Work at home on the Internet: internet marketing and affiliate program help.
Back issues here Issue 257 | Jan 19th 2003

Letter from Phil

Mad Fish and Englishmen

Trendspotting

Mini Site in one afternoon

Talking of ebooks

And here's a free book for you

Amazon affiliate changes

Aweber's new spamcheck tool

Hope you find something useful and interesting here....

1. Mad Fish and Englishmen.

last week I wrote about a friend who lives in town at the foot of my mountain.

My friend, let's call him Mike, has been a successful salesman and businessman for many years, but for over a year now he's been trying to establish himself in an online business....and failing miserably.

Well Mike drive up to see me the other day and we spent the afternoon discussing where he was going wrong, and how he could change things around.

After we'd got all the "going wrong" stuff out of the way, we started talking about the importance of niche marketing.

I took him inside Corey Rudl's "Secrets To Their Success" site and watched his excitement build as he saw all the things people were successfully selling online: Global Positioning Systems, binoculars, truck bed covers, 1950's Memorabilia, baseball gloves, hair restorer, handbags....

"handbags? handbags?," Mike yelled. "why would anyone buy handbags on the net when they can walk into a store?"

But they do. Katherine Desbrow Wagner is clearing $10,000 a month profit with her site at http://www.handbagdiva.com/ and explains how in one of the interviews on Corey's site.

Anyway, not really being a handbag carrying type of guy, Mike wanted to explore other niches.

So we opened a bottle of Mad Fish and went trendspotting concentrating on technologies. By the time we'd finished ideas
were tumbling through our heads...though perhaps that was the Mad Fish. :)

2.Trendspotting...

When you're casting around for things to build mini sites on, but you've really got no ideas in mind, it helps to go trendspotting.

The Lycos Top 50 is a useful start.

It shows you a weekly list of the most popular search terms, but importantly it also shows you last weeks position, and how long the
search term has been in the top 50.

For instance, in this weeks list, "Tattoos" (not to be confused with t.A.T.u in 32nd spot) is in 5th place, which isn't all that exciting until you see that it's been in the top 50 most searched for words for over 3 years.

I'm not really into tattoos, so I haven't taken a look at any tattoo sites, but there must be plenty of ways to profit from them.

And here's another useful trendspotting guide:

http://www.business2.com/webguide/0,1660,347,00.html

plus an article here at Clickz.

http://www.clickz.com/tech/lead_edge/article.php/1561851

This site is also worth a look http://www.trendsetters.com/

3. Mini Site in one afternoon

Anyway, Mike asked me to partner with him on a site following the techniques detailed in my Mini Site Profits book

So on Wednesday afternoon we're going to sit down and, in just one afternoon (and probably well into the evening if we open a few bottles) build a site that will be soon be pulling in at least $1000 a month, which is around 5 times what Mike is making online now.

And that's just for starters.

I'm developing a new way of thinking about mini sites, and this site with Mike is going to put all my research into practice.

If my lets me (he's into keeping quiet about his business ventures) I'll follow the site's progress in updates of my book.

Version 2003 will be out soon, and will be free to all current owners of the book.

4. Talking of books...

the book "The Whole Truth" which I wrote about last week after a reader request, has been creating a bit of a buzz all week long.

I hope it's not going to become one of those over-hyped products that briefly flare and then die, because it's packed with solid, useful info and deserves a long life.

You can read more about The Whole Truth here. The author makes around $30,000 a month selling info products online.

5. And here's a free book for you...

Chuck McCullough, author of the excellent beginners guide to profiting from affiliate programs

"Affiliate Mistakes: Maximizing Your Profits From Affiliate Programs" has put together a free trial version of his book.

It's only a small download, and gives you the table of contents, a lengthy introduction, and the first chapter "Affiliate Mistake #1.

You've got nothing to lose and a lot to gain by downloading it from

http://www.ozemedia.com/samplemistakes.exe

(sorry, it's not available for Mac users)

6. Amazon affiliate changes...

I'm not keen on the Amazon affiliate program, but perhaps I'll change my mind because you've now got a chance to earn more.

Agree to some strict terms and conditions and they're willing to increase your commissions from 5% to 8%.

Just one snag...to get the whopping 8% you have to make around 384 sales a week....every week of the year.

I know I can't do it. Can you?

They're also reinstated the $10 earnings cap on non-media items.

7. Aweber's new spamcheck tool...

Back in issue 249 I wrote about the free Sitesell Spamcheck tool which lets you pre-check the content of any email to see if it's likely to be blocked by server based spam filters.

Since then I've been sending this letter to have it checked for potential delivery problems (and it's saved my bacon a couple of times), but now I don't need to use it.

I use the broadcast delivery services at Tom Kulzer's Aweber service to send this letter and when I went to mail it last week I discovered that the same spamcheck tool has been built into the aweber site.

Any message (newsletter or autoresponder) that you prepare for sending is automatically checked and given a spam rating.

If your message moves into the problem zone (5 and up) you can click on it and see the offending words hi-lited. It's then very easy to
make the necessary changes, and as soon as you click save, you're given a new score.

Very useful, and it goes to show just how customer oriented, and far thinking, this service is.

I've never promoted their affiliate program but I've been using them for quite a while now with no problems at all.

They offer a very impressive autoresponder and newsletter delivery service. Highly recommended if you're in the market for a
reliable service of this kind.

Try the new Spam Analyzer demo here