Dougy Mak's Blog

2008 was a long year. At the end of 2008, what did I really accomplish?

I have bought countless e-books, and I would say that I’ve probably spent ~$500 on e-books. I’ve tried many methods and most of them do not work. Well.. Let me rephrase that, those methods work, but it just didn’t work for me. The first thing I remember trying in 2008 was building a website and showcasing my hobbycrafts. However, that failed because it was so hard to financially fund the hobby with no consistent cash income. I still believe it was a good idea on the long term, but I needed more money to do it. I ended up switching the direction of the website and turned it to a media website. The turn definitely helped increase traffic, and by a lot too. The traffic was all organic, and didn’t require much promoting to aquire that level of traffic. However, the traffic was not converting to money, so basically the traffic quality was not that great for that type of website, because the vistors would just grab what they need and leave. You can say that I didn’t monetize it well enough, and my defense for that would be: Who likes those websites filled with ads and pop ups? I don’t. I held back inorder to maintain a good quality website.

So after many other methods that I’ve tried, the next notable one was using YouTube to increase traffic and converting the traffic to $$ using CPA networks. This was my very first success in the IM area. It was quite exciting. I was making like ~$14 a day on autopilot. Not completely autopilot, of course I had to maintain it over the weekends. However, this soon came to an end when the school semester began. I was  overwhelmed with school, so I put down my IM stuff. Also, I never decided to resume this method. I really don’t know why haven’t I, and I still don’t know why shouldn’t I, but I just didn’t. Kind of stupid of me to not resume it. Anyways, while I was running this YouTube method, I also joined a coaching program for PPC marketing, but I also stopped doing it because of school.

When winter recess began, I returned to the coaching program, and soon after my return, I made my very first $1 using the PPC method. WHOA, a dollar, big whoop! It might not seem like a big deal, but to me, it’s a big step to my goal. So after spending hundreds, and possibly thousands of dollars on trying new things, I can safely say, Internet Marketing works. It takes time to learn, and it takes time to tweak. I’ve learned a lot in 2008, and I wasted a lot of time too. In 2009, I want to use my time more wisely when doing IM, I will use the tools I discovered from 2008 to do my IM stuff more efficiently, I will continue on with PPC and hopefully reach my goal, and I will learn to create my on twists on techiques with the knowledge I gained from all those e-books.