If you sell physical products you need to deal with postage prices. Paypal lets you choose between individually setting a postage price for each product, or having the post value set by a rising scale linked to the total order value.

This is fine if all your products have weights in proportion to the selling price, but what if you have very light expensive products, or heavy cheap products? The Paypal postage scale becomes unworkable, and I haven’t even mentioned the problem of UK, European and Worldwide postage differences!

Even in the best economic times, artists have found it difficult, if not impossible to support themselves on their artwork  alone.  Now add the failing global economy to the mix coupled with the vastly overcrowded internet marketplace and it’s a  wonder how any artists are able to not only survive… but prosper.

But somehow, they do.  In fact, some artists have become extremely affluent just from the sale of their artwork and art  merchandise.  Do you think they were just lucky?  You know… in the right place at the right time?

I recently wrote a post about a religious problem that has puzzled me for ages. When I looked for further information about the crappy paperback that raised the problem, I was astonished to see that the cheapest price on Amazon was £44!!

The only reason I still have this paperback is because I find it impossible to throw books away. But unknown to me this bit of pulp fiction I bought in a junk shop in the 1970s is out of print, and I suppose because of Dan Brown and the popularity of “The Da Vince Code”, conspiracy theories are back in fashion.

YIPPEE!! – My first article with Ezine has been accepted, and I am now an “expert” author. I was so proud of my new title I looked it up on Ezine – …………… EVERYONE becomes an expert once their article is accepted.

I was slightly disappointed when I discovered this, but then smiled to myself – what a great motivational gesture by Ezine Articles, and it didn’t cost them a penny.

My article was “Why do you want to Run Marathons?” - the best thing about it was, the only new part was the title.

The 100 comment challenge has caused a real buzz, and has had many unexpected benefits for me. Firstly I have actually enjoyed the extra blog-hopping, even though it’s time-consuming. Secondly, I have picked up loads of useful ideas. One of them from a new visitor to my blog Igor.

Although my ’sticky’ post lists the top 10 traffic blogs of Sally Neill who got over 4,000 visits in a month, I never thought about how Sally knew which blogs they were.  But Igor pointed out that everything is in Google Analytics, and it’s important to focus on the blogs that give you traffic in  return for the time you spend commentating.

Louise Woof sells trading systems by showing results that she had achieved. However she didn’t achieve them! She simply took a graph of the previous days trading and drew in buy and sell entry/exit points to demonstrate the mythical money she made. Anyone can do this, but no one can do it in real-time. Hindsight is a very powerful tool.

Louise Woof is obviously a prime candidate for my ’Unethical Sales’ category. She started off with her outright lies, showing forged examples of her days trading. Now she is more careful and only shows possible earnings.

I have a ‘cunning plan’ to get Income every five days.  At the moment it’s only a plan, so I’m not sure if it’s ‘cunning’ or not. This idea has the potential to make money every week, and the costs are minimal: Just a domain name charge which you can get for £3, although I will use .com domains for around £10. 

What you need to Implement the 5 Day plan:

1) Web Design Software (XSite Pro)
2) Hosting Company with unlimited domain space (1&1)
3) Keyword Analysis Software (Market Samurai)
4) Affiliate accounts with Clickbank and Amazon
5) A Profitable Niche

I have registered the domain www.freehotreport.com for all my Squeeze Pages. Now I need to create the website, which means I can play with my favourite bit of kit; - XSite Pro, the easiest web design software bar none. 

After a  few hours I am finished with a version I am happy with, and will be updating it later. I have 3 Squeeze pages. “Hot Products” looks like this:
The links to each Squeeze Page are at the top, though I don’t expect these to be used much. Each prospect will have been pre-sold the idea of a freebie, and will land on their individual Squeeze Page to enter their name and email address.

Google likes blogs because they contain regular new information. However that’s true only if you post to your blog regularly. One way to improve your Google page ranking AND get traffic is to go blog-hopping, leaving comments on other blogs with a back-link to your home page.

Jacinta Dean, a Masterclass Student has come up with a good idea to encourage blog-hopping, the 100 Comment Challenge. This post is ’sticky’, it will stay at the top of my page in an attempt to get 100 comments.

Blogging was completely new to me 18 months ago, but Masterclass students are told to set up a blog on day one of the course. Apart from learning all the website technology, I hadn’t ever kept a personal paper diary, so I wasn’t sure I could write.

First Rule of Blogging

Post something regularly. Google loves fresh content and writing new posts will improve your page ranking.

Write regularly? What about? 

My solution was to turn my blog into a PERSONAL diary, so I write about anything I’m interested in.