Read on to see all the details of the new guidelines and learn why it probably won’t make a difference.

The New Guidelines

First, let’s go through the guidelines, accompanied by some comments from yours truly:

Most importantly, please do not significantly alter your Pitch Page after approval. We recognize that some changes are necessary for testing, but if you need to make significant changes to your page (such as earnings claims or images, sales messaging or video content), please notify your Account Manager so we can ensure the new page is also in compliance.

For Internet Marketing products: Per the new FTC information, sales material shouldn’t create the impression that customers can easily earn money without putting in much work, and should give specific ideas of how they’ll earn the money (e.g., content marketing, video marketing, social media, etc). Sales pages should also not overstate how much can realistically be made, or imply that earnings are guaranteed.

The FTC also strongly discourages false urgency/scarcity messaging (for example, “Only 3 copies left!”) when there is no actual scarcity. Closing the doors to new customers after a specified amount of time and reopening later is fine.

Any Pitch Page references to ClickBank sales stats need to be verifiable by ClickBank, and need to have been earned by the methods being promoted. For example, selling an affiliate training product using sales snapshots from a vendor-only account is not allowed.

For vendors using video Pitch Pages, if a Buy Now button appears during the course of the video, the price must appear as well. We also request that vendors provide transcripts of video sales letters when submitting a product for approval.

For upsells, the initial product purchased must be valuable and usable on its own, without requiring the purchase of the upsell offers. Customers must also be able to immediately access their original purchase upon completion of their order, before being presented with upsell offers. An access link may be placed on the first upsell offer page, but the link must be very clear and conspicuous (i.e., not hidden or in a small font). We highly recommend that vendors use ClickBank’s official upsell flows to present upsell offers to customers.

Please submit product approval requests at least several days before your launch, so that ClickBank has time to thoroughly review the offer and request changes if necessary. This is especially the case for products with video sales letters, since making changes to these can take time. We may not be able to accommodate last-minute requests.

To prevent customer complaints, vendors should not close refund request tickets or switch tickets from Refund to Tech Support more than once, and the latter should only be used when actually trying to help the customer and save the sale.

What Happens Next?

Does this mean there will finally be peace in the kingdom of IM? The rules laid out would mean that about 95% of all the current make-money-onlin offers on ClickBank would no longer be approved and most of them would have to drastically change their offer pages and entire sales-structures for a chance to pass.

Call me a pessimist, but here are some reasons why I doubt this will make any difference:

Saying vs. Doing

Even before this update, there were regulations in place that should prevent a lot of the bad things that were (and are still) going on on ClickBank. The first point in the new regulations addresses the practice of switching out the sales-pages, after ClickBank approval. This is something that “everyone” was doing and the people at ClickBank knew about it. They were absolutely aware of the terrible sales-pages and scammy offers in their marketplace and therefore they were also aware of the fact that vendors switched out sales-pages. They simply turned a blind eye.

Who’s to say that they won’t just keep turning a blind eye?

No Public Statement

Something that strikes me as peculiar about these new guidelines is that they are nowhere to be found on the ClickBank website. They were mailed out to all (or most?) of the CB vendors. I got the list from Jon Volk’s blog and apparently, the list is genuine. But it’s not published on the CB blog, or in the newsfeed or anywhere else on the site.

I don’t know about you, but that seems pretty strange to me. It’s almost like they want to scare the vendors into behaving, but not put themselves in a position where they’re publicly accountable for the new guidelines.

It may just be too early to tell, though and for all I know, the new guidelines will be published in the coming days.

Nobody Needs ClickBank

Even if CB are absolutely serious about these new regulations and even if they are adamant in enforcing them, that doesn’t mean the scammy offers will stop. There are other affiliate networks. In my opinion, almost all of them are better than ClickBank in every possible way except one: ClickBank has the best name recognition and largest user base.

And even if they all crack down on crappy offers, vendors can still just run their own affiliate programs. In fact, they may just discover how great that can be. Sure, there are benefits to having your offer on an affiliate marketplace. But let’s just say: I’m not exactly a huge vendor, but I’ve already saved five figures in fees by running my own affiliate program, instead of going with ClickBank.

The Bright Side

Whether or not we will see a big difference in the ClickBank marketplace anytime soon is uncertain. The mere fact that these new rules were drafted and sent out is already a good sign, though. It means that there is some kind of a response to scammy offers and some kind of movement against them. There’s hope that vendors who sell hopes and dreams instead of legitimate products will find find themselves in increasingly unpleasant circumstances and may even have to rething their position at some point.

Until then, my universal rule for purchasing IM products remains the same as always: buy from people who’ve given you reason to trust them, not from people making fancy promises.

Cheers,

Having said that, there are times when people need to be warned and when a rant is in order. Now is one of those times.

“We Would Like to Offer You Coaching…”

I’ve gotten phone-calls like this, and chances are, you have too. Here’s what happens: You buy some online marketing related product and during the order process and a few days later, you get a phone call. The agent on the phone says something along the following lines:

We would like to offer you a very special opportunity to be enrolled in our exclusive coaching program. This is a very special opportunity and we have hand-picked you as a good candidate. We’ll offer you one-on-one coaching, to grow your business and make [insert arbitrary dollar amount here] in the shortest time possible. In return, we ask that we can get a testimonial from you and use you as a case-study…

I have no idea why they do the “testimonial” thing. It’s probably just something that has proven to be effective.

The Real Deal

On the face of it, there seems nothing wrong with this. Why not offer coaching as part of a sales-funnel, after all?

Well, there would be nothing wrong with this if it weren’t all just a big lie. Here’s what you need to know about these “coaching offers”:

The deal is not exclusive at all.
They’re trying to get as many people to take these offers, as they can.

They lie about their affiliations.
The agent on the phone might tell you that they are part of X’s company, X being the person you recently bought an IM product from. They aren’t. The way this works is that marketers get your contact info from the order you place and pass it on to some boiler-room operation that does nothing but call people all day long, with these coaching offers. The marketer simply gets a cut from anyone who takes up the offer and pays.

They don’t care.
What the above also means is that marketers who do this don’t care about you or respect you in any way. These are often the same guys harping on about “building a relationship” with your customers and all that, mind you. However, they are willing to pass your contact details on to some “company” that does nothing but scam people out of money. Another way of saying that: They betray your trust for money.

Price: All you’ve got.
The goal with these operations is to find out how much money you have and take it all. If you listen for this, when you get a phone call of this nature, you’ll quickly notice that the agent is prying for info on how much you can spare, how much you’ve spent in the past etc. Typically, they’ll ask you to “invest” between $5.000 and $10.000 for the “coaching”. If you make the impression of having more to spare, they’ll offer more non-existant stuff for more money.

There is no coaching.
The offer is not real. You certainly won’t be enrolled in a coaching program that’s run by the person who referred you to the call-center. There’s either going to be no coaching at all (and some fine print in the terms that make sure you don’t get your money back, inspite of this) or there is going to be some kind of useless “filler” content that’s nowhere near worth the money you paid for it.

In short, it’s all just a system set up to extract the maximum possible amount of money from people who tend to fall for “hope and dream” marketing (these are often those who are desperate and can least afford to lose so much money).

Don’t Be a Victim

Not everyone who follows up on the phone with you is a scammer or a criminal. And not every coaching offer is fake.

Unfortunately, it seems that the majority of all such offers currently circulating are indeed fake. If you get a call like this and you want to make the agent squirm, start asking specific questions. Like what the company name is and where it resides. What their website address is, so you can get more information. What their exact terms of service are and whether you can have a signed agreement sent to you by mail… that kind of thing. Also ask about their refund policy.

In general, don’t hand anyone thousands of dollars for coaching.

On the bright side, when you get a call like this, you instantly know who you can’t trust anymore.

All the best,

This video is definitely made for newbies, so if you’re one of my seasoned readers, there’s gonna be no news for you here. Hopefully, the video can help some beginners steer clear of a bad experience and help them not get scammed out of their money…

What it really comes down to is that I’m working on finding a way to bring good, solid marketing skills and authenticity, honesty and integrity together in my marketing messages.  Watch the video below to see exactly what I’m on about:

So, what are your thoughts on this? Of all the marketers you know, how many of them are closer to the “marketing machine” end of the scale and how many are more authentic?

And from which of those have you bought more?

I’d love to hear what you have to say, so leave a comment!

Cheers,

In this post, I explain a big problem I see with “Make Money Online” guides and what I want to change on RQR because of this. Also, in case you’re wondering why I didn’t post for a long time, I’ll briefly explain at the end of this post.

All Marketing and No Content a.k.a. The Newbie Trap

As I said, I had been looking to review several products lately, but ended up not reviewing them. Why? Basically, because I was disappointed in them. I was so disappointed, that I couldn’t even be bothered to go through all of the material and if I don’t do that, then I can’t write a proper review.

Now, on the one side, I feel almost obliged to write about bad products, so that some people might be saved from buying them. On the other hand, however, I have more important things to do with my time than going through sub-par training courses just to write a review.

The problem with many of the products I looked at is the same that Banner Ad Blueprint has: They are made by pure marketers – people who know everything about creating a great offer and nothing about teaching.

This type of product is usually set up as a “Newbie Trap”: Make huge promises to an audience that doesn’t really know much about marketing and then feed them some rehashed crap once they bought the product (and fought past half a dozen upsells).

–

Real Marketing Products

Instead of writing a ton of negative reviews about products like these, I want to make one general recommendation: Always think twice about a “how to make money online” guide. Most of them seem to be lacking in quality. There is a separate category of products that are much more often worth an investment and these are what I call “real” marketing products.

Real marketing products are tools and services that can leverage what you’re already doing to make money. For example, the recently reviewed WP Split Test plugin for WordPress is quite such a program. It’s quite simple and it serves to split-test your WordPress posts. It doesn’t claim to make you tons of money overnight, but it actually has more money-making potential than most of the guides I’ve read lately.

Further examples of “real” marketing products include keyword research tools, automation tools and services, programs like The Best Spinner, which helps leverage article marketing, programs like Web2Mayhem to help spread content around the web and things like rank tracking and analysis software.

–

No Love For Guides?

I won’t be seeking out guides and ebooks to review from now on. That doesn’t mean I’ll never review them again, just that I will be concentrating more on the “real” products mentioned above.

The question is, of course: What is a beginner to do? You have to learn the basics of Internet marketing somehow, after all. Well, for this purpose, I’ll be building a library of ebooks to cover all of the essentials. WordPress Websites Made Easy is the first in this series of guides and just like it, all of the following ones will be free.

I hope to be able to provide you with everything you need to know to make your first steps in online marketing and I want to provide all this for free. My motives aren’t entirely altruistic, either. I’ve been getting more and more questions in my inbox and I want to be able to point you to guides I’ve already written, so that I don’t have to type out long responses. ;)

Also: Pretty soon you’ll have to sign up to my list in order to download the free stuff. Then, I’ll spam you with pre-written mails for every big Internet marketing product launch that comes along. And if you believe that last sentence, you must be new here. Welcome to RQR!

Anyway, that’s all for now and I’d love to get some feedback from you. Do you think this is a good plan? What kinds of products do you want to see reviewed the most? Let me know in the comments!

Cheers,

P.S.: About my hiatus: I took some time off to clean out my life. Cleaned out my apartment, sold a lot of junk I had lying around and cleaned up my mind in the process. That was really good, believe me. Then, I also caught some bloody virus and my camera stopped working, which also delayed further production of blog-posts. I hope you all missed me! (Yeah, I know, you didn’t even notice my absence, did you?)

See this weeks selection after the break.

• More on the Duplicate Content Myth – Jonathan Leger
  I recently posted my own thoughts about duplicate content. The linked article by Jonathan Leger actually has two parts (part 1, part 2), of which I especially enjoyed the second one. The posts are already a bit over one year old, but they are still relevant as ever and definitely worth a read.
  –
• Description of a CPA Scam – Harlan Kilstein
  A while back, I posted an article about the difference between a scam and a crappy product and stated how I often see the term “scam” being misused. The video linked above is an example of a real scam. It’s really disgusting that people do such a thing and the video is well worth watching.
  –
• Dennis Yu – Shoemoney
  Speaking of scammers, this is an in-depth post by Jeremy Shoemaker about the, by now notorious, Dennis Yu, a guy who managed to piss off a lot of high-profile Internet marketers in a very short time. It’s interesting and sometimes baffling to read his story. There’s more in this follow-up post.
  –
• 3 Symptoms of a Marketer Who’s Destined to Fail – Chris Rempel
  Finally, here is an incredibly good post about where most IM’ers that fail to make money go wrong. I’ve seen many a post with this type of “Top Mistakes to Avoid” theme, but this one just left me speechless. It’s really well written and contains priceless information. Go read it now!

And that concludes today’s roundup.

Have a great weekend!

Cheers,

An upsell is when you offer extensions, expansions, “gold-memberships” or related products to your customers. Often this is done right after the initial purchase (instant upsell) and the reason upsells are so popular is that they often work. A customer who has just agreed to buy your initial offer is quite likely to be willing to shell out a little more cash for the next offer as well. In my reviews, I rate upsells and especially instant upsells as scammy. In this article, I explain why.

What Gives?

If you are an experienced internet marketer yourself, your first reaction might be to think that it’s very unfair of me to rate upsells as scammy. Am I against selling? What’s wrong with offering products? It’s not like you’re forcing anyone to buy them, right? Let me clearly state that I am not opposing selling itself in any way. I run online businesses myself, so I also sell to people. More importantly, I am also a customer and I don’t mind being sold to, as long as what you’re selling are products that interest me.

So why do I rate instant upsells as scammy? Because it’s an indication that you are not getting what you just paid for, that you aren’t getting what you signed up for. Take a look at the sales-pages of any number of get-rich-quick programs. They always give you the impression, or even explicitly state that this program is going to teach you everything you need to know to make tons of money online. Some of them even claim that their system is fully automatic and will practically start spitting out money at the click of a button. Now, when you decide to buy the product and immediately after the purchase, you are led to the backend where one or several upsells await, what does that say about the program you just bought? To me, it clearly says that the program I just bought is incomplete. On the sales-page, I was told that this program would solve all my problems and now I’m being told I should also get program X to really boost my traffic and program Y to make website-building a breeze.

Now, it’s one thing if these upsell products are affiliate-offers, but it’s even worse when they are from the same author who made the program I just bought. Why weren’t they included in the base product?

In short, the immediate upsell indicates that the product you just bought is actually incomplete. This is scammy, particularly if the initial sales-page explicitly stated that the program on offer is a complete solution.

Is a Non-Scammy Upsell Possible?

It’s definitely possible to make non-scammy upsells. On the one hand, the upsell product could be integrated into the base product and the combination could be offered at a higher price, right off the bat. In this case, the sales-page would make it clear that there are two or three different packages to purchase, e.g. the “Get-Rich-Quick Basic”, “Get-Rich-Quick Silver” and “Get-Rich-Quick Gold” packages. Of course, this might mean less sales, as many customers are put off by having to make a choice.

The main factor is the relation between the product an the upsell, however. If the product is “here’s the system that will make you money” and the upsell is “here’s really the system that will make you money”, that’s scammy. If the product is about something more specific, say, how to run successful PPC campaigns and the upsell is something like a software that makes creating and tracking PPC campaigns easier, that’s not scammy anymore (unless you were lead to believe that such a software would be part of the initial purchase).

The problem is that promising something like “the secret to making money and living your dream life” and being very vague about the actual product (a.k.a. hope and dream marketing) tends to do much better than if you’re specific about your offer. So, as a marketer in IM, you can choose to be honest and transparent, but that will mean less money in your pocket. Or you can go the typical route,  just push emotional buttons all the way and basically exploit the clueless to line your pockets. Which side are you on?

Photo by nutmeg

Get-rich-quick products are almost synonymous with scams. Many people believe that this entire market is one big scam and that the only way to make money in it is by ripping off poor, gullible victims that believe you will show them how to get rich. Whether this is true or not is not the subject of today’s post. What I will focus on in this article is the fact that the word “scam” is very often misused and why it’s important to distinguish scams from bad products.

What is a Scam?

A scam is a swindle, a fraud, a trick being played on you. The scammer is essentially a thief. He is not the type of thief who breaks into your house at night and steals your stuff. Instead, he cheats you out of your money in some way. When you fall victim to a scam, you do not get what you signed up for, but you did sign up for it.

For example, you may find a good offer for a TV listed on eBay. You check out the vendor’s rating – 99.9% positive – read some of the comments and decide to go for it. You win the auction, get in touch with the vendor, wire the money and, at first, everything seems to be going fine. You excitedly anticipate the delivery of your new TV, but it never happens. After a while, you contact the vendor again. No answer. You try to call them. No signal. You try to find their address and maybe call their landlord. He tells you they moved out a while ago and he doesn’t know their new address. You contact eBay and maybe get some of your money back (they have a buyer’s protection policy), but whatever the outcome you did pay for a TV and you didn’t get one. This is a scam.

When you get suckered into betting on a three-card monte by a stooge and lose money (which you inevitably will), that’s a scam.

If you are on holidays and someone tells you they know someone who can get you really cheap tickets to an awesome concert and you later find out that the regular over-the-counter tickets to that concert cost half as much, that’s a scam.

You get the idea. When you are being scammed, you are being cheated, tricked and stolen from.

What isn’t a Scam?

Many things are are being called scams aren’t actually scams at all. Let’s go back to the TV-from-eBay example: If you buy the TV, it arrives and it turns out that it has terrible contrast, lame colors and an annoying flicker, that’s not a scam. You bought a crappy TV, that’s all. Sure, the product description didn’t say that the TV was crappy, but advertisement is never honest, is it? Even if the ad clearly stated that it was a high-quality TV with great colors, it’s still not a scam. The vendors standards of quality might just be different from yours and the colors are fantastic (compared to a black-and-white TV).
The point is: You paid for a TV and you received a TV.

The reason I make this distinction is because I believe many get-rich-quick products are in fact not scams. A product that promises to teach you how to make thousands of dollars and then contains only vague and impractical advice on how to do so is not a scam. It’s just a crappy product. Just like you can go to the cinema (hoping for a fun evening), only to find out the story is boring and the actors are terrible, you can buy a get-rich-quick program only to find out it doesn’t really help you get rich. In this case, you have not been scammed, you’ve just made a bad buying decision.

With information-products, there’s the additional problem of follow-through. For example, it’s perfectly simple to create a guide for “guaranteed weight-loss”:

Step 1: Exercise every day.
Step 2: Eat only fruits and vegetables.
Step 3: Repeat steps one and two indefinitely.

This really is guaranteed to make you lose weight. If you follow through and actually do what the guide tells you to. Of course you could say: “Hey, this guide didn’t help me lose weight at all! What a scam!” But I’d have to correct you and say that I didn’t scam you and it’s your own fault you didn’t lose weight because you didn’t follow my handy guide.

So…?

The reason I’m writing this is not to defend any get-rich-quick products (particularly not the bad ones) and it certainly isn’t to defend actual scammers. It’s simply helpful to understand the difference between scams and bad products. It’s also important for understanding my review-process and the Scam-Scale as well as Spam-Factor ratings.

Apart from that, I hope to help you avoid both scams and bad products with my extensive reviews.

And that’s it for now.