Have you ever signed up for a “Free” offer, only to find out that you were automatically enrolled in some sort of recurring membership that you never signed up for?

This somewhat deceptive practice is called “Negative Option” marketing and is usually attached to free trial offers or free merchandise, such as DVD’s, etc. Although this practice exists in many niches (and has been around for a long time – ever bought a cassette from Columbia House?) , it is prominent in “Make Money” type products.

The FTC and Visa/Mastercard are cracking down on it. Visa and Mastercard are now actively declining merchant account applications from companies that do this sort of business, and going back through existing merchants and cancelling the agreements of those companies that are already established and practice this type of marketing.

Yes, some of these companies disclose very clearly up front that if you get the free whatever, in 7 days you will begin getting billed 399.99 a month on your credit card automatically for the idiot of the month club…but when you try to call and cancel, the line is busy, disconnected, or worse…and you have to send 5 different emails and a postcard to cancel…and by the time you do, the time has elapsed to cancel, you get billed, and there is no recourse other than a dispute or chargeback.

For more information on negative option,  check out the FTC’s site on it here.

Heads Up!

If you’ll recall (if you’ve been reading my blog for a year or more) I attended the first Earn1KaDay summit in Orlando, Florida in January of 2009. There I got to meet and mingle with Willie Crawford, the Rhodes Brothers, Jaime Mintun, Dennis Becker, and many more. Well, it’s happening again, and I want to meet you there.

The details aren’t firmly packed down yet, but we’re looking at a May date in Las Vegas. Earn1KaDay is where my business and life changed. The contacts I made there and the time I spent with all of these fine people were invaluable. And I plan to go again.

If you haven’t joined Earn1KaDay yet, I urge you to get in now…some more new things have just been added, and there are even more to come. Take action, get out of your “comfort zone” and make 2010 happen for you.

When you own domain names associated with the trademarks of a large company, more often than not, they’re going to file a complaint with the ICANN UDRP(Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy). And more often than not, they’re going to win control of the name. Such was the case yesterday with 16 names related to Apple that one man happened to own.

Read More…

Today, we’ve got a nice goodie for you, especially if you are creating eBooks.

Here is a great little pack of 11 preformatted eBook templates for use in Word or Open Office, complete with headers. These make a great addition to the toolbox of any info product creator, or even for someone who just wants to make a Word or Open Office document look goooood.

Price? Just $7.00. Instant access after payment!

A lot of bloggers and affiliate marketers are still confused by the pending rule changes imposed by the FTC in relation to disclosure on their websites. And rightfully so. With all the “he said she said” going on regarding the rules, compliance is going to be difficult.

Jim Edwards did an interview with an FTC assistant deputy, and the interview is quite informative.

I recommend you watch… The sky is not falling and the FTC will likely NOT be on your doorstep on December 2 with a warrant.

Here’s the link:

http://www.igottatellyou.com/blog/ftc-change-interview/

In the light of the continued discussion of the Dave’s Cool Little Website post, I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about potentially bad business models. Dave’s Cool sites is one of the lessons, and another one is Louis Allport’s “99 Minutes To Internet Success” videos, later Reprint Rights Every Month.

1. Dave’s Cool Little Website

Dave’s Cool Little Websites were a hosted website service, that provided a templated combination eBay-Clickbank website. All you needed to do was pay the $97 bucks for a site, and register a domain name to point to their server. Once all this occurred, you had your own website and received 100 percent of the sales revenue. You could also make affiliate income promoting the Cool Little Websites. You should already see the pattern here – your only investment was the one time site purchase. There was no more revenue going to the Dave’s Cool team. If they had a month with no sales, they were eating the cost of hosting and maintaining the sites. After the “hot” factor dies down, sales die down, and so does the money. Bad news for the developer, and it became bad news for the site owners as all the Cool Little Websites were shut down, with no prior notification to the buyers.

2. Reprint Rights Every Month

Louis Allport is one of the internet pioneers in video based infoproducts. His “99 Minutes To Internet Success” video series was (and still is) an incredible series of products, and I think Louis was quite ahead of his time. His Reprint Rights Every Month site was a monthly membership site where you could purchase these with resell rights. I sold many copies of videos from Louis in my day. But there was a problem…

When you purchased the videos, you didn’t actually receive videos. They were EXE’s (and later PDF’s) that linked to the videos hosted by Louis. These packages came with resell rights; once you bought you could resell and keep 100 percent of the money. Louis’ licensing stated that you could NOT resell the videos unless you were a member of Reprint Rights Every Month, but unfortunately that was hard to enforce and his videos spread all over the ‘net like wildfire. The videos became devalued, eventually ending up as the infamous 99 cent eBay auctions. More and more people were getting these videos, and the only income Louis had was the first layer, the Reprint Rights Every Month subscribers. I would hate to see the hosting bills Louis had once the bandwidth vs. income chart went the other way.

So, take these business models into consideration should you plan to pursue any kind of ongoing service or info product. Such a business can prove to be quite lucrative, even the businesses above; but you will want to make sure that your business will continue to provide for you down the road, not just for the short term.

In all the WordPress work I do, I usually drop in a text object widget and include an optin form for AWeber, my autoresponder provider. This usually works well. But, today, I got word of a new plugin by MaxBlogPress called Optin Form Adder. This plugin does so much more than just let you add an optin form to your blog – no, it lets you totally customize it to make it look like it is an integral part of your website. Field, text, background picture, box width and height, it can all be customized. And best of all, the plugin is FREE. Go take a look now!

What happens when you combine Twitter, Digg and Wikipedia?

You get TipDrop.

Jon Leger (of the famous 7 dollar script fame) has created a new “social knowledge” website called TipDrop.com, where you share tidbits of information on “Tip Sheets”. It’s more focused than Twitter, as it is all based on useful information (not what someone had for breakfast or what their dog just did).

This has the potential of becoming a very focused information site, as you are allowed only 255 characters per tip.

Credibility is voted on – you can vote tips up or down, so hopefully Spammy posts won’t inundate the site.

Go take a look now, you’ll be addicted. http://www.TipDrop.com

P.S it’s free as of this writing, and you can share Adsense revenue.

I went to my Cool Little Website today to check it out, and I discovered it was gone…as are all the other Dave’s Cool Little Websites out there. When you reach one, you are presented with a page that simply states…

Due to changes in technology and eBay
policy this program is no longer available.

Interesting. Changes in technology? Meaning Dave didn’t want to update his code? Or sales were finally flat enough it was time to scrap the project? And, I know eBay has been changing policies (making it more difficult to get an ePN account) but what policy is prohibiting these sites?

Anyone got any inside information? Please share!

I just learned of a new plugin that allows you to make screencasts directly in Wordpress and place them in your posts. I tried it out and it is quite cool!

Take a look here: http://www.skoffer.com

I’ve had people ask me what the deal is with Squidoo. Why create a Squidoo page? Well, take a look at this screenshot. It should be self explanatory.

I created a Lens not too long ago with a review of Traffic Drill, a site by John and Matt Rhodes. I had full intention of actually using Traffic Drill to boost this lens at least on to the first page in Google. It turns out that Squidoo did this all by itself, for the most part. I posted the lens, waited a couple of weeks, and I was number 7. Several days later, number 5. After that I briefly jumped to number 1, and now I’m sitting steady at number 3. I’m not a Squidoo expert by any means, but this clearly shows that a Squidoo lens combined with good articles with your target keywords in them can rank well in Google.

So, that is why you should Squidoo. More on this very soon…

As reported earlier, Matched.co.uk was a site that bloggers could go to get paid ads for their blogs. (Reference this post)

As of November 20, Matched is out of beta, and according to their site, out of business.

It was fun while it lasted.

Here’s proof that this whole internet marketing thing works, and can work with practically no effort. This is also proof that article marketing works, and it is probably an example of how NOT to do it.

A while back, I was doing some keyword research and found a niche that I knew something about. I say keyword research loosely, because in all reality, I wasn’t doing research. I was playing with SEOBook’s Keyword Research tools to see what it could do. I found a keyword set that had some pretty good results in a niche that I know something about (bad credit auto loans and “buy here pay here” lots, if you must know), and figured I’d write a short article on it.

I had been invited to join the affiliate program of a bad credit lender on Commission Junction (which is really what sparked this whole thing). This particular program pays 10 bucks a lead. Not too bad.

I was able to register a dot com name with the keywords in it. I grabbed a free web template and put my article in it along with the affiliate link in several strategic places throughout the article.

I then forgot about it. Did nothing with it – no promotion at all.

6 months later, I’ve made 50 bucks off of the site.Sure, 5 leads in the time the site has been up is not a lot. But you know what? It’s 50 bucks I didn’t have before.

Proof to me that organic search works, and that you CAN make something from article marketing if you even take just a little action.

Too many Internet marketing books tell you the “what”, when you really need the “how”. They tell you, “You need to upload your sales page to your website.” But, they never show you the steps of actually uploading that website – they don’t show you the “how”.

Why are so many information product creators writing “what to do” books, when they should be giving you the full “here’s how you do it” information? Because it’s much easier to tell you what to do, rather than take the time to actually sit down and show you. It’s like the difference between telling someone, “You go to 336 Pine Street” and explaining to them, “You go two blocks down this street, turn left on Magnolia Avenue, go straight a half block, and it’s the yellow house on your right.”

Kevin Riley writes the kind of detailed e-books that show you exactly, step by detailed step how to do something. He never assumes knowledge. He never skips over anything. And now, he’s created a comprehensive Home Study Course that takes you every little step of the way from the very beginning all the way to having your own profitable home-based Internet business.

With his step-by-step screenshots, illustrations, and photographs, Kevin lays out a Home Study Course that anybody – of any skill level – can easily follow. He even includes a valuable ‘Set Yourself Up For Success’ guide to get you fully organized for success.

Kevin is also well known for vastly over delivering on highly under-priced products, and this Home Study Course is no exception. Go now and get it while it’s still at the ultra-low Recession Buster price.

Click Here For More Information

If you have owned any domain for any length of time, no doubt you’ve gotten a renewal notice from the Domain Registry Of America (or Liberty Names Of America, another name they operate under). I get these all the time, and my wife now knows that it isn’t mail that I want anymore. It’s a shame that CAN-SPAM doesn’t include postal mail, since that is exactly what these notices are. You’ll get an official-looking “courtesy letter” that urges you to renew your domain name by enclosing payment. If you take the time and read these letters carefully, you’ll realize that;

1. You are transferring your domain away from your current registrar;
2. The prices to renew are quite uncompetitive ($30 for a year? That is SO 1998);
3. They got your contact information by harvesting WHOIS information.

You’ll get these urgent-sounding letters well in advance of your domain name’s actual expiration – sometimes up to 6 months before.

What you can do:

1. Write the Federal Trade Commission and complain…and hope they do something about it. (They’ve already been there once before…)
2. Simply rip it up and throw it away.
3. Type up a similar fake letter explaining that their domain, droa.com, is about to expire and send it to them – and that you’d be happy to renew it for $500 per year.

OK, the third one is a touch vindictive. Don’t renew your domain through these people. The more people that know about this, the less will fall for it and DROA will slip silently into nonexistence, or at least straighten up their business practices.

Oh, one more thing…Domain Registry Of America is a CANADIAN corporation. Hmph.

Yet another reason to join Earn1KaDay has come to the surface. Expert article marketer (5 figures a month) Tim Gorman has come on board Earn1KaDay as a “staff expert”. This adds yet another dimension of success to this already value-packed membership site.

On a side note, I just made veteran (I’ve been a paying member for 4 months) today on Earn1KaDay, and got access to the additional resources veterans get…and once again I was extemely impressed by the continual value that Dennis gives his members.

His mantra is “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet”, and so far, in my 4 months of membership, he has lived up to and surpassed that mantra.

The Rhodes Brothers have hit another home run with their “10x Method”, teaching a system for creating multiple streams of income that fits you, not the other way around.

Watch The Video

If you have sat and thought about building a custom theme for your Wordpress blog, but the Codex confuses the hell out of you and you just don’t have the wherewithall to spend a day with Google, I’ve got good news for you (and trust me, I’ve already got a copy on order). There is a brand new DVD out called “How To Theme Wordpress: From Blank To Beautiful In 2 Hours“. I’ve not yet seen the DVD, but it sounds like a very good foundation to learn how to build your own templates for Wordpress.

Keep in mind that Wordpress templates are in demand and people are paying for custom templates.

So, go grab it now!

There aren’t a whole lot of wearable products out in the world related to Internet Marketing or MLM, so I decided to head out and set up a store on CafePress. Right now there are only a few designs in the store. I’m planning to add more merchandise, such as mugs and mousepads. Not to mention more designs.

Creative outlet, you ask? Yeah, I love coming up with stuff and putting it to Photoshop. You can bet that you’ll find me wearing some of these a lot. There are nights when I’m brainstorming ideas for my businesses that I will just open up Photoshop and “noodle around”. Some of these designs originate from that “noodling”! So, if you feel inclined to wear a shirt that will have your friends green with envy (or perplexed about their meaning), take a look at the store today. The link to T-Shirts above will also get you there. Enjoy!

The Great Office War from Runawaybox on Vimeo.