Internet Marketing News, Reviews, and Tips

Sub-Domain vs. Standard Domain -- SEO Debate

2010-01-18T10:48:00.002-06:00

I've seen a lot of debates about whether using a sub-domain (name.domain.com) vs. a standard domain name (www.domain.com) has any benefit over the other search engine ranking wise.

I'm willing to bet that 95% of the people behind these debates haven't done any testing for themselves and are either repeating what they heard elsewhere (from people who haven't done any testing) or just flat out making assumptions. Well, I thought I'd take a few moments to tell you a bit about some testing that I've done and what my own conclusions are.

For those of you just looking for a quick answer as to which is better, it depends ... so read on to get my thoughts and test results on it... :)

To clarify how I did this test, I took a few blogs in a related niche -- some new, some old -- and did a new blog post on each of them targeting a few of the same keywords. I also divided up the groups so that each group had an even number of old vs. new sites as well as an even number of low and higher page rank.

I then did my normal SEO routine of optimizing the posts, pinging the sites, etc. and the test was to see which ones got 1) ranked the fastest (appeared somewhere in Google or Yahoo) and 2) got ranked the highest for the keywords that I was targeting.

For the sub-domains, half of them were blogger blogs ([some name].blogspot.com) while half were on domains that I owned. I then compared the two different types of sub-domains, sub-domains vs. normal domains as a whole, new vs. old sites, and low vs. high (by high, I mean more than a pagerank of 2 -- most in the test were 3 or 4 -- , low is pagerank of 2 or less).

Here's what I found:

1. New vs. Old -- regardless of the domain type used, the older, more established sites tended to get ranked faster (some within minutes compared to others taking several hours to a day or more). For my own domain names and sub-domain names on my own domain names, there wasn't really a significant difference -- maybe a slight edge to the normal domain names. However, there were some interesting exceptions that will be brought up in a later point here...

2. Low vs. High PageRank -- as what would be assumed, the higher pagerank sites tended to perform better. An edge was given to the normal domain names vs. the sub domain names. However, like before, there were some interesting exceptions (yeah yeah, I'm getting to those exceptions).

3. Sub-Domain Names vs. Normal Domain Names as a Whole -- this is where it gets interesting. I found that on the newer sites, if the sub-domain name was on my own domain name, they performed far less as well as my new normal domain names. They took longer to show up in the search engines, didn't rank as well, etc.. With the older, more established sites, the discrepancy between the two wasn't as bad, but there was still an edge to the normal domain names when comparing my own domains to my own sub-domain names on a domain that I owned. But like before, there was a HUGE exception that I'll explain in my next point...

4. Comparing different Types of Sub Domain Names -- This is where the interesting results came in that shattered a lot of the advice that I've seen out there on internet marketing forums and other blogs...

My own sub-domain names (regardless if they were new or more established) didn't even compare to blogger blog sub-domain names (name.blogspot.com, which you can sign up for free at www.blogger.com). The blogger blog sub-domain names beat them hands down every time in every aspect possible -- they ranked MUCH faster (literally within minutes after pinging them), MUCH higher (I was grabbing top rankings on a variety of keywords -- to be fair, they weren't the most competitive keywords, but they were still decent keywords), and seemed to stick for much longer.

That was a hunch that I had because I've seen blogger blogs doing exceptionally well, especially after some minor tweaks that I did (to be fair, comparable tweaks were done on the non-blogger-blogs).

My theory is that when super well established and known sites like blogspot.com or about.com are out there, the sub-domain names feed off of the main domain name's credibility. Now, this makes perfect sense to most people when they consider a site like about.com, as about.com has a lot more control over their sub-domain names (you'll notice that they have sub-domain names ranking well for almost anything online). However, blogger blogs anyone can sign up for for free, so some might argue that it'd be dumb for them to feed off of the established name. Well, I put that to the test, and found that it appears to still help significantly.

In fact, that brings me to another interesting point...

5. Blogger blogs as a sub-domain to blogspot.com (blogger's standard format) outperformed the standard domain names, even if the standard domain name WAS a blogger blog!

This means that it wasn't something with the way the blogger blog was setup or optimized (as a standard domain name using the blogger script still got beat out by the blogger sub-domain name). The interesting part was that even newer sub-domain blogspot.com blogger blogs seemed to outperform the more established and older domain names.

And upon further review, the brand new blogger blogs weren't performing as fast or as good as ones that were a little more established, but they were still both doing quite well.

So in conclusion, the blogspot.com sub-domain blogger blog kicked butt compared to normal domain names (including highly optimized WordPress blogs), other sub-domain names, and even normal domains run by blogger!

***What Should You Do?***

Well, that all depends. This test doesn't mean that you should go run out right now, ditch all your other sites, and move everything to blogger. I have many non-blogger sites that rank extremely well (many of which took a long time to gain #1 rankings for competitive keywords), and I don't plan on moving those over for a variety of reasons.

First, you got to ask yourself what your goal is -- if your goal is to start up a new site just to get quick rankings fast with no other goal in mind, then blogger blogs might be your best bet.

If your goal is to get ranked and make sales off that site, you probably still want to get a standard domain name -- it not only looks more professional, but a good domain name can bring a ton of repeat traffic if it's easy to brand and rememberable.

Remember, getting ranked in Google (which, by the way, was much easier in my testing compared to Yahoo) isn't all there is to making money off of a website.

And for those of you that remember my blog back in the old days, I actually ran it off of a blogspot.com sub-domain name, and I experienced super awesome and super fast rankings after some minor tweaks to the blogger code. You might ask why I switched it to the briankoz.com domain (it's still run by blogger), and that's simply because I found it better for branding and people searching for me respected that domain a lot more than some blogspot.com one.

Hah, in fact, I was questioned on more than one occasion about why I didn't spend $7 on a good domain name for it originally, and my response always was "I'm already ranking very well for a variety of keywords that I'm targeting" or "I just don't focus on my blog and never bothered to switch it."

But once I did switch it over to briankoz.com, even after quite awhile, I did notice that it wasn't quite as easy ranking for a lot of the keywords as it was before -- even after quite awhile. Again, it's not horrible, but there's definitely a difference.

So, if you're looking for quick rankings for some fast, immediate traffic without caring as much about the branding, go with blogspot.com sub-domains. If you're looking to make sales off your website or brand it more, go with a normal domain name.

And just for the sake of pointing out how easy it can be to make money online, my "simple" blogspot.com sub-domain name had some posts that literally did hundreds to even thousands of dollars in sales off of just a few minutes of work all because of the fast and high rankings. Not bad for a crappy blogspot blog when it was first starting out years ago, eh? :)

Okay, seriously, I need to update this

2009-11-10T22:53:00.003-06:00

Okay, so apparently it's a bad idea to have a partly done ... partly not done blog up for all to see for so long, eh?

As you can probably tell, I got the brilliant idea of putting up this blog quite awhile ago, but after getting halfway done with the redesign (not the graphic designers fault -- I just shifted gears to much larger priorities), I kind of left it up without doing much to it or updating it. However, I'm determined to change this up again and get it going with more posts and tips ... especially because I keep getting Googled and it's embarrassing that people find me this way. :)

I'll post some seriously wicked stuff here in the coming week, so stay tuned...

Leads Pro Alert Overview -- LeadsProAlert.com

2009-08-11T19:52:00.003-05:00

If you haven't heard about it yet, you need to stop by Leads Pro Alert to see how you could get daily targeted leads already asking to buy your products and services.

Leads Pro Alert is a cool new membership that we released that allows you to get all sorts of leads and see inside the minds of people already looking to buy from you. Whether you're looking to be a middleman for a service or product, do affiliate marketing, try out CPA, build a mailing list, etc., you need to check this out.

There's nothing else out there like this, and being able to get alerts in real time to new leads online that are interested in your products or services is extremely powerful.

You can use this to find buyers for your products/services, find potential jv/affiliate partners, find business partners, do market research, find places to leave backlinks or comments to your sites (to help with SEO / rankings in search engines), and more.

On top of offering a variety of default lead sources that we consider to be the best of the best, we also allow you the chance to add your own lead source to search virtually any URL or website out there for even more leads.

Check out LeadsProAlert.com.

Product Launch Formula 2 -- Cash Bonus

2008-03-27T16:25:00.004-05:00

I'm sure many of you have gotten a ton of e-mails today on Product Launch Formula 2. PLF has been a must read for any online business, while PLF2 covers tons of new information that you can't be without

http://www.productlaunchformula.com/?18309

Not only does Product Launch Formula 2 come with a ton of bonuses (including the original PLF), but I'm including some insane bonus options below. I know many of you have gotten tons of "crap offers" for bonuses from other marketers, and I also know that many of you have different wants and needs. As such, I'm giving you a couple options to choose from (one of these is a HUGE opportunity that is worth far more than the price of PLF2).

Here are my bonus options if you use my affiliate link:

Bonus Option 1: $500 cash refund (I know some of you hate bonuses, so hopefully this is an appealing option for you). This is to be paid via Paypal after the refund period is over.

Bonus Option 2: 100 professionally written articles on ANY topic of your choice by my team of U.S. writers. These guys write top notch articles, have degrees, and have proven track records for writing for web content, SEO, or any type of article or review you want. For the same quality articles, you'd easily be paying at least $2,000 for this alone.

Bonus Option 3 (MY FAVORITE): $250 cash refund AND guaranteed access into my exclusive apprentice program where you will not only help me launch one of my new products with a couple other apprentices, but you'll also be a part of the decision making AND you'll get a cut of the profits. I'll fund the entire thing from the copywriting, web design, and product creation -- you'll help with the decisions, the launch, etc. You'll not only get to see the inner workings of how to research, create, and launch a product, but you'll get a cut of the profits as well. If you want in on this, you have to have at least five hours a month free to discuss the various parts of this (we'll use parts of PLF and PLF2 obviously to help us). If you have more time available, there will be positions within the program for larger cuts. Best of all, for the few hours I'm asking you to help, you'll not only walk away with a cut of the profits, but you'll also get the $250 for your time.

However, if you want any of these bonuses you MUST use my affiliate link below before purchasing Product Launch Formula 2 and it must go through. Be sure to clear your cookies to make sure that it does, and then e-mail me to let me know that you're in and which option you'd like best.

http://www.productlaunchformula.com/?18309

I'm super excited for those doing option 3, as I already have a handful of lucrative products and ideas lined up for those who are in it.

To your success,

Brian Koz

P.S. Seriously, Product Launch Formula 2 is not only offering a 100% money back guarantee, but they're throwing in an extra $500 if you can show that it just didn't work for you.

P.P.S. Although I'm giving you a few bonus options, I encourage you to really consider the third one. I know it'll be a blast and an awesome learning experience for you. Heck, where else can you get a learning experience and an apprentice program that PAYS YOU!?!

Valentine's Day Relationship Advice for More $$$

2008-02-14T14:50:00.001-06:00

First, I want to wish those of you celebrating it a big happy Valentine's Day! I hope all of you taken guys and gals are enjoying your time with your significant others.

And now, I want to say that if you read this whole e-mail, you'll walk away with one of the biggest secrets in this industry.

Since V-day is all about love and relationships, I thought I'd share a bit of free advice (yep, no promo here) of how you can successfully use relationships to get more money.
In fact, I think that's one of the easiest ways to get more money is to know who and how to get the right business relationships with.

I've seen way too many people go about this wrong. Whether it be in finding potential business partners, finding JV partners, etc..

Too many people will often just look at how the other individual can benefit them, and not enough about how they can benefit the other person! Even when some people think that they're benefiting the other person, they usually have a twisted view of it that won't get them anywhere.
It kind of reminds me of some average joe going after a rich, sexy super model.

Sure, everyone may want that rich, sexy super model, and we all know what that person could do for you. But do you honestly think if you tell them that you can give them lots of love in return that they'll just jump right onboard to get in a relationship with you? No!

And with JV partners and business partners, it's the same way, especially if they're already very successful. Why would they partner with you just for a normal affiliate cut when they can be a JV for ANY product and get the same (if not more) money? You don't stand out.

But don't worry, there's hope! Listen up, here's the big secret to exploding your online profits (notice there's not an affiliate link here or any link?): either find partners at the same level as you or offer larger names something that will REALLY benefit them.

Think you can't do it? Think again!

There are tons of marketers out there that are at the exact same level as you. Find them, team with them, and stay together over time and you'd be surprised and what you can accomplish together.

If you're looking to partner up with a larger name on your product, don't just come to them with an idea -- come to them with a finished product, proof that there's a market for it, and a willingness to do anything that they want to bring in to market for you (and offer them a substantial cut of the profits). Be willing to accept that you might not be able to call the shots, but know that you WILL stand out to them for this.

Want to keep it all to yourself because you think it's the "next big thing?" Fine, but you better be able to market it, form all those JV relationships that you need, etc. just as good too. If you don't, that next big thing will be taken up by someone else or will forever just remain an idea.
Believe me, when I get a JV request, I'll look at it and see what I can do if I think it's a quality product, if it fits what my list is looking for, and if I don't have to spend a ton of time figuring out what the product even is. However, if someone approached me with an offer of a partnership and I could see that they were willing to work, you bet I'd be interested! Or even if it's just a JV request, if I see someone going out of their way to make my life easier just to consider their product, you can bet that I'm more than happy to do so. Others will too.

And you don't have to go to the biggest guy out there. If there are things you need to do but can't, find the right people to team up with who can, be generous to them, and you'll start finding more success and more money in no time.

One of the Easiest Paths to JV Success and Making Money Online

2008-02-09T17:42:00.000-06:00

Many of you probably know that perhaps the hardest part about making money online isn't coming up with a good product, sales copy, or website graphics ... it's getting JV partners, forming business relationships, and all about getting the people who can help you make more money to actually help you.

Well, I'm about to share with you one of the biggest tips I have that have led to a lot of my own online successes.

Too many people go about forming business partnerships the wrong way (whether you're looking for more JV partners to promote your own stuff or finding the right partners who can help bring your idea to life). They'll only focus on what OTHERS can do for them. The key is to also focus on what YOU can do for OTHERS.

I'll say that once more. Before you go trying to see what others can do for you, try to see what you can do for them.

It doesn't matter if you don't have a huge list, no marketing experience, etc.. If you can offer something that makes their lives easier, brings them the potential for more money, or helps them in any other way, you'll stand out and will be much more likely to be considered.

If you just go up to them, ask them to promote your product or partner with you without laying out how you can REALLY help them, you'll probably never be able to land a good partnership.

And let's be realistic with ourselves here too -- you don't want to offer them something that you realistically can't do. I've seen complete newcomers talk about how if a big name JV's with them, the big name will benefit by making soooooooo much money from them.

Let's get real. They can make money off of any product they promote. How are you different?

Or I'll see people wanting to partner up on a project, but the only thing they'll bring to the table is an idea. Let's get real again. Am I or anyone else going to want to waste time, money, etc. on something and share the profit with you if all you do is come up with an idea?

Give them a product instead of just an idea, offer to do the manual labor, etc. and you'll surely get MUCH more attention and be much more likely to land a successful business partnership.

So change your thinking to reflect this and start making some serious dough.

Fun times in Vegas

2008-02-02T15:20:00.001-06:00

I just got back a few days ago from speaking in Vegas, and I sure had a blast. Not only was I excited to talk more about my internet marketing techniques, but it's Vegas!

On the last day, I put $25 in one slot and won $750 -- the highlight of my gambling there.

I'm going to start making some major changes. I'm very close to finishing up some very big projects, have others on the drawing board, and totally revamping some of my methods. As such, I'll be starting to fix up things like this blog. I've been neglecting it too much and decided to not only post to it more, but to spice it up a bit.

More details soon...

Surprising Results from Co-reg Leads

2007-12-02T13:39:00.001-06:00

I was shocked the other day. Literally, I was blown away at how well some of the lists we have going at Co-op Lists were performing. I know I know ... why would I be shocked if I knew it was a great deal?

Well, I knew that we had top of the line co-reg leads (and direct sign-ups), and I knew that we'd get good results with them. What I didn't know is that some of the lists were out-performing MY OWN MAILING LISTS that were created from those who bought my products and direct sign-ups to my own newsletters from my websites.

We just launched Co-op Lists a few weeks ago, but I was curious as to how well the open rates would be. I suspected that we could get about 25% tops. And before you think 25% is bad, it's not! 25% is insanely good for co-reg. In fact, a 25% open rate for your normal e-mail list is good.

To be honest, many of my normal lists get around a 33% open rate depending on the offer (some more, some less). This is to be expected. Not everyone is interested in a particular offer, and not everyone will take the time to read one of my e-mails.

For Co-op Lists, I was hoping for a 25% open rate, but I wouldn't have been disappointed as long as it was over 10% (again, for co-reg leads, this isn't bad). To my astonishment, many of the lists had an open rate of around 50%!

And it wasn't just one or two lists -- it was several of the lists. Others had a 40% open rate (and others had over 50%), but overall, all of the lists outperformed my own high expectations for them.

This completely made me re-think co-reg leads. I mean, I know I've used them myself before and got decent results, but I spent much more time making sure that the ads for Co-op Lists were good (I wanted Co-op Lists to rock -- I spent much more time on that than my own campaigns).

I know I had a respect for these leads to begin with, but this is making me look at it even more. All I have to say is that it's too bad there are so many crap co-reg services and myths out there!

Good Co-Reg, Bad Co-Reg: Coregistration Myths

2007-12-02T13:19:00.000-06:00

Many people will cringe when they hear the word "co-reg." If you don't know what co-reg is, it stands for coregistration and it deals with a method of getting subscribers. Usually, people signing up for something (even another mailing list) will see a list of available newsletters/mailing lists that they can sign up for. They check off the ones they want and then hit submit to send their details to all of them at once.

That's the good form of co-reg if it's done ethically. But co-reg has a dark side to it.

Some marketers will sell HUGE lists of subscribers who have NOT signed up for an offer from your list (so they are much less likely to read your messages and much more likely to report it as spam). Even more so, some marketers will sell the same list over and over and over again to dozens or even hundreds of others. On top of that, many will put in fake e-mails and such or have non-English people signing up and getting paid to do so.

Obviously, that second scenario isn't going to work out too well, and it may even get you into a lot of trouble. Unfortunately, many people buy into the second option and not the first for a variety of reasons.

First, the first option (the legit one) isn't cheap. A decent co-reg lead might cost 50 cents to a dollar or more per lead. The second option, on the other hand, might be for a penny or less per lead (although when you factor in all the fake sign ups and such, the second option might be $50 or more per real lead). With the first option, you can buy a list of 1,000 subscribers for the same price that you might be able to buy a million subscribers with the second option. Which one do you think will get more attention?

Years ago, there was a lot of buzz about co-reg leads. A lot of it was just a marketing ploy while a lot of co-reg programs were being promoted. Since then, the buzz has died down and it's viewed mostly as a horrible form of marketing ... and sometimes even as a scam. However, several of the biggest companies around STILL do co-reg, which should tell you something. It can work.

The trick is in going for the good co-reg services. Several of the biggest websites around offer their own co-reg services at $1 or more per lead, but their openings are often filled months in advance. Other websites might have private offerings at 50 cents or so per lead, but you have to make sure that you test each one out to make sure you know which ones are profitable and which aren't (this can take a couple of weeks to often several months or a year or more).

But most importantly, you want to make sure that subscribers are signing up for OFFERS GOING DIRECTLY TO YOUR MAILING LIST and not one that will go to dozens of other lists.

I partnered up with Pat Lovell and Robert Puddy to bring you a unique solution that offers an affordable price without sacrificing the quality. It's Co-op Lists at www.Co-opLists.com.

What we do here is simple. We take top quality leads (yeah, those expensive ones that sign up directly for our offers) from a massive co-reg and non-co-reg advertising campaign and get them to sign up for several of our mailing lists linked up to Co-op Lists. Then we let small groups of marketers in the same niche as one of the lists send out a promo e-mail once a month. We still review each e-mail to make sure that it's not spammy and is relevant to the list's interest.

This way, we can be assured that the subscribers to the lists aren't getting bombarded with tons of e-mails, they're getting what they asked for, and members of Co-op Lists can get an affordable solution to e-mail marketing.

You're not going to get rich overnight, nor should you plan on living off of your income just from this, but it's a viable, inexpensive solution to bring the best of both worlds -- good co-reg leads with inexpensive prices.

Check it out at www.Co-opLists.com

Masters Seminar in Vegas!

2007-11-08T18:08:00.000-06:00

If you've never attended an internet marketing seminar before, or would like to attend a super fun one, why not join me in Vegas in January? I'll be co-hosting the Masters Seminar with Ross Goldberg in just a couple months, and we have an amazing line-up of speakers.

In addition, we have literally a TON of VIP attendees to maximize your networking. From the first internet marketing seminar that I attended, I create several partnerships that literally are priceless (well, some might have a price tag of multiple six figures, but priceless in the long run).

Check it out now and order now before the price goes up: MastersSeminar.com

And yes, if you attend there, PLEASE send me an e-mail and tell me a bit about yourself. I love meeting new marketers and others wanting to get into the field. Plus, Vegas is surely to be a blast for all.

At the last seminar I attended, a group of us were up until 5 AM playing poker while creating some awesome JV deals at the same time. Throw Vegas into that, and surely I'll have stories ten times better. :)

New Updates and 40+ Products?!?!?

2007-10-13T14:09:00.000-05:00

I've been super busy lately. Right after returning from a seminar in San Francisco, I was out of town again for a few days. Then I went on a little mini vacation as part of a surprise for my birthday. And during all of this, I made some major deals with top marketers with some exciting new products I've been developing.

Speaking of, after reviewing my list of products, I found that I have over 40 products that are either done and waiting to be promoted, close to being done, or that are currently in the works.

Of those, a handful are exceptionally exciting. A couple of them could easily change the way marketing is done online.

Now that things are starting to settle a bit more, I promise to be updating this blog more often and updating you on the products as they start to come out.

TalkStream Review -- Free Trial

2007-09-28T14:05:00.000-05:00

You absolutely need to check out this awesome new site launched by the people who created GetResponse:

Check out TalkStream now!

TalkStream allows you to easily create audio, video, and other special effects for your websites. It even gives you your own toll free number!

On top of that, it allows you to do some AMAZING video effects with incredible ease (including the special effect seen on the sales page with the lady talking). I've spent hours doing some of the things that this can do in a matter of minutes, and ironically, this site does a much better job of that.

TalkStream

To make it even better, they're offering a free trial for you to test it out. I know you'll love it, as I do, and it's very rare that I find products that I absolutely love. It's also at a super low price that we all rarely see these days.

Click to check out these amazing special effects now

By the way, if you don't have an autoresponder account yet, you definitely should check out GetResponse for an excellent autoresponder (these are the same people who made this new site)

Are you worthless?

2007-09-22T13:52:00.001-05:00

Of course you aren't! However, in the eyes of potential business partners, you might be unless you take the proper steps to be worth something to them. I've seen so many people thinking that the key to their success is partnering with the right people. This is partially true -- having the right partners can skyrocket your business. It doesn't matter if it's for a JV partner or some joint project you want to work on. Put the right people together, and you can have some killer combinations that will have everyone profiting more.

The one mistake I see people doing is approaching potential partners but not offering anything in return. They'll ask them to promote this or that, or they'll say "hey, I have this killer idea that I think you should make and market -- want to team up?" Keep in mind that most of the partners you're trying to seek probably get tons of offers -- you have to stand out to even have a chance.

And even more so, if you have nothing to offer, you're essentially worthless to them. The key to success is being worth something to them. Everyone can be -- you just have to realize that and take the necessary steps to do so.

Perhaps instead of saying "I have a killer idea -- want to make it and market it for me?" create the product, website, etc. and THEN approach them and say "I have this killer product ready to go, and I thought you'd be a perfect match up to market it for a 50/50 cut -- interested?"

Or if you're approaching some other professional to team up on a job (like a programmer or copywriter), you could say "listen, I have this killer product idea with the website ready to go -- I just need the thing programmed, interested in a 50/50 cut?"

All of a sudden, you have something worthwhile to them -- a killer idea, a site ready to go, potential marketing partners lined up, etc.

So before you approach someone with a potential partnership, make sure that you're worth something first. :)

IMAgainstPoverty Charity Launch -- Awesome deal

2007-09-13T10:24:00.000-05:00

As you know, I'm not like most marketers who promote every product or launch out there. I only promote the best and ones that I feel truly add a lot of value to you. As you know, you won't find a lot of products I recommend from my reviews, but this is different.

I would never want to recommend something that wasn't of true value to you, as I'd risk losing you as a reader to my blog here. However, I was approached by a good friend of mine and asked to promote a huge bundle of internet marketing products with a catch -- all proceeds will go to charity.

http://www.imagainstpoverty.com/?rid=12

Specifically, it's to help people in the poorest of the poor countries. When we think of poor, we think of not being able to afford the next bill. When I say "poorest of the poor," I'm talking about people who are at risk of dying from not having enough food.

Normally, I'd ramble on about how great this package is (it really is), but I think that the cause for this is far more important.

Please take a few minutes and watch the video, see what they have to offer, and consider taking them up on the deal. My affiliate link is provided, but I won't even be making a penny promoting this (it's used just to track the referrals to show during a live demonstration how marketers can make money online, but in this case, it's all going to charity).

http://www.imagainstpoverty.com/?rid=12

To make it even better, if you buy through the link, please e-mail me here for a surprise bonus (trust me, this is worth FAR more than you'd think).

http://www.imagainstpoverty.com/?rid=12

To your success,

Brian

P.S. I'm calling this the "charity week," as by random chance, I was approached by another respected marketer to promote a project where all the proceeds are going to help kids with heart defects. I'd love it if this list could sponsor one surgery! More details on that shortly...

Ready for Halo 3? Some awesome marketing opportunities and examples

2007-09-08T21:42:00.000-05:00

Although I'm a fan of the Halo series, I thought I'd point out some huge opportunities and a lesson we all can easily work into our online marketing that applies to far more than just Halo...

Prior to any big launch and immediately afterwards (regardless if it's a new product, game, etc.), there will ALWAYS be a TON of searches done for related information on that particular product. However, until shortly after they're officially launched, you won't find many websites being ranked for some of those related terms.

This leaves a wide open gap for those who plan a bit ahead of time. If you get ranked well for terms right before they're searched a ton, you'll be in good positioning in the first few days of the launch and can get some amazing traffic from it. Shortly after the launch, it can get much more competitive to rank for those same terms, but at least you can take advantage of the most popular days with ease.

From there, you just monetize your site accordingly and wait for the traffic to come.

For those who don't believe in how powerful this trick can be, I did some searches for terms related to Halo 3 that people will most likely be searching for almost immediately after it launches. I found that some decent keyword terms had well under ten results (some even none at all). Any one of us could walk right in and get a #1 ranking virtually within hours to even minutes. And I'm using Halo 3 as an example because it is a VERY popular game that is being markreted very well and creating a lot of buzz, yet there are even still tons of wide open opportunities with it.

Why you need Joint Ventures, and how JV Submitter fills that need

2007-09-04T12:27:00.000-05:00

Joint ventures, where you get affiliates to promote your products for you, can be a huge part to any online business. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and say that 99% of the top gurus out there wouldn't be where they are today if it wasn't for them being able to joint venture with others. It's that powerful.

Now I hope that you know this, and I hopefully don't have to convince you why having someone with a list in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands promoting your product can help you, but I do know that you're probably wondering how you can do the same.

You can't simply just e-mail them hoping that they'll fall in love with your product and be an affiliate of yours. Most get dozens to even hundreds of offers a day, and most of those are pure spam, so they ignore the majority of them. Even more so, you might not even know who to e-mail!

That's why I filled that void with JV Submitter, where big name gurus have agreed to personally look over your JV offers in our bi-monthly newsletter that goes straight to their personal inboxes.

www.JVSubmitter.com

Every single guru that will receive that newsletter has agreed to personally read your offers, which is a huge opportunity all by itself.

One particular guru has a list of over 300,000 loyal subscribers and is known as being the #1 super affiliate in the world. Imagine what he might be able to do for your business if you presented him with a good offer?

And now consider the fact that we have tons of the top gurus receiving this newsletter. If just one of them takes you up on a JV offer, you could become a success virtually overnight.

www.JVSubmitter.com

Now members of JV Submitter will get far more than just being able to submit their JV offers in our bi-monthly newsletter to the gurus. They'll also be able to participate in our forums, network with one another, create tons of JV offers and other joint projects amongst themselves, and be able to participate in a variety of special events we'll have planned just for members of JV Submitter. You'll even be able to get notices of future launches way ahead of time so you can prepare ahead to get a jumpstart that can skyrocket your earnings even more.

I don't care what niche you're in or whether you have a new ebook or script -- you can benefit from partnering with other like-minded marketers.

You'll find that the subscription fees are very cheap for what they offer (similar services that just have a forum without delivering offers to their inboxes charge several times that each month), and JV Submitter offers much more than anything that even comes close to it. In fact, JV Submitter is the first of its kind in many ways.

www.JVSubmitter.com

This really is a no brainer. This isn't some over-hyped product that won't do you any good. This is a real service that benefits everyone. Don't miss out on this great opportunity!

JV Submitter -- How you'll land joint ventures with gurus

2007-08-31T18:10:00.000-05:00

I'm proud to announce that JV Submitter is having a special pre-launch going on right now at www.JVSubmitter.com. It will officially launch next Wednesday, but I'm allowing my readers and subscribers to jump in ahead of time to take advantage of some special bonuses and discounts.

What is JV Submitter?

It's like nothing you've ever seen. Deals were made where several of the biggest gurus around agreed to personally review your JV offers in a bi-monthly newsletter that JV Submitter sends out to them. Some of these gurus have lists in the hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and they have literally made hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars from many of their projects and their joint venture projects.

This allows you to get some of that spotlight from them. I can guarantee you that you'll be happy with what you see, and you'll be excited to hear that there will be some awesome unannounced opportunities for members who sign up.

So head on over to JV Submitter now before the doors are closed.

Offline Marketing Opportunities

2007-08-28T22:36:00.000-05:00

I always try to look for more internet marketing opportunities. Anyone who knows me knows that I have my hands in A LOT of stuff. I have tons of different projects, sites, etc. covering a wide range of topics.

I often talk about how searching online forums, checking out other products, and just browsing the internet in general can help give people new ideas, see needs, see wants, etc.

However, despite how I do dabble in offline stuff here and there, I'm now going to think A LOT more about offline needs, wants, etc. and how I can fulfill them. I recently sat back and went through an entire day thinking of all the useful things that could be made offline from basic marketing consulting to cool scripts and so forth. The ideas didn't stop flowing, and now I'm much more motivated to focus more on this.

I've witnessed first hand how powerful looking offline can be for your business, and I highly suggest you do the same. I know I'll be doing it alongside you a lot more.

Recruiting an intern / coaching student

2007-08-25T03:16:00.000-05:00

I wanted to give one or two of you an inside look at product creation with me. Many of you might not know this, but at any given point, I have well over a dozen projects in the works from scripts and guides to membership sites and various websites.

An inside look at how a product is created (how we pick an area, research it, create it, etc.) and then marketed can drastically help someone duplicate such results for themselves. It will teach you better than any ebook or coaching plan can.

I'm in the middle of exploring a few new areas for some projects, and I thought it would be a great time to take on one or two interns ... or apprentices if you're a Star Wars fan.

All that I require is a little work on your part -- probably no more than a couple of hours a week. You can have virtually no skills and you'd still be fine for this. For instance, I might have you research a certain area where I've considered creating a new product. Of course, website design or programming skills are always a plus, they definitely aren't needed.

What's the pay? Zilch ... other than experience. I was going to grab a few interns from a local university, but I thought it would be fun to give some of my readers a chance too.

However, for the record, I have been known to be generous with cash bonuses during launches for those who have contributed to any of the projects in a significant way. And yes, there is always the possibility of more paid work later, but I'm not trying to encourage you to sign up because of that.

You will learn a lot from this, get an inside look, and drastically help your own business. I can promise you that.

To join, simply e-mail me at briankoz [at] gmail.com and tell me a bit about yourself, what your skills are (again, no regular internet marketing skills is okay), how much time you can devote (I want at least two hours a week), etc.

I can't take on everyone (I wish I could), but I can promise you that I will review all submissions and give an equal chance to everyone.

Unique Opportunity to grab an entire established website, domain name, and product ... with a twist!

2007-08-22T00:04:00.000-05:00

Not too long ago, I was approached by an individual who wanted to purchase a website of mine. Now, I knew that I could have accepted the offer and made a quick profit, but an idea hit me...

Why not turn this whole scenario into an example for others, as well as an opportunity to demonstrate how anyone can market a product well?!?

I thought of selling it as an auction and offering the extra publicity of being mentioned in a big upcoming guide, a seminar, and a few sites as a sort of bonus, but I knew that I really wanted to not only show how someone could make money from selling a website, but also how someone could profit from starting with a site, product, etc. from scratch.

I soon realized that I would be excluding a lot of people if I set it up as a pure auction or at a standard price, so I developed a solution to that which you'll soon hear about.

I'm putting up JS2Html.com -- its website, domain name, and the product itself -- for auction with a twist. The twist is that you'll not only have to e-mail me your offer at briankoz [at] gmail.com, but you should also include a brief sentence or two about why you think you'd be a good candidate for this site or what you think you could do to make yourself more money off of it. The catch is that the winner might not necessarily be the top bidder.

I'll decide to accept the bid if I like what I hear and think that you'd be a good example to demonstrate and mentor (if you wish) into marketing that site on a larger sale.

Now, JS2Html has been very profitable for me with very little marketing on my part. It provides sales by itself without any marketing due to some nice natural search engine rankings, as well as super cheap PPC ads (far under a dollar a day budget). But I haven't done nearly as much as I could have done to promote it. Instead of me focusing on marketing that, I wanted to focus on two things -- demonstrating the product creation process to the point of selling a site, as well as how ANYONE can market a site and make some nice dough without the aid of huge mailing lists, big JV's, etc.

I will be mentioning this in at least one upcoming guide, a seminar I'll be speaking at, etc. On top of that, I will be offering my mentoring services for free to the winner.

In addition, I'm offering some insane bonuses. If the winning bid is at least $5,000 (that's a steal for an established website already bringing in money), you'll also get to take advantage of an upcoming service of mine and get a custom written ebook on any topic of your choice, a website sales page with custom graphics, and a copywritten sales page for absolutely free. So that's two products for an insanely low offer.

If the winning bid is close to $10,000, you'll still get that custom ebook package deal, but you'll also get a free custom script/program package thrown in there to bring your own small to medium size script idea to life and also get your own website, graphics, and sales page written for that as well (that's three products with websites for the price that is incredibly low just for the JS2Html deal).

And lastly, if the bid is over $10,000, you'll get all of the other bonuses PLUS custom web 2.0 marketing specifically for the product of your choice all done for you by a fellow marketing buddy of mine specializing in web 2.0 promoting. This will include custom made videos, blogs, directory submissions, squidoo lenses, etc. all done for you. In fact, this along could skyrocket something like JS2Html for you.

This is the deal of a lifetime, and remember, not only will you get a ton of exposure, but you also have the chance to grab this deal even if you can't afford it. Remember, I'm still giving anybody the chance to enter this contest/auction if they can tell me what they'd do or why I should choose them.

So if you're interested and want to take advantage of this super unique offer, e-mail me at briankoz [at] gmail.com.

Find your buddy!

2007-08-21T00:44:00.000-05:00

When you were a kid, do you remember taking swimming lessons and learning about all the safety rules when swimming? If so, you probably remember something about always having a swimming buddy.

In internet marketing, the same rules apply, but you should try to have as many swimming buddies as possible. You never know when one might save you from drowning or help you in some other way.

But here's the trick -- don't necessarily try to partner up with the biggest names in your industry. That's awesome if you can pull that off, but most of them won't give you a second of their time. Instead, try to find people around the same level as you. There definitely is power in numbers, and it very well could be the very thing that gets you noticed.

So where is your swimming buddy?

Monopolize Your Market

2007-08-14T14:06:00.000-05:00

Many smart marketers talk about putting affiliate links in your products to make a little money as a backend even after you sell your product and make your initial money. That can be a smart move, as it will bring in even more money for you than just selling your product alone.

However, there is something else you should consider -- creating your own backends and monopolizing everything you can in your market. For instance, if they buy your product and you want to recommend something to them that would be very easy for you to do yourself, take the extra time and do it yourself so you keep 100% of the profits instead of your normal 50% cut.

Or if you are looking for other backends as an affiliate, take a few minutes to think what you could possibly do yourself to create your own backends that you'd control 100%.

The beauty here is that you can then turn around and make those backends frontends if you feel that they are good enough. This simple tip can drastically increase your profits and ensure that you get the most money from your customers that they're willing to dish out.

24 Hour Profits Challenge

2007-07-27T18:30:00.000-05:00

So many people talk about making x amount of money in 20 days, 90 days, or whatever. Some of those can be very insightful, but I'm prepared to do something even better. I'm giving myself a 24 hour challenge.

I'm going to start from scratch, come up with a concept (perhaps a script), and market it all within 24 hours. Furthermore, I'm going to only spend a couple of hours actually creating the product -- the rest of the time will be focused on gathering up a few quick affiliates, putting a quick site together, and doing any other marketing strategy that I can think of.

And to make this a REAL example, I'm not going to use anything that your average joe won't have access to.

I have a feeling that I'll break four figures within the first 24 hours, and hopefully five figures within the first week ... but we'll just have to wait and see. Stay tuned for more details...

Don't forget the backend!

2007-07-25T04:26:00.000-05:00

No, I'm not talking about THAT backend. I'm talking about backend sales to your existing products or websites. If you're selling a $12 product, you should always have at least something lined up as a backend, or a higher upsell. Sometimes it's not a bad idea to have more than one backend.

Many marketers often forget this. I know that I certainly have many times.

Here's a great live example of one I'm working on myself. I have a great guide in the works that deals with affiliate marketing. Most people would stop right there and after making those sales, they'd be happy. Instead, I not only plan on grabbing my customers' e-mail addresses to promote further future launches to, but I also plan on having a related membership site with a ton of affiliate tools.

Since these are buyers of an affiliate marketing guide, I can bet that many of them might be interested in having more tools for affiliate marketing. And since they'd already be dishing out money for my front-end guide, I can also assume that many of them trust me enough to also dish out some more for a quality membership site on the same topic.

Simple things like that can double your earnings, if not more. All of a sudden a simple $12 guide can turn into hundreds of dollars for a single buyer.

I've learned this the hard way over time, and now I try to almost always have at least one backend/upsell before doing any significant launch.

Just something to keep in mind.

SiteStealer Review and Awesome Bonus!

2007-07-17T14:57:00.000-05:00

I just got back from speaking at the Midwest Internet Marketing Seminar this past weekend. I met a lot of great people -- both expert marketers and newcomers alike. Tons of ideas were bounced off of each other, and I know everyone walked away with some great new ideas.

http://pinurl.com/stealer

One of the gentlemen I met, who also was a speaker, was Harris Fellman. Let me tell you, he's one of the funniest marketers I've ever met. On top of being funny, he also has some awesome ideas and has risen the ranks of internet marketers fairly quick.

He has a new guide where he teaches all about stealing sites. Now, don't let that make you think that he's doing something illegal or unethical -- he's not.

http://pinurl.com/stealer

The concept is an awesome one and easily allows you to pract ically "steal" profitable products and sites at little to no cost. Now, how do I know that this concept is great? Unlike most marketers, I actually saw Harris Fellman in person present the whole idea in front of me, as well as saw the great package he put together.

On top of that, what he does here is very similar to a concept that I've been using on Ebay and writing a guide about. It's not identical, but it's along the same line of thinking, and I personally know that it works great. I've also seen several of the gurus practice this same idea.

http://pinurl.com/stealer

Now, I know several other marketers are throwing out bonuses of irrelevant guides, tips, or other junk, but the bonus I have here for you is one you'll definitely want to take me up on.

I have a guide that is close to being done (scheduled for this week) on a similar concept with Ebay. It's not the same idea, so you won't be able to apply Fellman's guide right off the bat to Ebay. However, with my extra bonus report, you'll have your eyes wide open to a whole new idea that perhaps could be MUCH easier for some of you.

Simply e-mail me a copy of your receipt once you've purchased, and I'll send you a free copy of my upcoming Ebay guide.

http://pinurl.com/stealer

The seminar aftermath

2007-07-17T14:38:00.000-05:00

Wow, I had a blast at the Midwest Internet Marketing Seminar (now called the Masters Seminar). I gave a great presentation talking about two methods I use a lot in internet marketing that work wonders, effectively giving everyone sneak peaks at three of my upcoming projects.

There were at least three tips I gave that could bring in hundreds of dollars with only five minutes of work or less if applied well, and everyone seemed shocked at how easy it was. But enough about me and my projects -- you'll hear more about them soon.

I just wanted to say that if you haven't gone to an internet marketing seminar yet, you really should. I'm not saying you have to start out at a $5,000 per ticket seminar, but there are plenty of reasonably priced ones to check out. I know Ross Goldberg and I are putting on another one in six months that we're working out the details on soon.

I not only met the other speakers there and learned a few things that will surely help my online business, but I also met tons of other people attending and learned even more from them. It's amazing at how many different projects and ideas most of these people have. One fellow I met gave me two new ideas that I know will definitely at least double or triple my earnings for a future project of mine.

I also walked away with a few new JV offers (both ways), a couple joint projects, tons of great friends, and TONS of new ideas.

Stay tuned for my video presentation and how to grab the entire seminar on DVD soon.

A few upcoming launches -- now with dates

2007-07-06T06:53:00.000-05:00

After a few delays, I've finally set some dates to some future launches coming up. Since I'll be speaking at the Midwest Internet Marketing Seminar, I wanted to get a few of my newer projects done by then. Well, a few people (and myself) are busily at work and going to launch a few neat sites next week and the week after (visitors to the seminar will see a sneak preview).

I'm really excited that it's hard for me to hold back on an exciting new concept that I developed for one of those sites, which will give you an advantage that only the big names have had until now. Unlike other launches, it won't need any hype or false promises to get you to purchase it.

More on that soon!

1and1 Hosting now offering mailing lists and accepting Paypal!

2007-06-29T09:57:00.000-05:00

You might know that I'm a big fan of 1and1 hosting for several reasons. They're not only incredibly cheap, but they offer more features and bonuses than any other host I've ever seen. Perhaps that's why they're the largest web host in the world (that also reassures me that they're not going to disappear overnight).

If you've read my past reviews of them, you'd know that they offer hundreds of dollars in pay-per-click advertising credits for free, free domain names, hundreds of dollars worth of software (and good software, like GoLive for website editing, which normally costs a few hundred alone -- believe me, I paid a few hundred for it before knowing about this!), etc..

Whether you're going for shared hosting or a dedicated server, I've never seen their offers beat by any host out there (and their support rocks too -- other hosts don't even offer support for VPS or dedicated servers).

Now that I'm done bragging about them, I just wanted to announce that 1and1 is now accepting Paypal payments, which is big news for a lot of people who either only use Paypal or just prefer paying everything with their Paypal accounts.

On top of that, 1and1 hosting also announced that they've added a mailing list feature to their packages (for free). You can now have up to five separate mailing lists where you can put pre-made sign up forms on your websites, import e-mail addresses if you wish, and mail out your list as many times as you wish.

This is great news for those who don't want to drop a small fortune on autoresponders just yet, but who still want to take advantage of mailing lists. I still recommend GetResponse for marketers who are more serious about getting into autoresponders and mailing lists (it's really the best bet you can do), but I know that not everyone wants to spend that much right away or jump into it that much right off the bat.

So if you don't have a web host yet, or if you want to upgrade to a better one, I highly suggest checking out 1and1 Hosting right now (some of their plans are under $5 a month and still include a couple of free domain names, PPC credits, software, etc.). But if you want to have a killer combination of a host and an autoresponder, check out 1and1 and GetResponse together.

Article Marketing -- Conspiracy or Legit?

2007-06-23T14:10:00.000-05:00

I should warn you that what you're about to read might be very controversial for some of you. Afterall, many of you have been taught the opposite, and many big name internet marketers are more than happy to convince you that what you know is indeed a fact. I want to encourage you to read what I have to say here with an open mind and a little bit of logic and reasoning.

If you've been doing online marketing for more than a day, you've probably heard about article marketing (writing articles to submit to article directories in hopes of getting some traffic, links, and the article itself ranked well in the search engines). There are tons of guides out there on it, as well as several gurus swearing by their success.

Some entire internet marketing techniques (even some very popular ones) are based solely on article marketing.

There are TONS of PLR membership sites that hand out articles, thousands of writers willing to ghost write articles for you, etc.. Clearly article marketing is here to stay, and there are a lot of people who might not like what I'm about to say due to them making money on what's widely believed.

If you ask a real SEO expert about article marketing, you'll find that many of them don't like it too much. Sure, you CAN get some links, even some traffic from it, but you're always trying to get readers of that article to go to your site (so you can make a sale, get a subscriber to your mailing list, or do whatever you want to do with the visitors to your site).

Here's a thought -- instead of focusing so much on article marketing and submitting those articles to tons of article directories, why not ONLY write those articles for your own website?

Instead of being happy with 5% of your article readers visiting your site, you can get 100% of them.

Oh but wait! You might say that submitting your articles to directories gets them ranked better. This is sometimes true, but it's almost always a short term gain. This is because the search engines visit such directories a lot more and are able to crawl them faster. If you're a bit patient, you can still get ranked very well (if not the same or better) if you target the right keywords and can be a bit patient. The long term gain can be quite substantial -- it's not even funny how big of a difference you might see.

If you bring this up in any forum, a lot of people will lash out at you for even suggesting this, as too many people have their hands deeped in profits by selling guides or services that revolve around article marketing. Go ahead, try it and see what happens. :)

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that article marketing has no benefits or that you should never do it. If you want to get a site indexed fast, submitting one or two articles with a link can surely help speed things up. With some short term marketing strategies, it can even be beneficial to take advantage of the temporary search engine hike.

Putting up articles on directories is also far easier for some people who don't even have a website or blog (although seriously -- if that's you, you need to learn to make one -- it's really quite easy once you get the hang of it), so it might be a good solution for you.

If you need to, sure, you can rewrite your own site's articles for directories, but why not spend that time providing more content for your own site.

Here are a few advantages of writing articles mainly just for your own site:

You add more and more content exclusive to your site.
100% of the readers end up at your site, instead of 5% to 10% clicking through to it.
You can advertise whatever you want on it -- have affiliate links, banner ads, etc..
Over time, you'll be able to hold search engine rankings better.
You have complete control over it!

If you really are set on article marketing, I'll suggest you do something VERY easy that can often bring in far more traffic (and better links) than article directories: Submit one or two exclusive articles to targeted sites and tell them that they can use it anyway they want, as long as you get a simple link back. About.com is a good place to look for relevant niches that might want to show your articles. This works better than most people might think. I've gotten thousands of visitors in the past (and even to this day) from ten to fifteen minutes of work I put into writing one article.

And if you still want to do article marketing, I'm NOT suggesting that you completely stop. There are still some nice benefits to doing it. I'm merely suggesting that you focus more on your own sites/blogs with those articles.

If you don't believe me, look at many of the big name internet marketers out or big name websites out there and see how often they distribute articles to directories. If some of them promote it so much, surely they should have hundreds to thousands of articles in the directories by now, right?!?!

Any comments are always welcome!

Differences between making a little extra money, a full time income, and BIG money

2007-06-22T11:17:00.000-05:00

There are tons of people making money online. That's a fact. The difference is that most people are only making a little money here and there. Surely there are still those making a full-time income online, but they're only a few in the big pond of internet marketing. Even more rare is the marketer making HUGE money online.

Well, I'm a strong believer that if you can make a few bucks online, you can make the big money in time if you follow the right steps. Unfortunately, most people don't do these easy steps to turn their little extra online income to a full-time income and then to the big money.

I've helped tons of customers of my guide, The Big Secret, and I've seen several success stories (check out this thread to see reviews for The Big Secret from IWantPennies.com). However, even there, I see several people being content with their new side income and not even bothering to turn that into even more.

I've seen people making $500 or even $1,000 extra a month and being VERY happy with that. Sadly, many of those people are making that money with implementing this with just one out of hundreds to thousands of possibilities.

You might say "Why is that sad, Brian? That's great!" Well, it's great that they had that success, but they stop and don't try duplicating or expanding after that! That's the big key!

People start making money with something, get happy with the results, and move onto a new project. The key not only is to repeat what works, but to also expand what works as well.

Here are the differences between four types of people trying to make money online.

People making little to no money online -- these types of people often do one of two things. They stick with what doesn't work and keep beating a dead horse using the same methods that never worked for them before without analyzing how they could improve about it, or they start doing one thing and give up on it to move to the next without investing enough time and research into it.

People making a nice little side income -- often times, people who make just a little get content with what they make and never bother to improve upon their methods and don't bother with repeating the same results over and over ... let alone trying to expand into other areas.

Full time online marketers -- many full time marketers do one of two things. They either take what worked for them and keep improving upon it (to make more and more), or they repeat the same thing that worked for them over and over again. Most full time marketers also learn to take action, do some outsourcing, and at least establish some business relationships.

People making BIG money online -- these are a rare breed, but the success isn't anything complicated. They not only always improve upon their existing income streams (analyzing what works, what doesn't, etc.) and repeat what works for them, but they're also always looking to expand into other areas of online marketing. They aren't content with just making a good full-time income online and sticking to their profit streams -- they always look into investing their earnings back into the business and exploring several other streams of income. They don't just repeat what works for them, but they take it to a new level by exploring several more income sources at once. On top of that, they are masters of outsourcing, establishing friendships with other marketers (this is HUGE), etc..

The best news is that it doesn't matter where you stand currently. It might take some time and practice, but by establishing these steps, you can literally be wherever you want to be. So take action, analyze what works and what doesn't, improve upon your existing income streams (once you get them if you don't have any already), repeat what works, expand upon what works, explore new income streams, establish friendships with other marketers, and then eventually look into outsourcing when you can afford it.

Imagine what those people making $500 or $1,000 a month could do if they just repeated what worked and expanding upon that even more.

Some good news and some bad news

2007-06-21T15:41:00.000-05:00

I know I promised a launch any day almost a week ago. However, it has been temporarily delayed (we're aiming for the end of this month for the first one). My wife recently got into an accident with our car, so we've been dealing with a range of things from getting it fixed, talking to insurance, seeing a doctor for her, etc.. Luckily, no one was seriously hurt (just some whiplash and bruises), but it definitely wasn't a good time to do a big launch.

However, here's the good news! There are huge updates for two of my upcoming launches. I've been talking to another big marketer about teaming up and combining two of our upcoming projects into one to give you an all-inclusive super deal. It won't add too much more time, but the end result will be amazing -- more news on that later.

And in regards to my launch that is right around the corner (this one truly is a first of its kind), I decided since the launch was delayed a bit, that I'd take the time to add a few more bonuses and features to it, as well as to reduce the price even more so virtually everyone should be able to afford it. In fact, I might even be losing money on people right off the bat, but you'll see why I'm doing it soon.

If you run a membership site, don't do this

2007-06-11T16:10:00.000-05:00

Some people say that the latest craze is membership sites. Sure, there are tons of advantages to them for the owners -- reoccurring monthly payments (more steady cash flow), active lists of customers, easy way to have a great connection with them, easy access to affiliates, plenty of opportunities to sell other related products or upsell, etc..

As a customer, there can also be several advantages to joining a membership site as well -- usually monthly downloads or services, active support (usually), tightly knit communities to participate together on common goals, usually cheaper monthly prices compared to a high one-time charge, etc..

A lot of internet marketers are coming out with new membership sites. Heck, even I have a few in the works! However, one thing that many people need to realize is that membership sites take work, and you need to encourage your members to stay, as they can cancel whenever they want.

I've seen one too many marketers create a good initial package, but they then slack on the membership part. It almost seems as though instead of creating a simple one time product, they try to throw on a membership to it as well just for the heck of it. It doesn't work like that, and they are losing even more sales by being stupid about it.

Sure, their initial greed might get them some extra money to start with for the first few months, but most customers are smart and will unsubscribe later and run away from any other site or product that person might ever sell.

Recently, I joined a subscription based membership for a few reasons -- it was run by some well known internet marketers, it had some good products, the bonuses were actually useful (unlike other worthless bonuses that many sites give out), and it promised new products on an ongoing basis.

This site also got a ton of publicity at first. Well, to be honest, I thought two of its main products were okay at best. Other competition out there had done a far better job. However, I stayed on because they had several other smaller tools that I found useful, as it would save me time in my own efforts.

So although the start of it was a bit disappointing, I thought I'd hang in there to give them a chance. First month -- nothing new. Second month -- still no more promised products. Third month -- nada. And this whole time, I've been receiving e-mails from them about their new launches. The funny thing is that this membership was suppose to include most new product launches?!?! I haven't seen one yet.

Fourth month -- still nothing, and I called it quits and was quite disappointed. If I was a normal customer, I would have been long since gone after the first or second month, but I stayed on just for kicks to put them to the test. Sure, the membership wasn't all too expensive, but the point is that they were practically stealing money from me without giving me anything in return but broken promises.

Now they not only lost me as a customer, but I won't be even looking at any of their future launches. There were one too many broken promises in their one here. On top of that, they have a zero chance of ever getting me to promote their products or give them a favorable review. If they just followed through on their promises, I would have put in a good word on at least some of their products (because some of the smaller ones really were useful, despite the two main ones being mostly useless compared to other products out there).

So, if you plan on creating a membership site, follow through on your promises, give them a reason to stay a member, and make them feel that they're getting far more than their money's worth. You can't just view them as money bags, or your site will die faster than a fish out of water.

Simple trick to easy money ... with some patience (and an update on upcoming launches)

2007-06-07T10:04:00.000-05:00

Most people looking to make money online want quick, easy money. Although such a thing does exist, it's not easy for everybody to get. A much easier approach is to be a little patient and do things that will pay off in the long run.

One easy thing to do is as follows:

1. Sign up for any affiliate program (Clickbank is perhaps one of the easiest with lots of options, but there are tons out there) that interests you.

2. Set up a basic webpage or a single blog post (note that I said webpage or blog post -- not an entire website or blog) targeting one specific affiliate product.

3. Target extremely easy, non-competitive keywords. Most people say to target things that are under 100,000. I say to make it even easier! Target things that are less than a few thousand (without using quotes in the search engine search) results, with only a small handful (less than ten or so) with quotes. You can do this research the normal way by going to the search engine and thinking of search terms that people might use. Don't rely on all the keyword tools out there, as none of them will report all of the keyword terms used ... especially the less popular ones.

If you want to save some time (like me), you can also enter in a bunch of keywords by hand (and also search for new keywords) using a tool like Niche Inspector to look up the results of multiple keywords at the same time. Although I encourage you to use it to find new keywords as well, you also want to come up with several keywords yourself (especially long tailed keywords) as no keyword tool can give you everything, but Niche Inspector will still show you the results with and without quotes.

4. Now just sit back and wait. If you made a blog post on a blog, be sure to ping it to let the search engine crawlers know about your update. Pingoat.com is one of my favorites (and yes, pinging is free for those new to this). If you choose to do a webpage instead, be sure to either link from it from your main page, or have a link some place else that the search engines can follow (a link in a forum signature, on other blogs, at the end of an article submitted to an article directory, etc.).

5. Okay, now you can really sit back and wait! You won't get hundreds overnight, but for the five to ten minutes it will take you to do this (once you get the hang of it), you can literally take in hundreds of dollars in the long run.

I've used this exact same technique and have gotten hundreds to thousands of dollars from only a few minutes of work. When you do this several times over, it really adds up fast. Best of all, this is an extremely EASY technique that anyone can use, and it doesn't have to cost you a dime to do it.

Now, I know several of you are anxious about my two upcoming launches. I can leak out this -- one will be launched any day now ... and by any day, I literally mean within the next few days tops. Nothing has been done like this before, and I'm very excited to launch the first of its kind.

The second launch we're pessimistically dating at mid-July, although it could be much sooner if things go well. This second launch will be featuring a ton of never-before-seen affiliate marketing tools that can literally skyrocket your earnings if you use them well. There's a lot more to it, but you'll have to wait and see.

But wait, some of you are probably saying "but Brian, why tell us what the second launch is about without telling us more about the first one due any day now???" The reason is because it's such a new idea that it would be hard to explain it all without showing it to you. Oh, and to add to the mystery, it's priced so low that I could very well be losing money initially on it. But then again, the goal isn't to make money off of it initially ... the goal is to build the first and the biggest ..... ..... of ....... and .......

Let's just say that the major advantage that many big marketers have will be taken away, trampled on, beaten with an ugly stick, set on fire, and given a new home court advantage ... to you.

And if you think that's exciting, just wait until the second launch when the ninjas with flaming swords and laser-shooting eyes jump into the chaos as well to give you an even larger advantage than ... well ... ninjas with flaming swords and laser-shooting eyes would have against a 90-year-old lady in a fight to the death. Yeah, that's what it will be like ... well, sort of. :)

The big move

2007-05-29T13:07:00.001-05:00

As some of you might already know, I'm currently moving to a new place (just down the road from where I live now). I'll have a much larger office and a new lounge/conference room on top of that! I'm definitely excited.

On top of that, we're also getting a new server for some of our upcoming sites. So there are two big moves happening now actually.

But here's the exciting part -- at least one of my big launches will happen any day now to celebrate the move in, and the other one is only a couple of weeks away. Both are unlike anything you've ever seen online, and the opportunities will be huge.

This is sure to shake up the internet marketing community when they launch.

Stay tuned...

Brian

Midwest Internet Marketing Seminar

2007-05-25T20:36:00.000-05:00

This summer on July 14th and 15th of 2007, there will be the first ever Midwest Internet Marketing Seminar hosted in Madison, Wisconsin (my hometown!). I'll even be speaking at it myself, and there are a ton of other experts lined up ranging from SEO experts and copywriters to JV brokers and all kinds of businessmen (and one businesswomen!).

I can't even begin to explain how critical it is to attend at least one or two seminars to get the opportunity to network with others in your field. It can literally skyrocket your earnings just with that ability alone.

The information, freebies, and food are just added bonuses as well.

Unlike other seminars, this won't be one big sales pitch. There will be tons of new and useful information, opportunities to interact with the speakers, and so much more.

Even though most seminars cost several hundred to thousands of dollars (with no food!), this one is different. It is at a price that is almost a steal so that everyone can afford this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet so many great speakers at such a lower price.

On top of that, I was able to work out a deal for my blog readers to offer you your choice of one of two deals.

You can either get two tickets for the price of one (bring a friend or split the cost with someone) by going to www.midwestimseminars.com and e-mailing Ross after your purchase, or you can save $50 on a single ticket by purchasing it at www.midwestimseminars.com/deal.html.

I know that many of you are hesitant to attend a seminar in-person, but believe me, you won't be disappointed. If you can take a weekend trip to Madison, Wisconsin for two days (I'd be happy to show some of you around), you shouldn't miss this opportunity.

When I first started out in internet marketing, I know that I would pass up on an offer like this. However, I can now tell you that doing so would have been a huge mistake. The contacts you make might very well be your most valuable business asset. I don't care if you're a newcomer to online marketing or an experienced marketer -- you need to jump on these opportunities.

Following through

2007-05-24T08:58:00.001-05:00

I've been in internet marketing long enough to notice several people rise up from the crowds to make a substantial income online, as well as people who fall back into that crowd desperately trying to make money but never really getting any where.

The difference isn't just a stroke of dumb luck (although some do get lucky now and then). The difference is that the successful marketers follow through and stick with their dream, while others give up the second things don't go right.

Failure is a fact of life that will happen over and over again. The smart marketer learns from failure and comes out with an improved idea in hopes of eventually hitting it right, and if you stick to it, you will eventually get it right. From there, it's just a matter of duplicating your results.

One thing that has really bothered me is when I see someone get upset with how they just can't seem to make any money within the first few hours of trying something. They try blaming everything and everyone except themselves. They then move on to the next "big idea" and never follow through on anything.

The ironic thing is that often times, the reasons that they aren't making any money is usually just one or two easy fixes that if they just asked for help on or researched a little, they would have probably been able to profit nicely off of. Even customers of my popular marketing guide, The Big Secret, who don't get it right the first time and contact me, I can usually fix their problems within minutes -- they usually forget to do this or that, and it's very easy for me to help them.

So my point is this -- if you want to succeed at anything, you need to stick with it and follow through. Don't jump from one project to the next in hopes of making a quick buck and giving up if you don't, as you'll never learn that way. It's a simple lesson, but not many people listen to it.

Get tons of highly targeted traffic for free

2007-05-18T20:18:00.000-05:00

Here's a little tip that not many people do, yet it can be incredibly powerful. Instead of submitting every article you write to dozens of article directories, consider writing a few unique ones for specific authority sites like About.com or other popular sites in your niche.

Most of these sites are always looking for free content, and if you offer them quality articles (not just promoting your stuff), you'd be surprised at how many will feature your article along with a link to your site. You can even go a step further and offer them to use it any way they see fit (even allow them to take credit for it) as long as they keep your link intact.

I've done this and should definitely be doing this a lot more after seeing great results with it. For some articles, I easily get 100 or more visitors each week. Over the course of only a few months, I've easily received well over 2,500 visitors from this one article (not including others who may have seen the article and remembered the site without clicking the link).

This isn't bad for ten minutes of work, is it? I'm amazed at how many people overlook this. Too many people are obsessed with sending their articles to as many directories as possible, even if the majority of them will never give them more than a small handful of visitors (if even that).

You can take this concept here to an even bigger picture and offer to write free articles for magazines, newspapers, and other publications. The method works incredibly well.

You can buy a $50 guide on getting free traffic that won't work nearly as well as this little tip right here. And since you're a reader of my blog, I won't even charge you a penny for it.

Convert Javascript to Html -- a world of possibilities

2007-05-17T11:04:00.000-05:00

I just released a simple, yet very powerful tool called JS2Html (no this isn't one of the two BIG launches happening this month). JS2Html simply converts any javascript feed to search engine friendly html.

This tool doesn't sound so special due to its simplicity, but in reality, it opens up a world of possibilities. Javascript feeds can be used to do anything from get an automatically updated list of articles with summaries or even entire articles to affiliate merchant feeds with new affiliate links or even entire websites created from a single line of javascript code.

There wasn't much of a javascript craze (unlike the popular RSS frenzy that happened not too long ago) simply because the search engines can't read javascript, so there wasn't any search engine ranking benefit to it.

Now things have changed, since JS2Html can convert virtually any javascript feed (these are incredibly easy to find doing a standard Google search) to search engine friendly html.

Smart marketers will realize how powerful this truly is, and I hope that this new tool will start a new craze even more powerful than the old RSS one.

Check out JS2Html now to see how converting javascript feeds to html can literally allow you to create instant, auto-updating websites in seconds.

A lesson from the mafia

2007-05-11T07:28:00.000-05:00

If you're starting a website or creating a new product, chances are that you'll find several other sites competing with you. You might even find yourself having not only fans, but critics as well.

Now is the time to learn a lesson from the mafia. No, I'm not talking about beating your competition into submission or doing a drive-by. Essentially, you can put your competition on your payroll.

You can do this one of several ways. You can hire them for their own services that they offer, work out deals where you can both benefit each other, advertise on their site if you can (or even through Adsense), and so forth.

If you're hiring them for some work, they're far less likely to bash your site or try to compete as much against you. In essence, it's all about turning your enemies/competition into your business partners or friends.

What do you need to succeed online?

2007-05-03T01:17:00.000-05:00

That's the question -- what do you need to succeed online? I don't care if you're just starting out or if you're an experienced marketer. I want you to leave a comment telling me what it is that you think you lack and that you need to make more money online. I think many people will realize that it's really simpler than it seems.

What about a website? An info-product? Perhaps a mailing list? Perhaps a team of writers working for you? Maybe even a few marketers and a small budget would help? Have I missed anything?

Because if I have, please tell me, as I have some exciting news for you. I'm keeping this on the down-low and no one outside of you and others reading my blog will know about this (besides the people working on it with me of course). I'm about to launch a project that will give you EVERYTHING you'll need to succeed online.

And best of all, my business model is setup so that I might very well initially be losing money on this great new launch. That's right, I'm not in this to make money ... not just yet, and you'll soon see why. A new form of marketing will be announced by me in the near future. Perhaps even in the next week or two.

Stay tuned...

Niche Inspector Review

2007-04-25T00:26:00.000-05:00

I've been using a product called Niche Inspector for the past while. It has been out for the past month or so, but it hasn't really been promoted much by many of the big names because it was made by a less known marketer, Myleena Phan. I wanted to thoroughly test it and compare it to other tools before mentioning it on this blog or to my list.

I want to start by saying that Niche Inspector is a useful tool that helps you find niches that might be profitable for you. What do I mean by "might be profitable?" I mean that it helps you figure out which niches are searched more without having much competition in the major search engines. You can also look up the number of Adwords ads, the average price per click, and much more.

All of this is very useful regardless if you're looking to start an Adsense site or any other type of site out there. It can not only help you find profitable niches, but it can also help reduce your costs in Adwords (and help your campaigns) by finding terms that are searched a lot but don't already have many ads.

The filtering options are great -- you can specify for it to filter out whatever you want and easily modify it to your specifications. It's also easy to get lists of keywords easily, export or input keywords, save projects, etc.

You simply enter in a keyword that you want it to search for (or a list), and it will find other relevant keywords along with the results of the number of searches done, the results in the major search engines, ads shown, ppc price, etc. You can also specify how you want it to give results for the keywords (for instance, you can get results for keyword phrases in quotes or not in quotes -- many other keyword tools don't give you all those options).

It also has an interesting "brainstorming" feature where you don't even need to enter in any keyword for it to search. It will randomly start finding "random" niches for you, and you can filter out the results in the same way. A very nifty feature if you don't know what basic niche you want to start with.

On top of that, there is one thing that I absolutely LOVE about Niche Inspector -- it's very easy to use. In fact, it's so user-friendly that even a complete newcomer should be able to master this within a few seconds. I've never seen a tool like this that was this easy.

There are a few other similar tools out there, but I either found them lacking a few features, too hard to use for most people, or just way too expensive when compared to Niche Inspector. In fact, there are even a few tools that will give you basic results like a list of keywords with Google search results, but they aren't even close to comparable to this.

So to sum it up, I loved Niche Inspector and would highly recommend it to people looking for profitable niches that are easier to get ranked in the search engines for. If you know me (or are on my mailing list), you know that I rarely recommend or review many tools simply because I only recommend the best. If you use it, take action, and start plugging out a few websites, I'm sure you'll be earning some extra money in no time.

You can also click here to download her free report on niche marketing -- it's one of the best free reports I've seen.

When a guru recommends something way ahead of time...

2007-04-24T11:30:00.000-05:00

When an internet marketing guru, or anyone that runs a mailing list you're subscribed to, recommends a product a week ahead of time before the actual launch, you should be careful. Sure, some of them get to check out the product ahead of time, but many people just glance it over (some don't even do that) and shoot it off to their lists for a quick buck.

The advantage to them is that they can be the first to recommend it to you. The disadvantage to you is that you don't know how well the product is viewed in the eyes of everyday people testing it out, as it's too early to get real reviews on it.

I take a different approach to writing reviews. I review things thoroughly before I even think of recommending them -- my reputation is one the line and I don't want to recommend a crappy product just for a quick buck. That's precisely why you don't see me promoting many other products out there.

But after saying this, I want to say that I have a few great upcoming reviews on products that I now personally use and love. They might have been out for a month or two, but they passed my testing! Ironically, they're also not the most expensive products out there with huge commissions -- they're cheap alternatives that work great! Stay tuned!

1and1 Hosting -- Practically Free Money

2007-04-20T01:48:00.000-05:00

There's literally a great opportunity to get practically free money and bonuses right now at 1and1 hosting. They're not only offering 25% off their hosting packages, but they're also throwing in a ton of free bonuses like Adwords, MSN, and other PPC credits going up to several hundred dollars in credits in total for free!

On top of that, you can get a ton of great software shipped to you only for the cost of shipping and handling (under $7 I believe total -- not per software piece). They're even giving away the newest version of Adobe Golive, an awesome website editor that normally costs several hundred dollars.

Folks, you won't come across a better deal like this for a LONG time. It's practically giving you money with all the free software and credits, and even a complete newcomer should be able to take advantage of this -- they even have some great website editors built in with no html required.

If you're looking for a hosting account, or even if you already have one, I'd highly recommend checking out this deal from 1and1 before it ends. For most people, I'd recommend the Home or Business package, each of which comes with free domain names (3 in the case of the business package). Both are insanely cheap even without this special.

I previously reviewed 1and1 and highly recommend them, so this opportunity I really wanted to point out.

Outsourcing? Consider this...

2007-04-14T10:40:00.000-05:00

So many people these days are going to the big freelance sites where you can hire programmers, designers, writers, etc. often for fairly cheap. Even though there's nothing wrong with this (I've even used some myself), it can be very hard to find quality workers at times. On top of that, some people there tend to just steal your ideas and make it for themselves. I've even seen people talking about doing that as a strategy...

Here's something else you should think about -- your local talent! Even though newspaper ads are often very cheap, you could check your local university's website to see if they offer free classifieds. Most do, especially for job-related ads, as it serves as a useful resource for their students. Here's the thing -- if you take out a simple ad at such a place, not only will you attract talented students (where speaking English isn't a problem), but you might also attract some older talent who are just looking to make a few extra bucks.

Not only are they often fairly cheap, as they're usually just looking to make a little extra dough, but you run virtually no risk of them stealing your idea (the best idea is worthless unless it's marketed well, and most programmers aren't marketers). In fact, you can often even work it out so you pay them later, or even after you start selling it! It doesn't get much better than this.

Keywords and Keyword Tools ... A Real Secret

2007-04-05T15:56:00.000-05:00

There are tons of keyword finding tools out there. I plan on reviewing a few in the near future, but there is something that very few people truly understand. None of the keyword tools are 100% accurate. In fact, even ones by the search engines aren't even close to 100% accurate.

If you're trying to see how often a keyword is searched in a given month, use any data you get only as a rough "guess." It has been estimated in the past that nearly 50% of all the keyword searches don't show up in the tools out there. I'm guessing that it's realistically much higher than that.

So what does that mean for you? Well, it means to think about your own keywords and try to come up with some yourself. If you thought of the keyword phrases, chances are that others have or will too. I've used keywords before that all the tools out there tell me that they get no searches each month (funny how I searched for them the month prior by accident), yet I know that I get quite a few people coming to my site using those keywords ... and some are very profitable.

So sure, use some of the tools out there, but also add your own. If everyone out there is using the same set of keyword tools, you can come across a gold mine by using some of your own as well that don't show up on those tools.

New 1and1 Hosting Promo

2007-03-31T04:40:00.000-05:00

1and1 Hosting has a new promo going on for 25% off. 1and1 is one of my favorite hosts, especially for beginners because not only are they well established, but they also have perhaps the cheapest prices for the value that they offer. They should have just about everything you'd ever need, and I've used them as one of my hosts for quite some time. I've never found a cheaper web host that offers as much, especially multiple domain name hosting, for so cheap.

So I just thought I'd do a quick post to mention that this deal is currently going on. So instead of getting an excellent package at $5/month with free domain names, you can now get it for even less with this 25% off deal. Check them out!

The Age of Keyword Stuffing is Over -- Welcome LSI

2007-03-30T18:21:00.000-05:00

I've been working on writing a new guide that explains a few ranking tricks (especially on Google). Since it deals a little with LSI, or Latent Semantic Indexing, I thought I'd do a brief post here about it since it's been gaining in popularity lately.

LSI essentially means that the days of keyword stuffing are over. SEO experts in the past used to think that a certain percentage of a particular keyword was optimal if you wanted to get ranked for it. For instance, they might say that you'd need to use a particular phrase 5% of the time throughout your page. Sometimes it's very hard to do this without it appearing to be unnatural, which it is. Hardly anyone in real writing repeats the same phrases over and over again.

Real sites with real content appear more natural, and Google wants these to rank higher. As a result, they try to look at how often related keywords appear throughout the page too. For instance, the keyword "Christmas" might be associated with Santa, Christmas trees, Christmas Eve, Santa Claus, presents, etc. Or "World War II" might be associated with WWII, WW2, World War 2, Nazis, Hitler, Axis, Allies, Normandy Invasion, etc.

So instead of using the term "World War II" over and over again, you want to use it less but substitute in other terms for it and use other related keywords throughout your webpages or articles.

There are a variety of cool tools to help you with this. One such tool is this LSI keyword lookup tool -- it will offer you other terms that are found to be related to the terms you look up.

You can also go to Google and do any search, but add the ~ symbol before your search and you'll notice that Google will put related keywords in bold AND you'll get some slightly different results.

So to sum it up, pretty soon keyword stuffing will be a BIG no no (it already is, but even more so now). I've seen a few neat tools come out to help with LSI, but you should also keep in mind that it applies to more than just keywords on your page. It also applies to anchor text being used that's linking to your site and so forth. I have a much more thorough guide in the works that exploits some of these tricks, but more on that later.

But to put things in simple terms, the more natural you write, the better in the long run ... although keeping a little LSI in mind certainly might help.

Offline Advertising in Online World

2007-03-26T18:57:00.000-05:00

Many people seem to forget that you can advertise your website(s)/niche(s) outside of the internet too. Newspaper classifieds are one of the easiest ways to do this, and it can work for a variety of niches. On top of that, they're often very cheap (free to $50 for most decent size papers).

To emphasize this strategy a bit more, I will be implementing a few strategies in a live example this week to show how powerful it can be. I'll not only provide you free tips on how to grab attention, draw in customers, and make sales, but I'll also provide you with my exact results.

Instead of lecturing about how the offline world is often overlooked by online businesses (and ironically, offline businesses usually overlook online marketing), I decided to do a live example with a budget of not more than $50 to $60 -- something most people should be able to afford.

Stay tuned! And sorry for the lack of updates -- I just celebrated my daughter's 3rd birthday, so I'll get back to the marketing tips and updates over the next few days.

Adsense, prepare to die!

2007-03-20T17:25:00.000-05:00

Most people who know me know that I'm not a huge fan of Adsense. Why give your traffic to your competitors for pennies when they can profit from them? I've always loved affiliate marketing far more than Adsense, but there will be some interesting changes in the coming months that may very well all but kill Adsense how we see it today.

Google is currently testing a beta version of their CPA system, or cost-per-action. This can be anything from cost-per-sale to per-lead or a wide range of other things (like page views, other actions, etc.). In the past, some Adwords advertisers have been very hesitant with content bids (bidding to have your ad show up on other websites -- not on the Google search, which is known as search bids) due to things like click fraud, low conversions and so forth.

Personally, I rarely use content bids, and when I do, I never pay more than a penny for it -- it just isn't worth it. Google's new CPA may change all of that. You can't sign up for it yet, but I'm guessing that in the coming months you just might be able to.

Advertising through CPA or having other CPA ads on your site will almost certainly be more profitable for everyone (except those using click fraud and the like).

Unlike what others say, this certainly WON'T be the death of normal affiliate marketing, as other affiliate programs are still the best way to get specific affiliates, post links, etc. Google's CPA will most likely just be an easy way for anyone to sign up for CPA and immediately get ads displayed.

This still might not be the best idea if you want to specifically promote only certain products, as you don't want your competitors to advertise on your site still. However, for basic content pages, I have a feeling that this might be an end to the normal use of Adsense as we know it today.

I've been preaching affiliate marketing over Adsense for a long time, but I think that this will really prove my point once it comes out and we start hearing testimonies back. Remember I said this months from now.

Be realistic and you will make money and get great products

2007-03-20T03:34:00.000-05:00

One common trait I see in people failing online (and spending way more than they should) is with having too high of expectations -- not only with their own projects, but when buying tools as well.

Being realistic is the key to success. If you have plans for a great new product, how realistic is it that it will sell for what you want it to sell for? How realistic is it that you'll be able to get enough traffic? It doesn't just pop up out of nowhere. How easily can it be done on your budget? Can you even afford it?

If you're looking to buy a new tool, what are your expectations of it? Have you read any reviews on it (real reviews, not affiliates trying to make a quick sale and offer nothing but praise)? Do you really need it? Is it realistically going to help you?

And lastly, there's no such thing as a quick button to success. You can't buy a $100/month service that automatically makes "spam-like" webpages expecting to make hundreds of thousands from it. True success does require some work. There are plenty of tools that can help you along the way, but you have to be realistic about it all.

If you think you need a new research tool to help with something you need, great! But don't expect that you don't need to do at least some work on your own.

Something that I find funny is that you often see two types of people in internet marketing -- those who think that everything can be automated (like spam pages) for quick success and those who think that everything needs to be done the long and hard way. The truth is that there's a happy medium.

You can buy tools that will automate some parts of your business and make your life much easier, but the most successful businesses and websites do require at least some work. If you go into the market realizing this, you'll save a small fortune on bogus tools that make big claims with little to back them up.

You also won't jump from one "big thing" to the next "big thing," as you have to realize that success does take work. You're only setting yourself up for failure if you have too high of expectations. When you set your expectations right, you'll find a much clearer path.

I hope my rant has helped some of you -- hopefully saved some of you some money as well. I have some interesting products that I'm currently reviewing that do just this -- automate SOME parts of the harder work but still require work on your end. I'll give you more on that later!

Aweber vs GetResponse

2007-03-07T13:41:00.001-06:00

There are a ton of reviews of autoresponders like Aweber and GetResponse. Most of these reviews are outdated or extremely bias. I did an old review of autoreponders right here, but I've been noticing a lot of talk of Aweber vs Getresponse lately ... so I thought I'd address it.

As I've stated before, both of these autoresponders are excellent choices that are very reasonably priced. You can't go wrong with either of them. There are very few differences, and they're both constantly updating.

Many people have asked why so many gurus recommend Aweber while I lean a bit towards GetResponse. The problem is that most of the gurus have been around for awhile and several years ago, things were a different story.

Although GetResponse is a bit cheaper now (both for smaller and larger lists), it used to actually be the more expensive one for larger lists. Hence, why so many individuals with large lists probably didn't like it as much. Both also had minor differences. What Aweber once lacked, GetResponse would have. What GetResponse once lacked, Aweber would have. Most of these limitations that you read about on other reviews no longer exist, as both are constantly updating to better systems.

The one thing I've noticed with GetResponse is that they're always adding neat features that aren't really a necessity, but can definitely add a lot of value over time. Even recently I saw that they were going to be adding video and audio features soon. I probably won't be using these features, but it's again a nice little addition and shows that they are always making new additions.

Aweber certainly has their own features that they constantly work on too, but I believe that GetResponse often has a slight edge. Although again, both are very comparable. If you look outside of these two autoresponders, there are huge differences in the quality of the autoresponder, which is why for right now I'm not addressing other autoresponders within this price range.

I also won't go into autoresponder scripts that are one-time fees (often hosted on your own website or on your desktop), as I don't recommend those at all unless you have an extremely small list and want to risk having your site shut down (one spam accusation can go a long way). Hosted autoresponders like Aweber and GetResponse deal with these things for you, so there's not really much of a risk involved. If you get accused of such things with your own script, you're essentially screwed. If you get accused with a hosted script like GetResponse or Aweber, you don't even have to deal with it.

People often argue that Aweber claims to have a higher deliverability rate. To that I say, according to who? According to them is the answer. To be honest, it's essentially impossible to get anything even close to a 99% deliverability rate if you take every factor into account. When you test such things, you can decide on what factors you want to take into account. If you get rid of all the factors that hurt you, you can give yourself an amazing deliverability rate.

GetResponse doesn't publicly post their deliverability rates because of this reason -- anyone can claim a high rate based on their own studies. An independent study by a 3rd party for larger autoresponder companies (who deal with larger customers like big chain stores and so forth with HUGE lists) found that with all factors taken into consideration, you won't get higher than an 85% deliverability rate.

Think about it, if a mailbox is full, if someone has their spam filters set differently, etc., your e-mail won't get delivered into their inbox regardless of the autoresponder you use. It also depends greatly on how you write your messages. If you have a poorly written message that sets off spam filters, your message won't get through. If you use the same autoresponder and write another message, you might get through without any worries.

I don't think it's bad that Aweber claims their deliverability rate is so high; I just think that you have to realize that they are the ones claiming it and not a 3rd party. GetResponse could do the same thing, but it would be silly in my opinion because it's a bit misleading.

Another thing I like about GetResponse is that they have extra features, such as their service where you can buy "real" leads (not fake ones or crappy ones from other such services). With GetResponse's lead service, people actually opt-in to your offer, which is ideal. It's not just a list that is resold to you.

Because of this, you won't get all the leads instantly, but you will get them over time. To get the best out of this service, it's probably a good idea to have them set on double opt-in, so if they don't opt-in, you don't have to pay (this will give you a more responsive list).

So just to reassure everyone again, I still stand by my original review of Aweber vs GetResponse. Both are great services that you'll be happy with, but GetResponse is a little cheaper for both smaller lists and larger lists. They also have a few extra features that Aweber doesn't have, even though all of the really important features are covered by both of them extremely well.

In the end, you'll probably be more than happy with either service.

Simple tip for affiliate marketing

2007-03-02T01:24:00.000-06:00

Affiliate marketing has become pretty popular as an "easy" way to make money online without having a product, or sometimes even without having a website. Even so, it is a lot harder than it seems. However, there are plenty of tips to help along the way. I'll cover some other tips in the future, but I want to focus on one quick, easy, and very effective tip.

Contact the affiliate manager(s) or website/product owners for whatever products you might be trying to sell as an affiliate. You'd be surprised at how much extra help you can get from them. After all, they make money from you too, right?

Even multi-million to multi-billion dollar companies can have some really nice affiliate managers that will often take the time to e-mail you back. Sometimes you might even be able to work out some exclusive deals between the two of you. I certainly have before, and let me tell you, it can definitely make you stand out from the crowd of affiliates.

After I've established a relationship with them, I often will get a few exclusive deals or insider information from them just because they know I'm in contact with them. This can give me a huge edge over others.

Even if you only deal with Clickbank products and so forth, the same rules apply. Try talking to them and seeing what you can work out. You might find some sweet deals from just spending a few minutes of your time writing an e-mail.

White hat by being a black hatter?

2007-02-26T23:56:00.000-06:00

There's always a huge debate about the ethics of white hat techniques vs black hat techniques. However, so many people seem blind to the idea that black hat tools don't have to be used for black hat techniques. Have you ever thought of the simplicity of using white hat techniques with black hat tools?

If a black hat tool can do some cool tricks with articles, rss feeds, etc., who said that you have to have an auto-generated page with nothing unique? Why not use your own articles or a combination of your own articles and ones from article directories that you have permission to use? All of a sudden you're creating a completely white hat site ten times easier with black hat tools.

I should start by saying that there is no easy solution. Regardless of what you do, you will have to work at it a bit. It's not really about hard work vs no work. It's about being smart. You can be smart with minimal work and beat someone putting in 100 times the effort, but you still have to put some work into it.

If you buy a black hat tool thinking that you just have to click one button to get instant riches, you're in for a disappointment. But if you go into it thinking that you can use it for some nice white hat techniques, you're not only saving yourself time, boosting your SEO efforts, etc., but you're also making sure that your site will always stay around.

What are all of these tools? Well, that will have to wait for a future post.

New Video and Audio Feature in GetResponse?

2007-02-22T18:47:00.000-06:00

For starters, you might want to check out our review of GetResponse and Aweber. I plan on doing an updated review soon, but I still stand by my old review (since then, there are a few new features) and I'm happy with GetResponse.

Now that I've said that, I just noticed that GetResponse plans on adding audio and video into their autoresponders somehow. I've very curious to see how this turns out, but I have noticed that audio and video has been catching on more lately on several websites.

I'm still a fan of the old text/html method, but anything that can compliment a website or e-mail more might be worth looking into.

I don't like the trend of replacing writing with videos or audio, but it's not always a bad idea to try to do both if you can implement it well. I'm not quite sure of what my opinion is of this new feature that they plan on adding soon, but I'm very curious to see how this turns out.

As soon as GetResponse comes out with this, I'll be sure to report my findings.

Feel free to post your thoughts or comments in the comment section below.

Host Gator First Impression / Review / Coupons!

2007-02-22T18:08:00.000-06:00

You should never have all of your eggs in one basket, which is why I have multiple hosts. One of my current hosts that I like is 1and1hosting, which has some of the cheapest deals around that still are of great quality and all the options most of us will ever need (plus some). However, this is just one of a few different hosts I use.

Recently, I've been hearing a lot of good things about HostGator, so I decided to give them a try. They offer several different hosting plans, but I recommend going with their $9.95 plan if you go with them. They're a bit more expensive than 1and1, and they don't include free domain names and the like, but they do have a few very cool features that many hosts don't have.

One of those features is Fantastico, which is a cool tool from their cpanel (kind of like an admin panel for those who aren't familiar with what this is). Fantastico allows you to install tons of scripts with essentially a few clicks of a button. It will create the MySQL databases and all that techie stuff for you, which can save some people hours. Things like WordPress blogs, Joomla CMS, PHPBB2 forums, and dozens more can install within minutes.

Prior to this, even a techie would spend a fair amount of time getting some of these things up. It can all be done from the control panel now with virtually no work on your part. A HUGE plus on my part.

On top of that, HostGator has great support. They have a live support chat, e-mail, and a toll free phone number to use 24/7. I love the live chat support, which 1and1 does not have (they have good phone and e-mail support, though).

I'm very impressed with how good the support is and how easy Fantastico is to use. Fantastico alone is well worth the extra money. HostGator doesn't have all the extra bonuses as 1and1 like free domain names (you can get a domain name for $5.99 from 1and1 anyway and just point it to HostGator), but their support and ease of using Fantastico is well worth the extra money.

In fact, it has saved me hours upon hours already, which probably saves me at least a hundred dollars from having to hire someone to do some of that work. I still like 1and1 also, but I'm glad I got HostGator for some of my more complicated sites.

There are some other hosts that are a bit cheaper than HostGator that offer Fantastico, but all of the others I've tried have slow servers, downtime issues, and so forth (trust me on this) or they're overpriced.

HostGator Coupon: If you use this HostGator link and type in HG10 for the promo code when you order, you'll get your first month for 1 penny.

Heck, if the free domain issue is holding you back, I WILL BUY YOU A DOMAIN NAME that you can have all to yourself if you use this link to make your HostGator purchase. Just use the link and e-mail me at info@iwantpennies.com for me to confirm it.

To summarize, HostGator is still a great deal, despite how some hosts are a buck or two cheaper, but the extra dollar or two will easily be made up for in time and the quality of this host.

Meta tag discussions -- Dynamic Meta Tags!

2007-02-22T12:51:00.000-06:00

There is always a lot of discussion about how useful meta tags are. Some experts say that they were once very relevant to search engine results but now they aren't, whereas others claim that they still carry some weight.

I've even seem some people go as far as to say not to worry about them.

I say that everyone in all of the above arguments don't know what the hell they're talking about! Search engines want you to think about your visitors, as they want to bring searchers the most relevant results.

As such, KEEP YOUR VISITORS IN MIND WHEN USING META TAGS!!!!

That's right, you should use meta tags that help your visitors. Don't think about the search engines all of the time, as the search engines are trying to look at it from the visitor's point of view. As such, you should do the same.

Meta tag descriptions, especially titles, often show up in the search engine results. If you do a search for a particular question or topic, I bet that most of you would pass up on a site that had an irrelevant title. Duh?!?!, right?

So having said that, make the meta tag titles and descriptions relevant to what people searching for that page would want. Pay very close attention to the title as well. Meta tag descriptions can often be replaced by keywords and content that the visitor is searching for, but the meta tag titles often stay the same.

Using general meta tags will help, but if you have tons and tons of pages, they all might start to look identical in the search engines. As a result, you should consider dynamic meta tags. These are meta tags that change according to what's in the page that is indexed. You can make it so that titles in the article or page that is being displayed show up as the meta tag title and so forth.

Different websites/blogs have different tools (most free) that can do this for you, so I'd recommend doing a search for "dynamic meta tags" plus whatever you are looking to use them on (like a specific forum, website creator, blog, etc.).

This is an easy way to "set it and forget it," and it definitely has helped with my search engine results.

Tons of sites, a few sites, one site, just blogs???

2007-02-22T12:45:00.000-06:00

Every internet marketing out there seems to have their own opinion on what's best in terms of making money online. Some say to have several websites, some say to have hundreds to thousands, some say to only have a few, some say to just use blogs, and some say to only have one or two. Others say to use one method instead of another, while others say that everyone else is wrong with this method and that their method is better.

I honestly laugh at all this because the answer is obvious -- do everything you can and want to. You can focus on a few big sites that are important to you and still crank out tons of smaller sites. You can even throw in blogs, article sites, etc.

On top of that, you can even play around with some techniques that internet marketers and SEO experts constantly argue over -- like duplicate content. You can get a new site up and running with others' articles (from article directories where this is legal and you have permission to do so) and perhaps a few of your own (what I recommend) literally in less than an hour if you focus. Even if you're not good at creating sites, you can get one new site a day like this if you really tried.

If you try all the techniques out there, you'll soon learn what works best for you and what doesn't. Heck, even if half of them utterly fail, you should still be profiting.

Some of the tools out there that some people say are crap have made others tons of money. Other tools that people say are great can often be horrible. But the key is to just do the work and get down and dirty with it all.

Updated to the new blogger!

2007-02-18T15:55:00.000-06:00

As many of you know, there are now new blogger accounts that you can get from blogspot.com. I hesitated making the switch simply because I didn't want to mess around with what I had up, but I figured that it was about time ... and it wouldn't let me post any more to the old blogger account.

Having said that, I'll be making several updates over the next while and will soon have a post up on using black hat tools to get white hat results. Or in better words, how to use concepts from black hat techniques to make total white hat sites.

Many people complain about how black hat tools are crap or simply don't work. They're right if they try to use them solely for quick and easy sites, but you can use some of the same concepts that make them work to make a white hat site with a little work on your part. It's not as easy as 1 2 3, but with a little work, you can get great results.

Rich Marketing

2007-02-10T14:47:00.000-06:00

I just released my new guide, Rich Marketing, for an exclusive pre-launch. So view my special offer for Rich Marketing! It's only $12 (after the pre-launch, I plan on making it around $37) for a limited time.

Rich Marketing is a new technique of targeting "rich prospects" with virtually no competition. Why fight over a few pennies or even a few dollars with hundreds of thousands to millions of potential competitors when you can grab the "rich targets" with ease?

Rich Marketing will make you rethink things that you've taken for granted in internet marketing and making money online. Rich Marketing teaches you how you don't need tons of visitors to make bundles of cash online. You only need tons of visitors if you're targeting the wrong ones, which virtually everyone is!

I'll teach you not only how Rich Marketing can apply to SEO (with getting ranked at the top for "rich terms") and pay-per-click campaigns like Google Adwords (pay less for more!), but I'll also teach you how you can actually find "rich prospects" waiting for you to find them. You don't need to spend a dime to make bundles of cash with this system.

The philosophy of Rich Marketing is a simple one, but the methods of using it are extremely powerful. You can apply Rich Marketing to almost anything.

So don't delay and check out my special offer on Rich Marketing now!

Is SEO Dead???

2007-02-07T22:15:00.000-06:00

Everyone is always concerned about SEO, which stands for search engine optimization. For those of you who don't know what this is, SEO is the practice of trying to make your website "search engine happy" so that you get ranked well. Such practices typically include such things as placing your desired keywords well throughout your site in hopes that you get ranked for it. It also includes such practices as getting good backlinks (other websites linking to you) and so forth.

Well, technically, no, SEO isn't dead. But I beat that many of you would be a lot more successful if you acted as though it was dead and made no difference. Think I'm crazy? Let's think about this for a minute.

Google has time and time again claimed that you should optimize your pages for your visitors, NOT for the search engines like Google. This makes sense, as Google and other search engines want to rank good webpages towards the top that provide a great experience for their visitors. Other than the most basic SEO techniques (writing good, relevant content, good titles, etc.), Google and others don't want to have you worrying about SEO too much.

So why haven't others listened? Plain and simple! Because people want a hard solution that really only has to be an easy one. Most people would rather spend hundreds of dollars on SEO guides that are suppose to magically get your site ranked well, and the SEO experts thrive on this!

Don't get me wrong, there are some great SEO experts out there who can definitely help you, but you don't need them to rank well. If you provide enough relevant content, you WILL get ranked well eventually. If you start up a blog, for example, and try to do roughly one post a day (or at least a few a week) on a topic that you like, you can bet that you'll eventually get ranked well for at least some keywords relevant to it.

You might even be surprised at how well you'll do. Trust me, I used to play around with SEO so much that I'd worry more about that than my visitors. That was a huge mistake on my part. The sites that I tried to use SEO on I'd almost always never get ranked well with. However, the sites that I didn't care much about and just wrote content to have good content for the visitors I'd almost always get ranked well for!

Imagine that! So I now usually just write for my visitors (with a little common sense and keeping the search engines in mind) and almost always see results. You'd be surprised at how easy it is to get ranked well. All you have to do is get busy and get typing!

And by the way, look for a batch of new posts in the next 24 hours from me.

One of the best internet marketing tips

2007-01-31T23:54:00.000-06:00

Here's a great tip that many of you can use. Consider giving away your products or services for free or at least at huge discounts to big name companies (or at least big names for your niche). In return, simply ask their permission for you to use their name in your marketing so that you can say that they are a client or customer of yours. You'll earn ten times your money back ... if not more.

Any service or product that mentions a big company as a client or customer will instantly get a ton of more customers and money simply because it grabs their attention. For example, which company would you rather purchase from or have represent you: one with tons of examples of people or companies that you don't know at all or one that mentions having Ford Motors, Oscar Meyer, any chain stores, etc.?

On a simpler example that more people could perhaps relate to, which product would you rather buy: one that mentions several fellow marketers that you don't know that well or one that mentions big names or companies that you know very well in your respected niche(s)?

If you're able to get the bigger names or companies without offering special deals or giving your services away for free, that's terrific! If you're not to that point yet, you should really consider being more competitive by offering them a deal they can't refuse or even doing your services for free (or giving away your product). I can't even begin to explain how much this will help you.

I recently took on a client for a lot less than I normally would simply because the company had tons of national awards and ties to several large organizations and companies. Do you think that might look better to other possible customers? I'd be willing to bet my money on it. Do you think the discount I gave him was money lost on my part? Hardly, as I bet I'll earn several times that back just by having this company as a client.

I'm also in the process right now of getting things ready for one of my future projects. And guess what one of the first things I'm doing is? You bet! I'm getting a few big offline companies to try out my product either for free or for greatly reduced rates. Such testimony or names of clients will trump virtually any individual's testimony that you can get.

And on another note, if you do have big names or companies in your portfolios, make it known if you can! Don't hide it among dozens to hundreds of other customers, testimony, examples, etc. Bring it to the front and make it known! One good client is worth 100 unknown ones.

This one tip can really make you a lot of money.

My challenge to you: Easy way to $1,000 a month

2007-01-29T22:26:00.000-06:00

Here's my challenge to you. Follow my simple tip here, and I bet that a fair number of you could break $1,000 a month within one to two months. Want to know the secret? It's simply taking action. Stop reading forums 24/7 or buying every internet marketing guide out there. Stop switching from one topic to the next and not following through on anything. Stop getting excited about one idea only to move on to the next the very next day.

Instead of worrying about keyword research, news in the forums, etc., simply spend 1 hour a day (it's okay to take a few days off here and there) actually working and taking action. Bring your ideas or websites to life. Don't try to learn anything more or do any more research. Just get to work. If you spend that much time on it each day without procrastinating, and without worrying too much if things are perfect or not, I bet that $1,000 a month is not out of your reach.

Then once you reach that, aim for twice that the next month. You can keep building upon your work more and more effectively raising your income each and every time. If you make $20 doing something, do it 100 times over. If you spend one hour a day just taking action instead of buying new guides or reading about what you should do, I can almost promise you that you'll find instant success each and every month.

I hope this inspires some of you to get to it. Despite what you might think, making money online IS very easy as long as you take action. I just spoke to three different people today. All of them weren't making much online, but they all had two things in common -- they had great ideas and they weren't taking action on them.

Many of you literally have mounds of cash just waiting for you if you let it come to you.

Make huge profits online -- easier than you think!

2007-01-28T14:11:00.000-06:00

The one thing I love about the internet is how easy it is to make money online. I know people who try to invest thousands of dollars in hopes of making 10% to 20% more. Although they think that's a good return, I say that's crap! When I invest $100, I expect at least $1,000 back, if not more. If I don't get at least 10 times my return within a month, I don't even bother with it. Sure, there are plenty of other great opportunities out there, but I want to reassure that I don't lose a dime on any investment.

Think this is too good to be true? Think again. The first investments I ever made were for $5, which I turned into a few thousand. My second investment was for about $200, which I turned into nearly $10,000 within two weeks.

Don't think you have the skills to do this? So what? All you need is a good idea. If you have a good idea, or even a simple idea to make someone's life easier, you can easily hire a programmer or designer to bring that idea to life. You can easily get a great idea turned into reality for $100 to $200, if not less. You can even do some of this yourself if you want to save money.

Once you have your project (whether it's a program, ebook, or service) up, you can easily advertise it in your signature on forums, or even offer it for sale on some market place forums online. The money from that alone will almost guarantee that you'll make several times your investment back. If you're lucky and have a good enough product, you'll get a good monthly income from that as well.

But here's the bright side -- even if you fail, you'll still probably make several times your purchase price back just advertising it a bit or taking advantage of forums with special offers for you to market your product.

Then once you make a little money from that, you can reinvest a portion of it on new projects. You'll not only open up more opportunities to make even more, but eventually you'll find a few products that will catch on and provide you more and more money each month.

Currently, I have about half a dozen medium to big sized projects. The beauty of it is that I'm barely working on them, as I was able to reinvest a small portion of my past earnings to hire out for most of the work. And here's the other thing about it, most of these projects will cost less than $100 to $200 each.

Some internet marketers won't tell you this, but it's very easy to make money on the same scale if not larger than several of the top marketers out there. All you need are a few good ideas. You don't even need to invest money at the start, as you can slowly build your way up with reinvesting your earnings until one day you're making a very sizable income online that keeps on growing.

I started making money online with the very technique that I describe in "The Big Secret," and I made an extra income on top of that shortly thereafter by turning it into a guide. After that, I started reinvesting it in even more projects and the money keeps growing and growing each and every month.

I hope that this inspires some of you to take action on your ideas. If you can bring it to reality yourself, great! If not, don't rule out looking for hired help. If it's a great idea, you'd be surprised at how some programmers are willing to make amazing programs for very cheap prices.

Score one for the consumers! Unethical marketer takes notice

2007-01-23T13:34:00.000-06:00

Score one for all the consumers out there trying to look up honest reviews of websites and their products. Not too long ago, I posted on my blog here about some unethical practices being done by a handful of internet marketers, even one well known one from the Warrior Forums. Some marketers are trying to promote their products by creating sites made simply to review their own product (their own review of their own product, but under a different name), while others try to cover up their behinds a little more by having a worker they have or a friend write a good review for them.

In this particular case, the owner of this membership site had a very good review that came up as number one on Google. The review started by saying how skeptical they were of such Adsense pre-made sites and so forth, and that they never thought Adsense would work until they found this particular membership site and found it great. Ironically, I did a search on this guy and saw that he not only had ties to the membership site, but that he also had articles on profiting from Adsense and even had another site (also linked together) that sold an Adsense guide long before this new membership site came about. So he obviously wasn't new to Adsense like he claimed, and he wasn't a random person reviewing the site.

Well, here's the good news! The person who owns the site must be reading this blog too, because shortly after I posted the details of it here, that review page was taken down and is nowhere to be seen.

This is just a word of encouragement that if you see someone trying to scam you out of your money -- even if they are well established, do something about it. Even one voice can have a huge positive effect.

An Easy Business Opportunity That Is Often Overlooked

2007-01-20T14:30:00.000-06:00

There are always internet marketers talking about how to monetize a site better. There has also been a lot of talk lately about buying up websites that aren't monetized well (but with lots of traffic) in hopes of monetizing them and making a fortune. However, I think that there is another easy option out there that is often not only overlooked, but can be very cheap (and sometimes free) to do.

Here's what you do: Look for small businesses (or individuals) who have a really good offline product that you think could easily become an awesome online product. When just a little looking around, I've come across tons of great products and services that simply aren't marketed at all. Some might have a website with no marketing done, while others might not even have a website yet. You can not only look online, but you can also look at local businesses and people who you already know to see tons of opportunities.

If you are able to get the attention of these owners and establish even a small relationship with them, I'd be willing to bet you that many would listen to you and would be more than happy to give you a decent percent of the profits if you did the marketing online for them.

I've done this myself and find it VERY easy to do and is a huge opportunity that many people overlook.

Make More Money Just By Being Nice

2007-01-19T19:33:00.000-06:00

I was prompted to write this message after a few bad experiences in the past few days. I've not only been looking into purchasing a few tools online, but I've also been looking into hiring one or two people for a small project.

Out of four people I contacted, two were almost a bit rude, one was just straightforward, and the last one was actually nice and seemed to appreciate my potential business.

For the first two, I simply asked them to clarify something on a product of theirs. The description didn't answer all of my questions, so I asked a few specific questions and mentioned that I didn't see it anywhere on their site. One was really rude, while the other just said "check the website" that I already checked and didn't find sufficient enough.

The third guy simply just answered the question. He wasn't rude and answered everything I wanted, but just seemed straightforward and not too interested. The last guy not only answered my questions just like the third guy, but he also added that he'd be happy to answer any more questions I had.

Guess who is more likely to get the business? The last guy who added that one simple sentence just seemed more genuine, even though this is a simple thing to do that doesn't take more than a few seconds.

All four of these guys owned the products or services themselves, so it's not like they didn't care if they made sales or not.

I think that this serves as a friendly reminder to everyone to take the extra five seconds required to be a little more personal and appreciative in their e-mails to customers. Without a doubt, the more personal and nicer you are in your e-mails to your customers, the more likely you are to make a sale.

I'm shocked at how some people treat their customers knowing that their income depends upon them. I halfway expect this from large stores that hire minimum wage workers to answer their phones, but I think it gives an even worse impression when the business/website/service owner treats you like that.

Even if you write a simple e-mail back that answers all of their questions, try to take an extra five seconds to add a sentence about how you'd be happy to answer any more questions or that you appreciate that they contacted you and so forth.

You'd be surprised at how such a simple thing can bring in so much more money ... and make everyone have a nicer day.

Website Contact Forms

2007-01-19T19:30:00.000-06:00

I've seen a lot of sites, even well established ones, have links that say "contact us" that are plain old mailing links that go straight to outlook express (or whatever mailing software you have). For many people who don't have outlook express or other options setup and only use web-based e-mails, it can be a real pain getting e-mail addresses.

If you run such a website or plan on running one, I'd highly suggest either having contact forms on your site or at least writing out your e-mail address just in case. I know that there are quite a few people who prefer this way and wouldn't be turned away from contacting you otherwise. This is just a friendly reminder to keep that in mind.

Do some domain research before selecting a new domain

2007-01-19T19:24:00.000-06:00

When I'm making a new site, I usually try to think of a good domain name first. Then I check to see if it's available. If one of my favorite names is free, I usually just take it right then and there. But I've been trying to remind myself to do a little research on the domain name first (or even on existing names I already have).

You'd be amazed at what you can find at www.archive.org about your existing domains. You're able to look up screenshots of past websites that used that domain name in many cases.

I'd also suggest doing searches on several search engines for your domain name just to see if it's mentioned anywhere. One recent domain name that I almost bought that was a PERFECT name for a site I was thinking of doing happened to have been owned by a scammer in an unrelated niche. There were a few mentions online of that website being a scam, even though it hasn't been registered to anyone for a few years. Odd how that stuff works.

I also just found out that one recent name that I registered for a site of mine was just deleted a few days prior by a site that used it for several years (by complete random change).

I'd check out www.archive.org and type in your website address, as well as do any searches before making any purchases in the future.

Using Affiliate Links? Think Twice...

2007-01-19T19:16:00.000-06:00

Many top marketers swear by cloaked links (despite a few possible legal issues and other problems), but I encourage everyone to give cloaked links a second thought to see if they're really necessary -- or if they might even be hurting you. When affiliate links first came out, I can easily see how it was the smart choice to go with, but that was before people knew what they were. I did some testing on a few niches of mine and got some interesting results.

For those of you new to this, a cloaked link just redirects a link from you to an affiliate link of yours. So instead of someone seeing something like http://hoplink.whoever.clickbank.net/hop?63038 they'd just see something like http://www.yoursite.com/anyproductB. The second link would then redirect to the affiliate link.

The advantage that many marketers claim is that people are wary of affiliate links and might not click on it because they either don't like giving you credit for the sale (and type in the link itself) or they try to steal the commission from you by entering their own affiliate ID.

I usually don't use cloaked links for a variety of reasons, but I was motivated to do some testing and got some interesting results back that I thought I'd share.

In my non IM niches, I usually saw either a slight decrease or no difference at all. However, I actually noticed a very significant decrease in click throughs (by not quite 50%) in one of my niches. I replicated these results over again just to make sure it wasn't a fluke and got the same results.

For two IM niches, I didn't notice any difference at all (these links were on my site -- not in a message or anything like that).

With e-mail messages, I also tested both IM and non-IM niches. The non-IM niches showed little difference (so a bit better than when they were on a site) as long as the affiliate code was not bluntly shown as the link (so have different text saying "click here for this" instead of the actual affiliate link being shown, but still having the normal affiliate link without it being cloaked).

The IM niches showed a slight increase with cloaked links in e-mails, but it wasn't too drastic.

This goes a bit against what some people assume, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. If someone is intent on stealing your commission for a product, I don't think a cloaked link would stop many of them from doing so. On top of that, most internet marketers know about cloaked links and how to spot one. If they want to steal your commission for their own, they will. Outside of the internet marketing field, it would make sense that it wouldn't make a huge difference anyway.

The big decrease when using a cloaked link in one of my niches also made sense too. If you have a merchant as an affiliate, some people might be a bit wary if they look and see that the link appears to be to your own site or some odd domain name that they don't recognize. I don't think that you should have a visible affiliate link bluntly in the middle of your webpage, but putting a naked affiliate link there as a text link with the text not displaying the affiliate link appeared to work much better than a cloaked link in at least one case.

In other instances, they appeared to have little to no difference. The only difference I noted that was a bit more in favor of cloaked links was in e-mail messages.

Now I realize that this obviously changes from niche to niche and whether you're doing a post on your own site vs a message board (where a normal affiliate link would be a very bad idea in most cases), but it made me think a bit more about this. I encourage you to give it a little thought yourself and to perhaps do some testing first before following what others have said.

I've noticed that a few people are starting to realize what I've been talking about here and how cloaked links aren't always the best choice and can even hurt sales in some cases.

1and1 Web Hosting Review

2007-01-16T17:34:00.000-06:00

I know that there are many of you looking for cheap web hosts that are still of good quality, which is very hard to come by. This is why I want to do my review of 1and1 web hosting. There are tons of cheap web hosts out there, but only a few are actually good. Some more expensive hosts will argue that you need an expensive host or else your website is doomed -- they're simply trying to frighten you into spending more with them.

The majority of people out there, especially those starting out, should not be too worried. Most of the problems with hosts comes from people abusing the host or doing out-of-the-ordinary tasks that don't really apply to most people. However, there are still a few things to watch out for.

You don't want hosts that claim to offer unlimited bandwidth, as that is simply impossible. By unlimited, places really mean "unmonitored." Once your server (and whoever is on it) exceeds a certain limit, everyone gets screwed. Instead, you want to find a reasonably priced host with a given bandwidth that is very high. 1and1 web hosting definitely does a great job there. They have tons of different packages at very cheap prices (some are only a few bucks a month for unlimited domain hosting, which means that you can host as many domains as you want on the same account) with more than enough bandwidth than virtually 99.9999% of you will probably ever need. If you ever hit it real big and start getting thousands upon thousands of visitors a day, they always have packages to upgrade to.

1and1 web hosting is one of the hosts that I personally use to host several of my domains, and they have everything I need plus some. One thing to look for in a host is how compatible they are with other scripts, languages, etc. 1and1 is by far the best I've seen, especially for the price.

Although they have less expensive packages, I highly recommend their $5 home package for beginners. Not only do most of these packages come with great software that you can use to edit your webpages, but the hosting comes with built in website creators (one html and one dynamic/flash). So now even if you have virtually no skills with html, you should easily be able to learn everything you need to know very quick. I've played around with these editors and they are truly two of the easiest ones I've ever seen.

All of the usual things like subdomains, scripts, databases, etc. are all supported. The unlimited domains, which is different than unlimited bandwidth, is something that many people often overlook. Unlimited domains means that you can host 10 different websites on the same account with different domain names for the same price (not $5 per website). Many hosts out there only allow one website per hosting account, which can get very expensive for beginners.

If you want more advanced features and have tons of high bandwidth websites already existing, 1and1 hosting has plenty of packages to upgrade to, but I really like them for beginners due to their low price, great customer support (phone and e-mail), and their free domain names included in the price (not just the first year, but for as long as you host with them). Even the basic $5 home package has two free domain names.

In fact, as I write this, they currently have a 50% off deal going on for the first six months (so the $5 package is really a $2.50 package for the first six months), so you should definitely check them out. They also have over $300 in free pay-per-click credits at places like MSN and Adwords, which makes the deal even better. Some of the accounts even include a free tool to see who is currently visiting your website and allows you to initiate chats with them, which is just one of the many tools that you might find useful. Beginners will also appreciate their free collection of pictures, scripts, and so forth that can easily be implemented into any of your sites.

Overall, I give 1and1 web hosting a 9 out of 10 when taking the price, customer support, things included, compatible languages, and advanced features. And if you know me, I usually don't rate things too high.

Feel free to post your own reviews of 1and1 hosting in the comments or any other hosts you found useful.

Some new announcements

2007-01-16T01:08:00.000-06:00

I just wanted to make a few quick announcements, as I've been slacking a bit on the posts (only because I have some exciting things that will be coming in the near future). This will be picking up here over the next few days with tons of new information, so stay tuned.

First, with regards to this blog, I'll not only be posting some new internet marketing tips, but I'll also be starting some reviews of internet marketing and website related tools and services. I think that this will benefit everyone, as there are a lot of tools and services that are crap despite being very popular ... and there are some great cheap tools out there that hardly anyone knows about!

Now onto some more exciting news. I have four more announcements of projects in the near future (you'll definitely want to read about the last one).

I plan on releasing a cheap membership site for those interested in buying domains. Domain name buying has grown in popularity lately, but a lot of people are going about it the wrong way and trying to make hundreds of thousands of dollars overnight, which simply isn't how it works. I set up some unique relationships that will allow members to get high quality expired domains listed out for them, and it will allow you to sort out domain names that you find of interest to you. I won't give out all of the secrets, but this will be unlike anything you have seen so far. Best of all, instead of being $30 a month or more like other sites that don't do nearly as much, I'll be charging about $5 a month.

I also have two smaller projects. One is a special tool in the works to help website owners get in touch with their visitors better, which will allow you to convert at much higher rates. The other is a new guide that I'll be releasing shortly on how to profit big time without much traffic and how you can go to your visitors instead of waiting for them to come to you.

Now lastly, here's the big one... It's still a few months away from its public launch, but we're very close to having a super secret new project. One part of this project is where you won't have to buy a thing to benefit or make money online. In fact, we'll pay you -- sometimes hundreds to thousands of dollars -- to do a few simple things for us. You might not know this, but there are plenty of reasons why we should be paying you instead of you paying us. Sounds interesting, right? Trust me, this is one NOT to be missed.

I'll be notifying this blog's mailing list first shortly before launch, but this is definitely something to be paying attention to.

Feel free to post your comments!

Brian

A new look on buying and selling domain names

2007-01-14T15:17:00.000-06:00

I've seen a lot of interest in buying domain names lately. Not only has that industry boomed over the years (it was a lot easier in the past), but I've seen several posts on a few forums regarding buying/selling domain names on here in the past few weeks.

I think that some people think that they can easily find a $7 domain name that they can resell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, which isn't likely to happen. There are those who do this for a living, but they definitely know what they are doing, have money to invest, and so forth.

However, I think that there's a much easier and immediate benefit if you really want to go about this business, and this way is a bit easier than others might think.

Instead of looking for domains that get thousands upon thousands of visitors, why not look for a few that are related to your site with a few backlinks that get only a few visitors each day? Then just redirect it to your site. Even 1 to 5 visitors a day isn't bad for some niches.

If you have a niche that Adwords can be a bit expensive for, 1 to 5 visitors a day could be saving you $5 or more a day. When you multiply those few visitors each day by the number of days in a year, you get anywhere from 365 to 1825 visitors. All of a sudden that $7 investment isn't all that bad.

I think that some people think so big where it's much harder to succeed that they miss out on some of the easier opportunities.

I will buy your program/product from you

2007-01-11T22:47:00.000-06:00

I've realized lately that there are tons of people out there with great products/programs out there. Some of them made them only for their own purposes and never thought of marketing it to others. Others have tried marketing it to others without any luck. I've seen too many great products go completely to waste.

As a result, I'm making an open offer to buy your product/program from you that you either haven't thought of selling or having had much luck selling. If you're not interested in completely selling out exclusive rights to me, I'd be willing to do a joint venture and help you promote your product to benefit us both.

If you're interested, feel free to e-mail me at info@iwantpennies.com and describe your program to me (or send it). I'm not really interested in new guides or anything -- mainly just new programs or web-based tools. If you have a product that you're not sure on, feel free to ask anyway.

I've come across a lot of people with great products not doing anything about it. I'm willing to make good use of the products and benefit both of us. If you send me your product or description, I'll write back my thoughts and a possible offer.

New Online Techniques Usually Are Old Offline Techniques

2007-01-10T13:22:00.000-06:00

The offline world seems to be ahead of the online world in terms of marketing techniques. Don't get me wrong, as there are plenty of great new marketing techniques that couldn't possibly be done in the offline world. However, if you look at several of the best offline marketing techniques out there, you'll see that many are nowhere to be found in the online world.

In fact, I've purposely used some marketing techniques on some of my sites that are used offline a ton but barely at all online. When I found some great results with them, I mentioned what I did on a few forums. Some people found it great and simple, whereas some of the gurus attacked the ideas for being ridiculous just because they were new and didn't make sense to them. In reality, you'll find that most of the techniques I've used are very old in the offline world.

I've talked about rebates and money back offers, and some people thought that was ridiculous and just plain stupid. Look at the offline world? How many rebate and money back offers do you see? I don't think they'd be doing that if it was stupid. On top of that, I've offered rebate offers in the past and found that less than 1 out of 20 or so actually take you up on the offer, but it increased sales in the niche that I used it in big time. And that's just one of the common offline techniques that can be put to good use.

Sometimes I'll see a big guru mention a "new" technique and people will praise him for the "discovery." Often times, his discovery is a technique that has been in use for decades upon decades, but so many people fail to look at the offline world to get ideas for the online world.

There are so many great ideas offline that can be used even better online. I'll be sure to do a post in the near future listing a few ideas that I think more people should pay attention to, but I encourage you just to look at offline ads around you -- I bet you'll pick up on a few basics that many online sites are missing.

Screw Adsense!

2007-01-09T15:54:00.000-06:00

That's right, you heard me... Screw Adsense! I know that some gurus might disagree with me, but a few minutes of some critical thinking on your part should make you see why Adsense can actually hurt your business and not help it.

Think about it. People bid on keywords on Adsense to get traffic from you. Why do they want traffic from you? Simple -- in hopes to make a sale to make money off of your traffic. Now let's think logically about this for just a minute.

If someone is willing to pay to use your traffic, they're probably benefiting from it and making more than they're paying Adsense/Google. This is especially true with content bids (the bids on keywords that will show up on your site), as the majority of those are only a few pennies if that.

So why would you sell a potential sale of your own or an affiliate sale for only a few pennies? Not only are affiliate sales and your own sales far more profitable because you can make anywhere from several dollars to hundreds of dollars per sale compared to a few pennies, but they can make your site look far more professional too.

When you cover a site in Adsense ads, especially those dime a dozen Adsense sites, people can immediately be turned away from it. I've seen several people putting Adsense on their own sales pages lately, and I think that's a horrible idea. Their thinking is that they'll earn a little extra income. I doubt it. Realistically, they're probably losing a few sales and not making more than perhaps a few dollars a month if that.

It makes sense, doesn't it? If you need some actual numbers as an example, I did a little experiment myself with Adsense on a few sites. In fact, you may have noticed me having some Adsense up on this blog for a short while as part of this experiment. I also did the same in the past in different niches (to test different times of the year and different niches). My results might amaze you.

On some of my niche sites, for every dollar or two I made with Adsense, I earned several hundred dollars in affiliate sales of other products. Some of you might say that some keywords, like internet marketing and "make money online" type keywords would do much better. On this blog, which is barely monetized at all, here are the results: for about every $1 in adsense from this blog that I made, I made about $120 using JUST affiliate sales.

So by using Adsense, I was trading $120 for $1. If anyone wants to do that trade, be sure to e-mail me at info@iwantpennies.com and I'll gladly do it for you!

I think that says a lot, and I think that people should look over their strategies a little more with how they plan on making money online. I know Adsense sites are a huge craze just because people think that they are easy to do, but I don't think they are any harder than switching to a site promoting affiliate sales. In fact, I think that Adsense sites can be even harder to set up.

Gurus who sell those big packages of pre-made Adsense sites are selling them for a reason -- because they know that they personally can't make too much off of those any more, and selling them to you will make them a lot more richer than using them. People will buy them up because they buy the dream of a plug-n-chug overnight wealth scheme, which just doesn't happen.

That's part of the reason of why I created "The Big Secret," because even though that technique still requires a little work, it's as easy as Adsense (if not easier) and can be done by almost anyone. Even outside of the technique I describe in my guide, just setting up a few sites promoting affiliate products can go a long way.

I know I've been talking about ineffective Adsense can be for most people for a long time, but hopefully these numbers will stand out to you. I've even noticed a few well known marketers starting to catch onto this trend and turning away from what they used to promote so much.

Perhaps some of us should rethink our business models and websites as well.

Easy trick/technique to save/make money

2007-01-04T12:19:00.000-06:00

Here's a little trick that I don't think is used enough despite how well it can work for both consumers and marketers alike. It doesn't matter if you're selling a product, buying something, or negotiating a better deal for your debt or loans.

Basically, if you make an offer that is greatly in your favor that you don't think will ever be agreed upon, you can expect it to be shot down. But here's what you do after making such a ridiculous offer -- make a more reasonable offer that is still lower than what the seller/buyer was asking.

You'll find that many people will now accept your offer even if they would have turned it down the first time if you made only the reasonable offer without the ridiculous offer. Many will accept this offer because they'll view you as being nice for making a second offer and working with them, so they'll feel like they'll have to work with you.

Here's an example if you're negotiating rent for an apartment: For a $900/month apartment that seems to be strict in their price, try offering $800/month first. You'll probably get shot down, but then offer $850 or so. If the person you make the offer to has a say in the price, they may often feel bad for turning you down twice and will feel that since you are working with them on a more reasonable price, they might also work with you too -- even if they initially wouldn't have accepted $850.

You can even do the opposite as a marketer when you make offers to your customers. Some door-to-door salesmen are trained to offer to sell you an item for a much higher price initially only to expect you to turn it down. Then they'll offer a much lower price that seems more reasonable, which you might then look into. In the door-to-door example, this is a little more well known now, so it doesn't always work as well when it's this obvious, but you get the picture.

Even if you owe debt, creditors are often trained in this (and if you know this, you can get an even cheaper deal to pay them back) and will use it on you. You can make a ridiculously low offer that will probably get shot down. Then make a more reasonable offer. Even though creditors are trained at what they can and can't offer, many are still able to talk to their managers to get an even better deal. You'd be surprised at how well this works.

Here's one more example that is still somewhat related, but that I'm sure almost ANYONE here can use. If you're about to buy a car, you can use this tactic there in negotiating, but you can add a little twist to it. If the car dealership has financing, you can also offer to use their financing. Since dealerships can make a lot off of some financing plans (a lot more than the initial price of the car), they're often willing to negotiate an even lower price knowing that they'll most likely make more later. Then after this is negotiated and you get the lower price, either pay the car off immediately or go to your own bank to get a better loan and pay off the other loan with that.

If you're clever enough with this, you can find that you can save, or perhaps even make, a little extra money here and there.

Hope it helps a few of you!

Be careful with tempting offers that ask for more and more

2007-01-01T15:17:00.000-06:00

I have recently seen a lot of people falling for some common marketing tricks that could bring some big financial losses to those who fall for it. One of the most common marketing methods out there is to draw people in with a free or cheap offer to get them excited about making hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars online. Then after they determine who is willing to pay a few bucks for their guide, they do one of two things.

First, they'll almost always try to sell you more. There's nothing wrong with this if it's done in an ethical way. The second thing that some marketers often do is try to get you excited about something and then have you sign up for something through them. This is smart on their part, because they find ways of taking a percent of your profits. Again, nothing too wrong with that, except that you shouldn't have to pay for information on how to make them even more money in my opinion.

However, recently I've noticed some scary trends happening that a lot of people are getting really excited about. Some very well respected marketers are promoting certain tactics that not only simply don't work that well any more, but that you can literally lose thousands of dollars with all the hype. I don't want to name any names, but I want to warn people to be careful when they spot such techniques.

I'm not talking about a $5 guide that then asks you to look into a $30 guide. I'm talking about when a cheap guide basically says "join my business, give me a cut, and then also buy this $2,000 guide and start investing hundreds to thousands of dollars in this." This should send a red flag out, as you're essentially paying them to let them advertise a $2,000 guide to you. Does this make sense to you?

The technique in question is one that can work for some people, but it's one that a newcomer really doesn't stand much of a chance at. Sure, you can invest thousands upon thousands of dollars and hope for an okay return, but the hype that they gave is simply false. They'll point out a few rare exceptions and act as though that is the norm. I bet if you were to look into those exceptions, the money was all made by someone who really knew what they were doing and were doing it with investing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not something most people would want to get involved in.

There's something even more dangerous about this -- even though some people have caught on to this technique and realize that it simply doesn't work like it should, others are all excited about the hype and willing to throw their money away in hopes of making hundreds of thousands of dollars. I'd be willing to bet that not one of them will even come close. In fact, I bet almost all of them will lose money.

With the particular technique in question, the more people involved in it, the less profitable it can get, right? So why would a place be selling guides and tools on how to do it? Well, the answer is easy. The big boys have tools and techniques that the little guys don't have. They can continue to use their tools and techniques and snatch up all the profitable possibilities while you are left fighting over what's left and spending hundreds to thousands of dollars trying to do so.

So they can easily sell guides and tools to "help you out," when really it's just making more money for them. If any of you succeed at even making a little, they'll try to ensure that they get a cut of it. If it was really that easy, why wouldn't they just give all the guides away and rely on their small cut? The answer is obvious here too, and it's because most people will fail and they'll make far more money trying to sell you thousands of dollars worth of stuff.

Even though I realize that some marketers can make a lot of money by having people buy expensive products and guides from them that they know don't work nearly as well as they claim, I personally don't think that it's ethical knowing that these people can lose thousands. Now, I do sell a guide, but I believe that virtually anyone can be successful at it. I also make absolutely sure that I provide several free and cheap methods of using my techniques. This is because if someone is desperate to make money, I don't want them to risk thousands of dollars, even if it were to make me richer. In fact, I'd encourage them to stick only to the free methods, as I know that they'll be happier in the long run and can move up to spending a little once they get the hang of it.

I would never dream of selling a guide that would only tell them to sign up under me for another program so that I can make even more money. Even though some people might happily do it, I really want to push the fact that there are better ways out there. You should never pay for a guide that simply tells you to buy more from them or to sign up for programs that are designed to bring more money to the maker of the guide.

Even with respected marketers, you do need to be careful. Use common sense and look for the common signs of marketers trying to bleed money out of you. Only then will you be able to separate the good, ethical marketers from the bad ones. I've noticed several people following the wrong paths, and I hate to see someone losing thousands of dollars.

Happy New Years and some exciting things to come!

2006-12-31T16:39:00.000-06:00

I just wanted to take a few minutes to wish everyone a happy New Years! Remember to be safe, spend time with your family and loved ones, and be sure to set your goals for 2007.

Speaking of goals, I wanted to pass on one goal that I think everyone should do -- TAKE ACTION! Sometimes the difference between a successful person and one not so successful online is as simple as taking action and sticking with it. If you take action and try to figure out what works and what doesn't, it's pretty hard not to eventually be successful. Everyone is guilty of not taking action or procrastinating at least a little. I know I'm definitely finally cracking down on myself and taking more action.

With that said, I just wanted to let you know that there will be some exciting things coming in 2007. I will do some very big announcements in the near future. In the meantime, I hope to be doing a lot of updates on this blog, so be sure to check back often.

Best wishes!

Brian Koz

Why you are not making any money

2006-12-28T21:33:00.000-06:00

Okay, maybe some of you are making plenty of money online, but I bet that a good portion of you aren't. I also bet that I know why most people aren't making any money online. Simply put, you probably aren't REALLY doing anything about it.

People can buy guides left and right, but it's taking action that matters. You can have a million dollar idea in front of you and not do anything about it, and you'll make nothing. There's no guide or technique out there that doesn't require ANY work. I think that my latest guide on "The Big Secret" is very easy and doesn't require much work at all, but it still requires a little work and some action on your part.

Everyone is guilty of not taking action at times. I couldn't tell you how many times someone has told me that they want to make money online and have been trying for years, yet they aren't able to even create a free blog and know next to nothing on websites (even though they desperately want to). Well, guess what? I self-taught myself just about everything. It's not too hard, but you do have to take action and dive in.

You can even try free website tools to test the waters, or get a cheap web host at a few dollars a month to play around with a website and start learning. After you learn that, you can learn to get visitors and so forth. But you do need to start somewhere. Just reading guides and not taking action will get you nowhere.

Let me tell you a story of a very intelligent friend I know -- he's a great programmer with tons of ideas. Years and years ago, he created a cool program that does a ton of SEO work for websites. It worked very well and was better than anything even close to it. A few years after he made it, a tool came out that wasn't even close to as good as his tool that he had already been using for years.

Well, guess what happened? The new tool was marketed really well and became a very popular tool. I bet it took in over a million dollars in the first year alone (possibly several times that). My friend's tool was a lot better, but he never bothered to market it or make it user-friendly for others.

When I pointed this out to him, he stood back for a minute and was just like "wow." He then went on to talk about several other programs he had made in the past. About half of them had similar versions that were being sold and were quite successful. He could have made hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars quite easily, but he never took action to market it.

Since then, I've taught him to focus a bit and even have him on board with me for creating some new tools in the near future. But the point is that he missed out on some big opportunities. In his case, he already made the tool, which is taking a little action, but he failed to even think (or care) to market it.

I suspect that many of you are guilty of doing the same thing. Just taking action can go a long way. If I can teach you to do that, I bet it'll be worth more than any guide out there!

Are you thinking of the wrong ways to make money online?

2006-12-26T23:20:00.000-06:00

I know that many of you are looking to make money online. In fact, I'm guessing that if you're reading this blog, you probably almost certainly are at least interested in making money.

Having said that, I bet that many of you have tried making money online. Some of you may have had some success with it, but I'd be willing to bet that many of you haven't been having the best of luck with it. Well, today might be your lucky day, so read the rest of this post!

I've noticed that the most desperate people to make money online are usually the ones that fail at it. I don't think many people take the time to actually think about how they'll make money online. I'm sure that many of us are guilty of forking over $50 or even $100 or more to buy guides that claim to be all plug-n-chug methods to making thousands the second you read their guide. Others are guilty of buying pre-made Adsense sites that claim you only have to put the site up to start earning thousands.

There's one thing that I've especially noticed -- people who e-mail me asking for advice will always have links to health products or money schemes in their links. I'm sure some have told you to advertise your affiliate programs all over. Well, they're wrong. It can actually hurt your image and make you look desperate if you do such things, especially when you're e-mailing friends and family. Now, if you're doing business e-mails, by all means, have those on the bottom of your e-mails. But for personal e-mails or when you're just asking questions, it can really turn people off.

Others will take it a step further and advertise their own websites that talk about how to make thousands or millions of dollars, yet they'll be asking me how to make a single sale because they haven't been having any success. Does something seem wrong with this picture? I think so.

Now, it's not your fault, and it's not their fault. They've just been taught the wrong way to go about making money online. Many of the "big" marketing gurus don't really know how to bring riches to every-day-people -- they only know how to scam you out of $100 or so dollars (and sometimes even get you to be happy that they scammed you).

Please listen to my piece of advice here: Erase your thoughts and teachings! As Yoda once said, you must unlearn what you have learned.

Just think creatively for a few minutes. Don't spend $50 or $100 dollars on the next big thing. Instead, just take five minutes to think of how you can really make money online and I can almost guarantee you that you'll have more success.

Adwords not working out because it's too expensive? Did a "guru" tell you to stick to it because if you get just one sale, you could make a few hundred dollars and earn back the hundreds you've already spent? STOP! Think for five minutes like I said.

If someone wants what you're promoting, where might they be instead of on search engines? Where can you reach them?

Perhaps they're likely to be on certain niche forums? Or perhaps they might be searching for stuff on Ebay? There are dozens of other places they might be, but the point is that you need to think about it. What would you do if you were in their shoes right now?

If you think they might be in forums, then find those forums and start posting. Add a simple signature link to your site and you just advertised your services for free! Just be sure to add some valuable posts instead of just spam.

If you think some might be searching Ebay, why not sell a cheap ebook for $0.01 to $0.99 tops on that topic (if you actually know stuff about it -- if not, learn about your niche first). But wait, you might think that you'll be losing money here, right? Not really. It's a small price to pay for a targeted lead. If you can go about this the right way, you can sell your ebook which will talk about your affiliate products that they're looking for.

If you provide valuable insight as to which might be best for them, or the ups and downs of each one (such as reviews), you all of a sudden are getting free advertising that could bring you big bucks for less than the cost of one click on Adwords in a competitive niche. Just think of the possibilities here! Think of how much money you could make just by being creative!

Right now, I can literally think of a dozen different ways of going about the same thing with spending little to no money. There are too many ideas for me to write down, but perhaps I'll make a list for a later blog post here. In the meantime, I encourage you to just think about how you want to go about making money online. Think about what has worked and what hasn't.

And most of all, think about where your potential customers might be right this very minute and how you can reach them! Now that's the key to making money online.

Watch out for false reviews

2006-12-24T11:26:00.000-06:00

This is a sad fact that many of us fall for online. When many of us are about to make a purchase, we often look for reviews of that product or site first. Well, any good marketer knows this and keeps track of the good and bad things about them. The smart and ethical marketers will be sure to post comments next to bad things said and fully explain why their service is good (if it truly is).

However, there are plenty of unethical marketers who make false reviews ahead of time in hopes that their fake reviews will convince others to buy it. Some are dumb enough to use their own names when registering the domain name, whereas others get associates and affiliates of theirs to do so.

Recently, I came across a very popular membership site run by a very well known marketer who many respect. I personally find this marketer to be less than ethical, but they do have a lot of followers. I looked up reviews on Google of their site and found one VERY good review. In fact, it almost seemed too good to be true.

The reviewer was talking about how they didn't believe Adsense and the like would ever work, especially when everyone was using the same site. However, they then said that they were shocked to see that this membership site worked great.

Okay, fair enough, but just to make sure, I did a whois search on the domain that the review was on. It showed a name that sounded familiar to me, so I did a search on the name and found an article written by him. The article talked about how great Adsense is. Hmm ... now this is odd. In the review, the reviewer talked about how skeptical they were of Adsense.

I then followed the author's link to their site, which, oddly enough, was selling a guide on Adsense. Odd how the review they gave talked about how they were so skeptical of Adsense and such membership sites, but all of a sudden the author owns a guide on it.

Well, again, I didn't want to jump to conclusions. Maybe the author changed their mind after seeing the new membership site that he gave such good reviews too. Nope, not the case. His Adsense guide's site was created a few months before the membership site that he reviewed came about.

Even more so, there were some very obvious connections between the two. I won't go into any more detail, but it was clear to me that there was a business connection here.

Is this ethical? I don't think so. When looking for reviews, you should always see who is writing it, and make sure that they post the review AFTER the site launches. Any review that pops up before the site launches or that a little research shows to have some obvious connections to the author is a bad review and should be avoided.

Getting friends or business partners to write reviews for you is just as unethical and writing them yourself. I'm fully for paying attention to other reviews and leaving comments or posts by you stating that you're the creator and disagree with it for whatever reason. That can look good in the readers' eyes as it shows that you pay attention to your own product and care about what others think.

However, I encourage everyone to watch out for unethical reviewers who are only looking to scam you into believing that their guides are great. Even the most well known gurus often times resort to unethical practices.

Any thoughts or comments?

Another truth to marketing or buying online

2006-12-22T17:32:00.000-06:00

Here's another truth that many people might not like, and many of the well established experts might get up in arms about. If you have been on the verge of buying any product -- whether it's an online product or an actual in-person product -- I bet that many of you have searched for it and eventually came across a forum discussing it.

Now many of these forums are great places, even some internet marketing ones. However, always take everything with a grain of salt. Have you ever noticed how even though many of these forums claim to be unbiased that they are actually run by people selling things in their niche? Or how several of the top experts have relationships with the forum owner? Many times you'll see even business or paid relationships being made here.

I rarely come across a forum that is truly unbiased because there's simply so much money to be made by running such forums. I don't care if you're talking about internet marketing, autoresponders, or TVs. You always have to be careful.

I recently came under attack on a forum by one well known marketer for posting some solid advice on how you should protect your big investments legally (common sense, right?). Ironically, this guy owns a site that could be considered in competition with one of mine. Even though the concept is completely different in the two sites, I've had a few people openly telling me how they went with mine over his. Even more ironically, this guy seems to have an established relationship with one of the moderators. Funny how those things work, isn't it? You'll see a lot of baseless attacks that are pure defamation only to try to quickly attack someone in hopes that people just believe you.

He stated some facts that were purely wrong and proven solidly to be wrong, yet his attacks persist while ignoring the facts. This guy then turns down a challenge to test my results against his to a 3rd unbiased party. He declines, but continues his attacks. Why? It's plain and simple.

If he accepts the challenge, he knows that he can lose at that and lose credibility. Instead, he can attack, say ridiculous things, and know that some people will just take his word for it without backing it up with anything. Others are smarter than that, but one thing that many of these guys don't realize is that there are people who aren't members who are reading the same posts. Having your established relationships attack someone for you will not make you seem better in the eyes of the people outside of the forum.

People are smart. You are smart. And people know that everything has to be taken with a bit of skepticism and a grain of salt. I don't think I've ever found one niche online that didn't have biased forums. Don't get me wrong -- most of these forums are still great places, but you still have to think for yourself.

Easy Tips for an Extra $500 to $1,000 a Month

2006-12-21T17:22:00.000-06:00

I bet many of you were looking for a very plug and chug way of making an extra $500 to $1,000 when you opened this thread. Although these tips are just as easy, I bet many of you will shrug them off, but I encourage you to give it a little thought.

I've noticed that this blog has a wide range of people reading it. I've also noticed that many are struggling to make ends meet and just looking for a little extra cash to get along. There are a few simple things to do that will bring you anywhere from several hundred to over a thousand dollars per month. You can use this not only to have more of a savings and more of a stable financial setting, but you can also use it to get a good start on any business you might be starting.

Here are the tips:

1. Get rid of any services that you don't REALLY need. If you have 1,000,000,000 cable channels, maybe downgrade that to the minimum and get rid of all the movie channels that you never watch anyway. This can easily save you $50 or more (or even more if you get rid of cable completely).

2. Bring a lunch to work, or eat out less. This doesn't mean you need to be cheap with your wife or sweetie pie, but if you find yourself eating out almost every day (I know many people who do), try to minimize that. This can save some people anywhere from $200 to $400 or more a month. Just try to eat normal meals in and save the going out for the special times.

3. If you have any bad habits like smoking, try quitting. Not only will this improve your health, but you could save anywhere from $150 to over $300 a month -- plus your wife will stop nagging you to quit.

4. If you really need a cell phone (completely understandable), try to keep the minutes in check and try to get rid of any of the extra features that you pay for by never use. Doing this can save anywhere from $10 to several hundred a month.

5. Try to set a budget for yourself as far as shopping goes. Doesn't matter if you're shopping for clothes, food, or whatever else. You don't need many of these things, and you should try to limit your spending here. If you set a fair limit, you're still able to get those new clothes and the like, and you probably won't miss too much (but you'll save anywhere from $100 to $500 a month).

6. For your entertainment, try to sometimes think of cheaper alternatives. There are plenty of cheap to free things that can be just as much fun and cost a lot less. Instead of dropping $50 to $100 on a night out, try to budget yourself to keep it under $30 or so -- and limit the number of times you go out.

7. Try off brands. Doesn't matter if its food or other products. Many off brands not only taste the same or better, but they often are either a better quality or have much more quantity to them.

8. Here's a big one ... try to limit your credit cards! Just because you can get a credit card to purchase that $3,000 tv doesn't mean that you should. The interest rates alone on these can you a bundle. A $3,000 tv can all of a sudden turn into a $6,000 tv over time. Limiting yourself here will not only directly save you money, but not having those high interest rates will save you hundreds to thousands more.

9. Look into some used things instead of buying everything new. Some used cars can be great deals, and they can be much more within your budget. Looking for a new tv or stereo system? Try checking out the classifieds first. This doesn't mean you have to buy crap -- look for high quality used items.

10. And finally, don't buy anything that you can't afford. If you can't afford that new tv or car, don't try. This will send you into a world of never-ending debt and make it nearly impossible for you to get out of.

11. If you are in debt, try to negotiate with your creditors. Often times, you can negotiate your debt down to 50% or less. I know a person who was able to pay off a ton of debt and did so with only paying 40% of what she owed (and her debt was fully paid off). To the creditor, some is better than nothing ... and if they think there's a risk of getting none, they will bargain with you.

12. If you own a home or car that you are still paying off, try to give one extra payment a year. This might not seem like much, but it can save you $100,000 or more on a house in the long run (yes, it's true).

Ultimately, what you do is up to you, but if you follow these tips, you'll find that you'll have a lot more money to play around with. Even doing a few of these things will bring you a decent extra income and probably won't "hurt" you in anyway.

If you are able to do this, you'll have an excellent head start with managing a business.

List Of Techniques/Tips I Use To Make Money Online

2006-12-21T12:04:00.000-06:00

I just thought I'd post a short list of techniques/tips/sites that I use to make money one way or another online. Feel free to add any that you use.

1. Team up with bigger, popular sites in related niches but not in competition with won another. This is perhaps the best strategy that I have ever found, and I've been able to do this on a few sites. Basically, try finding a service, product, or content that you can propose to give away for free to visitors of a larger site. If the offer is good enough and it benefits the other website, you can instantly grow your business overnight. For instance, if you deal in health products, try working out something with an exercise site (not direct competition, but VERY related). Look for others who can help you, but make sure that you can help them too.

2. Look into sub-niches. I know some people might disagree with me here, but I've found that if you're goal to make money is in a niche that is extremely competitive and virtually impossible to get search engine rankings for, why not look into sub-niches that should be related to it that are less competitive? Or perhaps find a niche that will need products in your other target niche in time. This way, you can still market what you wanted from the original niche, but have A LOT less competition.

3. When using Adwords, try the same thing -- look for sub-niches that would like the product/service you want, but that cost a lot less for keywords.

4. Another tip with Adwords -- try to get some VERY specific keywords that others not only might not have, but that might increase your profits as well. If your site is selling LCD TVs and if bidding on similar keywords is too expensive, why not try to find specific models (expensive models) and use those keywords? Or try to add keywords that would suggest that someone is looking to spend more money. For instance, the difference between a search for "boat" and "luxury boat" can suggest that one of them is probably looking to spend more. If you do this well, you can not only decrease your Adwords budget, but you can increase your profits at the same time.

5. Have the profitable part of your site stand out and be VERY easy for them to get to and use. I once made some simple changes on a site of mine to allow visitors to use the profitable parts of my site much easier (and make it much more simple and obvious to them). This simple 5 minute fix doubled my profits for that one site.

6. Look for related forums or message boards for your niches. It really depends on the niche, but some niches might only have one or two forums without many people giving advice in them. If you give some useful advice, you could easily gain a ton of traffic and sales from this. One BIG tip here is that if a forum pops up in the search engines for a keyword that is popular in your niche, you can post a few times there and know that you'll be noticed by tons. It's almost like getting your own site ranked high.

7. Yahoo Answers -- try to use this to look for leads for your sites or businesses. For instance, if you are a website designer and someone asks the question "does anyone know of a cheap website designer for under $300?," you can jump on that and say "hello, I'm Suzzy and here's my site, here are some examples, etc." If they're asking specifically for things like that, they shouldn't consider it spam if you suggest yourself. Or if a question is asked about your niche in general, you can try to give them a helpful answer and maybe say that they can find more information on your site too. The best part is that these questions and answers can stay there for a long time, so you can continue to get traffic from it for a long time.

8. Submit a few select articles to larger sites that wouldn't normally take an article from you unless you submitted it directly to them. For instance, About.com is a good place for this. Many niches will accept articles if you try to get yours posted there, and they can send a ton of traffic your way sometimes.

9. Try to stand out from your competitors by offering something that they don't, or by offering something better. You can do this by offering unique content or by giving away something for free that they charge for. There are plenty of ways to monetize your site -- giving away something for free can be great to get the attention you need.

10. Free or cheap classifieds online or offline. Try Craigslist.com or USFreeAds.com for free postings. You can also look into classifieds in offline newspapers if you think your niche is relevant enough. Some large papers often might only charge $15 or so for a classified.

11. Find multiple ways to monetize your site, but don't lose focus on your most powerful way.

12. Get creative and constantly test -- always try to think of new ways and find ways to improve upon your product, site, service, etc. There's always a way to improve upon your results.

13. Post cheap guides in Ebay if you think they can be used for leads to bigger products of yours. You can even gain traffic to your site this way.

14. Be as nice as possible to your customers -- even if they don't give you a dime -- and overdeliver. Visitors are sometimes afraid to contact you thinking that you could care less about them. Take a few minutes to write back to the ones who contact you and go out of your way to help them. You can mysteriously gain extra customers this way (not only from them but from their friends and others).

15. Don't try to make a quick buck anyway possible. Don't throw affiliate links all over with no other value.

16. Don't ... I repeat DON'T ... use adsense on an important sales page of yours. The last thing you want to do is advertise your competitors next to your "buy now" button. When that happens, you're basically selling your customer for a few pennies and possibly losing out on a much bigger sale. I see people do this ALL the time, especially new people starting out.

17. Think of needs that are out there -- either your own or others -- and look for ways of solving them either via a new product of yours or information. If you need help, try to get others on board who can help and who you can trust. If you're having troubles finding something or solving a problem, I bet others are too. Always be on the lookout for new ideas.

18. Don't be afraid to go in another direction from others. Often times, you might find that the road less traveled is the road to more wealth. Just be creative and put some thought into your site/product.

19. Keep in contact with your customers with mailing lists, but don't bother them to the point that they leave you. Offer them value for staying on your list, as they can be worth a lot to you.

20. Don't view something that isn't a success right away as a failure -- view it as something you need to improve upon. Very few people are a success the first time they try overnight.

21. Get your hands dirty! Start on something, anything! Even if you know nothing, try to start a site, blog, etc. so you can learn at least something even if you don't make a dime. A $5/month hosting plan for a site to play around with probably won't kill your budget, and it can be a great way to get a good start.

#### Well, that about does it for the strategies/techniques that I use on most of my sites. Below are a few things that I've been testing out for the heck of it but haven't played around with enough to say that they are great. ####

1. Look for other products out there that people might do searches for reviews for. Then do blog/website titles that say "product B review" and so forth, and then have an affiliate link built into it. I did this one time unintentionally and started seeing a few affiliate sales after I popped up on the search engine results. Try to think of other ways that people would do research on products that you can be an affiliate for and target those keywords. Again, I haven't done this a lot, but I have gotten a small amount of extra money this way by accident.

2. Submit articles to revenue sharing article directories. I'm not a huge fan of article directories (I prefer to build up content on my own sites, but I know others use directories with success), but I have noticed that revenue sharing directories do pull in a little money. Even if you don't link it up to a website, you can still pull in some money. Just for fun, I'm currently tracking a bunch of articles over the course of a month or two to see how well they do there.

Now this is a long post. I'm sure I maybe left out a few things, but that's most of what I follow and found to work. If you have anything else to add, feel free to do so! If you think a specific strategy might not work for you or others, feel free to post that too -- this is just what I do.

However, I can't stress the #1 post enough -- team up with larger sites that aren't in direct competition. That has perhaps helped me the most.

Half off hosting fees at 1and1hosting

2006-12-19T18:40:00.000-06:00

I normally don't make such announcements here, but 1and1hosting just announced a 50% off deal on their hosting packages for 6 months. I have a hosting plan with them and I'm very satisfied (even at the full price). They are by far one of the most competitively priced hosts out there, and they are very well known.

On top of that, all of their packages come with at least one free domain name (even the $1.50/month plan -- the $2.50 includes 2 free domain names) -- year after year instead of just free domains for the first year like many other hosts. They also offer unlimited domain name hosting on their packages. That means that if you run 10 websites, you still only pay the one total fee of $1.50 or $2.50 (or higher depending on your selection).

They also come with free Adwords, AdCenter, and Citysearch pay-per-click vouchers. The cheapest $1.50 package has $100 in free credits. Even after the first 6 months, returning to the normal prices of $2.99, $4.99, etc. is still VERY cheap.

I'd highly recommend their 1&1 Home or Business packages (now $2.50 and $5, when they were $5 and $10 before). The Home package comes with two free domain names, $100 PPC vouchers, 100 GB web space, 1,000 e-mail accounts, 1,000 GB traffic, etc. The Business package comes with 3 free domain names, 200 GB web space, 2,000 e-mail accounts, and 2,000 GB traffic.

Both of these are more than you'll probably ever need, but there are larger packages as well. Many of the packages also come with a free software bundle containing Adobe Golive and other website editing software. I also like how they have a built-in no html needed html website editor and flash editor (ANYONE can make a website with this).

Again, I don't normally post such offers, but I know that several people would be very interested in this as it's a very cheap way to start a business online or have some fun.

So check out 1and1hosting to see for yourself. I use them myself and would never recommend something I couldn't completely vouch for.

How Yahoo Answers Can Make You Money!

2006-12-19T17:24:00.000-06:00

Yahoo Answers is a very neat tool by Yahoo where users can post questions that others can answer for them. You can both ask and reply to questions for free. It's very easy to search current and past questions to not only see what the best responses were, but also to answer any questions that you might know the answer to.

I'm sure some of you are thinking right now, "Cool Brian, but what the heck does this have to do with making money online!?" In response to that, I say EVERYTHING! If you can't see the power in this, let me explain with an example:

Suzzy is looking for a cheap website designer, so she posts a question asking for any leads as to where she can find one for under $300. Meanwhile, Tom is trying to train his new puppy and asks a question about what the best way to do so is, or if there are any good guides out there.

Well, let's say that you are a website designer, or perhaps you run a website in the dog training niche. Ding dong! You just got yourself a great free lead. They are looking for the very thing that you are selling!

You can easily reply to the website question and say, "hello, I'm Sam and here is my site with a couple examples of other sites I've worked on -- I charge xx amount of money and could definitely get you a nice site if you are interested." Or in reply to the dog question, you could say, "hello, I'm Stephanie and I run mydogtrainingwebsite.com and can tell you that the best way to do this would be to do that because of x, y, and z. You can also see my new guide here if you're interested."

With both of those, you can post an e-mail or website address for them to check out. As long as you don't make it look like spam and provide helpful information in response to their question, you stand a good chance of gaining not just that person as a possible customer, but potentially several others who search for answers to the same questions.

All of a sudden in less than a few minutes of your time, you could have just gained a few new customers, as well as several new future ones too. This can be applied to virtually any niche out there. Just be creative and as helpful as possible!

Check out Yahoo Answers now to see if you can accelerate your business today!

The TRUTH About Internet Marketing

2006-12-19T16:49:00.000-06:00

Some of you might love this post, whereas others might hate it. Either way, it will certainly create some interesting discussions. I hope to point out a few things that might be eye openers to you.

The internet allows people to make thousands virtually overnight. Stars can rise and fall virtually overnight as well. Unless you're complete new to internet marketing (or IM), you've probably seen the standard sales pages, the claims of being marketing gurus, etc. You've also probably been disappointed with several guides that promised to make millions, while others have found hidden gems sporadically amongst the pile of crap.

You've probably seen the sites with "rich" guys with their fancy parked cars in front of mansions. You've probably seen pictures of checks, beautiful women in bikinis, and so forth. If you've ever bought any of the guides that were from such sites, I bet that at least a good portion of those you were disappointed in.

But wait? Why did it not work for you when you read pages of great testimony from others? Others made thousands overnight whereas you only lost money. How could that happen.

Well, there are a few reasons. First, the testimonies could easily be fake. On top of that, the pictures, cars, girls, checks, etc. could all be made up as well. I can't tell you how many pictures I see of mansions where it's just a plain old mansion that anyone could just get by doing a search online and stealing a picture. One site even had a guy who said that his not featured in the pictures because he was busy being on vacation on some island. Do people actually believe this? YES, because they want to believe it.

Other reasons could be that the testimonies are swapped amongst other marketers. Have you ever noticed how some sites have testimony from the same people (other marketers)? Have you actually clicked on any of the provided links? Can you see testimony from the current owner of the site you were on present on the site where his testimony came from? Are you catching on yet?

There are marketers out there who do make fortunes feeding off of you, and some of them do team up to all profit from you. They will not only promote their own guides, but they'll use their resources to promote their friends' guides as well. They often do make hundreds of thousands of dollars using the very technique that they tell you to do, but it's only because they already have established relationships, huge mailing lists, etc.

Don't get me wrong, there are TONS of great, ethical marketers out there, but you do have to be careful. And it's not just in the "make money online" niche. I've been involved with several niches online, and many of them have competitors willing to do and say anything to stand out among their competition.

This doesn't mean that you can't trust anyone -- it just means that you do have to be safe and smart about what you spend your money and resources on. Some people often can't see the most obvious of things.

Remember those websites I was discussing earlier with the pictures of mansions, cars, babes, etc.? Well, how many of those guides gave only a few tips and then talked about how you could make money just by promoting their guide (for a cut of the profits)? Doesn't that sound fishy to you? A guide about reselling their own guide to help them? Yet you pay for it. Why? Because you want to believe it.

It's almost embedded in some of your minds that if you don't see pictures of mansions, babes, checks, cars, etc. that the website is fake. Does this make sense to you? Probably not until I pointed it out, right? You get so used to this that this is the norm for you. If you see anything different, your red flags go off, right? I hope that many of you have realized this and can point out a scam from the real deal.

I've known some internet marketers who aren't gurus, don't make hundreds of thousands of dollars, and definitely don't have fancy websites. But guess what? Many of them have awesome products, guides, and services. I remember reading one guide that was only a few bucks that explained a great deal about something that I could use to my advantage. This $5 guide was worth more than most of the $200 guides out there.

Oddly enough, the lady who wrote this guide wasn't famous, didn't have a mansion, and only made a moderate amount of money online. Yet would you buy from her? Maybe, but I bet that many of you would be more willing to throw your money at a fancy website with fake pictures of checks and babes in bikinis.

There are plenty of good internet marketers out there, but I encourage you to pay attention to non-gurus and gurus alike. Most gurus are already making tons of money in ways that would be extremely hard for you to accomplish if you just followed their guides. Non-gurus aren't necessarily making millions, but they may have been in your exact same shoes before and know what they did to be a success. Listen to them!

Also, don't just play follow the leader and go into whatever everyone else is going into just because a "guru" said so. The truth is that even though some of the popular techniques out there can make SOME people lots of money, it definitely doesn't work for everyone.

Often times, the road less traveled is the road to more profits. The basic skills you can get online for free or very cheap. Other than that, you often times just need to get creative and maybe pick up on a few pieces of advice from cheaper guides out there.

Personally, I came to my success without relying on a single guide out there. I essentially self-taught myself everything. It was hard at first, and I wasn't making much, but once I realized the needs that existed out there, I was able to realize how I could be creative with making money there. I have NEVER looked back because that's how easy it really is.

Success stories can be inside anyone -- even you. Don't do whatever a guru is saying just because he makes money. Look around you and see what you think is needed out there and what you can realistically do.

Most importantly, don't fall into some marketers' traps of making you feel scammed as being "acceptable." Don't ever think that those photo-cropped, fake websites are the only ones that contain useful information.

Look inside yourself and others around you (both online and offline). Perhaps the answers to your success and wealth might be glaring right back at you waiting for you to seize the opportunity.

See a need? Fill it! Make money.

2006-12-19T16:34:00.000-06:00

Lots of people ask me how they can make thousands online (some even ask how to make millions). The truth is that making money online, even though it DOES require work, isn't as hard as most people think. If you look at the world around you, I bet you can pick up on several problems that could need fixing. At the very least, you can probably see several things that could be made easier.

Having a hard time finding helpful advice or a solution to a problem or question you have? If it's really that hard, I bet that others are having a hard time finding the answer as well. Instead of just thinking "that sucks," you should be thinking "this is great!" Why? Easy! Because if other people are also searching for what you need, that opens up a whole new opportunity for you.

My best products have been ones that are solutions to problems that I've personally needed a solution to. Creating a product out of the solution is beneficial to me in two ways. First, it has the potential of making a lot of sales and filling the needs of a select group of people. This makes them happy and brings me money as well. But the second reason is perhaps the most important -- even if it fails miserably, I still view it as a success because it will help me!

A business partner and I are working on a huge project that we should be done with in the first few months of 2007. Both of us see a huge need for this (I know I personally need it) and a HUGE market for it. We're both quite confidant that this could easily make hundreds of thousands of dollars if we market it right ... possibly even millions once it catches on. However, even if it fails, we still win! Why? Because we have a need for it and it will help us make more money either way! It doesn't get much better than that.

If you don't believe me how powerful and easy this can be, I'll mention a brief example of a company making millions to billions of dollars from a simple idea. It was long known that as men get older, they have a few problems getting ... something ... up. We all know that, even though the problem wasn't out there as much.

The funny thing is that researchers knew why men couldn't get it up, but it took someone awhile to think "gee, if I can make a drug and market it to solve that problem, I could be rich!" Eventually, a company thought of that and marketed a drug known as Viagra. Not only did they sell the drug, but they spread the problem (and the solution) all over until you saw it all over -- on the TV, in newspapers, etc.

Even though you might not be able to make a drug, the point is that the solution to this problem was widely known. It wasn't rocket science! It just took someone a little while to actually go about it and fully realize how profitable it could really be.

Internet marketing is the same way. Think of your problems, or problems other people might have, and then try to see if you can fix them. Perhaps you can find a way that someone is willing to pay $20, $50, $100, or even $1,000 or more for. That's how you become rich!

www.iwantpennies.com Review

2006-12-18T05:29:00.000-06:00

I'm sure that several of you are aware of our product at www.iwantpennies.com called "The Big Secret." I just wanted to update many of you with some early reviews of it. Everything seems to be going great!

I just heard from one individual that he made about $500 from it in about two weeks. That seems like a lot, doesn't it? Well, guess what? He asked me to review his site and his technique that he was using based upon "The Big Secret." I thought that he did an "okay" job but that he could easily make some changes that could potentially double his sales if not more. He actually missed one or two key points in the guide, yet he still profited greatly from it. On top of that, he was only using this technique for one small part of his site -- I thought that he could multiply is profits many times over by expanding upon the technique that he already used.

This just shows how powerful and easy "The Big Secret" can be regardless if you're a newcomer or an experienced internet marketer. I know others have also made more using this technique as well.

I believe that it's the only product out there that can truly make money easily online regardless of your experience level. I know others have tried the usual guides to find no success with them, but I encourage you to give this one a try. I think you'll find it pleasantly different than any other technique out there.

The big internet marketing gurus are not too happy with how this guide is competing with their long-standing guides that often simply just don't work. I've gotten attacked before, attempts have been made to take down classifieds, and it appears that one guru even tried to hack my website (he appeared to be trying to ruin the search engine rankings of my site, as I traced the problem back to a site that happened to be owned by a very well respected guru). Some people will do anything to try to kill the competition.

But here's how I see it: I actually use my technique to make money online outside of the internet marketing and "how to make money online" niche, so I know that it works. Not many techniques in guides out there are actually used by the people selling them (at least not as their main source of income). Even if I don't make a single sale (I'm actually selling quite a lot), I'm still profiting from it!

If you're hesitating on purchasing the guide, I encourage you to try it out and take my challenge: compare the results that my guide brings you to any other guide out there. I'll give you free one-on-one consultations until you succeed at it. I've offered to fund an independent comparison of my guide to others, but so far none of the gurus have accepted my offer. But my challenge to you is that if my guide doesn't bring you any results after a month, or if you think it doesn't work better than any other guide out there, simply ask for a refund and I'd be happy to give it to you.

Check out www.iwantpennies.com to purchase your copy of "The Big Secret" and learn how I make thousands off of a simple technique that virtually anyone can copy without creating any competition.

Think Like Your Visitors

2006-11-17T11:03:00.000-06:00

Not to sound like some martial arts master, but you really need to be one with your website visitors. Try to think like them. Try to see your site through their eyes. And most of all, try to understand their wants and needs.

If you can do all of that, you're on your way to making a ton of money online. If you have a website, try to think of why a visitor would want to visit your site. What makes it stand out from others in your niche? What do you offer that others don't? Perhaps you offer something for free that others charge for (this can be huge)?

If you came across your own site, what would you think about it? If you're trying to sell something, what would make you want to buy it? Would you even buy your own product or service if you came across it?

After you've determined all of this, try to make modifications to your site, product, or services to fix it. Even if you aren't sure on something, try to test it. Even with some of my most profitable websites and services, I'm always making modifications and testing out new ideas. If I'm making a lot, I don't totally change it (because something obviously is working), but there's always room for little changes to try to make even more, retain more customers, and so forth.

Even if you don't own a website and try to team up with another site or someone else, try to think of how they'd perceive you. What do you have to offer them? If you were in their shoes, would you work with them? What would you have to do to stand out more? The same thing applies in almost any type of relationship out there.

Now lastly, how does your competition think? How would they view your site, product, or service? How will they react to it? What can you do to lessen the competition or possibly even work together?

If you can think like your visitors, clients, competition, and business partners, you'll almost certainly do well.

Article Submitters and General Article Tips

2006-10-27T17:51:00.000-05:00

Writing articles has been a popular trend lately. Some people hate it, while others love it. There are a few downsides to watch out for, but writing articles might be very beneficial to you if you give it a try.

The idea behind submitting your articles for others to post is for a few reasons. First, if the article is written well and provides useful information, it will make you appear to be an expert in your field. If you have enough articles on the same topic, your name will start to be associated with your niche more. This not only makes people listen to you more, but you're more likely to become a trusted expert and have people listening to you (even when you're selling them your own products or services).

The other reason behind this is for free incoming traffic. When you submit your article, you are usually allowed to place your name, e-mail, and often a link to your website. Some individuals who see your link will click on it for more information and be brought to your website. When you submit your article to even just a few article directories, you have the possibility of dozens to even hundreds of other sites, ezines, and so forth posting your article as well. This creates even more free traffic, and it can even help with the search engine optimization of your site (increases your chances of getting indexed in the search engines).

One thing to be careful here is that if you post your own article on your own site, be sure to make it different than the articles that you distribute freely. Google and other search engines can penalize you for duplicate content, which can hurt your search engine rankings. Since some of the sites that you are submitting it to might be viewed as more important (and visited by the google bot more often), they'll sometimes get the "credit" of having it first, which will make it appear to the search engines that you took your own article from them! If you create a similar but different article for your own site, the chances of this happening are less likely.

Another thing to keep in mind is that some article directories allow any site to take your article freely. If your article ends up on the wrong site that Google or other search engines don't like (perhaps they are banned), some SEO experts say that your site can be penalized for having the same content, or for having that site linked to you. On top of that, some article directories will even edit your article to the point of adding their own links within your article, or even deleting the links that you already had in it! This even ignores the chances that individual sites will do this to you as well. The end result is that you have to be careful of who you submit your articles to.

Some SEO experts feel that giving out articles is ridiculous, as you can build up your own content if you kept them all to yourself. I agree with that to a point, and I feel that some sites are better off keeping all the content to themselves. However, if the site isn't doing well traffic wise with other methods, I think it might be much more helpful to actually try articles. It all depends on your niche and your plan of action of how you're trying to get free visitors to your site.

In the end, it's up to you to figure out which route you want to go. Please feel free to post any relevant comments here as well!

If you want a free article submitter, or if you want to join our weekly newsletter with free downloads for useful tools, simply join up using the form located on the right navigation bar. We will be offering weekly downloads and will include an archive of all the downloads soon.

Adwords and Adsense Not Working For You?

2006-10-21T14:04:00.000-05:00

Having troubles with Adwords or Adsense? Or still thinking about whether either of these are right for you? This is the article for you to read! Both of these services are great for some, but they can be disasters for others.

Let's start with Adwords. If you don't know already, Google Adwords is basically a pay-per-click system that Google has set up. Sites pay to have their small ads shown either on the Google search or on sites that elect to have Adsense on them (not only does Google get paid per click, but they pass some of that onto sites that allow them to put their ads there too). It can be a lifesaver for some sites, but a huge disaster for others. Somes sites who are unable to get ranked high in the search engines (either due to their own SEO downfalls or a field that's too competitive) are able to create ads that can appear in the first page of results either on the top or the right-hand side of the results page. Interested individuals can then click on their ad and proceed to see their website or sales page. Clicks can cost anywhere from 1 penny to $50 per click (yes, you heard me right, some competitive keywords go for $10 to $50 a click).

Adwords is a little more complicated than some might think, but the "basic" idea is that the more competitive a keyword is, the more money you have to pay per click. This isn't totally true, as the amount you have to pay is also determined by how how popular and relevant your site is to the keyword (they check both your site and see how many visitors click on your ad on given search terms, how long they stay on your site, etc.). The more relevant and more click throughs your site gets, the cheaper your pay-per-clicks are.

Even so, you can go through a lot of money before you find your "sweet zone," which might not even end up being that profitable at all. There are a few ways around this, though.

Although having some money to play around with to find out what ads appear more popular (thus resulting in higher click throughs and lower pay-per-click costs) is the best way for some sites, there are even better ways for those on a much smaller budget. You can look for less common keywords where you'll get higher placement for a lot less money. You can do this by either being more specific or by finding keywords that are less popular but still somewhat related to what you are selling.

Let me give you a few examples. Let's say that you are selling TV's. Instead of buying expensive keywords like "electronics," "televisions," or even "LCD tv," you could bid on keywords like "Sony LCD VS1000" or whatever other product you are selling. If that wasn't specific enough, you could even search for less popular key terms that are related like "bad pixels in LCD tvs" or "plasma tv vs lcd tv" or even "LCD tv's vs plasma tv's" and so forth. Now I picked a fairly broad topic (tv's), so the results here might even be a bit more inflated than normal, but the same concept can work in any category to bring down the costs a ton. Even in golfing, for instance, if you were selling golf clubs, you could ad keywords like "iron golf clubs" or "'some brand name' golf clubs."

Another technique is to set a low bid amount (say maybe 5 to 10 cents per click) but use hundreds of keywords. There are tons of tools out there to look up relevant keywords. Both Yahoo Overture and Google Adwords offer these tools as well, but any internet search will present even more options for you free of charge. This way, even if your ad shows up in spot 139 on "tv," it might appear in the #1 spot for less used keywords and still result in some great traffic coming your way.

Another tip, which I'd be very careful with (if used wrong, it could hurt), is to be straight forward in your ads. If you are selling something for $200 and people click on your ad thinking that it might be free, you could be in for some very bad results (and wasted money). If you are giving away something free (and if you aren't, do it!), make sure that you say that. If you are just trying to sell something, then you can perhaps put a price on your ad. Even though this could result in less clicks, the people that do click on it will most likely be aware that it's not for free and that they will have to pay something, so you're not wasting your money on irrelevant clicks.

You do have to be careful with this depending on the keyword, as you don't want to be so blunt that you scare away potential buyers as well. This is more relevant to information products or services than actual consumer products, as everyone knows that you have to pay money for an LCD tv. They don't all know that your great website tools are $200 and not free.

Your sales page is also a huge deal with this type of marketing as well, as you really want to catch the attention of your visitors before you lose them. Let them immediately see why your site is the best for what you are selling, or try to offer them a freebie if they sign up for your mailing list (to catch them later). There are tons of techniques on how to make a sales page better, but I won't spend too much time on this (perhaps I'll do another review of good techniques for this later).

Another thing that makes a huge difference with Adwords is what type of business you are promoting. If you are trying to promote a vet clinic in St. Paul, Minnesota, Adwords could be a great way to go (although it probably wouldn't be terribly hard to get ranked in the search engines with some good keywords here if you got some SEO done on your website). Not only could you have the settings to only display your ad to people within a certain distance of your clinic, but you could also ad more unique search terms like "vet clinics st. paul MI," which would almost certainly place your ad in the #1 or #2 spot.

Now if your business is an internet based one (like website marketing), you have a much harder situation and should definitely pay close attention to the tips in this article.

With that said, just be careful with Adwords and make sure that you are using it in a smart way. Make sure that your sales page is a good one and that customers who click on your link are clearly interested in what you have to offer for the price. And make sure that your ad and offer stand out more than your competitors (with still being realistic).

Now that we got over Adwords, it is easier to talk about Adsense, which is basically the opposite. Adsense is a service by Google that allows you to get paid when you have a block of ads on your site from Google each time someone clicks on it (be careful that you don't click on it yourself or use other similar techniques, as you can lose all of your money and be banned). This can be great for some sites, yet horrible for others.

If you already have a ton of traffic and relevant content, it might not be a bad idea to give it a try. For instance, a popular web forum that isn't making much money might start making a lot more by implementing Adsense. When relevant topics are brought up, some relevant ads might be displayed as well. Depending on the ad, you could get anything from a penny to several bucks (although think nickels and dimes for most of them). This sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Not necessarily...

First, if you don't have much traffic, you're pretty much screwed here. Then if you also have very little to no content, people probably aren't going to want to even click on your ads as they'll simply appear to be spam. Lastly, Google ads in the wrong places or even anywhere on some sites might appear like a desperate attempt to make some money, which could turn away potential customers. I actually don't use Adsense that much at all (I have a few spots for it on one site of mine), as I don't want to trash up the site with it ... and I make a lot more money with other techniques.

Unless you are doing this extremely well on a very well established website, don't expect to take in more than a few dollars a month (if that). Even more so, don't buy any of those "pre-done" websites filled with Adsense that claim to bring you thousands of dollars. Not only will you probably never get ranked in the top search engines (the only way for people to see those pages realistically), but you'll never make much more than a few cents with them. Think about it, if it was that easy to get clicks, why would advertisers waste so much money on that? And why would packages like this sell for only a few dollars? I've seen some packages ranging from $1 to $100 that sell hundreds to thousands of these pre-filled Adsense pages for you. Don't spend a dime on them as they are all crap. No one will ever see them, and no one will ever click on them.

So there you have it, both Adwords and Adsense can work for some sites, but don't think that they will instantly make you thousands of dollars overnight from scratch. You do have to put some time into your investments.

My original ebook goes into detail about Adwords as well, and my new ebook "The Secret to Making Money Online" has a small section that can help the new technique that I discovered as well. Check them out at www.iwantpennies.com.

Feel free to post about relevant experiences with either of these.

About Paying For MLM E-mail Leads

2006-10-20T16:15:00.000-05:00

One of the biggest schemes out there are websites that sell e-mail leads (oftem MLM ones, which are ones seeking to start their own at home business opportunity). There are some bad ones and then there are some really bad ones. My advice to you is to stay away from them all, as they really won't get you anywhere. But read on to hear my reasons why and how some are even worse than others.

MLM e-mail leads are basically huge lists of e-mails, phone numbers, names, etc. of people that are sold by the thousands by some companies that specialize in such lists. Some of these companies set up deals with other webmasters to get new prospectives to sign up from their websites, whereas others actually give new prospectives an incentive to sign up (either money or free offers). Even worse, some of these sites actually pay other sites to re-use their own mailing lists. I'm going to tell you why they're all bad.

When sites pay other sites to re-use their mailing lists only to resell them, that means that the individuals on that list not only have probably been contacted by dozens of other companies, but that they may have even signed up several months to several years ago. Even if the lists aren't re-used, another common method of these companies is to give new prospectives an incentive to sign up (such as "if you sign up for 20 offers, you'll get $1"). This means that they'll sign up for anything even if they have no interest in what you are selling, which means that their e-mails are basically worthless.

Some of the more respectable sites that sell MLM leads only to two or three individuals once, and most of the leads from the more respectable sites are often a lot fresher (the sign-ups probably happened several hours to 30 or 60 days ago). These are 100 times better than the ones described above, yet I still am not recommending that you get them. Why? It's simple...

Even if you find a service that offers decently priced leads to only a select few others (or even exclusively to you), these leads did not ask you directly to contact them. Not only is that pushing you closer to being a spammer, but you're probably going to have a very low response rate as well. How many spam e-mails do you get a day? How many of those do you read? Probably few if any (and I hopefully won't have to open those viagra spam e-mails in 20 years from now!). Even if they selected to receive more information in general, they probably weren't expecting it from you.

Take me for example, I run a few different mailing lists, and every single one is double opt-in. That means that not only do you have to request the information initially, but that you also have to click on a confirmation link in a confirmation e-mail that you'll receive. This assures me that you are the original person who requested the information, you're not some computer bot program, and that you actually do receive e-mails and opened at least one of my e-mails. Even with this double opt-in method, which is vastly superior to single opt-in methods (even though you might lose half of the people who sign up, simply because they really aren't interested enough in your stuff to click your confirmation link and just wanted to see if they could maybe get the freebies without confirming), you still won't get a very high percent of sales from it or even people reading it. Of the main two lists that I run (this one on making money online and another one that's related to marriages), both have made me money, but it's not uncommon for only a third to half of the people to even read the e-mail. Then it's not that uncommon to only get a small percent of those even clicking on anything in it.

And this might seem even more astonishing for the mailing list on marriages, as it doesn't sell a thing itself and offers tips and advice that they requested -- often even giving away things for free (much like my free downloads on my making money online newsletter). But don't worry -- that's part of it.

Okay, so back to my point. If the percents aren't even astounding for these methods when people double opt-in to get the exact same newsletter that they requested, then you don't want to even think what the results might be for e-mails sent to people that haven't requested you to do so.

I had a friend who bought over 1 million e-mail leads for a few hundred dollars. The deal sounded great to him -- if he just got a few people out of 1 million to sign up, he'd make his money back plus some. Guess what? Of 1 million e-mail leads, only around 200 of them even read it. Of that, only a select few even clicked on a link to check out his site. And guess what? Not a single one resulted in a sale or even a free sign up to his newsletter.

Leads can range in price from one penny each to several dollars each, but my advice is to keep your money and try to offer people incentives to sign up for your own newsletter or mailing list directly, as even if it takes longer, you'll get much better results in the long run (these things take time). This is especially true if you run a niche specific mailing list (such as arts and crafts, marriages, sports, etc.), where it's virtually impossible to find many good leads other than from your own site or similar sites willing to partner with you.

If my advice isn't enough to keep you away, you might want to check out several of the top autoresponders out there, because they won't even accept 3rd party lists. They won't even allow you to send confirmation e-mails to them. This is because they result in very high spam complaints, which the respectable autoresponders don't want to deal with because they can get everyone in trouble and risk future e-mails from you to anyone being blocked (as in no more e-mails sent to any Yahoo, AOL, Google, Charter, etc. account). There is a reason why they don't allow them. Any autoresponder that does probably has horrible deliverability rates themselves and would therefore be a huge ripoff.

Don't get me wrong, you do want to build up your own list of leads so that you can contact them again in the future when new products or new offers come about (or to release your newsletters to). However, you want to do this the smart way by giving them an incentive to sign up directly from your own site (perhaps a free ebook, or several lessons or tips sent to their e-mail, etc.). It might not be as exciting initially as sending out 1 million e-mail leads overnight, but you'll definitely get more responses and make a ton more money in the future (and you won't get the spam complaints or the empty wallet from paying for those leads).

To check out our relevant article on autoresponders, where we talk a bit about why they are important, why you need one, and which ones are the best, click here.

The Big Secret to Making Money Online

2006-10-17T11:26:00.000-05:00

My new ebook, The Big Secret To Making Money Online, has recently been released. Prior to this release, I allowed several individuals to use the advice in this guide to offer me their opinions of it. Everyone was amazed at how straightforward and easy it is to make money online.

Other guides talk about using Adsense, Adwords, or affiliate programs to make fortunes. That's simply not really true any more. Although it is possible for some sites to make money with these, you really have to have well established websites and fairly large budgets to really get anywhere. Adsense is only good on sites with a ton of traffic, and even then, why should you be directing your visitors to your competitor's websites? Websites made just for Adsense are jokes, as who wants to go to a site JUST to see Adsense links - they'll leave in a second. And if you try getting those pages ranked in search engines, you probably know by now that it's nearly impossible.

As for Adwords, it's a great way for some sites to make money, but it's not like you can be an affiliate of anything and make money off of it. If it really was that easy, then why wouldn't the original website owner or product owner do Adwords just himself? They would theoretically make more, as they wouldn't have to pay you commission. The reason they don't do it is because they'll pay too much in advertising costs for it to be profitable. That's why they get others to do it for them by offering 50% commission (more or less). It entices you to advertise their product even without a website. They end up getting free traffic and a few extra sales, whereas you end up getting only a cut of the profits and have all of your advertising costs. Most people find that they actually end up losing more money than they make!

Even using Clickbank and other sites where you can easily sign up to be an affiliate aren't always that profitable. They key here is getting traffic to your site to advertise your offer(s). Don't get me wrong, as some larger sites can make a lot of money with such techniques, but I know that the majority of people that come to me don't have a huge site or a huge budget.

That's why I'm selling my new ebook. It creates zero competition for me, but it's a great way for you to make instant cash and for me to profit a little on the side as well. I use this technique to make thousands, and I know that it works. However, I'm tapping only 1/1,000,000,000,000 of what I potentially could, which is why no one will ever be in competition. It would be impossible for anyone (even an entire huge company) to tap much at all. You don't need to. Even tapping what I do makes me thousands upon thousands of dollars.

You won't be a millionnaire overnight, but you will learn how to start making a great second income and potentially turn that into your primary income once you follow my guide and learn the strings. It's so easy!

I'll show you how you don't have to spend a dime to make hundreds of dollars. In fact, even if you do end up using a budget to try to increase your profits even more, you'll be spending a few bucks for every hundred or so dollars that you take in.

I can't explain too much more, as this is really a great technique that very few people know about. No other guide that I know of talks about this.

I'm selling a handful of copies to the public (as long as they promise NOT to tell anyone the secret) at www.iwantpennies.com, so grab yours today.

As always, I stand by my products 100%. If you aren't completely satisfied, just ask for a refund and I'll be more than happy to provide you with one. Unlike other sites and guides, I'm more than happy to personally respond to any of my visitors in a prompt manner. Feel free to drop me an e-mail at info@iwantpennies.com to tell me a bit about yourself and I'd be more than happy to see how I can help you.

WhiteHat Vs BlackHat Search Engine Optimization

2006-09-28T21:48:00.000-05:00

There are tons of debates going on about whitehat (or the normal search engine optimization methods) versus blackhat (or methods that can get you to the top of the search engines fast, but carry the risk of being banned from ever appear on those search engines again) search engine optimizations. The whitehat SEO guys don't like the blackhat SEO guys because they lose lots of customers looking to optimize their sites to the blackhat guys, and you'll read a lot of negative reviews of blackhat methods (some true and some not). I'm here to distinguish between the two and try to offer as much of an unbias review as possible.

You'll read about how to use tons of whitehat methods in my Money Making Guide, which is also included in my all-inclusive package. These methods, which the search engines love and will never ban you for, are such things as keyword density (the number of times your keywords show up throughout each page -- they even score differently for showing up on links vs titles vs headings vs normal content and so forth), number of pages (the more the better), number of backlinks (the more RELEVANT and higher pagerank sites that link to you, the better -- you can get penalized for just submitting your link to thousands of irrelevant sites and directories), how long your site has been up, how your meta tags are done, what directories you're included in, and so forth. These do require a lot of work, but once there, you don't have to worry about being banned and you can usually enjoy your status for quite some time. If you run a respectable website or depend on your easily recognized name, you definitely want to stick to this method (you'll probably never see a serious big website use blackhat methods). On the sites that I try to optimize the search engines for, I use whitehat methods myself. You can get several whitehat tools, including one of my favorites (a search feature that searches by keywords for sites with the same keywords already agreeing to exchange links with you -- even less common keywords have dozens of sites show up) by getting our all inclusive deal by clicking here (the entire package is only $24.95 and has tons of useful tools included).

Now blackhat methods (often called search engine cloakers) are a bit different, although still related. The number of backlinks and other whitehat SEO methods still work great here (in fact, the better the whitehat optimization, the faster the blackhat stuff works), but blackhat goes a step further. Blackhat methods usually consist of automatically creating hundreds to thousands of keyword optimized pages that ONLY the search engines see (normal visitors will only see your normal pages). Typically, you type in a few keywords and the program will do the rest for you after you install a sort of script so-to-speak on your website. When the search engines see you with thousands of pages of relevant keywords, they'll think that you're a bigger and more important site. There are ways that search engines try to catch people who do this (like by trying to see if the pages make sense and contain more than just keywords), but the better search engine cloaker programs out there will create extra pages that contain normal sentences and the like (but still contain the right number of keywords and so forth). The better programs make it much harder for the search engines to catch you. Some will even include upgrades and add-ons that make it even less likely that you'll get caught.

Now you might be thinking "what if I use this method and don't care about possibly getting the site banned???" That's exactly the way most people who use this think. They'll either use free hosts or cheap domain names and hosts that they really don't care if they lose (typically, they try to use different hosting providers too). Often times, the benefit you get from being towards the top of the search engines (I know of a few sites who use this method and get ranked anywhere from number 1 to number 5 in places like Google for certain keywords) pays off even if you only have it for a short time. Top positions often get several sales to a ton of sales a day, and it costs you nothing in advertising costs and the like.

Your exact position depends on the keywords you use and several other factors. Some blackhat, or cloakers, try to also use a ton of irrelevant keywords to show their sites. Although this might allow more pages and keywords to point to you, it's not only more likely that you'll get caught, but the people doing those searches won't be targeted to you.

Don't believe me that there are people who use these methods? Then do a search on Google for "failure." Guess who is in the number one spot? The official whitehouse .gov website with George W. Bush's name. This isn't Google having a political tie to anyone -- it's a bunch of blackhat users doing this as a joke (although several whitehat methods can also obtain this result, but much harder).

Now you might be asking where you can check out such search engine cloakers, or blackhat methods. The most popular one, and the best one, is by far Search Engine Cloaker. There are a ton of features there and tutorials. Even if you know nothing, you could learn how to use this software. More advanced techies can also take advantage of other features and add-ons to do even more with it. The more advanced features are not as easy as other methods out there, but even novices can figure out the basics by following the guides. I should note a few things about this Search Engine Cloaker site...

First, several people have reported that cloaking has worked better in the past, but it does still work now (gives a big advantage until, or if, you get caught). A brand new site will still benefit from this software, but an already somewhat established site (even minorly) with a few links to it will make Search Engine Cloaker work a lot faster (hence some of the risks involved). Some people who have been caught and banned, which isn't a lot (but it can happen), have found that you can sometimes asked to be put back in the search engine index if you stop using the cloakers, while others have found to never get e-mails returned from the search engine that banned them. And again, if you abuse it too much (like by using keywords irrelevant to your site), you are more likely to get caught. If you follow the instructions and suggestions, it will reduce your chances.

Some people might not like it that I even mentioned such methods, but I try to be as unbias as possible. Blackhat techniques are not illegal (in fact, some search engines actually don't mind their use as long as they aren't abusive); they are just against the policies of certain search engines and can get such sites using those methods banned. I do want to make people aware of all the methods out there. My guide isn't about blackhat or cloaking methods, as to really make money, you don't necessarily need them (I've never used them on my sites, but I know a few people who have -- some have great results and some only have somewhat good results -- it all depends on how you go about it and the time you put into it). I do recognize several advantages to them such as quickly getting to the top with minimal effort, but there are downsides such as having a popular site get banned (which is one reason why several blackhat sites are ones that the owner doesn't care about if they get banned as they'll just make another one pop back up later and profit the entire time it's up).

You're welcome to check out the Search Engine Cloaker site. It is over $100 to purchase it (it should also be noted that to use it on an unlimited number of domains, it's $200). Once purchased, you get to log into your account and can start up right away. Although the basics work fine, there are also a few add-ons for additional features. I have known sites to use just the basics without having any tech savvy and finding them to work well. I haven't used this software myself, partly because I run a few popular sites that I wouldn't want banned, but I do recognize its potential for other people.

This would be a very good topic to hear some discussion on, so feel free to post comments here. Both sides have some very valid reasons for one why is better than the other (and not just better for the website owner, but even the visitors sometimes...), and both tactics will be here to stay for a long time.

I look forward to hearing your comments and thoughts!

Brian

www.iwantpennies.com

A Little Bit About Autoresponders (Updated For January 2011)

2006-09-28T19:53:00.002-05:00

If you're looking for an honest review of the top autoresponders (and an explanation why), you've come to the right place. Read below to find out about my experience with autoresponders out there and read at the bottom about a free tool I'm giving you to help start you out with list building. :)

If you read our guide or followed any of our advice in our e-mails, you probably heard about autoresponders. For those of you who don't know what one is, an autoresponder is a system or script that automatically sends several follow-up messages to individuals who sign up for your mailing list or newsletter. You can have a sign-up for and then have several e-mails spread out over the course of a week to several weeks, or you can have it only send out one or two e-mails and then e-mail out your own newsletters to everyone using your program.

It's essential to have one if you are selling anything on the website, or even if you are just using affiliate links to promote other products. It has been proven that the majority of sales take place after you contact them several times (for bigger purchases, it usually requires at least 7 follow-ups). So now that I convinced (hopefully) you that you need an autoresponder, your next question might be "which one?"

First, you have three basic options: either purchase a professional one hosted at another site for a monthly fee (usually $10 to $30 a month), pay a one-time fee for your own autoresponder that you can run from your own server using a script, or use a free hosted autoresponder (which almost always have ads and not as many features or reliability).

Let me say now that free ones with ads might be okay to start with, but don't expect to make a fortune off of them. Not only does it look unprofessional to have other ads on them, but some of those ads might even be from companies that are competing against you! On top of that, due to it being free, the company usually doesn't have the resources to make sure that your e-mails are getting where they need to go or to support you with any problems. I don't recommend them unless your running a small site for fun and not expecting to make money (for instance, if you're running a fan site of a game, famous person, etc.). But even then, you can turn any opportunity into a money making opportunity.

Now as to hosting your own using a script that you pay a one time fee for versus paying a monthly fee, the answer as to which is better isn't as easy as you might think. Obviously most people would want to pay less and might lean towards the autoresponder script, which typically cost anywhere from $80 to $300 or more (I sell a good script for $9.95, click here to see it among other products, but please note that I still don't recommend even that for serious e-mail marketers -- read on to hear my best suggestions). The advantages to this are that you only have to pay this fee once and that everything looks like it's coming directly from you (because it is). The disadvantages are that because everything is coming from you, you have to deal with all of your own problems -- ranging from e-mails not getting delivered to problems with the script and setting it up. Also, because it's mailed out using your hosting provider, there might be extra restrictions with how many you can e-mail each day, bandwidth problems, and problems with e-mails not getting delivered (and your host won't care because that's not their expertise and they don't make sure that their e-mails don't get blacklisted). This along might force you to pay more or it might cost you several sales if more of your e-mails get blocked or end up undelivered (or even in spam folders). In addition, any complaint about you spamming people (even if you did it legally and they requested it) you'd have to deal with yourself, and your host might drop you just to remain safe.

Basically, I'd only recommend this method, despite a few advantages and the cheaper price, if you had a much smaller mailing list and if your subscribers were always expecting your e-mails and not likely to accuse you of spamming. Having said that, though, I would still highly discourage this despite how several newcomers to e-mail marketing often try to go this route (trust me, it's a mistake -- been there, done that).

Now if you're more serious about autoresponders, plan on having a list of several hundred to several thousand (even tens of thousands), or if you want to avoid all of the hassle, worries, and problems with hosting your own script, then an autoresponder hosted on another server and run by another company is your best bet. Again, I wouldn't get a free one if you were serious about it, as not only does it look bad with other ads, but the service and rates of deliverability will be far lower than what you'd get with a premium autoresponder. They might be a good choice for starting out, though.

It basically comes down to two companies when you deal with high end autoresponders -- Aweber and GetResponse. Both companies have great programs, great support staff, great features, great deliverability rates, and constantly deal with issues ranging from getting better deliverability (they actually call up places to make sure your e-mails don't get blocked by certain e-mail providors) to taking care of spam problems for you (you are no longer at risk). Both have many positive reviews (be careful of negative reviews, as many come from people working for either company -- kind of a shady thing), and I haven't really seen any major complaints from either.

Both offer all the features you'll need plus tons more from easy message editors (do it yourself html or with their editors or plain text) to direct RSS feeds (so your mailing list knows when you update your blog, for instance). All types of pop-ups and forms are also as easy as a cut and paste (you can customize everything too) and offered at both. Both have great customer support as well. There really is very little difference between the two. Aweber is just under $20 a month and GetResponse is just under $18 a month. I'd say that the layout of GetResponse is a little easier for the novice compared to Aweber, but you can learn both of them fairly easily if you just take a little time.

Aweber also seemed to be a little ahead of the game several years ago, but GetResponse has more than caught up now. GetResponse is not only a little cheaper, but if you deal with huge lists (of over 10,000 subscribers), you'll also save a little there too (just over $4 per extra 5,000 subscribers compared to about $10 per 10,000 new subscribers). So if you have a mailing list of 11,000 to 15,000 subscribers, you'll save about $8 a month with GetResponse. Both allow you to have up to 10,000 subscribers for within their normal price without any extra fees, and they allow you to e-mail as many times to that entire list as you want. Both also allow you to have an unlimited number of campaigns too (so you can have a dozen different sites with a dozen different e-mail campaigns for the same price without paying extra).

Old reviews show Aweber being a little cheaper with larger lists only because GetResponse was priced differently a year ago when they didn't offer unlimited broadcasts (e-mails to your entire list) and the like, but now GetResponse is actually a little more affordable.

The one thing that Aweber has that stands out a bit is that they seemed to be on top of things a little more in the past, but GetResponse seems to have everything more than together now and seems to be on top of things as well. This, however, almost made me go with Aweber at first. On the other hand, though, it was GetResponse who first had a much better backup system than Aweber (now both are good), so that kind of neutralized it again for me. But both are well established companies with constant updates.

It's very hard for me to suggest one over the other, as it really comes down mostly to personal preferences. I actually eventually went with GetResponse and I'm very satisfied, but I'm sure I'd also be just as happy with Aweber as well (except the $2 extra dollars a month).

There are cheaper places, but be careful of their reliability. On a side note, Aweber sometimes claims to have the highest reliability, but it's based on their own tests and what they claim to have is simply impossible to really achieve -- and proven. It basically comes down to the fact that both have top notch deliverability rates and the differences seem to be negligible.

I'm also very happy that I switched to a monthly fee autoresponder over from a one time fee script. Not only are things a little easier, but it has saved me lots of time and worries. The customer support along saves me more time and money than the monthly fee. I have also noticed better deliverability rates. In fact, that's one of the things that convinced me to switch. In the not so distant past, I e-mailed a very select and specific group a special promotion that was only going on for a week. Off of one e-mail, I made over $700 dollars in a matter of hours (no joke). Sounds exciting, right? It was! BUT after the promotion ended, I checked my message and realized that it only e-mailed 36 of the nearly 300 subscribers it was suppose to due to a bug that had to be dealt with. If I didn't have that bug and used the service that I have now, I probably could have made several thousands of dollars in a matter of a day with that one e-mail. Luckily I switched and I'm off to a good start.

As always, any feedback or opinions on autoresponders are more than welcome!

*Bonus* -- If you end up purchasing either Aweber or GetResponse through my links (click Aweber or GetResponse), e-mail me at brian@briankoz.com and I'll give you a free $497 software tool to help you find and generate targeted leads to your new e-mail list.

Brian

P.S. I realize that I basically didn't promote the autoresponder that we sell for $9.95 (and which is included in our $24.95 package) much at all. It's a very good program and has tons of great features, but I'd still recommend Aweber or GetResponse for more serious individuals and to avoid a lot of the hassles ($15 to $20 a month is definitely worth it to me, especially after the increased sales it will achieve for you). So if you're real serious, don't buy this one from me! :)

P.P.S. Since this original review, Aweber and GetResponse have changed a bit more by adding new features, some pricing tweaks, etc.. Essentially, GetResponse added some more neat social media integrations and features, while Aweber and GetResponse both have added more analytics and adjusted their pricing a tad to charge a bit more for the larger list owners (the original pricing and review above still stands true, though, especially for those starting out or with lists in the hundreds to thousands).

Introduction to My Blog

2006-09-28T10:35:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my blog! I just created this with hopes of being able to better communicate with my visitors and subscribers to my mailing list at www.iwantpennies.com. I will be posting quite frequently here, and I will be updating you via my mailing list every now and then if you are interested.

I will be using this blog to review money making techniques -- the good and the bad. I will also be using it to provide you with several free downloads that will help you with things ranging from getting a better search engine ranking to techniques to make money even without a website. I will never suggest expensive programs out there that do nothing for you. In fact, usually I can find either free or very inexpensive programs or techniques that work just as well if not better than programs that cost $100 or more.

If you're interested, check out my tools section at www.iwantpennies.com/tools.html. The total package so far includes my ebook on making money (which I update regularly), an article submitter to 150 article databases, an ezine ad submitter to over 1 million readers, a mailing list builder, an autoresponder, a tool to search for sites by keywords that want to exchange links with other websites (a similar tool costs well over $100), a bundle of over 14,000 ebooks that you can give away or sell some (great for building mailing lists), an RSS announcer to get more sites to publish your RSS feeds or articles, and much more. The entire package (which comes with updates) only costs $24.95 as a one-time price. I use this money to do more research and obtain new products to review for you. This package is by far the cheapest and most effective I have found so far for doing what they do.

Check back often as I will be updating this blog several times a week! As always, your input is welcomed and appreciated.

Brian

www.iwantpennies.com