Happy New Years and some exciting things to come!

I just wanted to take a few minutes to wish everyone a happy New Years! Remember to be safe, spend time with your family and loved ones, and be sure to set your goals for 2007.

Speaking of goals, I wanted to pass on one goal that I think everyone should do -- TAKE ACTION! Sometimes the difference between a successful person and one not so successful online is as simple as taking action and sticking with it. If you take action and try to figure out what works and what doesn't, it's pretty hard not to eventually be successful. Everyone is guilty of not taking action or procrastinating at least a little. I know I'm definitely finally cracking down on myself and taking more action.

With that said, I just wanted to let you know that there will be some exciting things coming in 2007. I will do some very big announcements in the near future. In the meantime, I hope to be doing a lot of updates on this blog, so be sure to check back often.

Best wishes!

Brian Koz

Why you are not making any money

Okay, maybe some of you are making plenty of money online, but I bet that a good portion of you aren't. I also bet that I know why most people aren't making any money online. Simply put, you probably aren't REALLY doing anything about it.

People can buy guides left and right, but it's taking action that matters. You can have a million dollar idea in front of you and not do anything about it, and you'll make nothing. There's no guide or technique out there that doesn't require ANY work. I think that my latest guide on "The Big Secret" is very easy and doesn't require much work at all, but it still requires a little work and some action on your part.

Everyone is guilty of not taking action at times. I couldn't tell you how many times someone has told me that they want to make money online and have been trying for years, yet they aren't able to even create a free blog and know next to nothing on websites (even though they desperately want to). Well, guess what? I self-taught myself just about everything. It's not too hard, but you do have to take action and dive in.

You can even try free website tools to test the waters, or get a cheap web host at a few dollars a month to play around with a website and start learning. After you learn that, you can learn to get visitors and so forth. But you do need to start somewhere. Just reading guides and not taking action will get you nowhere.

Let me tell you a story of a very intelligent friend I know -- he's a great programmer with tons of ideas. Years and years ago, he created a cool program that does a ton of SEO work for websites. It worked very well and was better than anything even close to it. A few years after he made it, a tool came out that wasn't even close to as good as his tool that he had already been using for years.

Well, guess what happened? The new tool was marketed really well and became a very popular tool. I bet it took in over a million dollars in the first year alone (possibly several times that). My friend's tool was a lot better, but he never bothered to market it or make it user-friendly for others.

When I pointed this out to him, he stood back for a minute and was just like "wow." He then went on to talk about several other programs he had made in the past. About half of them had similar versions that were being sold and were quite successful. He could have made hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars quite easily, but he never took action to market it.

Since then, I've taught him to focus a bit and even have him on board with me for creating some new tools in the near future. But the point is that he missed out on some big opportunities. In his case, he already made the tool, which is taking a little action, but he failed to even think (or care) to market it.

I suspect that many of you are guilty of doing the same thing. Just taking action can go a long way. If I can teach you to do that, I bet it'll be worth more than any guide out there!

Are you thinking of the wrong ways to make money online?

I know that many of you are looking to make money online. In fact, I'm guessing that if you're reading this blog, you probably almost certainly are at least interested in making money.

Having said that, I bet that many of you have tried making money online. Some of you may have had some success with it, but I'd be willing to bet that many of you haven't been having the best of luck with it. Well, today might be your lucky day, so read the rest of this post!

I've noticed that the most desperate people to make money online are usually the ones that fail at it. I don't think many people take the time to actually think about how they'll make money online. I'm sure that many of us are guilty of forking over $50 or even $100 or more to buy guides that claim to be all plug-n-chug methods to making thousands the second you read their guide. Others are guilty of buying pre-made Adsense sites that claim you only have to put the site up to start earning thousands.

There's one thing that I've especially noticed -- people who e-mail me asking for advice will always have links to health products or money schemes in their links. I'm sure some have told you to advertise your affiliate programs all over. Well, they're wrong. It can actually hurt your image and make you look desperate if you do such things, especially when you're e-mailing friends and family. Now, if you're doing business e-mails, by all means, have those on the bottom of your e-mails. But for personal e-mails or when you're just asking questions, it can really turn people off.

Others will take it a step further and advertise their own websites that talk about how to make thousands or millions of dollars, yet they'll be asking me how to make a single sale because they haven't been having any success. Does something seem wrong with this picture? I think so.

Now, it's not your fault, and it's not their fault. They've just been taught the wrong way to go about making money online. Many of the "big" marketing gurus don't really know how to bring riches to every-day-people -- they only know how to scam you out of $100 or so dollars (and sometimes even get you to be happy that they scammed you).

Please listen to my piece of advice here: Erase your thoughts and teachings! As Yoda once said, you must unlearn what you have learned.

Just think creatively for a few minutes. Don't spend $50 or $100 dollars on the next big thing. Instead, just take five minutes to think of how you can really make money online and I can almost guarantee you that you'll have more success.

Adwords not working out because it's too expensive? Did a "guru" tell you to stick to it because if you get just one sale, you could make a few hundred dollars and earn back the hundreds you've already spent? STOP! Think for five minutes like I said.

If someone wants what you're promoting, where might they be instead of on search engines? Where can you reach them?

Perhaps they're likely to be on certain niche forums? Or perhaps they might be searching for stuff on Ebay? There are dozens of other places they might be, but the point is that you need to think about it. What would you do if you were in their shoes right now?

If you think they might be in forums, then find those forums and start posting. Add a simple signature link to your site and you just advertised your services for free! Just be sure to add some valuable posts instead of just spam.

If you think some might be searching Ebay, why not sell a cheap ebook for $0.01 to $0.99 tops on that topic (if you actually know stuff about it -- if not, learn about your niche first). But wait, you might think that you'll be losing money here, right? Not really. It's a small price to pay for a targeted lead. If you can go about this the right way, you can sell your ebook which will talk about your affiliate products that they're looking for.

If you provide valuable insight as to which might be best for them, or the ups and downs of each one (such as reviews), you all of a sudden are getting free advertising that could bring you big bucks for less than the cost of one click on Adwords in a competitive niche. Just think of the possibilities here! Think of how much money you could make just by being creative!

Right now, I can literally think of a dozen different ways of going about the same thing with spending little to no money. There are too many ideas for me to write down, but perhaps I'll make a list for a later blog post here. In the meantime, I encourage you to just think about how you want to go about making money online. Think about what has worked and what hasn't.

And most of all, think about where your potential customers might be right this very minute and how you can reach them! Now that's the key to making money online.

Watch out for false reviews

This is a sad fact that many of us fall for online. When many of us are about to make a purchase, we often look for reviews of that product or site first. Well, any good marketer knows this and keeps track of the good and bad things about them. The smart and ethical marketers will be sure to post comments next to bad things said and fully explain why their service is good (if it truly is).

However, there are plenty of unethical marketers who make false reviews ahead of time in hopes that their fake reviews will convince others to buy it. Some are dumb enough to use their own names when registering the domain name, whereas others get associates and affiliates of theirs to do so.

Recently, I came across a very popular membership site run by a very well known marketer who many respect. I personally find this marketer to be less than ethical, but they do have a lot of followers. I looked up reviews on Google of their site and found one VERY good review. In fact, it almost seemed too good to be true.

The reviewer was talking about how they didn't believe Adsense and the like would ever work, especially when everyone was using the same site. However, they then said that they were shocked to see that this membership site worked great.

Okay, fair enough, but just to make sure, I did a whois search on the domain that the review was on. It showed a name that sounded familiar to me, so I did a search on the name and found an article written by him. The article talked about how great Adsense is. Hmm ... now this is odd. In the review, the reviewer talked about how skeptical they were of Adsense.

I then followed the author's link to their site, which, oddly enough, was selling a guide on Adsense. Odd how the review they gave talked about how they were so skeptical of Adsense and such membership sites, but all of a sudden the author owns a guide on it.

Well, again, I didn't want to jump to conclusions. Maybe the author changed their mind after seeing the new membership site that he gave such good reviews too. Nope, not the case. His Adsense guide's site was created a few months before the membership site that he reviewed came about.

Even more so, there were some very obvious connections between the two. I won't go into any more detail, but it was clear to me that there was a business connection here.

Is this ethical? I don't think so. When looking for reviews, you should always see who is writing it, and make sure that they post the review AFTER the site launches. Any review that pops up before the site launches or that a little research shows to have some obvious connections to the author is a bad review and should be avoided.

Getting friends or business partners to write reviews for you is just as unethical and writing them yourself. I'm fully for paying attention to other reviews and leaving comments or posts by you stating that you're the creator and disagree with it for whatever reason. That can look good in the readers' eyes as it shows that you pay attention to your own product and care about what others think.

However, I encourage everyone to watch out for unethical reviewers who are only looking to scam you into believing that their guides are great. Even the most well known gurus often times resort to unethical practices.

Any thoughts or comments?

Another truth to marketing or buying online

Here's another truth that many people might not like, and many of the well established experts might get up in arms about. If you have been on the verge of buying any product -- whether it's an online product or an actual in-person product -- I bet that many of you have searched for it and eventually came across a forum discussing it.

Now many of these forums are great places, even some internet marketing ones. However, always take everything with a grain of salt. Have you ever noticed how even though many of these forums claim to be unbiased that they are actually run by people selling things in their niche? Or how several of the top experts have relationships with the forum owner? Many times you'll see even business or paid relationships being made here.

I rarely come across a forum that is truly unbiased because there's simply so much money to be made by running such forums. I don't care if you're talking about internet marketing, autoresponders, or TVs. You always have to be careful.

I recently came under attack on a forum by one well known marketer for posting some solid advice on how you should protect your big investments legally (common sense, right?). Ironically, this guy owns a site that could be considered in competition with one of mine. Even though the concept is completely different in the two sites, I've had a few people openly telling me how they went with mine over his. Even more ironically, this guy seems to have an established relationship with one of the moderators. Funny how those things work, isn't it? You'll see a lot of baseless attacks that are pure defamation only to try to quickly attack someone in hopes that people just believe you.

He stated some facts that were purely wrong and proven solidly to be wrong, yet his attacks persist while ignoring the facts. This guy then turns down a challenge to test my results against his to a 3rd unbiased party. He declines, but continues his attacks. Why? It's plain and simple.

If he accepts the challenge, he knows that he can lose at that and lose credibility. Instead, he can attack, say ridiculous things, and know that some people will just take his word for it without backing it up with anything. Others are smarter than that, but one thing that many of these guys don't realize is that there are people who aren't members who are reading the same posts. Having your established relationships attack someone for you will not make you seem better in the eyes of the people outside of the forum.

People are smart. You are smart. And people know that everything has to be taken with a bit of skepticism and a grain of salt. I don't think I've ever found one niche online that didn't have biased forums. Don't get me wrong -- most of these forums are still great places, but you still have to think for yourself.

Easy Tips for an Extra $500 to $1,000 a Month

I bet many of you were looking for a very plug and chug way of making an extra $500 to $1,000 when you opened this thread. Although these tips are just as easy, I bet many of you will shrug them off, but I encourage you to give it a little thought.

I've noticed that this blog has a wide range of people reading it. I've also noticed that many are struggling to make ends meet and just looking for a little extra cash to get along. There are a few simple things to do that will bring you anywhere from several hundred to over a thousand dollars per month. You can use this not only to have more of a savings and more of a stable financial setting, but you can also use it to get a good start on any business you might be starting.

Here are the tips:

1. Get rid of any services that you don't REALLY need. If you have 1,000,000,000 cable channels, maybe downgrade that to the minimum and get rid of all the movie channels that you never watch anyway. This can easily save you $50 or more (or even more if you get rid of cable completely).

2. Bring a lunch to work, or eat out less. This doesn't mean you need to be cheap with your wife or sweetie pie, but if you find yourself eating out almost every day (I know many people who do), try to minimize that. This can save some people anywhere from $200 to $400 or more a month. Just try to eat normal meals in and save the going out for the special times.

3. If you have any bad habits like smoking, try quitting. Not only will this improve your health, but you could save anywhere from $150 to over $300 a month -- plus your wife will stop nagging you to quit.

4. If you really need a cell phone (completely understandable), try to keep the minutes in check and try to get rid of any of the extra features that you pay for by never use. Doing this can save anywhere from $10 to several hundred a month.

5. Try to set a budget for yourself as far as shopping goes. Doesn't matter if you're shopping for clothes, food, or whatever else. You don't need many of these things, and you should try to limit your spending here. If you set a fair limit, you're still able to get those new clothes and the like, and you probably won't miss too much (but you'll save anywhere from $100 to $500 a month).

6. For your entertainment, try to sometimes think of cheaper alternatives. There are plenty of cheap to free things that can be just as much fun and cost a lot less. Instead of dropping $50 to $100 on a night out, try to budget yourself to keep it under $30 or so -- and limit the number of times you go out.

7. Try off brands. Doesn't matter if its food or other products. Many off brands not only taste the same or better, but they often are either a better quality or have much more quantity to them.

8. Here's a big one ... try to limit your credit cards! Just because you can get a credit card to purchase that $3,000 tv doesn't mean that you should. The interest rates alone on these can you a bundle. A $3,000 tv can all of a sudden turn into a $6,000 tv over time. Limiting yourself here will not only directly save you money, but not having those high interest rates will save you hundreds to thousands more.

9. Look into some used things instead of buying everything new. Some used cars can be great deals, and they can be much more within your budget. Looking for a new tv or stereo system? Try checking out the classifieds first. This doesn't mean you have to buy crap -- look for high quality used items.

10. And finally, don't buy anything that you can't afford. If you can't afford that new tv or car, don't try. This will send you into a world of never-ending debt and make it nearly impossible for you to get out of.

11. If you are in debt, try to negotiate with your creditors. Often times, you can negotiate your debt down to 50% or less. I know a person who was able to pay off a ton of debt and did so with only paying 40% of what she owed (and her debt was fully paid off). To the creditor, some is better than nothing ... and if they think there's a risk of getting none, they will bargain with you.

12. If you own a home or car that you are still paying off, try to give one extra payment a year. This might not seem like much, but it can save you $100,000 or more on a house in the long run (yes, it's true).

Ultimately, what you do is up to you, but if you follow these tips, you'll find that you'll have a lot more money to play around with. Even doing a few of these things will bring you a decent extra income and probably won't "hurt" you in anyway.

If you are able to do this, you'll have an excellent head start with managing a business.

List Of Techniques/Tips I Use To Make Money Online

I just thought I'd post a short list of techniques/tips/sites that I use to make money one way or another online. Feel free to add any that you use.

1. Team up with bigger, popular sites in related niches but not in competition with won another. This is perhaps the best strategy that I have ever found, and I've been able to do this on a few sites. Basically, try finding a service, product, or content that you can propose to give away for free to visitors of a larger site. If the offer is good enough and it benefits the other website, you can instantly grow your business overnight. For instance, if you deal in health products, try working out something with an exercise site (not direct competition, but VERY related). Look for others who can help you, but make sure that you can help them too.

2. Look into sub-niches. I know some people might disagree with me here, but I've found that if you're goal to make money is in a niche that is extremely competitive and virtually impossible to get search engine rankings for, why not look into sub-niches that should be related to it that are less competitive? Or perhaps find a niche that will need products in your other target niche in time. This way, you can still market what you wanted from the original niche, but have A LOT less competition.

3. When using Adwords, try the same thing -- look for sub-niches that would like the product/service you want, but that cost a lot less for keywords.

4. Another tip with Adwords -- try to get some VERY specific keywords that others not only might not have, but that might increase your profits as well. If your site is selling LCD TVs and if bidding on similar keywords is too expensive, why not try to find specific models (expensive models) and use those keywords? Or try to add keywords that would suggest that someone is looking to spend more money. For instance, the difference between a search for "boat" and "luxury boat" can suggest that one of them is probably looking to spend more. If you do this well, you can not only decrease your Adwords budget, but you can increase your profits at the same time.

5. Have the profitable part of your site stand out and be VERY easy for them to get to and use. I once made some simple changes on a site of mine to allow visitors to use the profitable parts of my site much easier (and make it much more simple and obvious to them). This simple 5 minute fix doubled my profits for that one site.

6. Look for related forums or message boards for your niches. It really depends on the niche, but some niches might only have one or two forums without many people giving advice in them. If you give some useful advice, you could easily gain a ton of traffic and sales from this. One BIG tip here is that if a forum pops up in the search engines for a keyword that is popular in your niche, you can post a few times there and know that you'll be noticed by tons. It's almost like getting your own site ranked high.

7. Yahoo Answers -- try to use this to look for leads for your sites or businesses. For instance, if you are a website designer and someone asks the question "does anyone know of a cheap website designer for under $300?," you can jump on that and say "hello, I'm Suzzy and here's my site, here are some examples, etc." If they're asking specifically for things like that, they shouldn't consider it spam if you suggest yourself. Or if a question is asked about your niche in general, you can try to give them a helpful answer and maybe say that they can find more information on your site too. The best part is that these questions and answers can stay there for a long time, so you can continue to get traffic from it for a long time.

8. Submit a few select articles to larger sites that wouldn't normally take an article from you unless you submitted it directly to them. For instance, About.com is a good place for this. Many niches will accept articles if you try to get yours posted there, and they can send a ton of traffic your way sometimes.

9. Try to stand out from your competitors by offering something that they don't, or by offering something better. You can do this by offering unique content or by giving away something for free that they charge for. There are plenty of ways to monetize your site -- giving away something for free can be great to get the attention you need.

10. Free or cheap classifieds online or offline. Try Craigslist.com or USFreeAds.com for free postings. You can also look into classifieds in offline newspapers if you think your niche is relevant enough. Some large papers often might only charge $15 or so for a classified.

11. Find multiple ways to monetize your site, but don't lose focus on your most powerful way.

12. Get creative and constantly test -- always try to think of new ways and find ways to improve upon your product, site, service, etc. There's always a way to improve upon your results.

13. Post cheap guides in Ebay if you think they can be used for leads to bigger products of yours. You can even gain traffic to your site this way.

14. Be as nice as possible to your customers -- even if they don't give you a dime -- and overdeliver. Visitors are sometimes afraid to contact you thinking that you could care less about them. Take a few minutes to write back to the ones who contact you and go out of your way to help them. You can mysteriously gain extra customers this way (not only from them but from their friends and others).

15. Don't try to make a quick buck anyway possible. Don't throw affiliate links all over with no other value.

16. Don't ... I repeat DON'T ... use adsense on an important sales page of yours. The last thing you want to do is advertise your competitors next to your "buy now" button. When that happens, you're basically selling your customer for a few pennies and possibly losing out on a much bigger sale. I see people do this ALL the time, especially new people starting out.

17. Think of needs that are out there -- either your own or others -- and look for ways of solving them either via a new product of yours or information. If you need help, try to get others on board who can help and who you can trust. If you're having troubles finding something or solving a problem, I bet others are too. Always be on the lookout for new ideas.

18. Don't be afraid to go in another direction from others. Often times, you might find that the road less traveled is the road to more wealth. Just be creative and put some thought into your site/product.

19. Keep in contact with your customers with mailing lists, but don't bother them to the point that they leave you. Offer them value for staying on your list, as they can be worth a lot to you.

20. Don't view something that isn't a success right away as a failure -- view it as something you need to improve upon. Very few people are a success the first time they try overnight.

21. Get your hands dirty! Start on something, anything! Even if you know nothing, try to start a site, blog, etc. so you can learn at least something even if you don't make a dime. A $5/month hosting plan for a site to play around with probably won't kill your budget, and it can be a great way to get a good start.



#### Well, that about does it for the strategies/techniques that I use on most of my sites. Below are a few things that I've been testing out for the heck of it but haven't played around with enough to say that they are great. ####



1. Look for other products out there that people might do searches for reviews for. Then do blog/website titles that say "product B review" and so forth, and then have an affiliate link built into it. I did this one time unintentionally and started seeing a few affiliate sales after I popped up on the search engine results. Try to think of other ways that people would do research on products that you can be an affiliate for and target those keywords. Again, I haven't done this a lot, but I have gotten a small amount of extra money this way by accident.

2. Submit articles to revenue sharing article directories. I'm not a huge fan of article directories (I prefer to build up content on my own sites, but I know others use directories with success), but I have noticed that revenue sharing directories do pull in a little money. Even if you don't link it up to a website, you can still pull in some money. Just for fun, I'm currently tracking a bunch of articles over the course of a month or two to see how well they do there.



Now this is a long post. I'm sure I maybe left out a few things, but that's most of what I follow and found to work. If you have anything else to add, feel free to do so! If you think a specific strategy might not work for you or others, feel free to post that too -- this is just what I do.

However, I can't stress the #1 post enough -- team up with larger sites that aren't in direct competition. That has perhaps helped me the most.

Half off hosting fees at 1and1hosting

I normally don't make such announcements here, but 1and1hosting just announced a 50% off deal on their hosting packages for 6 months. I have a hosting plan with them and I'm very satisfied (even at the full price). They are by far one of the most competitively priced hosts out there, and they are very well known.

On top of that, all of their packages come with at least one free domain name (even the $1.50/month plan -- the $2.50 includes 2 free domain names) -- year after year instead of just free domains for the first year like many other hosts. They also offer unlimited domain name hosting on their packages. That means that if you run 10 websites, you still only pay the one total fee of $1.50 or $2.50 (or higher depending on your selection).

They also come with free Adwords, AdCenter, and Citysearch pay-per-click vouchers. The cheapest $1.50 package has $100 in free credits. Even after the first 6 months, returning to the normal prices of $2.99, $4.99, etc. is still VERY cheap.

I'd highly recommend their 1&1 Home or Business packages (now $2.50 and $5, when they were $5 and $10 before). The Home package comes with two free domain names, $100 PPC vouchers, 100 GB web space, 1,000 e-mail accounts, 1,000 GB traffic, etc. The Business package comes with 3 free domain names, 200 GB web space, 2,000 e-mail accounts, and 2,000 GB traffic.

Both of these are more than you'll probably ever need, but there are larger packages as well. Many of the packages also come with a free software bundle containing Adobe Golive and other website editing software. I also like how they have a built-in no html needed html website editor and flash editor (ANYONE can make a website with this).

Again, I don't normally post such offers, but I know that several people would be very interested in this as it's a very cheap way to start a business online or have some fun.

So check out 1and1hosting to see for yourself. I use them myself and would never recommend something I couldn't completely vouch for.

How Yahoo Answers Can Make You Money!

Yahoo Answers is a very neat tool by Yahoo where users can post questions that others can answer for them. You can both ask and reply to questions for free. It's very easy to search current and past questions to not only see what the best responses were, but also to answer any questions that you might know the answer to.

I'm sure some of you are thinking right now, "Cool Brian, but what the heck does this have to do with making money online!?" In response to that, I say EVERYTHING! If you can't see the power in this, let me explain with an example:

Suzzy is looking for a cheap website designer, so she posts a question asking for any leads as to where she can find one for under $300. Meanwhile, Tom is trying to train his new puppy and asks a question about what the best way to do so is, or if there are any good guides out there.

Well, let's say that you are a website designer, or perhaps you run a website in the dog training niche. Ding dong! You just got yourself a great free lead. They are looking for the very thing that you are selling!

You can easily reply to the website question and say, "hello, I'm Sam and here is my site with a couple examples of other sites I've worked on -- I charge xx amount of money and could definitely get you a nice site if you are interested." Or in reply to the dog question, you could say, "hello, I'm Stephanie and I run mydogtrainingwebsite.com and can tell you that the best way to do this would be to do that because of x, y, and z. You can also see my new guide here if you're interested."

With both of those, you can post an e-mail or website address for them to check out. As long as you don't make it look like spam and provide helpful information in response to their question, you stand a good chance of gaining not just that person as a possible customer, but potentially several others who search for answers to the same questions.

All of a sudden in less than a few minutes of your time, you could have just gained a few new customers, as well as several new future ones too. This can be applied to virtually any niche out there. Just be creative and as helpful as possible!

Check out Yahoo Answers now to see if you can accelerate your business today!

The TRUTH About Internet Marketing

Some of you might love this post, whereas others might hate it. Either way, it will certainly create some interesting discussions. I hope to point out a few things that might be eye openers to you.

The internet allows people to make thousands virtually overnight. Stars can rise and fall virtually overnight as well. Unless you're complete new to internet marketing (or IM), you've probably seen the standard sales pages, the claims of being marketing gurus, etc. You've also probably been disappointed with several guides that promised to make millions, while others have found hidden gems sporadically amongst the pile of crap.

You've probably seen the sites with "rich" guys with their fancy parked cars in front of mansions. You've probably seen pictures of checks, beautiful women in bikinis, and so forth. If you've ever bought any of the guides that were from such sites, I bet that at least a good portion of those you were disappointed in.

But wait? Why did it not work for you when you read pages of great testimony from others? Others made thousands overnight whereas you only lost money. How could that happen.

Well, there are a few reasons. First, the testimonies could easily be fake. On top of that, the pictures, cars, girls, checks, etc. could all be made up as well. I can't tell you how many pictures I see of mansions where it's just a plain old mansion that anyone could just get by doing a search online and stealing a picture. One site even had a guy who said that his not featured in the pictures because he was busy being on vacation on some island. Do people actually believe this? YES, because they want to believe it.

Other reasons could be that the testimonies are swapped amongst other marketers. Have you ever noticed how some sites have testimony from the same people (other marketers)? Have you actually clicked on any of the provided links? Can you see testimony from the current owner of the site you were on present on the site where his testimony came from? Are you catching on yet?

There are marketers out there who do make fortunes feeding off of you, and some of them do team up to all profit from you. They will not only promote their own guides, but they'll use their resources to promote their friends' guides as well. They often do make hundreds of thousands of dollars using the very technique that they tell you to do, but it's only because they already have established relationships, huge mailing lists, etc.

Don't get me wrong, there are TONS of great, ethical marketers out there, but you do have to be careful. And it's not just in the "make money online" niche. I've been involved with several niches online, and many of them have competitors willing to do and say anything to stand out among their competition.

This doesn't mean that you can't trust anyone -- it just means that you do have to be safe and smart about what you spend your money and resources on. Some people often can't see the most obvious of things.

Remember those websites I was discussing earlier with the pictures of mansions, cars, babes, etc.? Well, how many of those guides gave only a few tips and then talked about how you could make money just by promoting their guide (for a cut of the profits)? Doesn't that sound fishy to you? A guide about reselling their own guide to help them? Yet you pay for it. Why? Because you want to believe it.

It's almost embedded in some of your minds that if you don't see pictures of mansions, babes, checks, cars, etc. that the website is fake. Does this make sense to you? Probably not until I pointed it out, right? You get so used to this that this is the norm for you. If you see anything different, your red flags go off, right? I hope that many of you have realized this and can point out a scam from the real deal.

I've known some internet marketers who aren't gurus, don't make hundreds of thousands of dollars, and definitely don't have fancy websites. But guess what? Many of them have awesome products, guides, and services. I remember reading one guide that was only a few bucks that explained a great deal about something that I could use to my advantage. This $5 guide was worth more than most of the $200 guides out there.

Oddly enough, the lady who wrote this guide wasn't famous, didn't have a mansion, and only made a moderate amount of money online. Yet would you buy from her? Maybe, but I bet that many of you would be more willing to throw your money at a fancy website with fake pictures of checks and babes in bikinis.

There are plenty of good internet marketers out there, but I encourage you to pay attention to non-gurus and gurus alike. Most gurus are already making tons of money in ways that would be extremely hard for you to accomplish if you just followed their guides. Non-gurus aren't necessarily making millions, but they may have been in your exact same shoes before and know what they did to be a success. Listen to them!

Also, don't just play follow the leader and go into whatever everyone else is going into just because a "guru" said so. The truth is that even though some of the popular techniques out there can make SOME people lots of money, it definitely doesn't work for everyone.

Often times, the road less traveled is the road to more profits. The basic skills you can get online for free or very cheap. Other than that, you often times just need to get creative and maybe pick up on a few pieces of advice from cheaper guides out there.

Personally, I came to my success without relying on a single guide out there. I essentially self-taught myself everything. It was hard at first, and I wasn't making much, but once I realized the needs that existed out there, I was able to realize how I could be creative with making money there. I have NEVER looked back because that's how easy it really is.

Success stories can be inside anyone -- even you. Don't do whatever a guru is saying just because he makes money. Look around you and see what you think is needed out there and what you can realistically do.

Most importantly, don't fall into some marketers' traps of making you feel scammed as being "acceptable." Don't ever think that those photo-cropped, fake websites are the only ones that contain useful information.

Look inside yourself and others around you (both online and offline). Perhaps the answers to your success and wealth might be glaring right back at you waiting for you to seize the opportunity.

See a need? Fill it! Make money.

Lots of people ask me how they can make thousands online (some even ask how to make millions). The truth is that making money online, even though it DOES require work, isn't as hard as most people think. If you look at the world around you, I bet you can pick up on several problems that could need fixing. At the very least, you can probably see several things that could be made easier.

Having a hard time finding helpful advice or a solution to a problem or question you have? If it's really that hard, I bet that others are having a hard time finding the answer as well. Instead of just thinking "that sucks," you should be thinking "this is great!" Why? Easy! Because if other people are also searching for what you need, that opens up a whole new opportunity for you.

My best products have been ones that are solutions to problems that I've personally needed a solution to. Creating a product out of the solution is beneficial to me in two ways. First, it has the potential of making a lot of sales and filling the needs of a select group of people. This makes them happy and brings me money as well. But the second reason is perhaps the most important -- even if it fails miserably, I still view it as a success because it will help me!

A business partner and I are working on a huge project that we should be done with in the first few months of 2007. Both of us see a huge need for this (I know I personally need it) and a HUGE market for it. We're both quite confidant that this could easily make hundreds of thousands of dollars if we market it right ... possibly even millions once it catches on. However, even if it fails, we still win! Why? Because we have a need for it and it will help us make more money either way! It doesn't get much better than that.

If you don't believe me how powerful and easy this can be, I'll mention a brief example of a company making millions to billions of dollars from a simple idea. It was long known that as men get older, they have a few problems getting ... something ... up. We all know that, even though the problem wasn't out there as much.

The funny thing is that researchers knew why men couldn't get it up, but it took someone awhile to think "gee, if I can make a drug and market it to solve that problem, I could be rich!" Eventually, a company thought of that and marketed a drug known as Viagra. Not only did they sell the drug, but they spread the problem (and the solution) all over until you saw it all over -- on the TV, in newspapers, etc.

Even though you might not be able to make a drug, the point is that the solution to this problem was widely known. It wasn't rocket science! It just took someone a little while to actually go about it and fully realize how profitable it could really be.

Internet marketing is the same way. Think of your problems, or problems other people might have, and then try to see if you can fix them. Perhaps you can find a way that someone is willing to pay $20, $50, $100, or even $1,000 or more for. That's how you become rich!

www.iwantpennies.com Review

I'm sure that several of you are aware of our product at www.iwantpennies.com called "The Big Secret." I just wanted to update many of you with some early reviews of it. Everything seems to be going great!

I just heard from one individual that he made about $500 from it in about two weeks. That seems like a lot, doesn't it? Well, guess what? He asked me to review his site and his technique that he was using based upon "The Big Secret." I thought that he did an "okay" job but that he could easily make some changes that could potentially double his sales if not more. He actually missed one or two key points in the guide, yet he still profited greatly from it. On top of that, he was only using this technique for one small part of his site -- I thought that he could multiply is profits many times over by expanding upon the technique that he already used.

This just shows how powerful and easy "The Big Secret" can be regardless if you're a newcomer or an experienced internet marketer. I know others have also made more using this technique as well.

I believe that it's the only product out there that can truly make money easily online regardless of your experience level. I know others have tried the usual guides to find no success with them, but I encourage you to give this one a try. I think you'll find it pleasantly different than any other technique out there.

The big internet marketing gurus are not too happy with how this guide is competing with their long-standing guides that often simply just don't work. I've gotten attacked before, attempts have been made to take down classifieds, and it appears that one guru even tried to hack my website (he appeared to be trying to ruin the search engine rankings of my site, as I traced the problem back to a site that happened to be owned by a very well respected guru). Some people will do anything to try to kill the competition.

But here's how I see it: I actually use my technique to make money online outside of the internet marketing and "how to make money online" niche, so I know that it works. Not many techniques in guides out there are actually used by the people selling them (at least not as their main source of income). Even if I don't make a single sale (I'm actually selling quite a lot), I'm still profiting from it!

If you're hesitating on purchasing the guide, I encourage you to try it out and take my challenge: compare the results that my guide brings you to any other guide out there. I'll give you free one-on-one consultations until you succeed at it. I've offered to fund an independent comparison of my guide to others, but so far none of the gurus have accepted my offer. But my challenge to you is that if my guide doesn't bring you any results after a month, or if you think it doesn't work better than any other guide out there, simply ask for a refund and I'd be happy to give it to you.

Check out www.iwantpennies.com to purchase your copy of "The Big Secret" and learn how I make thousands off of a simple technique that virtually anyone can copy without creating any competition.