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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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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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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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My Experiences with Niche Stores

With all the commotion over Max’s recent post Simple New Business Makes $222.73 per Hour, I wanted to give niche store building a shot. A lot of the comments replying to Max’s post asked how he managed to get organic traffic so quickly and what kinds of SEO things he did to drive traffic etc. After building a few stores of my own, my response to those people would simply be “Just try it.”

While my results weren’t as quick to come as Max’s, I have had a pretty impressive amount of success considering how little effort was required. The first site I put up took about 45 minutes for me to install and set up. This was the first time I had ever used the software and I made a few mistakes. I then spent another hour or so doing some quick keyword research and optimizing the individual pages for their specific terms. While that might sound a bit daunting to those of you who don’t have much experience with SEO, all I did was add the targeted terms to the page titles, the links pointing to those pages, and a headline or two (using H tags). That’s it, it’s hardly brain surgery.

That takes us up to about 1:45 in terms of time spent and I finished it off by adding links to the new site from a few of my forum profiles, a couple of blogs, and submitted it to a free directory. All together, I think I had about 5 or 6 links pointing to it with good solid anchor text and that took the total time spent on the site to about 2 hours total.

I sat back and waited for results and unlike Max’s test, I had to wait 3 days before I saw my first bit of organic traffic. I’d guess that’s due to the relatively small number of links the site had but sure enough once the site was indexed, the organic traffic started to trickle in and so did the affiliate income. Once again, my results fell a bit short of Max’s. He made $3.60 per day and while I did have days that I made more than that, my average over two weeks was right at $1 per day. While that’s not going to let me quit my day job or buy a house on the beach, if those results hold, that will be about $365 in a year’s time for 2 hours worth of work.

I didn’t create a video for you like Max did, but just so you know I’m not blowing smoke, here’s a screen shot of the results from one of my sites for the past two weeks.

Now I don’t know about you but when I see numbers like that, I immediately begin to think SCALE. As in, imagine if I could scale this up to 100 or even 300 sites. If I had 100 of these sites set up that’s an annual income of $36,500 for 200 hours (5 work weeks) worth of work! Personally if I were to do this large scale I’d get much quicker in setting the site up (I might even pay a local student to do it for me at minimum wage or something similar) but I’d also want to spend a bit more time building links to the site. With so many people jumping on the niche store bandwagon, I really believe links are what will separate the successful sites from the rest of the pack.

For those of you who would ask if it can be duplicated, I set up another site, and while I had to wait a bit longer this time (about a week) the same results have started to come in. Over the past week I’ve averaged $1.27 a day from that second site, again, for right around 2 hours worth of work.

So, if you were skeptical of Max’s results, I hope this helps open your eyes a bit. Stop worrying about how you might fail, buy the Niche Store Software and give yourself a chance to succeed.

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Should You Start An Internet Business?

I have a strong belief that making money on the internet is NOT for everyone!

If any of the following statements match your current situation, then you should look elsewhere to make money…

- You want a magic button to push that makes you money.

- You don’t have more than $300 to your name.

- You don’t want to work more than 1 hour per day on your business.

- You don’t have any desire to learn new things.

- You are afraid of risk.

Starting an internet business is the greatest opportunity in the world, but I think some people have this skewed perception of what a real internet business is.

I guess it’s because of all those stupid infomercials on late night tv that make it sound like you can sit at home in your underwear and watch money fly out of your company. I’m not sure where else people can the idea that it’s that simple…

Don’t get me wrong, making money online is very easy to do, but you have to put in the time, effort, money and use proven strategies to make it happen. Compared to digging ditches for a living, an internet business is a piece of cake!

Compare starting an internet business with starting a regular, brick & mortar business…

To start an internet business, you need:

- $8 for a domain name
- $10 for website hosting
- $300 for miscellaneous software, training materials, etc.
- $900 for advertising / marketing
- about 10 hours per week
- 30% chance of making nice profit
- no employees / workers comp insurance, etc
- no theft or other headaches, etc

- Total risk = Less than $2,000

To start a brick & mortar business, you need:

- $50,000+ for inventory
- $100,000+ franchise fee (if using a franchise)
- $36,000+ for first year commercial lease
- $3,000 for advertising / marketing
- about 50+ hours per week
- 30% chance of making nice profit
- $80,000/year for employee salaries & insurance
- deal with employee/customer theft, etc

- Total risk = $200,000+ and high stress

There is a dramatic difference between the two types of businesses, which is why so many people are flocking to start an internet business.

It amazes me when you hear people chatting about how it’s so hard to make money online or how expensive certain software programs are or training courses are. In reality, it’s absolutely peanuts compared to a “regular” business!

You’re either cut out for owning a business or you’re not.  Don’t worry if you’re not, that’s why there is such things as JOBS.  Not everyone is cut out for business ownership.

BUT, on the other hand, if you are truly fed up with your job, want to start an internet business to eventually surpass your job’s income and become truly independent, you can do it! Millions of us are making their full time income online, so obviously if we can do it, so can you.

If you don’t have any money to start your web business, your best bet would be to pick up a part time job for a couple months. Save ALL of that money from the extra job and once you have built up $1,000 or so, THEN start up your internet business.  It will save you lots of headache, stress and frustration compared to starting an internet business with no money to your name. It’s hard to spend that $30 on a piece of software when you should be using that money for groceries or gas.

If you don’t want a part time job, you can try one of these 3 easy ways to make money online to get you started and help you put money aside for your internet business.

I’ll try to help you anyway I can if you have questions about starting an internet business. Leave your questions in the comments section below…

How To Learn SEO Fast

Search engine optimization (SEO) is probably one of the most desired skills to learn as a website owner. When you know how to do SEO, you have no limits to the amount of money you can make online because you can literally create unlimited traffic to your websites without paying for each visitor (like PPC).

I get asked lots of questions about SEO tricks and techniques that I use, and I try to respond to each of these the best I can if I have free time to do so.

I consider myself an SEO expert, but not because I study SEO 8 hours per day and know precisely when each search engine changes their algorithms. I’m an expert because I know the 95% core knowledge that it takes to get a site ranked in the search engines. The last 5% is the highly technical, “nerdy” stuff that nobody even needs to know to be successful.

The core concepts of SEO haven’t really changed that much over the years. The blackhat strategies of trying to beat the search engines have changed and will change frequently because those methods always get caught by the search engines.

There’s really only 2 parts to the SEO puzzle.

First is the onsite stuff. This includes your website’s title tags, meta tags, internal linking strategies, proper use of alt tags, and quality of content.

Second is the offsite SEO stuff. This includes the number of incoming links from other sites, the quality of incoming links from other sites and the anchor text being used from other sites who link to you.

That’s all there is to it. I’ve gotten #1 rankings in VERY competitive niche markets using nothing more than this knowledge.

Sure, there are other nerdy SEO best practices and lots of theories about the best way to do SEO, but if you can do the two parts I listed above and do them very well, you will get high rankings, guaranteed.

The only trick to SEO is knowing how to do these things. Knowing how to write good title tags, how to get quality links to your website, how to link to your other pages within your site, etc. You need to learn the knowledge first, then you need to use the tools to make the process faster and easier.

Anytime someone would ask me for specific advice in the past, I would refer them to Aaron Wall’s SEO book. Unfortunately Aaron changed his business model from a fantastic SEO Ebook to a paid membership site that teaches all internet marketing topics now. I haven’t joined his membership site, so I can’t speak to its content, but I know anytime you go from an expert in one topic to a jack of all trades, you tend to lose quality in each individual topics.

If I had more time available, I’d probably just make my own training course to share all the things I’ve learn about getting sites to rank in search engines. But, between the buying and selling websites class I’m running now, updating this blog plus the other 4 web businesses I manage, there’s no time to take on another project.

So, I started my search to find a new training source I could refer people to who needed to learn SEO. I ended up buying this course and was pleasantly surprised to see how in depth it was and how easy it was to understand, even for a complete newbie (I had my 62 year old, computer illiterate neighbor read it to confirm how easy it is to understand..and no I’m not joking!)

The creator of the course is also the same guy who created the best SEO tool ever created for saving time and making SEO 100 times easier.

I’ll still be sharing my useful tips and SEO techniques via this blog, but if you want the full story, in depth and easy to follow SEO education you can put into use today, then you should pick up a copy of the course. It’s about a hundred bucks, but when you think about how much you’ll spend on PPC ads if you don’t learn SEO, it’s literally a drop in the bucket.

If you get into a competitive market and have to pay $0.50 per click for 100 visitors per day in Adwords, you’ll rack up $100 in just TWO DAYS. On the other hand, you can buy the course for $100, learn SEO and learn how to drive FREE traffic to your site forever. Shouldn’t be a tough decision…

The software tool is not required for SEO, but it will save you a ton of time when it comes to getting links to your site and researching the best keywords to go after.

This training book is the perfect compliment to the niche store money making idea I told you about a couple weeks ago. There were lots of questions when I posted that case study about how I was able to get free traffic to a new site as quickly as I did. Brad’s course will show you the same techniques I used (and a couple others I didn’t even know about myself that I’ll be testing this week).

Looking forward to reading the comments after you guys start implementing some of these SEO ideas and start getting your free traffic…

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Think Pennies…Get Pennies

How much money are you making on the internet?

Chances are, it’s right around the amount you think you are capable of earning. Call it the law of attraction, a strange coincidence, fate, whatever you want, but the results you are getting right now are exactly what you are thinking about.

When you are looking to start an internet business or a new website, how are you planning your business, specifically the monetization of the business? Are you thinking about things like “If I can get 500 people to my site per day and if 5% of those people click my google ads and I make $0.15 per click, I’ll be making $3.75 per day”.

Or maybe you say to yourself “If I can just sell 4 of these 125×125 ads at $25/month, I’ll be making $100 per month”.

You probably don’t even realize you are doing it, but you are limiting yourself based on your thoughts. You have to stop thinking in pennies if you want to make real money online.

I think entrepreneurs online have this mindset that the internet is “different” and there are certain rules that limit you from making the amount money a real business can make. That’s complete nonsense.

The minute you start thinking about your website as a REAL business is when you will start to see a drastic change in your income. I think part of the problem is, most people who want to try to make money online do not know how the real business world works.

Ford, Coca Cola and AT&T each spent $35 MILLION just to advertise on American Idol this year and Ford alone spends $150 million per year on online advertising campaigns.

A single ad in the yellow pages (which almost nobody even uses anymore) will cost a company up to $30,000 per year for one full page ad!!

A billboard advertisement can costs about $800 per month. Who ever responds to a billboard ad anyway?

National TV commercials can run into the millions of dollars for airtime…

…And you were stressed out and feeling doubtful that you could sell 4 ads for $25 each on your website?

What you need to do is convince yourself that you are WORTHY of being on the same playing field with real businesses and that you shouldn’t be settling for a measly $0.39 per day in adsense income or $20 per month for an ad on your site.

Don’t be afraid of selling products and services, and don’t be afraid of charging a premium for these products and services.

This really hit me like a ton of bricks once I started seeing success online a few years ago. When I was first starting out, I bootstrapped my startup business to the extreme.  I didn’t spend a penny more than I had to for anything related to my business.  I *thought* everyone felt this way when it came to their businesses too.

BIG MISTAKE!

Once I started making about $5,000 per month with my web businesses, I realized I could boost my business by buying things that would make me more money. I could buy tools that would increase my productivity. I could hire someone to design my logo for $50 rather than me spending 8 hours of my time making one just so I could save a couple bucks.

My mindset had completely shifted with the more success I had. No longer was I squeezing every penny I had in my business. After my mindset shifted was when I realized THIS is how bigger business owners must be thinking. They aren’t cringing over the decision of whether or not they should spend $500 on a training course to improve their skills. In fact, if they have two choices with one being a $500 training course or two being a $29 ebook course, most would opt for the $500 course because it MUST be better since it costs more.

Even if the material is basically the same, the only difference is the mindset of the person or company selling the course. One person is thinking BIG (and making $500 a clip) and the other is thinking small (and struggling to make any decent money with their $29 ebook).

If you are very cost concerned (nice word for frugal), keep in mind that not everyone else is. Just because you wouldn’t spend $400 per month for an ad on a website doesn’t mean another company won’t. In fact, if you are ONLY charging $400 per month for an ad and you offer the ad space to a large company like Ford for example, they won’t consider the ad because it’s too cheap! They have a mandatory and preset ad budget to spend each year on advertising and marketing, so they can’t waste their time on $400 per month ads.  It would take forever to split up that $150 million ad budget at that rate…

The next project you think about, try thinking BIG and see what happens.  Focus all your thoughts and energy towards that big idea, that big income and that big website traffic. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the outcome.

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