Well , I guess this was going to be part of the 16 weeks to wealth series that I had planned quite a bit ago , and haven’t updated hardly at all.

Anyways, I’d say the 16 week plan I had set has been a 95% absolute failure , and I’ll go over the reasons why.

Last year was a very wild ride, I went from having nothing ,to plugging along with a daily campaign (bizop) series that brought in upwards of $1500 a day , with several days over $2,000 daily income (with most of it being profit).

Anyways , I started raking in the money mid April , and managed the campaign(s) quite carefully, up until June-July, when we started to get extremely close to having the baby. Alot of ‘experts’ started giving me their 2 cents into what I should do to expand the campaigns, and go from $2,000 to $5,000 a day , and I was all ears.

I hired a firm in the Philippines to “manage” SEO on my campaigns, so I could work on other projects and try to expand my net.

Then in July, things started to go downhill , my sites all got a malware injection , and were all de-listed from Google, which made me loose about a good 20 days worth of income for the most part, as it took that long to get the sites re-included into Google. Finally in August, google decided they’d de-index a sheer ton of websites that delt with bizops , mine were included in the de-list, and I went from that $1,500 or so a day to $200 or so per day.

Also , during the time of the website doing good, I started to funnel money into other, non AM projects in hope of ‘deversifying’ so that not all my income would be based on affiliate marketing , or the internet for that matter.

Over the course from Sept-Dec I managed to get almost nothing done it seems, even though the sites were still getting a great deal of traffic from bing + yahoo (to the course of $200-$300 per day). I tried to get a site or two launched, with very little success, as I was relying on my seo “managers” to help in the reformation of new pages and seo sites.

I chunked along at a slow pace, as since the baby had come, my hours per day spent had been severely slashed……from 8-10hrs a day (some times 12hrs) down to about 6 hours, as I was helping with the baby in the morning, then getting back at home at 5 to try and help. This all has been extremely tiring, as the baby still cries in her sleep, and wakes my wife and I up (So , needless to say I feel like a zombie all day long).

So , what I’ve done the past 2-3 days is look at myself and situation ,and try and figure out where I went wrong, to try and convey a cautionary tale.

So , here’s what I discovered have been my problems.

#1 Being a follower and not a leader.

I’ve realized that almost every good choice I’ve made has been from making my own decisions about things , and not listening to others. In fact, I’d say 95% of the times people have offered me “Help” or “Advice” , it’s led to TOTAL disaster. I spent $12,000 last year with that stupid SEO “Firm” on a suggestion from someone, and what did it get me? A bunch of crummy links to sites that got de-indexed anyway! I spent $30,000 on a real estate investment I bought because someone asked me to buy it (not because I really really wanted to), but bought it because I ASSUMED my campaigns would continue to truck along at the $1,500 or so a day. I spent approximately $5,000 on software/websites that were absollutely worthless, in most cases it was from poor advice , but this was the lowest of my losses. Finally I lost $30,000 on a failed investment where someone begged me to help them get off the ground.

I realize that I’ve given in to pressure from others, rather than using a business mindset ,and working on things like I should.

#2 Reading forums and blogs.

Let me tell you something that you won’t hear on many blogs or forums………..They’re both pretty worthless.

Yes, Blogs CAN have good information , Forums CAN have good information , but 90% of the information is either total crap, or outdated. It’s far better to work and get stuff done, instead of finding out the latest trends and ‘advice’. The guys who make money WILL NOT give you advice because you’re a competitor, and they’re smarter than that, and anyone who is willing to sell you information is trying to make money , no more.

#3 Not working hard enough

As a followup to 2 , i’ve spent likely 3x more time than I should have in chats and forums, I’m sure if I cut those both out of my life i’d do much better….and I am doing better since I’ve cut them out.

Well , there’s the list of things that I’ve noted, I’ve unfortunately landed myself into the same place i was almost exactly 1 year ago at this time. Hardly any cash in hand, and a bunch of ‘hopeful’ projects that will bring money in.

For those of you curious , this is what one of my better FB ad campaigns looked like, something around $1500 adspend, $6500 in total return on this specific campaign.

CTR is important……..very very important.

I finally took the plunge, and sold off a few savings bonds from when I was a kid.

#1 Was purchased Oct 1985 sold @ 260% of initial purchase price
#2 Was purchased Dec 1992 sold @ 151% of initial purchase price

Test

Test
So , this is all good and well , however I started thinking about the investments that could have been made right around the time I was born (1985).

One of the biggest investments talked about right now is precious metal investing, so I will compare gold & silver

Gold spot in 1985 $330oz
Silver spot in 1985 $6.20oz
Gold Spot in 1992 $345oz
Silver spot in 1992 $4oz

Using current spot prices – of $1110oz for gold, and $17.15oz, we find out that since 85, silver has been up 177% , and since 92 it has been up 329%
Gold on the otherhand, would have seen a 236% appreciation since 85, and a 222% appreciation since 92,m giving an average 229% appreciation.

So , having said that, Silver would have been the best investment , then gold, then the bonds, but not by a wide margin.

Now , looking at the Dow Jones industrial average, the gain since 85 has been 631% and since 92 a 223% gain.

Obviously , out of these , stocks would have been the best choice , but let’s go further……

Machine guns since 1985 have gone up well over 1,000% , and would have been a much cooler investment

Ok, I’m going to do something that will gain me hopefully street cred, so one day I may wear the stunna shades like the big guys, and maybe a fancy ring.

Here is a rundown on a working facebook campaign I ran in the first few weeks of September While I was on Vacation.

Below is my ad write & CTR and the like , the offer pointed to “Fiesta” the game that every single network has , in particular , i ran this one with Profit Kings Media (If you join em, let them know that I sent you).

First 3 days was nuts , my bidding was around .004 (less than half a cent) with a EPC of around 5 cents, FB can be ultra powerful , however my hurdle always has been fresh ad-writes. I have yet to make more than $400 a day in profit from FB , as it might start off with a 500% ROI campaign , and over a week end up around 5%.

My targeted age group was 13-35 , the keyword was ‘Gaia Online” with a few associate keywords, you can imagine why. I also tried this with a few other kiddie games, with some luck and decent conversions. I’m sure if you copied this you could make a buck or two , but IMO copying isn’t worth it, the method however can work.

There you go , a working facebook ad campaign , my total cost as you can tell from it was around $34 , my total revenue was $211.60.

So , I was in my gmail account reading various business emails, when I saw a little adwords text ad that said “Premier wealth system” or something like that , and since I’ve been working on my very own “Make Money At Home” Course offer, I figured why not check into it, and see the lander.

I must say , I was blown away with the intro video , by far the absolute nicest lander video I’ve ever seen. So, I was curious to see what the program costs (That’s always the first thing that comes to my mind).

So, I opted-in to their Aweber opt-in system (Somehow it seems like they’ve bypassed the double-opt-in) , to see the product cost and whether the program was MLM or not.

That’s where I confirmed my thoughts about what it was……..Not only was it a MLM , but their top course was only a few dollars shy of TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!

I’ve heard how in the past there were a few MLM companies out there with $10k products, but had never seen one online till today. It sure did pay for a nice video to start off with , but I don’t feel nearly as bad about selling $40 internet ebooks now that I see people are buying ‘courses’ off this company for anywhere from $500 to $9497.

Amazing stuff, and here I was worried that my own ‘internet wealth course’ at $19.95 was going to be too high.

Well , week one is down ,and it had it’s good points.

Good points :

I made it in to the office before 8AM every day (7am was the goal, however I missed it by about 15 minutes on a couple of days)
I’ve got a bunch of work done, and set up a bunch off sites

Bad Points :
My good money maker site has really gone down.

The biggest problem I’ve had was the fact my 2 niche sites got banned, and since then , the traffic has been somewhat erratic.

The big goal has been to build several stable sites, and do as much as I can to get them ranked, and decent traffic to them, so I can then monetize em and get back in the game.

I’m also working on my own offer, so that’ll be cool to run , a few people I know have done well with releasing their own offers, so I really want to work on this.

The end goal of the offer/product will have a seemingly very legitimate offer that I can run in place of the semi-shady bizops I ran that got me banned, and also have something I can use with real-world advertising like Infomercials and such. I’ve almost got all the software stuff figured out, and the back end seems quite do-able, so all I need to do is continue to work on it (the content is almost done , the domains needed are bought, what’s left is the actual backend design and lander).

Well, I figured I’d do something productive and review a product, Ubot.

Ubot is touted as the answer to every web developer’s dream who has ever needed a bot , scraper or any sort of automation tool for websites.

I looked at ubot a month ago, and was pretty impressed with the potential of having the ability to build easy scrapers, as  I have no clue on PHP or any other programing languages (outside of HTML).

So, I ponied up the $149 (as was the price when I bought it) and bought ubot. I was definately impressed the first day I had the program, I was able to create a real simple bot that worked and pulled the indexing rate of a few of my project sites.

After day #1 , that’s when it started to go down hill…..quickly. I started getting BSOD errors, as well as different .net errors. After about a week, I could no longer log into the program as it required a update, which I was unable to complete due to the errors. I finally realized that I had to uninstall the program in order to download & reinstall the most recent version. Unfortunately, this has happened the past 4-5 times I’ve run the program, it has been so aggrivating I have stopped using it.

The potential for Ubot is huge , it’s relatively easy to use, and for someone who doesn’t know squat about programing, I was able to come up with a tool I needed in a hour or two. However, at the current time, the program is absolutely worthless. HOPEFULLY in the future, there will be some upgrades, or the developer will get his act together and make something usable , as right now it’s a POS.

Yep, I’m not even going to throw in an affiliate link for the product, unless they turn it around.

Well, It’s Day 2 Of The Challenge

So far so good, I made it into the office again today at around 7:15, I even packed my own lunch so I wouldn’t have to go out for food like yesterday.

My SEO income was OK I guess, a whopping $105 from BING , I also restarted a few of my facebook campaigns that had been run a while ago. Unfortunately the best they did was break even, so I know that I’ve got to release new adds, however dreadful it is, I want to do about $500/day on FB. I’d prefer to do something like dating on FB , however 99% of my ads get rejected, and the only ones that make it through are really crummy, super compliant ones that have a miserable CTR. I wish the interns would get it together and approve more ads, but as everyone knows , they don’t.

On another few good notes, I’ve  just about got my Emall type site up, which will provide the framework for the other ones I want to do. The goal right now is to build 15 e-mall type websites, then SEO the heck out of them. Each site would have something like 50k pages, and with 100% indexing ,I would have a good deal of SERP power with all those pages.

I had posted on wickedfire yesterday about my big marketing project, so I’ll fill everyone in on the project, background and my personal goals.

As  I’ve mentioned on the blog before,  ever since a young age, I’ve always wanted to have money. Growing up poor, it was always really sad to see my parents have to scrape, and live paycheck to paycheck in trying to keep up with bills and rent.  I had always promised myself that when I was married and had  a family that I wouldn’t live paycheck to paycheck like my parents did.

So, starting in October of last year, when my wife and I found out we were going to have a baby, it became even more evident that I needed to hustle, and find some way to earn a better living and at the same time, do something effectively that wouldn’t require me to be away from my family for 12hrs a day. I started initially just trying to find a way to monetize a blog I had,  and over time I started to learn about SEO, PPC and a host of other methods of making money, mostly revolving around affiliate marketing.

It took up until about the last week of November to find what I really wanted – CPA marketing,  interestingly enough, I had discovered everything on tylercruz.com due to a post on bluehat seo saying he was a lazy SOB and made affiliate marketing look bad. I knew when someone complained about someone making too much money or was ‘too lazy to be making money’ I knew I should do some further investigating. I was pretty inspired by reading how one guy had only been involved in PPC marketing for about 6 months, yet was generating over $100,000 in revenue per month. I figured it’d be best to try and copy what they were doing, or at least try to understand how they did it.

December I had made a whole $100.50 in income online from marketleverage, however knew that I needed to work a ton more to have any sort of success. In Janurary I tried starting PPC , and I think I also enrolled at PPC-Coach to try and learn more about it. I brought in approximately $1500 that month , which about half of was expenses & buying domains, it was a little taste of success but nothing much to write home about.

February was around $2500, with another half going to expenses, I had made some progress, but still hadn’t come close to hitting any of my goals. March rolled around, and I finished the month with $4285.50 in total income, much better, and not only had a $100 daily profit I had brought in $396 in one single day,  I finally felt like I was headed somewhere. At the end of the month, I really started to analyze what I was doing right and wrong, and realized that PPC was taking up a good chunk of the money I had made, while my SEO ventures were doing much better.

In April I almost completely dumped PPC in an attempt to concentrate only on SEO ,which was significantly cheaper for me to do, and from the month prior, also more rewarding. The month of April, I brought in a total of $24,295.97 , my best day bringing in $2001, of which was 100% profit. I had finally achieved a level of success that I felt was appropriate with the level of work I had spent on everything. The months of June and July brought in similar incomes, however my net revenue did go down, as I started to back up those SEO campaigns with PPC bidding to boost revenues.

Unfortunately, from that point on , I started to get lazy, going from 8,10,12 and even 16 hours of work on some days to something more like 2 or 3 hour days. Most of the work I had done was site maintenance, and other daily upkeep tasks, rather than expanding and diversifying.  I also invested a significant portion of my income (Well over $50,000) into a associate’s venture, as well as some real estate.

In August I got a pretty severe wakeup call, when Adwords banned me, and also had the majority of my sites de-indexed from Google due to them going after bizopp publishers as well as advertisers. My income suffered a drastic drop, as about 80%-90% of my income was from Google SEO , leaving me with a average daily profit of around $150/day.

Of course, $150/day is nothing to balk at , however only a few months ago, I was hoping to hit $4,000 per day in net revenue.

So, this brings me up to today , where I’m going to get back on the horse, go for the gold and surpass my best month of about $25,000 in income with a $100,000 consistent monthly revenue.

I am also planning on diversifying my income sources, up until September, I had never attempted anything outside of CPA leads with PPC and SEO.

These are my monthly goals at the end of the 16 weeks.

• $15,000 Per month in Facebook Income
• $15,000 Per month in CPS % E-Mall Income
• $10,000 Per Month in Adsense Income
• $5,000 Per Month in Profile Sales
• $40,000 Per Month in CPA SEO Income
• $15,000 In PPC Via Yahoo And Bing (And hopefully somehow get Adsense back up)

This will leave me with a $100,000/month income, at which time I can expand to greater things (such as large media buys which start at about $50k per campaign). I’d also like to get into high volume mailing (5m/day), however can’t devote enough time to that venture, I’m already making a few bucks a day off of it , however time constraints leave me unable to dedicate enough time to it.

Furthermore, every 2-3 days I will update this blog with my results and share my success and failures.

Ok , for some reason the CSS is totally screwed over by this post , so I’m in the process of fixing , please forgive me.

I figured I’d post up a little tidbit on my blog again (Finally , I know) about something that’s been bothering me – Macintosh Computers.

You know, there’s been tons of commercials on TV about how PCs are old and antiquated and Macs are the future! It even seems that every single trendy person uses a mac (Heck, even the president uses a mac).

So , being a ‘open minded’ individual as I am, I’ve asked every person who owns a mac the same question – Why did you buy one over a PC?

The answer I get about 80% of the time is “Because I’ve heard they’re the best” , The rest of the people I talk who answer because they run OSX on it.

So , I wanted to do something fun this morning , so I priced out 2 very comparable systems, a Macbook Pro 17″ and a dell XPS 16 (yes there’s 1″ of difference) to see how similar I could make the systems.

Ok , now what’s the difference? A different graphics card (Nvidia vs ATI) and about 1″ monitor difference. The price difference was pretty substantial at $820 difference between the two systems. Even more amazing was that Apple wanted $1,000 just to upgrade their macbook to 8gb of ram (Compared to dell’s $500 for the exact same thing!).

So , for about 50% more you’re paying for a name & Recognition along with a operating system that’s not compatible with quite a few programs, as windows still leads OSX in program development. Having said that , there’s always 3 choices for OS – Windows, Linux and OSX which whether the companies want to tell you or not , can be run on any of the systems, it just requires a little bit of tweaking.

So , here’s the question – Is someone really all that smart and trendy if they over pay on a computer by around 50% just to be like the next guy?