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Differences of opinion.

By Stuart Reid

Some net `gurus` will tell you one thing only to be shouted down 
by the next. Who do you listen to?

Yourself!

You'll only ever truly understand something if you try it 
yourself. If it doesn't work - then fair enough but at least you 
had a go. If you listned to everything that came your way then 
you'd never get anything done. Don't wait until you know 
everything to start. Because you never will.

The truth is always at some point between two opinions. Some 
people will tell you that free traffic is useless, for example. 
Some swear by it. The truth is it CAN work, but it takes a lot 
of it. Be aware of hidden agendas! Is the person promoting this 
Free Traffic an affiliate of it? Don't throw it away if he is, 
because he could be genuinely happy with the service and WANT to 
promote it. But take what he says with a pinch of salt until you 
try it.

Is it worth your time spending hours optimising your pages for 
search engines? Again, some will swear by this. Other don't. The 
truth? Well, in my opinion it is worth it BUT not to the expense 
of other avenues of promotion. With pay-per-click engines 
becoming the norm engine-friendly pages are not as important as 
they used to be.

What about certain programs? I'll take one of the ones I promote.
 Club Midas. I believe in this because the business model is 
sound and it offers a lot for the money. I am of course also 
promoting it for my own ends. So do you believe me? I don't know,
 but I'd at least want you to try it out. Then you can make your 
own mind up. By the way, the link for Club Midas is at my site 
:-).

All this is a skill you'll develop. That of seeking out 
promising new  tools and programs and experimenting by yourself. 
The main tool of your trade is the humble e-mail. Subscribe to 
some newsletters and you'll soon have offers coming your way. 
Read these e-mails, don't delete them or send them to a junk 
account and you too can seek out the gold amongst the dross!

Bonus Tip.

Here's an extra "mini tip".

Using Stats for promotion -

You can claim interesting things with statistics in your ad copy.
Tricks such as small sample bases, proportions rather than facts,
wide ranges etc can really make the smallest of figures seem 
exciting!

For example, "Fastest growing newsletter!" could be 1 subscriber 
yesterday and 5 today, a 500% increase :-)

Also, "Read Worldwide!" could be 1 reader in the UK and 1 in the 
US! Even, "Most popular Pig-Rearing page on the Net!" (most 
probably the ONLY pig rearing page!)

Try, "99% of visitors voted this site the best!" - yeah, in a 
survey of 10 visitors...

And don't forget to zoom those graphs in to amplify those small 
peaks! Say one month you have an increase of 50 subscribers. Use 
a chart that has 8000 on the bottom and 8050 on top. Big jump!

You can make anything seem good if you phrase it right. 
Deceitful? Maybe, but it's fair game! Things like this won't 
stand up to close examination but for a first visitor or a quick 
glance it will look impressive.

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Stuart Reid is the publisher of Netpreneur News and
webmaster of Netpreneur Now! Visit us for weekly
tips, reviews, recommendations and more. Sign up for
a free ad and 12 free e-books.
mailto:signup@netpreneurnow.com
http://www.netpreneurnow.com/
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