Critical Archives - GUJRAT INDIA

Getting Free Publicity For Your Business Depends on These Four Critical Rules

Getting free publicity for your business depends on a number of factors. Above all others, though, there are 4 cardinal rules you can’t afford to ignore if you hope to be successful. Not following them is a sure fire way to start depending entirely on luck instead of skill for your progress.

These rules that should be spray painted across the wall in the front office of every business are:

1. Be Organized. It’s fun and definitely rewarding, but getting free publicity isn’t a game. You need to have a good idea where you’re headed and how you plan on getting there. Success doesn’t come from a single “flash in the pan” encounter with the press. You become successful when you start developing a steady flow of press releases. This only happens when you’re organized. Carefully plan your campaign before you get started. Know exactly why you’re sending out a press release and what you want the end result to be. Have your press release, bio sheet and Q&A ready to go before you start any publicity campaign. Have several follow up releases ready to go. Send them to reporters 1-2 weeks apart.

2. Be Different. Remember you’re in the news business. By definition, something isn’t news unless it’s different. Being different isn’t that bad a business strategy, either. If you offer the same product everybody else does, packaged in exactly the same package, then you really have very little other than price to negotiate. If you can find ways to fill niches nobody else is, then you start building loyalty, and developing seeds for a powerful news stories. That’s the road to free publicity.

3. Be Consistent. The old adage about all news being good news is wrong. Just because your name appeared on the front page of the paper doesn’t mean you’ve made it. (Ask O.J. Simpson about that!) Yes, it offers momentum, but you need to be sure you’re rolling in the right direction. Earning the reputation of being self seeking and ruthless won’t help much if you then try to get free publicity when you open a series of homeless shelters. Chart your end goals and then move towards them, in a consistent, steady pace.

4. Be Persistent. Don’t give up. It’s all a numbers game. One press release sent to a few reporters won’t do much to help you to get free publicity for your business.

You might send out press releases to get free web publicity and get absolutely no response. That’s not a reason to give up.

Try tweaking it a bit. Change the headline. Make sure your format is correct.

You might need to frame your story differently. Is it practical? Would the average person stop in their tracks to take a second look at your headline? Does the content of your story constitute a news item or an ad for your product? If your press release is nothing but an ad for your business, you can be sure it’ll be tossed out. Reporters will see that you’re only looking for free publicity without giving them something to work with.

It’s about hanging in there, not giving up, when others might.

As long as you’re still in the ring, the fight isn’t over.

Being prepared before you launch your publicity campaign and systematically sending out your press releases every week or two will go a long way toward leaving a lasting impression about you in the minds of reporters. That, in turn, will increase your chances of getting calls from reporters to do interviews and getting free publicity for your business.

A Critical Review Of Shopping Sherlock – Is It A Good Company?

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been seeing a lot of buzz being created around a network marketing company called Shopping Sherlock. So to help other people who are looking into the company, I decided to put together a short but detailed Shopping Sherlock review. Before proceeding, I want to make two quick points. First, I’m not a Shopping Sherlock distributor myself so you can be sure that you’ll be getting an unbiased perspective of the company and business opportunity. And second, the service the company provides is pretty straight forward so I won’t be spending too much time talking about it. Instead, I’ll spend more time on the compensation plan and what you’ll need to do to maximize the opportunity should you decide to join.

Who Is Shopping Sherlock?

So first things first, let’s cover the company and what they sell before we go into the compensation plan. Personally, I believe that a company’s stability and service are more important than the compensation plan. Simply put, if the company isn’t solid and the services aren’t marketable, it doesn’t matter what the pay plan looks like since the company probably won’t be around long term. So here’s the good news if you’re thinking about joining: Based on the information I’ve reviewed, it certainly looks like the company is not only solid, but growing aggressively. A few months ago, the company acquired another network marketing company called Vi-Tel Wireless, which exploded their distributor base since they were able to bring over the Vi-Tel distributors. In addition to that, the California-based company looks well positioned in front of the Global e-Commerce Industry, which just went over $1 trillion. And if that weren’t enough, the company has strong experienced leadership in place.

What Does Shopping Sherlock Do?

In a nutshell, the company gives it’s distributors the ability to give away free apps which allow the user to save time and save money when shopping online. From a marketing standpoint, giving away a free app is as simple as it gets. You don’t have to sell or convince anybody to buy anything. You simply give them an app that will look for the best deals for them when they do what they do already, which is shop online.

How Do You Make Money With Shopping Sherlock?

In order to be a distributor, you have to pay a one-time set up fee of $249, and then $34.95 monthly. The actual compensation plan provides 9 ways to earn income. Here’s a simple and quick breakdown so you get an idea of how each way works:

1. Sherlock Usage Income – When you give away the free Sherlock Apps, the company tracks all the sales made by your personal customers and pays you a commission monthly.

2. 20% Override Sherlock Usage Income – The company tracks all the sales made through all the Sherlock Apps given away by your personally sponsored distributors, and pays you a 20% override monthly.

3. Fast Start Bonus – Whenever you personally sponsor two new people who pay the $249 start up fee, the company pays you a $100 Fast Start Bonus. This bonus is paid out weekly.

4. Sales Cycle Bonus – The company has a Binary compensation plan. Whenever you have 2 new people who join your left team through infinity, and 2 new people who join your right team through infinity, the company pays you a $50 Cycle Bonus. These bonuses are paid out weekly. It’s important to note that if you’re a strong personal recruiter, you can get paid multiple bonuses from the same work. For example, let’s say you personally sponsor 2 new people on your left team, and you sponsor 2 new people on your right team. You’ll earn $200 in Fast Start Bonuses and a $50 Cycle Bonus.

5. Subscription Cycle Bonus – This bonus is similar to the Sales Cycle Bonus, except it pays $10 every time two members on your left team pay their $34.95 monthly subscription, and two members on your right team pay their $34.95 monthly subscription.

6. Team Builder Bonus – If you can hit the position of Power Affiliate within 15 days of making your first sale, the company will pay you a one-time $200 bonus. And if you can hit the position of Global Power Affiliate within your first 6 months, the company will pay you a one-time $2,000 bonus.

7. Global Check Match – Once you hit the position of Global Power Affiliate, you’ll earn a 20% Match on the Binary Commissions of everyone in your personal enrollment team down to the next Global Power or Diamond Affiliate.

8. Diamond Global Check Match – Once you hit Diamond, you’ll earn a 10%-30% match on everyone in your personal enrollment team down to the next Diamond.

9. Equity Program – Once you hit the position of Global Power Affiliate, you’ll have the ability to earn on the entire company’s revenue. And then once you hit the position of Diamond, you’ll be able to earn a bigger share of the company’s revenue.

There’s certainly an opportunity to earn income with Shopping Sherlock. Of course, if you’re truly serious about joining, I would recommend that you review the official compensation plan document on the company’s website.

What Does It Take To Succeed In Shopping Sherlock?

In closing, the company is certainly solid and there is a viable business opportunity available. It has all the ingredients to be a winner: a good management team, a marketable service, a generous compensation plan and great timing since the company is still young. With that being said, all those things will play a very little part in your overall success. Why? Because if all those things are in place, but you can’t sponsor new people or get customers, you’ll make little to no money. So in order to succeed in Shopping Sherlock (or any other network marketing company), you’re going to need marketing skills that will help you generate enough leads to sponsor a lot of people in your team. My recommendation is that you use Attraction Marketing in your business. If you can use the right marketing systems in your business, there’s no telling how prosperous your home business can be.

An Honest, Critical Review of the Dani Johnson Scam

Who is Dani Johnson?

Dani Johnson began her career in the Network Marketing industry as a broke, homeless cocktail waitress with $2.03 to her name. Within her first several hours of starting her new business, she had made several thousand dollars of profit. She made more than $250,000 her first year, and more than $1,000,000 her second year, becoming the #1 international producer in her company.

Since that time, she has founded Call To Freedom International, and travels around the world teaching whoever will listen (or, whoever can afford to listen, as we shall see) her principles of success.

Can She Help Me Succeed?

That depends. You’ve probably visited Dani’s site and seen the impressive array of testimonials from people of all walks of life. Her website boasts well more than 10,000 unique testimonials from people of all over the world. Pretty impressive, to say the least.

My personal experience with Dani Johnson is not that inspiring.

I first ran into Dani’s teaching when I was living in Fairbanks, Alaska. At the time, I was for the first time in my life making a significant income from my company, around $4,000 a month only working about 2 hours a day. My organization was growing by 30-40% a month and I was really enjoying the process.

I came across Dani’s teachings and really believed it would take me to the next level of success, and help my team to experience the success they had been looking for. I bought every single training on her website (quite the pretty penny, but worth the investment, or so I thought)…

I gathered my whole team together and we had a huge house jam-packed full of people listening to ‘Prospect and Close Your Way To Millions’. ALL of them got fired up. (Dani can be pretty darned convincing). I personally invested 3-4 hours a day listening to Dani’s training, thinking I had finally found the ‘Golden Key’.

So What Were The Results?

My income immediately dropped by $1000, that very month, and recruiting almost completely stopped. The funny thing was, nothing in the company had changed and we were more excited than ever. So what did we do?

Instead of dropping Dani Johnson like a bad habit (like we should have), we heard Dani say that we needed to go to a seminar, so a bunch of us flew down from Alaska to L.A. and attended her well known ‘First Steps to Success.’ I personally spent more than $1500 between airfare, lodging, and the outrageously priced tickets, and between my group I think the price we paid was around $15,000.

That month, my income dropped by another $1000. Convinced that I needed to invest in my skills, I went to Dani’s ‘Creating a Dynasty’ and bought her ‘Prospecting and Closing’ classes, spending well over $2500 two months later.

What happened? My income went from $2000 to less than $1000, and from then went down to around $400 before I did what I should have done, and that’s drop Dani’s teachings like a bad habit and do what is proven to work!

So is Dani Johnson a Scam, or what?

Although there are many people who claim to benefit from her teachings, I certainly was not one of them. I invested 1000’s of hours of listening, called more than 5000 leads, and spent more than $5000 of hard earned cash flying all over the USA and buying trainings that completely destroyed my business. When I called and asked for a refund, (politely), they declined. I certainly feel I was scammed.

However, the good news is, when I learned about ‘Attraction Marketing’, my business started exploding faster than it ever had in the past, and now I am recruiting more people than I can handle, or could ever imagine…

Conclusion

If you are thinking of investing serious money in Dani Johnson’s material, just remember that when you sponsor a distributor, you have a responsibility to help them be successful as fast as possible, and that most of them are not expecting, (nor do they want), to fly all over the country paying their child’s college savings to go learn something that only works for sales superheroes. Any good, legitimate MLM organization should provide this training to their people, free of charge, with the understanding that if you benefit, they benefit.

That’s how this business is supposed to be, people helping people, building each other’s dreams through service, leadership, mutual prosperity and integrity.

If you want to spend $25,000 a year on training, learn from Dani Johnson. If you want to live a life of prosperity, learn Attraction Marketing. You decide.

Aloha,

and God Bless.

An Honest and Critical Primerica Review (Don’t Join Before Reading!)

An Objective Primerica Review From An Industry Expert

Primerica (formerly known as PFS/ALW) is a financial services company that uses a Multilevel Marketing model. For more than three decades, Primerica has been able to produce many, many 6-figure a year earners. In the 1st quarter of 2010, they officially parted ways with long-time parent company, Citigroup, and went public. Currently, the sales force is made up of 100,000 licensed reps. Primerica is a legitimate business opportunity and has maintained a good rating with the Better Business Bureau.

With that said, there are pros and cons to the Primerica Business Opportunity. In this objective review, I’ll go into the pros and cons of the Primerica Opportunity and give you details you probably don’t know about yet.

First, I’ll start with the Pros…

1. Primerica provides a unique opportunity for someone who has NO experience in financial services to come on-board and get licensed and trained on the basics of life insurance, mutual funds, variable annuities and mortgages.

2. Primerica allows people to come on-board part-time, which is RARE in the financial services field. This is a great feature because reps aren’t under the pressure to produce because they still have income from their full time jobs.

3. With the Primerica model, unlike other MLM opportunities, someone who just wants to market financial products can make a decent income via sales commissions.

4. Primerica offers a lot of support to it’s reps… mainly because reps have access to physical offices run by local RVPs.

5. As stated earlier, Primerica has one of the best track records the network marketing industry. Currently, there’s about 65 leaders in the US and Canada that make $1 million or more in income annually.

Now, let’s give you the Cons:

1. The product training is basic, which is sad for some clients that are being serviced by new reps. Personally speaking, I wouldn’t want my kid’s education funds, my retirement accounts and, especially, my life insurance accounts handled by someone that’s been licensed for 30 days and has no experience in truly offering financial advice.

2. Primerica pays a much LOWER commission to reps when compared to what they can make if they were an independent financial services rep.

3. You are a CAPTIVE agent at Primerica. This means you are able to sell Primerica products ONLY. While only offering Primerica products may not be a bad, as a financial rep, you have a responsibility to your clients to shop for the best possible products for them. While shopping around is a regular practice by independent reps, it is strictly forbidden at Primerica.

4. As a marketer, you’ll lose around eighty percent of your incoming recruits due to the licensing exams. The company stats indicate that ONLY about 20% of incoming reps pass their life insurance exams. So what happens to the left over 80%? Well, they basically end up quitting the business.Imagine working your butt off to build a team that was recruiting 100 new reps monthly. Now, think about this, 80 out of those 100 were people that you couldn’t even build a business with because they couldn’t pass the licensing process.

5. This is a important part of the comp plan that isn’t shown in the presentation – When you get promoted to RVP, you give your best one or two legs to your upline RVP. This is know as the “replacement or ownership exchange”. Imagine, busting your butt to hit the top position, then giving up your BEST leaders, and starting the building process over… Only this time around, as a Regional Vice President, you have office expenses to think about. By the way, Primerica requires it’s RVPs to be full-time and forbids them from making money elsewhere. This is extremely important to know if you are seriously considering the Primerica Business Opportunity.Why? Because if you wish to build multiple streams of income, you won’t be able to once you go RVP.

In closing, Primerica is a real business opportunity where someone can come on-board and learn financial services and how to build an MLM business. Just make sure you do your research on the products and compensation plan so you know exactly what you’re walking into.

So… Should You Join?

If you’re looking for a business that doesn’t require HOURS of financial product training, the probability that you’ll lose a ton of people during the licensing exams and the fact that you have to give your upline your best leaders, then Primerica is definitely not for you.

However, if you like the idea of recruiting agents (and you’re OK with a super-high attrition ratio) and building your agency with the opportunity to qualify to open up your own Primerica office, then Primerica may be an opportunity you should explore.