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Do You Have A Mastermind Group?

I never realized how important it is to have a mastermind group of like minded people when you are trying to accomplish something.

Over the past 5 years of my full time internet marketing career, I had basically been living in a cave. I would work on our private projects and not interact with anyone besides by business partner.

Sure, I would read the occasional blog post or participate in a couple forum posts here and there, but I just never got too involved with other people who did the same thing I was doing.

My wife has absolutely no idea what I do for a living and most of my friends, neighbors and family all have typical 9-5 jobs, so I couldn’t exactly talk with them about my latest split test results or sales letter copy.

In fact, teaching my buying and selling websites training class over the last 2 months has been the first time I’ve really been super involved with people who love internet marketing. Not only have I been sharing my knowledge with the students, but I’m also learning a lot from them as well. Everyone has knowledge and experience to bring to the table.

That’s another good lesson you should take away…becoming friends with your customers is a GREAT way to become more and more successful online. Your customers are your market. They know other people in that market. When you treat people right and make friends in that market, the word starts to spread and before you know it, your business grows dramatically as a result.

(You’ll see proof of this in my May 2008 income report I post next week, pretty interesting month we had)

Aside from working closely with my training class students, I also recently joined a smaller, closed door mastermind group of internet marketers. There are a total of 7 of us, each in a different niche market, but all working on the same goal (generating money online).

This is an informal mastermind group that we put together. Nobody paid anything to get into it, but I think it’s one of the most valuable things I’ve ever been a part of. Since there are only 7 of us, we can be completely open about all aspects of our businesses without worrying about someone stealing our ideas.

We share exactly what we are working on, what we are testing and what we are having trouble with. Since we meet on the phone every Wednesday, it also keeps us accountable for our actions (if you report that you didn’t do anything since last week’s call, you feel like a complete moron)!

Our mastermind group has one person from California, one in Washington, 3 from Canada, myself in North Carolina and one in Australia. All we do is get on a Skype conference call for 2 hours on Wednesdays and chat about business. It’s absolutely incredible the amount of great advice you can get in that short amount of time.

Finding a mastermind group isn’t all that difficult. You can go to any forum in your niche and find people interested in the same things as you. Put up a post asking if anyone wants to join your mastermind group. You can filter out the responses based on the type of person you are looking to mastermind with.

If you can find people that are more experienced, smarter, or have more contacts than you, then that would be great. You should probably avoid a mastermind group if everyone is a newbie and nobody has ever had any success (unless you are all willing to work hard and share with each other what is working vs what’s not).

Sometimes it just takes an extra set of eyes on your website and with a couple changes, you could go from making $20 a day to $100 a day literally overnight.

I’d HIGHLY recommend starting up some kind of mastermind group if you want to make money online. The key is you all must stick to it and the conversation must remain positive & optimistic. You also need everyone on the call every single week for it to work. Everyone holds each other accountable, and that’s where the success comes from.

Go out and find 3, 4, 5 or 6 people to mastermind with. Report back here after your first call and let me know what you think.

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10 Mistakes That Will Kill Your Blog

1. Excessive Ads - Hey, there’s nothing wrong with making some money from your blog (that’s why your reading this blog right?). But, when your advertisements begin to take up more space on your blog than your content, you’ve got a problem. People visit blog to learn and discuss topics that interest them. They want to share their ideas or ask questions. They DON’T want to have to sort through a million ads, to find your content. Think of it this way, you don’t tune in to your favorite TV show to watch the commercials do you? Well neither do your readers.
2. Lack of Interaction - Many people view blogging as the digital version of giving a sermon. The blogger sits behind his pulpit (keyboard) and preaches to his or her loyal followers. However, if you look at the most successful blogs online, you’ll notice that the interaction is a HUGE part of the blogs success. The ability to leave comments, read other comments, and interact with the content that you’re consuming is what has made blogging what it is. If you don’t make yourself available to your readers, don’t answer any questions and don’t accept any feedback on your content, you’re dooming yourself to the digital equivalent of talking to yourself.
3. Trolls - Everyone’s encountered a troll whether you knew it or not. The Urban Dictionary defines a troll as “someone who gets pleasure by typing annoying/controversial/offensive words on internet forums or message boards.” Unfortunately, trolls are no longer confined just to forums, they’ve invaded blogs as well. I can promise you, if you blog for long enough, and have any sort of success, you’re going to encounter one. Trolls bring absolutely NO value to the blog or your community and instead sit back and generally annoy you along with everyone else that takes the time to comment. They simply aren’t worth the hassle. To top it all of, many times, not only are trolls an annoyance, but they end up starting…
4. Fights - Now don’t think for one second that you’re going to agree with everyone all the time. And yes, I still stand by my statement that controversy is good. However, I’ve seen many bloggers allow themselves to get completely side-tracked by their fight with another blogger to the point that it consumes the blog. A good general rule of thumb is that when you get into name calling and personal attacks, it’s time to shut it down. If you allow a fight to go on long enough, you’ll lose readers who simply don’t want to hear the pissing and moaning anymore. Remember, your subscribers read your blog to get your thoughts and opinions on the subject matter. Unless that subject is fighting with other bloggers, chances are your fight will be interesting for a while, but in the end it will lack substance for your readers to survive on.
5. Playing Follow the Leader - I borrowed that phrase from Max but the premise behind it is 100% true. If you don’t bring anything unique to your blog, whether it’s a distinct style, a special way of covering the information, etc. chances are your blog will die. There are simply too many other options out there for people to read. If you’re not interesting and exceptional in some way, readers will have no reason to return to your site. Find the one thing that makes your blog exceptional, and make that your brand.
6. Under Posting - Ghost towns aren’t exactly hot tourist attractions. If you can’t manage to create fresh content for your readers to digest on a fairly regular basis, you might not be cut out for blogging. I’m not saying you need to post every day, or even every week, however, you need to post regularly enough that your readers know your blog is still active and you haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. On the opposite end of the spectrum…
7. Over Posting - Believe it or not, posting too often can drive away readers as well. If you’re slamming your readers with a high number of posts each and every day, there will be no way for them to keep up. Also, it’s going to be tough to keep up the quality of the posts if you’re cranking them out at such a frantic pace. If you slip into the mistake of posting too often, your “signal to noise” ratio will drop considerably, meaning readers will have to sort through more information to find something worthwhile or valuable to them. That’s a quick recipe for a failed blog.
8. Violating Privacy - This one’s a no-brainer. When people sign up for your blog, whether it’s to comment or subscribe by email, they almost always have to leave an email address. Quite simply don’t abuse that information. Don’t sell your email list or start spamming your readers with your latest chain letters. Trust me, they won’t appreciate it. You’ll damage your reputation and lose readers and commenters all in one fell swoop. Just don’t do it. See, I told you this one was simple.
9. Slow Site - You remember how slow dial-up internet access used to be? It sucked right? Especially if you’d ever used a high speed connection. Well, having too many ads (yes, it’s worth mentioning again), widgets, plugins, or those cool ad-ons included on your blog can drag your site back to the dark ages. It won’t matter how great your content is if it takes years for a single page to load! We’re now firmly entrenched in an age of instant gratification and if your site is slow to load, your readers and visitors simply won’t put up with it. They have too many other sites out there to sit around and wait for yours to get it’s act together.
10. Actually… there is no #10 - Oh wait! Over promising and under delivering. This is pretty much a good rule for life in general but it definitely applies to blogs. If you tell your readers you’re going to do something (add a feature, take care of a problem, listen to suggestions) then you’d better do it. Be very careful in what you promise and remember, this is a blog so everything is in print. You’d be surprised what people remember and call you on later. A couple of slip ups will likely be forgiven (they have been for me on this blog) but if you make a habit of getting people’s hopes up, only to disappoint them, don’t be surprised if you have fewer and fewer people to cry wolf to next time.

And my last bit of advice will be this… You’re going to make mistakes. It’s inevitable. But, if you follow the tips and lessons posted on this blog previously, and try to avoid things on this list, chances are, you and your blog will be able to withstand those occasional slip-ups. Most of all, be honest with your readers. You’ll be surprised how much slack they’ll be willing to cut you. I hope you enjoyed this post and as always, if you think I’m wrong, or left something out, feel free to chime in through the comment form below!

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The Power Of Being a Proffessional Direct Marketer

The "professional marketer" masters the skills of direct marketing without being limited to any one product category or media i.e. application of those skills. I might add, there is no higher valued and rewarded skill on earth than the ability to get something sold. In corporate bureaucracies, the top management's compensation is always pushed higher than their highest paid salesman, but outside of that controlled environment, the sales and marketing "stars" always make more money than the makers of products or providers of services being sold. If you want to increase your personal earning power, the answer is always to focus on becoming better at marketing (not at "making").

A PROFESSIONAL DIRECT MARKETER SUBSCRIBES TO AND READS THE TRADE JOURNALS OF THE
DIRECT MARKETING INDUSTRY

1. DM NEWS

2. DIRECT

3. Catalog Age

4. Direct Marketing
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To view all of the profit producing and wealth creation resources go to
www.glazerkennedywebstore.com

Using Your Content Wisely

When you start a website or internet business empire, you are going to spend a large portion of your time writing content. That’s what the original and main purpose of the internet is (sharing content).

What most people don’t realize, is you can create content once, and re-use that content for different purposes.

This has been one of my secrets to success over the years, but many people don’t realize the power behind it. Let me give you a real life example to explain…

As you know, I have a training class that teaches people how to buy and sell websites for a living. I also manage this blog, which is about helping people make money online.

Since these two websites are related, I’m able to produce content for either of these two businesses, and create value for the other business at the same time.

Last week I put up a video showing people how they can retire in 15 months. I originally created this free video for my buying and selling websites training class, but since I already created the video, I was able to use that same content on this blog to help even more people.

A couple days ago I put up another free video that explains how much your website could be sold for and how you can improve your site to make it worth more money.

If you didn’t watch that video yet, you can check it out here.

To be very successful on the internet, you should try to have multiple websites in whatever niche market you want to get involved with.  The typical problem is, people think they don’t have enough time to develop content for a bunch of difference websites at the same time.

I just gave you one example for how you can do just that.

When you have multiple websites in one specific niche, it allows you to do a few things at once. Aside from the ability to re-use content, multiple sites will help you achiever that “authority” status in your niche.

You can also use the various sites you create to cross promote your own products on each of your sites. Another tip is because you have multiple sites in one niche, you can focus each website on a very specific topic within that niche. Since the site is highly targeted, you will get a bunch of free SEO traffic from the search engines for your efforts.

The typical “make money online” niche market is very different from the “buying and selling websites” market, even though the same type of people exist in each market. By focusing a single website on specific sub-niche within the make money market, I am able to provide an enormous amount of value to my students from the specialized knowledge in the training class.

This is exactly what I mean when I say go for the larger markets when you try to start an internet business. If you pick a larger core market, you can easily break your business down into multiple but related sub-niche businesses.

On another note, thanks for all the emails about the Buying And Selling Websites training class.

The next class is scheduled to begin this Friday, and the registration is open now through the 30th.

If you missed out on the last class, now is your chance to get in…

Since you guys are such loyal readers, here’s a coupon code you can use to take $150 off the class tuition fee.  The coupon code is only valid from today through Friday the 30th.

Coupon Code - 3111CA77C0

You can signup on this page right now for the next class…

This next class is going to be amazing based on the feedback I got from the last class.  Looking forward to seeing you inside…

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The Power Of Being A “Professional Entrepreneur”

The "professional entrepreneur" masters the skills of entrepreneurship but is never limited to any one particular industry or business i.e. application of those skills. The professional entrepreneur can start or run companies or both, and is adept at extracting maximum value out of a business and its customers via focused diversification.
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To view all of the profit producing and wealth creation resources go to
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The First Paradigm Shift

When the jewelry store owner becomes a marketer of fine jewelry, the carpet cleaner becomes a marketer of carpet cleaning services, the chiropractor a marketer of chiropractic care, etc., he takes a quantum leap up in income potential. Most service business owners, small business owners, self-employed professionals and consultants all view themselves as doers of what they do, with the task of getting people to do it to as a necessary evil. The marketer sees the acquisition, retention and value maximization of the customers as his primary role, with the doing of the service the necessary evil. Simply, marketers are much more valuable and highly paid than doers.

This is very, very difficult for doers to accept. When you go to our National Speakers Convention, at least 80% of everybody's conversation is about the doing, not the marketing; in the cocktail lounge, people tell each other what they do...."I speak about X, I'm an expert in Y." In the meetings, they endlessly rehash platform techniques. If one asks another what do you do, the answerer will define himself by his topic. This is not unusual. If you go to a chiropractic or carpet cleaning or computer programmer's convention, the focus will be on chiropractic technique, new chemicals and equipment, and new software. If you ask most businesspeople what they do, they'll define themselves as a doer of a thing rather than as a marketer of a thing.

From the very beginning, when asked the question, I would explain that I was in the speaking and consulting businesses. To me, what I did on stage or in the boardroom was not the main issue. Being in those businesses (ie. marketing those services) was.

This attitude or view or definition of who you are has enormous impact on how you allocate your time and energy. The doers of things do those things and get around to marketing if there's "time left over." And often they will say they're no good at marketing or selling. Or that they don't like it or want to do it. In this way, they box themselves in to forever being a "worker bee" rather than a "queen bee", and to forever working harder than smarter.

Obviously, technical skills related to the delivery of a quality product or service are important. But they are not nearly as important as the ability to market those same products or services. And it is infinitely easier to delegate the doing than the marketing in just about every business, because there are plenty of good doers who are terrible marketers, who, because of that, can be hired cheap.
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To view all of the profit producing and wealth creation resources go to
www.glazerkennedywebstore.com

How To Retire In 15 Months

I don’t know about you, but I have no desire to “work” until I’m 65 years old like many people are required to do. In fact, thanks to my internet ventures, I am technically retired right now.

In other words, I don’t have to work another day in my life if I don’t want to. The reason I’m in this situation is because of our success in buying and selling websites.

When you sell a website for 6 or 7 figures, you can take that lump sum payment and invest it in various investment options such as stocks, real estate, etc. If you sell your website for a $1,000,000 and you take that million and invest it, you can literally live off the earnings/interest of that investment.

The stock market historically returns an average of 8% per year, so on a million bucks, that’s about $80,000 per year, every year for the rest of your life. The nice part about it is YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORK to earn that money! Your money does all the working, so you can retire and do whatever you want.

Isn’t that everyone’s goal in life?

We work so hard for 30-35 years at a job we hate, making less money than we deserve, just so ONE DAY we’ll be able to finally retire and “enjoy life”…

Why wait until you’re old and gray to retire? You can literally be retired 15 months from TODAY if you want to put in the effort to make it happen.

I just created a video that shows exactly how you can retire within 15 months.

You can check it out here.

Think I’m crazy? Go watch the video and see what I mean. Open your mind just a little bit and see what happens…

Seriously, go watch it right now. It’s only 9 minutes long. Come back here when you are done and tell me what you think…

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