The LTO is actually an old trick from the days of infomercials. Remember the old “Buy in the next 10 minutes and you’ll get this free set of steak knives!” The psychology behind it is that the viewer’s judgment about whether they actually want to buy the product or not is clouded due to the lack of time to decide.

The IM gurus have taken the LTO into hyper-drive. They now develop these massive, expensive products, generate a big pre-launch hype and then they only sell the product for 3 days -  no bluffing. After that you can’t buy it. But my question is: are you ever really sorry that you didn’t? Even if you have moment of regret it can’t last long because the next day another guru is beginning another hyped-up launch for a product you never knew you needed so desperately.

Now I have no doubt that these products are packed with quality info, since otherwise all the buyers will be slamming the gurus on every forum on the web and demanding refunds. However, I myself would never spend serious money on such a product simply because the marketing techniques employed remind me of those sleazy guys who like to target under-age girls in nightclubs. As a former under-age girl, they make me wanna run in the other direction. Sure they are all friendly and interested in you now, but you can sure that they will dump you so fast once they have what they want.

From the buyer’s point of view, the whole concept of these fly-by-night programs is antithetical to wise spending. If something is good, it lasts. People keep buying it for weeks and months and years. Studies have clearly shown that people rely on the real reviews and recommendations of real people to help them make online buying decisions. Word of mouth and reviews by people who have actually seen results from the product build lasting sales momentum. By selling us products that no one has ever seen or tried, these gurus are depriving us of the tools we need to make wise and careful spending decisions. When it’s a great product, the promoters don’t have to put you in LTO pressure-cooker to make sales. It’s that simple.

Moreover, since these gurus spend a lot of time and money developing a product it doesn’t really make sense to only sell it for a 3-day period… unless it’s something that will be irrelevant and overpriced by next week. The LTO offer creates what marketers call “scarcity,” which sways people to pay ten times what the product would be worth if you could buy it any time you wanted. The only reason that a diamond has 10 times the value of a zircon is because diamonds are rarer. So the marketers take an info product that is of decent quality, which would normally be worth $200, but since it is only on sale for the blink of an eye, they would like us to believe that it is now worth $2,000. Come on Guys! We all like to use various marketing ploys in our efforts to make money online, but that should only make us more wary that we ourselves don’t fall for them.

For every limited time offer you have passed up: Congratulations! I can’t speak for the “insider’s secrets” that you will never know you’re missing, but you have certainly demonstrated that those slick marketers haven’t got you over a barrel yet.

I encourage all my readers to join me in my declaration of war on limited-time offers. If you undertake to henceforth ignore all LTO’s I can almost guarantee you that you will never suffer from buyer’s remorse again.

Do you want to Make Serious Money Online?

Then save your money for perennial, tried-and-true Make Money Online products that are created by people and companies that want to serve you, not exploit you. There is so much garbage going around that you may not even realize that these perennial products exist. I will review one for you that I use in my next post.

Related Posts

• Is Headway Theme a Scam?

Before I bought Headway, I Googled “Headway Theme Scam,” “Headway Sucks,” “Headway doesn’t work,” etc. I didn’t find anything juicy. Even if I had, I wouldn’t necessarily have nixxed Headway automatically. Every popular product, company or person has a few detractors. But if a product, company or person is really bad news, the web should be crawling with complaints and reports about them. That’s the democratic power of the web – the scammers cannot hide for long.

A few months ago I was about to buy a particular affiliate program software script, but out of habit I first did my Google scam search routine. The things I found out about the product and the company behind it were seriously scary.  We are talking dozens of negative reports. I was glad to escape from their clutches in one piece.

For internet marketing products, it is helpful to check out imreportcard.com, which reviews a lot of products and is open to comments, so you will see how people who have actually bought the product feel about it afterward. Since there are so many scammers and snake-oil merchants in the internet marketing niche, this web site is valuable. Be sure to leave a few comments containing your backlinks about products that you know about . But I would still always do my own anti-scam research before buying anything online.

Another thing occurred to me: since so many savvy shoppers do anti-scam Googling before buying digital products, blog posts with “Product Name + Scam” are great for SEO. Let’s see how many new visitors this post brings me! If you are interested in Headway, check out our video review and discount coupon code.

Since then, I have noticed that people are really starting to buzz about Headway all over the web. Wow! that sentence sounds like a suspiciously vague, made-up factoid – but actually I have a Google Alert running on “Headway Theme” so I know for sure that Headway is much hotter now compared to a month ago. I really think that we are about to see a massive revolution as thousands of WP users adopt Headway, and super-customizable Headway-type themes become the standard for WP. Frankly, I can’t understand why anyone would pay money for a premium theme that only more-or-less fits what they want, when they can get exactly what they want with Headway Theme. In fact, there is no reason why anyone can’t become a web designer with Headway – you can easily use to make unique sites for paying clients, as there is no code to learn. I have even noticed that people looking for Web designers are starting to specify that it should be built in Headway.

Another sign that Headway is becoming seriously big is that some great independent sites and blogs are popping up to support Headway users and even sell them premium services to make Headway even better for them. The new Headway Marketplace has been set up to help people find what they are looking for.

When I was redesigning this blog, I used a great blog called HeadwayHacks.com a lot to understand how Headway works. It is run by a 17-year-old web designer who says she’s been working with WordPress for 5 years. Sheesh… (BTW Headway has just added some really great video tutorials so it is now much easier to learn the system fast.) If you looking for more ideas for what to do with your blank canvas, HeadwayAddons.com has some useful tips.

I just upgraded to the latest version of Headway and I’m now finding it even faster and easier to use, plus there are those handy video tutorials.

I’m gonna get back to planning my second Headway site (more about that later). If you think you are ready to join the Headway revolution, check out my video review and  click here and make sure to enter the coupon code CD40B35533 to save 20% on your purchase. (And yes, that’s my affiliate link, cos in case you haven’t noticed, I really LIKE Headway)

MyAds is really great because it lets you choose the target market for your ads so specifically – by age, geographic location, interests, etc. You can narrow down your ad to a really specific target market and pay pennies for clicks – bids start at just 1 cent! It is easy to generate some free traffic to your site this way, or of course you can direct to an affiliate site – yes, direct linking is allowed.

I got a free MyAds voucher a while back and this is how I used it: I searched Clickbank for some hot looking products and chose a few. I mostly used products that offered banner ads, but a few times I created my own banner using MyAds really cool banner generator. The main criteria for choosing the Clickbank products was that it had to be a hot product and it had to have a killer sales page. Lots of Clickbank products have a terrible sales page and they should be totally avoided.

After I chose a few Clickbank products to try, a set up a few targeted campaigns in MyAds and for a few days I watched the click-thru rate and adjusted my bids. Though the MyAds and Clickbank backends, it was easy to see which products were getting the clicks. There were two products that were popular, but only one was drawing people to the sign up form (probably because it had a better sales page:)).

So I got rid of all the other campaigns and just focused on the best one. I tried out different target markets and bids and soon I found success. I love the sweet sight of affiliate sales!

That was how I got started with MyAds. Of course, you could also use it to promote your own site – it could be a great way to get some new visitors. Either way, using this coupon it’s free.

Check out MyAds – and don’t forget to use the coupon code FRIEND50 for your free $50 credit.

PS. Yes, you can share this post – any friend of yours is a friend of mine

Have you taken PeiProfit’s Free 7-Day Link-Building Challenge? Start boosting your site’s rankings! More details here.

Whoops! did you notice that there was no affiliate link in there! That’s right, I am not an affiliate of name.com but I am still absolutely, positively excited to recommend them to anyone who needs domain names (which is most people reading this blog)! Even though I could recommend GoDaddy and earn a small piece of pei for some referrals, I am not going to do that, and here’s why:

First of all, Name.com includes private whois in the price, unlike GoDaddy. This is a very valuable bonus for internet marketers, who don’t want the whole world to know who’s  behind every site they make.

Secondly, Name.com doesn’t try to upsell you like crazy during the checkout process with hosting and virus protection and a million other products, unlike some other registrars (still looking at you GoDaddy).

Thirdly, Name.com has good prices (generally the same or better than what other reputable registrars charge).

I happen to think that Name.com has got that classy-yet-cool image down. This would be another thing that sets them apart from the despised GoDaddy. After visiting the GoDaddy site I always feel like I need a shower to wash away that sleazy bar-room feeling.  I know that a LOT of people use GoDaddy and are happy with them, and that they have a great reputation for support. Also some people out there don’t share my feminine repulsion to”Dr. Bob.” But c’mon guys, you gotta admit that free private whois is really a great deal.

So before you buy your next domain, definitely check out Name.com

BTW I only use name.com for domain registration, so I can’t recommend their hosting services.

1. Mafia Wars by Zynga

Created by the developer of other popular Facebook games such as YoVille (which was on our list of top ten Facebook games last year) and Texas Holdem Poker, Mafia Wars has a whopping 25 million active Facebook users.  Play this game and “build alliances, amass property, and fight mobs of enemies in games of power and deception.”

2. Know-It-All Trivia by CrowdStar

When you play Know-It-All Trivia, you compete against your Facebook friends to see who really knows it all.  With around 730,000 monthly active users, chances are some of your friends are already playing this game.  The trivia categories include Pop Culture, Science, Sports, Geography, Silly, and more.

3. SCRABBLE by Electronic Arts

Based on the popular board game, SCRABBLE for Facebook offers some online improvements such as: built-in chat and dictionary, fun animations, and multiple speed settings.  Play against friends, or request a game with a stranger!

4. Flixster by Flixster

Use this movie fan Facebook application to connect with over 20 million film buffs.  Share movie reviews, get recommendations for new movies to see, and take the Never-Ending Movie Quiz.

5. FarmVille by Zynga

Last year another one of Zynga’s games, YoVille, made it to our list.  But this year the rural version of this simulated community-building game is topping our chart.  Join over 83 million active users who are growing their own virtual crops, raising their own virtual barnyard animals, and having fun on the farm.  Flannel shirt optional.

6. GeoChallenge by Playfish

Test your worldliness with this game that takes you on a tour around the world while quizzing you on your geographical knowledge.  Think you’re good at identifying flags, countries, and cities?  Time to find out.

7.  Kickmania! by The Broth

Have a coworker whose butt you’d like to kick – both metaphorically and figuratively?  Now you can, thanks to Kickmania.  This game (which is popular for obvious reasons) boasts “low level violence and high level fun” because you can paste anyone’s photo onto a virtual dummy and see how far you can kick them around.  If you kick them the farthest away, then according to the game you OWN them.

8.  Word Challenge by Playfish

So you’re good at Scrabble, but are you truly a master of words?  Test the depths of your vocabulary with Word Challenge, where the objective is to take 6 jumbled letters and come up with 3 different 6-letter words.  Oh, and you need to do it as fast as you can.  Play against yourself, play against a friend, or play against a million and a half other Facebook users.

9.  UNO by GameHouse

Love the card game you used to play as a kid?  Wanna whip out those wild cards and draw four cards again?  Now you can, virtually, without even buying a deck.  UNO’s popularity as a real-life card game has obviously contributed to its virtual success, where it has over 3 million active users.

10.  Roulette Madness by Product Madness

Roulette Madness is brought to you by the Product Madness developers, started by two friends from Stanford in 2007 and responsible for other great Facebook games such as Zombie Wars and BlackJack Madness.  Play roulette against your friends and on different tables around the virtual world.  Made available on Facebook in December 2009, the game already has over 1 million active users.

I’ve gotta admit that I’m pretty busy blogging, which is what I truly love to do and has really been paying off lately, so I don’t have too much time for games anymore, but it is nice to take a little break sometimes. The trick is definitely not to get addicted. Have fun!

Like this? Visit PeiProfit’s New Facebook Page

PeiProfit.com

Promote Your Page Too

Headway Theme is the only WordPress theme that lets me create exactly the theme I want, without knowing code. Trust me, I am NO programmer. For this reason Headway has revolutionized the world of WordPress design. Using Headway, anyone can design original WP themes. I had an awesome time messing with the “visual editor”, changing the colors, layout, font, widgets, etc.  I get to move all this stuff around simply by drag and drop. I made a short video showing me having fun with it.

With Headway Theme, for the first time I felt like I had the power to create the look and layout that I want for a WordPress blog. It was a whole new world for me, as someone who has had a lot of frustration with inflexible WP themes in the past without making much…err… headway.

I should definitely mention that I had some headaches trying to upload the theme. But I just posted my problem on the forum and the moderator contacted me personally and uploaded the theme for me. BIG points for support! I should also mention that there is a learning curve in finding out how to use it. It’s not like you can just walk in there and then walk out with a totally original, functional site design 10 minutes later. You need to spend at least an hour just learning how the visual editor works, and then you will have a trial and error process to get your site looking just right. I am not a designer but I have enough of a designer in me to know when things look terrible. So there is a lot of tweaking going on.

I used colorcombo.com to get ideas for the color scheme and then tweaked that a bit too.  Altogether, I would say that I have invested about 5-6 hours designing my theme with Headway, and enjoyed every minute of it. Still the proof’s in the pudding, as my grandma says, and I guess the pudding is that our bounce rate dropped 10% after I activated the new theme. Also we have been getting a lot of new visitors thru our promotion of PeiProfit’s Free 7-Day Link-Building Challenge, and a nice number of these have signed up for the Challenge. I really don’t think this would have happened with our old design, which in my opinion was a little spammy looking (don’t tell ANYONE I said that). If Content is King, then Design is Queen (and links are the princes and princesses). What a charming Internet Royal Family they make!

About the learning curve with Headway, I don’t know if that is really a con, or just a fact of WordPress life. With my other blogs, even when I used paid themes, I have always ended up spending hours tweaking and the results were nowhere near as cool as with Headway.

Headway Theme sells for $89 for two licenses, the price is similar to other, less versatile, premium WP themes.

GREAT NEWS: Clay, the mastergeek behind Headway, has been generous enough to offer PeiProfit readers an exclusive coupon code for 20% off the regular price if you buy for through this link.  which is only valid for a limited time. He didn’t give me an exact time-limit but it is currently valid and if you have any problems with it later on, just contact me and I’ll try set you up. The code is: CD40B35533

In conclusion, not only am I recommending Headway, but I’m recommending it with my affiliate link, which is something that I only do for a product that I myself use and like (wish I’d had that coupon code when I bought it).  Check out Headway Theme for yourself.

Thou shalt avoid flagrant self-promotion – No one likes to admit that they are a flagrant self-promoter – so let me give you this short quiz: do you primarily post comments, articles and answers that are designed solely to draw visitors to your site and/or sell them something? If yes, I’m sorry to say that you are a flagrant self-promoter and you may not realize it, but your links are annoying to the vast majority of people who see them. Moreover, you are increasingly likely to get banned from groups, forums and blogs. Stop blowing your own horn and start contributing to the community!

If you want some guidance and support, sign up for PeiProfit’s Free 7-Day Link-Building Challenge. It’s the easiest, fastest and most fun way to build 100′s of backlinks from a diverse range of sites, including: forums, directories, social bookmarks, blogs, articles, Q&A and more. Take the challenge by filling out the following form.