I’ve changed my theme…

As you may have noticed, I’ve changed my theme.  I wanted a theme that was basic, clean, and had a lot of white space.   I went through hundreds of themes and couldn’t find anything I really liked.

Well, that’s a lie, there was one theme that I really liked, but I didn’t want to use it because it was already in use by ClickNewz.  I looked and looked for a theme, but found myself just wanting to use this same theme.

So with no offense to ClickNewz, I decided to just go ahead and use the same theme.  I figured my site is not in competition with ClickNewz and I actually highly recommend the site.  It’s an awesome site.

I hope you didn’t mind Lynn for using the theme.

~Shannon

2008 is fast approaching…

Well… 2007 is nearly over and what have I done? Looking back over the year, I do see that I’ve made progress, but I am disappointed in the amount of progress.

I am the reason for my lack of success.

This is due to my own fault. In my mind, I’m working hard trying to make a living online. Every spare minute I have is used towards this goal. I’m taking action, getting things done, and making progress, but my success is limited. Why? Because I’m not using my time wisely and spinning my wheels most of the time. I have a bunch of half completed projects and not much success from anything else and only one of my sites actually have done well at all.

All adsense, little affiliate.

I’ve also noticed, that majority of my income is generated through adsense and this is only a trickle here and there with one site providing over 90% of my adsense income. This is not a good position to be in because this means that at any given time 90% of income could be gone in a matter of seconds. I’m not liking having all my eggs in one basket.

So what to do?

So what is a man to do? Make some serious changes of course. I’m getting away from adsense and working more on affiliate / info product marketing. Clickbank is going to be my new best friend.

Back in August, I completed the Thirty Day Challenge and found the information and training to be the best online. I’ve since been following Ed and Dan on twitter and their sites. Although I never continued with the strategies that they taught, I have kept myself up to date on their training as much as I can without having a membership to the Immediate Edge.

The goal of the Thirty Day Challenge was to make $10 in 30 days. I never made any money during the challenge, but since I’ve received two sales for the info product I was promoting during the challenge. This resulted in commissions of $26.70.

Time for a change.

This got me thinking… I’m working my behind off trying to make money with my sites getting only a couple dollars a day (average about $1-4 a day) from adsense, but with little effort I received $26.70 in commission from a product I haven’t thought about since.

So I have to ask myself is why I’m wasting my time with adsense when there are much better options available? The reason I guess is that I have a history with adsense and know that I can pretty much rely on atleast the $30 a month from adsense income where with affiliate sales I have no experience and no guarantee…

That changed when I thought about it in a different way… I was thinking if I could get 3 sales per month from the same info product I promoted during the challenge, I would be already making more money than all my other sites with adsense. That single thought just amazed me. So, I decided to leave adsense behind and focus my attention on affiliate marketing… more specifically info products with a commission of 50% or more and a commission of $10 or more per sale.

How?… is the key.

So how am I going to make these 3 sales per month? By taking what I learned during the Thirty Day Challenge and combining it with the tips I compiled from all my rss feeds and creating a workable action plan. It would also be helpful to have Dan around to give me the kick in the ass so that I take action.

I pretty much have the entire month of January mapped out for me in a mindmap. 99.9% of the mindmap is following the TDC material with a few tips thrown in.

So on January 1st, I’m having my own challenge and I’ll (hopefully) keep you posted.

~Shannon

Awesome Sketch That Really Summarizes Success.

I came across this awesome sketch while stumbling that really summarizes the road to success.

Look closely at all the sections… After a few minutes, you’ll see just how detailed this sketch really is. It’s amazing the talent that some people have.

~Shannon