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RT @lynnterry That Oxelon media converter looks nice. And FREE is always nice! Downloading now… http://bit.ly/xJuYH #

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If you are advertising on Google’s Content Network it is possible that 28.2% of the clicks you pay for are FRAUDULENT according to ClickForensics:

The overall industry average click fraud rate grew to 17.1% for Q4 2008. That’s up from 16.0% in Q3 2008 and from the 16.6% rate reported for Q4 2007.

The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 28.2%. That’s up from the 27.1% rate reported for Q3 2008 and down slightly from the 28.3% rate reported for Q4 2007.

Now some Internet marketers will say that there is no way they are being taken.  Idiots that have no idea how easy it is to find clickfraud software and how easy it is to use.

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What happened?

An Internet marketer had his account suspended by GoDaddy because of a spam complaint.  The spam didn’t come from him — it came from an unknown third party.

GoDaddy promptly shut down his domain (NOT the website… the freakin domain!) and sent the following email…

Go Daddy has a strict anti-spam policy, Go Daddy customers are required to be able to provide conclusive proof of prior consent for any individual they send advertisements to. This also applies to the actions of any party that generates traffic on your behalf. This includes, but is not limited to, 3rd party marketers, business partners, employees, mailing list providers and affiliates.

Once the troubled marketer posted in the forum, other marketers with similar GoDaddy horror stories came out of the woodwork.

What did I learn?

1.  It only takes one  spam *complaint* to have your domain suspended by GoDaddy.  There doesn’t need to be proof.

2.  Once GoDaddy locks and suspends your account, you are billed $200 in administration fees in order to unlock and/or move to another registrar.

3.  GoDaddy has suspended and sold high value domain names, for invalid whois information.  Specifically an email address — without trying to contact using any other means.

4.  If there is problem, don’t expect a phone call from ‘customer no-service’!

5.  GoDaddy verifies ‘whois’ information using the domain SecureServer.net.  One domain owner received an email originating from that domain and ignored it not knowing it was GoDaddy — which seems resonable given all the phishing scams.  However, his site was shut down.

And don’t think this is an isolated incident.  It has happened repeatedly…

Ask Mike Filsaime what he thinks about GoDaddy.com and you will get an earful!

Like other Internet marketers, I have already moved my most valuable domains to NameCheap and made the ‘whois’ info private as another layer of protection.  Maybe you should do the same.

Further Reading: More GoDaddy Horror Stories at NoDaddy.com

PS: If you use Twitter you can link your NameCheap account to receive notices as Tweets!  Very cool!  You’ll find that option under My Account > Manage Profile > Twitter Integration.

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There is no reason to BUY software to create products.  There are plenty of FREE alternatives  if you are living paycheck to paycheck and trying to get your business off the ground.

I love open-source software.   Not only do I use Audacity for creating podcasts and audio products, I also use OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office for creating documents, drawings and presentations.

Another alternative is to use Google Docs.

If you can’t afford Camtasia, I have found FREE software called Webinaria that  will allow you to create your own video tutorials, as either AVI or FLV files.  I haven’t tried using the software yet, but the videos on the Webinaria service seem adequate.  I will give it a whirl in the next few days and give a review.

Now doing a simple online tutorial can be done marrying OpenOffice’s Impress (Powerpoint Alternative) with Webinaria.  Or record your Impress presentation as an SWF file and convert to FLV at MediaConvert.  Then you can upload to YouTube, etc.

Primarily I use Visual Communicator and Camtasia for creating my videos.  But it’s nice to know that there are plenty of FREE alternatives if you ask the right questions and how to use Google!

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His goal?

To create a business that brings in $2000/month automatically.

His problem?

Read for yourself…

As someone who has been involved with most of the components of starting a muse for several years, I thought that I would be a good candidate to see if I can successfully create a muse.  Because if I can’t create a successful Pay-Per-Click campaign and I’m certified as an Adwords specialist, isn’t it going to be pretty difficult for someone else?  I know there are other things I could do wrong like not choosing a good product or other operational issues, but these are the same mistakes other people can make.  I have multiple inherent advantages in that I have been around the industry enough to know what I’m doing.

What a douche.  I read the beginning of his blog post and KNEW he was going to have problems.  But it gets better…

I thought about doing some testing, but in all honesty, it would be much easier to test out the muse with real products.  I have already contracted out a very good Yahoo Design Firm to build the stores and provided them details on what exactly I’m looking for (by creating a mock-up with the features I wanted)…

…I’ve probably spent about 10 hours total so far on these projects and don’t plan to spend too much more.  I’ve also spent $2750 on the 2 web site designs and Yahoo programming for them.   I hope to be earning $2,000 per month by the end of the year (hopefully sooner) and be profitable in month one.

WHAT?  No testing?  If you are an Adwords guru, why not spend a couple hundred dollars (instead of the $2750+) to test?  The most important thing is to be sure that you have a hungry crowd!

Within a few months, he was lamenting his failure…

I’m sure that I have more knowledge about the steps that were laid out on create a muse than 95% of the people who have read the book.  If I can’t do it, I’m not sure how someone else can who has never spent any time in the online business world.

So what did I discover?  I think it’s very unlikely that most people can go in and create a muse that would provide a full-time income to support them.  The problem people face is the one that most entrepreneurs face when starting a business.  If there is money to be made in the market that you’re moving in to, there probably is a competitor there who has taken the easy profit.

Wrong… wrong… wrong.  Competitors in a niche are a good thing!  That usually tells you that the market is viable.  You should be looking for at least THREE competitors when you do your niche market research.  And of course you MUST test the viability of your market and product using Adwords.

Especially if you are a hotshot Adwords guru.

It is easy to Google and fnd people that are following the plan outlined in the 4HWW and doing their market research properly. Here is the perfect example from The Displaced African.

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