It’s been a while since I posted anything but I have been busy getting my new squeeze page funnel together.
It’s still not quite ready but I am getting there slowly and surely. It seems to be taking forever and I will be glad when it’s done. Right now I have a couple of problems getting the pages to look right in all browsers.
Why it should look perfect in Firefox and so different in Google Chrome and different again in Internet Explorer beats me. ( I am sure someone will tell me)
I am having to outsource that as I cannot fathom out the problem myself. I always use oDesk for these things. I have found some excellent people there before.
When I post a job I usually get a ton of reponses so it can be a bit time consuming to go through them but I just weed them out by the feed back they get and number of hours they have already done on oDesk.
Another thing was that I did get a little distracted and that’s what I wanted to write about today.
Make Money Online Oportunity Mail Shot
My husband got a letter from a well known and well respected direct marketing publishing company about a make money online oportunity with the headline “Your Websites are Ready!”.
The letter goes on to say that “this has to be one of the most embarrassingly lazy money-makers I have ever seen”.
It claims that you could make up to £4,413 a day in under five minutes without having to build or host websites and without credit card facilites or products. To find out more the letter invites us to watch a “short” online video.
The video turned out to be 30 minutes long and was very compelling although it did not give the whole game away. Just that you could be up and running in 5 minutes with 3 websites in highly sought after niches which would be hosted for you, filled with products and would be updated for you as needed.
The presenter claimed that “3 lucky apprentices” had tested the system and were already making money wih it. He claimed that you could expect to make £500 in 30 days which would more than cover your investment of £297.
I don’t usually go for these sort of things but I was intrigued by this and wanted to find out what it was all about.
I searched online for a review and the only mention I could find for it was on moremoneyreview.com. It stated that you could make money on autopilot. Yes, well, we have all heard that one before!
I was still intrigued and it came with a 30 day guarantee. My husband has bought stuff and got prompt refunds from this company before so we thought we’d take a look.
There was a buy now button under the video so I went ahead and paid online. I then got a message saying I could expect the package in 3 – 5 days. The video did mention a couple of bonuses that were on CD’s so I thought that they were referring to those.
Ready made internet business empire
As the letter said ” Imagine waking up tomorrow and having your ready made internet business empire…… ” and the video said I would be up and running in 5 minute I thought that I would get the sites right away.
Not, so! Nothing else happened after I paid. I didn’t even get an email acknowledgement or receipt. As it was at the weekend I had to wait until Monday morning to telephone the company. My order had not even been processed!
I told them I expected to be up and running in 5 minutes and was told that a lot of people comment on that but I could have my sites set up in 5 minutes once I got the package and followed the instructions.
It did not arrive until Friday! The package contained a 7 page quick start guide and the two bonus CD’s.
All I had to do to activate my sites was to sign up to Clickbank if I did not already have an account and then enter my Clickbank ID on an online site and a secret key number which was in the quick start guide.
The sites were up and running in 5 minutes but I don’t see why I had to wait 6 days to get them after they got me all fired up about them.
I got 3 sites in 3 different niches – health, investments and business oportunities and they were all populated with Clickbank products that contained my affiliate ID.
Now all I had to do they said was drive traffic to the sites! Well, we all know that that takes a lot of work. It’s not what I would call ” the most embarrassingly lazy money-makers I have ever seen”. What’s more the 6 categories for each site were very competitive keywords.
Fast Web Empire included 12 very short online generic videos tutorials for various methods of generating traffic to any site. Some of them such as affiliate marketing, link exchanging are not suitable for this.
Link exchages are old hat for SEO now and there is no way that I can alter the websites to make links as far as I know.
They also mentioned list building. Well that takes a lot of work too although they say you don’t have to do that to be successful with this.
Next I opened the bonus CD packages. The first one which was about using free classifed ads to drive traffic to affiliate offers stopped playing after a few minutes and sent my computer crazy when I tried to restart it! I desperately hoped it hadn’t dropped a virus on my PC.
After that I very gingerly tried the next bonus which was a CD-Rom and 2 CD’s “The Hidden Secret to Internet Wealth” by one of the most successful students. I put in the CD Rom and I got a message saying that either my drivers were damaged or the CD-Rom was.
That was all I needed!
I tried another CD and fortunately it played. So it wasn’t my drivers thank goodness. Well, by this time I am not at all impressed. I just want to send the whole thing back.
I telephoned the company and got replacements but the whole experience has put me off. I cannot see how this runs on autopilot although I will email the help centre.
I simply have not got the time to drive traffic to these sites as well as my existing ones. I would have to outsource the whole thing and I am not sure it would be cost effective.
So what’s the point of relating this story?
1. I am sure you have heard the saying before.” If the make money online oportunity seems to good to be true then it probably is”. This is another one of those. “One of the most embarrassingly lazy money-makers I have ever seen” it’s certainly not.
2. Your sales letter or video should make it quite clear exactly what you get and how it will be delivered. If you are sending out a physical package like this then you should send it out by next day delivery.
Who wants to wait 5 days for something when you can download digital products immediately.
The moral of this story is don’t lose your focus and get distracted by the next bright shiny object that comes along. I really should know better by now.
Have you ever been distracted by something in the make money online niche that sound too good to be true?
Hi Aaron,
There are undoubtably many scams about. I don’t think this was one as it was offered by a respected Direct Marketing company. I do think that the sales letter and vidio were very misleading though. They word these things to make the sales but don’t deliver what they promise.
Sandy
It’s true, we should not be easily distracted by such scams. It’s important that we should know more about the site so we won’t be deceived.
Hi Candice,
I think this was more misleading than an actual scam. It could work if you have the time to drive the traffic but as I am sure you know getting targeted traffic to websites is one of the hardest and time consuming things for most internet marketers.
Sandy
“Who wants to wait 5 days for something when you can download digital products immediately.” I totally agree with this one. It will be more cost-efficient on the part of the company and the client if there is a download option.
Hi Colin
When you get people all fired up for something then they want it there and then. With this particular package they send you a password to use to get set up with the websites but I am sure there is a way round this.
Sandy
Hi Sandy,
I know, it’s been a while. It’s good to be back blogging and visiting here. I know what it’s like putting together a squeeze page. Not only that but the e-mail sequences can be a lot of work as well. Things can get to go soooo……Slooooow, right?
Getting the pages to look right in all browsers, if I remember right, is just a matter of the html code. All browsers read the code differently. If there are any errors in the html code or things that don’t belong, each browser will interpret it differently. That’s why it all looks different in one browser and then another.
Thanks for giving us a heads up on a product that sounds too good to be true. There are so many products out there that are just not worth it. One must beware.
Terry Conti
Hi Terri,
You are right about the HTML code. I had to get someone to fix my HTML code so the page looks right in all major browsers. Kompozer, the WYSIWYG HTML editor I use puts in a lot of unnecesary code for some reason. It’s been a bit of a pain to say the least.
Sandy
I agreed with your point of view Sandy that we dont have to distract and lose our focus because it will naturally affect our work. Thankyou for sharing your story, it will aware many other readers to avoid distraction.
Now that is what we call competition for you; it is really hard to make a website look right in all browsers, much more in mobile phones. I hope that you are already able to figure it out.
I seem to have no end of trouble every time I try to get new pages together. In fact I have just had to get someone to sort it out for me again! Must find another HTML editor soon. I am loathe to download anything at the moment as I am running out of RAM.
Sandy
In my earlier days online Sandy I was constantly distracted by the next new shiny object. I honestly did believe that if enough people said it’s true then it had to be right. So I thought that if I found enough information telling me how great something worked then it did. Wrong!!!
Lesson learned and I finally told myself, no more buying anything unless it can help you move forward with what you’re currently involved in. If not, forget it and just keep on going.
Glad you were able to share this experience with us though. Sure hope you got your money back. What a time waster right!
Oh no! That’s such a shame.. But I think everyone has been burned like that in the past to some extent. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is!
Personally I have never spent that much money on something like that, because I never had enough to spend! But if I had, I’m sure I would have had a story like yours by now, because I have come across many of those get-quick-rich schemes that I would have spent money on had I only had it!
My curiosity got the better of me and the video was very compelling. I took a few notes from it!
It wasn’t so much that it was get rich quick as it was the easiest and laziest way to make money.
Sandy
Before you shell out money for these online get-rich-quick schemes, ask yourself this: if you found an easy way to make tons of money online would you be champing at the bit to tell others about it? I know I wouldn’t. I’d want to make all the money myself. So why are the creators of these systems always so eager to share the wealth with everybody? The answer is that there is more money to be made in the dream than there is in the reality.
Well of course you are right Robert. We always ask ourselves the same thing. But the fact is that people who make boatloads of money are still hooked on making more. I have asked some of them like Andrew Reynolds. It’s like a disease! So you can’t always go by that.
Thanks for your comment though.
Sandy
Hi,
I would have stopped the second they said you could make over £4000 a day… That kind of big incredible claim is always a huge red flag to me.
Another red flag is the fact they told you you’d have 3 websites ready within 5 minutes… Quality websites (i.e. those which have a chance to rank and also retain your visitors) take time and effort to build, and their content requires some planning. In 5 minutes all you can have are poor duplicates…
Actually, I remember a similar case. About two months ago I got a long chat with that Australian guy on Facebook ,he explained to me how he paid about £800 to that club called Millionaire Society for his “own” website… Which was nothing than a poor duplicate similar to the “websites” all the other members of that club had. This has actually been one of the two reasons I decided not to promote Millionaire Society. I had started to talk about them but I removed all my links from my articles and said clearly what I thought about them… I also told the guy to request a refund (MS is using ClickBank so this was possible), I hope he did…
Seb.
Of course you are right Seb. I thought it was same old, same old but my curiosity got the better of me in this case. They did actually show proof of the £4,000. I know that these things can be forged but I doubt that the direct marketing company would have allowed that as they have their reputation to guard.
Although what you say about duplicate sites is very true some internet marketers do very well with them. Thanks for your insights.
Sandy
Doesn’t seem a safe job