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I am surprised by how motivating it is to have a PayPal debit card attached to my PayPal account.

It’s great being able to buy a cup of coffee, or a meal, or gas, with money that comes directly from my passive income streams. Someone in France, the U.K, the U.S or god knows where else - buys a download. Then the money goes automatically into my PayPal account, where I can access it instantly through the debit card.

Previously, I would have to transfer the money to my bank account before having access to it. Somehow the immediacy of the debit card makes the income more real and more emotionally satisfying.

And a brief note about Google Checkout. I mentioned in a previous ecommerce post, that I added Google Checkout as a payment option to my e-junkie shopping cart. I do not have the exact figures in front of me, but there has been a substantial increase in sales. I’d estimate it at 20%.

It’s time to return to a topic from a previous post: Selling online without selling your soul. Why? Because there’s a critical fact people are missing about the anxiety and fear that they sometimes feel when selling and marketing online:

When you get clear about the value of your products and services, both to yourself and to your prospective clients, any so-called “negative” emotions that you had, dissapear.

Notice that there are TWO people involved in what I mention above: 1) You and 2) Someone else. Seem obvious? Obvious isn’t enough.

You can’t focus on one person or the other, you need both. i.e Don’t spend too much of your time convincing yourself how great and wonderful your products are. That’s not enough. The fact that your new whizbang device, emotional clearing technique or internet technique is fascinating to you? Yawn. You truly believe it can change the world? Snore. You know, deep down that it can make a difference? Blah blah blah. No one cares.

You need to ask yourself some questions:

What is the meaning of your product to your customers? What are their concerns? What drives them? And how do those drives related to what you are selling?

If you don’t know the answers to those questions and you start selling and marketing, guess what happens? Well, first off - NO SALES. But for the newbie, other factors come into play - fear, anxiety, insecurity, perhaps some major procrastination and disconnection from what they NEED to do to grow their businesses.

I congratulate them on their fears. Can I congratulate you? They are the basis for having a conscience. Without them you would be screwed: A dead man walking. Have you thanked your fears recently? Seriously. Here you go: “Thank your for those feelings of fear, insecurity and doubt.” Take a deep breath. Feel them some more. They have some important information for you.

But I’m not saying that you should always trust your feelings.

Really. Sometimes you don’t feel like brushing your teeth in the morning, but you do brush them? (I hope). If your toilet breaks tomorrow, you’ll call a plumber even if you don’t feel like it? You pay your mortgage and go to work even on a bad day? Good. Part of being successfull at life is doing things when we “don’t feel like it.”

Brush your teeth and get to work.

Coming up next: Niche Marketing 101: How to laser target your online marketing efforts using your client’s language, values and needs.

Quick Hint: First you have to find out what the people in your niche want. The internet provides an unparalleled opportunity to dive deeply into the mind of your market and find out what people want.

cheers - Ryan

Last week, I mentioned a client who lost her Google Adsense privileges and decided to use Adbrite. After a short week with Adbrite, I can tell you that she is ready to get back to Google ASAP. Adbrite did what it said it would - putting banner ads and text ads on her website that pay per 1000 impressions and per click.

However, they seem to have a limited number of advertisers and they cannot always put relevant ads on her website.

To give you an example, one of my clients’ websites is in the the category of “alternative health.” As of this moment, the ads that adbrite has on her website are 1) Personal Injury Attorney, 2) Buy Property Abroad, 3) Earn Income Now and 4) Massage. The last one, “massage” is potentially relevant, but the actual website to which it goes, is a shopping website that has nothing to do with massage nor alternative health. In short, Adbrite has put 4 ads on her site, none of which is contextually relevant to her content.

Most damning is the income. As a percentage, I would say that for every $100 that she would have earned with Google Adsense, she is earning $15 with Adbrite. That’s a huge decrease.

She is going to get ride of Adbrite, but not completely. One of her websites, a consumer-review of electronics products, seems to be getting a fair return on the Adbrite advertising, so she will keep the ads there.

Take home message? You do the math: Keep Google happy at all costs, and don’t do anything stupid or inadvertent that disables your adsense account! There is an upside if you are an advertiser - You may be able to get advertising at a much cheaper rate than you would get on Google.

I will keep looking for Google Adsense alternatives. Let me know if you see a network worth considering.

cheers - Ryan

Self-Publishers: Sell Your Book on Amazon and Save $$

I just got off the phone with a self-published author who has sold over 1000 copies of her book. She has used a variety of methods to sell her book, including book signings, live presentations and selling oniine through a variety of vendors.

She called me because she was felt like it was costing her too much to sell the book via Amazon. Amazon takes a 55% commission. She also has to send Amazon copies of the book to sell and and has to pay the shipping costs, so her per-book profit ends up being very low. Could I help her sell the book and keep more of the money?

The answer is “yes.” I am setting-up an E-Junkie account for her so that she can sell the book on her own website. She will do the fullfillment on her end. Paypal and Google checkout will take care of collecting the money and customer information and she will take care of the fullfillment, sending the book to her customers.

But Don’t Give Up Amazon

However, I am asking her to keep selling her book on Amazon.

Why?

There are two reasons. First, many people prefer to purchase through Amazon and will not buy directly through her website. I don’t want her to lose those sales. Secondly, and most importantly, she can sell on Amazon and avoid some of the fees. Here’s what she should do:

She can create an listing on Amazon Marketplace to sell her book as an independent bookseller. Her book will be displayed right alongside Amazon’s listing. Amazon takes a much smaller fee on Amazon Marketplace orders. She will pay 14% to sell through Amazon Amazon as opposed to the usual 55% through the main listing service.

Her marketplace listing will appear below the normal Amazon book listing. They will collect the money and send it to her and she will ship the book. In addition, she will have some ways to increase sales by adding some bonuses. For example, she could offer to autograph each book or send an audio CD. Like many self-published authors she probably has slightly damaged, returned or othewise less-than-perfect books. She can sell those through Amazon Marketplace at a slightly reduced price.

I took a few minutes this morning to think about my many “failures” online.

One failure is an audio mp3 series, based on the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education. It is designed to help eliminate back pain. I initially envisioned it as a $97 download that would sell dozens of times per month and create several thousand dollars per month in passive income.

It didn’t sell any copies at $97. In fact, it didn’t sell at $77 or $67. It didn’t sell in any appreciable volume until I had it a $27. Even then, it only sold 5-6 times per month, only making me about $150 per month. A failure, right?

I also used Snaps X Pro to create some video tutorials on how to use E-Junkie. My e-junkie video tutorials, at $19.95 only sell 4-5 times per month, for about $95 per month in sales. However, my e-junkie videos have the added benefit of bringing in a small amount of consulting income. People hire me to help set-up their e-junkie shopping carts and products. Currently, I make about $500 per month from this product and related sales. Another failure?

I put google adsense (advertising) on one of my websites last year. It started bringing in a few dollars here and there. I was intrigued by the idea, so I created 3 new websites specifically for the purposes of putting google adsense on them and gaining a new revenue stream. It took me 3 weeks of consistent work to get the websites up and running. My hope was that each website would produce $5 - $10 per day in advertising revenue and create a revenue stream of $500 - $600 per month. I figured that once it worked, I could start creating new websites, until I created the passive income stream that I wanted.

I overestimated the income. Each website only produced 50¢ to $1 per day in revenue. With the income from my other adsense sites, I get about $125 per month from google in adsense revenue. Failed yet again.

For now, I will skip the details of my other failures - the Amazon affiliate account that only brings in about $10 per month, the E-Junkie affiliate payments that are only $10 - $15 per month. There are others of course, the $7.00 Feldenkrais Breathing sessions that only make me $70 per month. The teleconference calls that I recorded and sell with Bill O’Hanlon…

Overall, my failures bring me aprox. $600 per month of passive income and an additional $2000 per month in consulting income. This does not include my individual coaching client’s and the money I make teaching at the University of Utah.

If I keep failing at my current rate, I will have $1500 per month in passive income by the end of this year. Unless, of course, I screw up my failures and one of them becomes a hit.

How about you? How much passive income are you making from your internet failures, so far?