Like you probably did I took advantage of the free Stomper offer for Stomping the Search Engines 2.  This was a fantastic offer and I was looking forward to the Net Effect magazines/periodical.  Whatever they were calling it I was looking forward to seeing it.

I also opted in to get the DVD of the month club and a second $97 DVD offer.  I don’t remember the specific name of it but it was the one other than the blue, red and yellow DVDs.

Obviously, they did a good job with their upsells.

I did take the time to go completely through the Net Effect, take some notes, and have started implementing what I learned which is the most important part of getting value out of any training materials you buy (or even free PDF’s). The main thing I’ve done is the tweetlater tip.

I’ve been participating on Facebook Connect and some other forums and the topic of paid training and especially in the form of paid membership sites, subscriptions, and paid continuity programs is much talked about right now.

I even watched a webinar on Tuesday where Ryan Deiss and Carrie Wilkerson were talking about this very concept of continuity and the issue of being unable to cancel out of some continuity programs came up.

Now apparently some unscrupulous marketers are setting up continuity programs and a phone number you can call to cancel.  But unfortunately for you, should you happen to fall into one of these programs, these unscrupulous marketers are ignoring the cancellations.  And you would continue to get billed which is a clear violation.

The only way I can think of for you to get out of these and the course of action I would recommend is to cancel the credit card or debit card you used.  I know this is a pain in the ass but just call your company and tell them you want to cancel your current one and for them to reissue a new one.

This will get you a new credit card number and the previous transactions being billed for that card will get denied.  If they give you any trouble just hang up, call ‘em back and tell ‘em your card was stolen (because it was stolen by this unscrupulous marketer who keeps charging against your will).

In that case they’ll certainly cancel your current one and re-issue you a new one.

Now this topic got me thinking about the membership site subscriptions I am currently active in.  Obviously, the two biggies you have as a business owner on the web are your quality Web hosting and you’re Aweber account (or other e-mail list provider solution you’re using).

I use kiosk as my main web host and Aweber as my e-mail list manager.  I’ve had good success with them, they’re reputable companies, I’ve never heard of anyone having trouble canceling out of them, and I highly recommend you use them.

I have been a member of TrafficGeyser Automatic Video Submission as well and highly recommended this service.

But these are all software/service websites and the main focus for this article is training type monthly subscription services including membership sites and/or off-line print newsletters/CD of the month clubs.

Since I took advantage of the StomperNet offer I also checked the box to opt in for their DVD of the month club.

Now I’m going to make a damaging admission here…I haven’t even opened the DVD of the month.  Nor have I opened the box of the DVD I paid $97 for.

The main offer for Stomping the Search Engines 2 is the only one I even looked at and I’ve only gotten through module one on that.

What can I say?  I prefer reading because I’m a fast reader and can get my information better and way more efficiently.  But I guarantee you I will go through the DVD trainings..Business is busy right now so my time is crunched.

I want to give a big kudos to the Stomper guys.  Even though I decided to cancel my subscriptions because of a lack of time to go through all the information, I got some great Golden Nugget’s from the Net Effect.

Cancelling was easy because I open my e-mail to find the one about billing with the subject line “[the Net Effect] important billing update”.  Go to the e-mail you entered when you took advantage of this offer to see what I’m talking about.  Toward the bottom of the e-mail is a link for easy cancellation.

I clicked on the link, logged in and never had to talk to anyone on the phone.  Here’s what I saw:

I simply clicked on the first link to cancel and here’s the next screen:

It was just that simple.  Of course I had to go back to the dashboard and click on the DVD of the month to cancel that as well.  So make sure if you are so subscribed to 2 separate things this is what you do if this is the wrong time for you to be getting this information in your life or in your business.

I also got a confirm email confirming my cancellation with the subject line “Confirmation of StomperNet Product Cancellation”. Stompers are always very professional.

As I’ve stated before I’m very impressed and certain the information the Stomper guys provide is valuable.  After hearing the horror stories of people unable to cancel their continuity I was extremely appreciative of the way the Stomper guys did theirs so professionally.  It was extremely fast, easy and simple to get done.

I am positive in the future when it’s the right time for my business I will certainly buy from the Stomper guys again and do business with them in the future.

However, had they done things differently and made it difficult I certainly would never plan to buy any more of their stuff.

So the moral of the story is respect what your customers want and when they want to cancel let them cancel.  When you do this it’s just good business and some will come back and do future business with you.

Eagle Eye is a very interesting movie which is eerily similar to Skynet from Terminator. At its core it’s a smart computer gone wrong.

It recruits 2 characters from regular walks of life into its evil scheme.

It’s based on monitoring all internet activity, forming personality profiles, and then leveraging their weaknesses from social media profiles against them. Sounds kind of like the world we live in now doesn’t it?

The skynet parallels are easy to see. The question which came to my mind was how far would you go when given the proper leverage?

I remember a Derren Brown show where he brought in a group of regular people and wanted to see how he could motivate them to rob an armored car. You can see the full 48 minute video here and it is fascinating.

Of course, with great power comes great responsibility so use these tactics for good. Don’t abuse people.

In the movie Eagle Eye there’s a “rob an armored car” scene and these 2 regular people are clueless on how to do it.

It had many similarities to Live Free or Die Hard also because everything is now hooked into the net, there are traffic cams and video seemingly everywhere, and Billy Bob Thornton plays the law enforcement hero with a young anti hero in Shia Lebouf.

Maybe it’s an Orwellian type warning on how dependent and locked in we are with computers and technology.

So the big question I have for you is how far do you have to be pushed before you’ll become extraordinary?

It’s within you residing inside you right now.

You can even use these fundamental tried and true psychological and sales techniques on yourself get the results you want and deserve in your life.

And I highly recommend it because once you know how the mind functions on a basic level it’s like having your own personal owner’s manual for your mind.

As you probably know but in case you don’t the mind is your most valuable tool in your entire arsenal. Ask any millionaire or billionaire and they’ll confirm for you the mind is your most valuable tool.

I know this post didn’t have any specific tactics to help you grow your business or seemingly make more money. But it really did.

Because when you get a handle on your own mind and give the specific techniques on how to get the most out of yourself and your own creativity then the world opens up before you.

Tell me in the comments how far you’d have to be pushed to maximize your potential? What would it take for you to achieve all you desired?

I was reading an interesting post about what link building today is really all about… building relationships.

Eben Pagan talks about this a lot in his teachings and systems.

His main goal is to provide them such valuable content they’ll have no choice but to link to it.  He does this instead of having some cheap looking banner ad that rarely gets clicked on. His goal is to have an extremely valuable editorial content piece that most people will WANT TO CLICK ON.

In social spaces like FB this is even more important.

The web is definitely moving to a more interactive platform based system.  The big sites like Facebook Wikipedia and YouTube are all community sites with lots of user generated and driven content.

Google is swiftly jumping on the bandwagon (in addition to their purchase of YouTube).

About a year or two ago they bought the social networking site Orkut.  Unfortunately for them this never really took off as they had envisioned and it’s mired in the distant rearview mirror of the two big sites Facebook and MySpace.

So Google has changed their strategy.

They are currently in the very early stages of rolling out their own social platform largely based on the research they did when they were considering buying digg.

After looking at Digg’s raw data and server files they got lots of good information on what a social sites is and what is valuable information to people.  This will soon be integrated into their search results and the way people get information from Google.

Here is a direct quote from The Official Googleblog on the direction they’re headed their search results

“As we’re already seeing, people will interact with the cloud using a plethora of devices: PCs, mobile phones and PDAs, and games. But we’ll also see a rush of new devices customized to particular applications, and more environmental sensors and actuators, all sending and receiving data via the cloud. The increasing number and diversity of interactions will not only direct more information to the cloud, they will also provide valuable information on how people and systems think and react….. As systems are allowed to learn from interactions at an individual level, they can provide results customized to an individuals situational needs: where they are located, what time of day it is, what they are doing. And translation and multi-modal systems will also be feasible, so people speaking one language can seamlessly interact with people and information in other languages.”

Which I first found at link building future tips

You can see their emphasis on inter-act and the overall engagement people have with content websites as opposed to the old method of just build a bunch of links and that’s what people find relevant.

Google has already secretly and quietly rolled out some of their features to address this shift.

Their Chrome browser will give them direct usage statistics of what people find relevant.  And Google reader will also give them in-house statistics of what blogs people are actually looking at, how much time they’re spending reading, and what they choose to bookmark and share with their friends.

These are just two of the changes Google has rolled out and there will be much more to come as the brave new world of the web continues to grow up.

Join the Dedicated Facebook group for the plain-speaking way to handle the changes and staying out front of them for maximum success.

Join Google Social Marketing Group on Facebook

Friend Connect is live you just didn’t know it.

Google in its infinite wisdom has kept this way on the down low for some reason.

Maybe it’s stage fright or anxiety. Or maybe it’s just good old Google doing what they do best…releasing something cool in beta and never coming out of beta.

You can try out Friend Connect right now if you have a Google profile in the widget in the upper left corner of this blog under the heading “Followers” by clicking ‘Follow this Blog’ link.

I believe you have to be logged into your Google account to be able to follow blogs. (Sidenote: I also recommend putting in a good photo of yourself into your google account). You can see mine on the Googling Social blogger blog I setup to demonstrate this.

Confirm the settings you want because you’re in control of how you get your content. You can join publicly and your picture will show same as it does on the MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog widgets.

Or you can join ‘anonymously’ and just receive the updates without being seen.

I join blogs publicly and recommend you do the same because you’re part of the community and want to be participating in the discussions and being seen by other members.

Next, click one of the avatars of those who have already joined and add the person as a friend and send them an introductory blurb.

I’ll be talking about this more in my Facebook research. The process of adding friends here and making true connections is the same as it is on FB. Stay Tuned (or better Add to Google Reader so you’re guaranteed to be in the loop and getting all the updates!)

The next screen you will see is their Google profile, links to their social networks and their Google Reader shared items. This is Google’s social bookmarking application.

NOTE: All these links open in a new tab so you will not lose this page.

Here is the lowdown on the rest of the Google Social Network and Bookmarking application.

Here is JohnT’s blog post from July 28 when he predicted Google Going Social before I was even talking about it publicly.

Here are two sites you can play with Google Friend Connect on, just one part of the Google Social Network: Googling Social.

Social networks might actually be semi-anti-social

Google Friend Connect for Blogger Users

How to add the Friend Connect widget to Blogger.

For those of you who do not know how to use Google Social, called Googling Social, I have instructions to create a Google profile, add friends to from Gmail and get started with Google Reader which is Google’s social bookmarking application.

Currently, the links to get to the pieces of Googling Social are hard to find so the best starting point is someone elses Google profile, so here is mine with a link to my Wickedly Evil Social Marketing Blog where you can find instructions to making friends in Gmail and Google Reader.

Alexander Alaric’s Google Profile. Alexander Alaric’s Social Marketing Blog

Look in the upper right hand corner of the page, the link is “my profile” and it is just to the right of your gmail address.

Word of warning, the Gmail address that you are logged into will be your public Gmail address in Google Reader and how you make friends thru Gmail. So if you have a private address then don’t use it. Use one you’re ok being public (despite Google’s best efforts some spam bots maybe able to harvest your address and spam you).

You only get one Google profile no matter how many Gmail addresses you have, so choose wisely.

If you have any questions you can email me from my contact page on my site. Also if you want to add me as a friend in Google Reader, send me an email at alexanderalaric1[at]gmail[dot]com.

Be my Google Friend by sending me an email with “Alexander I want to be your Newest Google Friend” as the subject line. I’ll respond back with “you’re in” as the body copy.

Do this because:

1. so you and me can share things easily
2. creates followed links to your blog when I share your stuff. And of course creates links to my blog when you share my stuff.

Then I’ll invite you to Gchat and we’ll be connected. Google makes this process difficult to insure there’s a 2 way connection and cut down on spam which is a good thing for all of us.

Replace the [at]  in the address with normal email address style. THis
is used to fool spam bots that harvest addresses so just replace the
monikers with the appropriate text.

This is WIN WIN. The more friends you have in this the better it works for you…and everyone in your network.

This will be huge so jump into the deep end now and be an early adopter dominator.

This is a huge revelation first broken to me by my friend Chris Lang and this post is modified from what he told me with my own spin on it.

Stay tuned for more info about the big G’s big changes to their social platform, how the new search results will show (hint: personalized), and how you can profit from it the whitehat way.

Who would have ever believed just six months ago that Lehman Brothers and AIG (one of the largest insurance companies in the world) would fail.

Yesterday, September 15, 2008 the headline on Yahoo’s homepage blared "Wall Street meltdown" .

Think about how powerful this headline is.  You’re almost forced to click through and see what the hell is going on.

Here’s the 10 second scoop:

AIG is forced into restructuring, Lehman files bankruptcy, and Merrill Lynch is bought out in a last-second deal.

Of course probably the very biggest fallout from these headlines is what it does to investor confidence.

The stock market, like your prospects, is all run by emotion .  Decisions are made based on emotion and then justified later based on logical rationalizations.

So what does it say when three of the biggest financial institutions, $50 billion plus institutions basically go under?

It definitely shakes confidence and could further hurt the receding economy and increasing inflation we’re experiencing here in America.

It means you’re going to have to get slimmer, meaner, and keep a closer eye on your ROI.

The strong businesses will survive and even thrive in this new environment but it is going to take more skills from you and your team

So look for the uncovered opportunities this news brings and no there is always money out there and some of it wants to come to you in exchange for your products and service.

This may seem a bit off topic since it’s not strictly about how to improve your own business but sometimes you got to keep up with the macro economic ‘goings on’ in order to maximize the microeconomics of your business.

So take a look inside your business, see where you can be more efficient, save money by trimming the fat so to speak, and ultimately increase your ROI so your business survives this economic crisis.