Are The Internet Gurus Lying

Take the time to read this all the way through.  This is a very small window of opportunity that you can take advantage of.  It is not a marketing trick or One Time Offer or any thing else.  This is something I found we can benefit from.

I know many of you have some real strong traffic exchanges that you surf on a regular basis to get traffic to your site or blog.  If you don’t then you need to be if you are going to start building a business without spending any money.  Surfing the traffic exchange you will be trading time for traffic instead of money for traffic.

I want to tell you about something that is a very small window of opportunity to get traffic to your sites without surfing or paying money. This is a way you can get you traffic to your sites with out paying or surfing.

We concentrate on the strong traffic exchanges with many members or the new exchange that is supported by owners of big exchanges and that is only good business.  But what about the new exchanges that no one knows much about.  Will they stay around and grow or will they be just a blip on the Internet Highway.

If you had bought Wal-Mart, AT&T, IBM, Apple, or Microsoft stock when it was small would buying the stock have been a good thing?  With the brand new small exchanges that no big name on the Internet is promoting, you are doing the same thing.  You are seeing if the small exchange will grow so that you get to benefit from their growth.  Even while you are waiting to see if they grow you can get free traffic to your sites or blogs.  The difference between this and the stock market is that even if the exchange does not get big you still have free traffic each month.

I have found some small traffic exchanges that I thank will grow and right now they have a great benefit for joining.  These sites, for now, will give you a free lifetime upgrade to gold member just for joining.  You will have free credits every month for the life of the exchange without surfing or paying for free traffic as long as the exchange is open.  That is free advertising each month for the few minutes it takes to sign up and surf 50 times to validate your account.  Then once a month at least you go back and surf 25 pages to keep your account active.  Not a bad deal at all.

If you want it there is a special upgrade in each of the exchanges to Platinum Ultimate that will cost a one time fee of $5.00 and will give you unlimited credits for life.  After you sign in and surf your 50 sites return to the members site and click on the Advertising button on the toolbar across the top and you will see the upgrade.  You need the Gold upgrade to Platinum Ultimate for a one time payment of $5.00.  This will give you unlimited credits for the life of the exchange.  Even if you do not upgrade the gold membership is worth it.

All this will change as soon as more members join so go join as a free member and get the Gold upgrade now.  Free credits each month to use without surfing or paying anything.   If you bookmark this or wait I can promise you this will not still be available.  I am posting it here so that the ones who read my blog will have a chance to take advantage of this first and tomorrow it goes out to my list and I know the free memberships will be gone.

I know, I know this sounds like one of those One Time Never To Be Seen Super Duper offers but it is not. This is not a sales technique to get you to take action like you see all the time.  These traffic exchanges are new exchanges that are growing.  As soon as there are enough members then this offer is over and they become just like any other exchange where you surf or pay to get credits.

The owner is doing this to get members in to view websites as quick as possible.  The more members the quicker it grows.  This is a smart business move on the owner’s part but is unheard of among the other traffic exchanges.

I know the owner of these exchanges and I believe they will be around a long time and grow.  If they do can you imagine having unlimited credits or at least a free gold membership in a growing, strong traffic exchange.

If I am wrong and they do not stay around at least while they are here you have another place to advertise that is not costing you money or where you do not have to spend a lot of time surfing.  I have not been getting a lot of hits off of my splash pages on these exchanges but the conversion rate has made it more then worth it.

I do not get credits for having you go sign up as I have upgraded to unlimited credits.  These exchanges do not pay me for referrals so I will not make money having you sign up.  I am sending you over there because I think it is a good opportunity worth the effort and the larger the exchange the more people that will see our websites.

After you join put these exchanges in a separate folder in your bookmarks so you can keep track of them At least once a week stop by and surf a little to see what is going on and make sure you list as many sites on them as you can.

I have no interest in these exchanges except for Surfplane.  I do not get paid for getting referrals and frankly if you surf it does not help me because I have upgraded in all of them for the unlimited credits.

As I said in the beginning I will tell you about things that will help you grow your business that I have tried and I know will work even if I get nothing out of it.

Right now it is 4:30 PM EST Sunday October 26, 2008.  Some of the exchanges only had 10 or 15 of these offers left when I checked.  On the front page of each exchange you will be able to see if you can still get a free upgrade or not.

This is one of those WIN WIN opportunities so go take advantage of it while it is still there.

Here are the sites:

http://www.areyoursitesbeingseen.com/signup.php?1105

http://www.handymanhits.com/signup.php?1076

http://www.hitconstruction.com/signup.php?1084

http://www.iguanahits.com/signup.php?1103

http://www.teepeetraffic.com/signup.php?2088

http://www.prehistoricsurf.com/signup.php?2019

http://www.spiritguidesurf.com/signup.php?2044

On this site it has grown enough the offer for a free upgrade has been taken down but you will still get 2000 credits for joining and surfing 50 sites to validate your membership.  After you use the 2000 credits you can decide what to do about this exchange.

http://www.cavemansurf.com/signup.php?1015

On this one you will get a free Platinum Upgrade for the next three months.

http://www.surfplane.com/signup.php?1000

Once you sign up and surf contact the Surf Plane admin and tell them I sent you and they will give you the free Platinum upgrade until February 1, 2008

So go get your free traffic.

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Clicking links for free information and traveling the world wide web can get you very lost.  You need a good road map and plan of action from the start of the trip.

Originally Posted Sunday, August 31, 2008

Whoa Hold It I Goofed

Hold the presses I made a mistake and I feel like a dark cloud came up and rained all over my parade. I started following what my list of Internet Gurus said to do so that I could be making money on the Internet. I set up my Word Press Blog plugin with the Tweetmyblog plugin so that when I published something it went straight to Twitter. I set up an auto-responder with Traffic Wave (One of my income streams and a good one). I started watching the training videos. I started reading the email courses and much more.

Very quickly I forgot which information was where. When I tried to go back to something I ended up spending time trying to find it again. I went to links and forgot to save them.

Now I am having to go back and get organized. Putting things in files so I can find them. Things about the blog in a blog file. Things about Twitter in a Twitter file. I had said I was going to post this information on this blog but I was spending  more time finding it again then what it took to post it. So today is get organized day. If it is this way on day six imagine how it is going to be a month from know if I don’t get control of it now.

The Important Lesson Learned.   Get organized from day one or no matter how good a plan you have you will get lost and discouraged if you don’t. I have not seen any of the Gurus talking about that yet.

Off to a good start I just need to get organized and post details here on the blog.

More to follow.

Today I installed Plug-ins and Widgets.  To see which Plug-ins I use go to the page titled PLug-ins Used On This Blog.

Originally posted August 30, 2008.  I am still rebuilding the blog.

Saturday and my school teacher wife is home for the day. She teaches third grade and today I got to operate heavy equipment. She let me drive the vacuum cleaner all over the house. I also got to cook lunch and supper so she could rest and do her homework. Yes teachers have homework. They have more homework then the students do. If you live with one at some time you have been drafted to grade papers and know what I am talking about.

I spend most of the day reading the information sent me by my team of Gurus and adding a couple of Word Press widgets and Plugins to this blog. I will be adding a page letting you know which widgets I am using and how they are working.

Visitors to the blog are going up a couple more each day. I expect that to keep growing as I keep following the instructions of the Gurus.

One thing that I have figured out. I think this would be easier for someone that did not know anything about marketing on or off the Internet. I am 57 years old and have had several successful businesses and I have noticed that it is hard to not inject what I think should be done into this journey. I made the commitment to do exactly what my team of Gurus said to do but sometimes it is hard. I keep wanting to reinvent the wheel. I made the commitment to follow to the letter what they said and I will do it. (except the part about buying every product they send me)

I made a list of the things that I need to do and there are a lot of them.

If someone tells you doing this does not take time and it is not work they are lying.

There are no magic buttons, no magic websites, no pay me and instantly start making money, no buy this niche site put it up and make money without work or any other way to make money without working.  A

Anyone who tells you different is not telling the whole truth or is out and out lying.  To make money on the Internet your biggest investment is time.

It that way building a Internet business is no different from a conventional  business.  You have to show up for the business to grow.  The difference here is that you show up at your own home and in your pajamas if you want to.

My commitment is to spend a average of 3 hours a day on the Internet working on this. That is 21 hours a week. I am going to try to keep a total of the hours I spend working on this and post it here on the blog.

As many of you do, I have the same problem that my wife’s third grade students have. I find it hard to stay on task. I see links to websites that look like they have good information and the first thing you know I am off looking at them instead of doing what I need to.

To solve this problem I have started copying the links into a word document and after I do what I planned for the day, if I have the time, I follow the links. If I don’t have time oh well if it was important I will see it again.

As they used to say in the movies  To Be Continued

Originally posted on August 29, 2008  we are still trying to rebuild the blog.  Making progress slowly but surely.

This is day 4 of the journey August 29, 2008

I spent the day in an Elementary School. I am an Artist In Residence that travels around Kentucky speaking at schools on American Indian culture, history, art, playing the flute, the drum, teaching simple dances and getting rid of a lot of stereotypes that students and teachers have. http://turtlebowbear.com/bio.htm This is something that is a lot of fun and I love to do.

So after spending six hours in a school standing in front of students from Kindergarten to Fifth Grade I wasn’t real energetic when I got home. I spent the evening relaxing and reading some of the information sent me by the Internet Gurus listed in the first days post.

I can see a problem that I didn’t consider on the horizon. Going to have to spend sometime thinking about this.

Free Wordpress Blog or using a Wordpress blog that I hosted myself was one of the questions that I had to ask today.  Here is the answer.

This was originally posted August 28, 2008 to see why it was reposted read explanation in What Happened to The Blog page.

Well I am making progress. There has been a tremendous learning curve today. Yesterday I talked about the problem with not being able to do what I wanted with a WordPress.com hosted blog so today I spent most of the day setting up a this WordPress Blog on my own site.

I had to go back to Feedburner.com and set up my feeds again. Also had to start from scratch with setting up the blog. So I lost about 3 hours of work from yesterday. Today went a lot faster though since I had been through the set up before.

Spent a couple of hours this morning reading information that I have been given by the Gurus. One thing I have learned that it is better to make several small post instead of one real long post so I am going to cut this one shorter and I will be make tomorrow with websites used and other information.

Before we go any further I have to be honest. I have three others helping me with this project. I want you to meet my hard working crew.

First we have

Peachy keeping everyone on Task

Nita Ofi Is In Charge ofEntertainment

Chiponta Hattak In Charge of Security

Day Two Report

This post was originally made August 27, 2008.  To understand why it is here read what happened page on right.
Money made today $0
Hours spent working on Internet 8
Hits to Blog yesterday 6 Here it is day two. I started this morning about 8:00 am EST. I got this blog and the blog at http://bofirebear.blogspot.com/ up and running today.

The first blog post went up yesterday and so far there have been 6 hits on the two blogs. This is a start from scratch and see what happens situation.

Here is how I spent most of my day.

Remember while I was doing all the things below I spent a good bit of time going, “Now how am I supposed to do that.” My generation didn’t have computers when we were growing. Yes, the wheel had been invented when I was young and there were no dinosaurs alive so don’t go there.

Anyway I started out the morning spending about an hour reading. Most of the time was spent reading a free blog http://www.problogger.net/31-days/ by Darren Rowse. He is not one of the original gentlemen who sent me emails talking about making money on the Internet but he seems to have good information on his blog. This free site is supposed to help me have a better blog in 31 days. I will keep track to see how that goes. I am going to try to implement at least one suggestion he recommends each day and I will list the suggestion used on the website each day.

Now I am not patient enough to read everything before I get started, so after about an hour of reading websites and e-books I was off and working.

With high hopes I started off working with http://feedburner.com According to the site it will help me get free traffic to my blogs and to give me some neat tools to handle RSS subscriptions. I can also send updates by email without using an autoresponder using this site. I will investigate tomorrow if I have access to the people who sign up or not. If not I will not use this service. Update tomorrow. Wasn’t easy to figure out everything and I lost time but that was to be expected on the first day.

One of the cool things I did was making sure that I had free Share This button from http://sharethis.com on the blogs so that people could easily send the blog to someone else. It seemed like a pretty cool little gadget and easy to set up. I was impressed and believe it will bring additional free traffic. It was easier then feedburner to work with. I even added it to my personal website http://turtlebowbear.com

Myy adsense ads are now on the blogs. After I added them I wished I had read this page first. http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/08/24/adsense-optimization-tips-buzzmachine/ It would have saved me some time and I would have placed the ads in the right location the first time. According to the site ad placement is very important. So there I went backtracking to redo the ads.

So the blog is up, I am on twitter a social site like Tweetmyblog suggested. I was ready to use the free software I downloaded from there which would automatically post to twitter for me. I found out that you can not use the free software on a blog that Wordpress host. You know one of those we will host it for you free WordPress blogs. You can only use the software if you host your own blog using WordPress. I didn’t see that in the fine print. Okay got to figure out how to work around that tomorrow or go ahead and set up a blog on one of my sites. Hmmmm!!!!!!

This evening I am going to send out emails to Michael Cobb, James Grandstaff, Mike Dillard, Derrick Van Dyke, Bob Jenkins, John Merrick, Soren Jordansen, Guido Nussbaum, and Alex Goad. Remember them? Those are the ones we talked about yesterday that said they could show me how to make money on the Internet. Now I know these men are busy making six figures and may not have time to answer the emails personally, but someone in their organization should at least answer. Tomorrow I will post a copy of the email I send to them and I will keep you updated on if they answer or not.

So here it is the afternoon of day two and progress has been made.

The websites I worked with today are:

http://botip.wordpress.com

http://bofirebear.blogspot.com/

http://www.problogger.net/31-days/

http://feedburner.com

http://sharethis.com

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/08/24/adsense-optimization-tips-buzzmachine/

http://www.tweetmyblog.com/

The adventure continues tomorrow.

Is It True Or Are They Lying

Hello everyone let me tell you a little bit about what is going on here. I am going to find out if they are lying or telling the truth.

First let me explain that this is an resurrected post see explanation page on side bar.

Who am I

I am semi-retired, ornery, grouchy 57 year old, feller and I keep getting these emails in my inbox telling me how successful I can be on the Internet. Now I have had some success in other businesses over the years. I ran my own business for years and made money off the Internet so I know money can be made off the Internet.

I have had a lot of fun and met a lot of wonderful people over the years over the World Wide Web but I am not riding around in a limo yet so I haven’t figured out how to make money on the Internet. Shoot, I am still riding around in my old 1995 Mazda pickup. We still have to watch how we spend our month each month or we will have to much month at the end of the money.

A couple of years ago I tried to get a business going on the Internet. Like most people I made a couple of dollars, and I mean a couple. I spent a lot of time working on web pages, clicking on free traffic sites, running free classified ads, using free autoresponders and other time consuming things like most of you. I tracked my ads, I used a free headline checker to be sure they were powerful and much more. I also spent a ton of money joining websites, buying e-books, buying software, and yes most of that is still taking up space on the hard drive.

Most of you know what became of that. If I was making 6 figures a year like the people sending me emails then I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this blog.

Whose is sending the emails

I keep getting emails from Michael Cobb, James Grandstaff, Mike Dillard, Derrick Van Dyke, Bob Jenkins, John Merrick, Soren Jordansen and others. Those were just a few of the emails from this morning August 25, 2008.

I haven’t been doing anything on the Internet other then keeping up our personal website, Turtlebowbear.com for over a year. I have not been asking for free newsletters, signing up for money making websites, asking for information on business opportunities or any of those things but the emails keep coming.

The Emails Keep Coming

Today I received an email talking about using Twitter.com along with blogging on WordPress.com and using some software to make a ton of money. They offered to show me how they were able to generate free leads and build a large mailing list free so finally I would make money on the Internet and the best part of it was that it was free.

They were not going to charge me anything for this life changing information. Well maybe not totally free. When I went to download the free stuff each time I was given a one of a kind, only once, never to be seen again offer at an unheard of price, to purchase something else to help me along this path to riches and fame. It also led to links of other opportunities to use the Internet and they had wonderful unheard of offers and free web tools to help me on to the Golden Brick Road by traveling the Internet.

Me Thinking, Oh That Can Be Dangerous

So I sit thinking, something I tried to avoid early in the morning or at least till after a couple cups of coffee. Anyway I digress. I thought to myself, “Self are they telling the truth about this or is it another time where the ones selling the information on how to get rich are the only ones making money. You know the old saying, “If you want to get rich sell books on how to get rich.” Hmmmmm! I wonder.

Now I love to read, am a writer by trade, know how to build websites, can get around on the web pretty good, am not afraid to try new things, and the number one thing, I am not afraid to put out a little effort. (You noticed I said a little effort) I decided that I would give making money on the Internet with their free tools one more try with a few rules.

1. I gave my credit card to my wife to hold with explicit instructions that if it involved buying on the Internet for the next six months to not let me have it. She had no objections to that and I do not know the card number by memory. If it involves buying or paying for something I will not pay for it out of my pocket. Zip, zero nada out of my pocket. No buying the one time only, super price, never to be seen again book or program. One thing about that. If the information they sell does what they say it will do then it would be worth the money. That will be another blog at another time once I am making my six figures like they say.

2. If any money comes in from what I was doing I am not going to put more then half of it back in this project. Most people I know that are trying to make a living on the Internet are broke and do not have any money lying around. After a discussion with the IRS this year I am pretty close to being there myself. So my motto is, “If it’s not free don’t go.”

3. Whatever it is that say to do I will do it if?

a. It is not immoral,

b. It does not violate my belief system

c. It will not hurt anyone including me

d. It does not involve taking my clothes off,

e. It will not get me shot

f. It will not send me to jail

4. I will not try to reinvent the wheel and do exactly what they say

a. If they say read it I will read it.

b. If they say post here I will post here.

c. What ever I need to do I will do it with out changing things

5. I will give this my best effort for the next six months. On January 25, 2009 I will have shown others what doesn’t work and I will quit posting to these blogs, (the other one is at botip.wordpress.com) or I will be very happy with some money in my bank account and will have shown others how to make a little money. Now I don’t expect to be a millionaire in six months but I do expect to see progress.

6. I will go into this with a positive attitude believing that it is going to happen. I know that if I go into something believing that it might not work it is guaranteed that it will not so I am not doing that. I am going in with anticipation to see what happens.

7. When I get to where I am making six figures I will not keep sending you emails I will retire and give some one my email list.

Most Important Part

I decided while I was finding out if what these gentlemen say works I was going to keep track of what I was doing. I would write down what programs I was using, where I got them, how much time and effort it took, and if it made me money. Now all this information I was going to put into a blog for other people to see.

I am also going to email each of the gentlemen listed and let them know about this. If they respond I will post there responses. If they do not respond I will also post that. I am going to try to make contact with them or someone in their organization. Whatever happens will be posted.

At this point I believe that everything they say is true and I will go on that assumption for the next six months.

Why am I Doing This

Want the honest answer, money. Yep that is right, to make money.

I am also doing this because I read the ads like other people and see all the nice testimonies. I then go to forums and I see the people who are saying it does not work. I don’t know if the ones who made money worked harder or longer I don’t know if the ones who didn’t make money changed things. I don’t know what happened because the successful and the unsuccessful just tell you the results but don’t tell you how they got there. So I decided to go step by step and keep records of it for others to see.

No I am not being a nice guy and trying to help other outs. I am still being ornery, grouchy and hard headed. If they are not for real I want to know and I want to let others know.

So here I sit ready to start reading and doing what they say. I will go at this believing in what they teach and will follow it step by step. I will fairly document the time I spend and what I do.

We ran into a small problem with our blog.  We did not have time to fix it so we made a call and out sourced the repair. About and hour later we checked on it and the blog was gone.  The people we outsourced it to say they don’t know what happened and the backup file is corrupted.  Now I have to wait until I can get back to my desk and get the backup off of my computer.  It will be at least Thursday October, 2, 2008 before I can get everything back on the blog.  I apologize for any inconvenience this might cause.  Do not go away.  We will recover and be smarter for it.