Failure+ A Year Ago Today...

I've liked the them of putting "+" in my titles (seems to work for Mike Iser) but really the post today is going to be about the same thing. Namely my progress in Internet Marketing right at a year after starting. I set a pretty big goal right out of the gate- try to get a full time income in a year (this was around mid August, technically, but I set the start date to September 1st). And after struggling onward and doing on again off again exercises in Internet marketing I can say... I came no where near that income level. I don't even make $100 residually per month. But I'm not too upset for several reasons, which this post will cover.

First off, I should probably tell you exactly what I did the last few months, since I said I'd start doing Adsense Snipers back in May. Truth is, I never got around to Adsense Sniping. I've bought about 10 domains (.infos) and done keyword research out the wazoo, but I've yet to get to putting up the actual sites. Isn't my laziness inspiring? Truth be told, I was going through a big move and the adjustment to the new place was difficult in and of itself. The reason I've moved for a little while (I'll be back in my normal home on October) was to help out a family member, and make sure she wouldn't be alone in a strange new town potentially full of drug dealers and rapists. Okay, so this little town in North Carolina probably won't be seeing many drug dealers and rapists any time soon, but meh, it was a nice change of pace too. Only problem was that it took until halfway through July to really get adjusted to things, and then I had to go out of town (the new town, not the old one) to visit family since my grandmother was turning 90.

During this time I posted that Snipsly thing, and, funnily enough, I actually won the contest (notice, vmassey120 was the winner, and that's because it was my mother's account) and about $500. Which is what leads me to my next point: (another) reevaluation. I won the Snipsly contest via posting about 22 posts to the site. In total it took about 4 hours as I wrote about 12 250-500 word articles and the rest were on similar snippet sites to Snipsly, ironically. Either way, I broke ti down and figured it was around $125 an hour. After taking a step back and looking at that, I begin to think that maybe I didn't have to have residual income. Sure, it'd be nice, and I'll probably go for it after a while, but now I'm much more interested in ANY income.

So the last half of July, and August was me changing my perspective and trying to figure out what I really want to do. I still don't have an answer, but I can say that I don't consider any part of this year a "waste". Well, okay, I do consider the complete laziness of the last 9 months a huge waste in regards to making tangible cash, but with all that I've learned, I have no doubt that the rest of 2010 and 2011 will definitely see me making some coin one way or another.

As for my current income... I'm making money every blue moon with Adsense- that last Google Update really killed me, and I don't have the money or the time to create a ton of links and improve rankings (another pivotal reason I didn't do much Adsense sniping despite my last post) but I still make at least $5 a month (pathetic) from my main sites and Hubpages/Infobarrels etc. Clickbank had a brief, minor revival about 4 weeks ago, when I got 3 sales in those 4 weeks. I'm thinking its because summer had fully set in and the products I was working on are summery products. I haven't done anything extensively CPA wise, because I've never had luck with CPA and free methods, and I obviously have way too little cash for paid methods.

So in conclusion... This year has taught me a lot. I feel like I've learned in several regards- from programming, to internet marketing. I learned how to sew using a needle and thread, and the proper way to work out (and I've lost 10 pounds the last 3 months, mostly because my sister, the family member I'm staying with, eats like a bird and I can't afford food, lol). I've become pretty much a true professional writer and now have the opportunity to get paid $15 per article (yeah, Demand Studios is GREAT). But above all else, I learned that this whole game is possible, but you really have to work at it to see big results. Although I guess I haven't actually seen "big" results yet myself....

Good luck to everyone, and starting from tomorrow, I'm officially off the clock (who knows, maybe my site will miraculously jump to spot 1 on Google and get me enough traffic to make $100 a day, lol!).