How I Made $604.39 Online in August 2009

I’ve been extremely frustrated doing internet marketing, not seeing results, trying lots of things and having nothing working. I’ve tried Google adsense, affiliate products, creating my own products, membership site, etc in the past and had pitiful results. I want to make this a success so badly, but often doubt myself and am discouraged by lack of results each month.

I haven’t got a lot of support for this venture over the years and have spent many years doing day jobs that I absolutely hated. I’ve been very inconsistent over the past few years until recently when I’ve been ‘between contracts’. I’ve been off work since november and have spent most of my time working on my sites, while I burn through my savings.

My wife Bonnie asked me to add up my sales for this month of August so I went into paypal, google adsense and various affiliate networks. I was happily surprised to see some half decent sales.

The breakdown is as follows:
-my guitar lesson online courses and membership site $286.27
-2 guitar lesson affiliate products $215.38
-internet marketing affiliate products – $29.16
-google adsense – $73.57

For the guitar lesson affiliate products I’ve done a video review using my webcam and posted on youtube and other video sites using TubeMogul (free).

For internet marketing affiliate products I put links within my blog posts and in the sidebar of my blog on membership sites.

For Google adsense I have 50+ videos on guitar lessons at Youtube.

For the guitar lesson site, I created a membership site at $19/month using WordPress and the Wishlist member plugin. I also took some of the content and made a few other products at $29 (Canon Rock Video Lesson) and $97 (Fretboard Blueprint) for instant access to the videos.

I’ve just used WordPress and organic search results, no PPC. I’ve used market samurai a little for keyword research but not for ads or articles. I use Google reader and google alerts to get posts in my niche, then I post these articles or write my own on my blog. I haven’t done many articles recently for EzineArticles (free).

Make sure your niche has a product focus – for guitar lessons we have books, DVDs, online courses and even guitar gear (guitars, amps, pedals, etc). Digital cameras is another one. I’ve just created a back pain blog since I’ve suffered with this for 2002 and have a lot of experience with treatments. There are a fair number of products associated with back pain, besides books, such as inversion tables, exercise balls, and other related products.

I post this to encourage those that are discouraged and to mention that this takes time to develop. I hope you will all work at it each day until you reach your goals. This is an emotional roller coaster. I happen to be excited after I just added up the results, but many days it’s discouraging as nothing happens. We can only control what we do – implement the system day after day with consistency.

Will