One of the things that is written on the whiteboard in my office, and that is uppermost in my mind pretty much every day of my working life is this:

‘CREATE ANOTHER STREAM’

It’s possibly the main reason that I’m a full-time marketer when so many other people aren’t.

It’s no secret or anything – it’s just that my income comes from more than one source.

I’ve actually never sat down and counted how many income streams I have. The trackers and testers among you will be freaking out now I guess but my answer is ‘why do I need to know exactly how many streams I have?’

I know what they are and I pretty much know when any of them increases, decreases or stops generating profits. That’s because, like most successful online marketers, I have a feel for my business that goes beyond tracking and testing, which I actively dislike.

It’s no exaggeration that I can look at my Paypal and Clickbank accounts and almost read it in the way that geeky bloke in ‘The Matrix’ reckoned he could see an attractive blonde women in those green squiggles on the PC screen.

I can tell when it’s a slow week or that one website isn’t performing well or is having tech problems, just as I can tell when I get a surge of unexpected traffic and sales increase.

I’d guess that I have somewhere between 50 and 100 seperate income streams, including (and mostly being) ebooks sold from stand alone or mini sites, but including affiliate sales, adwords, offline book sales, niche markets etc (JV’s don’t count because they’re bonus income surges and I don’t like to reply on them as day to day income. This also means that if my business is successful without JV’s I don’t have to ass kiss as so many people do, afraid they’ll get kicked out of the JV circle).

I also have a number of hosting providers. I’ve considered time and time again moving everything to one huge server but it’s a question of risk – if I did and my server blew up I would lose my entire income overnight. as things are, being hosted on numerous different sites means that if one of them has serious downtime I still have the others to provide me with a living.

It’s a personal choice of course, but that’s what being in business is about – making your own decisions and not letting other people do it for you.

The more income streams you can generate the safer you are. People often ask how much I was earning before I knew it was safe to go full-time. Actually it wasn’t quite like that – it was more a case of how many income streams I had ( I had a few from online marketing and a few from offline).

Once you’ve set up an income stream in place (by which I mean it’s bringing money in, not just a pretty website) then build another one. Rinse and repeat.

You’re actually reading one of my fastest growing income streams – it’s this blog. People are becoming much more used to buying from blog than they were even last year. I also find it immensley enjoyable to write. A great combination for an income stream.

If you want to find out how I maked money from writing down my feeble personal thoughts have a look at www.blogyourwage.com

It’s free.

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About 3pm yesterday afternoon, which in Yorkshire at this time of year is when it starts to go dark, there was a knock at the door.

I was working in my office and the kids were sitting in front of a warm TV so my wife answered the door.

I heard some mumbling then she called me to the open door. As I passed her she turned to me and raised her eyebrows a little making sure the person standing in the doorway couldn’t see her.

The sky was turning dark so I flicked on the outside light and watched the poor bloke’s pupils shrink to the size of decimal points as the light hit him full in the face.

He nodded and said ‘Sorry to bother you sir (HOW old am I?) but we’re in the area clearing roof guttering and we wondered if you’d like your guttering clearing out and sealing. We can do the work right now’.

Before he’d finished speaking I interrupted with ‘How much?’

‘A tenner’ he said in what I now recognised was a broad Irish accent. I told him I thought that was a fine price and he should start immediately.

Now there are, in my part of the world, unscrupulous individuals who offer to replace tiles, clear gutters and the like, then go up on your roof, break as many tiles as they can without being noticed, tell you your roof is knackered and will rain in at the first sign of a dark cloud then charge you £400 to fix it.

Which is why whenever anybody offers to do work on my house like this, I pour a small glass of scotch and go outside talking to them while they work.

Which is what I did.

Now my home is the larger part of an old property that has been split into two. The gutter runs along the front and rear roof of the house, which is quite long. Not too bad for the workers,  but it also runs along two extensions and a garage that have been added on over the years.

It’s also over 200 years old and the gutters are wide and deep – perfect in fact for all manner of sludgy, crappy, smelly wet goo to gather there.

Which is why I don’t do the job myself.

The poor blokes were at it for nearly an hour. They thought it should be a 5 minute job, but instead it turned into 60 finger numbing, cold, wet minutes for ten pounds. There were two of them so that was a fiver each. Not good pay by any standards.

But (here comes the marketing bit) they weren’t doing it for the money – they were doing it as a loss leader – to get a foot in the door if they will. Just like offering a freebie from your website to get prospects to know and trust you. Once they’ve downloaded the freebie you can start to sell to them.

Which is what they did next.

‘Your roof’s in really good condition, sir’ they said.

‘But your ridge tiles…..’ Here he made the sound that only builders and car mechanics can make by sucking in a long breath of air over clenched teeth. The one that tells you it’s going to cost a lot of money to fix.

It seems my ridge tiles were ‘shagged’ and at the first sign of rain would leak like a minor government official.

Good news though – they could fix the problem for just £280 – about $560.

I knew for a fact that my ridge tiles were not shagged or anything else because a builder friend who did a bit of work for me in the summer told me they were in very good condition.

I said I didn’t want any more work doing, thanks. That got rid of their ‘upsell’ but quick….what’s this?

Now they showed me their TIME LIMITED OFFER

He said ‘I know money can be tight after Christmas sir, but since we’ve no work on until next week we’ll do it for you for just £250, but we’ll have to start this week.

 When I said no they said I offered a hard bargain and introdued their ‘ONE TIME OFFER’ – never to be seen again, of just £200 – ‘and I’m cutting me own throat at that price’.

Well I turned them down again and by now the sky was very dark and my scotch had gone. So had my interest in the encounter, but it made Me think about my own business – and to those of us who think that time limited offers, one time offers and sales generating freebies are a cutting edge internet concept, think again eh?

PS It won’t be funny if it DOES rain in next time the storm clouds gather.

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Happy New Year, and if you celebrate it, I hope you had a great Christmas too.

We’re in the process of building a site where subscribers can distribute their free products. It’s free for subscribers to my own and Sara Brown’s newsletters and although I don’t have to explain the potential of this, subscribers should watch their inboxes for our newsletters, for more details.

I love Christmas and the holiday season brought family get togethers, great meetings with friends we don’t see often enough and a father in law who drunk most of my 10 year old Irish whiskey.

Luckily I hid the Scotch.

And as the New Year came and went I realised how a persons work can affect their whole outlook on life.

As usual, despite having a hangover I was very excited to wake on the first day of a new year and spend half an hour lying in bed while the house was quiet thinking about plans and possibilities for the coming year.

As everyone else awoke (we had a house full over the hols) i realised that those people who were heading back to work the next day were already planning their next holiday – one friend in particular said she couldn’t wait for summer because she had a big holiday planned.

I absolutely agree – but what about the time in between when you can make a start on shaping how you want your life to develop over the next 12 months?

In contrast, a couple of friends who run their own successful business were looking forward to next week when a new ad campaign goes live and they expect a rush of sales – they’re excited about the planning and tracking of the whole thing to see if it works as well as they hope.

Spot the difference?

And this is why you absolutely need to work for yourself.

Because people who run their own businesses don’t throw away big chunks of their lives waiting for the small gaps in their 9-5 job when they can ‘be themselves’.

People who work for themselves know that their businesses are part of their lives – a vibrant, important, vital part of their existance and while they might look forward to a holiday in the sun, they would be horrified to think that the bits in between that are part of their extrememly limited time on earth, shouldn’t be just as important and exciting.
It’s all part of being alive.

Unless you’re very lucky, if you have a 9-5 job then chances are you’re wishing a big part of your life away by ‘passing the time’ until the next week off comes around.
This is why I started to work for myself and why I can never work for anyone else again.

Not because I’m any more intelligent, talented or entrepreneurial than you are, but because I’ve woken up, smelt the coffee and fully realise that it would be like agreeing to throw away a big part of my life, and I enjoy it too much to do that.

Shake off your doubts, fears and anxiety and start work on your business. Make 2008 the year that you take charge of your life.

It’ll take work, effort and it won’t be a walk in the park but it’s still easier than working a 9-5 for the next 20 years.

I’d raise a glass to toast ‘new beginnings’ but a house guest who shall remain nameless would probably grab it from my grasp and down it in one!

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Thanks to all of you who grabbed yourself a copy of the ‘system’. I’m not mentioning the title yet because it hasn’t gone officially live – just to subscribers and a few invited VIP’s! It’s not a secret I just don’t want this thread being picked up on Google.

If you’ve got a copy, keep an eye on your inbox over the next couple of weeks because we’ve got some free resources and some severely effective help coming your way to kick start your new business into 2008.

In fact if we manage to pull off what we’re hoping to, you won’t have to do much traffic driving or marketing because we’ll sell your products for you – and you’ll keep 100% of the profits. No promises of course – this is all in the planning stage, but we’re quietly confident. In case you’re wondering – it’ll won’t cost you a penny – Sara and I are the freebie kings remember.

More soon.

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I’ve co-written a book with Sara Brown, and it’s going to be launched – very softly, without bells and whistles – initially to subscribers only, on Sunday 9th December at 6pm UK time, 1pm EST in the states.

It’s about a system we’ve been working on for the past couple of months that can be applied to any product, and is bringing us a conversion rate for the system of 5% consistently, regardless of what we’re selling. Just goes to show what a couple of simple sites with small ‘twist’ can do.

Each small launch takes a couple of days to put together, although to be honest once we’d done a few we were easily building them in an afternoon. Each one brought in just over $1,000, but even better was the viral traffic it pushed to our other sites and the number of opt-in’s we scored from it.

I’d have been happy just to build the sites for the opt-in’s and the traffic alone, but who can argue with $1,000 in your Paypal account every time, for a couple of days work?

 Our hope is that it might provide a ‘bread and butter’ income for our subscribers while they build their online businesses and maybe even go full time. There’s no chance of saturation because of how the system works and we’ll prove that because it’s going to be part of our online arsenal for as long as we remain on the net!

We’ve included screenshots, details of how we obtain our products, a full run down of the website system etc. – we’ve left nothing out.

 It’s going out initially to subscribers only, at a special nominal price that is only there to make us a small profit and ensure that people who buy it put a value on the package and do something with it.

You’ll only be notified about this on Sunday if you’re a subscriber. When it goes live on Clickbank in a week or two, the price will almost double. If you want to get in on the subscriber deal sign up for my newsletter on the right =====>> (at the top of the page)

or Sara’s at www.sara-brown.com

Hope you sign up!

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I can’t claim this as my own idea although I’ve adpated this slightly from Seth Godin’s original.

I put out a lot of websites, more than a lot of other marketers and people ask pretty often where all the ideas come from. I have a big thick ideas book that I’ll never get through even if I live to be 100, but one of the other main ways to get a product noticed (which often means it’s profitable too) is to do the ‘never’

So for example – most marketers don’t answer their own email – but both myself and Sara Brown do, so it becomes a selling point, as well as infinitely more satisfying that having some bloke in Darjeeling do it for you.

Another example would be most marketers mail their lists via an autorepsonder every 4 or 5 days. So I do it twice a month or so – once with my newsletter and once with an offer. Again this is something I was told I should ‘never’ do. Once I hear the word ‘never’ it’s time to do exactly the opposite.

Which is why I give away many top quality ebooks/tutorials for free. Just look around my blog and you’ll see what I mean.

Sure there’s an upsell – for a nominal amount you can grab the full Master Resell Rights, often rebrandable too, but unlike other marketers I let you see the book first – download the personal edition for free and if you like it (and most people instantly see the value in owning the rights) take the upsell.

 There’s no heavy selling, nothing is hidden and it works. This again was something I was told I should ‘never’ do – show people the product before they purchase – takes away the ‘mystique’ it seems.

Balls.

Do the ‘never’ – it’s one of the best ways I know to grab yourself a hit product.

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I’m a bit like a magpie – a 6’4” beardy magpie I agree, but by
nature I’m a hoarder.

I get it from my Dad. He never threw anything out. It drove my Mum
mad because she’d bash her leg on a 1950’s cast iron fire surround
that had been in the shed for over 10 years and yell at my Dad,
asking him why on earth he was still keeping it.

‘It might come in handy’ was always his reply.

I have the virtual equivalent of my Dad’s shed in a folder on my
laptop hard drive. Stuff that I’ve aquired that ‘might come in
handy’

PLR, Master resell Rights, Resell Rights products. Some I’ll
rewrite, repackage and resell and some I won’t.

I realised something the other day though. By FAR the ones I make
the most money with are those that come ‘ready made’ with sales
letters, graphics as well as Master Resell Rights.

Because they’re the ones that are easy to put together, and quite
honestly, look and sell the best. If you bought me a pint I could
spend hours telling you of my major and minor successes with Resell
material.

Which is also the reason I love putting them together for my
subscribers.

I always strictly limit the number of licenses that I sell for my
resell products, so after emailing my subscribers and waiting for 48 hours to let them get first bite at the cherry, I’m now able to post here that there are still TWO master resell licenses availble for my Master Key Methods package.

Once they’re gone, they’re gone.

If you’re thinking about starting the new year with a new product
line – you couldn’t do much better in terms of quality and
appearance than this.
http://www.masterkeymethods.com/limited

Full sales page, graphics, license and Master Resell Rights
included. The complete works – ready to go.

They’ll sell quickly and there are only 2 available – be quick if
you’re interested!

Regards

Tony Shepherd

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I must admit to being pretty astounded by how well Blog Marketing works in the Internet Marketing niche. I’m more than aware that in my other niches – ranging from website building, dogs, on through heath, jewellery to even more diverse niches,  that blogs are possibly THE single best tool for both directing traffic to my sales websites and for making direct sales from my blog.

 I though in this niche – Internet Marketing – that people would be much more cynical than that – after all as marketers we know exactly what blogs are, and more importantly how to use them to drive traffic and make sales. So I thought nobody would be interested in reading my blog.

I was really wrong.

The amount of traffic I’ve generated from a few links and a few forum posts is amazing. I’m getting more hits than I ever thougt possible, including comments and emails. I’ve also been indexed by Google.

You can find out how I did all this (and more that goes on behind the scenes) by reading ‘Blog Your Wage’ at http://www.blogyourwage.com

 Even better – the book is free!

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I sometimes speak to my children like a Victorian Disciplinarian Father – ‘Sit down and keep quiet child or I’ll sell you to a chimney sweep who’ll put you up chimneys to clean them!  I growl in a deep and menacing voice.

They know it’s a game and squeal with laughter or giggle and call me silly. It’s one of those private family joke things that is loving and fun and bonds us together.

Unfortunately I sometimes forget and last month did my ‘Victorian Dad’ routine in a shopful of people. My daughter as usual giggled and ran up to me and hugged my legs. But to the people in the shop she looked like a terrified urchin about to be given a taste of the whip.

I didn’t realise this until I looked around at the faces of my fellow shoppers, whose expressions ran from disgust to terror. I’m surprised nobody called social services.

The week after we were at a village gathering to welcome Christmas into the village. It’s actually very early for Christmas being November still, but in actuality I think the ceremony dates back to pre-Christian times and they’ve covered it up by shoving Christmas on the top to make it respectable.

This time my daughter was being genuinely naughty. She was bashing her brother with a squeaky stuffed (cloth) hammer and ignoring all attempts by my wife to get her to stop.

I leaned forward and said (in a not too quiet voice) ‘Please will you stop doing that – would you like being hit with that hammer?!’

Of course I said this just as there was a break in the music so my voice carried all the way down the street and into most of the next county. You could have heard a DNA unwind.

Of course as I looked up who was there but one of the more disgusted people from the shop episiode, and to make it worse my darling daughter looked up at me with big eyes and said ‘please don’t hit me with the hammer daddy’.

If my wife hadn’t dragged me away I’d have been lynched on the steps of the church (where they really used to do it 600 years ago)

Recently I’ve also had some very minor website problems. One poor man in particular was left waiting for his download for almost 24 hours when it should have been instant. I apologised and sent him a bonus but guess what?

The next time I had problems with a site, who should decide to buy?

Yep – my patient customer. I tried to explain that it was a co-incidence but polite though he was, I’ll never see him again. He got a snapshot of my business through bad luck, bad timing and technical difficulties. Nothing I can do about that except smile and hope he comes to visit my sites on a good day. You can’t control everything – so don’t sweat too much about the stuff that you can’t. Work on the stuff that you CAN change, and if you want to, change it.

Likewise my homelife.

What’s the betting that the next time my neighbours see me and my daughter, she’s got tomato ketchup all over her face and I’m walking behind her with the big stick I use for unblocking leaves from the drain?

I give up.

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I’ve never understood why most Internet Marketers are so mean when it comes to giving things away!

And if they do find it in their black, shriveled little hearts (sorry – not had my coffee yet) to actually give something away to their list or their subscribers it’s usually a manky little report that’s stuffed full of links.

Strangely enough – if you want to make money the opposite works. Provide something that is excellent value – worth at least a genuine $17 – and give it to them for free. Sure put maybe a single link back to your blog or newsletter page but don’t stuff it full of annoying URL’s that distract from the content.

And of course make sure that the content iself is valuable. Let’s not take the p*ss here – people know when they’ve been offered something of poor value that’s been knocked together by some lazy marketer who then expects his subscribers to circulate it all over the net just so he can grab the traffic. People are not stupid –  Marketers are (me included)

 If you provide quality freebies people realise that the your paid work will be of a high quality. I regularly offer top rate freebies to my subscribers with no catches (sign up for my newsletter on the right if you’re interested) or strings attached.

Sure I might include an upsell in the deal, but the link for the freebie is always obvious and obtainable without hassle. in the example I’m about to give you, the free link is at the bottom of the second page.

Check out the following free report – http://www.streamingaudio4free.com

See if you like the model – the idea – the marketing strategy, and if you do – use it with your own people – everyone will be much better off if we treat each other with respect and realise that there is intelligent life out there. Be nice!

Now sod off I need my coffee.

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