Internet Marketing Consultants - suddenly there are so many....

[Keithw]

After 3 years and some heavy investing (100's k) I have a great portfolio but the cashflow is nothing to be excited about yet.

I suspect this is the case for many Terry.
What are we doing wrong ?

The potential is definitely there, & its not all hype.

[tpr2]

It certainly isn't but I bought over 2000 domains (that was the big expense as I was/still am buying 1 and 2 word domains) as the first stage of my strategy.

So the portfolio is great and now the second phase is developing those into revenue generating machines which is slowly coming along nicely.

Certainly nothing I have done has suddenly bought thousands of dollars a week for doing nothing though. i.e only 15 minutes a day and you can make $10,000 per week....yeah right....

My buddy James spends 15 minutes a day now and makes that kind of money but the work he put in 8 years ago allows that to happen now.

He is friends with John Chow who makes similar money from 1 website but again John has been building that site for 5 years now.

[Perry]

I suspect this is the case for many Terry.
What are we doing wrong ?

Probably nothing. I suspect that the
real game is called get-rich-slow.

Or

The harder I work
the luckier I get

[PeterEmpowerEd]

He's a prominent Aussie Copy writer.
I've seen him speak a couple of times, he knows his stuff.
Up to you whether you think it is worth paying to see a guy like this.

Thanks for the info, Keith.
Well, if his first copy-writing goal was to get noticed, it worked.
Far too hyped-up for may tastes, as I said.

Another example here.

Peter Aranyi

[Findspace]

Has anyone heard of Dubli? Works on the same vein, click here has a link to the referrers number. Getting propositioned for it at the moment.

[tpr2]

I was approached many months ago by friends in Oz.

Nice concept but I doubt they will be able to deliver everything they say they will.

I mentioned to them that they wouldn't be able to offer the kind of bidding here in NZ that they do overseas. They agreed and changed their promotional material for the NZ audience...at least they said they were going to.

There are a tonne of those kinds of offers out there. Dubli, GDI, Buzzirk etc etc.

All of them require you to pay over the odds each and every month in the hope that you will have sufficient people below you paying enough money each month to cover your costs......hmmm sounds remarkably like a structure that has been outlawed in both NZ and OZ.

Plenty of people will make a lot of money out of those however those people have already been in it since the beginning which is ....from memory...how all the ponzi schemes spruik up the way to get rich....be the first one in.

[tpr2]

This is a video I watched by Gary Veynerchuck which is probably one of the best videos about both the good and the bad of internet marketing.

http://trafficcafe.tv/recent-episodes/how-did-gary-vaynerchuk-become-so-famous/

Some excellent points that actually cross over to our property marketing industry.

[lissie]

Just got fax spam this afternoon pitching another 'make-millions-from-your-computer' type thing: Brett McFall's "brand-new event called, 'How to Make Money While You Sleep LIVE'..." complete with yada-yada about laughing at the recession, instantly producing big money, you don't need a product, no face-to-face selling, but with "embarrassingly high" profits (!) ... etc ...


It goes on in that vein, "how to make serious amounts of money" (why is it never hysterically funny amounts of money, I wonder? I'd be attracted to that) ... all with this declared agenda ...
Oh. I see.

I know nothing about Mr McFall. Has anyone heard of him? Terry? Marc? Whitt?

Peter Aranyi

He's a prominent Aussie Copy writer.
I've seen him speak a couple of times, he knows his stuff.
Up to you whether you think it is worth paying to see a guy like this.

He is the classic "fake it till you make it" guy.
fell into copywriting years ago, totally untrained and in an environment where it didn't matter. I doubt the same could be done today.
He has lots of knowledge that is very valuable to anyone starting out in internet marketing, but also to physical business advertisers/ marketers.

As someone said earlier in this threat- most is available for free if you search for it , or get onto enough mailing lists & it comes to you !.

I totally agree with your KeithW I reviewed Brett McFall's World Internet Summit some time back. It was a master class in the crowd mentality. I went to his seminar in Perth in May (?)

The crowd was mainly older 40+ I'd say - very few under 25. It was a full day free event - are they charging in NZ?

I have been trying to build an online income for 2+ years - the first 3 or so hours were accurate information - but way over the head of someone who didn't even own their own blog or website! He was a very good speaker.

The sales pitch was from 2 to 4pm. It was sign up right now - to the tune (I think) of around A$3k for a 12 month (?) program - the sign up desks were at the back of the room - from a rough headcount I'd say he got around 40% signed up at the $3k deal and another 30% signed up at the $2k special offered 15 minutes. Later. There were maybe 300 people in the room - not bad for a day's work - although hiring a large conference room in the Burswood Casino wouldn't have been cheap.

The crowd feel was very much like a revivalist church meeting - if I don't go and sign up now I am missing out being part of the crowd! All the information they were signing up for was a) available for free on the Internet with a bit of work or b) in his book available for around $30 in the local bookshop - but not, interestingly at the event.

Making money online isn't that hard and there is no big secret.

Find a keyword that desparate buyers type into the search engines
Develop a website around that term
Use SEO to get the website to the top of serps -
make money from the affiliate offer or from their clicks on contextural ads or sell advertising space direct or selling your own product
rinse and repeat

The downside is that it takes a lot of work, its getting harder and harder as Google gets smarter with its algorithms.

I acutally don't think McFall was that bad as far as razmataz marketers are concerned - he never promised large profits without hard work for example. He wasn't using outdated tricks like google arbitrage which no longer work.

The funny thing was that quite a number of the audience seemed to know each other from property investment seminars - and i have several other invites to property investment seminars - I suspect that these people are serial dreamers.

I used to get really angry at the get rich quick merchants - in fact I quit trying to make money online for a while because I thought the only way you could make money was by conning other people and "fake it to you make" .

Lucky for me i found some honest marketers and now I make money legitimately and sleep at night because I don't rip people off.

Yes we do exist and yes there are affiliate offers on my site - and I really don't see the problem - every product I sell is something I use myself - it costs the buyer no more to buy from me and they probably are only buying the product because they like my site enough to read it. I don't really see what the difference is between pauing me a commission if you buy hosting from my link or paying a mortgage broker a commission if you use his recommended bank?

[PeterEmpowerEd]

Maybe I was completely wrong!

Looks like there really IS gold in them thar hills!

Multi-millionaire hacker buys Chrisco mansion
By Rebecca Lewis NZ Herald Sunday Feb 14, 2010

Kim Schmitz is thought to be the Chrisco mansion's new owner. Photo / AP

A convicted German computer hacker is believed to be the secret buyer of the $30 million Chrisco mansion on Auckland's North Shore.

The Coatesville property, considered New Zealand's most expensive house, has been vacant since Richard and Ruth Bradley, the British founders of the Chrisco Christmas Hamper fortune, relocated to Sydney nearly two years ago.

A source who wishes to remain anonymous said Kim "Kimble" Schmitz, 36, was the man behind an arrangement including a long-term lease of the 24.3ha estate, and sale once the lease expires.

The Finnish flag flying from the house last week, was "a disguise".

The source, who knows Schmitz, had heard he was interested in the mansion a few months ago and had recently been told Schmitz had entered into an agreement for the property with the Bradleys.

Schmitz rose to fame in Germany in the 1990s as a teenage internet tycoon, who eventually received a two-year probationary sentence for hacking into corporate computer systems and accepting gang-related stolen goods.

Full story here at NZherald.co.nz

Earlier in this thread I quoted an internet guru on the fast track as saying:

Internet guru: Affiliate marketing in particular is just ... cool. You don’t need your own products. You just need a little bit of information and a little bit of sweat but the results can be outstanding.

... Surely he doesn't mean "gang-related stolen goods"!! Crikey! That didn't occur to me! No way... Neh.

'The Finnish flag flying from the house last week, was "a disguise".'

-- Maybe it should have been Shark-Finnish flag?

[donna]

ha good find Peter - umm our most expensive house in the hands of a hacker....it's not "lock up your daughters but lock up your computers". I wonder who's on his hit list?

Cheers,

Donna

[PeterEmpowerEd]

Best line from the Herald article was:

Weighing a hefty 136kg, Schmitz has been called one of the world's "largest tech entrepreneurs".

<grin>

"Massive action"?

[PeterEmpowerEd]

Just tidying up a few loose ends ...

July 2009:

Actually Pete it's the Geekversity guys who are the experts. And based on the fact that their free information is valuable enough for full time internet specialists to be impressed I can't think of anybody better to learn from if it's your thing.
Unless you're too busy with your scarcity mentality bagging everything in sight that is.

Well, OK. Scarcity mentality aside, how did that all work out for the geekversity 'experts' and their clients?

January 2010:

THE Photon Group has parted ways with the head of its Geekdom subsidiary days after it announced it would the close its troubled Geekversity course with a $5.5 million loss.

Geekdom chief executive Troy Rushton said he had left Photon and would now focus on a new venture, Geekhub, built around a similar internet marketing concept.

"It got to a point where it was difficult with the Photon Group,'' he said.

"They wanted to exit the consumer business and I thought there would be students left stranded.

"I am still a shareholder so I still work closely with them, but I would be lying if I said it was all roses.''

Mr Rushton's Geekhub will provide education courses for internet marketers, but will not replicate the embattled Geekdom business, he said.

"It was far too difficult to take the average person and make them an internet marketer I probably underestimated the challenge,'' he said.

"We are (now) looking to established internet marketers who need help to improve their skills.''

The Geekversity program was established early last year and was marketed around the country as a means of achieving financial security through the trading of internet traffic and spruiking affiliated products.

But clients of the $18,000 program began to complain of unmet promises only months into the program, leaving Geekdom and Photon with a torrent of refunds....

from Adelaide Advertiser January 15, 2010

I think this bears out Donna's initial scepticism, which I quickly came to share.

Any comment Terry?

Peter Aranyi

[Xav]

Not surprising to most of us who posted in this thread. Also interesting that he openly admits the strategies used were those maligned by many in this thread.

I am impressed with the guy's honesty though:

"It was far too difficult to take the average person and make them an internet marketer, I probably underestimated the challenge,'' he said.

...leaving Geekdom and Photon with a torrent of refunds

It appears they honoured their pre event promises by giving refunds, which is a refreshing change from the approach some education providers have taken in the past.

[donna]

My understanding is the 'Internet Marketers' of that event still got paid (i.e. those who did the selling on the day).

While there were lots of refunds - you can be sure a few people made huge $$$ from it - the 'sales people' who get paid straightaway for standing up on the stage for an hour or two causing the frenzy of interest and sign ups.

"It was far too difficult to take the average person and make them an internet marketer I probably underestimated the challenge,'' he said

Agreed - we deliver a social media solution for Business and for it to work successfully we have made it fully automated so the average person doesn't have to understand how it works etc.

Cheers,

Donna

[Perry]

Dumbed-down-delivery, eh? I wonder
how many other things that applies to?
.