A Fort Myers man says that he was scammed and that unauthorized charges were made to his credit card subsequent to his order for a the teeth whitening products South Beach Brite and Prime White. Both products are popular CPA offers that a lot of Internet marketers are promoting.

It seems that free trial offers make it easy to make money on the Internet as the payoffs to the marketer can be quite substantial. It’s not uncommon to see a $40.00 commission on a free trial offer such as this.

The problem comes in when the “unsuspecting” (i.e. did not read the whole offer) customer gets charged the full fee after the trial period has ended. So of course the next thing you know they get charged and scream scam. Such is the case with Steve Nance. He complained, as have may free trial customers have, that they were actually charged after the free trial period was over. Nance was charged $87.62 and went nuts.

Seems he called everyone and anyone he could until he caught the ear of a reporter willing to make a storyout of this issue. Hey I guess if you can make a national scandal out of someone hitting a fire hydrant and smashing up their Cadillac Escalade you can make a story out of someone being charged $82 bucks on a product that they ordered.

I guess Mr. Nance in an effort to have his teeth whitened did not read this information which was clearly delineated on the offer site:

We are offering you a Risk Free Trial period. By agreeing to this offer, you agree to our full terms and to enroll in a 14-day Risk Free Trial where you will receive a 30-day supply and, included at no additional cost is a subscription to the Healthier Living Institute e-book series (billed separately). Your credit card will be charged a total of only $4.95 S&H (non-refundable). If either product is not right for you, call 954-237-2690 within 14 days of your initial order for simple return instructions of your Risk Free Trial and owe nothing more. Then, simply return the product, even if it is empty. Otherwise, at the end of your Risk Free Trial you will be automatically enrolled into our Home Delivery Plan and your credit card will be charged $79.95 for the product and e-book series you received. 30 days from your initial order (and every 30 days thereafter), you will be sent a new supply and your credit card will be billed $79.95 plus $4.95 S&H. Please read terms and conditions for full details of this offer.

If I saw it then why are all these people crying scam and fraud? Well it seems that “consumer confusion” is to blame. The Fort Myers Press calls this type of marketing “negative option marketing” and feels it preys on unsuspecting customers. Well here’s the deal…if we as a Country are so stupid as to not being able to read what we are buying then we are in real trouble.

The company that makes the teeth whitener contracted with Epic Advertising (Azoogle) to promote their product. Within one week they had 2,500 orders. Then in one 4 hour period they had 2,000 orders alone! Yeah…CPA offers work and affiliates push them. You can make a lot of Internet money promoting these offers.

But guys like Mr. Nance make the deal not so sweet. They complain that they never knew they were going to get charged and then they complain that they were taken advantage of and then every consumer board they can complain to jumps on the scam bandwagon.

So listen, maybe with all of the new FTC guidelines taking effect, and with so many consumers feeling scammed, maybe pushing this free trial offers might not be such a good idea. What I am saying is that we don’t know these companies, we don’t know what happens once we promote the offers. All we know is we get paid and we move on to the next offer. We leave the sites up and snare as many customers that we can.

Maybe as marketers we need to promote products that help you find the quickest way to lose weight, or perhaps concentrate on kids gifts like Zhu Zhu Pets ..or perhaps push radio controlled cars like the Traxxas Slash, maybe then we’ll be looked at better in they eye of the consumer.

The consumer is always going to have a problem with somebody and in this age of social media the power of the Internet strikes both ways. Just as we can get the word out about an offer or product launch the consumer can get their complaints heard. I think we are going to see a lot more of this so just be careful what offers that you promote.

For every Mr. Nance out there I have to believe that there are many more real customers who aren’t trying to get something for nothing. 

At least that’s the advice from Steve Clayton and Tim Godfrey from Commission Blueprintfame. Hey, before you grab the pitchforks and the torches, I have to tell you that I agree with them. Sure once in a while on some obscure, super long-tail keyword you might find a Squidoo lens showing up, but for the most part, you won’t.

More than likely because Squidoo wasn’t designed by or for those who want to make money on the Internet. It seems it was designed for conversational information, not selling. I am sure some will disagree but go ahead and start a Squidoo lens and load it up with an affiliate linked article and see what happens.

And if you do get your article posted (yep, you got that right..they will decide what you can post) don’t be surprised if down the road they decide to pull the plug on you.

Steve and Tim reviewed approximately 60,000 “popular” Internet marketing keywordsto see what was penetration in the Top 10 Google results for those keywords. What they found was that Squidoo and Hubpages only showed up about 2.5% of the time. That’s enough data for me!

Oh and also for you supporters of the almighty article marketing wave…fuhgettaboudit! While Ezine definitely reigns supreme, the other directories are basically non-existent.

Check out what Tim and Steve found out here.

A recent research study from NETexponent has found that only about 36% of those trying to make money on the Internet in the affiliate marketing realm are using pay per click ads and over 45% don’t have any means of collecting data from their website or blog.

“The affiliate industry is growing and evolving rapidly, and it is essential for new affiliates joining the game to quickly come up to speed on the latest trends and strategies if they want to compete in this lively marketplace,” said Peter Figueredo, CEO of NETexponent. “The AffiliateBenchmarks report can be a great getting-started guide for these newcomers as well as a tool to help seasoned marketers improve results.”

One of the reasons for these results may be due to the low barrier of entry into the Internet marketing world. A lot of people get involved with affiliate marketing with no real training or experience.

To increase their ability to profit and become successful Internet marketers, you may want to take a look at this very imformative white paper.

There are a number of ways to make money on the Internet. Affiliate Marketing is one of those ways. Promoting CPA offers is somewhat of an advanced strategy of affiliate marketing. I like to refer to it as affiliate marketing for grown-ups.

Why? Because you have to have some prerequisite knowledge of basic affiliate marketing and not just anybody can do it. You have to apply and be accepted by a CPA network in order to sit at this table.

CPA or Cost Per Action, is a program wherein an advertiser pays you as the affiliate for a specific desired action taken by the consumer. That action can take quite a few forms. Some of those actions include an outright purchase, acceptance of a limited or free trial, a form submission or survey, an email submission or zip code submission.

In order to begin making money on the Internet with CPA offers, you will need to sign up and be accepted with a CPA network.

CPA Networks are basically clearinghouses for these offers. The companies who make the products or want the products to be promoted bring them to the market via the CPA network and those of us who want to make money by marketing the products sign up to push the offer. Think of the CPA network as a broker of sorts.

As affiliates, we join these networks, select the products we want to promote, and utilize our websites, blogs, and media buying to drive traffic to the offer. Many affiliates who have a decent size list will also utilize email marketing as well.

CPA offers vary from products in markets such as dating, health, beauty, education, finance, work from home and many more.Right now one of the products we are marketing is a diet program. Here is a banner ad from the program we are promoting via various means.

So can you make money on the Internet promoting CPA offers? Well, let me put it to you this way… the Medifast program featured above brings in over $250.00 per day on average…and we are’nt even one of the major players in the market. Look at that again. That single program alone averages $250.00 per day in profits for us.

Now do the math and think about how much money you can make with CPA offers. We have one email submit program that converts at over 30%…that’s crazy. What’s really nuts is that the guys who are really killing it and have the resources to really scale a program, are making over $50,000.00 or more PER DAY!!! No BS, I know a couple of guys who regularly bring in over $100,000.00 per day.

Now understand, these power hitters are spending upwards of $20,000 or more advertising the products as well. But hey, they started where you are. Trust me, it doesn’t take long at all. Remember we began our trek in affiliate marketing just a few months ago after we got fed up with the bullshit of real estate agents. What a difference it has made!

The key to making money on the Internet with anything is having the ability to put eyeballs on your offer. You have to drive traffic. Profits are measured in small percentages. If you are only converting 2% then 100 visitors only equates to 2 sales…that is if all 100 visitors to your site or advertisement click on your offer.

In an effort to be as transparent as possible you have to know there really is no secret to this. You can sell a product on eliminating man boobs if you can drive the traffic. It’s all about eyeballs. If you can put enough eyes in front of your offers and have enough offers running, you will make a boat load of money.

There is a market for things you would have no idea about…remember when you seek to make money on the Internet, your market is global. So the catalyst for success is being able to drive traffic to your offers.

We will continue our discussion about CPA offers and CPA networks in our new Massive Profits Internet Marketing 101 series which we will be launching on September 1, 2009 right here on this blog. We hope you come back and want to hear more about CPA offers, CPA networks and how you can profit from these offers.

More About Cpa Offers

When we decided to focus on making money on the Internet and dipping our beak into the Internet Money pool we thought it would have a long learning curve. However it really hasn’t been as tough as we originally thought. Maybe it’s because we took it seriously and had some really good help over the last few months.

Now I realize that a lot of people may not be in the position that we were fortunate enough to be in. Due to the success of our radio show we were able to gain access to some of the brightest business minds both offline and online.

Most people entering the Internet Marketing foray don’t have that kind of access and unfortunately are stuck listening to gurus and scam artists who haven’t even taken the time to build their own websites much less be in a realistic position to offer you advice on how to make money on the Internet.

So let’s say you want to start out taking the steps to make your first steps towards becoming the next Frank Kern or Brad Fallon what exactly should you do? Well the first thing you need to realize is that you more than likely won’t be able to be as successful as either of the two gents previously mentioned anymore than you’d be able to be a successful as Michael Phelps in the pool.

What you have to realize is that if you truly concentrate on your quest to “be like Mike”, then even being a fraction as good is going to put you head and shoulders above everyone else. Mike didn’t become Mike because he just listened to some coach. Mike became Michael Jordan because he worked his butt off honing his skills to be the best basketball player in the world.

So my belief is if you want to be successful, then you need to learn from those who are indeed successful. When I wanted to learn about affiliate marketing I searched for information from someone who was successful. I don’t mean sold a few ebooks on Clickbank successful but rather someone in the Michael Jordan caliber of success in affiliate marketing.

So I found out about a guy who was making some serious jack to the tune of over $10,000.00 per day in the affiliate marketing world. While that may not sound like all that much in today’s CPA riches world where guru’s purport to make upwards of $100k per day…what makes Hamlet Batista stand out is he is the only person I know of who does it without PPC and no media buying.

As a person just starting out I was all ears..or eyes rather as I read all about that. So what was Hamlet’s earth shattering idea? What would allow someone to have an opportunity to reap those kinds of profits without having to spend a dime…SEO. But not just any SEO, we’re talking the type of SEO that means something and here’s the premise.

Pick a product that is already proven to be a winner. That means pick or find a product that a LOT of people want, that a lot of people will buy and have show that they will continue buying. Essentially forget about niche marketing.

Niche marketing is for suckers. There’s a reason it’s a niche! It’s because you are going to find a product that only a small segment of the market want.

What’s wrong with getting involved with the markets that have the most competition? Do you think Burger King stays away from street corners where McDonald’s sets up shop? Of course not…they jump in and look to compete. Why? Because they know people are buying hamburgers! How do they know that? McDonald’s puts it on their flippin sign!

OMG, how easy is that? Set up your hamburger stand near a McDonald’s and make some money. Do you have to be as successful as McDonald’s to succeed? Of course not…and there’s a bunch of guys who weren’t quite as good as Michael Jordan who still made quite a bit of money in the NBA.

Why do the gurus tell you to go find a niche? Because it’s easier and you make them look good when you show up number 1 for “Green Flypaper In Maui”. (no please don’t tell me someone actually is ranked for that…yikes!)

If I’m selling hamburgers I want to compete with the best. I don’t want to shy away from them. I want to take them on and I know from my hard work that even if I don’t beat them I’m going to have a pretty good living being second or third and who knows if I work really hard then just maybe I can take a bigger market share.

So when I read this from Hamlet’s blog I knew he had something. I have NEVER been one to shy away from a fight and I’m not going into a business to accept the fact that I have to settle for a niche because I can’t compete with the big dogs. I played football at the professional level and I know what I had to do to compete. It took a crap load of hard work and sweat and pain along with a great deal of personal sacrifice..and I would not have traded it for anything.

Here’s what Hamlet had to say about niches:

So we read everything he wrote and we decided to apply this approach and on June 19, 2009 we decided to begin our journey to make money on the Internet.

We decided we were going to take a stab at arguably the biggest market online…the make money online market by attacking the “make money on the Internet” keyword.

If you check the stats on that keyword, there are over 151 Million competing websites and as of today we have climbed to number 15! We’re not backing away from the mountain, we’re looking to take it by storm, day by day until we are number 1.

What does number 1 mean for that keyword…hmmm…well Google says that almost 6,000 people per day search that term looking for information on how to make money on the Internet. Well, we hope to capture a ton of that market and you know what that means…yep serious jack!

So today’s lesson is this…screw the niches. Or not…it’s up to you. If you want to sell shoelaces for snowshoes it’s up to you. Me…I’d rather be smack dab in the mix when people want to learn how to lose weight or how to trade foreign currencies or how to find people online. You know the BIG MONEY markets.

So what..it may indeed take a lot of work. But I bet you Michael Jordan didn’t take the easy way out. In fact he was so competitive he tried to compete in 2 professional sports. Basketball he owned and baseball..well not so much but guess what…he still played professionally. He still made it to the big leagues…twice!

In your quest to make money on the Internet what league are you looking to play in?

Is Affiliate Marketing Really The Ultimate Online Business?

Well if it isn’t it, I’d like someone to show me a better one. I recently have been doing a ton of research on affiliate marketing and the facts are undeniable and astounding.

As I assume much of our audience is comprised of our former audience of real estate agents and new readers who are interested in making money on the Internet, let me give you a bit of background information.

Affiliate marketing is estimated to be more than a $7 billion per year industry with an almost meteoric like annual growth

This is no longer the business of Tupperware parties and Amway. Although those businesses are still around, many of biggest companies in the world no engage in some form of affiliate marketing including Target, Sears and Amazon.com to name just a few. Even Walmart offers an affiliate program.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Very simple. When you register to be an affiliate for a company, you are paid as a result of your ability to drive a customer to the companies website. If the customer you were able to drive to their site purchases, or sometimes simply registers, then you are paid a commission.

The company will provide you with a link that is specific to your account so that they and you can track if a transaction occurs as a result of your referral of that customer.

Next week we will be releasing a video as to how affiliate marketing works which will clear up a lot of the fog for those new to the language and methodology of affiliate marketing.

While there are many who are struggling with getting affiliate marketing right, there are literally scores of people who are earning millions simply by referring customers to the websites of various companies.

If you’re wondering if you can be successful as an affiliate then here are a few things to consider.

• can you navigate your way around a computer with some proficiency
• can you navigate your way through the vastness of the Internet
• do you have the time to learn about affiliate marketing. Forget the infomercials of overnight riches. get real and determine if you are willing to learn

If you are disciplined and willing to learn, then affiliate marketing may be for you. It may just be the ultimate online business for you.

Generating a part or even full-time income by running your own affiliate marketing business has many benefits. Here are just a few of the reasons that affiliate marketing is considered the ultimate home based business.

If you think you’d like to give affiliate marketing a try, stick around as we will be devoting a substantial amount of time discussing it.