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?

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

There is a lot of talk about how blog commenting can increase the traffic on your website and thus “should improve the value” of your blog. Dennis commented on my last post “Stop Thinking, Start Acting” and I am quoting his comment here on the part where I said that getting traffic from fellow bloggers isn´t the best way to monetize your site, because I don´t agree with what he says:

“If I may politely and ever so slightly disagree – Yes, that’s exactly what it could lead to. What do potential advertisers (assuming you’re looking for them) like to see more then almost anything else? Activity. If you’re not “out there” no one will be in here.

I agree 100% that social activities shouldn’t be the bulk of ones time, but on the flip I woud never advise giving it up altogether either. Article marketing and the like is an awesome avenue like many others, but if no one knows who you are, never sees you around, how long is that going to last?”

There are a few things I would like to say about this comment and to clarify, these are my personal opinions and every body is free to think otherwise:

1. Fellow bloggers don´t bring in the money, especially not in the MMO niche
2. Potential Advertisers look at ROI not at just “activity”
3. Money comes from people searching for solutions, not from info addicts
4. I prefer long term strategies over short bursts of traffic
5. You don´t need to be a Big Name to get the Big Payouts

Yep, 5 reasons why I don´t agree with the above comment, sorry pal.

Fellow bloggers don´t bring in the money, especially not in the MMO niche

This one actually took me quite a long time to figure out *blushing here in shame*. Now anybody could argue and say but hey “look at John Chow” he is making tons of money off of “fellow MMO bloggers” but guess what, he is not your fellow blogger!

I mean, do you see him going round to other blogs and comment on everybody and their dog´s blog to get visitors in?? I bet he makes a lot of sales in the MMO niche because probably most people that find his blog are noobs that aren´t aware of the affiliate links placed everywhere.  But as soon as people start learning about the affiliate marketing structure, when buying any product I think that at least 90% will buy the product through their own link, not yours! And yes he probably earns big on advertising on his blog because he has a huge subscribers list.

Now anybody can argue with me that the “ethical way” to do things is to not steal affiliate links and replace them with your own before buying a product, but come on, be realistic about this. Your visitors don´t feel any fuzzy feelings towards any of the ads on your blog, so the chance of them stealing the affiliate link is much bigger, if they are visitors from the MMO niche.

Potential Advertisers look at ROI not at just any “activity”

This one is another thing I think one should really understand. Not any activity online is profitable, so you have to look at why a potential advertiser wants to buy ad space…

If I were to invest in putting an ad for any of my products or websites somewhere, I don´t look at the “front” activity in the meanings of how many comments there are on a particular blog. I mean, of course it looks fantastic, a blog with zillions of comments and such, but what if all of those comments are coming from other bloggers using blog commenting as a link building strategy? I bet at least a considerable percentage of comments are exactly that. I much rather advertise on a blog that can show me with statistics as proof that the bulk of their traffic comes from search engines, because those are the people actually looking for an answer, (after all, they did search for it, right?) and not regular fellow (info addict) bloggers.

So really, if you want to make money from your blog by getting advertisers to pay for your sidebar real estate and you want them to become long term investors, there should be a good ROI, in other words, the advertisement they put on your blog should bring in MONEY (not just clicks).

Money comes from people searching for solutions, not from info addicts

Another one that took me quite a bit to understand but now that I do, it just makes so much sense to me that I don´t get just why it took me such a long time to see the difference. All of the social sites like Digg, Tweeter and what not are full of people spending their time reading (and some researching), socializing and “staying on top of what is out there”. So yeah, these social sites can bring you a wave of traffic, but do you really think they are going to spend a dime on anything you are promoting?

They might, if you are lucky, but I bet there is a much higher probability that people who are looking for answers and solutions spend money than those who are just looking around, reading and socializing. Where do people look for answers and solutions? Do they go to tweeter to find a remedy for their blown up toe? Do they look at Digg to solve whatever problem they have?

……… Drumroll please…. they go to a search engine!

Ok, so you could arguee here that getting links from social sites is good too, but wouldn´t you prefer to be able to target potential buyers right where they start looking for their answers? And therefor spend most of your precious time actually focusing on getting the traffic that is looking for an answer with money in their pockets, willing to spend it?

Now it sounds logical to me -in hindsight of course- because my statistics are actually showing that it works better for me to get traffic through search engines instead of social sites and socialing on other blogs. And by statistics I mean ROI not just any activity!

I prefer long term strategies over short bursts of traffic

I will never say that people shouldn´t comment, socialize, digg, tweet or whatever to get traffic to their site. I mean, if you want to spend your time being sociable, please go ahead and do so. I did and boy was I excited in the beginning of this blog to see sudden bursts of 3, 4, 500 visits in a day. It would make my day, seriously.

And man it was wonderful to see some great comments and getting recognition from other bloggers, it sure did feed my ego. Did it feed my wallet though? Did the traffic continue at the same rate as soon as I stopped actively promoting a site? Guess you can tell me the answer yourself but if you can´t, I will tell you… as soon as I stopped spending hours commenting on other blogs, clicking entrecards and trying to land a few good Diggs, the traffic slowed down big time.

However, when putting out articles in different places, targeting my keywords on my sites, and actually seeing my search engine rankings go up for quality longtails, traffic started coming in and keeps coming in after only publishing a few articles per page.

You don´t need to be a Big Name to get the Big Payout

Now this might go against anything you have probably seen out there, after all, people only spend their money when they trust the source, right? At least, that is told on all the MMO blogs I have seen so far and in a way it makes sense if you are a MMO blogger yourself. So it is said that you should put yourself out there, comment on other blogs, socialize so that people actually get to know you, trust you and then buy your products, right?

I sincerely think this only goes if what you are trying to sell is your OWN product, or if you have a HUGE mailing list. Now, huge mailing lists aren´t build in a week, nor in a month if you don´t actually buy them or invest a ton of money in getting the leads or whatever. And please realize that I am not saying here that being a big name is bad, I am just saying that you don´t need to BE one to actually get money.

This realization actually came after I started using the One Week Marketing Plan by PotPieGirl and probably in the near future I am going to put up a review on that program (even though I realize that fellow MMO bloggers won´t bring me any cash ROFL), but I do feel it is important to break down the myth of “being a big name is the way to bring in big money”.

Just think about this one for a bit. Look at any of the marketers out there that are making it big time. They might have a flagship website that is attached to their name, but do you really think that is the only website that brings in the cash? Or could it be quite possible that they run numerous other sites without attaching their name to it?

And another thing to think about for a bit. If you really need to be seen out there to get somewhere, how come PPC is a huge market? After all PPC-ers don´t show their name or face, right? What they do is lead target traffic to a certain website that sells a product, without “them being seen in the scene”, right?

So basically, what I am getting at is that as an article marketer, you don´t need to become famous, you need to choose the product you want to promote correctly, make sure you target traffic that is looking for solutions and answers, willing to spend money and then lead them to that product. The one that needs to be “seen” after all is the product you are getting affiliate commission for.

My conclusion:

As far as article marketing and “how long it is going to last” I think the longevity is much higher than any commenting or socialization strategy

Too many people are getting sucked into the MMO scene and what other MMO-ers are spreading out there and therefor are defying their own chances of actually building a real business online.

Too many people over estimate the value of social traffic and blog commenting, too many people underestimate the true value of search engine traffic. Too many people keep researching and try finding the “secret to making money online fast” without taking action.

You as a visitor can take these words any way you want, after all, who do I really think I am without showing a $36,000.00 monthly pay check?

Am I telling you to stop commenting, socializing and what not? No, not saying that you should, just saying that you should make sure you use your time wisely if you want to build a real business out of creating websites and affiliate marketing.

But please do yourself a favor if you want to build a business online, get serious and take action doing things that give you a good return on investment, whether that be time, money and/or effort.

As you might know I have recently changed tactics and the main goal of making these changes was to increase my productivity level. When I first started this blog I thought it to be very important to get in touch with other bloggers and comment on their blogs so that they would come back and put a comment on my blog.

Sure it was great to see the comments per posts increasing as well as getting more visitors to this blog. It was great for my ego, but that was about all that it would produce. An ego boost and wasting an aweful amount of time looking for new information to improve my blog and tweak and twitch the look and feel of it.

It sure was a fun time and I did learn quite a bit. There is however a negative side to contacting and reading a lot of MMO bloggers, and that is that they/we tend to overthink things and sooner or later instead of being really productive we can spend hours and hours working without getting anywhere.

Ok, we might be getting traffic from fellow bloggers and we might be getting a lot of comments, but really, be honest, where does that lead anyways? Does it put a lot of money in your pocket?

Last month I have been turning things upside down. Instead of doing the “social thing” I went into private mode so to say. I don´t want to become famous on twitter, myspace or whatever other social networks there are out there, so why would I bother spending hours connecting and wasting time that I could very well use to actually build a business?

I needed another plan. Another layout I could stick to and make it my work schedule.

The Schedule I am following today

So I got the One Week Marketing Plan… eventhough I had pledged to never ever in my whole life to buy another ebook. And even when writing this post I am laughing at myself, I mean, here I am telling that I want to become more productive and then I go out, buy another book on MMO and instead of acting I read even more. Oh well, you gotta be able to laugh at your own actions right?

Anyways, like I said, I needed a plan after all this time “working” online I had gotten so brainwashed by all the crap that can be found when it comes to making money online, that I had to make a fresh start and just go about things step by step.

That was about 3 weeks ago already and since then I must say my productivity level, even though it still isn´t where I want it to be, has improved dramatically. My daily activities have gone from commenting, researching, socializing, learning and posting (the fun way of spending work time that most MMO-ers are guilty of) to building websites/lenses and then promoting and building links to them through article marketing.

Most of the time I get this done with the blindfolders on because as soon as I start doing any common MMO activity I am lost again.

Bloggers – “make money onliners” – waste so much time that they could easily be compared to the millions of 12 year olds who play video games six to eight hours per day. Why do video game addicts do what they do? Because it’s fun; it’s an escape from reality to get online with your buddies and kill aliens for hours at a time. While they’re playing video games they don’t have to think about anything that stresses them. Are bloggers any different?

read more

Are you guilty of being an MMO-er?

I never really understood the difference between the MMO movement and those marketers that were actually building their own business. I really thought they went hand in hand. Want to know what the difference is?

MMO-ers get sucked into the information highway by their fellow bloggers and start reading a lot of “how to get rich articles” written by people who aren´t putting their own words into practice themselves but think that if only they stick with that type of posting long enough, success will eventually rub off on them. After all, they are talking the right talk, right?

So I decided I did not want to get sucked into more information addiction, which is why I changed the path of this blog. I did get the One Week Marketing Plan because I needed to stick to something literally, plus I started using Unique Article Wizard apart from submitting articles to EzineArticles.com.

And just before you start wondering, I did actually already submit 5 articles to both UAW and EzineArticles.com before taking a break to write this post

Now my questions to you… can you guess what I see happening with my stats? Can you guess which way of promotion is getting me more click throughs to my affiliate programs, the former “blogcommenting-socializing-MMO-addiction” or my present “creating webpages-article submission combination”?

Which path will eventually lead to a substantial and steady income?

In my last post I wrote:

So now I should really look at what I have learned this year and whether it has been worth it to run this blog, but more importantly, why I should keep it going another year. Before writing a post with my conclusions later this week, I would like to take the opportunity to thank all my readers and commentators who have participated and made this year of MeMyselfAndIBlog a joyous one!

That was after realizing I had actually missed the first birthday of this blog. Obviously the MeMyselfAndIBlog is going to be around for another year, seeing that I did pay the domain name again.

Over the course of last week I have been thinking hard about where to go with this blog, whether to continue writing here, what to write about but more importantly why I should keep on writing anyways.

One thing was clear though, things have to change. First half year I have spent a LOT of time reading… some may say I have wasted that time, others may say “cool, nothing wrong with reading, more power to ya!”.

So now it is about time to put the reading I have done and the things I have learned to work. Not halfheartedly but with utter complete focus. Basically what it comes down to, I will have to put on blinders and put all the things I have learned over the past year to work, and work hard.

So what is that going to mean for this blog?

It means I am going to strip it down to it´s bare basics. Straight forward posts. The clutter removed from the side-bar and most “monetization” removed (yes, that means I will cancel the exit traffic on this blog). If ever something shows up in the sidebar promoting something, I will let you know why it is there. 

Another thing is that I won´t be doing any promotion for this blog at all. Maybe I might put the occasional comment on a blog post here and there, but not with the idea in the back of my mind of “creating backlinks to my blog” or “driving traffic” or anything like that.

Yep, I am crazy like that…doing no promotion at all is probably going to be complete blogosphere suicide.

But remember the name of this place?

Me Myself And I Blog

Feel free to keep stopping by to read or subscribe to my RSS, feel free to keep on commenting, but I am going to do a really selfish thing and that is focus on ME.

My Time.

My Dreams.

My Work.

My Future.

What will these changes mean for You?

Well… I really don´t think your world will stop turning or that your life will come to a hold.

You will be able to read at least one post weekly, written by yours truely, with updates on my new ventures and how things really are working out.

You can comment and get some exposure for your website through my commentluv plugin. You can show up in the Comment Champs Top 5 with a link to your site if you make comments that add to the value of the posts, say hi, make me laugh with a funny comment or just let me know how plain selfish I am.

Whatever rocks your boat.

I might also occasionally start sharing what is working out for me.

I might even think of writing a few short downloads that could be useful for you, sort of step-by-step blueprints or whatever you want to call them.

The posts that I will be writing are hopefully going to be so darn helpful, so bloody motivational or just so plain annoying and/or provocative that they will tease you into linking to them.

The biggest change that is that this blog is going to be:

• About productivity – the real thing, not goofing around online
• About challenging myself to reach higher and maybe challenge you
• About showing what works and what doesn´t
• About walking the walk without so much talking the talk
• Maybe even about inspiring you to get to work too.

Yeah…. I guess that will do it for now

Today the United States of America will finally see how Barack Obama will become their new president and if you ask me, it is about time. I know I will be watching his inauguration life on Dutch TV over here in Spain just like I watched the debates and elections eventhough the time difference completely threw off my body clock.

Anyways, this blog not being the most appropriate place for me to talk about politics but what I wanted to talk about is the feeling of “change heading our way”. I don´t know how journalists are covering all the news on Obama in the States, but all I see on Dutch TV is the overall feeling of positive change in the air.

The feeling that everything is possible if you set your mind to it

So now I am wondering, will tomorrow be different from today?

How long does it take for The Change to become visible, noticeable?

I guess it all depends on what you are wanting to change and the time frame that you set for that change to happen.

Mitch Mitchell from ImJustSharing.com for example wants to change the number of RSS subscribers to his blog, bringing it up to 250 by the 9th of February. That, if you ask me, is quite a big change he wants to make in only a short time, but seeing that I enjoy reading his blog, I would like you to go over there and have a look. Of course I can´t push you to subscribe but hey, if you like the blog I think you should atleast consider it!

Mitch is also running a Financial Blog so when he mentioned that in his RSS subscribers post I decided to have a look. Now I have to be honest, the information on there is mostly geared towards American readers, or atleast that is how I see it, but I do find it interesting to see the difference between the financial mindset of people from different countries. One post I could relate to more was his Paying Down Debt because that seems to hold some information valid for anybody anywhere.

Now there is something in his post that I am not sure about though:

“One thing you can do is cut up your credit cards and send them back to the issuer.”

Keep in mind that I am by no means a financial advisor, so correct me if I´m wrong, but the last thing you should do is actually cancel your credit cards once they are paid off. Just putting them away in a safe place without canceling them and just not using them so they don´t cost a thing could be important later down the line, because you still keep the credit that has already been approved to you.

Yes, I watch Oprah and saw a show the other day with financial advisor Suze Orman and what she said about cancelling credit cards is that in the long run it would actually hurt your FICO score.

Less credit -> lower FICO score … am I right?

Anyways … Mitch, I am cheering for your RSS subscribers to go upto 250, go go go!!!

Something I just noticed right now is that this blog has actually reached the 1 year milestone. Actually it is 1 year and 2 days now and I completely missed it´s first birthday!!

They say that reaching the first year milestone is supposedly a big thing but I really don´t noticed that big a a difference between last week and this week, heck I even forgot the date!

So now I should really look at what I have learned this year and whether it has been worth it to run this blog, but more importantly, why I should keep it going another year. Before writing a post with my conclusions later this week, I would like to take the opportunity to thank all my readers and commentators who have participated and made this year of MeMyselfAndIBlog a joyous one!

For now I better get to work, not wanting to miss the inauguration of the new president later on this day!

Dennis Edell, my friend over at DirectSalesWebMarketing has recently (re-)started two blogs and because of that, and because he again proves to come up with some great ideas, he is holding a special contest that will end the 31st of January.

For more details on that please look at the end of this post, because right now I wanted to go straight to the bigger matter, Dennis Edell´s new blogs:

DennisEdell.com

Now I have to tell you, every time I buy a new domain at godaddy, I am told that the domain name with my own name is still available and every time I decline. Boy do I wish I had a marketable name like Dennis Edell has but that put to the site.

More important of course is that over the time that I have been reading Dennis over at DirectSalesWebMarketing, I have come to really appreciate him as a blogger and as a person.

I am actually glad that he decided to get DennisEdell.com back up and running because I think he will do well. If you are unfamiliar with this blogging legend, his about page will tell you more about him. What I hope for this blog to turn into, is another place I can visit daily knowing that there will be interesting posts.

So why do I think this blog is worth visiting?

I have been following Dennis Edell´s post on his other blog and have always enjoyed the posts he came up with. My hopes are set high for this new revamped blog since it will be covering a broader spectrum of things, not just internet marketing but anything that rocks his boat.

Cool thing is that he himself is asking his visitors exactly what they would like to read on his blog, so head over there and leave your comment! I am sure that will give him some more thoughts to write about, because quite frankly, the only thing really missing right now, is quantity of posts… the quality is already there!

EasyCashContests.com

Now to be honest, I have actually toyed with the idea quite a while ago to start a blog just like that, to cover all the contests going on online and be able to participate in all of them so that I wouldn´t have to use any of my own blogs to post.

If you have a good look around you will find a zillion contests going on every day and I am sure that a person dedicating his/her time to participating in all of them, would actually be able to make a pretty decent living out of.

But then again, who really has the time to go and find current updated contests that will get you cash instead of mumbojumbo?

It looks like Dennis Edell however is going to put in the work for everybody wanting to participate in cash contests at his EasyCashContests blog.

Like he says in his about page, only contests will be listed that actually offer cold hard cash and knowing Dennis a little bit, I am sure he will only list those contests that are really worth participating in. How is that for a time-saver?

I highly recommend his EasyCashContests blog if you are looking for big bucks to win online, right now he is featuring contests for people interested in creathing delish dishes,… first prizes …. $500!!

Now being the swell guy that he is, Dennis is holding his own contest as well to give his readers the opportunity to start off the year with an extra $100 first prize and loads of other prizes.

Meanwhile, I am keeping my fingers crossed to win the $100 myself or some other goodies!!

For more information about the contest that he is holding on his blog right now, you can go to the contest post or check out the huge amount of prizes to be won below. Remember, the contest finishes the 31st of January so put on your writing boots and take a shot at all the lovely goodies!

Sponsors & Prizes:

CASH VIA PAYPAL:

Dennis Edell @ Beginner Marketing Tips – $25

Dennis Edell @ Win Cash Online – $25

Dennis Edell @ DennisEdell.com – $25

Yep, he is personally putting up $75 .

Mirjam @ MeMyselfAndIBlog – $10

Wei Liang @ ABloggerBlog – $10

Rodel @ Lagahit.com – $25

Suzanne Franco @ SuzanneFranco.com – $30

BANNER ADS (1 month ea. w/value if available):

Sherry @ SherrysShopping – 125×125

Sherry @ PinkyPosh – 125×125

Sherry @ AnotherContest – 125×125

Wei Liang @ ABloggerBlog – 125 x 125 ($10)

Superman Joe @ PostBlogger – 300 x 250

Sharmin @ ContestSpot – 125×125

Erwin Tan @ ErwinTan.com – 125×125 ($20)

Jonathan @ How To Blog – 125×125 ($15)

Garry Conn @ GarryConn.com – 468×60 ($70)

ZK @ WebTrafficROI – 125×125 ($20)

Yan @ Blog Setup – 125×125 ($20)

Archie Pennies @ SomeExtraPennies – 125 x 125 for 4 months

TEXT LINKS:

Collin @ FeedFlare – life time blog roll link

Harish @ BloggingKid – 1 month text link ad

Archie Pennies @ SomeExtraPennies – site wide blog roll link for 4 months

EBOOKS:

Peter Lee @ Make Money Blogging – New Home Study Course,”Quit Being a Wage Slave in 10 Easy Steps” ($47)

Ben Pei – @ Make Money Online – Instant Blog Traffic ($47)

Kathy Hendershot-Hurd @ VirtualImpax – 8 Week Power Blog Launch product ($77)

BLOG REVIEWS:

Mirjam @ MeMyselfAndIBlog – Blog Review ($25)

Superman Joe @ PostBlogger – Blog Review

Nishadha @ rumblinglankan - Blog Review ($20)

ENTRECARD CREDITS:

Sherry @ Heart Random – 500 EC
Sherry @ Name Sherry – 500 EC
Sherry @ SherryGo – 500 EC

Rodel @ Cebupacificairphilippines – 1000 EC

Nishadha @ rumblinglankan – 1000 EC
Nishadha @ YeastInfectionInDogs – 1000 EC

Wiehanne @ Wiehanne Lounge – 500 EC
Wiehanne @ Medan Daily – 500 EC
Wiehanne @ SimplyWP – 500 EC

OTHER:

David R Young Jr @ Niche-It – custom squeeze page template package ($7)

Brian D. Hawkins @ ExtremeEzine – one year Pro membership to YourAdTracker ($39.95)

This post is a follow up on Saturday´s post so I am glad you decided to come back and read about my little sweet success.

To catch up, I had decided to make a new website that would take in account the things I had learned so far, avoid the mistakes I had made earlier and actually follow a special plan for promotion and building the website.

So far so good, maybe I am just a slow learner in certain aspects, maybe I am just too lazy when it comes to certain things, but what I felt had been missing big time was a plan.

Really it is no rocket science at all!

The idea for the new website domain came by a message I read on the MoreNiche forum that made so much sense to me that I just felt stupid that I hadn´t thought of it myself. You see, the biggest problem I foresaw with promoting this product was the actual price it is selling at.

Being a “net-surfer savvy” I had found a lot of similar products that were way cheaper and with the recent crisis going on and the dollar being so ridiculously low I was starting to break my head over the price.

Anyways to make a long story short, I got a new domain name… fresh energy and a plan of attack.

At the time that I was thinking of what to do with this product and whether I should or not continue with it, I finally got into BumMarketing quite a bit and had signed up for a free course by Travis Sago. Now if you have never heard of BumMarketing or are trying it without results so far, I definately recommend you follow this free course since it was what made the difference for me!

The things Travis says might be known already, but for me it turned out to be a little blueprint to go about how to succeed with my new website. Some things really hit home hard and I realized he was pointing out exactly where all my efforts had gone haywire so far.

Yesterday a month ago I bought the domain. I had my plan in place and decided that instead of making a static website I´d opt for a WP blog. No need to teach an old dog new tricks and I knew I would save a lot of time using a blog instead of a static website, since I have been building them for quite a while and it just comes easy to me.

First week I worked on the design and SEO site of the blog while I outsourced most of  the content. This gave me the opportunity to get a little headstart on things before going off for my trip in the second week of this new project.

Second week I was gone, having fun, relaxing with my folks and enjoying the good life and Excellent Food during a lifetime experience. This week actually gave me some time to think and look from a distance at my work and little business. And knowing the content was being taken care off while away, I could sit back a bit.

Third week into the new project, I started adding all the content and doing article marketing, submitting around 20 articles to EzineArticles and articlemarketer and submitting my site to different directories. Another thing I did once I had enough content on my site was starting to answer questions on Yahoo from people that could very much profit from my product and then sending them to the post that would help them finding the solution to their problem.

I started seeing an increase in visits and clickthroughs on my affiliate links but nothing happened. It just stayed at that… more visitors, more clicks … no sales. But hey …. week 3 of a new domain, very few links to my website still so nothing too weird.

I have to go for now but I promise to post on Wednesday and tell you what changes I made to my website, why I did it, what gave me an extra push to put in more effort and why this sale is so special to me.

So if you are interested in finding out what was the turning point for me, I´ll see you on Wednesday!

For now, keep planning your succes!

They say the first sale is the sweetest and I have to confess that when I received a text message from MoreNiche last night I was absolutely thrilled, almost like a small kid that was lead to a candystore and told he could get whatever he wanted.

Now I have been making more sales on all different products from all different places and generating money with adsense and other means to make money online, but this particular sale is completely different. It is loaded with the taste of success, happiness and an unexplainable feeling, almost like a breakthrough.

If you have been reading this blog and following a bit of my path you will know that one of my biggest struggles has always been my lack of focus. I know I have a lot of capabilities between my past experiences, ability to speak several languages fluently and overall I don´t consider myself to be lacking intelligence.

But to be honest, I was jumping from one thing to the other, starting up new projects here and there, and doing the basics only long enough to come across yet another “possibility” that would get me off track.

So why is this first sale so sweet to me?

I had made a website last summer (feels like ages ago now) when I first started pursuing MoreNiche to promote a certain health product and posted several times on this blog about the progress and my thoughts about his particular affiliate program.

• It is starting to work out
• Update on my new venture
• It all boils down to making a decision
• Too many things to do, too little time

Now you can see that the first post about this program was in May and it actually took me all this time to finally land the first sale there. My cheeks are blushing with shame almost for having taken so darn long, and to be honest I was about to give up on promoting those products and just going back to working on other projects.

So I had set up a website in html, added a wp blog to it and for some reason I just did not like the site. It did not feel good to me, the design was off and there were a lot of things I felt I had done wrong with it and somehow I just couldn´t drag my sorry ass to start changing the things I wanted to change.

I had already promoted a bit, submitting articles and building links but that nagging feeling was just there. It didn´t rock my boat, plain and simple.

I was left with 3 options:

• Do a total makeover which would cost me a lot of time and work to get it to the point where I would like it.
• Leave the site and forget about promoting that product and go to “the next best thing”
• Fully analyze the site, write down what should be different, write a “plan of attack” for a new site, keeping in mind to avoid the mistakes I had made earlier and do a better job, sticking to the outline and plan.

Obviously after pondering these three options I decided to go for option 3 and I came to that conclusion for a few reasons.

• It is a fairly new product that has great potential in my eyes.
• I have tested it myself with very good results, so I felt really comfortable promoting it because I am convinced it is something that can help a lot of people.
• Honestly, I did not feel I had been promoting it the way I should have so far.
• The things I have learned over the last half year would now give me a better shot at trying again.

So after I had made the decision to give it another shot I was looking at the MN forum which I have found very helpful so far. They say that coincidence doesn´t exist but the first post I read was by one of the program managers and it gave me an idea for a new domain that would be perfect to build another site and start promoting the product in a different way.

If you have come as far as reading this and are interested in a detailed report of all the steps I made to get this first sale and reasoning behind all of them:

You should come back on Monday!

For now, have a great weekend ya´all!

I´m writing this post to let you all know that this blog will be temporarily closed for me taken a small holiday!

That is right, I will of course return, but this weekend I will be off to the north of Spain for a short visit with my folks.

I have been looking forward to it for ages now, since it is going to be the first time in years that I am really going on a holiday. Of course living in Spain myself, I don´t really need to go on holiday, since the countryside itself offers so much relaxation already, but actually leaving my area and not connecting every day to work on my websites will certainly give me the possibility to completely relax and take a bit of a distance from what I have been up to lately.

I always love driving long distances and even though all my friends think I am crazy for driving almost a 1000 kilometers on my own, I can´t wait to leave. Driving through Spain is probably one of the most beautiful routes I have ever made, the changing countryside looks like there are different countries in one and just the fact of being alone in my car, the music on and the long road ahead has a big effect on me.

An effect of complete relaxation, the time to think about a lot of things without being interrupted and clearing my head, almost as if it were a meditation session.

So yes, it will be great for me!

I will be back the first week of December

so see you all then!