When Leonardo da Vinci wanted to create a whole new style of painting, one that was more lifelike and emotional, he engaged in an obsessive study of details. He spent endless hours experimenting with forms of light hitting various geometrical solids, to test how light could alter the appearance of objects. He devoted hundreds of pages in his notebooks to exploring the various gradations of shadows in every possible combination. He gave this same attention to the folds of a gown, the patterns in hair, the various minute changes in the expression of a human face. When we look at his work we are not consciously aware of these efforts on his part, but we feel how much more alive and realistic his paintings are, as if he had captured reality.

The average person does not generally pay attention to what we shall call negative cues, what should have happened but did not. It is our natural tendency to fixate on positive information, to notice only what we can see and hear.

In business, the natural tendency is to look at what is already out there in the marketplace and to think of how we can make it better or cheaper. The real trick—the equivalent of seeing the negative cue—is to focus our attention on some need that is not currently being met, on what is absent. This requires more thinking and is harder to conceptualize, but the rewards can be immense if we hit upon this unfulfilled need. One interesting way to begin such a thought process is to look at new and available technology in the world and to imagine how it could be applied in a much different way, meeting a need that we sense exists but that is not overly apparent. If the need is too obvious, others will already be working on it.

Mastery by Robert Greene

A producer is someone who creates value and shares knowledge with others. In the process, a producer helps improve lives and earns continuous active and passive income.

Step one is committing to becoming a producer. 

To attract customers, and partner with affiliates who’ll help promote your products, follow these principles:

• Have a solid understanding of your customers’ needs. When you identify your target audience’s biggest problems, you’ll be able to create products that solve them. Once you do so, you’ll have customers for life.
  

• Be clear about what your customers are willing to spend. You can’t expect meaningful rates of conversion if you develop champagne products for beer budgets. Test, poll, research similar products, and interact with potential customers to discover what they’re willing, or even able, to spend on your product.
  

• Deliver your product in the expected format. Trying to sell a magazine to someone who wants to see a movie is an effort in futility. A videocassette won’t sell to someone who has only a DVD player. Learn how your target customer wants to receive your content and then deliver it via the appropriate medium. 

Higher prices lead to greater affiliate participation. Whether your product costs $10 or $10,000, it’ll require roughly the same amount of effort for an affiliate to promote it. As a result, most affiliates will choose to invest their time into selling high-priced products that provide substantial returns. Printed books and ebooks, while often providing wonderful content, are ill suited for commission-driven relationships as are most other products that sell for under $500. Today’s successful partnerships involve the promotion of products priced between $500 and $4,995. Products above and below these price points continue to be sold, but they represent the two ends of the bell curve. Successful Internet marketers offer products at the center of the curve—and right now that sweet spot is roughly $2,500.  

Higher commissions mean happy affiliates. Selling a highpriced product isn’t the whole story. You must also be generous on commissions paid. Today, 40%-50% commission rates are commonplace, as is the payment of an additional 10% for second-tier affiliates. Second-tier affiliates, also known as brokers, help recruit affiliates for a product launch. When a product is sold, a second-tier affiliate typically receives 10% of the purchase price. Naturally, this cuts into your net profits. However, industry leaders understand that 40%-50% is a price worth paying for instant massive exposure, immediate income, and adding thousands of hopefully satisfied customers to their sales funnel. 


Continuity programs create long-term relationships. While instant cash is always nice, long-term passive income is even better. Whether they consist of bi-weekly one-on-one coaching, monthly product shipments, quarterly VIP programs, or annual membership dues, continuity programs provide ongoing benefits for both you and your affiliates.   

Developing products from scratch is hard. But even more difficult is creating products that fulfill audience needs, provide immense value, are of superior quality, and convert prospects to paying customers. Success requires satisfying all four criteria.

Today, he who has the list controls the game. 

Internet Prophets: The World's Leading Experts Reveal How to Profit Online by Steve Olsher

Category-dominating sites are difficult to create and there’s little doubt why. Creating a formidable entity not only takes time, energy, and resources, but it also takes an in-depth understanding of oneself. There are seven crucial factors for success that must be mastered in order to establish front-runner position. Most would-be industry leaders find it nearly impossible to master one of these areas, let alone all seven. The requisite success factors—in no particular order—are:

• Specific Area of Focus: Identify your core interests and desired target market. In other words, what do you have innate love for and whom do you want to serve? From forensic accountants and third grade teachers to underwater welders and golf coaches, exhaustively providing relevant information and continuously adding beneficial, focused content to one specific subset of the population often equates to long-term success. This is not to say that expansion to other products and services is forever removed from the equation; however, this should only happen after market dominance has been established (think Amazon).

• Professional Website Design: Clearly a no-brainer, but there are so many poorly designed sites it bears repeating. Model competitive and other category-leading sites that receive significant traffic. Customers flock there for a reason.

• Visibility to Target Market: Where do potential customers gather and how can they be reached? One can have the best products and services in the world, but if no one knows about them, their business is irrelevant. Identifying high-return opportunities to spread the word is crucial.

• Expert, Valuable Content: Nothing breeds credibility and stickiness (the amount of time a visitor stays on the site) as will pertinent, well crafted content from both contributors the clientele knows and up-and-coming game changers. To establish authority, combine cutting-edge, exciting ideas and information with proven industry products and services.

Internet Prophets: The World's Leading Experts Reveal How to Profit Online by Steve Olsher

• Interactive/Social Visitor Experience: Leading sites encourage visitors to contribute content, comment on articles and products, and share thoughts via social networks with their tribe.

From Facebook and Twitter to StumbleUpon and LinkedIn, today’s customers insist upon leveraging social media to disseminate positive and negative feedback while cutting the learning curve down for fellow surfers.

• Free High-Value Products: Like it or not, free is mandatory. To drive traffic, one must offer something of inherent value that pushes beyond articles, helpful resources, and videos. Doing so not only enables site owners to capture leads as the customer typically opts in to receive the free product, it also fulfills the unwritten obligation they have to connect with their audience in a deeper manner than simply posting relevant content.

• Products/Services for Sale: Without products and services to sell, the rest of the equation is moot. Even not-for-profits ask for donations. Why? Because hosting, updating, and maintaining even the simplest of sites has related expenses. Creating for-sale products and services is a necessary part of doing business. the recommended manner for establishing authority is to first gain credibility within one specific aspect of the industry and then, if desired, seek to expand.

Although it may seem counterintuitive, the more narrow your focus, the wider a net you can cast.

Internet Prophets: The World's Leading Experts Reveal How to Profit Online by Steve Olsher

There are many factors involved with creating a successful website. Most can be easily and quickly learned so long as one critical ingredient is present: traffic. 


No matter how ugly or poorly designed a website is, if traffic exists, product will be sold.

On the other hand, one might have the world’s best site with copy so compelling it could sell gym memberships to your bed-ridden grandparents, but without visitors, not a dime’s worth of product will sell.

Today, link text and PageRank remain the two most important factors in achieving top rankings. Let’s cut through the clutter and examine why these two elements are so important. Relevancy And Link Text A page that’s highly relevant for a given search has three elements:

• Search keywords that appear in the page title.

• Content that’s pertinent to the query.

• Inbound links pointing to the page.

Internet Prophets: The World's Leading Experts Reveal How to Profit Online by Steve Olsher

Many of the links pointing to a page will stem from other websites. However, links from a site’s own pages count as well. That’s in part why larger sites tend to do far better in search results than smaller sites. Some refer to the latter as “the Wikipedia effect.” Wikipedia is one of the most authoritative sites on the web because it has 

1) an enormous number of pages, and 
2) thousands of links from other sites. With this in mind, let’s examine one of the most powerful SEO “secrets.”

Attaining the highest ranking shouldn’t be your primary goal. A top-ranked page that receives few clicks or fails to convert traffic into leads and sales is a site that requires major modification. Your first goal should be to create products and services that customers want to buy. Only after this core objective is accomplished should you focus on ranking high for the search terms relevant to your target market. Ranking that converts to leads or paying customers is the only sustainable strategy.

While there may be a select few who are indeed, looking for a Bikram yoga studio in Chicago, 99.999% are not. They could be searching for yoga apparel, yoga poses, a yoga studio in Tokyo, or one of millions of other possibilities and simply need to be more specific with their query. As a result, your page will receive minimal traffic regardless of its prominent position. Now suppose you narrowed your focus and searched for the term “Bikram Yoga in Chicago.” This returns around one million pages, of which 105f.com is number one. While the odds have dramatically shifted in your favor for achieving page one status (one million pages versus 400 million), major competition for traffic remains, as does the possibility that a great deal of those entering the query may still be seeking something other than what you offer. So, what to do? Identify what makes your business unique. Looking closer at your studio, you recognize that you offer classes for beginners, classes for advanced practitioners, daytime classes for moms and tots, senior classes, and a kids-only class on Saturday. Related search queries for these might include:

• Bikram yoga classes for beginners in Chicago
• Advanced Bikram yoga training in Chicago
• Daytime Bikram yoga classes for moms and tots in Chicago
• Senior citizen Bikram yoga classes in Chicago
• Saturday kids only Bikram yoga classes in Chicago

Internet Prophets: The World's Leading Experts Reveal How to Profit Online by Steve Olsher

Creating content requires time, of course, but nothing achieves higher rankings faster. There’s a direct correlation between the number of pages your site has and the amount of traffic it receives. 

Driving traffic through SEO requires you to be in the publishing business. 

While this may not be what you had in mind when you opened shop, there’s no way around it. Every time you publish a new webpage, you increase your site’s authority and the chances of a web user finding your business. And if your content is engaging, that visitor may become a long-term paying customer.

You now possess the modern-day recipe for search:

• Target search queries directly relating to your specific business.

• Create pages that provide detailed answers to popular queries.

• Include the search query for which you’d like to rank high in every page’s title.

• Create attractive, engaging pages with pertinent content.

• Use links between pages to help visitors find what they need. •

Create link text that includes targeted keywords and phrases.

• More webpages on your site will result in greater authority.

• Secure inbound links from related sites to increase authority.

• Cultivating traffic is mandatory for online success—SEO-generated traffic is ideal. 

• Well designed SEO strategies lead to higher rankings.

• Good page titles, accurate link text, and establishing PageRank are key factors for achieving top ranking.

• Search is a “conversation.” Therefore, think about your prospect’s queries and create pages that answer their questions.

• Short-tail queries may have a higher volume, however, they convert poorly and require high authority to attain prominent ranking.

• Long-tail queries are significantly more targeted, easier to rank well for, generate less traffic, but convert exceptionally well.

Internet Prophets: The World's Leading Experts Reveal How to Profit Online by Steve Olsher

I believe that entrepreneurship requires a managerial discipline to harness the entrepreneurial opportunity we have been given.

There are more entrepreneurs operating today than at any previous time in history. This has been made possible by dramatic changes in the global economy. To cite but one example, one often hears commentators lament the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States over the previous two decades, but one rarely hears about a corresponding loss of manufacturing capability. That’s because total manufacturing output in the United States is increasing (by 15 percent in the last decade) even as jobs continue to be lost (see the charts below). In effect, the huge productivity increases made possible by modern management and technology have created more productive capacity than firms know what to do with.

We are living through an unprecedented worldwide entrepreneurial renaissance, but this opportunity is laced with peril. Because we lack a coherent management paradigm for new innovative ventures, we’re throwing our excess capacity around with wild abandon. Despite this lack of rigor, we are finding some ways to make money, but for every success there are far too many failures: products pulled from shelves mere weeks after being launched, high-profile startups lauded in the press and forgotten a few months later, and new products that wind up being used by nobody. What makes these failures particularly painful is not just the economic damage done to individual employees, companies, and investors; they are also a colossal waste of our civilization’s most precious resource: the time, passion, and skill of its people. The Lean Startup movement is dedicated to preventing these failures.

Lean thinking is radically altering the way supply chains and production systems are run. Among its tenets are drawing on the knowledge and creativity of individual workers, the shrinking of batch sizes, just-in-time production and inventory control, and an acceleration of cycle times. It taught the world the difference between value-creating activities and waste and showed how to build quality into products from the inside out.

Progress in manufacturing is measured by the production of high-quality physical goods....the Lean Startup uses a different unit of progress, called validated learning.

With scientific learning as our yardstick, we can discover and eliminate the sources of waste that are plaguing entrepreneurship.

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries

Now, one of the techniques Google uses to filter out the ‘bad’ websites is to look at their backlinking pattern. In layman’s terms, backlinks are the quality and quantity of links that point to your website. So a link from CNN.com is way better than 100 from sites like bobsfriedchickenshack.com. Moreover, there is a ton of misinformation about backlinking. Many people recommend techniques like article spinning, forum profiles, link wheels, link pyramids, and social bookmarking. Once upon a time, these worked. But Google has cracked down on any site that uses these techniques. So bottom line... You need backlinks. Just make sure you’re focusing on quality over quantity.

Building Backlinks 101

Every backlink is different. Google places a strong emphasis on links from large, authority style sites. So it only makes sense to focus on these web properties. The best way to build a backlink is to create a unique piece of content, post it on a website, and then include a link back to your site. The trick here is to mix up the anchor text. These are the visible, clickable words in the hyperlink. You don’t want all the text to be the same. Instead you should include different phrases to make it more organic looking. Here are the percentages I recommend: --- 30% should be the target keyword for the web page --- 20% should be a related LSI keyword ---20% should be ‘naked hyperlink’ with no text --- 30% should be a random assortment of phrases like click here, check this out, this page, go here, etcetera. These percentages are important because they match how people normally link back to a website. It looks more ‘organic’ in the eyes of Google – So you’ll be less likely to get hit with any sort of penalty. That’s the essence of backlinking.

Your First $1000 - How to Start an Online Business that Actually Makes Money by Steve Scott

Write Benefit-Driven Content: 

Get into the mind of the reader. Describe why they should buy the offer and how it will help them. The best way to write compelling text is to talk about the reader’s pain and frustrations. Identify with them about their daily experience with the niche topic. Then show how the affiliate offer alleviates a specific obstacle. You need to use basic copywriting to make this section stand out. This will turn your words into compelling text. You can learn the fundamentals of copywriting.

You don’t have to create things like a headline or an opening hook. The most important action you can take is to emphasize the benefits over the features. Simply talk about how the reader will feel after using the product.

Your First $1000 - How to Start an Online Business that Actually Makes Money by Steve Scott

If one thing can translate off the page and into your life it might be this: 

You will have times in your life—everyone does—when opportunities present themselves. They come and then they go. They never last. And it usually feels scary when they come, because it’s something new and unchartered. The question for you is: Are you going to seize your opportunities? Are you going to differentiate yourself and take risks? I give myself a lot of credit for being able to find these opportunities and (as you have noticed) I like to call them angles. But the real fact is that everyone sees angles. Just very few have the balls to exploit them.

I guess what I mean to say is that those thirty seconds of awkwardness can pay dividends for life. Stop trying to be so cool, already, and focus on what you can leverage.


I do believe that you learn ten times more from a failure than you do from any success. You can read all day long about what you are supposed to do, how you need to act and react in any hypothetical circumstance, business or otherwise, but until you actually live through that real circumstance, you understand nothing about it.

These days I’m not running scared, I’m just aware. I’m aware that the affiliate space as I knew it is dead. I’m aware that my last crazy scheme is not behind me. I’m aware that tomorrow you can always find yourself bankrupt again and the day after that you could be on the cover of Forbes. I’m also aware that blazing new trails with the likes of Gates and Jobs and Trump often means that you leave your family behind and neglected. I’m mostly aware that I’m smart enough to find another way through where I can have a better quality of life with a company that sustains my inventiveness.

Nothing's Changed But My Change by Jeremy Schoemaker, Kate Sprouse

If you are deliberately trying to create a future that feels safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely. 
SETH GODIN, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?


I’m a marketer. Trust me. I’m lying to you. 

I know what I’m talking about here. I have made millions of dollars selling people stuff on the Internet. I have a model for how it works and what I always show you. I call it the 3Ps and the formula is copyright pending (which doesn’t really matter since I give all my best shit away for free). So here you go. 

• Pain. You have a huge problem right now. (At least one!!) 

• Potential. You are dying to know that there’s a way to solve this problem. 

• Proof. You’re in luck! There IS a solution, JUST LOOK HOW IT WORKED FOR JIMMY! If you understand even that tiny bit you will be successful in sales.

NOBODY buys a product for what it actually does. They buy it because they were sold on the story of what the product was going to do for them.

Nothing's Changed But My Change by Jeremy Schoemaker, Kate Sprouse

Opportunities are everywhere but they never last long. You need to be brave enough to take them when you see them. I am. I do. 

The other thing about me, that you need to know, is that I am always willing to do what others are not. Yes, I see angles and opportunities and in many ways and times I have been really lucky and fortunate. But I have also been willing to put the work in, to take a risk, to push the boundaries in order to see something through. So much of my professional success is due to this—100%. I tell people all of the time exactly what to do to make money and more often than not, these people will find an excuse not to do what they could. I don’t make excuses. I do it.

Nothing's Changed But My Change by Jeremy Schoemaker, Kate Sprouse