This is for those who intend to build a full-time income online, and the need to ask yourself a crucial question (the earlier the better).

Is your goal to create daily work for yourself that’s profitable, or do you want to build completely passive income streams to ultimately generate income for you while you play at the beach or travel the world.

I have to insert a word of warning here, the term passive income makes me ill. I absolutely hate the way it gets thrown around in sales copy by marketers who want to sell their systems of “free money” making to enthusiastic, desperate and motivated people.

The notion of passive income online as it gets touted too often is almost a myth, and is certainly not a reality for the average Joe starting out. Almost nothing you do today will continue generating revenue for you over several years without some additional input and upkeep.

However, you can build projects and alliances today that will be profitable for years to come with minimal input and upkeep, but that’s not truly passive income. You work for it and you earn it. For example, my web sites earn me money from around the planet 24 hours per day. I’m not online 24 hours per day, so some of that income is made without direct input by me at the time of transaction, but I still created the earning opportunity and generated the sale with my daily work.

I work every day on my sites. Not every site every day, I have nearly 200 web sites online right now and that would be too much. But I do give a few minutes to upkeep, maintenance, updating, promoting and etc. for almost all of them each month–plus I’m constantly developing new sites or products; and that makes up my daily work that I’ve created for myself.

In other words I haven’t built a business that just makes me money, I’ve built a job for myself to do every day that earns me a living. In my mind there is a distinct difference.

Now to shift positions…

If you’ve read this far you probably think I have some adverse feelings towards honest passive income, but I don’t. In-fact, my future plans depend on it.

In about 7 years I’m planning an early semi-retirement for myself. This has been my goal for a long time, and I’ve shaped my business so that when that time comes it will continue generating a nice income for me without my having to put much more than a couple hours per week into it at most.

While I work long, hard hours every day now, I do it with this future goal in mind so that I make the right decisions which will help me achieve it on schedule.

If you read my blog then you’ve heard me refer to Heather, Chrissy and Bobbi as partners and associates. Which is exactly how I view each of them. I’m not a business owner today, I’m a partner with the people I’ve surrounded myself with.

In 7 years I’ll be a business owner who relies on them to get the job done and keep things going forward. I’ll have a hands-off position in the daily operations at that point.

I can do this because I decided early on what my goal would be and have molded my business all along to be in position for that transition, and to have the right people with the right knowledge and experience ready to take over.

So, you could say that when I answered the question of this posting for myself, that answer was “sort of both”. I created a daily job for myself to do that would lead into a passive income for me down the road.

What’s your goal?

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Technorati Tags: goal, online work, passive income

The most frequent opposition I hear is “that traffic is easy, but it’s garbage that won’t convert”.

Well, that’s absolutely true if you pull in the wrong people with your efforts, and unfortunately because it’s so easy to get an instant traffic bump of the wrong people and then assume all of the traffic from social networks will be equally poor this conclusion is prevalent among Internet marketers.

But here’s the deal, there are people of all ages and all walks of life on nearly every social network you can think of. From MySpace to Facebook, from YouTube to StumbleUpon… every demographic you can imagine is there.

How can having instant free access to virtually every known demographic be anything but good?

It’s not the traffic that’s bad, it’s the methods for targeting it and the content they target that traffic with that people get wrong.

Recently I’ve been following my online friend, Caroline Middlebrook’s free course on using StumbleUpon effectively that she calls Stumble Rush with a close eye because Caroline is someone who does very well with traffic from social networks.

She does well with it because she understands the networks and how they work, she understands the traffic and she doesn’t abuse either. She gives people what they want and in the way they want it served up.

If you doubt the effectiveness of social traffic, or you’re just starting to get your feet wet with social network marketing I’d suggest checking out Caroline’s free course. It’s focused on the StumbleUpon network, but much of what she’s included (that I’ve seen so far) can be applied across other networks too. In other words, once you understand the network and traffic at one place you’ll be able to see it properly in others too.

The free course is available at www.stumblerush.com, check it out, follow through with it and then come and tell me what you think of social traffic.

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Technorati Tags: social marketing, stumbleupon

That’s all well and good if FriendFeed is a purely social venue for you, who wants to hang out with goofballs after all?

But, if you’re like my friend and do business on the web, and it doesn’t matter if you make products, sell products, or self-promote your services as an expert/consultant/etc. then blocking people seems like a stupid idea in my opinion.

Those “goofballs”, no matter how silly or insane their comments may seem at times, represent a portion of the audience or marketplace you’re always talking to, so listening is just polite and getting their input and gaining perspective on why they may view certain topics in certain ways (even if you disagree or think they’re nuts) is valuable data. If you block them you lose that.

To me, social venues like FriendFeed, Twitter and the like are fun and informative. I don’t just view them as tools for my business efforts because they’re not and that would be missing the big picture, but I also don’t overlook them as resources for my business either. And by resources I mean from seeing what people of all different perspectives have to say on various topics I gain insights and understandings that can be helpful to me.

So, don’t be so quick to block that next goofball, (s)he may be your next potential employer or customer.

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Technorati Tags: friendfeed, goofballs

Now, most of the folks involved (in the product and in clogging my Inbox today) are actually really decent people (some I know personally) and I get that they’re all just trying to make a living–but they do it all wrong in my opinion!

Seriously, I know some of them are making a killing in this business, but I still think they’re fubaring on products and launches most of the time.

Here’s why, I never liked the Dodge Neon when they came out. It’s not that it was a bad car, it was okay for a compact and the pricing was great. But, within weeks of hitting the market I’d seen a million of them on the road (my own mother had one) and had to sit through twice as many commercials telling me how great they were for the price. I formed a negative opinion from all of the inundation overload before ever even sitting in one.

And guess what, I never once considered buying one of those affordable Dodge Neons.

On the other hand, I’ve only seen a handful of Dodge Vipers on the road over the years, I’ve never seen a single commercial for them (though I know they made at least 1, but I’ve never seen it so it may have been just for car shows or something) and I’m near willing to trade my left arm for one I’ve wanted it so badly for so long.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Same company, same basic core product (a car that could really only go as fast as the speed limit allows on the highway)… yet one makes me feel ill to think of while the other gives me happy dreams at night.

What’s the difference? It’s obvious to me, when you create a Viper you don’t have to beat people over the head with how good it is, they know–and you can charge an arm and a leg for it.

Build a Neon and you have to beg people to buy it.

Same deal with any sort of product. The better you’ve made it, the less you have to convince others to try it.

So, whenever I get buried in product launch emails that are all telling me how great this newest, latest, what-cha-ma-call-it is the first thought in my mind becomes “yeah, well if it was so great you wouldn’t have to tell me about it”.

Now, this doesn’t mean they’re being dishonest with me, it may be that this latest what-cha-ma-call-it really is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I’ll probably never know because you lost me at hello…

My point here isn’t to bash on anyone, and this type of marketing blitz does work to a degree when your hitting email lists of tens of thousands of people. It’s kind of like a blind person playing darts, after enough throws they’re bound to hit the bulls-eye with a couple.

But my actual point is that the constant flood of cheaper “greatest thing ever” products and launches sort of seems like a huge time waster for everyone.

If we were all smarter about our products and launches we wouldn’t be building Neon-like affordable products to sell to the masses, we’d spend our time building high ticket Vipers and quietly, covertly, create a waiting list of “lucky” buyers who would be privileged enough to own them on our time tables and terms.

A few are doing that already, and my bet is they make comparable earnings as the hard working hustlers among us; but with a lot more free time through the year.

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Technorati Tags: product launch

I can’t help myself, I feel blessed in my life (after many years of not feeling so) and am compelled to try spreading the bliss where possible.

If you think about it, that’s partially the same motivations that were behind me starting this blog 2 years ago. I had helped some friends and family members start making money online (some as supplemental income and some have gone on to earn full-time incomes from it), and liked being able to help them to “get ahead” and started towards achieving their goals. This blog was just my idea for a path to doing that on a larger scale with others.

I’ve posted all of this here before, but I thought it was a good time to revisit the topic and maybe remind some fellow marketers (established or aspiring) that the methods we use to drive traffic and conversions to our sites and sales offerings work just as perfectly for sending traffic (and funding) to our favorite causes and charities–and everybody has a few seconds here or there to submit a social bookmark, submit an RSS feed or even spend a few minutes to make a blog posting for some organization or issue they feel passionately about.

Now, I could explain how from a business perspective this is 100% well-spent time with a potentially huge ROI; and give examples like how Roberta’s constant blog mentions and support for www.breastcancer.org has directly resulted in increased loyal customers of the women’s clothing site she makes those postings on… but I’d much rather that you take the initiative to use some of the tools, methods and techniques I talk about here to occasionally do some good for the causes you care about on your own.

But, just in-case you do need some incentive, let me remind you that online marketing isn’t about “hitting customers over the head with your message” any longer, it’s about having conversations and making connections.

Your online reputation is your company brand.

If people like and respect you they will want to interact and do business with you–and people tend to like and respect people who are truly compassionate, caring and giving. How’s that for incentive to do a little social networking for social good now and then? (even though I know you didn’t need any personal incentives)

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Technorati Tags: marketing, social good, social media

The first thing I found when I looked at the blog was a wonderful, spiffy design. Lots of graphics that looked great and weren’t too bloated so they didn’t cause slow page loads.

Next I saw that he had all of the latest widgets and social media badges installed. Normally I might give a big high-5 on that, I’ve written a lot about how I love social networking after all.

But the problem is his blog topic is pretty much focused towards middle-aged and senior readers. People who, for the most part (there are exceptions to every rule) aren’t going to be “up” on the latest technologies and online trends. So all of this stuff on his blog is really just noise to those visitors that distracts them from his actual content.

In addition, he was offering “special secrets & deals” for people who subscribed to his RSS feed.

That’s great, except that I suspect the majority of visitors who find his blog through a search engine aren’t going to know how to do that, and there’s no “how to subscribe” information available on the blog.

A good “how to” for RSS is the least that should be up there, but given the nature of his target audience I’d suggest making the RSS feed available by email too because RSS can be too confusing or intimidating for some, but email is far less so.

The last point I had was with the blog navigation setup. He had it displaying older posts by dated archives (by months) rather than by category. Personally, I’m a fan of showing both (and using robots.txt to tell search engines which to ignore), but again when your demographic is going to be folks who aren’t on top of online technologies the standard should be to display your archives by category.

There’s a good chance they won’t even think to look in “August 2007″ for more information on “red widgets”, but a greater chance they will click on a link that says “Widgets Information” for it.

The bottom line for him, and for you to take away from this, is to know who your target visitor is going to be and plan your design–from graphics to navigation, bells and whistles–accordingly. Don’t confuse people with anything that isn’t important to them or your bottom line.

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Technorati Tags: marketing, target market

And much of what I learned about product merchandising and cross-reference marketing in those days has been the backbone of my success online.

Unlike many of my peers who hated the part of their jobs that included dealing with customer service and would have preferred to just keep shoppers moving like cattle, I loved that part of the job. Meeting people, talking with them, helping them. Even the day when a crazy lady spit soda all over my shirt in protest of Phar-Mor (I never did learn what exactly she was protesting), I was able to make friends and laugh about it with the cops who carried her away.

So of course I love all of the new online venues that are sound and useful for people to connect online. Not just because I like being social, but also because as a marketer there’s nothing (imho) better than direct connections with the people that are my potential clients. Getting personal insights into their needs, desires, behaviors… it’s a bottomless gold-mine if used (and never abused) wisely.

I’ve recently discovered Retaggr, one such service, and I’m really blown away by it. Basically, Retaggr acts as a hub for your online identity, and allows your online profile to become portable across blogs or other social sites.

With a Retaggr account, anytime you post a comment (or posting on your own blog), or place a tag (or get tagged) on an image of a Retaggr enabled site–your profile is automatically attached to it.

To see this in action, just click on that little blue info-bubble next to my name in this link: Scott Bannon

Now that I have a Retaggr profile, anytime I leave a comment on someone’s blog (if they’ve enabled their blog for Retaggr) that blue info-bubble will appear so that my profile is connected to my comments.

Also, anytime I might mention someone here in a post, if they have a Retaggr profile, it will be attached to their name so that readers can get a better ideo of who I’m talking about.

But what I really like is having the profiles attached to the comments I leave. I’m always reading other blogs, and the comments that get posted on them, and all the time I think “hey, that person had something interesting to say”, but because they didn’t add their URL (or don’t have a personal web site to add) to the comment I can’t see what else they have to say about other topics in other places. With a Retaggr profile though, I would be able to see where else that person is participating in discussions online and could then follow along or even join in. In other words, blog comments with Retaggr profiles aren’t anonymous or random in nature anymore.

And since blogs are the foundation of Web 2.0 and online social networking, the fact that Retaggr specifically targeted blogs and blog comments from the start as they have impresses the heck out of me.

There’s enough platforms online for connecting and conversing, too many now in-fact and the conversations are getting thin and disrupted because of it. Centralizing everything you’re involved in with a single profile account like this is a huge step (in my opinion) of pulling everything together in a more orderly–yet still extremely portable–fashion.

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Technorati Tags: networking, retaggr, social media

It’s a seasonal niche so we had to rush to get it out in time or risk missing a lot of potential sales.

I consider this blog and the associated newsletter and forums to be very important, but I’m sure (or hope) my readers and friends here understand that my obligations to my partners and associates with our revenue generating ventures have to take priority at times.

I did perform the June case study for the newsletter and it was just getting those videos edited which was postponed when we became sidetracked–so what I’ve decided to do is make the July newsletter a huge double-issue for you all.

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Technorati Tags: newsletter, the leap

If I’m seeming abstract please indulge me for a moment and I promise to make myself clear.

In 1992 when I built my first website there was 1 goal, to show it to people. That hasn’t really changed much over the years, but how to do it has. Back then there was basically 1 way to show your web site to people, by talking with folks and telling them in conversations that it was there.

There were no search engines to care about (a few laughable-at-the-time directory attempts did exist) and online advertising was coveted but had yet to become organized into anything usable.

If you wanted visitors to your web site you had to talk with people either in person, or online in various chatting formats (BBS, chat rooms, irc and etc.) and say “hey, check out my web site”.

Then businesses became serious about advertising online (popups were born) and hired lots of Geeks out of the chat rooms to create elaborate systems for driving traffic with paid advertising, because business folk were far too important, I mean busy, to actually talk to people when they could just throw money around instead to get visitors to their sites.

And some of those chatting Geeks who weren’t offered corporate jobs took it upon themselves to create their own systems and models for driving traffic, this way they could cash in on the big bucks but not have to wear the suit coats and ties every day–and pseudo-search Pay Per Click was hatched; which ultimately led to what we know now as search engines.

It was all about who could control the message. If you controlled the message you controlled the traffic, and money (over technology) was able to control the message in those early years.

Fast forward to today and guess what, paying for traffic through popups, pop-unders, banners, Pay Per Click and search engines–by paying for search engines I of-course mean paying crazy amounts to experts who do things most of us can’t comprehend and they can’t (or won’t) explain to get our pages listed highly in the “natural” search results–well, this whole system is peeling away bit by bit because people don’t like being talked at and told what to like/do/look at/think/etc, and that’s what those systems do.

They impose their desired outcome on the individual rather than assist the individual in finding the best path for their unique needs.

Then along came that dubious Web 2.0

And suddenly people had choices, freedom like they’d never known to share, converse, analyze and rate…

And where does that bring us? Back to talking with one another again.

People, and conversations are what’s driving the web. Just like in the start, only with more bells and whistles; and this time I don’t think they’ll let that control go…

Not convinced that conversation drives the web? Have a look at the numbers in this slideshow presentation I recently saw:

| View | Upload your own

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Technorati Tags: control, conversation, Traffic

I have always favored the pay for pageviews model over straight purchased content from writers, mainly because I think it’s better for the writer.

I know that many are upset with the reductions in pay scales across several blog/web media companies recently, there’s plenty of bitching in the blogoshpere today about Gawker’s latest move, but lets put this into some perspective before forming our opinions.

Under the more traditional model of purchasing content from freelance writers, if I were to pay someone $0.25 per word for a 400 word piece that would be a flat rate of $100 for the writer. Not too bad, but if you’ve spent any time in the freelance writing market online lately then you know there are fewer and fewer publishers paying over $0.10 per word because the labor pool has become saturated; and at $0.10 per word that 400 word piece would only earn the writer $40.

But, let’s stick with the $0.25 per word rate and $100 payout for that 400 word piece to be fair. That’s a flat $100 for their efforts and the publisher owns full rights to the material, preventing the author from repurposing it elsewhere for additional revenue. The writer is maxed out at that $100 earning from the piece.

Now, let’s look at the pay for pageviews model. At $5 per 1,000 pageviews–which is what Gawker has reduced their rates to–if a writer gets 1,000,000 pageviews (Gawker writer, Richard Lawson received 1.2 million pageviews in February 2008 according to Portfolio.com), then they would earn $5,000 from their works.

Okay, but that’s collectively over a whole month and not for just a single writing.

Well, sure…but even if the author published a posting every single day for 30 days then at the flat rate of $100 per piece (s)he would still have only earned $3,000 for the month, regardless of how popular those writings might be.

So, the $5,000 they’d earn in from the pageview model is still 66% higher.

And for a writer who is particularly good and engaging, there is no ceiling to max out at with the pay for pageviews model. The better your output, the more readers you’ll attract and the more money you can earn.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the disappointment and emphasize with the bloggers who were used to earning higher rates for their writing. I don’t want this to sound like I’m taking the side of publishers completely; I’m not.

The problem, in my opinion, is that many of these publishers were dumb about how they started out. They began paying high scales (to attract talent), and were prepared to lower their scales in adjustments once they were rolling to compensate for initially over-paying if needed based on income.

When I began paying bloggers I started with lower pay rates (and actually, several of our current bloggers began as unpaid Interns) and was able to adjust upwards once I had a clear picture of what the site revenue would be.

This made it harder to attract good writers early on, but I accepted that because I knew once the pay-scale leveled out we’d be close to what others were paying (without paying out to the point we were in the red), and that the writers who were with us through that time would be appreciative of the rising adjustments rather than upset with the lowering cuts.

What’s funny is that most of the writers publishing with us are making the same as Gawker’s writers do now, and they’re all happy. Oh, I’m sure they’d be happier making more money, but wouldn’t we all?

But the important point is that none of the writers feel any animosity towards me or the blogs they write for over having suffered pay cuts.

I will add that I said “most” of our writers are at that $5 per 1,000 pageview range because in most markets that I have sites in that’s the pay level we can sustain and remain profitable.

There are a few markets where it’s slightly lower than that and writers on our sites in those markets are still earning less than the $5 per 1,000 rate because of it.

But I see that as comparable to how the world works in general when you’re a service provider–which is how I classify online publishing; as an entertainment/informational service.

For example, a cashier at a specialty boutique on Rodeo drive may earn twice as much as the cashier at your local grocery store will. They’re both doing the same basic job, but the marketplace is different between the 2 stores which accounts for the differences in pay scales.

The same is true with online publishing as well. There’s far more revenue to be made with a Technology or Financial related site than there is with a History or Fishing related site. With each different topic comes a different marketplace, and that creates different levels of pay that publishers can afford to remain profitable.

The bottom line is I feel fair pay for bloggers (or other online content producers) is a variable, depending upon the market they’re writing in. However, it should be something above what they could reasonably expect to earn if they sold their writings outright in one-off deals on a per word basis.

What do you think is fair?

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Technorati Tags: blog for pay, Blogging, paid blogging