HubPages

Can't believe it's been nearly 3 weeks since my last post. Time flies. Going to have to be careful about how I spend my time or I'm not going to make the January 09 deadline.

I have been moving around the web a lot more since I started this, and boy, the face of the web has changed! When you talk about Internet marketing in the old days, it's just submitting your site to the search engines, exchanging links, and getting listed in the directories. Now, it's more about the social networks, or Web 2.0. If anything, these networks have actually made Internet marketing simpler.

I just joined HubPages a few weeks back. It's a online publishing site on which you can write about anything you like, except for the obvious no-nos like porn, racist discrimination, etc. It has a rating system which rewards originality.

What I like about HubPages is that you can get traffic from within the network itself. This is essentially a characteristic of most if not all social networks, which is why I said that getting traffic is actually much easier now.

Here are some of the ways you can get traffic from HubPages:

• When you publish a site (it's called a hub), your site will appear in a section listing the latest hubs published, so you will get some traffic in the first few hours.
• Comment on other publisher's hubs. Your id will be attached to your comment, so you can attract some traffic to your profile and your hubs.
• Become a fan of other publishers (hubbers). You can attract their attention and you get to know when they publish a new hub. If you are fast, you can be the first to leave a comment. ;) They might become your fan as well and will be informed whenever you publish a new hub.
• HubPages has a system which rewards originality. An original article has a higher rating, and has a greater chance of being listed under the Hot Hubs and Best Hubs category.
• HubPages also has a Best Hubbers category. Consistently publish great hubs and you can get into this category. More great traffic for you!

In the old model, Internet marketing is all about search engine optimization and getting your links onto other sites. While this has not changed in the new model, getting your links onto other sites has gotten very much easier. The focus has shifted to user generated content, and building relationships.

You can view my profile on HubPages here.

Twitter

Just signed up for Twitter a few hours ago to explore the possibilities. For those who doesn't know what it is, it is a service in which you type in what you are doing at any given time in 140 characters or less. This message will go to your friends, that is, whoever is "following" you. You can also "follow" other people, in which you get their messages. Actually, in a nutshell, that's it.

But for marketing and networking, there are definitely possibilities. You can view who I'm following, and who the people I'm following are following, and so on. Since each person will typically follow 50-100 people, you can access thousands just from the people I'm following and who they are following.

When you are viewing a person's profile (I don't know the proper term), you are also viewing the person's "tweets", or messages. That way, you know a little about each person, about who they are and what they are involved in. If they appear "relevant", by all means add them to your follow list. And if they are on your list, there is a chance that they will add you to their list as well. I mean, I just signed up and I already have 2 people following me and one of them subscribed to my mailing list. :)

I can think of more possibilities but I'm not going into that now. Take a look at what I'm doing now here:

http://twitter.com/wanderert

Step One

I am really amazed at the amount of misleading and hyped up information there is out there on Internet marketing and home based businesses. We are at the point at which a total newbie, who is just embarking on his journey, does not know where to turn.

On the one hand, you have an Internet marketing guru telling you that link exchanges are great are traffic, and then you have another telling you that you must do SEO or you are not going to get any traffic, and another saying that link exchanges and SEO are passe, social networks are the in thing now.

And every Internet marketing guru has a product to sell! And you know what? Seems that everybody is a marketing guru. If you have the testimonials, the scanned copy of your bank statement, and a product to sell, you are an Internet marketing guru.

Sorry, enough venting.

The point I'm trying to make is that you don't know where to go for good, honest, reliable, down to earth information.

Since I already have a site at http://QuittingYourJob.com about home based businesses and Internet marketing, and its approach is to offer honest and down to earth information, I can start there.

I will revamp and expand the site, concentrating on increasing the number of brandable ebooks available, introducing more relevant articles and updating the marketing section with more up to date information.

For now, revenue source will primarily be Adsense. I will look into other sources in the coming weeks.

Potential of a Business

I asked the following question at a forum some hours ago:

"Would you work at a job that pays $100 a day for the rest of your life, or start an Internet business that pays $0.01 a day but increases by 1% every day?"

Most people will choose the job. Imagine, one penny as opposed to ten thousand pennies! That's ten thousand times. Who in their right minds will choose the Internet business that pays 1 cent a day?

I opened a spreadsheet and did a calculation as to the expected income for the Internet business in the coming years. The results were rather surprising:

Year 0 $ 0.01 per day $ 0.30 per month
Year 1 $ 0.37 per day $ 11.10 per month
Year 2 $ 14.13 per day $ 423.90 per month
Year 3 $534.05 per day $16021.50 per month

After 3 years, you have an income of about $16000 per month. And that's from a starting point of 30 cents per month.

Of course, there is a lot more to a business than that. You still have to choose the right business for you, do the right things for your business, etc.

But I just want to illustrate the potential of a business, online or otherwise.

Site Review - MMG's Massive Ebook Giveaway

Money Making Guide Blog is having phase 2 of its ebook and is looking for more stuff to give away. The first phase has been a fantastic success with nearly 7500 visitors since the beginning of July.

So, if you have written your own ebook and/or software and are looking for help get it out to the masses, this is a great opportunity for you.

You can leave a comment for Steve at his blog here. You can also find free ebooks here.

Article Marketing

Been browsing the forums and discovered that article marketing, sometimes called bum marketing, is a popular way of doing Internet marketing. General idea is that you write an article, include a resource box at the end which points to your website and submit the article to popular article directories. Once your article is published, you get free traffic.

You are advised to do some SEO research and to include relevant keywords in your title and in the first paragraph of your article.

In addition, since one article can only get you that much traffic, you should write MANY articles. We are talking about, maybe, a few articles per day! I find that surprising because the quality of the articles will definitely suffer.

I browsed the article directories and read some of the articles posted. Indeed, a lot of the articles I read, although not pure garbage, contains little originality and not much useful content. Those articles are basically food for the search engines and for obtaining backlinks for the author's site.

Sad that Internet marketing had degraded to this point. :(

But enough complaining and onwards to Jan 2009.

For a start, I will adopt the following basic strategy:

- improve my sites at http://quittingyourjob.com/ and http://wacky-background.com/.
- write GOOD articles for promotion.
- write more ebooks for QuittingYourJob.com.
- browse the forums for promotion and information.
- develop quality link exchanges and partnerships.
- promote the ebooks I have written.

In the next few weeks, I will have to look into other niches and products I can sell.

Password and Email Security

Some of you may not realize it but a lot of the sites in which we have to sign up at to access are run by individuals. Say you go to a forum, put in your username, email and password and register. The webmaster of that site will have access to what you input, and that includes your password. And if you use that same password, username and/or email at other sites, that is a huge security risk.

I have decided to use different email and passwords for different types of sites. I have one email for article directories, one email for forums, and so on. And the passwords will be different too, but formatted in such a way so that I can remember them without having to write them down.

In this way, I hope to reduce the security risk and cut down on the amount of spam that I will inevitably receive.

Pacing Myself

I have a rather short timeline but I am going to take a little time and come up with a gameplan.

The following is what I have at the moment and suggestions and comments are always welcome:

Preliminary GamePlan

Considerations

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- I need to diversify as much as I can. This will enable me to try out various techniques or products and have a better idea of what works and what doesn't. Income may vary a lot from month to month, so diversifying will enable a more stable income.

- Over the longer term, I should concentrate on products or services with a recurring revenue stream.

- I must start looking at products or services not related to making money or Internet marketing as there will be less competition. Like they say: "In the land of the blind, the one-eye man is king."

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Recurring Revenue Products

- Web Hosting, autoresponders
- health products

Non-recurring Revenue Products

- Adsense
- Master resell right products
- Ebay? What type of products?
- Own product?

Promotion and Traffic Techniques

- article directories
- brandable ebooks
- SEO techniques
- link exchanges


This is just a first draft and I will be adding to and expanding it in the months ahead.

Ready, Set, Go

The decision to start this blog was taken just a few hours ago. Recently I have set a target of earning $5000 per month (hence the name of this blog) from the net by Jan 2009. I mentioned this in a forum and another poster asked me to keep them posted on my progress.

So the idea for this blog was born.

This blog will serve to keep track of my progress. I will post what I am doing, what obstacles I faced, what I am thinking... and eventually how I fared come Jan 2009.

More details will come later but for now, I am in action!

Interesting how the decision to start this blog opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Where before I am extremely sceptical that anybody can build an income of $5000 a month in the short space of 5 and a half months, I can now see many ways of how this can be done.

Maybe it's just because I now have to perform as the world is watching. Gets you thinking of what we are really capable of, doesn't it?