11 Unsustainable Promotional Activities by Out of Control IM’ers

Last month I hired someone on good faith that they were going to register the Rich Sage at a bunch of Web2.0 directories, input relevant comments in blogs and in general work with me on a monthly basis on the rest of the networks’ sites.

I said “do a good job and I’ll let you do the same for the rest of the network and add a good bonus to top it off after the project is over”.  So, I paid and held a carrot expecting to see good results.

The project got off to a good start and I started to see the traffic generated from the various posts. Then I proceeded to check out some of the links and ran across a post that discussed “my kids watching Discovery channel”. That prompted me to ask my new consultant, what was that about? To which she replied “I’ll have to talk to the person I hired to comment”. Well, then I realized the idea was too good to be true.

The moral of the story: If you are promoting a website, do it yourself, pick the most effective sites to work with and be truthful.  While you’re at it, stick to the manual methods and just provide great content.  When you fake it, it will so, and lead to doom.

That lesson led me to these “11 Promotional Activities that Online Marketers Need to Avoid”:

1. Comment Spam: There are lots of people going from blog to blog posting comments just to get a link back to their own site.  That process has now taken another twist –with automated ‘bots’ doing the comments.  Guess what?  Filters already pick up that up as spam and blocks it.  This is a total waste of time and will make you look very bad.  It’s a week to week business model. That’ s all. It does not work.  Take for example, on the Rich Sage blog, the plugin Akismet blocks 99% of the spam very effectively.  I can then take 2 minutes to delete the rest before I reply to real comments.  I notice that they’re starting to charge for it, but that’s not a problem –your blog will stay under the limits they have set. I on the other hand will purchase a commercial key to support then and make sure my services are continued.
2. Reciprocal Link Spam:  All of these items create problems with reciprocal links.  The major problem with this idea is that getting a ton of links fast may actually punish you!  So, watch out. The search engines know that you’re out to fool their engineers and believe me, an entire room full of PHD’s are working on making sure you fail.  So, any success with such a setup is short lived.  For the long-term, stick to good content.
3. Track-Back Spam: This is a rather cleaver way to get a link.  Most blog’s allow the editor to create a post and then link to the content of another blog and say “I’ve created an entry about your post, and I am now linking to it”  When that is done by you, the admin, the blog will “ping” the tracked blog and let it know that you’ve written about it. In return the “linked” blog will ping back creating a “trackback” and another entry that your blog update exists.  You can see how quickly the links can build up.  The problem is that it’s rather easy to fake this process and not really put up good content.  After all, what good does it do when you have 1,000 visitors from all this work and NOT ONE READER of the content?  Nothing. You’ve wasted your time. That’s about it, and I see a lot of people doing a lot of that.
4. Email Spam: Well, this is the granddaddy of spam. I’ll not get into it, but suffice it to say, keep it up and you’ll do jail time. If you’ve just started, count on losing and getting your domain blacklisted.  This is definitely not the way to go!
5. Flooding Directories:  I’ve seen a lot of ads to get listed on directories.  Upon doing a close inspection of the directories, I found that a lot of them are just replicated sites from one domain and ONE IP address.  That does not do any good.  The idea that works is to pick around 20 good directories that are niche related and to create an account in them. Then manually go to each and list your site.  Better yet, while doing that, make a good list of sites to advertise in. You’ll get real traffic from that.
6. Spam Publishing Sites:  As you may have seen there are sites like Digg >> and Sphinn >> that publish your articles.  It’s then ‘ranked’ by the readers by giving each publications a vote.  There are ways to manipulate these votes by working with a few people.  However, once again, how long can you keep doing that?  How will you keep maintaining the content that you need to keep the readers’ attention?  This is a very short term strategy that will implode given a bit of time.
7. Forum Spam:  This has to be the most annoying spam that I’ve encountered.  I have several forums and it seems that one of them is hijacked by a bunch of porn promoters.  I just let the “thing go” just to see what happens. Well, it does not stop. These guys are using automated ‘bots’ to post all kinds of pictures and posts in the forum.  I’ll just wipe out the database sometime soon for all message above a certain size and that will clean out these morons.  If you are running any of these setups, just install a “CAPTCHA” that asks for a visual confirmation before posting and your problems are solved.
8. Coming Soon, Blog Spam: I say coming soon because I see more and more of this daily.  The problem is when webmasters use automated programs to post content to their blog –usually using RSS feeds that are then posted by category to a blog.  The idea is to automate the content and then have search engines deliver the visitors.  Nice idea.  How would you like to read the automated New York Times or Washington Post?  I don’t think that will fly for more than a day or two.  It’s bad enough when content is plagiarized!  However, if you extend that to automated content posting, it’s just a matter of time ’til your visitor clicks away.  It may work once or twice, but after that, your blog will be like “road kill” –smell bad and stayed away from. So, once again, very short term thinking that will cost a lot of heartache down the road.
9. Article Spam:  This is not so nice at all.  There are a bunch of light headed people who go around taking articles –either ones they plagiarized or bought and dumping them on article directories.  Once again, very short term thinking.  You may fool the reader once, but good luck getting the same reader to bookmark your site or content and return to it later.  It will never work.  My suggestion is to have a list of the best article directories and post to them your best content on a regular basis and get to be known as a provider of great advice in your niche.
10. Stats Spam:  I have no idea what kind of genius came up with this idea, but the strategy is this:  You run a program that creates a visitor from a site or pc over and over so that in the stats (visitor rankings) it appears that you’ve gotten 1,000 visitors from somesite.TLD.  Well that prompts the curious webmaster such as myself to checkout where the visitor came from… Once again, very short term thinking.  The idea that spamming a stats program with “hits” creating it to list your site as a big sender of visitors works when a site has a few hits.  However, take my site –you’d have to deliver a few thousand “hits” to register in the stats program.  Ouch. That almost a Denial of Service attack!  That’s serious harassment if you ask me.  That when an ecommerce company calls the Feds on you “kind of stuff” –very serious. Not for the faint hearted or the shy geek to initiate.  Definitely not recommended!
11. Video Spam:  Well, this is a relatively new one.  Suddenly the flavor of the quarter is to run a program that will post comments to video sites like YouTube.  Great.  That’s only going to take them a day or two to block.  I am sure by the time I post this, they’ll have a way to prevent such spam.  And you’re out the $97 dollars you paid for the software.  Why bother?  Just a waste of time, money and you’ve pissed off a lot of people who drive a lot of “bad karma” in your directions.  That’s so uncool!

The best solution to all of this is to keep your costs as low as possible and present a realistic business model that you can manage long-term.  You’ll find that your Internet blog or computer related business will last a long time and get a lot more respect from your friends, customers and the ‘Net community in general.  Trust me, what goes around comes around and you don’t want to be in the receiving end of any of the above problems.  To add to that, they don’t work, especially, for the long-term!

Success!

Rich Sage

What is the Best Way to
Start Earning Money Online? Here’s my Rich Sage Make Money Start up Guide for 2008!

Before getting started you need to think about a few things –Simply setting out to make money online will not suffice. You need to find a passion. If you are going to run an online mall, then I hope shopping is a “passion” –otherwise, sooner or later, you’ll “run against a wall”. If the subject of your online efforts are part of your passion, then you can be like me –just live like the Rich Sage. That’s what I do all day, so, this part of the exercise is a “walk in the park”.

Getting started is not that difficult. Most of the resources you’ll need are either free or you already have it while reading this. So, a passion –what will be your passion? Well, that’s something very personal –good luck. Just dig deep and you’ll feel that’s what you want to work on.

Let Me List Your Start Up Order:

1. Find a niche, a passion
2. Find a domain, or free blog solution
3. If you purchase a domain, get hosting
4. Then research your niche
5. Then start marketing

Rich Sage Analyzes 11 Reasons Why Online Success is Very Tough, and What You Can do to Overcome That and Succeed.

As the Rich Sage, from time to time, it is my nature to delve into things with a good dose of wisdom, and resolve a few online problems. To those who are venturing online to make their fame and fortune, I dedicate this episode. It will be a honest, sober and downright in-your-face assessment of the truth.

Don’t get pissed. Learn to avoid these mistakes and do it right…

Rich Sage looks at 11 Reasons Why Online Success is Very Tough:

1. The competition is not the neighbor or business across the street –It’s everyone in a particular niche around the block *and* around the world. If I am writing about Internet success, about Internet marketing –my competition? Perhaps, 1 million other blogs that are also dedicated to the same objective.In this type of minefield, how do I plan to succeed? My secret is the Sage! Yup, the funny looking guy giving you the wise look. He is a memorable character. It just so happens that he is also the way I live. So, it’s not that hard for me to tell it like it is and living the same. I talk the talk and walk the walk of the Sage. I love it.
2. This leads me to the next item –many of you are getting into Internet marketing looking for $$$’s. That’s the only thing on your mind. I say that is very short term thinking. You need to enter the online craze with your passion in mind. My passion? Well, it’s all over this site and my stock market niche. It’s all about it. So, I can sit here all day and add to this site and do my work. It does not tire me, nor do I get bored doing it.
3. My reason number three, is that business is something not everyone can do all that well. Not everyone enjoys presenting them selves in any type of stage. So, how could I say that while hiding behind the Sage? I don’t. Everyone that I meet ends up knowing me as the sage. It’s on everything that I do. It’s on my business cards -even my cell phone has the Sage crimson color! So, if you don’t like public sales exposure or presentations to the public, I don’t advice some aspects of marketing online. Sooner or later, to make money from the real world (as you will need to do to maximize online success) you will need to sell yourself in the real world. You’ll need to make contact, you’ll need to network and you’ll need to make friends everywhere. Embrace it. Absolutely dominate it!
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Rich Sage takes a moment to Watch the Last Full Work Day of Chairman Bill Gates.

I have followed his career and the rise of Microsoft from the 80’s when companies were switching from their mainframe terminals to workstations. Microsoft stock was the second best all that time –next to that of Cisco Systems. What a ride… I think a lot of people criticize his career and the progress of Microsoft. I don’t. What I’ve seen him go through are very typical of industry leaders –they are at the tip of the spear. It’s easy for people to be critical of ideas and achievement that they can only point to. Enjoy the video.

Best wishes Mr. Bill Gates!

Rich Sage

The Perfect Affiliate Program:

Rich Sage Review of the Maxsimo Network which has 11 Elements of the Perfect Affiliate Program

Affiliate programs are the rage of the Internet. Everyone seems to have one out.

However, the traditional Affiliate Programs have a rather expensive flaw when it comes to working with for Affiliates. The flaw is that once an Affiliate earns commissions from the program, the most of the future commissions generated by that customer are lost.

Affiliates simple drive traffic to the merchant and get peanuts from that merchant for delivering GOLD!

Does that seem like a scenario that you want to spend most of your time chasing? Does this seem like a good business model to put food on the table or feed your family?  I doubt many of you do… What then is the solution?

As an Affiliate, who wants to monetize a business online and/or generate the revenue for a full-time business, you need to look for these vital elements to success:

1. How often I can earn while promoting one business unit? Often, the Affiliate programs allow you to earn one commission from one sale. IF you are lucky, the referral period for that customer is around 90 days. Often it’s only 30. I’ve setup the referral period to be unlimited when a potential customer joins any part of the network for free. Anytime that customer upgrades, the commissions are earned. What’s interesting about the Maxsimo Ad & Membership Network is that you may sign-up and sell one product for $20 and earn commissions. Later, when the same customer buys a $200 product through the network, you earn commissions again!
2. Am I earning residual commissions? Many of the Affiliate program pay commissions for one sale. Often the charges to customers are recurring, much like hosting sales, but commissions are paid only once in most instances. In my network, the commissions are paid over and over by the various merchants. In my own properties the commissions are paid over and over. Take for example the advertising on the Rich Sage –as long as an advertiser renews their purchase, you get paid. My assumption is that we’ll have some membership programs that will bill for decades, and by selling those memberships you can earn for as long as the customer is active.
3. Am I getting the benefit of some form of leverage? This is often not the case. If you are seller for most affiliate programs, you make the sale and that’s it. You are paid a flat commission. In my Affiliate program, you may make just one sale of a membership or product, and many benefits start.  For example, through your efforts you may have referred 10 other Affiliates who also start selling the network. You earn from all those sales. Soon you’ll be highly leveraged!
   
   
4. How long can commissions from one sale last? Simply said “For the Life of the Customer!” I am sure their will be membership programs that are like the utility bill that you get every month –these membership programs will bill month after month for decades. I’ve got such a product in the Maxsimo Network Tools Membership, which helps small businesses worldwide advertise. The release of these tools will act like a long-term billing membership that delivers value month after month to small business online.
5. Are the products beneficial to the Customers? This is a vital element, after all the Customer is KING! He or she will be the one to enter a credit card and make a monthly, quarterly or annual payment. However, the value that the customer receives has to be outstanding. Month after month, year after year, the customer has to get more and more value for each dollar that is spent.  To ensure this, I’ve got radical enhancement to my product series just to make sure that we stay at the for-front of development!
6. What is the stability and financial strength of the company? The cost of starting an online membership program or affiliate program is less than $250.00. About ten years ago, the same process was $25,000 or even 10 times that amount. Not only has Maxsimo been operational as a development company for 7 years, we are now growing very rapidly with our latest marketing initiative –The release of the Maxsimo Network.  If you notice, biig.com, maxsimo.com and many other domains in the network are nearly a decade old.  Now beings our final phase: The marketing phase.
7. What Affiliate programs promotional methods are there? The ADMIN area for the Maxsimo Network contains all the graphic, text and advertising copy that you’ll need to promote the network. That’s just the beginning –we’ve just gotten started. A lot of third party support is building as the network grows. Along with the leadership of the Rich Sage, this is a network that you don’t want to miss working with as you look for monetizing ideas for your online business.
8. Will there be real-world products that also generate commissions? Yes, this is an often overlooked element (or one that simply cannot be accommodated by online affiliate programs) where commissions are generated by the use of real-world, bricks ‘n mortar stores. My mission is to have such a product in the Maxsimo Global Discount Card(TM)  which is already growing in the Maxsimo Network. It allows the Affiliates to earn from off-line sales –THROUGH a FREE PRODUCT!
9. How easy is it to promote? Most people getting started online have problems promoting a business. Often they look for a cookie cutter approach that will work for a few hundred or a thousand or two. Sure, that’s fine if you want a network to last a year or two. However, if you want to build a multi-billion dollar company as I envision, then the approach has to be different. My approach is to teach people how to use free programs such as WordPress and work on a theme or subject of their interest, in their own language, while promoting the Maxsimo Network as another monetizing unit. That works. Sure they don’t have to do all that. Any Affiliate can put our ad material at their place of choice and not bother any more. However, the best return on investment (ROI) is with following a plan with some work and making a best of your own website.
10. What is the growth and future benefits of the Industry? Advertising and Memberships are just at their infancy online. Advertising alone will be a $100 Billion Dollar online industry by 2010.  The number of “players” in the industry grow daily.  However, the effective, price conscious methods that can be used by small business to build their own businesses online are very few.  Then take the complexities of many countries and nationalities and languages and just the shear trouble of address spam –no one business can manage such issues –Unless it is a network that works with the Affiliates to deliver the best consumer and small business product.  That is how I’ve designed and modeled the Maxsimo Ad & Membership Network.  With the help of Affiliates, who have the most to gain, the network is up and running and will incorporate such management features as we ramp up our growth.
11. Lastly, how much can I realistically earn?  This is the first question that many Affiliate will ask, and in my case, I never give a definite answer. In business, there is always “risk and return” –My objective is to always minimize the risk, which I have done by following #1 to #10 above.  As for the return, take a look at the business model and the future of the industry and you’ll quickly get a very good idea of what you can earn from the Maxsimo Ad & Membership Network.

All of the above questions are what you should ask before joining an Affiliate Program. I’ve designed the Maxsimo Ad & Membership network with those answers in mind. The Maxsimo Network is a serious effort to give the average web Entrepreneur a good shot at online success.

I committed myself so much to that cause, I’ve developed a comprehensive training area with Rich Sage Lessons –a Free Membership area that you can join to learn what to do to build online success.

Given all the resources, trends, my leadership and the momentum behind the network, the Maxsimo Ad & Membership Network >> is something you should consider joining right away.

Rich Sage.

Looking at the Rich Sage Traffic at Alexa

Few weeks ago I pointed out my results (or starting point) at the Alexa network >>.

Given that I was ranked above a million and a one week ranking of about 3/4 of a million were not something to cheer about. However, there’s hope. I’ve made great progress in just a month. In a world where there are over 100 Million blogs and countless billions of websites, I’ve made the progress to a one week average of slightly above 320,000. Not bad. That’s in a month. Now the question: What will it take to break 100,000? What do I need to do? What do I need to do to make my work 1,000 TIMES more popular?  Those are questions that the whole webmaster/blogger community is asking. I know what the answers are and I’ll continue to discuss and use them to get the whole world to know me.

All the solutions are in the below tasks…

I believe in the next few months I’ll slice that to 30,000 something by continuing the following processes:

• Using my article submission strategy
• Growing my Affiliate Network
• Keep increasing the amount of purchased traffic
• Building everything from the RSS subscribers to the mailing list subscribers
• Growing my contest: The Rich Sage 2008 Make Money online contest
• Publishing great content that can help my readers
• Lastly, being consistent doing all of the above.

All of this is not easy, nor is it something to take lightly. So, back to work.

Rich Sage

Making a Perfect Network Using the Elements of Multi-Level Marketing and Direct Sales

I’ve studied how to setup a network marketing program (MLM) for years –actually 15 years.  The problem often is that the network starts out building the ROOF!  Usually, a business starts out building the foundation and then grows up from there.

In the case of most MLMs I’ve looked at it’s often the potential earnings that drive the initial product sales.  This is very dangerous as sooner or later the bottom (the foundation) falls apart.  Then the entire business model falls apart.

Starting the Maxsimo Network marketing program that I’ve designed, my innovation is two-fold:

1. I’ll use product sales commissions to make sure that a foundation is built by many distributors.
2. I’ll make sure to reward even further those who build a stable business with as many customers as they can.

I think between practicing the above two concepts, I can greatly curb the tendency to “self implode” and address the growth needs of the company.

The reason that #2 above does not get done is because people hate to sell.  Often distributors will sign-up to a program because of a good presentation, video or speaker.  However, later on, when it comes to selling the product or program, nothing happens. People are simply afraid to sell.  I think that personal sales are an even greater fear than public speaking!

I love both.  I have no problem with either.  Selling and public speaking have always been a challenge.  However, I have to setup things to take care of the 99% of the people who don’t want to do either.

My game plan is to accomplish this:

1. Let the software do as much of the selling as possible.
2. Enable distributors (Affiliates) to setup all of the products as monetizing units on their website(s)  My assumption is that these Affiliates can at least setup a website.
3. Lastly, move into the real world with products that bring all of the marketing network together with more expensive products that have better margins and commissions.

Now I need to get back to work setting up the Rich Sage Marketplace at richsage.com.  I am sure having read this that you too are looking for a perfect monetizing method.  You’ll find one here, with the Maxsimo Networks’ >> global affiliate program.

Rich Sage

Rich Sage Article Posting Strategy

In my research on publishing and promotions when an organization starts to promote itself, I looked at press releases and articles. The launch needs to be expressed in a press release, while on-going operations can be explained by articles. I have a list of 125 articles –which I’ll start to write with the next post.

In my article distribution process, the following steps are undertaken:

• Is it a launch of a service? Yes, then press release too.
• Then go to the Press Release list (bottom part of post) and send out to as many places as warranted.
• Then to an article production.
• Once the article is written, publish to the TOP Article Distribution list that I compiled a while ago — VERY IMPORTANT — I’ll publish one at a time, making changes to an article as each is submitted to a site.
• It will also go to such sites as Digg and my own Rich Sage blog.

I need to clarify what I mean by my article distribution method, in the “very important” note above.  My routine is to publish the article here as a blog post.  Then to update, improve and add a little content, and go right to the best article distributor.  Then do the same before I publish it again.

Each time I publish, I make changes prior to posting at an article site.  The problem is when volume catches up.  My idea of 125 articles, times 12 versions of each can add up to 1,500 articles.  How can I do all that?  I don’t. I’ll hire a few writers to come up with other versions. I may even use a program to help create many versions of one article.  I’ll perhaps use a software programs to make the first versions that I’ll need. Then the entire set of articles will be updated by a professional writer.

My next post goes right to the first article, which will also be sent of as a press release in one version.

Rich Sage

11 Rich Sage Comment: Why did I pick 11?

You may have noticed by now that I’ve started to make many of my posts using 11. But, why “11″ as opposed to some other number? The reason is simple. It’s more than 10.

Well, all my life I’ve worked harder (and hopefully smarter) than the guy next to me. As a result I’ve had to study more, do more and work harder. I would have put the TOP 10 of everything. But, in my case, I had to just go the distance just a bit more and try to find an 11th reason.

“11 Rich Sage” –with that I hope to let everyone know that what they are about to read is a quality, researched and containing the value that the Rich Sage tries to provide.  So, why not 12?  One has to stop somewhere.

Born was the “11″ idea. The Rich Sage will try to have 11 reasons for everything.

Rich Sage

Results of Traffic Building for Just 6 Weeks

Towards the middle of November, after getting the ground work set, which I describe here, I started working on traffic building.

First I started with just getting link exchanges, then directory listings and a few other link building ideas. However, all of those ideas are NOT the best long-term strategies.

The arrow above points to Visitors and Sites, which are the key elements to build traffic. The more sites, well, in this case, servers that have something pointing to the Rich Sage site the better. Over the course of this year my goal is to increase this by a factor of 20 to 30 times. I am not going to do it by fooling search engines. I am going to do it the old fashion way, by earning it. By delivering *great* content and then disseminating it via some key outlets.

There are just a few long term traffic building strategies:

1. The first is to setup a contest.
2. The next is to work with articles & YouTube videos.
3. And the last is to work with an Affiliate Program, which I’ve setup.

Well, it’s kind of early to make the claim, but I’ve established a trend. Now the plan is simple –do everything to keep that trend going, and if possible to accelerate the growth of the trend. Once again, #1, #2 and #3 are vital to conquering that task!

Rich Sage