Welcome to The Truth About Internet Marketing - Internet Marketing Solution

Blogging popups can be very annoying and obtrusive just like any other popup. Listed below are seven popup plugins that are not annoying or obtrusive and are actually very useful.

Avatar Blogging Popup
This Wordpress Plugin allows you to personalize, if not humanize, your posts, adding popups containings avatars next to mailto links, as well as next to any word.

Simple Images Blogging Popup
The Simple Popup Images plugin allows you to add pop-up images to your Wordpress 2.0 or 2.1 blog. You put a thumbnail image in your post; if a user clicks on it, a larger version appears in a separate window.

Firefox Blogging Popup Plugin For Wordpress
Wordpress plugin where you could promote Firefox browser and earn from the affiliate commission paid by Google.

User Bio Blogging Popup Plugin
This WordPress plugin searches posts and pages for the nicknames of authors. When it finds one, it turns it into a link which brings up a popup window with the author’s bio and image.

Simple Forum
As the name suggests, Simple Forum is a simple and straightforward forum that does the sort of stuff a forum is supposed to.

Blogging Popup Image Gallery
Is a WordPress plugin that utilizes ‘Pages’ as a container for a gallery.

Articles 1.0 Blogging Popup
This plugin allows you to easily present a list of posts you select outside of your blog chronology.

I got an email a couple of days ago from someone who read a post that I wrote some time ago under the Internet Scams category on this website. The Internet Scams category is the most viewed area on this website. The question was if a particular program was a scam or legit.

I’ve decided to answer the question here for the benefit of anyone else who may question if a certain program is a scam or not. I will warn everyone that my answer may not be desirable to many.

Let me start by saying that the biggest resource that you have and most never even consider it, is you. If you haven’t read the tutorial on this website yet it would be a good idea to do so when you get the chance. It will give you answers to many of your marketing questions. You can find the link marked ‘Internet Marketing Tutorial’ at the top of this page as well as every page on this website.

Here’s my answer to this persons question. Create a website and write about something that you know a lot about and put it on your website. If you know what your website is about, making money from it is the easy part. If you have a website that provides information about computers then it is a no brainer that you would want to sell computer related products on your website.

You don’t need to get involved with the next great deal out there to make money online. Most digital, as well as membership sites are total garbage. They hype these things up to put money in their own pockets, not yours. They could care less whether you make money or not. Take care of your own business and to hell with everyone else.

While there are basic things that you need to learn and understand about doing business online before you can get started, the only way to become successful online is by doing it the way that is best for you, not the way that is best for someone else.

We all have our unique way of doing things. If you try to do things the exact same way as someone else does it, I will guarantee you that you will be so confused that you will never get it done. You must do things online in a way that you understand. Reading an e-book that tells you to do this or that will not work. You need to work in your own way. Not in a way that someone tells you to work.

If you want to be a business owner you have be a leader, not a follower. Stop taking everyone else’s advise, and run your business in a way that you feel will work the best for you. Learn what you need to get going but then put into action what you have learned. They may say that knowledge is power but it is totally useless if you do nothing with that knowledge.

Stop looking for that pot of gold. You already have it within yourself. No one will take care of you better than you will. Stop chasing every garbage product out there and start making your own decisions.

Let me start by saying that I am not an affiliate of StomperNet nor do I want to be. I’ve been getting spammed quite a bit with emails about StomperNet from various Gurus trying to separate me from my money.

StomperNet is a member website program that teaches you about search engine optimization, e-commerce, among other things in case you don’t know what StomperNet is. StomperNet is run by 2 Gurus Andy Jenkins and Brad Fallen and both are very knowledgeable where SEO is concerned.

StomperNet was first launched last year and was sold out almost immediately and if I remember correctly the cost was just under $10,000 to join. It was hyped big time by the biggest Internet Marketing Gurus with huge lists, which is probably why it sold out so quickly. I wonder how many people actually succeeded with it? They have testimonials of the people who did well with it but the big question is how many people didn’t do so well with it?

Anyway, they are reopening StomperNet tomorrow 5/10/07 at 12:00 PM Eastern standard time. You can try out the program for a month for a buck. So if you were wondering whether or not if StomperNet lives up to all of the hype you can find out for a buck.

It may be worth doing even if you can’t afford to pay the full price after the month is up because you may learn a lot in the month that you are there. It may be a great opportunity to learn from two of the best. According to the spam mail that I got, you get full access to everything for a month for just a dollar.

Let me be crystal clear, I am in no way affiliated with StomperNet and whether you join or not has no affect on me one way or the other. I just thought I’d tell everyone here that there is an affordable way for those who wanted to try it or couldn’t get in last year. I have no idea if StomperNet is any good or not.

Here’s the hyped sales page for anyone who is interested. http://www.internetpromoservices.com/stomper

When visitors come to your website how difficult is it for them to get around and follow the links on your website? Does your website make it difficult to navigate? These are important questions that you need to answer or you may find that your visitors are one shot wonders that won’t spend more than a few seconds on your website.

If your website is not relevant to what it is intended for you will find that what visitors you do get, will not stick around for long. For example: If you have a website that is about pet products you don’t want to be writing about the vacation that you just came back from. That’s not what your visitor came for. They came for something that is related to their pet. Always stay on topic with what your website is about.

Are you giving your visitors too many choices? I know that this sounds like a ridiculous question but it really isn’t. If you are selling information about fitness and you offer 10 different products on fitness chances are that you are giving people too many choices and all of those choices tend to confuse people because they won’t know which product is the best and will cause indecision. Not being able to decide equals no sales for you. Do not sell more than a couple of products that are of the same type. If you do sell more than one be sure to give some information about each product to help your potential customer decide which product is best for him or her.

Do you have a mission statement on your website? I can tell you right off the bat that no one gives a crap about your mission statement. A mission statement should be an outline of what you want to accomplish for you or your company. A mission statement should be written for you and the employees of your company to help keep you both on track. It doesn’t belong on a web page. No one will ever read it. That’s not what your visitor came to your website for. Don’t bother putting a mission statement on your website. It’s a waste of time and can be a distraction to your visitor.

Do you have small print on your website that contains legal information or a disclaimer of the results of what you sell that only a lawyer could understand? I see this on just about every over hyped website out there. If you are going to provide a disclaimer be sure that it is easy to understand and why you are providing the disclaimer in the first place. eg. ‘Since everyone’s level of knowledge and expertise is different and the amount of work that any, one, person, will put in is an individual thing therefore we cannot guarantee what you will earn or whether you will earn anything at all.’ If you have small print of any kind at all on your website change it so that it can be easily seen and easy to read. Providing information that is difficult to read or can’t be read all, gives the impression that you have something to hide resulting in your visitor not trusting you and the product or products that you sell.

Do you give the price of your products on your website? I’ve seen this on so many websites. The only way to get the price of a product that I may be interested in is to click on the order form to get it. I can tell you right now, unless I can’t get the product anywhere else and I really need or want it, I’m not going to bother with your website any longer. I’ll just go elsewhere where I can easily get the price because it is clearly written on their product page. Keep in mind most will do the same. Make sure that you clearly display the prices of your products on your website. Don’t rely on people clicking the order form to get it because most won’t.

Is the content on your website easy to understand? I run across this so often that it’s ridiculous where the information is written in a way that only a rocket scientist could understand it or the information is written poorly because of bad grammar and bad spelling. Nothing will drive your visitors away faster than a website that is impossible to read. Remember that there are literally millions of websites on the web. If your website is hard to understand for the average person they will go somewhere else to get the information that they are looking for.

Do the above things and watch your traffic dwindle down to nothing in no time at all.

I know that this is the “Internet Scams” category and I guess this is a review about the worst kind of scam. This is the type of scam that falls prey on those who fear being scammed online. Anyone who falls for this scam deserves to get scammed.

Let me start by saying that I only read part of this so called review of scams. I had to stop reading because of the ghoul of this reviewer thinking that people in general are this stupid. I can only tell you about the part that I read before I stopped reading this idiotic review.

Basically he starts out with the standard I’ve been scammed quite a few times until I learned my lesson. You’d think that these morons would come up with something a little more original. They are all the same I guess.

He then goes on to say that some girl (he doesn’t tell you how he knows her) was informed that she had won a lottery that she had never bought a ticket for. So, super investigator comes to the rescue by posing as a TV or radio reporter. That’s where I stopped reading. I had no reason to read any further. Now that really happens in real life doesn’t it?

Come on, what moron would believe this garbage. I don’t know about you but I don’t like my intelligence questioned with fictitious garbage.

Here’s a good one for you. He has the nerve to place a form on his website for anyone who wants to have a particular program investigated. He will do so for a nominal fee of $25. You can bet that he will never do anything at all except take your money and give you some made up review on the product.

At the bottom of his web page he has a list of three products that he found to be the best of the best. One of them is one of those ‘type at home’ jobs which is just a nice word for data processing scam. I have not seen one online data processing job that is legit. The other two are programs that been around for a long time. Nothing to really review there. Great investigative work buddy!

As I said before, I only read a small part of this BS review before it made me nauseous. I have provided the link here even though it kills me to give this moron a back link. Be warned that you may be offended by how this guy thinks that the average person is nothing but an idiot. I know I was. http://www.moneyscamsrevealed.com

I submitted the press release for my new article site this morning. I will extend my offer until midnight Friday. After that this opportunity goes away because once the press release goes live I won’t be able to accommodate new authors like I can now. If you don’t know what I’m talking about Click Here. Below is a copy of the press release.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Brian Queenan
Company: Article Knowledgebase
Email: administrator@articleknowledgebase.com
Website: http://articleknowledgebase.com

NEW ARTICLE WEBSITE IS OPEN FOR IMMEDIATE USE.
PLYMOUTH, MA, (March 24, 2007)-Brian Queenan the owner of The Truth About Internet Marketing blog has just opened a new article website named Article Knowledgebase and it can be found at http://articleknowledgebase.com

According to Brian, article writing is a critical part of marketing online as well as offline and says that many business owners think that submitting articles is just for online marketers which couldn’t be further from the truth. While writing articles are great for online businesses they are also perfect for promoting an offline business as well. Articles are not only for business owners. Many people submit articles simply because they enjoy writing and want to share what they have written with the world. Article sites cater to all walks of life no matter what a persons intentions are with his or her article, there’s a place for them on an article website.

He went on to say that there is not a better or more cost effective way to get a business known, no matter what that business may be, than through writing business articles and submitting them to various article websites because almost all of them are free of charge. There’s simply not a better way to drive potential customers to a business than through written articles whether it be an online business or one that is in the real world.

Brian added that the biggest advantage to writing and submitting articles for any business is that there are no geographical boundaries for where an article will be effective. No matter where you live in the world an article, if written well, will bring potential customers to an online website or an offline business. It doesn’t matter which it is, both will be as equally effective.

Brian Queenan’s Article Knowledgebase is online and ready to take on new article submissions and is free of charge. If you have any questions, Brian can be contacted by email at administrator@articleknowledgebase.com and the URL address for Article Knowledgebase is; http://articleknowledgebase.com

Some of the comments that I’ve read on this blog (some live some not) has prompted me to write this post. I have read some comments here where the commenter complains about the lack of success that they are having. Some have even asked if I could direct them in some way to make them successful.

Here are some questions you need to answer honestly.

1.) Do you work on your online business everyday?

2.) Do you do research?

3.) Do you take action when something needs to get done?

4.) Do you jump from one thing to the next?

5.) Do you heavily promote your business?

6.) Do you update your website regularly?

7.) Are you willing to put in a lot of time and hard work?

8.) Are you looking for a get rich quick scheme so that you can make quick money?

If your answer except for questions 4 and 8 to any of the above questions is no or yes to questions 4 and 8 then you have found your answer.

I’ve said this a few times here on this blog that IM is a lot of work. There is no magic bullet that is going to suddenly make you successful. If you don’t put the work in you will get nothing back. If you jump from one thing to the other then expect to fail.

Running an online business is very time consuming and a lot of hard work to make it successful. If you owned a business in the real world would you sit back and wait until it somehow magically on its own makes you successful? Of course you wouldn’t. Don’t expect any different from an online business.

I’d hate to break it to those who are wondering why they are getting nowhere that if you want to have a successful Internet business you will have to promote, update your website, and do research regularly if you want to see results. You will see results if you put in a real effort.

If you want to be an Internet Marketer you will have to work at it every day to get it rolling and I can tell you that it will require many hours of work on your part. If you are not willing to put in the time and work to get your online business going quit now before you go broke.

One last piece of advice; Don’t post on a blog that you are having trouble getting traffic or making money. The sole reason that Marketers post is to show that they are an authority in their marketing field whatever that may be. Telling everyone that on a public site will not make things any better, it will make them worse. Do research and learn what you need to know to get things going. Better yet, hire someone to coach you. If you are spending a lot of money already on get rich quick crap you’d be better off spending that money on something that will teach you something useful.

Using forums can be a great way to market yourself as a knowledgeable marketer and in return will help you make a name for yourself and your online business. As with everything else that you do when you market, keep in mind that you want to join forums that are relevant to your online business. Being a part of a forum that has nothing to do with your online business is nothing more than a waste of time.

The biggest thing that you need to understand is that you can’t directly sell your products on a forum and is not your objective when joining one. What you join a forum for is so that you can sell yourself to others on your knowledge of whatever it is that you do as a marketer. If you try to sell people products on a forum two things will happen, you will be seen as a spammer to the other forum members and will most likely be banned as a spammer by the administrator.

There really are two reasons for joining like minded forums. The first I’ve already mentioned and the other is you will have the opportunity to learn from others. You can get some great info from forum members and can learn about some things that you may not know about and get some great ideas about marketing that you have not thought of. A forum isn’t just a great marketing tool it is a great place to learn.

How many times have you run a search for information and a forum post or two comes up in the results? I know for myself almost every time. If you have a post in the particular thread that the search result lists you will be found as well.

Unlike most marketing avenues, there is almost never any kind of review that is required to get your post listed on the forum. When you post it will generally appear immediately so you will have immediate exposure.

When you do post be sure to give clear and helpful information that pertains to the topic of the thread that you are posting to. I see this all of the time on forums as well as many other posting platforms where a person just remarks ‘great post’ just to get a post in. It’s fine to say ‘great post’ as long as it is followed up with some helpful insight on your part. Don’t say ‘great post’ just for the sake of posting. It is not only counterproductive, it’s also a waste of your time writing it and a waste of everyone who reads it time.

Remember join a forum to promote yourself as an authority on whatever it is that you do online and never directly promote a product using a forum. Never supply a link to your website in a post unless you are linking to additional information that you have on your website that is helpful to the subject matter on the thread that you are posting to. If you show people that you know what you are doing forum members will want to find out more about you and will click on the link in your signature and check out your site to see what information you have there. Directly promoting a product on a forum is considered spam and will ruin your reputation.

Run a google search that deals with the topic of your online business and join a couple of them. After you join make sure that you setup your profile and include the link to your website in your signature file.

Have you read a headline like this or similar to this from spam emails, or on website pitch pages from marketers? I sure have. These marketers will tell you anything to get you to buy the next best thing on IM.

You are told that the new IM secret that will be revealed to you will change your life forever and is not just a bunch of regurgitated strategies that have been written over and over again by just about every marketer on the net. You get excited and eagerly give your credit card information to find that the big secret is not much of a secret at all and is generally just a bunch of made up nonsense. Does this sound familiar?

I can tell you that I will take regurgitated over any supposed secret formula that is supposed to change my life forever because there is a good reason that these strategies are taught by so many and that reason is they work. They have been proven to work many times over. Don’t let theses marketers confuse you by using the word regurgitated. They use the word to somehow down play or discredit good proven strategies in an attempt to make you believe that you need what they have to sell if you want to be successful.

I think I’ve said this before somewhere on this site that I am a sucker for a good sales pitch. I will admit that I have spent a fair amount of money on information products on and off the net throughout my adult life.

Don’t get me wrong. All information products are not crap. There are some that are very good but on the other hand do not contain the big secret that will change your life forever either. The well written and informative information products that are out there all have one thing in common. They all use the same formula of taking a proven strategy and adding their own twist to it. Forget about the idea that one day a light bulb went off in the author’s head that made them millionaires overnight. They may have become overnight successes but the chances of someone repeating it and having the same instant success is minute. There’s a reason for those disclaimers on their website. There are no guarantees. Remember that.

This site has only been here a very short time and already I have had a couple of people ask me how to make money online. Online marketing requires a combination of many things to make it successful. There isn’t one set thing that will make you successful. It’s a combination of all of them.

The best thing that anyone can ever do is learn. Don’t expect one information product to get you to where you want to go. Internet Marketing is an ongoing learning process. Those who are successful continue to learn about IM. That’s partly why they are successful.

There is a lot of good info right here on this site that will help you with that learning process. You will not find any hyped claim that you will be successful overnight or will be successful at all for that matter. I’m telling you in advance so that you don’t waste your time. IM requires quite a bit of time and work on your part before you will ever see any benefit from it at all. You will benefit if you stick with it long enough. You just won’t see it as quickly as you probably would like.

Free information is generally the best because the author doesn’t have some hidden agenda and won’t give you a bunch of hyped garbage. I can tell you right here and now that if you are looking for get rich quick information, the material on this site is not for you. The fact that several of my readers spend hours on this site reading through everything here tells me that I did a good job of presenting it. It’s nice to see that there are some out there that take IM seriously. Those who are willing to learn will do well.

If you are just starting to build your online business or haven’t yet begun here are some things to take into consideration to avoid wasting time and money.

Make a plan of what you want your online business to be. Once you have decided where you want to go with your online business do some research on whatever it is that you are planning to do with your new website. It is very important that you research whatever it is that you plan to do with your idea because you have to know where you are headed and how much it will cost you to get everything in place. You may find that it is not worth pursuing. Research will help you avoid making costly mistakes.

Run searches on like minded websites to see what your future competitors are doing. You will be amazed at how much you will learn by researching what others are already doing. Look at how they have laid out their website and what kind of products they sell and most importantly what information do they provide. After you have researched some websites you will need to ask yourself, can I do it better? If the answer is yes, move on with it. If the answer is no, scrub it and find something more workable. Doing a little research of other websites will help you understand what you will need to do, one way or another.

If you find after you have done the research that it is worth pursuing, sit down and set a realistic budget. Itemize all expenditures from hosting costs all the way down to advertising costs. If you don’t know what everything will cost, I can guarantee you that you will waste a lot of money needlessly and possibly run out of money. Don’t let that happen. For the little time that it will take to do this, there is no reason or excuse not to. It’s really important that you know what everything will cost before you ever start because you may find that you can’t afford it.

Design your website to have a look and feel to whatever your business theme is. For example, if you have a website that is about health and well being you want the look and feel of your website to be one of good health. Add some graphics if you need to, to give your website the look and feel that you want. In other words, make it look like a website that is about good health.

Make your website so that it can be maintained easily. Don’t create a website with all kinds of bells and whistles if it makes your website difficult to maintain. You don’t want to spend all of your time editing this or that to keep things running smoothly. Save yourself from that frustration.

Your website should be easy to navigate. It should be setup in such a way that your visitors can find whatever it is they are looking for easily. You want your website to say here I am instead of your visitors saying where the heck is it? If you are going to have a big website that has a lot of content, create a user sitemap and make the link to it prominent on the main page so that your visitors can refer to it when looking for something specific. Also setup a search option on your website to allow your visitors to run searches on whatever it is they are trying to find. While flash may be cool to have as an opening to a website it is generally not practical for a business site. The dialup days are over and people are too impatient to wait for a website to load and will not be as impressed as you may think. Most people click away from flash sites before the flash presentation even loads. I know that I do. Your website should have a business look but at the same time it should be inviting to your visitors. If you have to compromise between one or the other, always go with inviting.

Whatever information you provide should be written in a way that anyone can understand. The school days are over and you are not out to impress your teacher. You are providing good information that is easy for your visitors to read. Keep in mind that you most likely will have people on your website where your language is not the first language for some of your visitors. You don’t want to impress your visitors with big words, you want to provide them with good information that everyone can understand. Keep this in mind while writing the information for your website.

If you setup your online business the right way from the very beginning you will end up with an online business that you can be proud of.