July 16, 2008 By

Blog Less, Make More Money?

If you noticed, for the past few months I’m averaging about 1 post a month, and in fact I didn’t update GobalaKrishnan.com at all in June. Neither did I write a lot for ProfitBlogger.com (formerly know as EasyWordpress.com). So what exactly happened to me?

profitblogger

Was I facing a really tough writer’s block, or did I just give up on updating my personal blog altogether?

A little bit of both actually. When I first started blogging, this was the only blog I had, and I posted everything here. In fact this blog is responsible for most of my life-long customers, subscribers and fans. However along the way I started a blog about how to make money blogging, one on music marketing, and another on MLM tips, and a while later yet another one about Internet business in Malaysia.

After juggling all blogs (with the help of hired bloggers), I started becoming a slave to my own business working 9am to 11pm and yet my income hardly grew. A classic case of stretching yourself too thin; biting off more than you can chew; or whatever you call it.

I lost my direction for GobalaKrishnan.com – I didn’t know what to write here since now I have all those other blogs where I can publish my content to. So I stopped blogging here and all I could do was to publish one or two rather lame post just for the sake of keeping it updated.

But I wasn’t being lazy.

In fact, I was working harder than ever before. The only thing that changed is that I realized with the time I spent on blogging, I could actually create a lot more of my own product which generated much more income. In the last three months I created Super Affiliate Blogger, wrote Blog Paycheck and even managed to update my first successful product you probably already know as WordPress Adsense System.

clickbank-increaseAs a result, in a two week period in May / June I made $10,882.33 from sales of my own products alone, thanks to the great response to Super Affiliate Blogger. Then I followed up with Blog Paycheck less than 30 days later and that too was a hit, bringing my income level for the next month to more than $8,500.00 from the sales of my own products. This means that by introducing those two products I almost tripled my income.

The funny thing is, since August 2006 the only product I had that generated daily sales was WordPress Adsense System and I never tried to even create a follow-up product to that. Instead I spent most of my time blogging, blogging, and blogging even more. A lot of blog post, and lot of “Thank you for the wonderful resource, you’re such a nice guy..”. But not a lot of money.

Which got me into thinking, is it really worthwhile to write 2-3 blog posts a day like some of the big name bloggers do? Do I really need to be a content-generating machine just to keep up? Do I need to give away so much free information, when it’s proven that I can charge for the information, have more time for myself, and yet keep everyone happy?

The answer is: it depends.

I now realize the difference between “having a blog” and “blogging” – at least in my own definition of those terms. Having a blog is good – after all blogs are still one of the best ways to get traffic and search engine rankings. But to be “blogging” day in and day out is not my cup of tea, especially when it becomes more of a chose than a pleasure.

I now have a new strategy to create more sites, make more money, yet spend less time with day-to-day blogging.

What is it? You’ll need to subscribe to my blog about blogging to find out. I’ll be writing about that soon.

This blog will focus more on strategies, experiences and insights on creating products, copywriting, list building, and direct response marketing. That’s what I’m really good at – selling stuff :)

A lot of work to do, but I’m going to take my time doing it. It’s more fun that way.

Filed Under: Blogging Tips, My Journey Tagged With:
February 2, 2008 By

I’m Now 28 And No Longer a "Young Hotshot" Marketer

I knew I can only talk about being young for that long. Sooner of later, you’ll get old and you can’t use the age factor in your presentations or salescopy anymore :)

Would you react the same way if the salescopy read “Discover how a 35-Year Old Makes Money Online”?

Well I’m not that old yet, but surely heading that way and besides nowadays you have 14-year old kids selling their success stories online, so I better find something else to say in my presentations.

On February 1st, 2008 I celebrated my first birthday and more than 2 years making a full-time living on the Internet. Sheila bought me a superb dinner, followed by a really unique birthday “cake”

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Here’s an earlier picture of us, with my clean-shaven look that she likes so much:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

She says I look better (and younger) this way. What do you think?

Filed Under: My Journey Tagged With:
January 6, 2008 By

Why Most People Don’t Achieve Success in Internet Marketing

Late last month, I quit from the band that I’ve been with for almost 4 years. Music is my passion, and I love playing the electric guitar, yet just when the band was having some level of success I quit. Why?

It’s the same reason why a lot of people quit Internet marketing: lack of passion.

Don’t get me wrong – I DID say that music was my passion, but what TYPE of music? I love playing late 90s rock, blues and a little bit of metal. As long as it’s in that range, I love every minute of playing the guitar. Yesterday I got together with some of my old music buddies and we played just for fun. From the moment I stepped into the studio it was obvious everyone was already having fun, and I felt total freedom to play, experiment and take the lead. I felt alive again, ready to learn new things and play even more. In fact our studio time was over before we even knew it..

In my previous band, there was always the feeling that I had to play music that wasn’t “coming from the heart” – so to speak. My band mates would be telling me “Dude you gotta feel it…” and I’ll be thinking “Feel what?”

There just wasn’t any feeling to the music, which I felt was fake and insincere in the first place. I didn’t have passion for it and it showed, even when I tried to fake the excitement. Spending one hour in the studio was like a long, repetitive nightmare I preferred to avoid.

Other areas of our lives are not much different either. When you do something you don’t believe in 100%, you’re never your best.

In Internet marketing a lot of people hop on the trend bandwagon; they do what’s “hot” at the moment and so the story goes. They keep on hopping from one type of business to the other simply because other people say that’s where the money is. Sure, there’s probably some money there but if you’re not passionate about it, there’s only so far you can go before your lack of passion shows and takes it tool on your performance and achievement.

At the end of the day, even if you’re achieving some level of success, what’s the point if it’s not both mentally and emotionally satisfying?

You want to start a blog but you hate writing. So do a video blog. Do a podcast blog etc; it’s the same thing but the medium of delivery may suit you better. Instead most people continue writing in broken English with half-baked posts that put people to sleep. Then they wonder “Why can’t I get traffic?”

The answer is, your passion isn’t there. And others can see it, feel it, and respond to it.

A lot of Internet marketers would tell you “Screw passion, what’s the point of being passionate but broke?”

I beg to differ. It’s passion for what you do that’s going to keep you in this industry in the long run. Most people quit when success is a mile away, just like I did with my band.

Want to know the reason?

Because they realize after a while that the success they longed for so much means nothing to them, as they were never passionate about it in the first place. I feel happier quitting a band that I wasn’t passionate for, and play the music I loved even if it meant I had to start from scratch all over again..

Passion is a funny thing. You better listen to it because it will never listen to you.

Filed Under: My Journey Tagged With: , ,
January 3, 2008 By

I Failed to Make $28,000 a Month in 2007

Yup I did. Come on say it: “Looooseeeeeeer…”

Looking back at my 2007 goals, I realized my initial target was to reach an income level of $28,000 / month and 28,000+ subscribers. My basic calculation was I’d be making $1 / subscriber.

I broke through the $10,000 “mental barrier” and have been making about $9,000 – $12,000 per month for the second half of 2007. I even reached $21,000 in July thanks to the SendUsTo.US firesale, but couldn’t sustain that level for the following months.

However, looking on the bright side, I did manage to get to the next level by turning my quarterly income into my monthly income, and even exceeded that in fact according to my “Better Your Best” goal setting plan. Now I’m on to step

My new goal for 2008 (according to my original calculation) is to turn my monthly income into my weekly income, which means I need to be making $28,400 a month, every month. If I don’t stray off course (like I did a few times in 2007) I think this should be possible.

If I achieve that, then I need to turn my weekly income to my daily income, which means making about $213,000 per month according to my original plan back in 2006 when I started my online marketing journey..

I’ll leave that massive target for 2009, hehe… take it easy right :)

Besides, I have some BIGGER things happening in my life in 2008, but that’s another story for another day.

Filed Under: My Journey Tagged With: ,
October 12, 2007 By

My Interview with Toki Tover

I did an interview with Toki Tover a few days back, and she have me a total of 20 questions which took some time to answer but it’s finally available on her blog.

Read the interview here

I also did an audio interview with Sern Yi from Malaysia today and that went great. That a paid product however so there’s no download link. I’m sure Sern Yi will be releasing it pretty soon.

Filed Under: My Journey
August 16, 2007 By

I Was Mentioned by A Fellow Internet Marketer

My name was mentioned by Kidino in his email, as one of the people he respects :)

Goes something like this:

kidinoYou subscribe to 20 guys and all 20 of them will tell you the EXACT same things, and promote the EXACT same products. 

Hmm … maybe you should remove yourself? You know what? You need new heroes to look up to. Somebody who does good promotion, build a good solid business and are not selling hype and smokes.

Let me just name a few people that have my respect now days. And you may not even know some of these people. (in no particular order)

- Yaro Starak
- Lynn Terry
- Dan Lok
- Craig Garber
- Craig Perrine
- Joe Vitale
- Darren Rowse
- Ron Ruiz
- Ansel Gough
- Jay Abraham
- Tim Phelan
- Gobala Krishnan
- Alex Mandossian
- Dan Kennedy
- Willie Crawford
- Patrick O’keefe

Well … these are my heroes. You can have a set of others if you want. These people don’t hype things up. They don’t jump on all product launches out there. But they all make good money …

Thanks Kidino, but the feeling is mutual really. I’ve learned a lot about email marketing from you too in the past, and I still owe you a big favor for going the extra mile and helping me (for free) in my previous viral membership site project.

Kidino’s Sites:

Filed Under: My Journey
July 31, 2007 By

My Journey January to March 2007 – $7,942

My Internet marketing journey needed an update, and I decided I’m going to have quarterly recaps as seperate posts to avoid one super-long post. So here it is..

The first 3 months of 2007 came and went rather quietly as I was either working or several projects at once, or merely updating my existing sites. Still, my income continued to increase, especially from promoting affiliate programs.

Some products I’ve promoted successfully:

  • Auto Social Poster – I’ve made over $680 and still get about 2-3 sales / month. It’s a very unique software for WordPress blogs.
  • RSS to Blog – The software itself is expensive, so needless to say although I make about 3-5 sales per month, it can come up to about $400 a month in affiliate commissions. My main promotion method is to create a Camtasia video on it, just allowing it to gather traffic and sales over time.
  • HostGator Hosting – I recreated my sales page for HostGator, and increase my affiliate commissions to about $600 / month.
  • MySpace Marketing – I did a quick interview with the product owner, and used that to drive affiliate sales. I think I made about 16 sales from my main promotion back in October 2006 and still make about 1-2 sales /month as I’m writing this. The interview transctip till date has been downloaded more than 1,500 times.

I discovered Jon Leger’s $7 scripts, which really opened up a new way of making money while building a big list. It’s a simple script that pays out 100% commissions to your affiliate’s Paypal account immediately. By selling a product for cheap (say $7.00), you’ll tend to get a flurry of affiliate interest which can help you build a bigger list. I’ve heard of people building lists of 10,000+ just using this technique.

I also started to really organize and track my email marketing promotions and affiliate links which were scattered all over my blog and websites. One of the software I invested in is GoTryThis(Black Hat Version) which has helped me understand affiliate marketing like never before.

By end of March 2007, I was making about $7,000+ monthly, or roughly about $35 / hour. The highest income was in March itself at $7,942, so that’s good news. Small increase, but at least I now have stability, which still eludes most internet marketers out there.

As far as blogging goes, I discovered MyBlogLog and Windows Live Writer, two tools that helped me connect better with my blog readers and also create new posts easily. I also added writers to my WordPress Tutorials blog, and the extra posts did bring in much more traffic than just me alone.

Let’s call it a slow start too 2007 :) The next quarter, however, my income maxed to the elusive $10k, but that’s really another story for another time.

Filed Under: My Journey