Are You Frustrated by Your Online Business?

In response to our question, "What is your single most important issue regarding marketing your products and services?" one person wrote:

Hi Vincent,

The one thing that I can't stand most is all of the misinformation. I've spent 100's of dollars on paid advertising, free and paid safelists, free and paid TE's and countless hours trying to market various programs and all for nothing. I'm told I need a list. I'm told I don't need a list. I'm told I need a website. I'm told I don't need a website. I'm told I need to create my own blog and then the opposite. Banners, splash pages, forums, articles, bulk mailings, opt-ins, double opt-ins, nothing works and yet everywhere I turn everybody else claims great success using these very same tools. Pish Posh! All baloney & hype! I'm ready to throw in the towel but I'm not likely to spend more money on advertising until the day arrives when I know my money is actually earning its keep.

Stewart

Boy, do we feel your pain! After all these years online, one thing is obvious to us: Creating a business is like having a baby - you've got to be in it for the long haul. It sounds like you, Stewart, have been in it for the long haul. Be assured that you are not alone in your difficulties - in fact, we showcased your message because it so perfectly encapsulates the problems some 95% of internet marketers are having.

While we can't go into every detail on how to succeed online, because it's a very complicated issue, we are actively working to find things that DO work. At this point, I - Jamie - have tried almost everything available to the average person and then some. We have had enough success that we can sustain our business, but those who skyrocket to the top with little effort are very few and far between. And many of them have engaged in clearly unethical and distasteful behavior to get there. From our studies, it seems that it takes at least two years of hard work for the majority of those who have succeeded. Others have figured it out much quicker, but even their success is not so easily reproducible. For one thing, as soon as something that works becomes popular, it often stops working!

In the meantime, consider these truisms:

• If you want to be truly free of search engines, you will probably want a list. There are many ways of getting traffic, other than search engines, but most of these are in the "nose bleed" section cost-wise.
  
• If you want to create some "easy" money, you will probably want a blog and an Adsense account (or Yahoo Publisher Network, MSN, etc.).
  

We have found these to be the "easiest" routes to make at least a little change to defray costs for other business endeavors. The first one - list building - is substantially harder to do, and in general it will take some time. There are many promises of quick list-building and so on - these methods are always worthwhile checking into, but almost nothing will be as easy as it is pretended to be.

Stay tuned, as we are always (time permitting) examining these problems and exploring the options.

Project Black Mask Review

We really like everything that Chris McNeeney produces, from Affiliate Project X to Day Job Killer to Project Black Mask. We didn't go to the head of the class with his products and make a killing in internet marketing, although we have had some interesting successes in affiliate marketing based in part on some of his methods and insights.

We will learn from Chris's latest product as well, but...we have to say that many people are simply not going to like Project Black Mask at all. Although we'd love to have the commission, we're not really going to try to sell you this product, so we'll tell you like it is. If you decide to buy it through this site or anywhere else after reading this review, we wish you the best of luck!

First of all, there's no doubt that Chris has accomplished some truly astounding things within the field of internet marketing. That in itself is amazing, considering how intelligent, determined and fierce is the competition. So, nothing he produces is not worth the time. And, certainly, getting people to think about Adsense income is probably always a sure-fire hit.

However, this product, Project Black Mask, is most definitely not for the faint-hearted or for anyone who wishes to keep his or her personal Adsense account. The meat of PBM includes the "black hat" seo strategy of spamming the search engines, which will also get your sites deindexed in a hurry. In PBM, Chris turns to notorious "Black Hatter" Alex Goad, who recommends building mass-generated content sites and putting up Adsense - a very old trick that's been around pretty much since the beginning of Adsense.

However, building mass-generated sites may work for a while, but Google will find them and cancel your Adsense account. If you don't care and have all the time in the world, you can open an account at Yahoo, MSN or another publisher network.

The hype and allure of the black-hat payoff all sounds great, but how do you keep from getting your Adsense account canceled? Google's been very much onto this exact same problem of spamming the search engines for quite a while, and this month, rumor has it, they began canceling accounts en masse for this particular problem. And then there's the problem with deindexing - you won't get much traffic if Google catches you and removes your sites from their index.

In PBM, Chris also daringly goes into the very black-hat SEO method called "cloaking." This one will get you banned faster than any other. If you value your Adsense account and any of your websites, don't do it. However, if you are curious as to what cloaking is and how people use it, then you've come to the right source with Project Black Mask. There's no doubt about it, you can learn Black Hat methods from Project Black Mask - and it is advertised as no more or less such a guide.

There's more to PBM than we've gotten to yet. We may cover some other parts down the road, or maybe not. Since most of these methods are designed to bring in traffic, we will say that there are better ways than risking Google's wrath. (Oh, there's this funny little thing about lawsuits and legal actions being taken against spammers as well - MySpace has won a couple of those.) These methods may not be easy to learn but they yield far more results than the search engines. So, in the long run, "It's not about Google." Better to learn how to get away from depending on Google than how to game them.

If you like living on the edge, you will love Project Black Mask. But, you've been warned!

P.S. If you want to know more about those other traffic methods that are NOT Google-dependent, stick around. Join our mailing list, and we'll be letting you know along the way.