Choosing a Path

I've been absent from the blog for some time, but not because I've been idle. Actually, if anything I've been very focused on exactly how I'm going to pull off my goals.

In his awesome book "Multiple Streams of Internet Income", Robert Allen makes the following statement:

"Successful people rely heavily on their mentors. Ordinary people don't."

I chose a couple of mentors and attached myself to their coattails. Then I came to a fork in the road.

I had narrowed down which path I wanted to follow to two possibilities. The first was selling digital goods, primarily on eBay. I have a tremendous amount of respect for John Thornhill, a Titanium Power Seller on eBay, and I decided to begin selling ebooks on eBay. My early results were encouraging. I opened an ebook store, which I still have at http://vals-bargain-ebooks.com and I was hopeful of developing a steady stream of income in this way.

Then the other shoe dropped.

eBay decided to restrict the sale of digital goods to classified ads (Read more at http://www.work-at-home-parenting.com/digital-goods.html

I'm not saying I have totally abandoned the possibility of making money through selling digital goods. It's just it's not going to be quite as simple as it was. So I have put that path on the back burner for now.

I have decided for the time being to focus on affiliate marketing. I have dabbled in this direction for a while now, but have felt that I somehow have missed the point on how to earn a stream of income I can count on from affiliate marketing.

The one thing I know is people make five figure monthly incomes this way. And I believe this statement (from the movie "The Edge"):

What one man can do, another can do.

If others can make five figures a month in this way, then I can too. I am the first to admit I am technically challenged, which is why I chose to open a site through Site Build It. I'm not afraid to learn, yet there is a learning curve still ahead.

I have been studying everything I can get my hands on regarding affiliate marketing to figure out what I might have missed and I learned the following:

• The money is in the list
• Driving traffic to a squeeze page is a must for building a list
• Follow up messages need to be plugged into an autoresponder

These are the areas I am going to focus on in the immediate future, and as I learn important points, I will share them here.