It has been about 7 years that I have been swimming with the Internet Marketing turds. You stick around long enough you will see that nothing really changes except the length of your mustache. I started out in this garbage flinging keyword generated pages into the web sewage. Speed was essential. Garbage was gold.
Today new clowns are juggling their pretty wares in front of the herd. Dipshit WSO hucksters are working new angles to get you to pry a buck out of your flat wallet. It’s all the same. Easy money. Projectile vomit quick content into the web sewers.
Email lists are king. If you so desire you can get smothered in spammy delight. Like most long in the toofers I create crap email accounts and let them spam my ghost. I have no interest in anything these people are offering.
WSO’s are particularly vexing. I fucking hate the whole enterprise with every fiber of my being. Today putrid products are dropped on the forum in the hopes of luring unsuspecting dumbshits into purchasing page after page of upsell slime. WSO ebooks full of so much rehash from the dust bin of years past.
I honestly cannot believe how disgusting IM has remained. You folks buying this shit are getting reamed. I trolled into the WSO forum the other day and decided to see how far the rod goes. I bought an Amazon course impaled on one of the time sensitive tickers and got it for cheap. I no more got past paying for the thing before I was hit with “BUY THIS UPSELL NOW BEFORE WE TAKE IT DOWN AND YOU DIE!” page one and then a subsequent upsell on page two. Then they allowed me to dutifully download the piece of shit.
These fuckers had the gall to send me an email after buying this dreck to attend an “UNANNOUNCED BONUS WEBINAR!” where they will teach the intricacies of obtaining stupendously generous Amazon niche ideas. Fuck if I was going to sit thought that shit when I had bullets to sling downrange with the missus that evening.
The next day I received an email that said they had posted the video of the webinar, but only for the next 72 hours. Being used to the quality and honor of a Keyword Academy webinar I did not expect to be slapped upside the face with their fishy Amazon sniper product. $197 fuckers. HA HA!
Welcome to the wonderful world of Azon Affiliate Crusher.
Please allow my token deposit of soon to be worthless U.S. dollars into the putrid coffers of WF and AAC to be your warning. I am your nightwatchman gliding though the misty web sewers of affiliate disrepute. Heed my counsel well.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
One of the big WSO hucksters was ranting about losing his PayPal account yesterday. He played a taped conversation with a PayPal rep where the Warrior Forum was mentioned specifically and the comments made it very clear that PP is aware of what goes on there and they are putting down the hammer.
The golden era of IM seems to be over. People like Grizzly have left the scene as if for ever, and the charlatans now have a field-day with their unmitigated crap. Thank you for your alerts.
I feel sorry for newbies trying to get into IM these days. So much is changing, and the old “rules” don’t really work anymore (if they ever did.) I look at a guide I once sold about affiliate marketing and even though it has good info in it, the thought of updating it makes me nauseous because so many of the techniques for building links, bookmarking, etc. have completely changed now.
I think the evolution of web marketing is creating a stark two-tiered system of people “in the know” who have been doing this long enough to see the scams and crap out there, and then the poor newbies who have NO place to get reliable info anymore. And WSO’s sure as shit aren’t going to give them that info. It’s all very sad.
@Jennifer – yea, I think the two-tiered system has pretty much always existed. Problem is newbies back in the day could eventually figure shit out because, like you said, there was reliable info. People shared. Google was fair. It wasn’t so damn hard.
Today you’re at the whim of Google. I think it’s far more difficult though others would say not so much. Just do your 3 years of backlinks and daily 1000 word posts and you’re good to go. Whatever. And of course all through it, like you mentioned, you have bullshit WSO’s that are egregiously fucking stupid and at a minimum misleading up to full on bullshit fraud. Crapbank isn’t much better though at least products outside IM can be useful.
I find the while enterprise to suck though I stick with it to fill my savings with soon to be worthless bills. The only new stuff I create is affiliate product sites, mostly on Squidoo. Most of my fat stacks are the result of sites from days past. I’m resting on past glory. I’m lazy that way.
I’d like to poke holes in your argument, but you are so right. It’s so bad that I keep a saved support reuqest for a refund on the screen and just fill in the blanks! Every so often I get caught in the noose too, but I can at least take some pleasure that I’m boosting their refund rates!
The only little ray of sunshine that I see peeking into my online struggles are the Kindle updates that show 2 of my little offerings are pumping out enough to cover the monthly $3.54 a gallon tank fills. Without them, I’d be sulking ALL the time!
I’ve bought one or two good WSO’s, some of the sub-$10 ones are little gems.
I think the IM boom is over. Most wannabe IM’ers stick to the same old niches, and they’re long closed to new entrants (unless they’re *really* smart). The Warrior Forum is just full of sewage now.
I left TKA as I didn’t think they had much in the way of new ideas. Now I keep my head down and write. I continue the process of recycling web money into real assets, and of getting rich slowly.