Boy, you hit nail on the head there, Josh!

I spent the first six months of my adventure in Internet marketing just sorting through all the information (both good and bad, helpful and unhelpful) attempting to make some sense of it all. I can tell you it was no fun at all. Your head is spinning in several directions all at once, and you’re wondering if you’ll ever figure this out.

Some people make money with one system (or business model) and others make money with another! Adsense is still alive; Adsense is dead. Who do you believe? Some are just trying to get naive people to buy into their hype while providing material that can be had for free! Others provide information that is outdated or just plain misleading, hoping to keep people guessing about what works. After a while, you begin to see through the BS and stop wasting your time reading those long hypie sales letters.

It all boils down to recognizing that what works in the brick and mortar, three dimensional world, also works in the hyper galactic cyber space of the Internet. You have to have a good product and be promoting it to a market where there is demand for that product. It’s not the newest and latest I.M. (or whatever) product coming down the pike. It’s simple supply and demand for good products that solve problems. This is what real people buy.

From there, whether you use a CPA marketing/income model, Adsense ads, affiliate marketing, or just plain selling your own product, you eventually need, as you say, to “find what’s appealing to you and learn all about it.” And then, of course, begin to take planned and disciplined action.

Your post is a good wake-up call to those who still believe (as so many hypie sales letters lead them on to believe) that something will just be handed to them on a plate without their having to do any work at all. It just doesn’t happen that way, and yet people want to believe that it can.

Thom

I think that if the successful marketers wrote in detail about their daily work schedules, it would give some insight into how to structure my own day. The number of hours worked should be included so that I’d be inspired/shamed into working my own tail off.

Time Management

I’m with you on the notepad but can I suggest you check out editpad lite which is free? It allows you to have text files in tabs and is a much more powerful text editor than notepad. I’m crazy about it.. It also minimizes to the system tray and you can just click on it when you want it back as a window.

Cheers!
Snoskred

Scheduling is important too and setting goals.

Things are moving better now that I fixed those. Recently I actually found myself spending way too much time on this and overextending myself. That was another lesson in itself.