Yesterday I wrote about my friend Paulie introducing me to a new mlm called BookWise. I decided I’d give it a try for my friend’s sake.

Keep in mind I do VERY well in Send Out Cards. I’m one of the top 30 or so distributors in the entire company. I am NOT looking for another opportunity but this was a good friend and someone I trust.

I was also looking to replace about $1,000 a month in lost income from a web site I had to shut down. So I figured I’d try out BookWise with my friend and see how it went. It was very affordable to join so why not try it. I think my total investment worked out to be about $85.

At first I was upset. I was looking at the books and thinking man these prices aren’t that good. AND for my monthly $35 I may get a book that’s really only worth $12.

BUT I stuck it out. Paulie actually put me with another friend Bob. The two of them know I’m a serious network marketer so they decided to put a few people with me. LOL. Actually they put about 50 people in my downline!

So now I really had to take a look at BookWise.

One thing that I quickly realized was this was MORE than just a bookclub.

For my $35 I not only got…
1 hardback bestseller a month
1 new author downloadable pdf (of a full size novel)
1 audio ebook

BUT I also got
3 financial advice podcasts ranging from 30 minutes to 1 hour and 15 minutes each
1 tax advice podcast ranging from an hour to and hour and a half each

They also plan to include a speed reading tip every month.

So that’s a lot more stuff for $35.

AND my business is growing so much I owed an extra $4500 in taxes this past year that I wasn’t expecting to have to pay. So having that tax advice will probably save me a lot of money, certainly a lot more than $35 a month.

Paulie also made a great point which is his coaching is worth $500 a month, and to have him as your upline holding seminars and trainings on internet marketing is certainly very valuable and certainly worth $35!

So I’m pretty happy with BookWise so far.

I hope to write more about BookWise soon. If you have any questions or curiosities please feel free to comment on the blog or email me.

- Ben

PS. Send Out Cards team. I’m not going anywhere! I’m just trying this new MLM. It’s cheap for the people that say no to SOC, maybe this would be a good fit for them instead? AND now that I’m going full time I’ll have more time to spend working both SOC and BookWise.

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A few months ago on a MLM based forum… Someone asked me to take a look at a new MLM called BookWise and offer my opinion. BookWise is a new company founded by Robert Allen.

I took a look and at first it looked like a book club. You pay $35 a month and you get one hardback bestseller from a category of your choice, one ebook from a new author whom a publisher is trying to get additional exposure, and one downloadable audio book.

To me, the prices were ok. But I couldn’t figure out why someone would use BookWise instead of amazon.com. I mean changing someone’s buying habits is tough. With Send Out Cards we’re showing people a new way to buy their greeting cards. So we aren’t trying to change someone’s habits as much as expose them to a new way to send all the cards they forget about. With BookWise however we’d be trying to convince people to buy from us instead of Amazon who they have been using for years, or buy from us instead of from the bookstore.

Last month a friend called me. Someone who never has done MLM before. Someone I respect a lot and have known for 6 years. He has even been a customer of mine for 3 years now. When he asked me to take a look at Bookwise I had to take a second look.

My friend Paulie is someone who gets paid $500 an hour to do internet marketing coaching. He also is in a mentoring program with Robert Allen and Jack Canfield. So when he told me there might be an opportunity to get leads from Robert Allen and Jack Canfield’s seminars that caught my attention.

So I decided to take a second look at the company…

More about that second look tomorrow

- Ben Fitts

Watch the Bookwise movie

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One thing I can’t figure out about second life is how the hell are you supposed to make money in it?

I watched a one hour demonstration today including demos of some companies, colleges, etc. using Second Life. Most of them were either there to build their brand and interact with users OR to sell stuff. In some cases selling stuff was just a way to help build their brand cool factor (Like Scion cars) [Toyota Scion SLURL.]

So what if you don’t want to sell items online? What if I don’t want to sell cars, clothing, or jewlery in Second Life? How do you the business owner make money in there?

One thing I have seen that does look promising is teaching in Second Life. Companies like onsite videos are charging $999 for your video avatar to appear on a web site. However in second life you can get your own office space much cheaper and can have your avatar in Second Life presenting power point even with full audio. Several Universities are using these virtual class rooms. One University I talked to is paying $400 a year for their Second Life presence. Compare this to a $999 one minute video for your web site.

Perhaps Second Life does have some potential.

I’ll do more investigating and write as I continue to learn about Second Life.

- Ben Fitts

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So I’ve got to write about this JV fiasco again.

I get an email from the manager of this JV launch trying to explain to me how lucky I am to pay him to promote his site!

Here is his JV page where he wants to SELL me JV membership.

Keep in mind 8 months ago when I was getting into this niche I did pay them $99 to join… and honestly if he had only offered to sell me a JV for $99 I would have considered it. However what really pissed me off was he decided to charge $499 to get me to buy a LIFETIME JV Membership! That’s BS.

He tells me in his email about how he has never shut down a web site and his original web sites from 7 years ago are still around.

Ok, so you haven’t shut down a web site in 7 years… BUT how many of your members are still paid subscribers 12 months later? how about 2 years later? Are any of them still subscribers 4, 5, 6, 7 years later?

That’s my point. His upselling me! His JV Partner! To lifetime membership is nothing but GREED.

Then he goes on to tell me about how I get these great membership benefits… I usually give those to my guys free, I don’t charge my JV partners for that! Why would I? I want my JV partners to be as prepared as possible. I want them to be able to see first hand what the membership site is like. That way they’ll be better prepared and better able to sell the product. Yet he thinks I need to pay him for this?

Yuck!

What do you think? Am I crazy?

Do you have JV partners who pay you to join your site? Have you ever heard of such a thing?

- Ben Fitts

PS. I couldn’t pass this one up:

> And if you look over the JV invite page some more you
> will see that our JV members made $7,000 in commissions
> the first 30 days for those two previous programs combined
> and most still make residual income and generate traffic from
> their involvement in the past.

So he sells 50 JV partners a membership for $99 a piece. So he makes $4,950 from selling them JV memberships. Then he pays them $7000 in commissions. SO really he is only paying $2050 in commissions, because the other $4950 is really just paying back the JV’s their initial investment.

AND this was his old launch which cost $99 to become a JV Partner. His new launch wants you to pay $499 in which case if you look at the numbers above you’d see how he is making a profit from his JV Partners even when you account for all the commissions he’ll pay out!

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When you become a known internet marketer you begin to get Joint Venture (JV) invitations from other marketers.

Here are a few mistakes I’ve seen people making recently when approaching me for a JV partnership.

1. Not giving me enough information…

It’s great to approac me 1 month early, but you’re making a mistake by not giving me enough information between the original announcement and the launch. You’ve got to set a hard and fast deadline and you’ve got to keep feeding me information about your launch to keep me hungry. JUST like you’d do a member of your mailing list.

2. Approaching me to help you launch your web site, BUT you launch your web site first before you let me announce it!

Yuck! So you want me to promote your site for you, AFTER you’ve already announced it all over the place? I’m going to have a hard time making sales that way because some of my list will already be exposed to this idea!

3. Asking me to PAY to become a JV partner.

Ok you approached me! How dare you charge me! That’s ROBBERY.

On one hand I understand that you want JV partners who are going to be legit and send you some sales, but yeesh. I got invited to a JV partnership the other day where they wanted me to pay $99 or $499 to join! $499 to join a JV partnership? That seems kind of crazy. What am I going to get for that $499?

4. Giving me ebooks for becoming a JV?

I don’t need your freaking ebooks on marketing. You chose me as a JV because you knew I could help you sell a couple hundred accounts. Now you want me to pay $499 and as a bonus you’ll give me a bunch of crappy ebooks? Come on man!

Yikes, what do these people think they are doing? Don’t they know they are shooting themselves in the foot?

Regards,
Ben Fitts

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Hi guys,

Commenting on the blog is now MUCH easier. I took out the requirement to register in order to comment. I know that was confusing some people who tried to comment, or it made it so difficult that many of you would just choose not to comment

So I’ve changed the system to allow anyone to comment. You still have to enter in your name and email address and I am confirming all comments to prevent the spammers from being able to spam us.

If you run into any problems commenting, let me know!

- Ben

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July 13th is the date!

I’m retiring from my J.O.B. I will never ever have another J.O.B. again.

I will only be building my own businesses and doing consulting with the people I want to work with. I will no longer be forced to work a job and do things I don’t want to do just to earn a paycheck.

I’ve felt like the JOB was holding me back for awhile but because we were buying a house I didn’t want to jeopardize my loan by quitting. So I’m sticking with the job until after the mortgage is closed so that I can get a good rate on the loan. Then I’m going full time!

One of the reasons I haven’t been writing much is because I have been working a lot on new web sites and products I’m launching between now and July 13th. This has taken a lot of my time. I’m outsourcing a lot of it but outsourcing still requires me to be in constant communication with the programmers and graphics designers.

Speaking of graphic designs… I know the blog has been having some problems recently and I’m going to work on a new logo and new theme for the blog. The logo is being done now and should be ready next week! The new custom wordpress theme will be coming shortly thereafter.

- Ben

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Have you seen Adsense ads lately?

We’ll apparently Google went out and changed the appearance of your ads.

They updated their ads to have a web2.0 look. The adsense logo now appears in the ad as a tab. My friend Larry pointed this out to me at his Malaria Stamps site. They have a totally different look.

I also checked the adsense blog and sure enough they explained the “fresh new look” of adsense ads.

Another important change is Google has now removed the “advertise on this site” link from their adsense ads. If you want to put an advertise here link, you’ll need to see the instructions on how to put an “advertise on this site” link on your site.

Interesting changes from Google. I like em

What do you think?

- Ben Fitts

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Have you paid your taxes yet?

It’s tax time in the United States. Lot’s of marketers will be launching “tax day specials” today and tomorrow. What do I mean?

Imagine someone launches a new ebook and uses a nickelmania type script where the price goes up by a nickle every time someone buys, or buy a set amount per hour.

In they “why” part of their sales letter they say it’s because they are offering the price so low because they are trying to pay their tax bill. They appeal to the fact that all of us have to pay taxes and we all know what it feels like to have a big tax bill, so perhaps you’d be willing to pay a few dollars for their new ebook or software.

Well I’m going to avoid that kind of promotion. Instead I’m going to do something simple.

I’m going to offer you 100% commissions at Instant Buzz Mastery! 100% on silver memberships and 75% commissions on Gold Memberships! This is good until April 30th.

That’s a great way to help you make some money, right?

Instant Buzz Mastery is my ebook where I interviewed some experts in getting traffic using Instant Buzz. It’s been a really good seller for me, and even though I launched the ebook in October I still make sales almost every day.

You can signup for free, or you can buy a silver/gold membership yourself. Once you’re a member you’ll get an affiliate code you can use, plus I’ve got a ton of promotional tools to help you with banners, buttons, emails, etc.

PLUS in the next few days I’m going to be making a ton of updates to Instant Buzz Mastery to help you with your sales.

So instead of trying to line my pockets, I’m going to line YOUR pockets and help YOU make some money this tax day!

- Ben Fitts

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It’s been a week or so since I wrote. Sorry it has been busy busy busy.

We’re moving forward on the purchase of the house and I’ve already given my bosses tentative notification that I’ll be “retiring” and going full time with my home business. It should be fun.

A few weeks ago I spoke about PayPerPost blogging.

I wrote about how you can earn $5-$100 per post depending on how popular your blog is.

However did you know that YOU can pay people to write about your web site? What if you wanted to get the word out about a new web site. You could pay bloggers to blog about you and you can even tell them what keywords to use when they link to your site. In addition you can attach images and things for them to use in their blog post. Pricing starts at only $5 per post. That’s really darn affordable.

We even put up a video in the free area of MarketingICE that shows you how the blog posting things work. We also have a video from an advertiser’s point of view, but that is only available to paid members.

Signup for free at Pay Per Post to try the system out today.

- Ben

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