1. Yanik Silver’s Underground Online Seminar Best of The Best
Yanik has taken the best footage from all of the previous underground seminars and combined them into a “best of the best” package. This looks like a great deal for those who missed the first 4 seminars. Click here to check it out for yourself.

2. Stomping the Search Engines 2
I am actually getting a preview copy of this in the mail, and I hope to get a chance to look at it before they launch. You can learn all the details by clicking here.

3. Rich Schefren’s announcement
For those who haven’t seen this yet, Rich Schefren is coming out with another report. I can hardly wait to read it. Check out the video announcement he made for it by clicking here.

Have a great weekend!

PS. There is a lot coming after my break… (summer Olympics blogging update, the final two posts of getting started series and some other cool things.)

This seminar looks like it had some great information and great speakers (including Darren Rowse of Problogger). Topics covered include little known secrets about:

• Myspace Marketing
• Blogging
• Search Engine Optimization
• PPC Advertising
• Making Money with Adsense
• Niche Marketing
• and much more

Also, the sales letter is quite unique and fun. I love the whole secret agent thing. Click here to go check it out.

Yanik’s Info Marketing Brain-in-a-Box

As you probably know, I love Yanik’s products. This product is basically the same “brain dump” he gave to people at a $15,000 per person conference. Since, I haven’t seen the product I can’t really say whether it is good or bad, but either way it looks like a pretty complete training package for people wanting to get into the information marketing business. I would definitely buy it over other similarly priced products.

You can check it out by clicking here.

A few years ago, when we started our Winter Olympics Blog (http://2006turinolympics.com/) one of the first things we did was tell just about everyone we knew about it. We also told them to tell their friends about it. That brought us instant traffic to our new blog. We also had a relative send the site out to a Sports list they are on. That brought instant TARGETED traffic to the site. Before getting any traffic from the Search Engines we were already getting a regular stream of traffic. Because many of the people we told about our blog were interested in the Olympics, they continued to come back as visitors.

So what if you don’t have that many people to tell about your website? How do you get free word of mouth traffic?

When you start your online business you should have determined who your target audience is. Once you have identified your target audience, you need to get involved with that community. Here is a step by step example of how to do that.

For this example, let’s say that you have a website/blog that is about coin collecting.

1. Search for forums about coin collecting, and other related topics (collecting antiques, investing, etc.) .

4. Start participating in those forums and provide valuable feedback on the forum. Don’t just blatantly advertise your site. Become a friend to people on the forums.

Repeat these steps with email lists from places like Yahoo Groups and Topica. Also, look for related blogs and give useful comments on those blogs (especially if you have your own blog). If you know other people who are part of a related community, let them know about your site and ask them to spread the word to their community.

This will spread the news about your site via word of mouth. It will give you FREE INSTANT traffic. Word of mouth traffic is a great way to launch a site or to drive new targeted traffic to your site.

Do any of you remember getting an email about the Interview with God?

Several years back I received the email about this site from more than one person. Everyone was forwarding this on (I even forwarded it to people). It was a very inspiring slide show (now a flash movie).

Well, a few years ago Yanik Silver invited the owner of the Interview with God to speak at the Underground Online Seminar. The owner revealed that he did not pay one penny on advertising. All of his traffic has been 100% FREE. And guess how much money he is making?

He makes about 3 million dollars a year from that site! All that money from one great idea and word of mouth traffic.

Word of mouth traffic can be great for your online business. Especially, when it spreads virally. Viral traffic is traffic where people like your site so much that they lead other people to your site without you having to paying any advertising costs. Word of mouth traffic that spreads virally is one of the best ways to get traffic to your site. That is what happened with the Interview with God, and it is also what can happen to your site.

Here are the 39 steps to create a new product:

1. Conduct Market Research
   This is one of the most important steps in the process.

   YOU MUST KNOW YOUR MARKET!

   That is a little easier when you are part of your target market (like with my project). That said, there are many resources for doing market research. During my market research stage, I used some techniques that I learned from the Reese Report, and some that I learned from elsewhere. I am not going to go into detail on the market research that I have conducted, but I will go ahead and tell you about a simple tool I used for quick demographics research. It’s called “Microsoft adCenter Labs Demographics Prediction Tool” and it’s pretty cool. When you type in a search term the tool displays demographic data about the people who search for that term. For instance, if you type in “make money online”, you find out that 52 percent of the people searching for “make money online” are male. 26.8 percent are between the ages of 18-24 and a majority are under the age of 34. It’s not a bad way to get a quick look at your target market’s demographics. However, you will want to do a more in depth look at your market than just using the Microsoft demographic tool.



2. Write The Business Plan
   I talked about my business plan a little while ago. In short, I filled out the business plan from the SCORE template gallery. It is an extremely useful step, one that shouldn’t be skipped.


3. Write A List Of The Tasks That You Need To Accomplish
   This list of 40 steps is an example of the list of tasks that I created for myself. Some of the steps listed here are broken into smaller steps in my actual list.


4. Assign Estimated Times To Complete Each Task
   You need to estimate how long each task in your task list is going to take and write that number down. When estimating how long each task is going to take, you need to allow some time for unexpected circumstances. I estimate on the conservative side, because I find that I often underestimate how long tasks will actually take.


5. Assign Tasks From The List To Yourself Or Others
   If you are doing all the work yourself, then you will be assigning everything to yourself. If you are relying on other people to do some of the work, then you need to assign their names to the tasks they will be doing. This will help you with the next step.
   


6. Create A Time Line
   It is very important to create a time line for finishing your project. Creating a deadline helps motivate you to take action. I recommend creating a Gantt chart using Microsoft Project, Microsoft Excel or with a free Gantt chart creator like ganttproject.org. A Gantt chart is a chart that tracks a project’s progress over a period of time. For those of you who are intimidated by the thought of creating a Gantt chart, or you just don’t want to, I have also developed a “lazy” method of creating a timeline. What you do is add up all the days from your estimates. Go to a calendar, and figure out when you will be done. A Gantt chart is better, because you can factor in other things like dependencies (tasks that are dependent on other tasks being completed). However, having some sort of timeline is better than nothing.


7. Select A Domain Name
   This can be a fun process. I wrote a good article about choosing a domain name for blogs and it applies to regular websites as well.


8. Come Up With A Name For The Product
   This goes hand in hand with previous step. You should choose a good name for your product. Names are very important.


9. Set Up A Mailing List
   I wrote about setting up an email list two weeks ago.


10. Promote The Mailing List
    There are many ways to promote your mailing list. In my case, I am currently only using this blog to promote my list by displaying it prominently in the upper right hand corner of the navigation. I will have to write more about promoting email lists in a future post.


11. Choose Affiliate Management Software
    If you are going to have an affiliate program (and in most cases you should), you will need to determine what affiliate software to use. There is a plethora of choices, and I am not going to cover them in this article. I will cover this sometime in the future.


12. Determine All The Tools And Technologies You need To Create The Product
    This can be a time consuming process. You need to figure this out early on, in order to come up with an accurate budget for your product.
    


13. Incorporate
    If you are starting a new corporation for your product, then it goes without saying that you will need to incorporate. Just like with the product name, it is a good idea to choose a meaningful and memorable name for your company.


14. Conduct Pricing Research
    There are many methods of finding the right price for your product. I recommend reading the free ebook – “Make Your Price Sell!” to learn the basics of choosing the right price for your product.


15. Choose Payment Processor/ Merchant Account
    If you are going to take payments over the Internet, you will need to determine how you are going to handle that. In most cases, you will need to have a merchant account. There are many things to consider when choosing a merchant account, and I recommend you do some research before choosing your merchant account.


16. Choose A Web Host And Purchase Web Hosting
    Choosing a web host can be one of the most difficult decisions you make in the process and it can be an easy decision. If you are like me and you want to find the “perfect” web host, then you will spend years and years researching web hosts until you discover…

    “All web hosts suck!”

    Once you discover that all web hosts suck it will be much easier to choose one by flipping a coin, playing darts, whatever method you deem acceptable

    Ok, all web hosts don’t suck! In fact I like mine, but you can certainly find some fascinating stories by searching for your favorite host along with the word “sucks”. In other words, don’t spend all your time searching for the perfect host, because there isn’t such a thing. Find a host that suits your needs, and preferably one that comes highly recommended by someone you trust.



17. Come Up With Unique Product Launch Plan
    I strongly considered buying Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula for this launch (and I still might). However, after watching quite a few product launches and after talking with a few established Internet marketers there is a good chance that I am going to make do without the Product Launch Formula for this launch. I am putting together a product launch plan and my wife and I brainstorming ideas to make our launch out of the ordinary. If I was launching a product in a niche other than the Internet marketing arena, The Product Launch Formula would be a more appealing purchase.


18. Create Marketing Plan
    Along with the product launch, Jill and I are coming up with a marketing plan to encourage people to buy the product. That said, I only want people who REALLY need and will REALLY use this product to purchase it. I don’t want people to buy it just because it’s the latest and greatest thing. I don’t want people to buy it because they think it will answer all their problems. I know this is likely to mean I will have less customers, but I would rather be able to sleep at night than sell the product to someone who is not going to use it and/or doesn’t need it.
    


19. Purchase The Tools And Technologies I Need From Previous Step
    This is both one of the least fun steps (parting with money) and the most fun steps (getting cool new tools) of the product creation process.
    


20. Create The Product
    This step needs to be broken down into many other steps. For instance, if you are creating an ebook, you will need to research the book, create an outline, write the book, create an ebook cover, etc.


21. Decide On Delivery Mechanism(s)
    How will your customers get the product? Is it a download, does it ship on CD, is it an audio file, video, membership site, email course, etc.? You may want to offer a product in multiple formats to maximize your earning potential. For instance, if you are selling an ebook, you might want to let users also buy it in audio format or have a hard copy mailed to them. You can charge more for the various options.


22. Consult Attorney On Legal Aspects Of The Business
    It is always good to consult an attorney to help prevent potential legal problems.


23. Build A Swipe File For The Sales Letter Based On Similar Successful Products
    One of the first steps people use to create a sales letter is to find similar products that are selling well and “swipe” their sales letters. In other words, you leverage succesful sales letters as a guide for creating your sales letter. Don’t use these sales letters verbatim, because that can get you into legal problems for copyright violations. However, take a close look at the things in your competitor’s sales letter that convince you to buy their product. Use those same techniques in your sales letter.
    


24. Create Sales Letter Based On Your Product’s Swipe File And Based On Copywriting Products That You Own
    I am currently working on creating the sales letter for the new product I will be selling from this blog.

    I own a product from Yanik Silver called Instant Sales Letters. When creating a sales letter, I like to go into the Instant Sales Letter members area and use one of the letters as a guide for writing my first rough draft of a sales letter. It helps me to focus on creating a sales letter with all the right components. I also will sometimes review some of the copywriting principles I have learned from other products I own (like Instant Web Profits System, etc.)
    



25. Create Camtasia Video For Sales Letter
    While not necessary, video does increase your conversion rate. You can create a sales pitch with the video, and/or show success stories, and/or show a behind the scenes look at the product. If it is in your budget, you should definitely create a video to help sell your product.
    


26. Create Camtasia Videos For Help System (optional)
    I marked this as optional, because most products don’t need video to help their users understand how to use it. However, videos that help users understand how to use the product can help, especially with more complicated products and higher end products. They can also be a major selling point and increase the percieved value of the product.
    


27. Create Affiliate Training Material, Sample Ads, Sample Emails, Banner Ads, etc.
    You should create as much promotional material as possible to sell your new product. Affiliates will love all the options and they are more likely to promote your product if they have less work to do. You can also offer your affiliates training. Studies have shown that giving your affiliates training will improve their conversion rate.
    


28. Create Incentives For Early Customers
    It’s important to come up with incentives for people to buy the product when they first learn about it. You should always offer an incentive for ordering immediately.
    


29. Create Website That Will Sell The Product
    This is fairly self explanatory. You have to create the site that is going to sell your new product. This can be broken down into many steps, including a few steps I mention in this list.
    


30. Test The Product To Make Sure It Works
    Testing is important, not only with your marketing, but also with any product you create. Make sure you have created a product that your customers will value. In fact, you need to over deliver on your promise. Make sure your product is BETTER than you say it is.
    


31. Create Terms Of Service, Privacy Policy, and Membership Agreement
    You need to have good legal terms of service, privacy policies, membership agreements, financial disclosures, etc. You need to make it clear how people are allowed to use your product and/or website.
    


32. Create Customer Service Plan
    Create a customer service plan to keep your customers happy. Don’t neglect your customers, they ARE your business. This might include decisions like whether or not to offer phone support, whether to have a customer support ticket system , whether to outsource your customer service, whether to have a customer support forum, etc..
    


33. Create A Company News Blog And/Or An Affiliate Blog (optional)
    While blogs aren’t a necessity, having a customer/product news blog and a blog for your affiliates will help you grow your business faster.
    


34. Set Up Affiliate Contest For The Product Launch (optional)
    Most product launches I have seen have run contests for their affiliates. If you can afford it, come up with a good contest for your affiliates.
    


35. Recruit Affiliates
    If you have an affiliate program, you need to spend a good amount of time finding people to join your affiliate program. Having a powerful group of affiliates promoting your product will make a HUGE difference in the amount of money you make.
    


36. Get Testimonials
    Testimonials offer the social proof you need to convince people to buy your product. You can never have enough testimonials. For those of you who don’t know about social proof, social proof is a psychological trigger that occurs when people see other people behaving in a certain way and, therefore, assume that behavior is the appropriate behavior to take. For instance, say you go into a new town and are trying to find a place to eat. You find two local restaraunts. At one of the restaraunts the parking lot looks pretty full, the other restaraunt only has two cars in the parking lot. Which restaraunt do you assume has better food?

    The restaraunt with more people.

    That is social proof in action. Testimonials offer social proof that your product is good.
    



37. Submit Articles Promoting The Site To Article Directory (optional)
    Writing articles that other people can reprint on their website, or in their eZine is one of the most effective ways of getting free traffic to your website. Writing articles allows you to get free traffic from websites that reprint your article, you get a link to your website which in turns helps your Search Engine rankings, and allows you to develop a reputation as being an expert in your field.
    
38. Write Press Release (optional)
    Press releases are an excellent way to get your online business free publicity, and free traffic. Publicity Insider has a good article on the details of writing a good press release.
    


39. Hire Accountant
    Last but not least, you need to hire an accountant to take care of the millions and millions of dollars you are going to make after your product is releaseed to the public
    

Final Thougths

Be sure to set deadlines on each step and don’t waste a lot of time on any one step. If you spend a month trying to find a web host, you just aren’t spending your time productively.

The steps above are fairly generic, so you can use them as a starting point for the products you create.

If you would like me to write a more detailed post about any of these steps, please let me know.

Man, I wish I had the vacation time to go see it. I guess I will have to wait for the CDs…

I love the way Yanik promotes his products and events. If you aren’t signed up for his newsletter, I recommend going over to Yanik’s Underground Online Seminar page and signing up for his Top Secret newsletter. It’s a lot of fun to see his promotions. In the case of the Underground Online Seminar 3, I just love the way he uses humor to sell it.

One thing about the seminar, is that it appears you have to sign up for his newsletter before you can learn the details about it. Unfortunately, I think that means I can’t tell you anything about it.

Anyway, there are some Internet marketing newsletters I recommend you join just to learn the great marketing techniques the person uses to sell stuff. Yanik Silver is at the top of that list for me.

Anyway, this morning in his newsletter he let everyone know that he is selling his car on ebay! After reading the ad for Yanik’s car I immediately wanted to bid on it. Sure, I don’t NEED a new car, but his ad made me WANT it.

Yanik is a great copywriter and you can learn a lot by reading the copy on his ebay ad. Click here to go check out the ad for his car.

My reaction to the ad just goes to show how important it is to market to people’s wants rather than their needs. Although, marketing to both a need and a want is what you would ideally like to do.

The other day I created my myspace page. I don’t know that I am going to do much with it, but it’s there.

I have noticed a lot of marketers like Yanik Silver (Underground Online Seminar), Jeff Walker (Product Launch Formula), Joel Comm (Instant Adsense Templates), and many others create myspace pages. I think as much as anything they are experimenting with the marketing aspect of social networking.

I can see how social networking sites can help you to build up a network of friends that could help you promote your products and services. So at some point I will probably experiment with them more.

PS. I just found out that even characters in tv shows have myspace pages.

There were two things I noticed that were a bit odd:

1. I don’t recall ever reading the number that he is limiting this too.
Did I miss something? Last time Joel limited the release to 2000 people. This time the sales letter mentions that there is a limit, but I don’t recall ever seeing what the limit is. Either I am missing something or Joel is doing a great job of creating a feeling of scarcity without there being a “set in stone” limit on the number being released.

2. When Joel starts throwing numbers out about the price the sales letter gets a little confusing.
At first when I saw that he was selling them for $1997 I thought that the price was a bit on the high side, considering what he sold his last templates for. I could see how one might get confused at that point and bail out before realizing the REAL price he is selling them at.

That said I almost instantly bought them. You know what makes this offer so hard to resist?

There are two things:

1. The sheer volume of stuff he is giving away makes this offer so hard to resist.
By the time you finish reading the sales letter you think to yourself, “Did he say I am getting a kitchen sink out of this?”

2. The way the sales page answers every question I could ask.
I think Joel answers just about every question I had about his product. He must have recieved great feedback on his first product and used that to answer any objections people might have.

Those are the two things that stood out (to me) in his sales letter. It is a great example of a sales letter that works.

I can’t recall another package that seemed to give away so much value for such a cheap price. That said, I haven’t bought it yet, because it doesn’t fit my current business plans/goals. Which is why I wanted to say:

BE SURE ANY PRODUCT YOU BUY FITS YOUR GOALS/PLANS BEFORE YOU BUY IT.

Lastly, if you want to learn the basics of creating a sales letter that sells, I suggest you take a look at this article by Yanik Silver that breaks down an example sales letter and explains how it works. It includes examples of the two things that Joel is doing that made his sales letter so good (answering objections, giving away bonuses).

It’s one of only a couple Internet Marketing seminars that I would really, really like to go to sometime. The people who are giving out advice in the seminar run all kinds of Internet businesses (not just a bunch of people selling Internet Marketing products). Which is one of the things that appeals to me most about the underground online seminars.

Unfortunately, Yanik is limiting the release to 500 DVDs for the next 5 days. Anyway, I think you have to click here and sign up for his newsletter to find out more about the DVDs.

The website for the business my wife and brother-in-law were creating is on hold, beause my brother-in-law is in negotiations to by the entire sealer business from the person we were going to be drop shipping from. So that business is on hold for us. This frees up some time for me over the next couple of weeks (which is a good thing).

We had a problem with the homeschooling wiki yesterday. Our web host changed something that made it so that we couldn’t edit pages. They fixed the problem quickly. I have been very happy with them for web hosting, because they always respond quickly to our questions.

It was interesting to see how Joel Comm launched his Instant Adsense Templates. He sold out of them in about 24 hours. I learned a few things about launching a new product from watching what he did. I don’t particularly like the limited supply (scaricity) hook he used, but it makes sense from both a customer point of view and a marketing point of view. From a customer point of view, you don’t want to have the web saturated with your template and similar content. From a marketing point of view, it helps you make sales if your customers have an incentive to buy now. Yanik Silver taught me that you will lose a lot of sales if your customers don’t have a reason to buy your product immediately. This is why so many businesses have limited offers, time sensitive offers, various sales, etc. It gives you a reason to buy now.

Anyway, next week I will probably spend most of the week working on promoting our homeschool wiki. Have a nice weekend…

So how much extra traffic did that give me?

Looking at my log files yesterday morning it appears that I got about 67 direct hits from the link on ProBlogger. My overall pageviews was about 150 more than I would normally get for a Wednesday. So I would guess that I had about 67 more visitors and about 150 more page views that can be directly attributed to being listed in the ProBlogger group writing project. While that isn’t nearly as much as the most traffic I have recieved from one link (over 3000 visitors in a day), it’s certainly not bad.

My link was way towards the bottom of the list. If it had been closer to the top of the list, the link probably would have increased my blog traffic even more. I think that the headline of my post was interesting enough to probably grab a little more attention than some. Creating a good headline will definitely bring in more traffic to your blog.

Lastly, I wanted to say that having a link from ProBlogger is important for other reasons besides the traffic that I recieved yesterday. Quality links from related sites really help your blog rank higher in the Search Engines.

If you want to learn more about getting traffic to your site, I highly recommend checking out my seo tips blog and Aaron Wall’s SEO blog. Aaron really does a good job of keeping you up to date with the latest and greatest news in the Search Engine Optimization world.

Hope you enjoy your weekend!

If you want to get on his mailing list to find out the details then go sign up by clicking here. Since I couldn’t make it to the seminar I am looking forward to the videos. I wish Yanik was not limiting the number. I know limiting the supply causes more demand for the product (scarcity marketing), I just hope there are plenty available and I hope they are set a good price.

We shall see…

Anyway, go check out the details on Jim’s blog. Jim Edwards has lot’s of other good information on his blog. Also, for those of you just starting out he partnered with my favorite Internet Marketing guru Yanik Silver on a step by step guide to starting an online business called “33 days to online profits”. I found it to be an excellent read for beginners wanting to start their own e-business.

Anyway, Copy Blogger has this excellent post that I recommend you read even if you aren’t a blogger. The post discusses the importance of your headline. Go check it out.

When you are done go check out Yanik Silver’s article on writing headlines that sell.

That’s it for now…

Enjoy…

By Yanik Silver

July 4th for Americans is a chance to celebrate our independence.
Trust me, I’m not going to get on a soapbox and start waving the
flag – but I do think it’s important no matter what country
you live in to really think about that word “independence”
and its meaning for you.

My father reminded me that July 3, 1976 was his
“Independence day” since that’s the date my family came
over to the United States from Russia. (Pretty cool
since it was right before the bi-centennial celebration.)

For me, my independence day was on July 1, 1999.

That’s the date I left my father’s business to work on my
own. It was by far one of the hardest decisions of my life.
You see, I had worked for my dad since I was 12 and he
thought I was going to take over the company. I had that
same thought as well until I got the “bug”.

In fact, my wife, Missy, and I were talking about this
recently. She was talking about how when she met me 9 years
ago, I had only one thought: “how to grow my father’s
business”. I would stay late working on new ads and
marketing pieces. I was in early calling my accounts trying
to make sales, etc. etc.

Now I had been studying direct marketing, and results were
really paying off for my dad’s business. (Actually they
still use a lot of the ads I wrote in 1998 because they
still work today.) But with every ad I wrote I was getting
more and more aggravated. Not because the ads weren’t
producing sales – they were – but because of the grief and
politics I had to deal with. Everybody seemed to be an
advertising expert even though they’ve never studied or
read anything on the subject. People mistakenly believe
that if they wouldn’t “read all that copy” then nobody
will. Or if the ad is “ugly” and has no pictures or pretty
graphics it won’t work.

Complete and total crap.

For every ad I wrote I had to fight to get it out there. I
got sick of it and decided I would create my own product so
I could write ads for myself. My first product was to help
dermatologists who wanted new cosmetic patients. It was a
big kit (manual, tapes, reports, diskette, etc) based
around some marketing consulting I was doing on the side
for one of my customers.

I ran my first ad in April 1998 in Dermatologic Surgery
magazine. I got 10 responses so I sent them the 20-page
sales letter I’d written selling this $900 kit. Not one
order.

I waited…

Sent out a 2nd notice to those 10 respondents.

Nothing…

Then I sent a 3rd notice telling them the expiration date
to get all the free bonuses was only 10 days away. Finally
on the very last day of the expiration date I got one order
over the fax machine.

Yipeee!!

I still remember that doctor’s name in Flushing, NY. What
an incredible feeling. That was the start of my
independence. I realized I now had the power to chart my
course as I wanted. That first sale. That’s one of the
greatest feelings in the world – when something you’ve
created is sold. It took me a little over a year after that
first order to realize I wanted my freedom and I finally
quit on July 1, 1999.

Maybe it’s the new confidence you get when you realize
you’ve created something that people want and are willing
to exchange money for. That first sale is usually the
hardest (but also the most rewarding).

It’s wonderful when I help turn on that light in people.
I’ve seen it first-hand working my Apprentices and seeing
them launch their products. How amazed they are by the
money pouring from around the globe. I love it!

And my wife is striking out on her own with a little bit of
my help. She set up her first web site – (www.InstantThankYouLetters.com) and she’s getting
checks each month.

So when will your independence day be?

If you’ve already achieved it – I bet you can remember it
perfectly. Sometimes the bleakest times that we believe are
terrible actually turn into a perfect opportunity.

Take my good friend, Jim Edwards’, for example. His
independence day came because he got fired. To him that
wasn’t a blessing at first but as he looks back on it – it’s the best thing that ever happened.

I remember the conversation we had right after it happened.
I was drinking a bourbon and Jim was having a beer. We were
talking about different projects he could try and pursue
and do now. We were throwing around some ideas and we came
up with “33 Days to Online Profits”.
(www.33daystotoonlineprofits.com/?35681)

It was right there during that call that we outlined each
of the days and moved forward from there. And “33 Days” has
been a tremendous six-figure income earner for both of us
and it doesn’t seem to let up.

So what can you do to achieve your independence?

I’ll give you a couple things to take to heart. I can’t
remember the author who said this but he said if you show
me what a man does in his spare time I’ll show you the type
of man he’ll become. What are doing with your spare time?

It all comes down to the choices we make every single day.
In fact, you shouldn’t let one day go by without making
sure you are taking at least one proactive step towards
your own independence. Just because the thought of you
doing what you want when you want may seem so far away – don’t let that stop you from taking those baby steps each
and every day. That’s one of my rules and I hope you’ll
adopt it.

What else?

Learn to be different. The truth is you need to become
extraordinary to achieve extraordinary results. You can’t
be like everyone else (and why would you want to). That
means doing the things other don’t (or won’t) do. That
means not listening to their advice (unless they are doing
what you want to do). Frankly, if you simply did the exact
opposite of what everyone else is doing you’d turn out
okay. Why? If only 5% of people are truly successful and
the 95% are the mediocre majority – doesn’t that mean the
majority is wrong? Don’t engage in their thinking. Don’t
follow their lead. Don’t adhere to the same values and
standards the “95-percenters” do.

Two people who really helped me clarify my thinking on
this was Early Nightingale and also Dan Kennedy. (See
next article for his insight and a special gift I’ve
arranged for you.)

Please don’t get me wrong – in no way am I trying to be
elitist. I’m not. But it is tremendously important to go
through your day with your eyes wide open. The truth is
most of your friends (right now) probably don’t want you to
change and succeed. That would imply that they are losers.
That would mean they are failures. Nobody is going to
propel you to succeed except yourself.

So get on it and proclaim your own Independence Day
starting T-O-D-A-Y!

(c) Surefire Marketing, Inc.

He is the author, co-author or creator of several best-
selling online marketing books and tools, which can be
found at http://www.SurefireMarketing.com/?35681

BTW - Feel free to send me your online success story. If I think it will benefit my readers I will post it here. I think success stories serve as great inspiration for all of us who are trying to make money online.

I recommend signing up to be on Yanik’s mailing list now so that you don’t miss out on any more of these free seminars.

Also, I wanted to share with you an excellent article that I just came across. The article is written by the man who created howstuffworks. Check out “How to Make a Million Dollars” by clicking here now. It is a really good read.

That’s it for now.

So after thinking about it for a while I have decided to increase the amount of money that I want to being making and decrease the amount of time I want to take to complete my goal. I have not yet set the goal amount of money or the goal date for achieving this, but I have decided that it will be more than enough money to work from home full time and I will do it in less than a year.

What is interesting is that after making this decision Yanik Silver sent me an article that talks about creating deadlines for your business goals. If you are interested in learning how to make money online fast, then check out the article below…

================================

How to Make This Year Your
Best Year Ever

By Yanik Silver
www.SurefireMarketing.com

===============================

Every year I’ve been in business for myself online
has been better than the previous one. Recently, I
decided to create an “Apprentice” program (Yes, even
before Trump) and I was extremely pleased that we
had nearly 100% of my Apprentices get an online
venture up and running.

I’ve gone back and thought about their projects and how
they developed and I came to a striking conclusion that
will be worth a lot of money to you this year if you heed it.
There was one key aspect that got them off their butts and
making money and it came down to one thing…

...A Deadline!

As simple as that sounds, once a firm deadline was
established that’s when the rubber met the road and all
obstacles melted away like snow flakes in a frying pan.
I’ll give you a perfect example for one Apprentice we were
going back and forth a bit tidying up some finishing
touches on the project and trying to get it out the door.
Many times people can try to make everything too perfect
and it never gets out making money so we said we are
launching this project at the LIVE Apprentice Summit. That
was it and that was final.

The date of the Summit was getting closer and closer and I
could see this Apprentice start to sweat a bit. But I made
him make the commitment to this deadline publicly during
our group call and he couldn’t back out now.

Fast forward to the day of his launch he had multiple
obstacles that would normally have put the project on hold
get swept away but not now. With the firm deadline in place
and the opportunity for him to be embarrassed our fine
Apprentice finished his project. We hit the ‘send’ button
and he made a tidy sum from a tiny list over the weekend.
And this was just the start because his project has made
well into the five figures already. And why did it get
finished?

The deadline once again.

What’s your deadline for your first project or your next
project?

Is it something that’s in your head? Not a good idea. It’s
pretty easy to keep moving that forward or letting other
things take precedence.

Who knows about your deadline and who’s going to hold you
to it? In some cases it’s not a good idea to share your
deadline or goal with another person, especially if they’re
the kind of negative energy vampire a lot of well-meaning
friends and family are. But if you’ve got a group of
colleagues all with the same thinking use them. This works
especially well if you don’t want to look like an “idiot”
in front of them and they are people you really respect.

I’ll tell you what works for me and maybe it’ll work for
you too.

For me, I work best when I absolutely “have to” perform.

For instance my first product on Internet marketing
might never have been made (or at least it would have taken
much longer) if I didn’t sell it before it was done. In 2000
when I first started marketing online a lot of people wanted
to know exactly what I did and how I started making money
so fast.

Well, I got my first opportunity to share my story in
Atlanta at an Internet seminar. I was extremely nervous and
my heart was beating out of my chest to go talk in front of
100 strangers. I gave my presentation and then I sold this
product (yet to be created).

I told people it would be delivered in a few weeks so they
knew it was a prepublication offer. I walked away with 10
orders at $200 bucks. All well and good except I couldn’t
charge anyone until the manual was done. Even though it was
only $2,000 (less what I had to pay the promoter)

I knew that at least people wanted this information and I
could keep selling it once I finished it. I probably had a
week or two of 3 o’clock in the morning work sessions but I
completed it and charged the cards. I was under pressure to
get the manual done because these people paid me (though I
didn’t charge them) and I owed them the material.

Since then I’ve updated my course material and it’s been
worth well into the six figures just because “I had to
do it”.

How can you set something like this up for yourself? If you
can stand the pressure – you can decide to put on a tele-
seminar. This is one of my favorite ways of creating
product by a deadline. You can do either a one-time tele-
seminar or series of tele-seminars and you get paid to
produce the product. How great is that? It doesn’t matter
if you have 1 person or 1000 people on the call because
this is forcing you to create product and perform.

Once you’ve set your deadline for anything you’ll
“magically” see certain resources fall into place. Trust
me, it’s a bit eerie but when it occurs every time you set
a firm deadline you know there’s something to it. Just the
act of making the decision sets these events into motion
for you. It’s also because what you focus on becomes your
reality. Your perception has changed. Your internal
“radar” is now attuned to resources, allies, etc that can
help you get your project completed.

Now I leave you with one more secret…Set “mini
deadlines”.

When you’re looking at the whole task of setting up an
Internet business (or anything really) it’s easy to get
overwhelmed. But if you break everything up into small
tasks with their own deadlines you’ll be at your
destination before you know it. I promise it’ll work for
you. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I really like
Franklin planner systems (now Franklin Covey). I’ve been
using them since 1998 and that’s when I first started
making some significant changes in my life.

Actually the founder of Franklin, Hyrum Smith has a great
book called “The 10 Essential Laws of Time and Life
Management” – this should be required reading for you!

Even though I hate ad slogans (since they don’t work) this
one should become your mantra for the year – “Just Do It”.

As cliché and overused as it is – that’s all it comes down
to. Whether you’re willing to roll the dice and put
yourself out there a little. I promise whatever the worst
case scenario you’re thinking, it is far from the reality.

And if you need someone to send your deadline list to – go
ahead and email it to me. I’ll keep it confidential and
we’ll celebrate together when you reach your destination.

(c) Surefire Marketing, Inc.

================================
Yanik Silver is recognized as the leading expert on
creating automatic, moneymaking websites…and he still
doesn’t know how to put up a website.

He is the author, co-author or creator of several best-
selling online marketing books and tools, including his
newest resource for making this year your best yet – http://www.33DaysToOnlineProfits.com

================================

You should check out the sales page. It’s rather unorthodox. I would be very interested in knowing how well it converts visitors into customers.