I just had a thought.

When I started Earn1KaDay I set up a blog and the forum, figuring I’d update both, but more so the forum.

Well, it seems like it always made more sense to post all my thoughts in the forum, and the blog has been seriously underused, to say the least.

And for a while I thought it might be useful to have a link to archive all the weekly emails I sent out, there’s some useful tips now and then, links to the best threads of the week, some special offers, many of which have expired, of course, but still …

So wouldn’t it make some sense to post the weekly emails in the blog? I could date them, and then for new members, they can catch up sort of. And you can use the blog search facility if you remember something that was in an email, but didn’t save the email.

Or sometimes emails don’t get delivered quite as well as they should, so you could subscribe to the blog posts (but please, please, don’t unsubscribe from the email, because I don’t promise the blog will get updated within a certain amount of time after I send out the email).

I’ll be starting to catch up tonight, it might take quite a while, there are over 100 emails to post. If you’re already subscribed to new blog posts, don’t be surprised.

In the very near future you’ll be seeing (if you look closely) a major change to Earn1KaDay.com. Don’t worry, current members won’t be losing anything at all.

First, an explanation of this site’s history. Can you believe Earn1KaDay.com is almost a year old? Actually the first member joined on May 18th, 2007. Officially the first member was Michael Gunn, but barely, since a couple dozen more joined on the same day.

In that 11 months, a lot of threads have been added to the forum, and a lot of downloads have been added to the members download area.

And therein lies the problem, as I see it. New members joining now have close to 150 downloadable reports available to them, and growing weekly.

Think of it this way. When you join Blockbuster, you rent one or two videos at a time, right? Finish them and then go back for more. How would it seem if the clerk at the video store said “Hi, Welcome to Blockbuster, here’s 150 videos for you to watch, there will be more next week!”.

Yes, I sense from talking to new members, or seeing some of their comments, that new members can be overwhelmed about where to start. Most (I hope) start with the essentials, and the top forum threads, and the top downloads. Then what?

Then by the time they get caught up with just that, they have new threads to read, and/or they get my Friday email with new downloads. Do they ever get to look at all there is in the archives? Or catch up on the threads in the areas they’re really interested in? Or browse in time back through some of the business model discussions? I suspect not. That’s a shame, because there really are some good reports available. Some aren’t so fresh anymore, but some of the topics are “evergreen”.

So what I will be doing over the next couple weeks is going through all the downloads, identifying which ones are “evergreen”, as well as which ones might belong in the “Top 20 Downloads” but aren’t.

Then, here’s the plan. I might weed out some of the downloads that have gotten stale, just remove them altogether (though I doubt that will affect too many). Some might get moved into the top 20 list and be there until there’s overflow and we have to start voting on which one to remove when there becomes 21.

And links to the rest will be sent to an autoresponder sequence. So in effect, instead of being presented with around 150 (and growing weekly) downloads, most of which will be ignored, a new member will maybe see 50 or so.

Links to the rest will be sent out one or two a week. That way, each report that merits it will get the attention it deserves, just like it did when it was brand spanking new.

What that means to current members is that you will be getting an extra email from me every week (maybe every 4 or 5 days, I haven’t really thought closely about the timing yet). It will be my way of drip feeding the content to all members. New members will start at the beginning of the sequence, so they won’t have access to all downloads right away, nor will they have access to reports that older members have access to. Of course, you’ll still get my Friday email broadcast.

The other part of my plan is to continue adding new reports every week like I currently do. Once the report has been in the download area for a month or two (I haven’t decided that yet either), it will be removed and added either to the top 20 downloads area, or to the autoresponder sequence.

So, in effect, current members won’t really be missing anything or have to wait for anything, because today you have access to every download that’s been added since May, 2007. Plus, you’ll get the new reports right away, as always. Plus, you’ll get an email once a week or so reminding you about something you might not have read before, or might like to read again.

Members who haven’t joined yet will, however, not get immediate access to all of the archives, they’ll have to wait for a lot of it, and have to remain members to get full benefit of everything that current members have been paying for all along.

In other words, if you joined in the beginning, you’ve made 11 monthly payments and got all the “stuff”, a few at a time. Under the current setup, a new member could sign up, make one payment, download all the “stuff” and cancel. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to think that the main benefit of this site is the “stuff”, I like to think the benefit is the daily information, ideas that are shared, and the wonderful community here. I think new members should get their “stuff” a few at a time, just like the long term members have.

And if you think about it, a lot of sites retire downloads after they’ve been listed for a couple months, rather than keep links to everything forever, so this isn’t an unusual approach. The difference here is that the old reports aren’t being totally removed, they’re just being delivered a different way, a bit at a time.

So, this is just a heads up. If you want to go through the download area archives and snag things you might have put off before, feel free to do so now, because very soon a lot of it might be gone from there and moved to the autoresponder.

No, I’m not talking about Earn1KaDay, you’re stuck with me leading this one for a good long time. I hesitate to say forever, but I hope so.

Unbeknownst to all but a few, back in July this year, I purchased a premium site. You all know it well. It was owned by JD Swanson, and goes by the name “Instant Cash Generators”.

The deal was that JD would stay on for an indeterminant amount of time to add content, but that the site was mine, in exchange for a (to me at least) hefty amount of cash. JD after all is the instant cash king, and I’m more interested in building long term successful businesses.

Recently you may have noticed that the content added to ICG has been lacking. For that I take responsibility, but there was a reason. JD and I decided in the beginning to structure the deal as a win-win situation, it was pretty complicated so I won’t go into it here, but part of it was that in order to avoid scaring off current customers that were paying for JD’s expertise, he would still be the apparent owner.

Why did the content slow down, and stop? Well, you’ve seen JD’s Mafioso Marketing launch, and you may have heard of his VRE (or whatever it’s called) project where he’s taking a bunch of people under his wing to mentor them to 6 figures in 6 months. Along with his other projects, he just ran out of time to devote to ICG, and this week he made it official. He can no longer add content to the site, and it’s all my responsibility.

I’ve found that “put up or shut up” demands like this (I mean this in a positive way) are wonderful, they boost my adrenaline and make me focus like a dog chasing a rabbit, all excited and wanting to work my tail off.

Now that I have complete control and no longer a reason to be secretive, I have some ideas to do things with ICG differently. Over the past 5 months while I’ve been taking payments from new subscribers and watching them cancel all too quickly, especially as the content has slowed, I’ve pondered how to do it differently.

First up is writing up new ideas. Though the name of the site is “Instant Cash Generators” some of JD’s ideas aren’t necessarily about instant cash, and neither will mine be. In Mafioso Marketing, he talks about MIF, Monthly, Instant, and Future income streams. I feel ICG should address all three, not just the instant ones. And so it shall.

I also think that when a new subscriber comes in and reads the 100+ ideas and the 2 or 3 dozen major articles inside, he or she is overwhelmed. Too much too fast. Like watching a Twilight Zone marathon, 48 episodes in 24 hours is too much. Much better one a day or one a week.

My plan is to restructure the site so that ideas are easier to find, and to restructure the content so that some of it is waiting there for new members, but that the majority of the ideas and articles will be pushed out as part of an autoresponder series every day or two, so that each idea can be given its day to germinate in the reader’s mind and appreciated.

And that also encourages longer term retention of members. Until the restructuring, someone could join, download the 150 or so pages of content, and unsubscribe. That’s not good for me as the owner, and it’s not fair for the loyal members that have been paying for months to see someone get everything they’ve paid for, for so long, the first day they join.

I also believe that, no matter how productive and a genius JD was, or how productive I could be on my best day, nobody has all the good ideas, even if we could steal from others, and that wouldn’t be right, unless …

And that’s where you, the members of Earn1KaDay.com come in.

But first back to a challenge, and one of the reasons the turnover was kept sort of a secret for so long. JD had sold reseller rights to ICG to a couple dozen people over the period of a couple months. I was one of the original ones, and that’s how I have been able to provide it to 1KaD members free of charge. I had that right.

So there are dozens of authorized resellers that have likewise sold access to the site to their customers. To JD, that was a good thing, and I agree. The challenge is providing ongoing valuable content to customers of so many others, even though I’m not being paid for doing so.

In my opinion, JD missed a golden opportunity in his quest for instant cash, and his love of flipping. He never built an email list of ICG members. Since my plan is to push out content via email, obviously I’ll have to build that list. And if I have my way,l the list will become rather large.

So back to where you come in. Some of you have proven to have a knack of thinking outside the box. Some of you have that ability, but have been more shy about demonstrating it. Here’s your chance to get a crap load of publicity for yourself and your sites.

Not only will some of JD’s old inventory be put in the autoresponder series, and not only will my new ideas be interleaved in there, but I would like yours as well. I’m inviting all of you to submit your ideas, which can be anywhere from a couple tight paragraphs to a couple thousand words, to me for review. If accepted, your idea will be added to the autoresponder series. You can include a link to your site, you can include a resource box to talk about yourself. All I ask is that the idea not be a sales letter, that it be a real idea that can earn a reader cash, either Monthly, Instant, or Future. I reserve the right to reject any ideas that aren’t appropriate, or have been discussed already at ICG, but all submissions will be definitely appreciated.

There will be no payment for your ideas, but if I reach my goals, the mailing list will grow to be well in excess of several thousand people. Every one of those people will eventually see your idea. Remember, these aren’t just my customers. Many different resellers are selling access to ICG now, and that number will grow, I will be selling more reseller licenses in an effort to spread ICG to every corner of the Internet, to experienced IM’ers and to wannabe IM’ers.

So your ideas and your resource box, could become very public. Much like the giveaway lists that are so popular among IM’ers during the holiday season.

Obviously the sooner in the autoresponder series your idea is, the quicker the traffic will start coming. So please don’t hesitate sending me a PM at the forum with your submission.

Thanks for your time, and I welcome your comments in the thread that was started that pointed to this post.

According to the calendar, we should be approaching the prime
holiday sales season, at least in the U.S. From what I’ve seen in
the stores, though, they’re not only approaching it, they’re doing
it. Well before Halloween, there were Christmas displays set up.
It didn’t seem to me that there was much interest from the shoppers,
though, more disgust at how it’s all getting pushed so quickly at
them, and commercialized so intensely.

Or maybe the thing is, more and more people are shopping online.
That’s a good thing for us. Are you ready? Do you have your sites
all set up? Now’s the time to budget some AdWords money if you’re
selling merchandise that appeals to gift buyers, and if you’re pretty
comfortable with your conversion rates and profit margins, you should
try to get as much traffic as you can afford at this critical time.

Now, here’s a first, I think. I was just looking at the download area,
to see what to alert you about, and it looks like nothing was added
this week. Sorry about that, normally there are two or three new items,
but this week is barren. I have a couple good ones in inventory, but the
authors said they couldn’t be added until after their WSO ends, and
can take as much as 3 weeks. I think one of them is due to end very
soon, so keep your eye out. I’ll look harder next week.

In the meantime, you can catch up on your reading. As you’ve seen,
I’ve spent some time putting together an introductory autoresponder
series about the forum highlights. I’m almost done with that, and the
last few emails point you to the downloads that I recommend most highly
for everyone. Maybe you’ve missed something or want to review.

Did you catch the announcement about the October Member of the
Month award? The winner was Michael Gunn for all his past help and
contributions. Congratulations, Michael.

Since I have some extra space this week, I’d like to mention a couple
products 2 of our members have available. Many of you might have picked
up on them before, if not, now’s a good time.

If you’ve been at the forum for a while, you’ll probably recall the thread
Jon (duderinow) started about thinking outside the box, something that
I preach all the time. He got some ideas from us, and got some from
other sources, and put together an eBook that he sold on the Warrior
Forum. Now he’s got it listed on Clickbank. If you didn’t get it the
first time around, here’s another chance, it’s really pretty good and
will help you get your brain going in the right direction:
http://www.5bucksaday.com/otb.php

If you already have it, and liked it, Jon’s looking for more affiliates to
promote it, so send him a PM if interested, to get a link.

Also, one of our graphics people (Lynn) has set up a pretty spectacular
offer for our members who want to join her membership site. She provides
great graphics for almost nothing on a monthly basis to her members,
and the price is even lower for 1KaD members. Here’s her offer if you
want to check it out:
http://earn1kaday.com/members/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1791

She’s doing a project for me and I can vouch for her skills, she won’t let
you down.

Did you see my idea about a cooperative Wiki? I’d really like to get something
together where every member can take part and benefit. This is one idea I
came up with recently. There have been good thoughts, but not as many as
I thought would pop up. If you didn’t notice that thread, and have any thoughts
of your own, or have enough Wiki skills that you can give me some advice, I
think that idea, or one similar where we can set something up like the site
milliondollarwiki.com (not to make a million dollars, but to get our own sites
noticed) might be beneficial to all.

If this idea isn’t worth pursuing, then maybe an alternative will come out of
the conversations, so it’s all good. Here’s the thread, please check it out:
http://earn1kaday.com/members/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1781

That’s it for this week. I hope you have a great weekend, and as always
I wish you nothing but the best.

Dennis, the 5 Bucks a Day Guy.
http://www.earn1kaday.com
http://www.5bucksaday.com

I posted this in the forum the other day, but it just occurred to me that with all that’s been going on there, many of you might have missed it.

And … I forgot to mention it in my weekly email yesterday. I thought I was forgetting something. Sorry.

You’ve always had access to JD Swanson’s Instant Cash Generators site, you now have similar access to his Sell Your Writing Online site. The purpose is to inform and motivate you to get maximum income out of your writing skills.

You can find out how to access SYWO in this thread:

http://earn1kaday.com/members/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=12

It isn’t always necessary for someone to invent a product or service to be successful. Many people do spectacularly well by finding a good idea and making it just a little bit better.

That’s what I like to encourage at Earn1KaDay, thinking outside the box. That’s why the site is devoted to ideas. I don’t expect, in fact I don’t want, people to read an idea of mine or JD’s or anyone else’s and just blindly copy the idea to see if they can make it work as well as the originator.

Inevitably too many exact copies will hurt the effectiveness for everyone. How many copies that will take depends on the idea, but it’s something to keep in mind. You have heard about duplicate content penalties in the search engines. You’ve heard about certain techniques getting you banned because you’re using the same template with the same footprints.

The same thought goes with ideas.

I’ll say it again. Think outside the box.

A great example of this surfaced at the forum today, and will soon, I predict, lead to one of our members having his first 1K day.

If you visit the forum at all, you know Michael Gunn. He’s one of the top contributors not only by volume but also by helpfulness.

Michael watched the Mini Money Site videos and decided he wanted to try the techniques. So, he put up several sites, and they started doing pretty well. But not as well as he hoped, so he started brainstorming. How could he take the core concept and make it better to squeeze more profit out of it?

What resulted was a technique that increased eBay new registrations on his sites. The “trick” was very simple to pull off, and devastatingly powerful.

He could have left it at that, racking up double or triple the new registration rates that he would have gotten otherwise, but he took it a step further. He made a video explaining how he did it, and he’s selling the video.

Is he afraid about diluting the effect? It doesn’t seem so, any more than I’m afraid of diluting the effect of the mini money sites by producing the videos. Probably less so, in fact, but still, with all the tens of thousands of niches out there, and even though there are tens of millions of registered eBay users, there are still tens of millions of Internet users who aren’t registered yet.

If you’ve purchased and watched Michael’s videos, hopefully it will demonstrate how simple it is to improve on a concept. He took my mini money sites and made his version better. Now I’m learning from him, and it should improve my results also. I’m not ashamed to admit it. What I need to do is accept the challenge and improve on his model.

You should too. Invent a better mousetrap, and you’ll be paid well.

If you’re interested in getting Michael’s video, and it isn’t too late by the time you read this, he started a thread in the Special Offers (by author) forum at Earn1KaDay.

I already sent out an email today, and don’t want to do another one, but I was just sitting here thinking how I can add more value to this site. I’ll probably point to this post in next week’s email.

Obviously I really don’t want anyone to want to unsubscribe, I realize some will because of circumstances like financial or other priorities, etc., but I don’t want anyone to go away because of not getting value. Hopefully that’s not the case yet, but I feel it necessary to prove the worth month after month.

That being said, I guess I never made this offer over at the 5BaD forum because, after all, adding new reports to the membership area was never promised in the beginning, and after all, the book is fairly priced even without all the bonus reports (almost 50 right now).

However, you’re paying for this membership, so I don’t see why I can’t be a little more bold in spending money for the download area.

Within reason, for the time being, until the membership is capped and I can afford to start getting custom products and reports produced for us, I’d like to encourage members to visit the Warriors Special Offer forum and look around.

First of all, you’ll often notice reports there that have resell rights attached. If you ever see me post in the thread that I’ve purchased it, you can assume that if it isn’t complete garbage, that I’ll be uploading it here. Sometimes it takes longer than others, and sometimes I forget, so if you’re anxious to see it, just PM me to see what my plans are, and I’ll probably make it a priority.

If you don’t see a post about a particular report, and it includes resell rights at a reasonable price, and you think you could use it personally for profit, put in a request by PM and I’ll consider it.

I probably will never pick up PLR packages, like 20 articles about fishing, or 50 articles about home remodeling, that kind of thing, but if there’s a report about something that can help you and others earn income, or self improvement, I’ll certainly consider it.

So put in your special requests if you have them now or in the future. With the price of WSO’s averaging $17 each or more, that should help justify the price of membership, right?

Now, here’s the test. Who’s reading this blog? Make a comment to this post. If we get up to 20 comments (20 different members), I’ll find a special report to upload. If your comment includes a suggestion, maybe I’ll take a suggestion from one of the comments. Or maybe more than one of the comments.

The test begins, 3, 2, 1, now!

The test ends after 20 comments, or on Friday, June 22nd, whichever comes first.

P.S. You don’t need to keep this post a secret, if someone wants to start a forum thread and start discussing ideas about this service.

If you haven’t been to the forum the last couple days, you would have missed the start of the follow along for the Money Sites series, which will detail how I set up my mini sites that take advantage of the eBay affiliate program.

I’ve started a “sticky” thread that lists the videos, and I’ll be adding to the list in that thread as they get completed. Here’s the thread:

http://earn1kaday.com/members/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=110

I’ve also started a new sub-forum, called Idea Incubator, where I’ll post, and hope others do also, ideas that aren’t quite ready for prime time and need some nurturing and growth. There’s a starter thread in that section that explains the whole concept, and I actually posted something there today with an idea or two that I have for this whole site, for which I’d like to get your feecback.

Today I uploaded what I call the framework for the types of minisites that I create, with LP Genie’s help, that target eBay auction ads.

Just now I started a topic as a poll to get some group input as to what niche we should try. I’m willing to do any of them, or listen to other suggestions.

See the official thread here:

http://earn1kaday.com/members/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=47

Give it some thought, do some research, make some suggestions, and/or cast your vote!

There were a couple separate questions at the forum about what AS:e is. Sorry, sometimes I assume everyone knows all the acronyms that I know, and I’ve been so involved with AS:e for so long, it’s second nature to me.

Anyway, AS:e is a software tool that enables you to very easily put eBay ad blocks on your web pages, embedded with your affiliate links and tracking codes. It’s PHP code so the spiders can see the ads that will result, as opposed to the eBay editor kit, which is javascript, and the spiders can’t follow that, so it does your SEO no good.

BW Griggs, the author of AS:e and all around good guy and friend, generously gave 5 Bucks a Day readers a special discount on AS:e, and I’ve ported that offer over here with his permissions, for anyone interested. The offer is explained in the Members Discounts section at the forum, with a link to the discounted sales page.

If nothing else, go there and download an incredible free report Bobby has put together, his 30K report. He asks for your email address, but he very seldom sends out emails, so you don’t have to worry about getting inundated with offers. In fact I don’t think he’s ever emailed me from that list, maybe a follow up to see if I received it or something, but never since.

eBay is raising their affiliate payouts beginning June 1st, if you’re doing any affiliate marketing at all, especially considering that eBay has obviously got every type of merchandise imaginable available, you really should be promoting them.