How excited would you be if I told you I had worked out a proven system to make money online, lots of money, and I was willing to tell you everything you need to know so you could literally copy and paste it to succeed? That I was earning almost twenty thousand dollars each and every month, and you could be too? Only you will do it minus all the trial and error I went through. Without all the financial loss I went through. And that I would share all this with you for… oh I don’t know… $77?

Are you nodding? Reaching for your credit card? Good, then before we make that purchase, I want to show you this ab work out machine that requires nothing more than three minutes a day to turn your flabby middle into wash-board abs! Oh no, no, wait! Even better, here’s a recently discovered berry from the amazon forests that will make your body simply repel any excess weight like it was last season’s fashion!

Yes, any of those ab machines will help you to get those rock hard abs of steel… providing you use it in conjunction with traditional exercise (cardio preferred) and a balanced, healthy diet. And that’s a diet in place of your junk food addictions, not as well as. Spending just 3 minutes a day but changing nothing else in your life will not work. Just the same as the berries on their own won’t work… although I don’t think they work at all, but they certainly won’t work some voodoo fat magic without the aid of exercise, diet and perhaps one of those ab machines…

Just like those infomercials, there is more to a “copy and paste” system when it comes to making money online. Yes they work, I’m sure that at least 50% of the people writing the ebooks claiming you can copy their methods are in fact making some money with the steps they are teaching. But, and it’s a very big but, there’s always going to be more to it. Why do I say that? Well let’s talk to Captain Obvious for a moment.

Put yourself in the shoes of one of those “I’m not a guru so you can trust me, but I’m making as much or more money than them and am here to tell you all my secrets” salesmen. Let’s pretend you’re making a respectable $10,000 a month, every month. You’ve gone through the trials and tribulations to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Sure, you’ve lost money along the way but finally, you’ve got it all sorted and would be comfortable making the claim that you could teach someone else how to do it. So, are you going to:

1. Share this system with anyone who wants to know?
2. Not only the methods, but give away your exact campaigns, and exact systems that allows anyone to duplicate your exact earnings?
3. And best off all, give away all this proven money making information for a measly $77?

No? Hrm, ok. No problem. I’ll just pop over to Copy Paste Systems because apparently, they will! And they make almost twenty thousand a month which is double you, so nyeh! In your face!

I’m not going to hide my dislike of these sorts of sca…. systems. I’ve been bitten a couple of times on the same sort of claim and I’ve yet to see or hear of any real copy and paste system that actually works. To me, all I see is Copy, Paste… Fail. Why? Because it’s common sense, something that is scarily uncommon these days.

I mean really, if you are earning just under twenty THOUSAND dollars a MONTH, and you are claiming that ANYONE who buys your system can do exactly the same thing with your EXACT campaigns, keywords, landing pages, etc… are you REALLY going to give away that big of a gold mine for $77….? No, you’re not. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to be proven wrong. I would be the first person to hand over my money if it was as easy as copying what ever they told me worked and plugging it in to where ever they say it worked. But it’s not that simple.

I’ve seen a lot of these types of sales pages over the past year, and have even fallen for a couple myself. But now, there’s no way I’d waste my money, because the only “copy and paste” system that is in play and working, is the “tell people they can copy and paste your campaigns”. Yes they’re making money, every time someone buys their eBook!

Just take a look at what the emails are claiming:

All the testing, tweaking, market research, landing pages, keywords, ads and all the other good “secret” stuff including exact systems and processes are already “done for you!”  and handed to you on a silver platter! There’s no more expensive trial-and-error!

That’s right, you don’t have to test, you don’t have to tweak, do market research or try to come up with the best landing page, keywords or ads. In fact, throw that brain right out your left ear, they’ve done it all for you! And all for $77? Gee, what a steal! (I mean seriously, stop and think for just a minute about how ridiculous that sounds!!)

I received a fair few emails on this particular product launch, surprisingly more than I would expect for a $77 ebook. Perhaps there’s some juicy up-sells after your original purchase that bump up the affiliates commissions? Who knows. I do love the ‘hurry now’ tactic used in a few of them though:

But, You need to hurry now because it’s extremely limited and available only for the first few people!

Yes, hurry. Limited. Right. I’ve been opening up the same website for the past 5 days (as of writing this post) and what do you know? It’s still for sale. That means that there’s either a lot more common sense happening than I first gave credit for or, more likely, there is no limit.

I do so love the other little tricks used as well. Like how the sales letter goes on and on about how you won’t need to worry about Adwords, Yahoo or MSN to make your money. A little play on words trick that gets the reader thinking that you won’t be doing PPC advertising. But you are. You just doing it via Facebook instead. How do I know it’s facebook? Look at the picture they provide for their “Traffic Tornado Sales System”, then look at the one under the ’step by step’ tab on this: http://www.facebook.com/advertising/ Oh my gosh! They’re the same…

And the quote “This brand new never seen before system does not require a web site or technical experience!” Um, yeah… Facebook advertising isn’t brand new, and you’ve never needed a website to do PPC, although it helps.

After noticing that along with a few other issues I had on the page, there’s no way I would be parting with my money for it. I’ve spoken to a few people on Twitter about it, but so far no one’s taken that leap of purchasing it yet, and apparently, none plan to. For what must work out to be between $26 to $50 commission, some of the promoters were hell bent on making sure I got the info about it – one of them even sent me seven emails, four on the ONE day! So I’m sure there’s at least some good info in there, because all affiliates purchase the product before they push it… right?

Oh yes, and I realise a disclaimer is pretty much required, but take note of the last paragraph:

ANY AND ALL FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS HERE OR ON ANY OF OUR SALES MATERIAL ARE INTENDED TO EXPRESS OUR OPINION OF EARNINGS POTENTIAL. MANY FACTORS WILL BE IMPORTANT IN DETERMINING YOUR ACTUAL RESULTS AND NO GUARANTEES ARE MADE THAT YOU WILL ACHIEVE RESULTS SIMILAR TO OURS OR ANYBODY ELSES, IN FACT NO GUARANTEES ARE MADE THAT YOU WILL ACHIEVE ANY RESULTS FROM OUR IDEAS AND TECHNIQUES IN OUR MATERIAL.

LOL!

P.S. I get that “copy and paste” is what this is all about, but, um, Chad Michaels… it might be a good idea when you “copy and paste” an email to promote it, that you don’t copy in the original senders sign off. Because when I get an email from you, ending with “Talk soon, Steven”, it kinda gives the game away.

Has anyone bought it? Care to tell me I’m wrong or are you too busy rolling around in all the newly acquired wealth?

We all know by now that I’m not the sort of blogger to sit back and rave about product after product, right? I don’t post fake claims or hold anything back. I only have one way of doing things, and that’s saying exactly what I see. I’m not here to try and pull the wool over your eyes so I can raid your wallet.

That said, I never go out of my way to bash a particular product either. It’s more a case of there being enough emails, sales pages and marketers out there that need to lift their game just a little bit so I don’t have a reason to notice it. There are a lot of marketers that try to trick buyers, or wording things just right so as not to be a flat out lie, but still sound better than the truth.

The good news (for everyone really), is that for every item that ends up as a blog post, there’s ten that are passed over. Generally speaking, most stuff I see isn’t that bad.

The example for today is a product called Niche Blueprint 2.0. It was released yesterday (the 11th of January) and as such, I have a couple emails about it. As I’m clearing through my inbox and realising how many times I am seeing one about this product, I stop to investigate a little further. Being “2.0″, I figure there has to be lots of information out there about the first release so that’s where I start. Frustratingly all I can find are the many fake review sites – aka the affiliates trying to promote it and using the “Don’t buy until you read this / I have the REAL review” tactic. For me, they are nothing but time wasters.

(Random Tip: Googling for Niche Blueprint actually brings up nothing but Niche Blueprint 2 sites, so you need to Google the term Niche Blueprint -2.0 to work, notice the minus sign there? That’s how you do it)

Realising that Google is more hassle than help for this particular topic, I decide to head on over to a community that’s helped so much recently, the Warrior Forums. Being able to do a single search and find a seven page thread on a product that, at the time the thread was created wasn’t even released yet is awesome. For those wanting to know as much as possible before they purchase, I bring you… the Niche Blueprint thread! Note: That’s a thread on the original Niche Blueprint, not the updated 2.0 version.

I haven’t read through all of it because I already know it’s not going to be a product for me. In fact, a huge thank you goes out to member ad2012 for giving me the absolute basic lowdown on what exactly the Niche Blueprint method is and helping me realise immediately that I’m not at a stage yet where I would be able to make a proper go of it.

I will try to explain what Niche Blueprint is all about. Nothing held back!

Niche Blueprint is an e-commerce course. It teaches how to build an e-commerce store around a niche market by selling physical products. Laid out in a form of 23 videos and 26 manuals. Basically, niche blueprint will show…

- How to research a niche market,
- How to find a good domain for the purpose of branding and SEO,
- How to find suppliers for your store,
- How to setup catalog, shopping cart, payment gateway, and toll-free number, brand logo, and store template,
- How to promote online store using free marketing techniques, and shopping portals,
- How to manage your store for daily routines,
- How to outsource your store,
- How to sell your store for quick cash rather than keeping it.

For $497, it also includes e-commerce platform, large selection of online store templates, free hosting for a year, keyword tool, and live coaching via UStream. No upsell or one time offer.

That’s what niche blueprint is all about. It’s about building and run a profitable online store. You see that e-commerce is a proven business model uses by hundreds companies. So, Niche Blueprint is not for everyone and only for serious person who are ready to build a REAL online business. If your aren’t ready to build an online store, you don’t have to buy it.

Steven Clayton and Tim Godfrey got helped by the Hermansen brothers. You may have heard about how Dave Hermansen sold a ‘bird-cage’ store for $173,000.

Here’s the proof and it’s on the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/te…p.html?_r=2&em

And here’s the actual ‘train horns’ store owned by the Hermansen brothers:
http://www.pbmissions.com/

Look, I will not hide the fact that I’m one of Niche Blueprint JV but I’m not trying to promote Niche Blueprint here. I just one to make this clear so everyone can have the knowledge about Niche Blueprint. I mean, when some gurus launch their new product, you cash is at stake because they’re trying to hide the fact. So just read this post carefully and you can skip the sales talk.

As you can see, I’m not trying to hide anything and the fact about Niche Blueprint, it’s all laid out here.

That’s straight from reply #25 of the thread I linked. I love that response for a couple of reasons, mostly that it tells me right away that it’s not going to be a product for me and I can now skip past any emails advertising version 2.0. If it was something that interested me, or I thought capable of doing, then I would purchase it from this guy purely because he gets right to the point on what it is, who it’s for and what’s involved. The fact that he adds the disclaimed at the end that he’s a promoter of the product itself doesn’t change a thing.

And this is something I think a lot of the more shady marketers could learn from. Internet Marketing has been going for a while now, and more and more people are becoming aware of what exactly it is. This means that they are learning to pick the real from the fake and those outlandish claims aren’t going to do you any favours now. Especially since the FTC is cracking down.

Regardless of their involvement however, I know I’d personally buy from a real review of a product over the flashy sales letter any day. And someone that can openly say “this product may not be for you” is someone I am more likely to listen to in the future when they do discuss a product that might be.

Outside of that particular “to the point” post in the Warrior Forum thread, there’s an absolute heap of other information in that thread on what exactly is involved with this sort of business. Again, that’s a thread on the original launch of Niche Blueprint back in January of 2009, but version 2.0 is the same methods to make money, so knowing what it is, regardless of the version is immensely helpful. If you are getting any emails promoting Niche Blueprint 2.0, then I’d take a look at the thread linked to learn what it’s all about. Post #267 on page 6 is from January of this year and discusses version 2.0.

My blog post today isn’t about the product as much as it is an example of how a short, to the point post by someone promoting it can be so helpful and more influential to the sale of a product that someone trying to say a lot without actually saying anything at all. I see so many over the top sales pages, or marketers promising so much without giving you any real idea of what example their promises relate to exactly, that it’s such a nice change to be able to see someone promoting the product and still being able to say “look, here’s the deal…”

After being screwed over three major times last year myself by unscrupulous marketers claiming to be Gurus, I’d like to see more people taking a leaf out of ad2012’s book. More real,less spiel! Oooh, that could be my 2010 slogan!

For those interested, you can check out Niche Blueprint 2.0 here. It’s released by the same people who did Commission Blueprint.