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Archive for November, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving!

November 26th, 2009 No comments

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I am very thankful to all of you, my faithful readers, twitter followers, mailinglist subscribers and downline members.

Without you, my online business would not exist, and I know that many many of you say the same about me.

I am thankful for the opportunity you guys have given me to learn from you, and with you. The opportunity you give me to better shape my own business by learning of yours and your needs. The opportunity you give me to meet new people, through yourselves. And, of course, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thankful for the commissions that you generate for me directly, and indirectly through your own hard work :-D .

Next month (New Year’s time) I’ll go into the bit about how I hope we’ll grow together over the next year to build ourselves and outdo ourselves, but the truth is that between now and then is the hottest part of the civil year in many many markets – so I hope that in the short period of time before the end of next month, we use the time wisely to build our businesses and position ourselves for the new year.

I know I’ve got lots of big plans for the next month, and hope that you’ll all be a part of it.

So for those who celebrate it, have a happy and meaningful thanksgiving!

Jason James is at it again! (Time to upgrade my autoresponder subscription!)

November 18th, 2009 1 comment

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It’s that time of year again.  Jason James is (finally!) doing another Greedy Giveaway.  I wait breathlessly for this once-or-twice-a-year event because since the 2nd (I missed the first) they ALWAYS build a hot list for me.

They’re also dirt cheap, generous on commissions, and massive events (several thousand members each time)

Heck, I didn’t even know who Jason was until I signed up (without upgrading!) to the Greedy Giveaway 2 back in summer ’08 and saw an odd site giving me masses of signups and went back to see what the heck the greedygivaway.com site was – I’d forgotten that I was even a contributor, and hadn’t promoted AT ALL, and couldn’;t understand why I was getting 100 signups to my sites in a week.

The second time around I’d upgraded and promoted, and…  Well, suffice it to say that it paid off BIG TIME!

Want your few hundred subscribers?  Get started by signing up for free, here.

OH yeah, I almost forgot this insane twist that Jason’s added this time.  I personally think he’s a bit off his rocker, and he’s gonna LOSE money on this, so you might want to join and lock in the deal before he comes to his senses, but he’s giving $1 away for EVERY SINGLE active contributor you bring on board, on top of the normal commissions.

I don’t want to miss out on that – sign me up!

Oh yeah – one last thing is you’ve only got a week to get in before the contributors doors close for good, so don’t waste time!

See you on the inside (hopefully hundreds of subscribers “richer” ;) ),

Why I almost cried! …And why that’s good for everyone else!

November 16th, 2009 No comments

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Before I got around to crying, I think I set a world record for saying “Wow!” yesterday.  The occasion certainly deserved it; my good buddys Paul Kinder, Jon Olson and Tim Linden invited me to take a sneak preview of their recently relaunched TE Toolbox, and…..  WOW!!!

Let me clarify: many of you know of my smart rotator system, called The Traffic Optimizer.  I won’t go into details of what exactly it does (you can look at a demo here if you really want.  I’ll wait.  Ready to go on?)  Anyway, I spent years perfecting the system.  It’s got ranked weights on the sites.  It’s got subrotators.  It’s got the ability to filter the views on the websites shown so that members of a given site don’t see ads for that site… EVER!  It’s hosted on Google’s network of servers so that the images and audios go lightning fast.  It’s got my own state-of-the-art tracking system.

It is, in short, what took me from a hobbiest with a list of 150 or so, to a pro with a name and face that the Gurus in the industry know and respect, a list of over 2,500, and a monthly residual income of hundreds of dollars.  Every month.

And I just threw half of it out the window.  Because TE Toolbox trumped me BIG TIME!  And the best part is that I can benefit from almost every single feature I mentioned above at TE Toolbox for less than 500 dollars!  Less than 100 dollars!  Heck, less than 100 quarters!

Want me to keep going?

Less than 100 nickels…  Or 100 pennies…  Or even 1 penny…

That’s right, free, non-premium-upgraded members DO get to play with the premium toys!

* Every link you send can be fully tracked right through to signup – even if you are a free member!
* Options to set the rotator to include frames, or have no frames, making it 100% advertisement-free – even if you are a free member!
* You don’t get one splash and squeeze page maker, you get TWO – even if you are a free member!
* You get to add your own sounds or speech hosted on a worldwide-spanning content network for lightning fast display – even if you are a free member!
* You can host 5 pictures or images on the same robust content network as the audios – even if you are a free member!
* You can earn great commissions from your downline – even if you are a free member!

I almost cried when I counted the hours and dollars that I’ve spent over the past 2 years and planned on selling for hundreds of dollars per month – and people have been BEGGING for my system at ANY price – only to see Paul, Tim and Jon go behind my back and spill the beans for NOTHING per month with TE Toolbox!

It’s so good, even *I’m* using their tools already!  And I haven’t even found the time to finish looking at all of the great features, yet, like the downline builder, the profit-pounding thank-you-offer rotator, the deluze banner rotator, the innovative site filtering, the incredible statistics interface with instant up-to-date results, 3 months history and sortable interface!

Whew!

what the heck are you STILL doing reading this?  Go join TE Toolbox now!

Go away.  Stop reading.  You’re wasting precious marketing time!

PS.  OK, ok.  You’re going to be a treasure hunter, eh?  OK – here’s the deal, but let’s keep it quiet, ok?  After you sign up, you’re going to be offered an incredible one year top-level upgrade… for less than 3 figures!  And if that’s too much, there’s a monthly upgrade available for under 10 bucks…  But you’ve GOT to take it when you sign up, or pay more later on!  I won’t even tell you how much, because it’s just not as good a deal as this!  But remember – despite this being a steal, you’ll lose far more by not using the incredible free features now, than waiting to upgrade later.

Join TE Toolbox right this minute!

My $0.02 on SPDY

November 15th, 2009 No comments

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The whole online community is a-buzz on the experimental SPDY protocol (pronounced Speedy) recently proposed by Google.  I’ve been holding myself in since I heard about it, and want to set the record straight on a few things.  I know that a lot of people from my marketing blog won’t really get this, and a lot of traffic stumbling on this won’t appreciate the rest of my blog (which just kinda sucks for you guys) but here’s my geeky response to all of the hubbub.

First of all, please stop writing about how SPDY is going to replace HTTP.  It’s not.  It’s mostly  going to wrap HTTP.  RTFM folks, it says so black and white in the 2nd question in the FAQ there.

Second of all, the server push, and server hints have been something that I’ve been talking about for years.  I’ve had some conversations with Roy Fielding about that (go Google his name if you don’t know it) and the answer was always to not do it.  There are very few cases where it will really help and in most of those cases that will require caching and/or pre-processing of the original or primary resource server-side.

Third of all, the Apache HTTP Server community addressed the lengthy headers a years ago.  A replacement protocol called WAKA was mentioned.  I’ve yet to see someone pick up that gauntlet but if the folks at Google care so much, why don’t you use that instead of adding mandatory compression around the whole protocol.

Fourthly, to all you small webmasters who are drooling over the speed boosts, did you notice that every web site now needs SSL?  The IP isn’t a problem, as I assume that SPDY-enabled servers and clients will also be SNI-enabled, but that does mean shelling out money for signed certs on every single website, based on my understanding of the SPDY proposal.  And if the server/clients are NOT forced to be SNI, then SPDY is going to pollute the IP space – which might actually be a good thing if it forces more widespread adoption of IPv6 ;)

Finally, I have to wonder about the timing of the announcement.  The fact that there are already beta clients and servers suggest that announcing this a few weeks earlier would likely have been possible.  If so, why deliberately wait until a week AFTER the larget opensource HTTP server’s semi-annual conference to announce it, instead of flying Google’s top folks over to Oakland to talk about it with some of the biggest people in the webserver community?  It just seems… odd… to me.

In conclusion, I think that SPDY has potential.  Google can “pull a Microsoft” and shove the protocol down our throats one way or another if they really want to, but is it really justified?

My Secret Signup Weapon

November 15th, 2009 1 comment

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Today, I want to share with you the secret weapon I’ve been using to generate incredible amounts of signups – with a whopping 20% conversion rate!

For those of you who are getting training from me, you’ll know that at the end, I talk about using blogs, forums and social media as a continual source of leads for whatever you do online. Well, 2 months ago, a new hot traffic exchange called Hitsilo launched, and boy has it been a gold mine! Not for the traffic exchange (necessarily), and not for the banner exchange either. But for the social networking community there.

You see, I’ve been leveraging the ability to communicate with all of the members there to generate massive amounts of signups to programs that I promote.

Before I explain how I do it, let me quickly mention what I do not do. I do not just spam hundreds of users per day. I also do not just send them a sales pitch.

What I do is actually browse the contacts there to find out about them. Their photo, their username, sometimes their name, and sometimes their blogs/comments. I can also see when they signed up, what level member they are (which tells me if they’re already spending money) and in many cases, if they’ve been actively surfing lately.

I then use a template message (always use a template, just so that you can track how well they work, let alone to avoid typing for hours), and modify it for the user I’m sending it to, based on what I’ve learned. I’ll use the message to communicate with the user and empathize with them by relating with them on a personal level.

Then, I’ll offer my program as a gift, or thank-you token. After a genuine personal message, this will usually go over much better, and will increase my conversion rate. I make sure that the sales or signup funnel that they see matches my gift offer as much as possible.

Also, by not mass sending these – I usually don’t do more than 25 a day, which over a membership of 250% more than that – it means that I’m only hitting a fraction of a percent of membership base a day, in the hopes to not upset the people (or admins) by over-abusing the system.

Also, the fact that I myself am upgraded shows that I put my money where my mouth is, and am not trying to scam people into spending money where I myself won’t.

This has really worked great for me and with a little out-of-the-box thinking, I’m sure you can do the same – or better!