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Don’t worry.  This isn’t one of those advertisements disguised as a review where all I say is “of course it’s not a scam… now here’s my affiliate link”.

It’s been awhile since I have reviewed a new program like this.  Since I have been seeing ads for The Streamline Funnel System popping up everywhere I thought I would spend some time today checking it out. Afterall, I love “funnel systems” so maybe it was something worth joining.

I should probably point out that The Streamline Funnel System is currently in “pre-launch” until July 1st so there is pretty limited information as to how everything is going to work.  Still, that hasn’t stopped hundreds of marketers from promoting it all over the Internet as the “next big thing”.

Since the site is still in pre-launch there isn’t much info on the homepage.  Basically just a nice design by cheapminisites.com and a video from The Streamline Funnel System creator Paul Birdsall.

Inside the site there are a few videos explaining how the program is going to work and some advertising materials that you can use to recruit new members.  Oh, there’s is also a message that says “during pre-launch it’s crucial you personally sponsor people”.  No explanation why though.

Here’s what I have been able to gather about the way the program works.  Basically, Paul Birdsall has been hard at work for the last 14 months developing the latest Web 3.0 software that harvests double opt-in leads from the Internet.  For only $9.95/month you can send your ads to 10,000 of these exclusive leads every month.  Wow!

Ok, let’s break it down.  First, can someone please explain what exactly “Web 3.0″ is?  I mean, we all know that “Web 2.0″ was a huge buzz word a few years ago when social networking sites started taking off… but what the heck is “Web 3.0″?  I assume if I don’t understand it then it must be something pretty awesome.  Right?

Paul claims his software harvests double opt-in leads.  Does everybody understand what “double opt-in” means?  These are leads that have specifially given you permission to email them.  First they say “Please email me”, then you  say “are you sure?”, and they say “yes, I am positive”.  These are some of the best leads you can get.  Spending $1 to get one of these leads on your list is generally considered to be pretty good.  10,000 of these leads for $9.95 is extraordinary!  I have to admit though, something about using the word “harvest” makes me think these aren’t exactly double opt-in leads.

I should also point out that the leads you get from The Streamline Funnel System are “exclusive” leads.  That means every member will get 10,000 different leads.  Sweet!  But wait, maybe we should do some math first…

According to my user id about 5,000 people have joined The Streamline Funnel System so far.  It’s safe to say that by the way people are promoting this thing there will be at least another 1,000 people by the time they launch next week.  That’s 6,000 members.  Obviously not all 6,000 people are going to pay the $9.95 on launch day but lets say they did.  6,000 members x 10,000 = 60,000,000 exclusive double opt-in leads.  60 million!  That’s twice the population of Canada!

Obviously that is a lot of leads but Paul isn’t really clear about what you can do with these leads.  You see the way the “income opportunity” part of The Streamline Funnel System works is that when someone you refer to the site orders additional leads you earn a commission.  They aren’t saying how much these extra leads cost but since your commission on an additional 10,000 leads is $50 I am assuming it costs a bit more than that.  They seem to imply that your 10,000 leads will be used to automatically recruit new members to your Streamline Funnel System site.  When the leads sign-up and buy the additional leads you make free money.

I can understand why people would be willing to pay $9.95/month to try this but who’s is going to pay hundreds of dollars on extra lead packages without testing it out the first 10,000 leads?  I suppose if you get enough sign-ups it’s possible a few will try extra lead packages eventually but the videos talk about earning thousands of dollars a month and “all you have to do is join and push a button”.

I should mention that I also did a little research on Paul Birdsall who is the creator of The Streamline Funnel System and found some interesting information.  I don’t want to personally smear the guy on my blog but I did find information about quite a few other programs that he has run in the past which are obviously not making anybody any money today.  Anybody who is interested in joining The Streamline Funnel System should probably go to google and do a search for Paul Birdsall to get a better understanding of what they are getting into.

That’s about it.  So is The Streamline Funnel System a scam?  Since the site is still in pre-launch and I haven’t personally shelled out the money to try it I guess I can’t say for sure.  I will say that if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck… it’s probably a duck.

It’s been 3 days since I launched my Safelist Marketing Tactics website and so far I have been very happy with the results.

Have you joined yet?

http://www.SafelistTactics.com

Since Monday I have had almost 800 people join and the site has generated close to $900 in sales.  Not epic numbers by an means but this was a pretty small launch.  Now that I am a little more confident that I know what I am doing I think I should be able to pull off something a little bit bigger next time.

I must admit that I was also a little hesitant to release something I had personally written to such a large audience.  I am not a professional writer.  I usually just write the way I speak.  Based on the feedback I have received it sounds like I at least did a pretty good job of offering some valuable content which is what I was shooting for anyways.

I was planning to get started on my next project right away but I think I am going to spend some time expanding the Safelist Marketing Tactics site.  I
have some great ideas to help make the site a little more valuable to free members and also help the upgraded members earn more money.

If you haven’t joined yet I would love to have you as a member.  Even if you are not really interested in safelist marketing the membership site is still an interesting business model that you can use to build your own business.

Check it out here:

http://www.SafelistTactics.com

Launch day!

Ok, you have been waiting a long time for this and so have I.

Introducing… Safelist Marketing Tactics

Hooray!

The site has been up for about an hour now and already 40 new members have joined.  Very cool.

The last few days were spent going over some really minor details to make sure I had all my bases covered.  Also fixed some really dumb errors that I missed after going over the site a few hundred times (thanks Tony Tezak!)

So why safelists?  It just seemed like everything related to traffic exchanges had been done to death but hardly anybody was doing anything new with safelists.  There’s only one other really good safelist ebook that I can think of and very few free ones that are worth reading.  I also get really good results from safelist marketing ever since I started applying the techniques I learned from using traffic exchanges.  I thought that would be something of value that I could share.

What now?  I’m going to go on a bit of an advertising blitz for a few days.  I’ll probably look and see where I am in about a week and then from there hopefully I will move on to my next project.

Until then.. go ahead and click the image below to join Safelist Marketing Tactics.

Note to self… Make sure to disable the membership sign-up page until the site actually launches.

Yesterday I woke up to find one of my partners had starting sending traffic to my site even though I told him we wasn’t launching until Monday.  Before I could catch it about 50 people managed to get in and some of them had even started promoting it themselves.  Eeek!

I disabled the start-up page and let everyone know not to start promoting it until Monday.  Hopefully no real damage was done by letting a few people take a peek at the site a few days early.

The good news is that everything works!  The sales page is converting extremely well and so are the special offers.  I am now feeling much more excited about Monday’s launch and much less nervous.

The launch date is still set for Monday, June 8th @ 12:00 Noon EST.

Make sure you check back here Monday morning for more inf0rmation.

T-minus 1 week to launch!

Launch is set for Monday, June 8th @ Noon EST.

Everything is set and ready to go for my first membership site… and much sooner than expected.

Last week I hired Jay Hines (Quick Tab Change) to do a little custom programming on the site.  I knew that was something I was going to need to do after I finished my product but I was factoring in at least a week for him to get it done.  I spotted Jay in the Affiliate Funnel conference room and told him what I wanted.  20 minutes later it was done!

With the site completed I spent some time last week sending out emails looking for JV partners.  I wasn’t expecting a huge response but I was surprised by how many people didn’t bother to respond at all.  The good news is that I got a few people who I know are going to be able to bring in a huge amount of traffic to the site.  The important thing to remember is that it never hurts to ask.

For the last few days I have been writing emails to put into my autoresponder.  That has taken longer than expected.  It’s been almost a year since I have written an entire email series but I think I have gotten much better at it.  I have essentially written an ecourse on Internet marketing that I will be sharing with the members of my site.  I am pretty excited about it.

If you are not sure how to write autoresponder emails I highly recommend reading Soren’s Internet Marketing Success Formula.  Really good stuff.

With everything being done I am not quite sure what to do for the next week.  I’ll probably write a few more promo emails for the members but otherwise I am ready to go.

Maybe I will get a head start on launching my 2nd membership site.

I have a product!

Well, at least the first draft.  I still need to spend some time reading it and re-reading it to make sure I crossed all my I’s and dotted my T’s but for the most part the hard stuff is done.

I sent out a few copies last night to some people hoping to get some feedback before I finalize it.  So far nobody has responded back.  I assume that is because they are speechless over how good it is.

Getting it done wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be.  The hardest part was getting myself motivated enough to start.  I started by making a list of all the chapters I wanted to include.  Then I opened my copy of Open Office and made the title page, the disclaimer, and the table of contents.  By the time I got to the introduction I was on a roll and just kept going.

I still need to do a little editing and get it turned into a rebrandable product but I feel like there isn’t too much more to do.

I have a tentative launch date picked out for Monday June 8th.  That may change between now and then so if you want to be alerted when you can sign-up you can subscribe to my newsletter at the top of this page.

Just a quick update.

Not too much has changed since my last post.  I did get all of the “little things” done that I mentioned in my last post.  All I have left now is to create the product and write some emails.

I did get fancy shmancy splash page made for me this week that affiliates will be able to use when promoting my site.  I usually try and make my own splash pages but this time I decided to hire Jamison Raymond from Black Hat Graphics.  Jamison is da man when it comes to splash pages because he understands that it takes more than just great graphics to create a high converting splash page.  I am very pleased with how well it turned out.

I had been putting off the product creation part of this project for awhile because I wasn’t sure how to properly format it in order to turn it into a rebrandable pdf file.  Thankfully Sunny Suggs got me into contact with Jay Hines from Quick Tab Change who came up with a great solution for me.  Thanks Sunny!  Now there is nothing holding me back!

Of course I still haven’t started.  I have been doing a lot of shows lately.  Tonight will be my 7th show in 6 days and I am feeling kinda drained.  The good news is that I have Saturday and Sunday off to work on my product… or I could watch the last 6 episodes of LOST that are sitting on my hard drive.

Next week.  Seriously!  I will have something done by next week.

My graphic desiger finally sent me the final images for my site on Tuesday morning.  I spent the last two days working on the homepage and other than needing to add some testimonials later on it’s pretty much done.

It’s amazing how much it helps having professionally designed graphics for your site.  I’m actually embarrased to show people my old site now that I know how easy it is to have something quality put together for you by someone who knows what they are doing.

2 days might seem like a long time to work on one webpage but based on the prices I received from professional copywriters I think I made the right choice.  It’s no masterpiece but I think it’s certainly above average when compared to other similar websites.

I have also almost completely configured all the internal site files.  That means the first 4 steps of my 7 step to do list are pretty much done.

I plan to work on step 5 today which is to create some marketing tools that I can put into the “affiliate toolbox”.

I also thought of a few other steps I need to do…

5.1 – Create a bonus page.  Pretty easy.  Just need to grab the html for some free programs and create a page inside the site for them.

5.2 – Add Products – Since I haven’t created my product yet I haven’t played around with adding products into LFM yet.  I do have some bonus products I am giving away so I should probably figure out how that works.

5.3 – Test the Support Room – Yep, I added a support room to the site by installing osTicket.  It was free and ridiculously easy to install.  I just haven’t tried it to see if it actually works.

5.4 – Test Member Emails – I should probably make sure the email is configured properly, make some custom welcome emails, and get everything linked to my Aweber account.

Step 6 is to work on my autoresponder emails and Step 7 is to create the product though I may need to do that sooner than I was planning.  When the product is done I am going to have to send it out to have it made into a rebrandable ebook and I have no idea how long that is going to take.  It would also be nice to get some testimonials from people before I launch and I probably need a product to do that.  Thankfully I think writing all the sales copy in advance has given me a pretty good idea of exactly what the product needs to be.  It’s just a matter of organizing all the information in my head into something that people will actually want to have.

I would say everything is going great so far.  My best guess is that I am about a month away from an actual launch but I have no problem pushing that back further to make sure everything runs perfectly.

The waiting is the hardest part.

I received an email from my graphic designer early Friday morning telling me he would send me my revised site graphics in about 12 hours.  I did a show that night and was looking forward to seeing them when I got home.  Sure enough, no graphics.  It’s now Monday morning and there is a message on the site saying “we’re currently on a very heavy workload, thus there might be delays replying to your emails.  Turnaround time 6-7 working days”.  D’oh!

I kept myself busy yesterday working on the inner workings of the membership site… mostly the OTOs.  Creating the pages wasn’t that hard, just very time consuming.  The real problem came with trying to link those pages to upgraded memberships via PayPal IPN.  I have never worked with IPN before and there was nothing in the LFM manual/videos explaining how to use it.  Thanks to PayPal Sandbox I finally figured it out after about 30 tries.  I just hope it works when I actually launch.

So the OTO pages are done.  I also did the “Upgrade” pages in the site.  Today I will do the members homepage and maybe work on some of the affiliate sales tools if I have time.

I just hope I get the graphics soon.  If I get stuck looking for something to do I suppose I could always start creating a product… nah.

After a week of no responses from my graphic designer I finally got an email from him today.  Seems the email he thought he sent me last week never got sent.  The good news is that I got to see the first draft of my new website.  Other than my last name being spelled wrong on every image (oops) I have to admit it’s pretty freakin awesome.  About a bazillion percent better than what I could have come up with on my own.  It’s amazing what a difference it makes when you hire a professional to do the work for you.

Now that I know what my site is going to look like I don’t really have an excuse for putting off the rest of the project any longer.

Well, maybe a little longer.  First things first.. I need a to-do list!

Here’s what i’ve come up with…

1. Update my blog with my to-do list.  CHECK!

2. Work on the sales page – This one is probably going to suck because it is the most important part.  Gotta come up with a killer headline and subheading as well as a bunch of bullet points for a book I haven’t written.  Should be fun.

3. Create some OTOs -I already have a pretty good idea of what I want to sell in my OTOs.  I will probably need to talk to some JV partners to see if they want to contribute anything.  Also gonna to have to figure out how to price everything.  Also not entirely sure how to tie them all in with the LFM site.

4. Configure Launch Formula Marketing – I registered my domain name today so I should be able to install the membership script on my new site now.  Not sure how much configuring I am going to have to do.  I played around with LFM-Lite and it was pretty easy.  I just don’t know how much more there is in the full version but it should be a lot of fun setting it up.

5. Create Affiliate Marketing Tools – Once LFM is installed I will have to write some email ads and signature files for my affiliate to use when promoting the site.  I love the idea of hundreds of affiliates using my ads to promote my site.

6. Write autoresponder emails – Most of these I can copy over from my other email list.  This will be a good opportunity to tweak them, drop the ones that aren’t converting, and add some new ones that I know convert well.

7. Write Ebook – Oh yeah, I still don’t have a product.  No sweat.  I am intentionally saving this for last.  Am I crazy for doing it that way?  We shall see.

Hopefully that’s all I need to do.  Should be an interesting to see how smoothly it goes.

More to come…

Yes, i’ve been gone for awhile.  Did you miss me?

Sorry.  I’ve been having some major financial problems lately and actually had to take a part-time offline job for a little while to help make ends meet.  I’ve also been busy doing light shows around town including a really amazing 5-day festival in downtown St. Louis.

Now that things are looking better and I should have more time to focus on getting my business rolling again which means more frequent blog updates.

So here’s what’s up… after kicking around the idea for over 6 months I am finally going to launch my first membership site.  This is something I have never done before so it’s going to be a bit of a learning experience.  I figure I can document the process here in my blog so hopefully someone can learn from my success (or failure… gulp).

I wouldn’t expect to see a finished product any time soon since I plan on taking my time and trying to do everything the right way.  So far I have purchased a copy of “Launch Formula Marketing” which although being very expensive is actually pretty awesome because now I will be able to launch as many membership sites as I want (assuming I can pull this one off).

I also hired a graphic designer to do all the layouts for me.  That’s right.  No more crappy do-it-yourself webdesigns.  It actually wasn’t that expensive especially compared to how much time I find myself spending trying to do my own layouts.  I’m still waiting for them to send me the first draft but that should be very soon.

The one thing I don’t have yet is a product.  Yeah, you would think that is kinda important but I am trying to do things a little different than what I did with Traffic Success Formula.  Rather than create a product and then try to come up with a bunch of ways to market it I want to create some killer marketing materials first and then create a product to go with it. This way I can be sure my product will be tailored to meet all the needs of the people I am marketing it to.

I also figure I will be a lot more motivated to actually create the product once some of the other stuff is done.

So does this sound like something you would be interested in reading more about?  I am much more likely to keep posting updates if you leave some encouraging comments.  You can also bookmark this page or sign-up for updates up on the top corner of the page.

Hey readers!

So here’s something that’s worth writing about.  You know how I have been going on and on about JV giveaways as a great way to build your list?  Well, since this year started there hasn’t been much going on worth mentioning.  Well that has finally changed.

I don’t know why all the major JV giveaways seems to revolve around holidays.  I may not have been paying attention like I should have but I didn’t notice a single St. Patrick’s Day giveaway.  Maybe I will keep that in mind for next year.

Well, the next big holiday on my calendar is Easter and along with that comes the “Easter JV Giveaway“.  Now I was pretty oblivious to these JV giveaway events last year but from what I am told the Easter JV giveaway is normally one of the biggest events of the year.  Since joining yesterday it looks to be true.

This year the Easter JV Giveaway is being run by Guido Nussbaum who has proven himself to be one of the best at driving new sign-ups to these events.  That means more fresh eyeballs on your page and more sign-ups to your list.

The Easter JV Giveaway officially launches on April 7th but you can sign-up now as a contributor.  I have already picked up a dozen new subscribers since yesterday and we are more than 2 weeks away from launching.

Don’t snooze on this one.  These events only come around a few times a year and you will be kicking yourself later if you don’t take advantage of this now.  It’s 100% free to join but there are some upgrade offers available when your first sign-up.  If you want to put your list building into overdrive you upgrade like I did.  From my experience, the upgrades are worth every penny.

To sign-up as a contributor to the Easter JV Giveaway click the image below.

Join the Easter JV Giveaway

What?  Oh yeah, apparently I still have a blog.  Sorry.  I’ve slacked off pretty hard on updates.  I had a good run for awhile but offline responsiblities have been taking up most of my time.  I want to at least keep these monthly stats coming to you but last month I missed recording them and one of the only major flaws with my tracker is the inability to pull stats from specific date ranges.

As usual, these stats are from my own efforts promoting a lead capture page for my ebook “Traffic Success Formula”.  Obviously, your results may not be the same as mine.

So, here we go…

Traffic Exchanges
Mythology Surf – 15
BootScootin’Traffic – 11
Traffic Splash – 8
ts25 – 8
ILoveHits – 5

Ok, I probably spent less than an hour actually surfing traffic exchanges last month so those results are actually much better than I would have expected.  Nice to know I can take some time off and still get residual traffic and sign-ups from the work I did a few months ago.

Safelists
ListJoe – 35
Elite Safelist – 14
Newage Safelist – 13
AdTactics – 8
List Auction – 8
Global Safelist – 8

I may not have had time to surf the traffic exchanges but I did a good job up keeping up with my daily safelist mailings.  ListJoe is at the top of the list as always but I was surprised to see relatively smaller safelists like Elite Safelist and Newage Safelist performing so well.

Text Ad Echanges
Traffic Swarm – 22
Maximum Profits – 7

I have virtually killed off using all of my text ad exchanges.  Traffic Swarm has always been a winner but if you are looking to try one of the many text ad exchanges out there then Maximum Profits is worth a shot giving me 7 verified sign-ups last month.

JV Giveaways
Daddy’s Birthday Giveaway – 46

There haven’t been many giveaway events lately that have been worth joining.  Obviously Daddy’s Birthday Giveaway was a winner but I think the doors are closing on that one tomorrow and so far I don’t have a replacement.  If you grab a free copy of my ebook top of the page I will be sure to send you an update when the next hot new jv giveaway event launches which, in my opinion, is one of the easiest and fastest ways to get sign-ups while doing the least amount of work.

Ok, that about covers it for this month.  I’ll try to post more often when I have the time and content worth sharing.  If you have any comments or suggestions please feel free to post them below.

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Over the last few years so many different blogs and web sites about Internet marketing have appeared on the Internet that it has become very difficult to make your site stand out from all of the others. It doesn’t matter if you are just starting a new site or if you are thinking about making your existing site more unique, the trick to creating and maintaining a site that captures the attention and interest of your target market is to find your own unique niche. If you are able to figure out a way to provide something unique that nobody else is doing then you will have a better chance of creating a lasting relationship with your site’s visitors. Once you have figured out your unique niche there is still a lot of work to do but this is the best way to begin.

Every great site starts out with a really good idea, and it’s almost impossible to build a really good site that lasts without one. There are many excellent websites out there that are targeted to Internet marketers so the competition out there can get pretty intense. To make sure that your site stands out from the pack you are going to need to offer something that nobody else is currently offering… or you will need to do something that someone else is already doing but do it in a way that is more impressive or that is more valuable to your visitors.

One of the ways you can develop a really good model for your site is to look at some other sites that have figured out how to successfully capture your target audience and determine if you can use some of their strategies to help you do something similar with your own site. I’m not saying you should copy them exactly. You will have to add your own unique twist to what they are doing in order to make sure your site stands out from all the others. I think many people would agree with me that the sites out there which are the most successful have their own unique personality. With so many popular sites to choose from most surfers will gravitate to the sites which they feel offers the best personality so try to take this into consideration when you are trying to decide how to give your site a unique feel by adding your own voice to the design and content on your site.

After you come up with a great concept for your site, picked a specific niche that you are comfortable with, and infused the site with your own voice and personality, the next big step is trying to figure out how to get the word out there to other people. When it comes right down to it a really good idea just isn’t enough to make your website successful any more. You are going to need to come up with a smart and realistic marketing plan that is designed to constantly draw new visitors to your site. Once you are able to hook your visitor hopefully your great content will hopefully keep them coming back for more but it is vital that you are able to get that first glance from them or else your site will never get the opportunity to shine.

I just received an email from Jay Hines about a bunch of major changes on his Quick Tab Change program.

For those who don’t already know… Jay Hines created Quick Tab Change as a way to make earning credits on multiple traffic exchange programs easier by assigning a key on your keyboard that lets you switch between tabs on your browser. It doesn’t sound like much but you would be surprised how many more credits you can earn from traffic exchanges using Quick Tab Change.

The software itself has stayed mostly the same except there are now two versions of Quick Tab Change: Pro and Lite. They are pretty similar except the Pro version loads quicker and has a few more options.

Most of the big changes are in the Quick Tab Change site itself. QTC has been one of my best performing affiliate programs for awhile since it is such a valuable tool that almost every traffic exchange user will want to use. There are now a lot more options for rebranding Quick Tab Change with your own affiliate links in many other top converting free affiliate programs. There are also a few new OTOs that so far are converting much better than the old site.

If you use free traffic exchange programs and you are not using Quick Tab Change you are missing out on lots of extra credits that you could be using to promote your site. Click the link below to download your free copy now.