One of the best internet marketing tips

Here's a great tip that many of you can use. Consider giving away your products or services for free or at least at huge discounts to big name companies (or at least big names for your niche). In return, simply ask their permission for you to use their name in your marketing so that you can say that they are a client or customer of yours. You'll earn ten times your money back ... if not more.

Any service or product that mentions a big company as a client or customer will instantly get a ton of more customers and money simply because it grabs their attention. For example, which company would you rather purchase from or have represent you: one with tons of examples of people or companies that you don't know at all or one that mentions having Ford Motors, Oscar Meyer, any chain stores, etc.?

On a simpler example that more people could perhaps relate to, which product would you rather buy: one that mentions several fellow marketers that you don't know that well or one that mentions big names or companies that you know very well in your respected niche(s)?

If you're able to get the bigger names or companies without offering special deals or giving your services away for free, that's terrific! If you're not to that point yet, you should really consider being more competitive by offering them a deal they can't refuse or even doing your services for free (or giving away your product). I can't even begin to explain how much this will help you.

I recently took on a client for a lot less than I normally would simply because the company had tons of national awards and ties to several large organizations and companies. Do you think that might look better to other possible customers? I'd be willing to bet my money on it. Do you think the discount I gave him was money lost on my part? Hardly, as I bet I'll earn several times that back just by having this company as a client.

I'm also in the process right now of getting things ready for one of my future projects. And guess what one of the first things I'm doing is? You bet! I'm getting a few big offline companies to try out my product either for free or for greatly reduced rates. Such testimony or names of clients will trump virtually any individual's testimony that you can get.

And on another note, if you do have big names or companies in your portfolios, make it known if you can! Don't hide it among dozens to hundreds of other customers, testimony, examples, etc. Bring it to the front and make it known! One good client is worth 100 unknown ones.

This one tip can really make you a lot of money.

My challenge to you: Easy way to $1,000 a month

Here's my challenge to you. Follow my simple tip here, and I bet that a fair number of you could break $1,000 a month within one to two months. Want to know the secret? It's simply taking action. Stop reading forums 24/7 or buying every internet marketing guide out there. Stop switching from one topic to the next and not following through on anything. Stop getting excited about one idea only to move on to the next the very next day.

Instead of worrying about keyword research, news in the forums, etc., simply spend 1 hour a day (it's okay to take a few days off here and there) actually working and taking action. Bring your ideas or websites to life. Don't try to learn anything more or do any more research. Just get to work. If you spend that much time on it each day without procrastinating, and without worrying too much if things are perfect or not, I bet that $1,000 a month is not out of your reach.

Then once you reach that, aim for twice that the next month. You can keep building upon your work more and more effectively raising your income each and every time. If you make $20 doing something, do it 100 times over. If you spend one hour a day just taking action instead of buying new guides or reading about what you should do, I can almost promise you that you'll find instant success each and every month.

I hope this inspires some of you to get to it. Despite what you might think, making money online IS very easy as long as you take action. I just spoke to three different people today. All of them weren't making much online, but they all had two things in common -- they had great ideas and they weren't taking action on them.

Many of you literally have mounds of cash just waiting for you if you let it come to you.

Make huge profits online -- easier than you think!

The one thing I love about the internet is how easy it is to make money online. I know people who try to invest thousands of dollars in hopes of making 10% to 20% more. Although they think that's a good return, I say that's crap! When I invest $100, I expect at least $1,000 back, if not more. If I don't get at least 10 times my return within a month, I don't even bother with it. Sure, there are plenty of other great opportunities out there, but I want to reassure that I don't lose a dime on any investment.

Think this is too good to be true? Think again. The first investments I ever made were for $5, which I turned into a few thousand. My second investment was for about $200, which I turned into nearly $10,000 within two weeks.

Don't think you have the skills to do this? So what? All you need is a good idea. If you have a good idea, or even a simple idea to make someone's life easier, you can easily hire a programmer or designer to bring that idea to life. You can easily get a great idea turned into reality for $100 to $200, if not less. You can even do some of this yourself if you want to save money.

Once you have your project (whether it's a program, ebook, or service) up, you can easily advertise it in your signature on forums, or even offer it for sale on some market place forums online. The money from that alone will almost guarantee that you'll make several times your investment back. If you're lucky and have a good enough product, you'll get a good monthly income from that as well.

But here's the bright side -- even if you fail, you'll still probably make several times your purchase price back just advertising it a bit or taking advantage of forums with special offers for you to market your product.

Then once you make a little money from that, you can reinvest a portion of it on new projects. You'll not only open up more opportunities to make even more, but eventually you'll find a few products that will catch on and provide you more and more money each month.

Currently, I have about half a dozen medium to big sized projects. The beauty of it is that I'm barely working on them, as I was able to reinvest a small portion of my past earnings to hire out for most of the work. And here's the other thing about it, most of these projects will cost less than $100 to $200 each.

Some internet marketers won't tell you this, but it's very easy to make money on the same scale if not larger than several of the top marketers out there. All you need are a few good ideas. You don't even need to invest money at the start, as you can slowly build your way up with reinvesting your earnings until one day you're making a very sizable income online that keeps on growing.

I started making money online with the very technique that I describe in "The Big Secret," and I made an extra income on top of that shortly thereafter by turning it into a guide. After that, I started reinvesting it in even more projects and the money keeps growing and growing each and every month.

I hope that this inspires some of you to take action on your ideas. If you can bring it to reality yourself, great! If not, don't rule out looking for hired help. If it's a great idea, you'd be surprised at how some programmers are willing to make amazing programs for very cheap prices.

Score one for the consumers! Unethical marketer takes notice

Score one for all the consumers out there trying to look up honest reviews of websites and their products. Not too long ago, I posted on my blog here about some unethical practices being done by a handful of internet marketers, even one well known one from the Warrior Forums. Some marketers are trying to promote their products by creating sites made simply to review their own product (their own review of their own product, but under a different name), while others try to cover up their behinds a little more by having a worker they have or a friend write a good review for them.

In this particular case, the owner of this membership site had a very good review that came up as number one on Google. The review started by saying how skeptical they were of such Adsense pre-made sites and so forth, and that they never thought Adsense would work until they found this particular membership site and found it great. Ironically, I did a search on this guy and saw that he not only had ties to the membership site, but that he also had articles on profiting from Adsense and even had another site (also linked together) that sold an Adsense guide long before this new membership site came about. So he obviously wasn't new to Adsense like he claimed, and he wasn't a random person reviewing the site.

Well, here's the good news! The person who owns the site must be reading this blog too, because shortly after I posted the details of it here, that review page was taken down and is nowhere to be seen.

This is just a word of encouragement that if you see someone trying to scam you out of your money -- even if they are well established, do something about it. Even one voice can have a huge positive effect.

An Easy Business Opportunity That Is Often Overlooked

There are always internet marketers talking about how to monetize a site better. There has also been a lot of talk lately about buying up websites that aren't monetized well (but with lots of traffic) in hopes of monetizing them and making a fortune. However, I think that there is another easy option out there that is often not only overlooked, but can be very cheap (and sometimes free) to do.

Here's what you do: Look for small businesses (or individuals) who have a really good offline product that you think could easily become an awesome online product. When just a little looking around, I've come across tons of great products and services that simply aren't marketed at all. Some might have a website with no marketing done, while others might not even have a website yet. You can not only look online, but you can also look at local businesses and people who you already know to see tons of opportunities.

If you are able to get the attention of these owners and establish even a small relationship with them, I'd be willing to bet you that many would listen to you and would be more than happy to give you a decent percent of the profits if you did the marketing online for them.

I've done this myself and find it VERY easy to do and is a huge opportunity that many people overlook.

Make More Money Just By Being Nice

I was prompted to write this message after a few bad experiences in the past few days. I've not only been looking into purchasing a few tools online, but I've also been looking into hiring one or two people for a small project.

Out of four people I contacted, two were almost a bit rude, one was just straightforward, and the last one was actually nice and seemed to appreciate my potential business.

For the first two, I simply asked them to clarify something on a product of theirs. The description didn't answer all of my questions, so I asked a few specific questions and mentioned that I didn't see it anywhere on their site. One was really rude, while the other just said "check the website" that I already checked and didn't find sufficient enough.

The third guy simply just answered the question. He wasn't rude and answered everything I wanted, but just seemed straightforward and not too interested. The last guy not only answered my questions just like the third guy, but he also added that he'd be happy to answer any more questions I had.

Guess who is more likely to get the business? The last guy who added that one simple sentence just seemed more genuine, even though this is a simple thing to do that doesn't take more than a few seconds.

All four of these guys owned the products or services themselves, so it's not like they didn't care if they made sales or not.

I think that this serves as a friendly reminder to everyone to take the extra five seconds required to be a little more personal and appreciative in their e-mails to customers. Without a doubt, the more personal and nicer you are in your e-mails to your customers, the more likely you are to make a sale.

I'm shocked at how some people treat their customers knowing that their income depends upon them. I halfway expect this from large stores that hire minimum wage workers to answer their phones, but I think it gives an even worse impression when the business/website/service owner treats you like that.

Even if you write a simple e-mail back that answers all of their questions, try to take an extra five seconds to add a sentence about how you'd be happy to answer any more questions or that you appreciate that they contacted you and so forth.

You'd be surprised at how such a simple thing can bring in so much more money ... and make everyone have a nicer day.

Website Contact Forms

I've seen a lot of sites, even well established ones, have links that say "contact us" that are plain old mailing links that go straight to outlook express (or whatever mailing software you have). For many people who don't have outlook express or other options setup and only use web-based e-mails, it can be a real pain getting e-mail addresses.

If you run such a website or plan on running one, I'd highly suggest either having contact forms on your site or at least writing out your e-mail address just in case. I know that there are quite a few people who prefer this way and wouldn't be turned away from contacting you otherwise. This is just a friendly reminder to keep that in mind.

Do some domain research before selecting a new domain

When I'm making a new site, I usually try to think of a good domain name first. Then I check to see if it's available. If one of my favorite names is free, I usually just take it right then and there. But I've been trying to remind myself to do a little research on the domain name first (or even on existing names I already have).

You'd be amazed at what you can find at www.archive.org about your existing domains. You're able to look up screenshots of past websites that used that domain name in many cases.

I'd also suggest doing searches on several search engines for your domain name just to see if it's mentioned anywhere. One recent domain name that I almost bought that was a PERFECT name for a site I was thinking of doing happened to have been owned by a scammer in an unrelated niche. There were a few mentions online of that website being a scam, even though it hasn't been registered to anyone for a few years. Odd how that stuff works.

I also just found out that one recent name that I registered for a site of mine was just deleted a few days prior by a site that used it for several years (by complete random change).

I'd check out www.archive.org and type in your website address, as well as do any searches before making any purchases in the future.

Using Affiliate Links? Think Twice...

Many top marketers swear by cloaked links (despite a few possible legal issues and other problems), but I encourage everyone to give cloaked links a second thought to see if they're really necessary -- or if they might even be hurting you. When affiliate links first came out, I can easily see how it was the smart choice to go with, but that was before people knew what they were. I did some testing on a few niches of mine and got some interesting results.

For those of you new to this, a cloaked link just redirects a link from you to an affiliate link of yours. So instead of someone seeing something like http://hoplink.whoever.clickbank.net/hop?63038 they'd just see something like http://www.yoursite.com/anyproductB. The second link would then redirect to the affiliate link.

The advantage that many marketers claim is that people are wary of affiliate links and might not click on it because they either don't like giving you credit for the sale (and type in the link itself) or they try to steal the commission from you by entering their own affiliate ID.

I usually don't use cloaked links for a variety of reasons, but I was motivated to do some testing and got some interesting results back that I thought I'd share.

In my non IM niches, I usually saw either a slight decrease or no difference at all. However, I actually noticed a very significant decrease in click throughs (by not quite 50%) in one of my niches. I replicated these results over again just to make sure it wasn't a fluke and got the same results.

For two IM niches, I didn't notice any difference at all (these links were on my site -- not in a message or anything like that).

With e-mail messages, I also tested both IM and non-IM niches. The non-IM niches showed little difference (so a bit better than when they were on a site) as long as the affiliate code was not bluntly shown as the link (so have different text saying "click here for this" instead of the actual affiliate link being shown, but still having the normal affiliate link without it being cloaked).

The IM niches showed a slight increase with cloaked links in e-mails, but it wasn't too drastic.

This goes a bit against what some people assume, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. If someone is intent on stealing your commission for a product, I don't think a cloaked link would stop many of them from doing so. On top of that, most internet marketers know about cloaked links and how to spot one. If they want to steal your commission for their own, they will. Outside of the internet marketing field, it would make sense that it wouldn't make a huge difference anyway.

The big decrease when using a cloaked link in one of my niches also made sense too. If you have a merchant as an affiliate, some people might be a bit wary if they look and see that the link appears to be to your own site or some odd domain name that they don't recognize. I don't think that you should have a visible affiliate link bluntly in the middle of your webpage, but putting a naked affiliate link there as a text link with the text not displaying the affiliate link appeared to work much better than a cloaked link in at least one case.

In other instances, they appeared to have little to no difference. The only difference I noted that was a bit more in favor of cloaked links was in e-mail messages.

Now I realize that this obviously changes from niche to niche and whether you're doing a post on your own site vs a message board (where a normal affiliate link would be a very bad idea in most cases), but it made me think a bit more about this. I encourage you to give it a little thought yourself and to perhaps do some testing first before following what others have said.

I've noticed that a few people are starting to realize what I've been talking about here and how cloaked links aren't always the best choice and can even hurt sales in some cases.

1and1 Web Hosting Review

I know that there are many of you looking for cheap web hosts that are still of good quality, which is very hard to come by. This is why I want to do my review of 1and1 web hosting. There are tons of cheap web hosts out there, but only a few are actually good. Some more expensive hosts will argue that you need an expensive host or else your website is doomed -- they're simply trying to frighten you into spending more with them.

The majority of people out there, especially those starting out, should not be too worried. Most of the problems with hosts comes from people abusing the host or doing out-of-the-ordinary tasks that don't really apply to most people. However, there are still a few things to watch out for.

You don't want hosts that claim to offer unlimited bandwidth, as that is simply impossible. By unlimited, places really mean "unmonitored." Once your server (and whoever is on it) exceeds a certain limit, everyone gets screwed. Instead, you want to find a reasonably priced host with a given bandwidth that is very high. 1and1 web hosting definitely does a great job there. They have tons of different packages at very cheap prices (some are only a few bucks a month for unlimited domain hosting, which means that you can host as many domains as you want on the same account) with more than enough bandwidth than virtually 99.9999% of you will probably ever need. If you ever hit it real big and start getting thousands upon thousands of visitors a day, they always have packages to upgrade to.

1and1 web hosting is one of the hosts that I personally use to host several of my domains, and they have everything I need plus some. One thing to look for in a host is how compatible they are with other scripts, languages, etc. 1and1 is by far the best I've seen, especially for the price.

Although they have less expensive packages, I highly recommend their $5 home package for beginners. Not only do most of these packages come with great software that you can use to edit your webpages, but the hosting comes with built in website creators (one html and one dynamic/flash). So now even if you have virtually no skills with html, you should easily be able to learn everything you need to know very quick. I've played around with these editors and they are truly two of the easiest ones I've ever seen.

All of the usual things like subdomains, scripts, databases, etc. are all supported. The unlimited domains, which is different than unlimited bandwidth, is something that many people often overlook. Unlimited domains means that you can host 10 different websites on the same account with different domain names for the same price (not $5 per website). Many hosts out there only allow one website per hosting account, which can get very expensive for beginners.

If you want more advanced features and have tons of high bandwidth websites already existing, 1and1 hosting has plenty of packages to upgrade to, but I really like them for beginners due to their low price, great customer support (phone and e-mail), and their free domain names included in the price (not just the first year, but for as long as you host with them). Even the basic $5 home package has two free domain names.

In fact, as I write this, they currently have a 50% off deal going on for the first six months (so the $5 package is really a $2.50 package for the first six months), so you should definitely check them out. They also have over $300 in free pay-per-click credits at places like MSN and Adwords, which makes the deal even better. Some of the accounts even include a free tool to see who is currently visiting your website and allows you to initiate chats with them, which is just one of the many tools that you might find useful. Beginners will also appreciate their free collection of pictures, scripts, and so forth that can easily be implemented into any of your sites.

Overall, I give 1and1 web hosting a 9 out of 10 when taking the price, customer support, things included, compatible languages, and advanced features. And if you know me, I usually don't rate things too high.

Feel free to post your own reviews of 1and1 hosting in the comments or any other hosts you found useful.

Some new announcements

I just wanted to make a few quick announcements, as I've been slacking a bit on the posts (only because I have some exciting things that will be coming in the near future). This will be picking up here over the next few days with tons of new information, so stay tuned.

First, with regards to this blog, I'll not only be posting some new internet marketing tips, but I'll also be starting some reviews of internet marketing and website related tools and services. I think that this will benefit everyone, as there are a lot of tools and services that are crap despite being very popular ... and there are some great cheap tools out there that hardly anyone knows about!

Now onto some more exciting news. I have four more announcements of projects in the near future (you'll definitely want to read about the last one).

I plan on releasing a cheap membership site for those interested in buying domains. Domain name buying has grown in popularity lately, but a lot of people are going about it the wrong way and trying to make hundreds of thousands of dollars overnight, which simply isn't how it works. I set up some unique relationships that will allow members to get high quality expired domains listed out for them, and it will allow you to sort out domain names that you find of interest to you. I won't give out all of the secrets, but this will be unlike anything you have seen so far. Best of all, instead of being $30 a month or more like other sites that don't do nearly as much, I'll be charging about $5 a month.

I also have two smaller projects. One is a special tool in the works to help website owners get in touch with their visitors better, which will allow you to convert at much higher rates. The other is a new guide that I'll be releasing shortly on how to profit big time without much traffic and how you can go to your visitors instead of waiting for them to come to you.

Now lastly, here's the big one... It's still a few months away from its public launch, but we're very close to having a super secret new project. One part of this project is where you won't have to buy a thing to benefit or make money online. In fact, we'll pay you -- sometimes hundreds to thousands of dollars -- to do a few simple things for us. You might not know this, but there are plenty of reasons why we should be paying you instead of you paying us. Sounds interesting, right? Trust me, this is one NOT to be missed.

I'll be notifying this blog's mailing list first shortly before launch, but this is definitely something to be paying attention to.

Feel free to post your comments!

Brian

A new look on buying and selling domain names

I've seen a lot of interest in buying domain names lately. Not only has that industry boomed over the years (it was a lot easier in the past), but I've seen several posts on a few forums regarding buying/selling domain names on here in the past few weeks.

I think that some people think that they can easily find a $7 domain name that they can resell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, which isn't likely to happen. There are those who do this for a living, but they definitely know what they are doing, have money to invest, and so forth.

However, I think that there's a much easier and immediate benefit if you really want to go about this business, and this way is a bit easier than others might think.

Instead of looking for domains that get thousands upon thousands of visitors, why not look for a few that are related to your site with a few backlinks that get only a few visitors each day? Then just redirect it to your site. Even 1 to 5 visitors a day isn't bad for some niches.

If you have a niche that Adwords can be a bit expensive for, 1 to 5 visitors a day could be saving you $5 or more a day. When you multiply those few visitors each day by the number of days in a year, you get anywhere from 365 to 1825 visitors. All of a sudden that $7 investment isn't all that bad.

I think that some people think so big where it's much harder to succeed that they miss out on some of the easier opportunities.

I will buy your program/product from you

I've realized lately that there are tons of people out there with great products/programs out there. Some of them made them only for their own purposes and never thought of marketing it to others. Others have tried marketing it to others without any luck. I've seen too many great products go completely to waste.

As a result, I'm making an open offer to buy your product/program from you that you either haven't thought of selling or having had much luck selling. If you're not interested in completely selling out exclusive rights to me, I'd be willing to do a joint venture and help you promote your product to benefit us both.

If you're interested, feel free to e-mail me at info@iwantpennies.com and describe your program to me (or send it). I'm not really interested in new guides or anything -- mainly just new programs or web-based tools. If you have a product that you're not sure on, feel free to ask anyway.

I've come across a lot of people with great products not doing anything about it. I'm willing to make good use of the products and benefit both of us. If you send me your product or description, I'll write back my thoughts and a possible offer.

New Online Techniques Usually Are Old Offline Techniques

The offline world seems to be ahead of the online world in terms of marketing techniques. Don't get me wrong, as there are plenty of great new marketing techniques that couldn't possibly be done in the offline world. However, if you look at several of the best offline marketing techniques out there, you'll see that many are nowhere to be found in the online world.

In fact, I've purposely used some marketing techniques on some of my sites that are used offline a ton but barely at all online. When I found some great results with them, I mentioned what I did on a few forums. Some people found it great and simple, whereas some of the gurus attacked the ideas for being ridiculous just because they were new and didn't make sense to them. In reality, you'll find that most of the techniques I've used are very old in the offline world.

I've talked about rebates and money back offers, and some people thought that was ridiculous and just plain stupid. Look at the offline world? How many rebate and money back offers do you see? I don't think they'd be doing that if it was stupid. On top of that, I've offered rebate offers in the past and found that less than 1 out of 20 or so actually take you up on the offer, but it increased sales in the niche that I used it in big time. And that's just one of the common offline techniques that can be put to good use.

Sometimes I'll see a big guru mention a "new" technique and people will praise him for the "discovery." Often times, his discovery is a technique that has been in use for decades upon decades, but so many people fail to look at the offline world to get ideas for the online world.

There are so many great ideas offline that can be used even better online. I'll be sure to do a post in the near future listing a few ideas that I think more people should pay attention to, but I encourage you just to look at offline ads around you -- I bet you'll pick up on a few basics that many online sites are missing.

Screw Adsense!

That's right, you heard me... Screw Adsense! I know that some gurus might disagree with me, but a few minutes of some critical thinking on your part should make you see why Adsense can actually hurt your business and not help it.

Think about it. People bid on keywords on Adsense to get traffic from you. Why do they want traffic from you? Simple -- in hopes to make a sale to make money off of your traffic. Now let's think logically about this for just a minute.

If someone is willing to pay to use your traffic, they're probably benefiting from it and making more than they're paying Adsense/Google. This is especially true with content bids (the bids on keywords that will show up on your site), as the majority of those are only a few pennies if that.

So why would you sell a potential sale of your own or an affiliate sale for only a few pennies? Not only are affiliate sales and your own sales far more profitable because you can make anywhere from several dollars to hundreds of dollars per sale compared to a few pennies, but they can make your site look far more professional too.

When you cover a site in Adsense ads, especially those dime a dozen Adsense sites, people can immediately be turned away from it. I've seen several people putting Adsense on their own sales pages lately, and I think that's a horrible idea. Their thinking is that they'll earn a little extra income. I doubt it. Realistically, they're probably losing a few sales and not making more than perhaps a few dollars a month if that.

It makes sense, doesn't it? If you need some actual numbers as an example, I did a little experiment myself with Adsense on a few sites. In fact, you may have noticed me having some Adsense up on this blog for a short while as part of this experiment. I also did the same in the past in different niches (to test different times of the year and different niches). My results might amaze you.

On some of my niche sites, for every dollar or two I made with Adsense, I earned several hundred dollars in affiliate sales of other products. Some of you might say that some keywords, like internet marketing and "make money online" type keywords would do much better. On this blog, which is barely monetized at all, here are the results: for about every $1 in adsense from this blog that I made, I made about $120 using JUST affiliate sales.

So by using Adsense, I was trading $120 for $1. If anyone wants to do that trade, be sure to e-mail me at info@iwantpennies.com and I'll gladly do it for you!

I think that says a lot, and I think that people should look over their strategies a little more with how they plan on making money online. I know Adsense sites are a huge craze just because people think that they are easy to do, but I don't think they are any harder than switching to a site promoting affiliate sales. In fact, I think that Adsense sites can be even harder to set up.

Gurus who sell those big packages of pre-made Adsense sites are selling them for a reason -- because they know that they personally can't make too much off of those any more, and selling them to you will make them a lot more richer than using them. People will buy them up because they buy the dream of a plug-n-chug overnight wealth scheme, which just doesn't happen.

That's part of the reason of why I created "The Big Secret," because even though that technique still requires a little work, it's as easy as Adsense (if not easier) and can be done by almost anyone. Even outside of the technique I describe in my guide, just setting up a few sites promoting affiliate products can go a long way.

I know I've been talking about ineffective Adsense can be for most people for a long time, but hopefully these numbers will stand out to you. I've even noticed a few well known marketers starting to catch onto this trend and turning away from what they used to promote so much.

Perhaps some of us should rethink our business models and websites as well.

Easy trick/technique to save/make money

Here's a little trick that I don't think is used enough despite how well it can work for both consumers and marketers alike. It doesn't matter if you're selling a product, buying something, or negotiating a better deal for your debt or loans.

Basically, if you make an offer that is greatly in your favor that you don't think will ever be agreed upon, you can expect it to be shot down. But here's what you do after making such a ridiculous offer -- make a more reasonable offer that is still lower than what the seller/buyer was asking.

You'll find that many people will now accept your offer even if they would have turned it down the first time if you made only the reasonable offer without the ridiculous offer. Many will accept this offer because they'll view you as being nice for making a second offer and working with them, so they'll feel like they'll have to work with you.

Here's an example if you're negotiating rent for an apartment: For a $900/month apartment that seems to be strict in their price, try offering $800/month first. You'll probably get shot down, but then offer $850 or so. If the person you make the offer to has a say in the price, they may often feel bad for turning you down twice and will feel that since you are working with them on a more reasonable price, they might also work with you too -- even if they initially wouldn't have accepted $850.

You can even do the opposite as a marketer when you make offers to your customers. Some door-to-door salesmen are trained to offer to sell you an item for a much higher price initially only to expect you to turn it down. Then they'll offer a much lower price that seems more reasonable, which you might then look into. In the door-to-door example, this is a little more well known now, so it doesn't always work as well when it's this obvious, but you get the picture.

Even if you owe debt, creditors are often trained in this (and if you know this, you can get an even cheaper deal to pay them back) and will use it on you. You can make a ridiculously low offer that will probably get shot down. Then make a more reasonable offer. Even though creditors are trained at what they can and can't offer, many are still able to talk to their managers to get an even better deal. You'd be surprised at how well this works.

Here's one more example that is still somewhat related, but that I'm sure almost ANYONE here can use. If you're about to buy a car, you can use this tactic there in negotiating, but you can add a little twist to it. If the car dealership has financing, you can also offer to use their financing. Since dealerships can make a lot off of some financing plans (a lot more than the initial price of the car), they're often willing to negotiate an even lower price knowing that they'll most likely make more later. Then after this is negotiated and you get the lower price, either pay the car off immediately or go to your own bank to get a better loan and pay off the other loan with that.

If you're clever enough with this, you can find that you can save, or perhaps even make, a little extra money here and there.

Hope it helps a few of you!

Be careful with tempting offers that ask for more and more

I have recently seen a lot of people falling for some common marketing tricks that could bring some big financial losses to those who fall for it. One of the most common marketing methods out there is to draw people in with a free or cheap offer to get them excited about making hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars online. Then after they determine who is willing to pay a few bucks for their guide, they do one of two things.

First, they'll almost always try to sell you more. There's nothing wrong with this if it's done in an ethical way. The second thing that some marketers often do is try to get you excited about something and then have you sign up for something through them. This is smart on their part, because they find ways of taking a percent of your profits. Again, nothing too wrong with that, except that you shouldn't have to pay for information on how to make them even more money in my opinion.

However, recently I've noticed some scary trends happening that a lot of people are getting really excited about. Some very well respected marketers are promoting certain tactics that not only simply don't work that well any more, but that you can literally lose thousands of dollars with all the hype. I don't want to name any names, but I want to warn people to be careful when they spot such techniques.

I'm not talking about a $5 guide that then asks you to look into a $30 guide. I'm talking about when a cheap guide basically says "join my business, give me a cut, and then also buy this $2,000 guide and start investing hundreds to thousands of dollars in this." This should send a red flag out, as you're essentially paying them to let them advertise a $2,000 guide to you. Does this make sense to you?

The technique in question is one that can work for some people, but it's one that a newcomer really doesn't stand much of a chance at. Sure, you can invest thousands upon thousands of dollars and hope for an okay return, but the hype that they gave is simply false. They'll point out a few rare exceptions and act as though that is the norm. I bet if you were to look into those exceptions, the money was all made by someone who really knew what they were doing and were doing it with investing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not something most people would want to get involved in.

There's something even more dangerous about this -- even though some people have caught on to this technique and realize that it simply doesn't work like it should, others are all excited about the hype and willing to throw their money away in hopes of making hundreds of thousands of dollars. I'd be willing to bet that not one of them will even come close. In fact, I bet almost all of them will lose money.

With the particular technique in question, the more people involved in it, the less profitable it can get, right? So why would a place be selling guides and tools on how to do it? Well, the answer is easy. The big boys have tools and techniques that the little guys don't have. They can continue to use their tools and techniques and snatch up all the profitable possibilities while you are left fighting over what's left and spending hundreds to thousands of dollars trying to do so.

So they can easily sell guides and tools to "help you out," when really it's just making more money for them. If any of you succeed at even making a little, they'll try to ensure that they get a cut of it. If it was really that easy, why wouldn't they just give all the guides away and rely on their small cut? The answer is obvious here too, and it's because most people will fail and they'll make far more money trying to sell you thousands of dollars worth of stuff.

Even though I realize that some marketers can make a lot of money by having people buy expensive products and guides from them that they know don't work nearly as well as they claim, I personally don't think that it's ethical knowing that these people can lose thousands. Now, I do sell a guide, but I believe that virtually anyone can be successful at it. I also make absolutely sure that I provide several free and cheap methods of using my techniques. This is because if someone is desperate to make money, I don't want them to risk thousands of dollars, even if it were to make me richer. In fact, I'd encourage them to stick only to the free methods, as I know that they'll be happier in the long run and can move up to spending a little once they get the hang of it.

I would never dream of selling a guide that would only tell them to sign up under me for another program so that I can make even more money. Even though some people might happily do it, I really want to push the fact that there are better ways out there. You should never pay for a guide that simply tells you to buy more from them or to sign up for programs that are designed to bring more money to the maker of the guide.

Even with respected marketers, you do need to be careful. Use common sense and look for the common signs of marketers trying to bleed money out of you. Only then will you be able to separate the good, ethical marketers from the bad ones. I've noticed several people following the wrong paths, and I hate to see someone losing thousands of dollars.