Seven Years Later

Time moves too quickly as you age.  It accelerates with each passing year until years seem to pass as quickly as month did when you were a child.A lot has changed.I have a tiny but valuable real estate portfolio.  I have stepped away from product creation and affiliate marketing in favor of web development and video production for other businesses.  That decision has been good so

Posted on: 27 November 2023 | 4:30 pm

One Year Later

It has been a year since the last post.  A ton has happened, of course. Had a baby.  Bought a new house. Etc. Etc. The fat loss site has been up for awhile but monetization has been slow and it has been completely my fault.  I think that part of it is that I have had so many things fall apart that I have developed a fear of failure that is holding me back.  I am pushing past

Posted on: 17 March 2016 | 6:24 am

Content Week Update

This is content week for the membership site.  There are three main sections to the site that need to be populated.  So far, I have one that is mostly ready.  I just need to add a video describing why they are using this particular technique and add some cosmetic touches to flesh out the section. Unfortunately, it does not look like I will make this week's deadline.  It may

Posted on: 4 March 2015 | 6:15 am

The Deadlines

I just had the weekly call with Roger and I established a set of deadlines for the weight loss site. Sunday, March 1 - Complete Final Design and Structure Sunday, March 7 - Finish Initial Content Sunday, March 14 - Finish Marketing Materials Week of March 21 - LAUNCH! This is not overly aggressive but I do think that splitting the milestones in this way will help a lot.  In the past, I

Posted on: 27 February 2015 | 1:26 pm

10 Years

Yes, it has been ten years since I started this game... And I'm actually more hopeful than I have been in a long time.  The membership site is coming along.  It's going a bit slowly but it is coming along.  I was hoping to have it ready by the end of the month but that seems like a pipe dream at the moment.  Between work, trying to close on a house, and other things, I have

Posted on: 26 February 2015 | 6:39 am

Preparing for the New Year

2015 is coming... already. For SLD, conversions are still a problem.  I have actually paused the PPC campaign while I address the issue.  The funnel leaks, in part, because I'm not hitting the right message for the market.  I need to get more accurate data on what they want so that I can tailor both the product and the funnel to those needs.  I picked up Survey Funnel Formula

Posted on: 30 December 2014 | 5:55 am

Conversion Funnel Leaks

Last time, I mentioned that the sales funnel for SLD was leaky.  Nearly every step in the process is underperforming - from the squeeze page to the actual emails.  I went back yesterday and took a look at some of the emails and realized that they really didn't "sell" the click.  It was mentioned but I really didn't do a good job of convincing the reader that they needed to click

Posted on: 9 December 2014 | 5:37 am

The Funnel is Leaking

SLD, my weight loss site, has a leaky funnel.  People go in and most fall out long before they get exposed to the salesletter.  Besides the poor optin rate on the squeeze page, the email sequence itself is a huge problem.  As I have been working to improve the optin rate, I have kept the budget for the PPC campaign at around $10.  This results in 2-3 optins per day (much

Posted on: 4 December 2014 | 6:42 am

Since Last We Met...

...A ton of things have happened. I got married in May 2013 and will be having a kid May 2015=) And I went part time at work in order to do more of The Business.  It took a few years but I'm finally back in the right mindset to do this again. I will not be putting in 16 hour days like I did when I was younger (I just can't do that anymore) but I am approaching things with the right

Posted on: 3 December 2014 | 6:49 am

I'm Ready to Make Some Money!

It's been a long time coming but things are almost ready.  The weight loss site has been up and running since June with posts at least twice a week from my writers.  The ebook is finish(!) and is under product approval review at Clickbank.  Not only that, but last night I finished the second sales video for the product. The first video is one with a hook meant to hit home and

Posted on: 11 February 2014 | 6:22 am

Salesvideo I and Optin Videos Complete

The first salesvideo, optin video, and sign-up thank you video are complete! The second one just needs the the first part worked on as the second half of the video is the same as the first salesvideo.  Depending on how the finances look, I may be able to launch by the end of the week.  I still need to make the download pages for the lead magnet report and the actual product before

Posted on: 20 January 2014 | 6:42 am

Foot Dragger

I admit it.  I'm dragging my feet with the new product.  Part of it is laziness and wanting to relax after being at work for 8-11 hours (depending on the day).  The other part is not wanting to do the video editing.  I've lost all of my employees and one of them used to take my audio and do all of the editing for me.  Admittedly, she wouldn't always get it right but we

Posted on: 7 January 2014 | 6:13 am

Draft Sales Copies Complete

Since the last post, I have written two drafts of the salescopy for the new ebook.  It is actually a sales script as I will be using video rather than the typical salesletter.  The videos have converted much better in the past than the salesletter style pages. Tonight, I will create the accompanying slides that will be used in the video.  I'm also thinking that it may be a good

Posted on: 30 December 2013 | 6:44 am

What's Been Going On?

It's been a very long time since the last post - April to be exact.  I could not let the end of the year pass without at least posting once.  So much has happened this year, both good and bad. I lost my grandfather and an uncle within months of each other. But I gained a wife and a new family! All in all, things have been good. I've been working in the job that I took back in June

Posted on: 18 December 2013 | 6:25 am

How My Eyes Have Been Opened

During my experiments with media buying, it became more and more apparent that traffic is not the only problem with my business.  One of the other major issues is reliable income.  In the background since October, I've been working on a membership site that would address that problem.  I had actually started the media buying in order to see if I would be able to get traffic for the

Posted on: 10 April 2013 | 6:23 am

Clicks but No Optins

So, my campaign is making baby steps.  I've been able to get clicks on my ads but no optins.  I had a voiceover created and one of my workers is developing a video to use on the optin page now.  Hopefully that will work better than the static page I've been using. That's all for now.

Posted on: 20 March 2013 | 6:23 am

Signs of Life

After some disappointing stop/starts (or rather start/stops), the campaign is starting to generate some traffic.  I retooled the approach to customize the banners to match the website layout of each site I was targeting.  I burned through a decent amount of cash before finding a site that is giving me a 0.15% CTR.  That would be horrible for PPC but it is a good starting point for

Posted on: 14 March 2013 | 9:51 pm

I Need Banner Help=(

Yeah, my banners are not the best.  I've been having pretty abyssmal clickthru rates with what I've developed so far with the campaign.  The good news is that I've been able to get some day parting info that I can use next time. So tonight, I will be redoing the banners.  I'm thinking that I create them based on each site individually.  When I did that for another campaign,

Posted on: 12 March 2013 | 6:47 am

Campaign is Ready

In the last two days I have: Created 2 more landing pages with different optin methods than the original 2 Added more tracking Added a "retargeting" campaign Updated the split page script to include the new landing pages Added a new email message to the sequence Fixed errors with the previous messages Uploaded a ton of banners I'm debating about starting the campaign now or waiting until I

Posted on: 6 March 2013 | 9:27 pm

More Banners

I ended up putting in almost 12 hours at work today so it was almost 8 o'clock when I got home today.  After dinner I was able to put together 8 more banners for the upcoming campaign.  Friday is the end of the billing cycle so I will be able to fund my ad network account on Saturday.  I'm thinking that I will get the campaign in place and approved beforehand so that I can start

Posted on: 4 March 2013 | 9:59 pm

Campaign Redo is Coming Together

The campaign is coming together.  The squeeze pages are finished; the thank you page is complete with tracking; the autoresponder messages are loaded.  Now I need to make the banners and find sites for the placements. I'm going to take my time on the banners.  I have some research on the demographic and will be using it to the best of my ability.  I will also use Ca$

Posted on: 28 February 2013 | 8:13 pm

8 Years Yesterday

Yep, eight years of being in this game as of yesterday.  As it turns out, yesterday was pretty fitting.  I made some conclusions about my strategy and decided to make some adjustments.  This Renaissance for my business is all about employing the fundamentals and I was ignoring one of the biggest... List building! Initially, I want to test to see if a traffic source would convert

Posted on: 28 February 2013 | 6:06 am

Fought Through

It was probably pretty obvious from my last post that the denial of my campaign was pretty discouraging.  However, I woke up this morning with renewed vigor.  Even though I had to wait until after work, I was able to develop 3 campaigns today.  Of those campaigns, one is already starting to get traffic. Banner advertising/media buying is a different animal.  There is so much

Posted on: 26 February 2013 | 10:08 pm

First Setback

The campaign was finally reviewed today... Reviewed and rejected! Apparently, the niche is a no-no for this ad network even though I do not recall seeing anything that gave a warning.  I'm pretty disappointed because I worked pretty hard on the banners. Oh well. I did put together 2 other campaigns and they have both been approved (different markets than the first).  Let's see how it

Posted on: 25 February 2013 | 9:11 pm

Nearly a Year Has Past...

Nearly a year has past since the last time I wrote here.  Actually, in four days it will be eight years since I started this journey.  Eight years... Out of those eight years, there have been some highs and a ton of lows.  However, in all of that time I would have to say that 2012 was the hardest.  By nearly all factors, it should have been the best.  My girlfriend and I

Posted on: 23 February 2013 | 10:11 pm