Yesterday I was having a think back to when we were really struggling to make a living online….and actually it wasn’t that long ago. And as I was thinking about it, I wondered why it took us so long to start making a decent income.

We had been working really hard on our websites on a daily basis for over two years but were nowhere near to making a living from it. In fact the only thing that kept us going was knowing in our minds and hearts that this would eventually work if we put in the hard yards.

As I thought about it, I realized that it wasn’t just one thing that finally did it for us – instead it was a series of actions that got us to where we are today. They are what I call ‘massive action’ tasks (you’ll know that phrase if you read or listen to Tony Robbins).

In other words, as we reached a stage where we could see that the amount of input wasn’t reaping the rewards, we changed our tactics and instead of continuing to do the same tasks everyday, we took massive action to take us to the next level. Now we are by no means experts at it, and really at the time we didn’t even equate what we did to taking massive action….we just arrived at the conclusion that we needed to do something extraordinary if we were going to make this work.

I love the saying – “If you continue to do what you’ve always done, you’ll continue to get what you’ve always got.” This happens a lot with people trying to make money online. They continue to do the same things day after day and wonder why they aren’t getting the traffic levels they want or the income they are trying to achieve. If you really want to leap ahead of the rest, then you need to take massive action.

Here are just some of the things we have done in the past that have taken us to the next level in our internet business:

1. Added massive amounts of content – At the time, we had read about two guys online who were adding something like 20 posts a day. We knew 20 posts were just a little beyond our capacity so we decided on 8 posts a day for one of our product blogs. That meant we had to each write 4 blog posts each a day. I did all of mine over the weekend. I think Wanda staggered hers over the week. It gave us a lot of articles to write but we did it.

The effort paid off and the result was that it made a big difference in the amount of traffic to the blog and a huge difference in the amount of  our affiliate sales.

We didn’t end up doing it forever – from memory I think it was a couple of months and then we started to reduce the number of articles steadily over a period of time. The funny thing was that the traffic didn’t decrease – it stayed at a steady level and continues to increase as we add content at a more manageable pace.

2. Changed the Quality of Our Content – We have a lot of blogs and a lot of content, but I can say with all honesty that a good proportion of our blogs have a lot of rather inferior quality content. This is because at the time we weren’t really thinking about our readers but more about making a dollar. When we changed our focus to providing more value to our readers, we noticed a huge difference in our income levels….and I mean huge. This was a major turning point for us. You can read a little about how we write our product reviews here.

3. Concentrated on Less – What do I mean by this?  Well we focused on only one or two websites instead of 20. This made a big big big difference….I know that’s a lot of ‘bigs’ but I need to emphasise the importance of this one. When we were working on all our blogs, we were really spreading ourselves too thin. It just wasn’t effective for us. The trick is to focus on one thing until it starts making you money, then and only then do you move onto the next thing.

4. A Change in Thinking – I think this one was a key ingredient for us. We needed to change our attitude to things particularly in relation to making money online. I remember us having a discussion about why we weren’t making the income we wanted and we came to the conclusion that the only people who make money online are those that tell other people how to make money online.

Well we know that’s not the case now but that was our thinking back then. After all we were working ourselves to a frazzle and getting nowhere, so that must be the reason. We all know this is a fallacy and product sites work extremely well, thank you very much.

5. More Time for Ourselves – It was at this point that we also started to work on ourselves a bit more rather than just the business. This meant that we started to take time out to exercise and to spend part of our day listening to self improvement cds like that provided by Tony Robbins. Funnily enough, the more time we took for ourselves, the more productive we were in our internet business.

Don’t let anyone tell you that making money online is quick and easy. For the majority of us it’s a hard slog. But there is plenty of opportunity for everyone and that is why we want to share our story with you in the hope it will encourage you when it seems that things won’t ever improve, just hang in there it will get better.

Just remember to:

• provide quality information for your readers
• look after yourself, physically and mentally

…and really believe that you can do – because you know what – You Can!

FINALLY RELEASED - Our complete guide to making money online by promoting Amazon products. Head over to the AMAZONIAN PROFIT PLAN website for all the latest info.

If you’re a regular to this site, you’ve probably realized by now that we don’t promote too many products. If we do, it is either a product that we have used or it’s a product from someone who we know can provide the goods. This is the case with Andrew from WeBuildYourBlog.com.

Andrew has been a regular visitor to my blog and ALWAYS has something worthwhile to say. Just recently he launched an Income Blogging Guide membership course which really is the first of it’s type….yes, I know there are other blogging courses out there but this one is different in that it includes every single step with screen shots and video.

The Income Blogging Course includes choosing a niche, choosing a domain name and goes right through to how to make money from your blog.

The information below lists some of the content that’s included in the Income Blogging Guide membership course so take a good look to see if it will suit you.

If you want to discover:

• The 2-step process you need to choose a proven money-making niche…get it wrong and you’ll never make any money
• The 3 golden rules of keyword analysis…get one rule wrong and ALL your future efforts are wasted.
• The exact step-by-step methods to find the best domain name for your blog …99% of bloggers miss this crucial “Search Engine Optimization” step
• How to install WordPress in under 1 minute (as long as you choose the right hosting company)
• Step-by-step guides and images of each ‘must-have’ plugin you must install on your blog (plus all the tweaks necessary – it is not just a matter of installing)
• The 2 steps you need to take to get Google to index your blog…and don’t believe all the hype…they take no more than 10 minutes to complete
• Don’t be one of those blog owners whose blog is ‘hacked…follow these 6 tasks that keep 99% of hackers at bay
• How to add pages, posts and images the right way, to pick up Google “link-juice” and without being penalised for duplicate content
• To launch your blog, what’s the optimum number of blog posts you should have? The answer may surprise you.
• How to write blogs posts so that your visitors think “I like this person, they know what they are talking about. I wonder what else they have to say” …and return time and time again
• How to write a good title for a blog post and why “Here are the top 20 tips for XXXX” is a no-no.
• The 5 quickest and easiest ways to start making a blog income…including the step-by-step approach
• How to split your working day into the 3 crucial elements of making money via blogging
• The 3 traits of a successful blogger…do you have them?

For more info you might like to get the free guide by clicking here.

Since revealing our Amazon income to both our family and friends (and to the world), we have noticed a change in the attitude of those around us.  And although the change is a positive one it revealed to both Wanda and I just what our family and friends thought about our online business.  We have since found that at least some of them didn’t believe we would achieve what we set out to do and others were even rather cynical about the whole thing.

Don’t get me wrong, they were supportive but in the back of their minds they really thought that we were just playing around and that we would never make a full-time income from it.

This is a common problem for people who work online. It’s understandable really as the majority of the population use their computer for communicating with friends and family on Facebook, playing games, watching videos on Youtube, doing a bit of research every now and then, and maybe buying a few things on eBay or Amazon, whereas for serious bloggers the world of the Internet is a whole different story. For us, the Internet is our life and we have no problem with sitting in front of that computer from dawn till dusk if we must to achieve our goals, and get our blogs generating the income we want.

And this is where the problems can start. Your family and friends may not see your time online as being part of what you need to do to build up your business.  It can be difficult making them see that although you work from home the same criteria applies as if you were going to the office. They may constantly interrupt you during the day and your friends may pop in unannounced and expect you to give them your full attention or  ring you and talk for hours. You really have to be strong and keep the visits and calls short.  Make it a policy that you will set aside time during the week when you will go to lunch, or have people around for coffee and a chat. That way you will establish a work schedule that gives you free time to spend with your loved ones that keeps interruptions to a minimum. And as much as we all love to spend time with family and friends you need to set guidelines for your working hours. If this sounds harsh remember what your goal is.

The fact is, until people see the results of your online business they really aren’t going to take it seriously. And it’s not their fault really – there are thousands of scams on the net and it seems as though the most common thinking is that you really can’t make money online.

So  don’t be discouraged if you find that your family and friends do not support you in the way you would like. Remember it may just be  a case of ‘show me the money’ before you are taken seriously.

Let’s face it, regardless of what some of the so-called guru’s like to tell us, it’s hard work building up an online business and there are times when it seems it would be just easier to give up, especially  when you don’t see the monetary results. So having the support of family and friends  makes a huge difference to keeping you on track.  Mind you, not having support can also be beneficial. After all, if you are constantly being told that you won’t ever be able to make a living online you may just find the drive to succeed to ultimately prove to everyone that it can be done.

I just noticed that Google has given us a little New Year surprise with the update of their pagerank. We have done quite well out of it with a good majority of our blogs moving up in the ranks. This blog went from a 1 to a 2…can’t really expect much more than that since I am still yet to promote it in a big way.

Some of the blogs we haven’t been working on at all have gone up to pageranks of 3 and 4….go figure! And most of the ones we are working on remained static. I don’t get it anymore and have given up trying. Pagerank really doesn’t reflect a websites worth like it once did. It really is more of a gauge to get a basic idea of how a website is going…but it’s still a bit of fun to see the changes.

So how did you go with the pagerank update?