This is the final post for Web Marketing Help's Blogspot blog. We have relocated this blog to our main site at www.webmarketinghelp.com/blog
We are now hosting our blog as a WordPress site. I have to admit I actually have always liked Google's Blogger platform. It's free, easy to configure and use. Unfortunately, for some unknown reason Google chooses to index and rank other blogging platforms higher in their search listings than they do their own blogs. So if you are looking to get traffic and have your message heard it's easier to accomplish that with WordPress.
I'm not saying that the WordPress system is easier to configure or use. In spite of the online rhetoric, WordPress sites are more difficult and time consuming to set up and maintain. The tradeoff is that more people will actually see your posts. Farewell Blogger you have served me well...
Why Internet Marketing Is Not For Everyone
All too often people try their hand at Internet Marketing
for the wrong reasons. In fact, I hate to admit that I was guilty of that
mistake myself in the beginning of my Internet Marketing career. I find the vast majority of those who first
enter into Internet Marketing do so under duress. This is often because of a layoff,
other job loss or money problems. Far fewer make a planned orderly transition
to entrepreneurial life.
This common event of
beginning a business AND a major life shift under financial duress may account
for the better than 97% failure rate among online businesses. Entering into a
venture like Internet Marketing while under duress requires that your project
achieve volume and profitability far more rapidly than it happens in normal business start-ups. The pressure for an immediate outcome makes new entrepreneurs
vulnerable to “get rich quick” scams or poor quality, low cost information and
solutions. They are now primed for failure and face a downward spiral
back to the “worker” mentality. Ironically, this often leads the “would be”
Internet Marketer to blame the industry because “they” didn’t help him succeed.
The blame game is a complex emotional issue that reflects
many of the beliefs we learned in early life and how we apply those beliefs to
our current existence. It has been said the ideal successful business for
anyone occurs at the intersection of these four important components:
- Resources – These can be financial as well as social and more.
- Knowledge and Skills – Simply put, you should engage in a business you know something about and have talent for.
- Opportunities – Finding the right opportunities to apply 1. and 2. above.
- Passion – None of the above will help much unless you truly enjoy what you are doing.
Of course, this means if you are starting a new business
from a position of financial duress that you are likely severely lacking in
areas 1-3 above. Now I won’t go so far to say that you can’t succeed with
little else than passion (I can think of numerous people who have.) Passion is
the driving force behind acquiring the other 3 components. But, I will tell you
that surviving primarily on passion is a long and rocky road to travel.
The harsh truth is that starting any business including
Internet Marketing requires skills and personality traits not common to the
majority of people. Many people wrongly assume running a business just takes
“common sense”. However, the statistics prove that it really takes “uncommon
sense”. It has been said time and again by nearly all the successful Internet
Marketers that the single most important hurdle to success is developing the
entrepreneurial mindset. This statement doesn’t seem to have much meaning for most
people who are just starting out so this important step is often omitted.
I recently read a blog post by someone who interviewed an
Internet Marketer. The interviewer clearly epitomized values that are the exact
opposite of what you have to learn to be successful in Internet Marketing.
These personality traits and core beliefs are common particularly among wage
earners or people who work jobs. Needless to say the author found several
sympathetic people to comment on his post. The beliefs shown in the table below
illustrate just a few of the differences between the entrepreneurial mindset
and the more common mindset many people have:
Common Mindset
(Scarcity)
|
Internet Marketing Entrepreneur
(Abundance)
|
Internet Marketing is a scam.
|
There are unscrupulous people in all industries.
Legitimate Internet Marketers provide quality products and services to people
who need and want them.
|
The “Gurus” are lying about how much they make.
|
I personally know several people who make millions online.
|
The days when you could make money online are gone.
|
There are new opportunities and ways to make money online
everyday.
|
The economy is so bad I can’t leave my job.
|
The challenging economic situation offers numerous new
opportunities to profit.
|
Everyone with money is a selfish crook.
|
I earn money honestly by helping people. The money is a tool
to improve my life and the lives of those around me.
|
It’s “their” fault I can’t make any money.
|
I accept responsibility for my mistakes and failures. I
evaluate what went wrong, make changes and try again.
|
There isn’t enough money for everyone to be rich.
|
Money is only a measure of value. There is no limit to how
much value I can provide.
|
It was easier to make money in the past than it is today.
|
There are more opportunities today to make money than ever
before.
|
Everything keeps getting worse.
|
Things are getting better.
|
Your Internet Marketing success is directly proportional to how well you can
shift your mind to the abundance model shared by entrepreneurs. I recommend the
following books to improve your mindset:
- The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles
- Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
- How I Made My First Million on the Internet by Ewen Chia
Obituary: The Internet Marketing Center
Sadly, today I am withdrawing all support and recommendation for products and services from The Internet Marketing Center, 906 Robinson St, Coquitlam BC . This action is based both on my own experience and the increasing number and nature of consumer complaints surrounding this company. While the company appears to still be in business, I recommend consumers seeking Internet marketing advice and training look for alternative sources. I have placed several suggestions for training from established experts on my main website.
What makes this action so difficult is that the Internet Marketing Center has a history and relationship with me that dates back to the beginnings of my Internet Marketing journey that started nearly 12 years ago. There were very few Internet Marketing training resources in those days. It was back then that I searched the net looking for some training and direction in a field I had quickly come to realize I knew very little about. It was the genius of the late Corey Rudl that introduced me to the world of marketing online.
It was clear that Corey’s untimely death in 2005 was huge blow to a then wildly successful company. When Corey’s friend, Derek Gehl, took the helm of the company, he did an admirable job of staying the course in terms of producing quality products and marketing advice in the rapidly changing Internet landscape. With Derek’s separation from the company in 2009 and a new ownership, the Internet Marketing Center began a slow drift into oblivion.
As an affiliate with IMC since 2003, I stayed the course these past 3 years keeping a positive attitude that the company would again find its way to brilliance. However, you get a bad feeling when a company takes a course that clearly violates the basic marketing principals they originally taught you as a student. I commented about this in a few posts in 2009. A second ownership change occurred early this year with nothing more than a one line notice in their newsletter. Communication from the company all but stopped after January. Much to my surprise I recently found my affiliate links where not operating.
On investigating, I found the IMC websites a complete mess with multiple broken links and a Wordpress blog operating as the main site. Even a rank armature could have kept the websites in better shape. Someone clearly does not know what they are doing. I sent a letter to support and was informed: “Sorry the Internet Marketing Center no longer has an affiliate program.” This response came from a company that not only had one of the earliest affiliate programs, but also practically invented affiliate marketing. IMC was a company that advocated affiliates as a way to grow and prosper. It came from a company management that today doesn’t have the decency to inform its affiliates they were terminating the program. They have also walked with over $100 in my hard earned commissions and who knows how many of my sales they lost or diverted. In 12 years of marketing online I have never been treated so poorly as an affiliate.
I remember a specific tidbit from one of Corey’s Marketing Tips newsletters that talked about how a website should always be current and that all the links should work. An interesting truth is that the decay of IMC’s websites had already prompted me to stop active promotion of their products. Sadly, what drew me to the Internet Marketing Center many years ago was that their website was one of the few that actually worked in those early days of the Internet.
Corey Rudl and Derek Gehl followed specific style of personal marketing that is still widely used on the Internet today. It was always radically different from the fortune 500 big company style. That’s why it worked on the Internet with minimal investment while multimillion dollar companies failed online. I’ve heard the style referred to as “Guru Marketing” and “Hype Marketing”. Many today have equated this style with being dishonest. In fact, nothing is further from the truth. I prefer to think of it as Renegade Marketing a term coined by Dan Kennedy who was also one of Corey Rudl’s early mentors. Dishonesty is what I have now experienced from this faceless company.
There are occasionally uninformed owners and investors who gain control of companies that strive to depersonalize the buyer experience and eliminate the hype. Simply put, they are dead wrong and their business endeavor will fail. Being originally trained as an engineer, I often struggled with the sales and marketing mindset. I am reminded of an important lesson I learned from an early tele-seminar with Jeff Paul and Shawn Casey both of whom are now seasoned successful Internet marketers. Jeff elaborated about his early experience and failures. He noted that at least 2 of his early endeavors failed AFTER his partners refused to use his more outlandish style to market their products.
For those who believe that everything is different on the Internet and that old tried and true marketing principals don’t work, I give this case history of The Internet Marketing Center.
Facebook Ads For Free - NOT!
On March 3, 2011 Alex Malve, Devin Chapman and Jani Ghaffor released their latest product called Get FB Ads Free. I have to admit the pre-launch rhetoric sounded pretty good and it's no secret that I'm always looking for good products to promote myself. So I checked into this. All the ads and slick copy writing in the promotional material lead you to believe that these guys have uncovered a BIG secret. They tell you that they have figured out a way to get free ads on Facebook by pasting a single secret piece of code.By now most every marketer knows that Facebook has pay per click (PPC) and pay per view (PPV) advertising programs similar to Google's Adwords. The difference is that many PPC users now prefer Facebook. This is because Facebook has over half a billion users and reaches more people than Google itself. Additionally, Facebook made the wise decision to allow advertisers to target the ads to the specific demographics of users. However, cost per click on Facebook has increased in step with the advertising platform's popularity.
It's natural to make the leap of thought that, indeed, Alex, Devin an Jani are talking about getting free PPC ads. There is nothing in their ad copy to deter this runaway thought process. In fact, that is exactly what I believed after reading all the affiliate promotional material. It's slick and it's clear the intent of the copywriter is to foster this belief. There's just one BIG problem. The product doesn't get you free PPC ads!
I don't know about you, but I've personally struggled for years online with this type of B.S. hype marketing and copy writing (no offense John Carlton). I've had some hope that the Internet Marketing community was getting mature enough to be more upfront with their advertising style.
So what IS this product all about? Well surprise, it's a software tool to build Facebook Fan Pages! Funny, no one ever mentioned "Fan Page". Now isn't that a bit like having a restaurant menu that bestows the virtues of a juicy cheese burger but then serves you a fish sandwich when you order?
Granted, this "Fan Page Builder" and "Fan Page Marketing Course" may well be worth the few bucks they charge for it. But somehow I just can't go to the restaurant that writes a menu like that. Who knows what I'll get when I order something else on the menu?
If you're not put off by HYPE then you may actually find some gems of wisdom in this offering. By all means check it out yourself. And by all means, click one of my affiliate links in this article. I deserve a commission or two for wasting my time on these guys.
Auto Coupon Cash System Launches
The Internet is full of "money making opportunities". Its easy to turn your nose up at products and courses that claim all sorts of fantastic benefits. Advertisers online will promise you fame, fortune, and easy ways to stay in shape. Still, just because many of these promises will never be delivered, and this is important, it doesn't mean that EVERY work from home product is a scam.
While the creators of Auto Coupon Cash exaggerate their claims a bit, essentially, they are claiming that one of the most powerful tools a business can use to generate sales is coupons. It's a big claim to be making...
Of course, they are absolutely right.
The part they exaggerate is the implication that once you have these coupons, sales are just going to fall from the sky. The fact of the matter is that the "method" requires a fair amount of work to succeed, but once you set it up, its remarkably effective.
That's not even the best part. Their main product is a STEAL at $37. However, the best part doesn't come until AFTER you buy it.
Every customer has the opportunity to upgrade to a complete Auto Coupon Cash system. The upgrade is actually more valuable than the original product!
They are offering websites that grab leads for you and that they'll update for you on a DAILY basis! With UNIQUE CONTENT!
This isn't some trashy PLR product, this is actual writers creating unique articles for sites that they professionally put together for you! Plus they update - so they don't leave much of anything for you to do but make money!
To get this quality service though, you've got to buy their initial product, plus the two up-sells at the end. You can always return it all if you don't think its valuable (but my guess is that wont be a problem once you see what you get!).
Overall, the Auto Coupon Cash system is excellent at creating a strong foundation for online earnings. It may not be as easy as they imply to get started, but once you get it going, making money is practically automatic. The websites are high quality, come hosted, complete with updates!
To grab your Auto Coupon Cash package before they are sold out, just click here now! This offer is good for a limited time only, and it's an opportunity that you can't afford to miss!
While the creators of Auto Coupon Cash exaggerate their claims a bit, essentially, they are claiming that one of the most powerful tools a business can use to generate sales is coupons. It's a big claim to be making...
Of course, they are absolutely right.
That's not even the best part. Their main product is a STEAL at $37. However, the best part doesn't come until AFTER you buy it.
Every customer has the opportunity to upgrade to a complete Auto Coupon Cash system. The upgrade is actually more valuable than the original product!
They are offering websites that grab leads for you and that they'll update for you on a DAILY basis! With UNIQUE CONTENT!
This isn't some trashy PLR product, this is actual writers creating unique articles for sites that they professionally put together for you! Plus they update - so they don't leave much of anything for you to do but make money!
To get this quality service though, you've got to buy their initial product, plus the two up-sells at the end. You can always return it all if you don't think its valuable (but my guess is that wont be a problem once you see what you get!).
Overall, the Auto Coupon Cash system is excellent at creating a strong foundation for online earnings. It may not be as easy as they imply to get started, but once you get it going, making money is practically automatic. The websites are high quality, come hosted, complete with updates!
To grab your Auto Coupon Cash package before they are sold out, just click here now! This offer is good for a limited time only, and it's an opportunity that you can't afford to miss!
Tom Bell Releases Fast Profit Pages
I'm not usually a fan of "cookie cutter" business in a box type products. The main reason is that regardless of the quality of the websites you usually have to overcome two major obstacles. One is securing a product to sell. The other is the one that usually stops 99% of the product owners, it's traffic to the site. Tom Bell's Fast Profit Pages offering overcomes these two large hurdles in style. Not only is he giving you a website fully integrated with the products to sell, he's also helping you get all the traffic you need to make it profitable.
Fast Profit Pages is based on a project Tom did for Katherine, a single mom, who originally contacted Tom for a job. After he heard about her predicament of being broke and trying to care for her daughter while living in a tiny apartment with her ex husband, he decided he needed to do more. Rather than giving her the j. o. b. (just over broke) bandage, he decided to show her how to make money online so she could produce a lifetime of income. This wasn't an easy task for someone like Katherine with no money or any real technical skills. Tom ended up taking care of all the details needed to get the businesses going. He covered everything including product selection, website design, hosting and traffic acquisition.
Tom has done the entrepreneurial thing and turned his project into the Fast Profit Pages product. During this launch phase you can get the entire system Tom developed to drive Katherine's success. You'll get 20 high performing ready made niche websites fully integrated with products and ready to take orders for less than $5 per site. Everything is in included in the one price. You won't have to buy domain names, hosting, or merchant accounts. It all comes with a full no risk 60 day 100% satisfaction guarantee. This is a truly remarkable offer by any standard.
The only catch is that you will have to provide a testimonial when you make money (and why not for this kind of deal). The launch offer is obviously limited and Tom will be holding the line on the number of packages he sells to keep the system profitable for all... Click here to take advantage of this package now.
Fast Profit Pages is based on a project Tom did for Katherine, a single mom, who originally contacted Tom for a job. After he heard about her predicament of being broke and trying to care for her daughter while living in a tiny apartment with her ex husband, he decided he needed to do more. Rather than giving her the j. o. b. (just over broke) bandage, he decided to show her how to make money online so she could produce a lifetime of income. This wasn't an easy task for someone like Katherine with no money or any real technical skills. Tom ended up taking care of all the details needed to get the businesses going. He covered everything including product selection, website design, hosting and traffic acquisition.
Tom has done the entrepreneurial thing and turned his project into the Fast Profit Pages product. During this launch phase you can get the entire system Tom developed to drive Katherine's success. You'll get 20 high performing ready made niche websites fully integrated with products and ready to take orders for less than $5 per site. Everything is in included in the one price. You won't have to buy domain names, hosting, or merchant accounts. It all comes with a full no risk 60 day 100% satisfaction guarantee. This is a truly remarkable offer by any standard.
The only catch is that you will have to provide a testimonial when you make money (and why not for this kind of deal). The launch offer is obviously limited and Tom will be holding the line on the number of packages he sells to keep the system profitable for all... Click here to take advantage of this package now.
Internet Marketing Gets Slapped By Facebook
If you have an interest in Internet Marketing or frequent Facebook you've probably heard the hype about Facebook being the next goldmine for Internet Marketers. Facebook offers an Ad product that has some similarity to Google Adwords while incorporating some very important differences.
You can place ads on Facebook with a 25 character headline, small images and 135 characters of description. The ads are context sensitive just like Google's. The ads appear in a right hand column of Facebook pages just like Adwords ads appear on the right of Google search pages. The most important difference is that Facebook users are generally not searching for products. Facebook targets the Ads by using the demographics in a Facebook users profile. For example, if you indicated you live in a certain city in your profile you will likely receive ads from businesses in that city. If you indicate an interest in a subject like Internet Marketing your will see those type of ads.
At first look this seems like a great way to advertise. With Facebook passing 500 million users and the ability to laser target ads to your market, how can you go wrong? That's what I thought to until I got the "Facebook Slap"! It appears that even worse than Google, Facebook has a zealous army of ad police that enforce a restrictive a set of polices aimed at keeping the Facebook page real estate arbitrarily "pristine" ??
I added the question marks above because I've never been convinced that ads for the "porn" industry are better than ads for "work at home schemes". However it appears that Facebook allows adult ads but strictly prohibits "work from home" products regardless of quality. I personally never endorse companies or products that make claims they can't back. Yet I had an ad for the Internet Marketing Center's Extreme Etool Kit banned because it, (according to the Facebook police), positioned itself as a "work from home" product!
In fact the Internet Marketing Center has been around for over 10 years and has a flawless record of helping website owners create successful online businesses. For those of you not familiar with this product it is a suite of software tools and services that allow you to quickly and easily select an online market and build a profitable website. It goes without saying that as a affiliate for IMC I thought their current promotion with a "double your money back guarantee" was a great deal. I was stumping for it everywhere I could including in Facebook ads. You can learn more about this product here.
You may or may not realize that the most recent Google slap, where Google canceled many advertiser accounts, resulted primarily from United States Federal Trade Commission's implementation of new disclosure guidelines. These guidelines were aimed at the rash of downright fraudulent websites promising huge profits from using Google's advertising tools. These sites often made outlandish claims then took their customers money and ran.
The significant change in the FTC guidelines made all parties profiting from the fraudulent advertising liable for damages. That meant that if Google profited from Adwords ads for these types of sites, they could get pulled into lawsuits for false advertising. Since many, if not most, of the rogue sites made false claims about Google products, it is at least understandable that Google reacted by not allowing landing pages to use the Google name or trademarks and canceled advertiser accounts that appeared to follow that pattern.
To the best of my knowledge Facebook has never been implicated in such schemes. I find their over zealous banning of "work at home" advertising to arbitrarily discriminate against a legitimate growing market of online products. I'm tired of large ad carriers like Google and Facebook slapping and arbitrarily appointing themselves as judge, jury and executioner while discriminating against legal business advertising. It was never the intent of the FTC to ban advertising from specific markets nor was it the intent of the FTC to allow companies "profile" advertisers in a manner reminiscent of racial profiling.
You can place ads on Facebook with a 25 character headline, small images and 135 characters of description. The ads are context sensitive just like Google's. The ads appear in a right hand column of Facebook pages just like Adwords ads appear on the right of Google search pages. The most important difference is that Facebook users are generally not searching for products. Facebook targets the Ads by using the demographics in a Facebook users profile. For example, if you indicated you live in a certain city in your profile you will likely receive ads from businesses in that city. If you indicate an interest in a subject like Internet Marketing your will see those type of ads.
At first look this seems like a great way to advertise. With Facebook passing 500 million users and the ability to laser target ads to your market, how can you go wrong? That's what I thought to until I got the "Facebook Slap"! It appears that even worse than Google, Facebook has a zealous army of ad police that enforce a restrictive a set of polices aimed at keeping the Facebook page real estate arbitrarily "pristine" ??
I added the question marks above because I've never been convinced that ads for the "porn" industry are better than ads for "work at home schemes". However it appears that Facebook allows adult ads but strictly prohibits "work from home" products regardless of quality. I personally never endorse companies or products that make claims they can't back. Yet I had an ad for the Internet Marketing Center's Extreme Etool Kit banned because it, (according to the Facebook police), positioned itself as a "work from home" product!
In fact the Internet Marketing Center has been around for over 10 years and has a flawless record of helping website owners create successful online businesses. For those of you not familiar with this product it is a suite of software tools and services that allow you to quickly and easily select an online market and build a profitable website. It goes without saying that as a affiliate for IMC I thought their current promotion with a "double your money back guarantee" was a great deal. I was stumping for it everywhere I could including in Facebook ads. You can learn more about this product here.
You may or may not realize that the most recent Google slap, where Google canceled many advertiser accounts, resulted primarily from United States Federal Trade Commission's implementation of new disclosure guidelines. These guidelines were aimed at the rash of downright fraudulent websites promising huge profits from using Google's advertising tools. These sites often made outlandish claims then took their customers money and ran.
The significant change in the FTC guidelines made all parties profiting from the fraudulent advertising liable for damages. That meant that if Google profited from Adwords ads for these types of sites, they could get pulled into lawsuits for false advertising. Since many, if not most, of the rogue sites made false claims about Google products, it is at least understandable that Google reacted by not allowing landing pages to use the Google name or trademarks and canceled advertiser accounts that appeared to follow that pattern.
To the best of my knowledge Facebook has never been implicated in such schemes. I find their over zealous banning of "work at home" advertising to arbitrarily discriminate against a legitimate growing market of online products. I'm tired of large ad carriers like Google and Facebook slapping and arbitrarily appointing themselves as judge, jury and executioner while discriminating against legal business advertising. It was never the intent of the FTC to ban advertising from specific markets nor was it the intent of the FTC to allow companies "profile" advertisers in a manner reminiscent of racial profiling.
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