The Blue Ocean Strategy – Ipod, Wii, and this Blog
I recently read a blog post that really got me thinking. The post was titled “Best Advice: Do Not Start A Make Money Online Blog!”. The point of this article is what I’ve only recently really become aware of. There are a ton of blogs out there in the ‘Make Money Online” niche. I mean, a ton. If you are starting a blog, Jay believes you are better off blogging on just about anything else online. After working on this blog for almost a month now, I’m coming around to the view that he’s right on the money (so to speak).
It reminds me of a strategy I heard about awhile ago called “The Blue Ocean Strategy” (at least I think that’s what it’s called). It basically says to do your own unique thing, rather than to compete directly with others doing the same thing. The Ipod and its enormous success is an example of this. When Apple released the Ipod, it was a completely new product. Digital music players just weren’t really around at all. As far as personal music players, Sony basically dominated the market with their Walkman line of players, followed by a host of imitators. Apple could have tried to do what Sony was doing, maybe do it a little better. If they had done this, they would have been jumping into the “Red Ocean”. The red ocean is an area already swimming with hungry sharks, all of them fighting for the same food source. It’s possible to win this way, by jumping and fighting in the bloody part of the ocean, but it’s very difficult (especially when one of those sharks is named Sony). Instead, however, Apple released an entirely new product that had never been seen before. They jumped into the blue ocean, and had the whole thing to themselves before the other sharks even knew what was going on.
A more recent example of this is the Nintendo Wii. When Nintendo was making their new game player, they could have done what Sony and Microsoft were doing. Make very powerful game machines that appeal to hard core male gamers. That was the model. That was the red ocean. Instead, Nintendo went back to the drawing board and decided to create a machine that was simple and fun. They wanted to create games that the whole family could enjoy, from little kids to grandparents. To do this, they created a much simpler controller which was much more intuitive. Few people want to learn how to press 12 different buttons to play a tennis game, but anyone can swing a controller to simulate the motion of a racquet. So what happened? While Sony and Microsoft were fighting it out tooth and nail for a narrow demographic, Nintendo brought in entirely new demographics to gaming, and the Wii has been an enormous success.
So, how does this affect this blog? Well, originally I was just going to chronicle my adventures in the online world. However, I now realize that I’m just following a well worn road that others have already gone down. Although I will still blog about internet marketing when it suits me, I think I’m going to expand my focus somewhat. It’s time for a slight course correction. To what, you ask? Well, tune in tomorrow to find out 
- Dave
Blog Marketing: Establishing Expertis
Image via Wikipedia
If you are attempting to build an audience as an expert in your niche it is important that your blog posts show off your expertise.
Some people attempt to paint themselves as an expert by telling everyone what an expert they are. Unfortunately this approach–even when it is true–tends to create the opposite impression.
Here are some tips to help you make an “expert” impression:
- Talk Like an Expert without ApologySometimes even when we are an expert we feign false humility. We pretend we aren’t as accomplished as we are.Go ahead and speak with authority. Others will see the difference between your absolutes and imposters’ weaknesses.
- Teach Others How to Do Something in Your NicheThis is one of the best ways to show your expertise. Don’t just do it, teach it. Let others learn from your expertise.
- Expose Little Know Tips, Tricks and ExperiencesOften the difference between someone who has real expertise and one who has none is the detail they provide. When you provide real details of what your readers will experience as they follow your direction you build your credibility. Your “little tips” and anecdotes will establish you as a real expert.
- Admit Your Lack of Expertise When You Don’t Have ItOne characteristics of true experts is their willingness to admit when they lack expertise. I can teach you hundreds of ways to make money online, but I know absolutely nothing about making money on eBay. If someone asks me about eBay I just admit I have no clue. It’s not something I’ve done before and I’m secure enough in my expertise that I can admit that without any embarrassment or fear.
- Never Attack or Be DefensiveThis is a tough one at times–even for someone with real expertise. If you are online long enough you will see someone doing something that makes your blood boil. You will want to attack them. Or even worse, someone will attack you.In almost all (if not all) of these cases your best course of action is to ignore it. When you attack someone else you hurt, not help, your credibility in the minds of many of your readers. When you get defensive, you often look weak.
If you do have to make a statement, use something neutral. One I like is: “I’ll let my track record speak for itself.” You appear strong and make your accuser appear weak.
Whether you are an expert in trading stocks or in knitting, following these tips will help you to project that image online.
This post is by Aaron Abber. Aaron is the owner of http://www.FullTiltBlogging.com where he teaches bloggers just like you how to make money blogging. Go there now to pick up his latest book “How to Retire on 200 Blog Visitors a Day” free.
Whose the REAL Culprit in the Global “Food Shortage”?
Image via Wikipedia
I’ve been reading a lot of articles recently on the so called world “food shortage”. Apparently, the price of food is rising around the world, and people want to know why. Many politicians are raising the specter of global warming as the cause. Others are pointing the finger at bio fuels, where we are subsidizing people to turn food into fuel. Personally, I find the global warming angle a sham, while I have a little more time for the bio fuel point of view. However, I suspect the real cause (as in 95% of it) is our old friend fiat money. In an earlier post, I linked to a YouTube video, explaining how the US dollar, since decoupled from gold, has been steadily declining in value. This is why other commodities, such as gold, have been steadily rising in value relative to it. However, commodities are not limited to gold and silver. Food is a commodity as well. As all of the world’s governments print more money, is it any surprise that the value of food is going up as well? I could write more about this, but instead, I’ll just link to this great article I found on this at RealClearMarkets. It’s a worthwhile read:
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2008/04/the_foodshortage_myth.html
More on Aaron Abber and an explanation of the previous post
In my blog post yesterday, I actually posted a post from Aaron Abber’s website. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, Aaron is running a FREE mentoring program every Monday for the next 10 weeks. I know what you’re thinking, as I was thinking the same thing too. Is this a scam? How can it be free? My fear was that he was actually an internet con man, as there are so many of them on the Internet (see my posts on Yuri the Pig Farmer). My next fear was that he would be this kid pictured above. I mean, do I really want to learn about internet marketing / blogging from some punk kid who looks like his acne just cleared up? (The picture above is from Aaron’s site at FullTiltBlogging.com) However, I’m willing to learn from anybody, if they have knowledge that is worthwhile. I mean, if this kid is making a ton of dough, then I’d be a fool not to listen to what he has to say.
Thankfully, Aaron is not Yuri or some punk know it all internet whiz kid. He’s an older gentleman with years of experience in internet marketing. He’s the real deal. At our first meeting, which was an online webinar (a format which will continue in the weeks ahead), I learned a lot. The meeting itself went on for nearly 2 hours. How’s that for value! Another great thing is some of my fellow apprentices seem to be really great people as well. One of them was Suzie Cheel, who runs The Abundance Highway blog. I’d actually read her blog before I signed up, so I was excited to see that she was part of the group as well. I’m looking forward to learning more about the other people in the mentor group as well.
At any rate, Aaron still has some spots open (at least I think he does). If you’ve been thinking about starting an online business of any kind and you’re willing to do some work, I can’t think of a better way to start. If I were you, I’d bust my butt over to FullTiltBlogging right now and sign up. I think Aaron realizes that he may have made a mistake by making this mentoring group free. When it’s free, people’s first reaction is that it can’t be any good. I think Aaron realizes that he might have had more serious people sign up if he charged them for it. I think he’s right. Again, take advantage of Aaron’s miscalculation and sign up today. You won’t regret it.
To our Success!
- Dave
Whew! I am WORN OUT!
We just got done with the first of our Mentoring Group meetings.
I gotta tell ya–it was exciting as well as exhausting!
If you haven’t signed up for the Mentoring Group yet do it now–it’s free. You’ll immediately get the Podcast and slides from tonight’s meeting. Just go here now:
http://www.FullTiltBlogging.com/blog?p=194
We have a few spots left. Why in the world WOULDN’T you sign up? I can’t figure it out.
If you were one of the participants tonight, I’d love for you to put your comments below and let others know what you thought. I know I told you not to divulge the content, but you can still tell whether you learned anything, whether it was worth the time and whether it was FUN.
This post is by Aaron Abber. Aaron is the owner of www.FullTiltBlogging.com where he teaches bloggers just like you how to make money blogging. Go there now to pick up his latest book "How to Retire on 200 Blog Visitors a Day" free.
A Live Case Study in PPC marketing … starting Now!
I know that yesterday I said I was going to start to look into social media, with the idea of creating viral videos. However, I think I’m going to have to push that off until tomorrow (as well as the Aaron Abber / Yuri the Pig Farmer update. I have my first meeting scheduled for 2 hours from now. I can hardly wait!). Today, I’m going to talk a little bit about PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns. This is also something I’m interested in, and I’m going to work through a real life example as I learn (just like I did with Niche Inspector). Hopefully, you’ll find it useful.
The very first website I ever created can be found at www.breathingweightloss.com. This website promotes a course of deep breathing exercises that can help you lose weight. I actually based it on a 1914 book written by J.P. Muller (it’s all in the sales letter, if you want to read it). My goal is to use google adwords to drive qualified traffic to this site in order to generate sales. I intend to use split testing to refine my ads to figure out exactly which ones are the most effective. Once I get google adwords working well, I intend to move the most effective campaigns over to Yahoo and MSN as well. The question is, can I turn this website into one that consistently generates revenue for me? (Currently, I get about 1 sale every 2 weeks. Obviously, I can’t retire on this) Well, let’s find out, shall we?
These are the keywords I am going to start with for this PPC campaign:
Lose weight breathing
Breathing exercise to lose weight
Loose weight breathing
Breathing weight loss
Breathing exercises for weight loss
Breathing and weight
In adwords, I set each of these keyword phrases as broad match, exact match, and phrase match. In theory, this should put my ad in front of as many relevant searchers as possible. I also set my budget at $3 a day. Once I find the right keyword combinations that work with the right ads, I’ll increase this amount. For now though, I want to keep the amount low, as I’m working with a limited budget.
The two ads I created are as follows:
Natural Weight Loss
Deep Breathing Exercise – The Secret of Natural and Easy Weight Loss
Breathing Weight Loss
Lose Weight/Feel Great with Simple Breathing Exercises for all ages.
I also created another 2 ads by simply switching the header and the body text. This way, I should be able to determine which is the more effective header, and which is the better body text.
As this campaign rolls out and I learn more about PPC advertising, I’ll have more to say on this. As well, I’ll definitely let you know what happened with Aaron/Yuri today. Till tomorrow!
To our Success,
- Dave
Final Thoughts on “10 Day”, go PHILLY! and more
Before I do anything, I want to give a big shout out to my favorite Basketball Team, the Philadelphia 76ers. Today, they upset the Detroit Pistons 90 to 86 in game one of their 7 game series. It’s been great watching the sixers this season. A lot of people had them pegged to finish dead last before the season began, and for awhile, it looked like that might happen. However, they really pulled it together. Unlike a lot of more talented teams, this edition of the Sixers really play as a team. They just don’t quit. At one point in today’s game, it looked like Detroit was just going to run away with it, but Philly just kept coming. In my opinion, if they were playing Cleveland or Orlando, I bet they could pull the upset. Detroit though, is just too talented. They took Philadelphia lightly this time, and I doubt they’ll do it again. At the very least, they won’t be talking to former teammates during timeouts, like they did today.
To business. Here are my final thoughts on the “10 Day Cash Secret”. It is interesting, and it’s worth a try. However, at this point I’ve created 10 websites using this system, and I’ve made $4.78 in total. Not exactly a great ROI. How to explain the discrepancy between my results, and the results that Neil achieved? Well, I can think of a couple:
1) With the site that Neil set up for Tesco, he was actually able to use the Tesco brand name in his blog. I believe Tesco is a fairly big name in the UK. If would be like being able to use a brand name like “Safeway” or “Walmart” in North America. I suspect this gives his blog an added bit of credibility. When you click on this Tesco blog, you are taken right to Tesco direct.
2) Like I said, I created 10 blog / datafeed stores to test this out. However, this is probably too many, and I was trying to use datafeeds that were too large. I suspect this is why I can no longer get the sites to update automatically. If you were going to try this, I would recommend only setting up one or two sites, with a max of 3000 products in the datafeed.
Although I haven’t achieved any kind of great sales with this system, there is still potential with them as far as being satellite sites for your main websites. For example, if you own a gardening website, you might want to set up a datafeed store with just gardening equipment. The datafeed store would support your main website, and vice versa.
If you’re interested in checking out the sites I set up using “The 10 Day Cash Secret”, here they are:
Bestcatanddogstuff.com
Comicstatuesreplicas.com
Swimmingpoolsandpumps.com
Wallandceilinglighting.com
Orientalandpersianrugs.com
Networkitsystems.com
Luggageandtravelgear.com
Indoorandoutdoorfurniture.com
Bestguitarampsandkeyboards.com
Bathroomtoolsandpumps.com
If I suddenly start to make a lot of money from any of these sites (and all of them have been up for less than a month), I’ll let you know.
I think what I’m going to focus on for the next couple of weeks is video blogging, or making viral video’s for youtube. In an earlier post, I wrote about and posted this video, which concerned the falling American dollar. What really caught my eye, and what I’ve been mulling over, is that one video had something like 200,000 views since it went live on April 4. If you create an interesting video, and it’s promoted by a social network, it can really drive traffic to a site. It just looks very interesting.
As well, tomorrow (April 21) I’m going to have my first mentoring session with Aaron (unless it really is Yuri the Pig Farmer). I’ll have to report on that as well.
To our Success!
- Dave
My Experiences with the 10 Day Cash Secret (so far…)
In my last post, I wrote about Neil Shearing’s 10 Day Cash Secret. From everything he wrote about on his blog, it seemed really promising, so I decided to purchase it and try it out.
The first blog / datafeed store I set up was at www.bestcatanddogstuff.com. I found it fairly easy to set up, as Neil created these online video’s of himself setting up a website. So, you get to watch what he does step by step in order to see how he does it. Having said this, however, I did have some trouble getting the CRON jobs set up correctly. A CRON job is a unix command/function that is critical to get the 10 Day cash secret to work properly. After several communications with my web hosts technical support, I was able to get it to work (or so I thought, more on this later).
I found a datafeed related to pet supplies, and uploaded it to my website. At first, it didn’t seem to work as promised. The 10 day plug in was publishing All of the posts at once, and not one every 5 minutes like Neil promised. I sent an e-mail to Neil, and he informed me that I needed to change the publishing interval due to the time zone I live in (I’m in Vancouver, so I’m in the pacific time zone, as opposed to England). So, instead of setting up the time intervals for each post as 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, etc, I needed to set them as now, 420 minutes, 425 minutes, etc. I’m not exactly sure why this worked, but it did.
So, my blog / datafeed store started to publish these posts every 5 minutes. What happened? Well, this did result in search engine spider’s crawling my site like I have never seen before. I had something like 300 visitors from google bot, yahoo bot, etc, on the first day. I was pretty impressed. Within a week, I had a few natural searches coming from google to this site. Not bad, I thought.
Now, here is where I may have made a mistake. After allowing the blog to publish new posts every 5 minutes, I thought it might be wise if I changed the publishing frequency to once a day. My reasoning was that I thought I might be punished for spamming if I allowed the 5 minute publishing to continue. Note that Neil did not recommend to do this. I did this on my own. It could have been mistake.
The other thing I did that might have been a mistake was that I was very aggressive in uploading datafeeds. On a shared server, I think Neil recommends a 1000. Well, I uploaded something like 10000 to the server. This seemed to work fine, but on March 31, the posts just stopped publishing. I’m not sure if this is related to the amount of posts I had uploaded, or some quark with the 10 day system where it has trouble with publishing posts between months. I’ll note, however, that I did set up other 10 day cash secret websites. All of them seem to have stopped publishing on March 31. Perhaps it is a better idea to upload smaller datafeeds (1000) and let those run? As well, perhaps it is ill advised to allow those feeds to run over a change in the month?
One thing that is a pain is that when you have a datafeed that stops publishing, your blog is left with thousands of unpublished posts that are hard to get rid off. This is another advantage to keeping your datafeeds on the smaller side, in case something goes wrong.
Today, I tried to do two things with my 10 day cash secret websites:
1) At www.bestcatanddogstuff.com I uploaded another smaller datafeed in an attempt to get it publishing posts again. So far, however, . I’m not sure why this is, as it did work before. It could be due to the fact that there are ait does not seem to be working whole bunch of unpublished posts in the blog, I’m not really sure. If you check this site out and you see an umbrella as the last post, the new datafeed I uploaded isn’t being used.
2) I recreated from scratch another site I created at www.swimmigpoolsandpumps.com. Again, although I uploaded a brand new datafeed and did everything the same as last time, it doesn’t seem as if the new datafeed is publishing. The only difference I can see is that this blog is using wordpress 2.5, as opposed to wordpress 2.3. Could this have made a difference?
Regardless, I’m a little bit frustrated at the moment. Tomorrow, I plan on revisiting another one of these sites that I set up in an attempt to get it publishing every 5 minutes like it used to. It used to work, why doesn’t it now?
Oh, and do you want to know how much money I’ve made so far? I have one sale from the cat and dog site, for a total commission of $4.78. Hmmmmm.
I’ll have more to say on this tomorrow, I suspect.
- Dave
Is there a 10 Day Cash Secret for easy internet wealth?
Today, I’m going to talk a little about my experiences so far with Neil Shearing’s “10 Day Cash Secret”. So, just what is the 10 day cash secret? Well, Neil Shearing is an internet marketer from England who has developed a wordpress plug-in that will automatically load a merchant’s datafeed at specific time intervals. For those of you who don’t know (and I didn’t, until very recently) there are many merchants who offer product datafeeds that affiliates can use to create online stores. These datafeeds are usually csv files of some sort, which usually contains the merchants entire catalog. You modify the datafeed with your affiliate ID. If someone then clicks on a product from the store you’ve created, they’ll be taken to the merchant’s store. If they buy something there, you will get a commission from that merchant.
What Neil has done is to use wordpress to create these online stores very quickly. Furthermore, you can set it up so that a new entry is put on the blog every 5 minutes. The advantage to this is that search engines love fresh content from blogs. Typically, they will rank fresh content from a blog higher than they usually would, for a period of time. So, with your blog / data feed store updating every 5 minutes, search engine spiders will be crawling your site within hours. In theory, you will rank highly in the search engines, and people will come to your site. If they click on anything, and then buy something, you’ll make some money. You don’t have to worry about search engine optimization, ppc ads, or anything else. Your blog / datafeed store with its updated content will do it all for you.
The example Neil gives in his sales letter is this site:
http://winebuyersuk.com/
He set up this site, and within 10 days, had his first sale. Within the first month of this site being live, it did $3851.30 in sales. Now, this is total sales, not commissions. However, let’s say he’s getting a 10% commission. Making $385 a month from a site as simple as this isn’t bad at all, is it? I mean, if this works, all you’d need to do is to create another 10 sites, and you’d be sitting pretty, right? Well, I thought this looks interesting, so I paid $154 dollars for the basic plan (you can pay $300 for the deluxe plan, which includes direct e-mail support from Neil) and got to work. So what happened?
Tune in tomorrow to find out
To our Success!
- Dave
Something Different: Scrooge, Nixon, and Gold – Oh My!
And now, as they say, for something completely different. Earlier today I was surfing some blogs when I cam across this video at www.flimjo.com. It basically makes the case that the American Dollar (like every other currency in the world that I’m aware of) has been declining in value ever since it was decoupled from gold in 1971. Now, the reality is that the gold standard was being undermined for decades up to that point. When Nixon removed it, he was basically just pulling the life support plug. Nonetheless, the video is great. Take a look.
Now, the question is, why is this so? To understand why, we first need to understand just exactly what money is and what purpose it serves. Buckle up, because I suspect that most economists do not understand this.
There is nothing magical about money. Money is a medium of exchange, nothing more. Imagine Robinson Crusoe on his island. Does he have any need for money? Absolutely not. He is forced to do everything himself to survive. Life is pretty brutal for poor old Robinson Crusoe. Now, imagine when Friday shows up. Does he need money now? No, it’s still just easier to barter. Maybe Robinson Crusoe collects coconuts all day, whereas Friday fishes. They then trade at the end of the day and they are both better off as a result. Still, there’s no need for money at this point.
However, as society grow more complex, bartering becomes more and more difficult. Take this example. Farmer Huey raises cows and produces milk. He decides he is tired of living in the dark, so therefore he wants to trade some of his milk to Dewie the candle maker. However, there’s a problem. Dewie is extremely lactose intolerant, and wants no part of Huey’s milk. Poor Huey, what’s he going to do? Well, he could go and try and find some third party that produces something that Dewie desires, but who is not lactose intolerant and actually likes milk. He could do this, but can you see right here how inefficient this is? This is why money, a universally recognized medium of exchange, comes into being. Rather than barter for things you may not want in the hope of getting things you do, it is far more efficient for Huey to sell his milk and accept a medium of exchange (money) for it in return. Dewie will accept this medium of exchange, as he knows he will be able to use it to get anything he feels he needs.
The question becomes then, what to use as this medium of exchange? Well, why not use leaves, a la The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy? The problem here is that both Huey and Dewie have to work to produce milk and candles. They are not going to want to exchange their goods for something that any fool can pick from a tree. How about a commodity like corn? Well, it does take some work to grow corn, but what if you don’t want to exchange your corn for something else right away? Your corn will go bad, and then where will you be?
In a free society, through trial and error, many different commodities are tried in order to fill the role of “medium of exchange”. What they all eventually settle on, is gold. Out of anything you can think of, gold is scarce, highly durable, portable, and in high demand. When Huey exchanges his milk to someone who desires it for gold, he can approach Dewie with confidence, knowing that he will accept the gold for candles.
Paper currencies arise when people realize that carrying around gold is a pain. Isn’t it easier to have a paper certificate, a note, saying that if you wish, you can exchange the paper for gold? This is how paper currency’s start, and there is nothing wrong with them. As long as Huey and Dewie have the confidence that the paper they are getting is backed by the real thing (gold), they’re happy.
The problem occurs when the government takes over the production of the paper money. For a time, everything works well, as the government paper money is backed by gold. However, this starts to fall apart when the government starts to print more money than it has in gold. Why does it do this? Well, government doesn’t actually produce anything that people will voluntarily exchange for. Whatever it does must be paid for by taxes. The problem, though, is that people don’t like to be taxed. However, if you want to get elected, isn’t the easiest way to buy people’s votes? It doesn’t matter what it is, free health care, a new stadium, etc. The sneaky politician will promise whatever it is you want as long as you’ll vote for him. However, once he gets into office, how does he pay for it all? Does he do it the honest way and raise taxes? Of course not! People may not have voted for him if they actually know how much his promises cost. Besides, he promised not to raise them. The easiest thing to do is to start paying for his promises by literally printing paper money. He does this and for the time it appears to work. However, at this point the gold standard is already under furious attack. The paper currency is now a lie. The government paper currency may say that it is worth 1/20 an ounce of gold, but there is now more paper out there than gold to back it up. So long as everyone doesn’t try and exchange their paper currency for gold, the politician is safe. Nonetheless, cracks will start to appear …
The video said that the US came off the Gold Standard in 1971. Really though, the Gold Standard started to come under attack with the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. When Nixon took the American buck off it in 1971, he really had no choice. The dye had been cast long before. However, once that last frail link to gold was lost, politicians of all stripes could promise the moon, free in the knowledge that they could print as much money as they wanted. At some point though, Huey, Dewie, Louie, and everyone else realize that they are exchanging hard earned products for pieces of valueless paper with dead presidents on them. When enough people awaken to this reality, the jig is up, as they say, and the currency collapses.
Fun fact. Every paper currency which is backed by nothing ends up being devalued until it is worthless. This has been true throughout human history. There are no exceptions.
Well, enough with that for today. For tomorrow, I plan on getting around to talking about my experiences with the 10 Day cash secret. Also, notice that I’ve added these cool social media buttons to the bottom of the post. If you want to do this, you can find the wordpress plug in here:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable/installation/
To our Success!
- Dave
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