I get it, the money’s in the list. I’m not personally trying to build a huge list of opt-ins, I’m here to help people. I built this site to directly help people network and promote their products and services to make money, I don’t need a list to push crappy products to in the hopes of a quick buck. That’s not helping.

When your subscribed to as many people’s email lists as I am (see here as to why), one thing becomes appalling obvious very quick – there are just WAY too many in the IM industry only caring about how much money they can make.

I got an email this morning that really took the cake for ‘complete lack of caring’.

I’ve blanked out the senders name although I was very tempted to name and shame. Not enough experience with this particular marketer to make that call just yet however.

So, I clicked the link – I always do, I need to see if it’s a product I’ve already seen. It turned out to be a new find – a product called Affiliate Page Brander.

One of the first things I do when coming across a “brand new” product is to Google it to see what others are saying about it. The “you’ve got to be kidding me” groan rolled through my head when I found this page – the same product with PLR rights released… September 7th, 2008. EIGHT people! Nearly two full years ago and here I am getting an email about this “this brand new software discovered”!

I received this email 24 April 2010 10:35… 18 minutes prior to writing this post.

C’mon people! At least do the BASIC research about what you’re pushing. Free or not, you need to stop pushing rehashed crap! If it only took me a single Google search (so what, like 10 seconds?) to discover this, it only goes to show how lazy you are and provides me with a reason to unsubscribe from your list…

Traffic. When driving to work we all wish it would just disappear, but when running a website, we want to be choking on the proverbial fumes. Everyone who has a website no matter how big or how small, wants traffic. Even if you’re just a blog like me who’s intentions are set more on informing your readers than simply emptying their pockets, you want people to actually see what you’re doing.

When I started receiving emails about Perfect Traffic Storm and it’s promises that “I may never need to worry about getting enough traffic to your sites EVER again“, I was intrigued. Even though I don’t have all the sales pages, the review sites and more to promote in attempts to convert as many sales as possible, I’d still like to reach as many people as I can with this blog. Investigating a bit more however, I made some very interesting discoveries!

Take a look at the following two images and tell me what you see…

Notice the big red writing? Look similar? No, they look identical and so do the entire sales pages for both! Perfect Traffic Storm’s sales page is a direct replica of Traffic Python’s. So much so you could even call it a… clone! Oh why hadn’t I had this example when writing the Affiliate Clone X blog post lol!

The funny thing is, there’s nothing really wrong with either product – you promote the program to earn credits which you then use to promote your advertisements on other people’s websites. Obviously there’s a little bit more to it than that, but you get the general idea. The problem I have however, is I find it really difficult to sign up to (or stay signed up to) a product that completely rips off someone elses sales page.

I mean, you just have to check out both pages!! Seriously, have to!! Open them up in tabs and flick between then as you read down. While some of the wording, mostly with regards to the testimonials have been changed, the layout, bullet points and information is identical.

Pay particular close attention to the “Banner Statistics” image about three-quarters down the page, the one with the 19.5% click through and 29.17% conversion. It’s the same image! Check out the Impressions count, clicks and sales. The numbers are the same. The only difference is that Perfect Traffic Storm photo-shopped out the dates shown in Traffic Python’s drop down section and under the graph.

From what I can gather so far, Traffic Python was released in July of 2009, whereas Perfect Traffic Storm was released November 10th of 2009. I can confirm the second release as I have 51 emails informing me of such. The thing is, there’s different owners involved. Traffic Python is claimed by Brett Ingram, while Perfect Traffic Storm was released by Mark Lareau and Todd Gross.

As I said, there’s nothing inherently wrong with either program, and supposedly PTS has upwards of 20,000 members now, which has to mean something (perhaps just a more aggressive promotion). Of course, if you are wanting to use it to promote and recruit to your ‘downline’ so you can then promote other products to people, a higher membership count is a negative – less people to recruit. Although for promoting your own sites via the slide-in ad impressions on other network sites, then PTS wins over Traffic Python for starting you with 1000 free ad credits.

I figure I might as well use those up to promote the blog since I have them

My question (actually two) to you all is:

1. Have you used either of these products before and do you have anything you can share about them? And
2. What is your opinion on the copying of someone elses sales page?

P.S. They say everything comes in three’s right? Well I found the third!! Web Traffic Juggernaut has an almost identical sales page to both Perfect Traffic Storm and Traffic Python. Same layout and information, just some slight variances with images used. That said, Juggernaut is also owned by Brett Ingram, so I would assume that it’s either the first draft of what was then made into Traffic Python, or he just really liked that sales page and reused it lol.

Teenage girls…. making money online. Not two phrases you would expect to see together is it? No, I didn’t either. So you can imagine my confusion when I open a link titled “How to Discover Hidden Revenue Streams in Your Passions, Skills and Dreams” and saw the following web page:

Yup, there at the very top of the page is five teenage girls with faces normally reserved for the male genitalia’s first appearance in all it’s glory. Especially as those girls look like they’re at the younger spectrum of teenage hood – I’m guessing around the 12 to 14 mark. Those are not faces of people asking themselves how they can quit their day job, change their career, make money online and do it around something they love.

I had this whole next paragraph lined up for “what really goes through the mind of a 12 year old”, but that was scary just as a thought, let alone inflicting it all on you to read as well. Let’s just agree it probably contains topics such as boys, Twilight, High School Musical, boys, Zach Efron, boobs, boys, Twilight New Moon (Helllooo, there’s a difference, like, totally), boys and how much school sucks but is totally worth it because of <insert boy here>.

Hardly a matching picture for a workbook based around taking a detailed look inside yourself to reveal your hidden passions, skills and dreams. The same passions and dreams you will then use to improve your lifestyle with. Am I right?

Now, the workbook (not an e-book because it asks you to fill it out like homework) isn’t bad exactly. You can download it free for yourself at the website http://www.theuncovery.com/ – no opt-in required. If you’re just getting started in wanting to create your own products, share your knowledge, start a blog etc and have no idea where to start, then I’d suggest having a read over it. It helps you sit down, work out what you like doing, what you know something about and how to make money in the middle.

That said, the web page picture is enough to distract anyone enough to forget why they’re there in the first place. You hear all the time how your sales page is so important in converting visitors to buyers, yet you never really hear much about image selection. I think this can be our first example of when it pays to keep searching for a better image. This is going to be my first post filled under the “What were you thinking?!” category lol.