Who are these asshole "Gurus"?

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Jon

Jon

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Jun 21, 2006
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You know, I'm getting really sick and tired of coming to ebook sales pages where these self proclaimed gurus of the industry have their little signature at the bottom of the page with what has to be one of the worst pictures of themself possible. They all claim to be "well known" but not only have I never come across any of their blogs (probably because they aren't for free), but I've never seen them post on any forum or written any worthwhile articles..

Where do these pricks come from? Is there a scammer university that we don't know about? Where they go and recruit the biggest looking rednecks in the world and teach them how to rip people off and regurgitate other people's ideas so they can stuff them into an ebook and sell it off for $50 with a billion other "bonuses" from 1999?

I've made posts similar to this on other forums, but no one ever has a good answer for me. Does anyone notice the same shit, or is it just me being paranoid again? I'll make a list of names, and let's see if we can add them to the scammer board.
 


Yeah.. but what makes me wonder is where the hell do they all network at? I would really love to show up to one of their evil meetings with an FBI jacket. I'm sure their facial reactions would be priceless, or better yet, worth a $47 ebook of pictures? ;)
 
"Where do these pricks come from? Is there a scammer university that we don't know about? Where they go and recruit the biggest looking rednecks in the world and teach them how to rip people off and regurgitate other people's ideas so they can stuff them into an ebook and sell it off for $50 with a billion other "bonuses" from 1999?"

haha. Scammer U. Rednecks. Yea, that about sums their shit up.

As for the designs, they have no creativity and look like shit, they're just ripping off the clown who did it first - there is a scammer template of sorts. Fucktards all.
 
I agree that most of the products are complete rubbish. The fact that something is available in ebook format usually puts me off.

But surely those sucky red and yellow sales pages must convert? If having a well designed, genuinely informative page got better conversions wouldn't they all have those instead?

We can tell crap from quality because of our experience on the net and maybe because we've been stung once
but there's an almost endless supply of idiots/newbs out there, credit card in hand, waiting to learn the secrets of the "internet gurus" and "get rich quick".

I really wouldn't want to get involved in making and selling something I wouldn't buy myself but when it comes to promoting it I'll take whatever makes me the most money.
 
seobook said:
I may be paranoid, but not an android ;)
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People like Aaron and Andrew Johnson, who have both written ebooks I can personally vouch for the fact that they are reputable. But then again, I don't really need to personally vouch for either of them because they have a strong fan base and everyone else respects them.

I'd compare Aaron Wall to "Yanik Silver". Now, if you do a search for Aaron Wall, you'll find a shitload of information on SEO Book. I'm sure you'll find his blog and all sorts of other posts on other forums about the book and how great the guy is.

Now take Yanik Silver. I have never in my life heard about this guy, other than that he makes a cajillion dollars doing whatever he preaches that he does. He's constantly selling teleseminars for $5k, DVD's for $1k, personal seminars for $10k, and god knows what else. Well, no wonder this fucktard is a cajillionaire, look how much he charges for all of this shit!

I tell you, the film industry should take notice from someone that sells a DVD that normally would cost 30 cents, and turns a huge profit by selling it for $1k+!!

But even so, has anyone ever heard of this guy making money without selling magic products? I feel like they all attended a Tony Robbins seminar and went "Holy fuck! All we have to do is exactly this! charge people money for showing up, then upsell them on a million other super expensive things, and tell them stuff that they can find for free on the internet just by searching for it on Google! Yeah!!!"
 
Jon said:
But even so, has anyone ever heard of this guy making money without selling magic products? I feel like they all attended a Tony Robbins seminar and went "Holy fuck! All we have to do is exactly this! charge people money for showing up, then upsell them on a million other super expensive things, and tell them stuff that they can find for free on the internet just by searching for it on Google! Yeah!!!"
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And why do they do it? Because they can and because people will pay for it.

I've been there. I bought some of this stuff that told me nothing of any real value.
 
And why do they do it? Because they can and because people will pay for it.

I've been there. I bought some of this stuff that told me nothing of any real value.
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How much did you pay for whatever it is you bought? Can you give us a rundown of how their seminars and sales pitches go? I'm so curious to see what they do..
 
The problem with a lot of these guys is they are good at writing sales letters, not making good products or being experts.

I subscribe to this e-mail newsletter called Early to Rise. Its daily, they often have great articles, but they make their money promoting really crappy shit.

On the other hand, some of the products aren't that bad, its just that the customers are so addicted to this stuff that they never do anything with it. I heard somewhere that these guys that run the $5,000+ seminars spend hundreds of dollars on sending people that visit other seminars free books and such. They swap each others customer lists because people that paid for one are the most likely to pay for another.
 
as the eternal newbie I have fallen pray tpo a few of these ebook BUT I got them from my friendly neighborhood russain based warez site for free! lol

The ebooks are full of shit any basic webmaster should know but they pass it off as "exclusive" knowledge. All bs if you ask me and these morons are making a killing!!
 
I wrote something along these lines the other day with the title "There is no secret" and posted it in the New to Web Development section at WebmasterWorld. It was inspired by exactly these fine spammers

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum48/3024.htm

That said, I was just at Borders and saw Joel Comm's Adsense book. Yep, it's not revolutionary. Joel does makes some comments about the Adsense Secret, but he says that "the secret" is the assemblage of lots of little pieces of information that are available for free in forums all across the net. I have to say there's not a lot in the book that's new to me, and I could find it all for free, but it's actually worth $25 for me to have it all assembled in one place for easy reference. For someone who was really new to the net or at least to Adsense, I think it would have to be worth $25 unless their time is valued at nothing.

Anyway, along with Aaron's book, it's another example of an ebook that fully delivers. On the other hand, I've downloaded a bunch of ebooks that various people give away as free teasers ($97 VALUE of course) and I bet the average person here could dash one off in a weekend.

To me the "tip off to the rip off" is that you read the sales copy from start to finish and you have aboslutely no idea what the book is about. I always feel like if there was any valuable content, they would give you a table of contents and maybe a free excerpt. The problem is that they know that anyone who has an inkling what's inside will never cough up the money.
 
Let's face it, so long as the sales/marketing is getting people to buy into these things, the more and more we will see them. It reminds me of the spam email RoS (Return on Spamming!) ratio. Sure, we all despise and wish dead these spammers but the small percentage they are getting to bite and click through earns these guys millions.

Marketing, gotta love it!
 
I love this sales page: Trafficsecrets.com -- its so damn obnoxiously long and there are even multiple video clips.

The basic formula is this:

1. Product with tons of DVDs, thick books, etc; looks like so much information you can never read it all, everything must be there.
2. Really long sales letter with bunch of testimonials
3. Stick an affiliate program on it so other people can promote it for you. If your product costs $1000 its not hard to reach a pay-off point that anyone will compromise and push it to their e-mail list or site.

In all fairness, for this information being on all the forums, thats not true. Number one there are things you'll have to figure out on your own because no one will tell you them. I've got a few SEO tricks like that; I've used them for
over a year and still haven't seen anyone mention them on a forum or blog.

Second, the amount of time it takes to figure all of this stuff out is just nuts. My first year I was just glued to forums. Within 6 months I knew what direction I had to go in, with 12 I was going there. Would I drop $1,000 or more to accumulate all that info in a week? Hell yes. Of course the problem is these guys aren't giving you that valuable info, just take a look at the Rich Jerk.
 
I work in real estate and I always hit thise seminars we are being sent to and 100% of the time its bullshit.

They feed you Marketing 101 bullshit and then sell you their overpriced CD for $300 out the door.

I had a guy try to sell me a CD burned on a home cd burner with inkjet printed cd inserts and the sound quality was no better than a radioshack hand held voice recorder, no exaggeration! RIDICULOUS!
 
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