Over the weekend, watch this video: AMP

A 90 Minute Video?

I know – a 90 minute video is a bit much, that's why I said "over the weekend", but I think you will learn a lot and see a new model for making money on the internet if you take the time, pay attention, and make notes.

Chances are, you're probably doing what this video says NOT to do.

Change Can Be Good

Make these changes and you'll get better results – Armand did and grew a brand new email list of over 130,000 in a few short months.

Enjoy the case study!

Ed

P.S. This video will be taken down in just a few days so watch it now while it's still up and available: AMP

[NOTE:  I am a compensated affiliate for the Armand Morin Network; well, at least there is the potential I could be compensated at some point.]

 

Copy Paste Systems featuring Paul Ponna as the "Reassuring Voice"

I've been trying out the Copy Paste System during the refund period and I've made a few discoveries.

The OTO Gauntlet – Many Times

First, the whole system is designed to sell you OTOs so when you buy in to get Copy Paste Systems, you get to run the one-time-offer gauntlet that could cost you a couple of hundred bucks if you bought it all.

But don't worry – if you pass them up the first time through, you will get emails constantly reminding you that you can still get them. Maybe they should be called MTOs – many time offers.

Support is Poor

The second thing I discovered is that you shouldn't count on quality support, especially if you are a newbie and need more than a 1-sentence reply to a question. I was working my way through the "Famous Automatic Cash Machine" – how secret could that be if it's Famous, but I digress – part of the Copy Paste website when I had some questions I wanted help with.

I sent an email with my question to support@copypastesystems.com on January 22, 2010. Then on January 25, I sent another email adding a different question. The first answer came back on January 31, that's about 9 days late, consisted of 6 words, and ignored my second question totally.

On February 2, I got another support email answering part of my second question with a nearly unintelligible reply. Soldiering on I've sent another email to support asking if they could please send me an answer I can understand and please answer the entire question.

Good Luck with That

So if you want to give the Copy Paste Systems a try, let me know how that worked. Maybe you will have better luck with support than has been my experience thus far.

Have fun,
Ed

 

I know it’s been a long time since I mentioned Affiliate Silver Bullet – but I hope Better Late Than Never applies here.

     Here’s the previous Affiliate Silver Bullet article.

Whoever runs Affiliate Silver Bullet doesn’t seem to pay attention to the products they are selling and that is a good enough reason to avoid this program.

Reported Attack Site!

One of the products being sold as a silver bullet leads visitors to a website that Google thinks is an attack site. That by itself rules out Affiliate Silver Bullet as something you want to get involved with.

To check out the product, I followed the process to get the free email course. When the first email came, I clicked the link at the bottom of the email, something like this: Just visit adomainname.com. The web page opened in my browser and immediately changed to the Reported Attack Site! alert What’s up with that? Shoddy product management or worse.

Cry Baby?

I gave my first name and email address to one of the silver bullets to check out the customer experience. I followed the process to get the free email course. When the first email came, I clicked the link at the bottom of the email, something like this: Just visit adomainname.com. The web page opened in my browser and when it had finished loading, the sound of a baby crying played for a few seconds. What’s up with that? Shoddy product management.

It Gets Worse!

I went to the support site and made out a ticket to report the problem with the Reported Attack Site. ASB sent me an auto-response email advising me to check the faq.

"Hello Edward Rykiel,

Thank you very much for your interest in the Affiliate Silver Bullet System!

Please take a quick look at these frequently asked questions, as they will most likely cover your inquiry. If your question is not covered below, you will receive a personal response within 24 – 48 hours (usually sooner)."

No response sooner, and none within 24 hours. You would think they would want to take care of a problem like that sooner rather than later. I also reported the baby crying thing, and got the same non response.

Don’t Ruin Your Online Reputation

Especially as a newbie, you don’t want to start off by ruining your reputation by promoting not just shoddy products but actual harmful products. There are too many hidden tricks and quality issues with Affiliate Silver Bullet. Your customers should NEVER get a ‘Reported Attack Site!’ web page with a product you are marketing. END OF STORY!

Comments?

Do you have experience with Affiiliate Silver Bullet? Add your comments here.

 

You sometimes wonder what the difference is between bullshit and marketing, especially internet marketing and beer  commercials. Harry G. Frankfurt, Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University, has a little book out entitled, "On Bullshit", and I think a few of his comments are very relevant to marketing in general and internet marketing in particular.

"Since bullshit need not be false, it differs from lies in its misrepresentational intent. The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensibly distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to.

This is the crux of the distinction between him and the liar. Both he and the liar represent themselves falsely as endeavoring to communicate the truth. The success of each depends upon deceiving us about that.

The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him … He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose."

You don’t really believe that those buxom hotties in the beer commercial are salivating over you because of the beer you drink, but your reptilian brain does. Bullshit marketing is aimed squarely at that part of your brain. That’s what makes you click that BUY NOW button when your rational brain is screaming NOT TRUE NO WAY WASTE OF MONEY at you.

Here’s the perfect example of bullshit marketing. How many sales pages have you seen that blast this claim at you, "I GUARANTEE THAT ANYBODY (EVEN A DOLT LIKE YOU) WILL MAKE MONEY USING MY SYSTEM." Then in that obscure part in the footer labelled, "Disclaimer", it says, "I don’t guarantee that anybody will ever make any money using my system and you will probably even lose money for any or all of the following reasons including that you spent money to buy my stuff."

So what good is that make-money guarantee in the sales letter? It’s not meant to be good or bad, just bullshit that suits the bullshit marketer’s purpose.

 

Have you ever wondered what an internet marketing guru looks like? Of course you haven’t because you’ve seen plenty of their pictures.

But have you seen Michael Green? Michael keeps a low profile when it comes to his image to keep his internet business separate from his "real life" because his real name is Grant and he is also a member of Parliament.

I thought I would share this picture with you because Michael came to visit me when I was a student in one of his mentoring programs.

Yes, he flew in from England. I can’t say that he came just to see me – I’m sure he had several students in the United States that he visited on that trip. But here’s the point – he took the time to come and help me personally, not meet me in a gathering of internet wizards in some big hotel where you are competing with hundreds of others to get someone’s attention.

While I feel that Michael is a business friend, there was one thing that was wrong with the mentoring he gave me. Because he has mastered internet marketing and can sell ice tea to eskimos, he forgets that things are not so easy for the likes of me. So he left out the part about doing market research and guided me into writing a book that no one wants to read. Now I bet he could sell lots of copies of my book to people who aren’t even interested in gardening, but I can’t. Especially not about gardening with native plants. Oh well, live and learn.

The bottom line for you? Do some research to determine that there is a viable market for your ebook before you write it.  There’s a good chance nobody really cares what you have to say about your "passion".

 

If you are an eBay affiliate, you will want to be aware that the eBay is changing its affiliate program. This note is particularly relevant to those who are using Jeff Mulligan’s eBay Quickie Profits strategy. You will no longer need a Commission Junction account to apply this strategy.

We are excited to announce eBay’s new global affiliate platform: the eBay Partner Network.

The new platform will go live on April 1st, 2008 PST, at which point eBay will no longer be running its affiliate program through Commission Junction.  Beginning April 1st, affiliates should register with eBay Partner Network and migrate their links from CJ to the new platform. 

While CJ and ValueClick have been valuable partners to eBay throughout the years, we’ve decided to give our affiliate community a customized experience for eBay affiliates.

All the great tools and benefits of working with the eBay program will remain the same – access to the Editor Kit and affiliate API, the flexible destination tool, the great payout structure.  In addition, the eBay partner network will provide several new features:
•    Easy global registration to multiple countries simultaneously
•    New, targeted banners and rich media creatives
•    New landing page optimization and geo-targeting capabilities
•    More detailed reporting capabilities for eBay’s programs

The eBay Partner Network and Commission Junction will run in parallel for one month through this process, so please plan to complete your migration by May 1st, 2008. 

You can receive an additional 5% bonus for all traffic tracked through eBay Partner Network in April 2008 (bonus applicable to traffic sent to Half.com and US, UK, Australia, Canada, Italy, India and Spain eBay sites).  The sooner you migrate, the more you’ll earn!  Just:
•    Register with eBay Partner Network on April 1, 2008
•    Confirm your registration, and obtain your new identifiers
•    Update your links with your new identifiers.
•    Reminder: Please plan to complete migration by May 1, 2008.

You will receive more information and step by step directions for the transition on April 1st.  A special help desk to answer your questions about migration will also be available starting April 1st.  You can find more details, including a list of programs that will be affected, at http://affiliates.ebay.com.

Thanks for being a valued partner.  We’re excited for a successful transition, and the opportunity to grow your business through even more innovations, information and communication moving forward! 

 
Sincerely,

eBay’s Affiliates Managers

 ——————————————————–

 

New to internet marketing? On a tight budget? All the gurus telling you to buy their stuff?

Wait!

There is a goldmine of free products and information on the world wide web. So before you buy anything expensive, look for the free stuff. The simplest approach is to use a search engine like Google or Yahoo. Just search for: free fill-in-the-blank; for example: free website builder.

The only problem with this approach is your time. You have to do the searches, then you have to try out whatever comes up to find out if it is what you are looking for. On the other hand, you can’t beat the price.

Begin Planning with free business plan software

I’ve made a point about using planning as a step-by-step how-to guide for developing your business so here is where you can get a free business plan template and a free pdf guide book bundled with it from planware.org. 

"… Free-Plan registration is completely free and there are no strings attached ! You will not be added to any email list as a result of registering. Check our privacy policy at <www.planware.org/privacy.htm>.

To register, simply e-mail <freeplan@planware.org> quoting within its body the serial number displayed in the table/box located in the middle of the first page of the Free-Plan Template file (FREE-PLAN_TEMPLATE.DOC).

You will be e-mailed back a password with simple instructions to unprotect the Template. Once unprotected, you are licensed to use it as an outline structure & guide for your business plan. It can be freely modified and there are no restrictions on how and where you distribute your completed plan based on the Template. (A little mention would be nice <g> but that is at your complete discretion)."

Freeplan is comprehensive so don’t feel like you have to do everything that is suggested. Start with a Short Plan. The idea is to familiarize yourself with the elements of a business plan and use those parts that are most relevant to you personally. Let me know what you think of it.

I try to keep in mind that a plan is nothing, but planning is everything – in other words, plans are meant to be revised as you get new ideas and information, and as your knowledge and skills grow.

More Free Stuff Later

From time to time, I’ll point out places where you can find other items that are both free and useful. Please add any suggestions of your own.

PS You don’t have to be a beginner/newbie to make good use of free stuff!

 

If you are like me (and are easily distracted), you have tons of ebooks, mp3s, videos, blogs, urls and other internet detritus cataloged on your computer. And you never actually use that stuff because there is always something new coming down the pike that you just have to explore.

It would take months and possibly years to read, listen, and view all the stuff you have accumulated in your hunt for internet marketing magic.

There’s only one cure for the packrat syndrome – choose a mentor (guru if you prefer) and ignore everyone and everything else not specifically recommended by your mentor until you are making so much money that you have time on your hands to explore other things.

Give your mentor 6 – 12 months to get you into money making mode, and by that I mean you are making about the REASONABLE PROFIT you were aiming for. If you were going for $ millions, you shouldn’t be here reading this.

If you haven’t gotten in the profit zone in that time, and you are the persistent type, you need to get another and hopefully better mentor.

There is also the possibility that you are not cut out for this kind of work, and you should definitely consider other options. There’s no shame in a steady job.

I’m not going to recommend a mentor to you (unless you ask). Use your best judgment and stop being an internet marketing packrat. By focusing your training and actions around the advice of a  single mentor or consulting service like Stompernet, you will have a better chance at doing something that actually makes money.

 

One place that you can find products to promote is the ClickBank Marketplace. If you are not familiar with ClickBank, all the products there are electronic, meaning that they can be downloaded directly to your computer once the purchase is completed.

Typical products are ebooks and software. At last count, there were about 27,000 products available.

The majority of sales at ClickBank are made by affiliates. Once you have set up an account, you can pick one or more of the huge number of products that you would like to promote (i.e., advertise).

You earn a commission on sales that come through you affiliate link. Affiliate links are generated automatically for you so you only have to copy and paste them. An affiliate text link looks like this:

http://AFFILIATE.product_ID.hop.clickbank.net

You also get a copy and paste link that you can use on your website that looks like this:

<a href="http://AFFILIATE.product_ID.hop.clickbank.net" target="_blank">Click Here!</a>

Replace AFFILIATE with your ClickBank affiliate name, and you can also replace the Click Here! text with any text that you like. The text will appear as a clickable link.

Both these link formats take your prospect to the sales page of the product you are promoting, and the AFFILIATE part of the link tells ClickBank that you get a commission if the prospect purchases the product.

 

 Did "they" tell you that you can make a fortune with internet marketing even if you don’t have a product? If so, they lied.

Here’s the mathematics: No Product = No Sales = No Income

Consider for a moment what a "product" is. It’s anything that someone else wants. I can’t make it simpler than that. They don’t even have to pay for it, they just have to want it.

We can describe products in a number of ways, but for our purposes here, we’ll just call them items that you get paid for. Those items can be real physical products (for example, a CD or a car), virtual products (for example, software), information products (for example, ebooks), and others.

The main point today is that either you are selling your own products or you are selling someone else’s products. This is one of those rare times in life when the choices are simple.

In internet marketing you generally have two ways of earning money. You can be paid directly for a product and get 100% of the sale price, or you can be paid a commission and receive some fraction of the sale price. Again life is simple. So here are the ways you can be paid.

1. Sell your own product – you get full price.
2. Get  someone to sell your product for you – you get less than full price, they get a commission.
3. Sell someone else’s product – you get a commission.
4. Get someone to sell someone else’s product for you – you get a smaller commission.

Nevertheless, complexity lurks around every corner and that’s why you need to start with a business plan, or go back over what you have already done and frame it into a business plan.

If you don’t have a product or don’t plan to create your own product, then where do you get a product? Many gurus recommend that you start with affiliate marketing and look for products at ClickBank. You can include that strategy in your business plan. We’ll talk about that and other strategies in another episode.

I think it was Dwight Eisenhower who said, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." 

Do your planning!

Your labor is one of your most basic and intrinsic products. When you sell it, we most often call that a "job". When you work for nothing, it’s called either charity or sweat equity. When you are new to internet marketing or don’t have a lot of experience (that means you aren’t making much or any money), your product is sweat equity – the time and energy you put into developing your business without being paid for it.

You probably noticed that people who want to sell you internet marketing products don’t like the term "sweat equity" because it sounds like work, and they are selling you the easy way to riches. Forget that – if you don’t work at it, it ain’t happenin’.