I grew up in a small town in Indiana. In the country grammar school I attended, it was easy to know all of the teachers and students, even if they weren’t in my class because…well, there just weren’t that many kids on the playground. I remember a wonderful, cozy and comfortable feeling in that intimate setting.

Then I moved to high school – one of those big consolidated county high schools. With more than 500 kids in each class, we had more than 2000 teenagers from all parts of the county in one big school.

I went from easy surroundings to massive hallways and tons of traffic – not so intimate and not so comfortable.

Smaller is better in my mind.

But success often seems that it wants to be bigger.

My friend Jeff Herring reminds me frequently that the Niche Affiliate Marketing System workshops are going to need “a bigger boat” as he quotes one of his favorite lines from Jaws.

Okay, a bigger boat it is!

I was in Atlanta last week at the Crowne Plaza – that’s where we hold the NAMS workshop. I was scouting for a bigger boat.

As NAMS grows, it’s important to me to maintain that wonderful, cozy and comfortable feeling in an intimate setting. One of the few issues I had with NAMS3 was that I didn’t get to meet everyone. There were just too many people.

Well, that wasn’t really it. There were too many people in one big room.

And I wasn’t quite satisfied with the group dynamics in the big room. Too many people meant that we had too broad an experience spectrum. So, we’re looking at this again.

NAMS4 will be a little different again. We’re adding a room to ease that growth pain. So, instead of three breakout rooms, we’ll have 4. We’ll still have the Intermediate and Advanced rooms, but now…

…Beginners will be broken into two groups – Beginners1 and Beginners2.

• Beginners-1 will be for total newbies. No experience at all is required with this group. One man told me at the last NAMS that he was truly excited because he finally understood Facebook and Twitter…and now had accounts. Beginners-1 group does not have a blog or a website of any kind.
• Beginners-2 is a group of students that may have websites or blogs, but is not making any money. They understand some of the concepts – so they are not considered complete beginners.

That means we’re bigger, better and even more focused on improving the NAMS education and atmosphere.

Join us in Atlanta.

It’s tax time.

So, like most people, I’m heads down with my accountant and my bookkeeper getting all my numbers together. For the first time in a long time, our corporate income jumped unpredictably through the roof.

Mark Hendricks at ISS

I may have to cough up some extra tax money this year.

And I blame Mark Hendricks. More about that in a minute…

My relationship with Mark has become much more than just a business coaching relationship. He’s a trusted adviser and a good friend. When Monday morning arrives, that’s my official Mark coaching time. But I can call him any time to go over specific problems or just to ask his opinion about anything.

He’s been instrumental in building the Niche Affiliate Marketing System workshop by pitching in whenever he can without any expectations.

And it goes way beyond the advice and support. When I started NAMS, I used his projector, his screen and his sound system that made the first one possible. He sat in the back of the room and ran the sound for the entire 3 days.

The first aids were my gold member colleagues from his Internet Success System program that pitched in to make it all work.

Again, thank you was all he required.

My investment in equipment by NAMS3 was nearly $20,000, but if Mark hadn’t been so generous with his time and equipment, NAMS1 never would have gotten off the ground. So, if you’ve enjoyed NAMS, send Mark a thank you note.

Better yet, join us in Orlando in April.

You see, Mark is my personal coach. I pay him to help mold my business and to keep me from doing dumb stuff. And I do plenty of that.

But Mark is too good!

Mark Hendricks and me at the Gold Retreat

If I had listened less in 2009, the tax issue probably wouldn’t be such an issue. But like someone said to me yesterday, “I’d love to pay a million dollars in taxes. What a nice problem to have.”

Luckily – or unluckily, I guess – I don’t have to pay anything close to that this year, but I’m paying much more than I expected.

So, why is Mark to blame?

When you dig into QuickBooks (assuming you do your accounting there), you can find out a lot of great information. And my discovery kind of rocked my world. (And this is the part that may get me fired! I’m not supposed to tell people stuff like this,but…)

My investment in Mark’s coaching over the last three years has been less than $15k. He is directly responsible for increasing my income many, many, many times more than that.

When I send Mark a payment, I do it with a very big smile on my face. And I assume he has one too. But mostly, I’m just grateful that he picked up the phone when I called a few weeks before Christmas about four and a half years ago because I had no idea then that it would be the turning point in my online business.

Just because of the way he talked – without hype or hard sell – I decided to visit his weekend workshop. Watching him and sitting next to the people in that meeting room with the same goals convinced me that making a living as a solo infoprenuer was not just a pipe dream. And I wasn’t as crazy as some of my friends told me.

That’s when I knew that what I wanted to do could actually be done.

Mark has been instrumental in every online success that I’ve had including the Niche Affiliate Marketing System workshop. He guides me at every turn. All I have to do is ask for directions.

Mark Hendricks - ISS Mentor

I’d really like to tell you that I get his full attention; that he has no other coaching clients; that I’m the most important ISS Gold Member he has. When we’re talking, I am the most important. But he is available to all.

And he connects us to the best people in the business.

For example, Mark connected me with Willie Crawford and Willie connected me with Lynn Terry and Lynn Terry connected me with her elite members who come to NAMS in droves.

Mark connected me with Cindi Dawson who connected me with Jeff Herring who connected me with his Article Marketing Club members and they show up at NAMS on a regular basis.

The ROI (return on investment) on my relationship with Mark Hendricks has been astronomical.

Wouldn’t you love to tap the guy who really changes online lives and puts a couple of zeros on your bottom line like he did for me?

You can. Very easily.

Attend the ISS workshop in Orlando in April – I’ll be there to hang out with a few of my friends and colleagues and to continue adding the tools that yield more zeros to my income.

Click that link now for The Internet Success System if you can make it for the full four days.

If you think you’d like to try ISS for free first, check out this link to get a free day on the front end with all the nuts and bolts of creating an online business.

But be EXTREMELY careful. You could end up with the same problems I have around tax time.

Man, I was really frustrated this morning.

I had a great farm day planned at my house. My driveway was like a washboard even though we’d put nearly a 120 tons of gravel on it just 3 months ago. Yep, that’s a lot of gravel, but I’ve got a lot of driveway.

My truck – and more importantly, Charlsa’s Jeep – was bouncing all over the drive even though we practically crawl up to the house. And it was only getting worse.

So, I rented a tractor with a box blade and a bucket, and planned to level out the drive myself. How hard could this be, I thought. Just need a blade to drag the drive and all will be well again. And besides, this would be an opportunity to show Charlsa that I really need a tractor to maintain this 95 acre paradise and can justify the $20,000 price tag for my dream machine.

When I reserved the tractor, I had no idea what they would be bringing, but when they pulled in the drive this morning, there it was – The Kubota! The one I’ve been coveting.

So, I jumped in the saddle, cranked it up and began dragging the drive to even out the bumps. But as I made pass after pass, the bumps were becoming waves. The bigger the waves, the deeper the blade cut into the drive. It was getting worse not better. After three hours, driving around my 2500 foot U-drive felt like riding a ship in rough seas – up and down, up and down.

Popping some Dramamine for motion sickness crossed my mind.

And I was getting really upset. This machine cost me $250 to rent for the day. And I’m destroying my drive.

That’s where Mike comes in.

Mike and Daniel are two contractors that are working on screening in my basement patio. When it’s done, we’ll have an old-fashioned southern sleeping porch in the rear of the house overlooking the stream. Mosquitoes will no longer be an issue.

Mike and his partner returned from lunch. Mike walked over to the tractor. I shut it off and the conversation went like this:

Mike: You’re just playing around today, aren’t you?

Mike: I know. It seems wrong, but trust me. The blade is for finishing. The bucket is for fixing.

Within an hour, I had the driveway leveled out. And I was in reverse the rest of the day?

Who knew?

Well, that’s the point of this post. Somebody always knows. And yes, there ARE shortcuts, tips and tricks.

We always suspected there’s a shorter, simpler, faster, cheaper, more efficient way of doing things. Knowing who to ask is the key. That’s why Mark Hendricks is my coach and mentor. Every Monday morning he tells me when I need to go forward or put it in reverse. And sometimes, I didn’t even know there was a reverse. That’s why I need to talk to someone who’s been there and done that before me.

Mark’s my main mentor. Sometimes, I need a specialist. Today, Mike was my mentor – in how to drag a driveway.

At the Niche Affiliate Marketing System workshop, we bring together about 18 of the top mentors and coaches who will teach more than 150 students in a 3-day intensive. You should use the opportunity to shop for a main mentor.

You’ll find someone with whom you’ll click immediately. Hire them on the spot. Buy their products. Find out what they do and how they do it. The savings in time and money will be well worth it.

By the way, if you haven’t gotten your NAMS4 ticket yet, better hurry. The price jumps $100 Sunday night at 11:59 p.m. EST.

It’s so nice to be home.

After 5 intense days in Atlanta for the NAMS3 workshop, I’m ready to take a long nap. The dogs were jumping all over me and the cat even climbed up on my chest for a quick pet before she went outside to keep our house safe from varmints.

Everyone was happy to be going home Monday from the workshop, but no one happier than our new friends from Venezuela!

We put together a 100% commission product on Saturday to give our students an opportunity to sell a brand new affiliate product called Strategies 4 Social Marketing.

It was a live 60-minute panel discussion with Kevin Riley, Willie Crawford, Jeff Herring, Maritza Parra and Joey Smith revealing their secret – and best – tips for driving traffic using social marketing.

We took the mp3, created the sales page in 90 minutes using tools and techniques that we taught studnets, added some great bonuses and started a 24-hour sales contest. Seven people made first-time sales including Rafael Sanchez who killed the competition with 26 sales. See his video below.

Rafael and his wife Luz made the trip from Venezuela.

This was Rafael’s first time selling anything on the internet.

He has no list. And get this – his country doesn’t allow credit card use on the internet. Nor does it allow the use of PayPal. So, he sent his affiliate link and ask his friends in Venezuela to send it to their friends in other countries.

In essence, it went viral on a smaller scale.

Sales started coming in. It was amazing to watch his excitement. When it was over and we were all heading home, I made a video of him talking about the experience. After the video, he asked what he was supposed to do with the $442 that he now had in his PayPal account from his sales.

He thought he was supposed to give it back to us!

He and 24 other people made 112 sales in the 24 hours. Thirty-five of those were from first-time sellers!

NO other internet mareketing workshop is like it. Willie Crawford said, “This was one of the best seminars/workshops that I’ve ever attended.”

All the speakers were raving and the 180 students were exhausted, exhilarated and excited.

Until Monday, Feb. 8th at midnight EST, we’re making available more than 50 hours of audio recordings to the three Niche Affiliate Marketing System workshops – NAMS 1, 2 and 3.  Be sure to check it out here.

How can Scrabble lead to finding your niche?

Today, I’m going to prove to you that you have a money-making niche inside your head (and heart) that you’re probably ignoring.

And I’ll prove that you can get it out and have it working for you in almost no time by following a simple 3-step process that includes a fun game.

1) What’s your passion?

Make a list of all the things you love to do no matter how silly other people think it is. This is your passion list. You should have as many items on this list as possible. Mine was more than 100.

Here’s some ideas:

• Family
• Raising horses
• Helping others succeed
• Collecting stamps
• Hiking in the woods
• Watching TV

For me, I have a passion for riding motorcycles, travel and creating things.

2) What are you good at?

Create another list. This is your expertise list. Again, as many things as possible. If you can’t come up with many, ask your friends this question: What do you think I’m good at? This is really hard because you have to give yourself a little credit. Don’t be shy.

More examples:

• Organizing closets
• Training dogs
• Creating an exercise routine
• Painting pictures of birds
• Reviewing movies

In my case, I’m good at building systems, writing and photography.

3) Next, let’s play a game called Prosperity Scrabble.

Prosperity Consciousness

This is a game created by prosperity guru Fredric Lehrman. This program changed my mindset completely about 10 years ago and showed me that you can make money – a lot of it – by changing how you think about money and limitations.

Take your two lists and cut each item into a single piece of paper. Keep the list piles separate. Passion pile on the right; Expertise pile on the left.

So, to be clear…

You’ve got two piles of small slips of paper – probably an inch by inch.

Now, dig into each pile and pull out one slip of paper from each.

Here’s the game part of this process – ask yourself this question: How can I make money with my expertise and my passion.

For example, let’s say that you pulled:

Passion: Love to write poetry
Expertise: Good at working with animals

How can you make money with that? (We’re not going into the whole market research piece of this until later, so don’t worry about keywords, market size, etc. Now, it’s about thinking creatively.)

The strict version of this game says that you don’t move to another combination until you make $1 from it, but I’m more interested in stimulating your thinking. Lehrman’s point was that you can make money from anything, so why not choose your passion and your expertise.

So, poetry and animals. That’s a niche. How do you make money with that niche?

Here’s just one example:

People who love animals love animals passionately, so they are a motivated group.

And poetry is a great form of inspiration.

The first thought off the top of my head is that you could use pictures of animals that you get from free resources and the $1 stock houses to create cards or motivational “business cards” with poetry snippets. Include a link to an affiliate product in that niche such as Send Out Cards or Amazon pet supplies and you’ve got a money making venture.

And if you make a little money from it, figure out how to scale it up to make a lot of money from it.

See how easy that is?

I’ve created a forum specifically for discussing niches. Talk about the niche you’re in if you’re having problems or success. But also, play this game and discuss your results. It really works well when you form a mini-mastermind group (in the forum) to brainstorm ideas.

I’ve also included a couple of handouts to get you started. Pick them up in the forum.

Remember the Gorilla-Gram business a few years back – like the singing telegrams, messages were delivered by people in gorilla costumes… That business was started using this technique originally. Lehrman talks about this and others in Prosperity Consciousness.

The secret to success in online marketing is not what you think…

Before we get get to my personal secret of online success, I want to talk to you about the Niche Affiliate Marketing System pre-workshop training.

It’s ever evolving.

As we learn more about the needs of our members, we deliver more focused training. And as we get more great content from our previous workshops, the training library becomes deeper and more complete.

But it also becomes more overwhelming as the thud factor gets greater and we build quite a library of valuable content.

With that in mind, each workshop will have pre-training that focuses our members towards achieving their goals. And often that training comes with bonuses. Sometimes, it will come with introductions to outstanding (but not free) training by some of our faculty, NAMS members, or trusted colleagues.

Bob (the Teacher) Jenkins’ outstanding Freemind Mindmapping video training is a good example of that. Freemind is my tool of choice for brainstorming and Bob opened my eyes to all kinds of new possibilities with that tool.

NAMS 1 and 2 pre-workshop training was conducted before the workshops were sold out. NAMS 3 pre-workshop training is conducted after the workshop sold out.

This is a better approach for members obviously.

You are in it for the training, not the pitching. In out continuing effort to avoid the pitch and bring you real value, we’ll focus training that supports our primary themes of the NAMS workshops.

We’ll always be focused on:

• Affiliate Marketing, and
• Driving Traffic

They fit hand-in-glove. If you can’t drive traffic, you can’t make sales. And making sales is what affiliate marketing is all about.

So, you can always expect to find the pre-workshop training heavily focused on those two factors.

Beginners especially will get significant doses of that medicine.

After a strong base there, we’ll branch out into other more specific areas such as social marketing, press releases, short reports, SEO, building landing pages, video traffic, ezine advertising, keyword research, getting the right mindset and more specific aspects of building a business.

A topic near and dear to my heart is…