My Journey To Freedom And Over $9000 Per Month
Posted on December 15, 2007
Filed Under Financial Freedom
My online adventure started in May 2005 when I decided to have a personal website. I’ve read many tennis websites and found that, at least in my opinion, lots of instruction online was not that effective.
I wanted to share my ideas with more people than just a few kids on a court (who weren’t even really interested).
It never occured to me at that time that my online business would help me to achieve financial freedom and freedom from being stuck in a job.
Learning To Walk In The Online World
I asked a friend who worked for an IT company to help me out, and he suggested a website design firm that would create a website for me.
The design, the ability to write text and upload pictures, cost $700. I thought I had a good deal.
The website domain name was www.mentalwinner.com (it’s now expired and full of sponsored links; don’t click on any of them), and this is what my first header looked like (made for free by my good friend):
I wrote some tennis-related articles for the site and thought that eventually Google and Yahoo would find me. No such miracles happened.
Then I read some Internet marketing tips which told me, that the $money$ is in the list. 
Okay, so I asked the IT company to give me a newsletter module.
“Sure,” they said, “this will cost you additional $300.”
At that point, I started thinking about other options. If this goes on, they will suck my account dry with all the extra modules that I wanted to add on later (like some forms, RSS, a blog module, complete traffic stats, and so on)
I started researching and asking some questions in IM-related forums.
And then one guy answered my question and told me to email him. He said he would help.
And he did. He sent me lots of tips, ebooks and ideas on how to start a website.
He didn’t want anything in return, which was quite strange. He said he was once at my stage, too (he was, and still is, making a nice living from his online businesses), and he hated seeing people being scammed all over the place.
After 20 or so emails, I asked him if I could build a website myself, so that I didn’t have to pay every time for a new module or something that I wanted to add to my site.
Tim, that’s his name, suggested Sitesell.com.
Learning From Ken Evoy With SBI
I had come across Sitesell before, but had never really researched it thoroughly. This time, I did.
One weekend, I spent almost 10 hours, split between 2 days, reading everything I could find on the web about Sitesell, Site Build It, and Ken Evoy.
It was unbeleviable (and still is) that I couldn’t find a negative opinion about Site Build It.
The only post I found in one forum was that their Brainstormer (at that time) was sometimes a little buggy.
Tim also told me that their Action Guide was the key to building a successful website and that there isn’t anything like it on the web.
The tools and hosting are all very good and probably above-average, compared to other similar products, but it’s the Action Guide and Make Your Site Sell, written by Ken Evoy, that really show you a step-by-step plan to building a successful and profitable website.
The final thing that convinced me of the power of Site Build It and that I could use my tennis expertise to build a high-traffic site was when I checked their results page.
When I saw that even a website based on baby showers could have an Alexa ranking under 100.000 (I knew something about Alexa by then), I knew that I, as a tennis coach, could create a high-traffic website.
So, on November 1st, 2005, I took out my credit card and paid $299 for my first Site Build It package. What a life changing decision!
I’ll write a review of Site Build It in the next few weeks, but for now, I’ll just share the most important moments from May 2005 until now:
The Journey From $0 To Financial Freedom
May 2005
Bought a website for $700 from a local IT company in Slovenia. Posted around 20 articles in English and Slovenian and realized that this wouldn’t work.
November 2005
On the 1st, I bought my first SBI package and on the 6th, I registered my first domain name www.tennismindgame.com.
I did my best to create quality content and started to write my first ebook. I also hired a graphics designer Thomas Breher to create header and ebook cover for me.
February 2006
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Completed my first ebook called The Mental Manual for Tennis Winners and earned $51.32 from Clickbank by selling 3 copies.
I also tested some Adsense on my tennis website but was disapointed not only with the average pay per click, but also with the poor quality of tennis products advertised through Adsense.
After a few months, I decided that there would never be Adsense on my tennis site.
July 2006
I started writing my second ebook and bought my second SBI site. The reason for that was that I had subscribed to Andy Williams’ newsletter and he offered a new niche blueprint every month.
I decided to buy one (at that time they cost $50), and it was all about vacuum cleaners.
So I registered www.vacuumwizard.com and started writing articles and looking to outsource them too, since I wasn’t really an expert on vacuums.
I found some writers on Elance.com and tested about 5 of them. I asked for 10 articles from each one and then decided on the best one afterwards.
August 2006
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I completed my second ebook, Tennis Strategy Encyclopedia and earned a whopping $441.31 in this month.
My earnings from both ebooks were around $500 during the next 6 months.
It was a nice extra income, but I was still far from being financially free.
December 2006
The traffic on my vacuum site started to grow really fast, since I targeted some good keywords on my homepage.
I started to monetize the site in November and the final earnings for December were $436.68.
I also sold two SBI sites through my affiliate links and earned an additional $150 in that month, so for the first time, I earned more than $1000 in one month from my online business.
That was 13 months after I started my first SBI site. Things were soon going to get much better.
I also bought one more Niche blueprint from Andy Williams, which he claimed was one of the highest-paying niches in Adsense.
I also bought my third SBI package and started to build a website based on conference calls, audio, video and web conferencing, which was the topic of that niche blueprint.
Here are some numbers from the Google Adwords tool:
Oh, and I also won the $500 prize from an SBI video contest for this video that I created.
February 2007
I initially monetized my vacuum site with Adsense and Amazon affiliate links, but I was really dissapointed with the conversion on Amazon. I was getting a lot of clicks, though, but not much revenue.
That’s when I discovered Chitika. I was accepted and started testing different types of ads.
I earned $2107,94, which was more than I was earning by working in the Tennis Academy of Asia. My salary there was $2000.
March 2007
Chitika was exactly what I was looking for – getting paid per click instead of purchase. I went through the painstaking work of replacing the Amazon affiliate links on over 100 pages with Chitika eMiniMalls.
Result? With traffic growing and Chitika ads, my earnings shot to $3647.97.
April 2007
I started to use Need-an-article.net more and more for my vacuum articles. Most articles were pretty good, and if they weren’t, I used them for article submissions.
I was also always on the lookout for good link partners and got some good links to my internal pages. This helped me rank even better in Google and I started to occasionally get more than 1000 visitors per day on my vacuum site.
I also completed the How to Play tennis videos, which I sell for $37. Since I had already built a nice list of subscribers on my tennis site, I could promote my videos to them.
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The combined earnings from my ebooks and videos through Clickbank reached $1986,30, and my the total income with Chitika, Adsense and a few Amazon links reached $4795,64.
That was more than double my monthly salary.
I realized that if I kept creating quality content and followed my strategies, I could achieve total financial freedom without the need to work for someone else.
June 2007
The traffic and income from both my tennis and vacuum site grew nicely and reached $5602,72.
I still hadn’t monetized my conferencing website, since it was in an extremely competitive niche and it was hard to get good links to it.
July 2007
My average daily income from Adsense surpassed $100 per day.
In the middle of the tennis summer season (lots of traffic and sales), and me getting more experienced with Adsense and Chitika combos, my monthly income reached $7580,17.
I still remember the day at the start of August when I added everything together and stared at this number for a minute or two. Wow.
Maybe I should start another website…
August 2007
The big number inspired me to share my ideas about financial freedom, although I was still in a job.
But I knew that my contract would end on the 30th of November and that the 1st of December would be the day that I achieved financial and personal freedom.
So I started this financial freedom blog to share my ideas and help more people achieve financial freedom through home-based online businesses.
I also came across a nice niche while I was doing some keyword research in Nichebot. It was about water filters and related topics, so I registered my fourth SBI site and started to work on it.
The traffic and income still grew and I surpassed $8000 with $8361,17 total monthly income.
October 2007
My first month earning more than $9000 per month.
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I was accepted in the Chitika premium publisher program, which allowed me to add Chitika Linx links to my vacuum site.
With some optimization tips from Ryan Travis (great guy!), my Chitika earnings surpassed, for the first time, my Adsense earnings – both over $3000.
I was getting smart-priced in Adsense, too, and I think I managed to get out of that by then. I’ll share my experiences with smart-pricing and how to escape it soon.
Total earnings for October : $9547,20
November 2007
This Financial Freedom Ideas blog started to get some traffic from Google, since it started to rank for the keywords that I am targetting with it: financial freedom, achieve financial freedom, financial freedom online and others.
(Hint; if you ever link to this blog, try to use the above-mentioned keywords in the anchor text. I’ll return the favor! )
As you can see, I promote mostly Site Build It, since I really believe that without the guidance of Ken Evoy, his Action Guide and the complete Site Build It package, you have little chance of really succeeding online.
I came across a few good products in my online journey and a few hundred crappy ones.
My mission on this blog is to earn money from affiliate links, only if I really believe that the products are worth what you pay for them.
So here’s what I used to earn $9302,11 in the month of November, 24 months after I bought my first SBI package:
Internet Marketing Tools I Use
1. Site Build It by Ken Evoy - I’ll write a comprehensive review soon, since now is the best time to buy it. Sitesell.com holds a Christmas special 2-for-1 sale only once a year!
2. Niche Blueprints by Andy Williams – Andy is the real deal and has my highest recommendation. The niche blueprints give you already-researched niches with keywords, affiliate programs and suggestions on how to structure your website.
And Andy’s newsletter is one of the few that I still subcribe to and read every week. Most other Internet marketers just promote IM products without any really valuable content.
3. Nichebot by Jim Morris – Jim has put together a fantastic suite of keyword tools and I use it often to get more data from Wordtracker or to find good LSI keywords for my niches.
4. Themezoom by Russel Wright – Themezoom is a more expensive keyword research tool, and it’s for those really wanting to get every possible keyword based on Latent Semanting Indexing. Not recommended for beginners.
5. Master Plan by Charles Heflin – The Master Plan is that additional 20% of expert knowledge that Ken Evoy’s Action Guide doesn’t contain.
If it did, it would confuse beginners too much. Most of the information from the Master Plan can be found in SBI forums, but you wouldn’t know what to look for, right?
Highly recommended for beginners and experts.
6. Need-an-article by Scott Foster – I would give Need-an-article 4 stars out of 5. The articles can be bought for an affordable price and they are of good quality most of the time.
If NAA implements its promised Choose a Writer program, I would give it 5 out of 5 stars.
Monetization Programs I Use
1. Google Adsense – The easiest to implement and a solid earner. Has its pros and cons; I’ll share my experiences with Google Adsense in the near future.
2. Chitika – Chitika rocks, and so do all the people behind it. I’ve already shared my top 10 reasons why Chitika rocks and it was the best earner in this month where I made more than $200 per day on a few days.
3. Clickbank – the easiest way to promote digital products from other people, sell your digital products and get affiliates for them.
4. CJ – CJ is slowly becoming a good earner for me since I’m getting ebay sales through my vacuum site and an occasional sale through my conferencing site.
There are thousands of affiliate programs available, and you’ll be getting only one check, which is very convenient.
So that’s about it.
As you can see, it’s not that complicated, and with the above-mentioned Internet marketing tools, you have everything (with extra bonuses!) you need to build a successful website.
Besides the tools, you’ll need motivation and discipline to follow 2 simple steps to achieve financial freedom, working from home.
Thanks for reading my story, and don’t hesitate to ask a question or share your comments on this blog. Remember that you can win a free SBI package for the best comment during this month.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
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Comments
30 Responses to “My Journey To Freedom And Over $9000 Per Month”
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What I Use To Dominate My Niches...
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Interesting roadmap, Tomaz. It shows us in a real-life example that the money doesn’t start out very high…but, it will steadily build up as time goes by…if we’re making the right moves (e.g., visualize success, employ the strategies from the successful people, use the tools & resources they use, be creative & persistent, network, etc.)
Thank you for sharing information on the IM tools you use, as well your preferred monetization programs, too.
DR
PS. I second your observation on Dr. Andy Williams. I read his newsletter as soon as it arrives.
VERY NICE POST.
Very insightful.
There’s not much else to add - you’ve hit it all.
Love this blog, love you’re views on making money online.
Keep it up!
DR,
Yes, it’s quite a slow process and that’s why Ken Evoy often mentions the “tortoise” approach. Of course “tortoise” approach in expecting results, but not “tortoise” approach in working on your site.
Tomaz,
It appears that you seem to prefer using NicheBOT to harvest keywords over a direct subscription to, say, Wordtracker. If true, is this because of the LSI feature offered by NicheBOT? Or, that NicheBOT, in Jim Morris’ words, fishes “…from more than just one lake of keywords” (e.g., Keyword Discovery, etc.)? Or, the organization of your online NB workspace? Other?
Regards, DR
DR,
First of all, I got into Nichebot membership for free (when it was still in the launch phase) so I don’t have to pay the monthly fee. The monthly fee now is still very low, I believe $19,95.
Secondly, there are a bunch of useful tools there, from keyword cleanup, to merging keywords, finding LSI keywords and so on.
I’ll make sure to write a review if Nichebot soon.
This is exactly what I wanted, good stuff!
Another request would be a tutorial on how you use NicheBot to find good keywords.
Also, don’t you think the niche blueprints get “overused” when so many use them? But then again I guess not many will persevere and keep building links and quality content.
My website (not the blog) is about 3 months old now and it is in the gambling niche as you know, which is extremely competetive.
In the beginning I got nice traffic from google (record 85 uniques/day) and now I haven’t gotten any traffic from google for 1½ months, someone said it was some kind of a spam filter or something.
I’ll keep going
Thanks again!
Henri,
Ok, Nichebot tutorial coming soon.
And about niche blueprints - I actually came across at least 5 or 6 websites based on Andy’s blueprint but it was REALLY hard to find them through Google.
Even though Andy sells 100 of those blueprints, I think only about 20 people take action and only a few work hard on the website.
All the rest are looking for shortcuts and still wonder why they cannot achieve financial freedom with their online business…
[...] I can afford to do it because I earn, from my static HTML websites, over $9000 per month while doing very little about them. • I like to help people do better online and make myself [...]
Tomaz, I am a big fan. I loved your video, and despite the fact that I do not play tennis, I read your tennis thoughts blog. I was so PSYCHED to find this blog. Your mindset and efficiency plays a HUGE part in your business success. I bought an SBI, and I lurk in the forums and read your posts all the time. This blog gives me so much hope. You provide actual numbers and information. I hope everybody realizes what kind of GOLD you’re doling out here. My first site is doing well, but I could be doing much more regarding monetizing. It is so easy to get overwhelmed by the possibilities of what I can do with my site. My day job was show business (aka very little business), and I LOVE the autonomy of working on the web. However, I do have artistic tendencies that I’m learning to work more effectively manage and use to my benefit. I’ve found your tennis strategies actually apply to life very easily. I particularly loved the article you linked to regarding projection. That is the crux of EVERYTHING. I’ve actually taken workshops to work on these things, and it was cool to read about it from another angle. You manage your time so well and at least appear to have such an even temperament. Do you have any tips regarding the self-employed/business mind game? Particularly dealing with being overwhelmed by the possibilities of what can be done and walking the line between being a perfectionist that can’t let go and being a little too relaxed. I cannot seem to find a balance.
Christy,
Thanks for the kind words.
And about tips of the right mindset - not perfectionist and not too relaxed? I learned this approach through tennis.
If you are a perfectionist in tennis, you destroy yourself with the negative attitude and start missing. So you beat yourself.
If you are too relaxed, your opponent beats you.
So through playing hundreds of matches I found the right approach.
But yes, you bring up a good point so I’ll try and share my thoughts on this in one of the future articles.
Tomaz,
Do you recommend purchasing The Long Tail Cash Report?
http://www. 0tocash .com/LongTailCash/
It is recommended by Andy Williams.
John,
I haven’t used that report but I’ll take some time to read through the sales letter and see what it says.
Sometimes you can get an idea just from the free stuff posted on the page and start using it without buying the project.
Hi Tomaz,
I used to earn about $10,000 a month with adsense. Now, it’s very difficult because of the way I built sites. It got to where I would only make .01 per click sometimes. I finally gave up.
What is this “smart-pricing” that adsense uses and how do you get around it?
Steve,
Hi Steve,
Smart pricing is automatic adjustment of value per click done by Google to protect the advertisers. This happens when Google “suspects” that the clicks don’t convert into sales. (subscriptions, leads or something like that)
I am planning to write an article on this topic soon so stay in touch.
In the mean time you can Google smart pricing adsense and see what comes up.
Hi Tomaz,
It was nice seeing your November numbers. Just out of curiousity, where are you now? Are you over 10K per month?
Hi Phil,
Yes, December was a great month of course with all the Christmas late minute shopping so I earned a little more than 12k. January was just below 11k.
February looks good since Google finally decided to “unsmart-price” (or maybe I figured out how to do that with all the tweaking I did) and Adsense looks much better this month.
I noticed the redo of your vacuum site. Nice job by the way. Did you do this or have someone do it for you? As a fellow SBIer I’d love to figure out a way to enhance the look of my SBI sites.
Phil, I purchased the 3 column template from AJ. He is a fellow SBI-er, you’ll find him in the forums - the link to the template is in his signature.
I then hired a designer to adapt the template to my original header and colors and then finally spent some time tweaking it to fit my needs.
Hi Tomaz, I got here through a mention of your site on SBI! forum. You have a really great success story, thanks for sharing it and for the inspiration.
I have a question about the niche blueprint. You mentioned that you outsource many of the articles because you didn’t know much about vacuum. I suppose this is really doable since you are having success. I’m just confused how it works. Did you outsource from the get go, or wrote some before you fully outsource it? Thanks!
Hi Rahmi,
Yes, I outsourced every single article on that site except the homepage which I wrote myself. Although not all the articles were written by the same person…
Hi Tomaz,
Congrats on your success. Your making 10K+
a month with only 2 sites, vacuum and tennis site,
that’s fantastic, plus they are static, not blogs.
So many people talk about how you have to use a blog that static sites are dead, plus
many people talk about making 100’s of sites
for adsense.
Jeremy
Hi Jeremy and thanks!
Yes, the “bloggers” keep pushing their theory just get some validation. In the mean time, we “static HTML website” guys enjoy our freedom while getting thousands of visitors every day on our sites without having to keep writing new content every day.
When are you going to convert?
Actually Tomaz your helping me to stay away from blogs and other things and get back on track.
I’ve been a fool…
I started with SBI May 2003 before adsense, wrote my own articles, saw no traffic after 5 months and decided to start over with a new topic, wrote my own articles again saw no traffic and started over again.
2004 I learn about adsense and buy an ebook that advices building content sites that earn 3 to $500 a month. April 2004 using SBI but the ebooks thinking I start a new site again, about snowboards. By Nov. 2004 I’m getting traffic and Dec. 2004 I earn $1000. Plus Aug. 2004 I started a bbq site with frontpage, makes money March 2005.
Jan 2005 I start a telescope and guitar site, July 2005 a plasma tv site, it is not until 2006 I start earning $1000 a month every month. By this time I research and buy other internet marketing products and don’t invest into more articles as much getting distracting and thinking I need more education.
Sept. 2006 joined a $800 a month membership in order to automate link building, Nov 2006, $100 a day adsense. Jan 2007 cancel membership, sites dropping in income. 2 of my sites de-indexed by Google.
Got lost in information buying in 2007 to now, luckily my sites in total, still make some money,
because I have not done too much, proof that once you make a large static site and get links to it,
it will keep getting you traffic ex.
http://www.best-telescope-guide.com but this niche is not that profitable.
I’m writing this to help newbies and to help myself reflect on my 5 years online.
Building static content sites works everyone,
just keep adding good content and get relevant links to your sites.
Keep working on your 1st site long enough for it to reach its full potential, don’t spread yourself too thin by making too many sites at the same time, link building for many sites becomes a big job, unless you want to outsource it.
Hope this was helpful.
Never give up.
Jeremy
One more thing guys, focus, focus, focus.
The IM tools Tomaz uses I know about and have bought and read about and used but haven’t applied them enough or am still distracted by new info.
I’m an idiot.
All you need are the tools above to succeed.
Jeremy
Hey Jeremy,
Thanks for sharing your journey! Yes, stay focused or “keep your blinders” on…
I unsubscribed from another email list today. So far, I get good info only from Andy Williams and Jonathan Leger.
All the rest is a bunch of promotional crap where the marketer thinks only of himself and how to make more money. As if that will make him happier…
Hi Tomaz,
I think if you can share with us about what kind of ebooks or tips that this good guy Tim has given you before, which has given you a big boost with your inspiring online journey, that’d be great!
What do you think, Tomaz?
Hello Tomaz
I cannot afford an sbi account.
Am from africa and its quiet a price.
Please is there something i could,some kind of work or something to have someone like you assist me with an sbi account.
I have dreamt of having one for 3 years now and have followed news about it for long.
Please if there is any way,help me out.
I will be forever gratefull
Hi Dave,
Try this: do a Google search for bum marketing. Use that method to earn $300 and then get yourself an SBI site.
I’ve followed the bum marketing method just for a test, wrote 5 articles for a blog, 5 rewrites which I posted on various article sites and that 5 page blog receives daily 50 visitors.
Hi Tomaz,
My SBI site finally crossed the $1,000.00 / mo. marker and I’m ready to jump into site #2. Considering I have 150+ pages on the other site (and I’m a bit sick of writing pages for it — I write the pages myself by the way). Anyway, I was wondering; you had mentioned back in Feb. that you had hit the 11K mark — any further progress? Either with your vacuum site, tennis site or your new water filter site? Eager to know…your biggest fan — Phil
Hey Phil,
Congrats on reaching $1000 per month mark!
My earnings will drop somewhat this month because my Chitika earnings have dropped more than 50% because of their new system.
I calculate my earnings on the 2nd of the month when all the affiliate earnings for the month are done. (by CJ, Amazon, …)