The other day a friend of mine wrote a post about a certain “Internet Marketing Big Shot” who is apparently part of the 2% who make huge amounts of money with Internet marketing.

Now, nothing wrong with people making a lot of money, I firmly believe there is enough to go round for people who are willing to do what it takes to become successful and I can only applaud those who really do.

However, I do have a problem with people selling stuff that is not up to scratch, which got me to think about the following.

In order to be a success online nowadays, it seems more important than anything else that your sales techniques are up to scratch and that even worthless products can generate a huge income as long as you know how to sell “air” (or freezers to Eskimo’s).

A few months ago, when starting this blog, I made a serious decision to not buy any more ebooks since most all of them only ended up crowding my hard disk and gather dust. Besides, if you are willing to spend some time, all information found in ebooks is readily available for free, and I have come to the believe there really is no secret to internet marketing, although so many guru’s are trying their hardest to make you believe there is.

Going back to the product my friend wrote about, it kind of did sound interesting enough to have another closer look and in the end I did sign up through his affiliate link, because after all, in his post he said the product looked good so far.

It is actually a real product instead of another ebook and all I needed to pay was $11.99 postage to get the book delivered to my door, and with summer offering plenty of time reading books while sunbathing a bit, I decided to go ahead and order.

Now, here is where things get tricky.

First of all I made sure to directly cancel a monthly subscription for a magazine about Internet marketing. I will receive the first copy for free along with the manual, but knowing myself, I better cancel straight away otherwise I forget and end up paying a monthly subscription without realising it (sorry pal!).

I did expect to see another offer page after ordering the initial book, after all, it seems to have become common practice to offer a “deal you will never see again” once signing up for a free product. This marketing guru however went a step too far in my opinion.

First he offered me another product for what he said “the best deal online” but after declining and wanting to go to the member area in order to download something that came along with the initial paper manual, he showed me another sales page for the same product, this time with a huge discount.

Yeah right, I thought, let’s skip straight to the member area, so again I optioned out of this “exceptional one time offer”.

Much to my surprise however, I landed on another sales page for the same product that had already been offered twice, but this time the price had actually gone down at least 75%! And as I was told on the sales page, I really could not live without this product if I were serious about making money online. And who would not believe this Guru, after all, he was showing his houses and cars and huge affiliate cheques and I could be just like him.

It was late though and I just wanted to get to the member area, so again I opted out of this offer, bad luck on me, now I will never make millions, but hey, I am pretty happy with what I do so far!

Guess what… apparently I had reached bottom price on product number one, because now I was lead to a sales page for product number 2, a marketing course that would normally go for thousands of dollars and wow it must have been my lucky day because now I could get full and exclusive access for only $997!

And even though I am like any other affiliate marketer and have thousands of dollars of cash saved under my pillow, I decided to pass up on this absolutely extraordinary offer, because I was sure I would see at least another few sales pages again lowering the price.

“No thanks (fill in name of IM Guru), I just want to go to the member area and I realise I will never ever see this great offer” and all of a sudden I had made 300 bucks!!!

That is right, by not taking up the offer; price had gone down to $697!  Needless to say I was very annoyed at this point and thought that I would finally reach the member area by passing up again, but this time I was lead to a sales page saying that maybe I did not have enough money to pay at once, so a convenient payment plan was offered and I could make 3 easy instalments, (because after all, if I couldn’t just dish out the initial big bucks, I really needed access to his exclusive program).

In a desperate attempt to finally go to the member area, although I really started thinking, “why would I even want to go to a member area?” and was about to just close the window, I again opted out of all these offers and free bonuses, “obviously” throwing away thousands of dollars, and clicked “go to the member area” button for the last time.

So why am I writing all this you might think, well there is a clue to this whole story.

The day after I received an email from my friend, saying that he had noticed I had signed up through his link and warning me to opt out of the subscription if I did not want the monthly magazine sent to my house. (Thank you for that!)

He said he had already received the paper manual which was supposedly filled with IM secrets and even though it was a pleasant read and nice to finally get something in print instead of all those e-books, he also said most information in the book is stuff we already now and he was yet to reach to the part were the real secrets were going to be revealed.

One comment he made though set off the trigger for me to write this long post, and it was down the line of “a lot to be learned from this guru’s sales techniques”.

Now, I am sure this guru is making a lot of money and I am sure not all he is selling is absolutely crap, but his sales page sequence and seeing just how much he was trying to sell his products for, and more importantly, see how much he was willing to drop his price, made me wonder.

Just how much can a product really be worth if there is a 75% drop in price within a few pages?

Plus…

If the free product he is giving out and obviously using in order to convince people to buy his (I believe well overpriced) program, does not really offer new information, will his program be any good to start with?

Maybe there is a lot to learn from this guru’s selling technique, but would I really be comfortable using this kind of stuff on people who just like me are trying to make a good living online?

The answer for me really is NO. I don’t want to trick people into signing up for monthly subscriptions along with a free offer, nor do I want to make money selling MMO products.

I still keep believing that the true secret of making money online can be put together in a few lines, no 100 page manual needed, no expensive exclusive programs needed, just common sense and a lot of hard work and dedication.

Plus, I am a bigger believer of Karma. What goes around comes around so I really don’t want to make money over the back of others.

And guess what? In order to be successful as an Internet marketer, there is no need to sell stuff you would not be caught dead buying yourself.

So what do YOU think is more important…. The product or the sales technique?

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So it has been little over a week that I decided to give MN a second run and have to say it has done a lot for my “learning curve” as well as my productivity level. When I first joined MN I had a quick look around at the free guides they are offering for the affiliate program but now that I am back there, I decided to actually give it a real shot and started reading the guides.

Gotta say I am really impressed with all the free information and level of support they are offering, either through their affiliate forum or contacting them directly.

So what have I during last week?

I have actually set up 4 new websites, and only have to finish some details and then upload them which will be done later this day, plus starting promotion strategies in order to get the linkbuilding going.

Terence gave me some good points to look at when I first posted about this program last week and I will certainly keep his comment in mind, for now though I find there is a lot to learn in their affiliate forum.

I picked a few products which I have experience with from the past and started building sites with all the material they offer for promotion. Most product in the program come with several ready made templates, loads of content and designer help (banners, pictures you can use freely etc)  and other information given good ideas in order to promote.

Cool thing about this program is that they are now uploading a lot of review videos in their forum, actually reviewing sites made by affiliates in order to improve them and point out where a site is lacking in view of selling and promotion.

Even after all this time I have been into affiliate marketing, there was a lot of things I hadn´t thought of and it is proven to be of great value to have somebody else look at your site and show you where you could improve it. I was certainly impressed by the time they put in to offer this service to their customers.

Now, some might say “yeah right Mirjam, they just want to earn more money” and I believe that is a fair statement, they are after earning more money through their affiliates promoting their products, but they can only do so, if their affiliates make more sales too.

So basically that is a win-win situation. Plus think about this, if you have been struggling like I have to get those sales in, you are doing something wrong. I was doing a lot of things wrong, and finally found some place to actually point out where and what to improve on. This is all information I can take along with me into other ventures outside of the program, ie, information I can use and implement to promote other products from other affiliate programs since it is all about the basics and then tweaking it to improve sales.

Through MN I have found to have made mistakes in the basics of all the sites I have set up in the past, with the consequence of not getting higher returns on the efforts I was putting in.

Funny when I come to think about it, as soon as I started this blog months ago, I have actually started learning a lot more than the years before and it does feel like pieces are finally falling into its place.

When I first started learning about affiliate marketing, I thought I did not have enough knowledge so I kept buying and reading guides on how to make things happen and the more I read, the more I felt like there was a lot of knowledge lacking to become a “super affiliate”.

It actually started feeling like there was some sort of secret to success and that the next book I was going to buy and read, would give me that secret.

I have certainly wasted a lot of time and effort. If only I had started building on the foundations straight away, making it secure with the basic information I had at that time and only than started learning about how to improve on those basics, I would have been a lot further already, but it is never too late to start.

MN is putting a lot of pieces together though, and now, when looking at the forum, I see a lot of people asking for help to become a super affiliate. They are making the same mistake I was making, thinking there is this big secret out there which is holding them back as long as they don´t find out.

Again, the secret is in the basics, following some beginner guides which tell you exactly what to do before even thinking about tweaking and improving.

If you don´t have the basics though,

there is nothing to tweak nor improve!

It is like wanting to run without first knowing how to get on your feet and start going step for step.

Anyways, I am going back to work now, just wanted to give a little update so far on what I think about MN  and what I have done so far. If you have been looking for ways to make money and so far aren´t succeeding in affiliate marketing, I would certainly recommend you to check out their free beginner guides which you can access after signing up for the program. The free guides offer information on how to start, how to build a site, how to promote and build links etc, sort of a step by step program on how to get on. After that, there are more guides on how to improve everything, including a free SEO guide by Brad Callen which offers some great inside tips on how to get your site ranking high and fast.

Again, the sign up is free and they are offering bonuses (upto $45) when you sign up with them. You will only be able to get those bonuses by making your first sale, which is what you are after anyways, I suppose, right?

Feel free to leave any comments and questions, I will try to answer all of them:)

To Our Success! 

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