Archive for the ‘Affiliate’ Category

Earlier today I was asked by a friend to check out whether a particular website was a scam – it happens a lot!

Whilst looking into the site in question I stumbled on a link to peoplestring.com – a social networking site. Nothing new there I hear you say! Thousands have sprung up on the back of the success of MySpace, Facebook and Twitter… But this one is different – it’s free to join and they claim that they pay you to attract people to, and use the site.

The only immediately apparent catch is that you have to accept a certain amount of junk mail. Not really a problem, getting it sent to a Hotmail account or similar will minimize that inconvenience. The principle is that you get paid for recruiting new members and there’s also an ‘upgrade’ (you get a percentage of if people buy that from your links) – which entitles people who pay $200 to a larger stake in the profit share they describe, which is based on their advertising revenue (this I wonder about when Facebook and Twitter are reportedly losing money on a daily basis!).

It’s all very MLM, and seems very ’spammy’ with your ‘make money on the Internet’ sharks… But – the key thing here is it’s free! I like free! So, I’ve signed up to see if what they say is true… I’ll be back to report on if it works or not…. If  you’d  like to help with my ‘experiment’ click here and join….

If you know me, or if you’ve read much of this site you’ll know that I have have an intense distaste for ‘get rich quick’ schemes and all those morons out there trying to pitch themselves as an ‘Internet Guru’ with little or no knowledge of the Internet or indeed business of any kind (or often with failed business careers behind them).

This is NOT my car - much as I wish it was!

There are a few people out there doing ‘make money from blogging’ thing really well and with a genuine desire to help others. And for each one of them there are a million imitators cutting and pasting their content, who are quite prepared to lie and cheat you out of your money for bogus ‘courses’ promising to mentor you into making millions just like them – they haven’t made millions yet, you are their best hope. Their sites are illustrated with pictures of Ferraris, big houses and screens shots of massive Google Adsense or Clickbank payment screens (the names always blocked out in an attempt to make you believe it’s actually theirs – trust me its not).

Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t always believe the stats web publishers quote when trying to persuade you how busy their sites are – there are some dishonest publishers out there…

Firstly let me point out categorically that I NEVER employ this (or any other underhand) technique. The stats quoted here come from a project I have under development and this was done purely to illustrate this article.

If I was trying to sell you advertising or an affiliate scheme of some sort, this would look pretty impressive wouldn’t it? Really, it’s not. It’s a very simple deception technique used by unscrupulous web site owners.

Now – how did we take a site from 16 page views to over 9,000 in less than 48 hours? Read the rest of this entry »

I stumbled on Ashley and Me on blogcatalog.com what a strange little site, on the face of it, you’d believe that it’s on mans tales of all the exiting experiences he’s has with his extra-marital affairs started through the Ashley Madison website which specializes as an introduction agency for married people who want to have affairs and ‘”discreet adult fun”.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with that for me (though not my thing). What I really don’t like about this blog is that it’s DISHONEST. Once you start reading the content it seems that this person is simply either writing (or more likely re-hashing) soft porn encounter stories.

So what is it then – it is simply a blog set up to push traffic to the Ashley Madison website based on pure fiction and lies. Somehow I picture a couple of rednecks playing with their boyhood fantasies (and probably themselves) and thinking they are going to make a fortune – maybe they think if they make enough money to join they can get to sleep with people they are not related to.

The reality is more likely that this person is probably someone (male or female) that describes themselves as a professional blogger – who has many such sites specifically written with their “personal experices” (i.e. made up personal experiences) of such affiliate programs – why in the hell can people not be honest. It really is pretty transparent to most readers…

If it is your thing and you have a suitable site – Ashley Madison offer an excellent affiliate program. I’m suprised they let a moron like this drive traffic to them through this type of low value content.

If I could give you any advice in writing a blogs, (be they for the purpose of making money or just for fun) it is this…

• Be honest and truthful – it builds trust and makes you believable
  
• Be yourself (unless you are a really dull character who can’t write – in which case, don’t bother starting a blog!)

This dishonesty is something I loathe about many bloggers – I’m getting laid, I’m making a fortune, I’m achieving everything I want in life because I’m blogging. In 99.9% of cases this is bullshit!

Sometimes I long for the old days before every idiot had access to the Internet. Yeah, perhaps I’m a bit elitist here – do I care if you think that – no!

Blogs for instance sound like a fantastic idea as does social networking. Culturally they offer a great opportunity – in reality they create a huge opportunity for morons to pollute the online world with meaningless drivel to hype their get rich quick schemes and scams through affiliate links.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to sell stuff over the Internet but it seems millions of fools appear to think that if they put up masses on nonsense content – filled with affiliate links to tell you how you to (when they haven’t) make a million (from a blog usually).

Just piling in links does not mean people will either read your crap, or buy the stuff you are hawking.

Cheap domains and affordable web space from the likes of Hostmonster have a lot to answer for, as do blogger and the like. I remember the days when putting a website up used to take real time, effort and commitment. It still does – though clearly many neither realize or accept it looking at their sites.

The online experience devalues it exponentially in direct correlation with the rate of growth.

Content is not king – quality is? But unfortunately quality is dying a death…