To give more people a chance to get off to a fast productive start in 2010, I’ve decided to give everyone free access to the first module of my Money Mindset course.

The first module is called “Getting Focused” and it’s incredibly important.

Here’s how to get free access to this module:
http://www.moneymindset.com/demo/

Username: mm
Password: free

* After you login, click the “RESOURCES” button that’s down the left-hand side towards the button. Then you can click to download all the PDF hand-outs that are used for the exercises.

ENJOY!

The Money Mindset course is now LIVE!

Get instant access to the course here.

This is the first course to use our new Income.com Learning Platform! We’re excited about this new online platform that will make it quick & easy to consume course materials and to put them into action right away.

Here’s a sneak preview of the Learning Platform interface for the first module of the course:

And as promised, this course is affordably priced at just $97. No upsells, no continuity, nothing else to buy. Just $97 to get access to all (48) lessons and (20) PDF exercise hand-outs.

Visit the Money Mindset web site for more information about this course.

I’m writing this blog post from the airport in the Philippines. I’m in the process of heading home to California.

I’ve been in Asia for the past couple of weeks, and I just finished opening our new Income.com Asia office in the Philippines.

Here’s a photo of me and some of the team from Income.com Asia:

We’re building an exciting software development team here, and we’ll also be looking here for additional expansion for our company.

The Philippines is a wonderful place to hire workers. Whether you’re looking for a virtual assistant, programmer, designer, researcher, or any number of other skills, the Philippines is a great place to outsource to.

The people here are very nice and hard-working. Their school system is taught in English, so they can read, write, and speak English really well. Arguably better than any other country where English is not the first language.

Overall, the Philippines is a pretty poor country. There are not a lot of job opportunities for its citizens, so outsourced (virtual) jobs are an important part of their economy.

You can hire people here to work full-time for as little as US$300/month. More skilled workers, like engineers and developers, cost a lot more than that, but it is possible to hire people to do data entry, research, and writing tasks for that little.

And while $300/month may not seem like a lot of money, it’s a lot of money to many people living here.

Many Fortune 500 companies have offices in the Philippines and employ a lot of people here. It just makes good financial sense for certain types of jobs.

Our Income.com Asia headquarters is going to be working closely with a nearby university. We’re going to be creating internship programs as well as helping the university create specific curriculum to help students have more opportunities, and we hope to hire more and more people from this region.

It’s a sad reality when some of their top engineering and computer science graduates end up working at a call center as their sole job opportunity.

Opening this new office and building out our development team will finally allow us to build and deploy a lot of the plans I have had for Income.com — many of which were delayed due to the nightmares I dealt with in hiring software dev firms that I previously mentioned in my Internet Marketing 2010 report.

I’ll be sharing more news soon about how to find outsourced workers in PH, as well as the pitfalls to avoid.

* For those asking… Money Mindset should be released within 3-4 more days.

During this past weekend, I was excited to announce the release of a new Web Class I am teaching called “Money Mindset.”

It’s a 4-Week class with assignments and Q&A help. The cost of the class is $497.

The class doesn’t actually start until October 15th, so I have a lot of time left to do follow-ups and get more people to register. In fact, I’m sure many people were going to wait until the last minute to sign up — which is often the case with live events like Webinars, seminars, and conferences.

From a business standpoint, the campaign to sell this class (after only 3 days) was already successful. But to be honest, I didn’t see as many of my regular customers signing up as I thought I would. I’m sure many of them were going to register at the last minute, but it was something that got my attention.

I also paid close attention to the blog comments that were made in the post below this one where I had originally announced the class. While you can see for yourself many people are really excited about the class and even feel the $500 price tag will be a bargain for what they’ll learn.

HOWEVER…

You’ll also notice quite a few people expressing their disappointment over the price. They are really interested in the class but just can’t afford, or justify, paying $497 for it.

Our office received quite a few phone calls and email support tickets expressing concern that they really wanted to attend the “Money Mindset” class but the price was too high. We’ve gotten that feedback on some of our products before, but never like this. This is the ‘loudest’ the volume of feedback has ever been.

The economy is still obviously affecting a lot of people. While many are actually prospering right now in their businesses, many of my other customers are struggling.

Now I’m certainly never one to make excuses for high-dollar marketing products that I sell. As Gary Bencivenga once told me (btw he’s one of the top copywriters in history if you don’t know his name) marketing products are actually UNDERPRICED compared to other products; if they are quality training products that can actually produce results, of course.

I also believe in the matra of “getting rich while enriching the lives of others.” I’m an entrepreneur myself and when it comes to Income.com, my marketing-related business, I focus not only on truly helping people but also on making my company wildly profitable.

With that being said, I’m going to do something I’ve never done before when it comes to pricing products for maximum profitability…

The cheapest marketing product (non-subscription) that I’ve ever sold is Traffic Secrets 2.0 at $397. In fact aside from that product all the others are $997 and up. I, again, make no excuses for charge high prices for products I believe offer 10X+ the value. Many of my customers will vouch for the fact that they are bargains for what they contain. HOWEVER…

Because I’ve noticed the real EXCITEMENT people have about this “Money Mindset” and the disappointment so many have expressed because of the high price…

I have decided to CANCEL THE CLASS completely.

All the customers that ordered will be receiving a full refund this week.

What I’m going to do instead is change the format of the class away from the live multiple week platform with Q&A/coaching help, and instead go into my studio and produce “Money Mindset” as a digital home study course.

And then I am going to release it and make it available for only $97. And, no, I’m not planning any upsells, forced continuity, or anything. Just this course by itself for only $97.

But… but… but… there must be some other sinister scheme, right? After all, I’m a marketer. Or “marketing guru” or whatever you want to call me. And all marketers are bad, capitalist pigs right?

Well, in this case there honestly isn’t some evil scheme.

So Why Would I Do This?

Is this just a scheme to make more profit!? I seriously doubt it. I’d have to sell 5X as many to make the same amount of revenue. In fact, releasing recordings of the original class and being able to offer a $250 commission to affiliates would generate a lot more sales activity than if I did the same with a $97 price and gave a $50 commission.

Now don’t get me wrong… I’d love for it to sell thousands upon thousands of copies at $97 and generate some great revenue for my company - after all, we’ve got some pretty high overhead and payroll that need to get paid every month. But that’s honestly not the sole motivation for doing this…

I believe in this “Money Mindset” method a lot. I know it’s going to help a lot of people. I truly believe entrepreneurs NEED it. And who knows, maybe it will spin off into a real book that I may write. I’ve had plans to write a real book for years and haven’t been able to follow-through because I keep changing my mind as to what I’d want in it.

And from a business perspective, I think if I can help a lot more people with this product (by selling it for far less than any marketing product I’ve ever offered) it will also generate some loyal customers that may go on to buy my other more expensive products when they can afford them.

So I just wanted to share some random thoughts with you about what I decided to do and why.

I’ll keep you posted on the development of the home study version and when it might be ready for release. Thanks to everyone for their visit in “Money Mindset” — I’m really excited about it!

~John

Today I’m excited to announce a new 4-Week Web Class that I will be teaching…

It’s called “Money Mindset.”

I believe the right mindset about how/why/when/where to make money is absolutely key to someone’s financial success.

Many know by now that I’m a HUGE believer in having the right mindset when it comes to starting or growing a business.  And now for the first time ever I’m going to teach a complete systematic approach to figuring out what you want in your life and then how to strategically plan and take action in order to get it.

Check out the video where I make the controversial statement…

Is ‘The Secret’ A Bunch Of B.S.?

Click here to watch the video and learn more about my new Money Mindset 4-Week Web Class.

Just released a video to kickoff the launch promotion for Opportunity.com.

This video will show you how to create an “Affiliate Commission Engine” that can generate affiliate marketing income on auto-pilot.

To watch the video and bypass the opt-in form click here to go directly to the video.

It’s funny how so many people missed the “April Fool’s Day” joke of the previous post.  We had a few emails from people that thought it was serious.  (I think they didn’t read all the way to the end about “Spamway” as that should have given it away.)

Until next April 1st…

After a lot of careful consideration, even before Income.com gets fully launched, we’ve decided to change the company name.

This is for many reasons.

1.  ”Income.com” no longer fits the business model we’ve involved into. (I’ll explain the business model in a moment.)

2.  Domain names are becoming irrelevant.  It’s only a matter of time before all URLs are truncated into some sort of short redirect.  (As is happening on Twitter with tinyurl.com.)

Our plans for Income.com were originally to build a massive media company that would be part education portal for starting & growing an online business, and part social community to connect entrepreneurs and marketers.

But those plans have changed…

After analyzing a lot of data during the past few months I’ve come to the conclusion that all the real money is in Pass-Along Marketing via email.

Every get ‘pass along’ emails from friends and family?  You know the ones, where they forward you (and tons of other people) jokes, news stories, videos, etc.?

Or the crazy viral effect that happens on Facebook when all of your friends send you new app requests or other pass-along things that show up in your newsfeed?

This is essentially Pass-Along Marketing and it’s only to get BIGGER.

Because of this, I have decided to evolve the direction of the company to take full advantage of it.

We have invented some amazing technology that will allow anyone to create an account that connects them with tons of affiliate program offers that they will earn money from.  Then the system ties these offers into carefully ‘disguised’ pass-along emails that they can send to friends & family.

These emails also contain powerful tracking URLs so the ‘pass-along’ path can be fully tracked; even through multiple generations of one person passing it to another.

Members in our new system will be able to earn override commissions on a multi-tier person-to-person ‘triangle’ shaped structure.  It’s VERY powerful.

So if you pass something along to your parents, for example, and they then end up passing it along to others, the affiliate commissions compound.

AND… 

It gets even better.

If someone you pass something along to ends up joining the program as a member themselves, you’ll earn a percentage of all of their pass along activity.  So your income will only explode through the pass-along effect.

We’ll Be Starting Pre-Launch Very Soon - Don’t Wait To Sign-Up!

I expect this opportunity to take the Internet by storm.  Because now people can make money from annoying others with pass-along emails and Facebook requests.  This is a MAJOR breakthrough.

So Income.com Is Changing Its Name…

The new company name is Spamway.

Get in before its too late.

Read this entire post for some information that you definitely need to know to take advantage of some opportunities that are right in front of your nose whether you realize it or not.  (More on that in a moment.)

Sorry for the lack of blog posts and communication lately.  I’ve been extremely busy working with my team on creating some really valuable stuff for you.  We’re going to finally start rolling things out very soon and throughout this entire year.  There is A LOT of amazing stuff on the way.  So buckle up!

If you’re looking to start an online business to make an additional income, or if you’re ready to explode your existing business, then make sure and be ready for some announcements that will be coming very soon.  One major announcement will be made before the end of this month (February).

The development of Income.com itself has taken a lot longer than I had originally planned.  We, as a young startup company, have been through many ups and downs.  Our primary issues have been technology related.  I won’t go into all the gory details, but let’s just say we had to abandon well over a year’s worth of programming code to start all over due to a change in our programming team.

But sometimes in life, and in business, you have to take a step back to be able to take several steps forward.

I strongly believe in our mission at Income.com and know we will be creating a legacy.  I know we will help thousands of people and their families with our new Web shows and everything else that’s in the works.  It’s going to be a lot of fun too.  So stay tuned.

Opportunity Is Knocking But Are You Answering?

Right now the global economy is going through a rough time.  And it may even get worse before it gets better.  But in any situation, even during the Great Depression, there is always a massive amount of opportunity to build wealth - you just have to be willing to seize it.

Know this… Opportunity is all around you.

I recently had a great discussion with one of the top Internet marketers in the world, and someone who is a very close friend… Frank Kern.  In this discussion I asked Frank this question…

“In your opinion, what’s the one major thing entrepreneurs should be doing right now?”

And his answer was simple… “Make offers.”

Frank hit it right on the head.  If you want to make money, and lots of it, you have to be making offers. That is the one action that makes more money than anything else.  Making offers.

Whether it’s creating your own new products to offer to your customers, or running a special discount offer, or even promoting someone else’s product where you get paid, making offers is what creates the cash.

Not fiddling with SEO.  Not posting on Twitter all day.  Not surfing Facebook.  Not hanging out on discussion forums.  And not spending countless hours of your time on research.

Now all of those things certainly have value, and some of them have a lot of value.  But without making offers and selling stuff you aren’t going to make much money.

There is PLENTY of money for you to make right now.  Don’t let this economic situation “fake you out” into thinking people aren’t buying stuff anymore.  It couldn’t be further from the truth.  You just need to ACTIVELY make offers if you want to make more money.

Let me tell you a quick story…

As you may or may not know from some of my previous posts and email newsletters, I’m a huge saltwater aquarium enthusiast.  As soon as I bought my house a few years ago the first thing I did was start designing my “ultimate” aquarium.

After weeks of doing research, and figuring out how much space I had to work with, I ended up designing (on paper) a 10 foot wide, 1,000 gallon aquarium.

So after 6 months of anxiously waiting, it was finally custom built for me and installed.  Here’s a photo of it with me standing in front of it to give you some perspective on how big this sucker is:

Back to the story…

I have this aquarium serviced & managed every week by an aquarium specialist.  They keep track of the chemical balances, clean the aquarium, and do a lot of other maintenance.  Having a tank of this size takes quite a bit of work — especially since the saltwater evaporates non-stop and has to be refilled.  (We use an automated system for that.)

Bill, the guy who owns the company that services my aquarium has become a good friend.  We’re both big sports fans and often watch games together and hang out.

Of course, just from hanging out with Bill we’ve had many discussions about business and marketing.  I’m constantly trying to give him advice and help him grow his company.  Well, recently he came to me and was almost in a bit of a panic…

“John, I really need to talk to you about my business.  I know when we hang out you prefer to get away from the marketing talk since that’s part of your work, but I could really use your help.”

I, of course, said I’d be glad to help and asked what his problem was.  He proceeded to tell me…

“This economy is absolutely killing my business.  I’ve never seen it this bad.  Usually I could count on a steady flow of referral business but that is way down now.  I’m really worried.”

The first thing I told him was, “Don’t panic.”  That’s the most dangerous thing anyone can do.  Every problem has a solution, you just have to analyze the situation and create a strategic plan.

I asked him several questions about how he was currently running things, what his options were, etc. and the conclusion and ’solution’ I came to was simple…

HE JUST NEEDED TO MAKE OFFERS.

Referral business in many ways IS down right now.  Some of the older more ‘passive’ ways for many entrepreneurs to generate sales in ANY business is no longer consistent.  And in many cases, like his, it has all but gone away.  (At least for now due to the current economy.)

But with so much opportunity all around us, it’s usually just about getting PROACTIVE and making offers and making things happen.

And that’s exactly what I told Bill do.

I told him he needed to be proactive and call his customers and offer specials on certain items.  Stop by some of the locations (many of them restaurants or doctors’ offices) and bring some corals and fish and tell them, “I think this would look really great in your tank, would you like to buy it?”

I also instructed him to be more active in ASKING his customers for referrals and inquiring about other aquarium needs.

Now he was already doing ’some’ of this, but just not a lot.  That wasn’t his main focus.  Like many entrepreneurs he was content with the referral business he was already getting and the revenue that was coming in from his “old ways.”

He agreed to give it a shot and less than a week later I got an excited call from him telling me that things were looking up very, very quickly.

From the very moment he ’stepped up his game’ and got more proactive about making offers and taking action to produce more ACTIVITY in his business, the money started rolling in again.  And now he’s actually in a position to really GROW things bigger than they ever were.

And it’s all because he got more active in MAKING OFFERS.

Are You Making Offers On A Regular Basis?

If you want to make more money that’s all you need to do.  Make offers.

Frank Kern made it sound and seem so simple but it really does just come down to that.

Frank’s a super successful marketer because he has the gift of cutting out all the nonsense and just getting to the stuff that brings in the cash.

Frank recently helped, of all people, Tony Robbins with this exact “offers” stuff I’ve been talking about.  Yes, Tony ‘Freakin’ Robbins.  And it’s no surprise that Frank’s simple advice and plan made Tony a bunch of money that his company wasn’t making.

It was the ultimate no-brainer.

Check Out This Amazing Video With Frank & Tony Robbins And A Soon-To-Be-Rich 13 Year Old Kid!

* I highly recommend every product, course, free report, video, or advice of any kind that Frank ever puts out.  He is truly one of the top marketers in the world and has helped so many people (including ME) make a lot of money in their business.

I’ll be in touch with more news soon.

NOW GO MAKE SOME OFFERS!

SPECIAL NOTE:  Don’t forget to make sure and ‘follow’ me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/johnreese

Today is a sad day for me.  I’ve made the tough decision to shutdown BlogRush.  There’s just something that stinks about seeing one of your babies (i.e. ideas) end up failing.

While the service is still going strong (serving a few million impressions a day) I just don’t see things improving for our users.  The click-rates across the network are dreadfully low (and getting worse) as so many Internet users now ‘tune out’ links and other ads on sites.

Because of this, and many other issues, I’ve made the tough decision to shutdown the service.  During the next 24 hours we’ll be shutting things down.  If you’re running the widget on your blog you’ll want to remove the widget code.

I expect that there will be many BlogRush critics that will rejoice in hearing this news and relish in saying, “I told you so” and that’s fine.  At least I had the guts to take a risk and to at least give the idea a try.  I’ve become a successful entrepreneur (online since 1990) because I am not afraid to fail.  I’ve had many ideas that didn’t work, and this one certainly won’t be the last.

I know that my overall success is a direct result from taking action and trying a lot of things. THAT is the real secret to building wealth.

In regards to BlogRush, many of my blog readers might remember when I came up with the idea at 4AM and even made a blog post about it.  You never know when a great idea might come to you.  So always be prepared to be ‘ready’ for it.

But most importantly, be ready to TAKE ACTION and at least TRY, or nothing will change in your life.

Here’s the letter that’s going out to all BlogRush users and will be posted on the site shortly:

—-

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008    

To: All BlogRush Users

After careful consideration, we have decided to shutdown the BlogRush service.  If you have the widget code on your blog you will need to remove it.

When BlogRush launched in late-2007 it spread like wildfire all over the Web.  Thousands of bloggers were talking about it and the service exploded to become one of the fastest growing free services in the history of the Web.  During the first year of the service it successfully served 3.4 Billion blog post headlines and the BlogRush widget could be found on blogs all over the world; even up until the moment we closed down the service.

BlogRush didn’t grow without its fair share of problems — from security issues to abusive users trying to ‘game’ the system to much lower click-rates than expected.  We also had some problems with trying to fairly control the quality of the network, and in the process made many mistakes in deciding what blogs should stay or go.  All of these issues, ultimately, limited the service’s full potential.

Our team worked very hard to try and build a service that would truly help bloggers of all sizes get free traffic to their blogs.  This was our primary focus.  Not once did we ever try to monetize the service with ads or anything else.  BlogRush never made a single penny in revenue.  We wanted to be able to help our users FIRST and then worry about monetizing the service later.

Unfortunately, the service didn’t work out like we had hoped.  (It happens.)

I want to say “Thank You” to all of the great bloggers that at least gave BlogRush a test to see if it would work for them.  We sincerely appreciate you giving the service a try.    

We have received several offers & inquiries about acquiring BlogRush, but we are choosing not to go that route.  While many might think this is crazy, we truly feel it’s the ‘right’ thing to do for our users.  Believe it or not, it’s not always about the money.  In fact, BlogRush will have lost a small fortune when it’s all said and done, and it was by choice.

There were many things we could have done to monetize the service but we wanted to make sure it was going to benefit our users first.

Last but not least I want to say that I hope the failure of this service doesn’t in any way discourage other entrepreneurs from coming up with crazy ideas at 4AM (like I did with this one) and from “going for it” to just try and see if something will work.

Without trying there can be no success.  And as we all know, ideas are worthless without action. The Web wouldn’t be what it is today without entrepreneurs trying all sorts of crazy ideas.

On behalf of the entire BlogRush team, we wish the best of luck to everyone with their own blogs, ideas, and crazy ventures.

Sincerely,

John Reese

http://twitter.com/johnreese