MasonWorld Late Night Internet Marketing » Internet Marketing

Niche Duel Update #1

Mark Mason — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:45:40 +0000

If you follow me on Twitter you’re probably aware that I am participating alongside Pat and Tyrone in the Niche Duel that’s being documented over at the Smart Passive Income Blog.

Now, my participation in this contest is a little bit different than Pat and Tyrone. Pat always does an amazing job of documenting everything that he does and goes into an enormous amount of detail. This niche duel is no different for Pat, he’s already done an excellent job of documenting his keyword research and progress that he’s made on his site.

In my case, I’m not able to dedicate that much time to this project, but I do think it’s incredibly valuable. So, I’ve decided to dictate some notes about my progress and have them transcribed by my awesome transcriptionist, that way you can get some information about how I’m approaching the niche site duel, but I won’t have to spend a ton of time documenting it on my blog.

My Approach to the Niche Site Duel

So, because of the fact that I’m trying to minimize the amount of time that I’m spending on the Niche Site Duel, I’ve decided to take the approach of outsourcing every possible element of the competition. And I’ve decided that the best way to document a lot of my progress is by microblogging the event over on my Facebook Fan Page. So, be sure and check the Facebook Fan Page for day to day updates, and I’ll try to post my progress on the blog every week or two so you can get a sense of how things are going in the big picture.

My first job was niche selection. When I select a niche I try to do three things. Number one, I try to find a niche that I actually think will generate some revenue and be profitable. In this case I chose the very popular guitar niche, specifically the learn to play guitar niche. I’ve noticed for some time that there are several successful products in the marketplace, both on Clickbank and elsewhere, regarding learning to play guitar, so I knew this would be an opportunity for me to play around in that niche.

Number Two, I try to pick something that I’m actually interested in. As a busy internet marketer I know that I have a higher probability of actually accomplishing tasks related to the creation of the niche site if I care about the contents. This is not a requirement in general for niche marketers, but for me personally I’ve found that I have a lot higher success rate if I pick things that I’m actually interested in.

Number three, for this particular project I wanted to make sure I chose a niche where there was a wide availability of materials for me to work with, this includes affiliate offers, blog themes, private label right materials, and other things that I would need for a completely outsourced project.

So, for my limited time commitment to this project I’ve decided to select something was easily outsourced, had a wide variety of materials available, looked like it could be profitable, and interested me enough that I could guarantee that I would participate in the project.

Keyword Research for Learn Guitar

Once I had looked around a little bit in the guitar niche and found out that there was a ton of material out there available for affiliate marketers I popped open my favorite fast keyword research tool, Micro Niche Finder. Notice that I’m making the distinction between fast keyword research and deep keyword research.
For deep keyword research once I’ve found a target keyword I prefer Market Samurai, but for fast keyword research where I’m searching across hundreds of keywords looking for a particular keyword to target I strongly prefer Micro Niche Finder. I think the user interface is a lot better for wide area searches.

So, when I put learn guitar into Micro Niche Finder the very first thing I did was ask Micro Niche Finder to find me all of the keywords that had an available dot net,, dot org, or dot com exact match domain. Now, the learn guitar niche is very crowded, so the number of domains available that exactly matched keywords returned by Micro Niche Finder was a relatively small number.

Once I had gotten a list of exact match domains I simply ordered them in decreasing order of search volume. I’m looking for a keyword that I think learn guitar prospects would be using that has a high search volume and low competition. So, starting with the keywords with highest search volume I started analyzing the competition. To make a long story short, Micro Niche Finder suggested to me that learn guitar basics was a decent keyword and it showed me that learn guitar basics dot net was available.

So, I immediately grabbed learn guitar basics dot net and continued my keyword research. In continuing the keyword research I wanted to find some additional keywords that I could target on the website that were also related to learning the guitar. I won’t go into detail about that here, except to say that for these keywords exact matches to domains are not a requirement.

So, I simply went back to Micro Niche Finder, removed the requirement for domains being available and started looking for high volume keywords with low competition. Again, the niche is very crowded, so the number of these keywords is not large. In fact, this looks like this is going to be a very challenging project from a keyword standpoint, but that’s okay, I’m up for the challenge.

Niche Site Traffic Strategy

Now I know that I’m going to be building a blog about learn guitar, and specifically the blog is going to be called Learn Guitar Basics dot net, and I know that my goal is to match offers with buyers. In fact, that’s always the goal of affiliate marketing to find some buyers and match them up to offers on the internet.

In this case I’ve found my buyers. They’re people that are typing in the phrase learn guitar basics. These are new people, maybe they just got a guitar, maybe they’re about to buy a guitar, who are wanting to learn how to play. So, the offer that I want to match them with, obviously, is an offer for online guitar lessons.
I looked around the internet and I found an outstanding affiliate program from a place called Guitar Tricks. Looking at the Guitar Tricks website made me want to sign up for their product, it really looks fantastic. As a guitar player myself I knew immediately that this affiliate offer was a good one because I found myself wanting to take out my own credit card and sign up for the affiliate offer.

As a matter of fact, one really good approach for promoting this offer would be for me to do exactly that and to blog about it. The problem is that approach is not really compatible with the amount of time that I have to spend on this project, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that. In any case, I’ve saved that as a note for myself in case I decide to really spend some real effort on this site.

Identifying the affiliate offer at GuitarTricks.com means that I need to consider a couple of additional keywords to target on the website. People who are considering signing up for a membership at GuitarTricks.com might type in at least two guitar tricks related keywords, and those are obviously guitar tricks review and maybe guitar tricks coupon. Additional ones that are sometimes present in the internet marketing niche are guitar tricks bonus and other kinds of things like that, but for normal people who are buying things online review and coupon are the two most sought after keywords.

Now, here’s an important lesson for you. Those keywords do not appear in the Google Adwords Tool. Micro Niche Finder and Market Samurai do not recognize guitar tricks review and guitar tricks coupon as keywords that people are searching. Why is that? The reason is that those tools are based on the Adwords database and it simply means that no one is bidding on those keywords.

However, if you go to Google and type the word guitar tricks into the search box and then hit the space bar several suggestions will pop down. Those suggestions are based on the actual search data that Google is collecting. They’re not based on the Adwords data, they’re based on the search data, and if you look at that list is presented to you when you out in the words guitar tricks, you’ll find guitar tricks coupon and guitar tricks review. That tells me that I need to target those keywords on my site.

Additionally, if you look at that list you’ll find that there are quite a few people that are trying to steal the Guitar Tricks system, because you see things like guitar tricks torrent. That makes me a little sad and reminds that whenever you have electronic products in the marketplace you need to protect the download.

Creating the Niche Website

Again, my goal in this website is to outsource everything that I possibly can. I’ve done my own keyword research, but it’s been a quick and dirty effort using Micro Niche Finder for less than an hour. If you want a really good tutorial about how the keyword research should be done, you should hop on over to Pat’s blog and look at his video about how he used Market Samurai to do keyword research for his Security Guard website. In my case however, I’ve picked quick and dirty keywords and now I need a quick and dirty website.

So, my next task was to put the search term guitar plr into Google. This returned for me a list of PLR products that are available in the guitar space. I knew I wanted three things. One, I’m looking for PLR that I can use for an autoresponder on the website. It will be very important to collect leads on this website and follow up with those leads and try to drive them to the affiliate offer. Number two, I’m looking for a blog theme and sometimes blog themes are available as PLR. Number three, I’m looking for content for the website. Again, this is an outsource project, I’m going to have some original material written, but really I want to consider PLR as the source for blog site content.

A note about PLR. I think PLR is absolutely excellent for autoresponders because there’s no search engine implications to using PLR. As long as the PLR is high quality and is in your voice and is valuable to your readers, I don’t see any problem in using it in an autoresponder. I don’t normally recommend the use of PLR for website content unless it’s completely rewritten. I’m not a big believer in the duplicate content penalty that’s often talked about by Google, but I do think you owe it to your readers to generate decent content on your own. If you do use PLR on your website, make sure it’s excellent quality and that the PLR you use is rewritten to avoid any issues with similar content outranking you for your search terms.

Having said all that, in this case I’m in a huge hurry, so I need to use PLR because I’ve committed to outsourcing as much of this as possible and moving as quickly as possible. So, lucky for me I found a complete and totally awesome guitar website theme complete with PLR content that I could buy with one click of the mouse. It cost 27 dollars and I bought it, it’s up and running at Learn Guitar Basics dot net.

Outsourcing Tasks for the Duel

Once I bought the PLR mentioned above I was able to outsource a series of tasks. The first task I outsourced was taking some of the PLR that I purchased and breaking it up into content for an autoresponder that was appropriate for beginning guitarists. The virtual assistant was able to split up the content, edit it, place a call to action to the affiliate offer at the bottom of every email, and load that content into an autoresponder over at Aweber.

Task two, I asked another one of my virtual assistants to take the PLR website and get it up and running on the domain that I had purchased. I also asked the VA to modify the site header so that it matched the domain name, to edit the footer, to take out references to the PLR and so forth and make the site somewhat visually unique.

Task three, affiliate offers. I asked the VA that works on my websites to integrate creatives from the Guitar Tricks affiliate site into the website. This meant that the virtual assistant needed to change the banner in the header, as well as place a video creative in the sidebar of the website.

Task four, I also asked the virtual assistant to integrate the autoresponder into the website so there would be a signup form in the sidebar. The sidebar will say something like, “For free beginning guitar lessons delivered straight to your inbox leave us your email and we’ll rush you your first lesson,” or something like that.

Task five, I asked my writer to go into the website and edit every PLR article on the site to change the title, very important for changing PLR, the permalink, also very important for PLR, and the text, less important but still important for using PLR on your website. This will help guarantee that my content is more unique, which can help in my search engine rankings.

To be honest with you, I’m not very worried about the impact of PLR on the search engine because I’m not trying to rank the PLR pages. I’ll be trying to rank the home page and some other pages targeted at guitar tricks related keywords, that content will be completely original and unique and will be easier to rank than the PLR content.

Task six, I asked my writer to write 10 articles around keywords that I had found in Micro Niche Finder. Among these included content for the home page around the keyword learn guitar basics and content for the affiliate offer landing pages for guitar tricks review and guitar tricks coupon.

Current Status and Next Steps

Right now I’m waiting for all those outsourced tasks to be completed. Once those tasks are completed I’ll move to some additional site set up tasks that need to be addressed. I’ll need a Twitter ID for this project, I’ll need email addresses and other set up items, I want to add an eBay and Amazon store into this blog, and so forth. We’ll talk about all of these tasks and more in a future blog post.

Once the site has been set up to my satisfaction (in about a week) I’ll need to start promoting it. For promotion I intend to use article marketing and other backlink building techniques that we’ll talk about in subsequent posts.

That’s it for now. I hope you’ve enjoyed this update, sorry it’s a little bit long winded but that’s one of the downsides to dictating posts rather than editing them. Please let me know if you have any comments, I’d be happy to answer them below. Have a great day!

Best Regards,
Mark Mason

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Niche Duel Update #1

Does Google Love WordPress?

Mark Mason — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:45:57 +0000

I hear this all the time when people are talking about old-school static HTML sites versus newer WordPress sites. They say it loud and proud as if it were a law of nature like gravity or something.

Google Loves WordPress!

The truth is (as far as I know) that there is no real data that says Google prefers static WordPress versus HTML (or vice-versa). There is no reason that they should care -- and I don't think that they do.

People say "Google loves WordPress" because they see WordPress because they see WordPress sites doing well in Google. The question is this: is this correlation, or causation? In other words, are these sites doing well because of WordPress, or for some other reason.

If two sites were COMPLETELY identical, Goggle would not care if a site was WordPress or Static HTML. In fact, if they were truly completely identical, Google could not tell easily which was which.

I don't think Google loves WordPress.

Why WordPress Sites Perform Well

Rather, I think Google loves what most WordPress installations do automatically (and most static HTML sites do NOT do at all).

If you install WordPress with a decent theme and use a few popular plugins, you get some killer stuff that is not present on many plain-jane HTML sites:

Ping-O-Matic to announce new content
Blog pinging to encourage back-linking
User-generated content (comments)
An RSS feed (promotes traffic)
Auto SEO optimized titles and URLs (in most cases)
Good automatic intra-site linking (in most cases)
et cetera

This is why "Google loves WordPress". It is not because there is some unfair bias in Google or some magic in WordPress itself. All of the above things are possible with an HTML site, but people usually do not do them.

So, while it looks like Google loves WordPress, what they really love are well constructed sites. Constructing site well is something that WordPress does automatically.

Build good site, follow the webmaster guidelines, and you too will live a long healthy and happy web life.

photo credit: AlbertaAndMe

7 Serious Salescopy SEO Slip-Ups

Mark Mason — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:12:14 +0000

Boy, that is a mouth full.

As an affiliate marketer, one of the things that you need to be able to do is write good pre-sales copy with great SEO properties. This is hard to do sometimes, but it can make or break your affiliate campaigns when you are counting on search engine traffic. It's so important (and so misunderstood -- especially by beginners), I felt like we should talk about it here.

I was discussing this with my friend Karon Thackston, and she could not agree more. Now make no mistake, Karon is a famous SEO copywriter. If you know anything about Karon, you understand that she's been writing high-ranking and converting copy for clients including Gorton's Seafood and the American Boating Association for over 25 years. I talked Karon into offering a free hour-long teleclass on SEO copywriting exclusively for you (people on my list).

Free SEO Copywriting Teleseminar

Teleclass: The Simple SEO Copywriting Framework
Signup Link: Just click here! Format: Audio (via teleconference bridge)
Date: August 26, 2010
Time: 2:00pm Eastern Time Length: Approx. 1 hour

What you'll learn: In this one-hour teleclass, Karon Thackston presents a simple framework for writing SEO copy including:

Which keyphrases to use
How to use them without ruining the flow of your copy
Precisely where to place keyphrases for maximum impact with Google and other engines
Which popular advice is a useless, outdated myth you should avoid
How to organize/outline each page for SEO copy so you don't miss a thing
And more!

In the mean time, I wanted to share with you the following tips from Karon. You'll get a lot more stuff like this on the call.

Thanks,
Mark

7 Don'ts for SEO Copywriting

There is no shortage of don'ts when it comes to SEO copywriting. It seems this niche got off to a rough start many years ago when early comers somehow misconstrued the core principles of the trade. Allow me to elaborate on how not to write SEO copy.

1. Don't shove as many keyphrases into the copy as humanly possible. It's not about the sheer volume of search terms you include. Yes, Google and other engines should be able to follow what the page is about. Yes, engines are looking to match a searcher's query with search engine optimized content on your web pages, but which pages land at the top is decided through a series of calculations far more complex than any simple ratio. When you overload copy with keyphrases you sacrifice quality and user experience.

2. Don't lose site of balance. If SEO copywriting isn't about the percentage of keywords within the copy, then what is it about? Balance. You have two audiences with SEO copywriting: the search engines and your site visitors. But surprisingly, the balance doesn't come with serving both masters well. The balance comes in how much you cater to the engines. You see, your site visitors always come first. However, if you write with too little focus on the engines, you won't see good rankings. If you put too much focus on the engines, you'll start to lose your target audience. Balance… always balance.

3. Don't let someone else choose the keywords. If keyword research isn't a service you offer, an SEO firm, keyword specialist or some other professional that your client hires will have to conduct the research. Don't just accept keyphrases these folks toss your way. Ask to see the entire list with recommendations as to which terms would be best strategically. Then you, as the professional writer, can decide which will also work best within the copy.

4. Don't sacrifice flow for numbers. This is a follow-up to number three and is a major issue with bad SEO copywriting. SEOs or clients sometimes insist on using hacked-up search phrases that simply don't work in a normal sentence. An example? "Candies samples free." Many copywriters will just grin and bear it, sacrificing quality and flow for the sake of competitive values or other numbers. The result is often some obnoxious sentence like, "If you're looking for candies samples free, you've come to the right place!" Forcing a phrase into the copy at all costs never turns out well.

5. Don't use keyphrases that don't apply to the page. If you operate a site about wedding receptions, don't try to force a search term about wedding dresses into the copy just because it pulls a lot of traffic. (A) Unless you sell, alter or design wedding dresses, it won't be applicable. (B) Even if you manage to get the page ranked well for the phrase [wedding dresses], once the visitor clicks to your site and realizes you have nothing to do with wedding dresses, they will leave. It's a waste of time and effort and it creates a poor user experience.

6. Don't use misspellings and correct spellings on the same page. I fully understand that the misspellings of keyphrases can be valuable search terms. However, to mix correct spellings and misspellings within the same page of copy looks like you've got a bunch of typos in the content. It's just not professional. Some writers will go for the old, "We rent limousines (sometimes spelled limosenes) for the most affordable prices in town." I don't care for that approach. It's just not natural. Would you ever see brochure or newspaper copy that reads that way? I think not.

7. Don't use keyphrases the exact same way every time. This is how we end up with horrible SEO copy that sounds like a 4th grader wrote it. (See #4.) There are lots of ways to use keywords in copy, not just one. In order to sound natural, you have to get creative with your keyphrase use. One way is to break up phrases using punctuation. Since search engines don't pay attention to basic punctuation marks, you can easily write something using the search term [real estate Hawaii] that reads like this: "Currently there is an impressive selection of available real estate. Hawaii listings can be…" See? "Real estate" is at the end of the first sentence and "Hawaii" is at the beginning of the second sentence. The engines ignore the period so there's no problem.

And Here Are Three More Bonus Mistakes To Avoid

8. Don't use all types of search phrases for every situation. There are many ways in which this "don't" applies. One quick example is that of an ecommerce site. It wouldn't be advisable to use specific, long-tail keyphrases on the home page of your site. They are much too specific in most cases and are better suited for individual product pages. Broader terms are typically best for an ecommerce home page. If you don't understand the best applications for the various types of keywords, you're likely to have lackluster results.

9. Don't neglect ALT tags/image attributes. These tags are the ones associated with images on your pages and they carry a good deal of weight especially if the image is used as a link. The ALT text counts the same as anchor text in a text-based link. Depending on a few different factors, ALT text may be a good place for those misspellings mentioned in #6.

10. Don't forget the chain of protocol. There's a method to the SEO copywriting madness. The idea is not to get as many different keyphrases onto a page as possible. Just the opposite, in fact. Rather than having 12 different search terms used only one time each, you need to use two to four keyphrases (depending on the length of your copy) per page. The title, META tags, ALT tags, other coding elements and on-page copy need to support each other as far as keyphrase use goes. Your goal is to let the engines know that you have original, relevant content about a narrow topic.

Unless you have an exceptional number of back links built up, just mentioning [dark chocolate], [chocolate strawberries], [chocolate chip cookies], [chocolate cake], [chocolate desserts], [organic chocolate] and [chocolate cheesecake] once each on a web page isn't likely to do a lot of good. Instead, pick two or three terms which are closely related and use them several times each along with mentioning them in your tags.

When you avoid making common mistakes, you'll find your SEO copywriting flows much better, is more natural-sounding and ranks higher, too.

Did you get a lot out of this article? Then you'll want to join Karon as my guest during a FREE SEO copywriting teleclass August 26, 2010 at 2:00pm Eastern time. This call - exclusively for MasonWorld readers - will give you a simple framework for writing great SEO copy. Register today at http://www.copywritingcourse.com/mason-registration.html.

Well, it turns out that sometimes it's not what you know, but who you know, ya know?

I got an email out of the blue from my friend Karon Thackston. She is a famous SEO copywriter. (OK -- she is not as famous a Lady GaGa or Jennifer Aniston, but you get the idea).

If you know anything about Karon, you understand that she's been writing high-ranking and converting copy for clients including Gorton's Seafood and the American Boating Association for over 25 years.

I talked Karon into offering a free hour-long teleclass on SEO copywriting exclusively for you (people on my list).

Here are all the details, {!firstname_fix}.

Teleclass: The Simple SEO Copywriting Framework

Signup Link: Just click here!

Format: Audio (via teleconference bridge)

Date: August 26, 2010

Time: 2:00pm Eastern Time

Length: Approx. 1 hour

What you'll learn: In this one-hour teleclass, Karon Thackston presents a simple framework for writing SEO copy including:

Which keyphrases to use
How to use them without ruining the flow of your copy
Precisely where to place keyphrases for maximum impact with Google and other engines
Which popular advice is a useless, outdated myth you should avoid
How to organize/outline each page for SEO copy so you don't miss a thing
And more!

Time permitting, she'll even take a few questions after her presentation.

Don't Miss This: Karon is a real expert.

Karon has written some powerful books and ebooks including the Step-by-Step Copywriting Course (now in its 5^th edition) and the latest in the Wordtracker Masterclass series, Ecommerce Copywriting.

Having the chance to learn from someone on her level for free is rare so I know you won't want to miss this call.

Sign up now. I expect the slots to fill up fast.

Just click here!

I'll see you there, {!firstname_fix}.

Thanks, and have a fantastic day!

Regards,
Mark

P.S. Be sure to sign up even if you are not sure you can attend. I am trying to get her permission to make the call available for download.

JV Giveaway Case Study

Mark Mason — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 18:06:47 +0000

I am planning to do a case study on JV Giveaways and report the results here. You can help my by following along with the study and (more importantly) signing up for to be a JV partner. This will give me the points I need to participate. This will also give you an opportunity to participate in the giveaway and build your list. If you have never done a JV list-building event before, now is the time (because we can do it together).

This JV Giveaway Is Different

I've got to tell you the truth. In the past, I have not been a big fan of JV giveaways. They have the reputation of generating tons of un-targeted, unresponsive leads. They also put you in a position of having to "give away" some of your list to participate. But recently, I learned about a JV giveaway that sounded like it might be different -- it is being run by someone that I trust, has several big name A-list marketers on board, has the potential to save kids lives.

To give you an idea, here is a promotional graphic from the event:

Let me back up a second.

In a JV giveaway, internet marketers recruit other internet marketers to participate in a giant giveaway. All of the participants do three things: they recruit other marketers to participate (that is what I am doing now, by the way), they contribute items to the giveaway (more on this later), and they send traffic to the giveaway.

The JV Giveaway Promise

The idea is that many marketers send tons of traffic to the giveaway, and some of those prospects will see the free gift (or gifts) that you donated and decide to download it (or them). To access the download, the prospect will need to opt-in to your list. So, by participating, you hope to build you list. (Note: There are some cases where you might want to give something away without opt-in, but we will talk about that later.)

To get this to work, you need some heavy hitters in the mix. So far, the giveway has over 100 participants planning to send traffic, including some big names you might recognize (Willie Crawford, Kevin Riley, Kathleen Gage, Jeff Herring, Lynn Terry, Bob "The Teacher" Jenkins, Maritza Parra, Nicole Dean, Sid Hale, Denise Wakeman, Dan R Morris, Roger Carr, Cindi Dawson, Joe Marsh, Karon Thackston, Paul Evans, Doug Hudiburg, Traci Knoppe, Doug Champigny, Mark Hendricks and David Perdew)

For this JV event, the goal is 1000 contributors and 100,000 "members" during the week that the event is live (next week - Aug. 20 to Aug. 27, 2010). Amazing. Hope his servers are up to the task.

And of course, if you are participating in this as a JV partner and you have One-Time-Offers (OTOs) or affiliate links associated with your opt-in, you can profit directly from the event.

The organizer usually benefits in a couple of ways. First, the organizer can (and usually does) require and opt-in to get to the give-away in the first place. Secondly, the organizer can place offers inside the software that runs the giveaway (these days, giveaways are completely automated). This particular giveaway has a lot of those (see the postscript at the end of this post).

Saving Kids Lives

In this giveaway, the organizers intend to collect donations for Dr. Mani. In fact, the literature indicates that all the proceeds from the front end of this effort go to Dr. Mani's CHD Foundation.

That is one of the things that made this interesting for me. I have donated money to Dr. Mani before. He is quite an amazing guy.

If you don't know about Dr. Mani, this guy basically uses internet marketing as a way to fund open heart surgery for kids that can't afford it.

Here's a one paragraph comment from Mark Joyner in the forward to one of Dr. Mani's books:

"To hold this (book) up as the measure of the man is a great disservice to one of the greatest men now walking the earth...What makes Dr. Mani great is the way he has leveraged his info- preneurship... He doesn't make a big fuss about it, but he uses the funds he raises with his entrepreneurial endeavors to save the lives of children who really need it. He is a heart surgeon who has dedicated his life to providing heart surgery to children who cannot afford the costs."

Join As A JV

So, here is what I would like you to do.

Thing one: Stay tuned and follow along. I plan to see if this "really works" to drive traffic to my list. I also plan to report all of the details to you.

Thing two: participate. If you sign up as a JV partner, you can easily add a giveaway and participate.

Your participation under my signup link will give me "points." These points give me a higher priority in the giveaway, and make it more likely that this will be a decent case study. So, even if you are not sure that you want to participate, signing up would help (it's free).

Oh -- and don't forget that you can help save kids lives by participating. This fact is part of the reason that I decided to do the case study. So, if you are on the fence, you can use that as your excuse.

Thanks -- look for my next post about setting up my giveaway items tomorrow.

PS -- If you do sign up, you'll immediately see a couple of OTO asking you to upgrade your JV account. I did upgrade my account ($17), but there is no reason for you to do that unless you want to contribute multiple gifts.

Also, you will see some OTO's in the back end software. Again, just ignore those (but pay attention to the marketing). I'll be talking about that part of the JV Giveaway magic in a future post.

Owl Pellets – A Weird Niche Response To Nicole Dean

Mark Mason — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:13:11 +0000

I had the funniest phone conversation with Nicole Dean yesterday. Nicole is the "mostly sane marketer" -- at least that is her claim. I'm seriously not sure about the "mostly sane" part. On days like yesterday, she calls that whole sane thing into question.

You see, our conversation was about owl vomit. Well, not owl vomit, exactly. We were talking about owl pellets.

Nicole does a series on her blog called " Weird Niche Wednesday" -- and today her weird niche is owl pellets. In case you don't know, owl pellets are little balls of bones and feathers that owls cannot digest after eating their prey.

I've had two fourth graders, so I knew that kids all over America dissect these little gems each and every year. What I did not know was that there is a niche market for these pellets on the internet.

Don't believe me? Check this out....

People Are Looking For Owl Pellets On The Internet

So, I'm sitting on the phone with Nicole laughing about owl vomit (trying to decide just how sane she really is) and I decided to take a look at the market for "owl pellets".

I was surprised when I typed "owl pellets" into Google (without the quotes), I saw 11 paid AdWords ads (these are the "sponsored links" on the top and right side of the Google search results.) Whenever I see that many ads and searches, I know that chances are people are making money in this niche.

I also saw that there were shopping listings in the Google search result-- a clue that there may be affiliate marketing opportunities in this space.

I know personally how quickly AdWords can suck money out of your bank account, so when there are ads running (particularly if they are running for a long time), it means that people are making a profit.

One measure of the competition is the price of those AdWords ads. If the ads are cheap, it usually means no one is bidding on the phrase. Sometimes that can mean that there is not much money to be made, so people cannot afford to bid much. We already know there are 11 ads - but what are people paying for them.

A quick trip over to SpyFu.com show me a nice little surprise. It turns out that people are paying as much as a couple of dollars per click for ads. So, there 11 ads on Google and some of them are costing $2 per click.

Hmmm. I smell money.

As you know, internet marketing is about matching offers with buyers. To be successful, you need buyers. Lots of them.

So, I decided to look at the search volume. According to the Google Adwords Keyword tool, there are 9900 exact match searches per month for "owl pellets". On top of that, some keywords are showing a cost per click of over $5.

That got my attention.

Next Stop Micro Niche Finder

At this point I had seen enough to make me want to fire up a keyword tool. I have several tools in my toolbox, but for quick stuff I love to use Micro Niche Finder. I find it easy to use.

I put owl pellets in Micro Niche Finder, and it told me some interesting things. Since it get's data from the AdWords keyword tool also (most tools do), it confirmed my finding of 9900 exact match results for Owl Pellets. It also showed me results for about 100 other owl-pellet-related keywords.

Of the keywords that it found, 28 of them contained the word pellet (or pellets).

I asked Micro Niche Finder to show me all the domain names (.com, .org and .net) that were exact matches for keywords. It turns out that owlpellets.com (and .org and .net) were already taken. However, the second most popular keyword, owl pellet dissection, was available.

Micro Niche Finder also told me that the competition was pretty weak. In fact, there are 1000 searches per month for "owl pellet dissection" and there is only one strong site competing for the term.

So, on a whim, I registered OwlPelletDissection.com (that is why it is shown as unavailable above) and I am in the process of throwing up an owl pellet site at OwlPelletDissection.com for experimental purposes.

Get it? Throwing up an owl pellet site? I crack myself up.

Sorry. I put up the site last night. So, it is a work in progress (kind of like my jokes).

An Interesting Case Study

Anyway, it will be interesting to see if I can rank for "owl pellet dissection" and or "owl pellets" over the next few months. I don't plan to work too hard at it (which makes it even more interesting), since I have lots of other things going on. But I will work at it some.

I'll keep you posted. Maybe this would make a nice case study for us to discuss on the blog. We can talk about the how and why of this project.

I'd love to hear what you think about this -- or answer any questions that you might have. Let me know your thoughts.

Effective Ways to Promote ClickBank Products

Mark E. Mason — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:51:38 +0000

Today I have asked affiliate marketer Jason Acidre, a Marketing Consultant for Affilorama, to come and talk about how to promote ClickBank products. In his post, Jason describes three ways to go about promoting products successfully.

Remember, when using these promotion techniques, you should keep new FTC rules about disclosure and testimonials in mind. Promote products that you really believe will help people. Be honest in your promotions and act with integrity - you will love the results in the long run.

Here is the post from Jason....

Effective Ways to Promote ClickBank Products

Ready to learn the most effective ways to promote ClickBank products? It’s much easier than you think and anyone can get started earning in virtually no time. There’s no better way to earn online than getting started with a good affiliate network like ClickBank so read on to learn more.

When it comes to earning income as an affiliate, using a popular affiliate network like ClickBank is the best way to gain access to top selling products and services. ClickBank has become the gold standard of affiliate networks and is often the first thing newbies to affiliate marketing learn about. There are many sites similar to this network but very few are as reputable or have as many affiliates promoting the available products. That being said, what are the most effective ways to promote ClickBank products for the best results? Read on to find out.

Method #1 – Blog with a pen name and “alter ego.”

In recent years this has become even more popular. While some people argue the ethics behind it the plain and simple fact is that it works. Many people set up free blogs at sites like Blogger or WordPress and blog from the point of view of someone else about how useful a ClickBank product is for solving problem X –whatever that may be. This is quite popular amongst people promoting weight loss related products and male enhancement products. Since the visitors read the blog and assume it’s a real evaluation of the product by someone who’s similar to them and their situation they go through with the purchase through your affiliate link.

Method #2 – Make YouTube videos

Make YouTube videos and make passive commissions. Depending on how saturated a niche is or how many people are currently doing this with the product you’re trying to promote you can have varying results. The way it works is simple. Make a video (either of yourself on camera or a slide show in Power Point) and talk about the product you’re promoting and why it’s great, how it helped you or could help the viewer and then tell them where to get it. The best way to do this is to purchase a domain name and redirect it to your affiliate link. Throughout the video recommend visitors go there to learn more and purchase the product.

Method #3 – Go Offline.

One of the most effective ways to promote ClickBank products is to go offline altogether. While this requires significantly more work and can be harder to monitor results it can work very well in certain areas. For example if you pick a weight loss product you want to promote you can purchase a domain like “KarensWeightLoss.com” and then print that on flyers along with a short message about how well it worked for you or what the benefits are. Then simply post the flyers in different areas around town like gyms, grocery stores or health food stores.

Depending on which methods you choose try to stick with it until you see results. Don’t immediately skip from one to the other if it doesn’t immediately work. Check to see what you could change and improve next time and try it again. Do this repeatedly until you get something that starts to make sales for you. Once you’ve identified what works simple scale it up and begin outsourcing the majority of work to others.

This guest post was written by Jason Acidre, a Marketing Consultant for Affilorama, an affiliate marketing portal. They provide affiliate marketing education and advanced affiliate marketing tools for beginning and advance affiliates.

Instant Article Factory Review (Free Copies)

Mark E. Mason — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 05:24:09 +0000

I just spent the last few hours playing around with an advanced copy of Instant Article Factory (IAF) from Jonathan Leger. Bottom Line: I was so impressed with the software that I talked to Jon and scored 3 free lifetime copies for my readers.

To enter to win a free copy, all you need to do is look at the video here ( Instant Article Factory Sales Page) and tell me what you think about the software, how you would use it, etc in a comment on this post.

Jon is offering special pricing until Friday (deep discount of 40%), so my contest has to end Friday as well.

This software is really neat, and the video speaks for itself. In fact, the video is so complete, here is my review: The software works exactly as advertised.

The video is so cool, I don't think you'll have any trouble coming up with comments about what you see. I am interested in any sort of feedback on the software, including questions.

Update: Instant Article Factory Bonus

If you decide that Instant Article Factory is right for you, and you purchase through my link, I will send you the following really cool bonus that will help you with your business (note, you may want to clear your browser cookies before purchasing through my link):

Bonus: Niche Navigator eBook

	36 of the hottest techniques and websites to have ideas coming out of your ears! - CRUCIAL!
	A simple plugin that can cut hours off your research with just a few clicks!
	How to quickly and easily find out if people are opening their wallets in your niche - then exactly how to find out the magic formula to get them to do it for you!
	The 6 ways to find out how to reach your market which after you do this, will give you a treasure map to follow anytime you drive traffic!
	How to find out the best time to launch your campaign, and the times that will absolutely make it bust.
	How to use one insanely popular website to spit out ideas like a spammer sending out emails, and actually make it gives you LISTS of niches to choose from - no more hunting through sites!
	The truth about the absolute best types of niches, and ones you can profit from them like no other...
	A list of 'gateway' keywords you can exploit to get Google to give you more niches than you can use in your lifetime...

36 of the hottest techniques and websites to have ideas coming out of your ears! - CRUCIAL!
	A simple plugin that can cut hours off your research with just a few clicks!
	How to quickly and easily find out if people are opening their wallets in your niche - then exactly how to find out the magic formula to get them to do it for you!
	The 6 ways to find out how to reach your market which after you do this, will give you a treasure map to follow anytime you drive traffic!
	How to find out the best time to launch your campaign, and the times that will absolutely make it bust.
	How to use one insanely popular website to spit out ideas like a spammer sending out emails, and actually make it gives you LISTS of niches to choose from - no more hunting through sites!
	The truth about the absolute best types of niches, and ones you can profit from them like no other...
	A list of 'gateway' keywords you can exploit to get Google to give you more niches than you can use in your lifetime...

To claim your bonus, simply purchase through my link
and submit your receipt to my help desk.

Here is how to Win A Free Copy (CONTEST NOW CLOSED)

The contest is now closed.

Thanks for all the entries. To select select the winner, I simply picked the comments that I liked (completely at my discretion) and gave some consideration to backlinks (as described in the rules). Selection was very subjective. Thanks for participating.

Here are the winners:

Mark Sierra
Kent F
Lori B. Walker

Please contact me through my support desk to claim your free copy of IAF.

Enter your comment about IAF before the end of the day, Thursday July 16th
Good, thoughtful comments get the most consideration
People who link to the post (or tweet about it) will be smiled upon
Early entries get special consideration
On Friday, July 17th at noon (not Saturday) I will pick 3 winners and contact them.
Three winners will get free lifetime copies.

Note: If you have already purchased a copy, don't worry. I will make sure you get your money back if you are one of the three winners.

It's that simple. The winners will be totally at my discretion. My decision is final. 3 people get lifetime accounts.

Check out the video and let the contest begin.

Winners will be announced at NOON on Friday July 17th by email and on the blog.

Thanks,
Mark

Stealing PLF 3.0 Guru Mojo

Mark Mason — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:50:16 +0000

Everyone knows that I like Jimmy Brown -- but I was really blown away today by this post (reprinted here with Jimmy's permission).

In this post, Jimmy talks about how you can leverage the hype created by mega-launches like the PLF 3.0 launch this week. You can do that by serving the people that WANT the mega-guru $2000 product, but cannot afford it.

For example, I am sure that I could sell a $97 product called "Product Toss Forumla" during the PLF launch. Why? Because there are tons of people like me that want to know more about product launches but do not have the money (or time) for PLF.

Interesting idea, eh?

Here is Jimmy's post (reprinted with his permission).

Note that Jimmy is using his own technique to buzz his own stuff here.

He sees the buzz, develops a technique to leverage the buzz, creates a buzz about that technique, and ends up getting a guy like me to promote one of his products on short notice on a PR4 Internet Marketing blog.

Pretty slick....(it helps that the product that Jimmy mentions below is very high quality, or I would not have reprinted the post).

Thanks,
Mark

How To "Borrow" Other People's Buzz TODAY (Think Traffic!)
By Jimmy D. Brown

Did you know that other people "warm up" your customers for you with their "big product launches"?

And, did you further know, that a huge opportunity for you to create sales for YOUR product or a product you promote as an affiliate can be the result?

If, that is, you "borrow" the buzz that other people are generating.

Imagine this scenario...

Mr. Marketer creates a new $2,000 product. He "launches" it with his friends. Everyone on the forums is talking about it. Every email sent out within the marketplace has something to say about it. Bloggers are raving. The whole industry is buzzing about the new launch.

The average conversion rate is 2%. And that's not on $2,000 products. But, let's assume that Mr. Marketer is the best in the biz. And he can generate something obscene like 25% conversion rate on a $2,000 offer (which, by the way, ain't likely to happen).

IF that were to happen, the flipside is this: 75% DON'T BUY.

In other words, for every 100 visitors to the "launch" site, 75 of them walk away without buying.

Were they uninterested? If that's the case, they likely wouldn't have visited the site in the first place.

In the majority of the cases, they $2,000 price tag was out of their reach. Not in the budget. Don't have the money. Been there, done that ... didn't have the cash to buy the t-shirt!

So, what can we learn from this?

We can learn...

* These 75 out of every 100 who don't buy are probably interested to some degree.

* These 75 out of every 100 have heard all of the buzz and have been "presold" on the premise of the product.

* These 75 out of every 100 are strong candidates to buy a lower-priced, related alternative.

That's where YOU come into the picture.

You "borrow" the buzz that's been generated for the big product being launched by talked about by everyone as you promote a lower-priced, related alternative!

Here's how you do it...

1. Look for high-dollar launches in your market.

The first step is to keep your eye on the pulse of your market. Whenever a major new product is being launched, get busy. You'll usually know days, if not weeks, in advance because that's how launches work: they do a lot of "pre" build-up work to get people salivating for the eventual launch. Keep your eyes out for anything new in the works.

2. Promote a low-cost alternative.

It doesn't matter if you write a quick 10-15 page report, promote your own existing product that is related or grab an affiliate link to some other existing product or service. It doesn't really matter WHERE you obtain this lower-priced alternative. The important thing is that you find one. It needs to be related to the topic of the big product being launched. It can be related either (a) by teaching a similar concept, or (b) teaching a portion of the big product's concept.

3. Write a mailing that explains the two options.

You'll want to write a mailing to send to your subscribers or to post at your blog. This mailing needs to contain three important elements...

- Content that presells. Share some meaty nuggets related to the offer you are ultimately going to promote to set the table.

- A small blurb about big launch with your link. Mention the "major" launch briefly. Describe it's benefits and use an affiliate link of yours to point to the offer. Mention that it's only drawback is "price". Express that many people can't afford it.

- A stronger promotion for your option. Then, really hit home with this "lower-priced, related alternative". Let them know the benefits are similar at a fraction of the cost. Be sure to point out that it's priced for everyone -- especially those who feel "left out" of the big budget launch because they can't afford it.

Then, it's just a matter of getting that mailing out to your subscribers.

Let's look at what you have in place as a result of this strategy...

* You have two promotions: a minor one for the same "major" launch everyone else is promoting, and a "major" one for the lower-priced, related alternative.

* You have "borrowed buzz". Everyone in the marketplace is warming up prospects with all of their "talk" about the importance of the subject matter of the "big product launch". They are primed and ready to buy ... something!

* You have a spike in sales coming.

This is a wonderful strategy for getting extra sales.

Remember, there are always a whole lot more people who DON'T buy the product being offered in the "launch", than those who do! You've got a huge pool of prospects in the 75-98% of people who don't buy the $2,000 offer. Many of them WILL buy a lower-priced, related alternative.

So, the only thing left for you to do is get started.

And if you've like a shortcut, let me show you a quick way to do it TODAY.

You have almost certainly seen that Product Launch Formula 3.0 (PLF3) has launched this week. Everyone is talking about it. While there are a lot of different strategies and ideas involved in a "launch", the backbone is the same...

*** Other people send you the majority of your traffic.

It's obviously a very *HOT* topic right now. People are scrambling to pay BIG BUCKS for the course.

But...

Do you think everyone can afford it?

What about the tens of thousands of internet marketers who can't afford it, but who ARE INTERESTED in the subject?

What a shame to let them sit by without getting any sales from them!

But, don't worry --- you CAN get sales from them! Here's how...

You offer them something for PENNIES on the dollar that provides the same end result: other people sending them traffic for their products and services!

A few days ago Jimmy D. Brown announced a resale rights offer for his SalesArmySecrets.com course.

All the details are at right here.

There are still licenses available for YOU to grab in order to sell a low-cost alternative to the high-dollar "launch" product that everyone is jabbering about.

***BUT IT GETS BETTER --- FREE PLR to $20 Report! ***

Jimmy wrote a report several months ago which he briefly made available to one of his membership sites. It's entitled "How To Get R.I.C.H. With Your Own Affiliate Program".

(It was pulled after a month and is no longer available anywhere.)

The report is 21 meaty pages in itself, but it also strongly promotes the Sales Army Secrets course at the end.

When you order one of the remaining licenses for Sales Army Secrets, Jimmy is going to give you (no cost!) a free PLR license to the special report!

You can sell the report for $20, give it away, do whatever you want with it (as long as you don't misrepresent it or mention Jimmy in reference to it)...

...while using the endorsement at the close of the report to promote YOUR COPY of Sales Army Secrets!

It's a ready-made marketing report to get people to buy Sales Army Secrets from you! You can sell Sales Army Secrets for $97 per order and keep 100% of every sale!

Here's what you need to do...

1. Order the Sales Army Secrets resale rights license here.

2. Register and open a ticket at Jimmy's support center at http://www.Infoprofitshare.com and provide his staff with a copy of your receipt.

Within 24 hours someone will send you the download information for this special Free PLR offer.

That's it!

Get one while it lasts...

There's only ONE catch...

This special offer is for the next 3 days only. On Friday, July 2nd at 10PM CDT, Jimmy is shutting down the license offer and this Free PLR offer. They will no longer be available. Officially "retired" at that point.

Grab yours now!

Then you can quickly "borrow the buzz" of those promoting PLF3!

1029 Make Money Online Keywords (free download)

Mark Mason — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 05:39:22 +0000

If you are trying to break into the Make Money Online niche, I have something really special for you.

I have been playing with Jonathan Leger's new Keyword Snatcher tool. I thought it would be cool to use it to harvest some keywords that are highly sought after in the Internet Marketing space, and then provide them to my readers as a free download. The first keyword that came to mind was "make money online".

The Google Adwords tool starts with about 100 keywords -- but the new Keyword Snatcher tool is able to find 1029 keywords related to Make Money Online.

Of course, Jon is doing this by looking at the suggested keywords that pop up when you type a phrase into the Google search box at Google.com (and at Bing and Yahoo too).

Anyway, if you are interested, here are 1029 Make Money Online Keywords (text file) you can target to make money online (also available in Word doc format).

UPDATE: Also ran the program with just "Make Money" -- that resulted in 3662 Keywords ( txt and doc).Note that Keyword Snatcher is only available until Friday June 25. After that, it goes off the market according to Jon.

Enjoy...

UPDATE #2: Added 3198 forex keywords based on a request in the comments.

UPDATE #3: Added over 8000 Thyroid keywords.

UPDATE #4: Added 999 Learn Guitar keywords.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job (Just Yet)

Mark Mason — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 12:12:55 +0000

Most people that I talk to about starting an internet business have dreams of quitting their day jobs. That can be incredibly exciting. However, as Brett over at StartSEOCompany.com shows in this guest post, quitting your day job before your business is established can be risky. One of the luxuries of internet business can be the ability to get started while keeping your day job, and that is something you should really consider as you plan your escape from your current job and start to realize your internet business dreams.

Don't Quit Your Day Job To Start an Internet Business
by Brett (guest)

I know four guys who quit their jobs to start a brick-and-mortar business a couple years back. They were all related, brothers and second cousins I think. They're from the South so they like to keep their business ventures in the family.

Anyway, these four aspiring entrepreneurs pooled their collective wealth and took out some small business loans to start a mattress shop not far from their hometown. After all the capital was raised and a building was picked out to rent, a date was set when they would finally quit their jobs for good.

After kicking their careers to the curb, they met at the local tavern to celebrate their independence from the 9 to 5. I wasn't in attendance that night, but I'm confident there was lively conversation of mattress-market domination and the checks to be cashed on the road to success. In addition to the dialogue, I'd bet there were a healthy number of adult beverages consumed that evening as well.

What an exhilarating weekend of full of planning and anticipation among brothers turned business partners.

Monday Morning Hangover

The grand opening of the mattress shop was on a Monday. The new owners had set money aside for marketing: a week of ad space in the local paper and a spattering of grand-opening posters distributed around town.

But, as you probably assumed from the headline, this story didn't end as planned that one boozy weekend.

The mattress store opened at the beginning of the recession in early 2009, which didn't help matters. But honestly, it probably wouldn't have mattered much if the economy were in boom times either. None of the men had any real marketing experience or understanding of the business of selling mattresses.

And most importantly, none of them had ever owned a business.

Sadly, the result would have been pretty much the same regardless of the downturn: Closed for business after a few months.

The reason, I'm telling this story is that these guys made the same mistake as a lot of online entrepreneurs: They cut the safety net of their day jobs before they ever tacking a practice swing at owning a real online business. And that my friends just doesn't make sense.

Between four guys, a few of them could have kept their day jobs to help fund the business, give them the opportunity to forge relationships with customers, and get the mattress store over that initial hump. And if they did decide to close up shop, they'd still have cash coming in for the essentials and could chalk the mattress business up to learning or a life experience.

Your first attempt at an internet business will probably fail like the mattress shop too. But seriously, who cares!

I started an online auction business when I was in college and it failed miserably because I had zero understanding of how to market something online. But I didn't drop out of college or risk quality of life to start it. I built it in my free time, it failed, and I moved on.

My advice: Start small, learn, and keep you're day job with any business—online or off—until you've got consistent revenue coming in and 3 months of savings in the bank in case things go wrong.

-----

Brett teaches others how to start client based digital marketing businesses at StartSEOCompany.com.

Plug And Play Niche Cash Review

Mark Mason — Tue, 18 May 2010 06:37:31 +0000

I am very excited to announce the release of Plug and Play Niche Cash from Andrew Hansen today at noon E.S.T. -- that is in less than 10 hours from now. The basic premise of Plug and Play (PnP) Niche Cash is that there is a big difference in teaching people how to do niche marketing versus actually doing a big chunk of the work for them.

In this product, Andrew tries to deal with the number one problem people face when getting started online -- what niche to choose and what keywords to attack.

Here is what Andrew has to say about what this product actually is:

What is Plug And Play Niche Cash?
PnP2 is a highly limited (500 people only) but complete "work done for you" affiliate marketing solution. PnP2 gives you the work required to open up new affiliate profit centers in hundreds of low competition niche markets across the web... You take it, plug it in, and begin to profit. Simple as that!

What You Get For Your Money

Andrew delivers 150 niches with the research already done. Each niche includes low competition keywords, articles, and a landing page. Andrew also includes a killer 14 day plan and an outsourcing guide. These straight-forward guides mean that you could buy this system and have a 100 blog empire up and running by the end of the year.

There is lots of stuff to promote. Here is what Andrew says:

Just FYI, in the niche folder, there's 150 "niches" total that is, products to promote... but there's actually almost 600 profitable low competition keywords that come with them

Andrew claims that the keywords are really juicy. Of course, I was unwilling to write this review and just take his word for it. So, I asked him for (and got) one of the keyword sets and check them out for myself using Micro Niche Finder. I was stunned. The keywords were killer, and they were directly related to a high ticket item that I had never really heard of before.

There is no way I could have found this niche on my own, but the keywords were great, the AdWords CPC was high with lots of ads, and it was clear to me that Andrew had picked a winner.

If all 600 keywords are like the one that Andrew showed me (and he claims that they are all great), then there is no telling what this package is really worth.

I actually demanded a second example, and it was better than the first. Totally killer.

A Look Inside Plug And Play Niche Cash

When you log into the members area, you find 5 meaty sections as shown below:

Niches is the repository of niches (obviously). There are 150 of them I am told that each niche has a package similar to the sample that Andrew gave me. There are a few great keywords, some articles, and a review template. To protect the product integrity, I will not reveal the niches here (and I have not seen them all anyway). My review copy was limited to just a few niches.

Guides -- the guides are simple and powerful. Most importantly -- There is an outsourcing guide and a 14 day site plan guide. They are both perfect for this product (they were created specifically for this product). They 14-day guide tells you exactly what you need to do to get your first (and second and third) site up and running. Once you know what you are doing, the outsourcing guide tells you how to scale your business through outsourcing. Again, these are not PLR junk. They were written specifically for PnP Niche Cash. There is an SEO guide and a Squidoo guide in there too.

Video -- many instructional videos that support users. The videos go with the guides. It's an amazing amount of video. If you learn better from video, this section is for you.

Outsourcing -- Andrew hooks you up with the outsourcing resources that he actually uses.

Linking -- amazingly, PnP Niche contains some backlinking technology (a backlink module). I did not get a chance to test this, but apparently Andrew is delivering automated backlinks along with the package. This is amazing, and I cannot wait to test this out. Based on the keywords that I saw, it won't take many backlinks to rank for these keywords.

Here Is The Bottom Line

This product looks fantastic. I don't know what else to say. If you want to build affiliate sites and create a passive income empire, this is an awesome way to go. Andrew has been making money this way for a long time, and has some really killer keyword research magic.

If you don't think this product is for you, don't buy it. For example, if you are not interested in building some web sites and promoting them, this product is not for you (unless you plan to outsource).

As always, if you cannot afford this product, don't buy it. While Plug and Play Niche Cash is a steal at the price, it is not a $7 eBook. Make sure that you understand that this is not a magic income in a box thing. This is a legitimate opportunity to make money in internet marketing thing. Making money requires some work.

If this appeals to you, I honestly recommend that you buy Plug and Play Niche Cash today.

If not, that is cool too.

Of course, Andrew has been clear that he is only selling 500 copies to keep the value of the product very high for his clients. So make a decision that you can be excited about -- because when this one is gone, it is really gone (not fake gone -- really gone).

If you have any questions about Plug and Play Niche Cash, please ask them in the comments. I will do my best to respond quickly with answers.

Test post from Blogo for preview

Mark Mason — Tue, 18 May 2010 03:59:05 +0000

This is a test post sent by Blogo in order to generate a preview template. It should be deleted shortly.

How to Make 300 Dollars a Month Online

Mark E. Mason — Sat, 15 May 2010 13:44:43 +0000

One of the questions that I get most often on MasonWorld.com, through support tickets and blog comments ( and directly in email) is from people who are looking to just simply make a little extra money online. Usually they’re trying to cover a car payment or a shortage in their house payment and they want to know how they can make an extra 300 dollars online.

My answer is always the same. It’s very simple to understand how to make that amount of money online. I’ll admit to you that it’s not always simple to actually make the money, that usually takes work, persistence, and understanding of some internet marketing ideas. But, fundamentally it’s really easy to understand how to do it.

Now I actually wrote this post a long time ago -- it's been sitting in my draft posts. Then I got a video from Andrew Hansen about Plug and Play Niche Cash, and I knew I needed to get this out there.

I was really pleased to see that Andrew Hansen teaches exactly the same thing (a fact I already knew). Here is his take on this issue. In his example, Andrew is talking about $1000/month, but the concepts are the same. Andrew has given me a direct link to his video, and you can watch it here (highly recommended).

My Take On Making Extra Money Online

Let me break it down for you the same way that I always explain this answer to everyone who asks the question. If you need to make 300 dollars a month online, really what you’re saying is you need to make 10 dollars a day online.

When you look at that already it doesn’t sound so bad. After all, the other day I went to Starbucks and bought a cup of coffee and it was almost 10 dollars, so 10 dollars a day sounds like something we can get at.

In order to make 10 dollars a day we need to do something that generates that 10 dollars. One of the easiest things you can do online is sell affiliate products that generate a commission. So, let’s say you’re going to sell something online and for the purpose of this example let’s say you’re going to sell Elvis bobble heads, after all I’m really good friends with the Queen of Elvis bobble heads, Lynn Terry and I know she’ll appreciate this example.

If you hook yourself up with a merchant who offers Elvis bobble heads, you might find (just for the purpose of this example) that a 30 dollar Elvis bobble head can pay you a 5 dollar commission. Let’s just say that’s the case. This means that in order to make 10 dollars a day, you need to sell two bobble heads each and every day of the week for each and every week of the year to average 300 dollars a month in extra income in your house.

Now, of course the big question is how in the world do we get two people to buy an Elvis bobble head every day? The answer is very, very simple, but you need to know some math, so let’s do some very simple math. It turns out that you can know the rate at which people buy Elvis bobble heads.

Every Site Is Different; Concepts Are The Same

Now, it’s going to be different for every site depending on the kind of website that you have and how you are presenting the Elvis bobble heads, and what kind of sales copy you’re writing about the bobble heads, but you can know, for example, that for every 100 visitors to your Elvis bobble head sales page one your website that a certain percentage of them will actually buy.

Let’s say for the purpose of this example that for every 100 people that visit your website on Elvis bobble heads you have a fantastic killer website and five of those people are buying an Elvis bobble head. 100 people find your site, five people buy a bobble head, that’s a 5% conversion rate, that would be an outstanding conversion rate for Elvis bobble heads. Your mileage may vary, but for the purpose of this example what it means is that you need 20 visitors to sell a single Elvis bobble head.

Since you need to sell two bobble heads every day it means that you need to get 40 visitors to your page every day in order to sell two Elvis bobble heads. If you can sell two Elvis bobble heads you’ll make 10 dollars every day, that will get you your 300 dollars a month.

Well, now the question is where are we going to get our 40 visitors? There are lots of places you can get traffic, but since we need to make 10 dollars a day I’m not going to talk about spending money to get traffic, I’ll just talk about free traffic, search engine traffic.

It turns out that if someone searches for something in Google they’ll get about 10 listings back when they type in a search term. So, if someone searches for buy Elvis bobble heads they’ll get back a page with 10 Elvis bobble head listings on it with web pages that hopefully contain information about Elvis bobble heads.

Research suggests that approximately 40% of those searchers will click on the very first link. So, let’s say that you are ranking number one for the term buy Elvis bobble heads. What that means is that 40% of the people who type buy Elvis bobble heads on Google will see your link first and click it.

That means, of course, if 100 people search for buy Elvis bobble heads, 40 people will click through to your site. We already know that if 40 people arrive at your site you’re going to sell two Elvis bobble heads.

Take Action On Simple Math

So, what do you need to do? You need to create a web page that’s targeted to an Elvis bobble head keyword that gets at least 100 searches per day so that you can get at least 40 people per day to your web page, so that at least two people per day will buy an Elvis bobble head, so that you can make your 5 dollars per bobble head, 10 dollars per day, which will translate to 300 dollars per month.

It really is simple math. Now, of course your mileage may vary. You may be a poor copywriter and at first you may only convert one out of 100 visitors. In that case, you need to two things. In the short term you need to get more traffic, and in the long term you need to work to improve your copywriting skills.

Maybe the market for Elvis bobble heads is not great right now and the commission is only 2.50. In that case, you need to two things. One, you need to find a better offer with a higher commission and two, you need to get more traffic to that page so you can sell four Elvis bobble heads a day to make your 10 dollars.

In every case these complicated problems of “how can I get an extra 300 dollars to pay my house note” can be broken down into very simple steps that allow you to reach your goals online.

If you want to know more about niche affiliate marketing and how you can make money online doing that I encourage you to visit my new website NicheProfitUniversity.com. Over there you’ll find a few free videos that will explain what I consider to be the five most important pillars of niche affiliate marketing.

Be sure to check out Andrew's Video -- it is a great one and says the same thing that I am saying here (only with a funny accent).

My name is Mark Mason, here at MasonWorld.com where we teach people how to build internet businesses one night at a time.

5PMWeb Project Management Software Review

Mark E. Mason — Fri, 07 May 2010 15:22:18 +0000

One of the things I constantly recommend to people is outsourcing. As you know, I do a lot of outsourcing, in fact this very blog post was dictated by me on a small digital voice recorder and transcribed by my transcriptionist, Loretta Oliver. If you need transcription services I encourage you to visit her and tell her "Mark sent you." (There might even be a nice discount in there for you.)

The problem is once you get more than two or three outsource professionals assisting you it can start to get really hard to keep track of everything that’s going on. Currently in my business I’m using virtual assistants for programming WordPress, writing server programs in Perl, transcribing material, doing web design, doing web site maintenance, building backlinks, submitting articles, building niche websites, and writing content.

It’s actually as many as 10 different people at times working on various parts of my business. Keeping track of all those people by email is impossible, so I started using Google doc spreadsheets to try and keep track of all the tasks. That’s a great first step, but quite frankly it wasn’t really sufficient to meet my needs.

I started looking for project management software that I could use to track all the work that’s going on in the MasonWorld.com empire (okay, it’s not an empire, but that’s my dream.) I started looking at solutions that are very familiar to most people.

The first thing I needed to understand when I was shopping for project management software was what are my needs? It was easy for me to identify the things that I didn’t need. For example, I don’t need extensive time tracking capability, all of my VAs are either full time or they track their own time. I didn’t need invoicing and other fancy add-ons that come with a lot of hardcore project management applications. I also didn’t need complicated Gantt charts and other long range project management solutions.

Really, my needs were very simple. I needed to be able to support 10 to 20 users of the system, I needed to be able to support 20 to 30 projects in the system, I needed to be able to track tasks on a project by project basis, and I needed the ability to communicate information about tasks between me and my virtual assistants.

Like most people, my first stop was Basecamp. What I found was an amazingly fantastic tool that was way too complicated for what I needed. I was also in sticker shock at the Basecamp website, because I was realizing that I was going to have to go from something that was free (Google Docs) to something that was going to cost me money every month.

So, I looked at a couple of free solutions, including the open source solutions of Collabtive and Project Pier. Both of those solutions looked pretty good, but they don’t seem to be incredibly well supported. The developer bases is small and it’s not clear to me personally that those projects will be supportive in the long run.

I also looked at a free solution called Officezilla. I liked Officezilla, but it wasn’t exactly what I needed. Again, it seemed a little too complex, there were too many features. What I was looking for was a glorified task list that understood the idea of projects.

Finally, I settled on a relatively new project management solution called 5PM. You can find 5PM at 5PMWeb.com and the best way I can describe it to you is to say that it’s simple, easy to use, and the interface is just sexy. When I say sexy, I mean sexy like Nicole Dean means when she testing is sexy. The interface is all web 2.0 looking with java script, it supports email notifications on tasks, and it just looks really nice. I encourage you to check it out.

I’ve been using 5PM Web successfully for about two months and basically have set up 20 to 30 ongoing projects. Cool features include every time I add a task to one of the projects my virtual assistants are notified automatically. When they complete the task I’m notified. If they have a question about the task they can ask that question by email, it’s recorded in the system and I’m notified so I can go back into the system and answer it or answer it by email and the system is updated with my answer.

I can also see lists of everything that is assigned to a particular person. So, for my full time virtual assistants I can know whether or not they have enough work to do at a glance. I can also see what kind of progress they’re making on various projects. That’s really all I need for project management and this fits the bill exactly.

Here's a screenshot from an assistant's point of view:

On the downside, even though the software has been in development for over seven years it’s still a young as far as project management software goes. You can tell that development is ongoing. Having said that, the support desk is incredibly responsive and I’ve simply been blown away by the level of customer support I’ve been able to get at 5PMWeb.

Of course, I don't want you to just take my word for it. So, here is what my transcriptionist, Loretta Oliver, has to say about 5PMWeb as well.

Hey Mark, and blog folks out there. As a transcriptionist I've used so many different project management software programs it might make your head spin if I tried to list them all. I have to agree with Mark that most of them over complicate things and frustrate the users in the end.
So far from what I've seen of 5Pm Web it's simple and clean, which I really like. Yes, the interface is super sexy, but not in a click this, look at that kind of way. It's organized and it's easy to see where I need to go to find my project assignments and what I need to get crossed off the to do list.
My favorite feature without doubt is the reply to task via email. It can get quickly get confusing when you have a project management system and someone replies to you via email with a question or a comment about the project. Oh yes, I've seen it get crazy more than a few times!
We're creatures of habit and hitting that email reply button and pounding on the keys is what we do, so being able to just reply and have it piped it into the system is a great feature to have built in. Confusion averted = win!

If you’re looking for a way to take your business to the next level, my suggestion to you is that you look around at the project management tools available, select one and get your business organized around that.

For more information about the wide variety of project management tools you can look at check out the awesome list on Wikipedia. Under project management tools there’s a summary of all the project management tools that are currently available. Now, of course this is changing every day, so I don’t know if it’s really all, but there’s literally a list of 30 or 40 of them there that you can thumb through and see what might meet your needs.

My name is Mark Mason from MasonWorld.com where we teach people how to build successful internet businesses one night at a time.

An Open Letter to Clickbank.com

Mark Mason — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:39:47 +0000

I have been a Clickbank customer for well over two years and probably even used Clickbank before I got interested in internet marketing without even knowing it. Clickbank is a fantastic service that I highly recommend to internet marketers that I coach, but there a few things that just simply need to be addressed.

What follows is an open letter to the management of Clickbank.com.

Dear Clickbank,

I am a happy customer of Clickbank.com. I use your service both as an affiliate promoting products from the Clickbank marketplace and as a publisher having several products listed in the marketplace myself.

As I have often pointed out to my readers at MasonWorld.com, there are many advantages to using Clickbank as a service for publishing digital products. Chief among those is the high level of customer service you provide in handling refunds, collecting taxes, tracking and promoting to affiliates, and reporting transactions through your analytics service.

In fact, with regard to those features of your services, I couldn’t be happier. I do however have a problem that I cannot for the life of me understand why you have not addressed, and that is the problem of commission theft.

Now, I’m not by any stretch of the imagination a huge Clickbank client. I know that you have many clients that are selling products on Clickbank in volumes 100 times or more higher than my small amount. But, even looking at my list of transactions from the past three months I can see an unusually high number of purchases of my products made by people with only one hop credited to their affiliate ID.

What this tells me is that people are finding my product, clearing their cookies, and purchasing the product through their own affiliate link. This is not a new problem and it’s been reported by many other bloggers over the last two years. My concern is why hasn’t Clickbank done more to solve this problem?

There are many other affiliate scripts available in the marketplace that do a better job protecting affiliates. For example, some affiliate scripts use IP tracking in addition to cookies, some affiliate scripts enforce the first cookie as opposed to the last cookie, and some affiliate scripts allow you to obfuscate the payment vendor on the order form.

It seems very simple to me that Clickbank should be able to address this problem of commission theft by offering product sellers the option to enable new features that enforce the first cookie, add tracking in addition to cookies that would identify the referrer, and help obfuscate the fact that Clickbank is being used as a merchant.

Sadly, I can only think of one reason that Clickbank would not be working to solve this problem. That is loss of sales that come from stolen commissions.

Here’s what I mean. I think that Clickbank must believe that if they take away people’s ability to steal commissions or in effect to get an instant discount that sales will go down. After all, there must be a certain amount of people who won’t buy a $97 product, but they will buy a $97 product if they can get half of that amount back by stealing the commission. Once sales go down that will mean that Clickbank will get a reduced number of sales based fees deposited in their coffers.

Now, that may be a cynical view, and I’d love to hear from Clickbank if that’s not the case, but I can’t think of any other good reason why Clickbank wouldn’t enable features to protect affiliates.

Clickbank’s fees are already some of the higher fees in the affiliate script space in my experience, but I would be willing to pay additional amounts of fees to protect my affiliates. I know that some super affiliates are not promoting my products because they’re listed in the Clickbank marketplace. In fact, in a couple of cases I’ve had to set up special promotions directly through PayPal to satisfy super affiliates that wanted to promote my product.

So, again, Clickbank, I ask you. How many sales are you really losing? If super affiliates are refusing to promote Clickbank products, and I believe that in some cases they are, wouldn’t it make sense to go ahead and enable optional protections for those affiliates so that people could use Clickbank without having to worry about commission theft?

I just simply don’t understand. I’d appreciate a response that would help me understand why you’re dragging your feet on this important topic in the internet marketing space.

Thanks and best regards,
Mark Mason – MasonWorld.com

Internet Marketing and the Circus

Mark E. Mason — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 15:00:34 +0000

It's Tax Day in the United States, and for some reason that makes me think of the Circus.

It has been very exciting around my household, because just a few weeks ago we were able to attend a local circus. Now, this is not one of those giant Ringling Brothers circuses with three rings. This is a small traveling circus that goes around from town to town in Texas, but has all the big stuff.

They have elephants, high wire acts, trapezes, and all the things you would expect at a circus, it’s just smaller than the giant circus that comes to town. By the way, it’s cheaper too, which is really great, because the big circus has gotten incredibly expensive.

Small circuses are perfect for three year olds, because there’s only so much circus a three year old can really absorb. So, last Sunday we went to the local circus, which happened to be in town. I was just knocked over by the amount of marketing that I saw there.

It reminded me that internet marketing is really just a very small and tiny example of the larger topic of marketing, which is all around us everywhere as a giant multibillion dollar industry.

I thought I’d talk a little bit about a couple of things that I saw at the circus that reminded me about things that you should do in your internet marketing to maximize your conversions. There was one particular example I wanted to discuss and it’s shown in the picture.

The intermission at the circus was a 15 minute delay that was completely unnecessary -- it was simply another marketing situation. The intermission happened in the middle of the circus for no good reason just to give you an opportunity to buy stuff. But, that’s not really what I wanted to talk about here.

During the intermission the big center ring announcer came out and announced that there were going to be special peanuts that were going to be for sale only during the intermission. Not only that, but after the 15 minute intermission the peanuts would no longer be available anywhere inside of the circus, or anywhere at all for that matter.

Completely artificially the ringmaster was able to set up this sense of urgency in his marketing of the peanuts.

He had these guys come out with boxes of peanuts down around the center ring and all during the 15 minutes he talked about how the peanuts would soon be gone. He even did a countdown in the final minutes, whipping these people under the tent into a frenzy to go buy these peanuts.

It was interesting, because I didn’t really want peanuts. I had already gotten popcorn and Zachary had a snow cone, we didn’t need any more junk.

But I could feel myself asking if I should go ahead and buy the peanuts because after all they weren’t going to be available soon. He had established a sense of urgency so well that I actually caught myself being drawn in by the peanut panic.

The second thing he did was he announced that in each bag of peanuts was the potential to win these amazing huge balloons. He had clowns around the arena holding these big bunches of giant colorful helium balloons. Not the little balloons that you normally buy in the grocery store, these were monster circus sized balloons. Some of the bags of peanuts contained a magic ticket that you could trade in for one of these balloons.

Of course, kids were going crazy getting their moms and dads to buy these peanuts. This has two effects. One, of course it had the normal bonus effect that you normally get in internet marketing. If you want someone to buy something you offer them a bonus and it increases the chances that they’ll buy.

The second effect it had that I thought was very interesting. Because there was uncertainty in getting the bonus, that caused people to buy more peanuts. I saw several people buying two, three, four bags of peanuts trying to get one of these tickets to win.

Now, that’s not a tactic that we often use in internet marketing, but I sometimes see it used when people are trying to run contests on their blogs and they give people multiple ways to get entries. Tweet my blog post, leave a comment, give me a backlink, and so forth. The more you do, the greater chance you can win -- kind of like the peanuts.

So, it turns out everything you need to know about internet marketing can be learned at the circus.

Or maybe just Internet Marketing is a Circus.

Either way, here is the bottom line:

Number one, you should always try to create some sort of sense of urgency with your products. Now, I don’t recommend that you create a false sense of urgency. In the case of the peanuts these guys had decided they were only going to mess with selling peanuts for 15 minutes and that created a sense of urgency.

In your case you might choose to decide that you’re only going to fiddle with offering a certain bonus or doing some certain thing around your product for a limited time and then you’re going to raise the price. Urgency sells.

Of course, the second thing is offer a bonus. People want to feel good about the things that they buy, they want to feel like they got a deal, and one way you can make them feel that way is by offering a bonus.

I’m Mark Mason from MasonWorld.com where we teach you how to build successful internet businesses one night at a time. Thank you.

It’s Not Too Late to Start an Internet Business

Mark E. Mason — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:00:15 +0000

Sometimes I am amazed at how long people have been in internet business. For example, my friend Lynn Terry who helps people learn how to make money online over at LearningWithLynn.com has been in internet business for over 13 years, which just seems amazing to me.

I personally started my internet business seriously in 2007, my website had been online since early 2001. Two and a half years seems like a really long time to me.

A lot of people might look at that and think, “Wow, all these people have such a huge head start. Is it too late for me to get online?” To that I say absolutely not! The internet age is really just beginning. This is still very much in its infancy, people are still coming online all over the world, handheld mobile devices are coming online in enormous numbers, mobile ecommerce really hasn’t even started yet.

So, to those people I say, No, we’re still in the beginning of this thing. There’s still plenty of time to get online and be early to the party.

As proof of this I saw something truly shocking today on the way to work. Here’s a picture...

I’m driving down Central Expressway in Dallas, Texas and I see a billboard in the middle of the highway for Host Gator. Now, this has got to be the clearest indication that internet business is about to turn mainstream that I can possibly imagine.

You wouldn’t typically think the average person running down the street would need to know how to register a domain name and get internet website hosting.

So, for that billboard to appear on the highway indicates to me that this whole thing is about to explode. I imagine everyone with a website, and hosting being so common that it pays to advertise on the highway. Once that happens, internet business will simply be a matter of how to increase blog traffic and match offers with buyers (which is all it is about now anyway).

I say to you we’re still at the beginning, but you need to go ahead and hurry, because if you don’t go ahead and take decisive action you’ll never get where you want to go with your internet business.

Thanks. My name is Mark Mason from MasonWorld.com and it’s my pleasure to help you build your internet business one night at a time.

Deep Linker Pro Review and Bonus

Mark E. Mason — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 10:00:31 +0000

This morning at 5AM, Josh Spaulding launched his new software, Deep Linker Pro. Simply put, the program takes information about your website and submits your site to Web Directories. Of course, these directories link back to your site, giving you a nice one-way back link.

This is a long review – if you want the short version, just know this:

I recommend the software.

For me, it is about 100 times less expensive than the outsourcing method that I was using just last week, and I plan to switch to it exclusively for web directory submissions.

Heads up: If you decide this software can help you and you make a purchase today, I am offering a bonus (described below) for people that purchase through my link.

Additionally, you will be able to take advantage of the introductory price (only available for a limited time).

Need more information? How about an interview with the man himself, recorded last night over Skype. In this interview, Josh talks about why he wrote the software, what it can do, and how to best use it.

Why Do You Need Back links?

We’ve talked about this before (most recently when I offered the 62-second SEO tutorial), but let’s go over is again quickly.

Google needs to know two things in order to rank your pages. Thing one: what is your page about? Thing two: how important is your page compared to others?

That’s it. If your page is about the topic (keyword phrase) that a person types into the Google search engine, and it is the most important page on that topic, it ranks #1 (and you get traffic).

And we all know that the most important thing that you can do to let Google know that your page is important is get back links to your site. Period.

I Needed This Last Year

Last year I spent 3 weeks looking for a good fully-automated link directory submission tool. All I could find was a mix of total junk and semi-automated tools. Unfortunately, all of the good tools were semi-automatic only.

Quite frankly, that just did not meet my needs. I need something that is fire and forget – and that is exactly what Deep Linker Pro is.

The stupid thing is that instead of writing the tool myself (like Josh did), I started paying people to submit links. Right now, Deep Linker Pro supports about 600 Web Directory sites in fully automated mode. That number will increase over time, too. The service I was using charges about $0.10 per link (ouch).

So in my case, one run using Deep Linker Pro instead of paying for manual link submission pays for the software. One Run.

Tuesday night I installed the software, entered the information for one of my sites, and pushed the submit button. That took a couple minutes. After that, I watched Jack Bauer kill bad guys on 24 and went to bed. This morning when I woke up, the the software had submitted my site to 619 link directories. I could not believe it.

I am pretty excited about this.

The Software Is Simple

The Deep Linker Pro Software is really simple to use – just what I need for “Fire and Forget Marketing”. The application has a nice tabbed interface shown below. The home tab bring up the “latest news” from the Deep Linker Pro site. You manage and add your sites on the My URLs tab. The supported directories are in one tab, and your submission history is in another tab. There are also tabs for the log and for doing manual submissions (for sites that have Captcha).

Here you can see just how easy it is to add a site that you want to promote using Deep Linker Pro. Josh recommends that you create a separate email address for each site you submit, just so your inbox does not get jammed up with confirmation emails.

Once you add your information for your site, you simply click “OK” and your site is added to the Deep Linker Pro software. Don’t get confused (like I did) and hit the Add New URL button again before hitting OK. Your information will be lost and you will have to type in that screen again.

Once you press the start submission button, you can watch as your site is submitted to 674 (and growing) web directories. You can see here a screen shot of the process log tab a few seconds after hitting the Submit button. Each site takes from a few to several seconds to process.

Deep Linker Pro Problems

Well, I did not run into any problems, but there are a couple of features that I would love to see added. The good news is that Josh promises that Deep Linker Pro updates will be free! He is not saying exactly what feature is So, that is really exciting.

Features that I would like to see added include:

Automatic defeat of Captcha. Some of the sites in Deep Linker Pro have Captcha. I would like Josh to add automatic Captcha handling. I am told that this is possible. Josh is looking into the feasibility.
The ability to spin content. I would like to be able to change the title, description, tags, etc. at random to get the max SEO benefit (by making the links look more diverse). No promises, but Josh indicates this feature is planned.
More job control. The ability to pause and restart the submission. Related to that would be the ability to retry failed sites (like when a site is temporarily down, etc). This really is not much of an issue now, but this seems like a good idea.
Ability to export and import site information. If my VA enters all of my sites in the software, I would like to be able to move that information from her computer to mine for safekeeping and future use.

Deep Linker Pro Bonus

Josh has already provided an awesome bonus to go with Deep Linker Pro – The Ultimate Link Building Report.

If you buy Deep Linker Pro through my link, I’ll also include a special report from Jon Leger called 1000 Visitors in 24 Hours (in addition to the bonus that Josh is offering).

In this report, Jon discloses the methods he used to generate more than 500,000 views of his videos, resulting in thousands and thousands of visitors to his sites in just 40 days!

It is an excellent companion to The Ultimate Link Building Report.

I'll also include this list of 50 social bookmarking sites that you can use to supercharge your niche websites.

You know that social bookmarking sites are fantastic places to get links -- and SEO Supercharger lists 50 great ones, sorted by Google Page rank at the time the list was compiled.

All you need to do is upload your receipt showing that you ordered through my affiliate link to my support desk http://www.masonworld.com/support In most cases this will be a Paypal receipt or a ClickBank receipt.

Order Deep Linker Pro today.

The price is going up on April 5th, so don't delay.

Working On Your Business Not In It

Mark E. Mason — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 15:47:12 +0000

The other day I mentioned that I was rereading the fantastic book by Michael Gerber called The eMyth and I told you that you should run your business like McDonalds. There’s another lesson that you can learn from Ray Kroc and that is you should work on your business, not in it.

One of the key ideas in The eMyth that Michael Gerber articulates particularly well is that the typical entrepreneur, and certainly this includes internet business people like us, is really three people when it’s all said and done.

It’s the technician, the person who knows all about the details that their website is about. It’s the entrepreneur, the person who wanted to start the internet business in the first place. It’s the manager, the person who coordinates getting all of the work done, particularly in the case where there are multiple workers or outsourced employees.

The problem with most entrepreneurs, Gerber writes, is that they have passion around the technician role. They know how to do something very well or they’re expert in some area and they just don’t want to let go of it. For example, they’re an expert gardener and that’s why they have a gardening website, or they’re an expert at some other technical aspect like putting up websites and so they don’t want to let go of the technical task of coding HTML.

Whatever it is they are so focused on working in the business they forget about doing the other two roles, the management role and the entrepreneurship role and work on the business. Now, Gerber says it’s very important that you actually let go of this role, systematize it, and outsource where you can so that you can work on the business instead of in the business.

An Internet Business Example

For example, if you’re actually creating all the content for your website, answering all the support emails, doing all the graphics, you’re working in the business. If you actually are planning new products, doing market research and laying the foundation for future growth of the business, you’re working on the business. Doing all the tasks yourself, clearly working in the business. Delegating the tasks and managing those tasks as the manager of your business, you’re working on the business.

This is the difference between working on the business and in the business and I submit to you that you need to take Gerber’s advice and start working on your business a little bit today instead of working in your business.

Thanks, this is Mark Mason from MasonWorld.com where we learn how to build internet businesses one night at a time.

Build Your Internet Business Like McDonalds

Mark E. Mason — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:33:58 +0000

I was reviewing one of my favorite books the other day and it reminded me that we really should all be building out internet businesses just like Ray Crock did at McDonalds. Of course, the book I’m talking about is The eMyth by Michael Gerber. Actually, the latest version is called The eMyth Revisted.

A lot of people mistakenly believe that The eMyth is about the electronics age, or email, or ecommerce, but actually E is for entrepreneurial myth. In The eMyth Gerber goes through an example of how McDonalds was able to franchise its business all across the world and the systems they used to do that.

As a matter of fact, Gerber points out that a new McDonalds franchise opens somewhere in the world every eight minutes. This is truly remarkable and only possible because the McDonalds business is completely systemized.

Every tiny detail that is involved in running a McDonalds is documented in McDonalds’ procedure manuals. How big the hamburgers should be, what the buns should look like, how thick the patties should be, they even have a procedure for where the pickles go. Crock recognized that if you place the pickles in a particular configuration you could keep them from falling off of the hamburger into the customer’s lap, therefore increasing customer satisfaction.

All of these tiny details are precisely documented in McDonalds’ procedure manuals. The impact of this careful documentation is twofold. One, it makes McDonalds run like a finely oiled machine. It gives consistency of experience at every McDonalds that you go to. In fact, I’ve been to McDonalds in Tokyo and Korea, in Texas, in Tennessee, they’re all the same.

Actually, as a side note, McDonalds in Tokyo also serves noodles, which kind of freaked me out a little bit, but that’s neither here nor there.

Is Your Business Like McDonalds?

So, the point is if you systemize your business you can give consistency of customer experience. The other point is you can make your business where it can easily be run by someone else or sold. That’s what makes McDonalds franchiseable.

When somebody buys a McDonalds shop they’re buying a turnkey business that makes it possible for anyone who’s got the money to invest to buy a McDonalds and be successful on a very predictable schedule. The great thing about McDonalds in this regard is that they have so much data, because they’ve sold so many hamburgers they know exactly what’s going to happen the moment you buy the franchise.

How does all this gibberish about McDonalds apply to your internet business? Well, the same two ideas apply. If you are able to completely procedurize and systematize your business you can easily do two things. The first thing you can easily do is you can easily outsource the work in your business.

If you’ve carefully documented the procedures, for example, for transcribing and posting a blog post then you can outsource the transcription and posting of a blog post. In fact, this very blog post is being transcribed at this very moment by my transcriptionist, Loretta.

The second thing you can do is some day sell your business. After all, you would expect a website to typically be worth about 10 times the amount of money that it earns in a month. Some people say 12, some people say 14, but you get the idea. That value goes up tremendously if the business doesn’t depend on you actually running it.
There’s actually a third benefit, and that is if you have a successful business and you’ve got it carefully documented, that successful business can be duplicated, exactly in the McDonalds case. You can change these businesses and duplicate them yourself or you can document the way you are running your business and sell that as an ebook that can help people understand how to successful run an internet business.

So, run your internet business like McDonalds and just like Ray Crock you will love the results. Thanks. My name is Mark Mason, I’m from MasonWorld.com and I’m happy to help you learn how to run a part time internet business successfully.

Have a great day!

photo credit: riNux

Another Simple 62-Second SEO Tutorial

Mark E. Mason — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:02:28 +0000

Hey there;

I was hanging out on Lynn Terry’s very cool private elite mastermind forum (LearningWithLynn.com) this morning and I ran into someone who asked for a simple explanation of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Here is what the poster said (I deleted and changed some stuff to protect her identity since LearningWithLynn.com is a private forum):

This may sound silly to the Pros, but your help would be appreciated as I really need to understand this aspect of my business.
I have been writing blog posts to my main site and have seen a number of them go to #1 on Google in a few days. The only thing I do is focus on keywords and especially long-tail keywords as taught by Lynn.
While I'm happy that it's happening I'd like to understand more. Help, please?!

I took this question to be “please help me understand more about SEO,” and I thought you might be interested in my reply. (Note that this discussion will probably be pretty long, which is one of the things I love about LearningWithLynn.com.)

Like most things in life, the 80/20 rule applies.

When someone opens google.com and types "best wireless headset for pc" (without the quotes) what happens?

Google does two things (basically):

It get the list of all the pages (pages, not sites) that it knows about (all teh pages it has indexed) that have something to do with "best wireless headset for pc"
It ranks them in order of importance the best it can and show the best ones first.

Remember, Google's goal is ALWAYS to guess what will help the searcher the most and put that at the top of the list. They need to do that, because if they do a poor job finding what you are looking for, you will use Bing.com next time and Google will lose ad revenue. Simple as that.

OK -- as the page owner/author there are only 2 things you can do

Optimize stuff on the page (on-page SEO)
Optimize stuff off the page (off-page SEO)

By on-page optimization, of course, I mean making sure that you do the things that tell Google what your web page is about. By far, the most important thing is having your keywords in your HTML title tag. But, you might also want to have your keywords in the URL (or the domain name for specific highly targeted applications). You also want to have your keywords and related content in the article.

Off-page optimization, on the other hand, refers to making sure that Google knows that other people value your page.

As you probably already know, Google tries to determine if people value your page by counting the number of backlinks to your page. You can think of them as votes for your page.

Note that G seems to consider the anchor text of the link when trying to decide what your page is actually about (and/or how much to value the link). That means that if it sees links that say Click here for a review of the "best wireless headset for pc" -- that helps more than a link with unrelated keywords.

So, think 80/20 rule for SEO. Get links with your keywords in the anchor text, and make sure your keywords are in your title tag, URL and article.

Don't believe me about the importance of backlinks?

Check this out. Google "click here" without the quotes. What do you see? (You can see the results here).

That's right -- acrobat reader. Why? Because there are 1.6M pages out there that say "click here" to get acrobat reader. Note that "click here" is NOWHERE on the page.

If you need help getting your web business going (or getting to the next level), come hang out with us at LearningWithLynn.com. You’ll love it (I do).

Keeping Things SIMPLE

Mark E. Mason — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:19:40 +0000

One of the big questions I got after returning from NAMS was whether or not it was worth it. Well, I can tell you that for me, personally, NAMS exceeded my expectations by a wide margin.

I mentioned before that I had two primary objectives in going to NAMS. One was to learn stuff, of course, because a lot of exciting stuff was being taught there. But, the second and possibly more important objective was to connect with people.

One of the people that I connected with that just blew me away was Bob Jenkins, you probably know him as Bob the Teacher. Bob is awesome. Not only is Bob a great guy to talk to, but Bob has got a lot of really great ideas between those two ears of his.

Bob's SIMPLE Plan

One of the things that he presented at the workshop was a really cool and very straightforward business plan for someone who wants to make money on the internet. (He calls his plan SIMPLE 10K). I was actually pretty shocked, because right there at the conference Bob presented (using a mind map of course, LOL) his actual plan for internet business. He teaches this plan at his Simple 10K workshop, which is happening in North Carolina later in February.

I was blown away by the presentation. It truly is a simple straight forward and intelligent approach to building an internet marketing business. But, more than that it’s something that normal people can attack. I loved that about Bob’s presentation.

Out of respect for Bob I’m not going to completely reveal everything that he presented at NAMS. After all, I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement at the workshop. But, I do have Bob’s permission to reveal what I think is one of the key elements of Bob’s Simple strategy for building an online business, and that is the idea of making affiliate offers that fill in a gap between what a product is offering and what your client needs.

Bob gave me permission to show you this little piece of his overall mind map that he has for the Simple system. You notice that one of the key elements that Bob teaches is how to start off your business by making affiliate offers and how to make those affiliate offers in a way that adds value for the customer. Now, this is awesome, because it shows you how to put the customer first while making honest and well thought out recommendations to your readers or followers.

This Is The Same Thing That I Do

In fact, that’s exactly what I try to do here at MasonWorld.com where I only recommend products that I have actually use and really believe in. The twist that Bob adds, which is shown here in the graphic, is Bob recommends that you find a small gap in what that product offers and fill it for your customer. This is an awesome approach that Bob has formalized here and it’s something that I always try to do, but Bob just said it so much better. I was really blown away at how well he communicated this very simple idea.

The entire Simple flow that Bob showed at the workshop was full of these little ah-ha moments. It was clear to me immediately why Bob carries the moniker Bob the Teacher. He’s just such an excellent communicator of ideas. I was just really blown away by his presentation.

Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to attend Bob’s Simple Workshop in North Carolina. I’m actually going to be tied up with my day job learning about advanced lithography and that impact of patterning on manufacturability in integrated semiconductors. You can see the agenda for that conference here. See me co-chairing Session 5: Layout Verification and Optimization. Whoo hoo! Doesn’t that sound exciting? So, while everyone is out in North Carolina at this fancy resort I’ll be in Silicone Valley kicking back learning about design for manufacturer ability.

I’m hoping that Bob will offer the recordings from Simple. If he does so, I’ll be sure to let you know. I’m sure those will be just a tremendous value.

The Bottom Line On Bob

Here’s the bottom line on guys like Bob and the things that Bob is teaching. Bob’s program, for me, passes the smell test. It makes sense. What Bob is basically telling you is that one of the steps in building your business ought to be leveraging the work of other people (affiliate offers) and adding value to that.

Adding value has to be a key component of anything that you do online, because if you expect to make money you need to be delivering some value for that money. That’s exactly what Bob is teaching. That’s one of the things that I like about him and his program.

Follow Bob on Twitter – he’s @BobTheTeacher (you’ll be glad you did).

I hope this has been helpful to you. I’d love to know what you think about what Bob has to say. Leave me your thoughts on this post and I’ll be looking forward to talking to you soon.

P.S. You and the FTC will both note that my post contains affiliate links to Bob's workshop and to NAMS. I am proud to recommend them both, and I get paid if you attend either. I hope you are OK with that, because I enthusiastically endorse both of them based on my personal experience with NAMS and my 1:1 interaction with Bob. Drop me a line if you are wondering if either is right for you and I will help you decide.

Outsourcing Backlinks

Mark E. Mason — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:59:21 +0000

There are two questions that I get all the time -- how do I get my pages to rank in Google, and how do I handle outsourcing in my business? Well, A few weeks ago, Lynn Terry released her new 5000 Backlinks product (look below for details on special pricing that I negotiated for you with Lynn -- it expires Friday). I purchased the product immediately and had one of my virtual assistants get to work building backlinks to some of my sites. At that moment I recognized that this presented a great opportunity for me to talk to you about the real power and leverage that is possible with outsourcing.

Here is a bonus hint -- you can use the outsourcing recipe below to outsource almost any kind of virtual work in almost any kind of business. I use this approach to find people for article marketing and web site administration in addition to SEO.

Ranking In The Search Engines

But first, let's tackle the first question: how do you get your webpages to rank for your keyword terms in Google? The answer, of course, is always the same. You need to do on page optimization and off page optimization in order to rank in Google.

By on page optimization, of course, I mean making sure that you do the things that tell Google what your web page is about. Off page optimization, on the other hand, refers to making sure that Google knows that other people value your page. As you probably already know, Google knows that people value your page by counting the number of backlinks to your page.

People say that there are over 200 factors considered in the Google search engine algorithm. However, it’s been shown numerous times that one of the most important factors is the number of backlinks to your site. Secondary and other really important factors include the anchor text for those backlinks, the title tag of your page, and whether or not your domain name and URL matches your keywords. But, backlinks are universally regarded to be very important.

Backlinks are great, but the problem is getting them.

How do you get enough backlinks to beat the competition?

Well, let me be the first to say that the absolute best way to get backlinks is to write killer content. If you have great content, people will link to it. That's the best way, but it is slow and it is often not enough to compete with other people using other methods.

Now, I've talked about a lot of linking strategies before...and I have also said that I think it is really important that you get your links from lots and lots of different places. As I mentioned, I recently ran across something that fits perfectly into that strategy and I thought it was great for discussion here.

Lynn Terry recently introduced a product called 5,000 Backlinks and it’s exactly what it implies. It’s a recipe for getting 5,000 backlinks to your site. It’s really neat, because it gives you a list of 5,000 or so places you can go to create a link that points back to your site. As I mentioned before, Google will count those links in its ongoing effort to decide whether or not your website is important.

The problem with 5,000 of anything is that it’s a lot of work.

So, I thought it would be an outstanding topic to discuss how to outsource SEO, because once you’ve got a recipe for how to build 5,000 backlinks all you really need is somebody to do the work.

Outsourcing SEO

Let me tell you what I do. First, let me say that I believe that if you’ve got more than one or two websites, you can easily keep a single person offshore doing SEO work for you busy full time. So, let’s start with that premise. Let’s say we’re going to hire a full time VA for $250 a month. Their job is going to be follow instructions and type things into their keyboard and build backlinks for you on a day by day basis.

Maybe you’ll end up paying $400 for a virtual assistant (VA) or maybe you’ll find someone for $200, but you get the idea. Here are the steps you need to complete to make this happen for your website and see your rankings shoot up in Google.

Step One: Obviously, you need to acquire a recipe for the virtual assistant to follow. I’m recommending 5,000 Backlinks today. There are other programs that you might find on the internet, but I really like this one because there’s so much bang for the buck in this program.

Step Two: You’ve got to locate a virtual assistant. Everything that I know about hiring a virtual assistant I learned from John Jonas at ReplaceMyself.com. I recommend that you go there and listen to the free audio. You can learn a lot about offshore outsourcing without ever spending a dime with John.

(By the way, if you do consider John’s service, I recommend it. I’ve signed up for it myself in the past and it’s a great service. Perfect for getting started outsourcing off shore).

Step Three: Find potential candidates. There are several job opportunity boards that you will learn about in the free audio mentioned above. Or, you can search Google for Philippine Job Boards. Go to those boards, identify resumes, or use John’s service and identify resumes that you like that you think might be a fit. Get a list of 30 or 40 people.

Step Four: Send 30 or 40 emails explaining exactly the job that you want done and asking people if they’re interested. Don’t hold anything back. Use great detail. Tell them upfront what price you’re willing to pay, what you want, and what you expect. You’ll get a few responses, maybe 10 or more.

Step Five: Pick the best response, or maybe the best three responses and ask the person if they would be willing to work on a trial basis for three days for guaranteed pay. I recommend for three days that you pay guaranteed of about 15 - 20 percent of what you would offer them for a month. So, for a $250/month VA, I would offer them $30-$50 to complete the task. So, for example, if you’re thinking 250 dollars a month, I’d pay 50 dollars for a three day trial, something like that. You can negotiate whatever price you want. The importance is that it’s a very short term commitment.

Step Six: Give them a portion of the 5,000 Backlinks packet and tell them to go to work on the webpage of your choosing. Do three or four people at once on three or four different web pages. Ask for proof that the work has been done by making the person give you a list of links that they’re placing for you, taking screenshots, etc. Once you have worked with the person for a time, proof will no longer be necessary. But for now, some hoop-jumping is a good plan.

Step Seven: After working with the selected people for a couple of days, pick the one you like best and hire them conditionally for a month. Tell them you’re going to hire them for a month and see how things workout. Give them the entire 5,000 Backlinks packet, tell them to go to work with a list of pages and set them to work.

Step Eight: Ask for a short report at the end of each day, so that you can know that the person did something for you on that day. This point is not negotiable. You’re not asking for a dissertation at the end of each day. You just want a couple of sentences that lets you know that the person actually did some work for you that day. It keeps them focused and on task.

Step Nine: Make sure the person gives you a more detailed report at the end of each month that says day by day what they did for you that month, and that should be in the form of an invoice. This is important for you for tax purposes, because you’re going to need to prove that this person is a contractor and not an employee. So, insist on an invoice. Let them know that you will not pay without a simple invoice.

Just a side disclaimer: You need to consult your tax attorney for tax advice. I’m not a tax attorney.

Step Ten: Sit back and watch your rankings go through the roof in Google. Rinse, repeat, and multiply this effect using 5,000 Backlinks and you’re sure to love the results.

Special Pricing From Lynn and A Bonus

OK -- here is the deal. I asked Lynn to offer you the same price that I paid for the 5000 Backlinks product. She agreed, but only for a short time. So, the special price is only available for until Friday night (whenever she pulls it -- Let's say 10PM EST).

Just so you know, the discount she is offering is over 30%.

So, head on over to 5000 Backlinks now and check out the special offer.

Added Bonus -- Outsource Your Success

And, if you do decide to take Lynn up on her offer and purchase through my affiliate link, I will include a copy " Outsource Your Success" -- a high quality PLR eBook that I have resale rights to. Just submit a ticket with your receipt at http://www.masonworld.com/support and I will send you a link to download the eBook for your personal use.

One more thing. Here is a cool article listing 32 Types Of Outsourcing Jobs (Things You Can Outsource).

I would love to hear your feedback. Please feel free to leave your comments below.

Sometimes It Just Takes a Coffee Cup

Mark E. Mason — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:58:31 +0000

It’s almost difficult for me to imagine, but the fact is that January 2010 is part of the history books (and February is almost half gone). It was just a couple of months ago that I started my planning for the year 2010. During that planning process I set numerous goals and objectives for myself this year.

One goal was to obtain some high quality internet marketing coaching, and I’ve done that. A second goal was to attend a live internet marketing event, and I accomplished that at the end of January when I attended the Niche Affiliate Marketing Seminar in Atlanta.

Understanding The 2010 Objectives

Now, my objectives for these two things were quite clear. For the coaching my objective was to set my sights a little higher and interact with someone who could really help me focus down and create a product that would be central to my business, sort of a benchmark product that would form the center piece of my internet marketing funnel for my business at MasonWorld.com.

My objective for attending the NAMS conference was simply to get to know some of the internet marketers that I respect. People like Lynn Terry, Bob the Teacher, Nicole Dean, Scott Tousignant. These are some of the people that I want to model my business after. The best way for me to do that is actually to meet them in person and spend some time with them. (Just a note: there are a couple of others that I respect that did not attend NAMS...)

Bigger Business Goals

Of course, these are just two small steps on the road to what I intend to accomplish in 2010.

Quite frankly, the major business goals that I’ve set for myself in 2010 can seem overwhelming at times. As most of you know, I’ve got what I consider a "day job" that I work from 8:00 to 5:00 at a large electronics company in Dallas. In that job, I’m a manager of numerous people and projects with multiple budgets that I have to maintain.

I do my internet marketing at night. So, it’s very important for me to stay focused. That’s one of the things that my internet marketing coach is helping me with. But, sometimes that’s just not enough. As tough as she is on me, sometimes I need a little more. So, this year I did something I think is kind of cool. I got myself a coffee cup.

My Coffee Cup

Let me explain.

Every morning when I get up the first thing I do is make a cup of coffee in my Keurig single cup coffee maker. I love the Keurig single cup coffee maker, because, quite frankly, I’m the only person in my household that drinks coffee. It used to be that for me making coffee was a real drag, because I had to make a whole pot or try to figure out how to make four cups or whatever. It just didn’t work very well.

Now, wit h the Keurig every morning I religiously walk into the kitchen and the very first thing I do, even before brushing my teeth, is get that cup of coffee. That may be too much information, and I promise you that I do brush my teeth right after that.

But, the very first thing that I do is get a cup of coffee.

Well, I saw an opportunity there, because recently as I talked about a couple of weeks ago I formed Mason World Enterprises LLC as part of my long range business strategy. As part of the formation of that company, I had a new logo created.

When I made that new logo I ordered business cards, and when I was checking out at Vista Print, where I ordered the business cards from, I encountered the classic internet marketing up sell. There I was ready to pay for my business cards and all of a sudden I was presented with a ton of options for other things that I could buy that had my logo. One of them was a coffee cup.

You might think that’s kind of silly, coffee cups are a promotional item and usually that’s the kind of a thing that a brick and mortar business would give away as a way to remind customers to be repeat customers. In my case, I use it for something completely different.

You see, every morning when I go in and I get my cup of coffee from my Keurig coffee maker now instead of some random coffee mug from my cabinet I use the Mason World Enterprises coffee mug. That reminds me every morning before I go off to my day job that I’ll be coming home to a set of objectives for 2010 that I’ve committed to obtain. It’s way of keeping my goals in front of me, just a small token that reminds me to stay focused on the things that I’ve set to try and achieve for 2010.

The Impact Of A Subtle Reminder

I think I stumbled on a really good idea, because it’s working. Every morning I get up, I’ve actually got a couple of these coffee mugs so that I can have a clean one all the time, and I look at this coffee mug and I think about what I’m going to do today to achieve my internet marketing goals. I’m even going to take the coffee mug with me to NAMS, so that I’ll have it with me to remind me to stay focused during the conference.

How are your goals for 2010? Are you achieving them or have you already lost sight of them? If you’ve already lost sight of your goals for 2010, or even if you’re making great progress, let me suggest to you that you get something that will remind you every day that you’ve got goals that you want to achieve.

After all, you can always remember and believe in what my friend, PotPieGirl has to say about these kind of things. If you’ll just spend a year doing the things that nobody else will do, you can spend a lifetime doing stuff that nobody else can do.

I hope you have a great day and an even better 2010. Thanks.

By the way -- I am really interested to know how your 2010 is going so far. Leave a comment below and let me know what's up.

Masterminding With Mark Hendricks

Mark E. Mason — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:21:00 +0000

I am sitting in a room at NAMS with 20 people in a masterminding discussion with Mark Hendricks. Talk about “business savvy” – Mark Hendricks is truly an amazing guy and incredibly insightful. Mark Hendricks has probably already forgotten more about being in business on the internet than I will ever learn.

The conversation today was about many things, including the “True Path” and whether or not Social Media is on the true path.

Mark talked about managing relationships on the internet. Relationships on the internet go through stages: Know Me, Like Me, Trust Me and about “Fish Jumping into the Boat.” You just had to be there to get a full appreciation for Mark and the genius therein.

We spent some really good time talking about Benjamin Franklin and how that has impacted Mark’s business plan.

Best quote from Mark (there were many): “I’m a really good test dummy.”

Mark is not a huge fan of the hyped product launch model – he is more about delivering value over time, and encouraged us all to deliver real value to our customers. He would rather have a lifetime customer than a quick buck and told us to avoid the “she got the coal mine and I got the shaft” model.

Great time with Mark – you can find him on Twitter @MarkHendricks. My masterminding and 1:1 time with Mark was one of the real highlights of my trip to NAMS.

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