I'm just thinking aloud here, but it occurs to me that
what might be "unique and interesting" almost by
definition begins limiting your audience.
You can write what most people want, and face the fact
that that info is already readily available in
abundance. About all you can do is rearrange the
wording.
Or you can take steps out towards the boundaries of a
typical nature travel conversation, (or any
conversation) have a chance to become interesting, and
lose a percent of your audience with each step.
The middle is where most of the audience is, and the
middle isn't very interesting because there is nothing
much new or different about it. That's what folks like
about it I think!
You know all those travel brochures lined up next to
the register when you check out of a hotel? Do you read
those? Would you link to one?
I have a LOT to say about nature travel, even more than
I have to say about business, (scary but true!) but I
fear it's mostly too far away from the audience to have
hope of being a commercial enterprise.
A quick example:
Kathy found two abandoned baby squirrels last week
and we are raising them now. It's great fun. Who knew
rodents could fill you with joy?
This might surprise you, it did us, but there are a
bunch of sites that go in to great detail on the
mechanics of raising baby squirrels. So even this truly
obscure niche is well covered already.
EXCEPT, none of these sites explore the question of
_why_ raising baby squirrels is fun.
Why is baby anything fun?
An opening?
To my professor blowhard mind, babies are fun, for the
same reason grandparents are fun. Both are close to a
boundary line and some kind of undefinable energy from
the other side of the boundary is reflected all over
the very young and old.
Something deep in us recognizes and remembers that
energy and is magnetically drawn to it, even if we have
no interest in articulating the experience as I am
here.
Finding that experience, and learning how to uncover it in
more and more places, is what makes nature interesting
to me.
That's the short version.
Would you like to book that rental car now?
This is just a reflection on writing in general, not a question,
and certainly not an answer.
Gotta go, it's feeding time again! Thanks as always for
your feedback.
Why not cover both? What people think they want ... and what is unusual and interesting? You may find they aren't that far apart after all.
You won't know until you try
Debs _________________ Learn how to turn keyphrases into quality, well-targeted articles your visitors and SE's will love with Gary Antosh's new ebook "Web Content Made Easy!"
Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 5839 Location: by the beach, Australia
Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2004 12:34 am Post subject:
Phil Tanny wrote:
The question really is, should I invest more time/money in to this niche, or go on to something else. If something else, what?
Readers should consider the disclaimer that I've done about 20 years worth of computing in the last 10 years and my body is not pleased.
If you're willing to spend more money, here's what I'd try...
Do some Wordtracker research on "Florida travel" and all sorts of related phrases. Find at least 200 good ones. Hire people to write articles for $5 a pop for each of those key phrases. (Gary Antosh explains how in this article - http://www.associateprograms.com/search/newsletter234.shtml )
Edit them, adding your own touches - this would be much easier than writing them yourself. Add them to your site.
Ad AdSense to the pages.
Hire Dirk Johnson to get 1,000 travel-related links to your site. You might be able to get them for $3.50 a pop. Total cost: $4,500 and not too much work for you.
End result: You'd have a fantastic, unique travel site that was miles better than most travel sites, and generated useful revenue. I'd be amazed if you didn't get your money back several times over, each year for many years, especially if you continued to some work maintain the site and give it publicity. If you're worried about the possible profitability, do careful research to see what people are paying for those phrases on AdWords.
At this stage, you'd branch out, generating publicity in email discussion lists, newsgroups maybe, on travel blogs?, writing articles for other sites, and writing articles for offline magazines, travel magazines etc., to make sure you were getting traffic from many different sources, not just relying on free search engines.
You have a beautiful site and a fantastic idea, a wonderful base on which to build a fantastic site that gives you and your visitors a lot of pleasure. It would a dreadful shame to abandon all that.
Your challenge with AdSense is that you have to decide what ads you want on the page and design the page accordingly, including the page file name, heading, intro, links etc - just like optimizing a page for search engines. If no one is buying "Florida nature" ads on AdWords you have to use other key phrases - or not use AdSense on that page.
Sorry if this sounds harsh, but it looks as though you've been too busy working and not busy enough learning how to make this stuff work.
Also, I clicked on four of the links and got 404 Not Found messages.
This is an interesting challenge trying to get you straightened out _________________ Allan Gardyne
... earning a good living from affiliate programs since 1998.
Learn how.
Subscribe now FREE Affiliate Program Tutorial
Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 1322 Location: Gainesville Florida USA
Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2004 12:15 am Post subject:
Debs wrote:
Why not cover both? What people think they want ... and what is unusual and interesting? You may find they aren't that far apart after all. You won't know until you try
Howdy Debs, well, sorta have been trying. Between the two sites in sig we've got about 100 pages, 800 photos and 120 videos.
More to your point, I have experimented with combining practical travel writing with the more creative writing angle. Try this page if you want:
I don't get much feedback pro or con (other than here, where I am blessed with it) so it's difficult to say how readers experience my experience of these places.
My guess is that those who enjoy nature in this manner may very well rather enjoy it in that manner, than read about it on the Internet. That would be the sensible thing to do! I'm likely mining really tiny niches when I venture beyond standard travel writing...
Even more to the point, my guess is that most folks don't really read travel mags at all. My sense is that when folks pick up a travel mag they are trying to simulate the experience they would have at the location. That is, look around, not read around.
If search engines weren't an issue I'd probably dump the text copy almost entirely and focus on the photos and video. That would _really_ speed things up.
As example, we've got something like 3 times as many photos waiting in the wings than on the sites, mostly because I get bogged down writing the articles.
The article writing goes slow because I've been aware since the beginning that I'm writing for myself, and the search engines, while the "readers" are most likely looking at the pictures.
Actually the most energetic feedback I've received has been in reply to the one and only negative thing we had to say (a few paragraphs) anywhere on either of the sites.
Aha! That's the secret!
"This part of Florida really stinks, along with all the people who live there, and their mothers too."
A couple of articles like that, and a forum, and the traffic will go through the roof! _________________ Free Email Discussion Group For Your Site
Your visitors will build your site for you.
http://Discussion-For-You.com
Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 1322 Location: Gainesville Florida USA
Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2004 1:51 pm Post subject:
Allan, I _really_ like the theme of your post, putting
one's money to work scaling up an online business. I've
been trying to do that for a couple years now. This
looks like the start of another interesting newsletter
article to me.
Most readers could scare up $5,000, if they
really believed in their busines model. So this thread
could be relevant for a lot of readers, if that level of
confidence can be created.
So my contribution here might be to play the role
of Ned Netnewbie reading an intriguing ebook by
Ed Expert. Let's watch Ned read the ebook and
see what connects, and where he loses the trail.
AllanGardyne wrote:
Do some Wordtracker research on
"Florida travel" and all sorts of related phrases. Find
at least 200 good ones. Hire people to write articles
for $5 a pop for each of those key phrases
Broadening the scope of the site to access higher
traffic keywords makes sense to me. And being a
publisher sounds more efficient than being a writer.
Another kind and generous person was counseling
me on this (and I have the Web-Writer book).
I got the theory, and liked it, but I couldn't picture
200 pages of $5 articles being the kind of site folks
would link to or care about. You know, what does a $5
article built around a term like "florida travel" look
like?
It's not that I disagreed, I just wasn't aware of
seeing a site like this, so the concept remained an
interesting theory rather than an action plan.
I'm not sure how to address this obstacle given any
site owner's very understandable concerns about
copycatting etc.
AllanGardyne wrote:
Hire Dirk Johnson to get 1,000
travel-related links to your site.
I like the buying links idea given my experience with
doing it manually. And it does make sense to turn this
mindless job over to a specialized system. Doing
recip link deals manually seems sort of equivalent to
trying to manage your newsletter with your own email
program. Possible, but very inefficient.
To clarify, Dirk sells reciprocal links, yes? So I'd
be adding 1,000 outgoing links to my site? I'm
vaguely aware of "link farm" issues, is that relevant
here? Where do the links go? Five links at the bottom
of each $5 article perhaps? Where do my merchant links
go then?
It seems buying links boils down to the question of
whether those links will push any of my pages on to the
first page of Google results. And once there, how long
do I stay on top? Is that the calculation you see?
Am I right to guess that either I get to page one of
results or I've pretty much wasted my money?
AllanGardyne wrote:
Total cost: $4,500 and not too
much work for you.
Yes, you've done a good job of designing a system
around my personal strengths and weaknesses. If I
could get the $4500 back within 12 months I'd be happy.
That's about as far forward as I'm willing to bet on
any net business model at this point.
AllanGardyne wrote:
I'd be amazed if you didn't get
your money back several times over, each year for many
years
OK, let's summarize. We're talking about joining
all of the below together in to one site:
1. nature-videos.net
2. north-florida-nature.com
3. 200 five dollar articles built on higher traffic keywords
4. 1,000 incoming links
Are you projecting that this site would earn $400 a
month or so once it was in the search engine indexes?
Do we have any example sites we might compare
this projection against?
AllanGardyne wrote:
Your challenge with AdSense is
that you have to decide what ads you want on the page
and design the page accordingly
Good point. Yes, Adsense is pretty remarkable in general,
but it doesn't always work to just dump the code in to
any page. If their replacement public service ads were
somewhat more polished that would smooth things a bit.
AllanGardyne wrote:
Sorry if this sounds harsh, but
it looks as though you've been too busy working and not
busy enough learning how to make this stuff
work.
Oh, don't worry about sounding harsh. Your real opinion
is what I'm here for, and I have no doubts about your
intentions which have been proven again and again
over time.
My take is that I've studied the theory pretty well,
but haven't implemented it enough, because I don't
believe in it enough.
I think that's fairly typical. Many are gorging on
theory, starving for hard data, and having trouble
knowing which of the 45,000 theories they understand to
commit themselves to.
As example, a table showing the genre, traffic and
income for 500 SBI sites, created by an objective third
party like http://marketingexperiments.com, would build
faith in the model a lot more than a mile of carefully
engineered sales copy and an example from the seller's
own family.
We all have work ethic issues to work on, no doubt.
It's easy to see this in the buyers, but sometimes we
forget that seller's are using ALL CAPS etc as a
shortcut alternative to assembling and presenting the
real data people need to grow their faith in the
system's being sold.
Without that faith, users don't commit their energies,
and thus they fail, and those failures reflect upon the
system itself as much as they do upon the user.
The system failed to provide the data that any
scientist or real business person would want to see.
AllanGardyne wrote:
Also, I clicked on four of the
links and got 404 Not Found messages.
Sorry, my fault. phil-and-kathy.com is under construction
and advertised here only. The URL's in my sig go to
the public versions of the sites.
AllanGardyne wrote:
This is an interesting challenge
trying to get you straightened out
In thanks I've gone ahead and bought you a year's
subscription to Masocist Magazine.
Seriously, thanks much! I hope I'm able offer something
that might make this worth your time as well. _________________ Free Email Discussion Group For Your Site
Your visitors will build your site for you.
http://Discussion-For-You.com
Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 5839 Location: by the beach, Australia
Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2004 8:12 am Post subject:
Phil Tanny wrote:
Allan, I _really_ like the theme of your post, putting
one's money to work scaling up an online business.
Where possible, I'd recommend outsourcing work. If you hire people and teach them everything, how are you going to get them to stay working for you? That's a challenge I've discussed elsewhere on the forum.
Quote:
...I couldn't picture
200 pages of $5 articles being the kind of site folks
would link to or care about. You know, what does a $5
article built around a term like "florida travel" look
like?
That's up to you, Phil, NOT the writer of the article. I don't know if you've ever done any editing of any sort. If you have, you'll know that it's MUCH easier to improve someone else's article than to write a complete article yourself.
Perhaps some - or most - of the articles you buy would be very rough. If so, you can use them as the bare bones to which you add the meat, writing interesting paragraphs based on all your knowledge of the area.
If the articles you buy are reasonably written, you may simply need to tweak them a little, perhaps writing a fresh intro, a comment or two in the middle of the article, and a light touch at the end - or add a paragraph which leads into a link to an affiliate product.
Little editing touches can make huge differences to the style and impact of articles. You can buy dross and turn into gold.
Having said that, I'd better add that I haven't bought any $5 articles - I'm so confident in the affiliate marketing model using Site Build It! that I've paid about $US50 each, hiring a journalist to write articles for one site.
In another life I once briefly edited contributed sports articles for a newsletter, quickly making a few small changes to each article and rushing on to the next one. It can be done, with acceptable results.
Quote:
I'm not sure how to address this obstacle given any
site owner's very understandable concerns about
copycatting etc.
Two things you could do ... Warn the authors that all articles must be original. Also, do random checks for phrases to see if you find them online.
Quote:
To clarify, Dirk sells reciprocal links, yes?
He sells a service - the work involved in getting them.
Quote:
So I'd be adding 1,000 outgoing links to my site? I'm
vaguely aware of "link farm" issues, is that relevant
here? Where do the links go? Five links at the bottom
of each $5 article perhaps? Where do my merchant links
go then?
The links would go in a directory with various categories.
Link farms typically involve members of a group all being given
copies of the same page full of links to place on their site. You
wouldn't be linking to a link farm. However, as with links
to any site on the Net, there's adanger that a site you have
linked to could later deteriorate into a link farm and you
could unkowingly be linking to a bad neighborhood and be
penalized for it. Someone would need to click on the links
once a month or so to see if the little bar in the Google toolbar is
grayed out when you visit the site - an indication that Google
doesn't like the site.
Quote:
It seems buying links boils down to the question of
whether those links will push any of my pages on to the
first page of Google results. And once there, how long
do I stay on top? Is that the calculation you see?
Yes. Ideally, you wouldn't use Dirk as your sole marketing
strategy. I see it merely as the launching pad for your site.
You'd use some initiative an imagination, exactly as you have
in other ventures. This time, it would be in getting publicity,
such as writing articles for publication elsewhere.
Quote:
Am I right to guess that either I get to page one of
results or I've pretty much wasted my money?
Yes.
Quote:
Yes, you've done a good job of designing a system
around my personal strengths and weaknesses. If I
could get the $4500 back within 12 months I'd be happy.
That's about as far forward as I'm willing to bet on
any net business model at this point.
Fair enough. There's absolutely no doubt at all that
search engine optimization is going to get a lot more
competitive and difficult in the next few years. However,
I think you can also safely guarantee that Google and
other search engines will get even smarter and be even
better at displaying good, original sites rather than junk.
That's what I believe, anyway.
Quote:
OK, let's summarize. We're talking about joining
all of the below together in to one site:
1. nature-videos.net
2. north-florida-nature.com
3. 200 five dollar articles built on higher traffic keywords
4. 1,000 incoming links
Are you projecting that this site would earn $400 a
month or so once it was in the search engine indexes?
With your intelligence, determination, writing skills and
a choice of a popular niche with lots of demand - travel -
I see that as being easily achieveable.
(I'm assuming here that lots of people DO want to travel to
north Florida? If that's not so, all bets are off. You might have to
extend your site to include all of Florida to make it work, or
at least write the pages so that you attracted Florida travel
AdSense ads.)
Quote:
Do we have any example sites we might compare
this projection against?
Good question. I've never done a travel site. If no travel
affiliates leap to give you examples, the best thing you can do is
do careful research in Wordtracker for key phrases and
look in Google AdWords to see what people are willing to pay
for those phrases. There are tools such as AdWords Analyzer
to help you do this stuff.
Quote:
Yes, Adsense is pretty remarkable in general,
but it doesn't always work to just dump the code in to
any page.
Absolutely! You have to optimize the page for it.
Quote:
If their replacement public service ads were
somewhat more polished that would smooth things a bit.
You can choose to display whatever you like as an alternative
ad. For example, on this forum, I display a banner ad for
James Martell as an alternative ad.
Quote:
My take is that I've studied the theory pretty well,
but haven't implemented it enough, because I don't
believe in it enough.
I guess that's where we're so different. I've been living and
breathing this stuff for years. I KNOW it works. Right now,
Joanna and I are staying at a resort in Queensland's Whitsundays - http://www.medresorts.com.au . We're giving Joanna's elderly
parents a treat for a couple of weeks.
We love the way affiliate commissions have made this sort of
thing possible.
I'm not claiming that everyone can achieve the same thing.
However, I know you. I know you've been very successful
in other fields, and with your skills you should be ideally
suited for success as an affiliate using keyword-rich content
pages.
Quote:
As example, a table showing the genre, traffic and
income for 500 SBI sites, created by an objective third
party like http://marketingexperiments.com, would build
faith in the model a lot more than a mile of carefully
engineered sales copy and an example from the seller's
own family.
True. It's a pipe dream, though. If such a study was done,
immediately the top 10 or 20 sites would all be under
tremendous attack from copycats.
Quote:
Seriously, thanks much! I hope I'm able offer something
that might make this worth your time as well.
So far, you're still offering me an interesting challenge.
I wonder if one problem is that because you have some money
in the bank you're not as hungry for success as you once were.
Perhaps you can afford to take too hobbyish an approach to
this. Perhaps it would help if you pictured your savings
running out 12 months from now, and you had to be earning
a living by then. That might sharpen your approach.
You've chosen a field you love. Perhaps you just need to work a
bit harder at integrating money-making into that field.
Anyway, gotta go. It's sunset and drinks time. _________________ Allan Gardyne
... earning a good living from affiliate programs since 1998.
Learn how.
Subscribe now FREE Affiliate Program Tutorial
Don't just rely on Florida Travel ... what about snowbirds? That's what we call the people up north here who go to Florida for the winter ... then retire there.
Do some research on great places to retire in North Florida ... and the benefits ... not as crowded as South Florida or Central Florida, the weather, the amenities, etc.
Your nature videos could be a drawing point for people to move to North Florida, not just retirees either, so cover the job market opportunities as well. You could set up some JV's for apartments, residential communities, etc. Use affiliate programs to promote colleges, employment, etc.
I agree with Allan, paying more for an article can be well worth it, and use those articles for your merchants. Take a few and set them out for distribution with resource box to build your popularity. You can get 1000 links in at no cost within a few months or so, I'm sure.
Debs _________________ Learn how to turn keyphrases into quality, well-targeted articles your visitors and SE's will love with Gary Antosh's new ebook "Web Content Made Easy!"
A couple of months ago I added a "submit article" page and form to my site, and I'm very happy with the results. I receive an average of two free articles a week, always written on topics related to my site that would never have occurred to me. Some are long and others are short, but all are good, niche-related content.
Most of the articles need some editing, and I require the author's permission to edit for spelling, grammar, punctuation, and keywords before they can submit it. I'm finding that my guest authors' keyphrases and keyword combinations - even ones that WordTracker never suggested to me - are bringing in some good new traffic.
You might put out a call for articles to webmasters of sites about travel, Florida, retirement, nature, photography, outdoor adventure, camping, beaches, marshlands, birds, Jimmy Buffett, etc. and offer a permanent free link to their sites in exchange for an article. Some webmasters may even want to write a series of articles for you.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were webmasters among our friends here who would be willing to exchange an article or two for links to their sites; why not find out by posting in the AP Talent section of the forum?
And what about becoming a regular contributor to a major site in one of the niches I mentioned above? All webmasters are continually looking for good content. But instead of writing articles for them, you could contribute a photo of the week or month to a few different sites, with a resource box linking to your site. Their visitors might enjoy coming back regularly to see the latest gorgeous Florida photo - and many would be interested in clicking the link to your site as well. You'd be building your reputation and spreading the word about your site, just by submitting your supply of photos around the Web.
Or have you considered a separately-hosted photo blog, linking to your site? Blogs are very popular with the SE's.
Phil, you're a fantastically creative person - and I know that creative visionaries tend to get bogged down by the nuts-and-bolts of bringing their visions to fruition. Allan has great suggestions for hiring others to do the tasks that are keeping you from the success your site deserves.
Get others to help you over the hump that's holding your site back, while you continue to do the creative parts you really enjoy. And then enjoy your success!
Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 1322 Location: Gainesville Florida USA
Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 6:33 pm Post subject:
Hey guys,
So many great points, by such good people. It's a
challenge to reply to only some of all the ideas you
all have offered. I'm enjoying my job as test newbie!
You're right, a dose of desperation might make this
easier. "What do you wanna do?" is fun, but a bit more
complicated than "Do what you gotta do."
Treating it like a hobby? Great question.
It's interesting to ask why I'm adding more pages of
content every day to Allan's site, instead of my own.
It's fair to ask a test newbie who is working on
someone else's site how serious they are.
Another answer is that this test newbie gets more
response from writing for 12 people here than they get
by writing for 1200 visitors on their own site.
That reality helps illustrate the energy feedback loop
needed to keep any project alive, and also raises the
question in my mind of whether our sites are really a
niche worth pursuing as a business, or even as a
hobby.
If you posted here everyday and nobody ever replied
to your post, how long would you keep it up?
The lack of response to an existing 100 page site is
real field data that I have to at least consider.
Treating it like a business?
Allan has raised the intriguing question of using money
to multiply our efforts. If the model works, it makes
sense to ramp it up. That's what business people do
usually.
Allan would be the first to say that adding money to the
equation involves being more careful about your
business model.
Here's what can happen if we ignore that wise advice.
In 2000 I partnered with a brand name, listed on the NY
stock exchange, leader of their field, company with big
offices in New York City.
A series of pleasant and professional folks at
this outfit told me that if I grew my mailing lists to
the size that they are now, this team could generate
about $8,000 per month in net income for me.
Want a peak at this month's check? $120.
When I ask for specific examples of sites with $5
articles, or evidence that buying 1000 links will
actually get me traffic, and so on, I am treating it
like a business. If you don't bring some facts to
the bank, you don't get the loan.
Actually, the longer I am a newbie the more I get
the logic of the muddle many of us are in.
Perhaps it's possible to not be very informed, or very
eloquent, and still instinctively grasp the fact that
an industry full of sophisticated sellers are advising
you to make investments based on very little data.
Maybe the 80% who give up are treating it like a
business?
PS. Jewel, you've got me pegged, proving you're as good
of a reader as you are a writer. Circling the earth
at ten thousand feet, but I forgot to oil the wings.
Whoops! _________________ Free Email Discussion Group For Your Site
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Phil,
It's not a hobby, it's a business.
I would try Adwords (paid ads) in combination with Adsense: Increase your Adwords spendings according to your Adsense income. Cannot lose... _________________ DatabaseDesigner
The complete guide to eBooks! Watch your visitors LIVE with VisitorVille! Enter "visitcity" to get lifetime 10% off
Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 5839 Location: by the beach, Australia
Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2004 11:21 pm Post subject:
Phil Tanny wrote:
When I ask for specific examples of sites with $5
articles, or evidence that buying 1000 links will
actually get me traffic, and so on, I am treating it
like a business. If you don't bring some facts to
the bank, you don't get the loan.
Fair enough. I appreciate that you want firm facts. It's often difficult to get facts in isolation, because a successful marketer does so many different things at once.
It would be fascinating if someone simply bought 200 $5 articles, pasted them into a site, bought 1,000 reciprocal links, added a few affiliate links and AdSense, and waited to see the result of the test. No doubt the results would vary widely, depending on the keywords chosen.
I'm tempted to try it, but it would be such a DUMB way to build a site, because the site would be only a tiny fraction of its potential. (Well, on second thoughts, perhaps not so dumb if it turned out to be profitable, and you could go on and build 10 or 20 of them - but I wouldn't have a lot of faith in the long-term future of such a site based purely on $5 articles.)
Such a test would be interesting. If the site was profitable, that would encouraging. If it was unprofitable, that would be a warning - but it would NOT necessarily mean that YOUR site would also fail.
Doing ONLY those few things in isolation would be hugely different from what you personally could do, using you're own knowledge and personality.
Let's take an extreme example - Richard Branson. I'm sure accountants looking at the bare bones of many of his ventures would say they were much too risky to attempt. However, add such publicity stunts as dressing up as a bride to launch Virgin Brides, stunts which win millions of dollars of free publicity, and you have a brilliantly successful business.
For some people, affiliate marketing is all strictly business - and what I think is an awful business. They create junky, horrible sites full of useless pages, designed purely to be found in search engines. If those sites are profitable, to them that's success.
To me, affiliate marketing is a mixture of hobby and business. Today, before breakfast, I rejected a request to speak at a conference in Las Vegas. I've tried speaking at an Internet marketing conference once and didn't like it, so I don't do that.
Success is being in a position where I can design my own business, do what I want to do, choose which products I promote, choose not to use sneaky software, etc. I often do things not because they'll produce the highest profits, but simply because I feel like doing them.
I imagine I'd have trouble selling that business model to a bank manager, but it works. _________________ Allan Gardyne
... earning a good living from affiliate programs since 1998.
Learn how.
Subscribe now FREE Affiliate Program Tutorial
Joined: 22 Aug 2003 Posts: 1322 Location: Gainesville Florida USA
Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 4:44 pm Post subject:
AllanGardyne wrote:
To me, affiliate marketing is a
mixture of hobby and business. [Allan went on to
say...] Doing ONLY those few things in isolation would
be hugely different from what you personally could do,
using you're own knowledge and personality.
Allan, I've been mulling over your post since first
reading it.
It's the opportunity to experience the joy
of creativity that keeps me in online business. Maybe
that's what you mean by the word 'hobby'.
And you're right, applying creativity to one's project
is about the only way to have a chance of being heard
above the endless noisy crowd.
Real creativity seems more like an operating system
than it is a piece of software.
A truly creative person applies creativity to anything
and everything all day long, even the smallest most insignificant
things, whether it's needed or not, without thinking
about it, because that's their mental operating
system. Their minds are prewired at the factory to
rearrange whatever they encounter.
Rather than follow the path that would take them
efficiently through the woods in no time, the creative
person is off somewhere up to their shoulders in the
underbrush, setting up their survey gear for a new path.
Why?
Because creativity can be an incredibly compelling
experience. You know that feeling, you go online at
5am and it's 3pm before you realize you haven't had
breakfast yet.
A truly creative person dives ever deeper in to that
all consuming experience and often builds their whole
life around it, whether they realize it or not, and
could be described as a creativity junkie.
The high is great! But then your mind uses that
creativity high as the basis of comparison for
everything else, and normal everyday humdrum activities
are experienced as being far more boring than they
really are. So you get high again.
Which explains why a lot of creative projects never
really get off the ground. Once the creative part
is over, massive boredom sets in, and the creativity
junkie is off looking for the next fix.
Creative people may be most useful when they work in a
team that can harvest the fruit of creativity like a
farmer would, and then package it and ship it to
market.
But good luck. If you try to put a creative person in a
team, they will immediately start rearranging that as
well. They can't help it, that's what they do.
Regrettably, online entrepreneurs generally work
on their own, so if you're not creative, or too creative,
you've got a problem.
Finding the right mix between hobby and business
is the trick. _________________ Free Email Discussion Group For Your Site
Your visitors will build your site for you.
http://Discussion-For-You.com
Success is being in a position where I can design my own business, do what I want to do... I often do things not because they'll produce the highest profits, but simply because I feel like doing them.
This is a great quote Allan. It reminds me of another one I have always liked that says "true success is being able to live your life your own way." Money is very useful of course, but the real reason most people want money is so they can spend their time doing things they enjoy. If we can get paid to do what we enjoy doing, then life is a paid vacation.
Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 5839 Location: by the beach, Australia
Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2004 12:46 am Post subject:
Phil Tanny wrote:
It's the opportunity to experience the joy
of creativity that keeps me in online business. Maybe
that's what you mean by the word 'hobby'.
What you say makes a lot of sense, as usual. However, you must be much more creative than I am. To me, a hobby is all about choice, being able to choose what I do with my time.
Right now, Joanna and I are staying on tropical Hamilton Island - http://www.hamiltonislandresort.com/ - and my "office", if you laughingly call it that, is a dining table with a view through palm trees to yachts sailing among the islands.
A few days ago we were at Airlie Beach in the Whitsundays, where my 87-year-old father-in-law, who's very conscious of the passing of time, stood gazing at the beautiful view from our balcony and said: "This must be just about as close to heaven as you could get."
All the "work" I'm doing these days is checking for urgent emails (none) and tinkering about on the forum each day.
I love the way affiliate programs have given us the freedom to do that.
I also love the way affiliate programs give you the options of choosing from thousands of different affiliate merchants and millions of products. You can also choose to master pay-per-click search engines, free search engines, article writing, offline publicity, seminars, email discussion lists, forums, buying reciprocal links, or whatever web site creation methods and publicity-raising methods best suit your interests and personality.
To me, that's what makes this much more like a hobby than a business.
Every day, I remember the boss I had who used to look over my shoulder and tell me what to do. I'm ever so glad I managed to escape from that jail. _________________ Allan Gardyne
... earning a good living from affiliate programs since 1998.
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Joined: 11 Aug 2003 Posts: 4 Location: Atlanta, GA USA
Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2004 4:08 pm Post subject: Back to Allan's original question ...
Allan, this is the first month I have bought some reciprocal links. Naturally, I am keeping a close eye on my results, so will be able to report something substantive in another 2-3 months. I've only invested $50 this first time, strictly as an experiment. And I consider it a bargain. The amount of time spent in getting links is much more costly than a few measly dollars. And it's amazing how many directories code their links so that they're worthless for search engine purposes. All the 'link partner identification" software in the world doesn't make the link gathering easy. _________________ Sydney Johnston
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