Newbie on the Net Blog

Honest Riches is a surprising title for a book and clearly indicates that the author has some criticisms of the Internet scene and some of the Internet Marketing books available. So have I and I said as much at the end of "7 Secrets Every Newbie Needs to Know" where I warned of a spate of bogus review sites all over the Internet. The author Holly Mann is a 25 year old ex U.S. army veteran. Her own start in Internet Marketing was in eBay. It's where many newbies start and often where they end as well. But Holly moved on. She saw the dollar signs flashing in front of her eyes. She found what every Newbie finds - it's actually pretty hard work. Now a few years later she has dozens of websites and a very comfortable income.

Holly Mann Means Business She lives up to the "honest" label in the first chapter of her book by briefly discussing the Tax position of Sole Proprietors and Limited Liability Companies. I think this is the only book I have seen on Internet Marketing covering these basics. It is a sensible way to begin a business book of course and it is unusual Most of the book covers the familiar ground of Internet Marketing Niche Research, Affiliate Programs, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and so on each with her own interesting take on things.

What the heck is a CMS? An unusual feature of Honest Riches is its coverage of Content Management Systems, CMS. Let's spend a little time on that because it's important. There is a saying on the Internet that, "Content is King". Millions of people look online every day for the solution of their problems. One person wants to lose weight another wants to gain money, others have both wants! All are looking for "content", well written, intelligent information.

As a website or blog owner your job is to provide content. But adding content to a website is a grind and really requires you to be familiar with HTML and building web pages. The solution to what I call "techy troubles" is Content Management. This is a specially designed website or blog which makes it "easy peasy" to add an article. Using a CMS is as simple as writing an email. The whole purpose of a CMS is to enable anyone to publish content on the Internet simply by typing or pasting content into a page and clicking on the "publish" button.

A Blogger blog is a simple example of that and is a good start. A WordPress blog is a better example; there are more features and options to customise. But those are blogs, how about regular websites? Is there a type of website we can use that is as easy as that? There is and it is called Joomla and Holly Mann is keen on Joomla websites. In fact she is so keen that she offers in the edition of her book that I purchased and on her website at the time of writing this review, to install a CMS for you.

Free!

You choose whether you want a WordPress blog or a Joomla website and she or her technical support will install it at no charge. The "price" for this free install is that the company you use to host your CMS must be a hosting company called Bluehost AND that you sign up through her link. That means you get a free expert install and she gets an affiliate commission.

If you are unsure what a WordPress blog and a Joomla site looks like here is an example of each Wordpress Joomla They are both mine; the blog is about a year old and the Joomla site is still in the testing stage. You will also need a domain name of your own but it looks like Bluehost give you a free domain name as an incentive to sign up. This is not the place to review Hosting companies; my views are clear clearly expressed in the free "A to Z" lessons in the Newbie autoresponder and in the Resources Page in the membership area of "Newbie". I'll just say, be cautious about accepting her advice on hosting and especially on autoresponders. On a more positive note she provides a very thorough list of Article Directories that she uses and recommends. It is probably the best list I have seen and covers 3 pages with 2 columns on each page.

Summary of "Honest riches" Overall this is a very good book. It stands out from the crowd of ebooks catering for the Internet Beginners market. Holly Mann has clearly thought out the issues for herself and gives an independent and honest account of her findings Coming in at 95 pages (my edition) this is not a lightweight offering and is well worth the price of $37 currently being charged. Check it out for yourself