How to Think Like a Scam Artist and Save Money

Seriously - While Not All Marketers are Scammers, Not Clicking Can Save Your Hard-earned Income

(graphic: Hubspot)

Of course, this blog post comes years after I nearly lost thousands in a scam - so anyone coming out with the same-old, same-old gets a raised eyebrow. (Yes, I got all my money back and so did everyone who listened to my advice, but that's not any reason to continue reading...)

I study everything like an editor these days. Most formatting and all ads are designed to interrupt your attention and get you to do something. And I dislike being advertised to - intensely. But I do appreciate good data that I can use.

When I found myself doing this today, I thought you might appreciate some shortcuts you can use to get good data, but avoid the unnecessary sales pitches.

A Few Steps to Avoid Scams and Get Good Data

1. Convert your "free download" to simple text you can import into a word processor or text editor.

My first response is often to take the appealing content I just read (after I clicked on it, usually giving one of my emails in exchange)  - and then convert it to plain text. Sometimes I have to go back and work it over as they put titles and navigation in as graphics.

I'll usually strip down all the styling in order to get it down to basics. Like being able to import it into a word-processor. (There's lots of ways to do this, like opening it with Calibre and then using that program to convert it into something like straight text, or an ebook, or simple HTML. Get one of my books on self-publishing if you want more data on that point. Now - back to our story...)


2. Restore any missing headings and navigation through the document.

If it's poorly built, all the headings will disappear. Maybe not. Doesn't matter. You want to be able to see what you have simply, including the steps they lay out.

When you've done this, you can tell right away whether they are really offering anything of value, or are just blowing smoke.

Actually, even having to do these two steps usually means they have something to offer. The one I'm working on as I write this was a 177-page PDF ebook which was also offered as a free Kindle version - which is a nice touch.

3. Start deleting anything which is simply an Influence point. 

Remember Robert Cialdini and his "Influence" books? Get a copy if you don't have one.

In that book, he laid out how marketers get you to buy things. In short, his points are just a few:

a. Reciprocity (free samples - like these ebooks)
b. Commitment and Consistency (downloading a free book helps ensure you'll click on something later.)
c. Social Proof (examples of people "just like you" who have successfully used the product they are pitching. All testimonials and dollar-figures are part of this.)
d. Authority (some Big Name - or several - telling how they used and/or recommend this product.)
e. Liking (its written and presented in a format you like, and try to tell you they are just like you.)
f. Scarcity (telling you that there is a limited time offer, or just a few left, or you have to sign up for a special one-time event.)

What you leave is the real nuts and bolts of "this is how the system works."

Some other points:

g. Anything that sounds/smells like "get rich quick". This includes income on automatic-pilot or anything where you don't have to work at anything and the money just rolls in. (Sure, and I have a great offer on the Brooklyn Bridge you should seriously take a look at...) While you don't have to work hard, and you do need to work smart, there are no free rides/beer/lunches. There is passive income, but you usually work to get the data to set it up.

And that is the point you are looking for:

Can this person actually help you improve your life with some new understanding of how life really works? 

The whole point of this exercise is to accumulate useful tools.

h. Look out for "done for you" services they are offering. Yes, that might be good, but it's another version of "we think you are lazy enough, and can pay enough to have someone do it for you." No, you're not lazy at all. But some marketers preach this, based on the sheer repeating statistics that around 90-99 percent of all course buyers don't complete all the material or lessons.

The point of this is to see if they are giving real value. Yes, you can do this on your own. The trick is to find out if they are offering anything worth investing your time. Money can be replaced, but not the time it may cost you as well.

4. As you are deleting, you'll start seeing the "special names and terms" they are using to market their stuff. 

This is more education for you.

Everytime you run into their pat phrase, simply replace it with a generic one, like "The Product" or "The System" - and yes, you can do a search and replace to make this easier. (This also goes for repeating terms like certain dollar amounts which are only buttons

Here's a fun example from this book I'm editing as we go through this:

You absolutely can and will turn your passion into [big sum goes here]—just not overnight and not without implementing every step in "The System".

Much easier to spot the hype, eh?

Again, whenever the author says "Trust me..." or refers to himself, start deleting that sentence - it's probably a pitch (see Liking point above.) You can search/replace every "I" or "me" with "you", and "my" with "your" - and it will be easier to read in most cases. Exceptions (few) are when they actually give a test case they did and the results they found.

Note1: leave a space before and after on your search/replace, otherwise, "time" becomes "tiyou", "It" becomes "yout".

If that phrase becomes untrue with changing "I" to "you", then go ahead and delete it. You're looking for truly useful stuff.

Note2: Preserve your navigation as you go.

Use regular outline format:
I.
II.

A.
B.
C. 

bold
italic

III.
etc. etc.

This is so you can find your way simply and see if this content is really going to be useful.

As noted, I started this with a 177-page ebook. And it's holding up so far. Many of these ebooks won't. They weren't written to give you usable data, just a pitch. They'll have no outline except of bunch of chapters following each other. That's when you simply delete the file and get back to whatever it was you were doing (usually your email) before you were interrupted.

5. Look out for stuff you've heard before and already know to be false.

Delete away. If you've tested it and know this approach doesn't work for you, then it still won't work for you now.

At this point, you may start finding headings which have no content beneath them (like "It's Time to Take Action") because this is simply an advertisement effort to get you to (again) click through for their course or offer.

6. Look it over to see if you've heard all this before.

Here's where it starts taking shape - but do this only when you've finished your deleting above. Yes, you'll be reading along as you go, but keep your editing job separate from your "digestion and evaluation" job. Finish your editing first, then you can digest and evaluate what you've uncovered.

You can tell as you go whether it's worth your time to keep deleting, or simply delete the file and get back to what you intended to do today.

If you did learn something, and there is perhaps a service you could take which would re-pay you well for the time you invest, now you can go into this with eyes wide open.

Otherwise, you can file it with the other also-rans you've filed for a nice review project. And you can always just delete it and save cheap hard-drive space.

7. Now look over the original for ideas in marketing. 

Obviously, you clicked on this for some reason. It was probably free, so you aren't missing anything if you decide not to use it. But very often, the design is nice and has elements you can use (not simply plagiarize, but learn from and adapt.)

Our results today...

This 177 page PDF and Kindle ebook was nicely laid out. It's an intro to "making money from a home business." It's also for newbies who don't know better - and that is usually about 90% or more of the audience for any given niche, according to experts and their studies.

That book boiled down to around 91 pages of useful data. Unfortunately, he's not offering anything you can't find online for free. 

(And shortly, I'll be off to Amazon to leave them a review...)

Meanwhile, you got a chance to look at how to not have to deal with a scammy marketing piece every time you turn around. And how to learn from someone else's hype - as well as how to present straight data people can use. People like to get straight-up and useful data. They don't like hype.

Treat people like you'd like to be treated - and everyone wins.

PS. There's more of this with "Get Your Self Scam Free" - available at that link and all major online ebook distributors.

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When "Mentors" are Really Just Celebrity Wannabe Train Wrecks Waiting to Happen

Watch the tracks ahead and be prepared to jump off if needed.

How can you tell if you have a real Mentor, or just a Celebrity Wannabe?

Are you getting incredible value or incredible promotional hype?

You want to find out if that person "helping" you is really doing this out of their own self-centered interests, rather than yours. Unless you are going to get a ton of personal good out of this, it may be that you're headed for a big de-railing at some point, with nothing to show for it except the trash left on the ruined tracks.

Too often, we find that following some of these "guru's" are no more than just another celebrity in guru's disguise.

I've experienced my fair share of these. Open-handed, helpful sharing is often stated as their motivation. But when you look deeper into the value they are delivering, you'll find that there is really nothing new in what they say. You can actually find this data in at least a dozen different books and several pages of Google search results.

The most recent profit-centered, self-promoting, self-oriented phrase I heard was "...to give without want." Sounds all noble and stuff. But you actually see how that person touts himself as an authority by stating he made all these millions within a few months and has this huge mailing list and now wants to share his special "insider information" with you.

Sounds great on paper. But it's just the same old hype. When you study how sales pages are made up, you start seeing these fakes all over the place. They are mostly all using the same "formula" to pitch you. Once you know that formula, you can spot the fake.

Here's how to work out if they are the real thing, or another glorified scam:

1. If they say they have a huge mailing list, then you know that they are already getting 1% of that to opt-in for whatever they pitch. It's a numbers racket. So that 1-million-name mailing list will give them an automatic 100,000 people signing up. Multiply that by whatever the price they give, and you'll see how much they will make from this "special insider" promotion. (Hint: they don't need your money.)

2. Does their email series contain the usual-pattern, hackneyed sales gimmicks? You know - authority, emotional appeal, limited offer, personal access, etc.? For those who know about the Product Launch Formula, you'll see a series of emails with videos only a couple days apart, spread over a week. The first is about some great data being released, the second is more about it, maybe with a survey, or survey results from the first one. The third is how it's a limited offer and why, the fourth is usually testimonials and why you need to buy now. Same format as the sales letter, only done over days with videos.

3. Real authorities don't use only a pat sales pitch or formula - they tell a story and give more valuable material than you could use before asking you for anything. Most of the time, the first video or installment will be their core data - and the extra value they give is in packaging it for you in other formats, such as DVD's and packs.  

4. Do they hype themselves up as revolutionizing an industry? All by themselves? Look - no one got there sheerly by their own genius. The really humble industry leaders will make the story all about you - not them. They'll point out who else to follow, who else to look up, whose books they studied, what other materials and authors they recommend so you can speed your results (and not make the mistakes they did.) The fakes just say "buy MY books, packs, DVD's, and especially MY monthly payment plan." (As if they are the only one with The Solution You Need.)

5. How are they getting paid from all this? How are they going to deliver it? It's been established that a single person can influence or help only about 250 people directly. If they are saying "coaching", that's the limit. And they won't be doing anything else, such as running a business empire. Keeping track of that many people - and actually helping them - is a full-time occupation. If they are getting a monthly residual payment, and just send you a course-pack and some weekly emails, they've just sold you a typical, usual offer. That's not coaching, even if it's an acceptable form of training.  

6. Do they push you on having a lifestyle with lots of *stuff* around you - like big homes, fancy cars, expensive trips? This is saying that you are a sucker for stuff you will probably never actually have, and so - like a moth to a light - are drawn forever toward them.

How did your "guru" do in this checklist?

You see, the bottom line is that it's still all about them, not you.

They are the ones who have unfilled needs: the need for approval, for personal adoration of devoted fans. It's a celebrity scene that they are stuck in.

They are exploiting your emotions and your "excess" spendable income so you can pay them for a few hours spent in front of a video camera, plus someone else creating their course packs and other materials.

The only one who is ever going to make you rich is you. The only way you're going to become successful is to change your mind and devote yourself to your own vision.

In any age on this planet, millionaires and billionaires got that way because they thought and acted differently than the rest of the million or billion people out there. (See the classic "Millionaire Next Door" by Thomas J. Stanley.) Change your mind, change your results.

Someone else's plan, blueprint, system - these won't work unless you can tailor them to your own scene. The Internet Marketing Guru's all got rich mostly by selling what used to work, using examples of a tiny handful to say that anyone can do this. Once they found how this "secret," the search engine algorithms or government laws were changed to close that loophole. That's why they are constantly coming out with new "systems" and tricks. Real mentors just keep promoting the same workable scene they've evolved based on studying reall people really applying it in real life.

Study the back-trail of these people and you can work out what they did to make their own success. Usually, it's getting a bunch of joint-venture partners with big lists who can promote their product for a hefty split of the profits (aka "commission.") Then they have all these guy's list all rolled into one massive one. (Yes, those big joint-venture guys built their own lists the same way.)

This is one reason I've taken to finding dead authors and republishing their works. This gets you out of the fads and the celebrities with their personal magnetism. The stuff that they used still works in our Internet Age. What still works is based on Natural Laws, not tricks and sleight-of-hand or an outright scam.

I've gone through a few of the Big Name types recently and found that this was their common scheme - they were wanting you to become a "supporting member" of theirs, so they could continue to live their own "lifestyle of the rich and famous." All on your back. All while you keep your day job and pay your own bills - plus your "fair share" of theirs.

Consumerism is the key way to find these guys (and gals) out. They push you into constantly wanting and buying more stuff in your life. Consumers consume things - load up their home with bookshelves of materials they can't use. Or sign up for an auto-ship of stuff to eat or use up. "For only one low monthly payment."

They aren't pushing you into changing the one thing which should be providing you with solutions to any perceived "lack" you may be experiencing - Your Mind.

Here's some people you can follow for free or nothing (note: no links here) -

Napoleon Hill - Interviewed over 500 world leaders over 20 years, and distilled their personal secrets to success into a single philosophy of success anyone can apply. You can get his book for around $4 - and even free.

Earl Nightingale - made his living researching and teaching others how to use self-help techniques in their lives. Made several fortunes just helping people. Known for his "Our Changing World" free radio program. Sure, Nightingale-Conant offers courses and packs of his content, as well as others. They're all one-shot purchases, and have proved themselves many times over.

Dale Carnegie - known for his bestseller books, which came from his World Record of critiquing more speeches than any other person in history. Boiling down what it took to train these speakers gave the common denominators which became books.

There are also Charles Haanel, Wallace Wattles, Genevieve Behrend and her mentor Thomas Troward. Also Dorothea Brande and Claude Bristol, William Walker Atkinson (and his many aliases), Robert Collier - tons of these writers, which you can get versions of their books for little or no cost (other than bandwidth.)

Yes, I am working to re-publish these and create training courses from them again, as well as ebooks for our modern smartphones, tablets, and phablets. That is just adding value. (The copies found in the Internet Wild are not always the best presentations or the most readable...)

The point is to honestly help people. The point is to tell people where to look for what they want. The point is to free people from unnecessary "wants" and "needs" - not pile more on.

The point is to give you more choice, not just harness you up in yet another chain of mules or horses pulling someone else's freight-wagon.

What do you think?

Leave a comment, either way.

P.S. The reason for this post is that I've been studying some of the long-dead copywriting Masters - and they didn't use what is in common use today, and what is giving advertising in general its well-deserved bad reputation... More about this later.

[Update: This  "guru" has 4500 surveys returned (out of his vaunted 1 million email list) and is going to give "1 year" of "unprecedented access" with him so he can "personally work" with these guys over the next year. Sorry - he's on a celebrity swing of how important he is. The trick with money is that is only makes you more of what you already are. An ass just gets bigger, for instance...]

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Optimizing your App Store Page for discovery

Turns out this isn't so different than the regular SEO world...

 

You start by making sure that it's properly optimized for search. Very simple. After all, the page is text and images, and Google got where they are with their search engine, didn't they?

Optimize Your Google Play Store App Details Page

How to optimize your app page

The good news is, there are several things you can do so that more users find your app:

Why Web 2.0 sites are good for traffic (and backlinks)

Alexa rankings prove why web 2.0 site traffic will help your SEO efforts.

Just did some research in looking through the top 500 Alexa sites. Not too surprised to see all the more recent approaches to getting both backlinks and traffic here.

While backlinks have been devalued lately, incoming traffic is more valuable. Some studies of how things work showed that many are going to Doc Sharing and Video sites to get their traffic up. (And use of embedding gives traffic to those sites, which raise their rank and so return with more traffic...)

As I saw what was unfolding, I kept track to see how it panned out. Now you can see that there is a definite trend happening...

How to Market Your Book Online - In Spite of Amazon

time-machine (Photo credit: midwestjournal)

Getting your book published without begging for reviews - a web-guy's approach

Just as a matter of record, something I'd like to bury in a blog post somewhere, but so I can say "I told you so."

Most of the theory of this is found over in "How to Build Your Own Honest Online Business." This also builds on what I laid out in "Just Publish! Ebook Creation for Indie Authors." Having spent a few months sorting out the various fictional narratives which are sold as Gospel for Authors to market their own book (see my Storify posts), I can proclaim with impunity that Amazon's review system is an arbitrary hoax and a time-burner.

The question comes: what do you use instead?

Make money online - Flipping Websites, Clickbank, and Google Adsense

In today's post, we bring you this article by Anthony Trister - who developed the Coffee Shop Millionaire brand.  

In this article, he discusses some online income sources which may or may not be familiar to you: Flipping Websites, Clickbank, and Google Adsense. 

I have a disclaimer about this article right off: none of these by themselves will really replace your day job. These three ideas are simply ways to get started. You'll still need to know the background information about how these various strategies can actually start generating money for you.

I offer free lessons for An Online Sunshine Plan - where you learn the nuts and bolts of Honest Internet Marketing.  I've been where you are now, and worse - believe me. And before you dive in and sink a lot of time or money into "getting rich quick", you should really test the temperature of that water. Again: free lessons for learning honest Internet marketing.

Additional caveats:

• With Flipping Websites, you really need some background in how websites are designed and what people think is valuable in them. If they are already configured for Adsense, that's a plus, but you also have to know their PR rank and general traffic. Best is to get them producing money for you so you have statistics to show. Site Build It! has some incredible free tutorials down this line.
• Clickbank is affiliate marketing. All the goods here are digital downloads. And your best bet is to study up on using Clickbank from several sources to most effectively monetize this source.
• Google Adsense is way over-rated for making any income. It's turned out to be a minor money-maker for just high-traffic blogs. Check out reviews of people who have done this before you sink a lot of time into designing your website around these ads.

- - - -

Need a little extra cash in these tough economic times? If so, then you may have just found a gold mine, because this article will show you ways to make money online - sitting in your own home, and with virtually no expense to you!

Make Money Flipping Websites

Ever heard of flipping houses? Flipping websites is basically the same process, only WAY cheaper and faster!

Here's how to get started:

1. Buy An Existing Web Property- Sites like Flippa.com, forums.digitalpoint.com, Sitepoint.com, and many other online website auctioneers have plenty of them.
2. Fix Er Up- Do a little research on the website's niche, and then figure the best way to make the site better. It varies based on site, but sometimes just fixing up the theme or adding pictures (royalty free images at iStockphoto.com for cheap) can drastically help. (Editor's note: Again, check out Site Build It! for free tutorials in this area.)
   
   Another thing you could do is add an interactive forum. You can create one using web forum software like Vbulletin.com. Or you could build a subscriber list by adding an email optin form, which you can create with free services like Mailchimp.com. The more subscribers or active members in the forum, the more you'll be able to sell your site for later!
3. Flip It- Now go back to an auction site and sell the site for more than you bought it for. Expect to buy basic, but decent looking sites for $20-$50, and sell them for $100-$300!

How to Make Clickbank Cash

Clickbank.com is basically the number 1 place for ebooks and digital download products. For potential buyers Clickbank is a great way to find good, usable information on pretty much any topic you can imagine--from dating advice, to health advice, and a ton more.

For affiliates like yourself, Clickbank is a great way to make cash. Here is how it all works:

1. Sign Up and Do Some Product Research - To start, you will need an account. That's easy to get, just sign up at Clickbank.com. Then you should start researching a "niche". Focus on something specific. For example, instead of just "golf" try finding a product on "stopping golf slices".

2. More Research, Get Links - Once you've done some initial market research and found a few, specific products, narrow it down to your top 1 or 2. Review the sales page, and check out the Gravity of the product (Gravity basically indicates what is selling right now). Usually, the higher the Gravity, the better the chance you have to make a sale.

Try out the product yourself if you can, and always ask for review copies. Talk to the vendor himself. If the vendor isn't professional and responsive, then that may indicate its not a very good product to promote.

You want to make sure people who buy from them (through you) are satisfied. After you know your winner, get the affiliate link by following Clickbank's easy to use instructions located in the "Clickbank Marketplace".

3. Promote!- Finally, you just need to promote your new affiliate product. One of the best ways is writing articles about your niche topic, and then posting your affiliate link in the resource box.

But if you want more exposure, create an email list, and promote it to the list of interested, targeted subscribers. You can also join forums in the niche, and have a signature link to your website. Don't be spammy and constantly try to sell in forums. Rather, just be yourself and try to be as helpful as possible.

Make Serious Dollars with Google Adsense

Not interested in selling? Don't worry, there are ways to make money without selling a thing. One is Google Adsense. Ever see those ads on the side of Google or in the side panel of a website? That's Adsense.

Basically, you just have to direct visitors to your site, who in turn click on those ads displayed within its pages, and you get money! Here's the skinny on Adsense:

1. Set up a niche website with Adsense - Choose a niche, get a domain, then sign up at Adsense.com. Get a free blog from Wordpress.org.
2. Be Informative- Fill the blog with interesting content by writing articles, posting youtube and other videos, interview experts in your niche. The more interesting your articles and videos, the better.
3. Promote- Get traffic back to your site with social bookmarking, social media, ping directories, article and RSS feeds, etc. The more you promote, the more traffic you get, which means more money, how sweet is that?!
4. Get Paid- Finally, add Adsense to your blog! You can really do this at any time, its not hard and there are even plugins if you use Wordpress to manage the ads. Make sure you place your ads in highly visible positions on your site. The higher your click-through-rate (CTR) the more you stand to make!

Extra: As mentioned above, you can even sell your site if it starts making you money with Adsense.

So now you have an idea of what you can do to make money online. Feel like you've got a good chance? I hope so, because creating wealth online is very straightforward, just choose one of the methods above and get to work!

- - - -

CoffeeShopMillionaire.com is the new, Internet revolution that's helping people like you to start their own dream business, create absolute financial freedom, and escape the rat race for good, faster than they ever thought possible.

Click the link below right now to learn how you can join the new class of "lifestyle entrepreneurs" and make a full-time Internet income, or even generate millions of dollars working online from any coffee shop, anywhere in the world

Become a Coffee Shop Millionaire today!

[Update: Coffee Shop Millioniaire is officially a scam - but an inexpensive and educational one. Note, signing up will give you tons of useless affiliate offers in your in-box, but after you opt-out and finish studying what's there, you'll be ready to learn what else you can do. (See the Related Articles below...)]

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New points on top rankings with through Google keywords

Some notes on the new ideas I've been having on the business of search engine optimization.

I've been messing around with videos, as I've told you earlier. And here is my latest, an overview of all my books I've been writing/editing/publishing lately.



Now, that wasn't too bad, was it? (Ok, then leave a comment...)

These videos continue to improve as I go, which is usual as you practice and study anything.

- - - -

Now, what I've discovered lately is the international aspect of keywords. (No, Duh?) But we in the U.S. are all too tied up in our own ethno-centricities (or eccentricities) and often forget that our sales can be better in niches "overseas" than here. Looking up my server logs showed that one site was more popular in Europe, another in Africa.

So I saw discrepancies when looking up "personal development, self improvement, self-help" on Google Trends. When I ran those up on Google Keyword External, the rankings didn't add up. While the world has a higher and longer use for "personal development", we in the US prefer self-help or self improvement - and the rest of the world doesn't. So I looked around on the page and found that my results were English-US only. When I searched for English in all pages, I came back with much different choices - and much wider ones.

While Google Keyword Tool gave "life coaching" as top position, this was as it ranks by advertising competition by default. Clicking on average searches gave me new top terms - which are closer to what people are actually looking for, as opposed to what people are making money at. "Book, business, dating, health, love" were top terms. Plugging these into Google Trends again gave me a new comparison for these terms, since how people search for them isn't necessarily what advertisers are looking at.

Just out of that, you could see that a "book about business health" should get a lot of hits. No, it's such a niche that Google trends doesn't even have it. But business book is number one in India and Singapore. "Love book" takes over in the U.S. and other leading countries. And "business book" is the only thing that shows up (out of "business book, health book, love book, fitness book, dating book" - the top 5 out of 8 terms from that first above search) in news search.

So press releases on just about anything with "business book _____" would give a substantial ranking.

And you can see that books about the other top items are also high in demand.

The point here is that this gives you additional tools. I started out looking for the broad field of personal development and found that there are five popular items which would be created and marketed as niches within that field. But the buyers would vary according to the product. "Love books" would sell better in the U.S. and "business books" would do better in India, Singapore, etc. A little more searching would show how to sell your "fitness books, health books, and dating books" to whom and on what continent - all from online research.

Just ensure you don't rely on your own fixed ideas when you are marketing. Niches are all over the place - remember, there are as many or more buyers on the Long Tail than there are at the Short Head.