Just in case your not sure what I’m talking about, link cloaking involves hiding your affiliate link extension, making it look like a normal link so that people don’t know that your an affiliate. ie the normal link might look like www.bootstrapedia.com as opposed to an affiliate link looking like www.bootstrapedia.com/aff=id1450. So cloaking will remove the ‘aff=id1450′. The reason why people would cloak is to prevent people from sabotage or robing you of your commissions by just removing that little extension. I guess some people just don’t like to be the one helping other people profit. Call it greedy, mean, harsh or whatever but it happens.

Well of course I don’t want people to sabotage my links robbing me of a well deserved commission. At the same time I would hope that my community trusts me enough that I’m not just going to promote rubbish just to make a quick buck. So I havn’t been cloaking my links to my list at all and what you see in the url is what you get.

Once thing I really don’t want are my users thinking I am trying to ‘trick’ them. I believe complete transparency is valuable in developing trust among your users. For example if I was to sell a product to my list and they find out that I made a commission from it, I don’t think they will think less of me, but maybe if I had been completely open about it they would actually gain further respect. I know what I’d prefer and am happy to risk a couple of sabotages in return for gaining more respect from my users.

My approach is just to tell my users: “here is my affiliate link, if your interested in the product then I’d recommend to give it a go”. I don’t know but I don’t think that its a bad way to go about it. Its open, up front, honest and trust building. Again, whether it’s as profitable as the cloaking method I don’t know but I definitely feel better about it.

I’m not dismissing the concept of cloaking as ‘bad’ because using it on the front end of your blog is probably a great idea as your blog may attract plenty of viewers who are commission sabotage happy. On the other hand cloaking to your list, your loyal community and your fans is a whole different ballgame.

I’m going to list the things one million dollars will buy you today:

• 1/4 New York Apartment
• 1/2 season in the GP2 racing championship
• A few good diamonds
• 5 yrs off
• 1/2 Bugatti Veyron
• Medium sized yacht
• 1/100 of the way to creating GTA IV
• An investment property (then the value will plummet and you no longer have close to 1million!)
• 2-3 Yrs Medical Insurance (As a practicing Doctor)
• 200,000 McDonald’s Happy Meals
• 500,000 Mars Bars
• 10,000 bottles of Moet
• 1 Law suit
• You business overdraft (Interest only!)

Its a pretty strange list but you’d expect a strange list when your wondering how to spend a million bucks. But after you write the list the only things you can buy substantially are smaller ticket items (ie the Mars Bars). The stuff your teen dreams are made of, or those investment and work essentials, are no longer the calling cards of those who have stumbled upon that magic million.

Yes one million dollars is a crap load of money but the bar has been raised. To shake the hand of a millionaire isn’t what it once was.

A lot of what I do everyday is a result of entrepreneurial insight from the region. I Jump on my computer (DELL, Austin TX, USA 1984) check my emails using Outlook (Microsoft 1975 Albuquerque, New Mexico), search using the Google search engine (Menlo Park, California, 1998), visit the Shoemoney Blog (Lincoln, Nebraska) using the Firefox browser (Again North America) and then when I feel thirsty I grab a Coke (take a guess?).

This isn’t surprising or a revolutionary insight by any means but I think its important to note the effect this has had on marketers. I’m an Australian but when I write a post or release a product, I know that the majority of the people making use of what I have to offer will be from the US. When I was writing my eBook I had an extremely enlightening recommendation from one of my reviewers who questioned my use of Kilograms instead of Pounds. I used the word ‘bootstrap’ in the title instead of ’shoestring’.

Tailoring my approach to suit the people most likely to follow me is now second nature to me. Whenever I’m asked to fill out contact details online, I instinctively put a +61 in front of the number. I even get excited when I purchase something and then realize that its in Australian dollars, thinking I’m getting a bargain because I’m so used to paying in US (about 80USc for $1AUS).

However something happened the other day which I never thought would, I felt I had an accent in my own mother tongue. I was creating a screen capture video and realized how ‘different’ I sounded to all the other Internet Marketers. I’m so used to hearing marketers from the US speaking in Audio and Video that my voice, even to me, sounded quite alien. Even after a few attempts I was considering a voice over! Obviously I didn’t take this route as I understand the importance of using myself as my brand so this was simply not an option, but the fact that the thought came to mind really made me think.

So I’m wondering whether other non US marketers have felt this sense of Internet Marketing alientation. The Internet is such a global medium yet there is a prominant ‘language’ in the IM world. Not that it bothers me at all, its just an observation which I find intriguing.

The reason I chose this was that I wanted my full name, when searched, to link to this blog in the search engines, not my Facebook page.

I can imagine all the people taking all the “make money online”, “Internet business” names and it will become extremely transparent after a little while. The shame is that now when people do populat internet marketing searches we are going to end up with Spam pages or link farms via Facebook. I think we see enough of these on the net already but lets see what happens.

Any reasons why you have chosen the username you did?

If you havn’t got your username and are already a member of Facebook then I recommend that you do, mainly so you don’t end up suffering from some opportunistic creep stealing your name. You can do it by visiting Facebook Username page.

Twitter is now trying to find a way to make money. Interestingly enough they have no clue how they are going to do it. They have already stated that advertising is not an option they are currently considering for their revenue model so where will it lie?

My take on this is simple: why start a business with no revenue model whatsoever? No you might think that this is quite a narrow minded view but the main reason for thinking like this probably isn’t what you think.

Let’s use a few examples (I love my examples!) and take Facebook for example. Now Facebook has always had some type of advertising on the site and I remember the first type of ads were tower banner ads. That was pretty much it and probably didn’t make them a lot of money. But it set a precedence. Users were comfortable with the advertising. So ramping up the ads into a full blown network, although not the most successful, didn’t put too many people off because it has always been there.

Same with Google. I’ve always known Google with two columns, one for organic and the other for sponsored links. Of course at some stage it was just organic search but the ads were put in quite early on, showing a defined revenue model and the users happily accepted it.

On the other hand you’ve got other start-ups like Twitter. These guys have built a massive following and have in no way monetised it. The negative effect isn’t in the fact that they are not making money now but the inability to easily implement a revenue model in the future. Taking the earlier examples, their revenue models crept up early on and didn’t cause to much of a flutter among the users. However Twitter has always been a free, non ad-obtrusive service with a host of loyal followers. Throw in a need to charge for anything and their loyal base will be kicking and screaming. This is their own doing.. they dug a hole from day one.

You can find clear evidence of this when reports came through of an agreement to form Twitter TV and Twitter’s most famous user Ashton Kutcher, made the following statement: “Wow I hope this isn’t true. I really don’t like being sold out. May have to take a twitter hiatus”. This shows any sign of Twitter trying to profit from their micro-blogging service, they are shunned by their most loyal and popular “Tweeters”. I can’t help but feel that if they implemented some type of revenue strategy from day 1… it may not have been so difficult.

I’ve been checking out some of the best online marketers and trying to figure out what makes them so successful. I have even gone to the extent of screen capturing their sales pages to try and understand what it is. It’s hard to compare my own because I become subjective so I feel it’s best to use others and take a completely objective point of view. The truth is in the detail and the delivery. It’s not much really and can range from a better fonts, bolder boarders, use of keywords and their uncanny ability to make you like them. This is probably one of the biggest marketing factors that most people are yet to fully understand and that is that the real good internet marketers are hard to hate although you think you should.  What do you think about the Virgin brand? I don’t know too many people that hate it because the brand is just so likable.. now what makes the Internet Marketing industry any different?

Then on the other end of the scale you’ve got the guys who have scam written all over them and the sad thing is, these are probably legitimate online marketers. However because they used a few over-zealous words, a dodgy squeeze page and maybe a few too many bells and whistles they are dismissed and placed in the Internet Marketers dregs pile. Think of any telco and compared it to Vodafone. They might both offer great product but for me personally, I struggle to hate Vodafone because of how to hold and promote their brand.

It’s sad really, a few choice words and a different colour can be the difference between being successful in this industry and being an ‘also tried’. My advice, and I can’t believe I’m saying this… find the good guys, observe, analyse and implement for a solid foundation. Only then may people tolerate your re-invention of the wheel and if not, you’ve still got a fat pocket to survive off until your next charge but remember wash up before you go out again.

Before you do anything, think of a field that you know a lot about or think of yourself as an expert in. Try to find something you are really passionate about as this helps, but it not necessarily an essential. Now once who have a few ideas, put them to the following tests:

1. Is there competition?

People often associate an industry that has plenty of competition as being an industry you should stay away from. I think that’s quite a silly approach because why else would there be plenty of competition other than the fact that it’s a profitable market? If there are plenty of people advertising to this market then that’s a good sign. If the market wasn’t profitable then why would people keep advertising? Use you competitors as your market research.

How do you do this? Let’s use “weight loss” as an example. The first step is to do a Google search for, you guessed it, weight loss! Now once you do a search have a look at the right hand side of the page at the sponsored listings. Its full. Check out the more sponsored links tab the the bottom. 54 pages of weight loss ads! 54 pages! I feel sorry for the guys on like page 32.. Who’s ever visiting these guys? Now go back to the original search and visit the top sites in the organic search. Do they contain a lot of advertising? Banners? Adsense? You get the picture.

2. Clickbank it – Is it popular lately?

No not Google it. Clickbank it. Clickbank is the largest affiliate network for digital products online. I’ll go into a little more detail of Clickbank later in this report but for now quickly visit Clickbank (www.clickbank.com), go to their marketplace (small link top-right of screen) and do a search for your niche to see what comes up.
Now you need to take note of how many products are for available for promotion and the more the better. Its for the same reason we did the Google search earlier. More advertisers = more people buying.
But most importantly you need to have a look at the “gravity” of the product. You can find this under the product description in a faded grey text with other info such as $/sale, %/sale and so on.
I’m not going to explain gravity because that would take me forever and I’ll end up getting confusing myself. Just take my word for it. You want a higher gravity. The higher the gravity the more that item has been promoted and sold recently. Gravity places emphasis on recent interest and sales of that product but in short, the higher the better.

3. Google Keyword Tool

This is different to simply doing a search in Google. Google’s Keyword Tool (do a search for Google Keyword Tool) allows you to see the volume of searches for particular keywords. So back to the weight loss example, the search term “weight loss” has a global search volume of 5 million searches. To put that into perspective “learning guitar” is at about 350,000 searches and “cheap flights” is almost 24 million.

4. Ebay Pulse

A great final test especially relevant for physical products is using Ebay Pulse. Visit pulse.ebay.com. Ebay pulse tells you what’s hot on Ebay right now, a great indicator of what is selling well on the internet. Great to use especially if you want to sell physical products.
The conclusions? You want to sell something that is high in demand, being sold recently and is a proven profitable market. If your product gets a tick for all these tests then your product is sellable and most likely profitable. Don’t be afraid of big markets just because there is plenty of competition. Where there is plenty of competition there is even a bigger market and getting a small piece of the cake is much easier than trying to take the whole thing!

(This is straight out of my ebook, Bootstrapedia. If you want to get a copy, first grab your version of Think and Grow Rich and I’ll also send you my book!)

The manifesto is very close to completion and is a bootstrapper’s formidable guide to online marketing and earning a living online.

I have set myself a target for Wednesday 27th May for the release of my eBook. Guess how much I’m selling it for? $297? $197? $97? 47?! $7! How about nothing. $0. I’m not charging a cent for this book at all. I believe the basic principles outlined in this book should be given away so that everyone can learn them and remove any excuse not to try.

I get extremely frustrated when great online markets with valuable information decide to run a course but then charge $497 or $297 a month. This immediately eliminates those who genuinely want to try but can’t because they simply don’t have the money to invest. It doesn’t make sense really does it? You provide a beginners course but then charge corporate rates. By no means am I knocking their product as I think many of these courses are worth many times more than what they actually charge. However it simply does not give everyone a chance to learn not only the basic principles but great marketing techniques as well.

A few things the eBook will contain:

• How to determine what product to sell
• Using your blog to full advantage
• 1 single step to increase affiliates conversions by over 200%
• Drop shipping guide
• The mega profitable eBay loophole that 99% of sellers don’t know
• Loads more.

Once again, all you need to do to get your hands on a copy when it comes out is to sign up to my mailing list. You can do this on the right hand column of this blog (and get your Free copy of Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich) or using the form below. Hope your excited like I am!

So how do you combine these two well known theories and turn them into one powerful marketing and sales technique? One and a half words – eBay.

There is a strange divide between people who swear by the monster marketplace and others who shun it like an Italian motorcar. I’m a bit of both, I love Ferrari’s but I drive an Alfa. What I’m trying to get at is that you may not be experiencing the full potential of the available resource but that doesn’t mean that it does not exist.

When I first started selling on eBay I did the normal thing. I sold something, sent out a great product, got good feedback and then moved on to the next customer. I would comfortably say that the majority of the sellers do this because that’s the way you do things right? Not quite.

Lets dissect things a little more. eBay is a massive marketplace full of millions of buyers ready and willing to buy stuff. Ready and willing to buy stuff. Those are some really powerful words right there. If you put a product up for sale on eBay you are exposing it to a market that is there not just surfing for fun, but are genuine buyers. That’s the first thing to take note of but it’s nothing that we don’t know already and many hundreds of ambitious entrepreneurs have used this fact to make thousands and thousands of sales.

Secondly when people buy a product from you on eBay you are required to communicate via email to finalize the sale. Now I’m guessing that little light bulb is flashing inside your head thinking you know where I’m heading with this. Your also thinking how could you possibly have not thought of this? Well looking at eBay’s terms and conditions there is good reason why you haven’t already thought of it or dismissed it entirely:

• Using member contact information obtained from eBay or using any eBay system to offer to sell any listed item outside of eBay
• Canceling a listing to sell to a buyer who became aware of the item through eBay.
• Ending a listing early to sell the item at a higher price to the winning bidder
• Offering to sell an item to a bidder in a Reserve Not Met listing without going through Second Chance Offer
• Offering to sell duplicate or additional merchandise to under-bidders without going through Second Chance Offer
• Sending unsolicited (without prior permission) commercial email offers to bidders for the same or similar products that they have bid on in the past

We need to read between the lines here a bit. If you run through the text in more detail you will notice that eBay makes a specific point of mentioning that sellers are not to use details obtained within eBay to sell any listed items outside of eBay.

So you can’t go and use the details you gather from eBay to sell the listed product outside of eBay but this is also the loophole: it doesnt actually say you can’t use this information to sell non-listed or alternative products outside of eBay.

As an eBay seller, once an item is sold, what you now have are the details of people who have already bought from you in a buyers environment. That’s the marketers dream right there and the potential is enormous.

Some brief action points to consider after a sale:

1. Send your buyers a digital thank you note (as well as a physical one when you send out your product)
2. Offer them a great bonus gift if they sign-up to your mailing list for great offers.
3. Once they sign up send through the bonus
4. Over the next 7 or so days build a healthy relationship giving away excellent products and information.
5. Sell to them again.
6. Then again.

Go the normal way and you’ll come out ok. Think outside the square and do that little extra and you’ll get your Ferrari.

As some of you may know, in one of my earlier business ventures I spent over 50k developing a product which never took off. 2 years of hard work and frustration led to nothing and I was left demoralised. However a little later I spent $45 and $70 respectively on 2 other projects which have since proved extremely profitable. So why was this?

The problem was I was basing my work on theories developed by people who wanted you to spend a whole heap of money. The theory was that you needed money to create a product in order to make you money. Society makes you believe that this is true and this is the way you have to do things.

Worst of all, individuals now use this as an excuse not to try and get out and do something on their own. Eventually it became the excuse for everyone any anyone who wasn’t where they wanted to be financially. Now this theory has become a viral institution and infected the minds of millions world wide.

Well my aim is to get the message out there and prove that this is not true. Financial freedom does not require you to invest thousands and thousands of dollars before you get going. And I will prove it to you. It does not require you to work 18 hour days for the next 20 yrs. And I will prove it to you. It does not require you to do anything unethical and I’ll prove it to you.

So this is my little super soft pre-launch. The book isn’t released but if you want to get a FREE copy of my new ebook when it is released then please put your details below and I’ll keep you updated and make sure you know about it first.

Oh an I’ll also throw in a little present when you sign-up . To find out what it is fill the form and check your email!!