If your new to my experiment click here and read how this whole thing came about.

Day 1 Summary
Yesterday was a very interesting day.  The blog post went up, I asked my twitter followers for help and immediately had 5 people unfollow.

I did see a little increase in traffic but nothing to write home about. Remember that my followers are mostly internet marketers and real estate people.

If you’ve ever had the feeling that your talking to yourself, that’s what day one felt like.  I talked, I posted my links twice because I didn’t want to offend.  Lord knows we get enough DM’s requesting “serious entrepreneurs” only,  so many that i one guy follows and unfollows me daily just so he can send his DM.  I find it interesting that someone hasn’t punched him in the face.

Comment count is at zero but tomorrow is a new day and this is a 5 day experiment.

Day 2 Summary

I reposted my link once (trying to be link sensative)  no increase in traffic, no comments.

Day 3 Summary
I reposted my link once (trying to be link sensative) no increase in traffic, no comments.

Day 4 Summary
I did not repostmy link and no increase in traffic, no comments.

Day 5 Summary
I did not repost my link and no increase in traffic.

I believe my 4 friends who I see and talk with on the phone and who follow me on twitter are the only ones who are listening. NOT ONE internet marketer, not one twitter guru, no one has said one thing about this twitter challenge. No one has said “hey I read your stuff and it sucks and so do you, shut up twitter rules!”

I do find it comforting that I get 5 DM’s a day from people who “guarantee me 16,000 followers in 30 days. Do I want the followers or do I want the communicators and listeners?

If you reading this and you have communication with your following and followers…..tell me how your doing it. Please leave and comment and if you subscribe to this feed, you will have 190,000 followers. (Just kidding)

Retweet This Disaster To Your Followers

Unless you’ve been held hostage by Somalia Pirates, you’ve heard that Ashton Kutcher raced CNN to be the 1st with a million followers.  I’m curious how many people got a follow back ☺ )  He’s a big shot movies star and CNN is powerful news giant. It should have been easy for both to accomplish this feat.

Set The Stage
I’m a nobody on the web but a legend in my own mind. I can’t get people to read my stuff; my blog title pretty much says it all and I want to use Twitter in an experiment.

My 5-Day Twitter Experiment
I want to see if Twitter and my followers can help me come up with the greatest list give away item since Al gore invented the Internet back in the 80’s.  At the time of this post I have 640 twitter followers and I’m following 638 people. For simplicity lets call my following / followers “my people”. 90% of my “my people” are Internet Marketers and Real Estate people.  These are the best and the brightest in their fields and I, through the power of Twitter want to see if at least 25 of my people can suggest a list give way item in the comments.

The Hard Part
The “Real Estate Business” has gotten hammered in the media, even though now is the best time to buy, invest or upgrade; real estate is like the bastard at the family reunion.  No one wants to acknowledge it.  I’ve tried a lot of things to build my list including giving away a house but most had poorer than average results. This is why I’m even doing this Twitter experiment, I’m stumped and I’m asking “My People” for help.

What’s In It For You?
You will be blogged about!  You will get your name, links and info splattered on my blog that no one reads.  But, someday soon, tons of people will be reading this and you might be the person who made that possible and you will get to tell the story of how you took a nobody and made them a web somebody.  You’ll get to link back to your work forever, children will sing songs about you. Woman will want to be with you.  Men will want to be like you and vice versa.

Come one Twitter lets see if you actually work.  Feel free to pass this along if you think some of “your people” should take up my 5 day Twitter challenge.  Watch for tomorrows update.

Tweet This To Your Followers

20 years ago when I started my Real Estate Investing career, I did it because I wanted the “perceived” end result.  What I saw was Freedom, Money, Recognition and I’ll admit it, I saw a lot of pretty girls at the end of the rainbow.

Every entrepreneur has asked or will asked this question.  How do I get from where I’m at – to where I want?  The answer is simple.  It’s so simple, I’m going to ask you a question back.

Who are you spending your time with?

Look at the people in your life.  Look at the people in your life and ask yourself honestly what they do for me “emotionally”?  Are they on your emotional team or do they suck the life out of you?

I have a group of friends who are very successful, honest, decent, giving and there fun to be with and being with them makes me want to be a better person.  I’ll never tell them that because I’ll never live it down but it’s true.  Your life right now is the direct result of the people you spend your time with.

At the end of the day, look at everyone in your life and ask yourself, “Do They Help Me? Or Do The Hurt Me?  Today might be the best day to make some decisions.   What if your spouse it not on your emotional team, then what?

Retweet Your Your Followers

Have you heard the saying “the money is in the list”!  I’ve been told if you want to build a huge list than you need to offer a give away, but what?

Below is a list of the things I have offered in building a list.

1.    Free Report
2.    Ebook
3.    CD
4.    DVD’s
5.    Contest – computers, iphones, ipods etc.
6.    A House – NO ONE BELIEVES THIS – so I included the video below.
7.    Videos
8.    Free Coaching
9.    Good Content

I’m a real estate guy and I still don’t know what the perfect give way is.  All of the above have had some results but nothing to write home about.  I thought giving away a FREE house would get people interested but of the 9 giveaways, it generated the least interest, who knew.

Here’s whats laughable, the guys and gals that seem to be having the best “results” building a list are the people who are offering FREE information on how to build a list with YouTube, Twitter or Your Own List.

Send me a comment – name your business and what giveaway is working for you.

Retweet To Your Followers

Some bold person asked me yesterday “what’s up with the name of your blog?”   I told them my blog name describes my road into the world of internet marketing.

So let me share my mistakes with you and maybe you can save yourself some headaches and possible a bunch of cash.  Its open forum so feel free to suggest a different path.

Things I bought
1.    A template website with a shopping cart, broadcaster, members area, blog etc.  It was a template site so SEO was out.
2.    I found out that the my website “broadcaster” wasn’t an autoresponder so I got GetResponse.  I like parts of it but I got turned off when I purchased their “we will help you build your list” system and their leads came from all over the world and my area of expertise is limited to USA.  I’m a real estate guy who buys and teaches within the walls of the United States.
3.    Need a SEO friendly website
4.    Hire a web designer (at the time I knew nothing about code)
5.    By now everyone I talked with is giddy about Aweber so I get Aweber and hated them.  Their email delivery was slow and some of their rules didn’t make sense to me (send me a comment and ask and I will tell you off the record)
6.    My website is almost done but my web designer tells me that I need a shopping cart.  1shopping seemed to be the one most recommended. I buy it and get rid of Aweber and Getresponse and move all my names to 1shopping.
7.    Its time to signup for all of my merchants accounts with authorize.net and my banks and now I’m in business.
8.    I was told that Adwords is the fastest way to traffic, so I set up an account, prepay a few thousand dollars and turn it on.  I freaked out a little when I discovered that I had to pay $5.00 – $7.00 a click for my keywords (mostly real estate related)
9.    I see an ad in the local paper from a marketing company who says that if you’re paying more that $1.00 a click your getting ripped off. I call them, we meet and the rep gives me a great line that he can change my Adwords account into gold. “I will have you making money the day I turn it on.”  Of course there was a few hundred-dollar setup fee and a few hundred dollars a month to monitor my account.  Big promises poor delivery, now I’m back to square one.
10.     My phone rings one morning from a “professional marketing company.”  Their angle is online and offline marketing with a guarantee.  The only problem is the few thousand dollars of up front costs but they have a guarantee.  The rep said, “we guarantee our work.”  After their delivery I’ll tell you go watch Tommy Boy “ If you’d like me to ………in a box and mark it guaranteed I can, I’ve got the time.”
11.    One day I’m reading my Iphone mail without a spam filter and I read the most interesting email that talked about getting traffic.  This person went on about organic traffic, link traffic, ad traffic that’s it I need a Guru who knows how to get traffic.  I bought his course “I LOVE IT”.  He warned me right out of the gate that getting traffic “takes time.”  His information is really good but it’s going to take time.   I have no patients as you can see so I look for a faster way.
12.    Through this one email and my lack of patients, I bought courses, ebooks, cd’s manuals, twitter guides, wordpress for dummies, SEO manuals, list building courses, affiliate courses and websites (stop laughing).
13.    My offline business requires customer management and communication so Infusionsoft was the best solution and for the record “I LOVE IT.”  It’s pricey but kicks ass on every other database management system.
14.    Don’t forget the “promote your website business services”, I have 4 of them.

It’s been about a year since I started this quest.  Have I made any money?  Ask me, if you’re brave enough to ask, I will tell you how much “online money” I’ve made.

Everyday my email fills up with product launch announcements and evidence of how you can make $1 billion dollars in one day “but you have to get in now because I only printed 500 units at $100,000 a piece.

The funny side to of all of this is that every day I’m reminded that I suck at generating website traffic.

As our good Friend Paul Harvey once said “and now you know (dramatic pause) the rest of the story.”

Got A Traffic Tip?  Send It!      Got A Question?  Send It!

Retweet To Your Followers