There are a mere 3 days of school left at USC. In my semester off, I’ve learned a lot about internet marketing. But how much progress have I actually made? If measured in dollars and cents, not so much. Technical knowledge alone won’t cut it in the business world. An internet marketing education is needed. That’s what Joel Comm promises in his Secret Classroom DVD set. If that interests you, take a look and let me know what you think of it. It’s a long salesletter, so even I don’t have time to read through it all right now… but it’s important enough that I will make a point of coming back to it later.

Secret Classroom Blog

There’s a product being launched tomorrow called the Secret Classroom, which will contain DVD videos of all the presentations given at the Next Internet Millionaire. In case you haven’t heard of it yet, the Next Internet Millionaire is the world’s first Internet reality show. That means it’s a reality show created from the ground-up to be broadcast exclusively online. It’s created by Joel Comm and Eric Holmlund, two expert Internet marketers who have made millions of dollars online. Now, you can find plenty of hype about it elsewhere, but my blog is going to be 100% hype-free. Just the facts. And if you have any questions about the product, I invite you to post a comment right here on my blog. I read all of the comments posted on my blog, and if you ask a question, I’ll respond, too.

Today I interviewed Thor Schrock, one of the contestants of the Next Internet Millionaire. In fact, he was one of the last 3 finalists, making him the last to be eliminated from the competition. He learned a lot about Internet Marketing from the content presented on the show, and he highly recommends the Secret Classroom for anyone who wants a good educational foundation for how to do Internet Marketing effectively. Read more about the Secret Classroom.

To give you an idea of what it’s about, here are my recent posts on there:

Jason Stanley Marshall on the Next Internet Millionaire – I tell the story of how I met Jason at Armand Morin’s BigSeminar X in Atlanta, Georgia.

Testimonials for Nitty Gritty Marketing – Some early testimonials about Jermaine Griggs’ new “private access club.”

Ask Database – I am now using this service to see if I can get any insight into the market at Invision Plus.

Have Internet Millionaires Build Your Business – A review of Jaime Luchuck’s new coaching program. Jaime is one of the final 2 in the “Next Internet Millionaire” reality show.

And my latest post, a video from YouTube about taking what you know and teaching others. Let me know what you think.

Of course, we’ve seen stuff like this before. I remember one where they donate a cup of food and it works by showing you a page of advertisers up to once per day. This is more fun because it’s actually a game. It’s like those image tagging games. It’s a game, but it accomplishes something at the same time. It adds to their database of images and tags. This one doesn’t do that, as their database already knows the meanings of the words. Heck– why not modify things a bit so that we actually do do something productive? I dunno exactly what it would be– maybe they could have us digitize the world’s books? It would give advertisers the confidence that users were real humans seeing their ads, too, which means they’d get a higher ROI, which means they’d be willing to pay more…

I earned $747.90 in December 2005, and it went down from there as I started using AdSense instead. Although AdSense earned more, that’s not the real reason why I switched completely. The real reason was that Yahoo!’s programmers suck.

Here’s why:

• Yahoo! Publisher Network’s stats are always delayed at least 24 hours.
• 24 hours is an eternity in Internet time.
• YPN’s reporting tools are the bare minimum.
• YPN’s color palettes have boring names and have not been tested.
• YPN’s reporting “categories” take a long time to set up.
• They don’t put the category name in the ad code, so it’s hard to track them unless you write your own comments.

Don’t underestimate the importance of these points. Google is doing so well not because of good search, but because of good ads. Ads make the money. Ads pay for everything at Google, and they do ads right:

• Google AdSense gives you up-to-date stats throughout the day.
• AdSense gives you powerful reporting tools.
• AdSense allows you to easily and quickly choose different color schemes.
• AdSense allows you to effectively compare performance between various reporting “channels.”

Today, I called YPN and talked with Chris Dupont, a very friendly “publisher advocate.” He informed me that they do not recommend modifying the ad code because of the potential for errors, which is understandable. He submitted for me the above feedback: the importance of getting updated stats and having more effective color palette testing.

He also told me that, unfortunately, he has no idea when the developers plan to put in these much-needed features. Additionally, while he can submit the feedback for me, there is no way to get any kind of response back from them. While the Support for YPN is good, I feel like we’re all at the mercy of the developers. There’s a huge amount of revenue Yahoo! is surely missing out on here, but there seems to be simply nobody working on it.

Jermaine Griggs

Now, let me be clear about something here. I know Jermaine is genuine because I met and talked with him earlier this month. Maybe you believe me, but maybe you don’t. So…

Want to see a real content preview of what’s inside his new Members Area? Watch these videos (new window) in a post on my newest blog, Track Forward. In them, he actually shows you how he teaches you to do things, and he reveals strategies that you can put to use right away.

At BigSeminar, which I’ve written about briefly before, Jermaine released his coaching program. It was only for people in that room, and totalled up to $1,983– since he was born in 1983 and dozens of people, including myself, rushed to the back of the room to order it.

Today, after working hard for weeks, Jermaine has finally released a new Private Access Club which will show you exactly how he made his millions, by being insanely successful in the relatively small piano by ear niche. But here’s the great thing: you won’t have to pay the $1,983 that Big Seminar attendees did… he’s opening a limited number of charter memberships for just $2.97 for the first month!

Seats really are limited, so take a look now at OfficialNittyGritty.com.

Here’s what Joel Comm says about Jermaine:

I’m actually a little worried about the ripple effect Jermaine’s insanely low pricing structure will have on the market, I’ve never seen anyone sell content this incredible for so little money.

Jermaine’s genuine, and so is Joel. So go to the site now: OfficialNittyGritty.com – and don’t miss it!

I actually had the opportunity to meet to meet Jermaine in person at BigSeminar X earlier this month in Atlanta, GA. He’s really who he says he is. He shows this video of his actual sales from 2002–2007. You actually see him go from making $2,000 to months of $112,000+… but I still can’t wrap my mind around the fact that he makes this much as a piano teacher (and 80% of his products are focused around gospel music at that).

As Google knows, the Internet is a huge place, with lots of customers to go around!

See this video of his sales numbers…

… I’m a little envious, to say the least.

But this video is more than just 4 minutes of bragging. I got several things from it:

1) That everyone starts somewhere. Prior to this video (2000-2002), as you’ll soon see, he talks about struggling to make $300. $500 was a good month.

2) That it is possible to double and triple sales from one month to the next. In 2003, the video clearly shows him going from making around $15,000 to $40,000 the next month. This isn’t the only time this happens.

3) That it’s possible to grow sales drastically year after year. His movie points out times when he “never made less than $10,000/month again” and when he “never made less than $20,000/month again” and so on… all the way up to $50,000+. Yes, we all have ups and downs– but wouldn’t you like to proclaim that you’ll never make LESS THAN A CERTAIN amount again?

4) That it doesn’t matter how old you are or where you’ve come from. He was 17-years old when he started and came from very humble beginnings (more on this later).

Watch that video again…

Today, at 9 AM PST, he’s launching a new website that can teach us everything about exactly how he did this. I really believe that it will be the talk of the season, so don’t miss out.

Find out more about Jermaine’s new site here.

Me with Joel Comm at Armand Morin’s BigSeminar X

One of the sites I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is Invision Plus. While it has, by far, the most traffic of any website I’ve ever owned, it makes only about twice as much revenue. This is because I run ads only at the bottom of the forums. I have never ventured to be more intrusive than that.

You see, since we are a forum host, the admins have a tremendous sense of ownership over their forums. Putting ads higher up that they couldn’t control would be a terrible violation of that ownership, and I’d always thought the negative effects on the user experience would be inexcusable.

After talking with Joel, however, I’ve realized that this isn’t necessarily the case. Putting ads on the site is one of the best ways to make money online, and not doing this means leaving lots of money on the table. For the users, the money would enable us to certainly provide better, faster, more reliable services. Besides, Invision Plus is not currently profitable due to this, and as a business, profits are what matter.

Now that I’ve realized this, it comes time to take action as soon as possible. Every minute that goes by may mean a lot of lost ad revenue.

So I asked Armand face-to-face. Is 1 Shopping Cart the way to go? He said yes, and others agree. Things look really good for 1ShoppingCart – they have a lot of happy marketers using their product.

Armand briefly mentioned that he had his own private label of 1ShoppingCart, which I remember as something like Quick Pay dot com. I tried that, but it didn’t bring up anything remotely related. So I must have forgotten it or misheard it.

I did some searching on Google with all kinds of related terms, mostly including Armand Morin’s name– since I don’t know anything else about the private label– and I couldn’t find it. Oh well, I’ll go grab 1 Shopping Cart directly.