Archive for March, 2011

The Most Powerful Backlinking Method There Is

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 at 8:00 am  
Comments (129)

We’ve been at this business for quite a number of years now and over that time we have tried just about every backlinking method known to man. We’ve tried authority site backlink packets, article directory submissions, reciprocal linking, 3 way links, blog commenting, link wheels, blog networks, forum posting, social bookmarking and networking, press releases and that’s just for starters.

We even paid an SEO company back in the early days to do the SEO and backlinking for us. That was a big mistake… it didn’t take long before we realized that we knew more than they did and they cost what felt like a fortune at the time.

I think our goal with all of this has always been to try to find an easy way to get backlinks but I’ve come to the conclusion that there really is no easy way. If you want strong powerful backlinks then you have to work for it. And notice I said ‘strong powerful backlinks’. Anyone can get a ton of backlinks to their website – I could email someone now and they could get me thousands of links in the next 24 hours but you can only imagine what sort of links they would be.

The distinguishing factor here is quality not quantity. One good quality backlink has more value than hundreds or even thousands of poor quality backlinks.

That’s not to say that all of those backlinking methods I’ve listed above are worthless. On the contrary, a good mix of backlinks is important so it helps to include a range of different techniques. However, what we have found is that out of all the backlinking methods we have tried one stands head and shoulders ahead of the rest. The backlinking method I am referring to is guest blogging or guest articles (or PAD if you are a James Martell student).

Guest blogging simply involves giving free articles to website owners in exchange for links back to your website.

Simple right? Too simple for some it seems or perhaps they really don’t see the value in this method. We received an email some time back from someone saying that they had read where someone had posted on a forum that although our Amazonian Profit Plan was great the backlinking section was ‘weak’.  I could only laugh at that because this method of backlinking is about the strongest there is.

It may seem ‘weak’ to some because of it’s simplicity and because there are no tricks involved in it to manipulate the search engines. And it is because of this many don’t see the value in it.

They also don’t even want to try it because they know it involves work. Most people simply want to press a button and hey presto they have hundreds of backlinks. In an ideal world that would be great but so far I am yet to see any automated backlinking system that results in hundreds of GOOD QUALITY backlinks.

Even those blogging networks haven’t been much of a success. We’ve tried most of them and some are better than others of course but ultimately your links end up on blogs that have been manufactured simply to add links. What this generally means is that the content on those blogs is average to say the least and they aren’t updated very often. You will also find that your links are mixed with other often undesirable links so you are associating with a bad neighborhood so to speak. We keep trying these networks and will probably continue to try them but as yet we haven’t really found any that have been up to par.

Another thing to consider here is that Google is starting to focus on quality even more so particularly with their latest update. I can only imagine that more is coming from Google in the future so we need to be ever vigilant that we not only provide quality content but we also have quality backlinks from quality sites.

This is an industry where just about everyone is looking for a quick fix and when I say ‘everyone’ we include ourselves in that bunch. Even though we have worked hard to get where we are, we are still constantly looking for things to make it easier. But then again maybe it’s a good thing that it isn’t that easy to make money online. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it and the market would be flooded.

It’s a case of survival of the fittest – only the strongest survive in this business and usually that means those that don’t give up and keep at it despite the work. You only have to look at JamestheJusts success story to see that.

What I am getting at is that if you want to really succeed with all of this you have to be prepared to do the work and you have to be prepared to stick at it for the long haul. That means even if you haven’t made a cent in the first three months, you keep going. And even if you have only made a few dollars by the end of the first year, you keep going, And even if, like us, after 5 years you still aren’t making a full time income, you keep going.

Doing the work means that you have to stop looking for the easy way out. You have to focus and focus big time and you have to stop looking for excuses. Getting traffic is often the biggest hurdle for most and excuses abound as to why they haven’t started to focus in on that area. Even for those who have started backlinking it is often a case of spending a few hours on it and then forgetting about it for another few weeks or maybe forgetting it altogether because it is just too time consuming or too difficult, or family commitments are getting in the way or it’s boring or whatever. Boring just doesn’t cut it – if you have an excuse for not working on building traffic then you have to get past it because it really is your biggest obstacle to making money online. This was one of our biggest obstacles – for us it was all about building websites and adding content but not real much happened when it came to backlinking.

Traffic is critical to your success and to get traffic you have to work for it.

So, How does guest blogging work?

If you have a system of getting traffic that works for you then by all means use it. We just know what works for us and guest blogging works.

The first step involved with guest blogging is finding sites to submit articles to. The best sites are those within your niche. Bear in mind, when contacting sites in your niche they may consider you as their competition and may not want to add a competitors article to their site. This often has to do with what you are promoting. If you have a specific product site then it can be a little more difficult – for example, if your site is about Apple iPhones and you contact another site also promoting Apple iPhones they will probably ignore your email. On the other hand if your site is about dogs then often it is often easier to contact other dog site owners as in general these sorts of sites are not as product orientated and they see you as more of a kindred spirit rather than as a competitor.

To get around this, you simply approach sites that aren’t in the same niche but are kind of related in some way. For instance, with the iPhone example, I might contact young bloggers who talk about fashion, music and similar topics.

You want a list of sites that have a decent pagerank – we usually go with 3 and up. You can start with technorati.com to find blogs or simply use the Google search.

Once you’ve found these sites you simply send them an email asking if they would like to take a free article from you in exchange for 2 to 3 links in the article back to your website. You let them know that the article is unique and will be on a topic related to their site.

If you get a response back from them you simply write up your article (or get someone to do it for you using Elance for example) and send it to them ensuring that you have placed links to your website within the article.

As you can imagine this method of backlinking can be time consuming. It’s not the quick and easy automated type of backlinking that everyone is after. But you also have to remember that the quality of links is very strong because you are picking sites that are already favored by Google.

Do We Really Have to Prove How Much Money We Make?

Monday, March 14th, 2011 at 9:10 am  
Comments (154)

As our regular readers know, we have been at this business for a lot of years now and for most of that time we weren’t making much money. Which is why in November 2009, when we made an astounding $14k in one month we were so excited that we felt like sharing it with everyone. Which was amazing really because both of us were brought up to never tell anyone how much you earned so it’s actually not something we really feel comfortable doing.

So even though we wanted to share the news,  in some ways we were reluctant to do so. But in the end we bit the bullet and did it and up went the post. The results were amazing really and to this day that post is still the most popular one on this blog.

It’s quite amazing how a success story grabs people’s attention. I know the feeling completely because when we were struggling during those first few years we would try to grab any tiny nugget of information to help us on the way. We were desperately trying to fathom why we weren’t making it and why others were. What was the elusive thing we were missing that these successful people had? We know now that for us it was a lack of focus and value that kept us where we were. In other words, working on too much at once and providing little value to our readers.

So as many of you know now, we adapted our methods and that resulted in a big change for us. We realized the struggle was no longer an issue when we received that $14k check in the mail. It made the hard work and frustration all worth while in the end.

So a year rolls around and it is the anniversary of when we first posted our earnings and we are ready to make the decision again about whether we are going to reveal our November income for 2010. After much deliberation we again decide to do it and up it goes. Again it gets a lot of attention and everyone gets excited about building their own businesses to achieve the same result.

I can see why, money is a great motivational tool – people love seeing that other people have made it in this business. But it’s not only the money…it’s the freedom that money can give you. I think that most people are looking for that – the money is simply a means to an end and for us that means total freedom….the freedom to be able to start work when we want, to make our own decisions without someone telling us what to do, to take vacations whenever we like without getting permission first and having enough money to do it, and to be able to plan our days as we please. It’s a wonderful life that this business can give you and it can happen for anyone.

The problem with the money however, is that it can get in the way of a good thing. It starts to stir things up in people. First of all there are those that just can’t believe it’s possible. If they haven’t achieved it then as far as they are concerned nobody else can, so if that’s the case then we must be making it up. We know there are people out there that believe this of us.

There is even a whole website dedicated to stating that we are obviously scammers because someone from Amazon told them that no affiliates earn that much and we must have photoshopped our earnings.

All I know is that I couldn’t even consider in my wildest dreams making up a story like this. Why would I, the only person I would be fooling would be myself. Plus it doesn’t sit well with me at all…I just couldn’t do it. I was brought up to be honest and do what’s right and that is how I live my life. I also believe that there is some sort of karmic action going on here so I am all for doing the right thing. I also know that ultimately being false just doesn’t work in this business because you get found out in the end and what would be the point?

It would have been a lot easier if this person simply contacted us – we could have provided proof in an instant. We even left a long comment on their blog some time back but it is yet to be published. I can see that he thinks he is doing the right thing by warning people but unfortunately he didn’t think to contact us first to verify any of the details.

But that’s the price you pay for revealing your income when you are promoting a product at the same time. Because we have said that we average $10k a month AND are selling an ebook on how we did it, some people think we can’t be trusted. After all why would we reveal how we make money, wouldn’t we want to keep it a closely guarded secret. In some peoples minds, the two just can’t go together - if someone is claiming they are making a big income and are also promoting a product about it then they are obviously scammers.

Another reason why money seems to generate the wrong signals in this business is that there are a lot of people who think that making money online is a simple process. It’s like the old gold rush days where people poured in to find that elusive gold and then realized that it was a lot harder than they thought it was going to be. The same applies to this business. It is a lot harder than it looks on the surface and one person’s success may not necessarily mirror another person’s success.

There are thousands of people making money with the Amazon affiliate program and each is making a different amount. In other words, income levels are not typical. If you were looking at becoming a doctor or a lawyer or a secretary or a marine biologist or even just working at McDonalds you would pretty much know what your typical income will be. With internet marketing you really have no idea.

So if someone comes along and says that they are making $10k a month from Amazon or $100k from Adsense or $50k a month from Clickbank it means nothing to you really because none of that is typical and it never will be. There is no ‘typical’ in this business – by doing the same thing you could end up making nothing or you could end up making ten times as much…nobody can positively say what you will make. It depends on so many variables (too many to mention) and the time and effort that you are prepared to put into your business which will determine what you will end up making.

What I am getting at is that the money can get in the way for some people – it gets in the way because those trying to succeed tend to focus on it before anything else. They either can’t believe that certain income levels are possible and therefore never really try or they focus on the money so much that it affects how they develop their business. This was our thinking and it doesn’t really work – it results in creating short poorly written articles just to get people to click through to the merchant or promoting products that you wouldn’t purchase yourself.

Sure, we all have to make a buck in order to survive…none of us are here simply to give it all away for nothing but there has to be a balance and believe me the benefits of providing value definitely outweigh the benefits of providing little value to your readers.

It’s time to let the income go…

So ultimately what this post is all about is we think it’s time to let go of the income. I don’t think we need to prove anything and it seems to be getting in the way for some. So this will be our last post where we reveal actual amounts. If we mention our income in the future then it will be a generalization more than anything else and we won’t get into specific numbers anymore.

So for our final post about how much we make and for those that need proof we have provided a video of us opening our latest Amazon check (or cheque as we spell it here). This was for our December earnings. We receive the checks two months after the end of a month of sales so December sales checks arrive in March.

And as for January and February of this year – we made just over $14,500 in January and for February we made just under $10k…it’s a short month.

All figures were better than last year for those months so we are improving and we hope to get even better. There is no limit to what can be made when you work online.

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Recent Google Changes – Were You Affected?

Sunday, March 6th, 2011 at 6:14 pm  
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In our attempt to stay focused we have been avoiding hanging out at forums, blogs and the like because it is so easy to get sidetracked. However, it can mean that we might miss things and one of these was the recent Google changes. We had no idea it even happened until someone emailed us about it. As it is it didn’t affect us – we haven’t noticed any decrease in traffic and our rankings seem to be in place….that assumes that Google is finished with their little dance of course.

The whole point of this change according to Google was:

“designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on”.

Matt Cutt’s (Google Engineer) has gone on to add that:

“The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content.”

I would love to see the end of scraper sites but my concern here is how does Google know who wrote the original piece of work? I know that in some cases we can write a blog post and within minutes of publishing it another blogger has the entire article posted on their blog word for word.

It’s a shame really that Google has become as big as it has and that we rely on it so much in this industry. When Google makes a change like this to their search engine algorithm big things can happen and it can affect a lot of people and businesses.  In this case, it has hit a lot of the big boys really hard – sites like EzineArticles for instance were one of the hardest hit. And as most of us know, EzineArticles is a site that is relied on heavily by many internet marketers for traffic. So hitting EzineArticles also hits a lot of the smaller guys who are just trying to make a buck.

The flow on effect can be devastating resulting in businesses crashing, people out of work and families struggling to make ends meet. And it might sound like I am over-exaggerating things just a little here but you only have to look at EzineArticles who have lost over 130,000 rankings (according to some sources) to see the massive loss of income that would result from that. Lost income means they may have to cut back and I can’t speak for EzineArticles but generally one of the first things to go in any cutback is staff.

On a personal level, I can see why Google has done this. I know that when I go searching for anything in Google I will ignore sites like EzineArticles, eHow, About.com and Suite101 and similar because I know that it will be rare to find a good quality article from any of those sites. More often than not,  my search results come back with short poorly written articles or articles that really only provide the absolute basics so I don’t even bother clicking on those sites anymore.

Sometimes these sorts of shake-ups can be a good thing, despite the impact it can have. In this case, I think it has been a positive move because it is forcing site owners to clean up their act. There are too many poorly created sites with little valuable content…hey we still have a few of those ourselves but we realized sometime back that they don’t work and we are working to revamp those sites so that they have more value and quality content.

In these sorts of situations, survival of the fittest comes into play. Those who have been hit the hardest will be making the big decisions now whether they need to adjust to meet the changes or whether it is all too hard and give up. EzineArticles has already gone into overdrive by making changes to their submission guidelines .  I can only think that it may take some time for them to bounce back.

What Can We Learn from This?

I think the main thing to take from all of this is that Google is trying to focus on providing high quality search results. That  means that as website owners we have a responsibility to our readers and we need to focus on providing high quality content.

This is something we have been harping on about for months now. We keep trying to instill the importance of providing quality and value to your readers and with these Google changes now in place it is now more important than ever.

It also reinforces why you shouldn’t focus on just one source for backlinks. For those that relied only on EzineArticles for traffic they may be suffering right now. This is why guest blogging is one of the best forms of backlinking. You are not relying on only one website – your links are spread out over many different websites and blogs. Just throw in some commenting, social bookmarking/networking, a press release here and there and you have a nice varied mix of backlinks that Google would be happy with.

Were You Affected by the Google Changes?

Were you affected by the latest Google changes? Please let us know in the comments below.

Easy Money is a Tough Road and a Real Gamble – A Success Story

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011 at 8:00 am  
Comments (62)
This post is a guest post written by James from The Average Genius.

Recently, I had the rare opportunity to take my wife and our 7 kids to a friend’s cabin to Cascade, Idaho. The scene was surreal: the blacktop was white. The pine trees were dusted with fluffy, freezing, playful snow.

We had just walked into a post card with our tired family van chugging along. This time we weren’t just driving through, we came to play in this stuff.

It was my wife’s birthday, and the entire trip was long overdue. See, we don’t take vacations normally. But that was in my old life…

The Flop: Struggle, Strive, Sweat And Ache

I’m James, a.k.a. “JamestheJust” online, former freelance writer on Elance (that turned into a golden training ground to learn the ropes while getting paid).

I blog at The Average Genius and tell it like it is. It’s still something I’m getting used to (I get paid a passive income? Say what?).

Unlike many success stories, or perhaps like the cliche story you might expect – I come from generations of struggling, hard-working folk.

Money has been that elusive character in someone else’s play, I was raised convinced that only other people ever had any.

My dad lived and left his life as one of the hardest workers I’ve ever seen.

My mother comes from the Philippines, where most internet marketers hire cheap labor for English web content.

See, both of my parents worked…

They worked long, hard hours, mom still does.

My grandparents were in various blue collar jobs from construction to rice threshing.

Needless to say, hard work is in my DNA. The family has viewed money as a slippery, wriggling fish that escapes every time you grab hold, real enough to tease but never real enough to linger.

Money meant struggle, strive, sweat and ache. Regular hours were reserved for banks and the filthy rich. I knew from the start: I was born to work to provide for my family.

For 16 years of marriage, that’s what I’ve done, and it’s meant nothing but struggling, striving, sweating and being bone-aching tired.

  • Overtime (usually left unpaid, that’s always “fun”).
  • Leaving when it’s dark outside.
  • Coming home when it’s dark outside.
  • Cramming down dinner and working some more at another job.
  • Sleeping 6 hours, working 18.

That was life, and the way to provide, right?

The Turn: A Glimmer of Hope, Or Fool’s Gold?

In 2009, I was embroiled in a family business owned by my in-laws here in Idaho. The job went from “reasonable hours” to You have got to be kidding me, I’m a man, not a machine!

I was given unreasonable hours and expected to turn up unreasonable results in marketing…so for three months in my final, desperate winter in the business, I pounded the pavement so to speak.

I would market for “bonus money,” but the trick of it was I had just suffered a loss of $12,000 annually, or $1,000 a month paycut, right before winter.

To make up the loss, I was offered the “opportunity” to market the business – so I jumped through the hoop and marketed like a Fury.

I marketed my way out of a $12k annual paycut in the worst of my personal recession, while the evening news told of similar sob stories all over the U.S.

Layoffs and foreclosures were happening all over my neighborhood, I was no exception it would turn out later. At the time, I bit down and faced the music:

I had to work harder, longer hours, for less money. Either that or get fired, so I was told. It worked, for my in-laws anyway. I built their business and gave all I had to give to my now thankless job.

Family ties were strained to breaking, and in the midst of my financial crisis, my boss / brother-in-law told me about Elance, and the XFactor AdSense buisness model.

The XFactor model was to build many miniature websites that would make $25-$100 a month extra. At the time, you must understand: every bit counted!

I had just lost $1,000 a month and didn’t have room to breathe in my budget – I didn’t know how I’d feed my family.

I figured I’d need 20-50 websites to make up the deficit…but the money was slow in coming for AdSense. To make matters even more desperate, for the first two months on Elance I got nothing…

I was met with rejection, disappointment, and panic. I was paying Elance a membership fee to bid on jobs but I received no work for all my frenetic efforts, I had no idea what I was doing.

In the precious few hours I had left to myself, I looked at sleep as a luxury I couldn’t afford. I bid like crazy on Elance, lowering my price until I found a sweet spot – I needed work and I hit bottom.

It was desperation time.

My first gig was for a lawyer in L.A. for $8.33 / hour, transcribing her free ebook to build her email list. I worked until I was bleary eyed and it was unhealthy and unsafe – but my kids liked warmth in winter and dinner on the table, so I knew what I had to do.

We decided long ago my wife would stay at home with our 7 kids. That meant I had to figure something out, and quick.

I had no choice – I needed the street cred on Elance so I asked my client if she’d give me a positive review if I dropped my prices.

She agreed. The next 5 jobs were similar: working for a referral and chump change.

Without those referrals, I couldn’t get a gig – they were my golden ticket.

The money wasn’t “good” at first, but every little bit counted. Then I’d raise my prices slowly as the referrals came in.

I began refusing work and became choosy, only working for better wages.

Then something funny happened.

I watched the AdSense grow on my one website – and it took 96 days before I got that first precious $100 AdSense check. I thought I had won the lottery.

The Problem With Freelancing

Freelancing was working, but it took all my time, I didn’t have time to build my 20-50 websites. Instead, I rushed my half-baked content out and slapped up a few skinny sites.

As I watched the AdSense total keep growing, it proved that the making money online dream was slowly chugging along and coming true – I just needed to find the throttle and let ‘er rip.

This had to work – I needed passive income to come in so I could do away with my active income (my job at the time, freelancing). Passive income was the road to freedom…but I needed more time.

Desperation and frustration drove me to work at a frenetic pace, and I channeled all my aggression into two very distinct, intermingled goals:

1) I had to prove to everyone watching, waiting for the next pathetic shoe to drop, that they were wrong about me. I began to feel trapped, backed into a corner and a brick wall in front of me.

With a family in tow, that’s a recipe for divorce, for drug abuse, alcoholism – all bad news. I had the tenacity to choose hard work and wild hours.

Everyone thought I was crazy. I worked like I was.

2) I wanted to put legs under my wife’s claim that she had a husband she could be proud of, I wanted to change that sad, forlorn look in her eye from desperation into a gleam of hope.

She was tired of worrying. I was just tired of it all, weary to the bone – but it wasn’t time to lay down. It was time to fight for our future, even in the worst economic turmoil we had seen.

Our kids weren’t sure what was “wrong” with me – I was gruff, distracted, determined…but I was in it for them.

They deserved a better life than the hand-me-down, beg-along life I’d given them. I was sick of it…

…Tired of the charity case claim to fame.

I didn’t want to work until I had arthritis into the long and lonely hours of the night as a security guard because retirement wasn’t an option. It had to stop.

“I’m a writer. I’ll re-write the script and my part in the play,” I told myself. “My wife’s going to be proud of what I’ve done, once the dust settles.”

That, more than AdSense and riches, more than vacations and more than luxury cars, is what drove me.

It still drives me.

The River of Dreams: Script’s Re-written

I lost my job in July of 2010. It was an underhanded surprise.

Before that nefarious, calculated event – things were getting better.

I was paying down debt. I was working my nerves into Carpal Tunnel Syndrome after putting in overtime in the “family” business, getting a “solid” 4-6 hours of sleep on weeknights and burning the midnight oil on Elance…

The money was getting better as I was able to attract better clients…

But there was one problem: more time was being given to Elance than to my own websites and passive income network of websites. I only had 10 or so websites up – mostly with mediocre, original content and AdSense.

Still – it was working out until July 2nd, 2010, when I was told I had a week left. I had been replaced with someone more desperate, willing to put in the 14-16 hour days now that I was “only” doing 10-12.

In the meanwhile, I had played “good student” in my own personal college. I was dissecting my clients’ requests for my writing, and developing relationships online.

I’d ask so many questions I thought I’d pushed my luck and welcome a few times. Then I’d ask a few more.

My appetite for more information was voracious: I needed to learn how the big players were making their living…

I had worked nearly 3 years serving big names in Boise, Idaho – the big wigs who were making a killing online.

I have seen their homes. They’re castles.

These people hired guys like me to build their thriving websites, I just had to figure out why my websites weren’t raking in that kind of money.

I listened. I asked. I studied. I learned:

  • How to backlink…
  • How to SEO content…
  • How to research keywords…
  • How to write convincing content that resulted in conversions…
  • How to target products to sell that made me real profits and not chump change…

I began reading. I found Paula and Wanda. I found other internet marketers’ blogs. I began asking more questions, finding people I could trust – hard to do in this business, but not impossible.

Learning Is Like Bowling: Always Follow-Through

My blue collar upbringing saw that I was son to a pair of bowlers – as in “Bruinswick, 10 pins and smoky bowling alleys,” not funny-looking hats.

As my dad would say to me at 6 years old, “It’s all about the follow-through, son. Always follow through.”

I didn’t have money for every ebook in town. I’ve only read two: the XFactor AdSense ebook and Amazonian Profit Plan – I didn’t need to buy every ebook out there to learn – and learning can become a habit in itself.

It’s pointless if it’s never followed through with action…

Once I learned something, I put it into practice – if I felt I had time. Then it dawned on me: I wasn’t taking action because I never made time for MY buisness.

Then I forced myself to work my own business.

It didn’t matter that I was swamped – it was either work for myself and make perpetual money, or work for others and get perpetual gigs.

I treated myself as if I was a client that had a real deadline. I committed just a few hours every week for research and writing.

Stupid Things I Believed and Did

If I wanted more money, I was stuck: I had to freelance more, right? That was born out of panic. It kept me back for a long time from breaking through…

My attitude tanked and wrists burned from the mad typing. Long hours grew longer, even though I was working for myself entirely with no “real job” to distract my efforts online.

My dilemma: freelancing provided the “right now” money, and my passive income wasn’t large enough to wait for.

It’s not like you get paid every week or two, most affiliate programs pay out every 30-60 days.

I let my fear control me – I kept thinking, “If I lose my clients, I lose the ability to provide…” But I wanted off the train to Nowhere.

I cared more about my clients’ quality when I’d write than my own websites – that was stupid.

I bought into the lie that “more is better: more sites, more pages, more writing…” when less is more.

I was stuck between chasing the AdSense many mini-sites method, or changing my entire approach and focusing on affiliate sales – my mistake was trying to do both.

I bought more domains. “Money’s in quantity, gotta have those Exact Match Domains before they disappear…” That’s a load of guano.

The truth was: I regularly made $400-$850 with one particular web page at the time, my first site. Then I “wised up” and began following the herd mentality of churning out dozens of sites…

But the math didn’t add up. I didn’t have time to develop such a massive empire of 200-500 websites – nor the resources to outsource: and I couldn’t fathom paying a writer when I AM ONE.

I was relieved when I devoured the Amazonian Profit Plan and read that quality counts, and you can make thousands from 10-20 webpages, even less.

See, my ears perked up at reading Paula and Wanda’s “How Much Did We Make in November” post – and I read it dozens of times.

My stupid mistake:

I was following a crowd and nobody was doing what Paula and Wanda were doing. I didn’t believe, down where it counts – so I didn’t act on it.

Then I read Dave of Making Money On The Internet Free, and learned that I wasn’t far off the mark – I just needed to do more of what worked:

  • Choose good products.
  • Focus on and compose great reviews – like I did on my first site.
  • Get traffic / rankings to those reviews.
  • Repeat.

I laid aside trying to build dozens of AdSense mini-sites altogether and began focusing on what was working: just 1 main website, selling affiliate products on Commission Junction and Amazon.

The revolution in my mind snapped into place: I was chasing the AdSense dream because I didn’t think I could do any better.

Besides: November 2010 was looming, and the summer had been dismal in terms of my online sales (my rankings weren’t stellar, the niche as a whole doesn’t do well in summer).

I had to act fast to get more content up, more reviews. Then I had to rank them in Google – but I knew how by then.

I just needed to make the time.

Identifying and Conquering My Barriers to Success

My big problems were: time, need for immediate money, and the emotional elephant that was sitting on my chest. It was hard to shake off the self-pity, and self-pity doesn’t pay the bills.

I was being eaten alive with the frustration of being fired and going down in ignominy, scratching along with 7 kids and the threads of a strained marriage with a beast of financial burden pressing on my back like the world on Atlas.

I would listen to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” track over and over again. I made a playlist of nothing but Eminem, he seemed to hit the nail on the head and kept reminding me what I was doing and why.

“Success was my only option…Failure’s not” more or less summarizes and sanitizes his lyrics that soon became my mantra.

November 2010 Changed My Life

November is a great month for sales in general – it was life-changing for me. I cleared over $2k in passive income, and made additional money on Elance.

My efforts finally paid off!

I had taken Paula and Wanda’s advice and I focused: one site.

A few quality products with a solid payout per sale.

Write a handful of well-researched, story-type reviews.

Get traffic to them.

For me, it meant backlinking my reviews until they ranked in the top 5 in Google or better. In my case, my reviews are at #1 in Google.

The sales rolled in then and now.

February of 2011 has been, thus far, my best month online ever – and I’m through worrying. I’m relaxed, I can breathe…and the old frustrated Eminem lyrics don’t tell my story anymore.

In February of 2011, I made just under $4,000 in passive income, counting my last Elance gig my total is over $4,000.

My wife looks at me with a glimmer of hope and a rested assurance that she’s going to be well taken care of…our kids had one hell of a Christmas…and my family business is now exactly that:

My family business.

How many websites? I have 13 developed. The majority of my income stems from 2 websites, my making money online site, The Average Genius, and another website in the health “niche.”

Funny Story About Amazonian Profit Plan

Yes, I’m an affiliate and this is ebook is a treatise on making money with Amazon – and I was asked not to hype or even really talk about the APP for this post, but it’s part of my story.

After reading it, I begged my wife to read it. She finally acquiesced once she saw the turning point in our income…

She now out-sells me in Amazon regularly, though I’m still selling primarily through Commission Junction with the same principles in the APP.

We earn 100% of our income in affiliate sales, in purely passive income.

Neither of us have to “work.”

She only writes product reviews when and if she wants to. With 7 kids, she’s busy enough. :)

With the investment of studying what works, learning SEO and reading successful internet marketers, to deconstructing my competition and analyzing top money earners’ strategies – I’ve put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

For 20 hours of work, I’ve made nearly $1,000 an hour – without any impressive university degree. In April I’ll get another $1,000+ bonus check for my sales in February.

When the chips were down, and sheer need and a stubborn hope were all I had to go on – feeding on the real stories of others’ success pulled me forward.

Seeing my wife and children and their needs pushed me beyond limits and made the goal worthwhile.

I was driven.

I had to see it was real. It wasn’t hype. Making just a little bit in passive income gave me a spark of hope.

Reading successful people make a 6-figure income just fanned the hope into an inferno.

Hope – not hype – changes lives.

Real, honest people who take time to answer questions are priceless, and they’re easy to find.

That’s what helped me most in 2010, and Paula and Wanda, and yes the Amazonian Profit Plan, are a definite building block in my foundation.

They are a real, visceral part of my success story.

I don’t freelance anymore except on projects I believe in – like guest posting here, to say this is the real deal.

This isn’t hype, it’s not just someone else’s dream.

Go ahead. Open your eyes. The money doesn’t disappear when you wake up.

UPDATE: Since writing this post, James has released his very own ebook all about SEO. If you are interested you can read more here – Duct Tape SEO.

Note from Paula and Wanda: We loved reading James’ story and  feel very privileged to be able to share it with you. We hope it helps to give you the inspiration and motivation to keep going. If you would like to read more from James we highly recommend checking out his website at The Average Genius.