Caribbean Derby

New Twitter-related Plugins Added

I ran across this article today, ironically on Twitter, “10 Awesome Way to Integrate Twitter With Your Website.” What a great list of plugins, widgets, etc.

I spend a fair amount of time on Twitter tracking whats going on, but also trying to formulate a method of building a customer base and driving traffic to my websites. There were two that stood out to me as being most useful, Tweetsuite and Intense Debate.

TweetSuite is a great plugin for WordPress that allows you to find tweets about your blog posts, much like a trackback or a pingback. They have coined a new term, “TweetBack.” It places these TweetBacks in the comments section and gives the blogger a better picture of the buzz around your posts. I am quite sure at this point, I don’t have much buzz around my posts. Additionally, TweetSuite adds a TweetThis button to the posts.

Intense Debate is a 3rd party commenting system, that will allow Tweets from the comments. Its features include comment threading, reply-by-email, commenter profiles, enhanced moderation, voting and reputation tracking.

I would encourage on WordPress bloggers to check these out.

I’d also like to hear your thoughts as well.

What is Attraction Marketing?

How would you like to build a large and flourishing customer base, downline, or list?

Would you like to be able to do this on autopilot? Imagine a world where you have customers really wanting to buy from you.

Attraction marketing is a philosophy that can make this vision of business a reality. It’s a completely different business model from traditional network marketing. Gone are the high pressure tactics. Gone is the three foot rule. Your prospects actually sell themselves.

Ever better is the fact that you can even make money throughout the process, because you use a low-cost information product to qualify your prospects and turn them into customers immediately. Can you think of a better way to find your warm market?

Attraction marketing is about building relationships with your target market as someone who adds value to the their lives. To borrow a term from the IT world, you become a trusted advisor by sharing your knowledge and information. This is where most online network marketers don’t get it.

Would you rather work with someone who is blatantly spamming you with sales letter after sales letter or someone who is sharing useful tips and information on a given subject?

You must give before you receive. Take the time to share links that will appeal to your target market. Tweet them, Blog them, Share them and build your brand. Your market will find you.

That is what attraction marketing is about.

Get 19,530 new twitter followers in 30 days?

I ran across this site while investigating marketing via lifestreaming. This site claims to have a way of getting thousands of new twitter followers.

Since I have just signed up for twitter, I would check it out.

At 14:18 on February 11, 2009 my twitter profile had only 3 followers. Those followers came about through a single tweet requesting a lifestrea.ms invite. Let’s see where it goes from here.

You can sign up for tweetergetter below:

http://tweetergetter.com/CaribbeanDerby

Update (2/12/09): After 24 hours, I now sit at 27 followers, not sure how many have been received by TweeterGeeter, but the number is growing steadily. And will RT the original message.

Change Your Thinking About Downline Building with Affiliate Funnel

Since the beginning of the internet, you’ve been able to build a downline. The conept is very exciting, let people know about your product or service, refer a few folks and bingo, you are on your way to massive online success. What’s the problem with this theory though?

Simple, years ago, downline building was more effective. Yes, there are people making lots of money online using their downlines and affiliate marketing strategies but during the past few years a change has been taking place in these strategies.

It’s called the marketing funnel and if you think of the pyramid look of a ‘downline’, flip it!

Here’s how it works. Fill your funnel with as many people as you can and funnel them down into paying customers. Start with a free front end product or service and then let your marketing turn those free leads into paying customers and clients.

Affiliate Funnel is a service that does this and so much more. It is an all-in-one business marketing and management hub that shows you how to properly promote online using the best free resources around and channel these leads into a thriving downline. This is the power of a well put together marketing funnel, taking leads and turning them into clients.

Affiliate Funnel is owned by two guys who have build massive six figure businesses using free resources and their own marketing funnel. Paul Kinder and Jon Olson have put their experience in a bottle and packaged it for anyone to check out for free at Affiliate Funnel.

Be sure to check out the Funnel today and start to promote your business the right way using the absolute best tools on the net. The results are there, it’s time to grab them…

Web 2.0 for self-branding

Image via Wikipedia

Chris Brogan has a great article on mashable titled, “How to Build Your Online Brand“.

Mr. Brogan gives a simple setup to monitor what is being said about you and your company. Also, how to tie into services like friendfeed.

I have struggled with finding a way to tie all of these sites together without have to update each and everyone of them. At this point, there doesn’t appear to be a way to ping all of them, but at least, friendfeed, aggregates all of the sites that you are on. From there, your friends can find out what you are doing.

Bear in mind, depending on your motivations here, the definition of “friend” is relative to your particular circumstances.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 10 Reasons Why FriendFeed Will Beat Out the Competition
• Using FriendFeed for E-Commerce

A truly risk free opportunity

Image by lgwright via Flickr

What if I told you that I could share with you an opportunity that costs absolutely nothing to get started?

What if I told you that you could get cash back from your online purchases?

What if I told you that you could make money by giving this opportunity away to your friends and family?

What if I told you that you could do all of this without being embarrassed of the company you represent?

Would you believe me?

It sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?

Well, it isn’t. You can have all of this and more through Aisle 19 and Escape International.

Escape International presents an incredible opportunity to make money by giving away access to the online mall, Aisle 19. Aisle 19 has over 600 online stores available. These stores have partnered with Escape International to offer 2-50% cashback on purchases that are made through the Aisle 19 mall.

Which stores are available through the Aisle 19 mall? How about these?

• 1-800-Flowers
• Barnes and Noble
• Bass Pro
• Dick’s Sporting Goods
• Eddie Bauer
• The Gap
• Home Depot
• Kohl’s
• Liz Claiborne
• Macy’s
• Office Depot
• PETCO
• Wal-Mart

This is just a brief sample of who’s there. If you want to buy, somebody has it in the Aisle 19 Mall.

There are two ways to take advantage of this opportunity. You can either sign up as a customer or as an Escape International Independent Business Owner. Either way you must be invited, just like many other viral services on the Internet today. Google’s Gmail is a great example of a viral service that has been distributed via invitation only.

The retail customer is entitled to receive cashback on their purchases, but does not share in the revenue of the company. Independent Business Owners (IBOs) make a commission on every purchase made by their personal customers as well as other IBOs they have introduced. The IBO compensation plan is quite lucrative and easy to qualify for (as low as $5 per month).

Imagine what kind of money this could mean for your family during the upcoming holiday season…

Sure, there are other business opportunities out there, but none of them offer what Escape International has to offer. Since there are NO upfront costs to get started, you have absolutely no risk. Check it out, share it with friends and family.

Here is a good introduction to the Secret of Aisle 19.

If you would like to know more, please leave a comment and I will get back with you shortly.

If you would like to get started, sign up here.

What it takes to be an online MLM success

How many times have you asked yourself this question?

“Why am I not achieving the level of online success I desire?”

Four things to think about
1. The Internet is incredibly huge, but the market for your opportunity is incredibly small. What are you doing to make yourself unique? How do you stand out from the crowd?

Everyday thousands of people decide to “get rich online.” In their search for the quick buck, they end up spending lots of money buying products from the online gurus. When in fact, all they really need to do is to follow the same model as the online gurus.

Create something that has value, gets noticed, and helps a lot of people.

Think about how you can present your products in a different light. Take the nutritionals market, what makes your super-duper drink different than the 20 other super-duper drinks? How will it benefit your customers or prospects? How will working with you make your customers lives better? What’s your “value add?”

2. Look at downline building in a different way.

What if you had an Google Group/List Serve for all of your downline? Members could share information and request help from each other. It’s a great way to build a solid team through collaboration and it’s easily duplicatable. This is a simple way that team members can help one another sponsor and recruit, replacing the three-way call.

This list is not the typical opt-in mailing list that prospects get dumped into, but a list of the people that are actual members of your downline.

3. Lose the hype. These days anyone that has spent any significant amount of time online looking for opportunities is numb to the hype. Sales letter after sales letter, which curiously seem to follow the same pattern. (As a side note and a good laugh, check out this parody of sales letters.) Unfortunately, it’s this hype that has turned a lot of people off to the idea of network marketing and online business opportunities.

Are your presentations, email newsletters, and web sites based on hype? It’s a proven fact that people will only do business with those that they trust, admire, or respect. Instead of bombarding your prospects with hype, invest some “quality” time developing a relationship with them.

4. Focus. Focus. Focus. Sure, there are many ways to make money online. Stop and think about how many opportunities are you marketing, and not just your MLM program? How many different niches are you touching?

Focus on one niche and own it. Some of us have been sucked into thinking that we need to have as many streams of income as we can keep track of. Let me ask you one question…

Do you honestly believe that you can make more money by spreading your efforts thinly across many different programs, products, and tactics?

No, you can’t. I would much rather spend my time on one niche and own it. The rewards will exceed the time spent in the long run. Why would you want to start-up more than one business? The start-up is challenging enough, why would you want to endure that again and again?

In conclusion

To wrap this up, I hope that this post has at least caused you to stop and think for a minute about the way you are running your business and what you can do to improve the bottom line result.