Thanks for stopping by. If you're new here, please subscribe to my RSS feed or you can head over to the following pages to find more of what you're looking for: Marketing Ideas, Consulting, Media Inquires, Contact Me or my Twitter page. Thanks for visiting!

One of the topics I caught on talk radio recently was how the FDA announced that most diet pills are bad for us. The kicker was that even pills marked as all natural are bad for the people taking them. I am thinking to myself, “no crap.” Just because something is natural doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

Internet marketing is a lot like diet pills

Internet marketing is not easy. I won’t claim that it is. It is real work. Sometimes at the end of the day having worked 14+ hours, I question why I even bother. But when you accomplish something cool and profitable, it is completely worth it. Like dieting, there is no shortcut.

Let me repeat myself, there is NO shortcut. You can’t take some magic pill that will make you money overnight online. If that were the case, everyone would do it. It takes long hours, a lack of sleep and eating potatoes for months to save on groceries. The reason so many people out there are “pretending” to give you good advice is because they are selling you diet pills. Then when you realize those pills don’t work, they have another one lined up for you to try that “really works this time.” Quit kidding yourself.

95% of the “A-List” bloggers are selling you crap. I fell for it just like most everyone else I know. I was only smart enough to get out of the Internet marketing rat race when I saw a good thing. People like Vic and Grizz taught me how to think like a real Internet marketer and how to profit from it. They will teach you more about Internet marketing than all of the A-listers combined. They can teach you about SEO and how to make money online. If you want proof, just Google “make money online” 3 of the top 10 spots belong to these two guys.

There is a lot of money to be made online. But the pie is shrinking unless you teach yourself some valuable skills. Skills that are not of value include spending 1,000 hours building a list of subscribers who don’t buy what you are selling. That is why it takes the A-listers tens of thousands of subscribers to make money. Do you ever notice that advertisers on their sites don’t buy repeating ads? The reason is because their subscribers don’t buy anything from those advertisers. It’s a big con game. People think if they can get an ad on those bloggers’ sites, some of their money and luck will rub off on them. Nine times out of 10, the advertisers lose and the blogger wins, and you’re the sucker if you bought anything. Trust me I know.

Quit buying diet pills

It’s time to start exercising. If you want to make money online you need to learn a set of skills that will help you to do that. Pick your poison as far as what you want to do. I chose SEO because there is not a lot of competition here in Fargo and it is a lot of fun ranking websites for new keywords. I hope what you choose is something that you really love because when times get tough and you aren’t making any money, you better love it in order to stick through it. Internet marketing is a race. You don’t win races by taking pills. You have to train, sweat, eat right and have commitment.

The #1 thing any of you can do is stop kidding yourself and decide to start working hard towards your goal. It’s either that or go about doing what you’re doing and continue to watch results slip away. I made a choice to quit my job and make a living online doing something I was passionate about. I am extremely thankful I found people willing to share what they know with me freely allowing me to accomplish my dream. I would like to make the same commitment to you as well. I will gladly and willfully tell you all I know, what I’ve learned and continue to learn. All you have to do is ask.

I have to warn you that I am only a willing vessel. You can take what you want and leave the rest. I just promise not to sell you Internet marketing diet pills. I am sure I will have more to come on this subject. I dare ask if you have any Internet marketing horror stories, but if you do and would like to share them feel free to do so. Just remember, you can lose weight for free just like you can make money online for free, it just takes hard work and time. I am always available for discussion via my contact page.

Well it has been a long time coming. I have finally gotten off of my duff and am going to start targeting keywords in my local niche. What I mean by this is to rank #1 or thereabouts for keywords in my surrounding area. Part of what I do is to help local businesses rank for keywords in their respective niches. Say a brick company in Fargo wants to rank for Fargo Brick, I would help that to happen. In the process of ranking others for more niche keywords, I haven’t been working on my own niche as much as I should. So words like SEO Fargo and Marketing Fargo have been neglected by me. So, don’t be surprised if over the next few months I drop a few of these words into my posts from time to time.

Now, just because I have decided to start conquering my own local niche more doesn’t mean I will stop working larger keyword terms. I am calling this my Fargo Marketing campaign. The goal is to dominate my local niche and expand from there.

In case you are wondering, there is a huge void in the middle of our country for people who know search engine marketing or comprehend how to rank sites to #1 in the respective niches. I am going to try my best to take as much of that market as I can while the gettin is still good.

Of course, all of this takes time and I am not expecting to rank for Marketing Fargo the very first week I try, but you never know in a month or two. Along with ranking for keyword terms I am increasing my public exposure to local business people. This week I will be speaking at the Fargo Moorhead Lodging Association meeting on the topic of Embracing Technology. Boy do I have a surprise for them. That is if I can get it put together in time for the meeting . If not I will still be talking about increasing their exposure to the digital world and different ways to embrace it. I hope to record the speaking and post it here so you can critique it for me. I hope to not disappoint.

If you are interested in having me speak to your company, group or organization, visit my media page for more information. I am willing to travel out of the Fargo area.

Another thing I will be helping to increase is local blogger / twitter interaction. Last Saturday we had the first blogger meetup and the second tweetup (the day before) in Fargo / Moorhead. I will post the video below of some of the people saying hi. Hopefully next time the tweeters and bloggers can coordinate the next meeting. We had a few people travel about 150 miles to Fargo (really cool of them). Also here was the list of those in attendance. If you are in the Fargo / Moorhead area you should definitely add them to whatever communication medium you prefer.

Blogger / Twitter Meetup Attendees:

@therealjosh
@bonnyface
@cbensen
@fmsphotography
@magicderivative
@kalyke
@epizoic
@mpool
@jeffspad

What a busy week. I feel like I have been running around with my head cut off and completely slacked on getting a post up. Yesterday I decided to take the whole day off from anything that resembled work, with the exception of helping to shovel snow. Such is life sometimes. Now without further adieu…

Susie Asks: How much emphasis or value do you believe social networking is for companies? I believe it’s really good for brand building, but conversions are a different story, especially when you are limited in your “territory”. What are your thoughts and ideas.

Josh: I think social media and social networking are huge for companies to get involved with. When you have a brand that has been established over time it is very important to monitor that brand and encourage open discussion. One of the best tools I have seen for brand management and tracking social networking trend is an analytics software called SM2 Techrigy. I won’t go into huge detail about what the software can do other than it is top of the line for online brand management.

Recently, I have been trying to use Techrigy to help in planning marketing campaigns for clients versus just as a brand management tool. I will have to tell you about the results after I am done.

If you are limited to a territory I would seek out the noise makers in that area and work on building a positive working relationship with them. If you are an online retailer I would look for the Twitters and Bloggers in your area and build the best relationship possible with them. Don’t be afraid to be fully honest about why you are talking with them and see what different kinds of ideas they might have. That alone is enough to make them talk.

Jeff Asks: love your stuff- you must work with some talented people. who are these stalwarts of creative energy?

Josh: Funny that you ask Jeff. I do as Jeff says surround myself with many people with creative energy. Here in no particular order are those people.

Jeff Nyquist – former marketing director of The Marcil Group and current marketing director of Black Knight Marketing in Fargo, ND.

Sue Long – who specialized in marketing and design also formerly with The Marcil Group and currently with Black Knight Marketing.

Lindsay Stordahl – Lindsay is the author of That Mutt: A Dog Blog and provides marketing assistance for local companies via SEO, content and editorials. P.S. Lindsay is also my girlfriend and chief editor. Thanks, beautiful.

Justin Moen – Who we imported from Norway as a little programming gnome that helps with our automation processes and SEO. (Actually, he returned from a Norwegian hiatus and we snatched him up quickly after).

Sherry Asks: Since I am going to start a contest end of Dec at my blog. I like to know what’s the best way to choose the Winners. Beside using random.org, is there other way to do it?

Josh: Another way to have people win a contest is to make it so difficult that the only person to finish it wins by default. Or, you could have a set guideline that must be followed in order to win. There are always the contests that you purely decide who the winner is based on your own opinion or that of a panel of people (your friends or closest Internet companions). I think all work fine as long as you specify how people are chosen.

stores open on christmas Asks: My question is how do you brainstorm for good marketing ideas to test out on your blog?

Josh: Mostly out of boredom. I usually see what other people are doing and then see how I can apply that to my blog or other sites with the least amount of work possible. I usually just try something because I think it is cool and want to do it. Like my Marketing Ideas En Masse idea where I just wanted an easy way to post frequently about Marketing Ideas to help with my search rankings on that term. Yes, it helped and also got me a boat load of new visitors. I just kinda stumble through this as I see fit, like my own little Internet Marketing / Social Media experiment.

If you have a question and would like me to take a stab at it go ahead and shoot for the next round of Ask Josh or use my contact form.

This is the tenth day of a 30-day trial. Follow the link to Marketing Ideas En Masse to find out more.

The other day I came across an article on the SoGoodBlog where Burger King is purposely dropping wallets around different locations loaded with goodies. Most of the contents inside are gift certificates to their restaurant but who knows maybe someone got adventurous and added some real cash. As far as we can tell they are being dropped in and around the Chicago area, but that doesn’t mean it cant happen where you are.

Yep, the wallets include notes telling the individuals who find them to go ahead and keep the wallets. Time Out Chicago reported on November 12th that Burger King planned to drop 5,000 of these wallets around urban hot spots in Chicago. A handful of bloggers have found some of these wallets, and are reporting that they contain actual cash, ranging from a $1 bill to a $100 bill, a gift card to Burger King, a “Drivers License” featuring The King, and a map of Chicago or Orlando area Burger King’s.

Several bloggers have posted about their experience, or their friend’s experience, finding one of these wallets. See HERE, HERE and HERE for more on their stories. A couple of PR and marketing bloggers are weighing in as well, praising the promotion and calling it “unexpected and well-timed” given the current state of the economy.

Here is an Interview with Turnip of Power | Social Networking marketer on the creation of a new advertising network called CMF ADS. CMF (Changing Marketing Forever) ADS is a widget-based advertising system that allows advertisers to purchase ad space on quality niche blogs on a CPM (cost per thousand views) basis. Currently, there are 20 blogs in the network that have been selectively chosen to participate in the initial launching.

I like discovering new and up and coming products or services and thought CMF ADS would be a great candidate to share with everyone. After you read through the questions below, I encourage you to visit CMF ADS and see what it has to offer. Without further adieu, here you go:

What was your motivation for starting CMF ADS?

My motivation was to implement an idea I had posted several times on both my blog and on the Entrecard Forums. Each time the idea was ignored or given the canned response of “We have limited resources for that.” Then recently I was disappointed with the Performancing Ads Network. Stan from razzball.com approached me and said “Why can’t we do something like that?” That’s how it all started.

What are your short and long-term goals for CMF ADS?

Short term the goal was to get good people involved who wanted to be part of something new. We wanted to test our code, our server, public reaction, and iron out all the little unexpected surprises. Long term we would like to expand our portfolio of blogs and reach out to other social networks. As we are only 3 weeks old today, we are still refining our initial goals. Just yesterday I rewrote the widget code to allow for this expansion.

What is your major selling point for CMF ADS (elevator pitch)?

For publishers: We monetize your social traffic for you. All you have to do is maintain a quality blog. We help promote your blog, help you with your website when help is requested, and at the end of the day provide you with a small paycheck for displaying our widget in previously unused space next to their social networking widget.

For advertisers: We get your message out there on 20 of the best up and coming websites. No need to interact with so many small sites individually. We bundle our members’ page views and sell them to you in a very affordable CPM bundle, providing geotargetting and other advanced features the individual site owner could not easily provide due to a lack of technical expertise.

I could imagine many bloggers will want to utilize your service. Do you have strict quality control admission?

We have quality control on both the publisher and advertiser ends. Nobody wants to advertise on horrible made for adsense splogs. Likewise, no blogger wants scammy ads on their website. We manually approve all blogs and ads, allowing both publisher and advertiser to opt out of any ads or sites they wish. Each blog in our network was discussed in detail before being sent an invitation to join.

If a blog is interested in joining what will be the minimum requirements for joining?

Initially we invited only WordPress blogs. Since then we have allowed blogs using other content management platforms to join. The main requirements are your own domain name, a minimum of a 250 pixel wide sidebar, and maintaining a high-quality blog. Sometimes we work around the sidebar issue in special cases, but generally adhere to these rules.

How does the advertising widget effect the speed and efficiency of a site?

Our widget opens in an i-frame, so won’t ever slow down the rest of a site from loading. In addition, we host the bottom image locally, further speeding up the process.

What has been the overall perception of the widget so far?

Reception has been great. The first day we announced our network we sold 25,000 impressions as well as numerous high-quality blogs looking to join the network. Many curious bloggers have taken notice, along with a few advertisers.

Do you see yourself in competition to Entrecard or merely using some of their ideas to create a stand along advertising network?

We don’t see ourselves in competition with Entrecard or using their ideas. We took twenty well-respected blogs and made an ad network out of them. Now because we are active in the Entrecard community it was only natural that these twenty blogs were discovered through Entrecard. One blog has since left Entrecard and we welcome that, as well. A good blog is a good blog, Entrecard or not.

What measures are you establishing to provide the smoothest growth possible?

To ensure smooth growth, we are only letting in a fraction of the blogs asking to join. Each step of the way we have checked to make sure all issues were addressed before moving on to the next phase.

Conclusion:

I think this network has some great potential to develop into a full service advertising network. I don’t know how often they will be accepting new publishers, but I would make admission highly selective, more on the prestigious side. Say it only has enrollment every two weeks and only X number of new publishers will be allowed in during the beta stage, kind of like Gmail was invite only for the longest time. This would help in the beginning to have controlled growth of all the system resources preserving the quality of the network and service by not having a bunch of down time.

I really enjoy when people go out on their own by mixing and matching various different ideas to produce a worthwhile product. Time will tell how things play out, but I would again encourage you to head over to CMF ADS and check it out for yourself.