Internet Business Reviews

Zer01 Mobile (at zer01mobile.com) is scheduled to roll out their unique cell phone service in July of 2009. What’s different about it is that they use data for all the transmissions instead of regular wireless packets. They’ve announced unlimited plans for data, voice, and long distance for $80 a month. Unlimited international long distance to 41 countries can be added for another $10 a month.

There’s also business opportunity available through Buzzirk Mobile (buzzirkmobile.com but the site was down as of this writing). It looks like Buzzirk will be doing the retail and dealer side of things (details are sketchy because they haven’t gone live yet, so bear with me). They will use a 3×9 matrix and pay $10 a month for any customer you sign up.

I spoke with two people today about it, that’s what got me in the mood to do further research. A lot of people are very excited about it, because at $10 a month it could really add up since it’s a huge market and scales so well. There’s a couple of reason why I haven’t jumped on board, I’ll explain.

First, it’s a month to month plan, which is good, except you have to buy one of the HTC phones, or have a GSM WM6 phone to use it. Since most carriers subsidize their phones with the plan, or give them away free, people are used to that. Selling them at full price (one gentleman I spoke with today heard they’d be in the $150 to $500 range, and only the top end phones will be able to use all the features of the network).

If you do have to buy an HTC handset (the current WM6 phones are all very expensive like the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1), it will make be harder to sell. People aren’t used to paying full price, and some won’t switch if it means giving up their beloved IPhone. Also in a down economy, the upfront costs may be too much for some people, especially if you factor in the cost of the penalty in leaving their plan.

Some advantages here is the $80 a month fee isn’t subject to the 20 percent wireless tax that traditional wireless companies have to pay so there’s a savings. I’ve read articles of these companies trying to get that tax to apply to places like Vonage, but so far without success. I doubt Zer01 and Buzzirk are going to go unnoticed when they start to compete against the traditional providers charging that tax.

The supplier as I mentioned is HTC. The reason why you’ve probably never heard of them is many carriers rebrand their phones. In recent years they’ve decided to pursue marketing their own brand, they’ve been around a long time and if you go to their site you’ll recognize Palm and Compaq products they make for them. It wasn’t clear what the price of their handsets are, because all the products listed there are sold with plans which subsidize the cost.

Since unless you have a GSM WM6 phone already or unlocked Blackberry, you’ll be buying the HTC models, it still remains to be seen if they can keep up with demand. The Buzzirk distributors who’ve reached triple diamond will get their phones first, then down the ranks with retail customers at the end.
With no production numbers on availability it’s still a mystery, but HTC is no stranger to making a lot of phones, so I’m not too worried. Also Zer01 is a new company, and whether they can scale up to meet demand, and do it at the $80 a month price is still an unknown. There’s a LOT of features and truly unlimited data and voice, I just hope they’ve accurately estimated just how much bandwidth some people are capable of using without a limit.

With all that said, I hope Zer01 and Buzzirk succeed. Eventually the phones needed for this advanced network will come down in price and availability will increase. One potential negative is they state there’s no acceptable useage policy for Internet access, and I can’t see that lasting. Someone will figure a way to spam with their account sooner or later so I hope they get that worked out before something happens.

If they deliver, they’ll probably bring prices down on traditional carriers for them to compete. This is far from over, and I’ll be keeping an eye on both with updates as this plays out. If you work for Zer01 or Buzzirk, or a distributor with new information please leave a comment. If you’re a Buzzirk distributor please keep in mind their new policy of zero tolerance for writing copy or linking to your distributor site. I read recently that they will freeze your account for 24 hours if you do this, and if the material isn’t removed your account gets canceled (and your residual payments lost).
One distributor said with it being in prerelease there isn’t enough marketing materials, so people started writing their own, and Buzzirk came down hard because many weren’t responding to compliance notices. I think it’s a pretty heavy handed policy because if you don’t respond in 24 hours you lose your business. I personally would freeze an account for a week before doing something that drastic (people do take vacations). If the account is frozen they can’t sign anyone else up anyway, but that’s their current policy. Like I mentioned, if you have new information on either Zer01 or Buzzirk post it here.

Andrew J. Cass is one of the original founders of Carbon Copy Pro. It’s a funnel type of system for marketing Wealthmasters International products but could be adapted to other products as well. I was in a business with an almost identical model (they probably got the idea from Carbon Copy Pro, I don’t know anyone who’s been using that model longer) and I’ll go into some firsthand experiences later.

A “funnel” system is basically where you hit a landing page, it sometimes will let the person opt in for more information, which sends them through a series of timed autoresponders (like with Reverse Funnel System, the one we did) and then they hit the prospect up for a $50 purchase, in the case of Carbon Copy Pro it’s a disk with Mike Dillard who goes into the details in a presentation. This step is done to weed out the tire kickers who don’t have any money, and also to finance advertising efforts to the people selling it until they can get some of the big package sales.

The next phase is where they hit you for the big purchase. In the case of Wealthmasters International, they have wealth management courses which cost $1,995, $8,995, or $19,995.

These are high end courses and the commissions are high as well. Also when you buy in with the larger packages, your commissions are higher as well. The problem with this kind of price point is courses like this were developed and priced during a period when many housing markets increased in value ten percent a year for ten years straight. We got hit with a housing bubble bursting and the double whammy of Wall Street banks packaging flimsy loans into mortgage backed securities and pressuring the rating houses to label them AAA when they should have been BBB. Of course you know how that all played out.

Andrew J. Cass is one of the founders of Carbon Copy Pro, he’s been very successful,  there’s no denying that. I do disagree with his view described in the Coffee House Letter in which he gives a pretty alarming view of MLM’s and that his G.P.T. (get paid today) method is better. This is where you make big commissions instead of signing people of for an MLM that pays more over time.

It’s true that some very flimsy or unscrupulous MLM’s have gone out of business like ITV Ventures (which went out of business due to mismanagement and then created an identical company) and people who built residuals with them were left out in the cold. From that point of view I can see his concern, but there are some very stable ones where there’s a lot more money to be made in the long term than $1,000 commission checks and having a downline struggling to sell very high ticket items.

Here’s the experience I had with Reverse Funnel System, which is a similar model to Carbon Copy Pro but instead the product is discount travel accounts with Global Resorts Network. We knew someone doing it and after signing up the first red flag hit, our sponsor said he’d signed up 17 people but none of them had gotten a sale themselves yet. We had poeple ready to sign up, but he said we had to wait or we’d be given to his sponsor as that’s the way the compensation plan is set there.
We did sign up plenty of people, but they simply ran out of money trying to market it before they could get any sales. It was a trend here, and it started to feel like a recruitment mill which put us on edge. The nail in the coffin was when the housing market tanked, and we discovered that people were buying into these high ticket programs typically using their home equity lines of credit. Well, when values dropped, the mortgage companies started to freeze  HELOs and Countrywide last June froze over 110,000 of them in a single month.

It got to the point where we had to throw so much traffic at this to get a conversion that we agreed it was time to bail and marketing something else. That’s how we got into the business we do now and couldn’t be happier with it.

With all that being said, it’s the reason why I wouldn’t do Carbon Copy Pro, and after doing what I’m doing I disagree with Andrew J. Cass on the big upfront payday approach. The top people at our company are making low six figures a month in residuals (granted, that’s after doing it for four or five years) and that’s my goal as well.
Chasing commissions of a thousand dollars or more is fine, but with all you have to spend on advertising to get that $1,000, for most people I can’t see good chances of them making it big in these times.

The economy will recover someday, but I think it’ll be a very long time until we see homes doubling in value over a ten year time span. It was the economic climate that very high ticket products like Carbon Copy Pro performed well in.

In any case, if you want to see what I do, call me at 813-908-3138 and I’ll show it to you. I’ve been through so many 1 hour conversations about it, but unless you try it (which is free) you’ll never get it. The thing I like about this business is you show it to people, you never sell them on it. It makes sense to people so much of the time that they want to do it as a business.

If you look back at the Great Depression, times much worse than what we’re going through now, many people did get rich back then. The same goes for times like these but finding them can be a big problem because most business opportunities “talk up their thing” and tell you how recession proof they are even when foundering.  The old phrase “success breeds success” is true and if you make insane income claims or say everything’s going great, a certain number of people will buy in just on that.

I’ve studied this and there are some businesses that don’t change much in a down economy, there’s things people don’t cut back on, or increase their spending when times are uncertain. Here’s a few:

High end items like Plasma TV’s, Dishwashers, Washer Dryers.

These kind of items can be reviewed and sold via an affiliate link at a place like Amazon.com and others. The key here is to only promote items which you can’t buy and take home from a big box store. Go to a Best Buy or Circuit City for a dishwasher and they have to deliver it in a few days from a warehouse. If you order it online from a reputable retailer you can saver $400-$600 typically, and you can make $100-$130 commission through Amazon.com if they buy from your link on your review page.

The real key is to buy a subscription to Consumer Reports who do hands on reviews of these items, and then write your own based on the information there. To get top search engine ranking it’s going to take advice from an expert though. Also also there’s some things to do with the manufacturer spec pages to avoid looking like everyone else. It also takes a professional design and look to get people confident enough to buy a high ticket item from you. It can be very profitable, but you’ll need experienced advice from someone who knows how to do it. I only do mentoring and coaching to people on my team with the company I’m with, and if you want more information on that call me at 813-908-3138 and I can tell you which one it is.

The adult industry when it comes to DVD sales has taken a tremendous hit, these places are in big trouble because when people have more time than money, they pirate the movies instead of buying a DVD for $20. This is partially the fault of the industry, because they’ve been in a “nasty arms race” for years churning out the same thing over and over. There’s been the “death of the kiss” and most “movies” (and I use the term loosely) no major studio has script writers or offers their performers acting lessons.
Compared to the 1980’s “golden age” where creativity and plots and scripts were common, it’s now boiled down to who can provide the hottest women doing the nastiest things. The industry close to this that’s remained flat is lingerie. People don’t stop spending on lingerie even when times are tough. It’s a comfort item, and if doing an adult business I’d base it around this instead of movies. I personally wouldn’t get into an adult business just because the marketers for those kind of products like movies have no moral boundaries. Spamming and the like is common as keyword stuffing and the rest. I just wouldn’t touch it, but if I had to, I’d market lingerie.

Vices. The Vice fund has increased sixty percent since the housing bubble burst. This is a hedge fund that covers tabbaco companies, casinos, and alcohol products like beer, wine, and liquor producers. People cut back on going out to resteraunts, but they won’t give up buying things like this, it’s usually the last thing they cut spending on. It means marketing these kind of products gives some insurance against the economy compared to say, vacation packages. I wouldn’t do these kind of businesses or invest in them, but the truth be told, they do hold up in times like this.

Amway. Are you on red alert yet just hearing the name? It’s ok, I would do Amway but only to three types of markets (and no, not selling stuff to my family or friends, no how, no way). I’d market Amway for one reason and to only three markets. The thing they have going for them is millions of products and they offer free UPS ground shipping. I’d go for poeple living in Manhattan or other urban areas where people don’t own cars (a parking space in Manhatten costs as much as rent in many places). Grocery shopping is a pain when you don’t have a car, and especially during the winter months, it’s a huge problem in an urban area to get grocieries home in a taxi.

Next is towns who are 30+ miles away from a Walmart. There’s a lot of towns who have fought Walmart and won. The problem is they can’t get close to Sams Club or Costco pricing and this gets them the items delivered to their door. I’d go for towns like those because you can save them a lot of money and deliver it to their door out in Tumbleweed Arizona.

The third is Mom and Pop diners and Pizza places because they’re the ones you see loading 17 bottles of Mountain Dew into a minivan because they need the best price for their hot dog stand or summer camp. With the auto order they can get all the straws, napkins, flour, and everything else they need delivered at the same price they’d spend a day going to a price club. You see the franchise places like Pizza Hut have commissary trucks that deliver everything they need.  A small place that’s not a franchise doesn’t, and this would be perfect for them.

In summary, these are the three I’d do Amway for, not my uncle or anyone else. The reason they try to get you to hit up you’re family is because with any MLM if you don’t make at least $500 the first month, you’ll likely give up on it. If you want to find out the only business that I do (it’s not any of these, but I mention them to show I’m not a zombie to what I do), call me at 813-908-3138. Showing you my business is the only way you can see it. I knew about it for six months and until I tried it, which is free, I just couldn’t get it. This is the reason the only way to find out is to call. I don’t even think anyone has ever done our business without trying it first. Give me a call and I’ll show it to you, my name is Nick Bentley and I’m at 813-908-3138.

Nick

John Paul Raygoza offers several different products and is involved with several businesses like search engine optimization and even one that reports news from the sport of Boxing. My business partner spoke with him last year and  even though it was over a disagreement, John Paul Raygoza sounded like a perfectly reasonable guy. I can’t vouch for his income claims, but he’s got a lot going on and I’m sure he’s very successful. After seeing some of the things John Paul Raygoza offers however, the question came up. Is John Paul Raygoza just good at making money for himself, or can his products make any money for you.

First off, his sites are very professional (with the exception of the Pushtraffic contact page where someone Photoshopped their logo on a skyscraper).  His background was at a web hosting company so you can tell he really pays attention to a clean design, professional artwork, and good layout. His main theme is to sell information products on Clickbank, then upsell the Pushtraffic mentoring packages which are $2,500 and $5,000. If you get the first package, you’ll be called again to upgrade to the bigger one. There were a few complaints on Ripoff Report about people not receiving the scheduled mentoring sessions. John Paul Raygoza did a rebuttal saying he took care of these people and resolved their problems or issued a refund in one case.

Push Traffic Inc. at www.pushtraffic.com also offers search engine optimization, with $1400 and $2400 packages, which isn’t bad for that kind of work. The question they don’t answer on the order page, is how many pages they’ll optimize and for how long reports are sent. There’s a lot of software that can analyze log files (I use Nihuo Web Log Analyzer) but how many pages they’ll do this for really will determine if it’s a good deal or not. If it’s just for a home page then you’d be better off learning it yourself.

I’m going to spend the next few reviews doing them for each seperate product he offers. There’s several and if I tried to pack them all into this entry it would an hour long read, so I’ll split them up. This way you can click on the John Paul Raygoza tag to see them all in one list.

John Paul Raygoza offers Your Affiliate Success at youraffiliatesuccess.com This is a $74 course on affiliate marketing and also includes marketing material on pay per click advertising and search engine ranking. It was almost impossible to find anyone talking about it who wasn’t also trying to sell it through John Paul Raygoza’s affiliate program for the course. They have a generous commission for selling this, because John Paul Raygoza makes his money on the back end with the $2,500 and $5,000 Pushtraffic mentoring packages, of which affiliates don’t get anything. This is a good strategy for him, but let’s focus on the product here.
Affiliate marketing can be good if you do it right. I’d personally only do high end product reviews like big screen TV’s and washers, dryers, and other appliances like them. The reason is, that these are items stores don’t have in stock. Whether you go to a store or buy it online they still have to deliver it, and if you can save $500 on a plasma TV then why not. Amazon.com and others pay good commissions for making these sales, so that’s the only way I’d do this kind of marketing.
$74 isn’t the end of the world for a course showing how to do this. The problem is most people start affiliate marketing not knowing what kind of work and financial investment is involved. You have to be proficient in making web pages and optimizing them. You have to know pay per clicks and test which keywords convert and which don’t. Testing like this takes money, and even with a course you need a few months to get traction. Of course an optimized blog will speed things up, but if you think it’s going to be a fast return on investment you’re in for a surprise. Think weeks to months for the time frame just because there’s so much to learn, even with a course.

John Paul Raygoza never takes his foot off the gas (or employs a spellchecker) for the sales copy here. All the talk is about the money and how fast you’ll get money and all the things you can spend it on. Also it should be pointed out when he guarantees you’ll be making $1,200 to $5,000 that’s not a guarantee, it’s a refund policy that if you don’t, then he’ll refund your purchase price. I also doubt the testimonials, it’s statistically improbable that four testimonials in a row would all end in an exclamation point! Also the claim that if you can browse a web page and read it then you’re set to do affiliate marketing is ridiculous. With all the talk about paying off your mortgage, buying fancy things, taking vacations, etc. It looks like the sales copy was tailor made just to get the kind of person who would go for the $5,000 worth of mentoring they’ll offer.

If you do this, at least know what’s ahead. You’ll need to learn how to make web sites and optimize them, also blogging and around $500  for a pay per click campaign, just to learn and test what works before you see money coming in. If you’re just starting out, count on a few weeks of hard work and learning before you see a dime. If they talk you into mentoring, another $2,500 to $5,000 there.  As the only person to write a review of this who isn’t selling it, I have to stress affiliate marketing is not nearly as easy as John Paul Raygoza makes it sound.