Secret Societies
A few words from a man who got bitten. Bitten by the gurus of money making on the web, gurus of jobs for new moms at home needing work from behind their computer; bitten by the sages of seduction into a world of quick, easy money. If only you followed their TOP TEN TIPS or their FIVE CRUCIAL LAWS…
Most of it is utter rubbish. A great way to get money out of your pocket, instead of into it.
They’re gurus with promises of great riches to be gained in mere hours from behind a computer. And they seem to have been time-teleported straight from some secret society of days gone by. They use mantra’s, and incomprehensible textbooks with images of stats and other dragons. They have their spells and their formulas. And they throw all of this impressive phraseology around to confuse the novices and laymen even more. It is in confusion where they can reign.
They speak of traffic, and long-tail keywords. They use acronyms no normal being understands, so the Brotherhood of the Initiated can keep their ranks closed and guarantee the flow of money they’ve laid their hands on.
You see, knowing the right keyword today is even more important than it has ever been in the most fantastic of fairy-tales or the darkest of myths. No Prince Aladin will make it through the day, today. Not with his outdated weaponry of daggers, diplomats and trained fists.
Having the right keywords and knowing how to use them (they often use italics or bold fonts or CAPS to emphasise their points…) guarantees, according to the guru, increasing amounts of visitors to our sites. Sites where we place ads – like I do – and so hope to regain some of the time and money spent on blogging in the first place. If only you’d click on them, and bought a random product.
But having the right keyword is not enough. You need to do a bit of spin, a bit of re-write and a bit of submitting as well to make sure that the one article you wrote about whatever thing is supposed to bring in the loot, gets chewed up time and again, and spat out in twenty, thirty different formats. All of course with a link to your site, with your ads, so you can earn a few cents. It is this re-writing, which is what earns the modern slaves in Asia a buck for every 500 words they can churn out, and would they please fart out twenty original stories a day…
These re-writes are needed like the magical book full of secret formulas; and here is where it might get complicated. Crux is: the more links on the web that lead to my site, the higher my site will rank on Google’s search results. And so, the more people will click through to my site when they’re searching for this magical keyword, and voilà… I get more visitors. More visitors means more people possibly click on my ads or buying whatever I’ve got on offer myself, and that leads to income for me.
A few days of research on the topic teaches me that – apart from the serious experts out there who do actually know what they’re writing about and are sincere in their ways of working – the web is flooded by thousands of miniature, self-proclaimed “experts” who vaguely hint at them gathering (the beginnings of) their fortunes with tricks that are just a nano of a second faster than everyone else’s tricks and spells. They’ve found the magical code to unlock the chest!!!
These people write ‘reviews’ about products that should somehow make life easier for the blogger who’s eager for some cash. And their so-called reviews are just about biased enough to make sure that you will actually, really click on the “Buy Now” button that screams at you from their sites.
What we all end up having, is a Virtual Reality full of ‘false prophets’ evangelising their gospel to the masses in spun articles submitted to as many sites as software can possible manage, while raking in money over the backs of the ignrant, most often all under the pretense of ‘self-sacrifice’ for the benefit of the powerless who know not. Because: look at how much info they’re giving away FOR FREE!!!!
The thing is that most of the knowledge and a great deal of fantastic software out there is available with no charge whatsoever… But funnily enough, the gurus never link through to those sites. It’s an utter waste of money to buy the KeywordWinner for $ 77; it can’t do anything any faster or cleverer than you can. The promise that you’ll make it into the Google top five within THREE HOURS? Lies, lies, lies and statistics.
You also don’t need the services of a company like Ultimate Article Wizard (for a stunning $ 67 per month…!!!) to post re-writes of your articles. The hidden cost here, namely, is in producing those re-writes: you’d have to add another few hundred dollars a month to the bill.
Tell me, after having spent all that money on gurus and intermediaries – where on earth is my profit? Where on earth is yours?
Sure: go try it all out. And find, like I did, that most of it is a load of mishmashed nonsense…
Trust me: you can do very well without the advice of some kid, any kid (a kid like Alex Whalley, for example), who’s trying to sell you all these products from behind the foggy dealings of his website, teaching the ignorant, pretending to be ‘independent’ and ‘self-less’, while his entire arm is stuck deep inside the cookie jar.
Charlatans.
With their bits, their bytes & their weird spells.
12 comments… Make your mark
Interesting point of view. Why you chose to make it personal is beyond me, but needless to say, THAT attitude won’t get you far.
You sell Thesis on this site, that make you a charlatan too?
Ps: you can’t spell, which probably accounts for your ongoing failure to succeed online. Good luck with that mate
Pps: UAW Works if you actually know what you are doing, so next time you start ranting and pointing the finger, LEARN SOMETHING FIRST
Headline: “Guru caught with cookie jar”
Jeez, so you got stung (or bitten as you call it). And what, you will bitch about it for a month now?
Get over it, if you followed the wrong advice it’s your fault, no one elses.
Or if you can’t use a good advice (like the one Alex gives, yes, I read his blog and follow his advice, so far with brilliant results), your fault too.
Seriously, have a beer, get over your woes and try again. Maybe one day you realize that it might have been your own mistakes not someone elses advice.
Hi Theresa,
I had been expecting your message. Well, not particularly yours, but any of the guru’s followers. Where he goes, they go. I’m sure more of your peers will come visit too, soon.
I’m glad you’re pleased with the advice you have been getting from what I see as just another ‘shopping channel’, but this time not on the tube but on the web. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of sites like the one you’re getting some of your insights from.
As Moe Muise writes in his ebook “Finding A Niche: It Doesn’t Have To Be A Bitch!”: “[O]ne of the most lucrative niches is the “make money” niche. (…) The reason that “make money” niches can be so profitable lies in the psychology underlying a purchase. (…) [W]hen a person considers buying something that can make them more money, their mental categorization is totally different. Now the thing they’re buying is an investment.”
Your guru has played it neatly from the book: he’s found a niche and he’s milking it. It’s a free market. You are clearly okay with Alex receiving “50% Commissions!” (source: http://www.keywordwinner.com/affiliate.php) on a product he himself is promoting as if he were independent. Every sale of this one product that Alex is able to generate with his ‘reviews’ earns him a whopping $38,50.
Good for him! Great! But it hardly makes Alex’ reviews or advice in my opinion even remotely trustworthy. As I said: he’s got his hand stuck in the cookie jar.
Mr Whalley is not independent (I repeat that word: NOT). He’s also not just a guru in issues relating to the use of keywords on web pages, but he’s also an “Internet Marketer”, according to the page just quoted, where we’re all invited to become an affiliate and sell the product too… “We have the following Top Internet Marketers in the industry supporting us on this Awesome product: (…) Alex Whalley (…).”
I have no qualms with anyone being an affiliate. How could I, I am one myself… I do have an issue when ‘experts’ (or gurus) sell rubbish to their followers under the pretext of being ‘independent’.
The thing with the followers of gurus is that they will wake up the day they realise they have only increased their well-being marginally, while the guru laughed his way to the bank.
That, Theresa, is where my issue lies.
And me having been bitten? It must have been a mere mosquito; the refund is on its way. Sorry about that, Alex, but you’ll have to do without my $ 38.50.
Happy business dealings,
Aernout
NB The quotes above from the web pages are as they appeared online on 29 November 2010.
That’s very sad you don’t have a life. What’s even sadder is that you actually believe the crap coming out of your mouth. Affiliate marketing is no secret, nor are the methods used in affiliate marketing. Your crap article would actually make sense if you attacked someone who did NOT know how to do affiliate marketing the right way.
As a guru, I am sure you will have something stupid to say about me too. Especially seeing that Alex and I are business partners. But let me see if I have you pegged. You are a loser. You spent time “learning” methods that Alex taught on his blog, and you didn’t like the fact that it took time to learn these things. Then you go out of your way to talk shit about him in order to get comments on your knock-off of a blog, “scribbles” and all. Great way to establish your reputation on the net man
Controversial is the way to go if you want comments, but you made the wrong decision on how to go about it. You should have went with something you actually had some knowledge about eh? I see your blog vanishing and abandoned in no time.
Very entertaining.
How a few critical remarks about the business ethics of a keyword guru inspire these comments…
My apologies if my ‘review’ touched on sore nerves. But then, if you wanna play in the public domain, you might actually get feedback you aren’t happy about.
Re. my short life span in cyberspace: I think it was Mark Twain who apparently said: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
(Mark Twain wrote literature. You know, that’s books of more than ten pages, with real content. Try one over the Winter season. Who knows, you might actually enjoy it.)
Who’s next? Alex’ mother?
You call that feedback? Not quite my friend. Posting crap and misinformation is NOT feedback at all. As a matter of fact, you made no single valid statement in your article whatsoever. You basically said that Alex was an affiliate marketer and shame on him. Hmmm, I wonder if anyone is going to click on your Amazon ads up on top of your blog. Just the fact that you have adsense on a site with zero traffic shows how much you know about making money online. Some advice from a guru… Try CPA with Max Bounty. That way, you don’t send away the tiny traffic you have for mere pennies.
On a side note, perhaps you would have gotten off on a better blogging start had you decided to go the friendly route. Just Alex and I alone could have exploded your traffic.
In my opinion, you guys are no more or less than a shopping channel. But somehow you want to be taken seriously as an ‘independent’ at the same time. A quarter of a century in international journalism taught me that the two don’t go together.
Ask any of my friends/colleagues at The New York Times or The Guardian or Le Monde, and they’ll tell you also: there’s a huge difference between ‘editorial’ space and ‘advertorial’ space. You are in the business of selling your time and space to whomever is willing to pay you for it. And it’s advertorial.
Yeah, I’m old school. Old media. I was taught some of the basics in a time with different standards. Standards where, for example, what you offered had to be worth something substantial, and not just ‘fried air’.
And your lovely quote? That if only I had been nice to you?
“Just Alex and I alone could have exploded your traffic.”
Thanks but no thanks. I prefer to make my income a tiny tad more the honest way.
By the way, your veiled threats are child’s play. I’ve roamed through enough war zones to know how to judge the adversary. I’m sorry, but you’re not it.
Wow, uneducated too huh? If you have been to my blog, you would have noticed a TON of free information. I post ads like you do. And to think you have friends anywhere is a bit of a stretch. Your “years in the business” didn’t teach you anything… otherwise you would actually know something.
Also, I think those voices in your head are talking again. Somewhere you heard threats. I don’t make threats, I make promises. I promise not to return here to comment on your garbage. I also promise that you will likely FAIL at blogging because you lack the knowledge to make money doing it, and you clearly aren’t doing it because you love it.
Good luck astronaut.
Why on earth would I want to go to your web site? No need for. You have left behind all the information needed here; a collection of some really wonderful promotional material you and Alex and Theresa have written on yourselves. On your services, your approach to the market and on how to deal with critical voices from outside.
Ah, you know what? Cheer up!
Another adage in public relations and journalism: “There is no bad publicity, unless you make it.”
Not even for a shopping channel
Wow and i thought i had the market on crazy and deranged cornered!
Attacking other people may get you some fans (LOL i made a joke…what fans!) but at the end of the day you just come off as a pathetic wanker who obviously isn’t doing as well as you think you should. If you’re going to attack someone back up your facts and make sure their friends don’t come for you.
One more thing Alex isn’t a kid, i believe that once you get to the ripe old age of 32 you safely leave that era of your life behind..some of us don’t age as badly as others perhaps you should try some miracle makeovers and then give us a diatribe on why they didn’t work for you.
(Yawn)
And for some good news: there are of course thousands of men and women out there who are worth taking advice from, because of their wisdom, experience, knowledge and integrity. The best two I’ve come across so far are:
Pat, who’s based in (I believe) California – find him here
and also worthwhile: the guys behind a site called ChristianPF