This Guy Loves To Party

I actually don’t want to dwell on this too much because not only is writing about how much money I make tacky, but writing about making just $1,000 per month is flat-out lame.  But, as those who try to make money online without a service-based business know, the first bit of money you make is the hardest.

I actually accomplished my goal two months ago, but held off writing about it until I knew I had duplicated my efforts.  Two months ago, I put a couple hours a day into my work and hit my goal, but this past month was a little different: from July 27 to August 27, I was on a bicycle tour down the Pacific Coast and was away from my computer the whole time.  I didn’t do an ounce of work the entire month.  I ended up making almost exactly twice my goal amount, completely passively.

So, it feels safe to say: goal accomplished.  I have now set my money goal far higher — aiming for $200 a day minimum with maximum of 3 hours of work a day within the next month, and gradually higher from there — but I know what to do now to get it done so it shouldn’t be too much of a challenge.

So what did I do?  I won’t spell out an exact method because you can find millions online.  What I think will help more is knowing the core principles that will help you make money online that I failed to grasp in the beginning.

I sell affiliate products, specifically through ClickBank, a vendor of digital products like software and PDFs that are instantly downloaded.  Some of the products offered there are crap, while others are gold (and some I use myself every day).  If you can sell a product on ClickBank, you get paid a generous commission — a maximum of 75% of the product’s price.  All products are sold through simple sales pages I have set up for specific keywords I’ve targeted.

Selling products is the trickiest part, though.  You have to find a market that is desperate and needs help, which is what most of the products on ClickBank cater to.  This means: you need to find a market where people are willing to pull out their credit cards and find the solution to a problem NOW.  Think about things that have driven you crazy in the past and what you would have done to get them resolved.  I know that, years ago, whenever I woke up with the beginning of a cold sore, I’d start searching on Google desperate for ways to cure it before it got worse.  If I had run across a product back then promising to cure my cold sore immediately and naturally or my money back, I probably would have considered it.  If someone was able to direct me to that product through my Google searches, then they would have made a commission off my sale.

That’s the main idea most people miss: find markets where people are absolutely desperate, find out how to get their attention, and send them to great offers from great products.  It’s not more complicated than this.

(Every web page I have that shows up for specific keywords in Google is text-only and about two or three printed pages in length.  I have ONE and ONLY ONE link on each of these pages, and it’s to the product I’m promoting.  Don’t over-complicate your affiliate marketing efforts.)

For those that already know a bit about affiliate marketing, this post likely makes sense.  For those that have no idea, this post is probably infuriating.  If you really have no idea at all about this stuff but want to know more, I recommend reading as much as you can over at the Warrior Forum.

And that ends this explanation.  I really don’t like writing about making money.

I set a goal a while back of making $1,000 a month all through online ventures.

I haven’t hit that goal yet — half-assing everything will give you results like that — but I did make $378.50 total in the last month.  In other words, I’m fucking rich as shit now.

What brought in the majority of the results?

A good portion of my income came from 1 article I wrote, that led to one text-only web page I made, that contained one link to a digital product.  $298.90 of my sales came from that one article alone.  I did no maintenance on this article or the site that it leads to after it was initially put up.

I’m working on expanding and replicating that success right now by creating nearly identical sites targeting different keywords.

What’s my current strategy?

I’m still trying to sell both digital and physical products.  I’m actually working on a couple basic sites to sell physical items through Amazon.

But, for the most part, I find keywords that get at least some (50+) searches a day and use backlink building to target those keywords.  In other words, I perform basic SEO to get my sites to rank higher in Google for not-so-competitive keywords.

Does none of this make any sense to you?  I’ll have a thorough post explaining everything I do to make money online once I’ve hit my $1,000-a-month goal, which shouldn’t be too long from now.  All the stupid terminology in here will make sense in that post, and I’ll explain how much work I put in daily, what I outsource, what I do myself, and so on.  A teaser for it: I’m doing all of this as low-effort as possible.

Mostly I just wanted to put this up as a reminder that I’m still alive.

A quick update on my goal to make money online…

Haven’t made anything yet.  I’m hoping to report something very different by next week.

For now, I’m going with the affiliate marketing approach.  This is where I sell other people’s products for a share of the profits.  I’ll be selling both digital and physical products.

This can be a very shady business.  This is because most people are interested in only making the sale, and not actually helping anyone in the process.  For this reason, not many people who sell the product actually buy it or know anything about it.

I am strictly planning on buying every product — digital or physical — that I promote.  I’ll be focusing, mostly, on reviewing the products and trying to get good rankings in Google for each review.  A rarity in the world of affiliate promotions is honesty and integrity, so I’m hoping that I can set myself apart.

The idea is that people search for reviews on products since they’re already interested in buying, and will run across my web page in the process and hopefully decide to buy at that point.

My current experiment: to see if video reviews or written reviews with screen grabs are better.  I should have my first full video review up tonight, and I’ll report back within a week or two how it’s performing.

Again, the immediate goal is only $1,000 a month in profits.  If I were to promote higher-end products — software packages that pay out $80 or more in commissions — then I would only need a few sales every month.

Stay tuned for more updates soon.

If you use a Mac and want to be more productive, then this tip will help you a lot.

The biggest problem with working for yourself and attempting to make money online are all the distractions you have.  Instead of focused working, I catch myself every 15 minutes checking to see which of my friends has updated their Facebook status, or to find out more about a random celebrity on Wikipedia, or to see if I have any new e-mail.  Sometimes my eyes get stuck on all the junk I have sitting on my desktop, or I zone out while listening to music.

Eventually, my mind is focused on anything but the work I have to get done.

I’ve fixed that problem, for the most part, by taking advantage of OS X’s multiple user accounts feature.  (This exists in Windows, too, but Windows is for shit heads, so I don’t know how to do it.)

What does this do?

A lot of people don’t realize you can create a second “user” on your computer.  This sets aside a small space on your computer with no personal documents, no messy desktop, nothing.  You go into it, and it’s almost like you have a brand new computer, aside from the existing applications you have.

I set up a new user — I named it “Work” — and whenever it’s time to get down to business, I simply log out of my main user, where all my personal documents are, and log into my “Work” user, where the only documents are those that are associated with my Internet business.

While in there, Facebook doesn’t automatically log me in, I have no e-mail accounts set up, and there’s no digital clutter to keep my mind distracted.  I’m a lot more focused on the task at hand.

How do you do it?

A patient-sounding man with a very robotic voice has saved me the trouble and already prepared an excellent tutorial on creating new user accounts.  Watch it below.

You simply need to select “log out” from the Apple menu when you want to switch between accounts.

Use this for any kind of project you have

I’ll be using this technique with all future projects I have.  The main advantage it provides is that the new user account has no data in it.  This decluttering will clear your mind and help you focus.  With a clear mind, you’ll find you get a lot more done.  When you’ve completed your work, just hop back over to your “main” account and spend as much time as you want on Wikipedia finding out what Stephanie from Full House is up to these days.

I’ve been asked this a few times now…

How do I plan on making money online?

The truth is, I’m not sure what my main money-making strategy is going to be.  I’m working on the dreadful affiliate marketing, where you sell other people’s stuff, and am ultimately interested in selling my own digital products.

The way I see it: if I can get 3 people to give me $11 a day, every day, I have roughly hit my monthly goal of $1,000.

So that’s really what I’m aiming for, at least in the beginning: 3 people, every day, to pay me $11.  Or 5 people who pay me $7.  Or whatever.  However I can achieve this, I’m going to do it.  And then, in the future, I’ll multiply my efforts by taking advantage of outsourcing — of course, when I actually know what I’m doing and know what will make me money.

But do you want to know the absolute best way to make money online?  This is something I can tell you right now.  In fact, this applies to just about any goal you want to accomplish.

Find someone who already does it, is good at it, and ask them for help.  Show them what you’ve done already — prove to them that you’re interested in actually working for your goal — and ask what next step you need to take.  You’d be surprised how many accomplished people want to help you when you show that you’re a driven, hard-working person.

A lot of people, when trying a new venture like making money online, dive in alone, get frustrated, and give up.

But think of how much more effective it would be if there were someone there who could look over your work and immediately tell you what is and is not working.  You’ll end up working more productively, more effectively, and reach your goals a lot faster.

That’s the power of an effective mentor.

So if you want to make money online — or really want to do anything — and want a sure way of doing it, what I can recommend to you is: find a mentor.

I’ve realized in the past couple months that I really don’t like owning things.  One of the big reasons is the cost that stuff entails.

Most stuff is a money trap.  When I had my nice flat screen TV, I was always buying gadgets and electronics to go along with it.  My car constantly had money thrown at it.  I always felt like I had to get new little things to decorate my room with, to compliment the other stupid things I had decorated my room with.

Owning one worthless item almost always leads to buying other worthless items to compliment it.  When I cleared out everything I owned and didn’t want, I was embarrassed to find bags of untouched feng shui stones and sand I desperately searched for and bought to compliment a weird glass vase I picked up on impulse and never really used.

Do you want to save money?  Then stop buying dumb junk.  It’s draining you in more ways than one.

Being “successful” with money is about how you use it, not how much you make.

I inadvertently saved lots of money while working a retail job in Los Angeles.  I spent $850 a month in rent alone, so it’s not like I didn’t have plenty of expenses.

But I cut out so many miscellaneous, small expenses that I was able to put at least a thousand dollars into savings every month.  That’s the power of not having cable TV, of preparing my own food, and of picking up average women in lieu of high-class prostitutes.

Now the money I saved is worth many times more, since I’ve been spending it all in South America, where not only is everything cheaper, but currency fluctuations have worked out in my favor, making the dollar even more powerful here.  Essentially every dollar I spend here is buying me 3x as much as it would have in the United States.

And when I do return to the United States, I’ll have plenty of opportunities to keep my cost of living very low, including staying temporarily with friends, family, and renting apartments from people desperate to sublet them for a month or two at the last minute.  These are just a few of the things I’ll do to keep my cost of living low in one of the world’s most expensive countries.

My savings aren’t substantial, but they’re enough to sustain me for almost two more years at my current rate of spending.

So why is your money goal so low?

I’ve been questioned about my current measly income goal of $1,000 a month.

$1,000 a month is enough for me to live on very happily and comfortably at the moment.  I’ll consider myself a success with an income of $12,000 a year simply because that puts me at the break-even point if I were to continue the awesome lifestyle I’ve been living for the past 8 months.

And if I were to bring in only $2,000 a month, then I’d be able to put an extra $1,000 into savings every month.  I consider this my “mini-retirement fund.”

I’m looking to grow my income, but I am a success if I have only $1,000 a month in income.  This is because my $1,000 is far more valuable than someone else’s $5,000, $10,000, or more.

(Photo: Scholten)

I prefer to hit one major goal at a time.

Right now, my goal is to make money online.  This is my goal for the next 5 weeks, and what I’ll primarily be dedicating my time to.

After 8 months of living abroad, I’ve found that I can live just fine under $1,000 a month, with plane fares included.  Because of that, my goal in the next five weeks is $1,000 a month in income that I can sustain and grow indefinitely.  I’m also aiming to make as much of the income, as possible, passive income.

I have a number of ways that I plan on achieving this, all of which I’ll post about in the coming weeks.

If I can make $1,000 a month initially, and continue to grow that income, then I should be able to keep living the way I want: in different parts of the world, learning new things, with no responsibilities keeping me grounded in one place.

Keep posted for regular updates on what I’m doing to build an online income stream.