The answer for me would be NO.

So if you are at the same place that I am maybe you are wondering just how do I decide kind of product to produce and then what to produce my product on.

Those were the questions I was asking a few weeks ago when I went about the very early stages of producing my first product.


Lets start with what kind of a product to produce.

Since this is my first product I am going to create an eBook.

If this is your first product I would suggest this as well.

An eBook is much simpler to produce that the others.  If you want to use some audio or video that could be incorporated into your eBook in small amounts.  I am definitely not going to attempt a piece of software. However, I would love to do that someday.

Now we have down just what kind of a product we want to produce.  That was easy.  So on to what the product is going to be about.

We now have 5 lists of 10 things.  Well that is if we are lucky.  I really had a hard time coming up with 10 on some of those.

I actually ended up doing number 5 as I was very stumped and could not figure out what I wanted to do.  In reality though if I had made good lists I would of found my answer in my lists.  I ended up choosing a topic that I had written two blog posts on.  That topic should have been on my list.

I think even the job of creating a list is a learning experience though.  The next time I will have a much better idea of what I am doing and I think or hope the job of picking a topic will be easier.

Due to the fact that this is my first product I am not going to worry to much about researching whether or not it will be very marketable.  I am looking at this as a learning experience and will market what I come up with.  I do think my topic is marketable though.

The whole idea of producing a product is to make money so if your product has no market you will make no money.  That makes this part of the process a very important part.

I have just told how to choose a topic for a product.  It is not complicated but I found it to be hard the first time.

If you are trying to produce your first product I hope that this helps you to be able to pick your topic.

I would love to hear comments on picking a topic.

Maybe you found it hard also or maybe it was easy for you.  It might help someone else if you shared a comment.

If you have produced several products maybe you have some valuable suggestions for those of us just starting our journey down that road.

Where ever you are on your journey your comment will be greatly appreciate.

P.S. Thank you to those of you who helped me choose my topic. I could not have done it without you.

This is going to be a two part post.  The first part will be to tell just what I have been doing in John Thornhill’s Master Class and the second part will be a book review of  a book John asked us to read during the first couple of weeks in the class, The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann.

Part I

About 12 weeks ago I started taking John Thornhill’s Master Class.  I keep thinking that I will write an update on just what it is that I am learn in the class but never have really gotten it done.  So, in this post I want to tell what I have learned for the first 12 weeks or so. I also do a book review of a book John asked us to read during the first couple of weeks in the class, The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann.

I want to start out saying that I love John Thornhill’s class.

It is really well laid out.  Every week I get an email with an URL in it for that weeks lesson.  The lessons are very detailed and just long enough to do over the following week.

The first thing he had us do was set up a blog.  Since I had set up a blog before this was easy for me.   This was also about the time I deleted my blog so I needed to set up a new one anyway. I kind of set up a new blog how I wanted with a few alterations to match what John was teaching.

On to the second part of the class.  The second part of the class involves creating a product.  Now, I have written a couple of Ebooks in the past but have never done anything with them.  Other than that I have never attempted anything like this.  I must say that this is much harder than I had thought.  I am still trying to figure out what I want to create for my product.

If I could just figure out what my product was going to be, I would have all kinds of ideas as to what to write about.

It is not that I have not had ideas.  I have but then decide that I don’t want to do that.  Think I just need to pin down what I want to do.

So that is what I am doing in the Master Class.  If you are ever interested in taking a class on how to make money on line.  I would highly recommend John Thornhill’s Master Class.

Part II

I was determined to do everything that John told us to do in the Master Class because I want to get the most out of it as I can.

So when he said to purchase the book  The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann, I bought it immediately.  Actually I bought it twice because I forgot that I had bought it the fist week he told us to do it, so when it was on the list of things to do the second week, I bought it again.  Much to my surprise the books both came 1 day apart.  So I actually have two copies of this book.

I figure I must have ordered 2 copies for a reason and when I started reading the book I realized why.  This is one of the best books I have ever read about a Business Idea.  I now have 1 book to keep and 1 to give away.  I have not given it away yet however, because I have to many people I want to give it to.  I have to narrow my list down to 1 or buy more of these books.

A Little Story About A Powerful Business Idea.

This is what it says on the front of the book and it really does a great job of describing this book as it is not very long but very powerful.

The Go-Giver goes through the five laws of Stratospheric Success.

These five laws are the secret to a successful business.  By applying each of these laws in our everyday life we will be successful.

The Go-Giver tells a spell binding story of a young man, Joe, learning what these laws are and how to apply them to his life.  The story is told in such a way that everyone can relate to it and learn from it.

In the end the Joe is a very successful business man and it is really clear how he was able to achieve such success.

I learned so much from this book and while I do not expect to achieve success in 5 day as Joe did I can see how applying these laws to my life and business will make me successful.

In order to find out just what the five laws are and how to apply them I would highly recommend that you purchase this book.

If you have read this book I would love to hear what you thought of it. If you have not read it, I would love to hear your comments as well.

I am really looking forward to reading all of your comments.

P.S. If you like the graphics I used go over to my friend’s blog at www.blog.effortlessebookwriting.com and get some free graphics and a free tool.

There are so many applications that use RSS and they all work slightly different.

In this post I want to talk about using RSS to post your blog post to Facebook and Twitter.

I found several applications to do this.  I am sure there are others also.  From what I can figure out it is pretty much personal preference as to which one your use.

I have used all of the applications that I am going to talk about here and have liked them all.

Using programs like Twitterfeed, Social RSS and NetworkBlogs allows you to use a RSS feed to link your blog to Facebook and Twitter. By linking your blog to Facebook and Twitter you can have your blog posts automatically Tweeted or posted to Facebook.

This will save you time and assure that when you publish your post it will also be Tweeted and posted on Facebook.

As for how this all happens, well that is where it all gets complicated for me.  So let me explain it in really simple terms.  When you publish a new post to your blog, your RSS feed is updated.  Then if you link your RSS feed to your Twitter and Facebook accounts they will be updated by your RSS feed everytime the RSS feed is updated.

That may sound quite hard but that is why we have programs like Twitterfeed, Social Rss and NetworkBlogs that know how to do all of the updating for us.  All we have to do is join, and it is free, put in our RSS feed URL or just the URL depending on what the program asks for and let the program do the rest of the work.

Twitterfeed

I  like Twitterfeed because it is not only possible to have our blog posts Tweeted and posted to Facebook, but we can also have all of the comments that are made on our blog posts tweeted and posted to Facebook.

This can be done by taking the feed URL for each individual post and setting up a Twitterfeed for it.  Then whenever anyone comments on your blog post, it will be Tweeted and posted to Facebook.

In case you do not know how to get your feed URL, it is your domain name with /feed after it.  My feed URL is http://www.deeannrice.com/feed.  If I want a feed for a post it is the same only include the name of the post like this http://deeannrice.com/restore-wordpress-backup/feed/.

If you would like a good tutorial on how to use Twitterfeed, Adrienne Smith at AdrienneSmith.net does a great job of demonstrating how to use it in her tutorial How to Create an RSS Comment Feed to Facebook & Twitter.  I would suggest watching her tutorial if you have any problems using twitterfeed.

Social RSS

Social RSS is a Facebook Application that allows you to update facebook using a RSS feed.

To get to Social RSS in Facebook all you need to do is do a search for it and click on the App when it comes up.  You can also Click Here and click on   .

Enter your website feed URL in one of the Feed spots ie. Feed 1, Feed 2, etc.

After putting your feed in above then scroll down to the bottom and fine  Send to your Wall. Click on YES under the number of the feed where you put your URL up above.  Then scroll down to where it says  Auto-like posts click yes under the feed number where you put your URL.

What I like about Social RSS is it allows your to auto like your post when it is posted to Facebook.

This is very simple to use and is great for facebook but it does not send your blog post to Twitter.

NetworkBlogs

NetworkBlogs is another Facebook Application that you can use to Tweet a post or post your blog post to your Facebook Wall or Fan Page.

NetworkBlogs does not actually use a RSS feed but just has you enter in the URL of your blog.  In order to use it just search for NetworkBlogs in Facebook.  You will now have to allow NetworkBlogs to access your information at Facebook.  Then click on Register a Blog and put in your information about your blog.

When you get done with that you can click on Syncronize and posts from your blog will be posted to Twitter, your Facebook wall or your Fan Page or where ever you choose to have them posted.

I really like NetworkBlogs because I can specify where I want my post to go and can even have it posted to my Fan Page.

When I started this I was going to show you how to use one way to sycronize your blog with Facebook and Twitter but as I got to looking into it I realized that I used all 3 of these at different times and like each one for a different reason so thought I would just tell you about all three.

I hope this will help get more exposure to your blogs.

If anyone has additional or different suggestion for syncronizing a blog post with Facebook and/or Twitter please feel free to leave a comment with your suggestions.

I decided to find out just what “nofollow” was and how it affected my blog.

The first thing that became evident is that everyone has an opinion on “nofollow” and they vary from don’t worry about it, it really does not matter to it is very important to take “nofollow” into account when creating a blog.

I am going to try to explain what “nofollow” is and how it affects your blog.

What does “nofollow” mean?

“Nofollow” seems to be a Google thing, but other search engines use it as well.  Each search engine handles “nofollow” differently.

From the Google prospective, “nofollow” links are not followed and are irrelevant from a search engines point of view.

So if you have your blog set up as a “nofollow” blog, when someone leaves a comment on your blog a “nofollow” tag is placed on it.  This means that no backlink is given to the person that posted on your blog.

In contrast a blog setup as a “dofollow” blog gives page rank to every post and a backlink is created for the commenter.

Yahoo, Bing and Ask all handle the “nofollow” in a similar way but may have slight differences.  There is a really good chart at Wikipedia that goes into the differences of the various search engines.

Should Your Blog Be “nofollow” or “dofollow”?

This seems to be a very personal decision and everyone seems to have an opinion on it.

The whole thought behind having a “nofollow” blog is that “nofollow” will prevent the blog from being spammed.  If you get a bunch of spammy people commenting on your blog then you are being linked to their spammy websites and this can affect the reputation of your blog.

There are lots of thoughts on weather “nofollow” actually stops spammy comments on your blog.  It does stop your blog from being linked to their spammy websites from a search engines prospective.

There is also the human factor however.  Even if your website is not linked to the spammy sites as far as the search engine is concerned, the people coming to your blog do not know that and they see that you have a spammy website.

The solution seems to be closely monitoring the comments that are placed and your blog.  Do not let just everyone leave any comment they want to.  This will get rid of the spam and prevent you from being linked to spammy websites.

So, if you are monitoring your blog comments there is no problem having a “dofollow” blog.  By having a “dofollow” blog you are also rewarding your commenter’s by giving page rank to their comments and a backlink to their blog.

There are also plugins that can be used to prevent spammy comments from being placed on your blog.

The following are list of plugins that will help prevent comment spam on your blog.  The first one, Akismet, is probably the most widely used.

Akismet

AVH First Defense Against Spam

Bad Behavior

bcSpamBlock

Defensio Anti-Spam

DNS-anti-spam

Email Protect

Math Comment Spam Protection

Maximum Security for WordPress

Simple Trackback Validation

Spam-Stopper

Trackback Spam Resources

WP Spam Hitman

WP-Hashcash

WP-SpamFree

yaCAPTCHA

Is Your Blog a “nofollow” Blog?

Well, if you have a wordpress blog and have not made it a “dofollow” then by default it is “nofollow”.   There are a couple different ways you can make you blog a “dofollow” blog.  The first is by using a plugin.  There are many of these.  I have listed just a few here.  The one that was recommended to me was the Dofollow v.4.0.  I have not used the rest so don’t know how they work, so you will want to check them out.

Dofollow v.4.0

Follow My Links

NoFollow Free

no-nofollow

Remove Nofollow

Remove NoFollow Commenter URL

Wp-Dofollow

Another way to make your wordpress blog a “dofollow” blog is to go in and change the source code in the wordpress program.  I did not do this but, if you go to Douglas Karr’s blog MarketingTechBlog, he tells you how to hack wordpress and remove the “nofollow” from the source code.

What about commenting on a “nofollow” vs. a “dofollow” blog?

If you are serious about wanting a backlink from every comment you make, there are sites out there where you can get a list of “dofollow” blogs in your niche.  One of these is Michael Busch’s site SEO-Traffic-Guide.  You put in your niche and he emails you a list of several thousand “dofollow” blogs.

How important is it to get a backlink every time you post a comment on a blog.  This is important to the search engines, but the search engines are not the only thing that sees your blog.  There are also people who are reading your comment.  This includes the other people making comments on the same blog and the blog owner.

When you leave a comment much of the time the blog owner will click on your link to see who you are and possibly leave a comment on your blog.

You can drive traffic by commenting on any blog, “nofollow” or “dofollow”.  It is not all about search engines.  All links are good and matter so just get links and drive traffic.  Getting backlinks is great but may not happen every time you leave a comment.

What did I learn from all of this?

As long as I closely monitor my blog comments and use a plugin to catch some of the spam, there is no need for my blog to be “nofollow”.  By making my blog “dofollow” I am rewarding my commenter’s with a backlink in addition to any traffic they may receive by commenting.

On the flip side I am not going to worry about whether the blogs I am commenting on are “nofollow” or “dofollow” as I will get traffic off of both and if I comment on a “dofollow” I will get a backlink as well.

I also learn from every blog post that I read and comment on.  It does not matter what kind of blog it is.  I love reading other people’s blogs just for the education I receive.

This is the first of many blog posts that I will make on this blog as I continue on my Internet Marketing Journey. Even though I have been internet marketing for about 2 years now I feel that I have just started my journey or maybe started a new adventure on my journey of Internet Marketing.

I have just finished setting up the New Super Affiliate marketing websites, which include this blog and my affiliate site at www.NewSuperbAffiliate.com.

New Super Affiliate is Alex Jeffreys program to help both the newbie marketer and the marketer that may have some experience create a successful Internet Affiliate Marketing Business.

Alex really has a great system that is well laid out and really easy to learn and follow.  I am amazed at how extensive the setup was. It took me about a week to do it full time but will be worth it in the end. The videos are great and extremely helpful.

I am now on my way to having a million dollar internet business.

Affiliate and internet marketing are all about building a list. Without the list you can not make any money. NSA’s whole focus is on list building and getting even the newbie marketer setup to start building a list and earning money.

The one thing that struck me about what Alex Jeffreys (founder of NSA) is the statement that kept being made — “If you are not marketing, you are not making money.”

This is so true. Many of us who think we market on the internet never really make any money. This is because we are great at setting something up and making websites that look just perfect but in the end that is where we stop, with a very pretty well set up system that no one ever sees. If no one sees it, it does not matter how pretty it is.

Alex Jeffreys really pushes that the set up is important but the marketing is where the money is. The set up is only preparation for the future and he really caries though in his course on the marketing end.