Read Part I here, Part II here and Part III here if you need to catch up.

When we left off, Badder Adder (and all the other top MySpace bots at the time) were forced to close. Believe me, if I could have continued selling it, updating it, supporting it, I would have. It was making me a lot of money, and every day I was getting “Thank you” emails from bands who finally got some radio play or other exposure because of their use of the product. One teen center in the South who focused on providing support to gay-lesbian-bi-transgendered kids in their area were able to get the word out about their program and make a huge difference in these kids’ lives by providing them with a safe haven and community where they once felt they had none. Another guy did really well selling “Grillz” – fancy bling/gold teeth inserts. Used properly it did amazing things for folks who had interesting content to offer MySpace users. I was bummed that all these cool things people were doing with Badder Adder would be no more, as the software slowly lost functionality when MySpace updated and I could not provide new releases.

Customers who’d purchased in the 30 days prior were given the opportunity to receive a refund, since they’d had little time to use the software. As such, affiliates who’d made sales in the prior 30 days lost their commission. Some didn’t understand that if a customer is refunded, there’s no commission earned, and put up a big stink. Unfortunately, that’s one of the risks of selling and affiliating with a product that depends on another site’s (MySpace’s) compliance for it’s very existence.

I spent some time regrouping and developing more, in terms of strategy, for my business. Tubeinator was being built in the interim. The truth is, Badder Adder was originally developed as an SEO tool for my personal use, and I went back to my SEO roots. Now, I’ll never claim to be an SEO expert, I simply don’t do enough massive testing, database building etc. to produce the stats some SEO guys do. But I like ranking high in the search engines, and I’m pretty decent at it.

So that’s what I went back to. SEO, link building, site building, niche markets. The internet was going through a huge video and social media craze (and still is, this was the beginning) and I started looking even more at social media for link building opportunities. From that, Social Media Daily was born, which was released as a free report. It detailed the exact steps I went through to promote a new site. It got *incredible* results for it’s users, as it did for me, and the homepage has several of the testimonials I was sent.

Now, I had an ulterior motive when putting Social Media Daily out. My list was primarily Badder Adder demo users and customers. They weren’t into internet marketing or SEO, or social media. For the most part, they were into MySpace, and MySpace alone. So I wanted a list that was more inclined to learn about that which I was into – and teaching. Social Media Daily was given away free to this end, and I agree with many of it’s users that it could of/should of been a paid product. It’s still the best Web 2.0 link building blueprint available. And my husband is still mad I gave it away for free.

Tubeinator was released, and while it doesn’t do the kind of sales Badder Adder did, it does well enough in it’s own right.

My supa-favorite affiliate program continued to produce like nuts.

So I just spent about 10 months playing the social media game & building niche sites and entire networks of sites, and getting back to what makes me love this business in the first place – crazy niche infiltration SEO fun.

During this time I also paid a lot of attention to Social Media Daily subscribers, helping them with individual questions they had relating to their niches. I’m doing the same with 30 Minute Backlinks folks.

There seems to be a big gap in keyword research knowledge. I’m not a huge fan of keyword research either – I mean, I enjoy the results of picking a good one, ranking for it and reaping the rewards – but the process of checking markets & running numbers over and over again can be tedious. I think folks just don’t want to do the work, end end up picking bad keywords as a result.

In January of this year, 2008, I released 30 Minute Backlinks, which helps people generate links no matter what their niche, in a way that was previously only available to software developers. It’s another solid product that produces immediate results, and I’m proud of it and the results my customers write me with each and every day.

So what’s to come?

Social Media Daily is getting an overhaul with some new tools and a general, all around update, new name, etc.

Tubeinator will be coming out with some new features users have asked for.

Beyond that, you’ll have to wait and see!

Now, I’m pretty good at what I do and I make more in a month (or a week, at times) then I used to make in an entire year. But I’m not a super hero with x-ray vision, I’m not a guru and what I do is attainable for the average person.

There was, and sometimes still is, a sharp learning curve for me – particurally with technical stuff. I don’t come from a design or programming background, so I had to learn quite a bit as I was bootstrapping things all by myself (or nowadays when I simply want something done now and don’t care to wait for a contractor to do it).

I didn’t do any of what I’ve done because I had Guru contacts, I don’t run in that old-boys circle crowd. I didn’t come out of nowhere and with 100 JV partners launch a top Clickbank product and thus secure my name in the IM industry. Yes, it’s possible to do that, yes, it’ll make you money, but it’s NOT necessary to make a darn good living and build a name for yourself.

I see too many people asking for questions when, if they just Googled their question, they’d have an answer. I didn’t get to where I am because I expected or depended on others to do for me, I set out to figure something out for myself and make things work. If I didn’t understand something, I tried it anyway and hoped I’d learn along the way.

This business is, more then anything, about mindset. I was fortunate to be exposed to the “think big” mindset in that private forum I mentioned. It really did make the difference in how I looked at internet marketing, and I will, once again, thank Keith Baxter for that opportunity.

So, if you walk away from this having learned anything, let it be that:

You are responsible for your life, your business, your income, and ONLY you can change it.

It is that simple.

   

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Tagged as: , 30 minute backlinks, Internet Marketing, keith baxter, link building, michelle macphearson, social media, social media daily