Internet Marketing For Newbies

I know I said the next post would be on PPC but I received an email Saturday that quite frankly, got me so hot I wanted to climb through the screen and throttle the guy. I wanted to tell you about this experience so that you might avoid the same mistakes. I decided to wait a few says before posting so as the post would not be dripping with venom.

SO, what got me so upset?

I WAS on this gentleman email list and he sent me this email:

I’m always in the market for PLR content, especially if it has Master Rights, so when I received this well written and to the point email I clicked on his link.

The first issue I had with him is that after I clicked on his link and his sales page came up I was greeted with a PopOver. A popover is the same thing as a popup except you can’t block it. This popover used Background Shading so that the web page became darken and the popover was front and center. Although there is a healthy debate about popovers in the IM field, I have no problem with them. However, this popover gave the user NO choice. There was no way to close out if the user didn’t want to opt-in, you either filled out your name and email address or you left the site.

Note: If you use popovers ALWAYS give the end user a way to opt-out, most have a close icon in the upper right corner.

Wanting the PLR I filled out the popover using an email address I check once a month or so. This brought back the sales page. I look at the first 5 or so then I proceeded to follow his instruction and scrolled to the bottom, click on his download link then entered the code I was given.

The next thing that happen was I was taken to PayPal. My eyes jumped right to the total and it was $0.00 so I started to enter my PayPal password then STOPPED. Something wasn’t right, why would you go to a PayPal page for $0.00 and not right to the download page? I then started to read the entire page.

The second line of the invoice stated that I would be charged starting next month $147 a month for access to his site.

NO where and I mean NO where was anything said about a membership fee! Maybe in his sales letter, but he said to bypass the sales letter by scrolling down to the bottom.

Let’s be frank… If you put up a site that doesn’t look good or there is allot of typos in your content, that looks bad on  YOU. If you pull a stunt like this guy did to trick the consumer into something, THAT MAKES ALL INTERNET MARKETERS LOOK BAD!

Don’t use your talents as an Internet Marketer to swindle someone. It will come back to bite you in the butt and again, it makes us ALL look bad.

Ok, I’m getting off my soap box now. I promise to talk about PPC in the next post.

Till then…

Well, sort of. I bought Blogging to the Bank 3.0 thinking it was just updated and if I learned one or two new things it would be worth the money. I didn’t expect what I found. This little (58 pages) eBook is packed with on topic information and little to no fluff! Personally, if I see fluff, I move on. I just don’t have that kind of time. So, Blogging to the Bank 3.0 has past my first two major hurdles.

1. Must be recently updated or new - What worked last year may not work today!
2. NO fluff - Not enough time in a day to be reading dribble

Here are some of the topics within this eBook:

• Market Research & Keyphrase Lists
• Creating Your Blog
• Optimizing Your Blog
• Content
• Promotion & Backlinks
• Advanced SEO Techniques
• Web 2.0 Strategies
• Outsourcing & Building Your Blog Empire
• Selling Your Blog

There’s more but you get the idea.

I can definitely recommend Blogging To The Bank 3.0 for Newbie’s and even experienced IMers. In the next few weeks when I get some free time, I plan on putting BTTB 3.0 to work. I’m going to follow it step by step and see how well it performs.

Right now I’m still working on my last two projects, ExtensiveInfo.com and BestRealSpyGear.com and I’m taking an Pay-Per-Click Marketing Accreditation Course from Wealthy Affiliate University. More on the PPC course in my next post.

Till then…

BestRealSpyGear.com went live 11/07/08. To promote the site I did the following:

• I bookmarked the site on 16 Web 2.0 sites using OnlyWire
• I posted BRSG (Best Real Spy Gear) on Google , Yahoo and MSN’s WebMaster tools along with my sitemap.
• I started submitting to directories using Directory Submitter and I continue doing this every day (around 10 per day) for several weeks.

Well, I’m happy to say I got BayRSS plugin to work. The last remaining issue (with my host provider not BayRSS) was resolved this morning. I use HostGator and their new security policy kept the bidnow.php file from working. I sent them a service ticket and they made the changes I needed.

Here’s a copy of their email to me:

—
The issue was that one of our newly added Mod_Security rules on the server was blocking the manner in which your script operates.

I have whitelisted your domain for this rule and you should no longer see any issues.

If you need other domains whitelisted for the bidnow script, just let us know!
—
So, if you install this plugin and you get a 404 error when clicking on the auction link, just send support a ticket and they will take care of it.

Well, sort of . This is the affiliate site I’ve mentioned in several post. I’m still working on the auction section of the site but hope to have it up by tonight. I purchased BayRSS WP plugin for the auction area and it’s proven to be a challenge. The plugin itself is pretty nice in that it will do what I need it to do. However, the learning curve for this plugin is pretty steep, mainly because of the poor documentation that comes with it. I find myself flipping between the doc’s and the forum to figure out how to use the tags (plugin is tag driven).

Real Spy Gear was the name I was after but as luck would have it that domain name was taken, thus, BestRealSpyGear.com . Real Spy Gear is one of my keywords so I wanted to work it into the domain for the site. The site handles spy gear (duh) as well as Self Defense non-lethal weapons (stun guns, mace, etc..) and products to help protect your home.

To monetize the site I used three affiliate suppliers that will handle all the orders. I’m also using  clickbank, adsense, eBay and at some point  I’ll add Amazon to the mix. Over the weekend I’ll spend some time promoting the site. I’ll do a separate post on how I went about it.

I bought a ebook that I’m still reading and so far it seems to be pretty good. Once I’ve finished reading it, I’ll write a post on it and give you my opinion on it.

Till next time…