rpsmith

I tend to believe that list building is essential to online marketing. The key to having a profitable list is to create easy to understand and follow content. Not just a collection of sales letters or (as someone said thinly veiled sales material). AS I see it, why not include affiliate links? Maybe not like some have done, but two or three. BUT, the bulk of your messages should not be sales related, but instructional. In situations like this the quality of the content can make or break a list.

Can someone explain Paypal's problem? They seem to g through this cycle every so many years. Campaign to get new vendors to use their services and then start dumping them. Does that make any sense? And no, I don't use GW. YET.

I have found that the best approach to making money online to join an affiliate program. They offer commissions and have prewritten sale materials ready for use.

Sir, there is nothing wrong with a healthy dose of realistic thinking. It helps you see the scams. It can be your seatbelt in a potential financial car crash. Don't be afraid to post.

So very true. I have seen businesses or online games take serious losses because someone posted a negative remark about them. I saw a video on youtube not long ago related to this very subject. In this case, however, the online game owner had friends who exposed the person responsible and his lies.

I can point out a few ideas to help you recognize a scam when you see one. 1) Does it sound too good to be true? 2) Is there more hype than fact? 3) Does the program offer you a membership then an upgrade (by preying your fears of losing out)? 4) Does it promise riches without work (or very little work)? Let me start by saying that I have seen all of the above at one point in time or another. I even fell for some of them. Some like Digital Altitiude and any one of Vick's Strizheus' scams are very polished and seem like they are offering you the world (or get rich quick). BUT, if you pay very close attention to their presentations, you will see that they are scams. Digital Altitude offered licenses (at outrageous prices) for each level of their products. They even offered "coaches" and "mentors" whose main goal was to get you to buy the licenses. Vick offers you traffic generation and list building techniques, but (as I recall and have heard) he does not teach you the nuts and bolts of putting together landing pages, etc. If his offerings were so successful, why do his programs keep shutting down and morphing into something else with a different title? As far as I know, everything he puts out has a short life then morphs. Once I got started with each one, I bailed out and kept my money. WHY? In both of the aforementioned programs, they were using high pressure sales tactics to "force" me to upgrade (and used scare tactics). In both cases, you had to pay lots of money up front just to get started. Finally, there is the work end of this. Anyone who has run an ethical business knows it takes lots of work. Unless you have people who are working for you, you wear all the hats in your business: owner, finance, advertising coordinator, etc. My advice? Stick to clickbank items or share a sale, etc. Build a landing page and a list. It works.

Hi, I have been interested in this type of promotion. Can anyone tell me how/where I could get content for something like this? Thanks.

Hi, I have seen this too. Can anyone share with me the costs involved? Thanks.

I would suggest joining an affiliate program. This is the easiest and fastest way to earn with the added bonus of not having to put any money into it. There are a number of them that will give you a brief course on how to promote. As a friendly suggestion, (if you can afford it) plan an advertising budget and stick to it.

I've been involved in a few things that turned out to be scams. These days, it seems harder to detect them. Their sales pitch is polished and designed to make you want to buy. But, I have learned to keep my eyes open and pay very close attention to details. Sometimes, their polished presentation have the key to exposing their scams. Some of the latest scams out there use your emotions to get you to "upgrade" and use the idea of "do it now or lose out forever." It's a false sense of urgency. There are a couple of them out there that use this type of business model. One changes brand names every few months, but uses the same sales pitch in each one. That, by itself is a major red flag as many of these scammers use the same sales pitch.

I would be very careful of using these payment processors that keep changing their names. It seems to me that they are doing to recreate themselves or hide their former identity (due to legal issues). When I see this kind of thing, I start wondering about their legality or whether or not they are an outright scam. There have been number of payment processors that renamed themselves to avoid any further negativity from their past. Stormpay is one.

I think it may have more to do with wanting to have verifiable email addresses than spam boxes. With services like gmail, they know their messages will get through vs. spam boxes that will auto delete or not get them at all. Just a thought.

There are a couple of issues in this one. First, I can understand his desire to encourage inactive members to become active again. But, not to the point of yelling or threats. There are other far more constructive ways to go about encouraging member to reactivate their accounts or getting active again. Having contests would be one good way to go about it. I can also understand the need to "clean house". I think it's one of the major frustrations related to this industry; inactive members. Again, threats are not the way to go about it. It's also a good way to destroy your reputation online. AS a member of some safelists, etc. I track the ones that are working out for me as far as promotional responses go. The ones that work, I focus on and the ones that are not working I drop. I think a lot of people do this. It's simply a matter of doing business on line. People who are looking to make money, need responsive promotions to make money. I tend to think that alot of exchange owners get into this not really trying to think of ways to encourage member participation, but stick to the "run of the mill scripts". These people need to understand that, in order to succeed, they need to set themselves apart from the rest. I mentioned this before, that this guy obviously does not understand the industry he is involved in. I think, if he did, he would rethink his entire business model. From what I understand, sites like this do not make a great deal of money. Most are lucky to break even. Unless the owner is savvy enough to understand this and use that knowledge to his advantage, he/she will lose money. I agree with the comment above. Focus only on one or two sites. Create a fund to pay members. Use the rest to promote or develop your site (or do both). Keep the ones that are showing promise and sell the others.

Can you say "busted"?

Some PTC's use an outrageous payment for each click. It's always important to ask this simple question: Who can afford to pay $2 or so for each click? When I see stuff like this, I pass right on by.

When looking at the get paid for getting sign ups sites, I automatically think "scam". Think about it this way: Who can afford to pay you $10 per sign up? Especially given that you can get leads for much cheaper.

Disgruntled members maybe? One of the sad parts to any Internet business is that people often post negative remarks for some petty or imagined reason. I recently saw a video about a similar situation except the "complainer" was trying to get stuff he didn't deserve in any sense of the word. Apparently it cost the business owner thousands of subscribers.

People start these sites in the hopes of "making it big" and later find out how tough it is to make it. I agree with the comment above. If you are selling a service, you really need to be on top of your game and deliver quality work on time. Failure in either area will result in disaster. It's important to realize that you may not make a lot in the beginning, but if you delivery quality work (and on time), your reputation will grow. I would also suggest having upsell items to offer as well.

Hi, can anyone out there who knows anything about wordpress help me? I am trying to provide my members with the means to promote affiliate links. I have tried to use the text area coding to display the code they are to edit and use on their site. It is not working correctly and I am looking for an alternative means to the same end. Is there another way to display the code without it showing the image? Thanks, Ryan

I would be very cautious about spending my money on these sites.Speaking for myself, these here again, gone again sites make me suspicious. When they disappear the first time, it might be issues with hosting or something, but more than once seems fishy.

You bring up a good point You bring up a good point. Many are not savvy enough to learn the ins and outs of this industry and do not realize the value of free members. In some cases, it has been the free members who have been the most active in recruiting. The "paid members" (in my opinion) are not quite so active in their recruiting efforts and are along for the ride. I am speaking in general terms of course., I realize there are exceptions to this. I was one who did not fare well in my ownership of TE's and Text Ads Exchanges. I sold them at a loss, but learned many valuable lessons in the process. P.S. Owners that send out threatening messages usually wind up losing big time and in the long run. I have seen a few that did so and tried to come back later. From the ones I can remember, they didn't make it the second or third time either. They succeeded in doing one thing: trashing their reputation.

I got involved with one of these sites some time ago. Built up my clicks, did everything they told me to do. When I tried to cash out, nothing. I had four cash out requests with them and no payment. I contacted their admin and got a nasty remark about being patient and that I would get paid when it was my turn. Still nothing. I stopped having anything to do with them after that. Ironically enough they are still around scamming people.

It seems like there are a number of "solo ads providers" out there. They seem to either send to their own membership or send to "lists". I would suggest that, before you join any of them and engage their services, check them out. Do your due diligence and find out as much as you can about them. It may save you some grief and otherwise wasted money in the end. One of the things that has bothered me about this industry is that I seem to be seeing the same people come up with repackaged versions of the same idea. Anybody got any thoughts on this?

Were you asking for someone's opinion on this?

You have to pay to promote them? What a rip off! To me, that is a scam and rip off!