Last week was an exciting week. My neighborhood was hit by a tornado that knocked out power and satellite, I celebrated a birthday (I feel old) and I was kidnapped by my wife and taken to an exotic hotel location without my laptop. Working on Internet Marketing without electricity, an internet connection or a laptop is really challenging. Luckily, my BlackBerry was not impacted by this weekends events, so I was able to stay connected. 🙂

Over the weekend, I was able to get started in Josh Spaulding's coaching program. Josh is an article marketing and SEO expert (currently ranking on page 1 in Google for make money online), and a really nice guy. When I first got started in Internet Marketing, I became interested in Adsense, and quickly learned that there were guys like Garry Conn that had as many as 100 blogs — many of which were making money from Adsense. In my research on this topic, I ran across Josh's eBook called Article Marketing Domination and his free eBook Easy SEO. Recently, Josh published another free eBook: $5 Mini-Site Formula. This book was about exactly what I wanted (needed) to know when I started last November.

The MasonWorld Roadmap

Reviewing that eBook has made me rethink the 2008 Roadmap for the MasonWorld Internet Empire. Basically, I have been thinking about what I want to get out of my Internet Marketing hobby. I started this effort in Nov 2007 with some similar goals, but I am continuing to refine them (December seems like an internet lifetime ago).

On this pass of goal setting, I came up with several key overriding concepts:

• Have fun. This is easy, since I am facinated with the internet and technology
• Learn something. This easy. I knew nothing about internet marketing when I started.
• Add some value. Whatever I do, I am not really interested in just “taking” and leaving nothing behind. A good example is this website. At the end of 2008, I would like to be able to point to this site as a valuable resource that people can use.
• Generate revenue. I actually struggled with this. I am not really in this for the money since I have a great day job (as I have mentioned a thousand times). Still, it seems like the measure of success in Internet Marketing is revenue. So, I am making this the lowest priority goal

Of course, there are some constraints:

• Limited time. I am only allowing myself a coupleof hours a day (max) to work at this hobby. My family and my real job come first (in that order).
• Limited funds. I could choose to spend $4700 on an eCourse or something like that. I am sure I could get great results that way. But, I am determined to do this the “hard” way on a limited budget.
• White Hat. I am still not interested in Black Hat techniques. However, I do see that sometimes it is a little hard to tell the Gray stuff from the White stuff.

With this as a framework, that left me with the question of what to try to accomplish in 2008.

Approaches and Goals for 2008

I am currently planning to have the following completed by the end of 2008. Of course, I plan to blog about everything that I learn in the mean time.

• Grow the MasonWorld.com Internet-Based Marketing blog
  • Post 3 times per week about my Internet Marketing experience
  • Grow RSS readership through great content generation
  • Grow email opt-ins through bonus content
  • Add a modest monthly podcast
  • Build a valuable brand with great content that people want to read
• Build three niche information sites
  • Launch 3 new sites with the $5 per day formula
  • Use article marketing to promote the sites
  • Use the Coaching With Josh resources to achieve $5/day in Adsense revenue
  • Work with a great developer to build a killer niche site WP template
  • Consider a plan to grow those sites to something more in 2009
• Build 3 Affiliate Product sites
  • Launch 3 new/existing sites (Elvis will be one of them)
  • Use article marketing to promote the sites
  • Consider a plan to grow those sites to something more in 2009
• Create my very own information product
  • Identify a niche (IM may be the first one)
  • Create an information product (Niche site case study how-to maybe?)
  • Promote and sell the product (or give it away)
• Create and release one report for Butterfly Reports

That's already way too much for 2008, given that I am working on this part time.

So, tonight I am planning on working on article marketing for my new niche sites using Article Post Robot. I bought this tool several weeks ago. I will post about my progress on Wednesday (my next scheduled post).

Best regards,
Mark