Recently I started with article marketing and I have chosen EzineArticles.com as my first platform to submit articles. This is part of my action plan for my blogging for profit venture after I revived my blog recently.

The first two articles were submitted without any problem so I thought this is good. The third article has some issue and I got an email from the reviewer but it doesn’t mention what was the issue. I responded to them accordingly but then I did not receive any feedback from them so I thought I’ll wait for them to reply before I make any changes.

In the meantime I wrote the 4^th article and submitted it for review. It didn’t occurred to me that putting in a squeeze page into the resource box will be consider a form or marketing. Anyway the squeeze page I put into the resource box is actually a free eBook on how to start your first blog. However the reviewer doesn’t see it that way and considered it as not relevant. Given that squeeze page is a single page that is simple and straight to the point, it cannot be use in your resource box.

This are the guideline that was invoked by the reviewer on my resource box.

Issue 1 (Section 2.f xv)
http://EzineArticles.com/editorial-guidelines.html#2-f-xv

Websites must be active and have content in order for you to link to them from your article. Please edit the included URL(s) so that they lead to an active and informative website.
 
Issue 2

Your article has been placed in problem status for linking to a page consisting primarily of advertising and/or your landing page does not contain enough informative content. In order to ensure a quality user experience, we can only accept links which direct to pages which are content-rich beyond advertising and products for sale. Please edit your article to link directly to the content-rich pages on your site, or edit the link to add additional informative content and resubmit for review.

I didn’t get the email informing me about this “violation” until two days later. The reason being my PC crashed so I had to go out and find the replacement parts. By the time I got back online my account was already suspended. Apparently the standard practice is that if the article submitter didn’t response within 48 hours, they will be put into a suspended state.

Well this is really something new to me so I have learned my lesson.

If you are new to article marketing, be careful what you put in the resource box. I have been reading on many eBooks on article marketing and none of them mentioned this. Check their guidelines if you are in in doubt

I have written to Ezine Article problem resolution center and asking for my account to be reactivated and that I have made the necessary changes to my resource box.

Hopefully I will be able to submit more articles soon.

Yesterday I mentioned that I was without access to the Internet as my PC broke down.

Well the computer store personnel called today and told me that it was the graphic card that is faulty and the motherboard is still intact. I was surprised at this finding because the motherboard is already 2 years old while the graphic card was only bought a month ago. I would expect that when the power supply unit blown that if there is any spike in power it may affect the motherboard more than the graphic card. Well it look like the quality of the Asus motherboard is definitely better than the Gigabytes graphic card.

This finding is really out of my expectation. I was hoping that it is the motherboard that is faulty so I have a good excuse to upgrade the motherboard to one with the P45 chipset. Now that the graphic card is found to be faulty it changed my plan all together. Given that most of the newer motherboard doesn’t come with any onboard graphic adapter anymore, without the graphic card means you can’t connect to the monitor so your PC is still not usable.

Also we have a very strange warranty system in this part of the world that annoyed me. The current practice of almost all computer parts dealers is that if you return the parts within 7 days, they will give you a one-to-one replacement. Beyond 7 days, they will return the parts back to the main dealer and let the dealer decided on the replacement. They might also charge you a small sum for the delivery of the parts and this whole process take one month, standard practice as claim by them. Both the graphic card and the power supply unit I returned the other day fall into this category. So my choice is either wait for the warranty to be processed and get the replacement part or have no access to the Internet for one month.

Can you imagine someone venturing into Internet Marketing space without the most important tool? Yes without the PC you have not web presence and you cannot drive traffic to your website. I have no choice but to buy another graphic card in the mean time and reassembled the PC. I am now back online but still pretty sore with the warranty system.

My next challenge is try to recover my Vista partition. Most of my commonly used tools and the most commonly visited websites are stored in this partition. If I can’t get it back then I’ll have to go through all my emails again to find them. In the meantime I will have to work on my Windows 7 partition and try to recreate as much of the information as possible so that I can continue with my daily routine.

Reflecting back on the past two weeks I felt like I have hit some major roadblocks. But I got up and get around it. This is just the small obstacle and I will continue to learn from this hiccup and focus on the main goal ahead.

Success is about attitude. I am not going to give up. I’ll get up every time I fall and I’ll get stronger.

I will continue my journey according to my plan.

 Having resuscitated my blog from a mistake I made two weeks ago kept me going with my renewed effort to venture into the Internet Marketing world. All seems to be in good order until another mishap come up last week end. Murphy law said that if something failed it will fail without you knowing it.

Last Friday night my PC died on me!

The signs were there all along that the PC will be shutting down on me but I just didn’t know it is so abrupt.

First the operating system is slowly grinding to a halt. There are so much disk activities on my Vista operating system that it is spinning the “donut” most of the time. This is the sign that the operating system partition is extremely fragmented and the Master File Table (MFT) is reaching it capacities. This is known problem since Vista was in beta stage but now it is hitting my PC now.

I launched Disk Keeper Pro and it recommended me to do a boot-time defragmentation on the operating system partition. So I did and it went through the defragmentation of the operating system partition after a reboot. All seems to be fine and the MFT was being rebuilt into consecutive spaces and then the defragmentation complete. The system now rebooted another time and low and behold, the windows loader was missing! Without the loader the Vista partition cannot be booted up again so that Disk Keeper Pro can continue with it process.

It just so happen that I loan my Vista DVD to my niece for her to fix her PC on another problem so I could not do a startup repair immediately. Thinking that I will do it later and since I needed to read some Internet mail, I boot up my Windows 7 partition. That’s when the problem start since the Disk Keeper boot-time defragmentation process is not fully completed, Windows 7 operating system thinks that the Vista partition is corrupted and tried to recover that partition. Well since it started the recovery I can’t do much so I let it continue it run.

However half way through the recovery suddenly the PC just shut down. There is nothing in the monitor. Hitting the power button also doesn’t power on the PC. There is a slight burning smell coming from the power supply unit. Thinking this could be due to a blown power supply unit I took it out and went to the computer store to get a replacement. After fitting the new power supply unit it still doesn’t power on the PC. It looks like there is something else that is broken.

After some research from the Internet on similar cases, the recommendation is to remove each of the components from the PC and try to isolate the faulty component. After several attempt I found that after I removed the graphic card (a Gigabyte 9800 GT) the system is able to power on. Well look like it is either a “fried” PCIe slot on the motherboard or the graphic card is faulty.

This morning I took both the items to the computer store where I bought it from and now they are investigating which is the faulty part. I am writing this post using my wife’s notebook.

I am eagerly waiting for the computer store to call me to tell me the result. Without the PC as a proper tool, it would be just so difficult to continue to make a present on the Internet. Also most of tools I use are on the PC hard disk so it is essential that I get the PC back alive so that I can continue to monitor my blog. Also I will have a hard time trying to remember the userid and password to all the sites that I have joined which means I will have to take a lot of time going through my mails to find them.

I am hoping that everything will be resolved by tonight. I’ll keep you posted.

I have been in the IT line for a long time but my focus has always been in the Enterprise Computing environment. I have been surfing the Internet for a long time since I started work but mainly for searching of information. I still remember using BB bulletin board to reach out to the Internet using those green screen!

I have also been exposed to Internet Marketing for a long time, not as a seller but as a consumer. I have bought info products on self improvement, golf instructional materials and recently forex trading products. I must say that it didn’t occur to me that I should venture into online marketing to make money all these while.

Recently I lost my job with one of the largest software company in the world when they announced a redundancy program. It is unfortunate but I can’t do much about it as it is a corporate direction and those who are affected are compensated accordingly. I think long and hard for the last few months and have decided that I will not want to worl in the corporate world anymore. I wanted to venture into forex trading and I want to make the kind of money that many people dream of. However forex trading required skills and patient and I must say I lack both. I still dabble in forex trading but not full time anymore because I think what I need now is not trading experience but accumulation of capital.

To do that I need to look for other avenue and then I found Internet Marketing and given my IT background, I quickly managed to learn how to start up a blog and started to venture further into affiliate marketing and other network marketing programs.

Because I have plenty of time and I wanted to make money from online marketing, I started to blog full time and provided as much content as possible on my blog and try to drive traffic to it. However I fail to make any sale from my blog or online businesses. The three downfalls of me are:

1. I am afraid to sell and not sure what to sell and keep on looking for the niche that sell

2. I lack the motivation and spirit to drive traffic and collect leads consistently

3. I don’t know how to make use of the traffic generation system that I subscribed to

The worse thing happened when I tried to experiment more with trying to enhance my blog to attract attention, I make a silly mistake and lost all my blog contents! Sigh.

After a night of consolation and soul searching I decided that I need to start all over again. The main different now is that I have draw up a plan before I start blogging again. I realized my previous attempt to venture into online marketing has been haphazard without any proper planning being put in place.

I have also change my approach in this venture that I want to focus on really making money. I will be actively promoting products on my blog. In my previous blog I have been very subtle in my promotion and I must say that doesn’t work at all. If I do not post up products that I want to promote I will never make a single sale online and my previous attempt prove that the case. Therefore you will see me posting more products related to blogging to make money in this blog.

Another are that I will be focusing more is to collect leads from my blog. I will be putting up opt-in box all over my blogs to entice my reader sign in. You can expect to find a gift or bonus when you opt-in into my mailing lists.

The last area that I will be focusing is driving traffics to my blog. I know there are many ways to actually drive traffic online and I will be using two methods to get my blog going.

Thank you for reading my blog and I hope to create an online community where I can update you constantly with frequent updates and products.

Cheers
Nighto Chan