I REALLY hesitated to even share this link with you, but I decided you just have to see the sheer douchebaggery that’s at work.

Whatever you do, DON’T buy this offer and if you get an email from someone about it, UNSUBSCRIBE.

This is a product being promoted at the moment. I got an email about it who’s headline I KNEW would be a lie so I opened it just to have a laugh. Here’s the fun little link:

Douchebag In Action

In the letter, he tells you how he’s making money referring people to free offers, obviously CPA marketing.

He tells you how companies like Victoria Secret and American Express will pay you for sending them leads… True.

THEN… to prove his income with this method… he shows you a CLICKBANK SCREENSHOT!

I didn’t know Clickbank ran CPA offers!! I didn’t know Clickbank ran offers from Victoria Secret and American Express for that matter… WOW!

That’s an example not of “misleading copy” but of flat out LYING. In fact – and I’m no lawyer – I’m pretty sure that’s illegal.

And to think it’s an isolated incident would be folly. This stuff is widespread my friends.

When you see something like this, remember, don’t just ignore it… UNSUBSCRIBE. Anyone who would put their name to this and recommend it when they know it’s a lie is an accomplice to the crime. That person does NOT deserve your time or attention.

And while we’re on it, I’m sick of being silent. it’s time to name and shame.

I got an email about this from the marketer Rob Benwell. I unsubscribed from his list for being an accomplice to this almost certain crime and I suggest you do the same.

If by chance Rob, you happen to read this: I used to respect you man. I was a customer of your first Blogging To The Bank back when we both had ads in the Warrior Forum together. You are better than this.

That’s all from me today folks.

Keep fighting the good fight!

Again, it’s not really with joy that I write this post. I feel like this is all I’ve been talking about lately, but at the same time, I can’t bear to NOT write this. I can’t bear to NOT let you know.

I went out to the World Internet Summit in London yesterday, an IM event that is pretty much bottom of the barrel in terms of pitchy-ness. There’s no content, it’s a high pressure sales environment that preys on people who simply don’t know better yet.

But I wanted to catch up with a friend and hopefully meet some more half decent marketers in London.

There’s 2 groups of people there: The newbies waiting to be sold their hopes and dreams on a platter for $2000 (2000 Pounds actually at this one… more like $3300 or thereabouts) a pop, and then the speakers & their friends, there to meet JVs and talk about how much money they make from ripping off those newbies.

I go to events alot, just to meet interesting people and sometimes learn. But the ones I’d been to more recently were a lot more content based and had a lot more experienced crowds. I quickly got jolted back to what these things were like in IM, and in many ways, what it’s like for someone new to online marketing to be trying to start up from scratch.

I spend most of my time at the bar, which is where the latter of the two groups of people in attendance hang out. I don’t want to listen to the pitches so that’s the only other option.

The conversations you here there are just grotesque.

(All of the following are based on ones I overheard yesterday)

“He gets up, speaks for an hour, sells the crowd a set of 7 PLR sites for $2000… walks away with $100k”

“Hahaha, you wouldn’t believe it, in Malaysia he had a guy during his pitch TRIP OVER running to the back of the room to sign up for his course, hahaha – brilliant!”

“Well we know why he launched it – they knew it wouldn’t work anymore in 3 months time. This way he can add another 100k a month to his business and be done with it”.

And much more…

I put them in the same group: The “speak from stage is all I do” marketers and the “product launches are all I do marketers”. There’s often a revolving door between the two groups. They are both equally as douchey.

Here’s the worst, scariest thing I heard.

Two guys were talking about a clickbank launch that had just happened. They were talking about how much the product sucked. The launcher was someone you’ve definitely heard of.

One guy asked the other guy to tell me how many sales the launch did.

The answer? 40 000 copies………………………………………………

Think about that number for a second.

To put it in perspective: I’ve been online for quite a while, doing both affiliate marketing and teaching. When I release a new product I’m happy if I sell 500 copies. They do 40 000! 80 times more than me.

If you’re reading this post you’re probably one of the people who are less likely to buy the overhyped clickbank launch type products…

If you’re like me, you probably think that those products are only for those unfortunate newbie souls who are just coming online and getting the inevitable fleecing before they realize how the game works…

BUT NO… no no… it’s not just a small group of newbies who buy this crap. It’s not just a minority of those getting started. It’s MOST people. It’s the MAJORITY. If you’re not in that group and you’re reading this post and you know better… you are in a TINY tiny sub sect. You’re one of the lucky ones!

The guys who do these launches and are the most unethical… make the most money. No one I mentioned on my list of “the wisest and most trustworthy marketers” do anything like the figures these guys do. That pisses me off but I guess that’s life.

Everything I’m about to write here I already knew, but the day that was yesterday just crystalized it in my mind and even took my understanding to a new level of depth regarding how dodgy and disgusting this IM world can really be.

The majority of product launches, ESPECIALLY Clickbank launches, where-ever you see extreme Clickbank screenshots, whenever you get more than 5 emails about the same product (with a rare few exceptions) the following is almost always the case:

1. The “System” they’re selling does not work.

Period. What they do is sit around mastermind meetings thinking of one question: “What would sell?” They think of ideas for things that those poor unfortunate souls would buy and they create products based on them. If there was a list of things needed for a good launch, laid out in priority order, the factor of whether a system works… whether anyone’s actually going to make money from it… would be at the bottom. Great sales copy at the top, bunch of JVs next, perfect upsell third… good product? Who gives a ####. As long as it’s good enough that we don’t get too many refunds, it’s fine.

This is the RULE, not the exception.

2. The “System” they’re selling, is not something they even use.

Doesn’t matter what the income screenshots say, they DON’T use it. They couldn’t use it even if it did work and even if they wanted to use it. Their entire lives are consumed by doing product launches and promoting other people’s junk so they’ll get more JVs when their launch comes around. They say they use it, and they show the income screenshots from their last launch. They DON’T use it.

3. The $67 product never contains the “secret”.

This is what these guys get taught (I’ve heard it being presented myself)

“You have a front end product, $67 or $77, but you don’t give away all the details in here! You don’t teach them all the secrets for $67 – don’t undervalue your products like that! Your front end product is supposed to be a teaser. Your $67 product is supposed to give them just enough so they understand the idea, but can’t apply it without further help”.

I’m not even kidding, I’ve heard those words being spoken from stage. So if you’re looking at one of those clickbank courses where the sales letter says you’re going to learn EVERYTHING… ALL THE SECRETS… for just $67… it’s NEVER true. There’s always an upsell you need in order to implement anything.

4. They work on the principle that most people who buy these products won’t use them.

Will the customer actually be able to make money? Who cares?

I told one guy yesterday that I have a customer support manager for our products (this was the 40 000 copies launch guy) and he was shocked. I told him we have a live support system and he couldn’t believe it.

These guys don’t care whether people implement their methods or not. Once the sale is made it’s “what can I launch next?”.

Ok guys, here’s the deal.

I’ve been writing about this stuff for quite some time and I can’t handle having this be ALL I do about it.

I need your help today.

We have to make some contribution to cutting down the number of people in that early part of their journey who don’t know that this is how things work yet.

This is what you can do.

1. Stop buying this stuff: Please, make a commitment right now that you will stop buying, or at least be EXTREMELY skeptical before you buy any clickbank IM product that shows clickbank screenshots and has a massive launch fanfare. You know they are all the same and there’s no point wasting your money. The above is how those products come about and you don’t need to be involved in that.

2. Tell someone you know: Do you know someone in IM who’s newer than you, just getting started maybe? Send them an email right now and tell them to be careful. Tell them to stop buying these products too.

3. Tell everyone you can: Do you have a blog? A Twitter or Facebook where you are in contact with other marketers particularly newer ones? Make one tweet or update about this. Tell people that they need to know about it.

4. I’ve never asked for something like this before, and I probably never will again, but if you have a blog or a Twitter or Facebook and you can’t do any of the above, send people the link to this blog post to read for themselves. Every person who hears this news and takes it on board is someone who saves themselves $67 or $197 dollars next time. Every person who hears this is another $67 that those bottom feeder launch guru scumbags don’t get.

We can help people here. We won’t change how this industry works, but we can do something.

Until next time, thanks for reading and…

Thanks for being my subscriber even though I’ve never shown you a clickbank screenshot.

It’s a situation that is probably supposed to have taught a lesson… I’m just not quite sure what the lesson is yet.

Yep, got my old Adwords account suspended.

Those who’ve had it happen know the way it works: You can’t create another adwords account – ever. Can’t sign up an adwords account with the same credit card again. Can’t advertise the same domains again – ever. All pretty dramatic stuff.

The reason WHY it happened is the worst part: One of my sites got hacked.

A site I was advertising (very well I might add – was performing highly, making Adwords plenty of money) got hacked. A hacker landing page went up – possible a couple of visitors Adwords sent there saw it… and BOOM. Adwords account no more. All campaigns, all domains, all keywords stopped never to return. Pretty harsh but I can see their reasoning.

But I lied when I said that was the worst part. Trying to explain the relatively simple situation to Adwords support in hope they might (heaven forbid) review my account, realize the situation, and consider “unsuspending” me… that has been the worst part.

I’ve got the conversation here below for your enjoyment, but allow me to convey to you what flimsy excuse for a “lesson” I have from this:

1. Site security is everything. One hacking can (luckily not in my case, but I can see how it’s possible) wreck a business. This means:

2. Reseller accounts: The account this happened on was a reseller. I couldn’t tell you technically why, but let me say this: I have never had a site on one of our dedicated servers hacked – but using this reseller again – 2 months time and a hacking occurred. The thing is that even if you’re doing everything to secure your own site, if some other idiot on the same server as you, or the idiots at your hosting company have a security breach somewhere YOUR sites can be in danger. If you have a lot of sites and have ever considered it: Think hard about going dedicated.

That’s it.

The rest is for me to vent and you to laugh (and hopefully if even just a little, cry). Check out the conversation I’ve had with Adwords support over this.

It’s still not resolved as you read and I’ve basically lost hope… but there’s enough money on the line to make it worth trying… keep hassling them and hope for the best.

ANDREW TO ADWORDS:

Ok so I’ve had a set of campaigns running a few weeks. They have been doing great,

high CTRs, some as high as 20%, quality scores all 7s, no trouble at all.

Then yesterday all my keywords in all ad groups are showing Eligible
but “Not currently triggering Ads”. My quality scores have NOT dropped to
1 – they are still showing 7. I do NOT have the message “rarely shown due to

low quality score”… I don’t have the message “keywords pending” or
anything like that… I did NOT get the message that the bid price had
suddenly gone up…

Is there a reason why this is happening? Look at the campaign in my
account XXXXXX for a good example.

Please tell me what I’m doing wrong so I can fix it.

Andrew

=======================================

ADWORDS:

Dear Advertiser,

Thank you for writing to us about your Quality Score. If you have
additional questions on this topic after reviewing the information below,
please reply to this email.

CONTINUE WITH GENERIC, IRRELEVANT TEMPLATE EMAIL ABOUT QUALITY SCORE

=======================================

ANDREW:

To quote from my previous message:

“My quality scores have NOT dropped”

They have not decreased – so this issue is not about quality score.

there is some other reason why my ads aren’t receiving impressions
- please refer to my original ticket for complete details.

Any chance I can get a real human to take a look
at my account?

Andrew

=======================================

ADWORDS:

Hello Andrew,

Thank you for your email. I’m sorry our initial reply to your email didn’t
answer your question. Please read below for my response to your issue.

I am sorry to inform you that you account has been suspended due to
repeatedly submitting ads with low quality landing page.

CONTINUES WITH IRRELEVANT TEMPLATE EMAIL ABOUT LOW QUALITY LANDING PAGES

=======================================

ANDREW:

While I was waiting for your reply I finally discovered what happened.

One of my sites was hacked yesterday!

A hacked landing page replaced one of my good sites, and THAT
is obviously what took that page from having a quality score of 7
to a terrible landing page… and understandably.

I even understand the suspension of the account because for
a moment my ad would have taken someone to a hacked page
which is awful.

But I need someone to review my account, – is there a way I
can do that?

The hacking attempt has been fixed and all my landing pages
are back to normal. Anyone reviewing my campaigns now would
clearly see this.

Again before the hacking, all my landing pages had quality scores
of 7 and there was no doubt about their quality.

Is there anything that can be done in this situation?

Andrew

=======================================

ADWORDS:

Hello Andrew,

Thank you for your reply. I am sorry as you feel you account has been
hijacked.

I’ve decided to escalate your issue to our technical team, which will
perform a thorough investigation to determine the cause of the issue.

These investigations can take some time, but I’ll contact you to let you
know when our specialists have found a resolution.

I sincerely appreciate your patience while we investigate for you. Please
don’t hesitate to reply directly to this email if you have more
information to add.

Sincerely,

Sunitha D’Souza
The Google Australia & NZ AdWords Team

=======================================

ADWORDS:

> Hello Andrew,
>
> Thank you for your patience while we investigated that issue.
>
> An AdWords Specialist has investigated your account and did not find any
> signs of unauthorized access. The campaign changes in your account, and
> the resulting charges, are legitimate and your account remains suspended
> for violation of our landing page quality guidelines.
>
> I apologize for the inconvenience caused.
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Sunitha D’Souza
> The Google Australia & NZ AdWords Team

=======================================

ANDREW:

Sunith,
>
> I think again there was a misunderstanding.
>
> It was not my Adwords account that was hacked. It was my website!
>
> One of the websites I was sending traffic to with an Adwords campaign
> got hacked and a hacker landing page went up. As soon as that happened
> my account got suspended.
>
> Before that, there was no problem with my landing pages – they all had
quality  score 7.
>
> Is there anything that can be done about this?
>
> Andrew

=======================================

ADWORDS:

Hello Andrew,

Thank you for your reply.

I am sorry as your website was hacked. I see that it was hacked on
September 30th. However, note that you account was suspended, prior to
that, on 27th September.

Since, the hacking issue is not related to AdWords, we cannot enable your
AdWords account again at this time. I suggest to avoid such instances you
may want to talk to your webmaster regarding the access security of your
website.

Sincerely,

Sunitha D’Souza
The Google Australia & NZ AdWords Team

=======================================

ANDREW:

Sir,

Where are you seeing the data of when my site was hacked and
when the adwords account was suspended?

I can see right in the Adwords account that I received clicks on the
28th of September (Australian time I assume) and I believe the hacking
had occurred by the 29th, which is the first day I can see in the Adwords
account that I didn’t receive clicks.

I was late in realizing the hacking had occurred and failed to report
it to our hosting company until the next day, the 30th.

Can you check this again please?

If someone just looked at the landing pages in my account right now,
they would be able to judge whether they were in fact “low quality” or not
and then I believe the issue would be resolved either way.

Thank you,
Andrew

=======================================

ADWORDS:

Hello Andrew,

Thank you for your reply.

Please note that your account was suspended for multiple violation of our
Landing Page Quality Guidelines and not attributed to just one website.
The disabled websites which triggered account suspension are as follows:
xxxxxxxx.com, xxxxx.com , xxxxxxx.com,
xxxxxxxx.com, xxxxxxxxx.com, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.com,
xxxxxxxxxxxxx.com, xxxxxxxxxxx.com

This action is related to sites that have recently been advertised through
your account. In a review of your account history, we found several
submitted sites that violated our Advertising Policies and merited poor
landing page quality evaluations. Although you may have corrected or
removed these sites since our latest review, advertisers that have a
history of promoting poor quality landing pages are subject to
account-level suspension.

We appreciate your cooperation in this matter and thank you for your
understanding.

Sincerely,

Sunitha D’Souza
The Google Australia & NZ AdWords Team

=======================================

ANDREW:

1. ALL of the sites you mentioned had their adwords campaign paused or stopped.
NONE were active at the time of the account suspension. How could they
trigger a suspension if they weren’t even active?? Some of THOSE were low
quality yes – that’s why I had closed or paused them to better meet the
guidelines!
>
> 2. Look how long I have had this account: 3 and a half years!
>
> 3. The sites involved in the campaigns that WERE active ALL had quality
score 7! Log into my account and check yourself. Check the XXXXXX
campaign, check the XXXXXX campaign, check the XXXXX campaign and you
will see the quality scores for yourself.
>
> 4. I beg you to escalate this, including the emails we have sent to
someone who can check my account further.
>
> Andrew

=======================================

ADWORDS:

Hello Andrew,

Thank you for your reply. I am sorry are you are unhappy with your account
suspension.

Note that at Google, we consistently seek ways to better ensure and
protect the online experience for all of our users and advertisers. At
times, we may review historical as well as current account behaviours to
preserve this integrity.

CONTINUE WITH BS TEMPLATE EMAIL THATS AGAIN IRRELEVANT

=======================================

ANDREW:

After all our emails back and forth that was the best you can do? A template response again?

Did you even read what I said? I believe my account has been suspended in ERROR and I need someone to REVIEW IT.

Can you escalate this to someone who can review the account and my landing pages and confirm what I have been telling you in this ticket for 2 weeks – that one of my sites was hacked and that’s why the account got suspended and that this has never happened in the 3 years I’ve had the account…

Can you get the account escalated and reviewed based on all the evidence I have sent you, or not?

Andrew

=======================================

ADWORDS:

Hello Andrew,

Thank you for your reply. I am sorry as you are not happy with my
response. I have forwarded your request to a specialists team and you will
be contacted by them soon.

I apologize for the inconvenience caused.

Sincerely,

Sunitha D’Souza
The Google Australia & NZ AdWords Team

=======================================

And that’s where we’re at.

Anyway, I hope you learned something valuable and had a bit of a laugh to start your week. I’ll keep you posted with what happens.

I hope you read my thoughts on Plimus from last time but since they are still at it… I thought I’d share my most recent encounter with their terrible support.

So this month, after sending payments to my paypal account for 3 months in a row (albeit the wrong amounts), they suddenly decide that my paypal address is something different, and send it to the wrong place.

Anyway, it means I didn’t receive payment this month so I have to email them.

Let me just show you the screenshots and you can deduce for yourself what’s up…

So 6 days ago I contact them to tell them about the error…

2 days after that… they reply…

In other words… a reply that doesn’t help at all.

Then another FOUR DAYS after that, 6 days in total now since I emailed them…

ANOTHER push to another department… after 6 days they can’t even decide who needs to handle this stupid thing…

Another reminder… if you can avoid it… DON’T USE PLIMUS!

Warning: This post is a pure rant. But it’s a warning that might save you some heart ache too.

I recently did some affiliate promotions for a product that was sold through the affiliate processor Plimus. When I say recently, it was probably over 3 months ago now.

Let me say, it’s something I’ll not do ever again. In fact I advise that if you’re reading, it’s something I advise you to avoid doing too… Here’s why:

It started out everything was cool, I’d generated something like $3500 in commissions. Then came the actual receiving of the payment.

First I had to change the way I receive my payment from check, to Paypal.

I find out that any change in my payment preference won’t take affect until the following pay period, even though I change it before the date the current months payment is supposed to be sent. Very annoying and I’ve never seen it before, but… security reasons, fair enough I guess.

So I’m supposed to be receiving a check that’s sent on the 15th of the month.

Next I get an email saying that my balance has been reviewed and for security reasons, only a portion of it will be released this month, something like 30% of the total.

I ask why and they say that unless you continue to make sales in an ongoing fashion, again, for security reasons, the amount of money they can release to you gets limited and segmented… This is particularly annoying since I had no intention to promote this product in an ongoing way, it was a one off email promotion, and so I was informed that it could take months for the entirety of my commission to be released.

Again, not something I’ve ever seen an affiliate network do, again extremely annoying, but I guess if it has to be that way and my whole business isn’t relying on it (shame if it was!) then so be it.

But that’s not even the start of the trouble.

So I’m waiting for this check to arrive. I’m in Toronto right now, closer to the US than some American cities, so I estimate that it might take 3-4 weeks at the worst to get to me.

That time passes and no check arrives.

Now I have to get in contact with them to find out why my thousand something dollars, “part payment” hasn’t reached me yet.

I call them up. No one at the accounting department answers.

I leave a message as instructed. No one at the accounting department returns it.

I call again, rinse and repeat, still no answer and no return phone call.

Finally by email, I get in touch with someone who tells me that if the check didn’t arrive they can cancel the check, re credit the balance to my account and send the payment out via paypal, which is the method I freaking wanted them to use in the first place.

I say “great, how long will that take?”

They say they’ll return it to my account and pay it out in the NEXT pay schedule. in another 3.5 weeks time.

Try to imagine my frustration at this point.

So I say ok, fair enough, by the 15th of next month, it’ll be released by paypal and this will all be over. Keep in mind this is more than 3 months since I actually earned these commissions.

The big date comes, August 15th, the day the payment’s supposed to be released by paypal… and I just suspect something’s not going to go right.

Sure enough, I get an email saying that “of the balance that was re credited to my account, $322 of the total $1288 will be released to you today”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So of the amount that was ALREADY cleared, it RE entered the stupid “security process” and it had to undergo review AGAIN before it could be released to me. It was already supposed to be sent to me in the mail by a check but thanks to THEIR mistake, it wasn’t!

What do I do? No one answers my calls, email support takes 2 days to reply. It’s like what I imagine affiliate marketing to be like if you lived in HELL.

Talk about a harrowing affiliate experience. 5 years promoting products as an affiliate and I’ve never seen anything like it.

If you promote through Plimus, boycott them today.

Click the links at the bottom of this post to Tweet this to your followers and share it with your social network subscribers and spread the word around. This kind of treatment is not good enough for a company dealing with your money.

I’ve thought about writing this post for a while now but today a threshold was crossed, and I simply couldn’t NOT post it any longer.

There’s a method of making money with affiliate marketing and free traffic that has been and continues to be peddled as an amazing way to generate easy cash. People KEEP talking about it. It’s been rehashed in at least 5 different products that I’ve seen over the past maybe year and a half now..

I want to tell you why it’s NOT cool, and why if you’re working hard at it you might want to reconsider.

The method I’m talking about is where you “capitalize” on the launches of IM products, by setting up a site in advance of a launch for the sole purpose of getting it to rank on the front page by the launch date, hence picking up traffic from people searching for the product’s name on phrases like “product” or “product review” in particular.

It’s so smart, the traffic is super targeted, conversions generally high, easy ranking for phrases that may have literally zero competition to begin with…

But it’s also the among the stupidest business models you could conceive of.

Here’s why:

1. Let’s take the best case scenario. Let’s say you get your site to the front page just in time for launch. You clean up, pull some good commissions and you’re happy. A week after the launch hype dies down and no one’s searching for that product any more, of what value is your site? How much traffic will you get? How much is all that work you did worth?

A: Nothing. The site productnamereview.com has no value anymore, no one’s going to be finding it, you’re not making any money.

What do you do about this? Easy, you find another product launch and do it again!

In other words, you’re trading your time for a fixed amount of money. If you stop working on it, your income dies. You may as well get a job. Which isn’t bad in itself, but I know it’s not personally why I started online marketing.

2. Let’s take a much more likely scenario. It’s two weeks out from launch, you’re working hard on your SEO to get that all important ranking. The date moves closer but you’re still not quite there yet. You’re madly building links in the most unnatural way possible because of the time pressure, waving your big red flags in Google’s face begging them to put you on the front page.

A: What happens if by launch date, for one of many reasons, you don’t get that ranking. The launch passes and your site never made it.

Again, waste of time. Whereas with a normal SEO campaign where you can continually build your ranking for a term to reach the front page and no matter how long it takes you, it will have value… with this method, it’s fruitless. You get the timing wrong, it’s worthless.

3. Back to the best scneario. You get front page ranking by launch day.

Realize that the people who are coming to the SEARCH ENGINES before purchasing an “IM” product, are those that have likely read the sales page already, are interested but likely skeptical, and are informed enough to be able to search out further information on the product before they buy.

A: Why’s that significant? Because there’s a good chance your crappy, biased review from the perspective of someone who HASN’T used the product, is not going to impress them. Surely not enough for them to buy through your link.

Furthermore, there’s a strong chance this group of people is going to notice something’s up when they see a front page in Google that’s full of URL’s like

product-name-review.com

productnamereview.org

productnamereviewSITE.com

productnamereviewS.com

And the more people use this method, the more those smart searchers are going to get clued in to what’s happening and the more it’s going to erode you’re already dwindling profits.

4. You thought we were done? Oh no…

This is the MOST IMPORTANT REASON of all…

Answer me this…

Why would you use this method above…

When there are THOUSANDS of products outside the IM niche, that get searched for by name, and by name review, that get THOUSANDS more searches… EVERY DAY… That will never have 100 new people jumping on to compete against you in a day…And will still be getting searched every day in 1, 2, maybe even 5 years time, that would build you a REAL passive income business and maximize every last piece of effort or cent of your money that were spent on them???

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it might be time to take a step back in time and review my Niche Marketing On Crack report.

Finally, an exception to the rule.

If the product that’s launching is a recurring membership… If they plan to have an ongoing marketing campaign… Or if it’s something people ARE still going to be searching for a year or two years from now… THEN promoting it is a smarter decision.

AND if you’re a real user of one of these products, it’s a smarter decision again.

Please, if you’re working hard on this method, I apologize, but I hope you can see what I mean and consider a change of strategy.

Indeed, the god of entrepreneurs himself is on Twitter…

Am I eating my words?

Not just yet

Like I said from the start, if you already have a big following, sure, it’ll help you spread your brand and connect more closely with your followers, build relationships, all good.

If you don’t have a big following… You know what I’m gonna say.

I didn’t really want to do this but after checking out this report to review it for some of the Firepow members I thought I may as well post it here too – maybe it’ll save someone (or make someone?) some money.

So I bought Rob Benwell’s new blogging to the bank 3 today and just finished going through it…

First let me say that I am a big fan of Rob’s. I think he’s an incredible marketer and an awesome niche marketer too – from what I understand he’s one of the few people who actually makes money from the methods they teach, and lots of it – Respect! I read Rob’s first bttb report all that time ago and it was a big inspiration for me both in my niche marketing and in releasing my own products.

That said, I have to be honest in saying that this latest report hasn’t impressed me in any way.

Here’s the thing:

The “quality” of information in a report is perceived through the eye of the reader. I have a certain level of knowledge so for me, reading certain information is not productive or helpful. But Joe Newbie could read the same information and find it insanely powerful, new, and exciting.

For me to say something like “I didn’t find anything new in it” or “I didn’t find it helpful” isn’t really helpful for you reading this because you and I have different levels of knowledge – heck alot of you probably know alot MORE than I do too!

So let me draw some parallels between the levels of knowledge and the quality of the report.

First, if you’ve read my Niche Marketing On Crack, I think you’ll find 80% of the information in this report old news, and not valuable.

If you’re a Firepow member and have read the Firepow Blueprint – I think you’ll find 90% of it old news and not valuable.

The report, like many I’ve written myself is basically: find a niche market, build a blog, create content, promote the blog, make money.

Don’t get me wrong, the techniques in this report are GREAT – they are powerful, and they WORK… I just think you’ll know them already.

And there’s no new detail either – I’m always open to new ways of looking at things I already know, but there’s none of that – the sections are short and concise, which is great, but again, no real new level of detail.

What it DID have, is a good section on using technorati to promote your blog – I learnt some things there and it had good content and detail.

The part about getting your site indexed in 24 hours showed a tool that I hadn’t seen and a nice method for getting links – so that was also valuable.

$37 valuable? Not for me personally but for some, maybe.

There are a bonuses too but if you’ve bought anything of Rob’s in the past you probably already have them.

The thing to remember is that it’s a $37 guide and you’re not really going to get all the meaty information you need to reproduce 6 figure blogs with a $37 ebook alone. Again, the information works, and is great, but it’s 90% old as far as I’m concerned.

If you’re at an early stage in your online marketing life and you’re looking for more info on blogging, niche research, SEO, feel free to check it out but otherwise, save your money.

I hope you’ve found this review honest and helpful.

Andrew

This company that for whatever reason, most of find ourselves obliged to use, has some serious issues to answer for.

First, I was shocked to read in this thread over at the Warrior Forum, that paypal very sneakily charges you much more than the rates they claim.

http://warriorforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=257934

I suggest everyone goes to read this thread now – watch the screencast video in the first post, go to paypal and apply to get your rates decreased before they steal anymore money from you. Here’s the video link:

http://screencast.com/t/NmNu6Zwm

I followed the procedure on the video just last week and was shocked by what I saw.

They say you need to “apply” for the lower rates…

The application form is a complete joke – all information that they would have from your account already – questions like:

What is your company name?

Do you sell from ebay or your website?

And about 3 other similarly ridiculous questions.

Then you hit submit… They say you’ll be emailed when your application has been “reviewed”.

And I got an email back INSTANTLY saying that my account has been approved and my fees have been lowered – ie there is no review procedure at all, it was automatic.

In other words, its a false barrier to try and stop more people getting the correct lower rates.

They say you have to make over 3k a month for the lower rates to apply, but I’m wondering if that’s even true – there’s no way they could have reviewed my account statistics and approved it based on that since the approval occurred so fast.

Not only that but their damn website is CONSTANTLY having problems – I can’t check my history, get timeouts trying to send payments, and other miscellaneous errors depending on the site’s mood on any given day.

And after all this, they are so trigger happy with limiting accounts, reversing payments, and other stupid things to people like me who’s business makes them a stack of money.

Ahh I’m just in a bad mood and keen for a rant. Here’s to hoping that Google or someone else comes and knocks them over asap.

REMEMBER to watch this video in that thread and go to Paypal asap to get yourself the lowered rates.

Until next time!

I’m not one to fill my blog with less than helpful information for all my great readers but I just had to get this one off my chest…

Feedburner has become what seems like a heavily used feed management tool for many bloggers (and I don’t know if it’s just because I don’t use the premium version) but in my experience it’s got some serious issues…

It misreports my feed count massively on a day to day basis, varying by almost 50% on occasions – I KNOW I don’t lose 50% of my RSS subscribers in one day..

My feed subscription toggles between working and sometimes telling my readers that I don’t have feed email subscription active which I definitely do…

And there is no internal support for it that I can see… I can’t ask anyone in there why this is happening.

Of course the obvious answer is to stop using it if it sucks so much but:

1. It’s a shame because the things it’s ‘supposed’ to do are great and not offered anywhere else that I know of (any suggestions anyone?)

2. I’m wondering if it’s just me having problems or have other people experienced these things too

Anyway, rant over. Let’s all get back to our day