There’s an area near my home town that’s full of PYO (‘pick your own’) fruit fields and orchards, and it’s their boom season right about now. So to join in the action, here’s my Pick Your Own PLR articles poll!.

My latest pack was Bodybuilding PLR . What shall I write about next?

There are lots of choices below. You can also leave more suggestions in the comments section and I will add them into the poll.

Don’t forget – you’ll need to sign up to the Flamillion PLR notification list so that I can let you know when new packs are available (if not already a subscriber). Join here (it’s free):

Join Flamillion PLR

You can vote for up to 5 topics but you have to vote for them all at the same time. You cannot come back and vote again. Vote now:

Thank you for taking the time to vote in my plr articles poll!

You may have noticed it is becoming more and more common in IM launches for the sales page and launch emails to use blatant lies and broken promises to imply scarcity.

For example, a UK marketer launched a new product last week. He advertised that ‘only 349 copies will be sold’. 71 had already gone in early bird sales to a small list, so there were 278 available at the moment of launch.

The next day it was ‘only 47 copies left’.

Now, given the number of people who were promoting this, I think it’s very unlikely that he only sold 231 copies in the first 24 hours. But there’s no countdown on the sales page, so without seeing his Clickbank account we cannot know for sure.

However, the day after that, no way can he claim there are any copies left. The last 47 must definitely be sold by now. The product is coming off the market … right?

Wrong. Instead, he sends an email saying that because this product has been selling so well, ‘the gurus’ have been begging him to keep it on the market so that they can make more money by promoting it. And of course he has to do whatever ‘the gurus’ ask …or that’s the excuse. So he’s going to keep selling it, but in 24 hours he will increase the price.

He even names these ‘gurus’. I happened to know one of them, so I asked him if it was true that he had asked for this product to stay on the market.

No, it was not.

And now 4 days later the product is still available, still at the launch price and – unbelievably – the sales page still claims that only 349 copies will be sold.

So he didn’t limit copies to 349, he didn’t raise the price and he lied that this was because named gurus had asked him to go back on his sales page promises.

That’s 3 blatant lies in 1 product launch.

And this is not an isolated case. This is typical of big product launches these days.

Does it matter? Well yes, I think it does.

First it means that the number of people using the technique described in this product is not going to be restricted after all. I don’t know if that will affect the effectiveness of the technique. Quite likely it won’t. But why disappoint buyers by leading them to believe they were getting something exclusive in the first place?

The result is that anybody who bought the product feels scammed and loses faith in it … so they will be much less successful with it than they might have been. (That’s why I’m not naming the product: I’m told it’s a good product and I don’t want to stop you using it if you own it.)

And everybody who received those launch emails, whether they bought the product or not, loses faith in internet marketers.

I advertise limited numbers of copies of many of my article packs and I really do limit them. The software that I use counts them down, and when they are all sold it displays a ‘Sorry, sold out’ page until I get around to taking them off the website.

So when other marketers make false promises to their customers about how many copies of something they will sell, it means that visitors to my website are less likely to see the value of my products. They won’t believe what they read.

Plus it can damage the reputations of the honest marketers who promoted that product to their subscribers in good faith, especially those marketers who were named and blamed for his decision to keep on selling.

(So take care if you are promoting ANY newly launching product to your list of valued subscribers, even if you have seen a review copy and know that the product is good. The product owner might just turn around and bite you in the a*** .)

I think it’s very sad that this kind of deception is becoming so common.

Sure, there’s a Clickbank guarantee on the product, so anybody who feels scammed can get a refund. But does that make it OK?

I updated all my cPanel passwords following the hacking last week. A tedious thing to do when you have a lot of sites, but worth doing from time to time.

However, there was a problem. After the password changes I realised that my automatic backup was registering just 20 bytes (i.e. nothing in there) for all of my MySQL databases.

The databases hold things like sales data for my PLR articles sites, customers’ download links, all the posts on my niche blogs … important stuff. So I wouldn’t want to be unable to back them up.

It took me a lot of internet searching to find fixes, but once found, they were very easy.

1. Easy fix for 20 byte MySQL database backup problem

This worked for 95% of my sites.

• Log into your cPanel
• Click on ‘MySQL Databases’ (not the wizard, the other one)
• Select the database(s) and click on ‘Repair Database’
• Run your backup again.

In a few cases you might still only have 20 bytes. If so, try this:

2. Slightly more complex fix

• In cPanel main menu, click on File Manager.
• Run a search for a file called my.cnf (it is usually in a folder called /etc)
• If you have the file, open it up with the edit option. You’ll probably see that it still has an old cPanel password in there. Update it with your current password and save. BUT don’t overwrite the database password if that’s in there, unless you changed that too.
• Run backup again.

Note: Don’t include in your password any special characters that have a meaning in html (e.g. # !) because they may be read as html commands in my.cnf.

If you don’t have my.cnf, you might need to create one. But the above 2 options plus dealing with special characters solved all of the MySQL database backup only 20 bytes problems for me, so I can’t tell you how to do that. Look for some sample my.cnf files online maybe?

The hackers just wanted cash, so they changed the PayPal email from mine to theirs without doing any damage to the site … not even changing the site’s password, so that I didn’t notice anything when I logged in.

(I was glad about that … it’s a bit like if your house is burgled … you’re almost grateful if all they take is money.)

But other victims did notice and reported them to PayPal, so pretty soon the hackers’ PayPal account was locked.

This meant that for a while you couldn’t buy anything from my site because the order buttons were taking you to a locked PayPal account … until I came home and found an email from a helpful customer telling me there seemed to be a problem.

But everything is fine now … all emails are changed back to mine … password changed to something stronger to keep it safe … so please go ahead and order anything and everything that you want!

The newest offer (currently available at WSO price with 10% off) is my pack of 10 top quality PLR articles on Self-Esteem.

You can get that here (if there are copies left – it’s limited to 50 licences):

Self Esteem PLR Articles

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The upsell is a PLR ebook called ‘How To Boost Your Self Esteem …Fast!’

If you ONLY want the ebook without getting the article pack, you will find that here:

Self Esteem PLR Ebook

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… BUT you get $5 off the ebook price if you get it as an upsell to the article pack. So if you want both, please get the articles first.

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Download weight loss PLR Clickbank product reviews

In this pack, you will get Review Articles on 20 HOT weight loss products from the Clickbank Marketplace. All these articles come with Private Label Rights so you can change them however you want to make them your own.

Putting up Clickbank product reviews and sending traffic to them is about the easiest way that I know of making money online. A good review leading to a top converting product means plenty of hands-free sales. And these products are some of the hottest on Clickbank.

The reviews stress the benefits of the products but they are not all positive. This is extremely important for your credibility and will actually help you make sales.

Of course, you could edit the reviews to make them all positive, but I don’t recommend that. My experience is that it’s better to include some negative reviews and say at the end “so instead, buy this [similar product].” Your visitors are much more likely to trust you, and buy the product that you do recommend.

There’s a screenshot of a sample article on the page so you can see the quality. I’ve seen the whole pack and the others are equally good.

The price is great too. In fact, the whole deal has my full recommendation.

Go here to see all the details of these weight loss PLR Clickbank product reviews:

Weight loss PLR Clickbank product reviews

Weight loss is the original ‘hungry niche’ of ravenous buyers – it’s hugely lucrative.

Google’s Blogger blogs are great for getting information online fast, and you can add Adsense and Amazon affiliate links automatically. So most of us have a few, and some people have whole empires of them.

But the big downside with Blogger is that Google can knock out your empire on a whim. Even if you set up batches of blogs under several different Google account names (which you should), in the worst case scenario they can match them all up through your Adsense account or Amazon Associate details. Then what?

Well, then you start over … and it helps mightily if you have your blogs backed up. And it is now very easy, and free.

There are two things you need to do. First, go into the blog and download your template, if you made any changes to it. This option is on the Layout – Edit HTML tab.

Second, grab yourself this free Blogger backup tool to back up your posts:

Free Blogger Backup Tool

It’s open source software so it’s free. You do have to enter your Google account details in the settings. It says it does not save your password – if you know anything about coding you can look at the code to check that.

Two important points:

1. After you enter your Google account details, don’t forget to
SAVE THE SETTINGS. You have to click on File to see the Save Settings option.

2. I found that the actual back up process did not work until I saved my settings, closed the tool and opened it again. After that it is very quick.

You can enter several different Google accounts and it will automatically retrieve all the Blogger blogs associated with those accounts. So you don’t have to enter individual blogs at all.

Great for people with Blogger empires and useful for those of us who just have a few blogs to backup with the free Blogger backup tool.

What happens is that just before your domain is due for renewal, you receive a letter in the mail asking you to send anything up to $100 to renew it. Remember, anybody can get hold of your address from Whois, unless you have private registration which usually costs extra.

I assume that these people then instruct you how to change from your current registrar to theirs, and you are locked in for renewals forever, unless you manage to extract your domain for another transfer.

There’s plenty of fine print to make it legal, and many people with just one website are probably taken in by this.

And this is not the only legal business scam …

I had a similar thing after registering a trademark for one of my sites. (Maybe I’m paranoid, but I wanted to make sure that nobody could set up with the same business name, and then come along and demand my domains on the grounds that they held the trademark.)

Anyway, as soon as my registration application went public, I received a very official-looking letter asking for something like $500 (‘reduced rate’ of course) to ‘record’ my new trademark in another country. The company name was similar to the name of the government trademark office – but not quite the same. And in the fine print, they explained that I would be paying for my trademark to appear in a published directory. In other words, it was not for official trademark registration at all.

$500 to appear in a directory that nobody is going to read …
I don’t think so!

Savvy internet marketers will not be taken in by these scams but they could catch a lot of people setting up their first business. And I’m sure there are many other tricks like this that threaten innocent website and small business owners.

Always read the fine print …

Oh and by the way, my latest PLR article pack is on Law and it is selling fast.

This is an extremely lucrative niche … see all the details here:

Law PLR Articles – click here

Only 50 copies are available so I apologize if they are all gone when you click.

And here are some links for reporting scams:
reporting scams in the USA
reporting scams in the UK
reporting scams in Australia

Also, this particular post has some good advice that could help you to focus on the essential in your internet business:

http://mnmlist.com/less

If you like the minimalism blog, you might also like my own blog post from last year on how to de-clutter your inbox:

How To Have An Empty Inbox

It actually gets you automated traffic on autopilot (I know, I know … but it really does) especially if you have a WordPress blog that you post to regularly. Plus it is targeted for your specific niche. I didn’t think it was possible to automatically get followers on Twitter that were targeted, but somehow these guys have done it:

Get Followers On Twitter Here

When I saw it I was not very excited, but I joined because I was thinking, well if it works it will probably cover its costs within the month … so nothing to lose really, I’ll give it a try.

Signed up, set it up which took about 30 seconds, checked after a couple of hours and I had 75 followers on Twitter.

By Monday, after 2 days, I had nearly 300.

But so what? I hear you ask. Who cares about Twitter followers? What we want is SALES!

So I checked my Clickbank account too and in 2 days (Sunday and Monday) I had clocked up 2 sales from that source.

’2 sales, big deal,’ you may say …

… but they were in the Forex niche where sales pay from $50 to $100 commission. Those two sales made me a total of $134.26.

So with me hoping for it to cover its costs in a month, this Twitter tool has gone out and more than paid for itself in TWO DAYS!

Get More Twitter Followers Here

But read on because there are some things you need to know.

First, you can only hook it up to one Twitter account in one niche (for now). So choose your niche well.

You want a niche where people are buying, and even better, where you know that they will buy from you (or the site that you are sending them to). E.g. you have made one or two sales already, so you can guess that if you had more traffic you would automatically make more sales.

Second, Twitter traffic comes when you tweet. If you have a WordPress blog, you can get a plugin that will automatically tweet all your blog posts. They tell you how to do this when you get inside.

This is the full autopilot mode for blogs that have regular posted content (like Forex PLR members’ blogs if they post my articles every day).

It’s perfect for me because I don’t have to sit there tweeting.

In fact I never have to log in to Twitter at all, unless I want to gloat over all my lovely targeted followers

If you don’t have a blog, you can still get the benefit but you might have to do a little tweeting. Still, it’s easier than writing articles, right?

So you will want:

1. A niche where people are buying stuff – I think it would work for any make money type of niche including MLM and probably tons of others too

2. EITHER a WP blog that has content posted to it regularly,

3. OR if you don’t have a blog, a few minutes once or twice a day to post a tweet directing people to your offer/landing page/squeeze page/an affiliate offer/wherever you want the traffic to go.

I had a lot more to say about how to make money with this, but this post is plenty long enough.

Places are limited so go get it, and if you get stuck figuring out how to make money from the thousands of targeted Twitter followers that you are going to have, shoot me an email and I’ll try to help.

(That’s actually quite a special bonus offer by the way …)

Get it here:

Get Followers On Twitter Here

P.S. Yes you have to watch the video but it IS worth it

Luckily (well really it’s not luck, it’s learned from bitter experience) I have an old computer that works well enough for emergencies plus computer backup software that backs up to two external hard drives. So I was able to go on working until I found somebody to fix it for me after their Christmas break.

Why am I telling you this story? Well, I hope it will help you to think about what you would do if that happened to you.

Irrecoverable loss is very common …

Two years ago my old computer had a motherboard failure. At the same time, for related reasons, Windows failed and data was wiped. I found that the computer backup software that I was using at the time had not been working properly. I had an old copy of ‘My Documents’ but I lost all emails, many programs that I had paid good money for, and a lot more.

And it’s not just me. You would not believe the number of people who email me saying they need a new download link for something they bought because their hard drive failed and they had no backup.

I hate to be negative, but I firmly believe that it’s not a question of *if* you have a major problem with your computer … it’s *when*.

So do yourself a favor, ask yourself what you will do if you switch on your computer tomorrow and nothing happens. Blank screen.

- Who will you call?
- What if it can’t be fixed?
- Do you have backups?
- How recent are they?
- What could you do to make the whole thing easier on yourself?

If you are well prepared, a computer failure is no big deal. If you are not, and you are trying to run a business, it’s a nightmare!

In case you are wondering what I do, this is the computer backup software that I use (these are not affiliate links):

www.acronis.com – daily backup to external hard drive (full system restore) and once a month I back up to a second external hard drive in case the first one fails.
plus:
www.carbonite.com – online backup in case of fire, flood etc (my documents only)