For FREE (my favourite word).

Read on.

If you consider yourself a newbie, then you might be finding it difficult to get it all started and I understand that, I've been there too. If that's the case I can tell you right now, the MOST worthwhile thing you can do for your business on a daily basis is to build a mailing list.

Even a few hundred subscribers can generate enough monthly income to enable you to buy a new car for instance, by enabling you to pay the monthly loan amount. Or maybe take a nice holiday somewhere, or get an extension on your house. The same principles apply, it doesn't matter how you spend the money.

You'd generate this income either by selling products you've created yourself, or by acting as an affiliate and promoting other people's products and earning a commission from it. Many affiliate schemes in the internet marketing niche pay 50% or more, and some of them 100% paid instantly.

If this is really new to you, then you might wonder why anyone would offer 100% commissions on a product. That's simple – they're list building! You get the full payment for the product and they get a new subscriber courtesy of you.

I do that too, my latest product at WPAffiliatePages.com pays 100% and is one of my list builders. You email your own list or write a nice review, publish it on your blog and you get 100% commissions. I get new subscribers and we all win.

Don't EVER worry about losing subscribers. Some people are a good "fit" for you and what you do, and some aren't. If you're telling them about truly useful products and also giving them good content too, then they likely won't ever leave. Some will, but it's never anything to get hung up about.

That aside, I know you'll want to sign up to a new free service I've just found that will build a list for you on autopilot. I'm using it here on this blog now, and you may have already closed the box to read this. Refresh the page if you want to see it again – it will only show itself 5 times to you as long as you have cookies enabled in your browser.

But before I tell you about that, ask yourself if you have a useful product that you can offer to people to get them to sign up to your mailing list. You need a good bribe.

You might also want to follow up with some useful content before you start promoting to your new subscribers. So think long and hard about that and jot down a plan right after you've signed up to this new service I'm telling you about – it's what's known as a co-registration service.

This kind of co-reg set up is used by many HUGE publishing companies so you're in good company by doing this.

The way it works in this case is to present a javascript box on your web site that not only presents your own subscription offer, but also related and similar other mailing lists with a couple of them already ticked. All that your visitors have to do is enter their name and email address and not only do they sign up to your mailing list, they also sign up to any others they've selected too.

The GREAT thing about this is your own mailing list ads are showing up on other web sites too, so you'll soon begin to pick up subscribers from other sites.

IF you've made a good enough offer.

Once you've set it up on your own site then your ads immediately become active on other peoples sites too.

I've just installed it on my own blog, and here's a great tip and is the way I've implemented it myself. There's a WordPress plugin called (strangely) "What Would Seth Godin Do?" and you can get it from here:-

http://richardkmiller.com/wordpress-plugin-what-would-seth-godin-do

What it's supposed to do is to show a small RSS subscription box at the top of all your posts for a limited number of times per visitor (it's fully configurable). So by default it shows the RSS message for 5 times when you activate it, and then disappears permanently for your regular visitors so it no longer annoys them by showing every time. Clever.

You can bend it to do other things too…

So rather than show a message, you can just paste the little bit of javascript into it which shows the co-reg box.

Aha!

So after 5 (or whatever) visits by your regulars, they will no longer see the co-reg box as by that time they're either signed up or they're never going to do it. Even if you decide not to sign up to the co-reg service, I'm sure this WordPress plugin will come in very handy for other things you might want to do on your blog.

The final bit of the puzzle is which autoresponder service to use with this free list building service, and that's an easy one.

Even though there's another autoresponder service surfaced recently, the smart money is on:-

http://www.frankhaywood.com/go/imail/

There are some great benefits to using this autoresponder, and I've spoken to the owner (someone I've known for a while now) and he's got even more great stuff coming – new development seems to be happening every day. I'm 100% confident that this service will replace Aweber and GetResponse for many people, me included.

The big deals for me with this new service are the built in API, and the choices available as to how you configure it – you're not locked into doing things the way Aweber forces you to for instance. Importantly, I'll be building support for this service into all my products as we bring out new versions, so if you're in the market for a new (or your first) autoresponder, this is without doubt the one to go for. It's so flexible I plan to do some videos showing how to get the best out of it, so watch out for those.

So, what have we got?

#1 – WordPress Plugin
http://richardkmiller.com/wordpress-plugin-what-would-seth-godin-do

#2 – New (and extremely cool) Autoresponder Service
http://www.frankhaywood.com/go/imail/

…and finally…

#3 – Co-reg List Building Service

http://www.frankhaywood.com/go/lc/

That's a 1-2-3 knockout.

-Frank Haywood

Me included, but then I'm an exception to the rule as I don't jump on every launch bandwagon. I'm quite selective.

Last year there was a launch for a learning program which I looked at but decided I didn't need right then and didn't have time for as my attention was on other things.

And…

I'm a little bit cynical. I normally like to wait a bit and see how things pan out.

Well it seems things really worked out for this programme, and I've heard nothing but good about it. People have earned tens of thousands through following it step by step. In fact I've been checking up with a few people I know and the reaction is typically "Sign up man! This is the best!"

In case you don't know me that well, I've spent THOUSANDS of dollars in learning and I continue to do so.

The good thing is, this is NOT going to cost you or me thousands of dollars.

In fact given some of the launches I've seen, learning of this quality is usually for hundreds of dollars a month to stay with the programme. This is nowhere near it, and makes some of the supposed "low cost" learning programmes look expensive in comparison.

Apart from all the learning materials, they even throw in cPanel hosting as part of the deal, which would probably cost you $7-$10 / month. And then there's the software and other tools they include too. It's just silly and is making me feel very excited at the thought of it. Talk about over delivering.

So what is it I'm getting so worked up about?

Can't tell you.

Yet.

It all happens tomorrow (Tuesday 28th July), and as soon as I'm allowed to tell you, then I will.

Just to let you know, I'm in a bit of a privileged position and I've already paid for my first months membership, but I'm still not allowed access yet myself!

I can wait until tomorrow. Barely.

To sweeten the deal for you, I'll be including some very nice bonuses if you decide to follow me on this one, including 90 days free access to my very own price comparison service currently running at $30 / month. And also a free copy of any of my other products – you choose.

More tomorrow.

-Frank Haywood

Thank you to all the people who've asked if everything is okay, and where I am. Your concern is appreciated, I've just been lying low.

Well, actually I've taken a little time out to take stock and decide which direction I'm going in this next financial year. I've now decided what to do and hopefully you'll come with me for the journey.

This last few months I've deviated from what I know works, and I've been doing a lot of experimentation.

First of all, what do I know works? The answer to that is right at the top of this blog, "Product Creation, Traffic, List Building, Automation."

You create a product, you get some traffic to take a look at your offer, you build your list, and then you automate the whole process.

Cool. I'll carry on doing that this year.

In fact I'll be concentrating more on list building than anything else this year, and I'll be implementing it in everything I do. I've decided to make list building my "hedgehog" concept from now onwards. ie no project is pursued unless it builds a list.

Secondly, what have I been experimenting with?

At the beginning of November I was introduced to IPK. I immediately saw the untapped potential and so off I went full steam ahead and created the Price Comparison service together with a method of quickly building sites thrown in for free.

This also captured my wife's imagination and attention and she started building mini sites to take advantage of the huge empty market that was out there. She also focussed on creating some hub sites, and two of those have just begun to pay off, with two of the sites making her a total of around £65.00 ($97.50) in the first 10 days of this month.

When the children go back to school next week she'll be concentrating on adding more content to those hub sites to get them onto page 1 of Google.

Which raises another interesting point.

She's made that £65.00 ($97.50) from just a few visitors a day – around 30-35 average – mostly from Yahoo, MSN and some ISPs own search pages. Google so far has hardly been in the running at all, sending only 1 or 2 visitors a day.

When she gets her sites off page 5-ish of Google and onto page 1, traffic will kick in big time and her earnings will soar.

She's never done anything like this before, and I've been really pleased that 1) she really got to grips with the whole site building thing (the Site Builder makes it easy) and 2) she's making money from it and can see that her income will grow in time as long as she sticks at it.

As a result of what's been going on with the mini-sites I've also been experimenting with autoblogging, with some very pleasing and exciting results.

It's funny. You know how some things just bubble around and are there in the background but nothing happens? And then suddenly they "come of age" and everyone's paying attention to them?

Well, it's autoblogging's turn to stand in the spotlight.

I mentioned automation above, and autoblogging is a perfect example of this.

You set up a niche blog, you set up a pile of relevant articles from a free article site to be posted, and push the button. From that point on you forget the blog and move onto the next one.

Here's a great and recent example. I set up an autoblog 5 weeks ago about petrol lawnmowers. I grabbed a load of articles and queued them up for gradual release over 6 weeks to see how it would do.

There's no advertising on that site yet, and I'm due to revisit it in the next week to put on a huge pile of articles and also some monetisation. (No, I WON'T be using AdSense.)

So far there are 84 posts and with no links from anywhere I'm now getting 4 or 5 visitors a day for the exact search terms I want people to find the site by. Google has indexed 75 pages but the site isn't yet in the first 10 pages.

Not a lot of visitors yet, but my plans are to shortly apply a linking strategy which will boost the number of back links and traffic to the site.

The next steps for that site are:-

#1 – Queue a whole load more articles which will appear over the next 12 months.
#2 – Apply a good linking strategy.
#3 – Monetise the site with a few "lawnmower reviews" and Price Comparisons, and also a few ads using AdSpurt and Amazon (and maybe eBay) widgets.
#4 – Link to my REAL petrol lawnmower site.
#5 – Forget about it.

Okay I won't completely forget about it, as I'll probably make changes to it as I like to experiment. Experimentation and a bit of thought and applied logic is what will make the site really pay off.

At the end of the day, this autoblogging site is disposable. Notice I said that I'll be using it to link to my real site. Google likes it when related sites link to other sites. Not reciprocal links mind, just one way.

So if I apply a good solid linking strategy to both sites, and then link the autoblog to my real site, then the real site should do quite well. Especially if I create a couple of other related sites via autoblogging.

Finally, I'll be automating the creation of my mini-sites by farming the work out to staff in the Philippines and Manila where the employment costs are much lower.

(I'm reliably told that there's a technical college in Manila where the undergrads speak good English, are well-educated and like to make a bit of cash doing web work.)

So there we have it. My strategy for the next 12 months.

#1 – Continue to create new and useful products for my own business and sell them. Make list building my "hedgehog" concept.
#2 – Create niche mini-sites (monetised with Price Comparisons) using a combination of WordPress and my Site Builder service. (Build niche lists.)
#3 – Create niche autoblogs where I both monetise them and also use them to link to my real niche mini-sites in #2. (Build niche lists.)
#4 – Pay other people to do #2 and #3 for me.

I hope you can see that having a good strategy and knowing just what you're going to be doing and how, is well worth taking some time out to decide.

Maybe you'll decide that my strategy or at least parts of it are good ones and will work for you too.

I'll share more with you as it happens, IF I get feedback that's what you want me to do.

-Frank Haywood

That's changing now as I started the first run of an "experiment" yesterday.

I took out a brand new .info domain in the baby niche for a term that suddenly seems to be getting a lot of search. My wife has earlier this week taken out a .co.uk domain for the same term, and is building a site similar to the one she built a couple of weeks ago that resulted in a payout from Amazon yesterday.

So she's building a regular "hand made" site using Price Comparisons, and I'm building an automated site using autoblogging techniques. We're going to directly compare to see if there are any SEO or monetary benefits to doing it by hand over having a site built automatically.

In case you've never heard of the term autoblogging, it refers to a method of where a blog site is built automatically or semi-automatically over time. It's populated with freely available material you can get from article directories, and is (usually) 100% white hat.

If you think about it, by gathering together a series of articles and other material on one particular topic from multiple sources, you're creating a useful resource for anyone interested in that subject.

In the bricks and mortar world you might think of it as a specialist store such as (for instance) scuba diving. There the store owner has pulled together lots of different products all about scuba diving and it's a one-stop-shop in that niche.

Autoblogs are no different from manually created blogs, but take a lot less effort. And they come in different guises and are used for different purposes, but the ultimate goal is to use them to make money with.

So in my case, I'm using a self-hosted WordPress blog and building it with a set of (as I've said) freely available articles from an article directory. I'm monetising it using the Amazon self-optimising widget (like Google AdSense, but pays a lot more), and also eventually with an eBay feed, and of course AdSpurt.

Rather than monetise it directly as above, I could have just set the blog up to grow and rank well in the search engines with no direct monetisation. I could then either monetise it by persuading people to sign up to a mailing list and then having an autoresponder send them a series of offers every week, or I could use it to send traffic to my wife's site.

Also, instead of using a self-hosted blog, I could have used for instance a free blogger blog, and again monetise it indirectly.

And there are umpteen other methods of building and monetising autoblogs.

Now I know that any non-marketer who is more of a techy geek would likely get very agitated at this and start making false accusations like "spammer" and "splogger", and "ruining the blogging community". I've seen that talk in various places, but this is total nonsense and in most cases the same people are running AdSense on their sites.

There's nothing wrong with monetising a blog, and if you decide to do it the easy way via autoblogging, there's also nothing wrong with doing that either. But some people just don't seem to get it, and I get the distinct impression that they think that's it's somehow cheating to do things more effectively.

After all, what's the difference between running a generalised article directory full of other people's articles, and running a niche blog full of other people's articles? It's a different platform, but the net effect is the same.

So, just to be clear, there's a distinct difference between a splog (spam blog) and and an autoblog.

Splogs are by their nature typically black hat, and sploggers are responsible for all the junk sites out there that are filled with AdSense and non-sensical scraped and gibberised wrangled content from other blogs, where all references to the original author of the material has been removed.

Splogs will just appear on the web fully formed often with several hundred pages of junk, thrown together in a couple of hours max and are never touched again. The life expectancy of a splog is about 2-3 months (often less) before de-indexing happens, so the creator isn't going to spend much time on them and knows beforehand they'll only get a limited life out of them.

Autoblogs are typically white hat and centre on a niche using a range of legitimately obtained material that gives credit to the original author and the all-important backlink to their site. It's the back link which is what spurred them to write and publically make available the original material in the first place. The material itself is often genuinely useful and well written articles, but of course not always.

Autoblogs will start small and grow slowly and naturally like a regular site would, with new material being published every day or so. Anyone that finds them would be inclined to believe that they're maintained by hand, whereas in fact the posts are automated. Your visitors benefit by finding their one-stop-shop on the topic they're interested in, and you benefit by not having to have done any real work while also being able to monetise your site.

It's a win-win, and that's always important to me in anything I do. I provide value, and I take my cut.

Here's the learning point.

If you provide genuinely useful material on a topic, and the site conforms to what Google expects to see on any quality site – privacy policy, terms, etc – and it stands up to human inspection, then you have nothing to worry about. Over time it will become a force to be reckoned with.

I've seen countless what I would call black hatters make comments in forums and on blogs that go something like:-

"I make my splogs so ugly that people want to immediately click on something to get away from them. So I put a big fat AdSense block in their way. Muhahaha!"

*sigh*

There's just no need to do that. Comply with what real people want and what Google want and everything will be fine. You'll have a long term useful resource that will bring you in a nice little extra income.

-Frank Haywood

She used the automated Vendiva Price Comparison Service to show regularly updated prices for a number of different merchants, and she also put links to Amazon and highlighted that they offer free delivery too. It's a fact that in most cases Amazon offer the lowest price and in any case anything over £5.00 is now free delivery.

She spent at most 3 part-time days working on the site, probably about 15-18 hours in total – "if that" she's just said to me.

Last night we sat down to check traffic to our sites and saw that the site she built 2 weeks ago had received a jump in traffic and received 18 unique visitors yesterday. More importantly, 2 of them had used links that took them to Amazon.

She checked Amazon this morning and saw that one of those visitors had ordered the item that they had searched for and found on her site, earning her approximately £13.12 ($18.70). She won't know the exact amount until Amazon dispatch it and it turns into earnings in her affiliate panel.

I think that's probably a lot more than most people earn with AdSense every month…

The wonderful thing about all this is that other than add more products to the site – which she'll do when she finds a few moments each day (and which will generate even more traffic) – she won't have to do anything with the existing products that are on there. People will continue to find the site using the same search terms they've done over the last few days.

As traffic to the site increases, so will her earnings. All passively. All done on autopilot.

We put the conversion solely down to the fact that she shows a range of prices and merchants for each product she's promoting.

All prices are clickable and take the visitors through to the merchant site using her cloaked affiliate link.

All prices are auto-updated several times a day using direct feeds from the affiliate networks.

This is a dynamite method of instantly gaining your visitors trust. And more importantly from your point of view, their gratitude.

After all, you've just saved them a lot of searching around for the best price available, and if they click the links through to the merchants sites they can see for themselves that the prices are accurate and up to date.

Getting the traffic is easy enough, getting people to click your affiliate links is harder.

You can make it much easier using the same methods as my wife does.

Here's a picture of the gradual increase in traffic over the last few days. My wife has done nothing to promote the site other than create it and give it a backlink from two other sites to get it indexed naturally which we think helps. (Ignore todays traffic of 2 visitors as it was still quite early when I took that snapshot.)

You can do exactly the same thing as she is. What are you waiting for?

-Frank Haywood

Logically you may know you need to, but you may be a bit like I used to be where testing and tracking was the absolute last thing on my mind. I put it to you that if you don't test and track then you don't really have any basis on which to make decisions.

I'll give you some examples.

#1 – If I didn't know how many visitors I get to this blog, I would have given up a long time ago.
#2 – If I didn't know what keywords people were finding my various sites with, I wouldn't know what to change the words to, so that I could increase the amount of traffic to those sites.
#3 – If I didn't try different things and then look at the resulting data a few weeks afterwards, I wouldn't know if what I was doing was right or wrong.

More recently if you're a regular reader, you'll know I've been putting up sites to promote and sell physical goods on Amazon and the like.

Every single site gets tracked completely.

• When I get a visitor, I know how they found the site.
• I know what keywords they used and I know what search engine they came from, or even if they've bookmarked the site and are returning via that bookmark.
• I know what pages they looked at while they were visiting and the path they took.
• I know what link they clicked on to leave the site, or if they left by closing their browser.
• I know overall how my sites are growing (or not) and as a result I can see if I picked a good product and keywords to promote, and I know if I should give the site any more attention.

I wouldn't know any of that if I didn't track all the traffic on my sites.

My question to you is…

Do you test and track?

-Frank Haywood

Google released a new search tool a little while back that pretty much tells you which niches people are searching for products to buy. It's supposed to be used to assist AdWords users uncover keywords to match pages on their web sites, but you can also use it in reverse.

They don't make it very obvious how to do that though and hide the link at the bottom of the page.

The thing is, when you start using it you can quickly work your way down to a relatively quiet and valuable sub-niche with a little thought.

I say it in the video, and I'll say it here too – it's a gold mine!

This data is coming from the biggest database in the world, all pre-processed and packaged up for you. And Google are giving it to you for free.

No other market research tool can compete with Google – they know for a fact what products people are searching for – and they're telling you where the hot markets are.

What I've done is uploaded a 15 minute video on how to do niche market research, and then I've put a much longer post about it which is a transcript of the video on the Warrior Forum.

You can read the post and the transcript, and get a link to the video and a downloadable PDF here:-

How To Find Hot Niches With Dead Simple Market Research

I hope you enjoy this, and if I get enough positive feedback about it on the Warrior Forum, I'll do more.

If you like it and you're a Warrior Forum member, then please say so on the forum. If you're not a Warrior Forum member, then you should be – go sign up.

-Frank Haywood

But… I've had more than a few people contact me to say they're having problems with Market Research.

And when I stopped to think about it, I realised that it's been a fairly recurrent theme. In the past I've looked at things like product creation, surveys and putting up sales pages etc, but I've never really had anything to say about market research.

Yet this is something that people have been asking me about, and I guess it makes complete sense, but it's something I've just completely overlooked.

So what I've done is I've put together a short video on how to do niche market research.

Tomorrow I'll release a link to it – it's just 15 minutes long, and I'll supply it with a transcript too so you can have a read if that's your preferred learning style or if my "brummy" accent sounds a bit funny and you can't catch what I'm saying.

-Frank Haywood.

I said in my last post we'd continue the day after but there's been a few things going on since then. I've had a couple of power cuts and Paul and I have been busy working on the Site Builder for IPK sites.

Okay, that aside, let's continue.

Many people say that the size of your mailing list has a direct bearing on your income. On the face of it this is true, but there are a number of other things involved too, and the biggest one is having a good relationship with your list.

I can tell you from experience that if you have a good relationship with your subscribers then you don't need a huge list. I've certainly found this to be the case.

Thank you.

(I feel that I can make that relationship even better – I've already instigated a few changes for this year, and you'll start to feel the benefit of that in the coming weeks and months.)

Apart from the comments made against my last blog post, I've also had people contact me separately, and the common threads seem to be…

"I've got a small list. How do I make it pay?"

"My list are only interested in freebies and they never buy anything. What can I do?"

The answer to these questions are as I've said above. It's the relationship you have with your list that dictates how they're going to behave to any mailings you send out. Do they like you or are they disinterested?

You know that in the offline "real" world that you like some people, and some people like you. It's impossible for everyone to like everyone else as there are some personalities that just clash. Sometimes you meet someone and you just get on, other times it's the exact opposite.

But did you know you can make most people like you by applying a few rules and changing your own attitude?

Think about this. If you meet someone and they smile a lot and agree with you, and then after a few minutes they smile and say "I like you", isn't it difficult not to like that person back?

The psychology behind it is that we all want to be liked. We're hard wired to like people that like us and sound, look or have the same ideals as us. It's that feeling of belonging we all want.

If someone smiles at you, then it's hard not to smile back. If someone tells you they like them, then it's hard not to like them back.

That's why if you go around spreading happiness and smiles, that's what you'll get back. It's obvious when you think about it isn't it?

Okay?

So how can you apply this to the online world?

You can't tell everybody you like them – it's clearly false when you've never met them and is likely to engender the opposite reaction. But you can put a smiling photo on your blog and connect with your subscribers that way.

And…

You can give them useful things such as information to help them achieve what they want.

So if you give your subscribers useful information (such as this blog post), and intersperse it with promotions for other products you recommend, and every so often a new paid product of your own that people will realise they're getting stunning value for, then you'll gradually build up their trust.

As their trust increases then so will your profits.

It doesn't matter even if you have a relatively smallish list of a few hundred subscribers, it's possible to make that list love you let alone like you, and that's my aim for 2009.

I'll be doing things this year that I know will raise your estimation of me. I'll explain them as we go if you want me to, and if you want to do the same kind of thing with your own list, you'll find it's very straight forward to do.

But if you can't wait and need to know this information now, there's a short cut you can take to get started right away, and it won't cost you an arm and a leg.

You can have a small list and still make a decent profit from it.

How?

http://www.frankhaywood.com/go/slbp/

-Frank Haywood

I understand the frustration, as at one time I found it difficult to grasp just how other people could it and not me. It wasn't so very long ago either.

I try to answer their specific questions as best I can, but sometimes the questions are so general it's too hard to give a good answer.

By the way did you know that 60% of newbies give up in the first 12 months? There's almost certainly a direct correlation between those who succeed and those who give up before they've given it their best.

(That 60% statistic came from a survey Mike Filsaime did just over 2 years ago. I don't think it's any real surprise to regular readers of this blog, and I don't expect that number to have changed significantly. And I don't think Mike would kill me for revealing that…)

So that means that every 12 months a load of people throw in the towel. Which I guess in a way makes it easier for us that keep going.

But even more interesting is that most of the people in that survey had a mailing list of less than 1,000 with half of those not having any kind of mailing list at all.

That's not just interesting, it's preposterous. How on earth do you stand any chance of running an online business without a mailing list?

Think about it.

I'll tell you now that your internet business is your mailing list. You probably think you already know that, but I just have to wonder sometimes at the importance that people put on having a mailing list at all, especially as it seems a lot of people don't have one.

If you're a newbie reading this, then start thinking about building a mailing list or several, right away. For instance, there's a good chance you're reading this because you had an email from me with a link to this site. You almost certainly would not be reading this if you hadn't signed up to one of my mailing lists.

Now you might be feeling a little glum if you have a small list, or if you don't have any list at all. But it's not all doom and gloom – it never is when you look at things in the right way. If you accept the proposition that your mailing list is your business (Which it is. Don't argue. Keep up.) then you know it's time to get going.

What if you knew that even with a relatively small list of a few hundred people you could make a full time living online?

That's a bit cheering on a cold January day isn't it? Apologies for that comment if you live somewhere hot, but it's freezing here in the UK.

If you knew for a fact you could build a mailing list and start making money from it right away, you'd make the effort wouldn't you?

How?

I'll tell you tomorrow.

-Frank Haywood

P.S. If you haven't done so already, come take a look at the forum and say hello. http://www.vendiva.com/forum/