First Affiliate Sale from HubPages

By selfemployedblog | December 29, 2007

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I have written articles promoting affiliate products on both Squidoo and HubPages. Both receive traffic from the search engines - mainly Google - but yesterday I received my first affiliate sale from HubPages. I’ve always read that there is money to be made from utilizing both services. They are both very similar in what they offer, but from what I’ve read, HubPages is a little more generous when it comes to splitting the profits with it’s contributors.

I also like utilizing their service because many times, I can’t promote certain products on my blogs since they are not on topic. I can write articles using keywords on HubPages and eventually they will get indexed and hopefully result in sales.

The product in which I made the actual sale with I also promote on my other blogs. I was basically testing out HubPages when I wrote up the quick article. I added my affiliate link all throughout the text and included a YouTube video featuring a sample of what it was about. It was all done fairly quickly. It was much easier to write up the article since I have been writing about the topic for some time.

I’m sure I can improve on my articles to get more sales but this is all still a learning process. Now I see for myself that using these types of services really does work and I need to start utilizing them much more effectively.

Topics: Online Sales | 2 Comments »

Consistent Clickbank Sales

By selfemployedblog | December 9, 2007

While I haven’t hit the jackpot it still feels good to log in to Clickbank and see that I have made some sales from my blogging efforts.  So far I have made sales every month since July.  I have purchased two new domain names to fit in with my other blogs so I am hoping to have a nice little network of blogs that are related.

I’m also trying to develop some landing pages for other affiliate products that I will try to promote using article marketing.  I don’t really have the budget to dive into PPC advertising and I wouldn’t want to really try until I can devote some time to studying more about it.  It’s so easy to lose a lot of money in PPC when you are inexperienced.  At least with article marketing it is all free and you can test out what converts well.

I can recommend starting out with Clickbank products if you’re trying to get your feet wet in affiliate marketing.  The reason being that customers can download the products instantly and it’s relatively simple to write up articles and link to landing pages you can create on Squidoo, Hub Pages, or your own sites.  Best of all, Clickbank pays out every two weeks.

After making several sales it will definitely boost your confidence to keep going and try new methods of marketing.

Topics: Online Sales | No Comments »

Great Self-Employed Tax Resource

By selfemployedblog | December 8, 2007


I was stumbling through some Web sites and came across a great resource for some of the most common self-employed questions. If you’re new to self-employment or even been doing it for quite some time, you have probably run into some of the typical tax questions:

The site below has a great archive of articles relating to the questions above and more. Check it out:

Tax and Money Info for the Self-Employed

Topics: Business Resources | No Comments »

Broad is Good, Niche is Better

By selfemployedblog | December 4, 2007

This is nothing new but I’ll write it anyway. The more focused your site is, the more likely you will make sales.

I run a few blogs and my most popular one is pretty broad. I make an affiliate sale every now and again. I make more money with PPC ads rather than affiliate sales on that site. Then I decided to make another blog that was more focused and still something I have interest in.

Almost every post links to the affiliate product I am promoting.  There is only one PPC ad and I am thinking of removing it all together. The niche site has only been live since late October and I’m already receiving traffic and have made two affiliate sales from the product I am promoting.

This could be pure luck or it may just be something I need to expand on. I was actually quite surprised at how quickly my niche blog was indexed by Google. I did all of the basics:

The next steps are to do some article marketing and just promote as much as I can. I think I will continue making targeted blogs for topics I am interested and just one page landing pages for affiliate products that I feel will convert into sales.

So far I am making sales in:

Clickbank is the easiest for me to generate sales with while I am learning the ropes.  Many of the products are a bit shady so I try to choose ones that I would probably purchase myself.  It is definitely exhilarating to see sales coming in. It shows me that I’m at least on the right track and most of the things I am learning are beginning to work.

Topics: Online Sales | No Comments »

Interview with Blogger Mehdi of Stronglifts.com

By selfemployedblog | November 11, 2007

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I am happy to post an interview I conducted with self-employed blogger Mehdi of Stronglifts.com. I came across Mehdi’s blog several months ago and was fascinated with his story of quitting his full-time job to become a full-time blogger. This interview has definitely motivated me to work harder on my own web sites. I think you will enjoy it!

1. Could you provide some background information about your business and how long you have been working for yourself?
StrongLifts.com is a blog helping you build muscle & lose fat through strength training. I’ve been doing strength training for 10 years. I became familiar with the concept of blogging September 2006.

My ex-trainingpartner gave me the idea of making a website about strength training in February 2007, StrongLifts.com went online 3 months later May 1st 2007. Prior to StrongLifts.com I had been selling stuff on eBay for about 18 months. That was my first experience as self-employee.


2. What finally made you decide to leave your previous job?
Lack of freedom. Not being rewarded for working hard. Not being able to take your future into your own hands. Living the rat race. Watching myself stepping on the train every morning with hundreds of other people which face told you they didn’t like their job.

Money was always the thing that held me at my previous work. I earned well. Not great, but well. One day I realized I was lowering myself by doing a job I didn’t like for the money solely.

“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need”. Quote from fight club I didnt understand until some months ago. I quit my job 12 days after StrongLifts.com went online. I never had 1 minute regret, even though I’m living off my savings account.


3. Creating a successful blog can be difficult. What types of challenges do you face as a blogger?
My biggest challenge is productivity. I’m a fast worker. I usually finished a task in 30 mins for which my employer gave me 4 hours. So kept busy doing useless stuff for 3h30. I’m working on losing that habit.

Building a reputation is the second most challenging for me. Getting new readers. I went from 0 to 1400 RSS readers during the last 6 months. It’s not bad, but it’s certainly not up to part to others like Leo Babauta who went to 20 000 RSS in one year.

But I like challenges, I’m very competitive. It’s a question of imitating what worked for others & putting it into practice. Like I said: productivity is my problem.


4. What is a typical work day like for you?
I set 3 major tasks every day. Most of my time goes to writing content & replying to emails/comments. I also spend a lot of time studying things related to blogging, making money online, social media etc.


5. What do you do to prevent yourself from burning out?
I don’t believe in depressions & burn outs. It’s like strength training & overtraining. Yes you can overtrain, but most people are undertaining & not overtraining. I work a lot, often 12h a day. It’s not a life, it’s a temporary sacrifice. I know where I’m going to, I know what I want in life. I’ll get those things eventually, right now I continue to work hard. It will get much easier a year from now. A lot of people think they work hard but they aren’t. Even I’m not working all that hard, because I’m not that productive.


6. What do you love about working for yourself?


7. Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently when deciding to start your business?
Many things. But I think it’s useless to look back. I look forward. I spend a lot of time analyzing current trends, statistics, seeing what works & don’t work, then I adapt from there.

I lost a lot of time before I started StrongLifts.com “planning”. All those plans were useless looking back. I don’t say you don’t need a plan, but I just spend too much time doing it, and there’s not much over of that plan right now. For the rest: I did everything quite right, although it could have happened faster.


8. What is one piece of advice you would pass on to someone who wants to work for themselves?
To make sure that’s what you really want. While I do enjoy what I do, it’s lots of work. It will get easier with time, but right now it’s lots of work. I’m good at dealing with stress (worked in customer support for 5 years) and I like to work hard. But you have to sacrifice a lot. And if you do nothing, you’ll have nothing. So make sure you want to do this.

Looking back, being an employee was much easier: you don’t have to think things over, somebody does that for you. You come home Friday evening, work is done until Monday. Right now things are different. I often wake up in the morning thinking at what I have to do. Sometimes I can’t sleep at night because ideas are coming up. Or I’m with friends & I’m thinking at my work. I always left my work at work as an employee, still need to learn that now that I’m self-employed.

Another advice is to choose something you like to do rather than thinking at money solely. While I’ll think you can start to enjoy something after a time, you’d better do your best to put any negativity out of your life as much as possible. That includes negativity coming from works & business


9. What books would you consider “must reads” for anyone interested in becoming self-employed?


10. Is there anything you would like to add? (upcoming projects, goals, etc.)
To have balls. Lots of people said (& still say) that I was crazy to leave my job which had a good salary & stability. I know what I want & I know that what I did wasn’t what I want. When you want something just go for it. Don’t ask yourself how you’ll get it. I had a vision of blogging will be like this & like that. 6 months later i don’t think I have done anything the way I thought I would. If you just keep working at it, you’ll get there. Persist.

Thanks so much Mehdi for participating in this interview!

Topics: Interviews | 2 Comments »

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