Posts Tagged ‘marketing’
Be forewarned. I'm going to talk about a few matters hardly anyone in the internet marketing business ever talks about, things a lot of us think we're not really supposed to say. But for both good and bad, I've always pretty much gone my own way, so here goes:
First, my approach here is to be something other than, or more than, simply promotional. I've been promotional on this site, sometimes, and in all but a couple of cases, that's been because I had seen the product, used the product, or believed in the marketer who was selling the product, and in the other cases, because they were recommended to me by someone I believed in, and, well, you either believe that or you don't. The point is, I do want to be more than just promotional, so I want to talk about a couple of issues that really have been bugging me.
One of them is that, if all you newbies want, or all you are going to respond to, is hype, then you will get what you deserve. Chase after the dream of instant, easy money if you want, but the truth is that just about everyone in this business that has done well has had to work very hard, at least at some point, to achieve that — either to build and build, gradually, on their efforts, or to FINALLY make that sudden breakthrough.
Now, I know this isn't what some newbies want to hear, but those guys around that are telling you that you can make a lot of money in a month, or a week, or a few days, or within 24 hours, or whatever, generally speaking, are not worth listening to. Yeah, sure, every now and again, someone figures out some 'trick' or some methodology that pays off in spades, but, you know what? Every now and again, someone wins the lottery, and someone else gets struck by lightning, but — and this is what you need to listen to — it doesn't happen very often. In fact, given the number of people involved in internet marketing, the percentage of those kinds of stories that are valid is miniscule to the point of being almost nothing.
So you got to expect to work.
A second item that has been really bugging me lately is the attitudes. Just yesterday I was out on a site and seeing all these comments, and some of them were complaining that this and that product or strategy doesn't work, or was deeply disappointing, and I mean some of the products and services that were being dissed were literally only a few weeks or a few days old! What?
One guy was saying that Site Profit Bot was a big disappointment. What? Like four days after its release, you're saying that? Did you even bother to try to learn how to use it? Have you taken even a moment to ask for support? Do you understand that results take time?
My last post was entitled, in part, 'Or what more do you want?,' and if Site Profit Bot is such a disappointment, I guess I have no choice but to conclude that what some of you want is to have a truck full of gold backed up in your driveway or deposited in your bank account the day after you first try something. No. Come to think of it, I bet some still would find something to complain about even then.
I mean, c'mon, people! Some of you buy into all the hype and so you expect something to work instantly? There are a fair number of good products out there, folks, but they are for marketers, and a marketer doesn't just try something for a day or two, or even a week or two, or even a month or two, and say it doesn't work if he or she doesn't get results. A marketer knows better than to buy into all the hype.
Sure, you may think its quick and easy someday, when you've got the traffic, when you've got the skills, when you've got the instincts. It might even be second nature someday. But a marketer knows that no matter how good or 'easy' something is, it is very likely going to take time and energy to learn, and time and energy to implement, and time and energy to work. A marketer persists long enough to be sure the product or service has been given adequate time to prove itself, or not.
And no, I can't tell you how long that is, because it depends a lot on the product, and on you, and on how quick a study you are, and how much time and energy you devote to it, and how much action you take, and how often, and whether and to what extent you can, as Winston Churchill once defined as the secret to success, 'move from one failure to the next without any loss of enthusiasm.'
So stop dissing products and marketers you know nearly nothing about. And take action. And persist. And expect to have to work your butt off, at least for a while, because winning the lottery is not a plan to bet your life and well-being on, and lightning isn't going to strike very many of us very often.
I'm sorry. For some of you, it's probably tough medicine. I wish it were otherwise, but that's just the way it is.
And finally, a few years ago, I was doing a little contract work for a fellow who…, well…, let's just say he had obtained a somewhat higher net worth than yours truly (about $80,000,000). And I'm thinking of using something that guy said to me to segue into something else I want to talk about, but it'll have to wait.
Maybe next time, or if not, sometime soon.
Thanks for visiting.
As I'm sure you know, being able to drive sufficient traffic is a major element of success for just about any form of internet marketing or online business. So I want to tell you about a guy that knows how, who has a system he developed himself through trial and error and from which I have benefited in my own business.
His name is Bill McRea, and he calls it 'Marketing on the Fringe 2.0.'
I took his original course, 'Marketing on the Fringe 1.0,' and was so impressed I am thinking about signing up for the new course even though I'm expecting a good percentage of it may be the exact same information as his original course.
So what I'm saying is, you REALLY need to check this out.
Why?
Well, I won't ask you to suspend your better judgment and swallow whole every miniscule mote in his sales copy, but Bill's "traffic machines" are the real deal, and this new course is the next level in his traffic machine revolution.
They are almost COMPLETELY automated, and they do drive the traffic. Since taking the first MOTF course, and implementing only some of Bill's suggestions, I have sites that are driving at least 10 times the traffic they were before. Frankly, I need to cut this post short so I can go implement some more of his suggestions.
Bill's letting people in the door to test the system for just $5 right now. But I don't expect that offer to last very long. So you've got to move on this.
Those of you who know me, know I've only rarely been this promotional or this enthusiastic, so you also should know I'm really serious this time.
Check it out right now, okay?
(Edit:: Nov 21 2009 – I owe most of the recent increase in my traffic to what I learned in his first course. Not all directly of course as I've continued to build on that knowledge, but I wouldn't have ever had the knowledge to build on in the first place if I hadn't taken his course. Bill told me this morning that he is almost sold out and expects to be tearing this down soon. Now maybe that's just a marketing ploy, and maybe it's not. In my experience, Bill usually means what he says, so to be on the safe side, you should fork over that massive $5 for the 7-day trial and check it out now if your current traffic strategy isn't all you hoped it would be.)
http://mythospheres.com/recommends/McReaMOTF2
To your ever-increasing success!,
Richard D. Farley
Now that the dust has begun to settle, I thought it might be appropriate to offer an opinion about Mike Filsaime’s AffiliateJump.
First things first. This post is not about promoting AffiliateJump. Nor is it about trashing Mike. (I won't name names, but there is actually another marketer out there who has also reviewed AffiliateJump, is misrepresenting a few things, and is being very unfair to Mike.) I simply bought into the program and this is my honest assessment.
Before I convey that assessment though, for those who may not know what AffiliateJump is, let me begin with a little background:
CPA, or Cost Per Action, marketing has been gaining momentum lately. Perhaps for good reason — after all, CPA is all about generating leads (freely submitted contact information from potential customers) and offers you the chance to make money, significant money, from a single customer. Some CPA offers pay as much as $200 when a customer signs up.
Further, you don't actually have to sell the customer anything. You simply send them a link.
Many Internet marketers are promoting CPA these days, and certainly some are making some serious money.
But the problem for many has been how to get accepted by the CPA networks. This has proven difficult for some as many of the networks require, among other things, a proven track record and a demonstrated ability to generate traffic, certainly two requirements newbies, and even some more experienced marketers, can have difficulty with. Additionally, there is the problem of choosing which offers to promote as well as how to promote them.
Mike Filsaime's AffiliateJump promises a turnkey workaround for these challenges. For example, you don't have to be accepted by the CPA networks. By simply buying into AffiliateJump, you are guaranteed to be "accepted" automatically.
Through AffiliateJump, your offers will be available to you through an easy-to-use interface, and you can build "websites" to promote those offers in just a few minutes, or actually, even seconds if you're not too particular. Not only that, but you don't have to buy a domain name to do it. That's all taken care of for you.
Then all you do is promote these "websites."
Sounds great, doesn't it? Well, yes and no.
While the folks at AffiliateJump seem to be working on some of the shortcomings, as of this writing there are definitely some problems. For one, the "websites" — or actually pages — that AffiliateJump allows you to create will all be located at similar domains (there are several available, but still a fairly limited choice). For another, the domain names, being limited, will not necessarily have much to do with the names of the products you'll be promoting, which means you could have a more difficult time driving traffic to your site.
You are given a choice, and with care you can get somewhat close in some cases, but certainly not all, and the closer the domain name comes to the name of the product or service that is being promoted, generally the better. Search engines seem to like it much better when the domain name and the content somewhat agree.
Another drawback, but another thing the folks at AffiliateJump claim to be working on improving, is that the pages generated are extremely similar, both in appearance and content (they don't have to be exactly the same, there are some customizations available, but they are very limited as of this writing).
Here are a couple of examples: (Unfortunately, the examples are no longer available.)
While the pages are attractive enough, it means all the other AffiliateJump members will be promoting pages that may be identical to, or vary only in minor respects from, the ones you are promoting, and it means the sites will look very similar to the search engines. Very similar, as opposed to identical, might not be a fatal drawback, but keep in mind that many of those very similar pages are likely to be hosted at the exact same domain name. So, you know, if that's not fatal either, it's certainly not good.
It could be a major problem, in fact, in terms of attracting visitors to your pages. While a Google rep very recently said Google does not actually penalize duplicate content, he also explained that the effect is often the same, and it is a truism in internet marketing at this point that the search engines don't like duplicate content, for whatever rhyme or reason. So if, say, a hundred, or a thousand pages all look extremely similar, it is likely only a few will get any attention from the search engines and the rest will be left out — and given Murphy's law, probably yours, and that would mean no search-engine-generated visitors to your offers. Of course you could drive traffic through advertising, but keep in mind that for every product or service offered, you'll be competing with every other AffiliateJump member for the exact same offers.
Another drawback is the price. To be able to create 100 offers, you'll pay. At the time I signed up, it cost $200 for the initial setup fee (refundable, but only after you have earned $1000 in commissions) and then $99.95 a month thereafter. There were cheaper options, but hardly worth having in my opinion, as they were so limited in terms of the number of pages you were allowed to set up and promote. Additionally, there are some of my long-time internet marketing acquaintances who are, rightly or not, outraged that anyone should be asked to pay for the opportunity to promote the offers of a CPA network in any case, and while AffiliateJump may yet prove itself very worthwhile for some, or in one sense or another, they certainly do have a point.
It seems odd that these matters were not given more thought from the start, especially considering Mike Filsaime's experience. It would be tempting for a cynic (or realist?) to surmise that AffiliateJump has been designed to make a lot of money for Mike, rather than having been designed with any real concern for creating any real opportunities for its members; however, as I said at the outset, I'm not about trashing Mike here, and also as mentioned before, there does seem to be a sincere effort on at AffiliateJump to address many of these issues. Recently, they have also been adding some training videos.
I'm not prepared here and now to pass a final judgment, and I am going to reserve the right to recommend and promote AffiliateJump at some point in the future if things improve enough; however, some of my continued evaluation will depend on how long I decide to remain a member, and in conclusion, newbies, and less-experienced marketers — who are clearly the primary target customer base for AffiliateJump — are, in my opinion, the ones least likely to be able to profit from AffiliateJump, so I'd warn most to stay away, at least as it stands now.
Meanwhile, if you are truly interested in CPA marketing, which admittedly can be highly lucrative, I'd like to suggest something you may find more worthwhile.
To receive an email about my recommendation, and a full explanation as to why I recommend it, please enter your name and email below. And yes, we (my company) may, very occasionally, send you another recommendation or notice of opportunity, but we certainly will not SPAM you or waste your time, and you will be able to unsubscribe from the list anytime you like simply by clicking on a link that will be included in any email we may send you.
Best regards,
Richard D. Farley
