February was officially my first month in the passive income game. (I already had several Amazon affiliate sites, but I’m not going to include them here. I want this to be a totally fresh start, as a newbie in this field.)

As you’ll recall, I created three information products in February. The BIG LIST of Amazon Products created the bulk of my passive income for the month, followed up by How to Become the Guest Blogger Everyone Wants.

The guest blogger e-book has actually started picking up in sales since the Google Farmer update. That’s probably because I re-wrote the sales copy (on the Warrior Forum) to tie the Google Farmer update in to the need for more guest blogging, and less article directory submission. That little trick gave me just the bump I needed to boost sales. Plus, I’ve been generating more sales directly from my website.

I decided not to push The BIG LIST of Internet Marketing Blogs because I’m thinking about adding it to a bigger package later on. Surprisingly, a lot of people have been asking me about it behind the scenes. Funny how that works. I decide not to sell it and all of sudden people want to buy it. Must be some kind of psychological persuasion thing going on there.

Newsflash… Despite all my snafu’s, I DON’T suck!

As I was blogging last month I started to feel a little awful about what I perceived to be product failures. Okay, not really failures… but definitely not the $20K in 10 days that I’d initially imagined.

After tallying everything, and looking back at the experience, I actually didn’t do too bad, considering this was my first foray into selling information products. I worked hard. But I worked hard at home… on my own time… sitting on my rump.

And in one month, of really grinding, I learned a lot. This was an education that you don’t get by reading a book. You just have to get out there, and make mistakes.

So without further ado, here are my sales figures for February 2011–

The BIG LIST of Amazon Products: $1,728

How to Become the Guest Blogger Everyone Wants: $425

The BIG LIST of Internet Marketing Blogs: 0

TOTAL: $2,153 (and NO refunds!)

Lessons Learned–

You don’t have to be on a forum for 6 months before you start selling something. A lot of times you’ll hear people say that you should hang out in a forum and participate for at least a few months before you start trying to sell something.

Now perhaps this is commonplace outside of the Internet marketing niche. But as you can see, I joined the Warrior Forum in January, and I started selling in February. As of today, I’ve only made 67 posts. Obviously I’m not a huge participant there. But when I do say something, I try to add value to the conversation.

No matter what you sell on the Warrior Forum, you need a little hype to make your point. Some people think ‘hype’ is a dirty word.

‘F*$k’ is a dirty word.

Hype, on the other hand, is the most accurate description of what you’ll need to generate sales on the Warrior Forum. Even if your product is mild-mannered, you need to give it a little uumph in the hype department.

To be honest with you, this slightly goes against my general nature. I’m more of a stream-of-thought marketer. I try to be as transparent as possible and talk to my readers like I’m having a face-to-face conversation. If you were to meet me for say… sushi and Sapporo, you’d find I’m the same chick in-person as I am online, except I laugh and smile A LOT more.

In saying that, I initially tried to be tame-and-sane with my the ad title for my guest blogger e-book. But sales were dismal. It wasn’t until I added in ALL CAPS and an exclamation point that things began to pick up. Seriously!

I hate to sound like a cliche, but when in Rome, shut your pie hole, swallow your ‘I’m-holier-than-this-shit’ pride, and do like the Romans. If everybody else is hyping their stuff with screenshots and financial claims, there’s obviously a reason why.

Be willing to give out a few review copies of your product. When I first started selling the guest blogging e-book on the Warrior Forum, I didn’t mention anything about review copies until I’d already gotten a shitload of traffic.

Can you say, “dummy move”?

At that point I’d already lost a great deal of momentum. By the time I decided to give out review copies, my ad had already dropped more than half-way down the first page.

When I was launching The BIG LIST of Amazon Products I mentioned 3 available review copies in the sales letter. I actually ended up giving out 5, including one to a reviewer on another site.

The reviews ended up being kick-ass and the social proof those reviews provided was more than enough to make my second WSO far more successful.

My thinking is that if you can get a review copy into the hands of a few people before you launch, and you request that they leave a review in your thread, you’ll build up that social proof a lot faster, which will (hopefully) generate sales a lot quicker.

If you’re at home sitting behind the computer on a Saturday night, you’re not a loser. I submitted The BIG LIST of Amazon Products on the Warrior Forum at 7:30pm EST on a Saturday. It didn’t drop off the first page until sometime Sunday afternoon, giving me a whole lotta time to benefit from that first page advantage.

I listed the guest blogging e-book on a Thursday afternoon, and it was pushed off the page by late evening the same day.  And let’s not even talk about the few hours it took to knock The BIG LIST of Internet Marketing Blogs off the first page on a Tuesday afternoon (which is supposed to be one of the busiest times on the forum).

Given my choice, I’d rather list my products on what appears to be the slowest times on the forum. In fact, I like re-listing my stuff at 9pm EST, and waking up to a bunch of new orders.

What’s in the works for March?

$20K in 5-10 days.

What? You thought I was giving up? Earning $2K in less than a month IS sweet, but I know it can get a lot better.

You have to work hard. You have to work fast. And you have to understand this audience.

Leave a comment. Give me your suggestions. Tell me what you think I could do to hit my rapid fire $20K goal.