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About This Blog

Below you can read about some of the ways I have made money online. Eventually I made my way to affiliate marketing, ecommerce websites and blogging. This blog is about my experiences running websites, building traffic to them and making a profit:

About My Knowledge

Languages

  • PHP
  • MySql
  • HTML
  • XHTML
  • CSS
  • Javascript
  • Visual Basic
  • XML

Desktop Software

  • Excel
  • Filemaker Pro
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Adobe Dreamweaver
  • Adobe Acrobat
  • Open Office
  • Many different SEO programs

Site Software and CMS’s

  • Wordpress
  • Magento
  • OS Commerce
  • Drupal
  • Just about any PHP based CMS
  • Custom PHP sites

Other

  • Adsense
  • Adwords
  • Clickbank
  • Commission Junction
  • ShareASale
  • Wordtracker
  • Yahoo Search Marketing
  • Google Webmaster Tools
  • Yahoo Site Explorer
  • eBay

About My Experience

  • 2002 – My extra income came mainly through eBay and products about eBay. Started a small eBay business buying closeout products online and reselling them on eBay. I also sold information products, compiled CD’s and my software. I dabbled a little in auctioning other people’s products for them on commission. Began to realize that if I could detect bidding patterns on eBay, I could have a distinct advantage over other sellers. I taught myself Visual Basic and wrote Hotbid 3.0 to find these patterns. Decided I was doing way too many things that there should be software to do, like emailing eBay customers their download links. So I used Outlook Express to automatically reply to Paypal payments, sending customers their download links. I wrote about this in an ebook called Automated Ebay Sales. I gave away resale rights and auction ads with the book to virally spread the affiliate links in the book.
  • 2003 – Purchased my first domain profit-ware.com, finally tired of free hosting. During this period, I religiously wrote 30 articles in 30 days and submitted them to article announcement groups. But I was sending traffic to a site yet to be truly monetized and I hadn’t yet starting paying attention to statistics, so I had no idea of the successful campaign I had begun. Purchased the domain clickbankebook.com and compiled an ebook that used Searchfeast to search the Clickbank Marketplace. Spread this book around the net and began to make my first few dollars from affiliate marketing. I was basically done with using eBay to create income by now. Affiliate marketing was my main focus. Wrote MaxAdwords and gave it away for free right when everyone was coming out with a pay software to scrape Adwords results. Linkbaiting again. Attained a traffic rank in the top 10,000 at Alexa.
  • 2004 – Starting working with open source content management system like PHPnuke and created Eristoddle which is one of my sites listed in DMOZ. Taught myself PHP and turned profit-ware.com into a cbmall clone for an exercise. Walked away and left it. Little did I know that all the work I had put into linking in the past had panned out. I checked my account one day and realized I had made more in a month online than I ever had before. My study of SEO became my major focus from then on. Profit-ware finally provided income that equalled my day job before getting banned by Google in January of 2005 for being a thin affiliate site. Finished a second edition of Automated Ebay Sales for a joint venture with Joe Vitale and Bill Hibbler.
  • 2005 – Profit-ware banned from Google. But I had been working on a whole new concept for the whole CBmall thing. My online income had surpassed anything I had ever made at a day job: 40% through SEO, 40% through PPC, and 20% through Adsense.
  • 2006 – Moved cross country with my family to our new house. Decided to make a break from the whole day job thing. Unfortunately, it takes a little more money that I thought to provide for a family of four. Created Ware23, my shareware site from scratch. Got a job at a local Kansas City Window and Door Company window and door company as an installer, bringing experience in the industry. I moved into the office as webmaster of their ecommerce site. Here I have learned more about online commerce, datafeeds, Amazon, Froogle, Google Sitemaps, Yahoo Site Explorer, Filemaker, Photoshop, OS Commerce, and Apple computers.
  • 2007 – Total re-design of ClickbankEbook . I updated the look to my own template, removed all tables, used css for all presentation, and integrated the sections of the site into a more complete whole. Developed more sites for All About Doors and Windows. See below
  • 2008 – Still making money via Clickbank, Commission Junction and Regnow. Experiencing more growth at All About Doors. I started exploring blogging more in depth and wrote almost daily blog posts here. I ventured into social media including Stumbleupon, Twitter and Friendfeed as well as the other networks you can see on my sidebar.
  • 2009 – My affiliate income slipped a bit, so I started freelancing. Build a lot of Magento sites this year and decided I hate it. Magento is a slow beast only meant for the most powerful server if you want it to run fast. Did some freelancing that was supposed to be SEO and turned out being development. I decided I do not like freelancing. Consulting may be better. When you freelance, the customer is always right and may drive his own site over the cliff along with you. If I consult, people can take it or leave it, I did my best.
  • Future Goals and Projects
    • Go back to full time at the day job and do no more freelancing.
    • Use whatever time I have to build more income streams with affiliate marketing, advertising and anything else where I for the most part am the only link in the chain to income and the income builds naturally over time.
    • Become an expert at Wordpress. After trying a few things, I am sticking with Wordpress. The more I use it, the better I get at creating custom sites, even non-blog sites. I am really good now. I just want to know it like I know English.
    • Stick to blogging. I must write. It makes the rest of the world less serious and I tend to take everything too seriously. Yes, the world must confirm to my wishes but with blogging I don’t care as much when it doesn’t. Writing cleans the mental engine and makes me less of a dick.
    • Become an expert at integration software like Jitterbit and Datasync to connect various software systems into a seamless whole.
    • Develop a network wide tracking and link building system that automatically hyperlink any queries from a search engine wherever that key phrase occurs in the network.
    • Build web site promotion software with AutoIt. I have been playing with this idea for a while after downloading tool after tool and not finding the perfect mix of automation, no spam and a wide spread of features, I actually started writing it. I do miss coding desktop software. It has been a few years.
    • Become a more effective SEO and social media marketer.
    • Adwords Professional.
    • Have everything automated and monetized effectively so that all I really have to do is write, my dream.

About Web Sites

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