Internet marketing

You may (or may not) wonder why I didn't manage to write a post yesterday. Mainly because I was too tired after attending an internet marketing conference. It wasn't something I particularly wanted to invest in (either time or money) as I don't have a business I want to promote but when a friend invited me I decided it would be a day out and lunch was thrown in so that was a good enticement.

I left home to drive to my friend's house at 7:15 am where I left my car so that we could travel by bus to the venue (hotel in the centre of Bristol). I don't normally do buses and now I remember why, it was crowded and we had to stand until the last two stops. We were jammed like sardines forced to listen to other people's conversations on mobiles (e.g one young girl wanted the person on the other end of the phone to make an excuse for her being late, reason sounded far too complicated to me why didn't she just say heavy traffic and bus was late but then she's probably used that one in the past but it was true and a bus full of people could vouch for it). Trying to avoid all the coughing and spluttering was impossible and I am keeping my fingers crossed I haven't picked up any germs, so far this winter 'touch wood' I've managed to avoid colds and flu.

It was quite an interesting day very American (no disrespect intended) but the company promoting this technology is American 'SO' (I decided to delete the full name I don't want to sued for my opinions) and the success stories are all from America. I won't go into detail but there must have been over 200 people present and a huge number of these were parting with quite a lot of money without even being certain of success. From my very limited knowledge the 'if you follow this verbatum' you will likely succeed (very cleverly making sure the bit about everyone will be different was added but not dwelt upon) and watch the cash come rolling in seemed a little too good to be true.
Don't get me wrong I have no doubt that some people make a lot of money selling on the internet and I agree you need to get your product at the top of all the search engines to even stand a chance. Yes they told you how this is achieved and in theory could work. However as there are only about 10 entries on the first page of each search engine and this company must have signed up thousands of people (they operate all over the world apparently) there must be a lot of people out there who follow the advice and still can't get their web sites seen or visited from searches (hope this makes sense). So the cynic in me listened and enjoyed the hospitality but said 'no thank you'. Afterall I felt caution was needed about anyone showing how to use 'sitemaster' to track traffic trends etc as though the system was theirs (is this not a free service anyway).

The day ended at 18:00 and we left those who had parted with money to have a little more tuition. I sincerely hope they come out on top but I suspect, for most, it will prove otherwise. If you are prepared to gamble over £3,000 and then spend an ongoing £120 a month then I would say go for it but I was thinking of the holiday destinations I could visit for this money. Plus the odds of success from buying the odd £1 lottery ticket would probably be similar and far less work.

PS we then had to wait over half an hour for the bus and I finally arrived home after 19:30 so you can see why I didn't have the energy or inclination to write a post after a 12 hour ++ day it was like being back at work- maybe retirement is not so bad after all!!