I knew that was good advice. The problem was, my mind was spinning with dozens and dozens of niches that I believed had potential. The truth is, you can choose any niche and make money from it. Sure, some niches will be more profitable than others. Some niches will have more competition than others. Some will simply interest you more than others. But the bottom line is this… one niche is all you need to make money on the internet.

I learned this the hard way. When I first started experimenting with internet marketing, I chose a somewhat competitive niche, but was making money fairly quickly. Since most of the advice I had received said, “Rinse and repeat,” I decided to venture into another niche. I invested some time and energy into that second niche and soon began making money in that one as well. “Rinse and repeat” again. Third niche = third income stream.

But not long after the third niche was starting to gather momentum, I noticed my first and second niches were starting to fade a little. Suddenly, I found myself doing three times the work, and only seeing minimal results compared to what I was getting by focusing on the first niche alone.

Of course, I could have decided to outsource some of the work i was doing, but since I was still learning the business, I didn’t feel completely comfortable with that tactic yet.

Eventually, I learned how to work smarter, not harder, and refocused my efforts on my original niche. The amazing thing is, the more time I spend thinking about this original niche, the more money-making methods I think of… all in the same niche.

Obviously, other internet marketers will have a different view of niche marketing, but I wanted to share what has worked for me. And thankfully, it’s only getting better and better.

My advice… Choose a niche and stick with it. Eventually, you’ll figure out how to make money with it.

About a month ago, I received a call that my company was going out of business. I wish I could say that I decided to not look for a new job and focus full-time on my internet marketing efforts, but that wasn’t realistic. Instead, I poured everything I had into finding a new job. Thankfully, I was able to get a great new job with just a short lapse in work time.

That short lapse in work time was filled with the extra money I’m making from my internet marketing efforts. As some of you know, my earnings have gradually increased and I’m now making about $1,200 each month with very minimal effort. Actually, I didn’t do anything for the past several weeks as I settled into my new full-time job, but my internet marketing earnings continued to accumulate.

Anyway, thanks for checking in. Stay tuned for more updates. I’m currently working on a new membership site called WordPressMoneyMaker.com. The purpose of the site, obviously, is to teach people how to make money with a WordPress blog. As of today, there’s nothing there to look at, but I have big plans for it. I’m dedicated to helping others like me earn some extra cash with Internet Marketing, specifically using WordPress.

Take care!

I’ve been asked numerous times lately what I use for a ping list. Here is my current ping list. If you have any to add, or if you see any that are outdated, please leave a comment

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/
http://rpc.wpkeys.com
http://rpc.britblog.com
http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx
http://ping.fakapster.com/rpc
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

If there is one thing I’ve learned from all of my studying and IM efforts, it’s this…

YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING! YOU are the most important tool in your internet marketing business, and if YOU don’t do something to make your business grow, it’s not going to grow. You can read every ebook and watch every video and visit every internet marketing forum in the world, but if you don’t DO SOMETHING, your IM business will be exactly where it is today.

One of my blogs is an experiment with generating adsense revenue. There are no other sources of income on that site. If I notice that my adsense income from that site is not increasing, there must be a reason. Am I still working on driving traffic? Am I still creating fresh content? How much attention have I given to SEO (Search Engine Optimization)? Do I need to DO SOMETHING about any of those things?

Another area I’m experimenting in is with Adwords. I have a steady stream of income each day from my adwords campaigns. I’m making way more than I’m spending, but am I satisfied with those results or do I want better results? Can I make my ads better? Should my landing pages be modified? Are there other keywords I should be using? Are there other campaigns which would perform better? Do I need to DO SOMETHING about my Adwords income?

I have a list of ideas with about 200 internet marketing techniques I could do today. I make it a goal to DO SOMETHING on that list every day. Some of those techniques are very basic. Others are complex and will take time to complete. If I work on at least one of those items every day, I can feel confident that my IM business is making progress because I’m utilizing the best tool my business has… ME!

I’ve seen gradual progress with my Internet Marketing efforts. I’m really committed to learning how to make money online. Here’s a brief recap of the last several months since I started in Internet Marketing.

Month 1 - I made about $8.
Month 2 - I made about $50.
Month 3 - About $350.
Month 4 - About $600.
This month - I’m averaging about $75 per day.
Today - I MADE $4,500.

The method is basically this… I’m advertising some products which have the potential for a high sale amount. Someone clicked on my Adwords ad, came to one of my sites, then followed through to the site I’m promoting. Since I linked to the products page with my affiliate link, I received a commission of the sale. My commission is a little over $4,500.

I’m really just posting today because I want everyone to know that it really is possible to make money through internet marketing - and obviously with PPC advertising. I realize a $4,500 day is not typical for me, but I’m hoping that I will someday have $4,500 days every day.

Stay tuned for more progress, and sign up to my mailing list if you want to be informed when I’ve figured out some new techniques.

Before I go too far, let’s talk about the Wordpress program itself. Wordpress is an open source, publicly created program which is free for the whole world to use. It is written entirely in PHP and runs off of a MySQL database. If you don’t know what that means, it’s no big deal. You don’t need to know PHP or MySQL to have a fully-functioning Wordpress blog on your website.

The easiest way, by far, to set up Wordpress on your own domain is to use cPanel with Fantastico. This combination of web-host software makes installing Wordpress a breeze. I strongly recommend that you purchase web hosting from a hosting service which has cPanel with Fantastico. Hostgator is my favorite web hosting service because they have everything I need and very good service..

To install Wordpress from cPanel with Fantastico, follow these steps:

1. Login to cPanel at your website (usually www.yourdomain.com/cpanel).
2. Find the icon that says, “Fantastico” and click on it.
3. On the left side, click the Wordpress link.
4. From the Wordpress panel, click “New Installation”
5. Choose which domain you’re installing Wordpress onto.
6. If you’re installing your blog into a different directory than your root directory, enter a directory name. If the Wordpress blog will be powering the entire site, leave the directory blank.
7. Enter your Admin username and password. This is the username and password you will use to login to the blog’s wp-admin section to make any changes.
8. Enter your admin nickname (this will show up in your posts and comments)
9. Enter the admin email address which will be used to contact you as the administrator. Make sure this email address actually exists. I always create a separate admin email address for my blog such as wpadmin@mydomain.com
10. Enter the site name and description. This is what will initially show up in the header of your blog.
11. Enter your email account information. This will also be used if you will be posting to your blog via email. You will need your POP/SMTP server name (usually mail.mydomain.com), username, and password.
12. Press “Install Wordpress”
13. Next you’ll see an overview screen showing you that you are about to create a MySQL database, username, etc. Press “Finish Installation” to continue.
14. Finally, you see the summary screen telling you that the Wordpress blog was installed. Make a not of the directory location, username, password, etc.
15. You’re finished.

If you do not have cPanel / Fantastico, you can visit http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress for step-by-step guide to installing Wordpress from scratch.

To start using your blog, go to www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin and login with the username and password you setup during installation.

My next article will focus on the important steps you should take to tweak your blog for best money-making potential. Stay tuned…

For starters, it’s helpful to know basic HTML. It’s not completely necessary, but having a basic understanding of HTML will make your life so much easier when building your site.

I’ve been making websites for years, so I have a very thorough understanding of HTML. I also have an understanding of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), which is the standard for giving your web pages proper formatting. If you’re serious about starting your own website, I strongly recommend spending a few hours (at least) getting to know the basics of HTML and CSS.

I’ll recommend 3 websites for learning HTML and CSS. Each of the following has step by step tutorials:

• www.html.net
• www.w3schools.net
• www.htmldog.com

With that being said, it is possible to create a website with no HTML or CSS knowledge at all. As a matter of fact, the page you are reading now was created without typing one bit of HTML or CSS code. Even though I have a thorough understanding of these programming techniques, I would prefer not to have to type the actual code if I don’t have to.

So how do you make a website without knowing code? There are a few ways, but I strongly recommend using Wordpress. Wordpress is a blogging platform which is available free for anyone to use. Actually, you can go to www.wordpress.com and set up your own blog right now. You don’t even need to buy a domain name or pay for web hosting. Anyone can start a Wordpress blog, or numerous Wordpress blogs, without ever paying a penny.

However, for your money-making site, you will want to buy your own domain name and web-hosting service. The free blogs are hosted at the Wordpress domain, and you don’t have nearly as much control or as many options as you do on your own domain. See my previous articles on purchasing a domain name and choosing the best web hosting service.

But if you’re looking to experiment, go open a Wordpress account and start a blog just for kicks.

Again, if you’re looking for the easiest, quickest way to get a website up and running with the power to optimize and modify your site to fit exactly what your needs are, Wordpress is the best. Even though I know how to create my own site from scratch, I’ll probably never do that again. I’m hooked on Wordpress.

Wordpress is fully customizable with hundreds, or thousands, of free themes, and can be extended with thousands of “plugins.” You can make your Wordpress blog as plain, or as fancy, as you want. Your blog can be a single page, or contain thousands of pages. When you add basic HTML and CSS skills to the mix, your Wordpress blog can be compared to any professionally designed website on the internet.

Wordpress blogs can be monetized with ease. That’s right… to make money (monetize) your blog, all you need to do is install a few plugins, copy and paste some basic code, and your blog has the potential to make money immediately.

Even more importantly, if you want to make money from your website, you need to let the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) know that your website is there, and let them know when you have new content to be indexed. By design, Wordpress is ideal for getting your site broadcast over the web.

With each of my Wordpress blogs, my sites have been listed in the search engines within 2 or 3 days after launch. This site, InternetMarketingLegacy.com, has only been online for about a week, and it’s fully indexed with the major search engines. And the search engine spiders are coming back every day to check for new content. That’s fast!

After hours upon hours of research for the best Wordpress plugins, I’ve come up with about a dozen that I absolutely can not, and will not, build a blog without. I’m putting that list together in a free report which I’ll be mailing out to my subscribers as soon as I have it ready. If you haven’t subscribed to my site yet, you can sign up on the right side of this page.

I know… there will be people who read this article and say that other platforms are easier to work with than Wordpress. I’ve tried other platforms, such as Blogger (and others), and I’ve settled on Wordpress as my platform of choice.

So how do you install Wordpress on your own website? I’m saving that for my next article. Stay tuned…

First, your web hosting service needs to have a friendly user interface to allow updates and changes to your site. Look for a host that has one-click application installation. For example, a hosting service which offers cPanel makes installing blogs and forums a breeze.

Second, consider your hosting needs. How much traffic are you expecting? How much bandwidth will you need? Do you need a secure server (SSL) to process sales and personal data? Will you be hosting multiple domain names? Is there an extra charge for additional domains to be hosted? How many subdomains can you set up? How many email accounts can you have?

The third thing to consider is pricing. The cheapest web hosting service isn’t always the best web hosting service. You can expect to pay anywhere from $5.99 to $19.99 per month for basic shared hosting. You can usually get a price break if you sign up for an extended time , instead of month-to-month billing. You’ll get into a higher price range if you require a dedicated server, but almost everyone is fine with a shared server until they’re hitting major amounts of traffic.

I’ll be honest… when I registered my first domain I never thought about any of those questions, so I setup my hosting with GoDaddy.com. I found out later that there were some features that I needed which GoDaddy didn’t offer, or they wanted to charge for, while other hosting sites were offering those services for free. GoDaddy is great for purchasing domain names, but I don’t recommend their hosting services (sorry GoDaddy).

After doing a ton of research, I’ve settled on a hosting service that I’ve found to be reliable, easy-to-use, and inexpensive - HostGator.com. I currently use HostGator.com for all of my websites. I’ve received excellent customer service (phone and online chat). My websites have never gone down.

The other hosting service that I will recommend is 1and1.com. I’ve had conversations with several internet marketers lately, and they’ve convinced me to give them a try. As of today, they’re less expensive than HostGator, and they’re offering 3 free domains if you purchase hosting and 3 months free. That’s a great deal! I’ve looked at their web interface, and it looks very nice.

The bottom line… compare HostGator.com and 1and1.com, then decide for yourself. There’s no need to look anywhere else. Just choose one of those 2 and get your website up and running ASAP.

My next article will focus on choosing the best website format. Should you use a blog? A standard HTML site? If you’re looking to make money from your website, I’ll show you the easiest way. Stay tuned (or subscribe to my site for updates).

There are several things to consider when purchasing a domain. First, is the company stable and reliable? Second, how user-friendly is their website? Third, is the pricing competitive? Fourth, what happens when it’s time to renew your domain? Will it be renewed automatically, and how much will the price change at renewal?

What happens when you purchase a domain name. First, your domain is registered with ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers). This basically puts your domain name in a database to make sure nobody else has the domain name. Second, your domain is listed in the domain registrar’s DNS (Domain Name Server). Third, the DNS server communicates with other DNS servers to tell them where to find your website. They say it can take up to 24 hours for the DNS servers to populate your new domain name around the globe, but my domains have all been up and running withing less than 1 hour.

There are dozens and dozens of companies which sell domain names. I’ve only used two, and those are the two I’ll recommend to you - GoDaddy.com and 1 and 1 Internet.

GoDaddy.com is probably the most well-known domain registrar. This is who I’ve used with most of my domains and I’ve never had a problem. Some internet marketers report having some problems with GoDaddy, but the large majority of the people I’ve asked about domain registration have told me that GoDaddy is quite reputable and reliable. That’s good enough for me. 1&1 Internet comes highly recommended from other Internet Marketers, so I’ve registered a domain or 2 with them also. 1&1 sometimes has lower prices, but you’ll get great service with both companies.

Registering your domain is just the beginning of creating your new website. Next, you need to decide on a hosting company - the company which will actually house the files of your website and serve them out to the internet. I used to use GoDaddy.com for hosting, but not any more. Find out which hosting companies I recommend in my next article.

The Internet Marketer

It’s preferred to have a memorable, easy to spell domain name. There are differing opinions on this. Some people say that the domain name doesn’t matter, and the content of the pages within the domain will carry more weight. Others say that having the topic or main keyword of your website within the domain name is critical.

For example, if your website will focus on purple monkeys, purplemonkeys.com, or purple-monkeys.com, would be a logical domain name. It’s easy to remember, easy to spell, and it explains what your site is about. On the other hand, there are thousands upon thousands of sites with domain names that make no sense, and they consistently get tons of traffic (ever heard of Google?).

The vast majority of SEO (Search Engine Optmization) experts say that it’s best to have the main keyword of your website in the domain name. Here’s the bottom line… if you can choose a domain name that has a logical meaning to someone who reads it (especially the search engines), then go with that.

Your website’s real traffic will come from getting the search engines to recognize that the content of your site is relevant and valuable. The majority of your traffic will probably come from other sites linking to you, not from people typing your domain name directly. So don’t drive yourself crazy trying to come up with the next Google name. If you have an idea, and the domain name is available, go for it.

I haven’t spent more than 10 minutes researching each of my domain names. My first choice isn’t usually available, but it’s not difficult to find something that will work. So what tools can you use to get suggestions for a domain name? Personally, I like GoDaddy’s suggestion tool the best. Go to GoDaddy.com, type in your domain name of preference, and if it’s available, it will tell you. If it’s not available, GoDaddy will suggest other domain names for you.

One other tip about choosing a domain name… if the name you want is not available, try adding a word or number to the front if it. For example, if purplemonkeys.com is not available, try 1purplemonkeys.com or A1purplemonkeys.com, or A2purplemonkeys.com. It’s a simple way to get the keywords you want in your domain name.

There is also some debate about whether or not dashes in a domain name are good or bad. The pros to having dashes is that it makes the domain name easier to read. For example, thisismywebsitename.com is not as easy to ready as this-is-my-website-name.com. Some people say that the cons of having dashes is that you’ll be penalized by the search engines because ‘dash-filled’ domains are used by spammers around the world. I haven’t seen any evidence to support that, and I’ve read that Google doesn’t penalize against sites that have lots of dashes, so I’m not worried about it. Dahes can be beneficial if you have a website called OJ-is-guilty-and-I-have-proof.com. In my opinion, dashes are fine.

What about the domain extension? Which domain extension is best? Is .com better than .net or .org or .info? Again, opinions vary on this, but most people believe that the search engines place more value on .com, .net, and .org domains. You can get .info domain name for as low as 99 cents now. I have 1 domain with a .info extension, and I get just as much traffic on that domain as I do on my .com domains. Some people might tell you that .info domains are useless, but my experience tells me otherwise. In my opinion, you should try for .com first, then .net, then .org, then. info. After that, it doesn’t really matter.

How about subdomains? Are subdomains alright? What is a subdomain? A subdomain is kind of like a prefix to a domain name. My .info domain has several subdomains which basically act as entirely different websites. For example, if your main domain name is lots-of-good-stuff.com, you could have subdomains such as buy.lots-of-good-stuff.com, sell.lots-of-good-stuff.com, etc.

Subdomains are good for several reasons. First, a subdomain lets you expand the scope of your site with memorable, explanatory domain names. Second, if you have a more generic domain name such as squidlydoo.com, you could have subdomains that tell the visitor what the domain is about such as football.squidlydoo.com, soccer.squidlydoo.com, baseball.squidlydoo.com, etc.

If you absolutely, positively must have a specific domain, and it’s already taken, you may be able to purchase that domain at a domain auction or resale service. There are companies that do nothing but buy good domain names and resell them for a profit. The prices can go from a few hundred dollars to many thousands. But unless you are convinced that you must have that domain name, I suggest being a little creative and  getting an inexpensive domain name and making that work.

Finally, do a little research to make sure that the domain you’re purchasing doesn’t have a negative history attached to it. If the domain name you want has been used by a spammer in the past, chances are Google and the other search engines might have that domain “blacklisted” and won’t list it in search results.

I hope you’ve learned enough to go out and buy a domain name. My next article will give you my recommendations for the best sites to purchase a domain.

The Internet Marketer