This is a message for Jay from Watford, who called me on Sunday afternoon expecting help with his web marketing projects. I should point out, I do not know Jay, have never spoken to him before and did not invite him to call me. Let’s just say it was a strange telephone call.

So first of all Jay, no I don’t think you should quit your day job just yet. If after three years of trying to make money online you haven’t succeeded, then it’s a pretty good sign that you don’t have a very good strategy or even a good idea. Secondly, I expect there are very few internet marketers making $10,000+ per month just from Adsense - I certainly do not.

It’s a shame you turned down my offer of help by email. As strange as it may sound, I actually don’t tend to work on Sundays. I’d also like to point out that I did not decline to help you because of your ethnic background, it was just my day off. IF you’d decided to take me up on my offer of help by email, then I might have a better understanding of what you want to achieve and how I can help. Without more information it’s very hard to offer you any useful advice.

Well anyway, here are the answers to some of the questions you asked:

Q. How are you making more than $10,000 a month with Adsense

A. I don’t and I do not claim to do so. I have a marketing plan in place for my online business that incorporates revenue from Adsense, but it will not be my primary source of income. I am building revenue streams from a number of sources, including ebooks, PLR, joint ventures, affiliate marketing, paid blogging and a few others.

I suggest you consider a multi level marketing approach - unless you have a truly fantastic website with tens of thousands of targeted visitors, then you are never going to get rich from Adsense.

Q. Can you get rich from blogging?

A. It is possible to make money from blogging, there are lots of very successful people doing this. However, it’s not an overnight, instant road to success. The best bloggers take an awful lot of time to research and write quality content and it’s most likely a full time job for them. As I said, you either need to know your subject very well, or have a real passion for it. I doubt if you have either an in-depth knowledge or a passion for the areas you mentioned - I have a feeling it was mortgage advice or something financial.

Also, the best blogs are written for a specific niche and I’ afraid the area of financial advice already has very many excellent resources. I fear you would find it hard to compete. And yes, from my point of view, WordPress is the best blog platform if you want to build an online business.

Q. Should I use 1and1 for my web hosting?

A. In my experience they provide an excellent service and I often recommend my clients use their services. That said, there are also many excellent other hosting companies you could consider.

Q. How much money do I make from Adsense each month?

A. I’m sorry but that’s my own personal information and is not for public consumption. Do you really expect people to reveal their income to a complete stranger who tracked them down via the internet?

Q. Can I pay you to help me make money online?

A. I am a professional marketing consultant working with companies both online and offline. I am lucky enough to be able to choose the clients I work with - unlucky Jay, I will always choose not to work with you. My offer of free advice by email was genuine, shame you decided to throw it in my face.

Q. I’m considering starting another online company selling my own products, like Watfordcouriers.co.uk as I used to be a courier delivery driver, what do you think?

A. Good idea but don’t do it without seeking professional advice. You will need to write a careful business and marketing plan and get your finances straight. DO NOT quit your day job until you have sought professional advice. Based on the conversation I had with you, I’d suggest you get back in the delivery truck.

I hope that helps Jay. Best of luck with your future endeavours, I’m sure they will be interesting.

How many eBooks and courses have you signed up to?

If you want to buy an ebook, don’t fall for the trick of buying the first book on blogging or internet marketing that promises to make you rich, or turn on autopilot riches. Choose books carefully and try to avoid the hype otherwise you might just be wasting your money.

If you still want to buy into the make money online scheme, read my other post about the top 10 Internet marketing myths.

It’s fairly unusual living in Britain to receive good, let alone great, customer service from a call centre. Recently lots of large service based companies have been moving call centres to remote parts of the world in an attempt to cut costs and increase profits, not really thinking too much about the customer experience. HSBC and Midland Mainline (a railway operator) are great examples of this and I’m frequently frustrated when I’m trying to book a train journey with someone who barely speaks English.

Such is the state of British call centres that I feel it is entirely necessary to report two cases of excellent customer service I received just this week.

Microsoft adCenter

I run a handful of Payperclick campaigns for my clients, one of whom was recently sent a £50 voucher from their host to spend with adCenter. Unfortunately this was only for new customers and not those with existing accounts. I called the adCenter helpline and the gentleman on the other end was fantastic. He listened to what I wanted to achieve, talked me through how to set it up and even emailed me the next day to make sure everything was OK.

Now that is fantastic service. Compare that to working with Google AdWords where there isn’t even a help line phone number to call in the first place. Well done Microsoft and come on Google pull your socks up, you’re making enough money to look after your customers properly.

The AA & Royal & Sun Alliance

I recently had my bicycle stolen (again) from outside my apartment in South West London. The process of speaking to the two companies that I buy insurance from (the AA and R&SA) has been incredibly straight forward. The call centre staff were helpful and even compassionate - it felt like I’d lost a dear member of my family, not a push bike. When it was necessary for them to take my query offline, they did so and called back within the 30 minutes as promised.

Excellent service and a big MacDonald’s style gold star to you both.

Of course, good customer service is essential and should play a big part in your online or offline marketing strategy. Even if you want to sell information products or small web scripts / plugins, think about how you will manage customers after the sale. What if they need support or a refund should your product not be what they wanted, or if they can’t get it to work.

If you need an incentive as to why you should consider after sales service, remember it’s ten times* more expensive to sell to a new customer than one who has already bought from you.

* OK so I can’t back that statistic up with hard evidence but I’ve heard it quoted many times and also it’s fairly logical.

If you want more advice on how to build customer relations I suggest you head over to Return Customer where you’ll find some interesting ideas - particularly the post on the ethical obligations of customer care.

Every month I will be adding a new reader poll to my blog. In the last month I asked the question:

What would you like me to write about on this blog?

The answers, in order of popularity, were:

37.5% Internet marketing

25% Blogging

12.5% WordPress plugins

12.5% Small business marketing

12.5% Making money online

You can guarantee that I’ll be writing a lot more on internet marketing topics from now on, with a little less on making money online, WordPress plugins and small business marketing.

I’ve added this month’s poll - you can find it on the right hand side bar - which asks which internet marketing tactics work best for you. Please make your choices now and feel free to add a comment if there are tactics I haven’t added that are working for you.