Using My Time Wisely...

Hi all,

Well, the time has come to get down to brass tacks. My babysitting days are almost over and it's time to make some serious money so I can stay home with the kids.

For anyone following my progress, I have now got three (Yes, THREE) businesses up and running in the last six months. My greatest gains have not surprisingly been with the latest project: "Your Virtual Assistant" (http://www.affiliate-start.com/VA/writer.html).

My first site took 6 months to figure out, 4 months to gain an income, and is still waiting to make a profit.

My second site was up within a day (24 hours and free to setup). It took 2 months to bring an income and is also waiting to show a profit.

My third try was up within hours (I built it myself) and turned a PROFIT within the first two weeks (may have even been the first!).

So my realization is that learning requires DOING. If you are still THINKING about starting an online business, STOP - and get MOVING! (Sorry for all the capitals)

I have overcome my fears. I have learned how to spend my advertising dollar wisely and even how to NOT spend dollars (this is the real key to making income :)

I hope you all are having exciting experiences. I'd love to hear them.

Shannon

Looking for Traffic? Look what I found...

And so it goes, traffic hunting is a never ending job!

However, kudos to two ladies who've opened MY eyes - Check out this site and sign up for the FREE 'Truth About Traffic' audio course: http://internetbasedmoms.com/.

There's a good bit about what NOT to do as well as traffic building methods for newbies and more advanced marketers.

I want to say that I have found a great deal of valuable information for free if I wait long enough. That doesn't mean all free information is valuable, but after awhile you start hearing the same things over and over, which gives perspective. As I try to absorb all the information out there, it's easy to get overwhelmed, but soon you'll start to see patterns in strategies and techniques. The biggest benefit? Instead of trying everything, I just stick to the main REPEATED techniques. I think this is a wise start.

So make sure you sign up for newsletters from some of the top marketers, this will cut down your learning curve quite a bit.

Another bit of advice - hold back! If you're like me, you think it "takes money to make money". True, but before you spend it on every great idea, hang around forums or read some of those newsletters until you trust the author. You may find some ideas are proven and others are just plain a waste of money. I love the Warrior Forum, there's so much honest feedback. A great place to be!

-----------------

I'm still in the countdown to loosing my babysitting income (if this sounds strange, I am actually looking forward to it!) so the push is ON to make this work.

Although I didn't follow through with my previous post about the websites (worried that's a little out of my league right now) I did see the value of finding something related to your marketing efforts that can provide an income while figuring out the affiliate thing.

So I went ahead and created a website offering proofreading services among other things. I offered some free jobs to get going, and I've already received my first payment with another on the way. I've created a newsletter from scratch and had my first subscriber within a day. And get this - I've paid NOTHING for traffic! I think I'm getting the hang of this :)

Here's the site: "Your Virtual Assistant".

Truth is, I think the program I started with, Plug-In-For-Profits is the BEST training tool. However, I think it leads successful individuals into taking further steps into making an income online with their OWN product or service. And speaking of getting good stuff for FREE, I only joined the Warriors Forum because it came as a bonus with the Plug-In-For-Profits system.

If you want to join it yourself, here's the link: WarriorPro
If you want to learn to market from scratch, AND get the forum access for free, go here: Plug-In-For-Profits
Hope everyone's well!

Shannon