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 internet marketing who willingly shares with other students of online business.
Anyway, my anti-guru sentiment (this week) derives from those who use (steal) content from those of us who endeavour to be more in the know.
For example, if your ‘guru’ repeatedly reposts information from a real guru (i.e. Matt Cutts) then they are NOT a guru.
He or she is a LEECH.
They use search engine optimization tactics to piggy back off those really in the know — i.e. they are too lazy to come up with their own ideas or to create their own content.
By re-posting OTHER peoples work, they hope to attain an inbound link via a trackback to their site directly from their favorite guru.
Fortunately, in most cases, this doesn’t happen (because the REAL guru is too smart), but the LEECH can only hope that their WordPress comment moderation is automatic.
I get or 9 or 10 of these trackbacks daily.
For example, today I received one from Ewen Chia, the guy who calls himself the “World’s BEST Internet Marketing Guru”.
Ewen has a new blog – InternetMarketingGuru.com – that simply sources content from REAL internet marketers — those of us who actually THINK about what we are writing.
Here’s an example of his thievery…
It’s simply a snippet or REPOST of what I wrote about affiliate marketing in June with a link back to my site,
What he’s HOPING for is that I will approve the trackback link to his scammy reposting site.
SORRY, Ewen… that’s NOT going to happen!!!
I guess things aren`t working out for Ewen, the self-proclaimed #1 Internet Marketing Guru if he’s been reduced to spamming trackback links from those of us who actually WORK in the Internet Marketing business, i.e. doing real research to share with our readers.
Anyway, the point is — if your ‘internet marketing guru’ is trying to scam Google and other search engines by automated reposting of others’ work, you might want to reconsider their abilities as a guru.
About Rosalind Gardner
Hi Rosalind,
I have been following your blog for quite a while too and really appreciate all information you have shared and have learned a lot from you. Likewise, I have learned lots of thing from Ewen too, though I agreed he may not be the best “GURU”, but far from SHIT as you have mentioned. This is not too fair to comment him as leech in your post too, and for this, I totally disagreed with you.
I respect you as much as I respect Ewen too. I considered both you are my mentor in some way, and hope that you have to respect others too. What he did is not really a big deal, moreover he has also linked back to the source and back to your site. You have gained some traffic too… In fact, there are tons of big name marketers are doing the same thing too, tons of them, so what’s the big deal?
Well, I know perhaps this comment will not be approved, but I do appreciate if you are not biased in approving your comments. I feel need to speak up too, when I see things is not right!
Thank you.
No One is a guru here its based on your handwork.Every one knows the same information(freely awailable on the internet),but how you use it is what matters.
Observers are worried
I have been following these so called Gurus around, in fact most of them have been in my melting pot for 6 or so years. Once you get yourself on their ‘List’ it is hard to get off. If I had more time I would create a site just to expose them. I had a sort of tight group of 3 or 4 people who I trusted (online trust = I wouldn’t let them look after my favourite pet) and looked at what they had to offer and the free bits of information that I was sure fitted somewhere.
After spending a few hundred pounds (over the course of 4 or 5 years) I came to the conclusion that following these people is wasting valuable time. They drip feed you and take more out the other end. It is like an ever evolving jigsaw puzzle with contradition at it’s heart. You collect a few pieces, begine to see a picture, get excited…….and then the first pieces you collected become redudant as they tell you about the new idea No.37 that is really making a difference and putting $2million in a month into the bank and only costs $47, $97, $497……
Ok, enough……I gave up following them and have just managed to escape many of them. I won’t name them here but suffice it to say you know the usual suspects.
I now run a successful business that is absolutely transparent and very client focused and helps people with a high degree of transparency…..imagine that….transparency on the internet.
Why do you have to be so harsh? Is there really a problem with re-posting an article or part of one as long as credit is given?
What were you smoking and drinking when you wrote that? You sound like a moron who has such a paucity of rhetoric that you have to scrape the gutter, a place, incidentally, with which you show some familiarity, in order to come up with enough four letter words to try and compensate for your paucity of resources to express yourself.
Ewen has a reputation for helping others that is obviously well beyond not only your ability to attain it, but also your capacity to comprehend it. He does not need your approval for what he chooses to comment on or about.
Your attack on Ewen was uncalled for; he didn’t deserve that. It appears you were looking for some cheap publicity, and saw this as a way to achieve it. In the final analysis however, it is your reputation that has suffered not his.
As for your blog I have been there twice in one visit – my first and last.
You jealous bith, just as ewen has an international reputation and you don’t. Your NASTY comments disgust me.
Daniel
I have no love for this fellow. His program, about 10 years ago, was the first program I ever purchased (same program on sale today, just slightly different). I didn’t have much money, but took the plunge, and in my excitement I printed every page. Soon I ran into so many upsells, side sells, down sells, that my printer collapsed and I couldn’t remember what I bought in the first place. I was a raw newbie, yeah, but he lost his chance with me forever, and burnt me for the rest forever. I trusted him when he sold me the first upsell, and blamed myself for getting lost in the others. OVerload primo in one program.
It was a long time before I tried again.
He’s a good salesman yeah, a used car salesman, who just wants your money and doesn’t care about his customers.
Wahoo!. I got to this site through a mail I received from Ewen Chia that he has been cyber attacked. He even posted the link to this site and advised his subscribers to visit. He said he posted his own version of the story but he is not sure if you will approve. Unfortunately, he is right. You have been bold to write this allegation but you should have been bolder to allow your readers to also be able to read his own comments. Its common for people to read a one sided story and pass judgement before they even read from the other partner in the dispute.
However, I think you made some point that we should watch for people we call guru. I see Ewen Chia as one of my gurus and a mentor. Infact, I’m currently promoting one of his newest membership program Now I have learnt from you and Ewen Chia how Internet Marketing should be done and how it should not be done.
I will bookmark your site and get more info regularly.
Thanks.
I am going to be honest with you. I also read some other gurus who attended internet summit sth with him have the same point of view I once bought my first product recommendation from him, some kind of articles mass distribution (or spam) software then i ended up requesting refund. And from time to time i got affiliate email promotion from him until one point that i got confused up which one should I pay attention to because most of them only have one title:” i earned this much, you suck, buy my course sucker.” So i don’t really care now, but i still keep my subscription because sometimes he does really provide values which i greatly benefited from, and i also “fortunately” purchased some real useful courses. So you be the judge. Anyway, Ewen Chia and Patric Chan definitely, sincerely have a thing or two good to share.
I might have this all wrong, but I always figured the idea of RSS feeds was so people could syndicate your content and republish it for their own audience?
I always thought of my own RSS feeds as an easy way for me to make my content available to other websites, so they could combine content from various sources and make it available to their own distinct group of readers in one location?
Isn’t that what every newsreader application out there … including Google & Yahoo … does?
So is there really any major difference between me adding feeds from a dozen different sites to a newsreader for my personal use, and adding the same feeds to a blog for my readers to enjoy?
If I ‘link to source’ and credit the material, isn’t that using the published content as intended?
I appreciate your candor in your post, but I honestly think you’re missing the point of syndicated content.
Yes there might be people out there who abuse it, but done correctly I think it can benefit everyone.
Cheers
Matt
thanks for this danger alert Rosalind. Keep it up.
hmmm, interesting stuff… i have actually used ewen chia’s stuff and have had great success using his recommended path for ‘newbies’. i have found his info to be very useful and definitely not S-H-I-T. His book is brilliant and an excellent read for those starting out, i highly recommend you read it for yourself. The word guru is so overused these days it has no real meaning any more. I think it is up to each of us to do our due diligence on the products offered to us and simply choose what suits our individual purposes, talents and the direction each of us wishes to take in search of our own internet millions… There is an endless variety of rubbish being offered, take care with how you proceed, and who you each choose to follow as a mentor. To your success, and mine, Daz.
Rosalind, I totally agree with you about autoblogs and gurus selling software that draws information from bloggers who write their own stuff. Their strategy is to try to create as many backlinks as possible. I think it is low and an absolute insult to intellectual property
I personally find Ewen’s stuff shady and down right ineffective as an Internet marketer. My personal belief is that REAL Internet marketers write their own content and share real information.
Thanks for your observation. May I suggest that a fellow IMer should give another a chance to respond to this very grave allegation. Perhaps Ewen has a reason for this. There might be a gap somewhere. Please ensure that such a response is not deleted from your blog. The pull-him-down tactics should be avoided. Give peace a chance.
I don’t know you, Ros, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and convince myself you’re just having a bad day. We all get frustrated at people but I don’t think there’s an excuse to call someone out and just be derogatory. I have found Ewen to be helpful, honest, a great speaker and presenter – very encouraging and inspiring.
There’s nothing wrong with sharing content on the internet. That is surely what it’s all about. If you want to blog about specific people then that’s your prerogative, but when you have to resort to childish name calling in order to get your point across, then your point pretty much fails as far as I’m concerned. Sorry.
I wonder if you’ll even approve this post? Your blog seems to only feature your cheerleaders and my face probably doesn’t fit.
Hi Rosalind,
I followed a genuine link from Tiffany Dow’s blog to here
Great rant… I love it when people speak their mind!
I’m glad I came as I always wondered what the purpose of those trackbacks was…. not knowing I always deleted them …lol Glad I did now!!
So yeah – we can all learn something new from each other if people genuinely share good info… cheers for that
Warm regards
Randy Smith
Your post is very one-sided. Just a post to attack someone who’s level you aren’t on?
PS.
You are cute.! .
You might want to do a little more research on Ewen Chia he has not become one of the most successful super affiliates from scamming his customers.
Hey Rosalind, I’ve got no problem with you attacking anybody as a leech or a thieve with regards to using content without permission. But I don’t think what Ewen has done in this case can be classified as thieving or leeching. The content on your site here is syndicated to others — just click on the feed button at the top of this blog, you will get this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/affiliateblogs. And if you read the content of the feed, you will find the content you are accusing Ewen of thieving is actually part of your publicly available RSS content that is syndicated to anyone interested in your feed. In Ewen’s blog, the source is a backlink back to your blog. I’d be very happy for Ewen to do to me what he has done to me — I’d be getting a valuable backlink.
What I am saying is, by all means call people thieves or leeches if justifiable. In this case of Ewen, I don’t think it is justified. Your content is syndicated for use elsewhere. If you want to fully protect your content, then perhaps remove RSS from your site and state clearly no content is to be derived from your site without express permission.
I applaud your courage in speaking up against these money sucking so-called internet marketing gurus. I hope your post will put fear into the rest of the bunch so that less of this unethical behavior will ever happen again.
However, I feel that Ewen Chia is not the worst among the lot. There are other even worse than him. I bought one of his courses which I found useful. But I disagree with his sales page which was full of hype.
I had bad experience purchasing Rob Benwell’s blogging course and Anik Singal’s course. Both these marketers use the trick of enticing you into purchasing a cheaper product, then push their expensive upsells aggressively once you bought into the cheaper product. All they are interested in is selling you those expensive upsells. When I refused to buy the expensive upsells, I was left in the lurch. In the end, I asked for refund from Clickbank. I believe that is exactly what they wanted me to do. I felt I was treated like shit.
Roseline you are only being jealous Ewen Remains d best. its not enough to castigate a fellow marketer only strive to be better than him. stop this nonsense.
You should respect yourself and not post your biased opinions in public Ros, this make you look bad and could hurt your credibility a bit. You see, things of this nature may always backfire. As if you don’t see, the auto-post clearly give you full credit with link directing to your own site/blog/place of article.
Ewen’s Blog doesn’t say “I WROTE ALL THESE POST AND TAKE FULL CREDIT” This post is really about how poorly you don’t understand the sole purpose of auto-posting, and for you not to of your character, and the leader that you are, I would’ve expected you to understand that small thing. Which now you are making it to be a huge deal for no reason. Just an Emotion time of month for you, but always act based off of True Facts and LOGIC.
If I bought a domain-name titled “BEST DETECTIVE IN THE WORLD” it is certainly obvious to any marketer or person with marketing knowledge and education would already know and understand that it in itself is MARKETING. (Appealing, attractive and attention grabbing.
How do I know you are not swindling me out of my hard-earned money for the simple fact that most of your shit is S+H+I+T regurgitated crap that you don’t even think about yourself.
Truth is you probably don’t even give a rats a$$ about the innocent beginners yourself.
This post allows people to judge who you really are as a person and what you may really think.
I think it is a completely pointless post , you just make yourself come-off as ‘stupid’ , not-thinking, emotionally wrecked. But very cleaver if this is just marketing publicity stunt itself. You know Ewen Chia is Killing the game every time in the top spot. Jealousy is such an evil trait. Be happy with what your doing and go farther focusing on your self.
You and I both know Ewen Chia and Yourself are genuine respected marketers, lets keep it that way, because a genuine marketer who knows another to be genuine would not react is such a manner.
Best Wishes!
CHEERS!
I have never followed eiher of you, I heard about this from a third party. Even though I doubt this will ever be posted I had to write it anyway.
1 The link was a one way only, with a hard block on a link-back.
2 In spite of calling this Speak Your Mind, the only one’s that make it past your moderators are one’s that totally agree with you.
3 On his are both for and against, plus everything between.
4 You need to rename yours, If You Totally Agree With Me, because the other is a lie.
5 this will be posted on as many other weitsites as I can find so maybe others can see what your afraid to post.
6 He was simply sending people to your site as a person who he respected and thought would help others.
Patricia Herr-Conde
.
This guy is outdated! Same old rehearse staffs over the pass few years. Nothing good about him but hype sales letters.
Still subscribe to his list and nothing valuable except sales pitch over and over again. Worst “GURU” i know.,,,