How did you get started?

[AmyTK9]

I just thought this would be a fun topic, and perhaps even useful to others just starting out. So the question is:

How did you get started, how long have you been doing it, and where are you at now?

My answers would have to be:

I got started by talking to an old friend who mentioned I should start Marketing and Affiliating my business. I think she meant something other than online, I'm not really sure as I still have to talk to her further for more information. Either way, the next day I went online and looked up a bunch of stuff on Affiliate marketing. This was all on Sunday, January 30th 2011. I took everything in, started a new blog, joined some Affiliating programs, and joined some Affiliating forums, this one included. I'm already really enjoying everything and still have a LOT to learn!

I've been doing this a grand total of 4 days!

I am at; Having a blog (which I might need to move), learning how to blog and finding good & valuable content for it. Trying to build a trusting relationship between followers and myself while throwing in a promotion or two with out looking like spam. I also have my own Website with it's own Domain. I am building a page for my Affiliate Marketing now but have a lot of work to do still.

No money yet, but... I am only on day 4 and they say it can take a good while before you see anything. So I'm not expecting anything for a while, which gives me plenty of time to really focus on marketing, gaining more followers and earning trust which I hope in return will eventually produce some good sales.


How about you? Please share your stories! I love reading other people's stories and find a lot of motivation in them!

Edit: Oh Also, How much time do you spend on your online business? How do you manage your time?

Right now I spend just about all of my spare time (which I have a lot of right now especially because I've been sick for a few days) reading, learning, and trying to put what I've learned to good use and getting word out about my blog. I'm also trying to keep track of what I have done, what I need to do, and taking notes.

Another great thing about this business in my opinion is, 1. It can be fun! 2. I can do it even while I'm sick! While still enjoying it.

 

[Laura61]

Hi Amy, welcome! You sound very enthusiastic, and that will help you a lot. You will have discouragements along the way, but if you can tap into the energy you have now, you'll pull through.

I got started when I ran across a blog that talked about affiliate marketing as one of several ways to make money online. It was the first place I really learned was AM was. I read and researched for an entire year before I really got going (should have stopped reading and started doing). I've changed my approach a few times and now have too many irons in the fire, but I love it. I love everything about affiliate marketing. Well, almost everything.

Anyway. welcome to 5 Star!

 

[AmyTK9]

Thank you Laura, and Thanks for Sharing! I figured the best way to start was to jump right in and learn from mistakes. Every mistake is another learning stepping stone so I say bring them on! Even businesses that do well can fall back to the ground, just another learning wave of building it back up. I am indeed enthusiastic about it and am already enjoying it a lot. Trying to get myself a bit more organized and really work on getting good info out there. I also want to look into Article marketing as I love to write!

I think I was meant to do this as it is exactly what I've been looking for! I love to write, I love creating web designs and such, I need to learn better sales techniques and I need to promote my Dog training business. This just sorta plugged it all in together! Perfect!

Again thanks for sharing and I hope others share their stories too!

 

[eLina39]

Made a lot of mistakes - firstly I joined Amazon Associate program: lost loads of time, energy, and some money... But - learned a lot. I always say - negative experience is the best experience. Now I found simple and smart business opp, and - feeling great

 

[AmyTK9]

Good to know eLina! What happened with Amazon Associates? I've joined them too and am basing a lot of my stuff off of them.

 

[eLina39]

I had DVD business + blog. Worked a lot in marketing it. Even paid money to improve website. Nothing. I kept trying for almost four months. I dont know - it just does not work. So, I gave up. I dont know - how other people manage to earn money. I made no $1
I found new business opp - so far - am really excited. Experience with Amazon helps, I learned quite a lot about marketing, whereas before - I was complete 'Zero'

 

[AmyTK9]

Thanks for the info. Do you know if you were getting any buys off of it and it just wasn't converting? Or do you know if anyone was buying at all.

Anyone else have trouble with Amazon Associates? I'd love to know before I put more time in promoting them! Thanks

 

[Ron Bechdolt]

My start is listed in my introduction here at 5 Star

The great thing about this business is that it changes. That's good and bad, but it keeps it challenging which is what I enjoy.

 

[eLina39]

Amy, I am not sure. I cannot check that on my website. It looked a little strange to me - I was getting quite a lot of traffic to my site, yet never ever a $1. So, I cannot say, as I cannot prove this... The one thing I learned - that's not serious business option. Not worth, I think...

 

[AmyTK9]

Thanks for Sharing eLina I greatly appreciate it and will certainly be weary of this along with trying to find other ways to promote the products.

 

[eLina39]

Amy, it is just my experience. It may be you'll succeed. Some people say they - do. Which I find it hard to believe. The thing actually I was advised to do - to hire CEO company, to get my site up in search engines. That was too expensive for me. You still may have some success. Still hang in there for a while. Just don't expect too much

 

[AmyTK9]

Thanks eLina I'm not expecting too much from them as I just post a book a day from them. I'd like to look into other companies that sell the same books though and see if it makes a difference. Right now I don't have a big enough targeted audience to be making any sells anyways.

Anyways, you've been very helpful and this is good to know before I go all out trying to promote them! I'm always buying from them so I figured they'd be good to go through.

---------- Post added at 11:34 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:45 AM ----------

Update-

Today I'm focusing on joining more forums to get my link out there more & trying to learn more about keywords and implementing them along with remodeling my website so I can advertise it more as well.

So far the forums are already paying off and people seem to be clicking! No buys yet, but I'm more focused on how to get more traffic for now. Today's blog post used plenty of Keywords and I kept all my products on topic. We'll see what happens!

 

[eLina39]

I wish you the best of luck!!

Even if it does not work - you'll acquire good Internet marketing skills, which in this age: always come handy!

 

[AmyTK9]

Thank you! And yes very true! Gaining needed Experience is a great thing indeed! Even if this fails, I will know much more in my next business 'experiment'. Though I treat each 'experiment' as the real deal.

 

[eLina39]

The best of luck! Great knowing you, Amy!

 

[AmyTK9]

Thank you and you as well!

Update-

Wow, accomplished a lot today! First of all I'm trying to write down 3 goals for each day I'd like to accomplish. Next I write down what else I need to do that day, then I start making a list of everything I've done that day. This seems to help a lot! Today is the first day I've actually made the list of everything I've done today, here's an example:

2.4.11
Goals for the day-
*Learn more about keywords & implement them into my blog & website
*Start Re-designing my website so I can advertise it more
*Join 3 Forums that allow signatures & post an introduction

As I accomplish a Goal, I put a check mark by it.

What Have I done today?
*Learned more about keywords and started implementing them
*Started Re-designing my website
*Joined 3 forums & posted an intro
*Posted to my blog
*Read more information and tips on Affiliate marketing along with watching a few videos
*Joined Squidoo
*Deleted Adsense on my blog & added RSS Clickbank feed
*Learned of Pingoat & Pinged today's blog entry
*Learned of FeedShark & Pinged today's blog entry
*Learned of RSS Feed Generator & Gave it a try
*Learned of Firefox's Submit Um Now plugin, downloaded and submitted my site to a ton of directories.
*Joined Digg.com & Submitted my blog


As you can see I actually got a lot done I'm hoping something good comes of it!

Goals for tomorrow include:
*Getting pictures for my blog, website, and Squidoo
*Creating my first Lens at Squidoo
*Re-designing more of my site

I of course have a list of the daily things that need done such as posting to my blog and being active on forums I've joined. I think keeping track of this type of stuff will be very helpful to track how I am doing, what areas I'm lacking in, and what areas I'm strong in.

Oh, also a quick question I might have better luck asking in another forum, but I'll try anyways. When writing Articles, can you take them from what you write for your blog? If you do, should you re-word them before submitting them? Thanks

Share your tips too!

 

[AmyTK9]

2.5.11 - This is sorta becoming my getting started blog / journal. If there's a better place for me to do this, let me know. I figured posting it all might help others too.

I got my first Click today! No conversions, but I did get a click which is still a step forward. It was with Amazon.

My goals for today, though are rather easy and straight forward, I'm not sure I'll get any of them done simply because I have to work here soon. I might get to at least work on my site, but I might save pics and Squidoo for Monday's work.

I have however posted to my blog today, trying a new approach of listing all books on the first page Amazon gives me on the top I am discussing. Not sure if that will push people away or get more clicks. We'll see I guess. I was wanting to try just links and no pictures, but with a product review to see what happened but for some reason they wouldn't show up at all when I previewed or published my blog. So I went with the pics like I've been doing.

I have also already pinged my blog entry at Pingoat, Feedshark, & Submit Um Now. Anyone have any feedback on any of these services? Do they help at all?

 

[AmyTK9]

Getting a bit further in all of this, wrote my first 3 articles and submitted them, plus advertised the links at a few different places and tried to on some blogs as well. Not sure how well that worked though.

Signed up for a lot of new places today and probably will be doing more through out the week.

So far no more clicks or anything. I've reached 100 page Views today though! Not getting many page views a day, and most are people who aren't interested in buying, just friends seeing what is new in my blog it seems. So my goal for this week is to get traffic that is more targeted towards people actually looking to buy!

I've also decided to do a whole new site instead of putting this stuff on my dog training site. I don't want it to make my training site look less appealing, as I'm still a dog trainer and need those clients too!

Anybody else have any updates? I'd love for other people that are new to this to be posting their information too! I want to read what others are doing and how it's paying off.

Still wondering if anyone has had any actual traffic generated from Pingoat, Feedshark, and Submitum now??? I've been doing all 3 every day on each new blog post and so far nothing. Hopefully my articles can pull in more traffic!

EDIT- Joining Forums is proving to be more difficult than I thought. It seems most forums now have disabled signatures

 

[AmyTK9]

So made a lot of mistakes with my first 3 articles. Reading more, I see a lot of things I could do better. 2 of my articles also got rejected at Street Articles (Which I'm actually happy they did, they were only rejected because I put my link in the wrong place), but all 3 were accepted at Free Articles.com . So I re-wrote one article (which was more like re-writing 2 articles), and re-wrote the article I had pending as well. I am MUCH happier with these two articles and I Really hope to see some traffic come off of these! What was my mistake? Sounding too much like a sales person and not enough like a professional. So I re-wrote them, I didn't do ANY advertising in either article except putting my link in the Author Bio. Hoping they get accepted, I think they will, then I'll have to try an get word out about my articles.

Just curious, is anybody actually reading all of this? Or is anybody finding any value in what I've been posting? I almost feel like I'm just spamming the board, should I continue to write these or no?

 

[djbaxter]

I think it has potential value to new affiliate marketers - they can learn form your mistakes.