T Minus 1 Day. Tomorrow's the day. Tomorrow is the Biggest Online Marketing Dump in the history of ALL HUMANITY. To join in, just go to your local health food store and ask for a 1-day cleansing product and prepare to strap yourself to the crapper tomorrow.

But first, let's talk about what's free...I'm not just talking about a free report or PDF, I'm talking about a free seminar where you walk away with real skills.

• Kevin Wilke's http://www.10millionin90days.com
  
• Mike Filsaime's and Gary Ambrose's http://ListBuildingBootcamp.com/

That second one, The List Building Bootcamp...the email says it is 100% free but the landing page says it is free to those who register for another conference. I'm sorry if there is any confusion. But the first link is absolutely FREE. I see this as an amazing opportunity that anybody who is open to making a ton of money quickly should check out. How fast is fast? 90 days. I know how to say yes.

Can a Story be too real? If you are contemplating this question then please click on that link to better understand Alternate Reality Marketing. This is not a game. This is all about contemplating how Marketing is the Modern Face of Magick.

T Minus 2 Days

Come play with us and we'll all have fun together. This is deep thought. We need more levity. Michelle, you joining up soon? We need our comic relief.

Just back from Harv Eker's Train The Trainer. WOW!!! Harv's company Peak Potentials weaves Buckminster Fuller into their teachings. Beautiful and lovely. Real authentic love integrated into making money. I'm seeing the world differently.

Changing topics...Want to spead love? Please click hear. You'll hear what you read.

We have a partner crime coming onboard to join us here as a contributor to this Online Marketing Dump...You'll be excited and pleased but she won't be here until she stops making love to her wife who she hasn't seen in a week. So keep your pants on. Besides...

T Minus 2 Days. want a visual? Did you read our first blog? Go and buy a comparable product and join us on Monday.

The Angry Marketer Diaries is my new favorite blog. This image has nothing to do with Anthony Blake's fabulous rants...but try this out, please. Which face is smiling? Now slowly walk away from your computer. Things appear differently for you? That's what Anthony's blog does for me. I step away from my computer and things appear differently for me.

T-9 Days until the great online dump...
MOST profitable website of 1997? I'm talking CASH profitable, not gross revenues. What one website far out cashed everybody else without selling a single product online?

That's right...they made obscene money without verifying credit cards or spiffing PayPal! Was PayPal around in 1997? What was the site? Psychic.com . How did they do it? They sold their list. If marketers needed people with 1995 Toyotas, then Psychic.com sent an email saying that they had a new psychic who could give you a reading partially based on what car you drove. Folks would reply and then receive their free reading. Marketers would pay PREMIUM DOLLAR$ for the right kind of lists. Why? Because a targeted list = $$$, if you know what to do. What list do I want? I want lists of people who grossed $1,000+ marketing last year. I have a tool that will explode their business.

You want more money, now? Immediate reward with no effort! Scintilating claims like this draw the biggest crowds, but how often have you paid $297 for a product and found you still weren't wealthy? I don't mean to burst anybody's bubble but if a $297 gizmo made thousands of dollars they wouldn't be selling it. This doesn't mean there isn't valuable information to be had, it just means there's no magic bean. Or, perhaps the most powerful magic bean is the one inside your head. I'm reading Multiple Streams of Internet Income by Robert G. Allen. "This is the first time I reaveal..." Yeah, well, this is 2nd edition of this book. No matter, the book is a solid overview of Online Marketing. However, overview is the key word here. The last chapter ends with reviewing chapter 9: Ready. Set. Launch. How Fast Can You Go from Zero to Cash? The chapter explains how to create a free or near free website and how to find stuff to sell. Then pay for an ad in an e-zine or rent a list to drive traffic to your site. In chapter 10 we get a super-charged way of making money, joint-ventures.

What do you think of this material? I think it is an inexpensive way to get the bare-bone facts, an overview of Online Marketing. I also think one's own trial and error will account for a lot of lessons. I hope many people feel safer about Internet marketing after reading his book. I also think the folks that are presently making a killing, going from broke to $1M in less than a year aren't discussed in this book.

Those are the folks that fascinate me...the ones that recently went pro or recently made their first million...I can model myself on their behaviors and they will honestly tell me to stop talking about all this sh*t. Tomorrow, another blog on the benefits of crapping and using Colinix on May 1st. Come join the greatest Online Marketing Dump in the history of the Internet!

You don't choose whether or not you have a brand. You are a brand. I'm a brand. I also have a couple names that can be viewed as brands, BUT here's where most folks get confused. The brand is not the name or the logo or any of those tangible things.

No, your brand is the likelihood of people to do business with you. How you conduct yourself is part of your brand.

"Brand Advertising" usually refers to ads to raise awareness that don't ask for a sale. While being heard of makes a new prospect more likely to do business with you. This is usually a tremendous waste of money. Few, oh so few examples, of image advertising = profit. Most of those examples are in fashion where there is a 30-60X mark up. People are buying the image.

However, I am grateful for free publicity. Most successful marketers I know are appreciative of free publicity that is neutral or better.

Me? I'm gruff and I occasionally swear and if I see something touching on TV I cry. To some, my behavior is too weird to do business with. That's basically why I left corporateland. But I've always had work freelancing. Why? Because I have a reputation for helping people make more money. Sometimes substantial amounts of money.

I am humbled by successful online marketers. They tend to be gracious and have integrity and have made their own money. They were smart like that. Up until recently I was dumb along those lines. I finally realized the $180,000+bonuses salary/stock options and racket was an abusive relationship. I was working 80 hour weeks make others millions while they boasted about our military victories with words like "take that!" wow. If you talk pro-war in front of me I'll probably walk away. Talking pro-war just turns my stomach. I see the need for military, but celebrating destruction of people is sick. No, seriously, I think civilian war hawks who cheer at battles are really demented folks.

I'll stand by my record. Remember the Yo-Yo fad of 1997 that became a craze in 1998/9? Yeah? Well that was over a quarter of a billion dollars I helped strategize. I was lucky to get to work on a project that took off. And, they were lucky to have me. And I'll leverage my experiences like that for all they're worth.

Why am I talking about all this? Because I received an email from J with whom I shared two conversations at Big Seminar. J said it was rude how I was name dropping on this blog. I told J I would not mention his name but reply here...I've emailed with everybody I mention here and they are cool with my use of their name. Everybody but Russell Brunson. I don't know if he's cool with this. But everybody else thinks this is fun, healthy and odd. These successful people don't mind having their name mentioned. Yes, this may be an odd blog, but the main thrust is about health.

Of course I throw around the names of folks you might know...you're familiar with their names and I'm attempting to make myself seem safe and accessible through my connections with them. Besides, I owe more to Mark Joyner than I can fit right here. I admire Tellman and Kevin tremendously. I sincerely hope I offend nobody I reference in this blog. If I do, please email and I'll remove your name immediately.

I love publicity. Even bad publicity. It helps sales. <- That one sold 80 books of mine.

Two of my HUGE Online Marketing blunders that should make your missteps look like easy-peasy silly errors...

I present these so you might learn from my mistakes.

First, you see that book on the right? I created a website with the help of a lot of friends...Over 500,000 unique visitors came by www.WhatWouldBillHicksSay.com. I created a construct where visitors could create content that became the book that was finally released last week. Why was this such a blunder?

1. Most notably I didn't create a list. Duh. I just didn't know. I created a buzz machine but without a mechanism to capture a list of friends. I could be using this list to promote the book and help spread Bill's love two-weeks ago when the book came out.
   
2. I didn't proof the final galley. They final galley lacked image credits so contributors have their work without their ego properly propped up. My bad.
3. I sent an email to finalists before the list of contributors was set, so three folks that I told would have essays in print don't and they told their friends and family. Bad karma.

More recently? I didn't lay out what this site was exactly about and how to participate. On the first entry I explain how Mark Joyner purchased me a bottle of Colonix. I shared how Tellman wanted to do this also and invited Kevin Wilke and this buzz began. So, where's my blunder? I'm getting emails asking how readers can participate. Where's the blunder? I didn't spell out exactly what I wanted my readers to do. So, here goes...I don't make a buck off of this sale, not that I'm opposed to making money off of you...they just don't have affiliate links.
It's as easy as 1, 2, 3.

1. Got to Colonix and order your bottle. Go here and buy now:
   http://www.drnatura.com/colonix_order.php
2. Email me or Blog on this site that you are in...
   Welcome Sam Heyer and Mark Williams!
3. On May 1, take Colonix

This will be a day of dumping. Don't plan on operating heavy machinery for extended periods on this day. Thank you for your considerations.

When is Branding Profitable?

Branding is a dirty word to many marketers who have had a bad experience with somebody selling a service or a logo design. I’ve had bad relationships, but I’m not giving up on women. Branding shouldn’t be a bad word just because some salesperson guised as a branding expert sucked at your pocketbook. I’m sorry you got taken for an expensive ride, however, there is a profitable role for branding. In fact, when branding works it is when you make the biggest profits.

Modern consumers suffer from constant overchoice…they have too many products to choose between, everywhere they look. In a supermarket, you’re confronted with 14 different makers of BBQ sauce in 9 different flavors. I never look at all my choices.

Last week I was asked to bring BBQ sauce to a friend’s house. So, I purchased a gourmet BBQ sauce because I wanted to impress his wife…she thinks I’m a wing-nut and a bad influence on her husband. If the BBQ sauce were for my own chicken, I’d start by looking at what’s on sale. But whatever the case is, I start shopping by narrowing my choices.

Studies have shown that people who claim “I always buy what’s on sale or the lowest price item” are liars. Maybe lying is too harsh of a word here…Nobody died because of their reporting error…when their carts were analyzed, 80% of these people had more than half of their cart filled with products that were neither on sale nor the lowest price. An easy explanation is that these folks have a different relationship with the word always than I do…for these folks always means nice to do. But even still, the vast majority of folks making this claim actually choose what’s on sale or the lowest price item less than half the time.

How does this happen? Overchoice. We don’t like to think. We buy what we bought last time. We like some products more than others. Sure, many of us play Soduko, solve crossword puzzles or play video games like Myst, but that’s fun thinking…time we set aside for problem solving. In a supermarket customers aren’t scrutinizing their choices for an optimal score, but for easily getting through the chore of grocery shopping. As marketers this works in our favor and this is where branding comes into profitable play.

We don’t like to think. Why is this important? In most cases, consumers limit their consideration to the products that are familiar in some way. We like what we already know. Further studies have shown that these consumers sometimes literally don’t see products that they aren’t familiar with. When presented with overchoice we only see what we already know.
Part of leveraging branding is presenting yourself consistently, showing customers that you’re already familiar. Why are bad-acting celebrities valuable? They are already familiar. In an attention economy recognition is valuable.

Leverage your recognition; Leverage your desirability. Branding is consistently communicating and delivering what you stand for in a profitable way.

When a customer buys a second product from you…that’s when you have a real relationship and the birth of a profitable brand. Encouraging the second purchase is branding. Thinking in terms of the life-time value of a customer is branding.

Branding is about leveraging your existing equities. “Branding” that doesn’t pay dividends on your return on investment isn’t branding, it’s either incompetence or a scam.

Thank you for your attention and considerations.

Ben Mack
Author, Think Two Products Ahead
"Creating loyalty beyond reason and moving from irreplaceable to irresistible is job #1 for all marketers today. Ben's book will help you get there."
Kevin Roberts, CEO Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide

Amy Williams is in. She's down for the Online Marketing Dump. Click on her name and you can hire her and her husband to lead you on bow hunting wild bore or for other extravagant vacation ideas. Amy is developing her speaking skills as lends her Olympic coaching skills to a broader audience than she has previously reached. You want to learn focus and relaxation under extreme conditions, contact Amy at the link above.

Focus is key to success. At Big Seminar Harv Eker discussed to critical role of focus...which brings me to our focus: pooping. Pooping is about getting what not usable out of your system. When we purge our system of what's not potential energy, we are more effective. That's the hypothesis. So far we have seven online marketers ready to test this premise. Are you up for the test? You know the value of testing in order to create best practices, right? How often do you run a test on your self? Join us in 14 days as we test our own bodies and discover if purging our bio-bag makes a difference on our marketing.

T-Minus 15 Days...Until the ultimate flush and the Greatest Online Marketing Dump in recorded history. Yesterday I received my Colonix kit. You should order now to participate. Dave Lakhani's in.

I asked myself, "How might I feel better on a day-to-day basis?" and Mark Joyner emailed me that he was sending me Colonix. If you scroll down to the first entry, you can see how this idea is spreading.

Somebody recently emailed me asking why I would say yes. I found this peculiar. I remember when I used to be resistant to saying yes. Now, I find I'm resistant to saying no.

As a Bokononist, of course, I would have agreed gaily to go anywhere anyone suggested.
As Bokonon says:  "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."

What Buckminster Fuller described as the human doughnut appears articulated more and more, what we focus on becomes our reality just as we internalize our surroundings. Ready to spend $5? Did you like What The Bleep Do We Know? Then, you'll love this...

Tom Bell & Michael Morgan are IN! We have this to look forward to. I'm not quite sure why somebody would crap on a piece of paper, but from what I've been reading online, a number of people want to see what's been inside their system. Anyway, if you Google online you'll see a number of testamonials about how great this feels. Come join us, see the first entry below to join in this new online movement.

I once strategized to get men to have colonoscopies, an intitiative of the American Cancer Society. My job was to incite men to have a "minimally invasive endoscopic examination." What does that mean? It means you aren't allowed to eat the previous 18 hours, that they give you medicine to dialate your anus so they can stick a scoptic tube-camera up your ass to look at your large colon and the distal part of the small bowel.

Getting men to say yes to a fiber optic camera on a flexible tube being passed through the anus was no easy feat. In the past, ads that showed fatherless kids or other tear jerkers hadn't really worked that well. It was something about not wanting a corded camera being shoved up their ass that most men objected to. And yet, doing this procedure is the only way to get an early detection on a cancer that kills and is often very treatable if detected early. If you are over 50 and have insurance...just go do it.

How did we get men to take action? We didn't advertise to them much...we advertised to the doctors. The message we gave doctors was that we were telling them that if they are over 50 they should have a colonoscopy. We also told the doctors we were goning to be polling their patients to see if they were recommended for a colonscopy, which the Surgeon General says men over 50 should have once.

In a land of HMOs, many doctors are incentivised to keep costs down. This was one way the American Cancer Society was helping with preventative medicine.

Cleaning out your system is thought by many to help prevent colon cancer. So, why not join us and order your detox kit today and come join us for a day of cleansing May 1, 2006.

Could Armand Morin actually be country STAR Michael Lee Austin?

I finally found "proof" that Armand Morin is a "NOT" Michael Lee Austin, but the more I research the more I'm convinced...
They're the SAME person.

You will be shocked and amazed, despite their huge efforts to convince you otherwise, this only confirms the rumors.

The rumor has been around for a long time that Armand Morin is Michael Lee Austin. This "proof" only reinforces my hunch, there is a deep, dark hole into which one must dive to dig out this truth.

See this video and let me know what you see...
http://www.michaelleeaustin.com/promo.html

CAN WE TEST THIS?

Best of Success,

Ben "The Dumpster" Mack

What can you make of this...
http://www.michaelleeaustin.com/promo.html

"That may have been the stupidest thing Ben has done in his career..." Words I heard just prior to BBDO Atlanta allowing me to spend more time with my cat Casandra.

Corporate folk often don't have the greatest sense of humor. A single question can raise such a big stir. It's two years later and I just heard the story of me asking the question that got me fired. Somebody else telling the story to me, not knowing who I am or my side of the story...
For the record, there is NO WAY that question was the stupidest thing I've done in my career. I've done far stupider things.

This BLOG may be the stupidest thing I've done so far...maybe after not-investing $10,000 when Google sent out that one email looking for early investors. What would that be worth now? $23,000,000 I recently read. Real smart there, Ben.

You gotta give me that NOT investing in Google's first offering to friends of the program was way stupider than ANY QUESTION, even if it did get me fired from a Senior Vice President, Brand Strategy Director working on Cingular.

With this blog, I risk alienating myself from the community I hope to join. And that might cost me more than the $23 mil I left on the table by not investing $10k when Google asked. Did I just hear somebody say "yeah, right?" Then, they don't know their Online Marketing history very well to comprehend the scope of possibility just now becoming mainstream knowledge.

Yesterday, I included a few sentences in my post from a private email. I viewed it as innocuous and that's irrelevant...THE LINES WERE FROM A PRIVATE EMAIL. I get it now. I pulled out the quote. I move on, damn I hope I didn't crap all over this project.

What am I doing here? Is this a meaningless, self-expression rant/blog like I had last summer when I met some of you at the Joyner/Halbert Fusion seminar in Miami and I blogged about covering Jeff Lloyd's Baja 500 race and being dragged through the brothels of Ensenada, Mexico? No.
This blog is about MONEY. About making MORE money.

What's the damn question that got me fired?

This was in 2003 the day before Cingular was going to announce the new partnership with
AOL Instant Messanger on the handset. The Chief Marketing Officer was doing a dress rehearsal of what he was going to say to the media the next day. We had a room full of 100 marketers and he gave his spiel and typed into the computer a message to be sent to the handset. Imagine a stage with two HUGE projection TV screens. One image from the computer that sent the IM (instant message) and the other of the screen of the wireless handset, what normal people called a phone.

The CMO hit send on the computer...

nothing happened

Still nothing happened

More time went by and yet the handset screen was blank. Nothing was happening. We're talking eight seconds by this point which might not seem like a tremendous amount of time, but in a room with expectation, eyes glued to HUGE MONITORS it felt like...

NOTHING WAS HAPPENING

Twelve seconds have gone by and still NOTHING!

The words I heard come out of my mouth were:

"Are we still going to call it Instant Messenger?"

The crowd cracked up, laughing very hard. The CMO sneered. I heard the president of BBDO turn to by boss, an EVP and say, "That may have been the stupidest thing Ben has done in his career..."

Well it wasn't. Not investing in Google when I had the opportunity was far stupider. My biggest mistakes in business have been a lack of action. Doing stuff has been respected by people I admire. That's why I'm creating this blog.

Mark said he was sending me a bottle of Colinix. I said I would blog about my experience. A few folks I really admire at Big Seminar said they wanted to do it also. Doing something as a group creates a support network. If you are doing what the group is doing you are entrained with that group.

I'm tired of making webpages that create a stir online and make me no money. I just signed up for Google AdSense. If I had that up when I was running WhatWouldBillHicksSay.com I would have garnered a modicum of $$$, and perhaps the wrath of the Bill Hicks estate. However, there is no excuse I have for not having collected email addresses from those that visited the site.

If you want to read about these antics, that's welcomed. If you want to participate...GREAT! Please buy Colinx and plan on beginning May 1, 2006. There will be some damn smart marketers joining us, and you know what, these guys have a sense of humor.
This may just be the crappiest offer on the entire Internet.

Mark Joyner offered to send me a free bottle of Colonix if I wouldtake iT and follow his instructions. I couldn't say yes fast enough. Mark Joyner is credited with creating more millionaires then anybody else I've spent time with besides Mr. Munger.
(begin by May 1st to get special priveledges)

Without further ado...

Welcome to the first Online Marketing Dump.

This is an experiment. Testing is the backbone to sustained efficacy in a
changing environment. Will detoxing my body change me?

I was going to do this on my own...but on Sunday after
Armand Morin's fabulous Big Seminar, I was poisoning my body with
alcohol and mentioned to Tellman Knudson about Mark Joyner's offer.
Tellman said he was in...I offered to buy his since Mark was buying mine...

Tellman asked Kevin Wilke if he was in. Yes, came the reply.
Tellman asked Russell Brunson...Yes. Sam Heyer? Yes.

We started inviting more people to participate...

You GOT invited. You are reading this blog. Inviting yourself is fine. This blog is a way for you to become part of the action and track how it goes for you.

Please notice the Colonix link above is NOT an AFFILIATE LINK. This blog isn't that kind of marketing. Yes, I'm a marketer. Yes, I hope to sell you something...not just one-thing, two-things, but a lifetime of products that makes you happier, healthier, content and self-expressed.

This blog is about testing a detox system. We will get more details as the time gets closer...but right now, you need to BUY TWO BOTTLES of Colinix. Why two? Because you are going to give one to a friend so you have a dumping partner.

Do you have somebody you love that irked you recently? Is there something festering? What better way to cleanse your relationship than to share a Colonix?

Have you ever wanted to do something with up-and-coming Legendary Marketers like Tellman Knudson, Kevin Wilke and Russell Brunson...Yes. Do you know what they all have in common? They say yes when Mark Joyner invites them in to a project.

If you order Colonix, send me an email and I'll invite you to become a blogger on this blogging forum. Can you see the value in demonstrating to Mark Joyner that you can follow instructions? That doesn't matter...what matters is your health.

If you participate in this project and cleanse your self, you will feel better and function better. That's where this becomes an experiemnt...If you participate we'll want you to track your results...Look, you can order the Colonix and not go public and just read our experiences and post comments...Or, you can get involved at the next level. You can create a public document testifying what you are doing and how the detox is going.

Here's the catch, you have to be willing to be honest. Online marketing requires integrity for sustained effectiveness. You are only allowed into being a co-blogger if you are willing to commit to being honest in your posts.

Also, you must commit to learn to use the back-page function of blogging so only your first four sentences show up on the home-page of this blog.

This blog is based on the value of an attention economy. Come play with us. You are one of our kind.