Transcript continued from the Episode 040 Show notes
iTunes Reviews of the Podcast
I wanted to give a shout out to some iTunes reviews. I had lost track of that a little bit. I try to read each and every review and we’re up to 46 five star ratings on iTunes. Thank you so much.
I was looking at the podcast stats. How cool is this? We have a listener from Iceland. I don’t if they’re a listener, but they downloaded the podcast once so I’m going to count that. We’ve been downloaded in 103 countries – very cool. The podcast is growing quickly and it’s all thanks to you and the nice things that you say about me and the podcast. I really appreciate it.
People ask me why I do this and to be honest with you, one of the reasons I do it just the great feedback I get from people. They say the nicest things and I really appreciate it, it means a lot to me.
There a couple of reviews on iTunes…
Shout out to beDroid who said he’s hooked on the podcast, he heard Mason World through another internet marketing podcast – 9 times out of 10 that’s code for Pat Flynn – and he’s going through the episodes from the very beginning, “This is an honest and encouraging account on what it takes to work on internet marketing part time. Keep up the good work, Mark.”
I love that. That’s exactly what the show is supposed to be. That kind of review tells me that I’m hitting the target market at least a little bit.
Another review from 8tracklover – I love that, because I’m old enough to know what an eight track is – that says, “I really connect with the way he puts out his information. He’s incredibly willing to share his knowledge and is accessible to listeners. This is a podcast done correctly.”
Thank you for those reviews. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you taking the time to go over and leave a review in iTunes. I read them all and it means a lot to me. Thank you very much. I couldn’t be happier with the fact that we have an amazing 46 five star ratings over on iTunes, it’s just awesome. Thank you so much.
Voicemail from Shaun
I had some feedback. You guys remember that I got together with my local listeners here in Dallas. I’ve been thinking about doing that again, it was fun. I just got some voicemail feedback from one of them a couple weeks ago and I wanted to play you that as well, just as a shout out to this guy.
He actually has an affiliate marketing website, he’s made his first money, and he wants to grow it and he has the right attitude. I really enjoyed the conversation with Shaun. He’s into mountain biking and his website is about that. Let’s hear what Shaun has to say about the meeting and the show.
Shaun: Hey, Mark. This is Shaun with Texas Mountain Bike Trails. I just wanted to say how much I really enjoyed meeting up with you that night in Allen at the Londoner Pub. It was a great time of learning, I thought, for everyone that attended. We had a great time and the Belgian beer was terrific. Have a good one. Bye.
Hey, Shaun. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate your feedback. We’ll do it again, it was a great time. Love your site at TexasMountainBikeTrails.com. I want to encourage everybody to get over there and take a look at that. I really like the way it’s done, it’s a nice clean look with a cool logo. I love the Texas Star with the mountains in the background, very nice. Go check it out at TexasMountainBikeTrails.com.
Thanks, Shaun.
Do I Need an NDA When I Outsource?
As you guys know, I spend some time in forums because one of the things I like to do is try to help people. I try to hang out in places where I know the forum owner and am generally on board with what they’re doing. One such place is Internet Business Mastery Academy.
I was over there recently and one of the guys was asking a question that I answered in the forum that I thought I would share with you here. This is a question that comes up all the time.
He wants to start outsourcing and he has a business idea. His question is how does he protect it during development? He’s going to use a firm to make a product and what does he do?
The first thing I want to say is I’m not an attorney, so I’m not giving you legal advice. But, I have some thoughts about this because I do outsourcing and have some experience with this kind of feeling.
You feel like you’ve got this great idea, you’ve spent a lot of time thinking it through, it’s unique in some ways, after all it is your idea, and the last thing you want to do is have somebody steal this idea out from under you. The fear that people have is that they’re going to outsource this idea overseas or wherever and the coders that they outsource it to are going to steal it from them and sell the idea on their own.
A couple of things about this.
One is my honest feeling is that ideas by themselves really aren’t worth very much in this kind of market. Don’t get me wrong, great ideas are critical to business. But, lots of people have great ideas. In fact, you never hear about most great ideas because you’ve got this other problem, which is part two of this which is the thing that’s really valuable is execution of a great idea.
In fact, your idea doesn’t even have to be great. If you’ve got the execution piece I’d say that’s way more important than the idea piece. A lot of businesses have been built on seeing someone else’s idea and executing it better than them. That’s get back to this question of, “What if somebody steals my idea?”
I’m sure there are cases where your idea is so unique and no one has thought of it, and once someone else thinks of it you’re in real danger of getting it stolen, sure I get that. But in most cases you’re talking about a website or some other kind of online business that is going to require marketing and execution to make it run. Just the idea itself is not going to actually go viral.
In those cases, I think the risk that you’re talking about is actually quite a bit smaller than what you think. Here’s a couple of ways that you can mitigate that risk.
The first thing is do business with people that you can trust. Now, if you haven’t been doing a lot of outsourcing it might be hard to know who you can trust. I would say one way to get a sense of whether or not you can trust someone is by looking at the reviews on Odesk or wherever you happen to be working.
If you are working with an overseas person through Odesk, don’t pick the guy with a single two star review to do your job. If you’re worried about this, go with somebody that has lots of good reviews. If they’re in the business of stealing people’s ideas they’re not going to have good reviews.
You could be the first time they ever stole anything, I get that. But chances are if you have a guy who has a business built around his reputation online, he’s going to be okay. That’s one way you could mitigate the risk of having your idea stolen.
The second thing I would say is ask for references from clients. If they don’t any, probably not the guy for you. If they’re unwilling to give them, also probably not the guy for you. If you can get references from clients you can just ask those clients directly, “My idea is kind of sensitive, do you feel like you could trust these guys with sensitive ideas?” And you’ll get a sense of how much risk you’re taking.
Most things in business, this included, are really more about mitigating risk than they are eliminating the possibility of something happening. That’s what I’d say.
The third thing I’d say you can do in addition to getting references and using people with good reviews and a track record is that you can ask for a nondisclosure agreement. Again, I’m not an attorney. But, I will tell you that enforcing a nondisclosure agreement overseas, especially the kind you’re going to want to create on a startup, is going to be almost impossible.
That’s my opinion. Again, I’m not an attorney and I’m not an overseas attorney. But, you’re not going to go sue some developer over in the Philippines because he stole your idea. Maybe you will, but you’re not going to get anything if the guy doesn’t have any assets.
I would say that the good thing about NDA could be that it might scare off someone who was casually stealing your idea that might fear this kind of repercussion even though it’s not really practical from your side to go sue these people. It will communicate very clearly what your expectations are.
That’s the fourth thing that I would say is very important; clearly communicate your expectations. Make sure that the party that you’re dealing with understands that you believe the idea is sensitive, make sure they know that you’re only willing to work with them if they’re willing to assure you that the idea is safe.
They can lie to you, sure. But at least you’ve clearly communicated your expectations that this idea is important to you and you don’t want them to share it. A lot of times that’s enough. A lot of leaks of confidential information are inadvertent. If your expectations are clearly articulated, then that can help a lot as far as this kind of thing goes.
Bottom line, you can’t guarantee that someone is not going to steal your idea, but there are four steps you can use to help mitigate the risk of something bad happening.
From Taiwan to Singapore
The sound of that jet airplane means that I’m no longer in Taiwan, I’m now in Singapore. I’ve been walking around. My daughter is a big fan of the O School Dance Studio, so I went over there and got her a t-shirt. Shout out to the O School, they’re pretty awesome. There’s a jazz dancer there named Freddy that my daughter thinks hung the moon, at least from a dance perspective. I went over there and unfortunately Freddy is in Russia this week, so I didn’t get to see Freddy.
I wanted to handle a couple pieces of listener feedback while I’m here in Singapore. By the way, I know the audio quality is not quite up to standard when I’m in hotel rooms and I apologize for the little P-popping in the first segment and some of the background noise. There’s construction outside the hotel and it’s kind of crazy. Thanks for bearing with me while I’m on the road.
Can You Help Loz with his New Website?
First piece of feedback was a really cool request that I didn’t have many good answers for, so I’m hoping you guys can help me out. This comes from a reader named Loz.
Loz has a new website over at Things My Kids Ask Me. Great idea for a website, you have to go check that out at ThingsMyKidsAskMe.com.
The idea is Loz is collecting up all the kinds of crazy questions that kids ask that are really hard to explain with kid-sized answers and he’s blogging about that. I think it’s an awesome idea for a website and it’s really well put together. He just launched it last week and it looks awesome. Shout out to Loz.
Loz asked me to send him some questions that my kids ask me and I couldn’t come up with any good ones, I’ll have to think about it. The question that I always used to ask my dad was, “How do light bulbs work?” Miraculously, I became an electrical engineer.
When I was a kid light bulbs were incandescent, now there are LED light bulbs and compact fluorescents and this other stuff. How do light bulbs work, Loz? That’s one for you.
So that’s some feedback for Loz. I really appreciate hearing from him. Definitely go check that out and when you meet Loz over there at Things My Kids Ask Me be sure and tell him you heard about him on the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast.
Teaching English in Costa Rica & WordPress Plugin Recommendations
The other piece of feedback that I wanted to get to while I’m on the road here is a ticket that came in from John Manning. John is about to go to Costa Rica, which is really cool, and he’s going to become certified to be an English teacher to non-native speakers in Costa Rica.
I think there is no higher calling than teaching, that’s my first thought about that. My wife was a teacher for 13 years, she taught fourth graders, and I like to think I do a little teaching on this podcast. I think teaching is awesome.
He’s been tinkering around with a website for his mom’s jewelry store, but he’s about to start a travel blog to chronicle his efforts in Costa Rica and to be a help to other people who want to go take teaching assignments overseas. He has this awesome domain name; OffToTeach.com. It’s in the initial stages, he hasn’t really launched it yet.
He contacted me for a couple of things. The first thing was he’s kind of new to blogging and wanted to know what plugins he should use. I could probably do a whole website on WordPress plugins, but there are definitely a few plugins that I would say you should get started with.
John is building his site on the Thesis theme, that’s definitely the theme that I recommend that you use. I think you’re okay if you’re using Genesis, I think that’s another good choice. If you want to use Thesis you can find that theme at MasonWorld.com/thesis. Of course, if you buy through that link it’s an affiliate link and it helps support the show, but you don’t have to do that and you don’t have to use a premium theme. I like Thesis and we’ve discussed that a little bit before, that’s a great start for John.
The plugins that I would recommend for getting started would be JetPack, which is a WordPress related plugin related to the WordPress.org guys who are somehow involved in the creation. The thing that gets you is WordPress statistics. You can register your blog at WordPress.com and it will track your blog statistics. If you’ve seen me publish statistics from the Corn Sheller site that’s where those statistics are coming from. JetPack is also the way you get access to Akismet now, which is a spam fighting plugin, so I definitely recommend JetPack.
Of course you’ve heard me recommend the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin. I don’t recommend messing around with any other plugin, I know some of you out there are using the All-in-One SEO plugin and I guess that’s fine, I haven’t looked at that in a long time since I started using Yoast’s stuff. I definitely recommend Yoast.
I use Sharebar Social, the free plugin for the sliding sharebar that can go up and down the left hand side, or anywhere that you put it. I recommend that.
For performance reasons, especially if you’re on shared hosting where you may be up against other people on your server that are taking a lot of server bandwidth, I recommend the W3 Total Cache plugin. That will lighten the load on your server and help your site be more responsive no matter what kind of server you’re using. It’s a little bit hard to configure, but the basic configuration is relatively straightforward and I’m sure you can handle it.
I like the YetAnotherRelatedPosts Plugin. That’s an important plugin because you want Google to be able to easily find links to and from other posts in your site; this is called internal linking structure. YetAnotherRelatedPosts Plugin helps to link things that are contextually related together. It reminds of a trick, I told you guys last week about the SEO podcast that I found and they had mentioned a trick that I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned to you guys, so another shout out to the SEO Podcast guys.
If you have a new page that you want to rank one of the tricks that you can use, and this is a trick that I’ve used, is to put contextual links to that page in your site on pages that are already ranking well. Pages that are already ranking well in your site by definition have link juice and so if you link to a new page from those pages you’ll pass some of that link juice to the new page and that can help you rank that page quickly. That’s a great tip and that comes from my new friends who I haven’t met yet over at the SEO Podcast. As they would say on their podcast, “smash in the face to you,” or something like that. Those guys are nuts.
So those are my recommendations on plugins.
I wanted to talk a little bit about John’s site, I really like this idea for a site for lots of reasons. I think that John has ideas around how he can use the site to chronicle his journey and he even tells me, “I’m not really doing this for the money, but if it can be monetized that would be great.” His instinct is to create something that’s valuable to other people and I just love that.
He even thinks about maybe creating a forum that other expat or traveling teachers around the world teaching English could use and talk on to discuss issues that they’re having in their host country and so forth. I think that’s great.
I could definitely see an eBook or two from a site like this that prospective teachers could buy. You could definitely run a podcast out of a site like this if you were so inclined. There’s just lots of things you could imagine doing with a site like this that could be a help to a lot of people.
As far as what the overall maximum earning potential of a site like this is, I don’t know because I haven’t done the work to see how many people are searching for this kind of information on the internet and what the competition looks like. That’s definitely something that I would try to figure out is when people search for this kind of information what search terms do they use.
For example, is teaching abroad a search term that they use? Maybe there are lots of keywords, but the one that I came up with just off the top of my head here is teaching abroad. If teaching abroad is your keyword, at least where I’m searching here in Singapore, there are a tons of Adsense ads. You’ll need to check this in the United States, I don’t have an easy way to do that from the hotel here.
If there are Google ads, as I’ve mentioned before, in the Google search results that means that people are actually paying for those ads. When people have money to pay for ads that means they’re making money in that niche. Advertisers here are everybody from Peace Corps to people that are looking for teachers.
I think at the very minimum you could monetize a blog like this with Adsense. There are probably some pay-per-lead programs and other things that you might consider. Add an eBook and all of a sudden you put together a website, you work on it, you make it real, you put effort into it, and you’re making a little money on the side, but you’re in Costa Rica which is a cheap place to live and it’s not going to take a lot of money, and you’re making money teaching, and that’s looking like a pretty sweet deal.
I think this is a great idea, John. Keep me posted, let me know what’s going on and let me know how I can help you. I love this idea. Good luck to you.
Google’s Latest Update: Disavow Links
The last thing that I wanted to cover quickly is the new tool that Google rolled out this week that people are calling the Disavow Links Tool. It sounds like something Ethan Hunt would use in a Mission Impossible movie starring Tom Cruise, but this is actually a real tool.
What it’s for is if you get yourself in a situation where you have spammy links pointing to your site, these are links from questionable sources that you almost certainly got in an effort to improve your page rank, and Google has identified those and perhaps is penalizing your site because you have those links pointing to you, after you try to get the person who created those links to remove those links back to your site, if you’re unsuccessful now you have the option to notify Google that you want to disavow those links and you don’t want Google to count them.
Essentially Google has said that the only time you ever need to use this tool is if you’ve been notified in Webmaster Tools that you have unnatural links pointing to your site and you’ve tried to get the source of those links to remove them and you’ve been unsuccessful. That’s the only time. So if you don’t have that message and you haven’t been through all that, then you don’t need to worry about this right now.
This is interesting because Google is in a constant battle to fight web spam and this is people like us – internet marketers – who pay money to try and rank better and do so by creating spammy links into websites that they want to rank. In order to fight this what they’ve been doing is trying to detect those and they’re starting to penalize sites who have spammy links coming into them.
They send you a notice in Webmaster Tools and say, “You have unnatural links,” and typically what they want you to do is go and try to remove the source of those links. If that means that you bought links from somebody, you want to go get the source of those removed. Go back to the person you bought them from and have them removed. Sometimes you can’t do that and sometimes you didn’t create the links in the first place, there are lots of reasons that you might have a hard time getting link removed, maybe it’s not even your fault. So Google has given you a way now to list the links that you’ve identified as spammy and want removed from Google’s consideration and upload that list to Google.
This allows lots of things, but one of the interesting things that it allows is for Google to collect a ton of data on sources of spammy links, and I’m sure they’re going to upload all of these files and cross-reference them to find the spammiest sites on the internet and immediately start discounting links coming from those sites. So this is a great data mining activity for Google and it wouldn’t surprise me if that was the main reason for launching this Disavow Links tool.
In any case, as I said, you don’t need to worry about this. I’ll have more information on this next week. This is kind of fresh, lots of buzz about it right now. Fundamentally, just know that Google is going to do everything they can to make it so that paying money to create spam is not a way to increase your ranking and this is one tool to do that.
Remember, if you haven’t gotten a notice in Google Webmaster Tools there’s nothing to worry about.
Wrapping Things Up
I’m headed to the Dim Sum restaurant that I mentioned earlier, I think it’s called Yum Cha. I hope you enjoyed this episode. My next episode will be out around the 25th of October and I’ll be doing that from the good old United States of America. I look forward to talking to you then.
