RayLucke.com

Wow. I’m impressed. Zecco is offering free trades to its customers through the month of October.

I’ve liked them since I joined. Great company.

I managed to earn $726.15 from Market Leverage last month! Not bad for my first month of affiliate marketing! I am still waiting for checks from the other networks I work with. I should get a nice fat check from CPA Empire in the next couple days as well!

I must say, affiliate marketing has been both the most challenging yet the most fascinating business I’ve been part of in the last few years.

When I first started I felt like I was climbing the Mt. Everest of information, but as I learn more, the simpler it becomes. I would definitely say this to anybody interested in affiliate marketing: be prepared to work HARD. It’s not a get rich scheme, but it is truly a lucrative business when you really understand it.

I think my biggest problem learning affiliate marketing was how spread out the information really was. I have grown significantly since joining PPC Coach and Wealthy Affiliate, but they are by no means a shortcut to success. You still have to put the time in doing your research. I’ll say it again, there are no shortcuts.

But if you are willing to pour your heart and soul into it, you can and will be successful.

Once I get a few things nailed down, I will post up be posting some tips and eventually a step-by-step guide like I wish I had originally had when I started.

I got sick of scouring the web every time I wanted to find a GoDaddy coupon code so here’s my “definitive list” of coupon codes. Feel free to post updated codes in the comments.

CJC695DOM - $6.95 .COM for both NEW and RENEWALS

EMMA1 - 10% off Any Order

So there you have it, my easy reference for GoDaddy coupon codes.

So I’ve spent the last two months on a secret project. I decided to try my hand at Affiliate Marketing, and I here’s my report.

First, I must say that I have played around with Google Adwords quite a bit in the past, never turning a profit. I have tried creating a few sites that I quickly lost steam on.

On my 30th birthday (early mid-life crisis?) decided to try out Build A Niche Store, a very efficient web application framework for creating eBay affiliate stores. I managed to get 11 sites up, and thanks to the help of the great people on the BANS forum, I managed to actually turn a profit within a few weeks. After getting some sites up and getting my feet wet in affiliate marketing, I realized how little about internet marketing I really know. I felt the need to ramp it up…

I decided to try PPC-Coach. I must say, Coach runs an amazing service, but even more amazing than the service is the community he has built up. The members really fill in the gaps and make for a completely mind-blowing amount of learning potential. I am amazed by the willingness to share ideas that would normally be kept close to one’s belt. I started with Coach’s month one challenge: create polls. I managed to make a healthy profit off just creating polls! More about that in a future post. After really getting the PPC thing down, I realized that while PPC is great, I should also round out my learning by understanding SEO as well.

So I joined Wealthy Affiliate. All I can say is WOW. This is another similar program, but focused more evenly across PPC and SEO. The members there really know their stuff and are incredibly willing to share their knowledge like the PPC-Coach members. I have not made any money from the techniques they point out yet, as I am still learning the ropes. I am finding that I am learning a lot more principles, and am able to create far more effective landing pages. My favorite feature of Wealthy Affiliate is their 8 week plan. That coupled with their extensive library of tutorials has really helped me to “get it.”

I am focusing on Wealthy Affiliate now, and intend to concentrate on mastering the art of creating high converting landing pages.

I’ll post more later about my affiliate marketing adventures, including my August numbers. Stay tuned.

The Wordpress team finally released their new iPhone app and I must say, it’s very impressive.

Here I am sitting at Duck Island Alehouse and posting. Very cool.

Over the last couple weeks I have returned to my old past time, running. The last time I ran regularly was in high school. I was in excellent shape at the time and remember feeling pretty full of my self one day in science class when we were learning about our cardiovascular systems.

Our teacher put us in groups and had us each check our resting pulse. Next, we took turns running a specified distance and checking our pulse immediately afterward, and a few minutes afterward. My ego was stroked when I saw that I our little exercise really didn’t do much to raise my heart rate.

Anyway… Fifteen years later here I am, 30 years old and get winded when I walk up a set of stairs. I decided to get back to running again so I can achieve the goal I’ve had since I was in my early 20’s: get in excellent shape and be able to participate in activities that my poor fitness has forbade me from doing in the past. I haven’t been since I stopped running and going to the gym regularly while in high school. Now that I live a block away from Green Lake, it seemed like an opportune time. Green Lake is 2.6 miles around the inner path where presently I run.

I started Monday of last week, running about a quarter around the lake in all, with much walking interspersed. On Wednesday I upped it to a third of the way, and on Friday I managed to make it half way.

I took the weekend off to make sure I recovered properly. This Monday I was able to make it a two thirds around the lake with minimal stops, and today I made it three quarters the way without any real stops. Hopefully Friday I can make it the whole way.

I’ve had to fight my urge to overwork myself, as it’s really easy to do, and every time I’ve tried in the past I have burned out as quickly as I got started. I highly recommend pacing yourself.

If you have any experience running, or questions, by all means drop a line in the comments!

I decided to take the test again and it would appear I am indeed an ENFP, or Extraverted, iNtuitive Feeling Perceiver. I took this test. Here are a couple descriptions of what that means:

• Keirsey on ENFPs
• TypeLogic on ENFPs

My score from that site was: E:11, N:25, F:38, and P:67

Go take the test and post your results in the comments.

I’m a perfectionist and I’ve found that my perfectionism tends to breed procrastination.

When writing a blog entry I’ve often found it excruciating because I felt like I was completely butchering it. I would finish writing a post and suddenly realize that I completely hated what I had just written. It only takes going through that process a few times before you start to lose confidence in your writing.

I recently read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and one of the main things she recommends is keeping a daily journal. She calls the journal “Morning Pages.” Every morning you are supposed to brain dump three pages worth of content into your journal. This includes every thought that comes to mind including hopes, dreams, worries, the fact you need to take the clothes to the dry cleaners, etc. If you run dry on ideas to write about, you are supposed to write about the fact you can’t think of anything else to say. The key is to do three pages of writing. You’re also supposed to hide the journal and not show anybody, your significant other included.

Writing daily morning pages accomplished two things for me. First, it allowed me to express some feelings I really haven’t dealt with, which was great. Second, it actually made me realize what it feels like to write with no holds barred. It felt freeing to be able to just vomit my thoughts onto a page and not worry about looking like a complete fool when somebody else were to read it.

What does this have to do with finding your blogging voice? Well, I have found that when writing my blog entries if I can recapture that “free” feeling I have when I write in my morning pages, everything comes out much easier and more clearly. I’m sure we all have our own issues that hold us back from being truly comfortable with our writing, which in turn makes for impaired writing ability.

Might I suggest that if you are having problems getting comfortable blogging and don’t feel that you are expressing your ideas the way you want to, consider trying out morning pages.