Before I got started on the internet, I can remember watching those SMC infomercials that came on late at night, wishing to myself that I could try it and make some big money.
Luckily for me, I didn’t have the means to join this opportunity. And I say luckily because with what I know now, I would never had made it at that time.
In this article, not only am I going to show you how to sell SMC products, I’m going to show you a bit of what I’ve learned since becoming successful on the internet.
This knowledge has enabled me to quit my day job and make a full time income from home without having to stock any products and without investing a lot of money upfront.
I’m going to show you:
- how to sell SMC products
- the bigger picture
- alternatives to selling SMC products that pay just as good
- Why you should be selling online
- and lots more.
But first…
An overview of SMC
SMC or Specialty Merchandise Corporation is a business opportunity that has been in existence for over 60 years. You can get a membership for as low as $25/month to resell their merchandise. As a member you buy the merchandise at low prices and sell them for a profit. SMC drop ships the products for you so you don’t need to handle any inventory and shipping.
Sounds easy right?
Well, most businesses do until you’re faced with the task of having to do it.
As I scoured the internet to find out people’s experiences with SMC, the consensus questions the quality of the products, finds that the membership is too expensive and a lot of SMC members seemed not to have made any money.
Like this one I found at a Work at home forum.
I got into SMC, after spending what? I think somewhere close to 400 dollars? And you had to spend a lot more to get that website. Anyhow, look around. The products are everywhere. They are extremely overpriced. When I saw the dollar store junk they sold, I thought they must be kidding, nobody here is paying that, this must be Beverly Hills pricing right? SMC was my first home business
mistake.
Personally, I won’t try SMC because there are better opportunities available. I don’t like their products and I don’t like reselling stuff in a face to face setting.
But that’s just me.
You’re always going to find failure in any business and with failure comes the blame game. So what were these people missing? How could they have made it work?
How to Sell SMC Products and Make SMC Work
The key to selling SMC products is something called niche marketing. I’m not sure what the coaching at SMC says but if you’re trying to sell the whole catalog of products then its not going to work.
Find one type of product and only sell those to people who are interested in buying them. This is called niche marketing and your success rate would be much better than trying to sell to your friends and co workers or random people.
How to Find People to Buy your Niche SMC products
The best way to find people to buy your niche SMC products would be to find a product with a unique appeal and then identify the niche or group of people will most likely be interested in these products.
So lets say you found some cool bird cages through the SMC catalog. You would then sell these bird cages to bird lovers or wholesale them to pet stores.
There are several ways you can go about finding these usually passionate people.
Using our example of bird lovers above, I found 157 meetup groups on Meetup.com – a site dedicated to bringing passionate people together.
You can also buy direct mailing lists of people who bought bird stuff in the past from mail order list brokers.
However, finding people to buy your stuff is a lot tougher than having those people find you and there’s no better place to do business than in the world’s largest marketplace – the internet.
Using the Internet to Sell SMC products
SMC is a bit behind on the technology that they use with their internet marketing packages and websites but I can still give you an idea of how to go about using the internet to niche market SMC products and why it is better than just running a product catalog website.
We’ll continue with our examples of selling bird cages to bird lovers.
Lets look at what kind of opportunity you have on the internet. Do people really buy birdcages on the internet?
The first thing I did to determine whether or not I could sell bird cages on the internet was to use a tool called the Google Keyword Tool.
I put in the term bird cages and here’s what I got.
The above screenshot shows you various terms people typed in to find birdcages online and how many times they were searched for.
Collectively, this is a huge market and if you could get in front of even a small group of these people who want birdcages then you’ll be in business and have even more success selling SMC products than the other SMC members who have no clue what to do.
Now if SMC would let you build a site around just birdcages, all you’d need is a domain name like say decorativebirdcages.com and web hosting service.
Another option would be to list the products on your Ebay niche store about birdcages.
Niche Marketing Know-how is the Key
Now I admit that I’m being a little vague but it isn’t intentional. I couldn’t possibly write all there is to know about niche marketing on this blog page.
The point is if you know niche marketing, then you pretty much can tell your boss to kiss it since a whole new world of opportunity opens up for you.
Not only will you be able to know how to sell SMC products, you’ll also be able to make money online selling whatever you like.
The best place to learn niche marketing without breaking the bank is a site called Wealthy Affiliate. The site is run by Niche Marketing Inc, a company owned by two authority figures on the subject, Kyle and Carson.
This is the site where I learned how to market online and a site that changed my life so I’m very proud to recommend it to you. They’ve helped over 35,000 members (last time I checked) worldwide and the site is growing everyday.
Alternatives to SMC that work even better
Now that I’ve shown you how to sell SMC products, I wish to introduce you to some alternatives to selling SMC products especially if you’re going to use online methods.
We all understand the concept of SMC. You pay a fee to become a distributor or reseller. You get a start up kit. Then you market the products via catalog or you can get one of those websites to sell the catalog of SMC products.
Now what if you could get those products for free?
What if those products were from brand names people know and trust?
What if you the products you choose on your own niche website and collect a commission when your products sell?
Well, people do this everyday online combining niche marketing with e-commerce and affiliate marketing to earn big commissions. You sign up with affiliate programs and take a percentage of the sales you make. The products are showcased on your website using datafeeds provided by the affiliate program.
Start an Amazon Store
One of the more popular affiliate programs you can use to make niche online stores is Amazon.com. Its a trusted name in e-commerce and millions of people go there everyday to shop.
It doesn’t cost anything to set up unless you take the better option of having your own domain name. All you need to do is sign up with Amazon’s Associate program and set up your store.
You would use similar methods to selling SMC products as I described above. Find a niche and sell only those products. For example you could sell “men’s luxury watches” and Amazon will feed your store with brand names like Tag Heuer, 
Casio and Cartier. Some of these watches sell for over $5000
Build an Online Store using Datafeeds
Some affiliate programs that have a variety of products will allow you to use datafeeds to put on your site. These datafeeds allow you to display the products on your site and earn a commission whenever someone buys those products. Some popular brands like Target and Walmart all have datafeeds and can be found in affiliate directories like Commission Junction and LinkShare.
A great way to use datafeeds on your site is to sign up for a service like Datafeedr which aims to simplify the process for you.
As you can see there are many ways to make money online that are simply better than selling SMC products but you also know the key to doing so – learn niche marketing and you will simply have a better chance at success.
“The market is too saturated.”
“Too competitive!”
I hear it all the time. Its usually a niche that’s been proven to be profitable but affiliates have a hard time breaking into.
I’ve always dismissed this because I know two things.
- There are no saturated markets. There’s always a way to break into any market.
- Competition means there’s money being made.
Trouble is many affiliates don’t know how to get their foot in the door of these ultra competitive niches. So they run off looking for a keyword they could manage to get ranked on Google’s first page that probably doesn’t have any money in it.
If the correct market research is done, I can guarantee you that you will find keywords in competitive niches that the other affiliates aren’t using. Keywords that are very relevant and profitable.
I remember my first $1500 day. If I told you the market, the first keyword that comes to mind is what all the other affiliates were advertising under and trying to rank for. I took a different approach because I knew that I would have to bid very high to get a good position or I’d have to spend days or even weeks building backlinks to try to rank for that keyword.
Instead I browsed a forum and found a hot topic about a keyword with little competition in the SERPS.
Money in the bank.
Now you don’t have to stress over finding these types of keywords because this is what Travis Sago and Matt Davis has done with InstaCash Keywords. They do the research and find these types of keywords, then email them to you everyday.
Preview of InstaCash Keywords
Need a sneak peek at the type of stuff you’ll get with InstaCash Keywords? Just check the following video as Travis breaks down 3 profitable niches right before your eyes.
Now that’s a pretty sweet video with 3 keywords that can make you money all day, everyday. So what’s the full version of InstaCash Keywords really like?
InstaCash Keywords Reviewed
I bought InstaCash Keywords about 21 days ago (I know because I just got list #21). The 7 day trial is just like the full version as you get all the same benefits.
You can decide if you’d like to keep getting these sweet keywords.
These keywords really are low competition ideas from highly competitive markets but they’re only ideas that you can use to get very more keywords.
The “insights” part of the email is probably the best part as it gives you a look at the market you’re targeting, how to use the keywords and ideas for promotions. For example, one of the “insights” tells you that it would be best to build a review type page comparing 3 or more products, while another tells you to that its a great niche to build an email lists along with ideas for cross promotion.
This is incredible value and I definitely recommend InstaCash Keywords if you’re having trouble finding keywords that convert well.
The only thing that bothers me is that I thought there was supposed to be a blog that Travis Sago keeps that was exclusive to members. I couldn’t find any such blog inside so that disappointed me.
Didn’t matter though since I am a member of Wealthy Affiliate where Travis regularly posts great content such as his tip for writing high converting messages called “BrainGasmic Content”. I would have loved if there was a blog though.
The addition of a bonus for every month of membership was also something I liked. The first bonus – How To Get Your Articles Written For Free – gave me some ideas for building another income stream, so much that I’m looking forward to the other bonuses.
You can get a 7 day trial of InstaCash Keywords to see what the service is like.
Yesterday, I did a review of Shelly Ryan’s Instant Profit Machine and decided to see if she had any other products.
I came across another product she has called Turbo Cash Generator - another unrealistically titled ‘make money fast’ method. Maybe, this time around this product will be worth something. I decided to find out.
Dishonesty At Play
Well, I started at the sales page to see what the product was all about. It had something to do with a software she uses for making money with twitter.
Apparently, there are similarities with Instant Profit Machine – Shelly makes a whopping $3267.75 every single day.
Can you believe that? Same exact dollar amount every single day? With Twitter?
Now this isn’t what prompted me to speak out against Shelly Ryan’s Turbo Cash Generator. I’m happy that she can make the exact same amount everyday.
Something I saw on the Turbo Cash Generator page, I didn’t like.
Because it was downright dishonest.
Look At ‘Em User Earnings!
Most people will never notice this but take a look at the earnings from one user of the Turbo Cash Generator software.
And take a look at the user earnings from someone who used her Instant Profit Machine Adsense page generator software.
I don’t know about you but even Ray Charles could see that something is wrong here. She uses the exact same earnings screenshot on both products!
This is a prime example of dishonesty and I’ll continue to blast Shelly Ryan if she keeps doing this sort of thing with any of her products.
Again, I wouldn’t be surprised if the user testimonials are fake.
Turbo Cash Generator Software Review
So, anyway, lets say you happened to not see this because after all we’re not reviewing sales pages here. What about what Shelly Ryan has to offer?
What about this twitter software and training program? Is it good?
Just like her other product, the Turbo Cash Generator software builds websites on the fly. You will need domain names and hosting as additional costs.
The websites are of poor quality and are designed to promote Shelly Ryan’s other products with review pages. Shelly’s training tells you how to promote these sites on Twitter and shows you how to build followers to promote these sites to.
However, this Twitter training is more about creating spam type accounts and if you want to get labeled as a spammer on Twitter by your followers and get blocked in the process then this is the way to go.
I did some further research on Shelly Ryan and it turns out that she has been creating a less than desirable user experience for Twitter users.
Here she is featured on Twitblock – a service that monitors accounts reported for spam and is one of 20 most prolific spammers on Twitter.
According to Twitblock, Shelly Ryan has over 1400 accounts, with 1372 suspended and 37 active accounts.
Amazing, eh? Is this how you want to go about making money online?
My Verdict on Shelly Ryan’s Turbo Cash Generator
By now, if you’ve read everything here and on the other review, I think you would know enough to avoid Shelly Ryan and her software programs.
Twitter isn’t the easiest platform online to monetize but it is possible to make money using Twitter, even indirectly by implementing other marketing techniques such as list building.
There’s even Sponsored Tweets where you can get paid to send out tweets by advertisers who will pay you.
Beware of anything that promises fast money and automation. While automation is good, the intentions of some of the people behind the programs are less than genuine and can even get you into trouble.
If you want to learn how to make money online the right way, from honest people who have YOUR best interest at stake, then consider Wealthy Affiliate. I’m a member there and although its not a one time fee, they can definitely teach you how to make money online if you’re prepared to do the work.
I was prompted to do a review of Instant Profit Machine by a subscriber who wanted to know if it was easy to make money using this software.
Like so many other programs like this that promise you can start earning in a very short amount of time, it is very easy to get sucked into the expectation of making fast money. I mean, who doesn’t want money NOW?
So I did some research on Instant Profit Machine and here is what I found.
The Salesletter “walks like a duck…”
The salesletter for Instant Profit Machine software, like any other informational product, plays a very important part in someone’s decision to get the product. It should deliver on its promises, otherwise a lot of people are going to have a less than desirable experience that could be damaging to both Shelly Ryan and the customer.
It must be my experience with this sort of thing because most “newbies” would not notice but the salesletter for Instant Profit Machine “walks like a duck.”
$4597.76 in 24 hours?
I’m not sure if Shelly Ryan made this kind of money in 24 hours. She could have.
But does this mean you’ll make over $4000.00 in 24 hours just because you download her software?
Highly unlikely. And when you realize what the software and the earnings program is all about its sooo unrealistic. She also makes it sound like you can just download the Instant Profit Machine software today and you’ll start earning this kind of money in 24 hours.
This isn’t going to happen because there are so many variables involved that would have to be worked on before you can even start earning $100/day…even if you had this software.
This is not to say you can’t earn $4500 in 24 hours; it just means that you really should set realistic expectations, like a more achievable goal and work on one thing at a time. It just won’t happen overnight and probably not anytime this month or even this year.
A Consistent $17048 each month…
Did you catch that?
So each and every month Shelly makes exactly $17048. How likely is it that you will earn such an exact figure each month at anything at all.
Believe it or not, this statement was put there to psychologically make it more believable to you. If she’d said she’d made $17000 each month, this would have generated even more skepticism because its an exact figure. Anyway, enough of the science…its just something that threw up a red flag for me.
Hurry! Only 25, 11 more people accepted
Maybe you should stop reading my review and go order, huh?
Instant Machine is selling well. And by well, the software has sold a lot more than 25 copies.
I mean, who would sell only 25 copies of a $67 software anyway? Also, there aren’t 11 spots left. More like 2 more…lol.
Actually, there is no limit because Instant Profit Machine has literally sold thousands of copies and I’m sure if you come back next week there will still be 11 spots left. It’s a little ploy to make you hurry up and buy but very poorly and distastefully done.
Well Guarded Method?
Shelly Ryan also states that there is:
- no selling involved
- no affiliate marketing
- no advertising
- no additional costs
I actually know what this “well guarded method” involves and it is no secret at all. In fact, there are tens of thousands of people who have probably never heard of Shelly Ryan who use this method. Sure there is no selling or affiliate marketing but if you’re going to make money with this method then you’re going to have to promote your site and I’m sure there are some additional costs. We’ll know for sure…just keep reading as it gets more disturbing.
User Earnings
Shelly sells you the dream a bit more about becoming independent and earning enough money to be comfortable with life. Then she drops one of the biggest red flags I”ve seen so far.
She shows a screen shot of the earnings from one of her users.
Now she must not have been expecting someone like me to visit her site because I would know at one glance that this couldn’t be right.
Remember when she said no affiliate marketing? Well, this is a screen shot of a Clickbank account. Clickbank only deals with affiliate marketing and in her case, these are probably sales from her Instant Profit Machine software and not earnings resulted from someone using her software.
This is not good at all. I won’ t be surprised if the testimonials featured on her page are totally made up.
Based on this sales letter, I would not recommend anyone try to find out what is in the package. There’s dishonestly and hype written all over this and you might want to stay far.
But wait, I’m not done yet. Don’t you want to find out what this is really all about?
What Does the Instant Profit Machine Software Do?
The Instant Profit Machine is a software that builds you web pages with Google Adsense on them. It also generates pages that contain an Amazon store where you earn money from the Amazon Associate program.
The pages are of very low quality compared to most web pages nowadays.
There are some issues that you will not like. While it was promised that you won’t need to buy anything else, you will need to buy domain names (website addresses) and you will also need to host your websites. 
Another issue is that you will need to apply to the Google Adsense program in order to be able to generate web pages with your code in them. If you don’t already have a website, Google Adsense will usually reject you from the program until you do. There are ways around this and Shelly does have training videos on how to get started.
Still you won’t be earning in as little as 15 minutes like the website says because your Adsense application takes time to be processed and can take anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks and in some extreme cases, a lot longer.
Even after you get approved and you get your sites up, you will then have to get people to the sites. How else are you going to make money if you don’t have website visitors?
The way Adsense works is that when people come to your site, ads are shown that relate to the content on the site. When someone clicks on the adsense ads, you make a couple cents. To make this add up to something substantial (like $4597.76), you’ll have to get a whole lot of people to visit your website. The software doesn’t do this for you so you’ll have to learn how to do it.
What Other People Are Saying About Instant Profit Machine
If it seems like I’ve been a little hard on Shelly Ryan and her Instant Profit Machine then I must say that its fair game. If you can’t deliver the goods, then I’m not going to give you a good rating.
To be fair, I looked around a bit to see if I could find any success stories from Instant Profit Machine users but alas, there was none to be found. And yes indeed, I did look.
I found this from one user at The Warrior Forum:
I tried it and when it didn’t work I requested a refund, at which time she offered me an alternate program. I was very clear in my email that I still wanted my refund. That was 3 weeks ago. To date, after repeated requests for a refund I have not heard anything. This is definitely not a very honest person.
I’m not too sure I want to mention any more user reviews here because no one has anything good to say about this program. Instead I recommend that you skip this software and try the following instead.
Make Money with Adsense and Amazon using Hubpages
When I found out what Instant Profit Machine does, I thought about something that I did to make money online. This has the ability for you to not make money with Google Adsense and Amazon but also with Ebay and affiliate programs. You also get a web page that while it isn’t your website, its actually easy to make the pages and most of all its free.
All you need to do is sign up with Hubpages.com and start creating pages. Here’s one I wrote that outlines how you make money with the site.
Adsense vs Affiliate Marketing
Before I go, I want you to know something.
While some people do rather well with Adsense, most people don’t. It takes a lot of visitors to your website do do really well. The fact that you’re earning less than $0.25 for each click on average doesn’t help either.
Plus, when someone clicks on your ad and earns you 5 cents for example, they go on to visit another site where if they make a purchase that same visitor actually earns the website owner, lets say $20 for example. The website owner who earned the $20 is doing affiliate marketing and this earns him much more than if he was doing Adsense.
So instead of pursuing Adsense pennies, you’d actually be better off learning affiliate marketing. I’m an affiliate marketer myself and I earn a full time income from home.
I actually learned this skill at a site called Wealthy Affiliate and they can teach you the same skills too.
Because of programs like Instant Profit Machine that hypes people up and don’t deliver, I only recommend Wealthy Affiliate because I’ve had a lot of success with it and I think they can help you as well.
Last night I was spammed with an invite to sign up with an opportunity called TVI or Travel Ventures International. This wasn’t the first time I had been invited but after doing some research, I don’t know why any one would want to be involved with this kind of opportunity.
First of all, I’m not a big MLM fan. I tried it back in 2004 and it didn’t work out for me. Not because I’m lazy and a quitter but because it didn’t seem right to go chasing all my friends and coworkers to sign up.
I learned some things from the MLM that I was involved with that helped me succeed in internet marketing so I won’t completely knock it. In fact, as far as MLM goes, I actually think they are one of the best in terms of structure. But that’s another story anyhow.
There’s also a difference between a legitimate network marketing opportunity and a dubious pyramid scheme. Well most people know that but there is always the argument of whether or not any particular company fits the description.
Now, back to the topic at hand, there was no way I was going to join TVI Express but I did some research anyway. I found that even hardcore MLM advocates are calling this thing a scam.
That means people who are even more experienced with MLM that most of the people that will sign up and promote TVI.
Troy Dooley of MLM Help Desk explained what would happen should the company not meet your expectations. What if you don’t get paid?
Here’s a quote from Troy’s review of TVI:
Although, the U.K. has great MLM laws on the books, it is virtually impossible for distributors to get any type of legal help if the company were to cause any type of financial hardship to them.
If you file a law suit in the USA, what are you going to get? They do not at this time have any USA base of operations. It the law suit was to become a Class Action suit, the attorney’s fees would eat up any financial relief ordered form the Courts, due to the International legal representation which would be required to win.
Not distributor friendly at all. Based on the fact the company is located in the U.K., you will be signing and agreeing to policies and procedures which are based on U.K. laws not U.S. laws.
In other words, you’d just have to go hug your pillow and cut your losses.
The other thing that bothered me was the fact that it was a revolving matrix and there isn’t a real product that is being pushed.
What you say about discount travel? Huh?!
Please!
$250 for a 7 night, 6 day vacation might sound like an amazing bargain but what the company really wants you to do is focus on building your downline membership which costs USD $250 to join.
Any legit MLM has an easily identifiable product (or products) that you can sell as a distributor in addition to selling the opportunity. I’ve always stayed away from anything that used the word matrix (except the movies of course).
Here’s what the FAQ on TVI Express website says:
3. Do I need to sell any products?
No. You don’t need to sell any products. TVI Express is a unique e-commerce opportunity allowing you to build the Business around the globe sitting at your home. However, we do support leaders who take initiatives to promote the opportunity offline conducting seminars and workshops about the Opportunity.
Doesn’t sound like they’re too interested in giving away those $250 vacations at all. Seems like what they want you to do is get people to pay $250 so that they can get other people to pay $250.
Sorry, I’m just not interested. Count me out.
