LifeLock is based in Tempe, Arizona.
It is now serving tens of thousands of customers in different states of the union, the US Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. LIfeLock is backed up by Bessemer Venture Partners and is in partnership with Better Business Bureau and TrustE. Their services include helping customers putting fraud alerts at credit bureaus and claiming damages in the incident of identity theft. Fred Thompson, former US Senator and a 2008 Presidential candidate taped a radio spot for LifeLock as a part of his ABC contract. In these commercials, he describes a story of military heroism in Iraq. Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh and Paul Harvey have all been celebrity spokesperson for Lifelock LifeLock’s current CEO, Todd Davis has gained popularity when he prominently displays his Social Security Number in an advertisement as a proof that the system works in protecting him from Identity Theft. Identity Theft and Identity Fraud Explained. The threats pose by identity theft and identity fraud is what gave birth to LifeLock. But what is identity theft and identity fraud? These are terms used in referring to all types of criminal activities wherein someone wrongfully get hold and uses somebody else’s personal data for fraud and deception usually done for economic gains. Unlike you fingerprints that are exclusive to you and cannot be given to someone else for use, personal information such as you Social Security Number, credit card and bank account details, or even your telephone number can be used by another person to personally profit at your cost.
The fraud or deception can range from acquiring a credit card, renting an apartment, or setting up a telephone account in your name. A victim’s losses can range from financial out-of-the-pocket losses to criminal charges in worst cases. Regrettably these crimes can be committed unnoticed. The victim will just be shocked when they review their credit reports stating unauthorized charges often involving big amounts of money. There are many different ways on how personal data lands in the hands of criminals. Some of them are: (1) Trash. Bills, pre-approved credit card and bank statements are all full of necessary information to steal a person’s identity. (2) Skimming. This uses a special storage device use to steal numbers of credit and debit cards while doing a transaction. (3) Phishing. This is an internet base stealing usually in the form of pop ups often asking for personal and financial information. (4) Stealing. Thieves can obtain your personal data even prior to you dumping them in your trash cans, they steal them right out of your mailboxes. Stealing purses and wallets are like gold mining for identity thieves. (5) Pretexting. In this, somebody poses as someone representing a telephone company or other organizations coaxing for information out of unsuspecting subjects. Fraud Alerts. The goal of fraud alert is to confirm that the person doing the transaction or is even using your name is really you. With fraud alerts in place, they must verify identities before they can process requests like issuing new credit, arranging loans, increasing credit lines and creating new accounts for utilities.
What the heck am I talking about? Let me tell you that this will be one of my ‘Chilli Pepper’ articles, it’s HOT and very controversial. If you’ve spent anything more than 5 minutes in the Internet Marketing world, you will most probably come across something called ‘Resale Rights’ / or often called Reprint Rights. This is where the creator / owner of the product, which could be an ebook, course, script or software, gives you permission to sell the product -and typically to keep all the proceeds – i.e. 100% profit to you. Sounds good? Hold on…….. it gets better (or worse depending on your point of view). Often, if buying Resale Rights, you are granted ‘Master Rights’ – this is the right to pass on the resale rights to other people. You could a step further, and often you can get the right to pass on the Master Rights to others. This can be a Catch-22 situation. Whilst selling to someone the ‘right’ to sell to others the right to sell a product may sound good, and indeed there are many out there in cyber-land who love to buy resale rights and master rights, it can also cause a few problems. If YOU are selling master resale rights, which in turn allow others to sell master rights, which then allow their customer to sell rights, and so on…… before long, the market is saturated with your product – and it can no longer be sold. Here it will end up in the bargain-bin, or piled together with a load of bonuses to sell something else. If your product really is any good, it will soon be devalued, as many people look at bonuses or freebies as worthless. While some try to sell it, others are simply giving it away for free. Hmmmmm…… That’s how things USED to be.
Resale Rights were often sold by the creator(s) of products, after they had been selling the product for quite some time, made a bucket-load of cash, saw that the sales were dropping off, and have created a new product to replace it. So, they decided to cash-in one final time on their product, and allow others to sell – for it a license fee. The creator has already moved on from this product – but he/she now makes another little pot of gold by selling X-hundred resale licenses at $xxx each. The ‘market’ was becoming very wary and wise to this, so now the flavour of the month is to sell ‘White Label’, or ‘Private Label’ or fully rebrandable rights to products. In theory, this is GREAT! You take a fully (or very nearly) completed product. Finish it off, perhaps add a little here and there, give it a name, create some graphics - and off you go! It’s the guts of a great product – for you to take away and create your very own product. Very often, as we have seen more and more of these recently, you are given the ‘source-code’ files, to do with as you please. The ‘source code’ is the engine of the product – usually everything you need to develop your own version. Sounds good? In theory – YES. In practice – it can be disappointing. Not because the product is poor – NO. Usually the products are very good. But because of how others abuse the rights and the source code. Herein lies the problem. Whilst you could easily fork out $197, $297, $397, $497 and much more for the ‘Source Code Master Resale Rights’ of a product – or even a bunch of products, within a matter of minutes, I GUARANTEE you that someone else is already selling the complete, entire package elsewhere for a fraction of the price. Rather than taking the product, creating something with it, selling it, and then trying to use the Master Resale Source Code Rights as an ‘upsell’ – they are simply selling the entire package, untouched for silly prices.
This really does belittle and devalue the main package. And of course, will annoy the hell out of all those who paid full price for the package in order to set up some good products of their own. Somewhere, there is some rule, or Law or something, which legally means that the original seller of the package (Master Rights, Resale Rights, Source Code etc) – CANNOT legally enforce a minimum selling price for these items. Where that emanates from, I have no idea. But many internet marketers know they cannot force anyone to sell their resale rights product, for a set minimum amount. So, they buy the resale rights, which the seller indicates a minimum resale price – but they ignore this, and resell it for 1/10th of that price. Which makes it look cheap and nasty. What’s the point of the article? 1. To make you aware of the problems that this little sector is facing, and how you could be feeling rather sick within hours of splashing out hundreds of dollars on Rights to something you believed would be a good product for you. 2. The internet is a BIG place – so although there are a few that spoil things, they certainly haven’t got the market sewn-up, and there are likely to be many other people out there willing to pay a fair price for your product.
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If you are thinking about issuing Resale Rights, Master Rights, Source Code rights to YOUR product(s) – just think of everything mentioned above. 4. If you buy these Rights, and soon see lots of others promoting the very same product or package for a stupidly low price – be different. NO – don’t undercut their price, just make YOUR package irresistible by adding more features, more support, more bonuses – or even better, simply IMPROVE the product and then sell it. 5. The best way to avoid this ever-growing problem, is to create your own product. That way, it’s YOURS, your OWN it, you control it. And there’s not hundreds of others trying to give it away for (next to) nothing! Don’t necessarily jump in to buy the latest Master Rights / Source Code offer. If you pay full price, someone will be offering the same package for pennies on the dollar, before you’ve even downloaded yours! Wait and see! Don’t necessarily buy every Resale Rights, Master Rights, Soruce Code offer that flies around…… a lot is simply not worth it. Be choosey…… be selective…. go for quality rather than quantity….. #############################################################
Timothy Rohrer 1. Select a Program: When it comes to working from home, it’s easy to get caught up in all the hype when looking for a legitimate program. The truth is there are a ton of programs out there that actually work, it’s just a matter of staying focused with one particular opportunity. Many new internet business owners will jump from one home business to the next in hopes of finding the Holy Grail. Find a product or service that people want and can apply to better themselves, increase their sales and grow a strong team. 2. Stay Motivated: Finding a great program won’t do you any good if you don’t actually get up off your tail and show like-minded people your opportunity. It’s extremely important to keep your motivation level high, a lot of people start and quit immediately because they feel as though they tried it for a week or two and had no success at all. It will take time and devotion to make your home business work. 3. Cost Effective Advertising: I don’t care whether your business is online or offline, a candy store or a fortune 500 company, you need to advertise. I am not a fan of high cost advertising, but I did have a lot of success with www.craigslist.org, www.backpage.com, Us freed ads, money making forums, work at home forums and www.talkgold.com. All of these places will provide you with quality business seekers just like yourself. Advertising here is free. Another cost effective way to advertise your opportunity is to write informative articles about your business.
Try to help people in your articles and guide them in the right direction. When finished writing, attach a link back to your website in the resource box. Submit your article to as many article directories as you can, it’s all free. If a publisher likes your article, they will publish it on their website with your link in the article so that a targeted audience may hear what you have to say. 4. Build Relationships: There is a saying that the money is in the follow up. It won’t do you any good if you’re getting quality people to look at your opportunity then never speaking to them again. Follow up with people that look at your internet business, be sincere and ask them how you can be of any assistance. After all we are all in this together and people can learn a great deal from one another.
1. Failing to understand how to make a marketing piece “viral”Often people create what they call a viral marketing piece when it is nothing more than a brochure and an advertisement. It is way too self serving. It has no possibility of creating buzz. While there is no guaranteed formula for creating a viral marketing piece, there are many things you can do to increase its effectiveness and its viral nature.2. Failing to make it interesting enough to pass alongWhether or not there are external incentives to encourage the viral spread, if you failed to make the article or e-book interesting enough with high quality content that is useful or entertaining, you couldn’t pay them enough to pass it along.
If on the other hand it is very useful, high quality or entertaining, it will get passed along with or without any other incentives.
3. Failing to provide incentives to encourage people to pass your message alongWhile there are many successes where the sender was not rewarded for passing on viral information, it works better if you can provide an incentive. Provide an incentive that you don’t have to pay up front. Instead provide a success incentive. If the desired outcome is met then you give them money, commissions, discounts, extended memberships, additional MP3 recordings, more articles, more eBooks, etc. Whatever incentive you decide to use, make sure it is easy to sign up for and easy to collect.4. Failing to provide an incentive for people to respond to your call to actionThe way to sell with a viral marketing piece is to do so at the very end, in the conclusion, in the summary or in the resource box. It doesn’t need to be a hard pitch, just an offer for an ethical bribe that will move them to visit your website, call your 800 number or send an email to get whatever you are offering. Experience has shown that the incentive should be related to your product or service. If you are a law firm, don’t offer a chance to win a Corvette or an iPod. Too many unqualified people will sign up and waste your time following up with them. Instead if you are a law firm specializing in Intellectual Property, offer a free e-book on “How you can increase the value of your company with patents and trademarks.
”5. Failing to effectively promote their viral campaignsBecause we’ve heard of some success stories where no promotion was needed, it is easy to fall into the trap that yours too will be one of those. I’m not sure what the statistics are but the vast majority of viral marketing requires promotion to make them successful.6. Failing to encourage others to pass it alongThere is a wonderful piece of wisdom you should apply to viral marketing – “you have not because you ask not.” Does your viral marketing ask the reader to pass this along to others? This can be done in the resource box with something very simple like, “If you found this useful, please pass it onto others that might be helped by it too.” If it is a viral article and you have also it published on your website, have a button or link on the page that says “Send to your friends.” While it is true the “Send to your friends” button won’t make it viral all by itself you never know which “friend” that gets it might decide to promote it to their list of 100,000.7. Failing to send out anything less than a blockbuster successWhile it would be nice to repeat viral marketing successes like Blair Witch, Hotmail, Purple Cow or ICQ those are rare occurrences. Just because your idea falls a bit short of phenomenal doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing. Let’s say you shoot for exponential viral results and only obtain a moderate success, it is still a success. The fact you got free visitors to come to your site is great. I love Michael Jordan’s quote when he attempted to go into baseball after his wildly successful basketball career. “I can accept failure, but I can’t accept not trying.” Even if you think it won’t blow away Blair Witch’s success, try it anyway.8. Focusing on a single viral piece rather than a viral processOne thing I’ve noticed in my business career is that we tend to adopt the John Wayne syndrome, go big or go home. We give it ONE try and if it fails we go home. I don’t know of successful business people or successful marketing campaigns that take that approach.
Instead of giving it this one shot and then not doing anything after that, create a process for creating, promoting, testing and measuring continual viral marketing efforts.9. Failing to test and track the resultsTo be successful you need to experiment with different titles for the article or e-book; test different ethical bribes; try different promotional methods; approach different list owners. Find all of the elements that can be tested in your project, test various combinations and measure the results.10. Not recognizing it is different from word-of-mouth marketingI fell in love with word-of-mouth marketing early in my consulting career. After 10 years of consulting I analyzed every project I’d worked on, every client I’d worked for and wrote down the source. To my shock, 95% of all of them came from word-of-mouth. The good news was it was cheap (free). The bad news it was unpredictable and couldn’t be controlled on-demand like I needed. Viral marketing is like word-of-mouth in that one person passes it on to another but typical word-of-mouth comes from one person asking the other if they know how to solve a problem. It is much more reactive than proactive.
Viral marketing is proactive. A person who reads a viral article or e-book immediately thinks of 5, 10, 500 or even 1,000 people that should know about this and they send it via email or put it up on their website or post in on their blog. Viral isn’t one person coughing in another person’s face, it is one person coughing in a crowded room causing it to spread like wildfire.
