A journey from Internet marketing stasis to business mastery and financial freedom (I hope)

Maybe it has something to do with this:

I feel like I’m spending a great deal of my life playing catch-up right now. I’ve been trying to focus on my most important tasks rather than trying to do everything. As a result, some things have had to take a back seat and this blog has, unfortunately, been one of them.

I do have a lot to say on the world of Internet Marketing though, so I’ll hopefully get some time to put some notes together for the blog.

One of the things I’m trying to do at the moment is catalogue my vast collection of Internet Marketing ebooks, courses, tools and other material in an attempt to put together a plan for moving forward. My aim is to summarise as much as I can into a condensed resource that I can refer to for quick access.

Of course, I’ve got a few emails to deal with first…

… They’re a bit tough to start off with, but as you chew on them for a while, they soften up and begin to stick. Then after some time, they get a bit old and manky and you have to throw them in the bin!

And so it is with my business plans.

I’ve tried so many things, I don’t know whether I’m currently on Plan E, H or Q. So I’m going to start from scratch and outline my new Business Plans A, B and C.

Plan A
Here’s where I continue what I’m doing with my software business. Now I don’t know whether it’s the current economic climate, increasing competition or other factors but sales are not what they should be and I wonder about the future of this business. I think it has great potential but it’s a struggle and requires huge effort for relatively poor reward.

Plan B
This is where I finally decide once and for all to get into the Information Publishing business properly instead of just dabbling and thinking about it. A low-cost entry opportunity has come up and I want to really go for it. I’ll tell you exactly what it is in a moment but when I do, please hold back from yelling out “sucker!” at your screen. Think it by all means, just try not to let it out loud .

Plan C
Now Plan C is really an extension of Plan B and here’s where I get really serious about the whole thing. I don’t want to reveal exactly what this is right now but it involves a day of training and ongoing mentoring to help me started and make it all happen. Yeah, I’ll be surprised if I learn anything truly new on the day but I really think the mentoring will give me that extra kick to make sure I get on with what needs to be done. It’s expensive though. Only time will tell if it’s worth it.

So, what’s “Plan B” all about?

Well, it’s about a little trip to Brighton at the end of the month to Andrew Reynold’s latest 3-day Entrepreneur’s Bootcamp (hey, I heard you – I said keep it to yourself).

So Andrew’s at it again, doing what he does best; organising big marketing events and pulling in top speakers from all over the globe.

Now I’ve been to enough of these things to know what to expect. It’s going to be a pitch-fest. No doubt about that!

Sure, there will be some nuggets of great information given out by the speakers, but no single, coherent plan to follow. And all of the speakers are there for one reason only – to sell their products, courses or mentoring programmes. Why else would they do it?

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. They’re in business to make money and I certainly wouldn’t expect them to appear purely out of the kindness of their hearts. I just want to point out that whatever people think the event is about, it might not be quite what they expect.

So why am I going?

Two reasons:

(1) It’s for charity. The meagre £149 entrance fee is going straight to The Make A Wish Foundation which is a fantastic charity. I’m sure AR will make plenty of money from the JV deals he’s surely made with the speakers, plus the DVD sales later on, but he should be applauded for putting up all the initial event costs and raising so much money for such worthy causes. And I want to support that.

(2) This time, he’s thrown in some resale licenses for physical products (CDs/DVDs). Now apart from not being in “make money” markets, we have no idea what these are and how many there are.

And I’m not stupid (well, not very stupid anyway). I know there’ll be about 3000 other punters, all being given the same licenses. But if there’s a reasonable number of different product licenses (say 5) and only 10% of punters (at best) do anything with them, the numbers start to look a bit better.

I figure that if Andrew truly believes that decent money can be made with these product licenses then there’s every reason to believe that I should be able to make money with them, so long as I take immediate action.

So that’s the plan. Go to the event, pick up the licenses, try to figure out what the markets are and how to best approach them, pick my 2 favourites, make contacts to get the ball rolling and maybe look for supporting back-end products too.

Let’s see if I can really make this work the way we’ve been ‘promised’ it can.

Then again, there’s always Plan C…

Most of what I do on a daily basis involves sitting and working in front of my computer. And when I’m not working on my computer or otherwise distracted by home life, I tend to spend a lot of time sitting, thinking about my business. I rarely take time out to think of “nothing at all”.

I’m not exactly unfit and I have been trying to increase my level of exercise over the last year or so. I get onto the trampoline at least once a week (even in winter) and I bought a door bar a few months ago to do pull-ups. I really love the trampoline, especially since I taught myself to to front somersaults (it took me about 15 months) because that’s really fun and addictive. It’s also a cool trick to show off with!

The thing is, my exercise has all been a bit ad-hoc and irregular. I’ve tended to fall out of bed and get straight to work. Sometimes I didn’t even have breakfast first.

Now my wife has been telling me for years to do regular exercise to take my mind off things, remove stress and become more productive while I work (oh yeah, and get physically stronger and fitter too). When I was working for someone else (5 years ago, now – yikes!), I was at least getting two half-hour cycles in every day.

Last year I made a real effort to start a morning routine on the exercise bike. I could have got out on my real bike but decided that was just too much hassle and I’d be less motivated to do that, especially without a specific place to get to. Cycling round the block just doesn’t do it for me, especially in the middle of winter!

So the exercise bike routine worked well for a time. I think I lasted about a week and a half. Then I started missing days and, soon after, got bored with the whole idea. And that was that!

So, what’s new?

Let me say straight off that I’m not an Eben Pagan affiliate and I’m not about to promote his Guru MasterMind program that’s currently in launch (actually, it may even be closed now). Not because I don’t think it’s good (I expect it will be great) but because that’s not what I’m about here.

However, if you haven’t yet seen Eben’s pre-launch videos, you really must take a look because he gives out a lot of excellent info. He’s also a master speaker and you can learn a lot just by watching his delivery and how he’s put the videos together. That’s on top of the actual content. Since the videos are to promote the program, they may not be up forever.

Anyway, in his “Becoming A Productive Modern Guru” video, Eben talks, among other things, about his morning routine and how it sets him up for the day. The things that struck me about his routine is that they cover a few different activities (not just exercise) and the exercise itself is more of a gentle workout to get the heart rate going and not the kind of “go for it” exercise I tried doing before that makes you hot and sweaty.

He’s successful and he knows what he’s talking about so that was enough of a push for me to try again.

Eben suggests a 1-hour morning routine but I’m trying to start a little easier with a 40-minute routine that goes something like this:

1. Drink a large glass of water
2. Back stretching exercises (I suffer from back problems) – 10 minutes
3. Pull-ups on the door bar – 1 minute (maybe not even that long, I can only manage about 10 at the moment!)
4. Exercise bike – 6 minutes (2.5 Km)
5. More back exercises – 5 minutes
6. Meditation – 5-10 minutes
7. Breakfast – 15 minutes

Okay, so I’ve only been doing it for 6 days so far but I do feel a lot better for it and start my work with a clearer head. Since it’s sliced up into short activities, I think I’ll be able to stick at this routine a lot longer than the last attempt, and I really need to hit that magic 21-day target so that it becomes a habit.

Watch the Eban Pagan video if you can but do try to find a good morning routine that works for you.

I’ll let you know how I get on with mine!

The title reminds me of some nursery rhymes I was reading to my kids the other day, where the words rhyme in spelling but not when actually spoken. I ended up trying them out in different crazy accents until I found one that worked!

So a year’s gone by since my last post and I could easily give up on this blog altogether because I really don’t have the time for it, but I’ve had a burst of renewed enthusiasm so here I am.

I’ve spent the last year focussing on my main software business which has done well. Of course, it could always be better and I’m about to put a lot more effort into marketing the business (mostly online). However, I’ve noticed a significant levelling off or even a downturn in business over the past few months. I haven’t worked out yet whether it’s due to the current state of the global enonomy or other factors. What I do know is that I’m concerned about being reliant on this one income stream and want to try a little side project.

If you’ve read any of my earlier posts, you’ll see that, a year or so ago, I was planning a niche info project (something I was calling my “Mercury Project”), but that still hasn’t really got started because I’ve been so busy with the software business.

The trouble with Mercury is that there’s no existing info products out in the marketplace to sell as an affiliate to get started. There are plenty of associated sites selling related hard goods so I know the market is potentially quite strong. But, as an info product marketer, it would mean creating my own product.

That’s fine because it’s what I really want to do but the niche is a bit like “how to build a summer house” and the way I want to create my product is to actually build that “summer house” and then show step-by-step how it’s done.

Except that my “summer house” (the actual Mercury Project) is going to take me years to build and I can’t wait that long!

Well, I have a new plan brewing and with my new early morning “get ready for the day” fitness routine, I’m getting fairly excited about the prospect.

I’ll write more about it soon (I promise)…

Despite my New Year resolution to post to this blog every 2 weeks or so, I decided to concentrate on my business for a few months so I haven’t had the time. But something today compelled me to write again…

About a month ago I got an invite to Andrew Reynolds’ latest “Millionaire’s Bootcamp” down in Bournemouth. Apart from a £150 donation to Gt. Ormond Street Hospital (a very worthy charity in my opinion) it was basically a free event. It looked really good on paper but I quickly realised that it was going to be a re-hash of the 2005 Wembley event and “not quite what it says on the tin” (please correct me if I was wrong).

Needless to say, I didn’t go. I didn’t want to be subjected to yet another pitch-fest. Yes, there would have been lots of snippets of information that I could use to make myself a millionaire but not a detailed, coherent plan as promised.

So this morning, I got a “Greetings from Bournemouth” postcard offering me the Earth plus a few neighbouring planets completely for free and with absolutely no catch, as long as I responded by midnight tonight (well, I hope Postie managed to deliver it on time). The postcard, of course, led to a mammoth online sales page – the kind that Andrew Reynolds does so well.

Now, to my mind, when something says it’s “COMPLETELY FREE” and with “NO CATCH” and repeats this message throughout the letter, I kind of think that maybe it shouldn’t cost anything. Maybe I’m just a little weird but when it then goes on to say that all I need to do is pay £697 + VAT, I get a little peeved. Now I wouldn’t mind so much if it was a £200 donation to Gt. Ormond Street but this is money going straight to Mr. Reynolds pocket and he says “just £697″ like it isn’t really that much to ask. Not in his world maybe, but it is in mine!

There must have been some cosmic event last night where the word “free” suddenly changed its meaning. I do hope it wasn’t just a gimmick to grab attention and brainwash us into thinking the price was insignificant… No, he’d never do that, would he?

I really want to like Andrew Reynolds because I think his heart is basically in the right place and, having met him a few times, I think he’s a really nice guy. But from a marketing standpoint, every encounter I’ve had with him lately (ever since last year’s World Internet Summit actually) has left me less and less impressed. His systems surely work – they make him a ton of money out of suckers like me – but the sales letters seem to leave a bitter taste in my mouth.

And just don’t get me started on the “US-To-UK Deals Workshop” he arranged with Tim Lowe…

Ever since reading Gerber’s E-Myth books and Rich Schefren’s original “Manifesto” document, I’ve become a big fan of creating systems within my business and describing them with process maps.

If you don’t know what a process map is, it’s a simple flow chart that describes how to do something. You have start and end points and then boxes containing the steps needed to complete the process, all linked by arrows so that you can easily follow it through. Sometimes you might have a decision box that asks a question and the flow branches depending on the answer.

Click on the example image to see it full size.

I currently have about 14 process maps that I use in my business. Rather than sit down and try to think of all the processes I need to map out and then draw them, I like to create them when I’m actually doing the task. That way, I know I’ve got all the steps in place at the right level of detail and my set of process maps therefore grows organically over time. Most of my maps are hand drawn on squared paper then, once they’ve been refined and corrected and when I get the time, I draw them using a software package. I happen to have a copy of Microsoft Visio so I use that but there are some much cheaper programs available that will do the job just as well (Google “flow chart drawing software”).

So why do it?

The main reasons that I create process maps are for consistency, to avoid making mistakes and to avoid having to think so much. They’re also a very good way of documenting the business so that anyone can do the work and can also be a valuable asset if the business is ever sold. At another level, you can use them to analyse the business and see if there are any areas that can be automated or made more efficient.

Some of the processes (such as “Order Processing”) I do on such a regular basis that I don’t need to refer to the process map each time. But even then, I sometimes get distracted part way through or I might be feeling a bit fuzzy headed one day so it’s really useful to have the process map there to refer to, just to make sure I’m doing everything I need to do.

Where they really come into their own though is with the occassional, monthy or annual tasks. I have process maps for performing the monthly payroll and filing my annual accounts with the Government, for example, that are extremely useful. I’d hate to have to figure it all out each time and I wonder how I managed without them before.

Even seemingly simple processes can benefit from being documented in a process map. I have one for paying cheques into the bank. I mean, how hard can that be, right? Well, first of all, the vast majority of my customers pay online by credit card or by bank wire transfer so it’s rare that I have to deal with cheques. That means that, however simple the process might be, I’ve probably forgotten what’s involved each time so the map is a useful reminder. But in this case, even a seemingly simple task like paying in a cheque has quite a few steps. I need to locate the customer invoice in my accounting package and mark it as paid, move the printed invoice from my “unpaid to chase up” section to my “paid” section, fill in all the right deposit slip entries and do a few other accounting chores. It’s a real pain actually. I hate being paid by cheque. But having the process map certainly makes it all easier.

Now one of the reasons I’m mentioning all this about process mapping now rather than at any other time is because of the “OMS3 Process Maps” launch that may or may not have escaped your notice during the last few weeks.

Without going into too much detail, these guys have set up a consultancy business using a large and cheap labour force in India to take some of the grunt work out of business by doing a lot of the traffic generation work for paying customers. They say they have more clients than they can handle so best of luck to them. But what they’ve just launched is a set of process maps that they use to do all this work, the idea being, why figure it all out yourself when you can buy their ready-made and ‘proven’ processes.

Now I pretty much ignored the whole pre-launch thing and didn’t even read the sales letter but, almost on a whim yesterday, when it did actually launch I bought the package. Now I’m not actually interested in all of the processes they have described. My main motivation was to see just how they’ve put the process maps and supporting documentation together – a kind of education on how to do it properly as it were. I also thought the $97 price was a reasonable expense if they lived up to expectation.

So what did I think?

Well let me get my negative, moany criticisms out of the way first. The download instructions were incorrect and some of the downloads had the same name. I think they really should have spent the extra 15 minutes or so to use a consistent and systematic naming convention and structure for all of their files, especially considering the whole point of the exercise is to make things simple and reduce errors. As it was, I had to rename a lot of the files and come up with my own naming convention.

The quality was also a bit disappointing. I’ve looked at most of them now but the one on sending out a press release initially caught my eye because I’m about to do that myself. Now I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting but the described process goes something like this:

1. Gather the information from the client.
2. Pick an online free press release site.
3. Enter the details and hit “Submit”.

And that’s about it. The supporting documentation shows screenshots of this for a single chosen site. To be fair, there is a small amount of info at the back about what makes a good press release but this particular process map itself has little value (for me at least). Maybe if they’d provided their list of free submission sites that may have had some use.

It reminded me of all the ’sales letter generation software’ that I’ve been pitched over the years. You know, the ones that say they can generate a complete and professional looking sales letter in less than 5 minutes. All you have to do is supply all of the words and pictures…

I’ve said that even simple process maps can still be very useful and maybe the press release process was a poor example (some of the others are better) but, overall, I’m not very impressed. I haven’t yet seen any major insights into extra steps that I might be missing in order to be more successful.

On the positive side, erm… well, it shows how little you need to put together to create an info product to sell. Also, if they really are using this information to train their staff to do this work then it’s an indication of how simple the process maps and supporting documentation can be while still being effective. And that’s useful to know.

I was recently asked to write more about what it is I’m actually doing to make money on the Internet (as I promised I would). It made me realise that I hadn’t done a lot of that so here we go…

One caveat though… while I am earning a living essentially off the Net, I don’t want you to confuse me with someone who is very successful at it and really knows what they’re doing. I know a lot of theory but putting it into practice is another matter altogether. I’m learning as I go along and that’s what this blog is really about.

How I’ve Made Money

1. My Main Business

Okay, this is my primary earner. Without getting too specific, I have a product that I created and have been selling online for the last couple of years. It’s a software product so it’s delivered digitally over the Internet just like an e-book would be. For various reasons, there is an overhead associated with each sale and also commissions to pay but the overall profit margin is very high. If I could just sell more of it then I’d be earning a comfortable living rather than just scraping by.

Most of my time is spent working on this business. It’s tempting (oh, so very tempting) to kick off one or two other projects to bring in multiple streams of income and I do waste a lot of energy trying to resist this temptation. This business is only scratching the surface of its full potential and if I drop the ball now then it could be catastrophic.

Most of the marketing for this business is Internet based though an increasing amount is going offline (and yes, that is more expensive). I’m making good use of a lot of the Internet Marketing things I’ve learned but because of the target market, some of it just won’t work so I have to play around to discover what I can use and what I can’t.

As and when I get the chance, I’ll try to write about some of my marketing experiences with this business.

2. Underachieving

I was one of the successes of the first 30-Day Challenge back in July 2005 (though Ed never did add me to the Hall of Fame for some reason). It took a while to find a suitable niche so the whole thing – product, web site, sales letter, ad campaign, everything – was put together in about 15 days and my first 2 sales rolled in on the last day of the challenge.

As soon as it was over, I got straight back to my Main Business and left everything untouched. In the 2 months that followed, it pulled in about $680 (not profit). Not a huge amount but enough to convince me that the system worked. Getting my first cheque from ClickBank was also quite a thrill although they’re a bugger to cash over here in the UK.

I could have continued with this but my Main Business was demanding all of my time and I also had a bit of a problem. The niche was (and I believe still is) quite a good one but my product, that was knocked up in about 7 days, was not, to put it bluntly, of sufficient quality. While returns are to be expected, I was wasting lots of time processing them and responding to emails so in the end I shut the whole thing down with a view to doing it properly when I get the chance. That was over a year ago but I may still do that.

How I’ve Lost Money

1. AdSense sites

You may be asking yourself how someone can actually lose money with AdSense sites? Sure, it’s easy enough to put up a site that doesn’t make any money, but how to you actually lose money?

Well, first there’s domain name registration and renewal fees. They may be cheap but if your site doesn’t earn anything then that’s money straight down the toilet. Then there’s hosting fees though, in my case, I’ve got an unlimited hosting account so I don’t consider that.

But the biggest incurred cost is all those crappy software tools that the gurus told me I must buy to automate site generation and send all that spam to my blog, etc. It’s true that some of them were so bad I managed to get a refund but I still wasted hundreds of dollars on that stuff for a total return to date of about $3.72 (ah, the sound of flushing is still ringing in my ears).

Now clearly I didn’t do it right but if you’ve read my earlier posts on the subject you’ll know that I’m not a big fan of making money from AdSense in this way so I don’t need to go on about why I haven’t tried to fix the sites.

2. Other stuff

I’ve lost money buying into BizOps and various other dubious endeavours that, quite frankly, I don’t really want to waste time talking about. They’re outside the realms of Internet Marketing anyway.

How I’m Planning To Make Money

First off, I’m not about to give up my Main Business. This is my bread and butter and it has good growth potential. I just need to improve everything about how it’s set up and being marketed, and that’s what I’m learning how to do, especially with the help of Rich Schefren’s Business Growth System.

In parallel with that, Mercury is about as close to a “normal” type of niche Internet Marketing project as I’m going to get for a while, so that will be a good opportunity to put everything I’ve learned (and am learning) about IM into practice. As I’ve said though, this is a long-term project in a subject I’m truly passionate about so I’m not about to try and make a quick buck out of it.

Beyond that, we’ll see what happens. I’m not the kind of serial entrepreneur that can juggle 15 different niche sites and projects all at the same time. I think those 2 projects will keep me busy enough.

What Next?

There’s not much point in me talking about my Underachiever project, especially as I’m not actively working on any more now. But what I’ll try to do over the next few months or so is detail some of the things that have been working (or not working) for me in trying to market my Main Business online.

That’s all for now.

I’ve now had a chance to read through the first issue of Dan Raine’s Immediate Edge Newsletter and taken a look at the rest of the content on the site. I was immediately struck by how clean and functional the site looks. That, and some of the Web samples, show that Dan has definitely got a good eye for design (or at least knows someone else that does). I bring that up because it’s something I have strong opinions about and I think presentation is very important.

So what about the content?

Well, it’s actually rather excellent. There’s a few things I need to re-read to fully grasp what’s going on but, on the whole, everything has been very well explained. There are ideas and techniques in there that I would never have thought of myself. And there’s certainly a few that I can use for my Mercury Project though I don’t think many so far will be appropriate for my main business.

I’d like to be more specific about what’s in there but I don’t think that would be fair to Dan. Besides, any quick summary I could give here wouldn’t really do the subject justice. If I put some of the techniques into practice then I might explain what I’m doing when I do it.

There’s 2 things I would like to mention though. These are more about what Dan has done rather than the techniques he’s actually talking about. Sometimes it’s worth doing what others do and not necessarily just what they say. They are great techniques that I will definitely want to use myself.

The first relates to the money-back guarantee associated with the membership site. This is a 30-day guarantee which means that you can try out the first month and get a refund if it’s not for you. Now the first month’s content is great but it’s been structured so that some of the sections (articles) continue with “Part 2″ in the next month’s newsletter (and perhaps further parts after that). This makes someone less likely to cancel and get a refund because they really want the rest of the parts.

TIP#1: Ideally, a newsletter should have multiple topic areas each month with at least one of them left hanging with one or more further parts to come.

The other thing to do is describe what’s coming up in the next issue. This is not a new technique of course – you see it in magazines and other newsletters all the time – but it is so important to encourage continued subscription.

Now I don’t know how Dan has created his site and whether he will be allowing people to join at any time in the future but there is a risk with the guarantee if someone can join and get 9 months worth of back-content and then get a refund. You should always offer a money-back guarantee period though. Maybe it’s not an issue to worry about. People who would do that are freeloaders who like to take advantage of others. They probably have no intention of keeping their subscription in the first place.

So the second thing I wanted to mention was something that struck me when I was reading through the $15k challenge blog and making all my notes. Rather than focussing on a very specific craft niche, Dan went wide to capture a broad range of craft enthusiasts.

The really clever part (I thought) was rather subtle to begin with and could easily be missed in reading though the blog. On the opt-in page, he included a selection box to choose the specific craft each person was interested in. This was actually crucial to the long-term viability of this business because it started off so broad. It allowed Dan (later) to specifically target offers to people with the same interests and start to specialise. It also gave him a good idea of what sub-niches were more popular or more responsive, if that wasn’t clear from other research.

TIP#2: If you have an opt-in form, it’s worth thinking about whether there is a question you can ask that will help you later. It’s a micro-marketing questionnaire. You don’t want to ask lots of questions. Probably one or two at most. Offer a selection box with an “Other” option. If it must be freeform entry, ask a specific question rather than asking for open ended ‘comments’ (I’ll tell you about my experiences with this in another post). Even in a focussed sub-niche, there must be a question you can ask to discover a little bit more about your target market and how they differ.

Okay, so I admit it. I weakened. But apart from the fact that curiosity got the better of me, I was persuaded by the iron-clad guarantee. I do have some specific things in mind and if the Immediate Edge is not what I’m after then I can always ask for a refund.

Besides, at today’s exchange rate, $97 is only about £2.50 a month, so I figured it was a fair deal. And, as a legitimate business expense, there’s a small tax saving in there somewhere… Oh, I can probably make up some other good excuse but I’ve done it now, so there!

By the way, my decision had nothing to do with Ed and Dan’s comments on my last post. I wouldn’t be influenced by such things (no, really, I wouldn’t). I’d actually decided to try out the newsletter before seeing Dan’s comment but I couldn’t let yesterday’s rare snowfall here in the UK go to waste so I spent the whole day with my family playing outside, building snowmen and racing down hills on a toboggan!

Days like that remind me of why I started my own business in the first place. To have the freedom to wake up on a particular day and spontaneously say “stuff work for today, I’m off to have some fun with the kids”. Try doing that when you’re working for The Man!

Well, that’s not strictly true. This post should have been called “How I Stopped Myself From Spending Yet Another $97 A Month”, but in my little world, that amounts to pretty much the same thing.

I’ve been very good lately. I’ve unsubscribed from the worst offending emailing lists but I’m still subscribed to tons more. I know I ought to unsubscribe from them all but I’ve set up a filter system so that most of them automatically get filed away as soon as they come in. That way I don’t even see them. I figure that they don’t take up much disk space and I can use them as a giant reference swipe file should I ever have the need.

However, some of the lists defy filter rules because they keep changing their from address or for other reasons. These are fairly easy to spot in my Inbox and I usually just grab ‘em and drag ‘em into a “For Filing” melting pot and forget about them.

But old habits die hard. Sometimes a subject line will catch my attention. Especially if it’s from a guru on my whitelist. And when that happens, there’s every chance that I’ll get sucked into the marketing pitch and swallowed whole. What I need is a system that can trigger a Red Alert lock-down of my PC with flashing lights and klaxtons blaring – the works! Sadly, all I have to rely on is my weakened will-power.

This one was good. So good in fact that I had the order form open ready to fill in my credit card details without even reading the sales letter properly. That’s the work of some master pre-sales effort.

You’re probably wondering what it was all about. Well, it was a pitch for Dan Raine’s “Immediate Edge” newsletter at $97 per month.

Now I only have the powerful sales/marketing blurb and a few cliquey testimonials to go by but I reckon it’s probably quite good and may well be worth the money. It’s supposed to explain everything in simple terms and provide technical solutions. Instead of just saying “set this up”, Dan apparently gives you the scripts or code to actually do it. Nice.

The main teaser is something ‘truly amazing’ called the Lightsqueeze page that is supposed to be a modern Web 2.0 version of the Name-squeeze technique that everyone uses these days. No details on what exactly it is of course. You have to sign up for that.

I like the name “Lightsqueeze”. It’s very catchy. But every time I see the word, I keep reading it as Lightsabre. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’ve been catching a bit of Saturday morning kids TV with my children including an advert for the new Hasbro Lightsabres. These look much better than the old ones because they’ve managed to get the extending part to go right back down inside the hilt instead of sticking out a bit. Cool! I was hoping someone might have bought me one for my birthday today but no joy…

So, where was I?

Oh yes, I was just about to part with some money on a regular basis. But in a brief moment of common sense before I hit the “Submit” button, I decided to dig a little deeper and find out who this guy actually is and what the program is all about.

Now this may be old news to you but due to my auto-filing email filter system, the $15K Challenge last August completely passed me by. In essence, this guy Dan was challenged to make $15K profits from scratch in 30 days with a budget of only $150. He blogged the whole thing so people could follow along with what he was doing as it happened. It’s just the sort of thing I love to read about (somebody doing something for real) and in fact I made about 5 pages of notes from it. I recommend you scroll to the bottom of the blog pages and hit the “Next Page” links until you get to the start and read it from there.

Basically, he got the resale/reprint rights to a bunch of e-books and other bits by subscribing to one of these membership sites that has tons of this kind of stuff. Then he set up a membership site with free content at one level and extra content at a $27 paid level. Because he didn’t have the budget to advertise, he made extensive use of forums and MySpace to put the word out. He didn’t spam and only used ‘legitimate’ posts (more on that in a moment). He also made it viral by using ‘refer a friend’ techniques and an incentive to make affiliate commissions.

Dan almost made his target with about $12K profit. It was all very impressive and fascinating to read about.

But a few things niggled me about the whole thing and it makes me just that little bit more jaded about the whole Internet Marketing world. I’m not about to get onto my moral high-horse and spout forth about what people should and shouldn’t do to earn a living but I wonder whether I have it in me to do the same kind of thing.

A lot of marketers earn money by finding a profitable niche and exploiting it. Nothing wrong with that except for the proliferation of crappy, ‘non-content’, keyword-rich AdSense sites that are clogging up the Internet and wasting domain names that could be used for decent sites (but don’t get me started on that one again…).

What bothers me though is the way in which the exploitation occurs. Many of the products (e-books) are of low quality (and I wonder if the marketers even bother to look at them, but that’s an aside). They knock out these membership sites using what’s available but then what happens after they’ve made their quick buck and exhausted their supply of resale e-books? Do they develop more and improve the site for the members to continually add value. No, they move on to the next project, the next niche and the next membership site. After all, you’ve gotta have more than one to make any serious money in this business.

Of course I’m pessimistically generalising here. I’m sure there are some excellent quality and great value niche membership sites around and the top gurus are always stating that their teachings should only be used for high-quality offerings. But how many marketers actually do that? Most are in it for the quick fix and just don’t have enough interest in their chosen profitable niches to make them good enough.

I mentioned ‘legitimate’ forum posts earlier. This means no spamming. The usual technique is to place your URL in your signature and write posts that simply comment on other peoples posts or ask questions. Often, the marketer has no real idea about (or interest in) the subject so they just appear knowledgeable, sometimes by re-phrasing questions they’ve seen elsewhere.

It’s a clever and effective technique but that’s all it is. A technique to market your offering. You could argue that it does no harm but does it actually contribute to the forum and the community that uses it? Probably not. What’s the point of asking a question if you don’t care about or even read the answer?

And I’d love to know the percentage of actual MySpace users compared to the number of registered users. How many of them are fake identities created by Internet Marketers pretending to be real people to exploit others. I think it would be ironic if MySpace (and other sites like it) became full of Internet marketers sending marketing messages to all of the fake identities of the other marketers.

Like I said, I’m not trying to say what’s right or wrong, I’m just wondering whether I would feel good about using these techniques myself and, if not, whether I have any future as an Internet Marketer.

Right, rant over. Back to the original plot…

Knowing that Dan Raine had been setting up these membership sites and was now providing The Immediate Edge newsletter to demonstrate techniques and supply scripts, I thought it would be a good thing to get. It might well fit in with some plans I have for my Mercury Project.

So what happened?

Well, quite simply, I realised that I just wasn’t ready for it. I’m doing other stuff right now. I don’t have a bunch of niche sites and products that I want to “take to the next level”.

I’m really trying hard to stick to the principle of only buying what I can use right now and not be suckered by the pressure of “limited availability”. These things always come round again in one form or another because these marketers are always looking to make more money.

So that was that. Mind you, I still have the order form open in a browser… It would only take one click…