I’ve noticed a lot of people doing regular daily posts as a way to keep themselves on track in their new internet marketing career. Not only that, but just recently the phrase “keep a journal” has cropped up several times too….as a way to make commitments for each day and then to follow them to conclusion.

So, what I have decided to do is to take the advice and copy the daily update route. (I may also keep a more personal journal, so you don’t get to see the actual site names etc.)

So, this is Day 1.

A quick update for those that don’t know where I have got to so far. I have set up several Amazon affiliate sites over the past year – great keyword research if I say so myself, absolutely lousy subject choices since they all paid out about 50 cents in commision for each sale! Lesson 1 learned….aim higher in price for Amazon.

Lesson 2 for Amazon was to steer clear of electronics – locked to 4% commisions – even though that’s where I am most comfortable.

Lesson 3 was a really painful one and that was to stay away from the UK for big ticket items. It was tempting to sell locally but I then found out that Amazon UK cap single item commisions to £7 – OUCH!! That means that even a modest TV sale (still at 4% remember) gets capped out at 7 lousy quid instead of 12. Sell in the US Amazon folks!

I also have one or two sites where I am experimenting with Adsense, these sites will grow over time but are a wee bit thin at the moment, so I am treating them fairly gently in case I get them dropped from Adsense before they even get going. These are not bad subjects, not hugely interesting to me but at least they have a big enough subject that I can write articles fairly easily without drifting into IM waffle just to make up the pages! Lesson 4 here is to make sure that you have a broad subject to write about (and preferably one you care about too)

I also have a single book up on Clickbank. Again a subject that I knew little about before researching and writing the book. Not a big seller despite the global interest, maybe I need to work on my sales page for that one.

So, as you can see, I’ve played with almost everything over the year. The Amazon and Adsense stuff has shown some results – not huge, but enough to show that it is possible to make some money. All I need to do now is scale it all up.  You can effectively set the daily income meter from these sources to zero (while I am making some money off helping others online, I’m not counting that).

Commitment for day 1 then is to finish some research in some more Amazon niches (not electronics as detailed) to buy the domains related to the subject and to get them all up and running with a single post ready for the start of the week tomorrow. I’m still playing with Amazon review plugins, so that may make up part of another day’s post.

Feel free to follow along, I’ve created a “Journal” category for all these posts to keep it clean and by all means comment if you think I’m doing well (or being stupid) at any point!

Earnings reset: $o