A Few Random Mumblings

I’ve had a few problems over the past 7 days or so, it all started going wrong on Friday when “exhibits a” did their best to make “exhibits b” worthless.

As such, “exhibits a” are now banned from reading the blog, unless they can redeem themselves in the 5th test, and if you don’t think that will mean anything to them, I can assure you that Ian Bell is a huge fan of this blog!

Anyway, with England’s failings at the cricket, it meant no trip to Headingley yesterday which scuppered all of my plans, not only that, but I had 2 new products to tell you about all on the same day which again, isn’t good.

It’s always a bad feeling when you have 2 things to promote at once, as no matter what you do you are always going to feel a bit crap for letting one of them down. So rather than let them both down, and without needing to bombard you with emails I’m going to cover both items in this blog.

I’m also going to chat about a few other things that don’t really warrant their own blog post, but should prove to be interesting none the less. So what can we start on….

My new Product

First of all I’m going to ask your your opinion of a new product of mine that I’ll be bringing out at some point in the future – yes, your eyes don’t deceive you, after over 2 years I’m going to have another product coming onto the market!

It’s going to consist of 2 parts – a free eBook, and a training course. Here’s what I was thinking of doing for the “sales page”:

What do you think?

And if you are considering nicking the design, please take a look at this kitten before you do anything:

I also need a name for the free eBook, I’ve narrowed it down to 2, so if you can leave a comment telling me which of the 2 names you prefer that would be great. The 2 options are:

“1 Webpage = $20,000”

“2,365 Words = $20,000”

There’s no ETA for the new product, the free eBook is 95% finished so I’m onto the training course part now. Hopefully it won’t be too long but I will of course keep you updating on any progress.

JV Auction Profits

This is the first product I was asked to promote this week, it’s from John Thornhill and costs a measly $10.

What’s interesting about this product, is not just the great content it contains on getting JV partners via eBay, but he’s actually used it as a really clever way to build up anticipation for another new product that will be launching very soon.

What I’d suggest you’d do is check it out (only $10!) and then watch the marketing take hold in the coming days/weeks, I won’t say too much but you will learn a hell of a lot from him!

Click Here To Check Out JV Auction Profits!

I literally just got the link through to John’s new product I mention, if you want to be one of the first to check it out click here….but be quick or you may miss the free video.

Fantasy Football – Win A FREE Domain Name!

Each year D9 Hosting (which is run by myself and Paula Brett) run a Fantasy Football competition, this year we are also giving a free domain name to whoever comes top of the D9 League. It’s free, and is done for a bit of fun, anyone can join, you don’t have to be a D9 Hosting customer, or even a football lover. Just pick a team and get in on the action, here’s the full details if you fancy taking up the challenge 🙂

“D9 Hosting is pleased to announce that 2nd season of our Fantasy Football (Soccer!) competition is up and running in preparation for the start of the new Premier League Season.

Each year we invite all customers, friends, relatives, cats, dogs, goldfish, etc. to come join our Fantasty Football league. It’s free to play, and the winner of the D9 League will be rewarded with a FREE domain name – so that should give you an extra incentive to do well 🙂

If you haven’t a clue what we are talking about, Fantasy Football lets you select a “Fantasty” team made up of any premiership players from any teams, you have to pick the best team you think, whilst remaining within the budget.

Each week when games are played, the players in your team will earn points for doing well – Scoring goals, keeping clean sheets, etc. but they’ll also lose points if they have a bad game, so you need to try and get the balance right!

You can create your team here:

http://fantasy.premierleague.com

And once you’ve found that magic formula, click on “Leagues” > “Join League” and enter the following code:

261043-238048

You’ll then be added to the D9 League where you can compete against the others, who will win the free domain name? Only time will tell 🙂

We’ll see you on the pitch!

Kind Regards,
Dan & Paula – D9 Hosting

P.S. Even if you know nothing about football it’s well worth joining, it’s a bit of light hearted fun and who knows, you may get lucky with your team selection and end up top of the league!

P.P.S. The D9 League is open to anyone, so if you have any friends or family members you think would enjoy the league (and a free domain!) please feel free to share the details with them. “

Guru Bypass

This is the 2nd product I was asked to promote recently.

It’s the brainchild (Is that a word?) of Anton Lomax, Anton has been dabbling in and out of the Internet Marketing world for as long as I can remember, he had been quiet for a while up until a few months ago when he made a post on a popular Marketing Forum, talking about how he stumbled upon a dead simple way to make money from Brandable eBooks.

His mailing list of just 600 people had brought back $400 in income for him, which I can assure you is a lot harder than it sounds! Knowing he was onto something, Anton knew he could make even more money by creating an eBook showing others just how easy it is to achieve using his system.

The problem was that Anton had no idea how to bring the product to market, so he got in touch with another forum member – Randy Smith, who helped Anton to create the report, sales page, and bring the product to market.

Fast forward to today, and “Guru Bypass” is currently on the market in it’s pre-launch phase. I believe the pre-launch phase will end on August 15th, so if you want to get in on the pre-launch price (Normal price is $47) you need to go to the site on or before the 15th August, and use the following:

Coupon Code: pre27

Click Here To Check Out Guru Bypass

Some Really Cool Free Software

I actually discovered this software by accident, but it’s an amazing bit of kit. It’s called “Notepad ++” and is basically a super charged version of Windows Notepad that comes with all Windows PC’s.

Notepad ++ doesn’t just have all of the features of the regular notepad (is there anything Notepad can’t open!?!) but goes way further. I won’t bore you with the details, but would advise you to have a look and give it a download. It’s 100% free, and by free I don’t mean “marketing free” where you have to enter an email address and go through a billion offers before getting the download, it’s a 100% free direct download!

Click Here To Check Out Notepad ++

And that brings to an and my random mumblings! I think it must be one of my worst structured blog posts ever, but can you imagine if posted each mumbling as a standalone email/blog post – I’d have bored you to tears 🙂

As always thanks for reading and let me know if you have any comments – especially on the naming of my new product!

Regards,
Dan

Back To Basics – What Is Internet Marketing

I’ve been very slack on my blog posts recently, the month of July seems to have passed me by completely…blog post wise anyway. Back in the “real world” I’ve been busy going to relatives birthdays, going on a mountain walk (note I didn’t say walkS….1 was more than enough), and in 6 days I’m going to Headingley in Leeds to watch day 5 of the Ashes test match between England & Australia. So despite going easy on the Internet stuff, I’ve been having a good time which I suppose is the reason we all decided to become Internet Marketing people.

Anyway, back to business.

It’s come to my attention that a lot of the content I’ve been posting on here for the past 3 years has been going over a lot of peoples heads. So I’m going to go back to basics with this post, and just give you an idea of how to get started in Internet Marketing and what to look out for along the way.

If you already know this stuff I apologize, but in the long run this post should help more people keep up with some of the more advanced things I have written about in the past, and that I plan to write about in the future so bare with me.

Getting Started

The first thing you need to grasp is an understanding of what Internet Marketing is all about, if we are to break it down into its simplest form, it’s about making money by selling things on the Internet both directly, and indirectly.

So you need to decide what you are going to sell, here are the options for you:

1. Create your own product/service and sell directly to customers

Examples of my own: D9 Hosting, Boomerang List Builder

2. Sell other peoples products that come with resale, or private label rights

Examples of my own: El Passo Software, El Passo Books

3. Promote other peoples products as an affiliate (Earn commission for any items you sell)

Examples of my own: DLGuard Review, Resell Rights Fortune Review

4. Create a content site and generate income from advertising

Examples of my own: Tattoo Intel

Each of the above have their advantages and disadvantages. So I’m now going to give you a quick run down of the above points and hopefully make everything a bit clearer for you.

Option1: Create Your Own Product

Creating your own product CAN be a big money maker – it might not be, but if you target the right niche and create the right product then the potential is huge.

Take D9 Hosting as an example, I created it back in 2007 with my business partner Paula Brett when we saw a gap in the hosting market, as far as we could tell there was no affordable, reliable web host out there that knew Internet Marketing like we did – I’m not being big headed there either, we have over 10 years experience between us and I genuinely feel you’d be hard pushed to find a more marketer friendly web host.

So to cut a long story short, we created D9 Hosting, which is now hosting thousands of websites for clients all over the world, the income generated through D9 provides a full time wage for both myself and Paula – all because we saw a gap in a market and created a service to fill that void.

I’m using the hosting market as an example but you can use anything you have an interest in, lets say for example that you enjoy mountain walks. I don’t have any numbers but I’d imagine there’s a lot of people interested in mountain walking that are looking for the best routes and secret tracks up xyz mountain, so why not compile an eBook showing the best routes to take up xyz mountain and sell it to amateur mountaineers like myself!

That may not be the best example, I have no idea what the mountaineers niche is like, but I would have certainly loved a guide I could have used last week, it might have stopped us going up the wrong path and adding an extra 3 miles to our journey 🙁

But hopefully you can see what I’m getting at, if you can find a gap in a market then creating your own product to plug that gap can be very lucrative.

What sort of product could you create?

1. An eBook

2. Some software

3. Training course

4. Video guides

5. A service

6. A membership site

7. And anything else you can think of!

Advantages of creating your own product:

1. Keep 100% of the sales generated

2. If you tap into the right market income potential is huge

3. Have total control over the product you are selling

Disadvantages of creating your own product:

1. Depending on the type of product you create, the costs could be high

2. You may target the wrong niche/market and your product may not sell

3. Can be disheartening to see that people don’t actually like your product (It happens!)

Resources:

Operation eBook – How To Create Your 1st eBook

Option 2: Sell Products With Resale/PLR Rights

This is how many of us; myself included, got into Internet Marketing. Back when I first started Marketing the first thing I sold was a collection of eBooks with resale rights that I purchased from John Thornhill. I sold these on eBay and made around £90 (about $160) each week, which for a teenager was pretty good going!

Back then, the “Resell Rights” market was still very much in it’s infancy, the only products with resale rights you could get your hands on were eBooks, nowadays there are tons of top quality items out there that come with either resale, or private label rights including videos, training courses, software products and so on.

If you buy the resale rights for these items, it means you are able to sell on the items as many times as you like, keeping all of the profits for yourself. With Private Label Rights (PLR) products you can even alter the items and pass yourself off as the author of the product!

I actually still have my very first marketing website online, El Passo Books, and it still makes a few sales every week to this day. All the products you see on the site come with resale rights, in total I paid around £30 for the website and all of the eBooks you can see on it, so when you consider the main package sells for £12.99 each time you can see it has been a wise investment!

Advantages of selling items with resale rights:

1. Usually dead cheap to purchase

2. Can sell them multiple times and keep the profit

3. Pass PLR products off as your own (Also saves time)

Disadvantages of selling items with resale rights:

1. Lots of other people could be selling the same product as you

2. Sometimes items can be sold very cheaply and are devalued

Resources:

John Thornhill’s Ready To Go eBook Business

PLR Monthly

Option 3: Promote Products As An Affiliate

This is personally my favorite method, as once I’ve set an affiliate promotion up I can pretty much sit back and forget about it. All I need to do is drive customers to the products sales page and watch the commission come in.

I’m sure you all know what an affiliate link looks like, it’s usually something along the lines of:

www.mysupercoolsite.com?aff=funkychicken

If someone were to click on that affiliate link, and then purchase something off mysupercoolsite.com I would earn a commission.

I wouldn’t have to deliver the product to the customer, and I wouldn’t have to provide them with the support!

Some of my most profitable ventures are affiliate websites, and I do plan to write an eBook (option 1!) on the subject so keep your eyes open for that.

If you are starting out and don’t have much startup capital available to you then I’d strongly recommend going for this method. It can be set up for free and even if you don’t make a sale you won’t have lost out financially, and you’ll have gained some valuable experience from the project.

Adavntages of promoting products as an affiliate:

1. No customer service to provide

2. No startup costs (in some cases)

3. If you target the right product it’s easy money

Disadvantages of promoting products as an affiliate

1…..I can’t really think of any to be honest!

Resources:

How I Dominated Google For Resell Rights Fortune

How I Dominated Google For John Thornhill Coaching

Option 4: Create Content Site & Profit Through Advertising

I’ve actually tried this a few times, but to be honest unless you have a really high traffic website you’d be better off sticking to another method.

The idea is to get people to your website by providing them with quality information that they are looking for, you’d then place relevant adverts on that website in the hope that people would click on the adverts and make a purchase. An example site of mine that uses this strategy is Tattoo Intel, it’s a site that provides all sorts of information on tattoos, you’ll also be able to see banner adverts on the page.

I make a few sales from these but nothing like I do from the other sites, if I were able to generate more traffic to the site then I dare say it would be more worthwhile, however at present it isn’t really a viable option for me when the other methods are bringing in more money with less work needed on my part.

Advantages of content sites with advertising

1. No customer service to provide

2. Cheap to setup, only a domain name and hosting needed

Disadvantages of content sites with advertising

1. Need to generate a lot of traffic to see decent results

2. Sites need updating quite often to keep people coming back for more

So there you have it, a brief overview of the main methods Internet Marketers use to make money online. It’s a very broad overview but it should give you a basic understanding of everything and help you understand what I’m talking about in some of my more advanced blog posts!

If you are just starting out, what I’d personally advise you to do is read through this post a couple of times, then decide which plan of action is for you. When you’ve done that, write down what you are going to try and do and do it. Don’t worry if you fail, you won’t know unless you try!

As always thanks for reading and let me know if you have any questions.

Regards,

Dan