Archive for the ‘Scams’ Category

I received a case study today, from someone whos I added myself to – a former “friend turned ‘get rich quick’ on the Internet blogger”. You know the type – I talk about them enough here! This person has gone down the usual ‘I’m a guru’ route, selling people freely available information and advice…

If you’ve read much of this site – you’ll know the thing I really hate is people who lie and cheat unsuspecting newbies out of their hard earned cash. This case study, boasting about how successful his content blog was, is full of unsubstantiated claims. He claimed massive use (far beyond anything that could be expected for the niche), without having the courtesy or good sense to back it up with even a screen shot of his stats.

Click to enlarge in a new tab

He was very clearly over-stating his income from the site, the sales of his useless ebooks, and – this is what really pssied me off – his earnings from Google Adsense. In truth, he didn’t actually state his Adsense earnings – he did, however accompany the text with this image…

Perhaps at best it is misleading, it is designed to mislead – of that there is no doubt. But I say, in not saying it isn’t his – it’s downright fcuking dishonest. I’m sure you won’t be shocked to hear that the author’s day job is running a real estate agency!

So, what does it suggest – that he made $332 today, and $288 yesterday. No he didn’t!

How can we tell… Read the rest of this entry »

After my recent post about a ‘get rich quick’ scheme encouraging bending the rules of Google – a site called googlestreak.com (the link is to the original article rather than of course what I consider to be a poorly presented scam) – I actually received a reply – to his credit – from the site owner – but he failed to follow through.

The article was about how having spent as much as he did on Adwords he had managed to include a really stupid typo. He came back in a comment claiming this to be ‘clever marketing’ which did give me a laugh. The site I see his ads appear on is a regular visit for me. Guess what? I haven’t seen the same ad since!

His current offering now is spelt correctly – and his tower includes (very appropriately) a picture of clowns.

I keep saying it – Brian, my offer still holds – I am willing to eat my words if you let me review your scam proposition and it actually works!

Click here for the original article and comments

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 just came upon this ad whilst viewing my stats. What an idiot!

As well as “waisting” his money on Adwords, he also clearly “waisted” money on his education too…

It’s no secret that I’m not a big fan of the “get rich quick” Clickbank type bogus reports – many of which – and I suspect this is one – at the very least encourage people to teeter on the brink of Google terms and conditions, if not blatantly disregard them.

But really, come on, if you are going to spend money on Adwords you might as well at least take the time to spell the fcuking ad properly! Even if it is for a low life scam such as this.

If you’re reading this, do yourself a favour and do not buy thie siht from this idiot. (googlestreak.com – note no link)

Or, in the unlikely event you are the linguistically challenged idiot in question I challenge you to prove to me this works. I don’t believe you for one minute!

Really people, don’t “waist” your time on crap like this…

I love spam message titles…. It never ceases to amaze me just how stupid these people are. These are generally non-English speakers (they have to be because of the poor grammar and Chinese instruction manual English). If English is their first language – they mus be complete fcuking morons with zero knowledge of marketing…

Get this one 

“Our watch will look great even on any loser.”

Translated: “You are a fcuking loser buy my crummy imitation watch that will last you five minutes….”

That’s if you’re stupid enough to fall for this crap – and if it ever gets delivered at all….

I’m always amazed at how many people get sucked into Internet scams. There are so many of these scam ‘companies’ its unbelievable. I can only assume that there are enough vulnerable, willing newbies, still with notions that the Internet is the only place you can make easy money to fall into their traps.

Someone I know who had signed up  – and was dumb enough to think that because I knew about about the Internet I would be amazed (as often happens) – rather than see through the bullshit, introduced me to this a while back.

I haven’t laughing since, it’s called Smart Money Websites. It’s hilarious, and in the usual style of these thing full of absurd claims and stupid testimonials like this…

“I absolutely LOVE Smart Money Websites. For the first time in my life I’ve been able to do my own websites, squeeze pages, record audio, split test, Oh my gosh it’s all so easy….”

This ‘business’ was started by a “Wayne van Dyke” who claims to be a venture capitalist, supposedly involved with highly profitable technology start ups.

Problems…

1. A search on Wayne van Dyke leads only to stories about Dick van Dyke thus burying him if it is his real identity in Google (I doubt this is an accident so you don’t find the truth!).

2. If he’s so damned smart why doesn’t he name his past successes.

In the usual hard sell direct style, the text of this ’site’ if you can call it that, has lots of numbers ($50,000 is the favourite), and lots of buttons to suck you into the $1 trail.

So, what are they selling. Well,  it’s not really clear. It’s either a pyramid scheme, or they are selling pre-build affiliate marketing site. Who cares what they are selling. They prey on the ill informed.

Here’s some numbers for you – apparently this is the yearly cost of a website.

How to make your first $50K (home study course) – $297

(Reality: Chances are completely worthless if their site is anything to go by as they don’t know what they are doing!)

Hosting – $240

(Reality: $83.40 if you use someone like Hostmonster)

Site Builder – $250

(Reality: FREE, assuming they mean a basic site building package as is often bundled with hosting accounts or free to download, but they are not clear)

Email Autoresponder – $200

(Reality: FREE with any sensible hosting plan)

Split Testing – $249

(Reality: FREE, but, creating similar gateway pages runs the risk of getting you banned from Google)

Squeeze Page Generator – $480

(Reality: FREE, but, again considered as spam by search engines – follow the  link to see why you should not use them)

Ad-Tracking – $199

(Reality: FREE)

Webstats – $348

(Reality: FREE with any sensible hosting plan, or you can use a service like StatCounter)

Audio – $348

(Reality: FREE, they simply don’t know what they are talking about)

Dashboard – $1200

(Reality : FREE, probably little more than a host’s control panel or an Admin panel within a custom site which would have been purchased with the build)

Webmaster @$50/hr. x 400 hrs – $20,000

(This is my favourite, the sites I build for people don’t often take more than a few hours – if any – to look after)

Here’s the good news, you only get to pay them $647 a year for all this! The only thing missing from this to truly convince me that this was a scam was a photo of the founder on a Hawaiian beach with a cocktail in hand next to a big boat or Lamborghini  just to show how they are enjoying spending your money!

I did send them a polite (okay, polite is stretching the truth a bit) email to ask what they were ACTUALLY selling, but needless to say never got a response…