Affiliate marketing hasn’t worked for me yet. Maybe I haven’t tried hard enough. Maybe I haven’t tried the right things. Or maybe it’s just a giant scam. I’m not ready to give up on it, but I am ready to take a break from it.
Not only that, but I found an answer to a question I asked a little while back. What do I want to do? And right now, the answer isn’t go sail the world or buy a big fancy house. I want to move back to Dayton. All my friends are there. There’s a lot more to do there than at my parent’s. And for God’s sake, I’m 25 and living at my parents’ house.
Also, I found I really like to make little programs, so I’d like to find a job in programming, and finding a programming job down in Dayton would be a solution to both my problems. Unfortunately, there are about 2 positions open in the entire area that are for entry level programmers, and there are a ton more qualified programmers than me.
So for the time being, I’m going to work on getting some programming experience. I just bought a PHP book, and downloaded the Qt Creator software. I’ll be writing about what I learn to hopefully help any other budding programmers out there.
A majority of the time management articles I’ve read (although I admittedly haven’t read very many) have suggested one thing when sitting down to do a task. Get into the flow of work, and keep doing it until you’re done. I believe it’s called “batching.” For example, if you have homework for physics, philosophy, English, and math, you would want to do all your physics homework followed immediately by all your math homework. That way your mind would be in “math mode” for as long as possible. Switching in and out of different modes takes a few minutes (20 minutes is often quoted) and those minutes are better spent on more important tasks.
I have achieved this “state of flow” state many many times. It was particularly easy to get into doing math homework back in school. I just locked myself in my room or isolated myself in the library and put my head completely in my work. Then I’d look up when everything was done just to find out that three hours had passed and I didn’t even realize it.
I’m not bashing that method. I’ve experienced it, and it’s absolutely astonishing. It feels amazing, and it works. If I am able to achieve this state of flow, then I will.
However, I’m finding that some days, no matter what I do, getting into that groove is difficult if not impossible. I’ll sit down, start my task, but other thoughts creep into my mind constantly. Initially, I berated myself for not being focused. For some crazy reason, I thought that since I couldn’t get into the flow of things, I might as well not do any work at all. After I realized that getting down on myself wasn’t helping, I started to ask why I was doing this.
I still don’t have the answer, but I do believe I have a solution. I have at least a moderate awareness of how scatterbrained I am at the moment. If I feel that I’m unable to sit down and do any single thing for more than a few minutes, I’ll commit to completing a very small task. One that will only take 15 minutes. There have been times where I only thought I could handle 5 minutes of work, so that’s what I did. Then I would do whatever I initially had the impulse to do like watch Frasier or check facebook.
This does two things. First, it has the immediate effect of at least getting something done. Even if it’s only getting a paragraph written or posting a couple things on a site. That’s more than I would have accomplished had I just sat down browsed the internet. Second, there’s small chance that by getting started, I’ll get into that miraculous “flow” state, and I can just keep going.
One thing before I wrap this up. By using the phrase “state of flow,” I don’t want you to think that I subscribe to anything new agey or religious that might be attached to that phrase. I have just personally experienced this state and used those particular words to describe it.
To wrap this up, getting in flow is great and deserves the pedestal I’ve put it on. However, believing that this is a readily accessible state that I can just slip in and out of at will is something beyond my grasp right now, and it may never be within my grasp. Doing small tasks is a good alternative to seeking a state of flow because getting something done is better than getting nothing done, and because I might accidentally fall into a state of flow. I hope this relates to at least one person who has difficulty getting things done as much as I do.
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I put in a lot of hours this week. As you may remember, I was so excited about the idea of one week on, one week off in my Week 11 post. It basically consisted of working your ass off for an entire week until you want to cry and go home to mommy, and then you get an entire week off to pursue other personal projects or just have fun. The first two days into my “on” week, I realized that I wasn’t going to make it. Working 70+ hours in a week is just not something I’m capable of…yet. I really like the concept, and instead of giving up on it, I decided to try something more like fast week, slow week. Last week was fast week, and I planned on putting in 50 hours. I ended up logging 54. Woohoo! Hours worked by day: 9, 1, 9, 13, 1, 13, 10, (0). Almost looks like 2 days on, 1 day off 
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Part of the credit goes to working on a new program to do my backlinking (promoting my site in a way that it ranks higher in google) for me. I love writing my own programs, so while it was tiring, it hardly seemed like work. I have huge plans of almost completely automating the backlinking process, but I can’t do it all at once. I’d like to, but I have other things to get done, so I’m going to shoot for a version 0.01 of my program that will speed up the process considerably. I think after I get version 0.01 of Backlink Builder working, I will consider all work required to make it “Backlink Builder 1.0″ a personal project.
As you can see, I have 41 articles up on Ezine Articles, and I have 3 signups for the week. That really does not make me happy. If it costs me that much work to get only 3 signups per week, it’s just not worth it. So I’m trying other things. The backlink builder will be a big help.
I’ve decided to start keeping an eye on my stats. Here’s last week’s and this week’s.
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As for my articles, I’m in the midst of doing 18 at once. I will not be posting them to ezine articles since they are all so similar. After working on them a little bit more, I give them a moderate estimate of bringing in 1 signup a day. If that’s actually true, then I just have to do the same thing five more times and I’m set. That will be residual traffic, not just once and I’m done traffic like with ezine articles.
After my almost euphoric reaction to the one week on, one week off plan, a couple problems popped up. The same internal problems that continue to pop up, and a couple new ones for good measure.
Other ways of making money seem more appealing. Getting a job. Writing articles for other people. Sell stuff so I can spend money on articles instead of writing them myself. I still want to give this form of income a solid chance to work. At least I am going through this self-argument less frequently and quicker each time. That’s some sort of strange progress I suppose. One point to add to this: this is not a permanent deal. I am not cursed to sit in a dungeon typing out articles for the rest of my days. As soon as I start making money at this, I can hire people to write for me.
I’m scared. I have giant plans for this week. I want to whip out 56 articles. In 80+ hours of work, that’s possible, but seeing as how I’ve never written more than 12 in a single week, it seems like a hell of a leap. I think having something to shoot for is worthwhile, but 56 is just too much to wrap my mind around. I’ll go for 25 even though I know that destines me for failure on my goal to put out 70 articles this month. Who knows, maybe I’ll knock out 56 on accident.
Overwhelming goals need a plan. Just thinking about 25 articles makes adrenaline run through my gut. If I break it down into keyword research, writing points, writing intros, writing conclusions, writing summaries, revising into a compelling copy, writing titles, formatting, inserting links, submitting, and backlinking, each task seems more manageable.
I need to start on step one as soon as possible. I don’t know if you noticed, but that was a pretty long list of separate tasks. It still seems overwhelming, but if I get started on the first one, pretty soon I’ll be on to the second, third, and done before I can blink my eyes.
I’m forgetting that failing doesn’t mean I completely wasted my time. What if I “fail” and only write 17 articles. Was this week a complete waste? Guess again. It will have been my most productive week ever by far. Just because I might come up short of what I want doesn’t mean that everything I did will be a waste.
As for my new problems, I just moved back into mom and dad’s yesterday. It’s not where I want to be in the slightest, and I’m taking it harder than I think I should.
I have no idea what I want to do on my week off. That might not seem like a problem, but I think it’s the biggest one of all. I chose this form of income specifically so I could eventually have lots of time off. After I’ve got all this money, what am I going to do with it? What’s the point of having money if all I’m going to do is stick it in the bank until I die? I’ve stuck myself so deep into a scarcity mindset that I forgot how to dream.
If I could do anything, what would I do?
If I could make anything, what would I make?
If I could be with anyone, who would I be with?
If I could be anyone, who would I be?
If I could solve any problem, which one would I solve?
I feel so disconnected from reality, the world, and myself, that I don’t have answers to these questions. Every time I think of an answer, it comes with a ton of “buts.” Maybe I need to dream small first. Get my mind wet. And then the bigger more awesome goals will come out. At least after pondering over this for a long time I came to one useful conclusion. Continually thinking about this isn’t going to get me anywhere. I have to find out what I like and don’t like. I have to do a lot of exploring, and exploring my imagination just isn’t going to cut it. I have to get out and live, even if all that means is I ask someone cute out on a date. That’s better than sitting at home thinking about how to meet girls.
How would you answer the above questions?
I was about to go into self loathing mode for my lack of work this week when I read this post on stevepavlina.com about one week on, one week off. I do this almost naturally, scorning myself for my week off.
To sum it up, it talks about working yourself to exhaustion for one week and then taking a week off to recuperate and do whatever the hell you want. It’s like he wrote this post just for me. Instead of trying to achieve balance all the time, I can shift laser focus on work one week to laser focus on other projects another week. I’m more than willing to try this, and I’ll be pretty astonished if it doesn’t work. Looks like work week is coming up.
By the way, as most of you know, I’ll be moving back to mom and dad’s tomorrow. You have all been very supportive, and I appreciate it very much. Thank you.
It’s Friday night, so I’m gonna make this a quick one.
Exciting News
This week I had 14 people sign up for my free newsletter. About the same number that signed up in the entire month of March. Out of those 14, 4 immediately unsubscribed, and 4 didn’t confirm. That leaves me with 5 new subscribers this week. That’s still progress.
Most of my signups came from a single article that got a giant rush of visitors on Monday, and half of the ones that subscribed immediately unsubscribed. I suspect that that was because after they signed up, I shot them straight to a sales page that had nothing to do with anything I had been building up before that. I fixed it as soon as I was able to, but by then the rush had stopped. Lesson learned.
To recap here is what I think cost me the immediate unsubscriptions:
Reader finds an interesting article ->
Reader follows a link to helpful free newsletter ->
Reader goes to inbox and clicks a link to confirm subscription ->
BIG FLASHY SALES PAGE ->
Reader unsubscribes.
To fix this, I made a “thank you for subscribing” page with a link to the big flashy sales page at the bottom. That way the reader can still visit that page if she wants, but she’s getting the recommendation from me, not just having it shoved down her throat.
Fixing The Confirmation Problem
There were several people that didn’t even bother to confirm. I realize that some people put in a fake email, and there’s nothing I can do about that. But I also suspect that some of them were confused about the fact that they needed to go to their inbox and confirm their subscription. I created a page to guide them through the process as best as possible. Both of those took a couple hours to fix as I had to learn how to make my own web pages. It turned out to be pretty fun, and it only cost me a couple potential subscribers to figure out that I needed to get this done now.
Article Marketing Developments
Like I mentioned before, I had one article that just had people racing to my site to sign up for my newsletter. I looked at it and tried to pull as much information out of it as possible. Here’s what I came up with:
1. Timing is exceedingly important. If your article gets published in the late morning to early afternoon, you will get a lot of visibility. If it gets published at 2:00 a.m., it’s going to get pushed off the first page with barely any readers. When articles get published is out of my control unless I want to shell out $100 a month. No thanks. I’ll take my chances.
2. Fear can be an effective seller. If you can convince people that if they don’t take action to fix their problem, they are going to suffer, people will click through. I know that sounds manipulative and callous. It may be manipulative, but it’s certainly not callous. If these people want to get help for their problem, they need to take action. If they’re not willing to click their mouse a couple times and type a few characters, there’s no way I can help them. If all it takes for them to get started is a push to make those clicks and typing those characters (signing up for my newsletter), then I’m going to push them as hard as I can without making them run away.
3. Being friendly and informative when recommending links might be more effective than being pushy and salesy. I’m going to give this one more time to test. The difference being:
Salesy: Click Here now to find out more about this subject
Informative: This free newsletter has some great information on this topic: click here.
4. Make your article title address a general question, not a specific question. If you can give general answers to a general question. If you craft those answers in such a way that they create more specific questions in the reader’s mind, you can tell them you have those answers in your free newsletter if they would like to go sign up for it. If you answer a specific question, you’ve helped them, but now the read has no more use for you, and they will click away.
As a final note, I’m up to 44 total articles published.
This turned out to be a lot longer than I expected. I’m off to have a few beers and look at something other than a computer screen. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you all next week.
Non-Technical Stuff
I’ve not really been in a blogging mood this past week. I’m still not. I had some sudden news thrust on me, and I’ll be moving back up to mom and dad’s next month. Not looking forward to that even a little bit. I was prepared to move; I just wasn’t ready to do it so soon. There’s no pretty way for this to work out, but it will work out.
I read an excellent post on one of the blogs I comment on for traffic. The blogger’s name is Mary, and she has giant goals that are starting to come to fruition for her. Then she wrote about her normal day. Get up; work out; make breakfast; write; do laundry…. it was just a mundane day.
She mentioned how big goals happen over time, and doing stuff over time is boring. You just keep doing the same boring thing day in and day out, and you come out months or years later exactly where you want to be. Big changes don’t take big effort, they just take a lot of time which is exceedingly frustrating. I want results NOW! WAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! And thanks to just trying to get a link to my site, I ended up learning something profound. Dammit. I thought I was done learning
This past week, I found a groove and settled into it. I had article topics picked out, and I just knocked off a few every day, worked on my software (I’ll explain below), and commented on blogs. Not very interesting. Good.
This new view of things is kind of a relief. It removes the burden of needing to feel motivated every day. Most days I’m not too enthused about what I’m doing, and it’s nice to know that that’s the norm, not those two or three days where I was on a productivity high. Those were days were gravy.
I broke my concentration today because yesterday I ran out of prepared article topics. Meh. I had another one of my frantic searches to try something new and exciting. God, it’s like binging. Swallow as much false hope as I can all at once. Get ready for a hell of a depression hangover when you realize that you’re on the right path right now and you just wasted a day (or a week, ugh) of getting there.
Keep on the high road guys. The boring, tedious high road is the only way to get you where you want to go. Take a little detour to the low road, and yeah, the fall is fun, but eventually you hit the bottom and you realize you have to climb all the way back up just to start again where you left off.
Technical Stuff
I worked pretty consistently this week. I probably averaged two articles a day. I’m up to 33 articles published. I think 100 total is a nice round number to shoot for this month. Keeping up a relatively easy 2-3 per day will get me there.
I made a nifty little piece of article submission software. It’s simple and quick, and it cuts down my submission time by 10x probably. No joke. It only took 5-10 minutes to submit 10 articles to 6 directories. That’s pretty badass. To me it is anyway.
I’ll be giving the social bookmarking sites like digg a try this week. I just worked out 15 more keywords and I’ve got a lot more coming. I think I can bust out the rest of the keywords for the month in the next couple of days. Keyword research is soooo boring. Which is good. Yessss. I’m going in the right direction.
Well, a lot has happened in the past week. My subscriber list finally hit the double digits. That’s right ladies and gentleman. I have 11 people listening to what I have to say.
I have come up with 3 new ways to motivate myself.
1. My brother really wants to go to Vegas when he gets back from Iraq in July. I don’t see how it’s going to happen, but I want to get him there if it is at all possible.
2. Pretend I am a successful internet marketer, and then do whatever that guy would do.
3. Make my life more balanced. I spent a week at home doing barely anything but working. That’s bound to get depressing. I need to get outside, move around, and hang out with my friends. And just so I don’t feel like I’m some worthless bump on a log, I need to work on my website as well.
I have quite a bit more to say, but one of my friends has informed me that my blog is hard to understand. And that’s pretty understandable. I’ve really been writing it for me and hoping other people have been reading, but I’d like it to make sense to you too of course. That’s why I’m going to include an introduction page separate from all my blog entries. Check it out.