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How To Become A Guru Online

Ah, how great it must be to be a make money “guru”, right?

Well, I’m no guru myself, although I’ve been called that through some nasty emails lately. I’ve been getting emails like “You’re just like all the other gurus out there” or “You’ve turned into one of those gurus who won’t share the exact details of your success”.

First let me state that I hate the term “guru”, at least in a sense that most people use it online. The ORIGINAL definition of Guru is from the Indian culture meaning: A spiritual guide, teacher and leader who provides a sacred path to wisdom and guidance.

However, the definition has since changed to a more broad “person with knowledge or expertise”. I work with several Indian partners who are offended by the term guru being thrown around so often online, especially when it’s used to negatively describe someone.

But the point of this post is not to debate how the term guru is being used or what the meaning of the term is. The fact is, people love to use the term guru, especially in the internet marketing niche.

So, how do people become a “guru” these days? And more importantly, why would anyone WANT to become a “guru”?

Becoming an internet marketing guru is pretty easy. Here’s what you have to do to become one…

Step 1 - Start an internet business.

Step 2 - Work your butt off and have amazing success with it.

Step 3 - After reaching the “wealthy stage”, you decide to give back.

Step 4 - You work hard to share your knowledge with others.

Step 5 - You get criticized and scrutinized for your every move.

Step 6 - People think you are a fraud and are only out to rip people off.

Sounds pretty exciting! Where can I sign up?

I always find it amusing to see people ripping on successful people. I assume the biggest reason why people hate “gurus” is because they are simply jealous of their success and if this “guru” doesn’t literally take them by the hand and show them every tiny detail to become rich, then the guru is a fraud.

Don’t get me wrong, there are A LOT of scam artists online claiming to be a guru. Just because you hang out with other gurus doesn’t make you one yourself. But there are just as many real, honest, hard working gurus out there that ARE trying to help you become successful. Just because they might charge a fee to help you succeed doesn’t mean they are out to rip you off.

Sometimes charging a fee is the one thing that will make people accountable for their own success. Nobody puts value on anything that’s free. If you pay $500 for a coaching program, you’re much more likely to put the advice into practice because you need to recover that investment. If you get free advice, you will probably not take action because you are not out anything if you don’t.

Nobody in this world is “entitled” to anything. If you want something, you need to work for it, not EXPECT it to be handed to you. There is more opportunity in the world RIGHT NOW than there has ever been in history before. Even though the media makes it sound like the sky is falling and the economy is falling apart, nothing could be further from the truth.

There’s always an opportunity to succeed, no matter what the current economic situation is. Sure the housing market appears to be falling apart, but other people are absolutely loving it (foreclosure investors). Sure some people are losing their jobs, but many of these people are taking this misfortune and using it as a kick in the pants to start their own business, something they always wanted to do but had been putting off because they had a “cushy job”. Sure gas prices are approaching $4/gallon, but this will cause a rush to find alternative energy sources, which will help our environment and bring additional job opportunities.

This is the kind of mindset that a “guru” has. An internet marketing guru is simply, a regular person who has found an opportunity and created success from that opportunity.

If you truly want to become an internet guru, open your eyes, work hard and prepare to be criticized…

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Power Of A Practiced Presentation

Many "modern" sales trainers and experts are very critical of "canned" ie. memorized presentations. I don't quite understand this. Personally, I have a "Million Dollar Sales Presentation" (that sells over a million dollars of my products each year from the platform) and I want to deliver it perfectly every time - word for word, inflection for inflection. So I have it memorized AND I practice. To me, it seems it would be stupid not to.

In person to person selling, which I do only a little of anymore; mostly on the phone or in meetings with clients; I have perfectly honed, memorized and practiced "vignettes" of material that can be linked together or used cafeteria style as needed. I have a "pat" way to describe how my fees work. I can't imagine ad-libbing all that.

So, I am an advocate of the polished, practiced presentation. I believe it gives you confidence, reduces stress and worry, frees you to listen to responses, and, of course, insures that you say what you have to say in the most persuasive and convincing way possible.

Conversely, I really wonder about the person who's constantly changing his presentation. Does this mean he hasn't yet gotten it right?
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Know Your Role: Finding your Blog’s Persona

Very often when you first start blogging, people will tell you that you need to find your voice. They’re of course talking about your style of writing and the personality you want to portray but I’ve recently been thinking quite a bit about the different rolls or persona’s bloggers use. Obviously every blogger has their own style and I certainly think it’s important to find your “voice”, but I think deciding on, or finding your blog’s persona is just as critical and often will help you discover the voice of your blog.

You may have noticed I said the voice of your blog, not your voice. When you first begin blogging most of the information out there makes it seem like you have this inner voice that once you discover it will begin spewing forth great blog posts. Once you’ve been at it a while, you begin to realize that’s not quite how it works. However, as I said earlier, finding your blogging persona will often make it much easier to establish your writing style, and even that elusive “voice”.

So what do I mean by persona? It’s a bit like a role in a play. You are assigned to play a certain character and that role carries with it certain qualities and characteristics. Is the character arrogant, are they shy, are they confident, do they feel trapped, etc etc. In much the same way, your blog needs to establish a role for itself in the eyes of the audience, and then fill said role. Many times this role will help your audience relate to you and may explain why they should listen to what you have to say. What’s great about blogging is that unlike a play or a movie, you get to choose what your role will be. The list you have to choose from is really only limited by your imagination but here are 5 of the most common roles or persona’s in blogging.

The Researcher

As the name suggests, this person has found their expertise through hours and hours of endless research. They’ve left no stone un-turned and no book on their topic un-read. A great example of this persona in the SEO industry would be Bill Slawski of SEO by the Sea. Bill has spent who knows how many hours and days learning about how search engines work, studying research papers, and pouring over patent filings. His posts are often quite lengthy and discuss the topic in great depth and detail.

Obviously this is a single example but the characteristics of the persona are the same across any niche. If your blog were about your favorite sport the Researcher persona would analyze as many statistics as he or she could get their hands on. They’d compare players’ performances against the games all time greats and be able to tell you the difference in success rate of a field goal from 45 yards out vs 47 yards away. If your blog is about parenting, you’d be well versed in all the child psychology books and discuss parenting theory.

The examples are endless but I think you’re probably getting the point. The Researcher is aiming to be the most knowledgeable person in the industry and their posts are often cited as the authority on a subject.

The Consumer Advocate

Another very popular persona is that of the Consumer Advocate (CA). Once again, as the name suggests, the CA is constantly looking out for the “regular guys” of the industry. The CA might very well be an authority or an “A-lister” but their main purpose and driving ambition is to make sure the “little guy” is provided the best information, and never taken advantage of. When a new product comes out, the Consumer Advocate will test it out and provide a fair and balanced review. If someone tries to take advantage of their customers, the CA will be the first one going to bat for the person who was wronged. The Consumer Advocate acts almost like a shepherd or teacher, and will jealously protect their flock.

Using the persona of the Consumer Advocate is very attractive because they often garner their readers trust very quickly and are then held in very high esteem. However, you have to truly have the consumers’ best interest at heart or a simple mistake could lead to a “fall from grace” and the loss of that carefully built trust. Whether this is the persona Max will be using for this blog, his recent post about the new test business contained language that was very indicative of a Consumer Advocate.

You’ll notice I don’t promote a bunch of affiliate offers on this site. In fact I haven’t promoted any affiliate products since I took over this blog. The reason for this is, I will never promote a product or service unless I fully test it first, AND am able to get the results the product says I will get.

With just a few sentences, Max has established a level of trust and built in accountability with his readers and that’s exactly what the Consumer Advocate seeks.

The Contrarian

The dictionary defines a Contrarian as:

someone who frequently takes a contrary or opposing position or attitude

Quite simply, the Contrarian disagrees with most conventional wisdom in the industry or niche. If most people tell you one thing, the Contrarian will probably tell you the opposite. A great example of this persona within the make money online niche, would be Vic from BloggerUnleashed. While his language and style is often very harsh and rarely safe for work, believe it or not he’s fulfilling a role or persona within the niche. He argues that the biggest names in the industry, Darren Rowse, John Chow, Shoemoney, etc are scammers and simply taking advantage of the masses.

This persona has several benefits, not the least of which is that controversy and negative press will almost constantly follow you (which, as I’ve discussed before is rarely a bad thing). By being willing to take on the big dogs of your particular niche, you immediately establish a fearless and relentless reputation. Also, by so tirelessly defending or arguing your position, you’ll often convert people that agree with you into incredibly loyal followers.

This persona also capitalizes on the 80/20 rule. The rule, as I’m sure you know states that 80% of the results or successes are generated by 20% of the people. By extension, that leaves only 20% of the results for the rest of the 80% which often times will leave people disappointed, disillusioned, and possibly frustrated. By attacking the commonly held beliefs and conventional wisdom, you’re essentially telling the 80% that don’t produce that it’s in fact, not their fault.

The Braggart

The Braggart is another persona that many people will have some negative feelings towards. Quite simply, the Braggart boasts and brags about how great they are. They’re amazing, just ask them, they’ll tell you… and because they’re so great, you should follow them and listen to what they say. The most obvious example of this persona would be the Rich Jerk. While I haven’t heard much from the Jerk in a while, I’m sure all of us remember being told that he was better than us because he was rich. Or was it he was rich because he was better than us? In any case, the point remains, the Braggart blows their own horn about their accomplishments.

While this persona may not seem successful, the fact of the matter is that people want to follow winners. The New York Yankees have the biggest fan base in baseball not just because they’re from New York, but because they have won more than any other team. John Chow (which I would say is another good example of this persona) is constantly criticized by bloggers (including myself) for not providing value, but as his subscription and income numbers illustrate, people don’t much care. The key to being able to pull this persona off is having something impressive to brag about and of course being able to give yourself multiple pats on the back.

The Newbie

And last but not least, we have the Newbie persona. This persona is probably the easiest to use and in fact, is what I used when writing this blog. The concept is simple, you’re entering a niche or an industry without much knowledge but you want to share what you learn with others along the way. As I said, this is the easiest to use because you don’t have to have any prior knowledge on the subject and you can flip any mistakes you make into lessons for others that are following you. By being new and admitting your lack of knowledge, you give your audience something they can relate to and will often endear yourself to your readers who want you to succeed.

This persona does have a couple of downsides, however. First and foremost, it’s been used, especially in the make money online niche, by many many people. Also, by openly stating that you’re a Newbie, it can be difficult to establish yourself as an authority as you grow.

While you certainly don’t have to pick one of these 5 persona’s (or only one for that matter), these are the most common roles I see bloggers using. Once you establish what persona you’d like your blog to have, that will often guide your content and help your audience to know what to expect from you. While finding your writing voice is important, I’d argue that your voice, your content, and your audience will all be determined by the persona(s) you choose for your blog.

What persona(s) do you use for your blog? Do you have other persona’s you’d like to add to the list? Which do you think is more important to “find”, your voice, or your persona? I look forward to reading your thoughts in the comments below.

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Power Of Simplicity

The late Fred Herman, one of the "early" sales trainers, coined "KISS" for Keep It Simple, Salesman, and the advice is just as good now as it was in 1950. Too often, we complicate the sales process unnecessarily, for our customers and ourselves.

When putting together a sales "pitch", I try to get a "straight line list" built; what points must be made and proved, in what order, to arrive at the close.....then I'm careful about wandering off in the weeds, away from that straight line.

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New Test Business Makes $222.73 Per Hour

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I’ve been testing a new mini business idea the last few days. Personally, when I set out to make money on the internet, I tend to build businesses rather than little money making machines. I just have higher expectations for the online businesses that I build, so if I can’t make at least $10k per month with a business, I typically won’t work on it.

But, I realize not all my readers have the same mindset I have. Not everyone has 30-50 hours per week to work on building their internet business. Not everyone wants to make six figures plus per year online (or at least is not willing to put in the work to make it happen).

So I set out to find an EASY internet business that had the potential to make somewhere between $500 - $1000 per month. This seems to be the magic number that people say would make their lives a lot easier.

You’ll notice I don’t promote a bunch of affiliate offers on this site. In fact I haven’t promoted any affiliate products since I took over this blog. The reason for this is, I will never promote a product or service unless I fully test it first, AND am able to get the results the product says I will get. Sadly, I’d say about 90-95% of the products people are promoting in the make money online niche are complete scams and garbage.

I’m not willing to sacrifice my reputation by recommending garbage products!

Long story short, I tested 4 different products claiming I could make quick cash. Three of them bombed terribly, one of them is doing pretty well. Below you will find a video that talks about the experiment business that is making decent money, and how this “quickie business” is on pace to make me about $222 per hour this year…

(Press The Play Button Below To Watch The Video)

Links To Websites Discussed In The Video Above:

1) Niche Store Software

2) Ebay

3) Hostgator Web Hosting

For those of you who do not like to watch videos, I’ll write a summary of the video below so you can get a rough idea of what I’ve done (you should watch the video if you want the full details of the income potential).

One of the product ideas I tested is this Niche Store Builder Software. The idea behind it is pretty simple. It’s a software program that lets you build an ebay affiliate store very quickly and easily. Basically, all you have to do is buy their software (about $100), but a domain name (about $8) and buy some web hosting (about $100/year), push a few buttons, read a training manual, and you are in business.

So, that’s exactly what I did. I bought the software on April 16, 2008. I then followed the instructions exactly as written in their user manual. It took me no more than 1 hour to get the first site created and posted online. I spent another hour getting a couple links to the new site as the training manual stated and then I left the website alone to see what would happen.

To my complete surprise, my new website got a little bit of traffic the next day (April 17th). From that traffic, I was able to send 8 clicks to ebay’s site via my affiliate links on the new website I built. Unfortunately, none of those clicks generated any money. (See the video for full income stats of the website).

I pretty much forgot about the site after the second day not seeing any income, so I got busy with preparing for my “website buying and selling class” I’m putting together.

Fast forward 5 days later when I checked my ebay affiliate program stats again and lo & behold, MONEY.

Nothing earth shattering, but it was free money that I did minimal work for. Finally, a money making idea that actually made money!

Here’s the commissions earned from this one little stupid website I built in an hour…(all verified in the video)

4/17/2008 - $0.00
4/18/2008 - $2.08
4/19/2008 - $4.55
4/20/2008 - $7.30
4/21/2008 - $4.11

Total income over 5 days = $18.04

Average income per day = $3.60

(side note, ebay’s affiliate program is pretty annoying, they delay the income stats by about 30 hours, so it’s frustrating when trying to review your stats).

Now some people would look at $3.60 per day and say “big deal”.

But, it’s actually not that bad. Let’s look at it from a business owner/investor’s perspective…

In this experiment business I started, I spent a total of $200.35 for the software, hosting and domain name. I also invested 2 hours of my time getting everything setup. That’s my total investment.

As a result, I have a website that is making $3.60 per day. Over the course of one year, that will add up to $1,314 in income for me, or $1,113.65 PROFIT (in other words, I will make 6 times my investment)

That profit will be made from 2 hours of work, which is $556.83 per hour.

Now I don’t know if this amount of income will continue for a full year without any additional effort on my end or not. I’m sure I’ll have to spend a little more time on marketing to get more links, etc.

So I’ll add in an extra 3 hours of “work” over the course of the year to maintain the current results. Even with 5 hours invested in this website, it will still be earning me $222.73 per hour…not bad!

Keep in mind, this is just one website. The other thing I liked about this money making idea is the scalability of it.

Once you buy the software, you can make as many websites as you want without any additional cost. Also, with the web hosting plan I bought (the “Baby” plan from hostgator), you can host an unlimited number of websites for no additional cost as well.

So, to scale this business up, your only cost for additional websites will be the $8 or so for a domain name.

Now, rather than making $1,113.65 profit per year with your website, each additional website would be making $1,306 profit per year assuming the same amount of earnings per day.

I have no idea how much these types of websites can earn if you actually spent time marketing them rather than just letting them sit like I’ve done. I’d imagine one single website could make well over $50 per day without too much effort.

It doesn’t take too many sites before the income really starts to add up.

As shown in the video, 10 sites earning $3.60 per day would be a profit of $12,800 per year (just over a grand per month) I also showed what you would earn if you wanted to get obsessive over this stuff and build 100 sites (over $130,000 per year).

The niche site software is perfect for complete newbies to internet marketing because it gives you full training. It’s also great for experienced marketers because it’s a huge time saver by using their templates and software.

Out of the 4 products I tested, this is the ONLY ONE that actually made money. I know it’s still early in the test, but so far it’s on pace to earn me about $222 per hour this year…

If you currently make more than that, then you can ignore this post. If you don’t make that much, then you need to seriously check out the Niche Store Software. (They have lots of great examples on their site for your review too)

Now get to work! I’d love to hear your results once you get your sites up and running…

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Training Class Registration Now Open

Just a real quick post in case the email I just sent gets tossed in the spam folders…

For those of you interested in learning the real life, step by step process my partner and I use for buying and selling (or building and selling) websites, the training class registration is now open.

A quick recap:

The class starts on Monday, April 28th 2008.

Only the first 20 students who register will be part of this “test class” (explained here).

Since this is a test class, the tuition is reduced from $400 to only $200 (with full money back guarantee also).

Registration closes on April 27th or once 20 students register, whichever comes first.

You can register for the class at the link below

http://www.buyingandsellingwebsites.com/welcome2.php

(Sorry, there is no super slick sales letter for the class. If you’ve been reading my blog posts, you know the class will have killer content. If you need a professionally written sales letter to convince you, then you probably shouldn’t sign up!)

I’ve been getting some great questions about the class, so I’ve posted my these and my responses on this FAQ page.

This class in and of itself will be a great internet business lesson. What you are watching right now is how you can start from nothing, build credibility in a new market, launch a new product and make money all in less than a month (class students get to see the behind the scenes stuff I’m doing right now).

If you have any questions for me, please leave a comment below or email me using the contact us form on this site.

On A Different Note:

I’ve been testing a super easy money making strategy the last couple days and it looks promising. You may have heard of it before, maybe not.

I wouldn’t call it a full blown internet business, but so far in my testing it looks like it has the potential to make at least $1,000 per month with about one hour per day in “work”, if you can even call it work.

I’ll put together a video explaining this business and showing you REAL LIFE RESULTS in the next couple of days.  Just want to let this experiment run a little longer to make sure the income is not some kind of fluke.

Talk with you soon…

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3 Cheap Sources of PPC Traffic

When it comes to pay per click (PPC) advertising, the first company everyone thinks of is Google. More experienced advertisers will also know of Yahoo and Microsoft’s pay per click advertising options but for a large portion of online advertisers, that’s where their knowledge of PPC ends. The “Big 3″ as they’re know are certainly the largest suppliers of traffic, however, the large number of advertisers vying for that traffic will often drive the prices up. It’s not uncommon to pay anywhere from $0.50 on up to $10 per click through the big 3 depending on which terms you’re targeting. So how are those of us without tens of thousands of dollars in our advertising budget supposed to get the targeted traffic we’re looking for?

That’s where the so called “second tier” PPC suppliers come into play. While they certainly don’t have the volume of traffic that Google or Yahoo does, traffic can almost always be acquired for a fraction of the price it would cost from one of the big 3. I’ve used several different second tier providers in the past but I’m going to focus on the three I found most useful.

SearchFeed

http://searchfeed.com - Once you depart from the big 3, the quality of the traffic you’re paying for becomes the chief concern. Throughout my numerous campaigns and tests, SearchFeed seems to be the highest quality traffic from any of the second tier sites. The price per click ranges anywhere from one cent on up into the dollars for the highest priced terms, but the average price I’ve paid is about 8 to 10 cents. Like most of the other PPC sites, you select the terms you want to bid on, determine the price you’ll pay per click, and the highest bidder gets the most traffic.

7Search

http://7search.com - In my experience 7search has been slightly less consistent than SearchFeed. While the traffic is decent in terms of quality, I’ve run across a few terms and niches that 7search just doesn’t seem to have much traffic for. If you can deal with the hit or miss nature of the site, I’ve found the average click to cost between 4 and 6 cents each. However, over recent months it seems more and more people are discovering the site and prices have been slowly rising.

One slightly confusing aspect of 7search is that it’s actually made up of a network of sites that all funnel the traffic into one channel. However, each source has it’s own prices and it’s own bids so just because you have the tip bid on 7search, you might not have the top bid across the entire network. They do provide a tool for you to view the top bids on all the contributing sites, but the whole thing seems a little unnecessarily chaotic. I guess that’s the price you pay for using second tier sites but I’ll gladly deal with a few quirks if I’m paying 10% what I’d pay through Google, Yahoo, or MSN.

Miva

http://miva.com - Much like 7search, I’ve found Miva to be very hit or miss when it comes to traffic levels. The first few campaigns I set up on Miva worked well and had a slow but steady trickle of traffic being sent to my sites. Then all of the sudden a new campaign I set up apparently tapped into a pretty impressive flow of traffic and I nearly drained my account in the matter of a day or so. I pretty quickly figured out how to limit the amount of money I spent per campaign per day to prevent myself from over spending, but most of the campaigns I set up never needed it. They seemed to have pockets of terms very high traffic levels and they can be fairly difficult to predict. Overall, the traffic from Miva performed fairly well for me and I’d certainly suggest giving them a shot.

While there are plenty of other sources for PPC traffic, these three sites have been the ones that consistently produced the best results. As with any PPC campaign, whether it’s through Google or one of these second tier sites, always, always, ALWAYS track your results. You can blow through a lot of money in a very short period of time if you’re not careful. Keep an eye on your stats and make sure the money you’re spending converts into sales, registrations, or whatever your goal is. I’ve found that most often there are a handful of terms that constantly produce conversions for me while the rest of the terms are like flushing money down the drain. They key to a successful PPC campaign is finding those terms, sorting them out, and pumping as much money as possible into those productive channels.

The benefit of using these sites expands beyond the direct traffic as well. Once you find the productive terms on these cheaper, second tier PPC sites, you’ll often be able to use that knowledge to create successful campaigns on the larger more expensive sites. Not only that, but they are often the terms you should concentrate on in your SEO efforts as well.

Have you ever used any of the so called second tier PPC sites? If so, which ones worked for you and which ones were a waste of money? Feel free to chime in with your tips and experiences in the comment section below.