Week in review

Ended up not posting a week in review last week so I want to make sure and get this one in. This week was a real bummer & a reality check. First, I was supposed to be in Hawaii all last week but happened to be booked on ATA which of course went Bankrupt - Whooo Hooooo! So that was a crappy start - Then I saw my new credit card bill and it turns out I spent almost $800 in advertising & signups and what not this month. And I gotta say most of it was a total waste. Started a PPC campaign and Miva.com - Deposited $200 but couldn't figure out how to set a daily spending limit. They figured it out for me and dropped all $200 in 1 and 1/2 days! I was only advertising the new Income Accelerator Program and got Zero signups. Seems like a pretty crappy investment to me. Dropped another $80 or so on Viral Adwords where I paid for "Targeted Hits" - I got 5,000 hits basically dumped on my site over a whole 2 days. When I checked where they were generated from, Yahoo Stats said McClintock High School. So people searching for a High School in AZ is targeted traffic? To say the least I was none too happy with that spending spree.

I do have some pretty good news though. I found a new online business venture called Online Business Alliance. Recommended to me by my best networking friend. So I go to check it out and sign up and buy the $5 ebook. What I didn't realize is that this actually comes with a heck of a lot more than just an ebook! You get 2 choices after you pay - Download your ebook & move on, or Start your new business with OBA. So I started exploring. This is a pretty cool deal - For that $5 ebook I purchased, I get the entire OBA business package included! And it's a really impressive package - Splash Pages, Autoresponder Service, Advertising Ideas etc. I spent about 1/2 hour going through the Setup steps and the more I went through, the more excited I got about the business.

Basically I promote the business by selling the $5 ebooks. With that $5 ebook you get the ENTIRE online business package which comes with 12 splash pages, the autoresponder service, etc. The advertising suggestions is where I found a great site called TrafficHoopla. They give me a list of the top 5 Traffic Exchanges to join and then the remaining top 20 also. So I went and joined them all!

I really still have a TON of work to get this thing off the ground, but I believe it's a really great program. I love the NetSuccess programs, but I think this might work a lot better for the clients on Traffic Exchanges. Of course the Exchanges are 70% of my advertising right now, so I get to offer stuff that is cheap to sign up for.

I also signed up as an affiliate for IPower - I was considering opening a new blog JUST for promoting this. It is the cheapest hosting I have found and I can make $100 per referral which is really incredible. See I'm trying to think beyond the traffic exchanges. It's hitting me pretty hard that traffic exchange population is just a 5 second attention span kinda place. They want to see all flash and make $1 million tomorrow ALL FREE - I guess this is why exchanges are filled with flash - The kinda stuff I have seen way too much of - This is leading me to my next thought about the 90% of online business seekers failing and is something I want to write an article about...even though it may offend everyone who reads it (because they are all traffic exchange newbies). Basically my theory is that it only makes sense to target the 90% of people who are looking for all flash and instant wealth. They will sign up for anything and everything and then give up in 2 weeks when they haven't made it big. Well, if 90% of your traffic are strictly these kind of people, then THEY are who you are marketing towards - So give them all flash - I feel like what I'm doing is different, and helpful. But everytime I see a poor review from a fellow Link Referral member, it is Always someone with less than 5 ratings who pretty much JUST started. My site doesn't fit into that flash stuff - so maybe I should be promoting more Flash when it comes to exchanges and promote my own site with PPC campaigns - I would say that a LOT of the LinkReferral traffic & reviews are great - I have gotten a lot of positive comments from members there who realize that it takes more than 2 weeks to succeed. I am happy about that for sure - I just need to target the flash stuff on the exchanges, I'm thinking.

I'm also using the Pop Unders for the OBA splash pages - Right now i'm buying these from BuyHitsCheap.com. My understanding is that Pop Unders are great for flashy items and the OBA splash pages have that quick eye appeal. So far I've had a few signups come this way. And with BuyHitsCheap, I get 10,000 pop unders for $12.50 - I can set them to be used hourly, daily or all at once. I can set up multiple campaigns and delete them anytime. Right now I have 4 splash pages on pop unders and I will probably be examining which ones work best in a few days.

This is getting super long but I had a lot of stuff going on this week. Goal this week is to get my OBA set up on LinkReferral. I had some timing issues and now they cancelled that email I was using. I got 2 signups w/in a day there which was nice. Problem was I originally put a different program under that email and then requested a cancellation because I found out it was a huge scam (site closed next day - obviously patience isn't my strongest point lol). I decided to just add the OBA account instead, and of course 3 days later they got my cancellation request for the 1on40.com account -

So I gotta promote OBA like mad this week - I love the program and it's cheap to sign up for so I think it's an easy seller that should end up making good money at some point - Just gotta get the word out. I gotta get exchange credits so my sites will get seen on all these new exchanges. I think I'm cancelling my TrafficSwarm pro membership - I got 2,500 credits this month and they were GONE in 2 days! I can't pay $30/month for 2 days of credits - That is a lot of money with what I'm using for exchange traffic. I think I will cancel that and get the Pro Membership at Traffic Hoopla - not only is it a Great service & exchange, I also can earn $5 for each member I refer there - So I get a 2 for 1 deal with building up referrals on 25 different exchange sites and $5 per referral at TrafficHoopla (only if they go pro though) - For $20 per month I think that is a way better deal than the $30 I'm spending at TrafficSwarm...The ONLY reason I spend money on pro memberships is so I don't HAVE to surf - but TS has been eating my credits up like crazy. I've gone through 4,500 credits in less than 2 weeks this month...Thats ridiculous...

so as this has gotten INCREDIBLY long, I have to say goodnight - Lots of thoughts & Lots of work ahead of me. I have spent a TON of money this month so I really need to come up with a budget I can live with. I'm thinking $300/month for everything. I hope that will get me a decent start but we'll see.