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What's In This Issue?

• 1.0  Community Central - 2 New Experts, Rumor Crushing - [ View Article ]
• 1.1  New Community Features - Ban User Now in Effect - [ View Article ]
• 2.0  Feature Article - How To Make Profit Through Public Forums - [ View Article ]
• 3.0  Featured Forum Reviews - [ View Article ]
• 4.0  Community Feedback - We want to hear from you! - [ View Article ]

_{1.0  Community Central}

Two New Experts: SEO and Profit for Newbies Welcomed

Peter Browne, a proven specialist in the SEO and Site Design areas has joined the ranks of our Experts Panel to offer his advice in the aforementioned fields.  With nearly a decade of experience, Peter has the unique advantage of having been involved in development when the internet was going through its many different stages and trends.  He's got some great advice and offers valuable guidance to forum visitors who are interested in this subject.  Drop by his Site Design and Search Engine Optimization forum; you'll be very glad you did. 

Linda Carrol, a marketer since 1979 and online since the mid 90's joins our Expert Panel bringing to the table her experience in marketing, online, psychology, and business profits to form a unique experts forum entitled Internet & Profit for Newbies. 

What's unique about both Linda and Peter is the fact that they were both members of Adlandpro in its early stages (Pre-2000) and have re-joined to provide our members with valuable information about Site Development, the Internet, and Generating Income.  Linda say it best when she states in her profile's "About Me" section:

"Back in the late nineties, Bogdan's Adland Digest was one of the first publications we discovered. He was starting out, and so were we. Peter and I were part of the growth of Adland, and Adland was part of our growth. Some of my clients today originally met us through Adland Digest. It's with a little bit of nostalgia that I have found my way back."

These two experts also share a unique bond outside of Adlandpro Community as you may have already guessed.  Linda and Peter are husband and wife in real life and lovingly referred to by Linda as Pete, the Jedi Designer and her being Yoda, the wise.  Very witty and clever Linda! 

Let me just say this: If their proven offline track record as a team creating success is any indication, then brace yourselves because I think there's going to be some interesting things to come from them in the next little while.  Make sure you drop by and say hi to them both.  Welcome aboard!

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Rumor Crushing: Adlandpro Community For Paid Members Only

Recently, a rumor hit the forums of Adlandpro Community stating quite strongly that Adlandpro was going to become a Paying Members community along with other unsubstantiated claims.  After a brief discussion with Bogdan, I've come to set the record straight and give you the official word regarding that rumor. 

First, let me give you a little background on the community.  Managing a Community of 19,000 members is no easy task.  Each profile, community post, picture, statistic, requires space and resources on our web server.  As the community grows, so too must the infrastructure required to keep the community running smoothly.  Bandwidth must be addressed, programmers must be paid, and of course, yours truly here provides support for several of our large ventures including the community.  Naturally, the idea comes up that in order to keep things enjoyable on the community, there must be a way to offset some of the costs. 

Now, the goal became to provide greater value for those who wish to upgrade to a paid membership while keeping services available to free members relatively the same.  It also has a secondary goal of preventing those who abuse free systems to spam and spread useless information from using the community to do so. 

The bottom line is that we will continue to offer free memberships to the Adlandpro Community however some of the existing features which are being abused will be made available to free members on a limited basis only to cut down on abuse. 

To make the paid service more valuable and attractive, we have created several powerful features and are working right now on two where one is adding voice communication between two users, voice conferencing, voice mail and stores integrated with PayPal system.  This store system won't require from a member to even have their own website or understanding about how to integrate the site with merchant system to process orders and payments for their products.

We have several other ideas in planning but these are the current ones.  All those will be offered as a trial version to free members for limited time or will just have limited features and/or functionality. 

E.g. Voice communication will be limited to one minute at a time for free members where paid members will have unlimited time.

We will even offer ways to earn a membership for those members with limited financial resources or would rather not pay and just earn their memberships instead.

So there you have it.  The official word on the "Paid Memberships" on Adlandpro. 

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_{1.1  New Community Features}

More Control Over Your Forums With the Feature

Now it's easier than ever to make sure that your forum stays within the boundaries of discussion that you lay out. 

If you are the owner of this forum, you will see these buttons under each post in your forum.  By clicking 'Ban This User', you will be prohibiting them from posting any further messages on your forum.  This is helpful if you find that a particular user is causing disruptions or posting irrelevant material. 

You will receive a confirmation before the ban is completed to ensure that this is what you want to do and a space to enter a reason for the ban.  If you confirm this, then this user has been successfully banned. 

Banned users can send a message to you re-requesting membership in the forum if they choose to using the tab below: 

Try clicking the "Banned" tab in the picture above to view this area on the Community. 

An email from users who re-request membership into your forum is sent to you notifying you that some action is required.  You, as the forum owner/admin, have the choice of either re-accepting this user or denying his/her request to be re-added. 

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Community Tip: Deleting Old, Unaccepted Friend Invitations

There are those of you who are very active in terms of inviting new members to become our friends.  Many have asked how to remove friends invitations that are obviously not going to be accepted as they have been sitting there for a week or two.  The answer is:

Friends invitations are deleted automatically from the list of "Pending Invitations" after 1 month so you need not worry about deleting these manually. 

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_{2.0  Feature Article}

Have an Article You Want To Submit?  Send It To Me and if I use it on one of our newsletters, I'll put your profile here. 

How To Make Profit Through Public Forums
Copyright 2005 By Linda Caroll

A lot of people start out online selling affiliate programs, and that's okay! When you think about it, brick and mortar stores are a lot like affiliate programs.

They don't actually produce what they sell. They sell someone else's stuff. Same concept, so the concept itself is solid.

So, why is it that so many people who have a solid concept are having such trouble making a profit?

Because they use methods that are ineffective. No one uses ineffective methods on purpose. They use those methods because it's what they see everyone else doing and think it's the way to go about selling online.

A very common example is the way people post to public forums. Let's look at some examples.

==========================================
EXAMPLE #1:

Hi (name)

Will you be my friend?

Get noni juice today and join my downline.
www.my-noni-site.com/id?4509576340958475

Get tons of traffic here;
www.my-traffic-site.com/id?4978305457

John Doe
==========================================


This is a blatant ad and no one is going to respond to it. That sort of message, in Adland, will get ignored. At other forums, the moderator would remove it from the board.


==========================================
EXAMPLE #2:

Hi (name)

Great post. Great forum. Thanks for sharing

John Doe

Get NONI juice today and join my downline.
www.my-noni-site.com/id?4509576340958475

Get tons of traffic here;
www.my-traffic-site.com/id?4978305457
==========================================

In this type of post, "John" is comlimenting someone. But, really, the post doesn't contribute anything except a pat on the back. Pretty soon, people start thinking
"That John Doe never has anything to say. He probably just posts to get his affiliate url up there again."

Everyone will be polite to John. But they won't click his links.

Testimonials

I have been a member of AdLandPro for some time now, but I didn't realize what an awesome resource this program is. Also, most of the members don't realize what they have here at their fingertips. This is the most complete Networking Tools I have found so far and the people are so friendly and helpful. Naturally, I want to market my business, but I also enjoy sharing things I have learned with others. Thanks for creating such a wonderful tool for us. Kathy Clark

==========================================
EXAMPLE #3:

Hi (name)

I couldn't help replying to your post. Yes, I know that there is a lot of people talking about these health drinks. But, that does not make them a scam.

Through all of time, there have been products that experienced a craze of sorts. In 1953, the top item on people's Christmas Wish lists was a hula hoop. Were those scams? Of course not.

A "craze" is really just an indication of a mindset in any given block in time. I'd like to think that all the people talking about health drinks these days means that we are more conscious of our health today than we were in the past.

When ever there is a heated debate, such as this thread about health drinks, it's a given that there are strong emotions on both sides.

I personally think the people who are the loudest protestors probably have not tried them, and are really protesting all the blatant ads by people that have not learned good marketing techniques.

The truth is that illness and aging have a lot to do with free radicals in our bodies, and a lot of these health drinks have high antioxidant properties that combat free radicals. Some are overpriced. Other's aren't. Some are better than others. It's no different than any product on the market.

But - I don't like all the blatant advertising any better than you do. I just don't think the methods people use to promote something necessarily make the product a scam.

Just my two cents... thanks for reading it.
John Doe

Get a free side by side comparison of the top 5 health drinks
www-my-natural-health-site.com
==========================================

We have a clear winner here. Do you see the difference? The third post is not a blatant ad. There is NO ONE that would find the third post annoying because John is truly interacting.

For that matter, anyone that has been thinking about looking at health drinks will probably check out John's page before they would check out any of the blatant ads.

And, by taking a little time to create a one page review of the top drinks, John has made it easier for people that are interested in health drinks to choose which one they'd like to try. If he's smart, he's signed up as an affiliate of all five of them.

Of course, "John" does not have to limit himself to just posting into threads about natural products. As long as he is truly interacting, he can leave that signature file in his profile no matter where he posts.

Perhaps John loves fishing, and also posts to a fishing forum. So John goes to the fishing forum regularly and swaps stories, and compares bait and lure, and talks about the best fishing lodges. The others grow to like and respect him because he's interacting, not posting blatant ads.

And, in that crowd of fishing people, there are people that have been thinking of taking better care of their health. Because
they have grown to like and respect John, they'll go check out his page before they'll respond to a stranger's blatant ad. Just like when a friend recommends a hair dresser or a restaurant.

So, John is making a profit from his little review page while tons of other people are wondering why this Internet thing doesn't work.

Erma Bombeck once said that we all walk around with an invisible sign hung around our necks. The sign says "Respect me."

She's so right. When you post to forums, really and truly post to forums. Reply the way you would if it was your friend or your sister. Join in. Be you. It really does make a difference.
 

About the Author

Linda Caroll has been a marketer since 1979 and an online marketer since the mid 90's.  A former member of Adlandpro.com in its early days, Linda has recently re-joined us once again in the role of an Expert on our Ask an Expert program.  Linda and husband, Peter Browne, both Experts here at Adlandpro contribute a wealth of information daily in their respective fields.  If you found this article interesting, you can click here to visit Linda's Expert Forum Internet & Profit Newbies for even more helpful tips. 
 

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_{3.0  Featured Forum Reviews}

These forums have been hand-selected as top forums on the Community as a result of their activity, topic, number of participating members, number of posts etc.  They're definitely worth the look and a good starting point if you've never been to the forums before.  Check them out!

Do you have a forum you think should be featured here? [ Let us know! ]

This forum has the same objective as the AdlandPro Digest - to discuss current hot issues in online marketing.  Moderated by Amalia, the moderator of the original digest. 

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_{4.0  Community Feedback}

Your opinions as members of the community are extremely important to us.  We would like to hear from  you.  Your opinions, suggestions, and kudos are welcome.

To submit your feedback click here

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