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Willie Crawford has been in the Internet marketing game for a long time, yet he still managed to have an entire career in the air force before becoming a devoted online marketer.

Willie and I recorded this interview on Skype and I wanted to learn more about his history online, since he is widely regarded as one of the earlier “gurus”. I was also curious about what Willie’s first foray into online business was, as most people don’t start out selling how to make money products. Willie is no different - his first big success was a recipes email newsletter and a cook book he sold (a six figure business), which began after he started sharing recipes from his family farm.

From there Willie went on to become a seminar speaker, created a continuity income stream by private labeling the 1ShoppingCart system (his is called ProfitAutomation.com) and today runs a community of people who service all kinds of markets in his Internet Marketing Inner Circle.

Willie ends the interview with two powerful tips - how any person can start a business today providing basic Internet marketing services and training to local offline small businesses, and how to leverage forums to find opportunities.

Show Notes

• Willie’s early life living on a family farm and then joining the air force
• His first Internet business project - a dating affiliate program
• Willie learns about niche marketing by reading email newsletters while flying in the air force
• Family food leads to Willie’s first successful email list and product - a cook book
• The next step - Willie becomes a speaker at Internet marketing seminars
• Willie reveals the secret to success - good copywriting
• Taking the next step, Willie decides to create his own residual income product
• How to become an expert - run your own seminars like Willie
• How the Warrior Forum led to a business opportunity
• Today Willie focuses on offline businesses and helps them market online
• Why do some people succeed online and others fail
• Willie’s current community - The Internet Marketing Inner Circle
• How to leverage forums to find business opportunities

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Last night I attended a special movie screening of the documentary, “Food Matters“. Here’s the trailer -

The gist of the film is that our medical system at the moment is not good at dealing with diseases. We focus on symptoms rather than the root cause of the problem and - here’s the big deal - doctors rarely consider nutrition as a cure or preventative solution, instead it’s all about cutting things out, or radiation treatments and drug therapies after the fact.

The drug companies like this because they can sell more product. If you have a culture like ours, which tends to react to problems only after they occur and then treat them using drugs, you have a formula for a billion dollar industry. We tend to think about popping a pill when something is wrong, rather than eating good food to stay healthy.

Food Matters looks at nutrition - the food we eat - as the best prevention and cure for health issues. It’s ridiculous how much sense this makes, yet people don’t follow the advice.

What’s The Key Ingredient For Business Success?

You might think the answer to the question in the heading above is marketing, or customer service or a superior product, but for every business in existence today, the key ingredient is people. If you don’t have healthy functioning people, then your business is not going to thrive.

In the home business, solo entrepreneur and professional blogging world, it matters even more because you work independently as the main cog that keeps the business going. If you can’t work, you can’t earn a living.

The message in Food Matters is a simple one: Eat organic foods, if you can - eat raw foods, and add superfoods to your diet too. Look to food as the best prevention and even the cure to any ailments you suffer from.

I’m not saying take on board the ideas in the movie as fact, you can make your own mind up, but the core message - you are what you eat - is just so obvious, yet it needs to be stated. Even those of us with the best intentions have trouble sticking to healthy eating all the time.

How Hard Is It To Stay Healthy?

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I saw this coming years ago and thankfully I made adjustments back then too.

If you watched my video on Conversion Blogging and the blog posts leading up to the release of the video, you know I was advocating a move away from the Page View Slave (PVS) model of blogging for money.

The PVS model relies on the raw number of page views you can deliver to advertisers in order to increase or maintain a level of income from blogging. Following the PVS model you set yourself up for hard work literally forever, plus you tend to put all your eggs in one basket, relying on traffic from Google to keep the page views up and in some cases, trading that traffic right back to Google in the form of AdSense click income.

Blog Networks In Turmoil

Today I had a chance, after supporting the new Blog Mastermind students and taking some time off, to catch up on the activities in the blogosphere.

One particular thread caught my attention, starting at Problogger with Darren’s short post on Talking Blog Networks, linking through to a post by Jeremy Wright, CEO of blog network b5media, on his feedback about the challenges of running a blog network and ending with Wendy Piersall’s thoughts on what the closure of a high profile blog network means to people in this industry.

I’ve never been a blog network owner per se, but I’ve owned multiple blogs and at one stage considered launching my own network after successfully branching into a second blog. Needless to say, I know the challenges you face coordinating bloggers, hiring good ones and monetizing the sites by selling the page views. It’s not easy for one person to do and I was stretching myself at times when trying to do it for just two blogs, so I can only imagine what Jeremy goes through at b5 with hundreds of blogs even with the support of a company team around him.

This is why years ago I decided to focus on long term asset creation and look for a means to get leveraged outcomes from what I do with blogs without wholly relying on the creative talents of other bloggers. I’ve never had intentions of trapping myself to a desk running a huge company as a busy CEO either, so I look for ways to keep things small, yet exponentially profitable, without giving up time and lifestyle freedoms.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve made good money being in charge of blogs that I didn’t personally write to (leveraging other people’s talents, but always in a win-win relationship), but the job is taxing - people managing is always taxing. If that’s a role you are prepared to fulfill, perhaps for a short term period, you can make it work, just be aware of what you are signing yourself up to if you decide the blog network model is something you will pursue.

Is The Advertising Model Broken?

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Over the weekend I worked hard on video presentations for the release of Blog Mastermind. Obviously the core topic of the videos is how to make money via blogging, however I’m introducing a new form of blogging for profit, something that can lead to income quicker, it’s more stable and in the long haul is a much better model for bloggers to follow.

I’ve got a name for this type of blogging that I will reveal when the video comes out but what I can tell you now, it is based on email marketing. I’m not the only person doing this form of blogging of course, but I’m one of very few compared to the total number of professional bloggers out there.

How The Humble Email List Changed My Business

Back in 2005 I started blogging. A few months later I began studying the work of some prominent Internet marketers and a trend arose - everyone talked about how you had to have an email list.

Strangely enough, I didn’t listen. Well, at least I didn’t take action, which is just as bad. I could see how having an email list was valuable, but my focus at the time was my editing business and I just didn’t see how email marketing was going to help it. My blog at the time was still more hobby site than a money maker.

Fast forward to the end of 2006 and I decided to finally launch an email list. However I still didn’t get it completely right because instead of leveraging my blog for continuous email opt-ins, I created an off-site landing page and wrote a few blog articles pointing towards it. At least it was a start.

When it came time to do a blog redesign I was well and truly convinced that I had to include an opt-in for my list on my blog. I asked my designer to put the opt-in in the right column at the top in the above the fold area. You can see it in action in most of the 2006 archives of my blog at the Way Back Machine.

Instantly my opt-ins grew and I quickly found myself generating an extra 20-50 new leads per day, which continued to increase as my blog traffic increased.

Since then, nearly every success I have enjoyed online has come thanks to making these decisions. I finally understood what Internet marketers were talking about when they said you have to have a list - and yes, that applies in EVERY niche online, not just the make money topics (email marketing is so good in non-business markets because not so many people use it well there).

How Email Will Make A Difference To Your Blogging

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In this final piece of a four part article series on customer service we look at one of the key components of a successful Internet business - a good customer support person.

If you have been following along this journey you will remember how Starbucks taught us the importance of good customer service as a powerful tool for reputation management, which can lead to a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

We then switched to the Internet business world and followed along the typical path of a solo entrepreneur growing an online empire. With success comes pressure to continue to deliver personalized support, despite less time available to do so. In the end one person can only do so much, and customer service suffers.

In the most recent article I went back in time and reviewed my own personal experience developing various Internet projects and how I evolved the system I use to interact with my constituents. The major conclusion of this piece was the importance of Angela, my customer service person.

Now let’s take a look how you can take the next step with your business and outsource your customer service role.

Start With A System

It’s likely you will begin by providing customer support yourself, especially if you work your way up as an independent operator. Along the way you can install a help desk or set up a customer support email account. You may go as far as replicating the ReplytoYaro.com support system I use.

The previous article looked at a several technology options available to you to implement a system for online customer support. I suggest you use my story as inspiration to build your own support system, and while you do, think about how eventually another person (or people) can run it for you.

Most help desk scripts are built for multiple users and as I explained in the prior article, a Gmail email is a great basic solution to get started and can also handle multiple users through the use of message flagging.

Once you have something set up, your next task is to find a customer support officer.

How I Find Good People

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