This is just too funny… | |||
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UPDATE #1: This post reached Digg’s homepage and has received over 100,000 visitors from around the world! (Welcome, everyone!) Thanks to anyone that ‘diggs’ the post — you can vote for it here. Also read-on (and see new photos) where I address the people that cried “FAKE!” To Those Calling Me A “Smug Rich Assh*le”: Yes, I am rich. Quite rich, actually. Should I be ASHAMED of it? Should I be ashamed of the fact that I have busted my butt and through nothing but HARD WORK (17+ years) have made a lot of money? GIVE ME A BREAK. I wasn’t “bragging” I was merely sharing something that I thought made for a funny photo. I’m sorry if that rubbed people the wrong way. This blog is all about HELPING PEOPLE MAKE MONEY. That’s one of the things I do — help other entrepreneurs succeed. So before some of you continue to judge me, please realize that this actual site is setup to help empower others to build wealth for themselves. I have helped THOUSANDS of people during the past 5+ years and will continue to do so. I will also not make excuses or feel ‘ashamed’ for having a lot of money. If I was being a ’smug rich assh*le’ I’d be posting photos of my Lamborghini Murcielago and my other ‘toys’. I give a small fortune to a number of charities every year and do A LOT of great things with my wealth. So I would appreciate it if some of you could chill-out on the bashing comments. UPDATE #2: There have been a lot of comments to this post and some have said this photo is FAKE. It’s not fake! I have added a 2nd photo that is another view of Andy (the guy cleaning the tank). I also added a photo of me (6 feet tall) standing in front of the tank. I’ve also added some other photos… AND to address some of the comments… The corals in the tank are REPLICAS, they are not live. This cleaning took place during a major water change; hence the reason the water is a bit low and Andy is able to submerge himself in the water without it overflowing. The tank weighs 8,000+ lbs when full; inside the cabinet (that you can’t see) is a strong steel frame that the tank sits on. It is capable of supporting the weight of a large TRUCK. The fish are actually in the tank; they are just hiding from Andy. The tank contains two eels (a pretty large green moray), a lionfish (yes, poisonous), some ‘look-downs’, a large puffer (can be see in lower left below his cleaning hand on the bottom of the tank), a stingray (you’ll see him in the photo with the puffer) and some others. Andy isn’t worried about getting bitten or stung (which I think is crazy) and so far he’s been fine. He’s a professional and knows what he’s doing — he doesn’t have anti-bacterial soap on his skin (or any other chemicals). HOW DID HE GET IN THERE? The top cabinet opens and there are 4 large ‘covers’ that can come off. He entered the tank through one of the them. I moved the ladder he used to get into the tank to take the photos. As I mentioned in the previous post, I’m taking a break from blogging and will resume in mid-August. But there’s a guy here right now in my house cleaning my 1,000 gallon saltwater aquarium. I already knew it was big (I designed it and had it custom-built) but seeing it being cleaned today really reminded me how freakin’ big it actually is… I just snapped this photo and thought others would enjoy it.
Additional view: Me (6ft tall) standing in front:
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Archive for July, 2007
Taking A Break Until Mid-August | |||
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I am going to be taking a break from blogging for the next couple of weeks or so and will resume in mid-August. I just don’t have the time to keep a regular blogging pace at this time as we are in the process of getting our first Income.com Network site launched as soon as we can — so I’m going to take a break from blogging. And, Yes, I know I could have guest bloggers post in my absence, etc. but it’s not something we want to manage at this time — we might in the future. People keep asking when the main Income.com site is going to launch. Realistically, not for a couple more months probably. We just don’t want to rush it and have some major problems. Our focus right now is launching our first Income.com Network site — which is more or less a “little brother” of the main Income.com site. We hope to launch this site within two weeks or so. We had hoped it would be launched by now but we ran into some infrastructure issues that we hope to solve ASAP. So… I’ll be back around early to mid-August. Take a break from reading this blog and work hard on your business in the meantime. I’ll resume the Struggling Series when I return. ~John |
Web Site Content From Others | |||
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This is entry #2 in the What Are You Struggling With? series. If you’d like to submit one of your struggles for consideration please post a comment in this original post. If you want to view all the posts in this series visit the Struggling Series category.
Jonathan, After reading your plans and checking out your blog, I can see that you are on the right track. What you need to do is to freely share valuable martial arts resources through your blog posts, pointing people to other blogs you’ve discovered, for example, that contain valuable tips and information. By using your blog as a way to dissiminate valuable info about your market - whether the tips come from you or someone else’s blog - you are gaining the trust of your readers, while simultaneously figuring out who the real experts are in your niche. As you send traffic to other experts’ blogs within your niche, these people will reciprocate by doing the same for you, and this could entail anything from sending traffic back to your blog, agreeing to conduct an interview with you, collaborating with you on product creation, and so on. Obviously, as people see how serious you are about the niche, and as they see that you are recommending solid resources for people to check out, you will have people visiting your blog on a consistent basis, and the experts who recognize this fact will be more than happy - even eager - to help you out in any way they can. One of the best things you can do for your business, if you haven’t done so already, is to download a valuable PDF that will help you really get exposure for your blog, allowing you to achieve the results I mentioned above. “Authority Black Book” was written by Jack Humphrey, and you can download it here: http://www.authorityblackbook.com/reese/ * This is not an affiliate link but a ‘backdoor’ to get the report without opt-ing in. Just remember that if you work hard to give good value from the very beginning, freely recommend the blogs/resources of other experts within your niche, and so on, you can expect to not only have tons of prospects returning to your blog, you can gain the assistance of several experts within your niche who are willing to provide solid content for you. ~ John |
Adding Video To A Web Site | |||
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This is entry #1 in the What Are You Struggling With? series. If you’d like to submit one of your struggles for consideration please post a comment in this original post. If you want to view all the posts in this series visit the Struggling Series category.
Jackie, Thanks for your submission. You’re not alone. You’re dealing with TWO factors here… 1. Creating Your Multimedia Files CREATING YOUR MULTIMEDIA FILES When creating your multimedia files there is a lot that will affect the QUALITY of your final files. But it all starts with YOUR SOURCE. For example, many people complain that quality of their online videos are poor when in fact the camera (or settings) they used to create their original video was poor. So it’s important to note, you can’t get quality multimedia files without starting with a quality source. If you know you have a quality video source (for example) then it comes down to converting that video file into something usable on the Web that will be compressed (so it’s not a huge file size) but will still look (and sound) great. Here’s a great tutorial on converting video files into high quality YouTube videos. That tutorial will most likely solve most of your problems. It links to some free software tools and some additional resources. Another great tool is Tracy Childers’ FLV Producer software. It quickly and easily converts video files into FLV files. As far as your MP3 audio files are concerned, it sounds like a settings issue with how you are trying to convert them. Start with the highest bit rate possible, create a version that way, and see how it sounds. Then try the next quality down. Try different versions until you find the smallest file size that still has quality you are happy with. Then just make a note of those settings for future file output. HOSTING YOUR MULTIMEDIA FILES I linked to a tutorial above for creating great looking videos for YouTube, but many marketers don’t want to host their videos with YouTube because it doesn’t look very professional. So let’s talk about how you can host them yourself… There are two main types of Flash Video: 1. Streaming Video Streaming Video is where the video actually “buffers” and starts playing before the entire video is downloaded. It also allows the user to ’scrub’ forward or back to a certain point in the video and start watching it from there. In order to serve streaming video you will actually need a streaming video hosting provider — or you will need to purchase a license for “Flash Media Server” and have it running on your own server. DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME! In my opinion (and many others) there really is no need for true streaming video. 95% of the videos you see online today are PROGRESSIVE video — and they work just fine. In fact, Internet users are more use to progressive video than anything else. YouTube videos are progressive Flash videos. Progressive Video is where the actual video downloads (in most cases to a temporary directory) on the user’s machine. The user can watch the video when it downloads enough where there is something to watch. If the user’s connection is downloading the video at a faster rate than the video will play the user can watch the entire video without stopping BEFORE the entire video is downloaded. If the user’s connection isn’t fast enough then they will have to wait until it’s downloaded. A user can ’see’ how much has been downloaded with a ‘progress’ bar. The great thing about progressive video files is that THEY CAN BE HOSTED ANYWHERE! You don’t need a special video hosting service. You don’t have to pay for special licensing or other fees. You can simply upload the video files to ANY web hosting account and it will work. BUT… You raise an important point… if a lot of people start watching your videos at the same time you WILL run into a problem. It will slow your server down and can cause others to have viewing problems. You definitely want to avoid this — especially if you’re going to be running a membership site and the multimedia files are what your users are paying you money to watch/listen to. Here’s what I recommend… Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) Amazon.com started an amazing service called “S3.” You can basically rent server space on their massive network of computers. When you upload your files it will automatically make a backup of the files across their network. Amazon has so much bandwidth that you could have MILLIONS of people trying to watch your videos at the same time and no one would have a problem. And the great thing about this new S3 service is that you only pay for what you use. There are no monthly fees. AND… their bandwidth/data transfer rates are extremely reasonable. They start at 18 cents per gigabyte transferred. So just to give you an example… if you have a 30 minute video that is 50MB in size, and you have 1,000 unique people watch it one time, here’s how much that would cost you… 50MB x 1,000 = 50,000MB. There are 1,000 megabytes (MB) in a gigabyte, so 50,000 divided by 1,000 = 50. So 50,000MB = 50GB (gigabytes). 50 x 18 cents per GB = $9.00 So it would cost you $9.00 total to have 10,000 unique people watch that entire video once. If you had 10,000 views of that same video file then it would be $90.00 in total cost. And Amazon’s prices drop if you end up doing a lot of data transfer — as low as 13 cents per GB. As you can see, their prices are very inexpensive. When hosting your videos with YouTube just won’t do, this is a great option. Income.com is currently hosting all of its video files with Amazon S3 and so far we’re very happy. * Special Note: If you go with Amazon S3 it would be good to have a ‘geek’ (any competent programmer type will do) that you can hire to get you setup. S3 can be a little complicated at first. Jackie, I hope that answers all of your questions. If you have related questions to these issues please feel free to post a comment on this post and I’ll try and answer it for you. ~John |
What The Heck Do I Sell? | |||
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* I emailed this to my ezine list yesterday and wanted to reprint it on the blog. #1 Problem Internet Marketers Have: “What The Heck Do I Sell?” I hear this time and time again… People tell me they want to start making money online but they have no idea what to sell or how they will generate an income. The answer to this question, for about 95% of those making money online, comes down to TWO product types: 1. CONTENT That’s pretty much it. If someone is making money online they are probably making money from one of those areas or both. And there are TWO ways to market and make money in those areas… 1. AFFILIATE Many people just want to be an AFFILIATE so they don’t have to deal with shipping products and what many feel is “actually running a business.” Hey, what could be better than just driving traffic and getting paid? There certainly is good money to be made as an affiliate, but if you’re only focused on generating income as an affiliate then you’re really missing the boat… There’s a lot more opportunity in being a MERCHANT and having your own affiliate force working hard to send you traffic. You’ve probably heard the analogy before, would you rather have 100% of your own efforts or 1% of the efforts of 100 others? (Or however that saying goes.) In other words, it’s a major advantage online to have a group of marketers working hard to send traffic to your site! You don’t even have to do any work… they do all the SEO, PPC campaigns, etc. You just pay that person a commission after they send you a paying customer. It really is the “ultimate” business deal. But to be a merchant you need to be selling your own products, right? NOT EXACTLY. This is a “myth” that most people completely misunderstand. Many marketers think to sell products themselves they need to invent some unique “widget” or go and put in months of work to create some information product. But let’s back up for a moment… I mentioned there are TWO main product types being sold online: 1. CONTENT Content would be information products. From ebooks to DVDs, CDs, manuals, binders, etc. But content can also be information freely publishing on blogs, web sites, or in other ways that is monetized by advertising. (i.e. AdSense or ads sold to advertisers.) So don’t just think of ‘content’ as some infoproduct that’s sold. An active blog with regular posts that’s generating a good amount of traffic and can be monetized by ads is generating revenue from CONTENT. To be in the content business as a MERCHANT you pretty much DO need to have your own UNIQUE CONTENT. There are some minor exceptions to this such as “resale rights” products but in the over 15 years I’ve been marketing online I’ve yet to come across anyone making a lot of money from just selling a resale rights product. Hey, just being honest. Resale rights products CAN make some decent money for some, but the ones that usually do well with them are marketers that are already selling their own unique infoproducts to a group of customers and then make additional revenue by offering the resale rights product “in addition” to their main products. I think many newbie marketers fall into the trap that they are going to get rich if they just buy the resale rights to some product they will have the license to sell. Why doesn’t this usually work? For the same reason almost anything won’t work… IT’S TOO EASY FOR OTHERS TO REPLICATE. In other words, when 1,000s of people can buy the same resale rights, and all they have to do is put the pre-written, pre-designed web site online, the market is instantly SATURATED with way too much competition. There is MASSIVE opportunity online to make money in a number of different ways, but the best opportunities are almost always those that take more WORK than others. Yep, that’s the secret. Okay so we discussed the CONTENT side a bit. Unless you’re going to do what it takes to create your own in-demend, UNIQUE content, it’s going to be very hard to make a lot of money. So what’s the other option? MERCHANDISE. This is the ‘part’ of making money online that I think is the most misunderstood… There are some companies online selling their own unique products that they actually manufacture, but you know what? This is probably less than 0.1% of the BILLIONS upon BILLIONS being spent online for merchandise. Do you think Amazon.com is actually ‘making’ the products they sell? Nope. How about Buy.com? Or Walmart.com? Or ToysRUs.com? Or JCPenney.com? Or BlueNile.com? Or Sears.com? Nope. Nope. Nope. Or what about the thousands of smaller ecommerce stores that are making their owners a small fortune? Nope, not them either. HUH!?!?!? Yes, it sounds a bit confusing but on the MERCHANDISE side of ecommerce the majority of what’s being sold is being sold by MARKETERS and *not* the actual manufacturer. And YOU have every right to be one of these marketers of merchandise online… Yes, YOU can be the MERCHANT. AND… You don’t have to ‘make’ or ‘invent’ a thing. Heck, you don’t even have to stock any inventory if you don’t want to either. It’s called “Dropshipping.” You can make a lot of money with your own ecommerce store selling merchandise. (Or multiple stores if you want — they are easy and cheap to setup.) BUT THERE’S *ONE* MAJOR PROBLEM… Remember how I said the better opportunities are usually the ones that involve more WORK than others? Well, when it comes to making money from your own ecommerce store, there *IS* a barrier to entry. This is the single biggest factor that keeps so many other people from going into business with their own successful ecommerce store. WHERE THE HECK DO I FIND A REAL WHOLESALER? (And how do I get setup to sell their stuff?) And there it is. The Big Barrier. THAT is why everyone and their brother isn’t setting up a successful ecommerce store. It’s the same reason why a small percentage of eBay sellers make a lot of money week in and week out while the majority of sellers STRUGGLE to make any money at all. If you’ve ever been surfing eBay and doing some research into these sellers you’ve probably already thought the same thing… “If I only knew where they got their stuff I can make money by selling it too!” And you’d be 100% right. Too bad it’s nearly impossible to find out where they are getting their merchandise. And don’t even think they are going to tell you so you can compete with them. So How Do You Find Real Wholesalers? You have two options… 1. Spend A Lot Of Your Time And Energy 2. Just Pay Someone Who Has Done It Option #2 seems like a no-brainer for sure. This is the option that companies like Amazon, Wal Mart, Buy.com, etc. use. They certainly don’t jump from ‘wholesaler’ to wholesaler and lose a ton of money only when they discover the wholesaler they were working with was a middle man marketing up the cost of the products — OR worse, they end up working with a company that doesn’t actually supply the products they promised to. So these companies have research services they use to find the best deals and manufacturers and then they just focus on doing what they do best — MARKETING. And this is what YOU need to do if you want to make a nice living from running your own successful ecommerce store. But here’s the problem… Online there’s no shortage of people ‘claiming’ to have “Secret Wholesale” lists. Look around, you’ll see them being sold everywhere. And if you’re like me, you probably already bought some and got burned. It happened to me more than once and I’m not afraid to admit it. I GOT SUCKERED. And if you did too don’t feel bad. Thousands of other people get suckered every week by buying these FAKE wholesale lists. So Let Me Just Cut To The Chase… I know of the BEST wholesaler research service on the planet. And there’s a reason this company has been profiled by “eBay University” and Entrepreneur Magazine. They are the REAL DEAL. Their name is Worldwide Brands. If you’ve been on my list for awhile then you probably remember me briefly mentioning them in the past. If you have any interest at all in this stuff then you need to just go and grab a LIFETIME membership to their awesome online directory/product research service. It’s worth GOLD. And that’s no understatement. And if you HURRY they are currently offering a $50.00 DISCOUNT for the next few days — which is what inspired me to write you this email to tell you all about it. REMINDER: THIS IS NOT AN AFFILIATE PITCH. As I previously mentioned, Income.com (my new company) is no longer emailing affiliate promotions. So I don’t make one single penny if you go and buy a membership from this company. I just believe strongly in the INCREDIBLE VALUE that they are offering and that is why I am recommending them to you. *I* personally have my own account with them. Income.com is going to be working with the “best of breed” products and services, and I have future plans to work with Worldwide Brands because I really believe in what they are providing their customers — and I am sick and tired of seeing people get SUCKERED like I did with those garbage supplier lists. So in case you haven’t connected the dots yet… Wonder where most of the successful eBay sellers found their products? Or many of the other ecommerce stores? Through Worldwide Brands. * You’d be surprised if you knew who some of Worldwide Brands’ customers were. Even some “big shot” gurus you probably know of are making millions by dropshipping products they found through the Worldwide Brands’ OneSource online directory. Even if you’re slightly “on the fence” about this stuff just go to this web site and watch the VIDEO DEMONSTRATION of what this is all about. You’ll learn a lot about setting up your own online store… * The discount ends soon so you do need to hurry if you want to save some money: http://www.worldwidebrands.com/discount AND IN OTHER ‘NEWS’… I’m starting a new “series” on the Income.com Blog… It’s called “What Are You Struggling With?” I’ll be making posts that address many of my students’ main problems and questions with making money online. You won’t want to miss out on this valuable information! You can post a comment in the following entry to submit your own struggles for consideration. I can’t promise that I will address everyone’s submission but I will do my best: |
What Are You Struggling With? | |||
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I want to know what you are struggling with right now in your business and with your Internet marketing! What gets you stressed out? Or what is the biggest challenge you need help with? What do you feel is keeping you from breaking through to the next level of income in your business? Please take a moment to submit a comment below and give as much DETAIL as possible about something you need help with. I am going to start blogging a series of posts to address specific needs that some of my readers have. I won’t be able to answer all of the requests but I am going to pick several of the most detailed ones and post my advice for them. So take a moment and post your problem/issue/challenge and be as specific as possible. If you would like to me to take a look at a web site or any other landing page, please post the URL and/or any other data you’d like to share. |
Squidoo Free Traffic Ride Gets Squished | |||
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Squidoo, in the past several months, has turned into a very popular free service for generating traffic. Setting up a Squidoo lens was an easy way to rank high for certain targeted keywords. Then a lens owner could just funnel that traffic (via links) to any web site they wanted. And it worked great… But that free ride seems to be coming to an end. This happens to almost any tactic that starts working well online. It gets abused and then it goes away. TechCrunch just made a great post about how Google is cracking down on Squidoo’s spam. |
When Is Income.com Going To Launch? | |||
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LAST UPDATE: July 25, 2007 Click Here To Read The Latest Update. * I will update this post from time to time with the latest news. I have setup a special redirect to this post. You can get here at anytime by going to http://www.income.com/launch.html. I get asked this question daily… Everyone wants to know when in the world Income.com is finally going to launch! Here’s the latest development news… Income.com’s development is coming along nicely. But we’re not quite where we need to be to release the primary application to the public. Stay tuned as we will be requesting Alpha testers soon. HOWEVER… Income.com itself contains several STAGES and components. Income.com is not just going to be some “discussion forum” site. There’s A LOT to Income.com — and you’ll quickly start to see several “pieces” come together. Before we launch the main Income.com community application we’ll first be rolling out and launching a Web property that will become a very important part of the overall Income.com landscape. ![]() As I have briefly mentioned in the past, Income.com will be made up of not only the Income.com site itself but also the Income.com Network. The Income.com Network will be a powerful collection of Web properties that will help entrepreneurs and business owners make more money from their online marketing efforts. Everything will WORK TOGETHER as one powerful network to help you succeed. Like I said, you’ll soon start to see things come together. I just ask that you are patient just a little bit longer. I promise it will all be well worth the wait. We plan to roll-out the first piece of the Income.com Network within about 14 days from now. It might be sooner or later depending on how our testing progresses. This initial Web property is made-up of some very sophisticated technology, so it’s not something we can rush to market. We have to make sure and test it thoroughly. Just to give you an idea of how sophisticated this one project is, it will be initially launched on 8 servers — multiple load balanced web servers and a clustered database server environment. And we expect to scale beyond this initial server architecture pretty quickly. (You’ll soon discover why.) So as you can imagine, we’re not messing around here. We understand everyone is anxious for Income.com to launch and please know that we are working as fast as we can. After this initial Web property is released (and any last-minute bugs are worked out) we hope to roll-out the primary Income.com application shortly thereafter. |
eBay’s New Classifieds Site | |||
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eBay recently launched a new classifieds site to go head-to-head with Craigslist. The new site is called Kijiji. CORRECTION: The site has been around for awhile but the USA version is new. This new site could turn out to be yet another great way to drive traffic to web sites that can find a way to creatively do it — i.e. within the rules without abusing the site. Many have been able to drive a lot of leads and traffic from Craigslist but it’s often done by breaking their rules — which I don’t recommend. Kijiji, like Craigslist, allows users to find or post listings based on location. So you’ll find listing sections for all the major cities in the USA. Check it out and see if you can’t find some creative ways to generate some free leads for your business. |
The Reese Formula | |||
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Here’s yet another video excerpt from my recent StomperNet keynote presentation. If you might have missed the others I have posted they are all listed in the Videos category of the archives. Again, the video quality isn’t great but it’s well worth watching. Make sure and post your feedback about this video in the comments section below. (Thanks!) Get the Flash Player to see this player. |










