It's been a few days.

I've been running around a lot so I haven't done a good job of keeping up with the blogs. I wanted to sit down and jot a few notes and bring everyone up to speed on where I have been.

Well, PPC for VitaminFan.com was dismal. I worked with two smaller PPC networks and while they delivered the clicks, they didn't do much for me-in fact, their was no real return at all for Adsense-thanks heavens the whole experiment cost less than $10.00. I didn't let it run long enough to test whether this was due to design or what-I think if I had let it run long enough, I might have been able to develop a trending pattern as to how many people stayed much past the initial page of the site.

Because I do suspect that design is a factor here, I decided to put the site up to a site review on the AssociatePrograms.Com forum. It's URL is http://www.associateprograms.com/discus. It's a great resource for affiliate information in general and the folks who gave me a site review were AWESOME-thanks Emil and StarHugger (of course that's all I know them by). They mentioned the need for more content-and of course that has been my Achilles heel mainly because it's so difficult to do and also because I procrastinate so much.

Well, speaking of procrastination, it's official. I have 30 days to make this whole affiliate marketing thing work. My story-I left my full time job in January and though I looked for another full time job, I was really wanting to find a way to make affiliate marketing work. My wife is a work at home mom (or was, as she is now about to return to work outside the home in August as a teacher).

Money has held out well-in fact, I was fully funded from January till now and I still have several months of funding available to me, but those resources are finite. In fact, if I cannot make a viable profit (for me, $1,000.00 pure profit) by July 31, 2005, I will need to look for a job of any form (up to now, since I've been working on affiliate marketing, I have really only looked for certain types of jobs. If I don't have the profit by July 31, 2005, I've got to take a job period). What type of job I look for will mainly depend on how close I get to the goal. If I am within 20% of the goal and it's clear that I can reach the goal with just a little more work, I may just look for a part time job. If not (if I'm more than 50% away from the goal), I will need to look for a full time job and treat AM as a hobby.

Of course, July does not end it. I need to have a plan for a viable profit of at least 20% growth month over month from July onward to "keep the doors open". Without that, I again need to plan toward a full time job outside of the home.

I think I have a plan right now-if it works, I will write about it after the end of the month-in fact, I'll probably write a series and title it "30 days to $1,000.00". Wish me luck!

Since I want to test my theory on that before trying to write a book on it, I'll instead blog on other projects I have going this month. VitaminFan.com is not a part of the plan, so I will likely write a lot about how it's going.

I also had a brainstorm in the shower (not really a brainstorm because my sister originally had the idea, but I'll be the one to try to flesh it out and maybe work with her)-I happen to be an African-American and I know firsthand the trials of being an African-American in a corporate world. To that end, I would like to start up an interactive site that allows African-Americans to meet and greet. What I need is for the site to go up in 10 days-that's 10 days working part time, as I have this blog, VitaminFan.com and my 30 days project to work on. That's all a tall order, but I think I'm up to the challenge. I will create a blog for it on it's own-I want that to be a marketing tool to get it a little traffic.

My next focus of marketing will be blog and ping, so my next few entries will likely be about this new project and what I discover about blog and ping. That's all for now, I'll try to be a little more consistent, talk to you all later!