(more…)

They are…
Steve Reist - $50
pjjg (Jeremy) - $40
Jake Riley - $25
TheUltimatePublishing - $20 (Plus an additional undisclosed incentive)

Unfortunately, the thread was locked and I couldn’t find the moderator who locked the thread to reopen the thread. Hence the winner would only walk away with $50. Nonetheless, before the thread was locked. There were quite a couple of good posts and I’m sure you would benefit from them.

>> Click Here To Download The Report <<

To start off this year, I would like to share this resource of a list of the Top 52 Online Money Making Blogs by Talkgold. While I am not sure how they derived the value of the blogs, there are blogs in there that I am familiar with whereby the content is top notch. Without saying, there are a couple of dogs with low value content in the list too.

Its a pity that Etienne Teo’s Blog wasn’t listed there as its a up and coming blog that never fails to provide good content and resources.

Without further delay, here’s the list…

1. ShoeMoney
2. doshdosh
3. JohnChow
4. Seth Godin’s Blog
5. ProBlogger
6. JohnCow
7. Daily Blog Tips
8. Entrepreneurs Journey.com
9. Courtney Tuttle
10. Andy Beard Niche Marketing
11. BlogStorm
12. Moms At Home
13. Caroline Middlebrook
14. Performancing - Helping Bloggers Succeed
15. Blogging Tips
16. Tyler Cruz
17. Strategic Profits
18. CarloCab
19. Zac Johnson
20. Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins
21. Marketing Pilgrim
22. Se RoundTable
23. Search Engine Watch Blog
24. SEOBook
25. The Top Rank Blog
26. Bruce Clay Inc
27. Earners Blog
28. Super Affiliate Mindset
29. 5 Star Affiliate Blog
30. Jom Kukral
31. Reve News
32. Cash Quests
33. Self Made Minds
34. Uber Affiliate
35. Fraser’s Affiliate Marketing Blog
36. Here.org.uk
37. 5xMom
38. CopyBlogger
39. PSFK Online Trends Blog
40. David Airey
41. Blog About Your Blog
42. Who Is Andrew Wee
43. Gather Success
44. Search Marketing Gurus
45. Marketing Profs Daily Fix
46. Search Engine Guide
47. One Mans Goal
48. Blogtrepreneur
49. Winning The Web
50. Drews Marketing Minute
51. JanGro
52. EZ Online Money

I have absolutely no idea what was the motivation/purpose for the creation of this video though. Team morale building for lower management and lesser beings to laugh over? Singapore is known for its “rigid” and utilitarian approach to implementing policies. And perhaps the MDA wanted to portray themselves as a governmental agency that is different and creative. While the dancing and rapping efforts of these upper management were commendable, it really seems like they were trying too hard. Were there no other alternatives? Does this happen in your part of the world too?

Much thanks for this information from Shaun OReilly from the Warrior Forum

As a marketing promotion for their latest Camtasia Studio 5, Techsmith is running a couple of promotions in PC magazines such as PC Plus (December Edition) wehere they are giving away Camtasia Studio 3 for free.

Why?

They hope that you will upgrade from version 3 to version for the special offer price of $149. So, how do you get your free Camtasia Studio 3?

Just follow these steps…

1. Download the free trial version of Camtasia Studio 3 at:

http://download.techsmith.com/camtasiastudio/enu/312/camtasiaf.exe

2. Go to this promotion page, complete your name, country and e-mail address and Techsmith will send you the software key to unlock the program.

http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/pcpls.asp

3. Just install the program you downloaded from step 1 above nd then enter the software key you receive from Techsmith and you’ll have a fully working version of Camtasia Studio 3 n your PC.

4. (Optional) You can upgrade to Camtasia Studio 5 if you ant to for just $149. That’s a savings of $150 over the full price of $299.

Don’t worry though, if you don’t upgrade to version 5, our Camtasia Studio 3 will still continue to work.

Lastly, drop by and thank Shaun OReilly by clicking here

And I happened to chance upon a warrior special offer (WSO) that was providing traffic generation services for US$395 monthly with a results based money back guarantee. For those who haven’t heard of the WSOs before, they are special offers made available only at the Warrior Forum and have to be priced lower than what it retails elsewhere online. Do take a look at it by clicking here. They do have great deals from time to time and I have picked up a few gems previously. But in this particular situation, unfortunately I was to be the sucker.

Archive of the service provided in the WSO

I eventually decided to take up the traffic generation WSO over hiring an intern as the seller of the WSO, warrior member Deborah Avery seemed pretty decent, (200+ posts and decent content posts etc). I talked to her project manager KJ Ross over the phone and his answers to my questions seemed satisfying. Though in hindsight I sure looked like a fool. I realized that for whichever tough questions I asked KJ, he always replied me with the same line:

“We use propriety methods/technology to locate conversations throughout the internet to find conversations related to your website/niche and then generate comments/content there to lure traffic back to your website.”

I should have smelled a rat when he used the same line 4-5 times throughout our conversation.

Anyhow, the 1st week went by with KJ providing me with the keyword/conversation analysis that they had done. Their research was nothing to shout about, just some modifications here and there with regards to research methodology. But I didn’t care as I was merely interested in the results, and hey they guaranteed results else they would refund the money.

The 2nd week went by with zip! Nada! Nothing! And KJ apologized (after I looked for him on Skype) and mentioned that there will be some delays due to overload of clients..blablabla…Well things like that happen and so I put up with it, but week 3 passed by and it was already entering week 4 with ZERO results. There were other warriors in contact with me that were also experiencing the same delay issues and disappointment. It was then that everything came crashing down. I emailed/called Deborah Avery (keeping in mind I’m based in Singapore and purposely stayed up until the wee hours so that it’d be a decent time when she picks up my call) but could not reach her. Deborah Avery had mass messaged all her clients apologizing for the delays and promising us an extra week of work (hah what work) and a special 1-2 hour search engine optimization (SEO) consultation with KJ Ross.

I had no interest in her extra offer as I know my search engine optimization stuff well enough and wasn’t interested in wasting time getting advice from an “unknown”. If it was Aaron Wall of www.seobook.com, Dan thies etc, then I’ll definitely bite.

So I emailed Deborah again asking for a refund. Got no reply for a couple of days. Keeping mind that I was a customer and had not received any results, I quickly filed a paypal dispute. Managed to get ahold of KJ Ross and he said he was discussing with Deborah with regards to my refund. Eventually Deborah refunded but the status of the payment was set to pending. Then I knew it was almost a lost cause already.

True enough, 2 weeks went by and Paypal eventually got back to me. Telling me that Deborah Avery did not have money in her account and they were only able to get me back $18.10 of the $395 I paid. I wished that I had paid with a credit card instead of using my Paypal funds, else I could have filed a chargeback and probably gotten the full sum back.

I heard from another warrior that Deborah was having problems with her project manager KJ Ross and that he could not deliver on the services. And that she could not refund the clients because no client continued with the monthly service. A really lame excuse though, yeah who would continue paying $395 for the 2nd month when the 1st month yielded absolutely nothing.

Continued to call/email Deborah but there was absolute silence. At least she bothered to talk and explain to the other warrior. For me and probably a lot of other warriors who purchased her service, we did not even get a “sorry”. Overall I guess it was a well planned out scam, post a few hundred posts at the Warrior Forum and orchestrate something like this. From what I estimate, there seemed to be 15-20 warriors who took her up on this service. So that’s around a neat US$6000. I guess there will always be people who are really desperate for money to do something like this.

Total Losses
US$376.90 (395-18.10)
US$1000+ (profits from the website dropped as I refrained from any new traffic generation tactics for the whole 1 month)
Opportunity cost of hiring an intern

If you happen to know Deborah or KJ Ross (I doubt those are their real names), do let them know that whatever goes around comes around. Deborah Avery does run a nifty business at http://www.intergalacticmarketing.com providing Search Engine Marketing Services too. I hope her clients there don’t get ripped up too.

These are their contacts which I can never get through too.

KJ Ross
webskillz@gmail.com
201-340-2265
Skype: webskillz

Deborah Avery
davery@spiderdiner.com
206-347-7067
Skype: dmused
126 SW 148th C100-323
Burien, WA 98166 US

Deborah Avery’s Pic on Warrior Forum

Lessons Learnt:

• $395 was too cheap a deal for what she promised. As usual one falls prey to the human sin of greed and wanting to believe it as I wanted to get some work off my hands. Cheap can be good, but seldom is.
• Never buy a high priced item/service from someone who doesn’t even show a real pic. (haha)
• As one fellow warrior Ron advised, treat it as a lesson learnt and move on. After all, it ain’t productive getting angry over something you cannot control. Wise words.
• I’m hiring my own temp full timer in Dec for 1 grand and have more control over the work quality and work plan. I might even hire a team and create my own traffic generation service for others, and of course I won’t rip them off.

*Note: This post was not intended to be negative against the Warrior Forum or WSO section. I will still purchase products from WSOs when there are gems, but probably not high priced services for a while. And scam artists like Deborah and KJ will always exist in all forms and everywhere.

The release of Jamie’s book on Amazon at www.cubicletomillionaire.com was timed just after the release of the final episode of the Next Internet Millionaire. And to push the book to the bestseller list and to generate sales, you will find the usual internet marketing approach of promising tons of bonuses to sweeten the deal when you buy the book at Amazon.

While I have no gripe against the book, the mega load of bonuses does look like a rushed job when it was pieced together. Sure, people do like bonuses but a mass collection of bonuses gathered from a multiple of various topics? They range from internet marketing (which is fine), business auditing to staying healthy (where did this come from??).

There are some gems within the bonuses (good luck finding them though if you’re an internet marketing noob) which could be worth your while but then again some bonuses aren’t even bonuses to start off with. Just to quote an example, there is…

Audit Proof Your Business with “Make Bookkeeping Easy”
Which you can get for free at http://makebookkeepingeasy.com/ anyway (some bonus eh)

All in all, majority of the bonuses are mainly disguised lead generation squeeze pages for you enter your name and email so that the bonus owners can continue to market to you and hopefully sell you something in the future. So unless you want your regular email swamped with pitches (to be fair some will have valuable information), be sure to use a throwaway email while registering for the bonuses.

I guess I’m just a tad disappointed, to find Jamie just throwing a bunch of bonuses together just to encourage her book’s sales. Bonuses are fine, but at least sift through and only put together quality bonuses, for example the $1 trial to Rich Schfren’s “Business Growth System” for a month was fairly decent. In this age of information overload, a person’s time is very valuable And having the buyer bear the burden of sifting through which are decent bonuses simply reflects back on Jamie Luchuck. A goldmine of bonuses? Or Rubbish? You decide.