Should you really be concerned with your competitors?

Be Creative, Not Competitive

When I read sales copy for a product that I am interested in I am always surprised when they mention their “competitors” or say that their “competitors” are doing this or that. They, of course are trying to tell you that their product is better than their competitors product, but all they are doing is bringing your attention to the fact that there are other similar products out there that compete with this one.

What they don’t realize is that I was not even thinking about their competitors until they mentioned them. If there is another product out there like this one and these people consider them to be worthy “competitors” I then begin to think that I should take a look at the other guy’s product and do some comparative shopping of my own.

The same holds true, I think, when you decide to sell a product. While it might be a good thing to learn what other people are doing, don’t get discouraged that others are selling the same type of product. Even with thousands of products out there, you will find customers for your products.

In the words of Wallace D. Wattles:

“We live in a thought world which is part of a thought universe. You are to become a creator, not a competitor. You are going to get what you want, but in such a way that when you get it every other person whom you effect will have more than he has now.”

“Riches secured on the competitive plane are never satisfactory and permanent. They are yours today and another’s tomorrow.”

“Remember, if you are to become rich in a scientific and certain way, you must rise entirely out of competitive thought. You must never think for a moment that the supply is limited. Just as soon as you begin to think that all the money is being “cornered” and controlled by others, and that you must exert yourself to get laws passed to stop this process, and so on, in that moment you drop into the competitive mind and your power to cause creation is gone for the time being.

And what is worse, you will probably arrest the creative movements you have already begun.”  (From “The Science of Getting Rich” by Wallace D. Wattles) Download the book free here.

So learn from your competitors, but don’t worry about them. Just be creative and do everything in that certain way that will attract wealth to you.

Things are Looking Up in My Internet Marketing Search

A brief update in my Internet Marketing adventure.

I would like to thank Ross Goldberg for his reply to my email and for his generous effort to help the little guys of Internet Marketing. Things are looking up.

In other areas, the good people at Google Adwords have a good support team and have answered my inquiries faithfully. I also told them about how I screwed up and ended up paying 49.00 for 19 clicks after I forgot a little decimal point and set my keyword bid to 40 dollars instead of 40 cents.

They at first told me the could not help me. I chalked it up to an expensive lesson. But I wrote to them again and they took pity on me or for good PR, they gave me a $20.00 credit. Things are looking up again.

In checking my Click bank account yesterday I noticed I had made sales of $98.00. I was very excited. It made my day actually. I checked that sale to see what it was, and where it cam from and I noticed that the same person bought the same thing twice. Perhaps he made a mistake. So I counted it as one sale because I am betting he will ask for a refund if he discovers his mistake.

My clickbank traffic seems to be in a steady upward climb since the peak and dive it did after my 40 dollar click. I am also looking at other ways to drive traffic to my little love nest.

Learn how to attract a woman… at www.love-pot.com. But the product, it is the best out there in my opinion. Make me very happy. Make the women very happy.

More “You can’t afford me Marketing.” When Will it End?

Limited offers, Rush offers, “Only serious need reply” high priced product launches and over-priced coaching packages, are beginning to really irk me. There I said it. Is this where Internet Marketing is going?

Everyone wants to get rich overnight and there is a sucker born every minute. I would simply like to make enough money to live on, that would be a start. How many of these people who purchase these high priced systems really do make it big? Inquiring minds want to know. I want to know, really.

I feel like a little tiny little fish swimming in a vast pond of giant fish that want to swallow me up. I can’t even find any other small fish to hang out with.

I don’t intend to give up, ever, but once in a while I need to rant. I don’t know who I can trust half the time and high pressure sales tactics are wearing on my nerves.

Yes, I am frustrated, but that only makes me more determined to figure out what to do next. I am on my own apparently, I can’t swim with the big fish, I don’t have my own product yet, and I am barely figuring out how to build a list while I throw money at adwords for advertising, not knowing if any of it will come back.

Here’s my site, check it out, learn how to improve your sex life, and buy something. Make me the happiest person on the planet. www.love-pot.com

Is There Any Help For the Little Guys?

It is times like these when I can’t seem to get any answers to my questions and I feel frustrated when I ask the question, is there any help out there for the little guy?

I am not one of the “big dogs” in Internet marketing and more and more I hear of how hard it is to be successful at it and make it work, yet I keep seeing people and I even know some people who are making it work and I start to wonder what I am doing wrong.

The people I look up to are the very successful ones who are writing books and teaching others how to do it, but they are sometimes to busy to give you the time of day, or even send you a personal email. They have people. They have to I guess. They can’t do it all themselves I guess.

The only one who actually ever sent me a personal reply was Tom Venuto with his Ebook “Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle.” Perhaps I should start promoting his product more.

The Internet is growing so fast and is so crowded I wonder if I will just get lost in it. But they say the more people on line the more money there is to be made. But I keep thinking, is there any help out there for the little guys? We who don’t have a large budget for advertising or other things? Do the big dogs only want to help the ones who can afford their expensive counseling? Do the big dogs have the time to help the little guy?

And the big question for me is, can I make money as an affiliate or do I have to get a product of my own? If so, what product would that be and how would I promote it?

In the world of the Big Dogs of Internet Marketing, is there any help for the little guys?

I spend virtually all of my spare time at my computer or reading a book on it. I gave up watching television. I am determined and dedicated. I took the time to learn to build websites the right way, and I have several blogs. I’ve written a few articles and gotten a little traffic.

Today, I hope, is the darkest day. I am hoping it gets better than this. I am hoping I don’t just give up. I am hoping that tomorrow, things will look better.

Okay Just Shoot Me, I’m so Confused about Adwords.

I feel like a complete idiot, and I can’t even seem to get this simple blog post right.

But that is nothing compared to my screw up today with Google Adwords.

I have to tell you that this has been a day of disappointment for me. I sometimes feel like I just don’t know what I am doing or how to do it. I am having a hard time doing the Google Adwords thing for some reason, and I made a monumental mistake changing my CPC (cost per click) on one of my key words. (I was just messing around.)

I tried to change it to .40 cents to see if it would get a better position and I accidentally changed it to 40 dollars, or at least that is what I discovered later. I freaked out when I noticed that and changed it back right away, but apparently spent $49.00 inside of a few hours for 19 lousy clicks which shot my budget to hell in a hand-basket

I don’t understand the budget thing really. I got the message that my ads quit showing because I went over my “daily budget.” HUH? I did not understand how that was possible since I had only gotten 29 clicks and my daily budget was set at $50.00. This was supposed to be a test campaign lasting for 300 clicks and I was already out of the advance money I had paid them. This did not seem possible. Then I noticed the key word with a $40. CPC. Oh Crap!

Now I am pounding my head on my desk wondering what the hell I am doing and thinking I need to go back to the drawing board and re-read my books on Google Adwords.

So I paid them some more money, since my budget was shot, and lowered my daily budget and my CPC to a reasonable amount of an average of $120.00 per month at $4.00 per day until I can figure out what I am doing.

I wrote to them about the mistake, ~lets hope they take pity on me, and refund me the money,~ but I doubt if they will. I will have to chalk it up to “learn by your stupid mistakes” and keep moving.

My friends all think I am a computer geek who knows so much about the Internet and websites and all this stuff, and I do know my way around more than the average guy on the street, but today I feel like a rank beginner and quite frankly am kicking my own butt for being so careless.  ~I’m a little depressed.

Oh well, tomorrow is another day. I will keep this blog updated, even if no one reads it but me.

Getting Started with Google Adwards, Two Good Ebooks

An email from Wade Winger, author of “Google Profits” reminded me that I didn’t have to make everything perfect and that the desire to make sure everything is perfect was sometimes as bad as procrastination and that both are barriers to your ultimate goals. They both eat up your precious time.

His point was “Even Crap can Sell” and he stressed that I should stop wasting my time trying to make my current project perfect and just get it out there.

WOW! How did he know? He must have been peeking at me over my live web cam!

Now Wade Winger doesn’t know me from the man in the moon and he really doesn’t send me very many emails but this one seemed to be talking directly to me. He hit the nail right on its head where my Google Adwords campaign was concerned.

Between his book on Google Adwords telling you how you can make money selling affiliate products without a website, and Perry Marshall’s book that gets down into the fine details of writing ads and running campaigns, I think it is time to get my feet wet, if for nothing else but the experience.

I have been reading and studying and practicing writing ads and finding keywords and learning this new program called Affiliate Elite, and trying to learn how to start another mailing list on eweber.com and darn it, I wanted to get my ad out there. Wade Winger thanks for the push.

I did sign on as an affiliate for Wade’s ebook because, quite honestly, I really liked it! It was easy to read and it really got me excited about Google Adwords. I haven’t sold even one of his books yet, so maybe he was talking directly to me, but chances are, he sent that same email to everyone on his list. It doesn’t matter. I’m glad he did. It was something I needed to hear.

Anyway, I got encouraged to get my feet wet and I opened my Adwords account. I wrote three ads and threw in some targeted keywords that a google Adwords tool picked out for me. They have this real cool tool that will search your website or landing page and then they give you key words based on their search. I was impressed with that. Here is the address: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.

I activated my ad today but it was not showing up on anything anywhere. (Insert sad face here) And so about 9:00 that night I opened a live chat with an Adwords help screen to ask them where my ads were. (I’m so impatient.) They were very busy and kept posting that “someone would be with me shortly.”

I waited, and while I waited I began writing this post. (I was being kept on hold in a small chat screen, but at least there wasn’t any annoying music to have to listen to.)

After they had posted about 20 of those “someone will be with you shortly” messages, I finally got some help. They told me that my ad was waiting to be reviewed and that was why it was not showing yet. Apparently a human person reviews all of the ads that go up on Google. That is impressive. They must have a massive amount of ads to look at. (Google is taking over cyber space you can be sure of that.)

So it will probably be tomorrow until I can see if my ads are getting any clicks. I put three different versions of the ad in there for my new website and apparently Google will rotate them and I will keep the one that gets the most clicks and rewrite the poorest performer. This is the part of the advice I got from Perry Marshall’s Book. You can get his free mini course which will have a lot of very useful information in it.

By the way - most “e-courses” are thinly disguised sales pitches with crappy information. But Perry says that he refuses to put out that kind of junk. This is quality content that will move your business forward.” He says that himself on his site, so you can take that to the bank. Get started making Google AdWords work for you now: You can get his free course by clicking here: 5 days to success with Google Adwords.

Now I want to apologize for promoting two books on the same subject because I know how difficult it is to make a decision between similar products. So if you don’t know which one to buy, I suggest that you just download Perry’s free course and see what you think. Also this link to Wade Winger’s Google Profits will get you a free mini course too. That way, you can read stuff from both of these guys and see which one you like best. I got them both and I have to say I wouldn’t part with either one of them.

Google Adwords is Direct Marketing On Steroids.

After looking at the many ways to have an Internet business, I have settled on building a small website that sells information products and work on directing Internet traffic to that site. I decided that the best and fastest way to get traffic is by advertising with Google adwords.

Google adwords is the fastest crash course in real-life street-level direct marketing. Google adwords system is an awesome concept. It is well thought out and executed and consistent with all of the other ideas that have made Google the world’s number one search engine.

There are two books I would like to mention and that have helped me a great deal in learning about how to make money with Google Adwords.. The first one was Wade Winger’s “Google Profits” on how to make huge online profits using the power of Google Adwords. This book was very easy to read, even for people less geeky than myself. I really did love this book and it got me really excited about the possibilities of Google adwords as a way to drive traffic and make money on the Internet. This book proclaims that you can make money without having a website, but suggests that it is a good idea to get one eventually. It is an exciting prospect for someone just getting started.

But the downside to jumping into a campaign like that is that now the competitiveness has risen for popular key words and you could end up not being able to afford to get a top spot on a google page or you might not get one at all if another affiliate is driving traffic to that same landing page. Still you could find a smaller nitch market and have success doing this without having a website.

So I bought a newer book called “The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords” by Perry Marshall. This book goes into more detail about how to write Google ads and tweak them, and how Google has changed a few policies that make it a better idea to have a mini website to drive traffic to rather than driving traffic directly to someone else’s pitch page with your affiliate link.

I like both of these books and I am glad I bought both of them. I am preparing to do some test campaigns on my new website which sells products for men on how to attract women. My new website has just gone up. I will talk about that in a later post.

Meanwhile I want to very highly recommend these books. If you can only get one of them, then get Perry Marshall’s Definitive Guide to Google Adwords.
(— Click the above link and you can sign up for a free 5-day course.—-)

Yes, Google is treacherous at first. It punishes uneducated marketers and rewards smart ones. So Perry Marshall wrote a 5-day FREE email course to help you get started and beat the system fast.

“Steady Income Secrets” and other high priced money making products.

I think things are getting out of hand where buying products for learning to make money on the Internet are concerned. Of course everyone is selling their “secrets” or so they claim. Today I clicked on a link to a pitch page called “Steady Income Secrets” sent to me by “Affiliate’s alert.” which is a newsletter I obviously signed up for. ..Go figure.. The email was signed by one Michael Marzan
(aka Maayan Marzan) But at the bottom of the email page I found this:

Click Leaders Technologies Ltd
POB 4316
Bet Arie, 71947
ISRAEL

At the top of the pitch page I found this: From: Michael Jones

I have no idea who these people are or why I signed up for their newsletter, or how good their product is but I looked back at all of the emails they sent that I had not open and they all go to the same pitch page that sells the same thing which is a program for $995.00 that says they will teach you how to make money by building and selling websites that sell monthly memberships. (Their product is marked down from $2000.00 ) Is that a bargain or what? NOT!

I did unsubscribe from their newsletter, (which is not a newsletter at all) but I just want to give my opinion of membership sites in general. I think most of them suck so why would I want to learn how to build them? And who on earth owns “Click Leaders Technologies Ltd? Someone in Israel it would seem.

More and more, as people are learning how to make money on the Internet you will see information products selling for higher and higher prices. I just don’t get a good feeling for these over priced products. How do I know they are over priced, you might ask. Well, because I would never pay that. I have books I that I paid 30 dollars for that have loads of information in them that I have not had time to absorb, why on earth would I want something like that? Besides, I don’t like membership sites. I want to pay one price for something, download it and that is the end of it. I don’t like contracts and monthly dues to everything that comes down the pike either. I looked at their affiliate page and guess what? An affiliate receives $450.00 for each sale. I wouldn’t sell the product either, I don’t care what they would  pay me.

The one good thing about the pitch page is that there was not a bunch of annoying pop-ups or pop-unders or last chance one-time offers, or squeeze pages, or “talk to us live chat” before you go..  when you attempt close the window. The only reason I can think of for that is that these people are rank amateurs in the annoying Internet Marketing hype business. They will probably get there soon enough, unfortunately, if they don’t fall on their face and scrap the program first.

I don’t like the up sales and the over-priced information products with all their testimonials, and all their hype and bonuses and one-time offers, and threats to sell only a limited number. I am mad and I’m not gonna take that crap any more. Don’t buy from these people.

In Search for an honest Internet business opportunity, Pro2 and Ebay Nitch stores

I scratched the Ebay nitch store idea and requested a refund of $96.00 from Clickbank for a program I purchased that helps you set up Ebay Nitch web site stores. In an earlier post you can read about the problems I had right up front. That was not the half of them.

There was probably nothing wrong with the program itself, but I could not do business with Ebay or Commission Junction. Their customer service and support is laughable. They are totally disconnected with the people who are sending them business and I found it frustrating to try to deal with all the flaws I encountered with their websites.

Ebay’s so-called support email addressed a problem totally unrelated to my question. I am sure it was something that was automatically generated from some key word in my support question. It stated that if they did not receive an answer from me, they would assume that my question had been answered. Well, I did answer them and my email was kicked back at me undeliverable. I did not attempt further communication. I took a hint from the Universe that I was going down the wrong path to Internet success. I don’t ignore the Universe’s messages.

Mind you, I am not a newcomer to the Internet. I know my way around it. I can imagine the problems a newcomer would have.

Commission Junction had suspended my account and I was not paid a commission I know I was due. They denied that my account had been suspended and said that it was working. It was working because after I discovered they had suspended it, I reopened it. Apparently they don’t keep logs on these transactions or didn’t bother to check them.

Anyway, they blamed my lack of commission on the client and the client washed their hand of the situation saying they have no control over suspended accounts.

Therein is the reason I asked for a refund on the software I had purchased through clickbank, because that software was totally dependant on these two giants for its operations.

Clickbank is a company I trust. If you sell a product through them, it is them who give you the refunds. You do not have to wonder if the owner of the product is undependable about refunds or not.

I also requested a refund on a program called Pro2 which helped you set up a website to sell downloadable ebook products. Apparently they only accept certain products with certain commission percentages and to make full use of the whole program you have to join all of their other affiliate partners. I was only a member of Clickbank and they did not have very many clickbank products in there to choose from, and none that I liked.

Also, before I could even learn what to do, they were trying to upsell another product to me. I was over loaded at the time and this was just too much. I quit because I did not want to be in their organization under their umbrella. Apparently the products they sold were sending them commissions on the second level. I had paid $79.00 for that membership. I got a refund.

www.bacaracka.com

The Longer the Pitch Page, the Higher the Price

I have noticed that the longer the pitch page for a product, the higher the price. If you spend your valuable time reading the sales page and if you buy the product, you might be presented with another pitch page or a one-time offer which is even longer and more expensive.

Excuse me, but there can’t possibly be that many “secrets” in the universe. Well maybe there are, but three pitch pages are overkill.

There seems to be a new trend in Internet Marketing and that is you don’t get anything until you give up your email address. Fair enough. But please don’t make me read two more offers before I get your “free gift.” It makes me feel like a seal surrounded by three sharks. And its not really free then is it? Sure I can just click out of them, but they are labeled step 2 of 3. Does this mean I won’t get my free gift until I get through all of these steps?

Me thinks I should take a break from looking at this stuff. I gave up watching television because I got tired of sitting through endless advertisements and now I seem to be doing the same on the Internet just because I am in search of an honest Internet marketing business.

The sad part of it is that they don’t give a rats ass how I feel, as long as they are making their money with their annoying methods. Even sadder, is nobody reads this blog anyway. Good night, until tomorrow.