Mike Filsaime is running a promotion at present using franchising as an analogy. This lead me to research the franchise stats as a 95% success rate is often bandied about – it is of course false to some extent.

Franchise owners often get a small business loan to launch so the stats of failure are easy to find. The true number of franchisees defaulting is around 50% roughly the same as a regular business.

Don’t despair though because some franchises have an outstanding record EG: Subway with a roughly 95% success rate. There are many top franchises with outstanding success rates.

When you take into account that the stats are only for those who have taken out a loan and consider that the vast number of businesses and ventures on or off line often are bootstraps then it becomes clear that yes franchises do succeed more often.

Apart from the seed capital whats the difference ?

1. Marketing and branding

2. Customer Support

3. Mentoring & Training

4. Protected Territory

The franchisees pay a premium for all of this – often many thousands of dollars. But look at whats available to you on line.

What are the top brands online ? Google, Facebook, Twitter, Ebay, Amazon etc just go to alexa.com and browse the top 500 list for all of them.

These top brands offer you a complete franchise – riding upon their success for nothing. There is one catch and that is there is no protected territory.

You get API’s, Affiliate programs, Training and mentoring, The full franchise shebang at zero cost.

This is how these companies succeeded because they know that franchising works. They have essentially franchised them selves to entrepreneurs and developers for free.

So the only problem is that there are not protected territories but as technology is in an expansion phase (when isn’t it ?) you can work around that by channeling into mobile and emerging markets.

Franchising does work – on line its free.

All 2011 I have devoted to web programming. This year I learned XHTML and CSS, Javascript, PHP, Ajax, Json, HTML5, CSS3, Jquery, mobile web apps and next MVC frameworks and web 2.0 mashups. So yep by the end of the year I will be a full fledged modern web developer. My tech background is electronics so I already knew C & C++ and a bunch of other hi tech geeky stuff. Next year I will be moving up to more corparate JAVA, ASP and a little C#.

Mostly I will focus on JAVA and javascript related web technologies while sharpening my C++ and hardware relatred skill set also. Anyway at some point soon I will set up a development firm and get into managing my own software operations.

Lets say you spend a year writing a book on cat grooming and training (my subject was different). You set it up on e-junkie or clickbank or what ever and just start selling the damn thing without a proper launch.

Notice its an evergreen market there by the way.

Well your sales will depend upon SEO and the conversion rate of the page basically as unless you have a great upsell most PPC etc will break even at best.

SO lets say you are selling 1-2 copies a week at $50 – which I am off my book with zero promotion or even SEO.

Soooo how about segmenting the market ?

Get 50 articles on training persian cats, tabby cats, how to groom your siamese cat etc – ask for them to be written as book introductions rather than web articles.

Now get a bunch of relevant pictures for each book and presto – for the work of a single book you have 50 books and 50x the income.

$50 – $100 a week is amusing but ain’t liberating –> $2500 – $5000 a week for doing absolutely nothing is GREAT!!!

Then ramp it up further – convert the original book from cats to dogs, horses etc, on and on you go, publish them on createspace etc too. Try making 2-3 websites selling each product.

Just a simple strategy that can take you from a small income to being totally free.

I decided to focus on the “winner” sites.

I uploaded content yesterday to one of those sites (not youtube) with a very clear link to my site – better than any article signature.

I used four keyword phrases and today I am front page on Google for all of them including the main phrase.

Even better – thats all I have done so far, no social bookmarking or link building at all yet.

So that is what I will do next and see it I can get up the serp list. This is great and so much easier than article submission.

WINNERS:

wikihow.com
answers.yahoo.com
ehow.com
howstuffworks.com
huffingtonpost.com
facebook.com
instructables.com

Its important when setting out on a project to get the basics correct.

For example lets say you want to throw up a few domains, generate some adsense revenue and flip the sites for cash.

Well for one thing you want high CPC keywords with a good search volume. Then you want to create domain names containing those keywords. Thats the first step in the strategy.

Miss it out and the rest doesn’t matter.

Lets say you want to create an ebook or an info product and sell it on clickbank or e-junkie.

Step one is to find a subject that has abundant enthusiastic JV partners EG: lots of people selling similar products through the same distribution chain. Without JV’s to act as affiliates a product launch is unlikely to be a great success.

You also should consider creating a number of products around a similar theme then bundle them all as an upsell or super product.

This way if an initial launch is a flop you can simply include it as a high value bonus in the bundle. If you get plenty of JV’s you have their traffic.

Isn’t a pain in the ass writing SEO articles that need all of those long tail keywords added into the mix ?

Well heres a little trick…

21 top selling books on making widgets

The 30 top experts on making widgets revealed

47 top widget making authors exposed

Get it ? People search for book titles, experts and authors by name. How easy can it be to whip off an article listing them with a brief blurb on each –> Go For It !!!

I know why newbies fail. I have failed for the same reason. Finally I have seen the light.

I think most that enter the arena of internet marketing will fail. They will try a miriad of techniques and eventually give up. When you attend a marketing seminar in this industry most attendee’s in that seminar will fail.

Its all about attitude. If somebody walked up to you in the street and shoved 10 $100 notes in your hand would you see $1000.00 or would you see a pile of stupid paper ?

Most of us believe we are failures so we see the stupid paper not the $1000.00.

Well all of those failing newbies have the money in their hands and don’t see it. I had the money in my hand for 5 years before I finally saw it.

Please let me explain. Let me shine the light in your eyes.

This industry is all about advertising and nothing else. Its an advertising business. You are now in “Advertising”, congradulations, welcome.

So we are all internet marketers and build websites, write articles, create products and do a thousand other things. Have you ever built a website by hand, from scratch that actually “lost” money ?

Its quite hard to make a site that gets zero traffic and does not cover the $7 domain fee. Personally even as a self percieved failure I had never made a non-profitable website. That was a big clue to me that perhaps I had not actually failed.

Look its really so simple.

Lets say you buy a domain and build a new site, you put adsense and some affiliate adverts. It may be a blog or a static site and you put up some content from some keyword research. We have all done this I believe.

This is the point where attitude percieves success as failure.

Lets hypothesize that the site makes $2 per week in adsense, affiliate sales or whatever. Thats $8 per month or $104 per year.

Now the failiue humunculous in your head will hold up a big sign with bright red writing that says “FAILURE” – he’s in the advertising business too. Then the rational part of your brain will agree with him – why yes it clearly is a failure.

You cant do anything with $2 a week so you have failed. You could work like a slave and build 100 of these and make $200 per week and you will still be a failure. An even bigger failure after all of that work.

OK so lets forget about our failiure humunculous and behave like advertisers. Lets look at the money. LETS LOOK AT THE MONEY !!!

One site, revenure $104 per year from adsense. Adwords cost of same traffic $208. Value of site just in adwords terms is $208.00 in your hand. So contact the people that buy those adwords keywords and sell them the site for $104.

Whats in it for them ? first they eliminate their anual $208 expenditure on the spot, secondly they actually make a $104 profit.

Do You Get It Yet ? Site flipping is the buying and selling of advertising. If you want traffic buy websites !!! If you want money sell websites !!!

Do this and you can not, will not and have not failed.

Welcome to the world of “Online Advertising” – not online failure for dummies.

Oh and by the way we are really talking about multiple millions of dollars here not $2 or even $1000.00 OK so kick some failure humunculous butt, get to work and make some money.

I use freelancer, elance etc

Know about odesk & the Philippine sites.

But all these sites are geared to the employee. They place the bids. They drive “UP” the costs.

Today I discovered micro-outsourcing.

Well kind of coz I have been aware of amazon turk for years but today I found a whole bunch of sites like amazon turk.

www.myeasytask.com

www.mturk.com

www.minijobz.com

www.CloudCrowd.com

www.Shorttask.com

www.Microworkers.com

Basically this is gunna make life much easier. Even if you have a full time VA – they can now use these sites on your behalf.

Its huge.

Everybody in internet marketing heads to clickbank, amazon or ebay.

Google gets hammered with clickbank promotions – people, take a look at Plimus and apply the strategies there.

71,000 products in the database. Commissions are high & many recurring. Every man and his dog is promoting clickbank. My guess is you will have less competition promoting as a Plimus affiliate.

Ive got insomnia tonight, I’m lying in bed thinking…

How to make money, be successful, find a wife, etc…

…And it dawns upon me, thats the whole problem.

It ain’t a question of how – its a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

Positioning. Pure and simple.

So I don’t mean positioning as it is commonly defined in marketing – which is really an abstraction.

You can have a lame product with a crapola sales page but if you are in the right place at the right time – BINGO !!!

Look at all the losers in power in our world, all the idiots common people jealously scorn.
They didn’t get there because they knew how – exactly.

So positioning is the crucial factor – in scoring chicks, in getting a job, in making money – whatever.

In order of significance…

1. Positioning (being in the right place at the right time)

2. Technique – Its not what you sell its the way you sell it (or say it)

3. Targeting – targeting & positioning should not be confused (what you sell to whom)

Most people assume technique is the number one step to success but it isn’t. Your technique can be garbage & you can be a world leader.

Look at Hitler. What an asshole. But he was the most successful man in Germany for many years and nearly became the most successful man in the whole world. Yet his way of doing things was total crapola.

The world is of full of people in positions of power & success who did not get there through talent alone or even at all in many cases.

Technique is the success “amplifier” – not the precursor & without the precursor an amplifier does nothing.

Targeting is selecting the right product for the market. This is not to be confused with positioning because if you get them when they “MUST” buy and even if you don’t apply step 2 – people will buy complete crap.

Targeting is simply the transaction – thats all. Somebody wants a pizza –> somebody buys a pizza or a pie or something. You see how the target can be moved.

Targeting should be seen as “controlling” the transaction.

People buy complete crap all the time – its called politics (snigger).

OK but if you target well thats the icing on the cake.

OK so what, when, where, how do you get to be in the right place at the right time ?

Well, just what is it you want to achieve first ?

Take it from there. Where & when do people “HAVE” to buy stuff ? Refer to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.