First of all, there’s been a new breed of spammers visiting my blog lately, and, in spite of my best efforts, Akismet has been unable to prevent them from posting. If this trend continues - as I fear it will - I will have no choice but to enable manual moderation of comments. It’s not something that I would like to do, but I’m sure it is preferable to having thousands of links to porn sites all over my blog. If anyone can recommend a better anti-spam addon than Akismet, please do let me know.

As for me, it seems that this week has finally drawn to a close. With only one day left, I am really looking forward to getting down and dirty with info product development. I think it should be quite exciting and I really want to push myself to the limit and finally get some serious work done. You know what they say - that the best way to start writing is to never stop, and there is exactly what I intend to do. Heck, I spent the better half of the class today just looking around the room and writing down possible niche subjects (people thought I was crazy).

Today, I had a life-changing experience - or, well, almost life-changing… Well, ok, not life-changing as in “Oh my God, I got an epic in World of Warcraft” life changing, but still life-changing…

Ok, you get the point, it was an interesting event.

Anyway, today my Mum and my girlfriend took me out to a lovely Japanese restaurant to celebrate my birthday. The meal was great, the service was top-notch, the cake was delicious (and with all the extra flabs I have on me, I know the difference between a good cake and a lousy one) - in short, it was the kind of dinner that makes you thankful to have such caring people by your side.

Then came the time for presents - and, since neither my Mum nor my girlfriend know what to get me (I’m a computer freak and they wouldn’t know the difference between a videocard and a floppy disk), they decided to just give me money instead.

That was awfully kind of them (it was a substantial amount of money - I’ll leave it at that), but it got me thinking - what the hell have I ever done for them?

I’m anything but the perfect son - and I’m definitely anything but the perfect boyfriend (keep the aforementioned flabs in mind shoudl you choose to dispute them).

So, I have to find a way to give back - to give back through caring and attention, yes, but to also through things such as vacations, Piaget watches (I made a promise to my girlfriend and I intend to keep it), cars, mansions, islands, space stations.

In short, if I ever needed another good reason to make a killing online, now I have it - to give back to the people who have never hesitated to bestow unto me.

Starting from tonight, I’m free.

Two weeks of arduous study have come to a close, and now I can look forward to a relatively relaxing month (or as relaxing as my professor can make it, at any rate).

With my birthday goals firmly set ($6,000/month in 365 days, in case you forgot), I already start planning and working on an info product - and I will finally have time to do keyword research and find a few more prospective niches to consider.

Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that I’ll finally have time for World of Warcraft again…

Well, folks, I gotta hand it to you - you handled having me around, living and breathing in this world for yet another year admirably well. I’m 24 today, and none of you have tried to kill me yet, which is pretty surprising.

Go on, put that rat poison into my birthday cake now or something…

Anyhow, this is an Internet marketing blog, so let’s get down to business, shall we? I first started Internet marketing in January when I got involved with ghostwriting to take care of the most pressing financial concerns. Since then, I’ve managed to put my finances in order, what with university studies and my girlfriend, haven’t focused a lot on making money online.

Time to change that, I think.

My goal for the next year is to set up income streams worth a stable $6,000 a month. I’m not talking ghostwriting or copywriting - the former is too time-consuming and I just haven’t got the talent for latter. Instead, I’m talking info products - all those lovely e-books that you’ve seen me rant about on this blog.

I checked at WF and it seems that $6,000/month is a fairly realistic goal for a year’s worth of work. And if I still fail, at least I’ll have the benefit of having something to whine and complain about when I’m 25.

Well, that’s it for today’s update - today is the day when I start actively building my info product empire. Hope to be able to post next year’s birthday update from a room in Four Seasons somewhere in the Carribean.

Now I know it’s been a while since I last posted on this blog - as usual I have had the lot of things going on in my life (for instance, my girlfriend is currently doing her exams and I help her a lot with those) I really haven’t got a lot of time to update my blog as well.

However while she’s actually doing her exam I got to thinking about niches and how to best research them. What I have here is this idea that I would really like to share with you because I think it is very powerful and it can probably make you a lot of money. I haven’t tried this idea yet but I think the concept is really cool and this is definitely something that you can think about.

Now the idea is called “Earning by Learning” and the whole point of this idea is that very often us Internet marketers are told to only work with markets that we are really passionate about. Now the problem with this idea is that very often the markets that we are passionate about are not the markets they are very profitable. For example I am very passionate about World of Warcraft, but there really isn’t all that much money to be made (believe me, I’ve done my keyword research).

So, instead of looking at things that I am passionate about at the moment I decided to ask myself - what are the things that I want to learn in life? What are the things that I am really interested in, the things that I really want to learn - but never had an opportunity to do so?

And that’s really where this idea came to me - maybe instead of looking at markets that I am already passionate about I can start learning about new things that I have always wanted to learn. In the process of learning, I will also write an info product about it and sell it to the target audience. The whole idea here is that you get to do something that you are passionate about as well as something will really benefit not just you, but also your customers. You learn what you always wanted to learn - and you get to sell that information as an info product.

I think is a slightly different approach to just looking at what you are passionate about and it really resolves the problem of either been forced to focus on markets that you have no experience or interest in but which will earn a lot of money or working in markets that you’re really passionate about but just haven’t got any profit potential (e.g., World of Wacraft).

So, here’s my idea in a nutshell - let me know what you think. I will see if I can implement and will of course keep you updated on my progress.

By the way is this blog entry is written using Dragon NaturallySpeaking - let me know how different my literary style is and whether you prefer this writing style to my regular one.

Niches are like the Matrix - if you don’t believe me, take the following excerpt from the Matrix movie script and replace the word “Matrix” with “niche”:

The Matrix is everywhere. It’s all around us, even in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to work, when you pay your taxes.

Now, you might be thinking, “Oh, jeez, not another Matrix-fan-turned-Internet marketer” - but wait…

Yesterday, I found a terrific niche for my next info product - and it came from taking a class at my university. Those of you reading my blog may recall me ranting against one of my professors for bugging me with e-mail reminders at 1:21am. Well, something good has come out of it, after all, since, as part of our classwork, we’ll be expected to do research on a specific area of management, making all sorts of handouts related to it - and then teach it to our classmates.

Think about that one for a minute (I’ll wait): research… create handouts… teach…

Is that a recipe for an e-book, or am I just barking mad?

Better still, since the niche is aimed at upper-level managers, those folks are going to have a lot of money and probably aren’t averse to spending it on a tool that will help them get better. And with five weeks’ worth of research, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of useful information to provide.

So, yes, I suppose I should retract my earlier statement that university education is irrelevant to my Internet marketing career - it can be made relevant, but it takes a madman of a professor to accomplish this feat.

Niches really are everywhere. Taking a class was the last place I expected to find one - but find one I did. So, keep your eyes open, your notepad next to you and always ask yourself - “Can I turn this information into an e-book?”

You’ll be surprised how often the answer is yes.

A few months after first registering at WF, I have finally taken the big plunge and requested my WF login to be changed from “G_C” to “George Chernikov”. After all, if I’m ever going to start branding my products and earning a name for myself, I had best get on with it late than never, right?

Besides, now that I’m no longer writing articles for others, I don’t have to worry about scaring prospective clients away with a Russian-sounding surname.

Looks like I got that TC font just by resetting the style.css file for the blog to default… I guess I do have a knack for complicating things…

Recently, I came across an absolutely invaluable piece of advice in Jim Edwards’ “7-Day E-book” - and, while I cannot disclose all the great stuff you can find in his work, I’d like to share with you one important point.

Sometimes, it can be very difficult to define the scope of your info product - what topics it’s going to cover, what makes it different from the competition, etc. And if you write your sales letter based on the finished product, there’s always a chance that you’ll end up delivering as much as the guy next door.

And if you’re playing the Internet marketing game, you had better overdeliver, right?

Well, that’s why it’s such a good idea to first write the sales letter for your info product, and only then the e-book itself. Why? Because writing a sales letter forces you to deliver on the promises you made in it! Just by explaining what makes your product unique and valuable you already set up a content structure for your e-book.

It’s not a very intuitive technique, but I can assure you that it has worked miracles for my product - and it can help you, too.

Some time ago, I wrote about Steve Rowland raising about $2,300 through affiliate marketing as an article writer.

Well, now we have another Warrior trying to do just that! I am definitely going to keep track of John’s progress, and you can do the same at his Blood and Guts Marketing blog. 

He’s got 67 articles written so far and is aiming for 200 articles and $2,500 in cash by the end of the month.

Also, I’d like to take this opportunity to make a quick comment on the post on John’s blog:

The slacking off I’ve done in the past and the soul-sucking experience of completing a four-year degree at a private university had nearly managed to brainwash me into thinking that I would have to spend the rest of my life sitting in a cubicle, slaving away for an overbearing boss.

Hear, hear - as someone struggling with a remarkably demanding professor myself, never have I seen truer words uttered. Sadly, formal university education often prepares us to become excellent, efficient, superior, flawless… management drones. We are trained to work and thrive in an established organization. But hardly any professor out there teaches you to create an organization of your own.