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?

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).

Most people involved in the ever growing world of online marketing are familiar with PLR products. While I don’t recommend using them for physical content of non-affiliate sites (your blog, information sites, etc), they can come in handy if you’re into article marketing, putting together sites solely based around an individual topic to promote affiliate products (fake blogs, etc) or are wanting to grow this ‘must have’ list by giving away freebies. For pretty much those three reasons, plus perhaps a few more, it can make sense to use PLR articles and e-books to save yourself time.

I got some emails recently informing me of a new PLR membership site called Resell Rights Weekly. Now I’ve had a look inside and I have to say, it’s hardly ‘new’, but that’s not a bad thing in this case. When you have a look at the downloads section for just free members (not even looking at the upgraded Gold membership), it goes all the way back to August of 2007. That’s a little over two years of free downloads built up right there.

Free is good right? Who am I kidding, free is great! But is free any good? That’s what’s important here. And of course good depends on the individual and their needs, so I can’t exactly answer that question.

Looking though the list of downloads I see:

• Wordpress Blog themes and HTML templates (can be picked up anywhere these days though…)
• Adsense e-books, reports and programs (are there many out there who still do adsense?)
• Some graphics packs, some with PLR. (always handy, you can never have too many free graphics to pick from)
• Information ebooks on every aspect of making money you can think of (naturally)
• As well as other miscellaneous topics such as Flying and The Hindu-Yogi Science of Breath (um… cool?)

Like most of these sites that give you free PLR content, you get everything but the kitchen sink when it comes to the topics they cover. Whether or not you could build a workable and liveable house out of all the parts is debatable. I’m not here to judge the quality of the existing content however, I’m here to happily announce that in an ever growing ‘fluff sales pitch’ world, I do in fact get everything the emails promise me. Sweet!

So, what exactly is being promised? Let’s have a quick look at one of the many copy and pasted provided emails.

I just found a new membership site that I just had to tell you about. It’s called Resell Rights Weekly and it’s totally free! If you have not done so already you can claim your free membership at: <link>. Here is a brief description of what you will get:

* Instant access to hundreds of hot selling digital products worth hundreds of dollars!
* Two hot new products each and every week with either Private Label Rights or Resale Rights!
* Instant access to over 10,740+ Private Label Rights articles!
* Instant access to 330+ free tools that will help your web business be more profitable!
* Instant access to the Resell Rights Weekly Members Forum!

Best of all, you keep 100% of the money when you sell these products, and you can sell them over and over again!  Check it out … you won’t be disappointed!

The only problem I have with the email is I received ten of the exact same one. It’s very clear this email was provided by Resell Rights Weekly themselves. Not a bad thing, but it is a perfect example of how modifying the provided text even just a little bit would make you stand out.

Other than that, you get what you’re sold. The digital products are divided up into months, with about eight in each. The 10,740+ Private Label Rights articles arrives via a link in your welcome email and covers everything from Apple iPhone to Travel Insurance and American Idol (I kid you not). (WHY they don’t just say “over 10,00″ is beyond me, why pick a number that looks like you thumped your fist into the numpad of your keyboard?)

The 330+ ‘tools’ are nothing more than links to tools, but still handy if you didn’t know them already. Links to things like OpenOffice, FileZilla, GifWorks and Gimp.

That just leaves the new products each week with either Private Label Rights or Resale Rights which naturally I haven’t experienced yet given I just joined, but I assume that’s where the back fill of previous months has come from. And lastly, the members forums which I’ve had a quick look over and it looks ok. With just over 700 members, it’s fairly active in a whole range of topics including how to generate income with Private Label Rights Products. A handy little forum for those just learning about PLR or learning internet marketing in general as they also cover PPC Marketing for Newbies and other non-PLR-specific discussions.

So far it’s everything it was promoted to be. A really nice change after a lot of the emails I’ve gotten recently, and, it’s all for free! Of course if you upgrade to the gold package you get so much more (naturally), and at the time of writing this post you can trial the gold package for seven (7) days for just $1.

If you do consider trying it out, I’d recommend doing it when you can set aside a couple of days to completely evaluate everything on offer as you get hit with the $19.95 per month as soon as your trial is up. Setting aside time specifically to look over it all however, you can download everything you think you might need and then cancel the gold membership allowing you to read and evaluate all the content in your own time for just $1. Sneaky huh?

For those who have signed up, please share your honest impressions and opinions via the comment section. I’d love to hear the feedback from people who actually use PLR content (I don’t) on the quality of what’s provided.