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.

Why are people going nuts about guest blogging?

The answer is simple. You can get a ton of FREE TRAFFIC.

Here’s how to get all the free traffic you can handle… and how you can finally become a guest blogging freak. I’m going to spill the beans for you.

First, let’s set the record straight…

I’m tired of people saying that they can’t get a ton of free traffic. They say “there’s no free traffic” out there. Well, that’s wrong. All you have to do is be cool and ask for it.

I use many different traffic-getting secrets. But in this blog post we’re going to look at guest blogging because it’s so easy a hamster can do it.

YOU CAN DO THIS…

First, you’ve gotta find blogs in your niche. Let’s say you’re into fire-eating. That’s your thing. What you do is hunt down blogs about fire-eating and you’re 80% of the way to getting free traffic.

The reason is that you’ve taken some action. Most people — not you! — are totally lazy and won’t even do a little work to find some blogs.

It ain’t that hard to go to Google or Google Blog Search to find blogs in your niche. But like I said, 80% of the people reading this won’t even do that.

OK, so now that you’ve found these blogs, you just contact the blog owners and say this to them:

“I’M WILLING TO WRITE FOR FREE!”

Well, maybe not exactly like that but you get what I’m saying…

Most folks are tired, lazy and have no time. If you tell them that you will do work for FREE they will be happy to listen to you. Listen, if I came to YOU and said…

“I’M WILLING TO WRITE FOR FREE!”

…for YOU, wouldn’t you be a little bit interested? Sure you would!

Who doesn’t want FREE stuff, especially free content from someone else. And, imagine if you said that your content was 100% unique — never published any other place.

So, when you do this, the other person is listening and there’s a good chance that no one else has ever offered to do FREE WORK for them. That alone is very special.

Now imagine that the only thing you ask for is a little author box or bio box at the end of the article. This is just like you’d do on a site like EzineArticles — diggin’ me?

There are two things that happen here. You gotta pay attention to this…

1. You’re getting direct traffic from that blog to your site. People will click the link in your bio box and come to your site. Sweet!

2. Here’s a ninja secret: you’ll also get a BACKLINK from that blog. Just imagine getting a fresh-n-hot backlink from a high PageRank blog. Heck, even a low PageRank blog is good. That backlink will be noticed by Big Brother Google and boost the juice of YOUR SITE. That means traffic… from Google!

This is like article marketing on El Crackola. And, you get DIVERSITY in your backlinnks doing this.

But wait, there’s more –

Seriously…

You are also establishing a relationship with the blog owner. If they are smart they are building a list. In fact, if they are smart… they already HAVE a list. If that’s the case… and YOU have been nice to them, and you’ve built a relationship…

That’s got huge potential for a JOINT VENTURE.

That’s a fancy way of saying that you can work with your new friend — maybe they will mail to their list saying that you’re awesome. You sell some stuff. You get traffic, make money. You and your new friend split the money 50/50 and EVERYONE WINS.

Listen… this is all from doing a simple guest blog post.

How hard is this?

IT’S NOT. You know in your gut that this is EASY to do…

But, maybe you need a “visual” and maybe you wanna see a video of this? We’ll I just released a video about how to find blogs and some other ninja magic stuff related to guest blogging right inside…

THE SIMPLE CASH BLOG

I’m not trying to sell you anything here… This is a FREE blog post about getting FREE TRAFFIC. However, I know that some people really want the extra cool stuff… the advanced tricks. I hear you.

Quick Disclaimer: The Simple Cash Blog is for folks who have a few bucks to spare and want advanced traffic-getting secrets. Not the crap you see all over the place.

In any event, about that video…

I created the Guest Blogging Firepower video. It’s only for Simple Cash Blog Members. Not just ANYONE.

If you wanna skip the dreaded “squeeze page” you should go directly to our private letter that spells it all out in detail… maybe we give too much away?

Simple Cash Blog Private Letter

(Hey, I can’t blame you… I often skip squeeze pages too… but don’t miss that letter. It offers up some instant training too. I give it my highest recommendation.)

That’s about it.

You’re ready for free traffic now, just by guest blogging. And, don’t forget about those Joint Ventures (JVs) and other cool stuff that most people don’t share — but you’re getting for FREE here.

Cheers,

~ John

p.s. Leave a cool comment. I read everything closely. Be cool…

Today I was in a room with John Reese, Jeff Walker, Brad Fallon, Joe Polish, Eben Pagan, John Carlton and many other ‘notable people’ in the internet marketing world. I swear I’m not saying this to simply name drop.

I’m just setting the stage for this…

They were all in learning mode. Like little kids in 3rd grade! It was almost funny, except for the very serious focus and ‘heads down’ activities.

They were listening to someone else talk. They were talking notes, they were filling out forms and they were in little groups sharing ideas and experiences. They were planning. They were developing their strategies. Like you. Like me.

My key point is that even these folks are hungry to learn more. They are looking for new systems, new opportunities and new partners. They are human with human needs. And, they are smart about building wealth and staying focused. Education is key — investing in your business is extremely smart.

Now, what they learned — and what I learned — was extremely valuable. But, it’s a topic for another day. What matters to you is this…

There are absolutely several “levels” of business evolution. It’s next to impossible to go from making $5 per day to $500 per day in less than 30 days. Sure, it can happen, but it’s rare. Extremely rare.

Here’s what’s also rare –

Too many people make $5 per day or $10 per day, or, whatever amount. But then, rather than using their knowledge and systems… they squander the opportunity to learn and grow. They stagnate. They give up or even blow up.

Why?

Well, one big reason is simple lack of access to the right information at the right time.
quite frankly, there are not many systems that show you how to legitimately make $250-500 extra per month more with 10-12 hours of extra work per month, for example.

This is a key reason why we developed the Simple Cash Blog. You can click that link and get the free information. It’s painless… Just do it.

What I want you to know is that you can save yourself a lot of time and a lot of energy simply by investing a little time and money in the Simple Cash Blog. In relation to the value, it’s basically free.

We’ve been told it could easily be a $97 per month membership. You’ll pay a fraction of that. And you might ask, “Then why the low price?” Simple! We want you on our buyer’s list and we want to forge a long term relationship. That’s Marketing 101 and we know the lifetime value of our customers (Hint: you need to know the value of your customers).

Even if you don’t have any intention of investing, do take 26 seconds to grab the some of the 100% free information we’re handing out. Then, like the gurus I was with today, start learning… and take action.

~ John

p.s. Here’s that direct link again: Simple Cash Blog

It’s been an insanely brutal couple of days. My team
and I ran into a wall of technical problems, and I’ve
grown at least a dozen new gray hairs (note: I’m 22)
but it’s finally ready…

John and I have just officially re-launched the Simple
Cash Blog. We want to let you know what it’s all about
by giving you a report directly from our member’s area.
This is just one simple business model that pumps out
cash for us every month. It takes us 5 hours to create.

I hope you use it:

>> http://simplecashblog.com/5kpermonth.pdf

It’s a powerful membership that reveals our extremely
simple money-making business models (we have dozens)
in the form of short reports, checklists and templates.
In other words, you can flat-out COPY our money makers.

Here’s the best part though…

If you are an active member of a Rhodes Brothers
membership, you may be eligible for several months
of complimentary access to the Simple Cash Blog.

Just send this information in to our help desk:

1.) Your name
2.) Name of the membership you’re subscribed to
3.) Your Paypal e-mail address
4.) Your Paypal transaction ID

Our help desk is located at RhodesHelpDesk.com. Just
submit your request and we’ll try to get back to you
within 24 to 48 hours with your link for complimentary
access to the Simple Cash Blog and let you know how
many months of access you will be given.

Also, don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any
questions. We’d love to help you out.

If you’re looking to make money you need to be a professional. Some people will tell you that being professional means being honest. Others will tell you that it means earning respect. Well, sometimes being professional means “beating” people over the head 7 times!

Let me explain before you judge this…

If you only mention something once to people it is very likely they will not absorb even a single word. The world is full of stress and pressure. It’s full of information fatigue. If your product or service comes with a fair price and delivers incredible value, you are obligated to push hard.

Unfortunately, it takes incredible work to reach customers now. And, it takes multiple exposures to break through. Plenty of research suggests that it takes 5-7 exposures before action is taken. That is serious business.

So, being consistent, and being persistent, is a real duty. Your customers actually need to hear form you often, perhaps even 1-2 times per day. But again, it all depends on the value you provide.

If you have nothing new to share, well, then don’t share. But, if your market is changing every day (like internet marketing) then it’s really important to “say it 7 times” to cut through the clutter.

The highest paid professionals hit their prospects multiple times with the same offer. They might change some words or add some extra special details, but, that core offer is repeated again and again. You should think about that too… and you should seek out real value. It’s the professional thing to do.

One last note. Consistency comes in many forms. It comes from regular emails It comes from continuity of messages over time. And, it comes from relationships that are formed over time. Think about who you want to work with, and think about how you can delivery professional value to your customers. It can boost your income by thousands of dollars per month.

~ John