How do you attain it?

In any field, there are about half a dozen things that really matter. Mastering them takes time and focus, but it’s usually not too hard to figure out what the essential elements are.

Pay attention to what people who are successful in the field you want to succeed in actually do. Not what they say they do, but what they really do.

Be smart enough to listen to the practitioners who tell you straight and be very wary of the ones that tell you all the answers are contained in their latest “Launch.”

While it may be true there are only a few things you need to do well in order to succeed, there are a countless number of ways to screw up and that’s what this article is about: screwing up.

The facts of life

Very, very few people are on the receiving end of either incredibly good or incredibly bad luck. Some things go our way. Some things don’t.

When we fail, it’s because we do ourselves in.

There are two basic ways to do yourself in:

1. Failing to invest in yourself

2. Tangling your life up with people who bring you down

Let’s look at these two mistakes in detail

1. Failing to invest in yourself

I’m NOT talking about buying an expensive “mentoring” program from some telemarketing boiler room.

I’m talking about simple things like not making the time and effort to uncover your real interests and talents…

…Not reading and taking relevant classes

…Blasting huge amounts of time in unproductive activities like watching TV

…Not making the effort to reach out and develop colleagues who share your interests and values

…In short, not taking the time you have on this earth seriously.

All this comes under the umbrella of not investing in yourself.

Screw Up Method #2...

2. Tangling your life up with people who bring you down

A second and very reliable way to screw up your life is to bring people into it who screw it up for you.

I’m not talking about the so called Law of Attraction.  I’m talking about letting people into your life who screw you up and letting them stay in your life to screw you up another day.

There are a lot of good, hardworking people who take themselves down this way.

How do you get around this one?

When you’re in the middle of it, it can seem the most baffling problem there is.

You might ask yourself:

“Aren’t the people who come into my life a matter of the luck of the draw?”

“Don’t we need people in our lives to have full lives?”

“Don’t people sometimes trick us by presenting themselves as being one way and then turn out to be exactly the opposite?”

Yes,  yes, and yes, but…

The luck of the draw

There is definitely a degree of randomness about the people you meet.

On the other hand, I believe that people who think that you attract who you meet by some mystical force are wrong.

You “attract” whoever happens to be on a collision course with you. That being said what you DO with this accidental event is ENTIRELY up to you and that definitely is an expression of what’s going on in your mind.

Rather than talk about the “Law of Attraction” when it “attracts” the wrong people into your life, it should really be called the “Law of Stubbornly Turning What Could Have Been a One-Time Meeting into an Ongoing and Painful Soap Opera.”

If meetings are random, it’s best to keep moving until you find the right folks: partners, vendors, employees, colleagues, mates, buddies  (fill in the blank.)

The right one, not the one right now. Big difference.

But people need people, right?

Yes, in the long run, but if you want to solve all your people problems now and forever and reliably nip future ones in the bud fast, tattoo the following somewhere where you will never forget it:

“It is infinitely better to have no person in my life than it is to have the wrong person in my life.”

First, the wrong person will drain you and make your life miserable. No fun.

Second, the wrong person will mess you up so much that even if the right person were standing right in front of you with a flashing neon sign over their head, you stand the chance of being too worn down and/or tied up in knots to even notice.

Is is really that hard to tell people who are good for you from those who aren’t?

If you’re scrupulously honest with yourself, you will probably admit that it’s really not that hard.

The “bad seed” who caused you so much grief probably telegraphed his or her massive f*cked-up-ed-ness (a technical term) virtually from Day One, but you didn’t see, or to be more accurate…you didn’t want to see because…

You were not operating from this ironclad principle:

“It is infinitely better to have no person in my life than it is to have the wrong person in my life.”

You needed an employee. Someone put on the charm and nodded a lot during the interview. You hoped for the best and hired them.

You were in a rush to get a vendor and you took the first one who answered the phone.

You had to have a partner to help you with the burdens of your business and…you get the idea.

And you took the person on, let them embed themselves in your life, and you got what you got.

Jean-Paul Satre said: “Hell is other people.”  If you don’t know the deep truth of that statement, you’re one lucky person.

How to steer clear of the bad ones

First, make sure that you’re operating from the principle: ”It is infinitely better to have no person in my life, than it is to have the wrong person in my life.”

Second, believe that all God’s creatures are worthy of love and respect and treat them accordingly.

Three, know beyond any shadow of a doubt that at least nine out of ten of the people you encounter in life will have major HIDDEN competence, reliability, and/or  integrity issues. A small percentage will be flat out mentally ill and a percentage of that number criminally so.

Let me put it another way, when you meet a new person, they are 900% more likely to become a problem for you than a boon if you let them into your life.

As if that’s not a grim enough statistic, consider this:  Some of the very worst people come in the very nicest and most pleasing packages. They’re masters at creating “positive first impressions.”

They can also be very good at projecting “sweet , harmless and innocent.” It’s part of their pathology and modus operandi.

We’re social creatures

Normal human beings love to bond, they love to make new friends, they love to fall in love.

That’s great, but here’s a suggestion:

You can just as easily bond, make a friend and fall in love with someone after you’ve checked them out as thoroughly as you can. Fireworks, good times, charm alone are never a good reason alone to open the door to someone.

The next time you find yourself getting all excited about someone new ask:

1. Is there a big gaping hole in my life for this kind of person? (Be honest.)

2. Am I methodically overlooking flaws in this person and dreaming I’ve found a winner based on zero information, or worse, my own vivid imagination? (You don’t have to be asleep to be dreaming you know.)

3. Am I putting myself in a position where this person can do me harm before doing a thorough examination of their character? (which is easily determined by: a) watching how they act and b) checking their track record)

What’s that old saying? “Trust everyone, but cut the cards.”

And never, ever underestimate the harm the wrong person can do to your morale, your energy level, you bank account, your reputation. The downside is often much bigger than you think.

Trust and verify

First, know what your bottom line is. What you really want and what you won’t accept.

I’d say that competence, reliability and integrity are three good places to start.

Lack of integrity should be an instant deal killer.  Lack of reliability is its cousin. Lack or reliability in small things telegraphs lack of reliability in big things.

When you see signs of these two things cut and run. There is no possible way you can win in any situation with a human being who is reliability and/or integrity challenged.

As for lack of competence, if you really think you’ll be happy endlessly picking up the slack for an employee, a partner, a vendor, a mate etc. who lacks competence in areas that matter to you, have at it. It won’t kill you, but it probably will get to be old faster than you think.

People change, right?

Generally, people do not change, unless it’s for the worse.

The employee who showed up late the first day and had a reason he had to leave early is just going to get worse and worse.

The date who whips out his or her cell phone at dinner to take a long call will find newer, grander ways to disrespect you in the future.

The colleague who takes and takes and never quite gets around to giving back will find ever creative new ways to extend the trend until he’s bled you dry and kicked you to the curb.

So don’t expect that it will ever get better than it is right now – with this particular person.

What you see is what you get and if it’s bad now, it will probably get worse, much worse.

It’s not all bleak – in fact, the future is quite bright

Some may say I have a negative outlook because I’m recommending you take a long, hard look at negative things.

These same people might accuse of me of failing to use positive thinking.

I accept these accusations because I believe that mindlessly parroting positive thinking principles can be the most dangerous thing in the world.

Parroting positive thinking keeps people in bad situations, hoping that the situation will get better just as it propelled them into the bad situation they never should have gotten involved in in the first place.

Instead of being “parrot positive” be truly positive.

Know that “it is infinitely better to have no person in my life than it is to have the wrong person in my life” – and that you’ve got the strength to wait as long as it takes.

Know that all God’s creatures are worthy of love and respect and treat them accordingly – and use your God-given judgement to weed out trouble-making people from your life before they become a problem for you, or, failing that, as soon as you realize you’ve made a mistake.

Finally, know that in spite of the super abundance of trouble-causing people, the world is full of human gems. One out of ten, give or take.  And among that number, some truly amazing ones. Not perfect, but decent, honest folks you can rely on and will even surprise you by going beyond what you could ever reasonably expect.

They exist and there are plenty of them…

…If you will take the time to look…

…If you will take smart steps to avoid and eliminate negative entanglements that are wearing you out and…

…If you will value yourself, your time and your energy enough not to randomly hand it over to unsuitable people just because they happened to cross your path at the same moment you happened to think you needed someone like them.

Success really is for the taking.

Invest in yourself and have high standards for the people you allow in your life and you’ll be improving the odds for your success exponentially.

You’ll also have a whole lot more fun along the way.

- Ken McCarthy

P.S. If you found value in this, consider sharing it with friends and colleagues.

http://www.Twitter.com

Some of it’s good, some of it’s not so good, and some of it is so bad it’s dangerous.

Finding good advice in these areas is a big challenge, but there’s even a bigger structural problem.

#1 – There are three essential steps you should take after you start making money and before you start investing that no one talks about.

These three steps are not sexy so you can’t build a sexy “get rich quick” course around them, but they are as fundamental to wealth building as eating, breathing and drinking water.

#2 – Investing money is not an easy way to make money, certainly not as easy as the “get rich quick” by investing courses make it out to be

I know this flies in the face of popular beliefs, but here’s the fact:

Among the world’s top gun money managers, a 15% annual return on your money is considered a home run. Stringing several years like this together is considered a god-like performance.

The lucky money managers who reach these heights WORK with world class resources at their disposal along with good sized staffs of razor sharp people who clock in at least 9 to 5 every day (usually a lot more)

Is it really likely that you’re going to do as well as them or better than them in getting a return on your money?

That being said, it is possible, but infomercial BS aside, it’s not going to happen without a ton of work on your part. And here’s the kicker: even if you are really, really good and work really, really hard, the markets are hazardous places and you can get blown up. It happens to the best of traders.

A better way…

This is why I advise people to focus on creating businesses with customers who come back over and over again to buy.

First, starting a business the smart way (the System way) is extremely low risk. If your first idea doesn’t fly, you can live to try again and again and again until you get it right.

Second, when you get something that works – a body of customers, a solid product, a compelling offer – you’ve got a System that makes money week in and week out.

Third, a business that works can be safely leveraged through excellent marketing. So-so money makers can be tweaked to become cash cows. Cash cows can be tweaked to be Godzillas.

In contrast, traders have to re-invent the wheel every day as markets shift and can make big mistakes in the process. Business owners push product over the counter to regular buyers and count their daily receipts. Having done both, I can tell you owning a solid business is a much better deal.

There’s a another big problem with the “get rich quick” investment courses.

Generally, I don’t believe in the “it takes money to make money” philosophy. There are all kinds of way to get started making money with just the spare change in your pocket and if you can’t do it at that level, you probably won’t be able to do it with a lot of capital either.

However, I do believe there is one exception to this rule: trading.

You need ample money to trade and that money needs to be calm and patient money in order for it to get the best results. Taking too small a stake to the market and trying to make your rent with this week’s trading opportunities is a recipe for disaster.

When I was a young guy with no money just getting started I really didn’t want to hear this. It seemed downright un-American. How come only guys who already have money have all the odds stacked in their favor when it comes to trading? Shouldn’t the little guy be able to make smart moves and leverage his $1,000 into a million?

It might happen, but more people win the lottery than pull that off.

The correct sequence is make money – save money – save even more money – put the bulk of your savings in bullet-proof, bomb-proof instruments (like short term Treasuries) – and then take a small piece of your net worth to the markets and make small bets with it.

None of this prevents you from studying investing, paper trading, and maybe even taking micro-positions now to learn how things really work while you’re building your stake, but the idea of “on the job” training in the markets with thin capitalization and no other serious source of income is just not optimal.

And yet, all the “get rich quick” through trading courses are essentially recommending this approach. Great for the course sellers, not so great for the course buyers.

Better idea:

Build a business. Make that business great. Take cash off the table on a regular basis and stack it up in Treasuries. Then take a small piece of that and roll the dice – if you must.

Get rich slow.

Follow the sequence that’s worked over and over again for the people who’ve actually gotten there.

It works.

If you really think it through and talk to lots of people who have “made” it, you’ll see that that’s the way it’s done.

If it’s still July 4, 2009, you can get the complete Blueprint here for free:

http://www.TheSystemSeminar.com/july4/download.html

No matter how many Rolex watches or trips to the Playboy Mansion they offer me…

I promise that they will NOT be speaking at the System Seminar this year.

But maybe I’m being too hard on them. You tell me.

To see who IS speaking at System Seminar 2008, click here.

For the full list of this year’s System 2008 faculty, you can click on this link.

It was quite a ride, but to be honest, I’ve been so busy in the last nine years, I’ve rarely looked back and have only visited a few times since.

This video reminds me of what a unique and admirable bunch of people live in San Francisco. There really is no place like it and it’s no accident that San Francisco was the first city in the world to “get” the Internet. Enjoy!

The first I call the “rape and pillage” school. These folks don’t know their customers and they don’t want to know their customers. They just want to get people to their site, convert them, and get their money.

False advertising, forced continuity, less-than-zero customer service…anything and everything goes. It’s all OK to these folks.

Then there are people who want to build businesses that provide real products to real people. They want a business that will last more than a few months. They want customers who come back again and again and tell others. They focus on the long term work of creating an asset as opposed to a temporary income spike.

Unfortunately, the “rape and pillage” mentality dominates what passes (laughably) as Internet marketing education these days. It’s too bad because the naive folks who try to emulate so many of today’s Internet marketing “success stories” are being set up for failure on two counts:

1. The “rape and pillage” crowd NEVER tell the full story of how they really made their money (assuming they made as much money as they claim.) They always leave important parts out because if they told the WHOLE story, no one in their right minds would want to model them.

2. The “rape and pillage” method while it might work for the short term – and “might” is the operative word – is almost guaranteed to end in failure, personal and financial.

Here’s a newsflash from a recent study published by the DM News: the online businesses that provide the best service (Netflix. Amazon, QVC) also enjoy: 1) more repeat purchases and 2) more free word-of-mouth advertising.

It’s just common sense, isn’t it?

But when you read (and now watch) the latest Internet “sure-fire” money-making scheme, this kind of common sense is always absent from the story.

I’m guessing that today is the biggest flower sales day of the year and that a lot of FTD customers are going to wake up to a strange charge on their card a month from now. It will be small (just $10) and many will not even notice it.

Here’s how it works…

After I placed my order, I was offered $10 off on my next purchase. Since I’ve got another order to place today, I clicked YES.

Then I was shown an official looking certificate with the $10 crossed off and $15 written over it. Wow! $10 off. Now they bump it up to $15. I’m in!

Or am I?

The skpetic in me asks “What’s the catch?” And indeed there is a catch.

I start seeing references to something called “Reservation Rewards.”

Hmmmm…what’s that?

Oh, I see…I get up to 50% off on this, up to 25% off on that etc.

Then comes the fine print. (My brother, sister, and mother are all law school graduates and as an entrepreneuur, I’ve invested a lot in my own less formal – but still very effective – legal training.)

I read…and read…and read… and finally the punchline:

By taking this one-time $15 discount on my next purchase with FTD, I’m committing myself to a $10 a mont payment forever (or until I cancel.) The YES button is huge. The “no thanks” link is microscopic.

This may or may not be a good deal, but I can tell you this, had I been impulsive and not invested significant time in decoding the offer, I would have clicked YES and found myself being billed $10 a month for something I didn’t even know I purchased.

In the direct marketing business this is known as forced continuity. The deal is in order to get Goodie #1, you have to commit to regular monthly payments for Service #2. Of course, you can cancel any time – assuming you have the time to figure out why you’re being charged $10 per month and who to contact to get out of the program.

Is forced continuity a bad thing?

Not for the merchant. There are people who will let that $10 a month charge run for YEARS and the cost to fullfill? Zero dollars. That’s a pretty good business.

But what about the consumer?

What I don’t like about the FTD deal is how overly crafty it is. Yes, from a strictly legal point of view, everything is disclosed, but the manner of presentation is well…crafty. I’m pulling up short on calling it “deceptive” but some people might.

From a business point of view, the “Reservation Rewards” deal is brillant. It can be tagged on to the post-sale to anything so even though the offer is new to me I bet it appears on hundreds of sites. Merchants must love it because it’s “free money” – an instant upsell they don’t have to conceive or manage.

But is it right? More precisely is the way this deal is being presented right?

My inclination? Study the model, test it, but clean it up a bit first before using it with my customers.

Your thoughs?

One of the things I learned about which has stuck with me ever since is the idea of the “winner’s curse.”

It sounds like a contradiction in terms, doesn’t it? How can a winner be cursed? Simple.

When he or she pays too high a price for what he gets.

This happens often in auctions. In fact, the phrase was coined in the 1970s after the US government put up offshore oil leases for sale at auction. In almost every case, the “winners” were the companies that miscalculated and paid far more than the leases were worth. As Financial Times commentator John Kay recently recalled, the “winners” were the companies whose geologists had screwed up.

When you’re at the foot of the mountain looking up, it’s easy to be carried away with winning, and winning at any cost but – as the 1970s gas and oil lease auctions and the dotcom bubble thirty years later showed – you can win the battle and lose the war.

Internet marketers often fall prey to the winner’s curse. I know I have. You see a course or a vendor who promises the moon. The goods come with a correspondingly sky high price tag. Not having the necessary background to make a proper decision, you plunge in, hoping for the best.

I’m all for optimism, but unquestioned optimisim is not a good trait if your goal is longevity. To use poker as an analogy, you could be “optimistic” and go “all in” on every hand. It’s exciting. It feels good…until the cards are turned over and you learn that you’re “all out.”

So how do you protect yourself from run-away optimism and the winner’s curse?

Here’s a three part formula based on three simple questions which I’ve found extremely useful. It’s by no means fool proof, but it will definitely help make sure you get the most out of your time, energy, money and morale…important assets that we all must husband carefully and none of us has an infinite supply of.

The three questions:

1. What’s the prize?

(If I win at this thing, what exactly will I get?) You’d be amazed by people who’ve involved themselves in a frenzy of activity and expense who cannot clearly asnwer this question.

2. What’s the cost?

(In dollars, in time, in emotional energy, in sacrifice, and every other factor you can think of) Again, a suprising number of people don’t count the total costs of various activities they’re involved in – or they undercount them.

3. Is it worth it?

(If I pay the price and get the prize, did I get a good deal?) It should be obvious, not only that #3 is the million dollar question, but that question #3 can’t be answered with nailing down answers to #1 and #2. Therefore, if you can’t clearly answer Questions #1 and #2, plunging ahead is into any purchase or venture is a gamble at best.

Is it OK to gamble? Sure, but look at what you’re doing for what it is and realize the long (and short) terms costs.

The day before the public comments closed, August 27, forty-two letters in opposition were posted.

One the final day, starting from a standing start at 9 AM, we – and by “we” I mean readers of the Ken McCarthy blog – posted twelve full pages with sixty-two letters per page in opposition. That’s 744 letters – almost twenty times the previous day.

Here’s how we did it…

First, how many of the letters in opposition came from us?

We can estimate this by seeing how many letters had the phrase “variable
pricing” in the subject line. That was the phrase the article I wrote suggested that people focus on. You don’t see the phrase in letters posted to ICANN before my blog article appeared Monday morning so it makes for a good marker.

Here’s a rough guess of how many letters our group generated in less than 12 hours from a standing start:

12 pages x 62 letters per page x 90% of letters mentioning “variable pricing” in the header.

Approximately 670 letters!

You can do your own count here:

http://forum.icann.org/lists/biz-tld-agreement/index.html

This is a very quick and dirty rough estimate so let’s round it down to 500 to be conservative.

In short – by any standard – we rocked the house.

How did it happen?

Two ways: one traditional and one web 2.0.

1. Traditional: My list.

I’m convinced I have the smartest, most progressive, most action-oriented group of Internet entrepreneurs in the world on my list. This campaign proved it. No other Internet group posted anywhere near as many letters as we did. We were the dominant force by far.

2. Web 2.0: Digg.com

A subscriber posted a well-crafted summary of the blog article to Digg.com and then let me know about it.

If you don’t know what Digg.com is, you should invest some time in learning about it. It’s the web site that propelled Alex Tew’s “crazy” pixel ads idea into mass awareness.

First, Alex mailed to his small list. His web site got picked up by Digg.com where people went wild over it. Then it got picked up by the mass media starting with the BBC and in short order, Alex became a media millionaire. (I’m less than convinced about the value of what he was actually selling, but that’s another issue for another time.)

Like all Digg posts, our post started out as one post among thousands. Once I saw that we were on Digg’s radar, I sent new readers to the Digg link instead of directly to my blog.

The more people who went to Digg and gave the article a thumbs up, the more prominent the article became on the Digg web site.

First, we were tagged as an “up and comer.”

Then, we made it to Page One of the Technology pages.

Then, for a brief shining moment, we were on Page One of the Digg home page itself, as a result of receiving over 1,000 thumbs up from Digg readers.

Net result: Over 10,000 visitors came to the blog article from Digg in less than twelve hours from a standing start – and, as we saw, 500 or more letters in opposition to the proposed changes in the domain name pricing structure were posted to the ICANN site.

You can see the Digg post here:

http://digg.com/?s=icann

I’m sure some people are probably thinking at this point, “OK, but how can I use Digg to get rich?”

You can certainly use Digg to get greater exposure for your ideas.

If your idea catches on with the Digg community, you stand to get a lot of traffic fast.

In my case, I wasn’t looking for sales or leads. In fact, virtually none of the Digg traffic stuck around to read my other articles. That’s fine. What I was after was for people to be informed about the subject and take an action in their best interest – and they did.

The proposed domain name rule changes were a hot button issue which contributed to the massive popularity of the post:

1. It applied to virtually all Internet users in one way or another
2. It represented an immediate threat to the Internet as we know it – and our “way of life”
3. The subscriber who posted the summary of my blog article did a good job of dramatizing the issue
4. There was a tight deadline for action
5. The action called for was clear, straightfoward and relatively simple.

(Note: The action rate was 5%. Approximately 10,000 visitors composed and posted about 500 letters.)

Warning…

I’m sure there are some Internet marketing sleazebags who are going to try “package” the method I just described as an expensive, whiz-bang, hype-drenched program to “game” Digg to sell junk products.

Please ignore these people when they start pitching second-hand, watered-down BS on this subject a year – or two – from now.

I’ve just laid out the whole method for you.

There’s no need to buy a “new and improved” method.

If there’s more to it, the best way to find out what that “more” is is to start using Digg and make your own discoveries.

Some principles that will help you understand and succeed with Digg:

Rule #1:

Don’t “game” Digg. It’s disrespectful and probably won’t work. If you have something of real value to contribute, by all means post it to Digg and encourage traffic to the Digg post in natural ways.

Rule #2:

Become a Digg community member and user first and get a feeling for what the community and its mission are all about before you post anything.

Rule #3:

Digg is a pretty smart, fast-acting community. If you think you’re going to “game” it with pitches for get rich quick schemes and other junk, think again. Digg members can and do give a thumbs DOWN as well as a thumbs up to posts and they can – and do – take articles off the site with their collective disapproval.

As popular as my blog post was, it did get some thumbs down from a few
readers who didn’t like some of my wording. I happened to get overwhelmingly MORE thumbs up than thumbs down, but if I had gotten more thumbs down, the article would have languished in limbo as the vast majority of Digg posts do.

Final point: Digg.com is a great source of free quality info on all kinds of subjects. Use it. Don’t abuse it. Contribute value to it. Don’t game it.

And celebrate our victory.

I don’t know what ICANN is ultimately going to do, but they definitely failed
in their attempt to slip this proposal by us in the dark of the night and they’ve got
to know that the world is watching which is step one to making powerful monopolies come to heel.

Some people worry about the power of Google.

There’s only one force on the Internet that I worry about and that’s…

The institutions that control the domain name system.

Why? Because they have the power to change the domain name rules radically.

Who cares? You might care if when you domain name comes up for renewal, the charge is $1,000, or $10,000 – or whatever the market can bare.

That’s impossible, right? Not only is in not impossible, but ICANN -
the domain regulation entity that controls .org, .info and .biz – has a proposal on the table right now that make such prices possible.

If they get away with it, you can be sure that Verisign which controls the .com domains will not be far behind.

I only just learned about this from my colleagues Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu late last night and the public comment period ends today.

Here’s what we need to do:

1. Go to the ICANN web page that discusses this:

http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-2-28jul06.htm

2. Compose a letter that opposes the variable pricing of domain names and send it to each of the three e-mail addresses listed on the web page – for .org, .info, and .biz

3. If you need ideas of things to write, just read the comments that others have posted which are on the page.

4. If you are a business owner who uses the web, let them know that you
are and that you oppose this radical change to the domain system.

5. The key phrase is variable pricing, so at a minimum put
something like “No to variable pricing” or “Opposed to variable pricing” in the subject line.

In the
body add something like “As a small business owner who has made a
considerable investment in developing the domain names I own, I am
firmly opposed to the variable pricing of domain names by the .org
registry.” And then send a separate note for .biz and .info.

The posting information is all here:

http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-2-28jul06.htm

Speak now or forever hold your peace.

Some of us are working to try to extend the public comment period, but
don’t count on getting a second shot at going on the record.

Variable pricing of domains by the registries is a terrible idea for web site owners.

ICANN and Verisign enjoy government granted monopolies. The current
system – which works fine and serves the Internet community – should be
kept as it is.

A good deal?

I don’t think so, and yet the price on these things just goes up and up…

Here are some current franchise prices taken from last week’s Wall Street Journal:

* Geeks-on-Call (a knock-off of Geek Squad): $250,000
They provide tech help to computer owners

* Intelligent Offices: $500,000 plus $1 million in net worth
They provide temporary office space

* Golden Corral: $2.5 million net worth and $500,000 in liquid assets
Some kind of a family style restaurant

Keep in mind that these are just franchise fees or net worth requirements. None of the other costs involved in starting the business – real estate, staff, equipment, inventory – are included.

Franchises are usually touted as "proven" concepts with an ultra-high success rate.

In fact, it’s not unsual for franchise promoters to go out of business and leave their franchises holding the bag.

Not only that, the franchise industry likes to play fast and loose with the facts. For example, ask a franchise promoter about the odds of success as a franchise and invariably he’ll tell you that the failure rate for franchises is just 5%.

Baloney.

Dr. Timothy Bates, a professor at Wayne State University in Detroit,
actually studied the question and he’s what he found:

1. The franchise failure rate actually exceeds 30 percent. Fully six times what franchise promoters routinely state.

2. Franchises made lower profits than independent entrepreneurs.

3. The average capital investment of
franchisees was $500,000, compared to just $100,000 for independent
entrepreneurs.

So why do so many people go the franchise route when it seems to be such a bad idea all around?

It’s the price of ignorance, pure and simple. And as you can see, ignorance is very expensive indeed, especially when there are companies that stand to make six figure fees from people who don’t do their homework.

It works the same in the Interner marketing world. In recent years, I’ve seen programs appear on the scene that cost $10,000; $15,000; $25,000 and up. 

Then there are the personal "coaching" programs sold and delivered by telephone that go for $7,000 and up.

Before you even dream of spending money like this on wild-eyed Internet gurus promises, go down to the bank and draw out $10,000 (or get it off a cash advance on your credit card and then put it right back) and actually see and feel how much money is at stake.

Wall Street scammers learned a long time ago that people who are normally prudent with their money, often are careless and overly trusting when the amounts of the table hit the stratosphere and the term "investment" is bandied about.

Here’s a way to protect yourself.

Throw the emotion-laden word "investment" out of your vocabulary. Any time money leaves your hands, it’s a PURCHASE plain and simple.

And when it comes to making a purchase, the only thing that matters – the ONLY thing that matters – is value.  To anwer that question "Is this a value?" you need to know EXACTLY what you’re getting for your money and be able to compare it to what else is offered in the market in the same category.

If you can’t do that, you’re not in a position to write a five figure check.

So what do you do?

Invest in research. (Or to use my new rule, purchase some research.) Set aside at least 5% of the proposed purchase price to make an objective study of the deal you’ve been offered.

Don’t know how to research the purchase? That’s a flashing sign you’re probablynot ready to
make the purchase.

What you’ll often find when you dig is that the promoter is "fuzzy" on the details and has some kind of a time or quanity limit that compels you to act now or lose out forever. 

When you see a deal like this – the price tag is serious, the available info is thin, and you’re being railroaded into acting now – run, don’t walk, to the nearest exit.