Internet Marketing Tell All

This is going to burn a huge bridge for me, maybe several. I am thinly disguising the name of the individual this story is about to keep from shaming the guilty, because he got what he deserved in the end. Maybe too much of it.

There was this guy, we’ll call him Scammer Rick. Scammer Rick convinced a (still) trusted friend of mine to join an organization whose sole aim was to help certain types of corporations with a very specific kind of online marketing that involved what I still think is one of the best products I have ever seen or used.

The friend wanted me aboard. Because of how great the product was and how much I trust my friend, of course, I said yes. I still don’t regret that decision because I met some great people.

Scammer Rick was the pitcher, and my friend, myself, and a few other people were the catchers. When we got the clients he signed, we actually got them set up and did the actual legwork.

After about a week working with Rick, I realized that my clients were being sold something completely different than what they were actually buying. I found this out when a new customer called me up asking what exactly he had bought.

I said “What do you mean, exactly?”

He said, “Well, Rick said that we were buying the most powerful marketing system online but he didn’t tell us what it actually was or what it does.”

I hated Rick desperately for a couple of years after this was over, not just for the mess I had to clean up, not just because he never paid me most of the money I made on any of the jobs I did, but because of the innocents harmed in the making of his scam.

However, I always will have a reluctant respect him for his sales ability, though not how he used it. To date, I still haven’t quite figured out how he got people to fork over what eventually amounted to thousands of dollars for something several of them claimed not to be able to identify.

If only he had used his power for good.

Getting back to the story, this kind of thing became a pattern. One of my biggest regrets in the time I spent with his organization was that sometimes I have too much faith in people, and that just because the product they are reselling is mind-blowing, doesn’t mean they are themselves good people.

It seems like a silly assumption now, and I’m alarmed that I was so naive then as it wasn’t that long ago. Since then, I’ve learned that if something doesn’t feel right, no matter how rational things seem on the surface, I have to trust my instincts and walk away.

If I can just get one person to realize that same truth, well, that’s really not enough people, man, LOL.

Seriously, here’s the reason it’s so crucial to know this.

See, my reputation Almost got attached to his reputation. And that would have ruined me. Failing is never easy to deal with, but it’s unbearable when it isn’t through your own actions.

I will seriously regret telling this story….

Another reason why you’re still broke - you’re afraid to invest, probably due to the possibility of failure. Overcoming this fear is what moved me from making a living into being rich.

If you are sitting on a few thousand dollars, and thinking about how to make money in internet marketing, here’s one of the things I did to start money working for me.

Go to a place where you can find products affiliates can make money from - I like reading up at the Associate Programs site, or going to Clickbank (esp the login page) and finding items that state their conversion rates, or ones I hear tell of from top affiliates. My personal comfort zone is with ones that say they convert at 8%, which I find normally means 5%.

Don’t put all your money in the pot yet, though.

Get a professional copywriter to make some ad copy for you, and do a test run in some of the cheaper publications or in lower bids on pay per click, and evaluate if you’re getting a decent return.

For example, if a product converts at 5%, and you’re testing that theory with $200, if the product costs $50, you would need to sell 4 units just to break even. How that money is spent to get to 4 units will vary, but when you find one that lets you end up in profit, that’s the one you lean on.

That isn’t exactly common knowledge, but it’s not rocket science either. Most people don’t go wrong there. So why isn’t everyone rich?

They spend their profits instead of reinvesting them.

The amount of money I lost before I figured this out still makes me break out in a cold sweat.

Put every last thin dime of what you make on that product back into advertising it once you find a way that works in a market that works. After a few rounds, take out only half, let the rest keep rolling back on itself until sales start slipping or trends shift.

Now I’m not a master affiliate, and I much prefer doing this with my own products, since I then have total control and know what the conversion rates are first hand. But during the part of the year that I don’t work, that system has worked for me year in and year out.

Have you ever noticed that the people with the most entitlement issues have the least amount of money? My own entitlement issues were Legendary, I kid not. I was sure the world owed me something for my troubles and if it didn’t give it to me, I was planning on taking it.

A mentor soon half-scoffed that I wasn’t owed anything, by anyone.

At first it was offensive that he thought that about me. Then when soul-searching revealed that it was true, that I felt I deserved or was owed some kind of a break because of the hard times I had in my life, it made me take a look at myself. That’s when I thought about working for it harder than I ever had before.

It’s painful to admit, but I was in a situation where I lawfully could have gone on public assistance or social security. This was post-entitlement me though, and I couldn’t bring myself to take a hand-out.

My money issues went so much deeper than that, though.

When I finally worked my way to what I started to believe was this great income, I felt like I didn’t deserve it. I thought it was too easy. All this time, money was coming to me at an inverse proportion to how hard I had to physically work. The less laborious it was, the easier and more rapidly money came to me.

I just couldn’t handle it.

Of course, I started to sabotage myself. I overspent in a period that should have put me on the road to wealth. I rested on my laurels when I should have kept working. It eventually stopped coming in more and more slowly and I was thrown into a panic.

The truth of the matter is that money has a certain type of energy. I promise I’m not going to get too touchy-feely on you. Here’s something to think about along those lines instead.

Broke people congregate together. Rich people try to hang out with people richer and smarter than them so they can learn.

Broke people hoard knowledge. The rich pass knowledge down.

Broke people complain about how much money they don’t have. Rich people talk about what they’re going to do with money they haven’t even made yet, then they go get it.

Broke people hoard pennies rather than saving intelligently. While a rich person isn’t a frivolous spender, they don’t jump over dollars to pick up dimes.

Broke people hate people who are rich and think that they owe them something. And yet it’s the rich people who were always the most willing to help me out when I was broke.

Yet, when a broke person pulls away from the pack and begins to think differently, and re-evaluate how to earn, and gets out of their own way, money seems to rain out of the sky for them, even more than for those sgment of rich people who are born rich and take it for granted.

If you want to be rich - or better yet wealthy - really think about how you feel about money. What did you learn from your parents? Are you tight-fisted or addicted to spending? Why?

Resolve your money issues now while you don’t have much, and when you get money, you’ll keep it.

The alternative is Not fun.