If you are trying to make money online but seem to be struggling, barely getting more than a few hundred bucks a month, The Keyword Academy might just be your missing link.

When I first started out trying to make money online, I thought it was going to be really simple. Just put up a site, get some traffic to it and money would start rolling in, or at least that is what many people wanted me to believe it would be like as long as I bought their product first. For some reason I have held on to the simple believe that making money online really isn´t that hard and my learning curve has been bumpy.

I would stay at the same level for months in a row, even though I was doing what I thought was right, and only the occasional “big hit” would keep me going, knowing for sure it was possible to make a living online, I just had to keep at it and plough away working long hours. Somehow though the work that I was doing wasn´t in a direct relation to the money I was earning and like many others I started looking for ways to improve on my return on investment.

I ran into the One Week Marketing Plan that thought me about the importance of keyword research and keep building and linking, and that plan really gave me a big jump ahead. I had been a member at Clickbank for years but it wasn´t untill I got hold of the OWM that I actually started receiving paychecks and seeing more and more sales coming in.

Sweet, really sweet and if anybody asks me what to do when wanting to start making money online, the OWM certainly comes recommended. There is however one glitch to this system and Potpiegirl mentions this herself as well, and that is that in fact you are building your business based on free sites. This shouldn´t have to be a big problem when you stick to the rules, but building your business around free sites has one big drawback… YOU are NOT in control!

I already mentioned having problems with this in the past, when Squidoo didn´t let me access my accounts and didn´t answer any of my attempts to get in touch with them. Since then the problem has been solved somehow, miraculously I would say and basically it looks like it was all based on a glitch in the system.

It did leave me with a stone in my stomach though, feeling I really needed to make sure I was spending more time on my own sites, seeing that I would have way more control over them and I would be able to sell sites and my content in case I wanted to as well.

So I started with FirePow, which I will be posting about in the near future to share my experiences, but right now I wanted to talk to you about The Keyword Academy because it has shown me a huge amount of things in a very short time which I feel could be very benificial to you. Look at it as the missing link in your internet marketing efforts if you aren´t making a lot of money yet.

I am sure you must have heard about the importance of doing keyword research before spending hours and hours working on your site and if you are anything like me, you may be trying to avoid what is probably the most fundamental part of making money online.

RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH

Yep, it is that important to do your research before anything else! But at the same token, don´t let this part freeze you up in your tracks, even though it is probably the most important thing to do when getting started, it is a START. Once you have done your research, you will have to put in the elbowgrease and get to work, creating sites and content and building links, which will take up quite a bit of time.

Back to the research part. Imagine you have an idea to build a site, and just go ahead working on it, writing content, spending hours creating backlinks, writing articles to submit to directories, asking for link exchanges and at one point you start seeing your site showing up on first page in google, receiving more and more traffic each day.

Now, that is a pretty awesome feeling right? Seeing your traffic going up, seeing the number of subscribers grow and your blog receiving more and more comments from peer bloggers. What a great feeling and boy does it grow your ego! But … does it really grow your bank account if all that movement around your site is coming from people that are not willing to spend some money, people that aren´t looking to buy the answer to their problem, don´t find the product they are looking for or are not clicking on any of your ads?

Nope … it won´t get you zilch unless you decide to sell advertisement space directly or offer to write reviews, basically selling link juice on your blog.

This is why you need to do your keyword research before anything else, to make sure that the keywords you are going to target in the future are profitable.

The Keyword Academy – The Missing Link

TKA is run by Court and Mark and both of them are making bick bucks with adsense. If you have ever done any research on making money with adsense and never came across their names, quite frankly I think you should be ashamed of yourself, because these guys have been giving away their information for free for years, high quality top notch information geared towards teaching people to make money online.

I remember when first opening this blog, I actually came across Court´s site and was hooked. I spent hours and hours and hours reading and over year ago I wrote a post about the 3 bloggers that have most helped me in this business. Court is one of them and when he opened The Keyword Academy I made sure I´d read all that came out from there.

A few months ago they set up a private area for members but at the time I was so busy doing other things I put it on my “to-do list” but I kept it on my mind. Anyways, I have now been a member of the TKA for a few weeks and I can only say I am more than impressed with the information and videos they are handing out.

These past few years I have been a member on and off on different sites and programs, all with the thought in the back of my mind that I needed to be a member to learn how to make money, which is why I was a bit weary in the beginning to sign up for another membersite (other then my domains, hosting and the UAW I try to stay clear from recurring costs!) but the great thing about the TKA membership site is that you can test all the information for 1 dollar and if you decide you aren´t getting anything out of it, you cancel your membership through paypal before the month is over and that will be the end of the story.

Being able to cancel your membership through paypal, means you don´t have to contact anybody, you don´t have to give any reason for stopping the membership or anything like that. You just click on unsubscribe and you´re done.

There are two types of membership, the basic one that costs only $29 and the premium account at $33 that also gives you access to the member forum and allows you to download the monthly seminars with Court and Mark (just the seminars are worth that money already!) but both memberships give you access to the keyword crash course videos, showing you how to locate keywords that are worth persuing so that you only put effort in keywords that will make you money.

By the way, before I forget to mention, the links leading towards TKA in this post are my affiliate links and Court and Mark only allow paying members to become affiliates. This means that the only people allowed to promote the program are actually those people that know what they are talking about, because they are actively using the system.

And because I feel this system can really improve your business and I stand 100% behind the knowledge of these two guys and the quality of information they are offering I would like to invite you to try the TKA for FREE the first month.

Yes, you gotta pay the buck to get in, but if you are that short of cash, I would happily return you the buck to your paypal account. I just feel this is a too important opportunity to pass on and I just know from being a member myself that those 95% of the people online not able to make money would highly benefit from The Keyword Academy.

I would recommend you to go for the $33 option so that you can get support in the member forum, which is proving to be a very helpful place, members helping each other and Court and Mark giving away more of their tricks and insights.

Anyways, have a look at The Keyword Academy and let me know what you think. I´d be happy to answer any questions so let´s see those comments!

PS Just in case you didn´t quite get it, TKA teaches you how to find profitable keywords (with a minimum of $50 monthly earning potential per keyword), find if they are worth going after by looking at the competition and knowing whether you can rank well for those keywords before actually building your site. TKA also offers a step by step guide, breaking down the “homework” into digestible steps so that you know exactly what to do in order to build a profitable site and build links to generate traffic. PLUS you get access to the directory of an ever growing number of blogs where you can post short articles to build links PLUS join a private group of TKA members to facilitate blogroll exchanges.

Check it out!!

I have to confess that I hardly read any blogs in the money making online niche, because there is so much stuff written that will put me on the wrong path again, and I really want to stick to what I am doing right now and follow my own plan.

I noticed though that a lot of what is written out there is basically really bad advice, passed on from one blogger to the next and you can tell that whoever wrote it almost totally copied it from somebody else without adding any personal view or experience.

Now, this wouldn’t be bad if the information to start off with was sound advice, but I unfortunately have seen my share of wrong information on quite a few blogs these past months, which is what got me to the title of this post.

Would you read your own blog, seriously?

I mean, if your blog weren’t yours but somebody else’s, would you sign up for the rss or bookmark that blog to keep following all that the blogger was writing? Do you ever sit back and go through old posts, changing things that aren’t valid (anymore) or just delete posts for the sake of improving the content of your blog?

I have several blogs but not one of them is as “personal” as this one, this blog is my baby so to say, the blog I use to write down my thoughts, my findings, my experiences in the crazy mmo niche, and it is the blog that I promote under my own name, so I feel a big responsibility towards my readers, to provide posts that are entertaining and informative, posts that at times could help other people making money online or refer to great articles that I think need to be read if you are serious about your business online.

Like I said, I have several other blogs as well, in all sorts of niches that on one level or another are important to me and try to provide information on them that is worth reading if you are looking for information in that particular niche. However I must admit that not all information provided on there is solely written by me basically because I just don’t have the time to write everything myself. I do make sure though that everything on there is well researched and helpful for the reader, in other words I try to provide quality on all of my blogs.

Back to the initial question and more important, why I occasionally ask myself whether I would read my own blogs or not (if I would allow myself the time to spend reading blogs). I think that as a blogger or website owner, we have a responsibility towards our readers over what we put out in the world.

So I signed up for FirePow the other day, wanting to take my business to another level and adding more blogs to my portfolio in order to grow my business. It has been 3 weeks so far and once the first month is over I will surely share my experiences and thoughts with you guys.

There is one thing though that I wanted to mention right now. FirePow is a pretty powerful tool that can give your business a real big push into the right direction. Not only allows it to create a new blog within a matter of minutes, including the installation of wordpress and a theme (all is done from within one admin panel with a few clicks) but it also allows to pull content from 10 different resources so that you can instantly create blogs with content and cut down on research time in a big way. It also allows you to access all your blogs from one control panel without having to go to all different admin panels, another big time saver.

Probably the best of all though are the promotional tools it offers, a social bookmarking tool that will bookmark all your posts automatically, promotion through yahoo answers from within the admin panel as well plus a vast amount of blogs you can put a short post on, linking back to the blog you want to promote. Everything is explained through FirePow´s videos and it didn´t take a lot of time to learn quite a few nifty tricks to speed up business growth.

All in all pretty good I would say, especially if you go full into the whole process and take advantage of all tools, but like I said, a full review will be published once my first month is over.

The one thing that kept lingering on my mind was whether or not I would read the recently created blogs myself and for some reason I felt I was in way over my head to keep up with all that I am doing already. More about that in the near future as well but right now I want to finally get to the point:

I believe that 80% to 90% of all the bloggers out there would not read there own blog because they suck, and even that number might be on the low side!

Don’t get me wrong here, not saying they intentionally build bad blogs, but I think a lot of bloggers out there aren’t critical enough when it comes to their own work and what they publish on their blogs and if they were forced to read their blog for a month or two, they’d run away screaming!

So that was my thought for today, start reading your own blog through the eyes of your readers and ask yourself:

Would you read your own blog?

If you are into affiliate marketing you must have heard about the Squidoo Policy changes by now, changes that I feel will make Squidoo a better place. As you know I have been “into” Squidoo ever since I got the One Week Marketing Plan a few months ago and so far my work of building squidoo lenses has proven to be very benificial.

I did run into problems a while back though when all of a sudden I couldn´t get into any of my lenses, which I wrote about while doing my squidoo study case, and the whole situation made me realize again just how important it is to keep control over your own content, especially if that content is created to make you money.

That little glitch a few months ago was actually a good thing even though I was pretty shocked and upset when it first happened and I couldn´t access my lenses, lenses that I had spent quite a bit of time on to create.

So I decided to create most of my content on my own domains so that no matter what happened I´d have the control over it, at the same time sticking with the One Week Marketing Plan to keep growing my business and building links to my own sites.

In come the Squidoo Policy Changes and to be honest, I am really glad that they are going to slap down the crappy content and spammy lenses. I am not too worried that a lot of my lenses being locked or deleted because when creating them I did put effort in the content, making sure it was totally unique and quality content, plus I have not been linking too much to products they now consider big no-no´s and I am pretty sure I am not linking out too much to the same domain, so that is gonna be fine too.

I will have to go over all of them before the 15th of July which is when they will turn on the “squidoo slapping machine” just to ensure my content is 100% ok, the linking is ok and my content will be protected. In order words this means making a back up of the content I have on Squidoo at present so that IF they decide something isn´t up to scratch, I can still use it somewhere else if I feel I should.

I am also not too worried about the squidoo slap because I started with the FirePow system 2 weeks ago in order to create more blogs of my own, on my own domains and just use squidoo for them as another way of building links.

My original thought was to use the FirePow system to create a whole load of blogs, put content on them and promote them through the nifty promotional tools FirePow offers and use OWM to give them another push up the rankings in combination with article marketing.

And now seeing the squidoo policy changes all I can say is that I am glad that I already started protecting the “eggs in my basket” by putting most of my content on my own pages already, and that I am looking forward to seeing Squidoo become a higher quality site again, taking care of all the spam practices that have been going on for too long!

What are your thoughts? Do you work with Squidoo? Are you scared to see your content be slapped and deleted?

After the big improvements I am seeing with One Week Marketing Plan I decided it was about time to start excelerating the growth of my online business and finally fell for FirePow. If you have read my last post on the CB Notify plugin and other tools you can use to make your job with ClickBank easier, you could see a screenshot of the earnings I made in a day with CB.

I am grateful for these earnings that I accomplished because of the One Week Marketing Plan but also realise that I am still far from where I want to go, there still are days that sales are slower and others that I see a big jump of 3, 4 or more sales a day. So I am working hard on making the process of money coming in more consistent and reliable.

If you have been a reader of this blog, you must have seen some “messages from the Universe” and this morning I received another one that made me write this post:

Very simply, Mirjam,

the more that you accept responsibility for,

the more power you have.

Doesn’t that rock?

Love,
The Universe

Thought that was a really good message, and it certains holds truth for me. See, I have been fluttering around for way too long, trying all sorts of things like many other people do when they first start out making money online. Many of these people never get any further than making a few bucks online and give up, thinking it isn´t possible for them.

But really, the only person responsible for your earnings online, is you.

The so called “money making products” aren´t responsable for your earnings (or lack of earnings in most cases) nor the advice you take from others. The only person responsable is you. YOU.

In a world that has come accostumed to blaming all the bad on others, the MMO scene really isn´t any different. So many people blame the bad products, the scams and whatever they can think of to not take responsability for slow results. They claim it can´t be done, that they work hours and hours a day, they have thrown away money on crappy products, they can´t afford to sign up for excellent services or training and the list of excuses goes on and end.

And of course, the latest newest excuse is a widely accepted one, the worldwide financial crisis.

Well, I have had enough of it! I have had enough of the excuses, I have had enough of all those negative thoughts and people, saying that “IT” can´t be done, holding on to their negative believes that in the end only bring them down even more!

See, in my area of Spain, unemployment has gone up in a shocking speed, latest news I´ve heard was that the percentage of people unemployed in my area is approaching 20% and unemployment in the whole of Spain belongs to the highest of Europe, yet one of the biggest Spanish football clubs was able to pay a total of over 150 million euros to buy only 2 new players (Kaka and Ronaldo) …

People around me all talk about the crisis, about so and so losing their job, about no money being available anywhere and I am seeing many foreigners trying to sell their homes so they can return to their countries and at times it seems the country has gone mad. The newspapers all feature horrible stories about people in need, disasters and accidents and yet another scam some political hotshot pulled off.

Yet, when digging deeper and skipping over to the job vacancies, I see plenty of jobs available, even more than say 6 months ago. I talked to a friend of mine who wanted to renovate part of his hotel and he kept complaining that it was impossible to find people to do the job. I think the crisis is in the head of many people, and of course I know many people have been laid off and many banks and big companies have fallen down from their pedestal, but really …

YOU are the one responsable for your own earnings when working online.

I know that sounds hard, and I am probably kicking many people in the behind or offending them by saying it so bluntly, but before starting to shout at me, take a real honest look at your own situation, and instead of spending a lot of time complaining  and bitching, moaning and blaming others, put that time to work in a productive way and change your mindset!

If I am able to increase my earnings the way I have been doing lately, you can too!

Now, back to the title of this post, I really do believe this is the best time to start excelerating your business growth despite the financial crisis, I´d rather say that the financial crisis going on everywhere around us, should be the biggest impulse to grow your business and stay far ahead of others that aren´t willing to put in the elbow grease.

So, I have been building blogs, I have been building lenses and OWM projects, I have even started writing my own products to start selling online (and no, they don´t have anything to do with the MMO scene, rather the subject is my true passion, horses and all sorts of therapies) and been trying to streamline the process to get more done in less time.

A big step I have taken the other day was signing up for FirePow, a tool to put blogging on high speed. I had heard of it many times already and looked at what it would do for my business (or what it claims it could do for that matter) but to be honest I was constantly put off by one thing and only one thing, the monthly cost of $127 and I am sure many of you would be put off by that as well.

And yes, it did hurt a bit to pull out the ol´ credit card and put my words into action, but the way I see it is that I can completely combine the OWM with FirePow and but my whole blogging business on speed, saving a lot of time while taking advantage of the built in tools to increase promotion (and thus more sales coming in!)

So far it has been 3 days since I have signed up and in those 3 days I have managed to set up 2 new blogs and almost completed the work I want to do in order to have them being updated for the next 2 months on autopilot, with unique, interesting and informative quality content, videos and pictures. The actual set up took a few minutes which included installing wordpress, theme and plugins for both blogs so that was a big time saver. Actually amazing to see that being done from the same control panel inside FirePow without having to go all different places, cpanels and ftp servers.

Now, to be fair and honest, 3 days is far from enough time to have all the knowledge and experience to be able to give a full complete review, so I am only sharing my experiences and thoughts so far, at the end of my month you can expect to see a full review and results of what I have managed to do with FirePow so sign up for my RSS if you are interested in speeding up and growing your online business.

Some of the excellent features I have been using so far:

• Universal panel to control all your blogs at the same place
• Instant set up of new blogs complete with wp software, themes and plugins
• Free videos that explain all the features of FirePow in a visual manner
• Automatically pulling content for your keywords to build your blog
• Automatically find free stockpictures from within your post, keyword based and added to your posts
• Automatically adding RSS to different RSS directories
• Automatic bookmarking set up to 20 bookmarking sites

Like I said, I am still far from using all the tools that come in the FirePow control panel, but so far I can only say that I am well impressed and have good hopes for it paying for itself in the next month or so and more. I still have to explore all the tools to create many backlinks to my blogs, part of that is the private blog network they have in FirePow containing hundreds of blogs where you can post your short articles with links, and I haven´t fully explored the RSS and social bookmarking yet, although touching the surface on that is already proving to work.

So you might think, Mirjam, you always keep saying that you aren´t gonna spend another dime on mmo products and yet you forked out $127 for blogging software and yes, that is a very legit thought.

Maybe you remember that a few months ago I wrote about having problems with Squidoo and not being able to log in to any of my squidoo accounts. That problem has since been solved and it basically had to do with my internet connection, but still, it lingered in the back of my mind that all my work at squidoo could dissappear for just about any reason.

And yes, I still believe OWM is an excellent way to learn how to make money, how to do keyword research, find profitable niches and products to promote and set up promotional products. It has actually taken over most of my other online work and is starting to form a major part of my income, not just through Clickbank but other affiliate networks as well.

However I have come to the point that I don´t want to have free resources to become the major part of my income, especially since I don´t have any control over those resources so I want to use the OWM lenses created as a means of back up support to my own sites. After all, I do have control over my own sites, can sell them if I want to and build my website portfolio, and the squidoo lenses are a great way to give extra weight to them.

The FirePow blogging software now actually enables me to build new blogs in a very short period of time, promote them, automate them and take them along in my OWM projects and the way I see it now, it is looking to be the perfect combination.

I will be posting on this combination more over the course of the next few weeks as well as share my personal experiences with this blogging software, but I´d be happy to see your thoughts, questions and comments, maybe you have been working with FirePow already and want to share some insider tips with me!

One last note, if you do decide to have a look at the FirePow software, you will see that you can actually import your excisting blogs into the FirePow control panel and use the promotional tools on those blogs, but unfortunately this feature is under maintance at present so if that would be your only reason to sign up, wait. I have already contacted the online support (pretty cool to have online chat support as to not waste time waiting for your questions to be answered!) and they have told me it would be a few more days. I will of course let you know once this feature is up and running again.

If you are still reading (sorry this became a pretty long post nearing 2000 words LOL) I hope you have a great weekend and think about all the things I have said in this post…

You are the only one responsable for your online success!

Check out the FP blogging software

This morning I woke up and found an email from a dear friend of mine. We have been talking quite a bit these past few months (boy, seems like we have known each other for years LOL) and I have been trying to help her set up a few blogs and explain a few things.

In her email at one point she mentioned she had bought some software to make videos that would bring more traffic in than any other program (heck, that is something all of us want right, more traffic!). I received that sales email yesterday as well and decided to have a look, but after a few minutes I closed the screen and went on.

She on the other hand, decided to go ahead and buy the software.

As I was responding to her email, I noticed that all the things I said to her, actually applied to myself and that is what caused me to write this post.

See… in my mind there is one big ugly beast that kills business for internet marketers and the only way to actually become a success online is to kill that beast.

That beast is the Internet marketer him/herself.

Not the person, but their actions or lack thereof…

Now the sales mail explained how to easily make “killer videos” to create a huge amount of traffic, sales pitches like “this video was created in 2 minutes”, “how many can you make a day”, referring to the amount of traffic each video surely was gonna get etc. So yeah, I could imagine anybody watching the sales pitch to start having visions of receiving thousands and thousands of uniques to all their affiliate sites per day, raking in the money as we speak. Besides, it was only a small investment, 40 or 50 dollar I believe, so hey, you would be crazy not to buy it, right?

I am sure that many people watching that sales video and listening to the voice telling he himself was technically challenged and all but with this software he was able to create a traffic monster video in a few minutes, would think they could do the same.

Please understand that I am not ditching the idea of creating videos in order to create traffic, nor am I saying that nobody should buy into the sales pitch, nothing like that.

What I am trying to get at is that before buying yet another piece of software, or yet another “big traffic generator” one stops and thinks about the reason they are not getting enough traffic as we speak.

I mean…there are just so many free resources online that will create targeted streams of traffic, as long as you are willing to put in the elbow grease and work them.

There is no magic pill, no magic formula, creating traffic no matter what anybody says, takes work, it takes time to do the research and find a proper niche, do the research and find proper keywords to rank, and it takes time to create links so that more and more people will find your affiliate site.

So as I was responding to my friend, saying that I wasn’t gonna buy that software because chances are, I am not going to use it, I started thinking about all the resources I already have at my disposal and am not using to the fullest potential myself.

See, after all this time online and seeing so many new launches, so many new products that would pave my way to everlasting riches, there is one thing that any product lacks. One big flaw that no product seems to be able to fix. And probably no product creator wants to fix that flaw because it would mean that any new launch would become redundant and useless.

The big flaw in any moneymaking product is the USER of that product.

And I am not referring to the lack of ability to actually use the product, rather am I referring to the lack of interest to really use whatever tools available already and keep working productively at creating more content and more links to websites to generate traffic.

Back to that video creating software, in the sales pitch it was said that it only takes 2 minutes to create that traffic pulling video, but really come on guys, anybody believes that?

Just a quick reality check here:

• You have to find the idea for the video
• You have to find the product to promote
• You have to find the text
• You have to find some images
• You have to find some background music
• You have to put the video together (which will take a bit longer then 2 minutes, especially in the beginning)
• You have to save the video (and then be able to find it on your computer )
• You have to upload it to youtube or any other video site

So yeah… it looks like a great piece of software, and probably if you are really motivated and able to figure out things really fast, work on caffeine and all you will be able to create one video in 15-30 minutes, maybe bring that down a bit the more you work with it and familiarize yourself with the how-to´s and short cuts.

My thought, chances are that after 2 or 3 videos, maybe some will even make it to 7 or 8, most people will throw in the towel or better said, get sidetracked by yet another new product that makes traffic generating even easier! My estimation is that only a very low percentage of those that buy the software will actually put it to the fullest potential and actually get to the stage where they see their hard work pay off, traffic streaming in, sales going up and get even more motivated to create more videos.

I actually made 40-50 dollars just by passing on and not buying the software cause I know that I belong to the group of people that would give up after a few videos, getting bored out of my head or just feeling it takes too long to keep going.

Acknowledging my flaw is one step on the right track, second step is getting back to work and be productive today, so I am off for now. I would really like to hear your thoughts on all this though!

Are you guilty of buying too many products and then not using them?

Are you guilty of having resources available and have them gather dust

Are you guilty of always looking out for the next best thing?

Are YOU killing your own business?

It is always so nice when things go according to the plan and even nicer to wake up and see money was added to your accounts.

I just knew that working on the One Week Marketing Plan would be the right thing for me when I first bought it and I was right. Yes it is work and quite a bit of it, but it is starting to pay off faster than any of the other projects I have ever started and sales are starting to trickle in.

Last week I actually built 2 lens projects, although I have to add here that I did outsource some of the writing work in order to be able to finish the 2 projects. I wanted to work ahead to feel guilt free if I wouldn´t be able to finish another lens project this week, because I have to be working a lot on 2 of the websites I have, writing a lot of content and making them upto scratch.

Instead of my normal attitude of “ok, I will just catch up later” I felt I had to stick to my one OWM project a week so I decided last week to work ahead. This way I will be guilt free LOL and it will give me time to do some refreshing on my lenses as well.

A friend of me asked me last week what I was writing about when I told her about this “new venture” down in to Affiliate Marketing Lane so I gave her some of the topics of my lenses. She got this blank stare in her eyes and actually looked a bit puzzled, … and then asked me if this was really what I enjoyed doing, writing about topics I didn´t have a clue about and really didn´t sound all that exciting.

LOL, I can totally understand her question, and no, the writing part really isn´t always that pleasant. In fact, it will be the first thing that I will completely outsource once the clickbank payments are in.

I do like the building lenses part though, making them look pretty, making sure all lenses are linked, following the other steps of the OWM plan and the bit that is called “Getting Your Cash!!!”

And even more today, seeing that my projects actually made 3 sales…

Thank you One Week Marketing Plan, thank you for being so easily digestible and easy to finish within a week, and thank you PotPieGirl for sharing this system you use to make big bucks… I am on my way!!!

When I first started learning about making money online, I got all hyped up by reading that there were these great opportunities to just sit behind your computer and fill in forms for companies. And of course I fell for the illusion that I could actually make a lot of money filling in these forms without having to do anything else.

I guess I am not the only person who ever spent money on this type of program because of the large amount of “online survey companies” you can find when googling around a bit. I thought it was a great opportunity, especially after reading all these excellent testimonials of people who were claiming to make hundreds of dollars a month filling in these surveys, working only an hour or so a day.
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I went out this morning to have breakfast with one of my good friends and our conversation turned to my work online pretty quickly. We have been friends for years and can talk openly about anything and everything.

The one thing though that she can’t seem to grasp is what I do for a living, at least not the part of being so persistent in wanting to achieve a better way of living by bogging and affiliate marketing.

It wasn’t an easy decision to give up on a permanent contract as a car salesperson and I can’t say it has all been a life of roses since that moment, so I can surely understand her worries about my job. She even tried to “open my eyes and face up to the truth”, her truth being that it is almost impossible to earn a decent living by bogging, especially after yet another failed little project or learning curve, as I prefer to call them.

Our conversation this morning though made me think. There have been a few positive developments recently which have given me more strength and a new found source of persistency and stamina, upping my self esteem and believe in my abilities to actually get where I want to go.

And when talking about these things, she pointed out to have a big admiration for all the effort, work and time I am putting in, never seeming to give up and that now, after all this time she felt like she could understand better where I was coming from.

I certainly have a better understanding of her worries and realize that I myself am the cause here. You see, I have always been quite vague when being asked what I do for a living. “I work online” used to be my response and people would automatically respond with “so you make websites for clients?” …

By this time I would start to stutter and blush a bit and either just say “yes, something like that” or if I felt more confident I would try to explain a bit more about the concept of blogging and affiliate marketing in all its varieties. That would usually be the moment I would get weird sighs and confused looks and the attention span would be gone.

So after a while I just gave up on explaining, I gave up on trying to get respect for what I do, even when pay checks started dripping in little by little, giving me a real touchable proof of it being possible and achievable.

Today, after the chat with my friend, I realize this is where I went wrong big time, because every time I was not able to explain with confidence what it is I am doing in order to try and make a living, I would tear down my own self-esteem and confidence in my own abilities, almost starting to feel ashamed to be an online affiliate marketer and blogger, as if it isn’t an honourable job.

This particular blog though, 2 months into it’s existence is what is getting me back on track and focussing more on tasks at hand, sorting out my own thoughts and things I needed and still need to learn.

And maybe things aren’t growing as fast as “they should”; maybe this blog hasn’t got great monetizing potential, maybe the stats aren’t all that they should be after 2 months. My own private and personal stats are going up and up though, giving me the strength on a daily base to keep believing in myself.

Now, that is a pretty impressive reward in itself, don’t you think?