***For Those Looking for the Joke - Just Skip to the Bottom!!***

I know because I just paid for another month!!

 I thought that I would sort of recap what has happened through the course of this last month.  I posted a rather lengthy post if the success stories, but I'm going to do the same here.

Now I just copied and pasted this from my post -

"So to date, I have published around 100 articles, ( I published them all over the place, so I can quite remember!) 31 Squidoo Lenses, 15 blogs and a few forum posts. Not bad, right?

That sounds like a ton of work, but I could have done a lot more. My first mistake is not organizing my plan before I started a campaign. I just jumped in and started working. This isn't all bad so long as you can keep yourself organized. Lesson learned!

Another big thing that I need to keep reminding myself is that this is a process. There are usually not immediate monetary results. It takes time to get your content out there, figure out what works, etc. If it happened right away, I would imagine EVERYONE would be doing this! I am taking my small achievements as my results. Each lens that gets viewed or articles that get a click through are my small successes. These will culminate into bigger successes and so on.

I came into this with some knowledge on IM (you can read my profile for more info) and thought that I would be able to be successful at this right away. Well it took me all the way until my FIRST DAY (catch the sarcasm??) to realize that this is not for everyone and that it takes a lot of work and dedication. But that is what separates the successful folks from the "not" so successful folks.

It took me 27 days after joining WA before I got my first sale. That was discouraging - I'm not going to lie. It SUCKED! Everyday (at least 15 times) I would check my stats to see my sales. I was checking my hops, order forms, etc. Talk about depressing! But what I did is kept myself involved with WA community. I kept telling folks my progress, asking questions, making friends, etc. Most importantly though, I didn't stop writing and researching. On that 27th day, my heart just about blew up! I got a sale!

THAT IS WHY I AM DOING WHAT I AM DOING!

On the eve of my 1 month anniversary, I made another sale. I've made $50 on two sales in a month! Ok, that's not a lot of money, I know. But I look at it like this -

2 months of WA = $80
2 sales a month = $50

I am only paying $15 a month for this membership! Now if I can crank out some more sales this month...you see where I'm going here.

My wife thinks I'm nuts. My brain hurts sometimes. I sometimes forget how to spell and type. But to all of those thinking about quitting -

IT WORKS!

See this is just like anything else in life - you get what you put into it. You know what my initial thought was when I first joined WA? I am not going to let these scammers take my money! That meant that I HAD TO MAKE THIS WORK! And I did make it work.

I don't know what my next goal is going to be. I want to post it though. It has to be challenging, but realistic too. I will get that posted shortly.

It is a long, hard, frustrating, invigorating, exciting, irritating road. It's a hell of a lot easier than trying to start your own traditional business though. If I can get just a couple of campaigns to hit, I will make more money than some people make in a year. Isn't that exciting?? If that doesn't excite you, then you should probably check your pulse!

Don't quit folks. Ask questions, get help, try again - just don't quit. I am by nature, the most pessimistic person you will ever talk to. I am changing that though. I will have more successes and will continue to post on this board. Mark my words.

I am not successful, but I have had my successes. You can too."

I figured that it would be important to share my story with other people to whom I'm sure are in the same position I am in.  Today I am still a bit bummed that I haven't done as well as I'd like. I did however crank out some more articles and blog posts this morning along with five new lenses yesterday.

I am backlinking a lot of my articles and Squidoo lenses today to get a higher PR ranking on both.  I'm getting clicks -

Squidoo - approximately 400 clicks

Ezine - 368

Now I need to go back and find out what my CTR is for my Squidoo lenses.  (i'm not going to bore you with that though ;)

I think I'm on the right track and have had two sales and can only imagine that it's going to get better.  Ideally, I want to be able to average at least a sale a day by the end of the year.  Even that will make a huge difference for me financially.

We shall see, but I thought it would be appropriate to share with everyone.

Transparency sucks, but it can really get me motivated!

"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of payments."