Actually is was more 10 days and looks to stretch into next week. it was so busy that I am writing this at 1 am on Sunday morning when any self respecting Internet Marketer should be partying with z list celebrities and footballers wives.

So why was my week so busy? Well I decided to do a major update of the WordPress Goldmine front end. Sales Pages are so 2009! So I’ve created a new blog style front end and added features like a weekly round up video and relevant articles. Got some more ideas but they can wait a while until I finish off the other projects I am working on.

Another project I completed last week was something I have had in my mind to do for a few months but never got around to it finally I decided to just work as many hours as I could last week on it and get it live. Thanks to clickbank who approved it in 18 hours , a veritable record, it used to take a week Video Creation Mastery went live last week.

The idea behind the course is simple,  I make most of my affiliate income from short videos that either demonstrate how products work or do reviews of products. I drive traffic to some of my sites by creating videos and linking from them.  I get top page rankings in Google by creating short videos.  see the common thread there… Videos work.

I’ve had 5 minute videos earn me $5000 in the space of a weekend and one video and 4 page report has generated about $500 on average every month since September 2007 (Over $18000 in total) and none of them actually did any selling they just showed a solution to a problem and demonstrated that the product could provide the solution.

So the course is all about how to create simple sales videos that sell, but we also look at advanced techniques like green screen video.  The unique selling point of the site at the moment is that you can get lifetime membership for  a one time payment and  videos are constantly added and updated every week . Obviously when there are 50-100 videos in there it will be converted to a subscription style site. At present there are 20 or so videos, articles and interviews that should be up to 30 next week when the latest ones are uploaded.

As if that wasn’t enough It was suggested that I could create an affiliate training course and teach people how to promote Clickbank products … Good idea , like I don’t have enough work to do

So I spent today designing a 7 day course that will teach you how to sell products of all types but in particular Clickbank and Amazon products. This is going live on Monday and will run for the next 7 days.  Each days videos will be between 10 and 20 minutes and will cover specific subjects.

If you’d like to take part please sign up at;  http://videocreationmastery.com/affiliates/ there should be a signup form at the top of the page. (if it doesn’t appear then just refresh the page)  All I ask is that if you take the course and find it useful you consider promoting  http://videocreationmastery.com

Roll on normality…..but it is a bit boring compared to a week like the one I had

I am sure you know the story of the emperors new clothes (if you dont’ you’ll find the details on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor’s_New_Clothes)

Everytime I see one of these new style “4 videos, leave a comment below” product launches I can’t help but think of this story.

You see the thing about these launches is as soon as you see the first video you know the product is going to cost $1997. At that price point the vendor basicaly gets $1000 and the Affiliate gets $1000.

I have no problems whatsoever with affiliates making money what i do object to is affiliates promoting a product without ever having seen it.

However that isn’t the worst problem with these types of launches…The big problem is that the products don’t really teach anything new. It’s just rehased products with a fancy new set of clothes. Worst of all is the fact that the people who create them don’t care about the people who buy them.

The whole product is just aimed at generating income and cash for the vendor and affilaites

What most people don’t realize is that there are huge prizes available to the affiliate who sell the most number of copies…

Below is the list of the top 10 prizes from a recent launch

1) $100,000 cash
2) $50,000 cash
3) $25,000 cash
4) $12,500 cash
5) $6,250 cash
6) 17″ MacBook Pro
7) 15″ MacBook Pro
8 ) MacBook Air
9 ) 13″ MacBook Pro
10) iPad 64GB+3G

Do you really think that anyone who promoted the product, and it’s the same people promoting every time, really took anytime to think about whether the product was a good deal for their lists?

I seriously doubt it…

You don’t need to support these guys, if you get an email promoting one of these products unsubscribe from the list, if everyone did that we’d soon get some sanity back into the IM market and some products worth the money being charged for them.

Finally before I get back to work… there are only 7 places available for the october seminar in Las vegas. If you want to know how to create and promote products that actually have value come along.

You can see details at http://beyondcommissionlive.com/us-las-vegas . Come along it could be the best decision you’ve every made….or you could save the money for the next crap product launch!!

More incredible laziness today… I wrote the post below 5 years ago after about 2 months in Internet Marketing. The weird thing is it hasn’t changed very much. when I wrote it $497 was the big price point now it’s $1997 but apart from that not much else. You’ll hopefully be able to recognize some of the people who I am referring to.

I am sure you can think of many more so please feel free to comment and leave me some of the ways you can spot a Guru!

Over the last few years there has been an incredible number of new “guru’s” appear in the world of internet marketing. Amazingly this has coincided with a whole host of very poorly though out products that offer very little or no value to purchaser. Coincidence? I’ll let you decide.

It could be that you are already an internet marketing Guru and you don’t even know it yet. Just to help you out here is a list of 10 (ok It’s more than 10 now!) things that will help you work out if you are in fact an Internet Marketing “Guru”

12. You refer to everyone as “My Good friend” despite the fact that you’ve never met them.

11. You start brand new emails with…. Re:-

10. Every family event, Birth, Wedding, Christening or Funeral is seen as a potential source of sales and the ideal opportunity for a webinar …hurry seats are going fast!.

9. You approach the local paperboy and offer him 50% of your sales to your new product in return for use of his “list”

8. You start to use words and expressions like “Skyrocket” and “Explode your Income” in day to day conversations

7. You write your wife a note to tell her you’ve taken the dog for a walk and it stretches to 8 pages

7b. Alternatively you leave her a 60 minute video and a note saying watch my 17 minute video (especially if your first name is Ryan)

6. You phone your local Wal-Mart and ask If you can get your shopping “even if it’s 3am”

5. You and your friends’ idea of fun is seeing who can sell the most number of $1997 products BEFORE you even write the product.

4. You get embarrassed in the showers when you find your friend has a bigger list than you.

3. You decide to sell your car but won’t tell anyone the price until they are in the bank and ready to pay

2. You take your middle kid to a new school and then try to up sell to your oldest kid and tell the headmaster that he will never see this offer again.

2a. If he says no you offer him your youngest kid as a bonus.

1. You can’t see the irony in the previous reasons

What do you do If any of the above apply to you? If you recognise that more than 1 of the 10 are applicable then I am afraid you are probably beyond saving.

Last week I had the pleasure of Interviewing Brian From Prosperent.

In the interview he talks about Prosperent , how it works, what they have planned and how they are helping affiliate increase their incomes.

You can download Interview at http://wpgoldmine.podomatic.com/enclosure/2010-07-30T07_53_52-07_00.mp3

Now for years affiliate marketers have been heavily restricted in how they can promote and sell products and make money online.

You could ad adsense, amazon, chitika ads, or ebay . If you were lucky you might have been accepted by a few vendors on commission junction.

Thats no longer the case , Prosperent are changing the rules and changing how you promote products and make money online.

One of the things that comes across in the interview is how Prosperent are working for the affiliates while at the same time keeping vendors happy with additional sales. It probably seems a novel concept affiliate networks but they actually want to see you succeed and are doing thing they can to help you.

You want to customize your ads?…do it..here’s the tools.

You want to blend ads into your articles? No problem

You have an idea for an app to display ads on facebook?… great, here’s our API!

Trust me if you’ve been an affiliate marketer for a few years this is like a breath of fresh air.

The first API based tool has recently been released by one of our members (Peter) at WordPress Goldmine it’s a wordpress plugin that allows you to easily add adverts to your blog, (think Reviewazon or phpbay pro on crack)

You can read more about the plugin at http://nichemarketingtoolkit.com/tools/prosperent-wordpress-plugin/

(There is a discount available for WordPress Goldmine members so check the  Special Offers Forum)

I thought the easiest thing to do would be to create a short video showing you how easy it is to use Prosperent and also show you how I use the plugin.

I would strongly recommend anyone who has suitable sites to test Prosperent on a few sites. There are already members earning several thousand dollars a month on autopilot.

A new departure for the blog today , we have our first ever guest Blog post.

Todays Guest Blogger Is Garry Booton from http://homeeasyearn.com/. Garry also works as a traffic testing analyst for the Cambridge Business Academy which allows him to test out all the traffic products and traffic generation methods. This gives him a real insight into what works and what doesn’t.

On with the post…

Back links to your web site or blog are crucial if you want to make your way on to the first page of Google. In fact you may find it impossible to get on the first page without back links pointing to your site.

There are various ways you can get back links such as, arranging reciprocal links with other site owners, you may have even paid someone to place your link on their high ranked website, or possibly you get back links by blog commenting.

In the past when you comment on someone else’s blog post you would earn yourself one back link pointing to your site. So to get 100 back links you would need to find 100 blogs that will accept blog comments. Now however this has changed and I want to share with you a fantastic way of getting 100’s and sometimes 1000’s of back links for just a few minutes work.

This has been made possible by a plug in called “Top Commentators” this allows blog owners to keep a record of how many comments each individual person makes on their posts. The plug in creates a list on each page of your site giving the names of the people that have posted the most comments.

Top commentators is a  great plug in to encourage people to make posts on your blog, as you could for instance run a monthly competition and give a prize to the person with the most comments.

So how does this help you to get hundreds of easy back links?

Well if you recall, the top commentators list is on every page of the blog owner’s site.

Now most sites will have possibly hundreds of pages that make up the site. If a blog has been running for 3 or 4 years, this could mean that it has thousands of pages making up the site.

If your blog post total is on the top commentators list, it is on there as a link back to your own site. Therefore if the site you posted your comment on has a thousand pages, you will get a thousand back links pointing to your site.

So how do you find the sites with the “Top Commentators” plug in installed?

All you have to do is type

inurl:blog “top commentators”

in to Google and press enter.

This will return all the sites that have the plug in installed on their site. All you do is go to each site and look for the list of people that have made the most comments. To get all your links you need to make enough comments to stay on this list long enough for Google to crawl the site.

So if the top poster has made ten comments it will not take you long to find 10 posts to also comment on. This will give you matching top rating and once your comment has been accepted by the sites owner or moderator it will appear on the top commentators list.

Once you have posted enough posts to get you on the list for that specific site. You will need to keep checking back to the site until your comment is posted live on the site. What you can do then, is take the URL of the page one of your comments appears on, and put the URL into pingomatic and ping the search engines. This will get the page crawled over by Google, which in turn will get your back links registered.

If you come across a blog where you would need to post 50+ comments to get on the top commentators list, it may be worth checking back throughout the month as there is a good chance the blog owner may have the list set to return to zero again at the start of each month.

You can find a video explaining this procedure in more detail by clicking the link below

Quick link building strategy

About 6 weeks ago I made a post about The Myth of List building (I’ll add the link to the bottom of the page) now considering I think that list building is in 80% of cases a complete waste of time I expected that most people would ignore the post and just treat it as the rantings of a lunatic… (the one that always sits next to you on a bus…except I had a 2.5 hour flight with one last month!!)

Surprisingly it got more comments than almost any other post I made. Many of them had to do with the amazing content my friend Andre gave away on one of his sites.. Thats real friend as in “here have another beer” not as in “Skype me I have an offer for your subscribers” type of friend!

So anyway we pretty much decided in that post and the comments that a targetted list no matter how small where you build a relationship with your subscribers is much much better than one of these massive lists the guru’s build.

Anyway next week Andre has a superb product coming out (don’t go Yet!! I’ve got something Important for you) that is unlike anything you’ve ever seen, i.e it’s not rehashed from what others maketers have said, it’s unique, More importantly It’s delivered in a way so that you’ll actually use it and take action…How do I know?  Because I am a week ahead of you… And I am hooked.

The Bad news is you can’t actually get it yet but the reason I am telling you this is that there is a free report on the sales page which could change the way you think about building lists and email marketing…

Autoresponder Madness

Grab that free report study it over the weekend and see if you think that email marketing by building relationships is something that you should add to you business. If it is head back to that page on Tuesday…you won’t be disapointed.

Here is the link to the first post I mentioned.

http://mjthompson.net/512/internet-myths-346-the-money-is-in-the-list/

Normal servie will be resumed next week!!

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!