I’ve been busy getting set up for a new freelance writing gig, so I haven’t posted in a while.  Sorry ’bout that, but income always comes first.  I’ve been doing the Twitter thing, doing a bit of surfing, and generally just gathering information.  I am amazed at the amount of work that is out there.  My strategy is pretty simple.  I use Twitter along with Tweetbeep.com to find the information I am looking for.  This has been highly successful.  I’ve been involved with Twitter for a while now.  I never paid a great deal of attention to it until recently.  Actually, I’ve been pretty busy with my former freelance writing gig.  That pretty much dried up the first of the year.  The company I was working for took a big ding along with everyone else.  They made the decision to outsource to a third party for content.  I wish them luck.  I have the idea that they are getting content from some company in India.  As always, you only get what you pay for.

So that kind of left me out in the cold.  Armed with Twitter, I began my search.  To filter out my results, I used Tweetbeep.com.  I simply set an alert for “freelance writing”, and let the results roll in to my inbox.  Within a matter of a few days, the alert notified me of a decent gig.  I shot off an e-mail with my resume, links to my clipbook, and a letter of recommendation.  I started training last week.  That, my friends, is the power of the Internet.  The good thing about my search for a freelance writing gig was this – I found a ton more information than I needed.  I capture a lot of good resources, and plan on compiling this list in the form of a report.  When completed, I’ll offer it up to my readership.  It’s just my way of saying thanks for hanging around.

I’ve also been doing a lot of graphics work for clients.  Because I do headers and similar graphics on the cheap, I pick up beer money and have a ball doing it in the process.  I got into graphics as a source of R&R because writing all the time drains the brain.  My technical skills are pretty good, even though I have basically taught myself.  I enjoy working with Photoshop, and integrate it with other 3-D work that I do.  It is a great tool, and one that is of great benefit to any marketer.  Although the price is prohibitive, I have more than paid for it with the work that I’ve done in the past year.

I also picked up a new technique that has been very beneficial.  Because my eyesight is getting bad due to glaucoma, I sometimes struggle with seeing both the screen and the keyboard.  While browsing through the Share Zone at Wealthy Affiliate, I come across a tutorial by a gentleman who advocates using Dragon NaturallySpeaking to write articles.  Because I had a copy, I installed it, set up parameters, attached my microphone and went to work.  Because DNS comes with a text editor, I simply increase the size of the font and talk away.  Depending on my mood, I can whip out an article in 15 or 20 minutes, have it edited, and on the website in a very short time.  It has its drawbacks.  My doxie girls have a habit of getting a bit excited at times, and their barking produces some pretty interesting text on my screen.  Some of it almost makes sense!

So life moves on.  My wife is doing well in her store now, and things are pretty good.  At age 65, I’ve taken up blues guitar.  My wife, bless her heart, bought me a Fender Strat with amplifier, and I am slowly but surely picking things up.  I’ve made several attempts over the years to learn how to play the guitar.  I find that now, with all the information on the Internet, interactive DVDs, and a ton of stuff on Youtube, the learning process is a great deal easier.  Besides, I am a whole lot mellower than I was as a teenager.  Rosie tells me that the Strat is just one more excuse for me not to have to leave the house.  She may be right…

I am uneasy being in the transition stage.  I thrive on routine.  Routine is what keeps me stable.  Having suffered from PTSD for over 40 years, I find that routine is very important to me.  I think that this is why I am so capable of getting things done.  The downside to that is this – I know an awful lot about what is going on in the world, but have little knowledge of what goes on around me.  My choice of newspaper is the LA Times, and throughout the day I get a ton of information from alerts and Twitter.  At my age, it matters little…

Peace,

Charlie~

We all know the affiliate marketing is not rocket science.  It is something that can be done with little or no capital outlay.  That’s a good thing.  Even though we know that affiliate marketing is easy to do, many people fail at it.  I think the reason people fail is because they don’t give it enough time to reach success.  Affiliate marketing is like anything else – it requires a lot of hard work.  By hard work I mean writing articles, building Squidoo lenses, and just generally over all educating yourself.  In this day and age, I think a lot of people have had it drummed into their head that affiliate marketing is something you can do in your sleep.  Every time I see an e-mail from one of the so-called gurus stating that I can make a huge income in my whitey tighties, and make money while I sleep, I get a big laugh.  I must admit that this is possible to do.  But, this only happens after paying your dues.

Like any other endeavor, affiliate marketing is simply a matter of education.  We must educate ourselves to be successful in any online venture.  Late last year, I joined Wealthy Affiliate.  My decision was based on feedback I got from my Twitter stream.  Everyone I’ve polled recommended Wealthy Affiliate to me.  Because I choose the people in my Twitter stream, I feel that their feedback is reliable.  It was a wise decision to join.  At Wealthy Affiliate, I picked up the basics of affiliate marketing.  As I said, affiliate marketing is not all that hard.  However, it is a little tricks that you learn from belonging to a website like Wealthy Affiliate that helps you become successful.

There are some pretty savvy people on Wealthy Affiliate.  The good thing about a site such as this is the fact that there are many different people from many different walks of life, with a lot of varied skill sets.  Each one of these people brings to the table knowledge and expertise learned over a long period of time.  Yes, there are a lot of newbies that haven’t a clue.  However, the old hands have a wealth of knowledge and freely offer it.  One of the things that Wealthy Affiliate highly recommends is utilizing the power of Squidoo.  A lot of the reasons are obvious – Squidoo is easy to use, is newbie friendly, and Google just plain loves it.  All these things add up to a great place to do affiliate marketing.

Right now, I have 19 lenses on Squidoo.  Like anything else, Squidoo is a numbers game.  The lenses are ranked according to how they are set up, how often they are updated, and how well the lens is built.  Although I am pretty comfortable with Squidoo, there is a lot I need to learn.  Which leads me to the little trick I previously mentioned.  When setting up a Squidoo lens, a lot of people, myself included, run together the URL of the lens.  What I learned was this – instead of running the URL together, hyphenate the URL.  Google will be much more pleased with it if you do that.  The name of the game is to always make Google happy.  It is no big deal to hyphenate the URL.  From now on, this is a trick that I will use.

I guess the moral of the story is the fact that we can never have enough knowledge.  All my life, education has been the most important thing in the world to me.  I’ve had that drummed into my head since I was a child.  It has served me well.  I have a habit of saying that if a day goes by, and I haven’t learned anything new, then the day was a loss.  Maybe that sounds a bit exaggerated.  But, in the final analysis, we must remember that knowledge is power.  Without knowledge we are basically shooting in the dark.  That worked well when I was in the Nam, but I have become a bit more civilized since then.

Being a big fan of knowledge means that I pursue it on a daily basis.  I’m sure I could write a best-selling novel on the little tricks that I have learned over the years.  Maybe in my next life…

Many thanks to @FranciscoIV  for reminding me how  “That’s They Way of the World” makes me feel so alive and joyful…

Enjoy…

That\’s The Way of the World

Image via CrunchBase

I’ve been spending a bit of time on Twitter.  Although I don’t spend as much time as a lot of people do, there are people I follow there who give information that I value.  There are also people there that I just plain enjoy.  In my Twitter stream, there always seems to be a lively conversation going on.

I was surprised this AM to see a Tweet by a person I follow named Prague Bob.  He appears to be an old curmudgeon just like me.  Hailing from Czechoslovakia, I always appreciate his insights.

Today, his comments were about an Internet marketer named Perry Belcher.  It appears that Belcher has been nailed for computer fraud, and online marketing scams.  Allegedly, he was selling medicinal treatments to people with various ailments.  The treatments he supposedly was providing consisted of nothing more than common household oregano and cayenne pepper.

Apparently, he bilked tens of thousands of dollars out of a lot of unsuspecting people.  And what did our Mr. Belcher get out of this?  10 years probation.  Apparently, they came in and attached all his assets, including his home and his Jaguar, and are selling these things to pay back the people that he screwed out of their hard earned cash.

It is people like Belcher they give Internet marketers a bad name.  I’m just as hungry for the buck as the next guy, but there is no way that I could live with myself if I was screwing a lot of people out of their money.  There is, after all, ethics and integrity involved in any business venture.  I sincerely believe that people think they can hide behind the anonymity of the Internet.  Because we can’t see your ugly mug, doesn’t mean that you are not there.  With the way technology is advancing, I think we will see a lot more whistleblowers and people they really care about what is going on on the Web.  I think it is about time.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with good old-fashioned accountability.

One thing that disturbs me however.  One of the applications that serves Twitter is called Grader.  To me it’s kind of hokey, but it gives you a fairly good idea of how popular you are on Twitter.  Grader told me that I should be following Perry Belcher.  For all I know, that would have been a good recommendation.  However, without the help of Prague Bob, I might have fallen victim to some of Mr. Belcher’s dealings.  A tip o’ the Allnut hat to Bob.  I appreciate you in my Twitter stream.

I know, for instance, that ad revenues pay for the article within three weeks time.  Even though they pay me $.10 per word to write articles, and that may seem a lot to many Internet marketers who want to only pay $1-$5 for a 500 word article, you can plainly see that people that are working for these kind of wages are clearly underselling themselves.

I also know for a fact that this company takes them $75,000 per month in ad revenues.  I am sure that at this time ad revenues have dried up to a significantly lower level.  Still, this company makes a tremendous amount of money.

What prompted this article was a blog post by Anne Wayman.  Her blog post told about her experience with Associated Content.  She had written an article entitled “How to Pay off Your Debt and Live Debt Free in Three Steps.”  Anne stated she was underwhelmed at the price paid, which was the fantastic sum of $.99.

I have done a little work for Associated Content before.  Generally, they would pay between three and four dollars per article for what I submitted.  I quit wasting my time with that some time ago.

Here is my opinion.  Internet marketers that are making a great deal of money online and are only willing to pay $1-$5 per article don’t deserve a decent freelance writer to work for them.  Let them go to India and get the people there to write for them for this price.  Of course the English and grammar will suck, but hey!  Ya get what you pay for.

It’s rather old with the number game that the Internet really is to see people like Anne Wayman being taken advantage of.  I haven’t read any of her articles.  I have no clue as to how good she is.  I do know however, that to offer someone $.99 for a well written article is next to highway robbery.

It isn’t any wonder to me that people are struggling to make money online.  When you put effort into producing a good article that has unique content, and you end up with $.99 in your pocket, I hardly think that article marketing is going to pay the rent and feed the kiddies.

Look at it this way.  Associated Content will undoubtedly make back their $.99 that they paid Anne Wyman in very short order.  Everyone is in it for the money.  I think it is especially important though that we spread a little of that wealth around.  Anne states in her blog post that this is an experiment she is trying.  She also reports she had a great deal of trouble navigating the site at Associated Content.  To me, that is only adding insult to injury.  Is Associated Content trying to make it hard for Anne  to reach the place she wants to be?

As a freelance writer, I promptly turn down work that does not pay me a decent amount for my services.  It makes little sense to me to put all the time and effort into article marketing, freelance writing, and years of experience to get paid $.99.  And that is the way that I see it…

I have a friend in FL, Ken Leatherman, of 1ArticleADay.com. Ken is a good writer, and able to match longtail keywords to a relevant article – something that takes a lot of skill. Recently, Travis Sago of Bum Marketing fame hired Ken to write a daily article for members of his email list to use to promote his product The Art Of Making Up. This is a great deal for affiliate marketing his product, and I think it is a smart move on the part of Travis.

Now what I am seeing is that people are using Ken’s articles word for word to market with – not doing a thing but copy/paste into directories and shooting for affiliate traffic. I am kinda glad that these new marketers are doing this, although if they had any training at all in affiliate marketing, then they would not go there. It makes my job a whole lot easier when these noobs do this.

Unique content is easy-peasey to produce. I use the articles that Ken produces as a “prompt” to write my own content. I open the article in Word, put a lot of white space between paragraphs, and have at it. When I am finished, I have a totally unique article. I can knock it out in about 10 minutes if I take my time.

This is why new marketers fail. It can only be one of two things – either they are too lazy to do anything different, or they don’t know any better. I am inclined to think that people are just too lazy to make the necessary changes. And that is why they fail…

Peace,

Charlie~

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