This is a great article by Justin Goff a fellow Elite Retreat alumni and is well worth reading if you’re looking at creating and selling an information product. The other parts have been published already: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Understanding Internet Law

This article alone made me completely delete a website I owned that was making me a few hundred dollars a month. This is an absolute MUST READ if you make any amount of money online or have any assets that you’d like to protect.

THE Backlinking Strategy That Works

My good friend Pat Flynn who I finally got to meet at this year’s Blog World Expo wrote this excellent post on building backlinks. This is very similar to how I do it now except I outsource all of this process these days. (Pat – you really should start charging for information like this…)

Using FBML to Make Your Facebook Ad Campaign Go Viral

Another great friend Ian Fernando who I met at SMX Advanced this year wrote an excellent post on how to make your Facebook ads go viral. Ian gave me some good advice on the Facebook ads I was creating which helped me to turn around a few of my unprofitable Facebook campaigns. Check out his Facebook training program if you want to improve your skills: InfiniteFB

How I Built A Site In Less Than 45 Minutes

Here’s another article from a new friend and fellow Seahawks fan Joe Sousa. I met Joe at Blog World Expo this year and proceeded to lose all of my money to him in Poker (along with half the other table). This outlines part of his process in how he builds websites quickly.

Build A Niche Site, Quick

Eric Nagel also wrote an excellent guide on how to build a niche site quickly. I haven’t had a chance to meet Eric yet but I will be sure to say hi when I go to Affiliate Summit West next month.

How To Market A Product Online

Great article from Justin Brooke on how to market a product online.

Why People Who Like You Still Don’t Buy From You

This is a good article to read if you want to know how to make money by selling something.

Upcoming:

Yes the free training course is still in the works, but as always it is taking me longer than expected to complete. I expect to launch the first video before the week is out.

I’ve been on a bit of a health kick lately because I’ve found it very easy to coast into lazy habits for eating unhealthy foods. Seeing an image like this one off to my right makes you realize just how screwed up the food is here in America. Just look at this article about how scientists have shown cancer is man made. Hopefully this stuff scares you into eating healthier like I’m trying to do. Ok, now let’s get to some stuff that might help your business…

My Volatile eBay Partner Network Earnings:

Ian shares his experience with eBay partner network. I should also mention that during the month of November and December eBay Partner Network is offering extra money for people that drive additional traffic.

A Crazy (Yet Common) Trait of Many Wildly Successful Internet Entrepreneurs:

Eric discusses a common trait of “forced chaos” between successful internet entrepreneurs and includes me as an example. (Perhaps I’m vain and egotistical, but I pretty much link to any article where someone links to me ) But I agree with the idea that when faced with adversity that’s the time you really need to dig in hard and fight against it (like when you get fired from your day job).

An Acquisition Or Two

Scott was the first interviewee on my blog where he shared some insight into his business. In this article he opens up about a website he purchased for $90k along with a few other websites he purchased.

To Truly Become Rich, You Need To Stop Acting Like It

This was a great article with some very intriguing stats behind millionaires and their spending habits. As you might not expect, 86% of all luxury vehicles are driven by people who are not millionaires. This fact shows that most people like to pretend to be rich and it mentions a book called “The Millionaire Next Door” which I plan to pick up. Don’t get me wrong, it’s cool to have nice things and after I make a few million dollars I plan to buy a Tesla Roadster before I buy my castle.

How I Almost Doubled My Conversions In Less Than 5 Minutes

I met Logan at this year’s Blog World and had a ton of fun talking to him and learning some tips from him. In this blog post he shares a tip on how he turned a 2 year old campaign that’s been earning $50 – $100 profit from 1.05% conversion to 1.97%. I also said on Twitter recently that Logan is one of the affiliate marketing blogs that everyone should start reading (plus he’s a cool guy too).

StoreCrowd – $0 to $1M+ in Affiliate Sales in 12 Months:

Here’s an inside look on how a custom coupon site went from $0 to $1M in affiliate sales in a very short period of time. Well worth the read and a great way to start up the blog again.

Young & Stupid: How I Lost My Millions

This is a very interesting story on how a young guy lost literally millions of dollars with his web business. It has several lessons worth learning and I highly recommend you check it out. Very crazy stuff…

Upcoming:

Tomorrow I have a free webinar at 5:00 PM PST teaching people how to install a CDN and drastically reduce your page load times.

Register For The November 4th 5:00 PM PST Webinar Here

I also have a very cool feature coming to my blog that I’m going to need your help on – more on that very soon…

Why Lead Generation Fails: 6 Mistakes Marketers Make that Kill the Sale
I’m looking at moving into lead generation and this article has some good tips worth reading.

Ten Easy Ways To Improve Your Landing Page Conversions
I’m slowly getting my feet wet with paid traffic so anything I read that can help me lose less money in the process of learning the better. I know it’s insane that the only way I make money is with free traffic but I guess that just goes to further illustrate how risk averse I am.

Keyword Research with Google Suggest Could Add 5,000 Visitors a Day!
In this article you’ll learn what happens when Google drops a keyword phrase from Google suggest that was previously sending this webmaster a ton of traffic. My recommendation? Look at what keywords Google suggests when you’re buying domain names and choosing which keywords to target.

Grasping Opportunities #2: How I Turned $2.3K Into $16.5K
Tyler Cruz shares his latest score by selling Starcraft2.net and a group of additional domain names. It’s always fun to read about the process behind selling a website(s) and why the sellers do what they do. I agree that the best time to sell a Starcraft 2 related website was when popularity was at it’s peak. This is something I try to avoid when I’m on the buying end of a website

How Starcraft2 is like Internet Marketing
After sharing Tyler’s story about selling Starcraft2.net earlier I had to include this post from Shoemoney as well. The gamers out there will like this article.

15 Entrepreneurs Share how They Build $1,000,000+ Companies
This is a collection of interviews from various entrepreneurs that build $1,000,000 companies and they’re well worth the read. I’ll admit I didn’t read them all but I did check out this interview with Brant Bukowsky because I’ve heard of him from my Elite Retreat buddy Brandon at Growth Partner.

Angry Birds sells 6.5M units on iPhone and flies to new smartphones
I’ve been reading more and more about various successful iPhone applications as I prepare to release my first iPhone app later this week. So it’s always cool to see what companies are doing in the iPhone application space (Angry Birds is definitely the most successful game). I know this article was written a while ago, but the vision they have for the franchise is so far beyond a $.99 game.

Is Google AdWords Keyword Tool Now More Accurate?
Turns out yes – the Google Adwords keyword tool is more accurate now which is great news (see the follow up post). This makes it that much easier to determine which niches you should enter and profit from (and I can teach you how I do it here)

Twitter user sells @Israel username for six-figure sum
A Twitter user sold his @Israel username for six figures. Kind of a cool back story about why he got the username in the first place but it’s too bad the Twitter user name gold rush has come and gone just like the domain name rush years before.

Link Building 101 – The Almost Complete Link Guide
Lastly, I’ll close things out with a pretty good link building guide. I believe most of these are usually just regurgitated content, but this one has a few tips I haven’t seen before.

Coming Up:

I’ve got some great things planned for you including another interview from another fellow Elite Retreat alumni on Monday. Then I’m going to share the details about my first free webinar on how to implement a CDN on your blog to decrease load time.

40 billionaires pledge to give away half of wealth
There’s a chance you read this one before as well, but I thought this was worth showing. Instead of passing on all of their wealth to children that didn’t do anything other than be a member of “the lucky sperm club” – as Michael Bloomberg put it – dozens of the world’s billionaires have agreed to donate at least half of their wealth. This is a pledge that each person has taken, and although they are under no contractual obligation to give the money it is something all pledge takers plan to do. Noticeably absent: Sergei Brin and Larry Page (co-founders of Google) and any of the Walton heirs (Walmart) – just another reason to hate Google and Walmart I suppose (kidding of course, except for Walmart).

Valedictorian Speaks Out Against Schooling in Graduation Speech
This post is well worth the read and highlights just some of the numerous problems in the public school system. Here are my favorite quotes from the article: “School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.” and “I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I’m scared.” This is why I’m glad I finally figured out that my purpose in college wasn’t to spend all hours of the day studying to get good grades and get a good job. In fact, I never once was asked for my grade point average in an interview and the only thing I wish I could do differently was to spend even less time studying. I played so much Halo 2 in college and I loved it (I got my first D the quarter Halo 2 came out for the Xbox) and in the end Halo 2 is what lead me down the path to the online business I run today not the marketing degree I got for my efforts (see my about page).

The Oatmeal: How to Get 5 Million People to Read Your Website
Quick video from Matthew Inman speaking at a conference here in Seattle. He’s the guy that runs The Oatmeal and makes me laugh every day. My favorite so far is a new one and I’ve linked to it at the bottom of this article – be sure to check it out.

Would you Travel 1,846 Miles for this Man?
This one’s from Annabel Candy and it’s a post about her experience traveling to meet Darren Rowse at the local meetup they had in Australia earlier this month. You can call me an ignorant American but I never knew Australia was so huge. That distance is nearly as far as driving from Seattle, WA to Chicago, IL (to put things into perspective for my fellow ignorant American’s).

5 Ways A Marketer Can Hurt Their Reputation
This is a good one from David Risley. These are all things I was conscious about avoiding during my own product launch of Niche Profit Course last month. (Yes I did have an exit pop but not to a cheaper offer – instead it was just for my free eBook). In either case if you’re considering creating your own product this is a good post to read.

3 Steps To Promote Clickbank Products with Your Blog
This was a guest post from Jonathan Volk and a pretty good one indeed. It lists out 3 potential problems with selling products on Clickbank and then offers solutions. I really should have taken the advice on problem 1: “People buy through their own affiliate link” I didn’t even have an affiliate program set up (technically) but because it was on Clickbank a ton of people purchased through their own affiliate link (almost 20%!)

Finally, there were two great posts on F@*! You Money:

No, You CAN’T retire rich at 30 if you sell your startup
Just pocketed $4MM from your recent internet start up sale? Congrats, but that’s still not enough to live on for the rest of your life according to Tony’s calculations – or is it?
How to retire at 30 on $1 million
Ryan Waggoner has a different point of view and in either case both of these articles were great reads and well worth checking out.

Why working at home is both awesome and horrible (comic)
Last but not least, this is exactly how I feel when I’m sitting in my office all day. When I go out of the house to drive my car it literally doesn’t feel right because I do it so infrequently. There are even times when I’ll go out to eat with my wife on Friday and realize I haven’t left the office all week! If you live in Seattle and want to meet up feel free to drop me a line. I apologize in advance if I show up unshaven, poorly dressed and unable to form sentences during our conversation.

What did you read in August that was particularly useful? Share it in the comments below.

Coming Up:

I have contemplated stopping my income reports because I’m starting to wonder how much benefit they provide and I also wonder about how wise it is to just openly share my income. Do you think they’re worth it? Would you like me to continue? I still believe I can meet my goal of $150k in 2010 although I know it’s still going to be a tough road ahead.

This month I’m going to try a new challenge to write 30 guest posts in 30 days as I really want to continue marketing myself and my blog elsewhere around the interwebs. Want me to guest post on your blog? Contact me here.

Coming Up:

Next I’ll be sharing another income report and sadly it looks like July could be one of my lowest income earning months of the year. I attribute this primarily due to the summer dip that usually starts at the end of June as school gets out and continues through until late August. (This also happened last year).

How to Make Money with Amazon.com eBook out on August 5th

Yesterday I spent 14 hours writing more material for the free eBook and adding in various images (those of you following me on Twitter already saw me share that fact). In the end I believe it will be an excellent resource for people looking to get started making money with Amazon.com. I’ll be releasing a paid training course in late August that greatly expands upon the principals I’ve shared in the eBook.

Remember, only Facebook fans and newsletter subscribers will get this eBook for free.

If you find something I should read please contact me and I may share it here next month.
Note: No one has sent me an interesting article to read / share in my monthly wrap up series yet. If you do send me an article that I use in my next monthly wrap up I’ll link to your website as well – so take action!

Upcoming:

My income report will be up next where I outline the sources I made money from along with my overall take for the month. If this sounds good to you, subscribe to my blog so that you don’t miss out. See past income reports here. Tomorrow I’m going to another event at the Has Offers offices; however, this time Shoemoney will be there as well. I first met Jeremy at the Elite Retreat (his event) and learned a ton from him and the rest of the attendees. It should be very fun to hang out with him again. I’ll write a post about the event if I learn something worth sharing. The last event I wrote about got very few comments so I figure that perhaps people aren’t interested in event wrap ups?

If you find something I should read please contact me and I may share it here next month.

Upcoming:

As always my income report will be up next where I outline the sources I made money from along with my overall take for the month. If this sounds good to you, subscribe to my blog so that you don’t miss out.

Single Page vs Multi Page Checkout Process
ABtests.com is a great resource to help you improve conversion. This was a study I read this month which was pretty good.
5 Things You Must Know About Creating Your Own iPhone Apps
I’m working on hiring a developer through Odesk to create an iPhone app for me and this was a good read.
7 Things Seattle Taught Me About Business
I live in Seattle as well and the part about NQECP plans is something I may try out if the sale of one of my web properties goes through (I try to keep my taxable income low).
Cash Crate Review
This was an article I actually wrote and it’s part of a new website I’m launching which focuses more strictly on money making ideas. I’ll try anything and if it’s a scam I’ll say so on the blog.
How to create a Facebook Opt In Page
This is a great video showing how to create a Facebook opt in page. I haven’t updated my Facebook fanpage with it yet, which you should join by the way but I will update it with the opt in box shortly.
How to Monetize a Blog Like a Pimp!
This is an excellent interview with Jim Wang of Bargaineering.com and he’s interviewed by Nathaniel Broughton and Brandon Laughridge of GrowthPartner.com. I met Brandon back at Elite Retreat and got to have breakfast with them earlier this month to catch up on how business is going.
Link Building with Content: 29 queries for content-based link builders
This was an interesting read and I’m including it here almost as a reminder to go back and check it out again.
OutsourceForce.com
I watched the video from John Reese about outsourcing and thought it had a lot of good free information. Of course he’ll be selling a paid product later this month and will take down the free videos so even if you don’t pay for his program it’s still worth watching the videos for the free info.

In future blog posts some lists will be longer or shorter and I’m always looking to learn more so if you read something interesting (or wrote a great article) and want me to check it out feel free to contact me and I may list it here next month.

Upcoming: My April Income Report is due out later this week and I’ll be outlining how much I earned last month along with areas I’m focusing on to improve my earnings. Be sure to subscribe to my blog so that you don’t miss out.