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It’s been 3 weeks since this case study started.

Here’s a brief recap.

Week 1: Posted 5 articles on the blog, and then submitted one article to EzineArticles. Once the article is approved, it is then submitted to Goarticles.com and then posted on the blog.

Week 2: About 5 articles have been submitted. Stopped all activity because at this point of time I wanted to add the site to 3 Way Links to demonstrate the power of it.

Week 3: This was quite a passive week. We stopped almost all activity on article submissions and just wanted to get our site onto 3 Way Links as soon as possible. Unfortunately, an upgrade was being done to the server and I couldn’t get my account going. We submitted the site right after 3 Way Links came back online, and we got approval in a day; very efficient.

Here’s a summary of our traffic stats.

52.90% Direct Traffic
34.19% Referring Sites
12.90% Search Engines

Of course, direct traffic mainly came from me and the better half as we edited the sites, added posts and made changes to it in general.

34.19% came from our article submission efforts at Ezinearticles.

12.90% came to out site while searching for resources on our niche. However, because ours is quite an obscure niche, our traffic was on the low site.

Earnings-wise, we’re still far from our aim of a consistent $1 per day; we’re getting the hits, but not the clicks. The affiliate programs aren’t converting as well.

So far we’ve mainly had $0 days, and peaked at $0.46 cents, with a total of 3 clicks.

Up until now, things aren’t looking very positive, but maybe 3 Way Links still needs some time to take effect. Afterall, we’ve only been on the network for about a week.

CY provided some useful information about article marketing to me that I’d like to share with you as well.

1. Don’t write a summary of your article in the article body. Instead, include the summary in your bio box.
2. Write a Part 1 article, then link to part 2 article from your bio box.
3. Write a how-to article, then link to a presell page where you presell a tool that can automate the how-to process you mention in article.
4. Write a product review, then link to a page from your bio box, where you offer extra bonus and discount if they purchase via your affiliate links.

If you have any comments/ideas at all, do not hesitate to drop me a comment!

Posted by admin | 4 Comments »

How time flies!

We’re now in week 2 of the case study.

We’re starting to get visitors from the search engines. 6 today, to be exact.

Traffic from ezinearticles are still coming in, even though it’s been about 3 days since we last submitted.

As described in the original post, we’re now at the stage of witnessing the power of 3 way links.

Unfortunately, 3 Way Links has been down for the past few days, so we’re experiencing some lag time here. It’s been fully functional as of today, and our site should be accepted by tomorrow.

Earnings-wise, things haven’t been very pretty either. Mostly zeros, and some 1 cent/4 cent days.

And yup, no affiliate sales.

We’ll see how things go when 3 Way Links comes into the picture.

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I just got news that my favorite underground marketer is coming up with something new.

Now, he’s one of those less-than-5-seconds-to-decide-to-buy persons on my list; the information he provides is phenomenal.

I know by conventional practices, I’m not supposed to toot another marketer’s horn so soundly on my own blog, but hey, he’s such a great guy, and I know you’re going to learn so much from him, that I don’t mind at all.

I’m going off for lecture soon, and will be updating this post later on tonight.

In the meantime..

Wanna venture a guess at the identity of this person I’m talking about?

Posted by admin | 2 Comments »

Just wanted to bring to your attention that 3 Way Links is down for now.

I emailed Jon about it and he says that it’s because he’s making a major upgrade to the servers, so be patient; it might take a few days for the site to be up.

*Update: 3 Way Links is up again!*

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Things are getting interesting.

Through the meticulous efforts of the better half, we already have 4 articles on Ezinearticles.

Traffic-wise,

I’m still not getting any traffic from the search engines. Traffic is 100% from search engines. The direct traffic mostly came from me and the other half, when we wanted to see how our site looks like after editing.

Here’s a screenshot of our traffic from Ezinearticles. About 5.5% clickthrough rate.

Not phenomenal, but decent, so I’m leaving it as it is for now.

Earnings-wise, we’ve made a total of $0.32, purely from adsense.

I was getting slightly disappointed that we weren’t getting sales from the affiliate products we were promoting. I wanted to suggest to the better half some ideas about how to bring more attention to our affiliate links.

In order to do that, I wanted her to understand more about what we’re promoting, so I clicked on the link, and…

*BAM!*

404 Error!!

And I got a huge scolding from the better half for screwing up when I’m supposed to be the “expert”.

Turns out that Gotrythis wasn’t setup properly on my server.

Horrified, I went to check out my links on this blog as well, and…

*BAM*!

I couldn’t access them either!

How wonderful.

The better half wants me to make a public apology to all the visitors of the blog, which I curtly refused.

Huge lesson learnt though; always check your links!

Anyway, the action plan for now is to slow down on articles submission.

I might get her to drive some traffic from Yahoo! Answers, but mainly, now what we want to do is to witness the power of 3 Way Links.

Again, to learn what it’s all about, read SEO Myths. Why not? It’s free!

I apologize for the goofup. I guess this is what happens when careless people do live case studies.

Stay tuned for more good stuff to come.

Posted by admin | 3 Comments »

It’s been 2 days since the better half submitted the first article to Ezinearticles.

It was approved in less than 24 hours.

So far, we’ve had 152 views, and 6 click throughs to the site itself, for a CTR of about 4%.

Not fantastic, which is why we have gone on to edit the resource box, which I think looks much better now.

The site has also been indexed, but we don’t have any searches coming from the search engines yet.

Profits-wise, no sales of affiliate products have been made, and I’ve earned $0.10 from adsense clicks in all.

So far so good I guess. We will submit 5 articles in this fashion. Once those 5 have been submitted, I will submit the site to 3 Way Links in order to better compare the difference.

Posted by admin | 5 Comments »

“Someone out there needs your help, and is willing to pay you huge bucks for it!”

Many people thought Andrew Cavanagh’s forum thread on how to make 1,500 dollars today selling your online marketing services to local businesses was lost forever.

But Andrew has salvaged the best posts and got permission from their authors, refined and edited it all into a fantastic pdf report you
can download right now here.

Online marketers are RAVING about the content in this report.

It really is a system where you can start with just a little basic online marketing skill and start collecting checks today for your skill from local business owners.

What’s really exciting is that just days after Andrew released this information on the Warrior Internet Marketing Forum ordinary online marketers just like you have been using it and putting 1,000 dollars, 1,500 dollars or more in their pockets…their first day out.

Like Robert Mescudi from Los Angeles, CA:

Saturday afternoon Los Angeles time just using your information I landed a $1,500 project. EASY!“

Or Matt Jutras from Alpharetta Georgia:
“The first store I walked into I walked out with 1,500 dollars in my pocket.”

Andrew could easily sell this report for 100 dollars, even 200 dollars or more.

The list of people who’ve used the powerful secrets revealed in there to make over a thousand dollars within a couple of days of starting out is growing fast.

And that’s what Andrew wants. As many online marketers helping small business owners as he can get.

Download your copy of the compiled forum posts here!

Or alternatively, if you’re impatient, you may order Andrew’s comprehensive guide on how to do it, right here.

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Inspired by the niche site case study Jon Leger did on his blog some time back, I decided to do one myself, now that I’m getting more savvy with niche marketing.

If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly encourage you to do so.

In a nutshell, I will kick off this case study by briefly planning out what I have done, and what I will do.

The twist is that the better half is the one who’s going to be executing the plan; I will merely be the strategist and advisor, and of course, the tech guy. I set up the site for her, and made it look nice and all that. She’s the one rewriting the articles, looking for graphics, and submitting the content.

And yes, she’s never done anything like this before, so it’s all quite exciting.

To make things easier for her, I’ve chosen to base the site on a topic that she’s interested in.

1. For now, I’ve already had the site set up, in a wordpress blog, using rewritten PLR content from the excellent Content Gold Mine. What I had her do is rewrite all of the content, and then post 5 of them onto the site as basic content. Step 1 is done for now, and we have a fully-functional site. However, in order not to skew the results, The URL of the site will be kept confidential for now. In time to come, I might decide to reveal the URL; or not. (It’s getting zero traffic right now.)
2. Tomorrow onwards, we will start driving traffic to the site via articles submission to Ezinearticles. Note the process we’re trying out though; we will send these articles one by one. As each gets approved, we will then post them to three other places at the same time: 1) The blog. 2) Goarticles. 3) Associated Content.
3. In the meantime, she will submit the site to major article directories.
4. Also, she will be submitting the site to the 3 Way Links network. (Learn what it is from this free report. You get a discount when you sign up to 3 Way Links from here.)

For now, that’s the battle plan. I’ll be posting the results on here, probably weekly. Or maybe I’ll post whenever there are significant results. The goal for this site is to hit an average of $1 in profits a day. Which would mean $30 a month. Monetization methods include Adsense and affiliate links. With a few affiliate sales, I’ll easily exceed $30 a month, so let’s see what goes on from here!

Some things you might want to know…

• I didn’t do any research on the niche prior to starting out; I merely presented the other half with the topics that were provided by Content Gold Mine, and asker her to take her pick. So I have no idea how profitable the niche is.
• Content Gold Mine does recommend a few affiliate programs, but I didn’t choose to use them. Instead, I took all of 5 minutes on Wealthy Affiliate’s Clickbank research tool to find 3 top ones to promote. I hope that’s not considered cheating!
• I have no idea how powerful 3 Way Links is going to be, but judging from Jon’s prior case study and his free report, it’s all good.
• I’ll be posting the results in the form of charts from Google Analytics and Go Try This. (GTT is currently unavailable for purchase, unfortunately; it’s an excellent piece of software.)

I hope this case study proves extremely insightful for the uninitiated to niche marketing. I also hope it shows you the power of article marketing and 3 Way Links!

It’s all very exciting for me and the other half as well; even if the site flops and we don’t manage to get the desired amount of profit from this site, this will be a fantastic introductory course to niche marketing for her.

Lastly, I hope this inspires the non-action-takers to take action as well.

Nothing happens until something moves! This case study will show you that it’s all doable.

So let’s kick some butt!

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I’m a raving fan of Mark Joyner’s.

So much so that I’m reading simple.ology (the physical book) for the second time now.

And I was just watching his latest online video course in the Great Teachers Series, “Jacque Fresco Teaches Drawing.”

If this is the first time you’ve heard of Mark or simple.ology, you’re in for a treat : http://kang.simpleology.com/

I first heard him speak at the World Internet Summit in Singapore, and having read his books, The Great Formula and The Irresistable Offer, I couldn’t resist (pardon the pun) going up to say hi. One heck of a cool guy.

Now, he’s conducting some sort of viral marketing experiment. He’s offering his blogging course called “Blogging For Fun And Profit” for free, for anyone who owns a blog, and agrees to blog about it.

So all I need to do is to paste some code onto my post, and I get a free course. A free course from the genius Mark Joyner, no less.

No-brainer yea?

I have tons of blogs and didn’t have to risk blogging about something I’ve not even seen yet but hey, it’s Mark Joyner!

Heck, I don’t even know what the code’s gonna end up looking like, but here goes! (I’ll follow up after I get my copy and seen whether it lives up to his name.)

-=*=-

I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.

-=*=-

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What a tongue twister of a title eh?

As you can very well see, this blog is not ready for the eyes of humanity at all.

I’m a strong believer in Murphy’s Law. “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong, at the worst possible time.”

I was all set for closing down the old blog and having a fresh new start for a good new year, reviewing through the posts made over the past years, and seeing if I have managed to fulfill the new year resolutions I made at the start of 2007.

Alas, on the night of the 1st January, I just had to screw up on some of the settings on that old blog, causing it to become inaccessible. And because I’m such an optimistic young men, like all impulsive young men, I didn’t back it up.

I’m now greeted with an error screen when I try to access the site:

=
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: _c() in /home/kang/public_html/wp-includes/locale.php on line 93
=

 So yes, being the forward-looking and never-say-die warrior I am, I decided to proceed with the soft launch of Marketing Alchemist anyway!*Fireworks soar through the air, applause rages through the fields, and the mood of joy spreads through the crowds like wildfire!*….Okay.Nevermind.So there’s not so much of a fanfare afterall.Instead of reviewing 2007 thoroughly through the eyes of the old blog, let’s just move on to the highlights of the year then!

Without a doubt, 2007 was the best year for my internet business ever! (It’s my first year, you see.)

Jokes aside, I met tons of wonderful folks at the World Internet Summit this year. Folks like Khai, Kevin Riley, Dr. Mani, Mark Joyner, Andrew Hansen and hung out with Dylan. I nearly had the chance to meet up with Chiayee as she came over to Singapore for holidays, but it didn’t work out due to time constraints.Milestones of 2007 include my first writing assignments, first purposeful affiliate sales through both pay-per-click and bum marketing, and of course, the elusive first four-figure month.

Unfortunately, at the apex of my achievements, a new semester at school began, and it has been such a super-busy one for me. I had more modules to take than my peers, in addition to my commitments as Project Director of Cyberia Camp 2007.

(The camp went very well, by the way!)

As such, online activities slowed down a whole lot.

And after I’ve fulfilled my commitments at school, I was so exhausted that I had to spend some time smelling the roses with the better half.

She’s been a very, very welcome addition to my life. (Understatement.)

A story for another day. She is currently functioning as my personal assistant, which has saved me the costs and hassles of the need to hire a virtual assistant. She is diligent, smart, funny, and she even feeds me all the time with her wonderful cooking skills. Where else do you find such a versatile virtual assistant at the low low cost of free?

(Never, ever, let her lay her eyes on the above paragraph though.)

*Update*

Now.. This is interesting. Seems like I did manage to salvage some of the posts from the old blog afterall. Here’s my new year resolutions post from last year.

-=*=-

Happy 2007!
By kang | December 31, 2006

It’s already 4.18 a.m. right here in Singapore, so I’m making this a fairly quick one.

A quick recap of 2006.

I’ve taken huge steps in internet marketing.

The birth of KangWeiAng.Com. My first adsense earnings. My first successful affiliate sales. My little accidents and disasters in adwords and yahoo search marketing. More than a hundred books, ebooks and special reports. Hundreds of threads read on Internet marketing singapore, the warrior forum, Wealthy Affiliate. Techniques learnt, implemented, or stored in the memory bank for future use. New friends and acquaintances in the internet marketing world. Mutual admiration for each other. And not forgetting the ugly side I’ve glimpsed of some less-than-ethical marketers. My realization that there’s nothing much I could do about them and I can do is stay on course myself.

It’s been a huge year for me. I haven’t made thousands of dollars yet, but I’ve learnt tons through hands-on application.

And thanks to people like Travis, Kyle, Carson, Dylan, Alex and Chia Yee, through their knowledge and expertise, I’ve grown alot, and I’m sure their brilliance will rub off on me through sheer contact, and I’m damn sure that 2007 would be a great great one for me!

I hope that it would be the best year for you too!

Come December 31st 2007, I would look back and smile at myself. I would certainly re-read this post again.

I would be moved. Maybe I’d even tear.

As I review the best year in my internet marketing career. My successful projects, campaigns, websites

And here’s what I wish for 2007.

To hit $1000 internet marketing income each and every single month, and to help 5 other people do the same. And when that time comes, all I have to do is duplicate that effort, and I’ll be a happy man! When that day comes, I’ll get myself my dream white Picanto!

And to do that, I will..

Focus on affiliate marketing. Bum plus adwords marketing for traffic. And I’ll build niche mini sites to get those sales.

Short and sweet, because I’ve learnt that focus is of utmost importance.

And education-wise, I’ll hone my speed reading skills and make it a point to be always hungry for information, and to apply my new-found knowledge as much as possible. I’ll stretch my learning ability to the max.

I can’t wait.

Bring it on, 2007.

I am ready.

-=*=-

I can’t help but smirk at the post.

I certainly haven’t been very successful, judging by the standards of that post!

• For one, I didn’t manage to have an income of $1000 every month. I only hit that amount once. And that wasn’t even passive income. Not good, Kang. Not good.
• “Focus on affiliate marketing, especially bum marketing.” Well, I did make quite a number of sales with bum marketing. I’ve grasped the mechanics of it, but then I just grew lazy, as usual, and tried alot of other techniques instead.
• “Niche mini sites?” I did build a few. But again, I didn’t follow through. Earned peanuts with Adsense through these sites; nothing to be proud of.
• It’s funny that I mentioned I realized that focus is of utmost importance, and yet I allowed myself to deviate time and again.
• I guess the only thing I managed to consistently “achieve” from the list of goals for 2007, is to maintain a constant state of hunger for new knowledge. This kind of hunger is like a two-edged sword though, so I’ve got to learn to be able to handle it properly, lest I fall into the proverbial information overload death cycle.
• My Picanto? (A Picanto is a car by the way.) A Picanto with my current level of earnings? *Smiles.*

Well, I did have alot of fun with my online business in 2007, but as they say, “never treat your online business like a game.”

I’m going to carry on having fun, but I will certainly strive to be more disciplined in my daily processes.

So, what am i doing this year that is different from the last?

1. Huge boost in productivity. As mentioned, I’ve overfed myself with lots of information, but fortunately, also discovered many gems along the way. I’ll be actively implementing GTD into my working style. Coupled with all the amazing hacks I’ve learnt from Lifehacker.com, I’m sure I’ll become much more productive in 2008!
2. A protestant work ethic. Okay, maybe not that extreme, but coupled with the hacks I’ve learnt, I guess I have also seen first hand, the miracles that happen when hard work is thrown into a business. For a start, I’ve finally taken the effort to actually list down what I want to achieve for 2008, and a thorough review of 2007. Not a slip-shod one like this of course, but a four-page document, with 10 point size font. It’s an amazing experience. You should try it if you haven’t done that before!

Why do so many people say that new year resolutions do not work? My take is that, publicly stated new year resolutions are merely ego boosters and are too flippant to achieve results! What I’m now a firm believer of..

Is taking some quiet time off to quietly reflect and think. Do not worry about what others might think; you’re not going to show them to anyone after all.

You’ll find that at the end of the process, you don’t even particularly want to show it to other people because if done right, it will have some very personal elements in it, some sensitive issues and even some confidential blueprints to your potential success!

For mine, there is one thing I’d like to share with you.

I did up detailed projected “internet marketing expenses” and “internet marketing earnings” lists. I calculated all that based on monthly standards; meaning recurring income and passive income are not taken too much into account.

I got the shock of my life when I realized that a semi-ideal full-fledged internet marketer lifestyle will lead me to spend a whooping $1537on my business each and every month!

Doh!

What shocked me even more.. Is that at a conservative estimate, and without taking into account recurring and passive income from sites built in previous months and stuff like that, my monthly income, provided that I’ve completed everything I wish to accomplish, is a whooping $5100!

I have no idea whether that is chump change to you, but a profit of $5100 - $1537 = $3563 makes me very excited indeed.

The magic in this.. Is that I have arrived at these figures via very conservative and realistic estimates!

The magic happens..

Only when you make these projections yourself, custom made to your business models and lifestyles!

It’s extremely liberating, trust me. Try it out for yourself!

It’s now 2.14 a.m. here in Singapore.

I guess this marks the end of my first post!

I hope this post has given you a better sense of direction of how you wish to approach your own new year resolutions. I strongly encourage you to try the exercise of calculating your expenses and earnings!

Before I say goodbye…

On Friday, January 26th, 2007, I wrote a post entitled “Weeeeee! I have Page Rank now!”

I’m constantly amazed by the amount of stupid things that can come out from my fingertips, but that old little blog of mine gaining a page rank of 4 was a wonderful achievement for me. I was at the stage of running around like a chicken without a head, trying out new stuff like nobody’s business.

Looking back, it felt right. It’s perfectly fine to celebrate small successes. Small results come before huge achievements.

You made every little step; you deserve all the success you receive!

I worked hard at getting that page rank.

And now, I’m starting off with a blank slate, at page rank 0.

It’s like what people say about millionaires not being afraid of going bankrupt again after gaining millionaire status. Because they already have the knowledge and know-how of success.

Of course, now that I’m more familiar with the mechanics of internet marketing, I realize that page rank isn’t a big determinant of how successful Marketing Alchemist is.

What I wish for Marketing Alchemist to accomplish in 2008, is to help you, whoever you are, wherever you’re from, to succeed online; to fail fast, and to succeed even faster.

Here’s to a wonderful 2008 for all of us!

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