the content and the community, and b) I hate seeing 2 month old blogs that are full of ads and top 10 lists. If you think no one will notice that you’re rewriting content from authority blogs, or polluting your site with 125×125 ad blocks in an attempt to attract buyers for your ad space, think again. It’s blog suicide and unless you’re already established and have social proof of your status online do not pretend to be something you’re not – because you’ll stick out like a sore thumb. Be yourself and you’ll do just fine!

Even though I’m not going to let you know about the $7.85 we made from Adsense, I do have some screen shots I’d like to share with you guys and gals relating to our traffic, subscribers and search engine presence from our Hostgator cPanel admin. As you can see below from our AWStats report we had 1370 unique visitors between 08/01 and 08/31, with 16,855 page views and an average of 5.79 pages per visit.

On a per day basis, shown below, our lowest was on 08/03 with 8 unique visitors, and our busiest day was on 08/08 with 324 unique visitors – which was when I did the first post discussing SocialMarker.com and how to use it for efficiently submitting your posts to social bookmarking sites. Our overall average bounced between 75-100 visits per day, sometimes higher and rarely lower, which could only mean one thing – you guys rock!

In regards to subscribers, as of Saturday we have 25 wonderful people who have locked in with their favorite RSS feed reader to keep up to date with our Internet marketing adventures. I’m still not 100% sure on how to read the statistics provided within the Feedburner dashboard, but as you can see below it says “25 readers” so that’s what I’m sticking with!

For those of you who don’t know, I’m really big on keyword research, backlinks and getting organic traffic from the search engines using Wordtracker, to find kick-ass key phrases for post titles and content. Out of curiosity I opened up Google and typed in “the at home couple” and was pleasantly surprised with the results I received. There are approximately 833 listings for this term, and tons of them are links coming from other blogs as well as social media services that we belong to.

I think that’s enough screen shots for now. I’ve absorbed quite a bit of information in the last 8 months, and even though it’s easy to get overwhelmed it’s becoming apparent that I might actually know what the heck I’m doing – which is comforting. I can remember a point in time when Veronica actually thought I was loosing my marbles with this “Internet” stuff and she would just sit and nod when I’d start rambling about affiliate marketing this, and click through ratio that… Poor girl!

We just want to say how awesome each and everyone of you are. We’ve hit some sort of nerve within the blogosphere and it’s comforting to know that there are other people just like us who lay in bed each night dreaming of working from home or traveling to distant places without breaking the bank. It does seem far fetched until you actually go out and do it, and with the power of the Internet at our fingertips there is no reason why a twenty-something couple or stay at home mom can’t improve their situation and bring freedom and excitement into their life. It really is a beautiful thing.

Cheers,

Elijah

From College To Cubicle – The Orthodox Blueprint

From College To Cubicle - The Orthodox Blueprint Let me start off with a story…

For those of you who don’t know, I’m a mildly respected Music Producer here in Toronto’s local Hip Hop scene, under the stage name MrBlue. I’ve developed artists and produced several albums over the last 8 years – and during this time I’ve been fortunate to share creative exchange with many ambitious, and uber-talented individuals and I want to tell you about one in particular; Lets call him “Steve”.

I’ve been collaborating with Steve for roughly 5 years, and out of all the artists I’ve ever worked with, he has the most potential for greatness without a doubt. Steve has been signed to a label, had his record in stores, and has performed with some major recording artists during his artistic career and yet he’s never seemed to have his musical endeavors flourish.

Steve has been in school for as long as I’ve known him – bouncing from one major to the next. It feels like every September he is starting a new course, or academic path, and what really stirs me up about his whole situation is that all he talks about is music and how he wouldn’t be where he is without it – but where is he really? Rather than pursuing his passion to the full extent, he has remained shackled to this cycle of call center jobs and tuition deadlines, and his governmental debt from education alone surpasses mine and Veronica’s debts combined – including our tuition repayments, credit cards, etc.

On numerous occasions I’ve said to him, “You should be going to school for what you’re passionate about. Why aren’t you taking music or recording arts?” His answer’s usually “I know, but I’ve already gone this far. I can’t just change course now, it wouldn’t be worth it.”

Wouldn’t it?

Unfortunately Steve is a victim to what I refer to as The Orthodox Blueprint. Now before you start bombing me with religious questions and moral script, let me elaborate. Dictionary.com defines the word Orthodox as:

Adhering to beliefs or practices approved by authority or tradition.

The word Blueprint is defined as:

A method for making, doing, or accomplishing something.

String these two words together and we have the 9-5, 40 hours a week until your 65, then retire and die life-plan. It’s been accepted by society that we are not to find enjoyment in our working lives, but rather stability and a maniacal sense of economic and social responsibility. It is our duty to contribute as citizens. It is our responsibility to work in a factory or office and pay taxes, because that’s how the system works – and the system is proven. The only career advancement worth pursuing is within the corporate ladder, because that ladder is sturdy and will provide you with a spending account and company car – and these are true signs of success.

As people, we’re so afraid to take the fork in the road, and face possible consequence, because a sign has been put there to warn us of the dangers in doing so. Just keep going straight and you’ll be fine. Finish school, get a job that will provide you with benefits, a steady paycheck, and you will eventually develop your method for tolerating with this blueprint. Adhere long enough and you’ll be rewarded with a mental notebook full of I wish I could have’s, a pension that will barely sustain your mortgage and minimum credit card payments, one trip to Florida every winter, and a deposit on your coffin.

This is what we should be afraid of.

In today’s world we are provided with more options than ever to lead a life of choice, passion and excitement. There are academic diplomas and degrees for everything from holistic medicine to audio engineering – and even e-business marketing. Technology provides us with the tools to be global entrepreneurs from the comfort of our living rooms and home offices. The Internet presents us with an abundance of resources and self-learning mediums in order to further develop and discover skills based on areas of personal interest. In 2008 you can be whatever you want to be, but ultimately it’s up to one person – You.

So don’t let yourself down.

I want to thank Alan from AffiliateConfession.com for inspiring this post by his use of the term “from college to cubicle.” I’m not sure if he is the originator, but it was the first time I’ve heard the saying used, and It inspired me to share my translation with you.

Cheers,

Elijah

Monthly Goals For August 2008

When we started this blog in mid July we knew it wouldn’t be easy. There are so many people out there selling products and systems that will teach you how to make money blogging – and all you have to do is press a magic button and watch the cash pour in while you sleep! It couldn’t be farther from the truth. It has never been easier to make money from home whether it’s via affiliate marketing, consulting, or creating and selling websites due to the current state of technology – combined with persistence, the ability to adapt, and HARD WORK – not because of some secret system. Without goals to strive towards you can say goodbye to your dreams of working while sipping espresso at a cafe in Italy, or checking your email from a Mayan jungle resort. As young adults, or adults in general, it’s crucial that we have ambition and a constant motion forward to promote personal growth and accomplishment. Having both long and short term goals will increase your odds of staying on course, which in turn will maximize your success rate and enable you to fulfill your dreams.

Here are my monthly goals for August 2008:

1-3 Posts per day Monday through Friday – The more frequent a new site is updated with fresh content, the more often Google and the rest of the search engines will stop by and visit us which will lead to an increase in organic search engine traffic and indexing.
Begin to increase online presence via social networking and social bookmarking sites. Social networking can bring loads of targeted traffic to a blog and increase the participaction and subscribers. I will be focusing on 6 main sites: StumbleUpon, Digg, Myspace, YouTube, Friend Feed, and Twitter.
Commenting on niche related blogs is also a great way to increase your online presence and establish yourself as a trustworthy resource. I am currently a top commentator on 3 high traffic blogs and would like to increase the number of blogs I frequent to 10. If I can write solid, helpful comments on 10 blogs per day for the next 30 days I will definitely start to see more activity here in a very short amount of time. I loves me some free traffic!
Write at least 3-5 keyword rich articles and submit them to all the major high traffic article directories like ezinearticles.com and goarticles.com. By using Wordtracker to conduct my keyword research and putting those low competition, high search volume key phrases in the article headings I will not only get indexed into the search engines, but I will also have an external guage on what topics are hot based on the performance of each article. Tip: high traffic article directories usually rank very high in the search engines, so writing some good articles could get you top spot for niche related keywords and phrases.
Continue to expand and diversify my WordPress skills. This is my first self-hosted blog using WordPress through my Hostgator hosting account. I currently run between 10-15 sites – some of them only partially optimized for the occasional affiliate sale or adsense click – the others are just sitting on a domain waiting for some TLC from myself or Veronica. I have found WordPress to be the ultimate management system for setting up, optimizing, and maintaining a blog or niche website. The amount of power behind it is incomparable and having the ease of 1 click set up through Fantastico on my Hostgator account makes it that much more efficient. I will be spending a significant amount of time brushing up on HTML, CSS, and hopefully getting a custom header done.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that my goals for August are strongly focused on building content, and generating traffic. When I first started getting into SEO and keyword research I got so excited that I started building blogs, putting up 5-10 posts, and then promoting the hell out of them. The problem with this mindset is if you only have 10 posts on your blog your traffic will come, browse, and move on. If you’re just getting into blogging like my friend T. Edwards over at Poverty101.net make sure you have a minimum 20-30 posts before you start to heavily promote and get backlinks – because if you so happen to make the front page of StumbleUpon you better have some content to keep your visitors interested! Nobody wants to stop by a blog with 1 good article and 5 pieces of crap.

Maybe Veronica will read this and compile a list of goals of her own, we’ll just have to wait and see. What are some goals you guys have for this month?

Cheers,

Elijah