Today is a historic day. My very first cheque from ClickBank arrived in the mail and — after confusing the heck out of the poor customer service girl at the bank — I now have an additional $90AUD in my bank account. It’s not much, but seeing as that there will be plenty more of these types of cheques to come (and hopefully with a couple of 0’s added onto the end of the $90), I thought it was worthy of it’s very own post.

(Oh, and, because every internet marketer posts a pic of their first cheque, here’s a pic of my first cheque)

Today is January 15th. If you’re like me and follow the tech industry like a religion, you’ll know that today is a very, VERY special day. Yes, January 15th is my Christmas come early/late/whatever.

371 days ago I was sitting in this very chair (at around 5am) madly mashing the F5 button on all the major sites that were covering the keynote live. There was an incredible amount of speculation and hype surrounding the keynote and the possibility of an Apple phone being announced. To say that I was excited was an understatement.

And then those ever-so sweet words appeared on my screen…

“And we are calling it iPhone!”

I remember getting up and jumping around my room, all while still remaining vewy-vewy qwiet because, yeah, it was 5am. It was like I had won the lottery — the thing was freakin’ gorgeous! Needless to say, 9 months later, I was the owner of a beautiful new unlockedsoitcanworkinaustralia iPhone.

So there’s only 18 hours, 5 minutes and 32 seconds until the keynote begins. It’ll be a long night, but I think a bit of World of Warcraft will deal with the lonely early morning hours quite well.

I’ve worked it out. Today, I finally managed to find a healthy balance between working my arse off on the internet and socializing with friends, all while still remaining incredibly productive and churning out more work than I ever have done before.

Somewhere in-between sitting through a lengthy phone call and having dinner with a bunch of mates, I spent a good 2 hours fixing up Dad’s site, finally finding a suitable theme for this blog and tweaking the living hell out of it and a completing a number of other internet related duties.

I’m guessing this is probably the worst post you’ve read on any blog before and hence would want your one minute back. I’m sorry — I just felt really accomplished and had to tell the world wide web. The next post will be more interesting, I promise.

One self-confessed issue that I have in life is laziness, and my work online is no exception. While I’m generally fit and love to get out and about, anything that involves work (even if it is fun) will see me sink into my chair and try to avoid doing it for as long as possible.

Today, on the 23rd of December 2007, I introduce to you a new me. Liam 2.0. No longer will I sit in my chair for 6 hours straight thinking of what I could become. Oh yes, the old lazy-but-kind-of-productive Liam is gone. I am now a full-steam-ahead article writing, website building, blog posting, bum-marketing machine.

So why the sudden burst of motivation?

I recently posted a thread at Wealthy Affiliate’s forum titled “I know what to do, but I’m too lazy!”. Less than 24 hours later I had received 22 replies — most of which were filled with extremely valuable advice and encouragement. The members at WA are the exact reason why I pay $29.99/month. I could care less for the rest of the tools (however awesome they may be)… the forum is worth it’s weight in gold.

The 6-week Holidays Challenge

So with the end of the school year I now have 40-odd days to focus on my internet marketing ventures. As I’ve been taught over at WA, you won’t get anywhere in the online world without goal setting.

I won’t post the specifics of exactly what I plan to do, but my ultimate goal is to earn $50/day by the end of the challenge. I’ll post daily progress reports along the way on this blog, so watch this space!

This is an article I recently wrote for EzineArticles — a huge article database that is fantastic for article marketing. I currently have 72 live articles that have attracted over 12,000 views and 1,100 clicks to my advertised websites.

Forums are a great advertising tool that many internet marketers will usually disregard. They are incredibly powerful and can actually generate more traffic than most advertising methods if used correctly. The key to this is making proper use of your profile’s signature. Whenever you make a post on the forum, you have the option of leaving a “signature” — a byline that allows you to include links, images and other forms of multimedia. The flexibility given for signatures all depends on the forum’s restrictions, so make sure you read the rules and guidelines before making any modifications.

The most important thing to remember is that the more you post, the more traffic you’ll receive. Quality posts with detailed information will generally receive more hits, as doing so will show to other users that you are a professional in your field and know what you’re talking about. However, do not try to “oversell” your website/product in your signature (avoid “Click here!”, “Buy Now!” etc.).

Posting on a popular forum with a link in your signature will result in quality backlinks, improving the popularity and overall search engine ranking of your website. If you post on a number of forums, it’s likely to have a positive effect on your Google PageRank.

Signature advertising is a great way to advertise for those with a tight (or non-existing) budget. Not only will you instantly receive traffic from targeted users, it will have a lasting effect on your website’s future and it’s inbound traffic flow.

For the past few years I’ve been involved in lighting my school’s productions and events. I’ve worked in the lighting industry for a couple of years and, while internet marketing has taken over my dreams of becoming a grubby roadie, it’s something I really enjoy and will continue to do as a hobby.

Most recently I lit Prairiewood’s Year 10 formal. Unfortunately (as with any school event) the work goes unpaid, but the satisfaction of knowing that it is appreciated is enough to make the 12 hours of straight work all worth it. Anyway, this’ll be a quick blog entry as I really should go to bed, so I’ll just let the pics do the talking for now…

The students ran with a “circus” theme for their formal. Impressive, hey?

Much better than migraine-inducing fluorescent lights I say!

There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding the newest “serious” PPC company WidgetBucks. It’s worth noting that, despite a turbulent few months, WidgetBucks has emerged as a fantastic programme and a major player in the online advertising industry. In short, here’s how the history of WidgetBucks has gone down:

• WidgetBucks launches and wins over thousands of international webmasters thanks to their supposed high payouts per click
• Webmasters go nuts and spread pro-WidgetBucks love around major forums: “OMG THEY PAY $0.30 PER CLICK!!!!!!!! ADSENSE KILLER 4 SURE!!!”
• WidgetBucks changes ToS
• Lots of publishers get banned
• Webmasters spread anti-WidgetBucks hate around major forums: “OMG THEY BANNED MY ACCOUNT!!!!! SCAMMERS!!!!”

Now, thanks to a couple of hundred webmasters getting banned and losing their $90.42, WidgetBucks now has a damaged reputation. I’ll admit that changing their ToS without properly previously notifying their publishers was a bad move, but if we really want to see a programme that has a chance at stealing some of Google’s market share, we need to give them the chance to improve and allow them to develop a solid programme structure.

A lot of (American & Canadian) webmasters are now receiving payments for their past month’s earnings. Want proof? Check out the threads listed in this category. Last time I checked scammers don’t just give out money.

A few months ago I started something that I believe would sky-rocket my online income and finally allow me to buy my dream car (Mini Cooper S). Yes, I started writing articles and yes, I set goals that were far and beyond my capable output…

• Write at least ten 300 word articles a day
• Build a new squeeze page every week
• Collect and maintain a steady 100 opt-ins/day to various lists

Needless to say I failed at all of them. That’s not saying it’s impossible though.

Article marketing, like anything else, requires work. A LOT of work. If you want to be successful you need to be prepared to apply yourself. It is not the next super secret earn-a-million-tomorrow method, but it’s certainly possible to earn a livable income if you possess an insane amount of dedication and drive.

I’ve seen scattered success with article marketing. The odd $20 sale here and there is a result of me being distracted by the normal things that an Australian teenager is distracted by (oh, and school!). Wealthy Affiliate has taught me everything I need to know about article marketing, but again, it’s all about getting off my butt and applying myself. It’s not necessarily hard either — all that’s required is decent writing skills and away you go.

So far I’ve managed to pump out 72 articles in the past 3 months, earning me a total of USD$90.54. This mightn’t sound like a lot (especially considering that each article takes around 15-20 minutes to write), but considering that the majority of the articles still attract a decent amount of views every day, it’s likely that over the course of a year these articles will bring in a little over $360/year.

Let’s say I actually managed to pump out 10 articles/day (300/month). Those 300 articles will attract $400/month in sales, eventually bringing in $4800/year. Now, imagine if I wrote 10 articles/day for an entire year. 3650 articles - approx $4500/month - approx $54000/year. And that’s just based on my (rather poor) results from my 72 articles. Figures are exciting aren’t they?

I think I just inspired myself.

Well as I prepare to receive a bill exceeding $500 from the oh-so kind and fair company that is Telstra, I am wielding a pair of scissors in my right hand to finally say good bye to the evil Telstra cable at midnight tonight.

August was the month of hell for the Schembri’s internet. We were capped on August 14th - resulting in speeds slower than dialup (despite Telstra advertising a sustained speed of 64kb down). We couldn’t really afford to have such slow speeds, so we upgraded to the “Bigpond Cable Extreme” plan a couple of days later. Bad decision.

Telstra failed to notify us that what we had downloaded would roll over into our new plan until our next billing period. To put it in simpler terms; if we had downloaded 12gb on our previous plan and upgraded to the 20gb plan, we would only have 8gb to use for the remainder of the month. It’s all there in fine print, but Mr. Trujillo - this is NOT something that can be disregarded, especially when you’re expected to pay $0.15 PER MEGABYTE when you exceed the cap.

Telstra does email you a few notifications when you’re about to exceed the cap, but considering that every Bigpond email is prone to endless streams of spam (even though you’ve never published the address on the internet), they’re useless. How about actually putting one of your call center robots to use and notify your “valued customers” through a courtesy call?

/signs up with TPG

Just over a year ago was my baby’s computer’s very first birthday. It’s crazy to think that it’s been a whole year since I arrived home after a memorably pathetic day at school, only to see the eye-candy that was the three plain brown Dell boxes stacked on my bed. It was the equivalent of a nerd’s Christmas.

Unpacking the boxes was a highly enjoyable experience. Apple’s elegant packaging has nothing on Dell’s, especially when you have to scrummage through mountain loads of cables and CDs that you’ll never end up installing. Yes indeed, this paragraph is a sarcastic one. Apple is way better than Dell.

Anyway, I just thought it was important to note the significance of my pride and joy’s birthday. I had bought the computer with it’s specifications maxed out, and yet only 12 months later, it’s graphics card is now inferior. Just goes to show how fast technology is pacing along — or better yet — how much I should’ve FREAKING BOUGHT A MAC INSTEAD.

Stats for those interested:

Dell Dimension 9150
3.2ghz dual core processor
2GB RAM
nVidia 7900GS 256mb
320GB HD