I like my blog!

That’s right, I said it… I like my blog!

I’m not being cocky but my bloglines blog reader is loaded up with over 30 blogs that I follow. Notice I didn’t say read, I just follow (scan) them. I only read about 6 on a regular basis. That is because the rest SUCK! I don’t enjoy reading the posts because they aren’t entertaining and they aren’t teaching me anything.

So here are the ones I actually read and why I read them….

David Fiske - Because he is both entertaining, informative and responsive. If you leave a comment he will answer it, in fact I suspect he will leave a comment on this thread because he follows his trackbacks. I’ve actually learned some things from reading his blog. Most importantly, his site ranks highly for “dragon car porn” - WHAT?! Dave, you’ve got some weird readers!

UberAffiliate - For goodness sakes, the kid is only 20! Legally he can’t drink beer but if Budweiser had an affiliate program he’d make a killing selling it. His posts are filled with great information. Even his “happy birthday to me” post had a great tip in it. And talk about an active blog… he gets huge reader participation. Ever post gets atleast 50 comments and there is gold in there.

CDF Networks - By far one of the most educational blogs out there. If you have a question about affiliate marketing I am sure he’s answered it on his blog. He’s not going to be writing for SNL anytime soon but who needs funny when you’ve got brains and this guys got brains.

Caroline Middlebrook - Because she might be the sweetest British lady I know and she’s got huge balls! She quit a full time job making a decent living to pursue her dream of internet marketing. I am in awe of her determination, focus and genuine desire to help others succeed. She is the most honest internet marketer on the planet. No agenda, no tricks and no scams, just 100% Caroline.

UK Affiliate Marketing Blog - by Kirsty not Kristy. Her blog is more of a guilty pleasure for me. She has great advice for new affiliate marketers but I stick around for the entertainment value. She is a very entertaining writer even if I don’t understand 1/2 of the british slang :)

Shawn Collins - because he keeps me up to date on the latest industry news. He posts a LOT and I skim a LOT but without him i would have no idea what the heck a “Golden Link Award” was.

And my guilty pleasure 45n5.com. He’s got personality and I like it. He can be rude, brash and offensive at times but that’s why we love him. I don’t always agree with his methods but I respect his honesty, his commitment to his readers and his knowledge. However, STOP WITH THE VIDEO! Video is a great medium for sharing info but I like to skim… and I can’t skim video, I’ve tried. Use video only when the topic warrants using video, not just because you can. I like the fact that he gives you a mini-transcript with the video so folks with ADD like me don’t have to endure sitting still for a whole 2 minutes.

And I like my blog. I may not be as responsive as Dave, young and rich as the Uber, smart as Chad, sweet as Caroline, entertaining as Kirsty, connected as Shawn or hairy as Mark but I’m 100% Mike.

I got discouraged with the blog because it wasn’t taking off like I had hoped. Then I realized, who cares! If only 1 person reads my posts then it is worthwhile. For two reasons:

1. Hopefully that person will be entertained or learn something while they are here.

2. This blog serves as a great archive for my journey into Internet Marketing which I can share with my grandkids one day.

So for those two reasons I will breath life back into this blog (again). However, this time I have made a plan. I am not going to try to post everyday. I’m not that interesting. However, when I do post I promise it will be fun and informative. I will finish the affiliate marketing course and give it away right here on my blog (I was going to try to sell it). I will make marketing my blog more of a priority so others can share in this experience.

And to my faithful reader who was so kind enough to email me and ask where I’ve been….. THANKS! That really meant a lot.

Mike

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1 vs 100 - Affiliate Marketing Success

His posts make you think, I guess that’s good.

His ideas make me question him, I guess that’s bad.

I’m torn. I read it everyday knowing that I’m going to disagree with him about something but maybe that is why I keep going back. I know that his way of thinking is going to challenge my way of thinking. Are either one of us wrong, and the other right?

Yes, I’m always right!

Just kidding, actually I don’t think so. I think we are two sides of the same coin.

I’m talking about my good buddy Mark at 45n5.com

His latest post asks the question, is it easier to make $3000 with 100 sites generating $30/month or make all $3000 with 1 site.

Easier 100 sites, smarter 1 site. (Actually the correct answer is 3 sites)

100 sites would be a nightmare to manage and although affiliate marketing is relatively hands off, you have to manage it on a regular schedule because things change fast on the internet. (CPC, competition, search engine rankings, etc)

100 sites would be spammy! In the comments he says to assume equal time would be spent on each project as a justification for the sites not being spammy. Consider the quality of the 1 site I could produce with 40 hours of work (which is about my average time getting a campaign completely up and running) vs the quality of 100 sites generated with 40 hours of work. So then did he mean spend 40 hours on each of the 100 sites? No, that couldn’t be right either because then I’m spending 4,000 hours to make $3000.

There is no arguing it, generating 100 sites with a cookie-cutter system would be spam.

It comes down to hard work vs easy work again. 100 sites would definitely be easier but for building a sustainable business, 1-3 sites would be the best way to go.

The road to success runs uphill.
Willie Davis

Enough rambling from me. What do you think? Now that you’ve heard both sides of the coin, what do you think?

Think Critically,

Mike

I’m BACK with a Vengence!

That’s right boys and girls, I’m Baaack!

Granted, no one is reading my blog anymore (I guess that is what happens when you fall off the face of the earth only to resurface 4 months later). But that doesn’t matter! I am confident that “if I build it, you will come.”

So what is it that I’m building?

I’ll get to that but first, let’s talk about my sabbatical.

I never gave up on Internet Marketing. In fact, I’ve developed a very profitable Affiliate Marketing business! It wasn’t easy but it has been a TON of fun. I’ve had a few failed campaigns and a few successful ones but at the end of the day I learned a very valuable lesson:

Internet Marketing Guru’s are destroying internet marketing! I am PISSED OFF at the quality of the educational material that is being hyped up day in and day out across millions of emails, sales pages and teleseminars!

First it was the Thirty-Day Challenge. Ed and Dan worked hard to provide us with quality information to jump start our Internet Marketing Career but on the whole, the program was a disaster! Don’t get me wrong, I learned a lot but I also wasted a lot of time and effort. I am grateful for what Ed and Dan put together but as a consumer (I know, it was free) I am entitled to an opinion and this is my place to express it.

It started with TumblrGate, which crushed the hopes of hundreds of newbies. It was as if we had won the lottery, watching everyone’s reaction to how fast and high they were ranked using Tumblr, then the smack! Dreams were crushed, hope was dashed….

But we still had the secret sauce, that would save the day! Wait, what was the secret sauce? Oh that’s right, we never found out! Hell, I even joined the Immediate Edge hoping to find some sauce but all I got was some crappy Facebook app covered in gravy! (There’s $194 down the damn drain, but that’s right…. the 30 Day Challenge was free).

I’m not even going to get into the disaster the Immediate Edge turned out to be. I spent the first month trying to help design a facebook app….(how is this helping me sell this stupid affiliate ebook?) The second month I spent reading emails about this great referral network they were working on but I had to “stay a member” to access it. The only problem, no one could ever tell me when it would be complete! I quit!

Then came the PPC Classroom program with Anik Singal and Jeremy Palmer. Being new to Internet Marketing I didn’t know either of them but the program sounded AWESOME! A step-by-step guide and a inside looking into Jeremy’s multi-million dollar affiliate business…. perfect!

Perfectly disastrous! Nothing was complete, I paid over $500 and the product didn’t even ship until 3 weeks later! Jeremy’s infamous keyword tracking tool that garunteed to show you exactly which keywords were converting and which one’s weren’t…..NEVER WORKED! Those step-by-step tutorial classes turned out to be philosophical discussion filled with fluff and little value.

Lastly there were the numerous $47 ebooks on ezine marketing, PPC traffic, getting a “list”, growing a “list”, spaming a “list” and how to piss away money on common sense techniques for emailing your “list.”

I’M PISSED!

So that is where I’ve been, learning a valuable life lesson!

“the only source of knowledge is experience”
-Albert Einstein

So that is what I did. I lost over 30 hours and $400 on my first affiliate marketing campaign. I lost about 65 hours and only $150 on my second campaign.

But now I’ve got it right! That’s right, I am making a nice stream of income from Internet Marketing!

You can too! And I’m going to show you how. That’s right, I’m going to actually deliver on what every other Internet Marketing Guru has promised and failed to deliver. We are going to walk, step by step through launching an affiliate marketing campaign.

No holds barred, full frontal Internet Marketing.

Tomorrow I am going to outline exactly what we are going to cover but you can be sure it will be all-inclusive!

Since this will be a small group, no more than 50 people, I will make sure that ALL of your questions get answered, all of your problems are addressed and that you MAKE SOME MONEY!

It’s time for a change, time for Internet Marketing Guru’s learn the value of customer loyalty and the principle of over-delivering.

Oh, did I mention that this is going to be FREE? That’s right, I’m not here to make money off of you (another first in the Internet Marketing community).

I learned a lot from all of the programs I mentioned above, and while I flamed them for all of their bad qualities. There were positives in each course. Do I think Ed, Dan, Anik and Jeremy are bad guys? Of course not, however I think there were valuable customer relationship lessons to be learned by all of them. I’m just here to share what I know so take advantage of it!

~Think Critically

The Key to Riches Beyond Your Wildest Dreams

Did you know that there are over 22 Millions pages selling Internet Marketing products?People search for the phrase “INTERNET MARKETING” over 3,000 times a day!

If so many people are selling IM products and so many people are searching for tips, tricks and techniques…. who is actually out there doing it?

It seems that everywhere you turn, someone is putting out a new IM product to sell to other internet marketers. Why? Because it is such a HUGE market. Best of all, no experience is required.

Most of these products were produced by people with little or no experience but they studied hard and regurgitated what they learned into their own product. It is the same business model we learned during the Thirty Day Challenge.

Find a niche, make a blog, sell an affiliate product, study the niche, produce an info product sit back and watch your bank account get fat!

So why not produce a IM product? It is a very saturated market but is there still room for development?

As with any market, if you are providing a unique service, idea or product buyers will come. So this is why I’m contemplating producing my on Internet Marketing product.

I have developed 3 unique techniques for generating profits quickly.

My plan is to use my newly formed (joined) team to verify these techniques, possibly add a few more tricks based on other team member’s experience and go LIVE with my first IM product.

However, this will not be some ‘get rich quick’ scheme filled with general information and no details. I will be limiting the number of sales I make each month to under 10, so that for that 30 day period, those 10 people will have direct exclusive access to me and my team to help get their business up and running.

In fact I will be screening orders to make sure that everyone who purchases will succeed. I WILL NOT sell my product to someone who is not committed to making it work. I’m not in this to make a quick buck off my fellow marketers, I’m hear to establish strong business connections with marketers who want to succeed.

Until then, I will continue to provide tips, tricks and tools for success here on my blog.

Do you have a plan for success?

Think Critically~

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I’m a big fat cheater

It’s true… I cheated.

I couldn’t help myself. I am easily excited and I love this challenge! Combine that with my ADD and I’m screwed. I think about this stuff constantly and I’m always trying to learn more.

So one day I was poking around the internet and a link to a page with the first 11 days of content from last year’s 30 Day Challenge. I posted that link in my twitter and on here but I guess it went under the radar.

While it is unfortunately not the complete challenge, I was able to get some ideas from it. I’ll get to those later.

While watching one of the current challenge videos I noticed something interesting…… Ed’s “Free Speed Reading” website. I googled “Free speed reading” and lo and behold, there it was. freespeedreading.tumblr.com

There was very little information to be gained from the site itself but I googled “freespeedreading.tumblr.com” to see how Ed was promoting the site using the various Web 2.0 applications he’s been teaching us to use.

So I quickly created my niche website and used the articles I had written as posts. I tried to replicate what Ed had done with “freespeadreading.tumblr.com”. I used the idea of running a Google Adwords ad for 24 hours to test the traffic and conversion rates.

Long story short I made my first $44. That’s right, I DID IT! I actually made money marketing a product online. I knew it could be done but I wasn’t sure if I could do it. Well I did and it feels great.

15 days ago, I could barely spell Internet Marketing and I didn’t even know my niche market existed. Today I’m the proud owner of what I hope is an entertaining and informative blog and an official internet entrepreneur.

The old saying is definitely true in this case…. If I can do it, you can too!

And you won’t even have to cheat….. guess it’s back to time-out for me but at least I’m $40 richer this time :)

Think Critically,
Mike

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Content is KING, right Tweetie?

No matter how much effort you put into identifying the perfect niche. No matter how many hours you spent cruising the bookstore looking for ideas. No matter how many “umbrella” terms you entered into WordTracker GTrends. No matter how many searches a day your keyword gets or how small your competition is, if you do not provide high quality content you won’t make a dime!

Think about sites you visit on a regular basis. Why do you come back? It’s not because their keyword is popular or they have pretty colors…. at the end of the day content is what matters most.

They key to providing quality content is to over-deliver. Creativity will pay huge dividends during this portion of the challenge. If you were hosting a free speed reading site, you MUST provide FREE speed reading tips. That doesn’t mean, you can’t sell to them. It just means that you must provide quality free content. Once you establish a reputation for providing VALUE to your visitors, they will be more willing to buy whatever you recommend. You can provide fun, interactive tools like speed reading games that test your reading speed, cool facts about fast readers (like Ed’s Harry Potter story) and reviews of speed reading courses but at the end of the day you MUST teach your reader’s how to read faster.

There is a lot of confusion in the 30 Day Challenge Forum. Many challengers are struggling to come up with quality content. It’s simple, search the internet for “things that make you go hmmm.” If you read something interesting, your visitors will probably find it interesting too so write up a quick blurb about that fact and give your opinion.

For example, did you know that in Florida alone the number of children prescribed anti-psychotic drugs rose over 250% and that those drugs were tested to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Some of the kids are as young as 3 years old?!

That is fascinating. Add some commentary about how those statistics make you feel and there you go… quality content.

The problem that challengers face is trying to convince themselves that their opinion counts. You don’t have to be an expert in a field to have an opinion. That is what blogging is all about…sharing your opinion with the world hoping to incite discussion. That is the same thing your content should do. Share interesting facts and your opinions with the world hoping to provide tips, tricks and advice on how to get the most out of your niche subject.

Did you know that the shelf life of a peep is 14 years? That little yellow slice of heaven will probably out live my car! Did you know that we consume over 600 million peeps each easter season? Apparently you guys aren’t holding up your end because I’m sure I eat about 2 million myself!

Fun facts are everywhere. Just do your homework and take notes on the “things that make you go hmmm” then tell the world about it!

Now I’m off to enjoy my perfectly aged box of peeps….. ahhh, 1996 was a good year.

Mike


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STOP THE MADNESS!!!!


Have you looked at the websites of some of the 30 Day Challengers?

Over half of them are Internet Marketing or Motivational sites!That is ridiculous. Internet Marketing is the epitome of a crazy, crazy psycho market! Ed was 100% correct, you can’t expect to walk on to the field and play in the big leagues. It takes years of practice to make the squad.

Most of the successful Internet Marketing Gurus started with a small internet marketing campaign, gained some experience and expertise. They replicated that success a number of times, THEN moved into teaching Internet Marketing. They developed their niche, affiliate marketing, audio/video marketing, viral marketing by establishing legitimate revenue generating sites not related to teaching IM.

It is easy to get lost in the hype and massive amount of income being generated by some of the marketing gurus. The dream of getting rich quick is just that…..a dream.

Now don’t get me wrong….blogging about your 30 Day Challenge is a fantastic idea! It will help you organize your thoughts and enable you to share your experience with others. I’m speaking specifically about hosting a squeeze page and selling a trying to sell a product.

The world heavy-weight boxing champion didn’t just walk into the ring with the reigning champ and take the title. He started small, won a few fights, built some confidence and his reputation. When he was trained and ready, then and only then could he begin to challenge the champ.

Let the heavy weights beat themselves into a pulp.

Start small, grow big and take over your niche one customer at a time.

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