TypeCarl

Moved to CarlZetterlund.com

Hey TypeCarl readers and subscribers!

I want to announce that I’m back to blogging, but at a different location. I had some success and decided it was time for a fresh start on my blog at a better domain name. The new blog is at CarlZetterlund.com.

I now feel like I have something to share, so expect me to blog much more consistently than I did here at TypeCarl.com. I know I left many of you guys hanging here on TypeCarl, but I had discovered an opportunity which required my complete attention.

It turned out I made the right decision, and I am in a better position than I could have realistically imagined. I hope you enjoy the new blog. I won’t be taking down this blog so you can keep reading my old posts.

Thanks for reading, and hope to see you at my place, CarlZetterlund.com.

What’s been going on?

Wow… It’s been 2 weeks since a post, and I feel really guilty. Why? I’m not sure. It’s not like I really have an obligation to do it. However, I don’t like to be deceptive to my few readers who expected an updated blog when they subscribed. I’m also sure there are few of my former friends checking in on me.

I’ve got no excuses for not posting,  but here is something that will interest you.

So I’ve been spending the past few months struggling to make money. I have finally been able to generate a decent amount of cash this month. This is great because it opens my options up for the future.

I’m still on shaky ground because I really don’t know how stable this income is. Maybe it is just a Christmas fluke or a temporary surge in popularity in my niche. Maybe the economy will crash into oblivion leaving people spending nothing in the coming months. Who knows!

However, I’m making money now and it’s enough to let me take bigger steps. If you’re wondering how much, let’s just say I’ve exceeded the $2000 goal already, and it’s only been half way through.

Now that I’ve bringing in income, I’ve got a whole slew of issues coming. One is a tax one. I’ve never been self employed so I now have to read up on how I have to file taxes and how I can bring them down with deductions. Another issue is what will I concentrate my future efforts on. This is because all I really wanted to do was make enough money to get by and then work on a longer term goal.

Affiliate marketing is great and all, but it’s BORING. Well… maybe I should not use the term affiliate marketing. It is more like short term affiliate marketing is boring! I find myself just repeating the same things over and over.

I really want to create something a little more valuable rather than become a short term search engine master. However, my new found SEO knowledge will come in handy.

Decisions… decisions… decisions… At least these are good decisions to have. I’ve probably said this a million times now, but I’ll keep you updated.

Carl Zetterlund

P.S. It seems like I post less when I’m doing better in terms of income. Maybe blogging is really my emotional cry for help! Naw… that doesn’t seem like me.

Internet Income Report - October 2007

Quite an interesting month! I’ll keep this short because I need to get back to working. So out of many of my attempts at different niches, I’ve finally found one that is going to pay quite nicely these winter holidays. I’ve also refined my strategies and I am beginning to see the power of what I am doing.

I also had quite a crazy day yesterday,which I’ll go into in a later post. Unfortunately, it would not be wise for me to talk about it here, but I will write about it in a couple of months. What I can say is that I managed to hit a one time opportunity where I earned more in one day than the previous 2 months combined. Exciting!

So here they are. The stats only include what I have been officially been awarded. For example, unshipped products from Amazon do not count.

Total Income: $933.11

Amazon: $300.13
AuctionAds: $207.38 (includes $25 bonus signup)
Commission Junction: $192.10
ClickBank: $103.46
Widget Bucks: $71.96 (includes $25 bonus signup)
Adsense: $58.08

A week earlier, I actually thought I was only going to hit $500. I somehow was able to ramp it up extremely quickly over the last week. This is partly due to the holiday season coming up and I’m seeing an increase in traffic. I’m also fine tuning my SEO marketing strategy so I only spend time where there is most value.

The biggest issue I have is that I am riding on a thin line. If Google decides I’m a bad kid, then BOOM, I’m a dead man. If one of my marketing platforms blows up then I’m dead too. I guess you could say I’m really playing in the High Risk and High Reward area.

The amazing thing is that I’ve spent almost no money. I spent $5 to get $50 on Microsoft Adcenter, which hasn’t turned any profit. I also spent $97 on Build a Niche Store.

Build a Niche Store has been surprisingly good to me considering I’ve only had it a week. If you can find a way to bring targeted traffic to the store, you’ll find that buyers actually enjoy the product and are more likely to bid and sign up for eBay. I’ve already gotten two signups already, which has translated into $50 ($25 each). If you purchase through my affiliate link above, let’s just say I’ll give you some more secrets than I’m willing to share publicly.

I’ll do a more extensive review later on many topics when the time is right. $933.11 is a nice increase from last month, but this is nothing to really brag about. I need to keep working hard.

Here’s a graph for the visual ones out there.

Thanks for reading, and I really wish I could post more. I don’t want to post just for the sake of posting. However, I hope I have more things to share soon. However, feel free to shoot me a comment or e-mail: carl at typecarl.com.

Carl Zetterlund

P.S. I forgot to mention about my goal of $1500 for the month of October. I didn’t officially reach it, but I was a lot closer than you think. I made a fat commission on Oct 31 that officially goes onto November. But, let’s keep it as me failing. It’ll motivate me more next month. My new goal is the glorious $2000 mark. A number I’ve been dieing to reach. I’m already off to a good start.

Declaring War on Average American Shopper!

Ok… not really. That’s just to pump me up for the grueling amount of work I need to put in to embrace this opportunity called “Christmas” or should I say “Holiday”. It’s been a few months into this full time internet marketing role. I’ve made some mistakes, learned a ton, and have made progress overall, which I’m grateful for. If I hadn’t gotten anywhere, the threat of getting a job would be looming over me right now.

Anyway, I’ve been focusing on pretty small niches, and I’ve found that my sales are picking up due to the holidays. It’s early I know, but the items I’m pushing are highly sought after.

As a corporate slave and college grad, I was pretty isolated from the real world. Sometimes we’d talk in class about some strange thing called a “customer”. I probably nodded my head and bubbled the answer the teacher wanted in the test and then emptied the knowledge out of my short term memory. This is what most people in the world call education. It’s not until you are REALLY trying to make money when you start to gain real perspective of what the heck you’re doing with this so called “customer”.

So who is this “customer” I’m talking about?

Well, my customer, is this average American, and boy… do I love average Americans! They’re absolutely fantastic. It’s not because they are amazingly genuine smart people. If they were smart, I’d probably have a hard time making a dime. These average Americans make decisions with their all mighty gut! Don’t worry, these average Americans are in great company. Just take a look at the decision making prowess of our mighty president, George W Bush!

The average American is pretty much well known all over the world. The average American is the one who just has too much “stuff”. You know why? Well the economy is doing well relatively (dipping big time now), but the secret sauce consists of two main ingredients: marketing and credit cards.

I personally believe the overlords of America (people with power which is not necessarily the political leaders) want Americans to be super consumers. Why? Control! There’s nothing better than to keep a person off the bigger issues when you’re worrying about what color car will most impress your friends and coworkers! It’s important dammit!

Then there is marketing. Holy moley!!! We are bombarded with advertisement. I always like to say that you should never hang around with negative people because you’ll turn negative. Well take that and relate it to product marketing. The average American consumes so much marketing from large corporates that it’s crazy. It’s hard to objectively think about it because we are born into it. It’s crazy how much mental stimulus the average American gets from just driving to the park. 

Just imagine all this stimulus going straight to the subconscious for these people. They don’t even know what’s driving their needs and desires!

So what am I going to do?

I’m going to take advantage of them while condeming them! Just kidding. I really don’t have any right to tell people how to live. Trying to change people who don’t want to change is like climbing Mt Everest naked. Don’t do it. You’ll end up killing yourself. I’m only 22 years old, and I know this to be a fact.

In my idealist world, I don’t like it one bit. I could go off on a hippie rant, but that would be a waste of my time. What I really need is some power. Right now I’m about as powerful as the homeless man on the intersection a couple of blocks from here. That’s why I’m going full force right for the all magical holiday shopping season formerly known as Christmas.

Wish me luck!

Carl Zetterlund

P.S. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not invincible myself, but it’s a disease I’m personally trying to get rid of. The irony is that I’m perpetuating it with internet marketing. C’mon… happiness never came so easily in a $9.99 box!

Introducing MCAT45.com

Wow… I really haven’t posted in like 7-8 days. All I have to say is shame on me. However, I wasn’t sitting around doing nothing. I’ve been trying to juggle one too many things. One of those things was mcat45.com. It’s a site for people who are taking the MCAT exam to get help and study our super duper prep guide.

Most of the wesbites I’ve created have been affiliate marketing based. I wouldn’t call any of those websites “real” as I don’t exactly own them. However, this one is different. A lot of hours were put in it, and it feels like a real website. A website that will have real value to people.

I really like that.

The most time intensive part is that we’re trying to condense 4 years of science in college into 150 pages or so. We’re not completely finished with our MCAT prep guide, but it’s getting there. We think it’s better than other MCAT resources because its less cluttered by taking out unncessary words and information. However, our main focus is to now build a vibrant community of students who are taking or have taken the MCAT.

Since a great deal of you are internet marketers, I’ll let you know about the inner workings. The site is built around Drupal. It’s a great CMS (content management system). This was actually a tough choice for me because there are some great ones out there. It essentially came down to Drupal or Joomla. Drupal won out because it was better at CEO out of the box as well as it is known to scale very well. Some major websites use Drupal.

The biggest drawback to Drupal is that the learning curve is a little steeper. However, it’s really not that bad if you consider yourself computer savvy. If not, I’d probably head over to Joomla. It’s a tad easier.

I customized a theme that was available on Drupal’s website. I tried to keep the design simple and give a little bit of that modern design. I’m still a novice in the way that it still takes me awhile to manifest what I see in my head.

Maybe in the future I can plug something into my head.

Everything you see on the website is Drupal with extra modules. For example, I was able to create custom fields so users could submit requests for tutoring. The amazing part is that I had to know absolutely no code to do it. It was suprisingly easy.

The only gripe I have is that there are a ton of updates coming out, and I know it will be a pain to keep up with them because the modules have to keep up too. We’ll see how it goes.

Overall, I’m happy with the site. We are still working on content, but we have shifted a lot of our effort into marketing. I’m putting my knowledge to the test with this. Currently, I’m working on getting the website indexed.

Let me know what you guys think. I’ve love the feedback.

Carl Zetterlund

P.S. I promise to post on a more consistent basis! (how many times have I said this now?)

Gem Mining for Internet Marketers

I’m starting to really understand what it means when someone says there is no magic pill for internet marketing. Despite what all those eBooks say, becoming succesful at internet marketing is a process. Once you’ve been in the game long enough, you will discover little gems that will make you profitable. I’m already starting to see this as I’ve found very specific ways of making money. However if I told everyone, the power of my gem mine would disapear.

No one will tell you their little internet marketing gem.

What does this mean? Well it means you should stop looking for a freebie from a guru. The masters know a whole lot that they aren’t willing to share with you. Sure… they’ll tell you some basic theory or previous successes but they’ll never give away their cash cow because they know it will only dilute it’s value.

So what’s my point? This is really geared towards people who are looking to start out in making money online. People get too caught up in buying every ebook to find that freebie that’ll make them rich. Well… it’s not going to happen unless its part of an inheritance from your parents.

Take for example, Shoemoney. He’s been in the game for years. He was fired for building websites during his day job. This means he had been doing it long before he went full time. He’s been in the game so long and tried so many things that he now has plenty of gems that work for him. Yet, he knows that giving them away isn’t the solution. He’ll sometimes throw s out an article about PPC marketing because he knows that it’s not as easy as it looks.

There is no perfect start. Stop looking for one.

I believe the right process is a iterative one that looks kinda like the following.

1. Learn - This means you need to find materials that’ll help you get there. I prefer the free method. Goto the bookstore and just read the book there, read blogs, or participate in forums. Here’s the top internet marketing forums: Digital Point and Warrior Forum.

2. Try - Once you learn about something. Do something with it. There’s two reasons why you should. It helps cement knowledge in your mind so it can use it to be even more creative. The other is that sometimes information is deceiving. You have to realize that people write books for a general audience in their mind. You will never be their perfect audience. No one is average despite every writer aiming for the average writer.

3. Repeat - Do this process over and over again. You’ll eventually hit a gem. Once you find one, seize the opportunity fully. If it makes a profit, exploit it till the mine runs dry. Don’t even dare to share until where the benefit gained from sharing exceeds the benefits of not (aka put it on a blog).

I know all of this is super cliche, but it’s a good thing to ram it in your head once more. Hey… I’m probably just writing this for myself. As an old saying goes (making this up), the man who tells other people to work harder is probably having trouble working hard himself.

Oh yeah… some gem mines are deceiving. You may strike a huge gem, but don’t start fantasizing about your wealthy future. Chances are it’s just a one time deal. I’ve already dealt with this already. One day it looked like I hit the jackpot thinking I’d make $50+ a day, so I ironically wasted time fantacising about it. The next few days, it ended up being not even close to what I’d thought it’d be.

Lesson: Keep working until you see REAL (consistent) results from a method. Once you find it, keep working harder. Anything that is stagnant is dead or going to die.

Anyway, I thought I’d get that off my chest. As you can tell, this is a lesson for myself because I did waste time myself, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Carl Zetterlund

Pushing the Limits with Google SEO

So I had a bummer of a day yesterday…

One of my most successful niches which was destined to provide me some cash flow has basically… tanked. This is because I was relying on Google and the mighty power over there decided to knock me down from #1 to #35. Now I’m not exactly sure what happened. When you’re dealing with Google SEO, you never really know what’s going on.

However, I think I know what it might have been.

I was pushing it in terms of what I could pull off and still keep my ranking. When I reached #1, I tried some tactics with Adsense and how I structured my pages that I now regret. I don’t want to tell you exactly what it was, but what I did ended up reducing the number of pages on my website.

And I paid for it.

I was getting a crazy amount of traffic from Google. Let’s say about 250+ a day and the traffic was decently targeted as well. I was pulling in about $10+ a day, which is no small sum for me.

Then again, I am getting some traffic from MSN and Live suddenly. Microsoft must have done a major revamp of their SERPs because I’m now ranking well in many of the keywords that I ranked well in Google

Anyway, I pushed the limits, and I paid for it. Bummer!

I did feel it too. I was pretty down for awhile. It seems that all successes and failures are amplified when you are on your own especially when you’re still at the level of trying to pay for your food.

Anyway, I got over it by realizing that I now know where the limit was. If I didn’t do it, I’d be wasting my time creating a bunch of websites that would have all tanked. It’s also given me much more certainty and faith in my abilities to rank well in Google.

It’s not like what I learned is something new. It just validated what I have been reading. Sometimes you just need REAL experience to knock sense into you. It’s always too tempting to go against principles and try to game the system.

You eventually pay for it.

But I don’t think it’s something you should avoid. There is nothing better than experience to put you back on track. However, make sure you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Fortunately, I had the good sense to not do it with my other niches until I saw it pan out.

You live. You Learn.

Carl Zetterlund

P.S. Losing a potential $300 a month STINKS though! Let’s see how forgiving Google is while I work myself up from #35 to #1 again.

Too Much of Something can be a Good Thing

I just randomly stumbled on Mark Cuban’s blog again from some unknown site, which I don’t even recall. It linked to a post about Mark Cuban competing in the Dancing with the Stars reality show. If you don’t know, it’s where celebrities dance with professional dancers in a competition.

I don’t watch TV at all. That’s right. Zero television. Don’t worry I’m still doing just fine, but sometimes I miss interesting things that sometimes does occur on television. This is one of them.

I was pretty shocked to see Mark Cuban dancing. He doesn’t really seem built for it and he’s a tech geek for sakes! It doesn’t help that I used to really not like him because of his actions as the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. This is because I’m a huge Houston Rockets fan.

However, Mark Cuban is a billionaire and that means he obviously knows something. So over the recent months, I’ve become much more fond of him. Mainly because I admire people who are so determined and ambitious.

The thing is though I don’t really know him at all. All I really know is that he sold broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion and now the domain just goes to Yahoo.com. He had great timing right in the middle of the dot com boom.

That was pretty much the extent though.

Until I watched two YouTube clips of him dancing during the last 2 weeks in the Dancing with the Stars competition. I then realized why he is so successful.

The guy is a machine!

I absolutely love his attitude about working hard to achieve something great. I mean this reality show doesn’t seem anything like becoming a billionaire overnight, but there are a lot of similarities though. Overcoming the competition will be no easy task for someone like Mark Cuban who probably isn’t much of a natural dancer. However, the guy tries so hard, which keeps him alive.

It’s unbelievable and inspiring to just watch this man practice for just 30 seconds on prime time television. It makes me realize how important it is to harness that obsession to succeed.

If you want to be the best, you have to live and breathe it. You have to become obsessed to the point where most people will think you’re out of your mind.

It’s funny because his partner looks like she can barely keep up with him, and she’s a professional dancer!

You’ve heard enough from me. Just take a look at the two YouTube videos below and see it for yourself. There’s magic there.

Carl Zetterlund

P.S. I’m still going to hate on him during basketball season though, but it’s all in good fun. The guy is amazing.

Internet Income Report - September 2007

So the time has come for me to show you how much money I made in September. If you’re new, I started to try to make money online a couple of months ago. It definitely hasn’t been easy with all it’s ups and downs, but I’ve made progress.

All of my income currently comes from short term internet marketing strategies. I build mini websites on very specific niches. Some of them are pretty obscure. Then I use SEO tactics to try to get them to a top 10 Google position for a niche key term. The only reason I’m focusing on some shorter term tactics is because I need to eat. In addition, I promised my parents I’d be out of their hair by the end of the hair.

We’ll see how that goes.

I’m also working on longer term projects where it is all delayed gratification. Yeah, it’s scary sometimes, but that’s where the bigger bucks are. I always thought of myself as the child who held back the urge to eat the piece of candy when promised more for waiting instead.

You’ve probably heard enough jibber jabber, so here it is.

Total Income: $231.43

Amazon: $97.54
Commission Junction: $61.38
Clickbank: $39.20
Adsense: $33.31

Making a couple of hundred dollars isn’t a bad thing if I was still in high school. However, I’m a broke 22 year old with nagging parents. This means I have to step it up some way.

I’ve only got 3 months to make enough income to make it on my own. I had set a goal of $1000, and I had fallen way short. I’m going to do something counter intuitive by raising my goal this month another $500. I will now have to manage to make $1500.

It’s doable. I know it is.

On the bright side, I’ve learned a lot and I keep learning, which is invaluable. On one hand, I am getting very comfortable with what internet marketing is all about. I can now make better judgments on where the potential opportunities are. I also am learning how to be a web developer, which will pay off big time down the line. This is because I’m creating websites that are a bit more complicated, but have bigger profit potentials.

I also have been learning about myself. I have been too comfortable living at home. I sometimes think I should have just gotten an apartment and really just put myself in a hole. It doesn’t sound like there is any better motivation than that. However, this is short sighted because I don’t want to be a typical starving artist who constantly puts themselves in these situations because they think it’s the only way for them to have the highest creative potential.

Not that I have anything against this concept.

The issue is that I am going to be successful one day, and I’ll still need to keep myself motivated to do more. This is because I don’t want to settle for anything less than my very best. Fortunately, I am starting to figure out ways to push myself to be productive, and it’s not coming from a silly “Getting Things Done” blog or book. Once I really nail it down, I’ll write a post about it.

Anyway, the month of September has been a month of many changes. I’m working on projects which I couldn’t have predicted a month earlier. One thing I’ve learned is that you can’t really predict the future. You can only have that big goal and work towards it everyday.

I’ll end it here, so it doesn’t become a daunting post that nobody wants to read. I’d like to thank you for reading my blog. I always appreciate it when my readers speak their mind. As pretentious as this sounds, I’ll probably remember my early TypeCarl readers the most even after I become rich and famous!

Carl Zetterlund

P.S. Special thanks to Catherine for looking out for me. I think I will try to post once every 3 days until I get a better hang of what to make out of this blog. There are just so many things to do!

P.P.S. By utilizing the power of manipulating graphs, it looks like I’ll become a millionaire in no time!

My Sleep Experiment

I’m at a very unique part of my life. I have freed myself from society for the moment. Nobody tells me what to do except for the occasional nagging of my parents to take the dogs out, clean the dishes, and any other parental power move. Other than that,  there is nothing to force me to conform to a 9-5 schedule.

My inkling is that I need to somehow take advantage of this situation because I know it won’t last long. Eventually, I’ll be making so much money that I’ll have to deal with people again.

I know…

You guess it! I’m going to experiment with my sleeping schedule.

Sleeping has always fascinated me. On one level, I’m just fascinated by the fact that we have no idea what’s going on in our heads. We have amazingly vivid dreams with an ability to become lucid. On the other hand, sleep has a tangible effect on our health and productivity.

I’ve always needed a good 8 hours to feel absolutely great, but that wasn’t always possible in college and in my short consulting career. The worst thing was having to work through extreme fatigue because you didn’t want to send your client the wrong message. This is ironic because if they let me have a 20 min nap, I’d be 10 times more productive.

If you’ve been a long time reader, you know that I have an obsession with productivity. It should come to no surprise to you that I am going to experiment with my sleeping schedule.

There are two types of sleeping patterns that intrigue me. One is called Polyphasic and the other is called free running. Polyphasic sleeping is essentially breaking down your sleep into 3 or more equally spaced periods. For example, one popular method is to nap 6 times a day for 20 minutes each. This means you’re just sleeping a total of 2 hours a day.

Think all that time you will have!

The only problem is that you strictly have to go to bed every 4 hours. This doesn’t lead to much flexibility. There are also concerns for health and memory. Sure, your body will use those 20 minutes naps very efficiently, but your body needs time to rest and heal as well. Also, I’m sure your brain needs time to do some house keeping to make you smarter.

On the other hands, free running sleep tells you to figure out your natural sleeping patterns by sleeping when you are tired and waking up naturally. One interesting point is that we are designed to be biphasic sleepers, which means 2 sleeping periods. Also, our circadian ryhtym is not based on 24 hour intervals. The average free running circadian cycle lasts 25 hours! This means you may find yourself sleeping at different time periods everyday.

This is counter intuitive because you’d expect a human being’s sleeping schedule to match the day and night. However, studies show it’s not true.

I’m all about listening to my body and being as natural as I can. You can already see this with what I eat. I’m going to try the free running schedule as it makes the most sense to me. I’ll put the Polyphasic experiment on the shelf for the moment, but it’s something I’d like to try as well. I don’t see it as a long term solution, but having the ability to only sleep 2 hours a day could come in handy one day.

I’ll end this with a farewell to my alarm clock. I never liked you anyway.

Carl Zetterlund

P.S. Click here for more information on Polyphasic sleeping. Click here for more information about free running and sleep and general sleeping information.