Monday, April 27, 2009

Newest Marketing Thought - Passive Income while building my list!

Over the past month I've been focusing on building my list. The biggest thing I've learned about online marketing is that programs come and go, but having your own personal email list is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Build

Yes, there were some CAPS in there for emphasis :)

A little over a week ago I thought it would be a good idea to offer a free ebook to prompt visitors to join the mailing list. So I got that 13 Deadly List Building Tragedies -

It got a few people to get that ebook, but I kinda realized it was kind of a lousy program. Maybe lousy is too strong of a word, but what I mean is that the ebook had minimal amount of usefulness (at best) - And really wasn't filling anyone's needs. If your giving something away, I would think it much better to give away something people actually NEED :)

But I liked the idea of adding a free product to my subscribers...

During last week I was working on my newest project Viral Ebooks. This seemed like a really good way to give away something VALUABLE - So I joined, branded my own ebook and put it on my site as a free giveaway.

I was also reading something about autoresponders and the "thank you" pages we use. AWeber does a really good job about getting us Useful Information and ways to keep our subscribers happier.

I realized I wasn't using a Thank You page at all.

So last night I build a Thank You Page for all people who join my Affiliate Curve email list -

Now, what I put on that Thank You Page also builds income and referrals for me as well. What I did was add My Viral Ebooks link and explain to all my subscribers that this was a great way to build THEIR email lists as well.

This is how I am using it: Read to the end to see where this all comes together

I give away the Ebook I made from Viral Ebooks. All my subscribers get a valuable product.

As soon as they sign up, they are directed to my Thank You page where they can see what I'm doing. They can join Viral Ebooks and start making their own ebooks - By giving them away (or even selling them i suppose) they will be giving away valuable products and building a list at the same time.

Anyone who joins Viral Ebooks has a chance to get the One Time Offer (yes, I hate them too but this is a good deal) $47, but a full 30 day trial with 100% refund -

If they pass on that, but later upgrade, it's $17/month - Of that, 50% goes to the affiliate

So I make either $30ish on the OTO purchases from my referrals, or I make $8.50/month for each upgraded member...

Even if they join free, that is fine too - They are still subscribers. And if they truly want to BUILD their business, they might see this as a pretty easy way to do that - By giving away their own branded ebooks -

So the more people I add to my list, is just more people that give me a chance to earn PASSIVE income from.

I get ALL of that by just making a Thank You page and giving away a great ebook.

That is what passive income is all about - Now all I do is promote my website and get as many people as possible to join my email list. Yes, I take care of my subscribers and I go out of my way to give them GOOD resources -

What would you need to do this? You need an autoresponder first - And a GOOD ONE! Not some crappy downline builder thing you can't use. You need to create forms, add them to webpages etc.

Get AWeber - seriously, don't waste your time with anything else. I've tried DOZENS of other ways to save a buck or 2 - They are all garbage or super complicated.

You need hosting - A Blog is an okay way to start here also, and it's free - But eventually, you should get your very own hosting account. Build your website, give away an ebook and use your AWeber account for keeping good subscribers!

Yeah, I like Home Stead here - Very easy to build pages, add forms etc. It's a great hosting plan for beginners!

Also, you need something to give away (obviously right :) - I really like Viral Ebooks. Not sure if there is better or not, but these are FULL of great products. I'm using it to give away stuff on my site, but I also listed the book for sale on ebay. You can sell the books - You can give them away - Another benefit of building these is that you put in YOUR Referral Links! So by giving away ebooks, you build your list AND have a chance to earn income through ClickBank, AWeber, etc - All these ebooks are rebrandable - That income portion isn't the most important to me, right now. I think it's more important to focus on my list -

Join Viral Ebooks -

By giving away Viral Ebooks on my Thank You Page, it gives me a chance to earn passive income and even more referrals by just giving away ebooks and showing my subscribers how to do exactly the same thing!

And it's all passive income - It took me 1/2 hour to build my thank you page last night. After that, I just changed my Thank You web address in my Aweber autoresponder to direct all my confirmed subscribers to my own Thank You Page. And then everyone that subscribes to my list can join Viral Ebooks just the same way -

I think it's genuis - I think it's something ANYONE can follow - And I love it

Thursday, April 9, 2009

CBCS SCAM - Know anyone?

First, let me assure you that I would NOT use a title like that just to get you to click on a sales letter. In fact, this email has nothing to do with online marketing at all -

Tonight I am writing you about a matter that is very upsetting to me. In fact, it angers me to my core - That might be too strong, but this is a situation with MASSIVE evidence of fraud, yet nobody actually DOES anything about it.

This story starts with a fake collection letter I received. The problem is that I received the exact same type of letter about a year ago - I thoroughly investigated my options and sought legal retribution. To my amazement, nothing could be done.

Here is the story:

A company called CBCS Collections sent me a letter offering me a "settlement" on a AT&T Broadband bill. I called and they told me the bill was from 1997. They claim the original bill was $153, but they are willing to settle for half.

I had this same experience about a year ago and investigated. I found out that HUNDREDS of complaints had been filed with the BBB. All the stories were the same - Fake collection bills for phone bills from 10-12 years prior.

Now, at the time they CLAIM I incurred this debt, I had just moved to seattle in 1997. At the time I lived on a friends couch - Nothing in the house was in my name, at all. I just gave my buddy some rent money every month.

That is when the alarm bells began ringing in my head. So I began to investigate a bit. I found all kinds of complaints filed against the SAME company for the SAME thing. Fake phone bills that they were sending to people everywhere in the US.

I talked to my fantasy buddies (yes, I'm a fantasy geek :) - Out of the 10 friends in my league, 1 of them was just about to pay his fake bill - $330! Another 2 people had friends who had paid the same thing. 1 of them told me his mom got one of those bills for $1,200 and the collection agency threatened to GARNISH her wages!

I filed complaints with the BBB - I filed a complaint with the Attorney General of Washington State. I called several attorneys - Nobody would touch it

Want to know why? Because if you go through all the hassle of actually suing a collection agency, you can win no more than $1,000 - That's IT!

What does this basically mean? It means that even if a collection agency breaks every rule in the book, you can't get more than $1,000 in settlement damages. And by having that cap, a collection agency really has NOTHING TO LOSE by sending out all of these fake charges.

Even now, as I went to search out CBCS on Google, I found Numerous complaints on message boards everywhere - The same exact story - Fake phone bills, threatening collection calls, etc.

Here are a few links to stuff I found regarding this company:

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/cbcs-c80613.html#c288056

http://www.universalhub.com/node/12807

http://www.thenoiseboard.com/index.php?showtopic=180957

These are only from a couple minutes of searching. The Complaints board is where I entered my own post -

There is a reason I am sending you this email. See, I have exhausted everything I could in order to do ANYTHING about this company and these malicious and fraudulent collection letters.

As 1 person, there is simply nothing I can do - I don't have enough power and I don't know enough people.

So I'm sending this out to you today, to see if you might know someone who can actually DO something about this.

And I'm not talking about me erasing my fake debt - As you can see, we have TONS of postings on all kinds of message boards about the same thing. Obviously that doesn't make any difference. I happen to know for a fact that my credit is nearly perfect - I've refinanced 2 homes 5 different times over the past 5 years - The last one coming just a few months back - Each and every time my credit had to be SPOTLESS. So yes, the bills are absolutely fake and fraudulent.

I'm not going to post another complaint though - That doesn't do ANYTHING.

I'm hoping that someone in my list might know someone with some power. Someone who can take some initiative and actually put up a real FIGHT against this kind of scam.

Maybe you know someone in politics who wants to make a name for themselves? Maybe you are part of a college newspaper. Maybe you are in Criminal Justice or studying Law. Whatever it is, posting another message on another website isn't getting it done - We need to take real action -

How about some real VIRAL action?

Pass this story on - In just a small sample size of my personal friends, I found several people who had these same fake bills.

Whatever you think might help, let me know - I will HAPPILY do whatever I can to put this to an end.

Just email me back - paulsteam08@gmail.com

I'll get back to online marketing soon, I promise - But this bothers me way too much to just sit on it and not try to do anything.

I'm not looking for money - I'm not looking for 15min's of fame - I just want this company and these practices to be shut down, for GOOD.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Most Important thing for online marketing success

Tonight I did some "revamping" to my home page. Despite having changed every other page in my site COUNTLESS times, I have never really changed the Home Page (at least not the content) - But over the past 2 months I've been REALLY working my butt off to build my list - And it's working - My personal email list is up to over 800 now - and 150 of those are JUST from the past month. When I revamped my Power Traffic Course, I built the new splash page using Synthasite and started heavily promoting it - Also, shot my youtube video and got on twitter....

Off topic :) Point is this - It's become CRYSTAL clear that the most important thing to do is Build My Email List - And that is what i've been working on for 2 months straight now -

I revamped my Power Traffic course THOROUGHLY! I mean from start to finish - now it's a 10 part series that is getting good results. I have over 30 signups for Affiliate Funnel (and even earned some nice commissions there) as well as signups for various exchanges and viral pond etc. I still think I ramble too much - I'm guessing that if it was just 1 email, with my "here is what you do" and 1 program only, I would get more signups...But the truth is that would only help me - My Power Traffic course is really about helping other people -

damnit, again :)

Building my list!

I've got EVERYTHING pointing to me and my home site now - My YouTube Video is on my home page. Even if people just want to shut it off, they go down and see my email subscriber form. This adds signups -

I also am sending Massive traffic to my Power Traffic splash pages - Each day I'm getting 3-5 signups for it just from the Traffic Exchanges.

Since I added the "Follow me on Twitter" link to my home site, I have over 60 new followers in 2 weeks. This adds signups when they click my homepage link -

My YouTube video has been watched over 300 times (granted, I've got it on auto play, embedded in my home website :)

I have now added over 150 people to my PERSONAL email list over March - And continue to get 6-12 new signups on a daily basis (including Power Traffic & my home site)

What does that really DO for me?

Simple - Now when I sign up for a new program, I get signups by sending an email to my list. Last week I checked my Pyrabang stats and had 15 members in my downline, when I did ZERO recruiting or advertising - Real Spillover! I sent it to my list and got nearly a dozen GOLD members -

I sent another email about 3900 Income - got 4 more signups

I sent an email about Teamwork Revolution - Got 9 signups

I sent the update about Free Site Signup - I'm up to over $1100 in "pending" commissions now. I haven't really "unleashed" my real marketing power (PPC) because I'm waiting to get the real check in my hands - Once I do, it's on :)

I'm still trying to find the balance between selling and helping - No doubt it is a fine line. But I had a real eye opening conversation with one of my best online networking friends, Alan C (better not use his full name I guess) - And as much as I am always sitting around "sugar coating" everything, online marketing is about 1 thing: SALES

How do we build income and get sales - That is The Bottom LINE -

Now, yes, I have gone through my share of crappy programs. Yes, I really DO try to help people who are starting in online marketing and YES, I really CAN help people START building their own online business -

But if we aren't making money, then what are we doing here? The bottom line is how to make money -

So how do I really MAKE MONEY?

If I hadn't been burned by so many programs now, I might not have ever bothered to begin building my personal list. Even now, I'm waiting on ANOTHER $2,400 from 3 different programs that i should have been paid from now (not including affiliate junktion!)

I'm learning the real hard way that online marketing programs really do come and go.

But despite all that bad luck and all those shitty programs, I'm STILL able to make money. It's because I haven't attached myself to any 1 program (except GDI I guess - but GDI actually IS solid) -

The only thing I'm really "attached" to is my list - And my list is the most important thing I have.

And anytime I find a new program that I think is really cool, I am able to get instant feedback and signups by sending it to my personal email list -

It's taken me awhile to get here - But now that I'm here, I'm going to work on growing my list even more. I'm starting to use PPC advertising on my home site, AffiliateCurve.com - If for nothing more than to build my email list, it's worth it -

I know that all of my Free Site Signups are from my email list. By continuing to build up my list, I get more people everyday who keep in contact with me - who learn from me - who trust me - and who join my programs.

Yes, the bottom line is making money. But without having my email list, I would just be bouncing around still. Advertising ANOTHER affiliate site on traffic exchanges - Hoping for a miracle. But now that i've done all the "Grunt Work", I really do have some decent online marketing power -

It will still take a couple thousand more people on my list before I can say I'm "accomplished", but it's well worth it to focus ALL my efforts and money into 1 thing - Building my list -

Safelists and Traffic Exchanges and free ads - They are CRAP for selling - A Personal email list is by far WAY more valuable - You should only be using TE's and Safelists in an effort to build your personal email list -

That's where the money is :)

that was SUPER long winded - Sorry, I've got a really bad back so I'm on a bit of pain killers, and it's also past 11pm now - When you have a 2 year old, 11 o'clock feels like 3am USED TO :)