In recent weeks, I’ve taken a pretty fair amount of heat from doing a testimonial for this program, which was released on 7/1. This is mainly because I gave the testimonial based on a preliminary look at some of the material and my conversations with its creator, not based on personal experience with the program. I also agreed to do so because a friend of mine claimed that he was making a pretty hefty amount of coin per day day off of the “preliminary” method that was distributed.

A few days later, it came to light that some of the methods offered in Income Greed were not necessarily “new” ideas, but ideas that had been around on the internet for quite a while, so our support of it was questioned, and eventually a few of us decided not to back the program.

This has really been bothering me over the last few days. I totally understand my friends’ unwillingness to support the program. I’m the kind of person that believes you back your friend’s play ’til the end…wrong or right.

I’m also the kind of person who believes you should do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going to do it. You give your word, you back it up. That’s just the way it is with me, there’s no other choice. So, I’ve decided that I should put my money where my mouth is.

Therefore, two days ago, I surprised even myself and signed up for Income Greed.

The guy who runs this show, another guy named “Chris” (great name by the way), has been nothing but a class act, even with all of the finger-pointing and name-calling going on. There have been some questions about the kinds of programs that he’s released in the past. Frankly, I couldn’t care less about any of that.

What I care about is whether or not I can use this program to make $200 - $300 a day by the time my time runs out. So if I plunk down my money and it doesn’t work out, then we will all know for sure, won’t we?

Upon the initial sign-up, I received an e-mail saying “thanks, you’ll be contacted regarding your login info within 24 hours”. Uh oh, I thought, here we go. But guess what? Less than 24 hours later, I was logged in and checking out the site.

So Income Greed kicks off with 5 “Income Systems” for us to test, one of which was revealed in the “demo” before the release. There is also a “Rolodex” of resources on everything from CPA & advertising companies to graphic design & hosting solutions. There is also a section full of “Turnkey” websites that you could easily just “plug in” and turn them into our own online business…everything from “Bloggers Guides” to “Camping Recipes”.

This is all well and good, but I’m here for the Income Systems. Therefore, I’m trying to system laid out in the “Demo”…Yahoo Answers. Have I seen this before? Yep. In all, I’ve seen 3 of the 5 initial methods before on the internet, for free. These looks to be about 95% “white hat” methods too, which is nice. Still, the big draw here is supposed to be the coaching and the support. The initial income check shown in the intro video is impressive and Chris says that this should be easily attainable in Month One.

So, I’ve put him to the test and I will say this…he is FAST. Every time I have e-mailed with a question or comment, I get a response within 24 hours…often within 2 hours! Given that this “coaching club” is supposed to be taking on 300 members, the key will be whether or not this is sustainable but, initially at least, the response time is MUCH faster than anything I’ve seen lately.

There is even a “Help Desk” where you can list your questions and have them answered, regarding each of the systems. Again, I see some questions out there that were answered almost immediately.

The interface is also clean and very easy. The only thing that bugs me is that when my system “remembers me”, and it seems that I’m already logged in, it just says “Hello, Chris” and shows the main page with no way to access the members area…so I have to log off and log back on to get to the good stuff.

So yesterday, I tried Yahoo Answers. I’ll talk about it here since this was listed in the “demo” anyway. A friend of mine is also trying a second method given in Month One so I’ll try to keep abreast of his results as well.

In Answers, I created two different accounts tied to two different CPA offers and began working on becoming an “expert” in those areas (not going to tell what they are….sorry!), only dropping an affiliate link every 10 answers or so, per instructions.

I realized quickly that, at least in the early stages, your post count is limited so I will either have to wait a bit to ramp it up, or just create more profiles, perhaps in different niches.

So far today, no results to report, but it’s only been one day. I wouldn’t expect it to take too long to see results, however, so the proof is in the pudding! Stay tuned.

Well, it’s been an interesting few days, to say the least. I knew it was a little nuts of me to start this little ‘countdown’ but I really wasn’t prepared for the amount of pressure I’ve put on myself. It’s really a good thing because it’s forced me to take a long, hard look at what I’m doing every day…and WHY I do each little thing that I do.

Time management is definitely my downfall.

That having been said, over the last few days, I’ve gone from absolute despair, and being ready to just give up, to absolute elation and confidence that this will work. Such is life in IM. If you’re looking for a nice, stable job that is secure and steady, go back into your office and file that TPX report for your boss.

Today was a $400 day. The crazy thing is, it was a totally different income stream than anything I’ve done previously.

On top of that, some other plans are falling into place that could be more long-term. I would love to be more specific but it’s late and I’m totally exhausted.

Strange things are afoot, friends. Strange things are afoot. Until next time.

Hey, everyone.  It’s been a day or two, I know, but it’s the weekend and I’m trying to get some quality time in with the family .  Not easy given that the clock is ticking.

The weekend is a little slow.  My PPC campaigns have started to drop off a bit and I’m having difficulty getting my second income stream going.

After the great day I had on Thursday, I’m averaging only about $40 a day since.  I’m hoping to tweak things a little more tonight and scale my campaigns even more so that when some are slow, some others will be hot.

To tell you the truth, there are moments right now when I want to just bail on this thing and go look for another job, since mine sucks at the moment.  I will not give in to that urge, however…and “failure is not an option.”

I’m taking steps to see if I can ramp things up this week.  Time will tell.

No sage words of advice from me today.  It’s 100′ outside and we’re about to have a cookout.  My brain is completely fried.

There seems to be no doubt that I do better at the end of the week than I do at the beginning.  Today, I fine-tuned several of my PPC campaigns and launched a few new ones as well.

It seems to have paid off as I had a pretty decent day.  I would venture to say it’s the best day I’ve had since last week.

Some of you have been asking what it is that I’m doing…exactly.  Well, you’re right, I’m not going to tell you…exactly.  Not because I’m being a jerk but simply because I’m not sure that this whole “mission” that I’m on is going to work out so I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of guru.  I really just created this site for the excitement of seeing if Joe Avergage Dad can buckle down and escape the rat race, after 9 months of trying.

I will tell you this…most of what I’m going involves Pay Per Click to CPA marketing.  The niche I’m in is pretty untouched, I’m guessing…mostly because most people probably just don’t think about it.  There’s a really nice offer out there though, that can be customized on a super-local level (thank you, olden).

I’m really amazed at how tiny fluctuations in bids and keyword selection can have a huge effect on ROI.  Also, for those who tell you to turn off the Content Network…don’t listen to them.

I might finally be getting the hang of this, however.  Time will tell.

Well, after a couple of not-so-good days, we’re back in the black today.  Not too bad.

Just goes to show you what can happen when you have a good day, then get lazy.  So I got back on my horse, tweaked some campaigns, did a little research, invested in some better tools, and it paid.

Now, I’ve got to keep it going.  I’m also making some pretty decent progress in getting an additional income stream going which could help to balance out these fluctuations a bit.

Remember, never put all of yours eggs in one basket.  Diversification is key…just like with investing.

If you’re making $300 a day in AdSense, great.  What happens if someone messes with your ads and you get banned?  I would rather have ten income steams paying me $20 a day than have one stream paying me $200 a day.

Until next time.

OK, so yesterday was rather….’uneventful’.

Let’s just leave it at that.  I’m busting my hump trying to reproduce my results from last week.

I’ll be busy today fine-tuning my PPC campaigns a bit and adjusting the way traffic is distributed on some of my other efforts.

I realize now how much easier this would be if I didn’t have to ‘work’ during the day.  I’m waking a fine line, it seems.

Stay tuned.

Day four.  Why does it feel like day twenty four?  Ah, yes…the lack of sleep, that must be it.

Well, after a dud of a weekend, we seem to be at least getting somewhat back on track today.  Looks like today’s totals will end up right around the $100 mark.  Not too bad.  I’m mainly working two business models right now but the second one is nowhere near as effective as I would like it to be.

I’m going to really have to figure out how to stabilize these income streams if I’m going to kiss the day job goodbye.  We can’t do $500 one day, $10 the next day, and $100 the next day.

So tomorrow I will tweak…and test…and tweak…and test some more.  Oh, and I’ll have to do it after the ‘day job’ ends.

I’ll tell you this much…once you buckle down and decide to really get to it, turn off your AIM and shut down your e-mail.  Those little pop-up boxes will take you WAY off track.  It’s the only way.

OK, off to do some more tweaking before bed.

Well, I spent all of last night updating my affiliate links.  It seems that my previous cloaking system suffered some sort of crash which I didn’t discover until I tried to click on one of my links…and it was dead!  So I’ve spent the last 16 hours or so updating ALL of my affiliate links…not what I was hoping to do on a Sunday afternoon.

This brings up an interesting point.  Why do I cloak my links?  I cloak EVERYTHING.  You had better do the same.  Some of your affiliates might not be crazy about it, but it is the ONLY way to protect yourself. Without cloaking your affiliate links, you are exposed in three main areas:

1) It protects you against having others ’steal’ your commissions.

2) It protects you against having the ‘affiliate’ portion of your links removed by those who are IM savvy (I have seen it happen).

3) It protects your landing pages.

With regard to number three, let me just say this…I love all of my CPA companies and advertising affiliates.  I have seen it happen first-hand, however, where an advertising company might “show” your landing pages to another affiliate, just to help that affiliate out a bit with their conversions.

This is not a pleasant experience and it has not happened to me lately…but, then again, as I mentioned, I cloak EVERYTHING.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out the new version of OfferCloak, go do it now.  You can just set up a 3-day free trial and try it out.  This is a first-class system and it will keep your pages safe.  Go try OfferCloak.

As for today’s earnings, well, it’s Sunday and I’m not expecting a whole lot.  Friday was fantastic but, after getting my butt handed to me yesterday on my PPC campaigns, I’m eager to get this second stream of income set up.  I hope to have that going full-steam-ahead by the middle of next week.

Stay tuned!

Well, Day 2 is wrapping up and it’s turning out to be quite the emotional roller coaster already.  By the time the dust settled yesterday, it seems I had my first EVER $500 day!  Not bad for Day 2.  I was hoping things would pick up quickly given the extra pressure I’ve put on myself, but not even I expected things to move this quickly.

I really burned the midnight oil though and reached out to several of the contacts I’ve made over the last 9 months to help me get there…you know who you are…and thank you.

As exciting as that was, it’s hard to get TOO excited because the “Day Job” can’t get thrown out the window until that level of income is sustained…and so far today I’m only at about $50, so we won’t be repeating yesterday by a long shot.

Some really hard work on some white-hat CPA ventures and PPC campaigns I’ve been putting together over the last few weeks obviously really paid off.  It’s not to the point where it will run itself on auto-pilot yet, though, as I really didn’t do much today since it’s Saturday.  My wife works on Saturdays and I stay home and take care of our kids.  That is time I absolutely must dedicate to the family.  All I really did today was tweak some settings on this blog and add a few banners.

I’m also going to take it easy tomorrow and prepare to hit it hard again on Monday and try to kick this venture into high gear so that my efforts will keep on paying off, even when I’m not.

Another big thanks to everyone who’s helpning me out behind the scenes.  Stay tuned!

“A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step.”

Well, that’s certainly true.  Overall, Day One was a success.  I have a lot of support behind me, this much is certain.  I’ve been fortunate to make a lot of friends in a lot of niches and on a lot of forums over the last 9 months or so.  Once they got wind of this ballsy Babe Ruth-like calling of my shot, most of them were more than happy to jump on board and pump me up a bit. Heck, my wife is even getting excited about the prospect.

So I’ve finished deciding on my course of action and which 2 or 3 main business models on which I’m going to be focusing my energy.  I’ve also been working with my friend, Matt, on tweaking this site.  In fact, the last few days have been filled with this type of planning.  Plan your work and work your plan.  The biggest trap I used to fall into was heading over to my favorite forum and hitting the “New Posts” button to see what new ideas had surfaced in the last 2 hours that I could try!

That will get you nowhere…and fast. 

So my goal for this site is just to document progress and keep myself focused.  I don’t really plan on this site being a big money-maker, although sure, that would be an added bonus.  Heck, I see we’ve had over 200 “page views” since we fired it up around 4pm this afternoon…not bad.

So, I haven’t finished tallying up dollar results for today, but it looks to be better than yesterday.  I made about $60 yesterday (Thursday), which was actually a pretty good day.  Still, it’s a long way from $300 a day.  Once I started thinking about living from day-to-day and paying for medical insurance for the family, etc. it feels like there is a long way to do.  Luckily, I feel like I am on the fast track, now that a lot of leg-work is done with regard to my methods.

So tomorrow, we’ll tweak this site a bit and take some time over the weekend to kick it into high gear next week.  I see that little clock ticking over to my right and it is a good motivator!  Until next time…