Invest 4 the Future

Lessons Learned From Online Identity Theft

2006-05-22T06:29:00.000-07:00

Recently, I endured a horrible experience with online identity theft. I want to share with you my experience in the hopes that you will never have to suffer the setbacks this can cause you and your business.

A couple of weeks ago, someone used my name and email address to send 1000s of SPAM emails. This email contained information and links I had used months earlier and was no longer promoting, so it didn’t serve much purpose. In addition, a website URL and email address I’ve never heard of was also placed in the body of the email. I believe that the person who committed this crime was probably someone who I reported for SPAM in the past, was angered by this, and was trying to get my email and domain shut down. Otherwise, I just don’t know why someone would do this, but it’s my understanding that it’s not at all uncommon and is happening more and more to innocent people. Nevertheless, it happened and suddenly I began to receive thousands of email bounces from the original email that was sent. Then, I started to receive threatening emails and phone calls. I even received a phone call from the police. Suddenly, I began to feel threatened and angered by these people’s accusations about something I didn’t do and knew I needed to be proactive to resolve this situation as quickly as possible.

I copied the original email’s message source, including the headers and sent it to my ISP for investigation. It appeared that the original email came from an online ISP, so I also sent it to them for investigation. Both of these ISPs replied back verifying that someone had forged my identity and that the email did not originate from me. I felt a bit better, but a CEO of an IT Call Center in Washington has been relentlessly bound and determined to ruin my business, reputation, and have me pay for something I did not do by threatening me with phone calls, having the nerve to call me a liar, and contacting all governing authorities as to his “proof” that the original email was sent by me. Apparently, this individual is a very unhappy person in his life, as most of us either delete the SPAM we receive or report it to an appropriate authority and move on. In any case, I also felt it necessary to forward the email to the FTC (SPAM@UCE.GOV) as this is the main governing body which handles the legalities of SPAM in the United States. I have not received a response from the FTC yet, but I’m confident that they will respond, as the ISPs have done, exonerating me from the one who sent this email.

After a lengthy conversation with my ISP about this situation, I learned how you can prevent someone from forging your information to send an unsolicited email IF you manage your own domain. It’s called an SPF Record (Sender Policy Framework). SPF fights return-path address forgery and makes it easier to identify spoofs. This record ensures that email with your email address is only sent via your mail server. In other words, if someone tries to send an email with your email address using any other mail server, it gets stopped in its track. After so many years online and administering my own domains, I was a bit surprised to learn this is not widely known, shared, and that there are many ISPs that don’t provide this service, so you need to contact your ISP and find out how they will protect YOU against these vigilantes. If they don’t offer this service, visit http://www.openspf.org for more information. The bottom line is, you are guilty for SPAMMING until proven innocent. Even in the cases of out-and-out fraud, if you can't figure out who is REALLY sending the message, there's very little you can do and we all pay the price for these criminals. I’ve always been very adamant against SPAM and reporting the likes of it to the appropriate authorities, but I never thought I’d be the victim of having my own information forged to send it. Take action to protect yourself NOW, before it’s too late. Below are some great resources.

More information on email spoofing can be found at the following sites:

http://www.lse.ac.uk/itservices/help/spamming&spoofing.htm
http://www.mailsbroadcast.com/email.broadcast.faq/46.email.spoofing.htm
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/E/e_mail_spoofing.html
http://enterprisesecurity.symantec.com/content.cfm?articleid=784

More information on the “Joe Job" phenomenon can be found at the following sites:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/TechTV/techtv_joejob030124.html
http://www.cotse.com/11022000.html
http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0%2C%2Csid19_gci917469%2C00.html
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Joe+Job
http://www.techdirt.com/fotr/20030211/0230225.shtml
http://www.cluelessmailers.org/glossary.html

The CAN-SPAM Act: Requirements for Commercial Emailers

Communicate with Your Customers or Lose Them as Prospects

2006-05-08T16:35:00.000-07:00

Whether you’re promoting a business opportunity, a product or a service, you must establish a constant line of communication with your customers. It’s impossible for your business to grow, maintain, or increase its profits without communication. There are many ways to keep in touch with your customers without losing precious time during the day, but today I’m going to cover just three of these methods, autoresponder, audio postcard, and Desktop Marketer.

An Autoresponder is the best way to keep your customers informed of your industry, new offers and promotions. It could be an ezine or a newsletter, but the most important element of an autoresponder is the ability to keep in touch with your customers all year round. It should be a system that makes it easy for you to manage your email follow-up, sales calls, web casts as well as face-to-face meetings through a simple to use control panel. A great autoresponder should be user-friendly and have the ability to:

Send out Email Blasts that will EXPLODE YOUR SALES and maximize your RETENTION!
Create multiple Autoresponder Email sequences. By automating your email follow-up process you can save your time while keeping in front of your customers and prospects.

Keep yourself and your organization on task with an excellent scheduling system which will track all Calls, Appointments, Web casts and more while keeping detailed notes in the history. When a customer calls from six months ago, you will know everything you did with that contact!
Synergize! – Connect your websites, lead capture pages, lead providers and more into Response Magic therefore automating your entire Internet Marketing efforts.

The biggest advantage of an Autoresponder is that it puts your company on the same playing field as Fortune 500 companies!

A simple Thank You could be the difference between keeping a loyal customer and losing them forever. So why not send your customers personalized messages with an audio postcard? An audio postcard allows you to instantly add streaming audio without expensive equipment or technical know-how? Here’s what this new eMarketing service can do for you right now:

Unlimited audio clips played instantly with one click of the mouse
You can record right over a telephone! Just like leaving a voicemail.
Technical know-how or experience is NOT necessary – easy to use
Allows you to create postcard templates for easy broadcasting to your entire list of customers
Gives you a way to reach your customer with your own personal touch.
Makes other audio technologies obsolete!

Using audio postcards can help you develop a personal relationship with your clients and isn’t that what it’s all about?

Desktop Marketer is the cutting-edge new software that is the first to bring 'direct-to-desktop' marketing technology to the small-business market.

E-mail marketing is becoming more and more difficult in light of new spam laws, increased filtering, and hoards of vicious spammers making it tough to get legitimate e-mail into the inboxes of the customers and subscribers who want it.

And that means it's time to look for new ways to reach online audiences to build relationships and, ultimately, increase sales.

With Desktop Marketer, you can bypass e-mail altogether and deliver messages STRAIGHT to the desktops of your customers' and subscribers' computers.

That means you have a constant, private communication channel that is NOT filled with other people's messages and is NOT interrupted by third-party "filters" or "blockers" -- so your messages get read every time... guaranteed!

The best part is that this technology is SO NEW that only the wealthy Fortune 500 companies have used it until now... So people using Desktop Marketer to send promotions to their customers and subscribers now have an incredible "first-to-market" advantage over their competitors -- at least until the rest of the small-business market catches on!

So, now you have three opportunities to capture new customers and keep your existing one which will boost your sales and give you the time to work on other areas of your business.

The Ultimate Internet Entrepreneur

2006-04-19T13:42:00.000-07:00

"Review of the LAST Corey Rudl interview -- a 150-minute recording hosted by direct marketing legend, Dan Kennedy!"

Product Title: "The Ultimate Internet Entrepreneur"

I've been listening to a 150-minute audio recording of Corey Rudl and Dan Kennedy -- the two great legends of Internet marketing AND direct marketing -- discussing how anyone can make MILLIONS of dollars using the Internet teamed up with direct mail, radio, TV, classifieds, and MORE...

... And I'm convinced you're going to find their strategic blend of offline and online marketing strategies to be as priceless as I have!

With this newly released "Ultimate Internet Entrepreneur" audio recording, you'll be a fly on the wall as you listen to Dan and Corey share their personal portfolio of winning test results from million-dollar marketing campaigns they were each part of!

You get their entire unedited conversation, including...

How to get permission from first-time buyers to BILL THEM AGAIN, over and over, for more of the same product or service, for years to come!
The Four-Stage Cycle that occurs every time a new marketing technology is invented -- and how you can make MILLIONS at every stage -- not just as a lucky "early adopter!"
How RICH marketers think differently than POOR marketers! Get insight into the genius minds of Corey, Dan, and their millionaire clients -- and learn exactly how they "think" their way to wealth!
The 2 blockbuster marketing ideas that Corey got from Dan, which made him over $100,000 in profits -- in less than 24 months!
Amazing TRUE story: Two guys sold almost IDENTICAL products, with the SAME offer, to the SAME audience -- yet one guy made $2 million MORE... all thanks to just one simple strategy!

... and that's just for starters!

If you haven't heard of either of these marketing giants before, you should know that Corey was the recognized expert in online marketing for over a decade, with over $40,000,000 in online sales (sadly, he passed away in June)...

... and Dan's made hundreds of MILLIONS of dollars for his clients, who include Weight Watchers, Amway, and the $200-million-per-year Gunthy-Renker Corporation (famous for its celebrity infomercials with Tony Robbins and Vanna White).

This audio recording contains the very same information that they only shared with their "inner circle" of multi-millionaire friends and clients... until now!

I give this audio recording the highest rating possible!

If applied properly to ANY business, the strategies revealed on these three CDs -- and accompanying 306 pages of supporting books, reports, and transcripts -- could conservatively add $10,000 per month to your bottom line!

Click here to start listening right away...

Multiple Streams of Income

2006-04-04T14:34:00.000-07:00

Do you have multiple streams of income coming into your business? If you answered no, that's okay, it's not a necessity to become successful with your online business. In fact, when you're first starting out, it might actually be easier to keep organized and administer your business if you only have one source of income.

However, ponder this for a bit: What do you think would have become of Ray Kroc if his business, McDonalds, only ever sold plain .39 cent hamburgers? How many hamburgers do you think he would have had to sell to make a monthly profit?

Well, perhaps that’s not a fair question. As it happens, when Ray Kroc started his business, he wasn’t the owner of a hamburger stand at all. He actually sold milk shake makers called the Multimixer. In fact, Mr. Kroc was the exclusive distributor of the machine that made milk shakes for a little hamburger stand in California, owned and operated by brothers, Dick and Mac McDonald. As the story goes, Ray Kroc convinced the brothers to let him open several “hamburger restaurants” which, of course, would all have a number of Multimixers as part of the culinary appliances. That was in 1954 and Ray Kroc was 52 years old! By the late 1960s, Ray Kroc had several franchisees under the McDonalds name and a list of products on the menu began to grow. The rest of the story is history.

It certainly didn’t take Ray Kroc 14 years to make a profit before adding other products to his menu. Having affiliates as franchise owners certainly helped his profit margin, but understand with today’s technology, managing an internet business that’s sells multiple products and/or services is not a difficult notion. It’s managing and advertising those various products and services that may prove more challenging.

Continuing to use McDonalds as an example, let’s focus now on the franchise. A franchise is a system that already has in place a branded name, a set of guidelines for how everything is to be managed, and a number of products. These products are easily sold. Why? Because they’re not sold individually, but under the branded McDonalds’ umbrella. A McDonalds franchise is the ideal system of how to make multiple streams of income work.

Now, envision your business. Are you ready to create an affiliate system? Do you have the market knowledge, financial resources, management guidelines, or the branding to accomplish a successful organization? If you’re just starting out, you may not. You need to find an established system with a branded name, whose products sell easily because of that brand and whose system shares its secret for success.

Here’s an example: www.e-cashflownow.com

Not only can you setup your own system quickly and easily, but it won’t take you 14 years to become a success story!

Blogging For Dollars!

2006-03-28T09:24:00.000-08:00

One of the easiest ways to enhance your business and make extra money is by starting your own blog. Blogging serves two purposes: 1) It helps you organize your thoughts and provides a way for you to document your own entrepreneurial journey. 2) It will also help your blog get free search engine traffic and that could lead to serious money.

In fact, I just finished reading this awesome report and now you can, too.

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SPECIAL REPORT: Learn how FREE technology allows you to "jump the line" and claim a #1 ranking on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and more!
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This report contains shocking case studies and test results you can use to grab a top-10 position in *any* search engine -- even if you don't know a thing about web design or HTML!

A team of marketing experts spent over a year -- and $79,583.28 -- compiling this study, and now you can review it FREE!

To read this special profit-making report, visit: http://here-is-more.info/?i=47479/

Keeping Your Focus

2006-03-22T11:17:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest challenges in starting your own online business is keeping your focus. There are literally thousands of ways to make money online and most of them tell you they’re the best or sound too good to pass up, but too much diversification can damage your business. Changing programs you use too often, and especially getting overwhelmed by not having a strategy, will defeat the purpose of growing your business and will most often than not, ruin any progress you’ve made. So, one of the first things you must do is set your goals. Write a list of your goals and stick to them. You can even write a list of daily tasks to break down your day so that you can stay focused and stay on task.

How Do You Create a Goals List?

Creating your goals will depend on what your business budget is, how much you are trying to make, and how large you are trying to grow your list of potential clients. So, before you can create a goal’s list, you need to decide what your business is going to be. First and foremost, your main business needs to be something you are passionate about. Whether it’s health products, technology products, marketing products, etc., you need to find a MAIN BUSINESS product or service that get’s you excited. How do you find something that you will love to “sell”? Well, you can do a search for keywords on the search engines or you can open a couple of traffic exchange accounts and see what others are promoting, i.e., TrafficSwarm. Whatever business you decide to go into, it needs to be with a reputable company with plenty of room for growth, so you’re business will be in profit for years to come!

Once you find a product or service that will be your MAIN BUSINESS, everything else you use must be a product or service that is going to promote and enhance your main business.

Everyone who wants to make money on the internet and is serious about it, needs their own website. Sure, if you’re just starting out and don’t quite have a budget yet, you can certainly promote someone else’s website with a replicated website of your own, but that has it’s own pitfalls and issues that I’m not going to go into here. Every other product or service used to MARKET your MAIN business could also be a source of income for you because each of these products or services probably have an affiliate program and a way to create income, but you don't want these programs/services to take away from promoting your MAIN BUSINESS. Does this make sense? As members sign up with your MAIN BUSINESS, THEN you can promote the products and services that enhance your business, in turn, helping your members to grow their business using the same successful techniques, with the products and services YOU use, hence, creating an additional but secondary source of income.

So, once you have your MAIN BUSINESS, you now need tools to promote it, track it, advertise it, etc. and get it out to the world. This is where you’re goals list comes in. You need to create a list that will describe what you want to accomplish in your first 30 days, first 3 months, first 6 months and your first year. Now, go make that list and make it a great day!

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Free is For Failure

2006-03-20T05:19:00.000-08:00

If you think that you can make money for FREE, think again. As the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So many business opportunities claim that you can make money with no investment. It’s not possible. However, there are many free resources on the net that can help you BUILD your business. In addition, most reputable businesses will allow you to “try before you buy” or “take a free test drive” before investing any monies. This gives you, a new CEO, the ability to investigate the details of how you make money and what the company sells. Do your due diligence. You are the only one responsible for your own destiny. Understand that your greatest advantages of working from home and being your own boss is that you aren’t doing it alone. You have a tremendous amount of support and resources on your journey. In addition, you won’t find anywhere the opportunity to invest so little and be on the same playing field as large national companies. Find an income opportunity that you will be passionate about; this will help keep you focused on your goals and give you a reason to want to succeed. Just think – right now, you probably get up everyday and go to a JOB that you don’t particularly like doing and yet you do it everyday. Imagine what you can accomplish doing something you love!

CEO in Training

2006-03-17T06:37:00.000-08:00

Whether you've already started your business or are getting ready to start one, the most important aspect of being a "CEO in Training" is to be coachable. Find a mentor, who is already a successful CEO, and ask them for help. If they agree to mentor you, you must be willing to do as they say - that's being coachable. If your ego gets in the way, no matter how accomplished you've been at anything else, you are not coachable. If you are not willing to respect your mentor's valuable time, then you should go off on your own and learn everything you can about running an internet business. It's more than likely you will spend many years and lots of money trying to figure it all out. One of the great advantages of building relationships with other successful business owners is that most successful entrepreneurs want you to succeed, as well. What a refreshing change from corporate America! A mentor will teach you what it takes to succeed, but your job is to trust your mentor and learn the techniques for which they will show you. Finding the right mentor is a gift that will empower you and give you the confidence to help others. Empowering yourself and others is extremely gratifying and will not only change your lifestyle but your entire outlook on life. You’ll wonder why you’ve ever worked for someone else before!

The Secret to Success

2006-03-16T08:30:00.000-08:00

Everyone asks me, “What’s the “real” secret to a successful home business?” Honestly, no matter what you read or hear, there is no secret to success. However, there are keys to success. The first key is your list – customers, affiliate members, newsletter subscribers, etc. There’s no secret to building your list, but to successfully build your list, you must have a guaranteed system in place that builds trust and provides customer service - that’s what keeps customers coming back to you instead of going somewhere else.

So, the second key to success is momentum. You must have a guaranteed system in place which will escalate the momentum within your business. There are various ways to accomplish this, but you only need to setup your system once. Sure, your system will need to be tweaked periodically when there is new material to add to it, but you don’t want to spend all your time building your system; you want to spend your time reaping the financial rewards of your accomplishments and hopefully helping others to do the same. You know you’ve reached momentum when you’ve earned your day’s worth of work, while you are asleep!

Your Path to Financial Freedom

2006-03-13T18:35:00.000-08:00

One of the hardest paths to financial freedom is removing the mindset that you don’t have enough money to start your own home business. Let’s face it, the majority of America lives paycheck to paycheck and it’s become a debilitating syndrome. Our nation’s bad influence continues its own spiraling, billion dollar deficit just to stay in business. Honestly, do you believe our country will ever get out of debt doing the same thing it’s always done? Then how can you possibly think that you can, too? It’s not going to happen! Yes, you do need to invest money to make money online, but let’s say you take out a small business loan for $100 and after investing that money constructively in such a way that you were guaranteed to make $500 just after 30 days, would it be worth the risk of another “debt” to earn that $100 back and profit $400? Now, that’s not $400 you can just go blow on new “stuff”. It's $100 you have to pay back and $400 you now have of your own money you must re-invest in your business. This means you will need to keep your full-time job just a little longer. By the next month, you have $400 to put away in a business savings account and $100 to reinvest in your business. If you continue to reinvest at least $100 a month on your business, increase your monthly spending budget by $100 for the next six months, and put the remaining profits into a business savings or checking account, what you have by the end of the year is a monthly business budget of $1700 and $2700 in your business account, with the assumption that your monthly profit never increased beyond $500 a month! Would an extra $500 a month make a difference in your paycheck to paycheck lifestyle? But let’s say that with all that business promotion, you also increased your monthly profit by $500 a month, by the end of the year, you would make an additional $6000 in profit, while never having to spend more than $1700 in business expenses a month! Do you see where I’m going with this? This doesn’t even include the amount of residuals you could be making by helping others start their home businesses. The costs in getting a part-time home business up and running, earning a profit and finally having the freedom to change your lifestyle, isn’t nearly as long or costly as a JOB.

Are You Working for Yourself, or Is Someone Working You?

2006-03-12T14:06:00.000-08:00

I've always been an entrepreneur. Not always wealthy, but entrepreneurial in the sense that I've always been creative, independent, unable to work for others, and horrible with authority all my life. I've always hated how most people are literally brainwashed from the time they are born to work for someone else, work someone else's hours, be told how much they're worth, and unfortunately, how much they're not worth, based on someone's opinion.

On the other hand, it is true, that the majority of people are not disciplined enough to work for themselves. They either don't have the skills, the patience, the direction, the mentorship, the finances, and the list goes on. So instead, you dream about what you think you'll never have or what you think you'll never be. But I do believe that you can enpower your dreams and turn them into reality. Hard work? Sure, but wouldn't you rather work hard for your own future, instead of for someone elses?

My blog will hopefully change your way of thinking and inspire you to take chances on yourself and, by all means, show you how to change your reality if you want it! Invest 4 the Future isn't about stocks and bonds or even real estate. It's going to be a journey in which it's possible for the average individual to find financial freedom - because it's your birthright!