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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s time for the feature segment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s time for the feature segment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now the feature interview.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew Hansen: Yes, I think so.

Mark Mason: Your from Australia, right?

Andrew Hansen: Right.

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

Andrew Hansen: You don’t have vegemite?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew Hansen: Absolutely.

Mark Mason: There’s just a huge difference.

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

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

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

Andrew Hansen: Sure.

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

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

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

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

Mark Mason: Tell me the URL again.

Andrew Hansen: That’s CrapCutterMarketing.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew Hansen: You can checkout GetFirepow.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark Mason: Thank you very much.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now the feature interview.

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

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

Josh Spaulding: Pretty good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark Mason: Okay, great.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, what’s number two?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Josh Spaulding: Yes, absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Josh Spaulding: No problem at all. Thank you.

Mark Mason: Thank you, very much.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now the feature interview.

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

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

Josh Spaulding: Pretty good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark Mason: Okay, great.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, what’s number two?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Josh Spaulding: Yes, absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Josh Spaulding: No problem at all. Thank you.

Mark Mason: Thank you, very much.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of the biggest challenges of part time Internet Marketing is finding the time to do some actual internet marketing. Last month I reviewed Yanik Silver's book about how to get started making money on the internet. That book talks about five different internet monetization strategies that you can go after part-time. As I mentioned in my review, Yanik talks about blogging, eBay, affiliate marketing, information marketing, and standard online commerce as ways to make money on the Internet.

It turns out that each one of those business models has hundreds of sub niches. As a new internet marketer trying to figure out how to make money on the internet it can seem overwhelming at times. This enormous amount of information is amplified by the thousands of people trying to make money online teaching people how to make money online. It is simply amazing. Then if you throw in some sleazy dishonest slimeballs for good measure, it becomes almost impossible for a new internet marketer to figure out what to do first. it's also very distracting. Every time I check my e-mail inbox I have some new fantastic marketing offer from some heavy hitter like Mike Filsame or Yanik Silver. These slick video sales pages are hard to ignore and end up taking a lot of time.

The Information Diet -- Focus on the Roadmap

So, I am currently on a strict information diet. If it's not on the MasonWorld roadmap, I'm ignoring it for now.

One of my main goals is to put honest effort into this blog and, after a long time, and up with an A-list quality product that people want to read. The big challenge is that most of my competition is blogging full-time. They are spending their days poring over twitter feeds reading hundreds of tweets about posts on obscure blogs from all over the world in every possible time zone. As soon as something exciting happens they're off to the races with their latest blog post. While all this is happening, I am happily toiling away at my day job (which I love dearly).

So, finding enough time to post a list content to my blog and do the research to support the post is one problem. But the bigger problem is that once I have the post in my mind, I have one heck of a time getting it into WordPress. You see, I am typing challenged. Yes, it's sad but true. I got my first personal computer in 1982. It was an Apple IIe, and I learned to program it using basic. At that time, I was proud to have a 300 baud at half duplex modem that I paid for by mowing lawns in my neighborhood. I've been using a computer almost every day since 1982, and I'm really not a very good typist. Go figure.

Technology to the Rescue

So today I went to my local electronics retailer and purchased a brand-new copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking version 9.5. I am making this blog post without touching the keyboard. How cool is that? I actually experimented with the software some years ago. At that time I remember thinking that there was not enough CPU power and computer memory to enable the application to work well. Boy has that changed. The software just simply works right out of the box. After training the software for only 10 minutes I was able to write this post in scribed fire with only minor edits. Of course once the text is entered, I have to go back and do things like add hyperlinks and special formatting. I think some of those advanced capabilities are available with the software, but I only installed it 20 minutes ago so I haven't figured that out yet.

I'm really hoping that Dragon Naturally Speaking will help with my post frequency. I'm also really excited about the potential to use this device for generating content for article marketing. I can imagine surfing the web, finding a web page with relevant content, and summarizing several pages verbally with my own twist. This would allow me to use Dragon Naturally Speaking as a way to create outstanding content for article marketing. For a guy who cannot type very well this is exciting news.

I'm also thinking that it might be possible to use the advanced version of Dragon Naturally Speaking to transcribe podcasts. I'm very interested in adding a podcast to MasonWorld.com, but to be successful it will need to be a very efficient endeavor.

So stay tuned to this channel.

Thanks and best regards, Mark

Almost completely hype-free, the book covers five methods for making money on-line:

• Information Marketing -- Selling digitally delivered information. In this section, Yanik describes why selling digital information is the ultimate way to go. I happen to agree with him, as this is part of my long term plan. He covers the basics about how to get started registering a domain and setting up a shopping cart. The section is only about 100 pages long, and is not a complete guide. However, looking at it from the perspective of a brand-new-to-the-internet person, it is a great beginners guide.
• Selling on eBay. I don't know the first thing about running a real business on eBay, so it was hard for me to evaluate this section. Sydney Johnson covers how to select products, how to do listings, and what makes a successful seller.
• Affiliate Marketing. This sections is nicely done by super-affiliate Rosalind Gardner. I like this section too as it is also part of my longer term strategy. When I started looking at making money on line, I did not even know what affiliate marketing was. It would have been really nice to have seen this section of the Silver book at that early stage. Gardner talks about how to find and work affiliate programs. The advice she gives is very similar to the advice in a recent post about how to make money online by Garry Conn. Good, solid fundamental information about how to get started.
• Yahoo stores and E-Commerce stores. Again, not something that I am highly interested in. The section covers the history of Yahoo stores and how to select a niche, drop-ship, take payments, etc.
• Blogging. I liked this section. It was written by Darren Rowse - lending instant credibility. It covers what a blog is, how to set up a blog, and how to monetize. Again, since it is only 50 pages long, it is just a start and covers the basics. However, if you are just starting out, it is a great overview.

So, why write a real book? At $21.95, this 300 page book sells for less than most eBooks. The answer is that this book (which provides useful information and is a great value for the beginner) is actually a loss leader for the associated website. The book comes with free videos. When you go to the web page, you hit a squeeze page that collects your email. According to the book, they have plans for a membership site.

No matter. If you are a beginner and you are having trouble telling whether or not guys like Jeffrey Lant are on the up and up, this is a great book for you. If you are not brand new, take a pass on this book.

Regards,
Mark

This week I had the opportunity to drive a convertible Ford Mustang with the top down in sunny San Jose, CA. Man, was that great. Surprisingly, I did not have the radio on -- I was actually listening to the Internet Business Mastery (IBM) podcast on my iPod. Jay and Sterling just released their latest episode -- an interview with Yanik Silver. Now, I happen to think that the IBM podcast is the best internet marketing podcast on the net. If you have not checked it out, you should.

I think I hold the world record for rate of consumption of Internet Business Mastery podcasts. I discovered these guys exactly two weeks ago, and have listened to the entire series (37 episodes and counting) twice. Sterling always talks about "information overload" on the show, and how he listens to Dan Kennedy audio books in line at the grocery store. Well, this is worse by any measure -- geeking out to an internet marketing podcast in a convertible mustang.

I am not in either of those groups. I really like my job and I really want to add some value on the net. I am not looking for something for nothing. This is more of a hobby for me. So, I ordered the Silver book after hearing Yanik talk about it on the IBM podcast, and I will let you know what I think in a few days when it arrives.That sort of gets me back to California and the Mustang. As many of you know, my first foray into internet marketing is really twofold -- creating a "Niche Super Site" with a $2/day passive revenue goal, and blogging about the creation of that site on this site (thus creating useful content for those who come after me). So, it's back to work. I got my first eZineArticle rejected. Woo hoo! That will be the topic for my next post.

As a side note, I got very distracted reading the very famous Butterfly Marketing Manuscript by yet another guru, Mike Filsaime. This Mike guy is another guru and a total internet wildman. After reading that report, I can see how these big-money guys can make millions per year (his description of how HotMail happened made me realize that I have been under a rock for some time with regard to internet marketing). The whole report was a real "AH HA" moment. But, I am not ready for that yet -- back to the getting started work for now (and waiting for Yanik's book).