Archive for the 'Website Building' category
Sharon Says check out Butterfly Marketing
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple months, you’ve probably heard about Butterfly Marketing. Here’s a product who was promoted a bit too well and as a result, turned off a lot of people because it was being shoved into their faces too much.
That’s how I felt, and at first I refused to even look at it. I’ve seen how these things work: lots of hype, big build up, a frenzy of buying, then… nothing. You get the product and feel like you’ve been duped. Great sales copy but like the Wizard of Oz, nothing behind the curtain.
So when I heard about Butterfly Marketing, that’s what I thought of it. Then I opened the door just a crack and took a look, kind of like “well, I’ll take a look but I’m not buying”.
After reading about it, seeing the proof of income video, and adding up everything that was included, I decided that Butterfly Marketing had been a victim of the hype machine, that there really was something unique and different about it.
So I took the plunge. Yes, I confess, I purchased it on January 31st and I’m very glad I did. The past two weeks have been fun and exciting. Here’s what happened: as soon as I purchased I got an email asking me to join a private forum for BFM owners, which I did. So did 900 other purchasers.
Overnight this thriving community sprang up and it’s totally dedicated to helping everyone get the best out of their packages. Newbies, intermediate and advanced marketers alike, people of all levels of expertise. There are some people who don’t even know what HTML means, and people are pitching in to help them get up to speed.
The other thing that’s been so surprising is all of the unadvertised bonuses that Mike (the creator of BFM) gave us. He has other sites that people actually pay to be a part of — $97, $147, and $250 memberships. And he’s giving all of us top level memberships in those sites. Sites like InstantBuzz and ListDotCom, which allow you to build an optin list. These memberships will give you a jump start on building your own list. He’s also giving us all of the products he’s ever created, and that’s a pretty long list. He says that “nobody will be left behind”, everyone who’s willing to do the work will succeed. It’s really unbelievable.
Of course the best thing is the BFM package itself, which tells you exactly what to do and includes all of the scripts and software you need to do it. To me, that’s what makes it different from all of the other products I’ve seen come and go. They might tell you what to do, but not how. Or give you some scripts, but you need a programmer to get them to work.
So I’ve been pretty busy the last couple weeks trying to grasp all of the concepts, getting to know others in the community, and brainstorming ideas for my first Butterfly Marketing sites. Stay tuned to this blog for the results.
I posting this now because some readers have asked why I didn’t promote Butterfly Marketing and they thought it was because I didn’t recommend it. That’s not the case, it’s just that I detest hype and the “in your face” emails that I got about this product. I figured that you had gotten them too, and I didn’t want to be part of the hype machine. I wanted to wait and see what was really behind the curtain.
But now that I’ve looked beyond the hype, I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you what I’ve learned so far. There’s an air of excitement and optimism on the forum that’s refreshing and contagious. As people are getting their packages, they’re reporting back and posting questions and others are jumping in to help. It’s such a positive thing and it’s only going to get better.
Like all big product launches, there were some glitches. It’s taken longer for people to get the package than they originally thought, especially those overseas. This is because everybody’s so excited that they want it to arrive overnight.
Another not so cool thing: some people actually asked for refunds for some of the products they had previously purchased that are now being given to us as bonuses, those memberships to ListDotCom and Mike’s other sites. Not nice. But there are always a few bad apples in any crowd of 900 people, that’s just life. But for the most part it’s a great community and getting better every day.
I’m really glad I looked beyond the hype and took the leap of faith. Mike really does overdeliver to the extreme. It’s really going to take my business to another level. Stay tuned…and if you haven’t taken a look, please do so now while the course is still available. (Of course there’s a money back gurantee.) Sharon Says check out Butterfly Marketing
Categories: Entrepreneurship, Website Building, Internet Marketing
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My rating: 5 out of 5
When it comes to grabbing expired domains, I’ve tried many different services, paid and free. I don’t know if it was bad luck, bad timing or both, but whenever I tried to register any of the names I found, they had already been taken, even if they had supposedly just expired! I was beginning to think it was all a racket until I found Expired Domains.
Amazingly, with Expired Domains almost every domain I’ve ever found and tried to register has been available. Of course some get snapped up pretty quickly no matter what, such as the ones that have existing PR or are listed in Yahoo or DMOZ.
But all in all, I’ve had great luck in finding previously registered names, then checking their status on http://www.waybackmachine.org before registering them at http://www.godaddy.com. Lots of the names I’ve acquired have had pages indexed in the major SEs before, and if statistics are to be believed, that makes them eaiser to be indexed the second time around.
The interface for the members area is terrific, which all sorts of options for searching or subscribing to regular updates. You can receive email updates of recently deleted domains sorted by Deleted Today, Deleting in 24 hours, On Hold, etc. You also get a thorough education on how the deleted domain process works. I always wondered what RGP meant, and now I know. I’m very impressed with their service, the layout and ease of use of the website, and best of all, the results —expired domains that are really available.
Expired Domains
Categories: Entrepreneurship, Website Building, Internet Marketing
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![InfoGoRound - King of Private Label Content]() My rating: 5 out of 5
I first heard of InfoGoRound last summer and was immediately intrigued with the idea. I’d heard of private label rights articles, and it made sense to me to use them instead of articles written by other people. For one thing, I don’t like sending people away from my site if I can help it.But the biggest thing for me—some of those free articles are terrible! Bad grammar, bad formatting, misspelling, ugh. Haven’t these people heard of using a spellchecker? Also, if you think about it, most of those outgoing links lead directly to competitors. Good for them, not good for you.
So private label articles make sense, and it’s the direction I want to go. Anyway, I was coming to that conclusion when I stumbled across InfoGoRound. What made their offering different from other PLR sites was their “Cash For Content” program, where you could potentially get a rebate for the $24.95 monthly fee.
I hate monthly fees, and will avoid them whenever possible, so this immediately caught my eye. I signed up for their mailing list and received some free sample articles. That was a nice touch—it gave me an idea of what’s behind the gate. They did a good job of staying in touch and making offers.
When I finally decided to get serious about building niche portals, I thought about IGR and took a closer look at their program. I decided to sign up and check it out, reasoning that if I didn’t like it, I could unsub. I hadn’t really thought about grabbing a bunch of content then unsubbing, but in case anyone thinks about doing that, be prepared to pay $67 if you want to continue using any content after you leave.
The way the Cash for Content program works is this: you write an article and other members rate it on a scale from 1 to 5, 5 being best. If you get a good rating (4 I think), then you get a rebate on that month’s article. So you still pay, but somewhere down the line you get a rebate. If you don’t submit an article, well you paid a small price for a lot of great articles that you can now load up into an autoresponder or post on your website.
Of course I put off writing my first article until the very last minute, and considering the amount of time it takes me to write an article, I probably would have been better off just paying the fee. But I wanted to try it at least once, so one day before my first month’s billing period was up, I fired up Microsoft Word and banged out an article on—what else?— local business and the Internet. That’s where I started, it’s a subject I know well and I find it easy to write about it. So I wrote, spell checked, set it aside, then decided it was up to my standards and logged in to submit it.
That’s when we had our first tiff—I couldn’t cut and paste the article into the editor! I couldn’t figure it out, so I went to read the directions (something I never do unless forced) and that’s when I found out that you’re supposed to type the article into the little box manually. I guess that’s their way of making sure it’s an original article, not published anywhere before, written just for IGR? Dunno. Makes no sense to me—if you’re determined to plagiarize or use pre-written content, you can very easily just type it into the box while reading it from a piece of paper.
By now I had spent much too long messing around with this article and was in no mood to TYPE it into the box. Time is money and by my calculations, I had lost quite a bit while trying to recoup my $25 fee. So I fired off an email to the IGR guy, complaining about having to type my article into the little bix, then pasted the article into my email. I knew it was a damn good article, and apparently he felt the same because he placed it into my publishing area for me, but told me to be sure and use the online editor next time. Fair enough. Next time I know to actually write the darn thing online—you can save articles in draft mode and get them just right before publishing them.
So I published it and the article has been rated a 4. If you get 2 or 3 articles with good ratings, apparently you get “special” privileges that will allow you to cut and paste. We’ll see. The membership fee is so cheap that I think my time is better spent on other things, so I’m not sure I’ll write another one.
If you want to see the article I wrote, check out my GeoLocal Blog —even though it has my name on it, you may see it anywhere online with someone else’s name on it. That’s okay, because there’s a lot of content that will be posted across many of my websites that won’t have any author’s name on it—and that’s the beauty of private label content.
Another pleasant surprise were the niche article packs—25 or 50 articles on a subject such as gardening, dating, or gambling. There was even an ebook on dating, which could be used as a giveaway to get the email address. There are about 5 or 6 of these article packs in the member area, along with the searchable article database. I was pleasantly surprised by the interface, the quality control and all the extras. InfoGoRound has thought of everything. I think I’ll stick around.
Visit InfoGoRound
Categories: Entrepreneurship, Website Building, Internet Marketing
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I first heard of XSitePro (XSP) a few months ago, while reading the ezine of someone whose opinion I respect. He mentioned in passing that he was using XSP to build multiple websites and liked it a lot. No hype, just an offhand remark. I have plenty of website building tools, but my toolbox is never too crowded for another one so off I went in search of XSitePro.
It wasn’t hard to find, and everywhere I went I found rave reviews. Hmm. I started feeling a little excited, the way I always do when I find a promising new piece of software. I clicked on over to the site and within minutes I had whipped out my credit card and was downloading the software.
I opened it up and started clicking around (I never read directions). Within a few minutes I could see how easily anyone could build a nice looking website. It’s power is deceptive though—even though the interface looks simple enough, there are a lot of very sophisticated tools built in.
I can honestly say it’s one of the best pieces of software I’ve tried in a long time.
This review is not complete, but don’t let that stop you from checking out XSitePro
Categories: Website Building
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