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.

This is the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, Episode 4.

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, everyone. Welcome to episode 4 of the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. Of course, I’m your host Mark Mason. It’s really great to be back on the mic. I’ve had a couple weeks of vacation with some light duty internet marketing activity, as well as some frenzied activity getting kids ready to go back to school.

It’s that time again in Texas, where we’re getting everybody ready to go back to school. That can be very exciting, because that generates a long list of things to go do. Everything from school clothes shopping to school supplies, physicals, band gear, and all of that. We’ve been pretty busy around the Mason World household the last couple of weeks.

I’ve also been busy, because I’ve been spending some time hanging out with guru affiliate marketer Lynn Terry in her private forum, she calls it the Elite forum. That’s really a fantastic investment that I’ve made. A small investment of money, and an investment of time over the last several weeks getting to know Lynn. I tell you, she is really fantastic. I had always heard great things about Lynn, and what level of integrity and customer focus she brings to her business.

Let me tell you, my time with her has exceeded all my expectations. She’s really fantastic. I encourage you to check her out over at MasonWorld.com/lynn, where I’ve a got a link over to her new Elite Membership forum over there. You can also find her on her blog at Clicknewz.com. I’ll provide both of those links in the show notes, you can check her out. She is really fantastic, and I really enjoyed spending time with her.

One of the best ways to learn about internet marketing is pick people and business models that you really believe in, follow them and watch what they do, ask them questions about what makes them successful and try to duplicate those results.

There’s absolutely no reason for you to reinvent anything in internet marketing. The best way to get started is to find somebody who you like what they’re doing, you believe in what they’re doing, and who will be honest with you and help you succeed.

Having said that, it’s time for the feature segment, where we’ll talk about our next internet monetization model. That’s making money on eBay.

It’s time for the feature segment.

In the feature segment today, we’ll be talking about our next internet business model. You’ll recall that we’ve already talked about affiliate marketing, which is when you essentially get paid for driving traffic to other people’s products, when that traffic converts to sales. Information marketing, where you can create information products, not too unlike this podcast, to be honest with you, and find ways to monetize those, usually by selling them as direct downloads.

Today we’re going to be talking about our third internet monetization method. That’s creating a business on eBay. Now, what we’ve been doing to kind of support this discussion that we’ve been having is following along in two publications.

One is the outstanding book by Yanik Silver, Moonlighting on the Internet. Yanik’s book can be found at MasonWorld.com/silver. We’ve also been following the great report from Jimmy Brown, I love Jimmy D. Brown, he’s really a great guy, his report is called 10 Proven Ways to Make at Least 10,000 a Month. That’s a 30 page free report that Jimmy offers, where he outlines 10 different things you can do to really crank up your internet income.

Those are both excellent texts for people who are getting started online, or trying to expand their online business. I recommend them both highly.

Today we’re going to be talking about eBay businesses and what you need to think about in terms of eBay. Now, most people when they think about eBay, think about going online and buying some used something, or some antique something that they go and buy and get a good deal. So, the two things that you usually have associated with eBay are used items, that’s what people think of when they think of eBay, or items that they can get for really cheap.

That’s kind of problematic if you want to start up a business on eBay, because you’re starting off in a situation where people who are looking for premium products, eBay may not necessarily the first thing that comes to your mind. Let me tell you, that is the wrong mindset to have if you’re an internet marketer.

The right thing to recognize about eBay, if you’re an internet marketer, is that there is a massive and enormous amount of traffic available to you on eBay. Millions of items are sold on eBay every year. It is a giant company that you can leverage to make money on the internet.

Before I go much further, let me tell you, I am not an eBay guru. I do not have a viable eBay business. Sure, I’ve sold stuff on eBay. In fact, I’ve got a couple of eBay auctions right now. But, that’s not my mainline business. I do understand, however, the fundamentals of marketing that are in play on eBay and I’m going to go over them for you a little bit.

The first one is there are a lot of people there. The fundamentals of internet marketing are find traffic, stand in front of it, and convert a certain percentage of that traffic into some monetized stream. So, you find people and you convert those people into something that translates into dollars. eBay meets the first criteria, which is lots of traffic.

Now, you might imagine sort of a fundamental eBay business, and you can setup sort of a traditional business on eBay by finding products and reselling them on eBay. The things that you usually hear about are people that go around to auctions and buy lots of items, and then warehouse them and sell them on eBay. Or people that setup things where they sell items on eBay, then they have them drop shipped so they’re not actually warehousing anything.

Both of those can be made to be viable internet businesses and that can work just fine. I am not super excited about those, because as I mentioned before, there’s a lot of price pressure on things that are for sale in eBay. I know people are making that work, and you can make it work too probably, but that’s not what gets me excited about eBay.

What gets me excited about eBay is the idea that Jimmy Brown mentions when he talks about eBay, and that is that you can use eBay as a lead generator. Now, if you go through the listings, as Jimmy points out, you’ll see a lot of people that seem to be losing money making sales on eBay. What I’ll tell you is that there are a lot of things that are called loss leaders sold on eBay.

It means that someone sells something, not so much really to make profit on the sale, but actually to get the customer. They know that once they get someone to buy something they’ve got a customer contact with a credit card in their hand, that’s actually willing to use it, and they can sell things to that person again. Essentially, they’re prequalifying the prospect and able to sell to them again. That’s the big thing that Jimmy points out is that you can use eBay as a lead generator.

You can also use eBay to get people into your direct sales funnel. If you’ve got multiple products, let’s say you’ve got a 1 dollar widget that you sell for 79 cents on eBay, and you know that people that buy 1 dollar widgets are going to need the 50 dollar widget cleaner. You can also get them directly in your sales funnel by selling your cheap product on eBay, and selling the more expensive back end to them later directly. Once you’ve got their contact information, of course, you’re able to contact them directly.

Those are sort of the business models that you should think about in terms of eBay. There’s the real eBay store, eBay auction, eBay selling physical products sort of eBay that you’ve thought about. But, then there’s this other thing, the marketing side of eBay where you can use eBay for lead generation or to get people into your funnel. Those are the two ways to think about eBay.

The important thing in eBay, just like in all good marketing, is the copy. That’s one of the things that’s really often ignored on eBay. When you go to write a listing on eBay, you really need to pay attention to your headline, you need to make sure your listing is personalized, you need to decide whether or not you’re going to specialize and feature it, and buy it now.

I’m not going to cover all those things, but there are a lot of marketing options, some of which are very sophisticated, that you can test and try to maximize your response on eBay. Particularly when you’re selling things over and over again. eBay is a great environment in which to split test, because there are so many different options, whether to use pictures or not, whether to use video or not, and so forth. That is a the main thing that you need to think about in eBay.

Don’t just do what all of these garage sale minded people are doing and throw up some sales copy in your auction. Actually approach it like a professional copywriter and think about what you’re writing. Hit people’s hot points, offer a unique selling proposition in your auction, offer risk reduction, make sure they know that there’s no risk for them to purchase through you. Use basic sales copy principles and you’ll be a lot more successful on eBay.

The last thing I want to mention about eBay is that you can combine what we talked about last week, that being affiliate marketing, with the things that you can do on eBay, because eBay has an affiliate program. A lot of people have made a lot of money putting up websites that actually don’t do anything but advertise products that are for sale on eBay.

You might be thinking, “That sounds like a lot of work, because something that’s for sale on eBay today won’t be there in 7 days.” That’s absolutely true. So, what these people do is they set up websites that read the eBay auctions, and when a visitor comes to their website it lists the current eBay auctions for very narrow subjects.

So, for example, maybe somebody might have a website selling coffee mugs, maybe antique coffee mugs that are for sale on eBay. They present themselves as an antique coffee mug site, with maybe some information and an antique coffee mug store. But, the links on the store really go to eBay auctions, so they’re able to sell these things that normally you wouldn’t be able to drop ship or otherwise find affiliate programs for on the internet.

You can check that out. My preferred source for the eBay affiliate program is Pepperjam. I’ll have a link to the Pepperjam Network in the show notes there for you so you can find that. That’s about it on eBay. Couple of business models there for you with eBay, a couple of things to think about when you’re listing your auctions, and finally affiliate marketing. You can mix all these things together. That about wraps it up for eBay today.

And now the feature interview.

I have a really special interview for you today. You know, I’ve been interviewing top internet marketers, asking them what are the three things they want to tell new internet marketers that will help them get started. What are the three things they wish they had known when they were getting started.

Today I have for you the guru of Firepow, the Niche Marketing on Crack author, Andrew Hansen. Andrew is an enormously successful marketer over at AndrewHansen.name. He’s a top choice of mine for integrity and paying attention to what people really need, rather than just be out to try and make a quick buck. His products are fantastic.

I’ve got him on the phone. Here’s what Andrew had to say.

Before we get started with Andrew, just one editorial note. I want to let you know that the recording of Andrew’s voice is a little echoed. It looks like we had a little equipment difficulty on my end. I did some work to clean it up, but it’s still not a fantastic audio recording. But, the information is so great, I didn’t want to re-record it with Andrew, because I didn’t want to miss that first pass raw nature of it. So, here it is in it’s entirety and I hope you enjoy it. Thanks.

Mark Mason: Outstanding. We’re on the phone now, and it’s Late Night Internet Marketing. That works for us, because it’s 1:00 in the morning. I am privileged to have on the phone Andrew Hansen. Andrew is famous for a number of outstanding products in the internet marketing space.

Of course, he is probably most famous for his viral ebook, Niche Marketing on Crack, one of the first internet marketing products that I ever purchased. He’s also got an outstanding free ebook that’s been making the rounds lately called Crap Cutter Marketing.

But, the flagship product of Andrew’s, and the one that I really love, is the Firepow product. That’s an outstanding product for affiliate and niche marketers. Maybe we’ll get to talk about that a little bit with Andrew today.

Andrew, how are you this morning at 1:00 AM in the morning?

Andrew Hansen: I’m really well. I think it’s closer to 2:00 AM now actually, where I am anyway. But, really well. Thank you for having me.

Mark Mason: Thank you very much for taking the call. It’s 2:00 in the morning on the east coast, 1:00 in the morning in Texas. This is the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, so I guess that’s appropriate.

Andrew Hansen: It’s all good. It’s fine by me.

Mark Mason: I have been interviewing outstanding internet marketers. I put you very high on that list. I’ve been reading your blog for a long time. I have been asking them the question, what would you tell a new internet marketer if you were going to tell them three things that they needed to know, or of you had it to do all over again, what are the three things that you would want to know?

But, before I ask you that question, Andrew, I’ve got to ask you another really important question that’s been on my mind for a long time. Can you handle one extra question?

Andrew Hansen: Yes, I think so.

Mark Mason: Your from Australia, right?

Andrew Hansen: Right.

Mark Mason: What in the heck is vegemite? Because in Texas we don’t know about vegemite. Can you just tell me what that is exactly?

Andrew Hansen: You don’t have vegemite?

Mark Mason: No. We don’t have vegemite and I don’t know what vegemite is.

Andrew Hansen: You don’t know what vegemite is?

Mark Mason: I’ve never seen it. I don’t know what it is and I figured now is my chance.

Andrew Hansen: Here you go. Are you ready? If I give you this description it will sound disgusting, but in fact it’s delicious. It is yeast extract. Now, how that is obtained, I have no idea. But, it’s like a black paste.

You can imagine like peanut butter, but black. So, it looks disgusting as well. But, it’s mega-salty. It’s a very sharp taste, sharp on your tongue, very salty. But, it’s a spread that you put on bread, toasts, and everything like that. It’s actually really tasty.

I didn’t know until I moved that it was really only in Australia and New Zealand, and a southern world thing. We haven’t had any since we left Australia, and we often regret that. So, that’s what vegemite is.

Mark Mason: Very good. Well, now I can rest easy. I appreciate that. So, you’re in Canada now, is that correct? And you can’t find it there?

Andrew Hansen: Canada, yes. Funny story, actually. My mum had sent me a birthday present earlier in the year, and she somehow had researched some things that we wouldn’t have had for a long time having been over here. She sent me in the mail these little vials of vegemite.

Mark Mason: That’s excellent. Very good. I’m glad to know that. You know, I’m a scuba diver, and I’ve wanted to dive The Great Barrier Reef, so now I can add vegemite and diving to that trip. That will be good.

Andrew Hansen: Just not at the same time. That might be weird.

Mark Mason: That’s true. So, the question for you, sir, is if you were talking to a new internet marketer, which I guess actually you do all the time, or if you had it to do all over again, what are the three things that you think somebody needs to know about internet marketing to be successful, or shorten the amount of time that it takes to be successful, or to avoid traps, or whatever. What are the three things you want to tell new people that are new to internet marketing?

Andrew Hansen: It’s actually a really difficult question, but it’s a good one, a very important. I don’t know whether I’ll have three things, or whether we’ll just kind of talk about a bunch of things in this time, but I can give you some of my thoughts.

The first thing that I think new people really need to know about is before they get into strategies and specific questions about you actually make the money, I think it’s important to just have an understanding of the industry that you’re getting into. I mean if you’re a new person starting out, and I’m sure you started out and I started out this way as well, you start looking into the different ways to make money online.

One of the first things that you realize is that there are so many of them. There’s as many ways to make money online as there is people trying to make money online, or at least people selling how to make money online.

So, that in itself poses, not a problem, but it’s like an initial barrier to people who are trying to get started, because one of the first things that you have to do is try to sift the enormous amount of information and try to find something that makes sense to you and something that seems like you can implement it.

Not only that, not only the amount of information, but the nature of the information that trains people how to make money on the internet is, as I know and you know, of varying levels of quality and varying levels of clarity in terms of how well they lay out the steps that you need to take. It’s so easy to waste your money, and it’s so easy to fail purely for that reason alone.

To have an understanding, like if you could somehow have foresight at that point starting out, the things that you’re looking at, the sales letters that you’re looking at and the products you’re buying are part of such an enormous, for lack of a better word, pile of information, strategies, tools, and offers trying to get you to spend more money and more money.

It’s a crazy world. That may be the first thing that I would talk about.

Mark Mason: It is a crazy world, there are 1,000 or hundreds of thousands of sales letters out there of different things you can buy. You’re right, some of them are just not very good quality. They’re well intentioned, but not good quality.

Andrew Hansen: Some of them aren’t well intentioned.

Mark Mason: Right. They’re not well intentioned, they’re actually kind of scam type things. What do you advise someone to do about this? Do you advise them to pick someone to follow, or focus their efforts, or do you just warn them?

Andrew Hansen: Yes, a bit of all of the above perhaps. I think one thing [inaudible] to the way I got started that was very helpful, and I know you did the same, was to start out when you start the search for information is to rather than jumping from kind of sales letter to sales letter and learning through the things that you read there, is to become involved in a community.

The Warrior Forum is a great one for people getting started, where you see a little more of the content and a little less of the offers, at least slightly. It’s the kind of place where there’s a bunch of people that are on the same mission that you are, and they’re looking at the same products that you are, and they can advise for or against a particular product, depending on your skill level.

They’re a group of people who definitely have been at the game longer than you have, so they will have made some of the mistakes that you are likely to make. So, you can learn from their experience. Learning from other people’s experience in that way is often a lot better than learning from your own experience, because when you have to go out and make every single mistake yourself, it becomes extremely disheartening.

It’s hard, you need a lot of will to carry on if you’re taking that way. Learning from other people’s experience cuts down the amount of time that you have to spend on everything. So, yes, joining a community is one excellent way to kind of fast track the process.

Mark Mason: Very good. That sounds like outstanding advice to me. How about thing two? What’s the second thing that you might advise someone that was new to internet marketing?

Andrew Hansen: The second thing that I had in mind when you first asked me, and some people listening may find it frustrating to hear, but it’s another sort of a mindset issue. Again, this is really difficult to do, and it’s very rare that people just getting started are able, even if they want to, to take on this mindset.

That is to just approach online business in two ways. Both as a long term venture, and something that you are building gradually and slowly, and that you want to have making you money, not just in the next 3 months, but in the next 3 years.

Then starting from that frame of mind, again is difficult, because all of the offers and all of the material that you read is always promising you that you’re going to be able to make X amount of money, “In the next 3 days you’ll have this stream of income coming next week, and then it will skyrocket from there and suddenly you’ll have an ocean front mansion and a Ferrari just like in the picture.”

It doesn’t take long for most people to realize that it doesn’t really work that way. Nor should you want it to work that way, because a general rule that I have is that the faster money comes to you, the faster it can leave you. You might be able to make 1,000 dollars by next week, but whatever may have brought you that money is almost always such that it can disappear just as fast as it came.

So, approaching it from the mindset of wanting to setup a real business is maybe the smartest thing that you can do. Again, it’s difficult, but if you do it you’ll beat many people.

Mark Mason: That’s excellent advice. I sometimes get these heartbreaking emails from readers of my blog, or people that stumble through my blog telling me how their credit cards are maxed out and they’re about to lose their house and they need to make 10,000 dollars tomorrow. There’s just not a lot you can tell those people, really.

Andrew Hansen: I know what you mean. I have the same emails. You’re right, what do you say to them? The truest thing to say to them is that you don’t need internet marketing right now, you need a loan or you need a job or something. If someone was in that situation, would you advise them to start a real business? Would you tell them to start up a Subway franchise and see if you can make money that way? Of course not. They shouldn’t be looking for a business. They should be looking to secure their financial situation first.

Mark Mason: That’s right. Okay. That’s excellent advise, number two. So, do you have a third one for me tonight?

Andrew Hansen: Yes. It’s hard to select a third one actually.

Mark Mason: Well, you’re allowed four. If it’s really coming down to that kind of thing, we’ll give you a fourth one.

Andrew Hansen: Sure. All right. The next thing, and this one is kind of related to your approach also in the pre-strategy stage, I would say. That is because like we’ve been saying, there are so many different methods to being able to make money, the thing is that actually there is also so many working methods.

There’s many ways to skin the cat. There’s a lot of ways that in the midst of all the ones that don’t work, there’s still a lot of ways that do work. What makes one method right for one person doesn’t depend on the method, but it depends on the individual.

For example, if you pick any given person off the street, that person would have preexisting knowledge, and preexisting skills, preexisting likes and dislikes. So, they would be better suited to one business model rather than another.

For example, you might really like writing, like me, I’m someone who really likes to write. So, writing comes easy to me. It’s never a rigorous process, I never begrudgingly start to write an article, because I enjoy it. So, I use that to my advantage by focusing on business models that utilize the skills and the things that I enjoy, and that I already have.

That’s how I got started out. I got started first just writing for other people. That allowed me to be able to make money from home. It wasn’t really a business, but I was able to make money from that. Then slowly as I learned more about actually making money with a proper business online, I was able to use those writing skills to leverage into content for blogs and for mini sites. Then to use the traffic generated from those to promote affiliate programs, and earn commissions and things like that.

The point after that discussion was try to find the method, and firstly, try to stick to one method, because the worst thing that you can do is get started with one method, see another method or offer tomorrow in passing and kind of hop over to that method and do a little bit of work there, and realize that it’s not really for you, so hop onto another method, and then maybe later come back to that first method, because you realized it might be more profitable after all.

That’s the worst thing you can do. That’s opportunity hopping, like I call it, and it’s almost always going to lead to failure. So, the first thing is to stick to one method at least until you get to the point that you realize you can’t do it, because it’s just not fitting with you, you’re not good at doing things that way, you don’t have the resources or the time, or whatever else to perform that particular method.

The second thing is when you are sticking to one method, make it one method that fits with the skills and the things that you like that you already have. So, if you like writing, blogging should be easy for you. You might find it easier to maintain a blog than to sell products. You could blog and to sell advertising on that blog, as opposed to doing all the research and the analytics and tracking and testing that comes with say making money with PPC.

That would be the third thing, stick to one method, and try to stick one method that fits with the things that you already are good at and enjoy doing.

Mark Mason: That’s a great tip. You know, I hear a lot of people, and I’m one of them, tell people to beware of getting distracted by what I call bright shiny objects. Every new email that comes into your inbox is trying to sell you a new method, you need to watch out for that.

But, I think you may be the first person I’ve heard who has really expressed this in this way, where you should take advantage of the skills that you have and try to get a match between what you’re good at and what the method teaches, so that you can leverage the assets you already have. That’s an excellent tip. I appreciate that.

Andrew Hansen: Absolutely. Part of it is that you only, and this is kind of unfortunate, but inevitable, that you will only really start to find what you really enjoy doing online and what you are really good at after a little bit of messing around. So, maybe one of the other side note points of the three is just be willing to kind of experiment a little bit with it, and be willing to lose a little bit of money if you absolutely have to.

Take your time and find out what it is you’re good at, because even if you take that little bit of time at the start and you start focusing on a method that you are really good at and that you do really enjoy, the dividends of that will pay down the track, both in terms of how much time it will save you and how much money it will make you, will be well worth the amount of time that you may waste in the beginning.

Mark Mason: Excellent. Did you have one more that you wanted to throw in here, because I’ve got time for you if you’d like one more?

Andrew Hansen: I think I will, actually, because we didn’t really get to talk much about strategy. So, I thought I might throw one little strategy point in there. It’s really hard to pick one strategy point out of everything that you could possibly say that would cover every kind of method and every kind of person who would be looking to start to make money online.

But, the thing that I thought of, and it’s such a recurring theme, and such a recurring thing that I see as the reason for people not achieving the results that they want to with their online business. That is firstly, whatever method or many methods that you will start to make money online with begin with finding a market. Whether it’s a market being an interest group to which you want to write a blog for, or whether it’s a market that you’re going to sell a product to, or it’s a market that you’re going to sell advertising to, whatever it is, many methods start with a niche or finding a market.

Different people have different definitions of what a market or what a niche on the internet really is. If you’re listening to this call, you probably will have already, or will in the future, come across the methods for locating markets on the internet. Like using the search analytics tools to see how many people are searching for a particular term.

A lot of people think, and it’s easy to fall into this trap of thinking, that things like somebody searching for a term is a market or is a profitable market. But, there’s a big difference between searches and buyers. If you want to make money from your online business, if you’re not just doing it for fun or because you enjoy it, you want to make money from it, you need to be in a niche where people are spending money. You need to be in a niche not just where you think people might spend money, but where people are already spending money.

Seeing the term, I don’t know whatever it is, Dragon Ball Z cards, for example, gets searched for 100,000 times, that doesn’t mean you’ve got 100,000 people who could potentially buy from you in that group, because that’s such a niche of kids and people who aren’t necessarily spending a ton of money. It doesn’t mean you’ve got 100,000 buyers. You might only have 1,000 buyers, if you’re lucky, maybe 100 buyers more likely.

Conversely, there’s markets where if you look at something like weight loss. People are spending money in that market. It’s an enormous market, not just on the internet, but offline as well. It’s a market where you know people are spending money. I’m not necessarily advocating that you get into the weight loss market, it’s extremely competitive, but I’m providing that as an example of a market where you are certain that people are already spending money.

So, your goal then, almost regardless of what method it is that you’re using, is to try to access and try to put yourself between the transactions that are already taking place and put yourself in the midst of the transactions that are already taking place. By doing that, you’re giving yourself a really increased percentage chance of being able to actually claim some of that cash that’s already changing hands.

Starting with a niche of buyers is my fourth, final, and only strategy tip.

Mark Mason: I know it’s amazing to me that people miss this, but I think you cover it pretty well in some of the materials that you’ve published over the years. There’s a lot of really simple things you can think about. One of the things that you teach is just the keyword modifier, “buy.”

There’s a hell of a lot of difference between the keyword “buy dog food recipes” and “dog food recipes.” One person is looking for a free recipe for dog food, and the other person is looking for a dog food recipe cookbook.

Andrew Hansen: Absolutely.

Mark Mason: There’s just a huge difference.

Andrew Hansen: One person has got their wallet in their hand as they type. They’ve got their credit card there and they’re looking to make sure they know all the different numbers so they’re ready to type it in when they find what it is that they want.

Whereas the other group, you can’t tell what they want. Some of them may be looking to buy, but some of them might be looking for a freebie, some of them might be looking for something they can print off and give to their friends. You don’t know. So, the group that’s got their credit card ready, and it’s a no brainer about which one you want to target.

Mark Mason: Very good. This has been incredibly helpful. There are a couple of other questions I wanted to ask you.

Andrew Hansen: Sure.

Mark Mason: I know that you’ve been very gracious and not actually talking about your own products, but they’re so good I want to talk about them. The first thing I want to talk about and want to point people to is one of my favorite ebooks that you’ve released, and it’s free, that’s really great, and I’ve actually sent my readers to it, because I really like it. That’s your Crap Cutter Marketing ebook. Can you give people kind of the 30 second lowdown about what they can expect in that ebook, and let them where to find it, and I’ll also put the URL in the show notes.

Andrew Hansen: Sure. Some of the things that I wrote about in Crap Cutter Marketing is the same as what we’ve talked about on this call. In part it’s about locating niche markets of buyers, locating groups of people that are looking to spend money and talking about strategies for putting yourself, your content, your website, or your offers in front of those people.

It’s talking about how to do that in a way that creates as little work for you as possible. There’s obviously work involved, but it’s try to make that as easy as possible for you. It also tries to do that without you having to spend a ton of money. So, it focuses on free traffic strategies. It looks at then leveraging that free traffic by promoting offers as an affiliate and using advertising revenue and using content, or things that you write, as the platform for selling stuff online.

There’s a ton of stuff in that report. A lot on mindset things, to finding niches, to monetizing your content, to generating traffic. It’s a really good free report, and it’s had a lot of good feedback. You can’t argue with free. There’s no cheesy up sell and you don’t have to spend any money in the process. It’s a good one to check out.

Mark Mason: Tell me the URL again.

Andrew Hansen: That’s CrapCutterMarketing.com.

Mark Mason: Have you gotten any negative feedback from people who are offended by the use of the word crap?

Andrew Hansen: No, I haven’t actually. Not as much as people offended by the use of the word crack in a previous report.

Mark Mason: Niche Marketing on Crack was another great one. I told you, that’s one of the first things I bought, so that’s good stuff.

The other thing I wanted to talk about briefly, because it’s your premiere product and I’ve written a lot about it on my blog, is Firepow. I was wondering if you could just give us the 30 second summary of what the Firepow system is, and give us some look into the future about Firepow and give me some breaking news here? Tell me what you’ve got planned over there.

Andrew Hansen: Sure. Firepow is kind of like a combination of all the intelligent things I’ve learned about making money online in the 5 or 6 years that I’ve been doing this. It’s a piece of software primarily, but it’s also kind of a suite of software tools, as well as a lot of training materials, like PDFs and videos, that focus on how to create blogs and use those blogs for the purposes of making money as an affiliate.

There’s other forms of monetization as well. The blog is for the purpose of generating really high quality, target, buying traffic that then you can push towards affiliate offers to earn commissions or to advertising on your site to earn Adsense clicks, or to your own products if you sell something somewhere else on the internet.

It’s a suite of tools that helps you to automate as much as possible that entire process. It helps you set up a blog in a matter of 10 clicks or something like that. There’s no HTML to write, there’s FTP programs to fiddle around with, there’s no uploading or downloading. You just fill in the forms and follow the instructions and it will spit you out a nice looking blog that’s not just a normal blog, but a blog that’s optimized to generate traffic for you from the search engines. So, it’s targeted to the right keywords that you’re looking to rank for.

It’s got proper permalinks. It’s got all the plugins and all the little settings that normally you have to learn how to set yourself or the add-ons that you have to work out. It’s got them all set in there for you, so you just click the buttons and you spits you out the blog.

It takes you right from that part of the process, creating your blog, to the generation of your content, which is the next thing that’s enormously important for anyone looking to generate free traffic. You need content. You need stuff to attract visitors that you can then monetize.

It helps you generate content both with ideas and with physically finding content for you on the internet that’s already out there that’s not being utilized as well as it might be that’s targeted to the terms that you’re looking to rank for. So, it helps you leverage other people’s content. Not in any illegal way, of course, just by grabbing content from syndicated sources from elsewhere on the internet.

Right through to the process of actually promoting your blog and being able to generate traffic to it, both through search engines and through social bookmarking sites, through directories, through other people’s private blogs, and building backlinks and generating exposure in as many places as possible to your blogs.

It’s kind of the whole enchilada from the creation of your blog to the cashing of your checks is what I always say. It’s automating that process as much as possible.

In terms of future plans, we’re really just trying to add new features or new tools all the time to optimize that and to automate it more for you. For example, we’ve got a feature coming out next week that’s for people who want to make Adsense sites.

We don’t have time to discuss that model, obviously, but it’s just creating content that gets ranked in the search engines that you position Adsense ads in, when people click those ads you make money. With this new tool, it will be in addition to something that we already have, but that lets you basically create a full Adsense blog that gets updated every couple days, however often you select, with content that’s targeted to the right keywords, that’s relevant and unique as much as possible, and automatically monetizing that for you.

So, you can create Adsense within, again, a number of clicks. You could create an Adsense site on any niche that you choose as long as you’ve got a keyword list that you’ve already researched within 5 minutes or so. So, that’s something we’re working on at the moment.

Mark Mason: Now, where can people find out more information about Firepow?

Andrew Hansen: You can checkout GetFirepow.com.

Mark Mason: That is excellent, sir. I appreciate all the tips, and I’m excited to give people an opportunity to hear about your products, because in both cases those two products are products that I’ve personally endorsed and have done so based on just the raw quality of both of them. I’m happy to give you that time to talk about that.

I do have one last question for you. I know you’re an accomplished affiliate marketer, you’ve sold all kinds of crazy things, which we don’t have time to go through them all here today, but now the question I have for you is, are you aware of any affiliate programs for vegemite?

Andrew Hansen: A vegemite affiliate program. You know, I’m sure there probably is one. You might have to sign up to some kind of online store, some Australian grocery store online. I don’t think it will pay out very high, because it’s a physical glass bottle with stuff in it.

After they ship it to you it will cost you 3.75, you might earn a 10 cent commission per jar of vegemite sold. I don’t know too many people that order it in quantities large enough to generate a huge commission. But, if you pioneer it, I’ll stand behind you.

Mark Mason: Okay, very good. Listen, Andrew, I really appreciate your time. The last question I have for you is, if people just want to follow the teachings of Andrew Hansen, where is the best place to follow you online?

Andrew Hansen: Sure. You can check out my blog, that’s at AndrewHansen.name, or you can follow me on Twitter as well, and that’s @AndrewHansen1.

Mark Mason: Very good. I’ll have both of those in the show notes. Andrew, thank you very much. I’m going to get some sleep. It’s creeping up on 2:00 in the morning here in Dallas, and it’s 3:00 in the morning there. I appreciate your time, and I hope you have a fantastic day.

Andrew Hansen: My please, sir. Thank you for having me.

Mark Mason: 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.

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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;

I am on the road (San Jose, CA), but I wanted to let you know that PepperJam just released a beta version of their TextAds for eBay gadget. So this is not really a proper review - more of an announcement.

Bottom line, I decided to give it a try. In fact, I have it running on this page. So the links that you see in several places in this post are affiliate links to eBay.

You add some simple JScript to your site, and bingo! Pepperjam adds in text links to eBay products based on the words your page. This is pretty neat because the eBay marketplace is huge, so this could end up being a really large ad network.

Of course, since this is done in JScript, no link juice is passed. As I write this I see that PJN is picking up a link to the word "juice." Here is an example with PlayStation3 (from the PepperJam WebSite).

However, as with the release of nearly any title that reaches millions of hands in the span of a day, the actual game had a couple of hangups -- notably system lockups on both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

I have no idea about conversion and those kinds of things -- all of that will need to be tested. I do love PepperJam --- they are great to work with and are always innovating.  And their reporting backend is really nice -- much better than some of the competition.

So, if you are interested in this, you can Join PepperJam for free and try it out. It too me 30 seconds to install it in a single page.

There is an auto mode (used here), but they also support positive and negative stop words so that you can target your ads to your content.

Here is what the PJN people have to say.

You may be asking what is Pepperjam InText Ads? In short, With Peppejam InText Ads, the advertiser's brand is linked to a relevant keyword appearing in the online content which is matched to the advertiser's ad. In the case of Pepperjam InText Ads rolling over a "hot" hyperlinked keyword results in a product advertisement from eBay being shown.

You can customize your InText code to reflect how it will display on your site. You can choose from 4 different configurations.

• White List - "White List" refers to keywords that you supply that you want converted to InText advertisements, as well as keywords from our "Auto Generate" default feature. For instance, if you have a cellular phone Web site, you may want to add keywords such as "phone," "accessory," and "Cingular" to your White List.
• Black List - "Black List" refers to keywords that you definitely do not want converted to InText advertisements, while showing keywords from our "Auto Generate" default feature. For instance, you may want to add keywords like "buy," discount," and "search" to your Black List.
• Auto Generate - "Auto Generate" happens automatically if you do not designate any White List or Black List keywords. Use this option if you'd like Pepperjam's system to automatically highlight keywords from our inventory of millions of e-commerce related keywords.
• Exclusive White List - "Exclusive White List" refers to keywords you supply that you definitely want displayed WITHOUT keywords from our "Auto Generate" default feature.

his could be a really nice companion to phpBay, which also supports PepperJam.

OK -- bye for now.  I am due to present at a panel discussion on Design for Manufacturability tonight, and I still need to make some slides. Be sure to check out PepperJam -- they are going places.

Internet Marketing Fortune Cookie #12

Staying Out Of eBay Jail

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

This week's Internet Business Fortune Cookie made me stop and look at something that has been bugging me in the back of my mind for a long time.  When I cracked open the cookie this week, I knew right away what it meant.

Hear the cookie speak:

"Be Willing To Admit That You May Be Wrong"

So what did I think I might be wrong about?

Terms And Conditions For eBay Niche Stores

As you know, I have several eBay niche stores powered by the incredibly cool phpBay software.  That software allows you to create an eBay store in any WordPress blog or other PHP-based site almost effortlessly, and it has killer SEO features not found in other tools.  In fact, I just released a video a couple of weeks ago on how I use keyword tools like Micro Niche Finder to build eBay niche stores in minutes.

But something has been bothering me.  When I did that video, I used the trademark term BMW in the URL.   Now, this may not be a great idea for several reasons, but one reason bothered me particularly.

I have been told (and believed) that the eBay terms of service (TOS) does not allow you to use a trademark name in URL before the third slash.  So, if you want to set up a BMW site using eBay tools, BMW cannot appear before the third slash.

OK: http: //www.mycarshop.com/bmw

Not OK: http://www.myBMWcarshop.com

I believed this was true -- but I don't any longer.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer and I do not offer legal advice. What follows should not be considered legal advice. If you need legal advice, you should consult an attorney. You have been warned.

My Research on the eBay TOS

I researched this "third slash" thing. I think I had it wrong.  I think it is OK from eBay's point of view to have trademarks in the URL of eBay niche stores.

Here is the TOS from eBay on PepperJam's site:

You will not adopt or use any company name, trademark, trade name. brand, shop sign, domain name, or URL (specifically, any term before the third "/" of your URL) that incorporates as a part thereof any of eBay Inc.'s, or its corporate affiliates', (a) trademarks, tradenames, company names, brands, shop signs, domain names or URLs (including the translations and transliterations), or any variations thereof; or (b) any term that consists of a generic or descriptive word, followed by the term BAY. Further, you will not display your company name, branding or trademark in an uneven, staggered, multi-color format that, in ePN's sole discretion, invokes the distinctiveness of the famous multi-color eBay logo.

I believe that this says (paraphrasing) that You will not have a store name or URL that uses any reference to eBay or it's affiliates.

I do not believe this says that You cannot use brand names in the URL. Now, using the term BMW may aggravate someone in Germany, but eBay does not care.

Let's break it down:

You will not adopt or use any company name, trademark, trade name. brand, shop sign, domain name, or URL (specifically, any term before the third "/" of your URL)

Above means you cannot use anything in your store name or URL

...that incorporates as a part thereof any of eBay Inc.'s, or its corporate affiliates', (a) trademarks, tradenames, company names, brands, shop signs, domain names or URLs (including the translations and transliterations), or any variations thereof; or (b) any term that consists of a generic or descriptive word, followed by the term BAY.

Above means that uses any eBay trademark names (or those of eBay corporate affiliates)

Further, you will not display your company name, branding or trademark in an uneven, staggered, multi-color format that, in ePN's sole discretion, invokes the distinctiveness of the famous multi-color eBay logo.

Above means you cannot rip off or parody the eBay logo.

Now one open question is what are "corporate affiliates"? I think they mean other eBay companies like PayPal, but I am still researching that.

I spoke with an anonymous "legal professional" with experience in Internet Marketing. He did not offer me legal advice, and he is not offering you legal advice (neither am I). He recommends that you and I both consult our attorneys. He also said the following:

I interpret this to say that you may not use any ebay trademark in the space between the second and third slash of your URL.

I do not read it to say anything about what comes after the third slash.

I do not read it to say anything about the use of a NON-affiliated company's info between the second and third slash.

Determining what companies are "affiliates" is the art.

Again, BMW may care, but I do not think eBay does.

Remember, I am not a lawyer and I do not offer legal advice. The above should not be considered legal advice. If you need legal advice, you should consult an attorney. You have been warned twice (maybe three times).

As the cookie says, Be Willing To Admit That You May Be Wrong.

Have a great day.
Mark

Photo credit: Uploaded on July 17, 2006 by headcase

I have written several times in the past about how Micro Niche Finder was the first keyword tool that I ever purchased, and how I still use it today because of the great user interface. I have also talked about how you can build cool eBay niche stores using WordPress and the phpBay plugin.

In November, James Jones from Micro Niche Finder had a contest and asked people to send in videos about how people were using his software.  I completed an entry as a way to say thanks to James for all the great support that he provides, including free lifetime upgrades for his customers.  As I wrote recently, James is right in the middle of a serious of major upgrades to his keyword tool.

I thought you might be interested to see my entry.  My idea was simple -- think up a niche store idea and build a quick and dirty site. In the video below, I show where I got the idea for a BMW autoparts store, how I did quick and dirty keyword research using Micro Niche Finder, how I bought the domain name and set up the store in about an hour using WordPress and phpBay.  It's all there.

Enjoy.

The video had to be under 10 minutes for the contest, so there is some stuff that goes by pretty quickly.  For example, I wanted to talk about creating and promoting the site in Firepow -- guess that will have to wait for another video.   In the mean time, I need to do some article marketing.

If you have a comment or a question, I'd love to hear from you.

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving.

It's Free Stuff Friday again, and time for the Friday Freebie.

OK -- this is really cool.

I was cruising around on Mike Filsaime's Butterfly Reports site and I found a report called "How to Use Google to Find eBay Best Sellers."  I checked it out, and inside the report I learned about a guy that is scanning eBay looking for items with more than a certain number of bids (40 in his example).

Now as you know, I have a number of eBay sites running phpBay, so this is very interesting to me.

Anyway, the guy apparently gives away the lists of items and the software itself for free.  I plan to check this out in some detail in the near future -- but for now I have uploaded the report so you can see for yourself.

As always, opt in to my list to get access to all the free stuff (opt-in box in the right hand sidebar). As soon as you opt-in and confirm you subscription, you'll receive instructions on how to log into the members area.

Thanks,
Mark

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

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.

It's time for another weekly Internet Business Fortune Cookie.  Last night I had General Tso's chicken.  It's funny, because a Chinese guy at a restaurant told me once all about General Zuo Zongtang, who was a Qing dynasty General.  He explained how the dish was prepared for the General by his wife and served for him and his staff.  Sources I can find on the internet suggest that the dish was actually invented in New York City in the 1970s. Go figure. I like the Qing dynasty version of the story, but I am thinking the NYC version is probably right.

The Cookie Speaks The Truth

As you know, everything you need to know about running an internet business can be learned from fortune cookies. This week's cookie actually hits right at the heart of Google rankings -- "The thing that you lost will be found this month."

Of course, that fortune cookie is obviously referring to the fact that one of my newer eBay sites using phpbay was "sand boxed" this month. I was ranking on the first page for my terms and making some nice sales. Suddenly, the site is nowhere to be found.

So, I am adding the site into Firepow to see if I can add some content and back links to it to get it back in play.  Firepow has a new very cool "blog import" feature that I am testing. There are still some bugs, but it is working well for a couple of my niche blogs. I plan to use the Firepow "BNet" to get some back links and some of the other Firepow promotional tools. It will be interesting to see if that helps the site or makes things worse. It's really hard to tell, because you never know what Google is doing in the first place.

Stay The Course

I've had this Google Dance happen before. The sites impacted by a sudden loss in ranking usually come back stronger than when they left -- which is what the fortune cookie is trying to tell me.

This is another really good reason to have 60 sites making $100/month and not 3 sites making $2000/month. If you are at the mercy of Google for your traffic, you are hosed if they slap your site or otherwise impact your rankings.

So, the message for you today is, don't freak out if your site moves in the rankings (especially if it is still indexed). Generally speaking, it will come back. Keep working on the site while it is in the sandbox and watch it come back even stronger in many cases.  Use good fundamentals (keyword targeting, on page SEO, white hat linking techniques, etc) and you should be fine.

Have a great day.
Mark

Photo credit:  Uploaded on July 17, 2006 by headcase

Man, did I get a bad case of something this week. I woke up Sunday morning feeling like I had been hit by a truck -- but it was more likely a virus. I got some well wishes via twitter, so for those of you that were rooting for me, thanks!

It was a crazy week last week. The hurricane (IKE) missed Dallas for the most part, but hit my parents in Houston. They are without power, and will be for several weeks. I have also noticed that many internet marketers from the Houston area (and there are a lot of them) are off the air. Their sites are up, but the pages are sparse and their lists are quiet.

Build Business Systems Into Your Business

Still, this reminds me about one of the important things about internet marketing. Internet business gives you the freedom to build income around automated systems that still operate when you are not around. If you have read The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, you know exactly what I mean.

In my case, I was away from MasonWorld.com for a couple of days, but readers kept stopping in. People kept opting into my list, and the many people on my list got automated messages that I had preloaded months ago with helpful information that was "evergreen."

My information products (like Niche Adsense Themes for WordPress) continued to make sales. Since the payment and delivery is automatic, this all runs on autopilot. AdSense clicks kept coming, and so did other affiliate program clicks (including eBay).

So, my adivce to internet marketers is to avoid creating businesses that "require" you to be there.  If you are selling a product that requires shipping, automate the order process.  If you are doing consulting, consider creating an digital information product instead.  If your business depends on you to generate content every day, look for trusted people for outsourcing.

In general, you need to look for ways to take youself out of the daily equation.  This allows you to grow your business way beyond what you can do alone, and it allows you to possibly sell it some day.  Who know, you might even find time to get off the computer and spend an hour with your kids.

I'm writing this in the United Airlines Red Carpet lounge in Narita airport near Tokyo.  It's 2AM Dallas time, but it is the middle of the day here in Japan.  I am waiting on my connection to another Asian country.  That will be my third airplane today and I have a bus ride to follow that.  I left my house in Dallas 20 hours ago and I have another 8 to go before I reach my hotel.  I am officially declaring that a long day (phew).

It's A Small, Small World

All is not lost, however.  I am chatting with Garry Conn via GTalk as I write this.  He is still up in the middle of the night generating content about how to make money online as usual.  It's funny, because with the internet, he has no reason to suspect that I am in Tokyo aside from the fact that I told him.  The technology is simply amazing.  The first thing I did when I got off the plane was to check on Michael Phelps.  Looks like he won his eighth Olympic Gold Medal while I was somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.  Well, on this day, swimming meant something very good for him -- for me, not so much.  Needing to swim during a scheduled international flight over the pacific is never a good thing.  Luckily, no swimming for me today.

Working On The Road

I did spend time on the plane catching up on course material from the Internet Business Mastery Academy (check out my review of the Internet Business Mastery Academy if you missed it).  The courses in the Academy are targeted at designing an "Internet Lifestyle."  Many people in the Internet Academy have left or wish to leave their day jobs to pursue a career on the Internet.  As I have stated many times, I love my day job and have no intention of leaving it.  Still, it would be cool to have a low maintenance part-time Internet business that generated enough cash to pay off the house and support early retirement on my terms.

So, this has gotten me to thinking about my own goals for MasonWorld.com specifically, and my internet business in general.  I know I want to continue to grow this blog, and I want to develop multiple streams of passive internet income (not necessarily from this blog).  In the very beginning, I thought my passive income was going to come from building armies of AdSense and eBay sites.  Sure, I have a few of those, but they are not very fulfilling.  The thing that I love is helping people be successful.  For example, I was happy the other day because someone was able to implement my free link cloaking solution successfully on their blog with my help.  It was not a big deal, really -- but I was glad I was able to help someone (even just a little).

Time To Update The Roadmap

What all this really means is that I need to update the MasonWorld RoadMap with an eye toward 2009.  I will have accomplished everything I set out to accomplish in 2008 by December.  I will have some AdSense sites, a blog I like, some eBay sites, a my first product.  So, what is next?  What do I really want from all of this?  That is what I am working through using some of the methods taught over at the Internet Business Mastery Academy.  When I figure it all out, you will be the first to know.

What Do You Want (Leave a comment below)?

One thing I would like to know is who are you, why do you read my blog, and what would you like to hear about?  That will help me set the direction.  I will also use your feedback to put together a reader survey.  So, let me know what you are thinking.  Leave a comment below, send me email, or drop me a note on the MasonWorld contact form.

Best regards,
Mark

One of the biggest challenges of part time Internet Marketing is finding the time to do some actual internet marketing. Last month I reviewed Yanik Silver's book about how to get started making money on the internet. That book talks about five different internet monetization strategies that you can go after part-time. As I mentioned in my review, Yanik talks about blogging, eBay, affiliate marketing, information marketing, and standard online commerce as ways to make money on the Internet.

It turns out that each one of those business models has hundreds of sub niches. As a new internet marketer trying to figure out how to make money on the internet it can seem overwhelming at times. This enormous amount of information is amplified by the thousands of people trying to make money online teaching people how to make money online. It is simply amazing. Then if you throw in some sleazy dishonest slimeballs for good measure, it becomes almost impossible for a new internet marketer to figure out what to do first. it's also very distracting. Every time I check my e-mail inbox I have some new fantastic marketing offer from some heavy hitter like Mike Filsame or Yanik Silver. These slick video sales pages are hard to ignore and end up taking a lot of time.

The Information Diet -- Focus on the Roadmap

So, I am currently on a strict information diet. If it's not on the MasonWorld roadmap, I'm ignoring it for now.

One of my main goals is to put honest effort into this blog and, after a long time, and up with an A-list quality product that people want to read. The big challenge is that most of my competition is blogging full-time. They are spending their days poring over twitter feeds reading hundreds of tweets about posts on obscure blogs from all over the world in every possible time zone. As soon as something exciting happens they're off to the races with their latest blog post. While all this is happening, I am happily toiling away at my day job (which I love dearly).

So, finding enough time to post a list content to my blog and do the research to support the post is one problem. But the bigger problem is that once I have the post in my mind, I have one heck of a time getting it into WordPress. You see, I am typing challenged. Yes, it's sad but true. I got my first personal computer in 1982. It was an Apple IIe, and I learned to program it using basic. At that time, I was proud to have a 300 baud at half duplex modem that I paid for by mowing lawns in my neighborhood. I've been using a computer almost every day since 1982, and I'm really not a very good typist. Go figure.

Technology to the Rescue

So today I went to my local electronics retailer and purchased a brand-new copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking version 9.5. I am making this blog post without touching the keyboard. How cool is that? I actually experimented with the software some years ago. At that time I remember thinking that there was not enough CPU power and computer memory to enable the application to work well. Boy has that changed. The software just simply works right out of the box. After training the software for only 10 minutes I was able to write this post in scribed fire with only minor edits. Of course once the text is entered, I have to go back and do things like add hyperlinks and special formatting. I think some of those advanced capabilities are available with the software, but I only installed it 20 minutes ago so I haven't figured that out yet.

I'm really hoping that Dragon Naturally Speaking will help with my post frequency. I'm also really excited about the potential to use this device for generating content for article marketing. I can imagine surfing the web, finding a web page with relevant content, and summarizing several pages verbally with my own twist. This would allow me to use Dragon Naturally Speaking as a way to create outstanding content for article marketing. For a guy who cannot type very well this is exciting news.

I'm also thinking that it might be possible to use the advanced version of Dragon Naturally Speaking to transcribe podcasts. I'm very interested in adding a podcast to MasonWorld.com, but to be successful it will need to be a very efficient endeavor.

So stay tuned to this channel.

Thanks and best regards, Mark

Last week, I updated you on my Niche Super-Site Project, History of Elvis. My strategy of going after long-tail keywords paid off, and I demonstrated a front page ranking for history of elvis using link directory submissions. (It is important to remember that there are links from this site to the Elvis site as well). This organic search engine ranking is starting to "pay off." In the last 30 days, most of the traffic to the site has come from search engines as seen below:

It is interesting to note that 15 searches in the last 30 days came from AOL and MSN. I never pay attention to those engines, but I have heard it said that the people using AOL and MSN are generally less computer saavy and have higher conversion rates than their Google bretheren.

What are people searching for?

In any case, it is not surprising to see that the google searches are hitting for history of elvis. As of this writing, I have moved up from the number 10 spot to the number 7 spot. Other search terms that are starting to hit include some products:

This is cool, because you will recall that I enabled this site with and eBay store using phpBay and other affiliate products using PopShops. This probably means that I need to revisit my keword strategy. As it turns out, Elvis is not a great niche for Adsense revenue because the amount of money you can get from each cleck is low.

Value of Elvis clicks

As you can see on spyfu.com, this is not a great niche if you are going after PPC revenue.

So, no one will get rich collecting money from Adsense on this one.

Next Up, Article Marketing

In my next post on Elvis, I'll talk about Article Marketing. After reading Article Marketing Domination, buying a copy of Article Post Robot and outsourcing the creation of 20 Elvis articles on Scriptlance, I am ready to roll!

Talk to you soon.

Best regards,

Mark

%RELATEDPOSTS%

Almost completely hype-free, the book covers five methods for making money on-line:

• Information Marketing -- Selling digitally delivered information. In this section, Yanik describes why selling digital information is the ultimate way to go. I happen to agree with him, as this is part of my long term plan. He covers the basics about how to get started registering a domain and setting up a shopping cart. The section is only about 100 pages long, and is not a complete guide. However, looking at it from the perspective of a brand-new-to-the-internet person, it is a great beginners guide.
• Selling on eBay. I don't know the first thing about running a real business on eBay, so it was hard for me to evaluate this section. Sydney Johnson covers how to select products, how to do listings, and what makes a successful seller.
• Affiliate Marketing. This sections is nicely done by super-affiliate Rosalind Gardner. I like this section too as it is also part of my longer term strategy. When I started looking at making money on line, I did not even know what affiliate marketing was. It would have been really nice to have seen this section of the Silver book at that early stage. Gardner talks about how to find and work affiliate programs. The advice she gives is very similar to the advice in a recent post about how to make money online by Garry Conn. Good, solid fundamental information about how to get started.
• Yahoo stores and E-Commerce stores. Again, not something that I am highly interested in. The section covers the history of Yahoo stores and how to select a niche, drop-ship, take payments, etc.
• Blogging. I liked this section. It was written by Darren Rowse - lending instant credibility. It covers what a blog is, how to set up a blog, and how to monetize. Again, since it is only 50 pages long, it is just a start and covers the basics. However, if you are just starting out, it is a great overview.

So, why write a real book? At $21.95, this 300 page book sells for less than most eBooks. The answer is that this book (which provides useful information and is a great value for the beginner) is actually a loss leader for the associated website. The book comes with free videos. When you go to the web page, you hit a squeeze page that collects your email. According to the book, they have plans for a membership site.

No matter. If you are a beginner and you are having trouble telling whether or not guys like Jeffrey Lant are on the up and up, this is a great book for you. If you are not brand new, take a pass on this book.

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
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Setting up your niche site
• Making things look nice
• Installing Plugins
• Getting listed in Google
• Making Money with phpBay
• Adding PopShops to your site
• Adding Adsense

I had Lasik yesterday, so this will be short.

I mentioned yesterday that we were really focused on 3 ways to monetize our niche site -- Adsense, eBay using phpBay, and affiliate links through PopShops. I forgot to mention Amazon Omakase links. I like adding the Amazon Omakase gadget because I think it makes a positive association between your site (mostly unknown and unbranded) and Amazon (well know excellent brand). Now, in most cases, I have Amazon below the fold. The commissions are low. Still, if some is really looking at your stuff and is unwilling to buy from you because they don't know you, Amazon gives them a way out where you still get paid. Just a personal theory -- but I do see some clicks. Amazon offers lots of page widgets. I like the Omakaze widget because it automatically features products based on "Amazon's unique knowledge about what works for your site" (whatever the heck that means).

To add Amazon widgets:

• Sign up at Amazon
• Pick your widget (like the one below)
• Add to your page

That's about it for monetization for the moment. See you tomorrow.

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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
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Setting up your niche site
• Making things look nice
• Installing Plugins
• Getting listed in Google
• Making Money with phpBay
• Adding PopShops to your site

Over the last to days, we have talked about how you could diversify your niche income by taking advantage of the eBay affiliate sales program using phpBay Pro and how you can make affiliate sales of niche items using PopShops. The third piece to our monetization puzzle is, of course, Adsense.

If you don't know about Adsense, you are living under a rock. In fact, you are living under the same rock that I was under until my wife learned about Adsense on the Today show and asked me about it three months ago. Adsense ads are everywhere, but I never stopped to think about how I could benefit from them.

If you are following along in Caroline's eBook on how to build a niche site with WordPress, you will be using the Prosense template from Dosh Dosh. That is a great template because the Adsense stuff is already done for you. All you need to do there is change your publisher ID, and optionally set your ad channel. I wonder how many clicks Dosh Dosh gets from people who forget to change that?

In our case, I wanted something a little different for HistoryofElvis.com, so I am using the k2 WordPress template. To make Adsense work with that, I am also using the Adsense Manager WordPress pluging. There are other managers, and you are free to choose the one that you really like. I am placing the following Adsense ad blocks on my nice site:

• An Adsense for search box at the top of the middle column.
• An Adsense link unit block at the top of the middle column, just under the search box
• An Adsense skyscraper adunit in the second column under the link unit
• An Adsense link unit at the top of every page at the start of the 1st post
• An Adsense ad unit at the end of single posts

I usually set one ad channel for the entire site. that way, I can tell the difference between ad clicks coming from historyofelvis.com and those coming from masonworld.com. If traffic gets high, it might be worth setting one channel for each ad placement. But, until we have enough traffic to optimize for, it does not make much sense.

In my case for the k2 theme, I actually edited the theme to so that the Adsense ads related to posts (the link unit at the top and the ad unit at the bottom) would appear where I wanted them. So, if you know a little php, this is a nice thing you can do (and something that you don't need to do if you are using the Prosense template from Dosh Dosh.) If you want to attempt that, be sure to check out the complete usage instructions for Adsense Manager. The other thing that I like about Adsense Manager is that you can send a percentage of the click revenue to the plugin developer. Pretty neat.

So, that is about is for Adsense. There are 16 other Adsense Plugins for WordPress if you don't care for Adsense Manager.

Tomorrow, talk about one more revenue tool from Amazon.com.

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
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Setting up your niche site
• Making things look nice
• Installing Plugins
• Getting listed in Google
• Making Money with phpBay

Yesterday, we talked about how you could diversify your niche income by taking advantage of the eBay affiliate sales program by taking advantage of phpBay Pro. Today, we'll look at our second method of nich store diversification -- PopShops.

PopShops provides tools for setting up an affiliate store inside your website. PopShops claims to be the largest searchable collection of affiliate products (said to be currently over 28 million and growing). They work with the major affiliate networks, including Commission Junction, LinkShare, ShareASale, and Performics. With the PopShops program, you keep all of your commissions. ProShops offers a Free Basic account where users can add affiliate products one page at a time using JavaScript. I use the Pro account ($5/month) because that allows you to use php instead of JavaScript. This is important because the php is SEO friendly and the JavaScript is not. This is because with the Pro account shops, the product descriptions are actually in your page, and can be inded by Google (similar to phpBay Pro). PopShops also offers an Enterprise account (at $30/month). The latter account offers better sales tracking, supporting multiple commission junction PIDs (among other things). If I am making so much money at some point that I am confused about where it is coming from, I plan to upgrade. You can read more about PopShops in PC World (good description of what they do).

To make this work really well on our nice site, we need the PopShops plugin for WordPress. As of this writing, it is still in Alpha release, but it works quite well for me. Features include (from their website):

• Add products to your WP blog from any of the major affiliate networks.
• Click the POP button on your WYSIWYG post editor to add affiliate product links directly into your posts.
• Build affiliate stores for your sidebar, footer, static pages, under a post, or randomly after posts.
• As always, keep 100% of your commissions

So, for HistoryofElvis.com, we want to add shops that Elvis fans will enjoy. You can use your imagination. For this demonstration, I have added shop pages targeted at Elvis Apparel, Elvis Auto Accessories, Elvis Pins, etc. I also created a sample Elvis t-Shirt PopShop at the end of this post for your viewing pleasure.

One thing that you have to watch out for with PopShops is adding products for merchants in commission junction for which you have no relationship. As far as I know, there is no way to tell PopShops what merchants have accepted you on Commission Junction. So, if you accidentally add a CafePress shirt to your PopShop page and you are not a member of the CafePress affiliate program through Comission Junction, you will not get any commission for the sale of that item.

One great thing about PopShops is the AutoFeed feature (available on Pro and Enterprise accounts). With AutoFeed you can automatically display additional pages of products similar to the ones you originally selected for your shop. The technology uses the same shop keywords and merchants you originally chose to decide what items to add. AutoFeed pages are SEO friendly when using the php code option.

So, that's about it for PopShops. Man, this blogging stuff is hard work. Phew.

Tomorrow we need to talk about Adsense. That will complete our three-pronged monetization attach (Adsense, niche store and niche auction). In the mean time, don't forget to check out the cool PopShop store below. Neat, huh?

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
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Setting up your niche site
• Making things look nice
• Installing Plugins
• Getting listed in Google

You'll recall from our List of Niche Super-Site Design Goals that we are striving to create a niche site that generates $2 per day in residual income. We said that we did not want to rely only on Adsense alone to accomplish that. So, one thing that we can do to diversify our niche site income is add affiliate sales. One great affiliate program to look at is the eBay affiliate sales program.

As I reported previously, phpBay Pro is the way to go when you want to add eBay auctions to WordPress.  According to the Wired Studio’s website, phpBay Pro enables web publishers to quickly and easily add keyword rich eBay auction listings to WordPress or php driven sites to generate serious affiliate revenue in a matter of minutes!  Boy, can I confirm that claim personally.  In our case, we need to focus on the feature rich phpBay WordPress Plugin (for more information on why, see Build Niche Sites with WordPress). There are at least two great ways to use this plugin. You can embed auction items in posts, or you can created entire pages of auction listings.

Wired Studios’ product boasts several important features:

• Simple installation takes minutes to get up and going
• Keyword rich results adds SEO value to your content
• List auctions from specific categories
• List auctions from specific vendors
• Mask outgoing Ebay links
• First Class support in case you have a question or need help

From my point of view phpBay Pro delivers all of this and more. Specifically, the support is over the top - outstanding.  In fact, since I was new to WordPress, I had a couple of newbie questions that were answered by the developer himself (Wade) the same day.

You will recall that our niche site (www.historyofelvis.com) is up and running in WordPress.   When people visit there, we would like them to buy things (thus helping us make our $2/day).  The great thing about  phpBay Pro is that we can install the plugin and have a page up and running in just a few minutes after becoming an eBay affiliate.  Generally speaking, the steps are as follows:

• Sign up with Commission Junction (www.cj.com)
• Apply to become an eBay affiliate.
• Install the phpBay Pro plugin for WordPress
• Set your affiliate sales ID in the software
• Insert one line of code in any WordPress page and see your auction come alive.

You can see an example on HistoryofElvis.com implemented in the Elvis Autographs page.  The cool thing is that phpBay content is indexed by Google.  If you mix in some ad copy, this can have a dramatic impact on your page SEO for your search keywords.

So, that's it for today.  Tomorrow, we'll talk about PopShops.

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Looks like we are having some success with our strategy to get listed in the Google search engine.  Hey --  I'm not talking about SEO ranking yet -- we will work on that later. But our pages are in there. Woo hoo!

If you look at the google search results for site:www.historyofelvis.com you can see that the auction listings are indexed.  phpBay Pro goes to some pains to make sure that the links to eBay are cloaked and SEO friendly.

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
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Setting up your niche site
• Making things look nice
• Installing Plugins

Today, we need to focus on getting listed in Google. This is a pretty straightforward process, and is not the same thing as landing on the first page of Google for a certain keyword phrase. Although, if you are not listed in Google, chances of landing on page 1 are pretty slim.

Telling Google we are here involves

• Generating a Google-compatible site map
• Pointing Google at the map

For our purposes, a sitemap is really just an XML file that lists the pages of your blog and gives Google hints about how often those pages change. Google requires that this file be in your root directory.The task of automatically generating a Google sitemap is handled very well by the Google XML Sitemap Generator plugin that we installed yesterday. This plugin creates sitemap.xml in the root directory. If you look at that file, you will be able to recognize URLs to all pages on the target website. For example, you can see the sitemap MasonWorld.com here. Now the question is, how do you tell Google about it?

There are at least two ways to notify Google about your sitemap.

• You can register with the Google Sitemaps program and submit your sitemap. This is what I do, as this will also allow you to see some interesting statistics about your site like the most used keywords and spidering problems.
• If you don't have a Google account or for some reason don't want to create one, you can notify Google about your sitemap by "pinging" them. You can hit the following URL (where mapurl is the fully qualified sitemap URL for your site). Google will come by on a regular basis, so you only need to do this once:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=mapurl

As I said, I prefer to register with the Google Sitemaps program and submit my sitemap.

Once you do that, you can get a result like this in a day or so

:

Have great day. Tomorrow, we'll discuss phpBay.

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I know we are making some progress, because we were mentioned on Caroline's blog and our site HistoryOfElvis.com is up and running. 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
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Getting your site up
• Making things look nice

Today we need to spend some time installing some important plugins. If you have not done this before, I recommend that you spend a moment looking at this post about installing plugins in WordPress.

Here are the plugins I recommend for the Niche Super-Site and why I recommend them:

• Adsense Manager. We will be using Adsense ads, and I like this manager. There are other managers, and you are free to choose the one that you really like. In a niche site that relies solely on Adsense, this is the bread and butter. As we discussed in our design goals, we will be trying to diversify HistoryOfElvis.com to build income streams in addition to Adsense. Still, we want a good ad manager.
• Akismet. Kills blog spam. Standard with WordPress 2.3
• All in One SEO Pack. Allows us to optimize on-page SEO for our blog. We will need to get organic search engine traffic on our blog, and this tool will help.
• Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress. It is really important that Google knows about all our pages and how often to visit them for fresh content. This tool will build a map for Google. I'll have another post later about how to tell Google about our map and verify our site on Google.
• phpBay Pro Plugin for WordPress. This plugin will let us make money from eBAy auctions on our site. It cost $49, but you can use it on as many sites as you want (as long as they are your sites).
• PopShops Plugin for WordPress. Like phpBay, this plugin lets you sell Commission Junction stuff from your blog.

That's about it to get started. This will allow us to end up with a nice looking blog with SEO potential where we can sell Adsense ads and niche merchandise.

Tomorrow we'll go get an article from eZineArticles as our very first piece of content.

Have a great day.

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
• How to choose your Super-Niche

Remember, our overall goal is to build a niche site that returns $2/day in residual income in the Elvis Presley niche.

Before we rush out and buy a domain name, we need a keyword strategy. Now that we have settled on Elvis Presley, let's hop over to Wordtracker.com and see what they have to say about The King and his Keywords.

If you sign up for the Wordtracker free trial you can access their competition search tool. If you enter the starting phrase elvis presley, you can then pick your 30 favorite phrases returned for further analysis. The 30 phrases come from analyzing the keywords from 100 other "elvis presley" webpages.

The results are very interesting.

Based on the KEI (a measure of the goodness of the keyword), people want to know about history of Elvis -- they are searching for elvis presley "history, born, death, funeral, etc.". So, for now, let's decide that our main keywords are:

• elvis and elvis presley (these are implied but very competitive. We will not try to rank for these. Some day, if our page rank is high, we might make the first page for these (but not any time soon).
• history of elvis and history of elvis presley
• elvis born/birth/death/funeral
• elvis presley born/birth/death/funeral

As a note, let's remember the other top keywords (KEI greater than one with some traffic) and try to create a page for each phrase. More on that later. Also, note the misspelling of Presley (as Presly).  We are also going to want to add some keywords specific to the affiliate programs that we will be offering (like eBay through phpBay).

See you tomorrow when we'll talk about registering a domain!

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.

Related posts:

%RELATEDPOSTS%

I love gadgets, but I am an electrical engineer with years of experience playing with gadgets, so it takes a lot to impress me.
Drobo impresses me.

In case you haven't heard, Drobo is a "data robot" that offers fault tolerant data storage. For the average consumer, "fault tolerant data storage" means no longer having to worry about hard drive crashes. Drobo also makes growing storage capacity easy. The result is fully automated storage you don't have to manage. As the junk on your hard drive continues grow, Drobo gives you a solution that allows you to easily manage, protect, and scale storage for your PC or Mac.

The problem is, Drobo is a little on the pricey side for some consumers. Never fear, however, eBay is here. I've searched eBay's listings and the best prices on Drobo are listed right here. If you see a good deal, don't wait too long. Chances are someone else will see it too.

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