Blog Joe Blog!

Archive for January, 2009

Hustle 2009 – Day 24, Quick Jab

Jan 31, 2009 Affiliate Marketing

It’s 5:20 A. M. Saturday the 31st.Â I’m checking my different accounts to see if there where any movement on Jan 30th. And there where a few. I made an additional $0.46 with the Ebay Affiliate and I had a increase of $2.50 added to my NeverBlue account. Again nothing really big but every little bit counts towards the goal.

Track record as of Jan 30th.
Goal $300.00, and only 7 days left
Ebay Sales – $74.12
Ebay Affiliate Profit – $3.98
NeverBlue Affiliate – $9.65
Sedo Domain Sales – $0.00
Amazon Affiliate - $0.00
—————-
Total – $87.75

Tags: 31 Day Challenge, Affiliate Marketing

Hustle 2009 – Day 23, Every Penny Counts

Jan 30, 2009 Affiliate Marketing

I have been on the road a lot these past couple of days so I’m looking forward to the weekend. In aÂ matter of fact I’m thinking about going into work early tomorrow just to get it over. I’m so looking forward to the weekend not just for the rest and relaxation but because I have a site to build and some additional tests that I would like to run.Â Lately the affiliate marketing tests have been coming out on the positive end. I mean nothing to quit my job over but it’s nice to have finally not lost money for a change. Don’t laugh when you see my numbers.
Yesterday (Jan 28th) I spent a total of $0.10. Yes that is correct $0.10. Basically I turned on my Google Adwords Campaign and forgot about it because I had so much going on yesterday. It generated 2 clicks but one of those clicks happened to convert @ $0.70, so I made a profit of $0.60, yea I’m a baller now.

Today (Jan 29^th) I spent a total of $0.30 and again generated 2 clicks and converted on one of them @ $1.25 for a $0.95 profit.
Here are some additional details

JAN 28, 2009

Clicks – 2
Spend -$0.10
Convert AMT. Â - $0.70
Profit – $0.60
IMP – 98
CTR – 2.04%

JAN 29, 2009

Clicks – 2
Spend -$0.30
Convert AMT. – $1.25
Profit – $0.95
IMP – 72
CTR – 2.78%

I opened and started a Facebook ad manager account, and I’m going to just say that I don’t know what I’m doing quite yet because it is totally not working for me. So I think I’m going to abandon facebook in regards to advertisement until I understand what I’m doing.
To complete this post I logged into my EBay Affiliate account to pull some numbers and it looks like I happened to have made $1.02 extra on the 28th, hell that’s better than nothing.

Track record as of Jan 29th.
Goal $300.00, and only 8 days left
Ebay Sales – $74.12
Ebay Affiliate Profit – $3.52
NeverBlue Affiliate – $7.15
Sedo – $0.00
Amazon Affiliate - $0.00
—————-
Total – $84.79

Tags: 31 Day Challenge

Hustle 2009 – Day 19, The wheels are spinning

Jan 26, 2009 Affiliate Marketing

Well it’s been a while since I have blogged about the Hustle challenge. Lately it seems like there’s not enough hours in the day to get all of the things I would like to get done completed. I’m working on a schedule to address this issue.
Well here’s what’s been happening since the last Hustle post. I was able to sale all of my items that I set out to sale on Ebay and thought the whole process was successfully. I generated $74.12 from my sales on Ebay. I mentioned in a previous post that my Ebay affiliate account made a whopping $2.50. Since then I’ve joined another affiliate program, ( NeverBlue ) but did not get anything up and running until midnight Saturday. There were lots I wanted to do to get started. I created a custom landing page and added some code to the landing page so that I could track its behavior. It’s important to me to at least have gained some knowdelge about affilate marketing after this challenge is over. The method I chose to drive traffic to the landing page was Google Adwords. So after doing some keyword research I loaded Adwords up with about 75 keywords. 4 or 5 hours within running the campaign I realized that only 5 to 10 of my keywords where really driving the traffic, so I pared my listed down. A couple of tweaks later and I was able to find what I call the sweet spot. That’s basically the perfect balance between CPC and Clicks. I hope this makes since, I’m not an expert. But what I’m trying to say is that I was able to produce clicks @ $0.14 and $0.16 per click. Oh forgot to mention the payout for a conversion was $1.25, so it was very important for me to keep the CPC low. Well to make a long story short. I ending up spending $12.69 and only made $2.70. I know what your thinking, G-wiz that sucks, but this was actually my best day ever, I learned a bunch. I don’t see it as a bust but as a learning experience and can’t wait until the morning to give it another run. Â This test brought up several what if’s that I would like to try with the next test. What if I just sent traffic to the conversion page instead of my custom landing page? Currently the way I have things setup a user would have to click on a Google Ad, then my page, then the conversion page. That’s a 3 step process to make a buck 25. By removing my landing page I will have decreased a step and added another layer of confidence to the user. What if I run my ad during prime time, 8am -5 pm, instead of on a weekend at 4 am, what will my CPC, and CTR look like then? Man I’m so psyched,Â If I nail this down it will open up so many doors for me. Hmmm it’s going to be interesting and I can’t wait.
until tomorrow..

Track record so for.
Goal $300.00, and only 12 days left
Ebay Sales – $74.12
Ebay Affiliate Profit – $2.50
NeverBlue Affiliate – $2.70
Sedo – $0.00
Amazon Affiliate - $0.00
———————————————–
Total – $79.32

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Hustle 2009

I just logged into my FeedBurn…

Jan 24, 2009 Tweets

I just logged into my FeedBurner account and saw a message from Google about a move. Not sure when it was posted.. http://tinyurl.com/ahlyy6

Tags: Tweets

48-year-old mother makes winni…

Jan 24, 2009 Tweets

48-year-old mother makes winning bid for Death Row. http://tinyurl.com/bxz999

Tags: Tweets

Digsby Totally Rocks

Jan 23, 2009 Marketing, Rants

So far I have used about every IM client known to man. These are some of the top few that I thought where pretty good.

Before you get into this review you have to understand that I work a desk job where Instant Messaging is a big part of my daily communication.

Digsby – Quick description Digsby is a multi-network IM client that is capable of connecting to all the big IM networks: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, GTalk and Jabber. It can also integrate with your email (I use Gmail), Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter accounts. The install is simple and you can customize the interface to be 2.0 sexy. They also have a feature that will allow you to send SMS messages right from the IM window. But the main thing I love about Digsby which I thought was totally smart was the fact when you log into your account it sync all of your contacts. So for example if you’re like me and use IM at work, at home, and on your laptop you don’t want to have to add all of your contacts back into the system over and over again. Digsby handles all of that for you. The download is FREE.

Pidgin – Pidgin is pretty awesome also. I first heard of Pidgin when I was test driving Fedora. I think it could be jazzed up a bit though. I think they are still stuck in the 1.0 era. The only reason Digsby is kicking their but is because of the customization options. You can really pimp out the Digsby interface, but with Pidgin not so much. The download is FREE.

Trillian – For many years I was a big fan Trillian. I really don’t have much to complain about except for the lack of options. If it wasn’t for the massive amount of features that Digsby includes I would probably be still using Trillian. They have two versions of the software FREE and PAID.

GTalk - Light weight, great voice and video chat. But it’s the whole “Google owns your data” thing that spooks me out. The download is FREE.

Yahoo! Messenger – Simple old school, and doesn’t support other clients. Plus it seems like when you’re using Yahoo instant messenger, everyone you know is using AIM. And when you’re using AIM everyone you know is using GTalk. The download is FREE.

AIM – Same as above, everyone you know is not on AIM. It’s been awhile since I have used AIM, but if I recall I think their client included advertisement. The download is FREE.

You should try them all out for yourself.

Tags: Digbsy, GTalk, Pidgin, Trillian

XML Sitemap Ping Application

Jan 21, 2009 Marketing, SEO

First of all let me apologize for not posting a status update on the Hustle 2009 challenge.
I was at work today and had this grand idea of creating a XML Sitemap application that could ping multiple search engines at once.
Well I just completed it, then found out that Ask.com was also supporting XML sitemaps so it’s not 100% complete. It’s currently hosted on another site of mine, but I will be bringing a copy over to the Blog Joe Blog site also.
XML Sitemap Ping
This application is not very technical; But I did get a chance to add some validation routines but nothing fancy.
So here you go have fun with it.
This code is not yet available for download
XML Sitemap Ping

Tags: Ping, Sitemap, XML, XML Sitemap Ping