Ok that could be a little bit harsh.

But I am getting really sick of reading sales letters where it shows every single internet marketer  sitting in a lamborghini, and photos of a mansion that would cost millions of dollars.

Maybe they do own a lamborghini and live in a mansion that is fully paid off - then good on them.

But I find it hard to believe that every second internet marketer is making an absolute killing online - but don’t feel the need to show some proof.

Internet Marketing is all about hype!

How do you feel about that statement? I mean if you can get their emotions you can make the sale right? I think it is one of the lowest forms of marketing - think about a few of thoughts for a second…

• If they were that rich from the work they have done that they talk about in their ebook - why do they need to even write an ebook?
   
• If their product was as good as they say it is - do they really need to convince you to buy it? Why not let your customers, and testimonials and product benefits win them over!

Sure they may say things like:

• Now I have learnt, I feel the need to educate others. Sure this may be true for a select few. But for the majority it is about the money (most likely because they are not as successful as they make themselves out to be)
• Hype Sells, people need to be sold to. As I said above, if the product is as good as they make it out to be, the hype about how rich you are should not be needed.

So why the sudden rant?

I am in the process of helping a client launch her first ebook (it is my first as well), and I have been doing quite a lot of market research. Checking out almost every single clickbank product, looking at their website and sales letter, and comparing it to their success.

And I have come to the conclusion that all the gloating about how much money you are making and the flashy cars that you drive don’t really have an impact on the success of your marketing campaign.

Hopefully I can take what I have learnt, and turn my clients product into a success!

Harsh? Maybe…Let me explain.

Over the last couple of days I had been complaining to my mother saying that nothing was working for me, and that I just didn’t seem to be having any good ideas or getting any opportunites come my way. It seemed like everyone was making money but me, everyone was getting opportunities but me.
Ever felt like that? 

It got me thinking. All these people making the ‘big dollars’ online did they get lucky? Was it all chocolates and roses?

I went to a friends 18th birthday the other night. It was a good party and all, but I am the typical wall flower, I find big crowds daunting so I usually just chat to the people I know. So here I was talking to a friend of mine who is the typical ‘computer nerd’, now I’m not saying this as a payout he is so smart when it comes to any type of programming.

And I was complaining to him about what I was just saying. I went on saying, Myspace, Youtube, and all the other big websites - they are such simple ideas, why is it that we can never get good ideas. It always seems that everything that we think of has already been done.
You know what my friend said to me?

He said everyone has good ideas - but we usually see them as too hard, or that we don’t have the talent or the money,  the successful people that do make it big see the potential and make it work.

It reminds me of a quote I once read by Thomas Edison:

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Once I took a hold of that it all started to fall into place!

When my perception changed I started seeing all the opportunities around me, and taking advantage of them.

The friend I was talking to was telling me about a project he was working on, that he wants me to help him with, I have had to offers to help promote ebooks from two different people (people I don’t even know), and things seem to be happening for me.
Change your perception or give up

Which brings me back to my blog title. If you are not seeing the opportunities around you maybe you need to make the perception switch that I made. It is an easy one - all you have to do is look at the offers that look like hard work, and see them as opportunities!

But if that seems to hard, then quit and go and work at McDonalds - I’m sure it is easier!

The short answer is I WAS!

Let me start at the beginning!

I started focusing on my blog, this blog, a couple of weeks ago.

• I want it to be a success.
• I want it to educate people.
• I want to use it as a networking tool.
• and I want to make some money from it.

In the beginning it was all exciting. My first serious blog. I was posting everyday- usually more than once, and things were going all rosy. I was not only building a significant amount of traffic for a new blog, but my rss feed count was growing at a fantastic rate.

Things were going great!

But a week or so in I started to think about how I had not received one single comment the whole time the blog had been up! “It’s only new” I told myself, “These things take time!”So I put it to the back of my mind and continued to blog, continued to network and a couple more days past and still no comments!

Something was wrong, I knew it:

• maybe my blog was just bad
• maybe the posts were boring and nothing new
• maybe I wasn’t meant to be a blogger

I got really discouraged, it was really starting to get to me - I needed to work out what was wrong!

I looked at all the popular blogs that got lots of comments, thinking I would surely find the answer to my problems. What I found was that the majority of the popular blogs had a section on their sidebar called “Top Commenters.”

I thought, Brilliant, a way to give your commenters some credit, and a bit of link love. This had to be the answer!

So I added it to my side bar, thinking the comments would roll in.

NOTHING!

This had me beat, so I went to one of my posts and scrolled to the bottom to see if I could post a comment as a test, and you know what?

I had the stupid thing set to “register if you want to comment”

The reason no one was commenting, was because the didn’t want the hassle of registering and logging in. So I quickly changed it, and made it so anyone could comment.

I had a new comment in 5 minutes!

Can I just say I felt a little bit stupid. But I am glad it is all worked out.

Feel free to comment my posts, at the end of each week I will show some extra link love to the top 3 commenters!

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On a side note, I have some exciting news.

I have been offered my first guest blog at IanFernando.com I will let you know when it is up!

Who said it was hard to make money online?

I have been reading a lot about ebooks and more importantly writing ebooks for profit, but the thing that kept stopping me was the fact that I did not have the time or patience to write a 60-100 page report on a single topic.

But I have noticed a growing trend towards the purchase of much shorter reports. 1-15 page ebooks that provide a short blast of information on a subject - and they are selling for $7-10.

Now I am just thinking out aloud here, as I have not tested this yet - although I definitely will be! But If you wrote 2 10-15 page reports a month - that is less than one page a day, one blog post, one article (I’m start starting to sound like one of those marketers that validate their high prices by saying ‘for less than the price of a cup of coffee a day you can…)

Think about it, if you blog every day, you would easily be able to produce two reports a month, and if you sold 50 of each report for $10 each there is your $1,000! Simple right?

also think of the potential, if you make the reports into a series, once you have created 6 or 7 of them what is wrong with packaging them into a complete ebook, or package? Plus you will already have a long list of testimonials!

You must be thinking there has to be a catch, it cannot be this simple - and you are right. There is one thing that you absolutely must do to make sure you reports are a success, and that is to make sure you are writing the report on an in-demand topic. You need to have people wanting to find out about what you are writing.

A few places you can look to find out what topics are hot are:
2. Clickbank Marketplace. Go to your preferred topic and look at the top results. Maybe you could make a similar abridged version?

2. Forums. Join forums in your area of interest and find out what people are talking about. If there is a topic that generates a lot of interest and maybe some signs of misunderstanding, you may have found your first report topic.

3. Article directories.Look at their most view articles, as the readers of these articles are you potential customers. Make sure there are a lot of them!4. Yahoo Buzz. This website is great to find out what people are talking about.

Ever wondered why some bloggers seem to have all the success, while you are sitting there typing away post after post - with no one reading? Here are a few tips I have tested that have not only worked for me, but that I have seen implemented in the majority of the top blogs.

1. Chose Your topic Carefully - The best of writers can talk about anything and make it sound good, but why make it hard on yourself? choose a topic that you are passionate about, and let your enthusiasm show shine. It will compliment your writing style and make for a more interesting read.

2. Study The Topic - Read up on the subject your are about to write about. Find out what others have written, and let it spark some creativity in your mind.

3. Create A Killer Headline - This is the most important step of them all. In fact it should probably be point number one, because if people are intrigued by your headline, why would they read the rest of your post? Don’t be afraid to flaunt your headline, people don’t like bland and mundane.

4. Deliver The Content - Your headline has promised it - now deliver! There is nothing worse then reading the title of a article, thinking it is going to revolutionize the way you view a topic, only to find it is a boring ‘copy and past’ job, that has taken 2 minutes to throw together. This hits on point 2, make sure you study the subject so you can deliver the content!

5. Use Bullet Points - formatting is so important! People like structure, and bullet points make articles much easier to read, and also helps the readers retain the information by giving them the key points of the article.

6. Choose Photos Wisely - No one likes a bland blog, but that doesn’t mean just splashing a random photo here and there just for the sake of it. Make sure the images compliment the article.

7. Make Your Opinion Known - People read blogs because they are written by people, people with opinions. If they wanted a scientific explanation to something they would consult a textbook, so let your readers know what you think personally about the topic you are writing about.

8. Use Lists - I know there are so many top 10 lists and I’m sure everyone is getting sick of them, but the thing is, they work. A busy reader can easily scan the main points to see if its is of interest before deciding whether to read on.

9. Provoke Your Readers - If you want to really grab your readers attention you have to challenge the way they think, question their beliefs and push their buttons. So start your blog with a statement or challenge that will make your reader need to read the next couple of lines to make sure you said what they thought they read.

10. Don’t Go On Too Long - Say what needs to be said and then get out of there. No one likes a rambler. Enough said.

Starting a blog from scratch is hard, you not only have to worry about what you will write, but you also have to worry about where you will get your readers from!

Here are a few things I have learn’t in the start up of my new blog on entrepreneurship.

1. Write Posts That People Will Want to Read

If you write posts that people enjoy reading, they will reward you by returning to your blog regularly. This isn’t just about the subject matter either, a blog is an online journal and should be written in a conversational way - and only one topic per post.

2. Ping Your Blog

By automatically pinging your blog, you are making sure that each new post is being made available to broadest range of readers. There are a heap of pinging services out there such as:

3. Commenting Other Blogs

Who is your target readers? Blog readers in your topic, right?  Then the best place to find them is on other blogs websites. By providing quality comments (not SPAM) on similar blogs to yours you are giving their viewers an opportunity to find out about your website, and you might even build some connections with the blog owner.

* Becoming one of the top commentors of influencial blogs is a great way to build traffic, expecially when they display a list of their top commentors (it on’t hurt your page rank either!).

4. Invite Guest Bloggers

A great way to add value to your blog is to find a popular blogger in your niche and invite them to do a small post on your website. This will flatter the guest blogger, and you are almost guaranteed a link back from their blog - helping promote your website.

5. Add Multimedia to Your Blog

Nothing is more boring that reading article after article of plain text. Spice up your blog with pictures, charts, podcasts, and videos. A lot of people are ‘visual people’ and need to see things to understand them, so pictures are very important. And with the growth in popularity of podcasts, why not see if you can implement one into your blog!

6.  Build Your Blog Into a Brand 

People associate themselves with brands!

When you are building your brand think about your readers and what they are looking for.

Don’t chop and change, if your blog is changing topic and direction ever month you are going to lose readers quicker than you can post!

And Be yourself, you will most likely be your brand - you can only pretend for so long, and if you get caught pretending the good luck!