the diary of a new e-biz

Internet Moneymaking - AdSense and Affiliate Programs

2006-02-23T23:52:00.000-08:00

No posts here in quite some time, but I am still doing the things I spoke of in prior posts as time and my health allows.

I feel I have studied this internet marketing thing a bit more over the last few months, and have a good beginning with one website with an average of 60 new visitors a day bringing in steady money every month with Google's AdSense program.

Most people making decent cash in the AdSense game surely have more than one website, with each website bringing in small sums of revenue... but the kicker is with multiple websites each bringing in small sums, it eventually becomes a quite nice sum when added together as a whole. People with their health intact, and tons of energy should have no problem churning out tons of websites with this formula. Only problem is it does leave one open to catastrophe, as their internet business is not diversified.

The affiliate programs I have joined, and spent hours upon hours adding their catalog of products to my websites have sent me absolutely nothing. Few emails for encouragement, or to tell the boss they did something today. Though, I have sent them a bit of traffic... FOR FREE!!

After about 14-16 months of this... I have one affiliate sale. One(1)

I am quite obviously missing something, or affiliate programs may be excellent for merchants, but a joke for 95% of their affiliates.

Are my commissions being stolen? Are my visitors turned off by suddenly being sent to some merchant who's page looks nothing like mine? Are the products I have added to my website more likely to be bought in person due to their size, shipping costs, or the lack of the customer being able to touch, see, and feel the product in person? Is it a bad niche for affiliate sales?

Well, I have no clue, and am quite dismayed to say the least. I had higher expectations for affiliate sales, due to my total amount of visitors over the past year... I mean surely more than 1 affiliate sale should be attainable with 60,000 visitors, correct?

Well, if anyone would like to show off how they sell affiliate products, I'm all eyes and ears, because this isn't working.

So, much for being diversified, eh?

SpyKids irc.gigachat.net Brasil Ownz

2005-03-08T23:08:00.000-08:00

Well, apparently some hacker, or cracker is angry with the United States government's "War on Terror," our President George W. Bush, and the War in Iraq as they have managed to upload html files with vulgar political statements to the root directory of about 120 websites, according to a google search of the text string, SpyKids irc.gigachat.net Brasil Ownz

How they did this is beyond me, but my build a home bar website was hit on March 7th. Only thing that they changed was the main index.php file. As far as I can tell no images, files, databases, scripts had been deleted; meaning this person did not necessarily want to ruin a person's website, and be hateful. They possibly were more interested in getting their political message out on as many easy to crack web servers as they could find. They even hit a Texas A&M University dept's page.

I must admit it is quite strange and shocking to go visit my own internet website to see if there was room for a tiki hut and bar section in the store, and my website is, basically, a blank white page with some hacker's political message emblazoned across the top of my webpage for all of my visitors to see.

As if being awake for about 27 hours straight with no sleep at the time of the discovery wasn't weird enough... then I have to talk to tech support while delirious out of my mind. heh.

What a day...

New Health and Wellness Website

2005-02-18T20:06:00.000-08:00

Well, I've been working a bit here and there on my latest affiliate marketing website based in the health and wellness industry: vitamins, weights and exercise equipment, etc. This one has proved to be alittle tougher to get going as compared to my other websites.

The script to make the product galleries has not been up to snuff, it seems, as compared to the other program's offerings. So, we'll just have to work a bit, and adapt to pull this one off.

That is about all I have been up to... besides my health being horrible of late: lungs congested, feeling weak,.. blah blah.. on and on...

Anyways, I hope I can post a url to my new fitness website by the first few weeks of March, and if that's possible... I'd be quite happy considering how February has gone.

and by the way, It's almost Baseball season!!!!! Woohooooo!!!

Till next time, and let's hope I'm feeling better by then...

Debt Consolidation Scout back online

2005-02-03T23:48:00.000-08:00

Debt Consolidation
Well, I finally uploaded and re-configured my debt consolidation website, Debt Consolidation Scout . Took, ohhh, bout an hour or so. The affiliate payout on the debt consolidation program I'm with is really nice. Few 10's up front, and then money monthly for however long it takes the person to pay off their debts. So, it's pretty cool, and hopefully it'll help out a few people at the same time. If you're in debt up to your eyeballs, go check out our website.. it's free to submit your information for evaluation, and includes a free debt consolidation quote, as well.

In other news...
I just bought a new server hosting package at 1and1.com and it seems to be a pretty nice package so far. 4 gigs of space, can host 200 domains, 5 free domain names up front, and tons more awesome options.

I look forward to 2005, and filling up a bit of that with my new affiliate marketing network I have planned.

Check back here to see how it goes... till next time, folks!!

Grill a Juicy Steak is online

2005-01-26T11:08:00.000-08:00

Well, our 2nd affiliate marketing website, Grill a Juicy Steak, is online! Obviously, it's about grilling good steaks, and outdoor grills. Visit if you're needing some high quality steak delivered to your home, or are in need of a new barbecue grill for the summer party season coming up.

We have plans to build some new affiliate websites in the next year focused on different niches. We have ideas of making several shopping and knowledge portals. If you're an affiliate manager and offer an instant product gallery creator, and other content for your affiliates, we'd love to hear from you.

Here's to good sales on the internet!!

Till next time...

Grill a Juicy Steak
Build a Home Bar

Build a Home Bar is online!

2005-01-19T05:15:00.000-08:00

Well, my 1st affiliate marketing website, Build a Home Bar, is now up and pretty much fully functional. lol Took quite a long time to learn the industry, which I still am studying, and building this website.

Hopefully, it will be generating some sales via the home bar, bar stool store I have just set up over the last month or so. I must admit it'd be nice if the affiliate marketing industry would go to a "take orders" style model, instead of the tracking sales via unreliable cookies, etc, because so far the home bar, bar stool, and other related product's sales have been quite slow considering the amount of visitors I've had over the last 2 months or so.

I'd guess it really is in the retailers benefit to do it via cookies though, as quite a few orders that should've been attributed to affiliates probably slip through the cracks with the affiliate not being paid, etc. With that said... Hopefully, the home bar, bar stool store will work better than the text link's to a merchant's website have, but I'm not holding my breath or anything.

So far, my foray into the Affiliate Marketing industry has been riddled with pot holes, and hard work... with hardly any pay. Is it all worth it? I really don't know yet.. it sure is seeming much harder than some of the ebooks and ads have made it appear. Almost seems the ebook peddlers may be making tons of money from people's dreams, as opposed to giving you a real, solid e-biz selling tangible products that people want and need in their homes, etc.

Bluntly honest here... It just seems difficult to make money with the tools that the companies give you in the affiliate marketing industry. Now, if it was all seemless, and you took orders on your website, and sent orders to the retailer.. that would work 10 times better, I think. I'm beginning to wonder if it's annoying for the consumer to be shopping on one site, and then click on a product or merchant link and end up on some totally other website!! It just may be too shocking for the consumer... but I'm 3-4 months into this, and we'll see what happens, because I promised myself I'd do this for a year... and that's what I plan to do.

If all else fails, I'll have 3-5 themed niche websites I can add real web stores to, taking my own orders and dealing with wholesalers, and merchant accounts!

Onto other news...

I have now started my 2nd Affiliate Marketing website and it's in the outdoor grill, delivered steak and meats, barbecue sauce/spices niche. LOL I hope it'll be up and functional by summer with orders coming in for the summertime party/bbq season. I'll post links to it when it's more complete.

Till next time... and next time will not be 4 months from now, I promise!!!

Affiliate Marketing Blues

2004-10-31T20:27:00.000-08:00

Get rich scheme, my butt... Well, I'm still working every day on my affiliate marketing websites. Some days more than others, and some days frustrated more than others. Sometimes, I enjoy the websites I've built; Sometimes I realize my code is all a big mess, my keywords seem to not be how they need to be, my titles may need tweaking, on and on. This is some tough work, and no sight of a check for the next few months.

I just really need a mentor, and no, I don't mean I wanna spend 500 bucks on a pdf file. I need to be explained the nuances of this business, I know the basics, and I'm not sure that an expensive pdf on the subject will have what I need it to have considering my current knowledge. I'm at the stage where I'm building websites and I'm not sure if they're going to work or not. I really need someone to look over them a bit for me and point me in the right direction.

Well, I'm off to post on a message board and see if someone would like to pass on some help that was maybe passed onto them... wish me luck...

SSL Certificates

2004-10-11T23:53:00.000-07:00

Well, went to shop around for SSL certificates. Going to cost a bit more than I had planned, as well as purchasing an static ip from my web host. This is for another website I had planned to start anyways, so I'll just wait till I tackle that next month or the month after.

Still plugging away on my main website. I had to re-do the top graphics and stuff because my tables were a mess, but it'll be well worth doing it now... as opposed to when I have 50-100 pages up. Whew, lot's of content to research and write. What have I gotten myself into?

The site is really starting to look nice finally, and now I have a solid template to go by for the remaining pages. All is to do is sign up with affiliate programs through Commission Junction and LinkShare and I'll be good to go! Oh, and write tons of content, but hopefully that will be fun and fulfilling. Seeing my website and biz grow. December and January should be much more interesting months, as far as the websites go. I'll be starting to get interested in getting listed in search engines and what not around then. Can we have a 1st page seo rank? Who knows, but I'm gonna try! Gotta bring out the drive and competitive juices out in me. I think those still exist somewhere...

Cyas...

P.S. grandma is still in the hospital.. hope and pray she gets through this.

Working towards goals

2004-10-02T18:40:00.000-07:00

Wow, not feeling so well can really set back your progress, I'll tell ya. Not sure what's up, but I just haven't felt up to par for quite awhile now. I have been studying on the net most every day but work on my website has come to a standstill. I really need to focus and get with it soon!

Since we're so close to Christmas, I certainly don't expect to build my website, get some links back to it, submit to yahoo and google in time for people to actually go there and get some sales/referrals. So, I'm looking at working hard for the next year and having multiple websites up and functioning by next christmas. Starting on an e-biz at the end of August and expecting much more just isn't realistic, in my opinion. Hopefully, the internet will be booming even more, with more people, and stronger internet sales by 2005 anyways!

Grandma's surgery went ok, though she has had a set-back as far as her leg healing from her aortic aneurysm surgery. The docs said there was a 2% chance that she would have complications with the surgery that would possibly involve losing the use of her leg. It appears she may be in that 2 percentile. So, instead of being in the hospital for 3 days, she's been in there for 10 days with no end in sight! Supposedly, they will try to rehab the leg and she'll regain use of it, but we'll just have to see.

Till next time...

Plugging along...

2004-09-20T19:30:00.000-07:00

Still working on getting this ball rolling. Signed up for 2 more domain names and almost have the 1st page of the 1st website done. Once the template's done, it'll be smooth sailing. Writing content, putting together a few scripts and the 1st site is ready to be shown to the world! It's an exciting time... though signing up for million programs can be kinda monotonous. Surely, this will all be worth it by next year some time! 'Tis the life of the affiliate marketer...

Outside of the net, my grandmother is having surgery on thursday to repair an aneuerysm. Talk about scary. The thing is, it's in her stomach! So, the docs will supposedly put some sort of round screen type dealie in there to strenghten the vein and then she should be back to normal hopefully. She's 84 now, and was healthy as a 45 year old before all this... so, hopefully this will be fixed and we'll have her lovely, smiling face around for another 10 years, or so. Kinda shocking though, cause we all figured she'd live to 120 cause of her fitness level: she taught senior citizen water exercise at the local community college! So, she was doing 3 hours of water exercise 3 days a week and then 2 days a week, she taught chair exercise and an hour long dance class for lil old ladies and gents! Talk about an awesome lady... she's just gotta beat this!! Hope so.. praying for her...

Till next time...

Nadda, Nothing, Zilch...

2004-09-07T07:40:00.000-07:00

Not much happening currently, besides study, study, and more study! Also, looking for some hot knowledge on the internet for e-biz. Nothing makes me sleepier than reading and I'm finding myself doing it more than I may care to, but it something ya just gotta do if ya wanna be up to date on all this. So, off I go to read some more...

New web hosting services!

2004-09-04T23:57:00.000-07:00

Last nite, I joined an awesome new webhost reseller program. It's free to setup besides buying your domain name for your hosting business, and thier template system is just awesome! So many cool designs to choose from and picking your own prices for your packages rocks, as well.

Back in the late 90's, I was always looking for ways to make some cash on the internet and every program seemed so cheesy and fake. I must say the research I have been doing for the last few weeks, or so, seems to really validate my thoughts on the state of e-commerce in 2004. Cheese is most definitely out these days(for the most part) and replaced with what seems to be very valid ways to make a living on the net. Most sites are presented professionally, with the thoughts of e-business finally gaining some respect in the business world.

Anyways, enjoy the holiday weekend!!!

New domain name - ebrainiac.net

2004-09-02T22:26:00.000-07:00

Well, purchased my new domain name last nite: ebrainiac.net! I'm wanting to make it some sort of portal for knowledge: maybe for kids in school to research on the web or just make small niche based information websites targeted at some nice keywords that can bring in a little cash. I dunno just yet what I'll do, but the ball is rolling... Now to find a good webhost for a good price and the features I want!!! Till next time...

Hello and Welcome...

2004-08-31T23:26:00.000-07:00

Wow, wasn't expecting to get this going so fast, but here we are. Guess I'll start making a lil diary out of this place. We'll see. I'm making some changes in my life and maybe this will help to keep me on track. Till next time...

Milton