When I first started toying with the idea to start this blog, it was due to some very, very bad emails and products being promoted. With that reasoning behind it, I knew going in there would be a large percentage of, shall we say, less than flattering blog posts, but I had also high hopes there would be a lot of good too.
I figured for every three or so bad blog posts, I would be able to mention a worthwhile product, give something away or share a great find. Sadly, with so much crap floating around the net these days, I’m thinking there’s going to be an 80/20 rule coming into play and not in the typical internet marketing way.
(Usually the 80/20 rule of internet marketing is that roughly 80 percent of your actual business usually comes from just 20 percent of your customers. Unfortunately I think in my case it’s going to be 80 percent crap, 20 percent good when it comes to posting…)
A little while ago I wrote about how important it was to proofread your work. (The Impotence of Proofreading…) I thought I had found some pretty good examples of why this is such an important part of putting together anything using the written word. Of course, the examples used in that post were sales letters, which is a pretty important step to make sure you have as correct as possible right? But what happens when you have that right, does the actual product you’re pushing not matter as much? What if you’re giving it away for free? Then surely anything will do, I mean it’s not like they’re paying for it. Right?
If you answered no, maybe, or I don’t know to that last part, please stop reading, take your right hand and slap yourself across the face. Now. Do it. Done? Ok, moving on. The product you are providing must be proofread! Even if you are offering it free! Just because you have my money doesn’t mean I can’t ask for it back (generally) and if I’ve bought from you once, and like what I purchased, then I am more likely to buy from you again. So make sure you do it right!
A week or so ago now, I received an email from ‘Charles’. No surname, he wants to be like Madonna. The email informs me that Charles has just found a brand new site that is
giving out a “magic code” that, when added to any site, FORCES it to just start making money!
Oh my goodness, magic code?
No kidding! – you just add the code, and like magic your site just starts pouring money into your pocket!
Like… magic? Well, someone hold me back because I just have to check this out!! Before I break my mouse trying to click on the link, I notice that Charles claims to have proof of how wonderful the magic code is, yet, scanning the rest of the email provides no such proof. Bad form Charles, not all your readers have the memory of a Goldfish. (By the time you read to the bottom you’ve forgotten what was said at the top…) If you claim proof, show proof!
While I’m sure you’re all sitting on the edge of your seats just dying to know what this secret code is, there’s a few things you have to know first. The email claims…
- You can add this “magic code” to any site in just 45 seconds!
- You can add it to an unlimited number of sites!
- You can “rinse & repeat” this over & over to make as much money as you can ever imagine!
- After adding just this code, you don’t have to do anything else! (Sweet)
- You just sit back and make all the cash you could ever ask for! (Ka-ching!)
Unlimited sites, forty-five seconds, sit back and suffocate under the influx of dollar bills? And, all of this information will be given to me free?! *Click click clickity click*
The above is the website the email link takes me to. And this is where the first eyebrow raises… upon entering my name and email address at the bottom, I am informed that I am already in the database. But how can this be? Charles specifically informed me that it was a brand new site. As I realise the email is nothing more than a provided copy, I do a search for ‘magic code’ in my inbox and am surprised to find there’s only a few emails containing those words. In fact, there’s only five. Surely the words ‘magic’ and ‘code’ have been used together more than that…
I match the name ‘John C Vincent’ provided at the bottom of the magic code website with the senders address attached to two of the five emails and open one. Voila, a link to download the “Top Secret Magic Code” PDF. I also check the other emails and find a word for word replica of Charles’ email sent on the 23rd of June by another marketer. So this is hardly a brand new site…
I download the ebook, open it up with trepidation and excitement, and am quickly yanked back down to earth by something written in the Introduction…. ie on page TWO!
One of my homes is valued at many, many $14 million, and is over 43,000 square feet in size.
I kid you not, that is copied and pasted directly from the ebook. Clearly it’s not a proof read sentence, because even if one of his houses was valued at many $14 millions… a fourth-tree thousand square foot home? C’mon now! Do you realise how big that is?! I do, because I worked it out.
In Australia, our houses are measured in ‘house squares’ as well as meters squared. Porter Davis is one of the more prestige house builders in my state, and the largest house they build is 50.23 sq (that’s house squares). Ok, are you ready for some math?
The Brookvale 50 consists of five bedrooms, six bathrooms (every bedroom has it’s own ensuite), a games room, computer room, separate lounge, family and dining rooms, a media room, a rumpus room (basically another lounge room), a study and double car garage. At 50.23 house squares, it converts to 467 meters squared. Converting that into square feet which is what the US use, you get 5,027 which, is still a large American house. This guy however, is claiming to have over 43,000 square feet!! Comparing that to our house sizes, that’s eight Brookvale 50’s!!
Sorry, but that’s just not believable in my books. That’s either a typo or a really out there lie. Then again, he does claim to have a personal wealth of over $96 million… so who knows? Why he couldn’t afford a proof reader with that sort of cash lying around is beyond me. I mean, that’s the second sentence in! In fact, I find pretty much the entire first section of the ebook hard to read – it just doesn’t flow.
What I really struggle with however, and what ultimately made me stop reading it all together, was the constant use of the term “magic code”. Why is this a problem? Because the PDF is nothing more than an introduction to Ad Networks. This magic code is their ad code. Nothing magic about it. I know, I spent 6 years working with many different ad networks to fill my inventory on my forum.
Throughout the PDF are things such as:
- …you will want to get the magic code and edit it into your select web page
- When directing traffic from Google to your web page, you should avoid adding the magic code on the page where visitors arrive as Google tends to punish your rank a little.
- …and then have that free traffic directed to my web pages that also contain my magic code.
What gets me even more is he uses Alexa to prove his magic code works:
One variation of my system is now being used by Alexa.com. Alexa does nothing but add this special “magic” code to their web pages, and then the money automatically rolls in. Notice it says that just these little button banners cost $15,000 per month?
So I know my system is very genuine, and works very well as the revenues Alexa is generating is 6 x $15,000 per page, which comes to $90,000 a month per page! Imagine yourself receiving $90,000 a month quite passively from YOUR web pages.
Of course Alexa can generate $90,000 a month! The sheer amount of visitors they receive is (I dare say) an unreachable amount for most sites out there. I’m not talking about Google and such, but sites that this guy is peddling his magic code to. You and me sites, ones that we create after wiping up the drool when day dreaming about ninety thousands dollars a month.
In the end, the overuse of magic code for what is, in it’s basic form, ad code the networks give you as well as the outlandish claims made by the author to prove his point put me off reading any further. Don’t get me wrong, using ad networks on your websites is a good way to make money – be it CPM Networks, CPA Networks or Marketplaces. I’ve used all three versions as well as selling my inventory privately. A lot of people claim to make good money with Adsense, and that’s great. Personally I’ve had more success via other avenues, but I certainly wouldn’t class it as “magic code that once placed filled my pockets with cash”. It still takes a lot of work on your part to grow your site and get those visitors in and clicking. There’s nothing magic about it.
P.S. Since reading the PDF, I have toyed with the idea of putting together a proper ebook/report on using the different ad revenue options to monetize your site. I’ve got six years experience utilizing them…
P.P.S. Further into this ebook I have to laugh at the claim that he recently bought one of the world’s most expensive cars as a collector’s toy. Then he goes and includes a digital picture and I quote, “as taken from a place online”. When I say digital, I don’t mean a photo taken with a digital camera. I mean a digitally created image of the car. As in not real.
It’s not that he didn’t include a photo of his car, and it’s not that he couldn’t do a google search to locate a real photo of the car. But that he only included a digital image of it as ‘motivation’, and then states that he took that image from a “place” online, yet can’t even link to where he took it from. After all, I did a google search and located a real version of his digital one and it took me less than 15 seconds. Not exactly hard.
For those curious, the car in question is the Bugatti Veyron which isn’t the world’s fasted car (although granted it did come in #2).
