Tying up loose ends…There are a few threads here that need lookin’-to, I reckon I’ll see to ‘em.  I’ve went ahead and created a table of contents of sorts, with the headers H2′ed, but realize that the headers do not exactly match the table.  I went creative someplace.

Word Count 2754 = Average Reading Time Of…12 mins, 24 seconds

Magic Submitter News…T Minus…Hmmm…

So…whatever happened to the “good news” about Magic Submitter? Well – in case you’ve been wondering – so have I! I actually had heard from Alex’s team that there would be a serious discount, but no word on it…not sure what the hold up is other than I’m not as “in the loop” as I thought.

I mean…Alexander Krulik and I went bowling together…we grew up together…

Alright. Seriously that last sentence was possibly maybe not even near true. Perhaps.

What IS true is that I had a hair-brained idea, ol’ Krulik dug it, and we both thought the final touches would be ready to go.

Needless to say, I am not on the Magic Submitter board of directors. Anymore. Apparently.

I DO have a post ready to go for it, when or if it does happen…

RoboCop…er…RoboForm Vs. LastPass addendum…scratch that: I win this debate.

In other news, recently I received a comment from RoboForm stating that I didn’t have the information accurate. The issues in question were:

1) That RoboForm was only $29.95 and I posted it was $34.95…

2) That the RoboForm “free” version was free for life, not 10 days or 12 days like I posted. I’m being lazy here, I think it is 12 days trial for most of the functions, but then you are limited to 10 passwords.

3) The fellow told me that RoboForm doesn’t “nickel and dime” a thing…

My answer:

Fake meat. A.K.A. Bologna…(Well – growing up, our bologna was fake, I’m sure that Italy makes the real stuff from actual animal parts…)

1) RoboForm is technically $29.95 – but guess what? They DO nickel and dime you from the start, (see point 3 and scratch that) – if you go to their sales page, it is automatically set to $34.95 for the auto-selected features (there is a check box that is automatically checked for their CD-ROM backup).

So: they nickel and dime that.

Call it what you want. The Public Relations-stunt, “Jedi Mind Trick” don’t work – I be Jabba the Hut (not to be confused with Pizza the Hut).

Grammar faux pas intended.

It’s an upsell that is selected for you, and in my mind, yes: that’s shifty business. It doesn’t have the customer in focus, but mainly the bottom line of the company.

2) Being limited to 10 passwords for the free version…uh…nope. No dice, not a chance, not even good for anything. At least, again, NOT compared to LastPass – where you have as many passwords as you need, for FREE.

When I opened up my LastPass vault, I currently have…let’s see…

…pulling the colored beads on my abacus here….

Carry the yellow bead…

…subtract the zero…

…dividing by Pi, and having a slice…

YEP! Too many to count. Just a smidgin past “WAY MORE THAN TEN.”

Technically speaking, of course.

The verdict on the LastPass Versus RoboCop:

RoboForm wins the crown.

If by “crown” I meant “way to stick it to the customers.”

Now, to be fair: it’s just the business model, NOT the product. I still don’t like to be stiffed, nickeled and dimed.

Call it a “profitable business model.” I call it getting the shaft. The short end of the stick. The customer service akin to the Ninja V. Samurai, or the way that the Manifest Destiny managed to undergird a….well…really good movie called “Dances With Wolves,” to be nice about it…

I digress. Where was I?

Oh, right: I’m SURE RoboForm has a great product, in fact I’m positive that it’s not bad at all.

I will even make the kind-ish observation that the price of $34.95….er…$29.95…is cheaper after 3 years.

For the first 3 years, IF you decide to purchase LastPass, you will pay $1 a month (OK, $12 a year), so the break even is that for about 34 months, you’re even Steven with RoboForm.

BUT

If you’re a cheapsk8…like moi…and you don’t purchase LastPass...hm. Well, folks, grabbing the handy dandy abacus…

Yep! Carrying the one and sliding over that pesky yellow bead…

I can tell that I am saving $34.95! Darn it, I mean $29.95. Silly me.

So, Mr. and Mrs. RoboCop, you have a great product, and a nickel/diming profitable business model. I still don’t like it, and thank you for clarifying my points.

/end rant on RoboCop

(Can you tell that “getting taken advantage of” or insulted gets up my belly button?)

Earnings Statement…hmm…

Earnings. My earnings for July AdSense-wise was a hair shy of a check, I made $97 and change…hate when that happens…

And I made $231.84 on Commission Junction.

Elance and other writing gigs landed somewhere in the neighborhood of $1500 – so here’s the rub – that was a sorry-sucky-shoddy-scary month!

It’s my first month 100% online, the month that is slowest for most businesses, and I actually spent a lot of it drumming up business.

Yikes.

My main issues:

Working through a cloud of frustration…

Being uber-duber-ticked at the way my last job was terminated — whoo! There’s an HBO special in there someplace, I’m sure — “Coming up next on HBO: CLICHE! The movie about YET ANOTHER persone losing his job in America!” Yeah, folks: grab the popcorn, it’s a doozie.

Being disorganized since I wasn’t ready for the full-time online deal (my plan was to build a passive income empire first)…yeah. That got shot with a 12 gauge, then taken to a taxidermist.

And being super-doused with a lot of work and the same old 24 hour day as anyone else…that means: I’m behind deadlines and sorta maybe stressed just a smiggin.

Book Deal and Woe To Internet Marketing? Well, Here’s What I DO NOT Like About IM

Interestingly…however:

I have been invited to write a book, an actual book. 125 pages or so, so not a novel by any stretch.

The subject?

Being a father with:

18 y/o daughter

16 y/o daughter

12 y/o daughter

10 y/o son

6 y/o son

4 y/o daughter

2 y/o daughter

8 month-old son…

…who just discovered he can crawl AND stand the same day…he’ll be driving next. (YES I realize that’s a lot of kids, I grew up in Cali, you connect the dots, man! My wife and I married right out of high school…And I wouldn’t change any of those facts. Except I’d be like a millionaire or somethin’.)

Granted: that ==|> ghost-written <|== book may or may not materialize, and since it's to be ghost-written it will only take care of a month's worth of expenses.

Nonetheless, here's to hoping: I love writing. And the subject matter?

Teenagers, that's about all I can say about it, it's an "NDA" type of deal: mum's the word. It would be a great thing to see if this book pans out: I love my kids, have a heart for teens, and would like to do more than just worry about my bottom line.

I'd actually like to do something that *matters* in the long run.

Too often business = worrying about ME...

How much do I get paid?

How much cred do I get?

How is my Alexa rating?

What about my readership?…whatever the case is.

I do NOT like that aspect about internet marketing.

Selfishness and self-centeredness sticks so far up my belly button that I can swear it’s reached my spine. The fact is I don’t like self-centered businesses, nor do I want to be a self-focused jerk…

Too often that’s the sort of person that an entrepreneur is (not naming any of you, and not thinking about RoboForm “in particular” btw, I am honestly more thinking about the effect this business has had on ME lately).

I do NOT want to wake up one day “Old, Alone and Done For” as Capt. Hook said at the end of the BEST rendition of Peter Pan EVER.

Buy The BEST Peter Pan EVER

Buy The BEST Peter Pan EVER

So I’m hoping to be an internet marketer for the life I have remaining: I love helping others succeed if I can, and I love being able to intersect with people in a way that has a positive impact on their lives.

Those are aspects I cherish about interet marketing. What I don’t like is the way this business can easily make a person so inward-focused that PEOPLE don’t matter.

It’s all a numbers game, and all I care about is MY numbers: Alexa, PR, CTR, CPC, ECPM or whatever it is…I don’t like the affect it’s had on MY attitude.

So, the book: it needs to get written. It will be a good way to reconnect with my kids and something much bigger than myself, and I think it will be a good way to break into print anyway, which is what I’ve been wanting to do for decades.

Building More Sites – Again! WOOT WOOT!

I have put up 3 more sites recently, which is good – and they’re all indexed, which is better. The sites I’ve used SEOPressor on are ranking higher than any have done without any promotion, one is on page 1 already, at #10, another is on page 3 at #22 – and the third was just launched. It’s at #81 – which I’m actually happy about!

Why is that “news”? I’ve been writing for my clients lately – exclusively, for a long time, actually. Yes, I make a passive income, but if I could have focused only on getting passive income sites up and running — which WAS my plan originally when I started the blog — I’d have been seeing some decent coin a month passively by now.

As it stands, I have ONE sales page with ONE review that pulls $300-$800 per month.

Just ONE. I did it right: just reviewed a product with a good review, got that page to spot #1 in Google, chose a good product…the result is simply a passive paycheck.

These new sites are mostly affiliate sites, the CPC for AdSense is dismal, and I’ll tell you the niche: they’re Halloween based. I wanted to do that last year, but my former employer told me I was a village idiot…

And I was! I listened to that crummy advice. Next thing you know I get a thousand emails about the $7 Billion Halloween industry, from Barry what’s his name I think…then I realized: crap. I actually was ONTO SOMETHING.

So, hopefully my sites actually produce. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, I’d suggest you get started on holiday-based sites, from back-to-school to Christmas and Halloween…

I tell you what, though: it’s nice to finally get back into building that passive income again!

Just Devoured An eBook…And It’s RE-DEFINED My Business Model

I want to thank Paula and Wanda of Amazonian Profit Plan…Their blog is in my blog roll, the “Affiliate Blog Online,” you’ll see a few of my comments there, though I read them more than say anything.

I just devoured their eBook The Amazonian Profit Plan – wow.

I’m NOT the kind of guy who buys a million eBooks, I’m extremely skeptical, I don’t believe half of what I read, although Daniel Tan of SEOPressor mentioned the other day – oh, in the World-Exclusive Daniel Tan interview, of course…that the trouble with most internet marketers is that we don’t simply follow the plan, we don’t just do what the eBook says.

Well, he’s right! Now, that doesn’t mean that every eBook or guru is “right” or has it “all figured out.”

For instance: I read John XFactor’s eBook “Micro Niche AdSense Masters” or whatever it was called – it taught me A LOT about SEO, about setting up a site: I knew nothing prior to that eBook, and you know what? It works!

I didn’t deviate…I just got sidetracked with Elance…the point is that the book works, BUT I also modified his theme and sold $26k now of a product (about $3000 or so profit for me). That was because I went off the map, found what worked, and went all out. With my bad-self-one-page-wonder…

Anyway: Daniel Tan was right in saying that following a set of instructions can be beneficial, and Paula and Wanda are spot on in their Amazonian Profit Plan.

They R E V O L U T I O N I Z E D my thinking on my business: I thought the XFactor way was “IT.” If you read Mike Iser’s and Sara’s blogs: you know it works! I can tell you that the XFactor method works, but it’s just not my style.

I do NOT want 200 websites that make $20-$100 a month: I’d rather work on smaller, higher quality sites, and actually sell. I want to be able to close a deal, to write something that helps YOU the reader find this quality product that I actually think is a quality product.

So, for me, the Amazonian Profit Plan is IT. It’s more my style, and I’ve started just this week in implementing it: this is going to define my business plans in the next few months. It’s just what I needed, and when I have something to report, I’ll share it here.

Preliminary thoughts? It’s a must read, they know what they’re doing.

If you are making money on Amazon, you don’t need it – although they are making ten grand or so a month (not $20k in the first week like some eBooks claim, but they have succeeded in their approach).

What to expect in the eBook -

A laid-out plan for making actual conversions on Amazon products, and WHY choose Amazon versus other affiliate programs. It’s all right here, spelled out, just like John’s book was – good stuff!

Want to know how to write a review that CONVERTS?

Want to know how to PICK a product, and how many to work with?

Want to see how they did research from what sells to what is a no-go?

I have made an accidental…well: $8 and change…on Amazon up until now. That’s dismal: but I was doing it all wrong. Here’s another crucial point I want to spell out just a little:

Why this eBook flipped my business model.

Micro Niche Adsense type of sites were all I knew how to do, besides this one, and to tell the truth, I don’t like the idea of making a bunch of miniature sites that pull in just $30-$100 or so a month. I’m not looking down on it, I just don’t **operate well** trying to go an inch deep and a mile wide.

How I’ve been “doing” the sites was right in the first few: I took my time, did research, put some “soul” into my writing. The end result was having 3 solid earners…one of which is the famed “$3,000″ site and counting.

Then something happened.

I got wind of a shortcut and did it all wrong: I outsourced and just threw up some really crummy content – not a good business model, and not what I was told to do anyway, it was a matter of cutting a corner off the shortcut I was handed..

Net result? Crummy content, poor keyword research because I wanted to mash out a bunch of sites to keep up with Mike Iser (like THAT’S going to happen), and I cut out the soul of what I was doing.

I don’t like the thought of doing a bunch of sites. I found Wanda and Paula’s blog a while back, read their post on how they made $14k in Amazon last Fall…and only with a small number of sites.

Well, I’ll be a primordial slug – are you kidding me? A small number of “quality” sites? $14k on a good month?

Um…K…

My personality type is this: I can only focus on doing ONE thing well, and ONE thing at a time. When I worked in an emergency room, it was different: I was a multi-tasking wiz’.

But naturally: I only do one thing at a time (heck yes this means that having 8 kids is a challenge on my senses!)…I get stuck in details.

So, shoot! This method in the Amazonian Profit Plan? It spoke to me – it’s more ME.

I’m excited again in getting traction, and will be sharing more on my progress, if and when that happens.

WOW. Another long post. Whoops! Had a few things to say. I have a guest post that I’m looking into, a couple of them really, in the meantime, the lesson I’ve learned is:

Focus. Do one thing, do it well, then repeat.

(( Wowee. My first fortune cookie! ))

Buy The Amazonian Profit Plan Through My Shameless Affiliate Link

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