Posts Tagged ‘marketing tactics’

Shipping is not FREE

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

 FREE Report, CD, DVD, yada, yada, yada

 

How many times have you seen this. It's FREE – you just pay the shipping cost. What is it about the word FREE that internet marketers don't understand?

How Stupid Are We?

My first point is this. How stupid do you have to be to know that if you pay for shipping – IT'S NOT FREE!

Here's the deal. When you pay shipping, that guarantees that the seller will make at least some small profit no matter what happens because they typically charge more for shipping than it actually costs.

But It Gets Worse … Did you really mean to sign up for a monthly subscription?

Very often in the fine print you didn't read because it was sort of a faded gray 6 point type way at the bottom it says that you agree to sign up for a $47, $67, or even $97 a month subscription to some sort of newsletter, and you will continue to be billed every month until you cancel except that they keep any money charged to your credit card before you cancel. So you end up paying that first month's bill even if you cancel immediately after you realize what has happened. So for that FREE CD the marketer makes money on the shipping and again on the first month's subscription. How's that for slick?

Is your time worthless?

Here's my second point. That FREE offer that you only have to pay shipping to get presumes that the time you spend actually listening, viewing, memorizing, note-taking, and otherwise marking your time doesn't cost anything. In other words, your time is worthless.

Alternatively, let's call your time a "sweat equity" investment because you are certainly going to use this information to make $xx thousands of dollars more in your business than you would have without this information.

Bottom Line

No way is it FREE! So before you click that BUY NOW button for that FREE product, give some thought to how much it is really going to cost you. Then you can make a thoughtful and perhaps even wise decision.

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Posted in Ed Notes, Free | No Comments »

Internet Profits in Your PJs? – Review: Don’t waste your time

Saturday, December 12th, 2009

The Holly Cotter Story

Holly Cotter’s rags to riches story is inspirational. There’s no doubt about that. But I’m sorry about this …

"Internet Profits in Your PJs – 36 Secrets to Creating Multiple Income Streams … on Autopilot"

Out of respect for Holly, I would like to put this politely, "This book is drivel."

A total waste of your time. Let’s say you value your time at minimum wage (I hope your time is worth more than that, at least to you, but let’s just say.). The 2-4 hours you might spend reading every word of this book costs you between $16 and $32 roughly speaking. That means the book is not FREE.

Out of Date and Out of Link

The book is copyright 2006. I found that most of the links don’t work and those that do are obvious shills for stuff that Holly sold off.

36 Secrets – Are You Kidding Me?

Here are some stunning samples of these amazing "Closely-Guarded Multiple Income Stream Secrets".

Secret #1 – There is a HUGE difference between “owning a business” and “being self-employed.” — Bet you didn’t know that.

Secret #5 – You must generate steady profits with one income stream before adding another income stream. — Geez, why didn’t I think of that.

SECRET #16 – It’s easier to make ONE sale than it is to make two sales. — Wow, this is almost mystical.

Secret #34 – To successfully build multiple passive streams of income, you must focus on building only one income stream at a time. — Oh wait a minute, wasn’t that Secret #5?

SECRET #35 – Patience is the key to your success. — Now that is REALLY a helpful secret – please don’t spread this around or everybody will know and we’ll lose our competitive advantage.

Sorry for the sarcastic comments, I couldn’t help it.

There’s No Substance

After you have read and absorbed every word of this book, you will know how to do … nothing! The book tells you what worked for Holly in a general sort of way, but not how any of it was actually done. There’s no step-by-step to duplicate.

Aha! That’s why all those almost functional links at the end of the book – you have to buy more stuff to make Internet Profits in Your PJs. And that’s the real point of this book. Holly sold a lot of her websites and changed her business model which you can see here.

An Impressive List of Testimonials – Huh?

When I reviewed the names of the "experts" whose testimonials appear at the front of this book, I actually learned something about internet marketers. A lot of well-known names are there, and I am having a hard time with that. Maybe they didn’t actually read the book. The alternatives are 1. they produce the same kind of internet marketing vaporware and so think this book is marvelous, or 2. they don’t actually know anything and have testified to their ignorance by giving these testimonials.

The Bottom Line

You won’t learn anything useful from this book. Let the buyer beware .

 

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Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Free, Marketing, Not Recommended, Review, eCommerce | No Comments »

Order Customization – Serial One Time Offers

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

The Best Copywriting Book Ever Written!

Sorting through my email, I opened a note from an internet marketer advising me that he was about to let me in on the greatest secret marketing book nobody knows about.

Well, of course I had to see that so I clicked on the link in the email and got to the website of this marketer where a video started playing. The video revealed the title and author of this greatest ever book, and this marketer explained that he cherished this book so much that he would never let this book get outside his arm’s reach.

But wait there’s more

Then he told about how he and his company had created a course based on this book, and how I really really needed to take that course so I could learn how to write mind controlling copy for ads. But you know that mind control can be dangerous in the wrong hands so you really have to take this course to learn how to use it ethically and not damage anybody’s psyche.

It’s FREE … Almost

It’s TRUE! You can get a free 7 day look at the course and can cancel anytime in 7 days and it costs you nothing and you get to keep the FREE Gifts anyway. If you don’t cancel within 7 days, you are automatically signed up on a monthly basis for the full course for a "mere" $49/month.

Order Customization – Serial Killer OTOs

When you see something like this, you know you are going to have to wade through this stuff to get what you originally wanted – your free look at the copywriting course.

Serial One Time Offers Begin Here

Even though it says your order is not yet complete, if you cancel out at this step, you are still signed up for the free trial because you gave your credit card information before you got to this step. Clever, huh. So go ahead and check the course out and cancel if you wish.

OTOs Increase Sales

Why do marketers do this OTO stuff? Because it increases their sales. Some people will be put off by this marketing strategy, but others will like and buy the offers and thus spend more money they intended to when they set out to get the free trial. If you have money you don’t know what to do with, go ahead and buy all the OTOs.

No Thanks?

If you don’t want the OTOs, you have to scroll down to the bottom of each page and click the No Thanks links to get the original offer. Another thing to learn about marketing – the No Thanks part at the bottom is in small type and often in lighter colored text to discourage you from saying No Thanks and to encourage you to buy the OTO.


PS If you want to see the offer(s) for yourself, click Here – and follow all the steps that start with an opt-in (another marketing lesson).

 

PPS The best copywriting book ever written is …  

The Adweek Copywriting Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Powerful Advertising and Marketing Copy from One of America’s Top Copywriters




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Posted in Book, Copywriting, Ed Notes | No Comments »

Dominating CB 2 Launches Thursday 18th September, NOON EST.

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

Want to make a lot of money dominating ClickBank?

Yeah, me too. So I’m passing this gem on to you because I thought you might want to see it.

Who is Andrew Fox?

Maybe you never heard of him, but maybe you should check this out anyway. He never heard of me either. I seem to be on the email lists of every internet marketer on earth. How about you? So this guy (I am assuming it’s a guy.) Rob Benwell was the first to send me a link to Andrew Fox’s video. Don’t get too excited about that. It’s just a description how much money he has made and how he wants to share his secrets with you and me. Boy, I never heard that one before! Anyway, read on if you’re so inclined.

And this just in … Andrew Fox has been marketing online since 1999 and has sold millions of dollars of products.

 

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

How To Use Clickbank To Generate Monster Ongoing Profits

      – by Andrew Fox

© Andrew Fox – All Rights reserved
   Dominating ClickBank 2
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

ClickBank is the Internet’s largest digital marketplace, where thousands of the web’s most popular products are sold every day.  

What what people don’t realize is how easy it is to get started with Clickbank and how you can start generating sales even if you have your own  product.

There are a few ways to do this.

1) Acquire Resale Rights to a product you don’t own, create an page for affiliates and supply them tools to promote and feed of their efforts.

2) Promote products as an affiliate using Pay per Click Search Engines

So which method is best?

I’ve successfully tried both methods, both with good results.

For the beginner I recommend promoting products as an affiliate to get used to how the system works and to help sharpen your pay per click search engine advertising skills.

Acquiring Resale Rights to a hot  selling product can be lucrative venture when set up correctly.

In fact I managed to generate over $25,764 in sales for a resale license I paid $197 for without spending a penny on advertising.

I was able to do this by leveraging Clickbank’s instant affiliate force which I teach in great depth in my new course Dominating CB.  

Once you have built a successful customer and lead list there are also several ways you can leverage this into even greater profits.

Clickbank is such an attractive proposition for affiliates to use. They know they are going to get paid twice per month and on  clockwork every time.  

Sometimes product owners complain that the fees are higher than the average merchant  account but the ability to leverage it’s massive network of affiliate can results in mega profits when done correctly.

Warm Regards,

Andrew Fox

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

OK, if you actually read this far, you observed (especially if you are an English major) that his grasp of the nuances of English is kind of shaky, but he copyrighted the thing so I couldn’t edit it for him. Nevertheless, he does send his Warm Regards.

Do this now!

Click here now and you too might become a money-making affiliate for Dominating ClickBank 2

 

Dominating ClickBank 2

 

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Posted in Affiliate, Affiliate Marketing, Disclosure, Marketing | 2 Comments »

Internet Marketing Sins – Hate Mail and Fan Mail

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

We Have Encountered a  S u r r e a l  New World Here

I’ve set some kind of record today, which I hope demonstrates my honesty in a surreal sort of way.

Flying Emails

I wanted to make sure that you would be dealing directly with Sylvie Fortin if you wanted to send her an email so I tested her email link before I gave Internet Marketing Sins my highest recommendation. Made sense to me but it turned out that we had a bit of a heated exchange – she can be very direct if you haven’t noticed yet.

I won’t reproduce our entire email exchange because I am practicing to become a gentleman, and Sylvie Fortin is a nice lady.

Hate Mail?

Part of my email is cited as Hate Mail! Go HERE and scroll down to "Email From E". You’ll find my hate mail there. I’ll leave to you to judge the hateful quality of it.

Fan Mail!

Now here is where it gets surreal. Go HERE and scroll down to "As Seen On eMarketWorks.com". My blog post is cited as Fan Mail! (And my thanks to Sylvie Fortin for the link to emarketworks.com.)

Truth or Truthiness?

How can it be that I’m cited for both Hate Mail and Fan Mail? Maybe that is the price of honesty. You be the judge of that.

The bottom line is that, despite the sometimes crude language, Internet Marketing Sins will give you excellent insights into the internet scammers’ tactics so you won’t be taken in by them.

 

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Posted in Affiliate, Disclosure, Ed Notes | 2 Comments »

Internet Marketing Sins

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

Had enough marketing BS yet?

  • Are you pissed off by the unethical and even illegal marketing tactics that assault you every day?
  • Do you get the urge to do bodily harm to internet marketers using these tactics on you?
  • Don’t even know what these tactics are and how to recognize them?

Internet Marketing Sins shines the light

Sylvie Fortin calls these tactics "sins" and she explains them in clear understandable, but strong, language. You won’t have a problem recognizing yourself, how badly you’ve been treated (and perhaps how you have treated others?).

This is a MUST READ for Newbies

I think it is especially important for newbie beginners in internet marketing to learn to recognize and avoid these tactics, and that is why I seriously urge you to read this revealing report.

You probably already realize that you’ve been scammed by one or more of these tactics, but Internet Marketing Sins lays it all out systematically and comprehensively. I feel so strongly about this that I’ve added Internet Marketing Sins to the Recommended page.

Hammerhead Marketing

I think most of you will have an emotional and personal reaction to Sylvie’s description of getting hammered. I clearly recognized myself as the dreamer in the description of the hammerhead marketing tactic. Maybe you will too.

 

Internet Marketing Sins

What’s the Catch?

(more…)

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Posted in Affiliate, Affiliate Marketing, Disclosure, Do This Now !, Ed Notes, Free, Marketing, Video | 1 Comment »