Spot The Internet Marketing Cowboys

Internet marketing or affiliate marketing con artists.
Admit it you may have fallen for one or two. I certainly did early in my Internet marketing carrier. You know those ebooks that promise you the earth and deliver.... sod all!
Now, a little wiser, there are some tell-tale signs that you are about to be hijacked rather than gain a whole load of useful knowledge

Here are a few

Any headline or ebook name with the word 'guaranteed'
Now I am not saying that they are all scams but no-one can guarantee any results with any technique!!
All you need to do to confirm this is scroll down and read their disclaimer.
An example of these headlines is '300 targeted visitors free to your website in the next 15 minutes guaranteed' Come on! And people pay their hard earned money for this stuff.
Or 'Get on page one of Google within 1 week, guaranteed' Yeah right!

Ebooks that show you 'How to make $xyza.bc from adsense'
You can be sure that you will not make $xyza.bc if you implement their techniques.

Having said that, you'll probably pick up a tip or two about adsense so it's not a dead loss

Clickbank proof of income or adsense proof of income that doesn't add up
It's reassuring when you go to buy a product and there is a clickbank proof of income or adsense proof of income attached to it. And a lot of us do not bother looking at the numbers. The large dollar figures are so impressive, aren't they?
But sometimes when you take the time to add up the numbers... they do not add up. Oops.
You would think if they were smart enough to know how to doctor their proof of income, they would be smart enough to make sure the doctored numbers add up.

E Book training by a Jack of all trades
This one really isn't a scam.
But if you find a man who claims to be an expert in every sub niche of Internet marketing, it is more likely that he is regurgitating what he or she has read rather than what he has learned through personal experience. Let me explain.

Take Perry Marshall of the definitive guide to Google Adwords. Perry focuses on adwords, he is experienced with adwords, he has made a ton of money with adwords. So when he writes a guide about adwords, we sit up and take notice. This is someone who knows what he is talking about because he has been there and done it all

Another example is Joel Comm of Google Adsense Secrets. Joel knows adsense and again when he talks about adsense we listen.

The thing about these two gurus is they stick to the niches they know. It keeps there training relevant and credible.

What would happen if either of these guys suddenly started churning out books on email marketing, ebay secrets, social networking insider tips and all what not.
I don't know about you but I think 'How can one guy be jack of all trades and master of all' Not likely

Till next time

Twitter Scam

I wondered how long it would take before people started to try to scam twitter. And today I got my answer

People have started playing twitter

The power behind twitter is reputation.

If you already have a big reputation in your niche, then getting a ton of people to follow you on twitter is not hard work at all..

And we know that the most responsive part of your audience is your followers.

Imagine having a 10,000 followers. That means

• Your tweets go directly on the twitter home pages of 10,000 people
• The mobile phone updates.
• The potential to directly nudge them

Whatever happens, a large proportion of your followers will know you have something to say

But what if you don't have a big online reputation

Well this is where the scam comes in.

Remember your profile name is the user name you register with

Well someone started following me on twitter using the mane of a big name Internet marketer but including an extra L in the name. And he even has his picture as his profile picture

Easy to overlook.

Why did I pick up on this. The big name marketer is already following me on Twitter.

Hmmm.

Now you could argue that

• The big name marketer has a look alike, who has almost the same name, and is in the same niche. Stranger things have happened. Or have they?
• Or perhaps the big name marketer has maxed out his twitter account and is building another one. I suppose that's possible apart from the fact that he has been tweeting lately about scams and people leveraging on his name
• Or perhaps this is just the beginning of scammers moving in on the twitter platform

You decide

Heads Up! Auctionads Irregularity

Auctionads, now known as shopping ads is an ad revenue site that I have been using to generate an income from a couple of my sites

And I noticed that just recently the pay outs had completely gone

What gives!

Earlier today, I logged into my account and for some reason thought I would check my settings i.e email, paypal email etc

And what do I find?

Some strange paypal address, email address and contact details in Selangor. Which I found out is in Malasia

I cannot tell you what is going on

Most likely someone has hacked into my auctionads account and changed the payment details

You know the old trick

I do all the work and they get all the money

I fired off an email to the shoppingads support team.

I am yet to get an answer but hey it's saturday and I have only been waiting 6 hours

Lesson: Check your contact details and payment details of all your affiliate marketing accounts

Hackers are really fine tuning their skills

A slightly frustrated

Fake Clickbank Income Proof

Just came across this video and thought i'd give you a heads up

Go to any make money online product's sales page and you will see the almost inevitable proof of sales or proof of income on clickbank

And for the majority [I hope] of these sales letters, the proof of income snap shot is probably genuine

But there are those products that are supposed to help you make a few hundred dollars a day and you buy them and implement what it teaches to a tee and nothing happens
Your clickbank account is still showing ZERO

And you must be wondering, is it me?

The vendor shows evidence of this system working for him so it must be that I am doing something wrong..or whatever

Well watch this clip and then decide for yourself



Well, you've been warned

Till next time

Adsense Hijack

Adsense Hijack?

Just came across a marketer who monetizes his sites using adsense

He noticed a drop in his adsense revenue and decided to investigate further

To cut to the chase, he found that some of the adsense blocks on his site had his publisher id on them and some had a strange id

Website hacking is getting more common and problem is the techniques are sometimes so subtle, that even the most vigilant can miss the signs

Just a heads up

Till next time

Websites Hacked

Website hacking is on the increase

For those of you who do not know what website hacking is the process of getting access illegally to the control panel of someone else's site
Most hackers in the affiliate marketing world are into it for
Emails: They want to get the emails on your opt in list
Redirects: mainly targets high traffic sites and sites that rank well in the search engines. The hacker enters your hosting account and sets a redirect to their site. This means that all the trffic that would normally come to your site goes to their site

You need to be alert to this and be ready to take action

First you need a traffic tracking. Google analytics is a good free one. Monitor your traffic on a daily basis
If you notice a sudden drop in your traffic, that is not typical of the niche you are in, get suspicious. Inspect the code of your pages for any string that looks suspicious. Go into your user account and make sure that no new scripts have been installed there

Google alerts: Set up a google alerts profile and use it to monitor queries that would trigger your URL. Google alerts will email you everytime your search term is queried in the search engines

Check your sites manually regularly

Till next time

Adwords Account Hijack

For any of you doing PPC to generate traffic to your sites and affiliate links, this is a heads up
Just come across two posts in the forums about adwords account hijack

Apparently they logged into their accounts only to find that someone had set up campaigns that were running for thousands of dollars a day and sending traffic to an adware site

Of course any clicks are charged to the owner of the adwords account

You just really need to be extra vigilant in this business

A couple of tips

• Check you adwords account everyday. You just have to keep a close eye on ANY online activity that allows money to be automatically taken from your account

• Protect your passwords and make them unique

• Have a separate credit or debit card for your adwords account so that if this happens you can simply cancel the card after informing Google of the problem.

Just cancelling your account if you fall prey to these fraudsters just won't do because to reactivate your account, all you need to do is log back in and activate it. What's to stop the fraudsters from doing this

Stay safe

Ebay sues digital point owner for 'alleged' cookie stuffing

A heads up for those of you considering black hat methods

IT DOES NOT PAY

Hot on the press is the story of Ebay suing certain defendants for alleged cookie stuffing

Read the full story at http://www.courthousenews.com/2008/08/26/eBay_Sues_Alleged_Cookie_Stuffers_.htm

Now the case is still in its early stages so no conclusions of guilt can be drawn

Personally, I participate in the digital pounts forum at least 4 times a week and to be honest with you have gained a lot of useful information from other internet marketers there

It is a bit of a concern the implications of this allegation

If true, does this make digital point a bad forum or just reflects on Shawn, the owner.

And if proven not to be true, how long does it take to wash away the smear

I intend to continue to use the digital points forum

Anyone worried about cookie stuffing from any site need only to clear their cookies frequently

But the big message here is BLACK HAT COULD RUIN YOUR BUSINESS

Not so 'Free' Directory Submissions

So as an affiliate marketer or an internet marketer with your own website, one of the things you are certain to have been doing is submitting your website to free directories to get a backlink

If you are not already doing this then get off this post and start hunting down some directories to post your link in, like now!

Anyway I was doing my daily routine of generating backlinks today when I came across a site that has a "List of Free Web Directories that offer a Free One Way Text Link"

So I picked one of the directories and submitted my link, only to be met with the message, "your link will be live once you pay via paypal"

Pay by paypal?

Why was there not any warning before I got to the stage of submitting my link

Anyway, of course I have no intention of paying these cowboys.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with paying for links [actually I do, it's against google's TOS] but hey they've got to make a living too

But mate, if you are going to charge me for a link, then announce it from the get go so we both know what the game at hand is.

Not an unreasonable expectation is it?

Anyway newbies, be warned

No backlink is worth paying for

Affiliate Marketing Buyers, Avoid This Scam

I just got an email that was rather upsetting.

It was a heads up from a fellow marketer warning me of a scam he has just uncovered.

It's one I have fallen for in the past and thought it was a genuine mistake on the affiliate merchant's part. But apparently I was wrong

The scam is this

You are offered an amazing affiliate marketing training package for a limited period for a ridiculously low amount, say $1.

So far, no scam. Affiliate marketing 'guru's' do these offers often. The hope is when you sign up for your trial period and have taken a peek into their membership program, you will be so impressed with the content that you will want a full membership.

But it would seem that some vendors have perverted this excellent system and are using it unethically

Now where the scam comes in is this.

When you sign up for some of these programs, you are also automatically signed up for their rather expensive newsletters. In my case it was a $99 per month newsletter. You then get the first installment free and are billed for further issues.

Why is this a scam? Well you never signed up for the newsletter in the first place. No one has the authority to set up a direct debit on your credit card or account details without you say so.

In my case I didn't realize what was going on for a few months.

Now I am not saying the £1 offers are bad, in fact in the majority of cases they are just as advertised, a $1 offer for a preview of a great affiliate marketing product.

But you have to watch out for the few scammers who are trying to use the one dollar offer to get your card details and automatically subscribe you to a junk newsletter at extortionate cost.

If you get a newsletter that you know you definitely did not subscribe to, Unsubscribe from their list immediately.

Till next time