Keep up! This week: C rate

Oh god. Here we go again. The Internet Marketers have coined a new phrase, and are ALL blogging, sending newsletters etc about it. This time it is "C Rate".

Now, let's make this clear, I am not going to take Mark Joyner and his cronies apart and then put them back together to sell you something. You only need read a few of the emails already doing the rounds to see that is happening.

I would quite like to take them to pieces and leave them in pieces, with you still holding your pounds or dollars in your hands.

I am no longer on the side of the internet marketers, although by being on their drop lists etc I can at least spot useful trends that can be employed by your average website owner ie you.

This latest is, I promise, nothing new, and it certainly isn't worth paying out for. Now, the VSA (Virtual Sales Agent - customer service tool) see previous post, I forked out hard cash to try it, as it seems to be to be a worthwhile module for any Linux/Php based site. (But you will need to wait, as I am still trying to suss Joomla through the newly bought videos. When I have won.....watch this space.) I think that VSA and the Joomla/Moodle stuff might be worth investing in, but this latest viral charge isn't.

The problem for me is that I follow one particularly successful money-making world _ IM. If I followed the developments online of the porn industry, I could be anywhere up to 5 years ahead of the online activities of my competitors in other industries, even if I was selling dog leads. Actually, that could be misconstrued as a porn item, let's try "Queueing systems" instead.

But I follow the IM guys, and see what is going to be big in 1-5 years time on the Net. And some of the stuff they trial is interesting, and some is crap (as they openly admit themselves), and some is just a license to print money from mugs.

Going back to the point of this post, if you think viral marketing is the biz then work out how it works. It takes:
1) a community
2) a buzz
3) timeliness

Just search on "C rate" on Google and discover whether the folks promoting it are all 'inter-related'. Type some of the names in, bearing in mind most of these guys have 100s of websites. It can take quite some time to put together the family tree but you only need to look for a few of the well-known names to see how they inter-promote each other to make things work.

Thing is, you can do that too.

In Bolivia, I learnt more about co-operatives and co-operation than I ever did looking into Mondragon, or the Rochdale folk. And I know quite a lot about that stuff...

So, today's lesson is: find others, doing the things you want to eg promote your businesses in a niche or locality, and work together. It will never, or very rarely, hurt.

I spent this evening trying to sell something on Ebay. I'm an Internet Marketer, trying to sell a personal item but looking to check out some skills using new techs.

I didn't need any of them. I needed some really old skills to make contacts, become a human, find the forums/community where people treat you as a person and say, "Hell, if that is why you selling it, I'm interested."

You honestly don't need a C rate or anything similar from the Mark Joyners, Kevin Wilkes etc of this world. You need to be you, belong to a community (or 3 or 100), and deliver good, sound honest products.

Not promises. Empty or otherwise.