It’s almost been a year now since I left to Istanbul to study abroad for a semester, followed by a whole bunch of travelling right before coming back the the U.S.

It’s crazy how time flies. Now that I’m done with my undergrad (which I used to think would take soo long to get over with – and now truth be told I kind of miss college), I’m starting to get the itch to start travelling again. I’ve been at home all summer long and while it’s been nice to be at home, I’m wondering what the future will bring. It seems almost every month I’m changing my mind as to what city I want to move to and rent an apartment out in – from Chicago to Miami to NYC. I guess time will tell as I still want to cover my bases before I plan a full fledged move.

I guess that begs the question of why I want to move. Well, I think that travelling and exploring different cities is one of those things we can and should do while it makes sense when we’re young and especially as young entrepreneurs to broaden our horizons. I’ve always kind of been inspired by Josh Wex’s “model” of being an affiliate as he describes on The Affiliate Lifestyle Blog and more recently in his article in FeedFront magazine of grinding it out for a few months and using that income to travel while maintaining campaigns. I’ve also gathered inspiration from Chris Guillebeau’s blog The Art of Non-Conformity and who is also releasing a book by the same name today on Amazon on sale for a whopping ten bucks.

Another reason is that I’ve also never truly been completely on my own even though I lived on my own in college – I was still surrounded by friends and close to home. So that’s something that I think I need to do in order to grow and learn to be content in my own.

Until then, I’m gonna keep grinding and see where things go. I’ll either end up travelling solo around the rest of the world, or checking out different cities in the U.S. and settle in my own place somewhere. Or both. Nonetheless, here are some pictures from my travels abroad last year that  I never posted if you want to check them out. Know a place I should check out? Post it in the comments!

Rome

Florence

Istanbul

Where to next??

I want to write a quick post just to portray how and what my AM (affiliate marketing) journey has looked like so far. To be honest, it’s been pretty conservative. I’m pretty wary of people telling me I can make x amount of money in just a few days and I’ve sort of had tunnel vision and not experimented with anything too crazy over the last year. I’ve learned the good from the bad though. I also want to write a recap post on Affiliate Summit West (which was awesome!) and that’ll be coming up next.

So,

December 2008- Many of you who are seasoned AM’ers are going to cringe when you hear Clickbank but that’s how I started.I had had a Clickbank account  for quite a while and it sat idle until December of 2008. That’s when I signed up to Wealthy Affiliate – an online university that aims to teach mostly newbies how to make money online through affiliate marketing, although a main focus of the site was teaching people how to sell digital products, i.e., ebooks. This worked for a while and I created my first landing page. Realized it was horrible and outsourced it. From there on I did some PPC and lost money. Then I let things sit for a good amount of time and didn’t really touch anything AM related. Revisited this product again in September 2008. That’s when I really started my AM journey.

September 2008 – January 2009
So this was my semester off of school. The three months I had to make it big in affiliate marketing and get to those dream numbers? Did it happen? Not exactly. But I did make progress. In Sept-Oct. I wrote tons of articles and tried to rank highly in the search engines for my keywords for the Clickbank product I was still promoting. By November, I was making $600 a month in profit. By December, it was $800 in profit. I started PPC again, however, as I got sick of writing articles and wanted to expand my campaigns. I didn’t abandon article marketing completely though – hired someone for $200 to submit my 60 articles to about 40 different article directories. I then started PPC. I got tons of leads as I started a list, a high quality score campaign. However, something happened. Conversions just dipped. The money I was making before just wasn’t coming in anymore. I used to convert at 1:15. Now it’s 1:50. I have no idea what happened. I’m still promoting that clickbank offer just because of how much work I’ve put into it, but have dramatically lowered my bids to a safe place. I’ve realized that…perhaps Clickbank works for other people…but it definitely isn’t working for me anymore.

I had been doing leads on and off since May 2008. However, it is only after signing up for PPC Coach as well as Affiliate Summit West that I decided that this is where I want to focus. I haven’t been able to get any hugely successful campaigns off the ground at the moment. In fact some days I’m losing $100-200. I’m going to keep going and putting up those campaigns though, because I know that it will click at some point. I will be having those $500-$1000 profit days no doubt. It may take me longer than I expected, but I will get there. Now that I’m back in school, I have less time to devote to AM, but I can’t keep myself away from it. I hope to reach these numbers by May 2009.

Other future goals

• Finish business school. Yes it’s not really my favorite place to be at the moment, but I’m committed to it.
• Be making at least $500 a day in profit by Affiliate Summit East.
• Learn to love the education I’m getting no matter how useful I deem it. Not many people get the same chance and I need to realize and appreciate that. One is only in college for so long.
• Study abroad in Fall 2009.
• Travel after graduation.
• Live in Manhattan for a year after graduating.
• Live in Austin for a year.
• Meet other like-minded people inside and outside of this industry.
• Continue to build new campaigns.

Just a quick post to anyone that follows me that I’ll be in Vegas for Affiliate Summit West 2009!

I actually have Direct Agents CPA Network to be thankful for that as I won a Silver Pass to Affiliate Summit through their contest which is awesome. If you haven’t checked out Direct Agents yet as a CPA Network, you should definitely see what they have to offer.

I’ve also now been a member of PPC-Coach for two months and it is absolutely amazing in terms of how much value it offers for the price. I know a lot of the guys on there are going to be at the Summit and if you read my blog and belong to PPC-Coach as well make sure you don’t miss the meet up!

I’ve spent the last few months being a full-time affiliate marketer as I took a semester off from school. I think Affiliate Summit West in Vegas is gonna be a great way to boost my relationships in the industry and make sure I always play a part in affiliate marketing even when I’m in school.

If anyone wants to meet up just shoot me an email or shout me out on Twitter at www.twitter.com/rohailr.

There are a ton of ways out there to monetize a blog. First and foremost, though, a blog should have meaningful content that attracts and retains readers. Once you have that (or even before the fact), you can monetize your blog in a number of ways. Here are some of my favorite ways:

1) Text-Link-Ads - Signing up for Text Link Ads is a breeze. All you have to do is submit your website for review and install the code they give you, and your site is automatically listed in a database where advertisers can find your website to place text links on. The amount you can earn per link sold is relative to the popularity and search engine rankings of your blog, but this is definitely one of the easiest ways to make money blogging. I can also sell links on my website without going through TLA so I don’t have to pay TLA their share, but TLA makes it easy to find advertisers.

2) WidgetBucks- Another really cool way to start bringing in some cash is through WidgetBucks. WidgetBucks lets you put up a custom widget anywhere on your site and it autotically puts up ads related to your content(i.e., if you have a digital camera blog up, it will show ads of digital cameras). The widget looks very clean and can be customized to blend in with your website and only takes a minute to set up.

3) Sell advertising space- This one is obvious. Let your readers know that they can advertise on your blog for a set monthly fee. Speaking of which, spots are currently going for $50 per month on this blog.

4) Affiliate marketing- If you haven’t already noticed, I’m pretty big on affiliate marketing. You can make a lot of money on your blog just by reviewing different products and earning a commission on items people buy through your link. To do this well, you have to be able to write well-constructed reviews that are actually helpful to people. To learn more about affiliate marketing and how you can make a killing with it, visit WealthyAffiliate.com. This is definitely the most lucrative method for making money blogging, or elsewhere.

With a little effort and some creativity, you can make blogging a beneficial and lucrative hobby/business. I hope these tips have been helpful and have encouraged you to start making more money today.

What are you willing to give up in order to achieve your goals?

Well that answer would certainly depend on what your goals were, but it would also depend on how badly you wanted to achieve something.

I just read on Adam McFarland’s blog about what he does on the weekend and what struck me was what he said about how much he gave up in the beginning stages of his business to make sure his business succeeded. He gave up much of his social life, had to neglect family parties, and the happy hours.

Being at home now and no longer living on campus for the semester, I’m starting to only get a hint of what sacrifice is like as I’m away from my friends, away from all the fun stuff going on campus, and stuck at home for the moment. I can certainly give up more as I still take the time to go see friends and it’s going to be interesting to see how hard I can challenge myself to focus on my goals. I have four months to make it happen.
How much are you willing to give up to achieve your goals today?

Earnings Screen shot 5/26

Update: $328 Commission Today Screen shot
Wish I had taken this screen shot a few minutes earlier, because it would have said $328 next to “Commissions Today”, before the clock hit midnight.

Just had my first $100 profit day and feeling pretty good about it considering I’ve only been at it for three weeks or so with PPC.

Funny thing is, last night I left post it notes everywhere around me room with $75 a day written on it to remind myself of my goal for the deadline of June 15th. Looks like I hit it a little early .

I’m running with CPA Empire and it’s a great network to run with. The people there are pretty awesome, especially my AM, Doug. If you want to start making money, check out CPA Empire today. And let me know if you have trouble getting into the network, I’ll see what I can do.

Wow. It has been a while since I’ve posted here. Summer really takes a toll on your diligence.

It’s sad because when school is in session I always wish I didn’t have to go to class so I can be a full-time entrepreneur, but when I do have all this free time I seem to get distracted and lose a bit of that flame. I guess that’s one positive thing about school then- it acts as a bit of a motivator by forcing you to do stuff you’d rather not be doing like class and studying for exams and makes you think about what you’d really rather be doing like entrepreneurship.

I don’t have any excuses for not posting. I have been very busy with my social life, but even then I’ve had free time. I lost a bit of the flame because I knew there were more relaxing things I could be doing. However, I think I will be  back on the entrepreneuring train as soon as school starts.

I’m curious- how do you keep yourself motivated when there are so many more short-term relaxing things to do?

P.S. I do apologize to my regular readers who haven’t seen a post in a while. I have to be honest and say that this is now more of a journal as to what is going on in my life than an informational blog. And some people do enjoy that, but sometimes it means a lack of posts. I will definitely try to post more often once September rolls around.

Jesse Lear offers his opinion on entrepreneurship in this interview. You won't want to miss out on this one. Check it out:

Question 1:  What is your inspiration for getting into business and
 what makes you get out of bed every morning?
Answer: I have big dreams; dreams big enough that they could only come
true three different ways.  
1) By winning the lottery (which I don't
play), 
2) by becoming a celebrity via music, movies, or sports (none of
which I'm extremely talented in), or 
3) by succeeding in business. 
Business is a way that anyone can reach their dreams by coming up with
 a good idea and going after it with passion and determination.  I love
 the challenge and the potential that being a young entrepreneur holds.
  
When the day of my last breath comes, I want people to think about me and
say, "He knew what he wanted and he got it.  He created an amazing life
for himself by making a positive impact on others' lives."  Each day is
another opportunity to take another step towards making that statement
 a reality.  That's what makes me get out of bed every morning.

Question 2:  What was your first venture, and is it the one you're most
proud of?
Answer:  My first venture was started when I joined a network marketing
team under my dad's name at the age of 15.  I'm not sure it's the
venture I'm the most proud of, but it was definitely the most
influential one.  Two of my dad's friends took me under their wings and
taught me, stretched me, and believed in me.   They made an incredible
difference in the direction of my life.  That experience was what
originally inspired me to become passionate about personal development
and achieving big things.

Question 3:  What are you working on now? Answer:  I recently returned from 5 months of living and studying in Dublin, Ireland.  It was an amazing semester, and I was able to use my own experiences adapting to the culture to write a very cool e-book called Dublin Secrets.  It basically contains all the tips, hints, and
stories I wished I would have had access to before my own trip.  The
e-book will be for sale online within a couple of weeks.  
Also, next month my dad and I are launching a series of nationwide
seminars teaching ordinary people how to make extra money on Saturdays
by photographing weddings.  My dad, a professional photographer for 30
years, has photographed over 1,000 of them and will be teaching the
seminars.  He's hired me to design and run effective marketing
campaigns, as well as create and manage his web presence.  Ultimately,
it's my job to get each seminar completely sold out as soon as
 possible.
This is the project I'm most passionate about right now because it has
the potential to provide a sizable and steady monthly income for me as
I start more of my own ventures.

Question 4: What advice can you give up and coming entrepreneurs?
Answer:  My advice is that if you have a dream, you have it for a
reason.  Treat it like gold, and don't let anyone shake your purpose to
make it reality or quench your faith that you will.  Stop trying to
figure out how you will get what you want.  Just form a clear mental
picture of what you want and prepare yourself to accept the
opportunities to get make it happen when they appear.  My #1 tip:  Read
the Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles.          
P.S.  Earn extra money on Saturday afternoons.  Check this out!
http://www.proflear.com   

I just want to thank again all my friends that were cool enough to do an interview for my readers. I think everyone gained a lot from your insights.

One of the common themes that I noticed from all the answers was that these entrepreneurs were natural risk takers from their first venture to their current ones and that they do everything they can to follow what they are passionate about. I was definitely reminded of the importance of continuing to take risks and pursuing ventures whether your past ones have been successful or not.

I’m currently involved in a variety of new ventures and have several learning curves ahead of me. I’ve just started on the eBay business as you know and am now entering affiliate marketing (which is made oh so easy using ClickAdEqualizer…easiest money ever, Aff. link). I have a network marketing business, which I may drop because I haven’t paid much attention to it and it’s just draining money right now. Furthermore, there is Project Seafire which is in the works. I was also just hired as the Product Manager of a consulting company based out of NYC, which I am very excited about.

I’m hoping to be able to create sufficient automated income in the next few weeks and put a lot of work into my new position. It should be exciting.

For all you bootstrapping entrepreneurs out there who want to repeat, but not risk as much, I highly encourage you to check out this list put out by BusinessFund.com: Top 25 Alternatives to Venture Capital.

Today we have an awesome interview with Adam Gilbert, founder of MyBodyTutor.com. Check it out!