Work at home on the Internet: internet marketing and affiliate program help.
Back issues here Issue 268 | Mar 18th 2003

Letter from Phil

this weeks letter is a couple of days late, because of a family illness. I haven't had time to research new products or affiliate programs to tell you about, so I'm just going to ramble on about
earning a living with mini sites.

Let's get started.

First of all I'm going to mention the word money a lot. So I'd better not use that m word again, or the spam filters will eat this letter alive, so we'll call it "m" from now on.

Revealing my income has never bothered me. Many people think it kind of crass to tell others how much they're earning.

Well I've never looked at it that way. I've been through some very rough financial times and other hardships. Years ago, when my daughter Kate was born with a rare genetic metabolic disorder, and we spent a week living in the hospital thinking she was going to die, the magazine I worked for fired me.

Kate spent long spells in hospital that first year. Desperate for work I found a job working hard nights as a welders laborer in a chair factory, and then going straight to a second job working mornings on a local newspaper, and afternoons and evenings sleeping in a chair by her hospital bed.

Luckily, after a year Kate was well enough to only need taking to hospital every 2 or 3 months, and I won a couple of big photography awards and got a full time job on a bigger newspaper and could quit the laboring work.

So I've done the rough stuff, and now that things are going so well I don't mind telling people about it and talking "m".

That's not to say I walk around boasting. When you meet me, probably at a conference/seminar somewhere, you'll be surprised how quiet and reserved I am.

I'm not exactly shy. I just prefer to listen and learn.

But then again, not talking much might just come from living on a mountain in the middle of nowhere and only leaving the house once or twice a week :)

So, to get on with it, what I'm trying to say, is that I'd like to let you know that this week I've already made more "m" than I earned in a week in my well paying newspaper job which I left last September.

And it's only Tuesday (or probably Monday in your part of the world).

"Right Phil," I can hear you saying." It's ok for YOU to say you've made lots of "m", but you're supposed to. You're well known. You've
got a big mailing list, a popular ezine. But what about me? How do I make it?"

And that's what I've been slowly leading up to.

The "m" I've made this week hasn't come from my ezine. I haven't put one out.

It's nearly all been income from affiliate mini sites. My book reveals how I do it.

Anyway, I don't even even mention my mini sites here because I don't want them copying.

(you might not do that, but some people would and do)

So my sales aren't coming from having an ezine.

Not only don't I mention the sites here, I don't even promote them much, apart from buying slots in the pay per click search engines and Google Ad Words.

They make "m" because I build them around products or services that people are buying online.

And they rank well in search engines because I take care to put them together the right way.

Now I'm not claiming to be any sort of search engine expert, because I'm not.

I just follow commonsense rules, and mainly follow the search engine advice in the books

Ranking's Revealed

and a short report called Microsite Miracles.

Both written by Australian's by the way, but don't let that put you off...we still use English here. Fair Dinkum mate :)

And I'm also following the advice in Michael Campbell's new book, Revenge of the Mininet

Now Michael's not an Aussie, but he's Canadian, which is much the same thing except it's cold there and they don't have kangaroos.

Ok, so I follow the advice in these books. But I'm also not adverse to hiring experts to help me out when I need it.

In fact I've just spent a thousand dollars down payment last week to get someone to fix up my ozemedia.com site, which has slipped so
far in the rankings it's almost invisible for the keywords I think important.

If I can get mini sites ranked high, why can't I do it with my ozemedia.com site?

Well maybe I could by spending a lot of time on it, but it's a big site - around 1400 pages, and I'm too busy making "m" with my mini sites.

Besides, the expert will do a lot better job than I could ever do.

Right, well I told you I was just going to ramble, and I have, but it's getting too long.

So let me try and clarify my thoughts and get to the point.

Which is....

1. you DON"T need to have an ezine or newsletter to do well and make big "m"

I know this flies in the face of what a lot of experts write, and I'm not saying they're wrong.

Having your own ezine certainly helps because you can use it as a vehicle to promote products in the niche you're working in. Regular follow up with people helps make sales.But if you want to run a successful ezine be warned that they're lots of hard work.

It's not just getting new subscribers that's hard - keeping them interested is the problem.

2. You DON'T need your own product. You can earn lots of "m"entirely by promoting affiliate programs.

3. You don't need to build mini sites. You can build just one or two big web sites that become authoritative sites in their niche, and make affiliate sales from them.But 1 to 12 page mini sites are certainly the fastest way to get oing.

Nine days ago, in issue 266 I talked about how a new mini site I'd built was in 3rd place in Google, and that it would drop to 6th.Well, it has, but sales from it haven't decreased.

That site took just a couple of weeks from raw idea to turning a profit. The first traffic and sales came from Google Adwords, but now it's ranking high I've pulled those ads. All being well the site
should be earning for many months, and I hope for years, to come.

Apart from the occasional update to add new products to it, or back end article pages, I'm leaving it to channel "m" into my bank account, and I've moved onto the next site on a different topic.

When you get to the stage where your mini sites make more than most people pull in with a full time job, you get a nice warm glow inside.

My sites are doing so well now that I've refined my techniques that I've had to cancel other projects.

My making "m" from digital photography books have been put on hold because building more and more mini affiliate sites is so profitable.

Now if all this sounds like one big ad for my book, I guess you'd be right.

When I started writing I wasn't sure what I was going to say, and I've just blasted this out as fast as my two typing fingers could hit the
keyboard.

It's just that I'm feeling over the moon that by Tuesday my sites have already earned me more than my old colleagues at the newspaper are going to make from a hard 40 hour slog.

So read my book and learn how to do it. (If you already own it, I've just added a lot of new low cost hosts to the member area of the site).

If you haven't read it yet, now's the time.

A new version, complete with videos, will be soon, but that will be free to current owners.

I'm not increasing the price, and I'm not lowering it either, but I am removing the bonus of a free "first mini site" review.

2.Right, before I go just a few news items and links.

Back in issue 258 I talked about a series of online "business success" seminars being put on by LA radio show host Ed Hunt.

At the time Ed was offering a free seminar, which was really a bit of a sales pitch to get you to join the program.

But now he's come up with something a lot better.

A 2 week totally free trial of his online learning and inspiration seminars. They're on 3 times a week so you get 6 free hours by going to

All you need is a low cost microphone and headset or speakers.

3. Viral PDF...price rise

A few weeks ago I mentioned a great new tool for making re-brandable pdf ebooks and reports.

Imagine the sales you could make by writing a quick 20 page special report promoting your own product or website, and letting people use viralPDF to change the affiliate links in the report to their own.

Anyway after several weeks of development and beta testing, the latest version of viralPDF is almost ready to be released.

I'm telling you about it now because the price is increasing from $47 to $67 on Monday.

So if you're interested in being able to brand pdf's you'd better take a look at it now.

4. Useful / interesting free tool...

Mark Horrell's PageRank free calculator

There also an interesting article on how Google Pagerank works.