One of the great things about having a blog is that you can have great readers that are really fun to get to know.  Susanne Myers is one of those, and she creates excellent content.  So, I was thrilled when she read my post from January 1 and asked to guest post.

Her post below is excellent -- but there is something even better here.  I published my other post on the 1st of January (3 days ago).  On the morning of the 3rd of January (yesterday), Suzanne had an excellent guest post written and in my inbox.   She even put my affiliate links to her products in the post (her stuff is really good by the way).

Anyway, the lesson here (for me and for you) is to take action.  Be like Susanne.  Whatever it is, just do it.

Growing Your Affiliate Niche Site in 2011

By Susanne Myers – www.AffiliateTreasureChest.com

I loved Mark’s post on online business resolutions and how we often focus on the wrong thing. His analogy that internet marketing can be a lot like losing weight was spot on and I thought I’d take it one step further today and give you some tips on how to grow your affiliate niche site this coming year, focusing on the important things like providing  a lot of value and serving your readers.

Adding Content

A great place to start is by adding more content to your site on a regular basis. I find that my larger sites not only get the most traffic, they are also talked about more, get more comments and my lists are growing faster. There’s a bit of a snowball effect going on here… the more people know about your site the more talk about it across social media sites, on their blogs etc.

Does this mean you should get into autoblogging or throw a bunch of rehashed junk on your site? Of course not!  What it does mean is that you should take some time out each week (or ideally several times per week) to write some good content and share some interesting tips with your readers. It helps to have a schedule for this. Take a few minutes to figure out how often you can realistically add new content to your site each week. Then create a content schedule and plan out the first few posts or articles. Then make it a priority to get that content added and watch your site and your traffic grow.

Building Your List

Next, I suggest you spend some time building your lists. Lists allow you to get back in touch with your readers regularly and provide them with even more value. Over time you build a mutually beneficial relationship with them and your readers will quickly learn that they can trust your advice and the offers you present to them.

While money should never be the main focus or goal when you’re building your business, it does come in handy, and even in 2011, the money is still in the list. Let’s make this the year we really grow those lists.

Start by taking a look at your lists and optin boxes. Are there things you can improve? Are you split testing your optin forms to find the ones that convert best? Are you following up regularly with your readers? Are you sticking a good balance between providing them with valuable content and making offers?

Expanding Your Reach

Last but not least it’s time to expand your reach. Sure, blogging regularly will get you some traffic and keeping in touch with your list will continue to send them back to your site, but unless you also spend some time marketing your site, you’re missing out on a big chunk of traffic.  Here are some things you may want to start doing this year:

Guest Blogging

Write a few guest blog posts for other blogs in your market place. Email the blog owners and ask them if they would consider publishing them on their sites. You can quickly and easy expand your reach with just a few guest posts.

Article Marketing

Article Marketing still works. Get in the habit of writing and submitting articles regularly. I like Mark’s recommendation or Automatic Article Submitter to help you spread your articles far and wide. Again, this is about capturing and audience you wouldn’t have access to otherwise.

Link Building

Both article marketing and guest blogging are excellent ways to build links. Other things you can do are inviting readers to link to you, create “link magnets” (exceptionally good content that people will link to automatically), participating in social media, commenting on other blogs etc.  Make an effort to build some links to your site on a regular basis.

If you are ready to learn more about this, take a look at my link building program where I share what I’m doing to build thousands of links that help me improve my search engine rankings and send me traffic.

Viral Reports

Combine some of your articles and guest posts and even your own blog posts into short reports that you can then give away. You could also write something completely new, but I find it more effective to reuse my content this way. When you’re done, post the report on your blog, submit it to ebook sites and of course send it out to your list. Don’t forget to invite readers to share it with friends.

You can make your reports spread even further if you make them brandable. If you have your own products, you can allow people to “brand” the links in the report with their affiliate links. If you don’t have your own products and are strictly an affiliate marketer, allow them to brand some of the links in the report and keep some in there with your own affiliate links. Don’t forget to mention your name and your main site in there as well and link to some of your pages or blog posts were appropriate.

Here’s an example of a brandable report I’ve created recently with my friend Nicole Dean

http://www.brandablestuff.com/tools/weight-loss-blog/

Keep in mind that it’s all about sharing useful information that will help people.

Podcasting

Now here’s something I haven’t  done but Mark does really well and I think it has helped him not only extend his reach, but also contributes to his expert status.  Take a look at his podcast here:

http://www.masonworld.com/category/podcast/

Next I want you to consider creating and recording your own podcast. It’s definitely something I’m considering doing this year.

For now, keep adding content to your site regularly, build that list and then do something each and every week to expand your reach and watch your affiliate business grow in 2011

And now I’d like to invite you to take a look at my affiliate marketing blog at www.AffiliateTreasureChest.com . While you’re there, take a moment to sign up for regular email updates so you’ll never miss a thing.

And yes, I am taking my own advice and will be providing lots of great content on the blog throughout 2011. Let’s make this the most profitable year yet!

Hello and welcome to the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. I’m your host Mark Mason and this is episode 11. Thanks for coming onboard with us for this 11th episode. I want to thank Zachary, my awesome three year old, for that introduction. You give your three year old the podcasting and slice and dice with Audacity and you get a really fantastic podcast introduction. Thanks for that, Zachary, I really appreciate that.

Of course, this is night internet marketing, so Zachary is in bed, but I’m going to go ahead and continue on with a show without him. I’ve got four great things for you today. Thing number one is a new segment I’ll be introducing called Internet Marketing Motivator. It’s going to be a regular feature on the podcast where we talk about an issue of motivation as it relates to your internet business.

Secondly, today I’ll be taking the time to give a shout out to all the great people who have been leaving us fantastic reviews on iTunes. The third and the fourth thing today are related, I’ll be talking a little bit about how you don’t have to sell things to people who want to make money online to make money online, and I’m going to give you a great example of that as the fourth thing.

I’ve got an interview with Pat Flynn. Pat is a good friend of mine and webmaster over at the Smart Passive Income Blog. Even though he talks about making money online on his blog that’s not how he got started. We’re going to talk about his other internet businesses today right here on the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast.

I wanted to start off today by thanking all of you that have taken the time to go over to iTunes and leave a review for the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. Boy, the reviews have been fantastic and it really helps me out because the reviews are part of the system that Apple uses when deciding how to rank the podcasts. It helps people find the podcast by ranking it more highly in the search results and so forth, so I really appreciate those reviews.

If you’ve got a minute to go on over to iTunes and leave a review you can do that at MasonWorld.com/itunes and that will take you over to where you need to go. It’s a little tricky, you’ve actually got to be in the iTunes app. iTunes is a free download and if you don’t use that MP3 player I think it’s pretty cool, you might like it. You can get that Apple.com/iTunes.

Since these reviews are so valuable to me I thought what I do now and in future episodes is I’d try to call out some people who left reviews on iTunes and give a shout out, maybe call out their URL and so forth. So, if you’ve left a review for me on iTunes or if you do decide to leave a review for me on iTunes be sure and drop me a ticket at MasonWorld.com/support and let me know that you left me a review on iTunes, leave your name and your URL in that ticket, I’ll go over and take a look at the review and give you a shout out right here on the podcast, maybe send a little traffic your way just as my way to say thank you for leaving me that review in iTunes, I really do appreciate it.

We’ve had a couple of great reviews in iTunes, and one of the very first guys that left me a review in iTunes was my buddy Josh Spaulding over at EthicalIM.com and he’s had some really nice things to say about the podcast. You can check out his review over at iTunes, again that’s MasonWorld.com/itunes, and while you’re at it go check out Josh’s blog. I think you’ll like it a lot over at EthicalIM.com.

The second thing I wanted to cover tonight is a standing segment that we’re going to be adding and we’re calling it Internet Marketing Motivator. The reason that I wanted to add this segment is because I know that to be successful in online business it fundamentally takes two things.

I’ve been at this several years now and it’s pretty obvious to me that the first thing that you need to have in order to be successful in online business is enough knowledge about online business in order to be competent and successful. If you’re not competent you don’t know what you’re doing you’re not going to be successful and that’s obvious.

Most information marketers out there on the internet that are in the internet marketing niche are trying to attack that very problem. There’s tons of ebooks and audio and podcasts like this where people are trying to teach you about internet marketing. So, that’s thing one and obviously there’s a glut of information out there about internet marketing.

The second thing that you need, I think, is a proper mindset in order to be successful with internet marketing. You’ve got to have the proper motivation to see it through. Most of the people that I’ve seen fail at internet marketing failed because they quit too soon and because they lacked the proper motivation to really get things done to be successful. So, that’s something I want to address in each and every episode of the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast.
Now, the first thing we’re going to talk about, the very first motivational tip that I have for you with regard to your internet business is simply that you need to set goals. I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say, “Mark, I know this. Everyone tells me that you need to set goals and they tell me that you need to write them down and so forth.”

Well, there’s a couple of things that I want to tell you about your internet marketing goals that I think will really help you. The first thing I want to tell you is your goals need to be reasonable, it’s very important. I told you just a second ago that most people I know that have failed in internet business failed because they quit too soon. The corollary to that is one of the reasons that they quit too soon is because they were expecting results too quickly.

So many of the headlines that people read out there talk about how you can make 27,000 dollars next week using this magic formula or you can be making money with this technique in a week or you can be killing it with Adwords in 47 minutes or whatever it is. The truth of the matter is building a real internet business that adds value to customers and creates value for you in the form of profit takes awhile.

So, you need to have goals that recognize the fact that it’s not going to happen overnight. Now, it’s certainly possible that you will put up a web page and become rich overnight and I hope that happens for you, that sounds fantastic. But, the reality is that it’s going to take you some time and some work and so your goals need to reflect that. So, my first recommendation is that you have realistic goals.

The second recommendation is, of course, not only that you write these goals down, but I’m going to make the very simple recommendation that you put them on a sticky note in front of your monitor. Internet marketing is one of those funny things where almost every time you’re working on it you’re in front of your computer and if you’ve got your goals in front of you and you feel that need to go check Twitter or your email for the 700th time or your Clickbank stats for the 800th time that day or your Adsense revenue stats for the 900th time that day, if you see that little PostIt note sitting there saying that, for example, you have a goal that you wanted to make three sales of your information product this month then you know that you can look at that and it will help you stay focused.

So, my second tip for you is to get that goal written down or those goals written down and put them on your monitor. Then my third tip for you regarding goals is make sure that you have some short term goals, some medium term goals, and some long term goals. Your long term goal may be that you want to make 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 dollars a month from your internet business so that you can quit your job. That’s a fantastic goal, especially if you know really what you want your business to be like and if you know why you’ve set that goal those can be fantastic goals.

But, you really need some intermediate goals. You might need to have a goal, for example, to get your first blog up, or you might need to have a shorter term goal that has to do with making 100 dollars a month online or 1,000 dollars a month online before you get to that 10,000 dollar a month goal. So, it’s really important to have short term, medium term, and long range goals.

The problem with only having a long range goal is that sometimes it can seem so far away that it can actually become a demotivator for you in your business, so you want to make sure that you have something that you’re striving for really to get done this week. Those are the best sort of near term goals. What’s your goal for this week? So that you can stay motivated and focused in your business.

So, those are my three tips regarding goals. I hope that’s helpful to you in your business and you can look forward to internet marketing specific motivational tips every week here on the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast.

For the last piece of the podcast today, episode 11, I wanted to address a topic that comes up periodically so you can know where I am on it and that’s this topic of whether or not it’s possible to actually make money online without resorting to the business of teaching people how to make money online.

In fact, internet marketing marketing to other marketers can be a little bit of a sleazy business. If you look online you see a lot of sales letters that are targeting people that are looking to improve their life situation, looking to make a little extra money and they’re making unfair or unfounded or unreasonable promises about how this person can solve all their life problems by just buying this ebook or whatever.

That’s fine and some of those are perfectly legitimate products, but it could lead you to ask the question, “Hey, is it really possible to make money online without selling people make money online stuff?” That’s a lot of times what you see. The answer is absolutely yes.

I think the two best business models for this are business models that we’ve discussed previously in the podcast. One business model is the business model that I like to talk about a lot and that we’ll focusing this podcast on in future episodes and that’s the business model of affiliate marketing where you provide valuable content or other kinds of helpful information to people in order to help them select a good product that’s right for them. That’s the kind of affiliate marketing that I like to do, there are certainly other kinds of affiliate marketing.

The other way you can make money online that’s an excellent business model is take some expertise that you have and package it up into an information product, either an ebook or a series of videos or an audio, and sell that product online. While you may see a lot of those in your daily internet travels that are related to internet marketing, you can make an absolute killing doing this sort of thing outside of the internet marketing niche and a lot of legitimate marketers do exactly that.

In fact, one guy that I’m very impressed with I have on the podcast today. Let me tell you a little bit about my relationship with Pat Flynn. Pat is the webmaster over at the Smart Passive Income Blog, SmartPassiveIncome.com. He’s also launched a brand new podcast that competes with this podcast actually called The Smart Passive Income Podcast. It’s an outstanding podcast, there’s plenty of room on your iPod for both of us, I recommend that you go over to iTunes and give that a listen. It’s fantastic. In fact, in episode two of that podcast you’ll find an interview with yours truly, Pat and I exchanged podcast interviews.

What you’re about to hear is an interview with Pat where he’s going to explain how he got started in internet marketing. Now, unlike a lot of people he didn’t get started in internet marketing trying to teach people how to make money online, he got started in internet marketing by selling a wildly successful information product.

He’s going to talk all about that and subsequently he started a second business, not including the SmartPassiveIncome.com brand, but he started a second business selling iPhone applications. So, there’s two great examples of ways that you can make money on the internet without having to resort to teaching people how to make money online. I think it’s a really important point.

A lot of times people will come into internet marketing and expect that they should be working on teaching people how to make money online, after all that’s the example that they have in front of them. They’ve bought a lot of ebooks and they’ve purchased all these things and they think, “Well, I’m going to create my own ebook.”
You can certainly do that, I’ve done it, that’s what this podcast is all about, that’s what the MasonWorld.com blog is about, but I will say that you may find that the competition in non-internet marketing niches is considerably less. It’s hard for me to make a recommendation to people not to pursue internet marketing, after all I’m in the internet marketing niche in addition to my other niches, so it would be disingenuous for me to tell you that you shouldn’t be in internet marketing.

Certainly it would have been crazy for me to recommend to Pat Flynn that he stay out of internet marketing, because he’s had some crazy success with the Smart Passive Income blog, he’s doing really well over there. So, I’m not recommending that you not pursue internet marketing as a niche in your internet marketing business, just understand that I think there might be a lot better opportunities for you out there depending on what kinds of things that you’re interested in.

That gets us into the interview with Pat Flynn. Let me tell you, I’ve known Pat since he lost his day job. Pat will explain in the interview how he was caught up in this kind of crazy economy thing as an architect and came out with his first information product as part of his activities in the Internet Business Mastery Academy, that’s where I met Pat. I hope you enjoy this interview. Pat is awesome, the interview is great. Without further ado we’ll get into it….

I’ve been following Pat almost since the beginning of his internet marketing career. We hooked up early in his internet marketing life on the Internet Business Mastery website. I saw him build an amazingly successful information product business right before my eyes inside the Internet Business Mastery Academy.

He then went from that to launching a successful internet marketing blog, something that is incredibly difficult to do with so many people in such a crowded niche. Then turned right around and launched a successful iPhone apps business. This has just been a hat trick, really amazing to me.
Pat, I’m really excited to have you on the podcast. How are you doing this evening?

Pat Flynn: I’m doing excellent. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I’ve been listening to your podcast and it’s just really cool to actually be on the show now, so thank you.

Mark Mason: Well, you are joining quite a distinguished list of guests that I’ve been able to coax to come on the show, so I really appreciate having you here. How are things in San Diego?

Pat Flynn: Things are good. Actually, today was a pretty crazy day. It was lie 97 degrees, so it was really hot.

Mark Mason: That sounds like Texas.

Pat Flynn: It felt like Texas, but then in the evening it started to rain, so I don’t know what’s going on.

Mark Mason: I’m glad you didn’t wash away. I saw a tweet from you that you thought maybe you were in Australia or New Zealand based on the weather.
Pat Flynn: Yes. Melbourne, Australia, one of my favorite places, just four seasons in a single day basically.

Mark Mason: There you go. So, it’s really great to have you here. One of the things that I’ve been talking about on the podcast, as you know, is trying to build people up to this idea of how you can make money on the internet, how you can build a business.

One of the questions that I get from time to time is… Is it really possible to make money on the internet some other way besides teaching people how to make money on the internet? I always laugh about that, because the businesses that I really admire on the internet are businesses that don’t have anything to do with internet marketing.

One of the best examples I could think of and one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show is your green architecture business, the place that you very first got started. I was wondering if you could just start off the interview just by giving us a little brief history about how all that happened and how that’s an example of how people who have some domain knowledge can make money with information products on the internet?

Pat Flynn: Sure, no problem. What’s funny is a lot of people ask me that same question. “Can I make money by not telling people how to make money?” I always tell them my story because it’s exactly that.

From the beginning, I went to school for architecture at the University of California Berkley, loved architecture. I graduated and got a great 9:00 to 5:00 job, I loved what I was doing. I was traveling around the U.S. meeting with high end clients, designing Hilton Hotels in Vegas and whatnot. I was just loving life.

I could see my whole life planned out, 401k, retire at 65 and enjoy life then. Then all of a sudden the whole economy thing happened and one by one everyone in our office was getting laid off and eventually it was my turn.

That was a pretty dramatic moment in my life and it was nearly impossible to get another job in the architecture field just because no one was building, there was no credit available for builders or anything like that. So, I looked for a solution.

I thought about going into another field or something related to architecture like engineering. But, I had been listening to a podcast, The Internet Business Mastery podcast, and those guys, Sterling and Jay, inspired me so much. I really always wanted to do internet business, I heard success stories and these guys just inspired me.
I was like, “That’s so awesome.” I was kind of living vicariously through what they were doing and the guests that they had on the show. My only experience doing something online at the time was a blog I created for myself.

So, what I did, this was before I got laid off, I was taking this test called The LEED exam, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and I created this blog to keep track of my notes for me. I knew how blogs worked, content management systems, and it was really easy for me to study on the computer. When I was traveling I could just go to any computer or take my laptop and study instead of carrying around a whole notepad.

Also, I must confess that my handwriting is like chicken scratch, so that’s why I created this blog. I passed the test, all my notes were on there still, and when I just for fun checked the analytics, the website visitor statistics, thousands of people were visiting my site from around the world. I freaked out.

I freaked out at the beginning, because I was like, “Whoa. This is like an invasion of my privacy.” I didn’t know how the internet worked with keywords and Google and stuff like that, but apparently I had been writing content that was related to keywords that people were searching for related to this exam.

So, they found me, they were using my notes. I later enabled comments and people were commenting and asking questions and I would help them out. I just became this authority, this head figure in this niche, the LEED green building exam niche.

I wasn’t an expert, I didn’t think I was an expert, I still had to look up stuff all the time to give people the correct answer. But, I knew more than they did and because of that I think they trusted me. That really helped as I started to build my website and actually take it a step further.

This was after I actually passed the exam, I took it a step further and made sure that all the content on there was perfect for people who were studying for the test, because I knew exactly how hard it was. I knew the lack of resources that were available for the test at the time, so I wanted to be that resource and help people out.
That’s exactly what I did. Right before I got laid off I was helping tons and tons of people pass the exam for totally free and I never planned on making money from this website at all. Until I got laid off, then I was like, “I guess I’ll do something online. All these people I’ve heard about are making money online.”

“Let’s see if I can do anything with this blog I have. I know I have traffic and I heard that if you have traffic you can do things with it to make money.” So, naturally the first thing I did was put Adsense on my blog, a little link text and little banner ads. I think the first month after that I had made 35 to 40 dollars.

I was blown away, 40 dollars for doing nothing basically. All I did was put some code on my website and let it run and I had 40 dollars in my pocket. That just seemed amazing to me. Unfortunately, at that time that wasn’t even enough to fill a tank of gas. I was in Irvine, California at the time.

Mark Mason: Right, especially not in California.

Pat Flynn: During summer it was like five dollars a gallon. So, from there I did more research. I asked a ton of questions from different gurus, I joined Internet Business Mastery Academy, just trying to figure out everything that I could do to make more money online, because I knew it was possible, I had 40 dollars and I wanted it to be more.

So, what I did from there was I sold private advertising on my website, little 125x125 pixel ads on my sidebar of my blog. My first deal was for 50 dollars for the first month. That was amazing too. So, I had the 50 dollars from this one company for one ad and 40 dollars coming in from Adsense, so I had almost 100 dollars. That was pretty amazing to me as well.

Then from there I added more private advertising, but still it wasn’t enough for me to sustain a living. I was getting married in just a few months and I had to figure out something to do. So, what I did was I gave myself an ultimatum.

I said, “Pat, you have three months to actually make this into a sustainable business. If you don’t then you’re going to go look for another job.”

Mark Mason: Three whole months? Wow.

Pat Flynn: Three whole months, I didn’t know if that was too long or too short, I just gave myself a time and wanted to make sure I got it done in that time.
So, from there I had read about people creating their own products and I learned about ebooks and how to write them. I created a study guide for the LEED exam, totally elecrtronic, I wrote it in Microsoft Word and it was just a PDF.

That took about a month and a half, so I was half way through the time and I was really scared. I didn’t know what to expect. I would have been happy to sell one copy. Well, the first month I launched that ebook on my website, my existing blog, I made 8,000 dollars in the first month.

That was more money than I’d ever seen in two or three months of work at my normal job, way more than that. That just blew my mind. I knew it was possible, so I took it a step further and I created an audio guide to go along with it.

Again, these are just tips and tricks from internet marketing friends that told me, “You should do this. Check out this guy who did this.” So, I’m just following people’s examples. I created an audio guide to go along with the ebook, so I had two products, an ebook and an audio guide.

I sold them together for a discount price. After I launched the audio guide, that month I think I made 20,000 dollars and I peeked in March of 2009 with making 30,000 dollars in one single month just from one product, one study guide. 30,000 dollars, I couldn’t believe it, I pinched myself.

I still pinch myself because I can’t believe it happened. But, now that I’m into internet marketing and in business I know exactly why that happened and that’s why I created the Smart Passive Income blog, because I want to show people that it is possible to make money online without having to tell people how to make money online.
I’m sure most of your listeners have never heard of the LEED exam before, it’s such a small tiny little niche in the corner of the world, but just selling an ebook for it gave me half my salary working as an architect in one month.

Mark Mason: I work at a company in my day job that has a LEED certified building and I had never heard of LEED before, so there you go. It’s a pretty obscure niche to be making 30,000 dollars in one month.

That’s just an amazing story and I remember it like it was yesterday, because I was there. All of this was happening inside the Academy essentially. It’s just shocking.

Pat Flynn: Lots of credit goes to the Academy. They helped me out a lot, you helped me out, and Sterling and Jay and everyone else in there. There’s a lot of people in the Academy too who also make a good living not talking about making money online.

Mark Mason: Yes.

Pat Flynn: Shawn Newnann I think he has a site where he teaches people how to speak Indonesian. There’s a guy who has a site that teaches people how to play the guitar and they’re making a killing too.

Mark Mason: Yes. With great products that help people at a fair price. They do this thing that my friend Nicole Dean always says, they make the internet a better place and they help other people profitably. That’s another way I like to say that.

Pat Flynn: I love that.

Mark Mason: That’s such a great thing. But, you didn’t stop there. The Smart Passive Income blog is one of the top blogs that I recommend people go read. I recommend all my listeners go over there, sign up for your list and download your excellent resource on ebook creation.
That’s very good, by the way. I haven’t had a chance to mention that to you. That’s outstanding.

Pat Flynn: I appreciate that. I just wanted to tell people exactly how I created the ebook that had generated all that income, so I laid it out on the line right there.

Mark Mason: If there are people listening to this that want to know how to do that, that resource is just outstanding to get a real perspective on exactly what it takes.
You didn’t stop there, right? You’ve now launched this other business where you’re creating sometimes it’s like five or six iPhone applications in a month. Is that right?

Pat Flynn: Yes, that’s right. I don’t do it myself, I don’t program, I don’t even know where to start with programming iPhone apps. In case you’re wondering how it all works, my buddy and I just come up with ideas and we outsource them to people who are good at creating iPhone apps.

My business partner knows how to program, but we don’t choose to do it, because there’s people out there who are experts in iPhone programming only and we outsource our ideas to multiple programmers at the same time to act like there are four or five of us that are working on it at the same time.

We can get a lot more done in a shorter amount of time, the quality of the products are much better than we could ever do, and we’re doing maybe four or five iPhone apps a month and that market has just taken off. We’re doing pretty good with it, so it’s a lot of fun.

Mark Mason: It’s amazing. Did I see that you have a breathalyzer application?

Pat Flynn: Yes. That one just came out. For those of you who don’t know, my iPhone app company is LOLer Apps, which stands for Laugh Out Louder Apps, and they’re all gag apps. I’m sure you’ve heard of iFart by Joel Comm.

Mark Mason: Yes, by Joel Comm, right.

Pat Flynn: That thing made on Christmas Day I think it was 2008 he earned over 25,000 dollars in a single day.

Mark Mason: A dollar at a time, right?

Pat Flynn: A dollar at a time. He has other apps and there’s other people. I think there’s an app called Doodle Jump right now that was done by two independent developers. They just cleared the 3.5 million dollar mark.

Mark Mason: Yes. The Words with Friends guys are from here in Dallas.

Pat Flynn: Really?

Mark Mason: Yes, they live right here in Dallas. I haven’t met them, but they live in one of the suburbs here in Dallas.

Pat Flynn: I’ve got to talk to those guys.

Mark Mason: Absolutely. I’ll try to set it up for you.

Pat Flynn: I was going to say because my wife got kind of mad at me because I played that game for too long.

Mark Mason: So, that’s just been another successful thing for you. Do you do anything special to promote an iPhone app?

Pat Flynn: A few things. We run what’s called AdMob Ads, it’s kind of like Adsense for iPhone.

Mark Mason: I see.

Pat Flynn: You can do both ends of it. You can create ads to click over to new applications or you can put code into your existing application for ads to automatically generate and show there and you get paid per click.

So, we have a number of free apps that have AdMob Ads running, kind of like Adsense. Whenever we come out with a new app usually with a paid app we’ll pay for advertising, which is equivalent to doing Adwords.

Mark Mason: Right.

Pat Flynn: So, we do that. We do a little bit of article marketing and going out to different review blogs.

What’s been really helpful is we’ve noticed with a lot of other iPhone app developers, especially ones who have multiple iPhone apps, on each of their applications they have a “more apps” button, so people can click on the “more apps” button and see the other apps that are available. That’s been helping out tremendously.

Mark Mason: Right. I’ve seen that and I buy those other apps, because I’m already invested in what I know is a good app, so I’m expecting that those same developers are also going to deliver something of a similar quality on their other apps.
Pat Flynn: Exactly.

Mark Mason: So, that works really well. That’s really smart. Well, that’s amazing. I hope everyone who is listening to this is convinced that it is possible to make money on the internet without teaching people how to make money on the internet. It’s important that that point is clear.

For people that are starting out on the internet, a lot of my listeners are trying to get started, they have a 9:00 to 5:00 job, they’re trying to get things going or they’ve lost their job and they’re trying to get things going, so what I ask every guest is…

Can you tell me the three things that you wish you had known when you started or the three pieces of advice that you would give someone who is starting out about internet business? Three things that somebody really needs to know, either technical things or technique things or mindset things or whatever you think is important.
If you could only pick three things what would they be?

Pat Flynn: Sure, that’s an excellent question. I might have to take that question for my own podcast.

Mark Mason: And you’re welcome to do that. As long as I get 100 dollars on every download you can use it.

Pat Flynn: Okay, for sure. Three things. The first thing I really wish I knew was that it was really possible to create a successful business online. I think not believing in it slowed me down at first.

Although it may seem like things happened pretty rapidly for me, I do know that I could have done things a lot earlier. Maybe before I even got laid off I could have started my internet business, I didn’t have to wait for that to happen in order for me to do it.

Not believing in it slowed me down. You have your doubts and you’re scared and because of that you don’t take the action that’s required for you to see the results. It’s huge. You have to take leaps of faith almost.

Although you can do research and try and make sure that you’re taking the right steps, you’re eventually going to have to take a leap and you’re going to have to take bold actions in order to make things happen. Just stepping out of your comfort zone, that’s a huge thing.

Tim Ferris in 4 Hour Workweek, I remember specifically this one exercise that he has. After each chapter he has different exercises to help you with the mindset of being a successful entrepreneur.

One of the things he suggests you should do is to go to a crowded area like a mall or just in the middle of a sidewalk somewhere on a busy street and just lay down and look up and just not worry about what everyone else is thinking, because it’s training you to step out of your comfort zone and do things that you might not normally do.

That’s kind of what it takes in order to be successful online. You’ve just got to do it. My best teacher for everything I know, although I talk about Internet Business Mastery and I learned so much from them and from you and everyone else, all my mentors online, my best teacher is experience and just doing things. I can’t stress that enough.

Mark Mason: Yes. You miss every shot that you don’t take. Right.

Pat Flynn: Exactly. It’s like in golf when you stroke a putt and you don’t even reach the hole. Well, you didn’t even give yourself a chance to sink it.

Mark Mason: That’s right. So, your advice to everyone listening is to rush out to their local shopping mall and lay down?

Pat Flynn: Yes. Well, no. Just understand that you’re going to have to things that you might not be comfortable with. You’re going to have to take risks. You won’t see the rewards until you take action.

Mark Mason: Okay. Very good. So, thing number one is take action, accept the risk, don’t worry about failure. What’s thing number two?

Pat Flynn: Number two is all of my success has come from helping others first. Before when I was trying to make money off of Adsense and stuff those ads didn’t really do much for the reader of my blog. I was trying to make money for myself, just getting people to click on the site.

What really skyrocketed my income was providing a product, the ebook or the audio guide that I created, that was really helpful. Because that was really helpful and people appreciated that they were happy to pay for it, happy to recommend it to their friends and their coworkers.

I say this all the time. Karma online totally exists. I don’t know if it’s just like a spiritual thing or if it’s actually technical and Butterfly Effect type of stuff, but it really exists. If you help people, like you were saying the Nicole Dean quote from earlier.

Mark Mason: Right.

Pat Flynn: That was just an amazing quote that sums it all up. Making the internet a better place profitably. That’s the other thing is just understanding that your first priority should be helping others and as a side effect you will make money doing that.

Mark Mason: Yes. The quote that I shared with you before, but that I learned actually when I was selling knives door to door, which is a story we’ll have to get into on another podcast.

Pat Flynn: It’s not Cutco is it?

Mark Mason: Actually, yes.

Pat Flynn: Okay, yes, we can talk about that later.

Mark Mason: We’ll have to. I did some sales training with Zig Ziglar and what Zig says is that you can get everything that you want in life by helping other people get what they want.
Pat Flynn: Absolutely.

Mark Mason: I really believe that. That’s what I do in my day job and it’s what I do on MasonWorld.com and I know it’s what you do on Smart Passive Income, because that blog rocks.

Pat Flynn: Thanks.

Mark Mason: People should pause this recording and go over to your website and check it out. It’s just really fantastic.
So, I got thing two. Thing two is help other people first. I like it. What’s thing three?

Pat Flynn: Number three is, and this was hard for me because I’m a control freak, I like to make sure that things are happening and that I’m doing them the right way, the way that they should be done or the way that I want them to be done, but the truth is you don’t have to do everything on your own.

Actually, you shouldn’t do everything on your own. We’re good at certain things and we’re not good at certain things. For those things that we’re not good at we should definitely find those people to fill those gaps, people who are good at those things that we’re not good at to take care of it for us.

They’ll be happy they’re doing things they want to do and then you’ll be happy because you’re not doing things and you can spend time doing what you enjoy or doing what you’re good at. In other words, I don’t want to blatantly say “outsource it,” but that’s kind of what it is.

It’s understanding what your strengths are and focusing on your strengths and not focusing on things that you shouldn’t be focusing on. For instance, when I first started that blog to help me pass the exam I didn’t know anything about WordPress or hosting or anything like that. It took me a month to set it up the way I wanted to. Literally, a month.

Mark Mason: I understand. I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Pat Flynn: I really wish I just knew that there were people online who did this thing for a living who could do it in five minutes and I would pay them 10 dollars or whatever, or however much they’re charging.

On the flip side of that, I’m glad that I went through all that hardships and learning everything because now I understand how some of those things work. Although I would never take on those things as primary jobs I understand how they work.

So, if there’s something that needs a little bit of tweaking that needs to be done on my website, for example, I understand how to do that. I’m not totally lost. Even when I created SmartPassiveIncome.com, which was my follow up website to GreenExamAcademy.com, I knew the process of how to create the blog, but I just outsourced it, I paid someone to build it for me.

I think that helped out a lot, because I have a custom template that a lot of people like and it’s unique and I think that’s been helping with pushing the traffic and new subscribers and getting people excited about the website.

Mark Mason: Yes, your website is beautiful. Again, people should pause this recording and go check it out.

What you just said resonates with something I heard you say earlier with your iPhone apps business. Your partner is a programmer, he doesn’t program, but he can speak intelligently to programmers that you’re hiring and that’s really important.

Pat Flynn: Yes.

Mark Mason: So, I love that. I love those three tips, they’re excellent. I’ll give you the best example, I think, of that. You came out with, as you often do, one of these amazing in depth tutorials about Facebook Fan Page landing pages.

I read that and I understood what I wanted, but I didn’t really want to learn FBML, which is Facebook’s markup language. I looked at it for five minutes and I thought, “I’ve got something else to do.”

I sent the URL for your page to my developer and I said, “Go read Pat’s post and then make me one of those, please, and send me the bill.” I got something that was very nice.

Pat Flynn: I remember your landing page, it is quite nice.

Mark Mason: I had nothing to do with it other than being smart enough to send my developer to your website. To be honest with you, besides expressing what I want I can’t add value to the landing page design process. No amount of me messing around with Photoshop is going to get a good result.

I just don’t have that skill, so that’s just wasting everybody’s time for me to work on graphics and positioning some sign up box. That’s not what I do.
So, that’s great advice. People need to do that and they need to do it sooner rather than later. I know it’s very hard. The reason that resonates so much with me is because I tell people exactly the same thing.

They need to start small, but start outsourcing the stuff either that they don’t like to do because it’s sucking out their life force or that they’re not good at.

Pat Flynn: Right, exactly.

Mark Mason: This has been absolutely fantastic.
Pat Flynn: Mark, we’ve got to do it again sometime.

Mark Mason: I really appreciate you being here, I’d love to do it again. Let’s talk a little bit about how people can get a hold of you. The internet is a big place and there a few things that I recommend to my readers that directly compete, if you want to use that word, with what I do here, but it doesn’t bug me because, as we talked about before, I just want to help people.

Reading your blog will help people, so tell me a little bit about how people can find you on the internet.

Pat Flynn: Sure. When I’m not at a mall laying down face up you can find me on my blog at SmartPassiveIncome.com, that’s the hub, that’s where everything happens. I talk about everything that I do online, even my income reports down to the penny exactly where it all comes from.

If you just want to say “hi” or “hello” probably the best way to find me is on my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/smartpassiveincome and we have a growing I guess you could say fan base there, I don’t know what they call them anymore.

There’s a great community there. If you even have a question there’s a lot of people there who will answer before I do. So, come say “hi” on Facebook if you have time.

Mark Mason: Very good. I really appreciate your time. I really encourage people if they have any interest at all to go to your website and download your ebook on ebooks, it’s really a fantastic read. Great job.

Pat Flynn: Thank you.

Mark Mason: Okay, sir, thank you very much. I wish you all the best and I will be in touch.

Pat Flynn: All right. Let’s do this again soon.

Mark Mason: Thanks. Bye.

That wraps it up for this episode 11 of the Mason World Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. We’ll be back in a couple of weeks with another episode where we have another interview with a guy that’s killing it online without selling stuff that teaches people how to make money online. Until then, we’ll see you soon. Thanks.

My name is Mark Mason from MasonWorld.com, I hope you have an absolutely fantastic day. Thanks.
If you really liked this podcast there’s two great things you need to do. Thing number one, go on over to MasonWorld.com and sign up for the Mason World Internet Marketing Newsletter. I send out all kinds of information to that newsletter that goes along really great with the podcast and you’ll learn about new podcast episodes there.

The second thing you need to do is go to iTunes and Apple.com/itunes and find the Mason World Internet Marketing Podcast and leave us a positive review. We love that and it helps us tremendously rank in the iTunes media library. So, go on over to iTunes and give us a great review and two thumbs up. Thanks!

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

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

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

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

Simple, right?

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

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

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

It's Win-Win.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also in the episode, I interview Geoff.

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

When the transcript is available, it will be here.

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

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This week's Part Time Tip is super simple. Avoid the Negative Nellies out there and push forward with your internet business to achieve your goals.

Another thing part time internet people really need to do is avoid negative people. This applies to all internet entrepreneurs, but this can be particularly devastating to the part time guy who is having trouble getting the motivation to put that extra effort in to start the business in the first place.

There’s several kinds of people you need to watch out for. You need to watch out for people who are just going to bring you down. Sometimes, unfortunately, this can include your spouse and your parents.

Not in my case.

In fact in my case I’ve told this story before, actually I told it on the Internet Business Mastery Podcast about how my wife was actually instrumental in giving me the idea and impetus to start my business.

I'm Talking About You

If this you, then you need to take some steps to get those people on board or decide to ignore them. I recommend the former, and the way I recommend that you do that, particularly if it’s your spouse, is involve them in the business. That usually works wonders. If you can get them excited about some part of the business they can really help you be successful if you’re working part time.

You’ll also run into people with funny attitudes about money. This is something that Sterling and Jay teach in their Internet Business Mastery Academy. You really need to surround yourself with people that recognize the fact that it’s okay for you to make money in a business. I won’t say too much about that, but as a part time internet entrepreneur this is very important to have a proper mindset about attracting wealth and being successful monetarily.

For me, my hope is to help people profitably.  I am running a business, and I want to help people.

This includes you, by the way.  I want to help you.  Yes, you.

Right now I am helping you by providing some valuable content to you.  There is no charge for this content, but it forms the basis for a relationship where you and I can exchange value.  That might be something much more valuable than money.  But it starts with me providing value to my readers.

Lot's of people don't get that.

Some People Will Sabotage You

Finally, and I think this is the one that I see the most, you need to watch out for people that will see your success as their failure. After all, if you’re smart enough to do something and you’re successful in your part time business, your coworkers at work may feel like they got left behind.

In fact, they may feel like they have somehow missed out and be very jealous of you. These are the kind of people you need to watch out for as a part time internet entrepreneur.

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 other day (a couple of months ago actually)  I was pleased and surprised to find that I was the subject of the feature segment on the 89^th episode of Internet Business Mastery’s podcast. Those of you that have followed me for a long time recognize that I owe a lot of my internet business education to Jay and Sterling over at Internet Business Mastery.

I got started listening to their podcast and eventually was a founding member of the Internet Business Mastery Academy. So, imagine my surprise when I turned on my iPod last week early in the morning to find that I was the topic of their feature segment and they hadn’t even contacted me.

My Forum Post Blew Up!

Basically, Jay had seen a hot topic in the Internet Business Academy forums that I had started about a comment that I had received right here on MasonWorld.com. In that comment a reader of MasonWorld.com called me out for a post that I had made in the Internet Business Mastery Academy forums back in June of 2008, I think.

In that post I identified some income goals that I had set for myself and they were pretty lofty. The blog reader challenged me on my motivation. Basically, the reader was asking me if I was all about money and just trying to make money off of people trying to make money, or whether or not I really was the principal centered guy that I was advertising myself to be. It was a pretty threatening question. I answered it and then took the discussion over to the Internet Business Mastery Academy forums to get some feedback on my answer.

Jay identified the post for two reasons. One, he liked my answer in terms of lifestyle design and other things that are taught at the Internet Business Mastery Academy. The second reason he liked it was because he felt like I had done a good job not getting angry at the commenter. My answer was very professional and I didn’t come across as being threatened by the person who left the comment.

This is a very important principal that I want to highlight here that you need to understand. If you are going to have a public face in front of people where you’re presenting your opinions and ideas, you need to expect that people are going to disagree with you.

It’s just a fact of life. If 100 percent of the people that are reading your blog agree with you, you’re probably not saying anything very interesting. If that’s the case, that’s probably not very good for your business, so you need to expect criticism. In fact, you need to invite criticism, because if you’re not getting that level of engagement from your readers you’re not doing it right.

Brace Yourself -- Not Everyone Agrees With You

Expect to be criticized. When people criticize you, you need to respond professionally. I have a very simple rule of thumb when someone is unprofessional to me, when they speak to me in an unprofessional way I get more and more polite. It has an amazing effect on people.

If someone gets angry with you, you should try to understand what’s making them angry. Maybe they have a legitimate reason. Maybe their dog just died that morning. For all you know, they could be dealing with some major tragedy. Getting in their face and taking yourself down to their level never helps.

It’s always important that you act professionally. In fact, my simple rule of thumb is, as I mentioned before, the more ugly they get the more professional I get. I’m not saying you should let people abuse you, in fact quite the contrary. If someone is being abusive you should terminate the conversation.

I always first seek to understand what is motivating the person’s comment. Second, I try and make sure to take the emotion out of the conversation so we can operate on facts and understand what the person is trying to say. I’ll give you a great example of where this has helped me recently in my business.

A Real Example

Periodically in my business I get unsubscribes from my mailing list. I know it’s hard for you to imagine that someone would want to unsubscribe from the fantastic mailing list that I offer here at MasonWorld.com, but it does happen occasionally.

On a few occasions someone will leave a comment about why they are unsubscribing. Overwhelmingly, the comment is that people are trying to reduce the amount of clutter in their inbox. I totally understand that, in fact I teach that people should go on an information diet. This is an idea that I got from Internet Business Mastery, Tim Ferris, and others.

The other day I got a crazy angry unsubscribe from a guy who was telling me that he didn’t have to deal with my unsubscribe procedures. He said some nasty things about how frustrated he was and so forth. He even filed a support ticket based on this unsubscribe.

My initial reaction was, “What an angry yucky person.” I wanted to send back a nasty reply, but I didn’t. I followed my own advice and I wrote back and said, “Thank you so much for your ticket. I’m happy to unsubscribe you. I’ve checked the records and you’re already unsubscribed. Do you mind if I ask why you’re filing a ticket?”

He went on to calm down and explain to me that he had filed the ticket because I had actually messed my autoresponder so that when he unsubscribed he got a subsequent email from my support desk. Now, this was a configuration error on my part, but it’s very important that I understand this. Had I just gotten angry at him there’s no doubt I wouldn’t have gotten that information.

That was a really good example of how instead of just responding to someone in an angry and escalating conflict, if you’ll just take a step back and be professional everybody benefits. It’s a win-win situation.

The bottom line for business, treat your business like a business, stay professional, value every customer, understand that people can have extenuating circumstances in their life that causes them to misbehave and treat their misbehavior with professionalism and kindness, you’ll love the results.

I’m Mark Mason from MasonWorld.com where we teach people how to build internet businesses one night at a time. I’d love to hear your comments in the comment section below.

People talk about the "risk" of having your own business.  I suggest to you that the real danger may lie in having a "day job".  The reason is that for most "real jobs" you have to drive.

Driving is dangerous.

This morning before daylight I left my comfy home in thee suburbs to drive into work.   Depending on traffic, I have a 20 minute to 45 minute drive.  Early in the morning, I was counting on a 20 minute drive.  I was in good shape because my first meeting was in 3 hours at 9AM.

I always use my time in the car to work or learn.  Most times I listen to books on tape or podcasts.  Other times I use a great Sony voice recorder to record draft content for this blog and other projects.

As an aside -- there are two lessons here for your internet business.  You should outsource things like transcription and you should work during your idle times.  There is no reason for me to fill my head with the junk on the morning radio DJ show or the negative junk on the news channel.  I don't need to know how many muggings there were last night.  I can always do much better that that by working on my business.

Today was really productive -- I recorded 3 blog posts on the way to work this morning.  I was really pumped, and wondering what the transcriptionist would think when I hit her with 3 new files in her dropbox.

Then, I set my voice recorder on the center console (I drive a Tahoe).  It's a great vehicle, and the accelerator never sticks.

Suddenly, I had to brake hard. I love Texas, but drivers here are idiots.   I am convinced this has something to do with the number of people that have moved to Texas from up north.

Naturally, the recorder slid of the center console right into the drink holder.

It landed in the middle of my big cup of coffee.

Then, trying frantically to rescue my $80 voice recorder and precious blog content, I spilled the entire cup of coffee on my khaki slacks.  Sure they are that fancy (and really expensive) stain-resistant microfiber stuff.  But when you dump 14 ounces of coffee on them, there is no escape.

The coffee was hot, and I was soaked down to my underpants.

No better way to start the day than with your manhood scorched, a giant coffee stain on your crotch, a ruined voice recorder, and lost data.

I started to get mad, but then I just said to myself:

"Self, this is an opportunity to have breakfast with the wife and kids,"

I turned the car around, drove through Chick Fil A, and surprised the family with breakfast.  I even got in one game of Super Mario Brothers with the big guy before leaving so I could get to my 9AM meeting across town.

What a day!

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

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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:
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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.

Today I want to share my experiences in Lynn Terry's Elite Internet Marketing Mastermind Membership Group (and invite you to ask me questions about it).  As with all of my reviews, you should expect zero hype and "nothin' but the facts.   But, if you are in a hurry, I'll tell you the conclusion right now:  Lynn's Elite Forum is awesome (just like Lynn), and if you think it is a fit for you, I highly recommend that you join and take advantage of the bonus I am offering (read the details below).

I recommend the membership for the following six reasons:

• Participating in a mastermind community is the single most important thing you can do to help your business
• Lynn is well-qualified to help you and has a wonderful helpful attitude.  Her community has the same positive feel.
• The cost of this forum is ridiculously low and may be worth more than 10, 100 or 1000 times the cost to your business.
• There are a surprising numbers of gurus in the forum that are like an "unannounced coaching bonus"
• Lynn hosts and Elite Mastermind brainstorming webinar call every Thursday.  This alone is worth the cost of the subscription.
• The resources provided by Lynn are nice and growing -- recorded webinars, free reports (that are for sale elsewhere), etc.

After getting so many questions about Lynn's elite forum, and writing the below review, I decided that what my readers really needed was hear from Lynn.  After all -- who better to tell you what to expect from her forum than the Lynn herself.  So, I rang her on Skype and asked her to describe what exactly her elite membership forum really is.  You can listen in on that call here:

Internet Marketing Coaching/Mentoring Is The Key

Here is the big secret:  Internet Business takes work, and it can be tough going sometimes.  As a result of that simple fact, sometimes you need some help.

Many of you know that I am a "true believer" in internet marketing coaching and masterminding.  It is really simple -- find people that are successful doing what you want to do, and emulate them (and eventually collaborate with them).  In the past, I have written about the importance of coaching in this process, and reviewed several coaching opportunities.  I almost all cases, when I review a coaching program I actually pay to join out of my own pocket.

Such was the case when I joined Lynn Terry's Elite Forum.   I paid out of my own pocket, and I still happily pay for the privilege of membership at the time of this writing.

Lynn's Elite Forum -- What To Expect

I've known about Lynn for a while, and really started to learn what she was all about by following her on Internet Marketing This Week, an excellent podcast about  news and trends in Internet Marketing.  Since that time, I have interviewed her on my own Podcast and really gotten to know what kind of person she is. Lynn's Elite Forum reflects the kind of person that she is -- positive, focused, helpful and kind. Here is what to expect when you join:

• First and foremost, this is a forum -- not a content membership site.  There is training content on the site, but that is not the primary mission.  Lynn is shooting for something much more valuable than just another collection of eBooks.  In her forums, you post questions, comments, or requests for input, and people (especially including Lynn) answer them.  You are paying to be part of a mastermind community of supportive, positive people.  Lynn keeps it light and does not tolerate any of the typical "negative behavior" that you will find in the bigger forums.
• I have noticed that Lynn answers just about every thread when it starts.  I don't think that she guarantees that specifically, but I can see that she is doing it.  So, if you want access to an affiliate marketing guru with 13 years experience in the business, this is the way to get it.
• Lynn's primary expertise is affiliate marketing and information products.  She has lots of broad experience with other stuff too -- but if you are looking for a PPC guru or an eBay person, she may not be the best choice for you.  If you are like me and your business depends on content creation and affiliate marketing, Lynn's Elite forum is probably just what you need.
• The forum is a great resource for getting started in internet business.  Not sure what to do next in your internet business?  Stuck?  Just post your question.  Questions range from very basic (like How Do I Get Started) to very advanced (both technical and marketing issues are discussed).
• The forum is a great place to test ideas -- there are several "A-List" Gurus that participate in the forums, and many more people with good internet marketing experience.  If you have an idea but are not sure where to take it, the forum is a safe place to ask others what they think.
• In addition to the main brainstorming forum, there are several subforums  for Social Media promotion, download, case studies, etc (shown below).

The Bottom Line:  I recommend that you try it

I love everything about the Lynn Terry's Elite Membership Forum, and I think it will help your business.  I honestly recommend that you join today.  I mentioned that I am currently a paying member.  So know that this review is based on my real experience as a real person really using her Elite forum to make my business better.  I think that you will have a similar positive experience -- that is why I recommend it.   Full disclosure -- there is an affiliate program, and I get a commission if you join.  But, the small commission is not why I am recommending this.  I am recommending it because I think it is great.

Still, I thought it would be cool if I could sweeten the pot for you.

So, if you join Lynn's Elite Forum through my link, I will send you the following two really cool that will help you with your business (note, you may want to clear your browser cookies before joining through my link):

	36 of the hottest techniques and websites to have ideas coming out of your ears! - CRUCIAL!
	A simple plugin that can cut hours off your research with just a few clicks!
	How to quickly and easily find out if people are opening their wallets in your niche - then exactly how to find out the magic formula to get them to do it for you!
	The 6 ways to find out how to reach your market which after you do this, will give you a treasure map to follow anytime you drive traffic!
	How to find out the best time to launch your campaign, and the times that will absolutely make it bust.
	How to use one insanely popular website to spit out ideas like a spammer sending out emails, and actually make it gives you LISTS of niches to choose from - no more hunting through sites!
	The truth about the absolute best types of niches, and ones you can profit from them like no other...
	A list of 'gateway' keywords you can exploit to get Google to give you more niches than you can use in your lifetime...

36 of the hottest techniques and websites to have ideas coming out of your ears! - CRUCIAL!
	A simple plugin that can cut hours off your research with just a few clicks!
	How to quickly and easily find out if people are opening their wallets in your niche - then exactly how to find out the magic formula to get them to do it for you!
	The 6 ways to find out how to reach your market which after you do this, will give you a treasure map to follow anytime you drive traffic!
	How to find out the best time to launch your campaign, and the times that will absolutely make it bust.
	How to use one insanely popular website to spit out ideas like a spammer sending out emails, and actually make it gives you LISTS of niches to choose from - no more hunting through sites!
	The truth about the absolute best types of niches, and ones you can profit from them like no other...
	A list of 'gateway' keywords you can exploit to get Google to give you more niches than you can use in your lifetime...

To claim your bonus, simply join through my link
and submit your receipt to my help desk.

Join Lynn's Private Community Now

That's about it. I would love to answer any of your questions about Lynn's membership forum. Just leave a comment below with your questions. Don't guess if this is the right coaching opportunity for you -- ask me. Tell me your particular situation. I'll give you a straight answer, guaranteed.

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 with eCommerce stores.

We also have a special interview with super affiliate marketing guru Lynn Terry. In the interview, Lynn and I talk about what she considers the three most important things that a new internet marketer should know. Lynn also talks about the importance of focus and the idea that anyone can build a business on the Internet.

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 eCommerce sites.  I mention that you need to look for

• A drop shipper that you can trust
• A good cart solution
• Great cart SEO

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
• Lynn Terry on ClickNewz.com (free)

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.

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 with membership sites.

We also have a special interview with my very own nephew.  In the interview we talk about his first affiliate marketing site and he reveals what he considers the three most important things that he learned as a new Internet Marketer this summer.

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.

Our discussion about membership sites revolves around Jimmy D. Browns Membernaire strategy.

Key points about membership sites:

• They can be an important part of your sales funnel
• There are many different kinds of sites possible
• Spend time on your eBay copy

Important -- Jimmy has a free videocast available where he describes all of this.  If you have any interest at all in creating recurring passive income in this way, you should check it out.   He asks a simple question -- What would it mean to your business if you had 1,000 customers sending you MONTHLY payments for your own membership site?

I mentioned that my nephew is creating a press release for his site using the Google Front Page Formula ebook.  I have arranged for a limited time discount for you here -- Google First Page Formula.  I am actually using this very method on a couple of my sites right now.  Note that I gave the wrong link in the audio.

I also mention that my nephew is using phpBay on his site.

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
• Lynn Terry on ClickNewz.com (free)
• The Easy SEO Report from Josh Spaulding (free)

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 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.

I had a interesting conversation with someone about my podcast.  Mind you, this is a very smart person with an interest in computers and internet marketing.  I mentioned to him that he should subscribe to my podcast in iTunes.

I was surprised at his response:

No iTunes account here...   Pardon my stupidity but isn't iTunes a "for pay" system?

You might be surprised that this conversation took place on a premium content forum -- so this guy has exposure to computers and is a user of Skype.  In the recent past, he has offered constructive criticism of my websites.  He is thoughtful.

Like I said, this is a smart man.  He is just out of the loop on iTunes.

This makes me think that Apple has a marketing problem.

So, what did I do -- well, I explained iTunes to him.  Then I called my mom.  My mom is 60-ish, has a digital camera, cable TV and a Razor cell phone.   I got a very similar answer.  Here was my conversation:

Me: Hey mom -- got a quick second?

Mom: Sure.

Me: Do you know what iTunes is?

Mom: Yes..., basically..., not exactly.  Well, I know that I buy iTunes gift cards for the girls.  I know that you buy music there.

Me: Thanks.  Love you bunches.

So my mom (who is awesome) and this smart man above (also cool) both think that iTunes is a music vending machine where you have to pay money to get in.  They would never consider downloading it because they don't want to buy anything.

Apple's Big Mistake

From my perspective, this is a real branding problem for Apple.  They should teach people that iTunes is a great free music player for your PC and Mac that you can use to organize your music and optionally talk to your Apple devices.

The store should be secondary.

After all, the entire premise of the store is the micro-purchase.  The sale amount of most iTunes store items is so small that people don't think twice about making a purchase.  That is the key to the iTunes store success in my opinion.

Once they download the free music player, people will find the store, spend $0.99 and be hooked.  In my opinion, Apple has brought the wrong message to market regarding iTunes.

So, what is iTunes?

Here is my response to the really smart guy:

iTunes is first and foremost a software music player for your Mac or PC. As it happens, it can sync with the iPhone, iPod AppleTV and iTouch too -- so if you have one of those you use iTunes to manage the content.

You keep your personal music/podcast library inside of iTunes (like a juke box). You can add music from your own personal CDs or other sources at no cost. You can also download free music from various (legal) places.

iTunes also has a "store" -- in the store you can buy music and other content. You can buy entire albums or single songs.

There are podcasts there too -- that is where most podcasts are delivered from. Most podcasts are free (like mine) -- but some are "premium" -- you pay for those like music.  You can also buy games and other software for Apple devices like the iPhone.

Other applications like audible.com also can interface with iTunes -- so you can buy audio books and transfer them into the iTunes player.

Does that help?

You can check out iTunes for free at http://apple.com/itunes if you are ever in the mood to explore more.

Not a perfect description of iTunes -- but that should get him started.

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.

Well, it's finally here.  The first ever episode of the MasonWorld Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast.

In this episode, I discuss why I am doing the podcast and what I have planned.  I also reveal what I consider 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

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.

Thanks!
Mark

I have finally decided to move forward with the MasonWorld Late Night Internet Marketing podcast.   I plan to launch the first few episodes on July 15th.

It will be a simple podcast.  with a format similar to the blog -- low hype information about internet marketing and making money online.  It will be available on iTunes and other conspicuous locations (including MasonWorld.com).  Episodes will be "short" making the podcast easy to consume.

Call me -- I need your help.

One feature of the podcast will be "listener feedback and questions."  To start that off, I'd like to ask you to call my digital recorder with your internet marketing questions.

Here is the number:  214-444-8655

After the tone, ask your internet marketing question.  Feel free to leave a small website plug -- here is an example:

Hi Mark, this is Bob from Bob's website.com.  I was wondering what you think about blah blah blah.  etc.

I already have the first 10 or so episodes planned, and I am looking forward to this new adventure.

As always, your feedback is appreciated.

• Watching WordWorld on PBS with my little guy. He loves it! #
• @jeremyfrandsen he rocks, but I did not use John Melley. I hear other people copying you, and I am trying not to be that guy. #
• @jasonvo thanks man. Taking it slow. I am trying to make sure I have a podfade-proof plan. #
• @jasonvo Took delivery of my Intro and Outro today for the upcoming MasonWorld.com Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. #
• @lansa Hey, Other Mark Mason. Are you the markmason.com Mark Mason, or is that a third Mark Mason? in reply to lansa #
• @imtw If you never had a list, why would you know where spam filters get their filter data? So some people are just ignorant of impact. #
• @imtw Agree about spam, but I bet there are many ppl that don't realize that marking email as spam auto sends info to spam filters. #
• Hey - this solves the biggest problem Internet Marketers face http://aweber.com/b/1jxMR #
• @peoplepond I would love an invite code, please #

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• Hey - read this before you leave another blog comment http://aweber.com/b/WTGx #
• @jarret Oops -- are you watching this too? LOL #
• Watching @GarryConn on UStream -- I have no idea why. http://tinyurl.com/dddbfb #
• @GarryConn Excellent question. Basically "how to build an online business while working a day job". Would target newcomers. #
• Considering starting an internet marketing podcasts targeted a new part-time internet marketers with a day job. Your thoughts? #
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• @rondavis007 thanks Ron. #
• @gushin bread was fantastic! #
• @rondavis007 TWIT? #
• Listening to NLP based podcast. Wondering if NLP really works, or is it just nonsense. #
• In the ER with youngest daughter and possible broken foot. Ouch! #
• Eating homemade jalapeno beer bread straight from the oven. Yum. #
• Finally celebrating Christmas with my parents. Better late than never. #
• My friend just started a new blog, and his first post is up. Check it out! InkHammer.com Stumbles appreciated. http://inkhammer.com/?p=10 #
• @jarret Check this out http://tinyurl.com/2tdkkj in reply to jarret #
• @colligan Right. But twitter is the tech. You are using the tech to some end. The nature of that tech is shaping the end result. in reply to colligan #
• @jasonvo @colligan But you cannot separate tech from the product. eg. Twitter. Before twitter, we would not have a 140 char debate. in reply to jasonvo #
• @aaronabber I am thinking that an IM product might generate more interest for your purpose. Like a copy of some cool course or software. in reply to aaronabber #
• @colligan I heard those 5000 people were all trying to fix Vista. Apparently, they gave up. Beyond repair. in reply to colligan #
• - Are You Having Trouble With AdSense? http://aweber.com/b/10B5Z #
• @PatrikBerggren It is going well but slowly. It is not my top priority right now. I have 30 sites up, creating content, and seeing some $. in reply to PatrikBerggren #
• Up early this morning preparing for a meeting. Need more coffee. #
• Just entered the $497 Blog Mastermind contest. You can win by following @JohnChow and retweet. http://xr.com/master He follows back too! #
• @jasonvo Are NDAs needed for mastermind groups? in reply to jasonvo #
• @jasonvo Should there be free alcohol at mastermind meetings, and if so, how much. Who should be responsible for bringing the blender? in reply to jasonvo #
• @jasonvo Mastermind group. Should there be a business profit model for a mastermind group, or should the group be "not for profit?" in reply to jasonvo #
• Wondering how to integrate my Google AdSense/AdWords/Gmail and Docs accounts under one login. Won't let me associate the accounts. Help? #
• Calling my grandmother. Sadly, she does not have twitter or facebook. #
• Taking kids to school. Rocking out to the Jonas Brothers CD. Not bad for pop music. Well produced. #
• @jasonpotash I don't go to bed. I write blog posts. LOL in reply to jasonpotash #
• Yep. Thanks. On my way. #
• IPod interfaced to car video. Watching @jasonvo how to register domain name tutorial on my car video. Too cool. #

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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

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

This week I skipped the entree and had hot-and-sour soup and steamed dumplings (both appetizers).  It was kind of nice.  Less Filling.  Tastes Great.  I like those little dumplings.  Steamed are yummy, but like most things, dumplings are even better when you fry them.

This week, the cookie speaks about the wisdom of friendly internet marketing gurus:  "Investigate new possibilities with friends.  Now is the time."

Clearly the cookie speaks about the need to get to know an internet marketing guru and learn from them.  It's where we all start, and lord knows we all could use someone to mentor us with business.  Plenty of my own mistakes could have been avoided with a little help.  If you are looking to niche your business into a particular specialty, find a guru to guide you along.

Real Versus Pretend Gurus

What is a guru anyway?  When I first heard that word many years ago, it sounded like a holy man living high up in the mountains.  Actually there is no reason you cannot become a guru one day.  A guru is just an expert in a field who is willing to share their secrets to success with others looking to prosper in that business.

Real Guru examples are Garry Conn and Josh Spaulding.

A Pretend Guru example is Jeffrey Lant.

When it comes to niches, a guru has found a way to hone their skills and their product offerings to appeal to the widest market possible.  Everywhere you go, you’ll see their name mentioned in publications and testimonials.  Often times, they will have an online presence as well as one in the real world.

Fake It 'Till You Make It

Many claim to be experts but all are not.  Look for particular characteristics.  How well do they know the niche?  Check their websites and feedback in forums about this person.  If their revenue is coming from marketing to that niche, it is worth a look.

How did they begin their business?  It could be that they began just like you.  They wanted something better.  Their “guru” status is a testament to persistence and not taking “No” for an answer.

Ask them questions.  Gurus are meant to be accessible.  They have blogs and websites, do podcasts and interviews, and partner with other viable business ventures to make more money.  But they always have time to give advice to others who are struggling to get where they are.

Finding a guru may take some time.  It all depends on your niche.  What you hope to find is someone who has found a new way to market a product or service that is a success.  Test their advice and methods.  If it works, continue to follow their lead.  A guru is also someone who is open to new ideas.  They are not the only one with great ideas, they just happened to discover most of them first.

A guru can be your teacher in the niche business world.  One day, you may even partner with them in a business venture.

As the cookie says, Investigate new possibilities with friends.  Now is the time.

Have a great day.
Mark

Photo credit: Uploaded on July 17, 2006 by headcase

It's Wednesday, and you know what that means. It's time for another weekly Internet Business Fortune Cookie. Monday I went to a "real" Chinese restaurant in a primarily Asian section of greater Dallas. I've been eating in that particular restaurant for more than 10 years. The place is really neat - there are traditionally prepared roasted ducks hanging in the front window.   The place has a "Chinatown Market" feel to it.

When I first started eating there in the mid-nineties the there were no English menus. I would go there with a Mandarin-speaking friend and he would do the talking.  This sometimes resulted in weird stuff like "chicken feet" being brought to the table, but in general the food was fantastic. The only thing that has changed since that time is that there is an English menu available now, but the daily specials are still written on the board in Chinese characters, and I still can't read them.

The Cookie Speaks The Truth

As you know, everything you need to know about running an internet business can be learned from fortune cookies. This week The Cookie has come out on the side of building your business around a loyal community of followers.

Hear The Cookie:

"An hour with one friend is worth more than ten with strangers."

Of course, the fortune cookie is obviously referring to the fact the most successful Internet businesses these days are built around a loyal community of followers.

A Life-Long Business or A Quick Buck?

Are you trying to build a sustainable life-long business, or are you just out to make a quick buck?  No offense, but if you are just trying to make a quick buck, you are reading the wrong blog.  If you are trying to build a life-long business, get to know your customers and invest in them.  The cookie is telling you that you need to give freely to your customers so that they value the trust and expertise that you are offering them.   As the cookie knows, one customer who knows and trusts you is worth ten (or a hundred) that don't.

Get out there.  Interact with your community of followers.  Give them value.  When it comes time to ask for the sale (and you will ask for the sale), you'll be glad you invested in them.

So, listen to the cookie. Build your business by creating a community. For more on this concept, check out the guys at Internet Business Mastery today (I have written about the Internet Business Mastery guys before).  To learn from them, you don't need to spend a dime.  Their podcast is awesome.  You can start with their tremendous free materials on their podcast website and learn a lot about how to think about building a life-long Internet business.

Have a great day.
Mark

Photo credit: Uploaded on July 17, 2006 by headcase