Did you know that Sylvester Stallone was dirt broke, with barely $100 to spare, and down for the count, before he rose to international stardom in Rocky?

March 1975, Sly watched the Mohammed Ali vs Chuck Wepner fight. Chuck was a nobody club fighter who went the distance with Ali – sound familiar? Sly spends the next 3 days and nights writing the screenplay that was Rocky I. He submits the script to United Artists who initially offered him $20,000 for the script only and apparentely Burt Reynolds was pinned for the lead Balboa role.

Sly instinctively knew that he was on a winner but for this to be his ticket, he had to be the lead actor. A few negiotiations later, United Artists up the stakes from $20k to $100k, and eventually $300,000 but didn’t want the risk of an unknown Sylvester Stallone playing such a crucial role. Sly didn’t give in, and eventually United Artists offered him the initial measly $20,000 and around $340 a week for the acting role (the minimum acting wage). Obviously, the rest is history. Best Picture, Best Director, Best Film Editing, grossing in more than $20 million, and propelling Sly to phenomenal success with Rocky I, II, III, IV, and V, and Rambo I, II, III, and IV.

The moral of the story? Listen to your gut, and hang in there.

I read a great story some random blog that I can’t remember (I’ll insert link here if I find it again). I’ll summarise it anyway:

A businessman sees a fisherman at a small Mexican village coming in from sea with a small catch of fish.
The businessman asks, ‘Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?’.
‘It’s enough to support my family. I sleep late, fish a little, take a siesta, play with my kids, catch up with friends… I have a full life’
The businessman gets agitated and brags about his Harvard MBA, ‘I can help you become more successful. Just spend more time fishing to get yourself enough for a bigger boat. Hire more people to catch fish for you. Start a business and eventually you could have an empire and expand the enterprise globally.’
The fisherman looks perplexed, ‘How long with that take?’
’15, maybe 20 years’
‘And then what?’

Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta, yadi yadi yadi…

Classic! Moral of the story is, you may be where you want to be already. And also, don’t spend too long chasing dreams, climbing the wrong ladder, when you may already have all you need.

Well, months down the track, I finally gave it another go and stumbled on an idea. I’m sure this is not new but I’m also sure that not everyone’s thought of this.

Here’s what I did.

1. Create a poll based on a contentious topic of the week. Use google trends or yahoo buzz for ideas.
2. Find a nice one field submit campaign. MaxBounty has heaps of these, more so than any other network I’ve seen.
3. Put the affliate link behind the poll buttons.
4. Here’s the killer. Add the text, vote and enter your email to get XXX!!!
5. Hit Adwords with as truck load of keywords related to the topic.
6. Bank!

Here’s an example of one of these pages. This example uses the $250 Free Grocery Gift Card campaign from maxbounty.

Interview with a Link Spammer

It’s from 2005 but it’s still really relevant. A few points of note:

• ‘Sam’ is a link spammer. He spams websites and blogs with text to pump up the search engine rankings of sites pushing PPC.
• He’s not some 16 year old kid. He’s 32. That makes him 36 now.
• He writes automated scripts to comment spam en-mass.
• He uses open proxies to avoid detection
• Apparently results 8,9,10 have better conversion rates than 1,2,3
• He earns a 7 figure salary doing this. That’s a MILLION up!
• It’s completely legal. Link spam is different from email spam. It’s hard to argue the difference between a person using a computer to post a comment, and a person using a computer to use a computer to post a comment

Me and ‘Sam’ share some similarities. We’re both in the SEO business. We’re both hunting for links back to our sites to increase their SERP. We both comment on blog posts. Here’s where this guy and myself differ tho. Sure it is legal, but ethically what ‘Sam’ does sux. The fact that it is all automated means that he leaves the same or similar comments on all blog posts.

• I take the time to read the posts
• I manually make my comments and try to add value. The way the blogger actually wants by allowing comments in the post.

Sure you can make a million bucks doing what he does, but I think he crosses the line between good and evil. Don’t be a bloody spammer that everyone hates. Be a commentor that everyone loves to have on their blog.

Do you fit the profile of a webpreneur?

1. you hate working 9-5 in the ofice
2. you’re bubbling with ideas
3. you work well in isolation
4. you always thought you were destined for better things

The blueprint for making money online

Whilst there are endless ways to do it, it all boils down to variation of this

1. have a product or service you want to promote
2. have a medium to promote your chosen product/service
3. have customers to promote to

Yep, it’s as simple as that. You might be saying ‘derr’? Tell me something I don’t already know. Well it’s the intricacies and understanding each of these three areas that set the newbies from the pros. How do you pick a winning product? What kind of a site should you build? How do you start an email list? How do you attract visitors? The best thing about making money online is that you don’t need to be a pro to start. The best advice I can give is simply just to dive straight in a start. You will probably fail a few times as I have but the key is that you will have learnt a whole heap and, like I said at the start, you will have lost nothing but sleep.

The reward for such little ‘capital’ investment is HUGE.

• You get to work for yourself
• You get passive income. Websites are 24/7 so your money should be rolling in when you sleep.
• You grow a network of friends online
• You actually achieve something. And in some cases, its something you can show off to friends
• You will actually want to wake up and go to work

So how much can you actually make?

I’m not one to divulge on my own earning (there’s enough of those on the net already) but I will say that I make enough to pay my bills and more. To be honest, though, when I first started I was making less than $5 a week. But you know what, those were the best five bucks I have ever earned in my ‘real’ offline jobs.

Just to do it!