When I wrote last Tuesday’s blog post, it was after seeing people promoting a page that really wasn’t being truthful in what it was selling. It used the ‘hype method’ to claim itself as a Ferrari when in reality, it was barely a Ford. But what happens when you have a sales page that doesn’t use the hype method but still doesn’t really speak the truth either – instead, they go out of their way to just NOT say what it’s about. It’s a verbal (or in this case written) way of going the long way around instead of direct to the point.

Today’s example is: My Online Income System (I know, the originality of the name blew me away too…)

The tactic here is the old ’sob story’ sales pitch – the woe is me, I had such a hard life before something or someone helped me see the light and whammo, I am now living a life of luxury. Oh yes, and of course now YOU can copy the methods that all of a sudden turned the tables and start living the life you deserve too!

The thing is, there is nothing new being offered here, in fact, when you read between the lines you will see it’s nothing more than a ‘How to’ for Affiliate Marketing. Yes I know, another one. My problem isn’t that it’s yet another ebook trying to tell you that Affiliate Marketing is the way to millions, it’s that the sales letter purposely goes out of it’s way to NOT tell you that. I mean really, just look at some of the points:

… “from a single website promoting just 3 products I was already making over a $100 per day” = That’s called a Review Site. A (usually) single webpage where you pitch three similar products against each other and recommend one… usually the one with the higher commission.

… “What’s more, I didn’t have to create a product, sell a product, and handle customer queries or any such stuff” = Otherwise called an Affiliate Marketer.

… “How to sell hundreds of thousands of products you never have to see, store or even ship.” Again! It’s just Affiliate Marketing!

… “you’ll get a free website that does all the heavy lifting for you.” Yes, that’s called a sales page, it’s what the product author creates! It’s not like you’re given a website of your own!

… “commission checks up to 75%” *COUGH* Clickbank *COUGH*

… “You’ll uncover the goldmine hidden on Google, Yahoo and MSN that could literally explode your earnings overnight!” My personal favourite of the page. Hello people that’s just Pay Per Click and is going to cost you a lot of money! Hardly a “goldmine” and in no way “hidden”

Don’t get me wrong, affiliate marketing works and I have no problem with people wanting to learn it, but I’m sure this woman worked harder making sure her sales letter didn’t say what it was than she did on the affiliate marketing in the first place. When you’re looking at enough “my product is the answer’ sales pages, it becomes very easy to pick out roughly what it’s about. Of course, this page is relying on the “oh wow it sounds so easy” factor present in newbies to making money online.

On top of all that, there’s quite a few holes in the “story” that make me question the truth behind it all. (If she’s even a ‘her’ at all… yeah I said it!)

Let’s see… she hated her job, hated her boss and wanted to work from home. She jumps on Google and does a search ‘work at home opportunity’ only to be presented with thousands of offers. No surprise there, but then she racks up nearly four and a half thousand dollars buying ebooks, courses and seminars yet didn’t learn about affiliate marketing until she went and cried on a forum and the gentle guiding hand of a complete stranger finally switched on the light bulb?

I mean give me a break, there are so many products out there teaching affiliate marketing that I find it way too hard to believe she didn’t know about it prior to Shelly coming to her rescue.

Then of course, she wants to ‘pay it forward’ (actually Shelly says she should) and she returns to the forum to spread the good news of her success. Only now, she can’t help everyone individually so what is a girl to do? She writes up an ebook to sell. That way everyone benefits – she helps those just like she was (yeah right) and she continues to help her own hip pocket at the same time. Quick learner this one, how she didn’t manage success after spending $4,500 on products is beyond me.

She does help people however… over six thousand of them! Whoooey that’s a lot of people. But wait, 6,308 people didn’t “make their first money online” because of Kimberly as she claims, that’s just how many copies she sold. (or at least claim to) I bet 50% of the buyers didn’t even OPEN your ebook – it’s almost fact that a large majority of people buy but don’t take action. You can hardly take credit for six THOUSAND people being transformed into internet business pros! I mean my goodness! How quickly she makes that jump too!

The three leaps to a big head:

1. To this day I’ve had over 6,308 people invest in my training course. (Invest is another word for buy)
2. I’m sure you’ll agree that any program which helped over 6,300 people make their first income online is nothing to sneeze at. (Now she knows they all made income online because of her)
3. You get my proven 60-day action plan which has transformed over 6,308 ordinary people into internet business pros! (See, now they’re PROS because of her! Amazing!)

How quickly the sales page subtly works it’s way to making you think that she’s “transformed” all these people and they are now living the life you want. For someone who used to be a waitress, she produced a pretty convincing pitch.

And let’s not forget all the highlighted yellow areas, because, as a newly discovered kindred blogger states: Highlighting something means it’s super important. I wouldn’t want you to miss the super important stuff! Like the price, you sooo don’t want to miss the price! Normally $97, but today only you can pick it up for $47. And remember:

P.S. I can’t promise how long I’ll keep the price this low. If you return after “thinking about it” and find that I’ve raised the price back to $97, please don’t blame me. The only way to lock in this low price is to order right away, while you’re still thinking about it. Order now!

I looked into the domain name – it was registered on the 3rd of June 2008. I know you’re wondering how long that price will last? My guess is almost 2 years. One of the recent emails was from Steven Johnson who has been pushing the EXACT SAME EMAIL (no seriously, word-for-word) on me since June of 2009, and you know what, back then it was still offered at the discount price of $47.

Click to enlarge the image and take note of all the “today only” emails…

A lot of daily specials or marketing ploy busted? It’s just so hard to figure out!

Oh yes, and when you go to close the sales page you get a special “I only offer this to family and friend’s” pop up that let’s you buy for $17. I guess this would qualify me as a friend then? Although wait, I do have family out there I’ve never met before. Oh my goodness the message MUST be for me!!

I do so love the request to “Please don’t give this link out to anyone, it’s by invite only ” – I guess ‘close window’ means ‘invite’ in her world…

I have no doubt that who ever is behind this product is making a lot of money – and not only from the 6,000 people who have apparently purchased it. Their affiliate page states that they have a “biz opp list in excess of 25,000 subscribers and have quickly become known for how well our list converts” and that this list is open for joint ventures (you show me your list and I’ll show you mine) either as a once off or as a monthly recurring event.

Oh yes, and let’s not skip past the last eye-opener: “We work heavily and exclusively in the biz opp niche and pretty much know whats going down in just about any area of the internet in regards to this niche.” (Yo, at least she be down with the lingo ya biz opp! Aww yeah, they know what’s going down bra!)

That’s some talented waitress right there!

All in all I found it really hard to think anything positive when reading the sales page. Between all the different ways of not saying it was affiliate marketing, and the holes in the sob story, I have to put this down as another internet marketer caring more about their profits than actually helping people like they claim.

Upon further research, I found people who were unhappy that it was just another affiliate marketing product, and those that raved about how awesome it is. Posts like this:

Notice the signature link? It’s greyed out because I clicked on it, and this is what I saw…

A website promoting three different products *cough review site cough* and look at what is number one. And that’s not the only ‘rave review’ of the product that has a similar link in their signature, at least 50% of the replies to a four page thread, ironically on the supposed same forum she got her big break from, contained links to similar sites.

/Facepalm

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?

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?