If you want to teach people about Internet Marketing, you can’t just be good at it yourself. You’ve got to be BRILLIANT at it!

The reason for this is that as soon you say that you can teach the secrets of Internet Marketing, people are going to start asking for credentials and examples of your successes. People are going to want to know how much money you’ve made and how successful your sites are. Worst of all, people are going to want to know all of this before they have signed up to any of your programs.

To solve the problem, many internet marketers have moved away from the “wall of text with testimonials” landing pages and are slowly creeping into the world of blogging to build their credibility and reputation.

David Ledoux is one such internet marketer who has recently started a blog and is aiming to teach you about the world of Internet Marketing. So let’s clear the sinuses, inhale deeply and get ready to sniff out all the secrets of his humorously named site - DidYouSmellThat.com

I smell someone who keeps it real

David Ledoux was named the #1 Trainer in the World in 2000 by MLM Insider magazine and he retired two years ago (aged 37) to pursue his interests of mixed martial arts, writing, travel and coaching other entrepreneurs. I don’t know much about the credentials of MLM Insider magazine but I do know that calling yourself #1 in the world for anything is a pretty big claim to make! I also know that the internet has changed a lot since 2000 so I immediately started to wonder if I was being fed a just a little hype.

However, any hype that I felt immediately disappeared when I watched the first video of David’s new internet TV channel, DAVE TV. It wasn’t the most polished production and it contained a few rants that saw the running time stretch to 35minutes, but it did leave me with the impression that I was dealing with a “real” person and not someone who was just going to feed me hype and ask for my money.

That’s a good start and quite a difficult task to achieve when talking about Internet Marketing to someone who already knows all the tricks!

I smell Internet Marketing tips and tricks

David blogs about everything and anything in his life with posts ranging from mixed martial arts tournament recaps to his experiences with dance lessons. However, as I’m sure most Cash Quests readers are only interested in his Internet Marketing posts I headed straight for his Cashflow category to see what he had on offer. It was a mixed bag filled with the practical and the inspirational and some of the better posts that I found included:

• A New Idea For Getting Rich With Public Domain Information - David discusses how the free ebook versions of classic novels are profitable again by being sent to cell phones.

• Six Miserable Methods To Murder Your Website - A humorous list of six techniques that will see your site “burn to the ground in less-than-spectacular fashion“. The points in this post are quite on the money.

• 5 Tips For Building An MLM Downline In Europe - This post would only apply to quite a small audience, but if you’re looking to go to Europe and do some marketing, David’s got some tips for you!

• Testing Azoogle vs. Google - David has begun a test between the two networks and is beginning to compare how they perform. It will be very interesting to read the results of this.

All of the posts are written in an easy to understand language, but you should be prepared to be hit with a lot of text. There isn’t a lot of bulleted text or bold highlighting in the posts which can make it quite difficult to skim read. However, David does have quite a unique and humorous voice in his posts which can make them well worth the effort.

I smell realness…but I also smell an Internet Marketer

Some of the posts on David’s blog contain affiliate links to other programs, but I got the feeling that the overall mission of the site was to drive people to his Internet Marketing Intern Program. The program has all the usual promises of profits and traffic along with “powerful and profitable backlinks” and “Web2.0 tools“. It also promises that you’ll never spend a cent and that by the end of the 90-day program you’ll own several valuable marketing assets.

The 90-day program is conducted via email and surprisingly…it’s free! The program promises to be task-orientated (with no theory) so I decided to sign-up and see what was on offer. As an “intern” program, David openly explains that some of the tasks will build his business and some will build your own. This was the first e-mail that I received:

Hmmm….well, it’s not new information for me, but even if it was I’m not sure how Stumbling his sites is going to help me make money. With my task for Day1 being purely to send traffic to his sites (with no mention of how I should get my own site), I decided to unsubscribe from the program.

Perhaps I should have stuck around for Day 2, but the promise of 15 backlinks from community sites didn’t really tempt me. Promise me 15 backlinks from PR6 sites and I’ll stay subscribed, but the promise of a link from a community site doesn’t even get me out of bed.

I don’t doubt that there will eventually be some useful information in the program for those getting started, but it just didn’t really seem like the type of program that an experienced money maker would find useful.

I smell Web 1.0

To me, the blog just looks and feels a little too 1997.

Technically, there’s nothing wrong with that as the blog is still quite easy to navigate and easy to use. However, the world of Internet Marketing is constantly changing and if the site doesn’t look modern it is more difficult for me to believe that it has the latest information. To improve the blog, I would recommend:

• Create an overall color scheme - The background is green, the headlines are blue, the MyBlogLog widget is red and the navigation bar is purple. The color scheme of the site needs a drastic overhaul so that everything blends and flows nicely. This will also make it easier to direct reader’s attention to the important parts of the site.

• Produce shorter videos - Diving into video blogging is great and it is the way of the future. But a 35 minute video just takes up too much time and would be difficult for the majority of readers to watch in it’s entirety.

• Spend time formatting posts - The power of bold text and lists should not be underestimated as it allows a site to be easily skim read. Often if a post can not be skim read, it will not be read at all!

A few more pieces of practical Internet Marketing advice in the posts would also do amazing things for the site.

I smell potential

While David Ledoux is undoubtedly an Internet Marketing success, I really feel that he’s just starting out when it comes to blogging. Perhaps that is best shown with the recent quote:

“With every passing day I’m becoming more and more convinced that niche blogging is the smartest way to get into niche marketing. You create an asset with high visitor value, repeat visits, high search engine rankings, and very topical content. I’m going to be exploring this as a major tool for people to work from home online in the weeks ahead.”

If David can transfer his Internet Marketing skills and knowledge on to DidYouSmellThat.com, I have no doubt that it will do great things - but only time will tell if that can happen.

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