I have a great problem today.  I had four or five things that I wanted to blog about, but I only have time for one blog post.

For example, some of you may have heard that my good friend Josh Spaulding, who teaches people how to make money online, has recently released an update to his incredibly popular free five dollar formula e-book.  I'd love to do a review of that, but since it's completely free, I encourage you to get over there and read it yourself.   You'll learn everything you need to know to drive traffic to niche websites and monetize them with Google AdSense.

My second choice for a blog post today (that I decided to pass on) was the topic of  income taxes.  Yuck.   This is the first full year since I started making money online that I have had to do with deal with thousands of transactions.  I am a little frustrated with myself that I didn't keep better records during the year, and I'm trying to do much better for 2009.  I am very interested in understanding the best way to handle tracking all of the different transactions that I complete during a year, and will reserve this topic fora future series of posts.

A Bunch Of Garbage Blog Comments

This morning I woke up and logged on to my blog and found that I had seven comments from new commenters. I'm always pleased to see new comments, because that means people are reading my blog and have something to add.   I try to answer each and every comment on my blog,  because I value both the comment and the time commenters invest contributing to my content.

Imagine my disappointment this morning when I found four of the seven comments were totally garbage just cluttering up my comment inbox.  I get these all the time. They waste my time, your time, and server bandwidth.  I thought you would enjoy seeing them so I've posted them here.

My absolute favorite is the guy who called me a guru using two different names pointing back to two different URLs.

Now I'm sure that at some point some Black Hat Internet Marketer sold some one some very expensive software to go out and find blogs corresponding to particular keywords and then automatically leave comments on this blog. I am sure that this was very appealing to some Internet business person who was looking for something for nothing.

My problem with this is that a completely misses the larger opportunity that comes from making helpful comments on blogs.

Good Comment Outcomes

When you make really thoughtful blog comments that add value to a post,  number of good things can happen to you.  The one that is most often talked about is the situation where you are one of the first commenters on a high-traffic post, and you make a great comment. People will tell you that readers of the post will see your comment, and click through to your blog. This is absolutely true and can provide you some temporary traffic.

Occasionally, you may find yourself commenting on a do-follow blog, that provides do-follow links back to your blog .  (In fact, this blog does this for commenters with more than 9 coments).

This can certainly help you with search engine ranking, but you'll usually find that these posts (the actual permalink where the post appears) have low page rank, at least initially. This means that you should not expect to get a massive amount of link juice from these types of comments.

The Real Value Of Excellent Comments

Both of the outcomes above are absolutely correct.   The problem is people who are focused on these sorts of outcomes miss the real opportunity.  In my opinion the real opportunity of leaving excellent blog comments lies in the relationships that you develop with excellent bloggers.  Once you've developed relationships with other bloggers, what you really have are opportunities for growing your business the through the conversations, friendships, business ideas, joint ventures, and product opportunities that come out of such interactions.

It's an old saying: it's not what you know it's who you know.

I'll give you a couple of examples.  When I first started my blog,I had no clue what I was doing. I searched around Google and started finding examples of bloggers who are successful and reading their work.   Basically I found three that I decided to follow long-term.

Garry Conn is the first eample.   Gary is a top-notch Blogger and one of the busiest guys I know.  When I was first getting started, I commented on Garry's blog asking for advice via a phone call system that he had set up at the time.  Not only did Gary use my phone call as part of his content, but Garry also called me back and we have been working together and trading ideas ever since.  He even designed this very blog theme.  Now, I consider Garry a friend.

Josh Spaulding is another example.  I was so impressed with Josh's e-book Article Marketing Domination eBook and his ethical approach to Internet marketing that I started commenting on his blog.  Now, I am a moderator in Josh's coaching form, and we have worked together on several joint venture projects.  I also consider Josh a friend.

The bottom line is relationships

Really when you get down to it, Internet marketing is not any different than my off-line business of semiconductor microelectronics. Getting things done and being successful is all about relationships.  Relationships with customers, relationships with coworkers, relationships with business partners, and relationships with suppliers.

If you want to be successful Internet marketing, focus on building relationships with people you respect and with customers you value and you can't go wrong.

Have a great day,

Mark

I have been working with niche sites with Firepow a lot over the last month, and many of my niche sites are monetized with AdSense.  So, I have had AdSense on the brain lately.  As it happens, a valued customer of Niche AdSense Themes contacted me this weekend.  He may choose to reveal himself in the comments, but in case he doesn't, let's just call him George.  George had just gotten a generic email from Google, and wanted some help figuring out what he had done wrong.  Here is an excerpt:

Hello,

While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently
displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our
policies. For instance, we found violations of AdSense policies
on pages such as mycustomerswebsite.com.

Publishers may not place Google ads on pages that violate
Google’s webmaster quality guidelines
(http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35
769#quality). While we've included the following excerpts from
these guidelines, we recommend that you take the time to review
them in their entirety.

The problem is, this email went on to discuss the webmaster guidelines generically, but never indicated what George had done wrong.  His site was not on a forbidden topic, and was not "black hat site."  It was mostly legitimately republished content -- but that content was republished with permission.

Now, getting ads pulled from your site is not the same as getting banned from AdSense.  George's other sites are OK at the moment.  Oddly, the site was de-indexed by Google at the same time.  This is a more severe action, and suggests that the search engine people are talking directly to the AdSense people.

Anyway, the bottom line is, we are not sure what happened exactly.

Usually, AdSense advice is blunt -- "don't click on your own ads".  In my research this weekend, I was reminded of five more subtle things that you need to keep in mind when building sites for AdSense.  Here they are, in no particular order.

Make It About Google's Customer

Ultimately, Google search cares about getting the user a great search result so that the next time the user needs a search engine, they will choose Google.  It is all about Google's market share.  If they put spam at the top of their search results, people will eventually look for a better search engine.

So, if you do something to trick Google to rank your content so that you can make a buck -- that is OK.  Have fun.  Lots of "black hat" guys make a lot more money on the internet than I do.  Business is business.  As long as what you do is legal, you can make your own decisions.  Google is not the law.  But, don't ever forget that they do own the search engine and they answer to Google share holders.  So don't be upset if they yank your listings.  It is their search engine, after all.

Same goes for AdSense.  Always remember that the customer for AdSense is the advertiser -- not you, and not the person who clicks on the ad.  If your content does not generate clicks, or if clicks coming from your site do not increase revenue for the advertiser (Google's customer), you should expect Google to address that.  They do that by paying per click, smart pricing, and banning some sites from AdSense.

Create Some Unique Content

As I mentioned above, Google Search is about the searching user.  If your content is 100% duplicated content from elsewhere on the web, why would Google want to show it?  If they can figure out where it is, they will prefer to show the original content (all things being equal).   However, it is not clear to me that AdSense should care about duplicate content.  There is some hard-to-understand language in the Webmaster Guidelines about duplicate content, but I personally believe that passage refers to mirror sites and not PLR and other "duplicate content."

As I mentioned above, George had a lot of duplicate content.  While it is possible that this got his site banned from AdSense, I really don't think that was the reason.  Still, good unique content is a valuable defense against getting your site banned.

Be Careful About Competing Ads

While it is not clear what ads are OK, be careful about putting ads on your site that "look like" Google Ads.  Google is sensitive about protecting their brand, and will ban your site.

George did have competing ads on that site, and those ads had a footer encouraging people to refresh to get"fresh ads."  We are not sure if this matters to Google or not, but I think it might.  This is my best guess as to why George's site got banned.

Be Careful About Ad Placement

The AdSense ads on George's site are highly optimized to maximize click-through.  One concern we had is that Google gets upset if you try to "trick" the user and make them think that they are clicking on something other than an ad.

Because of this, one thing that people debate a lot is how close ads can be to page titles.  For example, let's say you have a page with the title "Used Cars For Sale" and right below that title you have an AdSense block that makes it seem that the AdSense ads are actually cars for sale on your site.

You can interpret Google's guidelines in such a way as to conclude this violates their TOS.   While I am sure you can violate their TOS this way, I don't think this is an issue with George's site.  However, it is something to keep in mind.

Make Sure You Have A Privacy Policy (and Disclaimers)

As of about last April, Google started requiring a privacy policy.  Make sure you have one on every page that serves AdSense Ads.  I also recommend a disclaimer, although this is not required by Google.  Fortunately, this was not an issue for George -- he did a bang-up job here.

The Bottom Line

Here is the real bottom line -- Google can pull your site for any reason or no reason at all.  So, my strong recommendation is that you do not put all of your eggs in one basket here.  Diversify with other affiliate offers and your own products.  You'll be glad you did.

Regards,
Mark

P.S. -- I know the title said three tips -- I got carried away and inclided five or six.  Sorry about that.

I grew up in Texas.  I'm still here.

In Texas, if you steal a horse, we hang you. In Texas, people are allowed to carry guns to protect themselves and their personal property. As a child growing up in Texas, I was raised to understand that stealing is wrong. Well, one thing is for sure -- not everyone is from Texas.

The other day, I woke up to this anonymous email message about my product, Niche Adsense Themes for WordPress:

To: mark
Subj: Your Download Page is Unprotected

http://www.nicheadsensethemes.com/thankyou2008-1.html
It is floating in a black hat forum.
Remove it.

Anonymous

And sure enough, download activity showed this to be true.  People were stealing my stuff. (And by the way, thanks very much to the anonymous emailer, whomever you are).

Protecting Your Electronic Downloads

Now, I had already followed all the recommended methods for keeping my downloadable product safe:

• Use a thank you page that is hard to guess
• Use file names that are hard to guess
• Use robots.txt to block searching
• Use nofollow tags
• etc.

The problem is, that just does not protect you against really determined hackers.  There are lots of ways that product security can be compromised.  Some search engines (one in particular) are said to ignore nofollow tags and robots.txt.  This can result in your thank you page getting indexed.  Another problem can be that you customers might accidentally (or on purpose) share your download link with others.

Using Software To Protect Software

My solution was to go out and purchase a copy of DL Guard.   DL Guard (or DLG as it is often referred to) was recommended to be by some other top internet marketers that are happy customers.  At $127, it is not cheap.  However, it is feature-packed and the customer service is highly regarded according to people I spoke with.

DL Guard is really a lot more than just a download page protector (which is all I really needed at the moment).  Cool features of DL Guard include:

• Single or multi-product sales
• Expiring download links
• Limited download attempts
• Integration with many major payment processors (including ClickBank)
• Mailing list automation
• Membership site features
• Many others....I have only scratched the surface so far on this software

How My Product Is Protected

Install of this software was super easy.  It took me 10 minutes to install the software on my server and convert my existing sales page to enable protection.  So, now when you purchase Niche Adsense Themes for WordPress, you get a unique download link just for you.  When you download the product, your IP address is logged.  You have a limited time to download the product before the link expires, and you have a limited number of times you can download it.  The actual URL of the download is never revealed to the user.

Bottom Line:  I'm Impressed

I have not even started looking at the rest of the features -- but the bottom line is that I am really impressed with DL Guard.  This looks like an excellent tool for my Internet Marketing Toolkit -- one that I will use over and over in my business.  So, while I was initially put off by the "high" price of $127, I am impressed with the product.  I plan to keep DL Guard and use it to protect my current and future digital products.  If you are worried about digital product theft, I recommend that you check DL Guard out (their product website is excellent).

Last week was an exciting week. My neighborhood was hit by a tornado that knocked out power and satellite, I celebrated a birthday (I feel old) and I was kidnapped by my wife and taken to an exotic hotel location without my laptop. Working on Internet Marketing without electricity, an internet connection or a laptop is really challenging. Luckily, my BlackBerry was not impacted by this weekends events, so I was able to stay connected.

Over the weekend, I was able to get started in Josh Spaulding's coaching program. Josh is an article marketing and SEO expert (currently ranking on page 1 in Google for make money online), and a really nice guy. When I first got started in Internet Marketing, I became interested in Adsense, and quickly learned that there were guys like Garry Conn that had as many as 100 blogs -- many of which were making money from Adsense. In my research on this topic, I ran across Josh's eBook called Article Marketing Domination and his free eBook Easy SEO. Recently, Josh published another free eBook: $5 Mini-Site Formula. This book was about exactly what I wanted (needed) to know when I started last November.

The MasonWorld Roadmap

Reviewing that eBook has made me rethink the 2008 Roadmap for the MasonWorld Internet Empire. Basically, I have been thinking about what I want to get out of my Internet Marketing hobby. I started this effort in Nov 2007 with some similar goals, but I am continuing to refine them (December seems like an internet lifetime ago).

On this pass of goal setting, I came up with several key overriding concepts:

• Have fun. This is easy, since I am facinated with the internet and technology
• Learn something. This easy. I knew nothing about internet marketing when I started.
• Add some value. Whatever I do, I am not really interested in just "taking" and leaving nothing behind. A good example is this website. At the end of 2008, I would like to be able to point to this site as a valuable resource that people can use.
• Generate revenue. I actually struggled with this. I am not really in this for the money since I have a great day job (as I have mentioned a thousand times). Still, it seems like the measure of success in Internet Marketing is revenue. So, I am making this the lowest priority goal

Of course, there are some constraints:

• Limited time. I am only allowing myself a coupleof hours a day (max) to work at this hobby. My family and my real job come first (in that order).
• Limited funds. I could choose to spend $4700 on an eCourse or something like that. I am sure I could get great results that way. But, I am determined to do this the "hard" way on a limited budget.
• White Hat. I am still not interested in Black Hat techniques. However, I do see that sometimes it is a little hard to tell the Gray stuff from the White stuff.

With this as a framework, that left me with the question of what to try to accomplish in 2008.

Approaches and Goals for 2008

I am currently planning to have the following completed by the end of 2008. Of course, I plan to blog about everything that I learn in the mean time.

• Grow the MasonWorld.com Internet-Based Marketing blog
  • Post 3 times per week about my Internet Marketing experience
  • Grow RSS readership through great content generation
  • Grow email opt-ins through bonus content
  • Add a modest monthly podcast
  • Build a valuable brand with great content that people want to read
• Build three niche information sites
  • Launch 3 new sites with the $5 per day formula
  • Use article marketing to promote the sites
  • Use the Coaching With Josh resources to achieve $5/day in Adsense revenue
  • Work with a great developer to build a killer niche site WP template
  • Consider a plan to grow those sites to something more in 2009
• Build 3 Affiliate Product sites
  • Launch 3 new/existing sites (Elvis will be one of them)
  • Use article marketing to promote the sites
  • Consider a plan to grow those sites to something more in 2009
• Create my very own information product
  • Identify a niche (IM may be the first one)
  • Create an information product (Niche site case study how-to maybe?)
  • Promote and sell the product (or give it away)
• Create and release one report for Butterfly Reports

That's already way too much for 2008, given that I am working on this part time.

So, tonight I am planning on working on article marketing for my new niche sites using Article Post Robot. I bought this tool several weeks ago. I will post about my progress on Wednesday (my next scheduled post).

Best regards,
Mark

Just a quick update from the trenches.

I've been hard at work on multiple fronts the last few days. As you know, this blog is about part-time Internet Marketing (and making money on line). The part-time aspect of that phrase means that I have a really limited number of hours to do IM-related things each day. Interestingly, I think there are a lot of people like me that are trying to get started part time. Thus, this blog. If I can help a few people get started, I'm declaring success.

Just so you know what I've been up to, I have been working with a hot-shot pro developer on this fancy new blog theme (more on this in a future post). We're not done with all the tweaks yet, but I am really happy with the new clean, professional look. My eventual goal is to be a recognized authority on part-time online business with a focus on affiliate and information marketing. I plan to get to that place transparently -- no snake oil, get rich quick, or black hat stuff. (Side note -- there is a lot of gray hat stuff out there. We'll have to discuss that in another post). With the new theme in place, I feel like I have a better platform from which to reach that goal. So, this blog will continue to be about my experiences -- blogging in the open about all the stuff I wish that I had known -- it will just look nice now.

One thing I am realizing is that this blog must also about internet lifestyle and time management. If you are going to work on the internet part time, you must figure out how to keep it from taking over your life. So, we'll be talking about various tools that I use to try to make that happen (including virtual assistants). This includes my latest favorite eBook, Zen To Done. That eBook deserves its own post in the future (coming soon).

So, stay tuned. I have recently been working on the promised marketing efforts for HistoryofElvis.com. I have located PLR content, hired someone to write articles, purchased blog posts, and obtained link directory submissions. I've also started a super-secret side project that I'll be revealing in two weeks.

Thanks for dropping by! Let me know what you think about the new theme. I strongly recommend the guy that did it -- he's a real pro. More on that later too. Talk to you soon.

Best regards,

Mark

As promised yesterday, this is day 1 of my case study on building a "Niche Super-Site." I'm an engineer by training. For me that means we need to know what we are trying to do before we get started. (Note that this does not completely explain why I always need to make seven trips to Home Depot per home improvement project).

As I mentioned, I am an engineer by training. I love my job, and I am doing this for fun (and possibly profit) in my spare time using my own resources. I will be doing this late at night (and probably missing some sleep). The fact that I am an engineer means that I am not an internet money super-guru. I am just a guy with a laptop that has never done this before. I am not doing this to make a living. So, there is no warranty expressed or implied. Your mileage may vary. Not valid in certain states. All that...

Anyway, we have a simple goal:

Goal: Build a niche site that generates $2/day.

How did I get to that figure? I've got a number in my head that an worthwhile amount of money to make online would be $3000/month. That sounds like a very aggressive goal -- but so was landing on the moon. Problem is, I have somewhat fewer resources than NASA. For example, since I am doing this part time, I am starting with the assumption that the most niche sites I could ever build and maintain are 50. In round numbers, I am thinking I could launch an average on one site per week per year. If I wanted to generate $3000 per month in residual income with those 50 sites, each site would need to generate $3000/50 = $60 per month. That's about $2 per day in round numbers. If I can figure out how to do that once -- I can do it 50 times.

As a side note, there are super-humans out there like Garry Conn -- I am told he is at times running over 100 niche sites.

So, now that we have a goal, what are the design characteristics that we want to think about? Here are a few to start with. We may add some (or take some away) as we learn about the best way to do this.

• Keep it human. I am not interested in putting up sites that are not useful in at least some small way.
• Maintainability is key. If there will be 50 of these sites, I need to stay away from things that require a lot of time (like daily blog updates).
• Leverage existing software tools. I like to write code, but there are 100s of developers out there that are smarter than me focused on very specific tools. No reason for me to reinvent the wheel.
• Stay white hat. I am not interested in black hat tricks.
• Diversify. I'd like to avoid putting putting all my eggs in one basket (e.g. Adsense). There are lots of ways to make money out there -- I need to find several way to monetize my niche.
• Fast deployment. I cannot afford to spend more than 7 days on the initial launch of sites subsequent to the first one. The first one will take longer due to this diary and real-time research and learning. After that, the goal is 1/week until Christmas.
• Leave room for growth. If I find a niche that I want to grow into an authority site, my niche site structure should allow for this easily.
• Small start-up costs. I am not interested in paying $500 for some get-rich-quick software solution. I'd like to keep the total cost for the initial site below $100 total -- with minimal costs for subsequent sites.

That is about it for now. Those are the design goals and the design constraints.

Tomorrow, we'll talk about finding a web host.

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It's been almost two months since I initially got the bug to "make money on the internet." At that time, I stated my goal was to work at this part time, and that I was not interested in "black hat" money-making schemes. Just before Christmas, I published my initial plan of learning what I was doing by working on a few sites. Those sites are up, and boy have I learned a lot. Since Christmas, I have experimented with b2evolution and Joomla, and settled on WordPress as a content management system and blogging platform. I have played with Adsense, Azoogle, Commission Junction, ClickBank and other affiliate programs. I have written php code. I have purchased some software (like phpBay - affiliate link), and spent a lot of time reading. Tons of time reading.

Like everyone else, I've read John Chow and ShoeMoney, free SEO books, four million posts at DP Forums, etc. Right now, my favorite blog for this stuff is Caroline Middlebrook's site. I really like her style (she has been given the moniker "The Honest Blogger" by many of her loyal readers). Caroline is basically trying to do full time what I want to do part time. She recently released a good e-book about how to build a niche site with WordPress. It's a good read, especially if you need help with the mechanics of installing WordPress and other technical details that often get left out of other eBooks.

Inspired by Caroline's eBook and some of her postings, I am ready to integrate all of the knowledge that I have accumulated over the last 2 months in a live day-by-day demonstration. I have decided to build a niche site live as a case study on how to do this. Caroline's excellent eBook discusses building a "simple" niche site that relies on Adsense. That's an awesome place to start and perfect for the purposes of her eBook. I will be expanding Caroline's ideas to include discussions on PLR article content, news feeds, eBay auctions, backlinks, affiliate marketing, etc. The result will be a fully integrated niche site rich with content, ads and stuff to buy. I'm calling it a "Niche Super-Site." Pretty nifty, huh?

I'll post daily on my progress for a month or so, and we'll track the blog stats and progress together throughout February. I'll be accepting reader suggestions and ideas, and will grow the site live throughout the month. Along the way, I'll be handing out the "link love" posting links to all the references that I use to get the site operational.

So, stay tuned. It should be a wild ride.

Tomorrow, we'll tackle the topic of beginning with the end in mind, followed with a discussion about how to select a niche for our super-site. I will announce my choice for a niche after that and we'll subsequently register a domain name. Goal is one post/step per day (which is consistent with my part-time internet monetization strategy).

See you tomorrow.

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