The At Home Couple

In The Blink Of An Eye

I have a serious problem right now. It seems that the older I get, the faster time moves. Yesterday I was 12 years old, playing hockey outside without a single care in the world. Then I blinked… And I’m 27, saying good-bye to another year with a laptop full of accomplishments and failures, ready to take on the new year like a spartan army with their back’s against the wall. I understand why time is flying by… But what can I do to slow it down? Can I slow it down? Some say it’s all about stopping to smell the roses, and taking the time to appreciate the finer things in life:

Like midgets and candle wax.

All in all, I’m in a much better place now than I was when this year started. 2008 began with Veronica, her family and myself grieving the passing of her father – who was the type of person that you only encounter every other lifetime. His death was an event that set me over the edge, plummeting towards what is most important and completely abandoning everything deemed to be secondary, without the slightest hesitation.

Not only did that moment get my ass into gear, but it also made me re-evaluate (for the 37th time) this college-to-cubicle system of work that’s been accepted by the general population – put in your 35 years of service to society, and retire, having accomplished nothing along the way. It’s legalized slave labor as far as I’m concerned. There is zero emphasis on passion and dream catching, and total focus on stability and safety. Taking risks is, well, risky – and risky will not secure your future. Show up for work on time, maintain neutrality and indifference, and when it’s time for the final vacation, you’ll be taken care of.

As the Wizard of Oz once said, “Not no way! Not no how!”

On a high note, this year has ended with me clearing my 3rd consecutive month profiting over $1000 online. I’ve positioned myself and made my mark. I’ve met some of the most amazing people who will, without a doubt in my mind, be future business partners and vacation buddies. I’ve discovered a world of possibilities, beneath the sales hype and secrets, that will provide Veronica and I with safety and stability of a different color. A world where we determine our hours, our rewards and our shortcomings. A world where we are in control of the books…

In the blink of an eye I have become a man. A man who is leaving in an hour to sip scotch and bring in 2009 amongst the company of my successful circle. People who’s words I appreciate, and consultation I seek in times of desperation. If all of you were here, I would be celebrating with you as well – because you guys have kept me going. I’ve created this place where I can speak freely, and you crazy bastards have accepted me from the get-go! Whether your laughing with me or at me is irrelevant – but the fact that you stop by whenever you get a minute and share stories with me still blows my mind to this very day.

Word is bond…

Please take some time to think about where 2008 started for you, and where it has ended. Look towards 2009 with a pen and pad handy – and begin to sculpt your future. I strongly believe that 12 months is all it takes to go from struggling to comfortable, and with the right plan and network of people surrounding you – success will come knocking. I wish you all the best in the new year, and hope to see each and every one of you at the top!

Oh yeah, if you’re going out tonight, don’t drink and drive. If you see someone who’s getting ready to drive, take their keys and give them a pillow. Don’t be stupid, stupid!

Cheers,

Elijah

Karma, Good Deeds, And Free PLR

Here’s a great story for all you crazy mofos in the blogosphere. About a week ago I was domain searching for an upcoming site flip I’m working on, and after about 30 minutes of being denied I finally found a gem – www.TheStressFactor.com. Pretty sweet right? Immediately I determined that this was too good to be true (as most things in life are) and I was also suspicious because the .org and .net were registered, and when typing them into Firefox I noticed that they both redirected to the same site.

Do I grab the domain and hope that I get a sexy offer for it down the road? Or do I try and get a hold of the owner letting him know that I was interested, just in case he was waiting for the .com to become available?

Here’s where my good deed steps in…

Being the half decent guy that I am, I chose to contact the owner of the site and advise him that I was interested in purchasing TheStressFactor.com, and if he was waiting for it to become available and I didn’t hear back from him in 48 hours, I was going to go ahead with the purchase. This seemed fair to me.

Well, sure enough the next day I received a response from a guy named Ronnie Nijmeh who thanked me for contacting him, and said he was so glad to receive my email because he had been waiting for the .com to become free for quite some time! Ronnie proceeded to let me know that he owned a PLR membership site, www.PLR.me, which specializes in the self help/personal development niche, and to show his gratitude he would love to give me free access for the rest of the month to download all the December content – fuck yeah!

Karma is king…

Feeling so good about my decision, I checked up on Ronnie’s Flagship site www.ACQYR.com to see what this guy is all about, and to my surprise I discovered that not only is Ronnie the founder of a personal skill and development firm in Toronto, but he’s also nationally recognized with national broadcast appearances, live’s in Toronto currently and is from the same neck of the woods as myself – Scarborough. Talk about a small world!

I guess my whole point to this ramble is pretty simple – even though it may seem at times that the Internet business and making money online is a dog-eat-dog world, where you have to step on shoes to get to the top, the true success lies in recognizing opportunities. Whether that opportunity is to follow your intuition and reach your hand out to a complete stranger while disregarding personal gain, or a chance to sacrifice your own gain to better the situation of someone who you feel deserves the opportunity more.

One tiny good deed put me in the path to connect with an awesome, super inspirational and resourceful contact. In return that good deed got me a shit-load of free high quality PLR content in a niche that I frequent, and at the end of the day I have a kick ass post to share with you guys, to fill some silence during my dry spell. It’s win-win baby! Don’t be greedy, and you will be rewarded – I promise.

Cheers,

Elijah

CPA Offers And Offline Marketing

For those of you who are unaware, Toronto is a massive metropolis – to the likes of New York or Chicago. When I was still working a shitty cubicle-bound day job, I would ride the subway to and from work on a daily basis, and during this ride it’s common, almost ritualistic, for the commuting gerbils to pick up a free copy of the local paper we have here called the Metro. Now more than often I go straight to the business/financial section, peruse through some classifieds and continue on to my daily horoscope on the second last page – and this is where I was struck with an “outside the box” moment…

Newspapers are slowly dying…

Let me get right to the point – every town, city and county has several free local newspapers which all survive off of the advertising revenue they receive. In a city like Toronto, the Metro paper gets into the hands of probably half the population (3 million +) which presents a great opportunity for some prime time, low cost, creative marketing.

I went onto the Metro website and took a peak at the advertising program they have, and some of the pricing options available, and found out that I could get a reasonably size block on the front page for less than $50/week – are you kidding me?? I found this to be absolutely scalable, and well worth a trial run.

Here’s the plan…

Grab 1 or 2 of the more popular free local newspapers in your city or town, go to the classifieds section (usually near the back) and you should find info for advertising – usually a phone number or email address. Find out the pricing info, as well as reach for the first 3 pages of the paper.

Find a strong performing CPA offer from Neverblueads or Copeac, keeping in mind seasonal and social factors that may cause certain offers to perform better. Here’s an example of what I mean: It’s Christmas time, so you could find a dating offer and put up an ad like “Don’t Spend The Holidays Alone – Hot New Local Dating Site, Sign Up For Free! www.blahblah.com”. Another offer that might work now is targeting last minute Christmas shoppers with a free gift card, or another incentive based CPA offer and post an ad up like “Guilty Of Last Minute Shopping? Claim Your FREE $250 (enter store name) Gift Card Now! Limited Quantities Available! www.blahblah.com”

Are you getting my drift?

Many top performing CPA offers have custom landing pages available, so all you need is to grab a domain name to host it, or if permitted by your affiliate network, redirect straight to the advertisers landing page of your choice.

If you’re even half decent with Photoshop, you could make a really attractive ad in under an hour, $7 for a domain name, and if you want to take it an extra step – make some flyers that are similarly branded and post them up around busy sections of the city.

Most dating, scholarship, loan and gift card offers range from $3-$20+ payout for a simple form completion. When you look at the investment compared to potential return – one would be stupid not to take advantage of the struggling local newspapers that provide cost effective advertising options. What if that $60 translated into $400 dollars per week, would you consider that to be a sound investment? I think we all know the answer here.

Think outside the box, because each day that passes more people are getting into “online” methods of marketing, which means saturation and intense competition – especially with a platform like Adwords. By utilizing offline advertising mediums, one can cash out with minimal time and monetary effort – and after some initial testing you could have a hands off proven stream of revenue to add to your online wallet.

Cheers,

Elijah

I’ve Lost My Way

So it’s very clear that I have lost all steam on TheAtHomeCouple.com – what amuses me the most, is I have no reason why, or when this happened. It’s like one day I woke up and had nothing to write about. Eventually that day turned into weeks, and now I’m at the point where I am.

I want to be very clear in letting all of you guys know that Veronica and I are doing well. We’re doing great actually! I’ve been kicking ass online and making somewhat of a living over the last 3 months; a little white hat, a little black hat, a little NO HAT. I’ve recently hit the point where It would be smart to start outsourcing some of the content creation for my site flips, so I can produce more sites in less time – ultimately increasing my profit for that revenue stream.

To answer a few questions that I’ve received…

I am not selling this blog – no way in hell.

I am going to get back on a regular writing schedule after Christmas, promise!

TheAtHomeCouple.com will be revamped in the early new year, with a new theme, vibe and logo.

I promise to start leaving fucked up comments on your blogs more often as I manage my time and tasks more accordingly (this is where outsourcing comes into play).

That’s it!

I might squeeze out a post before Christmas hits, but in the mean time I hope all of you guys have a great holidays, eating lots of food and drinking lots of other people’s booze. If there’s a girl at your office that you’ve had your eye on, be sure to give her ass a good squeeze at the Christmas party – because it’s the only time of year you can get away with it!

Cheers,

Elijah

All Sales Pages Suck Ass

After I wrote you the title for this post I stopped and asked myself, “I wonder what kinda weird traffic I’m going to be getting for the term suck ass?” Anyways, it’s the first thing that popped out of my head so I wrote it. Over the last few days I’ve been working on an ebook package to flip – while simultaneously building a mini site template to cut down the amount of time it takes me to crank these babies out. Not only do I hate the tedious aspect of working in HTML, but I also hate how crappy most sales pages are.

I have never in my Internet surfing career (10 years) read a sales page that convinced me I should buy something – and that’s the honest truth. If I’ve ever bought something online, whether it be an info product or a service, it was because I did my research or because I have purchased from that person before.

Here’s the dilemma…

As I’m new to the process of creating my very first info product and campaign, I’ve been searching for related products and sites that I feel are examples of what an up-to-date ebook sales package would look like – and to satisfy my expectations I’ve been continually disappointed. I can’t stand the fact that somewhere in the history of info marketing it was decided that this is what works, and this is what encourages people to purchase your product, or opt in to your list.

I realize that there is a science to copy writing – which is a very complex skill to say the least. Developing your ability to write enticing copy that will convert traffic requires training, and the more I reference recent product launches the more I find myself wanting to vomit at the thought of releasing my own.

Change is needed…

Considering my first info product is going to be an off the wall (naked) guide to better blogging, it would be safe to assume that my buyers will fall under a handful of possible categories:

Existing bloggers who are looking to blog more efficiently
Existing bloggers who enjoy my style of writing from TheAtHomeCouple.com (you people)
New bloggers who can’t seem to get things going
Word of mouth bloggers that have read my dumb ass comments around the way
Random newbies who want to start a blog
All people in general who can’t find a bullshit-free product on effective blogging

More importantly, the success of my first launch will rely heavily on who I know – and what they’re willing to do for me. Yes, I know that a bunch of you will blast it on your blogs, or contact me to arrange some sort of contest – but how vital will the role of sales copy and a mini site play in the greater scheme of things?

SuiteJ was telling me earlier that he genuinely believes that 90% of people who buy a product scroll right down to the price. I agree with him entirely.

I think it would be safe to assume that people buying products within the MMO niche, whether it be on the Warrior Forum or via some autoresponder opt in have already made up their mind whether or not they are going to “show love” and make that purchase. Don’t get me wrong, there are still a whole load of people on this planet who have no idea what copy is, and are just starting to read some things about this “affiliate marketing phenomenon” and how to make money blogging – but what’s percentage of people really read the entire sales page and base their purchase decision on that?

I think there needs to be a change in the way we market within this make money niche. All these “Find Out How A 7 Year Old Retarded Kid Made $3789.77 In One Month By Selling Drool Samples Online” make me sick – and I’m sure there are a ton of newbies who are getting sick of it as well. Guys like Joel Comm and Frank Kern don’t make a killing because of their sales copy – they make a killing because of who they know, and how many people know them.

Perception is everything and the more visible you are to your potential buyers the more likely it is that your launch will be a success. Selling “make money online” products to the make money online niche has little to do with copy, and everything to do with visibility.

The sales page needs to die and we need a revolution.

That’s my opinion.

Cheers,

Elijah

Monday At The Office With Elijah

In the words of Freddie Taylor, Greetings Blog Family – If you recall a little while back SuiteJ did a video post about his home office, and certain things he has laying around to keep him inspired – so I decided to give you guys a little inside scoop of my world, and my office/studio where I do all of my online work. It’s important to have an office environment filled with tokens and mementos of inspiration – whether it be vinyl records or the latest Sound On Sound magazine. On that note, it’s also important to be comfortable in your office, especially if you’re spending 10-16 hours a day in it.

I shot this video first thing this morning when I woke up, and made sure everything was untouched so you get a good idea of exactly what my working environment is like!

Cheers,

Elijah