Material Monster

Ever wonder how a “guru” earns $3,546 or more just by pressing a
button?

The first thing a newbie learns when landing on the Internet is
that it is full of hype. Hype this. Hype that. But when you cut
through the hype, there is one simple truth. If you want to make
real money on the Internet, you have to build an opt-in list.

This is the simple truth the gurus understand. They are, after
all, gurus. They are not wizards, nor magicians. They know that
making money on the Internet is a very simple mathematical
equation. A small opt-in list equals candlelight dinners in the
basement rec room, savouring macaroni and cheese in front of the
TV. A big, bulging opt-in list equals candlelight dinners at
Chez Ritz, enjoying baked brie and filet mignon while
overlooking the lake.

That’s why the gurus earn so much money.

But just what is an opt-in list? Simply put, it is a list of
email addresses belonging to people who have given you
permission to send them messages. Anything else is spam. Make
sure your list is opt-in.

What kind of lists do people opt-in to? All kinds and all topics
- from grasshopper recipes to hotwiring space shuttles. But if
you really want to make it work, you need to create a newsletter
(probably on a topic with wider appeal than hotwiring space
shuttles!).

Why? Consider Madam B. (not her real name, by the way) She sells
beauty and cosmetics, and she was frustrated because so few
people were signing up to receive “updates on new products”.
Would you sign up? Only if you have already purchased from her a
few times, making you one of her few extremely loyal customers.

On the other hand, suppose you were offered the chance to sign
up for a “free weekly beauty tip”, which is what we advised her
to do. Now she has the chance to pick up prospects who have
never bought from her, who will read her weekly beauty tip, and
- this is the juicy part - they will buy many of the “featured
products of the week” highlighted with the weekly beauty tip.

There is a second reason you want your opt-in list to be a
newsletter, not just a product announcement. The newsletter
builds trust and is read. If all your subscribers see are sales
pitches, their level of trust sink lower than the lost city of
Atlantis. And we all buy from people we trust, not from
underwater snake oil vendors.

In fact, if your emails are just sales pitches, why would
anybody bother opening them? You have to build a strong
relationship with your subscribers, so put as much of your own
personality into it and write your text so that you speak
directly to them.

If you have good quality content in your newsletter, your
subscribers will open your emails, they will read them, they
will buy and you will make money. Notice I said “quality”, not
“quantity”. In the example above, it need only be a
one-paragraph beauty tip. You don’t have to spend all weekend
composing an article as long as this. Same applies for investing
tips, auto care tips, nutrition tips, evil magician tips, or
whatever. Quality keeps them reading and ready to buy.

Of course, you must have a related product to promote to the
list. Don’t try selling motor oil to your beauty tips
subscribers. They won’t buy. And if they do, imagine the mess
they’ll expect you to clean up! Remember, the goal is to make
money, not mess. The opt-in list gives you the prospects, your
trust turns them into clients, and your relevant and related
products turn them into paying customers.

Who can have such a list? Everybody. Your brother can. Your
tenth grade teacher can. The cashier at the grocery store can.
Your pet goldfish probably cannot, but YOU can.

Is it easy to build a list? You bet! Is it effortless? No. It
does take time, effort, or money - or some combination of the
three. For most people, it takes a lot of time and a medium
amount of effort. But it can be done without breaking into a
sweat.

You can cut down on both the time and money if you use paid
methods to build your list. “Paid methods” generally means
buying lists of names. Be VERY careful not to buy a spammy list.
Do not buy lists from people who spam you with an offer of cheap
email addresses, no matter how hard they swear the list is
quadruple opt-in and fully targeted. That’s like buying a Rolex
in a dark ally from an unshaven man in a trench coat.

Oh yes. It also helps to have some knowledge and some
creativity. The knowledge is something you can find at websites
like http://www.affila.com . The creativity you just have to
develop yourself. But it is amazing how creative most people
become when armed with a little good knowledge, a big dream and
a fresh cup of caffeine.

Remember that if you offer good content and promote related
saleable products, you will earn money from your list. So paying
for targeted subscribers can be a worthwhile deal, especially if
you can sell a product with recurring commissions (a magazine
subscription; a product requiring refills, such as skin cream or
motor oil; a membership website; a monthly service such as
webhosting; etc.) or multiple products that complement one
another (making repeat customers out of your subscribers).

You will find there are many more benefits to having an opt-in
list, but you have to start building it now. It does take time
to build, and the longer you delay your list-building, the
longer you delay your dream.

So what is that magic button a guru just presses to earn $3,546
or more? Is it his shirt button? Is it his belly button? No,
it’s the “send” button.

====== Ron Pioneer

Learn the Secrets to Having Your Own Magic “Send” Button with
our FR*EE Course: http://www.affila.com . ======

We all have them. The aunt, uncle, sister or cousin that never has a good word to say about anything and whine whenever they get the chance. I just spoke to one of mine again and listened to the reasons that XYZ or ABC will be a problem. In other words, why the things that excite me have fatal flaws. Why anything I like or promote, is destined for failure. Yet, they have good events happening in their life that they love to brag about. Their son or daughter made the honor roll again. Their spouse got another merit raise and they are on their way to vast riches and fame.

So why do I continue to call and hear the gloom and doom they find in other
things? I suppose some misguided sense of obligation to my relatives, keeps me
calling back. Even though, I know that regardless what we discuss, ultimately, I will
have to mention something about my current situation and hear the negative
feedback. It goes like this as you listen to my end of the phone call.

“Hi Fran, it’s me. What’s new? That’s wonderful. Little Timmy won another
Pulitzer Prize. Amazing, that he’s only three. Your husband discovered a cure for
cancer? Terrific. And you’ve lost so much weight they want you to model for Victoria
Secrets? Good for you. Oh, me? Well, I got a bonus at work. Oh, that will put me in a
higher tax bracket? I didn’t think about that. Did I mention my wife finally got her
PhD? Oh, they’re overrated because you can get one over the Internet and they’re
usually scams? I see your point. Hey, my daughter got a job at the local Red Lobster
as a hostess. Shouldn’t I worry that she’ll be raped in the parking lot when she gets
off late at night? No, that was something we never actually discussed. Gee, you’ve
really thought these things through, all right. Thanks for the info. It’s been great
talking to you again. Keep in touch. Bye.”

And that was a mild example. I’ve resorted to contact avoidance procedures
where I’ll concoct any excuse not to call. But can you blame me? The negativity
spreads to co-workers or friends. Often times, around the good old water cooler, I
would listen to the constant gripes and complaints about the job, employer, the pay,
the working conditions and other employees. Friends complain about their work,
relatives, and family as well. Nothing is ever good enough. The house, car, job, and
lifestyle all have their inherent problems. No one ever appears to have the things
that make them happy. So, in response, I’m going on strike. I’m going to place a
moratorium on hearing negative talk.

Come join me in my fight against the whining and complaining we all get to
experience. Become a zero-problems zone. It’s time to end the negativity and hear
positive feedback. We can do it and you can’t talk me out of this. I can feel the surge
as the readers cheer me on. I almost feel like calling up Fran and telling her the
good news. I’m just afraid she’ll remind me that I’m over on my cell minutes again.

Jeffrey Hauser was a sales consultant for the Bell System Yellow Pages for
nearly 25 years. He graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Advertising
and has a Master’s Degree from Monmouth University. He had his own
advertising agency in Scottsdale, Arizona and ran a consulting and design
firm, ABC Advertising. He has authored 6 books and a novel, “Pursuit of the
Phoenix,” available at amazon.com. His latest book is, “Inside the Yellow
Pages.” Currently, he is the Marketing Director for thenurseschoice.com,
a Health Information and Doctor Referral site.

Well, what is there about them you can say that is positive? How
can anybody trust a creature that is born without arms or legs
and smells with its tongue? Obviously, you can see I dislike
snakes! For me, they just don’t seem a part of the natural order
of things without the usual appendages. A friend of mine
suggested that I write down some of my encounters with snakes I
experienced when I was exploring the Amazon basin and the
western slopes of the Andes looking for gold and I guess my
first brush with mortality from serpents came about as Eddie and
I were walking into Puerto Napo from camp one day. The trail
bordered the Napo River on the south side and we were making
pretty good time on the twelve-mile walk. The ground was
slippery as it always was from the continual wetness of the
vegetation and we were always in danger of losing our footing.
Walking, as it were, consisted of articulating a series of slips
and slides and occasional falls. Well, Eddie was in front of me
when all of a sudden he fell backwards. Thinking he tripped, I
caught him under his shoulders and helped him to regain his
footing, but he instantly fell backwards again and there right
in front of him in the middle of the trail was a snake, half
coiled and half erect and ready to strike! I had almost pushed
Eddie into the snakes’ fangs! Close! Eddie shot the snake from a
safe distance. We had other encounters with snakes on the
eastern slopes, but most of them were on the west side of the
Andes. The first occurred when I stooped over to enter a family
dwelling in the village of La Concordia on the Cayapas River. We
had been canoeing upriver all day and it was time to set up camp
for the night. Our guide made arrangements for our
accommodations to spend the night for a few cans of Tuna Fish
and a pound of coffee. Barter was the preferred method of
payment once you were out of civilization. We walked into the
house made of Bamboo and a hardwood called “Chonta Duro”. I have
never been able to translate it into English except for the
“Duro” part, which means “Hard”. A log of this wood has a very
fibrous core that can be burned out to form a pipe of sorts. We
were to use it to bring fresh water into our camp for washing
and cooking. It can further be split lengthwise to form a very
durable flooring. It cannot be cut easily with a machete or axe
and resists the saw on crosswise cuts. The blade of an ax will
simply skip off of the wood, but I digress. We sat on the floor
eating supper and during the meal I glanced at the rest of the
construction. They used the “Chonta Duro” logs as roofing
timbers and as I followed one timber from the edge of the roof
to the lodge pole, I saw something in the shadows that I
couldn’t quite make out, so I took out my flashlight and shone
it right smack in the face of a fourteen foot Boa Constrictor!
Our guide explained that this was a normal household pet to keep
down the rat population. That night I slept comfortably in my
sleeping bag outside on the ground. Our camp upriver was built
on a small plateau on a hillside and was made of Bamboo and
Chonta Duro timbers. We built it at ground level, as we were
sixty feet above the surface of the river. The walls were only
three feet high leaving a wide gap between the wall and the roof
for ventilation. One morning, I had just awakened and was
getting ready to get up when, BANG! Wally had shot a snake off
of the top of the wall not three feet from my head! When I
looked over the edge of the wall, the headless body of Beige,
Brown and Black four foot Fer-de-Lance Pit Viper was sprawled
lifeless on the ground. This snake is one of the most dangerous
of all the snakes in South America for it is aggressive and will
strike without warning. Thanks Wally! Another time, I was
getting ready to walk out of the door of the our “House” and as
I was crossing the threshold, I saw a large three foot bright
orange snake crawling on the top of the wall. Another Pit Viper!
I grabbed a machete and killed it! The last really good story
again had Eddie and I as the centerpieces. It was on a Sunday,
and we decided to go fishing. Now in the middle of the jungle,
this is not a sporting event for we used sticks of dynamite to
do the fishing for us. Those of you that have qualms about this
just have never been hungry! We grabbed several sticks of
dynamite, caps and fuse and set off in our motor canoe upriver.
The Canoe was made from a forty-foot hollowed out tree with wood
planks added to the gunwales and a transom add-on for a
forty-horsepower Evinrude, which I had had shipped from the
States. Balsa logs added to the outside of the canoe at the
waterline gave added stability. We named it the Nueva Esperanza
or New Hope for good luck! I ran the canoe upriver about half a
mile and beached the bow on a sandbar. We had fished this area
before with good results. Eddie was sitting on one of the plank
seats and getting the Dynamite ready. We were using two sticks
as we were over a deep pool of water. Eddie lit the fuse on the
first charge and I leaned back on the Evinrude to watch the
results. After about a minute, we decided the charge wasn’t
going to explode and Eddie prepared another while I watched and
made rude comments about him not being able to blow himself to
Hell! The second charge followed with the same results and I
watched as Eddie prepare a third. The rude comments started
extending to his family lineage and as I watched, I saw
something swimming across the river about two hundred feet away.
I thought it might be an Otter and told Eddie what I was looking
at when the object lifted its head clear of the water and looked
right at us! I still couldn’t make it out but it suddenly
changed direction and started swimming towards us. I watched for
a few seconds and determined it was a large snake about eight
feet long and told Eddie about it. Eddie looked and put the
dynamite down and started looking for something to use as a
weapon. Meanwhile, the snake was coming directly right at us and
as it got closer, I could see the arrogance in its yellow eyes!
He swam right up to the canoe and started to work its body onto
the Balsa sponson. The Son-of-a-Bitch wanted us for breakfast!
Eddie had found a length of broken paddle in the bow and as he
was walking back to the stern of the canoe, the snake popped his
head over the gunwale! Eddie finally reached where the snake was
and smacked him several times on the head, until at last; it
succumbed and fell back into the river with his head and about
two feet of his length sinking beneath the surface. Dead for
sure! Eddie was so nervous that he asked me to fix the third
charge, which I did. I lit the fuse and instead of throwing the
dynamite, I placed it very gently in the water, alongside the
canoe. I had not noticed that the motion of Eddie killing the
snake had caused the canoe to shift its position and end up
right on top of the unexploded four sticks of dynamite! My
subconscious took it into account and that’s why I placed the
charge alongside the canoe. Well, before I could say “Holy
sh-t”, we were greeted with a loud, thunderous explosion that
lifted the canoe, all forty feet of her, about a foot out of the
water, and slammed us back into the river, opening up a crack in
the hull running from the bow to the stern, and we started
shipping water. The only way to keep us from sinking was to find
something to fill in the crack and stop the water from coming
in! Eddie looked at me and I looked at Eddie. All we had were
the clothes on our back! It must have been a pretty sight to see
two naked men trying to keep from sinking! We finally stabilized
the leak and headed back to camp naked, trying to figure out
what we would tell the others when we came upon the body of the
limp snake. Now, Eddie wanted to bring the snake into the canoe
so he could skin it and use the skull for a hat decoration, and
I told him in no uncertain terms that he was going to walk home
if he brought the snake into the canoe, but I laughed that we
could use the snakeskin for some Custom Business Cards. Eddie
instead put the paddle under the loop of snake below water and
carried the rest of the body on the paddle the rest of the way
to camp. I turned the canoe around facing upriver and was
preparing to land when two things happened. First Wally, who was
seventy-one, walked down the path to see if we had caught
anything, and secondly, Eddie threw the snake in a sweeping
motion so that it landed at Wally’s feet. The next thing you
know, the snake started moving, he had only been stunned! Wally
drew his machete and cut its head off. I never saw the old man
move so fast! We found out later that the snake was another
aggressive Pit Viper called the Bushmaster, also called an “Iki”
by the locals. It was over eight feet long and had a diamond
shaped gray and brown pattern like a Diamondback rattler and not
one, but two sets of needle sharp fangs, one primary set in the
front of the mouth and a second spare set in the rear. And you
ask me why I don’t like snakes, well, there’s several good
reasons! I have other snake stories, but none of them are as
interesting.

I want to initiate a movement that scales be banned from all
houses occupied by females. This needs to be done immediately to
save men worldwide from facing harrowing experiences with their
wives and girlfriends. Those vile, insensitive and repulsive
machines can change a pleasant day to a rueful one in seconds.

I have seen it happen to often not to speak up. My wife uses
that damn thing weekly. And every time she does so, I hear about
it for the next 10 minutes; or worse than that, if she was
planning on cooking, those plans are aborted. I would rather go
the mall and buy bathroom accessories than be around when I see
the scale being pulled out. If I see her moving toward it, I
take our dog out in the backyard.

A scale does not measure weight. It is mood barometer. If she
weighs more than she did last week, the cats run and hide. If
her weight is the same, it is still potential trouble. If the
scale is in a good mood and reports a lower number than last
week, it still isn’t low enough. There should be a switch on
scales to indicate whether a man or woman is using it. And if it
is a woman, the damn thing should start at five to 10 pounds
below zero. Honestly, I would buy this product and pay a premium
for the negative-10 factor.

“I thought for sure I would have lost more weight,” she will
grouse. It is a lose-lose situation no matter what. Am I the
only man that experiences the effects of this good-mood
eliminator? It doesn’t matter if your woman is overweight,
underweight or at the perfect weight. Forget about the scenario,
because there is no perfect weight for a woman, according to
women. So, it is not just my household. It is a universal issue,
sort of a cosmic-ethereal type of thing.

The only thing worse than my wife using the scale is when she
uses it a second time, thinking that maybe the first reading was
inaccurate. First I hear a profanity sprayed into the room like
it came out of an aerosol dispenser, then I hear grumbling and
the sound of the scale be reset on the floor. I know what’s
coming next, but I always cross my fingers, look upward, and
hope for the best. Moments later the profanity escalates. The
first time I heard this commotion I thought her body was
inhabited by a dead, angry sailor looking for a portal to return
among the living.

I think that it is time to bring the federal government into the
picture. This is probably an issue they could work on in
congress or the senate. Maybe slot it in between addressing
excess government spending and eliminating steroid use among
Major League Baseball players. Being a Libertarian I am a
staunch advocate of keeping the government out of things that
could be handled through the private sector. But for men, this
truly is a life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness issue.
Until we find a way to eliminate those little monsters, men
throughout the world are in jeopardy.

Martin Luther King had a dream. So I decided to devise a plan.
My wife exercises frequently, which is a good thing. Using our
elliptical training machine is part of her workout program. I
noticed that when I use the elliptical machine for an extended
period of time, my weight drops six or seven pounds. I realize
it is only a temporary situation and that nearly all the weight
returns after chugging a sports drink. But could you think of
better time to suggest to woman that she weigh herself? I
declared myself a genius. The suggestion I offered to her was
that she should weigh herself immediately after doing this
exercise. She does this for 40 minutes straight and there is
sweat everywhere when she is done. So, she would have to weigh
less after using it like that.

I asked my best friend for his thoughts on my plan. He talked of
nominating me for a Nobel Peace Prize as soon as we got off the
phone. The first time I offered her this suggestion. She was
actually on the elliptical trainer. However, when she got off
it, she immediately gulped down a sports drink and then headed
toward the scale. This was not going to work. So, I told her I
needed help in the kitchen. When she got there she asked what I
needed, and I had no ready response. And then I said, “Do you
think a garbage bag is totally filled when it is three-quarters
full or does it need to be filled to the top?” She gave me a
puzzled look, “That’s why you called me into the kitchen?” she
asked, and then walked away. I was hoping the cats or the dog
would have enough sense to hide the scale during my diversion.

Obviously my plan needs some tweaking. But I firmly believe that
if I could get her to step of the elliptical machine directly
onto the scale, it would truly make a difference. I know that I
am not in this weighted dilemma alone.

An engineer friend of mine suggested that a weight scale be
inserted inside the elliptical machine itself and that way women
could actually see their weight plummet. We are incorporating,
forming a partnership and expect the first model to rollout
within a year.

So, until then, men, do your best and remember to run when she
walks toward that damn scale.