Always committed to truth and justice, Mark Mason, Nicole Dean, Pat Flynn and Willie Crawford fight evil forces in the Internet Marketing empire.

Watch in this "never-before-seen-secret-footage" as Pat and Mark rescue Nicole as Willie makes the ultimate sacrifice.

Few people realized at the time that this movie was actually about Internet Marketing.  Shockingly, even fewer realized the critical roles that Mark, Nicole, Pat and Willie have played over the years keeping the Internet (and the galaxy) safe.

Now you know.

Watch on YouTube.

I am planning to do a case study on JV Giveaways and report the results here.   You can help my by following along with the study and (more importantly) signing up for to be a JV partner.  This will give me the points I need to participate.  This will also give you an opportunity to participate in the giveaway and build your  list.  If you have never done a JV list-building event before, now is the time (because we can do it together).

This JV Giveaway Is Different

I've got to tell you the truth.   In the past, I have not been a big fan of JV giveaways.  They have the reputation of generating tons of un-targeted, unresponsive leads.   They also put you in a position of having to "give away" some of your list to participate.  But recently, I learned about a JV giveaway that sounded like it might be different -- it is being run by someone that I trust, has several big name A-list marketers on board, has the potential to save kids lives.

To give you an idea, here is a promotional graphic from the event:

Let me back up a second.

In a JV giveaway, internet marketers recruit other internet marketers to participate in a giant giveaway.  All of the participants do three things:  they recruit other marketers to participate (that is what I am doing now, by the way), they contribute items to the giveaway (more on this later), and they send traffic to the giveaway.

The JV Giveaway Promise

The idea is that many marketers send tons of traffic to the giveaway, and some of those prospects will see the free gift (or gifts) that you donated and decide to download it (or them).   To access the download, the prospect will need to opt-in to your list.  So, by participating, you hope to build you list.  (Note:  There are some cases where you might want to give something away without opt-in, but we will talk about that later.)

To get this to work, you need some heavy hitters in the mix.  So far, the giveway has over 100 participants planning to send traffic, including some big names you might recognize (Willie Crawford, Kevin Riley, Kathleen Gage, Jeff Herring, Lynn Terry, Bob "The Teacher" Jenkins, Maritza Parra, Nicole Dean, Sid Hale, Denise Wakeman, Dan R Morris, Roger Carr, Cindi Dawson, Joe Marsh, Karon Thackston, Paul Evans, Doug Hudiburg, Traci Knoppe, Doug Champigny, Mark Hendricks and David Perdew)

For this JV event, the goal is 1000 contributors and 100,000 "members" during the week that the event is live (next week - Aug. 20 to Aug. 27, 2010).  Amazing.  Hope his servers are up to the task.

And of course, if you are participating in this as a JV partner and you have One-Time-Offers (OTOs) or affiliate links associated with your opt-in, you can profit directly from the event.

The organizer usually benefits in a couple of ways.  First, the organizer can (and usually does) require and opt-in to get to the give-away in the first place.    Secondly, the organizer can place offers inside the software that runs the giveaway (these days, giveaways are completely automated).  This particular giveaway has a lot of those (see the postscript at the end of this post).

Saving Kids Lives

In this giveaway, the organizers intend to collect donations for Dr. Mani.  In fact, the literature indicates that all the proceeds from the front end of this effort go to Dr. Mani's CHD Foundation.

That is one of the things that made this interesting for me.  I have donated money to Dr. Mani before.  He is quite an amazing guy.

If you don't know about Dr. Mani, this guy basically uses internet marketing as a way to fund open heart surgery for kids that can't afford it.

Here's a one paragraph comment from Mark Joyner in the forward to one of Dr. Mani's books:

"To hold this (book) up as the measure of the man is a great disservice to one of the greatest men now walking the earth...What makes Dr. Mani great is the way he has leveraged his info- preneurship...  He doesn't make a big fuss about it, but he uses the funds he raises with his entrepreneurial endeavors to save the lives of children who really need it. He is a heart surgeon who has dedicated his life to providing heart surgery to children who cannot afford the costs."

Join As A JV

So, here is what I would like you to do. 

Thing one: Stay tuned and follow along.  I plan to see if this "really works" to drive traffic to my list.  I also plan to report all of the details to you.

Thing two: participate.  If you sign up as a JV partner, you can easily add a giveaway and participate.

Your participation under my signup link will give me "points."  These points give me a higher priority in the giveaway, and make it more likely that this will be a decent case study.  So, even if you are not sure that you want to participate, signing up would help (it's free).

Oh -- and don't forget that you can help save kids lives by participating.  This fact is part of the reason that I decided to do the case study.  So, if you are on the fence, you can use that as your excuse.

Thanks -- look for my next post about setting up my giveaway items tomorrow.

PS -- If you do sign up, you'll immediately see a couple of OTO asking you to upgrade your JV account.  I did upgrade my account ($17), but there is no reason for you to do that unless you want to contribute multiple gifts.

Also, you will see some OTO's in the back end software.  Again, just ignore those (but pay attention to the marketing).  I'll be talking about that part of the JV Giveaway magic in a future post.

Now, one of things that I do and one of the things that I think it is absolutely critical for part time internet marketers is that you need to work on your business every day. Habits that you form as a part time internet marketer are the most important tools that you’ll have in your business.

The first habit that you develop should be that you work on your business every day. Not a day goes by literally that you don’t do something on your business. Now, maybe you make an exception for Sunday, because of your religious preferences, but what I mean is there’s not a day that goes by where you go, “I just don’t feel like working on this today. I’m going to just watch Grey’s Anatomy instead.” You have to avoid that.

You need to make consistent progress and stay motivated. One day will turn into two days, and before you know it a week and a month will have gone by and your dream will be sitting on the couch with you watching the latest episode of Private Practice.

The other reason, and this sounds very much like a Tony Robbins thing, but I absolutely promise you this is true, if you keep the project that you’re working in front of you in your conscious mind you’re subconscious mind will offer you up solutions. This is where these ideas come from that people have in the shower and while they’re brushing their teeth.

You put these ideas in front of your conscious mind all the time, whatever problem it is you’re working on in your business, whatever course it is you’re trying to develop or information product or website and you run into problems that you’re conscious mind can’t solve, your subconscious mind will continue to work on those even when you’re not aware of it and it will present solutions for you.

If it’s out of sight it will be out of mind and you won’t get that benefit of having that subconscious mind working for you. A lot of research on that, don’t take my word for it, go check it out. That’s a really powerful way to get work done.

Another thing that I tell people that’s really important is internet marketing is a marathon, it is not a sprint. You need a strong steady consistent pace for a long distance in order to win in internet marketing. It’s definitely a marathon and not a sprint.

If you adopt this very important habit of working on your business every day without fail, one thing is that you’ll accidentally accomplish more than you think. There will be a couple of days in there where you’ll intend to work a little bit and you’ll work a lot, or you’ll get lucky and be online at the right time to get something accomplished. Whatever it is, I don’t know what it’s going to be. Things will land, as we say in Texas, jelly side up. It will be good for you to work on this every day.

This has been another post in our Part-Time Internet Business Series at MasonWorld.com, where we build successful internet businesses one night at a time.

Another thing you need is you need routines. I live in Allen, Texas, there’s a famous Olympic gold medal gymnast that lives here and she grew up in a gym down the street from me and I know these gymnasts they have these crazy routines and they show up at the gym every day.

You need to have similar routines. At the same time every day if you can you need to be working on your business. For me, that’s every night. That’s why my branding is around this idea of late night internet marketing. I’m recording this at 1:46 AM and I got started around 10:00. I got a head of steam, so here I am still going at almost 2:00 in the morning.

I also like to catch a little work on my internet business while I’m getting the kids ready for school between 6:00 and 6:30. That’s an excellent time for me to answer email over breakfast and do a little social media promotion.

The other thing I’ll say to you in terms of routines is you need to establish the routine of balancing your business activities. This is another thing that Jimmy D. Brown taught me. You need to make sure that you’re not only working on the easy things or the thing that you like.

Maybe you really like creating content, but you hate promoting. Maybe you really like social media, but you hate article marketing. Maybe you really like this and you hate that. The thing about internet business is that you need to have a balanced approach.

The thing about part time internet marketers is it’s really easy to fall in this trap of, “I’ve only got an hour, so I’m going to pick the thing that I want to do, not necessarily the thing that I need to do.” So, it’s very important that you have this balanced approach. The example I have here is that you don’t need to just create content or products, but you also need to drive traffic, so that’s kind of an idea of having a balanced approach.

You have to do it even if you don’t want to. One strategy for that is do the thing you don’t want to do first, so you get that out of the way. Then when you’re running out of steam you can turn your attention to the thing you really wanted to do anyway and a lot of times that will have the effect of helping you work a little bit longer.

The other thing I’ve got to tell you, social marketing is a business killer if you don’t manage it correctly. So, limit your social marketing to specific time windows. Do not spend your entire day on forums, reading blogs, and tweeting about what you had for breakfast. Don’t do that. Have a plan for those things, spend a finite amount of time, get it done and get out.

This has been another post in our Part-Time Internet Business Series at MasonWorld.com, where we build successful internet businesses one night at a time.

I know.  You are sick to death of people telling you that you need to outsource.  Just hang with me for a second here.  I know you hear this all the time, but that is only because it it true.

As a part time internet entrepreneur you need to outsource in your business as much as you possibly can. It’s important and you need to figure out how to get it done.

Instead of just preaching outsourcing:  let me give you a simple way to think it.   Consider it a model for success as a part time internet business person.   Ready?

If you spend 15 minutes every night making a list of things that could be done at that moment by somebody else.

Simple, right?

Take for example transcribing a video. When I get done with a video I’ll typically ship it off to a fantastic transcriptionist, she will transcribe it for me and make a PDF, and I won’t touch it.

Sending articles to directories is another really good example.   Other examples include pulling traffic reports from your sites, tweaking and maintaining sites, updating autoresponders, etc.

Make that list of things that you don't want to do anyway and have them done while you sleep.  I can’t explain it to you any other way.  The most effective use of your sleep time is to have some worker in the Philippines doing your work for you while you sleep.  That person is thrilled to have the work, and you will be thrilled to have the work complete.

It's Win-Win.

I know what you’re going to tell me. “Mark, I’m just getting started. I can’t afford to outsource.” Let me tell you, Your time is worth more than you think. You cannot afford NOT to outsource.  But, if you really don’t believe that, just start small.

Think of a small thing and go to Scriptlance.com, or someplace like that and outsource it.   Just one thing.

Even better yet there’s a new site called Fiverr.com where you can get stuff done for five dollars. Look at the internet marketing section (Social Marketing), and you will see that people will do various social bookmarking tasks and other things for you that you should not be spending your time on for five dollars.

I know you’ve got five dollars, give it a try and see what you think.

You need to learn how to outsource if you’re going to be a successful part time internet marketer, take my word for it.

This has been another post in our Part-Time Internet Business Series at MasonWorld.com, where we build successful internet businesses one night at a time.

In this episode of the MasonWorld Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, we talk about "the mouse in my pocket" and about having the right mindset for your internet business. We also interview Jeremy "Sterling" Frandsen from Internet Business Mastery.

In the podcast, we're still rocking out the new MasonWorld Late-Night Internet Marketing Podcast Theme Song that I introduced last week.  I really hope you like it

If you like the podcast and are willing to take a second to leave us a favorable review in iTunes, that would be fantastic. You should be able to do that using this link.  You will need to do this from inside of the iTunes application (which is free).

In the episode, I talk about the power of teams, the value of "we", and the critical mindset that you must have if you want to be successful in business (and in life).

Also, I continue with the  interviews I promised last week.

Jeremy "Sterling" Frandsen from Internet Business Mastery is on the show this week talking about lifestyle design and definite major purpose.

All that I want to do for you that have to do with how to think about internet business. Then, I will be turning my attention to affiliate marketing techniques.

Basically, I plan to touch on the kind of things that I will be teaching over at NicheProfitUniversity.com (starting in about 4 weeks).

When the transcript is available, it will be here.

If you are lovin' the podcast, please be sure to leave us some feedback and subscribe in iTunes!

Podcast Alley is another option:
My Podcast Alley feed!

Here is the Raw RSS Feed.

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

Everyone knows that I like Jimmy Brown -- but I was really blown away today by this post (reprinted here with Jimmy's permission).

In this post, Jimmy talks about how you can leverage the hype created by mega-launches like the PLF 3.0 launch this week.  You can do that by serving the people that WANT the mega-guru $2000 product, but cannot afford it.

For example, I am sure that I could sell a $97 product called "Product Toss Forumla" during the PLF launch.  Why?  Because there are tons of people like me that want to know more about product launches but do not have the money (or time) for PLF.

Interesting idea, eh?

Here is Jimmy's post (reprinted with his permission).

Note that Jimmy is using his own technique to buzz his own stuff here.

He sees the buzz, develops a technique to leverage the buzz, creates a buzz about that technique, and ends up getting a guy like me to promote one of his products on short notice on a PR4 Internet Marketing blog.

Pretty slick....(it helps that the product that Jimmy mentions below is very high quality, or I would not have reprinted the post).

Thanks,
Mark

How To "Borrow" Other People's Buzz TODAY (Think Traffic!)
By Jimmy D. Brown

Did you know that other people "warm up" your customers for you with their "big product launches"?

And, did you further know, that a huge opportunity for you to create sales for YOUR product or a product you promote as an affiliate can be the result?

If, that is, you "borrow" the buzz that other people are generating.

Imagine this scenario...

Mr. Marketer creates a new $2,000 product. He "launches" it with his friends. Everyone on the forums is talking about it. Every email sent out within the marketplace has something to say about it. Bloggers are raving. The whole industry is buzzing about the new launch.

The average conversion rate is 2%. And that's not on $2,000 products. But, let's assume that Mr. Marketer is the best in the biz. And he can generate something obscene like 25% conversion rate on a $2,000 offer (which, by the way, ain't likely to happen).

IF that were to happen, the flipside is this: 75% DON'T BUY.

In other words, for every 100 visitors to the "launch" site, 75 of them walk away without buying.

Were they uninterested? If that's the case, they likely wouldn't have visited the site in the first place.

In the majority of the cases, they $2,000 price tag was out of their reach. Not in the budget. Don't have the money. Been there, done that ... didn't have the cash to buy the t-shirt!

So, what can we learn from this?

We can learn...

* These 75 out of every 100 who don't buy are probably interested to some degree.

* These 75 out of every 100 have heard all of the buzz and have been "presold" on the premise of the product.

* These 75 out of every 100 are strong candidates to buy a lower-priced, related alternative.

That's where YOU come into the picture.

You "borrow" the buzz that's been generated for the big product being launched by talked about by everyone as you promote a lower-priced, related alternative!

Here's how you do it...

1. Look for high-dollar launches in your market.

The first step is to keep your eye on the pulse of your market. Whenever a major new product is being launched, get busy. You'll usually know days, if not weeks, in advance because that's how launches work: they do a lot of "pre" build-up work to get people salivating for the eventual launch. Keep your eyes out for anything new in the works.

2. Promote a low-cost alternative.

It doesn't matter if you write a quick 10-15 page report, promote your own existing product that is related or grab an affiliate link to some other existing product or service. It doesn't really matter WHERE you obtain this lower-priced alternative. The important thing is that you find one. It needs to be related to the topic of the big product being launched. It can be related either (a) by teaching a similar concept, or (b) teaching a portion of the big product's concept.

3. Write a mailing that explains the two options.

You'll want to write a mailing to send to your subscribers or to post at your blog. This mailing needs to contain three important elements...

- Content that presells. Share some meaty nuggets related to the offer you are ultimately going to promote to set the table.

- A small blurb about big launch with your link. Mention the "major" launch briefly. Describe it's benefits and use an affiliate link of yours to point to the offer. Mention that it's only drawback is "price". Express that many people can't afford it.

- A stronger promotion for your option. Then, really hit home with this "lower-priced, related alternative". Let them know the benefits are similar at a fraction of the cost. Be sure to point out that it's priced for everyone -- especially those who feel "left out" of the big budget launch because they can't afford it.

Then, it's just a matter of getting that mailing out to your subscribers.

Let's look at what you have in place as a result of this strategy...

* You have two promotions: a minor one for the same "major" launch everyone else is promoting, and a "major" one for the lower-priced, related alternative.

* You have "borrowed buzz". Everyone in the marketplace is warming up prospects with all of their "talk" about the importance of the subject matter of the "big product launch". They are primed and ready to buy ... something!

* You have a spike in sales coming.

This is a wonderful strategy for getting extra sales.

Remember, there are always a whole lot more people who DON'T buy the product being offered in the "launch", than those who do! You've got a huge pool of prospects in the 75-98% of people who don't buy the $2,000 offer. Many of them WILL buy a lower-priced, related alternative.

So, the only thing left for you to do is get started.

And if you've like a shortcut, let me show you a quick way to do it TODAY.

You have almost certainly seen that Product Launch Formula 3.0 (PLF3) has launched this week. Everyone is talking about it. While there are a lot of different strategies and ideas involved in a "launch", the backbone is the same...

*** Other people send you the majority of your traffic.

It's obviously a very *HOT* topic right now. People are scrambling to pay BIG BUCKS for the course.

But...

Do you think everyone can afford it?

What about the tens of thousands of internet marketers who can't afford it, but who ARE INTERESTED in the subject?

What a shame to let them sit by without getting any sales from them!

But, don't worry --- you CAN get sales from them! Here's how...

You offer them something for PENNIES on the dollar that provides the same end result: other people sending them traffic for their products and services!

A few days ago Jimmy D. Brown announced a resale rights offer for his SalesArmySecrets.com course.

All the details are at right here.

There are still licenses available for YOU to grab in order to sell a low-cost alternative to the high-dollar "launch" product that everyone is jabbering about.

***BUT IT GETS BETTER --- FREE PLR to $20 Report! ***

Jimmy wrote a report several months ago which he briefly made available to one of his membership sites. It's entitled "How To Get R.I.C.H. With Your Own Affiliate Program".

(It was pulled after a month and is no longer available anywhere.)

The report is 21 meaty pages in itself, but it also strongly promotes the Sales Army Secrets course at the end.

When you order one of the remaining licenses for Sales Army Secrets, Jimmy is going to give you (no cost!) a free PLR license to the special report!

You can sell the report for $20, give it away, do whatever you want with it (as long as you don't misrepresent it or mention Jimmy in reference to it)...

...while using the endorsement at the close of the report to promote YOUR COPY of Sales Army Secrets!

It's a ready-made marketing report to get people to buy Sales Army Secrets from you! You can sell Sales Army Secrets for $97 per order and keep 100% of every sale!

Here's what you need to do...

1. Order the Sales Army Secrets resale rights license here.

2. Register and open a ticket at Jimmy's support center at http://www.Infoprofitshare.com and provide his staff with a copy of your receipt.

Within 24 hours someone will send you the download information for this special Free PLR offer.

That's it!

Get one while it lasts...

There's only ONE catch...

This special offer is for the next 3 days only. On Friday, July 2nd at 10PM CDT, Jimmy is shutting down the license offer and this Free PLR offer. They will no longer be available. Officially "retired" at that point.

Grab yours now!

Then you can quickly "borrow the buzz" of those promoting PLF3!

Man oh Man! Finally back on the air (again).

In this episode of the MasonWorld Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, we talk about the future of the podcast and we have a killer interview with Geoff Smith from TheGeoffSmith.com.

In the podcast, I roll out the new MasonWorld Late-Night Internet Marketing Podcast Theme Song.  I hope you like it.  I had a blast creating the jingle with Geoff Smith (he did all the work).

If you have an iTunes account and are willing to take a second to leave us a favorable review in iTunes, that would be fantastic.  You should be able to do that using this link.

In the episode, I reveal my plans for the podcast.  I have a couple of additional interviews that I want to do for you that have to do with how to think about internet business.   Then, I will be turning my attention to affiliate marketing techniques.

Basically, I plan to touch on the kind of things that I will be teaching over at NicheProfitUniversity.com.

Also in the episode, I interview Geoff.

Geoff is really cool, and is a great example of what you can do with your passion if you mix in a little internet business.

When the transcript is available, it will be here.

If you are lovin' the podcast, please be sure to leave us some feedback and subscribe in iTunes!

Podcast Alley is another option:
My Podcast Alley feed!

Here is the Raw RSS Feed.

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

If you are trying to break into the Make Money Online niche, I have something really special for you.

I have been playing with Jonathan Leger's new Keyword Snatcher tool.  I thought it would be cool to use it to harvest some keywords that are highly sought after in the Internet Marketing space, and then provide them to my readers as a free download.  The first keyword that came to mind was "make money online".

The Google Adwords tool starts with about 100 keywords -- but the new Keyword Snatcher tool is able to find 1029 keywords related to Make Money Online.

Of course, Jon is doing this by looking at the suggested keywords that pop up when you type a phrase into the Google search box at Google.com (and at Bing and Yahoo too).

Anyway, if you are interested, here are 1029 Make Money Online Keywords (text file) you can target to make money online (also available in Word doc format).

UPDATE:  Also ran the program with just "Make Money" -- that resulted in 3662 Keywords (txt and doc).Note that Keyword Snatcher is only available until Friday June 25.  After that, it goes off the market according to Jon.

Enjoy...

UPDATE #2:  Added 3198 forex keywords based on a request in the comments.

UPDATE #3:  Added over 8000 Thyroid keywords.

UPDATE #4:  Added 999 Learn Guitar keywords.

Welcome back to another weekly edition of Part Time Tips for your internet business. This week I want to talk briefly about what you need to be successful in your part time internet marketing business. Don't panic, I'm not going to list a bunch of stuff for you to buy, this more about you and your mindset when it comes to working your business. We'll keep things really simple

The first thing you need to do is get your head wrapped around your plan.  As we say in Texas, you’ve got "get your head right with ball." You’ve got to really have the proper mindset to be successful in internet business in general, but it’s really true for part time internet business.

There are three fundamental areas that I think are the highest leverage:

You’ve got to own your plan. By that I mean you’ve got to have focus. You’ve got to know exactly what you’re doing and you’ve got to be executing to that plan precisely. You don’t have a lot of room to be smoking and joking around. You’ve got to know exactly what you’re doing and be doing it every day.

You really need to leverage tools and resources. You can’t afford to be inefficient, so you’ve really got to get out there and leverage the things that are available that have been made available by the people who’ve come before you.  This is not just about investing in software or hiring people.  It's more about learning from a mentor, investing in yourself and  and following their example (more on this in the coming weeks).

Finally, and maybe more importantly, you’ve got to foster the right habits. You’ve got to develop habits that are particularly effective for part time internet entrepreneurs. I’m going to share those with you throughout our weekly tips sessions here on the blog.

Now, as far as getting your head right as a part time internet entrepreneur, the very first thing you’ve got to know is why in the world you are trying to start this business. In fact, why do you want to start a business at all, let alone an internet business? Think about that for awhile and we'll be back next week to discuss this a little further.

Understand why you are doing what you are doing will help you stay focused and motivated in difficult situations.

See you next week.

This has been another post in our Part-Time Internet Business Series at MasonWorld.com, where we build successful internet businesses one night at a time.

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

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

Dear Clickbank,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks and best regards,
Mark Mason – MasonWorld.com

My wife is always making fun of me because, well, I am an engineering geek.  The fact that I am interested in social media, internet marketing and public speaking means that I am not a typical engineering geek, but I am still a geek.  I admit it.

Today she forwarded me one of those funny emails about engineers.  I decided I would share it with you here so you could understand a little more about me (and my wife).

I am reprinting these jokes without permission -- there was no attribution in the email that I received.  Let me know if that hurts your feelings...

Understanding Engineers – One

To the optimist, the glass is half-full.

To the pessimist, the glass is half-empty.

To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

Understanding Engineers – Two

What is the difference between mechanical engineers and civil engineers?

Mechanical engineers build weapons

Civil engineers build targets.

Understanding Engineers – Three

Normal people believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.

There were some other funny ones in that email, but I decided I did not want to offend anyone.

Have a great day.

It’s almost difficult for me to imagine, but the fact is that January 2010 is part of the history books (and February is almost half gone). It was just a couple of months ago that I started my planning for the year 2010. During that planning process I set numerous goals and objectives for myself this year.

One goal was to obtain some high quality internet marketing coaching, and I’ve done that. A second goal was to attend a live internet marketing event, and I accomplished that at the end of January when I attended the Niche Affiliate Marketing Seminar in Atlanta.

Understanding The 2010 Objectives

Now, my objectives for these two things were quite clear. For the coaching my objective was to set my sights a little higher and interact with someone who could really help me focus down and create a product that would be central to my business, sort of a benchmark product that would form the center piece of my internet marketing funnel for my business at MasonWorld.com.

My objective for attending the NAMS conference was simply to get to know some of the internet marketers that I respect. People like Lynn Terry, Bob the Teacher, Nicole Dean, Scott Tousignant.  These are some of the people that I want to model my business after. The best way for me to do that is actually to meet them in person and spend some time with them. (Just a note: there are a couple of others that I respect that did not attend NAMS...)

Bigger Business Goals

Of course, these are just two small steps on the road to what I intend to accomplish in 2010.

Quite frankly, the major business goals that I’ve set for myself in 2010 can seem overwhelming at times. As most of you know, I’ve got what I consider a "day job" that I work from 8:00 to 5:00 at a large electronics company in Dallas.  In that job, I’m a manager of numerous people and projects with multiple budgets that I have to maintain.

I do my internet marketing at night. So, it’s very important for me to stay focused. That’s one of the things that my internet marketing coach is helping me with. But, sometimes that’s just not enough. As tough as she is on me, sometimes I need a little more. So, this year I did something I think is kind of cool.  I got myself a coffee cup.

My Coffee Cup

Let me explain.

Every morning when I get up the first thing I do is make a cup of coffee in my Keurig single cup coffee maker. I love the Keurig single cup coffee maker, because, quite frankly, I’m the only person in my household that drinks coffee. It used to be that for me making coffee was a real drag, because I had to make a whole pot or try to figure out how to make four cups or whatever. It just didn’t work very well.

Now, with the Keurig every morning I religiously walk into the kitchen and the very first thing I do, even before brushing my teeth, is get that cup of coffee. That may be too much information, and I promise you that I do brush my teeth right after that.

But, the very first thing that I do is get a cup of coffee.

Well, I saw an opportunity there, because recently as I talked about a couple of weeks ago I formed Mason World Enterprises LLC as part of my long range business strategy. As part of the formation of that company, I had a new logo created.

When I made that new logo I ordered business cards, and when I was checking out at Vista Print, where I ordered the business cards from, I encountered the classic internet marketing up sell. There I was ready to pay for my business cards and all of a sudden I was presented with a ton of options for other things that I could buy that had my logo. One of them was a coffee cup.

You might think that’s kind of silly, coffee cups are a promotional item and usually that’s the kind of a thing that a brick and mortar business would give away as a way to remind customers to be repeat customers. In my case, I use it for something completely different.

You see, every morning when I go in and I get my cup of coffee from my Keurig coffee maker now instead of some random coffee mug from my cabinet I use the Mason World Enterprises coffee mug. That reminds me every morning before I go off to my day job that I’ll be coming home to a set of objectives for 2010 that I’ve committed to obtain. It’s way of keeping my goals in front of me, just a small token that reminds me to stay focused on the things that I’ve set to try and achieve for 2010.

The Impact Of A Subtle Reminder

I think I stumbled on a really good idea, because it’s working. Every morning I get up, I’ve actually got a couple of these coffee mugs so that I can have a clean one all the time, and I look at this coffee mug and I think about what I’m going to do today to achieve my internet marketing goals. I’m even going to take the coffee mug with me to NAMS, so that I’ll have it with me to remind me to stay focused during the conference.

How are your goals for 2010? Are you achieving them or have you already lost sight of them? If you’ve already lost sight of your goals for 2010, or even if you’re making great progress, let me suggest to you that you get something that will remind you every day that you’ve got goals that you want to achieve.

After all, you can always remember and believe in what my friend, PotPieGirl has to say about these kind of things. If you’ll just spend a year doing the things that nobody else will do, you can spend a lifetime doing stuff that nobody else can do.

I hope you have a great day and an even better 2010. Thanks.

By the way -- I am really interested to know how your 2010 is going so far.  Leave a comment below and let me know what's up.

Man oh Man!  Finally back on the air.

In this episode of the MasonWorld Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, we continue with our series introducing the different ways that you can make money online. Specifically, we take a look at how you can put it all together -- niche marketing, affiliate offers, blogging, information products, etc.

Better than that, we have the lovely and talented Nicole Dean in the house!

When the transcript is available, it will be here.

In the podcast, I mention that I am still spending time in Lynn Terry's forum, and that I recently attended NAMS.

Some links mentioned in the podcast

• Moonlighting On The Internet (a real book)
• Ten Ways To Make $10K On The Internet (free)
• Lynn Terry Elite Member Forum
• Nicole Dean's website

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

Podcast Alley is another option:
My Podcast Alley feed!

Here is the Raw RSS Feed.

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

People talk about the magic of positive thinking like it is some mystical secret sauce that you can pour on your life to make everything OK. In my experience, nothing could be further from the truth. You cannot just think happy thoughts and have expect success in life and business without work.

However, Positive Thinking is an absolutely critical tool in your Internet Business toolbox. As you know, it takes many tools to be successful on line. If hard work is a hammer, and outsourcing is a power saw, I like to think of Positive Thinking at tape measure. The tape measure does not actually do any work, but it makes sure that the work that you do is according to plan. The tape measure makes sure that things fit together properly.

I am a big believer in the power of positive thinking in life as a tool to keep you focused and motivated -- but I am not an expert. So, I have invited Steve Thomas from Life Change For You to drop by and help us understand how positive thinking can help us in life and in business.  As a favor to me, Steve was willing to share his Tips for Positive Thinking in Internet Business.

Steve has worked in the world of self help and self improvement for over two decades. He has a BA in Business Organization and a Masters of Divinity degree. He is a public speaker and motivator, does a little personal coaching, has a website designed to help people change their lives. He even teaches yoga and meditation in his spare time.

The following article is a guest contribution by Steve.

Will positive thinking help in your internet business as well as in life?

Positive thinking has been around for a very long time. Some might argue that is has always been here in one form or other. We all know that positive thinking helps us in our day to day lives, but will it help you in your internet business. Let me try to convince you that it will.

A quick definition

When I say positive thinking, I don’t mean some Pollyanna way of looking at the world; as if nothing bad ever happens. I don’t know who really lives in that world, but it isn’t me and I doubt it is you.

My definition of positive thinking is looking at situations that come up in our lives and thinking about them in a positive way so that positive results happen. What if your blog completely disappears (it happened to me) how can you make the most of it and if not profit by it, at least learn from it.

Positive thinking as self defense.

I mentioned one scenario of what might happen. If you have been in the world of online marketing for any time at all you know that there is no end to the problems that can come up. Positive thinking and a positive attitude helps you to overcome those problems.

Just this morning I was supposed to record and interview with another online marketer for my podcast. The interview didn’t happen. No one was there when I called. The positive that came from that is that I was able to write this post today instead of tomorrow as I thought I would have to.

What is your biggest challenge? How can you turn it around to make something positive come of it? Are you not where you want to be in business? Why not and what can you do about it?

Positive thinking as a planning tool.

Even when things are going wonderfully, positive thinking can help. Where is it you want to go? Do you want to make a six figure income even if right now you are barely above poverty level? Becoming discouraged when you look at all you have to do to get there will not help. Thinking that you will never learn all you need to learn and that html is from hell itself is not going to take you to your goal.

A positive attitude, thinking positively about what needs to be done will have you plugging away at all that needs to be done and you will be nearing your goal much faster than weeping in your cup. You will believe in yourself or at least believe that those who have gone before know a thing or two and you can learn from them.

Both life and business are not as complicated as we sometimes tell ourselves. It takes a bit of courage and a positive attitude. It takes putting one foot in front of the other until you get where you want to go.

Regards,

Steve

Thanks, Steve!

I recommend that you stop by Life Change For You and learn how to change your life from being what you don’t want to the life you desire.

Have a great day.

photo credit: Melody Campbell

I am sitting in a room at NAMS with 20 people in a masterminding discussion with Mark Hendricks.  Talk about “business savvy” – Mark Hendricks is truly an amazing guy and incredibly insightful.  Mark Hendricks has probably already forgotten more about being in business on the internet than I will ever learn.

The conversation today was about many things, including the “True Path” and whether or not Social Media is on the true path.

Mark talked about managing relationships on the internet.  Relationships on the internet go through stages: Know Me, Like Me, Trust Me and about “Fish Jumping into the Boat.”  You just had to be there to get a full appreciation for Mark and the genius therein.

We spent some really good time talking about Benjamin Franklin and how that has impacted Mark’s business plan.

Best quote from Mark (there were many): “I’m a really good test dummy.”

Mark is not a huge fan of the hyped product launch model – he is more about delivering value over time, and encouraged us all to deliver real value to our customers.  He would rather have a lifetime customer than a quick buck and told us to avoid the “she got the coal mine and I got the shaft” model.

Great time with Mark – you can find him on Twitter @MarkHendricks.  My masterminding and 1:1 time with Mark was one of the real highlights of my trip to NAMS.

I am sitting in a session listening to Internet Marketing Guru Kevin Riley.  Kevin is really cool, and at the moment he is talking to the entire NAMS group about what happens after the workshop.

He started off his talk about how fired up the entire crowd is.  After all, people here are really fired up and are ready to go and implement.  The problem is (which Kevin correctly recognizes) is that when people get home stuff is getting into the way.  That stuff is called life.

People have doubts, discomfort, distractions and other junk that keeps them from acting on their plans.  He calls them little demons.

So, Kevin challenged the crowd to have a clear plan for next week for making progress in their business.  His talk was awesome (and will be available with all the other NAMS presentations on Feb 2).

My goal for next week is to complete the prelaunch opt-in for my next product and send it out to my list.  To do that, I need to finish 3 videos and set up the download page.

You can do this too.  What is your goal for next week? 

Let me know in the comments below.  Tell me your goals for next week and let’s hear how things are going in 7 days…

Try to avoid distractions next week and stay focused.

One of the really cool things that happens at the Niche Affiliate Marketing Seminar is how “hands on” that it is.  As a demonstration, the NAMS instructors actually create a product during the seminar, set up a sales page, and help people promote the product during seminar.

This is an excellent teaching tool.  It shows people just how easy it is to create an information product and put it out there.  It’s the best example that I have seen when you want to teach people to take massive action in conjunction with fundamentals of information product creation and marketing.

Excellent Social Media Product

The product that was created today was a panel discussion about Social Media Marketing Strategy.  Panelists included Willie Crawford, Mark Riley, Joey Smith, Jeff Herring, and Maritza Parra.  They attacked 5 questions for about an hour:

• Is Social Media for real?  How is it changing Internet Marketing?
• How do you drive traffic using Social Media
• Do you still need a list?  How do I use Social Media with my list?
• Why would I want to build an online presence using Social Media?
• Do conversion tactics still work on Social Media?

In addition to that, the moderator, David Perdue asked a simple question:  tell me one of your secret strategies for making money with social media.  That was probably the most exciting part of the panel discussion.

This is a pretty cool product.  When you check out the sales page, realize that the whole thing was created in just a few hours – you’ll be amazed at the quality of the content that can be generated in just a couple of hours. 

Check it out now.

One more thing:  While I was here, I learned about another really cool product called Twitter Glitch.  If you are using twitter in your marketing, you really should have a twitter disaster recovery plan.  I recommend you check that out as well.

Good morning.

Today I am in Atlanta at the Niche Affiliate Marketing System Seminar.  I’ve been spending some time with top internet marketers learning and mapping out my plans for MasonWorld.com.  It’s really exciting to be in the company of the 18 instructors and all the people like me that are here to learn from them.

The tone of this workshop is really cool.  There are two key features that I really like.  First, there is very little pitching here.  In fact, no products are for sale from the back of the room.  A lot of seminars like this are pitch-fests.  But NAMS is different by design (and it’s a great thing).  The instructors are here to teach (not to sell).

Just as an aside, the Niche Affiliate Marketing Seminar Audio is available after the conference if you are interested.    It turns out that you can get all the information presented at a fraction of the registration price.  If you are interested, you should act quickly because 51 people will also get a 2gb flash drive loaded with all of the Niche Affiliate Marketing System 1 and 2 workshop materials and complete audios!

Second, there is great access to all the instructors between sessions.  I’ve already had long conversations with Nicole Dean, Sid Hale, Lynn Terry and Kevin Riley.  At this moment, I am listening to a Lifestyle Design talk from Mark Hendricks.  I had not met Mark before this weekend, but I am blown away by his presentation, and have a 15 minute consulting session scheduled with him on Sunday.  The only weird thing was that he made us sing during his presentation. 

Of course, for me meeting Nicole Dean and Lynn Terry are two of the big highlights from the weekend (that’s Nicole at the left).  It’s been really neat to realize that they are just as cool (and genuine) as they seem.

Last night, a bunch of us from Lynn’s elite forum sat around and talked about internet marketing long after the planned events for the day had ended.  There are a ton of people from Lynn’s Elite forum here. 

More on NAMS later.  Right now this is looking like the most important investment in my business that I have made to date.

Next up later today, the entire conference is creating an info product live at the seminar.  Pretty cool exercise, especially for people who are trying to get started with info products on line.

OK -- all this New Year's resolution talk makes me want to remind everyone about who is really responsible for your success.   (I think you know who it is).  But first -- a story.

Michael Jackson is an amazing phenomenon that has completely taken over my household. I have a 10 year old and a 12 year old daughter, and those two girls have gone Michael Jackson bananas.

Ever since Michael passed away they have bought Michael Jackson posters and Michael Jackson CDs. My 10 year old daughter knows the words to each and every Michael Jackson song.

Unfortunately, we have quite a long drive to school every morning. Lately we’ve been listening to Michael Jackson CDs. We seem to have every Michael Jackson CD, and this is interesting for me, because I haven’t listened to any Michael Jackson since I was in junior high school in the 80’s. I know almost all the songs, at least all the ones that came out 20 years ago.

Micheal Jackson And Internet Marketing

Listening to Michael Jackson brings back a lot of fond memories for me. But, today I was listening to Michael Jackson and it actually made me think of internet marketing. You may be asking, “What in the world could Michael Jackson have had to say about internet marketing?” The answer is absolutely nothing.

Michael Jackson wasn’t talking about internet marketing, but the song that I was listening to this morning with my 10 year old made me think about internet marketing and what you can do to take control of your business and your own destiny to make your life better.

Michael Jackson has a song called Man in the Mirror. In the Man in the Mirror song Michael Jackson talks about how he finally wakes up to the world around him and how things aren’t so great, and if he wants to change the world, he’s got to start with the man in the mirror. If he wants to make the world a better place, he’s got to do something about it himself starting today.

I submit to you that’s a valid idea for you and your internet business.

Periodically, I run across people who want to complain to me about how some product didn’t meet their expectations, some internet marketing solution didn’t make them rich overnight, about how hard internet marketing is and how difficult it is to get going, on and on all about how it’s so difficult and their life is so difficult. Now, don’t get me wrong. Life is complicated, and internet marketing is difficult. There’s no question about it.

Aside:  Want to hear about difficult?  Go ask Josh Spaulding or Lynn Terry what they were doing prior to getting into Internet Marketing.  Lynn was a single mom trying to feed a couple of hungry kids, and Josh was causing real trouble....

You Are Responsible

The truth of the matter is, the ability to change that situation and become successful in internet marketing is within you. If you want to be successful in internet marketing, you’ve got to start by looking at the man or the woman in the mirror. You’ve got to decide that you’re going to be successful. Once you make that decision, then anything becomes possible.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say you buy a product, or you’ve decided on a business model and you find that implementing business model is not as easy as what was claimed in the sales letter. Okay, that happens every time.

So, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to blame the guy that sold you the product or are you going to try to get the help you need to bridge the gap and make that business model work?

Josh and Jennifer Know This

As my buddy, Josh Spaulding always says, you’ve got to fail over and over again as soon as possible, so that you can figure out how to make something work. You’re going to have to put the work in to get stuff to go right for you. That’s exactly what Michael Jackson is talking about. You can’t blame everybody else for your success or failure at internet marketing. You’ve got to take responsibility for things yourself.

So, what are you going to do today? Well, what I suggest that you do today is to think about the few things that you can do by looking in the mirror to make your internet marketing business a little better. See, my buddy Jennifer over at One Week Marketing always says, “If you’ll just do the things that nobody else will do for a year, then you can spend a lifetime doing stuff that no one else is able to do.”

That’s the key. You’ve got to look at the man in the mirror and make your world a better place.

Have a great day, and do something great today to make your future better.

photo credit: osakajapandaisuki

Yesterday we talked about several ways to get blog content, and I mentioned that you could hire a ghost writer.  One of the things that drives me crazy is when Internet Marketing Gurus say "you can just do blah blah blah" but they fail to tell you anything about how to do it.

Well, I did not want to be guilty of that.

So, here are a few tips for outsourcing your writing -- whether it be for blog posts, articles or information product creation:

• Get samples from any writer you’re considering before committing to the job. You should also have them write a set number of “test” pages (or a small section of the book if you are outsourcing a product) before fully committing. You should expect to pay them for this.  That means you may lose some money if you are not happy with the work.  That is just part of the deal.   Better to find out early on in the project than when you’ve fully committed.
• Visit online forums and ask for recommendations. There are various online marketing discussion forums (warriorforum.com, etc) where you may be able to find recommendations for writers. Just keep in mind everyone’s opinions vary.  You need to look at samples of work and form your own opinion.
• Start with research. If you don’t feel up to fully outsourcing the whole task you can simply outsource the research side of things or even the product outline or both the outline and the research.   Keep in mind that the writing part will usually be the most expensive and time consuming.  So, if you’re on a budget perhaps you could outsource the first two and do the writing yourself.

I like to use Virtual Assistants, and you can certainly outsource research and product outlines to a virtual assistant.  Again, you can visit online marketing discussion forums and ask for recommendations. You can also do a search under “virtual assistant” and you should find a number of different services, but recommendations are always best, especially when working with people online whom you won’t see face to face.

As an aside, if you are interested in learning more about virtual assistants for these types of tasks, I recommend this course.  If you want to hire a full time person (particularly if you are interested in offshore help, I recommend this product.

Visit places like elance.com or guru.com. In these places you can post a project and freelancers will bid on different projects. This is how I got started outsourcing.  You can also view samples of the person’s work (in many cases) and read past reviews and feedback they’ve been given.

Outsourcing your writing and research is a great idea, especially if you’ve been holding back on getting started.

Hope that helps!

photo credit: Daquella manera

One of the questions I hear a lot is "what do I write about?"

Here is a quick tip for you when you are looking for some blogging topics.

One simple answer to this age-old blogging question is to write answers to the questions that people have about your area of expertise.

For example, let's say you have a killer blog about WordPress.  Crank open your favorite keyword tool.  I like Micro Niche Finder for this type of work, but you could also use one of the free tools out there like The Google AdWords Keyword Tool or the Wordtracker tool free trial.

Search for your topic and "how to" -- For example "How To WordPress" (without the quotes).

I then like to filter out the results for searches that actually contain the phrase "how to" (this is easily done with Filters in Micro Niche Finder.

You get a result like this:

Now, you suddenly have lots to talk about.

By the way, I am planning on doing more "How To" videos myself.  If you have requests for "hot to" topics related to blogging, internet marketing, technology, or something related, please let me know.

Thought you might like a peek into my life over the last six weeks.

So, I made you a short (rough quality) video....

I hope your life is as wonderful as mine. Happy new year!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sWEiXomFTk

10 IM Things You Can Do While Holding An Infant

I’m back on the air after having a baby, actually my wife had the baby, but you know what I mean. I’ve been feeding the baby, well actually my wife feeds the baby, but I get to diaper the baby.

I thought I’d start off the new year with my first video of the year, The Top 10 IM Things You Can Do While Holding an Infant. It turns out that when you are working on internet marketing and you’ve got an infant there are about 10 things you can do, and I’ve found them all.

The first thing you can do is catch up on your blog post reading, because you can’t type, so that’s one thing you can do.

The second thing you can do is you can categorize transactions in Quickbooks, because you can do that with one hand pretty much. You can download transactions from PayPal and categorize them pretty easily.
The next thing you can do is read Twitter streams that you’ve never read before, because you’ve got time on your hands. Twitter streams are going by, it’s the middle of the night and the baby won’t sleep, so why should you.

You can look at other people’s sales copy. This is actually pretty useful. I’ve been doing some of this looking at some of the successful sales copy on the internet and trying to decide what’s successful about it, what catches my attention and why I think it’s worth swiping.

You can do mind maps. The program FreeMind works pretty well one handed. You can use the mouse to do most of your mind maps and you can hunt and peck while you do that.

Dragon Naturally Speaking works pretty well as long as the baby is not crying. It turns out that when the baby is crying you can hear that in the microphone and that’s not so good.

You can tweet, because it’s only 140 characters anyway, so one handed typing works okay for tweeting.
You can moderate comments on your blog as long as you’re not needing to reply. Replying not working so well when you can only type with one hand.

The best thing I’ve found to do, or maybe it’s the second best thing, is to assign to your VA. You can’t get anything done yourself, so that’s a good time to go ahead and outsource stuff to your virtual assistant.
Finally, you can kiss the baby. We’ve been doing a lot of that over the last six weeks. Little Morgan is six weeks old now.

We’ll be getting really active in 2010 now that little Morgan is starting to sleep a little. I hope you guys have been doing great and have a prosperous 2010 planned. This is Mark Mason at MasonWorld.com, thanks and Happy New Year.

This is the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, Episode 7.

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, and welcome back to the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. I’m your host, Mark Mason. It’s really great to talk to you again. I hope you’ve had a fantastic couple of weeks since the last time we spoke.

As usual, I’ve been crazy busy running my day job and playing with internet marketing late at night. That’s why we call it late night internet marketing, because I do it late at night and I really enjoy it.

This is the seventh episode, and in the first six episodes we’ve talked about the various methods for making money online. What we’re trying to do is set the foundation for building an internet business by first understanding the different ways that you can start an internet business. Of course, we don’t cover them all, but basically what we’re doing is we’re going through Yanik Silver’s outstanding book called Moonlighting on the Internet, and we’re talking about Jimmy Brown’s outstanding ebook, which is called 10 Ways to Make 10,000 Dollars a Month Online. Both of those are available on MasonWorld.com. The Silver book is available at MasonWorld.com/silver and the Jimmy Brown white paper is available at MasonWorld.com/10ways.

So, I’ve been working on a number of things over the last couple weeks. I’ve been getting some sites ready for Christmas, I’ve been participating in Lynn Terry’s outstanding forum, and doing some live case studies over there in the private area of her forum. You can find that over at MasonWorld.com/lynn. I’ve been reading up on all the stuff going on with the FTC.

The FTC has come down with some new regulations that have a significant impact, or could have a significant impact on affiliate marketers and bloggers. So, what I thought I’d do today is we’ll go ahead and we’ll cover as planned the next internet business model, and the topic for today of course will be blogging.

We’ll talk about how people make money online blogging, talk about that works into the other models. Instead of doing our normal interview with a guru, I wanted to spend some time in the second segment of the show talking about my opinions on this FTC thing, what it means, what it should mean to you, whether or not you need to worry about it based on my opinion.

I say that because it is my opinion. I’m not an attorney, I don’t work for the FTC, I’m not a government official, I’m not any kind of expert. I have spent some time reading the relatively plain language that the FTC has put out, and I think we can talk about it. I can tell you what I’m going to do on my various affiliate blogs over the next couple of months trying to bring them up to the standard that the FTC has set.

With that, if you’re ready let’s get into the feature segment and talk about making money blogging.

It’s time for the feature segment.

The interesting thing about blogging is that you can be famous without needing to have an agent or any other kind of traditional media support. That’s the really amazing thing. You can see examples of how blogging is starting to equalize the playing field. Once upon a time, media was in control of information and that’s just simply no longer the case.

Everybody is a reporter, everyone can start up a blog, and everyone can start writing about whatever they want to write about. The fact of the matter is if you are popular as a blogger, you can actually make money doing it. A lot of people wonder about this. How can you do that?

We’ll talk about it. A lot of it will involved things that we’ve talked about before, ways to monetize traffic, because after all in internet marketing what we’re trying to do is get traffic however we can get it, however we choose to get it, make that traffic take some action that we want them to take, and have that action be monetizable.

In the case of blogging, we want to create great content on a blog that people care about, get them to read it, and in general take some action that is profitable for us. There are lots of actions that they could possibly take. They could make a donation to support the ongoing maintenance of your blog, they could see an ad that someone paid for, they could click on an affiliate link. We talked about affiliate marketing a couple episodes ago.

The bottom line is we want to get traffic, we want to convert that traffic into some kind of monetizable return. What better way to create traffic than to get a loyal base of readers that care about what you have to say and turn to you to keep up with things.

Of course, the most famous of all the bloggers probably is Perez Hilton, everybody knows about Perez. I don’t actually read that blog, but I know about it because I’m in internet marketing. The most famous blog that I know about that I actually read would be blogs like Yaro Starak, who runs a fantastic blogging course, or Problogger, or Copyblogger.

These blogs have enormous numbers of readers. You can look at them and see how they’re monetized. They’re monetized by advertisements, they’re monetized by affiliate sales, and if you look at the latter two blogs, Problogger and Copyblogger, and Yaro’s blog as well, they’re also monetized by the sale of their own products, by referring people into their own products.

I actually think this is the best use for a blog. When we get to talking about how to use a blog in your business in future episodes, we’re going to be talking about a blog as a way to identify prospects for your other products. We really won’t talk too much about a blog in and of itself.

But, if you’re a prolific writer and you love to write, there’s a topic that you’re very passionate about, it is certainly possible for you to create a blog, start an online business around that blog, get traffic, and monetize that traffic with current monetization methods that are out there available to you.

Before we start with too much information about how to build a blog, I guess we first ought to touch on what a blog is. That’s a question I get a lot of times from people who aren’t familiar with the internet, particularly people like my mom. I’ll talk about a blog and she’ll ask a question, “I’ve heard of these blogs. What are they exactly?”

You probably already know blog is short for web log, which implies this is sort of a journal, an online journal. I’d say the most interesting part of a blog, or the thing that makes a blog a blog is the fact that the content in the blog is organized primarily in chronological order.

Posts come in one at a time, articles are called posts in the blogging world. They come in one at a time and the newest one is always on top. They can be organized in other ways as well, you can usually search these blogs and a lot of times the posts are tagged so that common themes are put together. You can have categories for posts and so forth.

The primary thing that you’ll notice about most blogs is that when you arrive on the first page of a blog, what you’re going to see on the home page is what the author has written first. Now, there are lots of other formats for blogs. You can have magazine style blogs where multiple stories are on the home page.

You can go to MasonWorld.com, that’s an example of a blog that was designed by Garry Conn over at GarryConn.com. You can see my latest post right there on the blog. In fact, if you go to the blog immediately after the release of this podcast, you’ll see that the release of this podcast is the latest story on the front of the blog. That’s what makes a blog a blog.

The question is, if you want to blog, what do you need? First thing you need is you need to decide exactly what it is that you’re going to write about. I recommend personally that you write about something that you care about.

If you’re going to be a blogger and you’re going to make money blogging, and you’re not using this blog for niche marketing or some of the other things affiliate marketing that we’ve talked about, but you really want to become a well known author on a subject, you really need to think about whether it’s in your personality to blog about something day in and day out that you don’t care about.

I know I personally can’t do that. I’ve tried to do some blogging on topics that I don’t care about, and quite frankly I can’t get it done. That’s my first piece of advice to you.

My second piece of advice to you is to write about something that at least some people are going to care about. Maybe you care about one particular kind of koala bear that’s only found in some jungle in Southeast Asia, and you are some kind of biologist and you’re the world’s leading expert in that.

That might just be fine for you to write about that, but I’m going to tell you as cute as koala bears are, there’s just not going to be that many people that care about your koala bear blog. Especially if it’s specific to one variety of koala bear in Southeast Asia.

On the other hand, if what you really care about is the Dallas Cowboys or some other kind of broad topic like cars, racing, weight loss, how to have a happy life, how to fix relationships, how to manage debt, one of these topics that’s very important and big in the news, you have a real opportunity to get a lot of readers.

The flip side of that is some of those areas are very competitive and like choosing any niche in internet marketing you’re going to want to narrow that done. But, the fundamental thing is that you need to write about something that you care about and some number of other people are going to care about as well.

Then once you’ve decided that you’ve got a topic and you are going to have a blog that people are going to care about, you need to register a domain name. My recommendation on the registration of domain names for blogs, where blogging is your ideal target market, that’s really what you’re going after you’re trying to be a blogger is to register a name that people can remember.

You want a name that rolls off of people’s tongue, like Problogger, Copyblogger, or something that people can remember and just type in at the command line, because you want that word of mouth opportunity. Do you want search engine traffic? Absolutely. But, the domain name doesn’t weigh that heavily on the search engine traffic. I know we haven’t talked about search engines a lot, but we will in future episodes. For now, if you’re going to be a blogger, I definitely recommend that you register a catchy domain name to call your blog.

The next thing you’re going to need is some blogging software. Of course, there isn’t any option here that I would recommend over WordPress. There are two versions of WordPress. There’s WordPress.org and WordPress.com. There’s actually a third thing called WordPress MU, we’re not going to worry about that today. That’s multiuser version of WordPress.

WordPress.com is software that allows you to host a blog on the WordPress site itself. So, you might end up with something like redsocks.wordpress.com for your blog on red socks. WordPress.org is the same software, very similar software, that you host on your own domain. I’m strongly recommending that option.

You definitely want to host the blog on your own domain. You need to be in control of your own destiny. WordPress.com is going to limit some of the things that they’re going to allow you to do some of the kinds of advertising that you can have on your blog and so forth. So, you definitely want to focus on a WordPress.org installed on your own domain.

Now, if you need hosting currently I am recommend a special host that has a one penny first month and easy set up of WordPress. You can find that recommendation at MasonWorld.com/host. But, the bottom line is your website needs a place to live, that’s going to cost you a few dollars a month. I recommend that you check that host out at MasonWorld.com/host. That’s my latest and best current recommendation for where to host your website.

Once you’ve got your blog up and running really what you need to do is write. We can talk in some more detail at a later date about how to choose things to write about, how to pick posts that will capture your reader’s attention, how to write pillar content that you can rank for in the search engines that people will come back to and link to, and drive traffic to your site. But, the bottom line is you need to write and you need to write a lot.

You need to create a posting schedule, you need to write regularly. One of the things, just like with this podcast that your readers are going to want to see is the regular creation of content on a predictable schedule. So, you need to write early, write often, but most importantly you want to write on the same schedule all the time. Maybe for you that’s once a week, maybe it’s once a day. Whatever your schedule is you need to kind of fall into it and stick with it.

One thing that you’ll find is that a lot of people start a blog, they find out that it’s not for them, then they fade out and the blog just dies because they never spend time on it. So, really get committed to your schedule in the beginning and get your blog going.

Once you’ve got your blog up and going, you have several options for monetizing that blog. You’ve got what could be described as direct monetization options and indirect monetization options. Now, direct options are the kind of things that you might think of automatically, like advertising.

You can put contextual ads on your blog, like Adsense, where the words that you write on the page effect which ads actually show up. You can put on different kinds of blogging ads and textual ads. There are all kinds of ad systems, and a lot of these are covered in the Silver book. That chapter on blogging is actually written by Darren Rowse, he’s a very famous blogger with lots of good things to say about blogging. Definitely recommend you check out that section in the Silver book.

You can also get your blog sponsored. Let’s say that you have a BMW fan blog where you talk about BMWs and all the things that are great about them. Maybe BMW wants to sponsor your blog.

You can also make money on your blog just by having a donation button. Maybe you’re providing helpful information to people. There aren’t really products to sell, but you’re helping people with relationships, or helping them fix their computer, or whatever it might be. They’re so thrilled that they might want to leave you a buck or two, the sort of “buy me a beer” click button that you can have with Paypal or other service to leave a donation.

There’s other direct methods. You can have merchandise, like CafePress t-shirts. You can even sell subscriptions to premium content on your blog. If you’ve got a blog where you talk in general about most stuff, but then you’ve got a premium side to the blog where people can get even more content if they pay you a monthly fee, that can work as well.

Now, one thing that you can use your blog for is for indirect methods of monetization. Let’s say that you’re blogging, but really your goal is to drive traffic to your consulting business or to get other types of indirect monetization, like other writing gigs or photography gigs if you have a photography blog. That’s an indirect way you can monetize your blog.

That’s kind of interesting, because if you’re already doing something, like you have some sort of business, a real brick and mortar business and you want to enhance that business, you can start a blog in your area of expertise, become an expert, drive traffic to your business and also leverage the information and knowledge that you already have in your online business against your offline business and vice versa.

Nothing says that just because you’re an expert offline in a local market that you can’t become an expert online in a national market, or maybe even in a world market. In fact, the fact that you are already an expert offline can make you a very good blogger online.

That should give you an idea about blogging. If you’re interested in blogging, I recommend that you go to get some hosting. One place is MasonWorld.com/host. You can find out all about that and be up and running with a blog this afternoon. That takes care of bloggings, that’s our next method for making money on the internet. Now, let’s talk a little bit about the FTC.

Let’s talk about the FTC . So, the FTC on the 5^th of October released some final guides governing endorsements and testimonials. You can find a link to this on FTC.gov. I’ll put the link in the show notes. Basically, the guidance is pretty short.

Before we talk about it, let me reiterate the disclaimer just so we’re really clear. I am just a regular person reading the output from the FTC. I am not an FTC expert, I am not an attorney, I do not play an attorney on TV. So, I am not qualified expert to advise you on what you need to do.

If you can’t deal with that, you need to turn off your iPod right now, because I’m not responsible for what impact my advice has on your business, you are. as long as you understand that, we’re cool. I’m going to tell what I think and what I’m going to do. You need to make your own decisions about what you’re going to do. Enough of the disclaimer.

Basically, this guideline really it only had about seven or eight paragraphs. I think eight paragraphs. The first paragraph really just deals with the fact that they indicate that they’re making an announcement. Now, what they’re announcing is guidance to advertisers. This isn’t law that they’ve put out, basically it’s the FTC’s guidance on how to deal with existing FTC regulations.

What they say in the second paragraph is that there are several changes incorporated into the guides for advertisers. Those guides were last updated in 1980. So, that’s a pretty striking thing right there. The amount of stuff that’s happened on the internet since 1980 is enormous, so it’s no surprise that it’s time to update some of this stuff.

Really they only cover three things that impact advertising in this announcement, and only two of them impact internet marketers, in my opinion. One thing that they’ve said is that any time there’s an endorsement by a consumer, an expert, an organization, or a celebrity that indicates that they’re a consumer of a product, any kind of endorsement, “I used this product and I got a result.”

We all use testimonials in our internet marketing products. Any time you use a testimonial that claims a result you are required to clearly state what the user can actually expect. So, let’s say I use a weight loss product and I give a testimonial that I lost 105 pounds. But, my results are not typical. It used to be good enough to say, “These results are not typical.” Your mileage may vary, that’s what the car people say.

Well, that’s no longer acceptable according to this FTC guidance. What must be done now is that you must state what the average user would expect. To me that means that very simply if 1,000 people take a weight loss pill, and one of them loses 80 pounds, but most of them don’t lose any weight, you’ve got to report the average of what those other people are doing.

In some cases it’s not even clear to me how you’re going to ever know that. How are you going to know the average results of what your customers are doing? But, that’s what the FTC is claiming.

Now the question is what is Mark Mason going to do? Well, I’ll give you a concrete example that I’m concerned about. I have a product called Niche Adsense Themes, it’s over at NicheAdsenseThemes.com. I am aware of the fact recently that someone using my themes, they’re themes for Adsense, someone using my themes was able to use those themes to generate some ridiculous amount of money per month. I think 1,000 dollars per month using article marketing and my themes in a mortgage site they were able to generate a site relatively quickly that made them something on the order of 1,000 dollars per month.

This is well documented over at Site Point. You can go look over at Site Point and find this thing. I was going to get that guy to offer me a testimonial that says, “Using your themes I was able to make 1,000 dollars a month.” Well, guess what folks? Those results aren’t typical. I’ve never had a customer come to me, besides this guy and say that they were able to make 1,000 dollars a month using my themes.

So, that’s not a typical result. For me to use that testimonial like I was planning to, I’m going to have to now say, “These results are not typical. The average user that uses my themes never makes any money at all.” Why? Because like with most internet products people don’t use them. They download them, throw them on their hard drive.

You might be able to say the average user who actually does what is recommended in the product and follows the program has a certain results. Quite frankly, I don’t know that result. So, my plan is to not mess with using testimonials that guarantee results or that talk about results at all. I will use testimonials like I have typically used where people talk about how they liked the product, they think it’s wonderful, but I won’t use any testimonials that talk about specific results.

That just opens me up to too much uncertainty. I don’t know other people’s results, I don’t have any way to verify, so I’m not going to use those. That’s my simple answer to that.

The second thing that’s covered in the FTC bulletin has to do with disclosing material relationships. That’s the next paragraph. Basically, what they say is something that should make sense to you. If you’re recommending a product to someone and you make money if they buy it, you need to tell people that, because if you have a financial incentive to recommend a product that can bias your recommendation and people deserve to know that.

Guess what folks? I know a lot of people aren’t doing this and I am not rigorous about doing it on my own blog, although I do have a very clear disclosure page. I’m not sure that’s enough in this case, but we need to be doing this. If I recommend to you, XYZ product, like I have even earlier in this podcast and you buy that product based on my recommendation I make money and you deserve to know that.

So, what am I going to do? Well, I’m going to do a couple of things. One thing that I’m going to do is make sure that every blog that I have that recommends a product has a disclosure page prominently displayed for the users to look at that says something along the lines of products recommended on this blog result in the generation of commissions. If you buy a recommended product, it’s likely that I’m going to get a commission.

You can see something like that on the MasonWorld.com blog, I have a disclosure page. I’ll also link to it in the notes. It’s not great. I plan to update it. it was my previous attempt of being transparent, and I plan to put that on all my blogs.

My personal opinion is that that’s not really going to be enough. Just having that disclosure page buried somewhere on your site is not going to be enough. We’re going to have to be more up front. I plan on actually adding something in my signature at the bottom of every post, or something that discloses the fact that I am using affiliate links when I recommend products.

I plan to be completely transparent. I’m going to take any chances on this one, because not only do I think that’s what the FTC is trying to get at, I also believe that they’re on the right track. I think it’s really important for some person who doesn’t really understand internet marketing, doesn’t understand the idea of affiliate links to know that when I recommend a product like FirePow, for example, which I’ve recommend many times, that I get a commission if you buy FirePow. That’s really what I think the right thing to do is.

The next paragraph in the FTC statement talks about celebrity endorsements. I don’t have that problem. Of course, I did have Lynn Terry on here a couple weeks ago, so she’s kind of a celebrity. But, seriously, I think celebrity endorsements are not a problem that most of us are going to face, but it’s covered in there as well.

That’s pretty much, from my perspective at least, all that’s covered in that announcement. You will see some gibberish at the bottom about how this is not actual law, about how this is the FTC’s guidelines on how to comply with existing law. There’s a burden for the FTC to prove that you’re breaking the law.

But, the bottom line is that thing really talks about three issues and those are celebrity endorsements, material connections between authors and the products that they recommend, and the first thing that we talked about, which was the fact that if you have testimonials you need to disclose average results.

Now, let me reiterate that I am not an attorney and I am not giving you advice here. I’ve just told you what I’m going to do. You need to do whatever you’re going to do.

Here’s another thing that I think is true. If you are trying to deceive people or you doing something that is going to cause people to be upset, if you misrepresent a product or you do something that causes people to be dissatisfied with the product that they bought, what are they going to do? Well, they are going to potentially file a complaint with the FTC.

What’s the FTC going to do? One thing that they can do is they’re going to look at your websites and see whether or not you’re in compliance. So, what’s the best way to keep the FTC out of your business? The best way to keep the FTC out of your business is not to do things on your websites that mislead or take advantage of your customers. Who are your customers? Even if you’re an affiliate marketer your customers are the people who come by your websites.

So, that’s the right way to think about this stuff. If you do things that respect the value of your readers or the people that are clicking around your blog you’re a lot less likely to have trouble with the FTC. That’s really the bottom line on this whole mess. You need to look out for the customers of the products that you’re recommending and endorsing.

That wraps it up for today. I am actually getting on a plane and heading out to Asia in a few hours. I’ll be going to Taiwan and to Korea on this trip. I’m glad to have this in the can and out on the website prior to take off on that long trip. I’ll be back in two weeks with another episode. Until then, I hope you have a fantastic day and a great week. Take care.

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.

Sometimes I read these sales letters for all of these internet marketing products (including my own) and I wonder how in the world these product authors became such instant successes.  After all, the part of their story that you always hear about is the amazing profit part, right?

The truth is usually that these people fail a lot.  Just like Thomas Edison did.   Just like Michael Jordan did.  Just like I do.   (Don't you love the not-so-subtle comparison between me, great marketers and Thomas Edison?) 

So, I thought it would be fun to tell you about a failed experiment of mine.

Michelle McPherson, Me and Chicken Coops.

Back in May, I mentioned that I was playing around with Automatic Article Submitter.  In that article, I mentioned that I was lurking on Michelle's blog and decided to try a crazy experiment about Chicken Coops.  Here is what I wrote:

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

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

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

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

Well, it's been many months since that post.  So I thought you might want to hear about the less-than-spectacular results.

Article Marketing Was A Success

As far as getting traffic to websites, Article Marketing is a success.  No surprise there.

In fact, some traffic continues to come in due to article marketing. There is no SE Traffic to speak of (I really did not set it up for that). The end result is that I sent 3500 visitors to this site and got about 378 hops. That is about 11% conversion. Not bad.

Unfortunately, there were only 9 order form impressions and no sales. This is completely unexpected since the product has a gravity of 69. Not sure what is up with that.

Well, live and learn.

Below are some stats screen shots for the record.

Love to hear what you think about all of this....here are some theories on why this "failed".   What do you think:

• Maybe the product sales page actually stinks and the gravity number is "misleading"
• Maybe this article marketing traffic is not "buying traffic"
• Maybe 378 visitors to the sales page is not enough to understand the real picture
• Maybe this was all an evil plot by Michelle to distract me

Again, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Of course the bottom line is always to fail quickly and learn from your failures.   Not sure what to learn here yet...

Regards,
Mark