David Leigh

One of the things I love about the Immediate Edge is the sheer amount of info that is shared with members. If you took part in the 30 Day Challenge then you’ll have some idea about the kind of stuff that is shared, but that is only the beginning - Immediate Edge is the 30 Day Challenge on steroids.

The newsletter is written by Dan Raine - Ed Dale  sticks to delivering his content though podcasts and video - and this month is a whopping 22 page PDF. I haven’t read it yet but will do so shortly because it will need my undivided attention, some reflection to apply it to my markets and a re-read.

Since I was away in August I started the 30 Day Challenge in  September, but the niche I picked seems to be a dud because I’ve had loads of impressions but only 1 sale. Now, however much that may seem like a failure - and it does, it really does - I haven’t had to launch a new website to test out that market - that would have been painful. Instead I’ve tested the market and found it’s a dud and moved on. One of the curious things about it is that the numbers on this niche were good for the 30 Day Challenge, but it is ranking on the first page of Google for a search term that would exclude it from the 30DC. However, those numbers are good for Immediate Edge! Still a dud market though

Anyway, I’ve tested several niches now and found one that is good. How long did it take? Just 2 weeks.

If you’re an internet marketer and want to stay way ahead of the crowd then my advice to you is definitely try the Immediate Edge.

I blogged about my Baby Gaggia earlier in the year, but want to return to the subject of coffee machines and specifically Gaggia coffee machines, which I really do think are the best in the world.

To the great amusement of just about everyone I meet, I’m a coffee drinker rather than a tea drinker, which I think is OK, but just doesn’t do it for me. I used to use one of those stove top coffee makers which can produce decent coffee if you’re careful, but often don’t. Most people don’t care enough about their coffee to really produce it well anyway, so I’m always a bit wary.

Anyway, since trying an espresso made on my brother’s Gaggia a few years ago, I also decided that I wanted one. And it is great. You can read a review of the Baby Gaggia , which is now available to take coffee pods, although I must admit I’m a purist, despite the amount of cleaning it takes. Favourite coffee is simply Illy, and I read an interesting interview a few weeks ago with the CEO of Illy - really focused on producing one single, excellent product and to me they’re doing well. Also see the line of Gaggia coffee machines stocked by Cafe Italia.

We’re currently looking to find an Australian website that sells pate, but without much success so far. This is for a Christmas gift, so any Aussies reading this can you let me know where I can buy Pate in Australia online.

If you’re a regular reader of my blog you’ll know that I’ve been more than happy with Immediate Edge since I joined at the beginning for September.

All the internet wisdom of Dan Raine and Ed Dale is served up to members on a frequent basis with a number of projects on the go to try and demonstrate not only how to do it but the thinking processes behind it.

One of the things they’ve been on and on about for ages is Facebook. The thing about Facebook is love it or hate it, you can’t ignore it, because with the launch of a geo-demographic PPC platform now launched it means that rather than target keywords, the internet marketer can now target customer profiles; internet marketing just got one step closer to traditional offline marketing, although whether that is one step forward or one step back is debatable

Dan and Ed think this is the biggest thing since Google AdWords launched. If you joined that in the early days you’ll remember that it was easy to pick up advertising for a few cents, but once it became a mainstream advertising medium that advantage disappeared as the ad costs soared. What this means is that there is now a window of opportunity before the big boys move in - Google Cash 2.0 if you like.

Dan and Ed will be releasing full info on how to make the most out of Facebook PPC as a stand alone product. However, you can get that info now, if you join the Immediate Edge. And if you join and don’t like it you can cancel at any time - if it’s within the first 2 weeks then you get you’re money back. All I can say is that it’s about the best $97 you could spend per month, so what are you waiting for?

Since installing a satellite dish at the beginning of the summer I’ve been able to receive UK television again, for the first time in 6 years. While much has changed - like a load of new channels - much remains the same too.
Anyway, after watching TV last night I’ve come to the conclusion that Top Gear is simply the best TV show in existence. It has fast cars driven recklessly, it’s far funnier than any supposed comedy, they have competitions that are beyond stupid (like crossing the English Channel in a converted car!) and so it doesn’t matter with you love Jeremy Clarkson or if you loath him; the show is simply brilliant!

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When I left my job and left England I didn’t really know what I was going to do next, but I did have a website that I played with and I toyed with the idea about starting an internet business, but didn’t really know how to go about it.

The last salary cheque I ever received was in June 2001, 6 weeks or so before I moved to Barcelona. I’d been working for a few years in marketing for telco/internet service providers and involved with the launch of ADSL in the UK for one of the main players at the time. However it wasn’t until I received a phone call out of the blue at the beginning of 2002 that the ball began to roll.

The call was from the sales director of a company selling a product online, and he wanted me to feature his product on my website , for which he would pay me a commission for every sale.

To be honest I didn’t think I’d sell a thing, but in the first month I made 4 sales for a whopping £50 commission. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it did show me that people apart from me would buy things online and that I could profit from it after all. After that start I pretty much managed to increase sales month on month until at one point I was earning around £3000/month for that one product.

Now that isn’t the only product I have been involved with selling and if you start to look for affiliate programs you’ll find them all over the place. But that isn’t the place to start - I was lucky in being contacted by someone who wanted me to sell their product AND that people actually wanted the product.

So what you need to do if you are thinking of starting an internet business of your own is to think about markets first, not products. By all means use products as ideas for indentifying markets, but you need to find out what do people want to buy? And then look at the competition, what do people want to buy and there aren’t many competing pages?

The huge advantage of affiliate marketing is that there is little risk for you - if you can get traffic and direct a good percentage of that traffic towards the sales page of the company you’re an affiliate for then it’s all down to how good their sales process is. And you don’t need to hold stock, or ship goods or deal with customers directly either.

There are plenty of places to find information on the internet about starting off in internet marketing, but one of the best places to start is the Thirty Day Challenge, run by Ed Dale and Dan Raine, which is completely FREE.

If you have more experience and want to reach the next rung of the internet marketing ladder then I’d suggest you look at Immediate Edge. It does cost, but the amount of info in there is amazing.

But the key thing about starting an internet business is that unlike me you can start your business while you have a job - it probably makes more sense for you to do this than do what I did and quit my job. With the right foundations and just a few hours a week you can start to live off the internet and work towards saying goodbye to your boss.

Home made soap is apparently a popular hobby and since it’s made from just a few simple ingredients, soap is pretty straightforward to make.

I’ve just been reading an interesting article about how to make soap and although it doesn’t give a detailed recipe it is a good start in learning how to do it.

Well, I’ve finally done it - I just cancelled my StomperNet SIMPLE subscription.

Although I’ve been quite critical of it for some time, it isn’t without some regret as I did learn plenty, it’s a shame that StomperNet didn’t give it a bit more priority some months ago.

As you may already be away StomperNet SIMPLE was originally the $1 trial back in May. Led by Australian internet guru Ed Dale it was a month packed with info on how to get an internet business off the ground.

Unfortunately due to poor communication on somebody’s part - I don’t know who is at fault here - the $1 triallers didn’t get as much for their dollar as some of them expected and so the first murmurs of discontent appeared. As for me, I was mainly happy with it at that stage and signed up for $97/month. There were some problems with some of the content, which coincided with the StomperNet conference and so there was a delay in getting it sorted.

That first $97 month did continue in much the same line, although I wasn’t happy with some of what I’d done. However in July the amount of new content was scaled back radically and many people started to leave, asking themselves what they were actually getting for their $97.

August was worse and although a whole load of new content was promised, most of it failed to materialize. September came and went; finally in October we had some more content, but for me it was a question of too little, too late - I joined Immediate Edge at the beginning of Sepember, also for $97/month, and the amount and frequency of content is fantastic. Perhaps Immediate Edge also had a shaky start, I don’t know, but new content is posted regularly, there have been a couple of amazing Q&A sessions (3+ hours for the most recent) and Dan Raine and Ed Dale talk you through their thought processes when choosing new markets to attack.

The irony is that the site I put together for StomperNet is starting to gain a trickle of orders. May Immediate Edge turn that into a downpour!