rat race slave

It’s been almost four months since I requested for a payment… and I still haven’t been paid yet.

Have I finally given up and accepted that I’ve been scammed?

No, not yet. So far, I haven’t found an evidence that it is a scam. It just takes toooooooo damn long for them to pay their members. I’m not sure if this is a sign that it is about to collapse.  I don’t have anything to back that up either.

Bux.to is saying in the forums that it will take about 4 weeks for them to clear their backlog. It is good they are being transparent about their issues. I will monitor this and see what happens. I will be posting updates in my blog within the next few weeks.

Waiting for my bux. to payment,

Rat Race Slave

Technorati Tags: Bux.to, bux.to scam, pay per click

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One day I was wondering why I didn’t think of setting up a business after graduating.  All I did was submit my resume, go to interviews and check out the company’s offer.  Going back, I think I didn’t even think about this because this was what was expected of me.  I was asked where I applied for a job and what companies offer what.

As I thought of it more, it seems that this was what I was trained for.  While growing up, parents teach their kids to get good grades because this help them get to a good university.  When they are in a university, they will still teach their children to get good grades because companies are looking for graduates from good universities and good grades.  The better your grades are, the better your salary will be.

It really isn’t bad to work hard to get high marks and graduate with flying colors.  When I was studying, I did study hard because I enjoy doing my best on each subject.  But I guess a lot of people miss what is more important than good grades.  People should focus more on what to do with the knowledge that they gained and the skill that they honed through education.  In the long run, the basic and practical knowledge, and the person’s attitude in life counts more than good grades.  So what if you have failed in your Math class?  Most of the top billionaires in the world are drop outs!

Rat Race Slave

Technorati Tags: corporate life, escaping from the rat race, rat race, trained for the corporate life, trained for the rat race

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I’ve been exploring affiliate marketing as an alternative to my day job.  I’ve mentioned in my previous post that this is one of the ways to make money online.  For those who are new to this, see below to get a grasp on what this is about.

What is affiliate marketing?
In the Definition of Terms page that I have created, I defined affiliate marketing as the process where an affiliate drives traffic to a merchant’s site. The affiliate then gets a commission when a sale is made. This simply means that the affiliate is rewarded by getting a share of the profit when the affiliate helps the product owner sell the product.

So, how exactly do you earn as a an affiliate marketer?
The following are the steps to earn as an affiliate marketer:

1.  Sign up with an affiliate marketing program.  Some affiliate programs or networks allow anyone to be an affiliate.  In some, only those who have purchased the product can be an affiliate.  One of popular website for affiliate programs is Clickbank.

2. Get an affiliate link to the product site.  This usually contains the product website plus a tracking number or your user name.  The tracking number or user name is used to determine who gets credit for the sale.

3. Promote the product using any marketing tools and techniques. This can range from email marketing, investing on pay per click, banner ads, etc.  This is the part where the affiliate helps the product owner sell the product.

4. Get a commission when a sale is made using your affiliate link. If a visitor purchases the
product using your affiliate link, you get credit for that sale.

From the three steps outlined above, the third one is your biggest task. How you promote the product is entirely up to you.  Some setup a blog, create some sort of a testimonial, or simply tell their friends about the product through email.  Some product owner even give their affiliate some sample emails, tips and some freebies to help them promote their product.

An affiliate is rewarded at least 50% of the sale. Your job is just to promote the product and drive traffic.  It is the product owner’s job to promote the product, generate traffic, handle inventory and sales, manage customers, etc. So, getting at least 50% of the cut is a great deal!

Affiliate marketing is a win-win situation for both the product owner and the affiliate. The product owner gets more traffic and sales while the affiliate gets a share of the profit.

I hope this post helped you learn something about affiliate marketing.

Successful affiliate marketer wannabe,

Rat Race Slave

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, Internet Marketing, work from home

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Yup, for a second, I really loved my job.

I appreciated every tiny bit of it. For a second, getting orders from someone and the long commutes are fine. For a second, I forgot all the things I hate about my work.

But yes, only for a second.

So what happened? Did I get promoted? Did I get a raise?

Nope. I just saw this picture:

What if I am a deodorant tester?  Will I cry myself to sleep? Or will I not sleep until I find the best possible option other than this?  I don’t want to know.

Not hating my job so much now,

The Rat Race Slave

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These are the words that I have encountered while researching in the Internet. I came up with my own definition based on my understanding on these terms.  These are just high level definitions but I hope they will be helpful to you.  I will be adding more as I encounter more terms.

Definition of Internet Terms

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, blog, hosting, internet definition of terms

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Based on what I know, there are 3 major ways on how to make money online. 

1.  Advertisements - These are web spaces or online billboards where you allow other people to display their banners or links for a fee.  I think one good example is Google.  It is a multi-billion dollar company now because of this business.

To succeed in this business model, you will have to be extremely popular and should have thousands of hits per day.  Obviously, this can’t be done by someone who is just starting out.

2.  Selling your own stuff - This can be the items that you have or the services that you render.  This may include your own products, your own things, your old clothes, shoes, mp3… and even your garbage!  If you have a special skill you can offer your services on web design, programming, copy writing and so on.  Ebay is one of the most popular sites where everyone can sell their own stuff while Rentacoder, Elance and Guru.com are one of the many sites where specialists offer their services.

A lot of people are making a decent income online by selling their products or services.  However, selling your own implies that you will have to think about the payment processing, product delivery, refund process, etc.  Offering services means that you have to have a special skill that will be useful to other people.

3.  Selling other people’s products - This is a practice where an affiliate drives visitors to the product owner’s site to get a commission when a sale is made.  One of the most popular sites where you can find a product to promote is Clickbank.

Sending traffic to the owner’s site sounds simpler than having your own product and some people actually became millionaires because of affiliate marketing.  The marketing or advertising techniques used by the affiliate can make or break his/her future in affiliate marketing so it is important to know these techniques from those who made piles of money because of affiliate marketing.

Trying to make money online,

The Rat Race Slave

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, making money online

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In my first review, I did a trial run on the software and used someone else’s website. I did this just to test how it works. Few days ago, I tried to build the real thing

Finding a Niche
I really did not spend much time on this one. I am just so eager to start building a site so I just picked a brand. The one that I picked was Adidas. Since I am planning to setup more stores, I’ve created a list of other niches that I would like to try out in the future.

Domain name registration
This step took a while since the good ones are already taken. I spent 2-3 nights trying to find a good name. I thought I found a good name and realized that it was misspelled after I registered it. The one that I chose was www.cheapaddidas.com. It should have been adidas, not addidas. I thought I should still use it because I have already paid for it and it appears that a lot of people misspell it. I typed ‘addidas’ in Google and a lot of search results were displayed so I thought it is still fine.

Hosting
I’ve signed up for a new hosting account for my niche store. I signed up with Host Gator because it was the recommended by the BANS site. I got the Baby package because it allows you to create unlimited number of domains on one hosting package. For me, it is a good deal because I am planning to create multiple niche stores.  I was also able to get a 20% discount because I used a coupon :)  See this link for more details:

http://www.ratraceslave.com/web-hosting/save-money-on-hosting/

After the hosting was setup, I linked the domain with my hosting account. The steps for doing this are detailed in the manual so I found that easy.

Installation and Setup
After setting up the prerequisites, I’ve started installing the files in my new account. This part was very easy because I’ve tried it before. I started to modify the look of the site after. I wanted it to look more like an Adidas store so I sticked with black and white colors. I also did the logo myself. I basically followed the instructions on the BANS site on how to enhance the elements of the page. Everything was pretty straight forward.

Traffic!
I actually don’t know a lot of options on how to promote my store. I started with adding the site’s URL to Google, Yahoo, etc. After about 1-2 weeks, the site can be found on Google. Yehey! I am planning to explore more ways on how to gain traffic so let’s see what happens.

You can visit my Cheap Adidas store at www.cheapaddidas.com

Now a niche store owner,

The Rat Race Slave

Technorati Tags: BANS review, Build a Niche Store, online store

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I found this in the internet and just want to share this with you. To all the rat race slaves out there, this one is for you! (”,) 

 
Click the image to view it on the next page.
*Replace [COMPANY] with your company name. 

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When I thought of creating a blog to record my attempts to escape the rat race, I actually thought of developing it from scratch since I know how to develop software… and it was such a bad idea!  It’s good I did a little research before proceeding.  :P  I have actually heard of sites used for creating blogs but thought that they won’t be flexible enough or users won’t be able to use it in their own sites.  So thank God for Wordpress

So for those who are planning to create blogs, you can follow the installation instructions for WordPress.  It is called the 5-minute installation but you can actually finish it in less time.  The instructions can be seen below:

http://wordpress.org/docs/installation/5-minute/

After installation, I selected a theme that can be used for the overall look of the site.  WordPress has a couple of themes on their site and you can select by color and by the number of columns that you want your site to have.  You can also modify the elements in the page through the Theme Editor.  The theme files are written in PHP so if you are not familiar with it, don’t try to alter the code because you might break your site.  But if you would like to try, do not forget to backup the original file.

You can also create your own categories to organize your posts.  You can think of them as your file directories.  Also, I discovered that if you change your permalinks to custom then enter ‘/%category%/%postname%/’ in the field, the post name will look like www.website.com/categoryname/postname/, which looks a lot better than the post date or post number.

Hoping to be a great blogger,

The Rat Race Slave

Technorati Tags: Blogging, wordpress

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I have just downloaded a copy of BANS, also known as Build a Niche Store. It is basically a software that lets you build eBay affiliate sites easily. When an item from eBay is bought through your site, you get a commission. I can’t remember where I found this but it’s in the list of items that I would like to try out. I’ve wanted to have an online store so I thought this is a good start.  Eventually, I would like to have several of these so I could work from home.

Licensing

After downloading and unzipping the files that I’ve downloaded from the BANS site, I started reading the license information and instructions on how to register in their forums. The contents of the files were short and straight to the point, not the usual lengthy ones that no one reads. One good thing about this software is that you can use it as many times as you like. Like what is mentioned in their site, you could be building an eBay affiliate empire if you want!

Forums

I’ve signed up in the BANS forums and was shocked to see that there are already thousands of topics posted there. There were also hundreds of topics written under the Success Stories section so I guess it was a good sign. I quickly browsed the forum and found a couple of interesting topics to help members create a good niche store.

Installation

After visiting the forums, I started to read the installation and user’s manual and followed it step by step. I’m already familiar with some items such as uploading files, choosing a domain name, etc so I just skimmed that part. The manual discusses this in detail so it is a good thing for those who haven’t tried it. The installation was so easy follow.

The installer leads you to an admin panel where you could configure the format of the site. For me, this was the fun part. You can change the layout, the colors, add some ads, etc. For those not familiar with HTML, you can change the format of your site using the admin panel. If you can fill up a form, you can create a site.  I just played around with this to be familiarized with the tool. 

What I think

Generally, I think this is a good software. It is relatively easy to use and has lots of potential. There are also a lot of goodies that can be found in the BANS forum and in the Internet. You can use it for several sites so you can have multiple streams of income.

However, since there are probably hundreds (if not thousands) of niche stores out there, yours have to stand out. With this in mind, you will probably have to know PHP, HTML, CSS and maybe mySQL to fully configure your site.

Since it is a software, you can’t expect it to be perfect. There are probably bugs, hopefully not too many. I guess having the forums helps a lot in this area.

What to do

I haven’t chosen a niche yet so I’m not really done with this yet. I also still have to choose a domain name. I will be featuring my first niche store so watch out for my next post!

The Rat Race Slave

Technorati Tags: BANS review, Build a Niche Store, online store

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