People are looking for quality content – and they’re willing to pay for it. But why?

Why the sudden a change from 250 words of fluff, to “can you make this sound really professional?”

Clues From the Larger Article Directories

I recently started hearing some rumbling over at eHow. eHow is an article site that offers an Adsense revenue share arrangement to its contributors. Whenever someone clicks on an Adsense ad in your article, you get a cut.

Anyway, eHow has been taking drastic efforts to clear the site of spammy, poorly written articles. They have a certain guideline that you have to work within, and if you deviate, they’ll delete the article. Yeah… even if said article is making a shit load of money.

When I started seeing eHow getting progressively tougher, a little signal went off in my mind. eHow makes a ton of cash from Adsense clicks.

So if they’re cleaning house it’s because:

1. They want their articles to continue to rank well in Google. Quality content means consistent ranking for a long time.
2. By maintaining quality content they keep people on the site longer, and they keep people coming back. More Adsense clicks.
3. They can outdistance themselves from the other schmuck article directories that aren’t maintaining quality control. They want to be known as a no BS quality article site. Period.

So I wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear that a couple of days ago Chris Knight – owner of EzineArticles.com – announced that they’re cracking the quality whip a lot harder over there.

EzineArticles, like eHow, is Adsense dependent. Though because EzineArticles was a lot more lenient in what they accepted, the site basically degenerated over the years. Articles used to get Google rank in a matter of hours at EzineArticles. That’s not been the case over the past few years.

But they’re waking up now. Perhaps they too are watching eHow’s evolvement, and deciding that they must up the ante significantly if they don’t want their Adsense cash cow to be slowly lured away by the sexy eHow bull.

Now EzineArticles wants submissions to be 400-600 words. They don’t want short and sweet anymore. All of those little 250 word hit-and-run articles that don’t say anything – no more!

I’m personally ECSTATIC to see these changes.

Happy as a lark, you hear me!

It means that you’re going to see a resurgence in the way Google treats sites that are self policing themselves. I already see it with eHow.

It means that you’re going to see the value of your articles going up again.

It means less competition.

It means SEO content writers will have to change to match these higher standards. And if you do write SEO content, now’s the time to make sure you understand all these new rules so you can be prepared to tell your clients.

What you’re about see happen in article marketing is the exact same thing that happened with the dot com crash.

More on this later…

I was lying in the bed… exhausted, sweating from head to toe, and I kept feeling like I was floating away to my vacation home at 125 Heaven Blvd.

Seems like the seasonal flu is making its rounds early on this side of town. The school nurse called me on Monday to ask about my daughters symptoms. She had been running a fever all weekend, and I kept her home for the past three days. Almost a dozen other kids in her class were also absent. All with flu-like conditions.

In any case, that’s just the side note to tonight’s post. But I had to tell you cause it’s kind of essential to the overall message.

You see, the thing that I found really odd about these past five sick days is that I got a lot more orders than usual.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not totally off-base to get a sudden surge of orders for one book. But a sudden surge for several books all at once is a bit more eyebrow raising – especially because I’ve barely had the energy to raise my head from the freaking pillow. (Meaning I haven’t done a lick of work since last week.)

Why does this happen?

Why do great things happen when you’re not concentrating on making great things happen?

And how can you use this secret to increase your business? (I had to throw that last part in!)

A Watched Pot Never Boils

You’ve heard that phrase before.

According to the folks over at The Free Dictionary it means, “Something you are waiting for will not happen while you are concentrating on it.”

I strongly believe my relationships are ruled by the Watched Pot theory. If I wanted a relationship, I’d never get what I wanted. I’d be as sweet as apple pie, but nothing would ever happen. As soon as I don’t give a shit anymore – BOOM – I’ll meet 5 guys who’ll swear I’m their soul mate and pledge undying love.

If it didn’t happen so often I’d be inclined to think it was a fluke. But it happens with such regularity that it’s really difficult to call it random. Maybe it’s some type of mental pheromone I’m kicking off.

But it’s the same thing with business. Sometimes you have to take your mind away from a project to-

#1… Allow the pot to boil. Testing is a necessary evil when it comes to successfully marketing online. But there comes a time when you have to take your hands off the keyboard.

I think we all know when that time comes. I mean have you ever felt the need to just turn the computer off, but then you just keep working because you’re so PRESSED to make something – anything – happen?

I’m guilty of this one. We often feel like we have to stay busy to make sales happen. But that’s not always the case. It’s often when you throw your hands up in total frustration and turn off the computer that the sales finally come in – not while you’re hitting refresh 100 times. (I know this from experience!)

#2… Gain insights that only time away from the computer can give you. People who tell me that they can’t get e-book ideas are usually the ones who are online 24-7. The Internet is fun. I make a living being online.

But the real world is color, sights, sounds, real people, dog, cows, greenery, cars, trains, buses, restaurants, bums, BMW’s and everything in between. It goes back to the title of this post… not thinking about money is usually the one thing that can help you make more money. Stepping away from the Internet and any projects that seem to be causing you grief can be just what you need to generate those winning ideas.

It doesn’t appear that way when you’re all in the mix. But it is that way.

Don’t Buy It – Just Try It

Not everything requires a $97 fix.

Not everything requires a fix at all.

Sometimes you just need to turn it all off, and let your mind NOT think. If you leave the kitchen, the pot will boil.

You can stop all other forms of marketing… the web can evolve from 2.0 to 3.0 and beyond… and if you’ve done your content right, your infoproduct business can sustain itself through all upcoming changes and trends. For free, might I add.

So I like fiddling around with different article directories and content marketing tools. This past month I decided to give Article Marketing Automation a try.

Now in case you’re not familiar with it, Article Marketing Automation (hereby referred to as AMA) is a web based tool that takes your articles and distributes them to targeted blogs. That’s the simple explanation.

What AMA Really Does

It actually allows you to spin the words or sentences within your article, so that each blogger gets a different version of the article. For example, if you’re writing a piece on dog training, you may have one sentence that reads like this:

If you want your shih tzu to perform tricks, you must find out what motivates them.

The sentence can be spun to look like this:

If you want your shih tzu to do tricks, you must discover what motivates them.

Most of you probably know about the whole article spinning thing as it’s a well-known online marketing technique.

But for those of you who don’t know, when you spin your content it helps site owners feel more comfortable about running your article, because it’s not the same thing that appears on dozens of other web sites.

So Article Marketing Automation allows you to spin your articles, and it offers those different versions to a list of targeted blog owners. You don’t know what blogs they are. And each blogger has the option of accepting or declining your article.

With AMA you’re not supposed to include a resource box at the end of the article. However you can include up to three links within the actual article.

No biggie to me. A link is a link. That’s all I’m concerned with.

Two Week Results

I decided to give Article Marketing Automation a fresh test with one of my reader’s e-books. I became an affiliate of hers, and wrote an article to promote her $97 e-book. The e-book centers around a rarely used online marketing tactic.

I uploaded the article to AMA on September 30, and 31% of the 475-word article was spun.

As of today, the article has been accepted on 12 blogs, which represents 41% of the total number of bloggers it has been presented to.

According to the AMA handbook if your acceptance percentage is below 50%, you should probably add something more to the article. But I’m not going to change it just yet, as that percentage has come up significantly over the past five days, and there are still bloggers who haven’t made a decision yet. (The article is trickled out… it’s not presented to all targeted bloggers at once.)

From those 12 blogs, I’ve gotten a total of 42 clicks and 0 sales for the month of October. Now keep in mind that I haven’t promoted this e-book using any other marketing techniques, so all those clicks are a direct result of AMA.

Will I continue my $47 a month subscription?

Definitely. In fact, I’m going to add another article to promote that e-book.

That test article hasn’t even generated 100 clicks yet. I like to see at least 100 clicks under my belt, and preferably 200 before I start tweaking. For example, if at 100 clicks I don’t see any sales, I might add a landing page between the article and the e-book sales page.

And although I haven’t gotten any sales for this particular e-book just yet, I have gotten four sales for another one also promoted through an AMA-run article.

Actually I’m pleasantly surprised by the results either way. Sometimes you can submit to dozens of article directories and not get the same number of clicks within a two-week span for a single article.

Have you used Article Marketing Automation? I’m curious to know what your experiences have been.

As much as I’ve tried to embrace the whole social marketing scene, I just can’t get into tweeting and whatnunt.

My cousin lives on Facebook, and she doesn’t even do business online. It boggles my brain cells to the n’th degree. I’m like a dreadlocked hippie in a world of suits and ties.

But you know what… screw it. I do article/content marketing because I’m really good at it. I make money from it. It pays the bills.

Sometimes you gotta do what you’re good at, and not try to be all fancy pants magnifico with everything that pops up.

2) Sometimes you need time.

What’s the one thing experienced and newbie infoproduct creators have in common?

Impatience.

I’ve had readers e-mail me after 48 hours, terrified that they weren’t going to generate any sales. I mean like insane, oh crap, my career as an infoproduct creator is OVER, crazy talk. They’ve got like three AdWords ads up and one article up somewhere.

Oh gosh, I’m the same way. I get super squirreled up if I don’t get a sale within the first hour.

My kid can always tell when I did a product launch because I’m like an exposed electrical wire for three days, tweaking ads and writing content and hitting refresh on Gmail like 2,964 times, even though I damn well know that it refreshes itself.

Unfortunately this feeling of anticipation hasn’t gone away after all this time.

But I do fully acknowledge that you almost always need some time before you start seeing your labor pay off.

I don’t know ahead of time which ads are going to pan out. I don’t know which articles are going to rock. I don’t know which blog comment is going to send hoards of customers to a site. Though once you get that floodgate open, you forget all the nervous, sweaty drama.

3) See the magic in the seemingly un-magical.

My daughter can pick up an acorn off the sidewalk and have two good hours of playtime with it, a stick and piece of gum wrapper from the bottom of my purse. I’m amazed by her ability to McGuyver ordinary sidewalk paraphernalia into toys.

(On the McGuyver television show, he used to make bombs from shoelaces, a few eyelashes, some old beer and a toenail clipping. You remember that?)

Well I had to discover that good things do exist in very ordinary marketing tools.

4) Failure is okay.

Every time I create a new product, I intend for it to be a winner. But that’s not always the case.

My problem? Clarity in the wrong way.

It’s like wrapping a tissue around a car key and using it to clean your ears out. Sure you can clean your ears out that way. But it’s far more efficient to do it with a cotton swab.

I used to despise failure. Each time I thought I was losing my mojo.

Then I sat and had lunch one afternoon next to a guy who was a seasoned online marketer. Actually his wife and I were having major girl talk before he arrived, and she told me all about his failed projects. (Gotta love those three Martini lunches with complete strangers!)

He had a bunch of bad deals go down. And yet, he was still very successful.

From there on, I changed. I stopped feeling so bad about failure and just accepted it as a part of the process.

Now I talk about my failed projects in Desperate Buyers Only, and it helps people. Failure is only bad when you don’t learn from it and move on.

5) Good grammar is a necessary evil.

I never got an “A” in English. I dropped out of English Literature 101 as soon as they assigned Frankenstein. (No lie!)

So I’ve always felt a secretive sense of smugness about making a living with my words, despite having rather atrocious grammatical skills. It got so bad that I used to get e-mails from editors and proofreaders whose retinas were searing after reading my work. (That still makes me chuckle when I think about it!)

Then I started writing content for a big-wig client and I realized that (oh crap!) I needed to improve my grammar skills. They were judging me on my (gasp) dangling participles. I suddenly became prey to the dreaded red pencil.

My grammatical education is still a day-by-day learning experience. I’m currently working through Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing.

And yes – to all of you who have damaged their retinas on my grammatically incorrect writing – you win. I do see the value in being a good communicator on all fronts.

(P.S.- The kings English may occasionally become butchered on this blog. I’m still learning!)

“When are you going to update your blog? Where are you Waldo?”

I’m here. I’m here! And jeez, it’s been a long time.

In the past year since we last spoke, I…

* Came out with the 2009 edition of Desperate Buyers Only. It’s got all new content, including an actual copy of a desperate product.

* Added another 4 e-books to my desperate e-book repertoire.

* Have written hundreds of web content articles. Hundreds! Most of them ghostwritten. Many of them centered around (get this) health and medical topics. I like writing health content. It almost made me want to become a doctor. Ha – NOT! It’s a noble occupation and all, but I’m not the college type.

In other words, I’m still making money with my words.

And in that time I’ve learned that any competent writer can thrive — even during a recession.

Not just survive. I said thrive. Live a comfy, cozy, ‘fly-to-the-French-Rivera-for-the-weekend’ type of thriving.

When I step away from this blog for an extended period of time, sometimes I am sitting on my duff, drinking wine and people watching at the French bistro downstairs. Sometimes I’m frolicking at the beach or doing the Disney World thing.

But most of the time I’m tinkering with success strategies. You know I have a hard time saying “Do this,” to my readers if I haven’t personally done it. It’s just not my style. So I’m constantly testing new money making ideas.

And the most important lesson I learned within the past few months is that, there is NO SUBSTITUTE for being able to research and write content fast.

If you can write fast, and you can write fairly well, you don’t have to be broke. Period!

At the absolute lowest end of the totem pole you can get $15 an article gigs like the positions at Demand Studios.

If you can write fast and follow their style guidelines, you can write seven articles a day and clear an easy $105 every single day. Right now, today they’ve got 50,210 articles waiting to be written. On every topic you can imagine, nonetheless. You make a guaranteed $100 a day and still have time to write your own e-books.

(If you don’t currently write for Demand Studios, and you’re interested, wait. I’m writing a report that’ll show you how to get hired, and earn $100-$150 a day. You get paid twice a week at DS, so if you’re currently caught in the recession shuffle, this is an easy-peasy way to keep your head comfortably above water.)

And if you think you’re too special for Demand Studios (we all are from time to time), you can get $25+ an article gigs from private clients who are literally waiting for good web content writers to show up. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to compete with the low ball writers who charge $1 per hundred words, unless you want to.

If you can write fast, you can create your own authority sites, and benefit from Adsense revenue and affiliate sales. Ten articles a day on a topic you absolutely love isn’t a stretch IF you can write fast.

There’s NO REASON to be a starving writer nowadays.

Not even during a recession. And I simply don’t subscribe to that notion that you’ve gotta pay some bullshit dues or have an English degree or chase some magazine editor to make money as a writer.

You don’t. Really.

If you have inside knowledge into the way things work, you just show up in the right places and do your part. Unfortunately (or fortunately) most people don’t have inside knowledge. And if they do have it, they don’t use it.

For example, if you have a copy of The Good and Fast Content Creation formula (which I currently include with Desperate Buyers Only), and you’re not using it, you’re missing out on an opportunity to possibly double your income.

Last month I cranked out close to 200 articles at 350-500 words a piece. A good bulk of the medical articles ranged from $35-$50 a pop. And by golly, I follow my own Good and Fast Content Creation Formula advice!

I’ve got my desperate e-books bringing in passive income. I’ve got web content clients that I write for. And if my entire online empire should collapse, I’ve got Demand Studios giving me $15 for an article that takes 20-30 minutes to write.

I’m not bored because I can write about whatever I want to write about at any given time, and it’s going to make me some money. And if I don’t feel like writing anything, I can live off my e-book income. This is a sweet time to have good writing skills!

Over the next few weeks I’ll be revealing some great stuff I’ve picked up over the past year. But in the mean time, heed my word. You will make a lot more money if you just get faster.

Stay tuned!

He was stumped.

Stumped because he’d followed the DBO criteria to a tee – but try as he might, he was having a doozy of a time generating sales. He even split tested giving away a part of the e-book, and selling the other half. Still nothing.

I told him that I would relay the advice I gave him (leaving out the actual topic) because I thought it would be of interest to other DBO readers.

The reader – let’s call him “Phil” – was targeting a well-known niche. A niche that had received A LOT of offline publicity over the past 5 years. I’m talking heavy rotation on everything from your local morning news to CNN and everything in between.

Needless to say, we (as in every reader of this blog) would recognize this problem if I mentioned it.

Anyway, Phil had been in this worrisome situation. He stressed and sweated through it. And in the end he came out okay. So what did Phil do?

He packaged his experiences and decided to sell his intimate knowledge on how to solve this desperate problem.

Seems Ideal, Huh?

Aaaaaah… a niche with lots of media publicity. Everybody knows the problem is in fact a problem. Easy sell, right?

Wrong. And that’s why Phil and I were exchanging pleasantries at 9:30am this morning.

The Problem (I Told Phil)…

Was that the niche had been exploited SO MUCH over the past several years that more people were looking to prevent the problem, rather than solve it.

When I ran the traffic numbers through Google, it was like 5,000 searches a month for solving the problem – but 1 million searches for preventing it.

In all actuality, I would target a niche that had 5K searches a month because I realize a lot of low performance e-books can add up to big numbers over the years.

But Phil Had Another Strike Against Him

The media had done such a good job at educating the general public, that most sufferers of the problem already had a built in Pavlovian response to solving the problem. In other words, if you had this problem, there are a whole series of steps you’d most likely undertake BEFORE getting online.

My guess is that most people wouldn’t care that much about looking online to solve the problem because they equated the solution with offline actions.

However Just Because the Niche Had Been Super-Publicized, Didn’t Mean it was Dead

On the contrary.

What I suggested to Phil was that he could still target the niche. But instead of selling a solution to the problem, he should focus on selling prevention to people who were most desperate to prevent the problem.

In this situation, I found that the problem was affecting children now. (This hadn’t been the case a few years ago.) Your 3-year old could have this problem, and it could be extremely harmful for them in the long run.

Now it’s one thing if I have a problem. I’m an adult. I can take care of myself.

But it’s an entirely different ball of wax when your kid is at the receiving end of the unsanctioned whipping post. As a parent it’s your job to prevent your child from being harmed. And if you’re truly about your job, you’re going to do your darndest to prevent your child from being hurt.

Parents are inherently desperate people.

And that desperation level can go from 10 to 100, depending on the risk involved. That’s a good thing, in a DBO kind-of-way.

You Don’t Necessarily Have to Solve an Existing Problem. You Can Also Show People with Naturally Desperate Tendencies How to PREVENT a Problem.

For example, competitive body builders have naturally desperate tendencies. If you’re an amateur and you want to go pro, you don’t want to get any injuries that are going to stop you from competing.

And if you know that 50% of amateur bodybuilders get an injury that halts their career, you’re going to eat 100 eggs in 10 seconds to learn the secrets for preventing that injury. You have naturally desperate tendencies. And you’re RIPE for selling to.

Can you think of anyone with naturally desperate tendencies?

Will that be in the next DBO?

Perhaps.

In between cooking, cleaning, going to the zoo, school shopping, grocery shopping, and taking my 83-year old neighbor out to dinner, my days are FULL.

I normally like to begin my work day at 8:30pm. But lately I haven’t been able to get started until midnight at the earliest. That only gives me 4 hours of work time a day.

My only saving grace is that I have trained myself in a writing skill that ALL WRITERS (yes, even you seasoned pro’s) need to covet.

Four hours doesn’t look like a lot of time to get any sort of serious writing done.

But if you have a game plan for writing fast, you can get A LOT done in only four hours.

Let’s say you can crank out 1,200 words an hour.

In four hours that’s 4,800 words.

A 25,000 word manual (around 80-90 pages) would only take you 7 days – if you factor in writing, research time and bathroom breaks.

And that’s the point of today’s blog post. Learning how to write faster is a skill that will empower you beyond your wildest beliefs.

If you can DOUBLE your writing speed, you open yourself up to far more profit opportunities.

You already know that I create information products for a living.

But I bet you didn’t know that for a while (this year, in fact) I actually moonlighted as a SEO content creator.

Not because I needed to. I wanted to test out my fast writing techniques to see if I could actually handle a deadlined work load (a deadline that wasn’t my own).

The fast writing techniques worked so well that I was clearing $25-$45 per 400-600 word article.

I got so busy that I had to stop accepting assignments.

All I was doing was writing article after article, all night long. I’d turn in 4 and get 8 more. Not a bad position to be in!

But I’ll be honest with you… my information publishing business is far more lucrative. So that’s what I chose to stick with.

Though I did learn a valuable lesson.

I learned that knowing how to write fast is an extremely underrated skill – especially if you’re a content creator, or you aspire to be one.

And you have even more at stake if you write books, e-books and reports for a living.

One e-book, (or even a simple report as DBO readers know from my own experience), can easily translate into $20K-$50K a year – if you choose your topic carefully.

Now imagine if you doubled or tripled your writing speed, and worked hard for 6 months to create as many information products as you possibly could. That could easily equal 2-4 new product A MONTH, if you’re working at an optimum speed.

You’d only need 3-4 of those products to become cash cows in order to take a mini-retirement over the next 6 months.

And that’s exactly what I do!

I hustle my butt off for 6 months. (Not always 6 consecutive months.) And then I spend the other 6 months fulfilling my spiritual needs, I do hospice volunteer work, I take up new hobbies to write about, I catch up on my reading, I take classes, and so on.

Of course I could be a helluva lot richer if I worked my butt off the entire year like most other information publishers.

Then again, I make no apologies for enjoying the fruits of my labor. I work hard, I play hard. The end.

And once again, that’s part of the hidden pleasure of increasing your writing speed. You’re not sitting at the keyboard for 6 long months slaving over a single e-book. When your output increases, you can afford to recharge more often.

My latest title – The Good and Fast Content Creation Formula – is a guidebook to the techniques I use for fast writing.

Though it’s not just about fast writing.

It’s also about choosing a topic, and researching the topic, and being able to put the research together to write your content quickly.

What I did was examine every part of the writing process to see where I was getting stuck. I asked many DBO readers about their writing issues during their free consultation sessions.

Then I went through each step to figure out what I could do to make the process go more smoothly.

That was one of the reasons why I created Rack and Write. I used to have a hard time coming up with article ideas when I wanted to use article marketing to promote my titles. Rack and Write simplifies that process, thus making the writing process go a lot faster.

And that’s only one of the tricks that I’ve been using to increase my writing speed.

Would you like to see the rest?

Get the full scoop on The Good and Fast Content Creation Formula …

I originally put them together for my own benefit because I sometimes found it difficult to come up with articles to promote my information products. (Remember, I do sell other information products besides the ones advertised here.)

Well after I put them together and got them into a usable interface, I began showing the templates to a few consulting clients. They were very well received, so I continued adding to the list.

Several of my initial beta testers asked how much I’d be selling this tool for. They were surprised when I said it would be free.

I Made it Free for One Reason…

I go away and come back, go away and come back, and I STILL have an incredibly loyal group of readers.

I appreciate that loyalty immensely.

And even though I can’t give away everything I write, I wanted to give you something that would benefit your information publishing business for years to come.

You’ll find that this tool is 100% evergreen. You’ll be able to use it today, next year, and ten years from now.

It’s ideal to use for most topics. And I’m always adding new templates to keep it fresh.

So What’s Behind the Curtain?

Some of you might’ve noticed the ad in the right hand side – “Generate 1,262 content ideas…”

Well if you click on that ad you’ll be lead to Rack and Write.

Rack and Write stands for, “Rack up ideas so you can write your content.”

See the graphical image of the interface below? You simply type in 8-11 keywords (nouns, verbs).

Rack and Write will insert those keywords into the idea templates. So if you fill out each box, you’ll receive over 1,200 idea templates.

However, depending on your keywords, you’ll notice that some of the templates don’t make sense. (When you use it you’ll see what I’m talking about.)

But that’s okay because I’m sure you’ll walk away with AT LEAST 100 article, book chapter, blog post or report ideas.

And that’s what makes Rack and Write such an exciting tool. By changing your keywords, your content idea base can grow by leaps and bounds.

So what are you waiting for?

Click on over to Rack and Write… watch the tutorial… and give it a spin. Remember, it’s free!

And when you’re done, I want you to do 2 things for me…

1. Come back here and leave some feedback. I’m always looking for ways to make it better.
2. Share it with other information publishers. They’ll love you for it.

Long time no see, huh?

I’ve been in a serious writing phase these past few months. Creating new reports, constructing new strategies, testing those strategies, writing some more.

In between all of that, three things have happened.

1) I moved.
This time from New York City to Center City, Philadelphia. One incident that prompted this move was the guy who bypassed my buildings concierge, and followed me and my daughter into the elevator. The hairs on the back of my neck bristled like a porcupine because he didn’t press a floor when he got on the elevator.

By the 3rd floor (I lived on 14) I dropped my shopping bags, removed my gloves, turned to face him, looked him directly in the eyes and gave him a look to let him know that he wasn’t going to catch me by surprise.

Even though he could’ve been going to see another person on my floor, I just knew that wasn’t the case. I was 100% sure he was going to harm me. It was a distinct feeling that I absolutely couldn’t ignore.

In the movie New Jack City, there’s a scene where Ice-T (a rapper in real life, but a cop in the movie) is telling a story about a thug who killed his mother in order to be initiated into a gang. It was a random killing.

Well THAT was the thought I had as soon as that elevator door closed. It was truly a gut feeling at its best.

Long story short – it didn’t get gory, but it did get scary. He was found waiting for me to come out of my apartment. In fact, when he ‘attacked’, he didn’t know it was the police coming out of my apartment.

I packed up, found a gorgeous condo in Philadelphia, overlooking Rittenhouse Square, and the rest is history.

All hail the portable lifestyle of information product creation!

BTW, this isn’t meant to scare anyone away from visiting NYC. I still feel very safe in the city. I just didn’t feel like the building I was living in was secure anymore. And for the money you have to pay to live in NYC, the stress of that incident took A LOT away from me.

I’m a pansy that way – a pansy who’s determined to be around for a long time.

2) Meanwhile on the Internet… last month I realized that I had a super scamming affiliate.

He had two Paydotcom usernames – both shared a similar phrase.

He sent a number of orders for Desperate Buyers Only in June. I paid him for those sales on July 1st. In July I started getting more orders from him.

Then all of sudden, I started getting chargebacks. First it was one a day, for three days. Then one day I got like four chargebacks. I looked at where the sales came from, and sure enough they all came from that one affiliate.

And all the customer e-mail addresses looked exactly the same – first name, last name, with a Gmail or Yahoo domain. Or first name, last name, and a number.

I went through and refunded the rest of the orders he sent, terminated my relationship with him, and closed the DBO affiliate program to new applicants.

I was so pissed off! Especially since I’d just gone through that PayPal account freezing incident this year.

Apparently Paydotcom got complaints about this person, and they reported him to PayPal. I also reported him to PayPal as soon as the chargebacks started coming in. But that call probably fell on deaf ears.

When I called PayPal about the incident, the rep didn’t even know what an affiliate program was! That’s idiotic.

How the heck can PayPal put their reps on the line to talk about e-commerce issues, and a rep NOT know what an affiliate does? There’s something wrong that picture.

That incident further prompted me to continue launching my new products with Google Checkout.

Speaking of new products and Google Checkout, I’ve been VERY pleased with the service so far. I’ve been with them for 5 months, and I have nothing to complain about.

Amen to that one.

3) As I mentioned in a previous blog post (when PayPal originally froze my account) I’m currently adding more print products to my lineup.

First off, when you snail-mail your products you have a tracking number. So you have fewer problems with chargebacks. In fact, when I did print products early on in my career, I won around 75% of my chargeback cases because I was able to provide tracking information, and show that the person signed for the delivery. (They frequently claimed they didn’t get anything.)

But even more important – (because in reality, chargebacks and problem transactions are the exception – not the norm) – print products create a better long-term image.

I think we all get a little excited and anxious when we’re waiting for something in the mail. I order at least one thing from Amazon nearly every, single week, because I like getting stuff in the mail – (and I read a helluva lot).

As I’m bombarded with information online, I can appreciate being able to pop something in my bag to read at the park.

Yes, e-books are far easier to deliver, and they give the customer the benefit of instant gratification.

But when you want to start going into higher price points – as I wish to do, you’ve gotta go print.

So my brand new $129 product – The Good and Fast Content Creation Formula – is print. And that’s just the beginning.

In case you’re wondering, I’ll talk about The Good and Fast Content Creation Formula later this week.

Until then!