I've just been invited to join an affiliate program from Jimmy D Brown called Affiliatenaire. Jimmy's business model is remarkably profitable. For Jimmy. He's offering to teach complete newbies how to do affiliate marketing in 52 easy lessons. He will send out one 5 - 7 page PDF each week for a year and charge the customer $27 per month. Think about it. He's offering to sell a 312 page e-book, sent in weekly instalments, and charge $324, payable in monthly instalments. It seems to me that this business model is designed with Jimmy's profits in mind rather than the customers needs. How many newbies will have the patience to wait 12 months before they get all the information they need? Why should they? And $324 for 312 pages of information is exceptionally poor value for money when that information is simply basic internet marketing knowledge. I won't be joining Jimmy's affiliate program. Alex

Twitter Auto-Direct Messages tell you a lot about people. And too many cannot see the world from the other person's point of view. Here is one of the types of question that proves my point:

"What's your single biggest question about.....?"

These sorts of questions are less than helpful. The questioner thinks people's lives and problems can be simplified into "a single big question". It ain't like that! Leastways, not for me, and probably not for anyone that thinks about things even a little. The reality is that life is complicated. There are many inter-connected issues contributing to any problem - and if anyone is going to offer any help, they need to take the time to understand that complexity and unravel it - and THEN they can start offering advice and wisdom. Asking "what's your biggest question?" is like saying "you do all the hard work of unravelling the complexity around your problem and formulate it into a nicely-packaged single question. And then I can give you a pre-defined, canned answer. I'm not going to bother doing any of the hard stuff." Example:

"What's your single biggest question about creating high converting, big selling websites?"

Nicely packaged answers to questions for which there are easy, canned answers are: How can I get more Traffic?", "How do I increase Conversions?", "How do I track my visitors and sources?", "How to I find/develop a Product?", "How do I find a profitable Niche?" But the real issue for most people is more like "All of the above". Or a little bit of lots of things, such as "I can't stay focussed" or "I don't know HTML" or "Time Management / Time Availability". Or the problem may be one they aren't even aware of, such as "No goals, no vision" or "No accountability" or "No-one to brainstorm with" or "No confidence" or "Not organized enough". You get the picture. Another style of question is:

"How can I help you...?"

Same issue here. Actually, that annoys me even more because it assumes I need/want help, and that YOU are in a position to help me. What do you know about ME to take that stance? Perhaps I'm in a better position to help YOU! Example:

"How can I help you increase your wealth?"

I have my answer ready for next time:

"Send me $10,000"

Alex