eXtra For Every Publisher

I have never tried to push my brand in order to get free things, and I probably never will, but I have always secretly hoped that all my hard work would be noticed by people, and in turn they would want to help me out, even in some small way. Most of the time, I am unfortunately disappointed as people say they are going to do something, but instead disappear off the face of the earth.

I have always found that online people over promise and under deliver, but recently, I have had two examples of people doing quite the opposite.

WordPress Wear

Back, earlier in the year, I attended Moosecamp and Northern Voice in beautiful British Columbia, and I met up with Matt Mullenweg and got to see Lloyd Budd once again. I mentioned how I would love to get a WordPress shirt at some point, but the cost of shipping made the whole thing prohibitively expensive. I had found it sort of ironic that I talked about WordPress all the time on various blogs, and podcasts, and didn’t have anything to show for it. I was honoured that Lloyd had me help out with his session about WordPress at Moosecamp, and he sweetened the deal by offering me a WordPress shirt.

He said that it might take a while, but I would get it, and since then, I had totally forgot about it. I never really expected to get a WordPress shirt, and amusingly enough, a week after my transition out of being a full time blogger, a package arrives and inside is a WordPress hooded sweatshirt.

Up to that point, I had been a little bummed out due to some personal life complications, but it felt like a sign that things were turning around for me in a very positive way. I also found it ironic that the only blog where I now had access to post about WordPress related content was here on Xfep, where I haven’t given WordPress as much focus as I have elsewhere.

Problogger Book

When I first heard about the Problogger book, it was already completed and Darren and Chris were already promoting it. I immediately signed up for their newsletter to get the sample chapter and was really impressed.

I contacted Chris, and jokingly pointed out that he should be handing out copies to all his buddies, and interestingly enough, he said that he would send me a copy. After hearing how other people were grabbing copies of the book, I almost went out and purchased a copy, thinking that Chris had forgotten. Promoting a book is much more important than spending the time to make sure I got a copy, and so I wasn’t frustrated or annoyed with him at all.

Today, a truck pulled up and handed me a small package. Sabine, my wife, looked at me and asked what it could be. I didn’t have any clue, and so before even signing for the package, I opened it up to reveal a small soft cover book including in large bold letters, Problogger.

I have been reading and re-reading the sample chapter and gaining a little more insight each time, and now I can’t say that I am not distracted by having the book in hand to pour through and review. I can’t explain how excited I am, and I still plan on buying a copy or two to give out to some blogging friends of mine, as well as maybe a few to give away here. Chris and Darren deserve all the support we can give them with regards to the success of the book.

Live Up to Your Word

Chris and Lloyd didn’t have to go above and beyond to fulfill the small mentions they made with regards to helping me out, and yet they did, and in doing so they made me feel very special, and appreciated, something that far too many people forget to do. I hope that they feel, in some small way, responsible for my happiness, and in turn feel happy themselves. They are great people, and deserve special recognition.

And now, to close out this post, here is me, with a goofy grin, excited about my WordPress shirt and my Problogger book.

I used to read a lot of blogs when I was new to blogging and learning affiliate marketing. I wanted to be a sponge and soak up as much information as I could find, thinking that the secrets to making money online could be found in my feed reader.

I was wrong.

Information Overload

It is easy to get caught up in the cycle of information gathering. If you are a student of whatever you do, then gathering information is an essential part of the process. The downside to gathering information is that many people fall into the trap of trying to absorb too much and doing too little.

It is pretty common for many readers to subscribe to 100 feeds or more in order to not miss any idea, thought or suggestion on how they can make money online. They will read and read and read about all the different things that other people are doing, yet do nothing themselves.

I call this “paralysis by analysis” and it’s a pretty common affliction even in the corporate world. Managers are so engrossed in reading P&L statements, emails and reports that they have no time to actually manage. That’s crazy but true.

Bad Advice

Another thing you need to consider is how much bad advice is given everyday on the Internet. Once you do know what you are doing when it comes to affiliate marketing, keyword research and making money online, it becomes very obvious that most of the people giving the advice don’t actually practice what they preach.

They will write sponsored reviews for products they don’t own, they will put affiliate links in their articles for products they have never used and have no real knowledge about. They will write an article about exploding your traffic when they have none. You get the idea.

Why would anyone listen to someone that isn’t an authority or offers no value? They shouldn’t, so if this is you then quit reading and start doing. It is a very well known fact that the reason most people fail, is because they never do anything to begin with. They think about it a lot, they want to, but they don’t.

The Best Advice

My experience has taught me a number of things, but the best thing I have learned over the last few years is that there are no rules. You cannot make money by using a top ten list of things to do to make money. The key is to experiment.

• Try AdSense, see if that works for your blog. It might and it might not.
• Try article marketing, it might send you sales, it might not.
• Try Niche Sites, they might be your thing, they might not.
• Try putting your ads in the middle of the articles instead of the top.
• Try BANS stores, try Niche blogs, try it all.

Whatever the situation is, try it for yourself. There is absolutely NO replacement for experience. What some joker says works for him, will not necessarily work for your blog or website. The key is to experiment, learn what works for you and then MAXIMIZE it.

Once you have the recipe or the formula, repeat it. Don’t stop experimenting but repeat what works and learn how to maximize it. Add to your niche site or build more using the same recipe. If one site earns you 10 dollars a day, could 100 sites earn you $1000 dollars a day?

Conclusion

Everyone wants to live the dream. Some hope they can find the dream on a blog somewhere for free and others hope to find the dream in a affiliate product for the low, low price of $97 dollars. Ninety-seven dollars will buy your ticket to millions.

Come on, how many independently wealthy people do you think are going to bother hawking a $97 dollar e-book? The real power brokers charge thousands of dollars for their information and it is an exclusive club.

The dream cannot be purchased, but it can be earned through hard work and dedication. If you aren’t willing to invest in yourself then you simply will not be successful. Affiliate tools have their place but they are TOOLS and not the answer. An affiliate product won’t make you money, but it can help you do the things that make you money.

Here is the best advice you will ever get and it’s free.

Experiment. Fail. Fall on your face. Every time you fall on your face, you are that much closer to being successful, because you are doing something most others aren’t and that is TRYING. To win the game, you’ve got to get in the game.

So how about you? Are you READING about becoming successful or are you DOING the things that will make you successful?

This post was written by Bill so if you enjoyed reading it then check out my own blog at The Blog Entrepreneur where I write on a variety of MMO topics but particularly niche site creation. I will be back next Friday to punish you some more.

There is a great post on Command Line Idiot that has a list of twelve signs that a recession has hit the Internet and since it made me laugh, I thought I should give it a nod on my blog.

My favourites from the list:

• Digg.com moves their server over to Dreamhost
• You hire a PHP Developer for $12 an hour through elance.com, and it turns out to be Matt Mullenweg

I have already heard from a few different sources that they think the worst is already over when it comes to the economy, but I am definitely taking a wait and see approach. I don’t think we’ve hit the worst of it yet, especially if the rising gas prices are any indication.

Here’s hoping that things get better with regards to the economy. I need the Canadian dollar not to be so strong so my converted from US dollars pay equates to more perceived buying power.

About Adify

Adify is allowing many different companies to roll their own advertising network. Some are big names like Computer World or Forbes, while others I haven’t really heard of before like IDG Tech Network. They all use Adify’s system to manage users and advertisers which is both great, and a little annoying.

Adify popped out of no where for me about five or six months ago, and now so many different bloggers that I know are using the service, and one or more networks they list.

Signup Process

The process for signing up to Adify isn’t that bad. It is a little confusing and a bit frustrating at times, but it is simple compared to signing up for some of the networks. Forbes, the network I am signed up to, requires a faxed confirmation of enrollment. In the city I live in, there are very few fax machines. I had to use the one at the local post office, and that wasn’t cheap.

The biggest issue I had was that each network had its own rules and forms for signing up, despite them all using the Adify system. I would like to see a better system for signing up for networks once I have my Adify account set up properly. Especially when trying to sign up for multiple networks for one site.

Ads Displayed

The advertisements displayed through the Forbes are of fairly high quality. They are almost all animated, and promoting decent brands and products. I found some of the stuff that shows under Adify’s remnant program wasn’t so great, but most are better than I have seen on other programs I have tried, which makes me pretty happy.

When they don’t have any ads to show, I have them set up to show my Google AdSense, and for the first few days, they were doing one hundred percent of my impressions, and now they seem to have settled around two-thirds.

Revenue

I can’t say I am making the $10 CPM that Forbes originally promised when they contacted me and I can’t disclose exactly what I am making currently, but I can say that it is much more than Google was able to provide over the last few years I have used them. In fact, each advertising position provides more revenue than the combined total of three advertising positions Google was filling before I switched.

Also, interestingly enough, my click through rate on AdSense, when it is displayed, has doubled. This is most likely due to the attention that the Adify ads generate, stopping people from becoming ad-blind as fast as they used to when I only displayed Google AdSense ads.

TechCanuck Podcast Mention

James and I recently spoke about Adify and how they are powering many different brands on the 17th Episode of TechCanuck.

Conclusion

I definitely recommend signing up for Adify, and trying to get your blog into one or more of the networks they currently have partnering with them, as the revenues are far beyond what you can get from most other services since it is based on cost per thousand impressions (CPM) versus the cost per click (CPC) or cost per action (CPA) advertising we are used to.

I am already getting ready to move all of my sites over to my new web host, WiredTree. I am still learning what it means to own and manage a virtual private server account, but I have already been able to install Subversion to manage my WordPress installs and upgrades, and so this will save me valuable time on upgrading as each new release of WordPress comes out.

WiredTree had Yum set up, so installing Subversion was very easy. While logged in via SSH, I entered yum install subversion and it did the rest. Afterwards, I was able to download the latest version of WordPress 2.5.1 though the now installed Subversion system by entering svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5.1/ . with the final period at the end referencing the local folder being very important to the command.

Next time, when I update to the next stable release, I will use the svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5.2/ command in my shell prompt rather than the svn up command that people using the trunk releases use. I won’t be using trunk as I need my blogs to work correctly at all times, despite most people not having issues with trunk, I don’t want to take any chances.

To learn more about installing and maintaining WordPress through Subversion, I suggest you check out the codex page entitled Installing/Updating WordPress with Subversion.

Next, I moved all of the files for this site over to the new hosting space, and checked to make sure everything looked correct.

My next steps are to get the database for this blog set up on the new site, export the content from this blog, and import it into the fresh, new blog on my WiredTree account. I will then move the DNS so that it points to my new hosting, and see if everything is working correctly with this blog.

I plan on moving the DNS during the weekend, when I have a lower amount of traffic than normal, so that if I do have problems, they won’t be as noticeable to most people compared to doing this whole thing during the week. If everything works as planned, all of the other sites I run will slowly be migrated over during the next two or so weeks.