My new highest score is…

205.47.

Actually, it’s the amount of money one of my sites has earned on AdSense during the past 30 days. So why have I called it my score?

I used to play computer games quite a lot. I’ve had some times when I spent a long time during the night playing them, and only went to bed around 3:00 to 4:00 a.m.

I still tend to go to bed around 3:00 to 4:00 a.m., but I don’t often play computer games any more. Being a family man is somewhat incompatible with that.

What’s all this got to do with internet marketing, I hear you say? Simply this:

Whenever I play computer games, I am highly motivated to succeed at them.

Success can take many forms. It can be to achieve the highest score possible within a given amount of time. It can be to complete a fixed goal within a defined time frame. It can be to beat an opponent.

If I think of internet marketing as work (which, of course, it is), I am reminded of all the negative connotations associated with work. I don’t automatically think of the dream lifestyle; I don’t even know what that is, as the tag-line for this blog suggests. (At the time of writing, it reads, “Chasing the dream… and finding out exactly what that means.”)

Instead, I tend to think of the issues that I have with money at present. The bills that need to be paid, month after month. The credit card interest, and feeling bad because I have some unpaid interest at the moment that I really should have shifted onto a 0% interest card by now, but haven’t, for some unknown reason. The fact that I don’t have much of a buffer if the smelly stuff hits the fan, and the potential consequences if that occurs.

How does that make me feel? Not exactly great.

What if it was a computer game? Losing doesn’t matter. You just try again. But I do find it much more motivating to achieve a high score at a computer game. Strange, isn’t it?

So, my latest idea is to play an internet marketing “game.” I will “play” the “game” each week. The rules are as follows:

1. The score each week is the gross revenue earned by the site during the past 30 days in all ways for which the site is monetized in pounds sterling. Any amounts paid during the past 30 days for anything in connection with the site, except taxes, is subtracted from the score.
2. The game is won each week if the score improves on the previous best score by 5% or greater.
3. The score is determined on Monday mornings or later.
4. The 30-day period ends on Saturday. This is because reporting of profits sometimes takes a little while to come through.
5. For simplicity, all time zones are assumed to be the same. (The AdSense time zone usually starts and ends at 08:00 each day my time.)
6. Any currency conversions required to be carried out to calculate the score will assume the HMRC published average for year to 31 March of the previous year. At present, I trade only in pounds and US dollars, so the only exchange rate that applies is $1 = £0.62649.

Now, 5% sounds quite achievable and realistic, doesn’t it? Well, the good thing about this is that when I achieve 52 wins, a quick spreadsheet calculation reveals that my score will be at least 2597.72.

Now we’re talking real money. If I get up to that level of income, I will be extremely pleased about it. I will be thinking about going full time if I haven’t already.

There’s just one more issue that I have to resolve. How am I going to achieve this if I am working a standard 9-7 day during the weekdays and I still have a family to deal with in the evenings?

I need to figure that out. At least one thing I will be doing to accomplish that is to do some outsourcing. Getting contractors to do what you want on the internet can be very inexpensive these days. I found that out from Rachel Rofe’s report called Happy Outsourcing. I read through it over the past few days and it’s amazing what you can do with internet contractors, and how cheaply you can do it, if you are in the know about where to go to get each type of task done effectively. Rachel’s qualifications are listed on the sales page, but as she founded the Burn Your To-Do List site, frankly, that’s good enough for me!

Another thing about me is that there are techniques that I know from personal experience work, and work well, but I don’t enjoy doing them. I wouldn’t mind paying someone to do these for me at the rates the report suggests can be achieved.

What do you think of my strategy? Let me know. I’ll definitely appreciate it.

Now, I’ve got some work to do…