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Thoughts about SFI Marketing Group

I’ve been a member of SFI Marketing Group for over five years and, in general, I have very positive thoughts about, and experiences with, this company.

I believe it is one of the very best companies for people who are brand new to affiliate marketing to learn how to promote online. They offer lots of training and good support. There is an active forum for members.

I am not a fan of multi-level marketing

One thing I don’t like about SFI is that it is a multi-level marketing (also known as mlm or networking marketing) company. I am not a fan of mlm, even though I’ve had good results with SFI.

Why?

Because, I’m tired of sponsoring people into the company who then do nothing, including replying to a simple email welcoming them to the company.

On the other hand, I’m happy to meet new people who have joined in my downline and I’m always happy to answer questions and offer advice based on my experience. That’s more than I can say for my sponsor, who has never replied to any emails I’ve sent him.

In theory, multi-level marketing makes a lot of sense. The opportunity to leverage income and efforts by enlisting others into your marketing team is very attractive. Some people seem to do well with this, but, in actual practice, most do not.

You can learn more by downloading Ann Sieg’s free ebook: The 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing.

What I like about SFI

What I like about SFI is the ability to earn commissions for selling their products and services at retail. I think their line of non-toxic, natural cleaners are the best I’ve used and I’m happy to have alternatives to the chemical-soup cleaners available elsewhere.

I enjoy getting that email that tells me I’ve made a sale. SFI is generous in their commissions, and I’m happy to get my monthly commission check.

I also like the fact that Gery Carson, president of SFI, is always working to find new ways for us to earn money by promoting an array of products and services. He’s a very innovative person and regularly responds to questions on the company forum.

What I don’t like about SFI

Unfortunately, the list of things I dislike about SFI is growing faster and longer than the list of things I do like.

For example, I really like the non-toxic, natural cleaners, as I mentioned above. What I don’t like is that there is no way to market them right now, and it’s been several months since I was able to do so.

Well, that’s not exactly true, but the explanation is rather confusing.

I can still offer you the opportunity to buy the non-toxic all natural cleaner by linking to the old Veriuni store. I still have links to this store on a number of my sites.

(Update August 2009: Affiliate link removed, as I no longer promote SFI Marketing Group.)

However, new affiliates don’t learn about this, because the training – as far as I can tell – no longer informs them about the Veriuni store.

There used to be a simple gateway page that affiliates could direct you to if you wanted to purchase the natural cleaners, but it no longer is available.

Here’s an example of a simple gateway page that links to the Veriuni Liquid Nutrition product and another one that links to the International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs.

(Update August 2009: Affiliate links removed, as I no longer promote SFI Marketing Group.)

Why is this important?

The great majority of new affiliates joining SFI have no experience in marketing online. Therefore, it makes it much easier to promote something if they can send visitors to well-written, easy-to-understand gateway pages and make some sales as a result.

The whole point in joining SFI is to make more money than you spend. Right?

We’re here to earn a profit.

Now, I want to emphasize that you can remain an affiliate of SFI as long as you want and never spend a dime. A lot of people don’t understand that. As a free affiliate, you can still earn a very nice commission for any sales you make, and these commissions are several times as much as you would earn if you sold something through your Amazon.com store, for instance.

As a free affiliate at SFI, if you sell any consumer goods to someone who is not an SFI affiliate and doesn’t live at the same address as an SFI affiliate, you’ll earn 30% of the commission volume (CV). Let’s use the All-Purpose Cleaner as an example…

All-Purpose Cleaner costs $9.85 per quart with a CV of $2.21.

A free affiliate would earn 30% of this $2.21 for each sale, which amounts to $0.66. Now, I know that’s not a lot of income, but it grows as you sell more product.

An Executive Affiliate (EA) would earn 60% of the CV, or $1.32. To become an EA, you either need to sell retail products that add up to 10 SVP or more. (I won’t go into SVP at this time.) The other way is to purchase products with 10 SVP or more every month.

A Team Leader would earn 80% of the CV, or $1.77 per sale.

It’s not much earning less than a dollar or two, but this amount can grow rapidly as you do a better job of making retail sales.

As with every other sales and marketing job where you’re working on commission, the more you sell the more you earn.

The main point I’m trying to make is that SFI isn’t making it easy for us to sell things. While many gateway pages remain, some of the products I want to sell no longer have an easy way to link to a sales page, especially if I don’t know how to link to the Veriuni store.

A marketing organization lives and dies based on selling things. We earn our commissions based on how much we sell every month.

Let me give you another example.

I am a happy member of the International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs and SFI offers a good gateway page for recommending it to you and others. Even if I weren’t an SFI affiliate, I would continue my IAHBE membership because I get more from it most months than I pay to be a member.

Now, let’s look at IAHBE from the perspective of an SFI affiliate…

As a free member, I would earn 30% of the Commission Volume (CV) of $19.00, which equals $5.70.

An EA earns 60% of the CV, or $11.40.

A TL earns 80% of the CV, or $15.20.

These amounts are for selling an IAHBE membership to someone who is not an SFI affiliate. The amounts you earn if someone in your downline joins IAHBE are less than these numbers.

Now, what gets interesting is that these are not one-time commissions. They are recurring commissions that you’ll earn every month that someone remains a member.

So, as a Bronze Team Leader, I’ll earn $15.20 every month that someone who is not an SFI affiliate remains a member, if they originally joined from one of my links.

It doesn’t take many of these to start earning some decent commissions.

At least, in theory.

In practice, I haven’t sold any IAHBE memberships to someone who is not an SFI affiliate. Several of the people in my downline have joined IAHBE and I earn some from that, as well as advancing in the leadership ranks, but it’s not as much as I would earn if I were selling these memberships to non-affiliates.

I think IAHBE is a good deal, but apparently the hundreds of people who have followed my links to the gateway page don’t agree.

SFI has been inconsistent

Lately, SFI has been advancing and retreating in about equal amounts.

Nice Offers discount coupon program suspended

A few months ago, SFI suspended the NiceOffers program and I had been working on promoting that with some diligence. I had created three blogs and almost 50 Squidoo lenses to help promote the NiceOffers program and the merchants who were offering discount coupons through the service.

I was syndicating my blog feeds on a variety of websites and I probably haven’t found and deleted all of them, even after a few months.

OK. I recognize that everything we try doesn’t succeed. So, suspending something that wasn’t working as expected makes good business sense, even though it impacted my efforts negatively.

Still, to do so suddenly after making it one of the primary marketing efforts of SFI came as a jar and I was very disappointed as a result.

Closing the Merchant Service program

This morning, I found this on the SFI forum:

Effective 8/28/08, the Merchant Services program has been discontinued due to continuing issues with the third-party company on which the program was based and over which we have no control. We apologize for any inconvenience the termination of this program may cause.

I have been watching this program for some time, and while it was very attractive, I was aware that there were problems with it, so I wasn’t actively promoting it, even though the commissions could have been very lucrative.

Now, I’m sure that a lot of affiliates are very disappointed about this.

It takes money, effort, and time to market something, especially when there are so many competitors. After spending months trying to build this part of your business, you have to be disheartened to hear that your efforts have been wasted.

The worst part of this is that we, the affiliates, are taking the risk in advertising and promoting these other companies. It costs money and time to promote through affiliate marketing, and we only realize an income when we make sales. If the merchants, both SFI and the third-party company they mention, fail in their part of closing the sale, then we are very negatively impacted.

New products that I don’t plan to promote

Recently, SFI introduced IAB Benefits which apparently offers health, dental, medical, and other services.

Even after reading all I could find about it, several times, I still don’t understand this company and what it offers. I’m a fairly bright person, but I’m still confused.

Before SFI affiliates began promoting it, when I searched for “IAB Benefits” on Google, I found more complaints than good reports about it. Are the complaints valid? I don’t know, but I don’t like promoting anything when complaints are so visible.

IAB may be a very good company that offers great products, but if I don’t understand it, I’m not going to promote it – no matter how lucrative the compensation plan may be.

I don’t want to mislead someone who is looking for medical insurance and who may sign up for IAB Benefits by mistake. Some of us just don’t have any money to waste, and from what I was able to learn, IAB Benefits doesn’t do what I would expect if I wanted medical insurance.

The SFIMG website logs me out while I am working on it

I was just reminded how much I dislike it when I’m researching something on the SFIMG.com website and it logs me out. I just had five pages open on the site and now I get a session expired message on each of them. When I log back in, does it take me to the page I was on? No. Now, I have to waste the next few minutes navigating back to where I was.

Sigh…

The not-quite-ready ecommerce store

We’ve been hearing since early spring that SFI will be introducing a new ecommerce store that will make it easy for us to earn higher commissions. A few months ago, I was excited about this, but I’m starting to lose interest.

Will this store do everything that is projected?

I hope so, but with a schedule that keeps slipping, I’m inclined to believe that it is more difficult to create than was originally projected or that there are problems with the programming and implementation.

I don’t know either way, but my gut is telling me to be careful about this one.

Here’s the latest update, posted by Gery Carson on August 29, 2008:

More new store features revealed:

For our many affiliates anxiously awaiting the unveiling of the new SFI store (and for brand new affiliates who may not have heard about the coming new store), here’s an update of some of the exciting features everyone will be enjoying soon:

• ONE store for everything. The new store will service both SFI affiliates and retail customers alike. Everything from nutritional products to Internet services to SFI promotional materials.

• Thousands (soon tens of thousands) of new products in dozens of new categories, plus closeouts, collectables and hard-to-find items available nowhere else.

• Earn instant SVP on EVERY product in the store…including all SFI promotional materials like X-Cards, postcards, business cards, etc.

• Exclusive, money-saving daily deals (“Deal Of The Day”).

• Special weekly/monthly sales with special discount prices.

• New products added daily.

• You can promote the store as a whole, or any individual product in the store, or any department, or any selection of products of your choosing.

• No longer do high shipping costs need to get in the way of becoming EA or making sales internationally. This is because the new SFI store will be utilizing new partner companies who will be shipping to you directly from outlets around the world. Additionally, through the store’s Private Seller program, you can locate sellers and products located in your same country—even the same city!

• Because of how it’s being built, virtually anything can be added and sold in the store. Goods, services, downloadable software and media, you name it! The sky’s the limit!

• The new SFI store also allows you to sell YOUR stuff. Through the new store’s Private Seller program you can quickly, easily, and cheaply convert stuff you no longer want or need…into stuff you do! List your stuff at the new store, and sell for cash….or for any product in the store. You can even earn EA status each month selling unwanted items around your house! Use the new SFI store as your online garage sale to clean out your closets, attics and garages! List and sell dozens or even hundreds of miscellaneous items easily.

• Hot, new marketing program will allow you to easily generate lifetime retail customers by the hundreds! And earning EA status though retail sales will have never been simpler or easier!

• Standing Orders, on thousands of products, will be available both to affiliates AND retail customers. When an affiliate or customer places an order containing any Standing Order-Eligible product, they’ll automatically be alerted how to set up a Standing Order for that item in seconds.

• More payment options.

• Product shipment tracking.

• Express Checkout feature allows you to make purchases in seconds.

• Wishlists

• Store multiple shipping addresses and multiple payment methods –which can be instantly accessed via pulldown menus during checkout.

• Seamless integration with VeryVIP. If you are a VeryVIP subscriber, you’ll have powerful additional tools to promote the new store and generate customers.

• One-click sitewide currency conversions for 17 major world currencies.

These are just SOME of the amazing features the new SFI store will come with. And there are many, many, many more. Not only that, the new store is also going to usher in some powerful new enhancements to the overall SFI program including substantial simplification, bigger bonuses, and more incentives to become and remain an EA.

Stay tuned for further details!

Several people posted some replies to the announcement, and Gery responded with the following post this morning, August 30, 2008:

Good morning,

I’d like to address some of the comments in this thread:

1. My apologies if you’ve perceived our launch date estimates published to date to have been “evasive.” This was certainly not our intent. These are the facts: Since beginning this project several months ago, the scope has grown enormously. What started as “just a new e-commerce store” has become something that will be seamlessly integrated directly or indirectly into every aspect of SFI. And what’s key here is that doing so closes a number of “holes” in the overall SFI program.

That is to say that we expect this project to have potentially explosive positive impacts on registrations, opt-in rates, shipping costs, EA upgrades, and much more. All those things you’ve been wanting to see out of SFI…we believe are now within our reach…thanks to this project.

Of course, making all this goodness happen has added some time to the project. And, yes, we definitely want to have everything significantly tested before we launch so that the growth explosion we anticipate can begin immediately upon the launch. We sincerely appreciate everyone’s patience; when we launch I am 1000% certain you will agree that it was worth the wait.

2. So when WILL the new store launch? There is still MUCH to do and it’s impossible to foresee every potential “speedbump” that could come up between now and the launch date as it’s not only our editors, designers and programmers involved, but also other software companies, banks, payment processors, shipping companies, etc. Therefore, it would not be wise for me to give out an exact date. There are just simply too many things that COULD cause us to miss the date. My hope is that we can unveil everything on November 1st, but that is only an estimate and could change. I’m sorry, but that’s the best I can do at this time.

3. At least one person in this thread has envisioned a “sky is falling” scenario based on some recent SFI events. What I will say to this is that there are many pieces to the puzzle of what we are putting together. What may look like negatives now aren’t necessarily so, but rather moves and pieces of the bigger puzzle that will be come clear to you after the launch.

Also, for the record, companywide, SFI continues to steadily grow. We have now seen nearly two years of continual monthly growth. Total EAs have nearly doubled in the last two years and we are up, up, up in virtually every key category. So you can imagine why I can hardly sleep at night thinking about what we’re going to see in these numbers later this year after the new store has arrived!!

So, have faith, the future for SFI affiliates is brighter than it’s ever been.

Thanks, everyone! I hope I’ve helped with your concerns.

Gery Carson
SFI President & Founder

Benefit of the doubt

I’ve been reading what Gery Carson has to say for the last five years and I’ve never known him to mislead his affiliates. I’ve watched him introduce innovative products, marketing methods, and compensation plans to adapt to a changing world.

So, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt in regards to the new ecommerce store.

I certainly don’t have any secret information or behind-the-scenes insight into all that is being done to make this a reality.

Part of me want to just throw my hands up and quit.

This has been a very rough month for me personally and I’m not feeling very enthusiastic about anything at the moment, so I’m not going to make any big decisions until I’m feeling better.

I recognize the part of me that wants to quit, and I tend not to pay very much attention to him. He’s a whiner and can always find the gray cloud behind every silver lining. He’s a manifestation of all the naysayers and doubters I’ve encountered who tell me things won’t work and who think I’m crazy for even trying.

I’m sure you’ve heard the stories of people who quit just before they would have succeeded.

Napoleon Hill, in his best-selling book, Think and Grow Rich, tells a story about R. U. Darby, who quit three feet from finding his fortune. He quit mining for gold when the vein ran out and he sold everything to the junk man, who hired a mining engineer to study the mine. He predicted that the vein had shifted just three feet because of a fault. The new owner ordered his employees to dig to where the engineer predicted the vein would be, and that’s where they found the gold. The junk man continued to mine gold from that vein for years and earned millions of dollars because he sought expert advice before quitting.

Russell Conwell, the founder of Temple University, tells the story in his Acres of Diamonds lecture, “about a man who wanted to find diamonds so badly that he sold his property and went off in futile search for them; the new owner of his home discovered that a rich diamond mine was located right there on the property.”

While that tells the basics of the lecture, I urge you to click the link and read the entire Acres of Diamonds lecture for yourself.

Sometimes we’d do much better by doing a little more digging, learning a bit more, and digging in our own back yard before quitting and moving on to something new.

I’ll wait and see

As I have said before, I earn a commission from SFI every month and it’s usually profitable for me to promote SFI, so I don’t want to cut off an income stream unless it becomes necessary.

But, I don’t want to just keep on going indefinitely as I wait for a higher income from SFI, as I should be receiving after 5 years of effort.

Most months, I spend about the same time, effort, and money promoting Gery Carson’s SFI Marketing Group as I do Ken Evoy’s Site Build It!

I earn higher commissions and true, recurring, residual income from promoting Site Build It! and I’m seeing a nice upwards trend in my income from them. On top of that, I’m a happy SBI customer and, a couple of days ago, I renewed my subscription for my SBI-powered Act On Your Dream! site. I never once questioned my decision to renew that subscription and I did it about six weeks before it was due.

So, it’s interesting to compare my relatively-flat income from SFI to my growing income from SBI.

I’m going to give SFI almost one more year. If the new store is released and performs as Gery hopes, and if my commissions from SFI grow faster than they have in the past, I’ll remain an affiliate and continue promoting the company and its products.

On my birthday, July 1, 2009, I’m going to decide one way or the other. I’ll continue to do my part, but SFI is going to have to improve substantially for me to continue promoting it.

I only have a limited amount of time, effort, and money and I intend to refocus on the very best affiliate programs. I hope SFI makes the cut.

As always, I welcome your comments and feedback about SFI Marketing Group.

Act on your dream!

(Update August 2009: Affiliate links removed, as I no longer promote SFI Marketing Group.)

Tags: Acres of Diamonds, affiliate, Affiliate Marketing, Gery Carson, Ken Evoy, Napoleon Hill, quitting, Russell Conwell, SFI, SFI Marketing Group, Site Build It, Sitesell, success, Think and Grow Rich

Comments

15 Comments on Thoughts about SFI Marketing Group

Bryan Holloway on Sun, 31st Aug 2008 5:33 am

Having seen and read so much positive reports about SFI and Internet marketing in general. It’s great to read down to earth reports like this. I have been an SFI affiliate for 2 weeks and Still have a lot to do and learn. In particular I would like to meet or contact someone directly who has been an affiliate for a while in MY AREA (SOUTH AFRICA). I am tired of do not reply email messages and non contactable addresses. I am very keen to get FIRED UP and RUNNING but need help and guidance. Thanks for the “from the heart” reporting. Bryan H

Bryan Holloway on Sun, 31st Aug 2008 5:47 am

I have been an SFI affiliate for about 2 weeks. It’s great to read “down to earth” and “from the heart” reports like this. I have a few questions of my own as a “newbie” and would like very much if there is someone I can contact DIRECTLY to get answers. I am getting tired of DO NOT REPLY advertising emails and non responsive upline members. If someone can make themselves available to help me I can be contacted at holloway.bee@gmail.com. Many thanks for a good report. Bryan H

John Dilbeck on Sun, 31st Aug 2008 6:30 am

Hi Bryan,

Welcome to the blog and thanks for jumping into the conversation.

Have you tried the new a2a system at SFI Marketing Group’s main website?

“a2a” stands for “affiliate to affiliate” and is a brand new system for locating and communicating with other SFI affiliates.

I just browsed for SFI affiliates living in South Africa and it turned up 18 people. Perhaps you can contact them and see if you can find someone who is willing and able to help you proceed with building your marketing business.

https://www.sfimg.com/a2a/a2aHome.sfi

Thanks for the kind words, Bryan. I hope you have great success with your affiliate marketing efforts.

Act on your dream!

Sire on Sun, 31st Aug 2008 6:32 pm

I have been an affiliate for some years now but had only really promoted it for 6 months. My only problem was being an Aussie and it was way too expensive for me to remain an EA as the costs involved in transport knocked the products out of the ball park.

Still I can appreciate how much easier it would have been had I lived in the States. I do believe though that affiliates would have a better chance of promoting the product were they able to build their own sites rather than rely on the ‘gates’ offered by the company.

Sires last blog post..The Legend Of Dastardly Darryl’s Big Stainless Steel Balls

John Dilbeck on Mon, 1st Sep 2008 6:13 am

Hi Sire,

High shipping costs have been the bane of SFI (and other companies) for all affiliates who live outside the USA. That’s been the biggest complaint I’ve heard, and with the rising price of oil, it’s only getting worse.

That’s one reason the new store and all that goes with it – if and when it really happens – should make a big difference for international affiliates.

Yes, it’s easier to sell the physical products to USA residents. Still, people complain about the high shipping costs here, which are much less than they are when shipping outside the country.

—– Sidebar —–

(Which brings up a topic I may write about…some people love to complain, and they are generally the ones that don’t intend to do anything productive. I think complaining acts as a substitute for taking positive action and attracts more things to complain about.)

(Hang on a second. I just did a search on Google for “complaining.” Steve Pavlina has a good article that better says what I’ve been thinking. See his post on complaining.)

(Please note, I’m not equating identifying a problem – high shipping costs – with complaining about it. That’s not my intention at all. This was an aside because I’ve been thinking a lot about people who complain as a substitute for taking long-term dedicated action.)

(This is what happens when I start writing before I finish my first cup of coffee – weak grin.)

—– back to what we were talking about —–

I agree that we need to build our own sites to promote the products and to stand out from the other hundreds of thousands of active SFI affiliates, but at some time you have to link to a sales page to take the order, and I have had much better results when linking to a good gateway page than to a page in the Veriuni store.

I don’t know if I made that clear. Just promoting a gateway page without establishing some kind of presence that builds your own reputation is much less effective.

It has always been true that – all other things being equal – people like to do business with friends and to follow the recommendations of friends.

That’s why people like Darren Rowse and Steve Pavlina do so well. First, they help people with something they want, and then they make a few recommendations along the way. By building their own reputation as helpful people, their readers are more likely to do what they recommend.

As a result, they get more activity on their sites and this attracts more readers. More readers means more people clicking on their ads and signing up for what they recommend.

They do a lot to help people first, and then later reap the rewards for their actions.

Even with their helpful nature, they would not be so successful if they didn’t put a lot of work in building their sites, writing articles, and helping their readers. They build their reputations and become friends.

Thanks for your comments, Sire, they always make me think.

Act on your dream!

Sire on Mon, 1st Sep 2008 6:47 pm

That’s why I blog rather than speak in public, it gives me more time to think otherwise I end up putting my foot in my mouth. It has gotten me into trouble with the wife on more than one occasion. You would think after 22 years I would learn when to keep my mouth shut.

I will just go and check that complaining link.

Sires last blog post..The Legend Of Dastardly Darryl’s Big Stainless Steel Balls

John Dilbeck on Tue, 2nd Sep 2008 3:33 am

Sire, I’m still laughing. I know exactly what you’re talking about.

It’s also why I prefer communicating online rather than by phone. I learned a long time ago that it’s both uncomfortable and tastes bad every time I stick my foot in my mouth.

I communicate much better in writing than I do in speaking. There’s also the opportunity to erase everything and start again before submitting it.

(still grinning)

Act on your dream!

builder99 on Thu, 4th Sep 2008 10:33 am

Hi JD,
The SFI forum (dboard) has just given a link to a few screenshots of their upcoming store website.

Looks interesting and seems they are hoping to get it online by November if possible.

This new link also promises to keep members informed of progress as things move along over the coming weeks.

It has been a long wait and not much info but perhaps now we will be better informed.

By the way, sent you a message over at Adlandpro a few days ago. Don’t know if you receive email notification of those Adland messages or not.

All the best,
Builder99

John Dilbeck on Thu, 4th Sep 2008 2:30 pm

Hi Wayne,

Welcome to my new blog. It’s always great to hear from you and I hope you’ll be a regular contributor to the conversations here.

I see that you’re linking to a splash page instead of your blog. That’s okay if you want to do it, but if you were to link to your blog, the CommentLuv plugin on this site would attempt to put a link to your most recent blog posting. I don’t know if it works with the AdlandPro blogs, or not, but if it did you might get some visitors and expose us to topics we may want to discuss on your blog.

I’ve modified this blog so that links should be followed by search engine spiders and that is not the default setting for WordPress blogs. I’d like to pass along as much “link love” as I can to anyone who participates here.

I don’t make it to AdlandPro as often as I used to. There are just too many other things I’m doing that perform better for me. I do get email notices, but most of the messages I get from there are either spam or low-quality, so I only check them once a month or so. Sorry I didn’t see your message. I just went and replied.

Now, back to SFI and the new store…

Here’s what Gery Carson had to say about it yesterday on the SFI forum…

From New Store “Update Website” Now Online:

For our many affiliates anxiously awaiting the unveiling of the new SFI store (and for brand new affiliates who may not have heard about the coming new store), we’ve set up a new Website for you.

On this special Website you’ll learn about all the latest new store features. There is an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section, plus a section with actual screen shots of the new store, and more.

At least once a week until the official launch, we’ll be updating this Website with the latest feature details, new screenshots, and more. So visit regularly.

Check it out now at:

https://www.sfimg.com/NewStoreUpdates.sfi

Thanks for the heads-up, Wayne.

I went and looked at that page and it’s great to see some new updates and the two screenshots make the store a little more real in my imagination – if that’s not a contradiction.

I like marking the latest additions in red so we can easily see the newest updates.

I won’t quote here on this blog anything that appears on the update page, because it’s in a section of the SFIMG.com site that’s available only to affiliates and I’m going to respect that.

I don’t mind quoting things that are on the publicly-readable dboard, however.

A couple of things come to mind after looking at the screenshots. There are lots of blurred areas which make me think that SFI may be planning some new branding and there are some products I don’t recognize, so we may be getting a lot more that we can sell. Both of those may be good for all of us – but I’m only speculating here.

If you can’t see the updates page because you’re not an affiliate, you can rectify that situation by joining SFI Marketing Group. It’s free and affiliates have access to the store updates page and a lot more. If you join from that link, please leave a comment here in this thread and introduce yourself. I’ll be happy to have you as a member of my team.

Of course, you’re free to join under the SFI sponsor of your choice, so maybe you should do a little looking around before joining. Builder99 is a good sponsor to consider.

Thanks for the update, Wayne. I miss our regular conversations on the SFI community that was doing so well for awhile. I opened a new section for Affiliate and Network Marketing on my A Year From Now Forum, but it hasn’t gained any traction, yet. You’re welcome to talk about SFI and other businesses there, but please leave affiliate links only in signatures.

(There’s also a section where you can tell us about your new articles on HubPages. I just read the two articles you wrote about car tune-ups and repairs and thought they were very good.)

Act on your dream!

builder99 on Fri, 5th Sep 2008 9:10 am

Hi JD thanks for the welcome. Have been trying to post a reply to you and keep getting wordpress error message saying **slow down**

Are comments limited to once every 24 hours, etc?

Builder99

builder99 on Fri, 5th Sep 2008 9:14 am

Hi JD
when I was getting the error message noted in my new comment above I had tried a new long link to my Adlandpro blog as per your suggestion.

The comment above (and this one) uses my original splash page link and it seems to be accepted with no **slow down** error.

any ideas?

Builder99

builder99 on Fri, 5th Sep 2008 9:19 am

Hi JD,
Thanks for the warm welcome and the hint about linking to a blog instead of my splash page.

Is it permitted to use different links in separate comments. One to a splash page, another to a blog, another to a different blog, etc?

I tried a long link to my Adlandpro blog using the **My SFI Support** category link.

But my comment just created an error message and could not be posted.

Glad you liked the Car articles at HubPages. Just joined HubPages this week. Should point out to viewers here that HubPages has strict guidelines when creating Hubs (articles) there.

Any links used in body of article must have direct connection with theme of article. No cloaked links, etc.

And the content must not appear anywhere else on the internet, because HubPages insists on unique content. That means we can not even put own own material on HubPages IF we have already posted it somewhere else such as our own website or blog.

All the best,
Builder99

John Dilbeck on Fri, 5th Sep 2008 10:25 am

I’m sorry to hear you’ve been having trouble posting comments. I just looked through all my settings and don’t see anything that should cause the “slow down” error message.

As far as I know, you should be able to enter any URL of your choice for a particular comment, but I think subscribing to the comments would work better if you use the same email address.

I’ve never tried posting with a different URL, though.

Perhaps it’s something about the AdlandPro blog that’s causing the error. I just don’t know at this time.

At least, your splash page links to your blog and other pages of interest.

I think there’s a built-in limit that stops anyone from commenting more than once every 15 seconds, but that’s just to stop robots from posting comment spam.

There may be a configuration error, but I can’t find it.

Those strict guidelines at HubPages means that I won’t be writing there very much, if at all.

Sorry for the troubles you’ve had posting comments here. Please let me know if it continues and I’ll dig deeper.

Act on your dream!

builder99 on Fri, 5th Sep 2008 11:37 am

Hi JD
Thanks for your reply. It is the choice of website link that is creating the wordpress error message here in these comments.

Will try a shorter blog link to my PowerBlog.

Hope this one works.

Builder99

John Dilbeck on Fri, 5th Sep 2008 6:34 pm

Hi Wayne,

It looks like that URL worked just fine. I was able to click to your blog. It reminds me that I haven’t been to the Power Blog for awhile. The last three months or so were difficult and I wasn’t able to do all the things I’d been doing.

It’s good to see that you’re posting about SFI again on your blogs.

Act on your dream!

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