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Archive for February, 2009

The Dark Side of Marketing

Feb 23
Business, Current Events

Welcome back! Have you joined my mailing list yet?

We all know the real reason that we’ve started trying to make money online. The whole purpose of our venture is to, well, make money online! Of course, nobody really gets into business who doesn’t expect to get some kind of gain from their efforts.

But what about people who rip others off? What about the idiots who use innocent affiliate marketers to scam people out of their hard earned cash?

Yes, this kind of thing goes on. It’s unfortunate to think that there are many of us who unwittingly cause people to hurt. Where am I going with this?

Acai diet plans. No, I have not done any marketing of this all-too-popular product. Do they work? According to many major media outlets it is a fine product. The problem comes in during the billing process, it seems. That free trial ends up costing lots of money.

What does that mean to us?
For many affiliate marketers, nothing. We generate a lead and the actual sale is between the customer and the company. All we do is send people toward the product.

I would recommend that all of you who are marketing Acai berry diets watch this video. The ‘best’ part is when they try to ask questions of the company that is selling the product and they just scatter like roaches and start slamming doors. Frankly, it looks like some kind of drug raid, even though the company is supposedly a legit company.

Come on. We all know that honest businessmen and women DO NOT act this way.

I am bringing this up as just something to think about. I’m sure we all have marketed things we didn’t use or recommend ourselves. Hey, we are into making sales with a broad selection of products and services to market. The more the merrier. This stuff that happens may not be our fault, but it is unfortunate that we could get mixed up in this kind of crap.

Anyway, what do you do when you find out that a product that you have helped to sell or a company that you have helped promote has been unethical with their customers?

 


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Win 500 EC from Project: Sugarbuzz!

Feb 18
Contests, entrecard

I’ve decided to have a contest. Unfortunately, I don’t have the hookups to give away snazzy prizes like iPods or laptops. Heck, if I had a good laptop, I’d keep it.

On the other hand, if you use Entrecard, you may be in luck!

I am giving away 500 EC credits to a random mailing list subscriber! All you have to do is join my mailing list. On March 1st, I will randomly select a winner and send 500 credits to their Entrecard account.

You’d better get started! This should be an easy contest!

Oh, and do leave a comment if you are entering…it’s nice to hear from people once in a while!

Bonus: If you subscribe to the newsletter AND grab our RSS feed, you can also win a 14 pack of PHP scripts AND a copy of Auto-Content Pro with MRR!

 


If you like these posts and want to stay in the loop, please subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on Twitter. And if you really like this stuff, you can buy me a coffee! Oh, and if you like being an insider, be sure to join the mailing list...I never spam, but you will get some insider specials!

 

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Affiliate Marketing Via Twitter

Feb 16
marketing, twitter

I’m sure that there are tons of web-savvy affiliate marketers that are already using Twitter to push their offers to the masses. In fact, I have even started doing this as well. My question is this: do you feel that using Twitter to market stuff is ethical?

Personally, I see nothing wrong with using Twitter. It’s easier to maintain a list of followers than it is to run a mailing list, and opting out is easy for people who do not want to be bombarded by messages – they simply unfollow your sorry marketing butt.

Also, finding potential customers is far easier when using Twitter. You simply have to follow people, and the ones that stick are your ’subscribers’. I would recommend using Twitter Karma to unfollow all of those people who just aren’t cool enough to follow you back.

Another tip that is working for me as far as getting followers (which worked enormously well a couple of weeks ago on @wwstewart) is to find someone who is using Twitter in a similar way (for example: marketing freebies, blog updates, you get the idea) and follow the living crap out of all of their followers. Odds are, a lot of them will stick around.

Twitter may not bring you the most targeted audience in the world, but if you are smart when selecting people to follow, you can make it more effective and accurate when it comes to marketing stuff.

As for the ethics of it all, I’m pretty sure that there are a few affiliate networks who do not want to see their links strewn about the Twitterverse. While I personally see nothing wrong with driving traffic via Twitter, be sure to read your Terms of Service with your affiliate networks before launching into the marketing abyss.

What do you think? Have you used Twitter for evil marketing purposes?

 


If you like these posts and want to stay in the loop, please subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on Twitter. And if you really like this stuff, you can buy me a coffee! Oh, and if you like being an insider, be sure to join the mailing list...I never spam, but you will get some insider specials!

 

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It’s Valentine’s Day. Again.

Feb 14
Funny, Rant

Once again the world is faced with a decision: chocolates which will induce the ‘does this make me look fat’ genes into firing off a slavo of loaded questions, or flowers…which will die? Either way, if you want to save a few bucks this year, why not get her something that will be far more valuable in the long run (and less troublesome)? Yes, you should buy her some gold.

I’m not trying to sell you any gold, although I probably should. I’m just doing my job to point out the idiocy of this whole VD debacle. You have one day out of the whole freaking year to tell/show someone that you care about them by spending your hard earned cash on something that will be absolutely devoid of value in days, if not minutes, and they raise the prices on you poor suckers who think that you can just get buy with showing affection once per year!

This is the part where I throw my head back and ROFL.

Of course, I’m not always doom-and-gloom. It just happens that VD is my least favorite day of the year. Yeah, it’s a tradition.

But this year, thanks to those wonderful people at NeverblueAds, I have something positive for you. Actually, it’s in their ‘daily news’ box, right there on the left when you sign in to your account.

What? You don’t have an account with NeverblueAds? Perhaps you should check them out. Here’s a link to NeverblueAds for you!

Anyway, here’s their thing. Oh, and do sign up with NBA. They are a great affiliate program.

Neverblue’s Valentine’s Day Tips!!
1. Don’t Forget!
2. Don’t buy any kitchen appliances (or anything practical).
3. Do NOT do the same thing you did last year!
4. Don’t break up with your significant other on this day.
5. Don’t brag about how good your gift is, and DON’T get her a panic gift (she will know.)
6. Don’t ever talk about your ex and what you did with them last Valentine’s Day.
7. Have Fun!
8. Cook for her!
9. Anything personal is better than something material, because you don’t have to spend a lot of money for it to mean something!
10. Always remember, be with the one’s you love!

 


If you like these posts and want to stay in the loop, please subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on Twitter. And if you really like this stuff, you can buy me a coffee! Oh, and if you like being an insider, be sure to join the mailing list...I never spam, but you will get some insider specials!

 

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SwagBucks: How I Get Free Amazon Gift Cards

Feb 11
Free Stuff

Free things are always good, in my opinion. Especially if they are free things that are actually useful.

I wanted to pass this along to my readers. In the past, I had been an avid user of MySearchFriends. Well, more or less. I never did hit payout (which was 50 euros), and eventually I just gave up. Partially because I felt that even if I did make it to the payout threshold, I had my doubts as to whether or not they would actually fork over the cash (after reading quite a few negative reviews on the net about them).

I haven’t totally abandoned hope on them, but I have found a program that works faster and easier. And frankly, since I’ve already claimed (and spent) one prize from them, I can safely say they are worth a look.

SwagBucks essentially rewards users for searching through their service. You can do this a couple of different ways (either their web portal or via their FireFox search integration – which I prefer). The way it works is when you search, you are rewarded with SwagBucks, which can be traded in for prizes of varying value, all the way from things like single baseball cards up to guitars and other high-dollar prizes. Just a note, you don’t get them for every search that you make. It is rather random, but still steady. I would say that I earn at least one for every ten searches or so. Once, I even got a 20 SwagBucks reward. That was pretty awesome, especially since that one search was almost half of what I needed to cash in on the Amazon gift card.

My first prize was a $5 gift card from Amazon.com (which I immediately blew on a DVD – America: Freedom to Fascism). This prize requires 45 swag points, which, if you search every day, will come rather quickly.

You definitely should check out SwagBucks. It is a great way to add free money to your Amazon account.

 


If you like these posts and want to stay in the loop, please subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on Twitter. And if you really like this stuff, you can buy me a coffee! Oh, and if you like being an insider, be sure to join the mailing list...I never spam, but you will get some insider specials!

 

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