My new book, Email Marketing Demystified, is now available on Amazon. The e-book edition of the book will be available for free through Amazon from September 30th, 2015 to October 4th, 2015. Paperback and audiobook editions are also available. Get Your Copy of Email Marketing Demystified Here After I published my first book, 40 Rules …
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How to Generate Sales by Sending Cold Emails
Below you’ll find an unedited version of a chapter from my new book, Email Marketing Demystified. To get your copy of Email Marketing Demystified, visit www.myemailmarketingbook.com. The majority of this book has focused on using email as a means of building an engaged audience and generating revenue by selling or recommending products to that audience. While growing a community …
How to Keep Your Email Legal and Stay Compliant with CAN-SPAM and CASL
Below you’ll find an unedited version of a chapter from my new book, Email Marketing Demystified. To get your copy of Email Marketing Demystified, visit www.myemailmarketingbook.com. While email marketing and other aspects of Internet business can sometimes feel like you are operating in the Wild West, email marketing is actually regulated in the United States, Canada and in some …
Email Deliverability: How to Make Sure Your Messages Get in Your Subscribers’ Inboxes
When you send a letter through the U.S. mail with a stamp and a delivery address, you can be fairly certain that your letter is going to arrive safely in a few days. This isn’t always the case with email. While you shouldn’t run into many email deliverability issues if you are following best practices …
How to Earn Money from Email Opt-Ins through Co-registration Advertising
Below you’ll find an unedited version of a chapter from my new book, Email Marketing Demystified. To get your copy of Email Marketing Demystified, visit www.myemailmarketingbook.com. In the list building chapter of this book, we discussed co-registration advertising from the perspective of an advertiser. As a mailing list owner that collects organic opt-ins from your website, you can also …
How to Make Money by Renting Out Your Mailing List
Below you’ll find an unedited version of a chapter from my new book, Email Marketing Demystified. To get your copy of Email Marketing Demystified, visit myemailmarketingbook.com. If you have grown your mailing list to more than 25,000 subscribers, advertisers may be interested in paying you to send an email to your mailing list on their behalf on a cost-per-thousand …
How to Earn Money with Your Email List through Affiliate Marketing
Below you’ll find an unedited version of a chapter from my new book, Email Marketing Demystified. To get your copy of Email Marketing Demystified, visit www.myemailmarketingbook.com. There are thousands of companies that will pay you commissions for any sales that you generate on their behalf, an arrangement known in the online business world as affiliate marketing. Promoting other companies’ …
How to Sell Your Products and Services through Email Marketing
Below you’ll find an unedited version of a chapter from my new book, Email Marketing Demystified. To get your copy of Email Marketing Demystified, visit www.myemailmarketingbook.com. Most companies use their mailing lists to market their own products and services. If someone comes to your website and completes an opt-in form, they have already expressed interest in your content and …
How to Write Email Marketing Copy that Converts
Below you’ll find an unedited version of a chapter from my new book, Email Marketing Demystified. To get your copy of Email Marketing Demystified, visit www.myemailmarketingbook.com. You have undoubtedly written thousands of emails in your life. You probably regularly send email to and receive email from friends, family, coworkers and even complete strangers on a regular basis for any …
Email Marketing Automation and List Segmentation: The Basics
Below you’ll find an unedited version of a chapter from my new book, Email Marketing Demystified. To get your copy of Email Marketing Demystified, visit www.myemailmarketingbook.com. If your company or organization sells a number of different products or has customers with multiple divergent interest areas, you might consider using marketing automation techniques so that customers only receive email content …
Broadcast Emails: What, Why and How Often
Below you’ll find an unedited version of a chapter from my new book, Email Marketing Demystified. To get your copy of Email Marketing Demystified, visit www.myemailmarketingbook.com. In addition to your auto-responder series, you will want to regularly send messages to your entire email list. These messages are known as broadcast emails because you are effectively broadcasting a single message …
How to Write the Perfect Welcome Email
Below you’ll find an unedited version of a chapter from my new book, Email Marketing Demystified. To get your copy of Email Marketing Demystified, visit www.myemailmarketingbook.com. The first email that every new subscriber will receive from your mailing list is referred to as your welcome email. Sending a well-written welcome email to each of your subscribers is the first …
How to Create an Auto-Responder Series that Actually Works
Below you’ll find an unedited version of a chapter from my new book, Email Marketing Demystified. To get your copy of Email Marketing Demystified, visit www.myemailmarketingbook.com. Creating an Auto-Responder Series An auto-responder series is a series of pre-written emails that every new subscriber receives in sequential order after signing up for your mailing list. A new subscriber might receive …
How to Select an Email Service Provider
Below you’ll find an unedited version of a chapter from my new book, Email Marketing Demystified. To get your copy of Email Marketing Demystified, visit www.myemailmarketingbook.com. The first step in building your email marketing empire is to put the technical infrastructure in place in order to handle the type and volume of email you will send. If you were …
14 Ways to Build Your Email List Independently of Your Website
Below you’ll find an unedited version of a chapter from my new book, Email Marketing Demystified. To get your copy of Email Marketing Demystified, visit www.myemailmarketingbook.com. Growing your mailing list through your website will allow you to steadily collect opt-ins and grow your list over time. If you want to accelerate your list building efforts, you can make use of …
List Building: Split-Testing Your Opt-in Form and Creating Your Thank You Page
Below you’ll find an unedited version of a chapter from my new book, Email Marketing Demystified. To get your copy of Email Marketing Demystified, visit www.myemailmarketingbook.com. The key to getting great opt-in rates is regularly running tests to determine if making changes to your opt-in forms will increase the percentage of people that complete your opt-in forms. In order …
List Building: When Your Website Doesn’t Get Much Traffic
Below you’ll find an unedited version of a chapter from my new book, Email Marketing Demystified. To get your copy of Email Marketing Demystified, visit www.myemailmarketingbook.com. How many opt-ins can I expect? Asking how many opt-ins you should expect to receive on your website is one of the most common questions asked by new email marketers. The volume of …
List Building: Selecting an Opt-in Form Plugin
Below you’ll find an unedited version of a chapter from my new book, Email Marketing Demystified. To get your copy of Email Marketing Demystified, visit www.myemailmarketingbook.com. In order to design and place opt-in forms on your website, you will most likely need to make use of an opt-in form plugin or a cloud-based opt-in form service. As email marketing …
How I Wrote a 45,000 Word Book in 18 Days
Toward the end of last month, I thought it might be a good idea to start working on another book that I could showcase at a few different conferences I’ll be speaking at toward the end of the year. The first of these is a local conference called Innovation Expo that I’m speaking at on …
List Building: Understanding Types of Opt-In Forms
Below you’ll find an unedited version of a chapter from my new book, Email Marketing Demystified. To get your copy of Email Marketing Demystified, visit www.myemailmarketingbook.com. Opt-in forms come in many different shapes and sizes and can be put on many different places in your website’s layout. Some opt-in forms are large, hard-to-miss and somewhat intrusive. Others are smaller …
List Building: Writing the Killer Copy for Your Opt-in Forms
Below you’ll find an unedited version of a chapter from my new book, Email Marketing Demystified. To get your copy of Email Marketing Demystified, visit www.myemailmarketingbook.com. After you have created your lead magnet, you will need to identify what kind of messaging you are going to use to get your potential subscribers to sign-up for your mailing list. The …
List Building: Creating the Perfect Lead Magnet
Below you’ll find an unedited version of a chapter from my new book, Email Marketing Demystified. To get your copy of Email Marketing Demystified, visit www.myemailmarketingbook.com. You should offer your subscribers something of value in exchange for signing up for your email list, such as a discount coupon, a free report or a resource list. In the world of …
I’m writing another book.
I published my first book, 40 Rules for Internet Business Success, last July. Since then, more than 10,000 copies of the book have been downloaded through Amazon. It briefly held the title of being the most downloaded book in Amazon’s small business and entrepreneurship category. The audiobook version of 40 Rules for Internet Business Success …
Business Expenses: How My Company Maintains an 80% Profit Margin, Every Month
When I founded American Consumer News, LLC in 2006, I literally spent no money getting the business up and going. I didn’t really have any money, so I started my online business using a free Blogger blog and zero-cost marketing techniques. After writing for several months on the personal finance blog I created, then called …
Introducing MarketBeat.com, the New Analyst Ratings Network
I began using the name Analyst Ratings Network in early 2012 in order to differentiate our coverage of equities research (analyst ratings) from our general financial news that we publish on American Banking and Market News (americanbankingnews.com). When I selected the name, I tried to pick out something that had an available domain name and …
Keep Me Accountable: A Few Steps Forward for Analyst Ratings Network
Three weeks ago, I wrote a post about some of the major changes that need to happen with Analyst Ratings Network as a result what I learned at a conference for self-funded startup entrepreneurs called Microconf. I wrote that I needed to simplify my company’s product offerings, reboot the brand of the company under a …
Juggling 3 Businesses (My BizNow Interview)
I was recently interviewed for BizNow, a Sioux Falls-area magazine that highlights a wide-variety of entrepreneurs and their companies. I’m thankful to Charlotte Hofer, Jessica Newell and the rest of the BizNow team for involving me in this issue. You can pick-up a copy of the magazine at your local HyVee or see the full …
Some Hard Truths About My Business (What I Learned at Microconf 2015)
I had the opportunity to attend Microconf, a conference for self-funded entrepreneurs that run technology businesses, earlier this week. One of the challenges that they gave attendees was to identify three actionable takeaways that you can implement in your business in the next few months. While many attendees came away with tactical strategies they can …
Why are there so many web design agencies in Sioux Falls?
If you wanted to hire an agency to build your website, you might search for a term like “Sioux Falls Web Design” or “South Dakota Website Design Agencies”. (Let’s assume you live in Sioux Falls, South Dakota for the sake of this post). Your search engine of choice would present you with more than 75 …
Reduce Email Velocity to Make Inbox Zero Last All Day
A while back, I shared the strategies that I use to work through all of the email in my inbox and attain inbox zero (an empty email inbox). I use a lot of the same strategies that other people use to work through their email, such as checking email at scheduled times, turning off notifications, …
How to Be a Lazy (But Incredibly Successful) Entrepreneur
Every Wednesday morning, I attend a local event called 1 Million Cups that showcases a local entrepreneur’s business. I typically end up staying well after the event is over to chat with other entrepreneurs about their businesses. A few weeks back, someone I was chatting with made a comment along the lines of “Well, I …
Two Major Announcements from American Consumer News, LLC
American Consumer News, LLC has changed a lot since December of 2006 when I started a now-defunct personal finance blog called Getting Green (which was later renamed to American Consumer News). In 2008, the company evolved from being a personal finance blog to a network of personal finance blogs. In 2009, the company started a …
Beyond Revenue: What Matters Most in Your Business?
Many start-ups believe that fast growth and attracting investment (angel and V.C. money) are the two keys to their future success. They identify a high-risk, high-growth business idea, form a team and try to raise venture capital funds to build a product or service that addresses said need. They try to show growth as quickly …
Why Your Personal Brand Shouldn’t Be Your Business
There’s an increasing number of people that have created profitable online businesses by building a personal brand. If you can become someone that people know, like and trust to talk about a particular subject, there’s a ton of opportunity to create an income stream surrounding your personality and the content that you product. There are …
A Networking Strategy That Works for Everyone (Even Introverts)
Every Wednesday morning, I spend an hour with 20-30 other entrepreneurs at event called 1 Million Cups at the Sioux Falls Design Center. I enjoy hearing speakers every week and pelting them with questions during the Q&A time. Before the event begins and after the event ends, there’s typically 15 to 20 minutes of time …
The Best Way to Make More Money is…
Every January, I help coordinate a Financial Peace University class at my church. The class shows people how to create a budget, get out of debt, setup proper insurance, plan for retirement and make other important financial decisions. All of the teaching in the class is about how to better spend money you already have, …
AdSense Optimization: How to Maximize Your Earnings from Google AdSense
One of my company’s largest revenue streams is running contextual ads from Google AdSense. Our network of financial news websites garners approximately 3 million page views per month and we’ve found that AdSense is an extremely effective way to monetize our audience. Recently, I was searching for a good article about AdSense optimization tips and …
Seven Secrets for Getting Great Email Opt-In Rates
Over the course of the last 3 years, I’ve put a lot of effort into perfecting the opt-in mechanisms on my website. At any given time, I’m usually running 2-5 tests on my sales funnel to see if there’s a better way to get more customers from one step to the next. I know that …
How to Fail Miserably When Pitching Someone
I’ve made it a point to get better connected to the entrepreneurial community in the city I live in within the last year (Sioux Falls, SD). I’ve been going to a lot more events, have sponsored a few different things and have made some great connections by buying people lunch. As a natural consequence, my …
The Split Test That Resulted in a 76% Increase in Email Sign-Ups
One of the foundational principles that I use in my business is that you should always be testing. You should continually try out different ways of doing things to see if you get better results. Consider every step of the process that your potential customers need to take before they actually become customers. If you …
Why You Should Say No to Side Projects
A couple of weeks back, I had the opportunity to travel to Las Vegas for an event called Rhodium Weekend. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect going into the event, but there were a lot of people that I knew online attending the event that I was looking forward to meeting in person, like …
I Build Digital Vending Machines for a Living
Whenever someone asks me what I do for a living, I have a hard time explaining that I publish an investment newsletter, operate a press release writing and distribution business, offer a service to help animal shelters to raise money and build educational training products for golfers. The various businesses that I’m involved in have …
The Value of a “Million Dollar Idea”
When I was eleven years old, I spent a lot of time playing Sim City 2000 and its sister games, such as SimTower, SimCopter and SimEarth. I even made a website called “SimWeb” hosted on GeoCities that had cheat codes, saved games and demo downloads for my favorite games. One day, I had the idea …
Let’s Get Better at Saying “No!”
During the last few years, I’ve built up a wide network of loose business connections in Sioux Falls and around the world by attending events, buying people lunch, simply being engaged in business and being an active member in the community. Because I’m a person that’s more “out there” than most, there’s not a week …
My Q3 Reading List
I really only do a handful of things outside of building my business and spending time with my family. I don’t have a lot of crazy hobbies or extra-curricular activities. Of the few hobbies that I do have, I put a lot of energy and effort into them. One of those hobbies is reading. I …
How to Add Rocketfuel to Your Product Launch with a Podcast Tour
When most people release a book with a traditional publisher, they will make a series of appearances at local bookstores as part of their marketing strategy–commonly known as a book tour. Since my book was being published exclusively through Amazon, it only made sense to do a virtual book tour. Instead of reaching potential readers in persona few hundred people …
How to Recognize and Attract New Business Opportunities
When people ask about the various businesses that I run, one of the most common follow-up questions that I receive is “What’s next for you? What’s the next business that you’re going to start?” As someone that runs a few different profitable online businesses, it would be natural to think that I have a list …
Entrepreneurship is an Endurance Sport
If you have never built a successful business, you might think the dream of building a profitable company is something that you won’t ever be able to achieve. If you’ve tried to start a business that didn’t work out, you might think you just don’t have what it takes to build a profitable business. You …
The Biggest Mistake I Made When Writing My Book
When I launch a new product for any of my company’s brands, I’ll develop a product offering, identify the pricing, create a landing page and write a series of marketing emails to promote the product. The end goal of product launches is to convert email subscribers into customers and to create revenue. When it came …
Your Business Will Fail Eventually. Here’s What To Do About It.
Ten years ago, you might have thought Blockbuster Entertainment was an unstoppable entertainment giant. The company had a near monopoly in the video and video game rental markets. At its peak in 2004, the company had 9,000 stores and 60,000 employees. Just six years later, the company went bankrupt. Blockbuster simply couldn’t compete with its …
Marketing First: How to Avoid Having Zero Sales on Launch Day
I had the opportunity to chat with an entrepreneur who is building a mass-market physical product a few weeks back. We’ll call him Fred for the sake of this discussion. Fred has been working on his project for over a year and has put the vast majority of his business effort into perfecting his product …
My Next Project: US Golf TV
A while back, my wife Karine received an email from one of her former co-workers at Terry Redlin Elementary. The co-worker’s husband, Todd Kolb, was building an Internet business and wondered if I would be willing to meet with him to see if I had any suggestions to help grow his company. At first I …
Reflections on 40 Rules for Internet Business Success
It’s been a month since 40 Rules for Internet Business Success has come out. Now that the launch of the book is in the rear view mirror, I thought it would be a good time to discuss why I wrote the book, the content creation and editing process, how I marketed the book, and some other …
I sold a website and made $6,181.20
One of the lessons that I’ve learned during the last two years that you really need to focus on the handful of things that you’re better at than anyone else and prune out everything else if you’re going to be successful in business. Earlier this year, I shut down my consulting business and a variety …
How Much Financial Runway Do You Have?
When you work for an employer, you know how much money you’re going to earn in any month. You have a set salary or hourly rate and earn approximately the same amount of money each month. You also operate under the assumption that you’re going to have the same job or a similar job indefinitely …
My Q2 Reading List
I have a reputation for reading a lot of books. As a result, I often get asked for book recommendations, which I’m happy to provide. In order to streamline the process, I’ve decided to publish a list of books that I read every quarter in 2014. I had previously published the books that I read …
Don’t Become a Freelancer (Or, Why I’m Not Becoming a Commercial Drone Photographer)
A while back, I bought a DJI Phantom 2 Vision+ aerial drone and have taken some pretty cool pictures and video with it. Soon after I started posting my work, several people asked if they could pay me to take aerial photos of their businesses and property on their behalf. I also had several people …
40 Rules for Internet Business Success Now Available
My new book, 40 Rules for Internet Business Success, is now available on Amazon.com. In my book, 40 Rules for Internet Business Success, you’ll learn the strategies I use to identify, build and launch my online businesses. You’ll learn the tactics I’ve used to get all four of my businesses to six figures in annual …
How to Price Your Product
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
Don’t Give Up Equity in Your Business (Early On)
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
Let Your Customers Develop Your Product
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
40 Rules for Internet Business Success: Launch Details, Pricing and Bonuses
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. My new book, 40 Rules for Internet Business Success, will be available two weeks from today. I’ve received a ton of positive feedback about the book from people that …
Don’t Write a Business Plan. Have a Business Model.
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
Build Exactly One Business at a Time
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
40 Rules for Internet Business Success to Be Released on July 21st
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Have you ever wondered if you could succeed in starting your own business? Do you already have an idea for your business but don’t know how to get started? …
How to Identify a Great Domain Name
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
Identify Hidden Revenue Streams In Your Business
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
Busyness isn’t Productivity
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
What Makes Your Business So Special?
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
Don’t Break The Supermarket Rule
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
Why You Should Work on Your One Best Idea
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
Why Relationships Trump Knowledge
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
Don’t Leave Your Family Behind (When Building Your Business)
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
Please Don’t Pitch Me on Your MLM
A couple of weeks ago, I started a new LinkedIn group for entrepreneurs in the Sioux Falls area. There was an individual that I was connected to on LinkedIn, but had never met in real-life, that had joined the group. This person called me out-of-the blue one morning and asked if I was open to …
Make Your Product Launch a Can’t Miss Event.
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
Want to Grow Your Business? Start Split Testing
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
What are Your Business’s Weakest Links?
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
Why Are You Building a Business?
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
Excuses are the Fuel of Failure
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
Why You Shouldn’t Rely on Social Media, SEO or TechCrunch to Market Your Business
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
Don’t Quit Your Day Job (Too Early)
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
Entrepreneurs: Quit Screwing Up Your Finances
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
Don’t Be a Franchisee of Someone Else’s Business Model
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
Not Everyone Needs to Be Your Customer
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of my …
Don’t Be an Employee In Your Own Company
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. Below you’ll find an unedited chapter from my upcoming book 40 Rules for Internet Business Success. To receive updates about the book and get a free digital copy of …
I’m Writing a Book
[UPDATE 7/21/2014]: 40 Rules for Internet Business Success is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle e-book and audiobook formats. Click here to get your copy. A couple of months ago, I attended a new event for entrepreneurs in Sioux Falls called 1 Million Cups, in which an entrepreneur shares their story for six minutes …
An Update on My Bitcoin Mining Experience: Complete and Total Failure
Last month, I shared the experience I’ve had mining Bitcoin alternatives, such as Litecoin and its various competitors, through a couple of custom computer systems that each have five graphics cards in them each. In early January, purchasing the two rigs at $4,900 each seemed liked a perfectly reasonable investment. I estimated that I would …
Want to Be a Millionaire? Become a Voracious Consumer of Content
Author Thomas Stanley did a survey of self-made millionaires and compiled the results in his best-selling book, The Millionaire Next Door. One of the interesting things that Stanley found in his survey results was that millionaires didn’t tend to watch a lot of prime-time television, but they do read one non-fiction per month on average. …
Which is Riskier — Getting a Job or Starting a Business?
Last week, I spoke about my business at Sioux Falls’ 1 Million Cups Event. One of the questions I received was “What are the biggest existential threads to your business? In other words, what keeps you up at night?” My answer was, “Well, not much. I guess SendGrid could stop delivering my emails or Stripe …
Why Paying Six Figures for a Dot-Com Domain Name will Soon Be a Thing of the Past
In the last decade, there have been at least 20 recorded sales of dot-com domain names for $1 million or more. According to this Wikipedia entry, the most expensive domain ever sold was Vacation Rentals.com for $35 million in 2007. Insure.com took a distant second at $16 million and Sex.com was the third-most expensive domain …
The Inside Story of Analyst Ratings Network (My 1 Million Cups Presentation)
I spoke at the Sioux Falls 1 Million Cups event last week about my investing newsletter business, Analyst Ratings Network. During 1 Million Cups events, the speaker has the opportunity to speak about their company for six minutes and the audience has the opportunity to ask questions for twenty minutes. During my talk, I discussed …
Will My Business Idea Make Any Money? Seven Questions to Ask…
If you want to start a business model and have several ideas in mind, it’s often hard to narrow down on a particular market you want to sell to. You might have several different competing ideas and aren’t sure which one to focus on. You might not be sure which part of a market you …
My Gmail Productivity Hacks: Getting to Inbox Zero, Every Time.
One of the things that I’ve discovered about myself is that I do email very differently than most people. While I get anywhere from 75-150 new non-spam messages every day, my inbox regularly stays at a status of “inbox zero” (having no emails in my inbox). There are a few strategies that I make use …
Online Business for Sale: WP Mechanic
I started a relatively-small side business last fall called WP Mechanic that has had some good initial traction. The business offers performance optimization services to individuals with WordPress websites and I think it has some good potential for growth. Unfortunately, I’m no longer the right person to grow this business, so I’m offering it up …
Investing in Bitcoin Mining Hardware: My Experience
I had first become aware of the world of Bitcoin and crytpo-currency mining in 2011 when Bitcoin first became a wide phenomenon and peaked at around $30.00 USD. I didn’t think much of it at the time and thought it was too volatile to get involved with. Fast forward to late 2013, my interest was …
Saying I Quit: Spring Cleaning in Business and in Life
As humans, we tend to get stuck in patterns and continue to do things simply because we’ve always done them, even if there’s a better way to do something or it no longer serves a purpose. Every now and then, it’s important to evaluate how you’re spending your time and cut out things that once …
How to Level Up in Online Business
If you were to do a search for the keyword “make money online”, you would get back thousands of websites that would teach you to build start-from-nothing businesses, such as long-tail AdSense websites, strategies to generate revenue with affiliate marketing and blueprints to make money with Facebook or Twitter. Many people in online business get …
Eight Strategies for Email Marketing Success
My company, American Consumer News, LLC, sends out about two million emails per month. The vast majority of these are the daily edition of our investment newsletter, ARN Daily. We do send out our fair share of marketing messages too, so I’ve had a lot of opportunities to do try things out to see what generally …
Don’t Build an Ecosystem-Based Business
In the last five years, there has been a major trend to build businesses on top of the platforms offered by major web companies, such as eBay, Facebook, Twitter, Apple (iTunes) and Google (YouTube, Search). Eight years ago, the big thing was to build an eBay business. Four years ago, the big thing to do …
There’s Only One Problem with Passive Income Businesses
If you’ve spent more than a minute hanging out on internet marketing forums or listening attention to gurus, you’ve been pitched on the idea of generating a passive income stream. In order to get you to sign-up for a service or buy some sort of product, some marketer will sell you on the dream that …
A Sure-Fire Way to Limit Your Business’s Upside Potential
What’s the difference between a food-service employee and a high-price attorney? When it comes to their compensation structure, not all that much. Both offer to perform specific tasks for an hourly rate. Granted, an attorney can charge a much higher hourly rate for their services than a fast food employee can, but both the attorney …
How to Implement the SendGrid Newsletter API in ASP.NET and C#
A while back, SendGrid announced its newsletter functionality that provides functionality for managing and emailing distribution lists. If you’re a developer that makes use of SendGrid, you’re probably managing your list internally in a SQL database and have no need for SendGrid’s newsletter functionality, but there are two distinct advantages to using the Newsletter API.The …
How to Automatically Backup Your WordPress Website with BackWPUp
What would happen to your website if the server that powers your website were to crash? You would probably assume that’s something the hosting company is going to worry about and would go on with your life while you wait for them to get it back up and running. Unfortunately, many companies that offer shared …
How to Prevent WordPress Comment Spam
If you run a blog that’s powered by WordPress, inevitably your website will be hit by a deluge of comment spam. More often than not, it comes from automated software tools designed to build links back to the spammer’s website for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. If you leave your WordPress blog unprotected, your posts …
How to Improve the Performance of Your WordPress Blog
WordPress does a lot of things right. It’s easy-to-use, it’s extensible and it has been widely adopted by the website development community. Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t do a great job when operating under a heavy load of traffic, especially when residing on a shared hosting server and being combined with a couple of dozen third-party plugins …
How to Select a Website Designer
If you’re looking to have a contractor or agency build your organization a website, you have more choices than you can possibly consider. There are local design and development agencies, freelance web designers and developers, international developers that can be hired through ODesk and similar services and do-it-yourself services such as Square Space. I estimate …
Five Common Website Mistakes Made by Small Businesses
If you’re a small business owner, you know that your company probably needs a website. So, you ask around to know if anyone knows a good website developer. You find a consultant or an agency, write them a check and have them build you a website that makes use of the latest software and design …
My First Two Weeks of Freedom and My Plans for World Domination
Today marks the two-week anniversary of my transition to full-time self-employment. I would like to say that the last two weeks has been the South Dakota equivalent of sitting on a beach drinking Mai Tai’s (whatever that would be), but that hasn’t been the case. Today also marks the one-week anniversary of bringing my son, …
“So…What exactly do you do?”
I announced earlier this month that I plan on quitting my day job as of November 7th, so that I can focus on my business, my seminary degree and my newborn son, Micah. Since then, I’ve gotten a lot of “What exactly do you do?” questions. This post was written to answer that question. My …
How I Quit My Day Job (and My Plans for the Future)
I did it. I finally did it. After four years and ten months of working at Factor360 full time and six years of building my business on the side, I’ve finally made the entrepreneurial leap. As of November 7th, 2012, I will have quit my day job to pursue my business on a full time basis. …
Introducing RatingsDB
My company, American Consumer News, LLC, will be launching a new stock research product tomorrow morning. The product, RatingsDB, allows retail investors to get access to Analyst Ratings Network’s entire database of more than 100,000 stock ratings. RatingsDB rests upon a custom-built search engine that tracks more than 200 stock ratings each day. Watch the …
How to Select a High Quality Web Host
I was running a cross promotional campaign for my company’s daily email newsletter, ARN Daily, this morning. Almost immediately after the campaign email was sent out, DreamHost’s data center had an outage, rendering the campaign almost useless. This is the latest of many issues that I’ve had with DreamHost, unfortunately. I have a couple of …
Tips for Running a Successful Paid Newsletter
Several months back, I wrote about my paid email newsletter called ARN Daily in a post called “How I Developed a Paid Email Newsletter to Diversify My Business’s Income.” Since that post last spring, the number of subscribers to both the free and paid newsletters has easily tripled. This business unit now brings my company …
How to Avoid Scams When Shopping for Websites on Flippa
Browsing for online business opportunities on Flippa is like prospecting for gold. Most of the time, you’re not going to find anything that looks remotely like gold. On a rare occasion, you’ll find something that looks like gold, but later you found out it’s fool’s gold. On an extremely rare occasion, you can find a …
My Productivity Secret
In the last couple of years, there’s been a renewed interest in time management, productivity improvement and task management tools. A lot of us are getting far more email than we can handle in any given day and find ourselves faced with an increasingly long and never ending list of tasks to complete. Some people …
My New Niche Site: P2PLendingNews.com
I’ve recently started a new website around the niche of peer-to-peer lending, P2PLendingNews.com. The site itself isn’t entirely new, but it’s new to me. It was originally setup in April 2007 by its previous owner during the initial period of excitement around peer to peer lending before the SEC came down on Prosper and Lending …
Three Podcasts Every Solo-Entrepreneur Needs to Listen To
Starting a business can be a very lonely affair. This is especially the case if you’re a single founder and aren’t working with a team to develop your product or service. When I got into business in 2006, there wasn’t much of an online community for solo-entrepreneurs and lifestyle business owners. During the last half-decade, …
How I Developed a Paid Email Newsletter to Diversify My Business’s Income
I’ve been running an information marketing company for the last four and a half years, but it wasn’t until three months ago that I started developing an email newsletter for readers of any of my websites. I had always gotten plenty of web traffic from other sources, was doing fine revenue wise and didn’t see …
Working with Committees: How to Build a Successful Website
Imagine that you and your ten closest friends are put into an industrial kitchen and told to make food item that contains everyone’s favorite ingredients. If you all like exactly the same types of food, you might wind up with something that’s not half-bad. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. You would more likely end …
How to Ensure You Will Actually Get Paid as a Freelancer
As unemployment rates remain elevated in most developed countries, people with specific marketable skill sets, such as website development, graphic design and copy writing, have been applying those talents in the marketplace in the form of freelance work to supplement their income streams. As a person that has done a lot of freelancing work in …