Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building Internet-based businesses, Online Business from Scratch. To receive updates about the book, visit www.fromscratchbook.com. After you get your web hosting account setup, the first order of business is to install WordPress into your hosting account. Almost every major web hosting service will …
Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building Internet-based businesses, Online Business from Scratch. To receive updates about the book, visit www.fromscratchbook.com. In order to launch your website, you will need a basic web hosting account that will provide the technology and infrastructure needed to serve your website up to …
Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building Internet-based businesses, Online Business from Scratch. To receive updates about the book, visit www.fromscratchbook.com. Before you launch your business, you will probably want to have a logo made for your brand. You should have some kind of logo in place when you …
Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building Internet-based businesses, Online Business from Scratch. To receive updates about the book, visit www.fromscratchbook.com. When I first launched MarketBeat.com in 2011, the business was called Analyst Ratings Network. I chose that name because I wanted to highlight the fact that we offered …
Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building Internet-based businesses, Online Business from Scratch. To receive updates about the book, visit www.fromscratchbook.com. Some online entrepreneurs actively work to build a brand around their name. They portray themselves as subject matter experts and teach their readers about relevant topics through blog …
Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building Internet-based businesses, Online Business from Scratch. To receive updates about the book, visit www.fromscratchbook.com. All of the good dot com domain names are already taken. Domain squatters have gone through and registered every dictionary word, almost every combination of dictionary words and …
Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building Internet-based businesses, Online Business from Scratch. To receive updates about the book, visit www.fromscratchbook.com. There are two schools of thought for choosing a name. First, you can choose a name that represents what your business does. Businesses like Bank of America, Ford …
Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building Internet-based businesses, Online Business from Scratch. To receive updates about the book, visit www.fromscratchbook.com. If you’re having trouble coming up with ideas for potential niches, there are several strategies you can use to come up with ideas for your niche: Consider Your …
Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building Internet-based businesses, Online Business from Scratch. To receive updates about the book, visit www.fromscratchbook.com. Many other resources that talk about niche selection suggest that you choose a niche based on whether or not you can rank in Google for keywords in that …
Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building Internet-based businesses, Online Business from Scratch. To receive updates about the book, visit www.fromscratchbook.com. Not all niches are created equally. Readers will have a much higher propensity to buy products and services in some niches than others. In some niches, customers might …
Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building Internet-based businesses, Online Business from Scratch. To receive updates about the book, visit www.fromscratchbook.com As you begin to evaluate different niches, you will immediately notice that there are already people creating content and selling products and services in just about every market …
Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building Internet-based businesses, Online Business from Scratch. To receive updates about the book, visit www.fromscratchbook.com A common piece of advice given by Internet business gurus is that you should “niche down until it hurts.” The idea is that you should pick a small …
Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building Internet-based businesses, Online Business from Scratch. To receive updates about the book, visit www.fromscratchbook.com In 2015, I attended a conference for software entrepreneurs called Microconf (www.microconf.com). One of the speakers, Patrick McKenzie (www.kalzumeus.com), told the story about how he launched his online …
As you might know, I read a lot of business books. There was a good five-year stretch where I was reading anywhere from 3-5 business books per month. By now, I’ve pretty much read every best-selling business and entrepreneurship book that’s been released in the last 15 years. A lot of people ask me what …
Three years ago, the name “Matthew Paulson” meant almost nothing to anyone in the Sioux Falls business community. I didn’t go to any business networking events. I rarely made it a point to meet with other entrepreneurs and business owners. My name never made it into the Sioux Falls Business Journal or any other local …
I don’t know about you, but I love to read investing books. Whenever someone comes out with a hot new title about their strategy to beat the market, generate alpha or reduce volatility, I gobble it up. While I take a lot of what I read with a grain of salt, there are some great …
There’s an old idea that if we pretend that we already are what we want to become, that our appearance of success will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The thinking is that if we present ourselves as successful, then other people will also see us as successful and we’ll have the confidence and the appearance necessary …
When I published my first book in 2014 through Amazon, I figured I would never make any meaningful amount of royalties. I figured that my friends, family and the people that read my blog would buy my books and that would be pretty much be the end of it. I wrote my book understanding …
“How do I raise money for my business?” This is the number one question that gets asked in the entrepreneurial communities that I am a part of in Sioux Falls. The people that ask this question aren’t large enough to attract interest in any local venture capital firms, can’t get a bank loan and aren’t …
Below, you will find an unedited chapter from my new book about wealth building, investing and personal finance, The Ten Year Turnaround. To get your copy of the book, visit www.tenyearturnaround.com “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.” ~ Albert Einstein There are only so many different things that you can do with …
Below, you will find an unedited chapter from my new book about wealth building, investing and personal finance, The Ten Year Turnaround. To get your copy of the book, visit www.tenyearturnaround.com “The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward.” – John Maynard Keynes While much of this book has been devoted …
Below, you will find an unedited chapter from my new book about wealth building, investing and personal finance, The Ten Year Turnaround. To get your copy of the book, visit www.tenyearturnaround.com Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas. –Paul Samuelson …
Below, you will find an unedited chapter from my new book about wealth building, investing and personal finance, The Ten Year Turnaround. To get your copy of the book, visit www.tenyearturnaround.com Every time you borrow money, you’re robbing your future self. –Nathan W. Morris If there’s a topic that divides personal finance authors more than anything, …
Below, you will find an unedited chapter from my new book about wealth building, investing and personal finance, The Ten Year Turnaround. To get your copy of the book, visit www.tenyearturnaround.com You must gain control over your money or the lack of it will forever control you. –Dave Ramsey Let’s face it. Nobody likes budgeting. Budgets …
Below, you will find an unedited chapter from my new book about wealth building, investing and personal finance, The Ten Year Turnaround. To get your copy of the book, visit www.tenyearturnaround.com If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is …
Below, you will find an unedited chapter from my new book about wealth building, investing and personal finance, The Ten Year Turnaround. To get your copy of the book, visit www.tenyearturnaround.com I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. –Thomas Jefferson There is an intangible quality …
Below, you will find an unedited chapter from my new book about wealth building, investing and personal finance, The Ten Year Turnaround. To get your copy of the book, visit www.tenyearturnaround.com “A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.” – Jane Austen For several years, I had the privilege of teaching …
Below, you will find an unedited chapter from my new book about wealth building, investing and personal finance, The Ten Year Turnaround. To get your copy of the book, visit www.tenyearturnaround.com “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” ― Benjamin Franklin There are very few people in the world that wouldn’t like to be …
Below, you will find an unedited chapter from my new book about wealth building, investing and personal finance, The Ten Year Turnaround. To get your copy of the book, visit www.tenyearturnaround.com It was August of 2004. I would be starting my first year of college in a few short weeks. My new school, Dakota State University, …
Wealthy people like me have gotten a bad rap lately. Politicians and the media will tell you that we are taking advantage of the system, that we are enriching ourselves off the backs of underpaid employees and that we aren’t paying our fair share of taxes. The release of the Panama Papers, a leaked set …
I got “the author’s itch” again early this year. While it had only been a few months since Email Marketing Demystified came out, I knew that I wanted to write another book. I have something to communicate the world and would be disappointed in myself if I didn’t publish my third book this year. Since …
There is a computer repair business in the city of Sioux Falls called Craig Computer Service that is run by my good friend Craig Jurczewsky. I have been helping Craig with some of his marketing efforts off and on for the last six months. We worked on a wide variety of marketing strategies in order …
“What kind of products do you sell on Amazon?” asked one conference attendee to another at a lunch I attended while at Freedom Fastlane Live. Before the other attendee could answer, someone else chimed in and said “You don’t ask that question to another Amazon seller. Do your own market research.” There’s an unspoken rule that …
MarketBeat recently crossed the 300,000 subscriber mark. We now send 24 newsletters per month and five-to-ten marketing emails per month to more than 300,000 people at a time. We also have a secondary list of 180,000 subscribers that receive a weekly newsletter. In total, we send out more than 13 million emails each and every …
I used to believe that the best way to be an online entrepreneur was to have a portfolio of 5-7 different online businesses. Each business would be responsible for a portion of your income and there would be some level of protection if any one of those businesses took a nose dive. This is the …
When I finally got around to quitting my day job two years ago, my business was already generating significantly more revenue than what I was making at my day job. Frankly, I waited too long to quit my day job. I recently had lunch with an entrepreneur that has an e-commerce business who is currently …
Why is it that some people peak and can’t get past a certain level of success when others continue to grow and reach new highs? You might hit a certain level of income, build an audience of a certain size or attain a certain job title. When you try to move up to the next …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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’ …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 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 …
Most of us are very bad investors. We put very little effort into deciding what kinds of things we should invest in. We don’t pay much attention to the tax consequences of our investments. We often let ourselves get sold products that primarily serve to enrich the person selling said products to us. We buy …
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 …
Last fall, I started listening to a travel hacking podcast called Abroaders after one of the hosts was interviewed on another podcast I listen to. After listening through their back catalog of episodes and reading a few travel hacking blogs, I learned that there is a community of people that regularly travel around the world …
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 …
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 …
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 …
A couple of years ago, I published a list of podcasts that I listen to on a regular basis. Of course, podcasts come and go and my interests have evolved over time. I’ve also scaled back on the number of podcasts I listen to (from 31 to 20) because I’ve recently started listening to audiobooks …
It’s hard to believe that we’re already through the first quarter of 2015, but here we are. My reading habits made a marked changed this quarter. Instead of the usual mix of repetitive business books, I’ve branched out and have read biographical works and more fiction. I read a total of 20 books during January, …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Now that 2014 has come and gone, it’s time again to share the books that I’ve been reading in the last few months. I had the opportunity to read a lot of good books during the fourth quarter. The amount of day-to-day work that my business required has slowed down as I’ve brought on a …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
[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 …