Cyza Sector

Blogging can make money. That’s for sure. Affiliate can make even more money. But the problem is mastering all the skills and techniques to be grow the affiliate business. If you are a regular in Cyza Sector, you’ll notice me mentioning my interest to be involve in internet affiliate business.

Honestly, I must say that, I am struggling to start up my affiliate business. Out of a sudden, I found this program which was just recently launched. It is a speedy way to make money from affiliate business using products from clickbank. After 48 hours analyzing the program and system, I decided to give it a shot. I hope I have luck on this.

Off course there are pro and cons of joining this program.

OK, since I’ve joined this program for about 72 hours already, I’ve test run it a little. I haven’t had the opportunity to spend more time on this as I was stuck with another non-online job.

Pro (Advantage) – in no particular order

• Set up the sites in just 5 minutes. 6 ready made + 29 possible custom made videos ready to be uploaded to youtube.com
• Start begin marketing effort using ready made + custom made video (with your domain) right away.
• Start article marketing right away. 20 articles provided.
• Video tutorial and ebook on how to make videos + other traffic methods are available. Hence making amateur people like me can learn all these available powerful traffic techniques immediately.
• Do NOT need auto-responder.
• NO need to think of auto-responder sequence – as the system will do the job for you.
• NO need to do niche research.
• All we have to do is marketing and wait for the Clickbank income.
• Every month, members will get a new clickbank product on anonymous niche to promote.
• For the first month (now, if you register fast), you’ll get 3 fantastic niches. I’ve begin promoting.
• The system is – I can say Automatic or almost Automatic.

Cons (Disadvantage) – I can see right now 2 cons:

• We promote our site but we cannot collect the email list.
• Possible competition with other members if we don’t market creative enough.

Personal view

For me it is tricky and will take relatively longer time to master the affiliate skills despite of reading and mentoring with Affiliate Gurus. However, to taste international affiliate profit faster, I decided to be a member of this plug and play program. I can easily set up my site in truly 5 minutes. And after 12-15 minutes, I already have 3 powerful niche sites. The next thing for me to do is to brand my video, upload them and do some article marketing. That’s the marketing part. It’s all ready for me. The membership price for founding member is USD29 per month, which I think is reasonable (only for the first batch). I heard today that there are only 12 spots left for this membership price. If I can manage 2 sales a month, the commission is more than enough to cover my fixed monthly membership fees. But, I’m going to target more sales. I’m going to try at least to get USD500 per month for a start. Wish me luck…

If you are interested, you can investigate more by clicking the READY-NICHE-PROFIT below. I’m not asking you to get hold of this program. I’m just sharing what I’m doing now with you. I know, some of you are just like me, wanting to run an affiliate business, but for some reason, stuck somewhere… Good luck…

Example of video that I just re-brand from the membership area to promote my site:

I’m planning a strategy to further improve my online career. I need to really fully focus on certain things and not getting very excited with other opportunities and offers which are abundantly found in the net. I’m no longer enjoying luxurious time as before. I’m now pursuing my ph.d in chemical engineering which demands massive amount of concentration, attention and time. It’s not easy to do research and achieve our targeted goals based on the hypothesis. I’m presently experiencing some difficulties in my experiments and having some some hard time writing technical papers to be published in high impact journals.

Bottom line is I need to balance my time between my study, online activities, engineering practice @ consultation and family for sure. OK, enough about my personal issues. Let’s share some business story.

Offline Business – Homestay business

I’ve spent some time earlier this afternoon chatting with my wife and business partner to expand our homestay business. The demand is surprisingly there and we felt the urgency to add a new house in addition of our main guess house. If you have additional house and if the house is empty or if the rent is not enough to cover your monthly loan payment, converting it as a homestay is a brilliant idea. With perfect marketing and excellent management, you can earn more then you can imagine. Since the BLR rate is currently low, the monthly mortgage will also be low, it seems like a good timing for me to buy a new house. It’s good rather than renting a house as a homestay. In long run, I’ll own extra property. Do you think so?

Offline Business – Car Rent Business

After reviewing and discussing various angles on car renting business, we have thought of not pursuing it. Even we’ve earn handsomely from renting our second car since end of July and used the income for our Raya expenditure/spending, I’m not going to continue it. There will always be a risk and the profit is not as good as running a homestay.

Offline Business – Ceramic Business Club

I’ve join this program early 2009 after being persuaded by my brother. Now, after almost 9 months operating it (not really running it myself because my brother is doing it for me) I’m very happy because we not only get some amount of cash but also do our grocery shopping without bringing any cash. Yes, that’s true. Since Ceramic Business Club set up the shopping mart at Skudai (near Giant Pulai Utama), we shop with very happy face because we get rice, cooking oil, frozen food, snacks, detergent and various other household products from the store just by exchanging it with our shopping points.

Online Activities

Google Adsense

I find this time consuming but rewarding. I know developing adsense websites and blogs can be regarded as having a virtual real estate and earning passive income. However, I haven’t been successful in penetrating my target income, though I’m still cashing out dollars via Western Union on a monthly basis.

Hence, I’m planning to allocate 10% of my online time on Google Adsense website and blog development. I’m rearrange the strategy to boost up my income 100% to the average of what I’m presently earning. Some of the strategies will be:

- creating and developing more niche sites using static websites and wordpress blogs (5% online time).
- marketing those website and blogs using article marketing (3% online time).
- comment marketing (2% online time).

TLA is not that big but it’s helping me to sustain all my online expenditures (domains + hostings) and purchase of ebooks and getting service from others. That’s why I need to have more blogs to earn more from this program. Percentage time allocated – 0.5%.

Revresponse

I’m not sure about the others but this program has been very good contributor for me. If you own good technical, academic or industrial blog/website, I highly recommend you to join Revrespon. Percentage time allocated – 1%.

Blogging

Blogging is for me fun but as I like to write and share. I won’t stop blogging and that’s a fact. It help me connect and communicate with others. Via blogging, I earn some money from Google Adsense, Revresponse, TLA and other make money program (which I do not cover now). Percentage time allocated – 15%.

JBCool.com

This is my baby project that I’m currently running with Azwan. We aim high for this and hope it can be a place where Johorean can refer. Currently jbcool.com is under construction, content addition and soft marketing. Percentage time allocated – 5%.

Autoresponders and Affiliate Business

I’ve made a point to myself that I’m going to get my hands in Affiliate business. As a result, I’ve signed up with norabots, a relatively cheap but reliable auto-responder to kick start my list building and affiliate biz. As a warm up, I’m building my own list in my niche. In future, I’m slowly going to build my own list for other niche, create my own products and sell other peoples product. I’m planning to spend 65% of my online time establishing this new area. Percentage time allocated – 55%.

Others

I’m not going to list other programs or online activities here. I’m just going to flock it into others, which basically means all the other minor programs and activities I’m doing which include TNX, jobamatic, nuffnang, advertlets, indeed.com, blogvertise, smoorty, backlinks, infolinks, facebook, forums etc. Percentage time allocated – 3.5%.

Conclusion

The most important thing I’m sharing here is the planning to spend my online time. I need to be more extra focus on what I’m doing. I have to let go some other important online activities. I only have approximately 10-15 hours a week (and that’s not much). Currently I’m not spending time at all on twitter (marketing) and any social bookmarks etc. I can’t!!! I cannot afford to allocate time for it. As more and more new products regardless free or paid products are introduced daily, I must keep my focus on what I’ve plan. You should too. Maybe you focus better than me?!!!

Any other tips for me…? to be successful online…

Should I JV with others? Should I launch a contest to boost traffic?

Whether you realize it or not, my posting frequency has slightly drop in this blog. As an indirect result to that, my Alexa ranking has dropped as well. Actually, I have been doing some deep thinking. What is it actually that I want to achieve from my online adventure? What is it that I want to achieve from blogging? Let’s recap my personal short term goal that I set at the end of last year:

1. To have an online income equivalent to my fix monthly salary job. Therefore I can have more money… My online income is presently (at the time I made that entry) accounting only about 14% of my salary. I need to double my effort to ensure I can have both off line and online income. Would that be nice! It’s not easy but it’s not impossible too.

My comment: It’s not easy to be successful in this business. It is possible but I repeat, it is not as easy as it seems. You look at international probloggers like John Chow and Caroline Middlebrook; and local IM like Zul Smartusaha and Team SaifulSham. Do you think those people arrived at their current state just like that. Nope…. They are committed and they worked hard. I’m not sure whether they think they are already successful or not, but surely a lot of us do recognize and would love to be like them. OK, back to me, my situation… Really it is not easy. Often, I found something interesting in a form of video, audio, ebook but I just haven’t had the time to allocate to absorb the information lying beneath it. I hate to say I’m busy… I’m trying to avoid that word. I’m trying to be a little bit positive.
So, what have I been doing for the past few days, or perhaps the past few weeks? Continuous learning… I’ve been listening to the audio and video that I saved in my hard disc. Why? To create a strategy to speed up my online success – to have an online income equivalent to my monthly salary. Is that possible? Can I realize that? Can I achieve that? Short answer is yes. Long answer: it is a matter of my hard work, consistency and perseverance; and it’s a matter of time. However, I have targeted to achieve that goal by the end of this year. It is now almost end April and that leaves me with approximately another 7 months plus to prove myself and my family something. I’m now pressuring myself!

How am I going to do it?

I’m going to expand my pay per click activities, learn some opt-in-list building and slowly involve with some affiliate programs. I’ll try my very best to squeeze my time and energy to work on those lists… And I must not forget to stay FOCUS on what I’m doing. I can’t let other programs or offers distract me. I must discipline myself and stay laser FOCUS. Wish me luck guys…

2. To get myself a decent laptop for my online activities. I’m not looking for something super or marvelous. A decent laptop with a good processor with a 1 Gb RAM or above, hard disc around 80Gb will make me smile. The laptop that I’m currently using belongs to my wife and she need to use it for her work.

My comment: Well, nothing much to comment here. I got one already and I’m using it now. This goal has been achieved.

3. To learn and become well verse in Wordpress, CPanel, Photoshop and creating websites. I really need to master them in order to be successful in the early stage of my online career. I wish there’s a teacher or ‘sifu’ beside me who can teach the techniques and secrets of internet success.

My comment: I haven’t really covered this part yet. I’m still exploring and mastering wordpress. Haven’t really touched CPanel and Photoshop. Still not sure when to learn those stuffs. If there’s a mentor to guide me, I would jump !!!

4. To publish a book (or e-book). I’ve been dreaming to publish a book since my university life. However, I haven’t done so due to time limitations and various other factors. I think this coming year will be a good time for me to push myself publishing a book with my name as the author. It’s not the money that I want; it’s the pleasure of publishing my own book that I’m looking for.

My comment: I’m still working on it. It will be something related to my niche. If I can’t produce an Ebook this year, I may produce a report instead. I’ll be very happy to release a report via an opt-in-list. The most important thing is to work on the article content which has value, real value to my target audience. The draft is in my laptop, off course .

5. To reduce 20% of my weight. I don’t dare to reveal my weight here but this year is a record breaking high. I look ugly in the digital photos taken by my wife. In order to achieve this goal, I need to control my diet and exercise regularly and effectively. Sometimes I just don’t understand why I’m craving to eat every hours!!!

My comment: Hmm… I guess I need to revise the target from 20% to 10%. That will be a more realistic figure, physically and mathematically .

Conclusion

Out of 5 goals, I have online realized one. I have another 4 more to work on. I need to:

1. Stay focus

2. Work consistently

3. Use all the time that I have efficiently and effectively = optimum

What about you?