Well I was just letting you guys know what I have been up to lately with all the stuff i have been trying out. Twitter is working ok and I can see the advantages of creating these accounts. I don’t have many followers yet and the sites have seen a rise in traffic. This is good since I am able to target the people I am following.

     Well it is Saturday and you know what I realized. I need a life. I’m kidding though. I am just frustrated with Affiliate Marketing right now because I am having trouble finding my niche and my method. I realize that I am going to need many different methods to be successful in the future, but when you are starting with no seed money, you need to take it one step at a time….and I’m tripping!

     This brings me to a little motivation or advice for people who are in my current position. Frustration is a big part of the process. We are going to fail a lot before we get to something that works. The important thing for us to remember is that you pay attention to what fails and what works. Don’t look at it as you failed, but look at it like “why did this fail”. When you can do this sort of thing, you will be able to take positive things that did convert well, continue with them, and put a twist on the things that failed to see if you can make them work. I am currently failing a lot and not finding things that I am willing to do. I have a few morals and at the time being I can’t afford to be sued – HA! So I am sticking to things that are legit and not “scams”. Of course I do feel there is a difference between scams and tricking people. I’m not trying to E-Whore or tell people on Craigslist that they have a job waiting for them.

     I guess the real point of this post is to encourage people to keep going and not give up. The start is the hardest point, but once you are able to generate money with one method then you can start scaling it and make tons more. It gets easier once you have an idea of what direction you are going. It also allows you to take more risks when you have something steady going. Your method will be bringing you cash while you are out trying other methods that may or may not work. Unlike when you started, if something fails then you won’t be so pressed to make something happen with it. You will already be generating money with your first method and all the are purely extra money revenues. Sounds nice doesn’t? NO? Well think of it this way then… Ever have a girl you know really likes you, but you are able to keep her around without committing to her. Friends with benefits I would say. It’s just like that. Go play the field with other girls to find a girl you really like and if you hit a dry spell with the ladies then you got that one girl you can always call up and chill with. Always nice isn’t it. Get a method and make it steady. Go out and gamble on other bigger methods that may end up bringing you twice as much money. You will lose some cash in the process, but you won’t worry about it because you know you have a steady method running every day.

     Well I am sure that you are all aware of of the freak of nature we call Twitter. Ugh, its taking over our lives. I am sorry, but I can really care less to hear when your taking a dump or what Ashton Kutcher has to say about life. I mean, dont get me wrong at all, That 70′s Show and Kelso are priceless. I just don’t care what he has to say post-1979. To me, Twitter is just glorified “Reply to All” text messaging.

     Now that I have said all that, why the HELL aren’t you using this crap already!! I mean seriously it can be a great marketing tool and will be filled with tons of targeted, yes TARGETED, traffic. There are tons of tools that will allow you utilize Twitter in a way that can help you and your affiliate marketing campaigns.

     I recently saw a method that will turn Twitter traffic into profitable traffic for your blogs. It will take a couple programs in which I will cover in a few short sentences, but the main jist of it is that you will be able to follow targeting users and get them to go to your website. I plan on using this idea on this site and if it works then try it with affiliate campaigns. Oh, and yes, I will be sharing with your what I found.

What will I need and Why:

•      You will need a program that automatically adds followers. You can go one of 2 ways with this… 1) Used a web-based application like Tweepular.com which is free and will follow and unfollow friends. It will allow you to add up to 200 friends at a time which is nice, but won’t let you target who you add. It is just random people. 2) you can buy a program like HummingBird or Tweet Adder. These run anywhere from $50-$200 and will do much more than the web-based models. You will be able to put in keywords and target people who follow those words which is obviously a plus when you want to advertise to people who are interested in what you have to say. PLEASE NOTE: Twitter only allows for 500 people followed per day . I am writing this now knowing that this max number may change by the time you read this post, but just be aware that there is a limit to how many people you can follow in a day. I have definitely made this mistake… twice… OK 4 times. These programs will add the followers to your account automatically and you can set it up for multiple accounts to do it at the same time. At the bottom of the post I will suggest places that MAY have these programs for free…

•      The next thing you will need is a program that will auto respond to followers. With Twitter you are able to talk to people by typing an “@” sign before their user name ( ex: @bumblogs ). There are programs out there that will pick 4 people and send little messages to them (Tweep.net ). This is good because people pay attention to that sort of thing and if you put a link to something on your blog then they may be more likely to click it and go to your website.

     So, that’s just one way you can drive traffic from Twitter to your websites where you have your leads.

     I am gonna try it out and let you all know how it goes for me. If I can turn that traffic into conversions and lots of good money. Who knows, it may end up being something profitable and it may get me to My 1st Goal.

THE BUM EXTRA:
TIP:

Twitter has a feature that ranks the top things talked about. These “trends” are are a good tool and EVERYONE has access too them ( they are located on the right column on Twitter). Use them… Write tweets with your link in it and include the trend word. Take a look at my Retweet button for My First Goal : V-Blog #1. 73 retweets or visits and I put that Phillip DeFranco died and here is the story, ONCE! Sorry, to the Philly D fans, but I doubt he is actually dead. Great way to improve traffic.

As Promised:

BlackHatWorlds Download section (Must Sign Up To view or DL these programs)

Where I got this method:

Part 1: TwitterProdigy.com: Tweet Adder
Part 2: TwitterProdigy.com: Mass Twitter Marketing Software

Tweet this Alright?!!?

“Like some other kids, 12-year-old Trevor McKinney believed in the goodness of human nature. Like many other kids, he was determined to change the world for the better. Unlike most other kids, he succeeded.“( imdb.com )

     Yes… I am being serious. This is my Affiliate Movie of the week. I was up at about 4 a.m. this morning and this movie came on showtime. I watched it because I hadn’t seen it in a while and Helen Hunt was strangely attractive as an ex-drunk single mother (don’t ask). As I was sitting in bed fighting off sleep deprivation, I for some reason thought of affiliate marketing and making money in general. It was because of the boys Idea to change the world by doing 3 nice things for three random people then have those people do three nice things for three random people. This trend would go on and on until the world has been changed by good deed, theoretically.

     You might be asking where I am going with this or you have already figure it out. The Tier System people. Yep referral programs at their most complex. You refer someone to something and earn a percentage, then the people that person refers earns you a smaller percentage. It works in levels and each level will bring you money at a lower price than the previous. This is kind of cool if you can get it rolling and get people to sign up that are interested in getting other people to sign up as well. It will only work to your advantage if you can get dedicated people to sign up and follow through. So, don’t tell your buddies to sign up and leave it to die. It might be some extra commision for you, but nothing to make a living off of unless you find a quality program and you have a great avenue to get people to sign up. Otherwise you can send your referral link out and just hop it catches on.

     In conclusion, you should watch Pay it Forward. its a pretty decent movie and you might even shed a tear at the end. But while you are snuggled up on the couch alone with you ice cream and Victoria Secret magazines (because you like the articles,right?), pay attention to what is going on and you will see that his method can apply to you and your marketing journey.

Here Are Some Sites That Run This System:

• BigCrumbs
• Hits4Pay

A WHOLE 75 Bucks. I need A Job… NOTTTTT So Much!

MAKE $100 A DAY

     I am going to start off this post saying I REALLY DON’T like E-Whoring. I just have a problem with talking to other men and getting them to sign up to my leads while promising them things I just wouldn’t ever want to be caught doing.

Lets Begin…

What is an E-Whore and what does it mean to E-Whore?

• An E-Whore is someone who pretends or gives the notion that they are an attractive woman when they are really a 54 year old male from India (kidding). These people find highly populated places and pretend to be someone they are not in order to convince those users to fill out certain offers which make the E-Whore some money. The act of this is called “E-Whoring”. Most E-Whoring is done with E-Mail/Zip submits and dating site leads because they are easy to convert with horny males.

What are the Pros and Cons of E-Whoring?

• Pros: If your are able to successfully trick a large amount of people a day then you can actually make $100-$200 a day by getting only 50-100 people to complete your lead. You can also set your own schedule and make what you want when you want it.
• Cons: It is considered fraud by companies and advertisers, so IF your are caught then you account with that affiliate company will be terminated. Also… you gotta say some gay stuff to be successful. If you are not very comfortable with yourself then you really need to rethink this whole method. I really have a problem with telling guys how cute they are, which is why I stay away from this method.

    NOTE:Please don’t think this is a post encouraging you all to start E-Whoring because its the complete opposite. I am simply writing this to share what I have picked up on my road to success. Since I have no success yet then you know I don’t think very highly of the methods I am covering…. YET.

So who do I think should start to E-Whore?

• I actually have an answer for that. 18+ GIRLS who don’t make any money and sit on the computer all day chatting to random guys who tell them how gorgeous they are. Yep, those girls. I mean they are doing it already, so why not get paid for it. They wont have to pretend to like men and now they can say they are doing it for the money rather than JUST the attention. Difference from an Attention-Whore and an E-Whore is that one gets paid . It is simple to do and I will tell you how…

Step 1: Sign up to an Affiliate Marketing company ( I won’t promote any companies in this post because it’s a black hat method and they frown on that. HINT: Links in sidebar *WOOPS* ). This will take a few days since most have to contact you via phone or instant messenger. You have to get approved so please use your real information.

Step 2: Find a lead or Campaign that you would like to get people to sign up for and that would make you some money. I suggest you use an E-Mail or Zip Code Submit ad because you get money if the people fill out ONLY their E-Mail or Zip Code. It’s easy and they take little time to fill out.

Step 3: Find people. Go anywhere that will allow you to talk to many people at once. Chat rooms, Myspace, Facebook, Stickam, and countless other places. Set up a profile and tell them your AIM SN so they all come to you. Anything that will allow you to reach many people at once is good for this method.

Step 4: Flirt… You need a back story that will give you a real reason for them wanting to fill out your ad. you will start off flirting and gradually move into a story of why you need them to do this for you. One I like is that you are a model and you are sponsored by Sears (I said sears because I know there is an ad out there that has to do with voting for Sears or Lowes and you want to be as specific as possible). Tell them that part of your contract says that you need to do certain promotions and you need 100 people to fill out the ad or you will lose your sponsorship with them. Something like that and you can promise them pictures after they do it, if you haven’t already sent them stuff.

BOOM!! MONEY BABY

PLEASE: If you are serious about Affiliate Marketing LOOK FOR OTHER METHODS AND STAY AWAY FROM E-Whoring

    I am a noob for sure, but even I can tell you that this just seems dirty and kind of a crappy way to make a living. For girls doing this for free then I say hey WHY NOT! I am a bum, but even something so simple like this can turn me away.

For More on E-Whoring Go Here

     I’m going to say this again. I am a NOOB. I am learning and I and making mistakes. This blog isnt being written by a pro or a company. It is being written by an unemployed…scratch that, self employed 23 year old college student. I am going through all the same things you are going through right now and I am getting taken for rides the same way you are also.

     The biggest lesson I think I need to share with my readers is that in order to be an affiliate marketer, you have to be the best liar you know. Yea, a dirty… filthy…LIAR. This is good to know on both ends of the spectrum. A person who is beginning their journey into affiliate marketing and a person who has been making money with CPA advertising.

     For the person who is beginning their journey, don’t believe anything you hear. Garenteed 90% of what someone tells you is either a lie or not the whole truth. I will tell you right now that when I go over methods with you that most will be things people already know and already have done. I am going to try them, but I am going to try to find the reason why it works for those people as well. You are wondering why I would need to do that. Well, it is because if you bug someone long enough they will tell you a method they use, but it will never be a method they actually make their own money with. Usually something they know other small time people do to generate some kind of money, but never anything they do on a daily basis. Another thing you have to look out for is partial methods. Ever been told to make a poll about something popular and have a lead behind it to make some money? Yeaaaah… that doesn’t work too well when you aren’t generating the right keywords, setting up the landing page correctly or using a lead towards your target. People tell you about a method, but the whole method is much more complex. In order to have a method you must know every single variable and think about it all the way through. It is not just step one… step 2… step 3 = MONEY MONEY MONEY. That is why I don’t like E-Books. Everything that you would spend 20-$200 on, you can find for free on a website like this or in other free downloadable E-Books. Most are vague and most skip the money making variables. The reason for this… SATURATION BABY!!. Smart marketers know when to sell their ideas. They are not going to sell an idea that people don’t know already. They will give ideas that have been used by a lot of people. Anything to do with Zango… saturated. Anything Myspace… saturated. yet you constantly see these E-Books being sold and people buying them. Keep the money and save it for PPC advertising. No one will give you the whole story. I think this is the best lesson you learn because you are going to look for help and you are going to find somone who knows what they are doing, but will tell you to E-Whore just to shut you up. Yea Alex, I’m talkin’ to you buddy!! All kidding aside, you need to figure it out on your own and not get discouraged that the methods you are reading about arn’t working for you.

Suggestions:

• •Read about methods, but look deeper and put your OWN TWIST ON IT.
• •Sign up to some smaller CPA companies which will be more likely to assist you when you need help.
• •If you are spening less than $50 on an E-Book, you have already heard it and it’s not worth the money.
• •Network, network, network… Make friends and do favors for those friends who may do favors for you as well.

LASTLY…

• •Think of an old method and sell the HELL out of it on digitalpoint forums… they will never know!! I Kid… Sorta.

     Okay, so i think I am ready to write my first entry about CPA marketing. I am picking this particular topic because it’s recent to me and I think that others will benefit from knowing about this company. I am talking about AdvantageCPA. This is my 3rd company that I have joined for affiliate marketing, but the first company that has actually tried to make me money rather than shove meaningless leads down my throat with no guidance. So, far I have been off on and with some of my methods in some months. One month ill make 65 bucks and the next I will make 5 bucks. This is to be expected since I am just starting. What I have Liked about AdvantageCPA is that I have been given some building blocks to start promising campaigns that can earn money in time. My Account Manager, Brandon Hall, has to be the calmest person I have ever met. I really don’t know how he has put up with me and my non stop IMs on AIM. I think he handles it so well due to the fact he ignores most of them, but he’s busy. ONLY KIDDING, I know he will be reading this and that would get his blood going a little bit. Truth is that I talk to the guy daily and have recently started to have webcam conferences with him via Skype. I suggest noobs, like me, to join AdvantageCPA for the sole purpose of learning. They know that if you make money then so do they. This is nice because they teach you and give you advice. Bigger companies don’t take the time, and why would they when they have to kiss up to the 5k a day CPA Pros.

     This world of Affiliate Marketing can be dirty. People don’t share and if they do they don’t tell the whole story in order to satisfy but keep their money making secrets. Trust is a hard thing to come by and that is really the main reason why I am writing about AdvantageCPA today. A few weeks ago I decided I would go to BlackHatWorld.com Forums and tell people about my experience with AdvantageCPA. Within the first day I had 19 people sign up to this Affiliate Company. Brandon saw what I wrote to members and how I responded to questions about the company. Since Brandon and I have been talking for a while he knew that I played Madden on X-Box 360. As a present for doing a good job and saying nice things about the company without being put up to do it, he sent me the NEW Madden 10 video game. I think this is pretty cool because he didn’t have to send me anything and I could have just been happy with my 4% per month referral percentage FOR LIFE. This type of thing builds trust and truly makes me want to make more money.

     Well I should start off telling you that my name is Steve. Basically I am a bum, so for the purpose of this blog you may call me The Bum. I am 23 years old living in sunny California. I am currently going into My 6th year at Cal Poly Pomona as an E-Business student. Being a student athlete in college slowed me down a bit acedemiclly, but now I am back on track to graduate this Spring.

     My Journey started in 2004. I was a Myspace Marketer. Basically I was one of those people who had thousands of friends and would sell accounts and bulletins to REAL advertisers. It wasn’t fun because I had to deal with a ton of scene kids who actually thought they had 100,000 friends. I hated those people. Anyways, I got tired of all that childs play (even though I was making around 1-2.5k a month from it) and figured I should try to be the people who were buying from me. In 2005 I opened BumLine.net as my first dive into being a real webmaster. I ran Zango ads on it for the longest time and then finally someone talked sense into me and I started Google Adsense. I won’t go further into all of my websites that I own, but if you care to see them then look at the links in the sidebar.

     Now comes my purpose. I have been successful with websites, but seen it all crumble right in front of my eyes. I am living at my parent’s home and now have no money. I am on a mission to make a living for myself and on my own. I have never had a real job in my life. 23 years old and self employed since the beginning. My plan is to keep it this way for as long as possible and I want to document it in this blog. I will be starting from nothing, I have started from nothing. I will make nothing into a fortune and I will show you the transition from Bummin’ to Ballin’ … Along the way I will share with you what I have learned, read and experienced. Obviously some methods I attempt will have to remain secret, but If I see something to share then you can bet that I will be bloggin’ it up for my subscribers. I want my story to be the next persons inspiration. I want to show those who don’t see the potential in all this that you don’t need anything but the will to learn and the patients to fail. I will fail… and fail some more, but I will learn from my failure ant grow from it. This is my journey in Affiliate Marketing… Dirt Poor to Filthy Rich!!