Let’s face it when you were first exposed to internet marketing you saw dollar signs….you were thinking you hit the end of the rainbox…you thought you finally found the way to instant riches….maybe a little better than lottery tickets but a better bet…..Am I right?

Well, I’ve been doing this for about 4 years and still haven’t hit it rich. But, I see the potential. I hate excuses but for me I’ve been dealing with some pretty severe health problems that have been getting progessively worse….which in turn limits the amount of time I can invest in my IM business.

First let me say I’ve met many great, compassionate and helpful marketers. Some just normal guys/gals like me and some “gurus”. For their kindness I am forever indebted.

Out of the 4 years I think I’ve only been burned about 3 times. All 3 times involved paying for a full years membership or lifetime membership only to have some calamity occur which ended up in me getting stiffed, cheated or screwed….whatever you might want to call it.

I always felt like I could never get in on the latest and greatest, simply because I didn’t have the money. I did some graphic work and had a handful of cash. Next I carefully selected a membership that was between $300 and $500 a month. The salesletter told me everything I wanted to hear. I knew this was the ultimate answer and with the help of the 2 guys running the membership I’d finally be in the money.

Once I got inside there was the promise of new cutting edge software, great tutorials, weekly calls and coaching along with the best money making forum. Well….it was the biggest disappointment in my life. I sacrificed money that I should have used for my family in hopes of gaining the knowledge needed to get past the starting line.

This membership was one big disappointment. The 2 guys running it were always busy doing something important…like, racing across the country, building new houses, moving, baby sitting, surfing and generally doing nothing to add value to the membership. I remember one poor girl questioned what was going on in a very polite way and she was tongue lashed.

The lesson learned….be careful of big named gurus and if you join a membership and find no value…quit. Tell them why and ask if you can join latter to see if the content and teaching is any better. The sad truth is….some of these guys really are just after your money and don’t give a rats ass about you or your business. Membership sites bring in money and when one member leaves there’s always a new sucker.

Now…don’t get me wrong. Please don’t be afraid of memberships because they can bring great value….just use discernment and if something seems wrong and your not getting fed, cancel!

One final note of disappointment. I’ve only asked for a refund once. Before I purchased the ebook I asked about its content and was reassured by the author that I would be happy and it covered the subject as per the salesletter. It ended up that the ebook was really just a report of a couple of pages and it discussed a concept that I already was using and openly discussed in a couple of forums. I felt a misled and it became a matter of principle so I asked the author for a refund….less than $20. This guy had been around for a while and I didn’t expect any problems. Well, it took 3 emails for him to reply.

In his reply he insulted me by not understanding the deeper meaning and potential behind his tactics. He said I should reread the report and if after rereading a couple of times and trying it out he would refund my money.

I was very insulted and I have a little bit of a temper and if the guy was any where near me I would have rearranged his nose!

But being the civilized person I am, I just let the matter go and will never…never…never… purchase anything from him again.

Lesson for you….if someone asks for the money returned…gladly refund them. Sure, there are those that will abuse refund policies. However, with modern sripts that protect your download links and pages you can easily ban ip address and/or email addresses.

A little discretion and common sense go a long way in this business and with prudent use, your business will grow!

Once you start to develop your online business….it doesn’t matter if its selling internet marketing products or trying to sell products online for dogs or cats….soon you’ll realize that you should use affiliate links in their raw form.

Let me back up. Lets say your trying to break into the dog niche. So you sign up for a product that teaches you how to train your dog. Once you sign up for the affiliate program you’ll recieve an affiliate link. Anyone who’s been online for any length of time will realize that you are selling an affilaite product by the look of the link.

The solution is to cloak your affiliate link. There are many ways to cloak or hide your raw affiliate link and still get credit for the purchase. However, I just want to show you one way to cloak your link and not divulge your affiliate link in the lower title bar of your browser and you can even create your own title in the Title Line of your browser.

Click on this link Cloak Your Affiliate Link and you’ll find a free online method of creating the code that will help you save affiliate sales commissions.

Hi Steven

Paylock generator has been around for a long time. You have the latest version.

Personally, I use the program when creating buy buttons or links for non-digital items because the buttons can be “saved” in the program.

Based on what you’ve told me I don’t think there is anything wrong with the way the program is acting. In fact, although I recieved emails from paypal telling me they were changing all their buttons, I just got another email a couple of hours ago warning me that “all” buttons would be changed sometime in the next 24 hours.

The encryption issue you mention is kind of like an open sore. If you go to some of the geeky forums and ask about encryption, they will tell you that no encrytion is 100% safe. I have many sites and I try to keep an eye for suspicious activity with any of my download links. In fact, I found one the other day.

You’ll find it more likely that someone will take your download link and pass it around the web. Or depending how you have your site set up it could even end up in Google.

If you’re just getting started I would just keep an eye on the activity with your download links. If you have something that is super sensitive I would always use the payment generator at paypal to generate you purchase button. Paypal will always have the latest and greatest encryption…..but like I said, once the customer buys he has access to your download link and the unscrupulous will pass the button around the internet, so encryption really isn’t an issue.

You might be interested in a program called Site Cash Manager, the guy who runs it is very helpful and you can find it at http://www.spgraphic.com/suggests/sitecashmanager.htm its a very comprehensive program and it will protect your downoad links along with allowing you to set up sales that are time limited, quanitity limited and a whole lot more. Don’t be intimidated by it, although it can do a lot, you can use it to do small tasks.

There are a couple of other programs I could suggest but I need to dig up their links if you’re interested.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Best Wishes,

Scott
Subject: Question about Paylock Generator

Hello Scott
I have a question I was hoping you may help with. I have been using the  Paylock Generator for making Paypal buttons. Today when previewing  my
website in Sitespinner (the program I use to upload my site) I noticed
three of the buttons that I created with the Paypal website, not Paylock  Generator had changed from the visa mastercard looking button, to a yellow Paypal button. My other buttons created with Paylock, had no change as they were suppose to. To remedy the situation I just created the changed buttons with Paylock and saved them that way. All the buttons look the same now. After editing and saving everything I previewed my site again without publishing it. This time I clicked on the Paylock Generated buttons, which is all I am using now, with no Paypal site buttons. When I viewed the security info, it said 128 bit  encrytion, instead of 256 as it usually does. After testing the encryption through the Payock generator itself, which showed 256, I  reopened the preview in Sitespinner and viewed the security info again,  which was back to 256. Is this a security issue I should be worried about or a common occurrence?The only thing I have done different to my unpublished web page in Sitespinner before this happening, was to create a page to put photos on  that buyers send me. The photos were scanned with Avast antivirus and A-Squared trojan remover.

How To Get All The Free Traffic You Want
With Only One Marketing Activity

Are you a “traffic juggler”?

That is, do you attempt to get traffic to your site by
doing all kinds of activities ranging from SEO to PPC
listings to buying solo mailings?

In other words, do you “juggle” your traffic generation
activities like multi-colored balls – never holding on to
one for very long and always moving on to the next one?

As a recovering “traffic juggler” myself, I can tell you
this with great certainty … you and I aren’t alone.

Sadly, most internet marketers wear the same hat.  They
complicate things by trying every new traffic strategy,
buying ever new traffic tool and joining every new traffic
program.

It doesn’t need to be that way.

In fact, what I want to suggest to you in this article will
make your life a whole lot easier, and, as a direct result,
will actually get more traffic to your site than ever
before.

Brace yourself for a life-changing statement –

** If you have your own product to sell online,
you only need to focus on ONE traffic strategy! **

Yep, you read that correctly.

Instead of trying to do a gazillion things, there is a very
simple, very effective approach:  focus on the ONE thing
that really matters, the ONE thing that produces the
greatest results, the ONE thing that will get you all the
traffic you’ll ever need.

And that ONE thing is to…

** Start, Strengthen and Spread Your Own Affiliate Program*

Let’s look at that statement in 3 steps for simplicity
purposes…

Step 1:  *START* Your Affiliate Program.

There is one major reason why you need to start your own
affiliate program that stands head and shoulders above the
rest:  every traffic generation concept (past, present and
future) can be done FOR YOU, BY OTHERS if you have your own
affiliate program in place.

Let that sink in.  Chew on that for a while.  It’s such a
paradigm shift that most people don’t even realize the
tidal-wave-like power behind the concept.

Instead of you working with PPC ads and you working on the
SEO stuff and you buying the solo mailings, you can get
others to do this FOR YOU as a member of your affiliate
program.

So, to begin with, you need to start your own affiliate
program.  A great place to do this is Clickbank.com.

Step 2:  *STRENGTHEN* Your Affiliate Program.

After establishing your affiliate program, it’s important
to “strengthen” it.  That is, you will need to train your
affiliates to do all of the marketing for you.  You’ll also
need to provide them with marketing materials such as
brandable PDF reports, articles, advertisements, banners,
etc.

But, let’s take this another step.

Instead of loading some marketing and training materials to
your affiliate center and leaving it up to your affiliates
to figure out how to use them, why not point out how to use
them?

Example:  List 10 great newsletters where they can purchase
solo mailings to promote your offer.  Put something in
there for every budget.  (What a nice treat it will be when
one of your aggressive affiliates purchases a $500 solo
mailing to promote your offer!)

You’ll be SHOCKED to see what this one additional step can
mean to your bottom line.

But, you could take it even another step further.

How about offering to personally train 10 affiliates in how
best to promote your offer?  You could teach one how to use
ezine advertising; another how to buy PPC ads in numerous
engines; still another how to distribute ezine articles.

(Here’s an idea:  how about you purchase a copy of the
latest traffic tool or manual for one of your affiliates
and get them involved in using it to promote you?!)

Can you imagine the impact?

Step 3:  *SPREAD* Your Affiliate Program.

Finally, you want to continue growing your program by
recruiting more and more affiliates.  As your numbers grow,
so will your results.

The bottom line is simple:  instead of “juggling” a bunch
of different traffic ideas, a much more effective use of
your time is to focus on ONE source of traffic:  your own
affiliate program.

Juggling is great for clowns, but lousy for internet
marketers.

Don’t be a clown when it comes to your business.

———–
Jimmy D. Brown is the author of Sales Army Secrets, the
most comprehensive, creative product available on the
subject of profiting from your own affiliate program.  Click here to get
a free mini-course at !
——————————

Google is doing what they do best…..that is, constantly updating the process whereby they rank the quality of your webpage or blog. It usually happens every couple of months and is always upsetting to those who try to trick Google into thinking their website/blog is more important than everyone else.

To some degree, pagerank equals traffic. So if you’re caught in a recent Google update and you loose pagerank…it’s upsetting and your traffic goes down. Of course, if you’re building a quality site and your website/blog is becoming an Authority site…..well, there’s a good chance your pagerank and therefore trafffic will go up.

Gobala Krishnan at Easy Word Press has a great post on the recent Google update, he says:

Google Pagerank is nothing but a complex mathematical algorithm which ranks websites and webpages according to there relevants. Things on which this algorithm works:

• Inbound links
• Outbound Links
• Site Quality
• Search Engine Ranking
• Reputation over the web

Stop by his Blog and read the Google Update Post….good stuff

Do you have any idea what’s installed on your computer?

Do you know what your computer’s processor is?

Do you know how much memory your computer has?

Do you know what your computer’s main circuit board is?

What is your computer’s processor?

How many drives do your have?

How many programs are installed on your computer?

How would you like to know everything you can about your computer?

I’ve been using a program called Berlac Advisor. Once you download the program, it will analyze your computer and give you some amazing information about your computer. You can find locations of programs you didn’t even know existed. You can find the latest Microsoft updates.

Anyway, I have a handful of computers and I’ll run Berlac Advisor…then print out the results. It helps when I have a crash or loose important data. It could just save your butt one day. At the very least it could surprise you when you see what’s been installed.

Also, you’ll have all the info you need when contacting your computers support. Processer, serial number, windows version…you name it and its there.

You can find Berlac Advisor at: Berlac Advisor 

Look for the download link….its an easy and safe process.