Where To Look For Business Ideas
By ShowMeTheMoney | September 9, 2007
I am always on the look out for new Business Ideas. A place I stop by frequently is Springwise. This is a great source for online and offline business ideas. They range from the fairly conventional to the completely wacky but the site is worth keeping an eye on as it occasional throws up some thought provoking ideas. Although it has to be said its often better to look for opportunities in markets that already have plenty of customers rather than hope to create a market….
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Clickbank - the lack of…..
By ShowMeTheMoney | September 6, 2007
Its been very quiet over the summer in terms of product launches (except for the usual incessant deluge of mail from Day Job Killer, if there was ever a case of over exploitation of a list this is it, give it a rest boys!). The Major product launch season usually kicks off in January or at least traditionally it has…..
On a different note I am still keeping an occasional eye on John Reeses upcoming Internet marketing site www.income.com. I am sure there lots going on behind the curtains but nothing much visible as yet!
The 30 day challenge (30DC) finished at the end of August although things are carrying on over on the web site and you can in effect do the 30DC any time you choose now as the content will stay up. Ive not found a great deal of time to take everything in this year but there were some impressive new techniques revealed in terms of traffic promotion.
Youll have noticed that I dont mentioned Clickbank that often these days. My Internet Marketing work has really moved away from what was I think an over reliance on Clickbank. As always on the internet things are changing rapidly and marketing Clickbank products via Adwords is an intensively competitive business now. Where once I would recommend it as an easy way into doing business on the internet, these days I couldnt in all honesty recommend a newbie to start off with the clickbank / adwords method. Adwords itself and the sheer volume of advertisers has changed out of all recognition from when I started doing this thing a couple of years ago. For a truly sustainable internet business the only sure way is to follow a strategy along the lines of the 30DC. Its a hell of a lot slower before you see the money but its something thatll still be up and running five years from now rather than brought down around your head in five weeks!
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Internet Marketing with Portable Apps
By ShowMeTheMoney | August 29, 2007
Just a note about some more really useful open source software. I tend to lug my laptop around with me everywhere I go. I have so much useful Internet Marketing stuff on there its pretty much indispensable these days. Which is why when I ran across Portable Apps the other day I was intrigued. Basically this gives you a free suit of open source programs that runs entirely off a USB stick, including the Microsoft office compatible Open Office. Its not quite a replacement for my laptop but its a lot less weight to lug about! Anyway I loaded it up onto my 1GB USB stick yesterday and I am going to give it a try.
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Launch Fever - has Internet Marketing hit rock bottom?
By ShowMeTheMoney | August 21, 2007
I recently got a marketing email from Scott Boulch of “life after adsense” fame. To be honest I dont bother reading 99% of marketing emails these days but his are always so well written I make an exception. He also writes a lot of sense! His main point was that the industry has hit rock bottom with a succession of crummy product launches or launch fever as he puts it. I couldnt agree more. There is NO magic product that will create an internet business for you. Ive been there, read the ebook (s)!, bought the courses got the T-Shirt! You learn by actually doing stuff. I cant think of a better example than Ed Dales ongoing 30 day challenge. For get being suckered into buying another hyped product, do something practical instead like the 30DC. Must admit pressure of other projects has meant I have only dipped in and out of this years challenge but Ive picked up half a dozen new marketing tricks already.
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Open Source - it makes perfect sense!
By ShowMeTheMoney | August 16, 2007
I know I have mentioned using open source software in the past. Ive re-visited some of my favourite software recently and have been amazed just how far things have progressed. In many cases the free stuff is now more developed and better supported than the commercial alternatives! Theres no excuse for paying daft sums of money on software. A bit of research will reveal an open source solution for most requirements.
Over the last couple of months we have completely replaced our telephone system with an open source solution. This now supports the other business I am involved with as well as my Internet Marketing activities. It even runs across two locations. The software we are using is called Trixbox. This is built on top of a Linux based IP - telephony application that has been kicking around for a couple of years now called Asterisk. Essentially you can run a fully fledged PBX on a quite modest PC. You get all the functionality that you could only get before with a £5,000 PBX from the likes of Avaya or Cisco! I honestly cant see their business model lasting with this sort of technology snowballing! The days of the proprietary PBX system is dead!
From an Internet marketing point of view this Niche looks really promising and I have a number of things already in the pipeline. In fact my little office is currently overflowing with VoIP, IP telephones from Snom, a German manufacturer and we already have a site in development to sell pre-configured PBX’s to the UK market and other VoIP related hardware. This niche nicely ties together a lot of stuff we have been doing over the last couple of years; including all the Internet marketing side of things as well as the server software / hardware installation business.
I have spent a couple of weeks writing a ”PBX” sales letter for new and existing small business customers of our installation business. The website is really to address the other side of things, the PBX Reseller market and the growing community of people who are just experimenting with Asterisk and VoIP.
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Why Every Internet Guru In the Universe Emails me.
By ShowMeTheMoney | August 15, 2007
Just checking my Email this morning and I have probably about 50 emails from well known internet marketers. Today wasnt exceptional I get probably fifty everyday! Do I read them all? Of course not…. In a bout of (what you might think!) madness earlier this year I signed up to the mailing lists of every well known and semi well known marketers email list. I created myself a special Gurumail email address just for the job, (I get enough junk already to my normal address). And the purpose of this insanity? Well believe it or not there is no better way of keeping tabs on up and coming launches and industry trends. You can tell the really big launches when you get virtually identical emails from nine or ten people! Its also a great way to check out sales letter techniques, I nearly always learn something useful. If you are going to use this technique to keep an eye on the competition, whatever you do dont use your normal email address!
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Share the knowledge and increase your traffic!
By ShowMeTheMoney | July 20, 2007
I have just spent a morning going through the process of planning and building a new site for a particular niche with a really good friend of mine. We go way back to computer days before the internet (hell before PCs even, remember dumb terminals?). We are both keen to cooperate in building up our internet business and I have been going through some of the tools and processes I use. I think sometimes you can get so tied up with particular projects that its good to get a different viewpoint and have someone ask questions about why you do things in certain ways. Most of the time youll surprise yourself with how much you actually know and take for granted. This is knowledge that youve built up really without thinking about it, but its a useful commodity. Share that knowledge about what you know best on your blog / forum / newsletter / email, and youll have a ready audience. People are hungry for good information about stuff that interests them whatever the niche.
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30DC and the UK rain.
By ShowMeTheMoney | July 17, 2007
Ed dales 30 day challenge (30DC) is running again this year. The challenge kicks off on the 1st August and is a must for any serious internet marketer. I have learned so much from the 30 day challenge over the last couple of years. Things change so rapidly on the internet and the techniques in this years challenge will be very different from those of previous years. Best of all its still totally free, I guarantee you wont get training / insight into internet marketing as good as this anywhere else on the net for free! Check it out at www.thirtydaychallenge.com
July is pretty much the lowest month of the year in terms of internet marketing activity. However the weather has been so poor this summer in the UK I am hoping everyone has been staying inside buying stuff from the internet to console themselves! It really couldnt get much wetter here, its rained constantly for the last six weeks.
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The Internet Marketing Gurus are off on Holiday - (with your money!)
By ShowMeTheMoney | June 18, 2007
The blog has not been updated for a couple of weeks. How many times do you see that on a blog? Too many I suspect but my only excuse is I have been ultra busy with various projects. I think some time ago I wrote about products with resale rights. Well I am about to wrap up the development phase of a resale rights based membership site. Yep I know there are a lot of these types of sites out there but I truly believe we have created something different this time. In the last few days I have got two more people onto the support team and they are working away at the moment sourcing some of the top resale rights products available. I am really happy with the way things are shaping up with the site. For anyone looking for new products they can use in their internet business the site is going to be a must. Ill keep you posted.
On another note heres an interesting link to a Post Wordpress installation check list. i.e all the things you should change once youve installed wordpress. I must confess I came across this link on John Reeses blog and after reading it find I am guilty of not applying them to half my own WP blogs. With blogs being an indispensable tool in your Internet Marketing efforts you might as well optimise them the best you can.
I notice as we enter the summer months the volume of new product launches has dropped dramatically. (Well at least the volume of my email about them has dropped off thank god). Presumably the “Gurus” are off counting up their money (or should I say your money) in some exotic location for the summer. Some where with warm seas, sandy beaches and sunny weather, so itll not be in the UK then… 
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Has being an Internet Marketer ruined the internet for you?
By ShowMeTheMoney | May 27, 2007
I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine the other week. He dabbles in internet marketing, mainly via AdWords. We were at a get together with a few other friends. Now when we talk internet marketing everyone else tends to tune out. Most of my friends wonder what the hell I actually do all day and when you try to explain it you sort of get that glazed look come over them. So its nice to talk to someone who knows what your talking about.
Now my friend has gone from being someone who just used the internet to someone who knows more about Adwords and internet marketing than anyone else Ive met. Hes almost as obsessed as me if not more so! And hes learned all this stuff in about half the time as well, which is frightening, but then he always was a smart cookie. Anyway, our conversation got around to the fact that he couldnt help but analyse almost every webpage he looked at now to see how they were trying to moneyterise it and assessing whether they had done a good job or not!
I must admit I do that as well, I just cant help myself. He said in some respects it had sort of ruined the casual browsing experience for him (which incidentally I think is so much of the appeal of the web). I think thats true for me as well these days. I look at a web page (even one someone else is browsing!) and Im mentally deconstructing the sales message not a good sign.
On the other hand I do think the general internet population has become much, much smarter this last couple of years. Consumers expect and demand more. They dont like being manipulated and they can spot it far easier. The internet isnt something so special anymore its become just part of every day life. As internet marketers thats a fact we should all be taking onboard when we put together our sites and products. If you think your going to get away by conning people and aim to make a fast buck, well think again, the wild west days of the internet are rapidly drawing to a close
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