The BookmarkMoney Blog

Hey all.

I know I’ve been uncharacteristically quiet as of late, and I apologize for that. Life has blown up around here, and even getting 10 minutes at the computer is an accomplishment.

The time change this weekend has completely thrown my 16 month old daughter off of her schedule, and she’s making it hell on everybody. Thankfully my wife is laid off, so I can go to bed at a reasonable time. Otherwise, I’d be greatly increasing my chances of running my hand into some heavy machinery at work.

I went into the doctor yesterday to have a pain that I’ve been experiencing for the last 4-5 months. It turns out that I have the beginnings of a hernia. I see a specialist on Tuesday to see if operation is necessary. I hope not, since I’m not preparred mentally for two weeks off of work. *sigh*

I’ve been trying to reformulate my affiliate marketing strategy, since my current efforts have basically stalled out. The last sale I made was two weeks ago, and nothing since. I finally shut off AdWords last week rather than throwing my money down a hole. I was hoping that I’d be able to replace my wife’s lost revenue, but I’m apparently doing something wrong.

Anyway, this weekend the wife and kid are out of town, so I should be able to blast out a linkstorm along the lines of what has come previously. Hopefully I’ll be able to pick back up on blogging, or just move to a more specific schedule.

Tags: Site News by Jotun
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I woke up this morning to a nice surprise - another $30 in my ClickBank account. In 8 days I’ve made about $50, and spent about $50 on Adwords, so I’m breaking even. However, that $50 is across 4 campaigns. Breaking it down, I’ve spent in the range of $25 on my campaign that’s making me money. So I’m essentially getting a 2 to 1 return thus far. But like the investment companies tell you, past performance is no guarantee of future growth.

I think I’m getting a broad idea of how this works, and I’m looking forward to doing more tweaking and seeing where I end up. I’m looking forward to getting my ClickBank check, since it’ll make me feel like I’m actually an accomplished affiliate marketer.

My first reward - a Sobakowa pillow. Sleeping on buckwheat husks might seem like some kind of hippie practice, but I have never slept as well as I have on those pillows. On a related note, my mom has been going to acupuncture for years now, and she’s started teaching me some of the doctor’s techniques. Some of them work freakily well, which makes me believe a lot of the stuff from the orient has legitimate value. It seems that in Western medicine’s rush to treat the body, the soul has been overlooked.

Speaking of, have you seen the Kinoki foot pads? Basically they’re an ace bandage that you put on your feet overnight that draws out ‘toxins’ and the like. The general consensus on the internet seems to be that it’s bullshit. I had my mom ask her acupuncture doctor about them. He swears that they work, but then said that an ionizing foot bath would work better, and come out cheaper in the long run. That might be treat number two.

Paul has a great post up on How to Scale a Campain. Very good, no-nonsense tips, although I’m doing it in reverse and starting at Google, and then moving to Yahoo (eventually).

Jonathan Volk has an enlightening post on why he Uses Landing Pages. I’ve been trying direct linking so far, but I’m planning on moving up to landing pages soon. The main reason I haven’t so far has been due to lack of time. He also has a post dealing with scaling campaigns as well. I’m trying to condense all of these scaling tips so I can wrap my head around the general themes.

5 Optimization Tips to Create a Good Website. Nothing revolutionary, but good advice nonetheless.

Screw You Google. This looks like an interesting experiment, but I’d still rather dance with the devil in the pale moonlight.

Alt Search Engines is a pretty sweet place to check out niche search engines/appliances.

And now to wrap things up, here’s a cooking tip:

Take one bag stir fry veggies.
Add one can of condensed chicken gumbo soup.
Cook until the water is gone.
Serve.

That’s some good eating!

Tags: Adsense, Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Linkdump, Recipes by Jotun
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I’m starting to make things happen, and it feels good!

I talked to someone at Neverblue Ads, and got accepted into their network. This is the first ad network I’ve belonged to since eAds.com went belly up in the crash of ‘00. I’m really looking forward to starting to monetize ReverbMadness.com as a stepping stone to bigger and better things. Most of the big boys in affiliate marketing started at Neverblue, and I’m excited to belong to the network, if not their club yet.

Started my fourth AdWords campaign today. So far it’s my priciest with the clicks averaging in the $.79 range. The two campaigns I launched Wednesday are $.31 and $.10 per click respectively. As of today I’m out $10.89, or just a hair less than what it would take to get myself and the wife into an afternoon matinee. I’m seeing a marked difference between campaigns 3 and 4.

Thus far none of my campaigns have made a single sale, but number 3 is getting almost a 1% click thru rate. Not a great number, but it tells me what is working, which in this case is fear. I’m definately going to have to play that up.

Not having much success on eBay right now. Probably going to have to find some other way to pimp stuff.

I’m focusing on crawling right now, since I’m a baby when it comes to making money online. Next up, walking.

Tags: Site News by Jotun
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