B.S. Alert: Is That a REAL Success Story?

Like you, I’m always on the lookout to find more ways to increase the size of my business and as such, I’m always happy when I come across a success story about someone who has recently made it BIG. Not only does it tell me that the opportunity to build a business online is still wide open (something I know to be true but love to see proven again and again anyway), but perhaps they know something I don’t — and perhaps I can pick up another piece of the puzzle through reading or listening to their story.

However, you and I both also know that there is a lot of hooey flying around the ‘net —especially related to Internet marketing and online business opportunities — so I therefore approach every success story with a healthy dose of skepticism.

First of all, many of the ‘success stories’ are published by that person’s mentor who wants to sell you a book or course that teaches their online marketing method. There’s nothing wrong with that — provided of course, that the story is true.

OK, I admit to having somewhat of an ‘inside track’ for digging up dirt, but there are many things YOU can do to determine whether or not a story is true. For example, here is what I did to test an affiliate success story that came down the pike just recently.

B.S. Alert #1. First, I Googled the affiliate’s name. The first site was not hers but had her name attached to a testimonial that included a dead link to another affiliate marketing site which I confirmed was hers through a Whois lookup. My question – if a ‘proud’ affiliate is willing to add their name and site URL to a testimonial – why doesn’t even one of that person’s own sites show at the top of the search results?

B.S. Alert #2. I checked Alexa and saw that the site had a PR4 (not terrible) and an Alexa ranking just shy of 3 million (which is terrible). Remember, the lower the number, the better the ranking. A poor Alexa ranking is a semi-reasonable indicator of poor traffic, and low traffic generally means low sales.

By contrast, my dating service review affiliate site, Sage-Hearts.com, has an Alexa ranking of around 42,ooo that bumps up to around 22K when I send a newsletter out to that list. Average traffic to that site is between 3,000 – 3,500 visitors per day. One of our sites with a 136K Alexa ranking gets around 100 visitors per day. How many would a site with a 3M Alexa ranking therefore get?

B.S. Alert #3. Another thing to consider at this point is the market to which they are selling. Ask yourself if the product is something that most people can easily obtain offline, even in the smallest of towns, or is this a product or service that most people would buy online? In this case, the product offered is something that I wouldn’t for a moment consider buying online and I live in a very small town.

Even if I did order that particular product online, the average order would be for around $25.00, and affiliates of the program to which she belongs earn only 15 to 25 percent of the sale, depending on monthly sales volume. At between $3.75 and $6.25 commission per sale, you’d have to get a TON of traffic to your site and make a LOT of sales to make a decent living. But the next alert shows that not many folks are even looking for this product online…

B.S. Alert #4. My B.S. meter went on high alert when I checked the primary keyword phrase for her niche using Yahoo!’s keyword selector tool. There were 26,885 searches for the phrase in January 2007. Compare that to “dating site” which had 1,497,182 searches in the same timeframe. So, not much of a market for the product she sells.

B.S. Alert #5. Alexa showed 72 inbound links. Although her mentor (whose principle marketing method is link trading) attributes this affiliate’s supposed high income to his training and the affiliate’s work on creating high quality inbound links to her site; what I found was that the majority of inbound links were derived from comment spam (including a bunch of foreign sites), scraper sites, dead sites, parked domains, links list sites and other obvious spam sites. So far, not good, but I give it yet another chance and revisit the Google search results for her name.

B.S. Alert #6. I discover that almost all of the returns on the first 2 pages are affiliate promos that link to her success story and her mentor’s program. Dig a little deeper into those sites and I find that some of those affiliates admit to having only just started as affiliate marketers themselves. Although it would appear that one affiliate whose page I found has multiple mentors as they were blogging — which explains why I found their page.

Just as an aside - I always warn new affiliates against promoting internet and affiliate marketing products before they have achieved success as an affiliate. Think about it — would you buy a product based on a product review written by someone who hasn’t used the product successfully and therefore hasn’t given you a good reason to trust their recommendation? I should hope not!

B.S. Alert #7. On page 3 of the Google search results for the affiliate’s name, I finally found 2 articles on an obscure article directory which had links to 2 of her affiliate sites, which – egads! – were anything but professional! The first site had an Alexa Rank of around 2.2 MILLION and only 10 inbond links. The second site’s Alexa rank was nearly 3.7 million and showed 13 inbound links. One was a holiday-themed site with programs paying around 10% commissions and the other had nothing but Adsense ads.

B.S. Alert #8 and 9. I listened to an interview with this affiliate and heard her claim that both her affiliate sites have a PageRank 5. Neither site had a PageRank greater than 3. HMMMM….

During the interview, she attributed her site’s success to very basic keyword strategies, and emphasized the importance of using title tags. However, both sites displayed only “Untitled Document” in the browser’s title bar (as shown in the graphic to the left).

B.S. Alert #10. Also during the interview, she claimed to have earned 20K one month and then projected earnings of 40K for the following month. By result, affiliates promoting the interview are claiming that she earns 40K per month. That’s misleading advertising, which according to FTC regulations is illegal.

I could go on, but you get the picture… do your due diligence! Check out the sites, the claims, the market, the programs and if something seems too good to be true — it probably is!

There is only one Internet marketing training facility whose claims I rarely verify anymore, and that’s the Internet Marketing Center.

First of all, as one of their success stories for the “Secrets to their Success” site, I KNOW how IMC determines the veracity of an income claim.

Secondly, they POST the URL’s of the successful online marketers’ sites, so you don’t have to hunt and peck through pages and pages of Google search results to try and figure out whether or not the ‘success story’ even has a site.

Furthermore, IMC has such a stake in the industry that they certainly aren’t going to risk their resputation on using false testimonials or untested success stories. Moreover, IMC provides GREAT training, which is why they can post such GREAT testimonials and success stories. Check some of them out.

Anyway, if you are looking for affiliate marketing training, get it from a real Super Affiliate. You can get my “Super Affiliate Handbook“. I also place a lot of emphasis on list- and relationship-building. Neither Jeremy nor I wastes much time on link trading. Both books are priced at a modest $47.

Or, if you want to hone in specifically on pay-per-click advertising as a marketing method, pick up Chris McKeeney’s recent “Day Job Killer” for $97.

Lastly, if you want an all-round education as an Internet marketer that also includes a good overview of affiliate marketing and all the essential marketing methods, I suggest that you start with the Internet Marketing Center’s “Insider Secrets To Marketing Your Business On The Internet — Version 2007” course. For the very reasonable price of $197, you’ll get infinitely more information in their 2 big binders than you’ll find in some ebooks that cost only a few dollars less yet focus only on affiliate marketing.

Moreover, you’ll be tapped into a pipeline that includes the occasional free seminar which gives you the opportunity to meet and mingle with really successful Internet and affiliate marketers whose stories you can trust.

Related Posts

1. Affiliate Scam Alert: Bogus Merchants
2. Frank Sousa – Real-life Success Story
3. Success in a Very SMALL Niche Market
4. 2 Great Success Stories
5. “Secrets To Their Success” Celebrates 100th Success Story