Found this on the side of my pizza box…
Love the Pizza. Why not own the shop?
Of course, it’s a promotion for their pizza franchise.
It’s a simple pitch of, “Do you love your company/job? If not, realize that a solution is to own this business!”
And isn’t that the basic idea behind an MLM Distributorship as well?
The desire to own this business.
So let’s compare a franchise THIS with an MLM this.
There are many variations of each, but in general the 3 key difference are …
1. The upfront costs. Our pizza-loving entrepreneur needs to come up with $50,000-$100, 000. Many MLMs cost under $1000.
2. The income potential. A franchise’s profits are limited by the physical turnover of one business. MLMs earn off many ‘businesses’, and many of them can even earn much more than most franchises.
So if it costs less money and has greater income potential, why doesn’t everyone choose an MLM?
The answer is simple…
3. The odds of success. In an MLM, Distributors fail MORE often than a standard small business. Franchisees, on average, fail LESS often.
If you are already in an MLM you love, then make sure you address #3 with proper training (like the ‘systems’ in a franchise).
If you haven’t yet found something you ‘love’, then here is what I do.
Please do the backlinking for it.
Filed under Martin's Extras by on Feb 18th, 2012. Comment. 
In ‘I’m So Tired’, John Lennon sang that he would “give you everything I’ve got for a little peace of mind”.
For bloggers, peace of mind costs as little as $180 a year for VaultPress and $75 a year for BackupBuddy (two sites). Certainly I hope that’s not “everything you’ve got”, so for anyone who is making money with their blog, those are both great deals.
But which one is better?
A bit of background first.
About BackupBuddy…
BackupBuddy is created by PluginBuddy, a division of iThemes Media LLC.
iThemes is a well-known company for WordPress plugins, themes, and web design training, but fortunately BackupBuddy is a particular focus for them. Backups are not something you want done by a company who is not serious about it.
… and About VaultPress
VaultPress, on the other hand, is made by AutoMattic, the same group that creates WordPress itself. You have to guess they know a thing or two about looking after their own blogging plaform.
Comparing BackupBuddy and VaultPress
Basically they are both going to give you a complete backup of your WordPress blog, and they both have a solid reputation.
So now to the nitty-gritty.
[PluginBuddy has as BackupBuddy v VaultPress comparison chart that is a little misleading IMO, and I'll point it out why I say that as I go through this.]
Here are the differences, and when they are important…
- How Often Are Backups Done?
Subscribers to BackupBuddy can choose to back up their sites every hour, daily, weekly, monthly, or twice monthly. VaultPress doesn’t offer this option because it automatically backs up your data as soon as changes are made ie real-time [the PluginBuddy comparison chart says VaultPress is, "Automated, non-configurable - data auto, media daily". Hmm.] Automatic backups will always be preferable, but the downside is it puts tremendous strain on your host’s bandwidth, especially if you have a large website. The solution apparently to this is you need to add your MySQL SSH and SFTP information in order for VaultPress to back up your site directly, using less of your webhost’s bandwidth. - What is Backed Up?
Seems a simple question but this is a key difference. VaultPress will only backup the WordPress part of the website, and often there may be other parts of your site it will not include. As a WordPress company that is fine for them to do, but the reality is that many other things often get added to a site through FTP or other techie tweaks. Certainly my sites almost always do, and I’m sure the ability to backup non-WP data and files will appeal to a large number of people. - Where is the Backup Stored?
VaultPress backs up your data in at least two separate cloud services, plus the AutoMattic grid. The result is that every one of your file has 11 copies each. Too many? In this case, having too many of something isn’t a bad thing. With BackupBuddy, your saved data are transferred to your choice of Amazon S3, Rackspace, Dropbox, a FTP/FTPS account, and/or, if it is small enough, to your email. - Moving Your Site
BackupBuddy has a comparison chart that puts a cross against this with VaultPress and comments, “Only with premium or enterprise monthly plan. ” Actually both services offer the ability to migrate your site to a new host and domain, although VaultPress only provides concierge support for this to their Premium and Enterprise subscribers. It can be done. - The ALL IMPORTANT Restore!
As one of the other backup services says, “A Backup is only as good as it’s Restore”, so how do they compare? Well both of them will require a bit of techie stuff, but not much. It just is unavoidable. But one thing to note is that when VaultPress talks about it’s One-Click Restore it is ONLY a restore of the DATABASE ie only a partial restoration. A full restore takes more than one click on both of them. - Technical Support
This is probably the main reason for the difference in prices. BackupBuddy does their support through their forum staff and community members, while VaultPress has their ‘concierge’ support staff available via email in standard US business hours. - Malware & Viruses
BackupBuddy also offers malware and security scanning, provided by one of the web’s best known security services, Sucuri. VaultPress, on the other hand, offers full protection from potential security threats, but only to Premium and Enterprise users.
Okay, so now let’s get down to price.
The Basic plan of VaultPress costs $15 a month ie $180 a year per site, but cancel anytime – as if you would want to when you have your backups there, so you really are just as locked in. The Premium plan costs $40/mth ie $480 per year per site, and services like core file integrity scanning and security notifications, aside from the services included in the Basic plan. The Enterprise plan is for large-scale WordPress installations and costs $350/mth ie $4,200 annually per site.
BackupBuddy’s Basic plan, on the other hand, costs only $75 per year and is for two WordPress sites. The Business plan for 10 sites is pegged at $100 a year, while the Developer plan is $150 annually for an unlimited number of sites.
What to Choose?
For me the answer is simple – BackupBuddy for most online situations.
For handling multiple sites it’s a no-brainer.
However, even for a single site it still outperforms.
Vaultpress Basic has it’s place if you need up to up-to-the minute backups, or you want email support rather than a forum, even if it is non-priority support. Just make sure you, and any tech people who help you out on your site, ONLY use WordPress or else what they do will not be backed up.
VaultPress Premium and Enterprises editions are suitable for a pure WordPress site that needs:
- Up-to-the second backups, or
- High-level computing support for your business, or
- The VaultPress official brand name to convince someone eg boss/investors, you have made the right choice.
Most online marketers will get all they need and more from BackupBuddy.
But in the end only you know your situation, so it’s up to you to choose…
VaultPress – Vs – BackupBuddy
But my biggest recommendation of all…?
Just get some sort of backup in place right away. I’ve had my share of malware, viruses, crashes etc etc, and you never know WHEN it will happen to you. Just make sure it is AFTER you are backed up.
Safe blogging!
Filed under Products / Services, Reviews by on Feb 14th, 2012. Comment.
When I meet people who are working online we naturally swap ideas.
So when someone mentioned they had purchased an affiliate website builder called Speedlings from this guy, Adam Ginsberg, I got interested.
What they said sounded fair enough. They had been to one of those Trump/Kiyosaki/Robbins seminars, and bought this product with a training weekend, and a push-button system for making websites that earned affiliate commissions.
When I got back to my computer, I went to do my own due diligence and check out this Adam Ginsberg fellow.
Over in trusty Google I type in “Adam Ginsberg” and then work through the whole bunch of results that come up, including a Wikipedia entry saying,
Adam Ginsberg is a guru of internet marketing…. He has written the book ‘How to buy, sell and profit on eBay.’, along with other titles, which were published by Nightingale Conant.
Cool!
Then I start reading around, and I slowly realize this is one of the strangest set of Google results I have ever come across when I have researched an internet marketing figure. So I thought I would put this post up to see if my research can help others, and also to get further comments and feedback.
You see the Wikipedia entry is all old, and goes to dead or unhelpful pages, and on Amazon his book has 2 reviews for a 3-star average.
Most of the first page of Google for “Adam Ginsberg” seems to be websites that have old entries (eg 2007 & 2009) and that either, Adam owns directly, or there is no identified owner (eg http://adamginsbergcomplaints.com/ which has 2 posts, no identified author, and the owner of the domain is hidden.)
And yet Google’s External Keyword Tool says that this guy is being searched for. It’s not like he is an unknown guy or anything.
My favorite independent place for reviews, IMReportCard, doesn’t have him listed either, but fortunately WarriorForum does – except Adam stopped replying on that Speedlings thread back in 2010.
So I went on searching for all the usual due diligence stuff, “Adam Ginsberg scam”, “Adam Ginsberg complaints”, “Adam Ginsberg review”, “Speedlings review” and getting bits like, RipOffReport & PissedConsumer (where people can say what they like, and just the title of the sites means that you are only going to get complaints), TrustLink.org which has 6 1-star reviews in a row followed by a two-week run of 6 5-star reviews , an old 2004 news item, etc etc.
In summary, here is what I came up with:
- By and large, Adam’s current products are promoted offline to people who are new to online marketing.
- Adam’s ‘Speedlings‘ program is teaching a form of affiliate marketing that has been well used and promoted by many, many others before and yes, I’ve made money this way too, so certainly the actual method isn’t a scam, even if Google is making it harder to profit from recently.
- The program costs thousands of dollars, with ongoing fees and upsells.
- Although promoted as “Point. Click. Profit” on the Speedlings.com site, it certainly is a tough way to make money because each individual site will only make small amounts a day. You need a LOT of sites to have a decent income.
- Even if the method or software is quick and easy, there is lots of time for the learning curve, finding the best domain names or websites, or to simply building up a big enough portfolio of sites.
- Many of the complaints are about customer service problems.
- The double-your-money-back-guarantee people talk about online is not a free kick. You have to work hard to qualify for the guarantee.
It certainly isn’t the most careful way to make money online, because you spend thousands of dollars before you know about your own psychological suitability for working online, let alone how well you and Adam Ginsberg’s support team will get on in this long-term commitment.
Personally, there are other options out there I would recommend ahead of this one.
Love to hear more people’s responses and experiences.
Filed under Reviews by on Feb 11th, 2012. Comment.
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