For a couple of days I thought this site was crawling along horribly and decided to have a dig around only to find a 1gb, yes I did say 1gb error log on my server. This looks to have been caused by a post by email type plugin. I will be having another crack at this on another ‘sacrificial’ site maybe over the Xmas hols  but as it goes it’s all hands on deck at the moment. The idea though came about from always having a problem with autoposting, the system itself works faultlessly and I have one site that runs on wp robot, only problem is you have no real control over what it throws onto your site.

So the other day I see Ed Dale off the 30 Day Challenge in a video, iPhone in hand, posting to his blog. Basically the process went iPhone > Reader (iPhones really great RSS reader) > Dale then sent it to Instapaper and then emailed the RSS article from Instapaper to his blog via email. Straight away I saw this was a great idea because you could have all the latest news lined up ready for you to inspect then send straight to your blog.

Now I run a cycling site and I thought this would be fantastic for news reports. There was actually one story I picked up days before the largest cycling site over here. If I had the system nailed it’d have been on my site in minutes. So anyhow I lost half a day trying to get this to work to no avail and then today I find a monster error file on the server. I think I’ll save this one for a rainy day but hopefully anyone reading this can see how great it’d be for news style sites.

The other news is my web design business is going great guns and my day job is crumbling under me, basically my boss thinks it’s a great idea to leave me guessing as to whether I get paid or not and I’ve come very close to jacking everything in. Only problem is in the space of 2-3 months I’ve secured about 5 clients (2 really great ones) , I still need more but here’s the scary bit, I’ve got these clients without a website. So this has now taken priority for a while.

I’ll definitely be back on the affiliate circuit though as it’s 100% integral to my business plan but sometimes in business you have to knuckle down hard, even if it does mean working to 1:40am in the morning only to get up again at 6:30am for the day job, so if things seem a little quiet round here it’s not because I’ve gone off the boil, I’m just a little busy.

So many people tell you buy this, buy that, this will make you six figures a year, look at my shiny new Lambo.

Ok, to start, 2010 has been a really great year for me so far, most importantly I can see financial freedom on the horizon which is something I wasn’t too sure I’d ever see for reasons that will become apparent as you read on. Although I have had to put my business hat on this year, which is why I thought I’d write a post about something that is rarely talked about in a negative light in affiliate circles

….. and that’s money.

So many people tell you buy this, buy that, this will make you six figures a year, look at my shiny new Lambo. Meanwhile in the real world there’s people like you and me saying ….. ‘oh shit I’m running out of money and I have bills to pay, what the hell am I going to do? I know I’ll buy another course.’

Even though right at this moment I’m making a nice stack of cash from my affiliate sites I’m in a position where I’m still not earning enough to cover my mortgage and bills yet (this is about as much as I’ll ever divulge on my affiliate earnings), this wouldn’t normally be a problem but currently my day job looks a touch shaky, and my web design business is only just taking off and it’s currently being used to kill the huge credit card debts which were solely incurred from my affiliate endeavours.

Ironically the internet side of my day job has been performing amazingly well year in year out since I took over the position, but there seems to be issues elsewhere in the business which I’m not at liberty to talk about and don’t fully understand, this is my main area of worry at the moment as my affiliate activities are making money but just not enough to live on full time without the day job, so agonisingly close yet so far.

And worst of all using my forecasting I can see I’m a month away from maxing out one of my credit cards at nearly $14,000

So coming back to the subject in question, my spending on affiliate bits and pieces really didn’t come to light until I hired an accountant, mainly for my new web design company. That’s when I found after prepping my accounts I’d spent just over $18,000 over the last three years on hosting, domains, software, hardware and the biggest culprit ……. Training. (WSO’s, books and memberships) yet made a big fat $0, in fact you can see my first ever affiliate commissions on my aptly named first ever accountability update.

Like a lot of new affiliates I spent a lot of time learning but not much time taking action until for me, the last few weeks of 2009.

Most normal people would be horrified at this but I can now see light at the end of the tunnel. Strangely enough I know I’d do exactly the same again in a heartbeat, with a few key changes though. The thought of not having a day job ruining your weekends (and holidays in my case), or more importantly your life in general was incentive enough to go absolutely eyeballs out on this affiliate marketing thing and give it everything I’ve got.

And I bet there’s loads of affiliates who can relate to this whole story, with maybe just a lucky few who’ve hit the big time right off the bat wondering what the hell I’m talking about.

So lets deal with the main areas of spending common to most affiliates (minus one that I barely entered and still managed to rack up $18k in spending) and how I went about cutting costs like any business would cutting out the dead wood.

Domains (Nearly $3000)

This is one of my large areas of spending, every time I used to crank up Micro Niche Finder I’d find myself buying a handful of domains to develop but in reality soon after I’d find a new affiliate method to try out and forget about developing the domains I’d bought.

Really what I should of done in hindsight is buy a small batch of say 5 at a time, then develop them, then when it comes to renewal time look to see if the revenue earned was more than what the domain is worth (factoring in the hosting too).

What I have to do now is monitor my domains due every month to see which I really want to let go to avoid more unnecessary expense on the credit card bill.

I still have some absolutely cracking domains in my portfolio but I’d say most people would look and say they could easily afford to lose 15-20% of what they own because they either have no intention of developing those domains, or some have become dead niches and past their peak, which in my case were a load of movie review domains.

Hosting (Couple of dollars short of $2000)

I rarely get wound up enough to swear but …..
OH F*CK IT!!!!!

Hosting should be a straightforward choice, but when you’re starting out and not too sure what direction you’re going in this can creep up on you with no real warning if you’re not tracking your finances. My aim was to build a network of sites all grouped up on different IP addresses so I could take advantage of building a few links here and there from different IP addresses instead of linking in and out from the one hosting account IP address which would have been completely pointless.

What I should have done is start a reseller account, which is what I have done now and it’s saved me a nice chunk of cash every month. A couple of unexpected bonuses are that I can now administer all my Cpanels from one login, and I can scale up my hosting easily without having to move a bunch of sites.

Not to mention as and when my sites get strong enough in authority to use for link building I can buy a unique IP address for each domain at $2 per month.

If you already do have a whole load of WordPress sites to move, WP Twin is fantastic for this, I used it for one of my most heavily modified WordPress sites and the whole process was a breeze, what could have been a complicated process was very simple. Plus it avoids the clunky operation of moving from one Cpanel to another Cpanel, it might just be me but I didn’t find it the most streamlined of operations, maybe I haven’t done it enough times.

Finally if you have a lot of sites interlinking to each other from different IP addresses because you have them on different hosts and you’re going to put them on the same reseller account IP then weigh up whether you can really afford to lose these links from your link profile, you won’t lose your external links, social bookmarks, article links etc as essentially they’ll all be pointing to the same domain name where ever it’s hosted, but all the links from each of your own sites internally will essentially be coming from the one IP address in the end which will diminish the strength of those links greatly.

The biggest culprit by far …….. Training ($11,000)

Oh my god ….. how much did I spend? All the sellers tell you, all the experienced affiliates tell you but nobody you really know or trust tells you which is why you pay no real attention to it.

The word is, not the bird (excuse the Family Guy humour) but ….. Concentrate on the one income source, master it, then move on to another and master that.

Oh why the hell didn’t I listen? If a family member who had experience in making money online had said this I’d of listened but no, people I didn’t know were telling me, I rarely get wound up enough to swear but ….. OH F*CK IT!!!!!

All those “little” $7, $17 and $49 payments soon mount up to something nasty.

Now I’m not saying all training is bad, there’s a lot of good training out there, but from nearly $11,000 worth of training over three years (nearly 80% of the $11,000 was spent in 2009) the ones that stand out head and shoulders above the rest are … (I have a few other good products I’ve used that I still want to review at a later date but these were the cream of the crop. I’m not saying buy them, by all means take a look, but when I look and stripped everything back, these were the three on their own that were solely responsible for me making money online).

1) Affiliit
Even though I’ve pretty much culled everything I spend on the credit card on a monthly subscription basis in way of training memberships and services this is the only one staying for sure, Clint and Chris were not only the catalyst for me taking major action and finally making money online this year but they also have everything you could possibly need in the way of training on Affiliit, you have a choice of paid traffic or free methods it’s up to you and they’re really helpful guys.

2) Niche Profit Course
Amazon is one of my regular income streams now and I’d say after numerous Amazon courses this is by far my favourite, if any friends or family wanted to try affiliate marketing this is the one I’d recommend them to buy first and only, in other words master it, only then move onto other methods.

Chris Guthrie has done a fantastic job of creating a course that will help anyone who’s starting from scratch and doesn’t know anything. To people like me who’ve done a lot of courses but still feel like there’s some missing piece of information they’re looking for.

Which I think for me was being shown some of Chris’s very own money sites, also explaining why he thought they work, cementing proof that selling on Amazon does work.

If you want more on this I’ve created a blow by blow account of every single course module on another site here ….

3) Ken Spano (Kenster on the Warrior Forum)
Ken is one of those rare few who when he posts up a WSO everyone who’s bought from him before dive in like rabid dogs to get what’s on offer. The two guides I bought from him were centred around CPA offers but reading through them you’re not just presented with a system but a new way of thinking.

The best one by far, and to be honest the all time best ever CPA related WSO on the Warrior Forum is Rags to Riches, I’ve not bought much for a while on the Warrior Forum but it’ll be hard to eclipse this WSO,

There’s hundreds of people on the Warrior forum who’ll agree 100% that this is solid stuff not only giving you a great foundation but also offering new ideas of his and creating the same mindset yourself to create your own ideas.

I can’t vouch for his latest course basically because I’m 100% focused on what I’m doing right now and I know for certain I’ll get sidetracked if I sign up.

(Late Addition – 20-11-10)
4) Warrior Forum – The War Room
I can’t believe I forgot this one, inside the Warrior Forum there’s a paid section called the War Room, I think if you click the forum section half way down you’ll get instructions on how to join.

What you’ll find in there is a gold mine of information, beta software trials and top marketers strategies and plans. There have been quite a few Warrior Special Offers go live for free in there just as a trial run. Every post has to be moderated before it goes live and the only criteria is that the post has some value. I paid $30 a couple of years back, I really do not know how much it costs now but I think it’s around $37 (one off payment). I would say if you’re short on money this is the one I’d recommend but that would be doing the War Room an injustice and would almost devalue the amazing content in there.

For the other $2000

This came out as regular run of the mill expenses like hardware and a couple of pieces of software, in comparison this didn’t seem too bad as I’ve had 2 monitors, 1 new computer, laptop, a couple of printers, ink, backup drives and various software, I won’t bore you with the rest.

So after all of that what can you take away from this agonising story of debt?

Concentrate on just one or two income streams your comfortable working with, I’m really hoping this post will prove the point that’s been repeated so many times yet so many people ignore this right up to the point of bankruptcy.

Any training I buy now, anything I read, all my time spent working is seriously focused on my main areas of income, nothing else.

Even though you’re thinking this is just a bit of spare money to start when you get your first few cheques, it can and almost certainly will turn into a business believe me, in which case you’ll need an accountant and you’ll need to keep track of your finances. Do it now, make a habit of it, start making PDF copies of all your purchase receipts, file them in an orderly fashion and create a simple spreadsheet of all your transactions and do this religiously every month, it doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.

This not only keeps your spending in check so you can spot potential problem areas not just from past spending but forecasting what’s coming up ahead, also when it comes to the time you feel you need to get an accountant it’ll save you weeks of trawling through your past spending. Just as an example it took me 3 weeks, actually think it was longer and it was as boring and depressing as hell, so I could basically account for all my spending and claim it back off my tax bill.

Another little tip is to use one credit card or bank account for all your affiliate related purchases if you can, when I opened a business account, and had spending spread across multiple credit cards and bank accounts then explained this to my accountant. I’m sure while I was explaining it he was gritting his teeth and making a stabbing action with his pen at the desk.

And finally, this will blow your mind but I’ve only ever spent less than $300 on paid traffic, ironically I’ve spent more on paid traffic related courses. It really does scare me to think where I’d be now if I had to add this into the equation, more likely on the streets or living back at my mums house, or maybe a very slim chance of being rich.

So, be careful, even though this might be a hobby for you, treat it as a business because it soon could be.

And for me? Well I’m using all my affiliate and web design business income to rectify my mistakes and clear my debts, I know for certain I’ll have a bright future ahead but I’ve now got to wade through a pile of crap to get there, although I have learned a valuable lesson from my mistakes in not treating this as a hobby and making it more like a business endeavour which is so ironic seeing as this is exactly what I do successfully day in day out as an ecommerce manager.

So please don’t make the same mistakes I did.

In fact what it turned out to be was one of the best scripts I’ve ever bought. To be honest it’d be so easy to overlook the importance of this but for me a similar problem that needed solving cropped up last Saturday and if I had this script then it could have saved me a huge amount of pain (it’s on my accountability update I wrote last Sunday if you want to read the long version), just reading this next part will make you realise how powerful and useful this script is.

This is one of my all time favourite productivity tools that sits right up there with Roboform.

Rewind 1 week, I have a heavily modified WordPress install on a test server so the client can see his site. The test server was having problems last Saturday but the long and short of it was that I’d set up WHMCS client billing on my reseller account but didn’t realise on set up that for some reason it was blocking all other incoming IP addresses apart from me the administrator, and nobody else could view the sites on my account. I tried lots of things to remedy the problem but being new to the WHMCS system, and getting in a bit of a flap about it all really wasn’t helping matters and the very last resort was to move the WordPress site to another server.

This was something I really didn’t want to do as it wasn’t your average install and last time I did it, it took well over an hour to move just from my local test server, then re-configure the whole site. Just to give you an idea, the client site was:

• A totally bespoke WP Theme, with child themes, built from scratch.
• Heavily modded and re-branded admin area through the functions.php file, if you’ve ever logged into the backend of one of my WordPress installs you won’t even recognise it as being a WordPress site.
• 52 Pages of content, all on the new WordPress dynamic menu system, which means if you do a standard move, copy / re-install a wordpress backup, the menu settings won’t be transferred and you have to rebuild it.
• There’s a forms plugin which has numerous settings for each form on the site
• All in One SEO, activated and in use.
• An embedded catchpa plugin, part hard coded into the theme, part plugin.
• Various levels of role management for both me and the client.

This is probably scratching the surface, but I thought if anything is going to trip this WordPress Twin Script up, this’ll be the site to do it.

Well, fat chance of a refund, first time using it I transferred the whole site from one server to another in 12 minutes, and most of this time was spent downloading and re-uploading the site backup, they couldn’t make the script any easier to use if they tried, in fact I’ll be surprised if anyone actually reads the instructions.

And? …… Every single little bit of the site on the new server was running as per normal, bloody amazing!!!!

Apart from the regular uses of moving and backing up, this would also be a huge benefit for site flippers selling WordPress sites or selling batches of niche sites.

For the price being asked for WP Twin, it’s tiny compared to the amount of time you could end up wasting, really this is one of my all time favourite productivity tools that sits right up there with Roboform.

As an example I’m going to tell you about a complete screw up of a day I had yesterday. It started off simple enough and I thought I’d finish on the weekend with a couple of training runs on the bike, but instead of my usual 100km Saturday training run, I spent 12 hours trying to fix something for a client instead.

If you want to make some real money in this business, that’s what you have to treat it as ….. A business, hobbies are something you do for fun and most of the time for free

Why? Or more importantly, why did this happen? I strayed from my tried and tested processes. Coming from a manufacturing background I have been involved with certain processes such as six sigma and lean. I’m sure most of the staff who were taught this with me have long forgotten the info now but for me it totally stuck. I run pretty much everything from my training on the bike to building a website (and I have set processes depending on which type of site I’m building too) but the long and short of it is I always without fail (apart from yesterday) plan, do and review.

So I do the job once, write up the processes involved, colour code what I think can be optimised then every time I do that same job I note down any improvements, everything is tested and optimised to the Nth degree. Then all that data is taken through into costing, which means I not only know if I’m hitting my desired hourly rate but also if the project or chunks of it are worth outsourcing.

Anyhow back to yesterday, I had a clients site almost ready to go. Put it in my shiny new reseller account and hey presto all looked good. Small problem!!! You could only see the site from my IP address, I’m still not too sure what happened but I’m suspecting it’s to do with when I connected my reseller account to my WHMCS account for billing. All the time I kept thinking I had the answer only to be confronted with another ‘cannot connect’ message when trying to view the site through a proxy, yet through my browser everything looked fine. Finally I accepted defeat and moved the whole site which was a heavily pimped out and modified WordPress site off my reseller account, I now need to ‘play and test’ this system when the pressure is off with my own sites before unleashing it onto my clients again, this was one huge lesson learned.

Even worse I have a course on setting up as a hosting Co that I’ve not had time to look at and put into action but took the ‘how hard can it be approach’ and tried to wing it …….. what an idiot!

If you’re always flying by the seat of your pants on projects with regards to the mechanics you will lose a hell of a lot of money. Or it’ll take to forever to build up a decent affiliate income. Point in case being I started the year building a few Amazon affiliate sites, the first couple took 2-3 hours each from registering the domain name to going live. Using the systems above I can bang out four every two and a half hours now and yep, even the niche selection process is mapped through an excel sheet so I can plug in results from current sites and map them to new niches by adding a few figures lowering my chances of failure every time I build a new site.

If you want to make some real money in this business, that’s what you have to treat it as ….. A business, hobbies are something you do for fun and most of the time for free.

This has also been due to my web design efforts really picking up which is going to be part of the overall plan so I have a really nice mix of work, and also some degree of insurance that in the future if one of my income streams stops, say for instance Amazon ban me for some reason unbeknown to me, I’ll still have a steady income coming in.

This has also been quite liberating at a tough time in my day job, but instead of a few years ago where I’d of panicked I now feel confident enough that the business will be my lifeline. So much so that earlier in the week one of the guys I work with (who always has a negative view on things) said what happens if this internet marketing and web design thing of yours doesn’t work out after all that money you’ve spent on it. Without thinking I just said ‘There’s no way that’s going to happen’. I’d have to spend all day sleeping for it not to work, I’ve never been so amazingly confident of anything in my life.

I will hopefully in the future do a little guide for anyone new out there ‘in the real world’ who doesn’t want to risk everything on credit cards to hone their PPC skills and wants to build up some sort of safety net. There are a few little tricks I’ve learned along the way, but it really does boil down to either targeting a service you can provide or building simple affiliate / Adsense sites. Then re-investing that money back into PPC. I however need to clear some debts first before I go into this all guns blazing but I know 100% it will work. It may be a bit slower than the methods some other affiliates practice but you won’t lose the shirt off your back doing it.

Anyway, back to the work this week. Pretty much all of the week has been spent streamlining my systems and looking for new offline services to provide. I look back at the way I used to work and it horrifies me to think how much time I’d spend working on what I thought were one off tasks for a bespoke site but were in fact repetitive tasks. There was one part of a site that has taken me well over 3 hours this week, but next time I do it it’ll take about 10 minutes now I’ve documented the whole process. Do this throughout the course of a site build and the build time comes down considerably.

Well the basic upshot of this week is I can finally see light at the end of the tunnel and soon my life won’t be governed by a J.O.B , soon I’ll be the one calling the shots and there’s absolutely nothing my boss can do about it now.

Trouble was my wages were late (nearly 2 weeks) and instead of my boss doing the honourable thing and telling me straight away when the payroll was done he just hoped I wouldn’t ask, and I should know when the payroll is completed because I’m the one who does it (yes, on top of IT, web, ecommerce and general business duties) and I rush it through as priority on the 1^st of every month. Trouble is my boss had decided to pay everyone, apart from me and a couple of other senior guys.

I thought shit!!! This is no better than having a non paying client so thought I’ll give them benefit of the doubt and a chance to rectify the problem, kept chasing and kept getting fobbed off. Until the Friday where I thought enough is enough, if I’m not paid I won’t be back Monday.

Well, I finally got paid in the end but I have a gut feeling something is horribly wrong with the company and it’s all coming to a head tomorrow (Monday).

Thing is another affiliate wrote about job security, and to be honest if you have a good business plan and discipline to get things done there’s no reason why you shouldn’t succeed, in fact the more I talk about the web design side of my business the more certain I am it’s going to work and compliment my affiliate activities. Everything has been costed to the Nth degree and even better I pitched what I do to one of my training buddies today and really felt no guilt about what I was doing, where a few years back I might have had some doubt because I either thought I was being greedy or my skills weren’t up to scratch, right now if someone rejected my offer I wouldn’t think ‘oh well ….’ I’d be thinking ‘what’s wrong with you, this is a fantastic offer’.

For those of you just starting out as an affiliate, one piece of advice I can give you is look to see what other services you can add to your own private affiliate projects (site flipping, link building, article writing etc). My plan is to run a web design service for a limited amount of private clients and work on my own private projects, this way I not only have a safety net if someone like Amazon bans me (don’t know why they would) but also having a good reliable ‘business’ income source I can use to start up my paid traffic activities, in fact the first month I’ll be ploughing hundreds of pounds back into PPC for my web design leads. This is a huge plan, which is infinitely scalable, and I’m writing processes for everything so I can cost up at my hourly rate and outsource the low skill parts of the job.

I have never felt so close to achieving my ultimate goal of breaking free from my day job and going it alone. Already the sense of freedom is amazing because I feel like I no longer have to accept what my boss says. If I don’t like it I’ll leave, but on the other hand I want to stick around for a little while. Last thing I want to do is walk only to find out a week down the line I could of ended up with a nice tidy redundancy settlement.

I say bring it on mo-fo, never been so ready in my whole entire life

Whether you’re just starting out or have been building Amazon niche sites for years, this course will definitely help. Split over 10 videos along with bonus videos on domains and outsourcing, also the Azon theme as an additional bonus this really is worth the money. Not to mention the case studies of live sites that Chris is actually making money from right now.

If you want to check out what the fuss is about just pop over to see the full review.

For the foreseeable future I’ll be trying to pull in more web clients to create a steady stream of money to throw at my affiliate endeavours. It’s all looking more and more certain now as I progress forward and I think this is the best way to do things rather than blow huge amounts of money on paid traffic via credit cards so that in effect I’m only spending time.

My current Amazon affiliate sites aren’t doing to badly either. I have one that’s making a sale every couple of days now and I still get excited when I see those affiliate commissions rising. I think all I can say to anyone who’s just starting out is keep plugging away.

I did start out with the Amazon sites but stalled earlier in the year as I was seeing no commissions coming through for a few months but once they do start coming through it gives you a massive boost, or it did for me anyway.

Think my overall targets have changed too, from earlier in the year I wanted to go all out with paid traffic too, but now I’ve realised I wasn’t really ready to start using it effectively and would of dug myself into a deep financial hole.

I’ve come to realise now there’s no shame in taking things steady, there’s lots of people saying ‘I want to make $100 a day within six months’ but sometimes it’s not realistic, with me I have a day job and a tough training schedule on the bike which means at the moment I’m also doing 120km training runs on top of my day job so I’m in no state to switch the computer on when I get back.

Setting the targets though is the important part, I’ve not reached mine yet but I still keep working away steadily in the knowledge that when I earn enough to cut my hours first or eventually quit my day job then my affiliate and web client earnings will ramp up big time.

Also I’ve found not to work too hard and burn yourself out, if you have outside interests or want to take the family out, do it. You’ll come back to your affiliate work more refreshed and raring to go the next day than resenting working when you could have been out enjoying yourself. The work of an affiliate is always an ongoing process and there are no shortcuts, if you keep making sure you’re making steady progress all the time you will find yourself staring your goals right in the face.

I know now that I’ve gone way past the ‘does this affiliate thing really work’ stage and I’m now 100% certain that if I keep doing what I’m doing I will get there, for me I’m sure I’ll be hitting my goals within the next 12 months and to think I have the choice of either steadily working for the next 12 months or spending the next 25 years or more in a day job it suddenly becomes a no brainer.

I had been told on good authority a while back that offering set price packages for web design wasn’t such a good idea? Hmmm. I think not. I can see where they’re coming from but I think sold right these smaller packages can act as brilliant lead in for those either not too sure about the importance of putting their business online (believe me I’ve already had one this year) or just plain old trust issues when it comes to working with a new vendor. Or just don’t want to commit a large chunk of their start up budget to a website and want to scale it up with the business, not doing the equivalent of setting up a small bookstore and renting out a warehouse the size of an airport hanger because one day they see themselves being the next Amazon.com , They may be, but it’s all about being smart about scaling up.

Thing is I’ve already unwittingly gained one customer who’s now one of my top clients this way, build them a small 5 page website, and then a few years later after some small jobs and nurturing a pretty healthy business relationship they’re now ready and more importantly enthusiastic about scaling the online side of their business. All the issues of not getting paid and trusting a new company are non-existent which makes for a very smooth project flow.

The question you have to ask yourself is what can you offer on some low cost start up packages, which nobody else in your area can or is offering? Really stand out from the crowd, only hard part I’m finding is keeping my dirty little secret a secret from the 101 other local web design wanabees but at the same time making it blindingly obvious to the potential clients that what they’re getting is outstanding value.

This is the secret, giving outstanding value. I won’t say what I’m offering but I will point you in the right direction and say that to use this business model on one customer as a bespoke offering would cost 10x what I’m offering it for. But, to build this whole operation into an optimized system means the clients get amazing value for money and I get a nice little payoff each time I do it, this truly is a win win offer for everyone. Bit like the guys who offer software as a service, to do it once would be financial suicide for most programmers but to replicate it as a business model and optimize it means they get a nice chunk of change and the client gets something that if built as a bespoke package would cost a small fortune.

On another note I’ve been stepping up my PHP and MySQL activities, this will be another important part of my overall plan, I used to think about the hours of programming but now I’ve got Dreamweaver CS5 I’m absolutely gobsmacked at how fast I can build database driven apps, still have a way to go on this but it’s definitely an ongoing thing.

And lastly my Amazon earnings have finally taken off, I’m hoping even more once Chris Guthrie brings out his Amazon Affiliates guide and I find the time to read it, all I can say is I’ve followed this guy from time to time for about 6 months now and he does seem to be the real deal and even better the book he’s offering with all his insider tips will be a must read. I’m guessing it’ll be a more organised and comprehensive version of his legendry Warrior Forum post. Time will tell but anything to give that little extra edge to my affiliate earnings will be more than welcome and I’ll give a full review once I’ve read it, forgot to say the book will be free to his list and Facebook subscribers as part of a lead in to a paid video course.

Well, I’m typing this up in MS Word at the moment, broadband is down in my area and support have said it’ll be 4-5 hours until it’s back on so I think it’s time to catch up on a few tutorials now.

Oh, and work next week? Well this is the first holiday where I’m not just wishfully thinking sometime soon I’ll be a full time affiliate / freelancer but absolutely 100% certain of it now. So going back is isn’t going to be such a depressing affair tomorrow , I’ll be just thinking one day closer until I call the shots on the rest of my life.