goombastomp

Now I remember why I have never managed to keep a personal blog running more than a week... I'm just way too fucking busy, and any free time I'm not working, I am generally away from the computer.

No time this month to do the Affiliate Challenge, I'm going to The Atlanta Forum next week, I have three sites I'm trying to get off the ground, spent the last two weeks renovating the back yard....

Yeah, I'l breath some life into this blog eventually, just not this month. Or the next ;)

I guess it's been a while since I signed up for a "mainstream" affiliate program... Aside from adsense, for the last few years I've been promoting primarily pharmacy and adult affiliate programs. 1) Sign up. 2) Send traffic. 3) Get paid. No phone calls, no string of questions, no list of sites to see "what fits".

My application with one company was rejected because I didn't want to show them any of my sites or landing pages. To me until I've seen what they have to offer, my current promotion methods are really none of their business. I talked to a rep over the phone for a bit and we went back and forth, with me saying I was going to build new sites to promote them with and wanted to see their offers, and with him saying he would have to see my sites to tell me which of their offers would be the best match.

End result? I'm going to have to build a fake site to apply with. What a waste of my fucking time, I should jut forget trying to diversify my income stream and stick with the porn guys who are more than happy to pay for the volume I send.

I had a few people I needed to phone today... A credit card processor, an affiliate program, and a client for a service I sell. Wrote these down on Saturday morning and made the plan to wait til monday, and totally forgot it was Labor day. Ever since I quit my dayjob I have completely lost touch of what holidays are, and moving to Costa Rica has only made it worse.

Oh well, there's always tomorrow. And no more holidays until Canadian Thanksgiving, followed by American Thanksgiving.

Got linked to a great article from wired on the evolution of free or next to free sales. Draws parallels to the founder of Gilette giving away free razors during WWI to today's tube site marketing. Great read that enforces that even though today's consumer demands a lot more for a lot less, they can still be monetized. This has been coming up a ton in adult, I have a ton of friends who ask me how one can sell porn when the free content is so prevalent everywhere... At least this article comes up with some ideas to monetize those freeloaders and turn them back into spenders.

Tyler Cruz has announced another affliate marketing challenge in conjunction with Market Leverage. I've never done anything like this before, but hell I've got a pretty open month coming up so why not try something new.

I'm still waiting on Market Leverage to approve my account (their emails asking me to phone them ended up in my spam bin this week, so I guess I'll call em on Monday and sort it out), so I'm not even sure what niches their offers are in, but 30 days is more than enough time to crank out some new sites and get the traffic rolling in. Hell, I may even buy some PPC for a change.

Back in the day, the idea of not having a boss or a cubicle to sit in 8 hours a day was motivation enough to bust my ass. Now that I've moved to Costa Rica and spend half the year travelling, I feel like I should always be raising that bar... I've always been a watch guy, and although I've got a pretty nice watch already, I'm always in the watch dealers and high end jewelers and picking up magazines like the Robb Report Watch Collector (I call it market research for the watch blog I have ;)

Enter the Hublot Bigger Bang. This is easily the hottest watch I've ever seen. It is pretty much the epitome of a manly watch, and the complex automatic chronograph movement with all black gears exposed with no face is nothing short of fucking amazing.

I was about to make this my next personal sales milestone reward, until I saw the price tag... $190k. I wouldn't even know how to calculate how much I would have to make to be able to justify a $190k watch purchase to myself. Eyes on the prize, I guess.

I just found out about Blog World Expo... I mean although at least half my income is generated from blogs, I've never really considered myself a blogger. For me the blog style of CMS has just always been easy to work with, and my niche blogs seem to do well in the SERPS.

Any excuse to go to Vegas though... Plus with John Chow's 20% coupon code it almost seems worthwhile. September hmm?

I might even learn something.

I always want to rant about how annoying it is when people complain about how it isn't like the good 'ol days. On any given forum someone will tell you how in 1999 you could throw up a banner to anything and make 6 grand before dinner... It's true those days are gone, but at the same time there is plenty of opportunity out there for anyone who wants to put in the time.

CPA Affiliates wrote a great reminder that although the gravy train is over, the money is still there and available to anyone willing to work on it. I know lately I've been focussing more on recurring revenue streams, and gaining organic (albeit slower-growth) niche search traffic. Known your niche and work it. Find new niches. The formula of putting a customer who wants to buy in touch with a vendor who wants to sell is not new or even that hard...

Just thought I'd point that out as the site is pretty new ;) I'm just a big Mario fan and all the good domains were taken.

After four and a half years of quitting my dayjob, life couldn't be better. It is hard though to keep that day-to-day discipline and motivation. I was reading problogger who linked to an article which reminded me that I had planned to create a new daily schedule and update my active todo list. Time management really is the most profitable thing I can focus on right now.