JennySweets Internet Marketing Sweet Spot

Wow when life hands me something this twisty and fascinating, I just Have to share it.

Sometimes things will happen to you while you’re pursuing the many paths to internet marketing success. Things that can be considered failures. Or successes. Depends on what you take from the whole experience.

Then sometimes, once in a while, you happen to be IN on something that effects even far more experienced marketers. And you come away practically unscathed, while they, on the other hand.. might get a bit burnt..

Yesterday the first part happened to me. This morning it happened to another marketer.. and I’m not sure they even know it yet.

Let me rewind about 33 hours. It’s oh, 2 in the morning, I’m super tired, and I still haven’t gotten a fruitful lead on what product I want to put together next. I want to be inspired.. it makes the work so much easier. (My White Hat Backlink Secrets was fun once I was onto the video part but writing it? Let’s face it.. backlinks are not exciting….)

I decided to head to the Warrior Forum and check out the test forum. It’s where people test sales pages and the like, and no, your post count won’t increase there so don’t even try it :p Anyhoo, I ran across two interesting things. One offered review copies if you PM him, the other was a test page for what Sounded like a Really Cool WordPress plugin. It was called WP-Amazing, and was supposed to allow you to set up an amazon affiliate store quickly, then turn around  and populate and backlink it for you. Set and forget. (let’s get real- there is NO SUCH THING. But it would have taken some tasks off your hand so you could focus on more backlinking and writing some original content to flesh it out.)

My mind immediately ticked – no, I was not going to buy this plugin. This is not my focus right now, building niche product amazon sites. It’s product and bonus creation- and usefull stuff at that (which is more time consuming that churning out crap!) However.. if the thing works as intended.. it would make a GREAT product to work up a training bonus for!

Now.. I had NO intention whatsoever of getting in on Christmas marketing this year. Trying my best not to split my focus. I’m not prepared for that sort of marketing at the moment anyway. Too busy!  However..  I saw an added benefit to this plugin.. if I could just get a REVIEW copy. I could test it out, set up one store, and Maybe.. Just Maybe.. have a little bit of income coming in “passively” for me by Christmas.

I’m All About Multiple Streams Of Income And You Should Be Too

All of this led me to do something I’ve never done before. I wrote the seller and asked if I could possibly get a review copy. Of course I “chatted” with him a moment first.. who want’s to receive a PM from a total stranger saying “Hey give me a review copy Plzzzzzz”? :p  To my surprise, he responded with a link and a license code and said he was looking forward to my review.

Ok I’m thinking BINGO now, all excited.. because I also know of a way to get a 3 .infos from GoDaddy, pay $6.51, and actually end up Earning $5.99 back into PayPal by Tuesday on the deal. (Yes, you can do it too, if you are a NEW GoDaddy member (I had been using NameCheap), And you are on a site like SuperPoints. I’ll be posting a page explaining all of that very soon, with video.)

I picked a pretty good domain name, set up the site and plugin, and let it run. I was kinda shocked at how little “how to” or explanation there was with it. That raised some alarm bells but at the time.. I didn’t realize the seller had already listed it as a WSO. I thought, mistakenly, that he was still in the testing phase. I even had thoughts crossing my mind that I could do how to videos for him either for a fee or some other trade. (My mind is Always ticking!) I noticed some things about how the plugin functioned that raised my concerns though.

I wrote several emails to the help desk with no reply, then went onto Warrior Forum to search for an answer to an RSS / .php / cron job question I had. What do you know, the first result of my search phrase was a sales thread for WP-Amazing! The thread was a day or so old, and had several pages of people with similar issues to what I’d encountered.. and other things I hadn’t noticed yet, not being an experienced Amazon niche site builder.

A lot of the problems were ones I had noted and intended to write him about. I mean, I’m a beta tester at heart, having tested many games, and some friends software over the years, a couple of WordPress plugins recently.. it’s just natural for me to give a bug report and suggestions for fleshing out funcionality.

His answer to Almost all of the issues was that they would be implemented or corrected shortly, and an update would be sent to all buyers.  My question was…  seriously? He had it up for sale already? I knew just from using it, that it needed testing and tweaking before it had a shot..  I didn’t ask that in the thread, I thought it from the MOMENT I saw that it was actually up for sale.

Would YOU put an incomplete product up for sale?

In the course of the thread. Some much more established marketers than me came to the guys defense, or at least suggested waiting for the updates before throwing the guy under a bus. But there were other red flags as well.. like the fact that he flat out refused to show any kind of proof of income, or any sites where he was actually, currently making money with the plugin. Just a shoddy, quickly thrown together page. One of the functions potentially violates Amazons TOS, and would only require a quick fix, however he stopped responding by then..  Also.. he only has 17 posts.

I know, I KNOW – Yes.. I noticed that before I asked for a review copy but he Claimed to have 6 years marketing experience in his home country and only recently joining the forum…  Hey. It’s Possible! haha

Well I don’t feel so bad because, at least I didn’t BUY the darn thing. Others who probably should have known better were willing to toss their money in to at least test it out.

It all came to a head when Paul Meyers closed the thread at 10:09 pm EST. I was about to FINALLY post something.. an honest, critical review (it was a review copy but it was skeletal bluefart crap, at least for an already released product) but the sale was locked down. Why? To quote Paul,

Oh and did I mention the upsell for a multisite license was like $100? I didn’t?  At least not too many people bought the upsell, from what they were saying on the thread. But I did see a few unfortunate “leap then look” types who bought and couldn’t get the multisite to work properly…

At this point I could beat my self up, or I could suck it up, pat myself on the back, and move on.

Why beat myself up is obvious – I’d not Literally bought in but I’d been lured in by shiny object syndrome and wasted an entire day on something “fruitless”. I’d used up a one time deal to profit on buying domain names, and wasted the purchase on something I now had no intention of using. (Ah but I already know how I am going to end up Profiting on those names too.. and I don’t mean directly in the sale of said names.. see I’m ALWAYS thinking!)

But why pat myself on the back? For one thing- it wasn’t entirely fruitless. I learned that I can move out of my comfort zone once in a while and the results, though unpredictable, are probably never going to be dull. I got a lesson in shiny object syndrome, and succumbing to the temptation to sidetrack from a mainline project. (Yes, it would have fit with my main goal but I did get a bit caught up in the idea of easy Amazon money. Can you blame me? It’s almost time to buy presents!!) I also learned that even more experienced marketers can succumb to shiny object syndrome too. So that made me feel a bit better :p

Fast forward to 6 am this morning

An email arrives in my inbox from a marketer I have a modicum of respect for. It’s about 2 amazing WordPress Plugins and guess what?

One of them is WP-Amazing

(insert crickets chirping to help you soak it in)

That means this guy got in on affiliate selling it and.. and.. well shoot? Did he even bother Testing it before he decided to sell it? Because it takes about 2 seconds to start noticing the lacks and less than 30 minutes to have a big enough list of complaints that I would NEVER promote it unless BIG changes were made first. Apparently, this means he hasn’t checked the sales thread either, because there were warning flags all OVER the place, from page 1. And possibly the message was on autoresponder because this was 8 hours after the sale was closed down. (Not a big deal except for the lack of checking lol)

Oh Boy. See, another twist! The lesson I took IMMEDIATELY was a fundamental rule of affiliate marketing – Never promote a product you know nothing about! It will only HURT your reputation in the long run.

I hate to say it.. but that helped me feel better about the whole thing too. That was an established marketer.. at least I didn’t even Think about making THAT kind of mistake!

There's a ton of graphics packs out there for you to use on your website and sales pages, but I gotta tell you - THIS ONE HAS IT ALL! Check out the Marketing Graphics Toolkit v3  at http://jennysweets.com/graphicstoolkit . Seriously, everything you could possibly think of needing and then some! Professional, Hot, Conversion Magic!