Time for a little venting. For every decent program I find I have dumped a pile of cash into dozens of dogs first. I have no one to blame but myself as I confess I just can't resist finding out what all these schemes are about.
The Rich Jerk
Most of you are familiar with this fellow and his organization. A few years ago he wrote an eBook that sold several million units online. (for $50 you can learn how to buy PPC traffic on the cheap search engines and send them to spam sites full of high paying adsense ads [doesn't work anymore if it ever did]... oh and you get the list of high paying keywords that everyone and their dog knows about, you know "Loan Consolidation" "Lemon Laws" "Cancer Lawyers" etc. Just try and set up a site using these keywords, if you are a blog you will be flagged as a spammer and websites won't ever get indexed) This vaulted him into Guru status and everyone that purchased the book has been getting spammed by him ever since. This guy really makes me puke. While his methods might have worked back then, they don't now so stay clear. He is currently trying his hand in the "excessively overpriced mentoring scam" - join his own personal team of "experts" and get rich. Whatever.
A little story..
A few months ago I responded to one of his come ons to join his "exclusive hand picked club". I was asked to fill out a form which would weed out the wannabes from the cream. Psych 101 stuff like "Why should the Rich Jerk let you into his inner circle". I filled in a bunch of sarcastic answers that should have ended things but guess what. In spite of my wit and sarcasm I got a phone call from a fellow in Las Vegas who works for the Rich Jerk and was told that I might have what it takes to be offered a spot in the exclusive "Inner Circle".
Golly gee, really, little ol' me? I was assured that I had made it this far out of thousands of people trying to get into the club. I just needed to answer a few more questions for them to be sure they had the right man. "Sorry" I said. "Call back tomorrow, I'm busy at the moment".
With so many people desperate to get in I figured that was the last I would hear from them.
They called back the next day... "Just a few more questions..." they said.
"Call back again" I said. "Still too busy"
They did. 3 more times actually before I said I had time to talk.
We talked for about an hour. They're dime. They asked all sorts of asinine questions about my goals, was I a Leader? Yes, self motivated? Yes, could I follow instructions? No, I'm a leader remember - I give instructions. Ha ha he laughed.
"How much money would you like to be making 3 months from now? 6 months from now? 1 year from now." he asked. "Millions, more millions and let's say an even BILLION for 1 year out." I said.
He paused. "Really - you don't think that's asking a bit much?"
Nope.
"What do you do for a living in the real world?" he asked.
"I own a fishing lodge in Canada"
"Do you make a good living?" he asked.
"A few million a year" I lied.
Another pause. "Um... why are you interested in making money online then?"
"I want something to do in the winter." I said.
"Oh, I see." he said, "Well I think you are an excellent candidate for a position in our group, just one last thing. We haven't figured out a price for admission yet but it will be somewhere between 2 and 6 thousand dollars. I assume you can afford it"
"Would you like cash, check or credit card?" I asked.
"Hold on" he said, "I have to talk to my manager and see if he will extend you an invite"
What? Was I buying a car? The old salesman pleading the customers' case to his hard nosed manager shtick. Gee... I wonder if I'll be accepted?
A few minutes later. "Well I think I convinced him to take you on, he said he will call you tomorrow. Is there a good time for you?"
"Before 6am is best" I said. "I'm a busy man and I like to get up early."
"Would 10am work?" he asked.
"He can try, I might be busy" I said.
I got the call at about 10:15. I was busy. (not really) "Phone back."
He did - 2 more times (in spite of all the eager thousands waiting to join) until I said I could talk.
"We would like to extend an invitation to join our mentoring program." said the manager.
"How much?" I was blunt.
"$4800.00" he said. "I can take your credit card info over the phone.
"Tell me something" I asked. "I got one of those "Free" Rich Jerk Websites and have asked for a few explanations regarding it. How come I had to pay $100 for hosting it on your server instead of using my server? How come I can't put my adsense ads on it? How come I can't put a stats counter on it to track my visitors? How do I know if someone bought anything - the stats you give me don't match the amount of hits that Google has charged me for adwords. Google tells me that 100 people have been to the site and your stats say that only 9 people have been there. How do I know you didn't sell 91 ebooks and haven't given me my commission? Why don't you use an independent third party like paypal? How come no one has bothered to answer my questions?"
"Um... those sites are with a different department" said the manager."About the $4800.00, how would you like to pay?"
"Tell you what," said I "Look into my questions and get back to me and then we can talk about the $4800.00."
"Um... Ok" The manager hung up but said he would get back to me shortly.
2 days later he phoned back. "We haven't received your payment yet." he said.
"You were supposed to get back to me regarding questions I had concerning the "Free" Rich Jerk website" I said.
"What questions?" he asked.
I repeated my list. "That's a different department" he said.
"Well, if you want my $4800.00 you had better introduce yourself to that department and get back to me with my answers" I said.
"OK" said he.
The next day he called back again. "Are you going to send us the $4800.00?" he asked.
Nope. Goodbye.
And that's the type of people you will be dealing with if you get into the Rich Jerk schemes. His latest push is for something called Pipeline Profits. Avoid it at all costs.
Oh, this wasn't an entire bust as I figure between the phone calls and the employees wages I must have cost them the $100 they took from me. Not that I'm a spiteful bastard...
Moving on.
Blogging to the Bank
This is run by a fellow in the UK by the name of Rob Benwell. I forget the price but it was for too much anyway. This is the typical ebook that you buy and find out that it's yet another regurgitation of stuff you already know. It's not a scam just more of the same old info you have read before. Basically stuff that is easily found for free on the net.
If you buy anything from him you will be spammed with a lot of emails for all sorts of spamming software he pushes that will "Guarantee" you top listings in the SERP's (search engine result pages). This is the kind of software that is responsible for all "validation" boxes that you see nowadays. You know the "Type the image above" box you have to fill out to sign up or join anything.
This fellow is a firm believer in the automated spamming method to making money... or at least a firm believer in selling the programs that do the spamming to people who don't know any better.
To his credit his method of creating blogs (real content blogs and not the spam blogs) is actually quite successful (I've tested it on several blogs) at getting indexed fast - real fast actually. I've mentioned before that this Blog got indexed in 3 days on Google using most of the methods he suggests. I knew most of these methods already but he did give me a couple of new pointers. Regardless I still wouldn't recommend his eBook just because of a few novel points. Normaly this would be a good ebook for beginners but I think they may get led down the wrong path by his other interests in the spamosphere.
I recommend - Save your Money.
That's it for now, I have to go and do some "real" work at my "real" job. More next time.
Later folks.
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