David Leigh

StomperNet Going Natural 2.0 

I’ve been pretty hard on StomperNet in the past after the fiasco that their SIMPLE program turned into, but have just watched the first video in the Going Natural 2.0 series after being alerted by Ed Dale, one of the faculty members. The great news is that you don’t have to pay anything, you don’t have to give your email address, all you need to do is watch, understand, make notes… and put it into action.

The video is by Andy Jenkins and although slightly technical in nature is so blindingly obvious that I can’t believe that I didn’t think of it myself. Anyway, I’m going to do something about it now, right after I’ve this post. Enjoy!

If you’re a regular reader of my blog you’ll know that I’ve been more than happy with Immediate Edge since I joined at the beginning for September.

All the internet wisdom of Dan Raine and Ed Dale is served up to members on a frequent basis with a number of projects on the go to try and demonstrate not only how to do it but the thinking processes behind it.

One of the things they’ve been on and on about for ages is Facebook. The thing about Facebook is love it or hate it, you can’t ignore it, because with the launch of a geo-demographic PPC platform now launched it means that rather than target keywords, the internet marketer can now target customer profiles; internet marketing just got one step closer to traditional offline marketing, although whether that is one step forward or one step back is debatable

Dan and Ed think this is the biggest thing since Google AdWords launched. If you joined that in the early days you’ll remember that it was easy to pick up advertising for a few cents, but once it became a mainstream advertising medium that advantage disappeared as the ad costs soared. What this means is that there is now a window of opportunity before the big boys move in - Google Cash 2.0 if you like.

Dan and Ed will be releasing full info on how to make the most out of Facebook PPC as a stand alone product. However, you can get that info now, if you join the Immediate Edge. And if you join and don’t like it you can cancel at any time - if it’s within the first 2 weeks then you get you’re money back. All I can say is that it’s about the best $97 you could spend per month, so what are you waiting for?

When I left my job and left England I didn’t really know what I was going to do next, but I did have a website that I played with and I toyed with the idea about starting an internet business, but didn’t really know how to go about it.

The last salary cheque I ever received was in June 2001, 6 weeks or so before I moved to Barcelona. I’d been working for a few years in marketing for telco/internet service providers and involved with the launch of ADSL in the UK for one of the main players at the time. However it wasn’t until I received a phone call out of the blue at the beginning of 2002 that the ball began to roll.

The call was from the sales director of a company selling a product online, and he wanted me to feature his product on my website , for which he would pay me a commission for every sale.

To be honest I didn’t think I’d sell a thing, but in the first month I made 4 sales for a whopping £50 commission. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it did show me that people apart from me would buy things online and that I could profit from it after all. After that start I pretty much managed to increase sales month on month until at one point I was earning around £3000/month for that one product.

Now that isn’t the only product I have been involved with selling and if you start to look for affiliate programs you’ll find them all over the place. But that isn’t the place to start - I was lucky in being contacted by someone who wanted me to sell their product AND that people actually wanted the product.

So what you need to do if you are thinking of starting an internet business of your own is to think about markets first, not products. By all means use products as ideas for indentifying markets, but you need to find out what do people want to buy? And then look at the competition, what do people want to buy and there aren’t many competing pages?

The huge advantage of affiliate marketing is that there is little risk for you - if you can get traffic and direct a good percentage of that traffic towards the sales page of the company you’re an affiliate for then it’s all down to how good their sales process is. And you don’t need to hold stock, or ship goods or deal with customers directly either.

There are plenty of places to find information on the internet about starting off in internet marketing, but one of the best places to start is the Thirty Day Challenge, run by Ed Dale and Dan Raine, which is completely FREE.

If you have more experience and want to reach the next rung of the internet marketing ladder then I’d suggest you look at Immediate Edge. It does cost, but the amount of info in there is amazing.

But the key thing about starting an internet business is that unlike me you can start your business while you have a job - it probably makes more sense for you to do this than do what I did and quit my job. With the right foundations and just a few hours a week you can start to live off the internet and work towards saying goodbye to your boss.

Well, I’ve finally done it - I just cancelled my StomperNet SIMPLE subscription.

Although I’ve been quite critical of it for some time, it isn’t without some regret as I did learn plenty, it’s a shame that StomperNet didn’t give it a bit more priority some months ago.

As you may already be away StomperNet SIMPLE was originally the $1 trial back in May. Led by Australian internet guru Ed Dale it was a month packed with info on how to get an internet business off the ground.

Unfortunately due to poor communication on somebody’s part - I don’t know who is at fault here - the $1 triallers didn’t get as much for their dollar as some of them expected and so the first murmurs of discontent appeared. As for me, I was mainly happy with it at that stage and signed up for $97/month. There were some problems with some of the content, which coincided with the StomperNet conference and so there was a delay in getting it sorted.

That first $97 month did continue in much the same line, although I wasn’t happy with some of what I’d done. However in July the amount of new content was scaled back radically and many people started to leave, asking themselves what they were actually getting for their $97.

August was worse and although a whole load of new content was promised, most of it failed to materialize. September came and went; finally in October we had some more content, but for me it was a question of too little, too late - I joined Immediate Edge at the beginning of Sepember, also for $97/month, and the amount and frequency of content is fantastic. Perhaps Immediate Edge also had a shaky start, I don’t know, but new content is posted regularly, there have been a couple of amazing Q&A sessions (3+ hours for the most recent) and Dan Raine and Ed Dale talk you through their thought processes when choosing new markets to attack.

The irony is that the site I put together for StomperNet is starting to gain a trickle of orders. May Immediate Edge turn that into a downpour!

Well after writing my glowing endorsement of Immediate Edge I was now going to tell you how StomperNet seem to be getting their act together.

It was going to be pure praise, but I’ve just found something to grumble about; after being told to sign up to aweber in May, we were never told a what to do with it. Now we’re being told to sign up with 1AutomationWiz instead because it’s much better.

StomperNet SIMPLE stage B

StomperNet SIMPLE stage D

It doesn’t affect me because I’m with aweber anyway, but couldn’t someone have sorted this slightly better? It would be good if they now show us how to set up aweber to do all that is promised…

Anyway onto the positives. First of all we have some new video content, which although it is late is good to watch. Second, the whole of StomperNet is being revamped so that you get credits to watch so much video content and will be able to purchase additional credits. To date SIMPLE members (that’s $97/month instead of $797) have been able to watch the first 10 minutes of a lot of the content, which gives you a taster…

Anyway, it should mean that we’ll be able to access some of the content for full StomperNet for an additional fee, which is ok in my eyes and suddenly makes it more attractive than it has been for 2 or 3 months.

Sort out the aweber/1AutomationWiz issue and you’re on your way to turning SIMPLE into a worthwhile product.

UPDATE:

The more I think about this the more it pisses me off. There is a link for a special StomperNet deal with 1AutomationWiz of course and like much of the content from StomperNet it makes me think how much they earn off the back of these promotions.

Dan Raine posted the mind map for the Maximum Edge Redux last night for Immediate Edge members and I can’t wait to get into it and working.

One of my internet marketing weaknesses has been picking the right niches to enter and Dan, having recognised that this is a huge issue for many people, plans on addressing it.

Obviously since Immediate Edge is a membership site I won’t reveal too much about it other than to say - I love it so far!

I’ll update this blog with the results, good or bad, but I’d like to have at least one more big paying site up and running within the next 6 months.

I’ve just been listening to the Immediate Edge Q&A session between Dan Raine and Ed Dale covering a ton of questions mainly by new members. The session is a couple of hours or so, but covers a lot of ground so well worth it - you could always join the gym.

There are so great projects coming up and I love the hands on approach, so really want to hone my internet marketing skills over the next few months. Immediate Edge is currently $97/month and so far worth every penny.

Just back from eating a great Indian chicken curry recipe at Restaurante Namaste in Barcelona with Dan. Almost went to the wrong restaurant as there are 2 of the same name and only one shows up in Google, but we talked to the owner at the end about his website which turns out not to be indexed. (more…)

I know that many people who read this will think that this is impossible, but I was telling Dan (fellow Stomper/30 Day Challenge/Immediate Edge/fellow ex-pat Brit in Barcelona) recently that I got a page to rank in Google in 15 minutes using the techniques used in the 30 Day Challenge and Immediate Edge.

He was stunned, but luckily he believes me. Anyway, I decided to write an article for one of my websites tonight. I published it less than 25 minutes ago, but when I checked 14 minutes after publishing on Wordpress doing all the Web 2.0 SEO stuff it was ranking at #1 already. OK, so it isn’t a competitive phrase, but how long does it take you to rank?

Let me tell you this; Immediate Edge works; 30 DayChallenge works; Ed Dale and Dan Raine are SEO Gods.

I’ve signed up, have you? I even persuaded my bro to go along for the ride - we’ll be the core of a team, even though I won’t be able to follow the full 30 days.

Watch the vid then go and sign up at the Thirty Day Challenge. You know you want to

And if you don’t - you’re just about to miss one of the best opportunities around to learn all about Internet marketing from some of the top guys around. And it’s free. Spelled F R E E.