Robert Plank

Let me tell you something.

Do you want to know the first time I saw a balance of 1000 bucks in my PayPal account?

It was 2002... geez, a decade ago now, I was 17 years old. I was a senior in high school. I lived with my parents. And you know what I was doing to make my money?

Installing a link tracker plugin. I had programmed it, and people could buy it for 67 bucks (I think)... I would get 1/3rd of that money. Better than working at McDonald's at that age, right?

But the big bucks came in when someone bought that plugin... many people wanted "someone else" to install it.

5 Minutes = 50 Dollars

The price was $50 bucks per install. What they didn't know is it took me about 5 minutes to FTP up files, chmod files, create a database, import that database, create a cron job, edit a config file... in other words, my "specialized knowledge" was worth every penny to them even though I could do it fast.

As you can imagine, it didn't take long to fill up to 1k...

And that paid for college. I'll admit I needed help from my parents for the first year living alone, but never fully. They gave me "some" money for rent. I paid the rest of my rent, plus school, plus food, cable, internet, clothing, all that good stuff...

Why am I telling you all this?

1. Because I still believe that if you're starting out, the fastest way to make money is freelancing: performing a service in exchange for pay.
2. You can get paid more per hour if you do whatever it is you do FAST
3. You get paid even MORE than that if you have a SPECIALIZED SKILL and differentiate yourself

What's a specialized skill? Let's think about this...

Scenario #1: WordPress Installer

How much would someone charge you to install WordPress? 10 bucks? But what if...

• You installed WordPress on their domain
• You loaded it up with a beautiful looking WordPress theme
• You customized it with all the SEO, social media, discussion, and traffic plugins they need
• You setup their blog to retweet and post to their fan page every time you made a post
• You loaded up the blog with YouTube videos, EzineArticles and PLR articles
• You contacted 25 professionals in their niche asking for guest blog content
• You brought people to the site to leave comments
• You setup their autoresponder, optin form, and popup on that blog

Now how much is that worth? 100 bucks MINIMUM... and it still takes you under an hour of work.

Scenario #2: Offline Business Setup

A few months ago I had dinner with a small business who was getting his website setup. His "coder" gave him...

• A professional design (magazine style WordPress theme)
• "About Us" and "Photos" pages (content supplied by the business owner)
• A Facebook Like button (installed a plugin)
• Business information and a Google Map to the location (installed a plugin)
• Coupon and QR code  (installed a plugin)

That took even less time and the business owner was happy to pay over 1000 dollars for it. Just something to think about... but what about this?

Scenario #3: Membership Site Ninja

I know a couple of people who are the "modern day equivalent" of what I used to do. They are membership site installers. Their full-time living consists of:

• Installing WordPress
• Adding a good looking theme
• Setting up membership site software
• Add a simple sales letter with a payment button
• Setup "free" and "paid" levels
• Install a forum
• Install backup and monitoring plugins

Average price these people ask for membership site installations: $4000. For MAYBE an hour of work if you're slow and a riveting, action-packed re-run of "Mama's Family" is playing on your TV in the background?

My head is spinning right now with so many ways you can look at what freelance services other people are providing, and put your own "twist" on it. Here are some more examples...

• Article writer: in addition to writing the articles, you could submit the article to 20 article sites, AND login to their blog once per day to post the articles they hired you to write
• Copywriter: in addition to writing their sales letter, you could write and schedule the autoresponder emails, setup the thank you page offer and upsell, setup the affiliate program, and contact 20 joint venture partners
• Graphic Designer: in addition to creating someone's logo, you could create their 3D cover, affiliate banner graphics, sales letter "doodles" and minisite design
• Product Ghostwriter: in addition to writing someone's product, you could put it on Kindle and CreateSpace for them
• Resale Rights Seller: in addition to selling resale rights to your report or membership site, you could install the sales letter and download page on their site for them

And how do you get these jobs? Easy... contact anyone who sells a WordPress plugin, WordPress theme, article creation course, graphic creation course, copywriting course... get yourself listed in their product and download page.

Remember, that's how I got all my "$50 installation in 5 minutes" jobs came from... someone bought the link tracking plugin, and they had all the instructions to install it themselves, but that download page said: contact this guy if you want to pay 50 bucks to get it installed.

Quick question: What have you done, heard of, or plan to do to make more money with freelancing and done-for-you services?

Notice: Only 17 More Comments Will Be Allowed in This Blog Post...

Update: We're going with Sherm's suggestion and meeting on September 23rd 2010 from 4:30PM to 7PM at:

Melody Bar & Grill
9132 S Sepulveda Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90045
Neighborhood: Westchester / LAX

Who will be there: Robert Plank, Lance Tamashiro, Sherm Cohen, Wal Gifford (chunked out), Robert Vance, Rodney Daut, Evelyn Brooks, Dennis Barakos.

You guys voted for where we should meet for my 26th birthday and the majority said: Los Angeles!

Now my question for you is:

1. Are you "probably" coming, or "definitely" coming?

2. What bar in the LA area should we hang out at?

Preferably I want this near the airport, and there is no set time... people can just come and go throughout the evening.

Go ahead, answer those 2 questions for me right now so I can at least have a head count.

My 26th birthday is coming up in a few weeks, on Thursday, September 23, 2010. I'm having my "real" birthday party a few days before because on Thursday I'm going to be traveling to JVAlert Live in Denver.

Here's my question to you: what major city close to you, can you get to on Thursday, not for anything major, just to hang out at a bar where I buy you a drink?

I don't want to fly into the northwest, southwest, midwest, northeast, or deep south, and I'm staying in the United States... so that pretty much leaves these choices:

Update: Here's what you guys voted...

• Los Angeles, CA (17 votes)
• San Francisco, CA (10 votes)
• Las Vegas, NV (7 votes)
• Salt Lake City, UT (3 votes)
• Denver, CO (6 votes)
• Dallas, TX (9 votes)
• Austin, TX (9 votes)
• Atlanta, GA (12 votes)
• Orlando, FL (6 votes)
• New York, NY (7 votes)
• New Orleans, LA (2 votes)
• Washington, DC (2 votes)

Which of these cities can you be in to meet me on Thursday, September 23, 2010? Go ahead and vote with your comment below.  I'm not sure if I'll be doing it yet, it depends on the votes.

My new iPhone 4 showed up a day early (Wednesday)... some lucky people even got theirs on Tuesday!

I did have to wait a few minutes for it to activate with AT&T, and for it to sync my iTunes movies and songs... but once that was all done... well you check it out!

Check it out... ability to use FaceTime for video calls, you can choose the front or back camera when taking photos... it's thinner, lighter, faster, and better looking.

Apple already introduced multitasking to the old (3G and 3GS) phones on Monday, so I've already been able to stream music from a radio station via Pandora while checking email or browsing the web on my phone.

• iBooks (book reader) is new, even though we already had the Kindle app
• Netflix app is coming so you can stream movies to your phone (like you already can with iPad)
• iMovie is coming out soon which will let you edit videos with all the features as the desktop version
• Farmville is coming to iPhone pretty soon as well

What phone do you have?  (Come on Droid people, let me have it!)  Are you getting this new phone?

Quick question:

Should I delete comments from people on this blog who post with names like "Affiliate Store" or "Forex Business Credit"... a handle instead of their real HUMAN name?

When you do that on my blog, I feel like I can't use your name when I reply to you... I feel like you're only here to get linkbacks to your site, and it messes with my search engine relevancy.

You market the most effectively when you can show you're a real person... that's why so many people put their picture on their sales letter, create video, use their real names on forums, post blog comments with gravatar images, and sell using webinars.

Should I delete those comments, yes or no?

I mentioned this in passing in a couple of blog posts recently, but after meeting Joe Lavery in Orlando, he had no idea I'm now doing internet marketing full time, so here it is:

I Quit My Day Job on March 25, 2009!

I should have quit a year ago, or even sooner.  The only things holding me back were: health insurance (my self-employed plan is now $125/month), money reserve (I have enough to last me a couple years), and pissing off the people who trained me (which was a stupid reason anyway).

March 26, 2009: Immediately after quitting my day job, I stepped on a plane to Dallas, Texas for AM 2.0 to meet Armand Morin, Ryan Deiss, Ray Edwards, Ryan Healy, and Mary Wilhite for the first time ever.

I was totally ready to tell Armand that I quit my day job so I could attend as Jeanette Cates's guest, but the only interaction we got to have was him yelling at me for pricing my stuff too low.  At least I got to tell Ryan Deiss that fact, even though I'm not sure he knows who I am.

The next two weeks after returning included knocking out as many points as possible for Armand's AM 2.0 Platinum 100-point checklist, launching our most profitable webinar ever ($17,000 on the launch), and updating Action PopUp, WordPress Crusher, 47 Hour Report, creating Split Genie, and running a couple webinars with Ryan Healy and Derek Franklin.

April 17, 2009: Back on the road... flew out to Austin, Texas for Eric Louviere's MemberSnap seminar after super-programmer Henry Fuentes invited me.  I brought my business partner Jason Fladlien along, especially because Marlon Sanders had been e-mailing us but liked him way better, so I figured the three of us could hang out.

We sat in the seminar a grand total of 25 minutes all weekend, and talked with Marlon most of the time.  He taught me most of what I know now about "branding" (yuck) and positioning and basically made me paranoid about everything going on with internet marketing.

April 23, 2009: Mass Control 2.0!  I only had a couple of days to stay at home before waking up early Thursday morning and heading south on California Highway 99 through Fresno, Bakersfield, Los Angeles, and finally to San Diego, California... six hour drive from Turlock.

I wasn't registered for the conference so I made sure to stay far, far away from that conference room.  I chilled with Lance Tamashiro most of the weekend, and got to meet David Risley (who confused Frank Kern for Kid Rock), met Jason Moffatt for about ten seconds (who was busy macking on some chick), met Alex Jeffries (who I'd never heard of but he was a big hero of Lance's), Ryan Wade (ViralTweets), Joe Lavery (long time customer) and who could forget Dale Maxwell the colon cleanser.

April 29, 2009: Time to co-host my own workshop at the Impact 100 event in Orlando, Florida.  Through a strange twist of fate I stayed at the same hotel I stayed at ten years ago when I was in high school for the Future Business Leaders of America.  Jason Fladlien, Mary Wilhite and I hosted the "Niche Riches for Beginners" workshop.

Jason talked about the niche selection system, Mary presented on webinars, I dissected list building and traffic, Jason explained copywriting, I talked about product creation and basically got in everyone's face and made sure all 16 participants gave me their name, phone number, webinar topic, and time and date they were going to present that webinar.  We presented from 9AM to 5PM (with breaks).

Joe Lavery was there again, so was Charlie Fry from the Video Sales Tactics class... he flew out from Philadelphia just to see us which I thought was cool.  All theparticipants in that class were AWESOME... and the three of us had so much fun that we are hosting another workshop, the "Action Seminar" in Dallas, at the end of May:

Dallas Embassy Suites
4650 W Airport Fwy
Irving, TX 75062

Friday, May 29, 2009 from 9AM-5PM (Workshop)
Saturday, May 30, 2009 (Networking Breakfast)

I'll have more info about that later including where you can register.  It will only cost $97 to attend and we'll have Jeanette Cates (the Tech Tamer) and Marc Harty (PR Traffic) onboard as guest speakers.

That's what I've been up to for the past month and a half since I retired from my day job: four seminars in a month.

I heard once that if you quit your job, the LAST thing you should do is immediately sit in front of your television set... either get a new job or go on vacation, so I went on vacation.

But now for the more important question: how do I manage my time now that I don't have the day job to hold me down?  How do I make sure I get enough accomplished, still have enough free time, and don't goof off with my newfound free time?  I've already got that covered, and I'm ready to explain my day to day system to you for free, but I need something from you first:

1. Ten comments under this blog post.
2. Ten tweets about this post (Twitter icon is on the bottom of the post)

Once I those those two things from you guys, I'll spill the beans about exactly how I manage my time and how I maintain my business day to day.  Thanks guys!  Leave your comment below...

As some of you noticed, I was banned from YouTube. No reason given!

That account had 160 videos, 50 subscribers, has been around for 2 years and responsible for a couple of extra accidental sales per week.  Some of the videos on that account had over 2,000 views.

Long story short: the Thursday morning of April 23, 2009 I drove from Turlock, south down Highway 99 and then Interstate 5 through Fresno, Bakersfield, Los Angeles then finally San Diego to meet a few people who were in town for Mass Control 2.0.... Jason Fladlien, Lance Tamashiro, Dale Maxwell, David Risley, and Bryan Blyss (Faceman).

Tragedy Strikes!

We check into Jason's room at the Hard Rock Hotel, break out the laptop like usual internet marketing nerds and check out our Video Sales Tactics blog.  Try to play the latest YouTube video I have posted there... and it's been "removed for terms of use violation."

That's weird, I say... and try to play another YouTube, same message.  I load my YouTube profile... it says, "This account is suspended."  Try to login to that account, same deal.

YouTube never sent me any e-mail about any videos being a problem or about the account being taken down.  YouTube has no phone number of e-mail address, but after filling out a 10-part form I was able to get this canned response:

Hi robertplank,

Thanks for your email. Your "robertplank" account has been found to have violated our Community Guidelines. Your account has now been terminated. Please be aware that you are prohibited from accessing, possessing or creating any other YouTube accounts.

YouTube staff review flagged videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week to determine whether they violate our Community Guidelines. When a video or account is brought to our attention we investigate and take action if necessary.

We are unable to provide specific detail regarding your account suspension or your video's removal. For more information on our what we consider inappropriate content or conduct while using YouTube, please visit our
Community Guidelines and Tips at http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines and our Help Center article http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=92486.

Regards,

Roberto
The YouTube Team

So YouTube tells me my account violates their community guidelines, but won't tell me which ones, and it's obviously none because their community guidelines refer to copyright infringement, anything illegal, hate speech, etc. of which my account had none.  It was ALL talking head and PowerPoint how-to videos.

The icing on the cake is that being "suspended" from YouTube not only means your account is gone, but you aren't allowed to create any new accounts.  (The guys from Traffic Geyser told me to create a new account at a friend's house, but there's no way I'm doing that.)

That Sucks!

The lesson to all this is: post videos in Camtasia format on your blog so you aren't stuck with a bunch of "this video has been removed" links all over your blog.  I have the originals of all those videos and YouTube only accounted for 5% of my traffic, but it still sucks.

Build your own site, not someone else's. You shoud be posting your YouTube videos on your OWN blog, including hosting the video itself.  It's just like how you should be posting your own articles to your blogs, and not just EzineArticles.

Matt Levenhagen responded to my tweet on Facebook and mentioned sxephil (Philip DeFranco) who is one of my favorite YouTubers, who does this too.  Use your videos to get people offsite and on your list so you can continue posting videos on your blog.

As far as why I was banned? The only thing that makes sense is Traffic Geyser. It looks like I was wrong, other internet marketers not using Traffic Geyser have been banned for the same reason...

What Does All This Mean?

The moral of the story is YouTube throws great parties, but is not trustworthy enough to watch your kids.  Use YouTube as a traffic source, not a place to store all your content.

That's the true story of the last YouTube ever posted by Robert Plank... what are your thoughts on this?  Make sure to comment below!