I thought long and hard about what product to release, I was actually halfway through a series of Videos about Authority Blogging, what it is and how to do it when I changed my mind and decided to do something “epic”, but what, I wasn’t sure.

So I loaded up with a few bottles of water and went for a long walk to clear my mind , (when you are half way up a steep mountain you tend to find that you don’t think about trivia) after about 12 KM  which is about 7.5 miles It came to me.

I’d write 20 or 30 of the best tips I knew from my 7 years in marketing (check out mondays post for one of them) In the end I actually got to around 90 tips . Wouldn’t 101 tips be a nice number I thought… truly epic!

So I emailed some of the most ethical marketers I know, and asked them for their best tips before I knew it I had 101 great tips to share with the world but would they like it? The list finally got to 103 but I left  the title at 101,  The full title is actually  ”Internet Marketing Braindump – 101 Must Have Tips for Online Marketers” not the catchiest title I’ve come up with!

To actually write the e-book was easier than I thought which is why I went from 30 to 90 tips easily. The first thing I did was to set myself a word count target of 5000 words a day, in the end the book is over 14,000 words and took me 3 days to write. I used Pages to write it, it’s the first time I used it and I really liked it, it made the task of writing much easier as it handled the table of contents and the font types automatically.

I first laid out the sections I wanted to cover by adding a chapter and a header, I chose 6 of them  SEO & Traffic, List Building, Affiliate Marketing, Keywords & Site Building , General & Finally Product Creation.

The initial idea was to write the same amount of tips for each section but it didn’t turn out like that General had 30 while affiliate market has about 13 I think. Once I had the sections I just started writing tips, I found that one tip would naturally lead to another . At this point I made sure I had a notepad with me at all times as I’d think of tips at the strangest of times.

I wanted each tip to be a mini WSO something that would make people think so I avoided 1 line tips and focused on getting at least a paragraph from each tip, as you’ll see if you have the book some are several paragraphs and a few take up multiple pages

I didn’t actually write them in any particular order just jumping between sections as a tip came into my head, I got a lot of ideas for the tips by reading back through the blog to find things i’d written about in the past.

Once I was finished I tested changing the font sizes initially it was 14 point baskerville so I tried 16 and 18 point which increased the book to 980 and 100 pages and both looked fine in pages but when they were in .pdf format they looked way too big so I went back to 14point.

So I had a product how was I to launch it.

The first thing I did was to let the members of WPGoldmine  know it was live, (Tip 104.. always support the people who support you by ensuring that they get the best offers). After that I created an email and sent it out to my list telling them it was live.

You’ll notice that no where in the list of things (well 2 things) I did did I mention contacting affiliates or JV partners. One of the better features of WSO Pro is the fact that it generally emails people who have promoted your stuff in the past when you release a new WSO (unless the opt out) I have some really great affiliates so I knew they would get notified.

I avoided all the JV hoopla that people feel obliged to do by offering bonus’s, gifts  & prizes.(been there, got the T-shirt and the bad taste in my mouth) I really have tired with all that stuff. I believe that people should promote a product based on it’s merits not on what they’ll make. I know I create good honest ethical products and so do my affiliates if they choose to promote some rehashed crap over my products because the have the change to win an iPad well thats thier issue not mine.  (did i sound a bit bitter there? I didn’t mean to)

So thats it the eBook is live it’s making sales,(268 so far)  the buyers are loving it which is really all it comes down to in the end.

If you don’t have it you can check out the thread at: http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-special-offers-forum/536680-my-final-warrior-special-offer-lets-go-out-bang.html

If you would like to promote it you can sign up at: http://www.warriorplus.com/affiliate/offer/9635

Below you’ll find some of the great comments i’ve been getting, thank you to everyone who took time to comment in the thread and to buy this and my previous wso’s

In this fascinating interview we discuss , why you should brand  yourself and how you actually go about it and much more.

I really enjoyed this interview and learned a lot during the course of it.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

During the podcast we mentioned HARO which is “Help a Reporter Out ” you can find them at http://helpareporter.com/

If you have any questions for Colette or comments leave them below or in the thread about the interview in the WPgoldmine Forum

Download The Podcast

Previous Podcasts

Get yourself out of the fishtank you might be surprised..

 

As Internet marketers we can be very insular, We go to the same forums, read the same blogs, buy the same products and as a result we tend to do the same things and believe the same crap as everyone else.

 

Broaden your horizons and read blogs and listen to podcasts from people outside of IM. The very best brains in the online marketing business don’t spend their time writing posts on Digital Point or the Warrior Forum.

Listen to and read stuff by people like Gary Vaynerchuk and Seth Godin, Read blog posts by people on the bleeding edge of SEO. Read Techcrunch and follow what Y-combinator are investing in.

Get a subscription to a site like Mixergy and see how entrepreneurs got to where they are today.

Set aside a day where you do nothing but watch videos or listen to podcasts by people not in niche marketing or affiliate marketing.

There is a whole different world out there and you can learn from it!

It really is very easy to become focussed on what you are doing and what people in the same line of business to you are doing.  One of the things I try to do in Wp Goldmine is to bring in ideas from other areas. There are hundreds of startup companies that are basically trying to market themselves and build their brand that have never seen the Warrior Forum or Digitalpoint. In many cases they are using or creating sophisticated tools and starting from a blank canvas.

How many of you have looked at what Buzzstream are doing?  If you have have you either used them or tried to create a similar system for yourself. If you’ve not seen them they build back link networks via relationship building and provide the tools to do it. You could probably create something similar (albeit at a lower level) for your own use by using google and a relationship management app.

Thats it for today I have a brilliant interview I did with a Personal Branding coach in tomorrows  podcast so keep your eyes peeled for that…

Have a great week!

As ever I welcome your comments so let me know what you think, Also if you like what you read on the blog please consider subscribing to my newsletter and get you hands on some of the free reports I produce on a regular basis

 

If the answer is no then why not?

I understand that you might think that you have nothing to say but by starting a blog you do start to track your online journey and leave a record there for the future. The more you blog the better you writing skills become and the easier you’ll find it.

It doesn’t matter if you only talk about how you only made $10 and spent $40, lay out your successes and your failures. Talk about the tools you use and what works and what doesn’t . Believe me people are interested and 2 or 3 years down the line when you have a few hundred posts and are making $500 a day before you get out of bed people will be reading your blog for insights and inspiration.

I regularly look back at my posts from the past and marvel at how much i’ve learned, when I made that first blog post on August 4th 2006 did I think i’d still be blogging 5 and a half years later .. NO!  But a blog is more than just a collection of posts It’s actually like having your own Psychiatrist, putting things on a public blog focus’s your mind and helps you realize what you want to do and what you want to achieve.

Internet Marketing is all about dropping seeds everywhere, some never sprout but others grow into fruit bearing trees, and a blog and your blog posts are just a few more seeds that you drop. I could bore you with long lists on people who make money online who wouldn’t be where they are today without their blogs.

A blog can also be a stepping stone to a much better place.  It can open doors for you that wouldn’t normally be opened.  Do you think that Pat Flynn thought to himself  ”If I start blogging I’ll be asked to speak at Blog World”  when he wrote his first blog post in 2008  http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/why-i-will-quit-my-job-for-a-passive-income/ ?  When he was writing that first blog post do you think he thought that he’d be earning $60,000 a month in January 2012.

I am equally sure that if you asked him he would say that updating his blog regularly has kept him on track and driven him forward, and it’s without a doubt the corner stone of his current business.

It’s the same for me, A personal blog helps to keep you focused and make you accountable to yourself and your readers, and future readers.

So get out there and start a blog,  at the end of the post you’ll see links to some of the members of WPG who have created blogs and who are documenting their progress…check them out you’ll be wiser for doing so!

Finally  huge congratulations to everyone who has completed month 1 of the 2012 challenge ($0 to $10,000 a month with a new business) The first target was $100 and a big lump of Kudos must go to Paul Nicholls who more than doubled this months target.  Next months target is $200 and I am sure we’ll have some great results to report as several income streams are starting to come online.

If you have a personal Blog then why not leave a comment below and make sure to click on the comment Luv button, that will then dispaly your last post for everyone to see…  Don’t bother if you are a spammer, I check each comment personally!

http://theseaworthymarketer.com

http://www.MikeFromMaine.com

http://PaulNichollsBlog.com

Broon Dog Internet Marketing

http://www.thenewbiehelper.com/

http://www.commissionclassroom.com

http://imDeanMartin.com

http://johnlenaghan.com

But perhaps most importantly I talk about some of the process I use that help me get tasks completed on time even when i don’t really fell like working.

I round off the podcast by talking about comment spam and by outing the company that spammed me this week.

Download this episode (right click and save)

These guys are masters at building AdSense sites on an industrial basis then flipping them a few months later for up to 25 times the income. A quick glance at their Flippa account shows multiple $2000-$3000 paydays.  If you think thats impressive well there is more, they are happy to share their techniques and methods with everyone.

If you have even the slightest interest in Adsense then make time to listen to this interview you’ll hear several tips that will help you earn money and avoid problems no matter what level you are at.

Download Podcast

Never Miss a Podcast subscribe on iTunes

Well this is what happened to me earlier this week. On over 100 sites Not 1 AdSense ad was appearing.

How did I feel?

Elated! Yes seriously and that feeling shocked me.

I felt elated because the first thing that went through my mind was that I was finally free of having to update my sites, free of having to worry about what google was doing. That feeling shocked me as I had never thought about my beloved AdSense sites like that, I’ve had some of them since the first week I started in IM.

Unfortunately that feeling of joy and release didn’t last…. the ads came back along with an email from AdSense

This morning we had a brief outage for AdSense for Content that affected a small amount of publishers, and we apologize for the inconvenience. Our engineers worked diligently to identify and fix the problem, and all ad serving should now be resumed for your websites. If you’re still having issues seeing ads on any of your websites, please feel free to reply to this message and I will be happy to help you investigate.

Sincerely,

 

I guess that was a bit of a wake up call to me and showed me my real feelings about one of my businesses. Over the next few months I think I am going to bundle up my AdSense sites and sell them off in groups of 10 or 15.

I say one of my businesses because that is how I treat each aspect on my online endeavors. Before this I had decided to change the way I worked in 2012, I am developing and focusing on 1 new  business for the first 4 months of the year, you’ll no doubt here a lot more about that in the weeks to come because it’s big and something completely different.  I talked about it in the podcast I released yesterday which you can find on the blog or on iTunes if you want to subscribe to it.. just go to podcasts and search for “mjthompson”.  That podcast is another key aspect of my new business model.

For me 2012 is going to be the year of reaching out, I’ve decided that I am going to reach out to subscribers and other internet marketers in a number of ways, the podcast is only the start I’ll be sharing the ups and downs of life as an internet marketer in it. I intend to fully document the new business in a series of monthly reports that will tell you exactly how I got the idea and how I generate the income and even what the income is… total transparency.

I really have had enough of some of the directions that Internet Marketing is going, and if I don’t like something I am going to try to do something about it….. stay tuned it could be a Interesting year.

Finally my Friend Andre Chaperon and his partner Steve are releasing their new “Tiny Little Business’s“ training course , It’s only available for 7 days and it comes with the highest recommendation possible from me. Even if you have no intention of buying it I urge you to look at the sales page and study it. You’ll learn more on the sales page than you will in many products I could name.

It really is a great way of marketing a product, the total opposite of the “Magic Button HYPE” type sales pages that most marketers think are necessary to sell their crap products.

Right I am heading back to the Batcave to continue my plans for world domination (sort of mixing my metaphors there!)  How would you have reacted if you’d lost your Adsense? Let me know below!

While i’ve been working I’ve been thinking of more ways of reaching out to my subscribers and readers. One of my major new years resolutions for 2012 is to do a lot more reaching out but to other marketers and anyone who may stumble upon this blog. I also want to increase my social media networking and exposure.

To that end i’ve decided to do a new podcast series, that doesn’t focus solely on internet marketing…yes there is life beyond IM and it’s some of these aspects I want to cover in more depth.

So I am happy to introduce :

 Life & Online Marketing Without Limits

The podcast will shortly be available on iTunes and they will always be embedded here to both listen to and download.

I want this to be as interactive as possible so please post any questions you’d like to ask me about IM, my business or life in general and If i think others will be interested i’ll cover it. I am also always open to interviewing anyone who has anything to say so once again let me know if you wan to chat!

Enjoy the podcast it’s “bite sized” unlike the other podcast series I do with Paul Forcey

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.

If you haven’t  then you’ve missed a a big trick, and it’s all to do with the buying dynamic.

Spend a moment to think about what happens in the first 11 months of the year, we generally buy online for ourselves. We know what we want, we are looking for the best deal and we are looking for information about the products and what they will do for us.

Now consider buying for christmas, what are we looking for now?  Ideas for gifts, we don’t really care about what they will do for us and we aren’t all that interested in information we just want something that will be appreciated by the person who receives the gift.

You can make this work in your favor by adding images  and test that say things like  “Perfect Gift for Grandma”  “What every Woman wants This Christmas”

The buyers aren’t telling us what they want to buy they are relying on us as online sellers to tell them. So tell them that head massager that you’ve sold 1 of in the previous 11 months is a great gift and will be treasured, tell them what to buy, give guidance and advice.

Change the wording on your site and target different keywords,  words like Gift,Present and Christmas should be liberally scattered around,  guest posts , press releases and articles should target the christmas period and nothing else. If you have testimonials or reviews , try to find ones that mention how the gift was received and mentions the christmas keywords.

Also allay fears, what does everyone fear about online buying at christmas?

Non delivery before christmas, so tell them it’s guaranteed delivery in 48 hours or 72 hours.  Tell them they can order up to December 20th to guarantee delivery or what ever day is the deadline.  If it’s a downloadable product tell them they can even buy it on Christmas day if the need to.

Don’t forget to include items like gift vouchers, whats the perfect last minute gift for someone you forgot to buy for?  I don’t know  but  tell the shopper it’s a Digital gift voucher!

If you’ve built a list… you have build a list haven’t you ?…ohhhh please tell me you have! Well now is the time that all those people who bought nothing throughout the year are going to thank you and become a customer for life because you are going to remind them via an autoresponder series that they need to get started with their christmas shopping and that you have some great gifts and you are also going to send them ideas for gifts …along with the links

Consider a few simple changes to your product review sites and you’ll reap the rewards.

I’d really appreciate your ideas for marketing over christmas and comments so leave a comment below and don’t forget to make use of the comment luv feature to get a link back to your latest blog posts.