I am sure that many of you have New Year's resolutions about your business.  I know that I do.  The New Year is a great time to set new goals for your business and get some perspective on the coming months.

New Year's Resolutions can be tricky.   Here today, but forgotten in February.

To make matters worse, the thing that I have noticed is that Internet Marketing can be a lot like weight loss.

Here is what I mean.

The Wrong Focus

In weight loss, people tend to set unrealistic goals that focus on the wrong thing.  For example, people might set the goal of "lose 50 pounds by summer."  The problem with that goal is that it is too aggressive and does not focus on the important stuff -- eat better and exercise more.

In Internet Marketing, I hear people focused on goals like "make $3000/month by summer".  This goal has the same problem.  Instead of focusing on making money, try focusing on helping more people, or serving more customers, or whatever is appropriate for your business.

Of course, the other problem with the  "make $3000/month by summer" goal is that it may not be realistic for your situation.  It can take a while to build stable streams of internet income.  That simple fact leads to the second problem.

The Quick Fix

The other thing I see in weight loss is people going for the quick (easy fix).  People want a pill that will cause them to lose weight without dieting or exercise.

Here is a tip -- if you want to lose weight, eat less and move more.

The same thing applies to your Internet Marketing business.  Want to make more money?  Add more value to your customers over a sustained time period.   Ignore all of the "quick fixes" out there.  There is no software that you can buy or program you can follow that will lead to instant riches.

Another tip -- if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

Your 2011 Resolution.

So here is the bottom line.  Set some business resolutions for 2011, but make sure that they focus on adding value to the internet and your customers.  Make sure they address things like sustained effort and consistency.

Do that and you will like the results when it comes time to plan for 2012.

This shouldn’t need to be said, but often it does: if you don’t enjoy what you do on a regular basis, then you’re going to have a very difficult time achieving your goals. The reason for this should be obvious: even if you “know” you should be working towards your goals, the pain and discomfort associated with them will push you too far in the opposite direction.

This is why it is important to make sure that you enjoy your life, even as you work towards very difficult goals. You can start by revising your current approach to accomplishing your goals, so that they become more enjoyable.

For instance, let’s say your goal is weight loss; and let’s also say that you find it painful and embarrassing to go to the gym. Well, instead of doing this, consider taking long walks in the evening. This could do the job of helping you lose weight, but without requiring you to be severely uncomfortable.

The same thing is true for internet marketing.  That's why I recommend people get involved in niches that they really care about.  That way, they will resist the temptation to watch the latest episode of Lost! (or whatever) and stay focused on their business.

Join us! Every Monday morning at 6AM Central Time we publish the motivational tip of the week. Each week we offer a short simple motivational tip to help you in your business. If you like this, you can check out our other Articles On Motivation.

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.

Hey -- Happy Halloween!

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

As I promised yesterday, we are spending a week blogging about lists. The problem is that it is also Free Stuff Friday, and I know how you love that. So, I am combining Free Stuff Friday with a post about lists.

If you read my blog, you already know that you can use "free stuff" to get people to sign up for your list.  This is a good approach because it provides value and builds trust.  A better approach is to get people on your list by selling stuff (as done with $7 Secrets), but giving stuff away is a great place to start.

You can give away information, software, content, merchandise, discounts, you name it.

In this example, we'll talk about giving away PLR content.

What Is PLR Content?

One thing that you hear about a lot in Internet Marketing circles is content that comes with "Private Label Rights (PLR)." Typically, if you buy content with PLR you are licensed to use that content in various ways. Things that you can usually do with PLR might include use it to make eBooks, publish with or without modification, combine it into longer content, split it apart into shorter content, use it in an autoresponder series, put your name on it, etc.

I say "usually" because PLR rights are almost always given specifically for the content you are buying, and restrictions can change depending on the authors wishes.

One thing that you usually cannot do is resell unmodified PLR to other people.

What are Master Resale Rights?

Master Resale Rights (MRR) usually gives you the right to resell something and keep all of the profits as long as you make no modifications to the content. MRR does not usually give you the right to reuse the content for another purpose (like re-publication under your name).

To illustrate all of this for you, I bought Master Resale Rights to a package of PLR articles on weight loss. I am making these articles available to you these articles as this weeks Friday Freebie.

Specifically, when I bought this PLR with MRR rights, I got the rights to:

(Yes) Submit to article directories
(Yes) Can be offered as a bonus with other Products - if changes are made to the articles
(YES) Can be edited completely and your name put on them
(YES) Can be used as web content
(YES) Can be used as a blog post
(YES) Can be broken down into smaller articles
(YES) Can be combined to make larger articles
(YES) Can be used as an e-mail/auto responder sequence
(YES) Can be added to a membership site
(YES) Can be Sold at any Price

I am NOT giving you MRR.

I am giving you PLR rights to these articles.

This means that you can:

(YES) Can be used as web content
(YES) Can be used as a blog post
(YES) Can be broken down into smaller articles
(YES) Can be combined to make larger articles
(YES) Can be used as an e-mail/auto responder sequence
(YES) Can be added to a membership site
(No) Can be Sold at any Price (Unless completely edited)

As usual, all you need to do is join my email list (see the opt-in box at the right) to download this report and other free stuff. Why not sign up today!

So How Can This Help Me With My List?

Now, I don't use a lot of PLR -- but here are at least 3 ways you can use it to help build a list.  Note that I always recommend that if you do use PLR that you rewrite it completely, adding your own voice and augmenting it with your own experience or research.

• Give PLR (when you have MMR) away to your readers as an opt-in gift (like this post)
• Use PLR on a blog as posts to attract readers to your opt-in box
• Send PLR content to your list as valuable content after they opt in.
• Use PLR to write an eBook for use with $7 Secrets

Enjoy.
Mark

P.S. -- If you really want the resale rights to this package of articles, you can have the resale rights for $5 by purchasing through the paypal button below.  Your paypal receipt with the title "Weight Loss MRR" will serve as your license to resell these articles (or use them as you see fit).  Note that you will still need to opt-in to the email list to get them, as I have not set up a separate download just for MRR.

I have been working on the release of a new eBook using Jonathan Legers $7 Secrets approach, and in doing that work, I ran across this checklist for eBook creation.  I am publishing it here.  I hope you enjoy it.

Checklist: How to Create & Sell your Own eBooks

Is the thought of selling your own product intriguing but also overwhelming at the same time? Here is a checklist to get you started.

1. Research your target market & come up with an idea for your product.

I could go into great detail on this step, but I’ll make it short and sweet. The following three criteria must be met. Choose a topic where…

• People are looking for information.
• They are willing to spend money on that information.
• You, personally, are at least moderately interested and knowledgeable about this topic.

Although the third point is optional, I recommend it if you are going to stay interested and motivated to promote your ebooks for months and years to come. You have the option of choosing something you love or something that is popular. Make work fun by choosing a market that you enjoy.

Here are some ideas for you…

• Weight Loss and Dieting
• Health (or fixing health problems)
• Fitness and Exercise (lifting things that are drooping and tightening things that are sagging)
• Looking good (reversing aging, removing hair, keeping hair, etc.)
• Relationships (finding then, keeping them, getting over them)
• Making Money (online or offline, small business, finding jobs, etc)
• Saving Money
• Parenting problems/concerns

2. Purchase a Domain name.

Important things to keep in mind when choosing a URL are:

• Make it memorable.
• Make it short.
• No numbers or dashes.
• Easy to spell.
• Descriptive of your product.
• It should end in a .com (not a .net, .org, or .biz – unless you have a darned good reason to do so)

Also, if this is going to be your main site, be sure to buy any similar domains to protect your branding.

You can buy your domain names anywhere, but I recommend: www.GoDaddy.com or www.NameCheap.com.

3. Purchase Hosting.

I recommend ServInt for many reasons, including:

• Excellent customer service.
• Reliable uptime.

4. Load autoresponder/set up squeeze page while developing product.

The best autoresponder, in my opinion, is this one.

This autoresponder will manage multiple ecourses and lists, including your customers and affiliates. It will grow with your business.

If you don’t have a squeeze page, you can start with one at www.MostlySanePLR.com

By setting up your squeeze page first, you can start to develop a list of people interested in your topic. That will help you later when you launch – you'll have an instant boost for your new product.

5. Develop product.

Don’t know how? Here are some options…

If you can write 7-15 pages on your topic, I recommend that you grab the free report on this page - www.SmallReportsFortune.com

Take a shortcut by buying Resale Rights products. You can find some here:

www.srzone.com/rights.html

www.FullTimeWAHM.com (includes resale rights)

www.BeginnerCoach.com (also includes resale rights)

http://easyplr.com/resale.htm (great reports with rights)

OR

Start with PLR content. Here are some places to look…

www.EasyPLR.com

www.JustPLRcontent.com

www.easyplr.com/bestplr.htm

OR

Record an interview with an expert, have it transcribed and sell it. It's really easy if you use www.audioacrobat.com

OR

Hire a ghostwriter to create a custom product for you.

6. Order graphics or create them yourself.

You’ll need, at the bare minimum, an ecover for your product and at least one banner and button to promote it. A professional header or mini-site design can also convey a professional image.

7. Create sales page.

This is a highly important piece.

For best results, unless you have studied copywriting, I recommend that you hire a skilled writer to draft it for you.

You can find skilled writers at elance.com or www.Shelancers.com

8. Create thank you/download page.

Your download page should contain a few basic pieces:

• Who you are
• How to contact you
• Download instructions
• Download links (of course)
• What company name will show up on their paypal statement or credit card statement.
• Any bonuses they were promised and how to claim them.

9. Load the sales page, thank you page, & product to site.

If you’ve never done this before, you can either outsource the task or use a free program like www.smartftp.com

10. Decide on payment processor. (Figure out how you’re getting paid.)

Here are some popular options to choose from:

• Clickbank - click here for info (Very easy to use and popular for that reason.)
• Paydotcom - click here for info
• E-junkies - click here for info
• 1ShoppingCart - click here for info (Much more control & room for growth. More hands-on.)
• WAHMCart - click here for info (Similar to 1ShoppingCart, but more affordable.)

If all of those options sound overwhelming right now, then a simple paypal button will work just fine for now.

11. Once the pages are loaded, notify your lists. (Tell your friends.)
Contact the following people about the product:

• Your leads lists.
• Your customer lists.
• Your JV partners

If you don’t have lists, don’t panic. Just move ahead to the next step. Although... I do recommend that you read the free report at www.ListProfitSystem.com to learn more about list marketing.

12. Create affiliate tools and notify your affiliates. (Get your Sales Army on the March.)

If you have affiliates, TELL them about your new product and let them promote it for you. Why not have your team of affiliates promoting it for you?

Recommendation: Sign up for the free ecourse at www.SalesArmySecrets.com right away if your affiliate program needs serious help.

The very basic tools that you’ll need are…

1. Banners & buttons
2. Articles
3. Solo ads
4. Text ads

But, of course, there are many more tools that you’ll wish to offer. Just get started with these.

13. Continue promoting your new product. (Market the heck out of it.)

Don’t forget to promote the report like you would any of your other products.

• article marketing
• pay per click
• ezine ads
• forum marketing
• SEO
• web 2.0/social networking

And anything else that you’d normally do to sell your products.

You can certainly outsource many of these activities and/or train your affiliates to do them for you!

14. Start researching your next product. (Rinse and Repeat.)

Go back to #1 and do it all over again.

Does this sound like an insurmountable task? Don’t panic. I recommend that you check out www.OutsourceWeekly.com for a step-by-step course that will show you how to easily and effectively outsource many of these tasks – and increase your income in the process.

So far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

• Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
• List of Niche Super-Site design goals

Remember, our overall goal is to build a niche site that returns $2/day in residual income with only a simple investment in cheap web hosting.

I begin today with a warning for all you WordPress users out there. If you edit your post in multiple tabs and use multiple computers, you can get distracted and confused and accidentally save an old version over a new version, losing hours of work. Not that I have any personal experience there....ugh.

That reminds me of my standard disclaimer: I am not claiming to be an expert on niche site building (and certainly not in WordPress file integrity). I am just trying to aggregate all of the information I can find and run it through my engineering common sense filter. This means that there is no such thing as easy money and that things sounding too good to be true usually are.

One of the most discussed aspects of niche marketing is the selection of the niche itself. Basically, most people will argue that you want to try to find an area to work where there is lots of potential traffic and low competition for keywords. These same folks also say that the niche should also have lots of great long tail keywords with low competition. Best of all, look for keywords that have PPC Adsense ads that deliver $300 per click. Sure, that would all be great.

I agree that we should avoid super-high-saturation keywords. "Build a niche website" is a great example of an over-saturated keyword phrase. Other good examples are "weight loss" and "make money online." To me, focusing exclusively on high traffic, low competition keywords is like asking for something for nothing. Everyone is looking for those tools. Some people are using fancy software to find those hidden niche markets. I know that they are successful sometimes, but counting on outsmarting 1000s of people hungry for easy money is not a great strategy.

I like the way Caroline thinks about this.

• Start broad and go narrow using a free tool like WordTracker.
• Use the Adwords tool to check volumes and advertiser competition
• Use some common sense and focus on meaningful phrases

By way of extension, I will argue that we should pick our niche based on the following criteria:

• Pick what you care about. Let's go ahead and pick something that we know or care something about. We are going to be working on this for a couple of weeks at least, so why pick "dung beetles" when we can pick our favorite hobby. Notice that I did not say pick something that we know. There is nothing wrong with picking something that we want to learn about. Maybe I want to learn about "dung beetles" even though I don't know anything about them today. If that is the case, pick dung beetles (especially for your first site). That will keep you going when thing aren't looking so great.
• Pick something that you could evolve into an authority site. If you get lucky or really interested, you may want to evolve your site into an authority site. Just think of the fame that could be yours if you become the world's expert in "dung beetles." Seriously, you might as well pick something that you could imagine having 100 pages if you find out that there is a market later.
• Pick something with lots of traffic. If you go to wordtracker.com and find out that there are no searches for your niche, that is probably (although not always) a problem. You need something with high traffic volumes so you can find niches inside that traffic. Stay away from "dung beetle mating habits" -- that is a low traffic niche.
• Pick a niche that has Adsense ads available to be published. Nothing is worse than picking a niche where no one is advertising. One of our stated strategies is to monetize with Adsense ads. If there is nothing to advertise, we'll be in trouble. Note that no ads come up in Google for "dung beetle."
• Pick a niche that has products for sale. Check with Commission Junction affiliates like eBay, CafePress, etc. Look for Adsense referrals for your niche. Check ClickBank. Again, one of our stated strategies is to deversify our monetization strategy. A search for "dung beetle" on the Commission Junction site will not return many results.
• Think about your market. This is just good marketing advice, but there is a twist for niches. I think you may want to stay away from super-techie web savy people. They will not be clicking on your ads and clicking through your links. They will recognize your site as a niche site designed to collect clicks and go elsewhere.
• Pick your niche. Don't agonize. If you are on a plan similar to mine, you will be doing 10 or 50 or 100 of these. Don't sweat it. Get to work.

There are some great resources on Dosh Dosh to help you pick your own niche.

And now, for purposes of this demonstration, I reveal my case study niche:

DRUM ROLL....

Elvis Presley

Why Elvis, you say? That must be very competitive, you argue.

Well, let's look at the criteria we set:

• Pick what you care about. I like Elvis. My mom likes Elvis (she shares a birthday with him, too). I can do a bad Elvis impersonation. Really. Elvis is not exactly my top hobby, but he'll do for the purpose of a case study. The Elvis franchise is probably worth billions -- and I only want $2/day.
• Pick something that you could evolve into an authority site. I can think of lots of ways to grow an Elvis site. Elvis fandom, Elvis forums, Elvis sightings (integrates with Google Maps and Twitter), Elvis gifts, history of Elvis, etc.
• Pick something with lots of traffic. A quick look at WordTracker tells me that there are some decent keywords available with various combinations of trafic and medium competition (competing sites). There are no magical max traffic zero competition free money keywords for Elvis. I am not sure those really exist -- and even if they do, they are only temporary.
• Pick a niche that has Adsense ads available to be published. If you type in "Elvis" at the Google prompt or looks at the Adwords keyword tool, it looks like there are ads. I would expect that, given the number of affiliate products (below).
• Pick a niche that has products for sale. Commission Junction has 1000 Elvis products and eBay is full of Elvis stuff (this is really good for us as you will see later). Some are really neat.
• Think about your market. My mom and people of her generation. The are baby-boomers that surf the net at work and have disposable income. Sounds good.
• Pick your niche. Don't agonize. If you are on a plan similar to mine, you will be doing 10 or 50 or 100 of these. Don't sweat it. Get to work, collect data, learn and repeat.

Tomorrow we will settle on a main keyword phrase, some secondary ones, and a whole bunch of long tail phrases for the niche product part of our strategy.

%RELATEDPOSTS%

Well, my New Year’s Resolution (one of two resolutions this year) is to lose weight. Now that is a big surprise. Each year I resolve to lose weight, and most years I fail. This year will be different, however, as this resolution will be blog-powered. I figure that if I blog about it, I will be accountable to the blog readers (literally about a million people across the globe, give or take a million). Additionally, I am taking an engineering approach, which includes ten common sense steps to easy weight loss.

I am not a Weight Loss Specialist, Doctor or Nutritionist

OK, first of all, let’s get one thing straight. I am not a doctor. I am not a nutritionist. I am an engineer. I do not have any special knowledge or training regarding losing weight. You should consult your physician before beginning any weight loss program or changing your diet.

Weight Loss is not Rocket Science

Weight loss is simple from a engineer’s perspective. Your body needs calories to live. Living burns calories. If you burn more calories than you put in, you lose weight. If you put in more calories than you burn, you gain weight. It is really that simple. In my opinion (remember that I am neither a doctor or a nutritionist), everything else is really just a second order effect. What you eat is important, but contrary to what Atkins might tell you, it is not the most important thing. The most important thing is taking in fewer calories than you burn. Only one way to do that as far as I know:

Eat less, move more

Big surprise. If you want to lose weight, you have to eat fewer calories and burn more of the calories that you eat. Again, this is an engineer’s view, so let’s do the numbers. Let’s say you currently weigh 200 pounds and that you are a male with a low level of activity. According to the calorie counter on the American Cancer Society web site, you need about 2800 calories a day to maintain that weight. If you want to loose a pound each week, you need to run at a deficit of about 500 calories a day. That means that you need to eat about 2300 calories a day (instead of 2800 or more). Loosing a pound means missing out on 3500 calories. Pretty simple, eh?

Simple ten step weight loss plan

Again, I am not a doctor. I am not a nutritionist. I am an engineer. I do not have any special knowledge or training regarding losing weight. You should consult your physician before beginning any weight loss program or changing your diet.

But, I plan to lose weight this year with the following ten step plan.

1. Begin with the end in mind. Know your weight now and your goal. This will raise some questions like “how much should I weigh.” I will address that in a later post. For now, know that a key is to have a goal that is written down.
2. Make you goal a reasonable and safe one. It is not recommended to lose more than a pound a week. It is also recommended to have a Body Mass Index (BMI) that is in the green. Again, consult your doctor about the right target, and how fast you should try to get there.
3. Weigh yourself every day. This keeps you mindful of your goal. If you way yourself every morning and write down your weight, it will reinforce your goal (and remind you not to eat that cake at lunch).
4. Keep a chart of your progress. Make graph that shows your progress to your goal. It can be a thermometer-style chart, a line graph, whatever. Take credit for your progress and chart it. We do the things we are graded on. Grade yourself
5. Tell people about your goal. Telling people about what you are doing will keep you accountable. It will also give your friends a chance to help and encourage you.
6. Count calories! This is the secret to Weight Watchers, and it will work for you. As an engineer, I am trained to measure everything. So, measure your calories. There are lots of free web-based tools for this (more on this in another post).
7. Choose green not grain. The most important thing is to hit your calorie target. The second most important thing is to eat things that are good for you. Make smart choices. Pick steamed veggies instead of croissants or Twinkies (I told you this was not rocket science).
8. Use the “three bite rule.” Don’t deny yourself all the good stuff. If you a craving ice cream, eat some. Just limit what you eat to three bites.
9. Get some exercise. I recommend that you never let more than two days go by without 30 minutes of exercise. Again, consult your doctor. Exercise could include walking, running, biking, playing with your kids, etc.
10. Start over now. And again and again. Don’t quit. Put down that cookie now. If you fall off your wagon, get right back on. You will have setbacks. Roll with them.

That’s my simple plan. In my next post, I’ll tell you about oatmeal!