David Leigh

Unless you’ve been living on Mars for the last few weeks, this won’t be news to you, but I’ll say it anyway: Stompernet is taking on new members.

As usual they have some well produced videos, but my experience with them is that they don’t really deliver on all their promises and are far too corporate. If you do want to join then go join through Ed Dale’s link as you get Immediate Edge membership and some other cool stuff thrown in too.

And if you are an absolute beginner to internet marketing then neither of these is for you - join the Thirty Day Challenge, which is FREE.

I’m most of the way through Stompernet’s latest video, the first of their Going Natural 3.0 series and blown away. Presenting the story of how Brad Fallon’s multi-million dollar business was blown away when it was dropped from Google’s organic listings and how Dan Thies headed up new research into AdWords to save that business from certain catastrophe, this is a really fresh look at how the AdWords game has changed and what to do in 2008.

One of the tools mentioned - in fact the only tool so far - is Microsoft’s Commercial Intent tool, which has yielded some surprising tools for one of my niches.

In fact, I’m going to see what happens if I use it to screen keywords in the Thirty Day Challenge/Immediate Edge niche research stage, as it may help identify really strong keywords that are off the radar at the moment. (more…)

Technorati Tags: stompernet smarts, stompernet, seo, social bookmarking

Ed Dale has a new podcast on the Thirty Day Challenge, which as always is worth a listen too. I’m just back from the gym where I was listening to Ed’s dulcet tones

Some good advice as usual - he talks about how increasing your typing speed to improve productivity, and I certainly find that sometimes I can just brain dump a load of stuff while typing at around 300 mph and it is great. The problem for me is getting into the frame of mind for the brain dump though, so although he’s right, that isn’t the whole story.

He also talks about scribd, which I think I’ll avoid talking about from now on as I think I’ve been crossed off Andy Jenkin’s Christmas card list for good, not to mention probably closing for good any opportunity to join Stompernet in the future. C’est la vie.

However, there was mention about Gtrends not working any more. I certainly found it don’t work yesterday, and when I went to Google trends it didn’t seem to work for some terms but worked for others. As of now Gtrends, Gtrends 2.0 and Google trends all seem to be working, so I think that was a false alarm.

The Thirty Day Challenge website is down at the moment, but when it’s working again you can download the podcast here.

Technorati Tags: ed dale, seo, stompernet, internet marketing, thirty day challenge, immediate edge

I noticed on another blog a post from Jason Bentley at scribd. To set the record straight he confirmed that the Stompernet video was not the reason for pulling links from scribd, but that an increase in spam in December and over the holiday period had prompted their action.

He also says that responsible marketers will be able to use their service again once they’ve completed some mods to the system.

Another point I’d like to make is that I guess I was the blogger referred to in Andy Jenkins email broadcast on Saturday saying that SMARTS had been pulled. In fact I didn’t point the finger at Stompernet, I suggested it might be related. Perhaps that was lost in my conspiracy theory joke - just shows always use smilies if you don’t mean it.

And just because the was no cause and effect between Stompernet and scribd, I stick by the point I was trying to make; the internet marketing community ought to be more careful about what they publicise, especially in a viral campaign such as this.

The other day I blogged about how Telefonica sucks due to the abuse of their monopoly. I also blogged about Stompernet spoiling the ride for many internet marketers, which Andy Jenkins took exception to, but it has drawn some negative comments in Immediate Edge and at least one internet marketer who is a member of the Stompernet faculty seems to agree in an email pushing the latest Stompernet product.

After my night of insomnia I got up really late yesterday - yes, much later than usual. After a couple of hours with internet access everything suddenly shut off - no phone, no internet.

Telefonica sucks. Worse than Stompernet.

Earlier today I found that links in my documents published on www.scribd.com no longer worked. That creates a bit of a problem since I’ve been using scribd to test new niches for the last few months. Scribd documents get ranked really fast, so it was great to be able to rank and get orders within a few days.

A week or so ago Stompernet published a video detailing this exact technique. And you know what - suddenly there are thousands more scribd pages appearing. And today this in the scribd FAQ:

“Can I include links in my Scribd documents?

No. Due to abuse from search engine optimizers and internet marketers, we have adopted a no link policy. You may place one link in the website field of your profile page. You may not add HTML links to documents on Scribd.“

Now it could be coincidence, but one possible scenario for this to happen is that the volume of internet marketers introduced to scribd after the Stompernet video brought this to the attention of the scribd admins, in which case Stompernet has spoilt the ride for everyone.

<irony>And if I were looking for conspiracies I might think it was done on purpose so that people could see how good the new Stompernet program is, get people to sign up AND demolish competition at the same time.</irony>

Don’t worry I don’t expect any sympathy, I’ll move on and do something new.

Well, I’m back. And it’s an interesting start to the year.

First I forgot to renew one of my domains. The website isn’t important to me any more as it has had a Google penalty for around 18 months, but almost all my email goes through this domain as I’ve used it since 1999.

First of all I thought that people weren’t back at work yesterday, until I looked at the website. Thinking it was my server, I checked another domain; it was fine. Finally checking the DNS details I found that to all intents and purposes the domain no longer existed.

Re-registering the domain was no problem, and the website was up and running within a couple of hours. But when I found no email this morning I began to worry. After multiple reconfigurations it might be working - it was throwing out a 550 - no relaying error earlier, but I’ve received some spam which at least is a good sign

The second interesting thing is that I’m no longer on Digg. Digg+blog has been a powerful combination in getting articles to rank in minutes, but I admit that I may have overdone it with Digg. They clearly think so as my account is no longer and my IP address seems to be blocked.

I’ve been using Digg regularly since about May for StomperNet SIMPLE; then the 30 Day Challenge; and just recently with Immediate Edge. I’ll take it a bit easier with other similar sites as I’ve been hitting them too, but it will be interesting to see how much my rankings suffer by being bigtime undugg.

Oh, the shame of it - what would Ed Dale say?

Technorati Tags: digg, immediate edge, stompernet simple, 30 day challenge

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!

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!