The Silent Avatar Speaks

If you’re into Internet marketing then maybe you can relate to to the title of this post….( or am I just being a touch sensitive to others marking shite loads of money straight from the wallets of “newbies”, and anyone else looking … looking …. looking … to make a quick buck? (sorry successful online business).

Let me explain…

My email inbox has been (yet again) bombarded with product launch emails.

If it wasn’t Mike Filsaime’s Traffic Fusion at $1495 (oops $1497) , it’s Rich Schefren’s Guided Profit System (at $2495.. oops $2497), or how about …

Look.. I’m not saying that these “systems” are not worth what they are asking for.. but either people are being crazy and digging deep into their wallets until they hit their credit card/s (Ker Ching),  or I’m just a tad disillusioned with the whole “up the ante lets rake in the money while we can game”.

In the space of 3 years I have seen product launches go from $97 to $497 to now $1497 and Rich’s latest offering at $2497!

Put your wallets away.. there is nothing that these guys can teach you that you can’t find by some diligent surfing of the Internet. Yes.. It may take time, but how about putting that $2497 into a BIG advert in your metropolitan paper and see what that gets you.

How about thinking strategically about where you spend your money for your online business?

How can this money be best spent right at this time to move me towards where you need to go?

$2497?

Think about it… a shite load of PPC! Just monitor your competitors, their ads, and see if the same ad keeps coming up week after week, after week. If it does? Just duplicate it with your own branding. Look.. no one keeps paying for PPC if it isn’t working.

$2497?

How about paying a crack SEO dude to really ramp up your site and get the traffic flooding in?

$2497?

Rent a Billboard for a week (or how ever long it gets you), in the most prominent spot in your city and stick your web address on it and a “tease offer”.

$2497?

How about outsourcing all the stuff you’ve never finished, never got around to, always wanted to add to your website, or have them blog like crazy for you, submit articles, research a niche? Hell for $2497 I could bring on board an outsource from from some far flung land that is prepared to work for months for me for that sort of money.

$2497?

How about hiring a PR dude to get you to speak at a Wealth Building Conference? (not for the faint hearted but definitely doable).

$2497?

For that I could catch a return flight from Australia and knock on Rich Schfren’s door and bug the hell out of him day and night until he sat down with me and talked turkey.

Now for all those reading who like to spend money on “Personal Development”, I say “You go girl!” (or guy). I am definitely an advocate for learning more of what you need to know about yourself, your self sabotaging patterns, and if you need to pay $2497 to find out what your constraints are then go for it.

Hell..  welt KNOW what our constraints are TIME and MONEY. But I’ll give you the link to shoot on over and sign your self up if you really want to…

You can do it here: https://ssl2.strategicprofitsystem.com/gps/

For $2497 I could get a one on one with someone like Rich Schefren for .. hmmmm.. maybe an hour or two.

Do you think I would pick his brains to bits.. do you think I would tell him what I want to do and then ask him “How do I get there”.

Do you think I would have a list of questions..take a recorder… video… do the whole shebang (and even take ‘em for lunch is that’s what was required?)

But you know what?…..

Do you really need to know what you don’t know?  Or … do you just need to know that you don’t know, and get someone who to find you the information you don’t know?

It reminds me of a story I read once.. it was about the guy Ford.. (you know the one.. the guy who made the first car.. the “Model T”). The story goes like this…

Henry Ford (congrats to those who got it right), wagered a bet with a friend that he could answer any question his friend put to him and get the answer right.

The friend accepted the challenge, and up for grabs was a considerable amount of money…

The friend asked him the question (insert your own wildly insane, hard as you can, bet you don’t know the answer question ’cause it doesn’t really matter what the question was he was asked).

The point is this…

Henry Ford picked up the phone, called his personal assistant, told him the question, and said get back to him with the answer.

Touche! Mr Ford!

Did he NEED to know the answer? No.

All he needed to know was how to find the answer, and he only had to pick up the phone and he had his answer. Do you get it?

You work hard for your money.. damn hard. Make it work for you, and stop making others wealthy, because now you know.

PS. This post comes with a disclaimer. Rich Schefren is the only man who I have got up at 4am in the morning to join a live video seminar he was hosting. The man’s a legend. However  he relies on people not to think about what else their money could buy. His list is so big, his contacts so far flung, his wealth (well.. I’ll leave that alone ’cause we know he’s not short of a dime) that he has at his disposal people just like Mr Ford had.  In a nutshell he has gotten rid of his constraints to building a successful business by finding out what he needs to know and then getting others to do the groundwork for him. How on earth do you think he manages to conduct workshops, teleseminars, run Strategic Profits, do product launches, and the thousand and one other things this guy does?

$2497 for the Guided Profits System?  Now it’s a choice not a “must have”.

I say.. Ease up fellas.. our wallets are not that FAT (and I’m not about to make yours fatter).

Of course, if you agree or disagree you comments are always welcome

Sphinn

Tags: Advertising, Business Tips, Internet Marketing, Online Business, Promotion and Marketing, Web Design by the silent avatar
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I couldn’t resist making this post in the wake of the launch of “Review Crusher”.

What? You haven’t heard of Review Crusher? Where have you been?

Mike Filsaime is at it again churning out yet another “buy this and it will make you money” product.

I sat through the whole painful video introduction which (if you took out all of his bragging and name dropping, and who he rubs shoulders with), it could easily have been condensed down to 10 minutes.

(C’mon Mike! Do you think we all have tons of time to just sit and watch a “brag fest”?)

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m no party pooper and good on Mike for getting to where he is (and no doubt his skydiving exploits are testimony to the money he has made to enjoy his down time) As Mike freely confesses.. he work’s hard and parties hard.

I’ve been reading Mike’s emails and watching product launch after product launch since I purchased the Butterfly Marketing script. All up I am probably on about 5 of Mikes lists (which means I get copies of all of his emails from all 5 lists! – which is another peeve of mine), and I’ve unsubscribed from others because it was just getting ridiculous with the duplicate emails).

But seriously.. lengthy product introductions like Review Crusher is enough to send me (and I’m sure many others) screaming up the garden path saying “Get to the point!”.

Was the waiting the 50 odd minutes worth it?

In my opinion? No.

Look.. the premise for this product is to be able to open up your own “Review Site” and without taking anything away from Mike I’m sure the product does what he says it does.

BUT… I couldn’t help thinking that even though you can customise your own template (so individual sites can be different), it still boils down to a few more hundred review sites hitting the internet courtesy of Mike Filsaime.

Now there is some benefit in creating your own review site, and before we get into what those benefits are, what about the competition who is already out there? Mike Filsaime has his own site for reviewing internet marketing products called MarketingProductReview.com.

As at the time of writing MarketingProductsReview.com’s Alexa rank was 28,927,768. Compare that to this sites ranking of 1,213,502. Enough said.

Dig a little deeper and I find that the traffic stats for MarketingProductReview.com is 140,832 (down 27,135)

The Reach, Traffic and Page Views are all down.

So one has to ask the question… is having a “review site” a good thing?

Well.. if you look at the stats then it’s not an earth shattering site for a niche (and this is Mike Filsaimes site).

However if you are in looking to pad out this site with your affiliate links and someone buys on the strength of a review, then it could be a money making proposition for you.

If you’re into Internet Marketing, then forget grabbing this product for a site which reviews Internet Marketing Products. Go review another niche as Mike’s got that one covered.

By The way.. if you are interested in purchasing Review Crusher software only it’s US$1997, or you can get a payment plan option: US$497 down and US$67 per month buys you the software and membership to Job Crusher.

You can watch Review Crusher Video here (you can download the video and fast forward Mike “bragfest”) to save time.

If you want to throw your money at Mike then go ahead. If I want a review I will just Google it.

So Is there any benefit in having a review site?

I’ll let you be the judge.

Tags: Hot Off The Press, Internet Marketing by the silent avatar
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No doubt taking a business online is a decision which shouldn’t be taken lightly. It’s easy to get caught up in all the hype of the Internet, but the bottom line is “will you see a return on your investment”?

One of the biggest headaches can be getting traffic (aka customers) to your site, and eBay already has that covered.

Here are the traffic statistics from Alexa.com

Of course there is a multitude of ways to drive traffic to your site. Most take time to do, others you can pay money for and get moving straight way. All should be monitored (especially if you are spending advertising dollars to get the customers) as to how effective they are for you.

So here are a couple of scenarios which you may want to consider…

1. Open an online shop and either hold physical stock or drop ship.

2. Sell your products for a competitive price (including postage).

3. Advertise your site using free classified, forum posts, Pay Per Click advertising, etc

or

1. Research your market on Ebay
   Log in and go to “Advanced Search”. Input your product (be specific). Check “Search Title and Description” and Check “Completed Listings Only”, and check “new items only” (if you sell new) – then search. This will return you a listing of SOLD items which have been listed for sale on eBay, which are more than likely products you would offer to sell.

   Note: Search through “all Categories”, then refine down your listings using “Narrow your results” (which is accessed by going to the left of the window)

   Only review the listings highlighted in green (these are sold items).

   Now… Start a spreadsheet or pen/paper and input the data from the sold items.

2. Enter in the following:

· Item Name ( you want to know which items are the biggest sellers)

· Sold price – (because you want to know the lowest/highest price you can sell for

· Date sold – you want to know which day/s things sell more of than other days.

· Time sold – you want to know which time is the best sale time.

· Postage – you want to know what postage is reasonable (though you shouldn’t make money on postage – it should be flat postage fee plus an amount to cover packaging and getting to the post office).

· The seller (the best seller may have tricks you can use)

Armed with the information from Ebay you have a much better idea what people are willing to pay for the item you are going to sell. You also have a good idea what day you should be listing your items, and what time you should be listing them to get them in front of buyers, and how you should be listing them (I’ll go into that next post).

If you have found that the price people are willing to pay is something that you can work with, the next step is to use this information and set up a listings on Ebay of around 30 products (they don’t all have to be individual products) and list them on the day and time that your research has turned up as being the best time to sell. Don’t list the same items one after the other.

Do this for 1 month and see how sales go.

While you are doing your research you can also be checking out other auction sites like oztion.com.au and do the same thing.

You can also check out forums in your selected niche (let’s say you want to sell Xbox 360 video games). You can simply Google search for “Xbox forums”, join up and have a look around the forum for anyone who is talking about where they buy their games. You can also get a pretty good idea about what products they are buying.

While this might sound a little tedious it will pay huge dividends and either confirm to you the project is viable, or scrap it as you can’t compete with what is already out there (and lets face it with imports from china it’s getting harder and harder to compete)

Having said that… all is not lost if the price issue is looking pretty grim.

If you specialise in a “niche” (and I’ll use the video games as an example, you could “specialise” in games for only Xbox or a certain type of game ie; racing car, war games, etc.

If you determine you have a viable product and can sell at a price which is comparable to your competition, you are then good to go…

You can either set up your own website and market traffic directly to the site or set up a full eBay store and run it as a business, or, you can keep listing products (using the research you have done), and just list single items to sell.

Over to you….

As always feel free to post a comment or question for me to answer.

Tags: Business Tips, Internet Marketing, Traffic Generation by the silent avatar
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Listen up folks! Want a $3,997 site for next to nothing? … Now Complete With a Revolutionary Breakthrough Technology that “FORCES” Cash Directly Into Your Pocket!! – Guaranteed!!

Here’s another opportunity for all you budding internet marketers to make money online.

Hot off the press today comes a “new” kind of website these days – one that “FORCES” money into your pocket!

The days are now over where you were left with just “chance” on your side when it came to making money on the Internet.

A brand new “technology” has been developed that makes websites pay you by “force!”

Short of putting a gun to people’s heads and making them take their money out of their wallets and pay you without choice, this new technology might as well be the exact same thing.

This breakthrough was developed by a New York Virtual Marketing Firm, and is taking the Web by storm!

Already some pretty famous names are taking note of this new “money making invention” that “forces” money out of the Internet directly into your bank account!

A spokesperson for the NYC firm boasted proudly:

“Imagine the Worldwide-Web as an ocean of money … our new technology merely makes a way for YOU to be able to dig a big trench from that ‘cash-sea’ directly into your backyard!”

And that’s obviously a pretty amazing feat to say the very least!

People get a webpage that’s NOT ordinary by any means!

The webpage “captures” a huge segment of the daily visitors it receives and winds up upselling them repeatedly with a predictable conversion each and every time!

Plus, the webpage has a “built-in” device that allows it to generate “free traffic” without end!

So considering the fact that you get free traffic, along with a predictable and steady stream of sales conversions, you get a guaranteed source of endless income!

Additionally, the webpage you get already contains a PROVEN digital product that no online marketer can live without, and one that is delivered where all your orders are filled automatically by another firm on behalf of you, the webpage owner! (And at no costs!)

Not only that, but the webpage contains a video that makes further an irresistible offer so that people must surrender their contact information, and which also becomes a VAST double-optin list!

This list is maintained by yet another separate online firm on our behalf, and that has the HIGHEST track record for getting over 98% deliverability for follow-up emailings (the same that convert another 378% more sales for you!)

So in a nutshell you get:

• An amazing website!
• A website that converts sales automatically!
• A website that puts “forced” money directly into your pocket!
• A website that’s run by another firm for you (at NO charge!)
• A website that continues to promote for you over &over!
• A website that grows & cultivates a proven list!
• A website that functions automatically (so you never run it!)
• And a website that you get Free H0STING for!

So as you can easily see you get the whole “Sha-Bang!”

Here are just a few examples of the successes people are having using this “Forced Money” breakthrough system:

—> “Lisa C.” Made $44,047 In Just 97 Days
—> “Jay R.” Made $102,033 In Just 32 Days
—> “Cal W.” Made $317,951 In Just 17 Days

Without wasting another moment of your time, why not go to the new site that shows you how you can get this site for yourself (if you’d like) for next to nothing? …

~~~> Check it out here

But I must warn you that they are only giving away a very limited number of these “forced money” websites that forcibly pour money into your pocket! – So please [for your sake] HURRY!

Tags: Hot Off The Press, Internet Marketing by the silent avatar
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