So I have decided to jump in and do some CPA Affiliate Marketing.  So now I need a Plan of Attack!

I have a few ideas on what “niche” and market that I am interested in getting involved in. so…

1. Pick out the niche and product that I want to start targetting.
2. Find an “aged” domain that has all of the properties that I am looking for, or add a sub-domain to one of my existing sites (this is the way that I am leaning for these tests).
3. Pick out specific products that I am going to market.
4. Start working on gathering content and keyword related articles.  I am going to use a basic version of wordpress for the CMS as I have found that it works very well, and it is easy to add content to.
5. Start a PPC campaign.  For this I am going to start with Adwords as it is still the Cadillac network when it comes to volume of traffic.
6. Refine keyword list, refine landing pages, repeat.

My goal is to break even in what ever area that I decide to get started in, however I am going to give myself a month to do this.  I am also setting a $$$ limit on what I am willing to put up.  I don’t want to dig myself into such a hole that nothing I can do will get me out of it.

As for timeline I am planning on having my niche, domain and products decided on this weekend.  Then the landing page, contact page, about page and at least 5 other articles related to the product group published.  From there it will be getting some easy links to get spidered.  This will take me about a week or so.  Then the PPC, this I am planning to have started by the second week of July.

I will have a series of weekly posts every Monday or Tuesday as the experiment runs its course.

One of the ways that make money online is by using affiliates. One of the ones that I have used since the beginning is Amazon. Back in the day I made a lot of money with Amazon, but lately I have been using it as a filler of sorts. If I see something neat I will link to it and use my aff-id.

Anyway, what I have done now is get paid in Gift Certificates. The last couple of payouts netted me about $70 in gift certificates. So last night I decided to do some cleaning of my wishlist. Some of the books have been in there a while and others I just recently added. Most are regarding business and marketing in general like The Dip by Seth Godin, others are just for fun like the book by Drew Curtis of Fark.

What books do you have in your Wish List? Link to your lists in the comments

I have come up with a couple of ideas to get started on to start to reach for my goal of $500 per month of passive income. The big thing right now is that I have to come up with a sales letter that I can use to test the product that I am thinking about. One of the major things that I have learned is that you really have to test to see if there are people out there that want to pay for the service that you are willing to offer.

Writing a sales letter seems like it is a simple thing, but it is one of the harder things that I have done. I can write great articles, ones that people can get a lot of information out of, but trying to convince someone that they NEED to drop some quid on my product is not so easy. I have went back to the sites that I have bought stuff from in the past and I am going to start from there. I hope to have the letter complete by the end of this week and then drive about $100 with of PPC to it and see what kind of conversions I get. I am going to set a certain price point about mid-range from what I would want to sell it for and use that. If the test is successful then it is off to make the product. I think that it will take a good 2-3 months to complete the book, and then some more money to get it edited.

I have a goal for this year and that is to have my semi-passive income increased to $500 per month by the end of the year. This doesn’t sound like much, but I don’t seem to have much of an imagination. I can’t seem to come up with an idea for a product. I like writing so I figured that maybe an ebook, but on what? And for who? Since this is to be passive income I want to be sure to pick a demographic that is easy to market to. I am an engineer by trade, and there is a couple of ideas there, but the people that I would be marketing to would not see my credentials as good enough to warrant the purchase. Also the topics that I am interested in, in my field of work, would be very technical and I am not sure if I could sell the books, I would need to sell one a day to reach my target.

So where does that leave me? Well frustrated….

I am not sure where to go, maybe I will offer myself up for some technical writing assignments over at DP, or elance and see if something interesting will come along. Or maybe I will simply try to think up a cool gadget that would fit into one of my hobbies. The issue that I am having now is that I am the type of person that can solve a problem if you give me one, but I am not good at coming up with things on the fly. I make a very good consultant, but service work does not lend itself to be very passive. You only make money when you are working, I would like to find a way to make money while I am out drinking with the guys.

SO what is a webmaster to do? I would like to be able to use the day job more like a hobby, something that I enjoy doing and a place that I enjoy going to, but not really required to pay the bills. This may be wishful thinking, but I am sure that if I really put my mind to it I will be able to come up with something that will enable me to be inspired. I know I will have to hook up with some old buddies and go out drinking. Maybe one of them would have a cool problem that I would be able to come up with a solution and create a product out of it.

Man is the market ever starting to piss me off, I saw the start of the down turn fairly early on and was able to insulate myself somewhat to hold on to some of my gains during the first part of the year. But now I am not sure what I am going to do so that I will be able to see some gains for this coming year.

Since most of my market is in the US, a recession is not going to work out well. I am going to have to hope for th ebest, but realistically I am not expecting to see much growth in my online revenue in 2008. Therefore what I am going to have to do is try to find ways to lower my costs. Become a more efficiently run enterprise.

First thing that I am going to have to do is to find a better CC. The best way to do that would be to compare credit cards for a number of different companies.

Second I am going to have to find some way to keep running and investing into my company. Since revenue is going to be a problem I am probably going to need some sort of loan. Now over at Beat the Quote they have a lot of information on UK secured loans, but since I am in North America I am not going to be able to take much advantage of that. However if you click here you can find out what they do have to offer in your area.

And Thirdly I am going to have to think about taking on some more freelance work if my own ideas don’t pan out. This has been something that I have been thinking about doing for a while. I have a lot of expertise in some very profitable niches that I think that I could become a very good writer for. And on top of that, there is not a lot of writers that can write on this subject, especially on DP.

All in all I am sure that 2008 is going to be a harder year, but I hope to see an over all growth, and stay on track to be completely independant by the time I am 30, 4 years

Cheers