If you thought ebook sales pitches were bad, you should hear pitches from affiliate managers and really just anyone trying to sell you on their biz opp.

They make just as many ridiculous claims about how much money you will earn and how famous you will be…

For example, here’s an unsolicited business offer I received on another blog I help manage:

Hi, My name is John Doe, we are interested in teaming up with your blog in promoting our newly developed running shape keychain opener. We are further interested in having our banner regarding the running keychain bottle opener placed on your blog. In turn we shall give you an opportunity of making up to 8% on each sales leads from the blog, which will be up to $40 – $60 per sales. As we all known that there are several events of race coming in nearly everyday, hence, this shall be a product which will be used by everyone organizing such events, hence, ensuring you of making up to $150 – $200 per day. We shall be pleased to provide you with further details and information in case you are interested. Product Link: http://www.funkykey.com/p3844/Running-Keychain-Opener/product_info.html

Regards John Doe — www.FunkyKey.com Create Customer Loyalty & Brand Awareness Everywhere your Customer go.

Funny, they know how many sales I’ll generate. So of course I’ll make $200 per day. Seriously, they have a great product, how could I not make 3-5 sales per day?

I’d be surprised if I did less than 30-50 sales per day!

And they know that everyone who operates a race (5k, marathon, etc.) is going to be buying this product! Yeah…

LOL.

By the way guys, those races are run on weekends, not everyday. And not that many races give out free stuff, especially in today’s economy.

And if this business is so great, why do they even need me to help promote it? It’s so profitable that surely they’d rather pay me a flat rate for the banner ad rather than pitch their affiliate program, because then have to pay me a % of the countless sales that will be generated each day.

So although I’m a big fan of CPA programs, if someone is going to pitch me on some scheme, they better come up with a more enticing offer.

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If you’re a relatively new webmaster, you may be wondering how to monetize your site. That’s a big topic and you should definitely spend some time on it (although, if you were smart, you would have a monetization strategy already in place once you have a business plan.)

But I’m not here to school you on the importance of having some sort of plan before you dive in headfirst. What I am here to do is make fun of the ignorant people who dive in without a plan and then bitch and moan about how things aren’t working out

What I’m seeing is that webmasters are complaining about CPA ads. They say things like “I deserve to be paid for placing the ad” and “I have a great website so I should be raking in the big bucks, not stuck only getting paid for leads.”

Some dude in a webmaster forum got up on his soap box and proclaimed that CPA ads are cheating webmasters, and that we should stand up and revolt, settling for nothing less than CPM ads. The rant was followed up with highly relevant nonsense such as comparisons to ads in print newspapers! (Gee, newspaper ads are priced differently than internet ads? Who’d a thunk it?!)

Lastly, they said CPA ads were good for nothing more than those shady landing pages with no value.

If I had to guess, this dude probably just got scammed out of $47 when he bought the “How to Make Gajillions of Dollars Overnight with CPA Ads” ebook and needed to vent.

But let’s look at it. When should you choose CPM ads, and when should you choose CPA ads?

What Are CPM and CPA Ads?

CPM ads are typically big banner ads and you get paid each time the banner is viewed on your site. The above 728×90 banner ad is a CPM ad for Domino’s Pizza, served through CPX Interactive. (See it on LiquidGeneration.com.)

CPA ads pay you per lead. That means a visitor has to click the link or banner and then fill out a form before you earn any money.

The above screenshot shows a text link and banner ad for one of the many acai berry offers. (Seems the banner is served by MaxBounty.)

*Note that most of these acai berry trial offers are scams and should be avoided. But it makes for a wonderful example of a CPA ad.

When to Use CPM, When to Use CPA

Let’s compare these two types of ads for different websites.

For example, say you have a huge website with lots of general traffic. We’re talking a site like CollegeHumor.com or even YouTube.com. Let’s say your site gets 300,000 page views per month (leading to 300,000 impressions on your banner ad.)

And let’s assume you get paid $1.00 CPM. That makes your monthly earnings $300.

But for the next example, say you have a small website that gets a mere 500 visits and 1,000 page views per month. Even if you were accepted for a CPM ad network, you’d earn a whopping $1 per month. Let’s face it – one item from the McDonald’s Dollar Menu won’t feed you for a month.

Good news – this small site isn’t a crappy landing page. It’s actually a quality, informative site, but it serves a very small niche. You have numerous #1 spots in Google SERPS, but there’s just not much traffic out there.

Despite how terrible CPM would be for you, it’s your lucky day! There’s a fancy doo-dad for this niche that you can advertise on your site and get paid $2.50 per lead, thanks to their CPA program. So you promote that, and out of those 500 visitors, you get five to buy. (Not hard considering how focused your site is.)

That’s $12.50 from CPA vs $1 from CPM.

Which is better, CPM or CPA?

So really, which is better? As I just showed you, it depends on the site.

CPM ads work great if you have a high-traffic site that attracts a general audience with varying interests. CPA ads work great if you have a tightly-focused niche site, since those sites attract a low quantity of high quality visitors.

If you’re using CPA ads on a CPM-type site, it’s no ones fault but your own. Quit whining and do something about it. You need to test both options and see what works.

Worst case scenario, you lose out on a day, week, or month worth of earnings if you choose the wrong method. But the knowledge you gain is invaluable.

*I didn’t even include CPC ads because that’s best for when you half-ass a website that’s not targeted enough for CPA and not big enough for CPM.

Let me repeat: Quit crying about your low income and test out some new ads for your site.

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One thing I hear around the forums and blogs from disgruntled webmasters is complaints about how they have a quality website with amazing content, yet they don’t get tons of traffic or recognition.

If the site was really good, then they would just need traffic to get started. And it’s true, there are plenty of high-quality sites that don’t get the traffic they deserve.

“Could my baby be any cuter?!”

But… a lot of people exaggerate their site’s quality. It’s the same as with baby pictures – pictures of your own child appear tremendously cute, no matter how truly ugly the baby really is. (And if you ask someone, they’ll probably just agree with you to make things easy.)

So before you put lots of money into advertising, or go on a rant complaining how your awesome site isn’t getting as much attention as crappy competing sites, sit back and really think, “is my site really that great?”

I’ll just tell you right now – your site probably sucks. The majority of websites do, so don’t feel bad.

Let me give you an example:

I recently came across a site called Campus Squeeze. It’s a “college humor” type website. The owners probably think it’s the best thing ever.

To their credit, the site does have decent headlines and concepts for articles that seem like they’d do well on social media sites like Digg.

But put CampusSqueeze in comparison with a really great site like Cracked.com. Cracked blows this site out of the water! (Cracked.com is so awesome is was even featured on DoshDosh.com as an example of creating Digg-friendly content.

No need for me to explain further, though, when you can simply check out Cracked.com for yourself. Here are a few articles I enjoyed:

• The 8 Most Obnoxious Internet Commenters
• Videos You Didn’t Know Were Staged – And How They Did It
• 9 Manliest Names in the World

My guess is, once you start reading one, you can’t stop. And once you’re done, you’ll read another article! (I have probably stayed on Cracked for the 9-5 workday on more than one occasion.)

If you analyzed the site while you were browsing (like a true internet marketer,) you probably noticed that Cracked has hilarious concepts, gracefully-written articles, intensely funny commentary, killer headlines, and thorough research.

By comparison, Campus Squeeze is lame. They have decent headlines, but the articles are scrapped together. There is just no real content.

Take this one for example – “Top Upsets in NCAA Men’s Basketball History”

It’s just a few pictures and short paragraphs. There is no substantial research and description to go with them. No suspense built up that draws you into the situation. In short, the post created no excitement whatsoever.

And the “no research” applies twice actually. There’s no research to determine if these are actually the 10 best, or if there are much better examples.

Another example – “The NHL’s Best Goalie Fights”

This one is eight random videos pulled from YouTube. Each one has an entire sentence worth of description. I could type “goalie fight” into YouTube and create just as good of a post in about five minutes.

Another – “Jail Bait Celebrities”

A child molester may get a quick bit of enjoyment from this post, but any celebrity gossip addict will be disappointed. The post provides very little information, tons of celebs are left off the list, and there aren’t even links to pages with more pictures!

Moving on – “Halloween Is The Best for Pranks”

OK, so some of these vids are kind of funny. But where is the funny commentary? I could go to Youtube.com and get the exact same pleasure.

Still going – “The 14 Biggest Upsets in College Football History”

Here we have an article that consists of pathetic commentary and no videos. Enough said.

Not done yet – “Sports Icons Who Called Their Shots and Failed”

The commentary wasn’t too bad here – it’s almost worth reading. And it did well on Digg, so I can’t fault it too much. (One of the very few exceptions.)

Last one – “The Hottest US Olympic Women”

In this case, the writers were smart enough to combine hot women (always popular on Digg) with a current event, the Olympic Games. The article did well, but too bad the pics and info were lame.

You see the difference, right? CampusSqueeze has its moments, but I think it’s clear that Cracked is better in every way.

The lesson in all this is… The sooner you get realistic, the sooner you can build a site that is great, and make lots of money. But if you want to live in denial, so be it.

The other lesson, that those true internet marketers probably picked up on, is that if you find a great site, you should copy its exact strategy!

Photo credit: AntToeKnee

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If you’ve never heard of Stores Online, you are missing out on one of the biggest ripoffs in the entire internet marketing world. You might not recognize the name from some sales letter because that’s not how they rope you in.

Stores Online sends letters to people (preferably older people in rural areas that may be seen as more gullible) inviting them to attend a free conference about how to make money on the internet. The conference is held at a local hotel ballroom.

If you attend, you get a free seminar, free lunch, and free gift. Sounds great, except…

Then they sell you their overpriced garbage services for somewhere in the range of $10,000 for a turnkey e-commerce website.

I’ve been to one of their conferences, but I’ll save that story for another day. Today I want to show you the latest flyer I got from Stores Online. (Yes, they are still inviting me back to their conferences!)

Like I said, they offer a free gift for attending. In this instance, the letter said “free MP3 player” and showed a picture of an iPod Shuffle.

Then I was reading the fine print and it said you get a free MP3 player, but you specifically DO NOT get an iPod! LOL!

Here is a scan of the letter:

You can click the picture to see it full size. You can clearly see the iPod portrayed below the “Free MP3 Player” text, but once you read the fine print, it points out that you most definitely do not get one of those for free!

That’s such a funny “bait and switch” I couldn’t resist sharing it!

(For further reading on Stores Online, here is a funny investigation plus a ripoff report.)

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Last month I was browsing through some “make money online” blogs for shits and giggles, and I came across a post about Google Hot Trends at one of the higher-quality blogs in our niche.

That post, plus an earlier expose of Google Hot Trends at TechCrunch, reminded me of how fun it can be. (If you haven’t used it yet, Google Hot Trends is a continuously updated list of the hottest new search queries.)

At the same time, I realized I better get my act together and write about how to use Google Trends to dramatically increase traffic to your website. At this point, it’s no secret – more and more bloggers are writing about it, so the usefulness will diminish by the day, but there is still time to reap the rewards if you’re smart enough.

(Sidenote: Once bloggers exploit the crap out of this and it becomes common place and less effective, some guru will put it into an ebook and sell it for $47 )

Here’s how to do it:

The Prerequisite: A Well-Indexed, Frequently Updated Blog

Unfortunately, this isn’t going to make you rich overnight with no work. It requires a fair amount of work, plus you have to have done lots of work in the past to make this worthwhile.

See, it only works if you already have a blog that’s fairly popular and gets new content indexed in Google real fast (like within minutes.) If your new content pages aren’t indexed that fast, this strategy won’t do you any good.

But if your blog posts show up in Google quickly, this could boost your traffic dramatically. (Maybe not 30,000 new visitors per day like they claim in the TechCrunch article, but you never know until you try.)

Step 1: Head to Google Hot Trends

First, jump to Google Hot Trends and browse the list. This is a frequently updated list of the hottest search queries of the moment.

If you find an interesting term, you can click on it for a few more details. You’ll see just how hot it is, and when the peak searching was done. The list shows today’s date by default, but you can also browse past days if you so desire.

Step 2: Choose a Popular Search Term

Once you have scanned the list, pick a good, fresh term with lots of searches to focus on.

This is the tricky part though. It’s best to pick a new, uncommon, or long tail term since they’ll have less competition. The more popular, generic terms aren’t worth chasing. For example, even if a term like “Thanksgiving” is popular, it’s also very crowded, and big sites already have the top Google SERPs. So skip the obvious terms.

And as much as Google wants to have “fresh” results in their listings, some sites/pages are going to be very hard to knock off the top spot with nothing more than the timeliness of your posting. For example, if there’s a popular movie coming out on DVD, there’s a good chance IMDB and Amazon.com are going to claim the top spots no matter what you try.

A great idea that has served me well is to look at actual URLs that make it onto the list. People type URLs into Google all the time, and they’re usually not competitive terms. So having a blog post titled “coolwebsite.com” or “neatwebsite.com/newpage” could lead to lots of traffic from people who end up at your site instead of typing the URL into the browser directly.

The “neatwebsite.com/newpage” type pages are the real gold mines.

Step 3: Craft a Blog Post

Now that you have your search term, prepare a new blog post on that topic. It should use the exact search term in the title and then have it in the post, too.

The key is to do this quickly. Time is of the essence. You want the post published quickly and pings sent out so that your post is indexed in Google within minutes.

Step 4: Check Your Stats

First, keep searching Google using the chosen term and wait to see if your site shows up. Ideally you’ll get a top-three ranking.

Then watch your stats and see how many people end up at your site. It’s unlikely you’ll get a Digg-like boost, but if you have a good site and a very popular term, you can easily pull in a few thousand extra visitors in a day.

(I used this technique last December and went from about 2 visits per month the whole way up to 11,000, from one trendy blog post!)

Step 5: Repeat Daily

That was simple, wasn’t it? Now just repeat the process daily (or even hourly) every time you find a good query.

But before you get going, read these bonus tips…

Bonus Tip 1: Make Sure the Topic Matches Your Site

When I first discovered this tip, I made the mistake of picking any random hot term for whatever website I felt got indexed the fastest. So I might have had a website about mobile phones with a page about a new weight loss program on it.

It was cool to have a few thousand extra visitors, but it was a waste of bandwidth, because the visitors had no interest in browsing the rest of my website.

Yeah, you could throw some affiliate links in there and make a few commissions, but sticking with related topics is a better long-term strategy.

Bonus Tip 2: Consider Perennial “Hot” Terms

Another finding from Google Trends are the perennial hot terms. There are even a couple I noticed recently, like “black Friday 2008 ads.” So you can be reasonably sure that “black Friday 2009 ads” will be a big deal in 12 months time… so why not start planning now and get a jump on everyone else?

Or browse back to mid December 2007 and see what was hot. It’s possible something similar will spike in search volume tomorrow!

Bonus Tip 3: Certain Topics Are Better Than Others

You’ll notice certain topics pop up more than others. Celebrity names and event names, for example. Politics is a big one, too, especially with the current economy and recent election.

Weather is actually pretty big, too. Any storms and school closing queries are going to be searched often enough to make it onto the Hot Trends list.

If I had to pick one niche/topic this strategy is ideal for, it would be entertainment websites. Whether it’s celebrity gossip or UFC videos, you are virtually guaranteed to find great terms to focus on.

Bonus Tip 4: Combine Trends with Insights

You can also get some cool data with Google Insights.

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As soon as OnlyWire.com launched a while back, I thought it was pretty cool. I even said OnlyWire was great for internet marketers.

If you haven’t heard of OnlyWire, it’s a social bookmarking tool that lets you bookmark websites to all your social bookmarking accounts with one click. Kind of like a mass-submission software for spamming social bookmark websites would do.

Why a regular web user would need more than one social bookmarking account, I’m not sure.

But this was the perfect tool for internet marketers that wanted to jump into the social media craze without doing much work.

So, considering I didn’t need OnlyWire to post to my sole del.icio.us account, I hadn’t logged in to my OnlyWire account for 6 months or more. But then I got an email the other day that reminded me of the service.

There were four parts…

The friendly introduction thanking you for using the service and reminding you that you actually signed-up for this and should therefore not report it as spam:

Dear OnlyWire User:

Thank you for signing up with OnlyWire – the fastest, easiest way to submit web content to all your social bookmarking sites automatically.

Throwing the product description in there makes for a nice transition to the next part…

The bragging and gloating making the service sound amazing and reinforcing the idea that you made a good decision by signing-up for it:

Over the past year, OnlyWire has become the most popular bookmark submission tool on the Internet and has won some notable acclaim. OnlyWire also became a valuable member of SNiPiTRON, LLC, a web-based software development company that provides Bookmarking and Collaboration tools for capturing, organizing and sharing bookmarks, content, and files with clients, co-workers and friends. With the SNiPiTRON platform, OnlyWire has now become the Number One Bookmarking Tool on the web.

Then they state the reason you should use OnlyWire again, even if you got bored with it:

We have made many improvements to OnlyWire. With these enhancements we are pleased to launch OnlyWire 2.0. Using a stable, secure and optimized platform for enhanced performance and reliability, OnlyWire 2.0 is BETTER and FASTER. Some of the recent improvements include: faster submission processes, increased bookmark links and improved functionality (to mention just a few). We are very proud of these enhancements and urge you to check out the new release at www.OnlyWire.com.

At this point you should be really excited about how awesome OnlyWire is and can’t imagine life without it. Which means you are primed for…

The “oh yeah, we’re going to start charging for the service” details:

With this new release, OnlyWire is implementing a “Pay or Promote” program. To continue to use OnlyWire, we are asking all existing users to choose an account option – one is FREE and the other is a paid version. The choices follow:

  1. FREE version — To continue to use OnlyWire for FREE, all you need to do is add the Bookmark & Share button to your website. To choose this option and to add the Bookmark & Share Button to your website’s homepage, click here.

  2. PAID version —If you do not want to add the Bookmark & Share button to your homepage, you can simply pay a small fee of $2.99 per month or a discounted annual fee of $24.99 (a 30% savings). You can pay this fee via credit or debit card. To sign up, click here.

They have the gall to start charging a monthly fee for their service! That is anti-Web 2.0 if I’ve ever seen it.

But there’s a simple solution to this dilemma…

Remember how I said this was a great service for internet marketers? Well, any time internet marketers find a good concept, hundreds of them will copy it.

Here’s the proof – projects on Get a Freelancer and Script Lance.

Out of the hundreds of clones, a few survive and even attract a few users. So all you have to do is find one of these sites and use it instead.

Like this one – Social Marker. Or SocialMatic. It looks like a worthy substitute.

It’s not like the $2.99 per month is a lot of money, but it’s pointless to pay for such a service. Heck, you could buy web hosting for $2.99 per month and you should end up with a positive ROI.

It’s also the principal of the matter! No spammer is going to stand for a $2.99 monthly charge!

This post was written by Sucker of InternetMarketingSucks.com

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Something I’ve been wondering for a while, even more so now that technology is rapidly improving and expanding, is…

What happens when a guru can no longer hide behind his ebook?

Future internet marketing guru.

The thing with ebooks is that you can write some crap down, come up with good sales copy, and then make a bunch of sales. You don’t even have to write the book yourself; you could get someone else to answer your questions, or resort to the ever-popular “copy and paste” method.

So not only don’t you have to be an expert, you don’t have to know jack!

That has been changing to an extent in recent years, what with all the popular seminars, teleconferences, and DVD packages. But even then, the only additional requirement is a little bit of public speaking skill.

Even if you’re presenting live, you’re still giving your own speech, which could just be a few hot points from your ebook. Then you’re done.

But today, people crave more. They crave personalized advice, action plans designed specifically for them.

But how many “one hit wonder” internet marketing gurus can help beyond what’s in their book?

I don’t know, and they don’t care. They don’t care because phone consultations are typically reserved for big B2B consulting services charging $500-1000 per hour.

But VOIP and live chat and that kind of stuff is gaining popularity. There’s even this new way to monetize your website called Speak To Me.

It takes the one-on-one phone consultation but makes it very easy for both an expert and the customer, eliminating nearly all the former “barriers to entry” on both sides.

I guess it’s like a widget that makes phone calls with just a couple clicks. But the point here is that gurus will desperately cling to their ebook thrones, while secretly wishing they were raking in the big bucks by giving out personal advice.

As I mentioned, anyone can play the ebook game. But it takes a true expert to dish out advice over the phone. (Advice that’s worth paying for, at least. Maybe SpeakToMe needs a built-in “dumb guru, refund my charges” button!)

So what do you think? Will gurus stick to their intense sales letters and ebooks, or will they risk their reputation in the phone consultation gold rush?

You can probably guess which side I’m taking! (Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but unless the gurus outsource their phone consults to real experts, Speaktome will only be as profitable as BlogRush…)

Photo credit: F.S.M.

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The other day I got a cheesy email from a so-called Silicon Valley start-up…

Hi,
we are a startup www.hyperwebenable.com based on silicon valley.
providing next generation blogging service.
we have seen your blog its very interesting we request to write review
about our service in your blog it will be useful to all your readers .
We will be happy to provide more info about our service.
Thanks and regards

Apparently they thought they could bypass my $3000 review fee by using impeccable grammar and saying that their service is useful to all my readers. But it’s never that simple in the dog-eat-dog world of internet marketing.

But luckily for them, I thought this would make a good post, so here we go…

The domain was weird enough I almost skipped by it, but funny looking enough I checked it out – hyperwebenable.com.

Just look at the domain, it’s funny. But once I looked it a while, I realized it’s “hyper web enable” which must mean something like “making you able to be on the web at hyper speeds.”

Free hosting, right? Like getting a blogspot subdomain? (But at warped speed, of course!)

Nope. I was surprised – you actually get a real domain, for free.

The only catch – you choose from a dropdown menu of domains. You can’t just pick whatever you want. (There are some nice domains on the list though, like giveawaycity.com.)

Sounds pretty good, right? But what’s in it for them?

(Always ask yourself this, because there is no such thing as a free lunch.)

It appears to me that they are giving out free sites in order to build a large network of publishers so they can sell ad space in large quantities over the network.

They provide the money and infrastructure, you do the work, and then they make lots more money from advertising. It’s a clever idea.

I didn’t see this mentioned in the terms, but I bet the website publishers have to meet some sort of minimum traffic requirements in order to keep their site from being closed down and the domain given to someone else. Otherwise HyperWebEnable would be wasting money on dormant sites.

Even so, it could maybe possibly be a neat way to get started online for free.

Just remember to read the terms for things like who owns and controls the domain name, whether or not you can place your own ads on the site, etc. Also, could they seize control of your site at any time? Did you agree to turn over copyright of all your work to them once it’s published on the site?

I couldn’t find any of that stuff specifically in the terms, but those are just concerns I would have if I were starting a business and hosting a website with them.

This looks like it would be better for someone doing a hobby site, not for beginning a long-term venture.

* For example, they mention that you can make money with your site. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you can put third-party ads on the site. It might just mean that you can refer others to HyperWebEnable and then get a $1 reward for each referral.

And they don’t exactly have a clean record of customer satisfaction.

But props to the founders for their ingenuity, even if the execution was less than stellar…

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It’s not everyday you’re presented with a truly irresistible offer. Sure, the $67 ebooks about making $89,251.56 overnight by writing one article on a blogspot blog are tempting, but they’re so prevalent. If you miss one, there will be a new one the next day.

(And yes, the next one will still have that “wait! save $5 if you order now” offer when you try to close the page.)

Well, yesterday I was presented with a very kind – almost irresistible – offer. The kind offer, from a gentleman we’ll call Sammy Smitters, went something like this:

“You can contribute an article to my blog, and I’ll post it for just $10.”

(So irresistible I had to put the offer in a blockquote!)

Isn’t that incredible? I do the hard work writing an article, and then I get to pay for it to be posted, too!

As if that wasn’t enough, the blog had an amazing PR3 and was full of high quality content ripped from ezinearticles.com! Wow, what a deal! I would be honored to be featured amongst such prestigious authors!

This Smitters dude must have read The Irresistible Offer by Mark Joyner, because I don’t how you could develop a ridiculously lucrative offer such as that without expert guidance!

Truly a remarkable feat of the human brain!

And to show you just how amazingly great this offer would be for me, here’s an example of what I’d have to settle for if I didn’t take Mr. Smitters up on his offer…

I would have to settle for publishing a guest post somewhere unpopular, say www.JohnChow.com. Then it would only reach his 35,000 fanatical feed subscribers and 300,000 loyal monthly visitors. How unfortunate!

But why do something worthwhile for free when I could waste my money adding my own article to a new PR0 page of a junk blog for the paltry sum of ten dollars?

That’s almost as bad as asking, “why not get a job instead of buying more $67 ebooks that have yet to teach you anything?” It just doesn’t make sense…

This post was written by Sucker of InternetMarketingSucks.com

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In the latest news of epic FAILs by internet marketing gurus, you’ll see that BlogRush is shutting down.

It comes as no surprise to me – I switched to running BlogCrap widgets long ago as I predicted from the start that BlogRush would be useless. (Actually I didn’t switch, because I never bothered with BlogRush in the first place.)

If you read the sales letter explanation, you’ll see an interesting point:

We have received several offers & inquiries about acquiring BlogRush, but we are choosing not to go that route. While many might think this is crazy, we truly feel it’s the ‘right’ thing to do for our users. Believe it or not, it’s not always about the money. In fact, BlogRush will have lost a small fortune when it’s all said and done, and it was by choice. There were many things we could have done to monetize the service but we wanted to make sure it was going to benefit our users first.

Gullible readers will think, “wow, what a great showing of ethics and morals.” But anyone that’s been around the internet marketing game for a while will see right through that.

See, BlogRush never needed to make money directly. They just needed to build a huge database of blog traffic stats and user details. (Yes, there are always ulterior motives.)

Don’t be surprised if the data gleaned from the BlogRush network reappears in a new service business (income.com perhaps) or at least results in you receiving pitches about John Reese’s latest product launch.

In short, don’t be sympathetic. They’ll get their money’s worth in no time.

(And forget the whole “if you come up with an idea at 4 AM, go for it!” rhetoric. Yes, entrepreneurs should be bold, but not dumb. Mashable sums it up nicely.)

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