I WILL make it!

Nothing happening

2006-06-12T01:13:00.000-04:00

Here's why:

I fell down the stairs. When that pain was 75% gone, I developped a severe toothache that took almost 3 weeks to go away. During the toothache, we discovered that my sharpei (the dog that I wanted since I was 4) has a serious liver disease/defect. This has cost over $700 to get a "probable" diagnosis, which will only be definite with more money and if it's definite, it means an expensive surgery. Had 3 teeth pulled (toothache) and 1 filled all in the space of 3 hours on Tuesday - my choice, but still hurts today, Sunday. Oh, and Eric has had a particularily nasty cold for the last 3 weeks - can you guess where this is going? Right now I have 2 blocked ears, one is particularly painful, my throat feels like it's the diameter of a quarter and I know the only reason I'm not sneezing and coughing up a fucking lung is the Nyquil which isn't helping me sleep.

So those of you that have been wondering where I am, sorry, but I REALLY haven't been in a chatty mood. Especially after we were presented with the vet bill, as we've decided I either need to pick up a ton of side work online or go get an offline job. So forgive me please if I sound bitchy right now, or if I don't post for another 3 weeks. I've done absolutely NO work pretty much since I fell because the second I start feeling somewhat ok physically, something else keeps popping up. Can someone tell me exactly why it is that if bad things happen in threes, why I'm on number 4, at least???

As for last month's total, I'm so not in the mood to go add it up right now, but it was in the vicinity of $200-300. Nothing spectacular, quite dismal actually, which is also not inspiring me to work real hard. I also haven't been really keeping up with everyone's emails and blogs or rather, I tend to be several days late, when commenting is moot. Sorry about that as well.

Ok, wow, bitch and pity fest over. Sorry about that, but I so just needed to vent. I hope everyone else's life is going a bit better right now. I know I shouldn't bitch - I'm not dying, no one around me has died (knock on wood!) but I'm just in a major funk of late. The crappy weather every weekend (the last month has brought 90% rain every fucking weekend) sure isn't helping either. Who's ever heard of daily HIGH in JUNE of 56F/13C??? Anyhoo, hopefully my next post will bring good tidings of health, happiness and good weather!

Tara :)

Howdy

2006-05-16T15:20:00.000-04:00

I'm sure everyone is wondering where I've been... Under strict orders from the hubby, I was recouperating from my fall. The strict orders came when I thought I was well enough to get some work (computer and offline work) done and set myself back a week. Holding a baby (friend's first grandchild) for an hour probably didn't help either, but what a cutie! So I've barely been at my computer for the last couple of weeks. Thank you to everyone who wished me well, I'm almost there. Still have some twinges when I actually attempt to do to much (like laundry) but I have to get things done as I'm moving down to the trailer this weekend. We brought down a bunch of stuff last weekend, but there are odds and ends that still need to be dealt with.

I still haven't done any work really since the fall. A couple of link fixes that needed to be done, but that's about it. I'm probably not going to get much done this week either, but next week with no distractions, it's back to work I go.. Hopefully I'll be almost 100% because while my desk chair is very comfy when I'm healthy, it's been VERY uncomfortable since I fell. If worse comes to worse I'll work from the lazyboy ;)

So that's been my exciting life in a nutshell. Oh, and unless I forgot something, my income for April was just slightly over $150. Depressing, but this month is going quite a bit better, and I'm on track to get an Adsense check in June for April/May, since I didn't make enough in April. Here's to everyone having a better May!

Tara :)

Since I last posted

2006-05-02T11:40:00.000-04:00

Well, got quite a bit done on Monday and Tuesday last week. Wednesday was a slacker day, but I was determined Thursday to get a bunch more done. That didn't happen though. What DID happen was on my way to my computer (after stopping for my 1st coffee of the day) I slipped a la cartoon (banana peel style, legs in the air, etc) on my basement stairs. Bounced a couple times and landed with my upper back and tail bone on the edge of 2 steps. Wind completely knocked out of me. Took about 2 full minutes to be able to breathe again and then the pain kicked in... Suffice to say that for about 5 days, breathing/talking/walking/sitting/moving/lying down/lifting/bending and all round being alive was no fun. To put it mildly. However, I'm now on a full night's sleep (couldn't sleep for very long from the pain for the first few days) so I'm on the mend. And that means (hopefully) I'll be able to get some work done again! Word to the wise - DON'T fall down the stairs! If you do, take 4 Excedrin Migraine pills, they helped alot. Just don't expect to sleep as they contain 65mg of caffeine each ;)

So, on the agenda this week (besides packing up for the trailer) is go through my links for the 2 pet sites as they are finally seeing a small trickle of SE traffic. Get some link exchanges done for them, but only quality ones. Write more for the new site, which I'm dying to get out of the way. Try not to fall down the stairs again (so far so good). Figure out how we're going to buy new trailer I want to buy. (new to us, but not brand new) And so on.. lol

I guess that's about it for now. Still a little tired and out of it, so while I'm sure there's more to tell, can't think of it right now. Have a great week!

Tara :)

Oops

2006-04-25T00:27:00.000-04:00

I really thought I'd blogged last week. The fact that I didn't in the end doesn't surprise me though, I've been totally goofing off for a while now. I've started to correct that now though tonight. I'm researching merchants (in order to research/write articles), I've written a few articles and despite the fact that I got up from my nap at 2 pm (I was up before 8, wayyyy to early for home) I'm still wide awake, so I think I may have a few more articles in me tonight. I still have between 20-30 product pages to write for the new mega site though (and several are already written, how scary is that?!), not to mention more keyword research, setting up email collection, figure out the scope of my newsletters and much, much more. So while I was hoping with a bunch of hard work I might have this site up soon, the reality is probably more likely within a couple of months.

So tell me, is anyone else having C R A P P Y sales and Adsense this month? I don't think I'll be seeing an Adsense payment next month, it's so bad. I've had 3 sales.. admittedly they've been pretty decent commissions, all 3 between $10-20, but still. Thank goodness I put some cash aside before quitting, I'll be needing it next month!

That's about it, but in case you were considering buying Keywords Results Analyzer, Dr. Andy mentioned that the new version is going to be released this week hopefully, which in turn means the price will go up from $67 to $97. I still haven't had an opportunity to play around with the new version yet, but everyone who has is raving.

Oh, and a quick little bit of link love for my buddy Chrissie who had a great time at and talks about Pubcon, the Webmaster World conference. I'm thinking from the sounds of it I'm going to have to go to the next one, especially since it's in Vegas, where I'm dying to go back to :)

That's all she wrote folks!

Tara :)

Busy busy bee

2006-04-12T00:45:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the delay in posting, but to be honest, I spent most of last week goofing off, plus I wanted that last post to be good and spidered for all potential JM customers to see in the SERPs.

So here's what I've done since yesterday, and most of this was today even:

bought an Adsense site... with losing income from my 2 pet sites (see below for more on that!) I decided to see if this will work.
bought hosting and transfered DNS to new host. got them to give me 3 months free even though I signed up without the special.
added my Adsense code to said site, managed to screw it up, tried to fix it, emailed the seller to help me.. lol now fixed.
added StatCounter code to new site to track traffic
wrote/tweaked 4 pages for the new site.. 1 product page and then the About us, Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. They are ready to publish now, though the rest of the site isn't.
bought the domain PawTails to replace a1-dog-info.com. bought it for 10 years - and look Ma, no dashes!
bought the domain Gone To The Bridge to replace pet-memorials-info.com, also bought for 10 years. (if you don't get the domain, google "rainbow bridge")
fixed templates (I LOVE "find and replace" in Front Page!) to reflect new domains and published them. hopefully I'll start seeing some traffic (and money) soon!
finally wrote out all the pages that need to be written and tasks that need to be accomplished before or right after the new site goes live.
updated my goals page to reflect the new sites and some new goals.
added up my income from last month... ok, that was last week, but here it is anyway... $425.
watched the remake of The Ten Commandments... YUCK!
blogged my boring life ;)

I think I may FINALLY be back into the working from home mindset. It bloody took long enough! I will say this though, talking to people like Andrea and Colin and Brad sure does help. Whether it's just to kvetch about you know who or to bounce business ideas off each other, talking to peers is essential.

As for this month's financials... well... let's just say that I REALLY hope the 3 "new" sites take off VERY quickly otherwise I don't think I'll get an Adsense deposit this month. Pretty much only 1 sale ($18 commission though, no complaints!) across my sites. But, if not this month, next month will be great, I have a feeling :) Of course, don't you know while I was looking through Google for inspiration for the new domain, I found my pet memorials site (with emax's info) on the 2nd page for my main keyword.. argh.. life sometimes! lol

Anyhooooo... that's all she wrote for tonight folks. Have a good hump day!

Tara :)

The last straw

2006-04-03T20:29:00.000-04:00

If you are a James Martell follower, you probably already know where this entry is going. I had heard a little while ago through the grapevine there was going to be an update of the Affiliate Marketing Handbook coming out soon, and it has arrived. I find the launch date of this update quite ironic (you'll see why in a second) - April 1st. When I saw how to get the update, I thought it might be an April Fool's joke, and then I realised it was April 2nd, so it couldn't be a joke. To "reward" (and I use this term very loosely) his loyal students, there's a tiered price structure to get the updated version of the book. If you had the misfortune to buy it over a year ago, you get a $60 "deep" discount from the original price of the book, $167 (overpriced to begin with) for the "cheap" price of $97.

A quote from his website:

"The Third Edition contains 21 "revisited" points, 7 "additional" points, and 13 new points Â in other words, the full training from 2002, the additional information added in early 2005, and all the UPDATES from January 2005 to March 2006 have been fully integrated into a logically flowing document."

Well, I doubt that it's a "logically flowing document" since the last update was anything but... you had to jump all over the place to see the updates. But maybe it is, I wouldn't know - because I sure as SHIT won't be paying $97 for outdated, useless information that the "update" no doubt contains. This of course is just my uneducated opinion, which it will remain unless the update becomes free or someone sends me a copy. And once I catch up on the Buzzes I haven't had time for (which I'm hearing HORRIBLE things about) I'll probably end up dumping that too. Because I am DONE with James Martell. I'm thoroughly disgusted with this update and it's (as the title says) last straw for me. I have removed the link in the sidebar to his book and will no longer promote him in any way, shape or form. And I'm not alone. 2 people have told me the same thing today.

So congratulations to whomever decided on this wonderful update strategy. I think you have succeeded in alienating a good chunk of your students, even those that weren't wavering already. And thank you for making it easier for me to completely write off James Martell. I was almost there, but this seals the deal. And a word to the wise - don't pay $167 for an infoproduct that doesn't promise free updates for life. For that matter, don't buy any infoproduct in the affiliate marketing industry for ANY price that doesn't include free updates for life. Both Colin's and Dr. Andy's products I mentioned the other day DO include free updates. Anyway, I've learned my very expensive lesson, I hope all JM followers have now too.

Tara :)

Got confirmation

2006-03-31T00:49:00.000-05:00

Quick note - Colin just let me know the price will be going up by Saturday, so it's your last chance to save $27 on The VEO Report.

That's it, off to bed and then off to the trailer tomorrow, but hopefully I should be online. Have a great weekend!

Tara :)

eComXpo

2006-03-29T15:24:00.000-05:00

Hey all, quick reminder that eComXpo is coming up next week, the 4th-6th (Tuesday to Thursday) and it's free for everyone to attend! I made some valuable contacts at the last one, and learned so many new things, I couldn't wait for this one. I was bummed that I might have to work through it (thankfully not a problem now!) but even if I'd had to (or you do) you can replay the presentations anytime during the 3 days.

I get no money from this, I just thought everyone would like to know about it. It's a pretty good substitute to an offline conference, so go check it out!

Tara :)

It's official!

2006-03-29T03:36:00.000-05:00

I am jobless!! Woooooooooo hoooooooooooooooooooooooo! Funny thing is, while I was off "sick" Monday, the other 4 who started with me got offered permanency. I'm happy for them since that's what they want, but as far as I'm concerned, good riddance to bad rubbish. I basically quit via voice mail. Of course, as usual, the supervisor wasn't there, so she called me back, cleared up a few details and it was over. In less than 10 minutes. Kind of anti-climactic. But it's done. No official word on Eric's new job yet, but we know the contract is being drawn up, so hopefully this week.

So, I've caught up on laundry finally (only took a week!) and mostly packed for the weekend. Going to have the phone and internet turned on tomorrow (dialup for a few weeks - have to go in to fill out paperwork to pay thru the nose for high speed) and then start making lists to get myself caught up. Because right now, I don't really know where to start. So much to do with old and upcoming sites that it's a little overwhelming. And in my time off I've done a lot of ebook reading too, so that's all swirling in my head. But now, I've got all the time in the world. And I can't wait to get back into the WAH groove.

Don't forget Colin's book will be going up soon, possibly as soon as this weekend, and there won't be much if any warning, so if you haven't got The VEO Report yet at $39.95, you should get it before it goes back to $67. It's still worth it at $67, but hey, we're all trying to save money :)

I guess that's it for now, but with more work going on there will be more blogging going on :)

Tara :)

Prices going up soon...

2006-03-27T01:32:00.000-05:00

I've heard about 2 products who's prices will be going up shortly. One is Colin's book (in the next few days) and Dr. Andy's Keywords Results Analyzersince he's releasing version 2 very shortly. I haven't spoken much about KRA but I use it all the time - it's so handy for sorting through the massive keyword lists I generate. Seriously, I end up often with 2K-5K keywords most of the time. It's $67 right now, but once you buy you get free updates for life. So if you've been thinking about picking up KRA, you'll want to do it very soon.

Not much to talk about in the last 2 weeks. We're still waiting on news about Eric's job (hopefully tomorrow) and in the meantime I've decided I'm quitting as soon as we hear he got the salary he asked for. This allows me to become a housewife, once I add my income from my sites. Other than that, I've been cleaning up the house a bit ('rents plan on visiting Easter weekend to drop off their old dryer) and getting ready to go camping. It's a smidge early (season only starts May 1st technically) but they're predicting beautiful weather for next weekend, so if it's stays the same forecast, I'M GOING CAMPING!!!! lol Can you tell I'm excited? No real work being done lately, just a few articles being written/rewritten. I'm staying home from work tomorrow though (and hopefully from now on!) so that should change shortly.

That's about it. I lead a very boring life ;) Have a great, prosperous week!

Tara :)

Latest Revenews article from Colin

2006-03-12T01:17:00.000-05:00

(This is going to be somewhat of an I heart Colin post, so if you're not into the Colin love like myself, too bad for you and just skip this one ;) )

Ok, so I've refrained from posting about Colin anywhere for a little while now. Mainly because I felt like I would be talking to a wall on the forums, but I also didn't want to burn you guys out on him either. However, with the latest (great!) VEO newsletter, the latest Allan Gardyne newsletter and a few posts in Allan's forum, (http://associateprograms.com/discus/ftopic15748-45.html, http://associateprograms.com/discus/ftopic16580.html) not to mention Colin's latest Revenews post, I felt it was time.

First and foremost, to the people who made the really dumb comment (obviously directed towards me and others who support Colin) about whether or not "i--love--colin.com" was available - you'll be happy to know it is. But you know what? I'm not about to register it. I do love Colin - he's a great guy and someone I'm happy to call a friend. I also think what he has to say about SEO and building sites and so on is on the ball - whether or not you agree is your opinion. And if you want to keep blindly following James Martell's system which MANY angry customers will tell you DOES NOT WORK ANYMORE, feel free to go register I-love-James-martell.com - that's available too. But hell, Colin will tell you that when we talk, I'm as honest with him about ideas he bounces off of me as he is with me.

And while it may SEEM like I have the same blinders on as when I first started in this business (which caused me to be a staunch follower of Martell until I learned I wasn't doing everything wrong, which is why I thought my sites weren't doing well) I most certainly don't. The VEO Report isn't perfect, nor does it offer all the answers. No one product does - in affiliate marketing or anything else in life. But I think it does address many issues that JM followers have been wondering about, and if you speak to former followers of Martell who've read the VEO Report, they'll tell you their eyes are wide open now and they thought the book was worth every penny. And most did not buy it through my affiliate link, which as I've said, I don't really care. I'd rather you bought it through someone else's link or none at all rather than not buying it - period. Because I think it has great info that we can all use. But hey, it's just my opinion, that I'm entitled to, just like you're entitled to yours.

Ok, off that soapbox for now. As I said in an earlier post, I would let you know about the work situation, which, believe it or not, has deteriorated further. As it turned out, they didn't force anyone on to the early shift or the late shift... the early one was done away with and the late one was split between 5 of us, that is until a coworker fell on the sword and took it full time - for 3 days until they decided it wasn't working. After he had just purchased a public transit pass for $63. And so, if the undecideness isn't bad enough, here's the latest in the saga of my job. I called our "helpline" (a senior coworker) to take a supervisor call. I had been given information when I first started that we weren't to refuse them, and she was polite and friendly with me until I questioned her refusing to take the call, since it wasn't a "legitimate" supervisor call. Then she turned into a real bitch. Turns out she was allowed to refuse it. Funny thing was - she was fine until I questioned her - but I got a verbal warning 2 days later because at the beginning of the call, I said the reason the client wanted a sup was because he wanted to know "why the hell" something hadn't been done. I was quoting him, and this person KNEW that. But though I was polite and she was a fucking bitch (very rude in words and tone of voice) I "set the tone" by saying "why the hell" - WTF??? Oh, and it gets worse.

So fine, after a little sit down about the fact that we ARE supposed to refuse sup calls when it's not for a good reason (fine, not what I had been told, but fine) I get another one 2 days later. I go see my team leader about the situation before it escalates, but I'm essentially told, go tell him the answer, BE FIRM, no sup call over this situation. So it escalates, he asks for a sup and I say no. Don't I get in MORE shit - for refusing to pass him on - because it involved a lot of money and because the guy asks for higher (he wanted a general manager) I should have somehow GUESSED that in this case, yes, it was to be transferred to a supervisor. (Who had JUST FUCKING TOLD ME to refuse it - and I had told her the money involved!!) But see, in this case, it was my fault for saying, I'm sorry, I can't transfer you to a supervisor who's just going to tell you the same thing. Which is what I was told to say. So people, unless you are psychic, don't go work for this company. They have offices all over the world. If you're about to apply for a company that deals with stocks and has computer in the name, email me first, I'll tell you if you should stay away or not. Because this is typical of the whole company.

Another little winner situation? They make everyone who starts later than 9 am (about 6 of us, some starting as late as noon) come in for 9:30 or 10:00 for a "town hall" meeting with the president. Big important meeting, should last for a half hour, can't miss it. (Of course, it was ok for our team leader to miss it since she started at noon, but I digress..) Said meeting which I came in a half hour early for lasted 5 MINUTES, if that. Just to tell us we bought another company, which happens more often than I change my underwear, I swear. So some people came in 2 HOURS early (not to mention screwed appointments they had made, since this was "soooooo important") for a 5 minute, useless meeting. Starting to get the picture here? Oh, and more changes coming this week, including removing our helpline (sorely needed, much info lacking on our intranet) and putting in a booth - manned from 10-3. Great. So if it wasn't bad enough that anyone who called after 5 with an usual problem had to be told to call back in the morning, now everyone outside of 10-3 will. Did I mention the call centre is open from 8:30-8? So 5 hours of 11.5 will be covered if you need help - which is multiple times per day, unless you've been there for more than 5 years. ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Ok, let's see, other than all that crap, there is a teeny bit of good news. I've caught up on some ebook reading while it's been quiet at work (not often these days) and I'm looking forward to not working to play with PPC a bit. It's still a scary concept, but not as bad as I thought. Also got a few articles written/rewritten that still have to be edited. And on the VERY good news front, Eric is interviewing on Tuesday for a job that will pay enough for me to quit my job if he gets it. His chances are pretty good - his former coworker works there and really wants Eric, plus Eric already interviewed there but turned down a different job that involved traveling 60% of the time. Really interesting place, great pay, 3 weeks vaca and stock options, which I'm now intimately familiar with and know that this is a GREAT thing ;) So, here's hoping they're just interviewing (since it's a different boss this time) for the sake of looking good and that I know by the end of next week, or better yet, by the end of the interview on Tuesday. Because I can't tell you how much I want to just grab my stuff, extend my middle finger at management and leave. It's nice to have dreams... lol If that job doesn't happen, "only" 24 days left to work. Seems like 24 years sometimes...

And on that note, hopefully your weekend is going well and you're making lotsa lotsa moolah. I've been having a good sales month so far despite losing 2 sites, but Adsense is down, of course. Such is life... one site will be replaced as soon as I have a bit of time and can decide on a domain. Anyway, that's all folks, ttys!

Tara :)

What a week, or if you're using Emax hosting - DUMP THEM NOW!!

2006-03-05T13:03:00.000-05:00

Ok, I was planning on posting my February revenue when I was done with dinner on Thursday night. No sooner did I pick up a huge knife and make the first cut into some veggies for salad, my phone rings. It's Emax. Telling me they've cancelled my account. Not to mention taken control of the 2 domains I registered for them. (Side note - I read recently on someone's blog (I can't remember whose, sorry!) to never have both domains and hosting with the same company. Believe me now when I say this is true!!) The reason? A charge back on our credit card. A little back story - about mid February, Eric said to me that there was a double charge on his credit card from Emax. So while I was looking into it, he called his credit card company and asked (ASKED!) what to do if we can't work it out. They said they'd send us some paperwork to file a charge back. (Meanwhile on March 5th we STILL don't have this paperwork.) Apparently they went and filed this charge back.

Now, it was legitimate, Emax charged me for registering a domain that was never transferred to them (we tried twice) and with the hours I work it's virtually impossible to reach them. Having had issues before and knowing their ticket system is just for technical issues I wanted to CALL them. I should mention this charge was applied in January and yes, they did credit me back, miraculously (they pointed out the date while on the phone) MARCH 2ND - THURSDAY - the email was received but not read since, HEY, I have a job to go to, I deal with email at night after work. Either way, it was too late since the chargeback had already been filed unbeknownst to us.

So after him repeating to me several times the consequences of a chargeback ($35 fee plus higher merchant fees for life) and me repeating I was unaware it had gone through and that since he had already cancelled my account I certainly wasn't going to pay the $35 (he said that I didn't have to!) our conversation degenerated into a screaming match since he would listen to me. He just kept repeating the fees without proposing any kind of solution (I honestly don't understand the point of the repeating, it was really weird) I finally got sick of trying to talk over him and told him finally to fuck off and hung up. (I was shaking at this point and we were going nowhere. The account was cancelled and he wasn't going to reactivate it.) He THEN called right back and told me his lawyer would contact me for the $35 and hung up on me.

So I rushed around like mad trying to find a new host. This time, I didn't care if I was paying more for it but I was getting 24/7 VOICE (phone) support included. When I have a problem, especially with technical stuff I don't fully understand I want to TALK to someone about it. Is that too much to ask? (It is with Emax - now even if you call their tech support they have a message that says fill out a ticket first... argh) So I finally decided on Host Gator.

So far I'm very happy with them. They have CPanel (which was another requirement since I'm used it now), shopping cart stuff (not well versed but I will be!), Fantastico (I wanted for a few apps), .htaccess access (finally starting to learn how to use it and I could never get it to work on Emax since they messed with my stuff so often), unlimited domains (you'd think I'd learn, but I like to manage everything, or almost everything in one place) , autoresponders and tons more. I probably could have gotten away with the "Baby" package, but since I plan on growing my next site to be huge and possibly have a shopping cart and database on it, I wanted ALL features available, so I went with the "Swamp" package at $14.95/month. I think I'd rather pay more for great service, and I've read good things about them from other people.

So all that said, learn your lesson from me. Dump Emax NOW. I sugarcoated a lot of the bullshit I went through with them (problems EVERY SINGLE TIME I added a new domain, to which their automatic response was "it's a FrontPage issue" unless I bugged them to actually LOOK. FYI - it was not ONCE a Front Page issue!) for the sake of playing nice. I refuse to play nice anymore. And I almost hope their lawyer contacts me... a) because what a WASTE of money, for $35! and b) my uncle is a lawyer.. I'll get free advice and perhaps file a counter claim for lost income. Since they've now stolen 2 domains I'm daily losing money on one of them. They can keep the dog domain though, I have barely paid for hosting, let alone the domain, that was a dud site from the get go.. lol (Not to mention I'm in Canada and they are in the U.S.) And btw - even if they did credit the domain registration charge, I'm still out for a month's hosting that they DID charge and I'm not getting.

And to be very honest, yes I'm PISSED about the whole thing, but if I'm philosophical about it, I have just been waiting to be out of a job to switch hosting companies anyway, since it wasn't something I really wanted to do after work, know what I mean? So anyway, if you sent an email between Thursday afternoon and Saturday afternoon to support AT a1-travel-accessories DOT com, please resend it because I didn't get it.

Ok, on to income.. well, it was a crappy month. I made a little more than last month I think, but that was from promoting 1 specific product which netted me over $120 in comissions. If it hadn't been for that I would have been very poor indeed. So here's the total: $380 (approx, as usual), which also includes doing some VA (virtual assistant) work for someone. Better than I had hoped for at the beginning of the month when I saw the awful totals, but obviously less than I would've liked. I'll just have to get working on the new site. Though to be quite honest, I've come to the conclusion if I get work done during the week, awesome, but if not I'm done with feeling guilty about it. My job is very draining due to the repetitiveness of it and the stress with dealing with a bunch of incompetent morons in management. In case this never occured to anyone else, NEVER take a job where your department has been in existence 3 years. Or maybe it's only at my company... but wow, they can't make a decision that sticks longer than a month to save their freaking lives! Frustrating to say the least!!

And at this point, I've no doubt bored you to death, so I will stop, wish everyone a GREAT week (can't be as bad as mine has been! lol) and may March be the new month to beat!!

Tara :)

I can't believe it's been 2 weeks since I blogged...

2006-02-27T00:07:00.000-05:00

Sorry about that, but honestly, I haven't had much to say, and I still don't, really... The biggest news is how I'm still struggling to make myself not quit my job, and it still may happen this week. They're forcing 2 people to change to shifts they don't want and we won't know until tomorrow (hopefully) who gets them. If I get the early one or the late one full time I'm outta there. They are both really bad for me for various reasons (some personal, some job related) and I have a bad feeling of either of them, I'll get the late one. It was mentioned that everyone doing one day a week was a possibility, but if you're a long time reader, you'll remember that I'm Queen of Murphy's kingdom, so luck is not on my side. I'll let y'all know.

In other news, I've been told to mention if you have questions about Colin's books' or if you'd like to bitch about the fact that a certain someone's system really doesn't work anymore, feel free to head over to Colin's blog and vent your little heart out. Also, Colin has dropped the price of the VEO Report by almost half - so if you've been thinking about it, now's a great time to check it out. I don't know how long the price will be so low. Also, I heard from a friend that The Positive Mind (which is free when you buy The VEO Report) that right after reading it they quit smoking cold turkey and have maintained it now for 2 weeks. If you've read either, I'd LOVE to know your thoughts!

Out of curiousity, how is everyone's income doing this month? I hope it's not as bad as mine! All of this month won't equal just my Adsense from last month. I can only pray that March is better than February! And not just for my income, but my initiative for working on my sites. I've done little bits and pieces here and there, but nothing much. Fingers crossed!

And on that note, have a great week everyone!

Tara :)

More to come this weekend, but...

2006-02-11T19:24:00.000-05:00

In the meantime, check out this great article in Revenews by Colin :)

Tara :)

Quickie

2006-02-09T21:53:00.000-05:00

Lynn Terry from Selfstarterweeklytips.com has a great deal posted on her blog, http://clicknewz.blogspot.com/ She's let everyone know about a great price reduction for Alice Seba's (the self-proclaimed Internet Marketing Sweetie) products. More than half off. So go take a look. I picked up one of the courses and so far (listening to the first audio right now) I'm enjoying what she has to say. If you already have her stuff or pickk it up, let me know what you think!

Tara :)

Back to work... somewhat

2006-02-05T12:56:00.000-05:00

I think I've discovered the trick to getting my fire back for my business. It was sorely lacking for a long time, but it seems that when this happens, the cure is simply to talk to a bunch of my AM buddies until the early morning hours. I got quite a bit (relatively) done yesterday. I've decided to scrap the idea of the 2 sites that I've been working on and combine them into 1 big one which will also have several other topics. While I know this goes against everything Martell is saying, I've come to the decision that I won't be following his methods anymore. I still think his system might be valid for someone just starting out who has no website creation/SEO knowledge, but once you move beyond that point, you just don't need him anymore. And there's an interesting thread on that topic that Martell himself answered on Allan Gardyne's forum, here's the link: http://associateprograms.com/discus/ftopic15748.html. I still stand by what I say in there - go pick up Colin's book and read it, learn it and apply it. You won't regret it! (If nothing else, sign up for his free newsletter, you'll get alot of info through that, too!)

Let's see, what else did I get done... Scouted domains for the new mega-site, non-dashed of course. Thought about all the categories that could be added. For example, let's say my original site was about patio furniture (it wasn't) so I broke it down in to tables, chairs, fireplaces, umbrellas, etc. The other site would've been cute knicknacks, plates, glasses, plants, etc. Well now, I'm going something more like, patio furniture, accessories, plants, fireplaces, tiki bars, outdoor equipment, pools, etc. I think that's a fairly good analogy, since I'm not ready to reveal the topic yet :) I'm excited about it. I've pretty much decided on a domain, it's quite catchy, and while I KNOW this will be alot of work, I'm hoping to divide it somewhat between PLR/authors/me and eventually grow it into an authority site. For now all my new sites will be like this. My existing ones will stay as is (maybe to grow out, maybe not) and I'll be honest and admit if I find a hot niche like Pet Memorials I may do a mini-site, but I agree with Colin that the mega authority site seems to be the new way to go.

I also tweaked a bit of the travel accessories home page and completely restructured the article directory. When I created the directory it was on the 2002 book advice, i.e. no more than 30 links per page, so I had it spread over 5 pages. How is that useful to the visitor? Plus they were all mixed in together with no way to easily find the topic you were looking for. This has all been changed now, if you want to see what I did, see travel articles. It really didn't take long, but what a difference! It all goes back to design and write for your visitor, NOT the search engines. We've all heard it before, but how many of us really listen to that statement? I wasn't REALLY... maybe a little, but the scale was definitely tipping in favor of the SE's. And look at where it's gotten me? I don't give a crap about the "Big Daddy" Google update because Google hates my sites anyway... and I think that's a sorry attitude. Because I know many of us are struggling to get Google to notice us, and just think about what kind of revenue we're losing every day because if we're lucky, we're on page 10 - if we're not, we're on page 100 or just don't seem to exist. If we do things right though, there doesn't seem to be a sandbox or getting "Google Whacked." There ARE other ways of doing what we do, we just have to be open to them. Which goes back to buying Colin's book.

If you're thinking about it at all, please bite the bullet and buy it. I'd gladly give to you all for free if I could, but even if you don't want to buy it through my affiliate link, that's fine, http://www.veoreport.com - I just think it will help all of us who I know have been struggling, because we've all discussed it at one time or another. It will be $67 well spent. Besides which, I'll be probably talking about it more as I'm building my sites and I'd like you all to be in the loop of what I'm saying ;)

Anyway, I guess the long "I heart Colin" post (as I'm sure that's how it feels to many of you) should end now, plus I can't think of anything else to say right now. Other than I'm slowly discovering what they say about February being the slowest month is true. I'm getting decent traffic (for my sites, nothing like in the hundreds per day) but no one's buying, and very few are clicking on Adsense even. I haven't seen CTR this low in a looooooooooooooooong time. Oh well, thankfully there's only 28 days this month! lol

Have a great week everyone!

Tara :)

Quick note

2006-02-01T22:25:00.000-05:00

Here's January's money: $392.27. Not as good as December, duh, but not horrible. Not looking good so far this month, the earnings are way down the last few days. Oh well, just means I gotta get the next sites out asap :)

Tara :)

Finally...

2006-01-31T21:39:00.000-05:00

It's only taken me about a month to write, edit and post these articles. I have been the epitome of laziness of late - even worse than usual. But, they are done, with hopefully more to come. While these articles don't directly relate to my affiliate products on the travel site, I consider them complimentary articles that I hope the visitors will enjoy. And I HAVE been thinking (thank you Colin) about making this site more about travel in general than just travel accessories, so maybe the travel insurance article will come in handy one day.

Here they are, exciting as usual:

5 Best Camping Destinations in the U.S.
5 Best U.S. Honeymoon Destinations
5 Worst Vacation Destinations
Tips for Parents to Avoid Hearing The Dreaded "Are We There Yet?"
Tips and Tricks for Your First International Trip!
Tips for A Stress Free Vacation
Do You REALLY Need Travel Insurance?

I'd like to say thanks for the lovely comments I got on my last post. While I have to say thank you Jen, I cheated - that pic is pretty old. I don't have any decent, clear pics of me in the last 5 years :) I'm probably 50 lbs heavier now than in that pic.. lol And thanks for the tip J.R. - I'm even having problems with adding 1 hour a day, but I'm trying. I'd love to do 2, but my brain is so tired at the end of the day from working (easy but repetitive and sometimes complicated dealing with numbers like 231.476598 all day long) that it's difficult to motivate myself sometimes... or actually, every day. 2.5 months to go!! lol Liz, it's so nice to hear that my 1 off rants are appreciated - I sometimes feel a little guilty about them :) And yes, the carrot cake is awesome, much better than the chocolate, but still nowhere near as good as the chocolate mousse ;)

I just wish there were more hours in the day and that in 2006 it was as easy to make a living at this as 2001/2. Hearing Colin talk about the early days and his income really made me stop and realise that those days are gone. Reading his VEO Report probably made that even worse... but in a good way. I mean, it's a given that we can all still make money, but the easy SEO manipulation days are GONE. This means for us that while we can probably still achieve the "guru" level of income now, it's going to take a lot more work and really keeping up with what people like Matt Cutts (aka GoogleGuy on some forums, at least that's what most people suspect and even if not, a high level Goog engineer) have to say, and truly building sites for our visitors, rather than the SE's. Easier said than done though when everything you learnt says the opposite. But, that said, everything that Colin says is true, at least based on what I've been reading in the last few months. You should definitely check out his VEO Report, it's worth every penny. It will give you a great new jumping off point - ESPECIALLY if you're a James Martell follower, and even if you're not.

On that note, back to do a little more work before bed. Happy hump day!

Tara :)

Congratulations Vicky!

2006-01-29T00:47:00.000-05:00

Did you call everyone you knew when you realized you'd made your first sale? I did! lol And hell, .58 or $58 - it doesn't matter, it's a SALE! Besides, better to start small and grow - my first commission was for $30 and I haven't hit that big again, I'm spoiled now! I was so happy to read that the other day, keep up the great work :)

Other than sharing Vicky's news with the world, not much has been happening around here. I have been really tired all week for no good reason. I went to bed early every night, even as early as 9:30 - and I only get up at 8:30 in the morning for goodness sakes! Maybe it's the job - I find just as I start to think I can handle 3 more months, something comes up that gets me thisclose to walking out the door right then and there. It seems that the company in general is run by monkeys (I'm being polite) and even immediate management are often pretty stupid. And the decision making process leaves a lot to be desired - if the issue requiring a decision hasn't gone through 12 different tries, it seems it's not valid. Honestly, there was one issue that changed 3 times IN AN HOUR. I'm all for adaptability (ok, no I'm not) but COME ON PEOPLE! My new mantra these days seems to be "less than 3 months to go, less than 3 months to go..." which would apply to the date the contract is up.

The reason I look forward to April 17th is based on what a former employee of this company told me... it seems that our "record of employment", which is submitted to Employment Insurance (otherwise known as unemployment insurance everywhere else) doesn't list WHY a contract ended, simply that it's over. Which is a qualifying factor to get it. They don't ask WHO didn't renew the contract (in this case MOI) so I will be able to hopefully get unemployment for a year - which of course means that I get to work on my sites for a year. Whooooooopeeeeeeeee! I have realized since going to Affiliate Summit that I will never be able to grow my empire to an income replacing level unless I work on it full time. This of course is just me - YMMV. I think this is reflected of late (or the last 3.5 months, whatever) in my "I just don't FEEL like it" attitude I've had towards my sites. I have TONS of fantastic ideas - I even registered a new domain this week, bad bad me - I just lack the energy and drive most days. This of course stems from the feeling that I ALREADY worked that day - at the stupid day job. Which doesn't advance my sites any, though I do try and get a little done at work when I can.

All of this to say, of course, I need it to be April 17th please. NOW. Because by then I should probably be able to start going camping again, which I desperately miss. Especially after visiting the trailer today, on the way to going shopping across the border for impossible to find in Canada items, like any and all Weight Watchers' foods. Which I have decided to attempt again, based on my best bud's recent success with it. Those of you who have either seen recent pictures or met me in Vegas know that I need it... lol Those of you who HAVEN'T seen pics or met me, don't expect any, anytime soon. I'm the least photogenic person you've ever met, even when I was at a decent weight. Ok, now I'm just babbling because it's 1 am, which is past my new bedtime these days. I do apologize to the 2 or 3 of you still reading this. Of course, if you've read the description of this blog you may have noticed the "rants about everyday stuff part."

Ok, I'm really really done boring you to death now. Hope your weekend is and will continue to be fabulous, I'm off to bed now!

Tara :)

Hopefully the last you'll hear about the Summit for now...

2006-01-18T22:09:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I left off Sunday night. Not much happened, I was exhausted and sore, so when I went to dump some stuff in my room after the networking and lay down to rest my back for a few minutes and woke up Monday morning, I wasn't too surprised.. lol I really needed the rest. You'd really be surprised at how even 3 hours can make a difference when it comes to jet lag!

Monday morning came around and I grabbed a bite to eat and went to the first session of the day, the Keynote speech by Corey Newhouse and a fabulous session with Anne Holland of Marketing Sherpa. Check out (there's still a day or 2 left) this link - it will show you the slides we saw and a lot of what Anne said at the session. Fascinating information about industry financials, email lists, untapped niches and more. Next up was Declan Dunn who was perhaps mis-scheduled for the first session since I think we were all still too tired for his boisterous but awesome presentation on how to create buzz marketing with blogs and podcasts.

Then it was lunch time with some lovely salads, cold cuts and cheeses (and some desserts which I didn't partake of) courtesy of the Summit. Much more networking ensued of course until the next session with James Martell. I was expecting to know quite a bit of what he was going to say already, but I was wrong. I knew all of what he said already. I found it a fairly dry session as well full of technical glitches. More useful for my friends who don't follow him than me.

That ended up being my last session of the day as the other ones weren't really useful to me. So after visiting with everyone at the Cafe Press booth, it was back to my room for a quick nap and getting ready for the Shareasale party at the Palms. It was held in the Celebration suite, and for those of you who are "The Real World" fans, this is where the Las Vegas version of the show was filmed. Also, if you've heard of the show "Inked" about a tattoo parlour (don't watch either of them myself) the Palms also houses this show and while we were waiting for everyone we got to see quite a bit of the show being filmed. Pretty cool stuff! The party was much more fun though. Seems there was some yummy food though I had just eaten downstairs so I skipped it, but the free booze was nice! We sat around and chatted for a while until I finally grabbed Colin's attention, which I've already told you about :) So after chatting and gambling for hours, most of us headed back to Bally's around 4-5 am (memory fuzzy about the time) and went to bed. Some of my new friends stayed behind to gamble till around 6:30 am so I heard - crazy shit!

I knew due to the late hour there was NO way I was making it to the first session - or the 2nd as it turns out - so I decided to sleep in a bit. After getting up to tell Eric about my night, I spotted Andrea online and sent her a huge thanks for bugging me to talk to Colin. At this point, she decided to call her friend Rob who's standing at a booth in the exhibit hall to tell him about me. HE then calls me and says, well, come meet me, John, Jim and Gary in my room. Knowing that he meant Gary ANTOSH (guru of web content, not just creating it, but buying it) and that John was someone from one of the forums I frequent, I RACED my way across the hotel to the south tower. At that point I entered an awesome, fantastic, amazing conversation with all 4 men, but mainly Gary and John (after Jim and Rob decided to go eat) that lasted probably around 2 hours. Wow, did I ever learn TONS of new ways to write articles - that will definitely help. Plus Gary gave me some great advice when it comes to hiring authors and using PLR articles (he gets 3 THOUSAND a month - see Chrissie, you're not that bad!!) that I can't wait to put into play!! Just as soon as I kick this damn infection, though I am writing this from work right now, I'm going to be getting back into my sites with full energy as I've got a BUNCH of great ideas for sites I want to get off the ground NOW.

Anyway, back to the Summit. The only session I really attended on Tuesday was one that was supposed to be with Rosalind Gardner, Super Affiliate, and the one session I REALLY wanted to attend the entire summit - but for whatever reason, she cancelled and was replaced by Joel Comm. I have to admit, I wasn't happy when I heard that, but I was pleasantly surprised by the presentation that followed. Joel was a very entertaining and informative speaker and I have to say I was impressed at his openess by picking apart both the back and front end of one of his sites. We got probably full access to everything about that site. Which of course is not to say I'm going to go out and recreate what he did, but there are certainly bits and pieces that I can apply across my own sites. Really cool stuff.

After that I headed back over to the CP booth for a while, hung out with Warren and eventually sat at the back of the ballroom with Matt, Jen and Adam (truly, check out their sites, they've got some awesome products, some of which I'm buying myself!) just discussing things we'd learned and the people we'd met. Good times. After that it was basically run and get ready for the Chocolate party at the Wynn hosted by oneNetwork and PartnerCentric (2 great companies) and then off we went. Awesome party with fantastic open bar, chocolate like I've never seen and a good band. We all got a little too drunk I think (or at least I got WAY too drunk) and when the party was over we headed to a bar in the Wynn where I stayed until the room started spinning and headed back to Bally's. All in all, I had a phenomenal time, much better than I had hoped for even! The only part I could've done without was the disastrous flights home I had (every plane I LOOKED at was delayed, even after being re-routed because I was going to miss my connection and we got home 3 hours late) but even at that, not enough of a negative to not go again... just not for a month or 2 ;)

I can tell you the thing that I look the most forward to when I start making some real money is traveling. I LOVE traveling. And I can't wait to take Eric to Vegas, with or without a reason, because I had such a great time. I can NOT stress it enough though to all of you conference noobs - start saving your money NOW. If I can I'm going to try and go to CJU in September. I don't know if I'll be able to do both the Summit in July AND CJU and if I can only do 1, that's fine. But CJU is a little cheaper and it will offer a different perspective of people and place that I'd like to experience. No matter what though, I GUARANTEE that Affiliate Summit West '06 is not my last conference, only the first of many to come. I hope I'll see all my blogging buddies at the next one, whichever/wherever that may be! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email me or leave me a comment. Now this entry is quite long enough, so that's it for today, hope you've enjoyed the chronicles of my trip!

Tara :)

A little more to tell

2006-01-16T12:15:00.000-05:00

Ok, well, I'm still feeling like shit (to put it mildly I think the next time I cough my lungs may suddenly come flying through that new hole in my ribs) to the point where I stayed home today, so please don't expect anything resembling Pulitzer Prize quality. Thank you all for the well wishes, hope they start rubbing off really soon! Here goes. I thought if I went step by step it might be easier than remembering things out of order.

Other than arriving way too early at the airport everything went very smoothly in terms of the flights, though there was a hairy moment in Newark where I had to go through security again (changed gates) and I thought I might miss my flight, but other than that, we even arrived early in Vegas. For those of you who haven't been yet, I doubt you'll ever see an international airport closer to the downtown area. Honestly, I'd probably vote Las Vegas' downtown area as most likely to be crashed into -- even on the ground it's about 5-7 from the airport to the strip. Very cool! Oh, and if you end up going, check and see if your hotel allows check-in at the airport - I had my room key and got early check-in, all I had to do was go straight upstairs! (If you stay at Bally's INSIST on the rooms in the North tower. I saw both N & S tower rooms and it's very true that the North ones are much nicer.)

So upon arrival in my room, I sat down, hooked up the net, let Eric know I hadn't died or anything and called Debbie from Cafe Press. I headed down to her room where I met all those people I told you about in the first entry and we went for a champagne brunch. Bad idea on an empty stomach as you never get to see the bottom of your glass until you leave the restaurant! I think almost all of us were tipsy to outright drunk! lol Our waitress was funny also, hiding people's food on them and stuff :P

After that we hung out in a lounge for a while at which point I decided to go take a nap for a bit since I was pretty much running on fumes at that point. When I got up and got ready, it was time for a bit of a nosh, at Nosh, a sandwich joint in the hotel and then gambling time. We started by gambling at Bally's until Debbie got back from a show which is when we hit the Stratosphere hotel. This is the one with the rides on the top. Check it out - you couldn't PAY me to ride the rides or look out off the roof, but then again I'm terrified of heights :) After that we hung out at The Top Of The World (restaurant and bar) until we closed the place and then it was off to the Palms (which is where the show Inked is filmed) to gamble more. I did quite well for a while but then lost it all - but I had a blast so that's all that counts.

Sunday was get up late day (around 11 am) but after I got up we hardly stopped as we set up the Cafe Press booth for the show most of the afternoon. I had just enough time to take a quick nap, shower and eat before it was time for the conference to begin at 8 pm with Speed Networking. Now, I signed up for this and put names of people I wanted to meet like a good girl and I'm assuming others did the same with me because I had 8 names on my list. Of those 8 however, 3 showed up. I also blew one off but because I had 2 meetings set up with the same company (I did that just in case I didn't get matched with one of them) and Jen had someone interesting on her list in one of my redundant spots. I asked the 2nd guy to offer my apologies to the first at least :) Kind of annoyed me though when I SAW at another meeting one of the people I was supposed to meet and she acknowledged it and subsequently didn't show. Some people have a lot of nerve.

On the upside though, I met someone very interesting at all the no show tables and even 1 FANTASTIC contact for a new merchant that I never would've met otherwise. I mean, I met the PR guy who kept chasing me the next few days so I could properly meet the Aff Manager - which I did finally on the last day. (He was also on my plane but wasn't sitting near me.) Their stuff will fit across several of my active and upcoming sites which is awesome - plus the aff manager hinted that a better commission could be negotiated for some products where there is a better margin. So if their stuff does well for me (and it will from the sounds of it) it could pay the cost of the trip right there!

On that note, this entry is quite long enough again, so I'll leave you with, next installment will include details of Day 1 and Day 2 sessions, though by day 2 I wasn't attending much anymore.. lol Hope you're all having a better day than me!

Tara :)

A day or 2 more

2006-01-14T15:09:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the delay in posting more about the Summit, I have spent most of the last 18 hours in bed with a fever of 103 and a scary, scary cough. Needless to say, I'm in no shape to write intelligently. So please be patient!

Tara :(

Wow, I cannot wait for the next Affiliate Summit!

2006-01-12T13:48:00.000-05:00

To all my readers – start saving NOW for the next Affiliate Summit. If you can’t manage to go in June, I just read today on Affiliate Tip that there will be another one early 2007 in Vegas again. If you’re a Vegas virgin like me, make a point to go to that one – Vegas is a trip!! Except for all the flying (I’m typing this on my last plane of the day, that’s a whole other story) I would go at least once a month – now someone just needs to figure out teleporting for me.

I think if I cover even just the really high points it will still take me a few days to cover everything, but I’ll do my best. First and foremost I have to thank Deb Carney from CafePress.com who introduced me to a bunch of great people, some of whom have now become friends, like Jen, Matt and Adam – last names removed to protect the guilty ;) I spent most of my awake time with those four and honestly, I KNOW it wouldn’t have been nearly as fun without them.

What I learned at the Summit has to do a lot with who I met. I mean, there were a couple of great sessions (Joel Comm replacing Rosalind Gardner at the last minute was very cool) and some not so great sessions (James Martell’s was full of glitches and he seemed nervous and it was repetitive for a student of his) but the best stuff I learned was from informal networking. I think the best contact I made (who’s now a friend!) is Colin McDougall. If you’re a JM follower you probably know that Colin is one of James’ original live class students. Andrea who knows him quite well, as well as BJ both, have told me that Colin is a super nice guy and Andrea urged me to go say hi at the Summit.

I didn’t actually see him till the ShareaSale party Monday night and only around midnight but after he was done chatting with JM (I was 10 ft away from JM most of the night but I didn’t talk to him) I screwed up the courage to go say hi to Colin. From word one he was the friendliest, chattiest and most gracious person I’ve met in a long time. We ended up talking about the business (and other random Canadian stuff since we’re both Canucks) for somewhere around 4 hours, give or take. (Much alcohol involved also so memory slightly fuzzy.) As it turns out I now can ask Colin a question anytime – with his permission. One great thing we were talking about was his new gameplan which is to help people. And the product of that is a great ebook called the VEO report. This is not an affiliate link but still, I urge you to go pick up Colin’s stuff!

There’s so much more to tell, but at this point it’s so long and it’s almost time to start thinking about putting away the laptop. So the continuation of this will be tomorrow… or today, depending on when I get a chance to post this. Please send me any questions you might have about the Summit or anything else I’ve left out, I’ll answer them in the blog. Good night!

Tara :)

2006-01-10T07:06:00.000-05:00

It's now 4 am on day 3 of the summit and this was written before I got on my first plane... I was hoping to blog more, but I have barely been in my room but to sleep. So enjoy this and more about the summit when I get home!

By the time I post this I’ll be in Las Vegas, but it’s right now 5:33 in the morning and I’ve just gone through the security screening (with flying colours) and I’m now waiting to board – which only starts at 6:05. You may think that a half hour isn’t that long, but I’ve been at the Burlington airport since about 3:40 a.m. – 3 hours early. Oops. But when you’re driving over 2 hours to get to an airport in mostly rural-ish areas in January, you leave EARLY. So now, I figured I’d blog. Well, at least, I’m typing this entry in Word… lol No wireless ‘net here sadly. Otherwise I’d probably be playing poker ;)

So, other than being exhausted (so forgive any spelling or grammatical errors) and so very excited, there’s not much to tell. I still can’t wait to quit my job, and truly get back into this full time, hell, even part-time. This week there was just no work going on. No time between laundry, packing and shopping for the trip. But I have a bunch of great ideas and I’m sure I’ll just be bursting with more by the time I get back. So here’s what’s going on at the conference:

Saturday, meeting and hanging with Deb who I met at EcomXpo and some of her affiliates and friends. Sunday I’ll be helping her set up her booth, then there’s a speed networking session which I’m totally looking forward to. Monday and Tuesday it’s session after session with a couple of networking sessions/parties thrown in. Wednesday is fly home time. If you want to see more details, visit http://www.affiliatesummit.com – maybe it will inspire you to save your pennies and make your way to the next one. I’ve heard a few rumours that it will be in Orlando this summer. I’ll be moving heaven and earth to go again, I can already feel what a good time I’m going to have and how much I’m going to learn. I’m also REALLY hoping to attend CJU this year. We’ll see where I’m at this summer.

Well, I’m sure I’ve bored you all to death by now, so I’ll stop, but keep an eye out for some more posts from Las Vegas, I’ll try and make time to tell you a little bit about my day every night. Take care, cross your fingers for safe flights for me and have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Tara :)

Forgot to mention

2006-01-02T14:03:00.000-05:00

December's total - just under $500. Not what I was hoping for, but still my best month. Here's hoping that Dec '06 brings another zero to that total - for all of us! :)

Tara :)

Thank you Chrissie, and Happy New Year everyone!

2006-01-01T13:43:00.000-05:00

Ok, so that thank you is kind of double edged - but only jokingly. A very sincere thank you is sent out to Chrissie who was kind enough to share some of her wondeful new idea for making more money. One or two I'll share with you since you can find them anywhere - but the rest of them I must keep secret about as I promised. The joking part about it not being a real thank you (which it truly is) is because now I have SO MANY ideas to build up current sites and create some new ones that I now don't know where to start! Seriously though I've got months of work ahead of me and I can't wait - I just need to stop being so tired and lazy after work and just GET TO IT instead of slacking off.

So here's one big idea that might help some of you who don't troll the forums all that much. Those who do, sorry for the repeated obvious :) It's called PLR articles. PLR stands for Private Label Rights. This is how they work: generally, you sign up to a website with a monthly membership fee - the cheapest I've seen is $24.95 and the highest (that I would consider) is $67. There are more expensive ones out there, but I think you might be paying more for the name that is running them. For this fee, the site gives you a guaranteed number of articles in a set number of niches every month. Some might be useful to you, some not - but you keep the ones that aren't immediately applicable to your sites for perhaps future sites. And since you get so many articles (usually from 100-300 per month) it literally works out to pennies per article.

What I like about the idea (and when I get back from Las Vegas I'll be joining a couple) is that even if I can't use everything right away it might trigger some ideas for new sites. And the BEST thing about these articles (which was a concern of mine when I first read about them) is that you can do virtually anything you like with them. Obviously you'll rewrite and tweak them somewhat so they aren't like the other people's version of the same article, you can compile e-books, you can submit them to article directories (if you change them enough) and so on. And some of these PLR sites even offer niche products like graphics included in the price. Here is a list of a few I am considering joining: (no final decisions yet)

http://www.infogoround.com/
http://www.readymadecontent.com/
http://www.niche-content-packages.com/
http://www.contentattack.com/
http://www.articlechief.com/articlechiefspecial.html

If you look closely you'll see which one Chrissie recommended most to me :) There were a few other suggestions and ideas she gave me, but those are closely guarded secrets at her request. Do some searching around the net though for products to help affiliates - there's so much out there you'll find yourself drooling over everything! lol

So, besides that, not much else going on... we had an interesting New Year's Eve - we decided to go out for dinner before going to a party, but didn't realize that we had signed up for a 7 course meal to be served over many hours until we had opened our bottle of wine. There went the party! Great food, huge bill, but worth it. We got home in time to have another glass of champagne (one was included with the meal) and watch the ball drop. Then we played in a poker tournament until bed time - mine was 2:00 since I fell out rather early, his was 3:30, finishing in the top 30 - but no money :( Not necessarily how I would've planned it, especially with the bad cliche dj/kareoke singer they had at the restaurant, but not horrible :P Hope everyone had a lovely night, and I wish you all nothing but your best year yet - health, wisdom and wealth :)

Tara :)

It's a been a long while

2005-12-23T23:20:00.000-05:00

I shouldn't have left you... (song reference there)

But I'm back, and I'm starting to get back on track when it comes to my sites. I've had a great month in terms of sales and Adsense (beats all records, but nowhere near 1K or anything) and while I like my job, I've decided to turn down extending the contract at the end of the 6 months and go on unemployment so I can work on my sites.

Speaking of my sites, hopefully Monday and Tuesday I'll get myself organized, or rather finish getting myself organized and write up a few articles at work next week. Maybe even enough to put the 2 new sites up by Saturday night. Don't hold your breath, but you never know... Honestly though, I PROMISE that they will be live by the end of January, my 1 year mark in this business.

Hopefully the Affiliate Summit will help that along, though everyone is telling me that I'll be so inspired I won't know what to do first. Whether or not that's true remains to be seen, but hell, as long as I get a small vaca out of it and learn at least 1 or 2 new things (I'm sure it will be MUCH more than 1 or 2!!) I'll be happy.

Unfortunately, being that it is now 11:30 pm on Christmas Eve Eve (the 23rd) and I still have 2-3 loads of laundry to go, plus packing for myself, Eric and the dogs, getting the presents ready, getting my contribution to dinner ready, and so on, I should probably skedaddle. So on that note, a heartfelt Happy Holidays and a Merry Chrishannuzaa to all of you and yours. May you find all you wished for in Santa's ear under the tree :)

Tara :)

STEPH WAS ROBBED

2005-12-11T22:32:00.000-05:00

Period. Judd (though obviously dumber than he appeared on t.v.) was right - all Danni did was skate her way through. As far as I am concerned she owes Steph and Rafe a shit load of money. To me there's no honour in playing or winning a game by letting everyone else do your dirty work. Oh, and I HAVE to stay, it was obviously a 6-1 vote - thank you to the 6 people for showing why it's a good thing that the audience doesn't vote, because you jackasses would've been long gone if it were up to us. And hey, if any of my readers happen to ever see any of the 6 that voted for Steph, bitch slap 'em for me, k?

Rant over. Too pissed to say anything else. Night.

Tara :(((((

(heavily edited after some calming down, email/pm me should you ever want to hear my TRUE thoughts on many of the cast members)

Light at the end of the tunnel

2005-12-04T23:46:00.000-05:00

Finally! This week (and hopefully longer, but it looks good) I am working 10:30-6:30 - EXACTLY what I wanted. No more being late because of traffic (in the last 2 weeks there's been 2 snow laden rush hours and freezing rain), sleeping in to a decent hour and hopefully less tired so I can actually get some work done. Another plus, Eric is interviewing for a couple jobs that look like they'll pay quite a bit more than he's getting now - and I (ok, we) decided that if it's enough, once we've paid our debts down a little, I'll be back to working from home full time. Not that I don't love my job, it's a good job, fun, easy and great people - but it's still a J.O.B.

Anyway, I'm sure a few of you are interested in November's total. I'll tell you, it was a good month in terms of affiliate sales from my sites - 6. Adsense wasn't bad either, and I had a few blog sales too. I think a combination of the holiday season starting plus my sites starting to finally peak out (slightly, nothing to get THAT excited about) of the sandbox helped. The last week of Adsense helped a lot too. And I can't WAIT to see this month's total - so far (still early, I know) my daily average is higher than ever before, and I'm loving it! So anyway, last month's total is roughly $320. Still not where I'd like to be, but it will certainly help defray the expenses of the Vegas trip! And if you consider I've virtually done nothing on my sites, very nice passive income.

So, basically this week is going to be devoted to figuring out what I can do at work since it's fairly quiet most days and since I'll have 2 hours a day that management won't be there :) We'll see what happens.

On another note - I apologize for not blogging more. Honestly though, the exhaustion combined with no work leads to a boring entry. And even if I were to blog more about my life, it would be equally boring, as I have no life anyway. So, until I have something to say or next Sunday, have a great week and I hope your sites are making you lots and lots of money!

Tara :)

So here's what's new

2005-11-27T23:15:00.000-05:00

Let's start with some old articles that hadn't been published:

If You Need A Gift For A Tea Lover, What About A Tea Pot?
Steak Gifts Are Easy And Cheap
Inexpensive Gourmet Meals - Cheap, Easy And Delicious!
Lamb And Meat Gifts - Unusual And Delicious
Mail Order Italian Meats - Delicious, Easy And Fun!
Steak And Lobster Gift Packs - How Do You Choose The Best Ones?

Besides that, I got caught up on all my link exchanges and emails, as far as I can tell. Linkmetro makes it easy since 90% of the link exchanges are C R A P. I had a few random ones too, most of which I discarded. I can't remember who it was, but they had a valid point - if you're going to bloody request an unsolicited link exchange, why the HELL haven't you put my link up first??? Anyway... lol That's about it. Slowly but surely I'm getting slightly less homicidal every morning, but I still can't wait until us "new hires" are taken off the "priority" queue (i.e. we get all calls that come in while the rest of the office sits on their hands unless it's busy). Once I'm off this queue, I'm hoping to get a 10-6 or 1030-630 shift which will allow me to sleep to a more humane hour, which will in turn allow me to perhaps not take a nap 4 out of 5 nights a week. And should THAT ever happen (sometimes I have my doubts) then maybe, just MAYBE I can get back to working on my sites.

At this point, the likelyhood of even being up to 6 is slim. But hell, the tradeoff of going to my first ever affiliate conference should be well worth it - even if just for "vacation" sake. I do expect it to be MUCH more than that though - meeting people I've been chatting with for ages, (can't WAIT to meet Andrea from GoldenPineCone - check out the templates! ) and Deb Carney who I met at EcomXpo (she doesn't blog) and the one and only Shawn Collins who created Affiliate Summit. I have to admit it though - lately, I just haven't even FELT like working on my sites. I'm kind of in the mindframe of "I'm ALREADY working!" - but this isn't going to get more money in. And more than I'm making now would be really handy, though I'm not complaining... just saying ;)

Let's see, on the not job/sites front, we put up our Christmas tree in the basement tonight. I'll post a pic as soon as the batteries are done charging for the digital camera. The kids (dogs and cats) are still as bratty and adorable as ever, I still don't want to kill Eric (only first thing in the morning, sometimes) and I still miss camping, but there's a while to go on that yet... lol Saw Lord of War and Harry Potter last week, both were great, but if you're a true Harry Potter fan (i.e. you've read the books, and more than once) you'll be dissecting what was missing and changed from the book - but it's better than the last movie :)

I guess that's about it for now. Maybe this week I can get some articles written for the 2 sites!

Tara :)

Happy Thankgiving!

2005-11-24T07:49:00.000-05:00

To all my American friends and readers, Happy Gobble Gobble day!

Tara :)

Affiliate Summit

2005-11-21T22:49:00.000-05:00

Does anyone want to go? I know a way you can get a free pass, however you'll need to figure out your plane ticket to Las Vegas and the hotel is $139/night (half if you split it with me!) but hey, the ticket is worth $1500!

It will take about 15 minutes of writing, but I'm even willing to help - you just need to be free from January 8-10 (I'm checking out the 11th) for the conference. If you're interested in the free ticket, send me an email at support AT a1-travel-accessories.com asap and I'll give you the details.

Hope to hear from y'all soon!

Tara :)

I swear I'm trying...

2005-11-13T23:29:00.000-05:00

I managed to do a bunch of link exchanges and email responding this weekend, finally. And now, training is over at work and it becomes just a regular job, so it should be reasonably easy to get back to work this week. I'll have to go through all my keyword lists since they were basically torn up and spilled on and trampled upon over the last month, shame on me. That won't happen again.

With the month long break, there's just no way (even with outsourcing, which is getting postponed) I'll have 10 sites live in 1.5 months. I HOPE 7 or 8, but more realistically it will be 6. However, if I'm a little easier on myself, getting 10 live by my 1 year anniversary, around February 15th, is slightly more doable. We'll see, but you know what - they're MY goals and I'll adjust them if I want ;) Seriously, I'm happy with the money I'm making right now (it's on it's way up this month again... slowly) and if takes me longer to get what I want, so be it.

The good news is the reason the outsourcing is being outsourced: I'm headed to Affiliate Summit 2006, and I can't be happier. I don't think work is thrilled with the idea, but screw them, I'm on contract. So anyway, basically all available funds are being diverted to flight and hotel costs, not to mention shopping for some nice clothes to wear there :) If any of my readers are going, or know anyone who is (ESPECIALLY someone who needs a roomate) let me know, it would be awesome to hook up and say hi. Andrea from Golden Pine Cone Templates (and her hubby) are going, so if any of you would like to meet one of the NICEST (truly) people in affiliate marketing, go sign up now!

I guess that's about it for now. Here's hoping that now that training is over there will be a return to regular(ish) blogging and more importantly, WORK!

Have a great week!

Tara :)

I am still exhausted

2005-11-02T20:43:00.000-05:00

I apologize for my lack of entries. I realize it's a crappy way to treat my loyal readers, and it's not from any disrespect, I assure you. It's from sheer exhaustion. Honestly though, the closest I've come to working since I started the new job (going very very well on a side note) is going through a scary few days trying to find a new friend I made through affiliate marketing, Chrissie. She lives near Fort Lauderdale and her area was very badly hit by Hurricane Wilma. She has power but no internet still, but there were several of us trying to find information before we finally heard from her towards the end of last week.

Other than that, I've managed to sort my email a little bit, but not much else. I don't have the energy at the end of the day between the lack of sleep and the volume of information I'm picking up in training. The stock market is interesting but daunting - and we're barely scratching the service. Life should be reasonably back to normal in the next couple weeks, so hopefully I can get back to working on new sites. In the meantime, being that this is mainly a blog about my travels through the affiliate marketing world, there's obviously not much to say. Even on a personal level I'm just watching a little tv and going to bed most nights.. lol So for a little while longer, there won't be much to say on here.

However, the least I can do is give you my October totals. The money was still down, but it's on it's way back up. But, thank goodness I got a job, because I wouldn't have been able to pay the bills December 1st either :) All told, unless I forgot something, I made about $315 last month. Nowhere near where I want to be, but it's better than nothing, for sure! I hope everyone else's totals were high last month too!

Back to Law and Order (oh how I love time shifting on the satelite dish!) and then back to bed! Take care and I'll see you soon :)

Tara :)

I am exhausted

2005-10-18T20:10:00.000-04:00

Getting up at 6 am is killing me. I am a nightowl, so getting to bed early is difficult. Getting enough sleep seems virtually impossible at the moment. The job seems cool and fairly easy thankfully. Anyway, as soon as I can stop taking a nap when I walk in the door, I promise I'll get some work done and blog it :)

Tara :)

I GOT A JOB!!!

2005-10-14T16:22:00.000-04:00

Woooooooooooooooooooo hooooooooooooooooooooo!

Customer service, decent salary and best of all, it's downtown and starts Monday! Outsourcing, here I come. Just gotta figure out how often I get paid and I'm on my way! Sounds like a great place to work too, more on that in the coming weeks :)

So now, I think the first order of business is figuring out which sites I'm going to outsource for. I think I'll start with a new one and get all the basic content out of the way (product pages, basic articles) to get it up and running. Then do the same for a bunch more.. lol At this rate, it shouldn't be a problem to have my 10 sites live by December 31st. Heck, maybe more! lol

And yes, I'm STILL working on getting the 2 new related sites live. I'm getting closer, but I have been busy with other obvious matters and with Eric alone at work, he just doesn't have the time to help right now. I know that a job is going to spur me into motion though, it already has a little. I cleaned up all my link exchange requests and emails as well as looked into a few promos that I was contacted about through eComXpo. A friend also gave me some articles she wrote (with permission to rewrite) and I've been going through those a little, deciding what I'm going to do with them. That will help bulk up one of my sites quite a bit.

So tonight off to my favorite restaurant for dinner with the hubby and rents (it's very close to where the rents live) to celebrate. Tomorrow mama's gonna buy a new pair of shoes too - partly out of necessity and partly out of just plain wanting to! lol Have a great weekend all!

Tara :)

I'm back

2005-10-11T00:16:00.000-04:00

Back from camping (trailer's closed up, just have to go back to get big things next weekend), back from eComXpo, back to looking for a job. Kind of a let down.

First and foremost, I have to say, WOW about eComXpo. Honestly, if you can get a free pass for the next one great, but if not, pay. Simply put, if you're really serious about your business and can't afford $50 (that's the early bird price, I'm not sure if the next one will be the same) start saving NOW. The next one is the beginning of April.

There were tons of great presentations, some fantastically awful ones (i.e. buy my stuff NOW) but the great ones taught me a LOT. Especially about PPC and possibly opening my own webstore. But I think the best part about the conference were the tons of emails, chats and vcards that led to some fantastic new affiliate marketing friends. I guess I should also mention that through all these communications I also found some new affiliate networks, ppc networks and even started promoting a few new products.

Honestly, though I was so exhausted by the end of it (didn't get enough sleep 2 days in a row) I slept about 10 hours, I wouldn't trade that time for the world! And I SOOOOOO can't wait to get to an offline conference! So make sure that you go to either the next eComXpo or Affiliate Summit or CJU, I really do get what everyone says now about them!

Ok, well, on to financials. Happily this month is doing MUCH better than last. Today is my best day in a month and a half, easily, just in Adsense. I also have a few sales. I don't know if I'll finish the month as high as August since I had a rocky start, but if only I could get this month's earnings this month, I wouldn't have to be out looking for a job. Well, at least not for the bills anyway. I know I need a job to outsource though, so a job it will be!

I guess that's about it for now. Don't forget, if you have a normal, non-spammy blog more than 2 months old that you regularly update and enjoy No Limit Texas Hold 'Em, see below! (non-aff link)

I have registered to play in the
Online Poker Blogger Championship!

This event is powered by PokerStars.

Registration code: 9466825

Tara :)

Mostly slacking

2005-10-06T00:31:00.000-04:00

I've done some work on the 2 new sites, mainly template tweaks, but I got 2 of the 10 articles done. I'm trying to get Eric to help, but he's so busy at work this week it's unlikely to happen. Now with eComXpo starting in the morning and lasting until Saturday afternoon and Thanksgiving weekend, there's no way that I'll get the sites live this week.

I had a good line on a job, but they haven't called me back - and it's supposed to start on Tuesday. Keep your fingers crossed because this is a pretty good job! Other than that, not much new. I have a few sales in the last few days, one for (feel free to laugh) 32 cents. Better than nothing I guess, right? lol

I just realized that it's October 6th and I haven't given you last month's incredibly disappointing numbers. Traffic and income were both down, about half. Adsense was $176.54 and everything else was just over $50. Bloody depressing I tell you. So far this month isn't bad, but it's mostly blog sales keeping me afloat - Adsense's daily average is lower than September. This is not helping to convince everyone that this is a viable business. It's gotta get better soon, right?

Those of you at eComXpo - enjoy, maybe we'll even see each other!

Tara :)

Poker Stars

2005-10-04T14:39:00.000-04:00

Does anyone who reads my blog and has their own blog enjoy playing poker for free? Well, consider joining Poker Stars and enter their Bloggers Tournament! There's lots of cool prizes including an entry into a World Poker Tour tournament at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. Check it out!

I have registered to play in the
Online Poker Blogger Championship!

This event is powered by PokerStars.

Registration code: 9466825

Almost done

2005-09-29T05:00:00.000-04:00

Both home pages and all product pages are now done. Meta tags and most tweaks as well. All that's left is about 10 articles (Eric's agreed to write 5, yay!) a few final touches, and by the end of next week, these 2 sites should be live. Then I think on to the next 2. I'm hoping with all these sites live (and the 5 jobs I applied for today) I'll be generating enough money to outsource the rest of the articles for all my sites. Not all at the same time, obviously; there will be bills to pay - but a good start. These are my small dreams at the moment, anyway...

I also hope to start having enough time to actually clean my house. I don't think it's been FULLY clean, the whole house at the same time, in over a year. After closing the trailer last year we had so many other things to catch up on and then after Christmas I started looking for, finding and working like a mad woman on my business. This hasn't really stopped yet. So maybe, JUST MAYBE, my house will be clean enough that I can actually have people over to visit. It's been a long while.

Well, I suppose my 5 am ramblings have bored y'all enough now. I think just one more game of poker and then bed. Happy Thursday!

Tara :)

It's funny

2005-09-27T14:18:00.000-04:00

Yesterday's title was "I'm so not in the mood" which was true. I'm not again today. The thing is, I wrote 2 home pages and 10 product pages yesterday... lol I have 5 product pages to go, then 5 articles each site and then I go live. So if I keep the hustle up you might, MAYBE see the new sites this week. Of course, I'm much anal retentive and must perfect everything first so it's more likely gonna be next week. Still exciting though - I'll have 6 sites started! Just need to find a job now so I can hire writers!

Financially, the sites just aren't doing as well. I'll be quite lucky to break $200 in Adsense this month - strike lucky, it would take a miracle! I have a few sales between the sites and da blog but it's no where near enough to get me up to what I made last month and July. Hence the rush to go forth and multiply. Sites that is - not children ;)

Did anyone check out Netshops? What do you think of them? I look forward to promoting them, especially on my 2 new sites. I could go with just a couple of their stores if I really wanted to, but I can't help adding a little variety. I will admit though that so far, both sites should have no more than 3 (some 2) merchants per product page. It hurts me, it really does... but too much choice and they won't buy. I know that. I just want to cover every possible product my visitors might want. See - anal!

Guess that's it for now! Another question for y'all - did anyone take a free pass from Shawn Collins for eComXpo? Just wondering who I'll "see" there. Also, is anyone planning on attending The Affiliate Summit in Vegas January 8-10?

Have a great day!

Tara :)

I'm so NOT in the mood

2005-09-26T13:26:00.000-04:00

But, I have to press on. No more excuses - I've figured out which merchants I want to use, got NetShops approval to join their program, now I just have to WRITE. One of my least favorite things.. lol About Netshops: if you listen to the Buzz, you'll have heard JM talk about them. It's a very very cool concept that I don't find anyone has satisfactorily explained, at least in brief.

Basically, they have a bazillion stores (well, over 70) that are completely nichefied. For example, Adirondack Chairs sells only Adirondack chairs, perhaps 1 or 2 complimentary products like a table in the Adirondack style. ALL their stores are like that. A few more examples: daybeds, desk lamps, bar stools, filing cabinets, etc. You get the idea. Plus, what no one seems to be saying (except the site itself) is that all the stores are owned by NetShops and they all have the same commission - 10%. Not bad at all - alot of similar merchants are well under 10%. Plus, since they own them all, they guarantee quality - and if you were to use 5, 10, even 70 merchants - ONE affiliate manager. I LOVE that!

Anyway, I suppose I should get to the writing that I don't feel like doing.. lol Hope your weekend was nice, have a lovely week!

Tara :)

Not much new

2005-09-21T15:12:00.000-04:00

***UPDATE: SHAWN COLLINS IS GIVING AWAY 250 OF THE SAME KIND OF FREE PASSES THAT I WAS. I WAS HOWEVER WRONG ABOUT THE PRICE TO UPGRADE - IT REMAINS THE SAME REGARDLESS OF WHETHER YOU HAVE A FREE PASS OR NOT. SO IF YOU WANT IN BUT CAN'T AFFORD THE FULL PASS, THIS IS WORTH $30 AS OF TOMORROW. GO TO http://www.affiliatetip.com/blog/ AND CLICK ON THE LINK.

So I thought I should mention eComXpo one last time, since tomorrow is the last day to get the great discount price. Here's the top 5 reasons to attend as per the website (though I agree 100%, and please remember even before I got the free pass I was thisclose to buying my own pass, so I am very serious about encouraging you to attend.):

Top 5 Reasons to Attend eComXpo

1 All the benefits of a top tradeshow, from the comfort of your home or office, for as little as $19.95! (Tara's note: go for the $49.95 pass though since then you'll get to see a bunch of cool people's presentations, including James Martell!)

2 View presentations and enjoy interactive Q&A with top industry speakers including Seth Godin, John Battelle, Shawn Collins, Fredrick Marckini, James Martell, Dana Todd, Kevin Lee and Declan Dunn, plus 70 others, including executives from Google, Yahoo, Commission Junction, Linkshare, Performics and more. Learn cutting edge, practical techniques in SEO, PPC, contextual search, local search, affiliate marketing, multi-channel retailing, blogging, legal, branding and interactive advertising, without the cost, travel or hassle of traditional events. Click here to view the full speaker list

3 Over 130 leading product, service and merchant exhibitors in one place at one time, with booth staffers ready to answer your questions and cut special deals. Click here to view the full exhibitor list

4 The ability to easily find and network with hundreds of peers, prospects, customers and experts using instant messaging, email, business card exchange or simply picking up the phone.

5 Lot’s of free stuff including
** $400 in PPC credits from Google & Yahoo Search Marketing*
** Annual subscription to Revenue Magazine
** $50 coupon off concert/sporting event tickets
** Plus a chance to win over 100 prizes including trips, big screen TV’s, iPods and more.
(*Requires booth and/or presentation visits. New customers only)

Ok, off that horse now - but I hope you're thinking about it! Anyway, spent all day yesterday fixing up TONS of stuff on the 2 related site templates. I was creating all the permanent links like the menus, fixing the footer, the exchange links pages, I created the article template for EZ Article Publisher (another tool I absolutely ADORE, saves me SO much time, I can't wait to save even more when I outsource articles) and figured out which merchants I'm going to be using, providing they accept me, of course. I guess it doesn't SOUND like much, but it sure felt like a lot! lol So now, I think those 2 templates are just about ready to go live, except for that pesky content I need to write.. lol

I think I'll be going with obviously the home/product pages plus 5 articles each to go live. Then I'll move on to 2 more sites probably, if not the other 4 at the same time. And because the topics of these 2 sites I'm working on now are fairly guy friendly, Eric is gonna help out. I'm going to get him to write a couple articles at least - because the sooner they're live, the sooner I'm making money!

On another note - while writing this entry, I just found out I have a complimentary pass to give away to eComXpo. It's not the full pass, but it will get you access to the following:

*Visit the Affiliate Marketing and Search Interactive Marketing Exhibit Halls.
*Participate in keynote presentations as well as group panel discussions.
*Win great prizes like a trip to Las Vegas, ipods and much more!

And if you decide to upgrade today or tomorrow, you should be able to get the full pass for around $30. Don't hold me to that, since I'm not 100% positive, but it SHOULD. So - the first person to email me that they want it, gets it. Send me an email with the subject "ecomxpo" and I'll forward you the pass right away. Email addy: support AT a1-travel-accessories DOT com

See you there!

Tara :)

In answer to a question

2005-09-19T23:32:00.000-04:00

A couple of people have asked me how I get Adsense to display at the end of every blog entry. It's actually just putting the Adsense code into the Blogger template. I don't know if it will work in other blog programs like it does with Blogger, since for some reason it automatically removes itself from older entries to make sure there are no more than 3 adsense blocks per page. I hope that helps. If you want more help, let me know :)

In personal news, I'm home now. We'll still be going to the trailer on weekends for another month or so, but since my camping friends have closed up for the season and it's getting cooler at night (plus they were predicting crappy weather for this week) I decided to come home. To mitigate those factors, there was a job I applied for last week which would have been perfect for me - 11-8 Mon-Thur with great pay. I didn't get it because they wanted the person to start today and I couldn't get to an interview last week. And with my income SUCKING this month (my daily average WITH sales is lower than last month's Adsense average alone) I have no choice but to get a job. I'd figured as much back in April, but I'd so hoped I wouldn't have to. Oh well, at least this way I'll be able to start outsourcing like the rest of you. Keep your fingers crossed that I can find a decent paying part-time job!

In my usual fashion, whenever I come home, my first day is a write-off. For some reason when I come home I'm either exhausted or don't feel great and end up taking a long nap. Oh well, back to work tomorrow. I'd like to think I'll get some/all of the home/product pages written for 2 of the new sites, but realistically I know myself and if I get ONE page done I'll be thrilled.. lol I'll tell you something though, I'm tickled pink to be back on DSL!! If I can do this again next year, there WILL be high speed internet at the trailer! I'm not doing the dial up thing again, that's for damn sure.

I guess that's about it, nothing earth shattering to talk about today. Hope your weekend and Monday went well!

Tara :)

What I’ve been up to

2005-09-16T16:25:00.000-04:00

Well, a LOT. Which I was why I haven't posted in a week. I've been working from the time I roll outta bed till I fall back in it. Like I said, I bought 3 templates from Golden Pine Cone last week, so I’ve been working on creating headers (banners) for them to match the theme of the sites. I was also playing with the colours a bit. Played with the links too.

Then I pulled up all my keywords associated with the first 2 sites I’ll be launching which are closely related, and put them through Keywords Results Analyzer. I did this to sort them a bit more into categories for the product pages. I also went back into Wordtracker to pick up a few more keywords to fill out the list. Basically – nothing that interesting to share with y’all.

Of course, it all had to start out with issues with Front Page. Thankfully the great folks at eMax hosting were able to help me sort it all out and in record time too. I just love that company! They have amazing customer service combined with fantastic prices, which is always my main concern... lol

On the financial front this week has gone from so-so to great to lousy. I had a couple of double digit days in Adsense, but yesterday and today are sucky again. Had a couple of sales, including my first one on Clixgalore (I was SERIOUSLY starting to wonder if they were fraudulent, but it was just my sites sucking I guess.. lol) so even though they were small, at least it makes me feel better! Oh, and the Clixgalore sale was from my Gourmet Food Gifts site! Kinda cool 1.5 months in!!!

And lastly – I noticed a few people visited the EcomXpo site, but no one seems to have signed up. Whether or not you do it through my link (which I’d prefer obviously, but I'll forgive you if not) you should really consider “going” – especially those of us who can’t afford to fly out to something like CJU. Just a thought. If you’re still thinking about it, just remember that you only have 6 days left before the early bird prices fly away.

So, with that wordy post done, I will bid you adieu and have a great weekend! Oh, and if you're going to CJU - I hate you, but have a good time, and learn lots!!! ;)

Tara :)

eComXpo

2005-09-09T17:42:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I'm not sure if you remember my long post about the free online conference ticket I got. Well, that's what I'm going to talk about today. Now, just so there's no accusations of hiding anything, this IS an affiliate link - eComXpo - but I still think it's an excellent concept, with an affordable price tag.

I know a lot of us would love to go to CJU for example, but the entry cost alone is often too much for those of us starting out. For as low as $19.95 however, you can get a lot of the benefits of an affiliate marketing conference, without many of the expenses, like flight, hotel, food, etc. Honestly though, I would go for the $49.95 option. It gives you full access to all the presenters and booths. Consider just a few of the big names who will be doing presentations: James Martell, Shawn Collins, Paul Colligan, Patrizio Spagnoletto from Yahoo! Search Marketing, Declan Dunn, Emily White from Google (she manages a team of Optimization and Client Services professionals who support AdWords advertisers) and many, many more. It's on from October 6-8, and if you register before September 22nd, you can benefit from the early bird prices which I mentioned above.

There is also a 3rd ticket you can get. I'm debating about getting it myself, since the free pass I received is the 2nd level. It gives you everything the 2nd level does, plus access to the archived presentations for 90 days. If you get it before September 22nd it's $149.95. I think it may be worth it, though you can replay the presentations during the conference, if I understood correctly.

If you do decide to go, there are v-card exchanges possible, so you may want to make one up to have ready to give to all the great merchants. Who knows, you might be able to negotiate a better deal than what you have now! Let me know if I should expect to "see" you there!

Tara :)

P.S. The link takes you directly to the sign up page. If you want to explore a little bit, once you're AT the page, you can go to www DOT ecomxpo DOT com.

New site mode - on steroids

2005-09-08T20:35:00.000-04:00

So, here we go again. I've decided that I'm going to create 3 or 6 (haven't decided yet, but got 3 templates for now) sites at approximately the same time. Or at least, work on them all at the same time. They probably won't go live all the same day though. I have 5 domains ready to go, and the 6th site has a general idea, but I need to nichefy it more.

So today I picked up 1 template and 2 licenses from the ReFresh series at Golden Pine Cone to start work on the new sites. Just another reason why I love Golden Pine Cone templates - besides the fact the templates ROCK and Andrea is so nice and helpful - with this series of templates, the 1st is $67 and the licenses for multiple sites are $37 each. So basically you get one full template, and when you're ready, you go back and buy the extra license. Which, by the way, includes a new graphic and styles based on the available templates. For full details, go to the Golden Pine Cone website. Why don't more template companies do this??? (so cheap I mean!)

So here's this week's article for the gourmet site:
Give A Gift Of Gourmet Meat!

So, I guess that's it for today... Made a couple sales this week - 1 big one, 1 small one. Adsense got a little better by going into the double digits yesterday, but no news as to what today's like with the stats being down for another 1/2 hr. Hope everyone's sites are doing MUCH better than mine right now!!

Tara :)

And how was YOUR long weekend?

2005-09-06T23:45:00.000-04:00

Personally, mine was great - though the live band on Saturday night sucked. Other than that though, it was a nice weekend.

Business wise... ICK. I made a couple sales on the 1st, and since then, let me say it again - ICK. If this was JUNE maybe I'd be happy, but for SEPTEMBER I'm thoroughly disgusted. As Jenn said - blame it on whatever you want, but holy crap, the last week is killing me. At this point, even if I carry over the little bit left from my bonus and last month's earnings I'll just barely cover my half of stuff on October 1st. A job for October is looking very very likely.

Here's August's earnings - a caveat though - I have a couple of sales that are from independants and they don't list each individual sale, plus with Emax I'm including recurring sales. So this is approximate, not down to the penny.

$420 - not at all where I was hoping to be. But hell, it's more "side" money than I was making just a couple months ago, so I shouldn't complain.

No articles for the last few days - too many people around and not enough time at the puter since Thursday morning. That feature should return tomorrow. I think I'm going to temporarily drop it to 1 or 2 a week per site that I have articles for. Partially because I'm running out of already written articles, partially because I'm starting to do design and keyword research for my next few sites. I would like to attempt to start up (at least) 3 at the same time. I may also go with an idea a friend is doing right now, see if it will work - using only (or mainly, for now) reprint articles. So many ideas - so little time.

Hope everyone had a lovely long weekend - if you aren't in North America, then at least a lovely weekend :)

Tara :)

P.S. - within 10 mins of posting this entry, I already had 2 spam comments. So, after fighting it since I started the blog, no more Anon commenters. Word verification is now on too. I hope that my regulars will deal with working around it :)

I did it again

2005-08-31T18:26:00.000-04:00

And forgot a title yesterday. It happens when I just post the link to my article and plan to come back later to write the entry.. lol Speaking of which:
Need A Coffee Gift For A Starbucks Lover?

So about the adult site. I don't know. I like the idea and all, but I don't think I'd be posting a link from here (don't want to be associated with a "bad" site off the blog) and it just seems SO overcrowded an industry (even my "niche" which is fairly loose) I'm just not sure it's worth it. It would be reallllllllly fun to write though! (I'm not shy about stuff like that... lol) If I DID do it, I think I would really have to approach it from the "review" angle, rather than the "informative" angle. Or, the "too shy" angle. Got another site to do before I get to that point anyway, so who knows.

Unless I can seriously start getting content done for me, I doubt I'll have 10 sites started by 2006. That's 6 in 4 months. Doable, but very tight. I'll truly have to work on all 6 at the same time, or maybe 3 and 3 for it to work. I know there are a few of you that have several sites - do you have any tips for getting a bunch out? Without hiring anyone?

On the personal front, looks like I'll be heading back down to camp tomorrow evening instead of Friday evening. My 'rents both have Friday off so they're going down tomorrow and I'm going to thumb a ride. Which probably means less work done. Oh well, the week's been pretty much written off anyway, I just can't stop watching CNN and their Katrina coverage. If I had some spare cash (and room on my CC) I would make a huge donation. If someone wants to pay my way, I'd go and help down there. And hell, if you can make your way to West Chazy, NY or Montreal, I've got a spare room and a couple couches and blow up mattresses I can put people on. I just cannot get over the devastation. And that stupid song by the Tragically Hip keeps playing in my head "New Orleans is sinking man and I don't wanna swim" - it seems hauntingly prophetic to me.

Well, even though it's Wednesday, I'm not sure how much I'll be online, so just in case - have a GREAT long weekend everyone, stay safe!

Tara :)

2005-08-30T14:01:00.000-04:00

Today's article:
Too Many Kinds Of Popcorn Gift Baskets To Choose From!

Nothing much going on. I finally have managed to turn off CNN and will hopefully start getting some articles written. Not that I'm terribly in the mood, but... ah well, gotta get done!

Tara :)

Wow

2005-08-29T14:07:00.000-04:00

I'm sure hurricanes have done this kind of damage in many other places, but living in Montreal, we don't get affected, other than the remnants (i.e. lots of rain and a bit of wind) and usually hurricanes don't quite make the news like this. I can't imagine having been there, and thank goodness it didn't directly hit N'Awlins. I still have everyone in Katrina's path in my prayers, and especially those in Slidell, Mobile and Gulfport. I tried to imagine the concept of losing everything I own, and even possibly my life, and I just can't. Those of you that live in the areas that are repeatedly hit by tropical storms and hurricanes - I just don't know how you do it. Hopefully all my readers loved ones are safe and sound - TMTB - please let us know how your dad is doing!

On to today's article:
Everyone Loves Old Fashioned Candy Gift Baskets!

I brought 21 article outlines home and I thought I would have no problem getting them done this week. Of course, with the state of the world right now, I have to admit that more CNN watching will get done than work, at least until more is known. If all goes well though, you may start seeing articles from my other sites as well.

I started brainstorming a little yesterday for my next few sites. I think I'm going to do an adult site - NOT porn - which means no Adsense on that site. There are other PPC companies I can go to, but I may make it a pure affiliate driven site. Another idea was home accessories. Obviously more nichy than that, but I don't want to show my cards yet ;) Maybe also something related to cooking. I'm hoping by that point I can start to hire writers so I can do niches that bore me to death. Like ball bearings.. lol (That's a Martell site)

That's about it. Again, good luck and God Speed to anyone who was, is, or will be in Katrina's path.

Tara :)

OMG Katrina

2005-08-28T23:39:00.000-04:00

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know about the nightmare that New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are about to experience. While I don't personally know anyone in the current path, Chrissie told me enough about Katrina (and it was a category 1 then!) that I'm shit scared for anyone who's left in Southern Louisiana. I just want to say that if any of my readers are in Katrina's path - be safe, I hope you're out or high up, and my thoughts and prayers have been with you all day, and will continue to be with you until Katrina is but a memory. God bless and God speed.

Tara :( (not a mistake)

I'm sore, but it was fun

2005-08-28T12:26:00.000-04:00

Here's today's article:
Wine Gifts For Men? We Can Help!

After boating on Friday (smallish fishing boat, big waves, lots of bumping around) and sharing a bed with Eric (smallish old bed, bad frame) and then standing and dancing for a few hours, I am SORE, but had a great weekend.

Because of Katrina (as usual, we always get the leftovers up here) they're predicting at minimum rain every day until Friday, and one site says thunder storms every day till Thursday. Kind of hard to work when I have to unplug everything since the electricity is so crappy here. So I've decided to head home this week. It will be nice to use DSL again for a little while, and see my kitties whom I've missed a bunch. Plus my nice pillow-topped king size bed sounds pretty cool too! lol

I guess that's about it - be back tomorrow with the latest article!

Tara :)

Not much work going on

2005-08-27T12:19:00.000-04:00

Here's today's article:
We'll Help You Choose The Perfect Gifts For Wine People

Forgot about yesterday's article. By the time I got done buying and setting up my templates in EZ Article Publisher (I bit the bullet) I had to go pass a message on to someone down here, and then I went on a lovely 2.5 hour boat ride around Lake Champlain. I WANT A BOAT! lol Then it was "happy hour" and then supper and then bed. Had to get up early to send a package and do some shopping for the camp party tonight, so that's another day that no work will be done.. lol

That's about it - hope your weekend is as beautiful and fun as mine is shaping up to be!

Tara :)

What a beautiful day

2005-08-25T11:56:00.000-04:00

Finally after about a week of almost strictly clouds and rain, we actually have a sunny day. Now if we could just get over 21C (about 70F) I'd be a reallllllly happy camper!

Here's today's article:
Fresh Seafood Overnight - Beware The Word Fresh!

Got 4 total done yesterday. 1 left of the outlined articles for the gourmet food site and then it's time to add some more article to the other sites. I'll be attacking the pet memorials site then the dog site. The travel site will be the last one since it has the most articles. And to be very honest, that's the one I really want to hire an author for. I'm so thoroughly sick of everything to do with travel accessories and I think I've run out of things to say! lol

I must say though, when I'm writing articles (as boring as they are, I know!) as long as I know that I have a preset limit in mind (usually 5 for the day) I can manage to suck it up and just write them. And this is (barring directory/article submissions) my least favorite part of what I do.

Anyhooooo, not much else to say, have a great Thursday! Adsense payments are on the way, at least mine is, so keep your eye out. And if you're in Florida, I hope Katrina passes over you with no damage! Oh, and Chrissie, you are welcome!!

Tara :)

Yesterday was declared a "no-work" zone

2005-08-24T14:05:00.000-04:00

So I'd gotten up, spend 3.5 hrs doing laundry, and then I was invited to dinner at my best friend's parents trailer last night. (They're on vaca this week) So by the time laundry was done it was practically time to walk over. Then I got back just in time for Big Brother, and decided to hell with it! It was nice. I look forward to the time when that will be the norm and days like today will be occasional. Alas, tis not to be yet.

So, despite the fact I've been up for 3 hours, I haven't started working yet. Though to be very fair, I lost more than a half hour due to my ISP going buggy. I did manage to get today's article published, Want To Buy Wine Online? No Problem! It's funny, some articles practically write themselves (it also helps when I "borrow" from some of my own articles) and others it takes me an hour to write because I can't think of a damn original (or even UN-original) thing to say. Hopefully today's articles will be the former rather than the latter.

Has anyone tried EZ Article Publisher? See Burke's blog for more details. I love this program personally, I'm just not sure (and Eric says NO) that I can justify $97 for it. However, I've been using it on the gourmet food site, and it works PERFECTLY with Andrea's template and I have no doubt it will work well with my other 3... It's just that it's $97. Any opinions?

I'm not sure if I'd mentioned it earlier, but I was hoping to (was GOING to even) take some of last month's Adsense earnings and hire an author. However, if I wait another month or 2 and put all that money towards my credit card and assorted bills I may be able to postpone job hunting until at LEAST October. And hopefully by then I'll be able to say screw it, and not look for a job at all. So unless someone wants to offer writing articles for $1 each, I'll be waiting a while longer... lol

I guess that's about it... funny, before I write my entries, I always have 1000 things to say, but when I start typing they fly out of my brain. And before I forget, must wish a Happy Happy birthday to 3 important people in my life: Daddy! Only 3 more years until retirement! Auntie Gail, I won't tell your age :) And Chrissie, of Internet Insomniac and Learning Geek fame, I stayed 21 for about 7 years, so I get the staying 30 for a while, but geez, you're hardly an old lady!! (xo)2

Tara :)

I don't know what to say

2005-08-23T02:25:00.000-04:00

Let's get today's article out of the way:

Buy Seafood Online - Safe And Cheap!

Ok, so here's where the real entry starts. I may ramble on here, but please bear with me. I guess I should start from the beginning. Over the weekend, I had read about (not sure where now) this new internet/affiliate/ecommerce etc conference. What's great about it though is that it's really affordable (well, unless you're me, not paying bills so I can do this full time! lol) and it looks jam packed with awesome presenters and booths and so on. The best news is that you don't need to worry about your flight or hotel because it's all online!

So I was going back and forth with Eric whether or not we can swing it or not. Or rather whether or not I can justify the expense. As BJ would say, synchronisity hit today. I got up this morning, and after checking my stats, emails and how much money (ha ha) I'd made, I opened FeedDemon to read my blogs. So I get to one of my favorites (really, I'm not just saying that, it's under the heading "AM Favorites") Shawn Collins' Affiliate Tip Blog, which was talking about how affiliatetip.com is an exhibitor at the conference. As an exhibitor, he received free passes to give away. Rather than use them to give to friends or high performing affiliates or something more selfish (which would be well within his rights!) he offered passes to the first 20 people who responded. Not to a question; all you had to do was send an email. Luckily, I was one of the 1st 20 people. How cool is that?

I don't think Shawn has any tickets left (I told a good friend about it that was online at the time - not trying to exclude anyone - and she hasn't gotten an answer, but it was only the first 20 that would get any kind of answer) but just in case, head on over and visit his blog. And even if you DON'T get a ticket, this is the same guy who's the co-creator of the Affiliate Summit, which if you follow James Martell, you know is another GREAT conference for anyone involved in affiliate marketing. So you know he's chock full of interesting information. I'm particularly enjoying his current feature "What is wrong with affiliate marketing and how can it be improved?". He prints people's answers, and many of them are very thought-provoking. Here are 2 more reasons to read Shawn's blog: 1. If you send in an answer to the question and he posts it, you get a free t-shirt with a funny on it. (go see!) 2. Before the last Affiliate Summit if you answered a trivia question (you had be right and first, of course) he was giving away passes. So Shawn, if you're reading this, once again, thank you.

Everyone else - what are you still doing here???? Go check out Shawn's blog!

Tara :)

Oops, forgot the title

2005-08-22T10:27:00.000-04:00

Here's Monday's article:

Mix It Up With A Mixed Nut Gift!

I'm getting low on banked articles so I have to release only 1 a day for now.. lol Hopefully I'll get a bunch done today. Not sure how many though, as I see a very dark blue cloud coming up, and soon, so if there's a storm I gotta go offline. Assuming all is good though, 3-5 articles are expected to be written.

Wish me luck!

Tara :)

2 new articles

2005-08-21T12:28:00.000-04:00

Here are the 2 latest going live:

You’ll Go Nuts For These Gourmet Nuts!
There IS Such A Thing As Inexpensive Candy Gifts

I was wrong... didn't get anything done this weekend. lol Oh well, tomorrow starts the work week! Hope your weather has been better than ours here!

Tara :)

Good and bad couple of days

2005-08-20T00:45:00.000-04:00

Here's a start to the good stuff, 2 more articles are live on the new site:

Need A Last Minute Or Quick Gift? A Coffee Basket Is Great!
Corporate Coffee Gift Baskets Don't Have To Be Boring!

Let start with the bad stuff. 2 days in a row now I've nearly thrown my dogs out. The last 2 mornings they have been very shitty trailer mates. And I'm being half literal. Thursday they got me up (barking every 15 minutes for 3 hours) after about 6 hours of sleep. Long time readers will know I have a sleep disorder which wakes me up over 100 times a night (no, I'm not joking, look up sleep apnea) so to be honest, even 12 hours of sleep isn't enough. 6 hours isn't even freaking close. But, despite my tiredness, I managed to get 2 articles done and then called it a day. I might've worked more, but got very excited and absorbed in Big Brother and spent the rest of the night reading the live feed updates. So, tired, I finally head to bed around 1:30 am. Read until about 2, turned off the light. Then Tequila decides she going to clean herself. Loudly. For 45 minutes. Despite repeated chastising and kicking. So I dozed off around around 3ish.

Then around 6 Tequila decided she still wasn't clean enough and started up again. Jager decided since I was awake, he could bounce on me to get me to let him out. Not sure WHY he wanted out so badly since he'd already emptied his bowels across the trailer (fun to clean up on 3 hrs of sleep and bleary eyed) so while they were out, cleaned that up (great smell to wake up to also) let them back in and went back to bed. Have you ever seen a dog so obsessed with cleanliness? Back at it Tequila went. Right beside my head. I finally gave up around 6:45.

So all that to say (hope you at least got a giggle out of it!) that no work was done today. At all. I figured it was safer for my visitors that I didn't write an article with severely diminished brain capacity. Maybe if it's quiet around here tomorrow (and Eric takes care of letting the dogs out) I can get a few more written. Still 12 articles isn't bad for the week, I'm not going to beat myself up over it.

On to the good stuff. Other than everything going according to my plans on Big Brother (me and Arnold Shapiro are thisclose I tell ya) I made a few sales this week. 2 I already told you about, 1 was from the blog. And then, when Eric got here today he handed me a funny piece of mail. It looked like it was from a vet in Nebraska, where I've never been. I opened it up - it was a cheque!!! 2nd biggest commission - $16.69. It was from one of my pet memorials affiliates. Odd that the sale never showed up in the reports, but when I'm more coherent (and let me apologize now for any grammatical errors) I'll write them an email to ask what's up.

I also figured out that with very careful planning and the sites doing slightly better in the next month or 2, I may be able to hook up with Chrissie and head to an internet marketing conference in November. I would love to go, it looks like the speakers there will be fascinating and meeting other AM'ers would be awesome. Especially Chrissie, we're 2 peas in a pod - we even both have dogs named Tequila!

I know there's something I'm forgetting, but on 3 hours of sleep and with an already swiss cheese brain, I just can't think of anything else right now. So after boring y'all to death, I'll finally end the rambling and say have a great weekend!

Tara :)

I STILL don't wanna work

2005-08-18T01:10:00.000-04:00

But I am. As a matter of fact 10 articles in the last 2 days, but I'll only show you 2 since I'm going to start publishing 1 or 2 a day as per the continous pour concept (Martell).

So here they are:

Candy Gift Baskets Will Remind Them Of Their Youth
Here's Some Great Tips For Buying Tea Online!

Hope you enjoy them. Have 2 new sales, 1 early Tuesday morning (travel accessories) and 1 late last night (pet memorials). Total would be just under $10 CDN. Not exciting in terms of $$$ but very exciting when you think about when the pet memorials site was actually released. I'm also very happy with the number of sales the travel site is making. If only the damn dog info site could a) see some actual traffic that wasn't from here or forums and b) could actually make me more than $3 a month. I guess it's just too competitive. I also need to add more articles, I know. Link partners aren't an issue, I have tons, as a matter of fact, they probably make up more than half the average 8 visitors per day... lol

Ok, off the rant now. Hey, for anyone looking to outsource articles or link building, keep an eye on Learning Geek, which is Chrissie's affiliate marketing blog. She's working on a site to publicize everything, but it shouldn't be long, and heck, let's try to give business to her, k? I mean, why not keep it "in the family" so to speak ;)

That's it for me. Have a great day!

Tara :)

Back to the grind :(

2005-08-16T13:20:00.000-04:00

Iiiiiiiii don't wanna work, I wanna bang on the drum all day...

To say I don't feel like working would be an understatement. I did a little bit yesterday. Article outlines, sorting the outlines and a little bit of link xchgs. Most of the day was spent reading Big Brother 6 live feed updates (if you watch the show, make sure and watch tonight, HUGE fighting going on all day and night yesterday) and playing poker, my latest addiction that's lasting way longer than it should.

So my new goal for the next few weeks is write, write, write. At least 3 per day, more if I can do it without falling asleep. We'll see if I can... my best friend's dad is down on vacation now and he's promised to take me fishing.. which I like doing, sans the baiting the hook part.. lol The big problem with article writing right now is that I've gotten the bug in me to hire authors even though I don't really have the money for it. I'm at the point where it looks like I will be taking a job next month, partially due to the fact that we're going broke fast, partially because I want some side cash to hire authors.. lol We'll see what does happen.

As for the financials, well, not so spectacular. If it was this time last month, I would've been tickled pink with my daily average. Not so much this month. It's nice, and it's higher than last month - but not by much. Certainly no where near the growth from June to July. And even with CJ's stats down for several days, it looks like no new sales. I thought for sure I'd have at least 1. So I guess it's true - a LOT of people go on vacation in August. I know in the southern U.S. a lot of kids are already back in school, but most of my visitors must be from the North as around here, kids don't go back until end of August/early September. So anyway... on the upside, most months have kicked in harder in the 2nd half and yesterday that proved true! Let's just say more than twice my daily average last month :)

Now, a quick question for all my readers - does anyone know of any work from home jobs that I can do from Canada? I had a lead on a great one, but it's looking like they don't accept Canadians :( Hopefully the do, but just in case, I'll take any suggestions under advisement ;)

Have a great day!

Tara :)

Wish you were here....

2005-08-12T15:31:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note... Having a wonderful vacation, lots of fun and games. I did manage to get a few link exchanges started and done and if anyone is waiting on an email, I'm getting to them as fast as I can, just not at the puter much this week :)

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Tara :)

Some pics of where I am

2005-08-04T13:01:00.000-04:00

Some people have asked to see pictures, so here's a few of where I'm "not" this week, but returning to tomorrow. Enjoy or don't :)

I love launching a new site/I hate launching a new site

2005-08-04T12:47:00.000-04:00

Ok, I love it because it's so gratifying to see your hard work open for business, and the nice things people say (even if they're lying) doesn't hurt either! lol Thank you to everyone who visited and had something nice to say, and special thanks to Ottawa Information Guide for pointing out a typo that I'd missed!

I HATE HATE HATE launching a new site since it means site and article submissions, though I think I've figured out a new system for doing the articles at least. I open a window for each article and copy/paste all the common info, then the titles, then the articles themselves. It seems to go a bit faster. Still not pleasant though.

Something I think I've mentioned before, but definitely bears mention again, which I forgot the other day - if you liked the layout/header/look of the new site, you really should visit GoldenPineCone Templates! Especially if you like the header. That was a custom design for me, I got to pick the pictures and let Andrea do her magic. Her prices for custom work are very reasonable as well, see the site for details. Oh, and if you like her templates and would like to promote them too, her affiliate program has a great commission with prompt payouts. Something to think about :)

The rest of today will be fighting the urge to play in a bunch of poker tournaments (new addiction, and it's STRONG, even for play money! lol) and do more article/site submissions and desperately needed laundry. Back to camp we go tomorrow and Eric's on vaca again, yay! Even better, my best bud is also on vaca with her boyfriend. Many drunk days await us, wooo hooo! lol So please forgive me if you don't see too many posts for the next week or so, not sure how much work will be getting done, and if no work is done, there's nothing to tell you about here! lol

Tara :)

Birth Announcement

2005-08-02T12:29:00.000-04:00

Well, it's time to usher my latest baby into the world.

Gourmet Food Gifts is the latest site in my arsenal. If you have any comments to make, as per usual, keep 'em constructive or don't bother ;)

Got a bunch of directory and lesser SE submissions done today. More of those and *shudder* article submissions tomorrow. Oh how I hate those. Jon and I were discussing our hatred of doing that today. He would prefer to write articles and I'd rather submit sites, though I'm happy to outsource the article submissions also.

Not sure if I mentioned it yesterday, but I had a sale (tiny) through the travel site yesterday and another sale from my blog today. I prefer not to mention where the blog sales come from specifically since I cover a few and I don't want too much competition ;)

Mark said today I was an insipiration and I find that so kind, and I guess hard to accept. I've always been the type of person where my life is an open book - too much so sometimes - and when we were chatting later elaborated that it was not only because I'm doing so well (relatively) but because I share my financials. I have no problems sharing at this level, at all, but I will be honest enough to admit that after I hit a certain (undecided) point, I won't be quite as open as I am now.

I'm also uncertain how many more sites I'll be sharing here. Most of my affiliate marketing buddies don't share any, or very few. Many of them also think I'm brave - or crazy! - to share what I do. The way I look at it is when I started 6 months ago, it would've been lovely to have a benchmark to measure myself against, or at least see someone else's struggles and triumphs along the way. So, I hope those of you who are celebrating your first $1 day, or your first month of $1 a day are enjoying this :) I also hope that you'll share your struggles and triumphs too, even if you don't feel comfortable with my level of openess :)

Tara :)

July Totals

2005-08-01T23:12:00.000-04:00

As promised, here are my July totals:

$369.47 USD
$13.46 CAD

$334.85 of that USD was from Google Adsense. Which put me at an average of $10.80 per day. I'm looking forward to an average of $100 a day, but I'm pretty happy where I am now, considering the travel site hasn't been officially live for 6 months. I'm a ways away from the $500/month that James Martell suggests, but that's ok with me - on my personal goals page I've written "No time limits - when the time is right, my goals will be achieved!" and I firmly believe that.

A friend of mine was recently disappointed because they achieved a goal earlier than expected, so they reset the goal, and came close, but didn't quite get there and was upset. I tend to be the opposite (which is easy to say as I surpassed my $9/day goal) and think, well, at least I got my first goal done. The rest is gravy, as the saying goes. My only major goal that I need more than want is $1000 a month since that means I won't have to drag my fat ass outta this chair to find another job ;)

Hopefully tonight will be writing the last 3 articles that I want on the site before going live and during the day tomorrow you'll see the brand new site I've created. I'm still waiting on a few merchants, but I've got plenty of other ones, so screw it, as soon as the hubby is done with the article editing, you'll all see it. I came home from the trailer this week to get the article and site submissions done on DSL rather than dial up, because as long time readers will remember, I'd rather pull out my own fingernails than do that stuff. Add dial up speeds to it and I'd probably go drown myself in Lake Champlain.. lol

So folks, I think that's about it. Thanks to all that wished me a happy birthday, I had a great one, though I'm still coming to grips with being 29... especially when half the time I feel like I'm still 21 ;)

Tara :)

Busy Bee

2005-07-28T20:23:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of posts this week, I suddenly got a mad working kick going and took advantage of it. I've been working almost non-stop since Sunday night on link exchanges (about 50 across the 3 sites), writing articles (7 done, 3 to go) and signing up for merchants, fixing up links, double checking content, etc. Basically all the annoying little things. Almost there though. Having friends and family go through the site to point out any problems, waiting for a couple more merchants to get back to me and then, maybe, this weekend I'll post the site here. Being as it's Thursday though (no one will probably answer over the weekend) and tomorrow being my birthday and all probably not too much work will be done. So, check back, but don't worry about it too much until next week :)

As for the financials, I did make a sale of about $17 USD. And Adsense is suddenly going crazy with the last 4 days being over the double digit mark. Not $50 over the double digit mark, but a nice enough amount for me. A few more days and I'll tell you ;) Let's just say enough that a friend did some math and at my current rate of growth he figures I'll be at 1K/month in about 2 months. That would be fantastic as I think that would be enough for me to stay home. It would be tight, but the bills will get paid with that amount. And if it hits between now and mid September, I may be able to get away with not looking for another job. I sure as hell hope so because I'm WAY too used to staying "home" now. I just wish it was summer year round because I love it here :) That and I can't wait to be making enough so that Eric can quit his job too.

So, I guess that's about it for now. As soon as I can I'll post the new site here for you. Have a great weekend!

Tara :)

It's been an interesting weekend

2005-07-24T23:43:00.000-04:00

Very full of drama. I'll spare y'all the details, but Friday saw me fighting with a boater and the office here, and Friday night saw my best friend have a huge fight with her aunt and grandmother which has most likely severed their relationship permanently. Saturday was a little nicer. We went to go get propane for the BBQ and there were 3 gorgeous little kittens there, and even Eric was in love with the one that cried and then tried to climb him. I'm working on him to get the little guy called Lucky. He hasn't agreed yet, claiming that 2 cats and 2 dogs are plenty. I don't agree. lol

Still no work being done whatsoever over the last few days. I could maybe get some done tonight as I had a wicked headache earlier and took a nap to get rid of it. It's now just after midnight and I'm wide awake. I STILL have 7 articles to write and then I'm good to go. I just need an afternoon of peace.. I don't see it happening too soon.

So that's all that's new and exciting here. I tell you, it's never boring here!

Tara :)

Link Dump Time

2005-07-21T23:04:00.000-04:00

As much as I wish I could tell y'all that I've been busily at work, that would be a lie, something I actively avoid doing. What I really need is a gorgeous day where both of my parents spend the day at the beach or the pool so I can have some peace. Otherwise they're here talking to me or watching tv and I can't work. I love them, and I love having them here (the food quality has improved dramatically! Ok, the company is nice too :) ) but I'm not getting anything done. Of course, after Eric's vacation I had a good feeling not much would be done. Oh well, I suppose I should enjoy my time down here too ;)

As of this writing I have slightly more than doubled last month's Adsense earnings and there are still 10 days to go. This is a first for my Adsense account. So far, I come thisclose to doubling the previous month, but miss by a few dollars. If I can maintain my average per day (unlikely to happen based on the last few days) I should finish the month close to $300. With last month's total being thisshort of $100, the deposit I receive in August will be very nice and will either make a great dent on my credit card or 2 car payments. Either way, much helpful.

So here's where the title comes in. I decided to do this entry based on some fantastic blog entries. 1 is by BJ who has found something incredibly useful as usual ;) Go check out her blog for more details as I don't want to steal her thunder.

Some of you probably know Jenstar, I believe she posts at Webmaster World, which I don't visit as I am already too easily distracted, she is usually WAY ahead of everyone else in terms of Adsense and Adwords information. She made 4 posts today that ALL need to be read by anyone with an Adsense account. Enjoy :)

Here a few other goodies I put aside in my Feed Demon for future use that you may enjoy also. You may want to bookmark some of these.

http://www.marketingchick.com/checklist/
http://awebbiz.com/blog/archives/2005/07/14/internet-marketing-tips/
http://www.homebusiness-websites.com/myarchives/2005/07/are_you_a_zombi.html
http://superaff.com/archives/2005/07/05/choosing-a-domain-name/
http://superaff.com/archives/2005/06/21/a-motley-mix-of-freebies/
http://www.voasi.com/2005/06/adsense-pissing-you-off-alternatives.htm
http://superaff.com/archives/2005/06/02/cloaking-affiliate-links-small-amount/

That's about it. Have a great weekend!

Tara :)

Two new links

2005-07-19T19:18:00.000-04:00

I don't have too much to talk about these days. Adsense is ok, not spectacular, no new sales and with the 'rents here, not much work is being done. Actually, all I've done is catch up on some link exchange requests.

As a matter of fact, not only did I complete those, but I've put up 2 new blog links on here - one, Vicky from Desperate To Be A Housewife who's blog I love reading, and Randy's Humble Affiliate Marketing Programs Blog which I discovered thanks to BJ.

Go forth and read much blogs!

Tara ;)

NOT lots to say today ;)

2005-07-14T23:21:00.000-04:00

Haven't done that much in the last few days. Tried my hand at designing a header for my new site, discovered that I suck pretty bad, and got Andrea at Golden Pine Cone templates to design one for me. It's beautiful. I can't wait to show it off for you, hopefully by the end of the month.

Honestly, it's just been too damn hot to do much of anything. The laptop puts off crazy heat too, so anything that required alot of thought was out of the question. I did get a bit of mindless work done, like researching more closely which merchants I'll use as there are TONS for this niche. It's again, not a very tight niche - I could probably do individual sites for each of the product pages. But that's me, I like doing big sites. I just need to finish them eventually!

Adsense keeps climbing, and Monday was a killer day, which gave me great hope for Tuesday. Tuesdays have been by far my best day since the site started getting a bit of traffic. Well, this week it was Monday. Not complaining by any stretch. I beat my best day by almost double. I can't wait to see what happens when this new site is ready to start getting some traffic :)

So that's about it. Have a great weekend!

Tara :)

Lots to talk about today

2005-07-11T11:07:00.000-04:00

Let's start with only the single most amazing deal for hosting I've ever seen. Not to say I don't love eMax, because I do, they're still the best in my opinion. On the other hand, everyone says it's good to diversify your hosting packages for many reasons. And at this price, you can't go wrong! I'll just give you the best part - for the rest of the information, visit BJ's blog, she is the amazing person who decided to let the world know about this. How's $9.24 for a domain and ONE YEAR OF HOSTING sound to you?!? That's the deal! I couldn't find a way to choose the domain later, so before you head over to buy (and why wouldn't you?) have a domain name ready. To be honest, I have no need for more hosting, eMax covers my needs - but hell, a domain for $9.24 is still a great deal.

There's a product that I've been using since I started that I think every affiliate should have. It's called Roboform. I never thought about promoting or even talking about it before, because when I first started this blog, I was naively under the assumption that my readers were James Martell followers. I know this is not the case as some of my closest buds aren't. JM suggests to use this in one of the first chapters of his book. The reason I'm talking about it today is because the thought actually crossed my mind this morning - I LOVE Roboform! Now, this IS an affiliate link, I won't hide that, but no worries, the payouts aren't huge, I won't get rich from this, but I figure since I'm taking the time to tell you all about the wonderful service, heck, why not get $.05 here and there? ;)

Alright, so we know how often you need to enter passwords or your address or even your credit card information on a daily basis when logging into our various affiliate networks, right? Imagine just clicking a button and having all the information filled in? Sure you can use the AutoFill feature on Google's Toolbar, but how much can you really edit it? With Roboform you can enter anything you like, change it as often as you like and even have multiple entries for the same website. It even passwords your passwords so no one can get in. If you decide to try it out, you'll have 30 days (I believe) with the full features. After your free trial is over, you can still use it, but you're limited to 10 passcards (login/password), which is plenty for some - I thought it would be plenty for me. If you opt to upgrade though, all your previously saved passwords return and you get unlimited passcards to use. I think it was all of a few hours before I opted to upgrade.. lol So, if you want to save time when surfing the web, Roboform will definitely help!

Ok, now about affiliate marketing. I now have a total of 3 sales this week - 2 from the travel site, 1 from the pet memorials site. Nothing spectacular as the totals of all 3 are around $12, but it still gives me lots of hope about things to come. Oh, and Adsense is doing AMAZINGLY well - I'm extremely close to last month's total, I'd say I'll hit it today or tomorrow. *** Correction, done - and I'm now in the triple digits for the month. Which is awesome. And if all goes well with the new site I'm working on, you might see it later this week. Because of some external problems with it though, it's more likely to be next week. Either way though, very soon.

On a personal note, I'm alone again this week as the hubby's gone back to work, so hopefully all the articles I need to get done on the new site will happen, as well as at least 2 each for my other sites. While I still (and probably never will) don't love being alone at night here, (very, very dark and the coyotes howling don't help) I like it when it's quiet during the week, I get so much more done! Alas though, as of Friday my parents arrive for what's known in Quebec as "Construction holidays", the last 2 weeks of July. Probably at least 50% of Quebec is on holiday then and my parents opted to spend their vaca here because they couldn't find a campground they liked that was still taking reservations. So likely after Friday not much work will get done again by virtue of 2 dogs and 2 adults being under foot, or rather, under my feet.. lol So hustle time is NOW!

Have a great week folks!

Tara :)

What I've been up to

2005-07-07T12:57:00.000-04:00

Ok, so yesterday we went home to feed the cats and do some laundry (there's a laundromat here, but why pay?) and I brought my laptop with me. I miss high speed! *sniff* I ended up finishing the last product page for the new site. Now I need to get the header done, 7 articles (1 for each product I'm targetting) and a few tweaks here and there and I'll be live. End of July, max, is the target date. HOPEFULLY, end of next week.

So, just as an update, I did crack double digits on Tuesday, and with the affiliate sale I made, the total for the day was close to $20. And again yesterday (no sales) I cracked the double digits in Adsense. I was telling Eric earlier that the way Adsense keeps gaining momentum (and with of course the launches of new sites) I'm not caring so much whether I get sales or not. In 7 days I've already made more than half of last month's total. And with the launch of the new site shortly, it's just going to keep growing. I think, honestly, that while perhaps Mr. Martell does very well with sales, it seems my income will be mainly Adsense based. Because even with fairly low traffic (I'm averaging 20-30 visits per day, and even hit 52 on Tuesday!) on the travel site (lower on the others, of course) I'm doing very well in my opinion. No complaints here, other than I need to put up more sites!

So, time to watch American Justice on A & E and then back to work time!

Tara :)

Here's what's new and exciting

2005-07-05T17:30:00.000-04:00

It seems I forgot to tell you about last month's Adsense earnings. Close, but no cigar. $94.57 for June. Had it been a 31 day month, I would've gotten a check for June. I will get one at the end of July for sure (I hit the $100 mark by the time I got up on Friday) and I would be quite surprised (at the rate I'm going so far this month) to not hit $100 for just July. As it stands today, I'm having my best day in terms of amount (very close to double digits for the first time!) and the day isn't over yet.

I also got my 2nd sale today! Another Magellan's sale from the travel site, though much smaller than the first, $5.30 CAD. I wish CJ would show WHAT they bought. On the very cool side, this now puts me over the minimum amount for payment at CJ, so I should be getting a check from them too!

And on the not so thrilling side, I got 2 more product pages done yesterday with 1 to go. So once that product page and 7 articles (1 for each product page) are ready, I'll be live. Certainly by the end of July, hopefully next week. It's hard with Eric (and myself, I guess) on vacation to get a lot done, so I haven't set myself any real goals.

And I just have to say to whoever's in charge of the weather - can we be done with the rip-roaring thunderstorms???

Tara :)

Not much to say

2005-07-02T10:35:00.000-04:00

Before the hubby got here Thursday afternoon, I got a couple of product pages written and got some more link partners up. I also fixed a mistake that someone on the AP board noticed. That's it. Since he got here, I've been relaxing. Then yesterday my best friend and most of her family got here (I'm quite close to all of them) and so it's just been talking and relaxing with them. Also, since the hubby's on vacation this week, I'm fairly sure not a ton of work will be getting done. That's ok though, guilt free relaxation isn't bad either.

Forget about getting anything done this weekend though with my parents here too, and my monkeys (see the attached picture) there's barely any room to move and I have to keep getting up from my desk to let people by.. lol That's ok though, I love this! I think part of the reason I wanted to come camping for the summer was to extend these weekends. Sadly, these people all have to work, so they leave on Monday (well, except for my friend's aunt who has 3 young children - there's only 3.5 years difference between said friend and her aunt) and then it will get quieter.

So, to all my Canadian readers, happy belated Canada Day! And to my American friends, Happy Independance day, I'll be down in the U.S. celebrating with you! Tara :)

Fun day

2005-06-29T22:56:00.000-04:00

All I ended up doing today was adding some link partners as another storm hit. And since I found out that someone's tv got fried last night (while they were watching it) during the storm, I'm very glad I unplugged everything and hauled ass over to a friend's camper. With the 2 dogs of course, because they freak as much as I do.. lol

So 4.5 hours later, I got home around 8:30 and now I'm exhausted and as soon as I find out who gets through on Canadian Idol I'm off to bed. Hopefully I'll be able to get up bright and early (but not TOO early) and get bunches of work done. Like maybe an article or 2?

So that's about it. Have a good one folks!

Tara :)

I'm back!

2005-06-29T02:10:00.000-04:00

As it turns out, (remember that Queen of Murphy's Kingdom thing?) that when they came to set up the phone line on Monday that all the poles were full. They tried and tried to find somewhere, but in the end had to bury wire from the road outside the campground alllllll the way back to me. So finally at about 3 pm I got online. Over 300 emails, checking stats for 6 days and Adsense channels later, I'm a little slap happy but mostly caught up. And that was with an hour break due to a scary thunderstorm. I think that's what'll send me home if anything, because other than that, I'm doing great.

So, on to the a.m. stuff. My stats are fantastic for the last 6 days. MSN has really picked up my sites which has led to fabulous Adsense. I'm well over last month's total, my CTR is way up and while the amount per click are probably lower than a few months ago, I've had several great days and I'm sure that if it keeps up, next month I will start getting a check every month. I'm actually fairly close to it this month, and if I could have 1 more week (tops) I would've qualified for a check this month. Also, last month's check is about to be deposited into my account. No sales while I was offline (that would've just been TOO perfect, I know!) but I'm still a much happy camper, pun intended ;)

And now the slacking is over. I've got to get back to work tomorrow because I've done nothing since Thursday. Funny, without the net though I was going to bed much earlier. To be fair though, that could have something to do with dragging my ass out of bed at 8 am on Monday.. lol Wasn't impressed when they didn't start work until just about 3 pm. Not only for the lack of sleep, but the temp was in the 90's (over 30) and the humidex put it over 100 (around 40 or more) and I couldn't go cool off. Not to mention the a.c. just wasn't doing anything. But back on track tomorrow and Thursday because it's another long weekend in Canada and starting Friday, Eric's on his 1st week of vacation so I KNOW not much work will be getting done.

I guess that's about it - boy am I glad to be back online, and NEVER AGAIN will I go that long!

Tara :)

I swear, when I'm REALLY rich...

2005-06-22T21:32:00.000-04:00

I'm going to pay for the people in charge of writing the algorythyms for MSN, Google and Yahoo to sit down and spill their secrets. Like many other people lately, Yahoo has been messing around with my rankings. Some that have been in place for over 2 months, not new articles. And now, suddenly this week, I'm sitting at #5 in MSN for travel accessories and pet memorials. I'm NOT complaining, but why all of a sudden (after I swear, MAYBE 5 searches a month from them) are my sites doing so well? It's frustrating as all get out, in terms of trying to understand what on God's Green Earth is bloody going on!

In other news, I got the home page and 2 product pages done for the new site. Inspiration suddenly struck at 2 am.. Don't ask.. lol 4 to go for the skeleton and then 5 to go to get the site live. Apart from all the other little tweaks, but those are more than half done I think. So most likely by the end of the 1st week of July it will go live. Then maybe a break on the new sites for a few weeks while I write my little heart out.

And in even bigger news, tonight will be my last sleep at home for a while. This will also be my last post until the phone is installed at the trailer, which will HOPEFULLY be Friday, but most likely will end up Monday. So... to all of you (if there are any of you) who live in Quebec, enjoy the long weekend! Everyone else, have a great weekend, and hopefully you'll get a short post saying I'm live again on Friday!

Tara :)

It's been a while

2005-06-21T09:42:00.000-04:00

And I'm sorry to my loyal readers for the big posting gap. Time seems to have gotten away from me, and throw in a couple of early nights and camping days and it's already Tuesday!

I'm happy to report with the exception of yesterday, I've done at least a little bit of work since Friday. Still too much goofing off, and now this week packing, but things are getting done.

I bought a template from GoldenPineCone.com (Jewelry 200 brown) as well as I registered the domain name for the new site. It's not about jewelry.. lol Once it's ready, you know I'll release it here ;) I've also been up since an un-Godly hour this morning (thanks to the dog who wouldn't stop licking my feet at 5 am) and I've read/sorted/deleted my email, caught up on all my feeds, and done a whack of research on potential affiliates for the new site. And over the the weekend with still no internet I still managed to tweak the template, mainly fixing up the internal linking and naming the product pages. Very easy template to play around with. No content as of yet, but this one should be a bit of fun to write at least - if the research is any indication.

Hopefully with the little bit of time I have before we go down Thursday night (the next 2 Fridays are holidays here in Quebec) I'll get a bit of content done on all 4 sites. On the upside, it looks like we'll have phone service by Monday at the latest, hopefully Friday.

On that note, hope everyone had a great weekend, and I'll post more often, I promise :)

Tara :)

I've been slacking

2005-06-16T12:50:00.000-04:00

In more ways than one. Not only have I done extremely little work this week, I haven't been here telling you about it! Mind you, I prefer to write something when I have something to say, and I haven't really.

I've added a bunch of link partners on both the pet and dog sites and I've done some more specific Wordtracker research for my next site. I'm gearing up to start that site. I need a template, and I'm trying to find a ready made one to save some time and money, but no one seems to have anything I like. So what I'll do is decide on GoldenPineCone template (which I actually love, I'm just lazy) and create my own banner with some pictures I've found. Once I finalize the keyword research (mining the smaller niches' keywords) I'll pick up the template and start writing.

I'm not sure yet if we'll be heading down to the trailer this weekend. My father is bugging us to go over and fix up the utility trailer that he's giving us. And he's bitching that he's doing all the work on it - after specifically saying that we were on our own except for the dry fitting of the new wood. LOL Daddies are funny! We're actually going out for dinner tonight for Father's day just in case we do go down to the trailer. Either way, my summer vacation doesn't begin this weekend. With everything being up in the air all week, I haven't prepared to go yet. So I'm hoping it will be next weekend.

That's pretty much it. See why I don't tend to write when I've gotten nothing done? lol

Tara :)

Oops, I went to bed

2005-06-13T15:18:00.000-04:00

And forgot about a proper post. I gave up trying to stay awake around 10 last night. Which led to reading for a while, sleeping like crap and getting up around 9:30 this morning. And so far, I've managed to accomplish adding about 3 link partners to the dog and pet sites, and that's it.

Ok, that's not really it, but all that's tangible. I got information about adding a phone line and internet to the trailer, tried to cheer up a fed up and sick friend about her job, chatted with my mom to reschedule Father's day celebrations, read FeedDemon like mad and reorganized a couple small things on my goal page. For 3:15 pm though, it sure doesn't feel like alot.

It might have something to do with me downloading a whack of games to the laptop and actually playing one of them for at least an hour. Can't wait to find a crack for it and play some more... lol Very very addictive.

So now it's 3:18 with nothing on tv tonight stopping me from putting in a whole bunch of hours of work and not only do I not feel like working, I can't decide WHAT I'm going to force myself to do. I can't wait to have the net down at the trailer and actually get a bit of work done on the weekends because I get way off track with the relaxing.

Please cross your fingers that I get SOMETHING done other than goofing off! LOL

Tara :)

BJ's bloody book meme

2005-06-12T21:27:00.000-04:00

Ok, here goes:

1. How many books do I own?

Not a clue. Probably well over 5000 over the years. I don't have a ton of room for bookcases and I often "lend" books so your guess is as good as mine. A LOT anyway - I'm a book-a-holic. At one point when I took the bus to work I would read 3-5 books a WEEK.

2. Last Book I Bought:

About 20 or so at a garage sale. I can't afford to support my habit with new books.. lol

3. Last Book I Read:

The last one I finished was Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, the prequel to The DaVinci Code. Both EXCELLENT books, although if you're Catholic (which I'm not) you might be offended. I'm currently reading a Jonathan Kellerman Alex Delaware novel, the 3rd one I think. The title escapes me and I left it at the trailer so I couldn't tell you what it is. Doesn't really matter, all of the Alex Delaware character books ROCK.

4. Five Books That Mean A Lot To Me:

Wow. Hard one. I guess all the Harry Potter books, and like BJ, all the Lucy Maud Montgomery books that I've read, which is most of them. The DaVinci Code, because I love the theme of the book and firmly believe in Dan Brown's version of the Holy Grail. All of my Maeve Binchy books because they're entertaining and usually heart warming with great morals. And my favorite author ever is Anne Rice, and my favorite book ever is Queen of the Damned. The storytelling is amazing, and they ROYALLY f*cked up the movie which depressed me to no end.

5. Tag Five More:

Well, I don't know many more bloggers than have already been tagged, but here goes:

Ottawa Information & SBI Blog
Mark's Diary of a Newbie Affiliate Marketer

More later on affiliate marketing ;)

Tara :)

Have a great weekend!

2005-06-10T13:47:00.000-04:00

Short post...

What I got done yesterday:

Submitted 2 articles to about 10 article directories before I got too bored to go on.. lol
Signed up for the Value Exchange for the pet site.
Spent 4 hours chatting with 4 lovely ladies, fellow affiliate marketers about a fun new site that WON'T be shared here.
Cleaned up my disgusting desk.
Sorted through article outlines for the ones I felt the most like writing. (didn't write any yet)
Stayed up way to late watching old CSI's.

Today:

Received my match list so emailed a whole bunch of potential link partners.
Responded to 1.
That's it.

In a few minutes we'll be heading down to the trailer. I can't wait to get there, it's stinking hot out and our pool isn't quite ready yet here so as soon as I unpack for the weekend it's off to the campground pool! So all y'all have a GREAT weekend and I'll see ya Monday-ish.. lol

Tara :)

What a great day yesterday

2005-06-09T12:30:00.000-04:00

First the sale, then spending the commission money at a Party Lite party - which was more like a shower, we were SO rambunctious. At least half of us were drunk.. lol Tons of fun with lots of good friends, some new, some old. The poor consultant lost control about 2 minutes in! lol

So after I calmed down yesterday afternoon (about 3 hours later) I did actually get some work done. Site submission for the pet memorials site to minor SE's and some directories. And Eric finally edited the other 2 articles for the travel site, so the links for those are below.

Kids Luggage - Tons Of Adorable Options
Clothing Check List for Travel

What I need to probably do today is figure out which articles are decent enough for publication and submit them to some article directories which is my all-time FAVORITE thing to do - NOT. And sometime this afternoon BJ, Chrissie (who has an absolutely HILARIOUS blog) and I are going to talk about setting up a cool new (non-monetized) site. Purely for fun. Once we get it off the ground, I'll let you know about it. I should probably also set up a link exchange through SiteSell for the pet site.

At some point I'm going to have to get ready for camping tomorrow too. Hubby will be leaving work early again (there's a lunch for the graduating students that he should go to, but he hates it and will bail.. lol) so I won't have much time tomorrow. Luckily I had nothing clean to wear yesterday and already did my weekend laundry.

Exciting entry, huh? lol Not much to tell, sorry! lol

Tara :)

I MADE A SALE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2005-06-08T14:16:00.000-04:00

OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG - someone bought something for $329.20 for which I got 10%. $32.92!!!! Not too shabby! It was from Magellan's, (my travel site) but I don't know what they bought. I don't much care either.. as long as they don't return it. But even if they do, I still MADE A SALE!!!!! LOL I'm a spazz, I know, but I was really starting to wonder if it was going to happen. Adsense is too easy, it doesn't feel like you've done any real work to get the money. And often, it's your friend who doesn't get it who clicks on it even though you TELL them not too. In case you're wondering, anyone who's online or at home or at work has been told.. lol

Here's hoping this is the first of many to come, and in 2 months I'll be laughing at what a freak I was today!

Tara :)

Well... Not all went as planned

2005-06-07T22:32:00.000-04:00

I got 6 articles done, which I'm thrilled about. 4 are ready, the other 2 will be edited and live tomorrow. Didn't really get much research done for the new site though. Mind you, 10:20 pm is still quite early for me, so we'll see. Maybe tomorrow's articles will be product pages for the new site. Ok, I know I'm reaching.. lol Still, it's possible. That may be my new goal for the rest of this week, home/product pages and at least 5 articles. Maybe if I buy the template and get the banner done I could even go live within a week or 2. It's nice to dream... lol

Forgot to mention yesterday, I've decided that when I go down weekend after the coming one, I'll be staying for the summer. I may have to come back for a week for a friend's baby's 1st birthday, but other than that, I don't think I'll be back until September. I can't wait. Our good American friends down there have also graciously offered to pick up groceries or what not if necessary and will lend me a walkie-talkie in case someone tries to break in or I get scared or whatever. They may be raging alcoholics, but they are soooo sweet. Nicest drunks you'll ever meet, too! ;)

Here are the articles, including the 2 from the new site.

Go for a Personalized Pet Marker - There are Many Choices
Looking for a Truly Magnificent Tribute? A Wood Pet Casket Is the Way to Go
Bernese Mountain Dog Clothes - Not So Easy to Find!
Warm Dog Boots - Don't Leave Home Without Them!

Happy hump day!

Tara :)

What a beautiful weekend

2005-06-07T01:28:00.000-04:00

Really hot, humid and sunny. I LOVE that - as long as there's a pool nearby ;) Got to hang out with some friends that I haven't seen in a while down at the campground. Discovered a LOVELY Cosmopolitain mix - just add water, I mean, vodka. It SAID 2 parts vodka to 3 parts mix... I think that's negotiable! lol

Nothing exciting happened while I was gone. High single digit earnings in Adsense over the weekend, still no sales. Got my first search on the pet site today. I've decided on what my next site is about and I'm doing some real research on it. I set up a program to create myself a banner from some pictures I've found. Now I just need to decide on the template - I'm having a hard time deciding between a few of them at Golden Pine Cone. Once I've decided I'll pick one up and start with the tweaking.

I've also come to the conclusion I need to set up a bit of structure to my days. It's too easy to slack off when I'm the boss.. lol So I'm going to try to work on research/tweaking the new site at least 2 hours a day, 2 articles per site, per day, get and keep on top of the emails I get, and especially in the next couple of weeks do directory and article submissions, my favorite thing EVAH. [end sarcasm]

And that's all I have to say about that.

Tara :)

What a sad day

2005-06-03T15:03:00.000-04:00

Corey Rudl has passed away (thank you to many sources) and you can read what happened here.

Priya Shah of Marketing Slave has just lost her husband of 18 years.

My heart, sympathies and condolences go out to both their families, may Priya's husband and Corey's souls rest in peace.

It's been a bad year so far. I lost my beloved Grandmother; 2 neighbours (married couple I've known since I was 5 died within a month of each other); an old, very good friend of my mother lost her husband; a week after my Grandmother's funeral one of her oldest friend's died. I'll be glad to be out of 2005.

Tara :(

Forgive my ramblings, I'm a tired Queen

2005-06-02T22:32:00.000-04:00

So if anything comes out spelt funny or doesn't make sense, bug off, I could've gone to bed @ 8 if it weren't for the fact I'd have been up @ 4 or 5 am, which is just WRONG.

Ok, so I know a lot of you have been checking in today waiting for the new site. The hubby thinks it looks great and we couldn't find any major booboos. One of the 2 merchants I've been waiting on finally gave me an answer - after I called them. It was an 800 number (nice touch for an indie) and I got an apology, they felt bad and were surprised they didn't get anything. The other one I'll call tomorrow unless I get up late and we leave for the trailer early.

In the meantime, to heck with waiting, I'm going to go live now. Say hello to my newest (brain)child, Pet Memorials Info. It's small and probably won't get to a typical Martell size as there's just not enough keywords. I found the niche when researching the dog/cat/pet site, which ended up being the Dog Info site. It seems to be a fairly untapped niche. Also very few merchants. But, I thought it was an interesting topic (albeit morbid) and potentially lucrative. I guess we'll see.

So the cat's outta the bag. Let me know (as always, constructive not rude, criticism) what you think!

Have a great weekend folks, if you're in the North East of North America, welcome to Spring - it seems someone forgot about us, but they just woke up and it should be a nice weekend, FINALLY! lol

Tara :)

Forgot to mention

2005-06-02T13:19:00.000-04:00

There's a Yahoo News Story about the latest domain extention (tld), .xxx. Obviously, this is meant for adult oriented sites. There'll be a hefty price to pay though if you want one - $60 and ICANN thinks it should be ready for purchase this fall.

I don't know who'll buy them, but I hope all the porn sites do so we can easily identify them - and AVOID them! ;)

Tara :)

Ever heard of Google Guy?

2005-06-02T12:30:00.000-04:00

Some of you who read this blog may not have heard of Google Guy. As you might guess, he's a Google employee and he will occasionally answer questions at the Webmaster World forum. To be honest, he could post other places, but this is the only one I know of.

Currently, there are 2 great threads going on where Google Guy is answering questions from the forum. I think these are a great read and a must if you're at all concerned about SEO and Google especially.

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/29727-1-10.htm
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/29720-1-30.htm

Enjoy, the 1st one is long!

Tara :)

P.S. I think I will go live tonight with the site, so keep an eye out later tonight or tomorrow morning :)

Boring couple of days

2005-06-01T01:55:00.000-04:00

I haven't done anything tangibly productive since coming back - well, at least nothing I can show you, like articles or the new site. Which I promise is just about ready, I just want the hubby to bounce through it and see what he can see. My best 2 merchants still haven't answered emails I've sent which is a bummer, since they have some of the products I've already written about in articles. Hopefully before this site starts seeing a whack of traffic they'll answer. That's the biggest hold back for me going public. Any suggestions? Should I wait, or go forward? Yahoo tends to really like me and so far has me indexed VERY quickly, so even if Google holds off, I'll probably get a trickle within a week or 2. Things that make you go hmmm....

So other than tweaking both my Goal Starter page and the new site, here's what I've accomplished:

Made a huge list of which keywords I'll be attacking next for articles - I'd say at least 50-60 across all 3 sites.

Moved just about everything over to the laptop so I can work from it all the time to make sure I'm not missing something vital (like a 100 MB file) when I go to the trailer.

Did URL redirects to the proper pages (categories, like instead of index.html, dog-books.html) for my merchants on the product pages on both the travel and dog site. I'm hoping this will help convert my CTR into sales.

Added a Google search bar to one page to test it. No traffic to that page since I added it, so no news on that front.

Added a direct product link in one of my articles at Jon's suggestion to see if that helps conversion to sales.

Spent hours searching for possible new merchants for the new site with no luck. (even emailed a few last week and no luck there either)

Downloaded all the Affiliate Buzzes so that if I want to listen while on dial up internet at the trailer I won't wait for an hour and have crappy quality connection.

Pondered the fact that BJ had a fabulous day yesterday and my end result in Adsense would make most people cry.. lol

Checked out some of the motivational links on the Goal Starter page, deleted most, kept 1 and actually downloaded some stuff from it. Who knows when I'll get around to reading it though.

Had my own little dance of joy realizing that I way overshot my goals in Adsense this month - $57.03 unless I get a click in the next hour. My 3 previous months totaled don't even reach that - $1.12, $16.27 and $28.62. And I actually hit the $100 mark while I was camping a few days before I thought I would.

All in all, while it wasn't an exciting time, I got a lot done, and while writing this entry, I realized that I've had a great month. And while it's hard to discipline myself to work, being a natural slacker, I am getting better at it, and pray every night that I don't have to go out and look for a job in September, which is when I think I'll run out of my savings. I know I probably will, but maybe if I have a good number of sites up by then I can stretch it out longer. I absolutely LOVE working from home and making my own hours - not to mention not stressing if I don't accomplish everything I had wanted to do, because there's always tomorrow. At least for a few more months ;)

On that note, good night!

Tara :)

Interesting Weekend

2005-05-30T13:22:00.000-04:00

So the weather was odd... gorgeous and sunny for a few hours and then thunderstorms - Saturday AND Sunday. Which led to me babysitting a strange dog. Next door to my best friend's trailer there was a puppy (it couldn't have been older than 4 months) was tied up outside for what we figure 10 hours. By 2 pm (my friend said the neighbours were gone when she got up at 9) there was no food or water left in it's dishes, and the sun was HOT. We got it more water and decided if a storm came (it threatned for a few hours before actually showing up) one of us would take it in. I finally grabbed it around 5ish when we heard thunder. As it wasn't OUR long weekend, we finally had to drop it off at another friend's trailer who has a bigger dog than us because my dogs were freaking and we had to go home. When we left around 7, the owners of this PUPPY S T I L L weren't back and the office was closed. I hope they had a heart attack when they came home finally! A$$holes! For goodness sake, if you get a pet, TAKE CARE OF IT. And I hope those damn owners have issues - I'd love my or my husbands fists to get a workout on them. People like that deserve the same kind of pain they inflict on their pets!

Ok, off my rant now :) I came home last night after dropping off the above best friend around 9ish and checked my stats - decent traffic and adsense. Actually, it was enough that as we speak (with no clicks yet today) I have broken the $100 payout threshold!!!!!! Even happier news, I finally got my PIN today too!! (Why they sent it AIRMAIL from New York City to Montreal - an 8 hour drive - I'm not sure.) So whether I get a check in June, July or August, I don't much care - it was the landmark I was looking forward to. To more experienced marketers, I know $100 isn't much, but it's really good reinforcement for me :)

Today looks like it will be dedicated to going after link partners. I got 35 for the dog site through Sitesell Value Exchange that I have to check out, and I someone I contacted a couple of weeks ago just got back to me for the travel site. I really hope to have the "secret, ha ha" site public this week. I haven't cleared up all my affiliate issues, but to heck with it, I have 3 or 4 which is plenty right now. It's been sitting in limbo too long, and Jon says he can't find any issues with it, so I'm going to do final checks and probably go public by Friday. You'll hear it here first, promise ;)

Off to work now,

Tara :)

It's been a crazy day

2005-05-27T05:03:00.000-04:00

*** Due to piracy concerns, the link to my version of the goal starter page has been removed.

Ok, so it's been a quiet couple of days with my little bro around visiting. Very little work - that is until today.

Andrea from GoldenPineCone.com messaged me today so I could test her new template. Yes, this is the lovely woman who asked me to be an affiliate. I hadn't had time to sign up until today, so while I was doing the testing, I signed up. Now, before I start on the story, understand, the problems I had today had NOTHING to do with her awesome template - purely my own stupidity, as usual. lol

So while fooling around (and rushing) to publish the template, I didn't pay attention to which site I was putting it on, and managed to somehow merge my 3 sites into one. The subsequent clean up took about 3 hours, and I still can't get it to work properly on my desktop, only on the laptop. Which is fine, I've been meaning to get everything up and working off the laptop for a while now. Still though, the only reason I got everything working is because I HAD backed up the site on the laptop. So as Jon said today in his blog... yes it's a pain in the ass, but BACK UP YOUR SITES!

On the slightly upside, I fixed a few more things on the not public yet site and caught a few mistakes I'd missed. We're getting there....

On the really fun upside, I've spent about 3 hours tonight playing with this awesome template. It's brand new and available right now and worth the (ONLY!) $15 Andrea is charging. Seriously folks, if you follow James Martell and want an easily customizable "home page" (like he suggests) head on over and pick it up - but make sure you do it when you have a bit of time, you'll be adding your own pictures and links galore. Lots of fun, and very useful. And for those of you who aren't aware, all of Andrea's templates are great - and she design's James' templates as well, so you know you're getting quality stuff.

Ok, I'm off the template kick.. lol It really was great though! So, off camping again this weekend. I've been asked by a couple people "again?" - let me just clear it up - until Canadian Thanksgiving (first Monday in October), if not longer, unless there's a big family/friend do, it will be every single weekend :) So unless the internet with my phone suddenly works this weekend, I most likely won't be posting until Monday night.

To my American friends, have a great LOOOOOONG weekend! Everyone else, enjoy your time off!

Tara :)

Woo hoo, Carrie Won!

2005-05-25T22:40:00.000-04:00

Not loving the single so much - but the best finally won!

It's been a slack couple of days. I was really tired all day yesterday, but couldn't sleep at nap time or bed time and only fell asleep near 6 am. Luckily when I woke up after 1 today, I remembered I was expecting my brother around 2 and didn't go back to sleep.. lol

I've been contacting possible merchants (for the new site) to see if they have affiliate programs - no love yet, though some have answered at the very least. And 2 merchants I've signed up for already are a little slow to answer emails, so I'm not terribly impressed. Sadly they're independants so I don't have much recourse - but I need them, there's very very very few merchants in this niche - at least not many with affiliate programs.

Happily one of my existing merchants does cover what I'm after and I figured out how to do a URL redirect on CJ today. Now I think tomorrow and Friday will be spent going back over all my affiliate links and doing the same thing, as much as possible. Maybe write a few articles too. I think I'll also stop predicting when this site will be public - every time I do, I have to postpone it again. I would say most likely some time in June.

I'm in the single digits before getting a check from Google. At this rate, unless I have a really bad few days, I may just qualify for a check this month!

Zat's about eet folks!

Tara :)

Back after an exhausting weekend

2005-05-23T23:04:00.000-04:00

And I'm TIRED. So if any of this is incoherent, you'll know why :)

As predicted, there weren't too many sober moments, though I wasn't the worst. We found out my best friend's boyfriend is quite a lightweight - but he provided many giggly moments.. lol

The weather sucked. Friday was decent, and then rain. 3 days of rain. Lots of movies and games going on, but it was nice to see friends and family.

On the A.M. front, I have surpassed last month's earnings in Adsense, in no small part due to today's earning's alone. With a week to go, I will most likely hit the $100 mark by the 31 of May. If not, I will bet my first check that I have it by the 5 of June. No commissions that I've seen yet, which is very depressing - across the board through all of my affiliate networks I'm averaging about a 7% click-through rate of those who visit my product pages. Oh well, it'll happen eventually, right?

I think this week (a short one again since we go camping every weekend) I'll be working strictly on my not-so-secret site. I'm not too crazy about alot of the Adsense ads on most of the pages, but I've gone as far as I can with Google, so I'll have to just do some testing. To do that I'll need visitors so I'll need to go live. Plus I'd like to see some more cash :)

So, I guess that's the weekend roundup. Oh, and I did all but 2 of the articles I had planned last week. Hope you all had a great weekend and have a fantastic money-making week!

Tara :)

As always, I'm late :)

2005-05-19T13:21:00.000-04:00

As promised, here are the latest articles:

What to Look for When Buying a Dog Trick Training Book
The BARF Spreadsheet Will Help You Keep Track
Stuffed Toys for Dogs Can Be Fun For All!
Keep Your Pet Safe With a Dog Car Harness!
Women's Travel Clothing - More Than Meets the Eye
There are Lots of Swimsuit Coverup Options Available
You CAN Take Your Dog - Just Use an Airline Carryon Dog Bag!
Here are My Favorite Travel Products
Souper Puppy Nylabones are Super!

There are 4 more, but I'm not ready to release the new site yet, it still needs some tweaking. Hopefully next week. With one day left of work, I've got to try and finish the last few articles, get Eric to edit them and then publish. Big feat to accomplish if I'm as busy tomorrow as I was today. I wrote 6 articles by 4 pm and then as a treat, I decided to FINALLY watch Desperate Housewives, which I'd been too busy to do. And I folded laundry, so it wasn't wasted time ;)

Then the phone rang - my Mom calling me back. Ok, chatted for about 15 mins, no problem, back to my show. Not 5 minutes later, my husband's credit card company calling AGAIN (not a creditor, a telemarketer) after I've told them politely twice to call back AFTER supper. This time I was less polite. About 2 minutes after that, hubby starts with the MSN about the articles I'd sent him to edit... I did manage to finish watching about 2 hours after I started. Oh well.

Then it gets better. Tons of email coming in all day, PM's back and forth with someone who'd like me to be an affiliate (OMG how FLATTERING!!!! - I said yes of course, I love her stuff!), chatting with Jon (as usual, I think my husband is starting to get jealous! lol) and then I discover I can no longer publish. Across all 3 sites. Internal server error. Then it's on to back and forth for an hour with my hosting company.

K, listen - I may be a newb at hosting, but I did work tech support and customer service - I know when I'm being brushed off. They tried to tell me some b.s. about back everything up, uninstall FP extensions, reinstall and get back to us. I hadn't touched anything in FP, and I don't know how to manually configure anything, so it wasn't me. We then discovered it was related to another issue (which is what I thought) and problem solved. Usually I talk to someone else who knows a bit better than to try and get rid of me. Hell, can't blame 'em - I did the same thing.. lol Still a great company with good support and fantastic prices. I would - and still do - recommend them to anyone.

Let's see, what else did I do... Signed up for a couple of affiliate programs for the hidden site, tweaked it a teeny bit, ogled Adsense and my stats, as usual, spent too much time on the AP forum and my RSS feeds, as usual.. And of course those articles above. Went to bed waaaaay too early yesterday (but it felt great) which is why the first articles didn't get posted. Then I decided to just wait until they were all done. I think that about covers the last couple of days.

If I get a chance to finish all the articles, I'll be posting tomorrow. Otherwise, unless the internet with my cell phone suddenly works this weekend (not holding my breath) I'll be posting on Tuesday most likely.

To all my fellow Canucks: Happy Victoria Day weekend - eat, DRINK and be merry!

Tara :)

Busy Weekend

2005-05-17T02:38:00.000-04:00

We had a lovely (read delicious) late Mother's Day dinner last night at a cute little Indian place. It's funny, as I get older, I enjoy my parents company more and more. Perhaps because we don't live too close together or talk too often.. lol Seriously, my Mom and I fight a lot less these days, which is nice.

No camping sadly, but we'll make up for it this weekend. It's a holiday weekend, Victoria Day (Monday) weekend here in Canada. Looks like Friday will be devoted to moving our old bed and our outdoor bar down to the trailer, coming back to get the dogs and just relaxing/drinking all weekend. Our good friend will finally be joining us this weekend, so I don't expect much sober time or sleep. Good times!

In terms of affiliate marketing, I've had two extremely good days in Adsense. Yesterday was better, but today is nothing to sneeze at. Actually yesterday was my best day ever in terms of amount, though not clicks. Let's just say that if I could get the amount every day, I would get a check every month.

I also have 9 articles (some I've blogged about already) edited but not set up. I'll most likely do that after I post. Tomorrow's post should include all the articles. I wrote 4 of them today. I would like to get at least 20 articles done this week (across all 3 sites) since I effectively will lose 4 days of work. With no internet connection at the trailer, I'll have a hard time writing the articles as I tend to do research as I need it.

So that's my life today. You know, it's funny where motivation can come from sometimes. The person whose site I blogged about earlier today called me an inspiration. We started at about the same time, but no doubt because of this blog, I have been more successful than her. It's all relative I suppose, because I certainly don't feel successful or that I'm any kind of inspiration, but then again, I'm sure that my inspirations don't feel like one either. Her very sweet comment has definitely motivated me to work harder. And don't worry, I had offered to help before she said anything :)

Something to think about...

Tara :)

Short post for now

2005-05-16T19:06:00.000-04:00

More coming later.

But, for now, help out a friend of mine and take a look at her site, Your Guide to Finding True Love. If you like it at all, do her a favour and link to it on your blog for a few days, she's having a heck of a time to get some SE's over to it.

Thanks loyal readers!

Tara :)