First I wanted to talk about what an excellent product the Mini Site Formula turned out to be. It takes you step-by-step from start to finish to build your first site. After that you simply repeat the process.

I did it with 6 sites. Joel recommends using .com domains, but I went the cheap route to get a feel for the system and used .info domains which I found for a buck a piece. My total outlay for putting the system into action was only $36.

One of the sites made $43 in a few days. The others didn’t fare so well. At this point, though, I was happy. It was cheap, easy and, best of all, generating cash.

Unfortunately, that particular road to riches hit a dead end thanks to my oversight. The step I mentioned earlier that you need to do is this: read eBay’s terms and conditions. I had assumed it was just the usual “don’t spam, don’t pretend you’re eBay” type of stuff so I skipped over it.

But lo and behold in all that legalese was a clause about what domain name you can’t use. They don’t allow trademarked terms before the third slash. So if you were building a site about ipods, you couldn’t use ipodsyoursite.com or ipods.yoursite.com. Guess what I did. Yep, broke that rule. To their credit, eBay sent me a warning email and gave me three days to comply or have my account terminated.

This brings me to my second mistake… registering with EPN using an email account that I don’t check regularly. When I did get around to it, I spotted the alert from eBay long after the deadline had expired.

Result?

Account closed. Crap.

I could go back and rework those using different affiliate products (non-eBay) that Joel mentions in the course. But those take more work and more money.

To wrap it up, I believe the Mini Site Formula is a great info product. Joel presents the information in a pleasant and easy-to-understand manner. I made money with it. Ultimately, my lack of success was my own fault. Hopefully, now that you’ve read this, you can avoid those pitfalls if you try out the product yourself.

After downloading everything, I started watching the videos and taking notes. I found Joel easy to listen to. He has good delivery and the videos are high quality. With some products I’ve seen, the production values are so poor or the speaker is annoying it really makes it hard to learn anything.

Basically the formula consists of researching what’s selling, creating a mini site and then promoting it. Joel said once you’re in the groove you could create a site from start to finish in 30 minutes. I made 6 sites at once and averaged about 2 hours per site.

In the videos Joel shows how to determine exactly what’s worth promoting. He suggests a couple of sites for basic research and one in particular which is a paid site. It cost $25 to access it for a month. I signed up and researched like crazy. It was really easy. I’m a bit compulsive so instead of just finding a couple of products to start with, I scoured the data and put together a list of thousands. I was on the path to riches.

After getting a list of products that have potential, you check to see the competition. How hard it would be to rank in the search engines. If it passes that test, you move on.

Then you see if there is enough interest in the product/keyword to be worth your time.

Once you reach that point, it’s time to join the eBay Partner Network. When you do, there’s a critical step you must do. Joel didn’t mention it. He may have simply assumed it was so obvious as to not need discussion, but for me it was a costly mistake. Read part 3 of this review to find out what it was.

That’s why I passed on it the first time.

But the more I thought about it, the more excited I became. I mean surely I could get a site going, create some content and make 3 bucks a day. Then do it again, and again, and again.

Imagine having a bunch of these little sites. Let’s say 10. That’s $30 per day. How about 100 sites. That’s $300 per day…or $9,000 per month. Wow.

The great thing is that you don’t spend a great deal of time on any one site. They don’t need to be perfect, just good enough. Create it, promote it, move on.

Ah rats, the clock on the wall says it’s bedtime. I’ll have to spread out this review. Hope you don’t mind. Stay tuned…In the meantime, you may want to check out the Mini Site Formula for yourself.

Every so often I think about posting, but never get around to doing it. I’ll read something by Seth Godin or John Forde or Michael Katz (to name a few) and think “I’d like to write like that.” Then I don’t.

I see I’ve posted a grand total of one time this year. This post doubles my output. How prolific.

I guess I’m not sure what to do. Should I post about local attractions or perhaps do product reviews? Rants, raves or what? I don’t know and that’s the problem. Too many choices.

I consume a lot of Internet marketing products from the likes of Frank Kern, Armand Moran, Yanik Silver, Dan Kennedy, Jeff Johnson, Jeff Walker, Ed Dale, Dan Raine and many others. I think I’ll try some reviews.

Just outside of town, we’ll soon have hundreds of windmills (or wind turbines) to gaze upon.  Now we can look forward to having an alien landscape like the wind farm over in McLean county. Eerie.

Will our cost of electricity be dropping? Um, no. It’s going up. At least that’s the latest word from those supposedly in the know.

What type of allergic reaction you ask? It will crash her blood pressure. Fortunately she was in the hospital when we discovered this fact several years ago. Her room filled up fast with medical personnel who soon stabilized her.

So if you were a doctor prescribing medicine to her, would there be any particular ones you’d NOT choose? I kinda thought so too. Well, today the doctor prescribed medicine she’s allergic to. And the pharmacist said, “it’s only got a small amount (of the medicine you’re allergic to).”

Isn’t that like a chef serving up dinner and saying, “it only has a slight amount of poison.” Enjoy.

Oh and there was a huge spike the week of June 29th. Hmm.

Elmo Live Toy

I’ve heard the Elmo Live Doll is the hot toy this Christmas season. I saw one for myself at Toys R Us this past weekend. It was sitting on a shelf next to the Elmos of Christmas past. I touched his foot and he blew me a kiss. Very nice movement.

Then out of curiosity I tried out the other Elmos. You can really see how they’ve improved the mechanics of the little guy. Elmo Live is much more realistic than the rest. Since he’s the newest, he carries a heftier price tag…$60 compared to $25 for the others.

My 2-year-old loves Elmo. My son comes running whenever he hears the little red guy on TV or my computer. But my boy has never had an Elmo of his own. This year that will change. Elmo Live? Well, no. My son really likes the Elmo theme song, so I bought the thought-for-the-day Elmo who sings it. Plus I’m frugal.

Have you heard of Internet Marketing Uncut? Or Tristan Bull?

A friend of a friend sent me a hot tip and the next thing I knew I was watching the Internet Marketing Uncut program on my laptop. There are a lot of videos (40 or so) and they cover all the essentials of making money online or so Tristan claims.

I had planned to post a nice review once I finished the Internet Marketing Uncut videos. Not gonna happen. I bailed out less than halfway through. It’s just bunch of powerpoints with Tristan talking. “You can really make money… It’s really easy… This is big… etc.”

The bottom line is you can find much better material for a lot less money elsewhere (IMC costs just under $2000) with products by Ed Dale, Frank Kern, Armand Morin, Yanik Silver and Early to Rise. If there’s interest I’ll put up some posts along those lines.