Ingredients:

1/4 Cup Butter
2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbsp Tomato Paste
2 Tbsp Brown Sugar
1/2 Large Onion, sliced up thin
2 Medium Red Bell Peppers
1 Jalapeno Pepper
1 cup chicken broth
Pinch of salt
Pinch of pepper

1. Melt the butter in a medium skillet on medium heat. Once it is melted, pour the onions in and saute them until caramel, about 15 to 20 minutes.

2. While the onions are being sauteed, pour the chicken broth in a microwave-safe bowl or cup and put the jalapeno pepper and red bell peppers in with the broth. MAKE SURE TO CUT OPEN THE JALAPENO PEPPER AND SEED IT FIRST OR IT WILL BE EVEN HOTTER THEN IT ALREADY IS!! Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and nuke it for about 3 minutes to get the flavors out and soften it up nicely. Set aside when done.

3. Once the onions are getting close to being done, add the tomato paste, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce and brown sugar and mix together and let them cook for a few minutes together.

4. Get a food processor or blender out and be careful. Pour the chicken broth/pepper and the onion mix into the food processor and process until nice and smooth, just like a sauce!

This sauce is nice and sweet when it hits your mouth but then it nails you with heat. Seriously, when you first taste it, just dip a little corner of your meat and see for yourself. If you are brave, take a large amount, but I am warning you, this is heavy on the heat! Give it a try and if you love spicy food, you will love this sauce.

Imagine your email list is a woman (or man). How do you approach a potential partner? Do you dive right in and try to get them straight to the bedroom? Of course not! Well, at least I hope not. But anyways, this is what I mean.

You need to take your approach slowly and build a relationship so that your potential mate trusts you. You need to do the same thing with your email lists. If you starting hard selling immediately, your opt-out list will be just like a slap in the face. Not what you want when you spent all that time getting your list ready to go and gathering precious emails.

Alright, so now that we know that we need to be smooth and use some charm to get what we want, how do we do that? Give more stuff away! Start a daily or weekly newsletter to your email list. Give away a free e-book, scripts, tips on whatever or some great coupons you have found, or a combo of them all. Don’t directly link to any of your stuff for about the first month or so. If you are going to link to a site, make sure it is a content site that has real value and not a lander. A lander will get you opt-outs too very fast.

After a month or so of good quality newsletter, you should have a solid user base that is starting to trust you as a source of good information. Now, it is time to start making some money off of them. Now, don’t ruin your credibility by sending out an email template from your favorite affiliate network. No, you still need to send out a good newsletter, just now you want to start to drop the seeds of the product you are pushing. A good example would be to do the following with your email:

Say I am sending out a diet email. Here is a basic sample. Don’t use this exactly, expand on it, as it is just a base sample and not good sales copy.

Post an article of a famous person losing weight and how they did it in your email. Then, after that, say something like:

Can you believe that they did that? They make it look so easy at times that it makes anyone sick. One thing professionals recommend is some type of jump start for your diet. Most people have a hard time starting out, as they don’t have the energy or the self-control to start the diet. Something like DIETPILL(this is your affiliate product, send it to a review site, not a lander) is way to jump start the diet process, as it helps give you energy and blah, blah, you get the drift. Just don’t pour it on too heavy.

The beauty of these email lists is that you built trust and you can recommend them to products and they don’t know it. It is subtle or soft selling, and it is done every day in life. Why not utilize it in your newsletters?

Now, you might be thinking, while this is great, after awhile, won’t they know I am pushing these products? Maybe, but not if you do it the right way. Plus, with the market that we have for almost every niche, the new products that you can talk about is almost endless. It is just about selling your current customers, retaining them after they bought, adding new to the list and limiting the amount of opt-outs. If you can keep your newsletter growing every month while increasing your income, then you of course are on the right track.

A bit of legal reminders here. Don’t forget about CAN-SPAM act when mailing out. Basically, you need to provide a way to opt-out online and offline, which means having an opt-out form online and your business’ physical contact information. If you are worried about privacy, just get a P.O. Box. Also, don’t just scrape emails or buy huge lists for a couple of bucks, because I guarantee you they are not opted-in. Make sure record them opting-in so that you cover your butt. And if they opt-out, make sure you don’t mail them. Finally, if you are running an affiliate offer, to be on the safe side, make sure to run your database against the network’s scrub list. That way, you cover your butt and no one can give you any reason to sue you or hold back your commissions.

That is the basics! Pretty simple, really, once you get the hang of it. Once you get going, it is really easy to stay up with and write the emails. You almost get to know your audience and writing to them is almost like talking to a friend. Once you get to that stage, you will be more successful, as the emails won’t sound as canned either.

Next post will be the finale and it is how you can get even more money out of your list without changing a single thing! You don’t want to miss this one, I promise.

1. Give away content

This is the most traditional way I have seen bloggers build up their email list. Content will get you plenty of email subscribers if you can provide high quality content that doesn’t rehash old content without giving any type of new spin on things. Content lists, I have found, are slower to build then any other ones, because it all depends on building off of your words. Sure, people may love reading stuff you write, but prying their email address out of their hands so that you can send them love letters all the time is much more difficult then you think.

However, if you have a strong following and a good amount of activity on your site, people will start to subscribe to your content. Consider adding pop-ups or banners about subscribing to an email list and give some benefits as to why they should. Also, make sure site look busier if you want more people to take it serious. You may have great content on your site, but if you don’t have any comments, people don’t think others are reading it and they likely won’t comment as well. Consider hiring some cheap help and get a bunch of comments for your latest blog posts.

2. Give extra benefits to your email subscribers

I mean, this is kinda a given when you sign up for an email list, but make sure your people know that when they sign up. Point out benefits, give out some secret tips or just tell them what they are missing by not being a part of your email list. You have to sell your email list in a very short period of time, like in a banner ad or pop-up. So do it. Tell them why they NEED to get on your list and what they will miss by not being on it.

3. Give away free stuff

I like this best because it is easy to do, builds your list fast and most of the time, it is cheap, especially when compared to the return you get. But what do you give away? More content is always a good thing! Here is what I mean.

For my one dieting site, it is targeted at people who need to start losing weight but they are having a hard time doing so. So, when they come to my site, my main purpose is to get them to sign up for my email list. However, that is not the main focal point of my site. The main focal point of the site is an ebook that I had written just for me on how to start dieting, which includes everything from changing your diet to changing your attitude. I mean, it covers it all. It is a book that adds real value to the site, and I give it away. But, I need your email so that I can send it to you. Bam, I got their email. It really is that simple. It just takes time and some initial investment and traffic, but it can be done easily.

Tailor the free gift to your audience of course. If like talking about site design, give away some exclusive templates. They don’t have to be killer ones, but make them good. The thing is you are pre-selling and building trust, so giving away something of real value will go a long way. People talk about things they get off the Internet, especially if it is a good value. Learn from that and build the trust of the people you are selling to. Remember, they are people just like you, so how would you be sold? What would make you sign up for an email list?

Just some things to think about here really on how to build the initial list. Now, I didn’t go into how to drive traffic or what to do once you get the email list rolling. That is for next time! Hope you enjoyed this simple but effective way to build your email list. I know it is nothing new or earth-shattering, but I hope you learned a few new things from the way that I look at things. Until next time!

Alright, enough rambling. That is why I can’t update more, because as I write, more ideas and thoughts flow to my head. That is also the reason I don’t use Dragon Naturally Speaking, because then this post might be thousands of words long.

Okay, now on to talking about email lists. You already know that getting a customer’s email is the key to recurring income, so how about we dive right into setting up the list. WARNING! This is not for advanced marketers who are already using email marketing. This is just a basic post of software, how to set it up and integrating on your site. That is it! More will be coming soon, I promise.

As I said before in other posts, I am not a designer, coder or anything like that. I know enough to get by and outsource anything I don’t know how to do or if I need an expert. So, with that being said, let us use the easiest and most powerful out of the box CMS available, good ole Wordpress. Seriously, for any content site that you are creating, there is no reason to use anything else, so start using Wordpress and that only.

I will assume that some of you are looking for free solutions as well as paid ones. If you are running a small list like you probably will, these solutions that I will share will work. The first one is a free solution and the one that I first used, which is PHPList. Simple, effective and free. Does it have all the bells and whistles? No. Can mail effective email newsletters? Yes. Case closed.

There are two paid versions that I have experience with and they are pretty much the most common solutions. Those two are Constant Contact and AWeber. Both are fine and will do the job and you only pay for what you use. In the end, it is all about personal preference and one other thing, which I will go over later.

PHPList is pretty simple to use. You just have to install it and start playing around. But it has all that you need to manage all of your list, including a list builder, the ability to create multiple lists and pretty much everything else you need to start mailing. Also, it is very easy to integrate your signup form into Wordpress using the PHPList Plugin, which is free.

I love the AWeber plugin for Wordpress not because you it is simple to set up, but because that it gives you the option to opt-in your blog commenters as well. Think about how to explode your list with this little plugin. Write a sweet linkbait story, drop a few hundred to get to the top of Digg, get tons of comments, profit. This is one feature that I love about AWeber. Of course you can do that with the other platforms, but it will cost you or you need to learn to do it yourself.

The Constant Contact plugin for Wordpress is similar to PHPList except that you don’t need to touch the site at all to integrate this signup form. Nothing special really here other then it is easy to setup, even for a noob.

So what do you do with this info? This is just basically the software to actually create a list and get you up and running. Next, I will share with you some ways to advertise your newly created newsletter.

First, you will need to have the following:

1 Package of Yeast
1 Teaspoon of Sugar
1 1/4 Cup of Water

1/2 Cup of Sugar
1 1/2 Teaspoons of Salt
5 cups Flour

1 Tablespoon of Vegetable Oil

1/2 Cup of Baking Soda
4 Cups of Water

2 6 oz Cans of Jumbo Lump Crab Meat
Shredded Cheddar Cheese of your choice (I use a Mexican/Taco style blend)
Old Bay
2 Tablespoons of Butter

I have them each separated above because they are needed in these amounts in different steps.

1. First, dissolve the Yeast with 1 1/2 Cups of Hot Water and then stir in the Sugar in a bowl.

2. Next, in a separate bowl, mix the 1/2 Cup of Sugar, Salt and Flour together.

3. Make a well in the middle of the dry mixture and first pour the oil in. Then, pour the yeast mixture in and start to knead. Do this for like 6 to 8 minutes until it is formed into a nice dough mixture. If it is sticky, add a bit of flour. If it is not forming right at first, add a bit of water. You can always self-correct with either one, so just do it and don’t be afraid. You will get it right eventually lol.

4. Lightly grease up a bowl and put your dough in it and turn it over once, making sure it gets a light coating of the oil. Cover and let rise for about an hour or so until it is about double in size. If it doesn’t double totally, don’t worry, it will still taste great!

5. Meanwhile, get the crab meat out and ready. Soften the butter so you can mix it with the crab meat, but you don’t want to melt it. It needs to be stiff so that it can cling to the meat. This also helps to make it thicker so it will be easier to place on the pretzel.

6. Put the butter and crab meat in a bowl and work it together until well mixed. Sprinkle Old Bay on the mixture to taste and mix again. That is now ready, so set it aside.

7.  After the dough has rise, preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

8. Mix the 4 cups of warm water and the baking soda in a bowl that you can dip pretzels in.

9. Take your dough to a surface where you can roll out the pretzels. Cut the dough (use a pizza cutter to make life easier) into 12 equal parts and roll them out and form pretzels.

10. Get 2 cooking sheets and spray with cooking oil.

11. After you form each pretzel, dip it into the mixture and place on the sheet, making sure the pretzel stays together. Make sure to pinch where the pretzels comes together to help keep the pretzel shape.

12. Once you have formed and dipped all 12 pretzels, get your crab mixture and cheese.

13. With your fingers, place the crab meat over each pretzel. This amount gives you a nice amount to put on each pretzel, so you don’t have to skimp.

14. After the crab meat is placed on the pretzels, sprinkle them with your favorite shredded cheddar cheese.

15. Place them in the oven for 8 minutes. They should get a nice color to them but still be a bit doughy when you get them out. That is okay!

16. Place them immediately on a cooking rack and serve. They are best hot of course!

These taste so good! The pretzel itself should taste like a buttery pretzel you would get at Auntie Anne’s or Pretzels Plus, and the crab and cheese just make it a great treat.

Also, you can just dip these in butter as well or sprinkle them with cheese. This is a great pretzel recipe and you can really add any of your own toppings. I love this base to start out with and it really lets you do anything with your pretzels, so be creative!

Let me know if you have any questions and feedback is always appreciated!!

This is a fairly easy thing to make, so don’t start thinking before you read this that you could never make it. All you really need to do is throw some things together, simmer it for about an hour and that is all. But, here are the fine details.

You will need these ingredients:

1 Medium Onion chopped
Olive Oil (to fry the onions)
28 oz canned or fresh tomatoes, either diced or whole (fire roasted gives them a nice flavor as well!)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 Tablespoon tomato paste
1/2 cup cider vinegar
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon Worchestershire sauce
OPTIONAL
To make spicy, add 1/2 Tablespoon of either Chiptole powder or cayenne power

Now that you have your ingredients, fry the onions in the olive oil, about 2 Tablespoons. Do this for about 5 to 8 minutes until browned. While frying, add all of the other ingredients in a large saucepan and stir them in. When onions are ready, dump them in as well.

Turn heat onto medium and cook for about an hour, stirring every 15 minutes at first and then every 5 minutes the last 15 minutes. Once you do this, pour into a food processor or blender (I suggest splitting this into 2 batches since the sauce will be very hot and it gets a smoother texture). Blend or process until smooth and no onion pieces can be detected.

Pour them into a jar or bottle or anything with a cap and that is it. You can use this up to about 3 weeks, so enjoy. My family won’t buy store brand anymore, as I need to always make this for them! Enjoy!

This is a very simple but quick to prepare meal that you can just shove in and let cook. The spices go together great and is a good recipe for those who don’t like a strong “fishy” taste. Give it a try!

1 lb of tilapia fillets(about 4 or 5)
Old Bay Seasoning
Garlic Powder
Paprika
Salt
Pepper
Can of Cream of Mushroom Soup
Panko Bread Crumbs
Lemon Juice
Favorite Vegetables(optional)

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Get a 9 by 13 pan out and pour in the Cream of Mushroom Soup (make sure to mix the can of soup with a can of water as well). This should coat the bottom of the pan nicely.
3. Salt and pepper to your liking first. Then, add a bit of garlic to each fillet. Don’t overdo the garlic.
4. Cover nicely with the Old Bay and Paprika. I hate measurements, so all I can say is do it to your liking. I cover it nicely but I don’t overdo it, if that makes sense.
5. Drizzle a bit of lemon juice over each fillet.
6. Cover the fish with the panko bread crumbs.
7. Place the fish in the pan and put in oven.
8. Cook for about 25 minutes. The crust should be nice and crispy and the fish should be firm and flake with a fork.

Now that we have that out of the way, let me start to talk about how you can use long tail keyword to really start raking in the cash.

Using short, generic keywords like auto insurance will get you tons of traffic of course, but that traffic will not only be expensive, but it also is somewhat untargeted for your needs. Why do I say untargeted? A lot of times, people using short, generic search terms are just tire kickers. They are not ready to buy at this stage. And since short, generic keywords are the easiest and first used by companies, they are more expensive and more competitive. So, let Geico and Progressive pay those high costs. They’ll be paying us soon enough when we generate leads at a cheaper rate then they can.

So, where do we start? First, you want to look at the advertiser landing page, their website and their competitors website. Read through them good and get a basic understanding of what it is they are selling and how they go about it, meaning what type of sales process do they use. Do they offer a consultation or is it a straight sale? Once you get a basic idea of the whole process, move on.

Put yourself in the shoes of a customer know that you know the product and why and how you would use it. Start coming up with keywords that are very descriptive. Don’t use “new shoes” but use “newest release mj shoes” or “top rated skateboarding shoes” or “buy new high arch sneakers”. This practice again will not get you a ton of traffic, but the secret is to build a HUGE list and generate tons of small traffic. Get people when they are most likely to take action with whatever your goal is, whether it be to whip out their credit card and buy new shoes or enter their personal information in to get a debt consolidation review.

If you want to generate a large listing of keywords, this is what I suggest. First, do the above manually and don’t use any keyword tools. Spend real time on this, not just a few minutes. Read everything about the company, niche and competitors and keep just pulling info. Then, use like KeywordTracker or some other keyword tool that you love and put each keyword in.

Now, when generating ads, you need to group your ads together tightly, and what I mean by that is only put about 10 to 15 of these into a single ad group. When you type each keyword in, set up a new ad group for that keyword and base your ad off of it. Each keyword will need a different ad and only related keywords will make sense in that ad group, so keep them together and that is it. A strong promotion should have at LEAST 50 ad groups, just to let you know, even if it needs to be broken into different campaigns.

After you have gathered all your main keywords for your ad groups, lets generate some more keywords. How is your spelling? If you are like me and most of the population, your typing, spelling or both suck, so it is likely that you will type the wrong word when searching. So, how about profiting off of that as well since most people will spell things wrong.

Go to the SEOBook Typo Generator and type in each of your main keywords that you used to set up ad groups. Check all the boxes on the tool and run it. Make an ad group for each of the results, even if it is more then the 10 to 15 I recommended before, and it will be a lot more. That is okay. Typos are rare and produce an even smaller amount of traffic, so large keyword ad groups are okay in this instance only.

Well, that is it about the long tail keywords. Remember though, when setting up for ad groups and writing ads, don’t just write one or two. You need to write at least 4 at first to get an idea of what ads are working the best. Also, you need to set up for own tracking as well, so use a system like Prosper202. I will write more details on this other stuff later, but for right now, I am just staying focused on the long tails.

As always, let me know if you have any questions either through the comments or you can email me at bryan@ahaze.com.

First off, for those who would like to get this book, it is called The Last Lecture and it is written by Randy Pausch. He has a site to along with this book as well, and it is called TheLastLecture.com. So, go check them out to see what I am talking about.

Alright, now on to the book and what it is all about. Randy was a middle-aged man who was full of life and was living his dream really. He got to do tons of things he never thought he would, including working as a consultant to Disney to being one of the top professors of Computer Science. His life was just great. He had a great family and just seemed to be on top of the world.

Then, his world changed forever. He was sick and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which is considered to be the deadliest cancer of them all due to their high fatality rate. However, he lived longer then they told him, but he ultimately lost his life on July 25th, 2008.

Before he died though, he gave one final lecture, hence the name of the book. This lecture was just amazing to watch, especially from someone knowing he was going to die. It made me put my life into perspective as well. I was having a rough time medically when I first heard about this. My wife actually bought the book right after she saw this story on TV, so she also thought I could benefit from it.

Anyways, it helped me to realize that yeah, your situation may suck, but it could be worse. And if you are facing a tough situation that you are having a hard time dealing with, just remember. You only live once, so why sit around and stress about something that you have no control over? So, no matter what your situation in life is at any time, everyone can take some lessons from this.

If you don’t buy the book, at least take the time to check out the lecture on YouTube. It is well worth it, trust me, and will help to change your perspective on life.

The Last Lecture – YouTube Video