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Empower Network Scam or Legit?

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empower-network

I was introduced to the Empower Network by an acquaintance at a rare blogging meetup in my home town.  I have said that I’ve sworn off scams – but this one came looking for me – its not just a scam, its a pyramid scheme – so illegal in most decent countries (including New Zealand). I’ve written my review on the blog they so kindly set-up for me for my $25/month.  I’m curious to see if it will rank for the appropriate terms before I get terminated!  Anyways here’s my review on the Empower Network Scam  Looks like they noticed it!  Lets take them one at a time : Wow a blogging system how cool is that? Very not cool – its just a WordPress install on their domain – you aren’t developing  your own blog – you are providing content – for them. That’s why the original review got removed – because they could. Interesting aside – when I put the original review on my very own blog on their system –  I thought it would outrank this review in the search results, it never did. In other words their own domain called “EmpowerNetwork.com” couldn’t rank for a term like “empower network scam”. [...] Read more »

Bullying Online is NOT OK – Even for “Adults”

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Tropical Beaches - the only one's worth swimming on!

If you’re bored with the making an income online – you are bored with life in my opinion. Normally I stay out of the day to day online dramas – but hell – what the heck – so here’s my thought of the day. Don’t Let the Bullies Win Today a blogger (and I’ll get to that term later) – wrote to me and said he’d removed a post, that I’d commented on. The post was written celebrating that he had resigned from a job that was “sucking the life out of him” – it rang a very loud bell with me – so I commented. Then he deleted the post – because the company that he hadn’t named was threatening to withhold his final pay (and his name isn’t on the site either). Now he probably shouldn’t have posted until he had the final check cashed, but either way the company was bullshiting – and he fell for it – it happens a lot online.  Bullies win, because people think they need permission.  I hope he puts the post back up once he has his final pay banked. I don’t like bullies, I’ve mentioned that before. Its one of [...] Read more »

Site Build It Review – Griz and Ken Evoy Best Friends?

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I have been pretty much off grid doing the holiday (vacation) thingy. But I am beyond angry so I need to blog about it – if you don’t like bad language – back button now! A few days ago Grizz made an interesting post about how he became one of the good guys in the Make Money Online niche – and why he walked away from it. Go ahead and have a read – a genuine apology – even though many of us considered it completely unnecessary – after all I’ve never paid Griz a cent and he’s partly responsible for the decent online income that I make these days. To be honest his original post freaked me out a bit – maybe I was delusional that my little mini-sites with lots of links would make me money. But Google keeps sending money to my account – the evidence told me that his original methods work just fine – for me anyway. Griz’s business has changed – he appears to have found a way to combine golf with making loads of cash – good on him – but no amount of money is worth learning golf as far as I [...] Read more »

Internet Marketing Scams – I’m Retiring From Them

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New Plymouth, New Zealand

This is  it – my final word on Internet Marketing scams. Every now and then I check out yet another program – the last one I was considering was Ed Dale’s 30 Day Challenge – I even started following along – but frankly I got so bored with the leaden pace that I dropped off (to sleep). Then we got to the show down to see what they the actual up-sell was happening – it was mainly Intermediate Edge – hmmm $97 or $67/month whatever – put it on the maybe list. Then the next message to the list was all about Kajabi – WTF – where did that come from – and it wasn’t even his product … You probably thought the same. So why am I retiring from Internet Marketing scams? Well  frankly the competition is really too much- I’m being beaten by a robot! Oh and  it takes quite a lot of time to check out the “new” programs.  But really I am very much feeling like “been there, done that” . Those of you who thought I was a little harsh on my Third Tribe Marketing review or Scribe SEO Review - both from Brian Clark [...] Read more »

Scribe SEO – My Review of Brian Clark’s Scribe Service

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scribe-logo

You may of missed it – but a couple of week’s ago Brian Clark – of Third Tribe Marketing fame – launched his latest money-making venture- Scribe SEO. What Does Scribe Claim To Do: From their own site they make the following claims – enrolling in Scribe SEO will have the following benefits to you the would be SEO copywriter, blogger or affiliate marketer: hit the keywords you are after employ SEO best practice it the keywords you are after produce optimized traffic faster increase search and social traffic remove SEO guesswork retain maximum readability optimize faster balance keyword usage Sounds good right? And frankly I understand the appeal – I spent quite a long time considering myself  incompetent at SEO – I thought it was really, really hard and technical and even though I thought I was technical I didn’t GET SEO. So I see where there market is at. I thought writing SEO Titles was a Dark Art. I didn’t know what a keyword was – I may have been very likely to jump at this tool. What is Scribe SEO? At the time of writing Scribe SEO is using WordPress plugin technology. Later releases will extend the [...] Read more »

Third Tribe Marketing Launches Their Affiliate Program and Some Stats

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Wellington Queen's Wharf

Third Tribe Marketing has just launched their affiliate program! Wow that was a surprise! Yes I am being Sarcastic! In fact if I had been a smart arse I could have predicted this when they announced the price increase from $27 to $47 – because if you offer an affiliate program  that pays 33% of $47 – that equates to $31.50 to the Third Tribe founders – i.e. you put up the fee to pay for  the affiliates, you end up making the same or more anyways. Meanwhile the affiliates do all the the traffic generation for you – they send their own followers over, or they rank their own Third Tribe reviews in the search engines and send the resultant search traffic. Some one in the Third Tribe forums was surprised that they hadn’t launched with an affiliate program. That wasn’t an oversight – it was deliberate. Initially they wanted to milk their own audience. If they had had an affiliate program at the stage they would have been paying for buyers they already had access to. The   initial  “lower price”  allowed them to get the maximum sign up from the curious – who then have the incentive to [...] Read more »

Third Tribe Review – Inside Rowse’s Third Tribe Is it a Scam?

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You need accurate road maps in Internet Marketing - and the Northern Territory, Australia

Which Tribe do you belong to? Apparently – according to Darren Rowse, Brian Clark, Chris Brogan, Sonia Simone – you really should be in the Third Tribe. Up until now there has only been two tribes: the sleazy, scum-bag Internet Marketers who promises the earth, or usually $14,449  plus a Lamborghini, while you sleep, and then there are the nice social media folks – they hang around singing kumbaya making lots of friends and making no money. I couldn’t stand  a kumbaya video – so here’s a video of my aspirational Lamborghini – from my favourite car reviewer - Apparently there was no middle ground – which was bit of a surprise to me as I have been doing it for a couple of years and so have a whole bunch of other people I know online – but no apparently there has been a vacuum… and Darren Rowse has decided to fill it.  There is apparently a third way  – oops I mean a third tribe (apologies to Eastern Religions there) – Internet Marketing Strategies That Work (Without Being Obnoxious) – as they like to subtitle themselves. What Exactly is Darren Rowse’s Third Tribe – and How Will It [...] Read more »

ROCK ART BREWERY vs Corporate America – The Biggest Scam of All!

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There you go – just when you thought I was behaving – here is the mother of all scams – and this one is an official scam including lawyers! My friend Allyn on his gay vblogger site brought this one to my attention. Basically a small craft brewer in Vermont is being threatened to by a cease and desist letter from a crappy energy drink manufacturer called Monster Energy – like duh – I had to look up the Monster Energy crap up in wikipedia – but its one of the those high sugar, high caffeine things which has nothing do with alcohol – beer does – Apple can’t stop the New Zealand Apple and Pear Marketing Board using their trademark – and neither can an energy drink go after a craft beer brewer in Vermont: Apple computers and the fruit are different: so are energy drinks and beer LOL So this is a basically a bully-boy tactic – oh can’t afford $65,000 a court case – back off now! So much for the myth that US is  the land of the free and particularly the land of the entrepreneur. Over the last couple of years of being online I [...] Read more »

Spammers Send Me Post Ideas!

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Its really fun sometimes this blog – I enjoy the fun we have in the comments – and quite often I get an idea for a follow up post on the subject of  passive income and online scams. But rarely do I get an idea from spammer – until today. Now this wasn’t just the usual brainless -  “please write more on this topic” comment spam. This was a real life email sent to me via the contact form – and this is what it read – in its entirety: From: Ruth email : ruth.gonzales@yahoo.com subject: http://www.spireclub.com message Can you please add the spire club to the list of making passive income ? Thanks Hmm – that will be a NO  love. In fact I think I have deleted at least one other of these – obviously I am showing up somewhere in the serps again for “passive income” – cause guess what – the site mentioned above is a passive income opportunity – seriously folks – all you have to do sign up, pay $10 and wait for the dollars to flow in. In fact as they state on the front page: As a Spire Club member you can [...] Read more »

Brett McFall, The World Internet Summit, Is He Legit?

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I had to make this quick post because my mate Mike from Retire Young and Wealthy just published a potentially controversial article on InfoBarrel titled: Don’t Waste Your Money on the World Internet Summit. Now Mike didn’t know this before he wrote this piece but I spent a day listening to Brett McFall and when he did the free version of his “How To Make Money While You Sleep”  in Perth some months back. I had never heard of Brett McFall online but the full-page in the local tabloid that passes as the West Australian newspaper caught my eye in its sheer awfulness – you know the type – 6point type, releaved by the odd large bold – I WAS  BROKE TOO, NO SKILLS NOW I MAKE $100,000 WHILE I SLEEP. I signed up out of curioristy – with about a 50% desire to actually go to the event. As the day nearer I was impresed with their follow up emails and even on the day an automated call to my cellphone (taking into account the local timezone) reminding me of this once in a life time opportunity. Now as I said on my comments on Mike’s article – I [...] Read more »

Teaching Sells: Does it Work?

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Lets get this out of the way right here – if you want a balanced, politically correct, weighed, grammatically perfect and well spelt review of CopyBlogger’s, Brian Clark’s Teaching Sells – you won’t find it here.  I am a blogger, not a lawyer,  I have no obligation to provide unbiased, balanced information all the time – and trust me I am pissed about this! Anyway there will be heaps of sycophantic reviews from those who are flogging the new version of Teaching Sells – about to be released for Fall semester – to counter my unbalanced and cyncial take on why teaching sells will not make you money – but will probably do quite well for Brian Clarke and his mates. For some reason I used to occasionally read Chris Brogan’s blog – and his post titled “Why I Will Promote Teaching Sells” – Google it I am fussy about what I link to from this blog – caught my eye. Why? “Teaching Sells” was what made me give up Internet Marketing back in 2007. It may not have been Brian Clark’s Teaching Sells programs -it might have been someone else’s knock off – I don’t really care because at [...] Read more »