A: I don't really have the expertise in Real Estate to comment.

I'd recommend you check the following two sites:

http://www.johntreed.com
http://www.creonline.com

A: The problem with most products sold through infomercials – especially in the "home business" area is that they typically try to upsell you into very expensive coaching programs – and more often than
not the coaches aren't that well trained.

I don't know this product from personal experience, so there's no way I can say that conclusively. You might want to take a look at:

http://www.infomercialscams.com/scams/jeff_paul_complaints

Although you should always take complaint sites with a grain of salt as they don't take into account how much volume a business does – so there's no real benchmark as to how significant the number of complaints is – especially if orders are primarily taken over the phone. If orders are taken over the web you can at least use Quantcast or Compete to see how popular the site is.

This is a useful post about late-night money making infomercials in general:

Making Fun Of Late Night Infomercials Using Hotties With Assets To Sell Get Rich Schemes

Which includes such topics as:

• The Use Of Flirty Female Hosts To Mesmerize and Make The Sale
• Obsession With Associating Everything With Magic
• The Joke That Computer and Internet Illiterates Can Still Become Online Millionaire

And more. I highly recommend you give it a read…

Educational AND entertaining!

Paul

Of course I know from studying direct marketing that details sell, so I would imagine doing a commercial for The Solution that takes "a varying amount of time" probably wouldn't pull nearly as well.

Anyhow, I was still curious as to what it was all about so I went to the site and saw it claimed to offer a "Turnkey, Autopilot system, that eliminated all of the sales and marketing."

Umm. Then what was the commercial for? Although I know what he's getting at. I think what he means is that he'll help you reduce your sales and marketing RISK and FRICTION by offering his or others' expertise.

I mean no matter how you slice it customers don't magically fall out of the sky.

However it IS true that some sales and marketing systems are much better than others and certain ones are MUCH better for people NEW to home businesses. I'll grant the site that, because the sales copy looks pretty good for the market they're targeting. REALLY good actually.

The other PLUS for them is that they actually seem to REALLY be sending the DVDs for free – not pretending to send them free and then charging some hidden monthly fee. I don't even see them charging for shipping and handling which still would be fine if that's all they charged. So score one for the gipper there.

So far so good so I headed over to the actual Speed of Wealth site. Unfortunately it was a bit too slow for my old Mac G4 so I'll need to wait until 'til I can kick my boy off his MacBook.

The main business seems to be an opportunity called "Retirement Tracs" which I don't have time to look into at this point.

However, the one thing I can say is Wayde definitely seems to really understand direct marketing which as any good marketer would tell you is way more than 1/2 the battle in getting a business to succeed.

Really the only thing I wasn't crazy about were the testimonials with no full last names, although I've had to resort to that as well when I haven't gathered the proper signoffs for displaying full names on testimonials. Although I see one testimonial says:

"Just wanted to let you know that you can use my contact info. and picture in case anyone wants information from me." Man, I'd be all over that – although MarketingExperiments recently stated about testimonials:

"Skepticism toward this marketing tactic, combined with the spread of Web 2.0 style user ratings, has raised the bar for marketers. As testimonials and other credibility indicators become increasingly prevalent on Web pages, marketers need to know how to use them most effectively to help increase conversions." – from their recent Web audio clinic on using testimonials effectively.

The other minor point is his use of the term "super affiliate" but that in all honestly that term is misused more often than not. Within the upper tier of affiliates that term is usually reserved for affiliates growing over $200,000 per month. But it's just one of those terms that has become so bastardized that it doesn't really mean anything anymore.

I signed up for the newsletter on the affiliate site, but the more I look at this the more I realize that the main product is outside my area of expertise so there's no way I can comment on the product itself. The only thing I can tell you is from a marketing standpoint that Wayde (or whoever he hired) seems to really know his direct marketing.

I had started with the title "The 68 Minute Solution – Prelude" because I was FIRST going to look at the marketing and THEN look at the product – but as I've mentioned in the last paragraph you'll need to find other expertise or make up your own mind about the product.

A: 66NoBoss.com is registered by LG Technologies and appears to be some sort of lead-generation site. Usually those types of lead-generation sites are for network marketing businesses, although it could be for other types of businesses as well. Companies often use a combination of different numbers and names to either track which advertising is working or to do revenue-share deals with the media they run the advertising through.

For example I checked a couple domains – 68Noboss.com and 10OwnBoss.com and both of those are also registered to LG Technology, so it really looks like they're lead-generation sites.

Let me know if that helps and if you have anymore questions.

I guess the blunt answer is that in my opinion there are better, more cutting edge ways to generate income online these days. That's why I was so excited about the Kindle Profits Exposed Course which you can read about here.

However, that's not to say you can't make money with SMC. When I was a teenager I had a neighbor who supported his entire family selling similar types of products. I'm not sure who his supplier was, though. But the types of products he sold were quite similar.

However, that brings up another point – when you have an organization that allows unlimited distributors – which it appears SMC does – the real question is how good of a marketer are you and how good is the marketing training that the company provides – because if everyone is selling the same products than obviously you're approaching a commodity-type situation.

Now the thing about commodity-type products that non-marketers don't get is that there are always value adds that can put in place to distinguish your offering from those of the others – even if the core product they are selling is exactly the same.

There are a couple good articles about this here:

• Selling "Commodity" Products in a Competitive Environment – from Shamus Brown's blog.
• Product Packaging: The Secret to Selling a Commodity Product – David Frey

The other way to beat out the competition is to find distribution channels that they aren't tapping. For example there may be opportunities in your local markets that most of the competitors throughout the other parts of the U.S. wouldn't have easy access to. The easiest examples would be flea markets, garage sales, bazaars, etc., although more creative thinking could go significantly beyond those basics.

Finally, finding a creative use for a product that others consider a commodity can lead to the discovery of additional distribution channels that less creative thinkers wouldn't have thought of at all. If you can find that type of profits you have the possibility of selling over larger geographic regions using advertising platforms such as Adwords or even more traditional media.

Related entry: Kindle Profits Exposed (a better opportunity in my opinion which avoids many of the hurdles that have to be overcome with the SMC opportunity and which leverages the multi-billion dollar company Amazon.com)

However, that being said, there like is decently potential in an opportunity like SMC IF you approach it differently than everyone else and I would suspect if you approach it differently than SMC itself tells you to approach it (I can't say that for sure, because I haven't seen their marketing materials – that's mainly based on the fact that they promote the opportunity heavily on TV which very likely lead to the competition problems discussed in this blog post).

Related sites: ClickSMC.com, SMCandYou.com, ViewSMC.com, SMCCorp.com

Thanks.

Renee

A:  Typically sites like these are lead generation sites run
by companies that provide leads to various MLM/Network Marketing
companies. I can't say for 100% certainty this is the case here, but it most likely is.

You will see various numbers assigned such as 242crazyfox.com, 241crazyfox.com,
240crazyfox.com, etc. which is typically done to track which advertisement generated
the lead. So you might see 100crazyfox, 101crazyfox, 102crazyfox, etc.

Someone recently asked a similar question about freedom98.com which has other mirror sites such as www.freedom98.com, freedom18.com, www.freedom22.com, and others.

Hope that helps.

———->Click here to go to the main WorkAtHomeTruth website<———-

I keep seeing ads for Freedom98.com and Freedom47.com. I go to the site, but I can't figure out what they are. Also, they both look the same. What is this?

A:

When you see sites using names like Freedom98, Freedom47 or other similar setups (i.e. Freedom18,Freedom22,Freedom54, etc) these are usually one of two things. Either they are being run by companies that provide MLM leads or they are co-operative advertising run by a specific team in a specific Network Marketing Company.

I'm not 100% sure that this is what these are, but it looks likely that it's the case.

Paul

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