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Affiliate marketers have a large array of products to choose from to promote and all too often, they seem to go for the scammy, quick-buck products that you see all too often on the Internet and in your email box. I recently covered one such womans’ product and will now address the issue of scam products being marketed to men. The following is a horror story of one man’s experience with penis enlargement pills. Read the rest of this entry »
Apparently, John Chow is trying his hand at viral videos. Not sure he should go into it full time. This one may go viral, but why? Are we laughing with you John or at you? For those of you who can actually stand to watch the video to the end, I think his point is something like “I can make a shitty video go viral and get a bunch of shitty traffic.” The point he may be missing is that a lot of videos go viral because they are either funny, informative, beautiful, etc. to watch. They give the viewer something that they think is worth sharing. Perhaps this is the best that Chow can come up with, but I wouldn’t want this one to be on my resume … Anyway, this is John Chow … talking shit.
The idea behind a good direct marketing campaign is to acquire happy, repeat customers that purchase again and again and have a high lifetime value. Then there’s your scam artists who are out for the quick buck and lure you in with deceptive advertising. Some of them so deceptive that you’re credit card is charged month after month for a product you never agreed to purchase.
Such is the case with the company Intelligent Beauty, LLC, marketing a product called IQ Derma. As you can see from the ad above, we have a photo of the Bride of Godzilla who appears to have been magically transformed into a princess by using their skin care products. If these claims were actually substantiated, it would put plastic surgeons out of business. Take a closer look at the blue smudgy print to the right of the photo where it says Simulated Imagery … meaning … fake results. Take another look at this landing page from IQ Derma to see even more of their before and afters that say “Dramatization: Not Actual Results”. At least the print is more visible on the website than on the ads they have placed all over the Internet.
Now notice at the bottom of the photo to the left where the ad says Try it FREE. You might take that to mean that you actually get to try it for free. I’m not usually one to fall for scams or even try free trials, but it must have caught me at the right time because for the first time in my life, I sent away for their FREE trial. You have to give them your credit card number and $3.95 shipping to receive the free trial.
I received my free trial and thought great … that’s the end of that. I used it for awhile and wasn’t impressed in any way with the product and thought … well, glad it was a free trial since it is crap and doesn’t really do what it claims to do. Two months later, I receive an identical box to the first box. I opened it and scratched my head and said wtf?Why are they sending me another free trial? I just put the box in a closet since the first product had not been used. Two months later … yep … another box. This one I investigated more thoroughly. Hidden under wrapping and under a catalog was an invoice for $95.70. I was shocked to find that I had already been charged $95.70 for this box, the second box and the original “free trial” box for a total of nearly $300 charged to my credit card. Read the rest of this entry »
Sense to Save blog is hosting an enormous Entrecard New Member drive where new members can win thousands of Entrecard Credits to buy advertising with. Many popular blogs have donated credits - over 45,000 credits will be donated from 38 current members! Only new members will be eligible to win.
Here are the contest details:
The giveaway will be held March 15 - April 15.
Only new users that sign up with Entrecard during this promotional period will be eligible.
Comment (and include your website URL) here to receive a contest entry or you can comment one time on each of the hosting blogs below to receive one entry each comment.
A 1st place prize of 34,000 credits will be given randomly to a new user.
Smaller 2nd place prizes will be given within each Entrecard niche category.
Last, please note that Entrecard has a little something for everyone and will be worth your time. Even within the Official Entrecard Blog, users have differing perspectives about whether Entrecard is a place to gain visibility in the blogosphere or make new blogging friends . There is no right or wrong way to benefit from Entrecard. In addition, the increased traffic to your website results in a huge boost to your Alexa ratings. This blog is just a couple of months old and started out with an Alexa rating of 2,780,846. It is now at 173,897.
Here is the list of 37 participants in this giveaway. Most people indicate they will participate as a host. Visit each hosts’ contest posts and leave a comment to get entries.. Any host that has created a contest post will be designated with the text: *Contest Up*
First it was PayPerPlay and now it’s PayPerPopup … both insidious in-your-face type of advertising that the majority of visitors absolutely hate. If you want to piss off your visitors, then I highly recommend force feeding advertisements to them in the form of audio that they have to listen to or insidious popups that they have to close before seeing your blog.
Obviously, I am not anti-advertising and I use several methods to monetize blogging, but in my view, advertising should be persuasive. It should generate interest and incite curiosity or even be funny. It should never force the visitor to do something to get rid of it, such as close the window or turn your speakers down. It just pisses people off and the last thing you should want to do with a visitor to your blog is piss them off right off the bat.
Take PayPerPlay as an example. Is Taco Bell the only company that has purchased ads? So far, they’re the only ones I hear on sites utilizing PayPerPlay and it pisses me off every time I hear it. I used to be a Taco Bell fan and I will probably eat there at some point again, but I think their PayPerPlay ad has harmed their brand. The name Taco Bell is now associated with anger … in my mind, and being a 5-second ad, there is really absolutely nothing in the ad that entices me to go out and buy some Taco Bell. I just want the ad to end and usually just close the browser on that site to get rid of it.
Now the PayPerPopup has my panties all in a bunch. Just as I do with PayPerPlay, when I encounter one of the ads shown above that you have to close before even seeing the site, I just ditch the site. Maybe I’m the only one who is irritated by that type of ad, but I doubt it. Do you want to take the chance that I’m not?
As long as we’re talking about links, this seems like a pretty good opportunity to talk about a simple litmus test for paid links and how to tell if a paid link violates search engines’ quality guidelines. If you want to sell a link, you should at least provide machine-readable disclosure for paid links by making your link in a way that doesn’t affect search engines. There’s a ton of ways to do that. For example, you could make a paid link go through a redirect where the redirect url is robot’ed out using robots.txt. You could also use the rel=nofollow attribute. I’ve said as much many times before, but I wanted to give a heads-up because Google is going to be looking at paid links more closely in the future. Matt Cutts
Relevance is an illusion Google wants to maintain
We are led to believe that Google’s war on paid links is to keep it’s search engine results relevant. We know only too well that those of us who are monetizing their blogs with paid reviews and text links are at risk of losing any page rank they might have achieved and of being buried somewhere deep in the Google black hole of death … all because we dare to make Google more irrelevant than it already is. It’s a cause and effect that enrages webmasters who want to rate well in the world’s dominant search engine. Many feel this is part of a ploy to force them to buy ads on Google to get noticed.
How Relevant is This Google?
Let me show you a very typical example of Google’s relevance that has nothing to do with paid links or reviews. Below is a screenshot of the current Google Hot Trends page.
I clicked on the first Hot Trend, Richard Kuklinski, an infamous Mafia hitman known as the Ice Man. Notice that there are three blogs that Google has chosen to list under Blog Posts for the “Hot Trend” Richard Kuklinski. Notice also that 2 out of the three are nothing more than Splogs. Not only are they splogs, but they are Google splogs … Blogger blogs. The very first splog simply bypasses the splog altogether and redirects to a completely irrelevant page shown in the second screenshot below, “Get a Free Samsumg 42″ HDTV”, “Get a Free Laptop Computer”, “Get a Free Canon EOS Digital Camera” … well, you get the idea. Read the rest of this entry »
The idea behind a good direct marketing campaign is to acquire happy, repeat customers that purchase again and again and have a high lifetime value. Then there’s your scam artists who are out for the quick buck and lure you in with deceptive advertising. Some of them so deceptive that you’re credit card is charged month after month for a product you never agreed to purchase.
Now notice at the bottom of the photo to the left where the ad says Try it FREE. You might take that to mean that you actually get to try it for free. I’m not usually one to fall for scams or even try free trials, but it must have caught me at the right time because for the first time in my life, I sent away for their FREE trial. You have to give them your credit card number and $3.95 shipping to receive the free trial.
Sense to Save blog is hosting an enormous Entrecard New Member drive where new members can win thousands of Entrecard Credits to buy advertising with. Many popular blogs have donated credits - over 45,000 credits will be donated from 38 current members! Only new members will be eligible to win.
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