I really hate saying it but things don’t look as good as they did at launch for Blogrush at the moment.

It launched, it had a problem, we got notified. Then there was another problem and we were kept informed by a really long email about the problems John Reese and the team were having with hackers and people generally abusing the system.

So five days on and I’ve still got no stats being displayed at the blogrush site via my dashboard. ummmm

I check my own stats and find out that I’ve got tons of page displays but hardly any click throughs to my site from other blogrush users sites. And I’m not alone. A quick search of the blogosphere shows numerous other people all saying the same kind of thing.

I know it could be the quality of my post titles but with so many people all murmering, I have to come to the conclusion there’s maybe more to it.

A really interesting post by Noah Fleming pointed me in the direction of a blogrush clone that has just started up. While it shows that John’s idea was great it also shows that the competition and the potential problems are mounting as well. Just read what he says about the black hat methods affecting genuine blogrush users.

All in all I like the idea of BlogRush but I can’t understand how John can justify saying that all members sites will be manually checked. That’s going to cost like how much? And blogrush is a free service …

Then there were the concerns that BlogRush was neither accepted or rejected by Google and that your adsense earnings could be at risk. Depending on which posts and information you read this is either true or a lie. The principle being is that BR skirts a very thin line in the type of service it is.

At the moment it’s s good idea with problems that are being sorted out. The problem is that as a user I want to see results or that widget is just a waste of space.

With all of the problems it also makes it that much harder to get other people to sign up for something and that affects how successful BR will be for you and me.

I hope that John and the team get things sorted out quickly. Make that very quickly or I’m going to have to remove the widget from my blog and use the space for something that does what it says on the tin.

At the very least I can fill it with an ad or two. At the moment I’d feel happier with an ad that I know I might earn something from at some point as opposed to a service that can’t deliver as promised.

Good luck John.

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Guys and Girls in the US and anywhere else for that matter take note, especially if you want to make more cash. This little tip might make a huge difference to your bottom line.

As some of my readers know, I’ve been involved in IM since 1997. It would be fair to say that I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to products and money making ventures but there is one thing that still irritates me like nothing else.

Timezones. Or more specifically lack of information in your emails about them.

This problem affects everyone and I’m really surprised at how few ‘experts’ still tend to ignore the problem and do nothing to make life easier for their readers and customers.

We know that most of the big marketers are US based and we can assume that most of their customers are based in the US to. BUT (notice that’s a big but?) - a growing percentage of customers are based outside of the US. So why is it, with very few exceptions, these marketers send out emails or postings asking us to attend webinars and conference calls at say … 8PM EDT and then they don’t put a link to somewhere where readers in other countries can find out what time it is for them?

We know that you have very little time to make a good impression.
We know that you need to make it simple

So why not help your readers work out when ‘8PM Eastern’ is in their part of the world?

Make it easy and we will turn up.

A simple link at the foot of your email or post makes all the difference. Just ask those who do it and you’ll find that they get more new customers in other parts of the world which means bigger profits.

Try these:

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html
http://www.timezoneconverter.com
http://www.time.gov/

The script is the effectively the engine that drives your video production and should be considered the most important part of any video.

The script tells the story or message you want to get across and pulls together the pictures of the overall image you want to create for your viewers. When it comes to video marketing tactics get your script right will make the biggest difference to your profitability.

One thing not to forget is that a scriptwriter writes the way he envisages his words will be spoken. This means that when you see your script for the first time don’t think that you’ve got to correct bad grammar. In a script “that’s it” will have more flow and rhythm that “that is it” - Can you feel the difference? If not just try reading those two things out loud.

If you are writing your script yourself some essential things to remember are; Read the rest of this entry »

A very quick post to say that today’s deal at dealdotcom is pretty cool and worth grabbing if you really want to get the edge on your competitors.

Sales Page Tactics (Vol 1) is written by PHP programmer Robert Plank and has a host of extremely useful PHP snippets and tutorials that he makes easy to implement on your site and could add to your ROI.

I bought my copy a few months ago at full price and it was worth every penny to me then. The video tutorials tipped the balance for me. Read, Watch and Earn.

This list of free video editing software tools makes it easy and cheap for anyone to edit and produce video to the highest quality that is ready for business or personal use.

Video has become almost a default in today’s blogs and websites. Without them a site can look almost naked. The fact is that NLE’s (non linear editors) need not cost the earth. In fact you can get some excellent video editing tools for free and I’ve put together a list of some of them here for you. This is by no means a complete list but having said that it is fairly comprehensive and as always if you think I should include another program or service let me know.

If you want to spend your cash on ‘industry standard’ applications like Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas, feel free. There are pros and cons against this thought process and the biggest pro I can think of is the sheer number of people using them makes getting help and manuals easier.

Having said that … things are changing and all of the sites and programmes listed below have very active support and development teams as well as thriving user communities. Lets just put it like this…

It could be that the big names will soon start to lose market share, I mean, why would you want to spend £300 - £600 ($500 - $1100) on a branded product when you can find free video editing programs that do virtually the same thing.

Lets look at the free video editing software available … Read the rest of this entry »

Today dealdotcom opened it’s doors and as I indicated in an earlier post EasyMemberPro is the first deal made available to it’s members.  At $148.50 for the unlimited license version this is real value for money.  Especially considering the single site license is normally $138.

If you are looking for an easy way to set up and manage a membership site this is the tool.  I’ve met Kim who is one of the people behind EMP and I also own my own copy.  It rocks.  It’s easy to set-up and makes life easy for those who want to run a membership site.  Having said that you will need to learn how to use it to get the best out of it but don’t panic it shouldn’t take you long.

Get yourself over to dealdotcom now and sign up.  Signing up is free and start promoting it because apart from the deals you will get you can also earn from the two tier affiliate programme

Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog or post your questions about how to maximise the two tier affiliate program so you can start making some cash.

BlogRush:
In a way I feel sorry for dealdotcom launching around the same time as John Reese launched blogrush.  You see BR has captured the imagination of the blogging community in a way that he wasn’t expecting.  It’s easy to understand why but I got this email from Mike Filsame and in it was this little gem;

“I have never seen anything like this. Not in Internet Marketing, not with anyone or any site I have ever been a part of. It has totally exceeded any wild expectation I had, and I was ready for big things. We are totally blown away. (big smile)”
~ John Reese

The publicity generated around blogrush has been immense.

Aggregating newsfeeds isn’t new, I’ve been using CARP for almost two years but adding the viral factor was a stroke of genius and I can well imagine that John and his team have been nervously keeping an eye on the server loads as news spread across the blogosphere like a wildfire.

An email update from the blogrush team yesterday started to answer some of the initial concerns about tracking and other issues so all in all things are on the up and up.

To start getting some free traffic to your blog simple sign up for blogrush and add the widget today.

Blogrush is a new free service that is using viral syndication to bring more targeted visitors to your blog. It’s simple to set up and works.

The brains behind this Blogrush is John Reese who is well respected in Internet Marketing circles and although the concept of adding widgets to your blog is not new the viral element that John has added makes this possible one of the simplest ways of getting free targeted traffic to your blog.

There is a very useful video that explains in detail how it works and shows just how powerful this can be, I strongly suggest you go and watch it sooner rather than later.

You can see the widget on the right of this page (I haven’t made it look too good and can’t see anywhere to tweak the setting - but the service in new and in beta - it will be improved) - the principle is that every time a visitor clicks on one of the post links in the widget, you will get a credit and your post will show in someone elses widget.

There’s lots more to it and well worth giving it a try.

See the blogrush video here to see how it will help you or click on the widget.