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

Blitzing a niche

Just about to go on holiday for 2 weeks - just when I'm getting warmed up on my niche!
Been reading more tips on WA from ccmusicmaker - how he generated 900 articles on one niche. Don't think I'll go that far, feels like the content quality is likely to be too weak.
However the concept of "blitzing" a niche is sound.

I reckon once a niche is found, and research done so I've got a good understanding of ins and outs of the subject (its got to be something I already have personal experience of) then I can create maybe a hundred subheadings & from this list combine them together into a number of unique articles then add the titles & body.

I'll use the keyword finder tool, the article writer tool & the website creation tool provided by WA. Excellent to get me started.

GeorgiaRedneck and his golden forum thread

There's a guy on WA called GeorgiaRedneck (formerly 1234567).
Since April/May 09, he's gone for article marketing big time working full time churning out articles to ezine & several other sites.
His earnings are on a spectacular upward curve and has made $13k in the first 4 months. I've no reason to doubt his claims. He's got what it takes & is exceptional. His trend will keep going up even if he takes his foot off the gas. He's made a comfortable living already. Good on him, though I suspect he either doesn't have young kids or hasn't seen much of them for 4 months!

Now he's made it, he is unloading his tips & methods. Brilliant advice yet his approach is nothing special, he just does simple things very efficiently & effectively. However his forum thread is now 11 pages long and its a "must" read.
So I read it and copied great chunks into a notepad.

I've also read the WA tutorial on article marketing which gives a lot of useful information from Kyle & Carson, as well as cracking sticky forum posts giving tips from a few of the top affiliates, the main one to follow on article marketing being Travis.

Today it feels time to have a go at writing an article. But using the techniques I've learnt, I'll create the content for 1 then repurpose & generate maybe a dozen. I guess I'll then submit to ezine. I intend to focus on article marketing - for the same reason as GeorgiaRedneck - I understand this approach very clearly and have already generated a lot of articles for my own business and for Suite 101.

Pet Niche Report

I've finally managed to read the whole of the Pet Industry niche research. I received it free in the initial $1 7 day trial.
It's taken perhaps 3 hours to read - I finished it off whilst my kids were at their swimming lesson today. Talk about comprehensive! I'd imagine this kind of report would normally cost several hundred £ or $.
It gives me ideas for marketing - but as its been available several months I may have missed the boat. I'll investigate keywords for competition.

I'm now into full membership and the next 2 free reports are available so I've printed them off - "Beating Adwords" & "Vegas Confidential" - both about 100 pages. Roll on next weeks swimming lesson! Both look very readable.

Tomorrow I'm planning to go for my first lesson in the WA University. I'm happy to soak in all the information before launching into trying to make money. I am an accountant after all...

The Wealthy Affiliate Journey Starts Here?

First up, I'm a qualified Scottish Chartered Accountant. And I'm from Yorkshire. So not only tight with money but also blunt.
Last week a colleague mentioned a site to me - Wealthy Affiliate. I checked it out with a heavy dose of scepticism, but being of an optimistic & opportunistic nature, I never like to pass things by.
At the moment I've 2 days left of a 7 day trial which cost $1. I've already decided to extend, initially by 2 months.
They have a mass of resource to learn about as well as techniques for article marketing, affiliate marketing etc. There is an 8 week self teach course to follow.

I figured it may be useful to track my progress over these 8 weeks and keep a diary of what I've learned and any success I've had from it.
I'm not normally into diaries but for some reason this idea grabbed me.
If I stick with Wealthy Affiliate after 8 weeks then I'll keep the diary going if any one's reading by then. I think I'll be able to post a screenshot of my latest earnings each week.

OK, down to brass tacks. Do I get anything for promoting Wealthy Affiliate? Only if I refer someone. Two will cover my monthly WA subscription.
Coming from finance, I'm not at all good at sales or at recommending anything that's anything but genuine.
So if this turns out to be as good as it sounds, then I'll feel good about recommending it to others who want to earn a residual income.
And I'll point them to this blog which hopefully will be a comprehensive record of my journey from the start point.