The BCS ... Can You Say "Special Needs"?

There is nothing i can say that has not been written. But here is my take...

The BCS decides who plays for a "National Championship Game" in NCAA football. It's the only sport in the US that has no form of playoff.

i don;t know who wrote this, but when i find out, i will credit them appropriately:

BCS DECLARES GERMANY WINNER OF WORLD WAR II, US Ranked 4th

After determining the Big-12 championship game participants, the BCS
computers were put to work on other major contests and today the BCS
declared Germany to be the winner of World War II.

"Germany put together an incredible number of victories beginning with
the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland and continuing on into
conference play with defeats of Poland, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark,
Belgium and the Netherlands. Their only losses came against the US and
Russia; however considering their entire body of work, including an
incredibly tough Strength of Schedule, our computers deemed them worthy
of the #1 ranking."

Questioned about the #4 ranking of the United States, the BCS
commissioner stated "The US only had two major victories, Japan and
Germany. The computer models, unlike humans, aren't influenced by
head-to-head contests, they consider each contest to be only a single,
equally-weighted event."

German Chancellor Adolph Hitler said "Yes, we lost to the US; but we
defeated #2 ranked France in only 6 weeks." Herr Hitler has been
criticized for seeking dramatic victories to earn 'style points' to
enhance Germany's rankings. Hitler protested "Our contest with Poland
was in doubt until the final day and the conditions in Norway were
incredibly challenging and demanded the application of additional
forces."

The French ranking has also come under scrutiny. The BCS commented
"France had a single loss against Germany and following a preseason #1
ranking they only fell to #2."

Japan was ranked #3 with victories including Manchuria, Borneo and the
Philippines.

"Thing That Don't Work" - Part IV - "Delusions of Wealth"

“Things that don’t work” part IV: “Delusions of Instant Wealth”

From the Bible we are taught that “love of money is the root of all evil”. It extends to internet marketing. It does so in that if a person is seduced by the claims of instant income (and there are hundreds of thousands of sites that can seduce in this way) and expects to begin brining in thousands of dollars a week – starting this week … then that person is going to be sadly mistaken.

Despite the noblest of causes, it’s the love of money that brings people into the fray of internet marketing. People all over the world are trying to better their own lives. Their motivation varies. They may be only interested in bringing in enough money to speed up the payoff of a car loan, or to help pay off credit cards, or even to start a college fund for their children. A lot of people come into the arena looking for ways to achieve financial freedom. To me this means that they want to be out of debt and will be financially secure no matter what curveball gets thrown their way. (ie – the car breaks down, the dishwasher goes out and needs replacing, etc.) Then you have your final group who are motivated by ultimate wealth. They want the Ferrari, the ocean front home, etc.

All of these motivations are noble (save maybe the last one) and none of them at face value are unethical. But unfortunately, all of these motivations are subject to the seduction of “making the quick buck”. That seduction runs rampant across the internet. Nearly every internet advertisement for an MLM, Affiliate Program, Google Advertising opportunity, selling on EBAY, (etc.), has a claim of the opportunity to make hundreds and thousands of dollars in only days weeks or months.

Soren Jordansen, the owner of DragonSurf Traffic Exchange recently published an ebook titled, Internet Marketing Success Formula. In this ebook Soren tells of the results of a survey that he took of his subscribers, readers and members. Some of these results are very telling – and, I think, very realistic. Take note of these samplings of internet marketers:

• 54% want to make enough money to quit their job
• 27% want to become filthy rich
• 67% are new to internet marketing within the past 24 months
• 12% have been involved with internet marketing for over 5 yrs.

Now for the telling stats:

• 89% are making less than $500 per month
• Over 50% are making nothing
• Less than 5% are making more than $1000 monthly.

Pretty scary, eh? Well, I think I can explain some of this.

Two of the statistics, 1) 7% of marketers make a full time income and 2) less than 5% make over $1000 per month, are both in line with the accepted fact that only 3-5% of all Network Marketers (MLMers) are successful. Given that, its easy to see why. Look at the first bullet: 67% have only been involved in internet marketing in the past 24 months and only 12% have stayed with it for 5 yrs. I draw two conclusions from this:

1. Internet marketing is still a new phenomenon
2. Most people are not seeing the results that they initially imagined and are bailing out.

Is it any wonder why people give up within the first two years (personally – I think the lion’s share quits within their first year) when they are constantly bombarded by enticing ads that give them the false hope of thousands of dollars of income in only a short period (days, weeks, months)? We have all seen these ads. Here is a sampling of them.

• Be ready to explode your income. Prepare to be extremely wealthy
• How you can easily build a massive list and earn more cash than you ever thought possible
• Team members earn $1000’s every week for free
• Financial freedom is just one click away

It is no wonder at all why people quit. They get seduced to often by ads like this and don’t realize that success does not happen overnight in internet marketing. The “delusion of instant riches” is just another item on the list of “Internet Marketing - things that don’t work”

Things that don’t work” part III: “Dabbling”

This topic of “dabbling” is an offshoot or symptom of a person’s “lack of focus” – which was the subject of my previous blog. That said – I may be repeating some of my thoughts from that blog.
While the intended audience for this post is geared towards the beginner in internet marketing – I hope it is of use to those who have been through the ringer, paid their dues and are now reaping the benefits of their work. My hope for anyone who reads this is that they become “reapers” – if they are not already.
I am going to define “dabbling” as it relates to internet marketing as this: “the act of trying out new and different programs without applying focused effort and strategy”. I have been guilty of this – as have many others – when looking for the right opportunities to make money from internet and/or network marketing. I think “dabbling” is normally the behavior of the gullible and naïve who believe the hype of “deposits of hundreds of dollars in just days”. Dabblers are usually looking for the quick dollar. The sad truth is that the “dabbler” never finds the quick dollar – and never sticks around to see the “dollar-down-the-road”
If you are a “dabbler” (there is still hope for you…) then it is likely that you have tried several programs and not seen much success from any of them. It is also likely that you moved from one to the next – and with each result, you began to allow negative thoughts seep in. After 5 or 6 of these iterations of failed attempts, you were ready to give up, and you caved in to the thought that internet marketing is not for you.
Believe me – I have been there. I have taken my thoughts of resignation to bed. I have allowed them to give me over to feelings of hopelessness. Have you had these questions and thoughts in your mind late at night?
1.this will never work
2.I can’t get any referrals
3.I have no traffic
4.I can’t bug my friends and family w/ this
5.This only works for a few people and I am not one of them
The good news is that all of that negativity can be overcome. How? Well the easy answer is to stop dabbling – and start doing.
I once was working with an MLM ( I will leave out the company info, because it is not important here). At first I really believed in this product/service and became a customer and an associate. (funny how those promotional videos and the weekly meetings keep you roped in at first) I had a really nice upline who stayed in contact with me and she really tried to help me. One thing that this particular business really counted on is the “warm market”. Like most of us – I hate bugging my family and friends about my business opportunities – so this was a problem for me.
They wanted me to write down a list of 10 people who I could share the biz op with. Granted, this was before I understood the power of the internet and social networking, social media, etc. Eventually, I compromised my unwillingness to use the warm market, and sent a meek and feeble email to about 5 people sharing this business opportunity. I got no response at all.
That was “dabbling”.
It got me nowhere.
Then I had the bright idea of printing some flyers and keeping them in my car so that I could distribute them when I went to the mall or supermarket, etc. I think I passed out about 20 of the 200 that I printed.
That was “dabbling”.
It got me nowhere.
I am no longer active in that program – because it wasn’t working for me, and that made me lose faith in the product to a point where I don’t really believe in it any longer. In retrospect, I failed, because I dabbled. Had I put in some extra effort in a targeted and consistent manner, I know I would have eventually succeeded. In my defense however, I think I can say that I was so new to the industry that I had no clue what I was doing.
“Dabbling” scenarios:
Take an example of someone who has a website set up as a capture page for his/her business. This person needs traffic. They need multiple eyeballs hitting that page daily. The first thing they do is to subscribe to one of the hundreds of traffic generating programs available. All of the sudden they see traffic on their website and get all excited. Later they wonder why the traffic has not converted into signups. Instead of turning up the volume and expanding to several different traffic generators, leveraging them against each other, and putting some consistent and targeted effort into it….they quit, and went on to the next thing.
The same person then decided that they would go into social networking and reap some benefits there. So they joined a couple of the hundreds of social networking sites and began adding friends and sharing their business with everyone they came into contact with. Yet they could never get anyone to join their program. (not realizing that everyone they connected with was already in a program and looking for their own prospects too) The immediate results were nowhere to be found. So they quit. This time they may have quit for good, or they may have tried yet another avenue and received the same result.
They dabbled
They got nowhere.
It would be my hope that anyone who went through this – learned from it and stopped “dabbling”. Further, that they are now practicing consistent and targeted efforts, that they are listening to people who know “what works”, and finally that they are on the road to a home business that flourishes.
People who want immediate success with little effort in internet/network marketing are naïve, misguided, or downright lazy. They are “dabblers”
Don’t dabble!

“Things that don’t work” part II: “Lack of Focus”

Among the many reasons that it took me so long to get going in a positive direction in internet marketing was that I was trying too many things at the same time. My email inbox was already a veritable flood-plain of business opportunity notices, marketing programs, get-rich-quick scams, and outright spam. Well, being a sucker for good advertising copy – I checked out a lot of programs and actually signed up for several of them.

One day I was chatting with a fellow marketer in one of the Yahoo Messenger “Small Business” rooms and we had a nice long chat about what we were into as far as our internet marketing activities. We decided to do a little “internet marketing quid pro quo” … I joined one of his free programs – he joined one of mine. We both thought it would be an easy way to get a signup and show some progress in our efforts.

As I was signing up for this colleague’s program – I was informed that the username was already taken. Dang! I was a bit put off, because I have a fairly unique username that I was using for that particular program. Then it dawned on me that the person who took that name….was me. It must have been some weeks/months earlier that I had already signed up for this program.

That was my “Uh-oh moment”. An “Uh-oh moment” is somewhat like the “Ah-Ha moment” that gets bandied about in our circles – but it is more of a negative. It is not the “Ah-Ha, this is how it works” realization - rather it is the “Uh-oh, that is not how it works” reality. I realized then that my focus was non-existent and I was over my head in too many programs.

I realized that my internet marketing prowess was lacking. It helped at the time that I was in weekly contact with a good networker who had been mentoring me, because I remembered his coaching of “consistent and focused effort”, (which he was focusing on me consistently). I felt at that time that my internet marketing skills were akin to someone constantly adjusting the rabbit ears on his/her TV antenna. (you will only relate to that if you are over 40 – and if you relate to it – how much aluminum foil did you use to “improve” your reception?) I was basically trying anything and everything. Call it the “sawed-off shotgun” approach.

At the height of my “lack of focus” issues, I had signed up for no less that 24 marketing programs. The categories of these programs included: a) traffic generators b) self-proclaimed training programs c) advertising programs and d) auto-responders. Most were free to join – but had the obligatory “Silver”, “Gold” and “Platinum” levels also.

With 24 different programs active – how can anyone new to the industry capitalize on anything? It is obvious to me now that I did not know what I was doing. In my haste to “make x-thousand in my first x-days” (fill in the wild claim…you have heard them all I am sure) I realized I was doing it backwards. I can’t name any successful company/corporation today that broke ground w/ a wide variety of goods and services – only hoping to hone in on one that worked. Instead, the successful companies, corporations, small businesses and home business entrepreneurs have basically followed the model of focusing their efforts on targeted markets – then as success comes, expanding to include new products and services.

Friends, you have to find your focus on how you can attract others to your program. Otherwise you will find that your lack of focus is just another item on the list of “things that don’t work”

Things That Don't Work: Part 1: Online Surveys

“Things that don’t work” part 1: Online Surveys

Online surveys sound good at first. The ads that you see for surveys can actually sound enticing: “Make $500 a week or more from home!” Well I will not say that it is impossible – but I will admit that I am just not willing to do it.
I joined 6-7 survey sites last year and had little success. Granted, I did not invest a lot of time in them. But one site that I did pay particular attention to was a disaster. I took some 31 surveys from this site and was disqualified 26 times. The worst part is that I had to answer 5-10 questions before they DQ’d me. And it was usually the same 5-10 questions every time. You would think that since they took the time and effort to set up web pages that took all my personal info in registering for the site – that they could have also asked these same 5-10 qualifying questions and stored the data in a profile. No, you had to go through the same interrogation for each survey and invest 5-10 minutes in simply qualifying!

After a couple weeks I decided to donate the $2.70 that I had “earned” from the site – and move on to something else.
To take a further examination into online surveys, let us consider this scenario. Say a survey site is offering $5 per survey taken (very liberal figure) and that you can crank out 4 in one hour. That would mean that you would need to use 25 hours each week to earn the $500. That is $20/hour – not bad money at all.

If a person has 3-4 hours a day that they are willing to spend answering survey questions – then yes, a nice bit of supplemental income will be theirs every month. If this is you – and its what you like – and you see a nice supplemental check every month – then God bless you.

For me however, it is only an hourly wage – and I already have one of those based on my salary. The time that is needed to actually see an income from taking surveys is fixed. There is no residual. No spillover. It is finite. It is done. It flies in the face of the basic concept of network marketing, internet marketing, social networking and all else.

Picture 2 people w/ a real desire to begin making money from home and/or starting a home-based business. Both people have an extra 3 hours a day during the week and 5 hours on the weekend to spend for the specific purpose of earning extra income. They will each have 20 hours a week to spend on their efforts. Fred spends his 20 hours diligently answering surveys. Sally spends her time learning about internet marketing, social networking, internet advertising, etc. After a week – Fred will probably have more money in his/her PayPal account than Sally does, because he is actually getting paid for the work he does – while Sally is studying, practicing and experimenting. The same will be true after week 2 and week 3 and maybe even weeks 4 and 5. After a while though, if Sally has found a niche and is expending consistent and focused efforts on growing her list of contacts, permission lists and her web presence – then her Paypal account is going to fly right on past Fred’s. It may take weeks – it may take months – but at some point the foundation that she has laid for her future home business will result in ongoing residual income. Fred’s surveys will never see this.

If you are one who is happy with the extra income you gain from taking online surveys – I am happy for you and don’t want to discourage you, or rain on your parade, etc. But I do have to tell you that if you could take that 2, 3 or 4 hours a day and use it to promote yourself, your product, your business or opportunity, and do so in a consistent and targeted manner – then you will be light years ahead of where you will be by your hourly job of answering online surveys.

My internet marketing mentor, Larry Brauner, says it best:

"Survey sites, get paid to read e-mails, and get paid to do whatever else sites appeal to people with lots of time and no money. The best way to make money is to refer people to products and services that they really need and are fairly priced. That's a win win."

Coming up… “Things that don’t work” part II: “Lack of Focus”

Things That Don't Work

I have been involved (at some level) in internet marketing for over a year now and I think that I can promote myself as an expert in one of its aspects – that being “what doesn’t work”. In fact – I think I am an expert now in the field of “what doesn’t work”.

With the knowledge that I have gained over the past year and the expenses that I have incurred – I have created a nice list of things that don’t work.

I have found that there are actually two benefits from “things that don’t work”. (I love taking negative experiences or events and turning them into positive outcomes, forecasts, and even realities – why else would I write a blog about things that don’t work?)

The first benefit is taxes. Its tax-season for many (I filed in early Feb because I knew my daughters were helping me get a nice chunk of change back from the gov). Uncle Sam through his relationship w/ the IRS has some specific guidelines as to benefitting from “what doesn’t work”. They don’t like the home-business owners who have a list of things that they spent money on that did not work. For the 2007 tax year I was able to write off a nice bit of change for the things that did not work. I would suggest a book titled “Lowering Your Taxes – Big Time” by Botkin for some good information on what you can do about writing off your home business expenses. Be warned this benefit has an expiration date. If you write off a couple grand this year and show little if any income….it may not work next year. The pencil-wielding accountants at the IRS will call your HomeBiz a “Hobby” and disallow your write-offs.

The second benefit that you can realize from “things that don’t work” is the experience you gain. (The school of hard knocks has more successful graduates than all Ivy League schools combined.) There are hundreds of great quotes about famous people who failed time and again – yet learned from their mistakes and their fruitless attempts – only to rise to later successes. I hope this is you. For that matter I hope it is me too.

Ah … a third benefit just came to me. I will tell you about it w/ tongue firmly planted in cheek. In the case that you got into the internet marketing arena to help get your family out of a financial crisis – then turn the positive into a negative. Expand the “3-ft rule” that they teach in MLMs. Here is how:

When the mortgage company calls and wants to know when you can make the house payment – go ahead and get things settled – then promote your business to the associate who called you. Everyone is a prospect, right? They called you and took you away from your home life – turn it into your favor. Call it Debt-management meets Social Networking.

Tongue in cheek aside, I would love to hear an experience from someone about this. I am sure that its been done. And I would also think that the person who can do this – will not be in financial crisis for an extended time.

So there you have it, friends. I intend to share some of those “things that don’t work” experiences in this blog thread over the next few weeks. I hope that you enjoy it and I hope that I can follow it up with some ideas along the lines of “things that work wonders” – because that is what I believe will happen for me.

Toxic Home Brew

Wow! Check out this video .... and then get rid of the bad stuff under your sink...

Watch the video here

For information on how you can take a step to clear your home of these products - go here... click me

Promoting Home and Online Businesses w/ Craigslist

Craigslist is one of the best classified ad resources on the net. We have used it sell vehicles and to promote our home-businesses, as well as promoting the tools that we use to promote our home-business.

Craigslist is structured geographically so that if you live in Denver and want to sell your couch and loveseat - it may be a good idea to post that to the Denver area. However, if you are marketing a travel service, health product, etc. - you would obviously want to spread the ad outside your area and likely even nationwide.

Craigslist will not allow you to post the same article to more than one area w/in 48 hours, so i have come up w/ a method to reach out to the entire nation without violating Craigslists policies.

I have a couple of main businesses i am working, 3 social networks, and a growing number of traffic generating/marketing referral sites that i would like to promote. So i have created a spreadsheet that on one of the worksheets has 3 columns, name of the business/ product/ service, a headline, body of the ad i want to post.

In the next work sheet i entered a date column and put in the current date then copied it out for 3 months or so. Then i added other columns for each the different items i am promoting. Now you will want to make a list of cities (minimum of 15) my list is over 40.

In the column of the 1st item you are promoting type in the 1st city on your list, then go down 3 rows and type in the next (your first city will be in the row of today's date, then your next city will be in the row of the date 3 days from now) continue entering the cities 3 rows apart until your list is exhausted.

Now go back to the top and highlight all of the cities that you just entered, right-click copy, then move to the cell one-down and one to the right of your top city and paste it there. Continue the pasting until you have filled in all of your columns. If you stepped down properly pasting then you will have some empty cells at the top right of your sheet. You can fill them in as you like. (at the bottom of your list will be the opposite affect you can use those cells to fill in the blanks at the top)

There you have it. Now every day you can open your sheet and look to see what items are to be promoted that day. Then go to craigslist and put in your add. Its a lot quicker if you cut/paste from your first worksheet the headline and body. This should take less than 10 minutes a day once you get the hang of it.

Leverage the "idleness of your past" into marketing for today

I have always been a bit of a "chat-nut". I remember even back in the mid to late '80s, i used my Commodore-128 (state of the art at that time) and got "online" over a 240-baud modem. It was my first online chat experience.
In subsequent years the "Chat Industry" really exploded. Millions upon millions were signed up w/ AOL, or MSN or Yahoo. I was a big AOL user back in the late 90's. And as a bachelor, i actually ended up meeting in real life, women who i had established contact with online. I think i did this 6 or 7 times.
Now that i am married - i pretty much try to stay away from the chatrooms as there is really nothing to be gained .... or is there?
A couple nights ago, i logged into Yahoo Messsenger and went into one of their small business chatrooms. It was there that i had kind of an "aha moment". I struck up a conversation w/ a young lady from Indonesia who was promoting her business and i noticed that in her "status" she had a link to her website. It dawned on me there that i could do the same and get some absolutely free advertising from it.
My experience that night brought me the realization that I could actually use the tools of my "former idleness" and leverage that today to grow my own network. If you are currently a Yahoo Instant Messenger user and have a nice long "friend's list - then you are perfectly staged to do this. Here is how:

1. Login to YM
2. Right-click your name at the top of the window and select "New Status Message"
3. Type in something like... "Home Business Opportunity: www.myurl.com"
4. Click ok.

You are now setup and all of the people who have added you to their frineds list will see that message next to your name in their YM window.
If you are not currently a YM user i probably would not advise you to "drop everything and join". But if you are a current user - then why not scrape up a few more contacts.
Lastly, I like to login to YM daily and keep it open. I usually go to one of the small business chatrooms, and leave that window open. Normally, i will get 5-10 IMs a day for people inquiring about my business. You can also just read the traffic in the chatroom and when you see someone submit a message about his/ her busieness - then send them an IM like ... " Hi (name) i was curious as to know how you are promoting your business...." This is a good started for getting a Yuwie referral or even getting a referral to your main business.

For what its worth....

My Favorite Time of the Day

Every night around 8 pm either myself or my wife - or - as is usually the case - both of us - puts our 20-month old daughter to bed. The routine is usually say a prayer thanking God for Olivia and asking that He would grant her a good night's sleep; a hug for mommy, a hug for daddy; then into the crib.

There is one point during this process that usually fills my eyes w/ the stuff of tears. It is the point that Olivia nestles her head against my shoulder as i am holding her. It is a moment of total surrender and total reliance. She is telling me without words....

"I love you and trust you, daddy...I have no idea what this world is about - but I know you are here to care for me and protect me."

This single moment makes every difficulty, inconvenience, annoyance, perplexment, disdain, aggravation, every dirty diaper, every snotty nose and all other negatives concerning caring for a toddler - worth every bit of the ride.

Many of you have been through this - if so, take a moment to reflect on the times that you had w/ your infant/toddler and remember that you were the most important person on earth to someone at sometime. Put that memory in a place where you can always access it.