Showing posts with label earn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label earn. Show all posts

Monday, August 11, 2008

Blogging for Cash

A good rule of thumb for making money on the Internet is a simple one. "If you are required to pay money up front, it probably is a scam". This rings true 90% of the time, I'm afraid. I've read it, and I've experienced it first hand.

Urban Legend Alert! A 16 year old high school sophomore buys first car with cash earned by blogging and taking surveys. While I have not seen absolute proof of this, there may be some truth to this recently started and wildly popular urban legend...

People get paid to take surveys on the Internet, all the time. And, successfully, too. However, most of the time it's a website that offers to sell you a list that contains companies that may or may not offer surveys. The real successful survey or secret shopper companies are the free ones, inside the stores you wish to survey or shop for. Don't be shy! Just ask somebody in customer service if they have a secret shopper or survey program. If they don't, they probably have a company they outsource. They'll tell you.

Get rich quick schemes or business ideas being sold on ebay are obvious paths of destruction if you don't set them up right. Ponzi schemes are the worst. It all implodes eventually, or when the new customers stop signing up. Unfortunately, a lot of people get stripped of their bank accounts with hopes and dreams to become the next self made millionaire. Try to get it for free first, if you can. Sadly, it's the selling of the information that make all the monies at the end of the day.

HOT TIP! Self made millionaires are usually by accident. Real success comes from the next proverbial "Pet Rock" or "Slinky". Society is bored too quickly, forgets and always is ready to move on to the next "thing". Wait 30 years and it's just called "nostalgia".

There are always exceptions.

Cafepress for example, is free - but you'll earn more by paying the $6.95 fee per month while running a premium shop. Technically, it's free if you sale at least one or two items a month. The fee pays for itself if you have a markup that earns you a return on investment (ROI). CPShop isn't free, but it guarantees you better SEO if you use it creatively as I and so many other shops have done. You have to pay Adwords if you want people to click on your ads, right? The list goes on and on...

Ebay charges fees for listing auctions. Obviously, your ROI is guaranteed as well - but only if you sell your item. You could pay an extra $19.95 to run a showcased gallery auction listing, too. This guarantees you at least 1-200 extra hits by visitors.

Best Intentions

I read and skim others blogs all the time. The ones with the photos of little Lola's first birthday are adorable. Blogs have now shifted from personal to business, like MySpace kinda did. People in Hollywood now throw out a Myspace URL instead of a business card. Sometimes, the business card is the Myspace page. It's nice to see a new trend with companies or entities becoming more personable to its potential buyers and readers by starting blogs now.

One thing important that I cannot stress enough is try to make money on your blog if you can. All you cafepress storekeepers out there still using the old "?pid=3041422" tag need to update your links to Commission Junction links from Cafepress's new affiliate program. If you are signed up with CJ, please update your links so your CJ checks get bigger in the mail. Anything even related to Cafepress at all should be updated with tracking links looking something like: "http://www.kqzyfj.com/click-2387222-10462227?sid=3041422&url=http://www.cafepress.com" , like mine.

Sign up for CJ if you haven't yet. You'll need to be approved (takes 1-2 days) and then you can generate your links via Cafepress's program. Look at my link...its custom with tracking, but it trails off ending with url=http://www.cafepress.com . To promote other shopkeepers, you'd just add a "\shopname\section#" after the trailing cafepress.com.

Here's the signup page to be a publisher through CJ: https://signup.cj.com/member/brandedPublisherSignUp.do?air_refmerchantid=1585594 .


HOT TIP! As a rule of thumb, you don't want to link to other people, products, or sites unless they are going to make you money. Unless they are putting your links on their sites as well (crosslinking).... It's considered wasted ad space, or the other guy gets your hits for free. Zazzle and PrintFection, and others to date don't really have a good affiliate tracking system yet. I say yet....because it just has to change soon. My reports aren't showing up to par with my "Zazzle Star" asterick mark after every url. http://www.zazzle.com/kaptainmyke* . But, they are currently making me money, so I promote them. Cafepress earns me more money, so I devote my 90% to them as my primary distributor.

Hey, this is America. Nothing's free.

HOT TIP! It's okay to give free information, but outweigh it with the money making links. Talk about anything you like! Start plugging in Amazon Associates links to keyword text in your paragraphs, too.... It is relatively easy to create links with their automated API. Signup today! http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join.

HOT TIP! Affiliate marketing is a lot like throwing out a big cast net in the Internet's creek or pond. Toss, pull, and see what you grab up when you check your reports at the end of the month. Note, I said month.

Nothing can take a full effect after a day, even 7 days. Wait at least a month before making any drastic changes. This can be applied in business, life, or website design. Sometimes, if you make too many changes at once, you really don't know what one thing made the biggest difference.

Passing on information to help others can and will reward yourself as well! - Especially in Affiliate Marketing.

Blogging is free. Sign up for free. Use the free tools in front of you. I repeat, the one thing important that I cannot stress enough is try to make money on your blog if you can. Use Ebay, Commission Junction, Amazon Associates , and anything else that is related to what you are writing or selling.

Read this article if you haven't yet - http://onemancorporation.blogspot.com/2008/07/commission-junction.html. I try to explain in detail some creative ways to market other people but you make money, too.

I just told you all this. For free.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Viral "Buzz" is Free.

RE: RE: [FWD] OMG THIS ONE YOU HAVE TO READ OMG LOL!!!

Every morning I wake up, I get at least two emails forwarded from my neighbor. With him it's a hit and miss for me, because I've seen just about every forwarded Internet fad email since 1999. Remember the 2-story outhouse? How about the five versions with different signs for both floors? The phallic sand castle? WOO WOO Bubb Rubb guy? TubGirl? Goat.se? The one's that get me are the urban legends that get started and passed around...

It's Okay to Pee in Someone Else's Pool

So, every morning it's a 50% chance that I've seen it, and 50% chance it's not true. I already have Snopes.com open and ready to go before I click his emails... Then depending on the context
of said email, I'll go ahead and click "reply to all" to the fifty something people he spammed and bust the urban legend with a link to Snopes.com. I know, I'm terrible. How to people have time for this? People complain they can't pick up a phone because they're too busy, but they can read and contribute to this email? I almost forgot... Did you know it's not true that the water will turn purple if you pee in a chlorinated community public pool? Well, I'll be!

Oh, It's Magic

As a whole, society has been on high alert of these forwarded and spam junk emails. We've evolved so fast with cell phones, blackberries, palm pilots, and all that etc., etc... This makes it even harder to get through the beaded curtain of someone's inbox. Okay, so what if you are a businessman who really, actually, positively has the next greatest thing to show others via email? You have no doubt in your mind, that what you have to say or sell is very important. You must forward it to others. So how are you going to do that when it's hard to convince people to click that magical "open" or "read" button?

HOT TIP! Your best friend will read any email you send to them. So why don't you start with your best friend? Your friend knows other people you don't know. You know people your friend doesn't know. It happens, that's why there's billions of people on this planet.

My best friend comes over to my house with an empty pickle jar. He asks for some well water and he fills it up. He pulls out the lid from his backpack with a computer part shoved inside with 2 wires hanging out. He plugs it into a surge protector out in my shed without warning. The jar starts making the water turn white and little bubbles started forming. I said, "Woah! Hey! Don't set my shed on fire, Beakman! What the hell are you doing?!" To which he places an airtight straw through a rubber grommet in the lid and attaches a balloon. The balloon starts airing up. "I just created hydrogen, dude. My class at school is working on a project and this is it."

Um, what?

A week later I stumbled upon some ebay auctions about similar items, and this ebook. Coincidental? I emailed that same friend about it and he said "yeah, the technology is there, and the Internet is now helping others spread the knowledge out there". He's a conspiracy nut with that story about a man who disappeared in the early 1900s who had a pending patent on a water powered engine. Insert obligatory X-Files whistle.

So ANYWAYS...

If somebody you don't know at all sends you an email entitled, "my car is now running on water"...pfft., "So?". If your best friend just sent you an email with the exact same subject line...you're going to read it and see what they are talking about, right? They just heard about a hot new product that is installed under the hood and now they are getting 70 mpg instead of 15 mpg. For real? How's it work? We gotta tell others! You now send it to your Dad, or your boss...it starts spreading like a new trojan horse virus written last night. So now my Dad and Larry have this contraption underneath Nana's sweet Cadillic Deville.

HOT TIP! Apply this to an email you really want to get out there. It's a trick on the analytical thinking of a forwarded email. If the author promotes himself, eh so, what? If somebody else is excited about someone's work and virally passes it along...it's more effective.

Oh yeah, I still don't know if this thing works or not. I need to call my father. I"ll give you guys an update when I hear something. See, I'm talking about a product I don't even know about... but it gauged my interest because my buddy already came over showing me a peice of it from his university study group.

The same trick was applied to some of you subscribers reading this blog. I have a few email relationships with competiting Cafepress shopkeepers. I started talking one day to a really cool awesome tee shirt site owner via Google Mail asking if they'd be interested in a blog such as this one. I just figured 3 years ago I could have used an information source to help get me started. I sort of fell into what has become of now. If I can help bypass hurdles, obstacles, and potholes along the way for a brand new Cafepress store being opened...then I accomplished what I set out to do.

http://creativegumption.blogspot.com/2008/08/one-man-corporation-blog-to-bookmark.html

You know it's good marketing when I hear about something because a friend told me about it.


I mean, isn't that the most trusted source? "I heard it from a friend."

Well, Mike from The One Man Corporation got it right when he sent out an email to his competitors (other Cafepress shopkeepers) teasing us with some valuable information and an invitation to forward it to more friends. And so, a friend forwarded it to me.

It worked. I got the email and actually didn't delete it! That's a feat in itself. I hate forwards. I always delete them. But, hey, if the first few lines grab my attention, I'll read on.

So check him out. I'm going to add his blog to the sidebar here for future reference. He's got some great tips on making money from home, valuable resources, and insight that can only be learned from experience. After all, he does work from home. And he's sharing his experiences for everyone to benefit from.

I've personally started building better relationships with competitors just by using this technique. This works in a world where all competitors rely on the same distributor for their product. Everyone else needs to stay in business, too, right? If your boss is doing better and the company is becoming more successful, the money is there to start getting a raise. If you suck, you contribute to a sucking company, profits drop, the boss says he can't give you a raise because the company is doing sucky, because the employees suck, which means he's sucking at being a good boss...it's a viscious cycle, isn't it?

Same thing...if your distributor or "boss" like Commission Junction, Ebay, Amazon, Cafepress, ie., WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING OR SELLING, is getting more sales and revenues, then your sales and revenues will go up as well. In the affiliate business, if you help others, then you reap the benefits and rewards, too. It's a give/give relationship on the Internet.

You got a great idea and want to get it out there? For free? Start with your friends and family. You don't have any friends? Stop being a jerk and get some! Simple.

Be that Ying to other's Yang. Yeah, I said it.

Saturday, August 2, 2008

The Potential of Cafepress and You

Know Your Competitors

McDonald's watches over Burger King, Jack in the Box, and Wendy's, right? The shops that I have my eyes on have been CultClassicTs, FlippinSweetGear, BurnTees, Detour Designables, Media Tees, Shirtees.Net, SpeakUp Designs , Barry's World, KA Designs, and ShirtVille. I'm sure these guys make a decent earning per month. I have no idea, but Juan can't help but assume.

Earning at Cafepress

During spring and middle of summer, i.e., slow season, I sell anywhere from 10-15 products per day at Cafepress. During Christmas season last year, there were periods where I sold over 65 t-shirts a day at Cafepress. Christmas makes 65% of my entire year's sales, it's funny... When I do payroll in March each year for myself from my corporation, it's amazing to see a year to date (YTD) earnings over $20-25k. Little do most know after that, the sales slow down - so your adjusted year to date (YTD) income is slanted.


The Flow of Cafepress products

A luxury item such as t-shirts aren't as important suddenly after college tuition fees, groceries and GA$... How about the maxed out credit card bills from Christmas? Sales pick up of course, during the tax refund season of May-June...For only those 2 months. School's out for summer, people are at the beach and tanning, not in front of a computer. Sales pick up again before school, usually good around August and start of September. This applies to most products that aren't a necessity in life. Sure, clothing is a necessity, but marked-up clothing with custom graphics aren't.


The rude/crude/violent themed t-shirts and products won't and don't sell as much, because their products are banned from little Johnny's elementary school. Capeshe?

$50k in net commission sales at Cafepress is a long reach, but I won't say it's impossible. Remember, what matters most of any business is the bottom line. It's not just Cafepress that gives me a check. You have to use everything together, as one happy family. Amazon , Adbrite , Paypal, Ebay , Ebay Partner Network , Cafepress, Commission Junction , ClickBank, PrintFection , Zazzle ..... bottom line figures can reach you to whatever limit you set as your projected goal. You, as a business man should make and set goals for you to follow. It's the best way to get to them....I'll have articles about all of those topics. Soon... I'm just a one man corporation, remember? ;-)

It costs money to make money.

If you spend $900 a month on Google Adwords, and it returns you an extra $2,000 in net sales, that's worth it, right? Google Adwords can make fortunes or destroy them. I personally lost $350 in one day for poor Google Adwords keywords and budget settings 'ala Commission Junction links. Be careful with your keywords. Very careful...


TIP! What also matters, especially for luxury items, you need to set ad scheduling Monday-Friday, 8am to 11pm so you don't waste money. Go looser on the weekends, or preferably, not at all, since people are out and about shopping or whatnot. When you're working from home, the world's quieter and different Monday through Friday. This is because everyone's at college or
work...most likely, on a computer.


TIP! Don't max out the Google Adwords during the slow seasons of luxury items for sale on the Internet. You can't polish a terd. If people aren't buying, damnit, they're not going to buy, okay? It's not your fault, it's George Bush and the economy's fault. Use your guns during Christmas. Consider it your bonus for the year from Santa Claus.

Never kiss and tell.

I've been asked numerous times how much I make each month. Have you ever asked a woman how much she weighs? You'll get the same reply from several businessmen.

A prude and polite businessman does not disclose figures if he doesn't have to. You typically don't want to disclose your sales figures to competitors. This is because it's already on public display how your competitor markets him or herself. By checking up on your competition, you have an idea of what they make by doing what they do. Corporations are private companies, and do not have to disclose gross sales or figures. If a company is public, and trading on the open market, they are required by law to release such accounting and paperwork to the general public record.

That and, the entire focus on this blog is to teach you to reach your arms out farther and dig deeper into the Internet's coinpurse. Using everything together gives you a bottom line figure that reaches closer to the projected sales goal you set.

I really feel confident these tips and tricks that I will be covering over the next few months (as we gear into Christmas soon) are going to help a lot of others out. The advice I give doesn't just apply to Cafepress. You can use these tactics for anything related to selling products online that aren't a necessity, like toilet paper or gasoline. You have to work harder to sell products people don't need.


Friday, August 1, 2008

Making money with Cafepress and other Print on Demand Services

Getting Started with Cafepress

A variety of services on the Internet involve "Print on Demand". Print on Demand is a technique that involves using a machine that presses a design or word onto a product with heat transfer, such as a tee shirt, mousepad, calendar, wall clock, mug, hat, sticker, poster, or anything else your heart desires. Print on Demand (POD) is another common term used for digital printing.

There are a vast selection of websites out there that offer this service. Some require a minimum order, which can be costly. I'm going to recommend three of the best sites that offer this service for free. You get to place your own creative masterpeices in their marketplaces and sell for a profit. After a 45 day customary holding period for commissions, you get a check in the mailbox.

Don't worry, the 45 day hold on your hard earned commission check is due to possibilities such as: credit card declined, a return, an exchange, a misprint. This is common for these types of services.

For those of you with limited creative talent and can't draw a stick figure if you tried, you still can make money by selling other people's products. You must have some sort of understanding of HTML and tracking codes for reporting. I'll explain those techniques later.


The first Print on Demand service website that I highly recommend the most to anybody out there is Cafepress.com.

My primary business source of income, KaptainMyke.com, is distributed by Cafepress. A privately owned company, Cafepress has been around for quite some time now, since 1999. I opened my first cafepress store in May of 2005. It started out as a free store, limiting you to just one design across many products. This limitation also includes no customization or anything beyond the free template supplied for your store.



TIP! Free stores can bring in anywhere from $20-50 a month if you are a good designer and offer tee shirts that people want.

SUPER HOT TIP! Stay away from categories that are too popular and overcrowded. I would avoid these categories: Religion, Pets, Holidays, and Cars. Why? There's too many designs, that's why!


You want to find a niche, a topic that not many people have products for, but something people are searching for like crazy. You're probably now thinking, "Okay, then what niche should I do?" That's the part where your brain comes in. You have to find your niche. Look around Cafepress and see who's the most popular shops, and why. This doesn't mean do what they are doing, this means do something like what they are doing.

Niches

While on that subject, the tee shirt business can be stressful and competitive. Others will always use your ideas and either spinoff another shirt from it, or blatently take your idea. It happens, and you just have to accept it sometimes. To combat some of that from happening, Cafepress has made its affiliate program, so others can still profit from the same ideas - equally.

KaptainMyke.com has released some of the most original, and unique ideas to the movie/television related genre of tee shirts. Some people, even licensed, official tshirt companies, have had movie studios (like Universal Studios) shut down our products due to copyright infringement and produced their own licensed official copies of our ideas. It happens. Some of our tee shirt designs were the first ever, from forgotten 80s movies and tv shows. I know, because I did my research. Surprisingly, waves of variations of the same movies and shows started appearing across the Internet. You can't point your finger to others saying they took your idea, especially if you are in the movie/tv related quotes genre, since you get the idea from said movie or tv show that actually owns the idea in the first place!

Doing fan shirts by fans for fans can be a tricky business to deal with. You have to be careful and know when to back down when dealing with copyrights. Some studios allow it. For example, the 1980 release of Flash Gordon had underground unofficial tee shirts swarming the streets and media. Everyone was free to make "Gordon's Alive?" shirts in order to push and promote the movie's release. The same thing happened yet again, this time in 2006 with the power of the Internet - Snakes on a Plane, the movie. Cafepress partnered with Snakes on a Plane and New Line Cinema and allowed fans to make SoaP fan merchandise, as long as you didn't feature a face or actual images from the film. The name of the movie itself created widespread promotion, like a virus across the web. Cafepress storeowners, including myself, made a decent income during that season of the movie's theatrical release.

Viral fan base is what makes our pop culture so vibrant and different. After all, if it wasn't for the fans, nobody would buy the movies and tv programs on DVD, right? We as a modern society should believe in spreading the love of American cinema by making fan merchandise inspired by pop culture, movies, and television. Support your favorite movies and television shows by reminding others in society of them! Someone walks up to you and asks, "Where is that from? What is that? It looks familiar to me." Mention the movie or tv show it's from and that person walks away thinking, "OH Yeah! Now I remember!"

Most likely, that person will go rent or buy the film. It works. Sometimes movie studios and television studios do not agree.

So what do you do? Keep designing, keep coming up with new ideas and stay ahead of the competitors! Tread lightly. Stay under the lawyer's and studio's radar, follow their rules and accept that sometimes studios don't agree with viral marketing techniques in order to further promote their movies, toys, games, dvds, and related streams of income for them. It takes convincing to let the studios realize they ultimately make the extra profits as well, sometimes way above the "little man's cafepress shop". -Wink.

Back to basics

At Cafepress, for $6.95 a month you can upgrade to premium shop status, with multiple sections and design choices. After you start making money, the monthly fee is paid for itself and you forget there is even a fee.

HOT TIP! One of the biggest recommendations to trying this program out is by getting a domain name, and setup hosting for it. This is because you are going to want to do way more than anybody else with your cafepress store. With it you can have custom graphics, rich, vibrant flash panels, your own templates, your own links and promotional methods...the list goes on and on. Remember the old saying, "You get what you put into it"? It rings 1000% true with Cafepress. If you know a little something about web design and photoshop - you are going to be very, very successful with Cafepress.



HOT TIP! With your own brand new domain name and webspace, you have to get CPShop. You must, must, must get it! Again, I am clearly telling you in blue and white: If you want to make serious money with Cafepress, you must get CPShop. I honestly don't think I could have been near as successful without it. 100% total customization of your scripts and pages. You can add in your own keywords, descriptions, custom shopping carts, and even sell other people's products by making seperate store ids. The fee is $19.77 to get the script. The scripts are easy to understand, and there is a support forum for help. Marty, the creator and site administrator, will help you and even log into your hosting panel to get you up and running. This man has went above and beyond getting other members setup, such as myself. Thanks, Marty! For $15 Marty will even install it for you on your own website.

HOT TIP! Also, for search engines sake, try and make your domain name say exactly what you are selling. If you are selling tee shirts about the sixties hippy culture, make your domain be something like: hippylandshirtco.com or teesfromthe60s.com. This makes you top spot on Google or Yahoo, no matter what.

I did not take this route myself, in setting up KaptainMyke.com. Learn from my mistake. Why didn't I do that? That's because my domain (kaptainmyke.com) started off as a photoshop forum in 2002. We would have photoshop wars against the site admins and owners of 2gnt.com, a car forum community. (hi, Dino!) I formed my company, moved the forum to that site, and because KaptainMyke.com had unbelievable page ranks (at that time, mind you) - I turned that domain
name into my tee shirt company. The rest was up to me, so I got lucky keeping traffic during the switchover of sites.


SUPER DUPER HOT TIP #1 ! The biggest secret to search engine ranking is STAY UPDATED. If you keep doing updates to pages weekly, no wait - daily, hourly, whatever, and offer very descriptive titles, links, and texts...you are going to soar above the SEO clients that pay thousands of dollars a month for search engine ranks.

SUPER DUPER HOT TIP #2 ! If you are selling a red tee shirt about a flying monkey doing handstands while holding a baby doing the macarena, you better make sure your link and page title are aptly named, "Flying Monkey Handstand Macarena Baby Dark Red Medium Ringer Tee Shirt". It's such a pain in the butt to go back and rename each product at cafepress, but DO IT. Spending that extra hour retyping exact descriptives of your product at Cafepress will make Google and Yahoo find you better, faster...and at page 1 on search results.


But I can't design or draw a stick figure! What am I supposed to do with Cafepress?

Sell other people's products! Cafepress now uses Commission Junction. I have written an article on getting setup with CJ. You may read all about it here. The commissions will start small, as it did for me. After 6 months into the program, you can earn a decent check every month just by selling other's products from Cafepress. You'll have to figure out what works best for you by promoting and marketing products effectively.

TIP! Start a Blog, or a Squidoo Lens, or even a Myspace Page about something and start plugging in people's tee shirt designs with links wrapping through Commission Junction to the marketplace or products at Cafepress. It's easy! 16 year old kids are buying their first car just by blogging all day in their room after school! It costs nothing to start a blog, myspace page, or a squidoo lens, so get on it!


Are you a good writer? Publish Books with Cafepress and sell them.

Cafepress has an inhouse book publishing department. There are no setup fees, black and white books with full page color covers. You can choose from Saddle Stitch, Wire-O or Perfect Bound binding options. There are 5 book sizes to chose from. Pricing includes book production, order management, fulfillment and customer service. You choose the retail price and earn the difference between the retail price and our base price. At $.45 cents a page that is a reasonable rate. You set your markup and make a commission off every book sold.

TIP! If you are a good writer, and you have a major selling book at Cafepress, other people will sell your book for you using the Commission Junction program from this article I mentioned before.


TIP! Recently, Cafepress has changed their volume bonus structure and affiliate percentiles. You now make full commission off affiliate driven sales. This means that when others sell your product for you, you now make 100% commission instead of sharing 15% from the affiliate!

Printfection and Zazzle

There are several print on demand websites found on the Internet. (Google, new window)

HOT TIP! Other "Print on Demand" Services I use are: PrintFection and Zazzle . I receive checks in the mailbox once a month from those two and Cafepress. It costs nothing to get started with any of those 3 companies. Zazzle is backed by Google partners and investors. Printfection is a newer player in the market as well as Zazzle, both providing state of the art printing techniques. Over the past 2 years I have tried to slowly migrate designs from one to another. I started that by accident, with the intentions of contingency, in case Cafepress ever went bankrupt or out of business. What ensued instead was two additional, smaller paychecks in the mail from home. ( edited )

Design Shoes

SUPER HOT TIP! Do you love shoes? Maybe if you can't design or draw, you can be a shoe designer? Zazzle.com has started shoes! As of August 1st, 2008, Zazzle has partnered with Keds Shoes. You can now design your own women's and kids tennis shoes or slip on shoes. KaptainMyke.com will be introducing the a fresh line of eighties (80's) themed Keds slip-ons and sneakers. A launch date for the new KaptainMyke Keds (KMKeds) is currently not available yet as of the date & time of this article.

Conclusion

This article primarily is to introduce to you the world of print on demand services available online. There are many ways you can be successful, but it starts with you dedicating serious time and effort into these programs. For the past three years I have literally made this an 8 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday job everyday in front of the computer. I'm not rich, but I can pay my bills and business expenses. The rest of life such as gas prices, diapers, baby food, electric bills and groceries are yet another story. Your success will show if you can devote the time and discipline.