Popularity: 4% [?]

I honestly don’t believe that’s true. Without money we wouldn’t have an economy. Without money we wouldn’t be able to pursue a unique lifestyle. Like Zig Ziglar said – money isn’t everything… but it’s right up there with oxygen!

What I believe is something that Jim Rohn said in one of his seminars. That is… the LOVE of money is the root of all evil. It’s okay to work towards making more money but… if it’s for the love of money then you will most likely never be satisfied because you will always want more.

The love of money can cause people to act out of character or change their attitude and their focus. In the past couple of years I’ve seen many online marketers, including some traffic exchange owners, change from people who I trust to people who sell dreams that have no real substance. I see weekly emails from them with outlandish claims of overnight riches and extraordinary income.

It reminds me of the importance of evaluating. When you see these types of emails you should look for proof that others have been successful with the product. Ask the person who is promoting the product… are you using it?  You should also ask yourself this – if it is such an easy way to make a huge income then why are these people selling the program rather than USING it themselves. I’ve never really understood that…. selling a program that promises thousands of dollars per month rather than using it. The answer to that question, of course, is that the main income for the product comes from selling it rather than using it.

If you do end up buying a product that promises riches without any work though… don’t get angry with the person who sold it to you. It’s your credit card after all and it was you who made the decision to buy. Instead, learn from your experience and be a little more cautious before you pull that credit card out again. Also, don’t confuse sincerity with honesty. Just as there are many online marketers who are sincere and honest, there are also many who just sincerely want your money and aren’t genuinely interested in whether the product they are promoting will advance you in your desire to have a better lifestyle.

Here are a couple of programs I recommend. I recommend these because I use them myself and they are products that have advanced me either by educating me on some really useful techniques or providing something that has saved me time and money.

One final word. Never begrudge money spent on self education. Self education really *is* one of the core activities that will help you advance toward your personal, business and income goals. Once you learn useful techniques and skills they are with you for life.

Auto Content Cash System – I’ll be honest… the name of this program put me in a slightly cynical state of mind straight away. I generally avoid anything that has the words ‘auto’ and ‘cash’ in the title. Most of the ‘auto’ programs I’ve seen were designed to push a few emotional buttons and provided little in the way of a viable long term business model. After watching a video I ‘took the bait’ though because I saw and heard some things that suggested there was a little more to this than just another ‘make $10k overnight’ promise. Fortunately I was right and I’d have to say that this was one of my most useful purchases in the past few years. It is very rich in content and provides a well laid out course that shows you how to target popular niches and leverage those niches to make a decent income. The interesting thing for me is that I’m not a niche marketer – but I can use many of the techniques shown in the videos to improve the visibility of some of my own sites. The videos are presented by Brian Johnson. I think I had heard or seen his name somewhere before I bought Auto Content Cash but hadn’t seen or bought any products from him. The guy is a walking encyclopedia on online marketing and he provides some very thorough and detailed tips, explanations and examples in the videos that make up the bulk of this course. It’s a product I have no hesitation in recommending as I know that there’s way more value in it than the $77 cost.

The Unselfish Marketer – This is one that, for the most part, I’ve kept under my hat. This is the site that provided all the content for the ‘Mr. Overdeliver’ site – one of the most successful monthly product delivery sites ever. Jaykay Bak really is an unselfish site owner . New products are added every 2-3 days and he’s been doing that since 2006 without missing a single update! The bulk of the products come with resale, master resale or private label rights and it’s a great place to find content for your website or products to resell. There are also many free memberships to other sites and other useful bits and pieces such as minisite and wordpress templates, sales page templates, squeeze page templates, audio clips, video background clips… you name it and it’s probably there. It’s about as close to ‘everything except the kitchen sink’ that you could get. I’ve used a lot of the content on my own sites and my forthcoming training site also has some content from there. It’s safe to say that this site over delivers way more than the original Mr. Overdeliver .

Popularity: 11% [?]

Around 4 or 5 years ago I signed up with SiteSell and used their SiteBuildIt! program to build my first online business site. Back then I was impatient, so I skimmed through the documentation, ignored the step by step process and after the first year I decided not to renew. Five years on I saw that SiteSell currently has a new monthly plan available for $29.99. I remember one of the reasons I didn’t renew back then was because I’d pretty much given up hope and the $299 annual subscription seemed pretty steep for something that didn’t seem to be working out.

Anyway, over the past five years I’ve learned quite a bit and used all of the tools out there such as keyword research tools and I’d totally forgotten just how good the SiteSell tools were. I was really blown away when I logged in a couple of weeks ago and started running through the ten day plan. I honestly think that EVERY online business owner should have at least one SiteSell site – like a ‘rite of passage’ – you will learn so much! The process of researching your niche, finding the right keyword phrases, researching the monetization and filling your site with valuable content is so thorough that it really isn’t possible not to learn a whole lot about what makes a good, successful website. If you’ve never tried SiteSell before then do yourself a favor… and then come back here and let everyone know your thoughts.

To find out more about SiteSell watch this video and then click on the link below:

Click HERE to find out more about SiteSell.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Andrew Baxter of MyLeadsMachine.com is the latest person added to the long list of cheaters and scammers. Apparently he created software that cheats safelist programs by automatically clicking the links. Now before you go running off to buy software like this, have a darn good long think about it. The people who think they’re really smart by automating a task where a person is supposed to actually view a page are cheating all the honest people AND eventually they will reap what they sow. What do I mean by that? Well, the more people that use these stupid automation programs, the less people are looking at the pages. Sooner or later you get a situation where it’s pretty much like an auto traffic exchange – useless for EVERYBODY!

Now here’s the really REALLY stupid part. The guy that created the software OWNS  A SAFELIST. So not only is this scumbag ripping off thousands of honest online marketers, he’s also ripping off his own members! That’s about as low as you can go.

My advice? Avoid Andrew Baxter like the plague! Avoid MyLeadsMachine.com and any other program this scammer owns like the plague!

Sorry if my tone is a bit harsh, but this guy is trying to make money by screwing with legitimate programs.

You can read more about Andrew Baxter HERE.

Popularity: 14% [?]

You may have seen just recently, a program from Mack Michaels called The Success Principle. Normally I don’t pay any attention to the many self improvement and motivation programs but this one caught my eye. Before I get into why, I’ll tell you why I’m writing this ’9 week’ review.

Generally speaking, I’m a bit of a cynic when it comes to some of the internet marketing techniques. I hate the carbon copy sales emails that I see all the time – I think it lacks creativity on the senders part and also it suggests that they know nothing about the program or service and that’s why they have to send out someone elses email copy. If I’m going to use a product then I’d prefer to purchase from someone who uses it themselves. If I’m going to suggest that anyone else buys a product then I’m going to want to use it myself and either give an honest opinion or simply not review it at all. I’m not really interested in pressing ‘emotional buttons’ so much as recommending things that I’ve tried myself and have found to be value for money.

One of the things that caught my eye (and usually does) was that when you dig into it a little there aren’t any outlandish or unrealistic claims. I watched the videos that were scattered down the sales page and you really should take a look at them as well. Jerry Clark talks about what happened when he started applying The Success Principle and how he increased his income to $10k/month after a few months. Not in 3 minutes … not overnight … not in a week… but in a few months. That seems like a realistic goal, assuming that the training facilitates that sort of success. I’m looking forward to re-wiring my brain into a more productive and successful mode and it does seem realistic that it should take several months to permanently change your outlook and remove the doubt, fear and negative thinking that most of us endure for much of our lives.

So, here I am on day 2 of The Success Principle. This first week is about questions… like asking the right questions of the right people. It also introduces something that’s called the ’30 Day Mind Fast’. There are a dozen or so audios and 2 videos in this first week. I normally switch off from audios fairly quickly but Jerry Clark (the main coach for this program) keeps it all moving at a reasonable pace and the audios range from around 2 to 6 minutes each. Basically it’s a 1 or 2 hour audio (I didn’t add the times up) broken down into a bunch of smaller audios. That suits me as it means I can log in and re-listen to 1 or 2 audios whenever I want without taking a big chunk out of my day.

I see that the next week doesn’t unlock for another 5 days. I think that’s a good idea as well because I’m sure that I’d be wanting to take a peek into the other weeks which could become a distraction. The way it is set up I have no choice but to stick to the plan.

As the weeks progress I’ll post about my progress and whether I feel it is having an effect on my general outlook and my bottom line. This first week is certainly encouraging and has provided some training that I can use straight away.

Note added Jan. 5 2010 – Things are moving along nicely and I’m enjoying the whole personal development thing so much that I’m going to continue this and expand on it on my new Self Improvement Blog.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Hey, it’s been a while since I posted on the blog so I thought it would be a bit of fun to tell you a little bit about me and ask you to post a comment and tell us about you!

I started with computers when I was around 15 years old (I’m 45 now). My first encounter was with an old teletype machine that had one of those old adventure programs on it. It went something like this… you hit ‘S’ to go south and it would type something like ‘You see the entrance to a cave…’. I can remember how marvelous I thought that technology was! Anyway, from that point on I was hooked. I go into all sorts of programming, repairing, diagnosing, building etc.

I’ll keep this part short … basically, computers were a hobby until 1995 when I started an ISP business and a network consulting business. The ISP business still runs from myspare room (dialup access and some local web hosting…I have 8 servers in there). In 2005 I decided to pull away from my consulting business and ‘work in my underwear’. Well..not exactly but you probably know what I mean. I moved my office back home and that’s where I’m writing this from.

Enough about computers. I’ve also played several musical instruments…violin and saxophone when I was at school and guitar for the past 20 years or so. I was in a few local bands when I was in my 20′s .. mainly playing 50′s rock and roll music. Nowadays I pick the guitar up every now and then .

I am a single parent with a 17 year old daughter who has lived with me for the past 7 years. I’ve always enjoyed being a parent and regret that I didn’t have more kids. My ex and I parted ways when my daughter was 1 year old and I’ve not had a partner since then.

Nowadays I look after WhirlwindTraffic, do heaps of programming and pretty much live online during the day and part of the evening. It’s not unusual for me to be up, like now, at 2.30am .. knowing that I have to be up at 8am to get my daughter motivated and off to school .

So…tell us a little bit about you!

Popularity: 100% [?]

Hopefully you have all recovered from the holiday season by now and are all primed and ready for a big 2008! If you’ve never done a business plan or even just sat somewhere quiet for a little while and thought about some goals, now is a great time! Without goals you have nothing specific to aim for and no way of knowing if you are closing in on success.

I know that it took me around 18 months before I actually stopped messing about and got serious. By that, I mean that I was trying to do 15 or 20 different things all at the same time and finally realised that if I was going to move forward I would need to choose something to focus on. Obviously if you are going to focus on anything it’s best to choose something you know and enjoy. So that’s what I did and I have to say it’s probably the best decision I have made over the past couple of years.

Never forget that we are just human and we should all be trying to ‘work for a living’ rather than to ‘live for working’. It’s a trap that’s easy to fall into, particularly when it comes to online business. But, it also could lead you to an early grave! Besides, having a strong work ethic without trying to be everything to everyone or working 20 hours every day will almost definitely be more effective than trying to run yourself into the ground.

At the other end of the scale .. well .. as they say, there aint no such thing as a free lunch. Success isn’t going to come your way by way of ‘Make 10,000 Relaxing by the Pool’. It’s easy to get excited over those sorts of headlines, but even when they come from well known, successful marketers it’s not like those marketers didn’t spend a year or more building their business before they got to the point where they had the knowledge, the tools and the mailing list to be able to earn large amounts of income from a single product launch.

It kind of annoys me a little when you see people talking about how (for example) John Reese had a $1 million launch day with his ‘traffic secrets’ product. They forget that before he launched he put in months of work, recruited joint venture partners and created a product that people would pay $1000 for. Don’t forget also that with many of these big launches there’s a 50-75% commission for the JV partners…so a $100,000 launch day is actually $25k – $50k less expenses for the product owner.

I hope you see what I’m getting at. It is possible to make a great living online but we mostly see the income discussed and no-one seems to mention the expenses, commissions or hard work!

So, I sincerely wish all of our WhirlwindTraffic members the best for this coming year. I have plenty in store for WhirlwindTraffic and I’ll be making a couple more posts later today about some changes that I’ve already made and some new features that will be coming during the course of the year.

Popularity: 64% [?]

The Moneylegs Credit Bank that is! If you haven’t already joined then do yourself a favour and join today. It is in our WWT downline builder. I guess you might want to know what it’s all about if you haven’t checked it out .

Moneylegs is a ‘Credit Bank’ which allows you to transfer credits back and forth between the participating exchanges. This will help you manage excess credits you may have in an exchange and put them in another exchange where you need them.

You will need to be logged into MoneyLegs to make the transfer.

Once you have signed up, log into Moneylegs and follow these instructions:

In MoneyLegs, click on the “Follow Me” button on the left hand side of the screen, then Scroll down the page to the ‘Partners’ directory.

Make sure that you fill in all of your IDs in the exchanges that are there as well as the exchanges listed in the Follow Me directory.

Keep in mind that in order to transfer credits to/from a particular exchange, you must have your ID filled in for that exchange. That’s all there is to it!

With the ML Credit Bank you can transfer your credits between all of the participating exchanges which gives you unrivaled flexibility in promoting your products and services.

Popularity: 52% [?]

Yep, I admit to it. I’ve been sending out some email updates and have neglected the blog for a while now. So, lets look at what’s been happening.

New Weekly Contest

As I mentioned a while ago in an email update, there’s a new weekly contest I’ll be launching from the start of November. The contest will be based on points and will take into account how much you have surfed, and then multiply that by the number of members who have joined through your affiliate link. Here are a couple of examples:

Bob surfed 450 pages for the week and 3 people joined through his affiliate link. He would have 450 x 3 = 1350 points

Sally surfed 700 pages for the week and 2 people joined via her link. She would have 700 x 2 = 1400 points

This weekly contest will start each Sunday at 00:00 and run through until midnight on Saturday. Initially there will be three weekly prizes of $15, $10 and $5. If all goes well and the contest is successful those prize amounts will increase.

HitSafari Oops
I’ve only just found out that HitSafari was in our ‘banned sites’ list. Those of you who use HitSafari will already know that it is a quality traffic exchange that has a very high delivery rate and an active admin team. It has of course been removed from the banned list, so if you have been unable to add a HitSafari splash page in the past you should be able to do that now. I’ve also added HitSafari to our downline builder, so don’t forget to fill in your referral ID.

The Vault

I’ve been adding new titles to the vault from time to time and have some more to add soon. A lot of the information, products and scripts we have in there isn’t just your run of the mill stuff that you see on every giveaway. There are some fairly unique products and all aimed at helping you build your online business.

Popularity: 27% [?]

Another week has flown by like .. whoa! .. where did that week go? Today I’d like to talk mainly about bad sites.

Effective immediately I will be considerably tougher on sites that are outside our terms. I’ve deleted several members this week for hidden iframes (the ones that exploit paid search sites), casino advertising and viruses. I think the rules are very clear and there are prominent guidelines on the ‘Add Your Site’ page.

Fortunately, the majority of members are just honest business owners and marketers who play by the rules and I will do everything I can to ensure you have an enjoyable and productive time at WWT.

Whilst I can’t reply to all of them, I DO read every site report and act on every one where I can see the rule violation. So, please keep them coming in. It is your reports that play a major part in keeping WhirlwindTraffic relatively free of bad sites.

Also, a reminder that if you refer 20 members in any calendar month, you will receive the current month’s PLR package from PLRMasters.com.

Popularity: 27% [?]