ElectronPlumber — Exposing the Bullsh*t Of Internet Money Making

Is Swipebids a scam?

by El Plumber (admin) on August 23, 2010

We’ve been assaulted lately for ads for “penny auctions” from all sides. Seems like a new penny auction site is popping up every five minutes and some of them are being *VERY* heavily advertised on every website imaginable.

Like the Home Income kits and Acai Berry free trial offers, penny auctions are the latest high paying affiliate craze. While there do seem to be some legit penny auction sites, there seem to be just as many fishy sites appearing all over the place.

Put aside for a minute that all “penny auction” sites are in my opinion basically thinly veiled gambling. They’ve gotten away with it so far, but the recent explosion in the numbers of these sites is going to cause the FTC to sit up and take notice.

Gambling issue notwithstanding, not all of these penny auction sites are fishy. Swoopo for example, is one of the original entertainment auction sites, and provide an option to buy the item you’ve bid on at retail price MINUS the cost of any bids you made. So if you spend $50 on bids at Swoopo for an iPod, then don’t win it, you can still buy it for $150 ($200 cost minus your losing bids). If you’re planning on buying the item anyway, the worst you can really do on Swoopo is pay full retail price for the item, even if you lose. Swipebids makes no offer that I could find as of this writing to put all your losing bid costs towards the price of the item. Maybe they’ll do so in the future.

Another auction site, CactusBids, has gone so far as to hire Earnst & Young auditors to audit their auctions to ensure they are fair. That and they have an A rating with the BBB.

Is Swipebids legit? Let’s take a look. Remember, this is all our opinion, hard facts about Swipebids are hard to come by, but let’s take a look at the details of the site and how it’s advertised and you can come to your own conclusions.

Swipebids In The News? Not Really.

None of these quotes are about Swipebids

The registration page for Swipebids has a bunch of logos for legitimate news sites plastered all over it. Yet none of them have ever reported favorably on Swipebids that we are aware of. In fact, all the news logo’s say something like “Penny Auctions in the news” in fine fine print near them, and at the very bottom of the page, well below where anyone would ever scroll down to, there is this little gem: “SwipeBids is not associated with any of the logos used on the website, however penny auctions have been featured on all of these newscasts.”

Swipebids has a private Web Registration

No legitimate business asking for your credit card should EVER have a privately registered web site. It’s very hard to trace back exactly where they are or who their are with a private registration.

Videos on their registration page have nothing to do with Swipebids

The video has nothing to do with Swipebids

There are a couple of images and videos on the Swipebids page that are intended to get you to think there are news stories about Swipebids and saving on overstock or closeout items in the news. Look closer for the tiny disclaimers under the video’s stating that they are generic videos for auctions and they have nothing to do with Swipebids? Huh? Why put them there? Oh, that’s right, to make the average consumer think they are getting some sort of special deal when in fact you’re going to be hit up for $159. That’s right, $159.

Is Swipebids tricking some people into a $159 charge?

None of the things I pointed out above are particularly illegal or fraudulent. Misleading sure, but not illegal. However, at the time of this writing, their registration page makes you think you are giving them your credit card in the same way eBay asks for your credit card, to validate your account and there is no information about being charged near the button to register.

WOAH! Stop right there! Look at the fine print to the left of the credit card box. Now look again. Yes, it doesn’t explicitly say anywhere that you are paying them $159, but that’s exactly what they’re going to charge your credit card.

In my opinion this does NOT meet the FTC requirements for clear disclosure of charges. Will the average consumer know what they are getting into and willingly fork over $159? Probably not. What happens is that most people decide it was their own fault and try to “win” back their money by bidding on items, thereby basically giving Swipebids all the ammo their need if they ever try to dispute the charges.

UPDATE: As of August 23nd, it appears that they have placed some small black text right under the “Start Bidding” button that says “By clicking below you will be charged $159 and receive 300 bids.” that was not there before. So kudos to Swipebids for that at least.

Crap! I feel like I was suckered by Swipebids! What do I do now?

The Terms you’ll find buried on the Swipebids site say that they offer a “money back guarantee”, but only if you actively participate in auctions, use all the bids that you didn’t know you were even buying for $159, and don’t actually win ANYTHING. Nothing at all. Many people get sucked in and end up winning a $10 Walmart card or better yet they “win” more bids and thus don’t qualify for the so called money back deal.

If you signed up knowing you were paying $159 and realize now that you’re unlikely to save enough on items to justify you $159 investment, make sure you do not bid on anything small ticket items you are likely to win but would never be worth the $159 you paid (the $10 or $25 gift cards, or ANY Bid packs) use up all your 300 bids on items that you would save more than $160 on and try to get a legitimate refund after you have used them all up.

If you registered *BEFORE* Swipebids added the text stating your credit card would be charged, you should follow the steps below. Here is what we recommend:

Don’t feel bad! Seems like hundreds if not thousands of people have been taken in by these sort of landing pages that trick you by not clearly disclosing that your credit card number is actually going to be charged. It happens to the best of us.
Swipebids may not have left out the note about actually getting charged on purpose, but if you didn’t think you would be charged when you signed up because of inadequate disclosure, it’s not your fault! Call Swipebids and explain that you signed up not knowing your credit card would be charged and want a refund. Good luck with that, but worth a try.
If #2 fails above call/write your credit card company, dispute the charges and change your card number. Since this Swipebids site at the time this article was written did not meet the FTC requirements for clear disclosure in our opinion for the charges you received, consider the charge to be suspect.
Start ID theft monitoring right away! Click here to sign up for Experian Protect My Id monitoring. We can’t be sure of Swipebids data protection practices at all without further auditing information. I’d suggest signing up for the free month to check your credit report and make sure no one tries to change your address or open a new card using the current cards details you gave away.
Warn your friends not to be taken! Click Here to Share this on Facebook! Hit “Post to Profile” to warn your friends, or Click Here to ReTweet this article.
Report Swipebids to the BBB by clicking here
Report Swipebids to the FTC by clicking here

Note that all of the above was on the Swipebids site when this article was written, and we’re not lawyers or Feds, so this is all our opinion. Look at the facts and decide for yourself. If Swipebids cleans up their act on any of the areas above, please let us know and we’ll be happy to provide an update.

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Is DailyNews7.com and the Home Income System A Scam?

by El Plumber (admin) on May 6, 2010

Months after the famous FTC deadline for disclosure on affiliate web sites, the online money making scammers are back at it, this time more brazen than ever. Now we have DailyNews7.com pushing something called the Home Income System, where for only $2.97 you too can become part of the American dream and work from home in your spare time “posting links online”.

Interesting use of the geo-targeting there, just saying they are from your state rather than drilling all the way down to the town where your internet service provider is located.

Since it’s almost certain they are breaking the law in the US, these guys seem to have thrown all caution to the wind and just gone for it. The FTC has clearly set forth the rules for online disclosure and factual proof of earnings potential the AVERAGE user would have with this system, as well as disclosure of all costs associated with the system.

DailyNews7.com does none of these things. No where does it say it’s an advertisement. It has a quote from Larry King that he most certainly never made about the “Home Income System”. It has a Photoshopped cover of Newsweek as well. It even has a fake ad for Dish Network that brings you to the offer page for the Home Income Kit if you click on it.

Our old friend Kevin Hoeffer’s sister Mary is apparently been dragged into it too, with a random photo of a check for $5000 attributed to her.

Why do we think this is a scam in our opinion? Besides the unsubstantiated income claims that are against the latest FTC rules, no where on the DailyNews7 sides does it say anything about the true cost of the “Home Income System”.

All it says is “First you will need to apply for a work from home kit. There is a small charge of $2.97 for shipping and handling, Judy explained that “this charge is made to cover shipping costs but also to separate the people that are serious about working from home.”

Which is complete bunk. The real reason is in the hopes you won’t notice the fine print. What is the fine print? Click on through any of the links and you land on internetprofitsuccesssystem.com, where you can fill out your name and address and phone number (which I would NOT suggest doing) and read the small text to find:

By placing my order I agree to the Terms of Offer, which explain this order includes the above for just $2.97 shipping and handling. If you enjoy your trial, just pay a monthly membership fee of $79.86. You may cancel anytime by calling: (877) 834-4449.

Yeah, that’s right, they are going to whack your credit card for $79.86. There is no checkbox or opt-in for this, which is also against the FTC rules.

Click on the actual Terms and Conditions link and you find this:

which is that you, the buyer, are not entitled to a refund that may or may not have been charged to you for delivery of said product, or services, or subscription. Furthermore, any free trials that may or may not be offered with this product are only free during the said allotted time of the free trial period, the free trial period is 3-days starting on the date signed up. If you have not cancelled the free bonus within the free trial period (if offered on product purchasing), you are agreeing to purchase the bonus material and/or service at a monthly reoccurring cost of up to $79.86 (seventy nine dollars and eighty six cents USD. This can be cancelled by contacting BlogMaster Profits customer service at (877) 834-4449 and stating your desire to cancel said bonus material. However, in order to not be charged any future reoccurring cost, please give ample time (2 business days) to be cancelled out of any reoccurring billing system before the next scheduled charge to your account (this does not apply during any trial period). Not canceling trial programs constitutes authorization, by you, the buyer, for any charges (as outlined) for the associated bonus service until your request to cancel has been received by our customer service staff. By not canceling the bonus program during the trial period or prior to two days before a scheduled billing cycle, you agree that any reoccurring charges billed to you will be non-refundable. You also agree that by purchasing this product, you will be given access to digital material outlined in the members area. No physical product will be sent to your home or business address.

That’s right, no refunds. And you have to cancel your three day trial within two days to be eligible to stop the billing.

Continue on through the site and terms and you will find NOTHING about the company’s physical address or email, just a phone number that was closed when we attempted to call it.

Now we haven’t read any specific complaints about internetprofitsuccesssystem.com, but it sure as hell looks like all the other Internet money scams out there that trick you into coughing up your credit card thinking you are only paying shipping and handling.

How To Cancel The Home Income Kit?

Well, they do provide a phone number you can call. HOWEVER, a number of people have suggested that calling their number is not the right thing to do.

If you call to cancel, they now have a record of you contacting them and if you later try to dispute the charge with your credit card company, they can show the record of your call to your credit card company as proof of the transaction. Only go this route if you can’t afford to cancel the card in question or if it is a debit card which is much harder to dispute. You’ve been internet mugged here, don’t take it lying down. It is our opinion based on the FTC guidelines that these people are breaking the law, plain and simple. You wouldn’t call a mugger to ask for your money back, you would go to the authorities.

Here is what we recommend:

Don’t feel bad! Seems like hundreds if not thousands of people have been taken in by these sort of “negative option” offers that trick you by not clearly disclosing you are signing up for monthly charges. You were tricked, it happens to the best of us.
Call/write your credit card company, dispute the charges and report the card stolen. Since this site does not meet the FTC requirements for clear disclosure for the charges you received, consider your card stolen. This will make sure they can’t charge you any more and that they can’t sell your credit card number to anyone else. If they tricked you once already, what makes you think they won’t try to squeeze every penny out of you they can?
Start ID theft monitoring right away! Click here to sign up for Experian Protect My Id monitoring. You just gave some shady website your name, address, phone number, credit card and secret 3 digit card number. You can get Experian ID Protection for $1 for 30 days, then it’s $9.95 a month. I’d suggest signing up for AT LEAST the first month to check your credit report and make sure no one tries to change your address or open a new card using the current cards details you gave away.

I Didn’t Get Taken, But What Can I Do To Help?

Wh can you do to stop these guys from taking in more people? Warn everyone about it!

Click Here to Share this on Facebook! Hit “Post to Profile” to warn your friends.
Use the “Share This” link below to Digg or Stumble or Reddit or Email or whatever service you use to share this so that other people might see it before they get scammed too!
Click Here to ReTweet this article.

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Free As In Ice Cream is Good, Free As In Trial Scam is Bad.

by El Plumber (admin) on May 5, 2010

All these Free Trial scams all over the Internet advertising world have started making people nervous of any free deals. Howeve, free has always been and remains a great sales and marketing tool.

Giving something away for free gets people’s interest in your product or service with very little sales “friction” since it’s free. If they like your free product or service, there is a far greater chance that they will return to buy later.

One of the most famous mainstream examples of free marketing is Ben And Jerry’s annual Free Cone event. Every year in late April, anyone can walk up to a Ben and Jerry’s store and receive one free cone, no questions asked. The promotion has proved to be so popular that many other stores such as Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, Taco Bell, etc have followed their lead and have a “free” something day.

There are huge psychological marketing benefits to giving someone something for free.

Free is Easy

First off, giving something away for free breaks down that initial barrier to purchasing something. Maybe you have never had Ben and Jerry’s before, maybe you just like the idea of free ice cream. Whatever it is, giving something away for free draws people in. Unfortunately, many online marketers have discovered this and have been hooking people in with the false pretense of “free”.

Black hat marketers soon learned that giving away Acai Berry pills or Home Income Kits for a “free trial” would draw people in. They would charge some nominal ($1.95) amount for shipping of you “free” item, mainly just so they could get your credit card.

What most people don’t realize until later is that “free trial” means that one day after you ordered you would get whacked with $97 and $47 and $27 charges on your credit card. With the Acai Berry’s if you didn’t return the unfinished bottle of pills in some short time frame (5 days), you’d get charged $197 for it, then $197 a month thereafter as they sent you a new bottle of pills.

The free trial that automatically charges you lots of money does NOT create goodwill but rather anger. People making money this way know that they will likely only get that first bill in, maybe the second before the customer gets angry and takes action.

Free trials with rebills like this only create badwill with your customers. If that’s your business plan to squeeze a payment or two out of each customer before they flee, then so be it.

Real Free Creates Goodwill

Studies have shown that giving things away for free creates future goodwill. That by accepting that free cone from Ben and Jerry’s, you are creating a future debt in your mind that you own Ben and Jerry’s something in return.

This translates to you wanting to pay for ice cream the next time you see their products in the supermarket or are walking past one of their stores, far more so than if you have never accepted their free gift in the first place.

People act irrationally about free as well. If given the choice between a free item of low value and a higher value item at a discounted price of half off, people will opt for the free item 90% of the time.

Don’t Screw Up Free!

The fast food chain KFC had a free chicken day, but only at some locations. The company refused to pay back the franchise owners for the promotion and thus many of them opted out.

And those KFC locations that were participating quickly ran out of chicken once the promotion was announced on Oprah.

The result? People were PISSED! They were promised some free chicken and then when it didn’t appear, they were angry at KFC. What started as a goodwill marketing promotion actually ended up creating a great deal of BADwill toward the company.

So What?

So what? Give stuff away for free and you will make money in the long run. True free is a very powerful marketing tool.

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Free Link Building Through Social Networks

by El Plumber (admin) on February 19, 2010

I’ve been planning on writing my own free program for making money online through building successful websites for a while now. I keep getting distracted by the crap that tends to derail all great ideas. Creating a site and program that is worthwhile with real tutorials takes time and investment and I keep going back to add content and improve my current money making sites over starting a new one that helps you do it.

Once you put in the time and effort to create a couple even mildly successful websites, it acts like a snowball gathering mass as it rolls downhill.

You can leverage your existing sites by starting new sites in similar niches and linking to them from your power sites to jump start them. But what if you have no power sites and are starting from scratch? Is there an easy way to get started and build a power site, without spending lots of money or spending lots of time trying to build links?

To answer that question I bit the bullet a few months ago and started a brand new site around a brand new topic completely unrelated to anything I’d done before.

I’m not going to link to this new site from any of my power sites. I want to see just how well it does doing link building ONLY through free link submission at social bookmarking and social networking sites.

So far so good. I’m just over two months into the new site, have only written five articles and only built links through free social link submission to places like Digg, Mixx, Propeller, Fark, Reddit, etc. I’m getting about 20 visitors a day to it from search engine keywords, and another 5 or so from direct links from the social network sites. It’s in a pretty tame niche, so no big payoff for a couple of visits, but that’s enough to pull a couple of dollars a day from advertising and affiliate links

Is it going to make me rich? Not yet at least. The idea is to build a site pretty much on autopilot, spending an hour or two a week creating new articles, eventually building the site to a point where it’s making a few hundred dollars a month. How many sites would you need to make to replace your current working salary at a couple hundred dollars a month each? 10? 20? 30? At a couple of hours each per week, that’s probably less than you are working now.

But it doesn’t end there. Eventually after a couple of years it’s far easier to build on your existing sites and make them more profitable. What about if they were making a couple THOUSAND a month each, how many sites would you need then?

I’ll keep you posted on when my new program will be ready. Click the “Subscribe” link at the top right to make sure you don’t miss out.

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Social Network or Bust! – Rules For Bloggers #19

by El Plumber (admin) on January 23, 2010

I’ve been talking about search engine traffic lately, since that is what I am targeting with my niche sites these days. Grab a good search results position Google for some half-decent keywords and it’s free traffic that keeps coming and coming without having to pay for advertising.

But at the same time, do not forget to use social networks to drive traffic. Sure, you can go try to attract tons of Twitter followers (who will likely just ignore you) and try to make lots of Facebook friends (who will likely Hide you from their feeds) and so on, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.

Google and other search engines trust social networking sites more than they will likely trust your site! It’s far easier to get your post on Digg or Propeller or Mixx to rank highly in search results than it is to get a new site to rank that high.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at this report for the last six months of referral clicks for Electron Plumber:

Referrer	Views
facebook.com/home.php?	860
google.com/support/forum/p/Web%20Sear…	685
google.com/support/forum/p/Web Search…	623
facebook.com/home.php	578
facebook.com/home.php?ref=home	531
digg.com/educational/10_Ways_to_Spot_…	518
digg.com/business_finance/Google_Mone…	397
mixx.com/stories/4709637/josh_made_ca…	365
google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense/th…	330
digg.com/business_finance/The_Miami_G…	318
prosperly.com/2009/make-money-posting…	254
google.com/support/forum/p/AppSecurit…	230
google.com	213
mixx.com/stories/7047354/google_adwor…	192
entrecard.com/category/browser?catego…	192
digg.com/business_finance/Mary_s_Mone…	183
digg.com/world_news/The_Los_Angeles_T…	162
digg.com/business_finance/Debt_Free_K…	159
facebook.com	154
anarchology.org/index.php?topic=2178.…	135
scam.com/showthread.php?t=118436	124
digg.com/business_finance/Yoursearchp…	120
blogstorm.co.uk/easy-google-profit-sc…	120
forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.ph…	108
mixx.com/stories/5345691/the_los_ange…	105
facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo	98
digg.com/d1ok2C	96
mixx.com/stories/5345724/kevins_road_…	90

While it’s important to note that direct referring sites account for less than 15% of the traffic we receive (the rest is direct from search engines), it’s still quite a number of visits and views.

What you should specifically look at though is the Digg and Mixx referrals in there. Why those two? Because those are really the only social networks we’ve submitted to. Well, Propeller (free links) and Reddit a little bit too, but mostly Digg and Mixx. And not every post either, probably less than half of our posts.

And those aren’t Digg superstar posts either, most have at 2 or 3 Diggs on them tops. But for certain search queries, Google ranks those links higher than our actual content, sometimes on the first page when the original story isn’t even in the top two pages.

So post those stories! Don’t be shy. Plus it’s crazy simple, takes only a couple of minutes to post a story. Even less if you use an automatic bookmarking tool like Bookmarking Demon to auto post to all the top social bookmarking sites at the same time.

Do it, do it now.

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Number of Clicks For Ranking First in Google vs All The Rest

by El Plumber (admin) on January 17, 2010

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a very important component of getting traffic to any website. Ideally you would have a great site that magically spreads virally around the internet by word of mouth/email/Twitter/Facebook then holds on to that traffic long term. Until then, there is great traffic available free from Google if you know how to get it.

Think about this. When you want to chat with your friends and socialize you go to Facebook or Twitter or Foursquare. When you want information, you go to a search engine and type in some keywords. Matt Curtis from Google has stated that approximately 25% of all search queries HAVE NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE. That’s right, 25% of things people are searching for have never been searched for according to Google statistics.

And many of those new search terms would surprise you. I just did a quick check on one of my sites for an example and found this search that led someone to it today: “were are you aloud to ride electric bikes?” That’s right, poor spelling and all. Now I’m not suggesting you go out and try to get these type of completely crappy long tail search terms.

For a good keyword, one that is searched thousands or tens of thousands of times a month, the difference between the 1st and 2nd position in the search results is huge. The difference between the 1st and 5th is even larger.

A couple of years ago, AOL published some of their search data as part of a research project. Whole other story, a number of people at AOL lost their jobs over it. But before AOL wised up and realized that there was still personal data in the actual search terms themselves, people downloaded copies of the full data set. Some smart people then mined that for data on click through rates for various rankings in the AOL Search Engine, which gets its data from Google.

So what you are looking at here is an average number of times someone clicks on each search result position after performing a search. Take a look at the data:

% of clicks
Click Rank1: 42.13%
Click Rank2: 11.90%
Click Rank3: 8.50%
Click Rank4: 6.06%
Click Rank5: 4.92%
Click Rank6: 4.05%
Click Rank7: 3.41%
Click Rank8: 3.01%
Click Rank9: 2.85%
Click Rank10: 2.99%

1st page: 89.82%
2nd page: 10.18%

Now it’s important to note that this is aggregate data, and that the percentages are going to differ wildly for various keywords. I’d bet a specific search like “Walmart” would yield well over 80% hitting on the first result, where as something generic like “porn” would have a more balanced distribution between the top three or four items. However, it certainly is telling. For 10,000 searches on a generic term a day, on average, you’ll get anywhere from 10%-40% of those hits a day in the top spot, vs 2%-15% for the second spot, vs 1%-8% for the third spot and down from there.

Note that other junk shows up at the top of most Google search results these days that can wildly affect the number of clicks you’ll get for the #1 search spot. Depending on how much people are paying, the top three Adword ads can appear at the top of the search results rather than the side. Add that Google now displays things like top shopping results and images and top video results above the regular old search results, turning your old #1 text search result into a #6. Or if you’re smart, turning your old #6 ranking into a #1 by using video and images.

But the biggest lesson here is if you aren’t on the first page, you’ll get a fraction of the traffic. If you aren’t even on the second page, you might as well not exist.

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Why Search Engine Traffic Is Still King

by El Plumber (admin) on January 13, 2010

Even in the new Twitter/Facebook/Foursquare/Digg/Reddit Social Media onslaught, for an ethical marketer search engine traffic is still by far the BEST source of traffic for most sites, especially newer sites. You sometimes read other places about sites still doing fine after getting canned from Google rankings because of some grey hat (more on that later) technique they used, and I say best for most sites because there are always exceptions, but Search Engine traffic is still king because it is ACTIONable traffic and actionable traffic converts to $$$ better than random traffic.

Think of it this way. How did you get to this site today? Maybe a friend sent you a link about a scam on Facebook, or you came through someone pointing out an article on a forum post you were reading. I would consider you a passive visitor. You came because you were interested in the link, but you were not ACTIVEly looking for information at the time.

The likelihood of you clicking on an ad here is lower than someone who came here by specifically searching for information. Say you typed in “work at home” into a search engine and arrived here. You are ACTIVEly looking for information, and thus far more likely to take ACTION on an ad you see on this site for anything related to working at home jobs, since that is what you came looking for. Your mind will almost subconsciously be scanning for terms related to what you searched for, and you might find it in a context sensitive ad.

These terms are important to remember; passive traffic is not bad at all, it’s just likely to not as good as ACTIVE traffic. And Search Engine traffic is ACTIVE traffic.

NOTE: Targeting your site niche is extremely important here toward your “conversion rate”. Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that turn into revenue. For example, if you get 100 visitors and 2 of them click a pay per click ad or buy a product, your conversion rate is 2%. Some search engine traffic will always convert better than others, but no matter what you need to carefully target your advertising. A search for “who won american idol” isn’t someone who is going to convert for an affiliate program for earning money online. However, they may convert for albums or DVDs of American Idol winners.

For example, we have one site that targets and gets over 75% of it’s traffic from search engines for people looking for generic terms. For example, they are looking for generic terms, things like “rechargeable power tool”, not “black and decker storm”. And in these cases, the ads on that site get a 8-10% click through ratio, vs a 1-2% ratio on sites that target specific products. Anyone searching for “black and decker storm” has likely already made a decision and is looking for product info or to buy. Anyone looking for “rechargeable power tool” has no idea what they’re looking for and want advice, will click around and be more likely to be interested in a targeted ad for power tools.

Again, search engines aren’t the only game in town, not by a longshot, but if you want free targeted traffic, Google is still king.

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The Electron Plumber Adds DoFollow Trackbacks

by El Plumber (admin) on January 11, 2010

Found another great WordPress plugin the other day, this one called DoFollow Trackbacks. If you link to any article on The Electron Plumber you get a dofollow link in return back to your site from that article!

What is dofollow?

By default, WordPress has a built in feature for both trackbacks and pingbacks, both methods used to update someone of a link back to their site.

Thus, if I was to link to your website from The Electron Plumber, you would receive a notification through your WordPress or Blogger interface that someone was linked to your site. It’s automatic and requires no effort on the part of the linker or the linkee.

Another feature of WordPress is that you can allow trackbacks to appear on the original article page as a way of thanking the other site for linking back to you in the first place. But by default those links at marked as “rel=nofollow”.

Now, if you have a website or blog or plan on doing any internet marketing and do not know what nofollow is and how it affects you, you’ll have to learn. Basically marking a link with a “rel=nofollow” tag is a way to tell search engines (specifically Google) that you do not trust that link and you do not want the search engine to count that link as a vote for the site you are linking to. The most common uses are to link to an affiliate program, or to link to a site you want to point out to users as a bad site, or simply to prevent spam. The theory is that if blog comments and user editable sites such as Wikipedia automatically nofollow links, then spammers won’t bother trying to build links using them to get a better search engine ranking. It certainly doesn’t prevent all spam, but seems to cut down on it for the most part.

Also, if you allow people to place links in your comments that are dofollow, search engines see that as an endorsement. And if that endorsement goes to a known spam or “bad” site, the search engine may actually penalize you for putting such a bad link on your site, that is unless is is nofollowed.

What does all this mean for you? If you link to any of our articles from your site or blog, you get an automatic dofollow link back to your site or blog from the page you linked to!

Enjoy!

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Don’t Use The Amazon Site Stripe To Create Links To Non Product Pages

by El Plumber (admin) on January 1, 2010

I’ve been an Amazon Affiliate for almost a year and a half, not on this site (although I really should add some links to books down the sidebar there someday) but on a couple of other sites. Last year before Amazon basically killed the practice, I was doing what is generally called Affiliate Arbitrage, where you could buy advertising somewhere like Google Adwords for popular product keywords and send the people directly to Amazon without needing to build a website in between. As long as you make more in commissions than in advertising, you make money.

That practice was killed by Amazon about 10 months ago, and I stopped advertising and started focusing on my niche product review sites.

Amazon lets you create up to 100 custom affiliate tags per account to help you track which links people are making purchases through. If you click on a link and buy something, I could tell which link you clicked on and thus which links were working the best. Rumor has it that if you wrote to Amazon Associates support, they would create up to 1500 affiliate tags per account for you to help with tracking, but I’ve never bothered.

Looking back at my sales figures over the holidays this year, I noticed a strange thing. Some of the tags I had used to track purchases made from advertising over a year ago were actually making sales and thus commissions during the holidays.

At first I thought I must have made a mistake and used an old tag somewhere, but when I searched my sites, I found nothing. Those tags had not been unused for a year.

Then it hit me, people had bookmarked my Amazon Affiliate links! Somewhere out there were multiple people who had browser bookmarks to Amazon with my tag in them, and everytime they clicked their bookmark bought something, I make a commission off it.

What is and what does this have to do with the Amazon Site Stripe you ask? The Site Stripe is something that appears at the top of the Amazon web pages for people who are logged into the Amazon Affiliate program. It looks like this:

Well, if you use the Site Stripe to make links to non-product pages at Amazon such as a Search result or a Category home page, your tag does not end up in the final URL and thus you will never get credit for sales by anyone who bookmarks that link.

Look at these two links below. One was generated from the Site Stripe using the Link To This Page function, and the other by adding my tag directly to the URL from Amazon proper:

PlayStation 3 Search – Not Site Stripe Generated

PlayStation 3 Search – Site Stripe Generated

See the difference? No? Well, the first one is a direct link. The second one contains a REDIRECT call from Amazon that takes you to the page but WITHOUT your affiliate tag in the URL. It still counts when someone clicks through it and buys something, as the redirect takes care of tagging it as potentially your sale but if they happen to bookmark it your tag is not in the URL.

How did I make that first link that has my tag in it? Simple. I took the original URL from a search at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Dvideogames&field-keywords=Playstation+3&x=0&y=0

and I jammed one of my Affiliate Tags into it:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Dvideogames&tag=playstation19-20&field-keywords=Playstation+3&x=0&y=0

Simple. My tag is playstation19-20, so I find the first & (or any &, doesn’t matter really) and I add this directly before it: &tag=youraffiliatetaghere, in my case it’s &tag=playstation19-20

Honestly, I find just grabbing the URL and adding my tag easier than using the Site Stripe anyway. Just make sure you get the tag correct or you won’t get credit for any sales. Go to the official Amazon Affiliate Link Checker to make sure any links you create are giving you proper credit.

Enjoy!

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Google Profits Kit and Travis Made Cash Scam

by El Plumber (admin) on December 29, 2009

Wow! I want a free fan of large bills too!

If you want the summary, yes, Travis did actually make cash. But he did it by stealing from you. And while you can work from home posting Google advertisements on the internet, you will get nothing but a giant headache and major screwing (and not the good kind) if you give these people your credit card.

It is our opinion that the people running the Travis Made Cash site and the people behind the Google Profits Kit are breaking the law pushing these part time online job kits that do nothing other than drain your credit cards. I really had hoped that something would change on December 1st. The FTC announced near the end of the summer that on December 1st, 2009, they would implement new guidelines clarifying the rules about what types of sites, advertising and affiliate offers were considered legal and how disclosures needed to be handled.

Well, looks like it was a complete and utterly empty gesture from the FTC, as these Google Profits kit type scams continue to invade every corner of the internet.

If this is your first time running into one of these fake news sites or fake blog sites promoting the, check out our article on the original Easy Google Profit scam that started this whole thing.

How does the Google Profit Kit work? Here, I’ll lay it out:

Some unsavory character, lets call him Phil for lack of a better term, takes an old electronic book about how you can make money online by posting Google Adsense ads (which is a FREE program from Google), then makes a crappy website out of it. He calls it Google Profits Kit.
Phil then sets up a flashy looking website, promising anyone who orders the Google Kit will make anywhere from $200 to $943 a day by doing nothing, and you can too for only $1.95! Note that if you want to make $944 a day using the magic of the Google Profit Kit, you’re apparently out of luck.
What you don’t notice is that hidden in the Terms and Conditions in the fine print is that you’ll get charged $84.73 every month, and $43.23 and $23.47 for some other stuff you had no idea you were signing up for. Yes, this is 100% illegal, but the FTC is too busy and underfunded to go after someone running this scam from the Caymen islands. And if they do get caught, the worst that happens is they have to give the money back, as they can claim that since it is in the Terms they technically aren’t complete criminals.
Phil then posts his site as an “offer” on an affiliate network site, saying he’ll pay anyone $40 for person who you can trick into signing up for his Google money making scam.
Travis, whose name isn’t really Travis but it works here, sets up a fake blog or fake newspaper and pays for advertising. He’ll probably get 1 out out 100 people to fall for his fake site, click through and cough up their credit card to discover how they too can instantly solve all their financial problems for only $1.95. If he pays $0.20 a click for the ads, and he hits on 1 out of 100, and he gets $40 for the poor soul who gave these folks their credit card, he just made $20. Now pay for $2000 worth of advertising and make $2000.
You get caught in this, and begin a nightmare of hidden charges and busy Customer Service numbers.

It’s the internet equivalent of the Three Card Monty, Phil is the dealer, Travis is the shill, and you my intrepid friend are the mark.

The sad thing is that THIS SCAM WORKS. People have been raking in the dough hand over fist using this scam, and it’s been going on for well over two years now. yet the FTC and other authorities seems powerless to stop it.

Oh, in case you were wondering, check out the hidden Terms and Conditions from the Google Kit that Travis links to at www.securesiteoffers.com. Note by the time you read this, it will likely have changed as these guys like to keep moving their sites every couple of days/weeks to keep ahead of the FTC.

Your Membership is the perfect tool to start making money on the Internet. We’ve helped thousands of people achieve their goals. By submitting this form you are ordering Creative Search Training and the trial membership for $1.95 Instant Access. If you do not cancel within the 3-day trial period, you will be charged a one-time amount of $129.95. In addition, you will be provided access to an online Learning Center which will bill at $39.98, unless you cancel, 30-days from the date of enrollment and you will be re-billed every 30 days at $39.98 per month until cancelled. To cancel call 888-753-4203 M-F, 7am-5pm, MST within 3 days of the date you ordered.

You will also receive a Risk Free 14-day Trial membership to HomeSource. You may cancel anytime during the trial period by calling 1-800-537-0984 M-F, 8am to 5pm, MST. If membership is continued you will automatically be charged $29.95 a month.

Yeah. That’s right. $129.95, PLUS $39.95, PLUS $29.95. Plus god knows what else you are going to find on your credit card.

How To Cancel The Google Profits Kit?

Well, they do provide a phone number you can call. HOWEVER, a number of people have suggested that calling their number is not the right thing to do.

Here is what we recommend:

Don’t feel bad! Seems like hundreds if not thousands of people have been taken in by these sort of “negative option” offers that trick you by not clearly disclosing you are signing up for monthly charges. You were tricked, it happens to the best of us.
Call/write your credit card company, dispute the charges and report the card stolen. Since this site does not meet the FTC requirements for clear disclosure for the charges you received, consider your card stolen. This will make sure they can’t charge you any more and that they can’t sell your credit card number to anyone else. If they tricked you once already, what makes you think they won’t try to squeeze every penny out of you they can?
Start ID theft monitoring right away! Click here to sign up for Experian Protect My Id monitoring. You just gave some shady website your name, address, phone number, credit card and secret 3 digit card number. You can get Experian ID Protection for free for 30 days, then it’s $9.95 a month. I’d suggest signing up for AT LEAST the free month to check your credit report for free and make sure no one tries to change your address or open a new card using the current cards details you gave away.

I Didn’t Get Taken, But What Can I Do To Help?

Wh can you do to stop these guys from taking in more people? Warn everyone about it!

Click Here to Share this on Facebook! Hit “Post to Profile” to warn your friends.
Use the “Share This” link below to Digg or Stumble or Reddit or Email or whatever service you use to share this so that other people might see it before they get scammed too!
Click Here to ReTweet this article to warn all your faithful followers.

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