Stick-to-it-iveness, as we say here in Texas, has a lot to do with part time internet business, and I’m going to argue you need to really stick with what you’re doing. Again, I say there are 10 to 100 ways to make money online. I told you before you need to pick one. Now, I’m telling you in addition to that you really need to stick with one.

Let me warn you. As a part time internet entrepreneur this is true, but it’s also true for the full time people out there. Most legitimate business opportunities on the internet that I’m aware of, and gosh I might even say all legitimate business opportunities on the internet take time to develop.

All of those overnight successes that you hear about, they’re usually working for years before they become an overnight success. There’s really no such thing as easy money. You cannot get something for nothing. Just forget it.

As a part time internet entrepreneur you need to recognize and acknowledge that this is going to take you some time, it’s going to take you longer than the full time guy. You need to accept that and embrace it.

Fail as fast as you can. You’ve got to fail as quickly as possible. You miss every shot that you don’t take. There’s no way for you to be successful if you don’t try. So, you want to try and fail as you possibly can, fix that problem and move on to the next problem. That’s the recipe for success and you’ve got to have stick-to-it-iveness to do that.

I submit to you that internet business is like eating an elephant and everybody knows the way you eat an elephant is one bite at a time. You’ve got to stick with what you’re doing in order to get that done.

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.

The next thing you need to do as far as getting your head right and owning your plan, which is the second piece of the strategy, is you’ve got to know what you’re doing.

I’ll submit to you that there are anywhere between 10 and 100 real legitimate ways to make money online.  As a part time internet entrepreneur you’ve simply just got to pick one. I don’t mean pick seven, I mean pick one. You need to pick a business model and you need to execute around that business model.

For example, Sterling and Jay teach an excellent proven business model at the Internet Business Mastery Academy, but there are other ones I like too.  No matter what you choose for your business model, you need to work through that and pick a single business model to execute on as a part time internet entrepreneur.

Once you pick it you need to be single minded and task oriented.

In future articles, I'll be talking a lot about how to handle the task oriented side of things.  For internet entrepreneurs that are working part time, I strongly recommend some sort of project focused next action driven plan, like the Getting Things Done program, GTD from David Allen.

If that’s a little too dense for you, and quite frankly, it’s a little too dense for me, there is an excellent ebook out there called ZTD, (Zen To Done). Take a look at that. That’s kind of a short version of GTD. Those are both great resources.

No matter what, you need to have a good task management system so you can stay focused and single minded.

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.

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.

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

Sometimes I am amazed at how long people have been in internet business. For example, my friend Lynn Terry who helps people learn how to make money online over at Clicknewz.com has been in internet business for over 13 years, which just seems amazing to me.

I personally started my internet business seriously in 2007, my website had been online since early 2001. Two and a half years seems like a really long time to me.

A lot of people might look at that and think, “Wow, all these people have such a huge head start. Is it too late for me to get online?” To that I say absolutely not! The internet age is really just beginning. This is still very much in its infancy, people are still coming online all over the world, handheld mobile devices are coming online in enormous numbers, mobile ecommerce really hasn’t even started yet.

So, to those people I say, No, we’re still in the beginning of this thing. There’s still plenty of time to get online and be early to the party.

As proof of this I saw something truly shocking today on the way to work. Here’s a picture...

I’m driving down Central Expressway in Dallas, Texas and I see a billboard in the middle of the highway for Host Gator. Now, this has got to be the clearest indication that internet business is about to turn mainstream that I can possibly imagine.

You wouldn’t typically think the average person running down the street would need to know how to register a domain name and get internet website hosting.

So, for that billboard to appear on the highway indicates to me that this whole thing is about to explode. I imagine everyone with a website, and hosting being so common that it pays to advertise on the highway.  Once that happens, internet business will simply be a matter of how to increase blog traffic and match offers with buyers (which is all it is about now anyway).

I say to you we’re still at the beginning, but you need to go ahead and hurry, because if you don’t go ahead and take decisive action you’ll never get where you want to go with your internet business.

Thanks. My name is Mark Mason from MasonWorld.com and it’s my pleasure to help you build your internet business one night at a time.

One of the things that I hear all the time is “Mark, I want to start my online business, but I need to make money right away.”  Well, the answer I always give is that it can take some time to make money online as a marketer (weeks or months – sometimes years), but you can always make money online as a Virtual Assistant almost instantly.

Last week, I was really pleased to get a very exciting announcement from one of my favorite Virtual Assistants, Loretta.  Put simply, Loretta rocks.  She was contacting me to announce her new product about how to quickly start a transcription business.  The product is called Transcription Crash Course.

Obviously, I was excited for her because she is an excellent transcriptionist and I was glad to see her launch what I knew would be an excellent product.  But I was even more excited because I know that there are people that read my blog that meet the following critical criteria:

• They have a computer and can type
• They need to make money right now (today)

So – guess what I did?  I bought a copy.  I am sure I could have gotten one for free, but one thing I learned from Lynn Terry is that in most cases if you are going to review a product, you should buy it yourself, so I did.

I was really impressed.  Here’s why.

Learn To Start A Transcription Business Today

When you purchase Transcription Crash Course, you get a sharp looking no-fluff 17 page eBook that tells you everything you need to know to get started.   Loretta covers these critical areas in the eBook:

• Stuff that you need (you already have almost everything; other stuff is free)
• Stuff that you might want (but don’t need to get started)
• Deciding to offer edited versus verbatim transcripts
• How to easily format your transcripts
• Doing your first transcript (not all that scary now)
• Setting your rates
• Finding work (easier than you think)
• Setting up your own website
• Using social media to promote your business
• etc.

In addition, Loretta includes some awesome bonus material:

• Client communication tips
• Time management tips
• Seasonal business

My Takeaway on Transcription Crash Course

So here it the bottom line.  If you need a quick way to make money on line and you can type, this could be the answer that you are looking for.  Check out Transcription Crash Course today.  Loretta is offering a 60 day money-back guarantee.  If you are serious about making some quick money online, you’ll know this program is for you after a few days.

Please feel free to ask me any questions in the comments below.

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.

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 make money blogging.

We also put our special interview schedule on hold for an episode to make room to talk about the latest communication from the FTC.

When the transcript is available, it will be here.

In the podcast, I mention that I have been spending time in Lynn Terry's forum.

In the main segment of the podcast, I talk about Blogging. I mention that you need to look for

• A topic you care about
• A topic other care about
• WordPress.org
• Some good cheap hosting

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
• The FTC communication
• My old disclosure page

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s time for the feature segment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks. That concludes the feature segment.

And now the feature interview.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

Bob: Hi. Good. How are you?

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

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

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

Bob: Yes.

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

Bob: That’s right.

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

Bob: Yes.

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

Bob: Yes. It’s very exciting.

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

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

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

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

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

Bob: Yes.

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

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

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

Bob: Yes.

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

Bob: It’s perfect. Yes.

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

Bob: Yes, sir.

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

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

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

Bob: Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bob: Yes, sir.

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

Bob: Yes, sir, I was.

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

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

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

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

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

Bob: Yes, sir.

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

Bob: Yes, I had.

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

Bob: Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bob: Thank you very much.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s time for the feature segment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now the feature interview.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew Hansen: Yes, I think so.

Mark Mason: Your from Australia, right?

Andrew Hansen: Right.

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

Andrew Hansen: You don’t have vegemite?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew Hansen: Absolutely.

Mark Mason: There’s just a huge difference.

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

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

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

Andrew Hansen: Sure.

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

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

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

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

Mark Mason: Tell me the URL again.

Andrew Hansen: That’s CrapCutterMarketing.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew Hansen: You can checkout GetFirepow.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark Mason: Thank you very much.

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

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

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

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

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

This is the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, Episode 2.

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

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

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. I’m your host Mark Mason, and I’m here to talk to you about how to build a successful internet business one night at a time. That’s what I do. It’s called Late Night Internet Marketing, because, well, that’s when I do it, late at night.

In the last episode I promised you we would talk about the two special reports that I think are really good. Actually, one is a hard cover book by Yanik Silver, it’s called Moonlighting on the Internet. You can find that at MasonWorld.com/silver.

The other is a free report from Jimmy D. Brown, one of the fantastic internet marketers in the internet marketing space, it’s called 10 Ways to Make 10,000 Dollars a Month on the Internet. You can find that at MasonWorld.com/10ways.

One of the 10 ways that Jimmy talks about, and one of the five ways that Yanik Silver talks about making money is through affiliate marketing on the internet. So, that’s what I really want to start off with as the number one way that you can make money on the internet, with affiliate marketing.

Now, there’s a couple of things that you need to understand about making money on the internet. One thing that you need to understand is how money moves around on the internet. In general, what you do on the internet to make money is you get traffic on the internet. In this podcast we’ll talk about how it is exactly that you can get traffic. There are a lot of ways to get traffic to your website on the internet.

You convince that traffic to take some action. That convincing of taking an action is called conversion. What you want to do is you want to get traffic, and you want to convert it either into a sale or to capture a lead, or some other thing that has value. You want to get people to take action on your website.

One of the things you can get people to do in terms of taking action is you can get them to click on a link that drives them to some other website where they might make a purchase. When they make that purchase, you can get what’s called an affiliate commission.

You can think of this as commission sales, just like someone in a store. If you buy a product that someone is pitching, then that person who is pitching the product can get a commission. On the internet it works the same way in a lot of cases. If I review a product, and you read my review, and you agree with me and like and buy that product, and you arrive at that destination where you buy that product through my affiliate link, that merchant will often times pay me a commission.

One of the reasons that I’m covering this first on the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast is that you’ve already been a victim of affiliate marketing on this podcast. I want to point that out to you. If you’re new to internet marketing it’s something that you really need to understand.

When I told you about Moonlighting on the Internet with Yanik Silver, I directed you to the link www.masonworld.com/silver. When I told you about Jimmy Brown’s report, I directed you to www.masonworld.com/10ways. The reason I did that, and the main reason to do that is because on a podcast it’s really hard to give links, so you want something that’s simple and easy to remember, because people are likely driving in their car or otherwise engaged.

The other reason you do that is because when you click through to those links, in the case of the Yanik Silver book, you’re forwarded to Amazon, and in the case of the Jimmy D. Brown book you are forwarded to a location where you’re able to download a copy of the book.

In both cases those transactions result in the placing of what’s called a cookie on your computer that will give me credit for the sale if you buy something. So, that’s something that you always need to watch out for in internet marketing. You need to deal with people that are transparent, that you trust, because the potential exists that someone might recommend a product to you just to get the commission and not because they believe in the product.

Now, in my case, my whole business is based around this idea of transparency and trust. That’s why I’m telling you about this affiliate marketing business first. So, you can understand that there is money to be gained in the recommending of products.

In the case of the Yanik Silver book, what happens is you go to Amazon.com. Again, if you go to MasonWorld.com/silver you can see this in action. You’re taken directly to the Amazon page, and it turns out if you buy that book within 24 hours of having come through my link, I’ll get a few dollars on the sale of that book, or probably even a few pennies in the case of the Silver book.

In the case of the Jimmy Brown report, that’s a more sophisticated technique where Jimmy Brown has links to his many outstanding, excellent products that he offers in the report. If you buy something through one of the links in the report that link will be tracked back to me and I will get a commission for that sale.

That’s using an affiliate technique called report rebranding, which means that report you downloaded is specific to MasonWorld.com, and anyone who downloads that report gets credit.

That’s an important idea that you need to understand. I tell you that for three reasons. One is it’s an absolutely great example of how affiliate marketing can work. You recommend products, hopefully you make honest recommendations. That’s valuable to people. When people buy those products based on your recommendations, you get a commission for the sale. It’s valuable for the merchant, it’s valuable for the customer, it’s win-win when it’s done with integrity.

The second reason I tell you about that is because my business is built around transparency, and I want to make sure that you know that if you buy those products that can result in a commission for me through those mechanisms that I described.

The third reason that I want to tell you about that is because it’s very important that you be aware about this issue with affiliate marketing, because currently the FTC is really starting to crack down on affiliate marketers. Particularly in the spaces like diet pills and Acai Berry, and these other things that claim to be able to sell you magic in a bottle.

These kind of things the FTC is really going to start to crack down on. They’ve got a position paper on how they intend to do this. We’ll cover that in a later episode. That’s a more sophisticated topic.

So, if you’re thinking about doing affiliate marketing, I’m not a lawyer, you should make sure you understand the rules around that as they come down from the FTC. I can tell you what I think, but as with all legal and accounting matters, you should get professional advice, because I’m not a lawyer. But, that’s the third reason. You want to be aware of what’s going on with the FTC.

There is an enormous amount of affiliate marketing going on online right now today. That is not anything that you should be afraid of. Just be aware of it, so you can make sure and run your business like a business in a way that makes sense.

That is way to make money on the internet number one, affiliate marketing. It’s actually number two in Jimmy Brown’s book, and it’s covered in Chapter Three or Four, I think, in Yanik Silver’s book. You can get that and take a look at it. It’s covered really well there.

Now, you might wonder, in terms of affiliate marketing, what is it that you can actually promote? Well, it turns out you can promote almost anything through affiliate marketing. It’s really amazing. Everything from automobiles on eBay to the smallest packs of gum, to anything on Amazon.com.

All kinds of offers where the only thing that’s required for you to get a commission is for the person to actually leave their name and address. That would be a different kind of affiliate offer, but an offer nonetheless that’s available in affiliate marketing.

You can use traffic that you get from search engines. We’ll talk about that in future episodes. Or you can use traffic that you pay for. The bottom line in all these things is for affiliate marketing to work, you need to make more money than you spend to make the money.

It’s just like any other business opportunity. You have costs associated with getting the traffic in some cases. Those costs need to be less than the money that you make when you are successful with affiliate marketing.

If you’re interested in checking out some affiliate marketing opportunities out there, one of the places that I like to recommend is the Pepperjam Network. It’s easy to manage and easy to understand. Amazon.com has an affiliate program. As well as the granddaddy of them all, Commission Junction. You’ll be shocked and amazed at all the things that are for sale and that are available for you to promote on Commission Junction.

Now, these first 10 episodes or so we’re getting an overview of internet marketing, so you can kind of understand what’s possible on the internet. As past of that, I’ve promised you an ongoing series of interviews with top internet marketers about the most important things that they wish they had known when they started.

What I’d like to offer you now is an interview with a fantastic internet marketer and personal friend of mine, Josh Spaulding. Josh runs an outstanding blog about internet marketing and making money online over at Easy-OnlineMoney.com. You can find his blog where he’s writing about all of his experiences at Easy-OnlineMoney.com/blog.

Josh is a full time internet marketer. He’s incredibly successful. He’s run membership sites, article directories, he does affiliate marketing, he’s an expert at email marketing, he’s an information marketer with a bunch of successful paid and free products. Josh has pretty much done it all.

I got Josh on the phone and I asked him to tell me what the three most important things that he wished he knew about internet marketing when he started, and this is what he had to say.

And now the feature interview.

Mark Mason: Okay. Today we have on the line noted internet marketer, Josh Spaulding. Josh, of course, runs a blog over at Easy-OnlineMoney.com/blog. He’s also got a viral ebook that I know a lot of people have read on how to make money with Adsense called The 5 Dollar Formula. That’s available at 5dollarformula.com.

Josh has been doing internet marketing for a long time. Josh, how are you doing today?

Josh Spaulding: Pretty good.

Mark Mason: I really appreciate you being here. I think we talked a little bit before the call, and I told you the focus of this podcast is really, at least initially, about how people can get started online, how they can build an internet business, and particularly do it like I did, part time and in the evenings, investing a little bit at a time over time.

One of the things that I’m doing is talking to successful internet marketers and trying to extract those sort of special nuggets of wisdom. What is that you wish you had known, what are the most important three things?

But, before we get to that, tell me a little bit about what’s going on in your internet business, maybe about how you got where you are, just real briefly, and what you’re up to these days.

Josh Spaulding: Well, I started off, as you know, in the Army about 5 years ago. I was a Section Chief in the Army, stationed in Germany. So, I didn’t have a whole lot of time to dedicate to my business. But, just the dream of working at home and not having to answer to a boss, all of that just attracted me to it. So, I dedicated myself to doing it.

It took a little while. I couldn’t work too much, so I had to really concentrate on what I was doing and really make sure I was doing the right thing and be specific as to who I listened to and what I did. Anyway, I did it. I never gave up. Here I am today, 5 years later, spending as much time as I want with my family , sitting on my butt at home.

Mark Mason: That’s great. Now, I understand that you’ve got several business models going simultaneously. You have membership sites, products, Adsense sites. Can you just briefly kind of go through that list of different business models that you’ve worked with, either now or in the past?

Josh Spaulding: Well, I’ve done just about every internet marketing business model there is, with the exception pay per click. Even that, I know the basics. I’ve done a little pay per click here and there. I do a lot of email marketing, blogging, niche marketing, to include Adsense. Those are probably the primary business models I do.

Mark Mason: Okay, great.

Josh Spaulding: There’s a lot of good ones out there.

Mark Mason: Yeah. Excellent. Let’s talk about that a little bit. There’s so much noise out there, so much stuff going on. I was wondering how you would answer the following question, and this is really the reason why I have you on the phone today.

If you were a new internet marketer getting started, and there were three things that you could know, three things that maybe you wish you had known when you got started, or three most important lessons that you’ve learned that you’d like to pass onto somebody that’s just getting started. What are those three things?

Josh Spaulding: Number one would definitely be pick a business model and stick with it. That’s the biggest problem I think a lot of people face when they’re trying to start an online business, or even offline business.

There’s so many different ways to make money online and offline. You get on all these newsletters, and you follow all these blogs, and each one of these people are doing something different. This guy isn’t going to make his money exactly the same way as this guy.

So, you have to first understand the different business models. Pick one, start off with one, understand it and go from there. Definitely the first and foremost.

Mark Mason: That’s awesome, because the first several, maybe five or 10 episodes of this podcast are going to be all about the different business models that are available out there, just to give people an overview so they can understand what the landscape is.

Then, of course, we’re going to niche down to some of the business models that you and I are more familiar with around email marketing, niche blogging, and niche site creation. But, I want to make sure, as you say, people understand what business models are out there so they can get a feel for the landscape.

So, what’s number two?

Josh Spaulding: Number two, invest in knowledge and tools, but be selective. Just like I said, you’re going to be on a lot of mailing lists, and you’re going to be reading a lot of blogs, and there’s going to be a lot of people pitching different products to you.

That’s another business model, business to business, internet marketers trying to sell to internet marketers. 99 out of 100 people get into that web, and they get sold to all the time. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with that. It can expedite your learning and your education. But, know what you’re spending money on.

If you’re concentrating on niche marketing and someone is promoting a pay per click product, don’t buy it, because that’s not what you’re concentrating on. A lot of people do that. There’s a lot of good people out there that are good at copywriting, that are good at convincing you that you really need this. It may be a good product, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you need it for what you’re doing right now.

Mark Mason: It’s funny that you mention that. I call that getting distracted by bright shiny objects. That’s a problem that I used to have, and I completely resonate with that one.

So, the third one then, what would the third one be?

Josh Spaulding: The third one, never, ever give up. You’re going to fail. It doesn’t matter what you do, if it’s worth doing you’re going to fail.

No one is perfect in this world. There are very few people who are going to start a business and just start making money right away. 99.99 percent of everyone who starts a business, whether it’s online or offline, they fail. Most of us fail over and over and over again.

That’s where a lot of people go wrong. That’s why a lot of people quit. They say, like, 99 or 98 percent of everyone who tries to start an internet business, quits. The reason why is they fail just like everyone else, just like the 2 percent that don’t, but the only difference is they quit where the others didn’t.

You have to understand that you’re going to fail no matter what. You’re going to fail. You just have to pick yourself up and keep going. That’s what makes a difference.

Mark Mason: Very good. That’s good advice for anything, I think it extends far beyond internet marketing.

Josh Spaulding: Yes, absolutely.

Mark Mason: Very good. I’ve told people this in the past, but Josh, you’re one of the internet marketers that I was following when I started out and I still follow you. How can people find you? Where’s the place to go if they’re looking for you on Twitter or on the web?

Can you throw down a couple of places where people can seek you out, or maybe even some of your products that you think could help people that are starting out online.

Josh Spaulding: Sure. Twitter, it’s getting so popular these days, I’m Josh_Spaulding. That’s twitter.com/Josh_Spaulding.

Then, as you said at the beginning of the podcast, I have a blog at Easy-OnlineMoney.com/blog. From there you can find all my products and all my free information, and basically everything.

Mark Mason: You’ve got a number of free products. I know I’ve read each and every one of them, they’re outstanding. I’ll be recommending those on future podcasts as we get to those topics, like SEO, and some of the other things that you’ve done.

I really appreciate your time today. I know you’re a busy guy, so I’m going to let you go. I appreciate it, and I hope you have a fantastic day.

Josh Spaulding: No problem at all. Thank you.

Mark Mason: Thank you, very much.

All right. That wraps it up for the second episode of the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast.

Just as a reminder, we’re very interested in your feedback and questions. Please give us a call on our digital voice line, we’d love to play your call on the show. The number is 214-444-8655.

We’ve already got a question from Tony. We’ll be looking at that on the next episode of the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. Thanks, and have a fantastic day.

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

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

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

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

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

This is the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast, Episode 2.

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

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

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. I’m your host Mark Mason, and I’m here to talk to you about how to build a successful internet business one night at a time. That’s what I do. It’s called Late Night Internet Marketing, because, well, that’s when I do it, late at night.

In the last episode I promised you we would talk about the two special reports that I think are really good. Actually, one is a hard cover book by Yanik Silver, it’s called Moonlighting on the Internet. You can find that at MasonWorld.com/silver.

The other is a free report from Jimmy D. Brown, one of the fantastic internet marketers in the internet marketing space, it’s called 10 Ways to Make 10,000 Dollars a Month on the Internet. You can find that at MasonWorld.com/10ways.

One of the 10 ways that Jimmy talks about, and one of the five ways that Yanik Silver talks about making money is through affiliate marketing on the internet. So, that’s what I really want to start off with as the number one way that you can make money on the internet, with affiliate marketing.

Now, there’s a couple of things that you need to understand about making money on the internet. One thing that you need to understand is how money moves around on the internet. In general, what you do on the internet to make money is you get traffic on the internet. In this podcast we’ll talk about how it is exactly that you can get traffic. There are a lot of ways to get traffic to your website on the internet.

You convince that traffic to take some action. That convincing of taking an action is called conversion. What you want to do is you want to get traffic, and you want to convert it either into a sale or to capture a lead, or some other thing that has value. You want to get people to take action on your website.

One of the things you can get people to do in terms of taking action is you can get them to click on a link that drives them to some other website where they might make a purchase. When they make that purchase, you can get what’s called an affiliate commission.

You can think of this as commission sales, just like someone in a store. If you buy a product that someone is pitching, then that person who is pitching the product can get a commission. On the internet it works the same way in a lot of cases. If I review a product, and you read my review, and you agree with me and like and buy that product, and you arrive at that destination where you buy that product through my affiliate link, that merchant will often times pay me a commission.

One of the reasons that I’m covering this first on the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast is that you’ve already been a victim of affiliate marketing on this podcast. I want to point that out to you. If you’re new to internet marketing it’s something that you really need to understand.

When I told you about Moonlighting on the Internet with Yanik Silver, I directed you to the link www.masonworld.com/silver. When I told you about Jimmy Brown’s report, I directed you to www.masonworld.com/10ways. The reason I did that, and the main reason to do that is because on a podcast it’s really hard to give links, so you want something that’s simple and easy to remember, because people are likely driving in their car or otherwise engaged.

The other reason you do that is because when you click through to those links, in the case of the Yanik Silver book, you’re forwarded to Amazon, and in the case of the Jimmy D. Brown book you are forwarded to a location where you’re able to download a copy of the book.

In both cases those transactions result in the placing of what’s called a cookie on your computer that will give me credit for the sale if you buy something. So, that’s something that you always need to watch out for in internet marketing. You need to deal with people that are transparent, that you trust, because the potential exists that someone might recommend a product to you just to get the commission and not because they believe in the product.

Now, in my case, my whole business is based around this idea of transparency and trust. That’s why I’m telling you about this affiliate marketing business first. So, you can understand that there is money to be gained in the recommending of products.

In the case of the Yanik Silver book, what happens is you go to Amazon.com. Again, if you go to MasonWorld.com/silver you can see this in action. You’re taken directly to the Amazon page, and it turns out if you buy that book within 24 hours of having come through my link, I’ll get a few dollars on the sale of that book, or probably even a few pennies in the case of the Silver book.

In the case of the Jimmy Brown report, that’s a more sophisticated technique where Jimmy Brown has links to his many outstanding, excellent products that he offers in the report. If you buy something through one of the links in the report that link will be tracked back to me and I will get a commission for that sale.

That’s using an affiliate technique called report rebranding, which means that report you downloaded is specific to MasonWorld.com, and anyone who downloads that report gets credit.

That’s an important idea that you need to understand. I tell you that for three reasons. One is it’s an absolutely great example of how affiliate marketing can work. You recommend products, hopefully you make honest recommendations. That’s valuable to people. When people buy those products based on your recommendations, you get a commission for the sale. It’s valuable for the merchant, it’s valuable for the customer, it’s win-win when it’s done with integrity.

The second reason I tell you about that is because my business is built around transparency, and I want to make sure that you know that if you buy those products that can result in a commission for me through those mechanisms that I described.

The third reason that I want to tell you about that is because it’s very important that you be aware about this issue with affiliate marketing, because currently the FTC is really starting to crack down on affiliate marketers. Particularly in the spaces like diet pills and Acai Berry, and these other things that claim to be able to sell you magic in a bottle.

These kind of things the FTC is really going to start to crack down on. They’ve got a position paper on how they intend to do this. We’ll cover that in a later episode. That’s a more sophisticated topic.

So, if you’re thinking about doing affiliate marketing, I’m not a lawyer, you should make sure you understand the rules around that as they come down from the FTC. I can tell you what I think, but as with all legal and accounting matters, you should get professional advice, because I’m not a lawyer. But, that’s the third reason. You want to be aware of what’s going on with the FTC.

There is an enormous amount of affiliate marketing going on online right now today. That is not anything that you should be afraid of. Just be aware of it, so you can make sure and run your business like a business in a way that makes sense.

That is way to make money on the internet number one, affiliate marketing. It’s actually number two in Jimmy Brown’s book, and it’s covered in Chapter Three or Four, I think, in Yanik Silver’s book. You can get that and take a look at it. It’s covered really well there.

Now, you might wonder, in terms of affiliate marketing, what is it that you can actually promote? Well, it turns out you can promote almost anything through affiliate marketing. It’s really amazing. Everything from automobiles on eBay to the smallest packs of gum, to anything on Amazon.com.

All kinds of offers where the only thing that’s required for you to get a commission is for the person to actually leave their name and address. That would be a different kind of affiliate offer, but an offer nonetheless that’s available in affiliate marketing.

You can use traffic that you get from search engines. We’ll talk about that in future episodes. Or you can use traffic that you pay for. The bottom line in all these things is for affiliate marketing to work, you need to make more money than you spend to make the money.

It’s just like any other business opportunity. You have costs associated with getting the traffic in some cases. Those costs need to be less than the money that you make when you are successful with affiliate marketing.

If you’re interested in checking out some affiliate marketing opportunities out there, one of the places that I like to recommend is the Pepperjam Network. It’s easy to manage and easy to understand. Amazon.com has an affiliate program. As well as the granddaddy of them all, Commission Junction. You’ll be shocked and amazed at all the things that are for sale and that are available for you to promote on Commission Junction.

Now, these first 10 episodes or so we’re getting an overview of internet marketing, so you can kind of understand what’s possible on the internet. As past of that, I’ve promised you an ongoing series of interviews with top internet marketers about the most important things that they wish they had known when they started.

What I’d like to offer you now is an interview with a fantastic internet marketer and personal friend of mine, Josh Spaulding. Josh runs an outstanding blog about internet marketing and making money online over at Easy-OnlineMoney.com. You can find his blog where he’s writing about all of his experiences at Easy-OnlineMoney.com/blog.

Josh is a full time internet marketer. He’s incredibly successful. He’s run membership sites, article directories, he does affiliate marketing, he’s an expert at email marketing, he’s an information marketer with a bunch of successful paid and free products. Josh has pretty much done it all.

I got Josh on the phone and I asked him to tell me what the three most important things that he wished he knew about internet marketing when he started, and this is what he had to say.

And now the feature interview.

Mark Mason: Okay. Today we have on the line noted internet marketer, Josh Spaulding. Josh, of course, runs a blog over at Easy-OnlineMoney.com/blog. He’s also got a viral ebook that I know a lot of people have read on how to make money with Adsense called The 5 Dollar Formula. That’s available at 5dollarformula.com.

Josh has been doing internet marketing for a long time. Josh, how are you doing today?

Josh Spaulding: Pretty good.

Mark Mason: I really appreciate you being here. I think we talked a little bit before the call, and I told you the focus of this podcast is really, at least initially, about how people can get started online, how they can build an internet business, and particularly do it like I did, part time and in the evenings, investing a little bit at a time over time.

One of the things that I’m doing is talking to successful internet marketers and trying to extract those sort of special nuggets of wisdom. What is that you wish you had known, what are the most important three things?

But, before we get to that, tell me a little bit about what’s going on in your internet business, maybe about how you got where you are, just real briefly, and what you’re up to these days.

Josh Spaulding: Well, I started off, as you know, in the Army about 5 years ago. I was a Section Chief in the Army, stationed in Germany. So, I didn’t have a whole lot of time to dedicate to my business. But, just the dream of working at home and not having to answer to a boss, all of that just attracted me to it. So, I dedicated myself to doing it.

It took a little while. I couldn’t work too much, so I had to really concentrate on what I was doing and really make sure I was doing the right thing and be specific as to who I listened to and what I did. Anyway, I did it. I never gave up. Here I am today, 5 years later, spending as much time as I want with my family , sitting on my butt at home.

Mark Mason: That’s great. Now, I understand that you’ve got several business models going simultaneously. You have membership sites, products, Adsense sites. Can you just briefly kind of go through that list of different business models that you’ve worked with, either now or in the past?

Josh Spaulding: Well, I’ve done just about every internet marketing business model there is, with the exception pay per click. Even that, I know the basics. I’ve done a little pay per click here and there. I do a lot of email marketing, blogging, niche marketing, to include Adsense. Those are probably the primary business models I do.

Mark Mason: Okay, great.

Josh Spaulding: There’s a lot of good ones out there.

Mark Mason: Yeah. Excellent. Let’s talk about that a little bit. There’s so much noise out there, so much stuff going on. I was wondering how you would answer the following question, and this is really the reason why I have you on the phone today.

If you were a new internet marketer getting started, and there were three things that you could know, three things that maybe you wish you had known when you got started, or three most important lessons that you’ve learned that you’d like to pass onto somebody that’s just getting started. What are those three things?

Josh Spaulding: Number one would definitely be pick a business model and stick with it. That’s the biggest problem I think a lot of people face when they’re trying to start an online business, or even offline business.

There’s so many different ways to make money online and offline. You get on all these newsletters, and you follow all these blogs, and each one of these people are doing something different. This guy isn’t going to make his money exactly the same way as this guy.

So, you have to first understand the different business models. Pick one, start off with one, understand it and go from there. Definitely the first and foremost.

Mark Mason: That’s awesome, because the first several, maybe five or 10 episodes of this podcast are going to be all about the different business models that are available out there, just to give people an overview so they can understand what the landscape is.

Then, of course, we’re going to niche down to some of the business models that you and I are more familiar with around email marketing, niche blogging, and niche site creation. But, I want to make sure, as you say, people understand what business models are out there so they can get a feel for the landscape.

So, what’s number two?

Josh Spaulding: Number two, invest in knowledge and tools, but be selective. Just like I said, you’re going to be on a lot of mailing lists, and you’re going to be reading a lot of blogs, and there’s going to be a lot of people pitching different products to you.

That’s another business model, business to business, internet marketers trying to sell to internet marketers. 99 out of 100 people get into that web, and they get sold to all the time. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with that. It can expedite your learning and your education. But, know what you’re spending money on.

If you’re concentrating on niche marketing and someone is promoting a pay per click product, don’t buy it, because that’s not what you’re concentrating on. A lot of people do that. There’s a lot of good people out there that are good at copywriting, that are good at convincing you that you really need this. It may be a good product, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you need it for what you’re doing right now.

Mark Mason: It’s funny that you mention that. I call that getting distracted by bright shiny objects. That’s a problem that I used to have, and I completely resonate with that one.

So, the third one then, what would the third one be?

Josh Spaulding: The third one, never, ever give up. You’re going to fail. It doesn’t matter what you do, if it’s worth doing you’re going to fail.

No one is perfect in this world. There are very few people who are going to start a business and just start making money right away. 99.99 percent of everyone who starts a business, whether it’s online or offline, they fail. Most of us fail over and over and over again.

That’s where a lot of people go wrong. That’s why a lot of people quit. They say, like, 99 or 98 percent of everyone who tries to start an internet business, quits. The reason why is they fail just like everyone else, just like the 2 percent that don’t, but the only difference is they quit where the others didn’t.

You have to understand that you’re going to fail no matter what. You’re going to fail. You just have to pick yourself up and keep going. That’s what makes a difference.

Mark Mason: Very good. That’s good advice for anything, I think it extends far beyond internet marketing.

Josh Spaulding: Yes, absolutely.

Mark Mason: Very good. I’ve told people this in the past, but Josh, you’re one of the internet marketers that I was following when I started out and I still follow you. How can people find you? Where’s the place to go if they’re looking for you on Twitter or on the web?

Can you throw down a couple of places where people can seek you out, or maybe even some of your products that you think could help people that are starting out online.

Josh Spaulding: Sure. Twitter, it’s getting so popular these days, I’m Josh_Spaulding. That’s twitter.com/Josh_Spaulding.

Then, as you said at the beginning of the podcast, I have a blog at Easy-OnlineMoney.com/blog. From there you can find all my products and all my free information, and basically everything.

Mark Mason: You’ve got a number of free products. I know I’ve read each and every one of them, they’re outstanding. I’ll be recommending those on future podcasts as we get to those topics, like SEO, and some of the other things that you’ve done.

I really appreciate your time today. I know you’re a busy guy, so I’m going to let you go. I appreciate it, and I hope you have a fantastic day.

Josh Spaulding: No problem at all. Thank you.

Mark Mason: Thank you, very much.

All right. That wraps it up for the second episode of the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast.

Just as a reminder, we’re very interested in your feedback and questions. Please give us a call on our digital voice line, we’d love to play your call on the show. The number is 214-444-8655.

We’ve already got a question from Tony. We’ll be looking at that on the next episode of the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. Thanks, and have a fantastic day.

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.

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 make money on eBay.

We have a special interview with Internet Marketing Guru Andrew Hansen and he reveals what he considers the three most important things that a new Internet Marketer needs to know. Well, actually he reveals four because he did not want to stop at 3 things.

eBay has made millionaires out of a lot of people. I am not an eBay guru myself, but in this episode I summarize what the other guru's out there have to say about eBay, and I share my thoughts about how someone might build an eBay business.

Key points about eBay:

• Great source of traffic
• eBay is not just an on-line garage sale
• Consider the use of "loss leaders"
• Spend time on your eBay copy

Some links mentioned in the podcast

• Moonlighting On The Internet
• Ten Ways To Make $10K On The Internet
• eBay Affiliate Program Through PepperJam
• Lynn Terry Elite Member Forum

Interview with Andrew Hansenr included in this episode.

Andrew has an awesome product for internet marketers:

Firepow

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.

As many of you are aware, Josh Spaulding released his latest product a couple of weeks ago -- Info Product Success Forula (IPSF). I have worked with Josh to secure a discount for my readers (you get 20% off of the retail price) and I am offering a killer bonus in addition to the discount on Info Product Success Formula.  To complete the picture, I thought that you might appreciate an unbiased Info Product Success Forula review.

Here is the problem -- I am not sure I am a credible reviewer.

There are lots of issues here. The deal is, I really think this is a great prduct. As a lot of you are aware, Josh has been one of my mentors for almost 2 years now, and we have collaborated on several projects together. I am a moderator in his coaching forum. I consulted with him on the ISPF project, reviewd and commented on the draft version and consulted with Josh during the development of IPSF. So, I am invested in this product -- and I think it is great.

On top of that, I consider Josh a friend, and (as you know very well) I get paid if you buy the product through my link. My entire business is built around integrity and service to people -- so I want to be completely transparent about this review.

In the end it's all no big deal because of Josh's money-back guarantee -- but I want to be straight up with you and make sure that you don't feel that you are getting hosed.   See, in this business, your perception can be more important than the truth (especially on trust issues) -- but that is another blog post.

Information Product Success Formula is a New Product

Josh had a lot of very successful information products about things like Article Marketing, AdSense sites, eMail Marketing and SEO (to name a few). Some of his reports are free and some are not. One of the first questions that people asked me is whether or not IPSF is just a rehash of some other product (like the $5 Formula). So, let's put that one to rest -- this is not a rehash of those products.

In fact, those products have made Josh many tens of thousands of dollars and are still making him money as you you read this. Info Product Success Formula documents the strategy behind those products and what you can do to to copy Josh's approach in any niche.

IPSF Works In Any Niche For Any Info Marketer

One of the key things about IPSF is that it is a general approach that applies to any niche. Josh had had lots of success in the information marketing niche, but is also making money in other niches with the same approach. Not only that, but Josh has two "tracks" that he describes in IPSF. There is a track for people that are trying to be authorities or "famous" in their niche. These people usually have a passion about a topic, and love to spend a lot of time working in a particular area that they love.

There is a second track for people that just want to get into a niche. Let's say that you want to set up a presence in the consumer debt reduction niche. You are not all that into that topic (boring!), but your research indicates that you can make some money selling reports to people about how to get out of debt. You can use Info Product Success Formula to set up and information business in that niche -- and then leave it.

What is covered in Info Product Success Formula?

Info Product Success Formula is a 45 page PDF file comprised of seven main chapters (not including the introduction and closing remarks. There is very little (like none) fluff, and the book is nicely formatted for easy reading as a print-out or on the screen.

Josh starts with an introduction of the formula that he has personally used to make money online. That introduction is followed by a description of the two paths -- path one and path two. As described above, path one is for people who want to be authorities in their niche.

I think of it as the deep and narrow path. Path two is for a quicker approach suitable for people that want to be in lots of niches. I think of path two as shallow and broad. As Josh mentions in the eBook, you can mix and match the two paths to diversify your business.

After that, Josh describes how he creates certain reports for lead capture and uses other reports for sale as products. He also talks about the importance of the One Time Offer (the OTO.) In fact, when you buy Information Product Success Formula, you can see Josh's OTO strategy in action (he offers a killer discount on one of his related products when you buy IPSF).

Once all that is up and running, Josh talks about the importance of the prospect and customer list that you will create, and how to manage it. As usual, Josh is relationship focused here, and emphasizes the importance of delivering value in your emails to customers.

The Bottom Line About Information Product Success Forumla

So here is my honest recommendation. If you are interested in having an information marketing business like Josh, this is the report for you. I have securecd you a 20% discount and included bonuses that will help you execute Josh's plan. If you are not completely satisfied with Josh's product, you can request a no-questions asked refund for 60 days. Fair warning here -- the refund rates on Josh's products are very low, and I preduct that you will love it.

Get Information Product Success Formula Today

You must make sure that affiliate ID "masonworld" shows at the bottom of the payment screen to get your bonus.

Then file a ticket and attach your receipt at

http://www.masonworld.com/support

Best regards,
Mark

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

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

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

Advantages of an Information Products Business includes:

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

Some links mentioned in the podcast

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

Possible information product topics

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

Interview with Jon Leger included in this episode.

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

Jon has an awesome product for beginners in internet marketing:

GeekFreeProfits.com

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

Podcast Alley is another option:
My Podcast Alley feed!

Here is the Raw RSS Feed.

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

In this epidose 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 affiliate marketing.

We have a special interview with Internet Marketing Guru Josh Spaulding and he reveals what he considers the three most important things that a new Internet Marketer needs to know.

Some links mentioned in the podcast

• Moonlighting On The Internet
• Ten Ways To Make $10K On The Internet
• Commission Junction
• PepperJam Network
• Josh Spaulding's Free $5 Formula eBook

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.

Greetings -- I am on the road -- hanging out in Starbucks drinking an iced Mocha. It's hot in Texas, and coffee just does not work for me after noon on hot days.

The Buzz In My Inbox

So, I thought it was worth noting that I have gotten several emails today about this voting contest being run by Dean Hunt to identify the best "Make Money Online Blog." I was pretty surprised to see MasonWorld.com there.

At the time of this writing, MasonWorld.com is near the top of the list.  I'm sure things will move around, and I might end up last.  As Brad Pitt would say, "it's an honor just to be nominated."

After thinking about it, I immediately wondered "why am I even on the list"?  After all, there are lots of Make Money Online Blogs out there with more followers, more content, more controversy.   To be honest, I know why I would want to be on there.  What I mean by that, is while I have no idea why people would like my blog, I know exactly what I am trying to make this blog.  Here is my short list.

• I put transparency and honesty above everything.  When  I started this blog, I wanted it to known as a place where people could believe what they read.  I hope people get that.  I'm not perfect, but I always try to tell it like it is.
• I wanted this to be a "no hype" thing.  That's what I mean by the "Down To Earth Internet Marketing" tag line.  I try to keep the hype to a minimum (although sometimes I do get excited).
• MasonWorld.com is about Internet Marketing.  Making Money Online is just a small part of Internet Marketing.  So, I would like to think this this blog is more than just another list of ways to make $10 on the internet.
• Professionalism -- I am a real business person in the offline world, and I try to keep it professional on line.  If you want name calling and profanify, you have to look elsewhere.
• The Zig Ziglar factor. I really do believe that you can get everything you want in life by getting other people what they want.  That is what this blog is about, really.  Telling people what I have learned so they don't have to learn it by themselves.   I help people get what they want -- and I get what I want.  Warm fuzzies and an occasional affiliate commision from real products that I really believe in.  What could be better?

So Many Great Blogs, So Little Time

But before you vote for me (or not) -- let's talk about the other blogs on there.   Man, there are some great ones. Here are just a few:

Caroline Middlebrook and Garry Conn -- now, I must admit that I do not read them much lately. Both Caroline and Garry have dramatically decreased their blogging as they work on other business models, but there is a ton of great content in their archives.  I don't agree with everything that they say all the time, but you can learn a ton from their blogs about blogging (Caroline) and AdSense (Garry).

Jennifer's Pot Pie Girl Blog.  You probably remember me promoting her One Week Marketing Course.  I did that because it is a great course (I still recommend it), and she is a great gal.  Check out her blog if you have not already.

IM With Joe.  Do you know Joe?  You should.  'Nuff said.  Peace out.

There are some other great blogs in that list (sorry if I did not list you, e.g. Yaro), and some that I absolutely cannot stand and would never recommend (I would never list you, but you know who you are).

Several Missing Blogs

I was really surprised to see several missing great blogs -- most notably Josh Spaulding's Internet Marketing Blog.  Not sure what is up with that -- I actually think Josh's blog is a lot better than my blog.  I read every word he writes -- twice.  Oh well, you can never have a perfect top list of anything, I guess.  (Hansen's Blog is missing too).

Vote For Me!

So, go vote for me if you like this blog.  I am probably not the best blog on that list -- but I guess it might depend on how you measure it.  I still want your vote.

It's certainly good for business (note the transparency).  LOL

Thanks,
Mark

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

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

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

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

The Results Of My First Attempt

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

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

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

Increasing Sales Page Conversions

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

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

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

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

Taking Action

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

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

Let me know your thoughts.

Regards,
Mark

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

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

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

A Bunch Of Garbage Blog Comments

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

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

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

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

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

Good Comment Outcomes

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

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

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

The Real Value Of Excellent Comments

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

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

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

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

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

The bottom line is relationships

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

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

Have a great day,

Mark

Hey --

I'll keep this short.

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

Either way, you need to read this report.

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

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

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

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

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

You're going to love it.

Regards,
Mark

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here was my reply:

Andrew;

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

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

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

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

Regards,
Mark

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

Thanks,
Mark

If you want to be good at something in life you've got to work at.  There really just aren't many shortcuts that will allow you to completely avoid hard work if you want to be successful. When I talk to people who seem to be successful without working hard, I often find that they are actually working very hard at something they love. When you're working on something that you love, you can make hard work look effortless.

A big part of working hard is learning. My personal opinion is that you should never stop learning about things that you're trying to master. This is specially true in Internet marketing where the landscape is changing on an almost daily basis. Two of my mentors, Jay and Sterling from Internet Business Mastery talk about the need to be a lifelong learner. I am totally bought into this, but I have the same excuses as everyone else. As a part time Internet Marketing hobbyist, I just don't have a lot of extra time for learning.  Still, I think it's absolutely critical.  So, for my learning, I turn to podcasts.

The great thing about podcasts is that I can listen to them absolutely anywhere at any time.  For me, this means I can listen to podcasts in the car during my commute to my day job. This solves my time problem as it relates to continuous learning about Internet marketing.  It also means that I need a really big iPod.

A New Podcast

I wanted to share with you the most recent podcast that I have found on Internet marketing.  The podcast is called Internet Marketing This Week.    There are some serious heavy hitters on this podcast, including Paul Colligan (new media guru), Ed Dale (30DC guru), Michelle McPherson (Web 2.0 guru) and Lynn Terry (Affiliate Marketing guru).  Of course in every case their guru power extends far beyond the parenthetical representation that I've provided here. These people really know what's going on in Internet marketing.  Sometimes, I am amazed at the breadth of their understanding of the trends in the IM industry.

There are several things that I really like about podcast.  this podcast is not a "how to make money online" podcast.  believe me, there is plenty of money being made by these four people. But that is not the focus of this podcast. This podcast is focused on trends and issues in Internet marketing, and the impact of new media on these trends.  Of course, there is some amount of tips and practical information, as well as a very cool segment called "Pick of the Week."

My only complaint about the podcast to date is that they are apparently using Skype and probably recording it with Pamela.  This is a great technology for quick and dirty recording, but the resulting sound quality is not up to the standards that I would expect from Paul Colligan.  The thing is, the content is so good I don't care.

Photo: photo credit: Gideon Burton

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

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

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

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

I'm a newbie with no previous marketing experience.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.1waylinksreview.com

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

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

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

Photo: photo credit: Dina Middin

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

The Money Is Still In The List

Well, you know I believe that (I have certainly said it enough).

This week I am offering a free report on email marketing by Ryan Ambrose.

In this report, Ryan covers some of the basics.  So, if you are just thinking about starting a list, this is not a bad place to get started with the basics.

Enjoy.

Check it out. You'll like it.

Join My Mailing List And Get Free Stuff

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

Thanks,

Mark

"Tired Of Having Tools But No System...

Or

A Great System But Terrible Tools?

Have I Got A Deal For You."

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

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

Firepow -- The Tool

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

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

You need a system.

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

Until now.  Until I met Colleen.

Blog Inferno -- The System

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ultimate Firepow Blog Inferno Deal

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

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

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

Here is the deal:

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Bottom Line:

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

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

Steven Covey calls this "Win-Win."

So, What In The World Are You Wating For?

Holler if you have questions.

Regards,

Mark

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

This offer may expire any time without notice.

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

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

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

When I was a kid, I was really excited about one thing at Christmas -- Toys.  So, today I thought it might be nice to throw in a free pack of PLR articles for Christmas about (you guessed it) Christmas toys.

You can use this PLR on a blog or website or however you choose.  In fact, you will find a PDF in the zip file that explains all the rights that come with this product.

Enjoy.

Check it out. You'll like it.

Join My Mailing List And Get Free Stuff

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

Thanks,
Mark