How Packaging and Product Information Trick Consumers

Although deception is at the core of any fraud, sometimes it's also used inside the law to mislead people and disguise what's really happening, especially when it comes to packaging and product information.

We encounter it every day when we open a carton or package to find out it's only half full, or we get that uneasy feeling that the candy bar or ice cream tub isn't quite as big as it used to be.

Most often we are right in our instincts that the volume is down but the price isn't.

If you take the time, you can often discover what food and other product manufacturers are up to.

Click here to read the full article. 



©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission.

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Scammers Use Phone Hacking and Hijacking for Phishing

Crooks are using phone hacking and hijacking to conceal their identities during phishing scams.

A message from one of our regular readers alerted us to a clever trick in which scammers appeared to have taken over the phone number of a local church, which then forwarded victims' calls to a recorded message asking for debit card details.

The scam started out in a familiar way. Our reader -- let's call him Nick -- received a text message on his cellphone claiming that suspicious activity had been detected on his card, and asking him to call a specific number.

 Because he's smart (and a Scambusters reader!), he suspected a fraud and checked out the number by doing a Google search. It turned out to be the legitimate number of a church.

Click here to read the full article. 



©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission.

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The Core 5 – Your Guide To Evergreen Products

By My Good Friend Jon Olson Hit Exchange News.

Here’s a newsflash…We see people come and go all the time in this business.

They join the least and great business opportunity, put all their energy and money into it and then when they don’t get the results they thought they would…They quit. This is not rare, unfortunately, 99.9999% of the people I have met online seem to have gone through this…Heck I ever did when I got started. Why? What was I missing?

It’s no secret, but maybe we don’t talk about it enough. We need a solid foundation of products that we use (and recommend) as much in a year from now, as we do today.

We call these evergreen affiliate products and in my opinion the sure fire way to build LASTING and sustained results in this business. Simply put, marketers and professionals MUST use these programs for their businesses. Regardless of what opportunity they are going after. When you build residual income in these kind of programs you will build what you need to succeed for a lifetime! Let’s go over them…

1. Tracking Service – Everyone should be budgeting and if you aren’t you should start now. And when you do budget, it’s VERY important to know what works, what doesn’t, where you are pulling results from and not. Using a tracker is the ‘illumination’ you need to see how well your advertising is doing.

2. Splash Page Maker – Put simply, in the traffic exchange and mailer industry, the ads that POP get the best results. Quick, catchy and to the point. You need a splash / squeeze page for everything you do in this business.

3. Marketing Hub – A central place to build relationships, get training, learn the ropes and progress at your own speed. This was critical to my success when I first joined MPAM so many years ago, which morphed into me creating Affiliate Funnel and now with ClickTrackProfit. This was the ‘golden nugget’ for my success, becoming a member of these communities.

4. Auto-Responder – The money is in the list. That’s what they will hammer at you for years to come. I say the money is in the relationships and there is no better way to create that relationship than through your email contacts. Use this wisely and you will be blown away!

5. Hosting – Eventually, you will want to perhaps get into program ownership but if you are just getting started, I’ve got a cool little four letter word that will catapult your personal brand online…BLOG! And with your own hosting account you can install WordPress and build your brand easier than ever before.

The Core 5! These are the un-disputed must-have evergreen products that you should be involved in. Here’s another nugget…By referring people into these programs you build your long term affiliate commissions. People don’t leave these kind of programs, they stick with them for years and years. That seems to me like a pretty good investment in time and effort.

They aren’t sexy. They aren’t flashy. They are evergreen!

Home Business Surge Leads to New Tax Scam

The changing shape of the US economy is providing a new focus for tax scam opportunists.

As more people become self-employed and running home-based businesses, unscrupulous tax preparers and advisers are creating dubious and illegal deduction schemes.

This is just one of several new tricks to emerge as the 2013 deadline for filing returns rapidly approaches.

 Click here to read the full article.



©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission.

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7 Ways to Protect Kids' Mobile Online Privacy

The growth in mobile device usage by children is leading to increasing worries about online privacy because of applications that track youngsters' behavior.

A 2012 study by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) found that as many as 60% of apps used by kids were transmitting information, often secretly, either back to the app developer or third parties like advertising networks and data analytics companies.

FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz declared then that "kids' apps siphon an alarming amount of information from mobile devices without disclosing this fact to parents."

Click here to read the full article. 


©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission.

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COME IN FROM THE COLD: WARM UP YOUR MARKETING

Do you feel uncomfortable trying to market your business to strangers? Most of us do. Making cold calls, knocking on doors, or attending networking mixers where you don't know a soul can be challenging or even painful. Happily, cold approaches like these are not all there is to marketing. In fact, you may never need to use them at all.

Perhaps you already know this, and have been marketing your business in other ways. For example, launching a website, exhibiting at trade shows, running pay-per-click ads, distributing flyers, sending emails and letters to people who don't know you, or posting promos on social media. But all of those approaches are "cold" as well, and many of them can be expensive.

Whenever you are trying to start a marketing conversation with a stranger -- with no introduction, referral, or shared connection to help you -- it's a cold approach, whether you make it on the phone, in a room, by mail, or online. And cold approaches, across the board, are less effective than warm ones.

A prospective client who becomes acquainted with your business by referral or introduction is much more likely to hire you than one who never heard of you before. A prospect who gets to know, like, and trust you over time will decide to do business with you much more easily than one who just ran across you.

Ready to warm up your marketing? Here are six ways to do it.

1. Before you engage in any pipeline-filling activity, stop to ask yourself if there is follow-up you've been neglecting. Filling your marketing pipeline with new prospects is important, but if you don't follow up with those people, they are unlikely to become clients. It's tempting to focus all your marketing on reaching out to potential new prospects. Pipeline-filling activities like launching a new website or social media profile, placing an ad, booking a speaking engagement, or writing an article may seem more interesting and less confronting to you than following up with existing prospects.

Try to resist the temptation to start something new until you've completed what you already set in motion. Follow-up calls, emails, newsletters, blog posts, or personal notes to people who already know you and your business will typically result in closed sales much more quickly than acquiring new prospects.

2. Warm up your existing prospects to make your follow-up more effective.  You may have people in your marketing pipeline who don't know you well, or with whom you've been out of touch. Before you pick up the phone to call them, consider how you might warm them up a bit more.

Is there someone you know who is a mutual acquaintance? Could you ask your acquaintance for more information about the prospect or use your acquaintance's name as a reference when you call? Do you and the prospect have other shared connections you could mention? Perhaps a school you both attended, an association you both belong to, or an interest you share? Is there a helpful resource you could send prospects in advance of calling, so they'll think of you as a trusted advisor, not a pesky salesperson?

3. Expand your view of who is in your pipeline -- it may be fuller than you think.  One more avenue to consider before you start reaching out to strangers is to make sure you have considered everyone you already know as a pipeline candidate. In your professional life, think about your former co-workers and bosses, fellow students at the training school you attended, members of your professional association, vendors who sell to you, and people in your social media network. In your personal life, consider the members of clubs you belong to, social media connections, your neighbors and neighborhood merchants, alumni of the college you went to, or the parents of your children's classmates or teammates. You may already know dozens, or even hundreds of people you could add to your marketing pipeline.

4. When you do need to fill up your pipeline, consider warm approaches first.  Before resorting to cold approach strategies -- advertising, cold calling, direct mail, trade shows, or any online strategy that involves contacting or attracting strangers -- think about how you could instead use networking, referrals, or personal introductions to make the acquaintance of more prospective clients.

Contact people who already know and trust you and let them know what type of clients you're looking for. Don't forget to include personal friends and family in this outreach -- those may be the people in your life who most want you to succeed. Seek out potential referral partners -- people who come into contact with your ideal clients every day -- and make their acquaintance.

5. In order to make use of warm contacts, remember to capture them in the first place.  An essential part of warm marketing is knowing who you know. Whenever you make contact with a new prospect, record their contact information, where they came from, what you know about them, and what they might be interested in. For prospects who find you via your website, blog, or social media, provide a way for them to join your mailing list, and an incentive for doing so.

Keep track of your prospects in some sort of contact management system. This can be a comprehensive CMS like Salesforce.com, a simple contact manager like Google Contacts or the app on your phone, an Excel spreadsheet, or even a notebook. It doesn't matter how you do it, as long as you do it.

6. Don't discard warm approaches until you've really tried them. It's common to hear entrepreneurs say about marketing tactics: "I tried that and it didn't work for me." But did you really? Did you try networking, for example, by going to a few events, but then never calling anyone you met there or setting up a coffee date? Or did you try referral-building by telling some folks, "I would welcome your referrals," without ever letting them know who would be a good client for you, or asking what you could do for them in return?

Warm approaches are all about building relationships. You need to have multiple contacts with your prospects and referral sources over time. You must build your contacts' trust by becoming a helpful resource or returning favors. You have to follow through on what you start.
But as your reward, you may just be able to walk away from uncomfortable, anxiety-provoking, expensive, cold approaches forever. And that's a goal worth striving for.
Copyright © 2013, C.J. Hayden

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Photo Theft, Bogus Property Watch, Fake DMV and More

While you take steps to protect your computer data, are you doing enough to protect your PC from photo theft?

And what else might you unknowingly give away to crooks -- like your upcoming travel plans?

Or how about falling for a simple con trick that uses an official name to sell you auto insurance?

Click here to read the full article.



©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission.

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