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My posts about XL Results Foundation Life Membership have sparked some debate here recently. Things really hotted up after a recent comment from a woman who was about to join XL after attending Roger Hamilton’s Business Breakfast Presentation in Melbourne. On returning home she decided to do some research on Roger Hamilton and his XL Results Foundation. When the search results served up my blog post, she was alarmed and left a long comment explaining her concerns about the sum - $12,000 - that she had almost paid over. Since that comment there have been contributions from other former XL members and those who had almost joined, expressing scepticism over the value of the offer. Some of these members asked me not to pub lish their comments as they were nervous of going public, and I have used their material as sources for this article. These comments brought several long and involved comments from the XL Results Regional Manager in Melbourne, Jeanette Jifkins, who was clearly very upset that others were not enthralled with her company. There have been other contributions from Paul Dunn, whose Ecademy profile says he ‘runs XL in Australia and he’ll soon be taking XL to America’, in staunch defence of XL’s charitable achievements.

Let me make it quite clear why I have written reports about this business opportunity. The offer to the potential member is membership of a network of entrepreneurs, and extensive training opportunities, whose quality is not independently verified or accredited. New prospects do not get a chance to study the contract terms before signing up, they are swept up in the moment by a persuasive presentation. They are often left to reflect on the implications of this decision only after they have parted with a substantial sum in hard cash. Paul Dunn has asserted in one of his comments that there is a cooling off period for new recruits. I would like to see evidence of that.

I do not view XL as a classic pyramid scheme, but I think others are labelling it that way because they do not see the Life Membership package offering a value to justify its high price - why is there not an annual membership option? This company has been in existence for less than a decade, it is privately owned so what guarantee do members get on the prospects of it existing in another ten years? If I decide to join any Chamber of Commerce or similar organisation in Britain there is a set annual membership fee, and at the end of a year’s membership I decide to renew if the organisation has given me value for money.

When I attended the XL Results presentation the big selling point was the scope for getting freelance work from other life members. Most freelance consultants spend their lives chasing more contracts, and I heard a lot of sad stories at the last Ecademy members’ event. So if a carrot is dangled in front of a hungry consultant, they are very likely to go for it. None of us know if our next contract will be our last and a carefully designed pitch can prey on those anxieties, making us think that life membership of XL Results Foundation is a possible answer to our problems. But of course there is no guarantee of any work and none of the comments in support of XL have given any proof of income generated through membership of the foundation. Charitable work is all well and good but this is meant to be a business networking organisation. The proof of a business organisation should be just that - real, tangible business results for its members.

The XL organisation business model seems weighted towards getting money from new members, instead of improving the value of the membership package. If the company wants transparency (as they have requested from me) then I would like to see them publish full detailed accounts of its revenue sources. They should also be able to show independently verified examples of members who have obtained worthwhile contracts and expanded their business as a direct result of their membership of the foundation.

Yesterday we received an alert from Natalia that Roger Hamilton has begun selling the infamous XL Results Foundation Life Memberships in Melbourne Australia at breakfast meetings around the city. Roger Hamilton is charging A$15,500 and those attending were told that membership are ’strictly limited’. Well, those limited spots are on sale in major cities every day of the week, so I think the only thing in short supply is the number of people willing to pay up.

If you signed up and realised your mistake after leaving the meeting, you are not alone. The presentation is designed to lead you to pay up on the promise that you will be entering an ethical organisation. You will be told that members refer valuable business among themselves, and everybody can be trusted. Sounds great? In fact, one of the guests in Melbourne was David Schirmer, a scammer of monumental proportions - he is a target of investigation by the Australian Securities Investment Commission (ASIC). He is also currently being taken to court by investors who were duped into investing in his Life Success Pacific Rim company with the promise of returns as high as 500 per cent. The investors lost everything while Schirmer continues to live in the lap of luxury. If  a character like David Schirmer is associated with the ‘Circle of Trust’, hold on to your wallet - very tightly!  You can see a video investigation of David Schirmer at Get Rich Slowly - a site full of sound advise and exposes of major scams.

If you are a disgruntled member of the XL Results Foundation, please leave a comment here or if you would like to make contact with others who have been scammed - in confidence - you can email your details to me: flora@brilliant4biz.com.

As a blogger making my living from home, of course I want to get my sites to the front page of the search engine results for my chosen keywords. But I confess, that first step is the hardest part of internet marketing for me - how to find profitable keywords that will bring visitors to my site. I have tried using all the conventional tools, and I have spent a lot of money on expensive software that has just not worked for me. It does not matter how well I write my web pages and blog posts, how many great offers my readers can find, the most important step is the very first one - finding your niche. I seemed to be climbing a mountain constantly and never reaching the top.

Then, a week ago, I found out about a piece of software, Micro Niche Finder, that helps you make sure you are on the right summit. I have now used Micro Niche Finder for one of my sites, which was languishing on page three for most of its keywords. Once I used the Niche Finder, that same site reached No 1 in 48 hours.

This is one of the most versatile keyword software packages I have used, and I have hardly left my screen for days because I just keep finding lucrative new niches for my blogs! The holy grail of any webmaster is to find an area with a good quantity of searches and little competition. You can download the package immediately to start increasing your online income today. If you need to find out more, have a look at these step by step videos that show exactly how you can home in on red hot niches.

I have tried all the other packages available - Wordtracker, IBP Arelis, Google Adwords finder, Nichebot, SEO Elite, GoodKeywords - NONE of them is as effective or as easy to use as Micro Niche Finder.

I signed up for Blogpayz paid to post site in February, completed one assignment offered by them - paying $1.70 - and waited for more.  Then things went very quiet: they paid the money on time, but my dashboard remained empty.  Later I was offered another paid blogging assignment for $2, but at that price it is not really worthwhile.  Today I heard that Blogpayz has more bloggers signed up and they are hoping to offer a minimum payout of $5 per post.  That will be welcome and I hope the service takes off.

Yesterday I did a quick search to see if any other promising new paid to blog sites had popped up nd i came across Blogvertiser. They are in pre-launch stages, you can sign up and wait for updates.  I have left my details for one blog and I look forward to getting some paid reviews from them.

At last I am updating my personal list of the top paid to post sites in my experience. These are real examples of the companies that pay me to post on my blogs - apart from this site - and how they operate. You can also read my permanent review of the paid to post sites as well, this post is the latest update. I have not updated this monthly list for a long time, many of the paid to post sites that once produced a good income stream are now doing nothing. The main drop in earnings came at PayPerPost. Their bloggers were targeted by Google in November and December, and most blogs’ page ranks dropped to 0 simply because they were writing paid posts for the company. It was easy for these blogs to be penalised as PPP requires a code to be embedded in the < Head > section of your web pages in order to register a blog. The search engine spiders picked this up easily. There were other, more arbitrary penalties applied and they are very unfair. It seems as if blogs were penalised just for mentioning the name of PPP. This site, for example, has never been registered there and I do not write piad blog reviews here. But the page rank dropped overnight from PR3 to PR0. Once the page ranks dropped for my sites that were writing paid blog posts, the opportunities at PPP dwindled and they were paying only $5 - not worthwhile in view of their rules on interim posts. I withdrew all my blogs from PayPerPost in January.

Here are my top sites for May 2008

1 PayU2Blog This is the consistent top paying site for me. It is well run and there is a blog where you can ask questions, or ask for more work! If you live in The US or Canada there are opportunities to test products before reviewing them. This is a good options, as I live in the UK I miss out on that one.

When you go toyur dashboard you have a list of blog opportunities for your sites. You will also see the date when they should be finished. When the post is written, cut and paste the URL and it is approved automatically. PayU2Blog pays out every fortnight, usually on Fridays. The payment covers all assignments completed up to the prevous weekend so you never wait more than three weeks for payment.

The vast majority of posts pay you $5 for a post of 60 words. If the post is longer or has more detailed requirements you may receive $7.50 or $10.

2. Bloggerwave

This is the surprise of recent months. I had some opportunities from Bloggerwave at the end of last year, then I found that four of my posts had been rejected and I had not been informed. I should have tracked the payments as well. Recently I have obtained more blog reviews from this site, paying $10 each, and they have been approved within five days of posting. They then pay out after a month. For the last two months Bloggerwave has been the second highest paying site for me.

3. Linkworth

This site has the most complicated set of paid blog advertising offers that I have ever seen, and it takes ages to get in and track the opportunities. Linkworth offers In-post ads, sidebar links and pay per click ads. The first thing you see when you log in are your earnings for the month - that bit is easy. I cannot get the Linkworth widget to work, so I have to post the ads in my blogs manually. Some ads are permanent but then the advertisers often cancel and the blogger needs to set a reminder to remove the link at the end of the month. I hope it will become eaiser to use Linkworth as I think it has good earning potential. It is my third highest paying site, and once the links are posted there is potential passive income.

4. Sponsored Reviews

I apply for a lot of teh opportunities on this site, but very few are accepted by the advertisers. Some of the advertisers actually reject the offer but most of them just leave it until it expires. When an offer is accepted, it usually pays very well and that is why Sponsored Reviews is my fourth highest paying site. My latest assignment was related to the niche that my blog serves and the advertiser wanted and unbiased review of their own site compared to competitors. A review like that is a pleasure to write: the sponsor gets a link and I write relevant fresh content for my site - I do not undertsand why Google thinks paid links are wrong.

5. Blogitive - LinkNerve

Blogitive has fallen away since its heyday a year ago. I logged in hundreds of times and found no opportunities on offer, and this is timeconsuming. Its partner, LinkNerve, send me opps by email and they are easy to complete. Payment is almost instaneous, which is a real plus. I hope this side of the site develops.

And that is it. If you wand to find more information on signing up for any of the paid to post sites, foolow the links to my main review. You should also find links to other related stories below this article.

You might like to read an article by Megapreneur, Get Paid To Blog - Blogging For Money, with some good ideas on how to drive traffic to your site using social networks.

I have been doing a lot of blogging this weekend to get a new domain established, I usually manage to get a new site indexed in Google within ten days. The new domain was registered on Thursday and I started uploading new posts on the same day.  So if it appears in the index by next weekend I will be happy. Then I will start to get some good traffic from the search engines and I should be able to use the domain to start blogging for money very soon. I ’stumbled’ one of the posts at StumbleUpon! and that produced more than fifty visitors in an hour. But I find that most Stumblers do not stay on the site very long as they are not really targeted to the niche of every page that they stumble. So traffic from Stumbleupon is not always quality traffic. Read more »

There have been quite a few comments on the earlier articles I wrote about my experiences with Roger Hamilton and his XL Results Foundation, which claims to be dedicated to World Wide Wealth. Only one person made a really positive comment in support of joining the foundation. According to its website, XL Results foundation uses collective power to create and contribute wealth through Social Enterprise. XL Results Foundation claims to be a global entrepreneur network whose entrepreneur members share the tools and knowledge to greater profit and greater contribution. When I attended the business breakfast I saw nothing at the time to prove that Roger Hamilton is in a scam organisation. He is a persuasive speaker and by the end I wanted to find out more about this organisation that promised me the chance to network with thousands of other like minded entrepreneurs helping each other generate wealth. Read more »

If you are young and you have winning looks, here is an opportunity for you to find fame and fortune. A new beauty contest called Look of the Year could be your opportunity to get seen on the world stage. You could win the top prize of $10,000 cash and be taken on to the nooks of a leading model agency. They are seeking young people worldwide to send in photos and possibly become a top model of the future. Send in your images now and it could be you! ???????? ????? ????????http://www.lookoftheyear.com

I have read a lot of sales pages for guides that claim to teach you all there is to know about blogging for money. Mostly they are just an introduction to the various blogging platforms with some generalised tips about traffic techniques - certainly not worth paying for.

On the other hand, there are some guides that are worth every penny, and they will pay you back many times the cover price in increased blogging earnings. If you have not heard of Rob Benwell’s famous Blogging to the Bank guides, you need to get out more!! This is a young guy who started his blogging business with just a hundred dollars. Now he has turned that initial investment in himself into a substantial fortune. You can learn his methods and copy his steps for your own income generation. Blogging to the Bank 2.0 has just been released, with full up to date help for anyone who really wants to make money from their blog.

Blogging is acknowledged to be the fastest most effective way to start making money online and with the system you will learn in Blogging to the Bank 2.0, your potential for big autopilot earnings just increased exponentially. Grab it now and start making money from blogs!

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Dennis Carey is an authority on business mergers, buyouts and joint ventures. It is hard to keep up with the latest trends and decide which way to jump. Should your company join in? His authoritative book on the subject is on sale at Amazon, use it to prepare for the next business shakeup.