Anyone going to CAP Barcelona please add me on skype @ jonathanholloway86 and shoot me an IM so we can meet up. I will be arriving Wednesday morning.
This is the shortest blog post ever.
Working at home can be a drag sometimes. Sure it’s great to have the freedom to work whenever you like, but it gets a little boring sitting alone in the office. Some of us resort to going to Starbucks or other coffee shops to work. I know JohnG and Graham do, at least they claim to be working… but we all know what they are really up to. Starbucks is a really productive atmosphere… if you are prepared.
The following are must have items when you are at Starbucks:
One thing you really need to have is an open mind. Today, as I sit and write this, I have seen the following.
As weird as the above sounds, I still end up making it up to Starbucks a few times per week. This is because working alone is very boring, and heading out to work in social environments is a great alternative to doing this.
Back to work now.
Have you ever realized that some people complain non stop? It is a really bad habit to have. I remember a few months back reading a book called A Complaint Free World which talked about not complaining for 30 days or something like that. Reading that book has forced me to notice how many complaints I hear from friends and family every day.
I have recently noticed an increase in complaining from the people I hang around. It’s as if they have run out of things to say, so they just start pointing out everything’s imperfections and flaws. It’s a really weird phenomenon, and it makes up a large percentage of our day-to-day conversations and discussions.
Stop and notice how often you and the people around you complain. It can include complaining about the weather, gas prices, your job, etc. The fact of the matter is that we are usually surrounded by a constant world of complaining.Be careful though because once you take a step back and realize who is complaining the most… you might not want to be around them anymore. They will only bring you down.
Are you a complainer?
Last week was great. I closed out a solid month and have some great things in the mix for August. I went out friday night and did a little celebrating with some friends. Saturday afternoon I roll into the house feeling quite hungover, and I sat down at the computer to check over a few things. I pull up my source code and low and behold there was some fabulous hidden viagra spam links in the code of the homepage. But wait… not just on one site, but all sites on the server.
So I log into my shell to delete this nonsense out of the code but… all of my file permissions have been changed so I can’t touch a thing. Great. Just a matter of time before they get crawled and dropped from the index and I am stuck for a few months.
The next stop was the wonderful live chat at ixwebhosting.com. If this isn’t the biggest waste of time, I am not sure what is. This A hole simply tells me to create a support ticket and there is nothing he can do. I told him to have a great day. Not.
So the next stop was to call in and see if this issue could be resolved. After being on hold for 3 minutes I was connected to what sounded like a child. This kid tells me that I need to create a support ticket and that there is nothing he can do. Why not just get a recording to tell me that? Why actually pay someone to give “tech support” when all they do is tell people to create a support ticket?
So hmm let’s guess what I did next. Did I wait for my ticket to be resolved? Nope. I went and bought different hosting accounts with people who have good customer service and changed every single site to a new server. I am actually glad I did this as it is now tuesday and my ticket is still open. I’ll have to modify the ticket in a few days once the bots are hitting my new servers to have IXSUCKSATHOSTING take the old stuff down.
Thanks for the headache IXWebhosting. You truly suck at life!
PS - $5 paypal for anyone who links to this post with the anchor text IXWebhosting Review.
Also this was not the only issue I had with them, there were times when sites would be down because of someone else overloading the server. 99% uptime is a crock.
I talk to affiliates all the time who all seem to be working around the clock. While I used to do this (work all the time) there comes a time when you think, “OK, I am making money now. When can I take a step back and enjoy myself?” Unless you take the steps to remove yourself from the monotonous tasks that consume most of your time, you will be forever buried in random tasks that keep you “busy”.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying to start outsourcing your SEO for $2 an hour. Just cut out the parts that can be done by someone else.
Stuff like…
I know some newer affiliates may not have the capital to outsource everything, and almost everyone starts out in this position. It all comes down to how hard you work and how much you can reinvest into your business so it can grow to the point where you can outsource many tasks and grow at an amazing rate.
People say that they are afraid to let someone else do their work because it may not be done as well as they could have done it themselves. While this is true it misses the point. The reason you outsource is to free up your time so you can focus on the big picture. You can do everything yourself and it will be very high quality, but by then your competition will have already left you in the dust.
Think about where you want to be 1, 2, 5 and 10 years from now. Do you want to have one little 30 page site that you play with as a hobby or do you want to have a huge network of sites that make you five-six figures per month?
I choose the second option.
It’s been a while since my last post, and lately I just haven’t been motivated to write anything. The motivation came back today as I received the one-millionth pharm spam comment on my pimp office post. I picked up the phone and dialed up this asshole’s hosting provider and had a nice chat with the abuse department. I then filed my formal spam complaint… I hope they cancel this dbag’s hosting (or the person who let this happen) AS HARD AS THEY F***ING CAN! To top it all off the dumbass(es) has no idea that all his spam comments are pending moderation… they never even had a chance. Maybe if the spammers would take the time to actually spam sites themselves instead of using programs they could be more effective?
Reporting a spamming POS is fun, but what really has me pumped is the Snoop Dog and 311 concert in Atlanta tomorrow. Every summer since I was in high school the band 311 has played a concert in Atlanta, and every summer it is the party of the year. The tailgate starts around 12pm and goes strong all day until about 6 or 7 when most people stumble into the venue. Beers get funneled, shots are taken, and a whole lot of other stuff is ingested as well. I think some kid actually got his arm cut off somehow last year but I could be mistaken as my memory is a little fogged. Nonetheless, it is a sick party.
In case you haven’t heard of 311 here is a little taste of what they are like.
According to the weather man it is supposed to rain all day tomorrow. This should make for an exciting time since it is an outdoor concert. Hopefully the rain won’t spoil the day and I can come back with some exciting pictures and videos.
As someone who has mainly been involved in the online gambling industry, I have always wanted to branch out and get a hold of a few non-gambling income sources. Don’t get me wrong, I am not shying away from the gaming side of things at all… I would just like to diversify a little more and break into some other industries.
It’s been said many times before that poker affiliates are top notch marketers due to the level of competition in terms of gaining traffic. I like to think of it like walking around with a 500 pound weighted vest on for about a year, and then taking that vest off and feeling like you can do anything.
I haven’t really broken into other markets as much as I’ve wanted to, but I do feel confident that eventually it will happen.
Enter Forex
You just don’t know what is possible until you “test the waters”. Forex is a good example. While in Cyprus there was a lot of hype about forex affiliate programs, and people were buying domains and ranting about how easy it will be to dominate. Heh. So yea… I was one of those people, and I even went as far as developing a nice site with some decent content and doing some linking. I did some keyword research and found some terms that looked like they would be fairly easy to dominate based on the sites that were currently ranking.
Needless to say the site ranks for nothing except for it’s name. This is due to a few factors like not having many links, some links being low quality, and mostly because forex is a seriously whored out market. Try to find a good forex domain… I dare you. Chances are it has been registered by a domainer or a Digital Point member looking to build a MFA (made for Adsense) site.
The funniest thing about forex is that all of the successful sites use adsense as their main source of revenue (Hint: if the mega-authority forex sites use adsense this may be an indicator that the affiliate programs don’t convert). I know because after becoming frustrated with not being able to outrank even the crappiest of forex sites I resorted to Adwords. My quality score was excellent, but it was still costing more than $1 for a click. I then resorted to using site-targeted campaigns. What I did was pick out all of the forex sites that ranked for the terms I thought would work well, and I tried to get my ad to display on their site. This strategy was totally bunk as well because I had to pay upwards of $2 to knock out the top guy and get my ad to show.
Long story short I scrapped the adwords plan since it generated ZERO conversions despite testing different placements, ads, offers etc. (Note: Also tried on facebook and got plenty of clicks with ZERO conversions)
My advice on anyone wanting to “MAKE MONEY IN THIS AMAZING UNTAPPED MARKET WOO HOO!” would be to build a content driven forex site (probably the most boring topic ever) that can rank well and then simply run adsense on it. With the amount of search volume involved with forex it shouldn’t be hard to make some decent money since the clicks are $2 and up. The only hard part is getting your site to out rank the old, crappy sites with backlinks from ezinearticles.
In my opinion it is not worth me putting valuable time and resources into a project that cannot make me at least a few thousand if not five figures per month. I just don’t see that happening in forex without serious effort and patience. Not to mention that I would rather have a tooth pulled than write anything about forex again!
Conclusion
Forex sucks so far.
Maybe selling a how-to ebook on forex would be easier. Rant over.
PS any forex affiliates out there please drop me a line for some link exchanges 
The other day I was feeling a little “malnourished”… and decided I should go out and get a delicious meal. For this feast, I chose to head to the nearest meth addict rehab center Waffle House. For those of you living in undeveloped regions of the world, a Waffle House is a small truck-stop diner that serves the most delicious waffles and bacon-egg-cheese melts.
Staff
The best part about Waffle House is their friendly staff. At any time of the day you can sit down and be greeted by a warm meth smile. All jokes aside they really are super nice. Here is a good video which portrays a daytime Waffle House experience. Click here to see this lame yet accurate video. Here is a video that portrays the typical night time Waffle House experience. As you can see it is a different place altogether once the bars close and people show up to eat while still drunk.
Live Entertainment
As if that isn’t enough, they also offer live entertainment. The best shows often happen in the middle of the night when the waffle house is packed with lots of drunken patrons. The shows usually consist of a waitress getting pissed off at the cook for screwing up the order and thus causing the drunken patrons to lash out in a verbally abusive fashion. The show ends with the waitress quitting her job and storming out of the restaurant, beating up the cook, or both. No worries though… once this happens you are greeted by a different waitress who quickly explains that your previous one did not take her meds this week. Here is some superb footage of the type of entertainment you see when eating at waffle house. The below video is actually from a waffle house in Savannah GA.
Now for the Motivational Part
So what does all this have to do with motivation? Lots.
When it comes time to pay for your pricey feast you must take your bill to the cashier. At the cashier there is a little pack of what looks like brochures. These are actually job applications. How would you like to work that job, for that money, in that environment?
I grabbed one of these at first as a joke to give to a friend, but I ended up finding a better use for it. As you can see in the pictures below, this little job application now serves a better purpose.
Conclusion
What on earth could provide more motivation than a Waffle House job application tacked to the wall right above your desk. It’s like saying, “Oh you want to slack off? Might as well go ahead and fill this out now.” Whenever I am feeling like slacking and being lazy, I just look up and I am reminded as to why I need to be constantly working and developing new ideas… So I don’t have to work a shitty job in a really shitty work environment.
Anyone one who doesn’t live near a waffle house and would like some “motivation” just post a comment and I can mail you one.
I remember a while back it was hard to stay busy. All I had to do was manage one project and stay on top of it. Now it seems like I have hundreds of different things going on at once. The good thing is that I don’t have to put those things off because of another job. Why is it so hard to be productive when you have nothing else to do?
I can’t even guess at how many hours I have spent chatting with people on skype, facebook, and now ichat. I think those three things combined keep me from making the kind of progress I want to make.
As an affiliate how busy are you? I know that right now I have…
It’s definitely not a challenge for me to stay busy, but it is a challenge for me to stay focused. I am just curious as to how much everyone else works and how they stay on track without getting distracted.
This question pops in and out of many heads each day when affiliates are thinking of starting up a new project, and it’s often a tough choice. If you already have a site related to your new project, should you just add a new section on to this site or start with a completely new domain? There really only two alternatives to starting fresh.
Starting Fresh
If the two alternatives above don’t apply to you, you are forced to start fresh. Whenever I start fresh I try to do the following. This is assuming you have already decided on the topic of the site and done some keyword research.
Within a few months your site should become established (getting a steady flow of traffic from search engines). Keep in mind the traffic will depend on how competitive your topic is and the quality of inbound links you point to your site. Keep adding good links and content, and eventually you will end up with a solid site. In six months to a year you could have a site that earns you some serious money each month depending on the niche you target.
