Youtube for advertising

Check out my new Youtube advertisment below:




Rather than make some long boring presentation I decided to try the 'TV advertising' principle. Basically it is a very condensed version of my website showing the core of my program. As a result of this and the web page of the same name on my website I have more than doubled my signups.

What exactly is a scam?

Identifying and avoiding scams within Internet marketing is key to being able to be successful. So first of all how do we define a scam?

Starting with the dictionary definition ; Scam - trick, swindle, fraud or a story or rumour.

These are all negative words but they do not convey the damage that is done to the victims of a scam. Not only in terms of financial loss (which can be extensive) but more importantly in loss of confidence and self belief.

So how do we spot a scam? Actually this is not that easy, particularly within the online world. This is largely due to the fact that almost anyone can produce a great looking website with convincing arguments to invest in their system. So if they are hard to spot by just looking at the surface, how do we avoid getting 'sucked' into the hype.

The only two tools that we have at our disposal are own own common sense and time.

Common Sense:

1. Use your head not your heart.
2. Do not spend more than you can afford to lose.
3. Research the system in question.
4. Ignore any testimonials unless they can be independently verified.
5. Understand how the revenue is generated.
6. Remember that there really are no get rich schemes.

Time:

1. If this is a new system be wary.
2. revisit the site a few days / weeks or even months later. If its still going strong then perhaps you can go ahead.

I know that some of these are obvious and that some seem extreme. This list is not exhaustive so you will always need to be on your guard. I do understand that it's easy to get swept along with the hype and promise of easy money (it's happened to me and in hindsight they are easy to avoid).

Personal recommendations are generally OK as long as you do actually know where they're coming from.

So the old saying of "buyer beware" has never been more apt.

Finally if you check out my previous post you'll see how I use these principles for my own system. On my main site I actively encourage potential prospects to investigate, and I also provide measures for people to make their own judgements and encourage them to revisit my site when they are ready. I also show advertisements on this blog that may illustrate some of the issues discussed here. As always comments on this or any subject are welcome.

The 30 second cash machine

I have discovered a new way of promoting my system.

Over the last few weeks I have been adding and amending my website to help with the content and increase the information that it contains. This is good as the content is now quite comprehensive. However, it suddenly struck me that my site had become a little too complex to capture some prospects. I thought about how to reduce the content whilst not compromising on the quality of the site.

Then I had an idea, I needed a short site that contains just the 'core essentials' of my downline building program. So I constructed a short page and called it my 30 second cash machine. The reason for the name is to try and highlight how quick the page can be read and understood. Effectively this is like a commercial for my main page.

The page can be seen here : Cash Machine

The other thing it helps me do is promote a couple of my downline members who help me recruit and build the downlines. This allows an even more effective (and faster) program than ever before.

More promotion for my own downline

My philosophy for helping my downline members by recruiting for them is working well. In fact its been so successful that I'm going to add them to my blog.

Starting in April I'm planning to directly promote some of my downline members on this blog. The intention is to update the page weekly to help my newest recruits build up their own downlines quickly. This benefits them as well as me and allows them to be more proactive in recruiting online for themselves. The old saying that 'success breeds success' is definitely true. It is much easier to gain new prospects when you can show them you own success.

All I need to do now is try and find a suitable format for presenting the links. I may even present it in 'league' format so that visitors can decide which links they would like to follow.

The advantages to this system are low cost and low maintenance. We also build a community spirit to help each other.

Do I need a new Blog ?

Although I've only had this blog running for a short time I have already learnt a lot. I am seriously considering moving to my own hosted blog system. Most likely I will use Wordpress to help with my online marketing campaign.

It seems that this will give the one of the best ways to extend my blog, promote my program and generate advertising revenue (all good things in my view). I presume the down side is its a little harder to set up and get running. Hopefully the benefits out weigh the difficulties.

If anyone who reads this has any views on what systems work then I'll be interested in getting some feedback.

Adsense update - why use it?

This is just a quick update to say that if you're in need of earning a few extra dollars then Adsense from Google is the way to go. Even though this blog has only been running for one month and with only a few visitors initially. I have made around $4 from the small amount of adsense links on this page.

I know that $4 dollars is not that great. I'm hoping to at least double it each month from now on.

You might ask, why do I even advertise similar or even rival opportunities on my blog? Well it's simple really. I believe that my system enhances the approach taken by most other sites. The easiest way to independently verify this is to display the competitions sites. If you see some links that look interesting then by all means try them out (bookmark this page first though!).

I believe that when you have seen how I help my downline members on my site - www.success2009.info and then check out some of the others sites that generally don't, you'll come back and take advantage of my program. If you happen to find a better system then that's great as well (if that happens let me know!). Either way you benefit, which is why you came to my site in the first place.

The by-product of this of course is some extra income. Over the next few weeks I will be investigating this further and in four weeks time I will publish my latest findings. I'm hoping that this will show all visitors how it has worked out for me and maybe inspire some of you to succeeding with me.

Are the free traffic exchanges of any use to you?

The biggest problem in getting exposure to your site is getting high traffic volume right? Wrong, the biggest problem in getting exposure to your site is getting the right sort of traffic. Or, to put it another way what would you prefer? Ten thousand visitors who are uninterested in what your promoting or 10 visitors who will all sign up to your program.

What is important here is to understand the quality of the visitors that you do get. With this in mind I'm going to try and answer the question: Are the free traffic exchanges of any use to you?
Before I try and answer this question I think I'd better mention that (as with all Internet advertising) there are no definitives. Everyone's experience or 'expertise' is subjective. In short if you show an advert to enough people at random you will get some sales, that's just the law of averages. However, most marketeers would like to stack the odds in their favour (at least a little bit anyway!). On the face of it the free traffic exchanges offer you the chance to promote your site with like minded people who will be interested in what your saying. The problem is that
what makes this look like a good idea is also generally the downside. Nearly everyone on the traffic exchange is more interested in promoting their own site rather than joining your system. There are new visitors to the traffic exchanges each day but this is a relatively low number in comparison. If you have enough 'clout' with online marketing you can 'flood' the traffic exchanges with great looking capture pages. I'm sure that you will have see the same pages in many places by now. If you're just starting out the promise of free advertising may look irresistible. I found that the time and effort needed to get enough exposure through this route was too difficult to maintain over any period of time. I tried paying the membership fees to buy 'credits' but this also had little impact on my success.

In conclusion I think that there are only two ways to get the quality of prospects to your site that you require.

1. Spend time working on your website, make it content rich, make it relevant, update it regularly, promote it with links and also work on the search engine optimization.
2. Pay for targeted advertising. Only use well recognized companies who specialize in this field.

Using this technique you will get the prospects who are looking for your type of product and they will be fresh i.e. they will have not come from a 'pool' of current marketeers.

So, to answer the original question, are the free traffic exchanges of any use to you.....Maybe.

As I said before its a numbers game. Probably they are of little practical use but they certainly can't hurt. I certainly have gained prospects from them in the past but in comparatively low numbers when judged against more targeted (and expensive) methods.

More on website promotion - paid traffic.

For the last week or so I have been trying a new experiment. Paying for traffic to my site. Perhaps its a little early as yet but the results so far are dissappointing. Certainly my traffic counter has started going up more often but my number of sales remains the same.

In a few weeks time I should be able to publish my conclusions for all types of web promotion that I have used along with my opinions of the systems that I have tried.

Shortly I will be re-trying an old favorite - Google's Adwords. This is the most expensive of all the options but has served well in the past. Lets see if its still as effective today.

We'll see what happens.

Are the free traffic exchanges worth the effort?

When I first started in internet marketing I discovered free traffic exchanges. I thought wow! FREE advertising, I'll do really great. I then spent every spare moment adding credits to my traffic exchanges in the belief that that I would get loads of web traffic and leads delivered to my site. Whilst I got loads of hits to my website I got no actual prospects or valid leads. After a few weeks of trying I gave up this line of advertising.

Since then I have learnt a lot. What you really need to succeed are people who are actually interested in your own site or opportunity. These are the real leads that you need on your site.

Now forward wind to the present, as an experiment I retried some more traffic exchanges to see if my theory was correct....free traffic exchanges are full of like minded people trying to find leads for their own programs. Apart from a very small minority of new customers everyone surfing these sites are doing what I used to do, building credits for their own advertising.

So, what I do different these days is pay for fresh targeted advertising to attract people that are interested in what I am doing. That way I get a great conversion rate which has proved to be really cost effective.

If you disagree with my viewpoint then try some traffic exchanges for yourself. It certainly is a numbers game and you will (eventually) pick up new prospects but it can be a long process requiring a lot of patience.

I will write more on this in a few weeks after trying some other options. I'll be interested in other peoples viewpoint. Perhaps I just used the wrong exchanges.