2011 was expected to be the most profitable and productive year of my life. Beyond just making money and growing my companies, I was not disappointed. I learned way more than I thought I would.

I was catapulted into a year of change by several life decisions I made last year and stuck with. This led me to experience a lifestyle I could have never imagined, before living it. I had finally figured out how to make serious money online, and had no idea how drastically it would change my life.

Things I had been building and putting together for years FINALLY came together, and are actually up and running and growing on a large scale. It’s a wonderful feeling, and I think I’ve learned more about business from this year of living than all of my schooling and study combined.

The advertising network, Chase Clicks, is starting to really catch on in multiple segments of the web. My lead generation service is integrated with it, and growing steadily as well. It’s super exciting on this end.

By establishing and growing a solid base of internet marketing platforms, I feel that I’ll have a reliable promotional channel for my future ideas and projects. I’m really looking forward to bringing a massive amount of exposure to my network of businesses and websites.

Unlike most other internet marketers, and online professionals, this is my full-time career and I haven’t had a “day job” or anything that resembles one in over 5+ years. Most of my time is spent dialing in campaigns, refining web properties, and improving things on the network in general.

I do this because it’s my passion, not because I’m looking for a quick payday. I would do this for free if I could! I seriously enjoy my work that much.

Before I started focusing exclusively on my own projects, I was busy designing websites and doing graphic design before it was trendy.

This can be a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that I’ve always been my own free spirit, and have complete freedom to do whatever I want… and of course a curse in that I spend ALL of my “free time” focused on how I can make more money, more effectively, and continue to grow my businesses.

Luckily, the longer I’m in the business world, the easier it seems to get. As things continue to build, network volume keeps growing and the word keeps spreading. I’m looking forward to working with a lot of new marketers and publishers over the next few years and building things up to an extraordinary level.

With all the frameworks and abstractions out there nowadays, it’s not surprising that developers don’t write web applications in PHP or raw Javscript as often as they used to. It’s awesome to consider the rapid development of ideas possible nowadays.

As responsibilities continue to grow, I’m finding myself needing to embrace more streamlined approaches to my work flow to really accomplish this year’s aspirations. It’s caused me a bit of stressful transition, but ultimately pushed me to leverage automation, quick reference, and the other standard trappings of an overloaded programmer.

I always found it a bit curious to see newer web developers completely shy away from PHP when starting out, and jumping on the Ruby or Django bandwagons, but after working more and more with frameworks… I’m beginning to see why. Things that yesteryear might’ve taken dozens of lines of code are doable without breaking a sweat. Gotta love progress.

Not really a point to this point besides one of those rhetorical -face/palms- we all do once in a while when we really step back and evaluate how productivity can be improved. Anyways, lots of big projects coming up that will really benefit from this, and I’m looking forward to some of the product announcements that will be coming up as a result.

The best way to begin affiliate marketing is to just get started. One of the most common questions I hear, or what seems to stall most people’s efforts in my opinion, is the very first step. It could be as simple as you’re completely new and don’t know anything about it, or maybe you’re just clueless as to what “getting started” really is in actual steps. It doesn’t help that it can be a bit of a mystery when it comes to internet marketing and becoming a successful full-time affiliate, and the industry knows that and capitalizes on it often.

When you aren’t sure of what you’re supposed to do, I suppose it can be a bit difficult. When it really boils down to it though, that’s probably the exact thing that’s tripping you up. The mindset, “but I don’t know what to do.. how can I get started?” is one of the most damaging things a beginner can struggle with. As with anything in life, it’s a matter of breaking down what you want to achieve, and accomplishing these steps towards the greater goal.

Don’t worry about the problems, find the solutions

I’ve always been more of a, “I don’t see a problem, I see a potential solution” sort of guy. Always have been, and probably always will be. I’m never content with just taking something at face value, and neither should you, if you want to be successful in online marketing.

As an entrepreneur with strong programming and development skills, but also a comfort with the design process, and a fair amount of sales, support, and managerial experience, I know that a manager thinks generally in concepts or ideas, programmers in strictly concise and verbose sets of instructions, designers with a lucid lack of structure, and end-users with a horrid distaste for having to think about anything beyond their monitor and mouse. To be the most successful internet marketer you can be, you’ll want to take into consideration the many variables present when researching and setting up your campaigns.

Don’t assume. Find out, and know the facts

Life is an endless pursuit of knowledge and as one timeless quote puts it, “Live as if your were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” This is one of the main defining characteristics of a successful affiliate: the endless quest for more knowledge, more data, more metrics, more market-share, you name it. We’re a competitive bunch.

As sad as it is, I don’t think its just the out-of-touch politicians that think the internet is a series of tubes, I think there may be a few million end-users mixed into that demographic. As an affiliate, one of the best things you can do is equip yourself with a strong understanding of the web from both a user and technical standpoint. Knowledge is power, and to an affiliate, knowledge is another zero on the end of that check.

As a kid, between the various sports and childhood activities, one of my long-running hobbies was magic for fun and profit. I would sometimes literally make $50-200 bucks in tips (as a 6-10 year old kid) simply walking around performing card tricks and impromptu close-up magic to complete strangers for about an hour or two for different events. David Blaine ain’t got nothin’ on me.

Don’t just read about it, learn it

Well, that same desire to decipher the secrets, and the hidden mechanisms of “magic and illusion” at a young age eventually turned into me tinkering with computers and wanting (/needing?) to learn as much about them as I could. Being an avid reader all my life contributed to me learning at an early age how to teach myself, and productively investigate or research a topic, while stockpiling knowledge. It’s probably one of the main reasons I think people should be more proactive about their thinking, decisions, and path in life, especially with their careers or general finances.

The best way to learn something is to try it. If you read about it, learn about it, then forget about it… it seems like you’d be wasting an awful lot of time. So when you read something that gets you thinking, act on it!

Get out there and start making money!

So, after reading all of that… are you just going to sit there and stare at your screen for hours more, wishing you were making money? Or, are you going to actually get started?

Many of the people in my personal life have no idea how I make money on the internet. They know I run my web hosting company and host several thousand websites. They figure, “that must obviously come with some level of residual income”, but beyond that they have no idea what my internet operations entail.

A growing chunk of my income comes mostly from my online marketing campaigns in profitable niches, and my various online marketing & affiliate efforts in general. I push traffic on several large mainstream networks, my own three networks, and several lucrative internal affiliate programs.

“Cool” they might say, what the HELL does that mean? Push? Traffic?

Internet marketing is pretty basic when you actually break it down

Buzz terms aside, the core of the traditional “affiliate mindset” boils down to a Cost-Per-Action based reward system. You put an offer in front of a visitor, they perform an action, you get paid. As a merchant, your ideal “action” is that the visitor converts into a paying customer and buys a product or service. As an affiliate, it could simply be a person filling out their zip code for a search, or entering their email and pressing go. The exact action is specific to the campaign, and your role in it.

As an affiliate, an offer you might promote could literally be as simple as a web page with a text box asking for the visitor to enter their email to win a free iPad, or any popular prize. Other common offers are debt and educational campaigns, which ask for someone’s contact details so that an organization can follow up with a phone call and further information. When a person completes a form, or whatever the action required in the campaign terms, an affiliate receives a conversion, and gets paid by the network or advertiser. As you can guess, these conversions can stack up pretty quickly when you have a good method of promotion, and ultimately put a lot of cash in your pocket.

The professional affiliates job is much like any other marketing career, but with much more freedom. The basic idea is to run campaigns that drive many targeted individuals to an offer you think they’ll be interested in, and likely to convert, which then earns you a large return. Beyond that, it becomes a science (and art) of campaign optimization, efficiency, and scale. This is to put it stupidly simple, but that’s affiliate marketing in a nutshell.

If you’re serious about making large volumes of money on the internet, this is all obvious. Connect the dots, and your wallet gets fat overnight. For most newbies, they think this a load of crap. How can it possibly be that easy?

Basic… doesn’t always mean Easy

Just because the basic concept is easy to follow, doesn’t mean actually putting it into practice is always as easy as it sounds. Any full-time affiliate will probably tell you life wasn’t always that carefree and lavish. They probably put numerous hours into researching, experimenting, reading, making money, losing money, learning lessons, discovering new methods, and so much more.

There’s a lot of time and effort that can go into learning a thorough understanding of internet marketing, and the mechanisms and industry behind it. It usually takes even longer to begin applying that knowledge, and making it tangibly profitable. Most people like to assume affiliate marketing is a lazy job, since you can do it from your home, in your pajamas. While this can be true in some instances, most online workers know the affiliate industry for what it is, a lucrative and worthwhile career. Most people in the online affiliate marketing industry know life is all about working smarter, not harder.

So get started, it wont happen by itself

The biggest thing stopping you from making money online is simply the fact that you’re not doing anything to push yourself further towards your goals. If you coast through life, wishing you had attained all these great things, it simply doesn’t happen. So get motivated, get on the AllHatter internet marketing forums, start reading my blog, and search google for affiliate marketing. Or, if you’re confident you’re ready to start making some serious money online, apply at my two public advertising networks, ChaseClicks and CPA Dough and mention you heard about them from my blog!

Ok, lol. I’ll stop making promises on when I’ll write, and just try to keep it flowing. I’ve been doing a lot of writing on other mediums lately and I like the approach of just jotting a bunch of stuff down as it flows. I’ve had success in almost every regard this year by deciding to just take the approach I prefer, so maybe it’ll work for this as well.

A New Direction

For those of you who don’t know, I stopped taking on new client work at the start of the year, and spent the first half of the year actually making that happen. There were a few straggling projects towards the end of the year, but I’ve successfully been able to transition to my own workload again full-time. No more stressing on client work, now I’ll have project managers handling new jobs, and several talented developers, in addition to myself, banging out the code.

A New Ride

Some of you who know me personally know I traded my old Lexus IS300 for a G35 after my brother bought it and couldn’t swallow the maintenance. After trading, I pretty much hated it, but don’t have the cash in the bank to throw down on the Twin Turbo Gallardo yet, so I traded it in for a new IS250. So far, I’m loving the new ride.. way better than the piece of crap it replaced. Not as fast as my usual ride, and the first silver car I’ve ever owned (yeah, yeah, hater’s gonna hate on the all-too-common color, haha) … I know… but it’s comfortable, and has a warranty for the next 5 years.

A New Focus

Basically, I’m not going to focus on cars or lifestyle for the time being, and plan on putting the majority of my time and attention to my work. Then the fun can begin again, besides.. I already have 6 cars, 2 trucks, several successful businesses, and a stack of bills. That’s more than one ride for everyday of the week, and I barely even leave my home office at the moment!

I’ve written very little in terms of creative outlet, or private journals lately, so it’d be nice to get caught up on some of the cool things I have happening in my life right now. Whether it’s because I’ve just had too much going on with my businesses, or just prefer to keep my thoughts to myself… who knows. I think I’m going to begin expanding my presence in the affiliate marketing industry this coming year, so it’d be good to get some stuff on the site for the online marketing crowd. As birdman would put, I’m all about my money, I’m all about my grind. I’ve pretty much always neglected the majority of my personal projects for client work and my network sites, figuring it put more money in my pocket, and faster. I’ll admit, all these years.. I was wrong.

Big Plans for 2011

It turns out, it’s better in the big scale of things to be one of the guys running the game, so I think I’m going to take that approach. Talk is cheap, but putting things together, and making things happen is my specialty. I know I’ll be in good company, and I know there’s plenty of room for all of us.

As most of my longtime friends and readers are aware of by now,

when I put my mind towards something, it happens.

It’s only a matter of time.