|pros • per • ly|

Yesterday Adam and I decided to enjoy the nice weather (65 degrees!) and golf (well, first we went to put downpayments on some scooters).  On the way to the course, this being the first time playing for the season (second time for me since I played down in Phoenix while at Infusioncon), we made some score predictions for the front nine:

Adam predicted 55.

I predicted a 43.

I was jokingly optimistic, seeing as how a 42 is the best score I’ve ever shot.

At any rate, here are the results:

If you’re wondering what the other numbers are, bottom left is the tee shot, Y means the fairway was hit, N means it wasn’t.  The bottom right corner is where we record the number of putts.  You’ll also see if there were any OB penalty strokes, or if we had to deal with any bunkers.  (This is content for another post entirely — tracking your progress to stay motivated and promote smarter decision making).

Speaking of bunkers, Adam had to deal with three of the four on the ninth hole.  He had his best tee shot of the day, smashing it probably 290 yards, but the ball ends up in a fairway bunker.  He hits it out of that bunker and back into the next fairway bunker down.  Then he hits it out of that bunker and ends up in the next bunker further down.  Finally he escaped the sand completely only to land in some dirt next to a bulldozer (they’re renovating).  Once on the green, he one-putted for a triple.

Anyway, did you notice the final scores?

Adam: 55

Jesse: 43

Let’s set aside the fact that I beat Adam by 12 strokes in nine holes, and just think about the fact that the score we specifically targeted for ourselves was the one we reached.  Adam padded, knowing it was his first time playing in several months.  Don’t you find it terribly interesting that he dealt with all of those troubles on the final hole?  Maybe it was his subsconscious willing the 55 to happen.

No?

Alright, maybe that’s stretching it a bit.  But it did cause me to raise a curious eyebrow.

Adam and I have very specific goals when it comes to our overall portfolio of sites.  I won’t share our specific goals, but the key is in the specifics.  They are extremely specific.

If you want to start making money online, you’ll need to set some specific goals.

Bad Goal: I want to start making money online.

Good Goal: I want to make an extra $300 per month online within the next three months.

(I want to shoot a 43…today.)

You can’t be driven or motivated by the bad goal from above.  How will you reward yourself with the satisfaction of finally reaching an unreachable goal?  You can’t. You won’t.

Since I get questions all the time from Prosperly readers I have decided to put all of these questions and answers to your internet marketing queries into one place because if one person wants to know I am sure many of you would like to know.

Question:

Adam,

First off, love the prosperly.com website – great info!

I had a question regarding legal issues when purchasing a website. I’m in the market to buy 1-2 websites to start building my website portfolio, but I’ve never actually purchased a website yet. So needless to say, I want to make sure that I do it right the first time!

My question is, should I have the seller sign a purchase agreement/NDA/etc- to help protect my investment, or is it really not necessary when using a an escrow service like escrow.com? Do you use contracts with your purchases?

I’ve been thinking about buying the “reusable” website contract kit from Sitepoint for $97, see it here: http://www.sitepoint.com/books/webcontracts1/. Do you think that would be a smart investment, or a waste of $97?

If you could help me out, that would be awesome!

Thanks, and good luck to you.

Joe

Answer:

Joe, thanks for the great questions. I’m glad you like the site. In answer to your questions, we have made many purchases and we have never used a purchase agreement or NDA. It couldn’t hurt you to do so but we have found that just using Escrow.com has been enough for us.

I hope that helps.

Question:

Adam,
I have a great idea – I think. I have a couple questions though.
1. The domain name I want is taken, but not active. How do I get it?
2. I was looking to see if there are any sites that already provide the same service I plan to, and there is. Only one though, and it’s not big yet – and I don’t think they are doing it the right way. Is this a problem? Would it be a good idea to buy their site or start from scratch?
I’m completely green to this process, so your advice is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Mike

Answer:

Mike, thanks for the questions.
In order to get a domain name that is taken but not active you need to find out who the owner of the domain is and contact them to see if they will sell to you. You can do this by doing a WHOIS lookup. Go to whois.net and search the domain you want and it should return a contact email and phone number for the owner.

If you only have one competitor that is always a great thing. If they already have an established site and there are obvious things you can do to make their site better, then they are a perfect candidate to buy their website. If they refuse then hopefully it won’t be too hard to compete with them.

Question:

Adam,
I know that your preferred business model is affiliated sites, but are there some sites/vendors that are easier to establish affiliate relationships with?

Thanks again for your help.

–Richard

Answer:

Richard, A lot of companies already have affiliate programs up and running. Those are the ones we usually work with. If you have an insider relationship it usually works out to be more lucrative. For example, one of the affiliate sites we run we know the owner of the products and he actually created a product just for us and gives us a 50% cut for each sale of that product.

Question:

Hi Adam,

I am new to this whole web site ownership thing. I just bought a website from godaddy and have built my site. I am not ranking however in any search resuls. It has been about a month since the website started. Do you have something that talks about the best way for a brand new site to get noticed by google and the other search engines. When using Mozilla’s rank checker I am invisible to the major search engines. Even when I search for the name of my website I am still nowhere to be found.

Any ideas on how I can get noticed?

Thanks,

David

Answer:

David, thanks for emailing. Here is a good resource for you:

http://www.prosperly.com/2008/seo-101/

Hope that helps.

If you have your own questions please feel free to email them to me. I am glad to do as many posts like this one to get all of your internet marketing questions answered.

I don’t really have a boss, but I did get a nice bonus. I just wanted to check in with you and let you know how my first day at Disneyland with my family went. We spent all day walking around the two parks here and had a great time. My legs and back were so tired I thought I was going to die.

Here is a pic of me and my boys (middle row) on Tower of Terror.

After laying down on the bed for 30 minutes and having my kids massage my feet (with the promise of a new toy) I decided to check my sales for the day. What a pleasant surprise it was to see that one of my websites had a record day and pulled in close to $700.

I know I have mentioned this before but everyone I talk to about this stuff tells me this is exactly what they want, I website that makes money no matter what they are doing. It really is such a blessing to have something like this where I can bring my family to Disneyland, stay at the Disney hotel for 4 days and actually come out of this in the positive.

I hope this post will motivate you to get working on your website. Do those 3 things to add value to the site.

I’m off to ride California Screaming.

As I have worked as an SEO consultant over the last few years it always amazes me how caught up people get with their competitors. It seems that some times they spend more time looking at their competition to see what they are doing than they do building their own business.

What is the benefit of knowing what your competition is doing? Do you just believe that everything they do is the right way to do things and you want to copy them? You have absolutely no control over what they are doing.

Spend time worrying about what YOU are doing. Look at your own site. Ask yourself, what can I be testing to increase conversion? How can I increase traffic? What new product can I create? What article can I write to add good content to my site?

Go back and read my guide to SEO and make sure you are doing everything you need to be doing on your site to increase your rankings.

The focus needs to be on what YOU are doing to YOUR site. Don’t worry about your competitors. Do the right things and you will eventually beat out your competitors, or at least steal a large piece of the pie. Don’t worry, there is enough to go around.

Last night as I was waiting for my wife to come home so we could watch “The Office” together I decided to do a little channel surfing. I came accross a show on Discovery channel called “Treasure Quest”. It is about modern day treasure hunters who look for ship wrecks at sea and try to find gold and other valuables. They recently made a discovery of over 17 tons of gold and silver from a ship wreck.

Any way this peaked my interest so I started watching and they interviewed the captain of the ship. He told of how he was a Navy captain who went into work at corporate America where he was financially very successful.

He then went on to say how when he was offered this current job it was a big pay decrease but he then went on to talk about how they gave him a beautiful new ship and said go find stuff with it. I could really hear the joy of his new journey in life. It wasn’t just about money for him but doing something he loved to do…and the money came later.

I have talked alot about how much I value my freedom and working for myself. I value it alot more than I value money. I chose to go out on my own and build my internet business and live my dream of coming and going as I choose and doing the things I wanted to do during the day. I have loved every second of it. Even when in the beginning I was making just enough to take care of my family.

Years later the joy remains and the money has come. I have been truly blessed.

“Well you know. Money isn’t everything, Jim. Not the key to happiness. You know what is? Joy. You should remember that.” – Michael Scott