February has been the worst month yet for me in a long time. First some numbers:

Total Spent:  $6,580.07
Gross Profit: $10,242.92
Net Profit:       $3,662.85
ROI:                        55.7%

I really hate posting numbers like this. It’s embarrassing. But I made a commitment to share my results on this blog.

The 3 main reasons my income sucks right now:

1. I’ve been lazy

2. When I did work, I neglected my active campaigns to work on upcoming projects.

3. I have 5 kids and our 11 month old and my wife haven’t been sleeping well at night. So I wind up babysitting until 1 or 2 pm while my wife gets some shuteye. After that, I have trouble getting motivated feeling like the day is shot already.

I spent several days looking into and studying new niches and new traffic sources. Basically, it’s like I’ve been going back to school.

I spent about 7-10 days side-tracked working on developing a board game. Probably sounds silly to some people…. I’m a born entrepreneur and have always been easily side-tracked by whatever new idea infatuates me at the time. I’d put this as the #1 reason I’m not rich yet. A person really needs to focus on one thing to achieve great success in life. Learn from my experience. Focus on only 1 or 2 traffic sources and 1 or 2 niches.

To your success!

Danger Brown

My income is in the shitter. I’ll probably only net about $4K or so this month.

There are 3 reasons:

1. Normal cycles. I’ve been pushing financial related offers like payday loans. They always perform badly this time of year so I expected this to happen.

2. I’ve stuck with doing paid search and have started having trouble with MSN slapping campaigns or inexplicably not giving me volume. So I’ve had trouble scaling my campaigns.

3. I’m not building out new paid search campaigns right now. I’ve decided to switch to alternate traffic sources and new niches. Because I’m getting into doing completely new things, I’ve been spending time trying to figure out this new stuff and not doing things that will make me money today. Also, there will be a learning curve that’ll probably eat into my profit margins.

So you ask, “What is Danger going to do next?”

I’m thinking I’ll try some dating offers with small targeted media buys on individual sites. Later, after I understand media buys better, I’ll scale up with network and larger media buys and make a mountain of cash.

Why dating? Because it has the potential to go massive but also has low payouts which should allow for more efficient optimization of creatives, offers, etc. Example: A $30 payout diet rebill would require me to spend a bare minimum of $30 to test each new ad variation, but a $3 payout dating offer would require a minimum of only $3 per creative. So I figure with dating I’ll be able to throw a lot more shit at the wall and see what sticks.

Why small media buys? Because I’m sick of having a lack of control over my traffic. Most traffic sources involve a wildcard element. With search engine dependent traffic you can get a slap and be out of business in the blink of an eye. I know dating is big on Facebook, but they love to disapprove ads and even ban accounts over there. I figure that media buying gives the maximum amount of control over traffic and most especially traffic volume.

If you happen to know something about pushing dating offers via display, I’d love to hear from you (please comment). Right now I’m struggling to figure out the best sorts of sites to target.

OK folks. Here’s the big 2010 earnings update you’ve been waiting on the edge of your seat for. I spent about $114K and turned it into $229K. This is the most money I’ve ever made in 1 year and the first time I’ve had a 6 figure income. I’m pretty pleased with it, but not satisfied at all. I need to do much better in 2011.

4. Took my wife to tour England and Paris.

11. $2,000 extra applied to the principal owed on my mortgage. Plus $1k in supplies to put in a new drain field for the house.

The legendary Jeremy Schoemaker AKA Shoemoney has a great contest going on right now. Here is my video entry: (spoiler alert:….if I win I’m going to shave my head! and give away up to $4000)
UPDATE 12/31/2010:

I’m listed in the top 10 and need votes from you to win! Please GO HERE to VOTE for Danger Brown right now. You have to scroll down to the bottom of the post to vote. Thank you so much! PLEASE vote for Danger Brown!!!

Final Update: 01/04/2010 I didn’t win. But placed 4th out of 90+entries. The winner got most of his votes using Amazon Mechanical Turk to pay $.05 each for people to vote for him. Some people might cry foul, but apparently there were no rules. I predict that next year either the rules will change, or it’ll just be an MTurk war between finalists.

It was fun to participate and overall has been a great experience.

Check out what the winner of this contest wins:

A platinum pass to Affiliate Summit West.
2 nights hotel accommodations paid for at the Wynn.
$500 Airfare Reimbursement.
$2000 to gamble on 1 hand of blackjack
Roll with Shoemoney at Affiliate Summit.
A pass to the Epic Advertising Playboy Mansion Party this fall.

When I read that, here is what I heard. “blah, blah, blah, Playboy Mansion Party!!” OK, this is a contest worth entering!! Thanks Jeremy!!! See you there!

UPDATE: I really need your vote to win this thing! Please go vote for me now! Thank you.

Shot these videos yesterday. Needed to rent a backhoe to tear up my front yard and put in a new drainfield. I also tore out a foundation from an old outbuilding and dug a new trash pit.
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I spent the last 2 days on this thing. Man, I really need to be working on my campaigns.
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I didn’t achieve my goal of $30k net in September unfortunately. I had a couple campaigns/offers go down and other things that hamstrung a couple hopeful projects. I really hate posting a decline from one month to the next. I’m only satisfied if the numbers get bigger. I made a commitment to myself to post my income on this blog though. I figured it would be a good motivator. Even if nobody were to read this, I think it does help me to stay oriented.
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September 2010 internet marketing earnings totals:
Total Spent:  $11,544.68
Gross Profit: $29,250.03
Net Profit:     $17,705.35
ROI:                153%
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So, things are OK. I’m disappointed that I didn’t make my $30K net profit goal. But of course, big goals are needed to have any hope of attaining anything worthwhile. I’m maintaining my goal to make $500K net profit from Sept 1 2010 to Sept 1 2011.
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Hold onto your hats. It’ll get a little worse before it gets better. I’ve focused my energies on paid search and have been using Yahoo for about 90% of my traffic. In the next 2 weeks Bing is absorbing Yahoo search advertising and I expect it to be a setback that will take me a month or two to recover from. So be warned that I expect October and November to be weak. We’ll see though. I’m busting my tail to recover my income as quickly as possible.
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To hit my $500K goal, I’ll need to hit $60K net or more per month within a few months. I’ve also got several offline obligations that will eat up time that could be used to increase profits.
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Want more? Subscribe to my newsletter, or check out my affiliate marketing earnings from August 2010.

I’m frantically working to rebuild the income I’m about to lose with the death of Yahoo Search Marketing. I need to build a new source for $20K net profit monthly but have a series of obligations keeping me from working towards my goals.
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1. Rent a backhoe, buy 20 tons of gravel, and 180 feet of septic drain field pipe and tear up my whole front yard this week. OK, maybe this one isn’t so wonderful. (-3 days)
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2. Attend Shareasale’s Thinktank 2010 in Half Moon Bay California from the 17th to the 20th (-4 days)
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3. Take my wife and 2 kids to a big party in Denver staying overnight on the 23rd (-2 days)
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4. Have my dad come from out of state to visit the grandkids. (-1 day)
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5. Take my wife to England and Paris from Nov 3rd to Nov 10th (-9 days)
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So in the next 31 days I’ll be unable to work for 19 of them. I only have 12 days to make things happen. Wish me luck!

This is my first video blog post. I’ll show you my workstation, introduce myself, and talk a bit about making money on the internet.

That’s my goal anyway. $30K USD net profit. I think stating it like a fact makes it more likely to happen. And by telling you about it, it forces me to be accountable. On October 1st I’ll have to confess to you how much I made (or didn’t make).

Also, speaking of confessions. When I tell you how much money I make, I’ve left something out. For about a year I’ve been running a set of accounts I set up for my retired mother. I figured I probably owed her about $30K from all the times she’s helped me out over the years and I wanted to pay her back.  I generally just duplicate some of my successful campaigns that are of the auto pilot sort. Since December 2009 I’ve earned about $15K for her.

So for example, when I said I made $11K+ last month what actually happened is that I made $9318 for myself and about $2000 for mom. This month, I’m on track to make $15K for myself and $3000 for mom.

The biggest factor that affect my September goal is the merger between Yahoo and Bing search. I’m making nearly 100% of my money from paid search traffic from Yahoo and Bing. As Microsoft takes over Yahoo search it will affect the traffic volume and quality for both. I’ve got plans for how to deal with that, but I do expect it to affect my bottom line. We’ll see what happens.

I’m expecting to spend about $20K with a 150% ROI = $50K gross or $30K net.

Heck, I might as well also mention that my medium term goal is to make $500K net profit from September 1, 2010 to September 1, 2011.

Kaizen is the secret. It’s a Japanese philosophy of constant and never ending improvement in all things, all facets of oneself or one’s business. I had practiced this philosophy for years before I even knew what the word meant. I am always trying to be a better man, a better father, a better friend, and a better business man.

How you can implement kaizen to make more money online?

1. Always be learning.
Expand your knowledge and skill in SEO practices, advertising strategies, web design, copy-writing, analytics, cash flow management, time management, etc.

2. Always be improving upon your successes (and failures).
Constantly split test and improve ads, landing pages, offers, traffic sources, keywords, business relationships, etc. etc. etc. Split test, improve, and track results in everything you do with internet marketing, forever!

3. Aways be networking.
If you can afford it, go to industry events and meet new people. Participate in local events and meetups. Most urban centers have affiliate or SEO meetups. If there isn’t one in your area, start one. You don’t need to be an expert to organize a monthly meetup.

4. Be relentless.
Never give up! Never surrender! If you have a setback, take a moment and try to figure out what went wrong. Learn from your mistakes. Then try again with a different or improved strategy. Live, eat, and breath IMPROVEMENT. As long as you’re constantly improving, you will eventually attain greatness.

In a big business corporate sense, kaizen often refers to aggressive cost cutting which sometimes has negative human impacts. For instance, lower level employees working all night (for free) to correct mistakes or meet deadlines. Cutting employee benefits, or reducing quality to increase profits is not congruent with my philosophy.

Be careful when dealing with people not to “glean the field”. This is a reference to a Christian belief that farmers should leave some remnant crops on their fields for the poor, widows and orphans to eat for free. Use the philosophy of kaizen to improve yourself and your life while continuing to live in abundance with others.

Do you already practice kaizen? Have I left something out? Tell us about it in the comments please!