It's Black Friday. Now, don't ask me to tell you why it is called Black Friday: I don't know and I don't want to know.

What I do know is that today I experienced something that you want to hear, you want to learn from, today, and the rest of the year, black, pink red, blue days... any day.

Ok, a little background information: I normally don't read my emails. I normally keep myself walled away in blissful ignorance of what's hot, what I should buy, launches and the like. Not today.

For some reason, maybe because I decided to stay at home, alone, for Thanksgiving, I left myself wide open to the onslaught of marketing messages you probably get every day, including this very day.

I have chosen only two messages to read and follow up, which is not what most people do, and those two messages pushed me into a state that made me intensely curious and made me want to write this blogpost.

I have fallen a "I will never amount to anything" mood. I have fallen into a place, where those marketers have it, and I have nothing. Where all the answers to my problems are out there, with those marketers, and if I don't get it, or even if I do, I am doomed.

Not a pretty picture, is it? Now, if this had happened a year ago, I would have thought that it is personal. Because a year ago I was coaching a few people, but I wasn't in the position to see people, over time, 3-4 times a week, with their moods, with their ambitions and trials and tribulations. Now, I am.

And what I am seeing is that this is normal.

The marketing messages are designed this way. The marketing messages want you to think that "they" have the solution that you need, and that without them you are nothing, a hopeless wannabe, better off burying yourself off into some sandy dune...

Is this new? Probably not entirely new. Probably many of my past purchases have come from this same place: I remember when I spent my rent money on Frank Kern's Mind Control. Or The apprentice program. Or Smarts...

All of them proved to be not so inevitable to my success, in fact they did nothing for me. NOT A THING!

But, of course, this is a lot like gambling: hope is eternal, and you are hoping that this time it will be true, this time it will solve all my problems I didn't know I had.

And that last sentence is really key: skillful copy writing, skillful mind control, will create problems that you didn't know you had so that you can buy the exact solution to that problem that doesn't exist other than in your mind, now that you were told that you have that problem.

Like the "it" factor by Jason Moffat. Like the miracle supplement by Mark Joyner. (These were the two emails I read, uncharacteristically) today.

And, if you buy the solutions (that you won't have time to digest given that you already have 47 solutions that you don't have time to read, watch, listen to, implement) you are out of money, and go deeper into the hole and into hopelessness.

If you don't buy the solution, it gnaws at you until you buy it, or do something to get rid of the "parasite" that attached itself to your gut.

It is not an accident that I am using this parasite analogy: I have two cats that occasionally get a parasite until I rid them off it.

Their behavior is very similar to the behavior these sales practices create in you: craving. Craving something you don't need, only the parasite needs.

When my cats have the parasites, they eat like machines, they yowl all day for more food... food they don't need. Only the paraside nudges them to get more food so the parasite can get bigger, fatter, multipy, and eventually destroy its host.

After I spent my rent money repeatedly, I was out of the game for almost two years... had not money, wasn't in the market to buy every shiny object.

It didn't quite kill me, but almost. I watched the parasite "almost" entering my system today... I caught it, in just a nick of time.

But the real cost is: seeing the solution outside of myself, I stop generating my own actions, and look for the power outside of myself.

When I look at periods in my life when I was successful, I always generated the solutions from within, instead of wasting time researching, learning, etc.

When I was an architect, I looked at the terrain, I looked at the specs, and designed a winning building.

When I was a magazine publisher, I wrote an article from what I knew, designed an ad for an advertiser from what I knew... and life was working, money was coming in, no time was wasted.

When I was coaching someone, when I listened keenly, the solution was there, in the speaking of the client: I didn't have to waste time researching.

When I had money making projects in marketing, I just did it... and tweaked it from what was in front of me.

When I wanted to write an article, I wrote an article... no research, no looking for the power outside of myself.

But when I bought products, and courses, and software: I suddenly assigned magical powers to that piece of stuff and guess what I gave up at the same time? Looking for the power from within, that is the key to actual implementation.

Now, of course, it is important to learn. But the rule I learned along the way has been a winning one: you need a little bit of information, and a lot of implementing, if you want to be successful.

Most people reverse this, and never get out of the gate. And savvy operators, marketers, pry on you when you do that.

I got a taste of that today.

Now, I have no problems with the above as long as:

1. The person did, in fact, create the results BEFORE they started selling how-to information.

and

2. The information they provide is useful and actionable.

The core of the offer is 4 reports where he explains online income models, presents some of his own philosophies (some new, some bold, some just puts a different spin on what I've read elsewhere), and he shares some of the ways he made quick cash in the past. Plus plenty more.

I've read his reports. They're well written and he doesn't skimp on content... trust me, he is crazy, gives too much for too little.

He also added video tutorials directly in some of the reports to further explore his ideas.

The 4 reports I'm talking about are:

1. "Dear Employee, Your Job Sucks: Create New Income Streams Through Automated Marketing Without Quitting Your Job ... Yet!"
2. "Freelancing: The Real Work At Home Job Opportunity ... Trade Your Time and Skills For a Paycheck Working From Home"
3. "Ridiculous Income Goals... And How Others Are Turning Them Into Reality"

and

4. "My Quick Money Ideas That Worked: What I Did To Pay Off A $1200 Loan In 36 Hours, Finance A $2700 Event In 3 Weeks and Earn $331 For 2 Hours of Work"

Rob has hundreds of testimonials from his readers, many of them are on his page. I know marketers that recommend his stuff, which is quite rare, because he is a competition. He has been a guest experton many guru calls.

He's quite an authority, and if his Canadian accent doesn't drive you up the wall :-), he is worth listening to. The accent bothers me, but the stuff is good... so I chose to put up with the accent.

By the way, when I first heard him speak, I was very surprised. He has a voice very firm and authoritative in writing, and in person he sounds like a pussycat... but I think it is only because of the accent... Anyway, I am very partial to him, he was born in Hungary like myself... so that makes me both more critical and more tolerant... wow, this came out quite complicated... darn.

Oh, and he did make his money before he started selling these reports. :-)

I recommend his stuff.

The Birthday Sale package also includes his traffic course which sells for a lot more than the price of his bd package... and then he has bonuses too, so he is giving a lot away... I guess you don't celebrate your birthday shabby if you make a ton of money, right?

Oh, he asks $8 for all this. Honestly I would have bought it for more, it is good stuff. Worth a few hundred bucks, if you ask me.

Here's the page:
http://www.sophieslist.com/28

This is a limited time offer.

I haven’t posted on this blog in a while. Not because nothing was going on… au contraire… too much was/is going on.

I don’t know about you, but just like no one is a prophet in their own land… you are never going to be able to see the value of your stuff like other people do.

Even if you think a lot about yourself, familiarity breeds contempt, and your work is going to be “just what you do”, even if it is/would be of tremendous value to others.

This is why I value what has happened in the past 2 weeks.

You may not know, but the bulk of my income comes from marketing affiliate products.

One of the things I have been marketing, ever since I first started to use it some 2 years ago, is the Healing Codes package, a unique energy product where you use your innate energies to heal the cause of disease… I had a cancerous growth fall off my right arm after a few days of using The Codes… so I am a believer.

I signed up to be an affiliate. I made a few sales here and there, but every month I learned a little bit more about marketing, google adwords, etc. and every time I learned something, I immediately put it into practice with the Healing Codes affiliate program. I watched a webinar 5 months ago, and the rest happened:

The past 4 months the commission, grew $400 every month. Why always 400? Beats me. So I have gotten accustomed to the income, they paid directly to my checking account… until the 8th of this month, when, instead or the money, I got an email telling me that my affiliate status was withdrawn and I wasn’t even going to get my last commission.

Why, you would ask. The answer came right in the email: I violated the affiliate agreement: I did not get my ads reviewed by the 3 people assigned to review marketing material… But the email said, my violation was that I used the product name in my advertising… hmmm. How am I supposed to sell something I can’t name?

I made a quick calculation, and saw that I lost $35K just in the first year (calculating the growth trend also). They lost 140K net, for the first year. Interesting. I wonder if they have heard of the expression: “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be rich? Choose!”

Anyway, let’s see what I have learned from this incident that is worth for you to read:

1. Before you invest so much time and energy into marketing a product, check if the company really wants you to market their product, or secretly they hope that you will share with everyone, but they will buy from the company directly, cutting you out of the loop.
2. The processes I employed to go from zero to substantial income could help a lot of people out there… so maybe I should find a way to tell people. If I had had a roadmap like that two years ago, I could have started to make money much sooner, and that would have been worth for me to buy. I forgot to say that I used exclusively PPC advertising, my return on my investments was consistently 10-fold, i.e. with a $3500 a year budget I could turn a 31,300 dollar profit. And some of my keywords ran at $5 a click. Which means: this market is competitive, baby.
3. It will be interesting to watch how the Boomerang Principle will play out.
4. I'd love to train an army of affiliates for the Healing Codes company... if I could do it, anyone can do it.

Another thing that happened since I last wrote, is that I did my first “Craft Your Public Persona” presentation. It needs more work, but I am over the hump. I have worked with a client today, who was praising the knowledge he gleaned from our session, and that felt really good.

I am just wondering how to reach all the people who would be interested in that: coaches, consultants, bloggers, marketers, realtors… anyone, who makes a living selling themselves first, an product second. Everyone, who need repeat clients, repeat sales, etc. Everyone, who needs to influence people. Any ideas? If so, please write a comment. I would appreciate it.

And a 3rd thing: I have built a small video sharing site on blogging but you can put the topic in a search box and it finds videos for you… really great… want to check it out? It is at http://www.mavencentral.com/videos

That’s it for now. Please give me your ideas about how to reach my target audience, and if you have any idea what to do with my lost affiliate position story, so that it can make a difference for others.

So long.