affordwealth

A very interesting subject. I have to confess - I like TEs and don't like surfing, so I'm trying to get credits from referrals mostly and using special sales. My personal preferences (some of my favorite TEs don't fit) 1. Paying commissions even to free members 2. As little of distracting stuff as possible. I'm trying to do business, not play games, either in TEs or in my personal life. 3. The design doesn't look like it was done for 4-year old. Unfortunately there was a period (that didn't end yet and probably will never end) when everybody seemed to compete for the most infantile design.

By the way, one of the best traffic exchanges I know of is Traffic Monsoon: http://affordablewealth.com/tramon/tm-as-tex700.jpg

There is a lot in between the smell of money and money in your account. One of the successful but pretty deceiving ways to advertise is to create the smell of money without the way to get to the money. I've seen so many of these "baits" or "mouse traps" (and, shame on me, was deceived by some) in my long years (on and off) in Network Marketing.

I do use TEs and Mailers a lot, but I do a minimum of surfing in TEs (almost none), relying instead on referrals to earn credits. Almost don't use Safelists , with Mailers also refer for credits, sometimes look through emails but not much> The way to use free advertising is to know what will work and what won't. Advertising traffic and tools for traffic (free) works well. Advertising paid programs is almost always a waste of credits. I've just started Solo ads (not those that go to the same safelists and mailers, the rate is better, but no real spenders) Ordered a total of about 250 clicks from Udimi - much better, but costs. I've had some success with paid programs there.

@oldbuddy - I do agree with most of what you said, although I see a lot of junk sold and sold. And about gold nuggets, they have a tendency to hide in crap. In other words, when you think that you've found a jewel in 95% - you are actually searching in 100%.

Just came across this topic. I know that videos work great and I use them. Nevertheless I myself don't like them and every time I come across a video, I automatically look for text information. I'm from a readers' generation. There are very few videos that combine good presentation with good content. Either one of those is suffering or both. And long presentations most of the time just bore me. I don't want to listen to the speaker's life story, descriptions of how poor and broke he/she was, and then found somebody who revealed a secret, and how many millions they made after they got this secret, and so it goes, until in the end of an hour you get a sales pitch selling you the same priceless secret. Life webinars are even worse. With recorded videos I at least can jump over the boring staff. I'm afraid that this post will be perceived as a complete rejection of all videos and webinars. Not at all. About 5% of them are good, so with time I've developed a skill in recognizing good stuff in the first minute or so. 5% is kinda magical number. It comes from a so called Theodor Sturgeon Law that in simplified form goes like that: "95% of everything is crap" More about this universal law later.

I surf very rarely these days, only when there is a requirement (like 25 pages to activate or similar). My credits in about 30 traffic exchanges come mostly from referring members. There are some downline building services (like Traffic Hoopla) that can help you to refer. I'm trying now TrafficProfit Pro, I guess it's not fair to give you my referral link here. To early to praise or put down - I'll let you know.

I agree with Edwal, I joined Lead Lightning more than a year ago, made some money with it and got some very good buyer leads from it. Now about the Gold membership - I've looked at a couple of feeders, liked them a lot. They used full Power Lead System as an engine. At first I didn't like the cost and was considering to build similar feeders with my other tools. Pretty soon I've discovered that the time needed to put it together would cost me much more than $54 a month. So I've upgraded. PLS has some flaws, but the main benefit is that they have it all tied together. If you just want to clone somebody's funnel, you get the code and will have everything workeing in half an hour. I never promoted PLS separately, just Lead Lightning, but lately the response to Lead Lightning went down dramatically. Considering that the feeders I use have PLS as a necessary part, PLS got promoted very much by itself. It doesn't cost me any money anymore.

I also doing practically everything myself and often wish that I could delegate some. My programming skills are like Swiss cheese - with a lot of holes in them. Nothing to brag about, but here are some of my creations: http://azadboard.com http://hotlinkcycler.com http://adviralizer.com http://cashinonbanners.com

Thanks Darren! I'm in most of your programs, some of them for several years. I always valued the designs and features, they are never "of the shelf" and in very good taste comparing to the majority of lousy infantile designs prevailing on the market.

Great, I've had practically the same experience with USA Lead Club, with almost the same wording of the responses. You can see my response earlier on this discussion. As I've said, I've received a refund from them after I've sent them clips from my tracker even without my asking for it.

The ratio of the pages you browse to the displays of your page is so bad that I personally never have time for it. I get TE credits either from referrals or special sales. Having a TE downline builder in my own program helps with referrals. The paradox is that you still hope that there are people browsing, probably novices and those with a lot of extra time. Probably there are, because I still get some decent response from TEs (at least some of them). AS Glen Palo does, I sometime browse just to see what is going on.

I didn't join Organic Prospects, but considering it seems to be the same owner, I've decided to share my experience with USA Leads Club. I've researched it a little on Google and the posts that were positive were very positive (so to speak). A lot of negative posts from people that didn't get any resalts. On the advice of one of the guys I knew a little and who was advertising ULC every day practically on all mailers, I've decided to join. I waited until I've accumulated about 1000 leads and then used their mailer to send my ad that was pooling decent response on Viral mailers.Their site showed pretty decent open rate, and some clicks. I was tracking the clicks with my own tracker. Out of a thousand mailings - no clicks, I mean 0. I've sent the results to my sponsor and he advised me to change my ad here and there. I replied that it was a tested ad at should have shown something. Then I've used my own mailer (PHPList) on my secongary server (AIOP) that I've used before with good results. First I've mailed a tested ad to my pretty average list and got average results. Then I've mailed the same ad to 2000 ULC leads and in two days received NO opens and NO clicks. But, I received a call fron the dministration of the server and wanted to know what kind of leads I've used for this mailing. I've told them I was testing a list and they told me to stop using this list immediately. Too many rejects, non deliverables and there was a little clogging on their mail server. I've stopped and checked reliability of my email server, it went down to 61 - way below my usual 74-73. I've sent all my printouts to the company withoud making any demands. In about two days I've got full refund (that I didn't ask for) with a note, that they definitely had some problem with their server (even when I was mailig from my server??) and that they will inform me when they fix the problem. Haven't received anything in about 4 months. The post got very long - sorry. Since then I've exchanged email ith some people that had experiences like mine and some that were praising their leads. If you have any ideas, please post. I have my own, I'll post them later.

I don't think that having upsells changes the fact that you can buy this service for $7. Upsells are everywhere. If you have a mailer that you can join for free, but then they trying to sell you several levels of paid membership, does it mean that you cannot call this mailer "free". Anyway, here is my own experience with Lead Lightning. I was with it for about 6 weeks, advertised with free mailers, got altogether about 9000 clicks, 136 leads and earned $216. Note: actual payment you get is about $5. They do have an autoresponder, working for the program itself. Their training is actually pretty good. I expected much better response and still don't understand why it is so low. May be it is already saturating the market. By the way, it is supposed to be a funnel to Power Lead System, for me it didn't seem to be serving the purpose. I've had only one person that was interested in upgrade.

No question MAP is a Ponzi scheme. It's worth understanding that any Multi-Level or Affiliate program that requires a monthly or one time fee for the product that isn't worth this fee without money-making part is a hidden Ponzi scheme as well. By this criteria many successful MLM companies, even long-lived are still Ponzi schemes. Sometimes thousands, even millions of people are making money in these programs. I myself participated in such companies (no names) where the product value was much less than montly requirements.

@redha39 - That's also my opinion. Now I only participate in Lead Lightning itself ($7 one time) and joined for two reasons: it was included in downline building program as leading program and I wanted to explore different feeder, funnel or "funded proposal" systems to get the best ideas for my own program. I've promoted it for some time and made some good money to my surprise. I don't know if I'l go further, I'm involved pretty heavily with AIOP that has most or even all that Power Lead System has. My main gain was experience.