University2020 Review

I'm very sad about this

I just read on the forum that University2020 is going to be phased out - I am so sad about that because I truly believe it was a fantastic learning environment.

It just makes the whole thing even sadder/stupider that it is disappearing due to lack of interest. Not enough people were buying it and none of the big gurus ever pushed it as far as I could see.

Apparently hype and the latest thing are more popular than getting a good sound grounding in marketing.
The likes of mass control win again - and I'm very sad about that.

Yes, I am Stupid

Ha! Ha! The Irony - I just noticed I posted that last post to my dieting blog instead of this one and had to rapidly delete it and repost here.

Must be going senile. Maybe I have been mass controlled.

Are Folks Stupid or What?

I have to laugh about all the commotion over Frank Kern's mass control although I am also pig-sick of getting emails about it. I really don't care about how many seats there are or whether it's opened or closed. No matter how many bonuses you're giving me I'm not buying.

If a guy tells you that he is using mass control and you allow yourself to be mass controlled then in my view you are pretty stupid. And if you have though that through and just want to learn how to mass control others then your motives are pretty suspect too.

We have seen every trick in the book with this promotion - it's all so obvious it makes me smile - but I'm not sure it's really that funny if people are falling for it.

Reminds me of the poor people on my dieting blog who get taken in by dieting pill ads and pay money they can't really spare to lose weight by some miracle means. Those diet pill sellers are selling hope and so is Frank.

How many times have you bought hope? I have bought too much hope altogether now - hope is now off my wish list...

Web 2.0 and Social Power Linking

I have been plotting again....

This time I have been thinking long and hard about how to get more traffic fast because most of my 5 Bucks a Day strategies were not going to work that well unless I got a lot of traffic (and the more the merrier). I knew I could get traffic over the long haul with Themezoom and by building out lots of silo pages but that all takes time and I need lots of traffic NOW to specific pages on my site relating to my projects.

That's when I heard about Social Power Linking, Jack Humphrey's latest low cost (huge value) membership site and I joined.  I have to say (like all the best information) it has changed how I view my business and my strategy and I find that it is not just a source of learning and more information to swamp my hard drive (and my head) - it provides a detailed step by step action plan too which is already making a difference in my site.

Dec 1 - 27 - Visits between 32 and 79 per day to my fitness equipment site 
Dec 28 - 30 (first 3 days of action plan and steps 1 to 3 of the 10 Step beginners Social Power Linking Step by Step Traffic Guide implemented) - Visits between  194 and 250 to the site most of them to two pages I was targeting. Result: 2 sales!

Goodness knows what will happen when I start the 60 day plan but I am going quite slowly through the guides because there is so much information on the Social Power Linking site and there's a danger of being over zealous with social power linking and using it in the wrong way (all explained in the training).

I must admit I love it when I buy a product  and it  over-delivers on expectations. That  has happened with the last two products - my bulls**t detector must be getting better after my University2020 indoctrination :)

Progress and a 2008 Plan

Affiliate commissions on my University 2020 classroom project site are doing well this month - very motivating. I thought I was joking when I said that I wanted to multiply by 6 every month but it is not looking so outrageous with the figures I have so far ($147 this month up to December 18th from $35 last month and $5.60 the month before). I have sold 2 large pieces of fitness equipment over the 10 weeks or so I have been active but I find that smaller stuff seems to sell better so I will be looking at adding more medium priced recommendations in future,

Although my  fitness equipment niche is not very Christmassy - holiday shopping has probably affected my figures - time will tell. 

For 2008 I have decided to continue the University2020 profitable website strategy (I know it works now) in further building out my site.  Added to that will  be a  particular mindset/methodology I learnt from Dennis Becker focusing on building one new income stream every week. I decided to use his strategy and adapt it to focus entirely on my fitness equipment site.

I have picked out 20 top projects for 2008  (from the list I made of over 50) and have already begun to get a headstart on No. 1.  Dennis' forum and huge number of bonus reports - available to those who buy his book - are full of more ideas I haven't had time to digest yet but I'm trying to focus on ACTION now rather than just gathering more ideas - one thing I have learned from University2020 too.

By the way I'll share my action plan with anyone who buys Dennis' 5 Bucks a Day  book through my link. Just send details of your purchase including transaction id to janiceelizabeth at gmail.com

 

Added a Blog and December Sales Progress

I have spent a few days (maybe as much as a week!) adding a blog to my site - first of all seeking out a template from the thousands out there which was

a) clean and professional looking
b) easy to adapt
c) SEO friendly
d) widget ready

After that actually installing the latest release was a walk in the park.

But then there was the plug-in dilemma. Which to install from all the plug-ins listed? I used a few blog articles about "best Wordpress plug-ins" from those who seemed to know telling me what they had installed. Actually installing was easy but trying to understand the plug-ins was something else.

Anyway I have my list of plug-ins in there - some of them still need configuring properly but I am getting there.

Finally added two posts - I plan to add five good posts before linking to the blog from my site (it's on the same domain).

Meanwhile sales are going well this month. As I have sold over 31 products on Amazon (actually 38), commission has moved from the starting level of 4% to 6.5% which is nice. Although most of the sales are very small I have sold one item over $500 so that helps the figures. This is helping to motivate me though I must admit all the Christmas preparations (and parties) are getting in the way somewhat.

I have big plans for the site for 2008 - a list of over 50 ideas to make it more profitable - and that's on top of my list of things to do to boost traffic. I think I'll be busy.

Stats for November

I have been a bit quiet on my blog I know - and I haven't been very active on my site I'm afraid although I have added a few new pages and affiliate links as well as posting my site to some directories. I have really just got back into the swing of things this week after Dad's passing at the end of October.

Despite the lack of attention to promotion and content on the site, progress is still being made. Here are the November results :-

Pages indexed in Google - wavering around 42  (not much changed there)
Pages indexed in Yahoo - 25 (up from between 1 and 3 last month)
Inlinks showing in Yahoo - 27 (2 external/25 internal up from zero)
Unique visitors - 1925 (up from 306 last month)(Average 64 per day (up from 9.87) maximum 235 on one day)
Average visit length 159 seconds (last month 171) (69.4 under 30 seconds - last month 73.7% )
1802 visits from Google search engine results (last month 221)
Found for 1055 different key phrases (203 last month)
Sales : 8 (4 last month)
Commission : $35.43 (last month $5.60)

Will have to get going with the site in December. I am collecting subscribers (90 so far) and doing nothing with them after providing a free report and i want to add a blog to my site so these will be my next tasks.

Now if only I can multiply my commission by six times every month this will be a very profitable site and I will be a millionaire around month 8  :)

Stats for October

So my site has been live for the whole month of October, here are the results :-

Pages indexed in Google - wavering around 40
Pages indexed in Yahoo - 1 (has been 3 during the month)
Inlinks showing in Yahoo - zero
Unique visitors - 306 (Average 9.87 per day / last week of month average 31)
Average visit length 171 seconds (73.7% under 30 seconds)
221 visits from Google search engine results
Found for 203 different key phrases
Sales : 4
Commission : $5.60

Roll on November and more promotion

Promotion Time and Progress

I have now properly started my promotion campaign. So what have I done so far?

• added a post to my pr4 weight loss blog with links to two of my product pages ( I did this a few days ago)
• submitted an original article to Ezinearticles.com yesterday with links to my home page, and two other relevant product pages in the resource box. Not yet accepted for publication.
• reviewed 10 human edited site directories today and submitted my links to 5 of them which had relevant categories and looked ok. The links will take anything from 2 days to 8 months to appear according to the directories.  We'll see - I am still getting acceptance messages for another site where I did the directory submissions last year.

I am aiming to give every important page at least a handful of diverse relevant links by various methods and I hope I will build up some natural links to my useful content pages too.

Where am I now?

Traffic is picking up with  56  unique visitors yesterday - another new record.  I have been found for  160 different search phrases mostly long tails but I am now getting found in the SERPS for some of my individual two-word product phrases - the ones I linked to in my blog naturally enough. So this stuff works. Just got to get on with it!

I still need to fill in some content gaps. Two of my three silos are finished (for now) as far as content is concerned. One still needs affiliate links to be added and one needs a  lot more content before I am happy with it.

But overall progress is being made step by step... or should that be word by word and link by link?

When Doubts Creep In

As I start picking up the reins a bit again after last week I can see dangerous times ahead!

Looking at the situation, I have done an awful lot of work with my site and got it live. I have researched my market, chosen my products, designed my site, built it and debugged it, written a lot of content for it, created 7 giveaways of 16 to 20 pages each for opt-ins, registered the site map with Yahoo and Google, created endless graphics. Yet I still have an awful lot of content to create, not to mention a huge amount of promoting and link building to do.

I know that "build it and they will come" is rubbish. So why am I suddenly getting impatient when I have done nothing to invite anyone into the site with a promotion or link building campaign? and I still have over 130 visitors finding me from Google somehow (University2020 magic)

I think this is the stage where many give up (I have certainly given up myself at this stage before but in niches where I had little interest).  It feels like I have put in an awful lot of work and got nowhere yet and there is an awful lot more to do before things will change. Will they change if I do all that work? It's easy for doubt to creep in.

But this time I won't give up. I want to see things through and make it work. I listened to an MP3 not so long ago  - can't remember who it was - but they were talking about a successful site being like a  skyscraper. You have to do an awful lot of digging foundations and driving in steel girders with nothing showing above the surface before you rise out of the ground.

Not sure I'm even at sidewalk (or pavement as we say here) level yet but I'm going to get there brick by brick.

And another thought - only the determined are going to get through this stage - that's what keeps millions of competitors at bay and therefore it's A GOOD THING that it takes a bit of work and staying power!