John Dilbeck Musings

Brad Fallon, CEO, has recently introduced Free IQ, an interesting new website that brings content providers, purchasers, and affiliates together.

Free IQ looks to me like it combines some of the features of several sites that are doing well: Squidoo, Lulu, CafePress, and a few others.

Like Squidoo, Free IQ asserts that most people are an expert in something, and then provides a platform for you to express your expertise.

Lulu.com offers a place to sell your ebooks and also offers extra features for print on demand real books as well as help in marketing your real bound books in bookstores and online retailers.

CafePress provides services for selling your CDs and printed ebooks.

Free IQ offers some of these services, but in a totally different way. They do not offer print on demand services. They don’t offer an unlimited number of one-page lenses as Squidoo does, but they do offer multiple categories on your publisher’s page.

Here’s a brief introduction from the Free IQ “Learn More” page:

We believe everyone knows something that’s valuable to someone else.

And some people know things that are very valuable to many other people.

So who decides whose ideas are more valuable?

The answer, of course, is everyone! We all do. This is the “Marketplace for Ideas,” where the best knowledge, ideas and information rise to the top. At Free IQ, the best content appears at the top of every search, based on actual reviews.

In a nutshell, we base our search result rankings on the feedback and reviews by people all around the world. (In fact, Free IQ has more than one patent pending based on the way in which the very best ideas rise to the top of our search results.)

Do you have knowledge and ideas to share?

Are those ideas presentable in a video or audio format? How about an e-book or an article?

Whatever your choice of media (video, audio, or print), Free IQ is the place to offer (present?) your knowledge to the world. And we’ll host your materials and stream them - for free!

This is why, when you want to learn more about almost anything, Free IQ is the ideal place to learn from the world’s best experts - for free.

We believe that internet video offers the best way to learn what you want, when you want - and the best thing is, it’s Free!

Go ahead and try it. Search for any topic you’re interested in learning more about - from business management to marketing to software to your favorite hobby - and see all the experts and authors and speakers on that subject.

Our patent pending search algorithm causes the best information to appear at the top, based on the reviews of the free information by other people interested in that same topic. In fact, other Free IQ users all over the world screen all the available information for you, so when you want to know something, the best video and audio presentations come out on top.

Now that’s a Marketplace for Ideas!

You can read more on their site by clicking the “Learn More” link at the top of the page.

If you have information you want to share with others, you can upload your ebook, video, teleseminar, audio, or other presentation to Free IQ and make it instantly available to others.

Now, I’m brand new to this site, but I already see a problem developing.

Many people have uploaded some of the free ebooks that Ken Evoy wrote. Yes, as affiliates, they have the right to upload copies of Make Your Site Sell! or the Affiliate Masters Course.

However, this will clog the system with duplicate content, the only difference being whose affiliate links are branded in the copy that’s being distributed.

Free IQ claims that their review system will bring the best content to the top of the page, so why do we see the exact same ebooks spread throughout the page? I’m not saying the best content won’t bubble to the top over time, I just see this as one way the system will be clogged with duplicate content.

I think it would be better for a Five Pillar affiliate to write a report of his/her own and recommend good resources for people who want to become an affiliate master or sell from their sites. Then, it would be easy to reference the resources you recommend and still provide unique content that you can show on your publisher’s page.

Now, that’s how I intend to test this site. To that end, I’ve created my publisher’s page for John Dilbeck.

Currently, there is not much on the page, but I’ll be adding some articles or small ebooks as I have time to develop them. Free IQ looks to be an excellent way to market and provide your content on a site that is relatively easy to use.

Not only that, but it will help you build your mailing list. If you have an Aweber account, you can plug your mailing list in directly. If not, you can choose to have leads emailed to you.

Back to finding info on Free IQ. Just go to the Free IQ home page and either enter a search term or click one of the tags.

You will be taken to a page that has free content in the left column and paid content in the right column. In other words, you can read, view, or listen to (as appropriate) the information in the left column for free. You can purchase, should you decide to do so, the information in the right column.

If you want to review an item, give your opinion, or leave feedback, all you have to do is Join for free and create your account.

Content Providers

If you are an expert on almost any topic, Free IQ may be a good place to display your expertise and pass along your best ideas.

At the moment, while Free IQ is still in beta, there is no limit on the size of the files you upload. They will stream or let others download your products for no cost to you. If you are providing content for sale, there is no monthly fee to use the Free IQ shopping engine to sell your information products. When you make a sale, Free IQ will charge you 5% of the sales price, plus credit card processing fees. You don’t even have to have a merchant account.

Once you’ve created your free account (see above), you can upload your content and see how well the system works for you.

Currently, I’m not sure if each content provider has to take part in the affiliate program, or not.

Affiliate Program

One of the things that attracted me immediately to Free IQ is their two tier affiliate program.

If you join the Free IQ affiliate program, you will get paid for the purchases made by anyone you refer, not just once, but for an entire year! Of course, many of the people you refer will buy nothing or maybe one item. However, if he or she does buy multiple items, you’ll get paid for each of them for an entire year.

You also get paid a percentage of any content sold by any Content Providers you refer.

While not as good as having a lifetime customer, getting paid for a year of purchases beats getting paid (maybe) for a single purchase.

If you are interested, you should read the affiliate program page to learn more about some of the innovative things Free IQ is doing.

You are invited to join their affiliate program and see for yourself how it works for you.

It’s free to join and you can quit at any time if you find it doesn’t work for you.

Again, to recap, this site is still in beta and there is no way to tell if it will gain market share or not. It looks interesting to me and that’s why I’m passing it along to you.

I’ve been working feverishly for the last three months to simplify my online presence and my Internet marketing activities.

At the end of 2006, I had over 70 sites I was managing, with many of them duplicating others. One of the major reasons for this is that I experimented a lot in 2006 to find what worked best for me. I tested quite a few blogging platforms, content management systems, forums, and methods for constructing websites. Most of them did not produce the results I wanted.

In January, 2007, I reviewed all of them and made some difficult decisions. Over the last three months, I have been busy closing quite a few sites and I’ll be consolidating several others. A very few will be recreated in a different format.

Over the last three days, I’ve been moving the 21 surviving sites, including JohnDilbeck.com, onto a new server, and it looks like the transfers have been successful. There are still a couple of days of testing to complete, but things are looking good. I’ve found some errors to correct, but they don’t look too difficult.

You may not notice a difference at first, but now that I’m not spending all my time testing, I’ll be able to get back to what I was doing at the end of 2005, prior to all the problems I had with my blogs at Blogger.com. 2006 was a stressful year, but I believe things will go better henceforth.

I’ll be getting back to promoting businesses, organizations, and events in Cherokee County, NC, and particularly in Murphy, NC. The blogs that have not been updated for months will become active, again.

I’m looking forward to actually producing something as opposed to spending all my time testing and implementing different ways of doing things.

I’ve decided that my primary marketing blog will be John Dilbeck And Friends, and this blog, John Dilbeck Musings, will be supplementary to John Dilbeck And Friends.

I’ll be doing a major reworking of all my sites over the coming months, and this applies very much to JohnDilbeck.com, which will be refocused and expanded.

I hope you will not be too discomforted by the changes and I think you will find the new information I’ll be able to publish will be useful and educational for you.

I am grateful for your visits here and hope you come back often.

Act on your dream!

JD