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).

The 7 Figure Catch?

My inbox has been drowning under all the “Mike is leaving the “guru” business and giving away his 7 Figure Code course for FREE” (insert desired number of exclamation marks here) emails this past week. For something that was being given away ‘free’, there were an awful lot of people pushing their links – some even offering bonuses such as giving you $10 just for picking it up. What does that tell you? There’s a catch in there somewhere that will make these affiliates money, and they want me to click their link to ensure they get their sale.

Some were open enough to share this fact, such as Matt Garrett:

Oh, I’ll also be throwing in some bonuses, simply because if you do decide to take one of the upgrade options I’ll get a commission on it, so it only seems fair I give you something extra in return.

I respect the honesty they share and to be honest myself, I would be more likely to make sure one of them got my sale commission if I was to purchase what ever was being offered. Of course, we already know nothing is really for free except a kick up the ass, and for this giveaway, you are asked to pay the postage and handling. Fair enough really, no one is going to lose money by covering the cost to post out the advertised 10,000 copies. All of the emails that were sent to me explained this factor, I have no problem with that.

However, this brings in the first problem: The cost of shipping. I will admit to never having watched any of the pre-launch videos because I wasn’t interested in getting the 7 Figure Code. This has nothing to do with the product itself, how good it is or isn’t, I’m just not ready to take on any new items (let alone big courses) at the moment until I get my currect collection of ebooks, reports and other items sorted. Of course now, after reading a lot of comments from unhappy people, I’m wishing I had paid a little more attention. It seems the cost of shipping is one of the major issues.

Apparently the original amount for shipping was meant to be between $7 to $12 depending on where you lived. Unfortunately after searching through my 47 recent emails on this launch, no where can I see a listed shipping cost, however there are quite a few comments on the 7 Fiigure Code Blog stating that amount. Regardless if that price was stated previously or not, for me to be shipped the 80 page printed and spiral bound copy of The 7 Figure Secrets is $23.99. (This is the secrets, not the code. This is not the price to ship the DVD’s)

That’s a fairly high price for what essentially, is just some paper. No idea how the postal system in the US works, but in Australia we have what we call ‘tough bags’ which are basically thick paper (bordering on cardboard) envelopes. These are used to protect items a little better, but at relatively cheap cost. For something like an 80 page notebook, it would cost me around $2 to post. At the worst, maybe around $5. Big difference there.

The price of the shipping however is not the BIG problem, it’s the fact that people feel lied to.

Lie #1 – You get the Physical DVD’s

A lot of the emails that went out contained statements such as:

• “FYI – this course is the videos of a $5,000 workshop so you’re getting the same content as the people that paid $5,000.”  (Shawn Casey)
• “Mike Filsaime is going to be giving away his 7FigureCode 16 DVD course for free tomorrow, for those quick enough to grab a copy.” (Matt Garrett)
• “Melani, it’s open, get your 16 DVD’s for Free!” (Email title) (Matt Garrett)
• “Mike says he is giving away 10,000 copies on Dec 15th so make sure to register and mark down that date.  The 7 Figure Code is 16 DVD’s of the best selling home study course…” (Frank Salinas)
• “The 17 DVD’s are of a seminar that Mike held…” (JT Martin)
• “Now, Mike is going to let you have that set of DVDs for free – you just pay the shipping.” (Doug Champigny)
• “If you cover shipping and handling then you’ll get 16 DVDS of content from a $1297.00 course for free.” (Jeff Johnson)

However that’s not really the case. And if you listen real closely to the video shown on The 7 Figure Code’s main page, you will hear Mike state that the information will in fact be available via streaming video. Mike also sent out an email (titled “The Catch? There really is none… (explanation inside)” if you are subscribed to one of his lists) stating something similar.

Granted a lot of people can’t make use of the streaming video function – I would be one of them. This would take me forever to watch as we aren’t blessed with an unlimited download capacity and watching them would pretty much eat up our entire months quota. If, like me, the streaming video option is not an option at all, you can get the DVD’s shipped to you… for the additional cost of $97. And this is where people feel lied to.

There are a lot of unhappy campers out there that were led to believe they were getting the physical DVD’s for free, and instead, are faced with a $97 price tag when it all goes live. What’s worse, is that they feel instead of being a miscommunication, it was a deliberate ploy to get them all hyped up and excited before what is being labeled “a bait and switch” was pulled.

Was it a lie? No. Was it misleading wording by some affiliates? Unfortunately yes.

Who emailed it right?

• “He’ll give you instant online access to the 7 Figure Code home study course (the content from all the original DVDs) and he’ll ship you a copy of 7 Figure Secrets, the
  “condensed version” of the course (an 84-page ebook that slims down over 20 hours of video)” (Michael Rasmussen)

Lie #2 – No tricks, no gimmicks and no forced continuity

This is where it get’s a bit tricky. Technically there is no “forced” continuity, if you pay close attention. When you click on the add to cart button, you see the following page:

“Yes Please send me the printed and spiral bound edition of “The 7 Figure Secrets.” I can’t wait to get my hands on this product…” yadda yadda yadda. Now, the first issue crops up with the line “I know it is a $297 value and I get it 100% free today“. Why? Because nearly every single email and publicity note about this release highlights the $1297 price tag. So when people read that they are only getting something worth $297, they get confused. Very confused.

Right there, people feel tricked.

As you scroll down the page, you see big red tick marks with the words “YES” sign me up for the Instant Affiliate Website and MarketingDotCom Monthly Magazine for a 30 Day free trial before charging me $19.95 a month. And “YES” I also want the 7 Figure Zone Elite Community Membership free trial which will end up costing me a further $19.95 a month after 14 days. Again, more confusion…

But if you look closely to the top right hand corner of each offer, you will see that you can remove them from your cart.

What is “forced continuity”?

… it’s when in order to get the “free offer” you get automatically signed up to some sort of ongoing payment plan usually (but not always) after a “trial period”. - as stated in the email sent out by Matt Garrett titled “When is a “freebie” not a freebie..?”

To me, the above looks pretty automatic.

I find this a very tricky way to go about it, because people’s brains will automatically jump to the “What the HELL??” side of the fence due to the confusion caused. They won’t automatically think “Well hrm, I was told I don’t have to take these offers, so I must be able to remove them somehow”. Most will look to the red tick wanting to know how to un-tick it, and then when they can’t, they get upset. This is quite clear when you read the many, many comments posted on the official 7 Figure Code blog. *

Remember, a lot of the emails went out with details that there was no forced continuity, yet here is the order page which what appears to be forced continuity.

Again, people feel tricked.

Is there forced continuity? No. Is this a really bad way to get people to consider accepting your offers? In my opinion, yes.

The Result?

Unfortunately, with the high shipping and handling cost, the miscommunication that left people feeling they were being lied to about what was actually being sent out, and the automatic acceptance of the membership options which the user has to manually remove, it’s left a very sour taste in a lot of people’s mouths. Just the same, there are thousands out there who have picked themselves up a copy – be it with or without the extras. Whether they know what they’re going to get charged shortly or not I can’t say…

As a few commenters mentioned in reply to the official blog post that if it had originally been advertised as a $97 special to get all the DVD’s with the option to access a free version via streaming video, there would be less upset caused. However, there most likely would have been a lot less interest…

*Update* It’s no surprise that by the time I had finished putting this together, let it sit to come back and proof read, all the negative comments from the official blog post are gone. Deleted. That’s only about 5 hours. Annoyingly, I actually had the page open until late this afternoon and only closed it when I felt I was done writing up what I wanted to. Really wish I had of captured screenshots of all the negativity… there certainly was a lot.

Feel free to share your thoughts and feelings here, as well as spread the word for other’s to do the same. I don’t delete things just because they aren’t kissing my … well, you get the idea.

Further Reading

• The Seven Figure Code Hype, by Matthew Bredel