What are my income strategies?
I don’t know.
I, like most other new internet marketers and entrepreneurs, am overwhelmed by the sheer number of ways you can make money on the internet. I think you could lump them into three different, very general streams of online income. I like the numbered list from yesterday so I’ll use it here:
- Selling your own product.
- Promoting someone else’s product.
- Advertising.
I don’t have a product, and I really, really, really don’t want to get into wholesale and drop shipping on eBay or my own store. If you think internet marketing sounds like a field of cutthroats and scammers, you haven’t heard about “wholesalers” who will rip you off faster than clothes during a conjugal visit. I don’t feel like paying $50 to merely get a list of “wholesalers” and “drop shippers” who are actually middle men (guys who buy from real wholesalers, jack up the price a bit, and pretend to be wholesalers or drop shippers) or just outright scammers. Also, a lot of the wholesalers have minimum unit purchases of 50, 100, 200 or more. I don’t have that cash right now.
So at this point, I’m doing #2 and #3. And by #3 I mean AdSense. As I said before, I have over a dozen blogs, most of which are now abandoned. Each one had AdSense ads on it. I also did a little ClickBank affiliate marketing, including doing review sites. I’ve made a few sales, not enough and none with a MasterCard so my money is still locked in there. If you’re not into affiliate or internet marketing, you might just be getting the feeling that this isn’t as easy as all those “MAKE MONEY IN YOUR SLEEP” e-book sellers make it out to be. E-book peddlers are so common now that I throw up a little in my mouth every time I see highlighted text online and in real life.
What are my income strategies now? I’m going to rebuild several blogs in different niches and restart my AdSense campaign. I’m staying away from AdWords for now as I look at how to promote affiliate products online. In terms of affiliate marketing, it’s been blogs and review sites. I got lucky with a few sales in the beginning but I just ended up burning a hole in my pocket to fund my AdWords campaign. I have several domains, unfortunately none are general enough that I can build several webpages in different niches on one.
My plan is to go niche this time, and I don’t mean the overplayed “making money at home” or “lose weight now” niches. They’re too competitive for an inexperienced small fry like myself. I also want to start promoting more conventional products like those at Commission Junction. I guess now is as good a time as any to start learning.
But for now I think I should get to sleep. My goal for tomorrow (er, today) is to start three blogs in completely different niches. I’m going to check out available niche affiliate programs and then do a little keyword research to see how tight of niches they really are. After that, I’m going to update my four still-active blogs, and then I’m going to see how the hell you promote CJ products. If anything exciting happens I’ll update later today or Monday.
