Deneil Merritt posted July 2010 Income Report

I am back from my week break. I have to say I have never been more bored in my life. The only thing I can think about was work. I surf through forums making posts giving my opinion and talking with other poker affiliates. I even sold a site I didn’t want for $25. The only good thing I did was read blogs learning new things I can do or use for my own business. But let’s get into what happen last month before I get into whats going on this month.

Last month was the lowest month of the year income wise. This past month I was so unproductive. I only got a few things done like updating my poker news site, do a little promotion for the poker forums on my big project, and last but not least prepared my poker blog for sale and we know that sold for $1,500 earlier this month. Still far from the months I was making $50 a month but a very disappointing month for me.

July 2010 Income Report

Direct Ad Sales: $140

Ad Networks: $3.63
Infolinks – $0.02
Adbrite – $3.61

Affiliate Marketing: $30.40
Poker Affiliate Solutions: $6.78
OIOpublisher: $18.50
Yoga Poker: $0.38
Full Tilt Poker: $4.67
Spin32 Poker: $0.07

Total Gross Internet Income Of July 2010: $174.03
Remember, my income is from my small network of blogs, websites, affiliate marketing, services, and website flipping.

In The Mind Of Deneil Merritt…
As you can see, this past month is nothing special. If it wasn’t for an advertiser buying a banner slot I wouldn’t have made anywhere near $100. However, the break I took was well worth it. My to do list grew beyond control but I think the more I attack this to do list the more money I will make.

I have decided to put both my CPA campaigns on hold but I will be looking for affiliates for my clickbank product. I am turning my complete focus on my rakeback site and poker news site. I will be building backlinks for both of them everyday. I even wrote a 5 page ebook to giveaway on my main site. Also, I am going to start using video in my branding/marketing for my rakeback site. Maybe even start a video service for poker and casino reviews. I don’t know yet but it would bring in a steady income. So I am seriously thinking about doing it.

On another note, I talk to a new poker affiliate on my break and we decided to have a little competition to see who gets to the top 10 of PAS affiliates. While it may take years to reach it. A competition is always a great motivator. Think that’s why my main focus is on RakebackRolls.com now.

I think we both will leverage this competition to gain motivation and push ourselves and sites to do better and better. I helped him with keyword selection and I came up with my own keywords to target after reading the rapid video blogging ebook. We also went over marketing plans. He has a really nice marketing plan but I don’t want to be the one left behind so I will be putting my marketing plan into action.

On that note, for the readers from PAS forum and PAL forum if you have any PAS sites for sale please let me know. I will buy your site (with players) for 4 to 10 times monthly revenue. Doesn’t matter if your site only making $20 a month. However, if you the only active player signed up to your site keep it moving.

I’m back blogging full time so let me know what you want learn.

Deneil Merritt posted New Ventures

Today I got a few things to update you on. First let’s start with my CPA project. I spent a few hundred on this project so far. While the number one goal from this project is to learn what to do and what not to do. The project is losing money like any project  in the beginning base on PPC traffic. I am getting really good data from this. Small upfront income from marketleverage, newsletter subscribers I can market to later, and what ads are dead in the water and others I can tweak. I am stopping this project for the moment.

Because I have bought 2 websites that need the PPC traffic more than my other project. I just can’t afford to fund them both. Plus these sites are worth the money to be spending on PPC traffic. The first site is a clickbank product and the other is a squeeze page in the same niche. Although the squeeze page gives away an ebook you can find really easy if you looking for it. But beginners don’t know what to look for so my site will help them.

Once I got the squeeze page transferred to my server. I set up my mailing list form using aweber and set up the followup emails if a person signups on the 1st their last email is on the 28th. I know a lot of people say don’t promote products right away provide value by giving away more free content. However, in this niche all the information needed is in 3 products starting with beginner to pro. The last product being best to turn a beginner into a pro and most importantly is a recurring payment product.

I used my personal clickbank account as the affiliate for all 3 products (that include my own product). I set it up that way just in case I resell the clickbank site. I will still make money promoting it on my mailing list. Each subscriber is worth up to $100. Now my goal is to get subscribers. While many people first step would be to “try” to get cheap targeted traffic. Often times targeted traffic isn’t cheap when it comes to PPC. Top affiliates and product owners have no problem spending upwards to $30 per click because they know the value of their subscribers.

I don’t have that type of money nor is my subscribers value is worth enough to even think of spending that amount of money per click. However, I do know my subscribers value which is $100. I have no problem spending up to $1 per click. Even a 1% conversion rate could make me break even. So I am going to start my PPC campaign using adwords today and make tweaks here and there as the results come in.

First product (my product) is promoted 1 week after the subscriber has signed up to the mailing list. So I am going to set a budget of $20 a day for 7 days and sales should be coming in on day 7. I am going to take a week break like Dean, Paul, and Mitch suggested I do. The only time I am going near my laptop is for one hour a day to check emails and the campaign.

Also, my good friend Caden (owner of cddhosting) and I decided not to run a wordpress theme shop. Although in the future we just might or I just might open one. It seem like a good business to be in. There are endless designers out there with cool designs sitting in there head waiting for a client to say design whatever you want. With the right budget I could make a successful wordpress theme shop doing what a rich man once told me. (Well he made sure I never forget it)

Pay others to do what you don’t know how to do, don’t get paid enough to do, and don’t want to do. In other words, you should be doing nothing but signing checks! In my case making paypal payments.

Goals When I Get Back

1. Make sure my campaign was profitable or at least on track to be profitable.
2. Finish my niche mini blog and sell it.
3. Sell my 6 poker blogs I used for article marketing. (Very useful for ranking for low competition keywords)
4. Check on the traffic on my poker news since I hired a blogger to do 3 posts a week for a month.
5. Do a ton of article marketing creating articles with my new article marketing tool.

Until I get back, I hope you all have a great week and profits come to you all.

Deneil Merritt posted Poker Blog Sold For $1,500

Today I started off in a really good mood. I felt so good I took $1,000 off the asking price of the poker blog for sale in the thread I was running. I then contacted 4 people that was looking to buy it and 2 of them got back to me really fast. I am proud to say that one of my readers/favorite bloggers bought the blog for $1,500.

Here’s a short back story behind that blog. When I first started making money online back in 2007 I was getting paid to signup for stuff and write articles for others. This one offer paid out a lot for this signup so I did it. I didn’t get credit for the signup which sucks and I was out of $92. So I had this domain and hosting for a year and I had no idea what to do with it. So for about 4 or 5 months I totally forgot about it and kept doing what made me the most money which was writing articles. Shity articles but hey for the price I was paid you wouldn’t waste too much time writing them either.

Fast forward in time a bit I have it as one the make money online blogs that is really growing readership. So I thought to myself if the blog is going to be popular I want my name to be known and blogging with the domain of your own name gives you a lot of room to blog about whatever comes to your mind. So I bought this domain and turn kushmoney into my personal poker blog since that is all I was blogging about at that time.

Fast forward to now, I have sold my baby. The very first site I have ever own. The new owner has told me what he plans to do with it so I feel its in good hands. Thanks a lot for buying it. If you didn’t who knows what someone else would have done with it.

Deneil Merritt posted Poker Blog For Sale

I am putting my poker blog up for sale. Since I added the forum to my main project Rakeback Rolls with a blogging option for all members. I don’t have a use for my poker blog. Although it has bring in most of my income over the pass year. I think its time to sell it and let someone take it to the next level and do something great with it.

The blog domain is 3 years old, pagerank 3, the blog uses a premium theme called the dealer theme valued at $215 and a banner plugin called oiopublisher valued at $47. The theme and plugin will be included in the sale.

Traffic stats
The blog gets over 500 visitors a month. The blog ranks for a lot of random keywords (all in or fold, sitngo, rush poker, limit holdem, and poker career) that could convert into signups if someone take the time to put in the right call to actions in the articles and do a little backlink building to rank number 1 for the keywords. The blog does come with a twitter account (kushmoney). The account updates with a lot of poker news and whenever the blog updates so the followers grow every month. Also it drives 10 to 40 visitors a tweet depending on the tweet message.

Revenue stats
There isn’t any revenue from signing up players as I drive all traffic to my latest project. I’m sure the right person will put in the right call to actions and make this site profitable. I did make nice amount of money from advertisements on the site. Most of the advertisements are expiring this month and next month. The more recent ads will be move to my poker news site or I will refund the advertiser. For my readers that are not in the poker affiliate business. If you buy the blog I will show you how to make over $3k a year from this website selling advertisements.

The starting bid for the blog is $500 and the buy it now price is $2,500. I am offering 10% finders fee to anyone that brings me a buyer that buys the blog at the B.I.N. price. To follow the current bid please click here.

Deneil Merritt posted Addons To My Big Project

Over the past few days I have revisited my research on forum software. My top picks was vBulletin and IP.Board for my forum. While people totally love vb 3.8 the latest release vb4 has far too many bugs for a non-techie no budget having person like me to spend my money on and then have to deal with the bugs. IP.Board is cheaper and more user friendly. So I went with the user friendly and budget friendly forum software.

After buying IP.Board I realize there are some great things I could do with the addons as well. So I bought IP.Blog and IP.Gallery. I contacted a designer/coder that specialize in Invision Power products such as IP.Board, IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, and etc. He gave me a quote on coding my forum to look like my site and I sent back a couple of questions regrading integrating aweber so when users sign up they are added to the newsletter and single log on for both my site and forum. Still waiting on a reply for that.

Until then I have been working on simple stuff like making the forums, added a few posts to see how it looks, added events to the calendar to see how that works and look, and added a shoutbox (mini chat room). I also created a blog and made a blog post to see how that looks.

I also seen an awesome video gallery addon that allows users to embed their youtube videos and others can comment on it. I think it would be great for users trying to help each other better their poker skills. I’m sure I will be active helping users become better limit holdem players and hopefully I can become a better pot limit omaha player.

I know its well known its hard to convert forum members into players. However, I will be running promotions that reward players for being active forum members, active bloggers, and since it’s a rakeback site they already rewarded for playing poker. Some of the promotions I have seen done while others I never seen done so it should be a ton of fun and a learning experience. I’m sure you can see the reasons why I want members active playing poker, posting in the forums, posting blog posts, uploading pictures, and videos.

I was thinking of adding the forum in 3 months or so. However, my players talk to me about it and I got to thinking. If I am going to build a community. The forum should be there from the very beginning. Anyways, I thought I’d update you all on what I been up too. As soon as the forum design is up, I will surely link to it or post a screenshot of it. Cheers.

Deneil Merritt posted Small Change In Project Focus

My big project I was working on a rakeback site with a twist to teach limit holdem. I have change focus a bit as I will not be teaching limit holdem and has removed the limit holdem content and publish the articles on my other websites. The small change is a step towards a better site.

Overall this project is all about building a solid brand. A brand that players would want to tell their friends, promote on their own blogs, and wear the brand clothes. While the name isn’t something one would think about branding the logo surely change that view.

So to speed up development I have decided to take on one or two financial partners. I don’t know how long it would take to find a partner. It’s not going to stop me from focusing on building my own funds to develop the site. Anyway, you want to invest or know someone else that would like to share in the profits without doing the work. Please visit this thread. Thanks

Deneil Merritt posted Back To Work

I took a small break from working which was great. I watched seasons 1 through 5 of Weeds. Now that I am back getting things done. I also did some thinking about the goals of this month. While content is great, it’s not going to make money today. Content is more of a long term, return on investment.

I will be producing and buying content as always. However, I am going to turn my focus to branding my rakeback/limit holdem site. I set up 2 tournaments to run every weekend. I am also, going to run some freeroll tournaments to bring in more subscribers to my mailing list as well as drive sign ups to smaller online poker rooms.

Things Done Since I’m Back…
I set up a $25 freeroll tournament on Full Tilt Poker for my rakeback site. All of my players will be added in the tournament so all the password/freeroll whose looking to sign up to my mailing list just for the password will be out luck with that. However, I will try to convert them with the $25 freeroll tournament on playersonly as a cross promotion for my rakeback site and a poker forum I bought advertisement on. Depending on how well these tournaments do I will host more of them.

As for content, I have produce some articles for article marketing as well as news articles for my poker news site. I did a lot of editing stuff, moving stuff around to add more banner slots without over doing it. I think I did a good job of it. I also decided to start taking some direct ad orders on this site so we will see how that goes for boosting my direct ad sales.

Hopefully the sign ups from the tournament promotions and the traffic from the poker news site will boost the monthly affiliate marketing income. From the monthly income reports we all know my affiliate marketing income isn’t up to par with my direct ad sales. Also, I will begin my bankroll challenge on my poker blog soon so hopefully the readers I gain from it will join me at the tables by signing up through my rakeback site.

With all that being said, I guess I decided to change this month from being about content to producing more signups and affiliate marketing income. Let’s see what happens.

Deneil Merritt posted Half Way Through The Month

It’s a little over half way through the month. I am not liking how things are going but then again when things run slowly in the first half of the month I push harder to make the second half better. Today I want to go over a few things. May goals, a few things added to the “to do list” this week, and how the income is coming along this month. First let’s get into this month’s goals. I want to complete 10k words of new content, revamp one of my sites, rank on the first page for 5 keywords, and complete the follow ups for the newsletter using aweber for my new site.

So far I have done over 6k words of new content. So half way through the month I am over half way done with goal number one. I am really happy about this because I got into the mood of not writing my own poker content. Now that I am writing again, I really feel bad about selling the content. The articles are so good I want to place them on my site for my players to benefit from them. However, I need the money to fund my project. I will touch more on the income later. Some of the articles I do keep for myself if I feel it’s more beneficial to place the article on my site. I also use some of the articles for article marketing if I don’t like the way it came out or if it’s shorter than 400 words.

Now goal number two is a little more work than just writing. This site I plan on changing from a poker community into a online poker news site with a little twist. I have taken off the dead poker forum, change some of the sidebars with an awesome wordpress plugin, and since I took off the forum where the poker commercials was published. I am going to add a poker commercials section. I still have to pay for the reviews, a new design, and logo as well as hire a poker news writer. The only problem with this project is funding. I told myself this project will only be funded by its income. So far, it has been producing from 2 online poker rooms and direct ad sales. However, I played poker with some of the funds and lost. It was during my downswing. So this project will be fund by my poker winnings since things have turned around and any direct ads I sell on it for now on.

Goal number three, this goal is bothering me a bit. I 301 redirected my test site which had a nice amount of backlinks and 301 redirect 3 mini sites to the new site. At first it seem google was taking forever and day to update the search results with the new site. Then it updated, I was happy until I notice some rankings dropped and others complete disappeared! So I began working on getting some of my rankings back by building backlinks for them but the more backlinks I built the more they dropped so I stop building backlinks for awhile. The rankings are coming back.  Then I read on PAL a lot of people are having all types of problems with google search results. So I guess I will have to ride the wave until things claim down. Until then, I am 1 out of 5. Rank for my own domain name. Not something I am happy about since that is pretty damn easy to do.

My final goal of the month, finish the follow up emails for the newsletter. I did this in the first week of the month. It took a lot of thinking and writing but I got it done. I should count the writing in the new word count for goal number one but I am not going to do that. I did 14 follow up emails including the welcome email. If the newsletter can not convert a player into a real money player producing rake each month I don’t know what will. Also I have some follow up emails that promote some poker tools that such bring in some nice sells as well. Once I get some training videos on the site I will be adding those to the follow up emails as well. By the time I am done with this newsletter it will have a ton of follow up emails. I will never have to send out a promotional email. We all know I will anyway.

Things I added to this months to do list. Create a facebook fan page for the new site, create a twitter page for the new site, and this one can wait until later maybe next month but it’s on the to do list. Hire someone to answer questions on Yahoo Answers. Personally, I think outsourcing this is best. It will give me time to complete other things.

The break down of income and what needs to be done. This month I said, I was not going to focus on direct ad selling. So far this month, I must say I only made a few comments this month in my sales threads. A few people contacted me but no deals. I have been focus on selling articles though. I stocked myself this one though. When it comes to something hard to make money. I normally run back to what I know best if I don’t see results fast enough. However, that’s not the case this month. I am really replacing my direct ad sells income with article writing. I have a few problems with this though.

1. Coming up with things to write about.
2. Getting over the feeling of keeping the article.
3. Knowing I will have to produce 50 articles to make $1,000

Now there is an up side to writing articles over selling direct ads. At first I didn’t even think of this but after talking with a friend. He help me realize a couple of benefits to writing articles than selling direct ads.

1. I only have to write 20 articles to replace my $400 a month income from selling direct ads
2. I will have less outbound links from my site. Which is always a good thing. I rather do internal linking.

As you can see there are good and bad things about selling articles than selling direct ads. I don’t know if I can write 50 articles a month plus content for my own sites. However, I have no problem producing 20 articles a month for $400+.

What will I do with the income? Here’s a break down of what will go where. All direct ads sold on my soon to be poker news site as well as some of my poker winnings will be reinvested there via producing content and hiring a poker news writer. All direct ads sold on my poker blog will be used for producing content and SEO for my new site. All articles sold will go towards producing content, design work, and SEO for my new site.

Summary
In my opinion, I done very little work in the first 2 weeks of this month and need to really pump out new content this second half. I only wrote 9 articles to sell this month so far. 11 more needed to completely replace my direct ad sells income for this month. Who knows if I will complete it. I been having writers block a lot lately. I think I am still having troubles getting back into the writing groove. Although, I always seem to crank out 1 or 2 articles around a long poker session. The twitter and facebook pages will be completed this week. However, I will have to find out the cost of a custom design for the facebook fan page landing page. If that make sense to you. I will wait on getting though. There are far more important things need to be done on the new site.

Here’s a little self promotion for my articles sales thread. Support my project and add new content to your site by buying an article or two maybe all of them. Until next time, work hard and work smart.

Deneil Merritt posted Starting Budget Needed To Start An Online Business

I was on a webmaster forum. Not going to say which one. However, one guy asked can he start a online business with $25. Of course, you there’s people that do not have their own website or business but will answer yes or no base on what they read in the forums. Then there’s people that have their own online business that will give an answer of yes or no and some will give little tips to get started. (Me being one of them)

What I have noticed is there are 2 types of people positive and negative in 2 different categories. I will go over these different types of people and then let you all voice your thoughts on this as I know how I am and what my answer is to this. I just thought it would be great to hear from everybody views and opinions about this topic.

Little to no budget (Positive person) – This guy or girl is very positive about starting an online business. Ready to learn and work hard. However, has little to no budget but still goes for with it. (lol, I did this)

Little to no budget (Negative) – This guy or gal is very negative about having little to no budget to start an online business. Generally, these people do one of two things. Don’t start the business at all until they have a big budget which may take longer than starting the business and bring in an income from that business or they start the business with that mindset that their going to fail because of not having a budget.

Has a budget (Positive) – This guy or gal knows that he or she will be success because they are willing to learn, work hard, and has a budget to buy any resources they need. Generally most of these type of people are successful because they work just as hard a person with no budget however has a budget to do things faster and better.

Has a budget (Negative) – Now these are the people I have no choice but to laugh at. (I know im wrong for doing so but I don’t care) These type of people has a budget yet still negative about starting an online business because they think their budget isn’t big enough. They fail even with a budget because they let the thought of not having a bigger budget get in the way of their work.

The debate on the webmaster began when little to no budget people started saying yes you can start a business with $25 and some said $0. Of course me saying that I had to voice my thoughts on this because I started with $0 and just look at my income reports.

Some people stated that starting with $25 is not starting a business but starting a hobby. I guess I run an 3 figure a month a hobby soon to be 4 figures. LMAO! Also, in the IRS eyes, if you make a single dollar from your so call hobby. It is indeed now a business!

What do you think? What budget is needed to start an online business?

Deneil Merritt posted 2010 Professional And Personal Goals

2009 has come and gone. I find myself in a position of knowledge. That’s right, knowledge. I spent almost the whole 2009 year in search of the perfect niche. Funny thing is I was in it the whole time. I totally forgot about the number one thing that is said so much in the webmaster forums. Follow your passion and the money will follow.

I blogged about poker on kushmoney on random days but never told it serious. I was too focus on teaching others how to blog since that is a serious passion of mine. Not the teaching but helping others. I love helping others. I have no idea why though. I just do. Anyway, early 2009 I decided to totally focus on poker on kushmoney and make this self name blog for everything else.

Funny thing is I kept teaching people how to blog on this blog until I got bord of it while kushmoney has paid for a flip camera, 2 laptops, membership to outstandingpoker (poker training site) and so many other sites I have built, own, run, and others I have sold for profit.

Now that you know what happen in 2009. Lets get into the goals for 2010.

2010 Professional Goals

My 2010 professional goals are pretty simple. Expand my business by building more mini sites within the poker niche, launch my online poker tour, and build a community in my poker forum. Get alot of new players signed up to online poker rooms I am promoting. Everybody knows my biggest goal is $10,000 a month. However, I know I will not complete this in 2010. My goal for 2010 is $2,000 to $5,000 a month.

2010 Personal Goals

Oh boy, the personal goals. First lets get the things out of the way that money can take care of. I want to pay off my debt, get a used car. Something to get me from point A to point B, and last but not least I want to move to Vegas. I want to start my life over and what better place than Vegas!

With that being said, I think its time for me to find myself outside of business, poker, and food. When it comes to business, poker, and food. I know where I stand in life. Outside of that, I am lost. So I really want to get to know me. I also want to gain some weight and finally take the time to workout. lol

On a side note, my ex is my back in life. I guess its a good thing. She is my bestfriend. We didn’t breakup on bad terms or anything like that. Not to go into detail, we just on different paths in life. Deep down I would love for her to move to Vegas with me. So you could say that is one of my 2010 goals. However, I am not putting it on the list.

Recap of 2010 goals list

Build poker mini sites
launch online poker tour
Build community on poker forum
Income to $2-$5k a month
Pay off debt
Get a car
Move to Vegas
Find myself outside of business, poker, and food
Gain weight and workout
Get ex-girlfriend to move to Vegas with me

My 2010 goals are pretty straight forward. I know for a fact I will complete most of them. I will not allow myself not to be successful at completing these goals. The only 2 I find myself struggling with is completely paying off all my debt and finding myself. I am ok with that. The rest I will complete for sure!

What are your 2010 goals?