You know about water torture, right? The idea is that you’re pretty much deprived of all your senses, but in the background is a dripping tap, which is set to a really slow, random drip. In the end it is said that anyone will crack, just from the natural tendency to listen for the next drip – and never know when it is coming!

Well, I’ve decided that internet marketing is a bit like that (at least to start with) since I can look across all of the different streams of income every day in the hope of money coming in and sometimes there is some…..and sometimes there isn’t!

I’m sure this all smooths out over time when you have a load of sites running, but in the early days it is just like torture and the idea of reporting it to everyone is also quite disheartening. It feels like I should be singing for joy every day to encourage everyone reading but it’s a hard act to keep up.

But, I said I’d do it so it is an absolutely true record of what is happening and I’ll stick to that commitment. I might drift to every other day every now and again but hopefully not too often.

I spent yesterday getting a killer article ready for ezinearticles – primarily for the link, not the traffic, but it would be nice to see it syndicated a bit too. As soon as it’s accepted, I’ll be sending it to as many places as UAW will allow.

A second string to yesterday was starting to bookmark the sites that I am working on. I use Incansoft’s SocialBot for this and I have a bunch of accounts already set up in there that get stuff blasted now and again. I’ve sworn to take this fairly easy, so it is set to 2 pages at a time and I’ll get there gradually rather than blast the whole site out in one go.

Today’s endeavours have started out with me re-evaluating some old sites, checking their rankings and having a think about whether or not to juice them all up a bit. Some made me a bit of cash in the past, but as I’ve said before, they tended to be low-ticket items and so the commision didn’t amount to much.

This afternoon will be a chance to write some more entries for my IPK style sites and to try to get to grips with how the central site should get linked in according to the plan Chris Kaye lays out.

Anyway, earnings for the last 2 days: Adsense 6c (yeehar!)

One of the challenges to your early life in the IM world is just how you get to meet some of these “greats” that you hear so much about. These are the marketers that have made it already, whose names you see all the time in your email.

Well, I’ll tell you one way that works. (Disclaimer here, there may be others!)

Are you ready?

Pay them!

There, that seems simple-minded doesn’t it, but actually one of the things it does is signal that you are prepared to invest in yourself as much as you are in their product. If you are in a coaching program for 8 weeks and you have a chance to make a face-to-face meeting then you have earned that right – so do it!

Don’t back out at that point, making excuses about the time it will take because, like it or not, this industry runs on relationships as much as any other business.

So, what am I getting at here. Well, on a personal level, I’ve just signed up for a 6 month Mastermind group with Chris Freville here in the UK that I am really looking forward to. Apart from the pressure to perform and actually get on with it, I’m going to find meeting up with like-minded internet marketers a great way to break out of the “working alone in a bedroom” syndrome that this business brings.

What’s just as awesome is that I’m also off to the Philippines for John Jonas’ outsourcing retreat in March. I spent some time in September last year working with someone out there after signing up for his “outsource myself” program. I’m hoping to find someone more appropriate to work with me this time round, but again, I’m looking to meet folk from around the world who are going to the event….

….oh yes. I’m also going to enjoy a bit of a holiday!

If you’re stuck in London as an Internet Marketer, thinking that you never get to see others doing the same as you…let me know…I’m easily convinced that a chat over a beer is a good thing .

More techno-goodness coming soon I promise, but I realised that I had become a slug about updating the site!

So, what’s the title all about?  I was lucky enough to get an invitation to an event being run by Daniel Wagner in London last week. Not only that, but it was all kicking off fairly close to where I live, so I went along for a session in the afternoon that was being run by Mark Vurnum.

Mark’s forte is in building a huge lead-generation system which pays him on a per-site basis but which also builds a list that he uses for further monetization. So far nothing too unusual about that I hear you say.

The difference in Mark’s system is just how large it has now grown. His figures suggest a network of around 8,000 sites (yes that’s EIGHT THOUSAND!) each of which brings him an average of $5 per day before he even starts to use his list.

Now, $5 doesn’t sound like much, but every site he builds is pure increment on the existing cash flow. For me, the best thing about this all is the cost of entry. Given a hosting package of even very modest size, you should be able to get each site running for the cost of the domain, say $8. As soon as the money starts coming in, you can upgrade, outsource the work, anything you like to make it scale! The premise here is to win the race eventually by being steady, not by aiming to be a millionaire overnight.

You might be able to tell that I’m fairly excited by all this….and yes, as disclaimers go, I did sign up to Mark’s offer on the spot….having sworn to spend no money at all. I’ve only experienced this style of site building to a small degree, offering some Amazon content on a micro(micro) niche and even that has made me enough to pay for my last three month’s hosting – with no real effort on my part. I can see that a little higher ranking would hel;p that site, but that another 100 like it would be very nice indeed.

So, this is the next experiment. I will be carrying out this technique and I will be reporting back on my progress. Watch out for continuing reports.

If you are just about to set up your first site, particularly if it will be focused on your internet marketing efforts, then hopefully you’ll find this useful.  A quick video today, partly prompted by a question from a friend, partly by my ongoing frustration at ever finding an untaken domain that matches one of those keywords that take so long to find.

Please forgive the sound quality, my editor decided to crunch it somewhere along the way…still learning Sony Vegas I’m afraid.

As always, if you find it useful, please rate the video, tweet it or comment. All feedback is most welcome.

I could probably have come up with 7 things that are bad about IM conferences but since I am a glutton for sales pitches, I’m back off to Earl’s Court for more of the Speedcashseminar that I mentioned in my last post.

So, let’s get down to it. 3 things that fill us with joy at these events!

• Waiting at the end of each session for anything up to 30 minutes for the pitch to finish
• Sitting in fluorescent lighting all day when it’s sunny outside (and that’s rare for London!)
• Knowing there is no real food anywhere nearby even when the short lunch break arrives

On the flip side, maybe I should balance those out with some reasons to be cheerful. How about:

• Talking to some great people and finding the glimmerings of a cool joint venture
• The speakers that really work for the audience. Steven Essa, hats off to you sir!
• Realising that life can never be as hard as it seems to have been to every IM speaker

What do you love about internet marketing conferences? Add a comment and let me know. This could run and run!