After last week’s assault on my inbox by the affiliates for Copy Paste Systems, I decided to search for the terms “Copy Paste” and start clearing even more emails out. I’m never going to purchase another so called lazy man’s money making system, nor do I really care to even hear about them. My last blog post was quite clear on my feelings for them I think.

Are you familiar with Gmail search results? More specifically, the section at the top where it says 1 to 20 of 85? Always good to know how many you’re going to have to sift through, except, when you see 1 to 20 of hundreds. That’s right, there was too many for Gmail to count properly when I searched for the term “copy paste”. Nice.

I decided to jump to the oldest of the results as I figured they would be the easiest and quickest to clear out – generally I find the products being pimped are either no longer available, or the links just plain don’t work. After all, I have emails dating back to April of last year still waiting to be properly looked at. (That right there is too scary to dwell on.)

Jumping to the end, I open up email number one which is about an “amazing *FREE* ebook revealing a revolutionary method on making money online via affiliate marketing”. Yah-huh. But, ok free, I’ll take a look.  The email link works and I am taken to the AIDA Profit Formula page.

Right off the bat my eyes instinctively roll, I swear, they did it completely on their own.

Doubtful, but ok I’ll read on. Only, there’s not really much more to read. Learn the entire process, blah blah, duplicate this process again and again, blah blah, “no-fail”, a very unique twist, profit is almost guaranteed, blah blah blah. Same as most other copy based systems out there. But, it’s free so I figure why the hell not, right? Maybe this will be the one that changes my opinion.

Don’t get excited, it wasn’t. I know, colour me surprised.

Let’s examine my findings:

Claims to reveal exact Niche
It doesn’t. Well it does and it doesn’t – you’re informed it’s “wholesale”. Granted yes this does give you a starting block, but wholesale what? Are they selling information about wholesale directories, or are they selling products themselves after purchasing them from a wholesaler. Or are they selling ebooks that teach others how to sell products and from what wholesale directories to buy from.

One thing I have learned with affiliate marketing is you’re much better to go deep within a niche topic. For example, you wouldn’t go “dogs”, you’d go deeper such as dog training, or even better, puppy training. What about house breaking, teaching the dog to fetch, to stop barking, digging or jumping etc? Much easier to promote lots of smaller products that generate specific search terms than it would be to promote anything and everything dog related. The same goes for wholesale… you need something more specific.

Did they reveal their exact niche? No.

Claims to reveal exact Landing Page
This was something I went searching for in the report because landing pages still baffle me a little. After reading through how review sites are the best method to go, the author states that it was exactly what they did for their wholesale web page, and then links you to two of their web pages. Only wait, they’re not about wholesale, they’re about paid surveys. What the?

When you read more carefully, you see a sentence tacked onto the end of the one about his wholesale pages stating “By the way, I did make a similar review site for the paid survey market, which is doing pretty well.” Thus, the links to those pages. Further down, in fact all the way at the bottom of that page, is a tiny little paragraph with a link to the wholesale site. And this is what it shows:

Yeah, not what I was expecting either. There is no review site, in fact there’s nothing at all. And you can tell by the “help the victims of the earthquake in Haiti” message that I’ve just clicked the link.

Given the claim on the sales page is that it’s still raking steady $2000 a month profit, you’d expect there to be a sales page.

Did they reveal their exact landing page? No, not for the wholesale campaign.

Claims to reveal top ten profit-generating keywords
The last part of the puzzle – the top ten keywords. When someone claims to not only give the exact keywords that work for them, but do so tacked onto the end of an “I show you everything – no BS” claim, I expect to see a heading “Top 10 Keywords” and those keywords listed right underneath. Perhaps in the section titled “Drive Traffic Using PPC”?

You don’t get that. What you do get is the four groups they categorized their keywords into. A completely different thing.

Don’t get too up in arms just yet, because under the “apply AIDA” section, is a screenshot of best and worst performing keywords. They’re not advertised as that however, in fact there is no mention bar a single image description line that’s what they are at all. The images are being used to show how the AIDA formula works.

If you look at the image carefully however, you will see the keywords. Nevermind that the section is outlining something completely different and you’re instead being told to look at the columns with all the numbers on the complete opposite side of the picture…

Did they reveal their keywords? Technically yes, but it should be made way more clear if that’s one of their main selling points!

More problems arise: 40 cent keywords?
As I continue reading I notice a number that really raises my eyebrows – “I increased the rest of my keyword bids to 40 cents per click.” The Copyright is from 2008, so that amount was probably correct back then. But I picked this report up less than a week ago, it was originally brought to my attention in May of 2009, and it was promoted to me at 10:18am this morning by Charles H. Mutrie.

There’s no way that you will get those keywords for forty cents a click advertising today. In fact, I know you won’t because I checked. Google’s Keyword Tool tells me that:

• Dropershippers is $1.97 per click on average, and
• Dropshipper is slightly cheaper at $1.71 per click on average.

A far cry from the 40 cents! This brings in a huge problem when a reader is basing their success of the ebooks figures and math. Claiming to bring in 100 visitors at 40 cents a click (costing him $40), and generating an average of 2 sales of $43 each (which is $86), means he’s making an average of $46 profit. An average of $46 profit for every 100 visitors, of which he supposedly gets an average 100 visitors a day is not bad – I certainly wouldn’t turn my nose up at an extra $46 each and every day. Especially if we can just rinse and repeat the methods in any other niche.

Sadly, in today’s market however, those same 100 visitors is going to cost you closer to $171, and with the same daily sale amount of only $86, you’re averaging a daily loss of $85. Not so attractive.

Maybe if you had an extremely long standing relationship with Google and a spectacular Adwords history, you might get close to that forty cent mark today. But anyone just starting won’t have that history and as such, will have to pay those higher CPC prices.

That said…
If you’re doing PPC, or are wanting to start, then the AIDA formula it shows is probably handy to know. I wish I had known it back when I attempting it all a year ago. Of course what is AIDA? Yeah that’s what I wanted to know too. Only, the report doesn’t really tell you. It goes on, and on about it: “How I Used Power of AIDA Formula,  made money by applying simple AIDA formula, how powerful AIDA is, AIDA can supercharge Google Cash, using AIDA formula”, etc. But what is the AIDA formula?!

Well, the first thing you find out, on page seventeen (of a 23 page report), is that Affiliate Prophet is an AIDA-tracking tool. Right… ok. Still doesn’t tell me what AIDA is.

After the report goes into detail on how to use Affiliate Prophet results to split test your results, you find out that it stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. That’s on page eighteen. With no heading what so ever “What does AIDA stand for”. If you’re going to write an entire report based around a particular acronym, tell people what it stands for!

A quick google search to actually learn what it is, I found the following excellent explanation:

AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire and action. It is a step by step procedure of getting a customer to purchase a product. It is a technique used by marketers in their advertising and promotional campaigns. The concept is to first get the attention of the customer; this is not as easy as it sounds because the customer is bombarded by hundreds of messages everyday.

After getting the attention of the customer, his interest in the product should be stimulated. This is extremely difficult to do. In order to stimulate interest the targeting of the ad has to be perfect. A good ad that has been targeted at the wrong audience will fall flat. If he is interested he might come to the store to take a look at the product. The product must be packaged and priced right in order to evoke desire in the mind of the customer. If everything fits into place he will act on his desire and purchase the product.

How hard would it have been to include that paragraph in the report? Preferably before starting in on everything else.

Overall the report was a pretty big waste of time. There’s a couple of snippets of handy information if you want to make use of PPC, but it does require the purchasing of additional tools which of course, are linked to with affiliate links through out the ebook.

• AdWord Analyzer – $77
• Keyword Elite – $197
• and Affiliate Prophet – $97

Affiliate Prophet is pretty much required to follow their methods of course.

If you want to pick up the report for the PPC tactics, by all means go ahead. It’s free after all. Just remember that the CPC prices won’t be correct and they don’t actually reveal anything you can copy. If you want it however, see if this link works: Download Page. If not, fill in your email address on the main page here: AIDA Profit Formula. Unfortunately it doesn’t come with any rights so I can’t pass it onto you…

P.S. I should have realised as soon as I read the copyright that it wasn’t going to be too good…

All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher. do right away to start making money.

That’s copied straight from the ebook. Granted that technically breaks the copyright, but what’s with that last out of place sentence?

That’s the headline I expect to read once man figures out how to make computers complex enough to think for themselves… to act on their own. We’ve all seen Terminator, iRobot and Eagle Eye right? It happens! Everything in Hollywood is the truth…

A little over a week ago I received an email. I know, shocked me too. This was no ordinary sales pitch however, this email was spreading news of new “revolutionary” software that was “radically changing lives”… lives people!! (You’ll get the irony of the ‘new’ part when you read further down…)

Titled “Turn your computer into a marketing robot! Let your Computer do your work FOR you!” It asks me if I’d like to:

• Save hours every day?  (Yes please!)
• Get more done?  (Of course!)
• Increase your revenue? (Who doesn’t?)
• All while working LESS!?  (Oh my goodness you’ve read my mind!)

Granted, those questions at least pique my curiosity, so kudos for that. And the next paragraph, albeit poorly formatted in it’s email form, also keeps my attention. (Just)

It’s all about automating the things you do each day. It’s about taking the burden off of YOU, and putting it onto your computer. After all, that’s what your computer is there for, isn’t it? It’s there to HELP you. Yet so many of us sit at our computers every day, slaving away… when our computers should be the ones slaving away for US! This program automates the tasks that you hate, and makes your computer do the dirty-work.

Unfortunately for me, the first sales pitch giveaway was the fact that the affiliate promoting it used TinyURL. Don’t get me wrong, TinyURL is a great service, but it screams “affiliate link” when used in email and on obvious affiliate sites (review sites, blogs, etc). Of course, when it is used, it makes it even easier to identify affiliate links and avoid them – something those using TinyURL for their links should take note of.

See, TinyURL allows you to preview where the link is taking you. A very hand feature. So when I clicked on the link in the email, I see the following screen:

And there you have it, a Clickbank link. Of course, if I had absolutely no idea what affiliate marketing was, and there are millions of people out there who don’t, then the preview feature wouldn’t mean a lot to me. But for everyone that does know what it’s all about, they’ve either just closed the tab and ignored the link, or switched the details to their affiliate ID and the original promoter has just lost a sale. (Especially as this person hasn’t even updated their links to the new somewhat masked clickbank links… tsk tsk)

Ignoring the lack of attempt to mask the affiliate link, I click ahead anyway. Now the product itself, Push Button Marketer, isn’t actually too bad. When I first read the sales letter, I must admit, I was skeptical. After all, it can supposedly automate all of your day to day tasks like checking email, writing content, managing PPC campaigns, building websites or web pages, writing your sales letters, creating ebooks and blog posts etc. Sounds a bit much right?

As you read down however, you learn that it’s basically nothing more than macros. Hardly revolutionary, but at least somewhat realistic. And the fact that they actually tell you it’s macros and give you at least a minor insight into the product you might be buying is a good thing. I’ve seen way too many sales letters that say a whole lot without actually saying anything at all.

I did have a hard time believing that this software was created and manipulated by someone who graduated with a degree in Drama/Television. The two don’t really mix. But then I had to remember that I knew absolutely nothing about HTML, web pages or PHP back in 2004, and yet I learned as I went and ended up running the biggest membership site in it’s niche at the time. So I have to give the benefit of the doubt and think that if it really did take a couple of years as stated, then it’s well within the realm of possibility the brother-in-law was able to build this program.

My post isn’t about the program necessarily, although if you are familiar with macros and what they’re capable of, by all means go check it out. No I’m here to talk about the ‘marketer’ (and I use that term loosely) that sent it out. Or should I say the second marketer. See, in my research about the product for this post, I went back to my email account and did a search for a few different terms. And this search provided a very interesting result.

Mr no name Leonard Worley (apparently aka “Daddy Greens”) sent me the email on the 30th of November. However, back on the 21st of June this same year, I have word for word the exact email from a Mr Fabian Tan. Who wrote the email first? I think everyone here can figure that out.

I should also mention that Fabian’s email was correctly formatted, paragraphed and much more pleasing on the eye to read. Leonard’s? Not so much. And remember the purposely pointed out ‘new’ tag at the start of this post? If I received the first email back in June, it hardly makes it new in November (practically December). In computer software time, it would be researching retirement homes by now…

I understand that emails aren’t technically covered by copyright, and that everyone has to start somewhere. But c’mon? Copy and pasting someone else’s email word for word, right down to the “I’m personally looking forward to letting my computer do more of the tedious work of my business. I recommend that you grab this program right away and put it to work for you ASAP.”

Oops wait, Daddy Greens altered that line to “I personally use this every day letting my computer do more of the tedious work of my business. I recommend that you grab this program right away and put it to work for you ASAP.” I mean, why stop at just copying someone else’s email and changing it to your affiliate link, you might as well go that one step further and claim to use it every day.

Unless of course he is using it, and this is what happens when you do – identical emails from multiple people. Hrm, that probably wouldn’t be a good sales plug for the program now would it?

P.S. Push Button Marketer guys, a major annoyance with your site.  Every time a user goes to click on another tab (not even close your tab, but simply switch tabs), don’t have a pop up window that requires closing before continuing. Quickest way to have your page closed and never seen by that person again. Once when someone tries to leave, fine. But every single time is too much!