Yes!!

My 3 autographed copies of Tim Ferriss's "The 4-Hour Body" just came in! At least one will go on eBay after the book blows up (which it will).

I've never seen a trailer for a book before - until now...

Journey to $300/Day - Many ObStaCKles

Things have been crazy since this weekend. First, my clickthroughs were not registering with one of the CPA networks. Then I get an email from my server host that says that I've used 922GB in bandwidth this month on the domain where I host Prosper.

Which is INSANE!

Especially when you consider that I only shifted my tracking there last week! I think someone hacked my server. I talked to other people who have pushed far more traffic that I have and they said there's no way that I used that much bandwidth. Unfortunately, I've had to turn off my campaigns in the meantime. My host and I have a meeting scheduled for this afternoon to talk about the situation.

No matter the outcome, I'm moving to a new server. I found a crazy deal on a virtual private server that I just couldn't pass up. I can't wait to consolidate my servers (I currently have 4 - I know, it' stupid and crazy) and kick some of the older ones to the curb. I also bought an SSL certificate and will be using that on my new tracking system. Hopefully that will and little more protection to my tracking system.

Journey to $300/Day - The Culling is Complete

This has really been a dead week as far as my business is concerned. I didn't want to add any more charges to my AMEX for this billing cycle so I had to wait until yesterday to do much of the cash investing that I needed to do.

However, this week was the Culling Week. I've cut out a lot of overhead to make the Business much leaner...

Unique Article Wizard - Cut, savings $67/month
Project Management System - Cut, savings $28/month
Link Packages - Cut, $12/month
MSN/Bing - Cut, $50/month (there was only one campaign and the traffic wasn't converting according to their tracking system)
2 Employees - Cut, [undisclosed savings]
Aweber Clean Up (removing unsubscribes) - $10/month

For those who don't know, Aweber charges you for all of the contacts you have in their system. That includes everyone who has unsubscribed. If you want to save a little cash, ask them to remove your unsubscribes.

I purchased a new tracking system last night. While I like Prosper202, it isn't as accurate as I would like. Plus it doesn't track email campaigns, which is something that I really need. The tracking system is expensive but I think that it will be worth it with the new data I will be able to gather.

Journey to $300/Day - The Culling Continues...

I fired my employees today.

They did great work for me but they recently moved to a country with very strict Internet controls (no, not China). Since moving, they have not been able to complete tasks for me as efficiently as they used to. It all finally came to a head last week and I finally made the decision to let them go today.

It really sucks. I like them both but from a business stand point, it didn't make much sense keeping them if they weren't able to work as efficiently. They understood and were actually the ones who suggested terminating employment initially.

As far as other business matters go, I bought Ca$hvertising yesterday and have been glued to it ever sense. Reading it, it is apparent why my efforts have not been as fruitful as they could be with the CPA offers. I'm going to take the approach of quality vs quantity and spend more time developing my landing pages and message rather than trying to throw as many campaigns up as possible.

Finally, I'm waiting for the billing cycle on my AMEX to end so that I can start promoting again in earnest. I've pretty much killed my budget for the previous month and don't want to add any more charges to the billing period. So I must wait. I did add some funds to my ad account but only in order to run some ads that I know convert. Everything else is currently paused.

Journey to $300/Day - Where'd Jon Go?

Man, Thanksgiving hit me a little harder than I expected. I've been having trouble staying focused for over a week now.

But I'm back and on top of things again.

In the past week, I switched some dating campaigns over to a new offer and end up losing a decent amount of money. I think my targeting is too broad and not "niche" enough for the offer. I'm debating on whether I should just let it go or continue working at it. We will see.

I also set up testing video on a number of my landing pages. So far, one offer has definitely seen an improvement from video. It's still too early to tell on the other offers, though.

Earlier today, I started the culling - killing subscriptions that I do not use enough to warrant paying for anymore. I'm trying to tighten things up and reduce my overhead as much as possible.