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Is it all complete BS? Can people really make money online working from home? A lot of money? or just small spending cash?

I started attempting to make money online sometime around 1995-’96. I was 13 or 14. I didn’t make a dime until I was 17. I did it by taking my hobby (magic tricks), writing a short report teaching some of my favorites, using free software to turn it into a .pdf file, and selling it from my website.

Most of the tools I used back then are either no longer available… or I simply wouldn’t use them now. Here are the tools I would use to recreate that business…

Create A .PDF file: PDF files are the standard format when selling information. It’s getting easier and easier to create .pdf’s these days. Many programs can do it, but I use the Open Office Writer that is a free program similar to Microsoft Word. You simply write the report like you would write any paper, then click a button to quickly convert it to a .pdf file.

Domain Name: Your website will need a domain name. You can purchase one from either GoDaddy or Namecheap. I use them both and have had no problems.

Web Host: You’ll need a place to “point” your domain name to. That place is a “web host” where your web page files are stored. For this, I use MeWebHost. They have some extremely affordable options and great customer service, 24 hours a day.

Accept Credit Card Payments I’ve used Paypal to accept credit card payments for close to 8 years. There have been a couple problems during that time, but for the most part they’re the best way to get started accepting credit cards online. (And it’s free.)

Of course there’s more to it than just these 4 resources. You’ll need to actually write the report, create an advertisement for it, and start sending traffic to your advertisement. But we’ll get to that soon.

In the meantime, remember to bookmark this blog or subscribe to the RSS/email announcement lists.

A few days back I told you how to increase traffic to your website using my blog.

The 4 point plan was to exchange links with me, comment on my posts, link from a post of yours to mine and to follow me on Twitter.

Many of you did these things and I greatly appreciate it. I’m also glad to see you’re being proactive.

But I am disappointed with 2 things.

One, no one has exchanged links with me. I know, cry me a river. But I’m really trying to make this Wordpress Link Directory work. My next post will be on how to set it up on your blog just in case you’re unsure how to do it. And then hopefully you’ll exchange links.

Two, some of the comments that have appeared since I invited you to comment for SEO reasons have been, I guess predictably, skeptical. There were a couple that forced me to make a decision on whether or not they were spam or legitimate comments by a reader.

I want people to get some link love back to their sites, but I also want comments that constructively add to the conversation.

So here’s what we’re going to do.

I’ve changed the “DoFollow” plugin I’m using. It’s now Lucia’s Linky Love and it only changes your links from “nofollow” to “dofollow” after you’ve made 5 comments. This will protect the blog from drive by commenters.

At some point, I may raise the barrier to 10 comments before you receive link love from me. But for now it’s 5.

Now I don’t want you to leave a bunch of “junk” comments in order to hit the 5 comment barrier. So if you don’t have 5 comments yet, don’t worry! You can still get some link love from me by exchanging links in the link directory It’s here: http://www.stephensblog.com/dir

And if you want to start boosting your comment count now, why not let me know what you think about this policy? Leave a comment

One thing I make an effort to do is to collect failure secrets. Because if you know how to fail you know how not to fail.

Justin Brooke just wrote a great blog post called “The Formula For Failure.” It shares several failure secrets. Check it out!

This is my first article of the Robert Plank Challenge. Not all articles will be on copywriting or copywriters, but this one is. Take a look…

Title: Message To New Copywriters
By: Stephen Dean

If you’re a new copywriter, this is my message to you.

Hi. I used to be where you were at. I started writing copy for others 5 years ago. At the time, I had just enough copywriting know-how to pass myself off as a copywriter.

Because my copy skills were very young, I barely charged anything. Only $97 for my first few sales letters. Then $197. Then $297.

(That pattern is important, but I’ll get back to that.)

At that rate, my clients were essentially hiring me for manual labor. This was good because I knew I wasn’t ripping anyone off. I didn’t want to claim to be the best copywriter in the world and charge thousands…

…when I was still learning the trade.

At the time, I was pretty much the only copywriter working for so cheap.

HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED.

Now everyone seems to be starting a copywriting career.

While people were shocked to see me offering copy services for so cheap, it’s now commonplace to see people writing sales copy for $197.

And actually, now that the economy is worse… these same copywriters are DROPPING their prices. I’ve seen offers for writing copy for $50!

Listen. As a copywriter you should know better than to compete on price. “Cheap” is not a benefit of strong sales copy. More sales is the benefit!

Instead of positioning yourself as a “cheap copywriter,” use your copywriting brain to come up with a unique angle that doesn’t COST YOU MONEY. An angle you can CHARGE FOR!

If you pick a niche, you can charge more than the guy who brands himself “the cheap copywriter.”

If you offer more bells and whistles than just the sales copy (emails? graphic design?), you can charge more than the guy who brands himself “the cheap copywriter.”

If you come up with a strong guarantee, you can charge more than the guy who brands himself “the cheap copywriter.”

DO pick a unique angle, but don’t try to sell your services based on price. It’s bad from a sales perspective and it’s bad business in the long run.

On the other hand, if you want to start at $50, go ahead. Maybe you’re working at manual labor prices… but you need to consistently raise your rates!

When I first started, I often DOUBLED my prices from one month to the next.

In fact, I once double my rate from $1,000.00 to $2,000.00 without any drop off in work!

Sure, start small and charge less. But treat your clientelle well, stay in touch with them after you finish, and keep raising your rates.

Continue to IMPROVE your skills by reading classic copywriting books like “Tested Advertising Methods” and “How To Write A Good Advertisement.”

Read my blog (http://www.stephensblog.com)

Read Michel Fortin’s blog (http://www.michelfortin.com)

Read Clayton Makepeace’s blog (http://www.makepeacetotalpackage.com)

Whatever you do, don’t keep the same price from one year to the next. It’s like running on a hampster’s wheel. And you’re better than that.

One of my favorite bloggers and Internet Marketing types is Robert Plank.

This guy is a productivity machine. He’s constantly writing articles, making videos, creating products and more… all while holding a full time day job. Ya, even though his online income vastly surpasses the income from his job… he still works there full time.

For February he’s set a goal of earning $30,000.00. Because February only has 28 days, that’s more than a $1000.00 a day… and so far I believe he’s on track to do it. Nice job Robert!

And oh yeah, he’s 23.

A while back Robert wrote a post detailing how he makes thousands of dollars essentially just writing articles.

The idea is to write an article a day, package them in to an ebook and sell them. Sound simple? Well, that’s just the beginning.

He also gives a great suggestion for cashing in on the ebook before you’ve finished all the articles… AND a great way to add scarcity and urgency to your offer.

I’m going to try it out and see how it goes.

I might post my first article tomorrow, or I might post something else. We’ll see

If you want to try it with me, leave a comment and we can encourage each other.

Maybe Zazzu? Lowell Rieger? Or maybe Tony when he gets back from his self imposed information abstinence.

Remember when I had Click2Mail send me a test postcard for ad campaign? I wrote about it here: Sending Postcards To Advertise Your Product Or Services.

Well it finally showed up yesterday. It took a LONG time…

…because of user error. My fault. I accidentally picked “standard mail” instead of “first class.” Instead of 4-5 days it took 9-15. (And I saved a whopping 11 cents!)

So that’s one mistake I noticed. The other is the graphics program I used to create the postcard.

Microsoft Paint just isn’t going to work! I saved the image I made in paint as a .jpg file, which looked fine until it showed up on a printed postcard. There’s too much noise surrounding the words… as a result of Paint not saving the .jpg at a high enough quality.

It’s possible that Paint might be able to work if I save it with another image format. But whatever…

Instead I’m going with Gimp. This is a free software program that acts a lot like Adobe Photoshop (a great program, but very expensive).

Gimp will be able to make a high quality screenshot and fix my postcard.

One more note. I took the advice to keep all of my content an inch up from the bottom in case the post office put a sticker on the bottom. The postcard did not get a sticker. In fact, I think the “sticker” was printed on the card.

However, I don’t want to risk it unless I need the extra space. So I’ll continue to heed that advice for a while.

Ok, so we got a few questions. Thanks Tony and Ron!

I’ll be sending both of you guys “The 2 Hour Sales Letter,” “7 Copy Sins,” “Digital Scarcity,” “Tapping Michel Fortin’s Brain,” “Tapping Michel Fortin’s Brain 2,” and a series of videos on increasing email sign-ups from your blog.

Let’s start with the first question…

“Let’s say i want to have a video on my page instead of lots of copy- would you advise this, and would you script it any differently?”

My opinion is to have a bit of both. Because I skim copy when I read it, I’m not a big fan of video-only (because you can’t skim it).

But that’s only my opinion, because I don’t have data on video-only sales pages.

A master copywriter who is a big fan of video-only sales pages is Dr. Harlan Kilstein. Follow him on Twitter and you’ll likely learn more about it: http://twitter.com/drkilstein

“Are there any shortcuts to learning (Muvar 2009)?”

For some stupid reason I haven’t purchased Muvar 2009 yet. I have several copies of 2007 and 2008 so I’ve been using these.

So I don’t know the difference between ‘09 and ‘08. I’ve heard the training videos didn’t change from ‘08 to ‘09, which has left some people confused.

That said, I’m pretty dang good at using ‘08.

Probably the best thing you can do when learning the software is to get familiar with the files inside that “data” folder and how to modify them.

James advises against doing this for an understandable reason. But there are times when I want to have that option. For example, if the variable version is larger than a certain number of kilobytes, Muvar can’t save it via the admin section. You must upload the content via FTP.

“Glyphius is I suspect a good basis for learning copywriting but I still need to ensure that the flow between the paragraphs are natural. It tends to push me into stringing together sentences that don’t sound right when read aloud. Have you any tips for using it?”

Simple, if it sounds awkward throw it out. Don’t sacrifice readability for a higher score, it won’t work.

“OK now for the big one I have tried to raise the price for a product but found the drop in sales meant I was losing money. Obviously I am about to drop them again blaming the credit squeeze and currency variations. Is this a good idea or should I just drop them without a hint of reason to stop people thinking I was desperate for sales.”

I wouldn’t use the credit squeeze as a reason for lowering your prices. That does imply that less people are buying your product… and that’s not good social proof.

Instead give a positive reason. Come up with a reason for a special sale, special offer, anything. Is your birthday coming up? There’s your reason. Anything can work.

But, do you have a lot of repeat visitors to your sales page? Are people going to notice you drop or raise your prices? You may not have to mention it at all.

And I’d recommend testing your prices using Muvar. Put several different price points in there, make sure you give the proper credit to each sale, and see which price is the most profitable.

I’m wondering how many of my readers have a blog. If you’re reading this and you do have a blog, will you leave a comment?

If you don’t have a blog, consider starting one. Blogs are a great way to start a business or generate traffic.

A great way to establish yourself as an authority is to have dozens and dozens of blog posts published to the web for visitors to read.

Plus Google loves content, so they love blogs. The more content you have the more search engine traffic you’ll get.

Whenever I start a new hobby, I start a blog with it. That way I can track my progress with the hobby, and I have a ton of content if I ever get to the point where I want to monetize that hobby.

Right now, in addition to this blog, I have a music blog and a wine blog. I keep both of them secret and don’t talk about them too much.

And I haven’t posted to either one in quite a while. But that’s OK, the content is there waiting for me when I come back. One day all that content I’ve compiled will be very useful. And if not, I’ll still have a personal record of the hobby if I ever want to go back and look.

I think I have some DVD’s that show how to set up a blog. Maybe I’ll give one away next week. In the meantime, it’s not hard. Buy a domain name, get a web host that uses cPanel, point the domain at the webhost and use cPanel’s auto-install to install Wordpress. Done!

I just watched this video by Perry Belcher. I was surprised to find we have a similar technique (and reasoning) for keeping organized and focused.

Watch the video if you’d like…

I don’t use post-it notes. But I do jot down thoughts as they come to me for the purpose of clearing them from my head. And I prioritize them similar to Perry’s method.

The difference for me is that I write everything down in a “distractions.txt” file. When I’m working, if a great thought or idea comes to me, I click a shortcut on my taskbar to open the file and type it in. Then I close the file and continue working.

It makes it easier to leave the thought alone until later so I can stay focused.