A Good Way To Piss People Off And Destroy Your Reputation
As many of you know, I’ve been running some traffic tests with a plethora of different traffic sources, this is not why I’m pissed off though. Even though only one of the nine campaigns running now have shown a solid ROI, I went into this knowing that the majority of the sources were going to be crap. So to further test the waters, I’ve decided to also start buying into ebooks and “fool proof systems” to see and report back, first hand on the results. This is the part that really gets to me too.
The first source I tried looked good. But see, that’s the trouble with these sales pages, they always look good and tell us what we want to hear. You’d be shocked at how many sales these programs generate. If you want to learn scam artist 101, then this is a good place to start. For the rest of you that have morals and don’t like paying for things that should be free, read on.
I’m not going to reveal the scammer just yet, because I’m going to actually try the system out, but from what I’ve seen so far, it’s absolute crap, and it’s another one of those “send us money, and we’ll let you join our affiliate program”. See, the way these guys are making their money, plain and simple, is by hyping up the fact that if you follow their system, and use their software, you don’t have to do much other than that, and you will make money. Which sounds like a fantastic idea, and I can totally understand why people would buy it. But the kicker of it is, is that they are really saying “if our software fails, just promote our product through our affiliate program and you’ll make your initial investment of $30 back within a week”. To some people that may seem like a pretty good deal. For me on the other hand, I refuse to promote anyone’s product unless I think it’s worthy of promotion.
I was talking to Andrew Johnson about it on IM’s and we were both laughing our asses off about it. I even sent him a copy of their “ebook” which wasn’t even an ebook, it was just a text file saying “promote our affiliate program for the next week and you’ll make $500″. So that right there is what’s known as a bait and switch. They promote one thing, but send you something totally different. I was telling Andrew that I found it sort of amusing and disturbing that I just spent $30 to promote something that should have been free.
This experience had led me to a new idea. Think of this as an outlet for people who want to try out all of those products, but don’t want to spend money doing it, because let’s face it, 99.5% of them are bullshit anyhow. So what I’m going to do is post EVERY SINGLE one of these scammer’s ebooks and “fool proof system” in my premium section on my forum when it launches. Am I afraid of copyright infringment, yes, so I’ll just summarize their system in an easy to follow “system” and post it like that, because that’s not copyright, that’s just my opinion of how it’s supposed to work.
I’m openly admitting it right now. I will spend about $1k on these dumb programs (I’ll also apply for a refund, because screw them for trying to screw me and everyone else), as long as you guys tell me where to go and which ebooks and systems you want to see. I am so sick and tired of these fuckers preying on unsuspecting webmasters, affiliates, and just average people looking for income sources. It’s time to fight back, because no one else seems to be doing a goddamn thing about it. The only thing I ask in return is that you guys blog about your experiences, and spread the word about these “systems” and ebooks, so that the programs themselves get a bad reputation and either close shop, or run away. I’ll also post all of their contact information, business/corporate information, and anything else I can dig up on them. Enough is enough, it’s time we do something about it instead of letting them get away with it.
Thats the spirit!
I have to admit that once or twice in my life I have nearly fallen for this sort of thing. One was with online surveys and the other was the rich jerk. Places like your blog and WSP.net have a lot more realistic ways of making real money and I am glad that you guys are around sharing you’re knowledge and experience. Cheers.
It will be interesting to hear about these ebooks, surely they are shared on pirate servers and P2P if you are plannig on copyright infringment you may as well save yourself a grand and steal the ebooks.
Once again, my 2c.
I’ve fallen for these things a couple of times - once it turned out to be worth it, the other time was exactly how you described it (fortunately, that one was offered at the ’strictly limited offer!’ of just a few bucks.
I blogged about this recently, particularly with that Adsense Videos site which popped up out of nowhere and EVERYONE began plugging, even though they admitted nobody except Adsense newbies would learn anything - it had a good affiliate programme, so why not?
I wonder why SEOBook.com has a gorgeous main site, but one of these shitty sales pages for the actual ebook? Do these pages really convert that much better?
Unfortunately I’ve purchased one or two of these.
They all seem to follow the same formula of the ultra long sales letter with yellow highlighting.
If you want the name of a few to take a look at, I’m happy to post them but will hold off for now - for obvious reasons.
Why don’t you guys dig through the internet and look for ebooks and “fool proof systems” for me, and I’ll compile a large list, and then make it available in the forum for all premium members to see.
as a newbie I fell for a few but I got pissed off and deleted the crap!
I know many of these bs things can be found on ebay in the websites section
ill dig some up Jon
matt
Here is one I just got in an email…. http://www.adsensewealthempire.com and here is the email….
In case you didn’t register to the pre-launch and didn’t hear
the news, “AdSense Wealth Empire” is a huge success even before
it was officially launched!
110 (100 + 10 bonus) packages were sold out in a record time of
1 hour and 47 minutes!
We invite you to register to the official launch and to make sure
that you will not miss the opportunity to examine the exact system
that made us over a million.
Just you an email with several listed. Have fun!
I always thought these things fall under the old adage of if it’s too good to be true, it is. So to me it’s a bit surprising that someone would actually order these. I mean, if it was really that simple then wouldn’t there be more of a fuss about it?
Will digg out some for you too
Regards
Howdy Jon
Love the content. Great work.
The BS programs are a big issue because they sell to the newbies a lot of the time. I see in your comments solid guys who know what they’re on about, but I guess half the battle is knowing who the quality guys are.
And when a newbie buys crap they go “This whole Internet thing is rubbish” and they don’t get to experience the many benefits it can bring.
And yes, the hype/highlighted yellow/never ending sales letter do work. Whilst they sound like crap to experienced people they do the job.
So you have to use them in a lot of cases.
Anyway, greta blog and great idea.
Cheers
Brendon
I was always curious; how come after getting ripped off by buying one of those get-rich-in-30-seconds-or-less books. No one went and resold the book (as used) say like 10 copies on eBay, is it against eBay’s policies or something?
It would help the sucker (that would be me) recoup my losses & possibly even turn a slight profit (for the time wasted trying to find one iota of useful knowledge by reading the book with a fine-tooth comb), as well as saving other suckers quite a few dollars off the price of the trash, while forcing the scam guru / marketing guru out of business by instantly devaluing the product.
Any thoughts on this matter? Has anyone ever tried it? I would be interested in trying it- if no one has & cannot give me a decent reason as to why I shouldn’t. I will also take suggestions (providing that the general consensus is positive), to help me pick out which one of the valuable products we should work with.
Excellent blog BTW (it’s my first time on it).
Keep it up!
PS I saw made mention before about a premium section how does one access it?
Ah…really so many scams and cons out there, just found out about one saying something about data entry to make loads of money. Ends up to be entry into Adwords to promote clickbank programs. Right…