Click Here to Order – Stories of the World’s Most Successful Internet Marketing Entrepreneurs by Joel Comm

September 16, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 3 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Amazon, Books, Marketing, Self-Publishing, Sitesell and Site Build It, Success and Failure 

Last month, Joel Comm’s newest book, Click Here to Order – Stories of the World’s Most Successful Internet Marketing Entrepreneurs, was released and currently ranks #2230 in sales out of all books sold by Amazon.com.

This is not a step-by-step how-to book for new Internet marketers. If that’s what you are looking for, you should probably look elsewhere.

Click Here To Order tells the stories of some of the earliest Internet marketing entrepreneurs who succeeded beyond their dreams. You may know some of their names, already.

In fact, if affiliate marketing is part of your business revenue model, you may even promote products that some of the people in this book created.

From the product description:

While the general public is familiar with the larger Internet companies such as Yahoo!, Google, eBay and Amazon, very few are aware that small business is thriving online like never before, especially in the realm of information products. Click Here creates an entertaining and instructive narrative that provides an in-depth look at the unintentionally underground movement known as Infoproduct marketing, and the people who have profited and succeeded in the industry.

This edition of Click Here to Order is a 300-page paperback book. The list price is $17.95 and, as you probably know, is offered at a significant discount by Amazon.com.

Marketing on the Internet can be a very lonely business since we spend lots of hours in front of our keyboards and sometimes lose sight of what we want to accomplish because we get so bogged down in the details of what we’re doing.

Sometimes, it’s good to get away from the details and learn about the pioneers in this business. Who are they? What did they do? How did they do it? Why did they become so successful?

You’ll find some of these answers in Joel’s new book.

If you are interested in the history of the Internet marketing pioneers, and you want to learn more about how some of the best copywriters made their first dollars with online marketing, you’ll probably enjoy this book.

This is just one of the books about Internet marketing that I recommend in my Amazon.com bookstore.

Do you want to learn about Infoproducts and how to create them?

You can download, for free, Monique Harris and Ken Evoy’s excellent ebook, Make Your Knowledge Sell!.

While it won’t do the work for you, you’ll learn how to create an infoproduct of your own.

They provide great information about picking good ideas, writing to persuade, packaging your infoproduct, marketing it, and making sales.

Make Your Knowledge Sell! sold thousands of copies over the last few years, and now you can get it free. What are you waiting for?

Who knows, maybe you’ll be one of the people who’ll be featured in some future book about successful Internet marketers!

Read Click Here to Order for background knowledge of the business and how it has developed. Get inspired to do more by reading about the people who blazed the trails some of us are following.

Study Make Your Knowledge Sell! to learn many of the details and skills you’ll have to master to create your own infoproducts.

You can get started by learning affiliate marketing before you create your own products

Perhaps you’re not yet ready to create and sell your own infoproduct or service.

One of the best ways to get started in online marketing is to become an affiliate for a company with top-selling, high-quality products and services and then earn commissions by recommending them.

That’s my preferred business model, as you can tell from the name of this site.

I highly recommend Ken Evoy’s Affiliate Masters Course, and you can download a free copy here from my site.

Even if you choose to create your own products and sell them, you’ll want to know more about affiliate marketing. After all, you may create a great product and want to have affiliates helping you sell it.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Chris Brogan has just released a free ebook on personal branding

September 8, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Comments Off
Filed under: Blogging, Books, Business Networking, Promote Yourself, Social Networking 

I like to read what Chris Brogan has to say about lots of topics including personal branding and social networking. I’ve learned a lot from him and he’s reminded me of things I already know, but haven’t been thinking about lately.

Today, he released a free ebook on personal branding called Personal Branding for the Business Professional and it is available as a free download. You don’t even have to give your email address to get a copy.

I just finished reading the book – it’s only 15 pages – and it has some good tips about building your personal brand and expressing it on your blog, website, and the social networking sites you prefer.

This book is definitely worth your time to download and read, if you are interested in building your reputation and promoting your personal brand.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Ken Evoy releases updated 2008 edition of the Affiliate Masters Course

August 31, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 5 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Books, Marketing, Sitesell and Site Build It 

Ken Evoy just released the new, updated, 2008 edition of his highly acclaimed Affiliate Masters Course.

So, what is the Affiliate Masters Course and what is it all about?

From the introduction to the course:

The Affiliate Masters Course is an intensive 10-DAY course on becoming a high-earning affiliate champion.

How? By “building income through content,” the proven, C-T-P-M way!

An affiliate business is one of the easiest ways to get your feet wet in e-business. You send visitors (i.e., potential customers) to a merchant’s Web site that you are representing. If they buy or complete a required action (for example, fill in a form), the merchant pays you a commission. No fuss, no muss!

That, in essence, is the beauty of the affiliate concept. You can be up and building an online business in record time, at minimal risk. Top-notch merchants supply everything (i.e., excellent products, ordering, credit card processing, and delivery). All you need to do is to put yourself in the path between customers and quality merchants… and earn a commission for your efforts.

So what’s the best way to put yourself on that critical pathway?

That’s what the course teaches you, the best way to put yourself in the path between interested customers and quality merchants.

From the introduction to the Affiliate Masters Course:

Upon completion of this course, you will have the power of C-T-P-M working for you, helping you to build a flourishing, profitable and stable online business. With the right process, you get the right results!

Be forewarned about the Affiliate Masters Course, though. The material we cover will be extensive in scope. It will require effort and commitment on your part, as does anything important that yields rewards. Most folks have to train or go to university for years to prepare to earn a substantial income stream. Your mini-university course will accomplish this by the end of this e-book.

I don’t mean to scare you. All of it is manageable. Take your time to digest the information properly before you start to work on the prescribed action steps.

Use the Goals-of-the-DAY and Ongoing Goals as your guideposts, your beacons of light. Understanding the concepts will boost your confidence level in applying them. Even as adults, we never lose our need to know why things work the way they do.

It’s critical that you finish each DAY of this course before you begin the next. The DAYS build on each other. Always keep in mind that you are following a step-bystep process.

Please don’t feel that you have to rush. Work at your own pace, as time allows. This is not a race. Sometimes, you will be able to devote large blocks of time each day to the course. At other times, you may have only 15-30 minutes per day to spend on it. In this situation, it could take you a week or more to complete a “DAY” of the course. And that’s perfectly normal!

It does not matter how long it takes you to complete the course. The key is to set aside a realistic amount of time each day to “do” the course. You’ll find it was time well, no best, spent.

I downloaded a copy of the new edition this morning and I’ve been reading through it with interest.

Here are the 10 days and what you’ll learn:

DAY 1 – Intro To Affiliate Business Basics
DAY 2 – Brainstorm Your Site Concept
DAY 3 – Develop High-Profitability Topics
DAY 4 – Plan Your Monetization Models
DAY 5 – Refine Final Concept And Register Domain Name
DAY 6 – Build A Site That Gets The Click!
DAY 7 – Build Free Traffic
DAY 8 – Build Relationships
DAY 9 – Know Your Visitors
DAY 10 – Monetize!

It’s good to see that the time-tested, proven steps for building your affiliate marketing business are still here (as I knew they would be), but the web has changed since the last version and some of the sites and tools are new.

I don’t remember if I first studied, several years ago, the Affiliate Masters Course or Make Your Site Sell!.

At the time, the Affiliate Masters Course was a free, multi-part, course delivered in email using an autoresponder. Make Your Site Sell! was a huge ebook that cost about $20.

After studying both of them, I rebuilt several of my websites and, over the next few months, I started making affiliate sales and began to earn regular commissions.

Later, when Site Build It! was introduced, I subscribed and studied all the training materials and the step-by-step Action Guide in order to build a profitable site.

Now, I’m applying what I’ve learned over the years to the Squidoo lenses, websites, blogs, forums, and social networking sites that I own and/or manage.

The more I learn, and the more I apply it, the more I earn. You can, too.

The Affiliate Masters Course is one of my very highest recommendations. Download it today and start your journey to becoming an affiliate marketing master.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Writing and Self-Publishing section added to bookstore

August 24, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 4 Comments
Filed under: Act On Your Dream!, Affiliate Marketing, Books, Lulu, Marketing, Promote Yourself, Self-Publishing, Writing 

Ever since I read Make Your Knowledge Sell! several years ago, I’ve known that I wanted to write a series of reports and ebooks with several goals in mind…

  • To share the knowledge I’ve learned over years of researching affiliate marketing and from the daily practice of it
  • To enhance my reputation as being someone with integrity who offers good advice about online marketing
  • To provide information that will help you avoid the pitfalls I’ve traversed and to make more money with affiliate marketing
  • To do more of something I enjoy doing: writing

About a thousand years ago, Nicki Fink and I wrote a textbook we used for teaching our students how to use Macintosh computers and several of the more popular applications that were in use at the time.

Knowing nothing about writing a book, we just did it.

Our first couple of editions were printed on a laser printer and we did all the collation and comb-binding ourselves.

When we finally approached a publisher, we had a pretty good book that was helping our students learn how to use Macs by completing a series of projects.

I submitted the entire book to Addison Wesley and instead of getting a rejection notice, as everyone had advised me to expect, we got an offer from Addison Wesley and Benjamin Cummings.

Addison Wesley wanted to get it into print quickly and Benjamin Cummings wanted a complete rewrite along with reviews by several colleges and academies before publishing it.

We made the mistake of going with Benjamin Cummings and added about another year to the project in addition to having several disagreements with the editor about the direction we wanted to go with the book.

Eventually the book was published and we received a few thousand dollars in advance royalties.

I was happy to have a published book that was helping some people learn how to use their Macs better, but the entire experience was less than satisfactory. I swore that the next book I wrote would be self-published.

Now, in the 21st century, a lot of things have changed. Books and reports can be released as ebooks and offered in downloadable PDF format. Tools and applications for doing this are becoming more popular and affordable.

Additionally, if you take the time to format that PDF ebook correctly, you can have it printed and sold at places like Lulu.com, CafePress.com, and many other print-on-demand publishers.

(I’ve started a Lulu.com storefront where I’ll be promoting reports, ebooks, and books in the coming months, as I have time to research and write them. Currently, there is one free downloadable copy of my Act On Your Dream! newsletter.)

Since writing and self-publishing have moved up higher on my to-do list, I researched these topics on Amazon.com this evening. As a result, I’ve added a new section to my Amazon store for Writing and Self-Publishing Books.

I have an older copy of Dan Poynter’s Self-Publishing Manual and I’m looking forward to buying and reading his latest edition.

Most people who dream of being a writer don’t know that writing is only one part of the job. Perhaps more important than writing a good book is promoting and publicizing it. If nobody knows about it, you won’t sell very many copies!

I added a few books about writing non-fiction, but most of the books in the new section are about promoting, publicizing, and networking. After all, if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably interested in affiliate marketing and other topics related to online marketing, so I’m sure you will find books of interest in this new section of my bookstore.

I’m always interested in your comments and recommendations. If you know of an excellent book about writing, self-publishing, or promoting books, I hope you’ll share with us.

Act on your dream!

JD

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New marketing books added to my bookstore

August 24, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Comments Off
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Books, Marketing 

As you may know, I’ve been an Amazon.com affiliate since shortly after they introduced the program way back in the 20th century.

One of the main ways I promote books and other products from Amazon these days is through my John Dilbeck’s Amazon Store.

Today, I added about a dozen books to the Blogging and Internet Marketing Books section of the store. You can see this section by clicking on the link under the Browse By Category menu in the right column of the store.

How do I select new books for the store?

I only add specific books to the store if…

  • I have read them and would recommend them highly, even if I weren’t paid to do it
  • The book has been recommended to me by someone I have come to trust and I plan to purchase it, read it, and put into action what it recommends
  • The majority of ratings for the book on Amazon are either 5 or 4 stars.

I spend quite a bit of time looking at new books, but the great majority of them will never make it into my bookstore. As I’ve said elsewhere, “if it’s not good enough for me, it’s not good enough for you.”

I try to put the best books on page one of my bookstore, but there is only enough room for nine books, so some really good books slide to page two and subsequent pages. I added several books to page one, today.

You’ll also find newly-added books on the last page of the main section.

My philosophy on buying business books is this…

If I can earn back at least twice what I paid for the book in additional revenues, then it was well worth the money and time reading it. If I can earn back twice the price I paid, then, with more work, I can earn back several or many times the cost of the book, by putting into practice what I learned from it and by adding it to my bookstore so you can buy it, too.

I looked at about 40 books today and added a little over a dozen new books to the store.

I’m looking forward to reading them as soon as I can make the time.

Come on in and browse

I hope you’ll consider the books I recommend in my bookstore.

Act on you dream!

JD

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