John Dilbeck Musings

Yesterday, in the 5 Pillar #291 newsletter, Ken Evoy announced the introduction of Snippet Build It! This is a tool that can be used by 5 Pillar affiliates to build links to over 60 landing pages for promoting Site Build It!

Many years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the rocks weren’t quite hardened, Sitesell was selling some of the best ebooks ever published. Make Your Site Sell! was the Bible of online marketing that helped me start building my marketing business. Now, it’s a free download and there is a lot of very valuable information in the 1,500 or so pages of this ebook. I still refer to it now and then.

In addition to outstanding ebooks, Ken wrote a number of courses that were delivered via email. I remember taking all of those courses as they were introduced and updated. I still have several of them in a 3-ring binder, and they are covered with notes and bright yellow highlights. Now, these courses are available as free downloadable PDF files. I still highly recommend my favorite, the Affiliate Masters Course, because it offers as much as some courses that cost around $100 and you can download it free. It was always free and still remains free.

Over time, to make it easier for Sitesell’s 5 Pillar Affiliates to market these products, Ken introduced Page Build It! - a tool for building customized gateway pages. Around the same time, give or take, the Build It! tool was introduced to make it easier for affiliates to build web pages (or just snippets of code) that combined text and graphics. This was a cutting-edge marketing tool when it was introduced.

Now, I hope you’ll excuse my memory, but a lot of water has gone under the bridge since these tools were first introduced, so I may not have all of this exactly right, but I believe the gist of it is accurate.

These tools for building pages and code snippets eventually lead to the first, less-than-impressive versions of Site Build It! But, Ken and the folks associated with Sitesell were not content with what SBI was and continued to improve it and add new features.

Now, several years later - a very long time in the online marketing world - Site Build It has become an incredibly effective tool for building online businesses. More tools are added all the time and older features are updated continually.

So, as I said, Ken announced yesterday that Snippet Build It! was available and I just now spent about a half-hour playing with it.

I am impressed!

What used to be the Build It! tool has been streamlined and greatly improved. Now, 5 Pillar affiliates can easily and quickly create links to over 60 different landing pages that tell the story of SBI and why it makes sense to use it rather than traditional webhosting.

It’s easy to go to the page, select either text or image, select the desired landing page, and build a link.

If you select text, and a landing page, you can type the text you want in the link and see the link created as you type. It makes it simple to try several phrases to see which one you like, and then simply copy and paste the HTML code to your websites, blogs, and other places on the web. The text links in this article were created using Snippet Build It! as a test of using the system and it is easier than hand coding the links as I normally do.

Not only is it easier, the landing pages are grouped by their order in the buying cycle, and this is explained in an excellent article that was also released yesterday.

Why is that important?

I’ve gotten into a rut of referring prospects to just a handful of the many pages that are available. Now, by using Snippet Build It!, it will be much easier to choose just the right page to link to, depending upon the point I want to make in an article or advertisement.

This combination of being easy to use and providing a full list of the available landing pages (and this number is growing all the time) helps me provide the information you may need in order to make your final decision to buy, or not to buy, a subscription to the Site Build It! system - or to become one of our affiliates and make money promoting the best way to build an online business.

In addition to text links, Snippet Build It! makes it easy to build graphics links using some new banners, buttons, and logos.

For example, the following is a link to the Site Build It! main page, and was created in less than five seconds:

The new graphics use less text and more people. They use more right-brained emotion and less left-brained logic.

Now, I’m a left-brained logic kind of guy. I rarely make my decisions based on emotion. I spend a long time learning about something before I buy.

Most people, perhaps you, make more decisions based on emotion and then later justify it with logic.

Site Build It! is great for right-brained people. It is an exciting system that has helped many of its subscribers build successful online businesses, and quite a few have left the corporate world and are now living their dreams and working from home. Of course, not everyone is this successful, but SBI offers the tools and training to make it much more likely to succeed.

Many people have said they were exposed to SBI and didn’t believe that it was as good as many of us believe it to be. So, they moved on and built websites using other services. After a year or two of butting their heads against the technical hurdles, they remembered Site Build It! With more experience, they were better able to judge the benefits SBI offered and some bought on the spur of the moment.

Rather than regretting the purchase, most of them regretted wasting a year or two trying to build their online businesses the hard way.

Yes, some people do not do well with SBI, and some people don’t like what they can’t do with SBI - so Sitesell offers a money-back guarantee. You can’t lose by trying it.

Oops, I’m getting off track. Back to Snippet Build It!

The new graphic images are more colorful and appeal more to right-brained people, in my opinion. I think they will be a welcome addition to the marketing tools offered to 5 Pillar affiliates.

But, nothing is perfect.

A few minutes ago, I offered my opinion about the new marketing tool on the members-only SBI forum.

I think it is a huge improvement over the older tools and I welcome the ease-of-use and organized listing of the more than 60 landing pages we can promote.

On the other hand, I believe we need a wider variety of graphics that are specifically targeted to each landing page.

But, you know what? I don’t doubt that Snippet Build It! will be improved over time and that we’ll see more and better-targeted graphics to go with all the other marketing tools that Sitesell provides its 5 Pillar affiliates.

It’s easy to recommend something when I know from first-hand experience how much it has helped me build my online marketing business. I’m working from home 100 miles from the nearest traffic jam and loving it.

I don’t believe I would be where I am today if it weren’t for what I’ve learned from Ken Evoy and all the many Site Build It! webmasters who help each other on the free, members-only SBI forums.

I’m a very satisfied SBI customer and have many plans for expanding my Act On Your Dream! website.

You know what?

At first I balked a bit at spending $300 a year to build a website, but after building dozens of sites and blogs over the last few years, and wasting more than what I would have spent to build several more SBI sites, the only one that has never given me any trouble at all is the one I am building using Site Build It! Over time, that becomes more and more important, because I’m getting tired of wasting my time and efforts on sites that don’t work or get destroyed by hackers.

I’m one of those hard-headed people that just has to do it my way and I don’t regret all the testing I’ve done. I’ve learned and I’ll be turning more to SBI in the future, except for some of my sites that require perl and php programming to make them work.

I just renewed my subscription to SBI for another year, and a long time before my subscription expires I will have earned back my $300 investment several times over. It’s not an expense, it’s an investment.

Just as Site Build It! is the best tool I know of for building a successful online business, the marketing tools that Sitesell offers its 5 Pillar affiliates continue to get better over time, too.

I am very happy that I found Ken Evoy and Sitesell those many years ago. I hope you’ll find it worth the investment of your time and money, too.

Act on your dream!

JD

(This article is part of my Marketing Tools and Techniques: Traffic Exchanges series.)

Normally, I won’t be promoting the latest and (supposedly) greatest thing, so don’t be afraid that I’ll bombard you with untested programs that may be here today and gone tomorrow.

I prefaced this recommendation because Soaring For Traffic is a new traffic exchange, but I believe it will be around for a long time and I think it will rise to be one of the best.

I’ve known Ray for a few months and I have seen for myself that he knows quite a bit about Internet marketing and is always working to learn more and to share what he learns with others.

I first met him on the Affiliate Funnel forum, where he answered some of my questions about ad tracking on traffic exchanges. I did some searching and found that he is the owner of Private Success Team, where he is busily helping others learn how to market on the Internet more successfully.

I recently learned that he has been working for about a year to introduce Soaring For Traffic, his free traffic exchange and downline builder.

Lately, I’ve become more discerning when it comes to traffic exchanges and I’m reaching the point where I probably won’t join too many more.

Over the last year, I’ve joined and used about 75 traffic exchanges with varying amounts of success. Now, I’m a member in about 60 and actively use about 20 of them.

I am an upgraded member in about a dozen exchanges, and I just upgraded my account with Soaring For Traffic.

Although Soaring For Traffic is free, you will get more traffic with less time and effort by upgrading to one of the two upgrade levels. I chose the highest upgrade and I’m looking forward to using this exchange a lot in the coming months.

I added about 170 sites to this exchange in one fell swoop by using my Page Swirl rotator and spent another hour or two advertising it on some of my marketing pages, including my LinkScout marketing site.

After I’d finished setting everything up, it was time to surf the new exchange and see how I liked it.

I found a couple of small errors when setting up to use the exchange, but surfing the sites of other members was easy and the site responded quickly, even on my very slow dial-up connection.

The downline builder part of the site contains five money making affiliate programs and I’m a member of three of them. I didn’t count the number of traffic exchanges in the downline builder, but almost all of my favorites were there and I saw only a handful of sites I’d never tried before.

I know that Ray will be a helpful and responsive owner, and that is a big part of being an upgraded member of an exchange.

Even though Soaring For Traffic is new, it already has nearly 1,500 members and is growing quickly.

Regarding the problems I encountered, one was just an incorrect height and width attribute in the HTML code for a 100×300 sidebar button link. That was easily corrected, and I’ll let Ray know about it as soon as I publish this.

The other was a bit more of a problem, but probably has an easy solution. The site offers a way to personalize one of the splash pages that can be used on other traffic exchanges. It features your name, photo, a banner, and a testimonial.

I filled in the form and submitted it, only to be told that the banner URL was incorrect. No problem; the exchange is new. However, the real problem, for me, was that the error page did not preserve the entries on the form that were correct. As a result, a very complimentary testimonial was lost.

Ray, if you read this, I said some nice things about you that nobody will read because the form lost my heartfelt compliments.

With only a couple of minor negatives (which I’m sure Ray will fix quickly) and lots of positives, I heartily recommend Soaring For Traffic to you.

If you want to be a free member, this exchange is better than most.

If you plan to upgrade, the prices are right and the One-Time-Offer page offers good discount pricing for an annual or lifetime membership.

If that doesn’t fit your budget, the second One-Time-Offer (OTO) page offers a 33% discount on the highest upgrade level, making it a good buy. Normally, the highest level, Soaring Eagle, costs $14.95 per month, and I think that is over-priced for a 1:1 surf ratio and anything less than 1,000 credits per month. However, the second OTO page offers the Soaring Eagle level for $9.99, and I think that is the proper price for what is offered.

I don’t know if either of these discount pages will be available should you join, nor what they may offer at that time. These things are always subject to change.

If you don’t take advantage of either OTO page, you’ll pay more, perhaps a lot more, in the long run.

Soaring For Traffic will be one of the dozen or so traffic exchanges I’ll use on a regular basis.

You can join Soaring For Traffic for free and see for yourself how well it works for you.

Act on your dream!

JD

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.

Several years ago, I needed a way to earn a living while staying home and being a full-time caretaker for my Mom.

I tried several things before I decided that affiliate marketing was for me.

There were many reasons for this decision. There was a low cost to entry since I didn’t have to buy merchandise, pay for inventory or interest, hire staff, set up an online order entry system, manage customer service, deal with shipping and returns, and do many of the other things that are necessary when you are selling products or services to the general public.

As an affiliate marketer, basically I work in advertising and marketing, and someone else handles all the rest of the necessary activities.

The downside to affiliate marketing is that there is a lot to learn, there is cut-throat competition, what works for me may not work for you and vice versa, and the Internet and online marketing is changing all the time.

At first, I knew a lot about the technical aspects of building websites, but I did not know nearly enough to be effective as an affiliate.

Fortunately for me, I found Ken Evoy and I have been successfully following his advice for several years. My affiliate marketing business is growing and I’m earning more as time goes by.

Ken provided a couple of things that made a huge difference in my affiliate marketing success. I appreciate his down-to-earth, practical advice and the products he has created to help me become a more-effective affiliate marketer.

The first was a free email course he called the Affiliate Masters Course. It was a five part course sent via email. Later, it was redone as an ebook in PDF format. Earlier this month, he released the November, 2006 updated edition of the Affiliate Masters course. I just finished reading it and the updated edition offers lots of information that was not included in the previous version. I recommend this book to you.

The cost? It’s free.

Download your copy of the Affiliate Masters course now. You’ll find about 160 pages of outstanding information. Others sell ebooks with much less information for $50 or $100 or more. Get this one and read it. Learn what you need to know and put it to work. I believe your affiliate marketing efforts will be more successful if you implement what Ken tells you.

Along the same lines, Ken wrote an ebook called “Make Your Site Sell!” a few years ago. The original version sold for under $20 and the updated 2002 version sold for about $30.

A couple of months ago, Ken decided to offer Make Your Site Sell! 2002 as a free download.

This multi-volume ebook contains over 1,500 pages of outstanding information and has been worth thousands of dollars to me in revenue I may not have earned if I hadn’t followed Ken’s advice.

While some of the information is a bit dated, the core information remains very valuable and you will find much information of use to you in this PDF format ebook. I regularly refer to it and continually discover useful tips and techniques to improve my marketing efforts.

If you want to build an online business, you need to read this ebook. Download it today.

These two ebooks made a great impact on the effectiveness of my online marketing and my affiliate marketing business continues to grow today based on what I learned from them.

Of course, reading and learning isn’t going to build a business. You have to take what you learn, plan how it will help your business grow, and then put it into action.

Act on your dreams!

Dan Nickerson has done it again.

Every time I turn around, Dan has come up with a brilliant idea and implements that idea before you can turn around.

This time, he has created the Newbie Report to help new Internet marketers learn more about the tools, processes and sites you need to master to profit from your marketing efforts.

It’s free to sign up for the newsletter.

The site already has links to some of the best marketing sites a new online marketer needs to find. Not all of the sites I’d recommend are listed, but it’s an outstanding start. I’m sure he’ll be expanding the listing as time goes by.

It even comes with a free affiliate program.

Go to the Newbie Report, sign up for the newsletter (the sooner the better, you’ll see why when you do it), and learn how to be more successful in your marketing efforts.

I’m not a newbie, but I’m looking forward to learning more from Dan.

Check it out right now!

I just created a new Site Build It Webmasters group on Squidoo.com.

If you are a Site Build It! webmaster, you are invited to create a new lens about your SBI site and how you use Site Build It to create your online business.

If you create a lens using the above link, you will be submitted for membership to the Site Build It Webmasters group on Squidoo.com.

As long as your new lens is about SBI and/or your SBI website, I’ll be happy to admit you to the group.

(Site Build It! websites, only, please.)

This is a great way to get one-way links to your site and the pages within it.

Squidoo lenses are powerful ways to build one page websites that link outward to other resources. You can even make money while you promote your site.

Do you have a CafePress store related to your SBI website? Add a CafePress module to your lens and sell your wares.

Do you sell products from Amazon.com on your SBI site? Add the top sellers to your Squidoo lens, too.

Feel free to put your 5 Pillar affiliate links on your lens(es).

Let’s all help each other succeed.

Act On Your Dream!

JD

I’ve never paid much attention to MySpace until the last couple of weeks.

When I looked at it last year, the people and their interests that I found there were not at all what I was interested in.

However, recently, there is a lot more business networking going on and I’ve started to invest some time there.

Come visit my MySpace John Dilbeck profile page.

If you have a MySpace account, come visit my page and - if you are interested - invite me to be your friend. If you don’t have already have an account, you can join for free.

From my page, you can link to some of the best online marketers I’ve been able to find and can expand your network as you want.

Some of the reasons I decided to invest some effort there is the built-in audience that numbers in the millions, good blogging tools, bulletins to keep in touch with friends and associates, the forums, and groups that you can start and moderate.

I’ve started new groups at:

Site Build It Webmasters

Success With Power Blog

Success With Affiliate Marketing

At the moment, I’m feeling rather lonely in these new groups and I hope you will join me there. I’m open to suggestions on how to make the groups better for all participants.

If you are going to use affiliate links, post it to your blog or profile page and link to it from the group forum. Please, do not post affiliate links in the forums.

I hope to see you there. Come be my MySpace friend!

Scott Boulch, author of Death of Adsense has a new blog for discussing the ebook and topics related to it.

In his most recent post (as of this writing), Scott proclaims The last battle cry of the dying Adsense “Gurus”.

He makes some interesting points, and obviously has more experience than I with earning from Adsense.

If you want to follow this subject, his blog is the logical place to do so.

His follow-up book, Life After Adsense was supposed to have been released yesterday morning, but I haven’t had the time to download it, yet.

Scott sure has gotten a lot of attention with this, so it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

If you have been reading my blogs for any length of time, you are already aware that I am not one of those people who follow the latest fad or breathlessly tell you why you just have to purchase the next great whatchamacallit.

I’m not going to start now, either.

I’ve gotten several emails over the last couple of weeks about “The Death of Adsense,” and, since I earn enough from Adsense every month to cover my hosting and advertising expenses, I wondered what it was all about.

So, I downloaded the ebook and read it.

The author makes some good points, but I have no idea how it will all play out.

I’m not even going to try to tell you what he says in the ebook. You can download it yourself and get it “from the horse’s mouth.” It’s only 18 pages long and you should be able to read it in less than a half hour.

When you sign up to download the book, you become an affiliate, and for a limited time, he is paying affiliates a half-dollar for everyone who follows your link and downloads the book. Not bad, making fifty cents when someone downloads a free ebook.

However, that’s not why I’m telling you about this. If his analysis (or hypothesis) is correct, then you need to be aware of this if you depend upon Adsense for income.

I am not saying that Adsense is dead and I don’t fully agree with what he says in the ebook.

And, here’s the spoiler, the ebook ends just as he is about to tell you the alternative to Adsense. That’s why I haven’t been talking about this.

Today, however, he is supposed to release the second ebook that explains his alternative income system. Will it be worth the read? I don’t know.

I do know that, in the past, it looks to me as if he created websites that were designed to skim as much money from Adsense with as little work as possible, and I’m sure these sites were low-quality at best. I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m assuming this is the case.

(You know what they say about assuming….)

Anyway, later today you may be able to get the “Life After Adsense” ebook. I’m sure there will be a lot of people trying to download it, so it may or may not be available.

I’m not going to recommend either ebook to you, but I will tell you how to get your own copy and decide for yourself.

I am a full-time affiliate marketer, but this time, I’m not going to use an affiliate link to send you to his site. I don’t want the 50 cents if you download the ebook, because I cannot truthfully tell you that I recommend the information contained in it.

So, buyer (or downloader) beware, use your discretion and think for yourself.

Am I going to download the “Life After Adsense” ebook to go along with the “Death of Adsense” ebook I downloaded a few days ago? Yes, I am.

Am I going to do what it says? I have no idea. I’m going to read it and think about it before doing anything.

What you do is up to you.

Here’s the site to go to: http://www.thedeathofadsense.com/

I have not seen a decline in my Adsense revenue, and I’m hoping it is because I do my best to build sites with the best content I can create. I try not to take any short-cuts and I’m willing to build my business using a slow and steady model - the tortoise approach rather than the rabbit approach.

Am I curious about what’s in “Life After Adsense?” Yes, I am. But, at this time, I don’t have any plans to change my business model or redo my marketing plan.

That may change tomorrow. Maybe, maybe not.

What do you think?

I’ve seen lots of websites and blogs about home business, and I just have to say that most of them do not impress me.

(I’m sure others have said that about what I write, too.)

I met Bryant Sandburg on Ryze.com when he offered his brand new blog for review.

We’ve had an exchange of messages and I get a very good feeling about him and what he has to say.

The blog is new, but shows real promise.

His article on Do affiliate programs work? covers the basics and offers some good advice, too.

I’ve just subscribed to his blog and you may want to go take a look, too.

Welcome, Bryant!

All the best,

JD