When I started Internet Marketing I had very little money available to spend so I had to build and promote each site from scratch. It was cheap and It was effective. However I do often wonder what would have happened if I’d been able to take some shortcuts.

On the positive side I probably would have started making money sooner. I could have then leveraged that income and increased it exponentially.

On the negative side I probably would have ended up taking a totally different path and I wouldn’t have had such a good grasp on the basics.

That last point is the problem with taking short cuts , you don’t learn and master all the finer points of site creations and promotion.

Having said that If you need to kickstart things how should you go about it.

The first thing people will tell you to do is try to find some sites for sale. Flippa is a the option that most people recommend but some sites do tend to be a little expensive there and with most sites with lots of members there will be a few sharks there looking to rip you off.

The big scam at the moment is to create a product sell it as a WSO on the warrior forum then show those sales as income, there is technically nothing wrong with this but it does stink of sharp practice as it’s doubtful you’d be able replicate this income on clickbank or paydotcom.com.

There are several other major problems with flippa, One listing today had the title “Automated Amazon earning $5403 per month Polarized aviator sunglasses”

To read that you’d think it was earning $5403 a month, it’s not in fact it’s earning $0 the $5403 is the sellers estimate of how much it will earn in 3 months. Why Flippa allows crap like this is beyond me! You couldn’t use misleading adverts like this in any other form of media so why allow it.

Do your due dilligence, get as much information as possible and if it looks too good to be true it probably is. Flippa is a great resource but you do need to be careful.

So what can you do to make things safer and less fraught with risk?

I usually use a site called flipfilter.com when i am looking for sites as it allows me to search a number of different market places.

If you are just starting out I would recommend finding someone who will be happy to create sites for you. We have several people in the WordPress Goldmine Forum who build and create sites for people. Other members regularly sell off some of their sites within the forum.

For example one of out members owns this site http://websitesforbuying.com there you’ll find several sites for sale.

One final thing you can do is to sign up with a Site Broker, these guys regularly sell sites on behalf of others in return for a commission. The prices will be slightly higher but if you use the right type of broker you’ll be assured of getting good quality sites as brokers protect their reputation by selling good quality genuine sites. One of the brokers I use is http://www.flipwebsites.com/

When you come to sell any of your sites it’s also useful to use a broker to sell your sites.

To sum up, you can get a head start by buying existing sites and promoting them, you will probably not gain as much as an insight into how Internet marketing works but you will probably be earning quicker. Finally be careful, only buy off trusted sources, paying a bit extra for a genuine site is worth it.

I am basically a very shy person, and I always feel very uncomfortable in strange places or in large groups, so a nightmare scenario for me is to have to address a large group of people in a strange place. I think this comes from a case of stage fright I got when I did a school play and had to give a monologue.

I stood on the stage, looked at all the people in the audience opened my mouth and my brain shut down…. I ran off the stage as quick as I could. The strange thing is.. I can still recite that damn monologue now from memory 40 years later!

Last Thursday at 9.45 am I stood up in front of 25 people in a Meeting room In Nottingham and presented my first ever seminar. The 2 day seminar covered Product Creation, List Building and Promoting your Products. I can’t remember ever enjoying “work” so much in my life.

Within about 5 minutes the fears and nervousness disapeared, the adrenaline kicked in and I was on a roll. Questions were asked and the answers just came without me even having to think about it, ideas that i’d never considered before sprung from the grey mush between my ears. I was having the time of my life… well apart from that night in the Ice bar in oslo….but thats another story.

I spent 2 very productive days with the nicest group of people you could ever meet, If I’d let my fear win I would never have had that experience. I learned a lot myself from the people who attended, never underestimate the power of sharing information with likeminded people

The really perverse thing about all this is that I arranged to present a 2nd seminar in Las Vegas before I knew if I could do it. Do you know what? I can’t wait, I wish it was next week.

(me presenting a seminar in vegas…I still can’t believe it!)

What aspects of you IM life, or even life in general do you fear?

I’ve had people tell me they were afraid to ask for help in case they were thought of as stupid.

I’ve had people write great products and not release them because they were afraid people wouldn’t like them

I’ve known people who wouldn’t send an email asking about a JV because they were afraid of the other person saying no.

Like most fears these are all irrational so what if they say no if you don’t ask it’s the same as a no.

Forget those irrational fears get out there and do something that you are afraid of.

Do it today address one fear that’s holding you back you’ll more than likely be surprised at the outcome.

Below is the group photo of the brave people who attended my first ever seminar, thanks guys , you don’t know how much I owe you!

How Many Potential Niches Can you Spot?

You are being Misled!

That’s not some marketing trick to get your attention it’s the truth. Every day you are getting emails from marketers and they are misleading you.

Some of it is deliberate some of it is just misguided ignorance.

Whether it’s telling you about some great new product that will make you millions of dollars…that they haven’t even seen or Just telling you that you that Guru x just did a million dollar launch most of its bull.

In fact next time someone tells you about a million dollar launch do the math and take off affiliate commissions, taxes and refunds (many big launches can have massive refund levels) and that cool million dollar launch won’t look anywhere near as impressive.

What really gets me is the lie that gets trotted out regularly each month “The Money is in the List” I wish I had $10 for every time I’ve heard that.

The thing is the money isn’t in the list, if it was then the guys with the biggest lists would be winning every affiliate promotion competition and making more sales than anyone else. Whereas when you look at the competition results quite often the guys at the top of the leader board are people very few of us have heard of.

The reason why is simple… the money isn’t in the list at all. The money is in a well-targeted and prequalified list.

There are two types of email marketers, those that do anything to get you on their lists and those that only want people on their lists they feel they can genuinely help. It’s really easy to spot the difference.

With the first type you see their email and usually ignore it or delete it without opening it.  With the 2^nd type of marketer you see their email and open it immediately or in some cases wonder why they haven’t sent an email out.

There is also a big difference between the way these 2 types of marketers build their lists.

Type 1 will make you sign up before giving you any information, just think about all the big launches that have happened lately.  You need to sign up before you watch any of the videos, look at Product Launch Formula 3 for example (what was wrong with 1 and 2?  Ohh and is it only me that see’s the irony in a product launch series about a product launch product..surely everything is in the launch series J)

Type 2 marketers give you lots of good information and only once you’ve read through it will you get a chance to subscribe. By doing it this way type 2 marketers ensure that they are sending information to people who want to get that type of information. Their lists are much smaller but highly responsive.

When you think about it its common sense really but that tends to be lacking in many marketers.

One of the best exponents of this type of prequalification marketing is Andre Chaperon. If you go to his Affiliate Bully website (no that is not an Affiliate link!!) you’ll find more good free  information about affiliate marketing than in many sub $100 e-books. ..Actually I’ve seen a $197 book with less useful information.

Go and have a read then come back and tell me (use the comment button below) if that isn’t the type of information every internet marketers should give out!

As the WordPress Goldmine Forum approaches it’s 2nd birthday I wanted to highlight some of the amazing offers the members have access to. This is not just offers of software and products but really great deals on top quality articles and site building.

Would you be happy to pay 1 cent a word for a great quality native English speaker to write your content? Our members are!

Would you be happy to pay $5 for someone to build your site for you?

How about a Voice over or a salespage these are all offers that out members have access to within the forum.

Add that to the helpful members who are happy to share their successes and failures… you won’t believe what Paul did last week! and you have an Internet Marketing forum that I am convinced give the best value available.

Why not check out what we have to Offer you’ really won’t regret it.

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Oh and members get 50% affiliate commission so 2 sales and you’ve covered your $19.97 costs

Ask any classroom of children who discovered America and the majority will probably say Christopher Columbus. However one thing is certain of all the people who may be credited with it Columbus’s claim is the least valid. Young Chris was a total failure, 4 times he left Spain To find a way to India and China and failed 4 times. On one occasion he was returned to Spain in chains. In fact his greatest success seems to be that his sailors managed to introduce Small pox to the West Indies and syphilis to Europe.

But none of that really matters despite being an abject failure he should still be a role model to us all. He never gave up and when people said , you can’t sail west wards around the world he said, “Just watch me try”.

One of the new members in the Forum inspired this blog post, she said that she’d been trying to make it at IM for a long while but as soon as she had researched a topic and decided to start (I’m Paraphrasing here) she’d read a Forum post which said xxx doesn’t work and she’d give up and look for something new.

I am sure some of you can relate to some of that, the over analysis of a method or the hoards of people who say XXX doesn’t work. Some forums are full of crap like that. I regularly go to the warrior forum and every day I see people write total bull and write it as if it’s fact. The trouble is some people actually believe them and if you point out what the say is wrong you risk getting flamed and banned.

Generally I find there are 2 types of people in IM Those that actually knuckle down and work day after day at making an income and those that study and analyse and find reasons not to work. I’ll give you one guess who earns more!

Go and get that spirit of Columbus get out there and do something today.

In last weeks podcast I challenged everyone who listened to it to outsource 1 task that day, even if it was only getting 10 backlinks from Fiverr.com for $5 (if you haven’t checked it out yet do so!). So today i am going to issue another challenge…

If you are one of the people who over analyses things, today buy a domain and add a blog to it. It doesn’t matter what the blog is about don’t even bother doing any keyword research just find a keyword based domain and build a blog.

Finally a small gift for you: I’ve dramatically up dated my “Quick and Easy Site Promotion” Guide you can get it for free from http://automatedsitepromotion.com/guide/ nothing to subscribe to just download it.

Ohh and one other thing. I have a small survey running at Click here to take survey It will only take 30 seconds to complete I would really appreciate if you could have a look at it and complete it.

So far I’ve had some really interesting ideas and comments left there Click here to take survey

AS ever I welcome your comments

Are sites like this the future of outsourcing?

Following from the amazing response to my last post I thought I would show you an Free/Cheap alternative to outsourcing some repetitive tasks.

There are 2 tools that I have been testing for the past few weeks that are providing me with great initial results. The thing I really like about them is that they both allow you to start with a free account and “work your passage” what I mean by that is that in return for you providing them with resources the allow you to use the system. One distributes your articles to hundreds of quality article directories which have lots of back links pointing at them. The other distributes your bookmarks to 17 bookmarking sites without you lifting a finger.

Let me explain more.

The first tool is EzArticleLink.

EzArticleLink is a unique article distribution service. There are 2 parts to it , firstly you add an article directory to the back end of some of your sites, for this I use old sites that are of little use to me. EAL will post articles from other members to these sites (you can monetize these). In return for doing this you can then submit articles for your main sites which are then posted to other peoples directories.

Additionally for every article you post you get 100 additional anchor text links if you are a paid member.

You need to add spun articles but the service has it’s own in-house article spinners who do an excellent job.

Free members get 100-200 distributions per article and paid members (currently $29) get 200-300.

One side effect I’ve noticed is that the sites I’ve added the directories to are starting to perform slightly better. Most probably due to the back link that EzArticleLinks provide to ensure that Google indexes the directories regularly. I’ve added 20 directories which gives me unlimited article distribution for my other sites so If I can earn $1 a month from each of these directories I will have covered my monthly fee

In summary:

Read More about EzArticleLink…

The next tool I like is SocialAdr.

SocialAdr also has a free and paid business model. The service provides back links to your site from social bookmarking sites. Free members earn credits by setting up accounts (Takes about 1 hour) and then logging in everyday and pressing a button which adds bookmarks to the sites for free members. It takes less than 5 minutes per day to do this.

If you are like me and are basically lazy and don’t want to press any buttons then the paid service is for you. You just need to set up the bookmarks you want distributed and then sit back and all the work is done for you. The sum total of your work is opening the email that tells you what has been distributed.

Read more about SocialAdr

To have outsourcers do this work for you would cost a lot more than these services charge. The results I am starting to see means that these are no brainers. You can use them for free until they pay for themselves then upgrade to paid status.

It looks like the big name marketers have a new toy and intend to play with it and intend to abuse it until it breaks. Yet another launch this week following in the steps of Video boss, List control, Mainstreet marketing.

Now we have Outsource Force from John Reese. Let me guess it will be $1997 course spread over 8 weeks showing you how to outsource. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz Same Old Same Old, here comes the bandwagon jump on board.

The thing that made me laugh out loud is that as well as being promoted by the usual suspects John Jonas who has his own course on outsourcing is promoting it.

Yes you read that right, a marketer with his own outsourcing course is promoting someone else’s course about outsourcing. Oh the Irony! Of course he also manages to damn the course with faint praise in his first email…

“A couple months ago I helped John Reese get started outsourcing to the Philippines.”

I am sure John Reese has been outsourcing for years but the comment above makes it look as if you’ll be paying $2000 to someone who has 2 months experience at outsourcing.

Now you don’t think a marketer would build a course around something he knows very little about would you? <==== More irony!!

So John Jonas If you read this tell us… Is John Reeses course better than yours or are you just promoting a course you haven’t seen for the $1000 commission? You have a good product so why act like a $10 Hooker.

Every Time I see this crap happening I get an Image of a nature program I saw about Vultures fighting over the carcass of an antelope trying to get the juiciest bits, the only problem is to these guys we are the carcass.

(There’s 5 more marketers that won’t promote WordPress Goldmine! )

Now it’s you money so you can spend it as you want. If you want to spend $1997 learning to outsource then that’s fine by me but there are much cheaper options (there is even a free step by step to outsourcing in the WordPress Goldmine Forum). But whatever you do make sure you learn from people who are actually doing this stuff day after day and sharing what they learn.

Despite What some marketers seem to think Internet Marketing Is not just about trying to screw ever cent out of peoples pockets. In the right environment it can be about testing and sharing and helping people.

One of our members Chris wrote the Crossroads Methodology which is a guide about marketing to main street businesses. Another Member took what he learned from that made a few minor tweaks and last month won $34,000 worth of contracts. He then shared his methods.

You can and will make money from Internet marketing but please don’t feel you have to buy every product that comes out especially If there are much better cheaper options available!

Be careful out there and sorry for the mixed metaphors! I would really welcome your Comments on this…Am I right or just over reacting?

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When I sat down to write this post I had a number of topics I was thinking of covering.

Murphys Law:- Why You have a network error that takes your sites down 5 minutes after sending an email to 7000 people… it only took 26 hours to fix!

Marketing Morons:- The people who have come up with a “loophole that guarantees you a 10 google position”… hmmm ok that “loophole” been one of the keystones of the system we teach in The WordPress Goldmine forum for 2 years. On top of that it’s not a loophole just commonsense. But then I don’t suppose you can sell anything based on commonsense.

However I decided to stick with something positive and touch on what I talked about in a recent email that I sent out the difference between dreams and goals.

Do you have a dream that drives you? I think most people do, a nice home, a fast car and great lifestyle etc . The problem with dreams is that they tend to always stay just that a fantasy, unless you do something about it. The something you have to do is to take your dream and turn it into a set of goals.

Goals are achievealbe and dreams are just a notion you have of something you want. Once you convert your Dream to a goal you can then work out the method to achieve the goal.

You will be very suprised at just how easy those dreams are to attain once you convert them to goals. It might take a while to actually get your dream but it will happen.

Here are some examples:

Dream : I want a BMW x6

Goal : I will generate an extra $600 a month to pay for the leasing costs on an X6

Daily Target: $20

Method: Write 2 articles a day and generate an extra 1 clickbank sale each day

Dream: I want a Villa overlooking the sea.

Goal: I want to generate $6000 per month to pay for a $1,000,000 mortgage (or you could rent)

Target $200 per day ($8.33 per hour)

Method: I will build a network of 50 adsense sites averaging $4 a day

The next step is the hardest for most people…actually doing it.

The key to this is to surround yourself with positive people who are actually working towards their goals and sharing the sucesses and most importantly not dwelling on setbacks. If you go into forums where there are loads of people being negative then leave, don’t let their negativity and neurosis hold you back.

If you can honestly answer yes to these 3 questions then you are just a few steps away from success.

1. Do you really want to succeed?

2. Are you really prepared to work

3. Will you really Focus on Your goals and not give up?

If you answered yes to those 3 questions you are welcome to download my Report called “I can”. There nothing to subscribe to , no hoops to jump through. It was originally released in 2008 but I gave it a quick update recently. http://mjthompson.net/ICan/

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I wrote the following post for a project I was working on. However earlier today I read a comment by a marketer and thought it was a good time to publish it. He said:

So with my friend watching I took a few minutes to write up a promotion and sent it to one of my lists. Within THIRTY MINUTES I had enough money to buy my friend a $2,000 set of golf clubs.

Now it’s not the fact that he generated the income, I actually respect his ability to do it , but the fact that  he uses his subscribers like a cash machine and boasts about it. It just makes me mad that some marketers have absolutely no respect for their subscribers. I can imagine him boasting at the bar about the suckers who paid for the golf clubs…suckers like you and me!

Now don’t get me wrong not all marketers are like this I personally know 2 or 3 who really care about their subscribers and would never send out a promotion just to show off. On the other hand one of the reasons why you rarely see anyone promoting my stuff is that I never do reciprocal promotions. (i.e. You promote me and I’ll promote you)

I’ve spent a long time over the past month or two looking closely at various Internet Marketers and their business models in microscopic detail and I find they generally fall in to one of 3 styles.

The Long Term Strategy

The Short Term Strategy

The Misguided Short Term Strategy. (The only none rude term I could think of!)

Marketers with a long term strategy are guys who rarely promote any product that isn’t their own. They are in this for the long term and see the big picture, they build lists  by providing good quality information. This is the hardest method to follow especially when you see all the short termers displaying their income for all to see like a cheap $5 hooker on payday.

The people with this strategy are generally the ones who are making the seriously big bucks and whose income is constantly growing. It takes a lot of time and effort to get to this position but the rewards are generally worth it if you stick with it.

Marketers with a short term strategy generally promote everything that comes along, I call it the IM circle Jerk. You promote mine and I’ll promote yours. These guys just want a regular cash injection and this is how they do it. You’ll see them releasing new products every 6 months or so and doing a promotion of someone else’s product every month. They very rarely provide value on a long term basis. I know one marketer in this group who is on his 3rd product this year.

It is possible to make consistent money using this model but you never build a real relationship with your subscribers. Several of the Superstar internet marketers started off this way but later changed their business model. Some never get past it

From looking around at who is promoting what at the moment it’s obvious that this is the chosen strategy for the majority of marketers, it doesn’t mean that it’s the best method although it is obviously effective in the short run.

The Misguided Short Term Marketers are almost the same as the Short Term Marketers. The one big difference is that they are not above using non ethical methods to promote their generally low quality products.

A classic ploy that is often used is to have your product promoted by a whole host of marketers, you do this by charging a high amount and give the JV partners a very high commission.

The next step is to release a second product which reveals how you made $10,000 a day with 5 minutes work. Completely failing to mention that the real method you used was to offer high commission to JV partners. And most of that $10,000 went out in either commission payments, refunds or PPC costs.

The more screen shots you can use showing the first launch the better! I really doesn’t matter if the figures are not related to the product you are now selling.

The Misguided Short Term Marketers don’t think anyone will notice what they are doing luckily they tend to be around for a few short years then disappear, as they quickly lose respect and email subscribers. A good indicator of this type of marketer is that they are usually seen with Ferrari’s and Yachts in their promo videos and sales letters and love to brag.

Sorry for being such a grouch !!  Be careful out there there are sharks in the water.

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