When I first started out in this arena, everyone was talking about creating niche products, so that’s what I did.  I created ebooks on weight loss, dog training, fishing, RC cars, paintball, advertising, marketing, poker, and many, many others.

After a few years, of spending time creating products, I was introduced to something called PLR (Private Label Rights).  This is where you purchase the rights to a product that someone else has created and you get to put your name on it and customize it to your audience.  About 6 years ago, I joined a website called Nicheology.

Nicheology was a monthly membership site that provided fresh unique products each month, along with keyword research, sales letters, and even lists of niche affiliate programs to join and promote to your customers.  Essentially it took a lot of the work out of creating new product.  The best part of this is that membership was very limited, and the doors to this program were closed for a long time.

Jump forward to today, Nicheology.com is no longer just a PLR source.  Paul Evans, the owner and one of my mastermind partners has added on a huge library of training and information to help you become a profitable internet marketer.  You also get coaching, tutorials, templates, and much, much more.

Well, today at 12 noon CST, Paul is re-opening the doors of Nicheology for only 48 hours, to allow in new members.  Then, at 12 noon CST on Thursday, the doors are going to slam shut again.  You don’t want to miss out on this opportunity to get a lifetime of internet marketing training right at your fingertips.

If all you do is learn the step-by-step system that Paul teaches, so that you can generate a new profit producing product every two weeks, just working 30 minutes a day, you’ll have 15 brand new products of your own to market and make money from by the end of this year.

Now, I know that you hear a lot of hype on the internet about different programs, trainings, and membership sites that promise all sorts of things.  Let me tell you, I would not have been a paying member of Nicheology for almost 6 years myself, if it wasn’t worth the investment.  I’ve easily made back a hundred times my investment since I’ve joined.

So, CLICK HERE to get access to Nicheology right now!  If it is before 12 noon CST on Tuesday June 8th, then you can join the waiting list.  But after 12 noon CST on Thursday, June 10th, the doors are going to be closed, so DON’T MISS OUT!!

Do you know that there a large number of people who are making money on the Internet only through blogging? Now, you may be having a blog only to promote your main venture, i.e. your business, but you should not downplay the potential of the blog itself in making money for you. After all, why are you in business? Surely to make some good money! For that kind of objective, the blog fits the bill quite nicely. There are ways to monetize your blog and at the same time improve the potential for getting prospects for your business through it. What can be better than that?

Let us see some of the ways in which expert marketers use their business blogs to make money for themselves:

Affiliate Marketing

When you agree to promote someone else’s product on your blog or website and get paid for the same, you are into affiliate marketing. You can surely do that with your blog. Pick out a product that you are comfortable promoting and ask its owner to allow you to promote their product. You can chalk out a method of compensation on a per-click or per-sale basis. However, it may be difficult to get affiliate sponsors in this manner.

The simpler way is to sign up for Google AdWords. When you do that, Google will match you with affiliates who are ready to promote their products through your blog. You will be given a code of their website that you can place on your blog. When any visitor clicks on the URL mentioned in the advertisement, you will get paid. This is known as pay-per-click advertising, because you are paid on the basis of clicks you are giving the advertiser.

The key is to popularize your own blog. If your blog is popular, it will get more visitors and you can send more visitors to your affiliate sponsors too. Also, Google pays out better for blogs that are better search engine optimized.

Opt In Lists

This is an indirect method of monetizing your blog but it sure works. Compile an eBook from all the matter that is present on your blog or get one specially written. Promise this eBook to your blog visitors for free. Make an advertisement for this and put it up on your blog. Give them a clickable link within the advertisement. However, this link must point to a lead capture page and not the direct download page for the eBook.

On this lead capture page (also known as squeeze page), which is actually a form, you ask the visitors to mention their email addresses so that you can send them a newsletter or more informative stuff like the eBook. They will mostly opt in because of the freebie they are getting. When you get the id, it adds up to your opt in list.

Now, how do you  monetize this? You can use a lot of methods, but email marketing is the best. You can send them regular information and slowly interest them in your opportunity. A lot of them will eventually sign in, if you provide them with quality stuff, and you get business because you added something free on your blog to build your opt in list.

For a while now, I’ve been thinking about some new ways to share my knowledge of Internet & Seminar Marketing.  Recently, I had a discussion with some of my mastermind partners about the new audio & video podcasts that they have been launching.  Here are some examples of the kind of thing I’m talking about:

Carrie Wilkerson – BarefootExecutive.tv - Complete Video Solution
Paul Evans – Nicheology.tv - Complete Video Solution
Jennifer Haubein – Websites2grow.com - YouTube Video within her blog
Aaron Foster – Small Business Podcast Network - Audio Podcasts

Well, I really like this model, so I’ve decided to launch MarketingBum.tv starting at the end of August.

On MarketingBum.tv you’ll have access to both my Audio & Video Podcasts (as separate feeds), and each will also be available thru iTunes.  I have to admit that the thoughts of setting all this up was something that I was looking at like a deer in the headlights.

So, like I’m always recommending to my clients, I started looking for an expert in this area that I can speak to, about what I need to do to get this all put together.  The person that I found from my research was Cliff Ravenscraft, the Podcast Answer Man (PodcastAnswerMan.com).  I just got off the phone with Cliff and had a very educational consultation with him.  He is truly an expert in this area, personally producing over 21 podcasts himself on a variety of subjects, including one that has been going consistently for a number of years.

After this conversation, not only do I know what I need to have equipment & software wise, but exactly what I need to do to get it all setup.  For those of you wondering, first and foremost, it is to hire Cliff to do it all for me   Why would I spend hours fooling around with this myself when I can hire him and have it all done in the matter of an hour or so.

So, make sure that you signup for MarketingBum News, by entering your name and email address on the right side of this page, so that I can let you know as soon as I’m ready to launch MarketingBum.tv.  I’ll be posting some additional information here before the launch and will also be contacting my subscribers to find out what pressing topics they would like me to cover during the first few episodes.

I look forward to talking to you live & in person when the MarketingBum Podcast launches in just a couple of weeks.

Have you read “Think & Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill?  I’ve been talking to so many people over the past few months who have leaved valuable lessons from reading and studying “Think & Grow Rich” that I decided I wanted to compile your stories.

If, like millions of others, you’ve read and enjoyed “Think & Grow Rich” in one form or another, then please add a comment to this blog posting and tell me more about your story.  I’m going to be picking some of the more compelling and amazing stories to bring together into a new book I’m writing that will look with more depth into the lessons in “Think & Grow Rich” and highlight you and your lesson.

Maybe your story will be selected… I look forward to hearing from you.

What most people do not know is that they can make much more out of their business blogs than what they are already doing. A blog is great on its own, but there are various ways of leveraging the potential of these online machines of business promotion. Article marketing is one of the most effective ways in which you can leverage your blog to get more results from it. Let us see this in a bit more detail here.

What is Article Marketing?

Article marketing is an online promotional campaign in which you submit articles to directories with a link below them. When people search for information through search engine, there is a high chance that these articles will show up in the search results and, if impressed, will click on the links below them and populate the website.

Using Your Blog for Your Article Marketing Campaign

The posts you make on your blog are your original written stuff. They contain valuable information. Article directories will love to have these posts as content on their own websites. You can do that quite easily. Just make an account on some of the best article directories of the Internet and submit your posts there as articles. You can rework them before posting if the directory has guidelines about not posting material that already exists on the Internet.

How does the System work?

You can write a bio of yourself and your business below the article you have posted. This is where you can introduce yourself and provide a link to your blog or your business website, promising readers more information in these places. If people are impressed with what they have read, they will visit there and you build traffic.

Also, most article directories are much better search engine optimized than your blog is. You are able to expose your business link to many more people through your article marketing campaign.

But the most powerful leverage you get is the impression you are creating of being a kind of authority in the subject. When you have several articles put up on article directories, you are going to become popular too. Your name will be searchable through search engines. This will add to the credibility of your expertise in the business.

Even if you have to write different articles for your article submission requirements (not from the blog), it is a good idea. You will find that you will get good traffic from your article marketing campaign too. In collaboration with your blog, article marketing can make your business quite popular on the Internet.

Part of the sign of someone who works “smarter” rather then “harder” is that they are always looking at what works for other people and then sees how they can integrate that into their lifestyle.

While I’m not necessarily a proponent of Tim Ferriss’ Four-Hour Work Week philosophy, I like the core tennent which is “consider anything that you don’t enjoy doing ‘Work’ and try and eliminate it”.

This video is from earlier this year of Tim speaking at the San Francisco WordCamp, and is his complete talk entitled “How to Blog Without Killing Yourself”. After you watch the video, you may want to take advantage of some of the links below to the things Tim references throughout the video.

After watching this video, I have a new understanding of time management, especially as it comes to my blog.

If you’d like to read the entire entry on Tim’s blog, CLICK HERE, there are some great comments there as well.