Sure it's possible to make a few dollars quickly. As long as you're willing to put in a little effort, you can create a short report and position it in front of a bunch of people.

Of course you have to write the report, write some sales copy, make it attractive with a few graphics and set up a suitable delivery mechanism.

If all you're interested in is making a quick profit… then your product doesn't need to be anything special.

But then, if you produce inferior quality products, you're not going to get much in the way of repeat business.

That type of short term thinking is not the way to build a business.

If you're in it for the long term, you have to offer high quality products that delight your customers. Those customers will then keep coming back for more and more.

If you want a business that will grow and prosper in the long term, you need to have a long term plan.

You need to have a rough idea of what your business will look like in three years, five years, ten years and maybe even twenty years.

When you have a long term vision, you have something to work towards.

Sure it takes longer to get very rich… you need to build your business foundations. The thing about foundations is that you can't see them after they're built… but your house won't last long without them!

Take a step back… consider what type of business you are in. Are you in it for the long term or are you just after a fast (albeit small) profit?

I had a conversation the other day with someone who has tried multiple courses, coaching programmes and info products and has yet to make any serious money from their online ventures.

As the conversation developed, I began to ask increasingly searching and tough questions. It turns out that I was talking with someone who had developed a habit of finding excuses to fail, so they could justify moving on to yet another strategy.

They had read literally hundreds of special reports and ebooks; subscribed to several membership sites, invested in high cost coaching and yet, none of those programmes were suitable. They had all let this person down!

Time for a healthy dose of reality!

The underlying problem was a fundamental failure to choose one strategy and to stick with it long enough to see some concrete results.

This type of person will almost always find an excuse to quit rather than to put in the work needed to move past the first couple of steps…

It's too complicated, there are gaps in the information, I need to understand the big picture, I'm no good at graphics, this doesn't suit my learning style, I'm no good at writing, and on and on and on…

If you are one of these people, it's time to break the spiral and choose just one strategy… commit at least 30 days to implementing that strategy one step at a time. Don't allow yourself to be distracted by another "opportunity" or anything else that takes your focus away from your 30 day goal.

If you come across one of these people, you have a couple of choices… either help them to break their spiral or run away as fast as you can. These people can sap your energy and, worse still, when it inevitably goes wrong yet again… they'll blame you. After all that's what they do… it's never their responsibility!

OK, so it seems that Google has no plans to upgrade the Google Toolbar to work with Mozilla Firefox version 5. Which is a shame because lot's of Internet Marketers, myself included, have got used to some of the functionality that the Google Toolbar provides.

So, I invested a fair bit of time looking for a relatively easy fix.

I discovered that some people are suggesting installing the Add-on Compatibility Reporter that allows you to use add-ons that have not yet been approved as compatible with the latest version of Firefox. Obviously, you do this at your own risk as there may be a good reason for them not to be approved.

However, that didn't work for me so I had to dig deeper…

There's a very easy fix that involves editing a specific "install.rdf" file

But first you need to find it. Simply follow the filepath below:

C:Users | [yourusernamehere] | AppData | Roaming | Mozilla | Firefox | Profiles | [sometexthere].default

You'll find a number of different folders and each one should contain an "install.rdf" file.

Open each file with a text editor and look for the following block of text and simply change whatever number is there (for example 3.6) to 6. Be sure to save the file before closing.

<em:targetApplication>
<Description>
<em:id>{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}</em:id>
<em:minVersion>3.0</em:minVersion>
<em:maxVersion>6.*</em:maxVersion>
</Description>
</em:targetApplication>

Then all you need to do is restart Firefox and your Google Toolbar should be enabled.

I'm becoming increasingly more skeptical about the Internet Marketing industry.

Why?

It's because of a very simple paradox.

With more and more poorly thought out, inferior quality products coming onto the market place it's becoming harder to find products that I'm willing to promote to my customers, subscribers, friends and followers. (I'm using friends and followers in the context of social networking here… just so we're clear about my meaning.)

So, I'm sure you can figure this out…

If there are fewer really great products to promote there are fewer opportunities to earn affiliate commissions. So, it stands to reason that only two things will happen… Either your affiliate earnings will decrease or you'll have to be willing to promote products of a lower quality.

The right answer is to accept a lower income level and maintain your high standards of product acceptance. One of my acceptance criteria is "Would I recommend this to a real friend" – now you know why I mention the distinction on the meaning of "friend".

But, many marketers have fallen into the income trap. They've taken on financial commitments that must be met. They can't afford to take a cut in earnings.

In the short term these marketers will be OK, BUT it won't take long for their people to vote with their credit cards. They'll soon get fed up with people who recommend crap.

I believe the Internet Marketing niche is reaching a critically important crossroads.

Many marketers will simply disappear from the landscape. Only those people with the integrity to maintain high quality standards will enjoy long term success.

Which camp do you fall into? Have you got the courage to take a hit on behalf of your customers, subscribers, friends and followers?

Your comments are welcome…

Over the past day or two I've received several emails from so called Internet Marketers promoting a product called PayPal Buddy. It's a 27 page short report that puports to offer advice on how to prevent getting your PayPal account limited, suspended or terminated.

The crux of the advice is to pay attention to PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy to ensure your products and/or services are in compliance.

This is followed by some "insights" into what may be "unusual activity" such as high transaction values, withrawing funds immediately after transactions and dealing with customers from high risk counties. It continues by talking about a couple of other pitfalls that the vendor should watch out for, all of it very basic common sense.

It then goes on to describe, in very basic terms, how to contact PayPal should you fall foul of their terms. And then advises that you should ensure you have accounts with alternative providers as a back up should your PayPal account be jeapordized.

In my opinion it's… well in the interests of decency, I won't use the type of language I could. Let's just say it's ill researched and potentially misleading.

Could it be that the people promoting this product care far more about what's in their own PayPal accounts than they care about their subscribers, customers and followers?

1. Clipmate – Is one of the most powerful product creation tools I use. It extends the functionality of your computer's clipboard.So, instead of copying just one peice of text, you can copy multiple pieces of text which are added to its internal databse. This allows you to search for specific text, you can group pieces of text and much more. It makes it much easier to collect and collate research materials and manipulate that material.

   Clipmate is great for writing articles, blog posts, special reports and ebooks. You can get a free trial of Clickmate from Thornsoft. It's well worth the small ($34.95) investment.

2. Textpad - is my favourite text editor. It offers so much more flexibility and functionality than Notepad. It has an in-built spell checker and is my application of choice for writing articles and newsletters.In addition to the usual cut, copy and paste capabilities, selected text can be case shifted and block indented, and characters, words and lines can be transposed. One of my favourite functions is the ability to set a fixed width for your text and apply the wordwrap.

   Textpad can handle much bigger files than Notepad and, more importantly, has an excellent search and replace capability. A single user license is less than $30 and you can get a fully functioning evaluation copy from Textpad.

3. Microsoft Office – As I'm sure you know, Microsoft Office contains a suite of applications. Obviously they are not all essential in the context of product creation.Clearly, Word and Powerpoint are the obvious choice for creating ebooks and presentations. However, have you considered the importance of keeping records? Excel is an integral part of my product creation arsenal as I use it to keep records of accounts, contacts and research sources.

   Microsoft Office is a relatively big investment and, while it's my personal choice, Sun's OpenOffice offers an excellent free alternative.

4. Nuance Dragon Naturally Speaking – Why type when you can dictate? Voice to text technology has come a long, long way since the early days and Dragon Naturally Speaking offers excellent accuracy.If you are anything like me, I'm sure you can talk a mot faster than you can type? My two finger pecking is OK for the occasional note or "tweet" but it is painfully slow when creating anything of significant length!

   I now use Dragon Naturally Speaking for the vast majority of my work. It's much more efficient that typing and I can create content much more quickly than when typing.

   Dragon Naturally Speaking is one of those applications that I always keep up to date. I'm currently using version 11 "Premium" and each new upgrade provides much more speed, power and accuracy.

   At $199 it's quite an investment. However, you'll get a very fast return on that investment in increased productivity and effeciency. Especially if, like me, you use a wireless headset such as the CS60 from Plantronics.
   

5. Mindjet MindManager 9 – I've always loved mind-mapping. It's a great way to structure your thinking, and excellent way of recording notes and mind maps are an important part of my personal product creation system.

   I'm a huge fan of Mindjet's MindManager 9. I especially like the way a mind map can be saved/exported with a standalone viewer. This means the end user doesn't need to install special software to read the mind map.

   I nearly always begin my product creation process with a mind map. It offers a lot of flexibility because you can add new content at any point in the hierarchy. You can move content around. You can structure your content at many levels.

   One of the biggest benefits with MindManager is the ability to output your mindmap as an outline to Microsoft Word. That's a huge timesaver and a very useful function for someone who dislikes working in a linear fashion.

   I'd strongly recommend that you give MindManager 9 a try. You can download a free trial from Mindjet.

6. Skype plus Pamela.biz – An excellent combination. Skype is a superb communication tool allowing text chat, Voice over IP and video messaging. It also allows for group communication which means you can get a small group of people together with no conference call costs.

   Pamela.biz is an excellent add-on and brings lots of extra functionality to Skype. Call scheduling, call recording, podcasting to mention but a few of the extra functions.

   I use the Skype+Pamela.biz combination to schedule and record interviews. It's easy to contact a specialist, arrange a suitable time to chat and to record the conversation. You can export the audio file as an MP3 making it one of the quickest and easiest product creation methods.

7. Camtasia Studio – Video is hot right now. Video cameras have tumbled in price and it's becoming easier and easier to upload and stream videos to hosting sites or to your own website.

   Camtasia Studio makes video product really easy. You can import video footage from a camcorder, you can import a Powerpoint presentation and add an audio track and you can record from your computer's screen

   Although Camtasia Studio is another application with a fairly high price tag, you can get a free trial. Hint: this gives you time to create and sell a video based product to raise the cash to buy it!

Put tother all seven tools and you have everything you need to create a broad range of products.

You know, there was a time when I had over fifty niche based email lists. How I managed to grow all those lists makes for an interesting story…

It goes back to the very early days of Adsense when you could bang up a site, stick some keyword rich content on it, add your publisher ID and you were almost certainly going to get some cash from Google.

At one time I had well over 300 of such sites and I was earning a good five figures every month!

Of course, it was only a matter of time before "Made for Adsense" sites were dropped from Google's search engine results pages. And, like many others, my income dropped like a lead balloon all the way through the floor.

Thankfully, I've always been a testing and tracking addict and I knew exactly which sites were getting the most traffic and which sites were making the most money.

I put together my new strategy…

I ditched over 200 sites. Some I managed to sell and others I just let the domain names expire. I then implemented my plan to improve the quality of the content on the remaining 100 sites.

Of course income from Adsense was a non-starter. So, I did the next best thing… I added opt-in boxes to all 100 sites and I organised a small team of writers to put together an autoresponder sequence for each site.

It might have cost me a small fortune for all those email messages… but, it didn't take long for those emails to begin generating affiliate income and I soon recovered my investment and got back into profit.

I learned a great deal from that experience… one of the most important lessons was to make sure I am always in control of my business assets and not to be overly reliant upon another company for a large proportion of my income!

I also learned that having a large number of non-related lists is a mistake.

I realised that it's much better to have a cluster of niche sites that have a similar theme. When you work with niche clusters you only need one list. That means you only need to write one autoresponder sequence.

As you might expect, I've rationalised my business since then. I'm only really active in two markets… Internet marketing (because I love marketing) and the "Self development" niche (because I love working with and helping people).

Needless to say, email marketing is still a very important part of my business. My small number of subscriber lists are my MOST important and valuable assets.

So, I strongly recommend that, if you haven't already begun to build your own list, you take immediate action to get as many opt-in forms out there as you can.

And, if you already have a bunch of lists, you consider rationalising your lists to focus on a smaller number of topics. Topics that you are passionate about. Review your lists and see if you can "cluster" them into categories.

If you need some list building help I have a special offer for you. You can pick up a copy of the newly released Email Profiteers at a deeply discounted price. This offer will only be available until the end of the month. So grab it now while it's still fresh in your mind.

I'm seriously considering putting together an "Email Marketing" webinar so I'd appreciate your feedback. If you'd be interested in attending a webinar, simply submit your comments below… feel free to ask any questions you might have too.

At the beginning of another new year it's a good idea to review our use of time. It's easy to slip into bad habits, to allow ourselves to be distracted and to focus on what we enjoy most rather than on tasks with high priority.

A great way of getting to grips with managing your time is to begin by analysing how you spend it now.

I use a technique know as "Activity Analysis" with my own added twist..

Create a new Twitter account and change the settings to make it private. Then, all you need to do is make a tweet every 15 minutes that describes exactly what you are doing at that specific time.

If you want to get sophisticated, you can add #hashtags to organise your tasks into categories.

After at least a week, review all your tweets and you'll begin to see a picture of where your time goes.

Then you can eliminate those things that are not taking you towards achieving your goals and spend more time on the important tasks.

Happy New Year!

As is usual on the first day of the New Year, many people take a little time out to think about their goals for the next tweleve months.

Unfortunately, a significant number of those people seem to set goals which a perhaps just a little bit more stretching than last year's. If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting the same results!

I urge you to take a step back and ask youself: "What business do I want to be in?"

I've workied with lots of coaching clients over the years and one of the single most important factor that has held many of those people back has been having a piecemeal approach to their business.

I've seen people with websites covering an amazingly diverse range of topics.. from astrology to zoology. While I can see the attraction of spotting keywords with profit potential, assessing the search volume and competition and going for the easy targets, all you end up with is a bunch of totally unrelated sites.

When you decide that you're going to be in a specific business, you'll become much more focused. Your portfolio of websites will all be within a common theme. Your sites will all benefit from interlinking. As your business grows, so will the opportunity to build a targeted list with a common theme.

Rather than simply do more of the same as you did last year, look at your business with a critical eye. Be prepared to get rid of assets that no longer fit and plan to develop a strong presence in a single theme.

I got a great response from someone yesterday's email about Terry Telford's retirement package. This guy is a subscriber, he's been on my list for around three months and decided to tell me in no uncertain terms why he wouldn't be investing…

As you may have noticed, my Skype ID is plain for all to see in the signature of every email I send out. I welcome feedback.

So, out of the blue I get a Skype call from.. let's call him "Bert".

Bert's opinion is that it'll be impossible for him to make anything from Terry's farewell package because he doesn't have a list.

So, when I'd stopped laughing, I asked him if he'd considered that the package contains everything he would need to build a list and to make some cash on the back end.

Here's what I suggested Bert should do..

1. Select a suitable set of autoresponder messages from Terry's package, edit them to stamp them with your own personality and "branding" and load them up to your autoresponder service.

2. Set up a squeeze page and use one of the high quality reports as an "ethical bribe" to encourage people to sign up to your newsletter.

3. Select another high value product and position it as a One-Time-Offer that is shown to everyone who confirms their subscription.

Now you could stop there. However…

4. Set up a membership site with some more of the premium quality content and position that offer after the One Time Offer.

Can you see how that system could keep on generating a nice income for months and years to come?

But Bert wasn't happy yet…

"What about traffic?" says he.

5. Select yet more content, create some free reports, embed links to your squeeze page and post those reports to free ebook sites. Convert some more content into articles, put a link to your squeeze page in the resource box and submit those articles to all the top article directories.

6. make sure that your membership site has a good affiliate scheme and provide your affiliates with lost of tools and resources to encourage them to promote your site.

Bert didn't hang about, he took advantage of Terry's split payment option and he's already organising a domain name and setting up his squeeze page while he waits for all those DVD's to arrive.

Terry's package contains so much stuff and so many different options that it will be easy for you to put together a unique offer with just a little bit of planning and creativity.