Last week I was strolling through the aisles of my local public library and stumbled upon a book titled “Rules for Renegades” by Christine Comaford-Lynch.  I had never heard of her before I saw the book, but with a title like that I had to check it out.  I haven’t even finished the book yet but I love it.  I’ve just gotten to the point where she sleeps with Bill Gates.  Does that have you a little more interested?

Christine has accomplished quite a bit so far in life.  She ran away from home at 16 to become a model in New York City.  Six months later she talked her way into college without a high school diploma.  She didn’t care for either fashion runways or college so she became a Bhuddist monk.  At 24 she broke her vows.  At the age of 25 she got a job with Microsoft despite the lack of a college degree. At 27 she decided to become a millionaire.  Ten years later she had made over $10 million and consulted to 700 companies in the Fortune 1000.  And she retired at 40.  I’d say all that qualifies her to write the rules for renegades.  What do you think?

Remember, she doesn’t even have a high school diploma proving once again that formal education is over-rated.  She says an MBA is optional, but a GSD is essential.  GSD stands for “gets stuff done.”

She started her first company on the spur of the moment while she was a contractor at Microsoft.  Something happened such that Microsoft could no longer pay them directly so 300 contractors were called into a big meeting to announce the change and encourage the contractors to become employees of Volt Technical Services who would then pay the contractors (forgive me if the details are not exactly correct but that’s the basic idea…it had something to do with taxes).

Of course Volt takes a percentage off the top of all the contractor’s wages and makes a killing.  Quickly doing the math (as Christine did), if Volt makes $10/hour for each contractor, they make $3,000/hour (300 contractors x $10/hour) which is $24,000/day assuming an 8 hour day and $120,000/week.  And all they really have to do is handle the payroll & tax withholding.  How hard can that be?  Not much work for $120,000 per week.

Christine realized this, recognized an opportunity, and more importantly quickly acted upon it.  She stood up in the middle of the meeting and announced she had a company providing the same service and would take a smaller percentage of the contractor’s earnings than Volt.

She had no idea how she was going to accomplish any of this, but she would figure it out as she went along.  After the meeting she passed out her email address, made a phone call to register a corporation, rented office space, and outsourced the payroll to another company.  By the end of the next day she had 35 employees.  Her plan was to take 5% less than Volt.  So if she made $9.50/hour for 35 contractors that’s a bit less than $350/hour, $2,800/day, $14,000/week, and $900,000/year.  She created a business on pace to gross nearly $1 million/year in little more than 24 hours.  Not bad.  Sounds like a classic reptile brain.

That little excerpt is from the first 10 pages of the book.  There’s plenty more and like I said I haven’t even finished the book yet.  I recommend you read it.  You’re bound to get some good ideas.

Tags: Domain Names, Monetization

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Carl Ringwall listened to my SEO interview with Fred Black last week and here’s what he had to say:

“Robert, this is one of the best guides to getting more traffic and general SEO that I have received. Fred has a great site, and the advice he gives is top-notch. You did a great interview. I encourage all to get this - it really cuts through the ‘hype’ of SEO and traffic issues.”

If you need more proof, read the post Fred made last week: SEO: #1 & #2

In this intervew, Fred & I cut though all the crap and tell you in plain English how we rank #1 & #2 in the most popular search engine for this highly-competitive search term. You can do it too. All you need to do is follow the simple plan we share in the interview.

Click Here to Download the SEO Interview

Tags: Video Products, Traffic

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Over the weekend I read Broken Windows, Broken Business by Michael Levine. The title is based on the Rudy Giuliani’s clean up of New York City when he was mayor in the 1990s. In a nutshell, the theory is that if there are broken windows in the buildings of a neighborhood, it sends a message of tolerance. And if the broken windows ar not cleaned up quickly, the neighborhood will decay and more serious and violent crimes will become commonplace.

It all starts with a single “broken window.” Giuliani and the NYC police chief implemented a strict “zero tolerance” policy on crime. Even simple things like jaywalking were not tolerated. Many ridiculed the policy and said it would never work but within a few years, the violent crime rate in NYC had dropped dramatically. Giuliani’s policy was widely praised for this success. (The authors of Freakonomics attribute another factor the drop in violent crime but that’s not the point here.)

Levine argues that the “broken windows” theory applies to any business too. He cites several examples of companies, like K-Mart & American Airlines, that tanked as a result of “Broken Windows Hubris” which means they failed to address (or in some cases even recognize) the broken windows in their businesses.

This is not only about large, behemoth corporations. The author cites bad customer service as the “ultimate broken window.” And that applies to an Internet or Information Business too. Levine talks about expectations vs. realities. Any customer of your business has certain expectations…most of them reasonable and some not so reasonable. But if you fail to at least meet those expectations, your business is headed for disaster. That means in some cases employees or you (if you do your own customer service) can be the biggest “broken window.”

There’s even an entire chapter dedicated to the Internet. Of course simple things like broken links are considered “broken windows” but on a larger scale a website might be the first (and only) exposure a prospect or customer has with your business. If there are “broken windows”, the likelihood of losing that prospect or customer for good are increased…and the worst part is that you probably won’t even know it. For example, if someone is looking for contact information or FAQs, they should be easy to find.

It’s a short, easy-to-read book (162 pages). I recommend you march on down to the local public library and check it out like I did.

Tags: Success, Create Your Own Products

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For the next 48 Hours, you can get the SEO Interview I did with Fred Black for $19.

Fred’s site, PQInternet.com, has consistently ranked #1 for a highly competitive search term…and you can use his simple strategies to do the same. I know this because several of my own sites have risen to the first page of the rankings for very competitive search terms…and all I did was follow Fred’s advice.

Click Here to see Proof of our High Rankings

If you have any interest in top 10 search engine rankings in the biggest search engine (and the traffic that comes with it), you’ll want this interview because Fred & I cut through all the crap and tell you what’s important…and what’s not.

Click Here for the SEO Interview

If you follow the simple process laid out in the interview, don’t be surprised if you find your own sites ranked on the first page of the most popular search engine.

Tags: Create Your Own Products, Article Marketing

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I just finished reading Dan Kennedy’s latest book, No B.S. Ruthless Management of People & Profit. Personally, I don’t want employees but I read just about everything Dan writes and this book is worth reading. The title of Chapter 36 is “The Speed Imperative”

This paragraph is written in bold type on page 248…

“Just about everybody I’ve ever met in business frequently has good ideas. CEO’s of big companies, owners of small companies, solo entrepreneurs, and my own peers in the information marketing field, like authors, speakers, conference promoters, and publishers. All these good ideas are useless and valueless until they are DONE. Compressing the time between idea & action, and between action and completion, is where all the profit is.” - Dan Kennedy

Last week I described an example of how I followed this speed imperative to create a product by interviewing Fred Black about how to rank highly in the search engines. You can read that post here: How to Create An Audio Product Practically for FREE

How many good ideas do you have that haven’t been acted upon yet? They don’t even have to be your ideas. Copywriters have huge “swipe files” full of sales letters and advertising materials written by other people. In other words, the “swipe file” is full of other people’s ideas. Ideas that can be “swiped” and used again in your own sales letters. Please note: I said “swiped” not plagiarized. It’s not very difficult to see a good idea and figure out a way to alter it a bit or add your own unique twist to make it apply to your situation.

I can think of several recent examples of where I’ve done this myself. Another good idea is to keep your eye on what known-successful people do and follow or “swipe” their example. Last month I saw another marketer having a sale based on tax stimulus rebate checks so I had an Internet Business Stimulus sale. Last week, I got a message from someone offering a discount on their information product through Father’s Day and I decided that was a good reason for me to have sale too. Incidentally, neither of these people is in the “make money online” market but their ideas can easily be applied.

Back to the Father’s Day Sale. Having bought in to “the speed imperative,” I immediately announced a Father’s Day Sale of my own, constructed several offers, wrote up a sales page, and launched. It all took less than 24 hours. However, in my haste, I didn’t realize Father’s Day was June 15th, not June 8th. Heck I just figured somebody else was having a week-long Father’s Day Sale but apparently it’s two weeks long.

Friday morning I was talking to a married friend with children and asked her if she had any plans for Father’s Day. She informed me that Father’s Day was not in 2 days as I thought but the following Sunday. Whoops! So I made a mistake. So what? Big deal. Shoot me. I’ve made lots of mistakes in the past and I’ll make more mistakes in the future. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying new things and you’re not learning. Yes, I realize it would have taken about 5 seconds to figure out Father’s Day was the 15th and not the 8th…but oh well, lesson learned.  It’s commonly said that an expert is someone who’s made all the possible mistakes in a certain field. I’m getting there.

Fear stops many people from being as successful as they could be. It stopped me for many years. I might still have a slight fear of failure but I’ve gotten over it for the most part. Most mistakes are easily fixed. I changed my Father’s Day Sale into a Pre-Father’s Day Sale and since I screwed up, I’m extending until midnight tonight. I bet few people even remember this mistake in a few days or a few weeks. I’m not dead. I’m not injured. I’m not embarrassed. I’m laughing at myself. It’s not a big deal. I’m over it.

Remember: “Compressing the time between idea & action, and between action and completion, is where all the profit is.”

Do you have an idea about starting an Internet business? If so, you have a good idea but it’s a useless idea until it’s done. If you’re ready to compress the time between idea & action, and between action & completion, click here to discover tools & information that will help you get started today with: Product Creation, Link Building, Webmaster Basics, & Internet Business Basics.

These tools will be available after today but they’re only deeply discounted until midnight tonight. Why not get started now? That’s where all the profit is.

Tags: Article Marketing, Blogs

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This morning I was talking to a married friend with children and asked her if she had any plans for Father’s Day this weekend. She informed me that this was NOT Father’s Day weekend. Father’s Day is next Sunday. Whoops!

So I made a mistake. So what? Big deal. Shoot me. I’ve made lots of mistakes in the past and I have no fear of making more mistakes in the future. Why? Because if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying new things and you’re not learning. It’s commonly said that an expert is someone who’s made all the possible mistakes in a certain field. I’m getting there.

I’ll have more to say about this on Monday…but for now all I can do is change the Father’s Day Sale into a Pre-Father’s Day Sale and extend it until Monday at midnight.

You now have an extra day to take advantage of useful tools & information on:

Creating Information Products

- How to Create Your Own Profitable Online Video Courses & DVDs & Choose Slam Dunk Markets

Building Links to Your Sites

- How to Achieve Higher Search Engine Rankings More Quickly With Less Time & Effort…

Webmaster Basics

- For Anyone Who’s Sick & Friggin’ Tired of Technical Alphabet Soup Terms Like PHP, HTML, & FTP but Still Wants to Make Money Online…

Internet Business Basics

- It’s Like a 2-Day Seminar on How to Run a Successful Internet Business…at a Fraction of the Cost

BONUS: SEO Interview

Invest in any of the above and you’ll get my recent SEO interview with Fred Black. It’s 2 hours & 6 minutes of two guys who’ve figured out how to rank in the top 10 of the search engine rankings for highly competitive search terms. We cut through all the crap and tell you what’s important and how we did it.

Click Here to Build an Internet Business

Tags: Domain Names, Create Your Own Products

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A message with that subject line arrived in my inbox yesterday. I didn’t know who Kristi Lynch was or why I should meet her but the headline (or subject line) was good enough that I opened the message. The message was short and contained a clickable link. It was from the Indiana University Foundation (IU is my alma mater) as part of their fund raising campaign. Here it is:

Robert,

I’m struck by the fact that every Hoosier has an IU story that is carried for life. Kristi Lynch has a remarkable one, and it is my privilege to share it with you.

Please click here to meet Kristi.

It’s a short message but it made me curious enough to click on the link. Who doesn’t want to learn more about this “remarkable” story? I did. Remarkable must be a powerful word to use in copywriting. That may have been the word that prompted me to click the link. It wasn’t just any old story. It was a remarkable story.

They usually just call & ask for money saying it will benefit students. This short video personalizes that and shows the story of one particular student. Then it asks the viewer to renew their donation and jumps straight to a form where you can fill in your information & make a donation.

How could you use something like this? Instead of saying how your product or service helps people in general, you can create a video with the unique story of how it helped one person in particular, then jump to the order page. Camatasia has a feature that will do exactly that. I think it’s called “jump to URL”.

Or you could make a video walking prospects through a real life example of what can be accomplished if they buy your product. I did this with a real estate investing information product here: Real Deal #1 It’s not as fancy as the IU Foundation’s video but it’s an example of what you can do with Camtasia.

Don’t have to a product yet? No problem. You can quickly & easily create either an online video information product or a DVD. And you can get both of those products plus two more as part of the Product Creation Special Offer that expires on Father’s Day…Sunday at 11:59 PM CST

Tags: Domain Names, Article Marketing

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Yesterday I announced a Father’s Day Sale and here it is.  It’s really 5 Special Offers and since Father’s Day is Sunday, the special offers are good for 5 days which is longer than I’ve ever let specials last.  It’s an experiment in response to some who have missed out on other special offers.

The 5 Special Offers are on groups of my products that I’ve put together especially for this sale.  You can’t normally buy them in groups like this and on top of that you’ll save 40% or more.

Here are the 5 special offers:

1. Product Creation

2. Webmaster Basics

3. Link Building

4. Internet Business Basics

5. GrandFather of All Offers (the first 4 offers at an even more discounted price)

As I announced yesterday, anyone who takes advantage of any of these special offers will get the 2 hour, 6 minute interview I did with Fred Black last week on how to rank highly in the search engines.  Fred & I both rank highly in the search engines for highly competitive search terms so we have some basis for providing information that will help your search engine rankings.

There’s also another FAST ACTION BONUS for 10 people.  It’s something I’ve never offered before.  You can read about it here:

5 Special Offers for 5 Days

The sale expires in about 5 days at 11:59 PM CST on Sunday June 8 which is Father’s Day in the US.

Tags: Traffic, Testing & Tracking

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In the past week or so, there have been a few comments that caught my eye like this one from Chris after I closed the doors on the Internet Business Stimulus Sale. Chris said:

“It’s a bummer that I missed this opportunity, maybe you will sponsor this again in the future.”

Maybe it would have been better to announce the sale in advance like I noticed Ed Rivis do recently (sorry the special on Stats Faceslap is over).

It’s worth a test so today I’m announcing a Father’s Day Sale starting tomorrow and running through Sunday, which is Father’s Day in the US. Stay tuned for details tomorrow. All I know for sure at this point is that any purchase will receive the interview I did with Fred Black last week on how to rank on the first page in the largest search engine…even for highly competitive terms.

This isn’t theoretical BS. We’re both doing it right now. Fred’s site, PQInternet.com, has been ranked #1 (out of over 100,000,000 results) for “internet business” for longer than I can remember. In January, I asked Fred for some help after wasting a year following the advice & using the “magic” tools of some other clown with unimpressive results. About 60 days later, this site was also ranked on the first page and has been ever since.

Thanks to the increased search engine traffic, my list has been growing faster than ever. This interview is 2 hours & 6 minutes of Fred & I having a conversation and sharing exactly how we did it. It’s actually pretty simple when you cut through all the crap…and that’s exactly what Fred & I do in this interview.

Speaking of Ed Rivis, I sent him (and everyone else who asked an SEO question) a copy of the interview last night and here’s what he had to say:

“I knew about your and Fred’s and impressive results in the search engines, so — even though I’m on a Tim Ferris low information diet — I started listening to this immediately after download. (And on a busy day when I really should have been doing something else!

And…

FINALLY!! A no B.S. and highly detailed explanation of the usually smoke and mirrors world of SEO.

I’ve listened to, read, and watched loads of stuff about SEO by so called experts, and I can’t think of a single one where they actually mentioned they have a current page 1 top position ranking for a highly competitive phrase.

Yours and Fred’s rankings are there for everyone to see, which PROVES you know what you’re talking about and that this stuff works.

Thanks for making this available.”

This interview will be offered as a bonus for the next 5 days…starting tomorrow.

Tags: Article Marketing, Testing & Tracking

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Recently Terry Dean made a post about how he was creating two products in two days. He challenged readers to create a new product in 7 days so I decided to do it. It actually took me 8 days but only because last Monday was a US holiday. I basically did it at no cost too. Here’s how I did it.

First, I thought of three experts on various topics related to making money online and sent them an email asking for an interview. One of them agreed so now I had to figure out how to record the interview since I had never done it before. Several months ago, Richard Lee had mentioned The Basement Ventures. It’s a free conference calling service that allows you to record an mp3 of the call and download it. It took about 60 seconds to sign up for an account. (Note: To record the call, you must press “5″, then “#” on your keypad. This wasn’t very clear but I found it in the FAQs.)

The expert I interviewed was Fred Black. His site, PQInternet.com, is on my blogroll and is consistently ranked #1 for the highly-competitive search term “internet business.” That should be proof enough that he possesses valuable knowledge about how to rank highly in the most popular search engine, but there’s more. I also know he’s good at teaching others how to rank highly in the search engines because my site is now consistently ranked on the first page of the most popular search engine for the term “internet business” too. My results were achieved by following Fred’s simple advice.

Then I created an outline for the interview and sent it to Fred. I also made a post titled “What’s Your Most Vexing SEO Question?” to help my blog readers get their questions answered. Fred & I decided on a time last Tuesday afternoon and we did the interview. About 90 minutes after the call, the mp3 was available for download. The only cost was for the long distance. It was actually very simple and now I know how to create another type of product. This method could also be used for teleseminars.

My goal was to have about 45 - 60 minutes of content on how to get your sites ranked on the first page of the search engines. The interview actually lasted a little over 2 hours. I did not “grill” Fred or “hold his feet to the fire.” It’s just two guys who have figured out how to rank highly on the most popular search engine having a conversation and sharing how we do it.

It’s not real difficult when you know the “secrets” and I don’t even focus on the buzzwords you’ll hear like on-page & off-page optimization, keyword density, H1 tags, blah, blah, blah. I don’t consider myself an SEO expert and I’m not saying none of that stuff is relevant. I am saying it’s a lot simpler to rank highly in the search engines that many “SEO experts” will lead you to believe. After all, they need to sell their products & services so they’ll make something simple sound confusing in an effort to get you to buy their “magic” software tools…but that’s just my opinion.

I haven’t released the product yet. Originally I had planned to get the interview transcribed into a .pdf (a second product) and offer the .pdf as a gift for subscribing to my blog announcement list. Then there would be an inexpensive upsell for the mp3 recording…but I might have a different idea. I’m still deciding what I’ll do with it.

The main point here is how quick & easy it is to find an expert to interview and record the conversation in a very inexpensive manner but there are several other things you can take away here. First, follow the examples of successful people. Terry is one of the most successful online marketers around so when he issued a challenge I knew he had my best interests in mind and took him up on it. Secondly, just get started. I had no idea how I would record the call before I started looking for experts to interview. Who cares? Without having someone to interview that doesn’t really matter does it? Third, lose the innate fear of failure and criticism most people have. Two of the three experts I asked didn’t even respond. So what? One of them did respond and I only needed one to do an interview, right?

What will you do with this information? Will you be like most people who will read it, think it sounds simple, and then proceed to do absolutely nothing? Or will you create an audio product in the next week? You can even take it one step further and Create Your Own DVD Information Product Without Spending a Dime.

Note: I originally stated I would pick the best SEO question and send the person who asked it a complimentary copy of the interview but I’ve decided to send the mp3 to everyone who asked a question. I like people who take action and they were basically all good questions so instead of picking just one, I’ll send it to everyone who asked a question. Give me a few days, I’m going to split the 2 hour mp3 into two files so it’s easier to download but I have to figure out how to do that first.

Tags: Testing & Tracking, Create Your Own Products

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