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

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

Here is the post from Jason....

Effective Ways to Promote ClickBank Products

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

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

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

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

Method #2 – Make YouTube videos

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

Method #3 – Go Offline.

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Clickbank,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks and best regards,
Mark Mason – MasonWorld.com

In this episode of the MasonWorld Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, we continue with our series introducing the different ways that you can make money online. Specifically, we take a look at information products or information marketing.

We have a special interview with Internet Marketing Guru Jon Leger (pronounced Lay-Jay) and he reveals what he considers the three most important things that a new Internet Marketer needs to know.

Information Marketing has made millionaires out of a lot of people.  In fact, my buddy Josh Spaulding has just release an excellent (and very affordable eBook on the topic of Information Products.)

Advantages of an Information Products Business includes:

• Incredibly low overhead -- create content and publish electronically
• Sell it over and over again
• Sell it 24 hours per day, 365 days per year
• Fully automated sales and order delivery product
• Works well with affiliate marketing
• Location independence (work anywhere)
• No employees required

Some links mentioned in the podcast

• Moonlighting On The Internet
• Ten Ways To Make $10K On The Internet
• Information Product Success Formula from Josh Spaulding
• ClickBank.com

Possible information product topics

• How-To guides
• Self-help products
• Financial eBooks
• Make Money On The Internet
• Fitness/Diet/Health
• Skills Improvement Or Training
  • PM PodCast
  • iPhone Programming
• Lifestyle Design

Interview with Jon Leger included in this episode.

• Tip 1:  Look for a mentor running a real business; it takes real work.  Watch out for sharks and false claims.  Cannot get something for nothing.
• Tip 2:  Find a great niche or product that sells well.  Have some passion.
• Tip 3:  Get targeted traffic.  Not all traffic is equal.

Jon has an awesome product for beginners in internet marketing:

GeekFreeProfits.com

Be sure to leave us some feedback and subscribe in iTunes!

Podcast Alley is another option:
My Podcast Alley feed!

Here is the Raw RSS Feed.

I'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. Drop me a line here on the blog on on the digital recorder at 214-444-8655. Ask a question or leave a comment and we may use it on the show.

If you need traffic, I have the answer for you.

Well, that got your attention.

And it should.  I am still playing around with the hot new article marketing software that I mentioned a few weeks ago -- Automatic Article Submitter.  I know the developer pretty well (we are both moderators inside Coaching With Josh) and he has been implementing some of my suggestions.  He is a great guy and a quality code writer -- which makes me like the software even more.  Best of all, he implements user suggestions (sometimes the same day).

The bottom line -- I have been using this software for weeks, and I am more convinced than ever that Automatic Article Submitter (AAS) is a program that every internet marketer needs.  In fact, it is the only software that I can really say that about (unless you count WordPress itself).

As I promised, I will be doing a full video review starting this week -- so consider this an introduction.  But first, I want to talk to you about chicken coops.

Software That Can Pay For Itself The Same Day

The amazing thing is that software like this can pay for itself.

Now, your results will vary and I am not making any guarantees -- but if you want to drive traffic to your site, you need to pay attention here.

About the same time I was playing with this software, I was also lurking around Michelle McPherson's blog reading about chicken coops.  I liked that video so much that I decided it would be a perfect opportunity to test Automated Article Submitter.

So, I did some quick keyword research (I'm talking about like 5 minutes worth) and grabbed the domain www.buildmychickencoop.com.

OK -- I know you are laughing. I can hear you.  Yes, I have a chicken coop blog.  No, I do not know anything about chickens.  Just hang on for a minute.

I asked one of the awesome guys that writes for me to write some quick Chicken Coop articles, and I threw up a WordPress blog.  I then asked another VA to install Automatic Article Submitter (AAS) and submit some articles to directories.

She was able to use the software to quickly submit the articles.  The software was really easy to use, but we will cover that in the video to follow in the coming few days.

The results surprised me.  After all, who really searched on the internet to buy an ebook on Building Chicken Coops?  You have to admit, this is a stupid experiment.  Or is it?

Here are the blog traffic stats from inside of WordPress (I have not even taken the time to set up GA yet).

Did You Sell Any Chickens?

OK -- traffic is great and all, but did you sell any Chickens?  Obviously, you are not paying attention.  I am not trying to sell chickens -- I am trying to sell a "how to build a chicken coop" eBook. 

Anyway,  no -- no sales yet.  But look at this. I got 250 visits to my blog and 66 visits to the sales page (and still counting)  for something crazy like chicken coops.  Chicken Coops!  Ha!  And I was able to do it using only article marketing.  And the best thing yet -- I am starting to see some limited search engine traffic!

I am expecting a 1% conversion rate. I am having so much fun that I am planning on doing some additional promotion and will let you know what happens with the chickens.  Stay tuned.

Here are the ClickBank stats -- note that all of the hoplink traffic is from buildmychickencoop.com, and all the traffic to that site (with the exception of a few SERP hits) is from Article Marketing (using the amazing Automatic Article Submitter).

Article Marketing Still Works

So, the bottom line is that you can use Article Marketing to drive traffic to a web site on just about any topic -- including Chicken Coops.  Heck, my chicken site is not even finished yet (there are some empty pages).  But, Article Marketing is a lot of work -- unless you have software that you can use to do all the hard stuff.  That is what Automatic Article Submitter is for.

More on that later this week.

Regards,

Mark

photo information: credit: yumyumbubblegum

As you know, I have spent some time building AdSense Mini-Sites, and have discussed before how important it is to consider your market if you want high AdSense payouts.  The method I use to build my AdSense mini-sites is based on the excellent $5 Formula eBook by Josh Spaulding.

Recently, I created a free 30 minute video that you can watch that explains the methods described in the $5 Formula eBook.  It's great for people that are not crazy about reading eBooks, and it offers my take on Josh's formula.  As a bonus, I have included audio of an interview that I conducted with Josh about the $5 Formula earlier this month.

If you are interested in creating passive online income with little investment, you will really like the $5 Formula Video.

There is no continuity program or other sneakiness  associated with the video.  I do have it set up on ClickBank so if you refer people to the video using your ClickBank ID and they buy any of my ClickBank products, you get the commission.  I figured that was only fair for people who send traffic to the video.  Just my way of saying thanks.  Look for the affiliate link at the bottom of the page at http://5dollarformulavideo.com.

Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think.

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

Several months ago I posted that I would be working on my sales letter for Niche AdSense Themes for WordPress.  You probably remember that this was one of my very first products, and that I am always learning by doing.  Man, that first product seems like a lifetime ago.

Edit -- See my special guest post invitation to real copy writers in the post comments.

Since I was "learning" on that product I did a "toss" rather than a launch.  What I mean by a "toss" is that I did not do a full court press trying to get anyone and everyone to promote the themes.  Rather, I worked with a few friends to do an initial promotion:

• Josh Spaulding and Garry Conn promoted the themes to their lists and blogs.
• Josh featured the themes in his excellent eBook $5 Formula.
• Caroline Middlebrook featured the themes in her excellent Niche Site Video
• James Jones sent my Micro Niche Finder Video to his list

The Results Of My First Attempt

Well, I learned a lot about having a product.  I thought that you might be able to learn some stuff too.  I actually made lots of sales.  From my perspective, it was a huge success (and continues to sell).

But, as usual, there were lots of opportunities to improve.  Here are some highlights (and opportunities to improve):

• Highly targeted traffic from a list that was expected to convert at 5% or more only converted at 3.5%.  What's worse,  less targeted list traffic converted very poorly.
• Less targeted traffic from blogs in the make money online niche converted at much less than 1%
• Traffic from ClickBank affiliates was converting at a very low rate.

Increasing Sales Page Conversions

So, I decided that based on that information, that I needed to look at the sales page.  Since I am a glutton for punishment, I posted a request for feedback on and criticism of my sales page on both the Warrior Forum and Digital Point Forums.  Well, as you can imagine, I got some.  You need flame-retardant undies to withstand the comments I got.

Note to new Internet Marketers out there -- don't get your self-esteem wrapped up in your sales copy if you are going to ask for feedback on a forum.  And, be prepared to hear from people that have no idea what they are talking about.

I also got some very helpful feedback from of my very own readers.  That was awesome, and I really appreciate it when readers take the time to comment.  Here are some feedback highlights:

• Work on the headline and sub-headline. It was described by one guy on the Warrior Forum as a "confusing wreck." The great thing was that he offered me a couple of much better alternative headlines that really illustrated his point.
• Work on the copy -- let it breath. Again, a member of the Warrior Forum supplied new copy to illustrate the point.  I got similar feedback from a reader of the blog.
• Make the site look more professional. The one comment from Digital Point pointed out the fact that a website that was selling wordpress themes needed to be "very professional looking."   I agreed.  Josh actually made fun of my graphics (several times).

Taking Action

So, based on all that feedback, I changed the sales template to something more professional, I changed the headline, and I re-did the copy.  Conversions are up considerably.  You can see the new Niche AdSense Themes for WordPress sales page here and you can compare it to the old sales page.

What do you think?  Did I make it better or worse?  Time and split testing will tell (I will be making a post on how to implement split testing next week).

Let me know your thoughts.

Regards,
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

You may have noticed an increased posting frequency here as MasonWorld.com.  Would you be surprised to know that I have actually published something every day for the past 30 days?

Rising To A Challenge

Thirty days ago, Colleen Slater issued a 30-day posting challenge on the Warrior Forum, and I accepted.  The challenge was simple -- post something good on your blog every day for 30 days.   There was so much traffic to the post, that Warrior took it down.

I like Colleen, so I decided to participate.  As you know, I also like her Blog Inferno Product, and recommend it.

Anyway -- As my last post in the challenge, I thought I would simply summarize my entries.

I hope you enjoyed the content.  As I shift my focus back to some other projects in February, I plan to return to a 2-3 times per week schedule.

Have a great day, and be sure to catch any posts that you missed below.

Regards,
Mark

My 30 Days Of Posting

Day 1 (Jan 5) - Top 5 Reasons To Follow Me On Twitter
Day 2 (Jan 6) - Ultimate Link Building Report Review and Discount
Day 3 (Jan 7) - Authority Of The Warrior Forum
Day 4 (Jan - Understanding Off-Page SEO and rel="nofollow"
Day 5 (Jan 9) - 2 Ideas For Finding Niche Markets
Day 6 (Jan 10) - $250 Free AdWords Coupon
Day 7 (Jan 11) - Google Trojan Horse - Brad Callen
Day 8 (Jan 12) - 26 Random Niche Site Ideas
Day 9 (Jan 13) - Beginning Affiliate Marketing
Day 10 (Jan 14) - How To Choose An Autoresponder
Day 11 (Jan 15) - Automatic ClickBank and AdSense Notifications
Day 12 (Jan 16) - How To Create An eCourse In One Day For Free
Day 13 (Jan 17) - Great Internet Marketing Podcast
Day 14 (Jan 18) - Use Outsourcing To Meet Your 2009 Goals
Day 15 (Jan 19) - Overcoming Blogger's Block
Day 16 (Jan 20) - How To Check For Broken Links
Day 17 (Jan 21) - Getting High AdSense Payouts
Day 18 (Jan 22) - Crazy Promotions And Scary Movies
Day 19 (Jan 23) - Help A Friend Start A Blog
Day 20 (Jan 24) - A Duplicate Content Experiment
Day 21 (Jan 25) - Don't Stop Yourself From Making Money Online
Day 22 (Jan 26) - What Is Your Backup Plan
Day 23 (Jan 27) - Free Back Links To Your Site
Day 24 (Jan 28) - How Are Your 2009 Goals?
Day 25 (Jan 29) - 5 Great Things About Outsourcing
Day 26 (Jan 30) - Defeating Writer's Block With Quotations
Day 27 (Jan 31) - Announcing The MasonWorld Internet Marketing Forum
Day 28 (Feb 1) - TextToChat - Facebook Goes MLM (huh?)
Day 29 (Feb 2) - FrontPage versus WordPress
Day 30 (Feb 3) - 30 Day Posting Challenge Wrap-Up

One of the time wasting traps that Internet Marketers can fall into is constant checking of stats throughout the day.  After all, it is human nature to want to know what is going on in your business, especially when you are just starting out.

When I first started out, I was always popping over to my AdSense account and checking my stats.  Same with ClickBank.  It totally annoys me that ClickBank does not send email when you make an affiliate sale.  So, I was checking my stats all the time.  That got to be a real drag, so now I use a couple of tools to notify me.

For Clickbank, I use CBNotify.  This little tool lives at the bottom of my Firefox browser and shows the day's Clickbank earnings.

For AdSense, I use a Google Desktop Gadget called AdSense Tracker.

Both of these will save you time if you are addicted to stats.

Do you use tools like this that save you time? What are they?

Have a great day.

Mark

As I have mentioned before, I am a forum moderator at Coaching With Josh.  That program is set up to help a wide range of people, including beginners.  Today, I got the below question, and I thought many people might be interested in the answer.

Of course, I have changed the names and some of the details to protect the innocent:

For the last couple of days I've been checking out XYZ product on ClickBank and I think it's a great product to promote as an affiliate, due to the fact that commissions are paid through ClickBank and the sales letter is really good.

I've been considering promoting it on specialized forums and on EZA.

I'm a newbie with no previous marketing experience.

The thing that really makes my head spin is keyword research. I don't know what tool I should use and how to tell which keywords are profitable and which ones are not worth it.

Also, my idea is to start generating not only keywords related to "xxx xxxx xxxx", but also to the "yyy yyyy yyyyy" term.

Since I've never designed a website in my life, I would like to know if starting with a blogger blog is a better option.

So, should I use the wordpress blog or start fresh with a blogger blog?

Now, I should say that entire $2000 courses are built around the above question.  So, it is hard to answer this kind of question in a single blog post.  I am not pretending to give all the answers here.

Additionally, I don't know much about the product that was mentioned.   I did check out the sales letter and  I agree the sales letter looks good.  The problem is that it is hard to judge how they will convert without testing.  I recommend always asking the publisher for conversion stats, and asking them what support they have for tracking your own conversions.

To promote a product like this, you have many options.  I am not a PPC guy.  I like organic traffic.  For organic search traffic, you can put up a site with a URL like http://TheProductURLReview.com using wordpress.

To get organic traffic to that URL, one option is to create pages that rank for keywords that are related to the product that you are trying to sell.  For each keyword that you want to target, you can write a short article talking about the product and linking to it with an affiliate link.

You can see one new site that I have like this here:

http://www.1waylinksreview.com

It's so new that I have not done much with that site, but you get the idea.

You can also take this approach with article marketing or a blogger blog.  But, I always think it is better to have a specific domain that you own.

Fundamentally, it boils down to conversions.  Get visitors to your site, presell them, get them to click through to the sales page, and a certain percentage will convert to sales.

Photo: photo credit: Dina Middin

Hey -- hope you are having a great day, and are enjoying my daily post frenzy that I started on Thursday with my post on the importance of lists.    I'll be posting daily for the next few days (possibly longer) and then it will be back to my normal 3 posts per week (Monday, Wed Friday).  We'll see how that goes in November.  So much to do, and so little time.

October Was A Crazy Month

If you have been following my over the last month, you know I am working on three main projects at the moment.  It can be a bit confusing at times, so I wanted to update you on the status:

1. Build 30 quality "AdSense sites" in a variety of niches. This whole thing was motivated by my post about how to make $5000/month on line.  Now, I am calling these AdSense sites, but, in reality I have decided to add a variety of monetization options including eBay links (using the phpBay bay plugin), some ads through the PepperJam affiliate network and other affiliate offers.  Instead of 30 "AdSense sites," this will result in 30 "mini-authority" sites.    I call them "mini-Authority" because they will not have high frequency original content.  Rather, there will be a mix of content from a variety of sources presented in a useful way.  Status:  all 30 domains are purchased and up and running.  About 15 sites are actually running and some are generating a little revenue. I think I sould be able to "finish" them and drip back to 1 hour of work per site per month by December.  We'll see.
2. Full evaluation of Firepow. In building these sites, I realized that Firepow might be just the tool that I need to make this happen.  I have been helping Andrew's team beta-test Blog Import into Firepow (which is working for me in most cases).   Now that that is complete, I plan to get back to blogging about Firepow late next week.  Don't forget that I have arranged for a $300 Firepow discount for you if you cannot wait for my complete review and recommendation.
3. Build my email list using $7 Secrets. This is the big distraction for me at the moment.  I was so impressed with Josh Spaulding's New Age Email Marketing report, that I decided to move the management of my email lists to his "formula."  Part of that experiment involves growing the list, and that means I needed to write a great ebook to offer for sale for $7 as recommended in $7 Secrets.  That eBook is complete, and will launch Tuesday here on MasonWorld.com. If you have not read Josh's report, I recommend it (it is only $7, as you might expect).

So, that is what is going on at the moment.

Hope that clears things up a bit.

By the way, things are likely to get worse before they get better.

I have learned a lot of tricks building these 30 sites (and others before them), and before the end of the year, I will be launching a new Niche Site Building service. If you are interested, you can see the current sales copy at http://www.nichesitenow.com.

Also, am hoping to do a PPC experiment with one of my internet marketing buddies before the end of the year.  As you may remember, I purchased Commission Blueprint, and I am itching to try out PPC.

So, hang in there -- lots of stuff to come before the end of the year.

Thanks,
Mark

I have been working on the release of a new eBook using Jonathan Legers $7 Secrets approach, and in doing that work, I ran across this checklist for eBook creation.  I am publishing it here.  I hope you enjoy it.

Checklist: How to Create & Sell your Own eBooks

Is the thought of selling your own product intriguing but also overwhelming at the same time? Here is a checklist to get you started.

1. Research your target market & come up with an idea for your product.

I could go into great detail on this step, but I’ll make it short and sweet. The following three criteria must be met. Choose a topic where…

• People are looking for information.
• They are willing to spend money on that information.
• You, personally, are at least moderately interested and knowledgeable about this topic.

Although the third point is optional, I recommend it if you are going to stay interested and motivated to promote your ebooks for months and years to come. You have the option of choosing something you love or something that is popular. Make work fun by choosing a market that you enjoy.

Here are some ideas for you…

• Weight Loss and Dieting
• Health (or fixing health problems)
• Fitness and Exercise (lifting things that are drooping and tightening things that are sagging)
• Looking good (reversing aging, removing hair, keeping hair, etc.)
• Relationships (finding then, keeping them, getting over them)
• Making Money (online or offline, small business, finding jobs, etc)
• Saving Money
• Parenting problems/concerns

2. Purchase a Domain name.

Important things to keep in mind when choosing a URL are:

• Make it memorable.
• Make it short.
• No numbers or dashes.
• Easy to spell.
• Descriptive of your product.
• It should end in a .com (not a .net, .org, or .biz – unless you have a darned good reason to do so)

Also, if this is going to be your main site, be sure to buy any similar domains to protect your branding.

You can buy your domain names anywhere, but I recommend: www.GoDaddy.com or www.NameCheap.com.

3. Purchase Hosting.

I recommend ServInt for many reasons, including:

• Excellent customer service.
• Reliable uptime.

4. Load autoresponder/set up squeeze page while developing product.

The best autoresponder, in my opinion, is this one.

This autoresponder will manage multiple ecourses and lists, including your customers and affiliates. It will grow with your business.

If you don’t have a squeeze page, you can start with one at www.MostlySanePLR.com

By setting up your squeeze page first, you can start to develop a list of people interested in your topic. That will help you later when you launch – you'll have an instant boost for your new product.

5. Develop product.

Don’t know how? Here are some options…

If you can write 7-15 pages on your topic, I recommend that you grab the free report on this page - www.SmallReportsFortune.com

Take a shortcut by buying Resale Rights products. You can find some here:

www.srzone.com/rights.html

www.FullTimeWAHM.com (includes resale rights)

www.BeginnerCoach.com (also includes resale rights)

http://easyplr.com/resale.htm (great reports with rights)

OR

Start with PLR content. Here are some places to look…

www.EasyPLR.com

www.JustPLRcontent.com

www.easyplr.com/bestplr.htm

OR

Record an interview with an expert, have it transcribed and sell it. It's really easy if you use www.audioacrobat.com

OR

Hire a ghostwriter to create a custom product for you.

6. Order graphics or create them yourself.

You’ll need, at the bare minimum, an ecover for your product and at least one banner and button to promote it. A professional header or mini-site design can also convey a professional image.

7. Create sales page.

This is a highly important piece.

For best results, unless you have studied copywriting, I recommend that you hire a skilled writer to draft it for you.

You can find skilled writers at elance.com or www.Shelancers.com

8. Create thank you/download page.

Your download page should contain a few basic pieces:

• Who you are
• How to contact you
• Download instructions
• Download links (of course)
• What company name will show up on their paypal statement or credit card statement.
• Any bonuses they were promised and how to claim them.

9. Load the sales page, thank you page, & product to site.

If you’ve never done this before, you can either outsource the task or use a free program like www.smartftp.com

10. Decide on payment processor. (Figure out how you’re getting paid.)

Here are some popular options to choose from:

• Clickbank - click here for info (Very easy to use and popular for that reason.)
• Paydotcom - click here for info
• E-junkies - click here for info
• 1ShoppingCart - click here for info (Much more control & room for growth. More hands-on.)
• WAHMCart - click here for info (Similar to 1ShoppingCart, but more affordable.)

If all of those options sound overwhelming right now, then a simple paypal button will work just fine for now.

11. Once the pages are loaded, notify your lists. (Tell your friends.)
Contact the following people about the product:

• Your leads lists.
• Your customer lists.
• Your JV partners

If you don’t have lists, don’t panic. Just move ahead to the next step. Although... I do recommend that you read the free report at www.ListProfitSystem.com to learn more about list marketing.

12. Create affiliate tools and notify your affiliates. (Get your Sales Army on the March.)

If you have affiliates, TELL them about your new product and let them promote it for you. Why not have your team of affiliates promoting it for you?

Recommendation: Sign up for the free ecourse at www.SalesArmySecrets.com right away if your affiliate program needs serious help.

The very basic tools that you’ll need are…

1. Banners & buttons
2. Articles
3. Solo ads
4. Text ads

But, of course, there are many more tools that you’ll wish to offer. Just get started with these.

13. Continue promoting your new product. (Market the heck out of it.)

Don’t forget to promote the report like you would any of your other products.

• article marketing
• pay per click
• ezine ads
• forum marketing
• SEO
• web 2.0/social networking

And anything else that you’d normally do to sell your products.

You can certainly outsource many of these activities and/or train your affiliates to do them for you!

14. Start researching your next product. (Rinse and Repeat.)

Go back to #1 and do it all over again.

Does this sound like an insurmountable task? Don’t panic. I recommend that you check out www.OutsourceWeekly.com for a step-by-step course that will show you how to easily and effectively outsource many of these tasks – and increase your income in the process.

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 months ago, I wrote about how to cloak an affiliate link and why you might want to cloak links for affiliate products that you promote. Since that time I have gotten a lot of questions and requests for help regarding that post. That's great because it means that people read the article and decided to give cloaking a try. I love that.  Helping people is the best part of this gig.

The Next Level Of Cloaking

Today I wanted to mention a more aggressive technique for cloaking - cloak an entire page. I was re-reading the Secret Affiliate Code (note the cool cloaked affiliate link) on the airplane on the way home from Singapore, and I was reminded about this method. This is a nice trick of the trade that I forgot about until I re-read this excellent eBook.

Let's say that you want to promote an affiliate product that is available on a service like ClickBank. Let's use Secret Affiliate Code as mentioned above as a great example for this case. It has a great landing page that converts really well. Let's also say that you want to link to the landing page as you promote the product as part of your promotion strategy. Now you could use a cloaked link like I taught in my previous post on cloaking (just like I did above). That would take the user away from your site to the sales page of the affiliate product. That's a perfectly normal and fine thing to do, and you can make money doing that.

Keep The Prospect "On Your Site"

But what if you want the visitor to have a more seamless experience, and you want the landing page to look like it lives on your domain, not the domain of the seller. Deciding to do this could help reinforce the message to the buyer that you are fully endorsing the product, not just slinging traffic to an affiliate link. Here is an example of the Secret Affiliate Code sales page showing up as if it were on MasonWorld.com.

So, How Can You Cloak A Page?

The answer is by creating a simple HTML file on your site that places the sales page inside a frame. The code shown below, but I recommend you download it from the attached zip file.

Save the zip file to your disk, edit the four things mentioned below, and ftp it to your site. To make the file work, you need to change the following:

WEB PAGE TITLE: Give the page a title that matches your keyword strategy for the promotion. This is especially important for a good quality score if you are driving Adwords to the page.

KEYWORDS: Put your keywords in here. You want to have these there, but it is not as critical as it used to be. Google pays very little attention to these.

DESCRIPTION: This will show up in your listing on Google. Make sure your keywords are here as well as a call to action for the Googler that makes them want to click on your search engine listing.

GA CODE: Be sure to turn on Google Analytics for the page. This is another major advantage of this technique. You can get Google Analytic data for the visitors that you send to the sales page.

Be sure and save your "cloaking file" file with a file name that includes your keywords and ends with the .html extension (like secret-affiliate-code-discount.html or whatever).  Alternatively, you can rename this file index.html and put it in a directory called secret-affiliate-code under the public_html directory.  That gives you a URL like this:

http://www.masonworld.com/secret-affiliate-code-discount.

I hope that you find this cloaking method useful. Thanks to Craig Beckta of Secret Affiliate Code for reminding me about it.

Best regards,
Mark

P.S. Here is the code (see also the zip file):

<body>

GA CODE GOES HERE

</body>

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

It's Friday Freebie Time Again

Like most people in internet marketing, I have an entire hard drive full of "free eBooks".  Just like everyone else, I often download free stuff from the internet with the best intentions to read, learn and use the information within.  Then, sometime later, reality hits, and I realize that I have a hard drive full of "stuff" that I have never looked at.  Well, I was cleaning some things up on my laptop and I ran across License To Print Money -- a free eBook about making money with ClickBank.

Just Ignore The Promotion

Now, the marketing purpose of this eBook is to promote a membership site at the end of the book.  I don't know anything about that membership site.  So, I am not encouraging you to sign up for the membership offer inside.  I don't know anything about it.

I did read this eBook, however, and I am recommending it here for a couple of reasons.

1.  If you have not thought about making money with ClickBank products, you should.  This eBook outlines a reasonable (although not the only) approach to promoting ClickBank products.

2.  This eBook outlines some solid traffic strategies for any project you are working on - press releases, article marketing, classified ads, Squidoo, etc.  These are all good fundamentals, and this is a reasonable overview.

Download Your Free Copy Now

So, for details on how to download the Friday Freebie, simply join my free MasonWorld Internet Marketing newsletter.  Since I hate spam as much as you do, you will not get any spam from me.  Instead, I'll send you useful free tips on Internet Marketing and occasional promotions of products that I personally believe in.  Best of all, you can unsubscribe any time (but I don't think you will want to.)

Sign up now! I hate spam as much as you do!

Best regards,
Mark

Man, Time Flies....

Well, it has been almost a month since I did a trial launch of my first product, Niche Adsense Themes for WordPress.  Two weeks ago, I started a post series talking about the lessons learned in doing my first digital project launch.   A few days later, I offered a free copy of the product to anyone who asked the best question that I could use for a future post.

The Big Winners Revealed

I am happy to announce that i really liked two of the responses, so I have named two winners.

• Kent made a comment that reminded me that I was thinking about doing a step-by-step explanation of how to create an AdSense mini-site.  I had actually started something like that a long time ago.  Some of you may remember my series of posts on my mini-site the History of Elvis.  Anyway, I never finished that post series or that site.  I need to do that, and I would like to do a post series for beginners on starting an AdSense mini-site.  So, Kent, thanks for that.
• Alex commented that he likes lists and checklists.   That was a great comment.  It applies to the current task of posts about my digital product as well as the coming posts on AdSense sites and Elvis.

So, both Alex and Kent will get free copies of Niche Adsense Themes for WordPress.

Lesson Learned 2:  Good Sales Letters Are Hard

OK -- so here is the next lesson that I learned regarding my digital product.  Of course to sell a digital product properly, you need a mini-site.  The setup of that mini-site is a big deal.  If you want a great free tutorial on that topic, you can take a look at Michael Rasmuessen's free Mini-Site video tutorial.  It is outstanding.

Anyway, inside this mini-site, you need a sales letter.  That sales letter is this only thing (besides possibly a pre-sales endorsement from an affiliate) that a customer will see before they decide to buy your product.  This is important to understand.

A customer is not making a decision to buy based on your actual product.  They have not seen the actual product.  And, they will not see the product until they buy.  Rather, they are handing you their credit card based on the claims in the sales letter.

So what about the product?  Well, the quality of the product (specifically, whether or not you live up to the claims of the sales letter) impacts returns, repeat purchases, and referrals (I call these the three Rs).

Good Sales Letter Need Basic Things

Now, I am not a sales letter expert (yet), but I can tell you that sales letters need basic things to be successful.

• A killer headline.  You have about 10-30 seconds to capture someone after the page loads.  If they do not see something that captures their attention, they will hit that stumble button and never return.  So, you must grab them.
• A USP -- Ultimate Selling Proposition.  Why do they need what you have?  What is the value of it to them?  Why are the benefits that you are describing obviously worth ten or 100 times the price you are asking?
• Risk Reduction/Reversal. Why is a decision to trust you (buy the product) completely risk free?  Or better yet, is there negative risk (If you are not completely satisfied, keep the free knives as our gift just for trying the product).
• Urgency. Be careful with this.  Act Now! can be a real turn off if not real.  Digital products do not run out of stock, so artificial urgency can be dangerous as it feels sleasy.  Instead, consider offering your product at a discount for a limited time. (Be sure to raise the price as promised later).
• Call to action. It is an old truth in sales.  You have to ask for the sale.  Ask them to buy your product.

My Sales Letter Sucks

OK, so my first attempt at a sales was not so great.  Here are my stats:

• 3.5% conversion for highly targeted email list promotions from an expert in the field with an "email list that converts well."  This is OK, but not great.  A %10 conversion rate (or higher) should be possible.
• Very low conversion rate (less than 0.5%) for somewhat targeted email list traffic from an MMO blogger.  I expected 3-5% conversions.
• Almost zero conversions from random ClickBank affiliates.

What does all that tell me?  It tells me that my sale letter needs work.  So, I am working on it.  I am in the process of gathering input on how to make it better.

• I posted to 5 forums asking for comments and help on the current sales letter (including the Warrior Forum and DigitalPoint Forums.)  Man, you want some criticism, just ask for help over there.  It helps to have high self esteem.  All the comments I got were quite helpful.
• Phone consultation from Aaron Abber at FullTiltBlogging.com (I belong to his mentoring program and to his membership site).
• Private consultations from Garry Conn and Josh Spaulding via email.  I am also a member of Josh's coaching program.
• Reading lots of sales stuff by guys like Dan Kennedy.

So, in the next post, we can look at the old sales page and the new sales page, and I will summarize the changes.  We can also talk about split testing.

Regards,

Mark

P.S.  What do you think of my first sales page?  Be honest.  I can take it.  Leave your comments here.

photo credit: TheTruthAboutMortgage.com

Hello;

I'd like your input on something if you have a minute. Read on to learn how you can win a free copy of Niche Adsense Themes for WordPress.

Yesterday, I posted the first part of a multi-part post to my blog about my experience launching my first digital product, Niche Adsense Themes for WordPress.

If you did not see that post yet, you can find it here:
http://www.masonworld.com/products/niche-adsense-themes-lessons-learned-part-1/

I am hearing from readers that people are interested in this topic because they also want to create and sell their own Digital Information Products.

So, my question to you is, what would you like to hear about? In the process of creating this product, I selected a product, built it, did some outsourcing, packaged it, created marketing materials, put up a mini-site, wrote a sales page, did a test launch, got set up on clickbank, etc.

So, I would really appreciate your feedback. If you have a second, please drop a comment on the post and let me know what you would like to hear about in a future post.

Also, if you like the article and want to stumble it, that would be great too.

The reader with the best question via the comments will get a free copy of Niche Adsense Themes for WordPress.

Thanks!
Mark

Be sure and check out my

Big Mac Guarantee at the end of this post.

I grew up with the Beatles. Actually, the Beatles had long since broken up when I grew up, but I loved them anyway. I had all of their albums (in vinyl). Now I have all of their CDs.  As a result, I quickly discovered that every thing that you need to know about life, you can learn from the Beatles. For example, I learned:

• "We all want to change the world"
• "It's getting better all the time, can't get no worse."
• "There's nothing you can do that can't be done."
• "Living is easy with eyes closed.

Mostly, I learned that "all you need is love" but money cannot buy it. Go figure. I was pretty sure about all this for most of my life.

Then I met Aaron Abber from LifeFoc.us

Aaron is selling Love, Happiness, Fitness and Financial Freedom all for less than the cost of a Big Mac.  Now the other day, I bought a Big Mac value meal for about $7 US.  So, if Aaron is delivering for less than that, then that is something that is worth blogging about.  However, this is an Internet Marketing blog, so let's talk about why this is cool from an internet marketing standpoint.

Make Money On Line Myth Shattered

Some people say that the only way you can really make money on line is to sell information about how to make money online.  Baloney.  Here is Aaron Abber with a perfect example.  See, Aaron is providing a real value.  It's a Zig Ziglar thing -- you get everything in life that you want by getting other people what they want.  What do people want?  They want happiness.  And finding happiness is an individual journey.  If you provide a place where like-minded people can support you in your success journey, then you have found something of real value.  Something worth paying for.

Enter LifeFocus

So, Aaron created a membership site. I am a charter member.  The site is fantastic.  Best of all, it is really affordable.  Aaron's sales page tells the story better that I can, so be sure to check it out.  All I can tell you is that you can join on a refundable trial basis for less than $5.

My Big Mac Promise To You

I honestly think this site that Aaron has created is really something special.  And, you know that I never promote stuff that I don't believe in.  So, here is the deal.  Aaron talks about how you can join his site for less than the price of a Big Mac.

I don't think you should be required to choose.

You should have you Big Mac and eat it too.

So, I am offering a Big Mac to the first 20 people to join Aaron's site using my affiliate link.  So, if you (1) sign up for Aaron's LifeFoc.us site through my affiate link;  and  (2) send me an email asking for your Big Mac, I will send you a $5 McDonalds gift certificate via US Mail or $5 via paypal.  All you have to do is email me with the details of your ClickBank transaction.  I will confirm that you signed up through me and send you your Big Mac.  It's that simple.  If I cannot verify the CB transaction or your use of my affiliate link, then you do not get your burger.  Also simple.  This offer expires after the first 20 sign-ups under my link. If you are not in the US, I will not be able to mail you the gift certificate (sorry) -- you will have to settle for paypal.

So, what in the world are you waiting for?  Join LifeFoc.us today.

photo credit: orsorama

It has been a little quiet here. As you know, I have been working on my first product, Niche Adsense Themes for WordPress, Volume 1.

I am still waiting on product approval from my digital product distribution partner (ClickBank) -- so I am not sure the full launch will happen today. ClickBank's approval can take up to a week in some cases, and to be honest with you, I did not give them enough time.

Since I promised you a June 30 launch, I installed some special software that I will be using until ClickBank is up and running. As I have mentioned before, I always do what I say I am going
to do (at least I always do my best).

This is your chance to get your hands on Niche Adsense Themes for WordPress before everyone else.

Here it is http://www.nicheadsensethemes.com/jvr3

By the way, if you are interested in promoting Niche Adsense Themes for WordPress, you can sign up here:

http://www.nicheadsensethemes.com/affiliates

Have a great day!

Regards,
Mark Mason

If you've been in internet marketing more that twenty minutes, then you've heard of Mike Filsame. He is the famous author of the Butterfly Marketing Effect, which he claims is the most profitable eBook ever sold. Mike is the undisputed King of viral marketing and has been for the past several years. But I believe he just started his own dethroning by letting us all in on it.

Today in my inbox, I got a marketing email from Mike. He is rolling out his latest project -- a viral membership site called Butterfly Reports. Currently he is working with Rod Beckwith who has been around as long as Mike has and is the genius behind this cool new Butterfly Reports site, and many other sites.The idea is very simple. Members will receive new viral reports each month (the number of reports you receive depends on your membership level).

These viral reports, available in different niches, are branded with your name and website, and contain affiliate links. Some of the affiliate links are set to your affiliate ID, and some are set to "Mike and Rod's affiliate ID." The percentage of links in the report that point back to you also depends on your membership level (Silver, Gold or Platinum).

One you get a report, you can use it however you wish. You can give it away, send it to your list, blog about it, whatever. The idea is to get it to as many people as possible.

Here is the cool thing -- the Silver level is free (one report per month). So, I signed up just to have a look. Of course, this is what Mike is counting on. Using a free offer, he is able to move me down the funnel. After I accepted the free offer, there was an upsell opportunity for $1. I took that too. Filsame blows my mind -- and I was really curious. Along with the free monthly report, you also get a free high quality ecover graphic to go with it. How cool is that?

Just a reminder under the heading of full disclosure: if you sign up using my link and end up paying Mike money, I get a referral fee.

Once you log in to the site, you are offered your first viral report that is actually about the site. More genius. It's a perfect first report since it promotes the site itself, which has an affiliate program (I am using affiliate links in this article from that report).

The report itself is very nice. Entitled Turning One Into A Million, it is basically a training document for the site and the viral marketing method itself. You can download the report here. Note that some of the links in the report are branded to my affiliate ID, and some are branded back to Mike. The more you pay Mike, the higher your percentage of links.

In another twist, you can also submit reports to this site to be included in their database.  in that case, you could write a report and have thousands of people promoting it for you.  Like the above example, you would get a percentage of the affiliate links pointing back to your Clickbank and  PayDotCom accounts.

I think this is really cool. Check it out for yourself and decide what you think. The Silver level is free. After you do, please come back here and let me know what you think.

Best regards,

Mark

So far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

• Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
• List of Niche Super-Site design goals

Remember, our overall goal is to build a niche site that returns $2/day in residual income with only a simple investment in cheap web hosting.

I begin today with a warning for all you WordPress users out there. If you edit your post in multiple tabs and use multiple computers, you can get distracted and confused and accidentally save an old version over a new version, losing hours of work. Not that I have any personal experience there....ugh.

That reminds me of my standard disclaimer: I am not claiming to be an expert on niche site building (and certainly not in WordPress file integrity). I am just trying to aggregate all of the information I can find and run it through my engineering common sense filter. This means that there is no such thing as easy money and that things sounding too good to be true usually are.

One of the most discussed aspects of niche marketing is the selection of the niche itself. Basically, most people will argue that you want to try to find an area to work where there is lots of potential traffic and low competition for keywords. These same folks also say that the niche should also have lots of great long tail keywords with low competition. Best of all, look for keywords that have PPC Adsense ads that deliver $300 per click. Sure, that would all be great.

I agree that we should avoid super-high-saturation keywords. "Build a niche website" is a great example of an over-saturated keyword phrase. Other good examples are "weight loss" and "make money online." To me, focusing exclusively on high traffic, low competition keywords is like asking for something for nothing. Everyone is looking for those tools. Some people are using fancy software to find those hidden niche markets. I know that they are successful sometimes, but counting on outsmarting 1000s of people hungry for easy money is not a great strategy.

I like the way Caroline thinks about this.

• Start broad and go narrow using a free tool like WordTracker.
• Use the Adwords tool to check volumes and advertiser competition
• Use some common sense and focus on meaningful phrases

By way of extension, I will argue that we should pick our niche based on the following criteria:

• Pick what you care about. Let's go ahead and pick something that we know or care something about. We are going to be working on this for a couple of weeks at least, so why pick "dung beetles" when we can pick our favorite hobby. Notice that I did not say pick something that we know. There is nothing wrong with picking something that we want to learn about. Maybe I want to learn about "dung beetles" even though I don't know anything about them today. If that is the case, pick dung beetles (especially for your first site). That will keep you going when thing aren't looking so great.
• Pick something that you could evolve into an authority site. If you get lucky or really interested, you may want to evolve your site into an authority site. Just think of the fame that could be yours if you become the world's expert in "dung beetles." Seriously, you might as well pick something that you could imagine having 100 pages if you find out that there is a market later.
• Pick something with lots of traffic. If you go to wordtracker.com and find out that there are no searches for your niche, that is probably (although not always) a problem. You need something with high traffic volumes so you can find niches inside that traffic. Stay away from "dung beetle mating habits" -- that is a low traffic niche.
• Pick a niche that has Adsense ads available to be published. Nothing is worse than picking a niche where no one is advertising. One of our stated strategies is to monetize with Adsense ads. If there is nothing to advertise, we'll be in trouble. Note that no ads come up in Google for "dung beetle."
• Pick a niche that has products for sale. Check with Commission Junction affiliates like eBay, CafePress, etc. Look for Adsense referrals for your niche. Check ClickBank. Again, one of our stated strategies is to deversify our monetization strategy. A search for "dung beetle" on the Commission Junction site will not return many results.
• Think about your market. This is just good marketing advice, but there is a twist for niches. I think you may want to stay away from super-techie web savy people. They will not be clicking on your ads and clicking through your links. They will recognize your site as a niche site designed to collect clicks and go elsewhere.
• Pick your niche. Don't agonize. If you are on a plan similar to mine, you will be doing 10 or 50 or 100 of these. Don't sweat it. Get to work.

There are some great resources on Dosh Dosh to help you pick your own niche.

And now, for purposes of this demonstration, I reveal my case study niche:

DRUM ROLL....

Elvis Presley

Why Elvis, you say? That must be very competitive, you argue.

Well, let's look at the criteria we set:

• Pick what you care about. I like Elvis. My mom likes Elvis (she shares a birthday with him, too). I can do a bad Elvis impersonation. Really. Elvis is not exactly my top hobby, but he'll do for the purpose of a case study. The Elvis franchise is probably worth billions -- and I only want $2/day.
• Pick something that you could evolve into an authority site. I can think of lots of ways to grow an Elvis site. Elvis fandom, Elvis forums, Elvis sightings (integrates with Google Maps and Twitter), Elvis gifts, history of Elvis, etc.
• Pick something with lots of traffic. A quick look at WordTracker tells me that there are some decent keywords available with various combinations of trafic and medium competition (competing sites). There are no magical max traffic zero competition free money keywords for Elvis. I am not sure those really exist -- and even if they do, they are only temporary.
• Pick a niche that has Adsense ads available to be published. If you type in "Elvis" at the Google prompt or looks at the Adwords keyword tool, it looks like there are ads. I would expect that, given the number of affiliate products (below).
• Pick a niche that has products for sale. Commission Junction has 1000 Elvis products and eBay is full of Elvis stuff (this is really good for us as you will see later). Some are really neat.
• Think about your market. My mom and people of her generation. The are baby-boomers that surf the net at work and have disposable income. Sounds good.
• Pick your niche. Don't agonize. If you are on a plan similar to mine, you will be doing 10 or 50 or 100 of these. Don't sweat it. Get to work, collect data, learn and repeat.

Tomorrow we will settle on a main keyword phrase, some secondary ones, and a whole bunch of long tail phrases for the niche product part of our strategy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you tomorrow.

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You will recall that I am generally interested in the topic of how people are making money on the internet. One of the ways that you often hear about is through the sale of eBooks. Well, I figured the best way to learn about this was to investigate directly.

I bought an eBook. I’ll read it and post my impressions on this blog.