Internet Marketing Made Simple

Over the past few years, blogging has become extremely popular. Nearly everyone who tries to make money online usually creates a blog very early in their Internet Marketing career, and for a very good reason – blogs alone can put serious cash into your bank account.

The big problem is that a lot of folks don’t use blogs properly. There was a time where you could have thrown up a simple Blogger blog, write a couple short articles, put up some Google AdSense ads, attract some web traffic, and then watch the money roll in.

That doesn’t work any longer.

Sure, you might make enough to pay for a few beers, but it’s not going to put a roof over your head. The good news is that blogs are still extremely lucrative and can put thousands of dollars into your pocket every single month – if you know what you’re doing.

The premier blogging tool, hands down, is Wordpress. It’s free, works well, and is easy to use. The only requirement is that you have a hosting account such as BlueHost (who we use to host our websites and recommended) to host your website. In your hosting account control panel, you can automatically install Wordpress on your website in less than a minute by using Fantastico or Simple Scripts.

However, the key to making real money with blogs is to get creative. Yes, it’s a huge cliché…but you have to think out of the box. That’s why I use these 6 simple profit machines to maximize my income potential with Wordpress…feel free to steal them and build your own blogging empire:

Profit Machine #1: Authority Sites

Setting up simple Niche Authority Sites is one of the easiest ways to start making a profit online, but it’s also the most time consuming. I wrote out an extensive step-by-step guide to building your first simple blog in a post I made over a year ago: Make Money Online – Step-By-Step Method

Note: If you have no money to your name, you can use a Blogger blog to build your first authority site (as I recommend in the above guide), but I do recommend upgrading to Wordpress as soon as possible. It is far more customizable and offers you more opportunity to expand. Wordpress also provides a free blogs via their website, but you want the self-hosted option so you can upload your own themes and plugins.

It takes serious commitment to start one of these and stick to it – and you won’t see any immediate returns. However, if you post daily for 2 to 3 months, have a professional design and monetize it properly, you’ll be light years ahead of competing websites and you will able to pull in at least a few hundred dollars per month.

The real trick to becoming an authority site (rather than a boring “blog”) is to either position your company, your brand or yourself as an expert. This is a big stumbling block for a lot of people – most feel like they’re not an expert in any particular area. That’s simply not true. When I asked my Dad if he was an expert in anything, he said no…but that’s definitely not the case. He’s a perfect example…

My Dad spent 30+ years as a police officer and learned some extremely valuable skills that you wouldn’t expect. One of them was the ability to write grants that generated millions of dollars for equipment and additional personnel for his department. His success rate was incredibly high – over 90% of the grants he submitted were approved. That’s unheard of and it’s a skill that companies, organizations and individuals would pay thousands of dollars to learn. Starting an authority site about grants would be perfect for him.

You really need to think about your experiences and your interests. Even if you truly don’t feel like an expert on a topic, you can do research to become one. Spend an afternoon learning the basic “rules” of your niche and you’ll know more than 80%+ of the population, and that qualifies you as an expert.

Once you’ve established a topic for your authority site, spend some time doing research on the types of phrases people are searching for using a free tool such as Google’s Keyword Tool or a premium tool such as Micro Niche Finder. (MNF is highly recommended – it makes it very easy for you to find profitable long-tail keywords and to quickly assess your competition.)

Once you’ve found several keyword phrases that people are searching for, you focus your site’s content around those keywords and post to it daily. You build momentum for your new website by talking about your authority site on other blogs and niche forums, then offer to be a guest blogger for other popular blogs.

The potential with an authority blog alone is extremely high. It’s a very flexible model that can be expanded almost indefinitely, but it’s just one way to make money with blogs. Here’s a method that’s a little less conventional…

Profit Machine #2: Niche Storefronts

A lot of people don’t know that you can actually setup an entire online store using Wordpress. Whether you want to sell items directly from your blog, or appear as a third-party store and simply refer customers to Amazon as an affiliate, Wordpress can help you establish these profit machines easily.

There are a couple of different ways you can do it…

a.) You can download a theme that converts your blog into a storefront. Some of these themes are fairly advanced and require a fee to download, but you may be able to find some for free. Once you have your website established, you can use Paypal to accept payments. Some of the more advanced themes even have an “Add to Cart” feature built in.

b.) You can download a plugin that automatically pulls in products from websites such as Amazon or eBay. These plugins can automatically include a picture and short description from those sites, integrated with your affiliate link. There are free and premium options for these types of plugins, but the premium options typically provide more options and flexibility.

If you decide to establish a store, you will want to make sure that you add some unique content (as the content you add will be from Amazon or eBay and won’t boost your search engine rankings) and also implement a professional design. This is effectively a type of authority site, but you will providing direct links to products or services rather than information. It’s harder to get traffic to these types of sites, but the quality of customers is often higher as they’re looking to buy a particular type of product.

Profit Machine #3: Membership Sites

Membership sites are a tried-and-true method for generating long-term cash. There’s so much to say about memberships that we created an entire course called Membership Blueprints. With that said, using Wordpress to power and protect a membership site is a very smart way to go.

In fact, we use Wordpress for our Simple Cash Blog Membership, our most popular resource. It’s extremely easy for anyone to do. First, install Wordpress in the location you want your member’s area. For example, you’ll want to install Wordpress in a location such as: http://yourdomain.com/members/

After you’ve installed it, you simply need to password protect either individual posts or the entire member’s area. For the Simple Cash Blog, we password protected the entire member’s directory in under 2 minutes using a tool called the Instant Membership Site Creator, which we sell for less than $20. If you want to password protect individual posts or provide different levels of access, you can use a plugin such as s2Member.

The best part about using Wordpress for a membership site is that you can actually create content for the membership site in advance and schedule it to be posted at a future date. Your membership site could have a full year’s worth of content in queue without you ever having to touch it. (Of course, this might not be possible depending on the type of membership or the support you need to provide.)

The toughest part of the membership creation process is that you need to write an extremely powerful sales letter and provide “addictive” videos, articles and resources to your members. It’s significantly harder to get someone to subscribe to a $99 per month membership than to purchase a $99 product. Plus, if your content isn’t compelling enough, people will drop out. It happens all the time and some folks will even drop out immediately after joining.

The key for the membership site model is to provide an ongoing service or educational material to a very specific market, and to expose your membership to as many of those people as possible by partnering with others, advertising, article marketing and more.

Profit Machine #4: Local Businesses

This is a rapidly growing opportunity that nearly every internet marketer can take advantage of. Most small, local businesses do not have a website, but most are rapidly realizing that they need to have one. It adds an immense amount of professionalism to a business if they have a well-designed website, and younger generations use internet search as their first resource to find out reviews or more information about a business.

As a 23 year old living in Toronto, I can tell you that I have only tried out new restaurants if I was able to read their menu online. There is a fantastic fish and chips restaurant 5 minutes down the road that I would have never found if they did not have a website. The website wasn’t even that fancy – it was simply professional enough that it gave me confidence that it was a good business.

The potential here is HUGE. There are a nearly endless list of services you can provide to offline businesses…

* Setup their site using Wordpress, then design it using a related theme (there are a lot of great themes available for restaurants, professional firms, and much more.)

* Charge a yearly fee to host their domain and website for them

* Sell them on Search Engine Optimization services – it’s extremely easy to rank for search terms in small towns

* Charge a monthly fee to update their website for them as needed – news, updates, new products or services and more.

* Charge firms to update their website design or ways to make money directly from their website

* Charge businesses for the ability to sell products directly via their site or to accept online ordering

That’s really just the tip of the iceberg. It’s easy to sell these types of services to small businesses. Provide a guarantee and legitimate recommendations to improve their business and you’ll be able to find a lot of customers who are willing to pay for monthly services.

Wordpress is an extremely powerful tool, but you have to remember that it’s only a tool – you need to think out of the box and apply the techniques above to create a profitable website that produces residual income for months and years to come.

There’s a big difference between novice marketers and experienced marketers:

Novice marketers are looking to acquire cash by selling their products.

Experienced marketers are looking to acquire new customers by selling their products.

Experienced marketers know that many (if not MOST) customers will purchase from you over and over again…if they are happy with the product or services that you offered.

Novice marketers forget about their old customers and are constantly trying to find new ones. Experienced marketers know the value of old customers and are constantly trying to find out ways to help loyal customers purchase more products or services from them and to provide more value.

Although some marketers claim that contacting your customers too frequently is a “bad thing,” I’m going to go out on a limb and heartily disagree. Your customers are always begging to get closer to you, to know more about you, and to benefit from your knowledge.

Help them!

Provide new information, videos, manuals, checklists and more to help benefit your customers with whatever problems they happen to be having…give approximately 30 to 40% of our secrets away for FREE. You can’t give away enough…

When people see the quality of your FREE content, even if it’s delivered constantly, they’ll want to find out more and get more information from you. Then, they’ll buy…

The lesson: Don’t be put off by what other people have told you about contacting your customers. Contact them frequently – but make it worth their time to read your e-mails. Don’t just sell them!

Hey guys,

I just finished this off and wanted you guys to see it first.

No one else in the world has seen this. I’ve been calling it
my little secret private label rights project. It’s a totally
free, downloadable system called the “PLR Quick Cash System.”

Inside the PLR Quick Cash System, I reveal…

* Tips for accelerating your Internet Marketing income with Private Label Rights content

* Our quick traffic system that always jumpstarts our website’s search engine rankings

…and much, much more.

Private Label Rights and Blogs have made us a LOT of
money. Let us show you how we do it.

Download the PLR Quick Cash System for free…

John just made this video for everyone earlier today…I watched it and was impressed. John clearly lays out why you should be investing high amounts of your profits into growing your business.

Go watch the free video, How To Grow Your Internet Marketing Business Like A Guru.

John talks about this in the video, but I just want to stress it as well…

It’s absolutely imperative that you are constantly taking action and growing your business. Businesses cannot grow without your help at it’s early stages…and that’s why you must start to invest now.

You’re either growing or you’re dying. What will you decide?

Your investments will most likely pay off tenfold over the next several years if you invest in content and other materials that will increase your bottom line.

Don’t spend another minute waiting…take your business to the next level. John’s video will show you how to do it for free:

Grow Your Internet Marketing Business Like A Guru

John and I have often told our customers and students that finding an internet marketing mentor can drastically accelerate your business. Good mentors have unparalleled experience that is invaluable to young businesses. And, the sooner you get a mentor, the better. If you’re on the “right path” from the beginning.

As you’d probably expect, a lot of people come to John and I asking us for our help. Now, you should know that I consider myself a helpful person…and that I wish we could help everyone who wants to get out of their job and start a new life.

The problem is that we simply CAN’T help every single person that knocks on our door, even when they try to throw lots of money at us. Most people simply can’t handle being in the Internet Marketing business, and if we help the people that can’t handle the business, then it’s a gigantic waste of time.

Here are some of the most common reasons we reject many prospective students:

1.) Most people don’t have the persistence to make it in Internet Marketing.

Like it or not, Internet Marketing is a “real” business. Sure, you don’t have to report to a boss, but YOU ARE YOUR OWN BOSS. Who should you work harder for than yourself?

I see so many new marketers give up when they don’t start making money in the first 30 days. It takes PERSISTENCE. It’s a real business, but it’s way less risky…you don’t have $1,000s in upfront investment sitting on the line.

Keep your head up and KEEP GOING. Most people can’t do that.

2.) Most people can’t handle rejection and criticism.

When we mentor new clients in our internet marketing mentorship, we often have make a list of significant and immediate changes that need to be made to their websites. This outrages a lot of people who think they “know better” than we do.

In fact, we may tell you to scrap an entire project. It might be your dream project. It might be the one that you’re convinced will make you rich.

Could you handle being told that? Most people can’t.

3.) Most people refuse to think big.

I have a powerful theory: People who are already making decent money online (more than $1,000 per month) can almost ALWAYS expand their business a minimum of 10x, into the $10,000 per month range.

In these situations, the mentored student typically is NOT:

* Exploiting all of the traffic they have
* Exploiting all of the additional marketing opportunities they have
* Focusing all efforts on building the list
* Exploiting existing relationships
* Building future relationships
* Finding new sources of customers

A mentor can often help them bigger, but it often requires the student to step out of their comfort zone and do things “bigger and better.” A lot of them can’t do it.

4.) Most people want a handout.

This is the most frustrating thing to me. We have perfectly good potential mentorship students approach us and then just completely lose the opportunity when they ask us to do everything for them for free.

Yes, believe it or not, we get a lot of “help!” requests from Internet Marketers making over $1,000 per month who aren’t willing to re-invest their profits and want handouts.

Nothing turns us off faster than hearing someone ask us “can you do it for free?”

But it’s NOT for the reason you think – it’s not about the money. It’s because people like that are so uptight they aren’t willing to take risks and make investments to grow their business.

5.) Most people don’t “love” Internet Marketing or their business enough.

It shocks me how many people get lucky in this business. I’ve talked with people who own $1,000+ per month online businesses but don’t really care about the actual marketing. They don’t have the passion or love to grow their business.

Nothing is worse than someone who is just in it for the money. You gotta have that drive to help people and grow your business to a whole new level. The bigger your business, the more people you can help….and THEN the money will come (rushing in at a faster rate than you can process it.)

6.) Most people won’t stick to timelines.

While I often have a lot of lazy days, I’m very strict about meeting my deadlines for projects. When projects aren’t completed on the timelines that we establish, bad things happen:

* Sales slow down
* Traffic slows down
* Lists become stale
* SEO potential decreases
* Customers become bored
* Skills become rusty

You MUST set a schedule for yourself and stick to it. When you have timelines and that “drive” to get things done, money flows to you.

7.) Most people won’t follow instructions.

Argh. This is probably the most frustrating. We get a lot of people that seem to do EVERYTHING else right…but don’t follow our instructions. We tell them exactly what they need to grow their business, and then they decide to either “add their own twist” to our instructions, flat out refuse to follow them, or (in the worst cases) completely disappear.

8.) Most people are too desperate.

Desperate people do crazy things and often make poor decisions. If you’re stuck in a position where your internet marketing business isn’t making any money and your back is against the wall, you’re going to do desperate things.

The problem in Internet Marketing is that you’re going to LOSE a LOT of the time. Your offers and traffic won’t convert and you’ll get nothing. BUt, other times you can have HUGE wins.

If keeping a roof over your head is depending on the success of a product launch, you’re getting into very risky territory. You need a stable income so that you can work without being stressed and feverish.

9.) Most people are too scared.

Whether it’s being scared of success, scared to try new things, scared to think about of the box, scared to take risks or one of the other 1,000 things there are to be “scared” of, most people simply have too much FEAR to make it big in the Internet Marketing business.

10.) Most people won’t systemize their business.

This is BIG. You need to be working ON your business, not IN your business. Remember, you are the mastermind of your own business…you control everything. If you owned a McDonalds, wouldn’t you want to have everything systemized so that other people did all of the hard work for you? After all, the owner shouldn’t be making burgers all day.

One thing we try to do for all of our mentored students is provide a framework for systemizing some of the “basic” stuff in their internet marketing business…content updates, traffic generating articles, videos and websites, customer support, and more. It’s not just about outsourcing…it’s about having a concrete SYSTEM for you and your employees to follow and grow.

So, with all of that said…

Getting an Internet Marketing Mentor is a BAD IDEA if you meet any of the criteria above …we have to flat-out refuse to mentor a LOT of people. It makes me feel guilty (like I’m “playing God” with people’s lives and welfare) but I have to do what is best for everyone.

But, if your business is earning over $1,000 per month and you’re willing to take the RIGHT STEPS to maximize your business growth, we are accepting a very limited number of students. Filling out an application is required and should be considered only by serious marketers.

If you’re interested in receiving one-on-one business guidance from the Rhodes Brothers, you can apply at RhodesMentorship.com. (Note: If that page is currently offline it means we have reached our limit of students.)