On May 5th I’ll be teaching a 2-day course for beginners who want to get started in mobile game development.

Have you ever wanted to create your own game for iPhone, iPad, or Android? This weekend course will show you exactly how to do that!

Get all the details here:

Mobile Game Development: Crash Course

In the olden days a writer needed a publisher in order to get their book in front of their audience. But with Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Kindle and iBook stores, that’s no longer the case.

And while I could argue for their usefulness still, one thing I continue to see makes me hope for the DEATH of publishing houses in the near future…

..if you charge the same price (or even close) for a digital copy of a book as you do for a physical copy, you are ripping people off. But I see that happen over and over again.

And not just on new books, but older ones as well. Here’s a book from the 1990s that’s cheaper if I buy the physical copy — and if I have a Prime membership I even get free shipping:

I’ve seen several stories recently about best-selling authors refusing large advances on their next book because they know they can make more selling it themselves. It’ll be nice when more and more authors (and musicians and other artists) do that and tell the publishing houses to take a hike.

I’ve written a LOT of tools over the years but the ones I use day in and day out are the following (and you’ll notice these are all aimed at creating and promoting products):

Article Architect – While I don’t do tons of article marketing anymore (I do it, but it’s very focused — no more shotgun approach for me) I create content all the time, and I still do most of my writing in AA. It’s one place where I can find all my content and then auto-post it to my WordPress blog or export and upload as an HTML web page.

Sonic Sneak – I’ve been cloaking and tracking my links for years and it’s probably the single best task I’ve ever done. At any time I can look at my dashboard and see which sources are bringing me the traffic. Is it a post on my blog? An article? A forum message? With Sonic Sneak behind the scenes I never have to guess about that, I simply know.

Instant Video Web Pages – Web video is a proven workhorse, whether you’re using it to promote a product, show someone how to use some software, or giving people a glimpse at how clever your cat can be. And since we should make use of it, I created IVWP to make it brain-dead simple to not just put up a video, but put up a complete video web page. Fill in the blanks, choose a template, and boom, it just works.

Product Creation Station – Finally, while I don’t “use” this actual product on a daily basis, the ideas and knowledge that went into creation of this course is what I use to create all the products I crank out. If you want a comprehensive course on info product creation, delivered on a weekly basis, PCS is perfect for you.

If there’s one thing I’ve preached in the years I’ve been doing internet marketing it’s to reuse and repurpose the content you create. I’m not a big fan of using PLR materials for much when it’s really pretty easy to create your own content.

And once you have that original, unique content, you can put it to use in many different ways.

Here’s a perfect example:

Article Marketing Explained on Amazon

Click that link and you’ll be taken to amazon.com where you’ll see a new ebook on article marketing. While some material is new, the bulk of it was created with content I wrote a year or two ago for a different project (membership web site).

Over the weekend I pulled together the materials, wrote some “glue” content to pull things together, and submitted it to the Kindle book store. Today it’s available.

And honestly, I didn’t know what a thrill it would be to see my name and ebook on amazon.com until I opened the page in my browser. :)

I have no idea how sales will be, but the point is that I did most of the work previously and used the content for one project (or more), and now for this project that I can just set and forget. Amazon handles all the sales, order-fulfillment, etc., so I can turn my attention to other projects.

Actually, one of my next projects is to take the same content and either turn it into an ebook app for iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad, or get it into the Apple iBooks store.

Not too long ago I was reading a book I got from Amazon recently called “Paid to Play: The Business of Game Design” by Keith A. Meyers, who’s done a lot of board game creation and publishing. I bought the book because I thought it might have something good for my computer game development. And it surprised me…

…by giving me an idea for a board game. The last couple weeks, off and on while waiting for things to compile, when I needed a break from programming, etc., I wrote up the rules for my game and created a prototype.

Here’s a picture of the final prototype played by myself and my kids this evening:

While the board says “Sailing Challenge” on it, that’s not going to be the real name. I’m still trying to come up with that. (It’s harder than I thought.)

The object of the game is to be the first to sail around the San Juan Islands by rolling the die and using special cards that are drawn. Among those cards are “Disaster” cards that you can play on your opponents to slow them down. For example, put an “Off Course” on a player and they’re stopped until they can play a “Navigational Charts” card, a “Tow Boat” card, etc.

You can get Stuck in Customs and lose a turn (unless you’re holding a “Friends in High Places” card), land on a Treasure Chest square and get to move extra spaces, etc.

There are aspects of luck (die rolling and drawing shuffled cards) mixed with strategy (which cards do you save or discard, when’s the best time to stop your opponent, etc.) that make it more than just a normal board game.

Playtesting has just begun, so there are probably going to be some changes coming over the next few weeks, but according to the family, it plays pretty well right now. :) (I know, I know, what are the kids going to say, that it stinks?)

In the next few days I’m going to write up some of my notes from creating the prototype, just in case anyone’s interested in doing something similar.

Anybody who’s kept half on eye on me for the last few years has seen me crank out product after product. Some, like Sonic Memo and Article Architect, really took off. Others (that shall remain nameless here) sputtered and coasted to a stop.

I’m in the middle of a project where I’m going back and pulling together all the products I’ve created, the articles I’ve written, and the videos and audio I’ve recorded, and thought I’d relate how I came up with the idea for my latest product, Adsense Eliminator.

If you’re interested in the process (maybe you could do the same thing to create, or have created, a product of your own), sign up for the Select Marketing Info list using the form to the right and I’ll send you a link to a page explaining what happened.

And, as a member of that list, you’ll receive coupon codes good for big dollars off my products — it’s worth joining, for sure!

Let’s start by looking at two things we can probably all agree on…

Here’s axiom #1 — Unless you’re J.P. Gotrocks and outsource everything, you’re going to spend an awful lot of your time creating content for your internet marketing business. Maybe you’ll do it all from scratch, maybe you’ll use some PLR (private label rights) materials as a base, but however you do it you’re going to be creating content.

And here’s axiom #2 — Leveraging your time is a must of you’re going to be successful in internet marketing, so you can’t spend time recreating the wheel. You must be able to repurpose and reuse content in your online business or you’ll never be able to grow your business past a certain size.

Two principles we need to follow — create content and reuse content — that can be very powerful when put together.

The key to making those two things work together as seamlessly as possible is to “think generic.” Here’s an example…

For my product creation course I needed to create a video showing how to hire a software programmer. Creating that fairly quickly is a no-brainer. But I’ve also been thinking about putting together a product focusing on selling downloadable software and I know I’ll need a similar video for that product.

Plus, I never know what’s going to come down the pike in the future, so making sure the video isn’t “specific” to a given product is a smart thing.

It’s pretty easy to make something generic. In general, don’t mention the product name in the video. The video I just created walks through the process, but I don’t do any kind of introduction. Instead of saying, “In this lesson for Product Creation Station we’re going to hire a programmer…” I just jump right into the process.

That gives me a piece of content I can use for any product now or in the future.

And when I do need to use it for something, I can “wrap it” in something more specific — I can record a quick intro talking about this lesson in the course, etc., and then combine that with the generic piece to get a piece of content that’s unique — but built on top of content that’s generic.

With text-based content you can always do a search and replace to reuse content for another project, but even then if you can write the piece as generic as possible you’ll come out ahead.

For step-by-step instructions on creating your own digital products see the Product Creation Station site. Product Creation Station