Be warned!

I’d buy some bread, some butter and some ham and make some sandwiches! But I wouldn’t eat them…

I would sell the sandwiches for $5 apiece. That way I would have money to buy more bread, butter and ham. I’d have enough to eat myself, so I wasn’t hungry any longer and STILL have a little profit.

I’d do the same again next day. I’d end up with even more profit. I could buy a lot more bread, butter and maybe different fillers (cheese, salads, pastrami etc) and sell even more sandwiches each day.

Pretty soon I could grow this to a sandwich bar business or even a restaurant. And from there, who knows.

The point is, if you have understood what I just told you, you’ll never want for money. What’s the secret? USE MONEY TO MAKE MONEY. Buy your wealth!

Most foolish people would spend the $5 on a sandwich. They are consumers, not entrepreneurs! That’s the difference.

You can’t keep doing what you are doing and expect more.

So if you are in a limited income situation, in other words a job with a fixed salary, or maybe no job and fixed income support, you have NO CHOICE. You must establish something which is capable of changing, growing and adapting.

Let’s face it, nobody ever got seriously rich by progressive salary increases. Ain’t going to happen. You can’t expect to win at cards and keep winning bigger and bigger amounts! You could marry the boss and inherit his empire, as the lady did who now owns BMW. But these are not a valid paths to wealth.

To build wealth, serious wealth, you need something you own and control which can grow to meet your increased needs.

Almost by definition, that means you need a business of your own.

Years ago, decades ago, that meant a big undertaking. You needed money to make money. That was one of the sayings of the day; you’ve probably heard it. For many people it was hardly possible to get started in your own business without some capital. But today, it just isn’t true. It’s never been easier to launch your own business.

There’s MLM, where you can get started for $50 or so. Then there’s the Internet, where you can start up for $100- 200. For many it’s been the path to fabulous wealth, starting out with absolutely nothing.

Don’t misunderstand me; just because you start with nothing doesn’t mean you DO nothing! It takes a great deal of work and effort to start up from nothing. You need to be patient. It may take years of hard work to make anything worthwhile happen. People give up far too soon. At least until they are made redundant and then FORCED to fall back on their own resources.

The smart choice, the ONLY choice, if you want serious wealth, is to create something you own and control yourself.

That has to be followed by knowing how to grow this entity into a large money-making concern. Once again, in the old days, that could be scary: you got more and more staff, a bigger building, took on more and more commitments; and that made you vulnerable.

A slight downturn could have you quickly in ruins.

But today the smart thing is not to have commitments. It’s so easy to run an Internet business from your own bedroom. Your only commitment is hosting fees, connections costs and some software (a lot of which is free).

With MLM you don’t need an office or staff, the whole downline network is your staff! You need maybe a car and a phone and that’s it for overheads.

Let me tell you some of the AMAZING advantages of owning your own Internet business or building an MLM network:

1. The income is truly unlimited. These plans can grow indefinitely. Think about it!
2. No or tiny overheads. There is no need to go out on a limb. Minimal risk.
3. No bosses (need I say more?)
4. No staffing headaches (staff are the biggest problem by far to conventional businesses). Just contract eople, don’t hire them.
5. Choose your own work hours and schedule! No need to work fixed hours and you can choose whichever part of the day suits you best.
6. You can work from home
7. You can work anywhere on the planet, if you can keep up your communication connections
8. Vacation whenever you want. Unlike a conventional business, it doesn’t affect the income of a properly set up Internet or MLM business if you take a few days off.
9. Networking and socializing is a resource. In conventional business, it’s mostly frowned on if you “waste” time talking to other people.
10. Huge amount of tax deductibles. Your vacation could be deductible, if you network and hold meetings while you are away. Who’s to say the dinner on the terrace in Rome was not a business meeting? (just bring back proof)

Is There A Downside?

1. On the downside there may be customer care issues, depending on what you are engaged in. People who buy from you can be a real pain in the a**
2. You have to find your own health insurance plan.
3. You need self-discipline and good motivation and a lot of people don’t have that.

I might say additionally that you do NEED a certain amount of personality and people skills to make it in MLM. If you don’t have these qualities, cross off MLM and stick to the Internet.

Antisocial gorillas and under-age kids have succeeded on the Internet, because nobody ever needs to meet them!

Beyond what I have said, you need only to know how to take an operation and make it grow, in order to become rich and succeed beyond your wildest dreams.

To do that you need my Growth and Development Formulas. I share an amazing set of logical basics that can take ANY enterprise and turn it into something gigantic, through the progressive application of key steps that bring about relentless, unstoppable growth and development.

There is a lot of satisfaction to creating your own products for sale. Also a lot of pitfalls, so listen up.

A successful product needs to be:
•    valuable to the market (something needed and wanted, in other words)
•    of reasonable quality (not necessarily perfect)
•    affordable
•    easy to consume (put to use)

It’s not important that products be original or new (books on dieting come out in an endless stream). Or that they be intrinsically costly to create.

The value of a product is NOT in the cost of production. Its value is in what it does for the consumer.  A Bentley sports car costs little more to manufacture than a Nissan – cost of steel, cost of rubber and upholstery, cost of instrumentation and so on. But a Bentley creates a vastly different transformation in the customer’s self image.

Value

The first important criterion is that the product has to be valuable to the potential customer. Artists and musicians are often bad at this and starve because they are doing what they want and not what the public wants. That’s got nothing to do with the ultimate worth of creative art and performance, merely an observation on how the market works.

If you are not sure a product you are considering will be valued, you can always ask. It’s called market research!

You can also check to see if anyone else is selling a similar product. These days you can easily check on the Internet and see what is popular and what sells.

Don’t waste your time on something people won’t buy.

You do, however, have to consider the possibility of a highly innovative product that will take the market by storm. If you think you might have such an idea, you need to do double the research and investigation, to really check that it will fulfill a need.

Just being different is not enough. But some of the greatest riches have been made where there was a need- and nobody else was filling it, or not exploiting the full possibilities (Gillette safety razor, Coca Cola, Sony Walkman, etc…)

If your aim is to sell Internet marketing products to Internet marketers, you have to consider what they need. Topics like list building, AdWords, AdSense and affiliate programs are digested hungrily.

You don’t even need to be original. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of eBooks and courses on all of these topics. But you probably know yourself, that some other person telling you what you already know leads to a sudden “epiphany”: this time you got it! So the fifth or tenth eBook can be just as valuable (or more so) than the first.

However, your product does need to meet certain minimum standards of quality, without necessarily being perfectly presented.

Beyond that the main thing that will influence your sales is what you charge. You know, we all know, that there are eBooks being sold for $97 that are not worth that much. But people’s perceptions count for more than just the cover cost.

If it’s the latest research from somebody like John Reese (the traffic master), chances are that people will readily bit $97 for his thoughts. They will feel they have obtained value. But you are not known and so you may find that people are not willing to risk more than $37 on “test driving” you. So be willing to be humble at first.

The final answer, of course, is test it! You experiment with several price points and see what produces the best results. Just don’t be surprised if a higher price tag brings more sales. This doesn’t always make sense but then it’s back to the public’s perception of value.

On a final note, make sure your product is easy to “consume”. If it’s an eBook, that may just be a case of making it legible and good grammar. Other physical products should be well-labeled and clear as to what is what. A so-called quick start guide can be good, to get the customer listening to audios in the right sequence, etc.

Assume your customer knows NOTHING about your product when they first open the box. You’ll be right, of course.

Product ideas to get you started.

The perennial favorite, the eBook, is slipping from top position as a tool. It can still work but as so many seminars teach their people it’s easy to write an eBook and create $millions, the vehicle is becoming over produced, if not downright abused. The perceived value of an eBook has dropped so much that gurus are now giving away 200- 300 page eBooks for free, just as a draw for their main product launches.

That further reduces the perceived value of a smaller eBook by someone relatively unknown.

Audios

Audios are better. They command a lot of respect.

But you’re new, aren’t you? So what do you have to teach?

Don’t worry, just interview experts and record these for later release. You need to be clear with whoever you interview this is what you plan to do. You must also ask them to sign a media release. You never know when attitudes and manners will shift and a nice relationship can turn ugly.

So think of your worst-case scenario and CYA.

Several players have got a good leveraged start using the interview approach. You need to offer something back to the expert. At least let them have free use of the recordings, for their own people. Maybe the chance to promote their own products is enough for them. If not, they will need a percentage of your sales, like a normal affiliate. Just always make sure it’s a win-win.

PLR

Private label rights are also a good way to get started. This means you buy the license to re-label the product, as if it was your own, as if you were the author. You don’t have to stick to the original titles even. In fact the more you alter it, the more it is your “own” product and the less likely it is to be recognized as a me-too (remember others will also buy the PLR rights to these same materials and distribute them).

Change the words, the format, the colors, as much as you can, to make sure what you are offering is, or seems, unique.

Just be sure to pick good quality PLR. There is a lot of badly written garbage which is not targeted at the final reader but at the enthusiastic marketing newbie who wants something to sell. They make all kinds of claims about how good it is, but when you get it, you would probably not want your name on it. The public would never read it.

Best to go to good sources and this needs some care but is not difficult, beyond exercising sound judgment.

Public domain

Public domain is something slightly different. It means products out of copyright protection.  That’s free and up for grabs by anyone. The problem is it’s old material (copyright typically last for 75 years after the author’s death), so this would not include any computer and Web data.

Public domain is also perceived as not valuable, because everybody is offering it, usually in dirt cheap print editions.

If you are running a website about fairies (!) you might find Arthur Conan Doyle’s memoirs about the Cottingly Fairies incident something you could sell to enthusiastic visitors. Even Joe Vitale is selling a hackneyed old public domain item: Pelmanism. Vitale makes strident claims for it.

You could tie old novels into TV and film releases and maybe sell a few copies. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen comes to mind. Around the time of the film release, the keyword “pride and prejudice” would probably get you cheap clicks and a hot position in Google AdWords. A lot of people would be typing it into search engines. But Borders and the other book stores have it all and are going to be your main competition.

The BEST way to break into public domain is to use content from government sites. In the USA this is all, by definition, copyright free. Anyone can use it, quote it, re-phrase and re-package it.

So you might write an AIDS advisory for instance, using data from the NIH website (but not if you don’t have any special knowledge in the subject, please).

Software

This is much easier than you think. You’re not trying to compete with Apple or Microsoft. If you come up with the right thing, there may be no competition at all.

The best software to develop is something you would like yourself. If there is something you wish was automated, chances are that several other people out there are wishing for the same thing.

Google Cash Detective, for instance, was brilliant in its day: a piece of software to tell you what keywords your competitors are using and how much they are bidding was brilliant and sold like wildfire. You could literally steal somebody else’s successful keyword research, instead of having to do your own.

Can’t do coding? Not a problem. You just pay some kid in the Phillipines or Pakistan who can work for a few dollars an hour! This is outsourcing and something we talk about in another lesson.

[more to come on this topic]

You need to choose a good keyword, which I am going to assume you know how to do.

Once you have a good keyword, you need to make it perform. Let’s suppose your keyword is “raise my child’s reading age”. Note that keywords are not necessarily just one word. They can be a phrase, like this one, which we would call a “long-tail” keyword. You certainly know what’s in a person’s mind who types in this phrase, right?

If – and ONLY IF – you can answer that person’s needs, then you can go fishing.

First stop might be to register raisemychildsreadingage.com. If you can secure a keyword related domain name, that’s great. Don’t forget raise-my-childs-reading-age.com. That could work. In fact some people think the hyphens make it easier for the search engines to “read” your domain.

Then there are all the .net, .us, .biz and .info type variables. Even if you don’t live in Canada, .ca might work. There are not many people living on the island of Tuvalu, but hundreds of thousands all over the world use their .tv suffix!

Then there are variations on the phrase, like improvemychildsreading.com and so on. There’s always a best domain but innumerable variations that come close and are workable, if not exactly what you wanted.

Next you go to work using the keyword in your titles and meta tags. You may not own the .com but there is nothing to stop you giving your home page the title “Improve my child’s reading age by Betty Jo” or just “How to improve your child’s reading age”.

Then come the meta tags. These are hidden in the code. If you can’t write metatags, you have 2 choices: find a friend who can or get one of the wysiwyg html editors to do it for you. Good programs, like Dreamweaver and FrontPage, have a button you click that says “type your keywords here” or similar. Folks say they are not important these days. Common sense says do every possible thing in your favor.

Then we come to the headers in the body of your page. Again, these are special designations. You might think of just writing like you would with a word processor; you know, capital letters and bold, maybe a different color, because this is my heading!

That’s not what a header is in a web page. A header is a little tag or special selector which marks out a word or phrase as IMPORTANT! The visiting web bots (robot crawlers) don’t care about grammar or text formatting. They just look for the little tags that say “This is my header 1” and this is my “Header 2” and so on. Headers 1 through 6 are decreasing in importance. But they are all more important than just the text.

Finally, in the text, you can use your keyword. Use it a few times but not too often. Not only will your writing seem wooden to the visitor. But the search engines don’t like you to try and cheat by ramming the keywords into their little bot-snouts!

Deliberate over-use of keywords to try and gain advantage is called keyword stuffing and it will get you penalized (moved further down the list ranking). In fact the search engine bots are getting increasingly wise to any kind of over-the-top manipulation.

You’re allowed to set out your wares, fairly and even enthusiastically. But not by twisting the rules. You can plant some lures but not try to stun the bots by carpet bombing or nuking. It just doesn’t work and will count against you.

You need to understand the term keyword density. That describes how many times in a given piece you use the keyword. Keep it between 10% and 30%. In effect, about 3 times per simple page.
OK, moving along here. Next time it’s links..

You can recognize the organic list; it’s on the left hand side. It’s usually very long and goes on for dozens, maybe hundreds of pages, on that particular search term.

Paid listings (in other words advertisements) are on the right and sometimes above the organic listing.

Using Google AdWords will allow you to pay for advertisements shown when somebody types in a particular search term. So if you sell golf equipment, you will pay to be shown to surfers looking for “putters” or “Improve your golf swing”. Quite bluntly, the more you pay, the nearer the top of the display list you come.

Competition is getting quite brutal. What used to be a few cents a click years ago may now have risen to $5-$10-even $50 a click. This is how Google makes most of its money and what makes Google increasingly powerful (and maybe even dangerous).

Not everyone wants to play at pay-per-click (PPC) advertizing. It need not always be costly in terms of money but it is very demanding of your time. PPC managers spend dozens of hours a week, tracking their clicks and costs.

The alternative, which is free, is simply to make yourself more visible in the organic listings. You can affect this outcome and improve your ranking in various ways. These tweaks to your website we call search engine optimization.

Obviously, if you sell golf equipment, you don’t expect your site to be shown when somebody types in “Barbie collectables”. But you do want people looking for clubs, golfing clothes and instructional DVDs to find you.

I comes down, basically, to how far down the list you show up. Being on the first page is good, the closer to the top the better. Second page isn’t too bad (people will look through several pages of listings to find exactly what they want). But page 10 or beyond?

It’s not likely you’ll be found often.

The way you drag yourself up the list is being clever about what people are looking for vs. what you want to sell. I’m talking keywords.

If your chosen keyword is “golf equipment” Google returns 7,890,000 listings (go ahead, try it!) Not much chance of rising to the top of that pile!

But if your keyword is “experimental golf clubs”, the search results drop to 440,000. That’s a little more in your favor. But you know what? NOT ONE of these 440,000 listings was for the whole keyword, exactly as typed. All three words came up separately.

So if someone really is looking for such a thing, you could be the first page they find that actually answers their query.

OK this is just an illustration. It falls over on the fact that nobody is likely to be looking for “experimental golf clubs” (Google had no data). But you get the point?

You could narrow it down even more. If you sold “Maxfli golf cubs”, the competing websites drop to 168,000 and 2,900 people per month type in that phrase.

If you narrowed it even more, to “Maxfli left hand golf clubs”, only 53,000 sites were listed and, once again, nobody carries the EXACT keyword. You could be top of the list.

A left-hander who likes Maxfli clubs would be almost certain to become your customer.

Do you see the value of narrowing the target down? “Inch wide and a mile deep” is the motto for keywords. Spread too wide and you won’t get the traffic. Choose a more specific segment of the market and you have a chance of competing for customers.

But it’s a trade off: the narrower the slice of the market, the fewer customers are found there.