Thirty Day Challenge: Why Must Traditional Email List Internet Marketers be so Sleazy?

I recently saw Ed Dale teaching thousands of Internet marketing newbies how to use Market Samurai, a paid tool promoted through their free course. Which, it turns out, is another good example of why many free information sources are worth less than they cost.

As their B case video (showing the free alternative that justifies the month-long sales pitch for various products pitched as free help) they used a poorly configured version of SEO for Firefox to make it look worse than what they were trying to sell. The video reviewing SEO for Firefox was given the title of SEO Competition The Old Way, and concluded that for SEO for Firefox

I am sorta hoping that you never have to use this, but if you do, it is there, and it is available.

Thanks for the faux recommendation. Pretty sleazy stuff there Ed Dale. Thumbs down for you.

For anyone who wants to see how SEO for Firefox actually works with all its features enabled, please check out the following video...and compare what you see to what you saw in that other video (while noting that I took half the time to show a much more comprehensive picture of the actual features).

Traffic Power Proprietary and Confidential Information

As reported on Traffic Power Sucks News Page:

I received a little letter from the same lawyer threatening me with a lawsuit if I didn't take "proprietary and confidential information related to Traffic Power's business" off of my website. I called the lawyer and asked him exactly what information he was referring to. He had no idea what I was talking about. This was the guy who signed the letter, and he was clueless. If anyone can find anything at all on this website that could possibly be considered Traffic Power's "proprietary and confidential information", drop me an email at webmaster@trafficpowersucks.com.

How do you sue a person without giving them any specifics? Is anyone reading this into legal policy much? Is that legal?

Eloquent Forum Spamming: a how to...

Step 1: Merchandise - create a product to sell or signup for an affiliate program or 2 if you are in a rush.
Step 2: Distribution Channels - get a long list of forums (like the list located here: http://www.spiffysoft.com/myposter/boards.php)
Step 3: Create a script - categorize your channels and create a script that will spam bomb the same question to a ton of different forums.
Step 4: Signup - create your accounts with a generic name.
Step 5: Post - try the script out. start marketing.
Step 6: Get Busted - ooops, that is not part of the plan. But it happened here

One thing many people miss is that many people who run forums are technically gifted, well socially connected, and know a ton about the web.

Its much easier to spam forums more naturally if you do it on a small scale in small groups. Its even easier to do well longterm if the people who are running the forums like you.

I originally found the reference to this clown move on Threadwatch. Chris from SearchGuild has identified the mystery poster.

One wonders why he did not password protect his page or register his domains via proxy? How long did he expect to get away with this? The same guy created SEO tools and certainly has to expect this to hurt his inbound link popularity...

bragadocchio also threw out a good resource link "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way" in the Cre8asite thread where he busted newsguy.

Overture & MSN Extend Partnership, Google Scholar Search, SEO Secrets

The Ruling Class:
NFFC is the David Beckham of SEO?

Auctions Expert...
knows how to make bank from click fraud, says Google.

While We are Selling...
google founders selling stock

Give it away, give it away, give it away now
Perfect 10 is in a sea of distress,
unimpressed by Googles information access.
porn is free
porn for me
say hell yes :)

Google Scholar:
New Google Scholar Search. Andrew Goodman has an interesting post about Google Scholar.

Toolbar
for your site. free and customizable.

Deskbar:
Google Deskbar API

The Best SEO Secrets:
are kept secret...says Nick W

MSN + Overture:
Partner up for another year.

Link Building Info:
Andy Hagans has a new site offering link building tips.

Scoop:
A while ago a sketchy self proclaimed "white hat page generator" (www.metawebs.com) hit the market. I do not know a ton of programming, but Dan Thies, one of my well respected SEO friends sent me an email stating:

It took me about 15 minutes to write a Google API app with PHP to fish these out of the SERPs, using a very small list of seed terms (<20 words). I stopped it after a while, but it's like shooting fish in a barrel to find these "unfootprintable" pages. It will get even easier as these sites get indexed, because it increases the odds of a "hit" when searching for them.

Traffic Power Sinks to New Lows :-(

Las Vegas Tribune article...

Web Advertising Info.com : Traffic Power & 1P Launch Fake SEO Forums

Fake SEO Forum?
Probably didn't think people would notice them about a week after they created their absolutely fake forum, but I did. Web-Advertising-Info = complete garbage... Web-Advertising-Info.com
It is a fake forum set up to push Traffic Power / 1P SEO services. These are the same SEO services that have got many webmasters banned from the search engines.

Web-Advertising-Info.com Forum Facts:

  • Only list two category sources of seo news (one of which being me)

  • Individually review a bunch of seo websites...as the seo forum categories (not normal)
  • Say that I cold called them offering SEO services...based on how much time I spend reading books and posting in forums and stuff... I don't have time to cold call people. In fact I have even called a bunch of other SEOs asking if I could refer people to them...and even yesterday refered away a repeat client sell to a friend.
  • They reviewed both of my sites as two of about 14 categories
  • Only have categories of sites that have bashed (gave honest feedback out the services of) Traffic Power AND
  • Give positive reviews of Traffic Power AND 1P
  • Their forum is premoderated. When someone tried leaving a message they couldn't.
  • No way that many negative things have been randomly said about me in less than a week in an honest premoderated forum with less than 100 posts.
  • Can you say scam?

Avoid that forum like the plague.

Web-Advertising-Info.com Forum Screenshot:
This image of the forum which promotes 1P & Traffic Power shows how they used two of my site names as their categories (to bash me) and also use one of their categories to promote Traffic Power.

Traffic Power & 1P: Using Deceptive Marketing
The fact that they would go to these lengths to try to market their services shows a few things:

  • They are pathetic.

  • Their services must not be worth using.
  • I was gonna let it slide, but this "SEO forum" went overboard. When Traffic Power cold called me asking to help me promote my website the site they wanted to promote this online shopping mall (look at how bad that site is and see for yourself the bad sites and naive webmasters they are actively trying to work for). The site is complete garbage. I made it before I knew anything about the web, marketing, or SEO. Now I use that site as bait site to see what kind of bad stuff there is on the web.
  • Traffic power is still the only SEO company that has cold called me and they have also cold called multiple friends of mine.
  • On September 23rd Traffic Power cold called another friend of mine. Here is the email he sent me about the cold call:

    guess who I just got off the phone with? A rep from trafficpower!!! She says that paying $3000 will allow me to refer clients to 1p.com and I get like 40% of the service cost. I told her if she is any good, then she should work for herself. I will be in touch with her to see if she has any skill. Just for shits and giggles, I asked her what it would take for her to work for me full time. She said $1000/week. I laughed. She must be getting crumbs over there. If she's worth anything, she's worth ppc management. She seems bright

    ..but she works for crumbs in SEO.

More Placing this Bogus 1P / Traffic Power SEO Forum in Perspective
If you look at the links page on their site:
http://www.web-advertising-info.com/links.php
The second through fifth links on that page point into a site that promotes my ebook on every page of their website and gives it a glowing review.

More Fake SEO Forums Promoting 1P & Traffic Power
Andy Beal just spotted
seo-talk.net &
seo-forum.net

Later someone else noticed
seo-professional-forum.com

All the fake SEO forums promote the same garbage as the other forum I found. On seo-forum.net they ran a poll for my ebook (what real premoderated poles do you know that would use the following language and options)

  • It was a waste of money.

  • Aaron Wall's writes like a preschooler.
  • If this were a real book, I'd wipe my ass with the pages!

The goal of this "clever" advertising bit is to try to make all SEO forums look deceptive and sneaky so that Traffic Power, 1P, and similar companies who had been complained about can be at a level bar with respectable SEO firms.

Basically it is a "our name is in the tank so we want to ruin yours too" type of game...kinda like how politics works. There is something overtly transparent about their forums that would likely turn off any site visitors. They could not have possibly been any more transparent.

Andy Beal has more info about the comment moderation of the fake SEO forums...apparently whoever made the forums was so foolish that they ping Feedster with the hidden moderated comments. Andy has a few of them posted on his blog.

Further Reading on 1P / Traffic Power SEO Services:

Traffic Power Sinks to New Lows :-(
Las Vegas Tribune article...

Traffic Power & Cold Call SEO

A good SEO has enough ideas in their head and enough things to work on to not need to call you. If they are calling you it most likely means that they do not understand the concepts of reverse broadcast networks and they are no good at their job.
I just got a phone call from Traffic Power (read the Traffic Power review).

He saw one of my crap websites from when I first started playing on the web (It is super duper bad). I then told him to try "my other URL." I had him enter my http://www.search-marketing.info into his address bar and then stated if he searched Google or Yahoo! for "search marketing" I would rank #1. If he searched for "search engine marketing" I would be in the top 10 on both.

I then told him that good SEO's have no reason to call people. I told him that I get plenty of phone calls from the web. The power of search and the internet is that my targeted traffic comes to me without me needing to waste my time on Traffic Power cold call garbage.

It's funny how their site does not even come up at #1 for Traffic Power if you search Google for Traffic Power. In fact I am willing to bet this post will rank at #1 for traffic power within a few weeks.

He wished me a nice day and I wished him one too. Would you buy a diamond from a person who cold called you? Would you bet your financial future on a random telemarketer who knew nothing about marketing or your life?

Traffic Power did earn a link from me though. I created the Cold Call SEO category of black hat SEO just for them.

My favorite part about the Traffic Power website is the link to the clients page has an almost nuclear trifoil type looking symbol and says "you have reached this page in error." Indeed being on the Traffic Power client list is an error.

Black Hat SEO

So I made a directory of bad SEO services (Black Hat SEO.com) and tools. It sat dormant for a great length of time. I told a few people about it and it did relatively nothing.

Out of nowhere I looked today and saw that I have been serving thousands and thousands of page views on that site...almost exceeding bandwidth limits in a few days.

Alexa is unreliable, but it works somewhat decently when your page is in the top 10,000 or so. Out of nowhere the page went to 2,505 when I checked today. The page may soon fade, but that directory has drummed up some good business for me. More potential leads in one day than most individual SEO's probably get in a month.

It's a Seth Godin type Purple Cow example. My very own Banana Guard. It certainly is an ugly cow, but it is still purple.

It is much easier to promote an idea worth promoting than putting tons of effort in promoting something not worthwhile. How can your site attach to an emotion? How can you make people want to link to your site free of charge? If you find ways to answer these questions then your ideas spread and you win.

Google AdSense AutoClick Software

Scumbag of the Year Award

I know its a bit early to give this one out, but there is a guy who has taken autoclick software to a new level. His new software, which goes by the name of Google Clique, is based on the Holland Engine - the mass email spam software.

  • Holland Engine was the originaly written to allow spammers to conceal thier orginating IP from mailservers and to keep it from apearing in email headers.

  • Holland Engine is the core of LincolnSX, the most powerfull mass-emailing software, running at rates of 5 Million emails per day per machine.
  • Holland Engine will actually tunnel through the internet and connect to the desired IP address from, not your IP but rather from another, the one at the end of the tunnel. It is this tunneling that makes LincolnSX so valuable, and now we bring it to you with Google Clique.
  • And for you technicaly challenged, NO, THIS IS NOT PROXY/SOCKS, and maybe you should be looking elsewhere if you are looking for such an amatuer solution.

Notice he is selling software for $1,000 down and is too damn lazy or cheap to hire a proof reader. Granted I am a horrible speller, but I am not trying to get you to spend a grand as down payment for software that steals. This is from his "interview" with Google.

I take this two mean one of two things, either they were feeling me out to see if this was for real or they are just oblivious as to how serious this software really is.

He also plans to launce a product by the first of April which goes by the name of Reaper. Reaper will aggressively autoclick on a competitors site to get them removed from Google AdSense program.

here is his WhoIs data.

Black Hat SEO

Ok so we all need to have a little fun now and then. As I stated earlier I have been trying out some of the directory script software.

Here is a fully functional tounge in cheek directory I titled "Black Hat SEO"

Thanks Bob for telling me the origin of tounge in cheek.

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