Buried Under the Hype

I checked my inbox yesterday evening and saw what seemed like a newsletter from Joe Vitale (and being as neurotic as I am, I glean his words with a fine toothed comb to see if I can discover any wonderful copywriting tips or nuances in his word selection).

I didn’t think it was an absolute literary masterpiece, but it was certainly well written. That’s when I got another newsletter, and one paragraph stuck out like a sore thumb:

But what you may not know is that he’s getting
married. Not only that, but he and his bride-to-be
have a lot more in common than most couples.

I thought to myself…hmmm…that looks extremely familiar, come to find out it was the same newsletter that Joe had sent out — verbatim.

This morning, again I find myself receiving the same damn sales letter from yet another marketer…at least thing one included his own introductory paragraph which made it a little more difficult to spot.

I have but one thing left to say about all the hype that’s floating around: it sucks. Chances are this program they’re all promoting is no better than the programs you already have collecting dust on your bookshelf.

It’s very apparent that the only reason most gurus even run a newsletter anymore is just so they can shove “the next best thing, end all, be all, you’re nothing if you don’t have it” product in their subscribers’ faces. It really is sickening.

While I respect Joe and the other newsletters I subscribe to, if they can’t even write up their own personal endorsement for the product, I don’t see myself purchasing it and I really don’t see any reason to continue as a subscriber.

So, before you go throwing money at someone because the guru in your inbox told you so…stop…take a deep breath and investigate whether it’s a true product endorsement or if they’re just trying to earn a commission off of you.

First, We Learn

Since I am achieving my goals by utilizing some foreign techniques (to me, at least), I figured it was time for me to collect some reading material. I decided that I will not choose to learn “the hard way” – it’s kind of redundant, and if someone’s already done it for me, why in the world would I put myself through the same torture .

<sidenote>
When starting an online business, it’s a good idea to budget for business expenses such as learning materials, domain registration, hosting, and marketing costs.
</sidenote>

I mentioned earlier that I purchased Google Adsense Secrets Revealed: What Google Never Told You About Earning Money With AdSense and I highly recommend it.

I am very glad I own this book because it will help me in structuring my three content sites. A full review has been placed on my “neverending” to-do list.

I’ve also purchased James Martell’s 2005 Affiliate Marketer’s Handbook and I will be structuring my main content site based on it’s instruction.

It’s a fairly thick book and something I probably won’t get through in the next day or two, but I feel it will definitely help me in the long run. It’s one of those “long term business” plan type books (and it’s definitely good to have a long term business plan). I’ve also added a full review on my “neverending” to-do list.

Total business expense for learning materials so far: $246 (it may even be tax deductible – please consult your accountant because I’m not one).

Both of these books were pricey to me (if you haven’t already picked up on it, I’m very cheap). I did my research to see if I could get by without these two sources, I asked trusted friends and did some research on the authors. I weighed the pros and cons and realized, I will probably earn more and faster with these books than without.

While most of the information in these book can be found online with a lot (and I do mean a lot) of research, tracking, notation, & trial and error, I don’t have that kind of time.

My best advice, do what’s best for you to get you where you need to be. If you cannot afford the outlay for instruction right now, you’re going to have to roll up your sleeves and work a little harder.

My final education purchase will be regarding traffic generation. In order for the AdSense revenue to come pouring in, I will need quality traffic and quality rankings.

That’s all for now. I’ll update when I’ve found a suitable program for getting traffic.

Sick and Tired of So-Called Internet Marketing Gurus

I do a lot of reading, especially a lot of internet marketing blogs and articles. After reading about four blog articles on how their PR is up and how many people they have linking back to them, I finally decided to stop reading.

While I understand the importance of link exchanges and PR and all that other wonderful stuff, there is already plenty of people writing about it and how they already have it. What I want to hear more about are the results. Cold hard figures. Describe to me how your going from PR0 to PR4 in a month has impacted your online revenue.

In that month timeframe, how much more money did you earn as a result? In that month timeframe, how many listings has your blog or website or whatever jumped in the SERPs? Those are the things the internet marketing gurus need to be talking about.

You can have all the PR in the world and you can talk about it, and to some internet marketers who are still wet behind the ears will start thinking you’re some amazing SEM God, but the fact remains, unless you have cold hard figures to back up the announcements of the ever increasing PR, it means diddly to me.

It is definitely time for me to go through my bookmarks, newsletter subscription lists, and RSS feeds and decide which of these gurus is worth the 5-15 minutes of my life that I waste reading their BS. I’ll post my results at a later date.