Dear readers,

I have a to brag a little.  I’m stoked to use a phrase from my teenage days in California.  (Stoked means really excited)

I just made the Send Out Cards top 25 money earners list!  This is my first time on the list since the very early days of the company. I’m so excited to be back in the top 25!

Sorry to brag but I’m just so excited I had to share!

- Ben Fitts

PS. On another note I just added a Google Call me widget to my site! You click the widget then put in your name and phone number and Google will try to connect you to me.

PPS. Some of you might be wondering… I just made the top 25 where was I before? Last time the list was updated: July 15, I was ranked #35. In about 2 months I’ve moved up 10 positions on the list.

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Several people are very angry with me over my comments about Kooday.

A couple people complained that I called it PPC.  Sorry about that. Let’s call it PPK.  It’s a new business model so not sure what to call it. You aren’t paying per click but like PPC you are buying keywords. If you don’t want me to call it PPC or PPK you tell me what to call it and I’ll start calling it that.

I stand by my judgment that Kooday is at least a rip off if not a downright scam.  They are at least selling a product that doesn’t exist. They are at least exhibiting some suspicious behavior that you should be wary of.

No one has refuted my statement that Kooday doesn’t HAVE a search engine yet.  Yes they are selling keywords but they don’t have a search engine yet.

All you have to do to have a search engine is license an existing search engine. There are companies out there that specialize in this.  I saw an advertisement earlier for a company that licenses search engine software starting at $350 a month.  What I don’t understand is how can they be selling ads for a product that doesn’t exist yet? Shouldn’t it be easy for them to have a search engine? Don’t they have the money to license some software? Sure the $350 software might not work for them, but the point is that there are options available!

A few people told me that Kooday allows refunds. This led me to do further investigation.  Kooday’s terms of service say :

Kooday has the right to amend or add to our terms and conditions as it deems necessary and can enforce changes that affect its business plans at any time.

Due to the type of services that Kooday offers no refunds will be given. If your account has been terminated because of infractions of our terms or conditions then no refund will be given.

There are  a couple of concerning elements there.  You can mantain the rights to change the agreement but you have to state how users will be notified of the change.  You also should include contact information.  If you look at some of the web site approval services these are things they require that are suspiciously absent from Kooday’s terms and conditions.

Second of all Kooday says in their terms and conditions that they do not allow refunds.  That seems to go against what everyone else is saying about Kooday allowing refunds.  At the very least it shows that Kooday could change their policy at any time since you’ve agreed to the terms and conditions that say you are not able to get refunds.

Where is the privacy policy?  No record of a privacy policy at all.  So what are they going to do with my information when I sign up?  Are they going to sell my information?  Why isn’t there a privacy policy? Why is there only a terms and conditions/terms of service?

Another concerning thing about Kooday is they lack contact information on their web site. If this was a legitimate business they’d have customer support information, contact information, a link to their helpdesk, and even a toll-free number.  Heck I’m a one man show and I even put my phone number, skype, email, etc on my web site.

Why when I click the about Kooday button does it only take me to a sales page pitching me on buying keywords? Why doesn’t it have any information on the company, the founders, etc?

Am I the only one that finds these things disturbing about Kooday?

Maybe Kooday is totally legitimate.  Maybe they just are new business people.  Maybe these are issues they aren’t aware of.

Are you really sure you want to promote them? Are you sure you want to associate your name and reputation with a company that has this many risk factors?

Not me.  I agree with Janet Legere.  I’d rather wait 6 months to see how this pans out. If it is a legitimate business I can still hop on board 6 months from now.  I can still buy some long tail keywords.

- Ben Fitts

Disagree? I’d love to hear your opinion.

PS. there are no affiliate links in this post.

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Dear surfer,

I have a warning for you today about a new online business opportunity called Kooday.

I don’t want to call Kooday a scam because I don’t know enough about it. But I certainly do want to warn you about it.

You see when people are new to the internet and home business they fall prey to a lot of these so called “opportunities”.  These scams, rip offs, con artists, or whatever you want to call them make these opportunities that sound great but are really full of false promises.  They make a big splash because everyone wants in on the latest greatest opportunity, but one day people wise up.

Kooday is a new pay per click search engine.  They are being marketed heavily in some internet circles right now and there is a lot of buzz.

They are selling themselves saying that you can buy keywords.  You can then rent those keywords to other people who want to use the same keyword, thereby earning yourself commissions. You can also recommend others to Kooday.

The issue isn’t whether or not that could work.  It could work.  You certainly could make some money now if you get started early and sell a lot of keywords.  However…. Long term buying keywords will only work if people actually search on Kooday.  What good is it to own a keyword if no one ever uses  the web site to search?

The real difficulty with search engines is how do you get a percentage of the market? How do you get people to search your web site instead of searching using Google or Bing?

Here is a warning right from the Kooday home page August 30, 2010:

Our Webcrawlers have not yet been turned on and once activated relevant results will be displayed. Our algorithm will impress the world. Currently our directory content is being used in beta and search relevancy is not accurate.

Kooday is admitting they don’t even have “relevant search results” yet.   At this point Kooday is selling false promises.  They are selling keywords in a search engine but they don’t even have a search engine yet!  Shouldn’t they have launched the search engine first?

This has happened at least 2x that I know of in the past.   Search Big Daddy and Search Estate both tried to take over the search engine market.  They allowed you to buy keywords just like Kooday is.  SBD even had some programs to pay surfers for searching their web site.  Yet they never took off.  They didn’t have enough people searching to make it worthwhile.

If there are only a small number of searchers using a search engine only the most popular keywords will receive enough clicks to make buying them worthwhile. Keywords that are not popular may go days or weeks without someone searching for them.  Advertisers give up because they’re paying for keywords that are never clicked.

The other thing to think about here is… if there wasn’t a business opportunity attached to it, who would use Kooday? Sure people would want to buy some keywords just in case it works out… but there wouldn’t be nearly as many people doing it… especially since the Kooday search engine doesn’t even work yet!

Is Kooday a scam? Maybe. Is it going to fail in 1 year? Most likely.

Could you buy some keywords and hold on to them in case it works? Certainly… but just be careful.  Don’t invest too much time or money into something like Kooday.  Don’t let it take time and energy away from building your real business.

- Ben Fitts

PS. No affiliate links were used.  This was not some trick to try and get you to buy Kooday ads through me. I genuinely don’t like the service and would not spend a dime there.  I’m not even comfortable giving them my credit card.  At least when Search Big Daddy and Search Estate launched they HAD a search engine in place.   Kooday doesn’t even have that yet! Smells like a rip off to me.

PPS. This is my opinion based on 17 years of being on the internet and 13 years of doing internet marketing. I’ve seen a lot of these come and go.

PPS. Some people are mad that I call it PPC.  I dunno what to call it? PPK?  Pay Per Keyword?

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Dear readers,

Usually when I disappear for awhile it is because I’m busy working.

The past couple of weeks have been a blur for me because I have 3 new products coming out!

I think you may find all 3 products interesting but this one in particular is notable. I’ve set up webinars for my business associates and friends.  These weekly webinars are on the topic of 40 ways to grow your business using greeting cards, postcards, and gifts.

This is going to be a beneficial webinar for any business owner.  We’re going to cover in detail 40 different ways to grow your business using greeting cards, postcards, and gifts.  We will be talking about a greeting card system you can use for follow up but you can even apply some of these same ideas to email, text messaging, or other forums of communication.

• We’ll talk about building relationships with clients and customers.
• We’ll talk about getting more referrals.
• We’ll talk about training team members, business associates, and employees.
• We’ll talk about rewarding people for their hard work.
• We’ll talk about prospecting.
• 40 different methods to Grow Your Business!

Another aspect you may find beneficial is you may want to create your own system like this for your team.  When I have written in the past about having your own MLM marketing system this is what I meant.  I am talking about a generic system your team can use to promote your business AND build themselves up in the eyes of the prospect.

You can join my webinars to see how I’ve setup the system.  Here is a quick overview of how this system works:

1. Lead Capture Pages personalized for each member of my team
2. Prospect enters in their email to register for the webinar
3. Prospect is asked to confirm their email
4. Once confirmed they will receive autoresponder emails and reminders about each webinar
5. An email is also fired off the the team member to let them know they have a new prospect
6. Each email in the autoresponder is personalized to my team member NOT me
7. Email reminders will go out day of webinar to remind people
8. All emails and autoresponders drive traffic to the webinar schedule which also contains the contact information for my team members
9. The webinars are setup using InstantTeleseminar.

The key here is that it is super simple for my team members.  Every team member has one link to promote. That’s it. They promote their link to get people to register for the webinars and the rest of the system does the work for them.

We use the autoresponder to keep in touch with the prospect and continually remind them of the benefits of the webinars and the upcoming webinar schedule. The webinar is generic  and at the end of the webinar we tell people to get back in touch with the person who invited them to the webinar.

New people who join our team can instantly get a web site like this and use the same tool to promote their business.

The whole team gains momentum and focuses on one simple marketing system.

Want to join us to see what the webinar is about?  Register for our 40 ways to grow your business webinar. You may learn some tips for growing your business.

- Ben Fitts

PS. Some links in this post are affiliate links.

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Dear reader,

Building a successful network marketing business is NOT about You making money!!!

It is about helping others make money!!!

Does that make sense?

When you help others make money you will all make money. If you get to be really good at helping others make money then I assure you, you’ll be wealthy. You’ll never have a hard time finding people to join your business. EVERYONE will want too.

Here is what made me write about this.

This guy I met online was promoting  this new social network (SWOM).  This social network targets people like you and I. It targets other network marketers.

I have seen many of these come and go.  The problem is they are sold to networkers like you and I. Being networkers we all buy into the hype. Mostly because we’re entrepreneurs and looking for additional revenue streams.  Here is where the problem comes in: We are all already in business opportunities. We’re not looking for new opportunities. They pitch us on the idea that we can market our business to a bunch of other networkers but it never seems to work out that way.

A lot of people join thinking this is going to be the next Facebook.  They usually go strong for 6 months and then begin to die out slowly.  Once all the rush of networkers joins there is no one else to join except new people just getting started in network marketing.  They don’t attract the public because the public wants to go to Facebook where 500 million people are.  They don’t want to go to a social network for network marketers pitch them on deals every day. be

Anyway, I was letting this guy know that promoting a program like that isn’t worth it.  That these programs usually die out.  Here was his response.

I have made over $700 with Swom, if the site closed down tomorrow I would still be in profit. So I do not understand what your point is. Please if you are going to make inflammatory comments about other peoples biz-op’s, make sure you know what you are taking about first .

I bolded and underlined a couple of points in his message. He basically said “F-You I made my $700″.  He doesn’t care if the program dies.  He has made his money!

That is the problem with a lot of network marketers. I feel that is one of the reasons why MLM and network marketing get’s a bad reputation.  You have people out there that are greedy and only care about themselves. They don’t care about helping others.

When you promote programs like this you hurt your reputation.  I’m not going to call SWOM a scam.  I doubt it is a scam.  However I do know SWOM is doomed.  Everyone going there is going to sell people on their opportunity but everyone there  already has an opportunity.  That is a recipe for failure.  When the average person discovers they aren’t going to get any sign ups they will quit SWOM.

I am sure you could join SWOM and make money at it.  However making a quick $700 isn’t worth hurting or risking my reputation on a business that won’t be around long.  Come back to me this time next year and tell me SWOM is alive and doing great. Then I’ll take a look at it.  My reputation isn’t worth that risk.

That is why focusing on helping others is important. Your reputation is in tact.

If you only focus on helping yourself make money you will hurt others in the process. You will hurt your reputation in the process.  Sure a sucker is born every minute and you can continue to market programs and make money, but not very many people will stick with you.

I have people who stick with me. If I promote stuff I have people I know will buy anything I recommend. Why? Because they have benefited from working with me in the past. They’ve made money. I’ve taught them stuff. They know, like, and trust me.  That is worth a lot more than $700 to me!

Making money in networking marketing is about helping others.

Agree? Disagree? Want to spam me with your SWOM links? Want to tell me I’m wrong?  I’d love to hear from you!

- Ben Fitts

PS. This week one of those people that trusts me asked me about paying for a SWEEVA membership. (see the graphic for sweeva in the sidebar.) I told her no.  I told her no because I don’t think her product would market well on Sweeva.  I didn’t want her to buy something from me that wasn’t right for her.  I didn’t think loosing that trust from her was worth the money I’d make from selling her Sweeva when it wasn’t going to benefit her.

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Dear readers,

There is a cure to the MLM blues.

Just the other day I received an email from a team member that had been out of touch for awhile.  She had some personal stuff come up and so she took a little time off.  In her email she was telling me about how most of her team had quit but she had 3 team members left. She was wondering how to get them working again.

Do you guys see the problem in her statements?  She’s focused on her past. She’s focused on the 3 distributors she has left.  They aren’t even doing anything in the business.  She wants to try and save them. She wants to try and inspire them to work again.

You can’t force anyone to do anything… But there is a cure to the MLM blues.

You can actually inspire them.

How do you do it? You simply need to go out and start building again. You start sponsoring new people.  By sponsoring more people you’ll have a chance to meet someone who gets it. Hopefully someone who is ready to start building right away.  You’ll also have a chance to inspire your old distributors.

I’ve been amazed that when I get back into building mode my team feels it.  I’m not sure how they feel it but they do.  I start getting phone calls out of the blue from distributors I haven’t heard from in months (or years!)  They’re ready to work.  I didn’t do anything to them. All I did was get back to work myself.  Through the law of attraction somehow they feel it too.

Let’s put it this way.  Is sponsoring new distributors ever a bad decision?  No.  Sponsoring a new distributor is never a bad decision.  If you’re at a loss for what to do in your business… If you’re at a loss for how to take your business to the next level, try sponsoring some new distributors!

Simple isn’t it?

Ben Fitts

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Dear readers,

A mentor of mine suggested to me that when he hadn’t sponsored anyone in his business he made a chart on a wall signifying the 20 people he wanted to sponsor.  He had never sponsored anyone yet.  His mentor told him that on average every 20-30 distributors you will meet one leader.  This one leader can lead to a full time income for you.  He set a goal. The chart on the wall was a symbol of that goal for him.

I recently went through a divorce. During that time I went for 6 months without sponsoring any new distributors into my business.  All I did was focus on my existing team and helping them. I didn’t want to call back prospects or speak to people. I was in a rut.

How did I get out the rut?

I took my mentor’s advice but I took it up a notch.  My goal? Sponsor 50 new distributors. Here’s my dream board. This is on my wall across from my bed.  When I wake up in the morning this is the first thing I see. When I go to bed at night this is the last thing I see.

You can click the image to get a full size picture.

You’ll notice that the numbers 1-50 are on the board.  Counting down from 50 to 1.  The first 6 numbers 50-45 are in green and have the names of distributors I’ve already sponsored since I set this goal. I’m counting down to 1.  The halfway mark and the finish are marked off.

I’ve gone a couple steps further. I have some “I am” statements written above the board. These are positive present tense goals written as if they already exist.  To the side of the board are my rewards for accomplishing this.  On the left hand side (off picture) are a couple of watches.  My next promotion in my Send Out Cards business I will get, as a reward from the company, a gorgeous custom watch.  I have two photos of different styles of these watches on the left hand side of the board.  I know that by sponsoring 50 new distributors the odds are I will hit at least two new leaders and this will promote me.

On the right hand side of the board I have a couple of pictures of hot rod cards.  These are classic 1930′s era hot rods. I am going to reward myself when I sponsor all 50 with a new hot rod.

By doing this I’m making this a reality.  I’m envisioning it in my head every day and every night.  As I mark off another number on the board I’m building momentum.  When I only had 1 or 2 marked off the goal seemed further away but in the past 16 days I’ve marked off 3 more names on the board.  I’m building momentum and I can feel it.  Imagine what the momentum is going to be like when I’ve sponsored 20 or 30 or 40 of the people?  I’m going to be unstoppable!

I’m going to have to reset this goal to sponsoring 100 or 150 distributors

Do you have any goals for your business?

Do you have them in writing?

Have you shared them with others?

I’d love to hear your stories.
Ben Fitts

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Dear Readers,

Perhaps you’ve discovered 400 million people are on Facebook and want to grow your business there.

Here is an MLM Warning for you trying to build your business on Facebook…

We’re running into some issues with people targeting our friends on Facebook.  We’re finding people who are targeting people they don’t realize are already distributors with us and the ONLY place they could have found this person was Facebook.  If they’re targeting people who are already distributors they are probably targeting lots of other people too.

We’re also running into people who want to sell supplementary systems and are using Facebook friends as a sort of genealogy list. They can lookup my friends and see many of them are involved in the same business.  They’re using this information to try and sell them additional products which I do not endorse and which our company in fact does not approve of.  Our company is sending cease and desist orders to this vendor yet they are targeting unsuspecting friends/team members who are my Facebook friends.

What can you do to prevent this.

One option is to hide your friends. Only show your mutual friends.  To do this go to your Facebook page and then find your list of all your friends.  There is a little pencil icon there. Click on that and then click on “change visibility settings”. This will allow you to set your friends to only be visible by friends, or only visible by YOU. This will prevent people who aren’t your friends from harvesting your friends list.

The other thing I personally am doing is I’m removing most of my “friends”.  I’m going to try and get it down to where it’s just close friends and family. Then I’m setting up a “Fan Page“.  People who want to follow me on Facebook can “like” my fan page. This will allow them to get updates from me and following my activities on Facebook.

You can see I have added my Facebook fan page to my sidebar of my blog.  You can see who my friends are and become a fan yourself.

You might be saying, but Ben people can still harvest your friends from your fan page. That is true and I’m trying to see if there is another alternative.

A few advantages of the fan page is that I am lowering my total number of friends. This will allow me to keepup with my close friends and family better.  Another advantage is that if someone tries to friend one of my fans they do NOT see me as a mutual friend.  Facebook Fan’s are not mutual friends.  That will help some of my friends to not friend someone.

Previously if I saw a mutual friend whom I trusted I’d friend someone without even thinking about it.  By cutting back on my friends I’ll truly be able to trust those “mutual connections”.

Does that make sense? Do you have some tips how I can better manage a lot of Facebook connections?  Do you have suggestions? I’d love to hear form you.  Leave a comment and let me know!

- Ben Fitts
(that is also a link to my Facebook fan page!)

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Dear readers,

Are you looking to learn how to build your network marketing business on the internet?

Guess what? Don’t forget old school marketing!  That stuff still works!

Don’t forget these old school marketing methods.

Flyers – One of my favorite old school marketing methods. I invented a better way to do flyers and I wrote a book on it.  I even give away my flyer ebook for free. The basics are to not go out and distribute the handbill type flyers or litter parking lots with your trash.  Instead pick key locations and put up tabbed flyers where people tear off a tab to call your number or visit your web site.

Flyers can be used at places like grocery stores or convenience stores… You can hit the local university… You can even do riskier stuff … I won’t tell you what those are yet. I don’t want to get you into trouble!

The point is this kind of flyer takes less time to distribute and has a very high response rate per flyer.

I used this method along with classifieds when I was getting started. I learned internet marketing by night and did the flyer marketing by day. You can also incorporate it into your life.  As you go to the store break out a couple of tabbed flyers from the back of your car.  One for a product and one for the opportunity.  Post those up in the front of the grocery store where they have a bulletin board for flyers.

How many places do you go to (or drive by) each week where they would accept your flyer?  Grocery stores? Convenience stores? Gas Stations? Universities? Laundry? Small mom and pop businesses?Public Library?

Don’t forget the old school!

Remember, You can download my ebook on flyers for free.

-  Ben Fitts

PS. Some of you may call them “fliers”.  I guess that is technically the right spelling when you pluralize a word that ends in y.  For some reason I just prefer to call them “flyers”.

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Dear readers,

I am constantly amazed by this one simple thing.  I am frequently asked by my team members to change their email address on file.  It can sometimes be confusing for me to keep up with.  Imagine how confusing it is for prospects!

If you’re constantly changing your email address you’re not providing a professional image for your business. In fact I’d say you’re treating your business like a hobby instead of a business.

If you must change your email address, try to keep your old address active.  I use Google’s Gmail and they allow me to check other email addresses.  I only have to check one email account and I can retrieve all my email.

One of my team members thought my email had changed because I used a different email when I hosted a training. I laughed to myself because I probably have more than a dozen different email addresses!  I never let them expire.  I have a couple of email addresses that are over 10 years old.  One is probably 14 years old.

Why? Well what if an old friend wants to get in touch with me?  What if someone I met in another job or another business wants to get in touch with me?  It’s such a simple thing, why miss out on an opportunity.

This is also the reason why you shouldn’t be using email from your cable company, telephone company, etc.  If you change your  service someday you’ll loose your email address.  If you’re going to use a free service use something like Yahoo or Gmail so you can be sure your email address will be around for a long time.

I’d actually recommend you purchase your own domain name so you can have your own email address that you own permanently. It doesn’t cost much and gives you a much more professional image for your business.

Don’t miss out on an opportunity by changing your email or using an email address you might loose someday.

Talk to you soon,

Ben Fitts

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