Today we begin a little series on buying and selling web sites. This topic has been gaining a little bit more exposure lately, and for good reason. There's some great potential for buying sites as an additional income stream, or even to fix up and resell like you might do with real estate.

I've learned a bit about it from the "King" of website buying and selling - his name is Ed Dale.

This guys knows a lot about this and has perfected a system for buying and selling sites. In fact, he made $5 million in just one deal selling a group of sites that he had developed in a market that you would probably never guess (hint: it had nothing to do with internet marketing) His course has only been available to few elite marketers who already knew him or hung out in the same internet marketing circles as him.

But now he's getting ready to offer this course to the public.

Since I've been lucky enough to be in the right place, Ed has let me share his explanation of how the system works. This is from Ed:

More on The KING of Buying and Selling Web Sites

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I recently decided that I wanted to run a marathon.  I’ve been running off and on for most of my life but I’ve never taken on anything quite like this so I purchased a book called The Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer.  It is a book written by two professors at the University of Northern Iowa who have successfully taught a course called Marathon Running 101 for more than ten years.  The result has been more than 200 students successfully running a marathon at the end of the course. 

Why am I telling you all of this? 

Because after only a few pages into the book, I was absolutely astounded.  This book is amazing!  I’m not talking about the training structure or the running tools and advice that they give – I’m only a few weeks into the program and the proof of their advice will be in my marathon results. 

The truly great part of this book are the testimonials contained inside.  They demonstrate how powerful the voice of experience can be.  More on Email Marketing – Use the power of testimonials to strengthen your copy

Yesterday I heard on the news that the Canadian dollar was at $0.98 U.S. Today, the Canadian dollar reached parity with the U.S. dollar. This news really takes aback those of us who grew with jokes about shopping in Canada. Living just south of the Canadian border in Washington State, it was conventional wisdom that you could buy almost twice as much for your U.S. dollar there as you could in the U.S. And it was an insult if someone gave you change (on the U.S. side) that included Canadian pennies, dimes or quarters.

Today all that has changed.

Over the past few months the Canadian and U.S. dollars have been creeping closer together in value until they are essentially the same.

So what does this mean for those of us who sell stuff? We're Canada's new China!

But seriously, if you have an online business of any sort based in the U.S., whether it's copywriting, mlm training, or patio furniture your stuff is now much cheaper to Canadians than it was just a few months ago. Suddenly, you are more price competitive and you didn't have to lower your prices!

In fact, this change has taken place just quickly enough that Canadian retailers have not had the chance to figure out how they're going to lower their prices to compete with their U.S. counterparts. Perhaps living in a town that is just 15 miles south of the Canadian border makes me more aware of this then someone living in Texas, but the benefits go to anyone doing business online in the U.S.

Particularly if you do not ship a physical product, the value of your offers just went up. Let's say you offer an eBook or training course for $97. A year ago that might have actually been more like $130 in Canadian funds. But now, it's actually $97 to them as well so a purchase they may have been holding off making is within the realm of possibility.

So for U.S. marketers, I advise that you make nice with your Canadian friends and remind them that it's actually cheaper to shop with you than to shop in Canada.

And for my Canadian buddies - come on down, the shopping's great!

Hope you're having a great weekend!  I spent the day at a cyclocross event with my daughter.  For those of you not familiar with the sport, it is basically riding your bike through the mud, snow, and over and around obstacles.  The goal of any competition is to generally complete as many loops of the course as you can in the time allotted.  It's a crazy sport and my daughter is a crazy kid - fun though!

Anyway, onto the writing and marketing stuff….

Last week we talked a bit about 5 things you absolutely must have if you want your e-zine to be successful and I promised that there were a few more.  Here they are:

1.  Forward to a friend. 

This is a feature that publishers generally don't think much about but it can have great importance, especially if you offer an informative newsletter!  Don't just place your forward to a friend at the bottom of your newsletter as an afterthought, purposefully ask your readers to spread the word.  They like you and they'll do it. A simple message consistently included in each and every newsletter, preferably in the same place each time, that encourages recipients to  forward your newsletter to friends, family, and colleagues is all you need.  Word of mouth advertising is the best kind and any newsletter forwarded is great word of mouth advertising!

2.  Don't forget to link to your website, at least once.  More on 4 More E-Zine Must Haves