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):

	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

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I like Nicole Dean's EasyPLR as a source for great quality PLR products.  Since that time, I have published several articles about how to use PLR, where to get blog content, and what the ethical considerations of PLR might be.

Lot's of you responded by trying out Nicole's products using my affiliate link (here).  If you are one of those people -- thanks for checking her stuff out.  As you know, I only recommend products that I use myself, and her PLR is great.

The Retroactive EasyPLR Bonus

OK -- so I know what you are thinking?  Who in the world gives a bonus after the fact.  Marketing 101 says that you use bonuses to get people to buy as part of the pitch.

I say, WHATEVER - I play by my own rules. 

The fact is that if you bought ANY PLR from Nicole using my link, I'd like to offer you a nifty eBook on how to use it.

The eBook is called PLR Cheater -- it is itself a high quality PLR eBook that I am planning on selling for either $27 or $17 (I have not decided yet).   You can check out the sales page for PLRCheater here.  Note that the page is not complete yet - you cannot buy the book there.

Anyway -- if you bought any PLR from Nicole through my link, just submit a ticket at my helpdesk and I will verify your purchase and send you a copy of the eBook with my compliments.  Just to be clear, you will be getting personal use rights to PLR Cheater, not PLR rights.

I figure that if you were kind enough to use my link, you deserve the bonus (even if you did not know about the bonus ahead of time).  Be sure to include proof of purchase with your ticket.

But Wait -- There's More (If You Act Now)

LOL -- I love cheezy marketing lines like "Act Now!"  Supplies are limited! (OK -- they are not limited.  It's an ebook.  How can supplies of an eBook ever be limited?)

Here where the Marketing 101 comes back in.  I want you to buy more!

I know that there will be some people out there that want to buy PLR from Nicole today and get the bonus.  If that is you, know that I will honor the bonus until further notice.  That is to say, if you buy PLR from EasyPLR in the future using my affiliate link, I will send you a copy of the eBook (just submit a ticket with your proof of purchase).

Bottom line - I want you to buy more PLR from Nicole if you need it.

And That Is Not All (Special Bonus)!

I know some of you will be buying PLR from Nicole with the intention of creating sites designed to make money from AdSense as described in the $5 Formula (and also in this video).

If that is you, and you buy $50 or more of PLR from Easy PLR using my affiliate link, I will send you a copy of my newly updated product -- Niche AdSense Themes for WordPress Version 3.   Note that this bonus is also retroactive.

Here is a snapshot of the latest version of Niche AdSense Themes for WordPress

So -- If you need some PLR check out Easy PLR today.

Thanks!

More About PLR Cheater

Here is what's inside PLR Cheater:

This is the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, Episode 5.

You want to build a business that you can call your own, but you can’t imagine abandoning the security of your day job. You are confident that you can find a few hours a week to pursue your dreams of creating a business on the internet, but you don’t know where to start. You’re looking for a plan.

Congratulations! You just found one. You are listening to the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, with your host Mark Mason, building internet businesses one night at a time.

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. I’m your host Mark Mason. It’s great to be back on the microphone. I hope you’ve had a fantastic couple of weeks since I talked to you last. I hope they were very productive for you.

I know I’ve been incredibly productive over the last couple weeks. In fact, in some ways a little too productive. I tend to get too many tasks going all at the same time. I don’t know if you have that problem. That’s a huge problem for a lot of internet marketers.

I was talking to Lynn Terry about this over in her Elite forum the other day. Her theory, she had a post in that forum about this, is that you really need to focus on something, one thing extensively until that thing is finished to really get the maximum productivity. I’m really going to need to look at that a little more carefully.

I’ve really been enjoying Lynn’s forum. I spend a lot of time over there. I’ve been getting to know Lynn, she’s great. Some of you saw the video on my blog of Lynn opening up the Elvis bobble head that I sent her. That was kind of fun.

If you get a chance to check out Lynn, I recommend that you do that. You can check out the information about her Elite Membership Forum at MasonWorld.com/recommends/lynn. If you just want to kind of get a taste of what that’s like, you don’t need to pay any money at all. You can go over to her blog at ClickNewz.com and check it out.

There are links to the forum over there, and she’s got a free side to the forum too and that’s really excellent. I’ve been having fun over there with Lynn. She’s got lots of cool peeps that hang out with her over there in the Elite Forum, it’s really good stuff.

The other thing that I’ve been working on this week is a site with my nephew. We’re going to talk about that a little bit in the interview. My nephew and I have been working on an affiliate marketing site for the last couple of weeks. I’ve actually got him on the podcast today as the featured interview as a new internet marketer.

He’s going to tell us the three things that he learned from me this summer working on an affiliate site. He actually cleared over 100 dollars on that site in the month of August, which was only one month after we really started working on it. So, he’s pretty pleased with that.

We’re using the phpBay plugin to work through eBay to sell some comic books online. We’ll talk about all of that in the feature interview.

Before we get into that, let’s take a look at the feature segment and see what we’ve got going on today.

It’s time for the feature segment.

It’s time for the feature segment today, and we’re continuing our discussion about all the different possible internet business models. We’ve talked about affiliate marketing, last week we talked about eBay, we’ve talked about information marketing.

One thing I wanted to talk about today, because it’s timely, is the idea of creating residual recurring income through membership sites. In order to understand why membership sites are important, you really need to sort of understand the idea of a sales funnel. So, we’ll talk a little bit about sales funnels, and we’ll talk about membership sites.

This, again, points to one of the resources that I’ve provided you for this discussion, and that’s Jimmy Brown’s excellent report, which is called 10 Proven Ways to Make at Least 10,000 Dollars Every Month. In Jimmy Brown’s report, item three in that report is tap into the back end automatically.

Jimmy basically talks about the idea that most marketers really are concerning themselves with the creation of the sales funnel. If you’re not familiar with a sales funnel, I can sort of explain it to you like this. When you have an initial contact with a perspective client, you bring that person in to your range of influence and you essentially get their permission to receive your message.

Now, if you’re a person who’s being effected by TV marketing, sometimes you barely even have permission, you just happen to be watching the channel and you see a commercial and that’s sort of your first contact into the sales funnel for whoever is selling something to you on television. In the context of internet marketing, this sort of thing usually happens when you sign up to an email list.

You’re at the top of someone’s funnel, they’ve gotten your permission to market to you, basically. So, you’re at the top of their funnel. Then you might at some point buy an inexpensive product from them. That moves you a little further down the funnel.

You’ll find that a lot of internet marketers spend a lot of time creating more and more products at higher and higher price points to move you further and further down the funnel. You see, there’s a big difference between someone you’ve never talked to before, at the top of your funnel or just entering your funnel, and someone who’s bought two or three products from you over a period of time, who trusts you and understands the quality of your product.

So, that sales funnel should be architected to move you further and further towards purchasing higher and higher end products. That’s a classic marketing strategy. It’s not unique to internet marketing, but it’s used very well in internet marketing in a variety of product lines.

One sort of special version of that, that can replace the sales funnel to some extent, is the idea of continuity programs. One way to implement a continuity program is through a membership site. Now, a continuity program simply means, you can think of it as monthly billing.

Continuity programs have gotten a bad rap over the years, because of various problems, usually having to do with them being deployed in a sneaky manner. You’ll recall that Joel Comm had a problem where he had a continuity program attached to one of his Adsense books, I believe it was, and it wasn’t clearly indicated on the order form. A lot of people were upset with Joel, because he didn’t make it clear that in addition to buying the ebook for 9.95, you were also signing up for his 27 dollar continuity program.

Now, I happen to know Joel, Joel Comm is a really good guy. I really personally don’t think that was something that he did maliciously, but he upset a lot of people. So, continuity programs in general have gotten a bad rap.

Russell Brunson and others, particularly Jimmy Brown, have been talking about several ideas around continuity that make a lot more sense. One of the things that they talk about is micro-continuity through membership sites. Jimmy has an excellent course on this that he calls Membernaire. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes.

Membernaire is an opportunity to create what Russell Brunson calls a micro-continuity program. The way Jimmy does it is he creates courses that are finite duration. It’s one thing if you tell somebody that they’re going to need to pay 27 dollars, or 67 dollars a month for their rest of their lives.

But, what Jimmy says is, “Hey, we’re going to have a continuity program with a finite term. It’s going to be 6 months long, or a year long, it’s going to be 27 dollars a month.” You know the cost up front. It’s spread out over time.

Jimmy actually implements all of his stuff completely automatically, which is really neat. So, if you’re the product creator for a Jimmy Brown style membership site. Then what you can do is you can create these sites one time, market them, and then they run on autopilot all by themselves. It’s pretty interesting.

Now, there really are sort of three kinds of membership sites that Jimmy points out. Maybe four, I would say, Jimmy points out three. The first site that Jimmy points out, or sites that offer a service, if there’s something that you need over and over again rather than paying for it piecemeal you can create a membership site that offers that service over and over again or on a monthly basis. Web hosting is a really good example of that, that Jimmy offers.

There are other kinds of membership sites you can imagine. Help with homework would be an excellent example, or tutoring. Those kind of things you can offer in the form of a membership site. Related to that can be a site that offers lessons on a topic.

You could have 6 month, 12 month, or 3 month courses on how to get an online business up and running. That’s the example that Jimmy offers. How to start a restaurant, how to do home repairs, or how to do whatever it is that you know how to do.

That’s one of the exciting things about the idea of a membership site. If you’re an expert in something, and you can break it up into 48 or 50 or 100 easy lessons, then you can easily create a membership site that just drips those lessons out to your customers at a fixed rate. You just tell them up front, “You’re going to get one lesson a week, and here they come. As long as you keep paying, you keep getting lessons.”

The other kind of membership site that you hear about a lot is a site that offers a new product each month. So, each month you get a new PLR product or each month you get a new something that you need, new templates for a website, new content, new something, new cross stitch patterns, whatever it might be. People subscribe because they want that new fix of whatever it is that they need.

The other kind of membership that I think Jimmy didn’t mention, but he certainly knows all about this, because he does these sorts of things, are coaching programs. I think those are a special kind. They’re sort of like offering a service, but basically you’re paying to have some person on retainer to help you with whatever your problem. Usually those are implemented as a forum.

That’s just a few ideas that Jimmy covers in his book. He says, basically, you need to choose a niche, find out what they’re buying, and what they want, and then go build a membership site around that. I think that’s a really good idea.

The reason that I bring that up in this podcast is two fold. One is these are very, very important. In fact, I had a graphics guy tell me today that I was talking to by email, he’s over in Europe and is the guy who does most of my graphics for my sites, he told me there are four weeks out on graphics because of all these micro-continuity sites they’ve been doing based on Russell Brunson and Jimmy Brown’s sort of programs. So, they’re just swamped with work over all these membership sites that are being created. That’s one reason why I bring this up to you.

The second reason that I bring this up to you is if you’re interested at all in this, Jimmy is offering a webinar, and I’m going to give you the details on that at MasonWorld.com/jimmywebinar. That webinar is currently airing this Thursday. If you’re listening to this in a time shifted manner, go ahead and go to the link, it will give you the current next time for the webinar.

Basically, it’s an hour long tutorial from Jimmy on webinars. I’m going to see it for the first time tomorrow. I can tell you that I can recommend it without seeing it, because Jimmy is just a fantastic guy. If you don’t know Jimmy, it’s worth going over to the webinar just so you can get a sense of what he’s all about.

He’s really a fantastic marketer and somebody that I’ve really enjoyed getting to know over the last year or two. His stuff is top notch. He knows what he’s doing. He has personally created, I know for sure of two, but maybe it’s six of these sites, where he has over 1,000 members in each site. You go do the math. If you had 1,000 members in a membership site, each paying you 27 dollars a month. I think you might like that result.

That’s the main segment for today. I just wanted to tell you about that other income model, which is membership sites. The bottom line is if you know how to do something that people want to learn how to do, and you can figure out how to bust that up into courses, kind of like a Dummies Guide to Tennis, or a Dummies Guide to Fitness, or a Dummies Guide to whatever it is that you’re interested in, you can make that into a membership course.

You can recruit people into that course and have a recurring stream of income. You can set the whole thing up automatically, and Jimmy Brown is the guy to teach you how to do that. So, that’s another way you can make money online, and that’s well covered in the 10 Proven Ways to Make at Least 10,000 Dollars Every Month. That’s Jimmy Brown’s ebook, and that’s available at MasonWorld.com/10ways.

Thanks. That concludes the feature segment.

And now the feature interview.

Okay. Now it’s time for the standing interview segment that we’ve been having for the last couple of weeks. What I’ve been promising you is that I’d interview successful internet marketers and ask them the three most important things that they wished they had known about internet marketing when they first started.

This has been very exciting. But, recently I’ve been working with my nephew on his first website. He has an affiliate marketing site based around comic books, which is something that he is interested in. He’s a sophomore in high school, very intelligent young man, highly motivated, but didn’t really know anything about how money was made on the internet. Kind of like a lot of us when we first started.

So, I thought, “Wow. Here’s a guy who just learned how to make money on the internet.” He’s made his first 100 dollars, I think his site made 136 dollars in the month of August. He’s very excited about that. We’ve got big plans for the site, because we made that 136 dollars and we’re not even ranking on the first page of Google for our search term yet. So, we’re real excited.

I thought the interesting was 2 months ago he didn’t know anything about internet marketing. He’s done all the work himself. I’ve sort of led him through it, and helped him and coached him, but he’s done all the hard work, and he’s got a result to show for it.

So, I wanted to ask him what were the three things that he knows now that he didn’t know 2 months ago. The things that really stuck out for him. I got a very, very interesting answer from him and I wanted to share that with you.

Now, he’s a minor under the age of 18. Like I said, he’s a sophomore in high school. So, I’m not using his real name. we’re calling him Bob here for the purpose of this interview, which is really hilarious, because that’s not his name at all. So, you may hear us giggling a little bit in the interview about that.

The other thing I’ll tell you, I want to apologize in advance, this interview we did in my study. We had to move the microphone around, and I forgot to put the p-pop filer on. So, I’ve edited the interview to try and cut out the pops from articulating the letter P, which is the world’s most annoying sound.

I don’t quite have them all out of the interview, but I did the very best I could. I enjoyed the interview so much, I didn’t want to do another take. Here it is live, raw, and with the pops, my nephew Bob and our discussion about his internet marketing experience.

…

Mark Mason: Hey, this is Mark Mason. I’m actually in studio with my nephew today. A lot of you who have been following me over on Lynn Terry’s forum know that I built with my nephew a website about something that he was interested in, actually the website is about comic books. We built that website and in the first month were able to generate some revenue with eBay’s affiliate program. That was a very interesting process.

So, what I thought I would do is get some insights from my nephew, who is a sophomore in high school about what he’s learned from his experience making money online. I’ve been telling people, “If my nephew who is a sophomore in high school can make money online, you can make money online too.” I think that’s a pretty straight forward kind of way to think about things.

Now, I’ve agreed since my nephew is a minor under the age of 18, I’m not going to use his name. So, I’ve agreed to call him Bob for the purpose of this interview. Hi, Bob, how are you doing today?

Bob: Hi. Good. How are you?

Mark Mason: I’m doing great. Bob came over, he lives nearby. How long have we been working on this website together, Bob?

Bob: We’ve probably been working on it maybe since the beginning of last school year.

Mark Mason: Yeah, something like that. So, we worked on it for a couple of weeks, then we kind of dropped it, but then we hit it really hard this summer. Right?

Bob: Yes.

Mark Mason: So, my recollection was we didn’t make any money or really generate much of any content last year at all. We really started working on it about in July.

Bob: That’s right.

Mark Mason: We started making money on the website in August, right?

Bob: Yes.

Mark Mason: Okay, great. So, the website sat idle for awhile, and after about a month we started seeing a little revenue. That’s been really exciting. I guess it’s been exciting for me, has it been exciting for you?

Bob: Yes. It’s very exciting.

Mark Mason: Okay. So, you’re actually in a very prestigious position. I’ve been interviewing internet marketers from all over the world on this podcast and asking them the three things that they wish they had known when they started internet marketing.

I thought I’d turn things around today and ask you what are the three things that you’ve learned over the summer with your first experience in internet marketing that you just didn’t know before, that you’d want to tell someone about your internet marketing experience?

Can you think of one thing that just occurs to you just right off the top of your head, Bob? That’s not your real name, I know, but it’s kind of funny. Something that you learned over the summer, that you didn’t know before.

Bob: Yes. First, is how easy it is to get a website going. If you use a website like WordPress you just pick a theme you like, get it going, and put it up. It’s just easy to make one.

Mark Mason: That’s right. So, basically, what we did was we just simply found a theme that worked well with our topic of comic books. We actually found sort of a play on Superman theme, right?

Bob: Yes.

Mark Mason: We just used that on top of WordPress to create our little kind of ecommerce site. That worked out pretty well. It looked pretty cool?

Bob: It looks really cool, yes. A lot of neat features.

Mark Mason: I think, if I remember right, we asked a virtual assistant to make some small modifications to the site.

Bob: Yes.

Mark Mason: Right. So, we started with a theme that was pretty close to what we wanted, and we had a virtual assistant make some changes. Just a few dollars, literally a few hours work, someone offshore. It’s pretty much exactly the way you want it right now, right?

Bob: It’s perfect. Yes.

Mark Mason: Great. That’s the first thing. So, that point is a really good one. That is that basically anybody without a lot of technical savvy can have a website up and running very quickly by using WordPress. Is that pretty much what you’re saying?

Bob: Yes, sir.

Mark Mason: Okay, great. That’s thing one. That’s an excellent point. What’s your second thing that you kind of picked up this summer working on your WordPress website?

Bob: Probably number two is if you want to get your website going, something very important to use is keywords through Google. Pick out a keyword phrase, get backlinks to your website to get viewers to come to your site.

Mark Mason: Now, before this summer, did you have any idea, you’ve always used Google, right?

Bob: Yes.

Mark Mason: But, did you have any idea why pages came up on the first page of Google? Did you understand any of that before this summer?

Bob: I had no clue. I just thought it was random.

Mark Mason: So, we basically spent. I don’t know, about an hour? So, we got you started with the Easy SEO report from Josh Spaulding,that was really cool. Then we picked a keyword with some traffic. Where are we now with that keyword?

Bob: Just by using that one keyword we’re almost to the first page of Google. We’re kind of floating back and forth between page one and page two.

Mark Mason: So, we’re down kind of at the top of page two. We’ve got some tricks up our sleeve, maybe we’ll talk about that at the end of this, where we think that’s going to get us to page one.

Basically, pick a keyword that people are searching for and get backlinks to the website. That’s the offpage SEO part, getting the backlinks, but we also optimized the homepage for the keyword. Right? We’ve got it in there.

Bob: Yes, sir.

Mark Mason: Kind of in a natural amount of time. So, that’s just kind of common sense SEO, and you were able to pick that up pretty quickly, right?

Bob: Yes, sir, I was.

Mark Mason: Okay. So, the first thing that you learned this summer was that you can easily build a site with Wordpres.

The second thing that you learned is that once you build a site with WordPress, you can optimize it, both on the website and off the website, so that you’ll get listed in Google for a keyword that’s getting some traffic.

What’s a third thing that you learned this summer?

Bob: The third important thing I learned was if you can get traffic to your website, you can send them to other websites and earn commission off their views.

Mark Mason: Yes. We talked about that quite a bit this summer. That’s affiliate marketing. Of course, for our website, because we’re dealing with comic books, that’s just a perfect fit for eBay, right, because that’s where comic books are being sold.

Bob: Yes, sir.

Mark Mason: And you knew that already. You’d already been buying comic books on eBay. That’s in fact, how we got the idea.

Bob: Yes, I had.

Mark Mason: So, Bob is into comic books a little bit, and knew that there were transactions going on at eBay. All it took was for me to explain to you that you could build a website that drove traffic to eBay and get commissions, and we’re off to the races, right?

Bob: Yes.

Mark Mason: What we really want is to be on the first page of Google. So, why don’t you tell everybody what you have planned for, I guess we’re hoping to get the first draft of it done this weekend, you’re doing all the work. What do you have planned for this weekend?

Bob: We’re planning to write a press release to put out there to get our website on the first page.

Mark Mason: Yes. We’re following the Google First Page Formula, that’s the ebook that I’ve shared with Bob. He’s going to write a press release according to the Google First Page Formula, and we’re going to see if we can get the same results.

I’ve actually got a special link for that ebook, where I’ve got a discount available for the listeners in honor of Bob, since he’s going to be doing that this weekend. You can pick that ebook up for a 20 or 30 percent discount. I’ll be sure and put that link in the show notes. In fact, that will be at MasonWorld.com/press.

That’s great. Bob, I really appreciate you being on the show tonight. Tell me what you’re thinking about doing next. Are we going to build some more sites? How many more are we going to build or what are you thinking?

Bob: We’re just going to keep going until there’s nothing left to do. For all those people that are doing websites, don’t give up. It takes time, but it pays off.

Mark Mason: That’s excellent advice. I really appreciate it. Thanks for coming over. Have a great day.

Bob: Thank you very much.

Thanks for listening to the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. For more information about this program, and to get the show notes, be sure to visit our website at MasonWorld.com/podcast. Follow @MasonWorld on Twitter.

Have you got a question or comment for Mark? Let us know by leaving us a voicemail on our digital recording line at 214-444-8655. We may use your message on a future episode of the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast.

Did you like our podcast? Help us out by telling your friends and leaving your review on iTunes by going to MasonWorld.com/iTunes.

Finally, always remember that all business involves risk. Internet business is no exception. Your ability to make money with the concepts discussed in this program and on MasonWorld.com depends on many things, including your effort and capability. Since these factors according to individuals, we cannot guarantee your success or income level, and we are not responsible for any of your actions.

Thanks again for listening to the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, building internet businesses one night at a time. Have a great day.

Hey there;

The other day I sent an email out to my list that announced a discount (expiring July 10th) on Jon Leger's linking products (1-Way-Links, 3-Way-Links, and My-Way-Links). That mailer generated a ton of questions about how the products worked and how they were different. I figured that the best way to answer those questions was with a tutorial video.

I hope you enjoy the video.  Please feel free to leave additional comments and questions below.

(Also, I have copied some key parts of the mailer below the video for your reference).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kkoPfpDHkM

YouTube Link in HD:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kkoPfpDHkM

Here is the text from the email that generated :

Hey Mark;

I hope you are having a great summer. It is super hot here in
Texas, but we are having lots of fun in the sun. Well, I'm working
inside with the air conditioning on "full blast," but my family is
having fun.

So, here is the deal...

I was not sure if I should send this message, because I personally
get tired of promotion after promotion coming to my inbox from
people I hardly know pimping products that they have never even
seen. It drives me crazy.

That's why you don't see many promotions from me. And when you
see them, they are almost always products I actually use myself.

So, why this email?

I wanted to let you know about a deal that was just announced about
an hour ago that is only available until July 10.

As you know, I am a fan of Jon Leger's link building products. In
fact, I am a paying subscriber to all three of his flagship products
(1-Way-Links, 3-Way-Links, and My-Way-Links).

That's right -- I actually pay for all three out of my own pocket.
I really believe in those tools (and in Jon).

I use all three products together to rank for keywords in Google.
They are designed to complement each other, and work great together.

It's one of those "whole is greater than the sum of the parts" things.

So, what's the catch?

The problem is, these products are not cheap. In my opinion, they
are totally worth the money (that is why I pay for them), but
that does not mean that they are cheap.

Sure, people might tell you that "these tools can pay for
themselves" -- but that doesn't really help all that much when
you are getting started. They still cost you real money.

Jon understands this issue, and is offering the following three-part
deal (note that part 2 expires on July 10th):

1. Jon is now offering a $7 one-month trial for each his links
products. That means you can get in and kick the tires for $7.
This does not expire (as far as I know).

2. UNTIL JULY 10, Jon is offering all three networks for the
price of two. If you subscribe to 1-Way-Links, 3-Way-Links,
and My-Way-Links you only have to pay for two subscriptions.

3. Jon has given me a "discount link" for the 3-Way-Links product
that will save you $120 per year. You don't get the $7 first month
deal, but you get a $10/month discount on 3-Way-Links. It is much
cheaper in the long run -- but it is your choice.

As long as you remain a paying member the two of the networks that
you are paying for, you don't pay for the third one.

The bottom line --

Mark, I honestly think this is a great deal. Like I
said, I use and pay for these myself -- that is about as honest
an opinion as anyone can offer.

Here are the links you need to sign up and give it a try.

1-Way-Links -- Massive way links to any URL
http://www.masonworld.com/recommends/1wl

3-Way-Links -- 250 three way links to each site
$7 deal: http://www.masonworld.com/recommends/3wl
-- or --
$10/month discount: (only available via email)

My-Way-Links -- Links the way you want them
http://www.masonworld.com/recommends/mwl

So, here is my recommendation...

Check it out today, Mark. I can tell you that Jon
offers a rock-solid guarantee, so you have no reason not to
give it a try.

No pressure -- just an honest recommendation. If you need more
details about the deal, just drop me an email.

If you do sign up for two of the networks, send me an email and I
will give you some instructions about how to claim your
"third bonus network."

Have a great day!

Regards,
Mark

Most of you probably saw an email from me this morning regarding ClickBank Cash Secrets.  If you missed it, you can find it here through the magic of Aweber.

Just want to give you some additional comments about the product and upload some screen shots from the download area.

My Quick Notes About ClickBank Cash Secrets

• Bottom line -- I really went through it and there is a massive amount
  of stuff.  I read through a lot of the content and it is solid.
• BTW -- I never promote products without doing at least that much (just
  so you know).
• It is a great resource for someone getting started in affiliate
  marketing.  If you already have affiliate marketing experience, it is
  "OK" but not earthshaking get rich quick for free and with ease stuff.
• There is an action plan -- that will help lots of folks.

Below are 2 screen shots of the DL area, and one of an included presell template.  The HTML presell template that is included is pretty darn good.  Maybe worth the money just for that if you are not good with that sort of thing.

Like every other product out there, whether or not ClickBank Cash Secretsis right for you depends on where you are personally in your IM education/journey.

Hope this help,

Mark

As I have mentioned before, I get my graphics from one of the greatest graphics outfits on the net.  Recently, these guys came out with a product that I was really excited about, PL Secrets.   As is my normal approach, I did not want to promote it without a review.

I liked the product so much that I decided to promote it on my blog, send it to my mailing list, negotiate some special pricing for my readers, and add a bonus if you buy through my affiliate link.   The bottom line is that I love it, and I think you will love it too.

If you just cannot wait, go check it out now (time to take advantage of the deep discount is limited -- for real).  This is not a marketing thing -- I really negotiated a special 48-hour deal for you.   More on this later.

Two Internet Marketing Truths

There are about seven or eight things that I think are fundamentally true in Internet Marketing -- but for now, let me tell you about two of them.

1.  You need your own products. Why?  The reason is simple.  You can multiply your earnings by putting your products up on ClickBank or PayDotCom and leverage the power of affiliates.   Affiliates drive traffic for you, and with a good product, you can have hundreds of affiliates that are thrilled to promote for you.

When I say this, I always hear the same objection:  But Mark, I don't know how to create a product.  I don't have anything to say.  I'm not worthy.  You know the drill.   PL Secrets solves this problem for you by providing you with excellent PLR products each month.

2.  Landing page quality is critical. You need great landing pages with great copy for your products.  Professional graphics are a must.

To this, I usually here the refrain -- but Mark, great graphics are expensive.  That is actually true -- I have paid a lot of money for graphics.  But the results always pay for themselves.  PL Secrets solves this problem for you by providing you the most incredibly excellent PLR landing pages that I have ever seen.  You must see these graphics to believe them.

The Bottom Line

PL Secrets provides you with excellent products each and every month.  You can modify them, put your name on them, sell them, and keep the profits.  All the profits.

I personally reviewed the products from Month 1 and Month 2, and I was blown away. The month one products are already gone (the limited distribution protects their value for members), but there are some killer bonuses in month 2). What you see now on the site are the month 2 products. Those are the products that you get if you sign up today. And then of course, you get the bonus for month two and then products for the following months. Every month, you can deploy new products.

Here is the deal

1. Until about Midnight on Saturday (about 48 hours from now), you can join PL Secrets at the Earlybird Pricing.  As far as I know, this is one of the very few places you can find that price.  I know one other guy that was able to get this deal for his readers, and he is almost sold out of his 25 copies. And, after about midnight EST or so on Saturday, my special price will be gone.
2. There are only 25 slots at the Earlybird Pricing for my readers.  No kidding.  I was lucky to get this deal for you at all, and I was only able to negotiate 25 spots.  Again, they are trying to limit the numbers to protect the value. They are only letting me have 25 (dang it).
3. Two killer bonuses inside. Be sure to check out the bottom of the sale page.  My favorite (especially for new people) is the training center.  This is one of the things that I insisted on on prior to promoting.
4. One killer MRR Bonus direct from me. The 1st month's products are no longer available, but I have gotten special permission to give away Master Resale Rights to AdWords Cash Mountain - complete with everything you need for your website.  This bonus is worth the first month's price alone. Just sign up through my link and email me your receipt and I will send you a link.

That is about it.

On thing that makes me feel good about this sort of promotion is the 100% absolute money back guarantee.  Be sure and check that out at the bottom of the PL Secrets sales letter. There is no risk.

This is one of the best products that I have seen this year.  If you have ever wanted to sell your own products -- this is the way to get started.

Do not hesitate to drop me a line if you have any questions.
Thanks,
Mark

I was reading Andrew Hansen's blog last night and he published this:

For those of you who don’t know - Lebron James is the 24 year old, widely accepted as the best basketball player in the world.

Not only that, but if you contemplate the following quote from him, he might even help you make more money online; not to mention dominating life in general.

This is an excerpt from an interview with him I was reading earlier:

Q: Who’s the best defender on the league on you?
Lebron: Myself
Q: No, the best defender against you?
Lebron: I’m the only guy who can stop me.

Here was my reply:

Andrew;

I think this is right on the money (so to speak).

When it come to making money online, most people stop themselves. They get started and they try stuff that will eventually work, but they quit too soon. I’ll bet you see a lot of this with Firepow. People sign up, follow your blueprint, but quit after they don’t see $1M in their PayPal account in the first week.

The thing that most people don’t realize about making money online is that you have to work consistently and follow a good system to get results. Firepow is one such system, and there are other good ones out there.

The bottom line in life and in the make money online business is that you are the only person that decides your own success or failure.

Regards,
Mark

Do you agree?  What is the biggest barrier for you (I am assuming that you have not quit if you are still reading my blog?

Thanks,
Mark

I really like Colleen Slater.  As many of you know, Colleen is the author of an eBook that I recommend called Blog Inferno.  Colleen is a "super affiliate,"  and her eBook is a step-by-step guide building a affiliate empire part time.  One of the things that I like about Colleen is that she builds her internet business part time.  She has a serious day job (like me), so I really identify with her.  I also like the fact that she is a big fan of Firepow, which is another product that I believe in.

Really Weird Promotion

Colleen's list is one of the few lists that I subscribe to.  Well, actually, I subscribe to many lists, but her emails are some of the few that I actually look at.   Anyway, the other day she sent me this weird email promotion about a $5 eBook.  The email was from Colleen, so honestly, I just bought it sight unseen.

It Was The Weirdest Sales Page I Had Ever Seen

The eBook is called Secret Associated Wealth, and it is all about how this guy is making $10,000/month using sales pages that tie in his products to big Hollywood media things like Star Wars and Indiana Jones, etc.  It is by far the strangest sales page that I have ever seen.  You need to check out the video on the sales page. Totally weird.

Whether or not you need this product is up to you and where you are in your business.  If you are writing some sales letters or landing pages, then you may want to take a look.

The case studies are actually quite good, and the product is well worth the $5.  Of course, $5 is not a very high hurdle, and the low price really confuses me.  Especially since the product comes with the 4 case study videos and the eBook content is solid.

On thing that is interesting is that this guy went from zero dollars in April of 2007 to $10,000 per month in just over a year.

The bottom line of the eBook is that presentation graphics are really important in marketing materials, and there are really cool ways you can leverage mainstream mind share that already exists around HollyWood products like Star Wars.

Even if you don't purchase the eBook, I'd love to know what you think about that weird sales page.  Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

I'm not done for the year yet, but I thought I might share my thoughts on progress at MasonWorld for 2008 with you now (before I get stuffed with egg nog and fudge.)

It's hard for me to believe that it was just over a year ago that I really got serious about Internet Marketing as a night-time hobby, prompted by a love for computer technology and a 5 minute segment on NBC's Today Show.  A lot of water has gone under the bridge since November of 2007, and I am proud to count myself as one of the small percentage of Internet Marketer that have not tried, failed, and quit.

In Internet Marketing, Failure Is Progress

Now, don't get me wrong.  I have failed over and over again.  I have lost money toying with PPC (that is a rite of passage, I think), I have posted blog posts that I later decided to take down, I have launched products that did not do very well, and I have spent time on lots of things that did not pan out.  I even launched MasonWorld.com on the "wrong blogging platform" and had to migrate to WordPress.

But learning and progress require a certain amount of failure (ask Edison).  So, one thing that I plan to do in 2009 is actually "fail faster."  Get out there, try stuff, and move on (keeping the stuff that works).

I also spent lots of time and money reading Internet Marketing stuff.  I have a sub-directory on my hard drive in my "Internet Marketing" directory that is titled "Courses and eBooks."  As of this writing, that folder has 474 files (91 folders) containing 4.96 GB of Internet Marketing eBooks, audio and video that I have downloaded for free or purchased.  Amazing.

With Failure Comes Success

Most important to me, I have learned a ton about Internet Marketing.  I am really not interested in working on things that don't allow me to learn.  The cool thing about Internet Marketing is that it is a nice mix of technology, marketing, small business, and people skills.  Lots of varitey.

Of course, I have had more than my fair share of successes.  I also have some profitable niche AdSesne sites, MasonWorld.com is growing, I have some affiliate products that are making money, I released a couple of profitable products, and I have a nice start on an email list.

My tip for you in 2009:  Take action and don't be afraid to fail.  The only path to success is through action.  With action comes risk.  So, take some risk in 2009 -- you'll like the results.

So, The Bottom Line Is Thanks!

Most of all, I have been able to make some great friends on line (you know who you are), who have helped me get up to speed.   And, I have a great following of MasonWorld.com regular readers.  I really appreciate those relationships -- so thanks to all of you.

I hope you have a great Holiday Season and get everything that you wish for in life in 2009.

Best regards,

Mark

"Tired Of Having Tools But No System...

Or

A Great System But Terrible Tools?

Have I Got A Deal For You."

Look, I am going to make this really simple with no fluff.  I get very excited when I am able to talk about products that I believe in.

Today I am going to put two tools together just for you that work better together than a lever and a fulcrum.  With these two tools, you will literally be able to move the world.

Firepow -- The Tool

As you know, I believe in Firepow, and that is why I began by offering a Firepow discount coupon in October. Just last week I spoke with Andrew by email and negotiated an even better $360 Firepow discount for MasonWorld readers.  That is really a great deal all by itself, because Firepow is an amazing tool.

But at the end of the day, it is just a tool.  It's an amazing tool, but it is just a tool.  If you do nothing with it, it makes you no money.

You need a system.

The challenge is, Firepow is not cheap.  I did not want to recommend it to you unless I could be sure that you could use it to make money online.  While I have checked it out thoroughly and used it and have been very impressed with it, I have not used it enough to show you hard evidence of the profit potential.

Until now.  Until I met Colleen.

Blog Inferno -- The System

Then the other day, Colleen Slater hit me with Blog Inferno.  It is basically the ultimate success manual for Firepow.  The main product is a 140 page eBook - a step-by-step guide.  I read it from cover to cover and could not put it down.

Colleen is making $140,000 a year using Firepow, and she describes everything in her system in one eBook.  Not only that, she gives you everything you need to be successful in the form of  12 (count 'em twelve) bonuses.  You even get task lists and mind maps.  Everything you need to duplicate her success.

It took me 20 minutes just to download all the stuff she includes with the package.

If ever there was a system to follow to make money online, this is the one.  It's all there.

The cool thing about Colleen's Blog Inferno system is that Firepow is not required.  In fact, Colleen was already making money online without Firepow.  Using Firepow improved her profits dramatically.

That was the proof I needed.   Now for the deal that I have set up for you.

The Ultimate Firepow Blog Inferno Deal

OK -- here is the deal.  It is really simple.  I really believe that if you want to make money online with niche marketing, you can do it with Firepow and Blog Inferno together.  And, to prove it to you, I am willing to put my money where my mouth is.

If you buy these products through my affiliate link according to the terms below, I will reimburse you for your copy of Blog Inferno subject to the terms below.

That's right, I will pay for your copy of  Blog Inferno.

Here is the deal:

1.  You read and understand the Firepow sales page, especially the 60 day guarantee offered by Andrew.

2.  You sign up for Firepow under my affiliate link (required) and get the $360 discount (coupon code mason).  I recommend that you clear your cookies first and then confirm this with me by email after your purchase.  You must purchase through my affiliate link to qualify.

3.  You buy Blog Inferno through my affiliate link (required).  I recommend that you confirm this with me by email after your purchase.  You must purchase through my affiliate link to qualify.

4.  I will email you confirming your eligibility for this offer based on confirming your purchases.

5.  61 Days later, if you have not refunded either of the 2 products, I will send you $47 rebate via Paypal payment to cover the cost of Blog Inferno.

Of course, if you are not completely satisfied with either product, you can exercise your right to a refund.  If you do that, of course our deal is off (makes sense).

The Bottom Line:

If you buy Firepow though my affiliate link, I make a little money (you knew that).  It's really that simple.  If you make money with Firepow, you stay subscribed, and I make a little more money.  Not rocket science.

So, it is in both of our best interests for you to make money with Firepow.  The best way to do that is with Collene's Blog Inferno -- so I am giving that to you as described above.

Steven Covey calls this "Win-Win."

So, What In The World Are You Wating For?

Holler if you have questions.

Regards,

Mark

This offer is currently available (last updated 12/15/08).

This offer may expire any time without notice.

Disclaimer:  Just like with any business, whether or not you make money depends on many factors, including your work ethic and skill.  Because of that, I cannot guarentee that you will make money with Firepow or any other online tool.  If you accept this offer, you agree not to hold Mark Mason or MasonWorld.com responsible for any outcomes or consequences of your decisions.

It's Wednesday, and you know what that means. It's time for another weekly Internet Business Fortune Cookie.

If you Google for "Chinese Food Restaurant" in my town (without the quotes), Pei Wei Asian diner is at the top of the list. So, I ate there this week. Pei Wei makes what I call "Americanized" Chinese food. Actually, they have Chinese, Korean, Thai, Japanese and other Asian influences present in their menu. It's not really authentic, but the quality is good.

I had their Lemon Pepper Chicken -- extra spicy -- and brown rice. It was pretty good. The fortune was good too.

"Life Always Gets Harder Near The Summit"

I have been trying (although not all that hard yet) to get a first position ranking in Google for "article directory list" (without the quotes) for my article directory list page. (Feel free to help me by linking to that page with the text "article directory list").

This is not a "perfect SEO situation" because I am targeting multiple phrases with that page.  However, it was easy to get to the 11th spot (first listing on page 2), and I am currently somewhere in the middle of page one as of this writing.

So, what will it take to get to position one on page one?  Check out this analysis from Market Samurai for my keyword phrase (you can click on the image to get a better view):

As you can see, Market Samurai is showing the top ten pages for the target keyword, and where they are showing SEO strengths.  Red is hard to attack (page is doing a good job) and green is easy to attack.  You can see that my page in the fourth position (varies from day to day) has one red item -- DA (masonworld.com has been around for a while).  I have 305 backlinks to my page and 7490 to my domain, and that is pretty good -- yellow.  You can see that the competition that is ranking above me has many more domain backlinks and good domain age.

What is a little frustrating is that my page tags are pretty well optimized (yellow) for the keywords that I am targeting, but a couple of sites above me are not optimized at all for "article directory list".

The bottom line is, sometimes it is hard to get to the top position for a keyword in Google, and sometimes it is even harder to understand why.

As the cookie says, Life Always Gets Harder Near The Summit.

Have a great day.
Mark

Photo credit: Uploaded on July 17, 2006 by headcase

It's Wednesday, and you know what that means. It's time for another weekly Internet Business Fortune Cookie.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I am actually at my parents home in Houston, TX at this very moment. I have a lot to be thankful for -- so much so that it is hard to make a list. I was thinking about that today and I suddenly realized that I have never had any turkey-based Chinese Food. Why is that?

A quick trip to Google to search for "turkey Chinese food" reveals information about Chinese food in the country of Turkey, but little information about Chinese food containing turkey. Naturally, my next thought was to dominate the "turkey Chinese food" niche, but I don't see any AdSense ads on that page. Guess I'll hold off on that site for the time being.

This week The Cookie has come out on the side of the value of Joint Ventures in Internet Marketing.

Hear The Cookie:

"Take a trip with a friend."

Of course, the fortune cookie is obviously referring to the fact that some of the most successful Internet businesses these days rely on joint ventures. Joint Ventures (or JVs as they are called) are business arrangements where two or more parties get together to deliver a product and share the profits.

Why Do Joint Ventures?

The best reason to do a joint venture is to leverage unique talents of individuals. Let's say you know how to write killer code, but you are not sure what to write. Another guy has a great idea but neither one of you has any marketing savvy. The two of you team up and find a marketing guru with a list of 100,000 hungry buyers. That's a joint venture. You share the profits according to some prearranged split.

The awesome thing about JVs is that you can often achieve something much greater than the sum of the contributions by leveraging each others talents. That can mean more profit all of the participants.

Three Tips For A Successful Joint Venture

Here are three things to keep in mind when doing a JV.

• Communicate clearly.  Everything from financial arrangements to schedule and quality expectations.  Misunderstands and arguments are a leading cause of JV failure and disappointment.
• Know the law.  I am not a lawyer, and I do not play one on TV.  However, I do know that you need to be very careful to understand the difference between a Joint Venture, a partnership and other business arrangements.  If you do it wrong, you could be held liable for goofy stuff that your JV partners do without your permission.  Consult your attorney.
• Be honest and fair.   Treat your JV partners the way you want to be treated.  Expect a long-term business relationship, and behave accordingly.  Care what they think, and listen to what they have to say.

Bottom line as always is listen to the cookie.  A JV can be a great way to jump-start your business.

Have a great day.
Mark

Be sure and check out our previous Internet Business Fortune Cookies.

Photo credit: Uploaded on July 17, 2006 by headcase

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.

Today, I show an example of how to use Master Resale Rights content and the $7 Secrets Script to build your list.  You can see the offer for PreSelling Secrets here.  Read on to learn more.

On Thursday, I talked about the importance of lists, and how I was rethinking my entire list strategy thanks to Josh Spaulding's New Age Email Marketing Report.  This caused me to start work on an experiment with $7 Secrets (which I described Saturday). Committing to a $7 secrets approach meant that I needed a new eBook to sell -- something that people would really want that was worth a lot more than $7.  Well, I went ahead and wrote one that was appropriate for this experiment. It's all about how to write your first eBook, and I am launching the eBook (called "First eBook Now!" tomorrow.  Stay tuned and you will be among the first to know when it goes live (hint -- around noon CST Tuesday).

But I Don't Want To Write An eBook

One thing that I hear from time to time from people is that they "can't write an eBook" or "don't want to write and eBook."  Now I personally think that everyone has at least one great eBook in them, especially if they already have a website full of content that they can draw inspiration from or perhaps even re-purpose.

I'll admit, however, if you have never written an eBook before it can be a little intimidating at first.  Based on that revelation, I will be releasing my own $7 eBook tomorrow about how to write your first eBook.  I think it will help get you over the hump.

Of course, there are other options apart from writing your own eBook.  You can purchase Private Label Rights content (discussed in my post on Friday where I give away some Weightloss PLR) and put that content together into an eBook.  Sometimes, you can find entire PLR eBooks that you can purchase and put your name on.  Or you can hire a ghostwriter.  Still another option is that you can purchase Master Resale Rights to a eBook and sell that.

Using Master Resale Rights With $7 Secrets

If you are not familiar with Master Resale Rights (MRR), you should know that when you purchase MRR with an eBook, you usually get permission to resell the eBook and keep all of the profit.  Sometimes, the MRR package even comes with a sales page and graphics that you can use.  These restrictions can vary from package to package, and you should always check before you make your purchase.

Honestly, I don't usually use MRR content for anything.  However, in support of this blog post I decided to find some quality content so I could demonstrate the idea for you.  I happen to own Master Resale Rights to Johnathan Leger's Preselling Secrets - an excellent eBook that my audience should value.  Since it is one of Jon's books, it happens to be set up for use with $7 Secrets - so it was really easy for me to set up.  You can see PreSelling Secrets here.

In fact, you can even buy the Master Resale Rights to PreSelling Secrets in a one time offer that is available to you after you buy the report.  That means that if you buy the Master Resale Rights you can use Preselling Secrets for your own $7 Secrets experiment (while you are writing your own eBook).

The Bottom Line

There is no substitute for having your own product.  But in certain situations, it can make sense to find quality MRR products that people will value and promote them using $7 Secrets.

Regards,
Mark

I hope you survived Halloween. I simply cannot believe it is November. Where did the year go?

Over the last couple of days, I have been on a posting rampage about the importance of lists in Internet marketing.  Yesterday, I told you about how you could build your list buy giving stuff away.  This works well, but fills your list with "freebie seekers."  Wouldn't it be better to have a list full of people who had already trusted you enough to give you money?

The Magic of $7 Secrets

What seems like a long time ago (2007), I remember hearing about Jonathan Leger's magical $7 Secrets report (complete with scripts).  There was a lot of buzz about it at the time.  But back then, I had never worked with Jon Leger, so I was not sure if I could trust him.  After all, I did not know him at all. I sort of forgot all about $7 Secrets.

Since that time, I have come to know Jon as a trustworthy Internet Marketer (and a really smart guy).  I read his blog, exchange email with him, interact with him on forums, purchase many of his products, etc.  I've even recommended some of his stuff (like IAW Pro) to my readers.  Bottom line, Jon is a good guy who works very hard and has lots of good ideas.

I was reminded about $7 Secrets when my friend,  Internet Marketing Coach Josh Spaulding, told me he was writing some $7 reports.  That got me interested in Leger's 7$ secrets again.  (Note that since then, Jon sold the product to Don, who is doing a great job supporting it).

What is Seven Dollar Secrets?

Simply put, the $7 secrets approach takes a high value item (a small eBook) and offers it for sale at a price that is way below the percieved value.  $7 is typically used as a sales price because it is widely reported that prices that end in "7" convert better on the internet.

The key piece of the $7 secrets approach is the viral marketing part.  The $7 script that comes with the $7 secrets report is set up so that people can make money selling the report that they just purchased -- and they can do it instantly.  By simply adding their paypal address to the URL for the product, new affiliates can instantly make 100% commission on sales.

The checkout part of the script even has a "tell a friend" area where people can make commissions as they complete their purchase by sending a promotional email directly to their friends.  Pretty slick.

The $7 script also allows you to make money on the back end of your sale by supporting "One Time Offers" for higher priced products.

So Why Offer 100% Commission?

If you are selling an eBook with the $7 Script, you are doing it because you are wanting to collect emails.  The script is set up to collect emails once the purchase has been made.  You don't care about the $7 -- you want the email.  So, if someone is willing to promote your report to their list, you will happily trade them the $7 commission for a chance to get the prospect email.  It is as simple as that.

Affiliates love it because it is usually easy for someone to decide to spend $7, especially if the content is great.

My $7 Report

The best value that I have seen lately for $7 comes from Josh Spaulding.  He recently released his New Age Email Marketing report under the $7 Secrets script.  You can go check it out to see what a great $7 Secrets promotion looks like.

My $7 report will be coming out on Tuesday, so stay tuned.   In the mean time, I recommend that you seriously consider getting yourself a copy of $7 Secrets (complete with the script) for $7 and writing your own eBook.

Regards,

Mark

One thing I know for sure about Google search engine rankings is that it is just about impossible to know anything for sure about Google search engine rankings.   Sometimes, it's good to know what you don't know.

How Google decides what websites appear on the front page for any particular search term is like the formula for Coke or the recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken -- it's a secret.  We know Coke has caramel in it, but the exact recipe is classified.  The difference between Coke and Google is that the formula for Coke never changes (they tried that once -- what a disaster).  In fact, the formula for Google SERPs is changing periodically as Google works to improve the experience for end users.

Of course, what you hear all the time on blogs just like this one are "stories" about what people did on their web site for their keywords that resulted in page one rankings.  I call this anecdotal evidence. It's usually very interesting, but it is almost never conclusive.  Just because someone got a page one ranking by including their keywords in the footer of their pages in flashing pink with a blue background, does not mean that you will get the same result.

So, let me tell you an anecdote about Google page rank.

Backlinks Do Seem To Be Important

However, some themes keep coming out.  For example, we are pretty sure that Google pays attention to backlinks when determining ranking.  We believe this for at least four reasons:

• The Google search engine was originally called "BackRub" (a reference to the use of backlinks in their algorithm).
• Google Page Rank patents discuss backlinks
• Matt Cutts talks about certain backlinks being important in various blog posts and forums
• We see anecdotal evidence of the importance of backlinks

So it's that last point that I want to talk about today.  I have some anecdotal evidence I want to share.

My PR2 Website

Last January I created a site for my wife called PalsLoft.com.  My wife was going to blog about our new baby and review various baby products.  I got the site up with some bad graphics and posted two sample affilaite landing pages complete with eBay affiliate links and some text.  The home page (where the weekly blog posts were going to live) was basically empty.

Note -- I plan to work on this site some soon, so by the time you read this, it may have changed.  Here is a screen shot of what the site looked line for about nine months between February and October 2008.

To get the site going, I submitted the URL to a directory link submission service.  This particular service submitted links to "brand new directories" as they were announced in Digital Point Forums.   So the backlinks that were created from this service were pretty crummy.  They came from link directories (bad) that had no authority (worse) and were brand spankin' new (terrible).  Basically, they were junk links.

After about a month of that, I forgot about the site.  I ended up with about 70 backlinks.  I literally never touched the site after January of 2008.   Earlier this month, I checked the site and found that the empty home page was PR2 (toolbar PR), and both of the two pages linked from the home page are PR1.  Go figure.  Here is a site that has little real content and Google is ranking it as PR2.  So much for content is King.

So What?  Who Cares About A Toolbar PR2 Ranking

So, what is that worth?  Who cares about a toolbar PR2 site with no content?  Well, as I stated before, it is only anecdotal evidence.  But, it suggests that tools like Firepow, 1WayLinks and 3WayLinks that provide quality links might be worth the investment -- at least in terms of getting page rank.  The problem is, page rank does not convert directly to sales.  Traffic converts to sales.  Is this page rank converting?

Well, I am embarrassed to say that I never finished adding Google Analytics to the site, or properly set up the Commission Junction ID to track clicks and sales.  But, the AWStats seem to suggest that there is some traffic there, and that it has been growing over time.

The Bottom Line on Backlinks

The bottom line -- Build Backlinks.  But you knew that already.  If you are working on sites, your promotion strategy needs to include a backlink plan.   Based on this traffic data, I conclude that tools like Firepow, 1WayLinks and 3WayLinks that provide backlinks links might be worth the investment -- but you need to evaluate this for yourself on your own site.  As I mentioned before, the above evidence is anecdotal, and your mileage may vary.

I am a little behind on my commitment to blog all week about Firepow, but don't worry.  I will get all of the information out there and answer all of your questions -- even if it stretches into the weekend.

To be completely honest with you, the first time that I saw Firepow, I wondered what in the world could be worth $100/month or more a month.  I had a hard time getting throught the long sales letter.  And, I don't like to buy software with recurring cost, and I really don't like to spend $100/month.   So my initial reaction was "Yikes."

Just to be clear, at the time of this writing, Firepow costs $147/month for the Premium membership and $117/month for the basic membership.  I have arranged a Firepow discount with Andrew for my readers that saves you $25/month.  So, when I say "$100/month or more, know the cost depends on the discount and what offer you pick.

Whether or not Firepow is worth the cost is a personal question. Anyone who tells you differently is just trying to sell you something.  It's all about return on investment (ROI).  If you invest $100/month in Firepow, will you get back more than $100 in savings or profit?   It really is that simple.  Don't be confused by all of the other crap out there.  You should only buy Firepow if you think it will make you money (good ROI).

In order to understand the ROI, you need to first understand what Firepow is.

From my point of view, Firepow is a tool targeted at people that want to create and manage "lots" of niche websites.  Whether "lots" is 5 or 50 or 500 is a question we will explore later.  It is certainly possible to make use of Firepow on a single authority site, but my feeling is that the best use of Firepow is across multiple niche blogs.

To make Firepow worth the money, you need to create 5 blogs that make at least $20 a month.  Or, ten blogs that make $10/month.  Or, 20 blogs that make $5/month.  You get the idea.  The cool thing is that creating 20 blogs with Firepow that actually get traffic looks amazingly easy.

Firepow Is Three Things (at Least)

From my point of view, Firepow is web-based software for creating and managing blogs, creating content, and promoting those blogs.

• Creating and managing blogs: The first thing that you do when you log into Firepow is create a blog.  Firepow is based on WordPress.   Enter some key information (URL, FTP information, Blog title, and some keywords), pick a theme, pick some plugins, and click "create".  A new blog is created instantly.  It takes me hours to set up a blog, download the software for themes and plugins and get everything up and running (including AdSense) for a new blog.   Firepow does this in 5 minutes (or less).  This is the ultimate in "one click setup" because it includes far more than just the initial install of WordPress.  There are tons of plugins (some unique to Firepow) and lots of cool options.  But suffice it to say that you can get a fully featured blog up and running in minutes.
• Creating content: One of the critical items that a new blog owner faces is getting some initial content out there.  For this problem, Firepow offers several unique and creative solutions.  You can "automatically" republish content from Article Directories, you can get content from RSS, and you can create your own blog posts using "cut and paste tools" from various sources.  Pretty slick.  You can create your posts right in the Firepow interface without ever logging into WordPress."
• Promotion: Ranking in the search engines is the key to organic traffic, and backlinks are a key to ranking.  The Firepow premium network includes access to the Firepow "blog network."  I will be covering this in a future post, but know for now that this provides backlinks in a way that is "similar" to article marketing (but you have much more control over the content and links).  You can also automatically promote your blogs via RSS and social networks.  This all looks really powerful to me.

There are some other really cool features like task plans that help you organize and manage your blogs and an amazing support forum.   More on those things in a later post.

The Bottom Line On Firepow

So, that is my personal opinion on what Firepow is.  To summarize, Firepow is software that allows you to rapidly create, manage, populate and promote niche WordPress blogs.

Over the next few days I will be getting more into what Firepow can do and why I think it is cool.

What are your questions about Firepow?  Let's make sure that we get all of them answered.

Greetings!

Except for a brief time when I went shopping with my two daughters this weekend, I have been knee-deep in Firepow doing an in-depth evaluation (as promised). Right now my plan is to blog about it several times over the next week. I have gotten permission from Andrew Hansen (the creator of Firepow) to include some screen shots from deep inside the software -- so stay tuned. Bottom line is that I am really impressed with Firepow. It's not perfect, but you can see perfect from there -- a comment that I will explain in detail all next week. I hope that when I am done with you next week you will be able to tell if Firepow is for you without even reading the sales page.

Why Am I Telling You This?

Like I said, I am busy with Firepow, but I got interrupted today.

Josh Spaulding just sent over a pre-release copy his new eBook product. He is launching it Monday, and it is called New Age Email Marketing.

Now, on Monday, I will be talking about Firepow, and will not be able to help Josh promote his report (which is killer -- read on). So, Josh gave me special permission to let my readers know tonight, ahead of the launch.  The ink is not even dry on the sales page.

You need to know something -- Josh is one of the very few people that I both trust and respect in this business. I read the report (26 pages), and I was amazed. The report is about exactly how Josh manages his very profitable email campaign. It's all the details you need to build and make money from a list, even if you are a beginner.

The crazy thing is, it is only $7

(with a money-back guarantee, no less).

Why Is Josh Doing This?

Well, he tells you right in the sales letter. He has created an incredibly valuable report and it selling it at a really low price as a way to grow his list. He explains all of this in the report -- and tells you how to duplicate his approach.

So, if you are interested in making money from your email list (even if you don't have one yet), I recommend this report unconditionally. Josh is a great guy. He shoots straight, and will help you make money online.

Get New Age Email Marketing for $7 today.

You will be glad you did.

OK -- so now I sound like that reverse funnel guy or Jeffery Lant. After all, the great promise of something for nothing is what fuels a lot of the scam artists out there. I am not really interested in talking about "something for nothing." Rather, I want to do some math. Those that know me know that I am an engineer. I do more math before breakfast than most people do all day. So, let's do some AdSense math.

$5000 A Month Is Really Cool

Honestly, I just picked that number because it sounds cool.  Who wouldn't want an extra $5000 per month?  I mean, if I told you that you could make $5000 a month working only an hour a day, would you do it?  Well, that is what I am going to tell you.  Of course, there are no guarantees.  Your ability to make money on the internet has to do with your abilities and your personal situation.  I am not able to promise that you will make money online.  You mileage may vary.  Not valid in Nevada.  You get the idea.

I'll also tell you that the hard part is the traffic.  You can trade off click through rate for traffic, so if you think my traffic assumptions are too high, you should know that my CTR is low.  If you assume a higher CTR you can use less traffic.  You can also use less traffic if you assume higher earnings per click (EPC).

I've been thinking about this because I have been looking at FirePow (which is even cooler than I imagined).  It is so easy to make sites with that system, you can easily imagine making a ton of them.  FirePow also has some automatic traffic stuff -- so it looks really appealing for the creation of AdSense Sites.

Let's Do Some Math About Making Money Online

The vision is about passive income.  By passive income, I specifically mean websites that are set up for generating income via AdSense revenue.  As you probably know, AdSense are those little ads that show up on sites and say "Ads by Google".  If you own a site with those ads and visitors click them, you get paid.  How much you get paid depends on the following factors.

• How many sites do you have? For the purpose of this analysis, I am assuming that you have 30 sites.  I choose 30 because I will recommend that you get to the point where you can work on one site per day each day of the month for about an hour.  So, for site #13, you will work on it for about an hour on the 13th of every month posting new content, doing promotion, etc.  You may want to outsource the generation of 4 or 5 articles per month per site so you can post them on that day.  Of course, you'll probably want to work more at first to set the sites up.  I am currently working in October to get my 30 sites set up.  But once they are set up, you should be able to "invest" 1 hour a day to continuously improve the sites.  This is really cool for people that have a "day job" like me.
• How many people will search for the terms that your site is ranking for each day? I am going to assume that you have set up your sites to optimize around 5 or so keyword phrases, and that those phrases have a total search volume of about 1500 searches per day.  That's 1500 people searching for your keywords, not 1500 people visiting your site.  Maybe your site is targeting 5 keywords with 300 daily searches each.  This is pretty conservative.
• How many of the people that search will click on your link? I am assuming that you will choose keywords and do search engine optimization that will allow you to rank on the first page of Google for each of your keywords.  If you can get in the first 5-6 listings and you write a great page description for page, you should be able to capture 10-15% of that search traffic.  If you are in the #1 position, you might get as much as 40% of the traffic.  For this analysis, we will assume that you only capture 6% of the search traffic.  This will get you about 90 visitors per day.
• How much traffic can you get from Article Marketing? I am personally a fan of article marketing.  It works well with AdSense because it complements organic traffic and provides backlinks which improve search engine performance.  For this analysis, I am assuming that you can get 10 visitors a day from article marketing from 4 or 5 articles published to 15 directories each.  If you want to know more about Article Marketing, check out my blog post on that topic.
• Just 100 visitors total per day. So, I am assuming that you can create a 5 or 6 page site that can get 100 visitors per day using search engines and article marketing (social media traffic not included).  Think you can do that?  I think you can.
• How many people will click your ads? I have assumed for this analysis that 8 out of every 100 visitors that visit your site will click an ad.  For an AdSense site, that would be pathetic.  I have see conversions using my Niche AdSense Themes for WordPress between %10 and %20 (your mileage may vary).
• How much will clicks pay? For this analysis, I have assumed that clicks only pay a measly $0.55 per click.  That is terrible.  You can easily find higher paying niches on SpyFu.com.  When I look at SpyFu, I assume that I can get 20% of the average that the report.  So, for "home mortgage" where the average is around $10.00, I would expect to get about $2.00 per click.  That is just an estimate, but $0.55 is a very conservative number in this game if you are careful about keyword selection.

So, the bottom line is that if you do some search engine and article marketing so that you get 100 visitors per day, you can get 8 AdSense clicks.  Those 8 clicks could be worth $5.60 for each site that you have.  If you have 30 sites, you can make $168/day or about $5000 per month.

30 sites not the right number for you?  Here are the numbers for 1, 10, 20, 30 and 50 sites.

Once you are up and running, you can maintain the rankings an traffic with a little content and link building each month -- maybe one hour every month.

Don't like AdSense or have a site with traffic but low EPC?  Consider converting that traffic to affiliate sales using something like phpBay.  I am actually doing that with a couple of sites that have a low AdSense EPC.

What do you think?  Can you do it?  I am off to build a couple of these sites in FirePow and see what happens.

Regards,

Mark

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).

A few weeks ago I wrote about the value of your time and how you should consider outsourcing in your online business.  Of course, the ultimate goal of outsourcing should be to create a more profitable company while keeping the owner sane.

I find that many people are afraid of outsourcing.  If you are one of those people (and even if you are not), you may be interested to hear about how to avoid common outsourcing mistakes.  This will make the process go much smoother and keep you from spinning your wheels and getting nowhere.

One of my favorite PLR gurus, Nicole Dean of www.OutsourceWeekly.com says "You must plan your outsourcing wisely. Otherwise, you're simply throwing money into the wind."

Just like anything, outsourcing has its good and bad points.  If you are aware of the potential problems before hand, you dramatically increase your chances of an enjoyable experience.

So, without further delay, here are 5 potential outsourcing mistakes every online business owner should be aware of, in order to avoid making them.

Failure To "Know" Your Contractor

If you ask around, most business owners who outsource will tell you the biggest benefit of doing so is the fact that their assistants work remotely. But that usually means you have never met the person you are working with.  So, the number one problem when it comes to outsourcing is not thoroughly checking out the contractor or company who will be performing the work.  You need to keep in mind that sometimes this independence can work in the "wrong direction" if not taken seriously.

Action: Make it a point to carefully interview the people you are considering working with before assigning a task or project to them. The person or company should be someone you can trust to represent your business.

Failure To Communicate

Whether you are outsourcing tech support, writing, web design or something else, you must keep the lines of communication open.  If you allow your workers to do work for you without communicating your goals and what it is that you need, you will find that they your work will not be done as you'd hoped. Assistants are not mind-readers and do need guidance.

Action: Take some time to make sure that you and the people you outsource to understand your expectations.  This is an important part of making sure that you get what you need.

Failure To Budget

If you want outsourcing to work properly, you'll need to keep a good eye on what you are spending for the work being done. While some projects will require single payments to your assistant, others may involve recurring or retainer payments and you will more than likely have some type of contract or agreement that binds you. Some of your assistants may charge by the hour while others may invoice by project or expect payment based on a commission of some sort.

Action: Take the time to figure out how much money you can afford to spend on certain tasks and budget appropriately.

Failure To Efficiently Use Resources

When you choose to outsource certain tasks, make certain you are using your assistant to their fullest capabilities and not just outsourcing for the sake of outsourcing or splitting up work between two assistants when it makes more sense to have one handle both jobs. Sometimes you can find freelancers who are willing to work on a recurring basis or who will complete larger projects at a reduced rate in order to get and keep your business.

Action: Ask potential contractors if they have room for more than just one or two jobs and don't outsource something just to say that you're on the outsourcing wagon.  Set aggressive goals and have a plan.

Failure To Be The Owner

As the one doing the outsourcing, you need to understand your role. In order for the relationship between business owner and assistant to flourish, you'll want to keep the lines of communication not only open, but clear as well.

Action: Be detailed in what you expect from your help.  Also keep in mind that you are probably not their only client and as much as you would love to have them all to yourself, that probably isn't the case. Be respectful of their time and give feedback on their work. This will help them do a better job and respect your time in return.

The Bottom Line

Making yourself aware of possible problems that often occur in the outsourcing relationship now allows your business to grow by leaps and bounds. Don't be afraid to start your outsourcing journey, especially that you are now better prepared to do so.

If you want to learn more about oursourcing, Jimmy Brown and Nichole Dean have an outsourcing course that you can take.  I have not taken the course mysely, but it comes hightly recommended.  Check it out at www.OutsourceWeekly.com

Several weeks ago I did a review of the Internet Business Mastery Academy and highly recommended new membership site. At that time I mentioned how excited I was about the quality of the content and offered there. I also noted when I wrote that first post that at that time there was no affiliate program (yet).   That is still true -- so you can relax.   I am not trying to sell you anything.  At the time of this writing, I am not making a dime from this post (although I expect there will be an affiliate program later this year, and I definately plan to promote the site).

Lots Of Cool Features

The Academy has several main features. There is a robust members only forum, course content, and a very cool "Rolodex" feature that helps people find recommended solutions and services. The latter feature is sort of like a cross between "Angie's List" and a How-To Guide. You sort of have to see it to appreciate how cool it is.

Anyway, the course material is being added and created over time. There are currently five complete courses available, with the first part of the six course coming starting this week. I thought it would be cool to review the first course here to give you a feel for the flavor of the material inside of Internet Business Mastery Academy. (I am also going to spill the beans about some of the key parts of the course here -- I hope that Sterling and Jay don't kick me out).

Money Ain't Everything

As I have mentioned before, Sterling and Jay are about more than just making money on the internet. They worry about things like lifestyle choices, definite major purpose and fulfillment. Their basic premise is that if you are working on something "just for the money" that you don't really care about doing stuff you don't really like to do, you will not be successful. When they say "successful" they are talking about having the lifestyle of your dreams (money and time to spend it) while enjoying what you do (passion).

Course 1 is all about the foundations and mindsets that that you need to have to be successful in any business (especially a internet entrepreneurship). The course is rich and includes ten audio files as well and some additional supporting material. Some key points from the course are (the following is a summary of content blatantly stolen from Sterling and Jay without permission):    

• Why internet business? What is it about internet business that should make you consider starting your own? There are three pillars to a successful internet business, and Jay and Sterling cover them in some detail. They also outline a road map for internet business success. While the content is too much to repeat here, I can tell you that my favorite recommendation is "take massive action."
• While there are many ways to make money on the internet, information marketing is an important one due to several critical objective business considerations. Sterling and Jay cover the value of information and why selling information can be the ideal internet business.
• Success means being a lifetime learner. The most successful people at the top of their game never stop learning. This is similar to what Covey teaches when he encourages people to "sharpen the saw."
• If you plan to make money and live the lifestyle of your dreams, you may need to reset your thinking about time and money. Your time has value, and you need to recognize that. Some of your preconceptions about time and money may be holding you back. Sterling and Jay discuss how to recognize and deal with that.
• Everyone has fears (sometimes they do not even realize that they have fears). If fears are stopping your from starting your internet business (true in many cases) you need a framework for rationalizing and analyzing those fears. Don't let fears stop you -- most things that you are worried about are not a big deal.

Bottom Line:  Highly Recommended

There is a lot more where that came from -- I am just scratching the surface. The bottom line is that a month into the Academy, I am still a big believer in both the message and the messengers. I strongly recommend Internet Business Mastery Academy and encourage you to join today.

Got a question about Internet Business Mastery Academy? Want an honest answer?  Drop a comment with your question and  I'll give you straight answer.

This is not a promotion.

I figured that lots of you are getting hit by email about this product and might be curious about the details of the offering.  I have always been interested in Pay Per Click, and I use ClickBank for my own product, so this product (which teaches how to make money on ClickBank products using AdWords) really got my attention.  It is the lure of easy money -- except that PPC is not easy.

So, this is not a promotion.  I am not necessarily recommending the product. However, I have looked at the entire thing (I was up really late last night watching all 14 videos) and I think that information might be helpful to someone considering purchasing Commission Blueprint.  If you are interested in this sort of thing, it is totally worth $77.

What Is Commission Blueprint?

This Internet Marketing product is a step-by-step guide that explains a detailed method for making money using AdWords to drive traffic to ClickBank products.  The authors are ClickBank Super Affiliates, and they show lots of evidence that they have been very successful (including a very impressive screen shot from the ClickBank sales report page (shown here).

What you get for your $77 is impressive.  There are 14 videos (4-5 hours total run time), release notes, 3 PDF files, 2 unadvertised bonuses, 4 landing page templates, and slides for all the videos are also provided in PDF.  It is total over delivery.  It is an amazing amount of quality content, and zero fluff.

The videos are good quality.  You have the choice of watching them online or downloading them and watching them offline.  The format is a slide show presentation with a little video camera box showing the speaker.  He is an excellent "speaker/teacher" and the quality of his presentation is very high.

So, for $77 you get a ton of quality content on video and some cool bonuses that seem to give you everything that you need to get started.  Question is, get started doing what?

The Commision Blueprint Approach

The approach taken in Commission Blueprint is "simple."   Pick a few products that have a chance to be successful (they explain how to pick products), do keyword research (excellent explanation here as well), estimate ROI, build landing pages (templates included), launch a PPC campaign, spend enough money to "test" the campaign in AdWords ($200-$500), pick a winner, and scale it to make real money.  It sounds easy, and the methods presented seem sound, but I am betting that it is harder than it looks.  I plan to try it anyway.

One thing that I liked was the fact that the old approach of "find 50,000 keywords and test them all" is no where to be found here.  Instead, you start with a handful of keywords and ads and grow the campaign from there.  I like that, although screening products is still a lot of work from what I can tell.

Can You Be A Honest Super Affiliate?

So here is my problem with this product.  I am not a PPC expert, but I think the methods presented are sound.  I expect that if you do what is asked of you in the videos, you can make lots of money with this approach.  What follows in my opinion, and the possibility exists that I misunderstood the material.  To get the real scoop on what was intended by the product creator, you should contact them.

Basically, I do not like the method for landing pages that is implied/proposed.  Basically, to presell these affiliate products, the Commission Blueprint team seems to suggest (as far as I can tell) that you need to tell a story about how the product you are trying to sell has helped you.  While the Commission Blueprint guys do not say it directly, the method suggested (to my understanding having watched the videos) is to make up a person and a success story that fits the product.

So, in order to use the story method discussed in the videos (if I understand correctly), you seem to need to "pretend" to be a customer of the affiliate product and claim that this product has helped you.  This is my interpretation of what was presented, and maybe I misunderstood, but this does not pass my personal integrity tests. Does it even pass the FTC's tests?  Anyway, maybe I misunderstood this part -- it was after midnight when I watched the video.

It confused me a little, because I really was impressed with the guy doing the pitch - so I am hoping that I have it wrong.

Also, there are other landing page methods that you can use -- including product reviews.  That seems more like something that I would personally be willing to do.

Commission Blueprint Membership Site

Also, there is an upsell in the order process.  You are offered an upsell to the Commission Blueprint membership site.  I think that the site is $67/month, with a $4.95 7 day trial (sorry, I forgot to take notes, but I am pretty sure this is correct).  So, if you buy the product, be prepared to make a decision about the membership site.  I took a pass here, so I cannot comment on the quality of that site.

I can say that there are enough details that you need to pay attention to that a good membership site would really help someone who was following this system.

The Bottom Line

Here is the bottom line:  Commission Blueprint is a complete product with little fluff.  The quality is excellent, and I think it is well worth $77.  Will it make you money?  I have no idea.  I have no meaningful positive experience with PPC campaigns, and I am not a PPC expert.  My feeling is that I could personally make this work with the information that is presented in the product.  My problem is that I am not sure I am willing to sell out to some of the recommended marketing tacticts.  But that is just a personal issue.

What Do You Think?

I'd love to hear what you think?  Did you buy this product?  Do you like it?  Are you OK with pretending to endorse a product that you have never tried?  Let me know your thoughts.

Regards,
Mark

I am always amazed that no matter where I go in the world, I run across McDonald's.  I'll never forget the first time that I was walking down the street in Tokyo and saw my first foreign McDonald's.  I had a bowl of McNoodles that day -- it was 15 years ago.

This McDonald's is actually in a shopping mall in downtown Seoul called the International COEX.  It is a huge underground shopping mall (200 stores) and was connected to my hotel.  Very cool.

Global Reach And The Internet

It struck me in that mall halfway across the world staring a that McDonald's that the internet has really changed the playing field for small entrepreneurs like me and you.  MasonWorld.com is actually available more countries in the world than McDonald.  Amazing.

As amazing as it seems, my little internet marketing blog is read in 132 countries across the globe.  Simply put, the internet gives me the kind of reach that McDonald's has.  I am a multinational presence.  Now all I need is the kind of revenue that McDonald's has, and I will be all set.

It's All About The Numbers

My personal opinion is that people in the United States tend to be focused on America.  It's the kind of natural tendency that get's us in some trouble from time to time around the world.  However, as an American Internet Entrepreneur, you cannot afford to think like that.  You need to consider the fact that you have a world-wide audience, and make a decision whether or not you want to try to reach those people with your content.

See, it turns out that these people across the globe are contributing to the global economy, and they can impact your business.  My simple little product Niche Adsense Themes for WordPress had sales from seven different countries in the first month alone.

The Bottom Line:  The World Is Flat

So the message for today is -- the world is flat.  In the new internet economy, it is more important than ever to have a global view and think about your customers a citizens of the world community.

What do you think?  Are you from a country that get's ignored in ecommerce?  Do American websites act like you do not exist?  Are you and American who could care less about the rest of the world?  Is you business set up to be global?  Let me know your thoughts.

When I first got started in Internet Marketing, I ran across a lot of discussion about "article marketing."  Article Marketing is often confused with "bum marketing," but they are not really the same thing.  It all seems so obvious to me now, but I remember having a hard time getting a clear description of article marketing. So, I'd like to offer you what I consider the key ideas behind article marketing. If you want to know more about article marketing, I am going to point you to my five favorite resources at the end (which are great, but not required to become an article marketing guru).

So, what is Article Marketing?

Article marketing refers to a traffic generation method that depends on submitting informative "articles" to sites called "article directories." These articles generally consist of an article body that has generally useful information, and an article resource box that contains links back to the author's site. This technique is sometimes mistakenly called "Bum Marketing."   Actually, as pointed out by Josh Spaulding, Article Marketing is one of the tools that Bum Marketers use (so named since it is so easy even a bum could do it.)

Good article directories have great traffic and strong Google page rank, so publishing your information there increases the chance that people will see and read what you have to say. Additionally, article directories allow people to copy and republish their articles, provided the article is unchanged and the resource box is preserved. This means that your article with your links could end up on multiple sites with lots of exposure.

There are literally hundreds of article directories, the most famous of which is eZineArticles. (As an example, you can see one of my articles about Viral Marketing.) The fact that there are hundreds of article directories opens up the possibility of submitting your article to many directories and multiplying your exposure. (There can be downsides to this, however, as we will discuss below).

Two Sources of Traffic

The beauty of article marketing is the possibility of two complementary sources of traffic. This is a key point that is often not understood. When you initially submit your articles, if they are well written, you should expect that they will be spread and read. If you write an effective resource box, those same readers will want more information and click the links in the box.

This simple idea generates immediate traffic to your site. Eventually, as the article ages, it may fall lower in the article directory as it gets buried by newer articles on the same topic. This usually means that click-through traffic from articles will fall off as a function of time. Sometimes articles go viral and the clicks keep coming, but this is not usually the case.

Not to worry. Now your article has spread around the net with links to your site at the bottom. Google sees these (correctly) as backlinks to your site. Done properly, these backlinks can help you rank for the pages that the links are pointing to. So, while your direct click-through traffic is falling off, your organic search engine traffic will increase. Pretty cool, eh?

A word about content and keywords

There are lots of things to think about when you are writing articles for article marketing. Most importantly, you need to have a keyword strategy for the content on your site and the content in your article. It may not make sense to directly compete with your own website, for example. Rather, you may want to choose keywords for your articles that complement the content on your site.

For example, if you have a site on "blue soap," you may want to write an article on "green soap" knowing that people interested in green soap will also be interested in blue soap. You need to think about this carefully.

Earlier, I mentioned that you could submit the same article to multiple directories. You can, and I do. But you need a strategy for that as well to balance the effectiveness of the submission against the impact of duplicate content. Google expects syndicated content to be duplicated, but there are still tradeoffs that need to be considered (beyond the scope of this brief article).

Article Marketing Resources

As promised, here are five resources that I actually use for article marketing. I have purchased these tools myself. Don't misunderstand me: you can be successful in article marketing without any tools. These are the tools that I personally use to improve the quality and productivity of my article marketing efforts.

• Article Marketing Domination. This is an excellent eBook by article marketing guru Josh Spaulding. This eBook covers all of the details that i have glossed over above, and is a complete reference. You can do article marketing without knowing all the details, but you will get lot better results if you have all the facts. Most things in life are like this.
• Article Post Robot. A tool for submitting articles to multiple sites. It is really tedious and boring to submit the same article to 50 article directories. Article Post Robot automated this process. This is not the most elegant tool on the planet, but it works very well for me on over 50 article directories (the software supports many more).
• Instant Article Wizard Pro. IAW Pro is an amazing tool for article research. I just learned about this tool this week, and have used it a few times with incredible results. Basically it searches the web for research on your keywords and mashes the pieces together in reasonable sounding paragraphs. Cuts article writing time down by a factor of ten or more in my experience. Even if you have no intention of buying this thing, you have got to see the video.
• Micro Niche Finder. One of the most important parts of Article Marketing (not really covered well in this article) is keyword selection. I use Micro Niche Finder for all my keyword research.
• Josh Spaulding. OK -- he is not a resource, actually. He is a person - a really nice one. Josh is my "go to guy" and mentor for Article Marketing, and the author of Article Marketing Domination.

The Bottom Line on Article Marketing

Article marketing is a great way to promote your website, affiliate products or affiliate program. By writing an article that delivers value and offers a subtle mention of your affiliate product or critical keywords, you're well on your way to getting the proper exposure for your promotion (whatever it is). Simply put, Article Marketing is a great way to promote your business online.

Regards,
Mark