BOOMER eZINE

The Online Entrepreneur Magazine

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Table of Contents for this issue.....

1.    Authors Comments

2.    Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

3.    Best Affiliate Program

4.    eBay Classified Update   

5.    Discrepancy in Google Results

6.    Branding Your Own Name

Author's Comments

It is rewarding to see Boomer eZine mentioned on forums and blogs.  This week Jim Cockrum emailed me to tell me that my name had been mentioned in the forum on his member’s only site at www.silent-team.com.

I checked and Rita had cited an article from a past issue of Boomer eZine.  Thanks, Rita for recognizing our efforts.  We really appreciate it.

Q & A, Suggestions and Comments

I had several exchanges with a subscriber who lives in Costa Rica .  He wanted to purchase Google Cash Third Edition using my affiliate link (thank you) and ClickBank would not accept his credit card.  The card was good and all appeared correct.

He became frustrated, and I did not blame him.  He asked for my help and I dug into ClickBank for the answer to the problem.  Here is what I found in the ClickBank FAQ:  

5. I tried to buy a product, but my credit card was declined. I know my card is good, so why did your system decline it?  

We recommend contacting your credit card company first to determine if there is an issue with the provider that can be resolved. If your credit card company denies declining any charge, then your card was declined by our risk management system. This is a separate authorization system, so we cannot provide any information regarding the decline. You may try using a different credit card or allowing 24-48 hours to lapse before making another attempt.  

Unfortunately, ClickBank cannot override any decline or process transactions manually. We realize this can be frustrating, but accepting credit cards over the Internet is a dangerous business for both us and our clients. It's better that we err on the side of caution, rather than risk facilitating counterfeit transactions. Other services may have a less stringent security system and therefore may also incur a higher percentage of fraud, which can be costly to everyone involved. We do our best to protect our clients from fraud.  

What we finally determined that Costa Rica has very high credit card fraud and the IP address of the purchaser showed the transaction was coming from Costa Rica .  This flagged the transaction.

I suggested that he join PayPal and use it for the purchase.  He did so and purchased the book.

I want to personally thank him (name omitted since I did not get his permission to use it) for his tenacity.  He purchased what I consider to be the best book about pay per click affiliate marketing.

You too can purchase “Google Cash Third Edition” here

http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Recommends/Google-Cash/index.htm

I venture that you will not have the problems my friend did.  If you do, let me know, and we will solve your problem together.  

If you have anything for this section or you have a suggestion for a topic for an article, please send us an email with your suggestions or your input.  With your help, we can improve the Boomer Video eZine.  

Best Affiliate Program

SBI has the best affiliate program that I have seen on the Internet.  It is called the 5 Pillar Program (5P).  

Here is more about it from the 5 Pillar Orientation Guide.  

The 5 Pillars are...

1) best-of-breed line of products to help small business owners use the Net successfully  

2) high first-purchase commission  

3) lifetime commission on all purchases by customers originally referred by you  

4) lifetime commission based on the earnings of your entire team of affiliates  

5) limited number of affiliates -- “too many affiliates spoil the program!”  

The great feature about SBI is the high first commission and the repeat commissions when the SBI owner renews each year.  The commission for selling an SBI ownership is approximately $80.00 and the repeat commissions are slightly less.  This is a nice constant income stream for the future.  

Also, you earn a permanent, life time cookie the first time a visitor buys a product from you, even if this person buys from another 5P affiliate after buying from you.  

If you sign up affiliates, they become part of your team and you get a small cut of any sales they make.  

Getting paid for selling Site Build It products is nice, but what makes it so great is the fact that you are selling real, quality products that can help change a person’s life.  SBI can bring financial freedom to its users who might never be able to create a successful online business using any other web host.  

When I recommend something to a reader, I want to be 100% certain that it is a quality item or service.  I can recommend SBI with no second thoughts.  

You can sign up for the 5 Pillar program today and get started.  

Download the 5 Pillar Orientation Guide and you are on your way.  

You can also log in and read the SBI Forums and learn what is really happening with SBI users.  I found that SBI’ers are a very positive, motivated group that help each other succeed.  

Log in here and join now. http://affiliates.sitesell.com/boomer.html  

It costs nothing and you can learn a lot.

eBay Classified Update  

The eBay classified ad keeps on ticking off the views and the sign ups.

As of the writing of this issue it has had 86 views.

At this point, each click (including my own) has cost $.47.  The ad has 13 days left to run so it should end up in the $.20 - .25 per click range.  

The conversion rate this week has been poor, and I do not know the reason.  This is a problem to address.

We will continue to update you on the results of our experiment.  

Discrepancy in Google Results  

I was writing an email last Monday morning to a subscriber in Alaska about how effective SBI was in creating search engine friendly web pages.  I was relating how SBI helped my www.retirement-jobs-online.com (RJO) move into sixth position on Google in about four months for the very competitive keyword “retirement jobs”.  I stopped to check the current position of the RJO site, and I nearly fell out of my chair!  

Retirement Jobs Online.com (RJO) was in second place on the search results page.  I refreshed the browser to double check and this is what I saw.   

I do my Internet work early in the morning before I go to work at my day job so when I got to work, I searched Google and RJO was in the usual sixth place.  I refreshed the browser and it stayed in sixth place.  

When I returned home after work, I searched on my home computer and there it was still at number two.  Why can this be? 

Linda has her own computer on our home network.  She searched on Google and found RJO at number two.  

When I checked two days later, RJO was number three (if you count the same website having a major and a minor entry as follows:  

I do not know why Google reports different search results to different computers, but we have proven that it does.  

Please help me out by completing a survey of the Google search results you get for the keyword “retirement jobs”.  Go to Google and perform the search.  Look where www.retirement-jobs-online.com is ranked and fill out the following survey form.  This will only take about a minute and it will be very revealing to see how different searchers see the results all over the world.  

The survey page is on my SBI site at  

http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com/google-rank-survey.html  

This will open a new window so close it to return here and continue reading Boomer eZine.  

I will post the results next week.  

Thanks in advance for your help.  

Branding Your Own Name  

I read an interesting article in “Entrepreneur” magazine titled “What’s in a Name?”  

Personal branding guru William Arruda was interviewed and he said that each of us should buy the domain of our name.  He said that this is how people will find us in the future on the Net.  

My domain name could be www.johnhowe.com, but someone has purchased that domain for the purposes of selling it to a John Howe who wants to buy it.  

I learned a long time ago that there is a man named John Howe who illustrated the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.  If you Google “John Howe” you will find him long before you find me.  

I decided to make my Internet name John V W Howe for which I have no competition.  If you are interested, I wrote an article about this in EzineArticles.com at  

http://www.ezinearticles.com/?Establishing-Your-Identity-on-the-Internet&id=424891

Arrunda also recommended that we purchase the personal domain names of our children.  

I purchased the domain name www.johnvwhowe.com.  If you follow the link, you will see that it is parked with the company that handles most of my domain registrations.  

Is it worth about $9.00 per year to reserve your personal domain name? Or your children’s?  

That wraps up our issue for this week.  Until next week, stay tuned.  

John and Linda Howe  

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