Friday July 20th, 2007: Issue #824
I belong to a lot of membership sites, mostly ones that provide private label materials, and have, over the last few days, been reassessing them all and cancelling my subscriptions to those which I no longer need.
* Some are really good and I wouldn’t dream of cancelling my membership.
* Some are okay and while I could live without them I do make enough from them to justify the monthly outlay.
* Some are pretty terrible and I wonder why I haven’t canceled my membership a long time ago.
* Then there are a few others that are good enough, but for one reason or another I don’t utilize them effectively.
It is these last two categories that I’ve been pruning.
One of the sites I’ve canceled my membership to has sent me this email in reply …
Please remember there is a one-time license fee of
$67.00 if you wish to continue using any previously
downloaded ———– content. The license enables
you to continue using previously downloaded —
content just as if you were a current — member
(subject to our content usage rules of course).
If you choose not to pay the license fee, all
———– content will need to be removed from
your computer and websites immediately. This
includes any websites created with the ——-
—– Site Builder tool available to — members.
Important - If you choose not to pay the license fee,
please acknowledge by return email that all —
content and other resources have been removed,
as per our ———– Content Usages Terms.
Sadly, I don’t think that this kind of outrageous double-dipping is unusual in the private label industry, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Out of principle I will not pay the extra fee and will remove all traces of this site’s materials from my own sites and computer.
Luckily I’ve used them so little that it won’t be difficult, but had I been a more efficient member of their site who happened to have fallen on hard times now, their little blackmail attempt could have cause considerable difficulty.
I am currently revising my ebook ‘Unlock the Secrets of Private Label’ and will make sure I reassess any plr membership sites that I recommend in it to see if they too follow this onerous practice.
I was so annoyed by this that I phoned Dan Turner, one of the owners of my favorite private label article site, PLRpro to ask him for his thoughts. Being as it is breakfast time here in England, but evening in Australia where he is, I interrupted his family dinner.
When I told him about the demand for a ‘license fee’ he was as outraged as I am: “What? They want to charge you again for stuff you’ve already bought? That’s crazy!”
PLRpro, he assured me, doesn’t do that. If and when you leave you keep everything you’ve had up to that point - which is exactly how it should be!
I was quite relieved to hear it because PLRpro is so good that I actually have TWO memberships! And I use their materials a lot.
Dan also mentioned in passing that PLRpro is running another ‘join for just $1′ special for the next 24 hours only. There are only about 50 places left, so if you are not already a member of the premier private label membership site, now is a great time to join.
- The sales page doesn’t mention the $1 special price, but if you follow the sales process through, when you finally get to the PayPal payment page, the $1 is shown there.
#~#~#
It is a bit gray and drizzly this morning, but if it stays like that we will have got off very lightly. the weather forecast is for parts of England and Wales to get 2 months worth of rain in about 6 hours today.
I live on the edge of the danger area, in a town that, so far hasn’t ever been subject to flooding, but the already flood-riven middle parts of England are expecting serious problems. The problems are so severe in some areas of England already that my (and I’m sure many other) Rotary Club has voted to send some money to try to help.
We can only hope that the weather forecasts are wrong, but it isn’t looking good.
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Several of my Internet marketing friends and I have different views on how to sell to our mailing lists.
They say that to be an effective marketer you should make sure to have a link to sell something in every edition of your newsletter and that you should send out extra sales messages in between.
Their argument is that readers of newsletters need to be kept in the habit of buying.
I guess it works for them, but you may have noticed that I don’t necessarily follow that advice!
For the last couple of weeks I haven’t promoted anything at all in Kickstart and often send you Kickstart editions that have no external links at all. If I ever do send out rare ‘in-between’ issue promotions they are for something very special indeed.
Am I a poor marketer as a result? I don’t think so. Of course I understand that writing a newsletter is a commercial proposition. Nobody would do it if there wasn’t a tangible reward. but I don’t feel that I need to extract that reward from every single issue. Over time, and on average, it all works out fine!
The last few weeks have been odd. I have reviewed many ebooks and products, but nothing has particularly grabbed my attention. There has been nothing that I felt strongly enough to write a glowing report about. A couple of items on my desktop are promising, but I need more time to assess their real value for you.
Perhaps if I was a better marketer I would pretend to like products I’m really ambivalent about, or worse, start sending you out the pre-written reviews that the product creators write for lazy ezine publishers. That way I could ‘recommend’ several products in each issue and a few more in between.
And your inbox would be as stuffed full of promotions from me as it is from all the other sheep-like publishers.
On balance, I’ll stick to what I do. From the emails I get from Kickstart readers, I think that you’d prefer it.
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An Inspirational Thought
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What’s the difference between an idea and a dream?
An idea is a notion that you are floating to see if a light goes on in someone else’s eyes.
A dream is a notion that shines out of your own eyes like a beacon and brings radiant illumination to everything you gaze upon.
Let’s light up the whole world with our dreams.
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Who do you know who would love Kickstart Today?
Don’t keep it to yourself - send them to
http://www.kickstartdaily.com today!
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The Quote of the Day
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I don’t know who said this, but I like it anyway …
“Good decisions come from wisdom. Wisdom comes from experience. Experience comes from bad decisions.”
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Today’s Power Thought
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Psychologists tell us that deep inside our minds, everything we experience is subjected to two questions before we can even begin to act or react. Those two questions are the bedrock on which our whole existence is based. They are hardwired into our subconscious, so unless we make a deliberate effort, most of the time we are completely unaware of them.
But I think that those two questions are so important that we should make that conscious effort and start asking them with full awareness. The answers will certainly make us think and will almost always surprise.
Question one is “What does this mean?”
Question two is “How should I respond to it?”
What powerful questions!
As soon as you start to ask them, right away, without any further action on your part, you are living your life more positively. Passive ‘acceptance living’ becomes impossible. All of a sudden you are forced to be proactive and your every action has to be ‘on purpose’.
Instead of sliding through life without touching the sides, you find that everywhere you look there are jagged handholds that you can grab on to and haul yourself up.
How neat is that?
Instead of wistfully looking at other people and wondering how it is that they can so often turn situations to their own advantage, other people will be wondering the same thing about you.
And all because you did something that everyone does unknowingly, but only a tiny fraction of a percent of people do as a deliberate, lifestyle act.
So today’s action point for you is simple …
… ask yourself what does this article mean, and how should you respond to it.
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Fascinating Facts
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Australia has a lot of unique wildlife, but of all the native species, only the Dingo is carnivorous.