martinos74

It’s Getting Real

20th September 2017 By martinos74 Leave a Comment

It’s only over this past week that I’ve started to realise we’re heading out of here in a couple of weeks and venturing off into a new life. Things are starting to get real as this week I’ve been handing over some of my responsibilities at work and am gradually getting prepared for leaving.

The thing is it’s always hard to imagine your next phase of life before you’re in it, and when you get to it, it’s really hard to imagine what your previous life was like. This is why change is good and makes things so exciting.

Outside the Thai Embassy!

We headed down to the Thai embassy this week and despite being told off by an angry Thai official for queue jumping (which I wasn’t) we picked up our visas and got the first tinge of excitement about our journey ahead.

On the online business side of things I still find myself flip flopping between what I should focus on when I’m away. It’s great that there are so many ways you can earn a buck online, but focusing on one thing really would be good too!

Affiliate Sites Competition

My original plan was to build up my affiliate website, but I got a bit disheartened this week when I realised the amount of competition that is out there that I’ll need to compete with in my niche. On the other side I reviewed my KGR list of keywords that I generated earlier and have found that I have a couple of thousand of keywords that I could write articles for and generate traffic towards my site.

The thing is, most of these keywords are info keywords only, so may not have that much value. After all, there is no point in having thousands of visitors to your site, if you can’t monetise it at all… apart from being a meagre vanity metric!

Anyway, this week I planned out another 5 articles to one of my writers, which are all related to the product that he reviewed recently. Then I briefed in another massive product review article and related articles to my other writer, who has been writing awesome articles so far, for only $10 per 1000 words! He’s never done a product review before but I think he’s more than capable.

My short term plan is to keep getting decent content onto the site, and then when I get to Thailand I can try my hand at link building, which I haven’t done any of so far, and am least looking forward to.

Copyright Infringement

The other business that is ticking along at the moment is my eBay business. This week I’ve put a 10% sale on all my products to see what happens and it seems to be driving a good number of sales already. I’ve also asked my VA if she knows anyone else that she can work with and possibly train, so we can increase the number of listings that we are adding each day, and it sounds like she’s up for it.

So, on the one side, I was all for upscaling this business, then the next day I get an email from some company whose products I’ve just been listing on eBay, which had a ‘Cease and Desist’ letter attached. Basically the note said that I am unlawfully using their images, and do not have the right to promote their products so I have 24 hours to take the listings down or face legal action!!!

Not the best note to receive, so I took the offending listings down immediately and sent an email of apology stating it was an honest mistake. After this they sent me a follow up note, asking where I had bought the products from. At this point, I am doing the Ostrich, and ignoring them, because I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell them that I only buy the products when someone buys them from me!!

Plan for Next Week

Well, I know right now that I will have pretty much 0 time next week, so my goal is just going to be to publish 2 of articles that I received from my writer onto the affiliate website.

Crowdfire Review : How to Boost your Instagram & Twitter Followers

2nd September 2017 By martinos74 Leave a Comment

This week we look at how to grow your Twitter and Instagram following using a free app called Crowdfire.

Lets be honest, creating a big audience on the different social media channels can be extremely time consuming and a major pain in the butt, however, it’s one of those things you really need to pay attention to. If you grow your audience in these different channels not only can you push traffic to your destination of choice, but you also have a fairly captive audience, who you know are at least somewhat interested in your topic.

Your social channels are also an excellent way to develop your network and build relationships within your niche, which you can reach out to for things like link building in the future.

What exactly is Crowdfire?

Think of Crowdfire as a central tool where you add all of your social media accounts and use this as a control panel to distribute content and grow your audience.

In short Crowdfire will do the following:

Suggest Content

Simply add the topics and niche that you are interested in and Crowdfire will suggest content to you that you or your audience may be interested in. If you’re interested in a piece of content you can simply share it to all of your social networks (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest) at the click of a button.

Post your Own Content

If you’ve just written a blog post then you can distribute this through the click of a button to all of your social networks as well. Even better than this, Crowdfire has a built in option where it will automatically post content for you at the best time (ie when your readers are most likely to engage with it)

Grow your Twitter Audience

In my experience Crowdfire works best with Twitter as it will:

Suggest who you should follow (users with similar interests or users who have followed you)
Suggest who you should unfollow (dormant accounts)
Show who has followed you
Allow you to create an automatic message for users who start to follow you

Daily Recipes

The nicest thing about Crowdfire is the principal that if you spend a few minutes a day using this tool then over time you will be able to massively grow your following. Each day it suggests to you a number of things that you should do, for example:

Share relevant content in your different channels
Share your own content
Post relevant images on Instagram
Which users to follow, unfollow

It also will give you a score card each day, showing you the number of followers, unfollowers, likes etc that you have created.

Overall I really like this app and the approach of slowly building your following. If you want to know more here’s a vid that goes into good amount of detail:

Progress in August

1st September 2017 By martinos74 Leave a Comment

So my theory in last month’s article was that if I publish my goals and let others know about them then I’m a lot more likely to succeed, so how has that worked out???

checkAdd 10 articles to my affiliate site – I managed to publish over 10 articles on my site, and am starting to use the new Thrive Architect plugin, which is a big improvement on the old Thrive Content Builder
checkSet Up Amazon Affiliate Account – This was pretty easy to do and I ended up starting accounts in the UK, US and Canada as well as publishing my first full affiliate review article and use the Easy Azon plugin to generate the Amazon links. Not expecting any traffic or income from this for a while, and as long as I make 1 sale in the first 180 days then Amazon won’t close my account!Complete content plan for niche website – Well, I haven’t really completed this task, but what I did do was outsource research on KGR content and had someone search 15,000 keywords in my niche to find at least 200 easy to rank keywords, which I’m going to drip feed into my writers over the next few months.
checkBrief writers for 15 more articles – In the end I only briefed one of my writers in to do another 5 articles as I was waiting on the keyword research content to come back
checkComplete content plan for niche website – Well, I haven’t really completed this task, but what I did do was outsource research on KGR content and had someone search 15,000 keywords in my niche to find at least 200 easy to rank keywords, which I’m going to drip feed into my writers over the next few months.
checkReach 2000 products in my eBay store – Unfortunately this was a bit of a fail and I am only up to 1700 products. I purged a load of products from www.splashandrelax.co.uk from my store, because they are quite simply shit and always display products even when they’re out of stock. On top of this my Virtual Assistant has been struggling a bit to get the listings done, so I had to have a chat with her and try to push her a bit more. In fact to try and motivate her I’ve asked if she knows anyone else she can train to do her job, so she can take on more of a role like a Store Manager, which might be more interesting for her… still awaiting her reply!

Needless to say I didn’t even look at my stretch goals this month with all of this going on and also getting distracted with the Merch by Amazon shiny object!

Goals for September

September is a massssssive month for me. Not only will I be leaving my job that I’ve been in for the last 10 years, but I’ll be heading off to Thailand with my lovely lady and renting my flat out. At the moment, I’m not 100% sure who it is going to pan out, but my rough plan is to relax on the islands for a couple of weeks, then head to Chiang Mai to see if I can get involved in some of the entrepreneurial action up there. Realistically I’ll only start having time to focus on my business streams from October so Im going to keep next month’s goals relatively simple:

Add 10 more articles to the niche site
Brief 10 more articles for my writers including 2 affiliate articles
Push to get 2500 eBay listings
STRETCH GOAL: This one I’m not really sure about, because of the amount of time it will take up and take me away from my other goals, but I really want to take the Low Hanging System course and start to get things set up there whilst I wait for my Merch by Amazon approval

Interesting times ahead….

Do Not Follow the Low Hanging System

23rd August 2017 By martinos74 78 Comments

One thing I absolutely hate about the world of making money online, is that there are so many darned ways to make money, and it looks like the low hanging system is going to be another big distraction that I should not follow! It’s definitely not a scam but it’s messing with my head as it’s yet another thing that I can’t wait to get started on!!!

QUICK ACCESS

If you’re keen to get going and want the best price in town then get direct access to the course on this button below:

How the Low Hanging System has Ruined my Plans

Over the last few weeks I’ve quit my job and rented my flat out and was busy preparing for my 3 months in Thailand. My plan was at last to start focusing on my affiliate website and finally getting around to some decent link building activities.

I really want to build the website up and more than anything, I want to prove to myself that I can actually make money through an affiliate website, because so far I’ve read an awful lot, taken a lot of action, but haven’t got to the monetisation stage yet. It feels like I just need to dedicate some more time to this.

Great plan, so what happened?

A friend from the Matched Betting group that I’m in (this group is awesome by the way) sent me a message the other day saying I need to get into the Merch by Amazon programme, so I signed up for this and have spent the last week getting my head into the concept and listening to all of the podcasts from Merch Entrepreneur

The whole thing really appeals to me as there is basically no investment, fulfilment or customer service required and it relies on you creating catchy slogans and designs. This is something that I’ve always been interested in and am actually quite good at so I am super excited.

I’ve been writing ideas down for T-shirt designs all week already and my head is exploding so much that I’m waking up in the middle of the night to write them down…. so much so that my girlfriend thinks I’m having an affair and sending texts to my lover in the middle of the night!

Sounds amazing, so what’s wrong with this?

In order to get started on the Merch by Amazon programme there is a whopping 2 month waiting list, maybe less, but probably even longer than that. I am soooo excited that I can be waiting around for 2 months for this and besides this, I’ll be in Thailand with time on my hands.

This is when I heard about the Low Hanging System by Rachel Rothe, which was recommended on the Merch Entrepreneur programme and gives you something to do with your over active brain whilst you wait for Amazon approval and also gives you another massive potential revenue stream.

So what is the Low Hanging System?

From what I’ve looked at this gives you heaps of tips and tricks about getting set up on 2 main reseller sites: Gearbubble and Etsy.

Gearbubble is a print on demand service where you can upload your designs and get them printed on a range of products from mugs and necklaces to pillow cases. The beauty of this, however, is that there is a direct integration with Amazon (and eBay), so your products will be automatically listed on Amazon when you list on Gearbubble…. and there is no waiting or approval time!!!

The second site Etsy is America’s equivalent of eBay for handcrafted and custom made products, so this course also shows you the best way to use this as a portal to sell your print on demand products.

Other than this it seems that there are heaps of tips and ticks about Facebook traffic, how to get traffic to your Amazon listings, outsourcing your business and where to source the best designs amongst other things.

Am I going to sign up for the low hanging system?

To be honest, I’m really torn at the moment, because if I get involved in this then it’s really going to blow my other goals out of the water and put the affiliate sites on the backburner again.

However, this feels like this is such a massive opportunity and exactly the type of business that I’m looking to set up, that I really don’t think I can pass on the opportunity.

The course is great value at $297 but I’m pretty sure that this is something you’re going to get back in no time at all if you follow the steps and have a little bit of creativity about you.

Check it our for yourself here

2018 Update

I signed up to the course and have been using it to add products to Amazon, eBay and Etsy successfully over the past year. It’s taught me loads about Print on Demand and how to create successful designs, so I’d totally recommend this investment for the training and great motivation from the really active FB community.

LOW HANGING SYSTEM

If you’re serious about Print on Demand and want a great way to learn how to do this from the Pros then get access today on the link below:

Weekly Goals

Last Week’s Goal was to add 3 articles to my affiliate site. I didn’t achieve last week’s goal as I only published 2 articles, but a lot of my time this week has been taken up by Merch by Amazon excitement instead, so I don’t think that’s the worst trade-off.

This Week’s Goals

I’ve finally managed to get my first product related article back from one of my writers, which has taken him an age to complete. He pitched himself as an expert product review writer, but I don’t think that’s actually correct.

I’m either going to have to drop him, or coach him a little more with the next set of articles. He’s actually from the UK and is only getting $10 every 1000 words so I can’t really complain.

Anyway, now that I’ve got this article, I need to try to knock off one of my month’s goals and set up the Amazon Affiliate account and get my first article published with affiliate links.

It’s the Bank Holiday this weekend, so I’m not going to have a huge amount of time but I’ll give it a good crack.