I just read a feature about blogger John Chow on the Unusual Business Ideas that Work blog. I met John Chow at Blogworld a few months ago. The post talks about how much he’s made from blogging – $25k a month. He started out making $300 a month. He spends about $550 a month in expenses. He’s only been blogging for a little over a year.

The article talks about how he makes money giving away his ebook free (with affiliate links). The article says he uses more than 100 ad networks, like AuctionAds and Kontera ContentLink. 100 ad networks – my head hurts thinking about managing that!

“There are no rules or limits in blogging,” he said. “Your earning power is only limited by the traffic you can attract.” Which is the same with web sites, only blogs take a lot less effort to update.

Today my business partner and I met Courtney Tuttle (you should read his blog too). We discussed how web sites attract people once and they usually don’t return. Blogs create a community that people return to again and again to read the latest. That’s why blogs and social networks have such marketing power.

They sum up with this: Blogging isn’t just a pastime or marketing gambit anymore; it’s a living.

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I wanted to link to an earlier post about Walmart and then I discovered something: my blog is messed up. None of my permanent links work [this has since been fixed]. I can’t quite express how I feel about the fact that almost 3 years of work and writing is inaccessible to the search engines right now. [Now I can express this - I'm glad they are back!].
I won’t detail the things that have broken lately – but I’m fixing them just as fast as they break. When things like this happen in my life it is a sign – a sign that it’s time for some changes. If you read my blog you can see this theme build over time and it hit crescendo recently. I have honestly learned a lot about this dynamic and what it means just by blogging about it.

Internet marketing has been my passion, almost like a love affair. I ate, breathed, and lived it. I wrote about it. When I started this profession it was an enormous challenge to learn. Reading and learning about it filtered into almost every aspect of my life. Over time, starting with being laid off last year, it’s become a job. No more and no less. Still a job I love, but not with the fervor that I’ve had for four years.

It was a grand adventure. I learned the best and worst about internet marketing. I tried a lot of things. There was nothing else I’d rather talk about. But I don’t stay up all night doing Internet Marketing that often any more. I value my sleep. I’m reading about other things. I value balance. This was a horrible realization at first, one that rocked my world. But over time I see it as a necessary and healthy one. It sounds like a break up, but be assured, in this case we’re remaining close friends. lol.

If I chose a word to describe this past 6 weeks it would be: broken. The word I want for the next 6: is restoration. After that I want it to be: resurgence.

I want to distinguish that I’m not burned out. I’ve read posts from other bloggers that signal it’s time to change professions. They are very negative and say that nothing works. Internet marketing works – it’s one of the best lead generation techniques I know. I’ve detailed why several times, but no other marketing technique can you get so targeted in your message, let you measure it so precisely, and do it for such a low cost.

What I’m saying is when my day blogging and consulting ends, it ends. My attention goes to other things. And that marks a big shift in my world.

I just learned a bit more about Innuity – the company that does the Internet Marketing services for Sam’s Club. They have a tie to a Utah company that became a bit infamous – 10x Media. In 2005 Innuity acquired 10x Marketing. I didn’t know that until today.
Here’s a quote from a press release about Innuity’s earnings for the first quarter of 2006:

Innuity reported “a 317% increase from $1.2 million reported during the same quarter of 2005. Contributing significantly to this substantial revenue increase were Innuity’s 2005 strategic acquisitions: the Internet marketing company, 10x Marketing, (now Innuity’s Lead Generation Services business) and the point-of-sale systems (POS) company, Jadeon (now Innuity’s In-Store Systems business).”

First, I hope Paul Allen cashed out on the sale like he did when MyFamily.com was acquired. Second, I want to set something straight. I’ve noticed how the blogosphere has blasted Sam’s Club (or WalMart) SEO or Internet Marketing services. Of course I can see why – because it brings a certain connotation – that of cheapness.

As professionals, we like to think that we are exclusive or elite, not something you can pick up at a discount retailer. But remember, though the services are being offered through Sam’s Club, the work is done by a reputable company. I will try out their services and as always, report back.

“…even years after beginning the process of starting a business, only one-third of people have a new company with positive cash flow greater than the salary and expenses of the owner for more than three consecutive months.”

This from Guy Kawasaki’s blog and it relates to what I’ve been writing about and thinking about lately. This is a guest post with ten myths of entrepreneurship. Before you think I’m down on entrepreneurs, let me stop right here.

Being an entrepreneur in the stage I’ve been at is hell at times (and I think if it truly was for me I would recognize the challenges but still want to plug on). I’m both the technician and the manager and so is Paul. This is a pretty predictable stage until you can hire out one side and focus on the other.

Here’s another quote:

“The typical profit of an owner-managed business is $39,000 per year. Only the top ten percent of entrepreneurs earn more money than employees. And the typical entrepreneur earns less money than he otherwise would have earned working for someone else.”

But we’re so optimistic that we’ll be the exception. And a lot of us are. But, if you knew that’s about what you’d make – $39k a year, would it be worth it to you? Even if it meant you work far more hours than a typical job with no benefits? I know so many people who’ve done far better than that. It’s just that it it’s usually a very long term investment and sometimes means going without a lot for a long time.

Side note: It’s amazing how long it takes to build blog readership and how quickly it can tank if you slow down and stop blogging. My blog was down for a long time before I even knew about it. An hour on the phone with technical support and now I’m up again, (but things aren’t quite right – starting with having to disable every single plugin). I started this blog for me and it’s still for me, recording a journey.

What I’ve found lately is how difficult it is for me to separate life and work – something I never considered a problem before (but those around me probably did think it was). It’s a good sign in some ways, but a transition nonetheless. It frees me up to take on other passions and expand a bit.

What I’m saying is, when you’re in love with something you will give it everything and the ride is fun, not harrowing. Many times entrepreneurs love what they do. They don’t mind the sacrifices because of the benefits.

What about you: are you enjoying the ride? What stage are you in? What’s next for you? How does the money play into it? What have you learned? (maybe you should read The Entrepreneur Story for inspiration?)

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As I was catching up on my blog reader today, I did a double take on this revelation: Sam’s Club (or WalMart) offers Internet Marketing services. The company that offers the services is called Innuity. It’s not new but I’ve never heard of it until today. I spoke to them to find out more.

First, Sam’s Club members get a free web site. It will be yourbusinessname.samsbiz.com until you get your own domain. 5 pages, content only (no shopping cart). For $10 a month you can get a CMS template ecommerce site. For $900 they will design the site (you write the content).

If you want to run PPC advertising to your site, for a minimum of $50 per month for 6 months, they will set it up in 4 days. Google only unless you want to spend more ($200+). About 15% of this is administration fees and the rest is for your ad budget.
Otherwise there are SEO services of $500 per month for a minimum of 6 months. That includes an article a week and landing pages for your top keywords. Basically building links.

So does this mean Internet marketing has officially hit the mainstream? And who is doing the work? Are the services any good? Anyone tried it or have any insights?

Next thing you know they will offer business blogging and email marketing

Update: Innuity is quite saavy, despite the connotations of working with Sam’s Club. I got two emails from them the day I wrote this post (without so much as a trackback to alert them). They have 30,000 clients and focus on taking “enterprise” level internet solutions to the small business owner. Like most SEO companies, their target market – small business owners – often don’t know they need or can afford Internet marketing.

They have larger clients that include well-known companies like: Overstock, ADP, and Amazon.

It’s great to see the The New York Times report on the benefits of blogging – especially for small or mid-sized businesses. They say blogging is a “low-cost, high-return tool.”

It’s not just for small businesses though – Google probably has more blogs than any other business I know. They seem to create one for just about every product they have. Blogs are ideal for encouraging word of mouth marketing (see my post about word of mouth marketing on Marketing Pilgrim) by giving people reasons to keep talking about your businesses.

Even if you don’t blog, you should be sending your news releases to bloggers in hopes they’ll write about you. That reminds me I have one to follow up on (feel free to send me news using my contact form).

Top reasons for a business to blog:

• for marketing your products and/or services
• reduce your PPC budget by building permanent links rather than paying for ads (I recommend doing both)
• search engines favor fresh content and frequent updates
• improves your public relations, by regularly communicating with your community
• raises your company profile online
• excellent for building your brand – even unknown companies can get high rankings fairly quickly

I’ve long been an advocate of blogging for businesses. I provide blog writing and design services with some of my partners. We basically handle it all for you from building the blog to writing posts.

Blogging has helped my own business grow as well as boosted my reputation. Right now I blog for two companies (including Podango’s Google podcast) and train and manage a staff of bloggers.

Our experience is that within a few months our clients start seeing higher rankings in search engines for key terms relating to their business. For small businesses blogs help you compete with much larger businesses.

For example, type in “internet marketing” and a company you’ve never heard of pops up first. Notice how they basically feed in blog posts on their home page. This is a very competitive term too – with over 111,000,000 results in Google.

Most businesses can benefit from a blog and it’s one of the first things I recommend. It doesn’t take a lot of technical expertise or cost. I’m also biased in that I love to write and the conversational tone of blog writing makes it simple to dash off a quick post.

Ideally, the best marketers utilize both on and offline marketing together. While I’ve never advertised in a newspaper (not even a classified ad) I was an advertising rep for my college newspaper. It was volunteer but I learned a lot from doing it. Plus one of my regular customers owned a Cajun restaurant and offered me free food (like hush puppies or fried alligator).

Back then I thought I was furthering the cause of our paper, but really I was learning about business and sales with no pressure on me. I wish I’d done even more volunteering like that.

I’ve been interested in Google’s newspaper advertising or as they call it Google Print ads (this goes to a video explaining how it works). Today I gave this a closer look. Note: you have to have a Google AdWords account to access this. First, I was surprised that they don’t just include traditional papers but have some weeklies, Spanish papers, college papers, and other niches. Over 600 in all. Note: if you live in Utah you can choose from the Salt Lake Tribune and/or Deseret News and that’s it.

The pricing is like Priceline bidding except there is more interaction. You get the newspaper’s list price and then you submit a bid. You don’t compete with other advertisers, publishers review your bid and get back to you in a day or two. They can accept, deny, or negotiate on the price. You can send an email to the publisher through the Google interface.

Here’s a quick example: you probably want to run your ad at least 3 times minimum. You select the newspaper(s) and set your budget. You can choose what section you’d like to advertise in. The list price for the paper I chose was around $1200 an ad for a daily (in a mid-size city). Your minimum bid is going to be around $300. Contrast that with a college newspaper that is around $800 with a $170 minimum bid. This is for 2 columns wide and about 11 inches tall (Google recommends at least 10 inches high or if you run smaller ads increase the frequency).

You’ll get an electronic tearsheet – or PDF file of your ad, after it runs.

There is an excellent “Tips for Beginners” section within your account that gives a lot of guidance, research, and advice. The nice thing is you don’t have to sign any agreements or contracts with the paper, like you normally would have to.

Newspapers have high trust and people tend to look at them longer and keep them around. I’d like to experiment advertising my SEO blog writing services that I offer.

If you want to try Google Print ads, you have to sign up for an AdWords account first.

After last week I have even more empathy for Seth Godin after Paypal seized his account. I recently had my biggest client bounce a rather large check. Being paid on time and paying other people on time is one of the biggest challenges I face. That’s why as an affiliate a lot of us like Commission Junction – they pay monthly and they collect so you don’t have to. Plus no invoicing. Not only did this check cause my account to go in the red, but it emptied my business savings instantly. Needless to say last week was stressful. But I’m not the only one who has things like this happen.

I thought of going to Paypal only because at least it almost guarantees the money is there. But after reading this I’m not sure that’s the best solution either.

Seth wrote about his bad experience trying to get his account back. I wish he put more detail about other’s dealings with Paypal (this is definitely a time when I wish he accepted comments). I wonder how Google Checkout compares or how it will evolve.

What solutions have you found to this problem? Have you had bad experiences with Paypal?

—— Burning through your cell phone minutes? I use Skype… ——

Since I’ve started blogging on Marketing Pilgrim I’m posting less on Newspapergirl. My blog has become a place for more commentary and local news for the time being. I will blog about what I learn if it’s helpful information.

I also appreciate hearing from businesses in the internet marketing space. I like to keep up on what’s going on and so this Thursday I’m going to this workshop by Constant Contact. It’s in Murray, Utah.

Constant Contact is a less sophisticated but very useable email marketing program. I liked Gold Lasso better because they are more secure and have more tracking features (I lost track of you!). But the user interface was much harder to use and has a bigger learning curve for beginners.

Email Marketing with Constant Contact
Thursday, December 6th Email Seminar
9:30am – 12:00pm
Cost: FREE

Workshop Location:
Webster University
5251 S. Green Street Suite 300
Murray, UT 84123

Description:
This workshop will walk you through the Constant Contact Email Marketing System while you learn email marketing best practices, winning strategies and tactics. You’ll learn how to build and manage your contacts, how to create great looking emails, and how to track and maximize results.

The workshop also covers basic email optimization concepts including building a bigger list, getting email opened, and ideas for email content. They won’t have wireless access.

To attend, register online at http://utah.constantcontact.com

(Space is limited to the first 30 registrations.)

UPDATE: The class is full. You can get on the waiting list. I asked them to do another workshop and will keep you posted on if they open up another class.

UPDATE: I got a reply to my email and they say classes often fill up very fast and to subscribe to their RSS feed if you want to attend (the calendar doesn’t work in Firefox so put it in IE and click to see the entire list of events to find the RSS feed. Not very user-friendly on this front.

My friend Boris at the SEO magazine Search Engine Standard let me interview him by email about how they got started. He is also offering newspapergrl readers a really good price ($4.95) on a subscription. So if you know any SEOs, this could make a great gift. It would be great reading for small businesses trying to understand how search marketing can help their business.

The idea for the magazine started because 5 years ago not many people knew about search engine marketing. That presented a problem because the company sold a product called AdWatcher (www.adwatcher.com), an ROI tracking and click fraud management tool. A little early in the game, they needed to inform people about search marketing so they started a web site and later published a book (Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing Handbook). The book sold about 5,000 copies during the first year or so – not bad, especially for a first book and self-published.

Later, Andrey Milyan, who is currently the editor-in-chief for Search Marketing Standard had the idea of a quarterly magazine about search engine marketing. Milyan was working as an in-house SEO at a Bridal magazine at the time. Now two years later they have a staff of 7 people and the magazine is going strong. Boris reached out to me several months ago and keeps me updated, which is another great way to publicize your product (find bloggers who write about the subject and reach out to them).
Boris set up a coupon code so you could subscribe to Search Marketing Standard, and get a 67% discount, which makes a 1 year U.S. subscription cost just $4.95 (International – $6.60). Use coupon code: 67PILGRIM (I asked him to make it available for Marketing Pilgrim writers too. If your company wants to offer a special discount for your product, please contact me, I think this is a great idea).

For every new subscriber until Dec. 10th who uses the coupon code, they’ll donate $1 to Toys for Tots.