One thing you will stumble upon sooner or later are membership sites run by self proclaimed marketing gurus that claim they will teach you the secrets to making money online. There are membership sites for blogging, affiliate marketing, pay per click, and just about any other twist you can put on the making money game. All you have to do is join any one of these sites and you will be a privileged member to a wealth of insider information that will set you on your way to fulfilling all your financial goals in life. Or so they say.

Some of these membership websites include:

Shoemoney System
Blog Mastermind
Third Tribe Marketing
The Keyword Academy
Wealthy Affiliate
 
There are many others out there but those are some of the bigger ones that you will hear about the most. Other marketers and bloggers will provide glowing reviews of each one of them in hopes you will sign up under their affiliate link so they will get a commission. These sites seem to range in price from around $30.00 per month to around a $100.

First of all, you should know that I have only joined one of them (for a month) but I have been around the block enough now to know what goes on in this type of site. There is usually a set of tutorial videos and a variety of other “training” aids the owner has put together. These might be webinars, eBooks, MP3′s, charts and other things that are designed to teach you all you need to know about how to start your own money making Internet marketing business. These are usually the biggest draws inside each membership site because it is through these vehicles that the “guru” explains his or her secrets and  system.

What You Really Get

Once you run out of the training materials, what are you usually left with? A forum. It is in the forum where you can then expand upon your knowledge by networking and talking to others. This is where you end up spending all the rest of your time, month after month unless there is new training material added. Now, what is wrong with this picture?

What is wrong is that all you have left is a forum that is full of other clueless beginners all trying to figure out and interpret the training material. The “gurus” might or might not participate in these forum discussions but I will bet you that 9 out of 10 times they leave the forums to the administrators they have hired. Forums can be vicious time wasters and especially so if you are conversing with other beginners like yourself. It becomes a free for all where everyone is trying to prove to the next guy that they know what they are talking about when in fact they don’t. You know they don’t because they are paying to be there just like you! 

What Is In It For Them?

One of the questions that any astute beginner who is trying to learn how to work from home and make money should ask themselves is: why is the guru giving away this information? If he or she is making such good money, why don’t they just keep doing it and keep to themselves? Why on earth teach it to others?  The answer is always the same: because they can make more money teaching their “system” or knowledge than they can by actually implementing it themselves. Plain and simple.

The brilliance of these guru run Internet marketing membership websites is that they will get your money month after month and in return give you some training material and a forum that the students are basically running more times than not. You are actually paying to belong to their forum and keep their business going!

Now, some of the training material these guys give out might be really useful and some of these membership sites might be better than others. I know for instance that with The Keyword Academy you get a guest posting system inside the membership site which might be very useful. However, my basic point of this post is to say that generally speaking, when you pay to belong to one of these “how to make money online and create a business” membership sites you are really getting a forum. And how much can you really learn from a forum of newbies all like yourself?

Know When To Quit!

The longer you stay with one of these sites, the less there is to learn as you will quickly run out of material and be left with nothing to do but converse on the forums and be part of the “community”. It is a brilliant plan really, for these guys to hawk their knowledge and receive a recurring monthly fee for putting out not much more than a glorified forum that they probably don’t even spend too much time in. They spend most of their time trying to enhance their “brand” and getting more people to sign up.

Always remember that marketing gurus are making more money by teaching than actually doing what they teach. If you do decide to join one of these paid membership sites, make sure you are willing to cut the strings after (or shortly after)  you have exhausted the training material. Don’t be one of those people who get suckered in to paying a hefty monthly fee just for a forum and remember, everything they teach inside can be found somewhere for free on the Internet.

TNX is a text link brokering network that has seen explosive growth and boasts over 41,000 members. I was hesitant to do this review as many of us have had dubious experiences with text link ads and Google. This is what I uncovered:

Unlike other similar networks, TNX  puts links on every individual page of your site instead of just the main page. Webmasters can even choose their advertisers themselves, placing only links that are relevant to every page of their sites. They are also able to block ads, delete them, or ban an entire website from advertising on their site. 

TNX operates off a points based system instead of working with actual dollars. Both website owners and advertisers work with this system and points can be redeemed for dollars. Advertisers buy points to use and the website owners receive those points when text links are placed.

Payment is made by PayPal, check or wire. The site itself is easy to sign up for and looks very professional. All prospective websites must be individually reviewed which usually takes between 1 to 3 days.

TXN has a special offer for free links to get you started and an  affiliate program that pays you for life for referred advertisers. Yes, that’s right, for life! That seems to me to be a very generous referral program.

Analysis

As I mentioned at the top, there is much confusion about what links Google will and will not allow and many blogs have been penalized down to a Page Rank 0 (including this blog). For that reason I did not want to try this service out myself as I feel the risk is just too high. 

Additionally, this link was provided to me which is a Digital Point forum thread and the ongoing theme seems to have switched in this thread to whether webmasters will be penalized for using TNX. Another link provided is a free tool for advertisers to make paid links look natural for Google. Wow, does that bring warning flags up for me? You bet it does!

Conclusion

Being curious, I looked for other blog reviews to see what others were saying. I found reviews that were mostly positive but I did find a couple that were negative. (I will provide you with an example if you email me)

With the research I have done, it seems to me that the dust is still settling regarding TNX test link ads. There are lots of views on both sides of the debate whether these ads will be OK with Google. I don’t think anyone knows for sure. Right now I just think it is too risky for me to dive in and try them out. I hope something will happen in the future to make the whole paid links controversy clearer and make it easier to understand just what Google will allow.

I am  definitely interested in using TNX, but just not right now. I am always searching for more ways to make money online and this one seems to have some great potential. Right now, however, I am in the wait and see mode with this one.

If you ever want a blog that talks almost exclusively about Internet traffic then I have found it. Traffic-Searcher.com is a no-nonsense blog about a topic we all are interested in: ways of getting traffic to our websites.

The blog is authored by Lee Seats who also writes for the freebie section of About.com. He started this blog in September 2007 and he has a couple of other blogs as well that you can find in his profile.

An article I immediately found of value was about submitting your blog RSS feed to directories. This is usually a time consuming procedure but Lee lists 30 directories that don’t require registration and don’t require reciprocal links for you to submit your feed URL. This very handy list opens up in a new window and links directly to the submission pages so that you can submit your site to all directories in about 30 minutes.

Other posts of interest would include one about getting your domain listed quickly in the search engines and a post about how it is NOT easy to make money on the Internet. That last post should be required reading for everyone! It is nice to see that Lee agrees with me that most information you get in those expensive ebooks everyone buys can be found for FREE somewhere on the Internet.

There is very little fluff on this blog in terms of widgets and doohickeys like you see on many other blogs. It is all about the articles and actually that works just fine for what Lee is trying to accomplish. A site like this that puts out quality information time after time will attract readers quickly. You can tell this is what Lee is trying to accomplish.

As with many other blogs, however, this one is a little lite on the number of posts. I think it is obvious that Lee has more than a few things going on at once and perhaps he has somewhat neglected this one. In order to get and increase readers, posting on a regular basis is a necessity. Writing more frequent and regular post is something Lee should consider doing.

I noticed that Lee’s blog has just a few sporadic comments and I believe comments are vital to the growth of any blog. I know Lee is a fan of the Blogger platform but I personally never comment on Blogger blogs. It is very difficult to comment because of all the hurdles they make you jump through and it is not worth my time. I have to think that I am not the only one who holds this opinion. This is something to consider in the future if Lee ever considers moving to WordPress which seems to have a more user friendly commenting system.

Traffic-Searcher.com is a very simple and straightforward blog that in my eyes has some good potential that just hasn’t been realized yet. It’s almost the new year and with it comes the time for new year’s resolutions. Perhaps Lee’s new year resolution should be to concentrate hard on this blog and see how popular he can make it!