And I’ve been doing a lot of tweaking to Earn1KaDay.com to add a bunch of value.  I’ll discuss more about that in a future post.

And I’ve been getting the word out to people that I think would be interested in the Wealthy Affiliate membership site instead of mine, that they only have until May 5th to join or else they’ll pay a bunch more (how much more is still a mystery, for some reason).

Plus putting up stuff on my Dime Sale domain and general life issues, so I’ve been quiet.

But I’d like to get the word out.  I use AVG Anti Virus.  I used McAfee once upon a time but the last conversion I did to that crippled my old computer.  So then I switched to Symantec, and the support issues I had there were insane.  It stopped working 8 months into my one year contract, and I couldn’t get support to help me at all, even though my contract hadn’t expired.

So I got AVG (commercial version, even though they do have a free version, I was happy to pay for it).  A couple weeks ago it started nagging me to upgrade for free to the new release 8.0.  So yesterday I finally did.  Duh, don’t I ever learn?

I suspected I might have trouble on my Vista computer at home, but it was my office one running Windows 2000 that gave me the most trouble.  After installing, the poor guy started maxing out at 100% CPU utilization and everything was crawling, especially opening emails, but also accessing web sites.  It seemed like nothing was being cached, every web page was being reloaded fresh.

Finally I started fooling around with the options.  First I disabled the link scanner, as I had seen in forums that others had trouble with that and felt it didn’t do anything useful anyway.  That didn’t help.  Then I disabled the web shield and resident shield.  Bam, my computer was flying again.

So tonight I came home and with everything enabled, no problem at all, and I was happy as a lark until I tried to submit some eBay auctions.  I had actually had a problem last night, and got around it by submitting as revisions instead of “sell similar item”.  Tonight the same thing was happening, so I thought, ah ha, maybe it’s AVG.  I disabled the link manager, no help.  Then I disabled the web shield and resident shield and no longer do I have a problem with eBay.

Just thought someone out there would like to know.

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I sell on eBay still pretty heavily, everything I have is merchandise that I just keep relisting, as one auction ends I start a new one.

The last several weeks eBay has had a promotion where they gave a free upgrade to have your item listed in the gallery (a little thumbnail picture). I never used that on the type of auction I run because it’s typically for cheap consumable merchandise, not something where a picture is particularly valuable to attract attention.

Like imagine you’re selling toilet paper (I’m not, but consumable so similar), would ypu pay an extra .35 to have an extra little picture of a roll of toilet paper visible, if you’re only going to make a dollar anyway if it sells? Me neither.

So I never needed or wanted or chose the gallery option. eBay just stuck it in as a freebie, thank you very much. My percentage of successful auctions didn’t seem to improve, but now the promotion is over.

As I started to do my robotic relisting this evening, I noticed after pressing the submit button that the fees charged were higher than they should have been. Sure enough, I checked my account and now they’re charging me for gallery at .35 per auction.

Neat marketing trick. They give you something you didn’t ask for, and the next time they charge you for what you never asked for.

Now I have to go in to every auction I’m relisting for the next week and make sure I uncheck the gallery option that I never turned on to begin with.

I know I should complain, and if I did I would probably get my $1.05 back because eBay customer service has always been pretty awesome once you get to a real person, but is it worth the time to jump through hoops for 30 minutes to get back $1.05. I have better things to do, like write a blog post.

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Back when I was heavier into eBay (I still sell every day, but mostly the same things that I’ve been selling for years, which I keep relisting, that I get from trusty suppliers), I used to always look for the magic wholesale list that would enable me to find stuff that could be sold for a profit.

The trouble with the wholesale lists is that they’re available to anyone willing to spend the few dollars.  Then you start competing not by who has the best product line, because you all all have the same, but by who’s willing to sell closest to cost.

Whap go the profits.  That’s no fun.

Dennis Hester has written a great guide called “The Product Hunter” that should enable you to find merchandise nobody, or very few others are selling, right in your neighborhood.  He lists over 20 sources that he’s found over the years to get sellable merchandise for great prices.

If you’re into eBay heavily, you really shouldn’t be without this guide for finding wholesale merchandise for eBay sellers.

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These are nothing like the ugly sites you’ve seen elsewhere where they scrape content designed to get AdSense clicks, make .50 a day and make 5 or 10 of these sites a day, building up a huge Virtual Real Estate empire until the sites get delisted.

So it’s not like these sites can be pumped out in a few minutes spewing crap all over the Internet.

Anyway, the guy who organized the challenge told the participants to figure out how many sites they thought they could build in a week, and then double that number, and get to work.

In other words, push themselves, get out of their comfort zone, and prove something to themselves.

Most of the members did what they set their minds to do, proving once again that if you think you can, you can.

A new challenge is starting up on Friday, one member originally thought he could build 2 sites a day last time, so he doubled that and tried to build 28 for the week.  And he made it.  This time he’s going for 56.  Again, these won’t be crap sites, and if he makes that, I’d say he will soon have a very nice income stream, just in time for the holidays.

There’s still time to learn how to build these sites and take the challenge.  Your goal might be to build 4 in a week.  Nothing wrong with that.  Even 1.  Go for it.

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With the MMS approach, we build small clusters of pages for a specific small niche using special software and a framework which the members have access to, and typically set up a site to drive traffic to eBay using affiliate links.

There’s more to it than that, but it’s an easy thing to do once you have the tools and go through the videos inside the site.

When I was getting ready to shoot the videos, I asked the members for a suggested niche, and I suggested 8 or 10 possibilities. The one that was voted on was a guitars site.

As part of shooting the videos, I actually did all the steps that I teach, and even though the site didn’t do all that well in the beginning I’ve been tweaking it a little here and there to see if I could get it to make some money.

Normally on a site like this if it loses money in the beginning I just ditch it, but I had some pride invested in this one because it was so public, so I kept it running.

The software we provide uses cookie cutter methods to build the site, but I tell my students to do things like replace generic parts with unique articles, maybe add a blog to drive traffic, that kind of thing, to make it a real site. Nothing that will take a lot of time, and in fact I suggest they spend very little time on a site like this until it proves to be a “winner”.

One thing I did with the sample guitars site was have some articles written and plugged them in. Time to do this for me was maybe half an hour since I had them written for me, at a cost of around $100.

Last night I took a closer look at the profits from this site, and so far in August, through the 18th, I had a profit of $46.00. Not a lot, but so far I’ve gotten most of my traffic by paying for it with AdWords. So, for an investment of $59, I made a profit of $46, even Warren Buffett would be impressed.

What I could do now is start doing things to get free traffic. I could use some of the articles I bought and submit them to article directories. I could, like I mentioned above, set up a blog and write some content that way, and using the standard built in pinging ability of WordPress, get some traffic that way. I could put up a lens or two on Squidoo about the topic.

All these things would take time, but would have long term positive effects for my site.

The other thing I could do soon, if the income continues, is sell the site. Actually it’s a bit early to do that, because the income has been increasing. In July I only made $30, so far in August I’ve made $46 in 18 days, so maybe we’ll double July’s profits. Ideally I’d like to get the profits up to around $150 for the month.

At that point I would have a decision to make. Should I invest more time to keep the profits increasing? Or should I sell the site?

Selling sites, or “site flipping” is another business model we talk about at Earn1KaDay.com Typically an income producing site will sell for 6 to 10 times monthly income, but if the income is increasing at a good clip, you’ll get on the high end or more for it.

So, if income goes from $30 to $60 to $100 to $150 to $200 over the period of 5 months, you have a pretty attractive site to offer. That kind of history could easily get you $2000 to $2500 cash.

Would you sell a site with increasing income like that? Many would. It took me a couple hours to build the site. And an hour or so to add the articles that I bought, I did have the $100 investment in the articles. And to get it from where it is now to where it’s earning $200 a month might take a few more hours of submitting articles to directories, and maybe a few more hours to set up a blog and write some posts.

But that’s all it would take. Let’s say at the most I would spend 20 hours in developing and tweaking the site. With that, an investment of $100 turns into maybe $2000.

If you can build 2 or 3 sites like this a week, you can start building a nice asset base. I mentioned yesterday that one of our members built 20 of these sites in a week. That was just the initial building, he would need to spend more time tweaking them if his goal was to resell, but that shows what can be done.

If you know how, and if you have the tools, and if you have the motivation.

It is so easy to make money through Internet marketing, it can make your head spin.

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Or if they’ve done it previously, their next one. Or their first 2K day.

With my background in frustration, I know how difficult it is to make even $100 in a day in IM.

And with my recent history, I know how easy it is to make $1000 in a day. Often.

There are several skills that can make the same person do $1000 so easily, when with the same skills, he or she struggled to do $100. And all those skills are legal, ethical, and can be learned.

One such skill, that I teach in 5 Bucks a Day is focus.

Another skill or attribute is the ability to believe, to have confidence, to have a positive attitude.

There are several more, but that’s not what today’s discussion started out to be about.

I read a report today, called “How to Turn Flipping Websites Into a $40,000 a Month Business”. It’s a great, short (25 page) report, that members of Earn1KaDay.com just received for free.

In it are several business models that, if followed religiously, could take a person to a large monthly income. To reach 40K in a month would take an awful lot of perseverance, though, and most probably don’t have the stamina to do that.

In fact, most probably don’t want 40K a month bad enough, even if they had the skill to do it.

But the beauty of the report is it lays out a way that virtually anyone with minimal skills in Internet or Information marketing can succeed with.

As I mentioned before, my focus is to take my members by the hand and lead them to their first $1000 profit day. The techniques in this report, along with some prodding and encouragement, could easily work for anyone. Yes, anyone.

For example, one of the business models is just to build a single website that makes $5 a day. Well, heck, that’s what 5 bucks a day is all about. People that read my book, apply themselves, and follow the strategy, do that every week.

Turning a site into a $5 a day income stream is very easy, and gives you $150 a month, for which you should be able to sell that site for around $1000 to $1500. Presto, a 1K day.

But wait, why would you want to do that? The thing behind 5 bucks a day is that $5 a day is $1825 a year. Why would you want to trade $1825 for $1000? That’s why there are so many buyers for income producing websites, even small income streams.

Really, you should be buying up those $5 and $10 a day producers if you can afford them, but still …

A quick $1000 is attractive, isn’t it?

Another way to look at it is, if you have the skill to make a website earn $5 a day, with jut a little more effort, you can make it earn $10, $15, or $25 a day. Just add some more content, get some more links, write some more articles, make it a little better.

At that point, a site making $25 a day, or $750 a month (same thing) should easily sell for $5000 if you even want to sell it (I wouldn’t, unless I really needed cash fast).

How do you build websites that earn $5, $10, $25, even $100 a day? How long does it take? What if I told you it could be done in a few hours?

I’m almost done with a video training series showing how to create “Mini Money Sites” over at Earn1KaDay. The course probably will never be sold (if it does, the price will be competitive with similar courses that sell at around $997), but it is part of the membership site at Earn1KaDay.

Right now the monthly subscription fee is ridiculously low. Build one mini money site, cash it in for $1000, and you’re pretty much paid your fees for the next few years or more. I show you how to build those sites in a few hours and give you the software tools and framework to do it with.

No, I’m not advocating building crappy looking scraper sites, I’m teaching how to build sites that provide visitor value and create virtually instant income mainly from the eBay affiliate program, which until today, June 1, was probably the most generous affiliate program on the Internet.

Now, the eBay program is even better.

So, I guess when I teach you how easy it is to create mini money sites that feature eBay, you won’t want to sell those $5 and $10 and $25 day income stream producing sites for $1000 or $5000.

But you could.

How difficult is it to earn $1000 in a day? Not tough to do at all, but if you’re like me, the decision to cash out is terribly difficult to make..

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Even with the tracking problems they had recently (which have been solved, it seems), I still made more with their program than any other, by far.  Of course I sent them more traffic than any other merchant, by far, but that was by choice.

I just received an email from eBay, they are raising affiliate payouts beginning June 1st, for the eBay.com (U.S.) site.

Where in the past the base commission for driving a new registered user (called an ACRU) to eBay was $12, it will become $25.

Where in the past the base commission for driving a winning bidder to their site was 40% of eBay revenues, it will become 50%.

And the bonus tiers for both types of commissionable actions are fairly easy to obtain, so many affiliates can expect to earn more than those levels.

On the downside, you can no longer link straight to eBay from Google AdWords or the Yahoo or MSN equivalents.  Well, actually you can, but you won’t earn a commission.  If you’re using PPC ads, you need to link to your own domain (landing page) first.

Thanks again, eBay!

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One of the most inspiring recent success stories could be classified as one of the most surprising.

The man I’m going to describe was almost a complete newbie to Internet Marketing, though he had sold on eBay. Actually his main income comes from his farm in North Carolina.

When he bought 5 Bucks a Day, he had a new problem or question every day, beginning with figuring out how to download the book. Eventually I realized he needed more help than I could give, time wise or expertise wise, and asked him to join the forum and start asking his questions there so that more people with more varied knowledge could help him.

Thankfully, he wasn’t shy and started asking lots of questions, some very basic ones, and going up the ladder to some more advanced ones. As I predicted, the forum members were fantastic in helping him out.

A while ago he surprised me by announcing that he had put together his own e-Book, and had talked a fellow North Carolinian, super affiliate James J. Jones, into promoting it for him, which worked out well, but all promotions eventually end and fizzle down.

This week, this man (OK, let’s give the man a name, it’s Walter), announced that he lost his part time job that he needed to supplement his farming income, and he needed help promoting his book.

We have some great members in our community, and several came forward to help him promote it, but Walter didn’t sit tight, feel sorry for himself, and wait for the results, he went out and found some JV partners. And not just any JV partners, since his book is about importing stuff to sell on eBay auctions, he went to two or three of the top eBay gurus on the Internet.

You see, Walter isn’t shy. He’s an honestly hard working person who figures he has to earn what he gets. And what he got was Mike Enos (the Platinum Powerseller) to interview him and promote the book.

If you’re interested, you can listen to the interview here: ==> Walter’s Interview With Mike Enos and prepare to be inspired.

We have lots of other success stories on our forum, you can enter as a guest and see some if you like, but you have to be a registered reader of the book to see some of the other parts of the site. To enter as a guest: ==> 5 Bucks a Day Success Stories

If you’re a reader of my book I hope you’ve registered for the forum, and I hope you can post your success stories there as they happen also.

The key lesson to succeeding like Walter did was never give up, success can come quickly if you want it to, but you have to take action. Walter’s e-Book didn’t write itself, and the high profile JV partners didn’t knock on his door, Walter went out and found them.

If a rabbit farmer from North Carolina can do Internet Marketing and succeed, why can’t you? Now you have no excuse for believing that IM success is only for the well connected, do you?

And neither do I.

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I received an email from eBay saying they had resolved the problem recently, and testing had proven that tracking is now happening properly. Sure enough my daily commissions are back to normal.

Additionally, eBay posted what they call a “make good” bonus which appeared in the CJ reports this evening. I’m not convinced it was accurate, relative to what I know I’ve been earning as an average commission per impression for the past couple years, but it’s time to move on and start expanding campaigns again, rather than what many have done recently, which understandably was to slow down or pause them.

Onward and upward.

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The problems have been acknowledged both by emails from eBay and by statements made by eBay staff in their own affiliate forum.

I’ve said many times that eBay has the most generous affiliate program I’ve encountered in all my years of affiliate marketing. eBay has said that they’ll be calculating a “make good” bonus when everything is ironed out.

I trust they will. In the meantime, my income is down drastically, but I’m sure it will return. Many affiliates have given up. Many have bad mouthed eBay. At least one has reportedly had his account canceled, he must have irritated the wrong person somehow.

I know that some of my forum members, especially those just starting with PPC and with eBay, based on my recommendations, are very frustrated, and obviously can’t tell if what they’re doing is successful or not. Chances are they could be losing money only because tracking is having a problem and if everything were right they’d have a winner.

It would be a shame if someone gives up just because of a temporary glitch.

Hopefully this issue will be resolved soon, and hopefully the “make good” will truly make good. In the meantime, I’ve decided to allow my campaigns to continue to run full speed, and I continue to believe that eBay has the most generous affiliate program on the Internet.

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