Marketing Savvy - CreativeWriting.com, LLC





		Marketing Savvy CreativeWriting.com, LLC March 4, 2000 Hello Everybody, Thank goodness for the questions that clients ask. This one is very important because it involves a “scam” type setup and you should be aware of what’s going on in the wonderful world of the Internet. You’ve all heard of the term MLM (Multi-level marketing). If you haven’t, just think of Mary Kay or Amway. You’ll recognize that the people at the top of the money mountain get to keep it and the workers at the bottom do all the work and make very little. There are variations on this theme and they are prevalent on the Internet. Please be careful before getting involved in one of these. ******************************************************************* Back to Top ++SkyBiz 2000 This company sells web hosting for 1 year for $200. There is an initial $200 set up fee. When you go to the site, you cannot buy the product. You MUST have been referred to the site by one of their MLM sales persons. http://www.skynary.com/boom/ A particular person didn’t refer me, so I took a guess and used the name of Smith to find a sales person and it worked: http://www.skynary.com/smith/ When I enter the site, I can buy the web hosting. As I go through the process of purchasing a web hosting account for my “family” web site, I’m begin to see the first pieces of information suggesting that I can “join them” to sell the web hosting too. Keep in mind that what they are offering for $200 a year is something that 90% of us have through our Internet Service Provider for FREE. AOL’s free home pages: http://www.hometown.aol.com/ MSN’s free home pages (unlike AOL, these can also be used for business sites): http://www.bcentral.com/ EarthLink’s free home pages: http://www.earthlink.com/benefits/ I could go on, but I won’t. The point is that you already have free space for keeping in touch with family. The tools that are provided by your ISP are better and/or easier to use than the ones that I saw in SkyBiz 2000. So, why would you buy web hosting that you already have for free? I can only think of one reason. You’ve been sold on this being the perfect home business. Just think of it! Cheap web space, all the tools you need to set up a web site and people will fall over themselves buying it from you. You’ll be a millionaire before you can blink! Even if you only get your family do to it, you’ve made some money! How can you go wrong? Like all MLM type businesses, you don’t get rich quick and you surely won’t do it over night. Just ask any Avon representative, Mary Kay sales person or an Amway sales person. It’s hard work and it’s sales which can even be harder. The bottom line about SkyBiz 2000 don’t do it. Use your free space with your ISP to post those family photos. If you want to go into business, pick one that isn’t an MLM. You’ll still work hard, but it will be for yourself and NOT the thousands of people above you in the “profit chain”. ;-) ***************************************************************** Back to Top ++Amazon.com Patents the Affiliate Programs Boycott! Can they really own the process of linking to another site with an account number and then paying a commission? It seems so according to the Patent Office. The Patent was granted and it looks like they own it. So what do you do when you are Barnes & Nobles, Toy’s R Us, DrugStore.com, CDNow and the millions of sites that already use this type of program to get traffic to their sites? Sit back and wait for Amazon.com to sue you and make you stop. That’s what they did to Barnes & Nobles when they received the Patent for One Click shopping. Is that what they will do to everyone? Who knows? It’s important and you do need to follow the story: http://www.oreilly.com/ask_tim/amazon_patent.html What are people doing about it? The only thing they can do. Send a message to Amazon.com and let them know that they cannot “claim” an idea that was already in use and isn’t hard to re-create. Who’s boycotting them besides me? Take a look: http://www.noamazon.com/ http://www.nowebpatents.org/ http://www.plover.com/~mjd/amazon.html One thing we’ve learned about the web is that consumers are powerful people via it’s fast communications. I can’t image the Piggly Wiggly grocery store chain getting a patent on the process of having a customer paying for groceries and the clerk giving back change. What if car dealers and real estate agents couldn’t pay a referral fee to people who referred business to them? Should that process have been patented? No. It’s common sense. Unfortunately, there’s only one-way to do it and it’s not that hard. Join me in boycotting Amazon.com until they “let go” of their patent, or provide written confirmation that anyone can use the process and that they won’t sue every company that does use it. Small businesses will be “put out” of business if they enforce their Patent on Affiliate programs. They are already hurting Barnes & Noble with their One Click patent and I don’t see them stopping there. ****************************************************************** Back to Top ++More about Affiliate Programs Trying to decide if you should sell another company’s product from your web site? Check them out first. Here are some web sites that evaluate and list Affiliate programs: http://www.refer-it.com/main.cfm http://www.affiliateadvisor.com/ http://www.soft%2dlinks.com/affiliateprograms/affiliateprograms.htm ******************************************************************* Back to Top ++Back to Search Engines MSN is beta testing a “pay for listing” service on its site. The highest bidder comes up highest on the rankings. The minimum account is $100. Once this is in place, the bidding starts. Yuck. Can you imagine how that would go? It’s definitely another sign that search engine registration will ultimately be a list of “who has the most dollars”. http://keywords.bcentral.com/ ******************************************************************* Back to Top ++Same Keywords, Same Search Engine, Different Results Online Inc explains why search engines provide inconsistent results. It doesn’t change the fact that the results are skewed, but it does help one understand that sometimes search engines aren’t perfect. http://www.onlineinc.com/onlinemag/OL2000/net3.html ******************************************************************** “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” --Eleanor Roosevelt ******************************************************************** Hope you enjoy the newsletter. To unsubscribe, simply reply to this email with the words “unsubscribe” in the body of your email. If you have any questions about your account, send an email to: <brenda@creativewriting.com> ©1997-2000 CreativeWriting.com, LLC Back to Top**