Time for another entry...

First, you may have noticed I've moved the Blog to the Blogger.Com Service. This is free, and it can be used directly on your site without advertising. The old blog-script seemed to mess up the dates, and create weird archives. The other reason is the Blogger.Com service is incorporated directly into the Google Toolbar and Blogger.Com blogs are searchable and linked, maybe increasing traffic :)

Visit the following link to see the old weblog: Old Weblog

The last week hasnt been so good business-wise. The EBEI Autoresponder was down, and since I rely on that for most of my communications it was a bit of a blow. It happened as I was supposed to send a paid-ad too, so that didn't look very professional.

I may have to move from EBEI, even though I've been happy with it. My whole web business suffered and I became a little demoralised with the entire Net Marketing thing, but I'm back on track now with a smile on my face :) - heck, where else can you make money and help others to do the same, and for little effort (compared to real world jobs)?

This isn't my entire income, though. I do have a "real world" job, as I'm not quite to the pack-your-job stage yet :) It's not as common as you're led to believe, and neither are the ridiculously high claims of incomes. I believe it is quite possible to supplement your income and build to a replace your income but it takes time.

One thing I'm beginning to see is the core tasks needed for a successful web business. It shouldn't be any surprise to you to learn that they are (A) Create your own product, (B) Own your own site, and (C) Build your own list. THEN you supplement that with back-end sales via JVs and Affiliate programs.

MLMs and Network Programs are a different kettle of fish. These need you recruit and train, as well as sell. I'm beginning to see that even if their POTENTIAL incomes are much higher than traditional marketing MOST people will NEVER make a good income out of them. BUT the trainers/recruiters will always try to convince you that you CAN, and use the spillover claims and the "just recruit x people" claims. Beware.

The only time I see MLMs/Downline/Network programs worth using is if their offer a product that will help your business. Hence the EBEI, Kiosk Leads and Push Button Publishing programs I promote. EBEI provides my autoresponder, so it's worth promoting the affiliate/downline part of it to make money from something you use anyway. PBP provides another responder, my hosting and my resell products. Kiosk Leads provides the Leads and the conversion of these leads. My advice is only promote a MLM/Network program if you use the product, and stay away from those that have products just to keep the MLM legal, unless you're a good recruiter!

Finally here's a good quote I heard on TV last night, on the BBC program "Hustle" (about con-artists): You can't cheat a honest man. Find someone who wants something for nothing, and give them nothing for something.

Now, I'm not advocating you go out and cheat anyone, I'm warning you about expecting something for nothing. If you do, you're the one who will be cheated!

See ya next time :)

This is a first post using the "Blogger.Com" Blog service. The original weblog is over at www.NetpreneurNow.com/weblog.shtml so if you see nothing here (yet!) visit there...

Hi

This time around EBEI is performing well, especially promoting the 2000 leads for $1 offer. An ad to the "Higher Ground Marketing" ezine converted well. If you haven't checked the offer be sure to visit Empire Building Essentials International 2000 leads and a bullet-proof autoresponder for $1 can't be bad! They've also upgraded to multiple servers for the responder with a limit on the users per server - resulting in increased speed and reliablity. Cool.

I also had a few signups for the Dont Touch My Ads Program - basically a software based Ads exchange. It works well, and is pretty unobtrusive, but because of the ads viewed to ads shown ratio (something like 10:1) you need to build a downline, since every view in 5 levels counts as 1 credit. It's all free so is ideal to promote as a freebie traffic tool :) Dont Touch My Ads . I also have to confess, another reason for promoting DTMA is the current promotion contest, so join quick if you want to be part of that.

You may also notice each of those links use Opportunity.com to cloak them. Couple of reasons: 1. it's a cool cloaking URL and 2. It works fast, it's pretty clean (just 1 popunder) and it builds a email-able downline for you. It also tracks the clicks, but doesn't give you full data for those clicks. Worth joining! The urls look nicer than those tinyurl.com ones :)

I'm having trouble finding good Clickbank programs to promote on AdWords. Adwords went off with a bang when I started, but it's slowing down. The "Best Deal Ever" converts well and pays 75% but others I've tried including Speeding Tickets and Hypnotic Seduction (lol) haven't converted well. AdWords is all about finding niches, but these niches are fast running out! Any suggestions???

Have you seen Marlon Sanders new weekly weblog-a-like newsletter? Its just a rambling letter from him about his week, and not all marketing. It is destined to be paid-for but he sent the trial link to all his affiliates, so I hope I'm not breaking rules by showing it here. Visit Marlons Monday Report.

I had another brainwave for Netprenuer News. Why not totally switch from publishing an ezine and just publish a weeks Weblog Digest. Some third party blog systems offer this feature, but it's easy enough to do manually and get more control. That way I can basically write the ezine in `real time` and offer alternative ways to subscribe, since email is so fickle these days. I wont be the first to do this, its happening already, but I dont know how successful it is.

Well EastEnders is starting (UK ppl will know :) ) so I'm off. Over and out.

I've been searching clickbank and commission junction to try and increase affiliate revenue, with AdWords and with Enhance. The programs I'm currently trying are a little different...

From ClickBank I'm promoting Beat Speeding Tickets ebooks and a Hypnotic Seduction ebook and MyAutoresponderPro. We'll see how they go!

From CJ I'm focusing on 123 Website Builder.

Ads are running on Google for these. I'm also promoting my Ebay Pack on both Google and Enhance, and the changes I made seem to be working better, with more sales. The rest are not really performing so far, but I only just put them up... I've dropped the "Best Deal Ever" resell pack since it stopped selling.

Apparently, it's best to get on the NEW clickbank affiliates (since there's always new stuff each week). I'm also thinking of putting the Ultimate eBay as an affiliate on Clickbank to encourage sales. With the amount of automated clickbank malls, popunders, search thingies etc perhaps it will grab sales without even being actively promoted to affiliates...

With all this going on EBEI has changed its autoresponder again, meaning until I get the leads moved from the old to the new I can't use the email system. Issue 60 sent a day or two ago (tried it in HTML format this time) is only now reaching my own inbox. May have to send again, but as a reminder link to the online issue.

I have a busy weekend coming up so probably not much in the way of computer and website maintenance will be happening. Nearly everything is automated now so that shouldn't matter. Ah... the wonders of modern technology!