Four Months On - What Progress?

The learning curve is starting to flatten out
And it may be time to wind up this blog - I've not been that good at keeping it going
But when I look back it may be interesting to get a flavour for what I learnt

So as it stands, I've revamped my consulting site
1 I offer a free healthcheck report
2 For £100 they can purchase a website action list with a prioritised set of actions
3 From £50 per month I can provide ongoing SEO services to optimise their site
Today I billed my first client and I'm quoting for one of £50/month or £100/month services
From 1 Feb I'll go on a big promotion drive. Step 2 will be half price at £50

On the article marketing, I've not done too well keeping writing articles
I got to 21 then stopped and decided to figure out how everything hung together
I drew a "mind-map" after seeing PotPieGirls in her One Week Marketing ebook
This is how my brain works so I've really figured it out now
The articles I wrote weren't converting well enough & with no sales I wanted to be sure of my approach before writing any more.
Next week I'll select a new product, new subniche, collect keywords, create the Wordpress website then start writing. I've got a lot more confidence this time I'll convert a lot better and make my first sales.

I've also found MailChimp, a free email marketing provider and will start to get that set up to create lists off the back of my websites

Finally, I've been steering clear of Pay per click. I asked at WA about experts and Carson who owns WA suggested I should take the certified course and become expert myself. Why not! After all my learning is starting to level out!!

Papa's Got a Brand New Website

Thanks to Roger Rowe aka X2 on Wealthy Affiliate, I've got myself a brand new 100 page Wordpress website for the cost of monthly hosting.

It's the kind of deal that comes along now and again on WA. You gotta be watching & jump in. He's getting commission on the hosting but I suspect his real prize is hooking in a bunch of newbies who will buy more from him as they trust him.

He knows his stuff but I've developed a healthy scepticism of everyone. Will be interesting to see how it develops. He's liable to be swamped with people wanting a free website.

My main prize is getting a website made for me in Wordpress. I'd decided to go that route anyway as I'd concluded it was the best long term platform for good quality websites.

This new Wordpress website knocks the socks off the first effort I did in Weebly, good as that seemed at the time!

On the article front, I've now done 15 but Ezine have raised the bar to 35 before I become Platinum and get my articles rapid-approved.

I'll need to amend them all to point them to my new Wordpress site once I've created a new landing page there promoting my product.

I'll soon rewrite the Ezine articles 2/3 times using Mass Article Control then post all 3 versions to 15-16 other article sites for backlinks back to my website to improve it's authority.

Then there's Digg, Delicious, Stumble etc. I've been told about Social Poster which submits to them all (being about 30 sites) in one go. It's on my list of things to do!

Christmas is coming the targets haven't been met...

One week till Christmas
My target of gaining my first $ hasn't materialised
I've done most of the tasks I'd set myself

Ezine - target 10 published - actual 5 published 1 in the publishing queue 1 has a problem 3 to write.
I reckon I'll achieve this.

Accredited WA Article Marketing Course - target is to complete - actual progress -lesson 7 out of 11.
Again I reckon I may just manage this by Christmas. Ho ho ho!

I've found a good niche to promote, created a website using Weebly for free, added a number of affiliate links and a landing page for all my articles in Ezine to point to.

So a week to go - with only 5 articles, I've not much chance of getting the first sale

Then again if I use Mass Article Control I purchased to send a modified version of each article to 19 other directories for backlinking to improve the authority of the landing page, I may have a chance...

Ready to roll

I got it. Yes after dozens of messages to a helpful colleague in WA I've figured out the tools to use and process to follow. So a big campaign looms.
I've bought a domain for a review type website and plan to point the hundreds of articles I write to it - no thousands.
I also decided to give something back to WA and wrote a resource tutorial on writing a journalist standard quality article. It's had very good reviews so far - and its pushed me up their rankings to 43rd.
But now I need to stop figuring and start writing day in day out to make some income.


I've also had a couple of clients asking for my help in keyword research and SEO. Hmm, I don't want to tempt fate but I think there's a strong business model here.

First articles published

I'm half way through the Accreditation Article Marketing course. Good for the basics. I want to get to the end for a preview but it won't let you! Better to follow the steps, no matter how pedantic, so the grounding is there.

Along the way I've published and had accepted an article with Ezine - the "holy grail" it seems, along with a handful to Squidoo & a few other directories

The help in the WA forums has been great. Though after 2 months, I'd got to know a few of the guys so just directly asked one of them the real deal. He's followed the same path as I am taking & earns more than enough to live on. He's not a salesman, just focused, determined & resilient.

For each campaign, target around 1000 different keywords & 12000 unique articles to dominate a niche. He was good enough to tell me the applications & tools he uses to do this efficiently. I'll start with these then adapt as I go.

There are quite a few others who I'm messaging & we'll undoubtedly be swapping notes too.

Within WA, there is a push by some to promote WA itself. I may get onto that later but I have decided to focus on writing articles for my selected niches first. Keep it simple and stay focused!

I've also got a zippier laptop now - though the downside was I had to reinstall Vista. Still I can publish articles much more speedily.

Go your own way

Been watching a history of Fleetwood Mac on TV and the blog title fitted

I've embarked on an 11 lesson / 30 hour course to gain WA Accreditation for Internet Marketing. It's an internal WA thing but feels good value for $67 and ensures I stay focused to reach a certain level of learning. It'll help other WA affiliates know I'm relatively serious.

However I've not followed the learnings in Lesson 1 of the Article Marketing Accreditation Course

Instead, I've kind of adapted as I've gone so I'm not following the herd

The idea of using DMOZ to find a niche underwhelmed me & I used ebay / amazon "bestseller list" to find a niche whilst checking "google trends." Nice combination.

I signed up to Clickbank. Yes its easy but I'd rather promote a quality product. I remember reading in the forum that GeorgiaRedneck also chose not to use Clickbank

So I signed up, using an existing website as my "base" to Pepperjam (who rejected me) and ShareaSale who thankfully accepted me. This gave me a fantastic pool of quality products to browse & refine my niche.

Now I've got a great niche (after 3 or 4 false starts with DMOZ) and its onto lesson 2 - writing an article!

Holiday Inspiration

A holiday can do wonders! Two weeks ago I thought I'd come up with a good niche and had started analysing it. Then whilst on the plane (where I always come up with my best ideas) out to Cyprus, I hit on a truly brilliant niche.
And now I'm back from holiday, I'm keenly following it up.
I can easily think of 30 odd unique articles to write. If I work on this, I'd hope to make this over 50. Wow! Then I can submit each in a slightly altered structure to 4-5 article sites.

Whilst on holiday I decided to target doing 5 campaigns before Christmas. The first will take 2 weeks, thereafter each should take one week. By then I'll know if this whole shebang is a go-er or not.

I also worked out a structured approach -
Find Niche - Find products to promote - Carry out Research into the niche - Create a pool of article subheadings - Create the framework of a website - Use subheadings to create series of articles - pad out website with content & links - submit articles
So lets see if this approach works. I'll update it once I've followed it through