Mid Life Marketer’s Kick Start

It’s really strange how so many of us Internet Marketers buy into all sorts of tools and services that we never get round to using properly.

I subscribed to Leadsleap when it first appeared on the scene earlier this year. Because of the number of different schemes I have used to promote PROSPERIZER, my primary online business, I kind of forgot about Leadsleap. In my absent mindedness, LeadsLeap continued to grow and its active members have been generating very focussed leads and increased turnover. The turning point for me, was when I started looking at the relative costs of the Pro membership compared with the classic PPC system on Google. For that reason alone, if you are working in the “Making Money Online” niche you have a highly targeted audience for your ads in this enormous market. As a pro you are able to have your PPC style advert displayed on LeadsLeaps viral blog for what amounts to something approaching just 6 cents a click. And remember, the readers are your target audience! Well worth a try.

The blog posts themselves are a classic series of tips, how tos and explanations of the basic nitty-gritty knowledge we need and the “arcania” of this marketing world. The information is not in itself highly original or innovative, BUT it is presented in a very simple clear cut manner that beginners can learn from and which clarifies the concepts for us overloaded and confused post-beginners.

These posts are produced by Kenneth Koh who is a bit of a rising star. This is one system where your inbox is NOT buried under the deluge of marketing emails, so many systems produce. Herein lies one of its magical elements. I have included an extract from the latest post below, to give you a flavour of the material. Here Kenneth is trying to encourage you to look behind the “Hoo Hah” publicity that many gurus present about themselves. It’s all too easy to be sucked in by the publicity if you don’t choose a product line that fits your psyche. The full post can be found on the LeadsLeap blog itself!

Here’s what Kenneth has to say about gurus:

How To Come Out With Innovative Ideas That Sell

I’m quite sure that you have constantly been bombarded with offers from different internet marketing gurus asking you to buy their products or other guru’s products.

Let me give you another example. continued on the LeadsLeap blog.

I guess, you still want to chase away the Monday blues! Dream of turning Mondays into a high day?

A project born of the inventive minds of Paul Ward, Greg McKenzie, and the Simons Tofield and Marriot; first hit the streets last November. In February, it evolved into a full on monetized powerhouse to nurture new starters into the online marketing world.

NOW; ahead of European requirements, Prosperizer is Metamorphosing.

Mondays will never be the same. Keep your eyes open and your ear to the electronic earth.

PROJECT MONDAY PAYDAY is coming!
You will be the affiliate making money on a Monday EVERY Monday!

Prosperizer is set to become the UK’s business building club with the mostest. With Lift Off planned for Monday, the UKs sharpest marketers, are preparing for a revolution in the way money is earned on the Internet. This goes way beyond the usual free ebooks about abundance and prosperity.

Have a look at the latest extract from Simon’s Secret Diary
diary3.pdf

Sometimes we dive in so deep with projects we’re pursuing that we miss the most obvious first steps and waste our best efforts. Last time I posted, I said I was going to let you know how I had got on with Craigslist. I had put a big effort into setting up an advertising programme on that portal, following the steps in Mike Dillard’s Building on a Budget (BoaB) course. Sadly every single one of my ads was ghosted. My original plan for a 2 day hit and everlasting automation - and zillions of leads … became a 2 and a half week marathon of unique ad writing and organising followed by crushing defeat!! Additionally I had neglected a lot of other work in trying to apply the lessons from BoaB. Well I haven’t steeled myself for the return match with Craigslist yet, but I have been catching up on my other neglected areas of work.

I decided that I really ought to check what I was displaying in the traffic exchanges and check out the hits and misses - so to speak. I got a shock when I started checking the contents of the “My Web Sites” sections of the accounts I hold. Outdated links, links with typos, Web sites not enabled … I could go on but the list just gets more embarrassing. Like I said at the start, I had dived in and got involved at too deep a level in too many programme’s at once, completely failing to check whether I had set up my accounts properly. The up side of that, was that I did at least have thousands of credits sitting “in the bank” ready to be unleashed. So I have had a day and a half of solid graft, up until my ex-wife brought the kids back from their holiday, to get my accounts in order. I am looking forward to some better responses over the next few weeks.

The advice we are given, by the experienced marketers we look to for tips and tricks, is to constantly check and recheck our ads responses. Slowly I am beginning to understand just what that means, but a couple of interesting patterns did emerge. Despite the poor set up of my accounts, I was still getting some traffic and there were some TXs which were clearly more responsive to my ads. At present my top 3 would have to be:

CosmicRay’s Top Three Traffic Programs

Stan’s the MAN - he has set up a very responsive site with (even better) hungry users.

Paul Kinder has obviously learned his business from the top eggs!! Traffic Splash is giving me the second best response rate.

Matthew will give you lots of insider info with his exchange; Web Biz Insider.

These 3 are the ones that have been working best for me personally. What I have used as a kind of umbrella to organise my surfing activities is a programme called Vital Viral. Effectively this provides a programme where you can promote all your traffic Exchange affiliations at one fell swoop. If a member signs up in vital viral and subsequently joins any of the other exchanges below you they are added to your downline instead of some other promoter’s downline. There is also a very helpful support section which gives great advice about how to organise your surfing sessions; particularly - how to use multi tabbed browsing to use your time more efficiently - and importantly - how to give other advertisers at least a few seconds of your time so that the whole Traffic Exchange phenomena is a REAL benefit and remains a 2 way street.

While I was setting up my websites in HitSafari I chanced to look through their forum and found that it had a very well set out series of tips. I’m not entirely sure why, but the information here is much more accessible to us normal “non-geekers” than the info in most of the other forums I’ve checked recently. if you are new to TXs this is particularly helpful. Although I’ve only recently reactivated my HitSafari account, it is apparently well up the rankings at present and getting good responses. And - it does have the free option so you can’t really lose.

Well I hope that you newer traffickers will find the information helpful - remember, these are just my impressions - warts and all. CYA next time.

Life Recast

I left my employment as a teacher on December 31st 2007.

I know my BIG WHY now, with a crystal clarity that I didn’t have before today. More importantly, I understand that nagging gut feeling that I couldn’t articulate for so many years. It was called unhappiness and I never knew.

So, as a newly “ex” teacher and newbie at marketing online, the rest of the entries in this blog will detail how I find ways to overcome the hurdles of a completely new and for me, an almost totally unexpected way of life. The details of how I went from scared beginner to gradually build a list of subscribers. I’ll detail the ways I am learning from experienced people, how the different courses and ebooks rate: the ones that deliver the useful information that is helping me grow my business. I’ll describe the opportunities that I am using to help me reshape my life, including: uVme and elottery from VWD; Prosperizer the most supportive of new start up projects; traffic exchanges and viral list building. I’ll tell it the way it is and describe my cock ups and crowning glories in the hope that you the reader can take something from my experiences and shorten your learning curve on the way to growing your business.
With all best wishes,
Ray of Team CosmicRays
aka MisterC
Oh and by the way, look out for The Northern View!

PS.
What wouldn’t we all do to be at the top of Google’s search results? Well for a limited time - and I suggest you’re quick- 1 on 40 are beta testing their package for getting subscribers to the top of, not just Google’s, but at least 39 other search engine’s results. They guarantee to do this within 120 days and if you get in during this beta phase, you won’t pay them anything until you are top for your 5 keywords for at least a week. Even if it doesn’t work, it’s got to be worth a punt! It’s the first no hype - no brainer I’ve come across in this game. When you go to the web site, just be aware that there is a client login and an affiliate login that you need to keep clear in your mind or your records, to navigate their websites easily. Get ready for the traffic and sales flood!

Hallo folks, CosmicRay here from the UK. I’m destressing after having jumped overboard from my teaching career. The last couple of years of professional and domestic stress have added up to my very own mid life crisis. Now, for some strange reason; being the most advertising resistant punter going, I have launched my Internet Marketing CAREER, to calm the crisis. I consider myself pretty lucky, because there’s a small nest egg to keep me going through the first few months of floundering. So, I’ve jumped in with both feet… and now my personal Internet fortune amounts to a magnificent, staggering $50- Yippee - yabadabadoo!

And that’s after only my first month of effort since breaking free to pursue this line of business. Obviously I am a powerful force on the marketing scene. LOL

Well, the drugs have worn off now and the real world has come back to haunt me.

The truth is, I’m a pretty raw beginner, but I’m in for the long haul as this will succeed. These Internet businesses are genuine. That’s the first truth that it took me a while to accept.

Secondly, these businesses are eminently doable. Like everyone, I imagine, I spent the last year or so of tentatively “looking into” this world; feeling totally overwhelmed by the sheer volume and diversity of information that was pushed my way as a “Newbie”. For a long time I was studying one programme, then another, then another… and sure enough I made the semi-fatal mistake of letting myself get drawn into too many programmes (English spelling - the real word!!) at once, so my little nest egg is dwindling rapidly towards cut off point.

Until quite recently I lacked the confidence to jump in and make my own splash pages and I am still nervous about the idea of blogging unless the mis-adventures of a numpty marketer could be a saleable item? So I hope this first foray isn’t a turn off for anybody looking in.

I have however, been fortunate to be taken under the wing of Paul Ward a pretty successful UK marketer. So I now feel a lot more on track. It’s amazing how quickly a guy, with a bit of mileage, can crystallise seemingly divergent ideas, into a coherent whole. Oh yeah - that’d be like a teacher then!! Thanks Paul.

During the summer, I started looking into real world conferences and on-line seminars and to be honest, I felt like a fish out of water. I was almost frightened to approach these apparently confident giants of marketing who were strutting around the foyers. I was very uncomfortable letting people see how clueless I really was. Until, I actually started an email conversation with one person, who turned out to be an ordinary bloke like me, or you or the lady over there.

So, what’s the point of this negative sounding monologue? Very simple; if you are new to this game and floundering, get in touch with your up-line and pick some brains. A recurrent theme in much of the sales copy is that it doesn’t take Einstein to work these systems. It may have been someone with a streak of the Einstein about them, who developed the system, but it was in their interest to develop a straight forward(ish) but DUPLICABLE SYSTEM.

The upshot of that for you new guys and girls, is that behind all of the glitz, the hype, the mega launches and the “never been seen befores” are just a few variations on a system or three. Most of these systems will work for you if you don’t system hop and YOU APPLY yourself seriously. Don’t be taken in by the instant wealth that is implied by much of the advertising copy you see. You’ve got some hard graft ahead of you to start building your own list of potential customers. That list and your relationship to the people those names represent is your starting point. It took me nearly 6 months to grasp and visualise what that simple point really meant. More about that in a future posting. If you are looking for someone to help you build your business, who isn’t already up there in the stratosphere, please get in touch. I’m not Terry the Tip Top Mentor, but by getting a gang of of us new guys together and swapping experiences we could probably save each other from a load of grief. I promise I won’t SELL everything at you in one go!! Honest! And together, I bet we couldn’t half pick some up-line brains!!

Seriously though, what I will show off now are the businesses I am involved with, which despite being too numerous for a simple bloke to keep a handle on, are the projects which seem to be genuine opportunities for producing life changing incomes. After a month of real focus, I haven’t “life changed” my income yet, but suddenly my lists have started to grow and I have pulled in my first couple of proper customers.

So, my main threads are: firstly, the best of the bunch, UVME This is a fantastic mixture of straightforward (!?) games of skill played on-line for cash prizes; with a superb and rapidly evolving social marketing system and the whole lot nicely capped by a superb back office to support the business opportunity. This is going BIG. It’s not cheap to commit to, but it really is a quality business. Before the “.com” games platform launched a couple of weeks ago, there were over 300,000 pre-registrations with lots of these becoming paid sign ups; once people had to show the colour of their cash.

Even more exciting is the news, revealed at the last training webinar: that there had been 15,000 completely new people who had signed up to play the games. Best of all, despite the hammer the servers were getting and despite the fact that we are only in soft launch / beta testing mode - the system works amazingly well and is being improved almost daily by 3 dedicated teams of software engineers, game developers and multi lingual support staff. Apologies if this gets close to hype, but it is a genuinely exciting on-line business opportunity with a highly desirable product - it’s cool folks! And you can have a look at (preferably) my site here. If you like what’s on offer, I wouldn’t say no to a few new associates in Team CosmicRays!
Go here for the games and play for free
Go here to see the business opportunity.

My second favourite is a new project by Paul Ward and his associates. Prosperizer’s best feature is that the team who have put it together are trying to build a resource and a business model where newcomers to marketing do not suddenly lose the support of their up-lines when the auto responders have banged out their last emails. If you are unsure of a direction to take, this is genuinely worth a careful look. It is developing into a very supportive community without the hype often associated with programmes trying to grab the newcomer.

Power Up Your Income With Prosperizer

At first I sank a lot effort into Stone Evans Plug in Profits programme. It’s a hell of a system even though it could be quite an expensive start up, if you blindly follow all of his recommendations straight away. Its big advantage for a newcomer, is that it opens up 6 separate but related streams of income. It does need a very focused approach but there are lots of subgroups of entrepreneurs who are willing to help or who offer full on mentoring. The products cover a very wide range from Vitamin supplements and audio books for your MP3; to Marketing and self development information; all the way through to Web hosting and domain name services. It’s a very broad church.

Plug in Here For Profit

For traffic building I am starting to get results now with Vital Viral. This clever set up, is a way of organising your activities in multiple traffic exchanges and then, if you gain an affiliate in Vital Viral, you gain that affiliate in the other exchanges as well.

Organise your surfing by using Vital Viral as explained here

So I’m up for networking but I daren’t get involved in any new projects unless they are very powerful, because I’m up to my eyeballs at the moment. But, instead of that sinking feeling that’s been around me for 2 years or more, I feel like I’ve just started surfacing.

All the best for a fantastic New Year in 2008
Ray