I've Been Busy Lately!

I haven't posted here in about a month - wow how time flies when you're having fun. (And when you've been busy!)

I've been quite busy lately, working on what I've settled on as my decision on what to apply myself to, as far as money making endeavors.

Looking through my (mostly junk) emails I came across something about a case study on someone's success at creating profitable websites. It's like, yeah, what else is new? But in this case it was impressive enough sounding that I ended up reading it and even studying it, trying to get the main idea of what has worked for the person who wrote the article.

Without actually promoting it for the guy, I'll just describe it as a software program that "creates" websites in a mostly automated way. Not fully, but mostly anyway. And the main idea I took from this article was that the key to the author's success was not so much that he did everything right, but that he did lots of what he did find to work.

More specifically, he created not just a few, but several hundred websites that consistently made at least small amounts of money each day. The result, in his case, was supposedly a consistent $15,000+ monthly income after only about six months of work. (Yes, I'd say that's something worth looking into, wouldn't you?!)

Needless to say, about the only way you could pull this off is to use something that does, in fact, automate the whole web site creation process so that it enables you to create lots of websites fairly quickly. And true to my usual form, I didn't just take this guy's word on what is the best program to use to accomplish this, but instead started searching a bit on my own for something I could use myself to get similar results.

And guess what? I found something else that I think is even much better than what that person was promoting. The one I found actually creates streaming video sites on whatever subject you choose, rather than just collections of free articles from around the web. And I think most people find streaming videos about the subjects they're interested in more exciting that just rehashed articles that can be found all over the place already.

So just finding this motivated me to finally open a web hosting account with BlueHost, which is the one that is highly recommended by Holly Mann, who uses the service for her own sites. After doing a lot of research on different web hosting companies, I decided that this was a good one to choose because not only are they one of the least expensive services for what they offer, (as low as $6.95 per month), but they also allow an unlimited number of subdomains for any domain names you host through them. And since I plan on creating a lot of websites here very shortly, this is important. Plus, an added bonus is that your first domain name is on them - it's free of annual fees for as long as you keep your account, which is nice.

Shortly after setting that up, I've now already created 3 web sites so far, all decked out with Google AdSense ads, ClickBank ads and even Amazon ads - all placed automatically by the program! It's really great, since it's so easy to go from start to finish all in one sitting. So I can really see the possibility of setting up dozens or even hundreds of similar sites before long. In fact, I now PLAN on doing so!

So maybe now you can see why I've been so busy lately that I haven't even posted here for a whole month! In fact, to be honest, I actually don't see myself continuing to post here all that often from here on, since there's really not much of any need to. I think I've found what I've been looking for since I started this blog. So I'll be busy doing what I should be doing, and that's creating more and more new and unique websites to make money with. Once they're set up and online, they don't go anywhere - they just keep making more money without doing much of anything to them. Truly "Auto-Pilot" as one of the latest internet marketing cliches goes!

OK...I guess I won't keep it a secret. I wasn't really planning on revealing this here when I started writing this post, but if you'd like to check this thing out for yourself you'll see that I'm not exaggerating. The program I've been using is called Instant Video Site Creator, and on their website they even include a few sample video sites that they've created as examples of what you can do with the program.

Needless to say, I'm pretty excited about the possibilities! So if I'm not posting on here very often anymore, you'll know what I'm up to! I plan to take this opportunity to get lots of sites up and online and start building my own personal "virtual real estate" empire on the web. I figure whether I really end up having the kind of success that other guy had or not, I'm going to give it an honest effort and find out for myself what's really possible.

Wish me luck! And of course, good luck to you as well, if you decide to try the same thing. Take care!

Seasonal eBay Toy Sales (My Own Results)

A couple of months ago I posted about the toy selling guide I had ordered and my plans to follow it, buying toys just to resell closer to Christmas. So in case anyone happens to be curious about how it turned out, here are the final results after eventually returning quite a few items that I didn't sell. (The numbers are all rounded off to keep it simple.)

Total profit after all eBay, PayPal and shipping expenses was about $70. This was after purchasing about $400 worth of toys. Only $138 worth of them were actually sold, but the remaining $262 or so were returned to the stores I purchased them from for the same price.

So the $70 profit sounds a lot better on an investment of $138 than it does on $400, but that's really the amount I had at risk. (If you want to call it that.) But that was a lot of work I did just for that $70 profit - lots of picture taking, eBay item description writing, packing and shipping...not to mention the time I spent in the stores, both buying and returning the items that didn't get sold.

Plus, when you figure in that I also paid $30 for the ebook that inspired me to do all this, it's more like only a $40 profit. So was it all worth it?

Well...that's $40 that I wouldn't have had if I didn't do it. But considering the amount of work that was involved...I think I'd rather be the one selling the ebooks for $30 each than just doing what the ebook recommends! (Which, time and time again, is usually the case with money making plans that are being sold.) When will I ever learn?!

Avoiding Get Rich Scams

Happy New Year!

How are your new year's resolutions going so far?

I'm not really very big on actual new year's resolutions myself, but I do always feel like the start of the new year is a great time to re-evaluate your goals and plans. So if you realize you've been drifting away from focusing on what's important, it's a good time to get back on track.

One of my usual goals is to continue to research new ways to make money, and this year is no different in that way. But I also have to be careful not to be TOO open-minded about money making schemes that are being advertised. As negative as it sounds, most of them are either just not worth the money they cost, or worse - even downright ripoffs.

For example...

Just yesterday I spent my whole lunch hour reading one of those little booklets that's really just a big sales pitch for a money making program. In this case, it was titled "The Overnight Millionaire", by Russ Dalbey. I get these from him every so often, and I had seen some derogatory comments about his products before, so I usually just throw them out. But here it is, Happy New Year time, so I thought I'd read this one anyway.

Before long, it sounded so good that I had halfway decided to order the thing. (For about $150.) But when I got back to work I took a quick look on Google to see what I might find about it.

Turns out, this guy was a genuine scam artist and eventually was sued and court ordered to stop all the infomercials that were selling the program.

Needless to say, instantly the temptation to order it was gone! Although, replacing it was the rather depressing realization that the existence of easy, get rich quick plans that you can buy and put into action immediately is probably just a total hoax.

It's almost like, is there no truth being sold out there? Is there really no way to make a lot of money easily, with very little work involved? If there is, whoever is doing it isn't writing any books about how to do it and selling them for $150 - they're too busy quietly doing it themselves and enjoying their success.

Time after time it seems to be the case that if someone is trying very hard to talk me into spending money to find out how to make money their way...it's a waste of my time AND money.

In fairness, I haven't ordered the program by Russ Dalbey myself, so maybe it's not totally fair to say it's a ripoff. But let's face it...there are way more than just a few people out there saying that's the case in so many words. Common sense kind of tells you that it might be best to avoid that one!

Like I've said before...it's always best to see what you can find on the internet about whatever you're thinking of buying - before you buy it. If it's well-known that something's not a good deal - you'll find out before doing so the hard way.

Sorry to be so negative, or to bust your own bubble about the whole get rich quick subject, but that's what I've found to be true so far. So because of this, even though I'm convinced there is plenty of money to be made on the internet, I think I'd like to steer as far away from the field of "money making advice" as humanly possible when choosing a niche to settle on promoting. I'm starting to feel like I don't even want to be part of it - part of the problem, posing as part of the solution. There are so many products and services out there to be promoted...so why not go into a totally different direction?

That's just my own feeling...there's really nothing wrong with selling money making plans - as long as they really work the way they're advertised. But that's the hard part.