Here’s an ‘update’ being emailed to all of our customers:

This is just a quick message to give you an
update on your order.

John Reese

In a few more hours we’ll be releasing the 3rd Traffic Secrets 2.0 preview series video.

Standby.

You can go right now and view a couple great videos:
http://www.trafficsecrets.com

Here’s a little teaser video:

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Finally.

It now looks like there’s a 90% chance that we will begin the pre-launch campaign for Traffic Secrets 2.0 starting this coming Thursday, July 3rd. We’ll be releasing several great free videos — valuable stuff even if you have no interest in the course.

If all goes according to schedule we’ll officially launch the course on Tuesday, July 15th.

Right now I say 90% because there are some last-minute minor details that need to be taken care of and I want to be very careful not to promise a date and then have to postpone it — everyone has waited long enough (over a year!) for this course to get released. So after some unexpected delays and mastering issues during the past 6 weeks, we’re so close to the finish line. More news as soon as something is 100%.

I want to thank everyone for their patience. And I promise, it will be well worth the wait.

Make sure to ‘follow’ me on Twitter for more LIVE updates: http://twitter.com/johnreese

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

Special Discount For Owners Of TS1.0:
When we ran the “blow-out” sale last year to take TS1 off the market I stated that all owners of TS1 would get a huge discount on TS2. TS2 is going to have a special release price of only $397. ALL of our TS1 customers (including the blow-out sale buyers) will be able to buy TS2 at the discounted price of $297. The exception to this is for anyone that bought TS1 at full price ($997) in the beginning of 2007 (right before the final sale) — those customers will receive TS2 for FREE since they purchased the course at full price so close to the sale.

Affiliate Program:
We’re getting a lot of emails and calls asking about an affiliate program for the launch. We will be using some affiliates to get the word out for the launch but we don’t have an ‘open’ affiliate program at this time. If you feel that you would be a valuable partner for the launch please contact Andy Hussong at andy@income.com. Tell him you’re interested in being a launch partner and explain (in detail please) why you think you’re a good fit for this promotion.

If you followed yesterday’s saga then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Attacks. Insults. Accusations. Assumptions. Reactions. Disrespect. Punches. Kicks. Slaps. And more.

Yes, just another day on the Internets.

Well, I’m about to say something that will probably come as a huge SHOCKER to everyone, especially those that so passionately defended me; which I sincerely appreciated it…

I WAS WRONG.

Looking at the situation again after the dust has settled, I am man enough to realize that I was wrong in some of the things that I wrote yesterday and how I ‘positioned’ those that I wrote about.

I was a hypocrite in the process. As many of you know, one of the primary things I teach is not to get caught up in NEGATIVITY in your marketing. Don’t spend time bashing your competitors or others in your industry.

Because in almost every case no good will come from it.

Your sole focus should be on providing great value to your prospects and to your customers. In the great free content you giveaway, as well as anything you ever sell to someone. If you stay focused on the positive, and truly work hard to deliver great value to your market, everything else will take care of itself.

And if it doesn’t for some reason, there’s nothing you can do about it because you simply did your best.

I broke this ‘rule’ yesterday.

I read some blog posts that mentioned me by name and I became defensive because of how I felt I was being positioned. So I got all fired up and had a knee-jerk reaction and made my post yesterday. And while I truly had been wanting to express those thoughts on anti-marketing attitudes online for a long time, I realize now that the way I went about it was all wrong — even if I truly did feel I was ‘right’ in defending myself based on the situation.

Since I wrote yesterday’s post defending myself and expressing my thoughts, Duncan Riley and Mark Hopkins have both responded with new posts.

As you can see by their posts, the negative ‘cycle’ just continues to churn. As I post insults or imply things about them, they in turn find whatever ammunition they can find and return fire. It’s like a tennis match. The ball just keeps getting hit back and forth and ultimately isn’t going anywhere.

This is what happens when people’s reputations are being challenged. And it’s a completely natural reaction and one that ANYONE would have.

So now it’s my turn to defend myself against the latest remarks from them and hit the ball back over the net. But I’m not going to.

Instead, I’d rather look at this from a more constructive point of view and have the three of us go back to focusing on the more important things in our lives — because, frankly, this type of drama is a waste of time and we all know it.

Let’s start with Duncan Riley.

Duncan kind of started things off with his original post that quoted an email I had sent to my list and he referred to me as an “ebook salesman.”

I took offense to this ‘ebook’ remark because most people use that term in regards to someone selling a $19 ebook that promises to make people rich. And I get sick and tired of having the knuckleheads that DO sell that crap bringing the rest of our industry down.

So I fired back at Duncan and included him in my long rant. His name came along for the ride and I essentially painted him as anti-marketing. In hindsight, even though I was bothered by the ‘ebook’ comment, I probably should have recognized that he was subscribed to my email list for a reason.

After all, his original post was quoting an email he received from me.

Even, though, in Duncan’s latest response he ‘returns fire’ he also makes the point that he likes my copy and likes to keep up with other marketers. Hence the reason I now see that it was completely unfair of me to just lump him in with everything anti-marketing.

Which, ironically, is the very thing I was so passionate about when it came to defending myself — fighting back against the generalizations that all Internet marketers are evil and are only out to abuse the Internet and/or rip people off.

So my apologies to Duncan. In hindsight I should have contacted him personally, expressed my concern over how I thought he was ‘painting’ me out to be, and taking it from there.

As a side note, I’ve actually enjoyed reading Duncan’s writing for a very long time. Before he started his recent blog he was a long-time writer for TechCrunch where he wrote about up and coming startup companies — which is very far from anti-marketing or anti-capitalism.

Let’s move on to Mark Hopkins.

The situation with Mark is a lot different than Duncan. In fact, Mark really took the negativity to far greater lengths — even to a realm where so many things were unjustified and became personal attacks, in my opinion.

But if I truly take a step back and look at things from Mark’s perspective, I can get a different view than my own. While I certainly won’t defend some of what he said about me and how he went about it, I am reasonable enough to see what motivated him in the first place.

Mark has made it loud and clear that he despises MLM and other types of “referral marketing.” He feels that it preys on a large set of people in the process, and that any model like that is junk — and so even, though, BlogRush was free, it was based on a referral credit system and Mark just didn’t like the ’smell’ of it, so to speak.

As many of you know, I myself am not a fan of MLM and don’t suggest my students get involved with it. Because the focus of those things are more about ‘recruiting’ others than marketing an actual product of value; and that’s, ultimately, in my opinion, a doomed business model.

I think it’s better to build a business by creating ASSETS — such as your own products, your own customer list, your own content, your own marketing, etc. I believe the same money and time spent on building a business with your own assets will always yield far greater results than just ‘recruiting’ or promoting another company’s business. And, again, this is just my opinion.

As I explained to Mark in my ‘defense’ to his ‘pyramid scheme’ attacks on me, I setup BlogRush as multi-tiered referral system because I wanted to give the users the benefit of the ‘network effect’ when it grew virally. With all the other services online that have grown from viral marketing, the only core benefit is to the company that owns the service — the users get nothing out of doing the marketing for them. It was also done to help the small blogger without much traffic have a chance to leverage the network effect, otherwise a 1:1 exchange ratio doesn’t do them any good; because they don’t have much traffic to start with. But even aside from that, I see Mark’s point about the ‘overpromising’ marketing for it and have told him that we’re working to change it.

I never stated I was perfect and neither is my marketing.

And, of course, BlogRush is a free service and trying to call it a pyramid scheme is a reach — even, though, Mark makes a good point that it still takes people’s time and even uses up some space on their blogs. Fair enough. If Mark truly feels passionately about his dislike for anything related to that multi-level stuff then that’s certainly his right.

In Mark’s responses he has pointed out that I unfairly painted him as an “anti-marketing hippie” and that he has long been posting about things that are the opposite — of which I was unaware. So while I got mad at his personal remarks towards me (and how he tried to paint me as a huckster selling things to ‘my victims’) it was unfair of me to make the anti-marketing insinuations about him and do to him exactly what I was so against — the generalizations about Internet marketers.

So as tough as it may be for me… My apologies to Mark Hopkins.

Mark didn’t like the marketing of BlogRush and probably even some of my other marketing and that’s fine. It’s his right to feel the way he feels. If he wishes to continue to post negative remarks about me, my business, my products, my marketing, etc. so be it. There’s nothing I can do about it but do the best I can to deliver value to my customers — because at the end of the day, those are the only people I am accountable to.

And finally… TWITTER.

I think it goes without saying, but Duncan put a creative ‘focus’ on what wasn’t said in the email I sent out about Twitter that started this whole thing, and so I want to clarify it once and for all…

I didn’t say it word-for-word in my recent email encouraging people to use Twitter, but I’ll say it… DON’T BE A JACKASS AND SPAM OR ABUSE TWITTER.

As many of you know, I’ve already expressed how blatant promotions and pitching on social networks and other social media DOESN’T WORK. Social media is best used to give great content and great feedback in any conversation and eventually lead people to your blog or other areas where you’ve posted great supporting content. Then after someone has had a change to see what you offer in terms of free content does the process start towards being interested in doing business with you.

Perfect example: as many of you know I hit the Facebook limit of 5,000 friends in less than 5 days from the time I announced that I set-up an account to my list. For those of you that made it into that group of 5,000 you know that you’ve never seen me ‘pitch’ or heavily promote my own products, affiliate links, or anything else. I’ve only used it to interact with people and to syndicate or announce content I posted on my blog.

So don’t spam Twitter. Don’t direct message people links to your sites. Don’t overpost URLs to your stuff — otherwise people will “unfollow” you and then Twitter will serve no purpose if no one is ‘listening’ to anything you post.

If you make a new blog post, by all means share the URL with people following you. But always keep in mind… What’s In It For Them? They aren’t following you to get blasted with advertising. They’re following you because they believe what you have to share and say is interesting and has VALUE.

So the moral of the story from all this drama is this… far greater returns will happen for you and your business if you stay focused on the positive and on creating value and not getting caught up in negativity towards others — justified or not.

I am now moving on from this drama and going back to what I do best and what makes me happy. I suggest others do the same.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. This post is something I’ve wanted to express for a long time. So grab some popcorn and your beverage of choice. You’re in for a long one.

I was recently called out and attacked by Mark Hopkins over at the blog Mashable with his latest post, Is Twitter Vulnerable To Marketer Attack?

Mark apparently got his motivation to make such a post after reading blogger Duncan Riley’s recent post (also directed at me and showing a recent email I sent to my list) Pending Sign Of The Twitter Apocalypse: It’s Being Talked About By Internet Marketers.

I think it’s about time that someone actually set the record straight and addressed attacks like these against Internet marketers. On the Web, there has always been this massive divide between entrepreneurs using the Net for marketing purposes and those that aren’t.

If You’re Going To Call Someone Out And Attack Them At Least Get Your Facts Straight

Both Mark and Duncan referred to me as an “ebook salesman.”

That’s pretty interesting considering I’ve never sold an ebook since I’ve been marketing online for over 15 years.

So come on, guys, you’re supposed to be “journalists” so try doing your research first — especially if you’re going to publish something that more or less is a personal attack and tries to put someone down.

But even, though, they have this fact wrong about me their implication with this statement is something I’m going to come back to in a moment because it’s important.

Both Mark and Duncan attempt to imply that somehow I was encouraging marketers to abuse or spam Twitter in some way.

Here’s a tip: Why don’t you actually READ whatever email you’re trying to use as ‘evidence’ to make your case? You may want to reread that email and pay close attention to this sentence:

“Observe how others post and you’ll quickly learn the culture, etiquette, and uses for Twitter.”

I clearly state that there’s an ETIQUETTE to be used on Twitter. I am not in anyway encouraging people to abuse Twitter. It’s clearly stated directly in that email.

Even if that sentence wasn’t included, the implication is still that I am notorious for teaching people to be abusive with their marketing or something. Well, if you would have actually done your research on me (before attacking me) you’d know that I don’t support or teach any Internet abuse of any kind.

If you’re not going to take the time to actually do some research about me the very least you could have done is OBSERVE MY POSTS ON TWITTER.

As anyone can clearly see, what I’m encouraging people to do is actually the OPPOSITE of what Mark and Duncan are trying to imply.

But they’d know that if they had done their research.

Anyone can see the public history of my Twitter account at: http://twitter.com/johnreese

So why on earth did these ‘journalists’ not investigate it?

Ironically, Mashable has used their Twitter account for 100 TIMES MORE promotional effort than I have with mine. Hey pot, meet kettle.

Last Time I Checked Twitter Used A ‘Voluntary’ Messaging System

And completely aside from the points I just made, Twitter works by having users opt to follow other users — and they only see their tweets after they have voluntarily chosen to follow that person.

This makes it nearly impossible for someone to abuse the system for evil marketing purposes. Certainly some idiot will probably come up with a way to mass-send ‘direct’ messages to people (and Twitter will squash them) but Twitter’s design does not allow people to just blast anyone.

But what do I know. I’m not trying to make a living as an ‘expert’ blogger about Web 2.0 services.

Mark also took the ‘attack’ efforts against me quite a bit further than Duncan. Mark makes a statement that I’m a “Web 2.0 flopster.” The word “flopster” implying FAILURE.

Back to the lack of research factor…

If Mark had done his proper research on me he’d know that I’ve been one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the history of the Internet when it comes to creating online projects that CREATE PROFITS.

I was a pioneer of opt-in email marketing when I created one of the first auto-reply email services for businesses in 1994.

I am one of the few people in the world that can say they’ve created a web site from scratch and using a tiny marketing budget put that site into the Top 500 most trafficked web sites in the world.

And, oh yeah, I’ve done it with THREE different sites and I’m currently working on my 4th.

I’ve made millions of dollars in a variety of markets - from golf to hobby markets to B2B. I’ve been one of the top super affiliates in the world for companies like eBay, Chase, and other Fortune 500 companies. I’ve even generated over $1,000,000 in AdSense earnings without paying a penny for advertising or playing the “arbitrage” game — and I did it as a ’side’ project.

And as most online marketers know, in 2004 I released a training course and generated $1,000,000 in sales in the first 18 hours from the marketing campaign I put together — which ended up creating $1M in net profit within the first 7 days.

And I did it without risking a single penny on traditional advertising.

So Does That Make Me A ‘Flopster’?

Again, it’s all about the research.

HOWEVER… maybe Mark was simply referring to me as a failure in the “Web 2.0″ sense? Referring only to projects that are Web 2.0 services.

Fair enough. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Mark has consistently ‘hated’ on my BlogRush project. He has bashed it in the past and for whatever reason continues to seem all fired up about it.

He implies that the service was a dumb idea (without so many words) and that it failed, was overhyped, yadda yadda yadda.

Was BlogRush A Total Failure?

Even if it was… WHO CARES? I mean, if an entrepreneur comes up with a crazy idea at 4AM and has the guts to ‘go for it’ and it fails, does that make that person a FAILURE? After all, BlogRush is not even the core focus of the company I’m trying to build. But should someone that has a failed project like this just call it quits?

If I had taken that attitude about being an entrepreneur I would have been homeless a long time ago. It’s better to have the courage to try something and fail to not try at all. It’s amazing how many people bashed BlogRush yet most of them had never taken a major risk in their entire life.

No risk, no reward.

At least I had the guts to invest $400,000+ of my own money to give the idea a shot. Yes, my money. Not money some VC gave me.

The Internet would not be what it is today without the courage of entrepreneurs trying all kinds of crazy ideas.

As far as BlogRush is concerned, I’ll be the first to admit that it did not work out the way I had hoped it would. I hoped it would be a great service that would provide tremendous VALUE to a lot of people.

There were many factors that I didn’t expect when I created the service — such as the amount of abuse, that many people would hide the widget so low on their pages it wouldn’t get much click activity, etc. Then there’s also the issue that most bloggers don’t know how to write compelling titles — which has everything to do with the click-rate.

BlogRush also encountered some technical issues and other growing pains. Hey, it happens. But even with all of those problems and unforeseen issues, was BlogRush truly a failure?

Well, let’s look at some traffic analytics from Compete.com. In this chart let’s compare BlogRush’s traffic with that of Mashable the super popular blog where Mark is one of their writers:

Huh? That’s weird. For someone calling me a failure when it comes to my little “Web 2.0″ side project it can’t be that bad of a failure considering it gets more traffic than one of the most popular blogs in the world — that Mark happens to works for.

And here’s what’s really amazing… this chart is primarily showing unique visitor numbers based on the BlogRush site and NOT on the reach of the widget itself; because the widget is served on other sites.

Here’s A NEWSFLASH For Mark: The BlogRush widget has already been served over 540 MILLION TIMES.

I think most other entrepreneurs would LOVE to ‘fail’ that badly.

Mark also attacks some of the marketing copy that I used for BlogRush. He says it’s nothing but “hyperbole” and overhype, etc.

Hehe. I love the irony in the fact that Mark created his post based on a blog title that contains “Pending Sign Of The Twitter Apocalypse.” Great use of hyperbole, Duncan. I actually think that title rules!

Bloggers are notorious for their strong usage of hyperbole. Hey pot, meet kettle. Oh, you guys already met. Well, maybe you should get married.

I will be the first to admit that we overpromised and underdelivered (so far) with the promises of the copy for BlogRush. Anyone that knows me as a marketer knows that my entire career has been the OPPOSITE. I thrive on overdelivering value to my customers. And again, I admit that BlogRush didn’t work out like I thought it would - no one is more disappointed about that than I am.

Many BlogRush users ARE getting the free traffic benefits that were promoted. But most of these marketers have a solid grasp on writing really click-worthy titles; which makes all the difference.

But Mark is very passionate about dogging BlogRush, and that’s his right just like anyone else. So, Mark, I’m sorry that it didn’t live up to your expectations. We’ll gladly issue you a full and prompt refund.

Oh wait. Somehow I forgot BlogRush was a totally FREE service.

But There’s A Much More ‘Poisonous’ Message About Internet Marketers That Needs To Be Addressed

I’m so sick and tired of the anti-marketing attitudes of writers, pundits, and others on the Internet. It’s been going on since the Web started to take off in 1994/1995.

So many of these people make it out like all Internet-based marketers are only selling scammy, rip-off garbage. And while the Internet is certainly filled with all kinds of jackasses that spam and abuse every known online service and tool there is, not enough ‘credit’ is given to marketers (like me and most of my customers) that have great marketing and success online and do things the RIGHT way.

And not enough credit and attention is given to the fact that if it wasn’t for Internet marketers there would be no Internet or Web 2.0 as it is today.

MONETIZATION IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF THE INTERNET.

Without all of the affiliate marketers, affiliate merchants, small bloggers, advertising networks, marketers buying PPC traffic, and everything else that is a part of the “Internet Economy” 99% of what’s on the Web today would not exist.

So for Mark, and any others that seem to take this anti-marketing attitude, the next time you cash your paycheck you should take a moment to realize it wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the very marketers that create and sustain the economy of the Web.

Heck, just take a look at many of the ways that the Mashable blog is able to generate revenue — many of those programs and networks only exist because of marketer activity.

So if you kill all the Internet marketers, YOU KILL THE INTERNET.

As far as the spammy and abusive marketers go, it’s unfortunate and it pollutes the Web. Thankfully, the Internet has this great darwinism effect where those that don’t provide value end up getting destroyed. Junk and scammy crap will always end up in FAILURE. The ‘problem’ is that so many new junk peddlers take the place of the old ones.

One more point I want to make… Mark and Duncan’s efforts to call me an “ebook salesman” is being done in a negative light relating towards selling information to teach people how to make money in some way.

This is another common anti-marketing attitude that has existed online for ages. So many people are put off by marketing or promotion for anything to do with “making money.” Even, though, there are hundreds if not thousands of fantastic products on the subject that are truly helping people.

To realize this, I only have to take a look at the success stories created by my own teachings and what they’ve done for thousands of individuals and their families.

Are there tons of people peddling utter garbage and worthless “I’ll show you how to press a big red button and get rich” crap online? Unfortunately, YES.

But to stereotype anyone and everyone that publishes or provides marketing or business advice is PATHETIC. And that is primarily what happens when it comes to the anti-marketing attitude.

A Quiet Revolution Is Forming

These anti-marketing folks need to realize something…

The world is changing quickly. Economies are evolving. More and more people around the globe are realizing the benefits of having their own business online. The ‘marketing’ uses of the Internet are only going to GROW. And it’s actually going to make the Internet even STRONGER and more developed. As the needs to increase monetization are created it will spawn more innovation online.

The survival of Ideas, Sites, Services, and Companies on the Web are ALL dependent upon the activity from Internet marketers. I just wish more people would start to realize it.

* I would like to encourage my fellow Internet marketers to spread the word about this post. Thank you.

We decided to kill the little thumbnail snapshots of each blog. They looked cool but took up too much room.

The new ‘cleaner’ designs now shows more stories before someone has to scroll — a much easier way to scan for interesting news.

Our little algorithm has been extremely impressive so far.

It’s far from perfect and occasionally some lower quality stories slip through, but overall it’s been amazing. Some great stories, sorted by category, all ranked live by the algorithm of what’s getting the most interest and engagement across the BlogRush network.

Not too shabby considering social news sites like Digg, Reddit, Propeller, and others rely on HUMANS to be submitting and voting on stories to determine relevance. TrafficJam.com is fully automated and managed by an algorithm.

I want to thank everyone for their patience. We sincerely appreciate it.

We’re getting very close.

We ran into a few issues with some of the content and I had to go and rerecord quite a bit. Nothing more fun than REDOING work a second time.

We also had a minor hiccup with the database setup that manages the learning platform but we have solved that issue.

At this time an actually ’shipping’ and full release date looks like either the last week of June or the first few days of July. We’ve got to wait and see how fast our duplicator is going to crank out the new masters and have it all ready to ship.

So we’re getting there. I’ll post more news when I have some to share.

It has been offline for nearly 5 DAYS.

Our primary server host experienced a major fire that knocked out connectivity to *9,000* servers. I would bet that over 250,000 web sites were affected by this outage.

Not all the servers are back online, but they should be any minute. I’m glad our blog is back up.

Status Of Traffic Secrets 2.0

We, unfortunately, ran into a minor problem with the CD-Rom format for Traffic Secrets 2.0 and now I have to go and re-record some of the content.

It’s not a major issue but it’s going to delay the course release by a few weeks. We had planned to release it by the end of May but that’s not going to happen now.

I want to apologize to everyone that’s been patiently waiting for the course. We’re doing our best to get it out ASAP and it will be available before you know it. (So thanks.)

The Main Income.com Site

We’re still very busy with the development of our core site as well as the great video content we’re creating for it.

I had really hoped to open up the site early in the year, but it’s just not going to happen. We’re adding more features and doing a lot of testing on the initial phases of it all.

UGH. Why is it that everything always takes A LOT longer than you think it will!?

A lot of our valued customers have been contacting us and are anxious to know when TS2 will be out as well as the main site. So I just wanted to send out this update to let everyone know that we’re hard at work on both of them. They will both be well worth the wait. I know I keep saying that, but it’s true, I promise.

I am dying to share some more information about what we’re developing (which would make people realize what’s taking so long) but I cannot release this information just yet for competitive reasons.

You’ll fully understand once you see it all come together.

So in the meantime, keep working hard on your business!

QUICK TIP:

Here’s how to make more money in your business right away…

Analyze your current results. See where most of your traffic is coming from and what’s creating most of your revenue.

You’ll find that only 1-3 things are most likely driving most of the activity in your business. Spend more time growing those things and very little time trying other things that are unproven. It’s the 80/20 rule on steroids. It really applies to Internet Marketing.

Also, there’s ONE thing that will probably make you more money than anything else - A NEW PRODUCT.

It’s a proven fact that one of the best ways to create an infusion of cash into your online business is to release a new product.

Yes, product creation is time consuming and sometimes is no fun. But regardless of your market, releasing a new product is almost guaranteed to make you more money as fast as possible.

A great book I highly recommend you go out and buy TODAY is “Ready, Fire, Aim: From Zero To $100 Million In No Time Flat” by Michael Masterson.

This book talks a lot about building an information publishing business and a lot of it can be applied to building this business online. After reading this book you’ll understand why creating new products quickly is one of the most powerful ways to build wealth in your business.

Here’s a link to it on Amazon.com. It’s currently selling for only $18.45 which is an absolute bargain.

More news soon.