The title of this post is a bit of a tease because I’m not going to tell you exactly where I earn money online.

What I do want to do is share how many different products I promote and what kind of thing I do in order to make some affiliate sales.

In time this will hopefully become a long list of products that allow me to earn a living online.

Regular readers of this blog ( are there any? ) will probably be able to guess what product I get the majority of my commissions from.

I’m going to promote a range of different products in a few different niches eventually  so I’m going to call my current cash cow:

Product A in the Red Niche

I’ll definitely go on to promote other products in this niche but for now there’s just one earning money for me and it’s a recurring payment which is great. It means making the sale once can keep money coming in for months, maybe even for years afterwards.

How am I promoting Product A?

This is almost embarassing, with all ideals of becoming a hard-working internet marketer, my biggest success has been with plain ol’ article marketing.

Not only that my earnings has come almost entirely from a single article.

Almost anyone explaining article marketing will point out that you need to be writing or producing content consistently and often in order to earn money.

That’s true but only because some of the articles will earn nothing and some will be profitable. I was lucky enough to write a profitable  article early on and have been reaping the rewards for years since.

I said I wouldn’t be telling you about niches or amounts but I can say that I have earned literally thousands of dollars from a single page on a website.

A page that took me about half an hour to write.

I might have to write a hundred articles before I get a winner like that again, but I’m sure that my “luck” would improve the more I write or the more I learn about internet marketing.

With previous success as proof I know that I need to produce more stuff and I can go on to earn more money from internet marketing.

The site you haven’t built, the page you haven’t published will never earn you anything.

In the Red Niche I have yet to create an email signup, I have not created any squidoo lenses or hubpages and all the traffic to my page has come from search engines.

It’s been successful because it’s an honest review of a product and people are receptive to something that isn’t too salesy.

It was the kind of article I wanted to find to reassure me that the product was worth buying.

Coming Soon

I’m going to expand this into a series that will explain what kind of promotion I’m using for each product in each niche.

Hopefully this will give you some kind of idea of what kind of  work is required to profit from internet marketing.

Just got a message from Kyle confirming that they are going to increase the price of their membership forum

Hi Declan,

So here we are 6 days away from the biggest price increase in Wealthy Affiliate history.  This is not necessarily a bad thing for you, because we are giving you ample warning to get your booty into WA at the existing price of $39/mth, or $29.99/mth if you pay for the whole.

That is quite a discount from the new price which is going to be $97/mth.

Yes, no joke, $97/mth is going to be the new price for a membership to the Wealthy Affiliate University after June 7th at 12PM EST.

I personally want you to have the best deal as possible, even though we as a business would stand to make more, I have no problems with you getting in at the discounted rate.

Why?

Because I want to see you and many others succeed online.  Over the past 5 years Wealthy Affiliate has grown into the opportunity “hub” for Internet marketers.  We have helped members become ten thousandaires, hundred thousandaires and even millionaires during this time.

I find this very cool and so does Carson.

So…

If you join now, you will lock into the current WA price and you will never be subject to a price increase EVER ($39/mth, or $359.88 year).  Even if you are a member 10 years down the road and WA is charging $500/mth for admittance, you still get it for $39/mth.

You will also get access to some future upgrades, and some amazing ones are going to be coming to WA within the next month.  These are new systems coming to WA that other companies are charging $300/mth+ for…but you will get them for free as a member.

Cool right?

Well what are you waiting for then?

Sign-up to WA today and lock in at the price that is soon to disappear forever!

This is not a marketing ploy, this is real and the price will be going up.

Chat with you inside WA,

Cheers,

Kyle
Wealthy Affiliate

Click Here to join now ( before 7th June ) and get complete access to Wealthy Affiliate at the lower rate forever.

Trying to keep on top of these updates and add to them daily before publishing.

Progress is still slow but I have got a basic autoresponder set up in mailchimp which needs more content.

I’d like to have lots of good stuff before I open it up to subscribers but if there’s just 2 or 3 completed it will be enough to start.

I’ve procrastinated too long over things already.

While I wanted to record some screencasts I’ve found typing out some articles easier recently. I thinkit depends on how complicated the content is. It’s a lot easier to plan something by sketching a diagram and translating it piece by piece to text than just jumping into a video and ad-libbing exactly what you want.

I know that some people prefer different types of content audio/text/video so eventually the same stuff would be available in whatever format suits a person’s learning style best.

I received a copy of How to be rich and happy from Tim Brownson. It’s really a guide to things he covers in his lifecoaching and a lot else besides.

Having a paper copy is ideal because in order to bcome familiar with the ideas in the book i want to keep on referring to it. Creating new habits always takes a bit of work.

He was even kind enough to autograph it – Thanks Tim

What’s next

I want to get google apps for domains working with my domains at hostgator, hopefully it won’t be too diffcult, I’ll try it with a new domain before moving any of my existing domains over so that I don’t lose anything in the transition.

More content and more networking with people at wealthy affiliate. I need to have more contact with people doing the same thing as me for personal support as much as technical or marketing support.

And I know that my weekly update has taken a few weeks to appear Things will improve (hopefully)

What would you do if you won the lottery?

Everyone has their own ideas about the kind of house they’d buy or where they’d go on holidays but I bet I’m not alone in thinking that it would be a great opportunity to help other people.

I’m not likely to win the lottery anytime soon but that doesn’t mean I can’t start contributing right now.

I’m not earning enough money to be able to feed millions that need food or build an entire school for people that will grow up without a chance at education.

But if I can start by buying one meal or one book I’ll have improved the life of one person.

So  I’m going to donate 10% of my monthly profit to charity.

I know that people have done “tithing” to churches for years but I’m about as religious as Richard Dawkins so I’ll be looking for secular charities to donate to, ideally those that help with education.

At first I’ll just be choosing charities that can take online donations but eventually I’d like to be able to fund my own projects or even start my own charity.

I don’t want to say how much or how little I’m going to donate every month but I’ll show you roughly where my earnings are coming from and how many different ways I’ve got money coming in.

Has anyone else done anything like this? Are there tax benefits to donating?

Last week was a pretty rough one thanks to some personal stuff.

So in terms of work I didn’t get a lot done.

My most recent efforts have been with trying to set up an autoresponder with mailchimp. Mailchimp is pretty easy to use but there are some differences between it and aweber, which I had used before.

In general, everything at the chimp is done through a friendly wizard style series of steps. There’s some nice features like the ability to send a test email to yourself before you save it to your list.

After a few attempts I’m getting the hang of setting up the list but I still have to find lots of content to put on it.

I’m going to keep updating on this blog once a week from now on hopefully. Got to be regular in blogging.

Fibretastic.

My last host was pretty good for a while.

It had a lot of cool features and allowed me full root access over ssh, it had subversion installed and lots of cool programming tools.  I was even able to setup multiple blogs with a single copy of wordpress.

But I should have known that it might not suit me exactly when I saw them recommend running and maintaining your own DNS server.

It all worked perfectly until  it didn’t and by then I didn’t have a clue how to fix it.

So I’m moving to something a bit less technically intimidating.

Hostgator is one of the hosts I’ve consistently seen recommended and I signed up to a reseller account just a few days ago. I can create cpanel accounts for each site which makes it really easy for  me to set up databases and change settings and it’s been really enjoyable to go back to something so familiar.

I had a lot of fun watching lines of code whizz past in an ssh client but it’s also fun to have sites that are working and easy to maintain.

Hostgator also have live chat support which is a really cool feature, there’s nothing more frustrating than sitting in a support forum and refreshing to see if someone is even trying to fix your problem.

Hopefully from now on things will run a bit more smoothly.

When I first got into the affiliate marketing game I thought it was going to be a great way to earn lots of money.

What if you got into affiliate marketing to try to earn lots of respect?

Would it change the way you work?

I am a procrastinator. I’m not quite as bad as I used to be but I find it hard to get started on things because I worry too much about how it’ll work out.

What if someone doesn’t like what I write? What if my advice doesn’t help the person?

When it comes to recommending an affiliate offer ( like wealthy affiliate or thesis wordpress theme )  I’m asking you to spend money on something based  on my word.

If you don’t like the product it’s partly my fault you bought it.

How can I avoid this problem?

I can recommend only the things I really believe in. I’ve tried to do this from the start on this blog and I don’t promote many affiliate offers anyway.

I started promoting in a differeent niche recently and I found that a lot of the products just weren’t that good. I felt uneasy about promoting them, so I didn’t.Instead  I have promoted a product that doesn’t have an affiliate scheme because it’s the best.

I’ve also emailed the author of the best product asking to him to start an affiliate scheme, alas to no avail.

So if I’m in a market that doesn’t have good products with affiliate schemes, how am I going to make money?

By making my own product and making sure that it’s as good as can be so that everyone can be happy to promote it as my affiliate.

If my readers can see that I have their best interests at heart, that I care about the quality that they get, I’ll be earning their trust.

Hopefully I reward that trust with good information and a good product that is worth the money they spend.

What is a life coach?

I wasn’t sure, even after I had paid for one.

I had just spent an entire confusing day in front of my computer, thinking about affiliate programs and how to earn money online to no avail. I clicked from one site to the next reading potentially useful information but not putting anything into practise.

Help me Obi wan Kenobi Tim Brownson

I had heard Naomi at Ittybiz talk about an excellent life coach named Tim Brownson who had helped her. I visited his blog and liked his advice, his sense of humour.

And then I thought, enough! – I can’t keep wasting my time online. I need someone point me in the right direction. So, at the end of a frustrating day I signed up for 6 hours of coaching via Tim’s site and went to sleep.

On the other end Tim received a lump sum payment from someone he’d never heard of ( me ) which prompted:

Declan,

It’s cool to be sent random money, but what is this for? Are you wanting coaching?

Cheers

Tim

After I had signed,  scanned and sent some forms we organised a brief 15 minute chat via skype and started from there.

So what does Tim do as a life coach?

Short answer – what you want.  One of the first things he sent me was a list of topics that I was to rate between 1 and 10. 1 being something that I really wanted to improve and 10 being something that I was perfectly happy with.

Things like work, business, health, mediatation, spirituality, time management – so we could focus on the things I was most interested in.

From there he asked questions to find out a bit about my values and motivations. He spent time learning about what I wanted to get from coaching and why I wanted those results before he advised me.

What really convinced me about the value of life coaching was how much attention Tim paid to what I was saying. He gave me plenty of advice, but more often than not he would hone in on something I said and effectively ask me why I had said it.

He stopped me dead a few times and after some thought I found myself thinking “Why did I say that?”

What gets measured gets changed.

That’s true of what you think and say as well as what you spend. Noticing where I was being negative allowed me a chance to re-frame the situation and turn it into something positive.

This might sound like a small change or something inconsequential but after a few sessions, for the first time in my life, I was waking up by myself every morning – no alarm clock, because I was eager to get in front of my computer and start doing what I really enjoy. I feel like I’m sure about what I want to do  ( even if I’m still  slow in getting there

I wanted to fix some of the problems I had by availing of life coaching and I found that the majority of those answers I found came from myself. I’m not downplaying Tim’s role by any means, I couldn’t have done it without him but now if I come across a problem I start to think in the manner he’s taught me.

Sometimes that means asking some strange questions like

If I knew the answer what would it be?

At the start of one of our sessions I told Tim that I was frustrated because I’d had a really unproductive day.

“Fantastic” he said, “Now you exactly what not to do”

He’s a great guy to have a chat with and if Tim ever shows up in Ireland the drinks will definitely be on me

With any kind of coaching or training, there’s probably going to be some slowdown after the coaching has finished and I did find myself slipping back into some of my old habits. But Tim has a huge amount of content on his blog and has published a book “How to be Rich and Happy” with John Strelecky which covers a lot of the techniques and exercises he uses in coaching. So I’ve been referring to these regularly to keep things fresh in my mind. Especially reframing and goal setting – they’ve been a huge practical help every day.

I can’t say that life coaching will work for everyone but I can definitely say that Tim’s coaching really worked for me. Of the 6 sessions that I paid I didn’t use the last one because I felt I had enough momentum to keep myself busy for months.

I eventually paid it forward so that someone else who needed some coaching could use it.

If you’d like help from someone who loves American football yet speaks with a British accent check out Tim’s blog and Life Coaching Offers.

I thought I was quite careful and secure when it came to my dealings online. I even bought a great piece of software called roboform so that I could easily maintain different passwords on different sites.

Unfortunately I didn’t change the passwords I had created before I got roboform and I received a strange email the day before yesterday

make yourself more safe. bcoz i went through your paypal account,
hosting and domain logs. its not very easy to remain safe in the
internet. i busted your inbox. sorry for that.

At first I thought it was a joke or some kind of spam but looking a bit further down in my inbox I saw 4 emails from paypal detailing 4 different payments.

total: $140

I went into panic mode and changed passwords in as many of my most important accounts as I could; email, paypal, hosting etc.

After a while I really started to wonder exactly how this person had accessed my account. I’m really careful when it comes to phishing – could it have been a virus with a keylogger built in? I decided to just ask him (her?)

Shouldn’t a hacker reveal how the hack was done so that the victim can
learn how to improve their security?

What mistakes did I make?

They were kind enough to answer

yeah you got me right, i didn’t mean to harm you. i just want to warn
you. here is your mistake:
1. stop using the same password for all of your accounts.
2. don’t give out your main email account and password to random
sites, bcoz many sites are hackable. hackers extract email accounts
from those sites, like i found your email+pass
[361] declancostello*****.com:******

so that’s all, sorry again if i harm you anyway.

A chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link.

Roboform comes with a plugin for firefox so that you can select a site + account  from a list and it will navigate to the login page, fill in your details and submit them so that you get brought to your logged in page with a single click.  Just make sure that the passwords you save are unique to each site.

P.S.

I filed a suspicious transaction report with paypal and they refunded the money taken by my would-be attacker

After Christmas and new year I found myself temporarily unemployed. Business has been a bit slower at the day job so my boss decided to cut his wage costs and do all the work himself for a while. I’m not too bothered by this and thought it would be a good opportunity for me to focus on Internet Marketing.

What’s been happening then?

I bought a batch of domain names recently (.com .net and .org ) for an idea I had and noticed that my total number of domain names had reached 50. Quite a few of them have got nothing at all on them so I’m trying to put wordpress and the thesis theme on them and at least getting google to visit them.

I’m developing some as affiliate sites and other as simple adsense sites. Either is an improvement  – All my domains should be able to pay for themselves.

I’ve got all my accounts hosted at joyent and that’s allowed me to run them all from a single installation of wordpress. It makes updates a lot easier because I only have to do it once and all my sites are up to date.

Work Life Balance

The big motivator for all this work has of course been money, and money has become especially important since my wife and I applied for a mortgage. We’ve been approved and I’m certain we can afford it but it’s really made me think about how much I earn  because like it or not I’m tied to the bank for the next couple of decades(!).

Next week  I’m going back to work so I’ll really have my hands full with Internet stuff, the day job and the bank to worry about.

I think it’s better than having unlimited free time because I’ll be forced to prioritise and get the most important stuff done, rather than spend the day procrastinating.

If you happen to have renovated your own 3 bed house and paid for it by internet marketing, drop me an email

I could definitely do with some advice.