You Can Lead A Horse To Water

Some time ago, I absolutely swore that I would never again buy an Internet Marketing product.


That's until Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkins decided to open the doors to Stompernet again in May 2007.


Almost daily, I was hit with emails telling me what an opportunity I was missing. There were videos providing clues and even personal trainers assigned to lead the way in and make it simple for even a beginner to grasp the nettle and make a fortune online.


Well, I bought in.


For my $795 per month, I would get a box fuill of DVDs and access to a mastermind group of Internet Marketers and a forum packed with people "just like me" who want to make their living online.


That's not all though! There are annual or bi-annual seminars, boot camps, link exchanges, even more videos, piostings and industry news.


It's a bargain at just $795 per month. For that, you're not just getting one guru, you're getting dozens of them, all there to contribute to your wealth, especially as they are being paid to do it.


No, Stompernet isn't just another, "join us and we'll bombard you with every marketer's latest, must-have latest product", as some sites are. It is actually an excellent site. It's well put-together and it works.


But today, I quite the program.


Why?


Simply because it is so good! There is way too much information there.


When I first began working online, the aim was to replace my income with a more passive one and to give me time to spend at home with my wife and kids.


I don't want to be stuck in front of a computer or DVD player all day, every day.


I don't want to click on a site link and find yet another way I've been getting it wrong all these years.


I don't want to join a forum that's supposedly packed full of "experts", only to find that instead of getting advice, I find myself dishing it out.


Yes, I like to share information, but not when others are being paid to be there - and I AM PAYING!


Stompernet, I loved the concept, but do you know what? There are people around this industry who GIVE. They ask for nothing back, it just comes back anyway.


A lot of what I saw was people looking for answers on the forums. Yes, people helped out - but I only saw other "Stompers" answering the questions, not the principals. (Unless it was in their own "Ask Brad" or "Ask Andy" areas).


So, though I wouldn't want to put anyone off joining, if they can afford the $795 per month, I felt that it wasn't for me. I already knew much of the stuff. There was nothing new for me in the videos. I already make enough money online and offline to keep me happy and I am usually happy to point people in the right direction if they ask nice.


It would be nice to do that for $795 per month, but really, is it necessary?


My friend Rick Shwartz runs his board for free. He has an international reputation that has been earned the hard way - in business. The information there really is priceless. My friends at DomainBoardroom, many of them very successful, run another excellent one. I even run a small one myself.

Good luck Stompers. Learn what you need, put it into practice, make some money, but don't fall for the $795 a month for life trick - that's a lot of money to mix it up in a forum!

How Not To Run An Affiliate Program

I found a site that I thought offered a really useful product this week. It was unusual enough for me to seek out their affiliate program and request details.

I got accepted and took another look over the site to see how well I thought it would convert my visitors into sales.

That was when I realsised that something was seriously wrong.

The site was full of Google Adsense advertisements.

Why would a successful company that wants to attract good quality affiliates and presumably sell their own products, cram their web site with ads designed to tempt their visitors away.

From my perspective (and I hope any other affiliate worth their salt), it's simply a ludricrous idea to promote their program.

I for one, work very hard to ensure that my visitors are only sent to sites that are useful and relevant to whatever site of mine they happen to be visiting.

If I am going to join a program on a pay per sale basis, then I expect that the company does it's very best to convert my visitor into a sale that I earn a commission on.

Why would I want to send a visitor that is more likely to click on another ad just to earn that webmaster money?

It makes no sense at all.

So, being me, I contacted the affiliate site with this email:

I am considering joining your affiliate program, but your site seems more geared towards earning Google Adsense revenue. Why would an affiliate spend time generating visitors to a site that is trying to get those visitors to click links that he doesn't get paid for? Yours looks like a useful program to promote, but with those Google ads? It's totally unprofessional. Please let me know when they are gone and I will happily promote your program, but I don't think I want to promote your Adsense ads!

They sent me a reply today. Here it is:

I appreciate your interest in our affiliate program. While we do serve adsense ads amongst many others,affiliates are paid on a free account sign up. Driving traffic to our free joine can be quite lucrative. Thanks again for your interest in (name removed to save embarrassment)

I think that says it all.

Don't think this company is alone. There are many companies who think they can screw their affiliates in this way. That's why I am reluctant to join affiliate programs and instead work with people I know and trust.

Affiliate program managers need to wake up to the real value of the traffic that a motivated affiliate can send, instead of treating them like mindless idiots.

Advertising Revenue

There's a lot of talk going around at the moment with people wanting to form assocations that would bring domainers together in sort of collective organisation, pooling their names into some sort of advertising pot perhaps and then splitting the resultant revenues.

I have thought about this a lot over the past few weeks and am convinced that although it *might* have some merit, the reality is that we all far too selfish for that to happen.

If my domains get developed, I want the spoils.

If someone wants to lease on of my domain names, I want to be in control of the contract terms.

If somebody wants to advertise on my web sites, then I want the revenue from that too.

My personal belief is that unless you have extremely strong generic, type-in names, then pay per click is a waste of time. (I acknowledge that there are specific exceptions to this statement for various reasons).

I also believe that 99.99% oif affiliate programs are a complete waste of time, from a sustainable revenue generating perspective.

So that only leaves development.

Development can take many different forms. Potals, information products, services, advertisnig hubs - the list is endless.

At the moment, I am concentrating my development efforts in VERY niche areas and picking some extremely lucrative low hanging fruit.

In the next few weeks, I hope to be launching a couple of niche market sites that will generate nice advertising income.

It's a fact that domainers are leaving too much money on the table if they are relying too much on the likes of Google and their Adsense cheques.

Things need to change. It's time for people to stand up and be counted. It's ok to make assertions that domains are a great investment opportunity, but in order to be heard, I think it's time to create something.

The cost of development is far less than you might think.