The Freedom Net

If you’ve been looking to earn a living online for very long, then you’ve probably heard of Cha Cha.  Cha Cha is a new search model for the Internet, that has a human component.

Here’s how it works.  Someone visits the Cha Cha website, and puts in a search term and asks for a “guide”.  The guide is a real, live, human who will research the term on their computer, screen the results, and return only the best, most relevant results to the person making the request.  Once the search is completed, the user gets to rate the guide and his or her overall experience with the site.

So what does this have to do with making money online?  Well, as I said before, the Cha Cha guides are real, live humans.  They work from home, and they get paid.  At first it sounds like a wonderful concept.  In fact, there is an affilate aspect to it, as you can also get paid for the searches completed by your referral network.  It is supposed to range from $5 an hour to $10 an hour (once you figure in the referrals, that is).  However, you don’t get paid to be ‘on call’, only for the actual time on a search, or for training new guides (once you yourself are qualified).

Because of this, I would not recommend Cha Cha as a great money maker.  I’m sure it will serve it’s purpose for some people who are looking to earn some extra cash, but I don’t believe it will appeal to those seeking to gain their financial freedom and buy back some of their time from the ivory tower.

Who would have thought it?  I’ve submitted four blogs to Pay Per Post, including this one, which is simply a resurrected copy of a blog I had previously approved through them.  And guess what?  You got it … rejection!

Yes, all four of them were rejected.  Be sure and read the small print when you sign up for Pay Per Post.  While it’s not hard to meet their criteria, it is very important to do so.  I still recommend PPP, but make sure you do your homework before submitting your blog.

Key points include:

• Blog must have existed for 90 days
• Blog must have at least 20 post in the last 90 days
• Blog posts must be completely visible on the front page, no truncation
• There cannot be a period of no posts greater than 30+ days in the last 90 day period

To their credit, this simply means that they want to make sure that you are serious about blogging.  This helps to ensure that their advertisers get the most bang for their buck.  I completely understand that.  It still doesn’t mean that I’m not disappointed.  Oh well, back to the drawing board.

OK boys and girls … check your e-mail inbox today!  You will probably find at least one, if not multiple e-mails regarding the demise of the Internet marketing niche as we know it today.  Some of the e-mails I’ve seen will tell you who is behind this new report, others hide the fact for fear you will never read it because it’s from a very well-know guru.

Modeled very openly after the ‘Adsense is Dead’ report and site we saw several months ago, this guru ups the ante for the subscriber base, paying $1 for all referalls.  Obvsiously, I’ll play the game … if YOU want to read more about The Death of Internet Marketing, just click on the preceeding link.

So what’s my take on the overall report?  Very accurate, and very much along the same lines as several of the posts that I’ve done in the past year here, here, and here. It is finally refreshing to see some of my points validated by a well-know, high-income-earning Internet guru!  It makes me feel all sorts of warm and fuzzy inside!

The bottom line is this:  This is literally one of the BEST Internet marketing reports I have ever read, bar none!  There is really no reason not to dowload and read this 50+ page report … it won’t even cost you one red cent!  If you don’t know where the future of marketing online is going, you will be lost in the dust of the days gone by.  I’m not saying this guy has all the answers (neither did the “nada-guru” of life after adsense), but he definately sees the problems clearly and presents some strikingly refreshing alternatives.  This should be a “must-read” for anyone involved in Internet marketing.

It must have been the article where I said Google doesn’t really matter.  Or perhaps it was my review of search engine marketing.  Or maybe the adsense is dead thing.  Whatever the cause, it is truly bizarre to watch your site go from a page rank of 4 down to zero.  Now I’m not black-listed, mind you.  The Google PR bar isn’t grey … it’s still white.  So they have the site indexed, but the page rank has been reduced to nothing.

That’s ok … because I’m going to show you the best deal I have ever seen on getting paid traffic to your site.  In fact, it has nothing to do with Google (haha!) and still serves up over 1.5 billion searches per month on roughly 35% of the search engines out there!

So if you’ve ever thought about using Google Adwords to drive traffic to your site … you don’t have to be confused and pay those high prices for targeted traffic any longer!  Stay tuned for the best PPC search engine service I have ever seen.  Google, eat your heart out!!!

I thought I would blog today about something that I am seeing more and more of in the Internet marketing scene. It’s always been bad … but I think it’s getting worse. I call it the “website stuffing” syndrome. Call it what you want … it’s VERY SIMILAR to the envelope stuffing scene that hit mail-order, newspaper, and magazine ads by storm (and, remarkably, continue to do so!).

So what’s the comparison? How can evelope stuffing compare with Internet marketing? Well, for starters, let’s take a closer look at envelope stuffing.

John Doe wants to make money from home, for whatever reason. He sees an ad in a newspaper offering him $5 per envelope that he stuffs from home. Stuff only 200 envelopes a week, and John can make a nice income of $1000 per week! Sounds pretty awesome, doesn’t it? Well, it would be except for one thing. The “info package” that John is sending off for that is costing him $5 plus postage is the same “info package” that John will be stuffing into envelopes himself. You see, the secret to this “opportunity” (scam is a better word) is to convince others (through national and local advertisements) to buy in to YOUR program of envelope stuffing. Then, when they send you their money, you are actually earning money to “stuff” the “special report” in the envelope you will be mailing to them! What do they learn from this packet? Only how to duplicate the process and set up another enelope-stuffing scam.

Well, the 90’s are gone, and we have entered the brave new world of the information age. The Internet has brought money making opportunities to all areas of the globe … or has it? Perhaps it has only brought the master-scammers to all areas of the globe. Now, I do truly believe that the Internet represents a wide-open opportunity for the right people to develop new sources of income. It also presents tens of thousands of regular everyday Joes (average people) a chance to earn an income online through various employment and freelance opportunities. However, in Internet marketing, there is a dark side. This is so hideous and disturbing, that most people will never talk about it. I call it website stuffing.

It goes like this. Mary Jane wants to be a work-at-home mom. Unfortunately, before she finds a real telecommuting opportunity or a real home-based-business that she can really do … she finds the allure of Internet marketing. Whether it’s a product offering “thousands a day from blogging” or “building an e-mail list of thousands in a week” … these opportunities really vary little from the aforementioned envelope stuffing deal. Dont’ believe me? Next time you get that “special offer” from your favorite “guru” ask yourself this: is he going to really show me how to generate the traffic needed to build that magic list, … or is he really just building his list? Or, perhaps it is a magic portal site … “learn to promote this site, and these three special programs will make you rich!” … and if you do have any success, you’re simply building thier downline. So here’s where the real rubber meets the road: find a successful online marketer … and if all they peddle are info products on “internet marketing”, ask them what else they sell. What real product are they using these great techniques on? If they don’t have one, then they are really nothing more than helping you to stuff internet envelopes. You learn how to earn by selling the same garbage they sell.

Ultimately, you are much better off doing one of two things:

(1) Develop YOUR unique product that you can promote in the REAL world, as well as the online world.

(2) If you are truly wanting to earn an income from home, then start doing it today. Don’t spend hundreds of dollars on info products that teach you how to sell other info products! Find a real work-from-home opportunity and go for it! There are many, many companies that use telecommunters, as well as freelance professionals. Even if you don’t think you are experienced in an online job field … do some research and find out!!!

Don’t let someone else tell you what your dream should be! Figure out what YOU want to do, and go for it!

If you’ve ever read financial planning books at all, you know that life insurance is touted as one of the best investments you can make.  The reason for this is that it creates an instant estate for your loved ones in the event that something happens to you.

Term life insurance is, by far, one of the most popular forms of life insurance.  The reason for this is because you can get a lot of coverage, usually for a very low price.  Consider a $500,000 policy on a 35 year old male, for just under $17.00 per month.  Not too bad, right?  You can get a free online quote from Accuquote, and see just what it would cost you to have the safety net of an instant estate!

If you’ve ever tried to setup and run your own Google Adwords campaign, then you know how frustrating it can be. Start out with a small budget and a small keyword list, and you will go no where, fast. If you go too far overboard, however, you can find yourself busted with no marketing funds left, and no results! That’s where paid search management comes in. Apogee Search offers this feature.
Ultimately, I personally prefer to go for free search listings and achieve a high-ranking position using peripheral keywords and good SEO techniques. Perhaps I will write another article on that. I did a post earlier on how I kicked butt on Yahoo! and MSN, and why Google really doesn’t matter. Check it out here. I figure it like this: if I’m going to pay money for a service to help me get customers, I’m going to pay for something I can learn - techniques that I can master to help me in search engine rankings - rather than having someone manage a paid advertising campaign.

Well, football season is upon us. It’s the time of year when football fans come out of the woodwork like you wouldn’t believe. As a Pay-Per-Post blogger, I’ve been presented with a great opportunity, to review a full-blown football calendar free of charge from Doc’s Sports. The calendar is a full-color, 120-page booklet with the complete schedules for college and professional football this season. In addition, it has some statistics like last year’s match-ups and results. This was quite impressive. As a football fan, I found it very interesting and a wealth of information.

Then, I began to read the articles. Slowly (it takes a while for me sometimes), I realized that this was no ordinary sports ‘calendar’. I noticed advertisements with scantily clad females … and for places online to do sports gambling! Then it dawned on me why the calendar has a place for all of the scores .. and also list the ‘odds’, as it were, for each team to take their division and league championships!

Well, as my ‘luck’ would have it, this PPP opportunity is a neutral one, which means I am free to express my review as positive or negative and still be paid! (Chalk one up for PPP, PPP - 1, skeptics - 0) So this is it. This post is my review.

I guess the bottom line is that if you like football alot, you might find some useful facts that you didn’t know and information from last season. Other than that, you will only find temptation to enter into gambling - an addiction that causes thousands each year to lose homes, hope, and families. Sorry, I can’t give this a positive review … poor marketing, sneaky tactics, and catering to ‘football fans’. Just because I am a football fan doesn’t mean that I am a fan of gambling.
PS - Oh yeah, and BTW, I am one of those conservative religious zealots who despises the big ‘G’ as almost as bad as one of the seven deadly sins, and NO, I doubt that gambling is going mainstream anytime soon.

EDITED 9/12/06 - Just for the record, PPP did not approve this post, since my blog is not specifically sports related. I don’t remember that being one of the initial qualifications, but that’s ok. I decided to go ahead and leave the post up, as pertinent and vital info for anyone checking out Doc’s stuff … but I did take the liberty to remove the gratuitous link to their site. After all, this is my blog, and on here, I’m the one who makes the calls.