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.

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

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

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

A Bunch Of Garbage Blog Comments

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

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

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

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

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

Good Comment Outcomes

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

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

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

The Real Value Of Excellent Comments

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

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

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

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

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

The bottom line is relationships

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

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

Have a great day,

Mark

Hey --

I'll keep this short.

My friend Andrew Hansen of Firepow fame has just released a report that you need to read.  It is called Crap Cutter Marketing.  The report is completely free.  He does ask for your email address -- but don't worry.  I promise you that you will love getting email from him.  And, if you don't, you can just opt out.

Either way, you need to read this report.

There is no affiliate program.  I do not get compensated an any way. There is no sneaky business.  There is no super secret one time offer on the back end.  Nothing.  Trust me -- just go download the report.  I am recommending it because I wish I had written it myself.  Plain and simple.

Actually -- there are some free bonus videos available if you tell 3 friends.  If you don't like that idea, no big deal.  Andrew is just trying to get the word out.  However, I think that you are going to want to tell people about it when you read it.

If you've been ripped off and bought so many fluff filled reports and courses and audios, and DVD's on how to make money online, you need to read this.

Even if you are making some money online you need to read this.

Just go download it and tell me what you think.  Comments are welcome.

You're going to love it.

Regards,
Mark

Note -- you may notice that I have a special link.  Andrew is tracking stats and testing graphics.  But there is no affiliate program.

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

I have written in the past few weeks about how to make money writing your own eBooks, and I even published a report on how to write your own eBooks. I published the report using the $7 secrets formula for it's distribution.

But I Don't Want To Write

Don't want to write? You can also make money using Private Label Rights content (content written by other people that you have the rights to use).

To help you understand that, I have a free report from two famous internet marketers that I personally trust available for you this Friday. The title of the report is: Private Label Rights (PLR) Secrets: How To Use PLR Products To Create A Money-Making Small Reports Business.

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

When I first started studying Internet Marketing, I immediately ran across Sterling and Jay and their Internet Business Mastery Podcast. I found the podcast while searching iTunes looking for information about how to make money online.  At that time they had the number one internet business podcast, and they still claim that title today.  When I first downloaded their podcast, I did not even know what Internet Marketing was.  Since then, I have written about these guys many times on this blog.  I respect them as honest experts on a variety of topics.

The Internet Business Mastery Focus

Sterling and Jay are really all about Lifestyle Design.  They know a lot and teach a lot about making money online, but money is not their focus.  They also know a lot and teach a lot about Internet Marketing,  although teaching the latest marketing strategies is not the primary focus of their business.  While they are experts on these topics and do teach all of this stuff, Internet Business Mastery is really about lifestyle design.

So what is lifestyle design?

Most of us have lives that revolve around our business.  I know that my life is centered around my traditional engineering job at a large company.   I love my job, but I know that most people out there are not as fortunate as I am in that regard.  Lots of people are working 9 to 5 for a paycheck (and that paycheck is not really all that great).

What Sterling and Jay argue is that you should create your own business that is designed around the lifestyle that you want.  It's about working to live versus living to work versus living the lifestyle of your dreams.  They ask the question -- What is your definite major purpose in your life and is your business designed to support that?  Their goal is to teach you how to do that, starting from scratch today.

As I have mentioned previously, I am a charter member of their Internet Business Mastery Academy -- even so, I have a difficult time impressing on people the greatness of it.  Now I don't need to anymore.   Finally Sterling and Jay will handle that for me.

Free Course -- Pillars of Internet Business

Sterling and Jay have decided to release a free 45 minute audio course and lifestyle design guide so people can finally see what they are all about.

I strongly recommend that you check it out.  It's free, and the ideas in there are important.  In the audio, you'll hear reference to the Internet Business Mastery Academy.  Even if you never decide to join the Academy, the listening to the free audio will be well worth your time.

So, what are you waiting for -- check out the 3 Pillars of Internet Business today.  You'll thank me later.

Regards,
Mark

This is not a promotion.

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

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

What Is Commission Blueprint?

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

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

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

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

The Commision Blueprint Approach

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

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

Can You Be A Honest Super Affiliate?

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

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

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

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

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

Commission Blueprint Membership Site

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

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

The Bottom Line

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

What Do You Think?

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

Regards,
Mark

Hey, It's Free Stuff Friday time again.  This Friday I am adding an eBook about Resale Rights to the arsenal for free goodies that you can download just by signing up for the MasonWorld Internet Marketing newsletter.

You may remember several months ago when I got really excited about a new site by Mike Filsame called ButterFly Reports.  The ButterFly Reports concept is a viral marketing strategy.  In the strategy, a report author writes a report (eBook) on some topic.  The report contains affiliate links.  Users of the site are able to rebrand some (but not all) of the affiliate links in report and distribute it.  This gives people an incentive to promote your reports.

I really felt this concept would explode and be incredibly popular.  As far as I can tell, it has not exploded, but it is growing steadily.  And, as a result, there are some pretty decent reports on the site.

So, for Free Stuff Friday, I am adding a pretty decent report from Mike's site -- How To Make Money with Resale Rights Products.  To get the report, and all my other Friday Freebies, all you need to do is join my email list below. I'll send you download instructions immediately (even if it is 2AM).

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

Mark

photo credit: moonrat42

Well, it has been about two weeks since I did a trial launch of my first product, Niche Adsense Themes for WordPress.  As you may know from reading my about page, I started working on internet marketing in November of 2007 as a part time hobby.  The goal of this blog is to tell people about my experience.  So, I think that it is important to let you know what I learned launching this first product, and how it went.

There is a lot to say, so this will be delivered in several parts.  This is Part 1.

Where Digital Products Fit In MY Plan

The first important question to address is why I am interested in digital products.  So far, my internet-marketing strategy has been to work on four things:

• Passive AdSense mini-sites following Josh Spaulding's $5 Formula
• Affiliate mini-sites using phpBay and other affiliate offers through CJ and Pepperjam, etc
• Building email lists for direct marketing
• Creation of digital products.

As a part time internet entrepreneur, I am very interested in creating streams of income where I can scale revenue without significantly increasing the time needed to support that income.  That why passive income streams like AdSense sites and think affiliate site are so attractive.

Once the sites are set up and marketed, the only remaining issue is traffic and some low-touch maintainence.  For traffic, long-term strategies like SEO and article marketing can be used in combination to drive traffic over the long haul relatively easily.

If you work hard at AdSense sites, for example, you can earn high four (even five) figures per month just like Tim Gorman.  It is reasonable to expect to make a few dollars per day from a passive AdSense site - so you can do the math.

Why Sell Digital Products

Digtal products are different, and a lot more exciting.  If you can create something digital that someone might want (an eBook or software for example), you can then create a sales page and sells that product and start taking orders.   In some sense, this is similar to AdSense sites and thin affiliate sites:  you are converting traffic to dollars.  However, there are some critical differences:

• Revenue per action can be very high with digital products.  While an AdSense click might get you a dollar, the price of digital products can range from free to thousands of dollars.  A typical price for an ebook might be $27.
• You can have an army of affiliates.  This is not actually unique to digital products, but it is different from AdSense and affiliate sites.  With those business models, you are the affiliate.  When you own your own digital products, you can have affiliates working for you.
• You can upsell.  There is no better time to sell someone something than when they already have their credit card out and have decided to trust you with it.
• You can capture email addresses and sell on the "back end".  This is perhaps the most powerful idea.  Once someone has purchased from you once (and has given you permission to contact them), you can sell to them again.  In this case, they already know that you provide quality products, so trust as high.  This relationship can last a very long time.

Most of the truly rich internet entrepreneurs have digital products as a central part of their business strategy.

Selecting The Product

There are lots of things to consider when selecting a digital product.  Most guru's will tell you identify a market first, and then build a product.  You need to do market research and lots of other things prior to launch.  Honestly, I was much more random about my product selection.

During my work on AdSense sites I heard a lot of people say that WordPress was not a good choice for AdSense mini-sites because of two issues:

• The resulting sites looked like blogs and not "information sites"
• It was hard to control the placement of AdSense ads

I wanted to use WordPress, however, for lots of good reasons

• Speed of deployment (easy to crank up a new WordPress mini-site
• Lots of good plugins for things like sitemaps, SEO, analytics, etc.
• Easy to update with fresh content
• Support for pinging, etc.

So, I did the obvious thing -- I worked with an AdSense min-site guru to understand a perfect site, and I built a WordPress theme that copied the layout of that exactly.  In fact, I actually hired out some of the theme code and the graphics.   More on this later this week.

Then, I put myself in the place of the customer.  What would I want in a package if I was trying to get started with AdSense and WordPress?  I settled on the following five things

• Several themes -- not just one -- with good generic graphics that could apply to lots of different niches.  For example, a medical graphic could apply to any mini-site on any medical topic.  I thought that these "specific" graphical templates look more authoratative than generic templates like ProSense, for example (I love ProSense, by the way -- I just think my stuff is better).
• The same templates in HTML. I wanted to get past the "what if I don't like WordPress" objection that people might have.  Many gurus recommended static sites.  I think WordPress is a better answer.  Including a static HTML version of the templates reduces the risk of trying WordPress for the customer.  If they don't like WordPress, they could still use the HTML templates.
• Some free reports about how to make money with AdSense.  For the complete new person, I wanted to include instructions on how to use the themes to make money.
• Some free content. Again, for someone getting started, having some PLR content that they could "slap" into their site allowed them to get going quickly.

So, I now had a digital product.  I needed a mini-site to promote it, a price, affiliates, a way to take money, a way to handle support, etc.  More on all this later this week.

Best regards,
Mark

Be sure and check out my

Big Mac Guarantee at the end of this post.

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

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

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

Then I met Aaron Abber from LifeFoc.us

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

Make Money On Line Myth Shattered

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

Enter LifeFocus

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

My Big Mac Promise To You

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

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

You should have you Big Mac and eat it too.

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

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

photo credit: orsorama

I think most of you are probably aware of the contest that Garry Conn is running against John Cow. Basically, the two of them are in a death match to build and sell the best blog in one month. The winner is the site that sells for the most on SitePoint.com.  Participation in this contest is a great way to learn about internet marketing strategy.

As it turns out, some heavy hitters are in Garry's corner.  Joel Comm has contributed a copy of his highly acclaimed Secret Classroom course.  You can win a copy of the course (so read on below).

And now, a message from the Cow Slayer, Garry Conn

Hey everyone, this is Garry Conn here and you have probably heard the news that John Cow and I are going head to head in a make money online competition to see who can build a blog and sell it for the most money in SitePoint after 30 days. I just unveiled my niche blog titled, Debt Consolidation Book and I want to briefly tell you about the blog and how you can win some really amazing prizes by contributing and telling people about it.

Debt Consolidation Book is a web site where you can read articles written by people who provide their opinions and tips on how to get out of debt. Additionally, you can get 13 high quality debt consolidation books for free. These 13 free debt consolidation books will teach you some amazing debt consolidation, debt elimination and debt reduction strategies. Many people have all kinds of debts and one of the most common is credit card debt. Debt Consolidation Book is geared towards helping people who have credit card debt as well as most all forms of debt.

In this competition against John Cow, you have a huge opportunity to win the Secret Classroom DVD Box Set from Joel Comm. This is an educational make money online study course worth over $520 dollars.

How Do I Win Secret Classroom

Winning Joel Comm's Secret Classroom worth over $520 dollars is very simple. As you probably already know, I am not a very complicated individual. When I run contests, participating in them are very easy to do and take very little amount of your time. Your time is one of many things I respect and I don't want to take up a lot of it. It will literally take you all of five minutes to participate in the contest. Simple, quick and easy.

If you would like to have a chance to win the Secret Classroom DVD Box Set from Joel Comm here is what you need to do. It's very simple.

1. Download a copy of this article that you are reading here and then publish it on your blog. This is a Zip File. Simply extract it and copy and paste the HTML code into your blog post.
2. Join the Debt Consolidation Book mailing list and score your free copies of the 13 free eBooks! You will get over 275 pages of high quality material for free!
3. Subscribe to the Debt Consolidation Book RSS Feed by Email.
4. Drop a comment on this post to let me know that you have entered the contest by doing the above three steps.

Optionally, I would really appreciate it if I could get some votes:

1. Click Here to vote on Digg.com.
2. Click Here to add to StumbleUpon.
3. Click Here to add to your Google Bookmarks.
4. Click Here to add to your Technorati Faves.
5. Click Here to add to FaceBook.
6. Click Here to add to Del.icio.us.
7. Click Here to add to your Yahoo Bookmarks.
8. Click Here to add to Propeller.
9. Click Here to add to Mixx.

Remember the first four steps above are not optional and you have to complete step four by dropping a comment on my post which will let me know that you have officially entered the contest to win Secret Classroom. The second steps 1 thru 9 are totally optional but will literally take you less than a minute to complete.

Join My Make Money Online Newsletter

I invite you to join my make money online mailing list and you'll receive a free copy of the AFFAdMax WordPress theme. This is the same high quality and professionally designed WordPress theme I designed from scratch that I am using on Debt Consolidation Book! You'll be the first to score a copy as soon as I release it in the next week or two.

Good Luck Winning Joel Comm's Secret Classroom

Good luck with winning Secret Classroom. I will be assigning each participant in the contest a number and on Monday June 2nd, I will use Randomizer to generate the winning number. It's a very simple random draw contest that could potentially win you a prize worth over $520 dollars. Also be sure to join my free make money online classroom so that you can learn more about how to make money online and stay in the loop with future events in the competition against John Cow.

Earlier this week, I talked about Lead Blogging and I proclaimed that "Lead Blogging is the Answer." In that post, I introduced you to Aaron Abber over at the make money blogging site FullTiltBlogging, and promised a reprint of one of his posts on Lead Blogging. In this post, Aaron show you a screen shot of his 60,000 subscriber list over at Aweber.

Lead Blogging: Turning Opportunity into Leads

Luck and leadblogging favor the prepared.

Last week I noticed a new blog post over at Aweber.com. Nothing earth shattering, but it dealt with a topic I am intimately acquainted with—getting people to subscribe to email lists then confirm their subscription. In fact, before I sold my online business last year I had captured almost 60,000 double opt-in subscribers (click here for screen shot of my account.)

So I went over and left a comment about how I get over 15% of first time visitors to subscribe and over 90% of those people to confirm their subscription.

I figured making that comment would generate some visitors and subscribers.

But then I had a brainstorm—why not put the actual codes into an eBook and offer it for download? I figured I could capture more subscribers.

So that’s what I did. I created this “subscriber trap” to capture email address from my visitors:

http://www.FullTiltBlogging.com/submagic

All in all it took about two hours to set up and has resulted in 183
email submissions (so far) on 312 visits—for a whopping 58.7%
conversion rate from visitor to subscriber.

That’s pretty cool.

In next week’s leadblogging
post I will tell you about how I got a 95.2% confirmation rate from
those visitors, and how I will turn those into $4,209.00 in cash. That
means it it paid me about $2,104.50 an hour. Stay tuned.

This post is by Aaron Abber. Aaron is the owner of http://www.FullTiltBlogging.com where he teaches bloggers just like you how to make money blogging. Go there now to pick up his latest book “How to Retire on 200 Blog Visitors a Day” free.

Sometimes I feel like I am "drinking from a fire hose" trying to learn about internet marketing and how to make money online. I even wrote earlier in the week that I am trying to go on an information diet. Still, I am constantly trying to keep up with all of the A-list bloggers and what they have to say about blogging, making money online, and internet marketing. Being new to internet marketing, I am constantly on the lookout for new sources of information. The problem is that each time I find a new great blog, it makes it harder to keep up.

Today, I turned the tables a bit. I found FullTiltBlogging. One of the great features of FullTiltBlogging is the daily blog summary. As the name implies, the guys at FullTiltBlogging are scouring the internet every day looking for great posts. This is really cool -- now I can check out a blog that saves me some time each day. The blog is run by Aaron Abber. I don't know much about Aaron, but he is also running a mentoring program teaching people to make money blogging. The program sounds interesting.

Check out the blog, you'll be glad you did.

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

Make Money Online -- how many times have I heard that phrase since I started this internet marketing adventure in November of last year?  This phrase is used so many times on the internet, it even has its own acronym -- MMO.  Usually, people who want to teach you how to make money online need to take your money so they can teach you how to take other people's money.  I always wonder, if these guys are so good at making money online, why are they telling people their secrets?  Of course, the answer is that it is your money that they are making.

Make Money Online with the Good Guys

It's not all gloom and doom out there.  I have been able to find several really great folks that are trying to add real value.  Garry (intrepid designer of this blog) is a great example.  He has a make money online section on his blog that filters out his previously written articles and only displays the ones related to learning how to make money online.  It is part of his taging gadgetry, which is really cool.  (I now have the same gadgetry, but my tags are really bad.  Need to fix that).  Anyway, if you look at his MMO section, he is not selling you stuff.  The posts there are about how baseball is the key to MMO, how to use certain tools, etc.  Garry helps people -- he is straightforward and honest.

There are other honest bloggers our there.  I am trying to be one as well.  You should too.  Don't fall into the trap of looking for something for nothing.  Add value.  Be like Caroline-Middlebrook and try to add value with every post.   She just posted about CSS galleries today.  I learned something because of that post.  Her efforts helped me.

You can get everything you want in life by getting other people what they want.  -- Zig Zigglar

Regards,
Mark