I’ve been duped, update/Time to name & shame

A huge thank you to all of you who took the time to express your support by commenting on my ‘I’ve been duped’ post and by sending personal messages by email. I felt rather downhearted after discovering I’d been ‘taken for a ride’ as you could tell from my post, my mood soon lifted, however, when I read your messages of encouragement.

I agree with those of you who suggested I should ‘name and shame’ the guilty party and in doing so protect others from falling victim to a similar scam.

The man in question is Errol Spence of 4 Garners way, Harpole, NN7 4DB, UK

This man advertises on the Sitepoint.com marketplace under the user name ‘Kuzmo’.

I have advised Tony Laidig of these details and he has passed them on to the appropriate authorities.

Tony explained to me that over a year ago he sold a limited number of master resell rights to his ‘Public Domain Survival Kit’  these rights came with explicit instructions that the products could not be edited in any fashion. Tony acknowledges that offering these rights was a stupid mistake that he has learned an important lesson from.

I do think that this episode highlights the problems with products sold under master resell rights . It is impossible for the authors of the original works to police the internet to ensure that their licence terms are adhered to and this presents a great opportunity for dishonest marketers to profit.

Despite my experience I remain convinced that outsourcing is the quickest way to scale my online business. 

I  created 1 eBook which I began selling in May 2008, I have built a list of loyal subscribers on the back of this eBook and the income I have earned since has proven to me that this business model works.

The challenge now is to add multiple  products and  build multiple lists and to achieve this quickly I need to employ others.

I have spent many hours in the last few weeks searching for tools I can use to protect myself from the scam merchants, tools like copyscape.com which provides a very effective way to search the web for duplicate copies of particular webpages.  This tool, however, can only find duplicate content that has actually been published to the internet, it will not identify a plagiarised eBook that is in PDF format.

I am open to your suggestions and as always I value your comments.

Blog Facelift

I hope you like the changes I have made to my blog during the last week.

Thanks are due to Steve at Planet Divinity for the customised header/footer and RSS button. Steve provides a great product at a competitive price and really looks after his customers.

I have also installed a WordPress plugin that allows me to have a customised signature after every post, as you can see I have used it to increase subscriber sign ups by offering an alternative way to sign up for those who don’t want to miss any of my posts. Click here for the plugin (it’s free!).

I have had Google Adsense ads on my blog for the last 12 months earning me an average of 30 cents per click. I have been looking for alternatives as this never amounts to more than a few dollars per month. Last week I received an email recommending a new service from ClickBank that displays ads for ClickBank products and I decided I had nothing to lose by giving it a trial.

ClickBank hop ads differ from Adsense in three important ways;

You choose the keywords that control which ads are displayed whereas Google spiders your web pages  to match its ads to your content.

You can edit the title of the box containing the ads whereas Adsense ads are always identified as ‘ads by Google’

The most important difference is that you are paid the ClickBank commission (up to 75% of the eBook sale price) for any purchases made when your ads are clicked, as opposed to being paid a few cents for every click.

Time will tell whether this change is worthwhile and I’ll keep you posted.

I’ve discovered Twitter!

Twitter is a social networking phenomenon!

Millions of people across the globe are using it to stay in touch with their family and friends. Twitter works by asking the simple question ‘what are you doing?’  your answer or ‘tweet’ (which cannot exceed 140 characters) is available for all of your followers to see.

You may well ask (as I did) ‘how can this help me make money?’

The key to using Twitter to benefit our businesses is to build a substantial list of followers and to tweet regularly.

Once we have built a relationship with our followers we can direct them to our websites and products by including links in our tweets.

‘This sounds really clever, Stuart, but how do I get people to follow me and can it really benefit my business?’

I too was sceptical at first but by following a simple strategy I have built a list of over 900 followers in the last week, during this time my blog traffic jumped to ten times its average level with a corresponding increase in new subscriber sign ups and Adsense clicks.

Do follow me at http://www.Twitter.com/stuart_turnbull  

My Twitter strategy will be featured here on my blog, so be sure to pop your details into the boxes at the end of this post.  

Do you need help?

As a new internet marketer I’m sure you, like me, have a constant stream of questions that you need answers to. If you have  ever wondered where to turn for expert advice and guidance then I heartily recommend the Warrior Forum.

Because the Warrior Forum has so many  members (118,000 at time of writing) you can be sure that any thread you post will be read and responded to by dozens of experienced and expert marketers in a very short space of time.

I have met some really helpful people on the Warrior Forum that I correspond with regularly and best of all it doesn’t cost a penny!

The Warrior Forum also represents a huge marketplace for our internet marketing products through the Warrior Special Offer (WSO) facility. Once you have posted 30 times you can advertise for a $20.00 fee which I feel is great value to reach such a substantial number of like minded people.

Thank you for reading my posts and for your continued support. 

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