I’ve kept my nose out of IM for a while now, turning a blind eye to the promotions that hit my email inbox. I’ve been working in other fields, freelancing, dropshipping and even some offline work. I needed the time off. I couldn’t see another mention of the words “marketing”, “affiliate” and “paypal”. The word “continuity” combined with “micro”, “forced” and “hidden” made my eyes bleed and my brain vomit. Emails with subject lines such as “Your OWN Software products”, “Your 5 figure/month business”, “Your OWN membership site in minutes”, “All profit, NO work” made me want to kill someone. Seeing this crap fill up my inbox made me realise this business made me sick, not rich. I wanted to chop off the fingers that typed these messages and feed it to the people behind it. It feels like I’ve already seen it all. A new email about a new product, yet I recognize it and instantly know what it’s about. I already have it, even if the exact wording isn’t the same and they’ve added a chapter about facebook and changed the authors name.

People I have looked up to, people I have admired, people I have considered nice guys despite their Guru Status, have been exposed as lying assholes and douchebags. Some promote fraudulent products created by convicted internet scam artists, and others promote convicted sexual predators. It has turned out that some people count their loans as income in their sales letters, and some even consider their debts as income when they write a sales letter. Others refuse to honor their refund-guarantees when they cancel events, and some even try to squeeze more money out of the disgruntled customers only wanting their refunds. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it turns out that a prominent self help guru (promoted by some IM gurus – the gurus all love eachother) has been running what could easily be considered as death camps.

You are only as good as those you surround yourself with. Do you really want to give your money to these con artists and their convicted friends? Do you want your money to finance death camps?

The IM business could easily be the best business in the world, open for everyone who’s prepared to work. I hope somehow, one of these days, it will revert to that. The shady elements just need to kill eachother off. Let’s hope it happens soon.

I am going to live up to promises made in the past, and I am going to deliver the goods. I just can’t give an exact time frame. During 2010 definitely. In the mean time, what can I do for you? What tools are you missing to become the star you want to be?

Tell me and we’ll have a look at it

Earlier this year, I broke up with my girlfriend since 5 years. Needless to say, I guess, things didn’t just instantly go back to normal. Lots of stuff had to be attended to, and I just haven’t had the time or energy to pick up my “online stuff” again. Until now. I’ve been dreading this moment, but now that it’s finally here it turned out easier than I imagined.

At the moment, I have an exact amount of 0 (yes: zero) products active, and the money I make is tied to a couple of sites that basically manage themselves. Scary, huh? Well, I thought so too, which is probably part of the reason I dreaded the moment I finally find the time to pick up where I started.

As it turns out though, the timing is good.

December 1st, 2009, will see some changes in the Internet Marketing scene for sure, as the FTC is putting out new guidelines that regulate what we (and our customers) are allowed to say and claim when it comes to our products. I welcome these changes! It’s about time! It will, however, make cranking out information products a bit harder. Not only are we not allowed to use testimonials and claims the way we are used to, we also have to be 100% transparent about our links. That goes for ebooks as well. You now have to tell your readers if you make money by them clicking links in your ebooks as well as your sites.

That makes this whole thing a bit more challenging.

I’m up for the challenge!

Are you?

(edited nov 20, 2009: changed the date, i had it a month wrong)

Today I noticed a testimonial on a website, written by none other than me.

The problem is I have never heard of the company in question, nor have I ordered anything from them. Never. Never have, never will. Not in a million years.

They export car parts (if I’ve understood it correctly) and stuff like that which I never use since I don’t have a car. Or even a license. Never had any need for it.

If I was a vengeful person, I would now ask the company for compensation for using my name – and if I weren’t compensated I’d immediately start a slander-campaign. That type of campaign can be pretty easily set up and get rolling, and can be devastating for a small to medium sized business. Imagine someone searching for your business on big G, only to find the first two pages of the results filled with forum posts, blogs and sites claiming your business was a fraud and used misleading information?

Not a dream situation.

But I’m not a vengeful person, so I’m simply going to ask them to remove my “testimonial” or atleast have the decency to sign with their own names.

The moral if this post is “never use false testimonials”. I’ve told you what vengeful persons can do if they find out their names have been used in places they don’t want to be associated with. I’m the only person in the world with my name (I promise you, it’s not a guess), which is the only reason I found out about it.

Truth in advertising! Remember that phrase

(Yes, I know I haven’t posted anything or been in touch lately, I’m re-organizing and re-structuring my business. There will be more reviews on a more consistent basis in the near future, since BjornSays is an important piece in my online puzzle. Stay tuned )

There’s obviously a lot of people out there that knows little or nothing about Google, judging by the number of new products that has “Google” in their names. If there comes another product this year with “Google” in it’s name, I think it’s only a matter of time before big G’s lawyer comes a-running. Besides, I’ll probably stop reading mails or sales pages as soon as I see “Google” in it/them.

With that said, I did actually purchase “Google Snatch 2″ despite the quality of the original Google Snatch. Sure, the old one did contain a few gold nuggets, but I expect more from a product with over 100 pages said to contain “no fluff”. It wasn’t the original product I promised to review though, but the new and updated v2.

Google Snatch 2 is close to 150 pages, and the first thing I noticed which was (and is) driving me mad is the half empty pages. Placing a couple of paragraphs in the same chapter on separate pages of their own seems like a pre-sell thing for me (ie. the salespage claims a big page-count, when 25% of the pages doesn’t contain more than a paragraph or two).

Now, you might wonder why I seem so obsessed with such an unimportant tiny detail? Well, to tell you truth it’s mainly to make sure I have atleast one thing to complain about. Because this ebook is actually quite good.

You get a couple of really useful bonuses with the purchase as well, such as a number of blueprints and mind maps to help you follow through the various methods, step by step, exactly the way they are supposed to be done. “The Free Click Formula” and “Free Targeted Traffic” contain decent material, although they are aimed at newbies, and the mind maps can be really useful.

The first chapter goes through the basics of IM and affiliate marketing, and are followed by a number of chapters going into more detail on the various aspects of marketing online, such as Blogging, Social Networking, Video and Audio marketing, classified ads etc. It’s the perfect introduction and crash course on Internet Marketing for any newcomer wanting to learn more about making their first couple of bucks online. The knowledge gained in this product will have you in the game for a long time, and makes it easier to digest information in other, more advanced products.

As usual, if you are a seasoned veteran, this could quite possibly be a waste of money for you. I picked up a couple of things that I had forgotten, and I have to say that the list of “web 2.0″-sites for you to work your magic made the purchase worth it for me. If this list was sold separately on it’s own, I would’ve picked it up instantly.

All in all, if you are anything from a newbie to semi advanced this product will be a great addition to your arsenal, and the blueprints and mindmaps will be really helpful. If you are a seasoned veteran or consider yourself an advanced marketer I seriously doubt the few nuggets you will pick up would justify the price. Luckily there’s always the refund option if you don’t like it.

I found a better and cheaper way a while back though…

A couple of days ago I talked to a friend and colleague, who had just seen a glimpse of one of the multimedia projects I’ve been working on, and he wanted to know how I made a couple of the elements I used. I told him I didn’t have a clue how they were made. “I purchased them” – “Wow! They must have cost you a fortune!” – “No. The most expensive of the elements cost me $9″. He was amazed and wanted to know where I found them (these were audio- and video-effects I used in a Flash-video). I was even more amazed that he hadn’t heard of this site before!

It’s an amazing resource when you need royalty-free multimedia elements such as video- and audio-loops, animation effects and filters. They have a service for website-themes and templates, and from what I’ve seen so far it’s it totally rocks!

Sign up, browse around, fill up your account and kick your multimedia projects into overdrive! Signup here Now!

I’ve been absent for a while now due to medical conditions, being in and out of the hospital all the time. Due to me not really paying attention to what my doctor said about my new medicines, I managed to mix things up taking the wrong amounts of the new ones and my old ones. I was supposed to lower the dose of the old ones, syncing it with raising the dose of the new ones…

So I got posioned, and for some reason I managed to get an internal infection as well, just to make things even more wonderful

I was actually pretty close to not waking up, but luckily other people noticed I started getting worse and forced me to the hospital. The infection is getting better, and I’ve started actually reading the instructions on the medicine boxes

With that said, I hope to have the review of Google Snatch 2 up next week.

I hope y’all have a great weekend!

If you’ve been at it, successfully or not, you know that the success partially depends on what article directory you publish your articles in. eZine-articles and Go-articles probably being two of the most prominent ones.

High PR normally means faster indexing, and provided your keyword and keyphrase density is at a good level, you have a good chance at hitting good positions in the organic result lists on the search engines relatively fast and easy.

A well-known and frustrating fact for most article marketers, is the fact that many directories frown upon affiliate links in articles and resource boxes, forcing us to use various techniques that almost certainly cost us a few sales considering the extra hoops our readers have to take to get to the product sales letter.

You can now say goodbye to that frustration! Anik Singal recently launched AffSphere, an affiliate-centered article directory. Not only can you use your affiliate links uncensored, you also get awarded points and commissions on your referrals.

If you sign up today, you can also purchase Anik’s new report on article marketing. A solid, informative report that really should be sold at a much higher price. Yes, that’s my personal opinion.

Go check it out!

“How You Can Fuse The Power of Adwords And Adsense Using A *Sly And Sneaky* Formula To Crush The Gurus And Create An Autopilot Income For LIFE – Guaranteed!“

After reading this 35 page report, I think it’s safe to say that there is no new sly and sneaky formula revealed, that will help you crush any gurus.

Chapter 1: Getting Started

Dylan sets out to explain the basics, AdWords & AdSense, selling affiliate products, building AdSense sites, using PLR and MRR material and basic traffic strategies. It all turns into mess, confusing AdSense and AdWords, constantly claiming things “aren’t easy” just to turn around and say “it’s simple”.

Chapter 2: Getting paid

This is basically about affiliate networks – Clickbank, PayDotCom and 7DollarOffers (?). Nothing new here, and nothing that will help you become a top earner.

Chapter 3: Keyword Selection

I heard that this chapter was great, only to find it missing in the first copy I downloaded. After a couple of tries, Dylan sent me the updated report that had chapter 3. Only it wasn’t clearly marked out as a chapter, and wasn’t in the same order as the index page. I could’ve lived with it, if the info was good enough. Which it wasn’t. Again, brief explanations of concepts such as negative keywords, selecting keywords and basic Search Engine knowledge.

Chapter 4: Writing Your AdSense Sites

You get a quick run-through on AdWords Ads, landing pages, bids, lists and whether to advertise in the content network or search network. All this in a chapter that was supposed to be about creating AdSense sites. Confusing? You bet. Anyone new to Adsense and Adwords will likely be just as confused as Dylan seems to be.

Chapter 5: Monitoring your AdSense Sites

Again a chapter supposedly about AdSense, that turns out to be mainly about AdWords.

Chapter 6: Adsense Arbitrage

This is the only chapter I would consider good information. It’s nothing earth shattering, nothing new and no real solid information, but a basic description of what arbitrage is and why it’s risky. It’s only a single page, though, so although it’s good advice, it doesn’t quite make up for the cost of this report.

All in all, there’s no secrets revealed, and it’s likely to confuse more than help if you’re new to the game. “Secret Google Tactics” is a misleading name, and the report seems like it was thrown together in an hour in the middle of the night.

I consider this a waste of time and money, but your mileage may vary

What you get, besides the service itself (at a whopping bargain-price of $67/month) is two videos explaining how to use the service, two reports (How To Spot The Shadow Elite – about finding successful AdWords campaigns to copy – and Creating The Perfect Review Page – since the landing pages are in the form of review pages) and a free copy of Google Wealth Wizard, if you’re not familiar with AdWords.

There’s an upgrade available too, at an extra $47/month, giving you access to “DJK Blueprints” reports, which I’m guessing is a monthly service.

Google Nemesis is basically a service letting you create AdWords landing pages promoting ClickBank-products in the form of review-pages. That’s the first minus. Not only are you limited to ClickBank, you’re also limited by a worthless search engine for ClickBank products. Once you’ve created your landing page, there’s no way to go back and change products. You’re also limited in that your landing pages can only be for two- and three-product review pages.

There are only two templates available, in red or blue. Hopefully more templates will be made available, but you have no chance to set up your own templates.

All review pages by members are spread around on several different domains, but using your own domain for your landing pages is not an option. The only way to do that would be to use the redirect- or cloak-option from your registrar or webhost.

Imagine two hundred pages on one domain using the same template and footprints… It’s already a recipe for disaster, but if the two hundred pages are promoting similar products and bidding on similar keywords in AdWords, a whole bunch of them are going to suffer from the display URL limitation. Google only displays ONE ad from a given URL. So if you’re bidding on a similar keywords as another Nemesis customer, only ONE of you are going to get displayed, the one with the highest bid. If you were on different URLs, you could still be displayed if your bid was lower.

The editor used to edit the templates and fill in your text is very limited. You’re far better of using something else and then just copy&paste your review-texts.

I’m not really comfortable with giving out login information for ClickBank to anyone, and especially not to a script hosted by someone else. You need to do this in order for the statistics in the Google Nemesis dashboard to get more accurate numbers. The dashboard lets you see stuff like where your visitors come from, what keywords they clicked to arrive on your page, and the number of sales that can be connected to each keyword.

Google Nemesis is only hype. It doesn’t help you in any way with creating your review pages, in fact it takes me longer to create them in GN than doing it manually. For the statistics, if you use ClickBanks tracking id’s together with Google Analytics, you get statistics that are just as accurate as the ones you get from GN.

Now, if you don’t know how to create landing pages and track visitors, but you’re a master at writing compelling reviews and AdWords campaigns, you might actually find this service quite useful.

If you’re not a master at writing reviews and creating AdWords campaigns, it’s not for you. In fact, I believe you’re better off without it either way, but hey – it’s your decision. As far as I’m concerned, Google Nemesis is just a waste of time and money, but your mileage may vary

Parts of this review was added after reading another review that made some good points I didn’t even think of at first.

The main report was good. Not great, but ok. Eric introduces what he calls his “Autopilot Money Machine“, which is more or less standard affiliate practice:

Find a market/niche that looks profitable

Examine the competition to find out what keywords and ads work best

Set up your landing pages on their own domains or on free blogging platforms

Set up your AdWords campaigns using the keywords and ads based on what works for the competition

Track, test and refine your keywords and ads to find out what works and what needs to be dropped

Rinse and repeat

Eric says he’s going to show us a market and exactly how he profits from it using his “Autopilot Money Machine” – and yeah, he shows a market. But that’s about it. There’s the basic overview of where to go to find niches, but nothing on how he chooses a “profitable” one.

Next there’s a chapter on examining the competition (find, spy, swipe) to find out what’s profitable using either Affiliate Elite or SpyFu, and finding keywords using Googles Suggestion Tool. Standard practice here too: use a broad phrase to find more targeted keywords and phrases. He also explains that you need a domain containing your main keyword or phrase, and how you shouldn’t have any ads or other distracting elements to make sure the visitor has only one action to take – clicking your affiliate link. Oh, really?

Eric explains the philosophy (ok, not quite but i like the word “philosophy”) behind creating review-type landing pages, using his own xbox 360 repair landing page (XBox360 Redlight Fix #1 and #2 ). Those two are very good examples. I like to put in one or two products I give negative reviews on as well, to add to the “honest guy getting ripped off”-image.

The Affiliate Conspiracy is pretty much Affiliate Marketing 101. The videos makes the package feel more solid than I’m used to with these types of products.

The free report surprised me by actually being more revealing than most other free reports. There’s no question as to whether the report is meant to sell the full package or not, but it still provides enough information and instructions to be considered good learning material if you’re new to affiliate marketing.

I like the two additional reports, especially the report on relationship marketing.

The instructional videos covers everything from a short presentation of ClickBank to installing your own blogs, from using spyfu to building lenses and hubpages. He also shows how to build a multiple-page landing system.

All in all I think it’s a pretty decent package, and I’m confident that you will find solid information and learn quite a bit if you’re either new to affiliate marketing, or have already dipped your toes for a while but still not grasping everything in full. If you’re a seasoned veteran, this is not for you…

If you’re not quite sure where on the scale you are, visit the site and sign up to get the free report. If you skim it through and realise there’s nothing new to you, consider yourself a seasoned veteran