In a forum this morning, someone asked “What’s better for making money– web sites, blogs or Squidoo pages?”

I said that I think of websites, blogs, Squidoo lenses, Hubpages and all social networking sites the way street bums think of intersections.I’ll explain.

Here in Florida, where I live, winter brings a yearly flood of bums who stand at intersections with cardboard signs saying things like “Homeless vet. Please help.”

After talking to the same people at the same intersections winter after winter, I realized that some of these people aren’t really “bums.” Working these street corners is their job.
1.They work in teams.
2.They cover as many intersections as they can.
3.At the end of the day they pool their donations and divide them.

One fellow told me he makes better than $500 a day, tax free. Not THAT’S bum marketing many internet marketers would envy!

These bum marketers don’t look at any one street corner as THE place to market. Instead, they cover as many intersections in high-traffic areas as they can, to maximize the number of people that see their message. In this way, they also maximize their earnings.

I put bums (pages) to hold up my sign at many intersections (Hubpages,Squidoo lenses, blogs, etc.) for the same reason. Web sites were the first means of doing commerce on the web. Now hubs, nings and all sorts of social networking sites are expanding that means exponentially. Don’t waste time trying to find the best “one” when you can be out holding up your sign on many.

Bonnie Boots publishes The Internet Wizards Magazine for creative people who want to make their own products and market on the internet. Register for a free 1-year subscription at http://www.theinternetwizards.com

I’ve been a huge fan of FREE every since! And one of the most delightful aspects of the internet is the vast amount of quality stuff people will give you for free just to get your attention.  My friend Dirk Dupon wants your attention for his FREE membership site, the InfoProducts Vault.  Every month you’ll get free internet marketing tools, free ebooks, free reports and other resources with resell and private label rights. No matter what you’re doing online, you’ll find something here to help you. Get in right now because, well… 100% FREE! Duh! Just click here:

http://www.theinternetwizards.com/recommends/DirkDupon.htm

“I drink your milkshake!” Daniel Day Lewis spits out these words in the final scene of the Academy Award-winning movie “There Will Be Blood,” and the next thing you know a new bit of internet slang–and a thousand YouTube parodies–are born.

Online, it may seem like the words are on everyone’s lips–or at least their laptops–but apparently the phenomena hasn’t yet translated offline. When Saturday Night Live tried to poke fun at the phrase, their joke fell flat, lost on an audience that evidently doesn’t spend much time trading insults in MySpace.

That points to what some see as an ever-widening gap between people who watch TV and people who get all the news they need from the weather reports in Cyberspace. Advertisers are watching this gap with interest and many have stopped throwing great gobs of money at television, choosing instead to spread some of their advertising budgets around Blogsville. This is good news for paid bloggers who no longer have to hunt for ads to monetize their sites. Those who can attract avid readers are finding that the advertising dollars come looking for them. Clearly it’s time for people who still think television is the primary media to wake up and smell the milkshake.

Bonnie Boots publishes The Internet Wizards Magazine for creative people who want to make their own products and market on the internet. Register for a free 1-year subscription at http://www.theinternetwizards.com

Having your own photo on your social networking pages, blogs and web sites is an important part of building your own brand, and adding yourself to a magazine cover can be a fun option for keeping your kisser out in the public eye.

I made my normal publicity picture fit into the theme of the Life magazine cover by putting it in Photoshop, turning it into a grayscale image and adding a soft halo behind my head- something frequently seen in real Life cover shots. I also used a soft focus filter to smooth out wrinkles and make myself look younger–ALSO something frequently seen in real Life cover shots!

There are no photo editing tools in Mag My Pic, so if you’d like to make it your own mug more cover-worthy, go to FotoFlexor, an easy-to-use and FREE- online photo editing tool where you can crop, take out red eye and apply a number of effects. FotoFlexor is here: http://fotoflexer.com/

When you’re done editing your image, download it to your own hard drive, then go to Mag My Pic, upload it and choose your cover. You’ll find Mag My Pic right here: http://www.magmypic.com/

Bonnie Boots publishes The Internet Wizards Magazine for people who want to explore their creativity, make their own products and market on the internet. Register for a free, one-year subscription at The Internet Wizards.com

If I decided to be an Elvis impersonator, I’d make use of an old theatrical costuming trick and give myself a third leg. The false leg is attached to a harness that straps around the waist. The leg then hangs down in a seemingly natural posture from the left or right side of the performer, who dresses in trousers constructed with 3 legs. The startling effect is particularly funny when the performer dances, and I can easily imagine how hysterical it would be to impersonate Elvis’ famous swivel-hips style with 3 legs.

In such a get-up, I’d be a standout, no longer just one of countless poor performers but the one and only 3-Legged Elvis.

The majority of people basically ignore one of the basic rules of marketing- “know your USP–unique selling proposition.” Simply put, your USP is the distinct feature, idea or benefit that sets you apart from your competition and makes you memorable. If I were an Elvis impersonator, my 3rd leg would be my USP. When not dreaming up marketing ploys for State Fair performers, I produce digital content. Funny pictures are part of my USP, something that sets me apart from thousands of boring old blogs and newsletters and makes me memorable.

The world of internet marketing is vast…and frequently vastly boring. Don’t let your business be lost in the sea of sameness. Why be one of a million when, with just a little imagination, you can be one IN a million.
“Thank you, thank you very much.”

Bonnie Boots publishes The Internet Wizards Magazine for people who want to make their own products and market on the internet. Get your free one-year subscription by visiting http://www.theinternetwizards.com

Still, it’s worth everyone’s paying attention, because it makes a universal point.

When you publish material to the internt, whether it’s a web site, a blog or any other means of distributing digital information across cyberspace, you should always, always, ALWAYS own your primary means of distribution.

And by “own” I mean have it registered in your name, pay a fee for hosting it and have a complete backup of it on your own hard drive. And then copy that backup to a CD and put it in a safe deposit box at your bank. OWN your digital empire!

Because anytime you use any free service, whether it’s free website hosting, or free blog hosting, whether it’s at WordPress or Blogger or MySpace or anywhere else, you have traded FREE for your  FREEdom to say and do anything you like.

Blogger and WordPress don’t allow people to put up blogs for free just to be nice. They do it to earn profits. And they, like any business, will act swiftly to stop anything that they think dampens their profits.

If they decide something you are doing is having a negative impact on their business, they will dump you and all the hard work you’ve put into your publishing-and there’s not a thing you can say or do about it. Why? Because you are a not their client. You are not their business partner. You are a freeloader, and you are expendable.

By the same token, if you have a web site or a blog, and you are paying to host it, be darn sure YOU register your domain names, and YOU set up your hosting account and YOU own a master copy of your web sites or a backup of your blog. It’s OK to hire people to do all sorts of things for you, like design a site and upload it to your server, or install scripts on your site, but YOU should have the ultimate control over everything that happens in your digital domain.

Ever month I hear from at least one person who’s just found out their web site or the blog no longer exists. And the person they were paying to manage their site isn’t answering emails.

And when I ask a few questions, I always find out the owner of the lost blog or web site doesn’t know where their domain name was registered or whose name it’s in. “Well, I assume it’s in my name. It’s has to be, doesn’t it?”

No, sir and mam, it does not.

The biggest mistake you can make is to let someone else do everything to set up your web site or blog, including registering a domain name, build the site, host it and then bill you for monthly maintenance.

Because if these people turn out to be irresponsible, or vindictive, or mentally unstable, or just run into the ordinary trials and tribulations of life that cause people to go out of business, your digital empire-and all the hard work you put into building it-can disappear along with them.

There’s nothing wrong with using free services like Blogger or Squidoo or WordPress or MySpace or Flickr or any of the many, many free means of publishing on the internet. But these should NEVER be the foundation of your online business.

The foundation of your business should be web sites and blogs you OWN and control and back-up regularly. Because then, when something happens to a free site-and it’s just the nature of the internet that something will, eventually, happen-you’ve just lost an outbuilding. You haven’t lost the whole damn farm.

Bonnie Boots publishes  The Internet Wizards Magazine . Explore the magic of making your own products and marketing on the internet. Register for a gift one-year subscription at http://www.theinternetwizards.com

I was doing a product on video marketing and thought about abandoning it because there are so many more experienced experts out there with big budgets and lists. But then I thought that they are only reaching a fraction of the market and there is room for one (or a hundred) more product creators.”

Martin brings up one of the many ways creative people cut themselves off from success—scrapping a good idea just because someone else has done something similar—or could do it better.

Here’s what I know after a lifetime in product creation and development for numerous publishers. There is nothing new under the sun. No matter what your idea is, someone, somewhere will have written, painted, videoed or broadcast something similar. They may even have done it better.

But there is one thing they will NOT have done—they will not have done it the way you will. Only you have your viewpoint and attitude and perception. Bring that tool set to the creation of your own product and you will make even the oldest, most shop-worn idea brand new.

Here’s another thing I’ve learned while working in publishing: people love to buy multiple books, magazines and other media on the same subject.

Suppose George Lucas though about making Star Wars and then cut himself short by saying, “Nah. There’s already a lot of Sci-Fi movies, even lots of them by big-name directors with bigger budgets then I can pull together. I may as well scrap that idea.”

Can you imagine the world without Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader? I can’t. Because Star Wars was a huge success, it spawned a whole new generation of sci-fi across all media from film and television to comic books and graphic novels. Star Wars altered the entire entertainment landscape.

The sci-fi genre has been and will continue to be profitable because people love to buy books, videos, films, audios and all sorts of media about the topics that interest them. They don’t just watch Star Wars and call it quits. They watch Star Wars and look for more.

People that love to cook don’t buy “The Joy of Cooking” and call it quits. They buy a cookbook a week AND they watch food TV, subscribe to cooking magazines and attend cooking classes.

Likewise, people that are interested in video marketing don’t buy one tutorial and call it quits. They buy dozens of books, ebooks, tutorials, audios, and magazines and take classes.

When you have an idea for a product, look for similar products already being sold. If you see that similar products already in the market place are selling well, that is a GOOD thing. It means there is a large market of people interested in your idea and willing to spend money on it—but only if you bring something new to the table, like your own unique attitudes and perceptions.

Posted by Bonnie Boots, publisher of The Internet Wizards Magazine for people who want to make their own products and market on the internet. Get a free 1-year subscription by registering on the home page at http://www.theinternetwizards.com

No matter what you’re doing to make money online, whether it’s making and marketing your own products, engaging in affiliate sales or selling ad space on blogs, you should stop and give a salute to Britney Spears, Angelina Jolie, Jessica Sierra and all their dysfunctional brothers and sisters in Celebrity Land.

By being outrageous, these paparazzi-plagued drama queens are keeping millions of people glued to their TV’s and text messages, waiting for the latest updates. While these vast audiences let the hours of their lives tick away in trivial pursuit of celebrity gossip, people like YOU, who are actively engaged in building their own business, have the field to themselves.

If you are a person who takes action, who creates books or painting or music, who designs software or websites or clothing, or indeed makes or does practically anything, your odds of success are greatly enhanced by this fact– the vast majority of people are not doers. They are consumers.

As consumers, they are your market. They are definitely not your competition.

When you’re in business, a portion of your attention must always be focused on your competitors. That narrow focus can easily create the illusion that you’re facing a whole world of competition. But in the whole world, with its billions and billions of people, only a small percentage are your rivals. All the rest–those using their time and energy only to consume videos, games, books and everything else created by doers—are your market. God bless Britney, Angelina and Jessica for keeping ‘em glued to their seats so we can dance rings around them!

Posted by Bonnie Boots, publisher of The Internet Wizards Magazine for people who want to make their own products and market on the internet. Get a free 1-year subscription by registering on the home page at http://www.theinternetwizards.com

Technorati is an internet search engine for searching blogs. As of December, 2007, it had indexed 112 million weblogs. As of today, make that 112million + 1. By pasting one line of code into this blog post, I’m doing what Technorati calls “activating my claim.” That is, I’m demonstrating through my ability to post a link they generated for me that I am the owner of this blog. Posting the code that creates this link will call the Technorati spiders, who will instantly come and crawl all over my blog and add it to their index. (If you see any tiny spots of spider shit on my blog today, you’ll understand why.)

Getting indexed in Technorati is akin to a debutante’s ball for a blog. It’s the way you tell the blogosphere, “I’m coming out!” It helps you get noticed and build up your blog rank–something that’s important if you want to monetize your blog with ads or paid postings.

If you have a blog and haven’t yet activated your claim with Technorati, what are you waiting for? All you need to do is go here: http://technorati.com/

And if you like The Internet Wizards Blog, you can tell Technorati by clicking here:

Posted by Bonnie Boots, publisher of The Internet Wizards Magazine for people who want to make their own products and market on the internet. Get a free 1-year subscription by registering on the home page at http://www.theinternetwizards.com