TOPIC: TJ's Journal to Making Ca$h

Dannn wrote: Like I've said before your site has great potential, but it sounds like you're still not satisfied with your product and the copy for it. If I were in your shoes (with little SEO knowledge) I'd probably perfect the above points while spitting out content every week, growing your email list and following.

Just a question on email lists --> Is the only way to grow them is by have an email opt in form & button, similar to the on TJ his site?

Other than that, keep up the good work TJ, lol, at least ur making money off ur site.

Just a question on email lists --> Is the only way to grow them is by have an email opt in form & button, similar to the on TJ his site?

Other than that, keep up the good work TJ, lol, at least ur making money off ur site.

Adswaps (adbuys?) / list swaps...

(Basically paying to have your optin promoted by another list owner in your niche or similar - give something great away, or a low priced product even which can help you pay for the adswap investment)

Definitely. Something you should implement TJ, you can build your subscriber list very quickly with that method

I came back Mid December. I didn't make basically any money until the 14th. Then I released a HUGE video sales letter and started getting sales right after that. I also started implementing FB ads again, which are a proven way to bring in leads. I get a lot of google traffic, but that traffic doesn't necessarily mean anything if those people aren't looking for a solution.

Through my experiments with using FB ads and turning them off, proper targeting and using ads is a guaranteed way to improve my business since I believe my funnel is OK now (still needs lots of work).

Profit: $927.48 - 15 Course sales, $120.42 from Amazon supplement affiliate links.
Revenue: $1146.48
Expenses: $219.00

Expenses were $70 to form an LLC, $29 for WPEngine, $15 for Mailchimp, $105 for FB ads.

122 Email opt-ins


10,760 sessions from Google Analytics


Technically, I made almost $1,000 in the second half of the month. If my mind was on straight I could have done 2k this month.

After publishing a talk I did, I got a few people really supportive of my goals and helping me out. I also had a friend who is big with conversions make me realize it is all about focusing on conversions here on out.

Did an offer of a free trial so that people can access a few sections from the course for free to check it out. So far this month, I've collected more emails from that trial than other opt-ins on my site.

This year I'm back in the USA. I've been connecting with people and networking in this field. I'm going to know everything out there about beating depression without medication and know everyone out there doing this work.

With a focus on conversions and improving my product and funnel, with the people I've met that are now helping me out with my site, along with doing real work person-to-person, I feel like I'm on the verge of growing rapidly.

January was a weird month. Had two refunds from December. Did a lot more coaching calls. Kept going with FB ads but there was a slight die out. At one point had a lot of controversy so my ad was getting a ton of comments and spam, but I tried to set it to a different audience and lost the original comments and likes.

Google analytics went out for about 1.5 weeks, so no reliable data there.

Profit: $656.23 - 8 course sales, 5 coaching calls, $229.23 from amazon affiliate.
Revenue: $1,128.35
Expenses: $472

I paid $290 for the year for hosting to save 2 months free instead of paying the usual $29 a month from WPEngine. I spent $167 on FB ads.

172 Email Opt-Ins


Set up a free trial for people to access from my homepage. I actually saw a decrease in sales after releasing it, so I am pretty sure a free trial negatively hurts sales.

The VSL I released didn't do very well. Probably is the length, since the buy now button doesn't even show up for 50 minutes. Was a lot of time spent and was probably wasted. Maybe if shortened or used differently in the sales process it has potential.

I set up a split test for all 3 of my sales letters. One goes to the very first one I wrote, second one to a later version sales letter, 3rd to the VSL. Hard to tell what is better than the others.

February I might have to look for other income sources, like sales, but I am going to keep tinkering with this and get my funnel right. My messaging could be more clear and I could improve opt-ins and traffic sources.

TJGoodLooking wrote: January was a weird month. Had two refunds from December. Did a lot more coaching calls. Kept going with FB ads but there was a slight die out. At one point had a lot of controversy so my ad was getting a ton of comments and spam, but I tried to set it to a different audience and lost the original comments and likes.

Google analytics went out for about 1.5 weeks, so no reliable data there.

Profit: $656.23 - 8 course sales, 5 coaching calls, $229.23 from amazon affiliate.
Revenue: $1,128.35
Expenses: $472

I paid $290 for the year for hosting to save 2 months free instead of paying the usual $29 a month from WPEngine. I spent $167 on FB ads.

172 Email Opt-Ins

Set up a free trial for people to access from my homepage. I actually saw a decrease in sales after releasing it, so I am pretty sure a free trial negatively hurts sales.

The VSL I released didn't do very well. Probably is the length, since the buy now button doesn't even show up for 50 minutes. Was a lot of time spent and was probably wasted. Maybe if shortened or used differently in the sales process it has potential.

I set up a split test for all 3 of my sales letters. One goes to the very first one I wrote, second one to a later version sales letter, 3rd to the VSL. Hard to tell what is better than the others.

February I might have to look for other income sources, like sales, but I am going to keep tinkering with this and get my funnel right. My messaging could be more clear and I could improve opt-ins and traffic sources.

Are you paying $24 each month for hosting? That's insane TJ, you can get good hosting for like $4-6 a month from bluehost or any other similar hosting provider (and even cheaper with a coupon). I know WPEngine backups the site, protects it and improves load times but you can get plugins that do all this for almost nothing.

Dann - I know that. I used to use Godaddy and it was good.

$24 a month for reliable hosting that has staging servers and backups has already saved me multiple times. One time with the installation of a plugin my membership part of the site got messed up (where people go after they pay) and I restored it back to working with one simple click, although the favicon still doesn't work.

That combined with everything going fast and there is protection against if I ever get a surge of traffic is a good deal to me. If I'm worried about $10 hosting versus $24 hosting then I'm wasting my mental energy on $14 a month difference... That shouldn't be a problem if I'm making sales. I'd rather focus on what matters than worry about trying to save $10-20 a month.

TJGoodLooking wrote: Dann - I know that. I used to use Godaddy and it was good.

$24 a month for reliable hosting that has staging servers and backups has already saved me multiple times. One time with the installation of a plugin my membership part of the site got messed up (where people go after they pay) and I restored it back to working with one simple click, although the favicon still doesn't work.

That combined with everything going fast and there is protection against if I ever get a surge of traffic is a good deal to me. If I'm worried about $10 hosting versus $24 hosting then I'm wasting my mental energy on $14 a month difference... That shouldn't be a problem if I'm making sales. I'd rather focus on what matters than worry about trying to save $10-20 a month.

I see what you're saying TJ, but once you know which plugin/services to use it can be done super fast and cheap. But I agree, for one site it's not that big of a deal but if I were to use this kind of luxurious hosting for all my sites I'd be looking at an extra monthly expense of 80+ bucks.

What's your next move with the site? Optimizing conversions, retargeting the fb ads, or?

Yo bro, you thought about doing a webinar mate? I think it would work really well.

Pretty much like your talk at the library, but with a little sales pitch in the last 10+ mins...