eBay Frenzy

This morning I received an ad about eBay Frenzy
and because it perked my interest I decided to get
it.

Here's the ad that got me to check out the sales
page.

----------
I'm going to keep this short, really short, but
with good reason ...

Making money around the holidays isn't all that
hard, but it does require fast action.

For that reason, I've designed a system that is
going to reward you for moving quickly.

If you're curious, click this link:

Nickel Mania

What is "Nickel Mania"? Well, click the link and
you'll find out.

If you need a little more information first, here
are the basics, but don't say I didn't try to get
you there sooner ...

- You'll learn how to cash in on the holidays
with virtually no risk.

- You may be able to join an affiliate program
paying out 100%, that's right, 100%, and you
will be paid instantly.

- And, if you look closely, you might see a few
marketing lessons too. ;-)

But, you have to act fast. What I didn't tell you
yet is that the name "Nickel Mania" wasn't picked
on accident.

The price of this package started at a nickel, and
it's going up by the sale! Now do you see why I've
been trying to just get you to the site already?

Nickel Mania

Thanks & Good Luck,
Gary Ambrose

P.S. The site launched just minutes before I sent
this email ... so get moving.

Nickel Mania

-----------

As I said, I got the package and read it.

This is really good information for anyone
who is serious about making money during
the Christmas season.

Here's the link again:

Nickel Mania

To Your Success,
Susan

Web Audio Plus

Mike Filsaime and Michael Rasmussen have
created a product that is going to change the
way people put sales pages together...

This weekend Michael completed a project
they had been working on for more than a
year and surprised Mike by offering the
product that had cost them thousands of
dollars along with the Master Rights to
the product for less than $38.00.

The project is WEB AUDIO PLUS....

Since I've wanted the capability to add audio
to my site and have found most products very
expensive, I grabbed a copy of Web Audio Plus
so I could see if it was everything promised on
the salespage.

AND IT IS!
They have included a video tutorial that is so
short you'll think that they must have left
something out - but theydidn't.

This product is fantastic.

It only takes a moment to run the setup program.
Then you just walk through the 5 screens as shown
on the sales pageand copy the code to paste on
your own html page. It's that easy.

I highly recommend Web Audio Plus because:

• It's easy to use!
• The audio buttons look absolutely amazing!
  (plus you can actually choose the color of your
  buttons too)
• It only takes a minute or two to create your
  own streaming audio buttons to put right on
  your website!
• You can record your audio right into this
  program, or you can take convert your existing
  MP3 files into streaming audio. Either way, the
  result is the same... a professional looking, and
  great sounding streaming audio player on yoursite.

Go ahead and take a look at Web Audio Plus right now.
The only thing that's going to impress you more than the
quality of this program is the PRICE. It's much lower
than anything else outthere.

To Your Success,
Susan Carroll
FriendsWhoCare Newsletter

A Tool I Don't Want

Today I received several offers for a free pdf
e-book called "Screengrab." This e-book comes
in a zip file so you get more than just thee-book.

You get:

1. The e-book with instructions on where to
   get the tool and instructions on its use.
2. You get a set of branding instructions.
3. You get a brander.

Now here's the scoop on what's contained in
the 4 page e-book:

1. A title page you can brand with your name
   and url
2. A coupon page for "Underground Interviews"
   that you can brand with your affiliate link
3. 2 pages of instructions on where to get the
   tool and how to use it

This would be a great viral freebie if it was a
quality product, however, what you don't get
is any information on how to use the pages you
can grab or how to edit them.

So if you're into capturing entire web pages
and using them, this tool will work for you
and you can give it away. But if you are
looking for a tool that will do more than
create an image file of a web page, don't
waste your time.

There is a free tool that will do everything
Screengrab can do and a lot more.

The tool is called Irfanview and you can get
it free at:

http://www.download.com.

Just click the "Design and Photo" menu item
and it will be in the top few tools listed.
(It was number 2 the last time I checked.)

Now I could have turned this into a sales
pitch for the product where I discovered
Irfanview but didn't because this information
is too important for you to blow off as
"just another sales pitch."

To Your Success,
Susan Carroll
FriendsWhoCare Newsletter

RSS Advertising -

When you have an online business you know
how you're always learning about something
new and then trying to learn how to do it?

Me too.

I saw how articles could be syndicated several
months ago but couldn't figure out how it was
done. Sure, I knew it involved RSS or XML
and even saw how those types of files had to
be written. But I couldn't figure out how to put
it all together.

You can imagine the hours I spent researching
the topic and how many e-books I read, all
with the hope that I would find the answer and
then be able to syndicate my newsletter articles.

Unfortunately, my searching took me nowhere
because while there's a lot written about how
great article syndication is, there's not much
information on how to do it.

Then, by accident, I found the answers I had
been searching for. While reviewing a product
with a title that implied it was going to tell me
how great using RSS feeds were for marketing,
and sell me on the fact that I needed to set
up a blog, I found not only all the information
necessary to do article syndication, but it also
gave me a tool to create the RSS file
automatically and links where I could convert
RSS to Java - free.

Now I have to admit that I haven't read the
entire e-book. I've only read the chapter
on article syndication. But for me, that chapter
made this book priceless because it contained
what I had been looking for and not finding
anywhere else.

So if you're thinking of syndicating your
articles, news, or some other type of
information and are searching for the
way to make it happen, you need this
e-book - "RSS Advertising - A
Complete Guide To Advertising Using
RSS Feeds"

Oops, the title isn't a link but that's not
a mistake. You see, I have resale
rights to this useful piece of information
and I do sell it with a 37.5% discount
off the suggested price - but only to my
subscribers.

So if you're a FriendsWhoCare subscriber,
just send me a note and I'll send you the
link where you can get this RSS e-book

If your not a subscriber please join us at
FriendsWhoCare and then request the link.
You can find a place to subscribe in this week's
newsletter:
FriendsWhoCare.us/thisweek.htm

If you don't like the newsletter you can
unsubscribe at any time and since we all hate
spam, you won't hear from us again.
Also, we never share subscriber information.

To Your Success,
Susan Carroll
FriendsWhoCare.us

PS Sorry, I don't have a non-subscriber page
for this product but some things I only share
with my friends.

Easy Archive Maker

It's been awhile since I've written a product
review and I've found some really good ones
since the last post.

If you happen to be one of my newsletter
subscribers, you know I don't have an article
archive on my site but ...

I do archive our monthly site reviews where
subscribers give suggestions on how to
improve that month's subscribers site.

Now one of the reasons I don't have an
article archive is TIME - there's never
enough of it. But with a new tool I discovered,
I decided to try my hand at archiving with
our site reviews.

Easy Article Maker is the tool I use and
it is not only easy but it's also makes archiving
very fast.

First I had to create the page template for
the review sites and index. Since my sites
pages are similar but different, this took a
few minutes. If you already have a template
for your site then you've already done most
of the work.

Second, I opened the tool, copied the first
site review into the text box and clicked
the create button.

Third I uploaded both the archived review
page and the index created by Easy Archive
Maker.

Now, when I need to archive another review
I just open the tool, copy the review into the
tool and upload the new page and the updated
index. All done and it only took a couple of
minutes.

This tool also has other uses besides archiving
articles and reviews. It can also be used to
create those much needed Table of Contents
for your e-book!

You may not have heard of Easy Archive
Maker but I did and I am glad I found it
because it makes the job of being a web
master a little easier.

To Your Success,
Susan Carroll
FriendsWhoCare Newsletter

123WysiWyg HTML Editor

Last week Mark Hendricks and Michael Nicholas released a
new product - 123WysiWyg Html Editor.

Well I downloaded it and tried it out today and must admit
that I am very impressed.

I normally use FrontPage and expected to find an editor
that either didn't provide much capability or was hard to
use. However, I didn't.

The 123WysiWyg editor looks much like FrontPage and
is very easy to use. In fact, when it comes to using scripts
on your site, it may even be easier.

I created a very simple page in about 5 minutes showing some
of the things I could do with absolutely no help at all. You can
see it at: http://www.friendswhocare.us/123wysiwyg.html

This 123WysiWyg HTML Editor looks like a real winner
and is in the affordable price range for most.

Good Job, Mark and Michael.

Susan

They Did It Again!

Recently I was asked by one of my JV partners -
"Why are you always pushing PushButtonPublishing?"

Needless to say he got an earful that I won't repeat
here. Instead I'll just rely his comment when I finished
answering his question -

"Wow, what a glowing testimonial. Now I understand
why you're always recommending it."

Today I re-discovered why I am so impressed with
PushButtonPublishing when I checked out a resource
recommended in another ezine.

The article I was reading was titled "Content is Critical."
Believing this to be true, I thought I might pick up a few
pointers on how to stress this to my own readers.

Imagine my surprise when I clicked on a resouce link in the
article and saw a very well-designed sales page for something
I already have, the "Viral Article Toolkit."

Now what's interesting about this product is that:

1. The product owner's own site sells this toolkit for $49.
2. The product owner has ClickBank affiliate sites that sell
   the product for $37.
3. I got this product as one of my PushButtonPublishing
   benefits where the monthly fee is only $27.

Now I didn't get the resale rights to this product and neither
will you if you buy it because the owner is only allowing ClickBank
affiliates to sell it. The only requirement I have that is different
from those who purchase the product is that I must include
a pre-written resource box with my PBP affiliate link. But
no where does it say that I can't add my own name and
signature file which I would do to promote my newsletter.

Imagine getting products like this that are worth more
than the monthly membership fee in addition to other
quality services like 500 megs of hosting space, unlimited
autoresponders, the ability to track up to 1,000
different links, resale rights products and ....

OK, I promised I wouldn't give you an earful so I'll
stop.

All I'll say is PBP is a quality program that deserves
a 5 star rating.

To Your Success,
Susan Carroll
http://www.friendswhocare.us/thisweek.htm

Start Page Exchanges - I am Through Testing

As you may or may not know, I have been a user of
traffic exchange programs since I first started my
online business. In fact, one of the first e-books
I created was a list of 30 really good start page
exchange programs because they were an easy, free
way to get some exposure for your site.

Now, however, I am re-thinking my position on the
use of them and recently stated that I would be
testing some of the ones I have been using. I was
going to run this test because I had noticed that
after surfing for credit I was usually infected with
some obnoxious spy/adware. Now I don't think the
infectious software was coming from the exchange
programs directly but rather from some of the other
members who were using the service to get traffic
to their sites.

Well, the testing has stopped with only 2 of the
traffic exchange programs really tested because I am
tired of fighting a losing battle.

After surfing on the exchanges I normally use for
about 45 minutes this morning, I spent the next 4
hours trying to delete all the spy/adware that had
been downloaded onto my machine. And I know that
my machine is still not clean. But at least the
pop-ups only come up every few minutes now rather
than every few seconds.( I was getting more than
25 pop-ups in less that 5 minutes before I started
cleaning my machine.) So I guess I'll be reloading my
operating system to get everything cleaned off soon.

Bottom line - I will be much more cautious in my
use of traffic exchange programs. As of today, I
will continue to use Instant Buzz and MDT because
when tested they caused minimal damage.

As for the 30 exchange programs that were listed in
the ebook I wrote 3 years ago, I will not list them
all because I've only been using 5 of them on a regular
basis this last year.

As for the 5 ...

TrafficSwarm - They showed my site and do review sites
before allowing them to be displayed to others. This
unfortunately is not enough since sites can be altered
and I know that at least one of the sites I displayed
while earning credit tried to infect my machine with 2
Trojan viruses.

WebBizInsider - They also showed my site and reviewed
sites before allowing them to be displayed. I don't
know if any of their sites tried anything funny but
I'm a little gun shy right now.

FastFreeway - They showed my site and they do not
review the sites except to see if it will breakframes.

TopSurfer - They also showed my site and do not
review the pages displayed. Also, they don't have
any safeguards in affect to ensure that others are
really viewing your site. They did however implement
one thing that should be available at more traffic
exchange programs - a way to report sites that take
you away from your surfing page. (Before all the
downloaded ad/spyware and trojans that used to be one
of the big surfing for credit problems.)

123Clicks - They don't review the sites shown and
it would have taken months before all the credits
I've already earned to get used. However, since I
won't be surfing the minimum, I'll be losing my
credits.

So today, these are my thoughts on the traffic
exchange programs I have been using. If you have
any information about these or other programs
please post a comment so that we may all learn
from your experiences as well.

To Your Success,
Susan
FriendsWhoCare Newsletter

Earn Free Advertising With Your Personal Email

Not too long ago I mentioned Instant Buzz in my newsletter and offered to send an invitation to any one who requested one. Now, those people are getting free advertising every time they are on the web just like I do.

Now I want to mention the launch of Instant Buzz version 2.0 because it takes getting free advertising to an whole new level. Read on to discover the one feature in 2.0 that will prove to be a paradigm shift in Internet advertising.

If you blinked, you missed the launch of Instant Buzz because it was only done so to a very limited group and then grew by invitation-only. Quietly, while no one else was looking, this tool has developed a massive following of extremely loyal users. The loyalty is based on one thing and one thing only: it's free and it works like crazy.

The 1.0 version of Instant Buzz was simple, but extremely effective. You simply downloaded the Instant Buzz bar on to your Internet Explorer and then as you surfed two things happened:

1. Instant Buzz Ads Appeared on the Bar
   They are quiet, attractive, and unobtrusive, but amazingly people click on them like crazy.
2. You Earned Ad Credits

That's right. All you have to do is surf like you normally do and you earn credits.

That was 1.0. 2.0 has all of that and more.

With 2.0, Instant Buzz has introduced the patent-pending MailSpace Ad and it is the first and only Email Ad Exchange system.

What is MailSpace Ad?

1. It's Mass Email Advertising Minus all the "Bad"
   MailSpace Ads are only allowed in personal one-to-one email communications so you can always be sure your traffic credits are being spent on ads that are likely to be seen.
   This is mass email advertising without all of the problems normally associated with it. The recipient is willing. He's likely to see it. And because it rides along with an email from a friend, it's unlikely to cause any problems.
2. Built-In Viral Growth
   Because each MailSpace Ad is not only an ad exchange but an ad for Instant Buzz itself, over the people who "sign up" for Instant Buzz under you will grow, and thus you'll earn more and more traffic.

Normally Instant Buzz is by invitation-only, but for the next four days they are opening up sign ups to the general public to showcase version 2.0.
Click here to sign up now.

NOTE: If when you click on the above link you get a notice saying "Instant Buzz is available by invitation only" it means that the open enrollment period for Instant Buzz has expired.
I'm more than happy to send you an invitation, though, if I have any available. Please send me an email to: susancarroll@friendswhocare.us

To Your Success,
Susan Carroll

PS Most other free traffic systems are based on either tricking or coercing people to click on links. Instant Buzz is totally voluntary so all of the clicks you get are generally of very high quality.

Further, the voluntary clicking means that the traffic you get from Instant Buzz is in fact targetted (even though the ads are seen by an untargetted pool of people).

Why Do We Use Internet Explorer?

I use Internet Explorer as do more than 90% of all
internet users. With all it's problems we all still use
it because it's what came on our computers. But after
getting so frustrated with it tonight I am seriously
considering a change.

Here's what happened...

I wanted to pay a bill online, something I do fairly
often. So I went to the sight just like I have done
several times in the past. But tonight I couldn't get
logged in. I kept getting that silly "page won't display"
error page.

I called tech support and after checking their records
they said I didn't have an online account and needed
to register. I tried to explain that I was registered but
they insisted that I really wasn't. (Wonder how I managed
to pay my bill the last several months without being
registered - don't you?)

So I went to the site and tried to register. Well I did
finally get to the page that told me my account was
already registered but only after I got the "page won't
display" error several times.

Ok, so now I figure I must be using the wrong password
and that's why the site doesn't like me. Wrong! When I
go through the exercise of filling out the form to get my
password I get ... you guessed it... PAGE WON'T DISPLAY.

It's now been more than 30 minutes and I still have not
done a task that should have taken less than 5. Feeling
a little upset I decided to do something else and see if
the problem would fix itself. (Hey, I still believe that things
that are broken one minute on the internet sometimes get
magically fixed and start working again.)

After giving the problem about 15 minutes to fix itself I
I go back to the site and am now able to log in with no
problem. Great! I go through the pages to make my
payment and click the final "submit" button only to end
up at ... do I really have to tell you ... "page won't display."

So I call tech support again. This time they tell me that
my problems are all because I have Service Pack 1
installed and there is now a patch I need. Security on this
site is so tight that IE with SP 1 won't work unless you
install the MS patch. (Hope you understood all the initials
in the last sentence.)

Now I don't remember installing SP 1 but then I don't
remember a lot of things so what the heck I get the
information so I can get the patch. I then go to the page
to download the answer to my problem only my
browser window hangs (you know - "program is
not responding").

After trying the front door approach to getting the
patch and having my browser hang several times
I manage to find a backdoor into the download page
so I download the patch. Unfortunately I get a
message that tells me that the patch can't be installed
unless I download SP 1.

Now I won't tell you how many times I tried to
get to the page to download SP 1 because I lost
count. I will tell you that after awhile I started sending
error reports to Microsoft because I was so frustrated
with my browser hanging on their site.

I tested my browser on other sites and was having no
problems - just the Microsoft site.

Well to make this long story short, I never did get SP 1
downloaded - never could get to the page to do it.

But ... I did pay my bill paid online and here's how.

I used my FireFox browser.

I can't tell you much about this browser since I
recently downloaded it and haven't been using it
because I don't have InstantBuzz installed on it.
What I can tell you is that when I used it to go to
the site, I logged in and paid my bill with no problem.

This is not a personal recommendation for FireFox,
at least not right now. This is a personal piece of
advice to have a second browser loaded on your
computer so you can use it when the first one fails you.

To Your Success,
Susan

I Am Starting A Test

Background for test:

I'm a big user of start page exchanges.
In fact, that's how I gained a lot of
my subscribers - both by using them and
giving away an e-book with 30 of them
along with a way to use them efficiently.

And while I no longer give the e-book
away or advertise the way to surf several
at the same time, I still do use my
method to surf 5 of them every week.

Reason for test:

Unfortunately over the last several
months I have noticed that my PC is loaded
with spyware after surfing on the start
page programs I use. I don't know if
some of it comes from all of them or
if some of it comes from some of them or
if all of it comes from one of them.

The test:

This week I am going to start a test
where I surf each of the 5 seperately
without the use of the tool that allows
me to surf multiple exchanges at the
same time. If I can identify which ones
run clean and which ones give me "crap"
I'll share the results. If I find they
all run clean that means that the tool
I use is loading the "junk" and I'll
share that info also.

To Your Success,
Susan