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May 23, 2012

Scams & Other Trouble

Learn from the mistakes of Merchant cheats, Affiliate scammers, email spammers... and other troublemakers so you can avoid problems with your online business.

Beware Bait and Switch Affiliate Programs

hook

Yes, barely 3 months into a year in which I vowed that all my posts would be positive, I find myself in the unfortunate position of having to share some bad news with you. It’s what I call the “Merchant Bait and Switch” and it works like this: Merchant gets you interested in a product. [...]

Better Business Bureau Scam Emails

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Do you sell a product online? Would you be alarmed if you received a complaint notice via email from the Better Business Bureau? I was… for a about a nano second until I got to the ‘bad English’ portion of the message. A quick Google Search confirmed my suspicions that this was indeed a spam [...]

10 Reasons to Avoid Automated Blogging

robot

I’ve recently come across so many misconceived notions (and outright lies) about automated blogging that I thought it best to share my white hat perspective on the subject. So, what is automated blogging? Also known as automatic blogging, autoblogging, splogging and scraping; automated blogging is the process of using software to “scrape” content from other [...]

Affiliate Promotions on Craigslist

craigslist

Well, I’ve just come across another example of an affiliate marketing coach who charges through the nose for training that takes people down a path leading to nothing more than a waste of time and effort. In this case, the affiliate ‘coach’ teaches his students how to place ads for Clickbank products on Craigslist. If [...]

So NOT an Internet Marketing Guru

phonies

Seriously folks, I can’t believe what you’ll fall for in terms of ‘internet marketing’ gurus. Just because someone calls himself a ‘guru’ doesn’t make it so. And by the way, I have NEVER referred to myself as a ‘guru’ of any sort. For the past decade and a half, I have been a student of [...]

Facebook Stalker Spam

facebook-stalker-button

Good grief. What’s up with the Facebook Stalker app (and all the idiots that are promoting it)? Folks, it’s just another way that scammers are getting you to give up your Facebook password. Don’t fall for it! First of all, if your Facebook security is good (no telephone numbers, addresses or real birth years), then [...]

How to Spot a Scarcity Marketing Scam

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Scarcity marketing is a strategy used by sellers to create a sense of urgency in the prospect to buy a product immediately. This is most often accomplished by stating that the product is available for a limited time or in limited quantities, e.g. “Offer ends March 31st” or “Only 36 copies left”. The latter tactic [...]