LeeLee Meyers’ Blog

We all read the sales pages of Internet Marketing products and the testimonials are compelling.  Most of us are wise enough to read between the lines of sales page testimonials.  But what about the appearingly unsolicited testimonial that shows up at a forum or blog.  I was following the exploits of a poster at one of the forums I frequent.  He was writing about his experiences with a program I too had been following. 

I’d had limited success with the program and had pretty much chalked it up to another instance of money sucked out of my pocket.  Like many other such programs, it did have some value/merit.  It had good training points.  The only problem is that it was filled with holes and the final conclusion regarding what following the program could do was faulty at best.  To date I have not met one single person who has even remotely been able to reproduce the product either in output or making money.

So it was with fascination that I was following this poster’s apparent excitement about the product.  I thought maybe he is going to be the one who is going to take this thing and make it work.  Or maybe he is just a newbie who writes really well.  Now he never exactly called himself a newbie.  He implied it.  Though he did refer to himself as a beginner, novice, rookie.

This morning he posted yet again about how well he is doing.  He isn’t making any money but in a matter of weeks he is producing what the product calls for at an astonishing rate.  So far, several weeks into the project, he has not hit any of the speed bumps I and others had hit.  So I got curious.  There was something about his name that had been nagging me in the back of my mind.  I’d seen him posting somewhere before.  I was sure of it.  And this morning I decided to find out.

And find out I did.  I found him in lots of places.  Research is one of my more useful talents.  And research on the net is like child’s play for me.  I don’t need Intelius to find people or what they are up to online.  So I will put it to you the reader.  You judge if this guy is being fair when he represents himself as a neophyte who just happens to be running like the wind with this new product.

1.  By his own admission, he has been in internet marketing for a year and a half. 
2.  He has already followed one program with a lot of similarities to the program he is now praising.
3.  He tweets.  Well so do a lot of people, I know.  I didn’t even bother checking facebook or Squidoo.  No doubt he is there.
4.  He has at least two personal monetized blogs, one on his life’s passions and one on internet marketing.
5.  He is writing an ebook. 
6.  He has an Amazon store.
7.  He took a master course that costs $1500 and I think to qualify, you had to complete a $500 pre-requisite, though I am not sure about the pre-requisite.

At that point I stopped.  I didn’t need anymore convincing that this guy is a shill.  Interestingly, he has something in common outside of IM with the guys he is pushing.  It is all too often that I run into the slimy side of IM.  It’s a shame because I am sure there are plenty of good products, honest marketers and sincere testimonials out there.   Even this product has redeeming qualities if it wasn’t being hyped as practically better than the winning the lottery.

But shills make it hard to weed through the garbage to get to the good, real stuff.  If you really are a rookie, beware.  If you are not a rookie, beware.  These guys are good.  Their specialty is not internet marketing.  It is separating you from your money.

This post was inspired by a conversation I am having in a pay to play forum/membership site.  The other member and I purchased an internet marketing program.  Our success with the program has been negligible so far.  The program was hyped to suggest we could earn a full time living online within weeks if we followed the program.  Well a few months have passed and we are not earning a full time living from this program.  But the question I will posit here is did we actually follow the program?  And if not, why not?

The program in question requires us to create 100s of websites with the expectation that these sites will earn $3 a day on average.  Each site could be built in as little as 30 minutes.  We might also invest another hour creating a video to promote the site.  Does it work?  I have no idea.  I haven’t even created 100 sites because my initial experience with the sites I did create do not indicate to me that it will work.  And I think that is the reason why most of the people are abandoning the system.  No immediate gratification and the costs involved.

Let me say one thing about immediate gratification.  I hate hype.  I make no secret about that.  But honestly, which program would you buy:

1.  Look over my shoulder as I show you on video step by step how to create an internet marketing empire in your spare time that will make money while you sleep.

OR

2.  I will help you every step of the way but know the learning curve will be painful and even costly at times.  You won’t likely see much, if any, return on your investment in the first few months.  In 6 months to a year, you can have a small income stream set up on the web.

Those of us who buy programs have created the hype.  We don’t want honesty.  We want hand holding.  We want to be told anyone can do it.  And that we can do it in our spare time between our jobs and family and softball league.  I won’t stop criticizing marketing hype but I do feel that I am partly responsible for it.

But hype is not what prompted me to write this post.  In conversation with my friend, he said something that jumped out at me.  He said his budget won’t allow him to churn out site after site.  But that was exactly the heart of the program: churning out site after site.  Before I got involved with the program I ran the numbers in my head.  I am a former financial professional.  It comes naturally to me to think in terms of numbers.  So using the example of this one program, let’s look at some numbers.

- 100 domain names at $8.95 each per year = $895.00
- Hosting – the program recommends a $35 a month host = $420.00 annually
- Cost of the program, one time fee = $97.00
- Private program forum $50 a month = $600.00
- One virtual assistant for technical and ongoing SEO = $3000.00 annually

And there you have it.  Over $5000.00 for the first year and just 100 sites.  Building 5 sites a day, 25 sites a week, 52 weeks a year, you should actually have 1300 sites at the end of the first year.  Cost of 1300 domain names $11,635.00.

Now I don’t know if I got a 100 sites up that I would amass $300 a day ($3 a day per site).  But I do know that an online marketing business is no different from any other business in one respect.  It requires start up and ongoing capitalization.

The number one reason for business failure is under capitalization.  It takes money to make money.  Sure you can do an online biz for much less than a brick and mortar but to think you can do it for pennies is setting yourself up for failure.  I don’t know the specific budget of the person who was posting.  But I can at least point out, especially to the newbies, that there are real costs in running an internet business.  Hopefully, I will save at least one person some heartache. 

Years ago I sold an MLM product.  One of the main objections we had to overcome was people saying they couldn’t afford the program.  Now that I think about it, starting an MLM biz probably costs about in the same range as starting an online biz.    To overcome objections, we would ask the prospect how they could get extra money to afford our program.  The initial outlay to join the program was $100.  Ongoing costs would be primarily advertising and education.  This was in the infancy days of the internet so advertising was mostly local and expensive.  Printing flyers.  Newspaper ads.  Business cards.

The crux of the argument is this.  How badly do you want it?  Do you want it badly enough to take on a parttime job to afford it?  Do you want it badly enough to give up $100 a month cable or $50 a week for movie and dinner date night (I’m a cheap date LOL)?  Do you want it badly enough to give up that vacation trip (I did for the MLM)?

The point is most people have money when they sit down and really think about it.  Some people are living hand to mouth but in most of North America, Europe and Australia we have a pretty good standard of living.  I used to have a business building and selling computers.  I once delivered an order to a notoriously poor neighborhood in NYC.  My clients were living way better than I was: new furniture, central air, big TV and all this was in subsidized housing.  It really is a matter of perspective.

Anyone who starts an online business without a plan of how to capitalize it is setting themselves up for failure.  A hard look at how much you can invest in your business and yourself has to be taken.  Business, on or off line is a gamble. 

No one plans to fail but it happens.  Many successful biz people failed repeatedly before they hit on success.  And some people may never hit on success but I couldn’t live resigned to the fact that my paycheck is all I have to look forward to.   I want the freedom of owning my own business badly enough to work on average 14 hours a day, 7 days a week.  The 4-Hour Workweek is the reward at the end of the road.  It is not so much learning how to create a “business that bothers me the least” as it is initially capitalizing a 4-Hour Workweek business. 

My VA’s don’t work for free.  My business is not paying their salaries.  But their salaries are part of my cost of doing business.  The start up phase of my biz plan.  Before them, a big part of my biz plan money was being spent on education and tools.  Currently I am investing in web real estate… web sites, hosting.

The bottom line is you have to be realistic about starting an online business.  I don’t advocate writing a complex business plan.  I know that turns a lot of people off.  But at the very least, you should know exactly how much capital you are willing to invest in your business, where you are going to get it and then match that to the business you choose.  I don’t recommend credit cards though I know many people do just that.  Miracles do happen but not often enough.  You are not going to get rich overnight.  Your business is not going to be self sustaining for a minimum of 6 months.  Plan to throw money at it for a while.  And close your ears to the hype. 

Now go.  Get a pad and paper and figure it all out.  If you are over your head in a business, cut your losses and dump it.   It is better to start over with a proper plan working for you than to keep bleeding money into a terminal case.

Every day thousands of new wannabe internet marketers jump into the fray.  And every day nearly as many give up.  If you’ve been online for a few months and have read some how-to books or bought a program or membership, you probably have concluded niche marketing is the ticket for a newbie.  And your conclusion would be correct.  Niche marketing is and will be hot for many, many years to come.  You may ask, if so many people are getting into online marketing, won’t the internet become saturated?  I suppose it will someday but I don’t expect to see it in my lifetime.  Sure things will change.  They always do.  New marketing techniques, new technology.  Who was even thinking web 2.0 just a few short years ago?

But I digress.  The easiest way for a newbie to get into business online is to select a targeted mini niche and build a blog.  That’s it.  Seriously.  Build a blog, fill it with relevant, fresh content and they will come.  Oh let’s back up a minute.  Did I say content?  Yes I did.  And not just the same old rehashed PLR in sub-standard English or cut and pastes from Wikipedia.  I said relevant, fresh content.  You can try to cheat your way out of this one but all you will accomplish is maybe a trickle of income and the conviction that internet marketing doesn’t work.  Or there is no place for the little guy.  Rubbish.

So why do so many people try to avoid the content component?  Well mostly because it involves work.  No short cuts unless you have deep pockets and can hire a proper writer.  Most new netpreneurs are working on a shoe string budget.  It makes sense to outsource some work if you have a spare $50-$100 a week.  Or if you are like me and could not get off the ground without technical support.  But you simply will not get the content writing you need for those prices.  I have joined a number of PLR memberships at various price points and exclusivity.  Only one comes close to providing useful, original content with good writing.

So what is a newbie to do.  Well you could do the research and writing yourself.  I do about 80% of my posting exactly that way.  And I do not limit my research to the web.  Remember that quiet place called the library?  It is still a great place to do research.  Pull some books off the shelf.  Immerse yourself in a topic.  Jot some notes.  Go home and stew on it for a day or two.  Then sit down and write from your notes and your memory.  Maybe you are already an expert on a particular topic.  That is fine but if you want to be a niche marketer, eventually you are going to run out of your own expertise.

So the next step is to turn to PLR.  I use PLR mainly to inspire me.  Occasionally, I will rewrite an article but more often I will use the article as a jumping off point for a personal, fresh perspective.  You don’t realize how much you know or have experienced in life until you start trying to write content.  If you are not very familiar with the topic, check the facts.  This is one area where Wikipedia is useful.  It’s not perfect but for a quick fact sweep, it can’t be beat. 

So why all this blah, blah, blah about content?  Content is king!  If you remember nothing else about internet marketing, remember that.  You can put up hundreds of mini junk sites.  You can add to the already teeming net of spam sites.  You can take all the short cuts you want but you will wind up with little to show for your efforts.  And wasn’t that the point in the first place.  Effort —> income?

One last point.  Time is on your side.  If you can ride it out long enough, you can emerge on the profitable end of an internet business.  No matter how many sites you have, if you add fresh content to them on a regular basis they will in time rise in page rank and develop back links.  You will have to do some basic traffic techniques but they are really easy and we will talk about them at another time.  So how often should you post new content?  I would say pace yourself.  When you first develop your targeted mini niche blog, you should post several times a week.  After that, several times a month is probably sufficient.  And if your blog has been up for 6 months or more, you can probably slow that down to a couple of times a month.  The idea is to keep the blog alive. 

No doubt you have done keyword or domain name research and looked at the first few websites on any given search page.  Some sites clearly belong on the first page.  Others will have you scratching your head.  A blog post from 2003 with top page rank.  Preposterous.  Yet what if you wrote that post in 2003?  And six years later it is still attracting organic traffic?  Home run doncha think?  The good stuff will rise to the top and stay at the top.  The garbage will sink to the bottom.

When it comes to targeted mini niches and content I am reminded of one of my favorite TV shows, Survivor.

Outwit – Outplay and most of all Outlast.

Affiliate programs online are big and growing bigger everyday.  Don’t let anyone tell you affiliate programs are dead.  They are very much alive.  And don’t let anyone tell you that you will be an overnight success.  You won’t.  You have a better chance of winning the lottery.  But you can be a successful affiliate marketer if you are willing to put in the time and work.  The beauty of affiliate marketing is that your upfront investments are small.  So your risk is also small.  And if you run your business like a professional enterprise, your payoffs can grow. 

Affiliate marketing is simple.  An affiliate promotes a product or service and gets paid a commission when some action is taken.  Depending on the affiliate program you join, you may get paid when a sale occurs.  But some programs pay you simply to deliver a visitor to the sales site or when someone fills out a form or subscription. 

You have two main jobs as an affiliate marketing professional.  Your first job is to choose your programs wisely.  An established program with a good reputation is a good place to start.  Keep in mind that you will do the same work to market for a low paying program as you will for a higher paying program.  Your second job is to drive traffic to the point of sale.  And this takes a website.  Don’t run in terror quite yet.  Today’s blogging platforms make a website doable for a lot of people. 

No doubt you will see ads that claim you can make money without a website.  That is true but it will take you either a lot longer to succeed or cost you a lot of money.  How so?  Well you can buy a domain name and (for the non-tech people) essentially attach a link to the sales page.  You promote your domain name via articles and by posting at forums,  blogs, social bookmarking and media sites to name a few.  But… not every site will welcome your self promotion.

Which leads me to the other way to make money without a website.  It is called pay per click.  The simplest way to put it is you buy ad accessibility on search engines.  You pay for the words you think people will type in their searches.  Your ad will be shown during that search or on that webpage.  If someone clicks on your ad you will pay.  If someone buys after clicking on your ad you make money.  If not, you are out money. 

Yes it can be done without a website but…. There is a trend in affiliate marketing to move away from these techniques.  Two of the biggest affiliate marketing programs in the world are removing pay per click as allowable ways to bring in business.  Pay per click is not dead and if you have a big enough business, you will still use it to bring traffic to your site but you will not be able to make a direct link to the sales site.

Also, many of the better affiliate companies request that you have a website and they even check that site manually to see if you are a serious marketer.  The days of being able to affiliate market without a website are dwindling.  And with good reason.  Think of it as a consumer rather than a seller.  You are interested in buying jelly beans.  You do a search online for “buy jelly beans”.  You click a link that takes you straight to the sales page.  Do you buy?  Probably not.  Before you buy, you may want to compare prices or brands or flavors or personal experiences.  Where will you get this information?  From a good webpage.  Let’s presume now that you click over to my blog.  I love jelly beans and my passion for them shows with the information I present on my blog.  First you will get a good feeling about me and jelly beans.  Then you may want to buy on my recommendation.  So you click my ad and buy from the sales page. 

I have heard affiliate marketers complain about having to provide good “content” at their website.  They have this notion that the search engines exist to bring them business.  The search engines exist to serve the searcher and provide them with a positive experience.  Understand this and you will have a lot less angst as you move forward with your affiliate marketing business.  Forums are websites paid for by someone, sometimes out of pure love for a topic but also to sell something be it a book or membership.  They will often allow you a bit of self promotion if you contribute positively to their site but they are not there for the sole purpose of posting your link.

So what do you need to succeed in affiliate marketing? 

1. Professionalism – treat your business like you would if you were paying thousands a month for a store front.  Make a plan.  Show up everyday and work that plan consistently.  Plan on a website or blog.

2. Patience – the odds of making a full time living overnight are astronomically against you.  The odds of making a full time living in the future are very much in your favor. 

3. Value – give your customers value.  Make a visit to your website/blog a good experience.  Try to provide useful information and your well thought out opinions.  You don’t have to be the sole source of the info.  You can bring in experts and posts with permission from other sites.  A little cross promotion is a benefit to each. 

If you dream of quitting your job.  If you want to make it in a business of your own.  Affiliate marketing is a low risk way to test the market and your mettle.

I purchased this product as part of a coaching program I took up at the beginning of ‘09.  The coaching program had two premises.  One, replace myself with an expert outsourcer.  Two, put the tools to create an online business in the outsourcer’s hands.  Well I have to say this has worked out beautifully for me.  I have hired two people who supplement and support me online.  And I learned the ins and outs of doing that at ReplaceMyself.

So what does Replace Myself have to offer?  A lot.  To begin, just by clicking on my link, you will be taken to a page with a free audio about outsourcing.  This is not your typical salesy audio.  You will be given real, useful, information absolutely free.  Go ahead, click and see.

If you listened to the audio, you are no doubt intrigued at the least.  The goal of your ReplaceMyself membership is to hire and train self directed people to replace you.  It sounds crazy but it is true.  Now it will not happen overnight.  Nothing of value normally does happen overnight.  But John Jonas has made the process as easy as he possibly can.

Inside the site, you will have access to additional training materials to help you screen, hire and train someone as fast as possible.  You are given access to a talent site that has thousands of applicants ready to work for you.  From beginners to experts, you will find the perfect people for you to jump start your business.  If you don’t want to search the talent pool, you can select a pre-screened employee for a small fee. 

You will learn how to test your applicant’s abilities and motivations.  You will have access to a great workflow program to help you keep projects organized and on track for your people.  Your main job is to learn how to select the right person and give them the tools they need.  That’s it.  It’s a win-win.  You create an opportunity for someone who needs, wants and deserves it.  They take the ball and run with it.

But it actually gets better, if you can imagine that.  ReplaceMyself provides you with all the tools you need to teach your new employee.  You can take a complete beginner and hand them the training John provides.  Or you can do what I did.  You can gather up all the programs you didn’t have time for or didn’t understand and let your outsource partner sort it out for you. 

Here are just a few of the training modules at ReplaceMyself:
Video Marketing – Is there anything hotter than this right now?
MySpace/Squidoo/Facebook Marketing
Adwords Training
SEO Training

If you already have a business in place, this will free your time up to create new business or actually be able to enjoy some of the fruits of your labor with your family and friends.  No more 50, 60, 80 hour work weeks.  If you are building a new business as I am, you may find yourself running to keep up with your people.  I used to leisurely struggle through every stage of my internet marketing business.  Now I have two people asking me… what’s next?  We have been together a few months and they now have regular focuses that they can work without my direction.  My business model includes a number of income streams.  It will be a while before the three of us have it all down to a science and they tell me to go away and let them do their thing.  But that day is going to come.

So those were all the positive things I had to say about ReplaceMyself, off the top of my head.  Now for the less positive.  It is pricey.  There is no other way to say it.  The product is worth every penny and then some but I have no doubt some people will be put off by the cost.  So let’s talk about it.  Before ReplaceMyself, I had a sometimes aggravating, often expensive, hobby.  After ReplaceMyself, I have a burgeoning business.  Before ReplaceMyself, I was buying book after book trying to learn internet marketing.  After ReplaceMyself, the only thing I am buying is domain names and hosting for my various new concerns.

Everyday new people try to jump online and make money.  The people who succeed are usually the people who take their new business seriously.  They have a plan.  They set a budget.  Some have to take on extra work to afford the expense.  They recognize that an internet marketing business has a low start up cost but not a zero cost.  They know they are not going to make 6 figures in 6 days.  They also know they can make a lucrative living by not giving up.  The people who don’t take their business seriously are usually disappointed.  It really is that simple.

I cannot say enough good things about outsourcing or the people who work with me.  You may notice a gap in my posting on this blog.  That is because my two outsourcers keep ME so busy.  They are helping me take my business ideas and things I have learned into the real world wide web.  My dream is becoming a reality.  We are actually earning real income.  We are connecting and interacting with real people out there in cyberspace.  I believed it could happen.  I just didn’t know how to make it happen until I hired outsourcers.

Like so many new netpreneurs, I got very excited about Internet Marketing.  
I read everything I could get my hands on.  I joined some coaching and tried to implement a few things.  But one major hindrance stood in my way.  I am a technophobe.  I tried, I really tried, to learn how to put up a web page.  I had some minor success after many hours and some tears.   And even with those things I was able to manage, if I hit one wrong key or placed one wrong code, I didn’t know how to get out of it. 

Honestly, I was about ready to give up.  And then I followed some good advise and hired a couple of outsourcers.  And it was the single best decision I have made in my Internet Marketing career.  I thought to be successful, I had to do it all.  Somehow I had confused having my own business with being a martyr.  I never did it all when I worked in the corporate world.  In fact, I did my piece of the puzzle which tied into so many other pieces.  I couldn’t build my company’s widget but I sure could create the deal to finance it.

Like anything else that is new to you, you have to learn how to manage the outsourcing portion of your business.  But if you hire the right people, this is probably one of the easiest things you will do.  In my next few posts, I am going to review some products and people who’s advise helped me choose the right outsourcers for my business.  I can’t emphasize enough how important outsourcing should be to your internet business.  And I can’t be more pleased with the two people I hired.

I have one person who is a whiz with all this technical mumbo jumbo.  He studied it in school.  Yes, he is devoting his career at this time to developing things on the web.  How arrogantly stupid was I to think I could or should be able to do what he does?  I don’t have time to go back to school fulltime for a couple of years.  But he is at the beginning of his career.  If I studied everyday, all day, I would never catch up to him because technical is his niche.  My natural talents lie elsewhere.

My other outsourcer is a young lady who is game to tackle anything.  She tries with various success to tackle technical stuff.  But her main value to me is to replicate my efforts.  She posts at my blogs.  She researches topics.  She does a little of everything and frees up my time to develop other projects.

The goal in hiring outsourcers is to replicate yourself and strengthen up the chinks in your armor.  Since both of my outsourcers are at the front end of their careers, I am giving them an opportunity to earn and learn.  I pay them to produce tangible products for me.  I also pay them to spend time learning new software and things I can give them.  This is how I was developed in the corporate world and this is how I want to be with my people.  I see this as investing in them and I hope they will want to continue to invest in me.  As my business prospers, they too will prosper.  In time, I hope they will run parts of my business with me nearly hands off.  I can see the day when we will need to hire more help that they will supervise and develop.

All I can say is this is incredibly exciting stuff.  With the help of the right outsourcer, you can have your business online now, not months from now after you have tried to do it all yourself.  If you are interested in bringing outsourcing help into your business (and you should be), check out my product reviews.

I Hate Video

Most gurus are in internet marketing for the quickest buck possible.  Hence their latest love affair with video.  When they realized search engines were indexing video easily they all jumped on the band wagon.  And they discovered if they had some knowledge about some topic, they could sit in front of a webcam and babble all day.  Point at a few screen shots and you have a product on your hands.

Video Ramblings

Gone are the days of write and rewrite.  Gone are the days of editing.  If you can gab you can be an internet marketing guru.  And you can waste my time in addition to my money.   One was bad enough.  Two is just unacceptable.  And if there are worthwhile gurus you have been following, you simply have to grin and bear it.

Look Over Their Shoulder

At first glance, this seems like a good idea.  Until you try to put the product into action.  You will wind up not only transcribing most of the audio, you will also have to describe what is seen in your notes.  Basically the user winds up writing the ebook themselves.  If you don’t you will about lose your marbles trying to find the spot on the video with the information you need.  I have wasted more time trying to go back to find one fact from a video than I want to think about.  Give me text and screen shots.  I can cope from there. 

Newbies Fight Back

Stop buying videos.  They are not going to help you build an internet marketing empire.  They are going to drive you crazy long before you make your first dollar.  If we stop rewarding this drivel with money they will stop producing it.  Any guru who is producing a valuable product will be happy to include a text version of their work.  If they don’t produce text, you can be pretty sure they created the whole thing in less than a few hours and have given it about as much thought.

I started my Internet Marketing journey, August 2008. I figured I had to do my due diligence for a while. I did a lot of reading and finally joined a membership site with someone I trusted. The site was a good decision because it gave me tons of ideas and valuable free stuff. Not that free junk you usually get when you sign up on a squeeze page.

I just realized what a momentous moment I have already reached. Three months ago I had no idea what a squeeze page was. Now I know a lot of things! And not nearly enough!

Anyway, about a month into my due diligence and information overload, I signed up for a coaching program. It is a great coaching program. Easy to follow. There was just one problem. Me. I was too new. It is not that the program didn’t give step by step instructions, it was that I had no idea what I was really trying to achieve online.

The basis of this program is that you will write and market an ebook. And surely they give you all the tools to do just that. Except I couldn’t figure out my niche. This was no fault of the program. I was merely in too deep, too fast for my particular sensibilities.

On the flip side though, without my coaching course. I doubt very much I would own my own domain and have a WordPress blog up and running. The funny thing is, once I got the blog, I didn’t know what to do with it. What I did not want to do is be an Internet Marketing Marketer. And I still don’t. I have massively eclectic interests and I could generate ideas all day long without ever having to sell a “how to make money on the net” book.

So I won’t. And just yesterday I think I finally decided on my first ebook topic. Notice I did not say my first niche. In fact my topic is rather broad but it is flowing so easily and quickly it is clearly the book I am meant to write at this time. So niches be darned. I am going with my heart.

Meanwhile I am developing as an Internet Marketer, the old fashioned way. I am learning everyday. I finally started blogging on a topic near and dear to my heart on a free blogging program. Ultimately I want all my blogs to be on WordPress with my own domain. But I am struggling with setting up domains and blogs and html and all that jazz. Sure I could hire a freelancer. But where would that put me?

I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. It is a mere flicker now. I realize I am not likely going to be an overnight success and I don’t care about that. I have made 2009 the year I make money online. How much money I have no idea. But the important thing is I will be learning. Worst case scenario, I have a whole new skill set which is never a bad thing.

This morning I unsubscribed to many of the emails I get in my inbox. You know. All the ones you signed up for to get the free gift. It is nothing personal. I am just too distracted by all the “free” advice they send me.

Actually, very few of the emails contain any really good free advice. Most of them contain nothing but pitches. Day after day, sometimes several a day, of links that will send my business into orbit.

Since I save all my emails, it was pretty easy to weed them out. When I see an article that contains interesting advice, I usually flag it. I also flag the occasional product that sounds useful.

In fact, I have started a folder called “things I want to buy”. This folder is working out very nicely. It prevents me from making an impulse purchase. I have pretty good sales resistance but sometimes I am tired or in some emotional state that lowers my guard and heck it is only $27 so I buy without thinking. The “things I want to buy” folder has cured this. I move the email, that contains the great offer, into the “want to buy folder”. Hours or better yet days later, I revisit the folder. More often than not I decided I really don’t want to buy that product at all. Either I really don’t need it now or I already have something like it. Or upon further consideration, it doesn’t really look like it is worth the money.

Some marketers I have already come to associate their name to their value. Those are easy. I will keep getting their email and reading what they have to say. And more than likely purchase items I need from them.

Some marketers I couldn’t name off the top of my head but I have flagged a lot of their emails because of the interesting content. I will also continue to receive their emails and consider the offers they make.

The rest who send nothing but pitches are now history. I would say I cleared out about 50% of my incoming email and I will be revisiting this process in a few more days to see where else I can make useful trims.

One last note. I have been receiving emails lately that I do not like. I call them confessionals. It started with the guy who is depressed. Then the one getting divorced. Now a guy is actually having a sale somehow tied in to the fact that his child died. Come on guys. I shudder to think what is next up.

Internet marketers wonder why people have such a hard time trusting them. They think it is because of the anonymity of the net. And to some degree that is true. But as a customer myself, I can tell you my problem is hype. My problem is slicker than ice sales pages. Sure people are persuaded to buy with advertising. But just imagine if everything you bought came with a sales page.

Straight up from the ground. This secret vegetable will give you a perfect figure and perfect health. It is so secret we can’t even tell you what color it is. We can tell you this. It has negative calories. Yep, you spend more calories just by the action of chewing this than the vegetable actually has. Etc.

And can I just tell you how sick and tired I am of promotions that threaten if you don’t buy now you will never get the chance again? Are you kidding me? You spends hours upon hours and dollar after dollar developing a product, launch it and then pull it after a few days or weeks? Okay this makes sense if you are selling a PLR (private label rights) package. If you sell it to everyone it will have no value. Still I wonder just how many times these packages really are sold.

Then there is the sister ploy, buy now or pay more tomorrow. That one really irks me. There is only one legitimate reason I can see to make this offer. If you roll out a promotion to your subscriber list at a “you are my loyal customer” friendly price. But more often than not, the discounted price is used to create a buzz. Get a massive bunch of money in your account and create a huge buzz among affiliates. Hours, days or weeks later, when your affiliates start promoting the product to their lists, the price goes up.

Or worse yet, the price never goes up. It was just a ploy to force you to action. I hate those sales pages with the prices crossed out … it will not cost you $197 or $97 or even $47. You can have the latest and greatest for just $27! Newsflash! If he really thought he could get $197, he would be charging $197. But in fact, there is so much competition in his particular niche he has a much better chance of reeling you in at $27.

There is nothing inherently illegal or immoral in these ploys. It just seems like a snake oil slick way of doing business. This is my opinion. I can understand sales and inflation. A perennial best seller may go up in price over time just as everything else goes up in price. And there is nothing wrong with a discount sale. I get a newsletter from a marketer who has a madness sale once a week on the same day. She offers “x” amount of her regular product at the crazy one day price of $5. When they are gone at that price, they are really gone. The next day they are back to $47 or whatever the regular price may be.

In my business I am trying not to insult the intelligence of my customers. I am trying to persuade them with the real value of my products. Sure a lot of hyped products really do have value. I just wish they were offered in a more dignified manner.

By the way, the secret vegetable is celery.