Flogs Start Getting Flogged Soon

Are you a blogger who writes product reviews and also includes an affiliate link to that product in the hopes of earning a commission? Perhaps you are an Internet Marketing affiliate that writes reviews to the newest IM product being sold and links the review to your affiliate sales page? Have you written reviews on a pay-per-post basis? Have you ever written a fake testimonial so that the product you may be touting looks more appealing? (Shame on you for deceiving your readers.) These practices are referred to as flogging or fake blogging. You may want to think very carefully about those practices now that the US’s FTC has entered the fray and has decided to police the Net.

A few high profile scams lately using fake testimonials have drawn the ire of many consumer defenders, including some state Attorney Generals. While the practice of using “paid” reviews has long been a sales technique on and offline, the use of fake testimonials is downright disgusting. Once the FTC’s rules are in effect, you will have to be prepared to disclose the contact info of those providing testimonials.

Read more

Were You Just Flippa’d Off?

In a tough economy, it is more important than ever to make sure every customer feels valued. Money is tight and the majority of buyers (and sellers) will migrate to where they will recieve the best value for their hard earned money. Unfortunately, Sitepoint’s announcment, and automatic transfer of their marketplace to Flippa.com, has tossed these values right out the window.

To sum it up, as both a regular seller and buyer on Sitepoint, this move has been disasterous. It’s obvious from talk, posts, and tweets around the net that I am not alone in thinking this way either. Most have been irked from the moment the announcement was made, and the reaction from Sitepoint owners and management has done absolutely NOTHING to make most of us regulars feel any better about the move. The reason for the move was supposedly because their marketplace had “outgrown its tab”. I find this highly unlikely. That “tab” was generating tens of thousands of dollars monthly for them!

Read more

Stop The Easy Google Profit Scam – Updated June 24th

The Easy Google Profit scam (also known as Google Treasure Chest and Google Money Tree) has taken thousands of people for a ridiculous amount of money. Every single day, more and more people are falling prey to, not only the original creators of the program, but both the knowing and naive internet marketers.

Here’s the lowdown on this scam:

Unscrupulous marketers have flooded the search engines, forums, Facebook, Twitter and a wide number of CPA networks with eye catching ads, promising thousands of dollars per month placing little google ads. Many of these ads even point to sites that are made to look just like a reputable online version of local newspapers.

Read more

The ‘Scam’ Threat Marketing Tactic

Anyone new to online marketing obviously spends at least a little time reading through marketing forums and joining newsletters, trying to pick up tips and tricks. It’s incredibly overwhelming just how much information is out there! Some of it is really good, but some is just down right ridiculously marketed…

I see people pushing all sorts of ‘make-money-fast-and-get-rich-off-doing-nothing-in-your-pajamas-while-on-a-beach-that-you-drove-to-in-your-new-porsche’ offers. This sort of marketing has been around forever because simply it works. Most people coming across these ads are made to feel they just can’t survive online if they don’t buy it, and buy it now before the price triples (or quadruples, or they lose out on 10 gagillion $$’s worth of bonus products, etc). These kind of scare tactics most likely will always be out there, but it’s a newer trend that absolutely drives me up the wall – the “Don’t Buy X Product Scam – Read This First” type of PPC ad.

Here is a little blurb I wrote a few months ago, taken from the perspective of someone new to online marketing:

Wow…Was I in for a shock. I googled product #1 to see if I could find a review and the first thing I saw was an ad yelling at me that it was a scam. Or was it? I quickly clicked away, proud of myself for not falling for that supposed “scam”. I then googled product #2 and by golly if I don’t see the exact same thing! Blaring warnings that I should not purchase this product until I read something first and another warning that it could be a scam if I didn’t go and read that persons website first too. The same thing happened for product #3 and #4.

This internet place is downright damn scary! It seemed that anything I checked had someone yelling SCAM about it! Can this be right? Is everything for sale a scam?

In my opinion, this type of marketing is NUTS! But unfortunately, some marketers think this is an effective way to market legitimate affiliate products. Scaring potential buyers into feeling they must read a particular website or risk losing their life savings, undershorts AND their first born child, has become the norm.

The norm?! Most people seeking out these products are new to online marketing and truly need help learning. Why on earth would people want to scare the living daylights out of them and make the online marketing industry look like it is completely fully of scammers?

It’s marketing tactics such as this, that bury the real scam reports from being found – the ones that really do take the money and run.

Come on people…Let’s clean up our workplace…

== Joanne ==