Pursuit of Profit

As many of you know I was blogging about my journey to $10k a month on a Blogger blog for the first leg of this quest. I just switched over to my own Wordpress blog this week, and after some minor adjustments, that I like to call “hacking”, I feel settled in.

You’re probably asking “why switch from Blogger to Wordpress?”
Freedom: Blogger is an excellent, dynamic and free blog service that allows anyone to sign up and get posting within minutes. However is such an easy to use service there are drawbacks. One of these drawbacks is the lack of ability to customize. However with Wordpress, you can customize to your hearts content.
Ownership: At the end of the day Google owns Blogger and Blogger owns your blog. I wanted to have my own blog that I owned, and all the content associated with it is solely mine. Plus having your own domain name is nice, it’s so much more personal and you feel like you do own it.

Okay so now that I’ve convinced you to switch over to the wonderful world of Wordpress you probably want to know how! At first I was hesitant to switch, because I imagined the switch including 2 pots of coffee, 1 popped blood vessel and more f-bombs than the movie Scarface. Thankfully this wasn’t the case! After finding the Blogger to Wordpress plugin the whole site was transferred over in about 5 minutes. Here is how I did it:

1. Download/ unzip/ upload plugin to my server
2. Activate plugin by clicking on the activate button in your new Wordpress backend
3. Enter your Blogger domain ie yourdomain.blogspot.com and select the options you would like to take advantage of
4. Click “Import”, make sure you leave this window open while you are importing and you do not surf away from this site. The script is working on pulling all your posts and comments over to your new blog and this can take a moment.

Voila you now have your very own Wordpress blog, loaded up with all your posts.

Well this semester is coming to a close and I’ve got a final exam tomorrow. I’ll be cramped up in a cubicle in the library all day so I won’t be able to give you any awesome posts for about 24 hours! Just a heads up, but check back tomorrow and there will be some new exciting posts!

First of all, welcome aboard to the first fresh post on Pursuit of Profit (all the others were ported over from blogger). I look forward to posting on here and answering any questions or comments you have. Let me know what you think of the new look and feel of this blog!

…Post continued:

import blogger to wordpress. So do not fear, I know there are some people out there who want to switch to the hugely flexible blogging world of wordpress. It was a painless switch and I’m so happy I did it. Also don’t forget to update your bookmarks, links and subscription feeds. The new rss is http://feeds.feedburner.com/PursuitOfProfit so feed away!

I just put up two new ad units for Neverblue Advertising on the right sidebar. I get the majority my CPA (cost per action) campaigns through them. In the next few weeks I will start tracking a few campaigns that I will be advertising for them. So if you want to follow along and create a similar campaign feel free to sign up and get access to their massive inventory of high paying campaigns.

I had no idea what kind of reception I would recieve when I first started this journey a week ago on April 1. I have found that everyone who’s commented and who I have talked to are very supportive of this journey to $10k a month. From day one everything was going great, the hits were rolling in from one of my posts which I submitted to Digg, people were commenting, and my adsense income was much better than I had expected.

Now after the first week, the blog has gained a bit of traction. Readers are becoming regulars, which is amazing, and coming back and checking for updates. New readers aren’t really making their way over here yet. This doesn’t bother me, because the site is still so new and not much backlinking has taken place.

What has me searching for a solution is the fact that my adsense income has dropped from where it was. I know that adsense is more unstable than Britney Spears, I went from $2.50 on day 2 to $0. This is actually a good thing, it is going to force me to work harder bringing up adsense earnings, and also building more stable income streams!

After posting that I was considering purchasing my own domain with my first months earnings, I recieved a donation from fellow blogger Dylan who’s also talking about making money online over at WMHaven.com, to purchase a domain name. There are some good tips on monetization, and are definitely worth the time it takes to read them.

Okay so I am pumped that I don’t have to spend my current earnings on the purchase of a domain name, now I can invest them in another way! After realizing that my previous choice of caseysquest.com just got snatched up this week, by what appears to be domain tasters, I had to put my thinking cap on and began searching for domain names.

With a little bit of luck and inspiration from the recent big Willy Smith movie “the pursuit of happiness” I came up with pursuitofprofit.com . I’m just waiting for the domain to go through, so I can get wordpress on there and get to blogging hard on my own domain! It won’t be too long before it’s all loaded and ready for your eyes, I’m thinking Wednesday or Thursday of next week (It’s final exam time for me, that’s why it won’t be up as quick as it could be).

Thanks again Dylan!

Readers don’t forget to update your bookmarks and feedreaders when the big switch to pursuitofprofit.com does happen!

I am seriously considering purchasing a domain name with my current earnings from this blog. I figure it is the best time to switch while the blog is still in its infancy. The only problem is that the domain I was planning on getting, (domain removed, I still may have a chance to snap it up if the register is a taster), just got registered this week! What are the odds of that happening?!

What are some good suggestions for a domain name for this blog?

There is some ambiguity in my previous post about how I plan to achieve my goal of $10k a month. First let’s get two things straight!

1. I don’t plan on making my income solely from this blog!
2. I don’t plan on relying on google’s adsense for my income!

Okay now that I’ve said that let’s move on.

Question: How do I plan on making the money?

Answer: I plan on creating multiple streams of income. Okay, that’s probably not the clear concise answer you are looking for. But that’s not what this journey is about. It is about testing and trying new things, and seeing which ones work. The ones that have potential I am going to invest more time and money into to, in hopes of creating highly profitable revenue streams.

Question: Any hints at what kind of systems I am going to try?

Answer: I do plan on focusing on increasing my traffic and backlinks at the beginning of this journey because those are crucial to readership. I also want to give domaining a shot; I have no experience in it so it is very interesting to me. I’ll give arbitrage a go as well as affiliate marketing.

However, I have not ruled out anyway of making money online yet (except things that fall outside my morals). I may even sell on ebay to complete my mission, who knows?

But now that I do have about $10 I am thinking of investing it in a domain name. That way I will be in control of all my content, and the site will actually be mine as opposed to google owning it through blogger. What do you guys think about using this month’s money towards a domain name? Also any suggestions on a domain name?

Now that I got my first goal complete, I’ve gotta start thinking about how I can double the money I made. Time to find a new revenue stream! Should I do some PPC ads for the blog to increase readership? Should I focus on publicity or building a different revenue stream all together like an affiliate campaign advertised on google adwords?

After 3 days I am now at my first goal of $5! This is a baby step in the long journey ahead of me, but it feels good completing a goal regardless of how small. One major discouragement with fresh to the game internet marketers, including myself, is having one far off lofty goal that is impossible to attain. You probably think 10k a month is one of these goals, and I can see where you’re coming from! However I’ve broken this goal down in to little goals, baby steps, because you have to crawl before you can walk, and walk before you run!

Meeting little goals encourages me to keep going and gets me even more committed and focused on the next goal.

Step 1. If you are new to internet marketing, sit down and figure out how much you want to make. Realistic thought is definitely your friend at this point, don’t say a million a month unless you think you have the determination and bag of tricks to get to this point.

Step 2. Once you have a goal, break it down to mini milestones. Some good mini milestones are:

• Traffic goals: I will have 500 unique visitors this month!
• Backlink goals: I will get at least 4 links a day for the next 30 days!
• Site development goals: I will write at least 10 posts a week on my blog!

Step 3. Write your goals down! This is huge, it’s so easy to dismiss a thought or a will that has never entered in to reality. Writing a goal down makes it REAL, it makes you feel like REAL shit looking at goals from the past and realizing that you haven’t accomplished them. Staying away from feeling like shit is a good motivator, but so is the success that comes with reaching your goals. Tell someone or post on your blog about your new goals, this takes writing it down one step further! This step also makes you adjust your dreamy goals so they are more attuned to reality.

Step 4. Start completing the goals! Completing goals gives you a sense of satisfaction and boosts your motivation to continue. Look at me, I made $5 and I’m feeling on top of the world because I am one step closer to my end goal! I am 1/11th of the way down my path to $10k a month.

You can use this motivation technique for anything as well. Hope this helps you out, but remember, you gotta do it to make it work!