$12.96

Somehow, my birthday wish was granted.

On April 1st, I wrote:

Since April is my birth month, my wish for this month is to make money (no matter how impossible it is at where I am right now) from internet marketing. Now, that's wishful thinking!

Then yesterday, April 29th, I received my first affiliate check ever. It is for $12.96. The check came from an affiliate company where I am subscribed to.

I could not believe it. I have long since deleted affiliate links from my websites and in my blogs since I thought they were useless anyway. I thought I was just wasting my space. So I did website makeovers and blog makeovers when my WowEzine.com was in a crash.

Okay, I still have some affiliate links but not as part of the site but as part of the content that I write. Like this blog still links to Holly Mann's site.

But the main thing is, I got this super-doper check and it is very little but big enough for me to get going. It paid off somehow. Is it my wishful thinking or my effort? I don't know and I don't care.

But now the inspiration is going through my blood again. Pat in my back. Congratulations myself. Way to go, girl!

Spreading Yourself Thin

In the realm of internet marketing, there is plenty of choices. You can do affiliate marketing, product reviews, niche marketing, website building, blah, blah, blah. When you venture in all these, you can surely create a multiple streams of income.

However, these are just too many heading off to different directions. One needs to specialize in order to succeed. It's called singleness of purpose. If the purpose is money, then you can do a lot. But, one also needs to do what one enjoys doing. To each according to his/her own talent. But then arguably, the talent can be that of making money.

All I can say is that when you do so many things, you spread yourself thin. I am concentrating now on developing my website. It does not make any monetary return at this time but I do think that each one's labor will be rewarded in the end. After all, you reap what you sow, right?

Now, these are just philosophical babbles as you would think. I think this is what I become for not making anything out of internet marketing. Honestly, I don't see the end of the rainbow yet because it is still raining. When it rain, it pours. And the rain of this kind does not represent blessings. It's the rain of absurdity.

Having Versus Knowing

As an introduction to this blog, I wrote that when it comes to internet marketing, Holly Mann has it. And in trying to share it, she wrote an ebook called, Honest Riches.

But having is different from knowing. Look at me, I read Honest Riches and know everything there is in internet marketing (if Holly Mann is honestly saying that she revealed it all in her ebook) but I'm still not rich.

So in order for us to be successful internet marketers, we have to have the talent and the destiny for it. Not just knowledge. Knowledge sometimes sucks. When you know too much and it's not helping, knowledge becomes a liability. It's just there to remind you that you are not good enough.

Dead Spirit

I was complaining before of my website which was down for a good four weeks. Now, my website is working. But the thing is, I'm now out of energy and enthusiasm to work on it.

When it was out, I was brimming with cool ideas on what to do. The lull even led me into creating another blog, tvmomma. Like all the ideas are on top of my head. Light bulb after light burb turning on. Now, there is no light, and worse, there is no bulb.

I don't know if this kind of "hole" happens to anyone. Nothing can make me excited again on internet marketing. It's as if I've exhausted all -- resources, effort, and money. No result. Now, I've vanished into nothingness.

For right now, I will just have to blog about my dead spirit.

My Mind Is Frozen

Days like this come. Some days, my mind is brimming with ideas; other days, it's just dead.

So what do I have to do? Shake my brain until my creative juice pours out? Or just let it rest? I hate it when I'm unproductive, as most people do. I mean most people hate it, not that most people are unproductive. Well but maybe the second statement also holds true.

Blame it on the weather. It's gloomy in Florida and it is going to be in the low 40s this week. Aha! That's a bright idea. My mind is frozen because it's cold atmospherically. That is a well good excuse.

Now I can put the frozen mind issue to rest.

My Enthusiasm Is Declining

Somehow, I'm getting tired of internet marketing. My website is back and I can't bring back the enthusiasm I had with it before. Like there's no fun with it like when I first started it.

I have no members, I have no comments, I don't even know if anyone is reading my website.

Sunny Day Again

Yes, now that my website is working, the sun is shining through my window again. I like my website. It is not back to its original shape but it is okay. I'm starting to write again. Three weeks of limbo and now, back in the light.

I remember the Scriptlance programmer suggested that I buy a software (that he is selling!) for articles. Content is very important to any site as Holly Mann herself wrote in her eBook, Honest Riches. So this programmer who himself runs magazine sites like mine recommended a software that would make content building easier. It's a software that revises the article so it does not duplicate the original.

I see two reasons why this is a good idea. First, search engines don't like sites with similar contents and thus, would not index them. So your website may not be searchable if you copy contents from other websites. The second is plagiarism. Of course, some articles online may be copyrighted and copying and pasting them in your own site would not do you any better.

But you know what? I'm glad I did not buy the software. I saw an article I submitted to some ezines during my wealthyfreelancer.com saga (now, this is no longer mine as somebody "stole" the domain name) and lo and behold, it kind of murdered my original article. What the software does is substitute the words with the same meanings. For me, it's like a thesaurus that replaces a word with its synonym. But the software is not a thinking machine just like a person. The overall result is horrible... like written by someone drunk or dumb or both.

I hope I copied the revised version so I can show you. Maybe next blog.

Busy On My Website

I have been very busy with my website because it is now back to life. Thank God. I am working double time to fill the site up with articles. It's very tiring and a bit frustrating to start all over again but that's life.

Just like in Martina McBride's song, Anyway, we can build something from nothing and spend our whole life building it but a storm can just come and destroy all of it. That happened to my website. In this case it's not a storm but a digital crash. Yes, it is disheartening but as the song goes, I'll rebuild it anyway.

Thanks for all of you who take time to check out my website. It inspires me to have people like you who read my articles. You are also very welcome to join WowEzine.com.

Blogger or Wordpress?

I prefer Blogger than Wordpress. This blog is made from Blogger. Holly Mann personally recommended Wordpress to me (read her letter to me here) and that's when I came to know Wordpress.

But Wordpress is very hard to learn. I don't really consider myself a dummy when it comes to making webspages but there sure is a lot of learning curve with Wordpress. And since I just wanted a blog, Wordpress does not work.

I made several attempts to do a blog with Wordpress but its level of difficulty is just so high that I have to either delete or discontinue the blog. It becomes frustrating so rather than fighting the system, just leave.

With Blogger, there is an ease of use. You can choose the template and edit the template. You can add or remove page elements. They said that there's not a lot of options with Blogger but the thing is, it's all up to you how you would make the best out of the options you are given. Blogger does not really impose on how you want your blog to look like. And to sweeten the deal, you can always put Google Adsense in your blog.

Welcome April!

I can't believe it is now April. It has been months since I started this blog and so far I cannot write any positive report on it. I think I'm not really following Holly Mann's eBook. Maybe it's really hard for me to learn. Fiasco after fiasco. I think I had it all.

By the way, I want to thank Glen Woodfin for making an effort to post comments to my previous posts. Thanks a lot for the input. I know that you notice how novice and naive I am when it comes to internet marketing. Maybe it is not really my alley. Or should I say niche?

I really want to belong to this world of successful internet marketing. I just don't want to be a Google adsense basket case. Yes, I'm not really seeing any hope right now. And I am firm on not going to spend any more money. It is not just working for me.

Since April is my birth month, my wish for this month is to make money (no matter how impossible it is at where I am right now) from internet marketing. Now, that's wishful thinking!