bill-goodrich.comAdventures in IM

I haven’t been posting here all that much lately, but I have an excuse a reason. I’ve been working on a secret project.

A number of “gurus” have been talking (and then selling courses) about some new venues, and I decided to investigate one and write my own results.

I started by reading the rules and losing money (nothing unusual there – pretty much always the case when you start a new venue). Pretty quickly, I was breaking even. After about two months, I was clearly money ahead.

It’s not up to the “retire to the Riveria” level (and it never will be), but there is a clear pattern now.

All I have to do now is write up my results, create a summary ebook, write/record a course covering the same information in more detail, and start marketing the whole thing. Woo-hoo… Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous, here I come!

Well… maybe the odd dinner out for my family anyway.

Watch for the grand unveiling soon!

Oh, and by the way: watch for some brief tutorials on more generally useful stuff, too.

Some things make me feel old. And seeing a new coat of paint on an old scam – one that has made the rounds a number of times in living memory – is one of them.

I have been seeing advertisements (from people who should know better) for the latest thing in list building – The Viral Secret. And people I know (and consider friends) are getting caught up in it as well.  Except… it isn’t anything new.

Back in the old days, it was more often run by mail. It is what is called a Pyramid Scheme, and it is illegal in the US (in general) and is explicitly a felony in several States. It is also illegal in most other countries (such as the Commonwealth countries: UK, Canada, Australia, etc.).

The basic idea of a pyramid scheme is that you give something of value then get something of value – LOTS of something of value – by recruiting new members (who recruit new members, who recruit new members… etc.). In this case, the “something of value” is opt ins for your list.

It sounds easy – almost miraculous – at first blush. After you sign up (opt in) to the lists of the person who sent you the link, and those of the five people “above” him, you get a free website to do the same thing with. You take the “top” person off the list of “newsletters”, move the rest up one spot, then put your link at the bottom. Then you get, say, 10 people to sign up. They get the websites and move people up, so when they recruit 10 people each, you get another 100 opt ins. And when they recruit 10 people each, you get 1,000 more people.

By the time you are bumped off the link list, you have 1,111,110 opt-ins (minus any drop outs). Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? And the site has a nice table showing all those wonderful numbers (which looks almost exactly like the one from the postal version).

It might even work for the first couple of levels. But let’s be optimistic, and say you are the first #6 on the link list and all the gurus above you have only recruited 10 people each. Yeah, we’re already in the land of fairy tales, but let’s go on.

For all of you #6′s to make your 10 person goal, ten million people need to be recruited.  And for them, 100 million. Before you get pushed out the top of the list, the necessary number of people is in the trillions – far more than the entire population of the world.

And that’s why it is illegal. They made you a promise that is mathematically impossible for you and your peers. But worse, all of you are making the same impossible promise to your recruits. And they to theirs.

But that’s not the worst part. After all, if it falls apart and you fail, you haven’t lost all that much.

The worst part is that the FTC is on a “Clean up internet marketing” binge. And this old fashioned con amounts to taping concentric red and white circles on your back.

And it’s an election year in some of the States that have declared such things a felony. DAs running for reelection absolutely love the kind of publicity that comes from breaking a large criminal ring (you).

Maybe you’ll be lucky. Maybe you’ll get a few names and you won’t be the one they come after.

Maybe.

But do you really want to risk everything you have (and then some) on that “maybe”?

There are many advantages to working from home – being your own boss, setting your own hours, etc. etc, etc… you have heard it all before. But there are also some disadvantages.

Please excuse a little self indulgent whining, but I feel miserable. Some sort of cold/flu thing. And therein lies the problem. Back when I worked in an office, such misery would mean expressions of understanding sympathy from my coworkers and a restful day in bed.

But I work (largely) alone, from home.

If I am not up to the “commute” to my basement office (how’s that for a stereotype?), I just stay in bed and work from my laptop – being careful to avoid disturbing my equally sick wife – and do almost everything I otherwise would have. About all I can’t do that way is my graphics processing and any scanning or printing.

And sniffling piteously only draws glares from my loving better half, even though the timing makes is clear that she gave it to me. Nor do I get any sympathy from my daughter, who seems to have a milder case (and is running about the same timing as me) but has to go to some of her college classes anyway. Nor from my son, who seems to have avoided the dreaded plague by virtue of isolating himself from the rest of his family in his electronics-intensive bedroom, when he isn’t at work or visiting with friends.

Still, I can get work done. It’s a little slow, since I need to double check that my fever-addled changes to a landing page don’t come out as “zxdes#& foomra Peach Pit” instead of what I had intended to write, but things get done. This is one of the times that the oft-repeated mantra that “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist” is somewhat comforting.

All told, the ability to work (fairly well) from my sick bed is good for productivity (even if it is bad for morale). I’m not sure whether you’d call that a benefit of working from home, or a disadvantage. Or maybe a little of both.

A recent (Feb. 6,2010) strip of the comic “The Buckets” seems especially relevant to discussions of IM these days. You can see the strip here.

The son says he is going to need a lot of money for his prefered lifestyle. His father quotes the old business wisdom “Find a need and fill it.” The son comes back with the way he sees the internet marketplace: “Create an obsession and fill it.” Trust me, the strip is better than this summary.

Actually, a lot of people are trying the son’s approach and failing (expensively) and a few are succeeding spectacularly. On the other hand, the father’s approach remains the way for people to successfully start their IM businesses.

The most consistent – and consistently praised as useful – advice to “newbies” is a combination of the two: Find an obsession (a hungry market) and feed it. At the best of times, trying to create an obsession is an expensive, lengthy, and risky proposition. But if you find an obsessive, “hungry” market and feed it, it is relatively easy to make money. A lot of money.

There are a number of potentially profitable choices for “obsession food”, depending on your resources and the nature of the obsession. The two most common are creating your own product and selling someone else’s product (as an affiliate). Obviously, using an existing product is easier and faster, but you only get part of the money.

Just something to think about.

I am about to show you three powerful words – words so powerful they can literally force you to think about something I choose to set up. And I will tell you why they are next to useless for internet marketing.

The words? “The other one”.

What? Nothing happened? Of course not. To work their magic, they require a specific kind of set up. And a particular sequence. And on a sales page, a squeeze page, an online article, and even a blog entry, the person is unlikely to experience the full set up in the appropriate sequence.

In most cases, the best we can hope for is an experience like:

Blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah

Blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah

The Other One

… which will be unlikely to produce any significant effect. More often, it is even worse. The reader skims over the text, producing an effect more like:

Blah blah blah …
…
…           blah blah …
…
…                 blah blah

Blah blah blah blah …
…
…
…                         blah blah
blah blah   …  blah blah blah

The Other One

Back when I was a psychotherapist, interacting face to face with a client toward a therapeutic goal, I was able to use consturcts like this to create significant effects by way of a seemingly innocuous conversation. But I was able to observe their reactions and control the presentation to produce the desired results.

That is part of the reason that audio and video additions to such pages are so effective. There is no feedback to the presenter, but at least the setup and the sequence are preserved – the visitor can’t skip over parts as easily.

Every now and then, you will see a book touting the idea of using these patterns in sales materials. And if you are lucky, the few people who actually read through your page from beginning to end might get some of that effect. But despite their power in face to face use (and sometimes in recordings), they really are pretty much useless in print.

We can debate whether the medium is the message (per the famous quote) all we want, but there is no question that the medium affects the delivery of the message.

If you would really like the delightful surprise of discovering the effectiveness of the magic words, I invite you to read the rest of this paragraph and then the next. You might even find yourself thinking of a blue gorilla with a bright yellow bird on its shoulder.

The other shoulder.

There are a number of patterns which fall into the same category. They work moderately well when you listen to or watch a recording of someone using the patterns with some degree of skill. They work poorly, if at all, when someone is just skimming the page. They leverage the way your brain processes language and patterns. That makes them useful in therapy, when we are trying to disrupt unwanted, established mental patterns like phobias, less than useful reactions, bad habits, and the like. They have names like “embedded commands”, “presuppositions”, “anchors”, “reframing”, “pacing and leading”, “double bind”, and so on (depending on which sources you get them from).

Make no mistake… in the right hands and under the right conditions, they can be insanely powerful. But in written form, in the hands of someone who read an ebook written by someone who “sort of” understood the patterns and figured they should work in ads, they can be embarrasing failures.

And they are not all that useful for marketing when they do work. Sure, I could force you to think about a pile of money in your hand.

The other hand.

But that does not convince you to click the book picture and subscribe to my list. In fact, it doesn’t do much at all to shape what you think about that money or what you are willing to do to get it. And even after you read the book and use it to start the money coming in, they would do nothing to shape what you do with all that money. And they certainly don’t do anything to convince you to send some of that money my way. The quality of the book and the newsletter have to do that all by themselves.

And for all the subtle use of those patterns in that paragraph, chances are good that you still haven’t so much as taken a moment to get the free book. As I said… useless for this (in written form).

Maybe I should write such a book. I know the patterns well, and often use them effortlessly. And I am becoming more and more familiar with IM. What do you think?

I made a few mistakes in my comments about Gmail advertising. First, it reads outgoing mail as well as incoming mail. Second, the ads appear on the upper right hand side of the screen. And it is “ads” – a group of ads in Tower configuration.

In the case of the outgoing mail, the ads appear just after the user hits send.

Although I didn’t say one way or the other, I’ve been asked about keyword insertion. Yes, it works in this context. And if you don’t know what it is, wait until you’re a little more comfortable with Adwords before you try it.

I don’t know how much longer Google is going to do this. A lot of people are more than a little upset about it, and that could translate into laws, regulations, or just a lot of pressure to cancel it. Also, it seems to be limited to the US and Canada at the moment (I could be wrong about that).

I still find it creepy, but people are telling me it’s effective in odd ways. A given ad tends to have a low rate of display, but a relatively high click through rate and a much higher than usual conversion rate. Psychologically, that makes sense – it plays to what the person is thinking at the time.

The privacy advocate in me cringes – a lot – at the notion. Google, in its infinite wisdom desire to cater to advertisers, is treating emails the same as website articles and blog posts. That is to say, users of Gmail have their incoming correspondence read (by a machine) and searched for keywords and their appropriate contexts. When the recipient reads the email, an Adwords ad (text only, for the moment) keyed to those keywords appears at the top of the page.

Let’s say you’re pouring your heart out to your best friend about the disintegration of your marriage, and your fears it could lead to divorce. The top of the page might display an ad for a divorce lawyer. Or maybe (marginally better) an ebook about saving your marriage.

Creepy.

Of course, I’m a little more sensitive than most. Back when I was a psychotherapist, privacy and confidentiality went beyond sacred. They were a moral (and legal) imperitive. I haven’t really gotten over that.

But maybe it isn’t me. I asked my (adult) daughter (who has a Gmail account) what she thought about it. Her initial response would probably violate the Terms of Service of my host, but after that she did agree with my characterization. Creepy.

It’s not as bad as it might sound. The process does not send any identifying information – much less any actual contents of the email – to the advertiser. It just shows the ad to recipients of “appropriate” emails, as determined in much the same way that Google determines which ads to run on a website.

It could even be relatively harmless. Say, your friend is congratulating you on your new puppy. You might see an ad for puppy food, pet supplies, dog training books, or even local vets (they can also determine where you are located, to a certain extent).

Some gurus are beginning to talk about this, with the usual “they don’t want you to know” hype. In this case, they have a bit of a point. Google will tell you (fairly clearly) that you can target your Adwords ads to Gmail by selecting the Content Network (rather than – or in addition to – the Search Network). But if you try to find out how to target them just to Gmail, most resources come up empty. They’ll tell you how to exclude gmail from your Content Network, but not how to target it.

As somebody who has made effective use of 1960s era IBM documentation, I wasn’t going to let a little thing like that stop me. It only got me more curious.With a little more digging, I found a response to an article which gave some valuable clues. Interestingly, the original article was mysteriously gone.

If you really want to try it (and don’t find it too creepy), you can set up an Adwords campaign. When you get to the point of selecting the “Networks” tab, make sure “Google Search”, “Search Partners”, and “Automatic Placements” are off (and “Managed Placements” is on).

Select the “Try The Placement Tools” link. Select “List URLs”. Type “mail.google.com” in the box and click “Get Available Placements”. In the area on the right and the “Site Placements” list (far) down the page, you will find mail.google.com and a location specific reference for “Inbox, Top Center”. Select “add” for that one.

Otherwise, treat the ad like any other Adwords text ad.

Like any other advertising campaign, watch the numbers closely. Left to run unchecked, Adwords (and any other paid advertising) can be an express train to the poorhouse. Some day, I’ll write about that $827 mistake.

Better yet, use less creepy methods of advertising.

In a couple of earlier comments, and on my About page, I outlined my background – a mixed bag to say the least. A couple of my friends, who knew most of it anyway, asked me a startling question: With backgrounds and experience in programming, psychology, and even theater, wouldn’t something like Internet Marketing come naturally to me?

And the answer is no.

There is a separate body of knowledge and skills – and a completely different mindset – involved in IM. And if anything, some parts of it runs absolutely counter to things I know from psychology. And some common – even necessary – practices in IM would be considered completely unethical if done in the context of psychotherapy.

So I am actually one giant step behind some of the other people in the mentoring program I have mentioned. I have more to unlearn than many of them, both in terms of information and limitations.I also tend to go deeper into certain technical aspects of things than many of the others want (or need) to, just to integrate it with my existing skills and knowledge.

On the other hand, I can see and recognize some things that even some of the Gurus miss. Why do they miss them? Mostly because they don’t know enough to ask their technical people the right questions, and because their technical people assume the Marketers know what they’re doing (so they don’t bring the subjects up).

I’ll talk more about some of those cross-disciplinary observations in later posts.

In December (2009) I started following the advice of a mentor of mine, Alex Jeffreys. I started a new subscription list, and started giving away a book about him and his approach free to people who signed up for the list. Then I started this blog.

So far, the world hasn’t flocked to my door. But it’s early days yet.

I did one thing he hasn’t mentioned(yet): I signed up as a contributor to a large scale giveaway… you know, the kind where people sign up and see offers for hundreds of freebies (almost all of which – including mine – involve giving your name and email address, signing you up for a mailing list). The people running the giveaway said that thousands of people would see the blurb for my giveaway, especially if I sent them a few bucks to upgrade my status (I did). Woo hoo! I was on my way! Visions of thousands of subscribers to my list danced in my head.

What’s that? You have a really good deal on a bridge? Sorry. I’m not doing real estate right now… maybe later.

I’ve gone through some of those giveaways as a standard “member” before, so I knew how they looked and generally how they worked. And I got a bunch of good freebies (and a lot of trash) from them. But I didn’t know how they worked from the contributor end until I signed up for this one.

It turns out that there are two major issues to be overcome (and a lot of lesser ones). First you are required to promote the giveaway, primarily through your list (difficult, if you don’t have a list in the first place). Second, your offering needs to be approved by the people running the giveaway before it will appear.

I had a plan for the first issue – I would promote the giveaway on my sites and some forum postings (where appropriate) as soon as I got word that my offering was approved and the giveaway started.

That was where things kind of fell apart. I had submitted my offering well in advance of the start of the Giveaway, but the approval process took a lot longer than I expected. And the people running the Giveaway expected me to promote it from day one, regardless of the status of my offering.

Much to my annoyance, I got two emails from the people running the Giveaway, about halfway through the active run. The first informed me that since they had seen no traffic from my (required) promotion, they were downgrading my status. The second, a couple of hours later, said that they had (finally!) approved my offering. Aaaargh!

This is where I ran into the lesser (but still frustrating) problems.

While not a problem in and of itself, I found out that the two otherwise experienced marketers running the Giveaway were new to this kind of event, and were using a standard package to set up and run the thing. In short, they didn’t quite know what they were doing.

One of the most important aspects of such an event is the feedback channel – the Help function. When the contributors (or later, members/visitors) have problems, that is where they go to let the people running the thing know and get the problems resolved. They were using a standard package for that, but they had not set it up correctly – and apparently hadn’t tested it. It was not sending out the necessary (and promised) emails to the people opening a ticket, and it was set up in a way that did not allow those people to view the ticket (and any responses) once it was closed. In other words, people had no way of knowing what (if anything) was being done. It was a one way channel.

After I submitted four tickets (about the combination of emails, some dead links, and two about the problems with the help desk itself) I finally got a response of sorts. In the second ticket about the Help Desk problems, I had reiterated the earlier tickets and requested that someone manually send me an email in response. After a few days (a bad delay, so close to the end of the Giveaway), I got an email response. My status had been more or less restored (my offering ended up on page 12 of 24), and the person responding said he didn’t remember seeing the other two tickets. Oh, well… better than nothing.

Today is the last day of the Giveaway. I gained a grand total of 5 opt-ins from it (unless there are more today). So much for my visions of glory.

It turns out that I was not the only person there having problems, and that some of those problems had nothing to do with the Giveaway itself. One of the most widespread practices in such Giveaways is to give away a package you have PLR or MRR rights to. PLR (Private Label Rights) means you can edit the product and then sell it or give it away as you choose (subject to limitations), and MRR doesn’t allow (most of) the editing but does allow selling or giving away the product (with, at your discretion, the right for the recipient to resell the product). Some of those products have been around for a few years.

One problem is that in the process of passing through so many hands, the chance of picking up a virus or trojan increases significantly. And since the packages are commonly distributed as .zip files, some antivirus programs (such as Norton) won’t always detect them in time to prevent the damage. People with more sensitive protection then have trouble downloading the package.

Another problem is that the packages most often include affiliate links as “bonus offers” and the like – and sometimes as a part of the package itself. While that is not a problem in and of itself, a lot of those links went through a particular site… one which went down during the Giveaway. Not just down – it went away (the domain name expired). This played havoc with those packages, annoying a lot of subscribers. For instance, one such offer had a package of 5 ebooks as the opt-in incentive (the thing being given away). When the people opted in and got the links for the books, those links went through the site in question and dumped them out at a seemingly unrelated (and useless) page. Not good PR for the list owner.

I was lucky in those regards. My offer was a PDF of my Alex Jeffreys book, with no infectable files or links through the down site. But I was one of the (very) annoyed opt-ins.

And most of the complaints about the problem went through the mishandled help desk.

The moral of the story? There are several takeaways here, I think. I really can’t judge whether such Giveaways are a good way to build your list. A lot of successful people use them, so I suspect they are (under the right circumstances). But from now on I will only get involved with Giveaways run by experienced marketers – those with experience running such giveaways. And I will submit my offers for approval WAY in advance of the starting date. And I will make very sure that I have an effective line of communication with the people running the Giveaway.

While I already do so, I will be even more likely to check my offers for malware and vulnerable links both before and after I put them on my download server. And I will continue to use my own download server. And I will continue to use my own links.

And, hey… I have five new subscribers on my list.

Last year, my son got an engineering degree from an internationally known engineering school. The next half year was heartbreakingly frustrating, and he ended up working at a toy store after a while. An older aquaintence (who I’ll call A) was less than sympathetic about his situation. When A graduated, the economy was on the upswing and companies were looking for engineers (and others) to fill the slots vacated by reservists who were being sent to war as well as those created by company growth. He hasn’t even looked for other opportunities since he got that job.

My son, on the other hand, graduated well into the recession, with companies cutting entire departments – even entire divisions – to avoid going out of business entirely. While he has been looking, he has been competing with hundreds of equally (or more) qualified engineers with years (even decades) of experience. He has gotten lots of interviews, and is still actively searching. In the meantime, he has gotten a lot of positive attention from his coworkers and has been moved into a leadership position.

It made me wonder… which one would you want job search advice from in the current market?