When I first started looking at getting into an online business, it was with every intention that my efforts would focus on cooking and recipes. After all, I am a trained chef, I’ve cooked in restaurants and owned my own catering business, and cooking seems to be the only place I seem to have any creativity.

I got myself off track after seeing how many cooking and recipe sites there are out there and deciding I needed to learn more about doing business on the web. You know how completely I got sucked into that pit!

Kindle actually has been the impetus for me to venture back into the food niche. I am told that cookbooks rank in the top 10 for downloads of Kindle books, so I’m spending some time with that.  I’ve edited a couple of public domain books, and now I’m writing one about meringues (no, not just the fluffy stuff you put on top of lemon pies – when you flavor the meringue and bake it crisp, it’s very good!) I’m hoping to have it offered for sale on Kindle in a week or so. And of course, it will be coming to a web site near you, as well, for the non-Kindle readers.

And article marketing will be a part of the marketing program.

I’ve been really lazy about doing article marketing – which is just plain stupid, given how effective it is to getting traffic to your site. I did a few articles about my Ireland site and actually saw some traffic generated, even though that’s another over-saturated niche. But then I got distracted (surprise!) by the newest shiny thing and didn’t follow through.

I do have roughly a bajillion articles/article packs sitting on my hard drive. Many of them are duplicates, I know, and it’s just plain annoying to have to go through a file simply titled “900 PLR Articles” to try to figure out what they’re about. But who do I have to blame? I am making myself spend an hour each day doing just that, though. Most of the articles are on internet marketing topics and most of those are awful, so I’m clearing up some space on my hard drive. And, the ones on other subjects are often pretty bad, too. I’m thinking that for most of the giveaway article packs, ‘you get what you pay for’ is especially true.

I have found a new offering, though, that I’m thinking is pretty impressive, especially for free. A fellow named Mike Steup, who seems to have found his niche in everything to do with articles, is offering a free daily set of 5 articles. He cautions that they are very rough and need editing/rewriting work, but they are a starting point. I just got my first set (they’re about aerobic exercise, and I’ll be able to use them on one of my sites, I think), and I am impressed. They will need some rewriting and editing, but only to get around the duplicate content thing and to maybe add some content (they run a bit over 400 words per article). They are good enough to use as is.

Of course the reason he’s giving these away is so he can tell you about his other products, but I’m thinking it’s well worth a little sales copy to have access to this quality. You should take a look by clicking here.

I’m back to my recipes. Have a great weekend – a great holiday weekend, if you’re here in the U.S.

Well, they’ve been very quiet for me. Sales are waaay slow. I thought for a minute that the trend in the books I am selling was toward the “make money online” kind. But then I sold some cookbooks, so who knows? I also admit I’m not giving enough attention to my listings. Definitely need to look at listing titles and see if I can’t do a whole lot better. And, as is always the case, I need to continue adding new ebooks.

And, of course, I’m continuing to work on diversifying my online stuff. I have several new blogs that I hope will draw in some adsense revenue, and I’ll be looking to add affiliate products there.

I stumbled across some information about a new system for getting started online that looks quite interesting. It’s called The Guru Assassin, and it’s being released on Thursday. I was very tempted by it, but then I remembered my promise to myself not to buy anything new until I got my blog system completely in place. I did ask for a review copy, and I’m very impressed. (They vary with each marketer and product, but review copies are generally more of an outline or part of the program so a reviewer can get a sense of what the product does.)

Anyway, not to take too much of your time, The Guru Assassin looks to be a pretty near perfect vehicle for folks new to internet marketing to get started, and get started making money quickly. The developer of the course, Jonny Andrews, says the “gurus” have it all wrong, that they tend to just rehash and recycle old information, and don’t really help folks. Having purchased a number of these new shiny things, I can attest to the truth of that. Andrews approaches this whole thing differently – even backwards according to the guru common knowledge – and gets results. If you’re struggling with how you want to get started, take a look at The Guru Assassin. It’s pretty inexpensive for all that’s being offered, too.

I’m off to work on my other blogs, hopefully to be more productive that I’ve been in the last few days!

Be well.

You’ve listened to me nag before about diversifying your business, but I wanted to let you know about this new program from Andrew Hanson, a well-known, very successful online marketer.

It’s the coolest new tool, and it’s called FirePow (see the new banner?), and I think it’s an amazing product. Well, it’s actually more than a product; it’s several tools and a community of folks all working to build massive blog networks.

We all know that niche marketing is the way to generate ongoing streams of income. Find a niche that’s underserved, give them good information and products, and you’ll make money. Find another niche, do the same thing, and again and again, and you’ll build a very nice income.

That’s the basic idea of FirePow, and it provides all the tools you need to be able to get your information on the web and indexed quickly. I’m just blown away with it.

Here’s just a bit of what this incredible system does:

1. Builds you a blog from scratch with just a few clicks of the mouse. You tell it how you want the blog to look, the keywords you’re looking to target, what plugins you want to use, and a few other goodies, and it spits the blog out for you. That’s no FTP, no database creation, no messing around with code – just a few clicks and you’re away.

2. It helps you promote your site – in multiple ways in fact. It has in house features that help you post content to article directories for promotion, to social bookmarking services for promotion, to RSS Feed Directories for promotion, and even has it’s own niche blog network of high PR sites from which you can get relevant backlinks!

3. It lets you manage all of your blogs from a central control panel! That means when you have 5 blogs running, you can easily see from ONE screen which blogs need new posts, which blogs are ranking where in the search engines, and you can make changes to any of the sites from one spot.

You do still need to do some work; I’m not going to tell you that by clicking a few places this system is going to set you up for life. Doing the niche research, putting your own spin on the information, etc., are all still necessary. It’s just that FirePow takes you through the techy stuff, freeing your time for the money-making stuff.

I got the great program included with another coaching program that unfortunately is now closed. However, Firepow is very much available, and you can get it at a discounted price for a time (I honestly don’t know when the price will change, but Firepow has been on the market for awhile). Click here or on the banner to the right of your screen. However, if you decide to buy, click to leave the screen first. You’ll get one of those virtual assistants offering a discount.

If you have any interest at all in niche marketing (and you should), be sure to at least look at the sales page. I’m just sorry I didn’t get into this program months ago!

My husband and I went to Las Vegas for a few days, and all I brought back was a major cold. I think I’m well enough now that I can make some sense, but if I sound blurred, please understand it’s because I am!

Speaking of Las Vegas, did you know there is now an eBay slot machine? I found it in one of the downtown casinos, so of course I had to play. Guess what? It didn’t do anything but take my money. Surprise!

Maybe they need the marketing push and income, given this:

The AuctionBytes Newsletter of November 21 reported that “eBay Page Views Drop Off Dramatically in October.” According to the article, Nielsen Online data shows a disturbing 30% drop in page views this past October compared to the same time last year. You can view the article here, and see the charts, if you can stand to look at them.

I do know that my sales have been meager, as have the sales of the other sellers I watch. Certainly the dour economy has a lot to do with this, but I can’t help but wonder if it hasn’t been brought on some by the turmoil of all the changes at eBay. Logic tells me that in bad times folks are going to be looking for bargains – with eBay a logical place to begin. And even with gas prices falling, shopping online should still be more attractive than running around to the mall or several stores.

eBay has contacted store owners about promotions they’re implementing – coupon offers and a cash back partnership with Microsoft Live Search, for example. They’re also pushing store owners to use their email marketing tool. What I’d really like to see, though, is the kind of ad campaign they ran a while back that emphasized the fun and ease of using eBay.

With all that, we come back to diversifying our online businesses. I’ve found a couple of reports I thought you might find helpful, both gifts from one of my favorite subscriptions, Pirates Of The Public Domain. (Check out the site and free newsletter for a boggling amount of information about using public domain information to make money!)

Click on the images below to download your free pdf books.

Niche Hunter

Public Domain 6 Step Formula

With that I leave you for my couch and blankie and hot tea. Happy and profitable reading.

I signed up a few weeks ago for some training by a marketer who’s list I’ve been on awhile and who seemed a regular, up-and-up guy. He’s young and apparently has built himself quite an empire. His instruction so far is in line with all I’ve been learning. I joined the traning, hoping to get a little kick in the backside on my journey to creating my own product. No rocket science concepts, just straight-up do this, then do that, then do the next thing kind of information.

Apparently somewhere in the registration process I entered my real phone number, and today I had the pleasure of speaking with a young man in the employee of this empire. We had a nice chat, and I waited to see what it was I was going to be sold. Turns out it’s mentoring, a perfectly reasonable pitch as a continuation of the free information I was getting. I explained that I understand how valuable mentoring could be, but that I’m not ready to make a financial commitment right now.

That’s when the conversation went a little sideways. This nice young man asked if I knew the concept of OPM. Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I do understand the concept of Other People’s Money. However, my understanding of it and his understanding of it don’t quite jibe. He seemed to be under the impression that using a credit card constituted using somebody else’s money.

Ummm, no it doesn’t. And I do hope he and the rest of that organization truly are just confused about the concept and not trying to con folks into feeling safe about using their credit cards/credit lines to pay for their mentoring.

You see, you can call your credit card company and ask them if, once you authorize that charge, they consider the obligation yours or theirs. Go ahead, ask. Just don’t tell them who you are or what your account is, because I’m sure they’ll have some pretty serious questions about your ability to understand the terms of your agreement with them.

Once you authorize a charge, the money is yours, as is the debt, the requirement that you pay it back with interest. This is no way constitutes using anybody’s money but your own. It’s the very basis of credit and borrowing, no matter how a sales person may try to change the wording to make it seem something it isn’t.

Now, I would have been okay with the fellow suggesting that if I had credit available, investing in myself and my education might be a good use of those funds. That’s fair and true. But trying to turn that expenditure into something that it clearly is not is distressing.

I will be canceling my participation in the training. Even if it was giving me new and great information, rather than reinforcing concepts I already know about, I just don’t want to have any association with a program that either doesn’t understand money (best case) or that is purposefully trying to fool me with misrepresentations.

Be well.

I finished my first reading of Blogging To The Bank 3.0 and can recommend it to anyone who’s thought about getting into blogging for cash. This isn’t a wildly excited two-thumbs up product, but it does give a good grounding to get you on your way.

This system is all about selling affiliate products through your blog, something the author has been doing with good result for a number of years. He explains the hows and whys of research quite plainly, and it’s enough to get you started.

This third version in the Blogging To The Bank series was updated to include more information about generating traffic from social networking. As you probably know, that aspect of online marketing seems to change every hour or so, with new networks and new strategies. In that, I think he’s done a good job in explaining the concepts and pointing you in the right direction.

Benwell recommends using Google’s Blogger rather than Wordpress blogs and shows how to get everything set up clearly, with a number of screen shots, and including the steps you need to take to make the blog search engine friendly. He talks about putting ads on your site, how to find them, and how to get them placed. There are tips for search engine optimisation, and he spends a lot of time on getting traffic with traditional methods, as well as Web 2.0 tactics.

This is a good place to start if you’re just getting into money blogging, but there are a few things in the book for folks who have some knowledge or who have started their own blog empire. I have some new SEO things to do and a few new ideas about generating traffic to put to use.

I also picked up some nice bonuses: more reports, some blog templates, and a couple of tools that I think will be useful.

The book is priced at $37 on the sales page, but as I write this you can get $10 off that. You have to try to click away from the site, so that one of those “wait, don’t go” boxes pop up, where you’ll be offered the discount.

The $27 is reasonable, I think, for all that is included. It got me thinking about another avenue of income for that all important diversity I’ve talked about before, and I’m certain that if I use the plan, I’ll more than make up the cost of the book with new income. You should at least take a look.

View the sales page and see the bonuses here.

Be well.

If you’re on any internet marketer newsletter or email list you’ve certainly been inundated over and over again with the Mega-Launch of the week. You get a bunch of emails, many exactly the same pitch with exactly the same headline, that some big-name guru is or will be putting out the very product you need to make it on the internet. (Personally, I like it when lazy affiliates just copy what’s been given to them, because then it’s easy to eliminate those emails without plodding through the pitch.) And apparently Tuesday is the best day to launch. Oh look, 87 new emails! Must be Tuesday!

A trend I’ve seen growing is that of the marketer who’s giving away his stuff on CD for a measly $7.95 or so to cover the postage for the big box of stuff he’s going to send you. There’s probably a “trial” subscription to their expensive newsletter that you need to agree to in order to get the big box of stuff. No objections from me on doing that, as long as it’s very, very clear on the sales page.

What leads me to write today are a few emails I’ve received about the latest greatest launch where the marketer tells me how he’s gotten this very special deal for me. One even hinted that he’d spent his own money to secure this incredible offer for his subscribers. Huh? I’ve already had a jillion emails telling me about this offer, including one from the guru himself, and I know it’s an affiliate attempt at sales. Why lie to me?

I know I’m not the only person who subscribes to lots of IM mail lists. In fact, many of the big marketers tell newbies to do exactly that so we can see what the big guys are up to and learn from their methods. Not one of them, however, says to lie to your list members.

The marketers who lie to me lose me as a member. Even if they have previously provided value in their information or products, it just brings me up short that they’d lie over something so inconsequential. Is this just a lack of good judgment or is it habitual behavior? Don’t know, don’t care. Either way, I just don’t trust them anymore. I’m outta here!

Harsh? Probably. Particularly for such a minor infraction. But my time is too valuable to me to spend it reading their stuff and wondering what little deception of half-truth or inappropriate advice I might be getting.

And here’s another thing. I’ve been looking at and researching and doing internet marketing for a couple of years now. I also have a lot of life/business experience that gives me a perspective on how I want to run things in an ethical way. How about the young newbie who looks at this kind of behavior as a role model? How does that help him? How does that help the world of internet marketing, already looked at by some as scammy?

If you take a close look at the really big, hugely successful marketers, both online and off, the folks who have been around for a long time, you see that they’ve built their businesses honestly and ethically. You don’t need to scam someone – or shade the truth a bit – to make massive amounts of money. The less than honest folks are eventually found out and their businesses crash – or in extreme cases are closed by the government.

Is it worth it to make a few bucks now and jeopardize your future?

Stay well, stay honest, make some money!

Whether you’re heaving a huge sigh of relief that the little darlings are headed back to school or just note that it’s one of those ‘time passing’ markers, it is time to reflect on the fact that 2/3 of 2008 is gone.

For me, it’s an “oh my” time as I see I’ve managed to fritter away a bunch of time. It’s going to be really hard to hit my goals for this year. Then again, maybe this is finally the push in the behind to put on that full court press to GET STUFF DONE. We’ll see.

Although I’m behind in the number of books listed at eBay, that pace is starting to pick up. And I had enough listed and sold to do a bit better each month – and that in July and August, slow months for any marketer.

One thing, finally, is that I’m working hard at monetizing my sales. I’m trying to focus more on digging through all the private label rights products I have, branding them, and adding affiliate products that I think enhance the material. I’ve also changed around the offer on my delivered CD product, offering inexpensive PLR and MRR packages. Roughly half of my customers buy books related to eBay or internet marketing, so I think they may want access to these digital products, either to sell themselves or to learn from. Since I just figured this out (a DOH moment), we’ll see.

If you’re interested in inexpensive rights packages, check my offers here.

Speaking of PLR, I found a product today that I’m very excited about. It’s just a little software program that’s very inexpensive, but I think using it is going to be very helpful in managing some of the stuff collecting digital dust – and to make me some money.

I’ve talked before about all the ebooks I’ve managed to collect. Just going through them is a major pain (self-inflicted, of course, since I am the one who let them just sit there for so long). One frustration is finding a great product with private label rights, but that has been given to me in pdf format without the source doc file. Now what? I can either sell it as is, without being able to take advantage of the plr aspect of the product, or I can retype it into a word program myself. Depending on my mood, some were put into a “get back to it later” file, and some of them were just tossed.

Today, I found my solution. It’s a little program called Tiger PDF Convertor, and that’s exactly what it does. You open it, click on the convertor button to load the pdf you want changed, click another button, wait a couple seconds for it to do its thing, then save the generated text file. Sure, you still have some work to do with the text file, but that’s sooo much easier than typing everything just so you can begin the format! Take a look here. The suggested price for it is $17.00, but I’m passing along my good deal and only charging $5. It’s also a resale product, so it comes with images and a sales page. You have to do your own thankyou/download page, and truthfully the sales page can use some work, but it’s a great product at a great price.

And another note about rights. If you get this tool, please remember that you can’t just start tearing apart all the pdfs you have and redoing them. Check the rights of the product before you start mucking around. If you don’t have rights that specifically state you can remake the product or tear it apart for articles, etc., or that you can claim ownership, don’t do it. You might think you won’t be found out because there’s so much out there on the web. And maybe you won’t. Then again, you might. I recently read a post by a fellow who found out the hard way. His mistake was inadvertent, but the original author decided to be a jerk about the whole thing. Some lawyers made a lot of money; the fellow who made the mistake lost a lot of time and money and lived a very stressful life for awhile.

eBay Cheater Update: After a couple more seemingly nowhere messages from eBay, I checked on the seller I’d found doing a booming digital delivery ebook business, and he’s not there anymore. Finally! I have seen other listings that are suspect, but until eBay works out their reporting systems for this, I don’t think I’m going to wade in any more. I did have an interesting exchange with one seller, though. She blatently listed a cookbook as being delivered by email, and she was charging a $.25 delivery fee. I asked why. She told me it was to cover paypal fees and that since she was selling her book for $.99, what with eBay fees, she really wasn’t making any money. Huh? Her sales are mainly hard goods, so I don’t understand why she’d jeopardize her account for this. Funny world. I’m not going to try to report her, but someone else might…

I think that’s enough for today. Be well.

eBay is making me nuts. No, this isn’t another rant about policy change – well, not directly. It’s about their response to email inquiries. It’s like they don’t actually read anything you send. They find a keyword that goes along with a policy, paste the policy into a response, and send it off.

Specific case this time is an email I sent asking that they take a look at an ebook seller who is delivering his goods digitally, although his auctions say they’re on CD.

I know I’m kind of reverting to that 12 year old: “you can’t do that, it’s against the rules!” But it’s frustrating to have gone through all the changes, working hard to comply, and then see someone breaking those rules.

Anyway, I bought a couple of items to make sure, and then I asked eBay to look into it and do something. The first email included dispute resolution policies, suggesting I contact the seller to work things out. Um, no, not going to happen. The last one quoted the digital delivery rules. Hello? I know the rules, that’s why I wrote, and I did explain exactly – again – what the problem is. Don’t know how they’re ever going to take action when they can’t take a minute to read the entire email. Oh well.

On another note, business is picking up for my ebooks on CD business. The beginning of July was dismal, but there seem to be more buyers lately. And I’ve had some lovely emails from happy customers. Always helps keep me motivated!

This isn’t a leaps and bounds growth by any means. My sales are only about $20 more this month than last, but I haven’t listed as many new titles as I’d hoped, either. It does mean that I’m paying all my fees out of earnings, so definitely life is good! And it’s pretty cool how a few sales can motivate me to get more done.

I’m going back to my listings now. Just wanted to share the latest bit of eBay nonsense.

Be well.

I signed up to be a contributor to Reed Floren’s IM Giveaway last week. Unlike so many solicitations for giveaway events, he promised this one could work for someone who doesn’t have a huge list already. Don’t know if you’ve looked into these things, but most are a kind of catch-22. We’re told giveaways are a great way to grow a list – but when you go to sign up you’re told if you don’t get a bunch of sign-ups from your list, you’ll be booted from the giveaway. I have a tiny list, most of whom signed up from a cookbook giveaway, so I’m lucky if 1 or 2 are interested enough in internet marketing to participate.

Anyway, this looked like it could work for me, so I signed up on Monday, nearly two full weeks until the event opened. Plenty of time to put together a book and get all my ducks in a row (I’ll tell you about the ducks are in a minute).  Then the gods said “Hah!” My 18-year old nephew, who’s been using our second car, got distracted (by the two young women riding with him – don’t get me started!), misjudged a red light, and totalled the car. Luckily, no one had any serious injuries, but if you’ve been through this, you know how it takes over your life for a few days. We’re well insured with a company that provided great service – but still…

So, the last few days have been a scramble! These are the ducks: 1) write, edit, rewrite book (topic eBay’s new rules about digital delivery and how to work with them); 2) set up sign-up page (sign up for my newsletter so you can get the book); 3) set up autoresponder for confirmed, or double, opt-in; 4) figure out what the upsell is going to be (since my book’s about eBay, I decided to put together an all-eBay package); 5) build the download page; 6) put together the sales material for the ebook package (gather and resize the ecover images and then list all the books – all 45 of them); 7) package the books for download – 4 zipped packs of books so the download isn’t too burdensome;  8) upload; 9) test, test, and test some more to be sure everything works. Phewww!

Got it done last night, and the giveaway started this morning. 9 signups already!

Click here to take a look at the giveaway. I did a spot check on it and there seems to be a lot of new stuff, of course mixed in with the old. There’s a staggering 51 pages to look through, so I’m going back when I have a couple of free hours. It can be tedious – you’ll have to give up your name and email address to get the gifts – but it’s also a great resource for collecting good information and books to sell.

Now, about my new bookstore. I’ve been struggling to put a store together, mostly in taking the time to do all the picky things you need to do to get stuff online (listings, download/thank you pages, payment buttons, etc.), so when I got email from John Thornhill that his ebook store price was going to go up, I decided I’d go ahead and buy a store from someone I knew as reputable and successful. This, of course, the middle of dealing with insurance and trying to get my giveaway stuff done. I downloaded the store and played around with it a bit, but figured out that I’d best wait until this weekend to actually get it uploaded. But this time, the gods had good news for me. John just released his new store, and it’s amazing!

I don’t know how many books are on it, ’cause I haven’t looked all the way through it. It has a nice look, and I know there are quality books that should sell. But the really amazing thing is how spot-on dead-easy it is to install. You upload everything (takes awhile because of the tons of books), then you go to an admin panel that is astounding at what it includes and how easy it is to use. Click a button on the side panel, enter your information (paypal, google adsense, clickbank, an audio bookstore affiliation, and more) and everything’s done for you. In fact, I worked through all the steps while I was watching Grey’s Anatomy last night.

The store has to be in a root directory, not in a folder (www.yourdomain.com, not www.yourdomain.com/bookstore). I’m not ready to buy more hosting and more domain names, and I really didn’t want to mess with what I’ve already done at www.smilingpartners.com, so instead I went for a subdomain: www.ebooks.smilingpartners.com. My hosting account allows a bunch of subdomains, and since I’m not off putting up a bunch of niche/adsense sites, it just makes a lot of sense to use the subdomains. The EBook Market link on the side of www.smilingpartners.com, then goes to the subdomain.

Go take a look at the bookstore. If you think it’s as great a deal as I do, look at the right column, in the members log-in box, and click to join up (it will take you to the ebook store sales page). Or you can go here to be taken directly. John’s raising the price on Tuesday, May 20, so before then it’s a terrific bargain! The increased price is actually more in keeping with the worth of this great product.

Be well, and have a great weekend!