Okay, so we already discussed traffic exchanges and viral list builders, now its time to continue the list.

Internet Marketing with Safe Lists and Solo Ads:

Safe lists are groups of people that have signed up to receive tons (and I do mean tons) of promotional offers in return for freely being able to send their own advertisement to the list. Most safe lists require that you read a certain number of emails and click on the link in order to receive credits that you can use to send your own promotion. These truly were a great thought and innovation, but like the rest of our timewasters we find that most of the people on these lists only click for credits and are not looking for another product or promotion to purchase. So even if the list is gargantuan-huge, you may easily find a very low response to your mailings.

  There are guys out there that have truly mastered safe lists and will swear by them,the problem is that the reason they are successful with safe list marketing is the exact reason that you will find it so hard to be successful! They have already mastered the art of only clicking for credits and will never pay attention to your advertisement. Plus, they are signed up to 20-100 safe lists that are all sending back hundreds of emails each, per day. So in the grand scheme of things they probably have to spend 3-4 hours a day to send their promotions,and with any luck they will make 10 sales a month. I would urge you to consider having a blog or website instead that will be pulling customers daily, with very little effort after the first hard push of start up, rather than receiving 10 customers (at best) in a month that most likely won't buy from you again. Remember you have to build trust with your customers, someone buying a product from a safe list advertisement is not trust, it's merely them seeing something they want and impulse buying, what are the chances of a return sale this way?

  In closing on this time waster, I think that safe lists were a great innovation and to be honest, I still use them to stay on top of the newest trends. However, I see the persistent use of them as a big time waster, but far be it from me to tell you not to do it at all, I just want you to be aware of the pitfalls that lay in your path to success.

Internet Marketing With Email Blasters:

 Email Blasters are paid services that have obtained lists of people to send promotional materials to. Most of these lists are double opt-in safe lists, so you don't have to worry about spam complaints.

 
  These are not so much time wasters as money wasters, but I felt they definitely needed to be addressed. For a fee, ranging from $4-40 (the majority of them) you can send your email promotion to their list once daily and all you have to do is login and push the send button for your advertisement.  Sounds great doesn't it? The sad fact is that the responsiveness of these lists are about the same as safe lists, and guess where these companies come up with their huge customer list to send to? That's right, they send to safe lists, so most of your efforts here are wasted, most of the safe lists they send to are lists that require pop3 email accounts. Pop3 email accounts are accounts that are basicly not used unless clicked on for credits and there is tons of software out there that wipes them clean daily, so if your advertisement didn't just happen to fall into the right account at the right time....your money and efforts were probably wasted. The upside to these is that you just login and send, and you get the service forever, so if you can make a sale or two you might break even. I still use one of these to this day, it had the best responsiveness of all the ones I tried, and my promotion gets read 4-7 times a day even though it is sent to over 1.1 million email boxes. Ponder that for awhile.

Internet Marketing Pitfalls to Avoid:

 Whether you are a beginner or a professional marketer there are pitfalls that we all fall into from time to time. First and foremost would be get rich quick schemes. I know you have seen the ads for "make 10,000 in your first month" and I just want you to consider some things if you are enticed to read their sales letter. Those screen shots of how much money is coming into their account could easily be faked, in most cases they are true, but how much money did they have to spend on advertising to get there? If you are at all familiar with Google Adwords, then you know how easy it is to spend a fortune on advertising expenses. Most of these guys that are true blue have been marketing for years and still have to spend 10,000 for a few months at least before they are seeing 10,000 a month coming in. So don't buy the hype, I know the sales letters can seem awful enticing and most of them will tell you there will be nothing more to buy...what they don't tell you is that you will be spending an enormous amount on advertising, and of course individual results will vary. I don't know about you, but I don't have 30,000 to try these schemes out, so just be aware that if it sounds too good to be true....IT IS!!!
  

There are other smaller programs out there that only require a minimal investment and only takes a few referrals to end up making a fortune. Most of these are pretty legitimate, but consider this...the average network marketer only makes two referrals in an MLM business. This is a marketing fact, not some number pulled out of the air. If you are interested in one of these programs, make sure that the market is not already saturated by this program. If you are going to advertise for free using the techniques that I have deemed in this report to be timewasters, then you are going to face some stiff competition and your referrals will have it even tougher when it comes to finding new members to sponsor.
 

Make sure when you are staying up to date on the latest products and programs that you don't fall for the big pitches to get your money. If you cannot see how to break even within days of buying a product or program, DON'T BUY IT!!!
 

There are free programs out there that you can sign up for to get a specific $ amount of advertising credit. The majority of these will have you signing up to tons of traffic exchanges, safe lists,viral list builders, and perhaps even some paid programs. The idea is terrific, but you find yourself trying to promote that program rather than the ones that make you money. So unless you can garner several referrals each and every week that might actually join a paid program under you...you are just earning more credits for someone else and not reaping the rewards of the program. Most of the "free advertising" they give you will be on their site in the form of banner advertisements and text ads, but how many people that sign up to promote their own program are going to be interested in clicking on everyone else's program???

Looking to the Future:

So now you know what some of the biggest challenges you will face are. Network marketing truly can be a fun, fullfilling, and very rewarding career once you have broken out from the pack and can see the broad spectrum of how it all works and what will work for you. How do I know it will work for you? Because it is working right now for all the "big dogs" and once you are receiving the proper information, and disregarding the "crap", you will have an "aha" moment where you see how this all works. It is much like the movie "the Matrix" everytime you think you know something, someone will come along and blow you outta the water with their knowledge and views on how to garner their market share. If you have the guts, and the sense of adventure, to follow through with network marketing a brand new world will be revealed before your eyes and you will start to understand why all the "Gurus" out there want so badly for you to stick to the time wasters and not break into the big time.
 

If you are not spending a penny on the internet to market your products or programs it is time for you to buck up.  Get yourself a blog at the minimum (preferably a website also) and start using article marketing and giving your readers great content so that you will garner trust and rapport with them. You will be amazed at how much more likely it is for a person to buy from you once they have received tons of great information for free. In some instances even, customers have begged for a product because they have been freely given so much great information on how to build their own business. How much easier would that be than sending ads to people who only want to sell their own product??
 

To wrap this all up...I hope you have enjoyed reading this and it will save you some time in the future. Just remember that when you have just been told that your marketing methods are time wasters,it just means that it's time for you to grow some more in your field. A whole new world of abundance is waiting for you, so do your homework, start a website, and start learning how the "Gurus" are making money rather than wasting time with the novices. If this was Karate, you would have just gone up a belt.
  Don't forget to have fun!!!!