One thing you need to do before joining anything is to make sure you have a good free email account. One if not The best today is gmail.com. If you use yahoo, you'll lose. If you use hotmail, you'll lose. If you use a cutesy email account, you'll lose. If you use any email account in which the sender must confirm, you'll lose.
The reason you lose is because you never know what you missed. I've had people tell me that they know they receive all their email. I'd like to know what crystal ball they have because I'd like to have one. The fact of the matter is, they don't know and there is no way they could know. It's also very obvious to those that have worked online for any length of time, hotmail is notorious for deleting in mid air, millions of emails per day. It's also obvious that yahoo can be very slow, even take days for a message to arrive to it's destination and many bounce right back to the sender. Obviously, those email accounts in which the sender must confirm by clicking a link, when they send an email, is not going to work because most people are not going to click a link.
Let's just say you either joined something, ask something, submitted something, told someone something...and now that person sends you an email...but you never get it. Maybe they are looking for a ClixSense sponsor. Maybe they saw your ad about something and want to ask you about it. Guess what...you are using a crappy email account and you never receive it...congrats, you just lost money...and possibly, a lot of it.
The first rule of thumb...Make Sure You Use a Free Solid Email Account and never take for granted someone received what you sent and/vice vera.
TIP 2
Detecting programs that are scams or a waste of time is not always easy. It's kind of funny if you have ever read the ads or saw the pages in which they say something like 'A Million Members Can't Be Wrong'. I'm here to tell you, YES a million members can be wrong. Should you join something that is in PRE-LAUNCH or should you join something that may have a million members that can't be wrong? Well, firstly if you are using a good free email account, and the program is free to join and check out, and you don't have to relay any private information, then there is probably no harm in joining it.
What can you do further to know if a program is worth handing your money over? Or maybe, you really don't want to bother with joining a program whether it is free or not unless you know it's legit. Do you simply read everything online that tells you it is a scam and agree with it? Do you read everything online that tells you it's legit and agree with it?
It's past time for YOU to take action and YOU do the research and DON'T relay solely on what other people tell you.
A - Know who owns the program. That is ALWAYS the first question I ask. Who owns it? If someone comes back and says Phil Piccolo owns it, I would not touch it with a ten foot pole! If no one can answer that question and there is no information about who owns it on the site (and I don't mean the 'we are a group of marketers' bs), that is RED FLAG number 1.
B - Who Is the people or person that owns it? Maybe there is info on the site in regards to who owns it. But you have never heard of the name before. Now what? You're going to need to go digging. Go to at least two search engines such as google and yahoo. Some times you'll dig something up on yahoo that you don't see on google. Type in that owners name, city, country...whatever amount info you have. Find out what credentials that owner has. Does he come up in the search engines as having a legitimate business? Is there a lot of good information about the owner? Or is there a lot of bad information about the owner....if there is a lot of bad info this is RED FLAG number 2.
C - It's a good idea to always check WHO IS to find out who owns the domain but maybe even more importantly, is HOW LONG have they owned the domain. Even tho the who is may not always relay the owners information (they may have set their domain details to private which is not always a red flag, by the way), it will relay the purchase date and/or renewal date of the domain. This can be very important information. Does the info on the site say something like 'We have worked on this program development for 5 long years and spent $50,000 creating it'? Well it would certainly be kind of odd to find the domain name was just purchased yesterday if they have spent 5 years and 50 grand developing it....RED FLAG number 3.
D - What if there is no information at all that can be found as to who owns it? You have red flags don't you? If A, B, and C are red flags, you don't have any green flags. You're going to have to dig further. Do searches about the program and see what others are saying. But don't take a whole lot to heart as to what just anyone says. Try to locate someone reputable that has experience and ask them. If you see someone like 'MLM WATCHDOG' placing bad info about it, well, it's most likely a big .... RED FLAG number 4.
E - Shabby is as Shabby does. What does the program site look like? Is there TOS and POLICIES? Is the site relaying their products and/or services? Is there information about how the program works exactly? Is there contact information? Have you contacted them? How long did it take to receive a reply? Is their payment information on site and what ways do they accept payment and what ways do they payout commissions? Does the product or service offered, make sense for the price point quoted? Just recently from this typing, I am seeing a lot of advertising for a program in pre-launch and I could not begin to tell you how many people have sent it to me....a lot. Did I join? Nope. Why not? Because there is no information on the site to amount to a hill of beans and because it plainly states a link that goes to a program that sells prelaunch sites.
Hey, anyone can throw up a prelaunch site! Therefore, if the site is shabby looking, relays no information about what it is, what product or service it will be offering, what it costs, etc etc etc...RED FLAG number 5.There are a lot of RED FLAGS out there for many programs. I would not hesitate to say, most programs have many red flags waving. Oddly, most people don't see them. IF a program is really good, believe me, GREEN FLAGS will be waving all over the place. As for that 'hurry up and join' gizmo, well, that is up to you. But if all you are finding is red flags, you may want to take caution and simply not join. After all, if a program is good, there will be green flags and if a program turns out to be good, it won't really matter so much when you join it, it will still be there and you can still be successful with it no matter when you join it.
TIP 3 - A fool and his money are soon departed.
You do know yourself, don't you? When should you hand your money over? Math Math Math..ALWAYS do the MATH. Then look at what you can do and what you will do. Know thy self. If the math is there, it makes sense, all the numbers are correct, looks like profit can be made, green flags are waving....should you hand over your money? Well, let's see if you know yourself:a - I am going to work this program. I mean, I am going to WORK this program.
b - I am not going to work this program. I will rely on spillover. I'll let others do the work.
a - I have enough money to hand over. It won't hurt me if I lose.
b - I am short on cash. If I hand over my money, I won't be able to feed my family this week.
a - If it does not do well for me, I gave it my all, I gave it my best, I won't be disappointed for trying.
b - This better work for me or I am going to scream scam all over the place.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of b type people out there. Never think you'll make money simply by relying on others. Leverage is great, team work is wonderful, but you cannot ever rely on others. Never give over money that you need. You can't risk money that you need to feed your family or pay for your meds or pay your bills...those are things that come first so don't risk what you don't have. If the program is solid and it did not work for you, maybe it's because you did not work for it. Don't go screaming scam just because you were not successful with it. Chalk it up as a learning experience and get over it.
TIP 4 - Longevity. Longevity alone is not always the greatest thing to rely on but it does say a lot. The longer a program exists online, the more information you can get about the program. And if the program has been online a long time, you will probably locate some negatives about it. However, the positives should far out weight the negatives. If the program has been online a short period of time, you need to really REALLY take a strong look at it and see if it is something that has the POTENTIAL for LONGEVITY. I think a big problem people have is joining fly by nights. They join a program, promote it, and the next thing you know the program is gone. That may not mean the program is a scam, it may just mean the program ran it's course and that is it, over, finite, nada, gone, done, poofers! You want longevity and as much of it as you can get. That's one very BIG reason I love ClixSense...longevity, longevity, longevity. My time is NEVER wasted at or on ClixSense. Think about it...you join program after program after program and you focus on them and the next thing you know, they are all gone. What about the time you spent? What about the money you spent? What about the pages you created? Instead, you could have chosen longevity, you could have focused on what will be around for years, you could be creating content pages, everything you do with that longevity program could be soaring higher and higher in the search engines and everything you do to promote is another source that may stay out there for years...gaining you referrals on autopilot. Don't focus on short term programs because when you do, you are constantly starting over and over and over and wasting your time, not to mention perhaps, money.
