So, its been a year since I joined as a dubli Business Associate. I’m going to post about my thoughts about that; as I’ve said, but, I wanted to post some of my stats first. Here goes:

Number of Dubli Business Associates that I introduced to the business and signed up: 4

Number in my organization (my people + the people they signed up): 61

Number of customers that I attracted and are assigned to me: 110

Number of customers that purchased from me: 18

Number of credits I sold: 1,490

Dollar amount of shopping commissions: $1.44

Number of credits it took to attract the customers: 1,010 (This includes the number I used to purchase things at Dubli – I wanted success stories.)

The customer number dubli assigned to my first customer on 2/20/2009: 26439

The customer number dubli assigned to my last customer on 2/18/2010: 148301

(Customer numbers were assigned in a manner that made me believe that this number MIGHT be a good indication of the number of US customers.)

Number of websites I created over the past year for the dubli business: 5 (I learned Wordpress, Simple Machine Forums, Joomla and some – read very little – PHP programming)

Number of websites remaining today: 3 (Including this one, my first)

Initial Cost: $3,290.85 (Including the credit card service fee.)

Total Revenue: $3,425.44

Soon, I will be writing a post about why I intend to quit Dubli. But first, let me say something to potential dubli customers: You can get really, really good deals on dubli, even after factoring in the cost of the credits, shipping and the annoying foreign exchange fee. (My experience is within the US, I don’t know if my experience is the same for those that live in other countries.)

FOR CUSTOMERS THINKING OF USING DUBLI (info current as of post date)

I have personal experience buying from dubli. Here it is: They are often slow to ship, the credit card transaction must originate in a foreign country because I am always charged a small FX fee, the tracking of shipments is non-existent, and the customer service regarding orders is less than steller. But, I always received what I bought in good condition, packed well and, on average, after all costs included – credits valued at the retail amount of $.80, for 15% below what I could find anywhere else. My purchases included Apple products and Visa and American Express giftcards, which never go on sale anywhere.

A secret: I run (ran, I guess is a better term – haven’t done much lately) a website called biddingtracker.com. I posted all of the prices that I saw on dubli when I checked them. At one time, we had quite a few other participants and we shared the prices we saw. This helped in two ways (really only on the Xpress Auction, more about the Unique Bid, below): 1) If you were interested in an item that was on dubli AND was also posted on biddingtracker, you could know what the last price was; so you knew the highest you would pay. 2) You could (can still, actually) look back over the many items posted and see the rate that items decrease in value. (Visa giftcards drop in price and sell much more quickly than Bose music systems, for instance.)

BUT, you don’t need to run (or use) another website to get the good prices. Just check the price over a day or two on an item you want. (Less than a day, usually, on giftcards.) BE CAREFUL to check the price on the same item. Every item on sale has a unique number that you can see in the URL and only in the URL. For example, there is an American Express $200 giftcard on dubli as I write this. The URL is http://us.dubli.com/American-Express-200-Gift-Card__5_10378?BArefno=7967766 After the description, there is an underscore and then the number 5. The number 5 indicates that the card is in the Xpress Auction (3 for Unique Bid). Then there is another underscore and the number 10378. This is the item number for this item. After this Amex card is sold, another one exactly like it will be put up on the site. BUT, it will have a new item number. If you didn’t know this, you would check this Amex card in the morning, decide not to buy and take your chances that it might come down in price, and then come back in the afternoon, after it had been sold and check the new Amex card, with a new and different item number and wonder why it had gone UP in price. It didn’t, it’s just a new item. (BTW, the info after the ? in the URL, is the information dubli needs to know to assign you to me, as my customer, if you click and look at the Amex card and then decide to sign up for dubli.)

OK. Another secret. I’ve seen some talk on some forums about the fact that people can’t REALLY be getting the prices that dubli posts as sold. “Why would someone bid and then NOT buy an iPod for $15 and then allow someone else to buy it for $10, or for $0.00?” They think it must be a scam for this reason. It’s not. Here’s the thing: dubli will say the reason people are getting the prices that you see is because more and more people are coming to dubli and the prices are going down so quickly that the person who saw the iPod at $15 couldn’t act quickly enough or just took a chance that they could get it for cheaper in a second or two. This is incorrect (but possible in the future, I suppose). Here’s what is actually happening: Dubli Business Associates who still have a lot of credits and who do not plan to renew their licenses are clicking prices down to unbelieveable levels so that they can get SOME value out of their dubli investment. If a former business associate goes in late at night and starts clicking on a $200 giftcard and gets it for $0.00, those credits that she used were worth $200. If she does nothing with them, they are worth $0.00. It is counter intuitive to think that someone would use a credit that has a face value of $0.80 to reduce an item by $0.25, but if you have 5,000 credits that you’ve had a hard time selling, why not use them for that? It would take forever to click on single items once or twice and hope for the best when you have 5,000 unused credits. And, its always possible that there are current business associates that believe it is a good investment for them to lower prices on dubli items before buying them so that they can point to that item as why someone new to dubli should either join as a customer or an associate. In any case, someone really got the items for the prices shown. (They just may have used more credits than a normal customer would.)

As a potential customer without thousands of credits, what does this mean to you? It means that you might get lucky and click on an item that is in the middle of being clicked down by a frustrated business associate and actually be able to get the iPod for $15. (And, if not, with a little record keeping, you can get it for 15% off or so.)
So, potential customer, take a look at when those items that sell for ridiculous prices end. Often, they end in the middle of the night. Maybe you could use that info to your advantage…

Let’s talk about Unique Bid. On biddingtracker, we had a group of people that posted different strategies that could be used to increase the chances of getting an item there. There was some discussion on the public site, but most of the good stuff went on behind the scenes, via private messages among members. And, some of those members were very successful. But I never got a Unique Bid item. I tried for a couple of 24” iMacs and was once $0.25 away from getting one of them. And let me say that just like in the Xpress Auctions, I believe that there are a lot of former business associates trying to make use of their very numerous credits to try out the Unique Bid. The thing is that, unlike in Xpress, a lot of business associates trying for the same item in Unique Bid actually DECREASES the chance of a normal customer getting a good price.

That said, the best strategy for unique bid is to place a lot of single bids at different price points early in the auction and then keep track of when you get notice that someone else has bid that same price point. You can judge the level of interest in the item that way. Then, just before the 5 minute mark, when you can still make large ‘range’ bids – bids that cover a large amount of prices like $1.00 to $10.00 (which I think would use 36 credits) – you use the info you’ve gathered and make a large range bid, or two (or three). You can track the price that the same item went for the last time, or the last 10 times, to get more info that can be used to bid. If you use 200 credits at $0.80 each and get an iMac for $320, you’ve spent $400 for an iMac. Of course, if you use 100 credits and don’t get an iMac, you’ve spent $80 for nothing. You can use information that you get as you bid and as subsequent people bid to modify your next bid and increase your chances. No doubt that there is a lot of risk but try that with a slot machine.

Biddingtracker.com is still there. I won’t be doing much with it right now, but if other people wish to discuss things dubli, especially strategies and bids, it’s there to be used. (I will still be moderating and getting rid of spam.) If any current dubli business associate wishes to advertise there, send a PM to the admin there or comment here and I will get back to you with prices and such. (There are some creative ways you can advertise.) Long term, I am probably going to turn the forum into a discussion about all unusual web sites for purchasing goods – penny auctions, reverse auctions, etc.

As for this site, I will begin posting information about other opportunities and other ventures. I’ve found that I do like to blog, when I have the time.

Please post your comments and questions about dubli…

Stay tuned for my post about my experience as a dubli business associate and why I am quitting.

Its been awhile since I’ve posted here. I’ve been busy with some other, pressing endevours. (I still am busy, but thought I should at least finish up with the Cinch review that I started.)

First, let me begin by saying that I think that this Dubli thing is a really great idea and I think it will take off. (Not as fast as you and I hoped or even expected, maybe, but still, its gonna work and its gonna make those of us that got in early very happy.) I saw Michael Hansen in person a little while ago and I have to say he is an impressive man. He says that he gets ideas almost every minute of every day, and I believe him.

I also have a lot of respect for Tom Ashlock, the creator of Cinch. He is one of the first two Vice Presidents in Dubli, and, I think, a genuine good guy.

But, I don’t like Cinch.

I understand the vision: get Dubli customers to use dubli through a different channel and then use that channel for any number of other things – advertisements, communication, interaction. It really would be great for Dubli and for Dubli business associates.

But, there isn’t enough of an attraction to customers to make them anything but annoyed. In my opinion.

My experiences: Our team has been successful in attracting customers. We’ve sold quite a few credits and had some good feedback from them. I sent 6 of my customers, some of my closet friends who aren’t dubli business associates, Cinch. Only one person installed it and he has since removed it.

Two friends said that they would install it at home, but really only access dubli at work. and their work will not let them install a program like cinch. (Then they never did install it. I quit asking.) The one who did install it had similar issues to me.

1) It often crashed. It would lose connection with the dubli site or something and gray out. Sometimes it seemed that my whole computer would slow down when this happened.
2) It starts up everytime you turn on the computer. This is how dubli and dubli business associates need it to work so that its always on the customer desktop. But, it takes time and its a bit annoying when you have no intention of looking at dubli at the moment.
3) It doesn’t really do anyting from a customer stand point.
4) Its old technology. We don’t install programs anymore – we go out to the internet. Facebook doesn’t require a fat program on your desktop. Twitter doesn’t need anything but a browser – even the myriad of applications that work with Facebook and Twitter don’t need you to download and install them. At my place of business, we are moving to ‘thin client’ where applications and needs are met through applications hosted elsewhere – not on the desktop.

Now, Dubli’s stated goal is to move to mobile phones. I have an iPhone, and this is actually a place that I do install programs. A program like cinch would work well on phones, I think.

And of course, this is only my opinion. I could be wrong. But, I am not trying to get my customers to install cinch anymore. (I might try again once Connect is free to use.)

Please post your experiences with Cinch in the comments. Let me know if I’m wrong. Does anyone have somre great positive feedback? I’d love to know.

A week or two ago, the Dubli website changed. The most notable change was the removal of the Zer0 auction.

I’ve not been attending the Webcasts as often as I should, so I don’t know what the official word on why the Zer0 auction was removed is. But I have a guess.

I’ve long believed that the Zer0 auction was vulnerable to webscripts that could automatically check the price and then, when the price was below a certain threshhold, could check the price automatically very quickly until the price was driven to 0. For a good programmer, this would be a piece of cake to do.

I might be wrong, of course. And Zer0 might be coming back for all I know.

And, the new site layout is great, I think.

I earlier promised posts on our experience as we begin to use Cinch and Connect. Here’s the first in a series.

As you Dubli Business Associates know, these are the programs built by Lariat Software that helps connect business associates with: 1) customers, 2) potential customers 3)other business associates and 4) potential business associates.

For those that have been with Dubli for awhile, you know that the launch of Cinch was a very highly anticipated event. It was to be the signal for all associates to begin launching their credits into cyberspace to start attracting new dubli customers.

Well, it finally arrived in mid-July after several false starts and a long delay. (Which is understandable for a brand new software/internet product.)

We weren’t sure that we were going to use it. We had been sending credits out and attracting customers without Cinch or Connect since February. We have developed a nice little system that seems to be working well.

But we decided to jump in and try it. We watched the first two Cinch training videos over the past few nights.

Last night, I subscribed to Connect and downloaded Cinch to my desktop. Here’s how it went:

I went to http://dubli-connect.com and found a login screen with no way to register and no instructions. It didn’t look like the screen I remembered from the training videos. So, I went to my e-mail to find the message that announced the launch to see if it had a different address. It did. The correct address is http://http://www.dubli-connect.com/Subscribe

I registered using our login info for dubli. Pretty easy to do. I read the Terms and Conditions and saw that the license fee is month to month. We could cancel at anytime. (The site asks that you give it 90 days to see if its helpful.) We paid the $14.95 for one month.

At this point it came to the Connect subscription site. On the site there is an icon to click to download and install cinch. (The subscription is for Connect – the website. Cinch is a program that runs on your desktop and is free. More about the functions of the two in later posts.)

We downloaded Cinch with no problems. It immediately showed the number of credits we have left in our account which meant that it had successfully connected to dubli.

Then I began attempting to import some contacts. I have a file of contacts that I had ealier saved in .csv format. It was easy to browse to the file and Connect immediately recognized it and brought up the info from the file. It asked that I idnetify each column of data and required that at least First Name, Last Name, and e-mail be identified. I also had some phone numbers that I labeled. Very easy and intuitive.

Then it asked that I identify each contact as either 1) a BA (Business Associate) 2) Potential BA 3) Customer or 4) Potential Customer. I did this – again easy. (I dumped all that I didn’t really know into Potential Customer.)

Then I pushed ‘Continue’ which is the place that the software really begins to take the file and the infor you provided to begin the import process. Things went well for the first 5 contacts. Then (at 13% done), the program froze. I noticed that the Cinch program I had open also froze. I had to cancel, and, I presume, lost all of the info that I had entered.

I haven’t been back in yet to see if anything was saved. I’ll post that with the next update, coming soon.

As those involved with Dubli know, there was a big meeting for Dubli Sales Directors and above in Miami this weekend. We didn’t attend but just received an e-mail with some information. Here it is:

You are all probably waiting with bated breather to hear the news from Miami.

1. New position created at Senior vice President- 5 VPs somewhere in 5 legs.

First one there will receive New Bentley Cabriolet, Breitling Bentley Watch and $ 1 MILLION CASH! – All new SVP subsequently will recieve $ 1 MILLION CASH!

2. Global Platform November 1, 2009  That is right, you can sponsor anywhere in the world and they will ship the product to the customers in any country in the world!!  The customers on the world-wide auctions will all contribute to the auction and the prices will drop like a rock.

3. DubLi Academy opens September 2009.  Real Associate training with testing and certification.

4. North American Customer Service Center opens in Miami September 2009 with English and Spanish speaking staff!

5. DubLi Land in Cayman Brack is beginning construction for luxury residences exclusively for all DubLi VPs and SVPs.  DubLi will finance.  All new VPs for 2009 will recieve a lot at DubLi Land for FREE.

More to come…

Pretty exciting news. This will really get things moving! I want a lot in Dubli Land. (And $1 million!)

We’re looking for information about using Cinch. We are going to start using it in the coming week and will post our results. In the meantime, please comment to this post with what you are experiencing.

I have to say I’m nervous about trying to get people to not only register at Dubli, but also install a new program on their computer that they are not familiar with. I know that this is why we really should call everyone that we send the Cinch to, and that is what we will do.

What are you seeing out there?

There are a lot of ways to make money on the internet. (Beiing a dubli associate is a good way, for instance.) There are also many ways to save money. (Being a dubli customer is a good way, for instance.)

One other way some people are making money is by writing articles for Squidoo. If you write well and develop an audience, and drive traffic to the site, you share in the profits. It takes awhile to get established, and its not guaranteed, but its fun, and there really are people making money at it.

So, I gave it a shot. Check out my ‘Lens’:

How to Find Great Deals on the Internet

I got so excited a few weeks ago I when I was checking things out on the dubli auction site. With school starting up at the end of August I decided to start looking for some deals on the gift cards that have been on the auction site. I found a footlocker gift card on the express auction. I clicked on it and saw that it’s start price was 100.00 and it was down to 70.00 thats a great saving for me when I knew I was already going to be shopping there for my son who loves basketball so I loved having an extra 30.00 bucks in my pocket.

Then I checked to see if dubli had footlocker in the shopping portal. And it was! So why not use it? I clicked on it to see if there were any coupons available, There was one that said if I spent $99.00 I would save 15% so this was actually even better for me because that was really off the $70.00 I payed on the auction site. We ended up getting about $130.00 of merchandise for $80.50 plus standard shipping. And this is before I get my 5% back for using the shopping mall. (So, another $6.50 off.) We received our package about 4 days later. I was very excited and called several people to tell them about it.

I really feel like if we tell everyone we know about this, we will begin to accumulate many customers and we’ll be so happy we got into this when we did. (Just ask yourself is this a value to you?) If your answer is yes . You just need to get the word out and help make dubli a household name.

We already have 69 customers 19 have purchased credits and of those several have been repeat customers, We woke up on the 4th of july to see 50 less credits and checked our back office to see $40.00 in our earnings area in our back office. Later that day and another 50 credits gone then another 20. All of this from only one customer. Imagine when you have hundreds and even thousands of customers . If you spend a little time to build a team and customer base things could get pretty interesting.

We are so excited to see how things go in the future, and look forward to getting the cinch program.

Exciting News! The Cinch program has launched to beta testers and should be released to all Dubli Business Associates in 7 to 10 days. It will be great to get a look at Cinch and see how it works, but the most important point of the Cinch launch is this: Its a clear message to all Business Associates to begin sending out their credits to attract customers. I know many associates have been waiting and ‘banking’ their credits in anticipation of the Cinch launch.

Well, its happening! Cinch beta testing associates have begun to send out credits and its having an effect already. Take a look at the Dubli Xpress Auction. In months past, there have only been about 4 or 5 pages of items on the auction. Today there are 7 pages. And if you tak a look at completed auctions, you’ll find that yesterday (the day of the beta Cinch launch) 10 different items sold. On the 28th, only 5 items sold.

Also, you’ll notice that there are many, many more gift cards available than in the past on the Xpress Auction. Where else can you get a $100 Mastercard Giftcard for less than $100? Where else can you get a $100 Mastercard Giftcard for $52.50 (plus shipping and a dulbi credit)?

If you haven’t tried out Dubli and want to, fill out the contact form and ask for some free credits. If you want to get in to the business side of Dubli (which is really fun and exciting), fill out the contact form and say that you are interested. Believe me , you want to get in as close to the Cinch launch as you can.