Work From Home Training

Learn New Skills Or Outsource?

There are plenty of marketers out there saying that you should outsource as much as you can rather than learning to do it yourself. I tend to agree – to a point. Trying to do everything yourself is going to end up in a disaster one way or another. If you’re not a creative type [...]

Work From Home 3: Ask Yourself How

Now that you know why you want to create an online business and you know what you need to do – the next question is how! How are you going to make the transition from home business wannabe to home business hero (or heroine)! This is the point that I started at in my last [...]

Work From Home 2: Ask Yourself What

So, hopefully I have you starting to think about all the wonderful changes that can happen in your life if you take a little time to ask yourself why you want change and how it is going to improve your lifestyle, relationships and income. The next thing to do is think about what. What do [...]

Work From Home 1: Ask Yourself Why

A while back I started writing a multi-part series about online business, but in retrospect I missed a whole lot of preparation steps. Rather than starting with the individual – you – I started with the business. So I’ve decided to create a new series and this time we’re going to begin from the beginning. [...]

The Trouble With Get Rich Quick

The main trouble with ‘get rich quick’ is that it does not exist. Those crazy statements like ‘He turned 5 cents into $173,165 inside one month’ are aimed at lazy people and designed to get the SELLER rich rather than the buyer. Here’s my best advice. Stop trying to take the easy way and the [...]

Instant Cash Empire – A GENUINE Review

Posted by Gary Smith on March 15th, 2011

Yes, you read that correctly. You have probably visited a bunch of pages that all purported to be reviews for Instant Cash Empire and every one turned out to be a sales pitch. This here is a genuine review of Instant Cash Empire based on what I’ve seen, what I know and what others are saying.

I was suspicious pretty much straight away for two reasons. Firstly because the email about this program came from Anik Singal and secondly because of the ‘income streams with 7 mouse clicks’ claim. Anik is what I like to call a ‘drive by’ guru. He puts programs up, makes lots of cash and then moves on to his next cash cow. He has a good sized list and plenty of JV marketers, so he could probably promote a pair of smelly socks and he would get a few sales. Anyhoo – this isn’t about Anik so lets look at Instant Cash Empire.

My original plan was to talk about the product promotion and then offer a link. I figured if people want to throw good money away at bad ideas I should at least make a few bucks in lieu of being able to say ‘I told you so’. Having seen what actual purchasers are saying, I decided against it as I think this program is going to tarnish the reputation of anyone who promotes it.

Like everyone who has seen Instant Cash Empire, I was taken to a web page with a video where Mike Harvey talks about this amazing system that produces income streams from ‘just 7 mouse clicks’. He starts by telling a story of debt and frustration and how he ‘burned his last credit card’ on an internet marketing seminar. To cut a long story short, he says a ‘guru’ sells a product from stage and makes $50k plus after the presentation. Later, in the bar, this guru is telling his guru buddies that he doesn’t sell the ‘real’ software to customers. He says the real software is on a DVD that he holds up and shows them – and it has made him millions of dollars.

After a few drinks the guru and his guru buddies leave. As this guru picks up his laptop, the DVD slips out. Mike then says that he grabbed it, intending on giving it back, but then changes his mind. Instead, he gets a programmer to hack the software, which he uses for a few months. Not content with software theft, he then gets his programmer to reverse engineer the software and turn it into ‘Instant Cash Empire’. Of course if this story were true he would be facing litigation from the software owner (i.e. the guru) as well as some felony charges.

Mike then goes on to explaining (in broad terms of course) that you can create an income stream in 2 minutes without doing anything other than clicking your mouse 7 times. His presentation has the usual ingredients – make big money – don’t do any work – clear your debt – write your own paychecks. He throws some figures around such as $69k in one day and $6k-$10k per day. He also says that you will only get one chance at this because the page will be ‘ripped down’ in 30 minutes. Not surprisingly, when I went back an hour later, the page was still there. Shock!

At this point I was still skeptical but still planning to buy it myself so I could look it over, and was still going to add a link in this post. Then I stumbled across some reviews from people who actually bought the software. I was pretty amazed at how many people were critical of it so soon after launch and that influenced me to save my $27.

Given the laws regarding people who make income claims I suspect the FTC would raise an eyebrow at Instant Cash Empire. There are no income disclaimers on any of the pages I was taken to. The first email you receive from Mike will say:

“I’ll also tell you how to go and bank $100 in the next
5 hours by clicking your mouse button just 7 times.”

…and on the exit page for the video (i.e. if you exit the video page without clicking the ‘Download Now’ ) it says ‘Swipe our proven $477 a day cash site FREE’. The link on that page leads to a second page where, rather than being given anything free, you are offered a $10 discount (after providing your email address of course!). Apparently there is also an upsell to a more expensive coaching course.

Folks, please don’t get tricked into buying this sort of junk and avoid any ‘gurus’ who promote it. It plays on your emotions and the thrill of being able to make gobs of cash without doing hardly any work. The business model centers around, what we call in the blog community, splogs. Basically they are mass produced sites that offer nothing more than material copied from youtube and article directories. They don’t get traffic because Google *hates* them. Googles recent changes to their algorithm were partly to address the problem of duplicate, somewhat worthless content.

If you have bought the product yourself and have anything, good or bad, to say about it then please do leave a comment. I did mention that some actual purchaser reviews influenced me to not bother buying it myself and you can see those HERE.

Google Gives Auto Bloggers And Article Directories A Big Slap

Posted by Gary Smith on March 8th, 2011

Exactly how big is yet to be seen, but there have been suggestions that some of the bigger article directories are down on traffic by 25-50%.

If you want to be successful in online business and/or blogging then there are two words you need to place at the very top of your marketing vocabulary – quality and unique.

There is a lot of discussion at the moment on some of the internet marketing forums about people who have had their accounts suspended and/or articles deleted on sites such as Ezine Articles and GoArticles. It’s hardly surprising though, given the propensity of ‘article spinning’ software that is out there and the large number of people who obviously think it’s okay to rewrite someone elses articles. In my opinion it’s not alright. I can honestly say that I’ve looked at spinning software myself from time to time, but I can also honestly say that I don’t spin articles.

When someone comes to my blog I assume they are interested in what I have to say – not what someone else had to say a couple of years ago, re-written to look original. I’ve always felt that rewriting or ‘spinning’ articles is deceptive and lazy. If you don’t have enough of your own knowledge and experience to write about a topic then I would suggest that you shouldn’t be writing about that particular topic.

Whilst Google is seen by many as the big, evil behemoth that ruins businesses every time it makes an algorithm change, I tend to look at it from a different angle. Yes they are huge and yes there are many people relying on organic search traffic for their livelyhood, but is that a reason to exploit Google. In my opinion, anything that isn’t natural or within Google’s own guidelines is a type of exploit. Article directories, link farms, paid links… why do people do those things? Simple answer – they are too lazy to spend the time to create a unique, informative online resource and instead try to artificially boost their rankings.

If you looked at some search results 10 years ago and then compared them with the results today, you would probably have to conclude that Google got it fairly right. It must be a tough gig though, trying to find new ways of combating the constant stream of poor quality content that gets posted on content and backlink farms.

The moral of this story is that, in the end, unique quality content will win the search engine rankings. It may take a little longer and require a bit more work than artificial methods, but it will also reduce your exposure to algorithm changes.

So do try to keep those words – quality and unique – in your mind when you are creating your websites and blogs.

Meshin Outlook Sidebar Review

Posted by Gary Smith on February 24th, 2011

A while back I wrote a ‘why I’m lovin’ Meshin’ post about the Meshin outlook sidebar. I’ve been using it for a few months now so I thought it might be worth re-visiting with a review.

First up, I am still using it. That’s a first for me. I’ve tried a few MS Outlook sidebars and most of them have lasted less than a week either because they made Outlook slow, or the crashed it or they simply didn’t do anything useful enough to be taking up a portion of my MS Outlook window real estate.

I probably don’t use Meshin anywhere near as much as I could (yet) but when I do – it saves me considerable time. Probably the most useful feature for me is one of its most basic functions… search. Search is fast and gives me a list of related messages which I just need to mouse over to view the contents of. I put it to the test today when I was talking on the phone. I needed some info that would usually take me, at the very least, a few minutes to find. Meshin to the rescue – I typed in a keyword and had found the message within about 15 seconds.

Meshin has other cool features that I mentioned last time I wrote about it such as linking together everything it can find about people, companies and the messages and attachments they have sent. Another cool feature I just found is the ‘Focus’ section. It lists ‘important’ messages at the top (though I’m not sure at this stage how it ranks importance) and then a list of recent messages below. These are grouped like ‘Last 46 minutes’, ‘Last 1 hour’,'Last 2 hours’ etc.

After using Meshin for a while you quickly get a good idea of what it’s all about. It’s about pulling together all of the little bits, pieces, snippets and scraps of information that relate to the people and businesses you communicate with and presenting it in an organized and very accessible way.

Learn New Skills Or Outsource?

Posted by Gary Smith on February 11th, 2011

There are plenty of marketers out there saying that you should outsource as much as you can rather than learning to do it yourself.

I tend to agree – to a point. Trying to do everything yourself is going to end up in a disaster one way or another. If you’re not a creative type then you’re going to have an ugly website. If HTML, CSS and site layout are things that you are only just learning then there’s a good chance your site will be a bit of a mess (though those of us using WordPress don’t have to worry too much about that as WP takes care of the layout).

I think you just have to be sensible. If you owned a retail store you would most likely know most of the basics – how and where to order stock, how to balance the books, how to track and maintain stock levels etc. If you plan on running your online business then you should know the basics of that business. You shouldn’t have to rely totally on outsourcing. Here’s my list of the minimum skills I think are necessary for an online business owner:

Update your site content – if you have to rely on a contractor to fix every spelling mistake, update your weekly news or make other minor content changes then it could get quite expensive. There are times when you need to be able to make changes straight away without waiting for a friendly freelancer to get the job done. If you are using Worpdress then updating your site content is as easy as using a simple word processor. If not, then you may need to learn some basic HTML.

Add/Remove affiliate links – someone might be running a weekend special or other short term promotion – you should be able to react straight away and make the necessary changes.

Update your own products – if you are selling products online then you should be able to update or change those products.

Know what’s going on – this is probably the most important. Giving control of your site to someone else who has no real interest in your site isn’t necessarily the smartest thing to do. If you are outsourcing then you need to be able to check and approve all work that is done by others on your website.

Outsourcing is a very logical step once your site is humming along and making some money. Farming out some of the day to day tasks will give you more time to concentrate on your site content, your products or services and your customers. Don’t outsource too early though. Spend enough time on your site to know the ‘ins and outs’ of it before you place those day to day tasks in someone elses hands. And always check on the work that is being done by contractors and/or freelancers.

Automated Home Profits Review – Buyer Beware

Posted by Gary Smith on January 4th, 2011

As a rule I don’t like to post negative reviews – they tend to be subjective in many cases and most negative reviews that I’ve seen are driven by (sometimes quite extreme) emotions. However, I also don’t like to see people ripped off by very elaborate and deceptive marketing techniques.

I was searching around today and clicked on an ad that was for a work from home opportunity that looked legitimate. I was taken to a page that was written and laid out like a news story at NewsDaily7.com. By all means, click the link and have a look (it will open in a new window), but please don’t be drawn in by the very well written copy. At least read the rest of this blog post before you decide to do anything!

The ‘story’ looks very legitimate and very compelling. It all seems a little too good to be true though (nothing unusual about that!). I am a great believer in ‘due diligence’ so I did a search for ‘Automated Home Profits‘ and found an interesting and very eye opening blog post about this very program.

Please read the post HERE to find out a bit more about Automated Home Profits.

And please, NEVER spend your money without first looking for independent and/or unbiased reviews and comments about the program you are considering spending money on. The link above isn’t totally unbiased as the author has a link to another program at the bottom of the article. The content of the blog post and the comments that have been left are quite compelling though.