Extra Cash From Home

I’m quite embarrassed to even being starting this. At 31 years old, I thought I would have figured out internet marketing by now.

I married young at 21 years old, months before my first child was going to be born. Prior to that, I had only had 2 real jobs. My hubby and I had made the decision that he would go to work and I would be a stay at home mom. But I wasn’t satisfied with not helping to add to the family income.

I’m not exactly sure how I started promoting in a certain industry. But I did and I learned a lot of hard lessons the hard way. I went from free hosting to paid hosting to dedicated server. Back then, learning the ropes of promoting such sites was hard. I don’t learn quickly. I wasn’t able to spend much money to grow my business as we were on a single income with a child to take care of.

I befriended many webmasters in the business, many of which were making tens of thousands of dollars every month or actually owning certain sites. Some were surprised that I was actually a woman working on the business side since there were very few female webmasters back then.

I tried to learn as much as I could and consistently built galleries to promote on the many TGPs. I thought I was getting a lot of traffic but my traffic was barely showing up compared the more experienced players.

I hit a lot of lows too. One I remember was when my server had gotten hacked into and my pictures were all being hotlinked. Then another time, my own computer took a crap and I lost everything. Since then I’ve learn to back my stuff up LOL

The best I had ever done in one month was over $3,000. I was so damn proud of myself especially since I saved Christmas that one year.

Throughout the years, me and hubby made financial mistakes that were very costly. We even started a landscaping business that put us deep in the hole. Embarrassingly enough, we found ourselves moving backing to his mother’s house 3 times. Yes I know, pathetic.

6 years ago, we were $91,000 in debt. Today, we’re down to under $8,000. It’s a huge accomplishment and we’re aiming to be debt free.

We’re still living at his mother’s house with our 2 kids. I had given up the adult affiliate marketing a couple years ago to focus more on mainstream internet marketing. Now that I have 2 kids, I want to be able to working on non-adult stuff so that when they come into the room, I’m not trying to cover up what I’m working on LOL

A few years back, I started up a website where I created Myspace graphics for end users to place on their profiles. I even started selling graphics packs to myspace site owners which netted me over $3,000 in my best month LOL. That number seems common.

It was a lot of work but I was proud of what I was doing. Unfortunately, a lot of teenagers got wind of what I did on a certain forum and started doing the same thing. Except, they slashed prices down to a couple bucks a pack. Really devalued the graphics packs. I didn’t want to and couldn’t compete with that.

I removed all the packs and the graphics I had on the site I owned and turned it into a Zazzle storefront with the intention of creating graphics to plaster all over their products like mugs and mousepads. But I figured why do all the work when I can promote other people’s work on my site? I’ve made a few bucks from it but nothing to be amazed about.

I also made money as an ebay seller. I was a powerseller at one point too. but it just wasn’t my cup of tea.

Over the years, I’ve picked up knowledge in

1. basic website html design
2. proficient in wordpress
3. some photoshop
4. and a few other miscellaneous things that I can’t think of at the moment

What I’ve studied:

1. A lot of shitty, rehashed crap
2. stuff from the gurus that have been way over my head (extremely complicated in my mind)
3. building and flipping sites
4. building niche sites with amazon and adsense monetization
5. authority sites
6. basic Search Engine Optimization
7. a little bit of social marketing here and there
8. A bit of CPA

What’s worked for me so far:

1. flipping 3-4 start up autoblogs for $50-80 each (however, a couple had to be relisted a few times before they got sold)
2. a Christmas site that got page 1 listings for various products last month based on Info product killer method (made a couple hundred bucks half of which was from Adsense)
3. Halloween costume site based on Commission Blueprint method ($70 in October last year)
4. $5 (2 sales); 1 from the christmas site and 1 from promoting a penny auction in a classifieds ad

As you can see, my results haven’t been amazing. My brain’s all over the place… scattered, if you will. I’ve dabbled here and there, got a huge case of information overload and paralysis by overanalysis. I have really no money to put into this right now and it sucks because I know I need money to make money.

Building sites doesn’t seem to be a problem for me. The biggest problem is how to generate traffic. I’m just not good at it. period.

I need to learn methods that will bring in the cash a little quicker so I can fund my long term projects. I keep hearing that CPA can bring the cash in pretty quickly if you know what you’re doing. Like I mentioned earlier, I started posting up classified ads promoting penny auctions. So far, 6 ads spread over 2 days have brought in $3.50 (1 sale lol)

I watched videos on setting up and promoting an adult dating site on backpage.com . but after I had things set up, I realized that just about all the city links to post ads in the “no strings attached” sections were “under review”. so they are at this point unavailable. Now what? I thought about using Craigslist but they have notices plastered everywhere that scammers need to be reported to their affiliate programs by reporting their affiliate ids. I did more research into it and read articles warning people not to fall for such dating scams. Grrrr.

Can you still make money promoting CPA offers on craigslist? or have I once again missed the wagon?

Another method I started to use was a variation of the $297 ebay method. except I used craigslist. Contacted a few people but never heard back.

So here I am frustrated to no end. I am constantly amazed and impressed by the people who are making a good living on the internet, especially those that are quite younger than me and have figured it out. I’m not expecting to get rich over night. I just want to make enough money right now to be able to pay off our debt and move back to CA where my family lives.

Obstacles:

1. My impatience
2. Being a stay at home mom raising and homeschooling 2 kids (one with ADHD)
3. A hubby who’s jobless (finding a job here has been very difficult)
4. My bad habit of over analyzing and then getting paralyzed with fear that I will fail
5. Really no money to support my internet marketing
6. Living at my in laws house

Short term goals:

1. Find a mentor who is willing to show me the ropes; take me under their wing (I had one when I was in adult affiliate marketing)
2. Make $50/day consistently
3. Make $100/day
4. Make $300/day
5. Build a portfolio of sites that make me passive income every month
6. Learn CPA (first with free methods and then moving on to PPC later)
7. Learn methods that I can use on a daily basis to bring steady traffic to my sites (press releases, video marketing, etc.)

Long term goals:

1. Pay off the $8,000 debt
2. Get a “newer” car (we only have 1 car, a 97 jeep)
3. Make $10,000/month
4. Move back to CA
5. Buy our first home

I know I can reach all my goals if I can find my way through this. Many others have done it before me. Why can’t I?