Brand Carolyn Lee Boyd a fool, but the New England author adamantly refuses to charge anything for the download of her new ebook, citing reasons of both practicality and uncontrollable uppity integrity. Real News sat down with this frankly stubborn and “slightly” bizarre woman and had the following totally unbelievable conversation:

Q: Carolyn, you are offering your novel as a free download. Why not charge something, ideally ending in the number 7, for it?

A: Well, I can look at my market in one of two ways. First, I can assume that out of the 6 billion people on earth, at LEAST 100,000 (or 1 out of 60,000, I mean, 1 out of 60,000) are chomping at the bit to read my book. At least 30,000 of them will be on the Internet and immediately find my site because there is nothing to stop them as I registered with all the major search engines. Then, they will each happily plunk down, say, $47 for the book, making me $1,400,000.

Or, I can think of it this way: my site is one of more than 100 million on the web, so that the chances of anyone both finding the site and wanting to pay $47, or about four times what a novel costs in a bookstore, for my book are slim. Maybe five will actually buy it, which would make me $235. It will cost me, say, $1000 to pay a virtual assistant to set up the snazzy site and shopping cart system and $100 a month to maintain it, so, after a year I am out about $2000. Oh wait, it will cost another $100 for my accountant to do a schedule C to report the $235, so that’s $2100 I’ve lost. So, my VA, God bless her/him, and my accountant will make money off this charging-for-my-ebook-business while I lose money. Being unrelentingly realistic, I tend to think the latter is more likely. Plus, I don’t need the money.

Q: That’s right. Unlike most Internet marketers, you have a salaried job. Don’t you go around helping old people or something?

A: Yes, I run an agency which assists elderly people to stay safely and independently in their homes. Last month I tried desperately to take a job that would have halved my salary, putting me at just about subsistence level, and in which I could tackle global human rights issues. But, they didn’t want me, so I am still stuck firmly in the middle-class, gosh darn it.

Q: Whatever floats your boat. And the novel – which is called Temple of the Subway Goddess – there’s some kind of woo-woo premise to this book?

A: It is about everyone valuing the sacred within themselves and each other. At the end, the two main characters find happiness by giving up their professional jobs to help build this community temple in a ravaged urban neighborhood. That’s another reason I offer it for free. It illustrates the point that you should do what gives your life meaning – and having people read the book gives me joy – whether it’s paid or unpaid, while benefiting rather than exploiting others along the way.

Q: Okay! So someone downloads your free ebook – here’s a good place to give us your link, Carolyn…

A: Oh! You can download the book by clicking here now.

Q: Good! Now — someone downloads your free ebook. What’s the upsell?

A: What’s an upsell? Doesn’t that have something to do with the Marketing Funnel to Eternal Damnation?

Q: Okay! We’ve had enough of you now. Thanks Carolyn! Next week: Real News readers will learn how an ordinary marketing teleconference call turned into a hotline to hell.

(Full Disclosure: The link to “Subway Goddess” is a real link to a real book and the zany plot is just as she says. Carolyn Lee Boyd is the lovely volunteer copy editor for Real News stories.)

Bookmark This Page or Email It To a Friend

Last year, I wrote a piece about how Text Link Ads had basically disappeared in Google SERPs, and how TNX popped up to try to capture some of the link buying/selling activity.

That post has been getting quite a few comments along the lines of:

you’re an idiot, I can clearly see that Text Link Ads is first in the Google SERPs when searching for text link ads.

And if I had just posted that article yesterday, these scallywags would be correct. But I posted that back in 2007, well over six months ago. And a lot can happen in that amount of time.

So today I’d like to tell you a little story…

Many years ago, a new service emerged called Text Link Ads. It was setup to allow you to buy or sell links on websites, with a premise similar to most ad networks – you put your links out there and people click them. Pretty typical.

For years TLA was a popular service and managed to earn a PR6 from Google.

But then, on one fateful day, there was a big shakeup!

With Google’s ranking algorithm being based largely on backlinks and anchor text, people could “exploit” their PageRank system by buying backlinks (instead of gaining them “naturally.”) Google didn’t like that one bit, so they huffed and puffed and blew TLA deep into the dark depths of their SERPs (back to page 5 or 6, where no searchers bother to go.)

The next year was like an ice age for link sales. With the big woolly mammoth size TLA out of sight, a herd of new text link marketplaces (like TNX) popped up and ran free over the arid landscape.

But alas, they all succumbed to the great ruler that is Google. The new services were dead before they began.

Text Link Ads, on the other hand, were hard at work, despite their lackluster SERPs. They kept bringing in more advertisers and publishers, and they also expanded their services to various types of link sales, including feedvertising. (Feedvertising is the act of placing ads in an RSS feed.)

Feedvertising would not manipulate PageRank, so apparently TLA was trying to run an advertising business, not a company bent solely on exploiting Google.

So Google did something surprisingly heart-warming – they lifted the ranking penalty!

Yes, Text-Link-Ads.com is now back in Google for phrases such as “text link ads” and “text links.”

And everyone lived happily ever after!

(Except for the companies like TNX, who crashed and burned. Oh well. It’s hard enough to get on Google’s good side when you have a legitimate website.)

The Story, Part 2

As I was writing this story, Google did something that did not surprise me at all… they must have penalized TLA once again, because now they’re not in the rankings. Google is toying with them!

They just jerk us around with their infrequent toolbar PR updates, hidden link selling penalties, and constantly changing rankings!

Where will TLA rank tomorrow??

Photo credit: bobster1985 (earthquake) | Photo credit: rpongsaj (woolly mammoth) | Photo credit: Raymond Brown (snow white)

Bookmark This Page or Email It To a Friend

The recent Trends in Endocrinology: Translational Research symposium held in Berlin, Germany was quite the eye-opener in many ways. There, scientists’ biggest discovery was not under the lens of a microscope but rather in the pages of New York Times bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek.

The book, a favorite of Internet marketers everywhere, was brought to the conference by Dr. Rory B. Wang, who describes himself as “first and foremost, a free thinker” on his LinkedIn profile. Concepts of the book, which include starting up an easy-to-maintain Internet business and outsourcing all work to overseas virtual assistants for $5 an hour, were discussed and debated. (Typically, scientists work 60 hours or more a week with some menial tasks being pushed off on surly lab assistants.) The official conclusion? That the hypotheses presented within the text were “certainly worth a try.”

And that is what has sent scientists scrambling to marketing coaches in recent weeks. Many are currently in search of their USP (unique selling proposition) as well as their niche market to serve. Coach Mary Radwinkel explains:

“The problem with these scientists is that they have been too laser-focused in their prospective fields with no extracurricular interests to speak of that we can zero in on as another area of expertise. As a result, they’re presenting me with some pretty geeky ideas.”

One of these “geeky ideas,” Radwinkel says, is Dr. Jane Pennywhistle’s laboratory mice enterprise. Dr. Pennywhistle feels that raising lab mice at home is “great for stay-at-home moms!” Their care requires just a few hours a week as the rodents are very intelligent and can be taught to self-administer their food pellets by depressing a lever with their tiny paws. Dr. Pennywhistle will be specializing in the so-called “knockout” mice, which have had a specific gene removed or deleted—in this case, the WD-40 gene, which stops the mice from squeaking.

“I’m concerned about the implications of so many scientists walking away from their jobs,” Coach Radwinkel confided. “To tell you the truth, I myself am interested in what’s up the pike in terms of the next wave of liposuction.”

And no one knows what industry will be affected by The 4-Hour Workweek buzz next. Will traffic congestion in New York City become a thing of the past as taxi drivers cut services to just four hours per week? Some mail carriers have also been spotted at Barnes & Noble purchasing the tome. What the overall impact of a spontaneously vacationing workforce is on our society remains to be seen, and we at Real News will be following the trend closely.

photo: istockphoto.com

Bookmark This Page or Email It To a Friend

Most affiliates understand affiliate marketing, it’s pretty simple. An affiliate is simply a commission-only salesperson. They get paid a percentage of the sale or a certain dollar amount per lead. (Even Wikipedia knows this!)

Sometimes there are multiple tiers of payments depending on volume, possible bonus commissions, lifetime cookies, recurring commissions, and sometimes a second level where you get paid for referring more affiliates. But those are just icing on the cake.

Today I’m just talking about standard commissions, keeping it simple. So to make sure you’re keeping up, here’s the basic summary:

An affiliate is a commission-only salesperson and gets paid a percentage of the sale when they refer a customer.

As I mentioned, that’s easy to understand. Say there is a $100 product that you are promoting and you get a nice 60% commission. For each sale you refer, that means you get paid $60. (Basic arithmetic!)

But as with most simple concepts, not everyone gets it right.

If you sign-up with a network like CJ, Linkshare, Clickbank, etc., they understand how this works. But the time to be careful is if you venture out into little niche markets with “mom and pop” type shops that have an in-house affiliate program.

These little shops and niche retailers, especially if they’re old school brick and mortar guys, might not understand the concept and value of an affiliate. Or maybe they just don’t get the concept of an affiliate program. For example, if they’re offering a 60% commission on a sale, they might be thinking of giving you 60% of their profit (not revenue) on each sale. So they might have a 10% profit margin, meaning your “60% commission” on the $100 product is a mere $6, which is 60% of their $10 profit.

Yes, it seems ludicrous that someone would advertise an affiliate commission and then tell you it’s not on the sale, but rather on their profit… But I have seen it happen. (And you thought my internet marketing scam reports were limited to just “get rich quick” ebooks!)

I think we can agree that this is a shady business practice, possibly fraud…

But it also has no basis in reality!

Why is that? Because no one would know what to expect for a commission! Calculating your earnings as a percentage of the sale is easy because you know the sale price. But you don’t have a clue what the merchant’s profit margin is! So a 10% commission from a profitable merchant could be better for you than a 75% commission from someone that makes a 2% profit on their goods.

As you can see, stating commissions as either a dollar value or a percentage of the sale is standard practice for a reason.

It just makes sense. And I even have another example which is even more realistic:

A merchant has a $100 product (something digital like an ebook) where they make a 90% profit on each sale after transaction fees and distribution expenses. For each product they sell directly, that’s $100 of revenue and $90 of profit.

But they also pay a 50% affiliate commission. So on a sale referred by an affiliate, their profit will drop, because expenses have risen to 60% (10% standard expenses plus a 50% commission.) That would create a 40% profit ($40) for the merchant on each affiliate sale.

So the profit is $50 less, but get this… the merchant still made $40 they wouldn’t have made without the affiliate! And the affiliate is happy because they get their actual $50 commission, which will pay for their advertising expenses.

So when a merchant tells you “I can’t afford to give you a commission on the sale because that will cut into my profits,” tell them “bite me, if it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t have made that sale at all!”

(And what is the variable cost of delivering another ebook, half a cent?)

Moral of the story:

Be careful if you’re promoting a product that’s not backed by a reputable seller. You might be wasting your time, money, and/or ad space.

Photo credit: ryan14072 (used car flyer) | Photo credit: vsqz (hustler with cash) | Photo credit: Sister72 (bite me)

Bookmark This Page or Email It To a Friend

Armed only with the scant knowledge of quantum physics that one can take in by skimming the texts of Deepak Chopra, high-energy time management coach Sally Squireton has caused damage to the space-time continuum, NASA officials say.

Squireton, also an amateur alchemist shaman, says she was only trying to help her clients – many of whom say there simply aren’t enough hours in a day to accomplish everything on their to-do lists.

“This is an extremely willful and selfish individual,” NASA spokesperson Remy Hodge said of Squireton. “There are laws that don’t even exist yet that she blatantly disregarded.”

Squireton is perhaps best known for having self-published the wildly popular ebook “WIIFM?” (What’s In It for Me?). Her follow-up book, “WIIFFMC?” (What’s In It for Fluffy, My Cat?), has been experiencing lackluster sales, however. Some believe the desperate e-author may have purposely manipulated the natural laws as a publicity stunt.

“This woman has ADD – Attention Diva Disorder,” said a source close to Squireton who declined to be identified. “Even though she claims to be a vegetarian, every year you can find her at the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating contest scarfing down wieners just for a chance to be on TV.”

Fortunately, the four-dimensional damage is reportedly minimal with only pockets of the population of Anchorage, Alaska temporarily thrown back to the year 1985. However, as the 80s have made a comeback, few have noticed the change and some have even been enjoying Hall & Oates concerts. NASA officials are confident that these individuals will be brought back to 2008 with just a few small adjustments involving complicated metrics, an egg timer and elbow grease.

Squireton remains free on bail.

Photo credit: http2007

Bookmark This Page or Email It To a Friend

If you have been struggling to figure out proper web design and coding, anything from page doctypes to deprecated tags and title attributes, you need to watch this ‘instructional’ video!

It’s packed with more advice than most $67 ebooks, and it’s free! You don’t even have to give up your email address!

Just kick back and watch this video:

Props to Poetic Prophet and M0serious on Youtube.

And before you ask, no, this is not just a teaser to get you to buy his more expensive ebooks or attend his seminars! He explains the entire internet marketing world free of charge:

Link Building 101

Paid Search

Conversion Closing

Social Media Addiction

Although, if the SEO Rapper did hold a conference or seminar, it would be off the hizzy!

Bookmark This Page or Email It To a Friend

You may remember Internet guru Wendy Wolinsky (”Make ‘Em Your Captive Audience!”) from the old days — living in lavish condos on idyllic beaches and showing off her impressive bank statements at Captive Audience Bootcamp. Well, that was so last year. Today Wendy is an everyday resident of the remote Podunkius, Washington where she is surrounded by the circular walls of her modest yurt and spends her time listening to the blissful bleats of the baby goats she now raises. What happened?

This reporter had a chat with Wolinsky over a lukewarm cup of fermented goat’s milk, a natural hallucinogen capable of spinning powerful fantasies second only to the delusional thoughts a computer surfer finds him or herself entertaining after realizing – for the first time – that there is money to be made working from home.

“I was at the top of my game,” Wolinsky confided. “I had a Client Distraction device like no other on my web site’s landing page.”

“Don’t you mean Client Attraction device?” this reporter gently corrected.

“No! It was a distraction — much like saying ‘Look over there!’ while pointing to the sky with one hand and emptying the client’s wallet with the other,” Wolinsky chuckled.

I pulled my purse closer to me. “I see…”

“It worked. Just like a hemi-powered Oreck sucking them into my marketing funnel.”

I nodded. “Making them your captive audience.”

“Absolutely! It was awesome. Then one day — it had to stop. How many more ebooks and info products could I create out of thin air? Probably a lot. But I wanted to give back to society. It was hard. The first checks I made out to those philanthropic organizations were never for $50, $100. They were always $47 or $97. I couldn’t control myself. I had to actually uninstall my mindset.”

“That sounds painful.”

“Yes! What are you, kidding? I watched Oprah. I was trying to be my Best Self. And my Best Self wanted to be a millionaire.”

“Well, you did succeed,” I said. Wolinsky seemed happy with that assertion, her eyes slightly glazed over from the memories, or perhaps it was the fermented goat’s milk. “What are your future plans?” I asked.

Wolinsky thought for a moment. “I would really like to joint venture with the Dalai Lama and do some more awesome things in this world.”

I decided it was time to go. Nudging several intrusive baby goats away, I made my way to the mule that had brought me to Wolinsky’s yurt, saddled up, and then quickly rode off, chasing a vibrant sunset.

Photo credit: clairity

Bookmark This Page or Email It To a Friend