Just released a video to kickoff the launch promotion for Opportunity.com.

This video will show you how to create an “Affiliate Commission Engine” that can generate affiliate marketing income on auto-pilot.

To watch the video and bypass the opt-in form click here to go directly to the video.

It’s funny how so many people missed the “April Fool’s Day” joke of the previous post.  We had a few emails from people that thought it was serious.  (I think they didn’t read all the way to the end about “Spamway” as that should have given it away.)

Until next April 1st…

After a lot of careful consideration, even before Income.com gets fully launched, we’ve decided to change the company name.

This is for many reasons.

1.  ”Income.com” no longer fits the business model we’ve involved into. (I’ll explain the business model in a moment.)

2.  Domain names are becoming irrelevant.  It’s only a matter of time before all URLs are truncated into some sort of short redirect.  (As is happening on Twitter with tinyurl.com.)

Our plans for Income.com were originally to build a massive media company that would be part education portal for starting & growing an online business, and part social community to connect entrepreneurs and marketers.

But those plans have changed…

After analyzing a lot of data during the past few months I’ve come to the conclusion that all the real money is in Pass-Along Marketing via email.

Every get ‘pass along’ emails from friends and family?  You know the ones, where they forward you (and tons of other people) jokes, news stories, videos, etc.?

Or the crazy viral effect that happens on Facebook when all of your friends send you new app requests or other pass-along things that show up in your newsfeed?

This is essentially Pass-Along Marketing and it’s only to get BIGGER.

Because of this, I have decided to evolve the direction of the company to take full advantage of it.

We have invented some amazing technology that will allow anyone to create an account that connects them with tons of affiliate program offers that they will earn money from.  Then the system ties these offers into carefully ‘disguised’ pass-along emails that they can send to friends & family.

These emails also contain powerful tracking URLs so the ‘pass-along’ path can be fully tracked; even through multiple generations of one person passing it to another.

Members in our new system will be able to earn override commissions on a multi-tier person-to-person ‘triangle’ shaped structure.  It’s VERY powerful.

So if you pass something along to your parents, for example, and they then end up passing it along to others, the affiliate commissions compound.

AND… 

It gets even better.

If someone you pass something along to ends up joining the program as a member themselves, you’ll earn a percentage of all of their pass along activity.  So your income will only explode through the pass-along effect.

We’ll Be Starting Pre-Launch Very Soon - Don’t Wait To Sign-Up!

I expect this opportunity to take the Internet by storm.  Because now people can make money from annoying others with pass-along emails and Facebook requests.  This is a MAJOR breakthrough.

So Income.com Is Changing Its Name…

The new company name is Spamway.

Get in before its too late.

Read this entire post for some information that you definitely need to know to take advantage of some opportunities that are right in front of your nose whether you realize it or not.  (More on that in a moment.)

Sorry for the lack of blog posts and communication lately.  I’ve been extremely busy working with my team on creating some really valuable stuff for you.  We’re going to finally start rolling things out very soon and throughout this entire year.  There is A LOT of amazing stuff on the way.  So buckle up!

If you’re looking to start an online business to make an additional income, or if you’re ready to explode your existing business, then make sure and be ready for some announcements that will be coming very soon.  One major announcement will be made before the end of this month (February).

The development of Income.com itself has taken a lot longer than I had originally planned.  We, as a young startup company, have been through many ups and downs.  Our primary issues have been technology related.  I won’t go into all the gory details, but let’s just say we had to abandon well over a year’s worth of programming code to start all over due to a change in our programming team.

But sometimes in life, and in business, you have to take a step back to be able to take several steps forward.

I strongly believe in our mission at Income.com and know we will be creating a legacy.  I know we will help thousands of people and their families with our new Web shows and everything else that’s in the works.  It’s going to be a lot of fun too.  So stay tuned.

Opportunity Is Knocking But Are You Answering?

Right now the global economy is going through a rough time.  And it may even get worse before it gets better.  But in any situation, even during the Great Depression, there is always a massive amount of opportunity to build wealth - you just have to be willing to seize it.

Know this… Opportunity is all around you.

I recently had a great discussion with one of the top Internet marketers in the world, and someone who is a very close friend… Frank Kern.  In this discussion I asked Frank this question…

“In your opinion, what’s the one major thing entrepreneurs should be doing right now?”

And his answer was simple… “Make offers.”

Frank hit it right on the head.  If you want to make money, and lots of it, you have to be making offers. That is the one action that makes more money than anything else.  Making offers.

Whether it’s creating your own new products to offer to your customers, or running a special discount offer, or even promoting someone else’s product where you get paid, making offers is what creates the cash.

Not fiddling with SEO.  Not posting on Twitter all day.  Not surfing Facebook.  Not hanging out on discussion forums.  And not spending countless hours of your time on research.

Now all of those things certainly have value, and some of them have a lot of value.  But without making offers and selling stuff you aren’t going to make much money.

There is PLENTY of money for you to make right now.  Don’t let this economic situation “fake you out” into thinking people aren’t buying stuff anymore.  It couldn’t be further from the truth.  You just need to ACTIVELY make offers if you want to make more money.

Let me tell you a quick story…

As you may or may not know from some of my previous posts and email newsletters, I’m a huge saltwater aquarium enthusiast.  As soon as I bought my house a few years ago the first thing I did was start designing my “ultimate” aquarium.

After weeks of doing research, and figuring out how much space I had to work with, I ended up designing (on paper) a 10 foot wide, 1,000 gallon aquarium.

So after 6 months of anxiously waiting, it was finally custom built for me and installed.  Here’s a photo of it with me standing in front of it to give you some perspective on how big this sucker is:

Back to the story…

I have this aquarium serviced & managed every week by an aquarium specialist.  They keep track of the chemical balances, clean the aquarium, and do a lot of other maintenance.  Having a tank of this size takes quite a bit of work — especially since the saltwater evaporates non-stop and has to be refilled.  (We use an automated system for that.)

Bill, the guy who owns the company that services my aquarium has become a good friend.  We’re both big sports fans and often watch games together and hang out.

Of course, just from hanging out with Bill we’ve had many discussions about business and marketing.  I’m constantly trying to give him advice and help him grow his company.  Well, recently he came to me and was almost in a bit of a panic…

“John, I really need to talk to you about my business.  I know when we hang out you prefer to get away from the marketing talk since that’s part of your work, but I could really use your help.”

I, of course, said I’d be glad to help and asked what his problem was.  He proceeded to tell me…

“This economy is absolutely killing my business.  I’ve never seen it this bad.  Usually I could count on a steady flow of referral business but that is way down now.  I’m really worried.”

The first thing I told him was, “Don’t panic.”  That’s the most dangerous thing anyone can do.  Every problem has a solution, you just have to analyze the situation and create a strategic plan.

I asked him several questions about how he was currently running things, what his options were, etc. and the conclusion and ’solution’ I came to was simple…

HE JUST NEEDED TO MAKE OFFERS.

Referral business in many ways IS down right now.  Some of the older more ‘passive’ ways for many entrepreneurs to generate sales in ANY business is no longer consistent.  And in many cases, like his, it has all but gone away.  (At least for now due to the current economy.)

But with so much opportunity all around us, it’s usually just about getting PROACTIVE and making offers and making things happen.

And that’s exactly what I told Bill do.

I told him he needed to be proactive and call his customers and offer specials on certain items.  Stop by some of the locations (many of them restaurants or doctors’ offices) and bring some corals and fish and tell them, “I think this would look really great in your tank, would you like to buy it?”

I also instructed him to be more active in ASKING his customers for referrals and inquiring about other aquarium needs.

Now he was already doing ’some’ of this, but just not a lot.  That wasn’t his main focus.  Like many entrepreneurs he was content with the referral business he was already getting and the revenue that was coming in from his “old ways.”

He agreed to give it a shot and less than a week later I got an excited call from him telling me that things were looking up very, very quickly.

From the very moment he ’stepped up his game’ and got more proactive about making offers and taking action to produce more ACTIVITY in his business, the money started rolling in again.  And now he’s actually in a position to really GROW things bigger than they ever were.

And it’s all because he got more active in MAKING OFFERS.

Are You Making Offers On A Regular Basis?

If you want to make more money that’s all you need to do.  Make offers.

Frank Kern made it sound and seem so simple but it really does just come down to that.

Frank’s a super successful marketer because he has the gift of cutting out all the nonsense and just getting to the stuff that brings in the cash.

Frank recently helped, of all people, Tony Robbins with this exact “offers” stuff I’ve been talking about.  Yes, Tony ‘Freakin’ Robbins.  And it’s no surprise that Frank’s simple advice and plan made Tony a bunch of money that his company wasn’t making.

It was the ultimate no-brainer.

Check Out This Amazing Video With Frank & Tony Robbins And A Soon-To-Be-Rich 13 Year Old Kid!

* I highly recommend every product, course, free report, video, or advice of any kind that Frank ever puts out.  He is truly one of the top marketers in the world and has helped so many people (including ME) make a lot of money in their business.

I’ll be in touch with more news soon.

NOW GO MAKE SOME OFFERS!

SPECIAL NOTE:  Don’t forget to make sure and ‘follow’ me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/johnreese

Today is a sad day for me.  I’ve made the tough decision to shutdown BlogRush.  There’s just something that stinks about seeing one of your babies (i.e. ideas) end up failing.

While the service is still going strong (serving a few million impressions a day) I just don’t see things improving for our users.  The click-rates across the network are dreadfully low (and getting worse) as so many Internet users now ‘tune out’ links and other ads on sites.

Because of this, and many other issues, I’ve made the tough decision to shutdown the service.  During the next 24 hours we’ll be shutting things down.  If you’re running the widget on your blog you’ll want to remove the widget code.

I expect that there will be many BlogRush critics that will rejoice in hearing this news and relish in saying, “I told you so” and that’s fine.  At least I had the guts to take a risk and to at least give the idea a try.  I’ve become a successful entrepreneur (online since 1990) because I am not afraid to fail.  I’ve had many ideas that didn’t work, and this one certainly won’t be the last.

I know that my overall success is a direct result from taking action and trying a lot of things. THAT is the real secret to building wealth.

In regards to BlogRush, many of my blog readers might remember when I came up with the idea at 4AM and even made a blog post about it.  You never know when a great idea might come to you.  So always be prepared to be ‘ready’ for it.

But most importantly, be ready to TAKE ACTION and at least TRY, or nothing will change in your life.

Here’s the letter that’s going out to all BlogRush users and will be posted on the site shortly:

—-

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008    

To: All BlogRush Users

After careful consideration, we have decided to shutdown the BlogRush service.  If you have the widget code on your blog you will need to remove it.

When BlogRush launched in late-2007 it spread like wildfire all over the Web.  Thousands of bloggers were talking about it and the service exploded to become one of the fastest growing free services in the history of the Web.  During the first year of the service it successfully served 3.4 Billion blog post headlines and the BlogRush widget could be found on blogs all over the world; even up until the moment we closed down the service.

BlogRush didn’t grow without its fair share of problems — from security issues to abusive users trying to ‘game’ the system to much lower click-rates than expected.  We also had some problems with trying to fairly control the quality of the network, and in the process made many mistakes in deciding what blogs should stay or go.  All of these issues, ultimately, limited the service’s full potential.

Our team worked very hard to try and build a service that would truly help bloggers of all sizes get free traffic to their blogs.  This was our primary focus.  Not once did we ever try to monetize the service with ads or anything else.  BlogRush never made a single penny in revenue.  We wanted to be able to help our users FIRST and then worry about monetizing the service later.

Unfortunately, the service didn’t work out like we had hoped.  (It happens.)

I want to say “Thank You” to all of the great bloggers that at least gave BlogRush a test to see if it would work for them.  We sincerely appreciate you giving the service a try.    

We have received several offers & inquiries about acquiring BlogRush, but we are choosing not to go that route.  While many might think this is crazy, we truly feel it’s the ‘right’ thing to do for our users.  Believe it or not, it’s not always about the money.  In fact, BlogRush will have lost a small fortune when it’s all said and done, and it was by choice.

There were many things we could have done to monetize the service but we wanted to make sure it was going to benefit our users first.

Last but not least I want to say that I hope the failure of this service doesn’t in any way discourage other entrepreneurs from coming up with crazy ideas at 4AM (like I did with this one) and from “going for it” to just try and see if something will work.

Without trying there can be no success.  And as we all know, ideas are worthless without action. The Web wouldn’t be what it is today without entrepreneurs trying all sorts of crazy ideas.

On behalf of the entire BlogRush team, we wish the best of luck to everyone with their own blogs, ideas, and crazy ventures.

Sincerely,

John Reese

http://twitter.com/johnreese

We’re underway with the marketing campaign for Traffic Secrets 2.0.

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

UPDATE: JULY 3, 2008. The initial free videos for the marketing campaign will be released in a few more hours. We’re just making some last minute changes.

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.

Our dev team made a slight mod to the story layout on TrafficJam.com today.

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.

Just a quick update.

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.

Shocked to see this blog actually load? YOU SHOULD BE!

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.