Tag Archives: Interview

An Interview With Mirko Gosch

You know, most of the time we tend to think that the only people worth interviewing are people who have accomplished great things. I think the interviews I’ve given have proven that not everyone has to be great to be fascinating, or to be able to learn something from.

I was on Twitter one night & saw Mirko’s post saying he could give some advice on internet marketing. I threw out a question, he answered, and it was a good answer. We talked, and he gave me some more answers; all good stuff. I asked him to take the standard interview questions, assuming he was someone who’d made a lot of money, and instead he revealed that he’s in the process of studying before figuring out where he wants to go. But his advice was still good. Thus, this interview:

1. How long did it take you to make your first $10,000 via internet marketing?

Come back in 3-6 months time and I’ll be able to tell you 🙂 I have spent the last 6 months crawling the internet marketing scene to learn, learn, learn. I’ve spend thousands of dollars and thousands of hours to dig deep into the abundance of possibilities to make money online and I’ve only just begun to implement what I have learned. I took the time to weed out the crap of which there is a lot of to be discovered and I am now confident to have found a system to deliver high valuable service and products without tricking people into buying stuff they don´t need.

2. When you first began, what kind of mistakes did you make that impeded you?

The biggest mistake by far was that it took me 6 months to get myself a mentor to guide me with a proven system. But then you know, it also took time to find the right mentor for me, as what I have written to question #1 applies to this one here as well. There is an abundance of people offering advice and it takes time to check them out before you commit yourself to one person, doesn’t it?

Another mistake I’d like to mention is that due to the fact that I was shining my flashlight into every single corner of this online marketing world I lost my focus and was spinning around in circles trying to absorb all the information available. I subscribed to dozens upon dozens of email lists from marketers and I found myself bombarded with emails every day. More than a single person can read or least of all follow up any of the gazillions of links. So for me it was time to reduce the noise in my email inbox, unsubscribe from the majority and stick only to the very best I had discovered.

3. For someone brand new who has a product to sell, whether it’s their own or not, what are the first three steps they need to do to drive traffic to their product, or is that the most important thing to begin with in the first place?

Talking about traffic, the life-blood of any website offering something to sell, this involves many aspects and I don’t have a short answer to this very good and important question. There is basically three types of traffic: Paid traffic (such as Google Adwords and other forms of advertising on other websites), Free traffic (such as traffic from the search engines, social media sites you engage on, like Facebook e.g, social bookmarking and more) and there is Borrowed traffic (traffic from joint venture partners who have a list of email subscribers to whom they can offer your product).

If you have a product (doesn’t matter whether it is your own or an affiliate product) you first will have to do some deep keyword research using the Google keyword tool or any of the good keyword tool software products to find out if you have a demand for your product in the market. If your search tells you there is a substantial amount of people looking for your kind of product, move on to find a good keyword related name for your blog or website that is still available and register a .com, .org or .net domain. Set up the blog/website and start adding valuable content to your blog. Then use any of the three types of traffic.

4. What’s your general opinion on trying to make money selling affiliate products through companies like Clickbank, Commission Junction, etc?

This is a good way to start making money online as you do not have to handle the product creation part, not the billing part, not the service part nor anything else like that. You don’t even need a website as you can direct the traffic directly to the affiliate offer (e.g. an ad linking to the offer).

But it is a competitive market and you certainly have to learn the basics before you go out and try and make a buck with affiliate marketing.

5. Do you believe an autoresponder is important even for those who don’t have much traffic at the beginning?

Yes, you should start as soon as possible. Your growing list can and will be a vital part of your websites traffic if you manage to build a good relationship with your list. Imagine sending out an email, asking your list to read your latest blog post, asking them questions and so on. If you’ve built up an relationship with your list, people will hop over to your blog. They will leave comments and this will attract other people and Google as well.

6. Do you believe that most people have the opportunity to make good money via their blogs, or do you believe it’s best to have a website, then possibly direct traffic through a blog to the websites?

The blogs (WordPress) are so good and basically easy to handle nowadays that I believe they will replace the majority of websites some time in the near future. Blogs are an excellent CMS (content management system) and I believe you can use a blog for everything you need online. I especially love the fact that you hardly need any knowledge of any computer language to set them up and maintain them.

7. What do you think of programs like Jeff Paul’s Internet Millions that bring a lot of people into internet marketing, promising millions, that don’t really know what the internet is to begin with?

Too much hype for me. I never bought nor liked any of those products.

8. Do you believe the market is getting too crowded, or is there room for everyone to make money online?

There is plenty of room for years upon years to come. In fact there will always be enough room. Mind you; there is a saying, that 95-97 % of the attempts to make a living online do fail. This might sound scary at first but it leaves us with 3-5 % who are obviously succeeding with their efforts.

And this is why I focus on finding out what makes those who do succeed different from the majority and follow their footsteps.

9. Take a moment for yourself; what are you working on now, or what would you like to promote?

Right now I am a proud student of Alex Jeffreys and I am so thankful that with the help of Alex and a great community of like-minded students I have regained my focus. I have my first product – a Alex Jeffreys course on you guessed it, internet marketing – up and running on my blog Easy Cash Webinar. Next and parallel to the ongoing coaching of Alex Jeffreys, I am working on my first own product to be released to the market – for free – within the next 28 days. So make sure to stop by on my blog Mirko Gosch. My blog is there to make a difference and it is a B.S. free area I’d like to invite you to. I am interacting and exchanging a lot with my fellow coaching students at the moment and there will be joint ventures coming up soon I expect.

10. Any final words of encouragement you’d like to give to my visitors?

Go and get yourself a mentor and prepare yourself for success by following a proven system. Make a plan and work on that plan daily. Be consistent and get your stuff out there. It can be done, you can do it but you have to DO it. Take action. If you ever need a helping hand, pop over to my blog. I am German but I will not shoot 🙂

I thank Mirko for sharing that information with us. And lest you think this is just some young guy who hasn’t done anything with his life yet, Mirko’s 41 years old and a lawyer who’s looking at a career change so he can do more things with his life and with his family. So, this is a driven guy who I hope makes it rich so I can play off his fame and tell the world I interviewed him first! 🙂

The Super Affiliate Handbook
by Rosalind Gardner



Some Random Sunday Things

I’ve been on quite a clip lately in writing this blog, my other blogs, other people’s blogs and all the articles I’ve been writing as well. I could have taken today off, and I kind of am because this is a quick hitter to mention a few things that have entertained or mentioned me lately.

The first is another online radio interview I did with Beverly Mahone of Boomer Diva Nation, the same group that named me as one of the top Baby Boomer Men of 2010. I thank her for that, and I hope to be able to live up to it for the year. Here’s the interview, which you can download as a MP3.

The second is both an honor and some confusion, I guess. I was listed on Not A Pro Blog by Jordan Cooper as one of the 20 Bloggers To Watch Out For In A Back Alley (at least I was; seems the actual Problogger bought this particular blog in April 2010, so the rest of this paragraph makes little sense, but I’m leaving it here anyway).

There’s a video that picks on 20 of us guys, but when he gets to me he compares me to Magilla Gorilla. I missed the reference, my wife isn’t happy for some reason (probably that “equating a black man with a gorilla thing), but I like that I got a mention anyway. I’d have commented on his blog but he has Disqus, and you know how I feel about that, so I figure he’ll see the trackback. His blog is pretty good, and I subscribe to it, so go ahead and check it out.

The third is just a bit of funny that I saw that I wanted to pop up here, though I’m not sure I’m really allowed to do. If I’m contacted, I’ll take it back down, but I’ll get a bit of fun out of it first. This is how you take someone’s power away when they don’t really have it to begin with. I wish I could have thought of saying stuff like this back to people when I was a kid; now I don’t have to deal with such things. I bring you Get Fuzzy:

Finally, some quick football picks. I’m obviously not the best guy at picking games, but I’ll have my fun with it anyway. In the AFC, I expect Indianapolis to win big, but I’m pulling for the NY Jets. They have to be the emotional pick in this game, and all week we’ve been evoking the memories of Broadway Joe here in NY state. In the NFC, man, I really don’t care since my Cowboys lost, but since I have to make a pick I’m going with New Orleans, though for no particular reason.

Indianapolis versus Minnesota would have way more back stories to tell, and the networks would love the Manning vs. Favre comparisons, and of course that game would easily draw in more visitors and make more money than a Jets versus Saints Super Bowl, but most of the world will watch no matter who’s playing, and I’ll have a legitimate betting interest in the game then (Scott, get ready!). By the way, the Jets prove why you play these games rather than just anoint the teams that should be there. No one saw the Jets making it this far with a rookie QB and new coach; fantastic stuff.

That’s it; a “short post” that ended up being more than 500 words anyway. Enjoy your Sunday y’all!

Getting Positive Publicity Through Interviews

Here’s a truth; I want to be famous. I want to be well known. And I want to make money from it. I don’t want to be infamous; I don’t want to have to do something illegal or be outed for something bad to get that fame. I like to think my integrity is higher than that.

I’ve given this a lot of thought and come to this conclusion. The best way to get positive publicity is through doing interviews. This, of course, presupposes that you’ve done something that’s worth getting interviewed about. However, if you have this part covered, it’s the best way to go.

To get interviewed, you just might have to contact someone and make a pitch about why you would make a good candidate. If you’re lucky to have done something already, someone else might ask you for an interview. When this happens, you at least know that someone knows about you, which helps make things go easier later on.

Being interviewed is also a big part of marketing. It’s the reason movie stars go on talk shows when they have a new film coming out. It’s the reason musicians show up in places they wouldn’t want anyone to ever see them, because they want to promote their new album (heck, do people still call it that?). I’ve talked about marketing often on this blog; this is one of those most positive things anyone can have the privilege of doing to help promote themselves.

Basically, there are three different types of interviews, and they help you, or hurt you, in different ways. Let’s look at these three.

The first type of interview is as a part of a piece that will have other people’s opinions at the same time. The best part about an interview like this is that you have the chance to not only focus your message in a short period of time, but if the interview goes well you might get your business name mentioned in the piece as well. The bad thing about an interview like this is that you never know which line the interviewer will use of yours, so it’s possible that they’ll use your line to highlight something negative. An example of this type of this interview I was a part of, which I found while writing my article on searching for your own name on search engines.

The second type of interview is a written interview of some fashion only about you. This can be in a magazine, blog, or newspaper article of some sort. With most of these, you may have the same problem as with the first type of interview, that being that you could say a lot of things that you felt makes you look good, only to find that the interviewer decided against using most of it. The best part, of course, is that it’s all about you, and if the interview is positive, you look good and, hopefully, your business and reputation gets a nice boost. An interview that could help highlight this is doing an interview on another blog. And, actually, this recent interview I did with Jim Turner on this blog is a pretty good example.

The third type of interview is the best, that being a live interview. This can either be on live radio or television. If you’re confident enough to be in front of a live audience, you can be an instant hit if you come across well, and your message will be unfiltered. The downside, of course, is if you’re uncomfortable, or look uncomfortable, and give one or two word responses instead of coming across as easy going and someone people might like to work or talk with. This type of interview can make or break your career. An example of that is an interview I did with Beverly Mahone of BAM Enterprises, which, if you’d like, you can listen to, as I talked about the concept of reinventing oneself; this is an MP3 file.

Sometimes the person doing the interview isn’t all that good, so you take risks with your reputation in those instances. Still, most of the time people will understand if you were good and the other person wasn’t up to snuff, and if you handle it all well, then your message will still come across properly and you’ll be better off in the end. Nope, not giving any examples there. 🙂

Getting interviewed means you’ve at least made some kind of dent into the consciousness of another person. If you handle it properly, you could be on your way to great things happening in your life and career. I love being interviewed, just as I like getting other people to allow me to post interviews with them here. I think everyone can learn something from an interview, and some of us can gain something from being interviewed as well.

So, who else wants to interview me? 😉
 

An Interview With Jim Turner

I met Jim Turner on Twitter, just as I met the last person I interviewed, Diane Walker. He’s an internet marketer who’s done really well over the past 10 years, and since, for many folks, this is still a make money online blog at times, and because I’ve gotten to enjoy meeting Jim, I asked him to participate in my little interview series here. I hope you enjoy it; show him some love by commenting after you read what he has to say:

jim_turner-150

1. How long did it take you to make your first $10,000 via internet marketing?

That’s a pretty tough question to answer. My first attempts at marketing online were to attract my target market and begin building relationships. That s over 10 years ago, long before social networking was created. So, the money part was not at the top of my mind. But based upon the price of the item I was selling, a small marketing ebook, it could’ve been around 6 months.

2. When you first began, what kind of mistakes did you make that impeded you?

It was real popular to buy email addresses when I got started online back in 1998. So I wasted a lot of time with those purchased email addresses before I learned that it was best to build my own list through people who were interested in what I had to offer.

3. For someone brand new who has a product to sell, whether it’s their own or not, what are the first three steps they need to do to drive traffic to their product, or is that the most important thing to begin with in the first place?

Wow, I was ahead myself when I answered your first question. Creating sales should not be your primary goal from the beginning. In today’s climate, people are extremely skeptical. They’ve seen ALL the sales messages and angles. They are bombarded by sales messages throughout the day and night. So the first step should be to build relationships. The vast majority of the people I do business with are folks who I’ve become connected with online through social networking

4. What’s your general opinion on trying to make money selling affiliate products through companies like Clickbank, Commission Junction, etc?

It’s fine to have those as supplementary products and/or services. Many marketers have made a ton of money taking that route only. Those marketers are heavy into Pay Per Click advertising to drive traffic to your site. It can be done but just don’t think it’s a walk in the park!

5. Do you believe an autoresponder is important even for those who don’t have much traffic at the beginning?

Any targeted prospect you can capture is valuable, no matter if you’re a beginner or a veteran. The best time to start using an autoresponder is before you get a lot of subscribers.

6. Do you believe that most people have the opportunity to make good money via their blogs, or do you believe it’s best to have a website, then possibly direct traffic through a blog to the websites?

I view blogs as credibility enhancers. Unless you have a very unique niche it is extremely difficult to build heavy traffic volume to a blog. Use the blog to demonstrate your knowledge & expertise in the eyes of potential clients or business partners.

7. What do you think of programs like Jeff Paul’s Internet Millions that bring a lot of people into internet marketing that don’t really know what the internet is to begin with?

Not that familiar with his program. I’ve seen Jeff’s mail order programs before. Many times those programs are purchased by “dream chasers” and people looking to get something for nothing. There is a market segment out there who jumps on every ‘hot’ thing that comes onto the market. It’s a real market that has a need and if one can fill it – great!

8. Do you believe the market is getting too crowded, or is there room for everyone to make money online?

Have you ever seen a major intersection where you can find any and all kinds of fast food restaurants and other types of eateries? In those environments you have to distinguish yourself by doing something different than the other guys on the corner. Maybe you always get your customers order right the first time… or you don’t overcook the fries… or you make fresh coffee often. Your reputation will spread around and people will choose you over the other guys because they know what your special offering happens to be.

So you have to distinguish yourself from the crowd. There’s always room for a business that adds value at a higher level than the competition.

9. Take a moment for yourself; what are you working on now, or what would you like to promote?

During the last 18 months of marketing through social networking I picked up a lot of valuable experience. There is a method to the madness of social media marketing. I’ve put all my best practices into my social networking guide for home based business owners and entrepreneurs. It’s titled: “Social Networking: The 21st Century Way to Find New Clients!

10. Any final words of encouragement you’d like to give to my visitors?

I like to keep it simple. Start small and shoot for the stars. Do something in your business everyday of the week, month and year.

Thanks for the opportunity to share with your visitors and hopefully they have gained something from this short message. They can follow me on Twitter at on Facebook.

I thank Jim for taking the time to talk to us. I hope y’all enjoyed the interview as much as I did.