Michelle Brouse

All right, now that I’m finished with “Internet Marketing Gurus” in general – heheheh – let’s get into some REAL fun “internet marketing.” Notice how I did not “CAPITALIZE” internet marketing. :::wink:::

That is because yes, I still have to market. (on the internet)

Yes, I still know what to do… even if I often don’t do what I should.

Dang Ipod touch applications have me all buggered out.

My oldest son (soon to be 9 here on Sept. 2nd) begged me for a long time for an Ipod Touch 8gb thing. He searched them out – figured $200.00 bucks was doable, and started saving his money to buy one himself. He came dang close to $200.00, but of course kept spending, unlike his younger brother.

The youngest, on the other hand (at five) wanted a compound bow instead. He’s been into archery since he was what, three? He found one on a “sales ad” from Fin Feather & Fur for “one penny less than $80.00 bucks” he said. LOL!

These boys (to make a long story short) did a good job of finding stuff around here to sell on Craig’s List. First they sold a great big 20 foot stainless steel slide that sat in the yard for a couple years.

They measured it, I listed it and took pics. They got $200.00 out of it, so on the split – each got $100.00.

They were in heaven.

Then the oldest tried to sell some old bottles and didn’t have any luck, but the youngest sold his battery powered 4-wheeler for $50.00. Add that to the allowance + previous savings… they were RICH! And of course, looking for ways to spend “big money”.

Which brings us back to the Ipod Touch 8gb story.

Uhg.

That goofy thing. We brought it home, and a friend of mine hooked it up to the oldest’s laptop. Everything worked great for about 24 hours or so, when this Ipod Touch went white. Then it went black, and back to white – then to black again, and finally just died. Ha!

Yup, nothing like a brand new Ipod Touch that you can’t use. The boys were not happy. Neither was I. About 4 days I have spent on that thing. First I had to figure out what I killed on the laptop, tried reinstalling iTunes, got irritated, called my dad for Ipod Touch advice – then installed iTunes on my desktop machine. Hey, maybe the difference in operating systems had something to do with it. The laptop has Win 7, and the desktop has Vista.

Well same thing on both machines – USB port not recognized, please try again or replace the device. Ha! Ok then… since nothing I was doing seemed to be working – replace it shall be.

The Ipod Touch 8gb wonder was boxed back up with the receipt because we planned on taking the junk back. Replace it indeed.

I looked up some documentation, the manual, and my particular issues online. Told the oldest (right before we walked out the door)… “let me see that thing.” Plugged it into a different USB port and it actually lit up.

The Heavens opened up with a bright light shining down on the Ipod Touch 8gb wonder, and the “aaaaaaaaaa” could be heard in chorus.

Happy people, kids and parents included on that note! So for 2 out of these past 4 days, the “momma” got to search applications on iTunes for the Ipod Touch. The oldest has repeatedly told me to stop loading educational stuff on his Ipod. Heh, yeah right – like that’s gonna happen. Educational apps? I’m in! And so is he, like it or not.

But it got me thinking…. ruhroh….

What if I could somehow build an Ipod Touch Application like that and get it in iTunes?

Now think about that for a moment.

The incredible amount of traffic for one. For two – great way to get traffic!

Seriously though. As it would apply to my new upcoming site, if I had an Ipod Touch Application that would easily search my site – that could be way cool.

I don’t know HOW to create an Ipod Touch application. I don’t even know how to get it into iTunes. Bet I could find out. Bet someone would be glad to build just such an app for me (that I could even TEST on my son’s Ipod) – for a good price too.

So that is going on my “list of things to do”. It should go on yours too.

If you do NOT have an Ipod Touch 8gb wonder at your own home, next time you see a pal with one check it out. They are really neat once you figure out how the heck to work them. Guess you have to be 9-14 years old for that stuff now days, cause my 9 year old doesn’t seem to have a problem with it.

Until it goes black of course. Hahahahaha!

Even if you do nothing else, sign up for a free iTunes account and look around in the “apps” section. There is an incredible amount of cool stuff in there along with the “junkier” stuff.

We have added, checked out, and deleted a lot of Ipod Touch applications so far – and some are really neat. I envision mine to be very slick, easy to use, helpful, and fun. I’ll have to make a list of our favs on another post.

For now, I’m still workin with the lawyer (who needs paid again) and doing my “thang”. Most of it being housecleaning, homeschooling is back in session, and working online at night.

Fun fun!

Thanks for reading!
Michelle

Our family has been through a lot over here, and we got a little lucky. Not from the internet, but through a gift – I can now afford… wait for it….

A LAWYER.

That’s right, I said lawyer. Here is my guy…

Read the rest

So, just what HAVE I been up to since I seemed to completely drop of the face of the earth for the past year or so? Well, let’s see…

Just read some Salty Droid for one!

Basically I started moving away from anything “Internet Marketing GURU” related. That includes deleting tons of spammail, not going to forums, and totally ignoring the “big dog gurus” of the Internet Marketing “syndicate” club. I haven’t even been on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets. When I have it’s been very sparse.

Read the rest

Well, it finally happened. Internet Marketing has become tiresome, and I’ve been distancing myself from it for some time now. The players are getting on my nerves, I don’t care for the crappy ad copy (even though they all swear it’s so great and pulls in such massive boatloads of money).

When I send a friend over to these pages that I still occasionally look at – she’s like “But that feels so scammy! What would I want that for? How can you REALLY make money with that? What does it do?”

Heh, you mean she isn’t getting that from the “sales copy”? Go figure. No, she’s not – and therein lies the problem. If I have to explain someone’s page to a friend, it’s obviously NOT doing a very great job of explaining the actual product you’re supposed to NEED and WANT – RIGHT NOW – before they are all sold out!

Which is hilarious anyhow. It’s freakin DIGITAL – you CAN’T sell out. If it’s a printed copy – who says the printer won’t run more copies? Then average folks like me are supposed to be too stupid to figure that out I guess. Well let me tell you a little “secret”. If I can figure it out – so can everyone else.

Well, I’ve been around online since about 1997 – and the last couple years of learning about IM (which I started in early 2005) – the community seems to have gone to hell in a handbasket. There are warning flags all over the place saying to me “get away… get far far away.”

And I have been, for the past year or better. First I stopped reading all the emails that flood my inbox. I have unsubscribed from a number of them – but it seems they just keep coming back like bad pennies.

There are people that I never did care for, then there are people that I honestly liked. I still like a few folks that are IMer’s but when they are basically running Internet Marketing SCAMS – no more will I associate my name with those people.

I stopped going to forums, including the most famous one “The Warrior Forum”. Now I spend my time in my own chat room on Skype with a few other pals that are good people. They may not make millions of dollars online, but they are good people, with good hearts. We all have different skills, and help each other out.

Unlike the rest of these “good ole boys” who have not a care in the world about taking your money then failing to help you through the process of actually USING what they sold you.

Come here baby… I got something for you…

I’m no longer impressed. I don’t care if you made 5.7 mill in 24 hours, it doesn’t mean you’re going to help ME make even 5k in 24 hours, because you’re NOT. So don’t play like you are. Not only that – I wouldn’t be comfortable with using your methods anyhow.

Many “normal people” are seeing through to the inside of the facade, and we see the desperation. The old ways of marketing are no longer working, and it’s gonna get worse. If you want to get anywhere online now days, it’s going to be because you are honest, trustworthy, and you are NOT a SCAMMER.

Your business practices will need to be legal, and guaranteed. I see “refusing refunds” becoming a thing of the past. When you state right up front that there will be “no refunds” on your 3k coaching program – then fail to deliver – you get to keep all that money. I get screwed. You told me that “using other people’s money” was a great thing – because I would quickly gain it back. But I incurred the debt because I trusted you. Ha!

And so it goes…

I don’t buy anything that I can’t get a refund from anymore, period. I’ve been burned enough times, that if I don’t see a refund policy – you’ll not see any of my money.

Sorry it’s come down to this. But I’m no longer “in” with the game. In the next post, I’ll tell you what I’ve already done. Then we’ll go into what I’m doing now. Since I’ll be seriously paring down the websites, hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with this blog a bit better. If not, well – then it probably wasn’t worth posting in the first place!

Thanks!
Michelle