As I mentioned in my earlier post on Commission Blueprint, I will be writing up a full Commission Blueprint Review very soon. I did purchase the program and I have been going through it diligently, but there is so much to go through that it is taking me much longer than expected. I have been watching the videos, reviewing the recommended software programs and links and working with the included templates for a day and a half now and I still have more to go! Here is a little feedback on it so far… Read the rest of this entry

I have decided to cancel my membership in Wowzza and walk away. I joined to check it out and see what was up there. Initially it seemed like a reasonably good idea as an affiliate marketer to be a part of such a network, but would it be worth paying a monthly fee? Now that I have spent a few days checking it out, it really doesn’t make sense for me and where I want to focus. Plus, I’m already sick of all those mlm-ers spamming everyone with their biz opp pitches and the old favorite “can you check this out and tell me what you think?” requests.

Wowzza is a network marketing site – period. If you want to get spammed with sales pitches and friend requests from every member with an opportunity to promote, join Wowzza.
I have been getting friend requests like crazy and a whole lot of messages, comments and group invites. Everyone is there to recruit others into their MLM program. If you are a network marketer, you might be considering Wowzza to try and recruit others into your program. Before you do, you have to be able to somehow demonstrate to the population why yours is better than theirs. You might also want to join if MLM’ers are in your target market.
So to summarize, I’m passing on Wowzza and I recommend you do the same.

It never ceases to amaze me how one thing can lead you to another on the internet. The entire concept of linking and networking is what the internet is all about. Although I receive a lot of marketing pitches from the various lists I am on, every once in a while one comes along that piques my interest enough to make me take action.

For example, this morning I received an email from a vendor I am affiliated with telling me about Wowzza – not wowza or wowzaa – but Wowzza, with two Zs. It is a new social network for online business people and others who are interested in making money online.

The concept is simple enough but I’m not quite sure yet how it will pan out. I mean really…there are a ton of free social networking sites on the internet already that are filled with people. Why in the world would someone pay to join Wowzza? I thought about it for a little while as I took the site tour, which I recommend, and realized the answer is obvious. People will join because they want to make money. People that are already trying to make money will join to help promote whatever they currently have to Wowzza members because they are pre-qualified business opportunity seekers.

For the most part, the people that are spending all their time on free sites like Facebook, MySpace and others like them are not monetizing their time or their pages at all. What if there was a way to make money while doing all the same things they are doing now? All they need to do is add a link to Wowzza on their Facbook page. That’s all. Some people will click the link. That’s just the way it is. You don’t have to make a big sales pitch about it if you don’t want to. People are interested in what you are interested in. That’s why they’re on those sites in the first place.

So I jotted some things down and came to a conclusion – I’m joining. I will be writing more about Wowzza and doing a full Wowzza Review in the near future so look for that. For now, I suggest you take some time to go to visit the site and look around. There is even a FREE signup so you can see all the features and benefits before forking over any financial info.

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[UPDATE] I spent a couple days at this Wowzza site and decided quickly that joining was a mistake. I’m getting spammed like crazy from the membership there. Review my Wowzza Review page for more info. DO NOT waste your time on the company. I have cancelled my account and requested a refund.
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I have been updating everyone for quite a while now on my Consolidated Solutions Group business and want to continue doing so for those looking for information on this company and their opportunity. This post is meant to be an update as well as a rant and a plan for going forward with CSG.

First let’s talk about commissions…
Since starting with CSG, I have been reluctant to submit my own leads for homeowners facing foreclosure because I saw no evidence that CSG could handle the leads properly. I focused my efforts on building a team instead. I have now decided that this approach is not very fruitful. To date I have earned a grand total of $178.74 in override commissions and zero team bonuses. That is since joining back in November 2006, nearly five months ago. There are three deals in the pipeline which will be paid out in May for a couple thousand dollars more in additional override commissions.

Now if I were submitting my own leads, I’m sure I would be earning with CSG but I have not been doing that. As a real estate investor, I work with many homeowners myself directly for free to help them keep their homes, with the expectation that if/when they eventually do need to sell, they will call me. Not everyone can be helped, however and that is where short sale outsourcing can be helpful but not too many of those end up becoming deals taht actually close.

Downlines…Does size matter?
At this time, I have a total of 3,419 people in my downline. In that group, there has been a total of two deals done and closed so far that I have received overrides on. The downline agents are pretty much not producing any business at all. At least not the levels that I get paid overrides on. There is obviously an issue with CSG’s business model if only one person in 3,419 does any deals in 5 months.

In my previous post, I said that I’d rather have quality over quantity and that is true, however, the quality I got from this group, and that CSG promotes heavily, is the recruiting efforts, not the lead submission. Getting a lot of people in your downline does not make you any money unless they upgrade, which is another issue altogether.

Disappointment
The issue I have now is that I have become very disappointed with CSG and the business they appear to be promoting which is Team Building and getting the Mentor Fee which is 50% of the upgrade fee. That seems to be their big push. There are no upline overrides paid out on those “Team Bonuses” at all. It is referred to as a “Mentoring Fee” by CSG and is supposed to help make the sponsoring agent provide more personalized support  to the newly upgraded agent. I can already see that this is going to be a big issue for CSG since they are not selling anything with that program and that is what causes Attornies General to investigate and shut companies down.

I’m sure they have given this all some thought, and they do offer services and products in their lineup, but I have concerns. They are supposed to be training people and making this business easier for their agents, but that is clearly not working. They are spending too much time promoting the business of getting people to upgrade and build teams and not enough on teaching people how to submit leads.

In any event, I plan to stick with CSG while they continue to grow and improve their business. I will be submitting my own leads soon to see how they get handled and I will start communicating more within my downline pay levels to identify those who want to do work this business for real and work with them by providing marketing materials and samples of how I do this business.

UPDATE: Please Read the Comments and my replies below.

It has been over three weeks since my last post and I wanted to give a very quick update on things that are going on with me lately.

1. I just got back from Houston, TX where I learned about a strategy for investing in real estate that will change the way I do things around here dramatically. It is actually a proprietary system developed by a 25 year investing veteran who does 3-5 deals per month averaging about $10k to $15k per deal. And he does it without using his own money or credit and through realtors and mortgage brokers all above board and fully disclosed to all parties. And he takes it easy too. Pretty cool. So, I will be working on that. I’ll keep you posted.

2. Consolidated Solutions Group continues to take off like gangbusters. I am working on putting more tools together for my team to help them as I start to add their services into my business model as well. I now have 2,874 members in my group, which really blows me away considering i only have 77 personally sponsored. It goes to show that it is not about quantity when building a team, it is about quality. You could have 50 people on a baseball team, but if they all sucked, they would lose every game. I’d take 9 good players any day.

3. I joined Rich Schefren’s Business Growth Systems coaching program last month and absolutely love it so far. This guy is the cat’s meow when it comes to running a business. I wish I could spend a month going through all his materials but there is just so much knowledge pouring out I can’t keep up.

Here out up a special page called “The Vault” where all of his FREE materials ae posted. Here is the link if you haven’t been there yet.

==> http://schefren.infusionsoft.com/go/vault/bizdream

I guess the only compaint I could have is that there is so much to take in that it gets overwhelming. His videos are awesome but they are like 2 hrs long each!

I need to get back to work. Make it a great day!

It has been five days since may last update on CSG. My total downline is now at 1,835 and it just keeps on growing. This Thursday ends another pay period so I am looking for some good news on the commission front. I still have yet to see any team overrides, though I didn’t expect to see any real results for about three months because I was focusing on team building as opposed to client sales. It has been about 2-1/2 months now since I signed up so things should start rolling in any time. 

I signed up for the Strategic Profits coaching program (or whatever its called) this weekend. I like a lot of what Rich has to say, though I have a long way to go until I can be as process oriented as he is. I will certainly be working on it though because he and his students have made mega-fortunes in their businesses. I see no reason why I can’t do it too.

I agree with just about everything he teaches so this is like a wake up call for me. I have always been looking for the right business that will allow me to profit without being present. I do not want t business that I have to work at every day. I want something that takes care of itself for the most part and that is what he professes to teach. I have lawyer friends and sales friends that think they have it good but if they don’t go to work, they don’t get paid. What good is that?

I’m also waiting for more updates from another online marketer that I purchased this blogging package through. She has some very interesting information and software to share about getting higher natural page rank. I’ll keep you posted on that as well when I learn more.

It has been an interesting couple days here in my office. CSG has been releasing their long awaited downline signups. It is a little suprising to me that all these leads have actually signed up for a CSG account already and are just now being placed into peoples downlines.

In my last update, I had 540 total people in my group. As of this writing, I have 1,322 people. With the people placed directly under me and those placed into my downline LM2 groups, it was a nice jump. I think they are still being disbursed too so there may be more coming soon.

CSG has also increased the number of websites that are available to me as a Senior Referral Agent to twelve (12) sites. They’re pretty nice lead capture pages too. I’m not a big fan of replicated sites because they do not get ranked and do not get any type in traffic. SEO is not an option for them because of the duplication.

If you are considering joining CSG, I recommend you get your own domain name and build a decent content site with links to the company page.

Gotta run. I’ll update more later…

Exciting things continue to happen with CSG. I wanted to continue to post my results for those who are considering joining CSG and want to see results. As of this writing, I have a total of 540 people in my team (downline). In my last post on Jan 25th, I had 425 so you can see how the growth is getting exponential. Adding 115 people in ten days is pretty good. Most of these people are coming from the 33 that I personally signed up. There are a handful of real workers in my group that are taking this program and running with it.

So…Is anyone getting paid? The answer is YES. People are getting paid. The thing is this, real estate deals take time. People who work in the Real Estate profession (agents, mortgage brokers, etc.) understand these delays because they are used to them. Loss mitigation can takes weeks and home sales can take months. Because CSG is a lead generation company and uses strategic partners for the actual case work, they have to wait until they get paid by their partners before they can pay their agents. People new to the industry often get concerned and start make negative comments about the company, then they quit and blame CSG for their impatience.

CSG is a long term company with a solid business in place. They will continue to grow and prosper. I will be with them because I see the big picture.

For more info on starting your own home-based business for FREE, visit my site at ==>
(UPDATE – CSG is no longer in business)

A lot of growth and a lot of changes coming with CSG very soon. They announced last night that we will be able to offer mortgage and commercial loan referrals beginning next Monday. They have revamped their lead programs and their back office systems as well to accomodate several new websites targeted to each market to help us promote our services to the public.

CSG also announced a change to their structure which will include a huge change in the pay. They are changing their LM1 and LM2 programs to Junior and Senior Referral Agents. They are also changing the fee to upgrade from $497 to $997 and will be paying out 50% iin commissions on the fee. The other commision rates of 40-40-20-20 will nto be changing but the new upgrade commission is great news. In the real estate business, it is not uncommon for a deal to take months to close and moneys to get settled. Professionals in the field are familiar with the time frames and are okay with it. Many people who are new to the industry do not understand this and get frustrated with the delays in getting paid. People are quitting because they are not seeing any money. They just don’t get it.

The commissions on the new upgrade (training) fee will be paid out within a few business days. This is a great help to those looking for quicker cash flow.

And here’s another quick update on my stats. I now have 425 people in my downline. This thing just keep growing. I love it!

 

 

I logged into my backoffice again this afternoon and totaled up my downline. I am at 343 total right now. Two days ago I was at 312. That’s 31 new signups in just 2 days. I’m pretty psyched about that one.

Also, I got a brief glimse of the commission reporting the other day because of a system error and was excited to see some of the figures that will be coming to me soon. They are very nice numbers considering the effort I have put out to date which, frankly, is pretty minimal in my opinion. Commissions should be getting paid out soon too so I’m looking forward to that.

Since the accident (I don’t think I’ve gotten into that yet but I will at some point) I have been having a difficult time getting my head straight and focus on earning again. I was all ramped up back in September getting ready to go full swing in October when things got messed up. Since then it seems like one thing after another has been going wrong with me or someone in the famliy. I have had to reset and start planning for a future date to get the ball back in motion and February is the time. I just finished my course of antibiotics for pneumonia so I should be full swing again soon. Being sick is tough when your body is all banged up already. Not enough energy to heal and fight the illness too. I really need to get more rest but I’ve been having trouble sleeping again too. It’s a perpetual downspin that I am trying not to give in to.

Anyway, so much for quick, eh?  Good things coming in February. Looking forward to sharing my results.