May 9, 2009 by DSM.

I have used e-mail myself, both the wrong way, and the right way.  There are different options you have to contact prospects, and to invite them to join your business.  E-mail is only part of the solution.  Here are some ways that e-mail does not work, and some ideas for how to use e-mail successfully.

== Broadcast e-mail marketing is 1 out of 1000 ==

Myself and others have done e-mail marketing in different ways, using special tools, and using various lead sources.  Sending 10,000 or 1 million will yield the same results, with only 1 out of every 1000 messages being read by someone.

These days spam protection is being used by AOL, Yahoo, Google, or MSN, or even in the corporate world.  They all have some form of filter that protects their users from people in all parts of the world, and from network marketing or as commonly called the “get rich quick” scams.

==Real world example ==

Since my current day job is in the corporate world as a Senior Computer Technician, we use a 3rd party service to protect our clients from having to deal with spam.  In April 2009, Company-ABC received 4,428,399 messages (yes that says 4 million) and only 18,091 were valid.

This is a 99.59% spam percentage.  A large part of the valid messages were caught in a daily spam report, unless the email address was whitelisted which bypasses the spam filters.

== Using e-mail invites is 1 out of 100 ==

Some MLM companies have an e-mail invite feature, which you can use to send broadcast e-mails to prospects.  Even with purchased lead lists, you will only receive about 1 or 2 notices out of every 100 invites you send, that someone visited your marketing website.

== Calling prospects is 1 out of 10 ==

For the last few months I have been receiving training as part of the Leaders Club - Individualized Success Plan (ISP).  It is personalized 1-on-1 & Live training, to review the skills you do have and those that you need to be successful.  As part of this process, I have started to take a serious look at my activities and their results, using tracking sheets and recording my own efforts.  Using the numbers from the last few months, I have been getting better results by following their proven techniques.

Since I am also in their Accountability Coaching Group calls, I am sharing what works and what does not work with the entire group and them with me.  With the Leaders Club - Daily Super Premium Leads, I receive 3 every day from people who in the last 24-48 hours filled out web forms requesting information.  After calling about 100 leads, I have personally connected with about 10 real people, and had a chance to discuss their interests and my business solutions.

==  Follow-up discussions are 1 on 1 ==

For every person that you develop a personal relationship with, they are 1,000% more likely to read your emails and to reply with their own questions.  Just make sure that they add your e-mail address to their spam filter, so every e-mail you send them is received.

Picking up the phone to call them will still have the best results, since you can discuss any of their questions.  Even using Instant Messaging programs like Skype, Yahoo, MSN Live, AIM, or GoogleTalk; will allow you to share ideas in real-time.

To improve the email delivery odds, you can use one of companies like AWeber Communications.  To setup your own autoresponder for web capture pages with email drip messages, newsletter notifications, or for your own team training.

== Summary ==

You can try the lottery and use the internet to send millions of messages to prospects, but you will not get many results nor will you receive the best outcome.  Even e-mail invites are still part of the same lottery, since our prospect is receiving invites from other businesses which are your competition for their attention.

Calling prospects is part of the old school approach to network marketing, which still has the best results even with everyone using the internet every day.  Starting your own Leaders Club training which is part of my Follow Our Lead team, you can learn how to be more successful.  Once you have developed a personal relationship with someone, you can still use e-mail but just for follow-up and to send new information for their own training.

…Darrin…

Check out Leaders Club for own business success training.  Here is a link to a free podcast about E-mail Marketing 101:

http://www.leadersclub.com/34542/email101/index.asp

.

. .

Posted in Leaders Club, Internet Advertising | Print | 1 Comment »

April 28, 2009 by DSM.

I joined a free program a few years ago called Follow Our Lead (FOL).  Here is some information about that site, why I joined, what is on the inside, about each of the programs (Empowerism, GDI, Hot Conference, Leaders Club), and how you can become part of our team.

Follow Our Lead was created by one of my mentors, Derek Bohlken.  I knew of Derek years ago when I was in his Retire Quickly downline before it evolved into Financial Freedom Society, and then finally died due to too many program changes or commission payment revisions.   Derek created the Follow Our Lead site to be a central place for all of us to get re-organized, and moving forward again with our network marketing business interests.

The site works on the premise that together everyone can achieve more than trying to do it all yourself.   We work as a team with Yahoo group discussions, weekly online conference room meetings, and sharing ideas about what is & what is not working.  Overall, I have been both a member of this group and a leader at different times sharing my personal experiences, just like I am doing in this blog.

Follow Our Lead consists of these four (4) different network marketing programs.  You can be a part of the group if you are in just one of them, or you can join all of them as a way of better managing your network marketing risk. They all provide different levels of training, or have tools you can use to help build your own online businesses.

• Empowerism

• Global Domains International (GDI)

• Hot Conference

• Leaders Club

.
==What is on the inside==

The back office has daily training lessons to help you get started, with the best ways that we have found to build your interest and your own network marketing business.

You will find each of the links for the main Yahoo discussion group and the Yahoo tagging group.

There are audio archives from past meetings to help you learn more about the team, or meetings which were topic specific.

The team training meetings use Hot Conference, and we have meetings scheduled twice weekly online.

You can also use your own FOL site to help market each of the different businesses, use it for internet marketing, lead capture, and to provide contact information for your own team.

Depending on which programs you are in, you can select which marketing pages you want to use and enter your IDs.   Now you have one generic marketing page to help with your internet and follow-up marketing, and to help train your own downline.

==What are each of the different programs==

• Empowerism = Internet and email marketing training, SEO optimization, online tools, with additional lead purchase options.  $25 to get started, then just $20 a month.

• Global Domains International (GDI) = Only $10 a month which includes your own domain name (www.yourname.com), website hosting, and email.  It’s a network marketing business and website all together with some great marketing materials.

• Hot Conference = Is an internet software we use for the weekly FOL training meetings.  You can use this when prospecting to create your own online conference room, or for your own team training meetings.

• Leaders Club = Network marketing training and mentoring, 30-day trial, hundreds of hours of audio and video training topics.  Live weekly training sessions.  Just $50 a month for the training package.  More if you want regular, premium, or super premium leads.

==How to join Follow Our Lead==

To be a member of the team all you have to do is join one of the programs listed above.  If you are already a member, you can still join the team to check out what we have to offer before you join the other programs.  There is no-cost to check out our team, or to join our discussions.  There are no monthly fees to create or use your own Follow Our Lead website.

You can use the REGISTER link at the top of the webpage to get started, and to create your own Follow Our Lead site.

I look forward to seeing you in the weekly team meetings and asking questions in the Yahoo group.

…Darrin…
.

. .

Posted in Follow Our Lead, Leaders Club | Print | 1 Comment »

April 19, 2009 by DSM.

Here is the ViralURL - part 1 article >>> http://blog.lazy-mountain.info/ViralURL

After a few weeks of using ViralURL, I need to add some important notes for everyone to review.  Otherwise your inbox will get filled with unnecessary junk when you create your own free or paid account.  There is also a way that I have found to dramatically increase your ad bar credit balance.  At the end of this article, I have included one of my computer savy email tips, for how you can use different email addresses and keep them all organized for topic review.

==> Easy Way To Accumulate Ad Bar Credits <==

Using my Traffic Exchange Rotation technique, I found a way to accelerate the number of ad bar credits that I can add to my account.  When you receive one of the member email messages, there is a section in the bottom that allows you to open a webpage to view other member websites & earn 30 credits for doing so.

What I was able to do was to copy that link, and paste it into 10 tabs in my Firefox internet browser software.  You can also just open 10 of the links from the emails you receive.

Since the webpage display has a 30 second timer, you can use tab rotation for credit earning over and over.  Using this technique and in just about an hour of tab surfing, I was able to raise my ViralURL - Ad Bar credit balance to 20,000.

Let’s do the math:  30 credits every 30 seconds * 10 tabs = 600 credits per minute * 10 minutes == 6,000 credits.  Even the Elite members only get 5,000 ad bar credits once a month automatically, but they have to pay for theirs.

Here is a screenshot showing you that it does work…

.

==> Create A Separate Email Account <==

When you first setup your own free ViralURL account, make sure that you create a separate email account just for that site.  If you don’t purchase their OTO (one-time-offer) for the Elite package or one of the other paid packages, all of the other members can send you email messages.  The result is that your inbox starts to fill up with those upline member spam messages.

You can change your email address to a different one.  Just login to your Account Settings and put in a different email address.  They will send you a new confirmation message that you have to approve.  After that is setup and working, once a month you visit that email account and purge all of the extra messages.

Or you can use those member emails as a prospecting source for bounce-backs.  I check each message to see if they included some form of contact details like Skype, their phone number, email address, etc.

With that information I add them to my contact manager and follow-up with them to see how their business is growing, or we share business building ideas.  In some cases, I have found other network marketers who are interested in the programs that I am a part of, and they join my downline.

==> Summary <==

With these techniques you should be able to maximize your credits in your free or paid ViralURL account, and set it on auto-pilot for the next few months.  While keeping the member emails separate from your main business contact email.  Personally, I have about 20 email accounts that I use for different purposes.  Some for registration on a splash page, safelist emails, twitter messages, email marketing testing, etc.

That’s one of the reasons that I like GDI (Global Domains International).  GDI lets you have up to 10 email accounts, and they have no spam protection so you will not miss any important email messages.  With POP3 settings & Outlook 2007 email rules, I can have different email accounts drop into different folders.  So I can review all messages related to one topic at the same time, instead of them all dropping into one mixing bowl in my Inbox.

…Darrin…

. .

Posted in Internet Advertising | Print | 1 Comment »

April 10, 2009 by DSM.

At the end of Feburary 2009, I joined a new network marketing program which offers personal development & success training.  That program is Success University (SU).

Success University is an online training resource with workbooks, audios and videos.  Here are some of the speakers & trainers on their roster that I recognized:

• Jay Abraham
• Robert Allen
• Ellie Drake
• Earl Nightingale
• Dr. Wayne Pickering
• Zig Ziglar
• Jim Rohn
• Mike Filsaime

Success University (SU) has a 14-day trial for just $2.00.  So I decided to give it a try, it was for a good cause since that trial cost is given to the “Save The Children” Fund.

After I received the sign-up information and gave them a credit/debit card to start the process.  The monthly cost is about $57.00 per month which includes shipping for their monthly training CD’s.  It’s always nice to get something physical for your money.

During the last part of the sign-up process, I was also given information about their $150 Premium option.  It includes the first month of service, double-commission amounts, some e-book downloads, and some DVD videos to be mailed as part of your welcome package.  I paid this fee, since I was interested the network marketing business.

After I joined, I was contacted by different team leaders some of which are at the top of the leader boards, and others who were my direct uplines.  Each of them have their own training sites, marketing pages, or blog sites to help with marketing and team training.  My SU Infinity Team has been very supportive, with lots of ideas for how to get started with my own marketing efforts.

During the last 7 weeks that I have been a member of Success University, what has impressed me are the updates and notifications that I have received from the main site.  For each of the conference calls, I receive prior notification via email with details about what is planned for that event.  I have also been receiving the Boot Camp business training which is sent every few days.

For my own site testing, I added my name to the Business prospect list, and have been receiving the SU marketing emails from Matt Morris (the founder and president).  The SU Newsletter splash page adds names/emails to this Business Contacts database too.  It can be used as your own personal email autoresponder and contact manager.  The only limit is it can only hold 100 people.

Overall, Success University has a lot of content on the inside which keeps growing.  They keep in continuous contact with their members, this is a huge-plus.  The only downside to this is that I have received a lot of emails that I have not read, but they are also available in the Training section or Business back office.

Final Thoughts:  I would recommend Success University (SU) for anyone thinking about getting started in their first online business opportunity and/or with network marketing.  It is a great site to join if you are a seasoned MLM veteran too.

For most newbies you will not understand everything that is included for weeks/months. Just start your own success and personal improvement training first.  You have to understand what you are marketing, before you can effectively sell it to someone else.

Use some of your business investment capital for a monthly marketing budget:

• Purchase physical marketing materials (the SU Magazine is great for that)
• Learn how to purchase paid advertising in ezines
• Use safelists & solo ads for Email marketing
  
• Advertise your marketing links in free & pro traffic exchange sites
• Join free or pro list building memberships
• If you are new to network marketing, join a professional training site to help you learn how to be in profit in 90 days or less.

As your business grows and is in profit, then you can get fancy with all of the automated tools and custom splash sites. Once you are familiar with your entire program and your upline training sites, all that experience will help you to be successful.

…Darrin…

For more information about how join my Success University team, click on this link & banner:

http://www.Success-Training-Online.com

.

. .

Posted in Success University | Print | 1 Comment »

April 2, 2009 by DSM.

They sold out after 12 hours. 

I got in during the first hour, sorry if you could not get in during their launch.  As I learn more about their techniques, I will be posting new articles for your review.

Make sure to add yourself to my mailing list, so you can be informed about those new topics.

They may re-open for new members sometime soon, and if they do I will make sure to create a new post to let you all know.

…Darrin…

. .

Posted in Internet Advertising | Print | 1 Comment »

March 29, 2009 by DSM.

I found ViralURL recently when I started getting into the new Twitter phenom.  Yes, I know, now I need to start adding my own tweets for everything that I am doing, LOL.  Well, with an Internet and Network Marketing business, there is always something that needs to be done.  So I should have lots of updates that I can post.

While I was checking out someone’s Twitter page, I found a link for Viral Followers to help build your own Twitter following.  I have used this kind of site before.  They post an update on your Twitter page, as a way of advertising their site and building a mini-twitter downline to help build your followers.

On the Viral Followers ad page, they had a link for ViralURL, so I clicked it to see what it had to offer for extra internet advertising potential.  Once I gave them all of the personal information, clicked the email authentication links to make sure it was me, I was able to login. After each login they help you with the setup by displaying the Text Ad setup or Banner ad setup pages.  Kind of nice to help you get started.

As part of ViralURL they offer to help build your downline automatically, and the usual we can help make you money.  I have a hard enough time managing my primary businesses, without worrying about how some other site can make me money.  If I get a few extra visitors to my site, to help with my own marketing efforts that’s all I am interested in.

They also have a Success University sign-up link on their profile page, which can be used to increase your downline.  That is one of the reasons that I did not just chuck them into my Junk Email list.  I am always interested in new ways of recruiting new people into my Success University business.

There are also ClickBank, and Add2it links.  Not sure what Add2it is all about.  I ignored most of the special one-time offers when I first created my account. I am still learning more about how they can be used, but one of my mentors Janet Legre has an account, so it can’t be that bad to use.

When you have their code added to your own website, their ads are displayed on your site.  You earn credits to advertise your business on another website, who is also a ViralURL member.  Kind of like a text/banner ad exchange. From my own site testing, it seems like the text and banner ads have one of yours as the first one, and then someone else for the second ad.

Once you create your own ViralURL account and during your own website testing, you may notice a slight delay in loading the ads, since ViralURL has to find the right ads to display.  Not sure why it takes them so long, all they have are URL links and images to lookup and load.  My blog site does the same and it does not take that long.  I guess they underestimated their growth and have not kept up with their web and database server farms.  So when they hit peak periods, their servers have terrible performance.

Here is my ViralURL signup link, so you can evaluate them for yourself:

http://vur.me/millerds

and my ViralFollowers link to help build your own Twitter followers:

http://ViralFollowers.com/darrinmiller/vu

and my Twitter page so you can follow me:

http://twitter.com/DarrinMiller

Here is one of the ViralURL code segments that you can post on your site to earn credits to display your text ad on other sites.

Here is one of their banner ad code segments, that you can post on your site to earn credits to display your ads on other sites.

…Darrin…

See part 2 here… http://blog.lazy-mountain.info/viralurl2/

.

. .

Posted in Success University, Internet Advertising | Print | 2 Comments »

March 24, 2009 by DSM.

When using Traffic Exchange (TE) sites, I get good results using a tab rotation technique with Firefox.  This type of setup helps to get the most clicks in the least amount of time, without waiting for the site timers.  In this article, I will provide each of the steps needed to get this type of free advertising setup and working for you.

What is a Traffic Exchange site you might ask?

They are sites which allow you to advertise your own Network Marketing, Affiliate, or Business website; in exchange for viewing other member websites.   There are free and paid TE sites, but for this discussion the free sites are good enough to get started.  Different kinds of sites offer automatic or manual viewing.  The manual TE sites are the most stable and have better results, since it requires someone to click a link to continue to the next page in order to get credit for that page view.  This provides the advertiser a good chance to grab the viewers attention in 10-20 seconds.

First step, install the free Mozilla Firefox browser.  Here is a link for their download page.  You can also use IE, Safari, or Chrome.  I like using Firefox since it has better options for groups and tabs.

Second step, here are 9 (nine) of my favorite manual Traffic Exchange sites, that I have organized onto a separate page of this blog site with each of the referral links and banners.  I have used all of them over the years with good results.  Open each site and start the process of creating your own free TE accounts.

Traffic Swarm = Free and Pro traffic exchange site.

Traffic Syndicate 25 (ts25) = Free and Pro traffic exchange site.

Fast Freeway = Free and Pro traffic exchange site.

Traffic Pods = Free and Pro traffic exchange site.

Hit Safari = Free and Pro traffic exchange site.

ILoveHits = Free and Pro traffic exchange site

HitPulse = Free and Pro traffic exchange site

WebBizInsider = Free and Pro traffic exchange site.

HitGusher = Free and Pro traffic exchange site

After you sign up as a new member, you can enter your URL’s (web-speak for the http://mysite.com… web page address).  Once you complete so many initial page views your account will be active, and they will start using all those credits you earn to show your site to other members.  Each site has their own requirements to get started.

Third step, create a group called “Manual TE Sites” and add a bookmark for each of your TE sites into that group.  At the bottom of the group, Firefox has the “Open All in Tabs” feature to open all of those bookmarks at once into their own separate tabs.  If you have a larger monitor with a high-resolution or one of the wide-screen monitors, you could fit 15 or more TE sites into their own separate tabs, leaving room for you to see the name of each TE site name.  On my normal monitor (1024×768) having 8 TE tabs open is about the limit that it can handle.

Rotation step(s), make sure your TE accounts are open in each tab, and they are all on the Surfing for Credits first page view. Click the right icon or number to open the next page view.  At that point that site timer will start counting again.  Using the tabs at the top of Firefox open the next one, and continue the process of clicking the right icon/button for the next web page to be displayed.  Move to the next tab and continue until you reach the last tab, and then you start again with the first tab.

TrafficSwarm note:  Use the right-click menu & “open link in a new tab” option on the “Start Surfing” link in your members section, to open that page in a separate tab.  Otherwise clicking the link will open the surfing page in a new window.

By organizing your bookmarks and their tab order, you can have them all working together in sequence.  This will allow you to earn credits on other sites, while the previous site timer is still counting.  With practice you can have them all setup and working together, and waiting for you to click the timer/button, instead of you waiting for just one site timer to finish.

Using this technique also gives you a chance to advertise more than 3 of your websites, which is the limit that most of the free accounts have.  Some sites have Banner and Text Ad rotation too.  With 8 TE accounts you can have about 25+ of your site links in the rotation at the same time.  You can also use any of the open advertising spots, to advertise your other TE sites as a cross-promotion matrix.

…Darrin…

Sign up for the recommended Traffic Exchange sites…

http://Blog.Lazy-Mountain.info/Resources/TrafficExchange/

. .

Posted in Internet Advertising | Print | 1 Comment »

March 18, 2009 by DSM.

Here is another update for my network marketing journal.  I plan to update this category as I find my own inspiration to share.

Over the last two weeks of editing this blog, I have started to get more organized.  As part of that training and frustration, I decided to add some pages so I can put everything into their own sections.

Near the top of the blog you will now find new pages/sections for Resources, About, and Contact Me.  We also added a Mailing List, so if you don’t understand RSS you can receive emails when we update content.

http://blog.lazy-mountain.info/mailing-list

On the Resources page, I have started compiling all of the network marketing programs that I have joined, as well as the other internet tools and sites that I use for promotion and advertising.  Some of them I have used for years, and others I am currently in the process of testing.  As I find out which ones have the best results, I will add more notes to this journal for your review, and/or post new articles in the Internet Advertising category.

http://blog.lazy-mountain.info/resources/

The About page is just a copy/paste from my first post, explaining how I got started in network marketing, and why the site name is named after a mountain in Alaska.

http://blog.lazy-mountain.info/about/  

Now on the Contact Me page, are my personal details if you would like to send me an email, call on the phone, or send letters or packages for my birthday (hint, hint, it’s June 14th).

http://blog.lazy-mountain.info/contact/

…Darrin…

Posted in Network Marketing Journal | Print | 1 Comment »

March 12, 2009 by DSM.

The Leaders Club has a lot of free training resouces, to help you understand all that they have to offer on the inside.  They have a weekly newsletter, CD’s and DVD’s, also online training materials in print, audio, and video.

Check it out for yourself:  http://LC-FreeTraining.Lazy-Mountain.info

Here is a detailed list of the items available on their Freebie page:

==>  Solving The 8 Greatest Challenges In Network Marketing

==>  The Top 10 Ways To Jump Start Your Network Marketing Business

==>  How To Use What You Already Have To Grow A Profitable Network Marketing Business

==>  Unstoppable Income: The 5 Elements of Network Marketing Success

==>  What Network Marketing Prospects Really Care About

==>  How To Evaluate A Network Marketing Company

==>  Why Your Support Team Is Critical To Your Success

==>  Creating A Comfortable Fit With Your Successful Future

==>  How To Get Experts To Help You Solve Your Specific Marketing Challenges

==>  The Truth About Network Marketing

==>  E-mail Marketing 101: The New Secret To Maximize Prospecting Results

==>  Leaders Club MarketingPower Network Marketing Newsletter

==>  MLM Income Calculator

==>  Network Marketing Survival Guide

Check it out for yourself:  http://LC-FreeTraining.Lazy-Mountain.info

…Darrin…
.

. .

Posted in Leaders Club | Print | 1 Comment »

March 9, 2009 by DSM.

Are you trying your own ways of advertising online?

What have your results been?

Have you created your own ads yet?

Did you find places to put those Banner ads, Text ads?

Consider joining the Directory of E-zines    

It seems a little expensive, at $197.00 for Lifetime membership (with a company who has already been in business 11 years).  They have an ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC group of bonuses, including free personal consultation, custom ad writing done for you (THEY WRITE YOUR SOLO AD FOR YOU!), UNLIMITED classified ads, etc. 

Seriously, this investment could make the difference for you. 

Check  it out!   http://DOE.Lazy-Mountain.info

(After all, you ARE starting a business, and this is a great investment.)

The full package includes …

Check  it out!   http://DOE.Lazy-Mountain.info

…Darrin…

. .

Posted in Internet Advertising | Print | 1 Comment »