What discovery TERRIFIED an insane genius and his hillbilly marketing guru friend?

While locked in his secret lab an insane genius stumbled across something so big, sooo scary, soooooo about to change the face of internet marketing, that he panicked. For 2 days he stayed locked in the lab testing and retesting the results. Scared that if he went outside the FBI, CIA, or some other alphabet agency was going to swoop on him.

Had he just unlocked the hidden code to the Universe?

Was this the key to another dimension?

When hunger finally forced him out of the lab the insane genius called up his hillbilly friend and asked him if he would mind testing something. The hillbilly, who has been successfully dominating the internet marketing world for sometime, almost had a heart attack when he saw just a brief glimpse what was coming out of the lab. He knew immediately that his livelihood would be destroyed if this tool fell into the wrong hands.

To find out what they decided to do with this information on the Laurence Challenge

Discover for your self how an insane marketing genius shares his secret with his friends to create a monster that uses the secret code to dominate the internet in ways never seen before.

Not only is it a lesson in marketing and the tools that have become essential if you are to want to build a successful online business, but it is also a prime example of how helping others achieve what they want will get you what you want.

So take a good look at what is going on, not just a superficial glance at the surface when you visit the Laurence Challenge.

A Business Plan In Time Will Save You Nine (Thousand Dollars Or More).

The following forum post is all too common with people starting out online.

I know where the poster is coming from – I have been there too.

What I wish someone had told me before I was in that position:

Making money online is no different to making money offline. You have to develop a business plan. Take your time and get this part of the process right or you will waste a lot of money.

Once you know what your goal is, and you have a plan to get to that goal, then you can start investing in programs and tools to expedite your journey. Do not buy anything (no matter how good or how much hype surrounds it) unless you understand exactly how it will fit into your business plan. Do not change your business plan to accommodate such purchases as this will cause you to deviate from your goal.

The gentleman in the above post had all the right motives for taking the action he did, but he didn’t have a plan in place to begin with. He is now in the position of having no disposable income to promote the business that he has just bought into. If he had a plan in place he may have chosen a slightly different route. After all, there is a lot a person can do with the $10,000 to $25,000 that he has most likely invested in the tools mentioned (depending at which level he bought into the programs).

It doesn’t matter how good the program/tool is, if it isn’t the right fit for your talents and expertise it will not benefit you at all. Just because your neighbor achieved success with it does not guarantee you will. Fully investigate how these things work before you buy in. If they will not explain the mechanics of the system upfront then keep shopping, there are many systems and business opportunities to choose from.

It is better to have “missed out” on a great deal (as the marketing will tell you) than to have spent all your money on a great deal that will give you a zero return on your investment. I have seen many cases where people have been encouraged to buy into programs using Other People’s Money as a “leveraging tool” only to find themselves paying off a huge credit card debt with no extra money coming in. It can literally take years to recover from these situations (or worse still, it can bankrupt a person).

Unfortunately, there are all too many predators out there wanting to relieve you of your money. Not all of these people are sharks who enjoying preying on the weak and gullible, many are those who were taken in and have no other way out but to recruit others and collect a commission.

If you are reading this before you have made these mistakes, remember:

• Set your goal.
• Create a business plan (get help with this if you have not done it before).
• Stick to the plan – do not get side tracked even if it means missing out on a once in a life time opportunity.
• Only buy tools/programs if you know exactly how they will benefit your plan (and you have the skills to apply them).

Please don’t let me see you making forum posts like the one above!

When is a friend not a friend?

Maybe when you have had too much of a good thing …

Recent innovation in the Google search engine results is to tailor your search results to those people on line to whom you are most connected.

In other words Google has decided that your online friends, and your friends online friends, are probably interested in the same sorts of things that you are, so when you search for something you will probably want to know what your friends have to say about the matter.

The returned result will reflect something like what is happening the picture below (at least that is what the video from the official Google blog says).

That all sounds fantastic doesn’t it?

But if this is the way of the future, what will the future end up looking like?

As I see it there are two possible outcomes.
1) It works like they say it will.
2) It doesn’t work like they say it will.

I am not sure which will be more scary. If it works like they are trying to engineer it to work then the more time you spend online the more the results will be tailored to your tastes and that of your friends.

Can you imagine a world so boring?

You are trapped in a pattern of perpetual sameness. No matter what search term you plug into Google, Google is going to throw back at you results that reflect the browsing behavior of you and your friends. A little too much like inbreeding in my books, self centred at best.

Ok, so initially your social network results have been segregated, but they have been engineering the results to your own habits for some time. And I can understand what Google is trying to do. They are trying to save you scrolling through the results to find sites that might interest you, or sites that feature your friends who obviously interest you.

But sometimes I just like to be surprised!

Perhaps I am strange. Maybe no-one else has learned something new and interesting because of an odd result that came back when they searched for a term on a search engine.

Or how about the other alternative? What if it doesn’t work as they plan?

The more likely outcome, in the short term at least, is that we will be inundated with new “friends.” If the only way of getting your website promoted to new circles of influence is make friends with new people, then I can see those people who currently spam your comment box, your forum, your social profiles, and your email in-box suddenly wanting to become your best friend.

As it is I have a plethora of “friends” from various social sites whose only attempt at interaction with me was to add me as a friend. I am not sure about you, but I thought friendship was a little more than having your avatar displayed on someone else’s friend list. Why would you even bother to go the effort if you were never intending to at least say “hi.”

I guess time will tell if it “works” or not. But at this stage I’ll enjoy the few surprises I discover when doing searches, and I’ll continue to make the most of my relatively small friends list.

Is A Website Essential To My Business?

We live in a country where the people love new technology.  New Zealand was world leaders when it came to EFT POS – Electronic Funds Transfer @ Point Of Sale. Many other new gadgets and gizmos are readily taken up by the Kiwi population.

Broadband is something the majority of New Zealanders are screaming out for. We want it available and we want it faster. It is such a big deal that even the Government has felt compelled to step in and try to sort it out.

What does this tell you?

It tells me that as a population most of us are actively online. Ok, no surprises there. But the staggering thing to me is the lack of recognition of this fact that local businesses seem to have.

I look at the number of businesses listed in the local Yellow Pages and then I do a search for these services online, and in some cases I am drawing a total blank. Even the businesses I do find often only have a listing in an online directory, they do not have a website of their own.

Who is to blame for this seemingly head-in-the-sand approach that NZ businesses are taking?  The Universities that produce all these managers? Business owners that hire staff to take care of computer stuff and have no idea how use one?

All I can say is that if you have a business and it isn’t online you are missing out on a lot of customers.  And if your competition beats you to having an online presence you will be left playing catch-up. It is always harder to outrank someone that already has a web presence for your target keywords.

If you need a little help getting online try NZMarketingSystems.com

A post for those of us who market on the internet.

There are a lot of people panicking and complaining about the F.T.C. (Federal Trade Commission) and the heavy handed actions they are taking with online marketers.

The interesting thing is that they are only enforcing rules that were always in existence but have not been enforced on the internet as strictly as they have been in other forms of media.

I always find it interesting that people get all upset when good business practices and consumer rights are enforced upon them.   I would not run a business that makes it standard practice to screw people, lie to to people, or generally provide substandard value, so this has never really been a concern to me.

Just today I got an email by a well known online marketer that stated this about his product:

... received rave reviews (which unfortunately
we can't print due to the damn new FTC regulations!).

You might think that he has cause for complaint – although I am not sure which rules his reviews were breaking.   However, the interesting thing is that I went the sales page for his product and after reading the page I was greeted with an exit popup when I tried to leave.

Exit popups are fairly common these days.  This particular one offered me an extra $20 discount if I changed my mind and decided to buy after all. It was a ONE TIME ONLY offer that I would never see again if I closed the window.

Here is my problem.  I would be seriously annoyed had I bought at the price first offered, because they were more than happy to sell it $20 cheaper.  But even more annoying is the blatent ONE TIME ONLY offer LIE.  Because I re-entered the site to check (several times), and was offered exactly the same ONE TIME ONLY offer each time.

My point is, here is a classic example of an online marketer complaining about the F.T.C. regulations, while at the same time blatantly trying to rip off his customers.

I say “shame on you Dan Raine.”

Modern Day Gold Rush

As an excellent example of the fact that we learn nothing from history is the Make Money Online exploitation that occurs on the internet.

Thousands of people sign up to the many courses being launched every month.  Some of the courses costing hundreds of dollars and some even costing thousands of dollars.

But just as in days gone by when people rushed to the gold fields it is not the miners that get rich but the store keepers and publicans.  One or two miners strike it rich by fluke just to keep the frenzy building.

Online it is no different. Every now and then someone breaks through and makes thousands of dollars “while they sleep.”  However, for everyone that succeeds there are thousands who fail miserably.  One thing is for sure, those “store keepers” and “publicans” of the Internet Marketing world are getting rich.

It is a sad sight to behold these people flocking to their slaughter. Investing money they don’t have to buy a product that will underwhelm them by its results.  Yet they will not be deterred. They have read the advertising that clearly states they will get rich quick if they own that course.

Please, do yourself a favour and stop chasing the gold at the end of the internet rainbow.  Most people will never recover the cost of their latest course, much less make money online.

“Don’t raise your eyebrow at me”

Said a previous boss to me one day after he had explained our project for the day.

I didn’t realize it was that obvious at that time. But since then I pay more attention to my subconscious displays of disbelief.

What sparked this comment?

Glad you asked.

I got a “Dear Dean McNamara” email from Squidoo HQ today. It wasn’t sent to just anyone.  No, it was sent to the select top 3% of squidoo lens masters.

The intent of the email was suggest that if I wasn’t happy with my Squidoo income I should have a look at the linked lens of tips.

Why should that raise my eyebrow?

Well given that I make approximately $1.50 from lenses each month, sometime is a little more, sometimes a little less, and because I got the email, I must be in the “top 3%” this holds out little hope that the other 97% of Squidoo lensmasters are making much money.

I figured out very early in the game that the effort required to make a living from Squidoo would be far better invested in my own sites – after all, why split the revenue with Squidoo? So I am not too concerned if I make money or not from my lenses – they are there for other purposes.

However, there are a lot of people joining up to Squidoo on an ongoing basis thinking they are going to make money online and be able to achieve this or that. The fact is, I am supposedly in the top 3% and I make $1.50 a month.

So don’t hold your breath is all I am saying …

Alternatively, I might not be as “select” as they suggested. In which case I am thinking that tactic has the potential to backfire. After all, if the majority of people are making similar wages as I am (and I suspect they are, judging by my lens rankings) then they will now think that there is no money to be made from Squidoo and will likely give up.

I wonder which scenario is true …

I was at the library today (long story) and I came across this book in the computer section:

The Accidental Billionaires

The Accidental Billionaires

And I was intrigued as to why it was filed in the middle of all the various computer manuals so I picked it up.

Anyway, long story short, I ended up skim reading through the whole book as it was quite an entertaining read.

If you want to get an idea of what really goes on behind the scenes of these house-hold named internet companies I suggest you grab a copy. I was not surprised to learn what I did, as I have experienced the seedy side of the internet up close and personal myself.

I don’t know how much was fact and how much was embellishment in this story, but I do that nothing has changed. There are still people stealing ideas, stealing traffic, back stabbing, and outright robbing other people blind even as you read this.

Nothing much has changed, except those start-up companies are billion dollar enterprises and there are new companies fighting for global niche domination every day.

All I can advise is that you take the proper care to protect yourself from these kind of shenanigans before venturing too far out into the world wide web way of doing business.