I had the opportunity to attend a webinar for Secret Traffic Solutions on Monday the 19th of Sept (2011). I don’t usually have time to watch these things but something in the email I received caught my eye.

I knew this was a complete scam about twenty minutes into the ~50 minute presentation but sat through the whole thing just to see how far these guys would go to steal other people’s hard-earned money. By the way, if you purchased this so-called product please do what ever you can to get your money back right now… don’t even read the rest of this post, do it now and then come back if you want to finish reading and find out how I could tell this wasn’t on the up and up.

Even before they showed the immediate sales results in the “live” clickbank account there were several things that rubbed me the wrong way. The first was how much they played up the fact that they were both making tons of money with this program every month. The presenter, I know what he called himself in the webinar but doubt that’s his real name so I’ll just call him the presenter, OK? The presenter claimed to want to “give something back” to the industry that had given him so much. Please…. if he truly wanted to give something back I’m sure he could fine a worthy charity, don’t you think?

No he wanted to give some back by charging the listener $995 for the use of the software he used to make his millions. This, even though he said he didn’t really need any money because he couldn’t even spend what he has. So why would he need to charge almost a thousand bucks? He said it was because people wouldn’t find value in the program if they didn’t pay anything for it. RIGHT…

Since he said he was going to limit the program to 15 people anyway why not make it a real “pay-it-forward” and charge something reasonable for it like $97 or even $47. People put a value in that don’t they? I mean nobody wants to throw fifty bucks away, am I right?

So that’s my first clue that this was a scam… even though he didn’t need any more money and wouldn’t know what to do with it if he had it, he was still going to charge almost a thousand bucks for it.

But I have to hand it to these guys, they knew exactly the buttons to push to make this thing nearly irresistible. They played on every emotion and told all the same old “I was so broke I didn’t know what I was going to do” stories that ensure quick sales. Don’t get me wrong, good sales copy is worth it’s weight in gold, but only when it isn’t out and out lies.

The number two thing that made me realize this was a scam was the same old tired line of telling you everything it isn’t and never really telling you what it is. If you’ve read any of my Internet Moneymaking Scams Revealed series you’ll know this is a sure sign to put your wallet away and run away!

Number three is the newer buzz in internet marketing, the “One click instant riches” ploy. This is a real powerful tool to get people to buy. Everyone wants a “money button”. Hell, I’d love to have one. Just push that button and watch the money roll into your accounts. Hate to be the bearer of bad news but even the most automated systems on earth are not this easy. There are still many details that have to be handled by someone, somewhere.

But here’s the real kicker and the reason so many people bought into this. He showed the system in action and within ~20 minutes there was over $300 in what appeared to be a brand new clickbank account. I have to admit, the one thing they didn’t lie about was the fact that no one has ever done this and that you haven’t seen it anywhere else. That much is true. I have never seen anyone show how they make money that quickly in real time. So how did they do it?

For those of you that weren’t on the webinar, although you may still get a chance as I’ve heard these guys are still running this scam, I’ll give a little background on the presentation.

First, he kept talking about this amazing software you get and even get to keep if you request a refund. But in the demo it was a website. So you don’t really get software you can run on your machine. But I guess if you request a refund you would continue to have access to the “software”. This was another mark against it.

I know the difference between software and a website that runs software. Also, let me mention here he kept saying if you didn’t make a profit in three days you got a no questions asked full refund. But looking at the terms on the website conflicted by saying “ALL SALES FINAL, NO REFUNDS”.

Anyway, back to this unbelievable demo, (because it really was). He picked a product from the clickbank marketplace, got his affiliate link, brought up the website “software” and pasted in the affiliate link along with a pre-compiled list of keywords.
Then he simply clicked on the “GO” button. This amazing “software” then showed how it was working on each keyword and then showed each in turn being complete! WOW! However there was no mention at all of what the software was doing in the background except a real quick mention of “using little known and overlooked traffic sources”.

During all this time he had a brand new clickbank account up in another browser window in the background. This is the one that has the associated affiliate link. So if any sales show up all he would have to do is switch to that window and refresh the report page to show the new sales.

Well guess what? After about 15-20 minutes of psychological salemanship he went back to the clickbank account and sure enough there were over $300 in sales! Even I was amazed. Until my experience kicked in and figured out all the ways this could have been accomplished. Ready for me to “pull the curtain” back on this one?

OK the easiest way to do this would to have had a couple accomplices actually buy the product from the affiliate link while you’re talking. So you’d have ~$500 in expenses on ~$15,000 profit in less than an hour. I’d take that profit to loss ratio all day!

But there’s another way. This one wouldn’t even require anyone else nor would it require any actual sales or cash outlay. It’s also very easy if you’re any kind of programmer. I could throw this together in an evening. All you would have to do is to recreate the clickbank web interface on a server (or even a local virtual machine) and pre-program it to show whatever you want it to. Then to make it real all you’d have to do is to make a little change in your hosts file to point the domain clickbank.com to your fake site. This would make sure that when you type clickbank.com into your browser’s address bar it would seem like you’re going to the real clickbank site (this is the way a lot of phishing viruses work).

Either way, the results are the same. You can show, in real time, money coming into a clickbank account as if by magic.
It really is impressive to see it happen in real time even if you know deep down that it’s not true. I may just do something like this to warn people of this new breed of scam as I’m sure we haven’t seen the end of this. I can imagine it works really really well.

Sorry for the length of this post but I wanted to get the word out and hopefully save you from falling for this one. Remember, if it sounds to good to be true, IT IS!

Take care out there and if you have any questions leave a comment.

PS I just went out and did a search and found a couple other links mentioning this one so you don’t have to just take my word for it…
http://www.affhelper.com/secret-traffic-solution/
http://www.scambook.com/report/view/22287/Secret-Traffic-Solution-False-Advertising-for-997.00-on-09-19-2011

Government Grants and Giveaways

I have not ran into one of these things that aren’t at least semi-shady. For one thing, if you really want a government grant the information is all over the Internet and is free!!! Get off your lazy butt and type "government grant" into Google and see what you find (ignoring all the programs I’m talking about here of course).

These companies make it sound so easy to get a grant that you’re expecting to pocket $25,000 in the next month! Believe me when I tell you it’s not that easy. I wrote government grant proposals for a company I worked for and it takes time and qualifications to get them. It’s true, the government does give away tons of money a year, but it’s also true that your chances of getting any of it are pretty slim unless you have something they want!

I wanted to warn my readers of such programs and bought a package a few years ago. It was crap. Using the material they sent (just two small booklets) there was no way someone inexperienced with grants could get one. One booklet was devoted to showing you how to apply and the other just listed sources for government grants all of which is information easily obtained online. So there was $29.95 I could have just as easily went out to dinner on and still knew as much as I did before I got them.

But always wanting to believe in the best in people, I was offered a "free" CD on a website a while back that tells you that you can get government grants easily (just like always right?) and that you only have to pay the shipping on the CD to get it for "free".

So I did, and while most people won’t bother to read the fine print on the order page I did. Guess what? By entering you credit card/bank account information you are agreeing to a membership on their site to the tune of ~$30 bucks a month! But I figured that I was going to cancel anyway before I ever got charged the $30 so I went ahead and filled out the form. I had 2 weeks to cancel so no problem right?

Well I’m a busy guy and pretty much forgot about the whole thing until I finally received the CD three weeks later! So I had already been charged! Then I reviewed the CD and the website so I could post this information and guess what? This CD looked exactly like a rehash of the two booklets I purchased years ago! I’m serious…. I still had the booklets in my library (I never throw anything away) and some of the information was exactly the same word-for-word! Some had been updated and there was a little more new information but for the most part all they did was recreate those booklets in an online form and continued ripping people off! They even show their "helpful" staff in a group picture. These are the people that will help you obtain your grant.

Guess what again? It isn’t going to happen unless you qualify.

For now… if you really think you qualify for a government grant, start by searching Google and do your homework. Not only will it improve your chances of getting a grant (you’ll probably know more about it in a week than they know now), you’ll be much better equipped to answer the questions the grantee will have for you.

For real honest moneymaking opportunities click here.

Until next time, to your success!

Kind regards,
Ken

*links in my posts may be affiliate links, I may (or my not) get a commission if you purchase from these links

Membership sites

As with the free-to-join programs, membership sites are a mixed bag of very few legitimate sites along with a ton of sites that are designed to do nothing but collect your money each and every month.

The worst ones are nearly impossible to cancel sometimes taking 3-4 months before they finally stop charging your credit card or stop debiting your bank account.

The legitimate sites are usually easy to spot. They will tell you exactly what they are and how they work before you even have to sign up. If a membership site has true value they will retain their membership base because of the fact that their members are getting something for their membership fee and will want to continue to do so.

Many (only the best) will offer a free one month trial so you can see the benefit of being a member before you have to a cent. Most of the good ones are also very reasonable in the 10-30 dollar a month range. Some will offer services that are more than worth the monthly fee such as free auto-responders, redirect services, ad trackers, and sometimes even web hosting and other services.

There are a few legitimate membership sites that don’t offer these things but can still be of great value. One in particular that I belonged to 3-4 years ago did nothing but document everything the site operator was doing to make money online. He’d start a new campaign every week and go into great detail of how he put it together, how he promoted it, and what the results were so far. This was very valuable information at $9.99 a month!

He would actually list the forms of advertisement he used along with the results from that advertising! This included bulk and solo ads in newsletters, banners (pay-per-click wasn’t around yet), emails to various lists, and  other forms of traffic generation. This information alone saved me lots of money per month! Much more than the reasonable monthly membership fee.

Now on to the ones that you definitely need to watch out for. I have also belonged to some membership sites that were not very good. One I signed up for in early 2006 was one of the biggest scams I have ever seen. It had a monthly membership fee of $47 with a OTO (one time offer) that told you in order to make big bucks you needed to upgrade right away to the $97 monthly fee.

The sales material was so good that even I in my jaded and suspicious frame of mind bought into it hook like and sinker. To top it off they only showed you a months worth of their so-called "training" at a time because, according to them" they didn’t want to overwhelm you. Bull Sh*t! All they wanted you to do was to promote the same program to other unsuspecting opportunity seekers and they would pretty much split the monthly fees with you!

I stuck with it for three months because the training material always just kept you guessing what was coming the next month only to find out that guessing is all you’d be doing. So after three months I went to cancel my membership (something that was guaranteed to be easy) only to find out that there was nowhere on the site to contact anyone.

So I did what I thought was the next best thing, I tried to get it canceled through the payment processor they were using and thought (after a month of going back and forth with them) that I was finally out from under this terrible program. Until the next month rolled around and I found another change on my credit card!

I contacted them again and was told that all I did was cancel my membership on the site, if I wanted them to stop charging me I’d have to get a hold of the site operator. I explained that I couldn’t find that information on the site and since now they had canceled my membership I couldn’t even log onto the site to look again! They gave me a web address where I could submit a support ticket which I did.

After two more months of back and forth BS I finally was not being charged anymore. I asked for a refund for the two months that I couldn’t even access the site but was informed that I wasn’t qualified for a refund! Is that crazy or what????

Be very careful when signing up for membership sites. I wasn’t going to mention any names but this one needs to be exposed because I’m not the only one hurt by them…. well, I guess I probably shouldn’t list the name here because he really isn’t doing anything illegal but I will tell you that the push is that you can make $1057.50 for practically doing nothing. And on the sales page there is a bank statement showing and incredible $114,186.33 for a month’s worth of sales!

Unbelievable? Of course it is… unless it’s his bank statement for duping in unsuspecting people like me! Then it goes on to say "Would $114,183.33 a month do the trick for you?" Of course it would! But you’re not going to get it here!

Oh and before I forget…. right at the top of the page it says this is a very limited time offer… sure… I signed up in early 2006 and as I write this it is Late November 2009 and the offer is still floating around out there…. I wonder what he means by limited time offer??? Never buy anything online from someone who is misleading in their sales page.

One other thing… if you read the entire page you’ll notice a section devoted to What this program is not! RED FLAG!!!!! But like I said… this sales copy is so enticing and written so well that even I had to know what this one was all about. Now I do… and now you do too…. but it didn’t cost you nearly $600 to find out did it?

If you do run into a membership site that you are interested in, email the operator and ask for a free month to see if the site is a good fit for you. If the site has value and the operator is honest he will gladly work out some kind of arrangement for you to preview the site.

If nothing else he will at least give a detailed description of what the site has to offer and let you make up your mind from there. Plus you’ll know how to contact the guy/company and request a cancellation if you no longer want to be a member. You can get a great feel for who you’re dealing with after a couple personal emails. If he/she/they don’t have time to answer your emails then I’d move on to the next opportunity.

For real honest moneymaking opportunities click here.

Until next time, to your success!

Kind regards,
Ken

*links in my posts may be affiliate links, I may (or my not) get a commission if you purchase from these links

Free To Join (or any free e-book type offerings)

I’m a little hesitant to mention these here because there are some very legitimate free-to-join programs and some free e-books that have true value. I even promote some of these myself. But there are also enough scams out there using these methods that I have to at least try to let you know how you can tell the difference between the good and the bad.

There are at last two types of the ones to watch out for.

The first is the kind that you are free to join and you can make money on those that you refer *but only* if they upgrade to a paid plan. I’ll tell you right now that no one upgrades to the paid plan. I mean, if you don’t, why on earth would you think anyone else would? And even if you do what makes you expect anyone else is going to?

I’m not saying you can’t make any money in these things, I’m just saying even if you do make a little money it’s not even going to be enough to make it worth the time to drive traffic to your signup page. There are other programs that generate better results.

The other kind to watch out for are the ones that will give you a site for free with all your affiliate links in it. But if you look closely you’ll notice that not all of the links on the page point to your affiliate partners.

For one thing it would be awfully expensive to belong to all the programs that are normally listed on these kinds of pages. So what happens is the guy that put the program together puts his links on "your" page where ever you haven’t supplied an affiliate links for him to put in it for you. See where this is going?

Now you promote the hell out of this page and he gets free hits on his links which are on every "free" website that he has "given" away! Not only that… but if you do decide to join more of the programs so you can get more of the revenue from advertising your page… he’ll have a spot where you can conveniently sign up! I wonder why? You’ll be signing up under him which makes him even more money!

Now there’s nothing wrong with this… it’s actually nearly genius in a way. But I’ve had a couple of these and have never got one sign-up or sold an affiliate product once! This is after I had driven tons of traffic to "my" sites.

To top it off you should know that these websites aren’t put together custom for everyone that has one. They are database driven, meaning they all look the same and everything is done automatically!

You do all the work of setting up your own website (except for the initial creation of the original template website). You enter your information and affiliate links, it is all stored in a database. Then when you send someone to that page with your id attached to the web address (URL) the information you entered is retrieved from the database and the page gets built on the fly. This page has your information and links on the page, except for all the links that still belong to the owner of the program because you didn’t belong to all the programs offered.

If you really want to make money with these kinds of websites start one yourself! I have extensive database back-end web programming experience and I’d be happy to help you put one together if that’s what you want to do!

Do be extremely careful with free-to-join programs in general. You can waste a lot of resources and time on these and have nothing to show for it in the end.

For real honest moneymaking opportunities click here.

Until next time, to your success!

Kind regards,
Ken

*links in my posts may be affiliate links, I may (or my not) get a commission if you purchase from these links

HYIP (high yield investment programs)

They are also sometimes called auto-surf programs just to get away from the bad name HYIP is starting to generate.

These things are HIGHLY illegal!!!

Don’t even consider putting ANY money into these!!!

If you really have that kind of money to waste please just send me an email telling me how much you want to give me and at least you’ll get a thank you from me! These guys take your money without so much as a thank you!

I’m not going to waste any more time on these… if you want to know more do a Google search for "12 Daily Pro FBI" and do a little reading on your own. You can thank me for this one later!

For real honest moneymaking opportunities click here.

Until next time, to your success!

Kind regards,
Ken

*links in my posts may be affiliate links, I may (or my not) get a commission if you purchase from these links

Traffic Generation/Advertising Sites

Now I’m not talking about traffic exchanges and such here. I love traffic exchanges and safe-lists! I know there are many out there that would argue about the effectiveness of these things but I’ve had excellent results with them. You just have to approach them from a different angle than normal advertizing methods.

Back to the subject. What I’m talking about here is programs that are usually very expensive in the $1000-$1500 range. And they usually offer a big commission (upwards of 65%) to promote their program. But with all the other programs out there in the same price range it’s a very hard sell.

For that matter, most people just getting into online marketing are pressed for cash as it is and can not afford to shell out that kind of money on something that isn’t a sure thing.

Experienced online markets have no use for these things so your customer base is nearly non-existent to start with. But guess what? The person that referred you has already got their 65% and the company just got another 35% so they don’t care! There are better ways to make an honest living on the Internet so stay away from these!

For real honest moneymaking opportunities click here.

Until next time, to your success!

Kind regards,
Ken

*links in my posts may be affiliate links, I may (or my not) get a commission if you purchase from these links

Doublers, Triplers, etc.

The vast majority of these are illegal! But there are always exceptions to the rule.

Some will offer a product or service to get around the legal loopholes but this still doesn’t make them a solid business opportunity.

The problem is that these things, even if they are borderline legal, are impossible to sustain.

Let me give you an example. You sign up and deposit some money. It varies by company but there’s usually an upper limit and sometimes a lower one but it’s normally not more than $10.

Then they guarantee that you will double or triple that amount in a certain amount of time. This also varies but is usually in the 1-3 month range.

Be extremely careful of the ones that say they’ll double in less than a month. So you put in $100 and in three months you get back $200! Great right?

So what’s the problem???

This is the problem. They have to continue to get new people in faster than those already scheduled to get payments. Where else is the money coming from?

Some say they are trading Forex (Foreign Currency Exchanges) but no one makes that kind of money even in the lucrative field of Forex. So no… sadly the majority of the money comes from new deposits.

When the payouts are bigger than the new deposits these things fold faster than you can imagine (overnight). And the money that is left in the program usually goes with the operators! Please just stay away from these and don’t get burned.

For real honest moneymaking opportunities click here.

Until next time, to your success!

Kind regards,
Ken

*links in my posts may be affiliate links, I may (or my not) get a commission if you purchase from these links

Retail Sales

There are tons of real products you can find to sell on the Internet. Books, meat, perfumes, health aids, weight loss products, and practically anything else you can think of.

These are ALL legitimate products. But unless you are a savvy salesman with lots of experience selling products over the Internet you are not very likely to generate the kinds of sales it takes to be successful.

The other problem is you have to inventory product, ship, handle returns and customer complaints (even with products you’re proud to sell there are always some people that just can’t be satisfied).

If you can find a company that will drop ship the product for you it would be much better. But you still have to know how to market on the Internet to be successful at this.

If you truly want to pursue this opportunity be sure to pick up and excellent Internet marketing course like I have available here. It will save you tons of money and time in the long run and will all but guarantee your success if you stick with it!

You’re probably wondering why I even listed retail sales here. It’s because most companies out there selling this kind of opportunity are not very good about helping you succeed. They don’t give you the tools or the training to become successful.

There are exceptions but be sure to talk with a successful distributor (one that will not benefit from you joining) and ask them to be truthful with you. Most people, if asked nicely to be truthful, will.

For real honest moneymaking opportunities click here.

Until next time, to your success!

Kind regards,
Ken

*links in my posts may be affiliate links, I may (or my not) get a commission if you purchase from these links

Get A Site Just Like This One

If you’ve been looking into marketing online I’m sure you’ve seen lots of variations on these.

Some have affiliate products for sale (with your affiliate links embedded in the page), others are just for Adsense revenue (which Google has already cracked down on!), and still others have a combination of the two.

Some are even going so far as to offer niche products. I can’t say that all of these operators are flaky but the majority are. Most are there just so you can get other people to buy the same site from you! Say one of the people that you sold one of these things to actually did some heavy promotion and got a couple sales from it. You wouldn’t get anything for it.

The site operators always make more money on these than you ever will. For one thing, some of the programs offered are affiliate or MLM programs that cost money to join. If you can afford to join all these programs you *may* be able to generate some kind of down-line from them.

But you are still joining all the programs under the site operator and he/she will get commissions on the fees your paying regardless if you make any sales or not. Most times these are monthly fees so you still have money going out with no return.

If you don’t join all the programs then the site operator puts his/her ID into the ads of the programs you don’t join and they will get credit for any sign-ups from traffic you have sent to the site. So it’s a no-win situation for you… either you pay to join all the programs and have the associated monthly costs with no guarantee of return, or you only join what you can afford and possibly send more customers to the site operator for your hard traffic-driving work.

Don’t get me wrong… I’m not down on the site operators, just the opposite, I think they are very savvy business people and have created great systems to generate money (for them!). Be as smart as they are and really look at what’s happening in these programs.

If you want to join one, by all means do. They do have some advantages over putting together you own site such as, no hosting fees, no web design fees, everything is already automated, etc…. but if you do join and promote one just be sure to go into it with open eyes and remember that in the end you are promoting someone else’s business.

At least if they were set up more like an affiliate program you *might* be able to make a little money if you can get enough people to buy their site from you. But it’s highly doubtful that anyone who buys the site will do anything with it anyway.

There are better ways to make money on the Internet. The only thing I could recommend these things for is to test your own idea of having a website devoted to selling affiliate programs and generating Adsense revenue.

You’ll see quickly how hard this actually is! My advice… steer clear… your promotional resources are better spent other places.

For real honest moneymaking opportunities click here.

Until next time, to your success!

Kind regards,
Ken

*links in my posts may be affiliate links, I may (or my not) get a commission if you purchase from these links

$100,000 in Four Months or Pay Nothing

This is another one of those "to good to be true" opportunities. That should tell you right off the bat if it’s to good to be true, it usually is!

The deal here is they promote your program and if you don’t make $100,000 in four months they won’t charge you their $15,000 fee.

Sounds great right?

I mean what if they only made you $40,000? You’d still be $10,000 a month ahead and you wouldn’t have to pay the 15k!

Problem is they know they can’t make $100,000 promoting your program or product. They know they’ll never collect your 15k. So how do they stay in business?

They also have a "setup" fee which is non-refundable. They already have your money and they couldn’t care less if they drive any sales at all for you!

Think about this…. if they could take *any* program and make $100,000 from it in four months why wouldn’t they do that instead of just getting $15,000 from you?

You may say… well they can get the $15,000 from several people and then can make over $100,000 by promoting several people programs. Really? Why wouldn’t they just promote those same programs themselves and make $100,000 on each one???

Think about it… and stay away from programs like these!

For real honest moneymaking opportunities click here.

Until next time, to your success!

Kind regards,
Ken

*links in my posts may be affiliate links, I may (or my not) get a commission if you purchase from these links