It seems these days people try to hit it big being self-employed in the Internet industry, mostly by staying home and following Twitter, and all of the related social networks.

I look back on where I found all my success, and it didn't come from sitting behind a computer screen. It came from talking on the phone with a live person, or meeting people in person. It came from going to networking groups, Chamber of Commerce mixers, and just venturing outdoors and seeing what happens.

Once you make a connection with someone live, then you can rely on Twitter to stay in communication, but you will never get anywhere trying to meet clients on Twitter.

I'm just an average web guy, with poor design skills. My knowledge of programming is pretty limited to just HTML and basic CSS. I know how to make websites, and make them look half-way decent. Otherwise, all my success being self-employed came via person-to-person skills.

You just gotta get out of the house and meet people, if you ever want to get anywhere.

At least, that's what my mom always told me. And, it seems she was right.  ✓

Thinking about getting into a better financial position perhaps comes with the start of a new year.

When I think of being in a better financial position it's not to make more money, but rather to be less dependent. That's because the ultimate goal of affiliate marketing is to free yourself of management and responsibilities. I'd rather be venturing out into the world, seeing the sights, sampling the food, and spending time with friends and family than sitting in my office working away.

The more dependent you are on your income, the more you have to manage, worry, and put out fires.

So with this new year my goal is to pay off that second mortgage, so that I don't have to worry about making those payments. If I can do that, I'll need less money to survive.

And that's what I'm talking about when I mean getting into a better financial position. The less things that require monthly expenses, the less you have to slave.

What it also means is that if one or more of my websites loses traffic, or loses affiliate income, it won't hurt me financially. The more money I can make, obviously the better. But the less money I have to make, is even more better.

Think about what you can do to eliminate burdensome expenses. Maybe one of your websites is making some good money, but costs a lot of money, and your own personal time, to maintain. Perhaps finding other websites that require less management, and earn more money is what you should be looking for.  ✓

Christmas. Bah, hum bug!

I loved Christmas as a kid, but became indifferent as I got older. I love the spirit of Christmas, the idea of giving, setting aside our differences, and then looking forward to a whole new year.

Yet, Christmas is a responsibility now. You have to buy gifts. You have to send out cards. You got to the store to do some shopping, and it's always crowded, and people fighting for the most popular items.

For me, as an affiliate marketer, I don't really take advantage of Christmas. I don't put up holiday banners, or do holiday specials, or send out "Christmas Savings" e-mail campaigns. I like affiliate marketing the lazy way, where traffic comes in via Google, people click links, and I make money. I like the position the I'm in, why should I create more work for myself because it's Christmas?

In fact, the Christmas season most of my websites and blogs see a decrease in traffic. The stuff I deal with in affiliate marketing isn't really the kind of stuff people buy as gifts. However, my beef jerky review blog is seeing an upswing in traffic right now.

I guess I've become a full-on Scrooge.

I thank my wife for pouring on Christmas cheer, however. Without her decorating the house, baking up the cookies and pies, and singing Christmas songs, I would be Scrooge.

So perhaps for guys like me, Christmas is about being thankful, even though we've already had Thanksgiving last month. And even though this time of year my websites and blogs don't earn as much money than in other months, I'm just happy to be in this position, working from home, being my own boss, and not really having to answer to clients.  ✓

I'm typing out this blog post on my Blackberry sitting at the bar of a BJ's Restaurant & Brewery. I'm inspired to write this because I realize what a great profession affiliate marketing is.

The funny thing is that while Internet affiliate marketing is perhaps 12 years old by now (if you consider Amazon.com launching the first successful affiliate marketing program), most Americans still don't know about this business.

After 12 years of being in this business myself, I still have to explain it in painstaking detail to my mom and dad. I'm convinced that if the world understood this line of work, everyone would become an affiliate marketer.

So, how cool is it that you can earn an income while seated at a bar drinking a beer and not really caring where you'll end up sleeping at? You don't care if you wake up at 10:00am, because you don't have a boss or any clients calling you.

But what if everyone was an affiliate marketer?

What if the whole world knew everything we knew?

How would the Internet be different?

I tend to think that Google itself would he different, trying to deal with a glut of affiliate marketing spam sites. Perhaps, the Internet would have a far different reputation than it has now. Maybe the Internet would be as useful as a pile of advertisements you find in a Sunday newspaper.

In that sense, it's good to be unfamiliar.

But then again, I'm speaking from the standpoint of someone who found enough success with affiliate marketing to be self employed and self sufficient. There is still another 99% of us who still hold down a "regular job" to pay most of their bills. To those folks, affiliate marketing is not all that it's cracked up to be.

So, I'm sitting here at the bar watching these cute bartenders serve up a busy crowd of people, realizing that despite all the innovations we've enjoyed, the world has not changed. When I was just a little boy, in the early 1970's, my mom was a bartender. The gal serving me tonight could just as well have been my mom some 37 years ago. In that sense, the Internet has made hardly an impact on our lives.

But for me, I'd be slaving away in an office, working for the Man if not for the Internet.

And for that matter, the fact that I can write this blog post on my BlackBerry, and publish it to my blog while seated at this bar, is a miracle.

For those of you enjoying this same lovely predicament, I salute you!

I felt a little vindicated after reading this blog post on SEOmoz about the nature of link building, particularly this little passage...

Like many parts of life - it's not about the quality, diligence or aptitude you bring to your field, but your ability to market it successfully.

I get this salesman calling me today to sell Internet bandwidth. He sounds
like someone who was hired off the street, because he doesn't totally know
what he's talking about.

He did a Google search and found my corporate website, and found my number.

He asks what my current bandwidth is. I say, "15 megabits download, about 5
megabits upload".

Then he asks, "How much are you paying for that sir?"

I respond, "Well, what is this call about?"

Then he says his company provides cheap bandwidth for media publishers like
my company, and that several companies like my own rely on them to serve up
websites, blogs, data-streaming, and what not. So he asks again, how much
I'm paying.

I say, "about $40.00 a month".

He says, "Oh".

And a long pause.

"Well, we can't beat that price."

I laughed. I said it's because it's a cable internet connection with our
local cable television company.

"Oh", he says.

I bet he was thinking I maintain my own web servers here in my office, and
that I have some kind of ridiculously high-priced internet connection to
some backbone company. He doesn't realize that most web publishers use web
hosting companies to provide the server storage and bandwidth. Either that,
or he thought my company is much larger than the corporate website appears.

Finally tried syncing my Blackberry Storm with my laptop via Bluetooth.

In short, it works. But it's very slow. It's nice to be wireless, but at
this slow of a speed, USB II cable is still preferred.

The first time I tried the sync, I received an error message, and it
stopped. So I ran it again, it seemed to work ok. But then I got a "unable
to read application data", and it quit again. I didn't seem to get these
errors when syncing via USB. So, I'm not going to sync via Bluetooth
anymore.

But I do think it's cool to play the MP3's on my Blackberry and listen to
them through my laptop!