Overwhelm

• Derek was completely overwhelmed and locked right up
• His brain froze and he left his website on ice for a while
• Derek decided that since he wasn’t sure what to do, he’d take a break
• He called Ben and asked for some help
• He was concerned about doing what he “should” do
• Instead, he decided to do what he wanted to do

Ways to deal with overwhelm

1. Don’t try to go it alone. Find a person to talk with to encourage each other
2. Take a break – don’t continue to stare at the blank page – Step back and regroup
3. Make small tweaks – make something bold, reword something, move an image, etc…

The break allowed Derek to process some ideas and get excited about the site once again.
He made a few small tweaks to help him get excited. He found a video on the product’s
main site, asked for permission to use it, and placed it on his site. He created a basic
squeeze page to begin creating a list.

Recommended List Creation Systems

1. Aweber – Ben uses this
2. Mail Chimp – Derek uses this

Mail Chimp has a “Forever free” product that is absolutely perfect for creating that first
list. Derek wanted to get a weekly golf tip out to his list, he didn’t mind doing this
manually, so the free product works really well for him. The free system does not allow for
an “Autoresponder series”. Ben uses Aweber to send out the 7-day beginning Internet business
course. That way, he doesn’t need to send messages manually. Derek, using the free system,
does.

Note: use a professional system – don’t use a script on your webserver – penetrating spam
filters is VOODOO. Leave it to the pros.

Reports and Statistics

Using stats lets you gauge how productive your marketing efforts are. Professional systems
give spectacular reports. What gets measured, improves. If you measure your deliverability,
customer engagement and conversions, each of those things will improve.

If you can make it through the first bit of overwhelm, you can really launch your business.

Make your site, your business – your very own. It’s yours, take ownership. Take it where
you want it to go.

Derek and I talk with Rick Inkster (my brother) from Praetorian Tactical all about starting and building an online business.  He’s special – we love him.

Rick has been running an online business for just about 2 years.  For the last year, it has supported him with a full time income.

Happy, Successful and Independent

In this episode, we talk about:

• Outsourcing staff
• Legal details about setting up a business
• Creating a mailing list
• Security vs. Freedom
• Dealing with fears and frustrations
• Running a business with a family
• How long it actually takes to make money
• Building a following using forums
• and much, much more…

Internet Business Beginners Episode 4

Ben: Derek has gone on vacation and he didn’t bring his mic so we’re not able to do our regular podcast here.

I’m so sorry – Derek is sorry too but he can’t tell you because he doesn’t have a mic.

Podcast4

So, in Derek’s stead I have done an interview with my good buddy, Etienne Bley who’s the founder of ELBSolutions.

ELBSolutions is a company that specializes in automating systems in small businesses so in this interview we talk a little bit about “Why to Automate?” and “What to Automate?” and then we dive into “How to Automate Different Sections of Your Business?” I think you’ll like it.

Ben: How long do we’ve known each other?

Etienne: It seems like forever but…

Ben: I’m not sure if I should take that as a complement or not.

Etienne: I meant it as a good thing.

Ben: Okay. It’s been a long time.

Etienne: It’s probably 4 years…

Ben: Around 4 years then and… Etienne and I have worked together on lots of different projects and so we wanted to talk about automation because we actually have 2 very different perspectives on automation and how to automate tasks.

Etienne: I think both are important.

Ben: I think you’re right. We just sorta come at it from two different spots. But we were talking about a project that you were doing… it’s for your brother?  Yes, it’s for your brother. Well, you were using software to peel down data…

Etienne: Peel down data and store it…

It takes about 12 hours work down to few minutes.

Ben: That’s awesome. Tell me about it. Tell me ALL about it.

Etienne: That’s just the 1st part – so automation: it can save time, time is money and frustration and computers often do the same thing over and over and humans, well…

Ben: less so…

Etienne: Well, there are a few but…

Ben: I’m not one of them

Etienne: … and I’m not either. In fact, that’s why I like to automate. It’s because I work at a lot of volunteer organizations where there basically isn’t anyone that’s willing to do a menial 8 hours of labor.

Ben: Yup.

Etienne: However, there are people that do like to do it and sometimes finding them is hit and miss.  So, what we are trying to do with automation is making sure that people are doing what they’d like to do:  What their gifting is.

If your gifting is in paper work, well you need something to help. So I make systems that basically imitate your life and do it well and consistently and replace people’s boring jobs … look it’s not a work replacement solution, it’s an augmentation – it helps people out.

Ben: Sure. So your turning people into cyborgs?

Etienne: Yes. Well, that’s what engineers do. You replace people… you put people out of work – but it’s not meant to be a bad thing, it’s meant to…

Ben: … do more creative work…

Etienne: Again, do what you like to do. Do you like to run your business, or do you like to do book keeping? Well, you can get Quicken® for that, it’s one of my favorite tools and it’s basically what I do for other companies.

Ben: Tell me about that a little bit. I mean, I know what you do, but people listening don’t know what you do – so tell me all about Etienne Bley: his life, his concerns, his fears, his hopes, his dreams, aspirations…

Etienne: Well, I like things done well and there are certain things that are needed but I hate doing them.

Ben: I relate to that.

Etienne: … a lot of people relate to that. My brother Rodrick said “It takes me 12 hours to do something and I’m sick and tired of doing it”.

Well, I got excited because that’s the exact phrase that I tell people, if you come to that point in your life, then that’s when you phone my company.

Ben: Okay. What’s your company?

Etienne: ELB Solutions

Ben: elbsolutions.com

Etienne: So basically, there’s some websites that I built and there’s tools behind them and they kinda just work by magic.

I hated Mac until about 4 years ago when I was forced to program on them because the person that wanted me and my philosophy happened to like that as a tool so I was… forced to program in Mac.

Once I started to use them, it’s really something!!! It seems that there’s only one way in and one way out – but what it causes is consistency.

There’s so much configurability in other operating systems, it drives you crazy.

Whereas, the stability of the Mac comes from the fact that there’s only one way in, one way out and there’s UNIX underneath but the top layer it just works and you’re not quite sure how but it works – magically.

Ben: Treat it as voodoo and be done with it.

Etienne: Right. But, with Mobile ME, somehow when you update one contact in one place it will magically update another again and even getting it, you have to copy hundreds of contacts over the course of a year – all of a sudden, you have someone’s number right at your finger tips. If you have an iPhone, of course, it magically integrates again and you get the phone numbers – off you go

Ben: If we talk about Apple – their philosophy – their way of doing things. I mean… whenever you… if you buy an Apple product, then it’s often referred to as “drinking the cool aid”

Etienne: Yeah and it costs a lot.

Ben: and then… It did costs a lot more but…

Etienne: … time is money, it will recover the cost almost immediately

Ben: Right

Etienne: either in frustration saved or money.

Ben: Well, I think that is something for people to think about – time that you would spend being frustrated about something.

You know, maybe user interfaces don’t work the way you expected to or you’re not exactly sure how to do something.

That’s “opportunity cost”, right?

That time that you could spend working on whatever you need to work on… your spending being frustrated trying to figure it out, right?

Etienne: Yeah.

Ben: With that sort of philosophy… you have something that’s consistent, it’s functional, it may not do absolutely everything, it may not have all that configurability but it is consistent. This may not necessary be your philosophy as the listeners at home – but it does work for apple.

Etienne: Well you can’t have configurability for everything.

Ben: Yup

Etienne: Uou need to do it in a very clear and concise way. That’s a whole different ball of wax.

Ben: Yes

Etienne: and then you need a good mind behind that as well.

Ben: Have you ever seen a ball of wax?

Etienne: No

Ben: No?… Date Berry – actually he’s is a humor columnist for the Chicago Tribune or something like that – had a write up about airplanes and the headphones they’ve give you in the airplanes.

He actually asked the stewardess if there has ever been a study that was done on how large a ball of wax would be if you cleaned off all of the headphones once you gave them back at the end of the flight.

Etienne: That’s disgusting!!!

Ben: Yeah. That’s exactly what she said. She said that’s the most disgusting thing she’d ever heard and of course…

Etienne: You know, I never have seen a ball of wax but I have a taste of it.

Ben: Eww. Oh… that’s disturbing. Should we edit that or leave that in?

Etienne: Everybody knows how a wax tastes like and we all don’t like it.

Ben: Yes, it’s not good. It’s… you know. Okay, taking a step back… back into automation…

Alright.

See, in my philosophy, I think computers are great, but computers do precisely what they are told to do – NOT what you meant for them to do.

I was talking to my son last night and we were talking about the difference between getting a computer to do to a search and getting a person to do a search.

So, if I said to a computer “I want pictures of insects” then it would come back with pictures of flies and preying mantises and all sorts of beetles – but it may also come back with an anteater because it’s an “insectivore” and I didn’t specify that I only want insect.

I wanted the word “insect” and it would totally miss anything that involves creepy crawlies because it uses the word “bug” whereas a person would understand the intent of what I’m going for (pictures of insects), I won’t get any pictures of anteaters.

I would get pictures of flies and beetles and all those sorts of things even if they were labeled insects, bugs or their latin name right there. A person can think for themselves.

Etienne: The automation in google for instance or any search engines would be getting better and better over time and again, how much time do you wanna spend or money do you wanna spend on on getting something more to work?

At the end of the day you want something really easy to use

Ben: Right

Etienne: if you click in the advance features in search and find how to do it, you can see its actually quite beautiful however, no one wants to spend the time on that, that’s the point. That’s why humans ingenuity comes in and so that’s not struggling into another vision on automation

Ben: Right. That’s exactly what I’m doing, ‘cause it’s my style to witness things, I outsource to other people in developing countries (very, very smart people) who are able to interpret what I want, can learn what I’m looking for over time.

The first time I ask them a question it may come back with not so great results, but the 2nd, 3rd and 4th time I can expect to have results that are… well, what I expect.

Etienne: and computers can’t get to know you

Ben: no

Etienne: or have relationship with you.  They can’t be part of a team.

Ben: that’s right

Etienne: Computers can’t do that. Im sure they could over time. But, you can’t wait for that long because we need our results.

Ben: Has science fiction taught us NOTHING?!

I mean, if we could create computers that smart then they’ll take over the world and kill us all right?

Etienne: I love to watch those movies

Ben: What if we talk about putting the 2 together.

So, for example, one of the things that I do with my staff is: I will have them create links back to sites that I create.

So if I create a site like internetbusinessbeginners.com and I want other sites linking back to me… there are software programs out there that will list to directories, post forms, post things along those lines – but they very quickly fails the “Turing Test” – it’s very obviously a computer whose been sent out to, you know… just do that stuff.

Etienne: People got catch on to that right away , if you wanna hide… if you look at the games where you hide something in pictures (like, “Where’s Waldo”). The ones that are well done have a lot of great creativity in them.

The human mind does incredible things and you can’t actually pause it’s creativity since we are built creative. People can interpret things. We are out to give you the best of what’s above: choices.

Ben: Sure.

Etienne: well, the computer can’t read that out for you

Ben: To a computer, two pictures are equally good right?

Etienne: Exactly. There could be heuristics that make one a little bit better than the other but, is that what you really wanted?

Ben: That’s a fantastic word.

Etienne: Yeah.

Ben: Fantastic. Alright, but my point is that if you combine the 2 methods together, you have a computer doing the drudgery, okay? You tell it, “I want you to do this”,  and it goes through it and does it.

Etienne: I think, you can’t do the drudgery in a few moments – that’s where computers are best suited

Ben: Where you have the individual and the actual tool in mind to do the creative work and go out and make something happen for real, right?

Etienne: Right. People like to move on and they like to be creative – so, usually the drudgery work the computer would do. And the person is off being creative in the first place.

Ben: Right.

Etienne: Let’s get the computers to do this for us

Ben: Right… Okay, well then let’s pull back from the flow of the side of things and dive a little bit into the technical ways to do that. What tools do you use to automate things?

Etienne: it could be anything. I love filemaker cause it’s extremely easy and intuitive for geeks as well as for people who don’t who really give a care about their data and have the ability to manipulate it themselves.

Ben: Well, FileMaker is a database

Etienne: It’s a database tool and I wouldn’t even say it’s a competitor of Microsoft Access. It’s in the lead and it’s absolutely fabulous.

Ben: Fabulous… Oh!

Etienne: Look, don’t really even start… I love it. The point is you can design rapidly.

Ben: Sure

Etienne: The point is you can automate things as well. It can link to anything so it’s one of my favorite tools

Ben: Now, is it something where you do like a macro recording or would you do excessive code?

Etienne:   It’s basically a database. It has coding as well and, if you’re a geek, you can get really involved with it.

Ben: So if someone was less of a geek, then they look for geeky people?

Etienne:  it’s probably the least a geeky database tool and most intuitive database tool I’ve ever used.

Ben: Okay, well that’s saying something, ‘cause databases can be messy

Etienne: Yeah.

Ben: Okay. What else do you use?

Etienne: The other ones I use, I make myself, I would be using MySQL because it’s free and very powerful and Oracle’s behind it, the company behind it you know?

Ben: Yeah.

Etienne: And PHP and JavaScript and all those other very geeky tools that tied up together.

Those are the main tools that I use. However, we use SQL server and all sorts of other stuff.

Ben: What you’re talking about is primarily data driven stuff. Are there are other processes that you can get that are not data driven?

You got a very confused and scared look of your face there.

Let me see if I can rephrase this…

What I’m wondering is uhm… let’s say repetitive tasks – when I come in the morning and I log on to my computer and I open the four statistic windows that I use and I…

Etienne: Aha! Four statistic windows… most people would never do that. What you are saying is that the computer will automatically open it up for you.

Ben: That’s what I’m suggesting. How would you do that?

Etienne: Sometimes there’s a little automation things like that. I mean, it’s worth the hour and half trying to figure out how the heck did they do something really simple. There’s gonna be a way, there’s gonna be something out there…

Ben: Sure

Etienne: so you go look up on google and it’s worth the hour and a half because every morning after that, once you figure out how to do it (or you have a geek to help you out), those statistics are available to you. It’s valuable, and you just have to have the pulse on exactly what is going on something that you really need to know everyday.

Ben: Great

Etienne: I mean “stock trader” people use it all the time. It never stops. They’re trying to automate how do I get what’s going on right now

Ben: Right. or 5 minutes ago…

Etienne: I mean, if you enjoy that sort of thing, again do you enjoy this sort of thing? If you don’t, you would never install it.  If that’s the case, go hire Phil.

Ben: Right. Hire Phil. Who’s Phil?

Etienne: He’s my financial planner.

Ben: Ah, I see.  Yeah hire Phil.

Etienne: Great guy.

Again, is he a computer? Or is he a human?

Then there’s a guy you got there. It’s automating using him.

There’s a lot of other people who enjoy stocks but automating using tools that are in my computer desktop but sometimes automation does not have to really expensive.

It could be an hour research on Google and figure out how to do something and sometimes, the tool is not there but you know what you want and you have the basics so you can easily look for someone else to quickly glue between it and that’s the solution to it – gluing things together.

Ben: Alright. Well, then… let’s talk about another thing…

I’ve been reading “the 4-hour work week” – one of the points that he talks about is at about step number 3 in building a business, he says its time for automation and he’s got all sorts of things to think about: freedom of time, freedom of finances and all sorts of things that he talks about and he is excited about.

He talks about it significantly further into a business then you know, step #1.

Where do you put automation? Like if ELB Solutions were not in existence, let’s say, and you were starting up a business from scratch. At what point would you begin automating processes?

Etienne: Why do I like QuickBooks? Automation.

Ben: Beats doing everything in excel, word or a general ledger.

Etienne: However… I did books for my brother when I was 14.

Ben: Really?

Etienne: Yeah. He thought me exactly about ledgers. I know what a ledger is and all the double entry book keeping is all about

Ben: Double entry…

Etienne: So when you say I’m starting my business, I’ve already done this stuff. I already understand how it works. I understand that I don’t want to do it.

Ben: Right.

Etienne: Okay. So really, that’s not even fair cause it goes back why would I say get cause I know I need it. Because, I know I don’t wanna do it.

Ben: So you automate it immediately. Begin automating something.

Etienne: Yeah. I mean after I’ve bashed my head a few times against the wall. I have had a book keeper right now, she does books for me and I realized that I’m doing things right but in the wrong way…

Ben: That’s very good

Etienne: I don’t think that it’s that good. The government would come after me and boy things should be a lot more organized and…whatever.

Ben: You know what? I’ll just pull out here for just a second.

This is something for anyone listening here – GET A BOOK KEEPER. Get an accountant. They will save you more than they cost.

Etienne: However, if you like to keep your nose in what’s going on… get a book keeper that will talk to you.

Ben: Yes. That’s important too.

Etienne: Again, we talked about automation with the human element. Nothing has changed in the conversation here

Ben: No

Etienne: and automation… you know you have to start your processes. You need to do in my hand but if people can say “Hey look! I know a tool…”

Ben: and they are not trying to be offensive to someone (by calling them a “tool”)

Etienne: So if they know a tool, they go buy that one, so you got QuickBooks and another one.

Ben: Sure. I don’t know what

Etienne: So you could automate things right after that if you know that there’s drudgery that’s already in existence and you understand that its chargeable.

You understand the process, you understand the drudgery. You wouldn’t get automation if you don’t know what’s going on. You got to get someone or somebody to figure it out.

Ben: Right. Cause that’s the important thing – in business, you need to understand what your business does and if there are gaps there and your not understanding something, then figure it out.

Etienne: Time is money. You need to do it once or twice. Okay, spend the time and just pay someone to do it for you and you and your organization or yourself, just do it. If its something that keeps separate entry or your program, listen to this, I mean, if your gonna use it twice probably and maybe in the future your gonna use it more, right us everything.

Ben: Right. Great.

Etienne: which is automation. I create a little chunk that does it for you and you kinda see the different information but when you use it 3 or more times, first of all you get  started by automating little tiny things.

Then you can start being creative and you save money because you can reuse it, right?

So again, automation is awesome. But the point is: you need a human to make this decisions. Well, if you don’t understand it yourself, then it’s hard to automate it because you don’t understand what you need

Ben: Yeah. That’s true. That’s very true. Keep… the whole point on that: moving from an existing process checklist and those sorts of things to an automated computers doing this task from “step one” to “step 14”. That is a creative process when you actually create that.

Etienne: What if steps 9 and 13 need to be done by humans?

Great! Because we will make a system to stop at those points and remind you and have nagging in there, like send out e-mails or something else just to make sure steps 9 and 13 gets done.

You move through steps 9 and 14 in an organized manner and you have metrics that measure out you have done this and things like that.

Ben: yeah

Etienne: so, at least ,augment humans. It’s the only way automation works. It is not replacing you.

Ben: Alright. So we’ll get back here to ELB Solutions, this is what you do right? You create systems like this

Etienne: Actually, yeah… one of the things that I love to do is to create QuickBooks and tools for companies.

Humans don’t need scratch paper… well let’s get rid of the paper and let’s get the computers to do it.

Not all opportunities, only automate what you do , there are opportunities to make it better and faster so it will change the way you do business.

This system, we used to do it with paper and you look at the paper and say to yourself, “Why on earth am I doing it this way?”

Well, this paper forms has been in existence and this is what has always been… well if you look at the paper and you fill it in… and you fill the top corner, the bottom corner and you go at the top right and go to the bottom left

Ben: it’s not a good way of doing things

Etienne: Right, so I understand what you are doing and once the computer does that, it’s obviously in the top right and paper wide and I mean, lets get make it go through and do what actually works and you actually do it of course.

Ben: Pretty much… any business has gaps that can be improved by automation

Etienne: Right and you always need to question even humans. Your business changes right?

I mean, look at Nortel: look at what it started off, research development companies doing switches …it’s demised and stuff… but the point is, if they… it’s the only thing they really have.

Nortel, it definitely did a range of things and then it had to move and turn.

So, I’m talking about while it was still viable … but it had to move and the systems had to move with it. So, don’t sit there and say “I have a system to follow”.

Systems are there to serve you.

Ben: Absolutely. I believe that very very strongly. If you have a process, and at some point you find that you’re doing it for the sake of doing the process. It becomes work for work’s sake.  Useless.

Etienne: Well, don’t automate from 1 to 14. Automate 1 then 2… all independently and make sure they are all bundled that you can get in and get out

Ben: Okay… that’s UNIX philosophy right there.

Etienne: When you get in and you have to change things, you have some basic blocks and all you need to do is to change the front end, get the interface so that one level to step 3 because you know that you don’t need it anymore.

Ben: I love that as a concept, as I’ve said, its UNIX philosophy.

That’s how I always do a lot of things. If you’re working on a computer, you have one program that does one thing well and then you take that program, you take the output from that one and then you plug it in to the program #2 and that one does one thing well and you can glue this long string together and do one enormous process

Etienne: well keep in mind we are not just talking about programs here

Ben: No. No… I recognize that

Etienne: We are talking about the way you run your business, right? And mine happens to be a computer program.

Ben: What I’m talking about is philosophy. It’s that you have one thing that does one thing well.

Now, if that’s a person doing it or a process or whatever, you nail that down so that this one thing does this one single step and then, from there, you can then glue that step to step number 2 or 3.

Over time, you end up with a process that automatically could create steps #1 through #14 in a snap.

Etienne: Yeah. Now documenting is very important. If someone new comes in or if you move to the Bahamas (actually, Hawaii is where I’d go) and you can do that well and execute well.

Ben: You would go to Hawaii? Why would you go rather than the Bahamas?

Etienne: Well, because I wanted to take my mother there but she passed away before that happened.

Ben: Oh… I’m sorry.

Etienne: There’s a bit of  sentimentalness there…

Ben: Is that a word? “Sentimentalness”? Is it in the dictionary?

Etienne: I’m sure

Ben: Okay

Etienne: If it’s not, we should add it.

Ben: I think we should. Mr. Webster please add it to the dictionary

Etienne: If you like to sell your business… The point is, it’s well documented and who wouldn’t want to buy a business that’s so well laid out? It’s so easy to run…

Ben: Sure

Etienne: …because, someone though it through and documented it. It’s something that we usually forget, it’s the thing that we don’t have time for.  But, when you do it, you sleep better.

Ben: Right. It’s true. Well again with the documentation, you have to write something for the next person to understand what you were saying, if its chicken scratch notes…

Etienne: But you can use chicken scratch notes for yourself, when you right it down you’ll gonna see flaws in your system.

Ben: Right

Etienne: and then you put the word “Todo” and find out what’s missing and you can fix it in the future

Ben: That’s awesome. That’s a programmer trick. I’ve done that stuff for ages.

Etienne: I wasn’t trying to bring that up.

Ben: SHHHHH. I’m a programmer, you’re a programmer, we’re both programmers – that’s why we get long. Alright, we’ve been talking for a while. Do you have any other thoughts on automation and philosophy in terms of business design and that sort of thing?

Etienne: Just how much time and frustration it cost you?

You buy a new car because of your frustration or because its cheaper.  The point is: it’s frustration and money these are the two things that can cause you to automate

Ben: some form of pain, basically…

Etienne: Yeah, because the other form of pain is when you automate something that’s only done once. Because, you may have the philosophy to automate everything (which a lot of people accuse me of). However, maybe you (or I) are right.

Ben: Usually. Absolutely.

Etienne: When it comes to… I used to do this. One time out of ten I’d make this mistake, not a lot, it’s less than you know…

Ben: A couple of years ago

Etienne: That’s a couple of years ago and you know I’m doing a lot better but no… you don’t wanna automate everything.

I think people misunderstand when I say “Let’s make or get something else to do that for us”

Ben: Right. So… okay, if someone wants to come looking for a geek (meaning, you…), where would they find you, once again?

Etienne: elbsolutions.com

Ben: elbsolutions.com and to clarify, how do you spell your name?  Because, everyone asks?

Etienne: It’s: E-T-I-E-N-N-E.

Ben: How do you spell Bley?

Etienne: B-L-E-Y. It means happy in dutch.

Ben: What? I didn’t know that. That explains a great deal.

Etienne: Well, thank you.

Ben: Alright. So that’s the end of the interview here today and if you’d like to check out some more cool tips and tricks, come check it out at internetbusinessbeginners.com

Internet Business Beginners Episode 3

Derek: I am Derek Sheehan

Ben: and I’m Ben Inkster

Internet Business Beginners – Episode 3

Derek: and we just start our podcast 3 here. We’re trying to develop websites and show you how easy it is to do. Now, I’m not the expert here. This is Ben. Ben, would you tell us what’s been going on in your world in Internet Business.

Ben: Well, I’m actually very excited. Internet Business Beginners – we’ve… it’s so bizarre to be in this sorts of recording… the royal “we”. We have – no, bear with me. I’ve been doing the whole pile of writing, Derek and I have done a couple of podcast here trying to build up a little bit of the community side of things here and I can’t see too much right now but in the next couple of episodes, we will talk a little bit more about community side of things and what’s been built. What about you? What have you been up to?

Derek: We’ll I can’t say quite advance as you and of course; my process is a bit slower. Last podcast, we talked about – gain that domain, gain that host, picking themes, where to find pictures and that sort of things that go on the website and I think at this point, I was assuming that I could just take all that – plug it in and my site will be ready and I have come to the conclusion that I’m struggling in the area of content and what I mean by that is there’s many examples of theirs for product websites but… you know, there’s pendulums swings here, there’s the one site that has run-on sentence and it’s like the TV add that never ends and then you have the other site where it’s just a one-page nothing with a button and it doesn’t really tell you anything.

Ben: Click here you idiot websites…

Derek: Yeah and I don’t really wanna be either end of those spectrums so I’ve been gathering information and things that I want to go on the website and just in case you forget, I’m doing sort of affiliate golf website – golftipstobreak80 but I think what I’m concerned about is how communicating the product. I want obviously to attract people to my site. Once they get there I want them to stay. I want them to read something that interests them enough that they’ll buy that product but I don’t want a run-on sentence and I don’t wanna be so vague that they’re just interested because what the heck I’m talking about.

Ben: Sure you have to build some trust, right? With that…

Derek: Exactly. I’ve come to a reality. Okay, I have to have a plan here. Not just throw everything on. I need to have a system of what/how I’m gonna communicate this.

Ben: Well, in fact… that really underscores what we’re talking about the previous podcast episode of about picking a niche and a product that interest you. If you find something that – a niche that caters to people who are like yourself, you’ll be able to talk about that and create stuff. Regarding that… that’s of interest because it interests you and if it interests you it’s likely to interest other people.

Derek: Well, that’s of course why I pick golf. I love golf. I want to break 80. I would love tips on how to do it. Has my domain name, my product, the whole process – I’m there. I’m passionate about what I’m trying to get out there, not just for myself and for other people and obviously to make money through is a bonus but for me, it’s just there’s different types of people out there and there’s different ways to communicate to them and as a preacher, as a communicator myself, I understand that. I wanna get as many ears as I can so where do I start here as far as content?

Ben: Ear Ear

Derek: Here here.

Ben: Well, okay. Let me put this – I mean, as we’re talking here, I’m looking at the notes we set down for the podcast ahead of the time here and a couple of things that I think makes sense to talk about is not just about communication because, I mean communication is just talking. It’s getting information out there but it’s really about learning styles and how people listen to what you have to say and there’s a few different styles there and then in addition to that is about structuring your content so that it’s interesting for people because you can say the most interesting thing in the world in a horrifyingly boring way and nobody will listen to it. You know… Presentation does matter.

Derek: Sure. As a preacher, I understand that. It’s like taking people on a journey and you want them to start and finish with you.

Ben: Exactly.

Derek: Not doing it halfway…

Ben: Definitely and in the end we can talk about some of the tools that I use at least and in fact as were doing this podcast that we’re using to get some of that content out there. So let me talk about this… there’s really 3 major learning styles out there and there’s a few combinations of them but most people will fall under one or the other of them. It’s visual learning style, an auditory learning style and kinesthetic learning style which is fun word to say let me tell you…

Derek: Don’t ask me to say it…

Ben: kinesthetic

Derek: Okay. You say it.

Ben: and what you’ll find is you will naturally gravitate to one or another method of communicating just based on the way that you yourself learn. I’m personally an auditory learner. I was tested as a kid and they’ve discovered that I’m almost exclusively an auditory so I talk and talk and talk and…

Derek: talk and talk

Ben: Yes. Instantly talk but that’s how I learn as well. I actually absorb significantly better just listening to people talk whether that’s an audio recording or a lecture somewhere or a video or anything along those lines. If there’s an audio component to it, for me, that works very very well. Other people are visual learners and reading books or flip charts or really anything along those lines in a visual method, something that they can see and read and examine how everything connects. If that’s your learning style, that’s often the way you would default to create your content and the 3^rd type is kinesthetic and this are people who need to do something. They learn by actually getting out and doing it. That’s a little bit tougher to translate in terms of internet content. You know… it’s tough to swing the golf club online. It could be dangerous but taking that and extending it a little bit – this is one of the things that if you are kinesthetic learner, actually following along on this podcast and building a website along with Derek and I is an excellent way to do because you are actually doing it. It’s not just a case of listening to us blather on at length. You are actually developing something with it, making your own mistakes your own tips and tricks. So, okay, let’s talk about structuring the content in addition to the actual learning styles something that they teach you when you right essays and you know, back in high school and junior high is to tell someone what you are going to tell them and then to tell them and then to tell them what you told them so let’s break that down here. At the beginning of any piece of content, what you want to do is create an opening statement – an introduction that says “In this podcast we are going to tell you all about learning styles” or whatever your content happens to be. So you have a hook. You’re introducing them. You’re telling people what you’re gonna tell them in broad strokes and then you actually tell them “and so this portion of podcast as we’re talking would be the telling them part as I blather on” and then at the end of any piece of content, you would have some sort of summary – “so in this podcast we told you X Y Zed” and that falls through in any type of content you create. If you’re creating a recording of some sort, you can introduce it with an opening statement. If you’re writing a blog entry, you can use your opening paragraph and say “In this blog post, I will tell you about X Y Zed.” Zed because we’re Canadian. The X Y Z for all our friends out there. That’s what it boils down – you tell them what you’re gonna tell them, you tell them and tell them what you told them. It works for any piece of content and you’ll find that it actually adds a nice framework and if you’re talking of the fly, if you’re creating a video on the fly, it actually sinks a little bit easier in terms of keeping things concise – point things together.

Derek: So you’re saying that I need to incorporate all of this learning styles onto my website or is that too confusing or you’re just… pick the one that I’m attached to or…

Ben: Well, to start with… What I would suggest is to go with the one that you default to, okay? If writing is your strength, write like crazy and so a blog is something that works very very well for that. You can just write 300 or 400 words blog post there. Few paragraphs, 3 or 4 paragraphs and you’re done and it is very very straight forward. If you’re an auditory learner, if that’s something that works so well for you, pick up your iPhone and start taking some recordings and then from there, drop them into your website or you could use some software to transcribe that or later on transcribe it yourself if you want a little more accuracy. If you’re kinesthetic, what you might wanna consider is doing some of the bigger media stuff in terms of… pick up a video camera and do some videos. Just let you wave your arms around and pace around and if it works for you, then by all means do it. What’s cool with the different methods is often the fall on top of one another so, to clarify that because that’s a bit of an odd way of saying it. If I take a video… well, in fact on internetbusinessbeginners.com you can check out some of the night school post, I’ve taken a couple of videos. Some of them are me talking in front of the camera and others are me demonstrating on a computer screen what I’m doing but I’ve actually created a video and out of that video I can strip the audio just that layer and put that out as a podcast or something downloadable for an iPod or iPhone or anything along those lines or mp3 player if you’re not an apple fan and then I could take that and write out what I have said and then you end up with a lengthy blog post. So you can see, if you create content in one format it actually translates very nicely into another format.

Derek: I have an idea. Perhaps, I should have a website that has 3 buttons on the website. Visual learner click here, Audio learner click here, kinesthetic click here.

Ben: That’s right. Well you know… it could work.

Derek: I have to define the 3^rd one though.

Ben: How do I spell that? Kines whatever. What I found works best is actually in just personal together. So if you look at the blog post or the podcast entries we have them written out, we have videos that go along with it. We put it all together so we get the same content in a couple different methods and as the end user, you can pick what works best for you. I mean, does that make sense?

Derek: Yeah, totally. It does. The only clarity that I need is how much do I put on my website? You know, you can have a lot of visuals. You can have a lot of written, you can have a lot of videos showing you how to do whatever but I guess my question is “How much is too much? How little is too little?”

Ben: Okay. Well, I think that’s one of those questions like you know how long is a rope?

Derek: Well that… I’m not sure.

Ben: It really depends on the niche that you’re in. It depends on the people that you’re competing with on what they are doing. If you are in a niche that requires a whole pile of writing, a whole pile of content, whether that’s right or anything else but lots and lots out there and you’re only doing a tenth of what your competitors are doing, chances are you couldn’t be drawing the same amount of traffic but if you’re in a niche where that’s not the case where it’s just a very little bit and you just create a dozen blog post and that’s it and then you’ll never need to touch again. Well, fantastic, that’s something very straight forward. You can set it up front and never worry about but if you’re in a niche like Internet Business Beginners where there’s lots and lots of content out there what really matters more than anything else is consistent delivery so pick a schedule and stick to it. If that’s once a week putting out a podcast or once a day writing a blog post or maybe that’s not for high school. Maybe once a month you put out a podcast episode and maybe 2 times a week you write a blog post or have a recording or something along those lines. It doesn’t really matter what that schedule is as long as it’s consistent. If you can create some content and then consistently over weeks and weeks and weeks and months and months and months deliver that. What you’ll find is it actually draws more and more traffic to your site over time and this is the consistent organic traffic that comes from websites or other magnetic strategies whether that’s iTunes or other podcasts distributors. Does that make sense?

Derek: It does. It does. It gives me a lot to think about. My initial thought is what are the percentages out there? Are mostly the world visual? I mean I’d like to go with… I guess what I’m trying to say is I want to incorporate all three. If 80% of the world is visual then I use 15% audio and 5% kinesthetic that sort of thing. Do you know those?…

Ben: I’m sorry. I don’t know off the top of my head but I do know that there are more kinesthetic learners out there than the other 2 styles.

Derek: Okay, I wouldn’t have guessed that

Ben: If you think about it, most people learn by doing. That’s the whole purpose behind homework, right? When you go to school, when you…

Derek: Yes…

Ben: Yeah. I know. I don’t wanna make you… that is true, if you go to school is not to actually done the exercises that you really absorb what it is that you learn in the class, right?

Derek: I guess that makes sense.

Ben: and so that’s the only thing I know but I can’t give you additional statistics. If I can find some, I’ll put them on the blog post that goes along with the podcast.

Derek: Sure. Yeah. Like I’ve said I just wanna grab as many of the population that are coming to my website… their attention and so you give me some ideas and I think that’s something that I have to really consider as far as schedule and consistency ‘cause I do want people to come back to my site. So I have to be consistent. That makes sense.

Ben: One of the point to mention here is to talk a little bit about the search engine side of things because search engines… they are getting more and more advanced. Don’t index video all that well. So if all you did was video you would find you are not drawing as many people to your site as you could because there’s no way for the search engines to know what you said that second, 5 minutes and 28 seconds in.

Derek: That makes sense. Yes.

Ben: Unless you transcribe it. As opposed, if you write it all out, you could make that work, right? But search engines… when you’re getting started, think about people first, second think about the search engines. Search engines, when they read a page of text, the first part of the page, the first maybe 3 or 4 paragraphs are what count more than anything else so you gonna get your most bang for your bucket on those first couple of paragraphs so write your initial content if you’re getting into a schedule and working what… you know, actually creating content. Just write 3 or 4 paragraphs instead of trying to write an epic, poem about whatever your topic is. Just write a little bit. Just a tiny little bit and then make it consistent.

Derek: Well, it goes back to what you are saying… tell them what you are going to tell them in the first paragraphs…

Ben: Exactly.

Derek: Then search engines actually know what you are all about and then tell them and then tell them what you told them. That makes sense because that structure, it’s not just logically but on the computer side. The engines are gonna help you with that content.

Ben: That’s exactly it. That’s what it boils down to – if you create consistent content, if it’s something that interests you because people will know if you’re not interested of what you are talking about. We are not taking video on this particular podcast but if you could see me my arms are waving as I’m talking here. I’m gesturing furiously. I’m excited about this stuff. I like this stuff and I think that comes through. If it’s something that bored me to tears that would come through as well and I think that if we were doing podcast episodes that were about things that didn’t interest you either Derek or myself, we would lose listeners. People wouldn’t come back to listen to more because hey, those guys sound like they’re really bored. So find something that’s interesting. Consistent schedule, something that interests you and just keep doing it. That’s what it boils down to. Take a look at your competitors and do a little bit better than them if you can. That’s really what it boils down to. I mean is there… any other thoughts? Any…

Derek: No. I think for me it’s just a matter of a bit of trial and error I think at this point. I have to put something on there and then test it out. Get people to look at it and get their critiques. It’s not easy taking critique but if I’m gonna be successful, we want people to be honest with you. So for the website, what’s interesting to them so yeah… It’s just a matter of getting it there. I think, for me, it’s just I don’t wanna put it there unless it’s perfect but in reality I think at this point, put the content out there. Play with it.

Ben: Exactly.

Derek: You might fall to it in the beginning but you’ll learn as you go and you can’t get anybody looking at your website unless you put it up.

Ben: I think this is really something that we should really stress. This is the point that most people get hung up on when they’re creating an internet business website of any type. It’s getting the content out. I love to do this, the design looks great, I got my WordPress engine, I got all this cool stuff. I gonna write something and then I got stuck and this is a very very common problem so for everyone listening the biggest thing is just get out there and create something. If that means picking up your phone and doing a quick recording or type it out 2 paragraphs and put it on the website, do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. That’s what it boils down to and even if your grammar is terrible and you’re spelling too, who cares? Get it out there and just do something and once you got that done and you can look at it and say “Wow, I got this and it works!” You can do it again tomorrow or you can do it next week and just set that so that you are doing it consistently and you end up with people come back.

Derek: and I think that brings up really important point for me ‘cause it’s not just get it on, get it done. It’s a process.

Ben: Absolutely. All right, I think we’ve got that nailed down. I think that makes sense. Let’s talk about some tools here. For us doing this podcast, there’s a number of different ways that we’ve done this. Tonight we happen to be sitting right side by side, we’re using the Blue Yeti microphone which we just got and it’s very very cool.

Derek: Very cool.

Ben: It’s enormous. It stands a foot tall but it makes mixing a whole lot easier because both of us are talking at the mic and it works very very well but microphone aside what we use consistently to actually do our recording is a program called Audacity. This is an open-source project. It works on Windows machines and Macs and Linux machines. It’s truly cross-platform and it just works.

Derek: Uh-oh you forgot the most important part.

Ben: Okay. I’m sorry. What’s the most important part?

Derek: It’s free.

Ben: It’s FREE! It’s awesome and so I’ll give you the place to go to. Go download it. Try it out and you can just use it with the mic that comes with your computer and you can crack out some quick content. It is audacity.sourceforge.net and if you go there check out the link on the blog posts as well. Download it. It’s the coolest program and it makes very very simple to crank out mp3s or wave files or anything like that and you don’t need to be technical at all. You start talking and you end up with these fancy little blue lines moving on the screen ‘cause we’re looking at here right now. It’s kinda cool to watch.

Derek: If you can talk, you can use audacity.

Ben: Exactly so crank out some content. That’s the major issue. After this podcast I want you to turn off this podcast. Take the ear bugs out of your ear. Download audacity and make a recording. Get something out today right now.

Derek: All right. I’ll put the content out. I’ll get something out now.

Ben: Perfect. All right, so that’s it for this podcast. If you have any other questions or wanna check out some other cool tips and tricks, check out the website at internetbusinessbeginners.com

Internet Business Beginners Episode 2

Ben: In this episode of Internet Business Beginners we talk about picking a market, picking a domain, picking a niche and ultimately figuring out which product it is that we want to sell but before we get into that I suppose we should start with some introductions.

Internet Business Beginners – Episode 2

Derek: Hello! My name is Derek Sheahan.

Ben: I’m Ben Inkster.

Derek: and we’re discovering processes on how to build our own websites.

Ben: We are a couple of fairly regular guys.

Derek: We’ll I’m regular.

Ben: I’m definitely regular … and we’ll leave it there.

Derek: So this is our 2^nd podcast. What’s been going on in your life since we first did that first podcast, Ben?

Ben: Oh man, I’ve been doing all kinds of things.

What I’ve been really working on since we last talked is developing some of my own products. We talked about doing some affiliate products in the previous podcast but I’ve actually taken the method of creating my own products and selling them directly. They’re downloadable products, software and the like. This is something that I did years ago and it worked very well for me then and so as a result, I’m just developing some new stuff now and moving into the process where they’re starting to sell so it’s pretty exciting to see…

Derek: Oh my… That’s great. That’s kind of why we build a business, right?

Ben: Exactly and how about you? What you’ve been up to?

Derek: Well, in our last podcast we talked about what are the steps in setting up an online business. I’m just gonna find my way through all these steps and based on the stuff that we talked about, I just started the process step by step. Just baby steps here and there and so I thought okay.  If I’m going to go on and do this business I need to just start doing it.

So, basically I was thinking about what I would like to do and what kind of domain names and all that stuff and kind of getting all through my head and I recognized I need to take a more holistic approach to this. I can’t really pick a domain name if I want it to be relevant to my products so…  maybe I should back up and say “What do I wanna sell?”

Ben: Well, sure. That makes a lot of sense. You’re not able to pick a domain unless you know what it is that you’re going to sell. For example, if you have a domain all about let’s say… well, squirrel migration (going back to our previous podcast…) and you’re trying to sell piano music … it doesn’t work all that well.

Derek: Yeah. That’s what I thought. There are thousands and thousands of things in the Internet to buy and sell and it’s a bit overwhelming and then I came across a quote.  I just started looking at blogs and stuff and I don’t know who said it… but the quote said:

Ben: Oh that is such a good quote.

Derek: Yeah and it really put a focus on what I want sell.

Do I want to sell apple pie?  No. Probably not – because people want to test it before they buy it.

So those are the things, products that you know… like clothing – some people I do know buy them but unless you know the store and how it fits you, you probably not gonna go with that. So I sort of narrowed a little bit more about what I wanted to do and then I started to recognize that I wanna sell a product that I like.

What would I like to buy from the internet? A couple of things came to mind…

Just little things like “find an easy market”. I didn’t wanna pick the squirrel migrations niche or anything to the like…

Ben: It’s a fairly small market

Derek: It *is* a small market so if I wanna get out there and make some money I thought I would have a market that is fairly large.

Ben: Absolutely.

Derek: … And something I like. Something that’s large, and a targetable market.

I wanted to find a product which that market will want …

So, I began to think about that and after a little while I came up with a conclusion that I like golf and I know that golf people – golfers, they spend money.

It’s a large market. It’s an all year market depending on where you live. When you are online, it does not matter where you’re selling a product from. Golf is being played all year around everywhere and I also recognized that this market, depending on who you choose to target, will spend money and they will buy stuff online – as I often done myself.

That’s where I narrowed it down. I took some of your hints from the last time about whether to create a product or whether to be an affiliate. (Affiliate – selling a product for somebody else and taking a portion of the profit)

I don’t have a marketable product that I have invented.  I’m not an inventor.  So, I went down the road of affiliates.

Ben: Well, that makes a lot of sense.

Derek: You mentioned on the last podcast some sites that you can go to and find products to be an affiliate of…

I went to one that you mentioned called ClickBank and they have thousands and thousands of products.   I narrowed it (my search) down to the golf market.  I found something that interests me and…

Ben: Well, let me stop you there for a quick second because, I’m curious. I personally haven’t checked out the golf market.

I am not much of a golfer. I think of golf like bowling. I shoot for 300 and I’m pretty happy if I can hit that score… but what I’m curious about is: the golfing market itself, particularly in ClickBank. Were there a lot of products or hardly any? What’s the price like? What was the market like?

Derek: Well, there were very different products. Let’s say there’s a pretty good amount to choose from and they range from books to golf clubs to whatever.

It was fairly wide open; but again, sort of sticking to the things that I thought about – I want it to be a large market. I want it to be something that customers want and (going back to the quote about something “small, touch, examine”) I didn’t necessarily want to sell clubs or products like that.

Ben: Physical products are tough to test as well…

Derek: Yes. Exactly.

Well, ebooks and things like that are more what I’m leading towards. I think golfers buy magazines and they read blogs and they watch YouTube videos. This is what we do.

I’m a golfer so I know how I act and so I recognized that… now, I have to choose what type of those golfers I wanna target – is it the weekend duffer, that hits hundred and twenty strokes? Or is it the guy that’s just about on the tour, hitting 72 – “scratch golfers” they call it?

Or, is it a guy like myself. I’m a pretty good golfer. I hit in the 80s – for golf that’s pretty good – but I find that I’ve hit a wall and my expertise has only taken me so far. I need something to help me get into the 70s. I wanna be better.

Ben: Okay.

Derek: I wanna be under “10 over”.

That’s the market, because I know those are the guys that golf more often and they’re the ones that spend the money.  Because, for them it’s not just a weekend thing to do with your friends. It’s a passion. You love to do it. I didn’t wanna get the guys that are already scratch golfers because they are already there… you know, probably they’ve got the products, they’ve got the tools for themselves so they are not the guys that I wanted to target.

So that’s where I was able to narrow it down.

Ben: Well, there’s something to point out here as well. You’re targeting a market with which you identify easily.

Derek: Absolutely.

Ben: You, yourself, are part of that; and so, you’re able to filter questions through yourself. Is this the product that I would buy? Would I be interested on this?

Derek: Correct.

Ben: Much better than taking a guess. For example, what are the scratch golfers like? If you’re not one, how would you know?

Derek: I took that information in my head and I thought if I was going into Google or Yahoo … what would I search for? What would I put in?

I would want golf tips. So I started looking for products with golf tips and then I started to look at golf tips to do what?

Well, I didn’t necessarily want to narrow in on a swing or a put. I wanted holistically… I just want to get under 80 – that’s basically what I said to myself. I’d like to get under 80 and that means learning everything to even get better.

Ben: Sure.

Derek: And, I found a product. (A couple of products actually) It focusus on holistically trying to break 80 and so I become an affiliate of that product.

Now, I don’t have a website or anything like that but I just said “I wanna be an affiliate” – so that’s great.

Now, the next step of course. I wanna try it myself. I don’t wanna sell some things that I don’t try it myself so I put that idea off to the side and thought… Okay. Now, I got a product that I sort of zeroing it on and so now I took the next step you talked about and that’s finding a domain name so one of the sites that you mentioned is GoDaddy.

Ben: Right.

Derek: So I just went there and you know what? It was super easy. I mean, not knowing what you’re doing or the terminology – it was still really, really easy.

Based on the search done in Google and Yahoo keywords,  I decided to call my website golf-tips-to-break-80.com

It was really cheap, just like you said, nothing too big as far as an investment and so I thought… “Okay. I’m on my way”

Now, I need to try the product and that sort of thing *but* the next step you said was hosting – so, I needed something to run my site.

You mentioned a few hosts. I happened to have a friend who is into hosting and he allowed me to use the hosting on his site so that was a real benefit because it doesn’t cost me anything.

Ben: Oh perfect. If you can test something out without having to spend any money at all… well, that’s excellent. Once you’ve sort of cut your teeth, at that point spend the money to figure out how to best promote your site, right?

Derek: Right and so you know, I guess there are some sites – I can’t remember the names but you have mentioned something about some of those hosting sites maybe you wanna comment on that…

Ben: Oh sure.

The ones that I often use are Liquid Web or Host Gator. Off the top of my head, I don’t know Liquid Web’s current sale pricing but I know that Host Gator has 5 dollar or less per month. Hosting that is really fantastic. It just makes things so easy and you don’t have to mess about with any of the 500,000 steps that it takes to push your site up into a website. It is just one click publishing – it’s what they call it.

Derek: Yeah. I didn’t have to go through those easy steps, of course…  my friend did it for me. So…

1. I got my domain name.
2. I potentially got my product.
3. I now got a host and so…
4. …Now I’m in a place where I need to start building this website…

This is kinda where I hit the wall and this is why I’m back here talking to you because I did some research on some of these places where you can get template and that sort of thing.

I see Joomla. I see iWeb and Drupal, WordPress and it goes on and on and I just feel like “Oh heck… I don’t know.”

It looks so confusing to me, so where would you direct me now based on my talents and skills because I know Dreamweaver and some of those are for techie people and I’m not at all techie…

Ben: Okay. If I was you…  Well… I’m not sure exactly where your site has been left-off. But, what I would do is: I would take some sort of content management system or blog system, okay?

Derek: Okay.

Ben: Now, we had mentioned in the previous podcast that there are several that I use.

• Joomla!
• WordPress
• Drupal

Generally my “go to systems” that I use are either Joomla! or WordPress and they’re both very very straightforward.

Joomla! allows you to expand or grow a little more than WordPress.

*BUT*

WordPress is a little bit simpler to set-up and use.

So, for someone like yourself… since this is your sort of first swing at the bat, I would recommend the simpler of the two – you should start with WordPress.

Derek: Okay

Ben: When you install WordPress – whether it’s your friend who’s installing it on his server or if you’re going through Host Gator or any other hosting system…

Generally, there is an installation system in the control panel. In the host that I’ve used (and Host Gator immediately being the one that comes to mind), they have a system called “Fantastico”.

Fantastico is just a little button down in your control panel and then you click on it. You say “I would like to install WordPress please” and you click it and it magically does… I don’t know if it was you who installed it or your friend, but there are about 4 dozen steps that you have to do to get things up and running and this does it all in like 2… you click it and you pick your site name and you’re done.

Derek: Yeah. I think he did all sort of computer language so…

Ben: Sure. VooDoo Magic …

Derek: …something I didn’t know exactly what he was doing but he just did it so it worked out. Fantastico sounds… well, fantastico!

Ben: Exactly! It works really, really well. You pick your management system and, in fact, if you’re just trying something (it’s your first crack at it), then it’s worth trying a couple of them and figure out what seems to work best for you because everyone thinks and works a little bit differently, right?

Derek: So can you download all of them? Like you can download WordPress, Joomla, iWeb…?

Ben: Sure and generally, how it works is… you would create what’s called “a subdirectory” so your domain being… what’s it called?

Derek: golf-tips-to-break-80.com

Ben: Okay, so you would go to golf-tips-to-break-80.com /testsite1, or /testsite2 or /testsite3

and you could install the different content management or blogging systems into each of those sub directories.

Once you find one that you like, well then, you basically escalate that directory into the main directory and again it’s all taken care of in the control panel so you don’t have to know all this terminology.

It’s just a very simple process to make that happen. Once you got your site, you have something that, frankly, is fairly plain; because the system comes with either templates or themes (depending on the terminology of the system you are using) and the ones that they have are … well, they are designed to showcase the features of that particular content management system but not necessarily to look all that great.

They are often are plain colors and not a lot of pictures and lot of information but not really sales-oriented or anything that really matters to us, right?

Derek: Okay.

Ben: So what you want to do is go and find some sort of a theme that you can style your site with to make it look pretty.

Derek: And these guys (Joomla!, Drupal, WordPress) have it themselves or they go somewhere else to find that?

Ben: Well, my recommendation… there are a few that comes with the systems. Try each of them out but you’ll very quickly come to the end of what they can do for you in terms of styling and colors and pictures.

My recommendation is to go with a company called Rocket Theme or WooThemes.

Now, there are a few places out there that are like this but Rocket Theme is one that I use personally for Joomla! and I can recommend them highly – fantastic themes and templates and it will cost you a little bit. It’s a couple of tens of dollars. You might spend as much as 50 bucks on a theme. Once you’ve installed it, you are able to configure it … you know, you go into your Control Panel system and you say “I would like my background to be purple and I would like my title to be blue and I would like this picture on the header … and the system just does it for you.

You don’t have to be a graphics designer.

Derek: Good ‘cause I’m not.

Ben: Me neither. Honestly, I’m not.

I’m a developer. I write software and I know my limitations. I am no good in terms of things like Photoshop or graphic work… or paint and colors…

Derek: Well yeah. It just throws me right off.

Ben: So I leave that to the guys that really do know these things and spend my 50 bucks or whatever you’re spending and suddenly, you’ll have something that looks really professional and, in addition to that, it takes care of a lot of the… sort of Ju Ju magic of search engine optimization (SEO).

A lot of websites get something that looks pretty; and, generally, it’s not designed to place really well in the search engines.

By having a lot of pretty flash and things along those lines, they’re actually sacrificing marketing position within search engines.

Derek: Interesting….

Ben: So if you get one of these professionally designed themes, they’ve actually gone through and tested this stuff and made them optimized for search engines.

Derek: Okay.

Ben: So, that’s my recommendation: Rocket Theme is awesome. Its rockettheme.com and they have all kinds of themes and they look great!

Derek: Okay. So, you’ve got your content and template… if, I mean, into the golf market… obviously I want nice photos. I want something attractive and again I’m not an artist (of any kind), so where…

Ben: So, you’re not out there shooting for photography on green grass?

Derek: No, I’m not down low on the 18th green taking pictures.

So, I guess my next question would be “How do I spruce it up with pictures? Where would you go to get some high quality photos that look professional?”

Of course I don’t wanna spend a fortune or spend time trying to find some green grass somewhere ‘cause its winter where I am right now.  So again, where do I go find these photos?

Ben: Okay.

Well this is actually something that a lot of first time web developers or marketers make a mistake on. The easiest place to find pictures is just Google images, right?

You go and you type in your image. You say “Golf” and you say “Images” and it brings up a whole host of pictures. The only issue with that is: those images are not royalty free images. They are something that someone else has taken, there are copyright issues and in fact by using those, you’re stealing someone else’s work.

Derek: Okay. So it’s infringement. I can’t just drag and drop it into my website type of thing.

Ben: Precisely. I mean, it’s the easiest way to do it but, honestly it will bite you and it’s not very professional.

You wanna have something that looks great and that you can rely on in terms of licensing so there are 2 places that I use when I go looking for photography. One is called istockphoto.com

Derek: Yes, I’ve heard of that.

Ben: You know, they advertise in magazines and they do a lot of print media type of stuff. So you can find the pictures that you’ll see on billboards and things along those lines right inside of iStockphoto.

They have an unbelievably vast library of photography and videos and flash animations and they got all sorts of stuff but the only problem with them is that they’re a little bit more expensive. You can often find a picture that you can’t find anywhere else and when that’s the case, spend the money…

Otherwise, there are better places to go and what I’ve found is currently the best go to place. (It’s that nice blend between size of the library and reasonable price)

It’s a place called dreamstime.com. You can buy what they call credits and you get I think it’s 10 or 15 credits at the basic level and it cost you about anywhere between 50 cents and a dollar per creditso you might spend 5 or 10 bucks getting the credit you need in order to purchase pictures.

Derek: Okay.

Ben: Then your pictures are anywhere from 3 credits up to as much as 10 credits depending on how big…

Derek: Oh it sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Ben: Oh yeah. It’s a couple of bucks per picture.

Derek: Oh it’s nothing.

Ben: … and you’ll have a licensed picture and you’re able to use this on your website and know that you’re not dealing with any copyright infringement and are, in fact, supporting the photographer that took that picture because they get a cut of each sale.

Derek: Now I’ve heard people talking about pixels and size. Is this important to know?

Ben: It is.

That’s definately something for you to be aware of. If you are buying a “print quality” picture, you’re gonna spend more for it because it’s larger, right?

Print… when you pick up a magazine, the number of pixels per inch, or they call them – dots per inch (DPI) is 300. That’s the standard number of pixels.

On a computer monitor, the standard number is 72 so a print image that’s… let’s say 2 inches wide is actually about  4x as large as a 2 inch image that’s designed for the web.

Derek: Okay.

Ben: Alright. So what does all of this boils down to?

DON’T SPEND MORE THAN YOU HAVE TO. Buy the web image rather than the print image.

Derek: Oh that’s good. That makes sense.

Ben: It’s a quick tip, and it will save you money because web images will cost you a couple of bucks where a print image can cost you as much as 15 or 20.

Derek: Okay. Thank you. You just saved me some money.

Ben: There you go. So yes, you save some money and once you have your images, you can go and you can buy Photoshop and do all sorts of fanciness with it – but try to find a picture that’s close to what you are looking for and just crop it down.

You can use an image editor that comes with your computer. Windows machines have “Paint” and Mac machines have “Preview” and if you need to go beyond that, my recommendation is to start with a program called “Gimp”. It’s similar to Photoshop. It’s not quite as simple to use, but Photoshop will cost you $600 (maybe more if you’re buying it in a multi-media kit).

Gimp is actually open-source software and the developers have chosen to distribute it for free – which is very generous of them.

As I said, it’s not quite as simple as Photoshop to use or for that matter Paint or Preview or anything along those lines but it gives you a huge amount of power and you can crop and change colors and do all sorts of cool things with it and you don’t have to spend the big bucks to make that happen.

Derek: Well… sounds like I have a lot of work to do.

Ben: I think so…  so take aways? Point 1 – I mean, you got your site up and running so that’s awesome. That’s always the first step.

Derek: I got a excited about that. Got my domain name listed. Just start building something

Ben: Yeah. Exactly and so just go grab yourself a template. Go to Rocket Theme or WooThemes and, if you need some photography, stop at Dreamstime and pick something that works for you.

Derek: Well, by the next time – and the next podcast we have: hopefully, I’ll have everything in order and people can actually check it out. So thanks Ben. I appreciate it.

Ben: Not a problem. Looking forward to the next one.

Derek: Alright. Me too.

Internet Business Beginners Episode 1

If you’ve ever wondered about how to start an online business – if the idea of residual, passive income excites you,

Ben Inkster (me) and Derek Sheahan introduce ourselves and talk about what it takes to get an Internet business running.  In fact, over the next several podcast episodes, Derek will set up his very first affiliate site from scratch.

In this first episode, I talk about what it takes to get a business off the ground in very broad strokes.  As Derek sets up his website, we will cover the specific details at each step.  By following along, you can set your own website up and begin making money at the same time as Derek does.

To listen, simply click the play button in the post – or subscribe to the podcast.

Internet Business Beginners – Episode 1

Ben: We are recording our first podcast. This is podcast “Numero Uno”. I am Ben Inkster

Derek: and I am Derek Sheahan

Ben: We’re normal guys – well… mostly normal. I consider myself slightly odd. A bit geeky perhaps.

Derek: You are odd. I will agree with this.

Ben: Alright. So, that makes u even if I’m odd?

Derek: That’s another podcast perhaps.

Ben: So, a little bit about me. Again, I’m a normal guy.

I am married. I have kids. I have 4 kids.

I have built a number of businesses over the years. This online business will be my 4th business in the last 10 years … which sounds like they’ve all fallen apart – but they haven’t. They have all been very successful businesses and I have built up and sold off my shares in them and moved on.

Specifically, my last business was a company called Gratisites. It was a web development company and we built up to the point where it was making a little over $300,000 in a year.

So – successful businesses and I wanted to build an online business and I’m telling you guys all about it.

Derek: Hello, I’m Derek and I’m married as well.  I don’t have 4 children but I have 3 children – all under the age of 9 so I have a very busy house.

I would consider myself a normal guy but I do like to have that “Jack of All Trades” title because I do like my hands in a lot of different things. I like to try different things and so I’m here just representing the normal part of the world that’s interested in online business.

Hopefully Ben will help me create a business because he has that background and we’ll see. I’m a minister – that is my profession. As you know, ministers have 24/7 sort of schedules.

So, why do I wanna see other business? Wow. Well, let’s ask Ben first. What does he wanna see in his online business?

Ben: What do I want to see out of this business?

What I want to see is a little bit more freedom of time.

In each of the businesses I built previously, it’s been very,very hands-on.  A huge amount of time interacting with clients with a fairly tight arrangements of schedules.  There’s a certain time you have to be at the office and a certain time you go home. There are certain meetings and all of those sorts of things and I’d like to have a little bit more control over that.

I’d like to be able to occasionally sleep in. That would be really cool. With 4 kids, I don’t know if that’s realistic or not – but that’s the hope.

The other thing is that one of my kids actually has a form of autism and so there’s a fair amount of time that I have to be at home, quite simply, and this provides a vehicle for that to happen.

Some passive income will be good, a little extra coin coming in, anything to help pay the bills and all that stuff.

In fact, I have started up my website – we’ll get a little more into that a little bit later on but within my first week of having it online, I actually made a hundred bucks.

Just a couple of simple sales of some affiliate stuff and that’s coming in. It’s not anything that I have to go and do a whole pile of sales for – which is awesome.

So, this DOES work and you can make it happen.

How about you Derek? What do you want to see out of an online business?

Derek: Well, i think if he had a point set similar to myself and probably to many of those listening.

Time freedom is a pretty important thing. You know, I don’t have a 9 to 5 job. As a minister I work from 12 midnight to 12 midnight. 24/7 available for people and I don’t have time to work on other businesses.

I think residual income is a smart idea. I think online business has so much potential – just kinda have that jack of all trades feel in me. I’m curious. I wanna try it. I think it’s something that has minimal input and that can have maximum output.

I don’t have a ton of vacation time in a year but when I do, I find that I can’t do too much because I don’t know too many ministers out there that are rolling in the money.

Ben: And if they are, I’d be a little concerned about that.

Derek: Well, I guess that’s true – but the fact that DOES matter is that I’d like to use that time, invest it to my family and take trips that sort of thing.

If I made a few thousand dollars in just a year, that will be fantastic, of course – but obviously I want to aim higher than that.

I’m not looking to quit my job. That’s not the whole point of this. This is just extra income and extra time that comes with it. So, it’s pretty simple. I think most people would agree on this.

So where do we start? How do you build an online business? I am clueless.

Ben: I don’t know if there is a true or the correct “WAY TO DO THINGS ®”

I can tell you a little bit of what I have done and about some people that I know and how they’ve built their business.

I think everyone needs to just get out and DO IT.  Try a few things.  Make a few mistakes. Try to build something and see where it goes.

Where did I start?

1. I set up a business
2. I have a corporation
3. I bought a domain
4. I set up a hosting
5. I set up my website
6. I started building an online following…

Derek: Well, hold on, wait a minute… just back-up for a second.

Again, being a person that does not have a background that you DO have, I’ve heard of these terminologies and you’re saying that like it’s kind of second nature which, perhaps it is for you, but just for me and the rest of the people listening to this podcast maybe you just gonna back-off and explain how to get a domain.

I mean, I have never had my own business. I’ve heard that you have to have a domain but I don’t have a clue about hosting and website building and so on … so back-up a bit and give me some details here.

Ben: Alright, well based on your questions … maybe I should clarify.

There is a difference between a business and a domain, okay?

Often times, the names are the same. So, for example: Microsoft Corporation happens to own the Internet domain: microsoft.com amongst others. That’s one that they do own – but a corporation or business name doesn’t necessarily have to be the same as your online name.

So, for example: I actually did set-up a full corporation for my business – its Geek Incorporated.

But you could just easily set-up a “Numbered Company” – which is a type of corporation. Or, you could set-up a sole proprietorship, or you could set-up … nothing.

I know several people who have made lots of money online and they don’t have a business, per se. They are simply themselves doing business as whatever the name of the website is. So that’s not something that right from the get go you have to set-up.

But setting up a domain, that’s something that you do have to do.  A domain – being your dot com (.com) or dot ca (.ca) or whatever country code that you happen to be in.

Most people get a dot com (.com) to do business online and there’s a number of places where you can get them. I usually get it at Go Daddy. There are others like Enom or Namescheap or whatever but when you’re starting out … go with something that’s simple and memorable.

Frankly, Go Daddy commercials are memorable and it’s an easy place to start. While Go Daddy isn’t the cheapest, neither are they the most expensive – you can get a domain through Go Daddy for anywhere from 2 to 15 dollars a year. We’re not talking huge expenditures there and all you do is simply go to godaddy.com and right at the very front of the page there’s a little bar that says “Type your domain here” and so you would type mydomainhere.com and you’d hit “Search”.

It goes into the domain registry and looks to see if someone else has already purchased that domain name.

If they have, it will kick back a couple of suggestions that are similar to what you’ve asked for. And if no one has purchased this domain and it’s available you get a nice little check box and you can simply say “I would like to buy this!”

You go through their steps and you purchase the domain. You set-up an account with Go Daddy and that’s it! That’s all there is to it. Once you got your domain, you actually own that little piece of internet real-estate.

Derek: So, it sounds pretty simple.

Ben: Absolutely. In a lot of ways, setting up a domain is a lot like real-estate investing. It’s just a significantly smaller ante – you’re not buying a hundred thousand dollar property. You’re buying a 10-dollar property.

Derek: It kinda sounds like the simplicity of setting up an e-mail.

Ben: Well, exactly and in a lot of ways they’re very closely related. You simply get a name and purchase it and way you go. Once you have that domain, then you do have to set-up hosting which is where you actually store your website on the internet. So, if you have a website that talks about..

Derek: Oh..I don’t know.. Migration Patterns of Squirrels.. They’re interesting.

Ben: I don’t know if that would be a profitable niche but it would be an interesting one.

So, we’re gonna run with that because I think squirrel migratory pattern could be an interesting topic.

So, if you have squirrelmigrations.com – that one may be taken but let’s say detailedsquirrelmigrations.com – that one’s probably available.

What you would do is:

1. You purchase that domain, and
2. You create a website, and
3. That website has to set on a server somewhere out there on the internet that people can then access it.

So, when they type in detailedsquirrelmigrations.com, it goes to the host and asks for the website and then, that website gets sent back to their computer and then they see your Squirrel Migrations website.

Derek: Ok. So now, I’m paying for domain.

I’m assuming hosting has a cost. So, where are we in that area?

Because, you know … I’m pretty an frugal guy and again I’d like to try different things but with little risk. I mean, I don’t wanna be spending thousands of thousand dollars to build up a business that I haven’t even really got a product for.

So, you know, fill me in as we go along with the prices as well.

Ben: Oh sure. If I forget, remind me please but the reality is it’s not terribly expensive.

I mean to get started, you can get going for domain hosting that’s anywhere from 5 to 15 dollars a month.

As your site builds and becomes incredibly popular – google.com is not on a 15 dollar a month hosting plan – they’ve spent millions of dollars but by the time your website is generating that kind of traffic, you can afford that, right?

Derek: Right.

Ben: In the meantime spending 10 or 15 bucks a month is very good place to start.

It’s very cheap. Good places to go… hmmm

Well there’s really two hosts that I would recommend.

1. liquidweb – they’re a little bit more expensive, more than 15 to 20 dollar starting point
2. hostgator.com – they’re more like the 5 to 10 dollars starting point.

Both are excellent. In fact, I can speak from experience with both of them. Anytime there’s been a problem, you just fire in what’s called a trouble ticket – which is basically sent in through an e-mail.  Something like  “Hey, I have a problem with my website” and they take care of it within a matter of minutes.

Derek: So, if I have a problem with my site, I just fire off some communication to them and they take care of all the technobabble.

Ben: That’s exactly it.

I mean, if you have design issues, let’s say you’ve done a picture of squirrels migrating and the picture comes out purple on your website.  Well, that’s a design issue.

That is not a server problem, that’s more of the graphic side of things – they’re not gonna fix that. That would be more of your template side of things or your website side of things.

We’ll go into a more details here as we move on but if your website is redirecting to a squirrelmigrations.net rather than .com

Derek: Is that a problem?

Ben: Well, yeah.

That’s a problem that they can fix in just a matter of minutes or if your site is down or if you’re having too much e-mail coming in or … well there’s a number of different things that can happen and, let’s be honest – there’s always something that will break your first couple of times with this.

It’s best to get professionals to take care of it rather than having to figure out all sorts of crazy geek speak and you know UNIX – beardy type problems. Best just to leave it to the pros.

Derek: Okay so I have set-up a business or not depending. I would probably not to at this point ’cause it’s an experiment for myself and so, I bought a domain, it’s pretty cheap. I got a hosting site now and they’re taking care of all the technical stuff. You said something about the web, so now; I have to figure out what my website looks like. Is that correct?

Ben: That’s right. And what you would do, there’s a few options here.

In the early days of the web, what people would do is they would buy a program called Dreamweaver.

Derek: I’ve heard of that.

Ben: And in fact, it is a program that is still in use – what it does is it creates raw html files and html is the language of what makes up a website.

Derek: Okay …which I know nothing about.

Ben: Right! So that is probably not a good option for you who’s just starting out. For some people – maybe – but there are a better solution for people who are not as technical yet.

Derek: Okay.

Ben: What you can do is you can set-up essentially a web engine.

So, it’s a program that’s get installed in the server. It then creates the website for you.

You would go into your hosting account (either at hostgator or liquidweb) and you go to a little button down at the bottom called “Fantastico” or the equivalent.

There’s a few different ways to do this and each of the host will tell you how to do this. But you go under the bottom and you say “I would like to install WordPress or Joomla! or Drupal”.

Those are the 3 that I recommend.

Derek: Okay.

Ben: They are very simple to work with.

Each of them has a little bit different nuances.

For example: WordPress is one that people hear a lot about particularly in the online marketing world and the reason why is because it’s so simple to use.

It is absolutely as simple as these things can get.

Derek: Simple is good. I like it.

Ben: Yeah. That’s right!

Now, it’s designed in a blog format so you create an article and when you create a second one, it actually shows beneath the first one.

Now, you can change that but that’s how it works out of the box … that’s what a WordPress site is designed to do.

Joomla!, in contrast is more like a portal site.

So, if you’re going to create a news site or an e-commerce site, some sort of unusual product sales site then Joomla! would make more sense.

It’s designed where you create a page (or what they call “articles”) and then they linked together but not one above the other and you can create a little bit different structure.

Drupal is the 3rd one that I like.

It’s more of a programmer’s environment or a programmer’s engine and you can make it do absolutely anything. However, it’s significantly more complex than the first two.

It’s a very powerful engine but it’s not one that I recommend for the first timers around. Really either Joomla! or WordPress are my first recommendations for that.

Derek: Okay.

Ben: and pricing on that is …

Derek: Oh, there you go.

Ben: I gotta break it up, right?

Both of those products are open-source products – which means that they are developed by teams of volunteers all around the world and they are released for free. You can get them and install them for absolutely nothing.

Derek: Oh I like that word. That’s a good one – FREE.

Ben: Oh it’s great!

Now, that’s it. There are elements that you want to enhance in these sites and those would cost you a little bit.

As an example, Derek, do you do lots of graphic design?

Derek: Oh yeah. All the time. Not!

Ben: I don’t either.

Honestly … I’m the programming side of the geeky spectrum here.

I’m not really the art geek type.

So, what I do is purchase what we call “templates” or “themes” depending on which engine you are using.

Derek: Okay.

Ben: You can go to – well, once again there’s a few different places.

If you set up a WordPress site, I recommend woothemes.com

You can purchase a nicely designed template or theme that you can wrap your site in and it will make your site beautifully professional for anywhere from about 50 to about a hundred bucks.

So, that’s probably the single most expensive portion of the whole site. You can get free themes but you’ll find that getting professionaly designed theme will really push your business forward.

Derek: Okay. So this is a onetime purchase?

Ben: Exactly. Yes. You don’t have to do this on a monthly basis.  It’s just one time. For hosting, you have to pay on a monthly basis. For a domain, you pay once a year or if you buy a bulk, once every couple of years.

For a theme or a template, it’s just one time and you get a license to use that theme on your site until the cows come home.

Derek: So … doing the math. I mean, this is pretty basic investment. You know, 3 dollars here, 3 dollars there, maybe a 50-dollar purchase outside of your monthly and that’s it.

Ben: That’s it. Basically, yes.

Derek: So far.

Ben: Well, honestly you CAN spend a lot.

I don’t say that you can do this for absolutely free every time. There are times when it’s worth spending the money, right?

If you’re in a market where you need to differentiate yourself from a thousand other people. It’s worth to spend a little bit to get something better than everyone else.

Derek: Okay.

Ben: But if you’re going into squirrel migrations which, frankly, there’s probably not a whole lot of competition.

Derek: Not likely…

Ben: You can spend a lot less and so you can get a very simple themes or something professionally done but not spend the whole pile of money doing it. And I should mention, for Joomla!, the place that I go get my templates is called Rocket Theme and they actually do WordPress once as well.

rocketthemes.com creates stuff that you basically install in the administration section.

So, you can log-in to your website and you can move things around, you can change colors, and you can change fonts, you can make it look whatever you want and you never ever have to touch photoshop or any code or anything.

Derek: So, it’s like a point and click and drag this – something like that and you’re done?

Ben: That’s it exactly. It’s a lot like using Facebook.  If you ever go through facebook and send a message to your friend – If you can do that, you can set-up the themes or plug-ins.

Derek: Simple again is very good because again, I’m not technical and I don’t want to write this HTML and I don’t want to program. I don’t want to web design.

I just want to scroll through a couple of ideas and pick and sort very simply.

Ben: That’s right and everything I’ve described here is stuff you can do.

Derek: Okay.

Ben: At this point, what you want to do is … Well, there’s a couple of things that you should do together.

FIRST – You want to start building a following, you want to have a bunch of people coming to your website.

Your easiest way to do that is to start creating some content. So, whether that means writing articles on your website or doing audio recordings and podcasts or creating a newsletter or something along those lines.

Basically, what you want to do is create something new and unique that will draw people to your website.

Derek: Okay. That makes sense. More traffic.

Ben: That’s right.

You want to build up that traffic, then at the same time you want to start thinking about this group of people coming into your site and…

SECOND ITEM – Think about what you could sell them.

How could you make money?

Sometimes, that means creating product yourself, so if your dealing with squirrel migrations, there may be some sort of squirrel tracking device that you could sell.

Again, I don’t think it’s a huge market but, you know, perhaps there is potential there. I could be wrong about… and in that case, it would be a product that you have to create.

However, if there was a product that you can be an affiliate of or a reseller of, that would be a really good place to start because you don’t have to create something new.

You don’t need a whole pile of time to do that and so, again, taking the squirrel migration thing, if there was some sort of squirrel tracking program that costs someone 10 dollars per month to use and you could be an affiliate.  Let’s say you get 2 dollars per month for every new sign-up to that system and your site draws all sorts of people that are interested in that, you could make good money.

Derek: So I become like middle man?

Ben: Yeah, that’s basically it. Generally, the term online is “affiliate” but essentially, you’re selling for someone else and so you’re the middle man.

Derek: So, then, they’re not actually purchasing from my site and they’re just using my site as the go to for the purchasing site? Is that what I’m understanding?

Ben: Yes, if you’re an affiliate. That’s how it’s done. If you’re selling one of your own products, then they would be purchasing something off of your site. Right?

Derek: Okay. Yeah.

Ben: and there are all kinds of different ways that you can do that. So for example, if you’re going to sell a downloadable book – an e-book …

Derek: Okay.

Ben: Then you could sell some of that using PayPal.

It’s very simple to set-up a “Buy Now” button. You could sell that using ClickBank or Commission Junction or RegNow or … there’s many, many different payment processors out there and generally, what I recommend is – get a payment processor that will take care of the details for you.

I use RegNow myself and I have for 10 years.  But, there’s a whole pile of them out there. Okay?

Derek: Of course. Okay.

Ben: You simply find one that you could take your e-book and upload it to them and, from a business prospective -this is again going into the business side of things – you’re not technically selling to the person that’s purchased the e-book from you.

You’re selling to the payment processor and they sell it to the end-user. Make sense?

Derek: Okay

Ben: The reason this is significant is that you don’t need to think about charge backs.

You don’t need to think about fraud protection

You don’t need to think about all of these things that you would have to think about if you are processing all of those payments yourself.

Derek: Okay. I’m actually glad you brought that up because my concern if something goes wrong, you know, they’re paying me.

Say, there was a complaint, and again, not having that business background, it get’s scary – like I don’t want to have 10 customers and then 8 of them have problems and then I’m dealing with all these problems whether it’s technical babble or a payment issues or the e-book didn’t load to their computer – you know, all these sorts of things.

So, is that what you are talking about? They sort of … take all the brunt of that?

Ben: That’s precisely it. They take specifically the money processing problems.  Which in my experience are the bigger problems.

If someone gets upset and has just decided  they want their money back then they take care of all that.

You simply say “Refund”, there’s a little button. You click the button…

Derek: Right.

Ben: … and the end-user gets their money back and you don’t need to think about reversing charges or dealing with the accounting element of that.

At the end of the month or whatever the pay-period is, you simply get the money from the payment processor – whether its in the form of a check or deposit into a PayPal account or there’s a number of different ways that they do it.  There is only one entry that you would put in to your accounting.

Derek: Simple is good. I’m glad you mentioned that because I didn’t really know that existed and I am sort of nervous getting into that area because I didn’t know much about it …

It looks like a lot of work and when you’re selling smaller products which I assume I would be, it seems like too much of a hassle.

Ben: That’s right and I should mention here the cost as well.

Some of these payment processors will charge you an upfront cost, a set-up fee – and that could be 50 dollars. Some of the higher end ones spend as much as a couple hundred dollars and that’s to cover their expenses if all of your first products that you sell get refunded.

They wanna have a little bit of liquid assets to be able to pay that back rather than coming out of their pockets.

Derek: Okay.

Ben: BUT, other ones are free and it just depends on what you want.

Take a look at each of the 3rd party payment processors and figure out what works best for you.

I know when I set up RegNow, I believe it was a 50 dollar charge when I set it up and it was a number of years ago and it may have changed since then but it’s very, very straightforward.

Once you set-up your product and you start selling.  Well,  basically just sell something else.

You simply develop a list of people. Every time someone buys something from you, you get their e-mail address and you ask them for the right to communicate with them.

Once you have this, just find something else that they would be interested in and offer it to them. You’ll find you get a lot of back-end sales and you can make more more money.

Just rinse-and-repeat. Does that make sense?

Derek: I believe it does. I mean, it’s still a bit of a learning curve.

As I go in and get hosting and a website, I’m sure I’ll have questions; but at least this gives me an idea of how to start.

That’s where I’m at.  I have a blank page in front of me and you know, I’m just taking notes here and it’s trial and error. As far as I’m concerned, I want to try.

Ben: Well i think that’s really the end of this podcast.

What I really wanna convey is GET OUT AND TRY IT.

Honestly, there is not a big expense, there’s not a huge risk.  Just get out and try it and you’ll find out that it actually goes okay.

You can make some money doing this. Your first time around, you probably not gonna make thousands and thousands of dollars but you will probably make… tens and hundreds of dollars and, considering that’s more than what you’re putting into it – there’s a profit there.

Derek: Yeah and that’s what I’m looking for. Something that can give me extra residual of money that gets my initial investment covered quickly.

Ben: Exactly!

So that’s it for now.

In the upcoming podcast we’ll cover some of the more specific details on each of those things – how to build up a list, how to build some traffic, how to set-up a business. You know… all of these sorts of details and you know, if you listeners are interested in anything specific, feel free to e-mail either Derek or myself.