Free Traffic Tips

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You’re not truly famous until someone is picking on you for no apparent reason.

It happened to me with my poetry, it happened with my poetry sites, it happened with my marketing site everytime I have a major article published. If you’re a Warrior, you can even read how it happened to someone like John Reese after he made a million dollars in a day.

I used to get really depressed about it, and now I welcome all types of critique. As long as the person is brave enough to say whatever they want to my face, I’m happy to address their concern. And by the end of the conversation, we’re usually friends.

Before you start to become famous within your Niche, you might be promoting a product that works for you, that you believe in, then the Next Big Thing in that Niche comes along, and the new jacks on the scene think that the best way to enhance their debut is to start a negative buzz about the first product.

What do you do if this happens? And how can you head it off at the pass?

The first thing you want to do is track what people are saying about the product in question. Bookmark the search on the product name and the initial search name. Google Alert and Google Web Alerts can help with this.

When you see bad press about your favorite affiliate product, you’ll be tempted to jump in the fray and say something equally nasty back.

Don’t do it. Whatever you do, stay silent for at least a day.

What most people don’t know is, if your favorite product is actually good, and the allegations against your favorite product are false, bad publicity can even be better than good publicity sometimes.

If you handle bad publicity well, money can’t possibly ever buy you the kind of press you’ll get as a result. Some people even manufacture false bad publicity just so they can reap the benefits of their response - I don’t suggest you do this, because it can easily backfire.

But if bad publicity comes up, thank the heavens for it.

Now, a day has passed, you bookmarked the bad comments, you went and did something else to calm your nerves. So what do you do now?

You sweep in as the helpful, wonderful person you are and turn the tide of the conversation. How do you do this? For starters, tf you can, get the creator of the product to post as a follow up. When folks think they are complaining about a nameless, faceless entity, and not a real person whose feeling they could hurt, they’re a lot less free with their idle gossip.

Imagine if you were posting about how Windows Explorers keeps crashing and Bill Gates posted to the forum to address your problem.

Next, whether you are the product creator or not, admit any shortcomings. This is crucial. If they are right about whatever the flaws are in your product (get your head out of the clouds, every product has one.), address it. Tell them what you’re doing to fix it in the next release. Or give them the reason why you did it that way - to benefit your customers, to keep the costs low, to protect the privacy of your users.

The thing about admitting your flaws is that it leaves the other person with no weapons against you.

My book is too short? Yes, it is. I cut the fat out of the book because I learned that my clients are busy, and I don’t want to waste their time. But anyone here who has bought the book can use my personal address to ask me for the missing chapters - free.

I said there was a sneaky part to this. And here it is. Set them up to attack you again, and use the opportunity of presenting the solution to the problem as a chance to do some promoting.

You think I want you to buy my book? Yeah, I do sincerely want to help you at this bargain price, when similiar products are priced twice as much, sure. But only if you want to exchange the value of your $50 for $500 worth of my help. And if you don’t, and you think you can figure it out on your own, here’s the link to my free resoureces/course/ebook/site.

Most of the time, the complaints are coming from someone who hasn’t even tried your product. I once stepped into a discussion an affiliate told me about where one webmaster told another that there was no such thing as free traffic.

I laughed so hard soda came out of my nose. Then I showed them where to get it, AND how much money I made from my last batch of free traffic.

When all else fails, end with a challenge. Even if it’s not your product, put some of your own money up. Converted skeptics are the best promotional tools ever. Once you bring them over to your side, all they ever want to do is tell everyone how wrong they were…. and how right they are now.

The Skeptic NEEDS to be right, either right now or later.

Clearly you still don’t believe that you can get the results I did. Fine. I’ll work with your site myself for 90 days. If you don’t get the results I promised, I’ll give you $100 and a free copy of my book..

You already know it’s going to work, and that it’s just that THEY don’t want to put that kind of work into it.

But in truth, you don’t care what that person thinks. You care what the community around them sees as a result of your interaction.

What was your reaction the last time you were in a forum, and saw someone get savagely attacked, yet they answered with humilty and grace? Odds are you were at least impressed with their composure. It might even have reminded you to stop by their site. If nothing else, your eyes came across their link or their name, or the name of their product again.

Now of course, none of this will work if your product really is crap, or if you did something unethical.

But if you’re doing good works, it’s almost formulaic how this will resolve most ankle-biting incidents.

Eventually, you’ll get big enough that you’re used to criticism, though you may never get to the point where harsh lies don’t sting if you’re a sensitive person like me. For me, it’s not usually the actual mean comment that hurts me - it’s that we still live in a world where people feel that their negativity should be used as a weapon against someone, when a simple, polite question probably would have addressed the problem.

I mean, I can face that some people just don’t trust the internet marketing community. To the extent that I’m a part of it, I can see how that happens. It’s mostly because someone copies another person’s hype language, but doesn’t follow through with a product that actually lives up to it.

If people want to make up their own minds that it’s not for them, I can understand that. But to drive someone else away from the possibility of gaining benefits for themselves, for no good reason? I’ll never get that. I’ll never get why the success of one person has to be seen as threatening to another.

This is the INTERNET man. Right now at least, there’s room enough for us all to rule our own little area.