Here's the Online Millionaire System

Online Millionaire System

Basic point is that the OMP-basics book seems to cover everything a person needs to get started. Only other point is that I would include what I've found recently about blogs and the relationship of social media. To blog, you have to have an area of interest. The intent is what is important. (And that is covered in An Online Sunshine Plan.)

Now the below is fairly technical, being mostly a set of notes to myself - but I know you'd be interested, so I'm releasing it broadly.  It's intensely short-handed. I've already covered it in the books and opt-in lessons linked above. (Or go to http://worstelldesign.com/lessons)

Looks like the simple scene would be:
 
0. Figure out what you like to talk about all the time.
00. Learn the basics of copy-writing and what helps people decide to buy.
1. Keyword research to find a niche within that to start from.
2. Get domain name.
3. Get hosting with cpanel
4. Set up a CMS for the main pages that can be installed via fantastico.
5. Set up a blog in a subdirectory or subdomain.
6. Install analytics and any needed plugins (just the needed
7. Get basic pages up (About, Contact, legal pages, main categories) plus 5 or 10 posts up based on the keywords you found in your research.
8. Find affiliate products (or own self-produced products) which you can link to.
9. Go back through those pages and posts and revise these to link into your affiliate offerings.
10. Set up Onlywire, ping.fm accounts - then go back and get all these announced to the world.
11. Set up Pixelpipe accounts for later promotion (optional)
12. Get article re-writer and learn to do variations of your existing content.
13. Set up an auto-responder account (paid)
14. Set up opt-in forms for various newsletters (work) or giveaways (less work)
15. Set up article directory accounts with the major directories and submit varied content to each as you go. (3 or 4 articles which deep-link back to your original post and any opt-in landing/sales page.
16. Set up Google Alerts to bring you data for content.
17.  Continue researching keywords in your niche to find out data about your topic area - and as well where to leave comments with back-links.
18. Convert your content to PDF's (ebooks) and post these to scribd.com, slideshare.net, and doc-stoc.com - ensure you leave links in your description back to the key pages you want people to visit (preferably deep-linked.)
19. Create a powerpoint presentation and record the audio to match (a webinar). Post audio to archive.org and powerpoint to slideshare.net - then combine these to make a slidecast there. Again, deep-link back to your key pages in the description.
20. Use the slides (coverted to images) and audio to create a video (Camtasia or XP Movie-Maker) and use Pixelpipe to post these.
21. For all new post, consider multi-publishing them as varied articles, pdf's, powerpoints, slidecasts, and video. Comment market every post to get backlinks. (All of these get backlinks.)
22. Get a Synnd subscription (paid). Synnd every new post you make, including posting to article directories through them.
23. Compile a newsletter of your posts and send to your list, along with additional affiliate products you've checked out.
(Idea here: do reviews of products and post to your blog.)
24, Set up a schedule to include these targets weekly:
   a. Review analytics.
   b. Continuing content research, including keyword reviews on subjects you find - to only talk about niches as part of a broader subject.
   c. Main pages to your CMS for your products and landing pages as well. Blog posts to cover details in an entertaining, educational, or enlightening fashion. Synnd each page.
   d. Comment market those pages and posts.
   e. Multi-publish your content to article directories, doc storage sites, video sites, podcast hosts.  Onlywire all of these.
   f. Use that content to create new giveaways or newsletters.
   g. Weekly or bi-weekly send out a message to your list with offers they can actually use to improve their lives.

For me, this pushes people back to finding their own motivations in life and what they want to do with it. And I simply align everything to just that - telling people they can improve their lives with what I've found.

Now, you extend your main CMS downward into additional related sub-niches. Currnent work on this is to create a new category with additional pages and sub-pages on your CMS - or simply sub-pages if your niche is broad enough. (You can simply blog about the data you find and cross-link the pages and posts within each other.) Or go ahead and make a subdirectory with it's own set of mini-pages which are cross-linked. (Use a little mini-CMS like Zimplit or just hard-code these in an editor such as Kompozer. If you are more savvy, get into using a php-based CMS like onefilecms or pulse.)

How big you get is all how interested you are in your niche - and how much you like to talk about it.

- - - -

The point to this is that it’s all mechanics. And that doesn’t get you rich.

The trick is to completely re-program yourself into becoming a millionaire.

And that is the rest of the score.

Just put it together myself. Thought it a good idea to let you know.

- - - -

As of this point, I'm going onto my own passion, which is cartooning. And you'll see me use all of the above in promoting these - including re-programming myself. 


Backtrack me through my other blogs and sites and you'll see why.


Good Hunting!

New ideas about a dip in the middle of your product lifecycle

Seth's now created two separate bell curves with a dip in the middle. Convenient for him, he has a book called "The Dip" that's been out for awhile. While this tends to explain his world-view, it may not be correct for all circumstances/situations.

I've earlier covered about the Product Life Cycle (which is explained various places), adding that such a marketing cycle (bottom is against time, not attitudes) can be restarted.

With Godin's double curve, he assumes a time function at the bottom as well. So he then has your product moving through the first, into the dip, and then into the second.

In both Bell Curves, your mainstream is at the top. Mainstream passionate, and mainstream pop. For both cases, your supply/demand then peaks (with least profit) at that point - for that set of public.

For many product life cycles, the early adopters are those "dweebs" on the "cutting edge". Gladwell talks about this in "Tipping Point". Artsy Greenwich Villagers who liked Hush Puppies started a new product life cycle trend (which lasted years), but then got out of that trend when it went mainstream.

Jeans, on the other hand, have been eternally popular - having ups and downs, but mostly making Levi-Strauss tons of dough meanwhile. I love the mainstream part of this, as now I can get really cheap jeans (which last no longer than the expensive ones) and be comfortable in the humid Missouri summers wearing nothing but cotton. (As well as being able to keep my dress slacks in the closet because I work outside with cattle and fences and greasy farm equipment during the days.)

Jeans were a necessary point early on of those passionate about gold-mining in California. Later, other trades found that durable work pants fit their operation as well - that niche was expanded. When they became a fashion statement during the hippy '70's, they became mainstream - and all sorts of people started branding their own. And extensions to this, such as Dockers and what not, gave the same durable easy wear some status as they could pass for corporate wear as well.

The original niche expanded, went mainstream, and then subdivided into smaller niches again. (One particular niche is the ultra-durable versions. Overpriced Carhart's with their trademark brown is one example.)

While you could have a dip in the middle, you could also simply have the early adopters being the passionate and the pop-cycle taking up the slack (and probably causing the slack) in the passionate demand.

You could even have several dips, as different niches find their use for that item. Jeans' sales above has had several dips in sales. In every case, it was where a certain niche-client-type was using their product heavily and then another niche found them. (Of course, a rather slack marketing approach can cause dips, as well as poor transition into mass-production.)

Dips are also seasonal, sandals don't sell well in winter - but also, high gas prices could keep more off the beach - or more going to the beach. A dip for one area would be a peak for another.

Charles Haanel's "Master Key System", Wallace Wattle's "Science of Getting Rich", and Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" - these continue to sell well, helped by Rhonda Byrne's "The Secret" DVD, and a host of lecturers who discovered people still bought these books and wanted more information about them. But look through eBay and you'll see that these books are being bought regularly for decent prices as more and more re-discover them and then want more data. Sure, they were in their hay-day during the 20'2 and 30's - but have gone on to sell way more copies than they ever did to begin with. But don't think they had that much of an extreme dip in between - the 50's had a lot of self-help going on (Nightingale-Conant developed during that time and the early 60's). This particular dip would be due to generational differences.

The passionate are not always the first bell curve in the sequence. Specialized niches can "discover" a product and start using the hell out of it way after it's fallen off the "pop" radar. Velcro has tons of uses, but has never replaced buttons or any other fastener - except in certain niche products.

- - - -

Now, that Bell Curve isn't really just 2D-flat. It's actually more of a bump, with niches and passions on every side. And that bump wouldn't necessarily be smooth - as you might have mini-dips as your product transitions from one niche to another, going out of style over here while ramping up as popular over there - and there.

Against time, you might find that a certain passion-niche remains steady for demand of an item (like farmers and their jeans - they've become consumers of the cheap and durable) - so you have a tunnel-effect throughout the overall life-cycle. Demands for gold-miners peaked years ago, and there certainly aren't as many farmers as their used to be, but people have gardens and like to go outdoors and so need durable pants-type clothing.

A 3D graph colored by niche would show all sorts of amazing interactions. But no one goes this way, so we'll leave that be.

Your takeaways today?

• Passion and Pop are just different niches.
• One's contraction is another's expansion, dip or no dip.
• Don't figure that the passionate are always first.
• But there is always early adopters for every niche, as well as late adopters.
• And, as always, product life cycles can be re-started through brilliant marketing - which is, again, creating a market for a product.

Seth's Blog: Avoiding the Passion Pop Gulf:

"The reason you need to care is that gap in the middle. Every day, millions of businesses get stuck in that gap. They either move to the right in search of the masses or move to the left in search of authenticity, but they compromise. And they get stuck with neither."

Inspiration, execution and monetization makes the online millionaire

The trick in becoming an Online Millionaire is in following your Inspiration, Execution of your plan, and Monetization of everything.

This is a review of a product I just purchased which is a very good example of how to use the Internet and locally-delivered CD's to monetize information products.

Now, as you've been following these blogs of mine, you'll know that I've been researching eBay as a selling platform and reverse-funnel - meaning, it allows buyers to find you.

I found through Deep Analysis/Hammer Tap a certain product was selling over 60% with several auctions each week and multiple items. So this thing and its marketing was bringing home over $2-300 a week, not bad for a single item. Approximately $12-15K per year.

The reason I bought it was because of the marketing, because it had resell rights, and because shipping was free.

Then - I got the package.

Did I get what I bought? Yes.

The kicker: it was printed and burned on a home pc and mailed in a little blank cardboard mailer with a - get this - 58-cent stamp.

If I had this drop-shipped by an online company, it would cost $1.75, plus about $7.00 shipping. To deliver something like this, I'd put a $2.00 handling charge - so that I'd have straight profit on it. But then the price would be a lot higher.

For their $14.00 price, they have a near-nothing fulfillment line and able to print these off at home in bulk, labels and all, then simply drop them in the mailbox daily for each sale.

Let's examine what they had on the disc:

It was really nothing but an autorun program and an executable which pulled up a web page - which then linked to other web pages. That's it - nothing much more than 4 megs of data on there.

Everything else was on external websites:

• One website was a membership-only site, meaning they got your email address - and gave you a membership with lots of downloads in it, while still being built.
• One website was a collection of eBay articles, compete with adsense - another money-maker.
• One website was a collection of wholesale lists for the US, Canada, and International markets.

Now, the reseller gimmick - you couldn't modify the product. Meaning you were sending them new customers. So the whole thing is viral just because it gives you money.

So the thing is beautifully developed to not just sell, not just be viral, not just get subscribers - but all at the same time. And the great part is that they get people to pay to be part of this system.

A critique -
a little on the cheap side. Depends on Windows to run - so the effect varies widely, depending on how your individual computer is configured. (And depending on Windows to do anything dependably is a bit like predicting the economy or the weather - good luck with that.) If they wanted to really take it to the next level, they'd get an affiliate sales system going - which is missing.

Now, how to improve it even more:
Without modifying the program - you can give additional value, which will then possibly bring your customers to your site. Just add in additional PDF's and or another executable file - which would drive people to your site. Then you can include that original product as part of the purchase price.

Your marketing could sell the product, but your packaging would start up yours first - and then they'd find the original resell product. You get first take at the buyers.

Your alternative is to simply take the affiliate commissions directly, minus your sales fees - and give away further sales unless you contact them directly.

But -- take their design and improve on it, plus the economy of their production line - and you've got a real winner.

Because creativity is the heart and soul of becoming an Online Millionaire.

How to make your millions through eBay - first, change your mind...

Making millions online isn't easy - but there's some "secrets" I recently got via my eBay training coaches.

Bright Builders isn't the only eBay training around, and certainly not the cheapest. However, the value I've already gotten seems worth my investment.

I'm not going to detail the training here - this isn't a sales pitch, and you'll find no affiliate link on this post. But I figure that the tons of material here, with web pages, mp3's, Camtasia videos, and all by people who are certified by eBay as knowing their stuff.

While I've only had the first lesson, I've been able to absorb most of what there is no their site and have a good idea where I'm heading with it. Down side is that this training is initially scheduled to take place every other week - which might be a good schedule for most, but I'm a bit more motivated than the regular Joe/Josie.

You see, that hefty chunk of change on a credit card is the key point to resolve. Sure they guarantee you'll make it back, but it requires you work at it. However, the idea that I can make these payments as well as cover other bills and meanwhile quitting my day job is just too much of a motivation for me to turn down.

The life of a wage-slave

Let's look at what 90-some percent of our nation does: slave for their wages. Essentially, you are giving away roughly half your waking hours each week in exchange for usually a fixed pay scale, which you hope increases each year to keep up with inflation.

Practically, you are a wage-slave and frankly are just pissing your life away. I know of people who work a factory job and set it up to get overtime for more pay. So they're working 50+ hour work and probably live no more than 1/2 hour's drive away (add an hour to their work day). Say 60 hours a week total. Now that means that their weekend is half-used up, giving them a single day of rest and then back at it again. So you can buy that big boat for the lake - you can only use it two or three times a year.

Let's talk taxes. Figure at a subsistence level, you're giving up around 30% of your pay every year to the government, most of which you'll never see again. And figure that as the government isn't popular with anyone (even those who work for it directly), you're just tossing 1/3rd of your money down the tubes. Currently, when you get overtime, it throws you into a higher tax bracket - so now you're throwing 50 % of the money you make away. At $30,000 a year, you keep $20K. At $50,000 a year, you keep $25K.

You work 50-60 hour weeks to make that $50K. So your weekend is roughly 10-20 hours usable time.

One story I was told: a girl went to college to learn the best-paid job possible - dental hygienist. After working for a year, she found out that her take-home pay was the same at full time employment as they would be if she only worked part-time. So she cut back her hours and spent the rest of the time either surfing or skiing. 20 hour work week, 50 hours personal time.

That is the insanity of paid employment - working for someone else. The more you work, the less you get paid. Adding another part-time job just kills you off slowly. No time for yourself and the taxes and deductions are as much as they can possibly take from you without sparking a revolt (known as election upset).

How working for yourself is viewed by the government

Really, this is the best way to get the most use out of your earned income. You earn it however you like, not trying to fit into a uniform schedule and dress-code that someone else considers optimal (Can you say: "Would you like fries with that?").

The government actually wants you to go into business for yourself. That's why they give "perks" to corporations. They want you to form a corporation to get the tax breaks you deserve.

Corporations are legal entities - meaning they are viewed as a person legally (where the "corpse" part comes in as part of that word). Now, despite all the class-warfare going around, you never really tax corporations. Every tax you put on them simply raises their costs - which is passed onto you with higher prices.

Corporations aren't taxed on total income - they are taxed after expenses are taken out. (I'm shorthanding this tremendously, but the basic fact are sound.) AND, the government gives out tax breaks to encourage corporations to act, invest, spend in certain ways. Like advertising is all written off, even if it didn't result in increased sales. And charitable donations (like to a non-profit you are on the board of) come out before any taxes are paid.

If you set up your corporation in states where there are no corporate taxes, then you only have to pay the Federal taxes. Now I'm telling you here to go ahead and pay all the taxes you're supposed to - but don't set yourself up to pay more than you have to.

An online business doesn't have to have an actual physical location. So you could live in one state and work for a business in another. While your servers (and bank accounts) could be in a foreign country. So, depending on the laws, you can actually set up your business to operate at a bare minimal tax level.

Or you could continue paying out the wazoo as a wage-slave here on Planet Earth in America. (And several countries have even higher personal income taxes than ours - but we are one of the top corporate taxers that exist.)

My point here is that you should be working for yourself and not the government or anyone else. Our government is telling you to set yourself up as a corporation and then contract your labor to another company - or better yet, create a new product people will buy and then sell it to them. The highest penalties they have are for people who make a lot of money personally. So you're not supposed to make money - your corporation is. That corporation is supposed to reinvest (spend) excess income and not show any income on paper. (Funny enough, it tells workers to stay poor and so pay less taxes, while corporations are supposed to stay "broke" on paper - to pay less taxes. That's just the way the system is set up.

Who actually pays taxes

The smart rich own nothing and all their expenses are paid by their corporation. They don't have earned income and so can't be taxed personally. The dumb rich pay exorbitant taxes personally, due to the amount of salaries they earn. Sure they have more money, but they don't get to keep much of it. (Politician Edwards falls in between. As a multi-millionaire lawyer, everything went to his corporation, and he paid very few dividends to himself as the only stockholder. As a politician, he campaigned for the poor, but was unable to keep his own finances secret - like the size of his house, you could see it all from a distance.)

Reagan changed the tax laws because of the problem he ran into as an actor. Finally landing a great movie role, he found that over 80% of what he was going to make went straight to the government - he was going to keep very little of it. Shortly after that, he got into politics through the Actor's Guild, and then as California's governor.

Anyway, I didn't intend to spiel on and on about taxes. It's just a point of control. Other people have it, you don't - that is, if you only work for earned income as opposed to going into business for yourself.

When you're running your own business, you can say what goes where and what expenses you are going to make - as a corporation, you keep all your money until you are done spending it and then you pay taxes on what's left over. As I mentioned before, taxes are viewed by the corporation as another expense - they are figuring out what's going to be left over to either reinvest or pay to stockholders as dividend (which can then be taxed by the government as personal income).

Who pays all taxes, actually? The employee - that working class individual and those white-collar people, all those who work for someone else and are told what to do each day as opposed to making their own decisions about what they want to accomplish that day and why.

As these politicians tell you so-and-so should pay more taxes, realize that it's probably you and me she or he is talking about.

How to really control all your own income, profits, and taxes.

Work for yourself - fire your boss.

The solution for retired boomers with fixed incomes is to put a small percentage of that aside to play with and invest in real financial independence. What they do have in spades is time. So take that time and convert it to earning income again. But what you do to earn income will mean changing your mindset from employee to entrepreneur.

If you thought taxes were bad, this is even more insidious.

Basically, you've been trained to be an employee (and dutifully pay taxes) your entire life - from the moment you were born, all the instructions and coaching and lessons you've had were entirely and completely designed to make you a creature of habit - being able to sit in a box or on a line and take whatever is dished out.

Factually, one author traced back our current educational system to the Prussian military model, which was used to create a single military force from the separated states of post World War I Germany. (Which force was then used to create World War II.) Seems the old general figured that if you kept people segregated by age and then trained them in large groups, they'd be all set to obey orders as a company or platoon.

In reality, the best schooling is proving to be home schooling (who wins all those spelling and geography bees?) and programs which are self-paced give better results. Lock-step training keeps the bulk of the class tied down to the slowest member (who is constantly getting D's and hearing about it).

But turning over a lifetime of training isn't all that hard - it takes persistence, but you've retrained yourself constantly during your life. You just have to find out how to take control over those tools you've been using all along.

Your own personal re-training tools to change your life (and make you as rich as you want).

1. Nothing is permanent except change - and it doesn't keep a steady pace (change changes, too).
   
2. You can change any habit in 30 days, regardless of how long you've had it.
3. Your world view is reinforced by your surrounding environment.
4. But your own thoughts are dominant over everything else. Everything else.

First, there is no permanency - stuff is changing around you all the time. Notice how that change has been speeding up lately? And it's not just the Internet - things had been speeding up before that. Probably the Magna Carta was a key point, but perhaps the Tipping point was that carpenter from Galilee... Don't know. It took us ages to get out of the Stone Age, but not as much time to move from sailing ships and global empires (East India Company) to airplanes and global corporations. And now anyone can sell to anyone else on this planet and get a product delivered that they didn't even make themselves or own the company that did.

So get over any idea that you have retired (or will retire) into some sort of Security. No security ever existed - but you do have choice. Everyone was born with Free Will - it's what makes humankind that way (and not our opposable thumbs). (And forget the idea that Social Security will be around or that you are going to be allowed to spend any of it. Nice having governments, but it's damned hard depending on them...)

Second, any mental habit you have can be changed in about 30 days if you consistently work at it. That's one serious truth. "The Secret" DVD had that number come up consistently. When I researched it out, it turned up studies by various universities which covered the findings that any mental pattern or habit or conditioning would change in 30 days (gradually) if you regularly reinforced a substitute pattern over the top of it. People were enabled to quit smoking if they consciously got a drink of water every single time they had an urge to smoke. And there are other examples. But the key point is to daily and probably several times every day (yes, that's every single day) for at least 30 days put a new pattern in effect and consciously use it - and whatever is keeping you from achieving that will dissipate or move to the background.

Third, your environment is constantly reinforcing whatever you think about yourself. For that matter, whatever you think about the world at large. Now I'm not stating you can change a Democrat into a Republican if you constantly surrounded them with campaign literature and videos - oooh, that's not a pretty picture either way... But you've surrounded yourself with stuff and that stuff is telling you the same thing back. Want to get over a nasty break-up? Get rid of anything around you that reminds you of that person. An age-old trick - taking a long vacation was also the same cure. Look around your work space, or your home and see what you have sitting there. Want to change your mind? Change your space - rearrange the furniture and fittings, or get some different ones.

Fourth, the oldest "secret" is that your thoughts make up your life. Sure - follow Earl Nightingale's "Strangest Secret", which he got from Napoleon Hill ("Think and Grow Rich"), which he in turn got from Charles Haanel ("Master Key System") and that came from Thomas Troward ("Edinburgh Lectures") who figured it out from studying each of the major religions' scriptures in their own language. Of course, even older than that is Huna, which shows that this idea has been floating around since before recorded history.

Look around your life - what you think determines your actions, which determines your results. Any attitude (or lack of it) is the difference between winners and losers in any competitive sport. Geniuses have generally a very unique approach to life, composed of both intuitive inspiration and persistence toward a goal only they can see. In both cases, it's the personal attitude which launches the progress toward the result (or impedes it).

How to apply this to make yourself an entrepreneur - and a lot of money meanwhile

The trick is that most of your attitudes are on automatic. Meaning that they have become habits.

But, you recall, habits can be changed. The trick is to set it up so that you constantly remind yourself with what you want to be, do, or have as the result. This used to be called "affirmations" - which have been widely panned because people didn't understand how they worked and how to make them work.

The first thing is to set up a vision statement that works.

Just like sales and marketing - people respond to emotions. So you really have to get into the feeling of being, doing, or having whatever you want - and in the tense that it's already there. (Check out "The Secret" DVD for more data on this - but Earl Nightingale also covered it in his "Strangest Secret" recording, available for free online.)

Now, you set up your vision statement and read it with the feeling it's already occurred - you know, full 3D full-on vision of it - two or three times every day. Follow the synchronicities and intuitions you get on this as you go.

The next thing is to have a plan. Work out backwards of what you need to do in order to achieve or acquire what you want. Getting a million-dollar income is going to mean starting out with some income weekly that you produce yourself, independent of any job or pension. Use your time, invest it, and provide some valuable service others will pay you for.

Go over Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" again - those sections having to do with planning. The old adage applies: Plan your work, Work your plan. That plan has to align with your vision statement, has to back it up.

Review your plan weekly and write a list of To Do actions which will move that plan forward that week. And take that weekly To Do list and create daily To Do lists and follow them. Work these over back and forth - and start making that plan create your vision.

Those three steps: Vision statement, Plan, To Do's - these are everything you need to do in order to change your world into what you want it to be.

Yes, just that simple.

Now, about that environment you live in... You're going to want to do some changing here. Whatever you've put around you has or hasn't helped you become where you are today - looking at making yourself into a millionaire or at least financially independent.

Look over what you're reading and listening to (including your friends and in-laws) to see if these are helping you or hindering you. If they aren't helping you, replace them with something that is. Listening to "shock jocks" on the morning commute and horrendous news and weather on the evening ride home - these aren't making you rich. Period. Replace them with recordings by Brian Tracy, or Robert Kiyosaki, or anyone who has made themselves rich and can now talk the talk honestly.

Same at home. TURN OFF THE TV. Period. Doesn't get you anywhere. Get your news from the Internet - but don't spend forever getting it. Instead, set up a system which will give you inspirational or educational MP3's so you can transfer them to your car for the commute and also listen to them as background data.

Set up your computer to give you all the PDF's on marketing and financial planning you can find. Study these. Buy books (or check them out from the library - cheaper) and read them regularly to find out what you could be and should be doing to achieve what you really want out of life.

What you're doing is reinforcing your vision, making it become a reality around you. Bit by bit - much like building a tall and wide brick wall - that reality will start showing up around you.

Don't look for the immediate. It can happen, but look - you've taken a lifetime to program yourself into the state your end. All you've done, month after month, is to reinstate and strengthen these patterns and habits. So it might take a bit to undo it. But you'll see progress if you look for it. And when you see it, reinforce it.

Summary - let's recap:

1. You can change your world, nothing stays the same. Just take control of the change process.
2. Figure out what you want out of life - write this out in the past tense.
3. Review this daily, getting all the emotion of that - as if it's there right in front of you.
4. Get a plan that works for you so you can achieve this vision - revise it as many times as you need to when you find it needs improvement.
5. Work out weekly and daily To Do lists to get that plan accomplished. Get these done to result. Move them forward until they get done - or find out why they aren't and rectify that reason.
6. Surround yourself with supportive material - change your environment to help you make that transition into your new life.

Once you've got all this done, you can then simply change your vision to encompass a new goal. And then repeat those steps above to get that new goal achieved.

These steps aren't original to me - the authors I've mentioned above all said this same thing in their own way. And these principles are in all the major religions and philosophies on this planet.

Look, there are a lot of people wanting to help you improve your life. Tons of them. There are thousands of books and recordings which do nothing but call out for your to read and listen to them. Pick out the ones which will help you to form that new life. Study, read, listen to them. Absorb them.

And then start looking for hints, clues, and surprises around you which say your new life is arriving...

Best of luck to you and - Good Hunting!

My education in eBay continues - through the world of hard online millionaire knocks

If you thought an online millionaire course in training people on eBay was going to be easy, guess again.

Ah, the hard slogging work of getting eBay feedback up through buying things...

I was up late doing the convoluted dance of buying the remaining cheap digital downloads through eBay - did you know it takes about 6 different screens to buy each item? And even then, you have to wait until that buyer contact you some how with the download link.

Increased my feedback by 6 overnight, just in the buying process. I'll now finish off buying from the rest of the non-duplicative sellers (and non-duplicative products - hopefully), then pile in on leaving them all positive feedback. You know, karma and Golden Rule and all that.

Now, a tip: when/if you do this, keep track of three things on a sheet of paper (or notepad if you like to type) - seller ID, product name, eBay item number. Reason being is that people's email doesn't align to their eBay seller name - but they'll often refer to the product you bought or the item number (eBay always has the item number in every email they send you). This way you can avoid losing track of what you've bought and who you bought from.

Because they can only give you feedback once. You need to buy one extremely low-cost item each from many, many different sellers.

Just bought a chicken wings recipe book with complete resell rights - and the sales page said it was in the public domain... Gotta love eBay.

Was listening to an interview with Socrates Socratous - who has made his living selling digital books and information products. He advises not selling these to other resellers, but selling them to people who really want and need the data. Makes sense - do some research on eBay information products as to average price and you'll see that this market is really polluted with nonsense.

Another approach is to sell the actual item (CD/book/combo) as these actually tend to sell better than the downloads. Also, you can give away the download as a bonus (after you've listed it on Lulu.com and can tell people what it's value is) when they buy your product - just send the link to them.

But your ebook sales depends on what keywords you use in the title. Nobody searches for "WOW!!!", for instance. Buyers search and buy, shoppers look and look. Keywords that attract shoppers' attention will turn off buyers. The great thing about eBay is that it makes it much easier for buyers to buy.

Well, I've now bought the prescribed number of things to get my feedback up above 50. Now, I have to send all this feedback and get it all in (plus drop all these downloads with resell-rights into my hard-drive). And I managed to stay below $5 for each purchase. Let's see - started off with about 19 and needed 31 - so I've spent maybe $50 or so getting these. Maybe you can't buy happiness, but you can buy feedback -- cheap!

If any of these don't come through, I'll look for a few more I can buy cheap and wrap it up.

Notes from Tim Knox webinar: eBay Multiple Streams of Internet Income (Mar. 26, 2008)

(my comments in italics)

(this webinar problematic unless you have very dependable broadband - I'm trying to watch this over satellite in a rainstorm. It's about an hour long - unless you have to restart it often...)

(Tim) started with a $7 ebook and built into multi-million income in about 3 years.

After 11 years, laid off with no severance package - wife, new baby, new house, new car. Went to flat broke, sleeping on his mother's couch.

These days - no such thing as job security. Single stream of income is like keeping all your eggs in basket - wind up with a basket full of broken eggs.

Diversification, automation. Multiple streams of income on a semi-automated basis.

Best time to start a business is now - due to Internet.

Work once - get paid many times.

Roadmap:

1st income stream - ebay
- easy to start, up in an hour
- open eBay store quickly as a web presence
- promote yourself with About Me page: funnel traffic from eBay to other websites
- Internet is in runaway expansion mode; lots of buyers online, Billons of goods sold yearly.
- eBay ready-made pool of potential clients

Sell what sells
- don't follow the herd
- don't sell "hot items" people who made money on iPods sold accessories
- don't invest big money until you know you have a product that will sell (test market first and drop ship)

(When you are selling for a drop-shipper, you are actually being an affiliate - you name the margin you want to sell it for. Consignments are the same arrangements. You are a independent/freelance salesperson. When you buy lots of wholesale goods and ship them yourself, this is still the same framework. When you rent your own warehouse, then you are doing the same functions, just with a different title. Manufacturing the stuff yourself is only slightly different - but you still have to sell that product, or attract affiliates/freelance salespeople to do so.)

Start off with selling everything you don't need or use around the house. This gives you experience in writing titles, copy, photos, etc.
- you can also go to storage unit auctions/sales
- flea markets, thrift stores, consignment sales (even RV's), closeouts, bargain basement...

2nd income stream - start your own Ebay store (doesn't cover this much - diverges into info products, which he later elevates to its own income stream)

Informational products (see yesterday's post)
- can be about mostly anything.
- charge more for the hardcopy (these also sell better).
- add audio/video with it, and you can get over $200 for it. (Link to your About Me page and they go right to your download site. Meanwhile, sell dropship CD's/DVD's on ebay.)
- can be easily automated, just send the emails over to the fulfillment company. (And meanwhile, get them to subscribe to your mail-list for additional bonuses...)
- high profit margins (don't get stuck in selling resell rights to resellers for .99 each - go upscale with CDs/books/packages, and then bring them back to your website to buy downloads for much higher - $47, $67, etc. Your overhead is the same, essentially zip.)

You can hire writers to write for you.
- elance.com, etc. (caveat - get writers who know what they're doing, some have good credentials and good feedback, but no clue whether what they write is correct.)
- when you become an author, your credibility goes up, more people are likely to buy from you
- use ebooks to supplement your regular product line (example: "teaching dogs tricks" book for a pet-toy store)

3rd income stream - Joint Ventures
- partnership between two parties to promote a product and share in profit.
- fastest way to build your list
- turning point to his business was JV
sequence:

1. find successful sellers
2. approach them with your idea, and send them a free copy
3. should be complementary to what they are selling already
   
4. seal the deal (do your homework in this area)
   

4th income stream - Affiliate Marketing
- sign up to sell others products, or sign others up to sell your product
- register as an affiliate, sell the product, collect a commission (see above)
- you don't need your own product or your own website to sell as an affiliate
- you can sign up others to see for you, paying commissions as high as 75% (sales you wouldn't have otherwise - money in both your pockets, but you keep the new clients on your list)

5th income stream - Build your own website
- funnel buyers/shoppers from eBay to your site
- can build simply with templates, etc.
- add on ecommerce, etc.
- (caveat - don't use a free site. Best I've found is getting a cpanel-powered web-provider)

6th income stream - Turnkey website
- get these already set up with products, etc.
- don't get a middleman from the dropshipper

Variations on this - he mentions briefly a membership website. This would be another income stream all on its own, but you'd have to have a web-provider, etc.

Income streams:
- eBay: direct sales
- eBay store
- Info products (auctioned or through store or both)
- Joint Ventures
- Affiliate Marketing (for someone else or others for you)
- Own website
-Turnkey website

- - - -

Let's reconstruct this:
First - start on eBay and get your grounding in online sales, delivery, customer relations. Study everything you can, including peoples' websites. Take some courses in this if you can - where they actually give assignments, not just send you emails.
Second - Set up an eBay store and run your business from there. eBay will actually send customers your way, again this is a gradient approach
- you can use joint ventures here
Third - Write or commission some info products and put them on your eBay store and auction them. Goes on your eBay store.
Fourth - Expand your sales expertise by becoming an affiliate. Study up on online promotion, SEO, and social media promotion.
Fifth - Get your own website
- Can be turnkey from someone else
- Or build your own with ecommerce engine, etc.
- Add in affiliate sales (others selling for you)
- Joint Ventures
- Subscription site - sell memberships

My review of Tim Knox:

All of this stuff works. He speaks sooth. Only really misses one point, that he actually refers to through out but never specifically takes up - which I include below.

This webinar is good data, and he gives tons of his products you can buy at the end. (Which is what webinars are for - they are online infomercials, afterall.)

The overall theme is that you have several different income sources so that if one tanks, you aren't left holding an empty bag (as most jobs are).

The approach to start off with eBay is a good one, since your success here will lay the foundation for your later success. If you don't do well, then you aren't out a great deal.

If you already know a bit about website-building, then just get your own site up and running, then start funneling traffic from eBay over there. Get a good hosting provider which can handle the high demands or can scale.

Once you have your website with a good e-commerce engine, set it up for affiliate sales. Add in joint ventures. (Note: you can actually set up affiliate sales with nothing more than a few sales pages and thank-you pages where affiliates can send you buyers.)

Tim's missing point: at some juncture, you are going to have to get an autoresponder service. This is how you upsell, cross-sell, and continue to sell earlier buyers/clients you have had. You really want every person you sell to to opt-in to your mail list. Every auction you get has emails coming to you. Give them the option of becoming part of your mail list (give them a bonus ebook or other ethical bribe). Then you can sell them over and over. Build a big list and then you have the capability to announce new products to that list. And is how you can have an "instant" bestseller on Amazon - tell everyone you know and JV that product with other people to their mail-lists. (That bestseller then generates more traffic for your other products.)

Summary advice - what I've learned over the past few years

To someone just starting out: find people who have actually made their own success at what they are writing or talking about. I recently heard of a person who had actually gone bankrupt as a PowerSeller on eBay and was now pitching an expensive course on how to become a PowerSeller (!). Look up their track record, not just the "glowing testimonials" and the sales spiel.

Get a coaching program that makes you actually work at this. Maybe you could do two or three - if they each increase your income, and more than pay for themselves, you can take as many as you have time for. Pick out programs which provide the structure you need. If you need to attend someone's intensive boot-camp, then so be it.

Study up on everything you need, ask questions, look for real-world examples.

Learn to look beyond the hype. Once you understand how sales pages are constructed, you can get easily through the silliness that goes for most sales pages. Learn the scams that are going around and how to avoid them. All the free bonuses in the world doesn't mean you need to buy that product. (Even if they all have resell rights - not so good if you can't resell them for more than $.99).

Change your world-view to become an entrepreneur - not an employee. Those are the people earning the big bucks these days - self starters. Surround yourself with effective examples and inspirational books, MP3's, videos, etc. Read biographies of people who have started out with less than you have now - keep their examples in mind as you go through life. Quit watching TV and listening to radio, reading newspapers. Get your news through the Internet, and keep it brief. Use an RSS reader to give you synopses. You can't waste time, since it doesn't come back to you.

Do tons of research, constantly. Know before you go. Look before you leap. The only constant that stays the same is change. Check your results as next week, they might not be the same.

When you sell - sell only to niches. Find the demand not being serviced. Expand your niches and take on more niches and/or broaden the ones you're already in.

Convert every first buyer into a lifetime buyer.

Automate every part of your business you can. Hire people to save you time as you need them.

Shoppers look for bargains - buyers are willing to pay any "reasonable" price (reasonable to their own idea of its value to them.)

- - - -

More applications in marketing into/through social media

I've covered earlier (and these posts started this current eBay research) about how you can promote through social media, but can't market there.

The point, as many have discussed, is to start or take over a conversation. You really can make a big mistake here with ClueTrain when you say that marketing is a conversation, so just start conversations and then you've marketed. No. Marketing conversations include the exchange of goods. Social conversations establish you as an authority, and then people want to hear more about your view of things and so will look you up. So all your social promotions need to have active links which come back to you and your products.

But the site itself carries the heavy lifting. It has to convert visitors to shoppers to buyers. And social media fails as marketing as the majority of the traffic is visitors - they aren't even up to shopping. They mostly are even below taking the bait of free downloads/bonuses. They are there for the experience.

And here's where eBay as a social community comes in. It's full of buyers more than shoppers. It's built to do the heavy lifting, since every single item has a built in urgency to buy now.

Most web sites (and I'd include most item descriptions on eBay) couldn't lift a feather with a strong wind under it. Those people never learned the basics of copywriting, headlines, keywords, titles, images - nearly anything connected to a web page. When you get into marketing, your result has to be intended from the outset - you are going to wind up exchanging your valuable good for something of theirs, usually money in some denomination.

Social media has conversations which are intensely enjoyable - but that is the end product for most of these: an enjoyable experience. So these conversations are not marketing, at best they are promotion, but mostly they are either educational or entertainment. Education always has some sort of agenda - and so is a form of promotion. The best entertainment has a story behind it, and people use these to evaluate and improve their lives - so entertainment is promotion.

Social media promotions don't equal marketing. Marketing can promote through social media to get traffic, but the result is traffic, not sales or subscriptions (potential leads).

eBay is a premier social network for marketing, since every sale is a classic reverse-funnel - you only get their email after they buy something from you. And so, this is reasonably the best introduction to online marketing, online sales, and the springboard to financial independence.

And all social media isn't equal. eBay could "almost" be considered social media, except for the common ideas (and reputation) surrounding it. It rather falls into the more formal "community" aspect instead of the wide-open cowboy-scene we have in MySpace and some of the others. Just talking about structure as the chief difference between earlier social communities and today's social media.

Creating your "aura" of authentic credibility through social media and comment marketing

Social media promotion is almost too easy. It follows fads even more closely than Google could ever (which explains why Google follows social media so much).

1. Go to popurls and find out what is going up on the world. Digg is another relatively painless way to find out what is considered "hot". Google trends and Yahoo's version of this - not so much. (They're simply too dinosaurian - can't move that fast.)
2. Pick a subject area you are interested in (preferably something you know about or are interested in enough to research).
   
3. Find blogs talking about this and start leaving comments which forward that conversation. Make darned sure that your web address (or several) is hotlinked (and not your email address). Preferably use Search Status plug-in to find blogs which don't use no-follow links. (Get your link love where you can - but this isn't essential.)
4. Make sure whatever is at your web address is representative of what you represent and every single link is monetized, either through affiliate sales or direct sales through your own ecommerce efforts.

If you do this well, people think you know what you are talking about and will want more from you. They come to your web address and you convert them to buyers.

Yes, this is simply comment marketing. Something that's been done on forums for years and before that the BBSes (yes, I'm that old).

Social media just adds a great deal wider variety of formats - such as pictures, slideshows, video, podcasts, etc. So you want to link to and use a great deal of these-type media in your posts.

This is marketing, because you are using social media intentionally to bring traffic to your web address which then converts them to buyers. Your intention is to get sales of your products from the get-go. You are creating a market.

Simply participating in the discussion isn't necessarily marketing - or even promotion. Only when that discussion leads to a sale or a future sale (ie - name on a mail list) is it marketing. Marketing has definite metrics - sitting around talking in a coffee shop only results in sales of coffee, muffins, and bathroom supplies. But you aren't selling coffee or any of that - so you're getting no return on the time you just invested.

That's the difference in marketing conversations and social media conversations.

- - - -

And tomorrow I start my 20 hours of day job. Usually too tired to do much after that (slogging heavy boxes and rugs around in someone else's warehouse isn't all that much fun).

Rest of tonight will probably be in listing my old books on Half.com - again, so that I could essentially raise my feedback without having the hassle of setting up auctions.

Most of the research on eBay itself is now done. The Tim Knox interview above really tied everything into a package. My own notes on HammerTap over the past few days show the advanced (and only profitable) way to go with this.

Next Tuesday is my first coaching session. Should be interesting.

Learning to become an eBay Online Millionaire - the training continues

Continue the eBay Online Millionaire training - research and strategies

Today, I'm continuing the basic research, but also keeping some MP3 interviews going in the background.

Notes from these:

Mike Enos - Your profit has to be at least $10 to be worth it to you. It's not how much sales you are doing, it's how much profit your getting. You want to pay as few fees as possible - keeping your overhead low. eBay fees are like taxes - you pay as little as you legally can.

And don't trade one job for another - where you're sweating all over the place to get your shipping done, like thousands of boxes a week. Hire someone for that when it gets profitable (watch that overhead).

Sydney Johnston - eBay is the introduction, not the whole game. Upsell every sale - buys a pair of ear-rings, send them an email: "Thanks for your purchase, did you know we have a matching bracelet for those?" They buy the bracelet, "Thanks for your purchase, did you know we have a matching ring for that?" You want to have a web site and get people over to that web site and sell from there. Means you have to sell on eBay first, but that's just the start. Once you have their email, you can then move them over to the website for off-eBay sales. You want multiple profits from each customer - your first sale doesn't have to be huge, just get that customer.

You don't personally buy on emotion. That will give you losses every time. Do your homework first. Find out if what demand there is for the product first (then find your supplier). You don't personally get involved in this - it's a business, get over it.

She actually likes to stay below everyone's radar and take her sales off-eBay rather than making all her sales through eBay. Then no one is watching what you're doing and what sales you are making, what products you are selling.

Get only reputable mentors to listen to (that includes this blog - compare what you are hearing to other standard business basics.)

You want to find the system that eBay runs on and then work that system. eBay works hard to be a silo and keep their participants right inside their set-up. And so have rules like not putting your own website address on their listing (it's actually their listing, not yours - you are paying them for the privilege of using their website). But they don't control your emails to your bidders and so that is where you can shine.

What started today's post - simple math on making online money.

What got me going today was simple math. Let's start at making $250 a week, which would make you a powerseller ($1000/month). If you are making $10 per sale, then you need to have 25 successful auctions per week - meaning at 50% success rate, you have to have 50 auctions running and ensure your other factors are accurate, like headline and copy, photos, etc.

It's just that simple. If your auctions are completing successfully at 80%, then you are going to need 40 auctions going each week.

Just work it backwards from what you want or need that week. When you find items that produce more profit - or have a higher success rate, then you'll need to run less auctions. Simple.

Playing Follow the Leader Research to start off your eBay career

From Instant Auction Profits Blog:
"Now that you know a little about researching certain items, let’s discuss finding hot markets. I use a technique that I like to call “Follow The Leader”. I call it that because that’s exactly what I do. I let other eBay sellers lead me right to the hot markets!

"As you begin researching items that you are interested in on eBay, you will come across many auctions that are selling for high prices. Many times, these auctions are listed by top notch eBay sellers. When I find an auction that interests me, I like to do a little digging into the seller’s eBay business. eBay allows you to get an insider’s look at their selling activity. This simple research technique has uncovered countless profitable opportunities for me.

"Here is exactly what I do. When I find an auction that interests me, I look at the box on the right side of the auction page that is titled “Meet The Seller”. The first thing that I look at is the number of feedback that the seller has. This is the number in parentheses right next to their seller ID. If they have a large number of feedback, chances are they have found one or more profitable markets that they are selling to. But don’t be fooled by a small number. They could just be getting started in a very good market. It takes a little more digging to uncover the truth.

"The next thing that I do is look at all of the items that the seller is selling. You can do this by clicking the link titled “View Seller’s Other Items”. If the seller has an eBay store, you can also view the items in their store by clicking the link under “View Seller’s Store”. This link will be the name of the seller’s store and will have the red eBay store icon next to it. Once you do this, you will be able to see exactly what the seller is selling.

"Next, you want to look at the seller’s completed items. Once you are on the page that lists the seller’s items that are currently for sale, simply click the box next to “Completed Listings” on the left side of screen. The results will show all of the items that the seller listed over the past 30 days. Look for sold auctions with the bid amount in green. This list will give you a good idea of where this seller’s income is coming from.

"Once you take this sneak peak into other seller’s eBay business, you can see what items they are selling on a consistent basis. If they made a lot of sales over the past 30 days, chances are they are selling to a hot market. This is a market that you want to be in. Don’t worry about competing with them. eBay has over 150 million users and counting. No one can monopolize any market. I have successfully entered many markets by using this exact technique….and I continue to use it successfully."

When you follow their lead, you can then study up on what they are selling, then research those particular items to see what you can sell profitably.

HammerTap (nor does eBay) readily disclose the items that have sold well. You can go to eBay's quarterly summary that tells what the best growing categories were for that quarter. Then, you can use HammerTap to drill down into those categories and find the selling profitable products, based on keywords.

Searching for Power Sellers - not as easy as typing it into Google

That's what I tried to do - since eBay doesn't just cough up a list of these for your research.

One approach - go to http://popular.ebay.com and find what is being searched for. Recall yesterday's eBay Online Millionaire lesson on the difference between trends and fads. I'm purposely not following the advice above, as I'm not going to follow my own "wants" or "what I'm interested in". I'm instead looking for what people are looking for.

Let's stay away from collectibles and one-of items, and look for stuff that is being routinely manufactured and should be a rising trend. Like satellite radio. Look this up on HammerTap (my version is Deep Analysis and not as full-featured as the latest HT version). Comes in at 63% completed auctions, with one seller doing 21 sales through Buy-It-Now (BIN) of $159. She's been selling a lot of Garmin products. Look her number up through HammerTap. She's got a 77.44% success rate. Did over $73K in sales during last 30 days. 375 items sold. She does this mostly through BIN. Ideal. Check out her sales page for the top item - she selling it way below list and says she ships immediately.

See, this is how it goes. Next, I'd check for competition for that exact item. See how many are being sold - Oh, this item has a 74% success rate and averages at $299. Now we're getting somewhere. A little more research and then I'd start looking for sources.

But you can see how it goes, eh?

Digital Products Kerfluffel - solutions you can use.

Interesting stuff here. eBay recently dropped digital downloads off their cliff. Now you can only sell CD's and DVD's right there on eBay. However, you can post classified ads for people to buy your product. Socrates Socratus, long a leader in digital downloads, is working up software which will burn and dropship your digital product to that customer. So the calvary is on the hill, ready to charge.

He gives two free reports (for your email), which give a lot of good ideas for this. He says that your classified ad last for 30 days and can have an opt-in form on it - means this ad can give you plenty of leads. Sure these are more expensive than auctions, but can potentially reach far more potential leads (buyers) than their auctions ever could.

And one of these PDF's (by John Thornhill) gives you a link to SwiftCD, who will burn your CD and drop ship it to anyone you want. Prices start at $3.69 - and drop after 2,000 (sell that many...)

Another link is Kunaki, which will manufacture and dropship - gives you a breakdown of shipping costs, as well as options - $6.75 from New York to my house in Missouri, 1.75 for that CD.

Your other option is to have these bulk produced and shipped to your house, then you can do what you want to move these items. Why this route? Your time is worth more than money. If you have several CD burners and professional labeling printer, plus printed mailers - then you're in business. But don't expect to send something out with some scribbling on it and expect to up-sell or cross-sell that customer on future products.

Kunaki looks good on this, but if you want to ship them yourself, try out Discmakers, who have a wide range of services - including automated disc burner/printers. (Plus, they routinely send you some very snazzy catalogues. You can get some great deals on bulk printing with beautiful packaging (lots of options) - but then you will have stacks of these that you need to sell on eBay.

Strategy here would then be to sell a few via Kunaki and then once you prove the market, get them produced in bulk (light bulk to start with) and start listing them regularly. (Of course your price would include their cost for shipping and your "handling cost" which would be the price Kunaki charges you for manufacturing ($1.75). What you get in the auction (minus ebay's fees) is all profit.

At this point, all your techniques for marketing (keywords, product research, etc.) come into play - since now you can create any sort of ebook from all that PLR material being given away regularly.

* Wild idea here * Create and format your book and publish it via Lulu. Set a comparative price to otehr similar books on Amazon (you can actually arrange Lulu to put it on Amazon for you as a printed book). Now, take that same digital file and create a download version - which you then offer as a CD through Kunaki. Of course, you state the price is $24.95 in print, but they can have the CD version (with all these listed bonus books) delivered right to their door.

Got another MP3 from Mike Enos

Here's the notes (I'll make the key points and then analysis in italics):

• Basics of eBay - easiest way to get started on the Internet: limited investment, short learning curve, no worries about getting traffic

• Advantages of eBay business - start and stop it when ever you want.

• Grow it at your own pace.

Getting started:

1. Learn how eBay works at eBay site - sign up and learn.
2. Sign up for PayPal - this is 80% of your payments.
3. Get your feedback up beyond 50. Do this by buying ebooks from different buyers until you have the feedback total you want. (this is still possible at this writing - but track your sellers as you go, to ensure you don't buy from the same guy twice. Another idea - get products with resale rights.)
   Reason for increasing your feedback is to build trust. People won't buy from you with a feedback score of 0.

Establish Your Goals (business goals):

1. How much time dedicate to building the business?
   How much money do you need/want to make?
   What kind of lifestyle do you want?
   Do you want employees?
   Money isn't an end in itself - what are you going to do because you've earned that money - it's only a tool.
2. Set goals - short, medium, and long-term.
3. Figure out how much your time is worth. How much do you want to make this month - means you have to make so much per week, per day, per hour you work at it. (note: a 40-hour work-week will need $200,000 per hour, 50 weeks a year.)
   
4. Start figuring your overhead - opting for high-speed over dial-up, you save time - but that investment has to pay for itself on a monthly basis.
   
5. You can grow your eBay business at your own pace. Start part time while you pay your bills with day job. Little pressure on you this way.

What do you want to sell? Sources

a. Drop Shipping - Don't get the most-used drop-shipper with the most demanded product. (See comments about trends vs. fads.) You don't want competition - if you can find it at Wal-Mart of a big-box store, don't list it. Don't copycat or sell what everyone else is selling - sell less competitive items. (But you might have to start by mimicking high sellers - great training.) Drop shippers might have backlogs when they run out.
b. Wholesale - Make sure they aren't selling on eBay themselves. Buy and stock the minimal possible. Don't use the largest wholesaler in the nation, use a smaller wholesaler and get as close to the manufacturer as possible.
c. Importing - low, low price. expensive to ship, language barrier, money tied up for months (containers at a time is thousand$).
globalsources.com
alibaba.com - PLR manufacturers
d. Refurbished goods - low competition, awesome margins; go to manufacturer's website and type "refurbished" in the website, then look if resell on ebay
e. Liquidated goods - surplus or auctioned off; no competition. search for "liquidated goods" liquidation.com (check your prices) ubid.com
f. Local auctions - have someone check these items on the computer
g. Knowledge product (information product) - limits competition if you develop it yourself. (Nowadays has to have a CD or book - see drop-shipping solutions above, unless you sell it as a classified ad.) Make sure it's a quality product and deliver more than expected.
h. Consignment selling - selling other people's products. Concentrate on higher-priced items.
i. One-off's (one-sies) - only if high priced (high margin)
j. No low-cost items unless you can make it up in volume (or are using this as a loss-leader to get qualified leads/mail-list subcriptions)

How to get more bids and higher closing prices -

• Get your feed back up.
• Add testimonials.
• Compress your pictures.
• Add audio - brief.
• Add video to show people what to do.
• Make your ad attractive and easy to read.
• Use high-quality templates.

You see that Mike covers some new stuff I'd not told you about before, but the essentials are the same. Mike got into this because he was earlier a computer consultant - and was spending 12-hour days away from his new son. Discovering eBay helped him get his life back.

Another key point is the section on business goals. He emphasized - as do every mentor I find in this research - that you need to apply real-life business basics to this and run it as a business. This includes setting and achieving goals. If you run this as a hobby, you wind up with the results of a hobby - just a drain on your bank account and time.

Getting your high feedback scores

Just as a note here - something that I've been doing as I listened to that MP3 above. For right now, there are still a few of these informational products left on eBay. They are mostly .99 each, with no shipping. So getting your feedback score up past 50 will cost you just under than. My idea is to ensure that your products also have resale rights and are worth reselling. (If you're worried about your wife or some family member discovering that you're selling "Karma-Sutra Sex: How to Make Incredible Love", then stick to eBay How To guides. (And you can bundle all these eBay how-to guides under a single package and re-sell them for a lot more over and over and over - because you have resell rights...)

At I write this, there are even .01 auctions still going on. I did buy at some stores, where I don't know that I'll get feedback, but that's 3 cents before I discovered that fluke. Just re-did the search to have auction only, with BIN and free shipping.

(An interesting one was that one seller gave me the option of paying for "insurance" for that digital download... made her look shifty, didn't it?)

Another interesting point is that I signed up for a mail list in order to get one mega offer (200-some ebooks).

Five Minute Research Recipe

(From HammerTap's forum:)

"Now, you can see that in five minutes, I could look through the Findings window and cook up answers to the following questions:

• What are my chances of selling? (LSR)
• How much can I expect to make? (ASP)
• Which Listing Type will increase my ASP and LSR?
• Which Start Day and End Day will increase my ASP and LSR?
• Which End Hour will increase my ASP and LSR?
• Which Listing Duration will increase my ASP and LSR?
• What Start Price will increase my ASP and LSR?
• What key Title Words will increase my ASP and LSR?
• What Listing Features will increase my ASP and LSR?

"Now the recipe is this—create a smooth combination of these options and your success will be higher than the average and your sales price will also be higher than average."

- - - -

Well, run out of steam for this evening. Still have about 15 more cheap items to buy in order to have my 50 feedback above. Already getting some of this feedback in, but these guys don't agree on how to ship products or deliver feedback at all - so it's all over the place. And some of their emails don't say what their ebay user name is, so leaving feedback could be problematic if not for the records I'm keeping.

But I'm certainly getting an idea of what good sales pages look like. And why you should spend just so much time on them... Buyers are already pre-sold, you are just pushing them over the edge - so your copy should reflect that. Have to remind myself to tell you about this beautiful sales page which must have taken days to build - and only got some 19 sales out. Good money, but not efficient (as far as that $200,000 per hour above).

Tomorrow will show more product research, as I check out those links we got from the MP3 above. See you then...

Using eBay to create an Online Millionaire - a course on the fly

Creating an eBay Online Millionaire - and writing a new online course meanwhile

Of course, all this eBay research is going to mean what I extensively revise my approach to making online millions. Because as I try all these things, I find out new things. While I've researched and written all the different ways to get something going, that hasn't happened for me - mainly due to my own lack of back end. And so the structure which I'm getting through this coaching is where it all comes to play.

The other reason for my slow start was the lack of a Napoleon Hill "BURNING DESIRE" (his emphasis). I've another post to write about this subject, over at my Modern View blog, but suffice to say that until you really get a fire under your own butt, you won't quit sitting on the smoldering logs. People, even me, don't want to move out of their comfort zone.

Means that my mental notes for An Online Millionaire Plan Course (when I get around to it) are changing pretty radically. When you get down to the bottom of this post, you'll see why. But it doesn't change the basics - just puts new light on them, as well as a different emphasis. eBay is just another route to your millions.

Keywords and building your website

Thought I'd pretty much figured all this out, but then I got this nice summary in a recent email I got from Bright Builders (which I've reformatted):

• Keep your title tag short (8 words or less) and ensure it is compelling.
• Use the keyword that you are targeting only once in the title.
• Use a compelling meta description tag. Keep it 10-20 words in length (this text will appear below the title in a search result).
• Use the keyword phrase just once in the meta description.
• Use the keyword meta tag, but keep the keywords generic.
• List five or fewer keyword phrases in the keyword meta tag.
• Avoid unnecessary meta tags.
• Build up your viewable content to at least 450 words per page.
• Use the keywords in the content naturally, so the text flows.
• Do not keyword-stuff your content, or you may turn off your visitor.
• Launch a campaign to get links to your site and be consistent with it.

Matt Cutts, senior engineer at Google: "If you create a web page that is well designed, and the content is informative and is exactly what the searcher is looking for, we will do our best to make sure that your page comes up in the top ten. However, don't think that you can just throw up any page or copy content - the text must be original."

It's always the Buyers' Market - Attracting buyers versus shoppers

Peculiar to HammerTap and eBay is that you can see what keywords actually brought buyers to your site - versus shoppers who are "just looking." Buyers are what you want. And buyers already know exactly (or pretty exactly) what they want.

Which brings us to how viewers have evolved along with search engines. Keywords are hot, but keyword phrases tuned to your product are the hottest way you can have to get people right to your auction in eBay. Viewers (especially buyers) are now search engine savvy. They don't just type in "motorcycles", but will enter "Honda 350 All-Terrain". So your long-tail keyword (as if you could still find such a motorcycle) would actually get your buyers. Being tops in "motorcycles" will get you shoppers. Doesn't mean you don't use "Honda 350 All-Terrain motorcycles" if you routinely wind up top in rankings - but realize that bringing more shoppers to your site will increase your traffic, but drop your conversion rate. So shoppers actually just suck your bandwidth and don't pay for it. You want buyers.

HammerTap helps you find buyers because it shows how the keywords are related to sales (and/or lack of them). You can actually research down and find which keywords were associated for top completed auctions for that particular item. And then build your title from those keywords - only.

A point here. Each and every successful auction in eBay (barring a handful of exceptions) only sells long-tail niche items. Buyers buy, shoppers just keep shopping. Buyers are pre-sold. Shoppers are impulse-based. Buyers pay for bandwidth (and hosting fees). Shoppers suck - bandwidth. True, shoppers can be converted to buyers - but let's take the easy route: invest in buyers and shoppers might also show up. (If you invest in shoppers, the inverse isn't necessarily true.)

So your title is simply long-tail niche keywords.

Now this rolls right into everything we've already been covering in An Online Millionaire Plan. The money is in the niches, not in the mega-marts. You can take over search engine real estate for niches, but ignore trying to take over the big (shopper) keywords.

There are apparent exceptions. I was pointed to the term "gavel". And a website owner has that keyword for his site - and was trained though Bright Builders. But look at that keyword. It's a one-word niche. It won't be found under "hammers" or "judges". The guy has a site completely devoted to selling gavels - straight up and deluxe presentation kits.

But when you make a long-tail niche keyword phrase and optimize your landing page around it, then you have buyers only coming to find that item there (or accessories for it).

The strategy with eBay (and how you become an Online Millionaire through this) is to then sell on eBay as a lead generator - and then get reverse funnel buyers to subscribe to your site. You make clients of them (plus the other bidders to your auction).

Build your big site - but do it one product at a time. You don't make money selling only sizzle - people ultimately pay for steaks.

This gives us a sequence. Set your site up with a handy shopping cart - but have single, individual landing pages for each site - which are keyword optimized (including theming) for that long-tail keyword. Every single link on that page is optimized, including all affiliate links to similar products. But unless they are going off your mini-web to an affiliate, don't give them an option to go somewhere else.

(One strategy is to give them a link off site - but have this with a giveaway that they can subscribe to a mailing list to get... before you let them leave - and then send them to a search engine page with your links on it. Idea behind this (not mine, but still clever) is to give them a back button right on your site - but then expose them to more offers, so you are servicing your customer, but it's on your own terms. I suppose you could send them to your list of auctions, which would put them back on eBay...)

Mastering Trends - versus "following the buzz"

"What's hot" is a misnomer. The flame isn't the hot part of a fire - the heat is actually given off by the coals. Following the "hottest trends" is a sure route to ruin. Because this is where everyone is heading with their own marketing.

Recall the datum of Product Life Cycle. At the beginning there isn't a lot of supply, but the demand is increasing. Getting into the market right now will cost you a bit, but there is a lot of money to be made because demand is outstripping supply. At the peak (when it's finally noticed as "hot"), the supply is wide open with lots of distribution points - and profits are thin, mostly in the Big Box stores who already have customers (creatures of habit, remember) who shop there - and buy other stuff while they are "shopping". The third section is where it goes into a niche product. Most people probably already have that product, but will be looking for accessories or spare/replacement parts. (Late adopters are another subject entirely - but another reason to sell after it's "cooled off" a bit. Take advantage of others creating the market for you - it's their advertising dollars, not yours.)

You always, always, always want to find high demand, low supply. These only exist on the two sides of that peak. You don't follow fads and make any money at it.

But trends are not just "what's hot".

Trends have human social reasons for existing. They do not burn out like fads and "hot" items. Trends can be tracked. Fads are a blip on the screen - straight up and straight down.

Christmas sales patterns are repeating trends - as are most holiday-shopping "seasons." These are recurring waves of sales with peaks and valleys. On the Internet, these waves have been getting bigger every year since the Internet started - which can be said for brick-and-mortar sales during the same periods.

[Pure controversial statement: Global temperatures are natural trends, they shift every thirty years or so from hot to colder and back - within the realm of a few degrees. Al Gore and his "prestigious" awards are a fad - and he got those awards after the hottest year on record (1998, per NASA) in the last few decades. ]

Trends drive product sales. You look for trends first and then the products which are part of that trend. Only then can you source for profitable individual items to sell.

Now, environmental awareness is a human trend. And "green" products are becoming more and more common. Stuff made with recycled materials, or use less energy. Or converting to biofuel (like diesels which can run on vegetable oil - not expensive ethanol).

Boomers are a trend. And Europe has a worse boomer problem than the U.S. - their immigration problem is also much worse than ours. Boomers want to retain their health as long as possible with a high disposable income to buy it with. Gen "Y", Gen "X", etc. have differing wants and needs - but they aren't as big a demographic and won't be.

There are eight drives (mostly) for trends:

• consumer/customer/client wants
• consumer/customer/client needs
• lifestyle changes
• (shifting) demographics
• new technologies
• innovations
• long tail niches
• economics

Notes on these: Wants are different from actual needs. The old saw is that "we buy what we want and then justify it to be what we needed." Food is a need - "fast food" is a want. New technologies are bringing tons of new products to view - and new versions of old products combined with newer technologies. Any niche you have is splitting as it grows into long-tail niches.

Now you don't have to be trendy or a trendsetter to study and research trends. It doesn't take more than HammerTap and the media you already use to study trends and know what is going on (although once you get the gist of how this is done, you'll start seeing trends in every thing that comes across your lines). And this should be part of your regular research habits.

Here's three trend-spotting websites:
http://www.trendwatching.com
http://www.influxinsights.com
http://www.trendhunter.com
Some of these are "interesting" to say the least - themselves verging toward fads, but these should get your head out of any rut about what you think acceptable trends are.

What you are doing is to set aside your own personal biases and just observer buyers buying. You have to get around whether you think that trend makes sense or not, or whether you'd personally buy it. Forget "what's hot" and look for "what's selling". Just look down your magazine racks and you'll see what is being pushed by advertisers, based on their market research. Also, look for trade publications - find the trade publication for your product by typing in your product (in quotes) and then "+ trade publications".

Once you find how trends are moving, get some sample products (especially as you check through HammerTap) test-market them, and then sell them if they are profitable. Thinking creatively will give you so many more ideas about what could be sold. Checking your percent completed will give you an idea of these. However, note that you might be ahead of the curve and you will have few auctions - so the studies may not support it.

But this is where last year's auctions come in. Look for similar products that have sold in the past and this will give you some idea of how it will perform.

By studying and taking action on the trends you notice, you will actually put yourself a bit ahead of the curve - a very profitable area if you predict it right. What you will notice that these 8 points above will cross-connect to give very long-lasting trends. (New technologies for boomers...) Getting into a product line first will give you great products until that line gets saturated. You can continue selling it as a regular item on your website, but by then your auctions will have new items you are testing and buying by bulk when they do prove out.

Idea here is a simple set of basics:

• Start trend-watching as a back-of-the-mind habit.
• Look for products within that trend.
  
• Test-market and sell new products for a rising trend. (Or look for accessories or updates to supplement a declining trend.)
  
• Trends morph and change - so your trend research and product testing need to be constant in order to maintain maximal profits.
• Keep an eye out for repeating social trends such as buying seasons. Keep up with the advertising schedules of the Big Box stores. Remember, individuals move faster than the big stores. Be aware, be prepared, and be insanely profitable.
  

Holiday selling doesn't mean redecorating the trees in the front yard.

Christmas and other holidays repeat their trends (above) and are insanely profitable if you plan for them. By researching last year's shopping statistics, you can expect to improve your preparations for this year's sales. Per report, more and more people are venturing online to shop. One report has it that over 40% of buyers intend to buy something online this year.

Biggest sales days: (in order)

• Dec 13th, Dec 4th, Dec 11th

Biggest traffic days:

• Dec 13th, Dec 12th, Dec 11th

Biggest conversion days:

• Dec 12th, Dec 11th, Dec 13th

Biggest week:

• Dec 4th - 10th

This doesn't mean you only sell and prepare for Christmas - but you can and should research for sales days (Mother's Day, Father's Day, Memorial Day, etc.) which are global or American peak sales points - and then figure out what you can sell.

Once you have a holiday shopping period nailed, you can then look through top categories for 90 days worth of sales through that period. Look for maximal success rates and prices.

You're looking through your analysis to find a few key things:

• what auction type to use
• what ending day (and hour) will be best for you
• how long a listing duration should you use
• is there a starting price that creates a bidding frenzy
• keywords which produce the best hooks
• listing features which work (and ones to avoid)
• what's the most effective category to put your auction under

All these are answered in the HammerTap program - and I really recommend you study their tutorials from their forum. That's the homework I've been doing for these eBay posts - in addition to everything BrightBuilders has and my own collection of ebooks.

What you do in searching past sales is to take snapshots of three-month and then weekly periods to see how these change over time. Look at the dates above. Now people start shopping for Christmas in October - and don't forget about Black Friday, as well as the shopping after Christmas when there are probably less competitors (who buy the idea that no body sells after Christmas). In short, don't neglect to turn over every rock in your search for the best time to sell.

Your mileage will vary depends on your own research. (And every single item performs differently.) But ny getting these snapshots (and HammerTap saves each report so you can jump between each one), you can see trends. As you keep up such research, you can then find other peak selling periods for your particular item. Again, look for completed sales versus average price. Where there is a high competition, these will change. But through your own analysis, you can find where the peaks and valleys are.

This post shorthands the subject quite a bit. And if you've not seen these forum presentations, then I've got you completely mystified. Once you see the power of this program, you'll be hooked like me. (But I, on the other hand, have already invested in this and have to recoup that investment - so you can see my own necessary excitement in this.)

Another approach is to search through categories to find best-selling categories - then pile through these to find what items in those sold the best last year. Chances are, if they have new items this year, they'll have similar sales potential. (But don't go out and buy a container of these things without doing very thorough research first.


And what does this say for your SEO efforts and your social media promotions?

Frankly, a lot. Ok, so I don't know at this time that when you optimize a sales page using your keywords for eBay that this translates right across to top search engine real estate. But figure this - maybe you don't particularly have to depend on search engines to have people find your site. Get the top for that keyword in StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit - and then have these social networks send you traffic. Maybe you only get shoppers - but on the other hand, if you are consistently setting yourself up as an expert in this area (particularly if you are posting articles and making Squidoo lenses, as well as comment marketing), people will be following you in Twitter and these others in order to see what you are talking about these days.

But you go ahead and social promote every single product sales page you create. Again, your sales page will probably be written as a product review page - and then have a link to your "buy this product now" page. (And wouldn't it be great if you did a comparison page and sold either all of these products or were an affiliate for each one/some of them...)

Why I tell you constantly about social media promotion is that either social media are replacing search engines, or search engines are going to expand their use of social media to find better content to display. Either way, if you aren't on the social media bandwagon, you won't be able to keep up in the profit parade.

But if these eBay keywords are the same - and remember, they are long-tail niche keywords - you are going to get buyers coming to your specific pages to find what they are looking for. And while they are there - they can bookmark your page and sign up for your mail list and become your client.

That's the underlying basic to everything we are covering here. You want to attract buyers who come and spend money on your services (or a company you are an affiliate for).

Again, eBay or not, you'd build your main page first (an ecommerce engine of some sort) and ensure it has a mail list subscription opt-in (and all the necessary analytics connected to it) and then start building individual product pages, which all link in and give link-love to your main page. You are building a mini-net, one product at a time. Now your eBay sales drive business over to your product info page - which sends it to your ecommerce page. As you continue to add products, they build up your page rank and bring you more attention from the search engines. Videos and slidecasts and blog posts and Squidoo lenses will also bring traffic to your product pages. Hopefully, you are attracting buyers in all this traffic.

eBay, then, is a simple reverse-funnel lead generator for mail-list subscribers - which you can then up-sell and cross-sell over and over and over. When you plug this into your existing online marketing structure, you build a devoted and profitable client-base. And that is how you become an Online Millionaire. And any millionaire will tell you that you diversify your income sources - so eBay is only one way to get buyers and subscribers. (Boy, that paragraph would make a nice ebook, wouldn't it...)

Getting your feedback rating up quickly - an investment.

I've run across a simple feedback method - essentially, find low-cost items that are ending soon with no bidders. Search eBay and find:

• Items with no bids on them.
• Items that you want!
• Or, items that NOBODY would likely want (better chance of being the winning bidder!)
• Dutch Auctions (will usually guarantee you a winning bid)
• Auctions that are ending soon.
• Auctions that allow payment via credit card (quick transaction)
• Sellers with a high rating!

Then, when you buy the item pay immediately - and ask for feedback with your email.

But watch out for high shipping. Don't even bother bidding if they have something far over the normal shipping costs. (Oh - and if you are smart, you can re-auction that item, or give it away as a bonus...)

You do want to get your feedback rating over 50 as fast as you can, which can come from sales or buying - so invest in your feedback and it will do you well.

Note: a little product research can net you some tidy profits by buying cheap on eBay and then turning around to sell it high - based on what you already know in this area. Lots of people buy right on eBay and turn around to sell it. So your investment in feedback can double up when you sell it for a profit.

FAQ - Frequently Asked Question Pages

Here's another tip. If you're selling a lot of something, have a FAQ page which answers all the routine questions. Now you can always tack this onto the bottom of your Review page as well, with in on-page link to that section (and another one there back to the top). If you do a standalone FAQ page, it should be worth your social media promotion - and grab its own search engine real estate, sending its link-love to your main page with a no-follow link back to your sales page for that item.

The efficiency of a FAQ page is to save you time in answering questions. You answer the first question and tell them that there is far more information on the FAQ page. However, by including the FAQ at the bottom of the sales page, you can save yourself the emails.

On the other hand, being able to communicate with your bidders will actually give you a personal contact, the chance you need to build the relationship. And your email signature will give them a chance to see your other sites - as well, sending them to your FAQ page (or back to your "more information page" about that product on your own site, you have a chance to make a direct sale or get them to subscribe to your mail-list (give them a bonus, etc.).

Your credibility and your articles can increase sales

Increasing credibility of your website can be done by hosting your own (or others') articles on your own site. If you can link to articles about this product or related products right on your own site (which then link right back to related sales pages, plus specials) will then tell your customer that they can come to this site for more than just buying a product, but actually how to use that product in their own life. As you do research on this area, you can collect up data and then write 500-700 word articles handling a specific point about that product - with hot links to any product you mention by name.

Oh - and did I tell you that these articles then are social promoted to get you more link-love?

(I wouldn't, however, go so far as to host your own forum, since you have to moderate these to keep out the spammers and riff-raff.)

Other uses for eBay - why become a salesperson.

This gives you an overall experience in selling stuff, becoming a merchandiser. That is all Sam Walton did when he founded Wal-Mart. (His first store was a failure, by the way.) But Wal-Mart is constantly finding the sweet-spot, how many people will buy what at what price. Same as eBay particularly when you use a key research tool like HammerTap.

Our culture currently develops a very low appreciation for salesman in everyone. (Right down there just above lawyers and rocks.) So people simply don't appreciate this very highly-paid tradition and occupation. (See Earl Nightingale's "Strangest Secret".) But as you get over this trained-in aversion, you can then build up your back-end to support this vital, highly-remunerative activity.

That is the essential that I've had to overcome as part of this Online Millionaire Plan. And probably one of the reasons I stuck into my product creation activities instead of building my back end when I started out.

But however you do it, forcing yourself to get in there and sell stuff is good for you. On eBay, it's a bit easier than going door-to-door, since you don't have to meet people face-to-face and can simply do it from a number-crunching aspect through HammerTap.

Now with the proper tools, eBay doesn't have to have a burn-out aspect. Drop shipping and HammerTap take a great deal of the stress out of this area. You want to be efficient with your time and earn the most money from your listings.

• Not selling (50% of most auctions currently complete with no bids right now) isn't an option you want to have.
• Having to package and ship stuff personally can get tedious.
• Spending a great deal of time finding salable items at yard sales and auctions - hoping you can get a good return from them - is a bit stressful and can load up your garage with some very interesting non-moving items.

If you organize and get the proper tools, none of these common aspects of eBay auction work should bring you down.

My key point in this is to get a coaching program to get you over the hump of selling on eBay and helping you build your backend to make it all happen. The program I dropped into, Bright Builders, has a top track record in this area and a website with so many different resources it can fill several CD's with that data.

But it's pricey - which makes you commit to making yourself a success with it. Sure, they guarantee you'll make it all back. Know at the outset, though, that YOU are the one who is going to getting that work done.

Once you've swallowed that pill of getting yourself to sell to make back the money you just loaded up your credit card with - then you can make some forward progress.

And that's why I recommend it.

Is all eBay sales this number-crunching effort?

No. And you don't have to be an accountant to succeed in what you're doing. But my enthusiasm for HammerTap is that anyone can now find exactly what sales, what time to sell it, what keywords to use, what hour to sell it, how long to sell it for, what special mark-ups work and which don't, etc. etc. etc. You just can't get this data to this degree and quality by looking up completed sales on Ebay and then guessing.

So get a bit twisty in this and get some real analysis going. Sure HammerTap costs by the month. But then - if you're making monthly income, it tends to pay far beyond your monthly investment, doesn't it?

It's the road to power selling - and their own studies show that existing power sellers have improved their own sales by 40%, while cutting their listings by 50% - making more money with less time. Neat.

- - - -

What's next?

I've basically exhausted all the stuff in my library and the forums at this point. Now I need to practice and put all this stuff to use. I'll also be getting into my own website and posting some stuff shortly (today) in order to have a rudimentary site ready to send my clients to.

That's what you can look forward to in my next post...