By Jimmy Krug –

The eBook business – hot or not? Well, if you pursue it the way most people do, I would have to definitely say – not.

How do most people approach the eBook business these days? Well, most of the time they offer a lousy PLR (private label rights) product with the same information in it that you can get in 1,400 other places  Next, they email offers to the subscriber that have (at best) a vague or general connection to the original information they signed up for.

This is a surefire way to get crowds of people to either unsubscribe from a list right away or delete the emails without opening them.

I enjoy buying eBooks. I’m talking about “How-To” business topics. I read them mostly these days for the enjoyment factor. You could say I read them for the same reason people read fiction. I find it interesting reading about what other people are doing or have done in the past.

Most of the authors I’ve followed over the years use their publications as “frontend” products. If you’ve been around marketing for any length of time, you’re probably already familiar with the terms “frontend” and “backend” when it comes to direct marketing. The frontend  is designed to bring people to the table. This can be done with inexpensive books, CD’s, DVD’s, and other low-cost products.

The big money, however, is made on the backend.

I’m sure you’ve all seen the expensive weekend seminars advertised over the years? The people who attend these seminars usually do so after purchasing books, DVD’s, etc. A percentage of frontend buyers will invest in the backend seminar which may cost several thousand dollars or more. The business model was designed that way. No one is going to “walk in off the street” and sign up for an expensive seminar without first testing the product in its cost-effective form first. True, there may be exceptions, but they’re just that – exceptions.

That’s just one business model.

There are many others.

As you can see, there’s quite a difference between writing a book to make some money and doing it to make a living. To make GOOD money, you need to have a profitable business model in place that allows the potential lifetime value of a customer to be a significant one.

WHY NOT THINK – PUBLISHING COMPANY?

Today, thanks to the Internet, you can be the writer and publisher of your product.

Amazon has a service that makes it easy for you publish kindle books and paperback books via their on-demand service called CreateSpace.  Along with that, you also have the standard PDF publications people have been buying for years. The industry is wide open to a new generation of author/publishers.

The gatekeepers of old (traditional publishing houses) have lost their ability to control the industry. There is nothing standing between you and your market. All you need is a plan to provide you with the mechanics of making money.

In 1998, I began developing the concept of selling booklets (paper and ink) in bulk to credit unions. The booklets (Car Buying Secrets and How To Erase Your Poor Credit Rating) weren’t exactly ingenious titles or concepts. They fit a very tight niche. They were designed to help credit unions market their products and services to their members more effectively.

With this business model, the money was in selling bulk units. Making money in chunks is a lot better than making it in drips! There wasn’t really a backend to speak of, although my career as a consultant was basically born out of the experience. That wound up opening doors of opportunity in many other areas.

THE MODEL I’M CURRENTLY USING

Another way to run a profitable eBook publishing business is to use the publications to market other services you offer. Last year I began publishing short Internet marketing publications and used them to promote a variety of services to local, offline businesses. The response was great. I’ve enjoyed a very prosperous 2011 using this model.

If you know what you’re talking about in a particular niche, you can also use your publications to promote your own consulting service. I’ve met a lot of consultants over the past year. Most I’ve met, regardless of the niche, make an average of $100-$150hr.

That’s not too bad, is it?

A friend of mine is a restaurant consultant. She also provides publicity services such as writing press releases and sending them to local media outlets. Basically, she can do it all, so she creates a package for the restaurant based upon their individual needs.

That’s just one example. She, too, is getting ready to use books to market her services throughout the state of Florida.

Books, paper or digital, are great marketing vehicles. Blogs are great, too. Both can be used to build trust and familiarity with your brand. Building trust is what it’s all about in today’s market. Before anyone will be willing to send “big money” in your direction, they’ll have to trust you first.

CREATING YOUR PLAN

I’ve developed a variety of marketing plans for myself, friends and clients over the past years. There really isn’t a one-size-fits-all plan that good for every business. In my own case, the simpler the plan (the less moving parts), the easier it is for me to implement the plan and stick with it. With eBooks, it doesn’t have to be complex in the least and you can have full control over your product. You don’t have to invest in programmers (as you do with software) or inventory, as you do with physical products. Even if you decide to have a physical, paper and ink publication, you can use a service like CreateSpace that only prints the book after the sale is made. That way, there is no need to inventory anything.

Next, you have to decide on how you’re going to market your business. There are loads of tools out there with more popping up every day. Some people I currently work with are really big on social media. Other’s just use it to create backlinks and aren’t very active with it at all. You don’t HAVE TO do ANY ONE THING except attract the attention of those in your niche… and there are many ways to do that.

I prefer using blogs. Drawing traffic to a blog isn’t rocket science. Good keywords in the domain name is where I usually start. I do my research using the Google Keyword tool which is free.

I also use a few plugins (All-In-One-SEO, Google Sitemap Generator and Easy WP-SEO) to handle the on-page SEO for this site and others. On my home site, SimplePublications.com, I use a template that automates a lot of the time consuming tasks. This is a WordPress theme which, if you decide to use WordPress, will save you a lot of time.

It’s not exactly cheap at $97, but I wasted a lot more than that buying and testing all the “low cost” solutions. If you’re a do-it-yourselfer, there is a learning curve that goes with the territory. Each new software product and/or script you buy will require some focus (an occasionally some tenacity) to set up properly. Realize this going in. With some things, it’s much easier paying someone else to set things up for you.

At the very least, it’s good to have a “go to” person available, just in case you mess up.

If you’re a sole proprietor and just starting out, you’ll also want to have some basic accounting software you can use to keep track of who owes what… as well as your income and outgo.

Accounting software isn’t cheap. You can buy invoicing software if you have a very simple business structure instead of investing in a whole accounting package. That’s one way to save a little money. Another option is a free online service called Wave Accounting (http://waveaccounting.com/)

One of my friends is a lawyer. He runs his firm as a sole proprietor. When I asked him why, he said, “Because I don’t want to pay all the corporate fees to the state to run a corporation. I use a simple Schedule-C on my tax return.”

Naturally, I asked him about liability. His response was, “Liability for what? No food or drink is involved. I’m not in the health industry. What type of liability do I have to worry about?”

Of course, this isn’t legal or accounting advice I’m giving you. I’m just sharing with you what’s been shared with me. You need to decide what will work best for you.

DO IT YOURSELF, OR OUTSOURCE IT

As a habitual do-it-yourselfer, I prefer to keep most of tasks involved with my daily routine in-house. I do outsource things from time to time, but that’s only if my time is being consumed by “billable hours.” I never let laziness be the deciding factor as to whether or not I’m going to outsource any particular aspect of a personal business project.

Naturally, you can’t do everything well. I once heard someone give the advice, “Have you fingers in everything but your hands in nothing.”

That’s good advice to a point, but it’s not always practical.

At the end of the day, no one will care as much about your business as you do. If you’re going to outsource work, make sure you’re outsourcing it to individuals who have as much to lose (in terms of reputation) as you do by the job not being done correctly.

If you’re a little confused about business models and which one would work best for you, do a little investigating in your spare time. Visit sites, buy products, see how the marketing works and take notes. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Sometime one little tweak makes all the difference in the world.

Finally, stick with it. Most people fall by the wayside when things don’t go their way right away. Or they become bogged down with information overload. Prepare for adversity in the very beginning. If it doesn’t happen, great. If it does, you’ll be prepared.

By Jimmy Krug -

The Internet has changed the way just about every industry and niche under the sun does business. It hasn’t changed “business” per se. It’s just changed how business is done. The age-old concepts and framework behind sales and marketing will never change. The psychology that powers the whole process will never change, either. What’s changed is the medium.

What that means to you is –

1. If you have “wimpy” sales skills, all the technology and design elements in the world will elevate you to mediocrity at best.
2. If you’re a 98-pound weakly when it comes to Internet Marketing and Publicity knowledge… but you’re selling skills are top-notch, you need a simple system to take what you’re doing to the next level. That’s what this article is all about.

So… things have changed, right? The medium has changed. Think about it – in the past, you’d grab a phone book to get the number of a local restaurant if you wanted to make a reservation. Today, you’d Google the name and get the number directly from your laptop, PC, Mac, Handheld device, etc.

This doesn’t mean people are abandoning the Yellow Pages altogether. The other night, my high-speed connection went down and I was without an Internet connection for several hours. I didn’t have the number for my ISP written down or stored in my cell phone. So what did I do? I grabbed a small Yellow Page directory I keep in a kitchen drawer (for emergencies). As amazing as this seems, people still use the Yellow Pages, still read newspapers and magazines… and still use the “dated methods” with one exception. They’re doing it with less frequency, favoring “a few clicks of the mouse” instead.

Yes, people still buy and listen to CD’s. They still insert DVD’s into their DVD players. They’re slowly but surly, however, migrating over to the more convenient methods of digital downloads and streaming video. For increasing numbers of people, this is becoming the method of choice.

Keeping all the above in mind, from a marketing perspective, why would you want to invest your advertising dollars on advertising mediums that are shrinking? Why not place your focus in areas that are growing and showing the greater growth potential over the next several years and beyond?

The answer is fairly simple. They don’t “see it.” Most people have enough trouble dealing with “what is,” let alone anticipating what’s coming around the next bend on the road they’re traveling.

There was a day when the horse and buggy was the preferred method of transportation. I’m sure they found it hard at the time to believe the advent of the “horseless carriage” (as it was called) could ever be more reliable than the horse and carriage (let alone replacing it). After all, horses have been with us since the beginning of time. They’ve taken men into battle, carried them across the Wild West, been used to deliver “express” mail, etc.

Imagine yourself back in those days not knowing how history would play out and the arguments of the time will seem more sensible to you. Who could have known at the time that Henry Ford would take the process of manufacturing horseless carriages to the next level? The rest, of course, is history.

Now, let’s take a long, close look at what’s happening right now. Does technology go backwards? Of course not. It keeps moving forward. It keeps evolving.

If you want to stay in the game, you have to change with the game.

This doesn’t mean you have to chase every new thing that comes down path. Believe me, there will always be a lot of “can’t miss” things coming down the way that turn out to be flops.

Websites, like the original Model-T Ford, have evolved quite a bit since the early 90’s. Design elements, audio and video now work to promote the message in a variety of forms. Think about you, you can now have all the elements of radio, TV and print advertising – all residing on a single domain – www.YourBusiness.com.

For the most part, the INBOX has replaced mailbox for most direct marketers. You can reach people with your message – faster, easier and cheaper than ever before.

I created my very first website in 1996. My first site was an online equivalent of a “horseless carriage.” It was loud, didn’t look too good and didn’t get too far without problems along the way. Over time, I’ve changed, modified and improved my plans.

Today, I offer friends, clients – even family members, a simple blueprint for starting or modifying an online business.

Here it is -

Your Simple Online Business System

1. Buy a domain with set up a WordPress blog. Forget about “free” blogs. If you’re building a business and are committed to following through, buy a domain for a measly $10-11 bucks. Use a professionally designed template and make sure your logo and contact information are clearly visible. If just starting out, you can even begin with a sales page template theme that’s “fill in the blanks” oriented.
2. Decide who your target market is. Be so specific you could create a character that could be inserted into a novel or movie script. You’re trying to sell a single personality type. Most people do the opposite and seriously dilute the effectiveness of marketing message. Why so specific? Marketing is like hunting. The better you understand the specific habits of the target, the easier it is to capture them. In this case, we want to “capture” their limited attention spans.
3. Create a message within the site that brings this type of person “to the table.” Give them enough information to intrigue them, but not enough to suffocate them. Many sites try too hard to impress and as a result, come off insincere and artificial.
4. Offer rock-solid information that PROVES you’re among the very best choices in your market. Ask for their email address in return for – more information, discounts, free gifts, etc. Have a simple “sign-up” form visible from the first page (be it a link or the form itself).
5. Target a niche – not the “masses.” In all likelihood, the masses (even your local community) aren’t interested in “your thing.” There is a specific niche, however, that is. Find it, define it, examine it and build your business around it!
6. Don’t flood your new list with every affiliate offer under the sun. Think of yourself as a partner with the people on your list. Your job is to help guide them in your particular area of expertise. Don’t fall into the trap of being a “taker.” Learn to be a giver. Like the old saying goes, give and it will come back to you again.

This is a simple process you can use to build a site quickly and gauge interest in your product, service, ideas, etc. If you have a winner, you can develop a much larger site, add additional products and go on to attract business for years to come.

Currently I have over 16 website businesses, all in different niches. Some of them have been around for over a decade. I’ve been using the same basic system with the exception of a few tweaks here and there since starting. Give it a try and feel free to share your results with me.

By Jimmy Krug –

There are lots of shortcuts available today when it comes to creating a solid presence for your online business. The days of people paying thousands of dollars for a website are few and far in between. I know because I was one of the people who made money building them in the mid-2000’s! Today, you can pay a designer several hundred dollars (or even less) and get the same product that used to cost several thousand dollars.  With a little bit of knowledge and you can use a template, modify it, and wind up with something that looks totally unique.

If you’re going to update your site regularly, a content management system may be just what you’re looking for. Products like Joomla, Drupal and WordPress are three of the most popular content management systems available today. In case you’re not familiar with the term “content management,” the term simply means being to add content such as text, photos, videos, etc., without having to know html or other programming languages.

Content management systems have “plug-n-play” appeal. They are basic “what you see is what you get” systems that take care of all the technical stuff without you having to worry about it.

CMS’s take a lot of moving parts and put them together under a single “hood.” Once in place, the content management engine then drives or automates many of tasks that used to take webmasters quite a bit of time to accomplish. Instead of making changes on your desktop and uploading new pages and content, everything is managed through a control panel which is accessed by logging in to your system with a username and password.

I’m currently consulting for a national publisher based in Florida. They publish several publications that are distributed throughout the country. Each of these magazines has an online equivilant of their offline publication. They use one of the more popular high-end systems in use today called – Kentico. Basically, it works like WordPress and Joomla with the biggest difference being the price tag and the live technical support they offer.

All these programs do the same basic thing. They help make time consumming jobs less time consuming and technical for you as the end user.

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT BEFORE GETTING STARTED

If no one knows who you are, or you’re entering a competitive new niche, you may want to consider having your top keyword(s) reflected in your actual domain name. For instance, if you own a new lawn service in Milwalkee, you may want to consider starting with – lawnservicemilwalkee.com as opposed to BobsLawnGenie.com.

If you’re Bob and everyone already knows who you are, by all means… use your business name as your domain name if possible.  People either search for a product or service by name or by category. I’m not saying you need multiple sites with multiple domain names. It’s simple a strategy. But as far as strategies go, it’s one that’s worked wonders for a number of businesses.

I’ve personally had much success using this method of having little “satellite sites” filtering traffic through to my main website.  That’s why I’m such a believer in content management systems like WordPress and would recommend them to anyone.

HOW TO DETERMINE WHICH STRATEGY IS RIGHT FOR YOU

Next, you’ll have to determine what type of website strategy is right for you. If you hate writing or have no intention of writing weekly or even monthly articles, you can still benefit from a platform like WordPress. All you have to do is put your content in “pages” instead of “posts.” Just because you use WordPress doesn’t mean you have to be or become a “blogger.”

In the WordPress Dashboard, simply click on the “Reading” link located under the Settings section on the lefthand side of the screen. From there, you can choose to have a page show up as your frontpage instead of a blog post. Next, create pages instead of “posts” by clicking on the “Add Page” link on the lefthand side of the page. Finally, click on “Appearance” drop down menu (also on the lefthand side of the page) and choose “Menu.” All can add all your pages to your menu on this screen and that’s basically it. Your site is ready to go.

Why would anyone want to use a WordPress blog for your website if you have no intention of blogging? Because you’ll still receive all the SEO benefits that go along with the WordPress system without having to invest the time creating blog posts and ongoing content.

I know of several sites with a minimal amount of content that rate at or near the top in their respective niches using WordPress with strictly pages instead of posts. In other words, the content rarely if ever changes.

You won’t hear that from too many experts!

• First, determine the product or service.
• Next, decide the type of site you’re going to put together. Don’t go crazy trying to figure out what type of theme or design you want to use. If your really stumped or just happen to be stubborn about the way things look, go to www.fiverr.com and look for someone who will create a nice looking header graphic for you for $5 bucks.

There are some really great products and services available there. I’ve literally saved over $700 in the last four weeks by finding people to contract work out to. So far I purchased hundreds of dollars worth of services for $25.

Summing it up, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to build a successful online presence these days. You do, however, have to have a product or service that’s worth your time and effort promoting or building a business around. Between WordPress, WordPress Themes and Fiverr.com, you will be able to have a finished product you can be proud of at a fraction of what it would cost to have another company or individual build it for you.

Here are the plugins you can download for free that will automate all the complicated stuff for you. You can do a search for them from directly within your WordPress Control panel under the plugin section. Simply do a search for these names.

• ad-squares-widget (to manage ads if you’re going to have them)
• all-in-one-seo-pack (self explanitory)
• fblikebutton (Facebook “Like” button)
• google-maps-for-wordpress (if you have a physical location – you’ll also need a gmail address/account
• wp-spamfree (This will protect you from spam and enable you to insert a contact form in your contact page. Just click on the “contact form” link after you activate the plugin)

If you would like to have a simple video series that will teach how to be a real pro with WordPress – plus ALL the plugins (and I do mean ALL) listed above – plus the ones I use for myself and clients – you can pick up a complete training package here, “on the cheap” for only $15 bucks.

Click here for WordPress Video Course w/plugins and templates.

By Jimmy Krug.

When I first heard the words, “Those who can do, and those who can’t teach,” many years ago… they didn’t exactly leave me with a warm, fuzzy, home-for-the-holidays type of feeling.  Fortunately, I wound up discovering the contrary to be true as well.  “Those who can – teach, too.”  Some people some have the ability to communicate their knowledge and insights of a subject a lot better than others.  Many Hall-of-Fame boxing trainers were terrible fighters.  But that didn’t stop them from helping others succeed.

You've gotta put some "heart" into it!

Several years ago I saw a piece on one of the top NFL kicking coaches. Not only was the couch unable to kick himself, he was paralyzed and unable to walk!  Even though he was bound to a wheelchair, that didn’t keep him from becoming one of the top paid kicking coaches in the NFL.

When it comes to business and opportunities, the same principles hold true. Some people have a much better eye for these things than others.

Recently, I spoke with a man who has a definite love for the game of golf.  Although he’s older and probably can’t hit the ball quite as far as he used to, there are still plenty of money making opportunities for him to be involved with the game of golf. What type of opportunities am I talking about? I’m talking about opportunities to make money – online.

A web site blog dedicated to helping older golfers modify their stroke and enjoy the game well into their 70’s, 80’s and beyond is a niche worth considering.  I’m just using that as an example. People feel comfortable around others with whom they share similarities.  A Golf site dedicated to helping golfers from 69 to 89 would probably have more usable content if the person running the site were in that age bracket themselves.

I’m just using Golf as an example.  It can be any subject or topic.

In life, we seem to alternate between the roles of student and teacher as the years go by.

Maybe you didn’t get all A’s back in your school days.  I certainly didn’t.  If I wasn’t interested in a topic, I had a more difficult time focusing upon the information. If I had an interest in the topic, however, it was a totally different story.  The more the internet grows, the more clearly you can see the shape of things to come.  The big money probably isn’t going to be found in “selling marketing tools” in the future.

If this were an ongoing gold-rush like we had back in the 1800’s, there would be shovels and pans for sale every 20-yards or so.  Look at the offline world.  The tools are cheaper than ever before.  Fax machines, PC’s, Laptops.  They’re so cheap, there’s barely a market left to fix “broken tools” anymore.  Instead, most things have become throw-away.

That doesn’t mean tools aren’t necessary.  If they weren’t, I wouldn’t be selling them myself at one of my sites (www.SimplePublications.com).

No, this isn’t the time to be lazy. This is the time to start carving out your own place or niche in the online world. It’s time to start actually “mining for gold” yourself!  To do this successfully, you must get involved with a subject YOU enjoy and start building an online presence around it.  Do not buy into the automatic “content generators,” concept. There are shortcuts you can take, but remember… the heart of your site will be the content.  That’s why it’s critical that it be “your heart” upon which the foundation is built. Not someone else’s.  I’m not saying you have to write everything yourself.  I believe in having authors besides myself on my own publication sites. What I’m saying is, the site has to reflect YOU at its core to be unique.

Do you realize that a site you establishing today may actually still be in existence 100 years from now?  It may look different, sound different, etc.  But in all-likelihood… if it’s decent to good, someone will want to keep it going after you’re gone.  Certain topics are timeless.  And certain types of information will be sought after for years to some.  How incredible would that be if your products kept selling – long after you were gone?

Okay, let’s jump back into the here and now.

When you teach someone about a topic you have already have a keen interest in – it’s like learning the information all over again.  Every time you share what you know, every time you communicate your strength’s, your knowledge and ability grows.  It’s like planting seeds into the ground. Each harvest not only yields food for today, it yields additional seeds for tomorrow.

Creating a business plan for the online world isn’t much different than creating one for a brick and mortar business in the “real world” when you get right down to it.  The biggest difference is the start-up and operational costs.  Any business in the 3-dimensional world needs a sound business plan or blueprint in place.  You don’t just rent a place, put up a sign and see what happens.  You’d go broke fast that way.

Online isn’t much difference.  The chief difference being – you’ll go broke slowly because your overhead is low enough to keep flying by the seat of your pants for extended periods of time. It takes awhile before you start developing road rash (you know where).

The more time I spend in the online world, the more I firmly believe in being involved with subjects that interest you.  Stick with subject you can put some heart and soul into.  Build a business around something you really enjoy or love.   I’ve been online since 1996 and have been selling “stuff” since 1997-98.  Things seem to move and change a lot faster in the online world than they do offline.  In the online world, ten years seems to be the equivalent of twenty as far as change and progress goes. And what I’ve experienced during that period of time is – I stay with the things I love… and the things I don’t – fall by the wayside.

______________________________________
Online Mentor Magazine – February 2010

By Jimmy Krug.

Question: What is the easiest way to get a site listed fast in a search engine?  I noticed this magazine was appearing in Google within 3 weeks of the first issue?

Answer: The easiest way to get a site listed and Google and the fastest way are actually two different methods.  The fastest way is to create an ad on CraigsList.  Google indexes CraigsList daily.  If your site goes live for the first time on Monday, your ad along with the link to your site will usually be there on Tuesday.  Wednesday at the latest.

One of my clients is a self-storage company in Brandon Florida.  They have one store and have to compete against the big chains.  The name of their store is Stor-N-More Self Storage.  Ever since they opened their doors last August, they post at least twice a week on CraigsList advertising particular items and services they offer.

One time it’s packing supplies.  Another time, it’s locks.  They also are involved with The Boys and Girls Club in their area.

So CraigsList is the fastest way.

You can’t survive with just CraigsList, however.  That’ll get your products and services moving fast.

The easiest way is to use the WordPress Script for your website.  That’s what Jim and I have done here with Online Mentor Magazine.  Google loves Word Press and can index it quickly and efficiently.

If you download the Google XML Sitemap Plugin for WordPress, it works even better.  You can automate the submission of your WordPress Blog every time you add a post.  The sitemap generator will submit your site to all the top search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing & Ask.com)

To get started quickly, create a FAQ section on one of your existing sites using WordPress.  Add to it, once of twice a month.  That’s the basics and more than enough to get you started.

You can use this technique to secure clients in every imaginable industry.  Everyone wants to be “seen” near the top in Google.  Most of the big SEO companies don’t promote this technique because it’s so easy and effective, it can cut them out of the picture entirely with certain online business models.

Online Mentor Magazine – September 2009