Tired Middle Aged Man

This posting expresses my own opinion and does not represent DuPont Company information, positions, strategies or opinion

At my work when it rains it pours.  It seems like all kinds of errors or possible misconfigurations are coming out of the wood work because so many more people in our company are using our website.  I’m getting hit with more emergency, urgent, calls or emails.

Anyway I did force myself to take 30 minutes out of my time off to catch up on Michael Jones videos.  I’m now in the 5th out of 6th set of videos.  Why does this feel so arduous?

Some immediate immediate impressions is this program is NO piece of cake.  It takes hours of dedicated work to digest and practice.  One of he scary parts is where you turn on you website and turn on the part that pays google money for each time someone searches for something on google, they find you and click thru to your website.  You are supposed to budget $500 a day for this and if you don’t watch it carefully and it goes awry you could be making nothing and in the hole $500 a day until you get online and shut down your runaway train website!  I mean I get distracted by something and I’ve been out of touch for a week.  That’s a $3500 bill for falling asleep!

This time I learn about handling failure conditions.  Like if you suffer what’s termed a google SLAP.  Once Google determines that your website is for making money they ramp up your advertisement costs 10 to 50 x larger.  So to stay as busy you need to shell out $5000 to $25,000 a day!!  When this happens you have to abandon your website and start over from scratch. The videos also describe how you should consider writing one 450 word article a day.  So for each website I put up I need to spend a few hours a day doing research on material to fill out an article that I write.  Man this sounds like a 12 hour a day job.  The pitch that is being sold to me in these videos is that it takes hard work in the beginning but once you get going and start getting experienced it becomes much easier.  In Michael Jones words: “This is what will separate the Men from the Boys” when it comes to this business of affliliate marketing

This posting expresses my own opinion and does not represent DuPont Company information, positions, strategies or opinion

Activity with the website I support  has been really picking up and so have the website errors.  Pretty much most of my week back from vacation has been fighting fires after fires.  I mean initially there is that adrenaline rush from being under the gun to fix a problem and then at the last minute pulling out the answer seemingly from just being lucky as well as having just the right experience to see the answer.  But this is all very wearing.

Well now I’m on a plane headed back to Philadelphia. Since I’ve been away from home I’ve still kept in email contact, and I’ve watched both Robbie Benwell and Michael Jones send me a handful of emails each trying to get me to bite on yet something even newer and more exclusive than the blogging packages I already bought from them. Because they both seem relentless in sending me emails I start to feel skeptical. I mean is this how they make money, by constantly pitching you a better opportunity to make money. They both already sold me on the superiorness of the package they already sold me. Why are they selling me something better? Was I just a sucker in buying what I already have? I mean if they are teaching me to follow how they sell by emails, and I’m only starting to feel more skeptical with each new email pitch, I would only expect my prospective blogging customers be just as skeptical.

So for now I’m going to still try and stick the course and complete Michael Jones’s videos and get my blog/marketing website setup.

View from my hotel room

This posting expresses my own opinion and does not represent DuPont Company information, positions, strategies or opinion

So I’m definitely amiss in my blogging progress. OK I admit it sounds like a bad excuse but I’m in the Bahamas for the week. This was a trip planned by Virginia’s sister to celebrate my Mother-in-law’s 80th birthday. It was a one of thoses once on a lifetime opportunities to spend some quality time with the rest of Virginia’s family. But it was also a prime opportunity to open up child hood wounds.  Let me tell you I spent many days and late nights up with Virginia as she went thru lots of her emotions concerning the criticisms of her Mom and issues with her sister. These are the kinds of emotions that can wear one out into becoming a TIRED middle aged man. I had visions of my wife fretting with excitement, next crying, next furious, moody, and me starting to get paralyzed with indecision as to how to best support her. So I definitely had reservations.

Anyway a few hours before our plane was to take off she started yelling at me that I always take my laptop with me, that I was trying to do work on my vacation. I have to admit the laptop was partly for work. At my job, I’m kind of the 24/7 technical support. So I sort of wanted the capability to handle an emergency at my Hotel room if I got an emergency phone call on my cell. Any while I was half sleeping Virginia’s ranting got me thinking:

“You know I guess she’s right. I guess I’m starting to become one of those workaholic techo geeks that works on their vacation. Plus it is kind of a pain lugging a laptop around. You never know if airport security might decide to confiscate it. And when I’m in the Hotel room I’ll always have to check it in with the bell hop to protect it from theft when I’m out of the room since the Hotels waive all responsibility for items left in your room. Taking in and out of luggage checking can be a real pain. Besides I’ll have my trusty iPhone to blog from.”

While sitting at the terminal in Philadelphia waiting to board the plane my wife is in better spirits and she asks “where’s your laptop?”. I told her I left it behind trying to let go of tech toys and their enevitable draw to make you work. She replies: “It wasn’t because of me?”

Anyway, I’m taking time out to blog about my time out as I think about the fact that I could be watching the rest of the Michael Jones videos on making money with Click Bank. Right now I’m lying in a heavily discounted but still very expensive room at The Cove in the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas overlooking the ocean.

This place has a ton of water activities and for some reason I’m compelled to not move and just sink in a couch by the balcony or lie on the bed soaking in the ambience of aqua water, a gentle ocean breeze, clear sunny skies, and the lull of waves making parts of my body seem to get weak, revealing stored up stress and fatigue. The hotel gave me free passes to golf and then time with the dolphins and I honestly wouldn’t mind just slouching forever in the bed just staring at the panoramic ocean view thru my eyelids. This is an ambience and sight that pictures just can’t seem to capture.

This posting expresses my own opinion and does not represent DuPont Company information, positions, strategies or opinion

I’ve been fairly stressed the past few days.  Virginia’s been struggling, feeling bad about herself and she’s been a bit more critical of me.  I work much of my life professionally in front of many computer screens and Virginia makes me conscious of that fact.  This tends to discourage me from spending time in front of the computer on my off hours, which kind of tends to work against doing things like trying out internet based businesses or even writing in a blog.

Anyway I’m now about 1/2 way thru all of Michael Jone’s videos.  He continues to be very real.  He makes it clear that you need to budget an advertising budget of $500 a day.  $500 a day!  That’s a lot of money to spend!  That means when I turn on my website with advertising I need to watch things daily or risk going broke

But $500 a day does sound very real.  If you were to open up a restaurant you’d be spending more than $500 a day, not to mention the initial outlay to buy the restaurant business.  With Michael Jone’s my outlay so far has only been he $77 to buy the package.

Anyway I need to sign off now.  Last night I stayed up really late singing Karaoke on our small Karaoke machine.  So I’m about ready to fall asleep on this keyboard.  Good night.

I have been remiss with Robbie Benwell’s “blogging to the bank”. I mean putting out stale canned blog material can’t make money. Anyway I have put Robbie on the shelf a bit. I do want to give it a fair try and not dismiss it outright. Who knows a canned blog might work. I mean I don’t think I have run across this canned blog anywhere.

So in the meantime I’ve grown interested in Michael Jones’s scheme. Sigh! I didn’t realize I spent another $77 for this. I could have sworn it was only about $30.

Anyway for $77 you get a few hours worth of video with some real meat to it. Michael Jones comes across as very real. He actually gets you to do real math and real marketing analysis using an Excel spreadsheet.

The stuff that really fascinates me is how you make plans to bid for the right to use particular google keywords that boost your ranking in a google search. So you start to see that google is the most popular way to find things on the Internet and what you find is influenced by how much somebody pays google.

So in a way information is organized by the highest bidder. If for example you are looking for secrets to happiness, I could just about corner the Internet, by paying google enough to be listed first on any keyword related to happiness. Given enough money I could just about assure that google always tries to direct you to my website.

I wonder if there was once a time that web searches were based upon a genuine search for the best information. Now web searches are based upon the best financed and promoted information.

I read about a case where an Internet business attempted to sue google, because google changed the rules of how it ranked website information resulting in some websites dropping out of the listings. Google won the lawsuit on the argument that they are trying to make sure that the truly revelant information gets ranked the highest. So google does have a fundamental altruistic goal of trying to deliver the most revelant information. However, it has an obligation to maximize profits by allowing the it’s paying advertisers to influence the ranking.

So anyway I’m about half way thru watching the Michael Jones videos. All I can say is you get very good information on what to set up. Definitely much more nitty gritty detail than Robbie. Michael Jones also emphasizes that you should try out and believe in the products you decide to sell. He touts that his plan will blow away competing blog based businesses. And his videos start to show you why. You don’t make fluff websites, you find out the product you believe in and then you tell your personal true success story with the product. In other words there us no magic, you do real earnest work.

Also you see clearly how you can easily be running a website with some $300 a day in google ranking costs. So its important that once I turn on my blogging website I need to be concious if I’m losing money rapidly.

This posting expresses my own opinion and does not represent DuPont Company information, positions, strategies or opinion

Actually, I paid $27 not $29 for Robbie’s package.  I supposedly got a $10 discount of the regular $37 price.   I started listening to the Robbie Benwell videos.  One thing that is discouraging is that much of the videos are actually available free.  You just need to know the web address.  The only thing you don’t get is possibly his template of files.  The basic premise of the get rich online schemes I’m looking at have to do in someway with making a website, attracting people to it and putting something like Google advertisement on it and making a commission off the products being advertised.

Back to Robbie’s videos.  His package is called “Blogging to the Bank”.  For $27 what you get is a PowerPoint slide of Robbie’s secrets, a blog template with content, and an a never ending set of emails with tips, sort of.  Some of those email tips get you to see someone else’s success story and product ultimately getting you to buy their product.  That’s what got me to buy another product sold by someone named Michael Jones.

Hmm. An epiphany arose.  When Robbie sends me an email referring me to someone else’s website, it’s got to be actually his website or else how would Robbie be making money out of giving me an email referral.  Hmmm.  Anyway I continue.

So with Blogging to the Bank you’ll be serenaded by a series of emails stretched out over several days giving you links to his free videos.  They cover the content in his PowerPoint slides but give a much better explanation.  Each video is under 10 minutes long and you’ll see about 5 of them.  So if you’ve got attention deficit disorder you’ll manage to finish the videos before getting distracted.

Here’s where it gets discouraging.  First of all the stuff is kind of techie feeling.  It feels a bit more like I’m talking to one of my computer guru workers showing me how to configure an ASP .NET website.

“What you mean you don’t know how to set up an ASP .NET website?  Well it’s easy you just go to msdn.com and download an eval version of VS 2008 and blah blah blah”

Did I just lose you there?  If I did then that’s a bit of the flavor of how it feels when watching Mr. Benwell’s videos.  So once you manage to get over the techie anxieties, there’s the basic premise of his instructions.  He shows you how easy it is for you to come up with you own blog, gives you two money making ebooks for you to sell royalty free, and then gives you the blog content.

So I’m going to put up a “fake” blog, where there’s several days content already written and I just post them to make it feel like a real blog.  But what happens when the “fake” content runs out?  And there are maybe thousands of others with the same “fake” content.  So that means there are probably blogs with identical content.

Then the final kicker.  I read the one of his bonus books titled: “Update Report”  And it’s got a 2006 copyright.  If 2006 is the update then that means I’m using a package that’s fairly old.  Somewhere out there’s a legacy of the cookie cutter blogs with same content?  Maybe.  I can’t say I’ve seen them, but the internet’s a big place.

But let me not lose faith yet.  I’d like to give his plan a shot anyway.  Giving each scheme it’s full chance is my intent.  If after I give it the full due diligence and it fails then I can give it a thumbs down.  Who knows with billions of people out there it might just work.  I’ve seen people buy things on Ebay for more than if they bought it from a store.  So even if it doesn’t quite make sense it could still actually work.