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Signs of success

You know the sign of success we want, taking the kids and the wife on that holiday that was always out of reach. Being happy there's nothing in the fridge because it means you'll have to eat out. Wandering through the motorcycle showroom with th...

Monthly Analysis - March 2011

Is it imprudent to look at a couple of successful months' figures and say out loud you think you've made it?  Well I'm not feeling that cautious, I think we've got to where we are secure.  The figures for the month have been really very healthy ...

Monthly report - February

The report is an epic, lots has happened.  Probably best you go and get a coffee.  The figures for the month have been really very healthy for us.  we'd expect them to ease a little for the next couple of months, that's been our pattern for a wh...

The strength of ranking

You'll have noted that we're just a couple of average guys and that we haven't set the world on fire, we're still having to work for a living, but that we are making what seems like reasonable progress for us. We're also trying to share what we le...

Return of the monthly report - January 2011

It's been a while since we ran out the regular monthly report for you. The truth is, we're still here and in many ways that's a good thing. The bad news is in our own scheme of things, here isn't where we planned to be by now. I should preface a...

Finding The Silver Lining In The Growerflowers Collapse

As you've probably noticed, we don't give you our url's away on the blog.  People have proven to be nasty and destructive, so we keep a few things to ourselves.  Having said that, a lot of it's fairly open and we can tell you that we have been in ...

Growerflowers Closed Down

Yes it's true, the USA flower merchant Growerflowers is out of business and has closed down. This is sure to make thousands of affiliates around the world quite upset, because none of us were notified! We've been Growerflower affiliates for the la...

The Internet Is Full Of Crap

We were blogging regularly, and as you'll recall if you fairly regularly read the blog, we decided that things were moving slowly and there was training and learning to be done. Well off we went, to pretty much sit at the feet of the masters. Gra...

Monthly Analysis - August

Another month passes, and progress shows up on the bottom line. Months ago we were pretty clear we had a deadline to make all this happen, and we're tantalisingly close, but not close enough. You'll have read the earlier post that says we're going...

More Training

You’ve read it from me time and again. We don’t believe in instant success. If you figure that you can make a gazillion dollars from the internet for very little work, there are lots of people on the internet who are ready to take your cash from y...

Monthly Analysis – July

May was a great month, up a long way.  June was supposed to be a little down, so we were fine with that, but we’re doing the work, July was supposed to be better.  This business is trundling along making a part time living, and we know the trends ...

Support calls

This week I’ve had the joy of being involved in a number of support calls, the type you make to a help desk when your computing world turns to manure. On the outgoing side I spoke with an Armenian guy called Nerses.  Then later with Robbo.  I foun...

Buying a working website

You may have noticed that we had steered clear of buying into sites until now.  We’ve always thought that it’s a good way to grow the business, but it’s very difficult to do your due diligence in buying a site.  Having taken a big hit early in our...

Monthly report – June

This is an interesting month.  Our aim here is to achieve the place where we are making a living and the actual figures are down a little, but we’re feeling pretty up, why is that? Well some important things happened.  First and probably most impo...

How an internet marketer makes Facebook pay.

You’ll remember our blog about four months ago, when we pondered how to use facebook.  We’ve been sure for all this time that there has been a way to take a facebook presence and turn it to something that supported the business, or strengthened us...

Time for ourselves

It’s occasionally important to step back and take a look at what we’re doing.  In some ways we’ve been blessed with the situation where we don’t even have a vague feeling that we’ve got this all under control, so we have to take a look fairly freq...

Social Media - be in it...

The internet is a vibrant and ever changing place.  We’ve started to make sense out of it and that’s becoming our living.  In the last year or so social media has become one of the greatest drivers not only of fun and pleasure on the internet, but...

Using Social Media to secure your future.

Recently we attended the Affili@Sydney conference, to talk with a bunch of other high flyers about what the future holds for our industry, and to pick up the tricks that are going to make us winners in a game that’s growing all the time. There wer...

Our Junk League

There is a bunch of trial and error in this game.  We use some tools and they improve our hit rate really significantly, but I don’t believe you can get a guarantee of a site/ product/ market combination that’s going to hit it right every time and...

Monthly Analysis, May

Well after a couple of whining, moaning months, it’s about time for a positive, isn’t it?  It’s been a much better month and after feeling like things were on the improve, it was a joy to sit down at month’s end and actually do the numbers. O...

One to beware of

A time ago we were considering getting more serious about affiliate marketing.  We thought there might be a fast way to do it, and we had a go at purchasing a trading, profitable website. If you read our regular monthly analysis, you’ll be able to...

Succeeding, but wanting more

As you know, we’ve been doing this seriously for a few months now.  We have looked at the idea for a lot longer than that, and before we dived in, we’d started to look at some training. Like a bunch of other things, though, we started at it before...

Monthly Analysis - April

Monthly analysis, April Here we are again, not as late as usual.  Time to spill for you all in the ongoing soap opera that really is about whether we float to the surface or whether we crash and burn. First point on that I guess is that we wanted ...

Wanting more than success

As you know, we’ve been doing this seriously for a few months now.  We have looked at the idea for a lot longer than that, and before we dived in, we’d started to look at some training. Like a bunch of other things, though, we started at it before...

Trusting theory

Sometimes I look at science and understand in broad terms what’s going on, but don’t understand the detail of it all.  Then there are practical things I do every day and I can’t really be clear about why they work but I know they do and I trust th...

Monthly Analysis - March

I hope you’ve all been waiting for this, we’ve certainly had our work cut out for us and this has sat there, waiting to be written and probably demanding that we do the work, even though we didn’t want to. The month shows us down in actual cash fl...

Ouch! Don’t be a stinking evil bully

Last week was a hard week.  We alluded to it yesterday, and as part of our grinding stubbornness to keep going, we kept pushing out the output, but didn’t get round to the month’s figures and you’re still waiting for them. Our real issue is that w...

Reflecting after a hard week

This week I’ve got three posts in my mind to write.  You’re going to get them in reverse order of how they arrived for me, but that’s because all this stuff arrives in our mind and causes turmoil and the last thought is the one that brings both pe...

Expectations - anywhere between $2 a day and the big million.

A little while back we had an encouraging feedback from someone who reads the blog.  The reader shared with us that they are also involved in internet marketing and asked about doing business in Australia, given that they’d started their trading i...

Things we hate – and YOU should be careful of.

There’s no doubt that the internet is the future of commerce.  We are sailing along building a business that isn’t keeping the wolf from the door yet but is growing at a remarkable rate.  If we were better resourced, we’d probably be able to buy s...

Monthly analysis – February

Monthly report time, something I kind of look forward to doing, but am challenged by the time it takes us. How did the month go?  Well we’re less mopey than we were last month.  We are sure from this that we’ve made the right choice of direction, ...

Watching the seasons

One of our issues in the internet marketing area is that we are facing seasonal matters.  One of our very positive performers is pretty much a summer product.  There’s use for the product in all weathers and I’ll continue to use mine, but it’s cle...

Facebook, who can work it properly?

Facebook - a dilemma for your humble correspondents. Regular readers of the blog will know that we’re building up a bunch of income streams and learning as we go.  You’ll also know that we want to get cleverer all the time so when things come our ...

Avoiding the mistakes

So our last post was maybe a little bleak, it wasn’t supposed to be, but really, the truth is, we are all going to make mistakes. Today as an antidote to my own yesterday's attitude, I thought I’d consider mistakes we’ve already made, and the same...

Money in the Game

Money in the game When I was a young child, my parents were in the Salvation Army.  I’m not any more, and neither are they but there were a lot of great things to be learned from the Salvos.  Among the benefits of it included that I didn’t drink u...

More on leverage

We’ve spoken not long ago about a process where we hired some inexpensive labour to get us through some arduous tasks.  We’ll pay these people once and they’ll deliver something that will work for us long into the future, everybody wins. Meanwhile...

Monthly progress report - January 2010

So here we are for another month.  It’s time to get honest, and get painful.  First thing to note is that we’ve worked hard for January’s numbers.  There was a break over Christmas and we knew that would have some impact, but since we got back, we...

Taking the percentage shot

We’re plugging away at the affiliate marketing game and our results are steady but unremarkable.  One of the things that’s happened is that we (that’s both Graeme and Dave) have had opportunities come across our desk and we review them.  This proc...

Improving the bottom line with leverage

Most business principles translate from physical business into internet business pretty clearly.  The reason is fairly simple.  Business is essentially one person with a need, whether they’ve clearly thought that out, and some money.  Another pers...

Lift your profits with a simple cost reduction

This week has been a whirlwind and there are a number of half finished thoughts in our heads.  Business is fun and I really feel like we’re winning, but telling you about it is tricky.  So it’s time to kick in with a simple but really important bu...

Turning a forgotten gem into real money.

This looking at what we do thing has to seem like a lot of navel gazing, certainly does to us.  Truth is that we’re really more doers than planners, and that might have been some of the problem.  We know others who plan forever, and the planning t...

More in the Toolbox

We started this blog to offer something to people who really want to do well in the internet marketing field, as realistic business people, not as a five minute millionaires.  We’ve discussed a few tools we can’t do the job without, and we think t...

Letting one pass us by

We’ve got a lot of stuff coming across our desk.  There is always something to do, watch, try, accept, keep up with. It’s exciting and we get a sense of forward motion, but neither of us get the sense that we’re getting to that holy grail, not bei...

Little steps forward

We like this blog.  You’ll note that we’re adding articles to the site as well, which have been written by us in the past and which we’ve reviewed and placed in the library. A little while ago we reviewed the site’s adsense earnings and while it’s...

Missing opportunities

We’re really struggling with something here.  Last week we were in on an opportunity to sell lots of a product called Niche Blueprint 2.0, from our friends at Commission Blueprint.  A while back we were aware that affiliate marketing looked like a...

Monthly analysis – December

We’ve had this info for a while now and it was going to be important in the scheme of things to tell you how we were going and what that means, how we respond to good news, what we do about bad news etc. So here’s what happened for December, one o...

I unfollowed someone today

You’ll have noticed that we are singing the praises of twitter.  As I use it more and more I find a couple of things.  Firstly my initial use was a bit cynical, I wanted a list and I’m getting one.  I am noting that the format works for me.  Peopl...

The importance of Twitter

If you’ve been following this blog for a little while, you’ll know that South West eCommerce is two guys in Bunbury Western Australia, who are sure the internet is a place where we can make enough money to support our families, and maybe get just ...

Friday pause for thought

Gidday, the way business is going, there’s no stopping.  Even when I’m away from the computer, there is thinking going on, but school holidays means I HAVE TO down tools every so often to hang out with my young people, and that’s a great blessing....

Clearing the decks

Well we’re looking at the new year, the way most of us do, and trying to work out the best way forward.  This year it’s different, major decisions are only months old and every week seems to be a review of something.  That’s all good and even exhi...

Monitoring – Part 3

Yesterday we were muttering about the situation of one of our better working sites.  The site had stopped paying and on checking, we found that we were still driving traffic there but the site wasn’t directing clients to buying/ payment options. G...

More on Monitoring

Yesterday while I was writing about balancing how much we need to monitor what’s going on, something was happening. My partner in the business was checking what’s paying and what’s not.  One of our sites, which did quite well in December and which...

Monitoring versus micromanaging

There are two competing urges and responsibilities in an affiliate marketing business.  You have to know what’s working and what’s not, making sure you don’t expend time and money on things that are a waste.  Meanwhile, if you spend all your time ...

The Golden Aeroplane Game

When I was too young to have any money, there was this thing called the Golden Aeroplane game that went crazy around Australia, and as I recall it was common enough and caused enough heartache that they eventually legislated against it.  The bas...

Blind Alleys

I watched another video today, well actually I watched two videos that I had to see because I’m still learning a lot of things, and I spent another half an hour listening to an opportunity that was sent to me that promised to make me a sqillionair...

What Are We Learning?

Well there are a few things we learn along the way, but as we progress, the absolute is that to do well, we’ve got to add value.  We add value for our knowledge and our intervention to get new knowledge to new people.  Every time the spam filter l...

The Beginning Of Understanding

So if we’re making about half a bag of money every month after 3 months, how is that achieved?  After all, if you are still an employee and you put 50% on your wage for 3 month’s study or development, maybe that’s fine.  So it’s sharing time. The ...

The Journey Begins

South West eCommerce have made the decision to focus on affiliate marketing to re work our business and gain success.  Apart from actually doing it for ourselves we’ve always wanted to share how to get the best from the internet, so we figure that...

We've Had An Epiphany!

South West eCommerce has had an epiphany, and a change of direction.  Some time back, we started our business with the idea that we’d help people get the best out of the internet and over time we found that we were building web sites for beginners...

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