Before I explain how you can “recession proof” your IM business, first I need to provide a brief explanation of the current economic crisis. In 2008, as you know, the U.S. and much of the World suffered from a recession that was caused by the housing bubble, among other things. And although the markets recovered somewhat, any smart economist that isn’t politically biased will tell you that the economy is still broken.

While the market begins correcting itself in some aspects, it is only getting worse in many others. Since most Internet Marketers target the U.S. market and it’s the market I know the most about, I’ll talk about it. As the U.S. Dollar is the World Reserve Currency, the U.S. has the luxury of printing their own money (via the Federal Reserve) when they need it. That is a luxury however, only if done so responsibly.

The problem is that the Federal Reserve (Fed,) which isn’t even “owned” by the government, is NOT responsible and many people believe they are even corrupt, as they have NO transparency and consistently decline audit requests! So here is where the problem is. The U.S. is nearly 15 TRILLION (yes, with a T) dollars in debt and it currently does NOT have enough money to pay its own bills. SO, instead of cutting spending, like a responsible government would do, the Fed just prints more money in order to cover all of the interest the Government owes on all of these bonds (loans.)

That’s great, the U.S. can do that, so why not? I’ll tell you why not! Because the more money it prints, the less value the U.S. Dollar has. And the less value the U.S. Dollar has, the higher inflation goes because oil etc. are based off of the World Reserve Currency. And the higher inflation goes, the higher prices on OIL get. And the higher the price of OIL gets, the more money farmers have to pay to run their business. The more farmers have to pay to run their businesses, the higher they have to charge for milk, eggs, corn and every other food we need to survive.

In a nutshell, that is the problem. The good news is that the problem could easily be fixed, but the bad news in the U.S. doesn’t have people in office who care to fix it! I’ll tell you why. Because in order to fix the problem, big government programs MUST be cut! And if you tell people who are used to being given free handouts that they will no longer get those free handouts, they get mad. When they get mad they DON’T VOTE FOR THOSE PEOPLE and THAT is the root of all of these problems! Politicians who deliberately create a welfare state in order to further their political career, completely ignoring the fact that welfare states historically do not work and even CAUSE recessions.

So, instead of solving the problem, the U.S. has politicians, both democrat and republican, who are going to play politics until they can get out of the spotlight, to save their political careers. The next election will not be held until November of 2012 and I predict, along with many smart economists who are not afraid of the truth, that the current economic troubles are only going to get worse until we get a new government into office in 2012 who will cut spending, reduce regulations and allow the markets to correct themselves (maybe someone who can appeal to both sides like Ron Paul?)

That in itself is going to hurt and it’s going to take time, but it’s the only way out of this mess. To make things worse, the U.S. has HUGE oil reserves in their own Country, but the government (the same government that refuses to cut spending) also refuses to drill into their OWN oil reserves, which if tapped, would buy the U.S LOOOOOTS of time to fix this overall problem while at the same time dropping gas prices to historic lows AND creating thousands of jobs. They won’t do it though, so we need to take care of our families!

So how do you, as an Internet Marketer, protect yourself?

Simple, you get into the right markets! The markets that maintain and even profit from recessions! I wish I could give you a step by step plan, and maybe sometime in the future I will, but for now you simply need to know that:

1. this recession is only going to get worse, the numbers are proof!
2. SOME MARKETS ALWAYS BENEFIT FROM RECESSIONS! So as Internet Marketers we have a huge advantage on other business owners, because we can target any market we want! A local donut shop, for example, can’t just jump right into another market, so we really have an advantage here!

So what markets are either not effected by the recession or even benefit from them? Well, the precious metals market for one, always benefits because you can’t create gold and silver out of thin air like the Fed does the U.S. Dollar, so no matter how bad it gets, Gold and Silver will ALWAYS have value. This is why Gold and Silver prices have skyrocketed over the past few years…because they are sound currencies, while the USD is NOT sound.

Discount business models also benefit because when people are hurting for money, they’re looking for deals. So anything you can do to help people save money is going to do well in a recession. This is why I predict Wal-Mart (for example) will do just fine over the next few years. They may be negatively effected a little, but they will not collapse because their entire model is based on low prices, which always wins in recessions.

The Entertainment markets like video games and even sin markets, although I don’t recommend getting into them, always do well in recessions. I personally see these markets still being somewhat negatively affected, but some businesses in this overall market WILL benefit!

So whatever it is you do in the IM space, whether it’s something in affiliate marketing, blogging, what have you, start looking into these markets and doing your research to find other markets that will benefit from a recession.

Maybe I’m wrong along with hundreds of Millionaire and Billionaire economists, and if we are oh well… you’re still building your business and you’ll still benefit. But if we’re right, YOU will be one of the very few who not only maintain, but gain, while millions of others lose their job, home and more!

I don’t know about you, but I know what I’m focused on right now and if what I strongly believe is true, really is true, this will be the most valuable blog post you read in years, if not your life!

Fortunately after a few years working part time online while serving in the military I did finally get my IM income to the point to where I could pay my bills with it, barely. But as time went on I started to realize more and more than although I’ve never thought of myself as a Entrepreneur or business person, I was exactly that! That was my “tipping point.”

There should come a time in every IM’ers online ventures when they hit that same tipping point and start to see the bigger picture…the bigger opportunity that is the infant Internet… yes, it’s still very much an infant!

But the question for those who haven’t reached that point yet is, do you want to keep working a JOB or do you want to become an entrepreneur? If you just want to pay the bills, you might as well just get a job. At least then you have more stability… that’s how I see it anyway. But I don’t think that is what any IMer wants.

So how do you go from an Internet Marketing worker to an Internet Marketing Entrepreneur?

The first step is to learn the basics of the business… learn SEO, email marketing etc. You don’t have to be making loads of money in each, you just need to know the techniques and their markets… just learn the basics. That is the “work” we all have to endure before we get to our tipping point. The next thing is to decide whether you WANT that tipping point or not. I’m guessing you want it!

One thing I learned about life while in the Army is that almost everything that is challenging, whether mentally or physically, can be accomplished if you truly set your mind to it. So if you don’t believe you are an entrepreneur, or at least have the potential to become an entrepreneur, then you will never become an entrepreneur because you will not possess the mental confidence required to become one.

So what’s the difference anyway?

To me, the primary difference is in what you devote your time and resources to. If you’re constantly working to write and publish articles to get your site(s) ranked in google… creating sites to earn a little adsense income… etc. etc. then you probably have a worker mindset. If you’re constantly coming up with new ideas for software, applications etc. and you’re looking to outsource everything you possibly can… also thinking about automation (so one project doesn’t tie you down, but brings in residual income,) then you’re on the entrepreneurial track.

This all seems like fairly basic stuff, but I’m writing about this today because as I watch conversations and updates on facebook, twitter, blogs etc. I see 9 out of 10 Internet Marketers (if not more) who are completely focused on working for a living and very few who are focused on becoming true Entrepreneurial business people.

Of course it is nearly impossible to filter out all of those who are still in that required learning phase, but just by evaluating the overall mindset, I believe there are more IMers who are looking for a JOB than there are who are looking for a solid business opportunity.

There are obviously pros and cons to every type of product. But when creating a product you should always have two main things in mind:

1. How can I help the most people in the biggest way.
2. How can I make the most money doing so.

If you concentrate solely on making money you’re not going to help people as much as you could and if you concentrate ONLY on helping people you’re not going to make as much money as you could.

I’ve sold many different types of IM products over the years.

- I’ve created lots of info products in the form of PDF’s.
- I recently launched a new info-product full of informative videos that were accompanied by PDF’s (The Offline Guru.)
- I’ve also sold desktop apps
- I currently run a web app full of Internet Marketing Tools, that is behind a monthly membership. You’ll be hearing from me in the next few weeks on an exciting, big update on that, by the way.
- I’ve also ran a private, monthly fee, coaching forum.
- I’ve also sold services in the form of keyword research and even writing.

So after all of those products, which is the best type of product to sell in the IM space?

That’s a good question I’m glad you asked. The answer is, as it often is: it depends. And it depends primarily on what you have to offer. If you don’t have any valuable skills to offer, then you probably shouldn’t be offering a service. If you don’t have enough knowledge to teach in your niche you probably shouldn’t be releasing ebooks. If you dont’ have the skill to develop a web app, or the money to outsource it, then you shouldn’t be doing that.

HOWEVER, I can tell you what the smartest and most profitable is once you’re at the point in which you can add enough value. The smartest and most profitable, in my experience, is offering a web-based app and selling it for a small monthly fee. You can do almost anything with a web app, which can potentially provide LOADS of value and you don’t have to worry about compatibility issues, which can create HUGE issues with desktop apps. And charging a monthly fee allows you to cover any monthly expenses you have and also reinvest every month to make it better and better and better and better.

All you need is a good developer who works for a reasonable rate and a good idea. You can have an app made that does just about anything you can think of. You can even have your app do many different things, like [removed]. If money is an issue for you then start off slow. Find a developer on oDesk and only have him or her complete small steps at a time. It will take longer, but it will be worth it eventually.

The other product types have their pros as well, like building up the audience/list in order to sell your new monthly fee web app to, but if we’re talking about direct sales and profitability, a monthly fee web app is the way to go!

It’s probably the simplest form of advertising, yet I bet 90% or more of the people who read this article aren’t doing it.

What is it?

It’s pretty simple. You have a website about hunting (for example) and thousands of companies out there sell hunting equipment. Your site gets traffic that is targeted toward hunters (who buy hunting equipment) so they buy an ad (usually a banner or link) on your site so they can leverage that targeted traffic. They pay you for the ad spot, you put up their ad… simple.

How do you do it?

You simply create an “advertising” page and link to that page using “Advertising” as the anchor text. This would go in your menu… wherever you link to your contact page etc. In some cases this isn’t even needed, but by having it you are confirming that you are open to offers and that it will not be a waste of time contacting you in order to ask. In my experience having an advertising page makes a big difference in the amount of advertising inquiries you receive.

What you put on your advertising page can be as basic as “We do have advertising options available, please contact us for details.” or as complex as providing detailed traffic stats, screenshots and ad rates. I haven’t done any detailed testing on this, but I believe if someone is serious about advertising on your site, they are going to contact you whether your advertising page is basic or full of stats etc. If I have a site that doesn’t get a crazy amount of traffic and/or doesn’t have any kind of rankings or anything to really brag about, I’ll just do a basic page. If I have a site that holds impressive rankings and/or receives a good deal of traffic, I’ll go ahead and specify that on the page.

How much to charge

This is a tough one because the price you charge is going to be determined on a site by site basis.

I typically look at two things:
1. The traffic my site currently receives
2. What rankings my site currently holds in Google.

It’s hard to give a good recommendation on pricing without looking at the site, but I can give you an example.

One of my sites that gets quite a few advertising requests currently receives about 400 daily unique visitors and holds a few quality top 5 Google rankings. I typically charge $350 for a three month placement, $600 for a six month placement and $1,000 for a year placement. That’s probably a little low, but I get repeat buyers, so I just keep it at that.

A few things to keep in mind

- Just like any other monetization method, some niches bring in alot of direct ad sales while some niches just don’t, for whatever reason. Don’t worry about whether or not your niche will end up bringing in good direct ad sales or not. You’re just adding a little page to your site, so it doesn’t hurt to just go ahead and open up the opportunity for it.

- Sites that hold high SE rankings for competitive phrases tend to receive more advertising inquiries, simply because these companies use Google to find sites to advertise on.

- Most people are interested in direct, sitewide links for SEO purposes, but some are interested in banner ads for direct traffic.

- Selling links that do not contain the rel=”nofollow” attribute is frowned upon by Google. However, linking to related sites is fine. They have no problem with sites selling advertising, they just want the rel=”nofollow” attribute added. However, if someone wants to buy a link for SEO purposes, they do not want that attribute added to their link… just watch what words you use on your advertising page. I’ve talked about selling links on this blog in the past and if you take a look at my toolbar PageRank … well, there is no toolbar PR The authority is still there though.

So, if you don’t already have an advertising page on all of your content sites, go ahead and ad one. There’s really no reason not to. You can keep your current form of monetization in place and this will not effect in one bit. In my experience it has increased the revenue of many of my sites, adding money to my bank account.

If it’s an ebook it may not be long enough and people may complain about it. If it’s a website it might not look professional enough. If it’s a service you might not present it in a professional way. These are just a few of the worries people have when getting started.

If you’re teaching people how to make money and you’ve only made $100 then you shouldn’t be teaching people how to make online, right? WRONG! There are millions of people out there who would LOVE to learn as many ways as they possibly can to make $100!

If you are one of those people, stop, right now! As the Nike slogan goes “Just do it!” Just do your best and concentrate on providing value!

If there was a line of 100 people in front of you and you sat down with each and every one of them I guarantee there is AT LEAST one thing you could teach them that they didn’t already know. That one thing may be small, but I bet you have many of those small things and I bet there are thousands, maybe millions of other people out there that are looking for that little piece of info as we speak.

Understand that you DO have value to offer! It may not be valuable to one person, but it IS to someone and most likely thousands or even millions of people. Once you understand and truly believe that take action and don’t worry about getting it perfect. As long as you’re providing value things will eventually work out! Once you have started providing that value, in whatever way you choose, THEN you can start learning how to improve on how you do it.

That’s it. Just a short one.. This post is a perfect example. Some people will read this and think “Duh, come on Josh.” And others will think “hmm, he has a point.” =)

Please keep in mind I AM NOT A TAX or FINANCIAL EXPERT! ALWAYS seek professional advice before doing your taxes yourself! As a matter of fact, if you run any kind of business I highly recommend having a professional do them anyway. Tax laws differ from state to state and Country to Country. I am in Fishers, Indiana (USA.)

So throughout the year you’ve been paying your quarterly estimated taxes… right? And you’ve been keeping track of your incoming payments and outgoing payments unlike I did my first year working online. Now it’s time to get all of your info ready to hand to your CPA so he or she can do your taxes. I just open a Word document and fill it with all of the info. Things like my full name, address, SSN, DOB, Wife and Son’s names and info etc. Then on a different sheet I start adding things that I believe to be deductions.

The following are what I will be giving to my CPA, which I believe will equal tax credit. Some I have claimed before, but some are new for me this year. Keep in mind, you can only claim a percentage of some of these, like your mortgage, utilities etc.

- Internet costs
- Education (seminars, ebooks, reports, other info products)
- Advertising (Adwords and any other advertising costs)
- Hosting
- Domain Registration
- Professional services (software development, graphics, coding etc.)
- Child care (daycare)
- Healthcare costs (out of pocket)
- Computer and accessories
- Charitable contributions
- Home office furniture
- Office supplies
- Postage
- Mileage (to bank, comptuer store etc.)
- Business use of home
- Utilities
- Cell Phone and service
- Financial services (tax preparation etc.)
- Business meals/drinks
- Legal fees including LLC/Inc. formation
- Renter/Homeowner Insurance
- Real Estate/Personal Property tax

And I’m sure there are more. What do you think? Do you claim anyhting I didn’t list above?

Over the years I’ve made thousands and thousands of sales on products to fellow Internet Marketers. Throughout that time I’ve learned what type of product typically sells well and what doesn’t. I believe every product that I promote is valuable, or I wouldn’t promote it, but every now and then I promote one that I really LOVE (and I always make it a point to let that be known.) Would you believe that many of the most valuable products I’ve promoted have done some of the worst sales volume? It’s true and the reason why is because a vast majority of Internet Marketers are more willing to pay for something that they believe holds some sort of secret to quick and easy money… I can’t really blame those people. But what I can do is try to help them make better decisions.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying everyone who buys these products is stupid… not at all. Some of these types of products really are extremely valuable and some of these sales pages are done so well it’s REALLY hard to pass it up. Luckily most digital products come with a money back guarantee, so the question is NOT should I take a risk on this or not (you can always get a refund) … the question is how do I define “value!” (how do I judge what is worth the monetary and time investment and what I should get a refund for and forget.)

Unfortunately, many people define value in the wrong way when it comes to Internet Marketing products! In regards to ebooks and reports one of the big ones that people get wrong is the number of pages. I’ve released some of my most valuable knowledge in 25-30 page reports/ebooks. As a matter of fact MOST of the reports/ebooks I’ve released contain about 30 pages. Why? Because that’s all I typically need to get the info out there. But every time I release a new one I get a handful of refund requests from people saying “it’s only 30 pages.” I typically laugh and shake my head, but afterwards I actually feel bad for those people. If that’s how they define value there is little chance that they will ever find any success in this business, or any other for that matter. Sure, I could easily add 10 or more pages of fluff that won’t really add value like many other people do. It would probably save those handful of refunds, but that’s not how I operate… I’m not going to do it.

Another big one is any product that requires any more than a little work. I believe I have a logical explanation for this and I don’t believe it’s that most people are truly lazy. I think many people who are new to Internet Marketing go on a product buying spree basically looking for an Internet Marketing Business Model that will yield them the most money for the least amount of work. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but there comes a time when you have to choose one and guess what, there isn’t a single one out there that is going to yield big profits with little work, unless you’re just lucky, a genius or you have one heck of a good mentor giving you perfect instruction.

Another I want to hit on is buying products that are completely unrelated to what you are currently doing. Now, there is a fine line here. Diversity is a good thing! There is nothing wrong with getting out of your comfort zone and expanding your business. But the decision to expand from SEO into PPC (for instance) shouldn’t be made by one promotional email that Joe Schmoe sent you about the best PPC product EVER. If you want to diversify your business that’s great. But when it comes to the decision of what model you’re going to expand into you should consider a wide range of models and techniques and choose one that you feel is a good fit to you and your business.

And last but certainly not least… the most important one: ROI (return on investment!) I don’t care if we’re talking about a product that consists of a 2×2 piece of paper with 3 words on it. If you pay $100 for those 3 words, yet they end up making you $150 then it was a good investment. TOO many people completely ignore that!

So all in all I do believe that my fellow Internet Marketers, both new and experienced, are generally a smart bunch of people. I think we are all human and our human nature sometimes rules smart decision making. Just be sure to look for that money back guarntee. If it’s there it’s not about risk, it’s about good decision making. If you have any interest at all go ahead and buy it. Then put on your rational thinking and good decision making cap, review the product and decide whether it’s worth your time and money or not.

Hopefully this post will help you invest your time and money a little better in the future.

Of course you should be reporting your earnings anyway. And those of us who are have nothing to worry about. It’s just not worth the risk of being audited (they often look back 5 years or more!) and you end up owing the government all of the money you were supposed to pay PLUS penalties.

Some Internet Marketers in the past have used PayPal to collect payments in order to avoid reporting all of their income, in turn saving them money when it comes time to report their quarterly earnings. That’s clearly a bad idea in the first place, but now it won’t work anymore.

This does only apply to those who receive $20,000 or more in gross sales volume AND 200 payments or more, but if you don’t fall into that category I still highly recommend you report it all!

Click here for more information on the matter directly from PayPal

But there are a few other pages that have proven to make a positive impact on the SERPS when present as pointed out by my buddy Andrew Hansen in his blog post “Does Google Hate Your Site?”

Those pages are:

About Us
Contact Us
Privacy Policy
DMCA Policy
Anti-Spam Policy
Terms Of Use
Affiliate Agreement

You’ll probably notice I don’t have some of those pages on this very blog. I will in time I just started adding the ones I didn’t have already on several of my other sites, which I concentrate more on SEO with.

Andrew did a little quality score experiment with and without these pages and noticed a drastic improvement of quality score when these pages were implemented, which isn’t surprising. These are credibility pages so obviously Google looks for them. Of course quality score is associated with Adwords, but as Andrew states and I completely agree, if these pages are important for quality score they are important for organic results!

So for an easy SEO bump and credibility booster, simply add those pages to your site(s.)

So here they are! The following are mistakes that I found to be very common throughout this little test, but also throughout the web in general. If you’re making any of these mistakes, STOP!

#7 Poor or no keyword research – Many sites I visit will be targeting one main keyword on the homepage, but when I look at internal pages they are targeting either EXTREMELY competitive phrases, which they will probably never rank for, or they don’t seem to be targeting any particular keyword. If you’re not doing some kind of keyword research, you’re just “taking a stab in the dark.”

#6 A lack of a good internal linking structure – This applies mainly to larger sites (approx. 30 or more pages.) If you have a site with alot of pages, it is very important that each and every page links out to other pages on the site. A list of random pages, popular pages and recent pages that appear on every page of your site is an excellent way to improve the internal linking structure of your site, which in turn helps the SE spiders crawl your site quicker and also spreads authority throughout your site. If at all possible every page on your site should be within 2-3 clicks from the homepage.

#5 Too many banners – Adding a few targeted, well-placed banners to a site is not a bad thing and will generate a little more profit. But contrary to what many people seem to believe the more banners you have does not mean the more money you will make! It can very quickly equal LESS money because a site full of banners is irritating and unneccesary.

#4 Lack of a clear purpose – Way too many sites that I visit require way too much thought on my part (the viewer) before understanding what the purpose of the site is. When the site is yours and you start thinking about a million different ways to do this and that, it’s easy to get off track and present an incredibly confusing site to new visitors. If there is any doubt at all as to what the purpose of your site is to new visitors, you should simply add a 2 sentence or so site description in your header.

#3 Little to no focus on building a list. As many times as I hear (and say) “The money is in the list” it is surprising to me how many people still do not actively work to build their list(s.) In nine niches out of 10, if you’re not building a list you’re wrong. If you’re not collecting opt-ins on your site, you should be! It’s that simple! However, it’s not as simple as sticking an opt-in form in the sidebar with “Join our Mailing List” above it. You need to have something of value to offer and use that in your call to action to draw readers into your funnel.

#2 Using the title tag improperly. The title tag of a page is the absolute most important on-page SEO factor. If the phrase that you want to rank for is not contained within the title it is going to be very difficult to get that page to rank for that phrase! NEVER use your domain name (mysite.com) in the title of your site and don’t saturate your keyword(s) with loads of filler words. That title should be the exact phrase you want to rank for with as few additional words as possible (although adding a few words to make it user friendly is ok… just don’t add TOO many.)

#1 Not Building Enough Backlinks. This is by far the biggest issue I see. People wonder why they aren’t getting the rankings they want, while they’re spending 90% of their time worrying about little things and ignoring the MOST IMPORTANT SEO ASPECT! If you’re not submitting articles to article directories, Submitting your URL to web directories and spending time working on other link building techniques on a weekly basis, you’re not doing enough. If you want to consistantly improve your rankings, you NEED to be consistanly generating backlinks!